Mining Skillgain Section Added To Wiki

[Farmerbob 369]

I hear way too much voodoo about how mining skillgain works, so I wrote up how skillgain for mining veins and standard rock tiles in mines works, for mine_forward, mine_up, and mine_down actions.

Surface mining, tunneling, and (possibly) ceiling and floor mining inside mines work differently.

If I've got it wrong, let me know, but provide examples that we can test for ourselves if you find anything wrong.

http://wurmpedia.com/index.php/Mining

It's in it's own section - I've removed nothing from the rest of the article yet.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Farmerbob

[bdew 2,462]

Huh, this 39.99 limit doesn't sound right... i'm pretty sure i've seen gains at higher QL products, will pay attention to it next time i'm mining.

[Farmerbob 369]

When surface mining I am fairly sure you do get skillgains outside the 1.01 - 39.99 range. That confused me at first. This also holds for tunneling (I had to tunnel my way into my mine again today, lol, which started this whole experiment. I KNOW tunneling actions give skill outside normal QL range for me)

I know that ceiling and floor mining are faster skillgain for new players then straight forward rock mining, but I didn't experiment to see if that is because you get the same skill with a shorter timer, or if there is a wider QL range of produced rock that will generate skill.

Also, it may be that low skill players get bonuses or a larger range of QL for skillup.

For all I know, higher skill characters might also change rules at they hit another title, or skill level.

That's why I'm looking for information, because for me, the 1.01 - 39.99 rule is ironclad no matter what I mine as long as it's a standard mining action.

If there's a new set of skill gain rules every title, or every 10 skill levels, or whatever, let's get it documented.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Farmerbob

[Asciana 303]

Sure you say the skill gain is equal for all the veins. I get that. But how OFTEN are the skill gain ticks for each of the veins. They are different depending on mining skill. It's a bit misleading.

[Kediec 280]

I'd like to say that on Pristine with a new char, when i hit 60 mining i was getting double the skill gain (due to faster skill gain ticks) mining a normal ql Silver vein , than i was on a Normal ql Zinc vein using a 25-30ql pickaxe ( no coc or woa available ).

This is before turning on SB and testing, where it was even more noticable .

Tested it a also against Iron as well going from 60-70 mining. While the skillgain per tick is virtually the same, the speed they are granted is quite varied.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Kediec

[Aristia 37]

Huh, this 39.99 limit doesn't sound right... i'm pretty sure i've seen gains at higher QL products, will pay attention to it next time i'm mining.

Agreed, a partial fail is not within a specific QL range to generate a skill tick, a partial fail (i.e, not your skill or 1.00 (a fail)) will still be generated no matter the QL. The idea of a QL limit is a rumour and if you mine for a while at a higher level ( over 70+ ) you'll notice it a lot more.

This should of also been put in the talk page for mining, as its pure speculation and not actual facts, misleading to newbies who read the page.

[ago 470]

Huh, this 39.99 limit doesn't sound right... i'm pretty sure i've seen gains at higher QL products, will pay attention to it next time i'm mining.

The 39.99QL seems right. I've mined quite a bit today and I have only seen skill ticks for >1 and <40QL ore.

[Laiwyn 188]

Another consideration: A quality 30ish pick is going to maintain it's status and it's enchantment FAR better than a QL 10 pick will ...

I've never heard this to be true. The way I've been told is that the quality of the item that an enchant is on does not affect the degradation of the enchant level. The enchant level itself determines its chance to degrade, not the tool quality.

[Farmerbob 369]

Sure you say the skill gain is equal for all the veins. I get that. But how OFTEN are the skill gain ticks for each of the veins. They are different depending on mining skill. It's a bit misleading.

Hrm, I am unclear in the "Third Rule" section. Adjusting the wording of that now, thanks!

*************

Is this clearer?

Third rule of mining skillgain: Your mining skill level, pick quality and pick enchantments are critical to your choice of what ore you mine.

In order to fully optimize your skillgain, you need the lowest possible quality pick which will allow you to frequently create ore or rock (in a mine) between 1.01 and 39.99 quality. Each mine-able substance has a different base difficulty. The lowest being rock, then iron, etc. A combination of your skill and your pick's quality will be compared against the dificulty of what you are mining in order to determine the "curve" of skillgain.

