Minethings

[Samwise]

The oil mining thing is fun, now that I'm getting to actively play with it.  Very smart use of the "random drop" mechanic that's at the game's core, since you have to figure out how to best make use of the "pieces" you've mined given the current "board" configuration.  In particular managing all the different pipe shapes feels a lot like Pipe Mania (minus the time pressure but with a strong element of resource management).

I'm curious to see if Japhet goes anywhere else with it -- right now it's largely decoupled from the game's other systems, since the pieces are mined at the same location as the board.  If the different types of piece were mined at different cities then the transportation/trade game systems would come into play much more heavily and that'd be... interesting.

[Samwise]

Oil mining is fantastic now that I'm getting my head around the more competitive aspects of it.  There's a douchepickle who sabotages my mining operations at every opportunity, so I've started responding in kind, and that's a very fun game to play -- need to deploy everything with an eye toward what the other guy could deploy that would mess it up, and in an ideal world you can set things up so that a piece does something good for you and bad for him at the same time.



Red machines are mine, green machines belong to other people.  My inventory of machines I haven't used yet is up at the top.  I've deployed my machines such that if douchepickle decides he wants to mess with my oil pipeline, he'll need to invest a lot in doing so; the only parts that he could place adjacent to are the ones that he can't siphon oil directly out of.

This is basically what I've always wanted crafting in an MMO to be like -- assembling available components in clever ways to produce a desired outcome, with enough shifting parameters in the problem that the ability to adapt is more important than looking up static recipes in a strategy guide.

I really wish a few more folks from here were playing and at my level.  Cooperative play is currently nonexistent and I think with two or three people working together you could form a very effective cartel.

[Samwise]

This just happened.

[Ironwood]

That is certainly a thing you mined.

[Samwise]

It's PURRRRRRPLEEEEEE.

And now I am using it to mine OTHER things at a slightly increased rate.  But I've decided I'm going to sell it (I think I can get 20k gold for it, that's how rare purple finds are) and use the proceeds to finance the construction of a factory (about 10k each in materials and labor).  So that I can build my own aircraft, and upgraded mining bots, and other amazing things.

[Ironwood]

In two years I have found 6 things.

I'm really not sure 'Miners will work even when you're not logged on' is hugely accurate.

[Samwise]

In two years I have found 6 things.

I'm really not sure 'Miners will work even when you're not logged on' is hugely accurate.

 

The mining bots have a "battery life" that's meld-dependent.  Mine is about four days, so if I don't check in a couple of times a week my bots stop going.  A lot of stuff in the game is designed around the idea that you're playing a little bit each day (e.g. a lot of vehicles take a full day to get anywhere).

[Ironwood]

Ah, this explains it.  This game still has the most amazingly fucked UI ever.

I have no idea how you manage to play it.  I can't find anything and the non important bits look exactly like the important bits.

Seriously, do us a youtube or something as to HOW THE FUCK YOU PLAY.  I'd watch that.

[Samwise]

A radicalthon of this game would be the most amazingly boring thing ever.  I'll start working on it.

[Samwise]

Okay, I'm just gonna use this thread, because it'll be easier to explain shit if I'm not trying to also maintain some kind of narrative flow across weeks of gameplay.

Here's where you see the stuff you've mined:



You get here by clicking on where it says "FINDINGS" on the left.  When you aren't actively looking at the findings screen, there'll be an arrow pointing at it to let you know it's the fun one.  You don't actually have to do much of anything on this page, but it tells you all about how your mines are running, and gives you handy links to other things.

Over on the right you see your new findings (stuff you've found since you last looked at this page) and also a history of your previous findings.  You'll see that some of my findings say "(trashed)" -- that's because these are things that are not worth my time to try to sell, and I've designated them to automatically be trashed when I find them. 

Up top in the header bar where it says "batteries" is my battery life.  This gets recharged to full each time I check my findings.  If the batteries run down (either because I'm not logging in for a few days or because I let my inventory fill up and can't claim new findings), my bots stop mining.

I have two mines in this city -- one is for equipment, one is for vehicles.  In the findings list you see that some of my findings are equipment (boot icon) and some are vehicles (wheel icon).  My two mining bots mine at different rates; my "top" mine in my home city (I get to pick which this is) automatically uses the best equipment I have and gets a special bonus that's dependent on achievements ("stones").  I get a random find roughly every 200 "buckets" (of dirt) my mining bots sift through, which means I get a piece of equipment every 3 hours and a vehicle every 4 hours.  This happens automatically as long as my batteries are active.  Mining can be accelerated by using oil (which boosts your bots' mining rates temporarily) or explosives (which effectively give you a bunch of buckets instantaneously).  Getting better equipment and unlocking achievements will permanent boost the mining rate by a small amount.

