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Guide to Mining: Difference between revisions
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Added Mining: 201
(Created page with "'''Written by RandomTyrant, transferred by Blukey'''. More than half the people I see who go into the mines end up dead in a ditch underneath a Goliath somewhere and I usuall...") |
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Now, you have finally learned the basics of being a miner. You definitely could have figured it all out on your own, like I did - but where's the fun in that? After playing a few shifts as miner, if you feel confident enough, feel free to look at Mining 201 for advanced mining tips and tricks. | Now, you have finally learned the basics of being a miner. You definitely could have figured it all out on your own, like I did - but where's the fun in that? After playing a few shifts as miner, if you feel confident enough, feel free to look at Mining 201 for advanced mining tips and tricks. | ||
= Mining 201: Advanced Dwarven Tactics = | |||
So you're familiar with the piss poor user interface and how to use it to mine! Congratulations. The hard part is out of the way, and we can get into the nitty-gritty of how to be a robust miner. This will cover a variety of important topics for any miner aspiring to greatness. | |||
=== Efficiency === | |||
The most important trait of any miner is their efficiency, or rather, how quickly they can complete their job at a minimum of loss of health and potential scores. There are a number of methods you can use to increase your efficiency, and while I will not list all of them, I will offer a few suggestions that any miner could benefit from, assuming they don't already use them. | |||
=== Routes === | |||
The mining asteroid has two main areas divided by a crack in the asteroid, and a third, additional one that rarely if ever comes up. There is the eastern half of the asteroid, where the main mining station and the northern mining station are located. This is where you are immediately after you exit the shuttle. If you step out the airlocks next to the mining hardsuits, you will be able to mine through the eastern section quite easily. The eastern section is populated by zero monsters, but as a trade-off, has much less common rare ores. Beginning miners may find it prudent to stay in this area until they feel confident in their abilities. | |||
However, any bolder miner will naturally seek more rare ores, and larger concentrations of them. The western portion of the asteroid, which is significantly larger than the eastern section, is like a flame, and miners are moths. There are many, many monsters here, but the potential profits are much greater. There are three paths you may take to reach this section: you can go west from the hardsuit room, cross the bridge, and exit out through the southern airlocks; you can go north till you reach the northern mining station, then go west and cross that bridge; or you may just as well make, or find, an opening in the rock of the eastern half and cross the void to the other side and dig your way in from there. All three options are more or less equally viable, though most miners tend to use the southwestern bridge and end up in that same area, which means greater competition for ores. | |||
This means that a prudent and lonely miner may find it more profitable to go north and cross that bridge, or make thine own path in the rock. Either way, you immediately cut down on competition. That is, unless, of course, you prefer to operate as a team, in which case you should definitely go the southwestern route and follow the other miners. Be sure to tell them that you wish to work together, or they might find you suspicious, like a ore thief, and seek to be rid of you. | |||
Ultimately, these are minor details and you are as likely to find as many ores and monsters on the western half of the asteroid on any path as the other. It may all come down to personal preference at the end of the day. I, for example, simply prefer the northern route even though the southern route has more allies who can help you in your time of need. | |||
Ah, and the third section of the mining asteroid that I mentioned before is the labor camp, which is a relatively small section with no monsters and very, very little amounts of rare ores bordering on none. No miner should waste their time in this area. It is to the far west, divided from the main asteroid by only a small crack of space. You can technically mine your way through to the labor camp station and ask security to escort you back to the space station if you are terribly wounded or simply do not want to walk all the way back through the asteroid, but don't make it a habit, and mining your way into the labor camp will create a breach in the atmosphere that makes it uninhabitable for the prisoners who sometimes end up there. Also, the prisoners could kill you. You have been warned. | |||
=== Health === | |||