In other words, it is possible to adjust your skillgain by varying the quality of your pick. A higher quality pick on iron might end up generating just as much skillgain as a lower quality pick on rock because you are hitting for skill more often, even if you are getting a bit less skill PER HIT (because the higher quality pick is faster). If you mine on iron at 64 skill with an 80 QL pick, you will very rarely ever get a skillgain tick. With a 28.5 QL skiller pick, you get more frequent skillgains. On lead, at 64 mining with a 28.5 QL pick, you will be constantly failing with "1" results that give no skillgain. With a higher quality pick you will get more skillups.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Farmerbob

[Farmerbob 369]

I'd like to say that on Pristine with a new char, when i hit 60 mining i was getting double the skill gain (due to faster skill gain ticks) mining a normal ql Silver vein , than i was on a Normal ql Zinc vein using a 25-30ql pickaxe ( no coc or woa available ).

This is before turning on SB and testing, where it was even more noticable .

Tested it a also against Iron as well going from 60-70 mining. While the skillgain per tick is virtually the same, the speed they are granted is quite varied.

Aye, see above, I hope that it clarified things. Each skill tick that you generate with a pick is based on the enchantment of the pick and the length of the timer (and sleep bonus) If all these things are the same, your skill gain from each individual skill tick will be the same.

However, you will get more skill ticks per hour over time from some materials than from others, based on your mining skill, and the QL of your pick.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Farmerbob

[Farmerbob 369]

Agreed, a partial fail is not within a specific QL range to generate a skill tick, a partial fail (i.e, not your skill or 1.00 (a fail)) will still be generated no matter the QL. The idea of a QL limit is a rumour and if you mine for a while at a higher level ( over 70+ ) you'll notice it a lot more.

This should of also been put in the talk page for mining, as its pure speculation and not actual facts, misleading to newbies who read the page.

This is pure facts based on experimentation and four years of gameplay with several different characters. If you have evidence indicating otherwise, please provide information on the testing process you used, so that others can test.

[Farmerbob 369]

Depersonalized the additional section a bit, cleaned up a couple more ambiguous bits, added reference to sleep bonus.

[Farmerbob 369]

I've never heard this to be true. The way I've been told is that the quality of the item that an enchant is on does not affect the degradation of the enchant level. The enchant level itself determines its chance to degrade, not the tool quality.

Horse puckey. My QL 28 skiller pick is nearly three years old, and has lost a total of 5 points of CoC after getting Bob to 64 skill, and an alt up to 50+ skill. Jyin also used the pick for hundreds of hits when I owned her.

I have a 2 QL skiller hatchet that has lost 1 point of CoC in multiple years of everyday use.

My tools rarely lose enchantments because I'm constantly repairing them. I nearly have a heart attack if I see a tool with more than 1% damage on it. Normally I repair before items hit 0.1% damage.

The way enchantment decay seems to work is that the higher the enchant is, the more likely it is to suffer loss of quality based on damage to the tool.

If you leave low QL tools in a wagon, and you have 90+ enchantments on them, and they suffer a decay tick of 10%, then yes, chances are good that you will lose a chunk of that enchantment. That's because of the damage to the item.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Farmerbob

[Laiwyn 188]

Horse puckey. My QL 28 skiller pick is nearly three years old, and has lost a total of 5 points of CoC after getting Bob to 64 skill, and an alt up to 50+ skill. Jyin also used the pick for hundreds of hits when I owned her.

I have a 2 QL skiller hatchet that has lost 1 point of CoC in multiple years of everyday use.

So basically you just agreed with me saying that tool quality has no effect on degradation of enchant level. Read the rest of what I say before you repeat what you said.

My tools rarely lose enchantments because I'm constantly repairing them. I nearly have a heart attack if I see a tool with more than 1% damage on it. Normally I repair before items hit 0.1% damage.

Fair enough, I also believe that keeping your tools repaired helps reduce the chance of the level wearing down. Yes, the amount of damage on the item factors into how much of a chance the enchant will wear down... but the tool quality itself doesn't matter one bit.

The way enchantment decay seems to work is that the higher the enchant is, the more likely it is to suffer loss of quality based on damage to the tool.

