Rock Shard Analyzing In Wurm 1.1 - Knowledge And Speculation

[Terapherna 21]

the thing is before they "fixed" it i was getting skill gains every couple of analyzes not like now 1 out of 50 shards

[Aeris 3,759]

Can't really blame them for fixing a bug right away

[DKSprocket 412]

I'm not seeing the problem since regular prospecting skillgain hasn't been nerfed, and "Analyse" was implemented as something to use primarily for finding veins, not a mean of skillgrinding.

 

No one's complaining about old prospecting being nerfed. People are asking for doing useful (analzying)to give at least some skill gain at higher levels. I know we can skill going back to pointless banging on the walls for days in a row - we all know that is possible, that's how we got the skill in the first place.

 

The intent, as stated by Rolf multiple times, is to try and make skill gain as useful as possible doing useful things instead of pointless grinding. For example the attempted change to weaponsmithing 6-7 months ago. The fact that these attempts have often failed doesn't change the intent. Since Tich actually plays the game it does not unreasonable to request such a change.

Edited June 27, 2013 by DKSprocket

[Tich 1,389]

Thanks for the info, was unsure if I got the skillgain correct, I'll look at increasing it for analyse next week

[Veldez 0]

Not really finding anything that confirms the belief that QL of shard/ore matters. In fact, nothing I've seen so far points in that direction.

Was standing in the same spot and mined QL 75, 50 and 36 ores. My prospecting skill was 61.8. Got these messages:

QL75 shard:

[19:11:43] You start to analyse the ore.

[19:11:43] A reddish chunk of rock containing many cavities lined with dark, metallic crystals.

[19:11:48] You do not notice any unusual traces. (Successful check with no veins within 1 tile?)

[19:11:48] You take a closer look.

[19:11:54] You do not notice any unusual slight traces.

[19:11:54] You study it a bit more.

[19:12:01] You spot a faint trace of slate shards.

[19:12:01] You study it real hard.

[19:12:07] You see a minuscule trace of iron ore.

[19:12:07] You finish analysing the ore.

QL50 shard:

[19:17:14] You start to analyse the ore.

[19:17:14] A reddish chunk of rock containing many cavities lined with dark, metallic crystals.

[19:17:17] You cannot see anything unusual. (Unsuccessful check at 1-tile range?)

[19:17:17] You take a closer look.

[19:17:21] You cannot see any unusual slight traces of anything.

[19:17:21] You study it a bit more.

[19:17:24] You see a faint trace of slate shards.

[19:17:24] You study it real hard.

[19:17:28] You see a minuscule trace of iron ore.

[19:17:28] You finish analysing the ore.

QL36 shard:

[19:22:42] You start to analyse the ore.

[19:22:42] A reddish chunk of rock containing many cavities lined with dark, metallic crystals.

[19:22:45] You cannot see anything unusual. (Unsuccessful check at 1-tile range?)

[19:22:45] You take a closer look.

[19:22:49] You do not notice any unusual slight traces.

[19:22:49] You study it a bit more.

[19:22:52] You see a faint trace of slate shards.

[19:22:52] You study it real hard.

[19:22:56] You notice a minuscule trace of iron ore.

[19:22:56] You finish analysing the ore.

The only thing I'm seeing is an inconsistency where it varies between "do not" and "cannot", which proves nothing since the wording didn't seem to be related to the QL. The QL75 and 36 used the same in one instance and the QL50 and 36 in another.

 Maybe the results lines that do not mention "traces" are skill check failures, kinda like dowsing failures giving no info?

[Terapherna 21]

 Maybe the results lines that do not mention "traces" are skill check failures, kinda like dowsing failures giving no info?

