What would be the downside to doubling the ore in Serpent Spine?

Ok, Scoffer and I have decided to run a "One Hour Test" to get some actual numbers behind this.

The criteria:
Both of us are GM mining, swift mining. He's GM in meticulous, mine's 85, but both using precision/metic potions and both using true bronze tool. I kill monsters faster than he does.

The Challenge:
I go into Serpent Spine Cave for 1 hour, and he runs around in circles in Serpent Spine Foothills for 1 hour, and lets see who gets more ore. We thought about working out producer/adv xp/money, but since the foothills is far superior in all three of these things it wasn't really worth tracking. We're also not counting the negligible "coin drops" which in both cases were <1000 gold.


The results:

1 Hour Test - Serpent Spine Cave

Yes, I got more slime ooze than I did iron ore.
This was more of a disappointment than I dreamed, and I was really trying here, dashing around at all times, looting while mining a node, trying to do this as efficiently as possible.
I found one silver node early on, ran by its 'spot' a dozen or so more times, but in my hour test, it never respawned.

Now here's the contrast:

1 Hour Test - Serpent Spine Foothills

Scoffer spent the same hour running around the outdoor scene Serpent Spine Foothills. His main priority was picking up iron ore, but he picked up cotton and tress directly in his path, and killed the various bandits and such usually because they were within aggro radius of desired nodes and therefore had to die.

Now then, in ore ALONE, Scoffer was able to get nearly twice what I was, *in the mine*
I should say that when Scoffer and I have done 1 hour tests of the /same/ zone, I usually out-mine him, simply because I can kill faster, so this isn't down to that.

Basically, you're better off in an outdoor scene getting ore, than you are in a MINE.

The Conclusion:

Serpent Spine Cave is good for:
Maybe some citrines
Clay Nodes
Raising water resist
Slime Ooze

It is inferior for ore, cash, or experience. Far inferior. Now that this test is complete, I don't think I'll ever go back.




Just as an added aside, 55 iron ore, with suitable metal scrap balance and the secondary metals, is not even enough to make a single meteoric iron chestpiece, unmasterworked and unenchanted.

 

@Chris
Are you able to get any metrics on how many people go in serpent spine now vs a couple of months ago before the change?
I know it will be higher due to the curiosity factor of seeing the new place but it would be interesting to see the numbers.

 

As a side note, I can get 480 water an hour humping the well.
If i sell this to another player for 3.5 each it totals 1680 gold which means i can buy 52 (of your 55 mined) iron ore @ 32 each.....

 

You can still pull 50 copper an hour out of The Epitaph with an alt (as you play your main). Its not much but its kept me in business so far. When this gets nurfed Im totally done doing anything crafting related.

 

And then quickly broken when you do MW or Enchant like the 10 of 15 chain pieces I just blew up with a 76% chance. By your statistics, that would have been 10 hours worth of Ore farming blown up by really bad math alone

 

Mining drives me mad. something about being alone in an instance in the dark clicking the wall over and over again is depressing on its own. When I factor in my time-value self-worth, it is even more depressing. Even in elysium, which has not had this treatment, I don't find any part fulfilling or fun. Instead, I skin wolves for craft pool xp, so i can run into people and even group up sometimes. I buy ore with real dollars.

I can only view this nerf as a validation of my playstyle, and that portalarium would like even more of us to buy our resources. Perhaps they like supporting professional mining and see it as a way to stabilize commodity markets, or, giving them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they are intentionally trying to encourage it temporarily such that they can improve their bot-detection abilities?

But anyway, the reason i'm commenting here is that I really want to adventure with my friends, but when i look in my friends list, half of them are instead playing a mini-game where i can't even stop by and wave.

 

Really this says it all... i'm curious what the dev's have to say about this. because this can't really be "working are intended"

 

I think the mine is beautiful, but it no longer functions as one. A lot of level headed people are showing proof that there is a problem here, and I agree with them.

Two main concerns; the dev response as of yet is that there isn't a problem - this is worriesome from my perspective in that it makes me wonder if the devs and I are playing the same game.

Secondarily it doesn't bode well for the other mines, so you're going to see people living in Elysium, etc to stock up before they get ruined as ore bearing mines.

Understandably, lots of areas in this game are in flux though...I'm going to stay positive that this is one of those things and we'll soon see a huge load of iron nodes hit the wall!

It'd be a shame to not need to visit such a sweet map.

 

Aye, Devil kills much faster than I do, and found another area that I didn't by climbing up. He also ignored all clay/gem nodes and only went for the ore. Still only managed 80, that's pretty bad (

 

The problem is buying the ore is simply that the market will eventually dry up because you are buying (even with real cash) from players who spent time in these places. If verdantis and Elysium go the same route as serpent spine no one will bother at all so there won't even be a market for it.

 

Either that or the price will skyrocket since the acquisition rate is so much slower.

 

The biggest surprise in all of these test cases is that the Serpent Spine Foothills has more ore an hour than the actual mine.
What is worse is that by selling the halbards you can buy more ore (at its current rate of 35 each) than you got in both these places combined.

 

Just as a further update:
Elysium Mines: 267 mixed gold/silver ore per hour (Scoffer)
Graff Gem Mines 256 mixed copper/gold/tin/tungsten per hour (Shim) plus a couple hundred gem fragments and 2 emeralds, 1600 gold in sellable loot and a skeleton bone. And 168 granite yay.

These are 500xp nodes as well.

Serpent Spine Cave just doesn't measure up.

 

So, back to the original question:

What would be the downside if the ore nodes were doubled in here?

 

Crafting being more accessible means there are more people crafting, which theoretically makes it harder for crafters to sell goods. It's possible that this experiment could drive enough people out of crafting that profit margins appear. (I don't necessarily think that it will, but it's possible)

 

If the ore price drops crafters might actually be able to afford materials and sell the finished product.
As it stands there is very little profit in finished goods as the current ore prices, breakage rates etc means its just not worth actually crafting anything with the intention of selling it.

 

Ya I have more confidence in that experiment as well. Just playing devils advocate since it's what you asked for. Perhaps coupling increased node #, node reward, or decreased recipe requirement with slower xp gain would accomplish both goals? I am guessing that the intent with making this hard is to prevent a WoW-like scenario where everyone has crafting skills and as a result it is impossible to make it into a primary playstyle/income producer.

 

The answer is No! - no downside to increasing the number of nodes and making a beautiful scene fun and profitable to mine in....


.......did I win?