Shimmering orbs-opinions please

General
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This topic could be in both General and in Suggestions and if the moderators feel it needs to be moved there they can.

Shimmering orbs can be found in glow cap mushrooms on level 6 planets, maybe level 5. And in growth on all planets.

Problem: Glow caps can be hard to find and the critters can be very dangerous to deal with. My son is a excellent and experienced hunter in other games and this one, but yesterday we were on Cardass and he was killed five times by high level critters; twice due to fall damage from the bombs. I died once, but my main problem was fall damage.
On a couple other planets we have a extremely hard time finding them and dealing with the critters. Have all the protection and have upped my skills, but well, my son said I can’t hit the side of a barn and he is right, I’m lousy at aim and hitting the target. Growth, again, at least for me I have a hard time finding it and the farms that I know of are closed or I seem to not be able to find them. Plus the expense of the shovels and brews are too much, shovels don’t last long and I never seem to get many from digging for them.
I can find a small amount of growth on a couple level 4 planets, but it can take around 20 of them to give me one shimmering orbs, that is too little for all that work.

Yes, I know they are supposed to be a rare item, but I feel they are too rare and are required in too many recipes.
What I am wondering is how many feel that the amount needs to be increased, and I’m not talking about a huge one, but 5% perhaps, no more than 10% increase.

Two recipes, such as the food one and another one that isn’t used in the centraforge be switched to using a different orb. I think of pulsating orb because there are to many of them, they need to be used in other recipes, and they could be made more difficult to find, lower the chance of finding them, not by much, say 10%.
I like exploring but am finding growth difficult to find on lower level planets, have found them only on level 4 planets and the amount is small.

What do others think?
Too few and too hard to find?
Need to be increased in a small amount?
Need to be found in other plants (just one or two other, no more than three) so they are more plentiful, and ones that are also hard to find?
More in growth so it makes it worthwhile to dig for them in the growth?
Need less recipes that use them and a substitute for them in two at the most three other recipes by another orb?
What orbs should be used?
Should that orb (the substitute) require more orbs to compensate?

Glow caps are also hunted for selling as a decoration for yards or inside buildings, that makes it harder to get the shimmering orbs for recipes. I sell them in a shop that has plants and boulders to be used that way, in New Leyden Market, have not yet put up a sign with the name Nature’s Greatness, but will do so today. I hate having to increase the price, but they are so hard and dangerous to find I am thinking I need too. I don’t go by how nice and pretty they are, but hard difficult/dangerous it is.

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I will just link my reply in the other thread, as a reason not to increase the abundance or reduce the demand!

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Yeah theres that, but there is also balance.
It’s not there for shimmering orbs.
Shadow orbs are supposed to be more rare but i have more than twice as much and i only go hunting for shimmering orbs, i only pick up shadows if im running past one.

THIS right here.
I think what would help is an increased spawn rate for glowcaps and maybe reduce the requirement on one recipe for each type of item like food/brews/tools etc.

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@Janna55 Note sure if this will help. Though I have recently opened a Growth Farm on Galan reachable from 3 networks. It is completely protected as well. I tend to get a large amount of Shimmering Orbs with a persisting pie and half an AEO 3x3 Diamond shovel.

https://forum.playboundless.com/t/bobs-farms-galan-located-at-p-u-r-e-ultima-portal-seekers-hubs/26859

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Are you using regeneration bombs for growth? Just making sure since you didn’t mention them. It makes farming Shimmering Orbs a lot easier. That and AoE tools are the only thing that’s keeping them under 100c in the market.

If you don’t want to waste shovels but are willing to waste bombs you can also get them from underwater growth on lower tier planets (same drop rate as high tier planets). I just opened up a farm as an experiment on Trung (T2, reachable via Xa Frant PS Hub).

So yeah, I agree that re-spawn rate of Glowcaps seems pretty low. I was one of the lucky ones to explore Flan when it first came out and they were everywhere. It just never really recovered its original lushness because of the player activity.

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Exact reason why I opened a growth farm on Dzassak. Also have the shovels n regen bombs available

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This I think is quite a problem. I’ve been seeing this with every new world. it is a bountiful utopia the first few days, but after a few weeks or months, everything is SO hard to find

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While understand you can use regen bombs should they be a requirement to successfully gather something? Should the amount of an item that occurs naturally not be enough to meet demand if players are willing to go gather the item?

The issue I have is when it becomes a requirement to use a 3x3 AOE tool and additional items like regen bombs or durability brews in order to be successful at mining or gathering. If this is the case then the items are too rare or it is requiring too much time. I do not think there should be a 900% performance difference between a tool and its forged counterpart.

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Using regen bombs on T1 and T2 planets for Shim Orbs balances having to gather them on T5/T6 planets.

They are really cheap now so wouldn’t consider them a high-end item. Less than 50c? They were 300c not that long ago.

