The Wall is NOT so Big - Editorial

General
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So here is my outlook on the game and the issues that I see so often on this forum, for any who care to read.

I was at level 25 or so, using only iron tools, and reading this forum found myself agreeing with the many people who claimed that the grind was “too hard,” and that it detracted from gameplay and overall satisfaction.

TL:DR - I was wrong to accept that train of thought.

I am loving the game overall, tons of fun to play! A little history - I only started playing after PS4 release (and I play on PS4), have standard edition, not a Gleam Club member, and have not spent a single real world cent on cubits.

The first thing that blew me away was how incredibly nice, friendly, and genuinely helpful the community was, both in game and on the forum. I say genuine because I don’t think that one nice player who gave me 3 iron shovels when I was level 5 trying to collect sand got any sort of achievement or reward for their action. I saw a post on here about open plots in Black Light on Pheminorum and was shown a great spot and not charged a single cent for the space. They even give away beacons and fuel so that the real estate costs prospective residents nothing!

On top of that, there are several people on here that are trying to get away from the high prices for items (read: AOE hammers) to better enable people to really get going in their boundless adventure.

So back to my point - I was at that notorious diamond wall, taking 9-11 hits to break rocks on Surfin Safari - it was rough!

But then I realized that a game as complex as this (and I absolutely LOVE the complexity) might just require me to use my noggin (brain) to formulate a strategy to progress. Here is what I did (and these tips have been written in this forum SEVERAL times, I’m not inventing the wheel here!):

I walked around the Finata hub checking out the shops to see what I could sell that was reasonably easy to gather and would fetch a decent price. One guy was buying any type of rocks of one certain color for 6c a piece! Not stones, just rocks. And after utilizing the amazing player created resources online, I found out they were on a T1 planet! Easy!

After that, I respec’d my character with some of those cleanse points so I could run around Besevrona and snatch up some of those sweet plant drops that are so coveted by many request baskets. Yea, I died a good handful of times, but came back with a solid haul and make some good coin!

All in all, it took my about 7 hours over the course of two days to earn approximately 30,000c. Now I had investment money! Next stop - hit up the forums, see what kind of deals I could find on AOE hammers, and picked up a great one from [another] super nice guy! Had some coin left over to buy a couple Persistence Pies, and I was ready to respec back into mining skills and look for diamonds! (I will also add, right about this time, the devs pushed out the patch that fixed PS4 atlases, which was a lifesaver!)

Came back with 80+ diamonds, among tons of other resources like coal. I had momentum! Sold some diamonds, sold some coal, and I had enough to pick up another hammer! Oh and by the way, I had enough to craft my first 5 workbench coils too!

Long story (sorry) short, the second hammer brought me back 130+ more diamonds, crafted some more coils, sold some, made more, etc. I can now make advanced coils for any machine, and I just keep finding more and more really cool people that love helping people out with good deals and good advice!

The wall is not as big as it looks from the ground - just play smart and take advantage of the options you have to get where you want to be.

That is all.

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some people stop turn around and go home when they see a wall.
what they dont see are the people on top of the ramparts helping others to climb up.

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its great that you managed to climb the wall. happy you had the time to invest in the grind. some people also work and have other responsibilities. I’m finding 1-2 hours are a max i have for the game at the moment and that’s on a good day, some days im lucky to have time to jump in for a few minutes. Grinding is all good and fine but the game is getting to the stage where a casual player is just falling further and further behind. The more i play the more i see and feel the never endless grind. Well off to some Black Ops to have some fun.

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I totally get your point. I will say this though - I am active duty military, work 50+ hours a week, go to school, have a wife and three kids. I don’t always have tons of time to play either. I also don’t get to play at all some days, but my main point was that to get past it for me I had to utilize that time I did get efficiently, maximizing my returns so that my slow but steady progress would actually start paying out dividends. Thanks for taking the time to read my ridiculously long post, I was stuck in a waiting room and had time to kill lol…

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I would love to meet one of these folks. All I can find are those trying to sell me an overpriced rope-ladder.

