Trunk: New Meta? Old Exploit?

[Nightstar]

In the interest of moving the conversation in a more proactive direction, I’d like to bring out something to take a little direct pressure off of the rock/stone debate specifically.

I’m posting this before I have hard numbers across the process for a couple of reasons, the plainest being that someone may have numbers (answers) for some of these points already.

The next reason is because a consideration process like this will occur until either the root cause is addressed or an acceptable “new meta” is found. It may or may not be trunk. But trunk is a serious contender, I’m giong to borrow a list of points from @Tagris to demonstrate:

@Tagris

You don’t have to gather stone, you can just buy them…or people will give them to you. I have gone to miners and just asked for stone, they don’t see the benefit for getting the levels/or just don’t care and will give me stone. I got 50k stone from a miner that was mining and had a bunch extra in their inventory, and then later messaged me and gave me the rest…so their inventory wouldn’t fill out while gem mining.

Ignoring how easy it is to access, how easy it is to craft and focusing on one person showing their path doesn’t exclude others just because it fits a narrative.

Stone is a byproduct of mining…and it rewards more exp then everything else you gather while mining (especially if you refine it after which is also free).

A byproduct of an activity, shouldn’t be more rewarding then the actual items you are seeking. It is out of balance…and lifting up the other items would just throw the entire system out of balance.

It isn’t healthy for the game to have rock to stone be the best way to level a character in the entire game. It doesn’t even make sense.

In a sense this thread is a broadening of that discussion - ignoring any history or software aids, let’s acknowledge these as valid concerns. You can replace the word rock with trunk at any point there.

Tool quality / durability and buff availability are relevant here but surely can cause side track discussions of their own. We have what we currently have and some people use it and some don’t. To set a context for this discussion and get the numbers I’m discussing I’m using my logger, and a readily available axe.

You could tune this further. A faster axe. A slightly better farm. better reflexes than mine. Anyways, I built a farm for speed farming sap. For comparison this was the output of an axe just like the one above:

A lot of people are throwing trunk away because it’s not useful in the rock meta. But it’s useful anyways I’ve been bringing it home to put in my spark generators that’s something like 2.7 million spark in that pic. Anyways there’s no doubt that if you just set it up right an axe very comparable to a hammer can be very profitable, and it generates so much waste people are throwing it away rather than put it to any basic use.

Anyways I was giving surplus trunk to a forger for charcoal the other night and laughingly noted that you could use trunk to cook the trunk into charcoal. Now in that moment I was making a silly joke. But right now, I wonder.

@a13o

Close your eyes, W+M1, 109 XP/second. Think about that number next time you do literally any other activity and see whether you think the effort:reward ratio is in alignment with the rest of the game. Even aiming at a sleeping cuttletrunk takes more effort and they don’t sleep in perfectly dense cubes. It would be cute if they did but I digress.

If @a13o is on he might have some specific numbers that would save some time here. I was just cutting some wood and with a diamond axe, a mega fast, and a currenlty 0 dexterity build I can do this every 3 - 4 seconds for hours. just cutting the trunk.

It’s a bear sifting quotes out of some of these threads but I hope I’m not putting the quote in a wrong context, this is just the acquisition phase for the waste product and I believe the quote referenced the mining, conversion to stone, and possibly refining of 1 rock.

I would normally use a persisting pie and get a little more output and less experience at this phase.

I’m also wondering (as I write this) if it’s worth the gains to do this in rock, as you could be much more efficient. Depending on how you exploit (verb definition) the waste product here it can be profitable in coin, an aspect of the rock/stone debate being left off of the table.

If people really aren’t seeing this prepare for the nerfing of coffers and leveling rewards at some point. This is an exploit that exists in basically every alting system ever that has leveling rewards. It’s less profitable to farm alts than to mine or to log (if you can sell your product) in boundless right now but does affect other players in the economy much more than cubit farming.

To the point: Charcoal!

You can take these stacks and stacks of trunk, and pile them into furnaces, and use the trunk to cook the trunk into charcoal.

Now I understand that ‘furnace spamming’ has been an issue in the past, but everybody has furnaces. For symmetry i have 28 up at my main shop even though I’ve really only every used 14.

Once piece of charcoal, no buffs. 4XP. Teaching Pie, 8 XP. Rock to stone only is 4 xp per putput with a pie.

Coincidentally if you have a stack of trunk to cook with the efficient crafter (18 heat per charcoal) can produce 1500 output units per stack.

I can’t find the numbers for the stages at the moment but logging and processing trunk is clearly a contender, if not the hidden jewel of:

@james

You shouldn’t be able to give XP to an alt like this.

Hopefully there are numbers to follow and not name calling but hey, IS this any different from rock to stone?

