What Mining could use...

[Eslake]

Since the introduction of color ores, mining has been the most time consuming of resources.
The addition of color woods evened lumberjacking out a tiny bit, by making rare forms of lumber to coincide with the rare ores (tho frostwood is far more rare than valorite).

But nothing so far has addressed the simple fact that a 105skil(gloves) miner can only hope to get about 3500 ingots / hour if they are lucky enough to have no smelt failures, while a 50 skill lumberjack can get over 15,000 logs in that time and have No chance to fail to make boards from them.

Leather items use far fewer leather than metal items use ingots.
Wooden items use fewer boards than their corresponding metal items use ingots.

--
Barring the complete removal of smelt failures (which I doubt would be seen as reasonable) I would suggest the following.

The current Ore/Skill table.
Iron : 0
Dull : 65
Shadow : 70
Copper : 75
Bronze : 80
Gold : 85
Agapite : 90
Verite : 95
Valorite : 99

Dull Copper should be created by using iron ore on shadow iron ore (and vise versa). And while they're at it, the color for Dull should be darkened a bit, so that dull granite is easier to distinguish from plain, and the armors made from it stand out a bit.

Bronze (yes, we've all laughed about this since the day it went in ) should be made by using Copper ore on NPC-sold Casseterite, or vise versa.
Perhaps also add Casseterite to the Gem-Mining table with a very high rate.

And finally, move the remaining higher ores down in skill to take the place of the 2 removed.

Iron : 0
Shadow : 65
Copper : 70
Gold : 75
Agapite : 80
Verite : 85
Valorite : 90

Many don't see a problem because they Buy their ingots, but I feel the need to point out that Virtually Every ingot seller out there is stocked by script miners.

No, I am not generalizing. Do the math yourself.
Even if 3500 ingots / hour was possible every hour (which it is not), it would take more than 20 hours to stock 1k valorite ingots / day. (Val spawns 1.4% of the time)

If they are using a Prospector tool and Garg pick for every spot they mine, it bumps to 8.4% of their ore, but they have to lose the time dealing with elementals spawned and still have a 48% Valorite smelt faiure at 105 mining. So we're still talking over 18 hours a day every day to stock a vendor with 1k valorite at a time.

 

[Connor_Graham]

Wooden items use fewer boards than their corresponding metal items use ingots.

Not true. Even a simple parrot perch uses more boards than any metal item uses ingots.

I feel the need to point out that Virtually Every ingot seller out there is stocked by script miners.

No, I am not generalizing..

Yes you are. I sell ingots and I've never scripted anything. I even raise all my skills while sitting in front of the computer pushing the keys over and over. I take offense at being called a scripter because you want to generalize.

 

[Eslake]

Not true. Even a simple parrot perch uses more boards than any metal item uses ingots.

I was talking about items that are similar between the skills.
Eg: A bokuto uses 6 boards, a katana uses 8 ingots.

The only instance where a carpentered item takes Fewer boards than the equivalent Smithed item uses ingots, is if you compare a Wooden Shield to a Taer Kite Shield (and ignore all the other smithed shields taking More).

Yes you are. I sell ingots and I've never scripted anything. I even raise all my skills while sitting in front of the computer pushing the keys over and over. I take offense at being called a scripter because you want to generalize.

Are you stocking 1k valorite ingots / day?
I said Virtually Every vendor, because those selling mostly iron - gold could be doing it legitimately.
It is those selling quantities of Agapite and up that are not doing it via attended game play, because they would have to be dedicating every waking hour to mining to do so.

 

[pavel.vesely]

3500 ingots per hour? Only when half asleep or with heavy hangover.

Pavel Veselý

 

[Connor_Graham]

I was talking about items that are similar between the skills.

You can't do that with carpentry, especially since there's only 1 weapon that can be made with it. Average carpentry use when making the primary items, furniture, is higher than the highest ingot use item in Smithing. Lumberjacking produces more boards because you use more boards when they get made into something. Also, you can't recover boards once used as you can with most metal items and smelt them into ingots.

