Prospecting in natural caves

[Machenoid]

Lets say the player has the prospecting skill but doesn't have the necessary (and joker-insane i might add) stats to find a rust root. In order to avoid making the prospecting skill completely fucking useless until hour 24xx of gameplay (lets face it, it is useless until you find a rust root, just like swimming skill w/ <90 constitution) let the player go into a natural cave and use the prospecting skill on the stalagmites there. If the player finds ores, then they can mine the stalagmites for that ore, with there being at least 1 ore of the discovered type in that stalagmite out of all the rock that comes from it. Obviously, ore qualities can be limited to a fraction of the nearest mining point.

- Player enters cavern, lights torch/camp fires.
- Player locates and prospects whatever stalagmites there are.
-- Stalagmite that "has ores" in it can give out at least 1 ore when mined. (no stupid false positives)
- Player is happy that his prospecting skill is no longer considered a complete waste of his time, and has at least something to show for the 5000 experience he spent on it.

tl;dr
Prospecting is useless until you hit 63/64 perception and 64/63 exploration. This idea makes prospecting more useful then it currently is without such stats, but not as useful as with those stats.

[edit - this is not a gripe of "where's my iron?!" it is a gripe that there is a useless skill sitting on the tree that costs 5000 experience, and is not immediately useful without the use of secondary stats, AND AN ITEM THAT IS RARE AND IN HIGH DEMAND. 5000 xp more then enough to buy a good deal of the starting skills, all of which are much more immediate in their impact on the players' abilities. If the stat requirement for prospecting to function were removed and item restriction loosened, and the skill cost increase by 10 times, i wouldn't mind it. As long as the skill is immediately useful like most other skills are, it would be fine with me.]

[theTrav]

I don't think it's possible to get usable ores out of stalagmites... it's like, water rock or something isn't it?

[Brosephine]

A better option would be to simply allow the building of mines in caves if a stalactite gives a positive result.

[theTrav]

To be honest I think it's coming down to Machenoid wanting metal to be less rare than it is...

If the dev's want it to be less rare then there's plenty of ways they can achieve that, I don't know how making many suggestions on how they could do it is going to change their mind on that though.

[PhaedrothSP]

Well metal is very rare right now, especially on the main land where most new players are limited to.

I'd say a good way to solve that would be to allow the building of a mine anywhere, but a mine that isn't placed on a geology point has very limited ore and is at lowest quality.

But then there's always the option of allowing us to extract bog iron from swamps.

[Brosephine]

But then there's always the option of allowing us to extract bog iron from swamps.

This is a fantastic idea.

[Duplicity]

Well metal is very rare right now, especially on the main land where most new players are limited to.

I'd say a good way to solve that would be to allow the building of a mine anywhere, but a mine that isn't placed on a geology point has very limited ore and is at lowest quality.

But then there's always the option of allowing us to extract bog iron from swamps.

I swear either Jorb or Loftar said this is on the cards, I can't seem to find the post though.

[PhaedrothSP]

Its a great idea because it was already mentioned by J&L, I'm pretty sure it was in one of the threads discussing the new(current) map.

If I find it I'll link it to this post.

Edit:There it is. viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1113#p12442

7) Mine points that can be found much like wellsprings are right now. Mines only buildable on minepoints. Different kinds of metal. Panning for gold, and ability to extract bog iron, would be neat.

[Machenoid]

Bog iron, building mine shafts that have a size of 21x21 tiles in natural caves, i don't care what it is at this point.

To be honest I think it's coming down to Machenoid wanting metal to be less rare than it is...

If it bothers you so much that "IRON SHOULD BE RARE" then a quality level restriction can be put in that stipulates that iron must be at least quality x before it can be turned into bloom. Then, all the iron that's obtained from sources that arn't obtained from mine points could be forced to be quality <x. Would that satisy your idea of how rare metal should be by making the "easy" obtained metal crappier and making the good stuff rare?

The story is, there's a 100% USELESS SKILL sitting on the tree that is gimped by low character stats and the rarity of a single item. So unless someone else can come along with something better to make the prospecting skill IMMEDIATELY WORTH THE XP SPENT (just like most other skills on the tree!) this is all there is that's being suggested to improve it.
Yes, bog iron is bad-ass and would increase sources of iron, but unless it itegrates prospecting into it that lets prospecting be immediately worth-while, the skill would still be useless with low stats and/or no rust root. Having a useless travel skill like swimming is bad enough, but having a skill that's involved in a significant portion of game items that's useless until other things are bought, is untennable... Know what, just make prospecting cost the amount of XP that 64 exploring/perception + the 5000 it already costs, and remove the exploring/perception requirement. Then it'd be useful immediately when it's bought.

[theTrav]

I don't know that it bothers me... It seems to bother you a lot more...

I do like that metal is apparently very rare in the current world, I think it's going to be good for trade.

Isn't plant lore a useless skill? What about call to power?

I'm pretty sure there's a few useless skills in there... Arguably more useless than prospecting

Whatever man, I think you're jumping the gun, and should play for a few weeks before making big calls on balance