Ore vs Coal. Round 1!

[Reallylongunneededplayername]

Ok, Hear me out here:

(My view + facts etc.)
Coal is used by Smiths and Glass makers. It's material with a value equal to cotton, softwood and other minor materials.
Yet is is in EXTREEMLY high demand and you go through it with amazing speed.

This causes the following:

Epics grinding the coal mine
People grinding coal and sell it as Adamantin's little baby sister.

Also: After the coal mine, Coal is getting problematic to aquire, You have to get out of the way for it or go half way into "Writ places".

My solution: Make coal more availible;

Increase coal in the mines from 1st floor 2, To 6.
Let coal commonly found at well traveled roads. (Maybe as random ore spawns if possible)

[Lunargent]

I agree coal should be more available, but there are 3-4 (I cant remember which) coal nodes in the 1st floor of the mines, not 2. 2 by the front door, 1-2 more out of the way toward where the door down into the 2nd level is.

[Subutai]

I think, in general, there should be more lower-level ore generally available, including coal. In part, this ties back to my complaint about Arcane Archers not having access to arrows easily, but it extends into all kinds of the lower-end (repair kits, scroll cases, thieves tools, etc.) items that require metal. They all require lots and lots of coal, iron, copper, and/or tin, but other than the mine in Cordor for coal, there isn't really anywhere to get this stuff consistently.

The constant wandering grind for it can get irritating. There's always the option of traveling around to different settlement warehouses to buy them out, but that can be equally inconsistent. Sometimes you'll come away with plenty, other times almost all the settlements are running low, if someone else has been along recently to buy from them.

I'd really like to see something like the iron mine actually having a decent amount of iron, and maybe some other mines with consistent access to other base metals. It could make for a nice little addition to the player economy, with people making money by mining a whole bunch of copper, and then selling it off at decent prices to various crafters.

[Reallylongunneededplayername]

I think, in general, there should be more lower-level ore generally available, including coal. In part, this ties back to my complaint about Arcane Archers not having access to arrows easily, but it extends into all kinds of the lower-end (repair kits, scroll cases, thieves tools, etc.) items that require metal. They all require lots and lots of coal, iron, copper, and/or tin, but other than the mine in Cordor for coal, there isn't really anywhere to get this stuff consistently.

The constant wandering grind for it can get irritating. There's always the option of traveling around to different settlement warehouses to buy them out, but that can be equally inconsistent. Sometimes you'll come away with plenty, other times almost all the settlements are running low, if someone else has been along recently to buy from them.

I'd really like to see something like the iron mine actually having a decent amount of iron, and maybe some other mines with consistent access to other base metals. It could make for a nice little addition to the player economy, with people making money by mining a whole bunch of copper, and then selling it off at decent prices to various crafters.

first: Yes, I do think the iron mine could have a bit more iron but, Basicly... They have easy iron, And one deposit is enough for 2-3 ingots. but, I do think, For the sake of "writ" the one deposit below should go up to the second level aswell.

As for copper and tin, Their extreemly easy to get and the "mine" they are in has 2 deposits of each.
Actually! The " mine" their in is the PERFECT sample how a mine should be, It isn't on a writ location, Easy to defeat the enemies
and there is plenty of it.

[Subutai]

The trouble with the iron (again, this is influenced by my experience making huge amounts of expensive AA arrows) is that enough iron for 2 ingots is only enough for a single bundle of Damask arrows, and going three levels deep for enough iron for 1-2 bundles of arrows is extremely tedious. At the moment, I don't know of any way to quickly get iron, other than buying it out from warehouses, because there really isn't much iron at all. I'll give you the point on copper and tin though.

I'll also add that Cordor is actually perfect, as far as coal goes. Head to the coal mine, clear out level 1, then level 2, and you'll have almost a full stack of 100 coal. By the time you're done with level 2, you can head back up to 1 and finish off your stack with one or two of the now-respawned veins near the entrance.

The issue for coal, I think, is that Cordor's mine is (to my knowledge) the only mine like this. If your character is in Myon, Bendir, Brog, Guld, or anywhere else, they don't have nearly this easy access to coal, but still go through coal like crazy, necessitating big trips to Cordor in order to stock up.

