Surface Mining

[shadow 6]

With the design of Xanadu (the sheer rock cliffs) I was wondering if the surface mining percentage chance could be raised or changed to be based of your skill like most everything else? Without surface mining i am paying for unusable tiles, but with the current setting (25% chance) even at 80 skill it will take me a month or more and lots of cotton to mine it down. I beg u to please reconsider the current surface mining percentage.

[Aetherwalker 1,863]

It DOES increase with skill. Shorter timers = more actions per hour = more successes per hour. If you don't want to surfacemine, pay someone to do it. There are loads of us who really enjoy it for the char gains.

[Nomadikhan 2,197]

8 months of surface mining on chaos.. no 3x slopes per skill level either... I love it and am a beast in the body department.  Can easily juggle 3 girls... if only they didn't think I used roids

 

Good for the body, fool!  Builds character fool!   haha I'm kidding, it's really not that bad

[Trepper 78]

I didnt mind it so much on the old servers where the world is not made of clifs every where.  Xanadu is the land of granite it might help to adust the rate for that server atleast.  Made worse by mostly shllow dirt on areas that are Dirt on Xanadu I have tryed 6 totaly different areas and all but one was less then 100 deep dirt and most around 40 deep.  All the exposed granite and the shortage of dirt to make ramps ectera could justify makeing it a bit easyer to surface mine so more players will do it before the land becomes even more granite from the undeeded areas being striped of dirt for deed development.

[Rockmod 17]

I like this idea for Xanadu. The dirt layer does seem to be pretty thin (at least in the places I have been digging). I also wouldn't mind being able to surface mine down a corner of "rock" without all tiles around it being exposed rock. If I can't dig because of solid rock, then I should at least be able to use a pickaxe to mine that corner.

Edited August 16, 2014 by Rockmod

[Theodis 339]

Eh like I've suggested every time this has come up, drop the random chance and raise the timer to what the statistical average time it would take under the current scheme to mine down a section of rock. The worst thing about surface mining is the fact that you need to be very careful when you get close to the level you want because if you accidentally go slightly too far it's a lot of work to fix(can't just drop rock like you can dirt to raise it back up), so you can't really have your attention divided while you do it and who honestly does these sorts of things in wurm without a distraction to keep sane? The randomness makes the task tedious and obnoxious.

[KunAlt 844]

Surface mining should be a difficult but yet enjoyable task like digging instead of the torture is now.

[Domhnall 69]

Eh like I've suggested every time this has come up, drop the random chance and raise the timer to what the statistical average time it would take under the current scheme to mine down a section of rock. The worst thing about surface mining is the fact that you need to be very careful when you get close to the level you want because if you accidentally go slightly too far it's a lot of work to fix(can't just drop rock like you can dirt to raise it back up), so you can't really have your attention divided while you do it and who honestly does these sorts of things in wurm without a distraction to keep sane? The randomness makes the task tedious and obnoxious.

 

I think there's a very good reason that surface mining is so hard, and if you think about it you'd probably agree.  If leveling a mountain was as easy as mining a tunnel then we would have no more mountains!  They would all be flattened out within a month or two by some noob who can't figure out why he's not making a tunnel rather than being a years long village project.

 

I'm against making surface leveling easier, it's fine as it is.

[KunAlt 844]

I think there's a very good reason that surface mining is so hard, and if you think about it you'd probably agree.  If leveling a mountain was as easy as mining a tunnel then we would have no more mountains!  They would all be flattened out within a month or two by some noob who can't figure out why he's not making a tunnel rather than being a years long village project.

 

I'm against making surface leveling easier, it's fine as it is.

 

It is a damn sandbox game, if people want to flat every damn mountain so be it.

[Othob Rithol 700]

It's also a shared sandbox.

[Depends 220]

If all those people sharing the sandbox wanted to keep the mountain then they should have deeded it before it was flattened.

[Sobotnik 365]

even if surface mining was as easy to do as digging, it would take years before mountains would vanish

 

people don't level mountains for kicks, they cut through things because they're in the way of something

 

given how terrible the terrain is on a lot of maps, i really don't think adding a level action to surface mining would do much, if at all, considering that surface mining used to be much easier and mountains didnt vanish then

 

if somebody is determined, they will remove a mountain, it doesn't matter what you do with the mechanics

[Zekezor 3,188]

With a little bit of effort anything is possible.

 

 

Victim of the death pit for scale.

