All bars in WZI are alloys, which are not pure metals. There could be some weird ratios of materials in alloys.

Talking about names, a gold coin is called a gold coin even if there is only 1% gold in it.

Edited 7/2/2021 14:08:20

the other day it will come to you if you're in your position as to how the person feels about yourself per. it has a few years in a month for her so he is going for more money on his relationship if you need something more comfortable and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and less more!

Ok, it's a game, and weird stuff happens in fictional worlds.

Curious though, do you also stand behind the recipes for crafts? Such as needing gold for boiling flasks, silver for glass, nickel for rivets, zinc for bolts, platinum for explosive bolts, screws (on only some maps) to build barbed wire, etc?

I'd love to hear a chemistry based explanation for these. (:

You edited your post ... and added this:

Talking about names, a gold coin is called a gold coin even if there is only 1% gold in it.

When is this the case? If we're talking about actual currency coins, that's an exception b/c of the history of people melting the coins for resale value. The point of a coin is that it's supposed to be worthless, and only representative of the value it holds as currency so people continue using it as currency and not as an actual physical asset.

Anyhow, we're not making gold coins here, we're making gold bars, right? And those to my knowledge are supposed to be 99.5% pure.

Edited 7/2/2021 14:40:32

Silver Glass: https://www.ebay.com/itm/182566059265
Gold Boiling Flask: https://www.ebay.com/itm/254143107257
Nickel Rivet: https://www.ebay.com/itm/264730022408
Zinc Bolt: https://www.ebay.com/itm/191348313533

Silver Glass: https://www.ebay.com/itm/182566059265
Not what I envisioned with "glass"; I was thinking glass window not glass beverage holder.

Gold Boiling Flask: https://www.ebay.com/itm/254143107257
This has gold bands on it, hardly a gold boiling flask. If you go by these rules, then not sure what the point of discussing is, b/c you could put a gold fleck on top of a car and say "gold car", without ever having to justify why multiple bars of gold are required to create it.

Nickel Rivet: https://www.ebay.com/itm/264730022408
I see rivets, but don't see nickel, but sure, okay, this is plausible.

Zinc Bolt: https://www.ebay.com/itm/191348313533
Zinc plated ... okay, stretching but at least an integral part of the product, so better than the gold bands on the flask.

You missed some though ... what about platinum for explosive bolts, screws to build barbed wire?

And if you're going to provide links for each of these, then I shall offer the following challenges:
silicon / twine
lead / struct
zinc & nickel / ceramics
iron, zinc, screws / metal pipe
neodymium / magnet

I'll note that needing aluminum for welding rods actually seems totally legit.

But I'll stop there b/c most of the items after that just get ridiculous:
chromium, uranium, welding rods, twine / speaker
gold, nickel, rivets, structs / transistor
lanthanum, terbium, welding rods, twine / resistor
titanium, welding rods, twine, structs / capacitor
lanthanum, erbium, dysprosium, welding rods / CRT screen

Besides, some of the metal names are completely made up, so real world chemistry might not apply here at all.

Which ones are made up? They all seemed legit to me. Or you mean they exist, they are elements, just not metals?

Curious though, do you also stand behind the recipes for crafts?

Short answer, no! Especially because these recipes change too often. There is definitely something fishy going on with the crafting, way more so than with smelting.

would there ever be a case where you would need a 5x or higher ratio of the inexpensive metal to the raw ore of the expensive metal?

Yes and no, but probably more no. If the more valuable ingredient binds a lot of oxygen but the reducing agent can only bind very little oxygen, then you would need more amount of the reducing agent to completely purify the valuable metal/element. But as I said, this assumes that the affinity to oxygen (or to sulfur in case of sulfides) decreases with the value of the material. So, copper must have a higher affinity than silver. Given this assumption, how likely is it that silver-oxides contain more than one atom of oxygen per molecule? Very unlikely, even if this was possible chemically speaking, the oxygen in the air would have reacted with other materials first before oxidizing some silver-oxide a second time.

I just remembered one application where you use two metals in a redox reaction. Not to purify one of them, sadly, but for welding rail tracks together. That is Thermite.

So, yeah, the recipes we have to deal with here are definitely a stretch and are mainly there to torture us. If you want a realistic game, rather play something like factorio (I'm not associated with this game at all, and haven't even played it, but I know that they are quite realistic there). ;)

EDIT: Okay, only one made up one. I just checked and all the others are real, but Unobtanium??? seriously? You couldn't have thought that this one is real, right? And the order of the ores in this game seems off to me.

Edit 2:

Talking about names, a gold coin is called a gold coin even if there is only 1% gold in it.

Let's differentiate this. There was a time, where coins were actually worth something. Back then, the actual material value of the coin was the only guarantee you had that you were holding something that others would accept for a trade. The governing entities were only responsible for small areas and outside of their territory, the name of the duke or count wasn't worth anything. So, coins were made of valuable metals because everyone could at least agree on the fact that gold is rare and therefore valuable. At this time, gold coins were made of almost pure gold. That's why you see pirates in movies testing coins with their teeth. Pure gold deforms, fake coins would be more rigid and wouldn't deform at all. If you can deform the coin with your teeth, it's a real (and therefore accepted) coin. Later on, things like Fort Knox came along. The actual coins were worth very little, but everyone knew that there is some amount of gold stored in a safe place as a guarantee that the coins you handle day in, day out will be accepted. Nowadays, no such guarantees exist anymore, but countries and federations (like the EU) got powerful enough that we just believe in the value of our currencies.

Edited 7/3/2021 10:50:58

LOL, forgot about unobtanium. Ok, that's definitely made up. Right out of the Avatar book of nonsense. If more stuff was made up, it might actually be better, lol. But ignoring Unobtanium, b/c it uses real chemical elements to create other things, it gives the appearance of being authentic, and even makes a meagre attempt by using cooper for copper wire, iron for screws, etc, but then just gives up and makes stuff up.

Anyhow, overall we agree, the recipes are just made up for game mechanics and make little (some) to no sense (most).