[Samwise]

I don't think I need to explain this screen too much:



When certain stuff happens, you get a message, and here's where it goes.  Most of the messages I get are because a market transaction completed or because a vehicle reached its destination.  Click message to read.

[Samwise]

Time to introduce the world.  Different servers have different maps, so your mileage here may vary, but this is the lay of the land on the Calbuco server:



Clicking "CITIES" gives me a dropdown list of the cities.  (When you first start playing, you don't see cities until you've physically traveled to them.  I'll get to that later.)  Clicking on a city switches my view to show me stuff that is available in that city.  This affects just about every screen in the game because "things" are not fungible between cities (but "gold", the game's currency, is).

So right now I'm viewing Franco Thistle, which happens to be my "home" city -- there are some things that you can only do in your home city, like use your achievement mining bonus, or work in a factory, or create melds.  Everyone starts in the same home city (on my server it's Alssa) but can move elsewhere if they want.  If I click a different city, I switch my view to see what's in that city:



Here I am looking at my Danchesser findings.  I only have one mine in Danchesser (it mines machines, which are used for mining oil).  If I were to switch to any of the other cities, this screen would be basically blank, because I don't have any mines in those cities.

If I click around to other screens (which I guess I'll be getting to next), it'll continue to show me information in the context of Danchesser -- market pages will show me the Danchesser market, and my inventory page will show me the things I have in Danchesser.  To switch back to seeing what's in Franco Thistle, I'd go back to that CITIES dropdown and pick Franco Thistle.

[Samwise]

Okay, let's look at the THINGS!  Clicking "THINGS" shows you your inventory in the currently viewed city. 



So this screen is showing me all the things I have in Franco Thistle.  "Franco Thistle Inventory - 45   Global - 155" means I have 45 things in Franco and 155 things in total across (and between) all the cities in Calbuco.  (The inventory limit is global, not local; it can also be increased by doing certain things.)

My "findings" go into my inventory (in the same city as the mine), as do my market purchases (in the same city as the market purchase -- each city has its own market).  If I click on a thing, I will see more information about it, including the local market for that item:



Note that this isn't showing me information about a specific individual rickshaw, it's showing me information about rickshaws in general.  Any place I click on a "Rickshaw" link it's going to bring me to this exact screen.

Vehicles have stats which determine how fast they move and how they behave in combat.  I'll ignore those for now, but this screen is how you'd look up the stats for a given vehicle type.

This screen shows that I have 10 rickshaws in Franco Thistle (matching up with the listing on my "THINGS" page).  There are also 8 rickshaws elsewhere; we'll see those in a sec.  Down lower are the market controls where I can buy, sell, or trash my rickshaws within Franco.  If I wanted to buy more rickshaws, I could click the "Buy" link; I'd have the option of instantly buying a listed rickshaw (at 2 gold) or placing a bid (presumably at 1 gold).  If I place a bid, it sits there until someone comes along who wants to sell.  If I wanted to sell one of my 10 rickshaws in Franco, I'd click the "Sell" link.  Since there are no bids, I wouldn't have the option of instantly selling to someone; I'd have to place a listing and wait for someone to buy.  If I wanted to just get rid of a rickshaw rather than trying to sell it, I'd click "Trash"... you can figure out where that goes.

Okay, now let's change cities.  From this screen, I'm going to click "CITIES" and then pick "Alssa".  Here's the resultant change in view:



Some of the information (the basic information about what rickshaws are) stays the same.  But now we see that I have 5 rickshaws in Alssa.  We can also see that the rickshaw market in Alssa is different -- I have them listed for sale at 15g each and nobody has underbid me.  Of course to be able to sell my rickshaws in Alssa I need to get them there from Franco (where I find them in my vehicles mine).  How do I do that?  And where are the 3 rickshaws that aren't in either Franco or Alssa?

[Samwise]

Clicking "VEHICLES" on the left hand side shows me all my vehicles, in and between all cities.



You can't see them because they're way down the list, but those three rickshaws that don't show up in any inventory are en route from Franco Thistle to Alssa right now.  It's a long trip (500 km).