I said Virtually Every vendor, because those selling mostly iron - gold could be doing it legitimately.
It is those selling quantities of Agapite and up that are not doing it via attended game play, because they would have to be dedicating every waking hour to mining to do so.

Then please specify that and not just say "ingot vendors".

 

[pavel.vesely]

I did small test:

10 minutes mining
used two macros: F1 - last object and F2 - last target
used 278 showel uses + 18 prospector tool uses
had 1 incident with snake, run away

372 iron
306 dull copper
58 shadow iron
47 copper
84 bronze
84 golden
34 agapite
total 985 ingots

1 perfect emerald
1 ecru citrine

 

[UOKaiser]

I did small test:

10 minutes mining
used two macros: F1 - last object and F2 - last target
used 278 showel uses + 18 prospector tool uses
had 1 incident with snake, run away

372 iron
306 dull copper
58 shadow iron
47 copper
84 bronze
84 golden
34 agapite
total 985 ingots

1 perfect emerald
1 ecru citrine

Pretty good no recall macro either. Fel right?

 

[UOKaiser]

I was talking about items that are similar between the skills.
Eg: A bokuto uses 6 boards, a katana uses 8 ingots.

The only instance where a carpentered item takes Fewer boards than the equivalent Smithed item uses ingots, is if you compare a Wooden Shield to a Taer Kite Shield (and ignore all the other smithed shields taking More).



Are you stocking 1k valorite ingots / day?
I said Virtually Every vendor, because those selling mostly iron - gold could be doing it legitimately.
It is those selling quantities of Agapite and up that are not doing it via attended game play, because they would have to be dedicating every waking hour to mining to do so.

Way too broad assumption. Alot of miners dont sell as soon as they obtain the ingots especially high end. The gold and above usually sits there as ore for a long time then slowly smelt 100 -50-10-2 or 1 ore at a time. After that they stock there vendors as they sell out. Anytime possible though they head to sellers of ingots out in the sticks and buy cheap sell high to make it appear there always stock. 1 of the top rules never put all your product on a vendor to sell always have more so that youre vender doesnt stay empty too long. in the mean time you mine and search for deals to sell at a higher price. Also its great to have youre miner be part of a miner guild that really helps greatly.

 

[Eslake]

You can't do that with carpentry, especially since there's only 1 weapon that can be made with it.

Ah, I see why you don't understand the correlation, you don't have a carpenter.

There are 12 carpentered weapons, not 1.

You are correct that you cannot recycle boards from wooden items, but as you point out, much of what can be made via carpentry are furniture and other addons.
If you need a chair, you just make a chair. There it is, a chair - done.
If you need a 40HLL 30SSI katana, ... a whole different story.

You may need 40 chairs for a castle all decked out as a guild hall and tavern, but you can make 40 consecutive chairs and have every one of them be what you wanted. That is why there is no recycling for wooden items. Until SE the only reason you would ever need to make more than 1 of an item was to get or not get the exceptional tag.
Smithing on the other hand, has always been about making multiple items to get the ones you wanted. (Even Pre-AoS you had to bang out a ton of plate pieces to get exceptional ones)

Then please specify that and not just say "ingot vendors".

You don't think the rather detailed explanation of how long it takes to get 1k valorite ingots was explanation enough?
*shrug* I thought it was pretty clear.

3500 ingots per hour? Only when half asleep or with heavy hangover.

If you are getting more than 3500 ingots/hour, I want to know how.

There is a server-side forced delay of 2 seconds between getting ore. You can actually swing faster than that, but it ignores the extras. Felucca gives 2 at a time, so it boils down to 1 ore pile / second.

IF you could find a vein that never ran out (impossible)..
and IF you could always get 2 large piles/swing (impossible)..
and IF you never failed a smelt (improbable)..
You could get 7,200 ingots/hour.

