PC Why I like the new loot system (as an miner/crafter)

[Liesel Weppen]

1) all ores are available in all biomes, except for oil shale

2) there is a lot of ore underground that is not signaled by a surface rock; like, a LOT a lot - branch mining a'la Minecraft ought to be pretty productive if you don't have any surface iron rocks

Yes. We already noticed that since the surface signals have been introduced. If you dig anywhere you still have good chance to find ores. The surfaces rocks are just signals for surface near occurences. And if i dig at an coal sign i basically always end up finding also other ressources that have absolutely no sign on the surface nearby.

 

[JCrook1028]

Because living in a hole in the ground, looking for iron and lead and nitrate and then melting those all down in a furnace and then crafting the thing you need out of it will take a very long time and be really boring? 

Yea, maybe even a couple of days! Oh My! Now with the resource nodes sitting right on the surface it's not you have to search for raw materials anymore...

 

[Roland]

I remember back in A17, when you could craft everything without parts. The forum was full of complaints that looting has become meaningless and that people never leave their base.

You aren't the only one. The entire dev team also remember and will never again go back to a crafting only model. They are still dialing in to the perfect balance between crafting and looting and I personally like A19's stab at it. Crafting definitely got a boost over A18. Once the gamestage modifiers for locations are in, there will be places you will be able to go to in order to have a better chance at getting weapon parts and weapons in loot earlier if that is what you want.

Craftable gun parts? Never going to happen outside of a mod.

 

[Gobarg]

i started playing this game in a18 and i specialize in mining, crafting, building, (basically anything that doesnt involve combat or cooking cause i dont enjoy those).
Heres the diffence in interaction between me and my friends at the night of day 4:

A18:

me: "I finally created a iron pickaxe!"

all my looting friends: "well we all brought back 10 steel tools of each type, an auger, and a bunch of m60s and pump shotguns along with swat and military equipment"

A19:
me: "I finally created a iron pickaxe!"
all my looting friends: "Great! But we still need that damn fireaxe!!!! We also need you to craft more blunderbuss ammo cause we can only find pistol ammo for a pistol we cant find!!!!"

at least for me and my friends, we became much more communicative trying to share our resources especially in the early game where were trying to figure out how to optimally split the precious 30 blunderbuss ammo we acquired for the day when it used to be everyone just doing their own thing and we are just chickening around by day 7.  i also get more requests to craft specific items which makes me busy and incentivizes me to plan out the prioritization of certain crafting and mining. even the looters (who im assuming makes up the bulk of the negative reviews of the new looting system) within my friend group thinks positively of the new looting system cause now alot of stuff they find have relevance (ex: "i found a m60 and 5 trashes" vs "HOLY @%$# I FOUND A LV 3 BLUNDERBUSS!!!!")

Any thoughts?

I am Gobarg and I endorse this

Seriously though I am loving the new system

I too am a mining/gatherer and for me the game just got better and better.

We usually play two up coop and between the two of us we are able to keep up with the gamestage and progression in a way that we couldn't do solo

I've said it before but this game is MADE for great coop play, notwithstanding the fact that it is a brilliant solo experience.

For instance, we are still using the tools I was able to make and haven't yet found anything better

Same for some other things but not for others

Armour seems to be something that you find before making but it's a close thing sometimes. ie you may be a point or two from being able to make the lvl5 stuff but find it in loot.

All in all though I reckon this system with a few tweaks is on or near the money

I would however bloody love to find a lvl6 steel tool every now and again

 

[Solomon]

For what it's worth, a few months back (18.4) I used FileMachete's ore vein mod to scout around underground and discovered, to my surprise:

1) all ores are available in all biomes, except for oil shale

2) there is a lot of ore underground that is not signaled by a surface rock; like, a LOT a lot - branch mining a'la Minecraft ought to be pretty productive if you don't have any surface iron rocks

For example here's what a tiny portion of the desert under ground looks like (A19.1):

View attachment 14986

Burned biome:

View attachment 14993

Snow biome:

View attachment 14994

Then i think im on the weirdest streak of bad luck because we just mined down an entire hill next to our base and not a single iron or coal vein was around.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Then i think im on the weirdest streak of bad luck because we just mined down an entire hill next to our base and not a single iron or coal vein was around.

Uhm... i guess the ore veins are generated below "surface" (below sea level or whatever zero is). So if you mine down a hill, you will find nothing. You need to go deeper. I just once mined down a hill, and iirc there were also no ores.

 

[Solomon]

Uhm... i guess the ore veins are generated below "surface" (below sea level or whatever zero is). So if you mine down a hill, you will find nothing. You need to go deeper. I just once mined down a hill, and iirc there were also no ores.

Heres a link to our base:





Its a big as hell hill, the entire thing is based on a weirdly working idea on how the zombies just cannot reach us.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Heres a link to our base:

What has your base to do with where you can find ore and where not?

 

[Gazz]

Uhm... i guess the ore veins are generated below "surface" (below sea level or whatever zero is). So if you mine down a hill, you will find nothing. You need to go deeper. I just once mined down a hill, and iirc there were also no ores.