On many occasions you may find yourself at brown or worse health and no hivelords in sight. At this point your movement speed has decreased dramatically. This would be the time to call for a mining medic, or if you are a mining medic, to patch yourself up. Sometimes there are no mining medics, however, or they're all dead and they wouldn't have been of any use anyways. In these situations, there are a few options you may take to recover your health and not have to go all the way back to medbay for a doctor to spend five minutes trying to patch you up. | |||
First, you can steal the medikit in Cargo or in the mining station infirmary. Or steal both. You have enough space in your pack for them. Sure, it's not very helpful to anyone and everyone might call you a selfish prick, but at least you can heal yourself on the go. If there are very few miners around, it's more palatable to do so. It is up to you ultimately, as other miners do rely on the medkit in these places to patch themselves up on the way back from a long haul. And if someone else takes it before you, be sure to call them a total scumbag asshole jerkwad chode, or some other colorful combination of curses. Unfortunately it is not allowed to kill people for stealing medical supplies, so you'll have to wait for him to get torn to shreds by a goliath before you can loot the medkit off of his corpse. | |||
The second, less powerful, less time-efficient, but more team-oriented option is to drag yourself back to the nearest mining station (the northern station if you are in the north, or the southwestern station if you are in the south, or the main mining station if you are close to that one) and eat something. All of the mining stations are equipped with food items. Donk pockets are available in the secondary stations, and a full vending machine plus donk pockets is available in the main station. Eating, especially if you are hungry (which is indicated by a burger icon on the right end of the screen and a yellow or brown tab above it), heals you a bit because of the small amount of nutriment in food. It will not fully heal you by any means, but it can turn your health from brown to a pale green, or from red to a darker yellow. This option does not cut into the medical supplies of the other miners, too, so team players will prefer to do this. | |||
Remember to put a donk pocket in the microwave and heat it up to increase the healing value. Do not add more than one at a time. | |||
And, lastly, of course, you can simply keep digging in the hopes of finding a hivelord that you can murder and eat its heart out. This will fully replenish your health and hunger, but it is risky as you could run into many other kinds of monsters instead. Do note that you cannot kill a hivelord and carry its heart in your inventory for just when you need it - the heart will expire and go bad quickly, leaving you with nothing. It is better to use it as soon as you can. | |||
=== Inventory Management === | |||
This is a more controversial topic, and I've already covered some the core tenets of it in Mining 101 by teaching new players to put their ID in their PDA and get rid of the internals box and so on. Of more importance is the ever-broiling argument over mining satchels vs. ore boxes. | |||
That is to say, some miners prefer to carry two mining satchels instead of a mining satchel and an ore box. Sounds strange? You are not wrong. | |||
See, with two mining satchels you can pick up up to 100 rare ores. That is quite a lot and on average, one mining satchel full of rare ores is worth about 1000 mining points when redeemed. However, you are explicitly abandoning any thought of taking iron ores or sand. In this situation, it is prudent to discard your shovel as you won't be needing it and it frees up space in your backpack. The second mining satchel occupies the freed space, more or less. | |||
But why, you might ask, would you go without an ore box and thus forsake the lesser ores as well as be forced to return to the station more regularly? It is quite counter-intuitive. There's a few reasons for that. First, pacing oneself is vital to a miner. "One more vein of plasma" you might say, and then get killed by a goliath. If you regularly make trips to and from the station not only does the station get to benefit from your rare ores more quickly, but you also get mining points more quickly, and RnD will be able to make advanced optical meson scanners and mining drills or even diamond mining drills for you earlier in the shift. With an ore box, there is no hard pace setter and you may be tempted to simply go for a full circuit of the entire asteroid before redeeming your ores. This is terribly inefficient. | |||
On top of that, some miners get tired of having to ctrl+click ore boxes and then let go of them to fight monsters and then pull them again. Then you also have to keep track of it, and losing your ore box is a terrible prospect. They also obscure a portion of your vision while you're pulling them and can obscure rock while you're mining if they're beside you, which means you have to spend a couple more seconds digging, which can be frustrating. | |||