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OK so should new players be shown how to make regen bombs and shown how to use them in the tutorials? If they are what is needed than do we tell players this is another level of complexity to mining certain items. You need to have these or you are wasting your time?

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And regen bombs well under 5c a use now. We don’t want to make everything so easy that there’s no challenge doing anything.

If running around T5/T6 with an atlas in one hand and an axe in the other aren’t to your liking, do a task you enjoy and trade with someone. I’d much rather see that than make everything easy for everyone.

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I guess this all comes down to why you are gathering the item you are gathering.

Let’s take shimmering orbs.

Most recipes that use them are for forging ingredients, so if that’s why you are gathering them then it’s kind of a loop, you are gathering to make forging ingredients to forge tools to make it easier to gather then, no issues there I don’t think!

You also need them to create food and brews, but again you are gathering an item to craft an item that makes it easier to gather the item. Again, I don’t see an issue.

The only other recipe I see on boundlesscrafting.com is enriched bonding agent, which is again used to make tools which make it easier to gather the ingredients.

If there are other recipes, apologies, I missed them.

You need 36 shims to get 50 enriched, it only takes 8 enriched (less than 6 shims) to make 10 diamond shovels.

My point being, how long would it take to get those 36 shims with one of those diamond shovels?

You get that investment back pretty quick I think?

The only other reason to gather is to sell for profit, be it as they are or crafting items from it to sell for profit.

I have to assume that’s why most people want to make it easier, but the easier it is the less coin each shim will be valued at.

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Challenge is one thing. I think the game has sufficient complexity to the recipes for me to consider that alone challenging. My thing is all players read when they come into the forums is you need pies and brews and forged tools if you want to play the game right. If this is true then is the game being made to fit the hardcore experienced player at the expense of the new or casual player? Are there enough hardcore players that enjoy this kind of play for the game to be successful?

As someone with over thousand hours in, I am not enjoying the game any more.

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You don’t need brews or pies to gather shimmering orbs! I just run around with a titanium axe and an atlas for an hour - that gets 50 to 100. How easy do we want to make everything?

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I do not think we need to make everything easy but we need to at least make it enjoyable to get the resources we need to either craft, build or whatever part of the game we enjoy. With an unforged iron hammer, how long should it take to get a smart stack of rock? How long to get 100 gems? How long to find 100 shimmering orbs? For a player that has maybe 6 hours a week to play, how much of that should be mining and gathering? I think they also need to balance the game for the players that are casual and hardcore.

It is not a case that as a builder I can always just buy what I need. I have to have coin and the only way to do that is some combination of mining/gathering/crafting and then finding someone to buy or sell to. Or I can make everything myself. In the end it probably does not take me any more time to make it myself then to make something and go through the struggle to find someone to buy it and then find someone selling what I needed in the first place.

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you are just using single use scenarios here… some of us craft all those things, but i am not 3 people, still one person collecting these things once and crafting 3 times.
the demand is so extreme for these things.

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But doing stuff IS the game! If we didn’t have to do anything to achieve anything, what’s the point? You can’t win at Boundless, you just set yourself sandbox objectives and (hopefully) feel pleased with yourself when you did it. Things which are harder for you to do are so much more rewarding when you succeed, aren’t they? I agree “grindy” aspects of the game aren’t everyone’s idea of fun. I hate mining, so I gather stuff and sell it and buy gems to make stuff. THAT is the game, isn’t it?

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But don’t you think that if you do want to do all the things then you should have to put more effort in?

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generally yes, but when i put less effort into getting shadow orbs which is supposed to be rarer and i get more of them, no. this is imbalanced.

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No they are not. If it takes 2 hours to mine x amount now, making it take 4 hours does not make it more rewarding. I think that is the logic behind your statement and I have to disagree with it. The time it takes to do something does not does not make an activity more interesting or rewarding. Does the complexity or if they made is so a player had to perform and activity 100 times and then got a better result, then yes, I can see where that might be more rewarding. But time alone and how rare resources are that are needed for recipes I need to make even simple things or the tools that apparently are required to not make the game too grindy does not make it more rewarding to me.

When I finish mining for a few hours I feel more a sense of relief that I do not have to do that again today than any sense of accomplishment or I end up frustrated at the pitiful amount of resources I gathered in the amount of time I played. And a player with limited time per week you think should spend most of it on mining and gathering so they can be happy they have a few smart stacks of rock?

No that is not the game for all players. I want to build. . and I have no avenue to build without engaging in activities I do not enjoy. I agree that is part of the game, but if I spend 90% of my time doing things I do not enjoy in order to build is that the game? And if building is not part of the game then they need to remove all the huge, fantastic builds they show in all the game trailers and make this a game all about trading.

I already have a hard time getting any of my friends to stick with the game. They do not enjoy mining/gathering any more that I do and felt with limited gaming time that is all they did. So should Boundless be marketed as a game for players that have 20 + hours a week to play?

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