Current grind of being a builder and how this effects you

In this post I’d like to discuss what it looks like to build large structures right now and the issues I am facing.

The past two weeks I’ve spent maybe 20 hours digging into hill sides and building caves to,
a) collect materials
b) build all the machines
c) understand how crafting works and experience the newest updates to the game.

My goal of understanding is now at a proficient level and I have worked my way up to iron/silver/copper tools ect. As well as crafted most current features, like warping ect ect.

My original plan before all of the above was to go straight out and build a giant structure. Something I had to come back to, as I didn’t have the materials, plots of land size, or the type of blocks that would look good in my opinion.

Now that my base is well established I want to build yeah.
Only there is a huge reluctance right now because of the grind involved.

I don’t feel that the amount of time spent hitting blocks. (Which my ocd does enjoy to an absurd level) is balanced with the amount of time I get to spend building. Not even close.

5 hits of a shovel 180 times to get enough clay to build 25 compact clay.
4 hits of my hammer 72 times to get enough rock to build 50 stones.

4 hits of my hammer 200 times to get coal to make enough spark and fuel for the process. (I’m estimating 200 soft coal).

Mix it all together and I get 50 blocks to work with.
My build is 60 blocks long by 50 blocks wide and 6-8 high. I’m being modest when I say I need about 2000 blocks.

This hasn’t even considered that after doing all the grinding for material. I need to do even more to replace and keep my tools updated and coming through.

So in total I’m doing 2-3 hours work for tools and mats. And then I can build for probably 5-10 minutes. I’m not trying to make a structure out of rare gems by the way. Just basic metamorphic brick.

Now I’m all for the long game. I have patience, and maybe when this game is 1.0 or what have you I can justify spending so much time whacking endless blocks to build my structure (because if its hard and you obtain it, it means something special you have worked so hard for), but right now especially in early access, you’re killing us with this grind to make anything remotely impressive.

Yet I see my neighbor make a house out of shiny gleam yeah, which is cool. It looks great. It’s shiny. The perceived value of that easy to come by resource vs my basic brick structure is astonishing.

I may by wrong but if no one is building the type of structures like this, especially the devs with there mods and unlimited block features I thought this well worth bringing up.

And if anyone says yeh but they haven’t balanced things yet. That’s fine, at least unbalance it in our favor of being a little bit easier than outrageously hard / time consuming. Its still early access.

Open to criticisms, discussion and opinions. Thanks for sharing and caring

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I can feel you. I have the same problem.

Same here, also building with stone only.

I can agree with you at every point. It’s currently far out of balance. I hope the skills will change this :frowning:

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yep i feel the same but hopefully over time the devs will improve it,there time/team is limited so i understand that at mo the’re mainly focused on get it in the game and balance later :slight_smile:

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This is the main reason I’m excited for the skills tree. Because if I could make my hammer mine faster and longer it would fix most of those issues. I agree with you on the gathering being very time consuming.

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i’m not sure if they want us to make those super big castles alone so easily… but if that is not the case then yes it should be much easy’er. but it would be much nicer that you actually need a community to create those huge buildings so every time you see one you either want to join in or want to create your own community and those big buildings gets they’r own value and are unique.

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Agreed, it is a bit of a grind… but Rome wasn’t built in a day… and neither was this…

I’ve dug out pretty much half the mountain, with the exception of the top couple of floors which are still in progress. I have no use for all the space inside and every floor is pretty much empty, but I just wanted to see how high I can go before 1.0 :wink: Once I have the height I want, I’ll start embellishing it with more fancy blocks :smiley:

Maybe you could set up a buying plinth in a local market and see if anyone wants to sell their excess materials? I set a plinth up outside my build, but have had no one wanting to sell any stone to me yet, but I will try my luck and set up a plot at the Therka market offering to buy the materials I need.

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I like how much effort it takes to build anything big, especially if you are using non-basic materials. Bricks are pretty much the most complicated material you could use to build something, along with glass. I think this is necessary since you don’t want every random person to be able to play for a couple hours and have a gigantic castle, large builds should require huge amounts of time or cooperation of many people. This way giant builds will mostly be concentrated in cities where lots of people meet up, and once the economy gets going you will be able to buy blocks from people too.

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personally id like to not be punished for making my own “big creation” (by one person standards) but yet require a guild/group for very very large buildings (say 100+ person sized buildings),i tend to log at silly hrs(2am-3am and onwards) to do a bit of building.

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what planet you on?(i’m on therka) can always pop by to sell some stone depending on what ya after.

I’m not really sure how relevant this is but anyways,

I think the smallest building on this graph should be achievable in a few months by a single player who has around 5 to 10 hours every week and the largest buildings only by guilds or incredibly dedicated players. I think that the system should not feel like it’s inhibiting the player, rather it should feel like the game enables us to make these things. For example, all movement options from Minecraft, like walking off of edges without falling, should be present from the start. Later in the skill tree, there could be options to streamline the creation process, like % faster destruction of blocks placed by the player to help fix mistakes and remove scaffolding more quickly or the ability to place blocks like in ace of spades.

I feel like we need some kind of survey on what players think is a fair build size for solo players and what is a fair number of man hours to achieve it. I just think we need a better sense of scale and allowance. It’s arguable how big we should allow structures. Take these pictures, which groups of people do you think it is reasonable to allow to build these, and how should the time taken differ? I think there’s still a discussion on how large a guild needs to be to build something colossal, if there is to be a limit at all.