So I just keep walking into the wall.

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Indeed. The OP found a guy paying 6c per rock? He got very LUCKY. That isn’t normal. It was by random chance that he found that. Cause very rarely so I see a show buying rocks, and those that do are ALWAYS at 1c. In fact, in most shops, the request baskets I see are almost always very very low, much lower than what you have to pay to buy the item, especially from the same shop.

If anything, this story shows how vast and horribly designed the wall is, that you need to keep looking for random luck to climb it, not skill, or just being casual, or even just having morals.

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I will say to OP-

Your story gives me hope. With my next binge-day I will try to find a lucky request basket and take them to the cleaners. Go from there. I have been simply trying to force my way with an iron hammer. Haven’t even found a gem yet. Found one titanium node though!

Side note: is it true that iron hammers can’t even mine gems? Just read that in a post today… I would be devastated to finally find gems and not be able to gather them…

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They can mine gems fine.

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Iron hammers can mine gems. But in PC early access some time ago it took certain hammers to mine gem stones.

And keep at it, good deals pop up all the time. You just gotta ask/look around.

I made my way selling to request baskets like @nathanwilder and eventually when I banked enough Oort shards from lvl 1 meteors, I waited for a good portal spot to open at a hub and start my small business selling odd and ends. Used some funds to buy my first AoE hammer (thanks @Aanika :sunglasses:) and the gains from that one hammer pushed my business into a nice steady source of income.

Now I’m part of Akward Miners (thanks @Merln :sunglasses:) and now I have steady supply of AoE hammers as long as I farm smart.

You just gotta keep your eyes out for opportunity and strike when the iron is hot.

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I paid coin to get above the first step of the wall (1500 workbench power) while I could get advanced for 8000c after that I’ve taken my sweet time getting further and further up that wall.

If anyone want to make coin by selling large amounts of shlock I can recommend dropping by my place on Lamblis, NE from the hub (slightly more east). I’m buying clay soil for 2c and ash/mud for 4c, prices may vary on how desperate I am for brick. Right now I pay 3c and 5c.

I’m a bit low on coin right now though, but pay me a visit and I will get footfall to buy your stuff later :wink:

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This has moved a little too far from what the core issue is imo.

1: The midgame grind is too slow and too rough.
2: It is so slow and so grindy that it feels more like a job than a game.
3: It requires WAY too big a time investment if you want to get past the midgame in a timely manner.

Early game is glorious, end game is glorious (cept for centraforge RNG, which i seriously hope they do something about), but the mid game really needs some love.
The buff they are giving gold tools is showing that they know the issue is there, but it will be far from enough i suspect, and hopefully it’s a sign of more to come.

Of course i could just not care, as I’m way past that point, but i want whats best for this fantastic game.

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Tec187 already answered covering the core points and I completely agree. I’ll go a bit deeper in to the issue to answer your long post, so brace yourself.

But, first thing first: I came out of mid game with iron/silver tools and paying a fee to get my adv coils crafted.

You sold Rocks. Stone is cheaper than rock. Refined stone is more expensive. Anyway 6c per piece is, even if you sell 900 (full stack), just 5.400 for how much time/fun?
Also, Rock is usually bought at 1-3c per piece, because with an AoE hammer you literally can get it in minutes.
You did gathering right? Currently gathering baskets are flooded with players selling that stuff because of the wall, so you can sell something that’s going to be sold at 3 times more plus the footfall the owner gets. Why? Because opening a shop is expensive in mid and cheap in end, so mid game player prefer baskets but that also means end players are taking advantage of how many are currently stuck in mid.
Since I like math, if you sold bitter beans and shimmering orbs (the less flooded ones) it’s still 24.600c to make with bitter bought at around 50? And shimmering 400 in not such large quantities if you know where to go, so we are talking about 400 bitter beans or 60 shimmering (shimmering on t5 are no more than 10 per region) with a gatherer level 25?
If you went for diamonds with iron tools and the right build you would have made those diamonds in the same amount of time. :slight_smile:

Anyway, the issue is that gathering can’t be speeded up in end while mining can (grapple scalability isn’t comparable to hammer), so if we want to keep up with the math, 1h time mining for end players is way more remunerative than 1h gathering because the power wall and shop costs keep mid in gathering, leaving end to make up their shop prices out of mid not having other way than to sell and buy from end.
Devs are already on it with those buffed gold tools.

