Golem Shovels/Mining

The purpose of this thread is to discuss golem shovels and their use in game today and how it could change in the future.

Are golem shovels worth doing vs traditional mining?

Is the ingot return per shovel worth filling one small bod?

Should iron shovels be removed completely?

Should the colored ore drop rate be changed?

Would you like to see traditional mining get a buff as well, if golem shovels receive a positive tweak?

As it stands, golem shovels are the fastest (and most profitable) way to mine colored ingots. You are able to dictate which color you pull up based on the shovel you use so there is very little wasted effort.

Shovels come with 5-7 charges (+/- 1) and can be exhausted in a matter of seconds. The only thing slowing a golem miner down is their ability to kill the golems fast enough without dieing. As it stands a shovel will net you between 200-300 color ingots of your choosing.

Vs traditional mining, golem mining is much more lucrative as is. (I ran 3 recall mining bots) With practically every small blacksmith BoD netting a random shovel there are plenty to go around.

I feel golem mining is fine as is and IF it receives a change for the better, traditional mining should not be left out as it is already behind the standard we have become accustomed to with golem mining.

Please excuse my poor grammar

• Are golem shovels worth doing vs traditional mining?

Golem shovels are extremely profitable. Traditional mining is not.
In 1 hour of mining using golem shovels, I net about 10-11k ingots of whatever color shovels I decide to use.
At currently ingot prices that means roughly 160k gold per hour if you were to sell all the ingots to other players(except iron). I personally don't do BOD's so I have to purchase all my shovels from other players, taking my hourly gargoyle shovel mining profit down to roughly 120k an hour.

Iron gargoyle shovels are a different beast because town NPC's sell iron ingots at 8gp per. This acts as a price ceiling more or less. People will possibly pay a small premium over 8gp just for the convenience but for all intents and purposes, iron is locked at 8gp. If you were to do 40 iron gargoyle shovels, you would be left with only roughly 40k profit.

• Now, are golem shovels worth doing?

I suppose if your goal is to make gold they are. Pragmatically however, using gargoyle shovels are in my opinion one of them most painful ways to spend your game time.
1. You end up risking a lot of expensive gear when you go mining. I mine with over 500k worth of gear and that is the norm for my fellow maxers out there.
2. Golems drop 3 random sized piles of ore on the ground upon death. Using 40 shovels means you have to pick up off the ground almost 1,000 misc. sized ore piles. Have fun getting carpal tunnel.
3. The golems run when low on health. This just screws up your flow and means your going to be chasing shit all over the cave, leaving the ore all over the darn place instead of where you mined it up.
4. If you want to mine with gargoyle shovels at any respectable rate you will need to multi-box.

• Should iron shovels be removed completely?

I wouldn't go so far as to remove them completely. I would be VERY interested to see what the true price of iron ingots were if the NPC's were keeping it so low.

• Should the colored ore drop rate be changed?

No

• Would you like to see traditional mining get a buff as well, if golem shovels receive a positive tweak?

Yes I think traditional mining needs a buff. As stated previously, even an adjustment to the price or availability of NPC iron ingots would change it completely. Traditional mining could be ok if miners were paid the market price for their wares.

Nice post. Yeah I think the biggest thing is the price ceiling with npcs. This needs to be done away with asap. I enjoy mining but currently its so far behind. 8 gold per ingot is really not worth the time spent. As a miner its actually more valuable for me to keep the ingots for a one day blacksmith or use gold from hunting to PAY for more ingots at the current rate.

I would like to see the price for iron ingots change. No, I do not believe iron shovels should be removed. I enjoy traditional mining, gives me more of the feeling of old school UO. That feeling is one of the main reason I play here. I can play old school fashion, have fun. Still earn gold, etc. I really don't have to adjust my play style to fit this game.

I am far, far away from being one of the riches players in the game, but that has never been my goal. I have enough gold that I buy what I want, etc.So,
sticking with my play style does decrease my gold income. but...my choice.

I think the gargoyle pix axes and Golem shovels are fine. The random piles of ore doesn't bother me. I cannot remember a time in UO when they were not part of the game.

In my opinion, taking away the traditional aspects of the game, such as iron shovels, and keeping only the beefed up items, (Golem shovels) would take away from the game. (those were just two examples, keeping within this thread)

Thanks for this thread, an interesting one.

Westra/Marjo

Governess of Wispfelt

I would like to see Gargoyle Shovels removed completely because there is no reason at all that a character with no mining skill should be able to procure ore in such a fashion.

I would like to see Mining returned to what it was before Cave Troll spawn was thought up. Back when players had gumps to manage to assure they were at the keys. Hell, in the very worst, perfect that Cave Troll spawn to really only affect Recall miners and let us recall into caves again instead of whatever this convoluted fucking mess of "mining" is we have today. The Cave Troll concept was the perfect 'fix' for players remotely monitoring their mining macros from the shitter or otherwise. Instead, that got skipped over and we dove headfirst into some excessively restrictive configuration where we can't recall into mines, there's always some shitty spawn in the mines and big fucking surprise, there's still no common player vendors selling ingots.

