Easier concrete

[As_I_Decay 1,592]

Concrete was implemented into the game a while ago. It was supposed to help aid those that wanted to fix mine floors, that had either been:

*Damaged by the horrible implementation of when devs allowed critters to mine.
*Damaged by newbies/griefers

The addition of the concrete feature also gave players new flexibility in design, both in the under world and the
 surface world.

The problem is, concrete is too hard to make. It's very time consuming, as you need to gather a slew of materials to attempt to make it. Also, MANY skills are required to gather this stuff: ash comes from firemaking, lye from alchemy, clay and sand from digging, and mortar from masonry.  Once you manage to gather said materials, the materials need to be very high quality to get a decent chance to make. Even with my nat sub in the mid 30's, my creation % is quite low (62, I believe) using 35-40ql lye and 70-80ql mortar.

At 62% chance, I fail a lot at creating concrete. If a player with my skill set has such a hard time creating this stuff, how hard is it for a newer player to do so?

If concrete was made easier to create, we would see:
*Public mine floors repaired. No more 100+ sloped spikes in starter area mines.
*More creativity in building and design
*Surface mining could be tweaked and played with a bit, because concrete (the fix) is easily available.


Thoughts?
 

Edited January 26, 2014 by As_I_Decay

[Rakki 429]

its fine as it is

[MetalDragon 1,630]

I agree the amount of work required for concrete is massive, I have no suggestions on how to improve it.

[silakka 2,360]

90% to create, with 6.7second first action

55natural substances, 45ql mortar 40ql lye.

 

Just get ur skills up.

Farming isnt easy when ur skill is 30, but it gets easier at 90

same thing.

 

Ive been making over 400concrete in these last days and it is fine as it is for me.

no changes required.

Edited January 26, 2014 by silakka

[As_I_Decay 1,592]

I agree the amount of work required for concrete is massive, I have no suggestions on how to improve it.

We could start with making creation % chances higher. If concrete creation was as successful as mortar making is for me, I wouldn't feel it a burden and wouldn't be so deterred to create it.

[Chlodovech 246]

Why are you looking at masonry to make concrete?

[As_I_Decay 1,592]

90% to create, with 6.7second first action

55natural substances, 45ql mortar 40ql lye.

 

Just get ur skills up.

Farming isnt easy when ur skill is 30, but it gets easier at 90

same thing.

The point of my OP was, you shouldn't need to have the skills of a demigod to be able create concrete. Even a newbie should have the ability to create a decent amount of concrete to fix his/her mine. It shouldn't take them months to do.

You're also missing the fact that besides the nat substance skill, you need 50 digging and roughly 50 masonry to make the mortar. You need 50 WC to chop the high ql kindling needed to get the high ql ash for the 45ql lye. That's a whole lot of different skills needed to make one, singular item.

 

[As_I_Decay 1,592]

Why are you looking at masonry to make concrete?

I failed when typing. I intended to put my nat substance skill there, will fix.

[Serpentarius 186]

I agree the amount of work required for concrete is massive, I have no suggestions on how to improve it.

Keep the exact same creation formula but instead of 3kg of concrete being needed to raise the floor by one, make it 1kg.

[Klaa 4,872]

One avenue would be to increase the ways of producing ash, say from any fire.

 

Ovens and forges can be optionally "emptied" of ash. Activate shovel, right click fire container, select Shovel Ash.

 

Also I dont recal if using larger lumps of ash and larger amounts of water results in more lye persay. Quicker mixing even if less skill overall.

Edited January 26, 2014 by Klaa

[silakka 2,360]

Keep the exact same creation formula but instead of 3kg of concrete being needed to raise the floor by one, make it 1kg.

 

id agree with 2kg.. but no way to 1kg.

[As_I_Decay 1,592]

Also I dont recal if using larger lumps of ash and larger amounts of water results in more lye persay. Quicker mixing even if less skill overall.

It does. But, the creation % problem of the concrete itself still exists if you dont have nice ql ash, or a high nat substance skill. 

Plus, as a newer player, you're probably going to fail that one mix of 20kg ash and 45kg water.

Edited January 26, 2014 by As_I_Decay

[Depends 220]

While there could be some use above ground that could lead to issues if it were too easy to create, the below ground use is nearly all repair work for damage from bugs, newbies, and momentary brain failure while mining.

There are a lot of mines that could be fixed and useful but would require way too much work to do so at this point.

Maybe an alternative concrete for use in mines would help. Keep the more difficult one for outside use but allow people who were griefed or made a mistake to fix things without hours of effort.

[Elen 1,013]

One avenue would be to increase the ways of producing ash, say from any fire.

 

Ovens and forges can be optionally "emptied" of ash. Activate shovel, right click fire container, select Shovel Ash.

 

Also I dont recal if using larger lumps of ash and larger amounts of water results in more lye persay. Quicker mixing even if less skill overall.

 

I've pushed this twice on suggestions, always to wide approval, but never implemented

[As_I_Decay 1,592]

While there could be some use above ground that could lead to issues if it were too easy to create, the below ground use is nearly all repair work for damage from bugs, newbies, and momentary brain failure while mining.

