Polishing Graff Gem Mines

Hey Folks, today I have a few screenshots of some updates I made for the Graff Gem Mines. Rather than edit the existing dungeon, I've added a new section to the mines for players to explore. The new area is a flooded cavern, which is occupied by a handful of Kobolds and Water Elementals who are defending a large deposit of crystals. The rest of a mines remain untouched, so players should still be familiar with them.

The Flooded Cavern



One of the entrances to The Flooded Cavern


Chris Wolf
Level Designer

 

Like what you did with Graff... especially the inclusion of the old areas and expansion of the mine. You could do the same with the others expanding both to the left and right.

I would like to see new areas in these mines that you don't show ahead time... Something like... hey guys... go explore... secret areas, traps and new enemies to be found.

Keep the explorer's like me happy, and keep the miners happy.

That area to the skeletons on level 2... so much potential!
Go left on level 2, instead of right... so much potential!

Keep up the good work!

 

Ok the idea is wonderfull, so basically you removed 4 veins where you opened the entrances to the new cave a really big cave, and then putted those 4 veins inside the big flooded cavern, so now the poor miner will love to have more to walk, even more to kill but nothing more to mine. Now for instance instead of mine 150 copper per hour, he will mine 120 but have a nice flooded cavern.


Anyway the idea is really wonderfull, it look really good, but the consequences as you can imagine from what i write up here are not so funny, and btw this is the problem of the all new designed mines, and if you check the frequences people go inside them, you have an idea of how mines work; Mine is not funny at all, is boring, you are alone , you are doing it just cause you need mats, crafting exp, igg, money or whatever, you will never say: Let's have fun to mine! When you build up gathering zones please keep an eye on production per hour and consider the kind and spawn timer of mobs you put inside.

 

well I do have to revisit the graff mines if i am in the area again....

looks great

 

It's actually worse than that: because it's full of water elementals, who are both healing AND ranged it's just annoying. First thing I tell anyone going mining with me, if we're in Graff is "Please don't go over there. The water elementals are annoying and not worth the effort for a few gems." I went there exactly one time, and my response was inappropriate for polite company. I've not gone back, just stick to the old areas.

 

It would have been ok if that big cavern was actually populated with ore... buuuut it's not. Just like @Tiina Onir mentioned, it's full of super annoying water elementals, waste-of-time gem nodes (truly worthless, low exp, horrible yield on gems, and fragments to gems require entirely too many fragments), and just a few ore nodes. This was not a step in the right direction; this was regression for anything other than visuals.

 

It has gold and copper as well as gems... and the respawn rate on them is fairly high. The elementals are easy to avoid. I get quite a few nodes out of there... Still best place for copper... although my yield for tin is much higher in the other mine people bellyache about.

 

I'm not saying abandon the whole mine, Graff is still the best mine for copper, it's just not worth going into the newer sections of it.

 

My first response was turning into a rant. So I deleted and started over.

1) It's a 5-skull. If you can't easily dispatch water elementals, you are not 5-skull solo capable. Bring a party.
2) Mines need to develop. (Serpent Spine not so great (for resources), Verdantis is actually really good (and yes for resources)
3) Copper can be found EVERYWHERE, and although Graff may be best spot for copper... is not best spot for tin.

I started farming Graff at advL45. I started this game last October. I thought, "THIS is a 5-skull? What a joke!" It was actually easier to farm copper inside than to fight the mage outside, in the 3-skull entrance.

Yes it affects the lowbies that want to easily want to grind copper... but it was too easy to begin with.

 

So what else can you find in the new sections besides water eles, a few ore nodes and gem nodes nobody really cares about since you can get tons of gems of trolls and even more so of dragons?

Did Portalarium fire the lead-designer for the original good mines or why are all new mine designs really really worthless for, well... "miners"???

 

Not sure this is a question you can answer or not, Sea Wolf.

But originally the Graff Gem Mines were supposed to have the largest/best gems in Novia. The way it sounded, these mines had a near monopoly on gems. Yet it seems to me that gems are all over the place in Novia and there are plenty of places players can go to get gems. Better places in fact.