[Propheteer 7,139]

just to note the above picture is at my deed and was done in less than a week by one person who plays for less than 8 hours a day

Edited August 17, 2014 by Propheteer

[KunAlt 844]

just to note the above picture is at my deed and was done in less than a week by one person who plays for less than 8 hours a day

 

Send it to my deed, i have some work for him then...

[Theodis 339]

I think there's a very good reason that surface mining is so hard

But it's not hard it's just tedious. My suggestion would make it take almost exactly as long in the long run to file down a mountain. The only difference would be that for minor adjustments it would be much less painful. If you have a whole lot to mine down or simply don't care to be exact then you can easily just spam the keybind with little regard to how often you succeed. Which is exactly what I suspect happened in the picture above rather than precision work. So the current scheme isn't exactly going to protect mountains anymore than my idea.

Edited August 18, 2014 by Theodis

[Bix 453]

But it's not hard it's just tedious. My suggestion would make it take almost exactly as long in the long run to file down a mountain. The only difference would be that for minor adjustments it would be much less painful. If you have a whole lot to mine down or simply don't care to be exact then you can easily just spam the keybind with little regard to how often you succeed. Which is exactly what I suspect happened in the picture above rather than precision work. So the current scheme isn't exactly going to protect mountains anymore than my idea.

 

if you want precision then drop [100-x] (x being how many times you want to lower the corner) of items so it's in a pile then spam surface mining until you get the "There is no space to mine here. Clear the area first." message. Rinse and repeat for any corner which you want to lower.

 

Surface mining is fine the way it is.

[KanePT 699]

I think there's a very good reason that surface mining is so hard, and if you think about it you'd probably agree.  If leveling a mountain was as easy as mining a tunnel then we would have no more mountains!  They would all be flattened out within a month or two by some noob who can't figure out why he's not making a tunnel rather than being a years long village project.

 

I'm against making surface leveling easier, it's fine as it is.

People throw the word hard around, like its actually hard. It isn't its just MORE boring and way too random. Its not hard, a monkey could surface mine (Hell a monkey could do most things on Wurm...). Its just stupid how random and time-consuming it is.

 

if you want precision then drop [100-x] (x being how many times you want to lower the corner) of items so it's in a pile then spam surface mining until you get the "There is no space to mine here. Clear the area first." message. Rinse and repeat for any corner which you want to lower.

 

Surface mining is fine the way it is.

Only works if you don't need to mine down more than 100. Which, sadly, ends up being the norm, rather than the exception in many of the new servers. People on Inde don't realize how bad it is in other places, in Exo you'll be damn lucky to find a dirt layer higher than 50 average within 50 tiles of a mountain. I had to create a 300 tile high monolith of dirt, AFTER surface minning a few corners to make half my mountian deed flat.

Its fine if you have a 30 slope corner you need to flatten, but when you get several patches of 50 tile areas with average slopes of 20-30 (with total difference above 100 slope) it becomes a huge task. Hell i could probably build a couple of colossus just with the time i spent not lowering the rock because the skill is stupid.

 

I mean many of the stuff i had to use my brother's char exclusively on some corners (at 80 minning) because at 40 i couldn't lower some corners, that's how messed up the rock layer is. Its the kind of stuff even if it was normal dirt it would take me several hours to do, but on rock it takes 2-3 times longer. And for what? To create a 6x10 flat area for a house and a guard tower on a deed. And just so you get how badly balanced the slopes are, the Northwest corner was raised about 60-100 tiles, and the southeast had to be mined around 200 slope.

 

I think there's a very good reason that surface mining is so hard, and if you think about it you'd probably agree.  If leveling a mountain was as easy as mining a tunnel then we would have no more mountains!  They would all be flattened out within a month or two by some noob who can't figure out why he's not making a tunnel rather than being a years long village project.

 

I'm against making surface leveling easier, it's fine as it is.

I'm guessing you don't dig much, if you think a noob would be able to flatten a mountain in months. First its highly unlikely it would even be possible, except maybe in the most pristine areas of xanadu, release and such. Since if there's a mine below you can't mine below the mine level.

[KunAlt 844]

With the design of Xanadu (the sheer rock cliffs) I was wondering if the surface mining percentage chance could be raised or changed to be based of your skill like most everything else? Without surface mining i am paying for unusable tiles, but with the current setting (25% chance) even at 80 skill it will take me a month or more and lots of cotton to mine it down. I beg u to please reconsider the current surface mining percentage.

 

Btw I don´t know form where that 25% come, probably like most wurm assertions just from thin air. After several surface mining session involving thousand of actions my finds are 15% chance at best.