Please, stop saying there is no issue. People are complaining about not having fun and feeling a steep curve out of nowhere, saying that they are not using the brain like you can be perceived as kind of offensive.
Still, thanks for sharing and giving hope. Keep up and see you around!

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Yup! The game has a trading system and economy and that’s not for nothing! It helps to get you over the hump!

At first I barely found iron, then silver, then titanium, then diamonds, etc. I just ran around the shops to see what items I could make or collect and sell so I could get my workbench upgraded, same like you. I did it with things like gleam and gleam lanterns (back in the day when they did not need glow cap, hmpf!). After making my first 5 regular coils I sold enough stuffs to be able to buy 3 advanced ones (right before the bomb mining nerf, hours before it only actually, I was lucky!), I was then only 100 power short so managed to make another regular coil son after to get me to 3000 power.

Then I suddenly started to find a lot of titanium, then diamonds too, sold them to buy other gems, etc., etc.

And the trading system is perfect for this! Right now I am all coiled up on my machines, love crafting food, brews, forging, etc. But also love building and yesterday I noticed I keep needing to go out to find more mats to keep doing it so I expanded my number of shopping baskets and added a bunch of request baskets! If I can get my mats thru that it will save me time to craft, forge, build and the people selling to me can upgrade their stuff again!

It’s just awesome!

Anyways, now for a plug! I’m located in Nirvana Nova/New Leyden on Gellis, there is a small player portal in Gellis Prime and since yesterday we now have a 2x2 shop portal on Lamblis PS shop portals! It’s on the upper floor on the east side, it’s the one all the way on the right if you come up in the middle.
This will take you to my recently (10 hours ago!) set up market square (work in progress, now it just looks like a shop with no roof), 2 other shops are at the sides of the square too.

For now I’m selling mostly food, all types of pies are in stock (or should be in 5 minutes!), will add all kinds of things later with their own special islands/stalls…

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Sweet beans! Go find sweet beans! And when done, come visit me and take them off you for a good price! I need too many of them in crafting lately and still haven’t found a good spot for them.

Bitter beans are usually worth more to some but I can find those easily, my request basket prices reflect that and what I’m willing to pay, also, am still getting an idea of what to give for items (and what to ask for stuff that I sell, crafted items I can calculate somewhat)…

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Any mmo in the history of mmo’s requires extreme time investment to be top dog. That is the appeal of mmo’s. You can also play Boundless casually… fight stuff… build castles… gather. That’s how it is. Mmo’s are about looking at your account and achievements knowing that you got all that from commitment. I too work and play other games thats why im only lvl 39 on ps4.

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Ok so after 15 hours, or a day over two weeks an average of 1 hr a day playtime, you would be at the same point as this player if you followed their advice. Already almost at the end game in about 150 hours less than me. If youre a multiplayer cod kind of person im not sure why you would even buy a sandbox game, nevermind a mmo. Im not bashing, its just every person i know that only has time to play a game of cod only plays cod or other short time games.

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I charge through the wall!Hnghhhh
Or I like to think I do in my little fantasy world =/

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Thanks everyone for taking the time to chime in! I appreciate your input and everyone has a valid point. My intent was not to say that the game was perfect and exactly where it needed to be, just that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was initially for mid game.

I certainly was not implying that others were not using their brain, only that I had not fully used my own brain to take advantage of the resources and mechanics that the game does offer. Again, thanks for the replies!

