Mining....... What happend to change?

[StaticOnAtlantic]

Okay heres the deal i kept track of all my stats ( yea i know no life!)

100.00 GM mining with +5 mining gloves
Fel Brit Guard zones

I mined 4868 ORE and here are the totals!

IRON: 4038
DULL COPPER: 278
SHADOW: 166
COPPER: 0
BRONZE: 208
GOLD: 140
AGAPITE: 38
VERITE: 0
VALORIGHT: 0


WHAT HAPPENED TO the so called randomization of it? i really am lost about the skill itself.

 

[imported_Hanna]

You mean there are still people who bother with mining besides the scripters?

 

[Guest]

Mining for one hour in the same area isn't going to get you all the % as stated... (or two hours , whatever it took you to get the 4k ore)

average that over 100 hours and it will be much more on track...


also, try the mining forum

 

[Guest]

...

I've been mining about an hour to an hour an a half most days myself and have found that some days are better than others, but overall, the distribution of ore has been fine on LS.

 

[Guest]

Mining is fine you just have to be patient

 

[angelus aconitum]

I mine alot and I get a good amount from every metal after a few days. I really like the change !

 

[Guest]

(1) Random != common

(2a) Not every swing is random - it's more complex than that. Over a long enough time, mining in a secluded area, you will get the "expected" percentages.

(2b) high traffic areas can become "mined out" of good stuff if people are cherry picking instead of strip mining. It takes a lot of patience to "spawn" new resources (unless you get a rare subserver flip of everything at once).

I tend to harvest in one area over and over. It works over the long term ... you get long stretches of nothing, then now and then hit the motherload and clean up for a while. There might be more efficient strategies depending on how long the delay is between respawn chance checks.

 

[Guest]

The method I use is go into an area and mine each zone once to see what it is
currently spawning. Then go in a second time with a Prospector's Tool and a few
Gar Pickaxes and specifically target those zones that will give the the ore I wish
to stock up on.

After an hour or so of step 2, 500+ of even Verite or Valorite is not too difficult.

My only complaint is that they seem to change a bit too quickly and frequently.

 

[Guest]

...

Thus far this week, my mining numbers are as follows:

5858 Iron 59.95%
1220 Dull 12.48%
806 Shadow 8.25%
616 Copper 6.3%
269 Bronze 2.75%
519 Gold 5.31%
115 Agapite 1.18%
166 Verite 1.7%
203 Valorite 2.08%

Total: 9772 Ingots

This is using sturdy shovels only (5 at a run until they run out in either Felucca Cove or Britain), no prospectors tools or garg picks yet.

 

[slasherofveils]

<blockquote><hr>

...

Thus far this week, my mining numbers are as follows:

5858 Iron 59.95%
1220 Dull 12.48%
806 Shadow 8.25%
616 Copper 6.3%
269 Bronze 2.75%
519 Gold 5.31%
115 Agapite 1.18%
166 Verite 1.7%
203 Valorite 2.08%

Total: 9772 Ingots

This is using sturdy shovels only (5 at a run until they run out in either Felucca Cove or Britain), no prospectors tools or garg picks yet.

[/ QUOTE ]

this sounds quite accurate, though my personal numbers are skewed (more gold agapite and above, and much less copper/bronze) due to the use of prospects and picks

 

[KingSidhe]

I simply Soulstoned mining. My smith is Legendary, and I don't need to waste a skill slot on mining. I had spent several hours mining, in felucca, in several spots, and got 23 ingots valorite. I even mined from a boat north of minoc from one end to the other.

If I ever get enough BODS to work for a val hammer, I have enough ingots already stockpiled. I dont use them for anything. My smith is for repairs and enhancing. And I am totally frustrated with the changes to resources. My vast library of ore/wood spots is totally wasted, and I spent MANY MANY hours compiling them.

No, I do not farm resources to sell, never have, never will. Now, I don't gather resources at all. If I need wood, Ill buy it. If I need ingots, Ill buy them as well. I will kill for feathers and hides. Thats all. Until that gets randomized somehow.

I don't make stone furniture now, because of the changes. If I need them, Ill buy them. I do not see the changes as a good thing. The rarer woods and ingots will simply drive the prices up on them, as well as products made from them. That doesnt hurt the scripters, just the average consumer. Before they scripters would make millions selling IRON ingots and normal wood, as compared to the other colors because instead of paying outrageous sums for the colors, people would just go mine it themselves, or cut the trees themselves. Now they are almost impossible to get unless you do buy from the scripters, so why even have a LJ or miner?

