[Mining] cowardly miner asking for advice

[arkanos]

since the different ore elementals seem to be the top source of crystaline blackrock (mining in ter mur did not work well for me) allow me one or two questions:

Is there a way to kill shadow and/or valorite elementals? If so, do you need fighting skills or is there a way with magery/summons (can a trained vollem maybe take them on? probably not shadow)?
I usually kill all other elementals easily with a couple of mind blasts exept for the 2 above.

Also: I have never gotten a DC elemental to spawn using a gargoyle pickaxe on a normal iron spot. Is it possible at all?

Thank you very much,
Hephaistos of Europa

 

[Petra Fyde]

Can I ask why mining in Ter Mur didn't work? I've done quite well mining around the city itself.

 

[arkanos]

well, 18K ingots (which takes a looooong time with single resources compared to fel mining) and not a single drop in Ter Mur exept for 3 from elemental bodies seems a rather bad drop rate . So I assumed I would be better off mining in fel and getting the crystaline blackrock from killing elementals. Hence my question about shadow and valorite elementals to maximize drops (and also because I would like to be able to clean up the area and not leave them behind for other miners - hmmm, unless it´s a nice present for bot miners).

Hephaistos of Europa

 

[Barry Gibb]

Shadow Iron Elementals cannot be hurt by pets, summons, or spells use a weapon you are skilled in (or a mage weapon) and they go down easily.

Valorite (and Copper) Elementals reflect damage back at the attacker. It is best to kill them with smaller hits and without a slayer. This will not hurt you as bad, so avoid big damage and using a slayer on them. You may have to back off and heal once or twice before it dies.

Dull Copper Elementals cannot be dug up. They do spawn in Shame, the Yamatso Mines, and one of the dungeons in Ilshenar. They do not have 25 ore (like the other elementals, only 2). You can get crystalline blackrock from the spawning shadow iron elementals in the mines.

Stayin Alive,

BG

 

[Kallie Pigeon]

My smith miner also has macing/anatomy/tactics/healing and he can kill the shadows sometimes in one hit with a good earth elemental slayer. As far as the valorites go I haven't tried them yet since the changes to the damage done with slayers. So much to do and so little time to do it in. I am concentrating on imbuing. Someone posted they went from zero to 120 in 4 days. It's been well over 4 days for me more like 4 weeks and I'm thinking it will be 4 months to 4 years I think I can get loyalty to go to the queens forge in 4 weeks though or certainly by 4 months
Can't help with the magery thing. I haven't tried magery on any of them.

 

[Silverbird]

I actually avoided that problem by creating a dedicated miner. (He became a simple lumberjack-miner-swordsman with some chiv.)

In todays uo you could use soulstones to swap mining with several other skills on any dexxer template. (Preferable a melee with some healing) With the increased number of stable slots with SA it is even no longer a problem to stable an additional fire beetle with a char, that already had two mounts.

Otherwise a mage weapon bow would probably works best on your smith. (Depending on how many magery he has.) Probably without anatomy and tactics (maybe 20 from human joat?) you should try, how much damage you are getting with an earth elemental slayer bow. (Earth elemental works for all ore elementals. You should maybe try that out with an earth ele slayer spell book and your mind blasts ... would shurely help a lot.)

To avoid wasteing gargoyle pickaxes I would suggest to use a prospectors tool first on a mining spot. That way you start off with at least dull copper and you can get elementals from every spot.

I dont know, if it got changed, but shadow/valorite elementals were not fully magic resistent in the past. They were somewhat vulnerable to earthquakes and fire fields. Having that in mind and if it still works using conflag/explo pots could work too.

Ah ... I forgot something: Just to hijack this thread .... Does anybody know, if paragon ore elementals have an increased chance for crystalline blackrock?

 

[Kallie Pigeon]

Yeah that's right I heard you can kill them with earthquake. Not sure how that works now. I looked at hunters guide. It says for shadows 3 or 4 earthquakes at 100 eval should kill them.
http://uo.stratics.com/database/view.php?db_content=hunters&id=313

Come to think of it I beleive I heard someone say you could kill them with bladespirits.

 

[arkanos]

thank you for all the replies!

Well, I have absolutely no room left on this template for any fighting skill. I know its rather easy to switch around skills with soulstones nowadays but I am one of those people who had the dream to GM (or further) all the skills in the game and I am close. Which means I can´t get my hands on enough full soulstones - fragments are used to quickly imo to justify the price. Full Stones are simply not sold very often on my shard and I buy at almost any price (i refuse to buy any ingame item for rl money).

This means I have 100 magery (with book and jewels) on this char and no eval (only JoaT) and I can tell you that earthquakes or blade spirits or my mindblasts don´t do anything to shadows or valorites. Not one single point of damage. Maybe only due to the lack of Eval Int.

I will try to find a book with earth ele slayer (and some magery to replace my tome of lost knowledge) to see if it makes a difference. If not it will surely help me kill the others faster at least. thanks for that, did not think about this at all.

Will also try fire fields and explo pots, interesting idea!

And the mage weapon idea is great of course. MW SC earth ele DI Bow (thank you Lord for imbuing!) should be best I guess, lets see.

Oh, and I had three para elementals in Illsh the other day - no drop from them, at least for me.

Thank you very much everyone!

Hephaistos of Europa

 

[[JD]]

I was training pets on a shadow ele today and earthquaked... it went from 100 to 40% from one spell, but I have really high eval

 

[Basara]

Note that Valorites have ALL the other elementals' special abilities.

Shadow's pet and magic immunities
Copper's reflect
Bronze's gas attack
Verite's chance to break items that aren't insured/blessed/cursed/

Last I heard, only Earthquake works, among spells (fire fields stopped working in 2003-2004, IIRC).

You can also provo creatures on them, and do damage (same goes for shadow), or have them follow you into a crowd of blue critters and loot all the kills on both sides that results. In fact, the first Valorite Elemental Paragon known to be killed was where someone (I think on Siege Perilous) getting the Paragon to chase him into the Oaks spawn at Spirituality.

 

[imperterritus]

I actually avoided that problem by creating a dedicated miner. (He became a simple lumberjack-miner-swordsman with some chiv.)
...

I did something very similar with a completely magic-less fighter. His goal template is:

110: Swords, Parry
100: Tactics, Healing, Anatomy
100: Mining, Lumberjacking

He's GM in the resourcing skills, but not yet high enough in fighting and healing to take on the ore-els. With Int set to 15, he has 125 dex and currently 90 str. (If he can ever get stat scroll, he'll up the strength.) He's an elf to help get more colored ore and wood. This also gives him an extra 20 mana, enabling him to recall from books and occasional special moves. Swords/Parry/Lumberjacking will let him do the specials at -10 normal mana cost.