I really wouldn't mind seeing more iron, and coal being something that's easy for anyone to get a bunch of in a short period, just because of the tremendous amount of coal used for everything.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I think you need to poke around some more just for the sake of poking around. There is coal in every direction for every level range, and you can even get some xp along the way while gathering it. And if you ever need a lot in one big lump, you can get 90-100+ just for flying through the first two floors of the coal mine. Sucks when you run into lowbies trying to writ, sure, but if you hear battle music on the second floor just don't go down there. If you don't guanji root/haste your way around the map and get out before some arrive.

[Ork]

1:1 coal recipes please. Fixed locations for med-low ore as well.

[Subutai]

I think you need to poke around some more just for the sake of poking around. There is coal in every direction for every level range, and you can even get some xp along the way while gathering it. And if you ever need a lot in one big lump, you can get 90-100+ just for flying through the first two floors of the coal mine. Sucks when you run into lowbies trying to writ, sure, but if you hear battle music on the second floor just don't go down there. If you don't guanji root/haste your way around the map and get out before some arrive.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of coal for people who are just making stuff for themselves and their friends. But if you're a smith (or art crafter who uses a lot of glass) who runs a shop or does a lot of commissions, you pretty much need 90-100+ all the time. 100 coal is enough for about 16 forging repair kits, for example. A single repair kit takes 6 coal (2 each per bronze ingot, plus another 2). It actually takes slightly more, since it also requires a flask of oil, which requires a glass vial, which requires 1/5 of a coal, so if you count the glass vials, you're actually looking at 13ish forging repair kits per 100 ore.

That's plenty for your friends to have to repair their stuff, but those will sell fast, so you'll need to be constantly restocking them. Factor in Damask arrows (4 coal), quick-selling jewelry boxes (10 coal) and a few other things that sell quickily and/or in bulk, and you're looking at absolutely massive amounts of coal all the time when running a forging shop.

That's not a bad thing, per se, but the Cordor coal mine is really the only place on the server with enough coal to be able to even approach keeping up with coal. Arelith could really do with a few more highly-concentrated coal mining areas, I think.

[Richørd]

The real issue is clearing epic level dungeons just to find zink at the end of the boss room.

[Reallylongunneededplayername]

Sucks when you run into lowbies trying to writ, sure, but if you hear battle music on the second floor just don't go down there. If you don't guanji root/haste your way around the map and get out before some arrive.

I never go past the first floor, Just for the reason of writs. I actually try to avoid those places as much as possible for that reason
as I know how hard it is to go with your party and half way find some epic dude hacking at some ore.

The real issue is clearing epic level dungeons just to find zink at the end of the boss room.

This is extreemly painfull, It has been done to stop grinding, And grinding can be an issue, But it's going to hit that one guy that actually works his way down there hard with his friends, Then at the boss..Finally Mithril? No..Zinc.. Woop.

Ultimate solution:

We got materials like cotton, Fruits, pinks flower etc in easy squired farms at Cordors front lawn, We got Trees Soft and hard along the roads. Let's do the easy solution for coal and ore up to iron:

Remove them out of the writ dungeons and put them in mines that are availible to everyone. I'm looking at you Brogendenstein.
There is nothing wrong with save easy coal and Iron when you are in a beginning city as Cordor that counts so, so, so many crafters.

[Durvayas]

Easy solution, because this is an issue in the underdark as well, moreso, I'd argue, since the dreadnaught requires coal to function.


Just increase the yield of coal per node from 10-12 to 15-20.

The simplest solutions are the best.

[naturaly]

There could be more dedicated coal places. Right now it Cordor coal mine, brog kin mine and Andunor silver mine. Maybe add more coal nodes to cliffs outside Sibayad town, caves in flood plain outside Andunor, Cordor iron mines, and Cave of the Mound by Bendir?

[Skald Haldi]

I couldn't agree more with the OP about the nature of the bottleneck - if not the solution.

Arelith has a coal-based economy. So many recipes depend on coal - and in large amounts. Yet, coal is no more common than other materials - with an exception of the Cordor coal mine. Result: epics grinding the Cordor coal mine. My level 30 cleared it twice today myself. If you mine a vein of any base metal, you typically need to mine two coal veins to match. It's strange bypassing ore veins because you don't have the enough coal to smelt it anyway.