There was NOTHING wrong with how mining was working other than the seriously hardcore were grinding away at it (which would have balanced itself out in time anyway as their ingot supplies got larger). I don't see major changes completely screwing tamers from 3x humping plat and gold at champs so why should miners get fucked? I don't see major changes screwing fishermen out of running 3x humping amibs and tmaps so why should miners get fucked?

I forgot about the cave troll spawn. So, I will amend my first post here. and agree with Blaise on that one.

I know that golem shovels won't go away however, I really don't want to see any changes that brings this server closer to trammel.


It's nearly too close for comfort as it is.

Are they worth doing?
Absolutely yes. Very profitable and on par with the best money makers in the game when using slayers.

Is the ingot return worth a small bod?
Yes.

Should we keep the shovel system?
Absolutely yes. Many players enjoy it as a nice alternative from traditional mining.

Should traditional mining be buffed?
Sure, but keep in mind that there is enough city mining available that this is a zero risk task. Is shovel mining faster? Yes, but they also face the risk of death and losing expensive slayer weapons. It should be faster.

Huh? Trammel? Please explain.

Where is the problem with traditional mining? I dont know where it has been nerfed? Just avoid the spawns? We even got doubled carrying capacity.

Someone said risk... I was thinking about that recently for some reason!

I think the shovels are completely fine to answer the questions posed,

Are golem shovels worth doing vs traditional mining?
Definitely, it's the best way to get colored ingots.

Are the golem shovels worth doing?
Yes, there is risk involved with slayer weapons and gear but I think it's fair since as Basoosh said they run the risk of losing the weapon so it should be faster than traditional mining.

Should iron shovels be removed completely?
I think they should appear less, As Elhorno and others have stated the fact NPC's sell iron ingots for 8gp puts a real ceiling on the iron ingot prices. You might be able to get 8.5gp per iron ingot if you sell in bulk but that's about it. Maybe something should be done with iron ingots on NPCs?

All in all I think the true problem with traditional mining, which for me is just using a packhorse and stripmining a cave/mountain is the fact that more than half the ingots you are going to get are iron. This brings the big problem with the fact iron ingots have a price ceiling due to NPC sales. This can deter player miners away from wanting to mine iron ingots, its much easier to go kill some monsters and buy the ingots from the vendor than to actually mine the iron itself. I think this is a problem in itself as it makes it so mining is really only done to gather colored ingots and not iron ones.

I don't know what can be done because I wonder if we removed iron ingots from NPC vendors would there even be enough iron in circulation normally without them inflating the amount? I don't do BODs regularly so I wouldn't want to comment on this.

No, packhorses got doubled carrying capacity. Going out mining with an actual miner character feels like farming with a dexxer. Like I'm only doing it for RP because it's so ridiculously out of balance from the alternatives (gargoyle shovel mining and multi-bond tamer). Why bother playing the game the way you want, or the way you remember, when there's so many super cool changes and unique systems here as alternatives?

/wrists



This is NOT UO the way I remember it.

I love Mining. Since the first time I played UO I was a crafter and I was mainly a Miner/Blacksmithy. I really don't care for golem shovels, I didn't even knew them before playing here. When I knew about it, I was a little bit excited, but I was disappointed when I had to have a fighter instead of a crafter to have a chance. Well, it'd be okay, but I was severely disappointed when I knew you need no Mining skill to use it.

What the freaking hell where is the sense to it? I cannot freaking control a freaking dragon if I don't waste at least 100 points of my skillset, why should a John Doe mine things with zero skill effort? This is completely absurd and it's a total disbalance of the system itself. That's obvious. When pretty much a Young freaking character freshly created could gather a backpack full of valorite.

I just like to stripmine caves with my pack horse while I watch YouTube videos or TV series. Classic mining. It just calms me down. Because the effort vs. net is not even close to valuable. Iron ingot economy, one of the most useful resources, is literally dictated by the system. Basically Mining is just a good waste of time for guys like me who just enjoy the game and don't care triple-boxing 24/7 to sit on gold and plat.

I don't mind golem shovels still around, but you definitely should have the proper skill to use it. It's logical, it's obvious, it's clear. Or give my miner the ability to control dragons. Or peace and provoke stuff.

Also: remove the iron ingots from NPCs. Let the economy flow among the players. BODs are a thing, there is demand for resources. Let the prices increase, let people create miners and look for resources or buy from other people.

This needs to change. Skill required should match the shovel's color to the skill required for that ore type.

As things exist today, if you remove NPC ingots, you kill BODs. There simply is not the supply of ingots from players to maintain the volume.

And I guess, if the price of iron ingots increases accordingly, filling BODs wouldnt be profitable unless prices of the BOD rewards increase drastically?

Would an increase in the cost of the NPC iron ingots to lets say 11gp per kill it?

A return to the mining we had before all these fucked up changes, would keep BoDs going just fine if not BETTER than before. Return mining to the way it was before Cave Trolls and Golems and drop ingots from NPCs entirely. I'll fire up my macros again and enjoy mining at the keys just like I used to as well as the people who quit over these ridiculous changes designed to curb something that wasn't even a problem.

I like shovels. And I have 3x GMs in mining btw.

I feel like, providing reasons might be productive, but I am too burned out from these discussions lately. I will simply press the like button on other peoples answers.