It might sound odd, but Horizons/Istaria made help to understand how metals are made, and even so I could pass some tests when we learned about the metals back in school. Because I knew you would need to smelt iron and nickel to get steel.

I loved the fact that Istaria kept "real" with the metals. In RL you also smelt copper and tin to get bronze, same with the cobalt, you smelt cobalt with nickel to get cobalt bars.

Boo me out all you want, I like when a game tries to keep real with the crafting, and so with also the metals. I know mithrill is not real and such, but in RL you also have to make alloys to make a durable metal, if you don't mix stuff together, you get a crumbling bar that does not hold long when crafted into something.

Just a few cent from a beta player, but I get now back to lurking.