I’ve shown some pictures from spot test and I feel like I must be missing something but is this more profitable in terms of XP across the cycle than mining stone and then doing the entier two step stone → refine?

There’s a heat cost here but it’s just more of the same ‘free’ trunk and there’s no wear/repair cycle. Furnaces are readily available, easier to make than a set of both refinery and a table, and we’re talking 5 or 6 clicks per 1500 output units rather than 35 ish.

Also does anyone want to buy some sap?

[anon67769248]

Yes, charcoal is a great exp mover. It’s just one of many ways of passing exp to alts. The stone fix is a lazy and thoughtless approach. If the real reason is alts shouldn’t be able to be given exp well there are a few other ways this is easily done and yield far more than the stone method. The stone method is just the easy/lazy method not to mention time consuming to setup method.

Sap = gems

Trunks = stone

It’s as basic an equivalent as you can make

Never mind giving an alt a ton of mats that you buy at a mall and crank a pie and then burn through some various crafting routines.

There are other far more rewarding methods to give alts exp, the stone method is just the most widely used one because of the prevalence of stone due to the gem hustle that went on for so long.

[Nightstar]

@anon67769248

There are other far more rewarding methods to give alts exp, the stone method is just the most widely used one because of the prevalence of stone due to the gem hustle that went in for so long.

Right for all of the heat and debate that’s occurring over this, it’s not even the most efficient method.

the game virtually requires this by enabling volume and efficient crafting at the expense of 10% of a player’s available skill points. Until he hit level 55 approximately my miner never smelted his own ores, either.

Maybe compacting soil is more efficient still. I doubt it but haven’t watched any numbers.

[MrSgtPeppers]

There are also far less rewarding methods that gain an insane amount of xp if you crunch the numbers… Any game with methods of xp gain like boundless is ALWAYS going to be riddled with holes and exploits…

Very well said Vetteq, it IS a lazy, thoughtless, approach…

[a13o]

Just crunched the numbers. You get 4 xp for trunk->charcoal. If you heat it with trunk (efficient fuel, titanium furnace) you will spend another 0.6 trunks on fuel. That means it costs 1.6 trunks to get 4 xp, or 2.5 xp per trunk.

Use a teaching pie and we are at 5 xp/trunk. For comparison, rock->stone nets 11.111 xp/rock. Refining it gets you another 3.858 xp/rock for no additional cost. Even if rock->stone were halved to 1 xp, it would still outperform trunk->charcoal although it would be much closer.

Economy-wise, you need to buy/gather 40,000 trunks as opposed to 13,361 rocks to get 200k xp and level up. That’s a significantly harder target, so wear and tear cuts into the economics a bit even though axes and hammers are equivalent. But if you’re just collecting the trunk as a byproduct of a larger task, free is free.

Density-wise, each furnace can net you 6,000 xp when fully loaded. Interestingly, a fully loaded table also nets 6,000 xp. What are the odds! The furnaces are more expensive and take up more space but that just feels like an initial investment cost that fades away in the long run. If you wanted to set up a furnace factory for “+1 lvl” set up 34 of them. Then go collect 45 SS of trunk. (For comparison, you also need 34 tables but only 15 SS of rock.)

So it’s not quite as good as rock->stone by the numbers, but it does have a unique set of advantages and other disadvantages.

Advantages:

1. You can queue up 900 trunk for fuel and another 2 stacks of trunk per furnace. A table can only handle 540 stone at a time.
2. Only takes 3 clicks to fill a machine vs 30, although you will need more backpack-loads.
3. You don’t have to carefully empty the machines. It all turns to the same charcoal item.
4. No repair.

Disadvantages:

1. You can’t mass craft furnace recipes, so the reward doesn’t scale as well as stone.
2. Sap, bark, and berries have pretty stable demand but still pale in comparison to the coal, gems, alloy, ore, and tech found mining.
3. It’s charcoal, man. You can’t build a house out of it.

Interestingly, furnaces do have mass craft recipes listed in the data files, the game UI just doesn’t allow them. If it were possible, it would be a 36 in and 50 out style recipe. That brings them up to 6.944 xp/trunk. It’s funny, you wouldn’t immediately think adding something as innocent and player-friendly as mass craft furnace recipes would open up an exploit but here we are. The systemic observation I take away is that Volume Crafting Epic is an XP generating epic in addition to its more surface visible benefits. It’s an additional source of XP multiplier when trying to exploit recipe output XP. Rock->stone’s 18 in and 50 out is the best ratio in the game IIRC so it will be pretty hard for anything to dethrone stone.

[Nightstar]

Thanks so much, honestly, for the math properly averaging in the spark cost. Repair cost on a table + refinery is pretty negligible if you’re not coiling it up so this is a significant factor.