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Yayy \o/ Im so glad the hammer helped you out. I remember hitting that hurdle of being ready for power and not having it. It took me more than a week of playing 18 hours a day to get power with silver hammers lol. Ahhhh the good old days… last month. :wink:

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I agree, I’ll add a story about my own feelings of progression–

It’s actually underwhelming how quickly after launch I had 1500 power on everything without ever buying anything except for one or two gems for atlas (not diamond though, found that one pretty fast). Yes, in effect fully self sufficient. It also wasn’t a “no life” grind since I do have a full-time day job. I wouldn’t classify my play as casual either, though. I’m not trying to brag, I’m making a point that it’s not as bad as people make it out to be.

A big key was 2 characters. One fully dedicated to crafting and the other to mining. The trick was understanding the progression system, exp system and doing quite a bit of research and talking to other players.

I will admit getting the first 40 diamonds was tricky. After 30 minutes of iron mining on Serp I knew that wasn’t going to work. I looked at gold and silver and laughed at how useless these would be. I spotted titanium and knew this was the next logical step, but I didn’t have the means.

So I played with some math about how to do iron bomb mining on T5s. That worked but required a whole bunch of bombs. I actually abandoned that in favor of the massive exp and efficiency of chisel mining and since stone chisels one shot the rock, there was no doubt with what was available to me this was the way to go. I used sandwich chiseling to expose 6 rock face per 1m and sandwich chiseled to the right and left and up and down (except only half for down to avoid falling down).

At some point in there I bombed T1s-T3s (mostly T1s) and stockpiled ores/coal. The point of the bombing at that time for me wasn’t actually to find anything, that was a bonus. Instead my sole purpose for doing it was was for massive EXP.

So the recipe was when I was looking for something, Iron hammers + stone chisels equals at the very least a whole lot of EXP and maybe some of what I was looking for. Not looking for something? Bomb randomly for massive EXP. And any rock was fed to my crafter to level him. I then used my miner to build (also really good exp).

But honestly after getting those first 40 diamonds this opened up titanium and before I knew it I had all my machines to 1500. The hardest thing to overcome for me in the diamond stage was actually finding someplace that wasn’t already blown to bits or hollowed to nothing. This is less of a problem today, but it’s still a thing. WTB> real time updates on Atlas! (fat chance these servers could handle this).

They have since nerfed the exp of chisel mining to 0 outisde of beacons, nerfed block exp, and invalidated bomb mining efficiency to pretty much useless. I suspect a stone crafting nerf is in the works too (get it while you can!). So the road I took isn’t as good, but there are still some points that are still useful.

The point of all this is like the OP said, I had to use my noggin a shift my methods when something wasn’t working. I actually could have just bought right into titanium stage, I had the coin but I didn’t want to. I take pride in being self sufficient and enjoy the challenge of doing it efficiently.

I was going to go for having 2 of each machine @ 2000 (some 3000) power and crafted a few dozen titanium bombs and forged 2 stacks into AoE… I actually never got to use them (outside one or two bags mostly testing the waters) because 2 days after I did this the bomb nerf hit. Lucky me. So they sit in my storage cubes to collect dust.I was bitter about it because the forging was a pain with a broken surface resource regeneration system.

Anyway, the bomb nerf forced me to progress into diamond AoE hammers (+persisting food and +str brews), which is a bit more work but the payoff is actually much better. Since I now get all the rock, I’m working on a 3rd character to level cap pretty quickly. Also surface gathering is day-and-night better now.

The bottom line is the answer to the diamond wall for me was digressing into stone tools rather than up to titanium, in that of the stone chisel. Although you don’t get that sweet sweet EXP anymore, I implore those at the diamond wall to try it along with their iron hammers. You can quote me on this, a stone chisel in mining at the iron stage is more OP than you having a diamond hammer (normal) in that same hand. Your goal should be to expose as many rock faces while your looking for those diamonds. Stone chisel will allow you to do this.

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