Meticulous Collection

Yes, you'll fight more if you're using meticiulous, because you're moving from room to room slower. That's just another way that using it slows you down.

And disregarding the "statistics" of what each "node" gives you - regardless of what you 'roll' for that node, you'll still always get more than what meticulous gives you which is exactly 1 of the base item.
As long as there's another node nearby to get, its a better use of your time to go get that, than to sit hammering the same one for +1 more ore and +zero XP.


I'm not asking if its working as intended or not, I'm saying that how it is working it is not beneficial to level the skill and/or use the potion and it needs to be adjusted/fixed to make the skill and potion relevant.

If you were standing in a room with a single ore node, with no monsters spawning, then yes, having meticiulous vs. not would give a benefit. Or even with three nodes, assuming the respawn times equalize.
Currently I find the only benefit to the occasional meticuluos is, as Waxillium has said, is to keep yourself from getting ahead of the respawn rate. If I go no-holds-barred and cancel any metic that comes up, yes I will run out of nodes. But if I were to level meticiulous higher and use the potion, i'd be wasting my time meticiulousing while fresh nodes of 'more stuff' and 'exp' are sitting there languishing. Its about finding the sweet spot where you can maximize your hourly output.

 

If you are mining gold or silver ore, because those can often get 2 and 3 on the first hit, and you have an abundance of nodes, metic lowers your overall ore rate as you only get 1 per on metics. Metic is good when there are not enough nodes to keep you mining consistently.

 

I don't follow the logic here.

If you get more per node, it's working as intended. It's worth it.

I think people are trying to over engineer the efficiency here. Looking at this from a "how much do I get per hour" is misleading. The potion isn't supposed to help fight off ghosts for you.

 

While it's true that you will have a slightly slower room clearing time on average with meticulous than without, in a lot of places it makes no difference at all. For example, if I am mining in Elysium, I will fight each mob that I need to fight 1 time per cycle with almost no variance at all. The spawn time on mobs is much faster than the mine cycle time and slower than my room clearing time.

To know whether or not meticulous benefits me there, all I need to know is the collection rate of a meticulous collection vs. overall collection rate. Given that the collection rate of an uninterrupted meticulous collection is over 600 ore per hour, if my primary goal is to get as much ore as possible, its clearly beneficial for me to get bonus swings when no mobs are around.

I'm not saying meticulous is good or anything, but it's clearly not a debuff.

 

While I understand what you're saying, I think this does have to do with statistics.

The OP was asking if it's working as intended. Statistically, it seems like it is.

Because more animal hides are more?

I guess I don't min/max every second of my existence while I'm online playing this game. That may be the difference here. The time it takes for me to meticulously collect more animal hides or ore seems immaterial to the advantage of getting more animal hides or ore.

Over the course of a year, I'm sure that time adds up, but so does the time it takes me to use the restroom. I'm not going to ask the developers to provide a potion of use the restroom that allows me to continuously get more animal hides and ore for 15 minutes even though I'm no longer at my keyboard.

 

See that's the bit of logic you're missing.
Meticulousing and getting "1 more animal hide" is only "more" if the alternative is "nothing." Which it never is, unless you're killing a single wolf in a vacuum.

If the alternative is skinning another fresh wolf sat next to you in the pile of wolves you've just killed, which will give you (something random, that will ALWAYS be more than 1 animal hides) will give you another dose of experience, its a no-brainer.

If you could spend the same amount of time and get 1 animal hide vs. getting 1-3 hides, suet, thrombus, head, carcass and 500 xp, I think its pretty clear which is better and arguing otherwise is just being pedantic.

The same thing applies to nodes of any type - the "extra" that meticulous gives you is worth significantly less than a fresh hit on a fresh node. Unless you're in a situation where there are no fresh nodes, meticulous is detrimental and buffing it higher via skill/potion is more detrimental.

There's no need to create a ludicrous minmax scenario of restroom potions. Its simply about using the time that you have most efficiently. Will it matter to most people? Probably not. Those of us who have figured out the way to maximize are doing so - without meticiulous or allowing meticulous only when a delay is needed to keep apace with the spawn. The whole point of this thread is that for a skill that costs twice what other producer skills cost, and for a potion that costs a CotO, you'd expect to see an improvement in your performance, and at the moment, you don't.

