Is it just me or is there much less reason to go underground?

Theres a use for obsidian?

 

Not that I have seen. Though I've only been up through Tier 4 (31-40), but I don't think there is much after that since it's not implemented really. Obsidian is just a pain to mine through because it takes longer than normal stone, which is the norm in other games like MineCraft. When you have to go through 3-4 screens of it from the surface on a lava planet to get underground, that's when it's a pain. Bombs make my life so much easier.

 

From what I understand, this game is about space exploration more than it is about mining. I think they should keep the underground area the way it is, with maybe more valuable loot in chests, so people focus on hoping about from planet to planet.
EDIT: Shad0w, that text under your name made you my new favorite.

 

its not balanced. There's no reason to go underground because everything is on the surface.

That's the exact opposite of balance. That's unbalanced.

 

Going underground is great, you never know what you'll find, there's some weird disturbing stuff down there sometimes...If that's not enough for you already then I don't know what to tell you...

 

This is a good point. I've found a huge tar biome with harvest-able bone plants, a meat biome, and a cave that took four screens of space upward and two to the side, while I was digging.

 

I think you are right. There is too much surface content in the sense that every planet has surface content. The reason is probably if it were underground you'd never see 90% of it. The vertical dimensions of the planet are much greater than the horizontal, at least on small planets, and far easier to explore. Then again, civilization exists on the surface for a reason. I think if they did away with surface ores you'd have a good mixture. As it is, you can just walk the surface to find most of what you'll need in VERY HEALTHY amounts. Forcing you to go down, at least into a cave, for basic ores would be a better way of doing this. There would be a good mixture of above and below ground activity.

 

You find more metals underground.

 

Underground isn't finished yet, coming in the next update they are adding harder monsters with better drops. So it'll be more of an intensive to travel down there =)

 

This is what I wanted to hear

 

If I want ore ill just go to a smaller moon. Once you get down closer to the core you can find an abundance of silver/gold ore (in a T2 moon) otherwise yes I just run on the surface looking for random events. Hopefully going underground will be made more enticing as the beta goes on. Also I think some of the underground blocks (obsidian im looking at you) take waaaay to long to break even with a platinum pickaxe currently. I generally try and find a nice slime layer and search there.

 

It wasn't more than about a month prior to release that I recall them working on world gen and adding content underground. I doubt it is finished yet.

 

Just making the cave systems better (more connections or better lighting to "cool" areas) would help a ton. I love mining in games (Wurm I miss you), but for some reason I felt like there was very little reason to dig to the cores of planets. The work:reward ratio seems way off. I am especially sad because I spent a ton of time mining, and then I read others' posts about getting legendary weapons just by running left on each planet they travel to, where I never found a legendary weapon by digging.

 

* laughter*
Dude. I found a little fairy/pixie/dwarf/something village underground where everything was made of money, okay. MONEY. That's a reason to go underground. Plus, ore, especially silver/gold, is money. Just pop that into a refinery, and ta-da. Screw getting pixels, you lose pixels when you die. Ore? Ore lasts forever.

 

As it stands, the mining speed is too slow to pique my interest in digging around underground too long. On the flip side, I spent hours digging vertical/horizontal tunnels in terraria, because I felt like I could actually move quick through the earth. But in starbound, the mining speed is way too slow.

 

Yeah I am surprised no one else noticed this. I made six refineries and fill them up to around 2k pixels, and whenever I need pixels I pull it from there.

 

You can even pull only half out by right-clicking. Protip. *nods* Oh, and you can repair any pickaxe with any ore, just pick up the ore and right-click the pickaxe. Get yourself a gold pickaxe and you'll breeze through the first 30% of the planets, down to about where silver/gold starts really spawning. There you go, heaps of cash. Don't like death penalties? Lol, there basically isn't one. Pixels you find laying around are bonus cash if you live long enough to spend it. Your real cash is the ore your (should) always carry around with you, along with a refinery. Found a shop and you're short some change? Plop down your refinery, pop in some ore, take it out and then put the thing away. Problem solved. Oh, another tip for easy mining. To save torches during the first 20% of the way down or so, just mine out the background. Sure, it doesn't work at night, but hey--don't be underground at night. Stuff gets stronger at night (level doubles), and stronger as you go underground. That's a baaaaad combination.

 

Well, I agree that there needs to be some additional content for underground but well, this IS still the Stage 1 beta. I'd expect that to be added somewhere around stage 2-3 or something, right now the groundwork is what's important.

Also, I'd always go underground to get the rarer ores easier. Iron, silver, gold and even platinum are much more abundant close to a planet's core rather than near the upper crust.

 

If the way you play Terraria is "by digging straight down", you were probably doing something wrong.

Exploring the surface caves and checking for chests makes exploring underground a lot easier. If instead of going naked, you go underground with a Spear, a dozen+ ropes, a Shine/Spelunker/Featherfall potion, some accessories - it speeds up your progress tenfold.

There's a good balance of surface and underground exploration there, though. If you want to improve, you need to go underground (actually, follow a certain "path"). And Starbound is still too early in development to condemn it, but right now there's not a lot of balance in that area (surface and planet exploration are infinitely easier and faster to progress).

 

Ehh, no. Many people spend their first few nights and days mining in caves, gathering resources, and finding heart crystals. Then they come to the surface and build their base. But, it definitely is your opinion.

@Zero(pS)