So at something like 1/3 the gain per unit (45 ss vs 15 ss of harvested ‘waste’) I wonder whether or not we will be seeing balancing changes here in an upcoming update.

@a13o

it will be pretty hard for anything to dethrone stone

Nah somebody pulled the chair right out from under it

[Nightstar]

@a13o

Density-wise, each furnace can net you 6,000 xp when fully loaded. Interestingly, a fully loaded table also nets 6,000 xp.

I’m still turning this around in my head, Now I’'m actually testing. Without regard to the cost of achieving the processing I’m going to use hard coal. I was going to test with trunk all around but:

I’m not waiting 1875 minutes for an answer. Anyways when I burned a single unit with a pie the furnace output was 8 XP. So 1500 processed units at 8 xp per unit should drop 12,000 XP on you at completion.

Hard coal will give me in game confirmation in the morning. If I’m reading the first two paragraphs right, this really only affects the furnace density calculation not the trunk/xp conversion.

[FireAngelDth]

For you pc players there’s actually a true exploit that nets more a ton of xp. But again it would fall closer to the “traditional mmo” definition of exploit. So I won’t actually goin in how to do it. I’ve mentioned it before on other posts. I’ve seen a few people doing it too. But it’s a pc only thing and can’t be done on ps4.

[peregrine]

I think James’ comment that you shouldn’t be able to transfer xp to an alt is confusing. As long as you can gain xp from crafting, this will be a thing. There will always be a most efficient method of giving an alt xp through crafting, are they going to nerf them one by one?

[Nevioni]

Needing Alts in the first place to play the game is real problem.

[Kal-El]

I agree, since I need to split my crafting between alts due to the way the skill tree works and then need an alt spec’d for mining seems like this is going to be an ongoing issue.

[Nightstar]

@peregrine

There will always be a most efficient method of giving an alt xp through crafting, are they going to nerf them one by one?

Yes this is 100% what I am trying to highlight here.

[Tagris]

I personally see a large difference between Stone and Wood.

I use the Charcoal means to gain EXP (I usually used it while also doing stone to up my EXP total for log-in).

Stone is powerful because it is endless. You get the materials you need to craft your next hammer while you are using your hammer. Your other materials you gather are also good coin, so there is no loss.

“You go to gather Gems, but you get stone in high amount”
Your drop rates for gems to stone is pretty stark…unless you are some master miner I’m sure there is one out there.

“You go to get Bark, but you also get some wood”
Bark drops at a 5 - 9 % based on where you are farming it. I have gotten what i needed and not even filled up my inventory. Not the same for Gems, and I am down the Axe durability and either have to sell things off to buy a new one…or go mining to craft a new one (which ironically would generate Stone). So you could say:
“You got to get Bark, and you get Wood…and also Stone”
lol stone slips its way into everything.

I don’t feel like you get Wood as a ‘byproduct’. Just a personal, subjective observation.

Wood EXP is great though…but one great way to keep something from getting nerfed, is to not make a bunch of posts about it on the forum hehe

[anon67769248]

For me the difference in wood and stone is the utility. The spark leads in to more crafting chains. Once you do the stone, you’re left with refining it more or less where as spark let’s you continue the chain.

Again this is based off of James comment that alts should not be able to get exp transferred to them.

[Nightstar]

@Tagris

Wood EXP is great though…but one great way to keep something from getting nerfed, is to not make a bunch of posts about it on the forum hehe

I’m looking more to encourage the discussion towards what the end goal is here. Based one the inputs that have developed and iterations of james’ explanation the current thrust is to use experience gain as a time gate to game content, and it’s just very unfortunate that it’s tied to cubits.

In my opinion, or based on my playstyle, as you prefer, I see a forged tool as something I acquire with the end goal of producing some output. At the end of the process I will need to acquire a new forged tool if I want to produce more output.

The tools have near identical pricing and cost to produce so if I’m not producing or forging them, these other points about recycling output back into the process don’t present as issues. They are otherwise valid points to consider, if you are soloing the entire tooling and harvesting chain.

I see what you are doing as maximising output for your inputs. I do it, to a perhaps less agressive extent, myself. The reason I have the screenshot above is because I don’t throw my trunk away.

The trunk in that photo, was not processed for experience, It was used (actually only half in this case, I gave some away) to provide spark equivalent to 30 stacks of uncompressed soft coal. To be fair and based on things I see here, that alone might be considered OP.

So anyways rather than stretch out any intentionally exploitative behavior and keep simple calculations or game mechanics “secret” or “Exploitable” for as long as possible I’d rather be sure that what I’m doing following the instructions and experience available to me in game is acceptable, if not actually desirable, behavior.