I reiterate the suggestion @Chris that subsequent metic hits should trigger the initial yield which would equalise this in terms of resource. Alternatively or in addition a diminishing XP benefit would potentially make this slightly more worthwile, as initiaully suggested, ie 500 for the node, but metic could give +250 / +125 ....etc. (pick some numbers).

 

When I mine the 3rd floor of crag mines, I end up with more ore without matic because of the gold nodes.

 

oh god, the "sample size" people came out on you Scoff.

If you dont know Scoffer, we used to call him the "Ore Licker" because he has pulled I would seriously estimate a million ore out of mines in the past year. I think his sample size is good enough.

Trihugger above actually says it perfectly.

 

Yes, Scoffer has even written many in game books about his adventures in mines...usually composed while he is smelting his proceeds....titles include "A Miner's Guide to Sanity" "Earth Elementals are Friends" "Ores can Save Lives" .....

 

That's a very min/max way to look at it. I mean the argument is literally considering every second here. I don't think that's a strong argument, but if Poratlairum wants to increase the impact of meticulus collection so that a few people min/maxing the game will see a slight benefit that helps satisfy a few seconds of time like this...ok.

Then don't use the potion? I see the benefit because I'm not min/maxing the hell out of the game I suppose, so I buy the potion. I'm not continuously grinding though. I play a lot, but I don't play very efficiently.

It will be interesting to see how developers feel about this. It seems like they would be interested in selling you more potions so you'll probably see a change? But at the same time if it keeps players from min/maxing the game to death at the expense of other players that have no interested in doing this, maybe it's not such a slam dunk? I mean, it sounds like the argument is that if people are willing to play the game to be extra efficient, it doesn't matter what this does to the economy or to players that are more casual?

 

Guilty! I set a 1hr clock and run time trials. Mostly because it's so boring that if I try to beat my PB it keeps me focused and doing it. Hard to motivate otherwise. Youtube/Netflix helps.

 

Not really. I hardly min/max. I spend more time goofing off in town, decorating, writing books, and generally being unproductive than doing anything else. But when I go out to get 'stuff' I'd like to do so more efficiently rather than less efficiently, for the time spent. That seems like fairly reasonable behavior to me.

I don't.

I too am interested in how the devs this, because as you say, you'd imagine they want to sell more potions. I guess the casual players who perhaps hit a node every now and then buying the potions vs. the people who are 'serious miners' buying the potions needs to be weighed up. Of course, improving meticulous would help casuals as well as serious miners, so its kind of win/win -making it better will make it better for you too, even if you don't play 'efficiently'. To be clear I'm not judging anyone's playstyle here - play efficiently, or don't - its your time and you can use it as you see fit.

Whether it is changed, or not, there are still a lot of people out there who will try to maximize their time. My only argument here is that investing money in a potion and investing experience in a skill should have a net positive benefit. The current economy has created a situation in which hundreds of ores are required even for a modest set of gear, so naturally people go out to get those ores - to use them, sell them, whatever. In addition the crafting system requires gathering as a fuel for levelling up production skills - so people naturally go out and gather things to pool up experience. How efficiently they choose to do so is up to them. The current state of the meticulous skill however makes additional investment in it dubious at best, for some playstyles, and detrimental for others.

 

Or perfectly fine for some.

I really don't get it. I see meticulous collection as a huge boon. I see the potion being a slight increase to that under normal circumstances. Continuously mining to the degree where that is no longer true is not really normal. I wonder how this jives with Chris's mantra of "just play the game"?

 

Where are you getting this quantity? What is your meticulous at and do you use the obsidian potion?