 

[Connor_Graham]

I think you just hit a bad string of lower end ores. I never fail to bring back a couple hundred Valorite every time I go out mining.

 

[Guest]

...

Just a thought to people thinking that mining distribution is messed up or are having bad runs... are you using an elf or human as your miner?

My numbers which I will track for the purposes of this thread are on my miner which is an elf character.

That MIGHT have a bit to do with the amount of colored ore your are or are not gaining through mining, so I thought I would bring that up for people to take into account.

 

[Guest]

I save my gargoyle's pickaxes, and soulstone my mining over to my archer, who has a horselord and a bonded fire beetle. If you pull up a val elemental, that's 25 ore right there and you only need a verite vein to get one. Use the prospector's tools too and you can get them from agapite.

 

[imported_BlacK RaiN]

<blockquote><hr>

Mining for one hour in the same area isn't going to get you all the % as stated... (or two hours , whatever it took you to get the 4k ore)

average that over 100 hours and it will be much more on track...


also, try the mining forum

[/ QUOTE ]

being a casual player... and the fact that I don't dedicate 100% of my UO timing to mining... how is this good for UO?

I'm not going to spend 100hours mining even in a total of 6 months of game time... hell, I doubt I'd even devote that much time in a whole year... are you flippin crazy!?!?!

I should see the proper percentages whether I'm mining for 15minutes or for mining 100hours... no matter where I mine and I don't.

For this fact alone it's broken and really... this system only benefits the scripters, not those who honestly mine.

a poorly thought out design is what comes to mind when summarizing this changes!

 

[Guest]

...

I mine about 10k iron per week as a goal to fill BODs. This amounts to an hour or less per night, or if I skip a night or two, a few hours over the weekend. In this process, I've been doing the following as a mining habit:

1. Set up 5 Sturdy tools, 1 for the "setup" macro and the others for the mining macro (in KR, the setup to mine is a bit different than "choose a shovel and use it up, then choose the next" due to how the macro system is structured).

2. Start at one end of Cove in Fel and mine up to the bank. Drop ingots in bank.

3. Continue rest of the run in Cove, drop in bank as I go back to the start point in #2 above.

4. Continue until I have run out of shovels/picks.

5. If it's a weeknight, call it good and do something else. If it's the weekend, I may take a break or reset and start from step 1 again depending on mood.

Once I get about 10k or so iron, I then fill 50 "Junk" BODs starting at 20 exceptional and working my way down to 15s then 10s. Normal qualities get filled either with PvM "junk loot" or buying from NPCs. Then I go to the non-combinable colored deeds, then combinable.

For BOD purposes, the distribution of ore is fine.

However if you're doing nothing but hammering out Verite or Valorite items, or trying to sell bulk ingots of those colors, then you're going to have a problem because those types of ore which were designed to be more rare have FINALLY become *gasp!* more rare.

As it is, I really don't see too much of a need to bang out a ton of higher end ore items as long as leather armor remains stupidly overpowered compared to metal and as long as weapons get little to no benefit from higher ore types (yeah they change damage types, but then a Paladin can do that to the weakest resists REGARDLESS the color/damage of the weapon).

I have also noticed that for whatever reason, Fel ore spots change MUCH LESS OFTEN than Tram based ones. Whatever I find in Cove on a given day tends to stay (within a couple of vein changes) the same the entire time I'm there and will be different the next day whereas in Tram, the vein change seems to be every time or almost every time it is drained.

 

[Guest]

if your mining for ingots, to me this still sucks.

I still say if the ingots/woods were not added into the community collections they would not have been as scripted. Sure you going to always have some scripters. But if they would have remained just for making/enhancing items, they would not have been this abused.

but if your mining for colored stone, you are just screwed. period.

I used to make colored stone furniture, thats why I mined. I did not care about the ingots, I just saved them. good thing I did or I would not have any for trying to enhance items now.

 

[Guest]

...

I'd say that the main point of stone sucking so badly is due mostly to the fact that it's NOT stackable. Were we able to stack stone, I would probably be more active in mining it for the purpose of selling it on my vendor to help out the stone masons (since my price would be MUCH lower than anywhere in Luna).

Still, I would say that Mining has it easier under the new spawn system than Lumberjacking... at least a miner can bump any given vein one or two levels whereas a lumberjacker simply can't.

 

[imported_BlacK RaiN]

<blockquote><hr>

...