The surface is what you stand on. You will notice that the dirt player stops after a few blocks down, no matter if you're on a hill or not.

The distribution really has not changed much since A17. Couple minor tweaks here and there but this old screenshot is still completely representative.



There are still large "empty" spaces between ore veins so digging down at a random spot is not a guarantee to find anything but rocks.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

The surface is what you stand on. You will notice that the dirt player stops after a few blocks down, no matter if you're on a hill or not.

That's why i wrote surface in quotation marks and added sea level in brackets.

My thesis was that ores are just generated below a certain height (like below sea level). So you won't find any by just removing a hill, because you will not get below this certain height.

 

[Diragor]

I did remove hills since A17 and it always worked just fine. found ores everytime even in A19 and also above sealevel. so it's just bad luck with the 0 ore inside the hill

 

[Boidster]

My thesis was that ores are just generated below a certain height (like below sea level). So you won't find any by just removing a hill, because you will not get below this certain height.

Right, and Gazz is explaining why this isn't correct. Ores start several blocks below terrain height, regardless of how high that terrain is above sea level.

Mountain (snow in the desert? yeah 19.0 map in 19.1...it happens):



Inside that mountain, looking down (from about +120m):



Ore is found at all elevations, starting a few blocks below the surface.

 

[Boidster]

Then i think im on the weirdest streak of bad luck because we just mined down an entire hill next to our base and not a single iron or coal vein was around.

So, if you mean you mined out the entire hill - flattening it to the surrounding terrain - and found zero ores, that would be very unlucky though it depends on how big the "hill" is. If you found ores, but just not iron or coal, then that could be RNG and biome related (certain ores are more prevalent in certain biomes, but they all can be found in all biomes except oil shale).

If you mean you mined "down", as in, straight down, then you ought to switch to branch mining.

This is looking top-down. You mine down at X, about 20 blocks. Then mine out a (H)allway north (for example). Then you start mining tunnels to the east (---) and at some point you stop, turn north again, mine three blocks of the (R)eturn hallway, then mine west to get back to the hallway. Just cover a horizontal area with these tunnels and you'll find ore. Actually you'll find gravel and as soon as you see gravel just start digging it out - it always leads to ore.

H-----------------R                
H                 R
H                 R
H-----------------R
H                 R
H                 R
H-----------------R
X

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Right, and Gazz is explaining why this isn't correct.

But he just said that the clay stops. That's right, i didn't state that hills consist of clay.

Just because there is stone under 3-4 layers of clay doesn't mean there are ores.

But ok, if ores are also in hills, i also haven't found some there yet. I usually don't dig complete hills down, but also haven't found ore when piercing tunnels through hills.

 

[Solomon]

What has your base to do with where you can find ore and where not?

You mentioned that it could be that most ores are generated below a set "surface" level so it made sense to me that i only dont have much coal and iron because we are on a hill.

 

[Syncrinity]

I'm kind of on the fence with this issue. I play with my GF so we always allocate roles and do our jobs. She's the looter and I'm the crafter/builder. It's nice that I can make her good tools and weapons before she can find better things. 

On the other hand, I find it off putting to break open gun vaults or climb gun factories only to find primitive tools. 

 

[Boidster]

But ok, if ores are also in hills, i also haven't found some there yet. I usually don't dig complete hills down, but also haven't found ore when piercing tunnels through hills.

I guess the point is (and you can see this in biomes.xml) that the RNG chances for ore always start just a few blocks below topsoil (or topsand or topsnow, whatever) in every biome at every elevation. It doesn't even recognize "hill" or "mountain" as a thing, nor reference any sea-level elevation. It's just X layers below the surface, there's a chance for ore. It's still RNG (based on world seed) so of course there will be vast areas of nothing but stone.

For example here is one sub-biome of the Snow biome:

<layers>
  <layer depth="1" blockname="terrSnow"/>

  <layer depth="3" blockname="terrDirt"/>
  <layer depth="*" blockname="terrStone">
    <resource blockname="terrOreIron" prob="0.6500" rwgGenerationType="all"/>
    <resource blockname="terrGravel" prob="0.7830" rwgGenerationType="all"/>
  </layer>
  <layer depth="3" blockname="terrBedrock"/>
</layers>

So this specifies one layer of snow (the "topsoil"), 3 layers of dirt, then all the rest of the layers (except the last 3 which are bedrock) are stone + a chance for iron/gravel.

Interestingly, the surface ore boulders are prefabs like a house might be. I need to research that a bit more, but the implication is that every ore field attached to a surface boulder has the same layout underground (though it may be rotated).

<decoration type="prefab" name="deco_iron_vein" checkresource="-7" onslopes="true" prob=".00657" rotatemax="3"/>

Edit: Hmm maybe not. I'm thinking that the "checkresource" parameter there actually forces the decoration/prefab engine to...uh...check for the resource underground (maybe 7 blocks down?) and then only place the "prefab" boulder over the top of a pre-existing ore field. The prefab itself does extend a few blocks down - basically the first 5-7 ore nodes are part of the prefab, which is just linking into whatever ore field the RWG put down there.