PC A17 and the lament of the surface boulder miner

Ghostlight

Ghostlight

New member
As someone who was always the designated miner for a regular co-op group in previous alphas I was always a surface boulder miner at heart. I liked it for the predictability of yield, and the adventure of travelling around to each rock field. I never dug proper mines. That would bore me senseless.

Sadly, in A17, surface boulder mining has been massively nerfed for all of the following reasons...

a) The overall yield from boulders is reduced

b) There are fewer boulders overall

c) They are more scattered and do not occur in useful clumps

d) You need to hunt them down (in Forest) rather than use your map to flit from one cluster to the next, so it's easy to miss lots of them

e) Difficult to re-locate where you left off mining an area last time, so again you miss a lot

f) General Stamina issues meaning you spend a lot of your mining time resting till Stamina recovers

I believe they need to GREATLY increase the yields from surface boulders. I hate digging proper mines. :) Don't force me to dig mines, please.

p.s. I was typically mining for enough Nitrate and Coal to support 3 trigger-happy friends, so it is possible that surface boulders might give enough yield for playing solo, I wouldn't know. But for my regular group, I am being forced to dig mines as far as I can tell.

 
Are you using the motherlode perk? It makes quite a difference.

With 2 points into that and the bunker buster mod on my pickaxe, it seems pretty easy to get a 1000 stone with a few minutes of boulder mining. Coffee helps with stamina regen. Of course this is more of a mid-game thing, early game stone collecting is probably much grindier, but I never really bother with it..

 
"Skill what suits your needs most" is what i experienced.

I Immediately skill fortitude and healthregeneration 2 after getting those 6 points. The next points go into stamina and cardio. All skillpoints after that go into motherlode and skullcrusher as far as i can Skill.

The earlygame is nerfed by giving access to midgame by perks, yes.

But the perks and mods make up for the initial Lack of Power.

If youre after stone primarily, i suggest to find gravelpaths and dig them up.

Improve-Adapt-overcome

 
Yes I am fully specced for Mining (level 95, 4/5 points in all relevant perks including stamina perks, using Steel tools with several Mining-boosting mods in them). I am the group's miner, we plan these things.

And no I am not after Stone, nor even Iron, but Nitrate and Coal. I thought that was clear from my OP. Stone and Iron are not an issue. Well maybe Iron a little.

 
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I'm also always the designated miner and resource collector for my groups and I personally think we should be forced to go digging underground to get a lot of resources. I used to love making a mine underground and finding tons and tons of materials and always felt that it was too easy to find materials above ground. Currently I think there are still too many rocks above ground and they should be removed. But to each their own.

 
Have you seen the vertical boreholes the Z's now make to reach you in your mine? Don't expect the underground to remain peacefull. My mountain is being turned into swiss cheese.

 
Have you seen the vertical boreholes the Z's now make to reach you in your mine? Don't expect the underground to remain peacefull. My mountain is being turned into swiss cheese.
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And that is boring, being forced to zombie hunt when you clearly can't be arsed and mining instead of surface stuff.

I hate it.

 
And that is boring, being forced to zombie hunt when you clearly can't be arsed and mining instead of surface stuff.I hate it.
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they're working on balancing the exp gains from all sources :) hopefully soon we see changes in the exp awards.

Also below ground mining is super annoying now. What little iron I found was in tiny sections of 1 block here and there :/ the same for the coal I found on the same spot. The boulders now spawn ontop of areas that have ore in the ground, so if there are 3 boulders there probably 3 different sets of ore below it.

I'm getting a lot of my iron just from smelting the tools and other iron things we find while looting.

 
Have you seen the vertical boreholes the Z's now make to reach you in your mine? Don't expect the underground to remain peacefull. My mountain is being turned into swiss cheese.
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From what I've seen you need to start mining 35 meters below surface, otherwise zombies will sense/hear you. I built an underground workshop/mining tunnel, but on surface it's my horde base so I have entrance "protected". I don't mind zombies digging, but "sensing/hearing" non horde nights should be way less effective otherwise entire world sooner or later will be like a swiss cheese.

