Depot near mines

[Tanaloth]

im writting now because us,miner, have to come back to town to have a depot to put our stuff in it. i know we can use a cow but when we are in the mine, it is easly for someone passing near by to take your cow (mules) when we are mining. so i suggest to put a depot outside of each mine. exemple: coppermine the depot will be named -depot(coppermine).
and when we are far away of the town like if we are in the north mine it is long to come back to town and go back mining. i think most miner will agree with me.

thanks for you to read this

Tanaloth

[LifeWonder]

I think one of the main reasons why cows were implemented is stuff like that.. and yes, mules can be stolen, that's purposeful too..

I think that adding a depot there wouldn't be fair for other professions either, such as lumberjack, harvesters and so on..

[Tanaloth]

yes but a lumberjack can have his cow (mules)following him and a farmer too

[LifeWonder]

A hire a guard to watch your mule?

[JonathanSmith]

yes but a lumberjack can have his cow (mules)following him and a farmer too

Consequently, mules should be possible in mines again.

Or, consequently, disable cows
- during working (farming, carpentry, etc.)
- in woods, houses, workshops, ...

Cows in the workshop, near the carpenter table or in the kitchen (fire place), that's what I personally find really annoying.

[Vern Kron]

Agreed. All hauling animals should be left tied to a tree or attended to. Not wandering about the outside of the workshop, sitting next to the fire, or blocking doors in the tavern.

[Ivar Kraftimarm]

agreed. all the materials should be in the depot and one depot should be exactly one field left of every tool. only with that everybody has the same way to walk for materials.

edit: what i want to say... you never have the same terms in different works. you can't compare apples with pears. in my oppinion the actual system is allright.

[Pellandria]

There are several reason that mines are unreacable for the mules, one of the mainpoints is that there are allready a crapton of smiths ig anyway, another is that you fail to understand the reason illarion is played online, its a "team" game, just gather 3 chars, one who mines, one who carrys the mined goods and one who has the mule and you no longer have the problemwith mines...if you don't use the options the game gives yourself, than its your own fault.

Oh and something else.. the mules weren't created to acces ressources easier but to transport items from one town to the other.

[Mr. Cromwell]

There are several reason that mines are unreacable for the mules, one of the mainpoints is that there are allready a crapton of smiths ig anyway, another is that you fail to understand the reason illarion is played online, its a "team" game, just gather 3 chars, one who mines, one who carrys the mined goods and one who has the mule and you no longer have the problemwith mines...if you don't use the options the game gives yourself, than its your own fault.

Oh and something else.. the mules weren't created to acces ressources easier but to transport items from one town to the other.

I don't see any reason why "a crapton of smiths" was a fair reason to make mining more pain in the ass than farming (or baking). AFAIK you bake and farm a lot with the cow always on Pella's side, so meh. You fail to understand that that mining is "a crapton" bigger pain in the ass without mules, simply because unlike ovens and farming plots, mines are generally (with a couple well-known exceptions) extremely far away from the closest depots. Not to mention that what you dig up tends to get even a strong character encumbered rather fast. It's pretty unreasonable IMO to assume that someone would dig 20 iron, run all the way from the Northern Mine to GR castle (if he's not kicked away for intruding or something) to deposit it and then go back again. Mining shouldn't be a monopoly of Varshikar and Silverbrand, but if it's simply a waste of time and effort to do mining anywhere else, then it will be just that.

Mining without a cow is just a pain in the ass (especially if you would like to do something else except to mine at some point during the week). Illarion is a multiplayer game indeed, but it should not be one just for smiths and miners, and not for farmers/lumberjacks/cooks/carpenters/et all. Since I'm not entirely sure if 'make game more difficult' by taking away the mules/cows from the other craftsmen is necessarily the right course of action here, you make your own conclusions of 'what should be done'.

Equal opportunity and shit.

Yeah, I used a cow in the mines. Why? Because then I just need to focus on mining for an hour or two, and then be done with that. Maybe do something really enjoyable, like.. use the multiplayer aspects of the game.

Do you have any clue how boring and troublesome to arrange such a three-player arrangement would be? Yeah, Nitram mines, and Martin stands for two hours by the depot, waiting when Vilarion runs between the two places and then divide the gain by three. That sounds quite retarted; Fine way to idle and waste time in a highly inefficient manner. If you turn the tables, how often could you find partners for farming if you had to get three (3!) people to do that? What about noobs?

You could forget about doing the "necessary evil" stuff when it's quiet. Then you could roleplay alone when you can't find anyone to mine with. Genius.

And this comes from someone who doesn't even mine a lot with any of his characters, and still recognizes how utterly boring and inefficient it can be.