I mine about 10k iron per week as a goal to fill BODs. This amounts to an hour or less per night, or if I skip a night or two, a few hours over the weekend. In this process, I've been doing the following as a mining habit:

[/ QUOTE ]

That's cool that you dedicate every day if not almost every day of the entire week to UO.

I... do not.

The whole drivel you posted is all fine and dandy but, it doesn't pertain to me. I have no desire to mine every day or damn near close to it for the entire year... nor will I.

This in no way means that I deserve not to see my character yielding the same percentages of Ore that I am told I should be mining up (if I mine up 1000 ore, then your damn right x% of it better be agapite,) even if it only took me 1 hour to do on the only day I felt like mining for the entire month.

You and your in-game experience is not the bar things should be set at. You do your thing... I do mine.

Now please, do not post to me another book about your UO playtime on any char because quite frankly I don't care and it has nothing to do with the issue being discussed at hand.

I should see the same percentages of ore mined as claimed there should be whether I'm mining for 1 hour or for 100.

Period.

 

[Guest]

...

As long as there is a random number generator, you're not guaranteed any kind of percentage return on your mining. Some days you may not find anything above Bronze... other days you may run the entire range, and some days you could get all top end ores.

The only point you're going to get close to the numbers evening out is in the long term.

Also, each vein is independent of another. Just because you hit a run of iron veins does NOT mean that the next vein will be a higher level ore (see: Gambler's Fallacy). You could in all possibility mine all day and never get anything BUT Iron, or you could mine all day and pull up a nice range of ores. Nor does it mean that if a vein changes FROM Valorite that another vein is forced to changed TO Valorite.

But again, 100 swings of a shovel will probably vary to some degree in the percentage of outcome compared to 1000, 1000 to 10000 and so on.

Once you get into the 100,000+ range will you start to see a coherent distribution.

 

[imported_BlacK RaiN]

<blockquote><hr>

...

As long as there is a random number generator, you're not guaranteed any kind of percentage return on your mining. Some days you may not find anything above Bronze... other days you may run the entire range, and some days you could get all top end ores.

[/ QUOTE ]

Duh... which is why the OP started this thread and which is what we are discussing. It is OBVIOUS RNG is the issue.

Maybe a solution is to not have RNG working for mining but another more robust, better system the Devs may feel like implementing to help us out.

This would be a thread where the community should come together and brainstorm possible ideas the Dev team could consider to help us out... ALL of us, from the casual crafter to the hardcore everyday one you seem to be.

I suggest adding places in UO where crafters can go to complete quests... get maps to locations of good Ore spots, (much like T-Hunters do for buried treasure) and seek out that place in the bottom of a dungeon or cave... or where-ever be interesting and engaging enough.

You see, the above paragraph would be what's called "Adding to the discussion" and the posts I'm replying to would be what's called "Wasting breathe."

So, lets try and stick to adding to this discussion... mmmm k?

 

[Guest]

...

An update:

Now that I've hit my 10k mark on Iron, here are the numbers for this week:
<pre>
Ingot Number Percentage
Iron 11062 61.38%
Dull 2248 12.47%
Shadow 1195 6.63%
Copper 1222 6.78%
Bronze 619 3.43%
Gold 918 5.09%
Agapite 287 1.59%
Verite 269 1.49%
Valorite203 1.13%
Total 18023 100.00%
</pre>

(Imported from Excel)

And here's the take in an image, also shows special gem and Blackrock drops as well

Again, this is purely with sturdy shovels/picks, no Prospector's tools or garg picks.

Obviously today was a bad day for Valorite. It happens.

 

[jelake]

You know, all this lamenting about mining changes; you don't know how good you have it when you can use prospector's tools and garg axes to upgrade the vein. You have as good a chance at winning a pick-4 lottery as you do finding a frostwood tree.

 

[Fantaapple]

To Honest
Ea Says alot of things that Will never happen

I wish they would make some of the useless skills useful, such as herding

 

[Guest]

...

Trust me, I'm not trying to take away the pain from Lumberjacking.

As I stated earlier in the thread... mining has it MUCH easier thanks to Prospectors' tools and Garg Picks allowing miners to raise a vein one or two levels.

For mining, are some days better than others? Certainly. Some areas? Probably. However, mining for ingots is NOT as bad as some people try to make it out to be. Stone? Yes, because of lack of stacking makes it difficult to impossible to "stockpile" while you mine to get enough of a certain color. Lumberjacking? Definitely harder than it was. Mining for ingots? Harder, but reasonable considering that UO is not set up in level based zones where they could put all the higher end ores in the higher level zones as a method of limiting the ability to gather them.

