Iron beetles speculation

[Uthar Pendragon]

Ok I tamed one and wandered around with it. I want to try and gather some useful information on it.

1) seems to randomly dig up ore. Not sure how long of an interval between attempts for it to do this.

2) If the ore is left on the ground for to long and the beetle is hungry, well the pile of ore is going to be munched (funny crunching noise almost expect a burp after)

Now for speculation notes. There is a selection menu on these critters (right click to get options to mine- ore, ore & rock, ore & gems). So that made me curious when I tried to select another option besides just ore. I got a message similar to -you dont know how to mine this. (forget exact message) So I set mining to 100 on my char and went to the minoc mines, same message. I decided to wait it out to test another theory. I lored the beetle and noted his barding difficulty. After the beetle had spit out a few piles of ore (about 5-6 more) I lored it again. His barding rate had gone up by a tenth. I waited it out some more, lored it again and it had increased another .1, now pure speculation at this point but my guess is to get the other options to come up as useable you will have to train this thing up to GM mining.

How do I get the mining skill as going up? Part of the formula for figuring out an animals barding difficulty is add the total of all skills. If I did nothing to train this there has to be some unseen skill going up. There is only one other confirmed hidden skill on pets (parry).

Now how useful is this pet? Unknown as I cannot figure out if there is a means to activate this pets mining ability aside from its random digging. I will play more with it as well to decipher a bit more.


Anyone else have any info. or speculations?

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

Hum interesting observation.

I didn't stick around and let it eyeball the ore on the ground so I never saw the munching

The barding increase is very interesting indeed.

It is possible there is a mining skill not listed on the Lore Gumps and this is what is being seen as increasing, so yah, until other information becomes abvailable I agree it is a good theory.

If I finish playing with my Skree tonight I am going to revisit the Iron Beetle and take it to a Felluca Dungeon and let it wonder around a bit.

 

[Nenime]

Thank you for this information, Uthar Pendragon. To me, the Iron Beetles are the most mysterious and hence the most interesting pets right now. I'm trying to GM one to see what abilities it will develop. But I think the Devs haven't finished their work with this pet, there are probably more changes to come. So for now I am focused on their fighting abilities but I will have an eye on this digging feature.

 

[Hinotori]

Go to the blacksmith in Tel Mur and buy and eat the book on mining for gems. Go to the Gargoyle city in Ilshenar and eat the book on mining for stone.

When you select from the beetle's menu it sets you to whatever you want mined like a pickaxe. I think this is a bug. Seems like it should set the beetle to dig up that stuff.

I'm wondering if you have to train up the beetles mining skill to get colored ores. The one I got hasnt given me anything but iron so far. I think I'll take it out someplace besides Tel Mur to test the mining, though. That could be the issue on that.

 

[Uthar Pendragon]

I have managed to get verite and agapite from mine. few other things I noted while digging around today.

1) Digging rate seems to be once every 3 seconds. At least that would bethe assumption from my stroll allong the mountain sides and into the mining caves. the beetle would pause a step every 3 seconds while following me.

this got me thinking about the dex and to see if the rate increases when the dex has increased. So I took him to the shadow eles in tokuno mines and started him on one.

2) they will continue to mine while in combat. This was noticed from the ore piles that kept appearing at my feet as we were training. Right now its a slow process and I am going to redirect my training elsewhere to skill up the beetle a little more so he is better matched for the shadow.


Side note I wonder if it was just overlooked in the coding for taming of the beast, that the skill is reduced when tamed so that even the mining ability is affected by the tamed skill loss so therefore needs to be retrained.

 

[Hinotori]

Well, I took it to the Minoc mining mountain and was getting colored ore just fine there. Must have just had bad choice of locations before.

I'm not sure that it's worth 4 control slots still. I still think the fire beetle is a better choice. We'll see what the iron beetle is like when they release SA live though.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Old topic I know, but thanks to the new pet brokers I had one of my miners buy one of these very odd looking creatures.....cute though in a sort of radiation-leak-bug-ate-it kinda way.

I see no pet command for "hey buddy, mine some ore will ya?" or anything by googling around to tell me how to get this creature to do something. With the Fire Beetles it's rather obvious.

It's bonded to a GM miner. I've had the miner eat the book for stone and gems and I can set these on the pet's pull down menu....but nothing happens.

In short, how do you use these guys?

Thanks
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[Pinco]

Old topic I know, but thanks to the new pet brokers I had one of my miners buy one of these very odd looking creatures.....cute though in a sort of radiation-leak-bug-ate-it kinda way.

I see no pet command for "hey buddy, mine some ore will ya?" or anything by googling around to tell me how to get this creature to do something. With the Fire Beetles it's rather obvious.

It's bonded to a GM miner. I've had the miner eat the book for stone and gems and I can set these on the pet's pull down menu....but nothing happens.

In short, how do you use these guys?

Thanks
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well, you can't "use" this
just bring it with you while mining and sometimes it mines too...
Personally I prefer the fire beetle or fire beetle + 2 pack llama than this 4 slots pet that does whatever he wants

 

[5% Luck]

Heh I had mine out for a few hours last week..... Bad bad bad!

It does infact drop ore to the "ground"where my uoassit picks up on the fact that it is there and drops all "my ore" to that pile too and I wonder why my pack isnt getting filed!

OMG not only is it useless but it incurs a penalty against the user!

And I was psychiced about them too!

 

[Jonathan Baron]

So this bug is a buttock.

Polite way of saying it's a half a**sed alleged feature.

Perhaps it and the Skree can mate and make 8 slot babies. No matter. They'd be useless anyway

Thanks guys for the quick answer.

Damn, though!
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