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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Mining and Metalworking needs a tuning pass yesterday.
AidanNaut
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
TL;DR: Too much basic stone, not nearly enough metals for all the crafts that require it. Higher tier gatherables currently take the spot of potential lower level spawns, further reducing available lower tier nodes. Certain crafts nonsensically use metal(metal bows in carpentry!?). We need more uses for stone, and either much higher frequency of metal ores or reduced crafting costs.
This feels awful:
Pictured are two tier 3 mining nodes that reside in an area filled with level 3-5 mobs. They have been here for literal weeks.
I've been hittin' rocks all night and all damn day. I've established a farming route going up and down Winstead and Miraleth, and the number of copper nodes are just too damn low. I've reached level 15 in mining and have mined less than triple digit amounts of copper, compared to the 1000's of granite and basalt I've mined.
At the same time I am constantly passing by the same tier 3 nodes that I literally have no chance of gathering until the node I'm a part of builds the correct building to allow me to craft the correct mining too. I see these tier 3 nodes more and more as I constantly mine out all the tier 1 and tier 2 nodes for a chance at mining copper later.
After all that, If I do manage to get copper or zinc, I have barely enough to make a single craft. That single craft then provides such a paltry amount of experience it's almost insulting. I would have spent more time crafting gear that will be instantly replaced by the fraction of the time spent killing random mobs that drop superior gear.
I'm willing to bet that the current distribution of mining nodes is based on a future end game state. A state where there are hundreds of tier 3 gatherers that are able to fully clear out areas to let nodes spawn in a balanced manner. But that state at the current rate of a servers progression should be months out and not the current state. At the very least it should check if there is a node that's even capable of crafting the tools required to harvest that material.
I will also argue that metal is being currently over-utilized in crafting. It's being used in bows, tools, wands, books, swords, maces, armor, and jewelry. Some of these items need to be retuned. A few suggestions I have for this, in no particular order:
Stone is currently quite underused for crafting in contrast. I would like to see more stone crafts, such as sharpening stones for weapon buffs (an MMO classic), stones ground to flux or sand as an intermediate craft, etc.
In summation, gimme my copper Steven!
This feels awful:
Pictured are two tier 3 mining nodes that reside in an area filled with level 3-5 mobs. They have been here for literal weeks.
I've been hittin' rocks all night and all damn day. I've established a farming route going up and down Winstead and Miraleth, and the number of copper nodes are just too damn low. I've reached level 15 in mining and have mined less than triple digit amounts of copper, compared to the 1000's of granite and basalt I've mined.
At the same time I am constantly passing by the same tier 3 nodes that I literally have no chance of gathering until the node I'm a part of builds the correct building to allow me to craft the correct mining too. I see these tier 3 nodes more and more as I constantly mine out all the tier 1 and tier 2 nodes for a chance at mining copper later.
After all that, If I do manage to get copper or zinc, I have barely enough to make a single craft. That single craft then provides such a paltry amount of experience it's almost insulting. I would have spent more time crafting gear that will be instantly replaced by the fraction of the time spent killing random mobs that drop superior gear.
I'm willing to bet that the current distribution of mining nodes is based on a future end game state. A state where there are hundreds of tier 3 gatherers that are able to fully clear out areas to let nodes spawn in a balanced manner. But that state at the current rate of a servers progression should be months out and not the current state. At the very least it should check if there is a node that's even capable of crafting the tools required to harvest that material.
I will also argue that metal is being currently over-utilized in crafting. It's being used in bows, tools, wands, books, swords, maces, armor, and jewelry. Some of these items need to be retuned. A few suggestions I have for this, in no particular order:
- Reduce metal costs across the board (simplest and crudest solution.)
- Implement intermediate metal crafts (wand caps, bow tips, belt buckles, book clasps, etc.)
- Change item crafting requirements to use different materials entirely (by the Seven, why are the bows made of copper!?)
Stone is currently quite underused for crafting in contrast. I would like to see more stone crafts, such as sharpening stones for weapon buffs (an MMO classic), stones ground to flux or sand as an intermediate craft, etc.
In summation, gimme my copper Steven!
7
Comments
Need to make Node respawns and the xp for those nodes variable to the amount of people who can actually craft gather it.