 
I like a lot of A17 but the overall mood is "Don't dig, don't build". Not really getting the most of the engine and assets.

 
I like a lot of A17 but the overall mood is "Don't dig, don't build". Not really getting the most of the engine and assets.
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I haven't done too much digging, above ground boulders and soil have sufficed thus far but as far as building goes you just need to be a little more creative, although honestly some old builds do still work if you put the effort in. Considering how easy it is to find or earn iron tools and to find a random forge to make forged iron to repair, you don't even need level 20 for a while and can focus on resource grinding and building a solid base.

 
You can build. The new pathing makes wood structures invaluable. It doesn't take very much at all to make the AI path around something now, they don't get frustrated and immediately smash through walls and will go some considerable distances for easier paths.

As for the surface boulder, you need Motherlode or you're wasting your time, and backed up by Sex Rex to cut back on the stamina costs. I also have found that 'power attacking' boulders results in a loss of yield, so settle in for some 'downtime digging' with light attacks (which won't drain your max stamina as much).

While extremely rare, there are mods that further increase damage to stone, dirt, wood, and metal. You can also obtain steel tools as early as day 1, and the steel to maintain them, from the trader/missions. In fact, you can MAKE STEEL yourself in the first week if you find a working forge, workbench, and wrench for the mech parts. SUre, it's going to take a while to make the crucible, but forged iron and steel bars require zero perks. Repairing also requires no perks.

 
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From what I've seen you need to start mining 35 meters below surface, otherwise zombies will sense/hear you. I built an underground workshop/mining tunnel, but on surface it's my horde base so I have entrance "protected". I don't mind zombies digging, but "sensing/hearing" non horde nights should be way less effective otherwise entire world sooner or later will be like a swiss cheese.
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MMh I havent tried mining underground yet, but I agree with this. While I totally disagree with some players who didnt want zombies digging, I meant it for horde nights when they are 100% aware of your possition. I dont think zombies should detect you while underground unless you are almost at the surface.

 
TFP's have stated there doing a balance pass on the digging/mining. How to dig and mine like most things in A17 will take new methods. I hope they take a look at how deep the zombies detect you. Though even with changes, the wandering hoard that arrived as I was 10 down from the surface, would not have missed me and hand me a fresh death. Just bad timing. But if TFP's are going to keep in the dig as is, then a lot more balance to building needs to be done so you have some way to survive. Packed into a hole with 20 zombies flooding down from a wandering hoard and able to smash hard rock and concrete quickly due to numbers, has me hoping for a big balance pass.

 
I've encountered 3 issues with mining thus far myself. One of the problems I'm running into is - digging beneathe creates alot of cave-ins to the point of opening a massive hole up top. Ive done 3 mines - desert, forest, and snow. After a little while of digging for resources in each of those mines the mine would collapse on itself and create a huge hole topside and no amount of bracing seemed to help ultimately.

Secondly, the ores color has once again returned to one color fits all which is frustrating. Its dark down under and when the ore looks almost the same color as normal stone it gets hard to tell where the actual ore is without doing a test-pick on a rock/ore node. The color also helped determine what ore it is - iron (bronze colored) - lead (blue colored) - etc...

Thirdly, at least for me, timewise, getting an auger and going from mini-boulder to mini-boulder topside was more fruitful than mining below. I could spend x-time topside and get more y-ore than spending x-time down below to get the same amount of ore (most likely because you can visually see where your next node is topside versus running blind down below as to where the next node is). And following the gravel is not in my interest as it full circles back to the first problem I stated above.

 
The gravel does seem to collapse easier in A17. Idk why but it sure feels like I have more and larger cave ins while mining.

Ores looking the same I don't know about because all I have found is 3 lead veins in the forest mine so far but those look like coal so.................I see the problem coming at me.

 
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