But -
You can't find a vein that never runs out, you have to move around between veins.
You can't always get 2 large piles/swing.
You always have a chance of failing smelts unless you know some hack to get only iron-bronze on a GM+ miner.

So please, enlighten those of us who mine on how you manage to get more than 3,500 ingots/hour without a hack.

 

[Eslake]

Way too broad assumption. Alot of miners dont sell as soon as they obtain the ingots especially high end. The gold and above usually sits there as ore for a long time then slowly smelt 100 -50-10-2 or 1 ore at a time. After that they stock there vendors as they sell out. Anytime possible though they head to sellers of ingots out in the sticks and buy cheap sell high to make it appear there always stock. 1 of the top rules never put all your product on a vendor to sell always have more so that youre vender doesnt stay empty too long. in the mean time you mine and search for deals to sell at a higher price. Also its great to have youre miner be part of a miner guild that really helps greatly.

The idea of buying from "in the sticks" vendors to sell at a markup is used as an argument by everyone ever banned for selling dupes.
Don't you think it odd that you can roam the entire game map and visit every player vendor on your shard, and not see 1/1000th of the items and resources these people claim to Each be able to find every day from them?

*note the "each day" part of 1k valorite each day.*

True, a miners' collective/guild can produce ingots at volume, but I haven't seen an active one for years thanks to the script miners driving the value on ingots so low that you would honestly be better off killing mongbats or lizardmen for gold than what you can make by mining.

 

[UOKaiser]

Ah, I see why you don't understand the correlation, you don't have a carpenter.

There are 12 carpentered weapons, not 1.

You are correct that you cannot recycle boards from wooden items, but as you point out, much of what can be made via carpentry are furniture and other addons.
If you need a chair, you just make a chair. There it is, a chair - done.
If you need a 40HLL 30SSI katana, ... a whole different story.

You may need 40 chairs for a castle all decked out as a guild hall and tavern, but you can make 40 consecutive chairs and have every one of them be what you wanted. That is why there is no recycling for wooden items. Until SE the only reason you would ever need to make more than 1 of an item was to get or not get the exceptional tag.
Smithing on the other hand, has always been about making multiple items to get the ones you wanted. (Even Pre-AoS you had to bang out a ton of plate pieces to get exceptional ones)



You don't think the rather detailed explanation of how long it takes to get 1k valorite ingots was explanation enough?
*shrug* I thought it was pretty clear.



If you are getting more than 3500 ingots/hour, I want to know how.

There is a server-side forced delay of 2 seconds between getting ore. You can actually swing faster than that, but it ignores the extras. Felucca gives 2 at a time, so it boils down to 1 ore pile / second.

IF you could find a vein that never ran out (impossible)..
and IF you could always get 2 large piles/swing (impossible)..
and IF you never failed a smelt (improbable)..
You could get 7,200 ingots/hour.

But -
You can't find a vein that never runs out, you have to move around between veins.
You can't always get 2 large piles/swing.
You always have a chance of failing smelts unless you know some hack to get only iron-bronze on a GM+ miner.

So please, enlighten those of us who mine on how you manage to get more than 3,500 ingots/hour without a hack.

I guess lets remove the percentage of smelt and different color ores. Lets assume all done in fel you will need at least 1750 large ore to get 3500 ingots which would be 875 swings at least multiply that by 2 seconds would be 29 min minimum of striaght mining. now factor in recalling to each spot so you dont have to waste time walking then dropping the ore in packys or bank or house. Now most people get alot more large ore than any of the other sizes but lets add that in as well will add 10 min more of mining brings it to 39 min then anymore delays another 10 min for carpel tunnel syndrome or any spots recalled that are used up or any other reason. briings total to 49 min got a 11 minute window more to add in delays in moving the ore to home, packy secure, bank. Yep I think its highly duable.

