Where have all the mines gone?

[Gaiadin]

We've been exploring and prospecting for the past two days venturing far off map to the north and the east into the wilderness and have yet to receive anything but the message "No minerals found." Is there any news on whether there may be more mines at some point in the future? They seem to be absurdly rare at this point...

[Rift]

well.. its not that they are "rare" in the overall world sence.. just in the places people are sence.
The northeast is where most people seem to be migrating, so all the mines that way got snatched up.
The straight north and straight east likely have a few though [although you might have to travel aways], and the NW, W, SW, S, SE likely are mostly untouched.

[Peter]

... Looooong tiiiiime paaaaaassin'
Where have all the miiineees gooonne...
long time ago.

Anyway, I heard that mines where rare if not entirely gone, so you might be in trouble.

I for one think that once the economy stabilizes with people being able to buy iron regularly and at reasonable prices, then this will work out fine enough. I miss knowing that at least hypothetically I could do anything myself, but maybe J&L will be able to cook something up to balance that.

[PhaedrothSP]

Do the other supergrids have mine points at all?
I just went all around the south one and found none. A small trace of a tin mine near the start of it, but I'm sure that it was actually on the first grid, as the trace disappeared further south.

[niltrias]

I have found at least 6 mine points on the new supergrids, and I have only been to 4 of them (Im guessing there are 8? I havent tried to walk off the far boundary of any of them yet.) One thing that might be hampering your ability to pick up scents is that when the mine is built, you can no longer detect the mine with prospecting. So you could just be wandering around an area with claimed/built mines.

I will say I have noticed a disturbing lack of iron mines. Considering how quickly a determined town or group of towns can go through a single iron mine, I am worried that the current system might lead to the creation of nomad tribes hunting out ever-more-distant sources of iron, instead of establishing and building up city states and nations...IRL mines were often worked for generations, so i think it would be nice to increase the amount of iron available in the mines (like with my previous suggestion about mining dropping ore boulders, which would be chipped for the ore, instead of the mine space dropping ore directly.)

[Rift]

Well, i have in my limited explorations of the non-main supergrids have seen 10-12 mines pop up in my little prospecting message box. [just by walking from one side of a new supergrid to the other]
I know of 2 currently unclaimed iron mines in addition to the one that cakeport uses.
I have hit the edge of the map, and can therefore claim that there is indeed only 9 supergrids atm [including the main one].

[niltrias]

Well, i have in my limited explorations of the non-main supergrids have seen 10-12 mines pop up in my little prospecting message box. [just by walking from one side of a new supergrid to the other]
I know of 2 currently unclaimed iron mines in addition to the one that cakeport uses.
I have hit the edge of the map, and can therefore claim that there is indeed only 9 supergrids atm [including the main one].

Thanks for the confirmation on the supergrids. I had kind of suspected that if I had explored more deeply I would have found more mines, but I went for a more wide style exploration to see what was close to established areas.

[PhaedrothSP]

Guess I'll have to scour the current world for more mines then :/
Almost scares me how rare Iron is.

[loftar]

I miss knowing that at least hypothetically I could do anything myself, but maybe J&L will be able to cook something up to balance that.

1) Yes, we will cook things up to balance that :), because;
2) while I do enjoy the hermit life, I never liked the idea of being able to do anything myself. Rather, I think it would be much more fun if the resource tree were large enough to support a couple of different styles of hermit life and village life, with each character having to specialize on some more-or-less-self-contained part or another. That way, there'd still be a lot left to discover by making new characters once in a while, and others' lifestyles could actually seem foreign to you.

[Ruggan]

Sometimes I get the urge to "solo the game," that drive to do everything by myself, but I don't think that allowing this (or at least allowing this to be the successful style of gameplay) would be bad for the players' and game's longevity. Rather, it'd seem that players should be brought together, and brought together in meaningful ways - not simply to socialize or exchange goods, but because they have to to survive or accomplish meaningful goals

Easier said than done.

Edit: good != bad