There are a lot of mines that could be fixed and useful but would require way too much work to do so at this point.

Maybe an alternative concrete for use in mines would help. Keep the more difficult one for outside use but allow people who were griefed or made a mistake to fix things without hours of effort.

And what's the point of that, really?

Why must surface rock removal AND addition be so hard for a player to do? If both actions were as easy as digging was, than it would be viewed no differently than digging. No one would care. Everyone only makes a big stink about it because both ways of manipulating surface rock is a PITA.

 

Edited January 26, 2014 by As_I_Decay

[KanePT 699]

90% to create, with 6.7second first action

55natural substances, 45ql mortar 40ql lye.

 

Just get ur skills up.

Farming isnt easy when ur skill is 30, but it gets easier at 90

same thing.

 

Ive been making over 400concrete in these last days and it is fine as it is for me.

no changes required.

You're kidding right?

Farming?

The skill that gives you multiple items for the least amount of input, next thing you're saying that HFC is the hardest skill to grind.

 

 

One avenue would be to increase the ways of producing ash, say from any fire.

 

Ovens and forges can be optionally "emptied" of ash. Activate shovel, right click fire container, select Shovel Ash.

 

Also I dont recal if using larger lumps of ash and larger amounts of water results in more lye persay. Quicker mixing even if less skill overall.

Yeah, either this or halve the ammount of logs required on coal piles, or both.

I mean, a coal pile gives like a bit more than 10 of each item? for 21 logs? thats 400+ kg input wood (not mentioning the lost dirt) to get a few dozen kgs of end-stuff.

This means that basically i can make about 20 kindling->campfires from one log, which results in 20 units of ash. the 20 logs from a coal pile would yield enough campfires for about 400 ash.

Maybe its time to review these outrageous disparities?

 

As for improvements on concrete:

-Get rid of the slope limit, it can be circumvented, and is mostly useless, except for maybe some obscure PvP reason that the majority of the player base doesn't care about (this would also end all issues with surface minning being a irreparable damage).

- Start with lye, its always the limiting factor on leather working and concrete. Make its ql less random, make it miss more, but always have ql =ql of ash on success (wouldn't even mind total ash loss on failure, i mean some of the "takes a bit of material on failure" things end up the same as destroying as far as the usefulness of the item- kindling is an example).

[As_I_Decay 1,592]

its fine as it is

I disagree, and is why I am suggesting it be changed.

I don't see anything "fine" about the fact that I can accidentally mine my floor in 11 seconds with an f2p character, but it takes me hours to successfully create one piece of concrete on the same character to fix my mess up.

[Depends 220]

And what's the point of that, really?

Why must surface rock removal AND addition be so hard for a player to do? If both actions were as easy as digging was, than it would be viewed no differently than digging. No one would care. Everyone only makes a big stink about it because both ways of manipulating surface rock is a PITA.

Don't ask me, I agree with you. Just trying to throw out a concession to the people who cry about every step Wurm takes towards being an enjoyable game.

I just want to fix my mines after Rolf griefed them with bugs.

[Arronicus 642]

It wouldn't hurt either if they simply increased the amount of concrete created (but the volume/weight) stayed the same.

[Ricowan 199]

+1  Concrete shouldn't be that much harder to make than mortar.

[Aeris 3,764]

I had around 300 units of concrete and it was gone faster than a chocolate bar in front of Augustus Glute. I almost felt bad using it up since it took far longer than that to create. It's supposed to be a fix for all the "oopsies" people make in caves but it's so precious that using it turns us into Uncle Scrooge.

+1 it needs to be made "easier" somehow. And no, I don't care what people who've actively grinded natural substances and happen to have access to a lot of mortar think. The rest of us aren't as fortunate or amused by the creation stages.

[Klaa 4,872]

I've pushed this twice on suggestions, always to wide approval, but never implemented

Aye its a means Ive liked everytime Ive seen it. Its optional so people dont have to, immersive, intuitive, and more gain from the same old work.

[Becket 843]

+1 The success rate for the creation of concrete, surface mining and foraging/botanizing all need to be looked at. There is no way at 91 mining I should fail as often as I do surface mining and how tired am I of seeing This area has been picked clean where I know for a fact no animals or people have been in months.

[Jerrywalker 16]

After making about 6k concrete it comes to me that main trouble is common around Wurm - RNG that allows you to fail 20 times in a row with 65% chance to create. Making concrete becomes patience test and mats wasting festive. I must say that after 43 NS it becomes much more easy even if chance to make shows same value - you will fail twice less than usual (at last that is right for me with 45 NS 16 ql lye and 40 ql mortar).

 

 Most time consuming is making ash as you need to wait days for coal piles or spam campfires 1 per tile. I don't have much money but after using 700 ash to make just 170 concrete (skill was low) i've started to just buy ash so i can finish my project in this year. I will be glad if devs add ash as byproduct from using forges/ovens or at least increase the amount of ash per campfire depending on fuel quantity burned in it.

[FreeTineen 430]

Its easy to mine down, concrete is very, very annoying to raise. Lets eve that out shall we.