 

The method is pretty simple, you surface mine for a while, then fire up search function on wurm assistant and search for "You chip" occurrences, take note of the number, then search for "You mine" occurrences. Then do the maths, "You mine" * 100 / ("You mine" + "You chip") = Chance.

 

This is using a Ql 92+ rare pickaxe, idk if Ql or rarity affect chance at all, probably not.

Edited August 18, 2014 by KunAlt

[Zekezor 3,188]

Q_Q make things easier for me!

Ya know, the majority of the black light kingdom on elevation is spread across a mountain.

We surface mine. We raise platforms. We make it habitable.

But we dont ###### about it <3

 

Put in some effort and qq less.

[Youngsoldier 282]

less than 8 hours a day... lol... gg...

[Hordern 2,177]

I dislike surface mining intensly, but am pretty quick at lowering cliff faces to create ledges. It's amazing what can be accomplished with a mag priest and some locks (though you can't have mines below for my method...)

[Youngsoldier 282]

hehehe

[KanePT 699]

Ya know, the majority of the black light kingdom on elevation is spread across a mountain.

We surface mine. We raise platforms. We make it habitable.

But we dont ###### about it <3

 

Put in some effort and qq less.

1) Its a kingdom, as in at least 25 players wasn't it?

2) I've flattened 4 Fairly big deeds on exodus all in or around mountains (except one that ones on a dirt hill, albeit low dirt). I'm not bitching. I'm saying anyone, like yourself, that thinks surface minning is ok, is fooling themselves, pretty much. The system is RANDOM, you know what that means? It means that you can lower a dirt step in 1 stroke, or 20. That's not ok.

3) And QQ, make it easier? Read my statement. There's NOTHING, nothing in Wurm that can be classified as dificult. Boring, tedius, time consuming, yes, but dificult, or hard? Nope, wrong adjective there. You can't classify stuff as hard when you can use a simple macro software to do it for you (which you can in Wurm, although, you'll get banned). It is hard to bear sometimes, specially when fanboys keep pulling the game backward because "its supposed to be hard".

4) Hey, i flattened 3 of those deeds before level was available. I raised a chunk of my main deed from water before level, i created 100+ dirt steep platforms with old-school flat-raising. I thought level was gonna dumb stuff down for dirt works, but its awesome, and i use it all the time now. And instead of a day or 2 making such platforms it takes a couple hours. So yeah, just because you had to suffer through something, doesn't mean that other people have to.

5) You're on epic. Higher skill increases the success rate of surface minning, and you have higher skill and faster skill gains. Get back on your high horse when you do it in freedom.

[Propheteer 7,139]

1) Its a kingdom, as in at least 25 players wasn't it?

2) I've flattened 4 Fairly big deeds on exodus all in or around mountains (except one that ones on a dirt hill, albeit low dirt). I'm not bitching. I'm saying anyone, like yourself, that thinks surface minning is ok, is fooling themselves, pretty much. The system is RANDOM, you know what that means? It means that you can lower a dirt step in 1 stroke, or 20. That's not ok.

3) And QQ, make it easier? Read my statement. There's NOTHING, nothing in Wurm that can be classified as dificult. Boring, tedius, time consuming, yes, but dificult, or hard? Nope, wrong adjective there. You can't classify stuff as hard when you can use a simple macro software to do it for you (which you can in Wurm, although, you'll get banned). It is hard to bear sometimes, specially when fanboys keep pulling the game backward because "its supposed to be hard".

4) Hey, i flattened 3 of those deeds before level was available. I raised a chunk of my main deed from water before level, i created 100+ dirt steep platforms with old-school flat-raising. I thought level was gonna dumb stuff down for dirt works, but its awesome, and i use it all the time now. And instead of a day or 2 making such platforms it takes a couple hours. So yeah, just because you had to suffer through something, doesn't mean that other people have to.

5) You're on epic. Higher skill increases the success rate of surface minning, and you have higher skill and faster skill gains. Get back on your high horse when you do it in freedom.

 

 

Get back on my high horse?

 

I play freedom like i do epic, mining isn't hard to grind on either cluster.

 

The chance to mine down a rock shard is random, the quality and the rare/supreme/fantastic level of a pickaxe also increases the chance of a successful action.

 

 

Id also like to point out that cool, you built things the old way, so did most people on the pvp clusters at some point.  I remember trying to level out a 20x20 on a mountain peak with oldschool flatraise and only able to move the dirt by small cart. Just because we think the current system is reasonable doesn't mean we are blind.

Edited August 18, 2014 by Propheteer