Are you guys planning on making the original vision of Graff Gem Mines closer to reality as you polish it? To me this was a fundamental example of what the regional economies were all about. Now it seems like all the mines may have resources that are more or less abundant, but they all have basically the same thing. I think that's bad. I'd love to see just one large gold mine. One large silver mine. One large gem mine. And really I don't see why we need to mix all the resources together. I think it would be a lot better for the game if you had to pick one place to find large amounts of a particular resource. Right now you can kind of double or triple dip into gold, silver, etc...

 

There are no plans to do so, as far as I know. I agree that more homogeneous mines would be more interesting from an economy perspective, however if we start removing existing ore types from scenes, there would be an uproar from folks who purchased a house next to their favorite mine. For this reason, when I spawn a scene (which I don't always do) I try not to take away anything from the mine that was already there. It's too late in the game to make drastic changes to resources. I even have to follow a guideline for what kind of resources I can spawn in a map depending on the region.

 

Thanks for the explanation.

Just thinking out loud here:

It's too bad that we have to make decisions like this. Perhaps we might be able to make different qualities of gold, silver, gems, etc.... Like for example, you can find gems everywhere. But the BEST gems (special new class of gems) are only found in Graff Gem Mines. We'd need new recipes that would require the new types of gold, silver, gems. But this would give us more flexibility around the whole "I got this house because it was close to a particular type of mine" thing. I hope we consider making some kind of change (I know this isn't up to you Sea-Wolf).

 

Speaking of BEST gems, whatever happened to the Mystic Graff Gem? I recall I had a few of those in my early mining days (and I may still have them in my chests), but it would be great to leverage this previous drop for some of the potential crafting enhancements planned.

 

I like how you were able to expand the dungeon and connect to the new room through several shafts of the existing mine and it looks seamless.

I wish the mines had dynamic mine shafts that would open randomly. I feel like once you know the lay out of the mine, it's very predictable.. but tunneling into the earth can be very unpredictable and dangerous. pockets of deadly gas, pitfalls, etc. These dynamic shafts could lead to more resources, different types of random monster encounters/mini-bosses, etc. Say only 4 out of 8 of the dynamic shafts would be open at any given time. I enjoy randomness.

 

I didn't say that it's impossible, I said it's annoying. There is literally NO REASON to go over to the water elementals. All this time was spent making a new part of the mine, that I've yet to hear anyone say they actually head into it, after the first time. Everyone I've talked to just ignores it. It's a waste.

 

I go into ALL the time...there you have one. I get on average 10-12 gold and 10-12 copper for 5 mins of time, and I don't have to go downstairs... and that doesn't include all the gems and fragments I get. Doesn't annoy me.

 

OK, so I've now heard one person who just LOVES to spend ALL HIS TIME over there, while everyone else I talk to goes there once and never again. Congratulations, you're the exception that proves the rule.

 

<=== smarm... jam... bread... favourite and how

 

I can get a few of the ores/crystals in the lake area simply by avoiding/leashing aggro, but it's tedious and I get tired of it after about 15 minutes. But I usually take the lake to go down because I prefer it to the skeleton archers.

And yes, water elementals are just too hard to kill now because of the healing. Really, any mob that can heal needs to give more XP than a non-healing mob with equivalent max hit points. They make Kiln Cistern no fun anymore.

But what really bugs me in Graff these days is the earth elementals in the middle area by the kobolds. They seem to have a much longer aggro range than they used to. It's bad enough that I can barely clean the kobolds when the earth elementals stay over on their side. I'm also not sure why earth elementals don't attack the kobolds, they should be in different factions. But I'm glad they took the satyrs and fauns out of there, even if I can't handle the kobold respawn rate.

If you're making gems from fragments, you're probably doing it wrong. Okay, it does take too many fragments to make a gem based on NPC value, but I don't have trouble getting more than enough whole gems. I've found fragments to be important for making glass for houses, and you can't make fragments from a gem. We need more crafts that use glass sheets.