If any of my math is incorrect you can correct it. Now when factoring in color ingots thats usually is saved to be smelt at a later date carefully so it wont take away time from your'e mining. Usiing a fire beatle will incorporate smelting into the equation so that would coincide more to the diffulty in getting 3500 ingots in 1 hour that you have pointed out.

 

[pavel.vesely]

Pretty good no recall macro either. Fel right?

I have runebook, first rune is my home, last is start of my mining line, does it count? I recall back every tree 150 uses shovels or two 200 uses shovels. By that time ore is respawned so I can return to start again.

And I am human GM miner w/+5 r. gloves, I mine in Felucca, and I use fire beetle.

Pavel Veselý

P.S. If anybody want to whine, that he dont have gloves or fire beetle, they equal about 2500 ingots (on Europa), so go whine somewhere else.

 

[UOKaiser]

The idea of buying from "in the sticks" vendors to sell at a markup is used as an argument by everyone ever banned for selling dupes.
Don't you think it odd that you can roam the entire game map and visit every player vendor on your shard, and not see 1/1000th of the items and resources these people claim to Each be able to find every day from them?

*note the "each day" part of 1k valorite each day.*

True, a miners' collective/guild can produce ingots at volume, but I haven't seen an active one for years thanks to the script miners driving the value on ingots so low that you would honestly be better off killing mongbats or lizardmen for gold than what you can make by mining.

I know a couple of miner guilds that are still very active at my shard though not sure if we have the same shard as some are way underpopulated and finding any ingots away from luna is nearly impossible. I know what i do i go buy ingots in bulk at lower prices like for example I head to miner shops still located in the land of lost houses and head to miner guilds active buy for a lower price and cut deals with them. Also I help new players get up on there feet if they prefer to be miners i show them the way or leather gatherers i point them to the place or lumber or whatever then i offer to buy anything they gather untill they can sustain themselves and sell for higher price s.

If val is selling in luna for 425k per 1k i go look for someone selling for 424k or lower and sell it at regiular luna price keeps me stock and make a small profit. Thats the usual way. Then when I can I go mining and saving up what i mine to replace my stocks. I assume others do the same I run into others trying to buy before I do from the sellers and we have fun trying to beat each other trying to get to them first

 

[Setnaffa]

I hate mining, but when I do it, I can mine more than 5,000 ingots in an hour. I can't get much more boards than that, but then I'm a much better miner than lumberjack.

 

[Eslake]

Yep I think its highly duable.

If any of my math is incorrect you can correct it. Now when factoring in color ingots thats usually is saved to be smelt at a later date carefully so it wont take away time from your'e mining. Usiing a fire beatle will incorporate smelting into the equation so that would coincide more to the diffulty in getting 3500 ingots in 1 hour that you have pointed out.

Possible, but not sustainable.

You can (and I have) obtain more than that in an hour, but conditions have to be pretty specific for it to occur.
You have to get lucky on the ore randomization and not get any of the higher ores (or you suffere failed digs and failed smelts).
You have to navigate perfectly to avoid a packy/fire beetle getting stuck on a twig or behind a tree.
You have to go prepared with 200use shovels.
And so on.


As to the claim above of using 278 shove uses in 10 minutes, I simply will not credit the claim.
The Server will only allow 300 uses in 10 minutes due to the forced delay, so you would have been mining the entire 10 minutes at a PERFECT 2second/swing rate for all but 24 seconds of that time, and since you claim you had a pause due to a snake......

 

[Bomb Bloke]

You don't fail digs at GM+ skill, do you? Smelts, yes, but not digs.

Not hard to stop your fire bug getting caught on a tree, unless you're mining the forest ore veins. But that's not a good way to get ore quickly.

 

[Eslake]

You don't fail digs at GM+ skill, do you? Smelts, yes, but not digs.

Not hard to stop your fire bug getting caught on a tree, unless you're mining the forest ore veins. But that's not a good way to get ore quickly.