But that's just wrong. Higher enchants have a reduced chance to lose their enchant level. Lower enchants wear off faster. Just because a tool has a high enchant level does not mean it is more susceptible to enchant level loss, quite the opposite actually.

Edited January 7, 2013 by Laiwyn

[Farmerbob 369]

So basically you just agreed with me saying that tool quality has no effect on degradation of enchant level. Read the rest of what I say before you repeat what you said.

Fair enough, I also believe that keeping your tools repaired helps reduce the chance of the level wearing down. Yes, the amount of damage on the item factors into how much of a chance the enchant will wear down... but the tool quality itself doesn't matter one bit.

But that's just wrong. Higher enchants have a reduced chance to lose their enchant level. Lower enchants wear off faster. Just because a tool has a high enchant level does not mean it is more susceptible to enchant level loss, quite the opposite actually.

Damage has a direct and linear effect on the effective quality of a tool.

A high quality tool takes less damage from use, or from decay

When an item takes damage, it's effective quality is directly reduced, making it more susceptible to damage in the future.

Damage on the tool itself is what causes loss of enchantment on tools.

I *might* be wrong about high quality enchants wearing off tools faster. But that doesn't have any bearing on our primary argument.

I'm absolutely certain that I am correct in saying that higher quality tools take less damage, and maintain enchantments better.

*I am VERY OCD about repairing my tools. I very rarely suffer loss of enchantments on my tools because of this.

Edited January 7, 2013 by Farmerbob

[Laiwyn 188]

Damage has a direct and linear effect on the effective quality of a tool.

A high quality tool takes less damage from use, or from decay

When an item takes damage, it's effective quality is directly reduced, making it more susceptible to damage in the future.

Damage on the tool itself is what causes loss of enchantment on tools.

I should probably start this out by saying "In my personal opinion" and you should as well for you will see why once you finish reading this.

Damage is damage. Is does not matter if you have a 70ql tool at 30 damage or a 2ql tool at 30 damage, if both have identical levels of enchants they will have an equal chance of the enchant level being degraded. The only difference is that the higher quality tool will get more actions out of the same amount of damage. You could say they may hold enchantments better because of this, but that would not be looking at what I'm saying correctly.

Also, I could have been spared the first three lines.

I'm absolutely certain that I am correct in saying that higher quality tools take less damage, and maintain enchantments better.

I'm not sure you're right about the latter. Of course higher quality tools take less damage, though.

So, as I see it the two main factors in determining enchant level loss is the level of the enchant and amount of damage on the tool. Where the balance is between the two would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine exactly.

I can see what you're saying, but since there is no way to determine what damage to level of enchant ratio there is for determining chance of enchant level loss neither of us can say for sure that higher quality tools = less chance of level loss. Even if I have a fairly good feeling that higher quality tools do not hold enchants better just because they're higher quality.

Also, you say in the section that this thread is based on that steel is rumored to hold enchants better. Steel is just an alternative to iron, all it does is take less damage through each action. You cannot say it is rumored to hold enchants better just because you think it does. I have not once heard someone say that steel holds enchants better. And don't say something about it taking less damage makes it so... because then we're right back at the paragraph right above this one.

So on that note I bid this discussion farewell since you and I are just going to stick to believing different things. Though I think it is bad practice to put something on the wiki such as the line I first made my post about without being able to prove it as true.

Edited January 7, 2013 by Laiwyn

[Farmerbob 369]

But I can prove it is true that "(steel is rumored to take less damage and hold enchantments better)", because there are rumors to that effect. You do note that I do not declare it to be an absolute fact, though it's pretty darn close to that.

We know that tools lose enchantments when they suffer damage. You will never see a tool lose points from an enchantment just from sitting in your inventory.

I know with absolutely no doubt whatsoever that if you maintain your tools extremely well, that they will hold their enchantments extremely well, because I have heavily used tools in my inventory right now that have performed thousands of actions and have lost very, very little of their enchantments. This is a clear cause and effect relationship.

1) Maintain tools, enchantments stay longer.

The inverse is also clearly true.

2) Treat a tool poorly and it's enchantment will rapidly disappear.

Why would this be the case? Because damage inflicted on tools increases the chance for loss of enchantment.

Therefore, it is clear that tools which resist damage better will hold enchantments better because they suffer less damage.

