[Trade] Mining and Ore

[Glim]

Hey guys,

I was brainstorming with a friend and we were talking about how mining and smelting really doesn't make much sense currently. So I decided to write up how it could and what changes I think could be made that would affect the trade for the better.

When it comes to mining-

#1 - The type of ore should be determined by area, not by skill level. I.E. it should be set in the area file. Mithril and metal (titanium and elven) would be set in harder to reach places, more dangerous places, while lower level metals would be set in very easy to reach places. This would encourage miners and smiths to go out and search for those rich veins of ore.

#2 - The quality of the ore you mine should not affect the finished product later, it's just going to get melted down anyways. Smelting and smithing skills should heavily affect the finished product, as they do, but it simply doesn't make sense that mining does.

#3 - Well what would be the point in having a high skill in mining then? Because mining would affect your ability at actually extracting the ore as well as how often your pick damages. I.E. If you are at very low level in mining skill and you try and mine mithril, you might mine all day and get maybe one piece and go through 20 something picks trying to get that very hard metal.

I think that these, in all, would result in a better and more realistic mining experience. I hope you like it.

Feedback is always welcome,

[Liandria]

#1 - The type of ore should be determined by area, not by skill level. I.E. it should be set in the area file. Mithril and metal (titanium and elven) would be set in harder to reach places, more dangerous places, while lower level metals would be set in very easy to reach places. This would encourage miners and smiths to go out and search for those rich veins of ore.

I very much agree! The fact that the same room has yielded tin, copper, lead, iron, and silver for my dwarf has always bothered me. A large mine might yield a couple different metals, but mostly it would have a single type of ore. I'd think a large mine say like Mithril halls might have different ores available on various levels, but a single area (I think MH is something like 6 areas) would only yield one sort of metal. The metals would get harder and better probably as they burrow down through the many layers of stone.

This is supported by FR cannon also. From some of the FR books I've read:
Vaasa has Bloodstone Mines
Nashkel has an Iron mine.
ThayMount has a large Gold Mine beneath it.
Mithril Hall at its deepest points should yield mithril.
There are others I'm sure, but those are 4 just from the top of my head.

This would also allow miners who found an area with diamonds or some other very valuable ore to somewhat corner a market on it, by not revealing its location to other miners, thus adding a bit more competition. I know many dwarves have a "spot" where they go and do all their mining and once they level their skill beyond a metal its sometimes very very difficult to get that metal again. My dwarf actually has been getting requests for copper and lead, of which he can now find none, though the room used to yield it easily.

There are also a lot of areas that have notes in the room descriptions like "veins of silver sparkle to the eye" or "gemstones glitter in the stone" there's nothing more depressing in FK then bounding through hoops to get to a spot like this, and find out you get the same iron ore you were getting in your safe spot, and have to fight constant waves of hobgoblins for it now.

#2 - The quality of the ore you mine should not affect the finished product later, it's just going to get melted down anyways. Smelting and smithing skills should heavily affect the finished product, as they do, but it simply doesn't make sense that mining does.

I thought that quality was based off the smelting, I know ores that fail smelting repeatedly become of lesser and lesser grade. I agree though, the quality of the ore, would be more dependant on the stone its mined from then the miner.

#3 - Well what would be the point in having a high skill in mining then? Because mining would affect your ability at actually extracting the ore as well as how often your pick damages. I.E. If you are at very low level in mining skill and you try and mine mithril, you might mine all day and get maybe one piece and go through 20 something picks trying to get that very hard metal.

Just because an amateur can get to the lowest point of MH, doesnt mean they'd actually strike the mithril. They might be able to see that its there in the room description, and note it for later, but they'd not have the skill to manage it.

I don't much like the idea of the breaking picks. One of my picks cost something around 30 platinum, and the other was a quest reward with a magic bonus. 30 plat is a bit expensive to just toss away, and I think people will be upset if their quest reward suddenly breaks doing the job it was designed to do.

[Selveem]

Here here!

One thing, though, is picks that are magical or of a specific substance should also be taken into consideration. An adamantine pick should not be always damaged (though, I suppose the shaft could! so.. maybe my arguement has no basis?).

Also, does anyone know if adamantine still is damages when it is removed from UM? I was fairly certain that was a 2nd edition thing since I don't remember reading anything about that in the PHB or DMHB for 3.0+.

[Japcil]

#1 - Already possible.