 

possibly but to test that you would need to try it with shards from a tile you know there are ore viens at that distance and see if it "fails" and gives the same message, i have been messing with it and will actually pay atention to the messages and let you know what i find out

[Terapherna 21]

Thanks for the info, was unsure if I got the skillgain correct, I'll look at increasing it for analyse next week

 

not sure if you changed it but i did notice i am getting aprox the same amount of ticks per tile using analyze now that i am getting for prospecting, i get skill gain on teh first 10 or so rockshards i analyze 1 to 3 skill ticks per shard totalng to 20 skill gains, which is roughly the same amount of skill gains i was getting prospecting, so roughly you get teh same amount of skill doing either one, i personally like analyze as i mine out a tile then analyse the pile of shards then mine the next tile and repeat (clearing 1500 rock tiles is taking a little bit of time heh)

[Terapherna 21]

ok so i analyzed 50 shards where i found [12:22:55] You see a faint trace of iron ore. and out of the 50 shards analyzed i didn't find any that "failed" to find said faint traces of iron ore, so the difference in "cannot" and "do not" doesn't seem to be a fail or succeeded message this was at my max range at 38 prospecting so it was my range of possible failure. i will try again when i hit the next level and see if that will effect on whether or not there is a possible "failure" message when you know there is a vein there

[Veldez 0]

wow, fast research lol. thanks for the information. I really wonder if the difference in the messages means anything then.

[Dran 24]

Still no 4-radius (miniscule) traces at 50 skill.

[Aeris 3,759]

I've been playing around with "Analyse" together with Asidecay. My skill is 60 and his is 40, and I've compared our results and come up with several theories about the mechanics. I'll post my theories and what I base them on.

1.) You get a new message per every 20 skill in Prospecting

-> I get 4 messages at 60 skill, he gets 3 at 40. Dran got 3 at 50.

2.) There is a radius around the vein that goes "Trace of", "Slight trace of", "Faint trace of" and "Minuscule trace of". This radius seems to be a solid 1-tile and not increasing with skill, though I'd need someone with 80 prospecting to verify that statement.

-> Been walking around known tiles mapping them on a piece of paper, writing down all messages and comparing to Asidecay's results.

3.) The different vein types have different difficulties. Meaning that you see the QL of them sooner if the vein type has a lower difficulty. For example, so far I've found that the QL of gold is harder to see than the QL of copper and iron.

-> Been checking the veins from the same radius distance and jotted down the results and then compared them to each other. I could see the QL of iron one tile further away than I could with gold.

4.) You gain 1 tile of QL checking per every 20 prospecting. The different ores have different starting values.

-> Been comparing my results to those of Asidecay's. At 60 prospecting I can see the QL of a gold vein at "Faint trace" while he could see it at "Trace of", i.e. I could see it 1 tile further away.

5.) So far the difficulties of the veins I've been able to figure out have been that copper and iron appears to have the same difficulty (or close to, would need someone with 20 prospecting to try) and gold a difficulty higher than theirs. Since Asidecay could see gold QL at "Trace of" I am guessing that copper and iron have a base difficulty of 1 or 2 and gold has a base difficulty of 3.

Edited July 2, 2013 by Aeris

[Dran 24]

51.39 prospecting.  I can now see miniscule traces (4 radius).  I recently improved my pickaxe from 67ql to 71, so maybe that's what finally unlocked it.  Glad I'm not stuck waiting until 60 prospecting.

[Aeris 3,759]

I just received the "You peer at it", the 5th radius tile that is. I have 68 prospecting skill at the moment, which means the theory of it showing up at 80 doesn't hold up!

Sidenote: the pickaxe doesn't have to be activated when Analysing so its QL doesn't matter

[Dran 24]

Since unlocking miniscule traces, I'm getting lots of "you detect something, but can't quite make it out" at my outermost analyse range.  The only ones I've had any success at detecting at max range are iron.

[Tich 1,389]

Since unlocking miniscule traces, I'm getting lots of "you detect something, but can't quite make it out" at my outermost analyse range.  The only ones I've had any success at detecting at max range are iron.

for this to be worked out, need you exact prospecting skill *hint*

[Aeris 3,759]

You've unlocked the message range but the ore types are of higher difficulty than what you can trace at that distance, is my guess. Iron is probably of lowest tracing difficulty.

Edit:

Theory 2) that the radius is a set 1-tile seems to hold true. Hodur got a vague trace of iron five tiles away from it (80 prospecting skill).