You can see I've also got some vehicles moving from Danchesser to Franco.  This vehicle screen is how you get things (including vehicles themselves) from one city to another along land routes.  (There are also sea routes -- for those you use ships, which work similarly but are mined at a different mine and work differently with respect to combat.)

Clicking the link under the "status" column shows information about that specific vehicle, like any combats it's been in, mods it has installed, cargo it's carrying, etc.  If a vehicle isn't currently moving, clicking "send" opens up a screen where you can choose where to send it and what it should carry with it.  Once a vehicle is sent, it can't be recalled, and you can't change your profession while you have any vehicles en route.

To send a vehicle at all, you need to have a vehicle-using profession: Trader, Highwayman, or Guard.  You change your profession by clicking PROFESSION on the left.

Traders may send vehicles and load them with any cargo.  Their vehicles are not aggressive.
Highwaymen may send vehicles but may only load them with weapons.  Their vehicles may be aggressive to (and attempt to pillage) Trader vehicles.
Guards may send vehicles but may only load them with weapons.  Their vehicles may be aggressive to (and attempt to extort) Highwayman vehicles.

[Ironwood]

Deathmobile the milk truck ?

 

[Samwise]

Last (and probably the most confusingly named) screen I'll show you is the "MINES" screen.  This is NOT your own mines (that's FINDINGS), it's essentially a reference of all the types of things in the games, organized by mine type.



This is how you get to the info page for a type of thing if you don't have that thing -- say, if you want to buy your first set of equipment, or a new rickshaw, or something.  If I click "Equipment" on the list of mines I see all the types of equipment there are, along with local market prices where applicable:



Clicking on any of the thing types gives me the page for that thing, and from there I'd be able to buy it on the market.

Down below that are the "melds" (collections) that can be created out of things that come from this type of mine -- in this case, equipment.  If you gather all of those things in your inventory in your home city, you can click on the name of that meld, and then you have the option to create the meld -- this consumes the things (taking them out of your inventory), and gives you the meld (which is the closest thing the game has to "points").  Having more melds unlocks more advanced professions and gives you stat bonuses (e.g. longer battery time).

I think that concludes this Minethings tutorial.  I will begin taking questions at this time.

[Samwise]

Deathmobile the milk truck ?

 

Yes.    It's my most valuable/badass vehicle (which isn't saying much unfortunately, there are players who have entire fleets of vehicles that could trounce it).  Here's the "status" page (accessed by clicking where it says "stopped" on that VEHICLES page) that shows its stats and mods:



The five mods I've bolted onto this particular milk truck modify its base stats -- an unmodded milk truck has a higher capacity, very low Attack, and zero Dodge.  The three guns I've got on this thing buff its Attack way up (which lets it do significant damage to highwaymen), the drive shaft buffs its Dodge way up (which negates the effect of weapons carried by highwaymen), and the door panel buffs its armor (hit points) for good measure.

On the rare occasion I feel like taking the risk of transporting something really valuable (i.e. a red thing, or an ore crate), I use the Deathmobile and hope I don't meet a highwayman that's even better outfitted.

[Ironwood]

Right.

Right, I think I'm getting some of this new (also, I'm on your server, killing your doodz).

[Samwise]

Gooooood.

You probably remember this from playing earlier, but it's hard to make money mining things out of your starter mine unless you strike it really lucky with a rare find.  Better to mine gold and use the slow but steady income to invest in vehicles so you can start making money as a trader.

[Ironwood]

Yes, but I also remember that it's hard to make money from your mine also.

 

[Samwise]

 To some extent it remains true that it's hard to make money directly from your mine.  I almost never just sell things I mined in the place I mined them; I either use them myself or ship them elsewhere to sell for a better price.

[Ironwood]

You'll never guess what I found, Sam !

NOTHING.

 

[Samwise]

I found a rock!

[Morat20]

I've got three starter mines mining gold and about 13k in the bank. I've got a bunch of bids out trying to increase my number of melds, and dropped merchant (which is, even with yellows, surprisingly lucrative) to try my hand at guard.

I'm trying to find a fun profession, really.

[Samwise]

I've got three starter mines mining gold and about 13k in the bank.

You've got enough saved up at this point that you could sell one of the starter mines and move up to a music mine.  That'd give you a steady source of stuff that's worth shipping around.

Guard is hit and miss -- it's really fun to catch a highwayman and shake him down for a bribe, but most highwaymen are smart enough to either avoid you or outgun you.  When I was running a weapons mine (the next cheapest mine after music, not counting avatars, which I wouldn't recommend investing in) I'd use the Guard profession to ship weapons around; hitting a highwayman was a very occasional bonus.