#2 - Disagree, the more impurities from the poor mined ore the less workable it is after you smelt it.

#3 - Mining skill shouldn't(but does) affect what type of ore you can extract at all, just your success rate. At inept I should be able to mine mithril, but im so inept I should damage it almost everytime I mine it. Other miners would hate me for it, call me a newb and say go practice on less precious metals if it were not a game and mines were not bottomless pits of ore.

[Glim]

By already possible, you mean that it can be done, just isn't being done that way, correct?

#2 - Disagree, the more impurities from the poor mined ore the less workable it is after you smelt it.

But mining has no correlation to how impure the ore is. Me picking at a rock wrong isn't going to make its chemical composition change. Either the rock is naturally more or less impure, not by any fault of mine, just through nature, and I cannot do anything to change this until smelting comes about, which is how you turn impure ore into pure ore. And since we both agree that mining should not change what metals we find, but merely how successful we are at removing them, that also entails that mining should not change how pure or impure the ore is that we should happen to find.

Just a couple of quotes to support this:

As most ores are impure, it is often necessary to use flux, such as limestone to remove the accompanying rock gangue as slag (also called scoria or cinder).

In nature, the ores of metals such as iron, copper, lead, aluminium, and other metals are found in impure states, often oxidized and mixed in with silicates of other metals. During smelting, when the ore is exposed to high temperatures, these impurities are separated from the molten metal and can be removed. The collection of compounds that is removed is the slag.

Thank you,

[Raona]

But mining has no correlation to how impure the ore is. Me picking at a rock wrong isn't going to make its chemical composition change. Either the rock is naturally more or less impure, not by any fault of mine, just through nature, and I cannot do anything to change this until smelting comes about, which is how you turn impure ore into pure ore. And since we both agree that mining should not change what metals we find, but merely how successful we are at removing them, that also entails that mining should not change how pure or impure the ore is that we should happen to find.

Chemically, this can be argued either way. Modern electrochemical methods of smelting allow for purification of metals to almost complete purity from almost any ore; however, back before fluxes and electrorefining/electrowinning, the quality of your smelted metal did depend on the quality of the ore you started with, because if the ore contained two extractable metals, say lead and tin, you ended up with a mixture (usually an alloy) of the two. In some mines, a trained miner could differentiate the two ores and the ore segments were large enough that they could separate them - thus end up with almost exclusively the tin-bearing mineral, let's say. However, the mine itself also plays a role. If the two ores are mixed together so completely that one really can't mine a hunk of one or of the other, then no amount of mining skill will allow them to collect ores bearing only one of the metals.

It takes experience to be able to recognize the ore of a given metal - so it actually does make sense that, for example, one can walk by lead ore every day and not know it is a lead ore, then one day learn what a (new) lead ore looks like and be able to start mining it to get lead. However, the ease of identification does not go up in a tight correspondence with metal value. Gold is darn easy to spot, for the most part, because it exists as flakes of gold. But you can get better at learning what sorts of rocks and spots it tends to be found in, so I guess there too it makes sense that your mining skill can strongly impact your chance of spotting it.

[Selveem]

I still have to agree that mining shouldn't produce different "quality" of ore. I think the whole mining, smelting, crafting system is kind of cool. But, to have this particular function in makes it very tedius and difficult to manage.

I say this mostly because even if you mine a bunch of horrible and one reaaaally good one, they don't combine properly when trying to go through the remaining processes (after mining, I mean). Further, one cannot _see_ how good the ore/smelted piece is (per a previous post) which makes it all the more frustrating for some players (and may discourage others completely).

I don't much like the idea of the breaking picks. One of my picks cost something around 30 platinum, and the other was a quest reward with a magic bonus. 30 plat is a bit expensive to just toss away, and I think people will be upset if their quest reward suddenly breaks doing the job it was designed to do.

Liandria, it already has a chance to damage your pick. Now, I don't believe it takes material into consideration currently. I do believe it takes magical picks into consideration. So, in essence, my suggestion is nothing new. I was just hoping that magical/special material picks would not be harmed during mining.

[Liandria]

What Glim was suggesting sounded to me initially like he wanted an increased risk of breaking picks, not just damaging them, but I think I misread what he intended.

[Selveem]

After re-reading it, I can see where you might misunderstand. I think what he was suggesting is that higher skill would reduce the current risks further.

