The new Serpent's Spine Mine

The Good:

This zone looks pretty cool and it has a lot of neat features that you won't find in most places. There's lots of elevators, steam switches, and puzzles, as well as hazards like runaway mine carts, exploding barrels, flame traps, spike traps, and a really deep hole in the ground that you don't want to fall into. It was a pretty fun place to try to fully explore for the first time.

The Bad:

The amount of resources available in this zone relative to the amount of time spent running around and killing things is not very good at all compared to other mines. The level of difficulty in the new mine is much higher than the old mine and the resource yields are much lower. The old mine was already the least popular mine in the game, and this one will certainly not attract people for the purposes of mining.

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I don't have any problem with there being zones in the game that are fun to explore while not necessarily being the type of place to go back to every day. I think Kiln Cistern is like that and I consider it to be a really good zone. However, I was hoping that as these mines became uncloned that we would start to see the gap between low level and high level mines closed a bit, and that gap is actually a little bit wider now.

Are there any plans to ever add something like a 3skull mine? A lot of people enjoy mining, so I think it would be really good for the game if there was a progression path available that allowed people to level up while mining as opposed to leveling up in order to be able to mine.

 

OH I agree with your post and the mine is now worthless to... actually be a mine or spend time in game in there to harvest resources. Before I could mine close to 125 to 150 iron ore an hour and if this is where all the mines are going I am done as a crafter.. We have been told, resources will still be the same and if they are they must be hidden in a super secret room that no one has found yet.

 

Im pretty sure it has something to do with slowing down the xp. The mines were by far the best xp generators because of density. Hence the 15xgm crafters all over the place.

But it is beautiful looking.....

Id wager the other mines will be "adjusted some". (5 gold pieces)

 

Mining used to be the best producer generator xp -I actually make more producer skinning than mining in the same amount of time, even in the existing mines which had already been "adjusted" severely since persistence. Other than the novelty of exploring it, I don't think I'll be going to this mine for any reason. Its just inefficient. I really hope the plan isn't to make all "mines" into "dungeons with a few nodes scattered around". I might as well just mine in outdoor scenes if that's the case at least there's trees and such as well.

 

I agree with Lazlo completely. It looks cool and there is plenty to figure out (and I do love puzzles) but it is overloaded with so many gimmicky things it became borderline obnoxious. The novelty of it will wear off fast. I have already self pinned these mines the "Macgyver mines." I didn't expect to get through it without great effort, but aside from the bells and whistles, even some of the mobs are overpowered. I can 600+ crit skeletons in DRW with banish undead but I couldn't even take 2 skeles (next to the sharpshooter) without a few deaths of my own. Maybe there are easier ways, but this isn't a mine as we have known them to be. It's a dungeon. There were so many dead bodies at that ankh.....

It is very much is the work of a talented designer, and it clearly demonstrates that. A lot of thought was put into this. But balance in some simplicity and it will do wonders for the overall experience.
I'm not looking for EZ-mode, but time wise it would make more sense for me to farm ore out of the random encounters than it would be to go through that again. Strictly speaking about efficiency here.
I'll go back there for discovery reasons, but if all the mines eventually follow this style you can expect ore prices to go up further.

Edit: I pretty much just said what Kaeshiva did. Ooops, I did not see that post in time!

 

I've already totally approved the point of view of Lazlo; the pb is we spend 3/4 time fighting, 20% time walking and the little remains mining knowing the amount of ressources is just ridiculous (20+ iron ore & 180+ citrine fragments an hour). This is very close to an "iron running out" mine as all the new ones ... but an extraordinary journey thanks to dev's incredible artistic direction !

 

To me, anything with Mine in it, means ORD NODES and LOTS OF THEM ...... but not any more I guess

 

This statement is ridiculous..

I make up to 3 times the amount of non producer pooled experience per hour than you can in a mine or other places. At best you can hit 50k per hour producer experience when I mine.

I see a LOT more 15xGM+ non crafters than I see 15xgm crafting players.

 

Idk I speculate its the reason, they added decay to combat non crafting xp not to mention there are way more non crafting skills. Gathering is slower in other trees (forestry, foraging, field dressing) with the exception of hides possibly if your high level and can mow mobs very quickly and wearing brutal butcher belt. Trees are spread out and less of them and bushes in any scene than ore in the mines. The fastest xp I can gain by far is in the mines vrs all other methods, as a matter of fact with mining xp I gmed carpentry vrs anything to do with tree/forestry gathering.

I think its better to look at crafting and adventuring trees as thier own unique system its very hard to compair to each other.

mining/forestry/foraging/field dressing.

Im my original post I am only talking about crafting expierence, just to clarify in case some how you are confused. By no way am I saying crafting and adventuring xp are even close. Like I said above those are two very diffrent beasts.