Mining Hat

[Weapon]

At the beginning of the year, TPC and I made the first mining hat. There were people mining for hours a day trying to get enough orichalcum ore to make the hat, and that went on for a couple of months. The horrifying revelation was that the hat made so little difference in mining outcomes, and having realized how much time was wasted in trying to get it, I rushed to the bathroom and threw up. At that point, people kinda stopped trying to make one.

Because it was the way I made my money at the time, I kept mining anyway and continued using it. There was a thread made on how TPC and I didn't notice much of a difference the hat was, but it was dismissed by a GM posting an explanation that there was a tiny calculation that """theeoooreeetiicallyyy""" made the picks break less often. In practice, un-noticable.

Linh still mined for money, so when I went on break I gave her the rest of the orichalcum I mined over the next few months and she made the second hat. Infrequently, if desperate for ore, I'll go down there and mine some more, but it deters from leveling and would rather combat-farm & purchase what I need directly since it's more cost effective. Either way--over time Linh, TPC, and I (along with some purchases I made from other players) pooled together the rest of our resources and as of last week I made (what I'm assuming is) the 3rd mining hat. That means the quest's been there for well over a year, and there's only 3 of these. If you compare it to the fishing hat and how easy it is to make one of those, the bonus is pretty lousy, since (if I remember correctly) the bonus was intended to do the same thing when you really don't get the same outcomes (Not-catching-a-fish vs your-pick-breaking, when the real loss in mining is the opportunity cost of getting a stone at least 75% of the time)

SUGGESTIONS:

- I wouldn't say that making it drop better stuff more often is what it needs... but what WOULD make it better is an huge increase in efficiency. You get a CRAPTON of stones mining--a RIDICULOUS crapton of stones, and everyone throws them away since all they do is take up space. If you want to empower the hat, severely reduce the number of stones that you get while mining. That way instead of taking an hour to go through your picks, it'll take maybe half as long to get the same outcome. Less time wasted and less carpal tunnel, which would make ANY miner happy.

- A 3rd mining spot, where having a mining hat is a prerequisite to mine there. Better drops, less garbage, hat-tastic people only, high-end-awesome. THIS IS AN EXTREMELY BIASED SUGGESTION 8D

- Making orichalcum easier to come by so that there'll be more mining hats to justify the current bonus. Every time I go to the advanced fishing spot, I usually get at least 1 fish bottle, sometimes 2 or 3; which is why most fishers have fishing hats. For orichalcum, you generally get a rough ore every 5 complete runs (I bring 240 picks), and that's if you're lucky. This might not be ideal since the GM's declared orichalcum a god item earlier this year (So maybe they should undeclare it if they do this.) On a related note, nix the 'fail' rate on making a pure orichalcum.

- I *hate* that miner-quiz NPC at the advanced mining spot. You don't have to put up with that crap while fishing, why do you have to put up with it there? (In fact, when you fish, you'll often get free baits rewards passively with no quizzing involved.) It makes mining require that you pay full attention from start to finish, when I'd rather keep clicking and turn my head to watch TV to help pass the time. You get a free pick when you answer his quiz correctly, but often that just gives you MORE STONES before breaking. He should probably just reward you with something nice, or at least whichever item was the correct answer (i.e., if 'flame heart' was the right response, give the player a flame heart. If the answer was something of lesser value like rough ori/rough elu/iron/coal/etc, give them a few of those.) Sure, this suggestion's unrelated to the hat itself, but GOD that guy's a pain >8T Plus, this would make him more of a yay-happy-congrats-for-paying-attention-bonus without removing him as a botchecker.


TL;DR
Bear in mind... mining itself is still a great way to get a variety of stuff, albeit tedious... the main argument is that the mining *hat* is too difficult to make for what it actually does in comparison to the fishing hat, so I suggest either making it better so it's WORTH the endless hours clickspamming the spot, or simply making the hat easier to create.

(edit)

...or something like Aaronock's post would be cool too--a chance of getting ores when killing monsters. Like the "Finding Ore" skill, only it wouldn't be so 'meh'.