Since we were off-topic onto how much one could mine in an hour, and no Cave system can provide an hour of mining (other than inhabited dungeons), I was talking in general about mountainside mining. That usually means a lot of trees, twigs, and those little patches that look like miniature hay piles.


And since nobody has any intention of discussing the actual Topic, I may as well stay off topic.


Setnaffa -

Don't LJ in sparce areas like minoc, go where there are lots of trees on all sides. 8x8 for skill is gone, but the game still uses the 8x8 grid for resources. The more trees there are in on the 8x8 segment you are chopping in - the more lumber you can chop before moving on. Yew, Britain and Occlo all have some good timber areas in guard zones for fel chopping, more than you will burn through before the respawn.

A UOA macro -
Use Item Type (your preferred carpentry tool)
select wood - ash
make boards
select wood - oak
make boards
select wood - normal
make boards

- allows you to use a key to reduce your log-weight without resetting your Use Last object or Last Target so you can resume chopping right away.
(personally I use a seperate macro for each of the higher types since they aren't common enough to assume they will be in the pack at any given time)

The macro saves a lot more time than you might think. You can easily fill a beetle and 2 packies every 15 minutes, at 4800 boards/run plus what you carry on you to the museum.

 

[Harlequin]

Since we were off-topic onto how much one could mine in an hour, and no Cave system can provide an hour of mining (other than inhabited dungeons), I was talking in general about mountainside mining. That usually means a lot of trees, twigs, and those little patches that look like miniature hay piles.


And since nobody has any intention of discussing the actual Topic, I may as well stay off topic.


Setnaffa -

Don't LJ in sparce areas like minoc, go where there are lots of trees on all sides. 8x8 for skill is gone, but the game still uses the 8x8 grid for resources. The more trees there are in on the 8x8 segment you are chopping in - the more lumber you can chop before moving on. Yew, Britain and Occlo all have some good timber areas in guard zones for fel chopping, more than you will burn through before the respawn.

A UOA macro -
Use Item Type (your preferred carpentry tool)
select wood - ash
make boards
select wood - oak
make boards
select wood - normal
make boards

- allows you to use a key to reduce your log-weight without resetting your Use Last object or Last Target so you can resume chopping right away.
(personally I use a seperate macro for each of the higher types since they aren't common enough to assume they will be in the pack at any given time)

The macro saves a lot more time than you might think. You can easily fill a beetle and 2 packies every 15 minutes, at 4800 boards/run plus what you carry on you to the museum.

Ok, off topic:

Actually, Eslake, there are large cave mines that can allow fully perpetual mining. I am training my miner there at the moment (104.4 with gloves). I share it with 3 script miners. I am blocking their spots with bagballs kekeke.

That's not in Fel though. I don't mine outside guardzones when I go Fel.

And I use prospector tools with garg pickaxes when I hit agapite/verite spots. Verite spots don't last long, but agapite ones seem to last longer.

25 Val ore for each Val ele that I kill. But still, no where near 1 k Val ingots per hour. A couple of hundred on good days, zero on bad days (my sessions are a couple of hours).

On LJ, there are "Paths of Glory" referred to in one of the LJ essays. 2 lines of trees in a north-south direction where you can chop. Start from one end, and chop down the line. Then move to the next 2 rows of trees and start LJ'g the other direction. If the first 2 rows have not spawned yet, move on to next 2 rows. If they have re-spawned, you can just keep doing it in circles.

Also, setting a macro to turn them into logs is a good idea if you don't want to reset your last object. I set my "use equipped item" key in UOA to mouse wheel up, "last target" is mousewheel down. Works wonderfully. But I normally just dump the logs at home and turn them into planks when I am done. Saves carpentry tool uses (yes, I'm a cheapskate). Also prevents me from accidentally making smoothing tools from frostwood...

On topic:
Instead of making dc and bronze special, I suggest to simply downgrade each ore type 1 level.