EX: Don't have a high chance of spawning journeymen nodes if no one on the server has journeymen gathering.
The grind from novice to apprentice should just be a small one as a small speed bump for players because everyone and everything needs at least the base nodes IE Copper. It shouldn't be a massive endeavor just to get to the next step.
This alpha 2 phase was Imo only OK with everything in consideration and the reasons its not great is all tied to the speed at witch the nodes where gimped by recourses and players not getting to apprentice within a decent time.
Nothing needs to take more than 2 days of passive grinding while working on other things to get to lvl 5 novice and NOTHING should take multiple weekends of non stop grinding just to get to apprentice anything.
I feel a lot of what can help out is either changing the Exp requirement for the first Ten levels or changing the requirement to unlock T2 materials to be level Five versus Ten. For the last 3 weeks, I have been lumberjacking a few hours here and there; I am only level 9. However, I started fishing last night and did a bit of AFK fishing for about 3 hours and I am already level Ten. This time investment seems a bit off. I can find an abundance of trees but, it takes forever to level. Fish is infinite at the side of a body of water but, I can afk to level 10 in 3 hrs. I am at level 2 mining because every rock I see is T2+. Why do I see T3 rocks in a started zone? It makes no sense considering EVERYONE can mine T1. If everyone can mine it, even those who aren't planning on doing any gathering long-term, they will still mine it as they adventure or have a moment. The most easily collected resources should be the most abundant.
Literally unplayable currently.
Stone is common because it's a base layer material (like wood) while metals should be rarer. The issue we've been running into isn't an issue of metal being too rare instead there are three parts:
1. As Node level increases higher level resources become more likely to spawn, which due to the fast tracked node leveling during this phase vastly outpaced the gathering skill progression. So materials spawned that nobody could gather, locking that gathering node from recycling into something else.
- this should be solved after the wipe, as Nodes will progress much slower. And is mostly solved already as players like me have finally started to catch up.
2. Selective Player Mining: players bypass stone nodes, which stops them from recycling (potentially into metal, but probably back into more stone).
- this will always be the case for most players. Dedicated gatherers like me will mine everything we see, so it'll cycle at least in areas we've staked out. (And this is fine, it gives us gatherers a purpose. If metal were easy to find.. nobody would need us)
3. Metal is more Common than you realize: metal spawns all the time, copper spawns all the time.. (less often than basalt.. but still fairly frequently) the issue is demand.. everyone knows everyone wants it, so everyone even people who largely ignore gathering gather it whenever they see it. Giving it the illusion of being all but absent from the world. As the resource is spread out between literally every player in the world... And most of the time sits unused in a storage container.
- this in conjunction with Selective Player Mining is what I believe to be the primary driver of the metal drought.
I found so much copper today just by walking main roads it wasn't even funny because it seems like a lot of gatherers stopped looking. (I wasn't even _looking_ for copper, it was just there).
it only seems rare because everyone is looking for it, when not everyone is looking for it, there it is.
Also getting the server to Apprentice picks helps too, because the Apprentice nodes sometimes roll as Copper when they respawn. So maybe the early bottleneck needs to be smoothed over as well when many nodes are literally untouchable.
Should be fixed after the wipe.
Node level increases likelyhood of higher level spawns. And since node level was fast tracked during this phase gatherers couldn't keep up. Whith nodes leveling slower, people will theoretically have more time to level gathering before so many untouchable resources spawn.
I mean.. artisanship will never compete with combat for XP or for gear grinding efficiency. It isn't supposed to. If making your own gear was as easy or quick.. everyone would do it. Making artisan players irrelevant. Leveling crafting isn't about your own gear, it's about either selling your services or gearing your guild.
In the future crafters will be able to create items better than the drops from mobs.. but it isn't that way just yet. And even then, grinding mobs will be more efficient for most people. But an artisan like me will be able to sell armor and weapon upgrades to everyone else.
Here's hoping. I wasn't aware node leveling was fast tracked.
I believe they will decrease in leveling speed by 95% for next phase.
This will actually be kind of terrible. Crafting is already behind what we can get from grinding drops and I can't imagine it taking even longer to get to Apprentice professions.
Unless they are also making leveling take longer or decrease completed gear drops (again). Though they could decrease completed drops and keep the recipe/material drops where they are and that would be beneficial for crafters.