Mining is tedious

So far, I have upgraded to the copper pick, and trying to explore underground is extremely tedious. most of the cave networks aren't extensive enough to stick to exclusively, and even if they were, just mining ores alone is annoying. It is simply painful. by the copper pick you should be able to work with basic materials at a good speed. Making it take longer isn't making the game funner, it isn't making the later upgrades seem more desirable, it just makes it so I don't want to put up with hours of mining to get anywhere. At any given level of upgrades, your equipment should be serviceable against what you are facing for that level. This picks are not serviceable at their level. Even going through dirt takes a long time. This isn't even something you are doing occasionally, you have to mine a lot.
The playtime doesn't need to be inflated like this. It should come from exploring, fighting, and building, not chewing holes into rock. I normally love exploring caves and mining resources in games like this, but the mining speed has sapped all of the satisfaction I get out of it.

 

Your right, but its not really mining, its about the cave system. It needs to be adjusted so that you can find multiple caves to explore. If you want to mine, best bet though is head to an arid world, and go mine through the gravel/fine sand since it collapses. Can mine extremely fast since you do not take damage from falling objects as of yet.

 

The caves are usually really big, And sometimes a mini-dungeon. For instance, I found a giant cave swarming with barrel fires, Tents, And bandits. This is where I found my first weapon.

The mining is really fast due to the 3x3 mining radius on the pickaxes. What more do you want?

 

improving the cave system would help, but even if you don't have to tunnel, the act of collecting the ores is tedious.

the 3 x 3 mining radius just offsets the blocks being so tiny. I just got done spending way too much time standing in one spot holding down my mouse button and waiting for things to happen to I can move on. That is not clever gameplay, it is just wasting my time.

 

The difference in mining dirt/sand to cobblestone is ridiculous especially the one with ores in them. Even though they admitted that they have improved the speed a "bit", I would say the current speed is just ridiculously slow.

The current cave generation is also not helping, since most of the caves are too small and disconnected from one to another.

 

I don't think it's tedious. It just seems that way but if you upgrade your pickaxe you'll be much faster. Copper is nothing compared to a gold or diamond pickaxe. As longer there is a possibility to get better equipment to be faster on harder blocks, i really don't see the problem.

 

Have you ever tried digging dirt with a real pickaxe? How about we tell the devs that it's too unrealistic and the pick should mine dirt slower because it honestly should. We should be crafting shovels. And have you ever used a real pick on solid rock? Even if you haven't common sense should tell you that it's not going to explode into your pocket in less than 2 seconds. And I think the reason ores take longer to mine is because metal is generally harder than stone.... it's WHY metal picks work better than stone picks... right?

And the OP is complaining about mining speed with a COPPER PICKAXE!! Good lord, man, upgrade that thing before complaining about mining speed. My platinum pick gets me through almost everything in decent time (except obsidian, magmastone, and the like).

... Wow, this thread upset me more than I initially realised. I need to go lie down

 

but you have to spend hours on the low end picks. Those hours of gameplay being unfun is a problem, even if you eventually get past it. IF the low levels in a game are not fun, it is a problem, even if the top level is a complete blast. I don't need to be cutting through everything like butter using the low level stuff, but it doesn't need to be painful.

 

I never had problems with the copper pickaxe. It cut everything up pretty darn fast.

 

IMO Fun=/=Realism, sure you can be realistic about the system but is it fun? for me it's not.

I have gold pickaxe and it still takes quite a while to mine cobblestone.

I would not complain if I didn't have to dig most of the time to find another cave. I don't mind if I only need to dig to get ores or cobblestone for crafting but for spelunking in this game you will need to dig a lot.

 

Another one of these threads. The beta is the first THREE tiers out of TEN. You are suppose to mine slow at first.. The diamond pickaxe already blows through most materials very quickly, and it's not even close to endgame.

Welcome to the genre. How is this any different than Minecraft or Terraria? If you think it's wasting your time then these type of games aren't for you.

Keep in mind you are not suppose to be able to easily get through hard materials with a crappy pickaxe. If you mining all the way down at the core with a copper pickaxe, of course your going to have a bad time. Stay in the dirt/sand/grass/gravel areas until you can make better.

 

I didn't play terraria much ,but minecraft was great. Mining was a lot faster, you can make tunnels, chew through ore, and would be going on good picks very quickly. You could get up to iron in 10 minutes. I have spent hours in minecraft mining around and spelunking, and it works well because you can chew through the blocks rather quickly. mining dirt barehanded in minecraft is faster than using a copper pick in starbound. If I had a shovel in minecraft it would be a breeze, I can level hills carve out mountainsides. I don't have to spend hours slogging through it.Also consider that any given ore block in mincraft is worth a lot more. New pick? 3 blocks. full set of armor? 24. So the time you do spend mining out veins of ores pays out very quickly.

