Fire-setting for early game mining

[Sevenless]

It was absolutely aids in salem. I can't imagine how it'd be better here. Setting fire for every couple tiles to make them softer? It's better for the game to just tell you no.

Actually, it was only for the initial walls on a level + occasional "black wall " you find.
They had higher chance of containing good metal within them.

Was that the initial system? I played during one of the super early betas and I remember only being able to mine fire cracked walls.

What about:

1. No tile will need fire-setting to be mined.

2. Any tile can be fire-set once to make it bit softer.

This still makes fire starting part of the optimal meta. And if something aids-y is meta, then it'll have to get used a lot and people will hate it.

Exactly like stone axe meta, where stone axe always had the highest quality, so to not ruin ore you'd constantly have to start chipping away slowly with one. That was horrible, even if you "wanted a bit more quality" the impact of that was horrible. (Might still be that way, I haven't mined in a while).

[ZoddAlmighty]

Was that the initial system? I played during one of the super early betas and I remember only being able to mine fire cracked walls.

Maybe it was like that in early, early beta. But for the last 7 years it's pretty much like I stated before. The whole initial level is black walls that you need to crack, after you crack them with fire, you can mine normally, without to much trouble.
Occasionally, you'll find a black wall node, which maybe needs multiple fires to get to the center because it's designed like an onion maybe. Layers upon layers of black wall.
More times than not, it had silver in it (most valuable ore). Kinda funny, like a kinder egg. But it takes soooooo much work since ore distribution is not a single node but many, many small ones.
Anyway, concept is trash, Salem mining is trash, do not take anything from it.

[Audiosmurf]

I think this would be fine as, like, an option available to the player to soften walls by a relatively small amount early in the game. It would suck big ass if it was Literally Necessary, but I personally wouldn't mind lighting some fires to get metal a couple of str points earlier.

[Ferinex]

What about:

1. No tile will need fire-setting to be mined.

2. Any tile can be fire-set once to make it bit softer.

this is what i envisioned. it serves as a buff not a nerf. instead of pumping strength you are fire setting more. once you have the strength you don't need to fire set any more. it just makes mining possible earlier