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[Mining] Is pet info for minors still accurate and more

Rhiannon

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Hello fellow minors!

In reading through the crafting data chest, I'm seeing that it's recommended that I use multiple pack mules and a fire beetle.

Questions:
  • Why fire beetle?
  • If I don't have taming, can I control the beetle?
  • Any reason to not have like 4 pack mules?
  • Being a typical crafter, I don't have any fighting or defensive skills. Thus, I tend to hang out around the mountains near my house for mining. What are some of the safest places for a crafter like me to mine?
  • Got any tips for safety? Defense?
Thanks in advance for your advice!
Robyn (Rhiannon's Sister)
 

Basara

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Hello fellow minors!

In reading through the crafting data chest, I'm seeing that it's recommended that I use multiple pack mules and a fire beetle.

Questions:
  • Why fire beetle?
  • If I don't have taming, can I control the beetle?
  • Any reason to not have like 4 pack mules?
  • Being a typical crafter, I don't have any fighting or defensive skills. Thus, I tend to hang out around the mountains near my house for mining. What are some of the safest places for a crafter like me to mine?
  • Got any tips for safety? Defense?
Thanks in advance for your advice!
Robyn (Rhiannon's Sister)
The reasons were all explained in the FAQs. To recap...

1. The Fire Beetle can be controlled by anyone, but requires a tamer to tame (before transferring ownership to a miner) because the actual taming part requires beating it into submission AND high taming skill. It also spawns in a rather nasty part of the Tokuno mines, so the Tamer better have help or something better than just spellcasting to defend with.

2. The Fire Beetle acts as a mobile forge that you can ride. This allows you to smelt in the field.

3. As 120 ingots' weight = weight of 1 large pile of ore or 6 small ore, taking 4 packies to collect ore to take back to smelt is downright foolish.
Amount one can gather with 4 packies = 532 large (and 8 small) ore or 3200 small ore (1068 ingots, or 1600 ingots, respectively), plus about another 25-40 ore on your person.
Amount one can get with a fire beetle and 2 packies = 32,000 ingots, plus whatever you can carry on your person (about 2500-4000 ingots)
Roughly ~35 THOUSAND ingots is substantially greater than 1500-2000 ingots. So, you can mine all day without having to return home to drop off ingots.

4. Safe places to mine for a no-offense crafter:
a. The edges of the "moat" around the city of Umbra can be mined on both sides - the inside edge is mostly in, or steps away, from a guard zone. The outside is mostly housing areas, with no hostile spawn with the exception of stuff that might wander in from stuff chasing people from the direction of Doom (extremely unlikely occurrence, these days).
b. The mining cave outside Umbra, and the mountain face there, running west. No hostile spawn unless you go deep into the desert, and accidentally blunder into the lost Pyramid (which is WELL away from the mountain face). DON'T go into the desert THROUGH the cave, unless you have a means of killing giant scorpions and the occasional rare Sand Vortex.
c. Also in Malas, the passage through the mountains between Umbra and Luna. Get a rune there. As long as you don't go near the exit on the Umbra side (where there's an orc fort), the most dangerous thing you will run into is a vampire bat, and your beetle (or even trained packies) should be able to take those down, or you using wands or explosion potions, if you really have to.
d. Trammel Delucia & Cove, and Ter Mur Royal City have lots of mining in a guard zone.
e. Ilshenar Mushroom cave (near Spirituality - has entrance to Twisted Weald): no natural spawn, and unnatural spawn is pretty much only elementals dug up by other miners with garg pickaxes, or (if you're neg karma) Cu Sidhe released there by tamers.
f. The entire rock face from Spirituality gate to Sacrifice gate in Ilshenar is spawn-free as well, unless meer or brigands chase someone to Sac gate.
g. Minoc has lots of relatively safe (barring event spawns) mining areas, from the mines, up north through the castle-infested housing area between the city and the cave to the lost lands.

5. The best defense - train your Fire beetle up (packies too, but they are considerably more fragile). Bond them all (so they recall with you and so they can be rezzed) before they train. Best means of training involves mining up a shadow iron elemental with a gargoyle pickaxe, have your pets fight it (they can't hurt it), and have a tamer friend there using vet on your pets to keep them alive (or someone with magery, and max mana regen and LMC)
 
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Rhiannon

Sage
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Thank you Basara for the extremely informative information! As mentioned, I had read the FAQ but it was so old, I wanted to make sure it was still accurate.

A few quirky things about me that do effect my choices here:

1) I really don't like beetles. I think they look like large roaches (no offense to beetle owners) and in my RP world, a miner wouldn't be riding a large florescent roach to mine with.
2) I'm not a power player in ANY way. I do things because I enjoy doing them. So it's OK to me to have a handful of pack mules, fill them up with 1600 stone's worth of ore and head home to smelt it.

Interestingly, I have had one pack mule for a long while - years I think. I went to a stable master with the intent to buy another pack mule. It occured to me to see if I had any unexpected stabled pets as it was so many years ago that I started some of these sister-characters. Low and behold, I had two more! After I fed the poor starving things, they immediately bonded to me so now I have three bonded pack mules following me around.

I truly appreciate your tips on where else to mine besides my house area. I just hit 90 mining last weekend so I popped over to Cove to try something new. I was delighted to mine my first apapite! I got to the far northern end and suddenly a troll popped into the garden there and came towards us. I figured I'd run back to the town area and call guards, totally forgetting that Cove isn't a guarded area - at least I don't think it is. We ran far enough ahead so that I could recall my guys out to safety (using charges in my runebook).

Next question: Is there a relatively SAFE way to train up my packmules by myself to have more strength so that when we are accidently in danger, they can stay alive long enough for me to get us to safety? I barely managed it this time but poor Doug the packmule nearly lost his life. He's my oldeste and dearest packmule!
 

Basara

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Thank you Basara for the extremely informative information! As mentioned, I had read the FAQ but it was so old, I wanted to make sure it was still accurate.
I just hit 90 mining last weekend so I popped over to Cove to try something new. I was delighted to mine my first apapite! I got to the far northern end and suddenly a troll popped into the garden there and came towards us. I figured I'd run back to the town area and call guards, totally forgetting that Cove isn't a guarded area - at least I don't think it is. We ran far enough ahead so that I could recall my guys out to safety (using charges in my runebook).

Next question: Is there a relatively SAFE way to train up my packmules by myself to have more strength so that when we are accidently in danger, they can stay alive long enough for me to get us to safety? I barely managed it this time but poor Doug the packmule nearly lost his life. He's my oldeste and dearest packmule!
Most of Cove inside the wall is a guarded area. It's just the north end of the farms and that tower at the top that aren't (and on some shards that tower is a GZ, I think).

As long as the packies are bonded, when they die, they become ghosts, and can be rezzed by a layer with Veterinary skill or by an NPC Vet. You'll need to loot the corpses before the body disappears, though.

As for safe training, I think it's possible (guilded or not? I forget...) to have your pets fight each other in a guard zone, but I can't remember how hard it is to keep them from killing each other (I THINK there's some set of conditions where they do less or no damage to each other). You might want to ask on the Tamer forum for this, as it's their territory.
 
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