Scaling cost for mineholes

[Szat]

With Chalcopyrite (and means for making hard metal) on cave level 2, hearthlings must now build a mine hole before they can access a huge part of the game.

This is going to result in a shitload of requests here that the soft metal/casting system gets fleshed out to include tools people would otherwise need to wait 1-2 months to get. That is one way of making things better, but possibly a waste of developer time - big groups will leapfrog right by any soft metal phase because to them, 10 hardened leather is annoying, but nothing they can't do in a week.

If the aim of the metal changes is to make metal more exclusive and limited to large groups and extremely dedicated players, forcing trade and cooperation, this is perfect. If the intent is to slow down player progression, I think pyres have accomplished that and it would be worth considering scaling mineholes so that from cave layer 1 -> 2 they cost 1 or 2 hard leather, increasing for deeper levels. You aren't likely to see a lot of minehole clutter, because it's easy as shit to bash pyres and nobody wants to waste even 2 hardened leather.

[Sevenless]

Mineholes are timegated now. Which means you can't leapfrog, and everyone is restricted to the available progression in the current mine level.

Hard leather also becomes very trivial for organized groups. Most players don't realize they aren't using nearly enough beeskeps.

[Szat]

Mineholes are timegated now. Which means you can't leapfrog, and everyone is restricted to the available progression in the current mine level.

Hard leather also becomes very trivial for organized groups. Most players don't realize they aren't using nearly enough beeskeps.

Care to ballpark the number of tiles a player would need to claim, enclose, and plow with a wooden plow to run a dozen beeskeps concurrently? Also - darkly funny you don’t get your metal plow until *after* you’ve completed the most farming-intensive task in the game.

Again, requiring mineholes for access to more than a third of the tech tree is more akin to placing limits on how far a solo player can go without bots. That’s fine if that’s what we want, but let’s be honest about it.

[Sevenless]

Mineholes are timegated now. Which means you can't leapfrog, and everyone is restricted to the available progression in the current mine level.

Hard leather also becomes very trivial for organized groups. Most players don't realize they aren't using nearly enough beeskeps.

Care to ballpark the number of tiles a player would need to claim, enclose, and plow with a wooden plow to run a dozen beeskeps concurrently? Also - darkly funny you don’t get your metal plow until *after* you’ve completed the most farming-intensive task in the game.

Again, requiring mineholes for access to more than a third of the tech tree is more akin to placing limits on how far a solo player can go without bots. That’s fine if that’s what we want, but let’s be honest about it.

Each beehive can harvest 50 tiles of a monocrop, once per ~9 hours. 12 beeskeps requires 600, or roughly a 25x25 patch of farmland to be fully functional. Make that crop turnip, and those hives absolutely crap out wax. Terrain growth only happens if it's either near a tree or directly touching a biome. Pave the edges of your field and keep trees away and you never need to plow again.

You don't need the minehole, you need the metal/stones. This isn't really different from previous worlds. Everyone lacks all forms of hard metal atm, but once they become available hermits will probably be getting it by trading. Exactly like the vast majority of hermits did in previous worlds. Most hermits don't mine.

The big key is, to keep "on pace" is much easier. You have a lot of time before you can possibly access L2 to gather wax since you're time gated like everyone else.