My thoughts on the new mining changes

It makes me so happy that this hasn't devolved in to a flame war like recent IRC. I love playing here and the community is great.

The fact that someone/anyone feels it necessary to generate 1m iron ingots for the sake of filling bods - not selling - shows that the system is in need of repair. For those of you who are glad this change happened and are shocked by these stats.. Well, that shows you how far away you actually are from competing in the BOD world ( as it stands today).

AFAIK, Red Rover was the only person to shamelessly sell these ingots for profit. The rest of us are trying to keep up with the demands of going after high end bods.

I haven't been recall mining because I wanted to. It was a necessary evil to feed my bod addiction.

I like what Chris is saying here.. The first step is to reduce the abuse of recall mining. Once people's inventory is under control, the system can change. If you reduce my speed at obtaining ingots and reduce the amount of bods I need to flip to get a valorite.. it could be a wash!

I don't see why this is necessary. There's already three people working on the highest level reward, maybe more for all I know. Theoretically, *something* in this game should be hard.

If you get 6 good BODs per 100, and you want to have 12 good BODs, why is asking for the percentages to be higher the desired solution? Why not just turn in 200?

The drop rate on BODs is in the forum here. I've tested this over literally thousands of turn-ins and recorded them all, and it is accurate. It shouldn't surprise anyone that it's a pain to get Valorite BODs when they see that the chance is 0.5%. You know what you were getting into when you decide to get into it; no one said it would be easy.

I'm sorry to keep using the word "I" here... but I do take this a little personally. Because I don't have a million ingots from pickaxe exploits... I don't have the shard's biggest guild supporting me... and I've never been given one single gold piece from a player leaving the shard. Everything I have gotten from this system has been attained through legal hard work and consciously sacrificing gold and "wealth" I've attained and putting it towards this goal. It's frustrating to see people say it's impossible, or that I am somehow at an advantage, or that the odds of getting these ultra-rare rewards should be increased because they're too hard.

/rant

This is sort of what I was arguing against, right as you posted this.

I built recall miners, and used 2 at a time (small laptop screen) for probably about 30k ingots, in total. Basically negligible. And I would gladly put my BOD collection up against anyone's.

You do not need a recall miner to compete in the BOD world. What you need is the will to see the difficulty of it and persevere in spite of it. You need to make a sacrifice to compete in it. If you see the difficulty, and your idea to succeed is to ask Chris to make it easier, that's the problem.

I don't mean this to be a personal attack.

I don't take it as a personal attack. Everyone has their own point of view..

Dal, are you saying that you didn't ever buy ingots from other recall miners? Do you personally hand mine all of your colored ingots? I want everyone to be careful about this.. because even if you farmed those monsters you linked with your time, you still might have paid someone else to bulk mine out those ingots. Rover didn't get rich selling his ingots to vendors or filling 200g bods.

It's possible that one could farm their brains out and buy iron from npc vendors, and if that's how you got to where you are.. good on ya. I wish I had that much time to game, or could stomach that much revenue loss.

Yeah, because you definitely made it sound like a personal attack. Either that or a massive case of butt-hurt. For what it's worth, I don't have a million ingots and I never mined with multiple picks. I use shovels, one at a time, and my macro has not required a single change for this patch. My guild doesn't 'support' my BoD work or ingot consumption. The vast majority of ingots I've used, I purchased from player vendors with literally no preference other than price per ingot. I've been given tons of gold, resources and rares by people leaving the shard but really, you're just sounding like a punk at this point. I've also put forth millions of gold and tons of resources supporting the players of the shard and hosting events, not hoarding shit in my house so I can sell hammers for 4m. So if you'd care to stfu about who's actually working hard, I'll do my best not to return the insinuated bullshit going forward.

I mine some, and I do a LOT of BoDs to get where I am and have very few contributions. Yes, I have a system where a partner does Tailoring and we pull bods for each other. This doesn't not equate to the 'biggest guild' supporting me. Quite frankly, Moartearsbro had far more resources and BoDs than I do, but in any regard, thanks for assuming.


You do realize that I've yet to make a hammer larger than gold and have no Phoenix pieces?


No, the better return on higher turn in isn't necessary. No one said it was, but it would be nice. Considering there are literally DOZENS of the highest tier Tailoring rewards on the shard....why not Blacksmithing, where we have seen 0.

I buy from all sorts of miners - recall miners and new players.

However, I have long been limited by colored ingot supply. That is, I am able to churn through all of my irons, but I have a pile of Dull Copper, Shadow Iron, and Copper BODs I cannot fill due to lack of ingots.

I do expect my colored ingot supply to shrink a bit in the future due to these recent changes. I don't think I ever bought from a 3-picks-at-once miner, but I have bought from people who will be slowed down by cave trolls and such. However I don't see this as a reason to make higher-end BODs more prevalent. The vast majority of my churning is via iron BODs. So I may be churning 5% less BODs due to this change.

