For example instead of 1 compact amethyst it would be 1 compact amethyst and 100 rocks. Bulk would be 8 compact amethyst and 800 rocks. Mass would be 36 compact amethyst and 3600 rocks (4 smart stacks).
My goal is to reduce the impact on the economy that the AoE boon has, without touching either the boon itself or the stone crafting recipes. Those both have legitimate uses that players of all types benefit from. I’ve proposed changes to those other systems in other threads and they are typically contentious, so hopefully this idea is my lightest suggestion yet.
Why does it address the issue? Simple! You must now choose whether you use the rocks to craft gems or to generate XP for one of your characters.
Rock has to be the most gathered item in the game and the sinks simply aren’t there. Even after grinding them down into smaller stacks of refined stone I’m sure your storage areas are like mine; full of tens of thousands of refined stone you will likely never need. Adding them into a high end refinery recipe would provide the perfect sink to match the source.
It also fixes the biggest side effect of the AoE boon. We need that boon to dig through solid rock and find the gems hiding inside. The boon gives us the visibility we need for gem hunting to not be a total grind. But as a side effect, we all end up with backpacks full of thousands of rock. If those gems consumed some of the rocks as part of their refining process, it’s the same thing as us accumulating less rocks when we’re out mining.
Thematically, I chose the refined recipes because to polish gems you often tumble them with other materials to smooth their surfaces.
Alternate solution: Drop the rocks on the ground. Same end result and I don’t have to deal with the logistics of a craft needing 9 smart stacks of something.
I appreciate your persistence in trying to come up with ideas to fix the 3x3 and alt exp issues/exploit or whatever we want to call it, but i think adding more mats to current recipes is a bad idea. Its been done before and the community hated it. However, i agree we need another sink for all these rocks/stones to make people choose between exp and crafting something of use. I’d much prefer a brand new recipe or an alternative to current recipes using rock/stone as the main material.
Ore Mill machine or new recipe for the Refinery machine. Rocks contain trace amounts of valuable resources. By putting a large amount of rocks in you get a small amount of ore/rough gems out.
Numbers left as an exercise for those who have access to metrics.
Agree with that, bring bomb mining we are ripping huge amounts of gems now I bet even faster than when bomb mining was possible. Bring it back! Bring it back! All together now!
Im not sure where you see an issue with 3x3 AOE tools they cost around 12 000c per tools to make at 100c per gems with forge ingredient.
1 3x3 hammer could net you around 20 000c
Adding rock would not even change anything other than taking inventory space to mass craft gems.
Edit: Rafined Gems are Rafined it won’t make sense to add rock to them, decorative gems could use some rock but again that just taking inventory space for almost nothing except choosing between lvling an alt or make decorative gems. If you are at the point in game to make decorative gems you probably already have maxed out Alt.
Edit 2: Price per tools can be much higher if you aim for T8+ DMG
The milling machine idea is one I like as well. The best way to deal with abundance of things is more uses for them, more options is always better then making existing options harder/take longer etc.
And you could make it so the blocks have a chance to give resources that we already have, % for ores from rock or orbs from growth or berries from foliage etc. Or you can make it make new resources used for more crafting recipes down the line. Want to get into making pottery? Need to grind up the rocks to mix with clays to get useful pottery or enamel. Or grind up the different color blocks to make dyes so we can dye different crafed cloth items, banners or tapestries, heaven forbid… Pants? Heh. A milling machine adds new mechanics and a base line for new items.
Extractor recipe: raw crystallized mineral shards.
Exact numbers can be tweaked later
Extract rock for a chance to receive crystallized mineral shards. RNG would play a part here in determing what minerals you get from extracting the rock. T1 copper minerals. T2 iron minerals T3 gold/silver minerals and so on.
Option 1: Insert rock. Once it’s extracted you randomly get a tier of minerals. These minerals are then used in the compactor to make augments for tools. Preferably something not already covered in the forge. Chance on hit to receive 2x drops augments, buff augments, debuff rock in a given radius augments, 100% crit augments, etc. there’s a list of these people have already come up with somewhere on the forums.
Option 2: same process as above, except the minerals will be used to craft a new block. Obviously the higher tier would be most desirable. These blocks would have to be very appealing visually and be worth a decent amount of prestige as well to encourage people to use them. Lower tier minerals can be compacted at large quantities to form higher tier blocks.
Option 3: rock into extractor to extract rough oortstone. Gives people a second option other than hunting to get oortshards for portals
I like there being a machine with “RNG recipes” like queue up 90 rocks for a chance at earning an amethyst. Or queue up 900 warp stones for 10 chances at an oortstone. Etc.
Skinning it as recipes should make the idea easy for ppl to understand (we don’t need every machine to be a centraforge worth of complexity).
Making it a machine means the recipes can be locked behind power and spark requirements which help add some more progression to the game. If you could make the coils for it without needing gems, it would give you a way to get gems that doesn’t first require having gems, so it also helps smooth out the gem wall.
It also sounds like the trash compactor idea that has been mentioned a couple of times before.
Finally it provides a nice place for devs to add resource sinks whenever they need one. Or, when they start repeating holiday events they can add a recipe to mill up last year’s crafting item into this year’s. Otherwise they will have to worry about players who have been sitting on spooky seeds, candy canes all year to make an economic splash. A lot of power for them.
I think the excess rocks that have been accumalted by some players is actually very beneficial for other players who like to build and not mine.
I have read multiple times about a creative mode being added but with so many extra rocks hopefully the price will drop so it is easier for pure builders to do what they do best.
Personally I love seeing other people’s creativity in their builds. The more building materials available to everyone the better I say.
I’ve been enjoying reading your balance ideas, but I think even with this change (which would be a net positive, overall, I think), the existence of the 3x3->rock->7 figures of EXP chain is just fundamentally imbalanced for a game with skill points (and real money currency) gated by leveling up. Also, and this more gets into the nature of the machine, but the people that could most use this are the people with 3x3s who don’t really need to trade in 900 rock for 10 slot machine pulls at gems; they can just go get the gems. I’m sure some would do it, or maybe it would open up a market for lower tier players to buy rock at 1c to try to generate gems, but I don’t know how much of the rock generated would get diverted away from becoming EXP.
tl;dr: I love the machine idea and think it adds to the game, but I’m skeptical that it would noticeably help the problem you devised it for.