On the other hand, some miners prefer to literally pick up everything and kitchen sink and while it won't increase their profit margins all that much, it will potentially appease their obsessive-compulsive disorder. Double satchels is technically more efficient if you do get upgraded mining equipment from it, while the ore box would be more efficient if there is no upgraded equipment available and you intend to make only a single, broad trip through the entire asteroid without having to stop and go back to redeem your ores. There is no necessarily right or wrong choice here, only a matter of personal preference. | |||
== Equipment == | |||
From the get-go, miners have to choose between three essential pieces of equipment. On top of that, they have the chance to acquire improved gear from research and development, assuming the scientists aren't useless twats that shift. Here is a breakdown of these items and how they can affect your mining style and experience. | |||
=== Resonator === | |||
These things are fairly simple melee weapons that can also be used to mine. They cannot mine multiple tiles of rock at the same time, but in exchange, they instantly break a tile of rock and the cooldown between hits is shorter than the time it takes for a pickaxe to break through rock. I've seen many miners eschew pickaxes entirely in favor of these and just dig one tile wide tunnels through the asteroid. You do move faster than digging three tile wide tunnels with a pickaxe that way, but you are endangering yourself by doing so as you do not leave an avenue for escaping or fighting goliaths (hivelords and basilisks are less of an issue). This is an absolutely shitty practice and anyone who does it should feel bad because you are not following the dwarven way. Loser. | |||
Resonators do create little energy bubbles when you swing them, and said bubbles last for a few seconds before popping. When they pop, they deal a little bit of damage. It is possible to kill goliaths by luring them into the bubbles, but it is a feat of timing and patience that I do not personally care for as the bubbles last far too long to be practical in battle, unless you are just brawling it out with a basilisk or hivelord. | |||
=== Proto-Kinetic Accelerator === | |||
"This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true... My rifle and I know that what counts in war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, or the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit. | |||
My rifle is human, even as I am human, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strengths, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its barrel... We will become part of each other." - excerpt from the Rifleman's Creed | |||
This, this is how you kill Goliaths solo and without taking damage. It has a range of two tiles in any direction, and it can destroy tiles of rock just like the resonator can, but it is much slower at doing so. It deals heavy damage per hit, but it takes around eight to bring down a goliath. It does not deal much damage at all in an area with an atmosphere, it is only practical in the vacuum of space. It does not have a limited amount of ammunition, the only limitation is that you must cock it each time you fire. If you master this weapon, you will be able to bring down ten or more goliaths in a single shift without healing. I have done so (record is ten goliaths in a row without heals, with an eleventh goliath killed after healing). To fire it at things adjacent to you, you must click past the thing you're trying to hit, or else it won't fire. It is less efficient in a fight against basilisks and hivelords than melee weaponry. Keep your pickaxe near, it will suffice for those. | |||
Each shot from one of these in a vacuum deals 30 damage. | |||
=== Mining Drone === | |||
It's shit. Don't waste your time with it. You have to pull it behind you, which means you can't use an ore box (double satchels method is fine, but it sucks for other reasons too). It has two settings, ore collection and wildlife combat. If you set it to ore collection it will go around collecting ores on the ground for you, but unlike an ore box it does not have infinite space inside it. If you set it to combat mode, it will engage the nearest monster with its kinetic accelerator and mining drill. Unfortunately, it will shoot you in the fucking back with its gun because it has no sense of friendly fire. Which hurts. A lot. | |||
You can kill a goliath by working together with this thing, but you will still take huge amounts of damage and this thing will almost certainly be destroyed, leaving you with nothing. Avoid this pile of junk like the plague. It's not that it doesn't have uses, but rather that the other two options are far superior to it. You can repair any damage caused to a mining drone by clicking on it with a welder in your active hand with the help intent, but if it's destroyed, you cannot fix it. | |||
=== Optical Meson Scanners === | |||
These allow you to see through walls and see rare ores when you use a mining scanner, which means all tiles of rock, so you can see where iron veins and other tunnels are from your position. Moreover, they work even without a light source, but you will not see items or actors (people, monsters, etc.) without a light source and your range of vision of items and actors is still limited by the brightness of your light. It's not strictly essential to miners since you can find rare ores just fine without it, but if you're trying to avoid monster tunnels or trying to FIND monster tunnels, feel free to use this. | |||