Possible solutions:
1) Increase coal supply: More coal available in more locations in consistent sizable amounts.
2) Decrease coal demand: Less coal needed for recipes. We have magic, right? Per chemistry, steel is the only metal recipe we actually NEED coal for - because you need that carbon!
3) Special: Coal is needed to heat the oven, then you can do a whole bunch of batches at once. This would encourage dedicated smelting processes.
4) Special: Certain magic/environmental smelters that don't require coal. For instance smelters over fire vents / lava. This would encourage dedicated smelters to frequent those locations and meet each other. (right now, that's the Cordor coal mine)
5) Maybe the designers/devs like having a coal based economy as the simple gas pedal for the server?

[ReverentBlade]

I think the coal reqs for smelting ingots could probably be cut in half.

[Ecthelion]

Agreed with most of this, coal needs to be more accessible/less demanded.

[TimeAdept]

100 steel is 600 coal

100 silver is 400 coal

it's not uncommon for the cost of the coal involved in smelting ores to be more than the cost of ore itself, unless it's greensteel/mithril/addy

when i was selling steel heavily in andunor it was common for me to go through about a thousand coal a week just for the steel.

basically: god bless the cordor coal mines, and god bless strength builds. you go through crazy crazy amounts of coal as a smith, and only slightly less as an artcrafter thanks to the world's best change with the glass recipes.

[Zaravella]

Agree to most of the above... especially the cutting down coal requirements of smelting ores.

[Astral]

I agree that coal in recipes should be cut in half. Not just for forging but for arts as well.

[Rhavin76]

Perhaps making your own coal from wood to fuel the furnace for melting ore.

A simple DC1 recipe to Forging that turns 5 Softwood into 2 Coal can add some variety in resource gathering and take some pressure of the supply/demand imbalance for Coal.

[Subutai]

That would be charcoal, technically, and it can already be (kind of) be made as a byproduct of making pine tar. Although I very much agree with the rest. There's no reason a forge couldn't be fueled by charcoal rather than coal (maybe a little less efficiently, so the Dreadnaught would still need coal to operate). A recipe that allowed for making just charcoal, without pine tar, (so no need for glass bottles, or maybe no need for alchemist's fire, either) would be great.

Overall, I'd really love this just from an immersion perspective. In the medieval world, charcoal was everywhere. Making charcoal was a whole occupation on its own. I'd be 100% in favor of allowing charcoal for forging/art, except in cases where extremely high heat was needed (stronger metals like mithril and adamantine?).

[Memelord]

Sucks when you run into lowbies trying to writ, sure, but if you hear battle music on the second floor just don't go down there. If you don't guanji root/haste your way around the map and get out before some arrive.

I never go past the first floor, Just for the reason of writs. I actually try to avoid those places as much as possible for that reason
as I know how hard it is to go with your party and half way find some epic dude hacking at some ore.

The real issue is clearing epic level dungeons just to find zink at the end of the boss room.

This is extreemly painfull, It has been done to stop grinding, And grinding can be an issue, But it's going to hit that one guy that actually works his way down there hard with his friends, Then at the boss..Finally Mithril? No..Zinc.. Woop.

Ultimate solution:

We got materials like cotton, Fruits, pinks flower etc in easy squired farms at Cordors front lawn, We got Trees Soft and hard along the roads. Let's do the easy solution for coal and ore up to iron:

Remove them out of the writ dungeons and put them in mines that are availible to everyone. I'm looking at you Brogendenstein.
There is nothing wrong with save easy coal and Iron when you are in a beginning city as Cordor that counts so, so, so many crafters.

The real solution is "remove the monsters from the coal mines, put them someplace else." I will continue to shamelessly and unabashedly venture into lowbie-monster infested coal mines - I just throw a few thousand gold at any lowbies who I inconvenience for 6 minutes.

[Rhavin76]

That would be charcoal, technically, and it can already be (kind of) be made as a byproduct of making pine tar. Although I very much agree with the rest. There's no reason a forge couldn't be fueled by charcoal rather than coal (maybe a little less efficiently, so the Dreadnaught would still need coal to operate). A recipe that allowed for making just charcoal, without pine tar, (so no need for glass bottles, or maybe no need for alchemist's fire, either) would be great.

Overall, I'd really love this just from an immersion perspective. In the medieval world, charcoal was everywhere. Making charcoal was a whole occupation on its own. I'd be 100% in favor of allowing charcoal for forging/art, except in cases where extremely high heat was needed (stronger metals like mithril and adamantine?).

I know about the charcoal/coal difference in efficiency, just wanted to keep my feedback simple, quick and easy to implement and not a load of work from a Dev point of view.