The current Ore/Skill table.
Iron : 0
Dull : 60
Shadow : 65
Copper : 70
Bronze : 75
Gold : 80
Agapite : 85
Verite : 90
Valorite : 95

The problem with val ingots now is 3-fold:
1) Scarcity of the vein
2) Vein only lasts for 1 or 2 re-spawns. Half the time, it doens't even respawn
3) Smelt success is about 50% to 60%

Changes 1) and 2) is making it a tad too difficult for legit miners. In this case, I would have to agree that script miners definitely have the upperhand on getting rarer ingots since they can script this while playing. Unfortunately, it's pretty difficult to change stuff to make it not benefit scripters more than legit players.

 

[hen]

It's fine as it is. I miss mining while hidden but hey ho.

 

[Connor_Graham]

Ah, I see why you don't understand the correlation, you don't have a carpenter.

There are 12 carpentered weapons, not 1.

I do have a carpenter and GM at that, but guess what, no one ever buys carpentry weapons, so I never make them. The ONlY one that ever gets bought, or even made that I've ever seen, is the Bokuto. That one went out of style when it was nerfed a while back, so you rarely even see those anymore.

People buy FURNITURE from carpenters, and that's pretty much it.

 

[Olahorand]

You don't fail digs at GM+ skill, do you? Smelts, yes, but not digs.

Lumberjack GM dont fail on chopping trees as well (which would be equal to the digs), as a GM skilled carpenter does not fail on converting the boards to wood. If he fails, he may (or may not) loose 1 log.

Leather hunter does not fail on getting hides and cutting them to leather without needing any skill besides those to kill, if nobody else does it for him.

Both can to the task where ever they want, if they have a tool in the backpack. Both not even need to convert the material to use it.

I think, in the ancient time an alchimist lost also 50% of the reagents, if he failed to create something, but this may have changed or I may be wrong here.

Only the miner is treated that bad way. He needs either a fire beetle or move to smelt the heavy ore relatively instantly after each vein.
And even with 105 mining and as a legendary blacksmith you fail often enough on smelting, which is already starting with gold ore (fails at 105 used to start with agapite a few years ago). And with each fail you loose the half of the ore which you try to smelt, even 1 ore more, if the number cannot be divided by 2. Nothing protects you against streaks of failure, which may leave 2 meager ingots from a solid 500 ore stack. (Where does all that metal go?)
Given, that the value of metal armor is also not that great nowadays, I see no reason, why this behavior of wasting player time for resource harvesting and supporting scripters that way should not be changed.

*Salute*
Olahorand

 

[Connor_Graham]

Blacksmithy is needed as skill to smelt the colored ores.

Um.....No it's not. I smelt Shadow Iron on a character with GM Mining and 0 Smithing with no failures.

 

[Olahorand]

Um.....No it's not. I smelt Shadow Iron on a character with GM Mining and 0 Smithing with no failures.

thanks for the correction. You are right, I mixed that up with the need of blacksmithing skill to smelt items made from that metal (changed in the original text).
*Salute*
Olahorand

 

[pavel.vesely]

As to the claim above of using 278 shove uses in 10 minutes, I simply will not credit the claim.
The Server will only allow 300 uses in 10 minutes due to the forced delay, so you would have been mining the entire 10 minutes at a PERFECT 2second/swing rate for all but 24 seconds of that time, and since you claim you had a pause due to a snake......

I can show you how it is done, if you really have open account, I have some doubts. I mine every other day or so. All you need to bring is some snooping so you can check it yourself.

And on "PERFECT 2 second/swing rate" - do you have Nintendo DS? Try to play Elite Beat Angels or some other rythm game. I personally will not forget dancing part of Project Rub (XX/YY or something in US, I do not remember exactly). After week of training with some such game, you will not have any problems in uo mining. Just remember do NOT penetrate DS with stylus, it's your skill where is problem, not hardware.

Good luck

Pavel Veselý