Shovel Damage on plants with Gathering Epic

General
1

Using an Axe on surface plants does more damage. The same with Hammers and stone blocks, and shovels with dirt/sand. My understanding is that using the ‘right’ tool for the job is intended to be beneficial.

However, when you pick up the Epic gathering skill, you gain the ability to harvest the actual ‘Plant’ with a shovel. In my mind, this should make a shovel also the ‘correct’ tool for harvesting plants, granting the same additional damage.

As far as I can tell though, this is not happening. On a T6 world, while having Max Power, Damage Epic, Axe & Shovel Epic, Max Axe damage and Max Shovel damage:

  • It takes 2 hits to harvest a plant with an iron axe.
  • It takes 5-6 (Depending on crits) hits to harvest a plant with a iron shovel.

Im unsure whether this is an oversight (most likely), a bug or a intentional decision. I’m personally hoping it’s not the latter, as that would be yet another way in which 5 points for the Gathering Epic feels very lack-luster (on top of the diminished returns from having both luck and the Gathering Epic).

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2

Probably working as intended. It’s harder to dig a plant up intact than it is to harvest it.

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3

I mean, sure, in the real world.

But I’d hope for consistent and thought-out game mechanics over ‘real world’ any day. After all, being able to sprint around carrying 21,600m3 (24 x 900) of raw stone seems a little un-real-worldy.

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4

Are you sure? They aren’t human… Did you run tests to see how strong these species of critters could be? I mean gorillas for example… can carry a lot more then a man… Want to go the other route… Chimps (smaller then a man) can rip a mans face off easy.

Also, did you run a test on this rock and get the weight? Also these planets we are on are small… Gravity is the major role on weight…

5

Yes. I did all of the tests. A typical Oortian can only carry, at best ~2000m3 or raw stone, given the typical weight of Stone and gravity present.

It’s also worth noting that sponge, wood and stone all weight the same amount, got those interested.

6

Do they use the metric system as well? I mean 2000m^3 is nice and all…but that does not tell us the actual weight. Just the volume.

Also, are we talking 1g? 2g? .1g? .0001g?

G’s of force for gravity I mean by that.

7

They do indeed use the metric system. It’s been widely know for some time that measurements in planet size are performed in kilometers.

I could carry on with this but… I’ve gotten bored (short attention span) and it’s only acting to derail a legitimate question that I was hoping to ‘maybe’ get an actual answer for.

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The epic works as intended- Axes are effective against “wood type” blocks, and surface plants count as wood-type, therefore the Axe is the appropriate tool for harvesting plants. The gather epic does not harvest plants and stones, it collects them rather than breaking them. The shovel is used to literally scoop the prop itself. The drop rate increases the number of leaves and lamellas dropped by plants and mushrooms, this does not act like luck, which increases the chance of rare drops, like beans, orbs, or petals.

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Basically what @Havok40k said. If the shovel was the most efficient tool for plants, but at the same time only collected the prop, what would we use to gather materials?

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10

Yep, axes shovels and hammers all do different types of damages, and different block types have different amounts of resistance and armour to these types of damage.

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11

I think the idea with using a shovel is that you “scoop” the whole plant, leaving it intact. With the axe, you destroy plant giving you the remnants of the plant.

12

sigh.

Ok, time to stop using the forums I think.

This isn’t intended as a dig at anyone in particular, but I don’t think I’ve managed to make a post in the last several weeks where I felt like the people who respond actually understood what I was asking, or at least was trying to ask. I guess I’m going to have to re-evalutate how I communicate on places like this.

Thanks anyway to those that answered.

13

I just re-read your initial post to see if there was something I missed. Are you suggesting the axe and shovel both be the intended tool for plants?

14

Yea I think he was curious as to why its less efficient (5-6 hits vs 2)

15

No, we understood. You are just not getting the responses or support you desired for the post. It happens. Great ideas are often unpooular at first as well.

16

You got it backwards, the gathering epic increases the chances of getting rare items such as shimmering orbs and rarer drops, and luck increases the chances of getting more, but seems to also increase the drop chance in general as well

17

As previously suggested, I’m frustrated enough that I am going to be refraining from adding anything to any other threads on the forum, and will only continue to use it as a read-only resource at all because it’s the only place I can stay up to date with the state of the game. Whatever I may think about it’s current state, I haven’t stopped hoping that one day it will get good.

Sadly, I am just a little too egocentric to ignore that someone has just inferred that I don’t have the intellectual wherewithal to be able to tell the difference between disagreement and lack of understanding.

Using this thread as an example:

Disagreement would be. “No, I believe collecting any surface resource after purchasing the Epic skill and while using with a shovel (i.e using the correct tool for the job being attempted) should still take significantly more hits than harvesting surface resources using the correct tool because [insert logical or considered reason here]”.

What I mostly got was people thinking that I was requesting that shovels unilaterally did the same damage as axes to plants. Or that I didn’t understand even the basic concept of using the right tool for the right job.

Obviously Havok is a notable exception, he instead proceeded to either actually misunderstand (Technically, I used the wrong word once, but I’d have hoped the idea that I was talking about harvesting with a shovel after picking the Epic gathering skill would be enough to convey the idea that I was talking about collecting the plant as opposed to it’s drops) or to deliberately ‘Misunderstand’ and take the time talk down to me and to explain to me how the skill worked, as if I was unaware. There was a time I would have unquestioning believed it was the former, but reading through most of the forum’s posts recently leaves me… less sure.

I am sure that most of the people were genuinely just trying to be helpful, and I appreciate that for what it is. But for me having any kind of constructive conversation about how the game could be changed, or even just asking if a thing is a bug or not, feels like it meets with far more resistance than a genuine, civilized conversation should need (often from a notably select handful of people).

This might not be the hub of toxic bile that I’ve seen other game’s forums descend into, but it’s close enough to it in other ways that I just don’t have the ability to care enough any more to deal with it.