Had I interpreted it as you did, I'm sure I'dve disagreed as well. *grin*

[Glim]

Thank you, Raona, that was very interesting and you obviously tend to know more about the process than I. I agree with you in some parts, but still in looking at your post, I get from it that alot of the quality of ore depends upon the mine and not the miner. Yes, in some specific cases, the miner can differentiate between an alloy and a pure metal, but in the long run, it doesn't tend to affect how pure or impure a specific metal is.

As to the metal type, I still believe it should be set in the area file, with difficult metals put in more out of reach/dangerous spots. Perhaps though, it would also take a certain mining skill to even be able to identify what metal is imbedded in these rocks. Figuring these things out is what these discussions are for

As to damaging picks, that was only because if mining only affected how successful you picked the ore, instead of what ore you randomly find, then what would mining affect? It was an idea that mining should affect how often your pick damages. I don't necessarily think picks should damage more, but I do think that mining should have an affect on how often it does. And I completely agree that magical or very expensively made/mithril, adamantine, etc picks would not damage.

[Selveem]

Perhaps mining skill could be a config option. If toggled on, you could get a message stating that <insert ore type> here is available in this location. Of course, you would need to be skilled enough to recognize these. I don't think they should necessarily add to your skill usage count for mining - only referenced as a check to see if you CAN identify this would be a good place to mine such and such. Also, perhaps knowledge geography could tie into this? I dunno. Just tossing ideas out there.

[Dalvyn]

Actually, one item on my todo pile is to create a whole new type of object that would be a "resource source".

Resource sources would be any kind of object (handplaced by builders) that can be exploited to collect resources, that has a limited amount of resources and can grow new resources with time, for which the collecting process can be based on a skill (that determines the amount of resources you manage to collect, not its quality - quality depends on what is there, not how you get it out imo) or not, can require some sort of tools or not.

Examples:
- fruit trees/bushes -> fruits
- vegetable paches -> vegetables
- fish banks -> fish
- crystal formation -> pieces of crystal
- metal veins -> ore
- sheep groups -> wool
- ...

That will mean that, in order to get gold for example, you will not just have to have a high mining skill and walk one room into Undermountain: gold veins would be found in harder to reach places. This requires a whole revision of the trade system though.

[Larethiel]

Cow herds = Milk?

No, seriously Dalvyn, that sounds awesome

[Glim]

I think that is an awesome idea, Dalvyn! That way, the quality is not affected by the mining skill, just the quantity. You put that better than I could. I also agree that you shouldn't be able to just walk a bit into UM and mine mithril/gold/elven/etc. That is kind of what I was getting at. Those rare metals would require a bit more effort and thus would be made more valuable.

Trades do kind of need a bit of a revamping, I feel.

[Raona]

I still believe [metal type] should be set in the area file, with difficult metals put in more out of reach/dangerous spots. Perhaps though, it would also take a certain mining skill to even be able to identify what metal is imbedded in these rocks. Figuring these things out is what these discussions are for

I agree wholeheartedly - It would make a lot of sense for only certain ores to be available in a given mine, and then have those only extractable by one skilled enough to identify the ore and work the surrounding rock (which would vary in hardness and ore content).

Dalvyn - I think your resource idea would be great!

Selveem - I think an echo stating you realize that such and such ores are available in a given spot is a superb idea.

[Duranamir]

Resource idea is brilliant !

I have always hated the process of going from area to area after game reset trying to get the ore you want and in the process setting the areas to useless (relativly) ores such as lead. If the ores were set as Dalvyn suggests then hunting for them would be far more fun, and you could have favoured mining places to go back to. It would lead to a whole new career path Prospector .

It could also work far better in an IC manner, you see a room description that says that you see veins of silver...now with the new system you might even get Silver !

Duranamir

[Selveem]

The only thing I worry about is if one person were to mine up all the copper in MH.. what would any new characters get to mine? They'd never be able to mine anything at all.

Now, surely this was already taken into consideration, but these are my fears.

[Glim]

Im sure that some veins could be set to respawn or whatever faster than others. I could see places with weaker metals for newer characters spawning metal faster than a mithril vein deep in UM. Thats what testing and tweaking is for

[Ilnthis]

Just found this thread, and I agree with just about everything said above. My dwarven char has also jumped through hoops, seeking deeper and rarer veins to mine, only to find more of the weaker metals that she could have gotten in her safe place. I think the respawn-able resource idea is great!