[Llama]

<3 Cromwell

[Pellandria]

I don't see any reason why "a crapton of smiths" was a fair reason to make mining more pain in the ass than farming (or baking).

Well it should be obvious, with smiths constantly draining the Islands natural ressources it gets harder and harder to get the ressources, oh and only getting ore or coal is restricted, you can easily smith and smelt ores with a mule around.

AFAIK you bake and farm a lot with the cow always on Pella's side, so meh. You fail to understand that that mining is "a crapton" bigger pain in the ass without mules, simply because unlike ovens and farming plots, mines are generally (with a couple well-known exceptions) extremely far away from the closest depots.

I allready mined without a mule and many people use frogging and I can transport much more iron /coal in a shorter timespan than one could farm or bake even with a mule, as Farming is the most boring craft in illarion anyway, not to forget maybe one of the highest food cost aswell.

Not to mention that what you dig up tends to get even a strong character encumbered rather fast. It's pretty unreasonable IMO to assume that someone would dig 20 iron,
run all the way from the Northern Mine to GR castle (if he's not kicked away for intruding or something) to deposit it and then go back again. Mining shouldn't be a monopoly of Varshikar and Silverbrand, but if it's simply a waste of time and effort to do mining anywhere else, then it will be just that.

There is a mine next to Trollsbane which has, last time I checked, Iron aswell, so walking all way up to north mine would be stupid anyway, but taking that away, its perfectly fine that those ressources are hard to gather, everyones ressource is basicly hard to gather, its strangly enough only the smiths, who allready posses the most money ig anyway, who keep their constant whining, you want iron or coal, go to silverbrand or varshikar, both mining licenses are incredible easy to pay and both mines give a nice rate, its not like these places are unreachable as you make them out.

Mining without a cow is just a pain in the ass (especially if you would like to do something else except to mine at some point during the week). Illarion is a multiplayer game indeed, but it should not be one just for smiths and miners, and not for farmers/lumberjacks/cooks/carpenters/et all.

Cooks/baker needs goods from farmers and fruit collectors.
Farmer need to wait incredible long until they even get their crop, a good miner gets atleat twice as much ressources as a farmer in the same time
and a miner even can sell his mined goods for more money than any other crafter or ressource gatherer could, so its more than balanced, more work but better sellprice.

Since I'm not entirely sure if 'make game more difficult' by taking away the mules/cows from the other craftsmen is necessarily the right course of action here, you make your own conclusions of 'what should be done'.

Make other people depend more on other crafter and I say "yeah do it" but as everyone just uses smithed goods anyway I gotta say "No way josé"

Yeah, I used a cow in the mines. Why? Because then I just need to focus on mining for an hour or two, and then be done with that. Maybe do something really enjoyable, like.. use the multiplayer aspects of the game.

Yeah and..I never said you couldn't do that did I, there are still places where you can go with cows the rest is just harder to get, you hear a lumberjack complaining that he must run from tree to tree, you hear a farmer complain that they must run from town a to get ingredient a and then to field b to get ingrdient b and then wait for weather c to get ingredient c?

Do you have any clue how boring and troublesome to arrange such a three-player arrangement would be?

Yes, because I allready did it and its far from different or boring.

Yeah, Nitram mines, and Martin stands for two hours by the depot, waiting when Vilarion runs between the two places and then divide the gain by three. That sounds quite retarted.

Wrong, its quiete efficent, its an incredible fast way to gain ressources even out of remote places, if you are unable to writte #me's while you are standing still..well dunno might go for multitasking.

Fine way to idle and waste time in a highly inefficient manner. If you turn the tables, how often could you find partners for farming if you had to get three (3!) people to do that?

I allready planted and harvested with two people at the same time, maybe if your chars would not be such a stuck up manner, someone would actually want to join them, just a guess herethoguth because i jsut know one of your chars after all.
Dividing work while Farming, specially grain, is a great way to plant bigger fields without the fear of loosing half of the crops because you don't have the time to run back to your depot.

What about noobs?

three newbs are just as good as three experienced players, such actions are good tolearn rp anyway, because its easy topicture and play how your char slowly starts to get tired.


Your only true argument is "everyone else has it easy as pie, so let me have it easy aswell", but ultimatly you fail to see the reason why mining and smithing gets harder and harder, there are too many smiths allready and too many depend on smithed goods, thus mining should be harder, make a proposal how to increase the need for the other parts of the crafting system and I will gladly think about your points again, but only because you are too lazy to search someone to mine with you, well thats not the fault of the devs is it?