Indeed I am probably in the camp of "farm their brains out and buy iron from NPC vendors". Stomaching the revenue loss is easy. Finding the time is hard. But such is the nature of this game. I can generally only log in between 8:30 and 10:30pm each day. If I were to try to pursue IDOCs, I would miss 22/24ths of them since even if I knew about them, they'd be dropping when I was offline anyways. But, I do not see this as a reason for me to ask Chris to make all IDOCs fall within those hours I am playing. I just accept it as an aspect of the game that is much more difficult for me to pursue.

Blaise, my comment had 1% to do with you, and wasn't meant as a personal attack. It was just a statement that a solo player, without a single bit of outside resources, can compete at the highest level in this system, against players who have more than that available to them - regardless of how they got it. Don't need the name-calling and insults in this thread.

When more people realize they can farm a shitton more colored ingots through ore elementals when using gargoyle picks, the number of available colored ores will rise.

That's fine Dalavar, then just opt to not vaguely insinuate shit as a dig at me. Unless you've got someone else that fits the bill of what you were taking a dig at.

It was not intended to be vague or insinuated, it was my understanding of how various people have pursued this area of the game. If you tell me I'm wrong in how this relates to you, I apologize for the misunderstanding on my part.

I could have made the point without any examples, perhaps. The point is that one can succeed on their own at this pursuit, and I feel I am an example of this. And it seems as though others may be as well, but they can chime in if they wish.

I just want the bods to be a fun way of playing the game. I have faith based in what I have seen so far.

I also am self made and don't really work with anyone. Even with recall mining I felt like the drop rate / turn needed was more than I would ever achieve. Saying don't get enough at 100? Do 200! Is illogical. You hit a wall where you physically can't play enough to farm gold, buy out vendors and complete the bods.

Call me lame for asking for it to be easier, but there is only so many times I can turn 100 and get 6 shields that yield 20 fort powders before I break.

Nt

The Tailoring BOD system is set up such that a player can get into it and begin putting together high-level rewards easily. And you are right, the Smith BOD system is not. But I don't think anyone's lack of play time should necessitate such a change. As I mentioned above, there are many other things we might want to do in this game that aren't feasible based on our playing availability.

My hunch is that the carpentry system will sit in between tailoring and smith in these respects. That is, it will have some deco-based rewards, like tailoring. And will have some functional rewards, like "runic fletching kits" or whatever. So perhaps it can bridge the gap and allow a more arduous pursuit than Tailoring, but with a more medium term reward than smithing.

Increasing the drop of smith BODs also has some long-term implications for the shard. If everyone has agapite+ runics, then any profession relying on magic items (farming monsters, treasure hunting especially) becomes entirely second-rate.

I do not recall mine, but i do recall from the bank to my house to fetch more shovels, and after being mining for over 20 minutes it still spawns a troll. I can run from it sure, but my 2 pack horses cant. I spam a little to them to follow me but the troll can cast and makes the horse to make a u turn. And for a pure gatherer/miner this sucks. I'm in the process to make a hybrid to fight off elementals.

If for the new guy that uses 0% magery the risk is 0, for the guy that uses magery only sparsely to get just some gear then this needs a tweak, like a cast time decay, something that would still work as intended to the recall miner and leaving alone the guy that is doing it all by hand.

*flips to page five of his spell book*

"ah here it is! An Ex Por! And stay there you dumb troll"

Also if you tell your pets to "all guard me" they run faster also

Record a macro for cast Paralyze, target nearest grey and set it to a hotkey.


Still not ideal as the really shouldn't be spawning on players manually mining. That's silly.

What is recall mining? When I played UO back in the day there were no BODs lol! Getting ganked by pkers was the downside to mining back then. This ERA stuff is a bit confusing but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it! Lol

Recall mining is what lazy people who are good with Razor do to get ingots in this game. Recall to a location, mine it, recall to bank, dump it, loop.

It can get vastly complex or stay simple, it's all in the macro.

What we have here is a Catch 23 situation. Richies get rich, and poor people are just poor. Its all about supply and command. But this is what I ask you: Does it matter if you are rich or poor to enjoy this game? Once you have 1mil+ ingots, you are stuck in your house, to fill bods, endlessly. Do you ever leave your home and see what the world has to offer? I think not. And how fun would the game be if even the top three BODsmen had valorite/verite hammers? What our game masters have done here is a minor (pun intended) hiccup in regards to the agenda of these razor mechanics. They will be fine in regards to a cave troll that surfaces once in awhile. Also, why worry about smithing bods when carpentry bods are going to be implemented? There is so much time consumption with BODs, I fear you are missing out on some of the more fun aspects of the game.

"Oh noes my recall mining macro doesnt work!" - Disgruntled Richie

Go to a bank and meet somebody to have some fun with.

I'm happy to report that Chris came to me, apologised for the inconvenience and told me that changes were made to stop them to spawn where they shouldn't.
=)