I won’t remain in a community where the prevailing ethos is “do everything you can to avoid actually paying the developers for their work”. I’ve done both corporate and freelance software development. This is true whether or not I find myself wanting to support any particular group or product at all.

This mechanic has been in game since before I started. I have no problem with the devs deciding that the game needs a rebalance, I like everything to square up across the spectrum from design intent through implementation.

I do have a problem being labeled an exploiter, or told that I’m “abusing an exploit” by the development team and/or other players when I have never failed to report a problem or repeated an action that gave me an obviously unwarranted reward. Harvester harvests, crafter crafts. This is no exploit. There is no bug.

So yeah, nerf, rebalance, potato, potahtoe - I’m not interesting in “exploiting” an imbalance or a developer mistake rather than hiding these items and arguing over each one until they’re all ‘nerfed due to exploitation’
one by one.

instead let’s just call the same activity “Rebalancing to bring the experience in line with the developer’s intent” and get on in such a way that we can all be honest with each other about what we’re doing to feel like we are “succeeding” in boundless.

Or, if necessary, go play a game where the developer’s intent is clearly in line with our desired entertainment, I guess. It’s clear that the players in this game bring a tremendous variety of goals and desires.

.

[anon67769248]

Why do you see or describe it as a developer mistake ie: stone. The stone exp method has been used as long as the bomb mining exp was. Bomb mining got nerfed due primarily to the loot it generated but it was also a huge exp booster. Insane compared to stone table setups.

Point being the devs have known about this since at least October, which is when I started, and I assume they knew before as well given I picked it up from some vets in the early finata days.

They should have nerfed the stone exp method at the same time they nerfed places blocks being placed and giving back wild resources, like sap and such.

These aren’t mistakes. Mistakes get corrected on a timely basis, not willy nilly over the course of months.

E: btw I agree with your put it all under the light reasoning but at the same time I don’t feel like it’s my/our place to do that. We’re just doing their job for them and that’s fine, some people are just fine with doing that kind of thing. It means something to them I guess; for me though, that’s doing a QA job and QA is a paid position in the industry. Something they can’t afford to bring on. I guess that’s the struggle of a small shop like Wonderstruck.

[a13o]

@Nightstar

Anyways when I burned a single unit with a pie the furnace output was 8 XP. So 1500 processed units at 8 xp per unit should drop 12,000 XP on you at completion.

Woops yes, this is right. I forgot to take the pie bonus into account. Patching up my post real quick that means you need 17 furnaces for the “+1 lvl factory”. Making the block density the same as tables!

Click density is a little off too. The fastest way to get 1500 trunk is to drop in 1800 trunk then open one SS and take out 300. 7 clicks in all once you load in the fuel. Still better than ~32 on the tables. Although on the tables I always spam click and spacebar so who really knows. It’s not worse on the furnaces, that’s for sure.

[Nightstar]

@a13o

The fastest way to get 1500 trunk is to drop in 1800 trunk then open one SS and take out 300. 7 clicks in allnonce you load in the fuel. Still better than ~32 on the tables. Although on the tables I always spam click and spacebar so who really knows. It’s not worse on the furnaces, that’s for sure.

If you’re really pushing through batches you can just let the extra three hundred sit there after the first time and just load 1500 with two clicks on subsequent batches as well.

[a13o]

We don’t know the developers’ long term vision. And they’re human too so their opinions can change. I analyzed the rock+pie cheese end of last year and they didn’t react, so it was probably considered fair xp at that time.

But they may not have considered the transferability aspect, or underestimated the virality, and after observing a few months of player activity changed their minds on it. The quickest and least disruptive fix is to close out the xp. As we’ve seen, all the better solutions require reworks and fresh code, whereas 0xp requires editing one data field. Personally I’d like to see a two phase attack. Close the exploit now like they’re doing, then fix the source of the problem and bring back both trunk and rock XP (and crafting times.)

I think ppl on the forums are way too quick to assign negligence or ineptness to the devs. They clearly have new data motivating their decision because they reference high lvl characters with low play time. It takes a while for a small game like this to build up the data case for making a change even if the exploit is common knowledge. Why aren’t they allowed to change their mind when confronted with new data? And why aren’t they allowed to “wait and see”? Their style solved the economic crisis but it took many moves over a long period of time. Sometimes we too must wait and see.

[anon67769248]

Yea I commented on this in a different thread. The only new data outside of what was known is the new player influx during the free event. But based on player retention that isn’t/wasn’t the problem as people complained about other things.

E: and I think a lot of us look at it as inept because they have been told many times about knee jerk reactions they make butngo through with it anyways and wonder why the population drops. Again, this isn’t mysteriously new data, it’s just being used more now is all. So it was fine while it wasn’t widely used but now it’s not? That’s some very poor logic.