=== Mining Drill, Sonic Jackhammer, and Diamond Mining Drill === | |||
These are straight upgrades of the pickaxe, greatly reducing the time it takes to dig through a single tile of rock in order from most time to least time spent digging. Mining drills and diamond drills require rare ores, so it is in your interests to deliver them to science so that they'll have the materials to make such things. Sonic Jackhammers can be purchased from mining vendor machines for 500 points and they are superior to standard mining drills but still inferior to diamond drills in terms of how quickly they dig. All of these deal the same amount of damage as a pickaxe. With a diamond drill, digging is almost instantaneous. You have a chance of finding sonic jackhammers and diamond drills laying in randomized rooms on the asteroid by a corpse, usually with an oxygen tank nearby as well to prove that they were once miners. There will be more on artifacts later. | |||
=== Plasma Cutter === | |||
These are fun little things that you might recognize as being from Dead Space. They can be used to mine, but their real usefulness lies in their robustness in combat. They're like resonators but harder hitting, basically. Great for fighting xenomorphs, which are unfortunately almost never a thing on Yogstation, so these end up being pretty inefficient tools overall to miners. | |||
=== Gibtonite === | |||
Gibtonite as equipment? Huh? Well, if you disarm gibtonite with your mining scanner, you can mine through the rock around it and it leaves the deposit sitting there. You can pick this up (it takes both hands) and carry it around and drop it anywhere you want. Clicking on it with your pickaxe or resonator or shooting it with your accelerator will re-arm it and it will explode. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, gibtonite has a much smaller explosion radius after it has been disarmed once, and it is difficult to use them as portable bombs to clear rock away. It is usually far more efficient to simply let them explode in the place you find them, as the explosion is much larger and clears much more rock. | |||
=== ''Ripley'' Mining Mech === | |||
This is the standard mining mech, which robotics might give you. The advantages of these that they have their own health, their own atmospheric systems so you don't need a suit (but you should wear a hardsuit anyways), and they mine very quickly especially if they're equipped with a diamond drill. Also, you can instantly crit anyone by mining them with your drill, but that's more useful for antags. Unfortunately, these are not particularly durable things and goliaths will make short work of you. On top of that, you need to charge it every now and then at one of the mining stations or it will run out of power and shut down. Plus, they're slow and turn slowly. They're an option you can mess around with, but I personally prefer to just hoof it. | |||
== Goliaths == | |||
The bane of all miners, everywhere. Responsible for 99% of miner deaths. Literally unbeatable in solo melee even with a resonator. And here's how you kill them. If you do it all correctly, you might even take no damage. | |||
=== Set the Stage === | |||
If you've been mining three tile wide tunnels like I instructed you to do in Mining 101, then you are already doing this to an extent. The goliath tentacle attacks that trip and stun you are their most frightening weapon. To evade them, you require at least one empty tile in all four cardinal directions around you. That is, an empty tile to the north, south, east, and west. If you do not have openings, the tentacles can pin you against a rock wall and unless you have a resonator or diamond drill, you won't be able to break the wall and move into the empty space in time to avoid being stunned. Three tile wide tunnels are the bare necessity for fighting goliaths provided you stay in the center of them, but not the ideal. The ideal is a wide open area, such as what gibtonite creates when it explodes. In these areas, you should be moving back so that you're at least two spaces away from the goliath at any given time, as well as slowly moving diagonally away from the goliath so that you can make a wide circle. If you do this, you will be able to kite the goliath eternally provided you don't screw up evading the tentacles. | |||
=== DOOOOOOODGE === | |||
Evading the tentacles is not just about having the room to do it, you also need to get a handle on the timing. They appear once every ten or so seconds, which is about enough time to get in two or three kinetic accelerator shots. While you're moving so that you're always around two tiles away from them, you need to get an instinctive grasp on the tentacles' timing so that you know when to simply stand still and wait. If you move at the wrong time, you'll move right into an erupting tentacle and get stunned. Even if the goliath moves up to you and starts hitting you, waiting is preferable to getting stunned and letting it hit you a lot more times. Also, moving into melee with the goliath causes the timer to be reset; they will not use their tentacles while beating up on you. Keep that in mind. | |||