 

[Guest]

I'm enjoying going back to my roots. I built my wealth in this game from mining LS Minoc in the early early days...(remember Joshua, Dermott? ) It's actually quite relaxing for me, and I'm hoping my time is well spent as it seems ingot prices keep rising. This change helped that happen. Finding valorite veins isn't so hard, it's keeping them from changing on ya

The change is a good thing, however, lumberjacking needs more love. I recall Leurocian mentioning a bug where LJ wasn't checking for higher end woods as many times as it should, or something to that effect. I wonder where we stand on this...

I also feel LJ should get bonus goodies such as mining has. Pros tools, garg picks (treefellow hatchets, anyone?) and fire beetles (my LJ has no carpentry, grr) make mining lucrative and, more importantly, FUN!

My random $.02, take it or leave it...

Ru

 

[Guest]

...

With all of the people that I've been in contact with on many levels over the years, I'm afraid the name has gotten lost in the shuffle, but I don't doubt you one bit.

I know exactly where you're coming from and agree on all counts.

The point I've been trying to make is that Mining under the new system is fine, and I'm saying that as someone who is playing an active miner right now (to fill BODs), not as someone who while they DON'T do something tell everyone else to "get over it".

Sure I lost a pretty sweet Verite vein right by my cabin that would net me a TON of Verite or Valorite depending on mood, but I can accept that.

 

[Guest]

Joshua was the vendor run out of a small smithy owned by Lady Maliki just east of the Minoc stables, steps from the mountainside. You can no longer place there, obviously. In early days, there was a plethora of folks coming through there, on their way to the orc spawn/pk haven north of Minoc. The mining community (there were a *lot* of us) there was close knit and hella fun to be around, thought for sure you were part of it

Don't mind me, just a harrowed old vet rehashing his youth...

 

[Guest]

...

No, never did much in the Minoc area back in the old old days. I was mainly around the East Britain Bank goofing off and mixing and selling potions. My miner at the time was little used.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

Now that I've hit my 10k mark on Iron, here are the numbers for this week:
<pre>
Ingot Number Percentage
Iron 11062 61.38%
Dull 2248 12.47%
Shadow 1195 6.63%
Copper 1222 6.78%
Bronze 619 3.43%
Gold 918 5.09%
Agapite 287 1.59%
Verite 269 1.49%
Valorite203 1.13%
Total 18023 100.00%
</pre>

[/ QUOTE ]
Valorite is supposed to be about 2%. I don't see what everyone is complaining about. Nothing is wrong with the Random Number Generator based on these statistics.

Since seeding was turned off a long time ago, the RNG is as close to random as random can be. People who continue to blame it on a bug in the RNG are misdirecting their complaints.

 

[Guest]

...

Here are my numbers as they are currently. I started another section in Excel for today's mining and then a second one to add together the two batches I have tracked:

<pre>
Ingot Number Percentage Ingot Percentage
Iron 15638 62.78% Iron 50.00%
Dull 2816 11.31% Dull 11.20%
Shadow 1849 7.42% Shadow 9.80%
Copper 1378 5.53% Copper 8.40%
Bronze 864 3.47% Bronze 7.00%
Gold 1116 4.48% Gold 5.60%
Agapite 411 1.65% Agapite 4.20%
Verite 419 1.68% Verite 2.80%
Valorite418 1.68% Valorite1.40%
Total 24909 100.00%

</pre>

The info on the left is my distribution thus far, the right is what Stratics has listed as the chance of getting a given ore type.

I'll keep track of this as I continue to mine since I have "glance" access to the numbers and can input them rather quickly into Excel.

 

[KingSidhe]

LJ has damage bonus with an axe and Melisande's Hatchet. Still, it's not like it used to be. I don't mind. I just won't be gather resources to stockpile like I used to. I dont need any more of the library/mueseum items, and if I did, Ill just buy them. It's really not worth the wasted skill points in my opinion. And it's just that, an opinion.

 

[slasherofveils]

Wood gathering makes less "check for colored wood" rolls because you chop 10 wood at a time, compared to minign where you get 1 per swing (2 in feluc)

Which makes the node dry in less swings, making colored wood much more rare.

It was in a FoF and I believe they suggested the way to fix it would be to reduce the number of wood you chop per hit.