Right now, progression in this game to me looks like:
Stone - > Iron -> Titanium -> etc
Why even have Copper, Silver, and Gold?
I immediately go to Stone (so Wood almost never gets used), then from Stone I go to Iron because Copper costs way more for very little benefit, and now I’m headed’to Titanium because Silver and Gold tools don’t do much more damage to blocks compared to Iron. The entire game I’ve basically only used Iron, 'cause why use anything else? The cost/performance ratio is terrible for everything else.
This hurts the game’s progression I feel. We’ve got all these ores and I can’t find a use for them besides the chisels/silver slingbow.
Implementing wood tools is almost no cost beside textures - nice an free tiers for beginners.
Back in early access silver, gold and titanium tools were so expensive that nobody did really use them. At this point silver, gold and titanium tools are cheap and I suspect where many people will still be using iron tools, these 3 tiers mentioned serve as a bonus from time to time. Also it’s worth mentioning these tools have different base stats which may give better results in a centraforge.
For me these tiers are nice addition to the game, I can make a nice collection of tools. And they have really cool sound effect.
(but with the right skills you can get 100% efficiency on gem tools)
But I guess wood could be made to be about the same as iron? Could be an interesting experiment
While this is great and all, it doesn’t impact the progression TO the forge. Early-mid-game is just as important as late game, and for the last 15 hours I’ve felt like I’ve made zero progress in any of my gear, I just keep makin’ more iron stuff because, why not? It’s cheaper and I break blocks almost as fast.
I feel like this game is launching without much bein’ done to the early/mid-game, like the devs really lacked necessary new user input. Look at all the complaints of the Atlas, or T0/1/2 worlds and people confused about Iron distribution.
I feel like Silver and Gold tools should be buffed a little so I actually feel the need to make them, instead of balancing everythin’ around the forge.
Metal worlds near the mantle. Maybe I don’t have lots of the stuff, but I can find it, and it only takes a little to make a few tools, especially compared to the beta.
I was mining on Till - no or very little caves. Gold on 10-20 level best, silver 25 35 best so far.
tried under ice and desert and got 28 silver and gold plus 150+ iron and 50+ copper (was skipping it mostly) as well as 50+ coal (really scarce in the area I mined), 20+ remnants and 10+ components. that’s topped by just below 1000 rocks and soils.
So, around 30-35% of blocks were resources, and only about 10% of resources I got were silver and gold, but it might be better in different biomes.
Caves are best, but tend to be dominated by lava lakes at 20 and below. If you are really good at grappling, you can get across. I mine around the side.
About half the time I just wander around deep in self-made tunnels. Bear in mind you can still break into a lava lake and flood your tunnel with lava, so be prepared to run away or hop up quickly.
I really feel that silver and gold are more viable because much less ore is needed to make them, as compared to beta. I can find 3 ore to make alloy for a bulk craft pretty reasonably.
It’s always been this way to. There were different effects before on the difererent metal bows and hammers. Now the effects can only be obtained with the forge. But most people even then skipped silver and gold hammers, even titanium because it was so slow, and jumped right in for gem.
Even for gem, I recommended all new players to only use iron until they had a decent amount of durability skill. Now I still think the same thing. I bought a forged titanium hammer for way too much money. It dissolved faster than the iron hammer. Wasn’t worth the cost in any way. I’m sticking to iron until way later.
I remember doing some analysis in EA, iron tools had the best efficiency (i.e. best ratio of blocks broken per coin spent acquiring the tool), because of their high durability and high damage per swing. But silver/gold tools do let you mine faster, so they can potentially yield quicker profits if you plan on selling your spoils (depends on what you’re mining and how much it’s worth)