[HolyKnight]

Mining without a mule is stupid. No miner in the history of the world would be so stupid as to carry ores on their back, unless they were slaves. I agree a miner can make more coin then a farmer with his resources. Hell I just read that someone bid 85 silvers on 1000 iron ore. Making things tediously boring just to minimize the amount of a certain resource that enters the economy is just foolish. I can tell you right now who will be the ones doing that job PGers or the ones that have the resource nearby. No decent RPer is going to sit there for HOURS doing a craft that is ridiculously tedious when they could be rping.

It goes back to a very old argument about whether skilling (in this case resource gaining) should be made easy to allow for more rp. However, with the new crafting system that was introduced this argument is thwarted a little bit since you can RP and skill. Now we have as Cromwell pointed out a pathetically BORING craft that can be really aggravating to say the least when you could be rping. Err it was a long time ago but when I was going to have a miner go to silverbrand to get a mining license it was rather steep for my budget and the amount I actually mined a month.

I have to take this ... topic a different direction. As I see it there is a dilemma here that could be solved ig. There use to be a miner's guild but it was taken over by Goldburg. If there are people ig that are fed up with having to walk all the way to the north mine all it takes is four people to start a little guild and build a trade house or building for housing their ores near the mine. Sure the resources are terrible to get but hey it doesn't have to be huge. Then again I guess there is always that argument that there are too many buildings as is. *shrugs* Always more then one side to a discussion

[Sundo Raca]

You may be able to rp and skill at the same time in the current system, but its pretty boring typing out repetitive #mes while in the mines by yourself

[Tanistian_Kanea]

the guild idea is good, as for buildings the map is to small. you can get from one town to another in about 5 minutes. from one end to the other in about 15 minutes. this is crazy even IG, we are talking about a matter of an hour tops. map should be bigger with more empty room. i'd love to see it take 5 minutes to get to grey rose. instead of like 30 seconds. i'd still be happy with it taking 10 minutes to get to grey rose.

[Llama]

the guild idea is good, as for buildings the map is to small. you can get from one town to another in about 5 minutes. from one end to the other in about 15 minutes. this is crazy even IG, we are talking about a matter of an hour tops. map should be bigger with more empty room. i'd love to see it take 5 minutes to get to grey rose. instead of like 30 seconds. i'd still be happy with it taking 10 minutes to get to grey rose.

That would decrease concentration of players... badly.

Also try getting a mule and walking to the north mine, tell me how long it takes you

[HolyKnight]

Actually for the player base Gobaith is too big.

You think the walk from Grey rose to the mine is short... Sir or ma'am Gobaith is 9 times bigger then it used to be

That is why I said adding another building is usually taboo.

[JonathanSmith]

Completely agree with Cromwell.

[Mr. Cromwell]

@Pell.
Sorry for the delayed response.

So, let me get this straight:

Basically the summary of your position is that;
1.) You are jealous because smiths make more money than your character does in her craft, and see this as a (the?) fundamental problem.
2.) Your solution for this problem is to hinder one of the few crafts where there actually is considerable amount of player to player trade going.
3.) Think that it's a good idea to make the game a pain in the ass and timeconsuming for the players, instead of rewarding and fun even for those who don't have uber-powergamer attention span and endless time available.

Okay...

Having had a dwarf for way too many years, I can say that I have experience with group-working (The legendary dwarven goldmining expeditions, for instance) and know that they are nice special events, but your suggestion that these should be the normal method of getting one of the most important and basic resource in the game begs the question: Are you completely detached from reality, or just selfish to the point of it being funny in a sad way? You know, constructive would be to try and figure out ideas to help other crafts instead of ruining the ones which are working at least a little.

Ps. It's not a good way to learn RP for newbies. Sheesh. One guy digs, the other transports and the third stores. Wonderful RP. Newbies find the game to be difficult enough already without such idiocy.

[Lennier]

We think about solutions, to prevent to have a cow during all kind of crafting... But it could be difficult as i understood Nitrams words.

[Mr. Cromwell]

We think about solutions, to prevent to have a cow during all kind of crafting... But it could be difficult as i understood Nitrams words.

Regardless; When making decisions concerning fixed resource-extraction areas such as mines, you should consider the viability of such location first. Throwing mines to areas which are hard/pain in the ass to access (the infamous northern mine, for instance) is a quick way to ensure that these extraction areas will be used only seldom. I assume that this is in fact not the goal you want to achieve most of the time, so perhaps something should be changed?

I can see why you would prevent people from using mules in mines which are located near depots, but when you have a mine located a considerable distance away.. A mule is the only way to ensure that the players are not only wasting their time by mining there.

[Lennier]

True and noone will be against it to use a mule to transport ores/coal from the mine to a settlement.

What we do not like is how every single person uses a mule as mobile depot everywhere. It is a tool to transport goods. Not to have them behind the char in every ressource gaining process (mining, farming, luberjacking) or next of the workbenches/smitherys.