I recently picked up Manufacturer and am having trouble finding cheap labor in Franco.  A man of your talents could easily make 200g a week toiling in my sweatshop.  Regrettably I can't offer to pay your moving costs.  

[Samwise]

I sent this to IW in-game, but really, this is a valuable "Minethings noob strategy guide" so I'm going to paste it here.  I'm not positive whether this general strategy is still good on Cal (since everything is dependent on the state of the in-game economy) but this is roughly how I made money as a yellow-tier noob.

=================

Ya, the way you make money as a trader (which is the easiest profession to start with) is buying low in one place and selling high in another. The rub is that:

a) it takes time to move stuff
b) bandits can steal your stuff en route

Best ways of dealing with (b) are:

1) Use a vehicle that's hard to catch
2) Use a lot of them
3) Outfit them for combat

Rickshaws are the fastest in the yellow tier, hence their popularity (1). If you send a bunch at once (2) with empties going first, the "bubble" in the front of your convoy will tank the highwaymen, hopefully allowing your cargo to slip by in the confusion.

If you want to outfit your vehicles for combat (3), one way is to buy weapons, but my preference is to load up on mods -- send your rickshaws down to Danchesser (you can probably buy any yellow mod for 1g there), buy yellow mods that don't penalize offense/defense (since penalties need to be offset by weapons -- I use a gun turret, quick shift, and door panel on each of my rickshaws, the mod holy trinity), and go to the vehicle's "status" screen to equip. Equipped mods decrease cargo capacity but they don't count toward your inventory limit like weapons do.

Once you're ready to start trading, my suggestion would be shipping bolts (starter mine item) from Alssa to Danchesser -- they're cheap in Alssa since they're a starter mine find, and vehicle owners in Danchesser need them to install higher level mods, so demand is high. Equipment from Franco to Alssa can also be lucrative, as can explosives from Danchesser to Franco, so there's potentially a nice little triangle there. Expect to lose a shipment once in a while regardless of precautions taken; hopefully your successful voyages net enough profit to make up for it.

If all goes well you'll eventually reach a point where you've amassed enough wealth and gotten efficient enough at moving stuff around that your inventory is full of yellow stuff that you're having a hard time selling, at which point you'll make the exciting leap to the green/blue tier since that has a higher value:inventory density...

[Samwise]

I've got three starter mines mining gold and about 13k in the bank...

I'm trying to find a fun profession, really.

Here's the bugfuck crazy alternative to slowly and conservatively upgrading your mines -- get yourself to 40 melds (not hard if you've gotten good at moving yellows around, there are a lot of yellow melds and you can probably top yourself up on cheap green melds in your home city), buy a helicopter (around 11k gold), then start placing bids on yellow machines in Danchesser and go into the oil business as a pilot.

Bugfuck crazy because you'd be dependent on purchasing machines rather than mining them, and the market is very volatile, as is the process of mining oil -- but in theory a few yellow machines placed right will net you a barrel or two of oil, which will easily sell for around 100g each.

[Ironwood]

How do I see the listings (Market) in another City ?

Do I need a mine there ?

[Samwise]

Like with everything else, click "Cities" and then the name of the city.  Every page you look at is now specific to that city where applicable.  Your currently viewed city is remembered until you explicitly switch it.

So if you want to compare (for example) the prices of bolts in Alssa and Danchesser, click Mines > Starter > Bolt to see the market listings for bolts; it's showing you the listings for your current city, which is whatever's in the upper left corner of the page at the moment.  Cities > Alssa to see the Alssa market, and Cities > Danchesser to see the Danchesser market.

[Ironwood]

Right, gotcha. That works.

But there's no FULL listing, er, list so that you can see what's in demand and what might be a good comparison ?  You have to select shit one at a time ?

[Ironwood]

IT BEGINS.

[Samwise]

Right, gotcha. That works.

But there's no FULL listing, er, list so that you can see what's in demand and what might be a good comparison ?  You have to select shit one at a time ?

Correct, unless you get one of these things:

[Ironwood]

I sold a skirt.

A skirt Gandalf !!!

[Ironwood]

I have now built a flourishing Bolt Selling Enterprise.

I have made 70 gold.

I am content.

[Samwise]

Those bolts are great money at the low levels.  It helps that they're consumable -- every time you install a green+ mod, you need at least one bolt, sometimes more, and you don't get the bolt back if you uninstall the mod.  I went through a lot of them outfitting my vehicle fleet.