Originally posted by Noodle:

the skipping bonemass option is, in my opinion, simply a contrarian way of playing the game. It offers nothing better in terms of gameplay, and makes finding silver tedious at best (as electricdawn outlined).
It's like how some people will tell you that you can skip getting a metal axe to get fine wood. Yes! You can do it, but it's tedious and there is little point to doing it besides bragging rights (guess what though? no-one cares that you rolled a tree into another tree for a while/walked around the mountain randomly hammering the ground). Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean that you SHOULD.