Sevenless wrote:People would get there in 2-3 months.
Only if they get lucky. You could make 20 mineholes to layer 2 and run into nothing but ql10 ore.
The problem is just too much RNG. You have to be lucky enough to find ore. Then you have to get lucky and hope you can mine it. Then you have to hope you're lucky enough to find a quality node, and quality comes in 3 varieties so you've got to be lucky enough to get either one or two qualities high, or to find all 3 qualities. That is 5 different factors involved in making progress with ore/metal quality.
In the old version, going lower guaranteed you some progress. Now it doesn't.
The only other option is to pump your Str like mad, but eventually you're going to either be eating entire bears for 1 str, or you're going to need cheese (and wouldn't you know it, cheese production has also been slowed down massively). I estimate with my current pickaxe (17/15/13) I'm going to need another 80-100 str to be able to even mine the softer parts of layer 3.