=== Shoot Them === | |||
Shoot them. Or use your resonator bubbles. Do something to actually hurt them that doesn't mean getting into melee with them. Make sure you keep your distance and you don't back into a corner. | |||
Rinse and repeat these three steps, with a bit of experience, and you should soon be able to kill goliaths while taking little to no damage each time. It feels good. Here's some other advice on dealing with them: | |||
-Gibtonite explosions, while clever use of your environment, do not hurt them that much even if it's point blank. After all, a miner can survive a point blank gibtonite explosion too. Don't get cocky just because you blow them up a bit, it's a difference of like one hit at best. What these are good for is clearing an arena for fighting the goliath. | |||
-don't be afraid to clear rock out even in the middle of a fight - use your accelerator or your resonator to break tiles of rock a bit at a time and make your arena more ideal. Just remember to watch for the tentacles. | |||
-laser guns, energy guns, etc. are very ineffective against them. Projectile weapons that deal AT LEAST OR MORE THAN 30 damage per hit will be fully effective, but laser guns and energy guns do not. Use laser cannons, shotguns with solid slugs, et cetera. | |||
-Teamwork can make short work of them if two or more miners get their pickaxes out and wail on the goliath. | |||
-Don't be afraid to flee and get healing if the goliath beats up on you and you're nearly dead. | |||
-Goliaths deal 15 brute damage per hit on you. | |||
=== Revel in Your Victory === | |||
Now that you've killed a goliath, you can take their hide plates and put them on your armor. This increases your brute damage reduction by 10% each time and your helmet and your hardsuit can each be upgraded five times. | |||
Goliaths and all mining monsters only attack your torso and limbs, so upgrading your hardsuit before you upgrade your helmet is advisable. With just three hardsuit upgrades the goliaths will hit you for way less damage than before! That means being stunned is not as big of a deal. With five hardsuit upgrades, you're nearly a tank - each hit will only deal 7.5 damage! You can literally just stand there and beat up on goliaths with your pickaxe until they die, though you'll still hurt quite a bit from it. | |||
However, if a human player intends to robust you, they will most likely attack your head region, and having an unupgraded mining suit helmet means you are as vulnerable as a baby to griefers and antagonists. Still, if you do manage to get a fully upgraded suit and helmet, you can basically tank any antag you feel like in melee. Keep this in mind. | |||
== Miscellaneous Advice == | |||
-Grab a GPS and turn on your suit sensors. On Yogstation, the crew monitoring console on the mining asteroid actually works, so your suit sensors are actually useful. The GPS is less vital now, but if you have it, telescience can warp you or your dead body out. | |||
-Teamwork is never a bad thing except if you actually care about getting lots of mining points (not much reason to, though. The rewards aren't all that great...) | |||
-If you're a traitor, why not use traitor items for mining? An e-sword is twice as powerful as a pickaxe. You might even be able to kill a goliath with one in melee. Food for thought. | |||
-Talk to your other miners, talk to the station, just talk and make friends and so on. It alleviates some of the boredom of a long trip and gets you in on the happenings of the shift even though you're technically absent. Talk when you're about to go fight a goliath, or if you're stunned and about to go into crit, scream on the radio and let everyone know so you have the best odds of being retrieved. | |||
== Wrapping Up == | |||
Well, that's about all the advice I can dispense that I can think of. If you follow my instructions, you should become quite the robust miner. If you get good enough, the title of "Honorary Space Dwarf" may be bestowed upon you for your valor and efficiency, reminiscent of the space dwarves. Or at least, that's what should happen. Unfortunately miners are a pretty undervalued profession and you rarely, if ever, get noticed by the heads for being good at your job. Still, there is a certain amount of fun to be had in collecting goliath hide plates and just being competent in general. | |||
The profession is somewhat limited by the quality of its earnings with mining points and the time limit on shifts. Some shifts don't even last thirty minutes, not even enough time to fill up a single mining satchel (~1000 points). Blob shifts in particular are egregious for this. It's not bad, but it's not as good as it could be. | |||
Well, that's about all I have to say. I hope this helps someone, anyone. There's still some secrets to the mining gig that I've left out, like artifacts, and the location of bananium, but I won't spoil the fun of discovering things. Go forth, and may your pickaxes be sharp. | |||