On a node by node basis the potion does yield more as the average with the potion is 2.395 ore per node, without the potion its 2.308, both of these using a sample size of just under 300. The issue is obviously that without the potion you finish quicker and so hit more nodes resulting in a net gain of more stuff (ore, xp, rares etc)

Thats kinda the question here, I don't think its bugged its probably working as intended. I'm questioning the intention of the skill because more meticulous should give you more stuff but the overall effect is less, not more. This is probably due to other factors already mentioned like mining faster to beat the mob spawn, 1-3 ores per node rather than just 1 for a meticulous etc.

That is twice you have used the over 600 ores per hour if you have meticulous collection at 100 and mine a single node for an hour continuously. The issue is that if you run the same condition and as use the same mining time without meticulous you could mine 600 fresh nodes in the same time (if they instantly re spawned and you discount moving) which would get you between 600-1800 ores an hour without meticulous.

Getting Meticulous 599 times on a single node is about as likely as a single node instantly popping 600 times.

Its not the size of the sample its what you do with it...apparently.

This isn't really about min maxing at all although there has to be an element of it to get the required data. Even without min / maxing basically using the potion will result in a net loss of ores gained. It doesn't matter if you spend 12 hours a day mining or 20 minutes a week. A potion which is supposed to give you more ends up giving you less in the long run. While there is the instant gratification of getting that lucky extra hit on the same node its costing you in the long run.

 

It's a skill in a gathering profession to increase ore yields... How do you NOT look at this in a min/max perspective...? If a skill that's *assumedly* intended to give me more ore, and the metric IS in actuality ore/hour by anyone gathering ore, aaaaand it's not.... then... uh... yea.

I mean lets face it, the entirety of the gathering trees are built on the basis of min/max outside of the skill to make the nodes sparkle (aka useless). To come outright and pretend they're not and then say lol... that we're unique in being the ones looking at this from a min/max perspective is basically amusing at this point.

The fact you see it as a huge boon is alarming in light of the facts of what it does to hourly yields both in experience and ore. You're straight up wrong if you think the skill increases either in any sort of *loop farming* situation (Which is where I'd guess the vast majority of raw resources are generated).

 

Metic is 86? Yes to the potion. Elysium. Have you seen my Rise Mage video? I consider myself a think outside the box person. Maybe Ill do a vid but I don't feel like getting a mining nerf! Already did with the metic nurf.

When Lancelot use to play we challenegd each others time trials. We figured out a number of in game non-exploity methods to increase numbers. I recommend brain storming with a friend!

 

Wanna be my friend? I need more ore!

 

This really fascinates me.

How can both that and this be true...?

I understand that THIS is your answer...

SOTA is not really designed to min/max the mining system to the point you're doing it, is it? I think that's important to the conversation.

I'm not going to report you for telling me I'm wrong, I think it's wrong when people do that. You're welcome to your opinion.

@Scoffer, what I mean above is that to my knowledge *loop farming* is not really a design goal of the developers. It's something players do, but it's not like the developers said "Let's enable loop farming because that's good solid entertainment". Everything the devs have done in an attempt to balance mining has been to reduce *loop farming*, hasn't it?

 

Yeah...I feel like I am 'just playing the game' - a game which dictates I need 1000 ores of mixed types to make a single suit of armor and have it survive very modest enchanting/masterworking. So I go get them. I don't want to take longer than necessary to get them because I want to get back to doing fun stuff. Mining is not fun for me, its a means to an end - even if I wanted to do something else profitable and buy the ores I'd still need the producer xp. So its a necessary evil, and part of playing the game. Thats why people (I'm sooo glad its not just me) run 1 hr trials to optimise routes in different zones.

In your very specific circumstances of casual play, meticulous may very well be a huge boon to you. It gets you more out of each node you hit. And if you're only occasionally hitting nodes, yeah, sure. I get it. You don't see a problem. For people who are serious gatherers though, the skill is problematic.

 

If that were true, then wouldn't we see a significant reduction in the amount of ores required to do anything? Or the ability to level producer skills by actually producing things instead of having to grind gathering?
The game by design requires a signifcant amount of gathering time to get the needed resources for even modest gear-crafting. Levelling up the skills is a whole different matter. You can't create a system that requires thousands and thousands of ores and not expect players to go and get thousands and thousands of ores. That makes no sense.