Chaoslink replied to Grind is in the eye of the grinder; what say you? July 27, 2022 @ 1:20:22 pm PDT
I don’t find the game too grindy, but it depends on the task. Let’s look at mining as an example.
Farming iron is pretty enjoyable. The biome alone provides risks and can be treacherous. The crypts provide a combination of mining, exploration and fighting so things don’t get stale. The excitement of opening a chest to a half stack feels good as well and the combat in such close quarters provides a nice change to the open terrain outside. While nodes don’t provide too much iron in and of themselves, they don’t take many hits to break each section and you can hit multiple sections simultaneously.
Tin can be enjoyable too. It’s rewarding to use your first Karve to ferry the load along the coast. Each node might only provide the yield once, but it’s 3-4 ore per with no trash drops and they’re pretty common. You also have the multitasking of harvesting the gulls and other bits in the area and you can keep moving constantly.
Silver can be rewarding as hell to find prior to having the Wishbone. The nodes have an interesting shape and digging under them isn’t too much effort and the massive lag spike followed up with the entirety dropping at once feels great. The yield isn’t too bad and the stone helps with your stockpiling for building stone structures. Mining manually allows hitting many sections at once as well amd sections break quickly.
Then there’s copper…. Massive nodes that require breaking a lot of terrain to get to. Each node takes quite a few hits and sections are large and spaced out making it hard to hit multiple at a time. The drop rate for ore includes 0, meaning multiple full bars of stamina might lead to no ore at all or just a single one. There’s not much to break up the monotony either as the only combat you’ll find is Greydwarf packs that are more annoying than threatening, especially as they pathfind away from you to throw rocks. They drop a lot of trash items meaning you’re constantly managing crap in your inventory and the stone, while nice to stockpile for later, isn’t immediately useful and weighs you down fast, especially since you’re not too likely to have the strength belt yet.
Copper… is a grind. It’s the one ore type I think should be looked at to improve player experience. I rush Iron just to avoid it, it’s that bad.
Farming iron is pretty enjoyable. The biome alone provides risks and can be treacherous. The crypts provide a combination of mining, exploration and fighting so things don’t get stale. The excitement of opening a chest to a half stack feels good as well and the combat in such close quarters provides a nice change to the open terrain outside. While nodes don’t provide too much iron in and of themselves, they don’t take many hits to break each section and you can hit multiple sections simultaneously.
Tin can be enjoyable too. It’s rewarding to use your first Karve to ferry the load along the coast. Each node might only provide the yield once, but it’s 3-4 ore per with no trash drops and they’re pretty common. You also have the multitasking of harvesting the gulls and other bits in the area and you can keep moving constantly.
Silver can be rewarding as hell to find prior to having the Wishbone. The nodes have an interesting shape and digging under them isn’t too much effort and the massive lag spike followed up with the entirety dropping at once feels great. The yield isn’t too bad and the stone helps with your stockpiling for building stone structures. Mining manually allows hitting many sections at once as well amd sections break quickly.
Then there’s copper…. Massive nodes that require breaking a lot of terrain to get to. Each node takes quite a few hits and sections are large and spaced out making it hard to hit multiple at a time. The drop rate for ore includes 0, meaning multiple full bars of stamina might lead to no ore at all or just a single one. There’s not much to break up the monotony either as the only combat you’ll find is Greydwarf packs that are more annoying than threatening, especially as they pathfind away from you to throw rocks. They drop a lot of trash items meaning you’re constantly managing crap in your inventory and the stone, while nice to stockpile for later, isn’t immediately useful and weighs you down fast, especially since you’re not too likely to have the strength belt yet.
Copper… is a grind. It’s the one ore type I think should be looked at to improve player experience. I rush Iron just to avoid it, it’s that bad.
5:13 pm, July 29, 2022