I do not personally own any steel tools yet - I've seen no need to own them because I already treat my tools extremely well, so I have hedged my statement above with the word "rumored".

I do agree that this is not the place to have an argument about tool enchantment degradation.

[MrGARY 12,421]

Agreed, a partial fail is not within a specific QL range to generate a skill tick, a partial fail (i.e, not your skill or 1.00 (a fail)) will still be generated no matter the QL. The idea of a QL limit is a rumour and if you mine for a while at a higher level ( over 70+ ) you'll notice it a lot more.

This should of also been put in the talk page for mining, as its pure speculation and not actual facts, misleading to newbies who read the page.

It is not a rumor at ALL. It holds true to mining, it holds true to most things that run off creation (note: this 1.01-39.99 rule takes in effect after 20 skill) such as locksmithing. I can confirm with much personal testing grinding to 97+ mining on my Chaos toon that skill gain from mining is in fact limited to the 1.01-39.99 rule.

[Torgrim 403]

So, the bottom line is: There is still much voodoo about how minging skillgain works.

Proves Rolf has done great with this skill. We're not supposed to be able to figure out the exact details.

Next topic - Enchanting. Let the voodoo begin

Good work on the wiki article and good disussion btw. It does give a good idea of how things work.

[bdew 2,462]

Huh, this 39.99 limit doesn't sound right... i'm pretty sure i've seen gains at higher QL products, will pay attention to it next time i'm mining.

Did ~200 mining actions with a skill pick watching the QL of the ore and all the gains were in the 40>ql>1 range (76 mining).

It still sounds odd to me, but some kind of limit is definitely there.

I'll get some attempts with a non-skilling high ql pick today to see if it's any different.

[Farmerbob 369]

I am considering adding a bit more to the mining skillgain section, but I would like the input of others this time around because others might have already performed the testing.

During some PM's with another player today, a bit of mechanics were bandied about and I realized what might actually be the best way to determine best skillgain on any particular type ore.

Proposal:

Test must be performed on a vein 40+ QL for accuracy

Ignore all QL1 and QL40+ ore.

Calculate the QL average of all the QL1.01 and QL39.99 ore. The closer to 20.5QL the average is, the closer you are to optimal skillgain with your skill and pick quality on that specific ore.

My reasoning is this:

We can't see the whole range of RNG values. 1.0 is a failure, but we can't see when the RNG generates a -200 when a 1 skill miner mines gold with a 1QL pick. Nor can we see when a 99 skill miner with a 99QL pick generates a RNG value of 200 on rock. We can, however, see what the end result is for mining actions in the skillgain range are, provided the ore is capped at 40 or more. So let's measure those.

So, let's simply restrict our analysis to the data we can actually confirm. And the closer the average value of the skillgain generating ore is to 20.5, the more likely it is that you are sitting on a skillgain sweet spot. Any truly meaningful analysis will require large numbers of samples, but restricting analysis to skillgain generating ore gives us some solid footing mathematically.

Edited January 26, 2013 by Farmerbob

[Keldun 335]

I can only confirm that the basic rule is true for all gathering actions(mining, digging, farming, woodcuting etc). When your uncapped items are between 1 and 40 ql you get skill every single time and never outside of that range. It also seems applicable for all processing actions (sewing planks, making bricks).

It seems the game works this way: first the rng calculates a number based on difficulty. When that number falls between 1 and 40 you get skill (always the same amount). Then where applicable (surface mining, planks, bricks) a success chance is calculated. I think this success chance is separate from the innitial ql calculation, because you still gain skill on total failure.

When you succeed, all the caps (skill, vein, etc) are applied and you get the item. That's why you can't evaluate skillgain results from capped items, you don't know the original value.

Also skillgain is always equal to the length of timer. A 10 second timer will always produce double the skill of a 5 second timer. That is true no matter whether the timer was affected by WoA or difficutly.

Btw, in my tests I haven't found a clue that difficulty has any affect on characteristics gain. That seems to rely on another fixed random mechanism. In other words: one hour of body strength gain is always one hour of body strength gain, unless you use CoC and sleep.

All of these can be proven pretty easily, so for me they amount as fact. So all that anyone needs to care about is whether they want skill or ql and then figure out how to determine the appropriate difficulties for the different skills.

Edited February 15, 2013 by Keldun