Edited July 8, 2013 by Aeris

[Cromson 0]

Ok, was careful, and at 50.9x I was getting 3 checks, an analyse starting at 50.99x and ending above 51 gave me 4 tiles.

 

A few subsequent observations.  At 51, a known Iron vein at 4 was still shown, but not identified as iron.

 

Another spot still at 51..(51.14 to be precise), an analyse gave one miniscule trace line from a spot with 2 known Irons and 2 known Marbles at a range of 4 tiles.  Again only one detect line for 4 known veins in range  The odd part of this result is a check I did on an adjacent tile to confirm.  At 51.1 skill and a range of 3 tiles, I got information that Marble and Iron were present, but only one line for each type even though there were two known marble tiles and one known Iron vein.

 

My assumptions, anytime you get anything less than quality information you don't appear to get seperate hits for each vein of a given type.

Less evidence but following the same trend I would suspect that any reading that can't discern vein type could very well give the same result even if multiple type are present at that range.

[Terapherna 21]

from what i have seen it holds true that only 1 vein type is mentioned even if there are 3 in that same tile radius as long as it is the same type, unsure if at the point you actually know the quality of the vein if this changes or not

[Bullbrand 63]

Ok, my tests are :
 
34.99 Prospecting

Iron

- 1 tile - ore type detected, ql detected, message is 'trace of'

- 2 tiles - ore type detected, ql not detected , message is 'slight trace of'

- 3 tiles - ore type detected, ql not detected , message is 'faint trace of'

 

35.01-35.06 Prospecting

Copper

- 1 tile - ore type detected, ql detected, message is 'trace of'

- 2 tiles - ore type detected, ql not detected , message is 'slight trace of'

- 3 tiles - ore type not detected, ql not detected , message is 'faint trace of'

 

35.03-35.05 Prospecting

Gold

- 1 tile - ore type detected, ql detected, message is 'trace of'

- 2 tiles - ore type detected, ql not detected , message is 'slight trace of'

- 3 tiles - ore type not detected, ql not detected , message is 'faint trace of'

 

35.03-35.05 Prospecting

Zinc

- 1 tile - ore type detected, ql detected, message is 'trace of'

- 2 tiles - ore type detected, ql not detected , message is 'slight trace of'

- 3 tiles - ore type detected, ql not detected , message is 'faint trace of'

 

 

(Edit - misread the extra post I Was replying to)

Edited July 15, 2013 by Bullbrand

[Chromega 64]

Prospecting skill 86.83.

 

I have located a new distance message, indistinct trace. This only recently appeared after 85 prospecting (have not noticed prior to 85). At 5 tiles I can detect gold, currently I have only detected iron at this new 6th tile. I will continue to share what I find out as I push for 90. Feel free to ask questions, I'll answer what I can.

 

---

[19:57:40] You start to analyse the shard.

[19:57:40] Lots of different sized rock shards.

[19:57:42] You cannot see anything unusual.

[19:57:42] You take a closer look.

[19:57:45] You cannot see any unusual slight traces of anything.

[19:57:45] You study it a bit more.

[19:57:48] You cannot see anything unusual.

[19:57:48] You study it real hard.

[19:57:51] You spot a minuscule trace of acceptable quality iron ore.

[19:57:51] You peer at it.

[19:57:54] You see a vague trace of flint.

[19:57:54] You spot a vague trace of iron ore.

[19:57:54] You go cross-eyed studying it.

[19:57:58] You see a indistinct trace of iron ore.

[19:57:58] You see a indistinct trace of something, but cannot quite make it out.

[19:57:58] You finish analysing the shard.

----

 

Update: 89 prospecting. Still cannot see gold at indistinct traces or detect QL at vague traces.

 

----

 

Update 2:

[02:50:15] Prospecting increased by 0.000832 to 90.00023

[02:50:15] You have just received the title 'Goldsniffer'!

 

Still cannot see gold at indistinct traces. Still cannot detect vague trace QL. Quite disappointed.

 

Update 3: Taking nice long break from prospecting grinding.

Edited July 21, 2013 by Chromega