That would be more of a straight up boon rather than a quirk.
Durability is one of the most desirable stats and a gem tool with a durability boon and pies already lasts a good deal of time…
I think it might be just too easy to abuse. Kind of like forging range on bombs pre-199.
Oh god, please give me those rock so I can sell them!
Lots of code in the background anytime you try something like that. It shouldn’t be crazy difficult, but would definitely break some stuff. It’s a neat idea, though. I like the idea of having a somewhat useful quirk.
Don’t forget you can buy things. The game (I believe) was designed so that you can purchase things to circumvent areas of the game you don’t want to participate in; like mining.
DO IT! JUST DO IT!
Make every Item and Tool Useful, Or Most things will become Useless.
I think the main issue with that particular boon is the ‘random’ part. It’s amazing that it hits 6 blocks with full damage, but it’s extremely annoying that it makes messy tunnels and sometimes leaves stones right in front of you blocking your path.
If it was changed to, say, 3 wide x 2 high with full damage to all 6 blocks, I would pick it over 3x3 for high tier mining without thinking twice.
Edit: If it guaranteed a 1x2 ‘tunneler’ effect + 4 extra random surrounding stones, I would be less happy than with a guaranteed 3x2 but still use it for high tier mining. With the 1x2 +4 configuration it would be more of a stone collection tool, rather than a proper branch mining tool. It would be a bit more of a niche use, so not as useful, but still, some use is better than none. At least it wouldn’t block your own tunnel and force a switch to a single-target hammer to clear the path.
Titanium is almost as hard to get as gems for me. I’ve never had much luck getting these ores. It’s due to a lot of reasons. Some on my end and some on the game’s. I’m a casual player and a great deal of the frustration stems from that. In every mining run, I’ve found a maximum of 10 titanium nodes per trip, and possibly 30 gem nodes on my best day.
A good idea would be to put the elevations that each material is found at. Also, I’ve noticed things like rock salt don’t even have a knowledge entry That might have changed with the recent patch though. Updating the knowledge base with more details about where the item is and how it’s obtained might go a long way towards helping.
That being said, I see the point about the tools and agree with it, but speaking as a casual player, I barely have access to titanium tools and that’s because I setup a request basket and bought a bunch of the ore to make tools with. I’m hesitant to make them though because they last a bit longer than iron tools, yet, not that much longer. Forging is currently end game and I don’t want to waste the forging components I already have. Anyway, none of this is relevant. The point is I agree that tweaking needs to be done, and not only will I answer any questions about my experience you might have, but I’m willing to be a test subject as needed. Good luck and I hope you all have success with it.
In my uneducated opinion, durability is the biggest issue here. You can balance speed vs. power, but each tier of tool should be more durable than the one below it, regardless.
Wood <stone <copper <iron <silver <gold <titanium
A lot of those bullet points are huge issues with the game currently. Fixing those over the next few releases would go a long way to keeping people playing as they get further in the game.
For the bomb mining (really wish I had gotten in on that while it was still a viable thing so I wasn’t stuck in this choke point of not having gems for coils) Perhaps you could make an augment for bombs that people could craft that would simply not damage the resources or maybe different augments to not destroy specific resources? It would take more crafting to make them so it wouldn’t just throw forged hammers to the wayside but not require full forging.
I’ve wondered about this a great deal as well. In particular it seems like a fantastic way to balance or at least add some risk to the balancing act of getting what you want on any particular gem tool. If it’s by design then it’s brilliant. If 3x3 was the level 5 of that particular boon then getting maxed 3x3 gem tools with maxed damage and longevity would be easy. I can say for certain that it’s the reason for 3x3 being level 4 of the boon. But giving the dev team the benefit of the doubt i’d say it seems like a design feature.
These sound like some welcomed rebalances. The only other ones I can think of that should be considered is the 15 min delay on skill set changes, while you are away from your beacon and the ability for spanners to fix everything that is connected like they do spark generators. Both of these things seem like simple quality of life additions that would make playing the game more enjoyable. I’m not sure what the purpose of having a 15 min skill tree change penalty is if you’d like to specificity use one character for multiple things. It seems to me like it’s only there to hinder your ability to use one character efficiently. The spanner upgrade would also be very useful for those of us who have a lot of machines and crafting tables. If we could simply use the spanner on connected complex machines the way we do on spark generators it would make fixing things less of a time dump.
Hunting is not worth the effort because the resources used in a long hunt is not worth the gems or mats gained in the meteor at the end. That and the exp still sucks.
If you want to make higher level tier hunting worth the effort but still want your exp system to remain damage based then you’re gonna need better drop rewards from the meteors that also are worth losing gear, levels (because of the death penalty), and even food/brews.
and please dont make it rift or blink.
A thought for bomb mining; a certain percentage of the bombed blocks could randomly be destroyed, while the rest drop like normal. This allows luck to still play a part but makes bomb mining more of a gamble than hammer mining. The percentage of blocks could be tweaked to fine tune the rate for balance. This could be a normal bomb effect, a forged effect, or an augment.
Its massively common on high tier planets, even more common than copper on lower tier planets, just mine at the right height
Do gem tools work the same as gem slingbow regarding their effectiveness on certain elemental? If not i think a diamond hammer for instance should have a reduction in effectiveness on a blast world however have an increase efficiency on a toxic world. Regarding the higher level meteors, i would like to see an increase in gem drop. This can be tricky because hunting is pretty lucrative as is and I dont want to take way more from mining and force players into hunting. The reason i want an increase is simple i can complete more meteors on a T4 then on T6 world. Ive log some of the ressources i got from a couple past hunts on Adrihol spreadsheet. ; https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Fej23JD89SIRTt7ZNjj5X-raD938BzdsW1WwDfAhtdE/edit?usp=drivesdk
“Diamond tools are only Percieved as a better gem tool as it is far easier to get diamond than any other gem”
I disagree here, you have not looked the stats on a diamond tool for dmg, vs all other gem tools. Diamonds top out at 1900 vs all others in the 1200-1700 range. So yes diamond is the all out winner.
If more gems dropped from meteorites, I’d be for that. Only reason I went after meteorites before was to help my community, well now that it’s dead, there’s really no reason to go after them now, except to try and get squished under one for a laugh. But if gems started to increase, or be added to the list of dropped items, oh heck yeah I’d go after them, instead of spending endless hours trying to find seams only to come across someone else’s left behinds.
There’s plenty of reason. A lot of valuable materials that sell well, shards for your portals, the fun of running around with a bunch of people shooting stuff. Did I mention all the money you make to buy coils with?
Oh dont get me wrong there is a slight increase in gem drop from T4 to T6 worlds. The reason you would do a T6 over a t4 world is trophies (wildstock horns and thermal core )and sacs since they drop at higher rate on higher tiers. The higher worlds are worth doing for those ressources.