Mining is tedious

I think the tools are pretty okay as they are. It's really easy to get up to a copper pick, which is decent.

I do think that they need to modify caves a bit. In 15 hours of play I've yet to find a really good cave system. There are a lot of little caves that go down maybe 50-100 blocks, but I have only once or twice found one where when I saw something to mine it led me towards an adjoining cave or anything like that. I typically jump down a cave, shine my light around, see that there's nothing worth doing anything with, and go back to the surface. Occasionally there will be a nice vein of ore, I'll go mine that, shine my light into the walls and see nothing else, and go back to the top.

I think part of it is that I haven't found any chests or anything else unique in caves that I want to explore for (which is admittedly just because I lack knowledge of what can be found where) and resources are abundant enough on the surface that it seems like a waste of time to mess with caves.

In contrast to that I have to compare it to Terraria, where it seems inevitable that you will find a cave system where you end up just digging deeper and deeper because you always see something in the distance that makes you want to get to it.

I suppose the question is whether the devs want us to be digging deep or not. If not, then the current system makes perfect sense. If so, there's nothing incentivizing me, as a player who isn't looking up info online, to go spelunking.

 

I gather you can repair any type of pickaxe with any type of ore. I don't doubt that this will be fixed?

 

I believe that has been changed, you have to use ore of at least the same quality. However, repairs are fairly cheap.

 

Personally I feel the drill should mine faster than it currently does, and that that would solve the issue. The drill is unlocked much later, is restricted by the same tier progression as the pickaxe is, and costs vastly more minerals to make (I'm looking at you, 20 diamond 3k pixel diamond drill). It makes sense that it should be a good bit superior.

 

People who wish they could get a new faster pickaxe every 5 minutes are the exact same people who will come back to the forum later and say "I already did everything and this game is boring now, add more content."

 

I'm satisfied with the speed of mining as is. Sure the copper picks can be a tad slow in cobble stone but hey, you need to have some reason to upgrade if you are actually going to have a system of progression.

 

I like mining a lot. Sometimes, I even start screaming while I'm mining, simply because I can't handle the sheer sexual thrill that I'm bottling up inside as my Glitch crushes rocks with his big, strong, robotic arms and his giant, lenghthy pickaxe.

 

There's nothing to "fix". It's in the code to have even lesser-tier ore repair your Picks/Drills. Lesser ores just repair less per ore used however.

On-topic: For the most part the mining speed is reasonable, though it starts to become a tad sluggish for many of the "deep" minerals such as obsidian, some of the various types of "cobblestone", other stones, etc. Even using my Diamond Drill my speeds aren't quite what they should be on a lot of these dense minerals. In fact, the speed increases are hard to notice on anything that isn't a soft material like dirt, mud, etc. A 12 (?) tier mining tool that costs thousands to make and many rare minerals should be pretty efficient at any mineral you put in front of it, at least in my opinion.

 

i spent the first 6 hours of the game building a slipshod house out of random crap I picked up on the surface and wood wielding nothing more than a stone pickaxe. (No armor just overalls and a wedding veil) So I think tedious is really subjective as this thread as shown.

I think they would need to dramatically decrease ore amounts for it to become tedious for me personally.

 

I think mining speed is fine as it is, my opinion is similar to everybody who goes around difficult obstacles rather than going through them (Unless I spot a bunch of diamonds), but I would enjoy having a mining laser at a higher tier that mines a 4x4 so that I can mine a proper tunnel without readjusting my aim or using Morphball to mine a long 3 x 3 tunnel.

Also I'd just like to point out that in Starbound a 2x2 (not a 3 x 3) is equivalent to a block in minecraft. you are 2 blocks wide and 4 blocks tall.

 

but you still have to mine out 2 instances to pass through, which is the important part.

 

The biggest issue I'm having right now is that my Plat pick axe mines cobblestone at the same speed as a stone pickaxe. That should change.

 

Unless you're going straight down or diagonal. I prefer diagonal because you go 2 blocks each time you mine (and you can get back up easily), but I switch it up with straight down sometimes.
The trick with diagonal mining is that the entrance has to be 3x4, but after that it's great.

 

You should've been mining where I was mining this morning. I got there with a stone pick, since I was unable to find enough copper near the surface. The caves opened down to a deeper cave system surrounded by brick blocks which were ironically called "Soft Bricks". Took around (or over) 15 hits to break. There were tons of ores in there, but took me a good while to get anything worthy from there... Luckily, I got enough platinum right of the bat, and I could upgrade my pick up to it, but it still was tedious to mine there, even with that pickaxe. I eventually moved somewhere else, but I found exactly the same stuff there...

Mining in this game being tedious depends on which blocks your luck takes you to. I don't know if the first planet is always forest (has been for me) but if you spawn in that, well that means you'll have at least plenty of cobblestone to deal with. And it's actually cobblestone the block I have most issues with being so hard. I have issues with magmarock and blaststone and some other lava level stones which seem a bit overkill, but since lava level doesn't seem very fertile it may not be a concern.

I have more of an issue with some other stones that are more common right above that. But I strongly believe cobblestone shouldn't be so hard, really. Most of the times I started anew I simply ignored most of the ores that spawned in cobblestone because of that, unless they were huge chunks. Even with better picks I eventually decide to start ignoring cobblestone.

I also feel like shroom blocks should be softer.

 

In my opinion mining is actually too fast comparing with other games. It should take some time to get ores and the maximal area which can be digged should be 2x2 areas. Right now it's way too easy to get the next pickaxe or the next armor.

 

That has more to do with ore densities than mining speed. As people have pointed out, most mining does not occur by burrowing through tons of stone.

 

In my opinion either they should make it slower for a few types or blocks (as example copper on dirt or mud) or they should make the mining area smaller.

 

Making mining more tedious will not improve the game in any way, shape, or form.

 

I'd prefer it if ores could potentially spawn in large veins, currently you might find 3 or 4 platinum ore, keep looking, 1 more, keep looking, 5 more, keep looking...
Then eventually you have enough ore and you can go home and smelt it, it works but I'd like more of that exploratory feeling, knowing that you might stumble upon a vein full of ore that will last you for ages.

I know that you can sometimes find a significant amount of ore in one place, but I've only found say, 20 coal in the same place, not quite a vein of it.

 

Ah thank you.

Dont think my little bro knows how to do this yet, and neither do i. How do you repair it?

About speed of mining. After sitting down a bit and starting my own test character i think its fine. Im a hardcore gamer and i like the feeling of progressing with hard work and learning through tinkering. I think many that want it to be fast are maybe casual gamers that dont sit as long as us crazy ones? Im playing a lot of games that require you to think and practise etc to get good, and i dislike games where you learn everything in the first 15 minutes and then you repeat that over and over (simple FPS for example and arcade games (although some arcades can be fun time killers)).

Of the little ive seen so far i have but one complaint that doesnt revolve around mining and it would be that Starbound seems to lack a little of Terrarias "sparkle" so far. What i mean is the amazing light effects from weapons and magic plus lit up particles in Terraria. Even the braingun (lol!) have an electric zap but it didnt lit up in the night. Couldnt even see the zap during night. Maybe that comes later though, would be nice, and boy did i go off topic. Sorry guys wont happen again.