u/Dilly-Senpai

My friends and I love Barotrauma, but the game gets unbearably laggy for our group of 5 right about the time we get to the Great Sea in any campaign we've played (sometimes earlier). It really puts a damper on things because it makes it difficult to EVA and fight things like Fractal Guardians when you and they are rubber banding around and things randomly regenerate HP because the server decided that your hit didn't really count.

Has the game meaningfully addressed this in the last year or so?

I've seen much discussion around the subreddit lately about the new smithing mechanics and after being curious in my own playthrough, I made the following spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GRycajMp2U_4Ys6Z7LdBMXzioX5kHtOvRZYjf7lD7DA/copy

Clicking through will prompt you to make a copy into your own google drive. You can use the dropdowns to select what smithing step you want to calculate. You can also change the base stats at the top to any tool you like -- the wiki has the important stats, and you could also reference the tool's description in game.

The "Cumulative Odds" box will calculate the chance of your tool actually surviving the process by multiplying the chance of success for each step together. I have tested a few permutations on a steel pickaxe in creative mode, but there's always a chance I messed up on the math somewhere. Please let me know if that's the case.

As I was writing this, I added "Effective Durability". This will take the base durability, multiply by the odds of success (thus "decreasing" the "durability" to account for shattered tools) and then multiplies by (1 + durability bonus) (to simulate the increased durability of the finished products that survive). The higher this number, the more "optimal" the recipe is.

• In practice, it's not perfectly representative for a number of reasons;
  • First, you're very unlikely to smith 100 steel pickaxes to have a sample size large enough to represent a percentage, so that skews the resolution of the results.
  • Second, with that low of a sample size, a few bad or lucky results easily invalidates there numbers.

In case you'd like to audit my findings, the source code for the quenching behavior can be found on Anego Studios' GitHub, at:

https://github.com/anegostudios/vsessentialsmod/blob/bf457714887091a81b5c34b884aabcf9ca7761e6/CollectibleBehavior/CollectibleBehaviorQuenchable.cs#L228

Below are my opinions after using the calculator. Terms:

• Power Quench (P)
• Durability Quench (D)
• Temper (T)
• Effective Durability (ED)
• Effective Durability % (ED%)

If you want power (Swords, Spears):

• Quench normally 3 times in a row. Don't temper. (PPP)
• This gives a 73% chance of success and a 26% improvement to power. Your odds drop sharply after this point (the next quench goes down to a cumulative 58% success rate)
• Tempering is generally not worth it when going for power (unless you want really extreme numbers). At best, you do 3 quenches and alternate 2 tempers (PTPTP) (no point in doing a third if you aren't going to quench further). This gives you a 78% chance of success and a slightly worse 23% power improvement. Frankly the extra heating and cooling time doesn't account for +- 5% difference in odds and a slightly worse tool.
• You could also do PPTP for a 75% chance and 24% improvement, but this is pointless in my opinion. Just triple (or more) quench if you want power.

If you want durability (Tongs, Hammers, Chisels):

• Alternate quenches and tempering. Tempering does not reduce durability, so there's no reason not to.
• Same odds apply as above. The most optimal is DTD with an 87% chance of a 37% durability bonus, and an ED of 2986 or ED% of 19%.
  • "Wait!" I hear you thinking. "The first quench gives 20% more durability instead of 19%! Surely quenching just once is better?" No. The 5% chance of a shatter on that first quench weighs down that 20% durability bonus to an ED of 14% ; pushing to two quenches gives you more juice overall.
• DTDTD is also an option, but is slightly worse with an ED of 2951. Why go to the extra effort?
• You can look at it this way: if you try DTD on 10 pickaxes, that's a total of 25000 steel pick durability (base is 2500 each.) You lose 10% (rounding because we only have 10 tool heads) of that durability to shattered tool heads, leaving you with 22,500 durability. You gain 37% durability on the remaining heads; that means you have an effective 30,825 durability of tools.
  • We can see that this lines up pretty closely with our estimated ED of 2986; we're off by a bit due to rounding.

If you want a mix:

• Here's where things get tricky. Power and Durability quenches both lose effectiveness off of the total number of any quench, so taking durability or power directly reduces your potential upside of the other.
• I think that the best option is, as you might expect, DTP. It gives you an effective durability of 2622, a modest 5% increase. (Total percentage increase is 20%). It also gives you an 8% increase in power, so a small damage or mining speed bonus.
• PTD is a tempting thought, and does give more total power, at the cost of effective durability. You end up with 9.24% increase and 2549 ED or 2% ED%, respectively.

If you don't care about optimal, just quench until you're happy (or sick of wasting ingots...)