The compromiss we want is, that in interaction of more than only 1 player the mule is under control of its master outside of a mine during the miners do their work to get ores inside.

Same with lumberjacking and every other process. The miner or lumberjacker does his origin work and can not control the mule in same time.

~~~~~~~~~~

To the mines:
If good mines are too far away of settlements/depots, maybe these mines are a good spot for real new settlements - Not like them in the past, which are placed in mid of nowhere.

[Mr. Cromwell]

Of course, that's a solution, though with the effort and restrictions that surround the construction of even the simplest of houses mean it is not exactly the smallest of tasks. On the other hand, if you decide to sap the ability of people to accumulate such extra wealth as the project requires (by making it slower and harder to mine), you are also simultaneously making the project that much harder for those who actually care about the problem IG. This has an eerie ring of a catch 22.

Mining economics for dummies:
Renting a cow requires a certain additional minimum amount of ores you need to mine to 'break even' after the usual food expense. Since Miners don't exactly mine for free, you need to pay them, or divide the ores by the number of miners; you are looking at even LONGER mining session times, as the miners have to work harder to make the single trip non-pointless for all involed.

Waiting is something which is quite (extremely) boring for the "master". I can say that with personal experience from such two people mining and it didn't help much that the master was fishing. If you even go to disable the ability to do other crafts, then you can bet your ass that the master will be idling (and definitely won't be having any fun at all).

If it's the official staff policy to encourage people to idle by the cargo as others frantically mine, well..

Allow me to present my official response to your policy:

[Lennier]

Mining economics for dummies:
Renting a cow requires a certain additional minimum amount of ores you need to mine to 'break even' after the usual food expense. Since Miners don't exactly mine for free, you need to pay them, or divide the ores by the number of miners; you are looking at even LONGER mining session times, as the miners have to work harder to make the single trip non-pointless for all involed.

I remember on days in past, when guilds made "working days" to solve such tasks together. That is also how the dwarves of silverbrand support their smiths (PG or not). That is the benefit to have friends which work together to reach a common goal. A real reason to found a guild (not to get agreement for a building).

Waiting is something which is quite (extremely) boring for the "master". I can say that with personal experience from such two people mining and it didn't help much that the master was fishing. If you even go to disable the ability to do other crafts, then you can bet your ass that the master will be idling (and definitely won't be having any fun at all).

Who said, that the master/guard of the mule need to idle? First option is that all members guard the mule in rotation. Second is that they have some more complex roleplay except of idling and mining. Maybe they start a campfire to rest and relax during breaks... Who knows.

In alternate he also could mine. Of Course! But an unwatched mule could be stolen easily. - Apropos I would prefer to lift up the time period of an uncontroled mule before the mule get removed by the server.

[Vern Kron]

If we are changing mules, then perhaps we could add a 'tie to stake' feature. That way when we leave the mules to do some sort of tedious work, we don't risk lossing the mule. An average miner can get about one whole rock destroyed before he is significantly slower, and can not mine any longer. But during that time, it could be very easily to lose a mule, so maybe we could get a use for the rope and have it be used to tie the mule to an object.

[Kevin Lightdot]

Problem though with the getting a group together, not everyone can play at the times people who can/will communicate with them can play(Think Europeans that don't speak German.), and it can take an annoying amount of arranging.

Going in groups can be awesome if you can get a group together, but this is a lot easier for fighting than it is for mining because mining is boring.

[Borine]

You could always just try and buy a license for the Goldburg/silverbrand mine because the bottom of Goldburg has a depot near quite a few rocks...

[Ivar Kraftimarm]

my opinion is, do it like you do with monsters. easy access for simple ressources like coal, iron and stones (like flies, mummies etc. which you can kill easy alone). hard access for special resources like merinium, gold or gems (like dragons, drows, lich etc.).

that works everywhere fine (fighting or treasure maps) and so you can have fun alone or in a group.

[Llama]

my opinion is, do it like you do with monsters. easy access for simple ressources like coal, iron and stones (like flies, mummies etc. which you can kill easy alone). hard access for special resources like merinium, gold or gems (like dragons, drows, lich etc.).

that works everywhere fine (fighting or treasure maps) and so you can have fun alone or in a group.

The problem is that there is no 'intermediate' resource.

Allright, making coal iron and copper easily accessible is allright.

But what are you going to make rare? Smiths don't need gems, nor gold. Also merinium is MEANT to be amazingly rare.

[Ivar Kraftimarm]

believe in me, smiths need gems and gold...

[Vern Kron]

Fine smiths do. Gems and other things aren't usually used in smithing, unless you are talking about the -very- high end things, then I believe you may need them.