How can I make better picks when I can't find any gold/diamonds? I am down really deep and I've seen 2 gold ore so far. If I am supposed to be in the dirt, then the materials to upgrade past it need to be in the dirt.

 

Seems like you want to progress through the game really fast. Don't know why I didn't find mining so tedious when I started and I was only using the rock pickaxe. You're not even on a silver pickaxe and want to jump up to the gold and diamond ones. If a planet isn't yielding enough stuff you need, try a different one.

 

Agreed Minecraft mining was a lot funner and that was a game specifically about mining for stuff. Starbound is theretically about exploring new planets and building bases yet you are forced to spend a ton of time mining with a slow pick. Upgrading doesn't even speed you up that much.

Consider in Minecraft an iron pick takes 0.5s to chew threw a 'block' and you must mine two in order to tunnel foward or one to move straight down. In Starbound the diamond pick the highest tier pick we have right now that takes considerable effort to get seem to take ~1-2 seconds to to mine a 3x3 'block' and you still need to mine 2 to move foward or on to move down exactly as in Minecraft.

The highest tier is twice as slow as the lowest in Minecraft and yet you require massively more ore for everything. It all adds up to extremely tedious mining when you can't find good caves.

 

I will respectfully disagree with that right there, being an avid minecrafter myself. Digging dirt barehanded doesn't take long, sure, but you know what? A copper pickaxe in Starbound pulls up 9 dirt a helluva lot faster than you could in minecraft.

Again I will respectfully disagree. In minecraft 3 ores will get you 3 bars. That also 3 blocks to break... individually. In Starbound, you can break up to 9 ore at once, effectively giving you 4.5 bars. You might be thinking "But it takes 8 bars to make/upgrade a pick!" well... in Starbound, we have a repair system. It only takes 3-4 ORE of the same type as your pick to FULLY REPAIR IT. If that's not enough for you, you can repair a diamond pickaxe with COPPER ORE, which comes by the truck loads in late game!

Again, you are playing Starbound, not Minecraft. Fly to other planets... preferably higher level than what you started on. Your odds of finding goods ores is much better. Although you can find decent pockets of gold on a level 1 world, your odds are much higher on a level 10 world.

 

What?! A diamond pickaxe takes up to 2 seconds to break 9 blocks?! Wow... that's pretty damn fast. I must grind harder to get one. Seriously, though, I still have a platinum pickaxe, as I've never found diamond outside of chests.
Besides, what were you digging through for it to take so long? Obsidian? Magmarock? Blaststone? Consider the same in minecraft? How fast do you dig through obsidian in minecraft? I mean, if we're all on the wagon to compare Starbound to minecraft, let's go ahead and do this. Tell me.. how long does obsidian take to mine in Minecraft? What was it again? 20 seconds or so with a diamond pick? Minutes with an Iron pick or less, am I right?

And let us not forget that in MINECRAFT your picks break, unless you go through the trouble of repairing them with experience that you likely got from an exp farm, that you spent HOW LONG building? In Starbound, we essentially have our picks forEVAR!

 

You know, I'm actually perfectly content with pickaxes the way they are right now.

If you consider that, at some point down the line, we may have mining drills, then I think you'll agree that the speed on pickaxes right now would fit in VERY nicely. They break soft blocks easily, but have a difficult time with harder blocks.

 

Complaining that mining is tedious in Starbound is like complaining that driving cars is tedious in Grand Theft Auto.

If your mining speed is too slow, there's your motivation to upgrade your pick. Or reach a point in the game where picks are obsolete and you're mining using a drill, explosives, mechs etc.

 

Hey, yeah, I forgot all about that! Dude, use bombs to mine if your pick sucks so bad! There, I gave you incentive to go exploring to find bombs. You're welcome.

 

Once you get your pick upgraded to gold, things get a little more manageable. Why you would make a pickaxe out of a super soft metal like gold (INSTEAD OF STEEL?) I have no idea. Getting the materials required to actually MAKE the pickaxe is the tedious part, as you will often have to dig your way through some pretty tough materials to get down deep. As someone mentioned previously, one of the best ways to get ores is to go to an arid or desert world and just powerblast through the sand. Not only does everything just fall right ontop of you for instant collection, but it also allows you to dig down to the deep parts of the planet much more quickly. There are only two real risks to this method:

1) You're mining in an area way higher level than your equipment and your cave in drops monsters from another chamber on top of you.
2) You cause a collapse into one of the many massive chambers in the deep parts of planets, and the fall kills you.

Totally worth it.