Elizabeth Gold
Grandmaster
For those who are unaware of the change: Mining ore now has a chance to spawn an ore elemental, which was implemented to discourage bots from ruining the ingot market.
Anyway, overall I think most players like this change.
Now in order to deal with elementals, a lot of us miners had to adapt their templates. Before discussing that, I'd like to review the most common setups:
Craft miner:
Most mining templates pair up with crafting skills. This is due to the organic development where a player wants to be blacksmith and picks up mining to be self sufficient and recycle goods. At one point they pick up tinkering to make their own tools. There is also a lot of synergy with carpentry which leads to fitting in tailoring for BODS as well.
Core skills: Mining, Blacksmith, Tinkering
Optional skills: Carpentry, Tailoring, Magery, Musicianship
Filler skills: Meditation, Inscription, Alchemy, Bowcraft
Pure miner:
This template is mostly used by players who focus on mining as a source of income. Their main defence exists of hiding and recalling. This template is very suitable for recall/gate mining as it leaves enough room to pick up meditation. Most of these templates fill their skills up blacksmith and tailor but for the sole puprose of collecting BODS.
Core skills: Mining, Hiding, Magery
Optional skills: Meditation
Filler skills: Blacksmith, Tailoring, Evaluate Intelligence
Now let's review the adaptions needed for dealing with elementals:
Regarding the earth elementals themselves
Anyway, overall I think most players like this change.
- Retired miners are picking up their pickaxes again.
- Existing miners welcome the variation.
- Anti-bot supporters rejoice.
- @eppy and the other admins who got tierd of social inspection
Now in order to deal with elementals, a lot of us miners had to adapt their templates. Before discussing that, I'd like to review the most common setups:
Craft miner:
Most mining templates pair up with crafting skills. This is due to the organic development where a player wants to be blacksmith and picks up mining to be self sufficient and recycle goods. At one point they pick up tinkering to make their own tools. There is also a lot of synergy with carpentry which leads to fitting in tailoring for BODS as well.
Core skills: Mining, Blacksmith, Tinkering
Optional skills: Carpentry, Tailoring, Magery, Musicianship
Filler skills: Meditation, Inscription, Alchemy, Bowcraft
Pure miner:
This template is mostly used by players who focus on mining as a source of income. Their main defence exists of hiding and recalling. This template is very suitable for recall/gate mining as it leaves enough room to pick up meditation. Most of these templates fill their skills up blacksmith and tailor but for the sole puprose of collecting BODS.
Core skills: Mining, Hiding, Magery
Optional skills: Meditation
Filler skills: Blacksmith, Tailoring, Evaluate Intelligence
Now let's review the adaptions needed for dealing with elementals:
- Hiding: while it still offers some protection against players, you will get revealed by the elementals and instantly attacked. Meaning you can't hide again. Since it's unpredictive when an elemental appears, this skills becomes a lot less reliable. (-100 skillpoints)
- Combat skills: When an elemental appears, you'll find yourself often overburdend with ore. It's easier to pick up a weaponskill. While archery, fencing, swordfighting and macing offer you something offencive, you still need a second skill (tactics) to make it viable. (+200 skillpoints)
- Magery skills: While magery is already present in most templates, you'll want evaluate intelligence and meditation to make it a viable option. You'll need a defence option as well, so eighter you pick wrestling or anatomy in combination with evaluate intellige. (+300 skillpoints)
- Healing skills: If you went for combat skills, you'll need healing and anatomy. With magery, you are better off with using healing spells. (+200 skillpoints)
- At 100 mining skill, you get a 40% damage bonus on earth/metal elementals, so we can save 100 skillpoints with tactics/evalint.
- At 100 tinker skill, you can bond with a golum and resurrect it, so crafter templates can still function. Perhaps upgrade the golums using various resources (crafter/miner meta?).
- Encourage the use of pack animals (vet/animallore template for ressing), by giving packanimals a pack bonus. Perhaps introduce a new pack animals that have a mining requirement (crafter/miner meta?).
- Crafter Miner -> Golum Miner (mining, tinkering, magery)
- Pure miner ->
- Combat miner (mining, weaponskill, healing, anatomy)
- Mage miner (mining, wrestling, magery, meditation)
- *New* Pack miner (mining, animal lore, vetrinary, magery)
Regarding the earth elementals themselves
- Disable paragons: Please we can adapt to deal with earth elementals, with paragons we spend more time PVMing than mining. This is kinda overkill for an anti botting mechanism.
- Loot revisement: I'm pulling A LOT of valorite out of their corpses. Up to ten times what i would normally get out of a valorite node. Kinda beats the purpose of exploring new veins for valorite.
- A few mining themed rares would be most welcome, just like fishermen have. (and in all fairness, give the lumberjacking something too
) - Spawn cooldown: Sometimes you spawn several elements at once. An internal cooldown might be welcome to avoid this (unless you like october to be THE motm drop month).