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from your pictures id say 3rd pic and onwards definitely should be guild/group sized projects,solo up to 2nd pic in size for a solo player,if someone is dedicated enough to build that more power to them and they shouldnt be “punished/stopped” from doing it if they choose to.

I don’t think that the time it takes to build is the only factor in this though… currently we only have a loose implementation of progression, which will inevitably undergo a certain amount of balancing, with regards to how many beacon plots we receive at certain levels. So it would also a case of how much space we are able to build in and not just time it takes to fill up that space.

Personally, the speed with which we build at present feels about right to me (even though it is a grind - which I think is actually necessary), otherwise most of the builders out there are going to fill up their space with all the most precious blocks and be sat twiddling their thumbs wondering “well, what do I do now?”. At least with the slower progress, you’re in an almost perpetual state of build and rebuild as you’ll want to upgrade as you get access to different materials, or finally unlock the required skill to craft the different types of decorative blocks etc.


I agree with this, although I that for the 2nd picture, it would probably be a stretch to be able to gain enough beacon plots to cover the size of that building, even in the later stages of progression. Maybe a 5-6 person build, as I can’t imagine each player being able to build a house with over 100+ rooms in it - the space required in-game would be immense (and that’s only if you can claim enough of the surrounding landscape before any neighbours move in and snag the building space)!

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all good points as we dont have traits/abilities etc yet so that may swing the balance to acceptable levels on gathering,curious what the cap will be on beacons per person come 1.0+

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well, it really depends what you consider as a very very large and big creation. for me a 24 plot size building is a semi big, something that you can create by solo rather easily in less than week with low play hours, lets say 1-2hours/day (crafting stone tools and building with stone). imagine if that would be much easier, lets say half the time then it takes only 3-4days to create that semi big building and with longer hours, 7hours/day it takes ony 1 day to create 24 plot size creations only by 1 person. with 5 people like me they would create 120 plot size building in 1 day so imagine what they would create in 1-2 week? and when there will be 100 or even 10,000 people like that it would be quite common to see those super big creations everywhere.

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Appreciate everyone’s thoughts on this.

After my feeling of initial discouragement at the amount of blocks I new I had to break, I’m going to enjoy the process and chip away at the project. I agree with a lot of your opinions and it would be good to utilise trading, community, hand outs and what ever else I can muster up.

Look forward to sharing progress with you all. Once I strike gold I will bring a plinth to the US severs as trading will be in more demand :+1:t3:

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id agree on 24-30 plots being semi big and about 40-50 would be considered quite large for 1 person,for guild sized id say 150-200 would be considered very large.

I understand that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but, c’mon this is supposed to be fun.

I started building a small shelter my first day on the game, and It took me about 4 hours to build a 1 room shed with very basic amenities and minimal appeal. I got off that night with a pretty small amount of satisfaction,sure, but it was shadowed by the fact that I had just wasted a good 4 hours of my time, time that could have been spent doing something else relaxing and more productive, essentially erecting 4 walls ans roof. Now, I’m not saying that we should accelerate to MC speeds, but, the current system as it stands makes it building a bit too grindy, and as it stands, makes the game pretty unappealing to me.

I’d rather not spend years building a descent sized home that I cannot physically live in.

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there will be skill tree added at some point what should improve things so ill just wait for full features before i know what should be “nerfed or buffed” since we don’t know how they will effect on things.

I have to disagree with @Miige here on the timescale of things. I have a castle I’ve been working on that is 27 plots currently. 9x9x3, to be exact. I’m not even close to being done with it. I’m a solo player right now (I’d love help) but I’ve invested 25-35 hours on this castle so far. I’m using metamorphic bricks, using igneous and sedimentary for hammers, and lustrous wood stairs, slabs, and timber. The time investment is much larger than [quote=“Miige, post:14, topic:5470”]
solo rather easily in less than week with low play hours, lets say 1-2hours/day (crafting stone tools and building with stone)
[/quote]

That being said, I don’t mind how things are. I think that it discourages people from building random enormous buildings for no reason or to be annoying. Once the skills come out that the devs have shown, it’s going to reduce the time anyway.

The number of plots, if experience per mined block stays the same, will increase faster than people can build, in my humble opinion. I’m saying that because that’s what happened for me during my build.

Last thing I’ll state because I feel like it fits in this conversation (please link me to other topics on this line): I hope that the devs add in unique features for both solo and guild feats. e.g., when I hunt down and kill a rare difficult monster on my own, it should drop a trophy of some sort (head, horns, body) that I can mount above my fireplace. Or an aura I can add to one of my beacons. For guild things, they should add stuff that adds functionality. Portal point in your guild beacons, maybe a separate teleport device that only works in between members of your guild’s beacons. Maybe rare resources with their own graphic effects. All of these things would add to the long-term playability and give builders something more to seek after.

I’ve got way more ideas about the rewards for feats that could add on to buildings, and I think this is CRITICAL! We should be able to build uniquely for the things we do that are difficult. That way, others can see our feats in our buildings. . . “Look at that giant dragon skull over that guild’s castle bridge entrance! They killed [insert deadly dragon name]!” or “Look at the purple mist falling from the top of that person’s fortress! He razed [enter spooky dungeon castle]!”

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