Update to Mining, Harvesting and Fishing Rules!

[Eonwind]

At the next server reboot the mining, harvesting and fishing skills will give items (ore, crystals, plants, ...) with a variable quality based on the following factors:
- relevant skill
- relevant tool quality
- a random factor

This will allow blacksmiths, cooks and herbalists to get higher quality base materials to use.

We hope this rule update will be helpful for your crafting

[Karzela~]

 

[Gilrond]

Great, at last there will be some point in using the master crafted rock pick! What about lumium coated sickles for better harvesting? 

[Mordaan]

The main thing to remember, especially when mining/harvesting/fishing in great numbers is stacking.  Different qualities means they won't stack so you'll run out of inv slots fast.  And if you stack them of course it means an averaged quality.  I'd probably keep 3 stacks - low, medium, and high - or something like that.

Compared to the benefit of variable quality, which is long overdue, it's a minor problem...you just have to develop your own strategy for it.  Just something to keep in mind.

[Gilrond]

This actually requires a fix. Some might prefer to stack everything. So it introduces an impairment. There should be some trigger which enables or disables stacking by quality. When it's disabled, items should be stacked just by the name.

something like:

/stack_by_quality off
Then dig whatever you want and it will all stack automatically (if you don't mind the averaging of the quality)
/stack_by_quality on
to restore the original mode.

[bilbous]

Are the ground score units going to remain there to pick up and be a standard quality?
Will the npc merchants pay a per quality rate for ores, because I wouldn't unless the quality of the metal made a difference to the quality of a finished product.
Will the merchants that sell products that cannot be acquired elsewhere, milk or whatever, at several different qualities or will those items remain q50 or become available from free sources?

This has been talked about for a long time and is welcome. Let us hope it doesn't cause more complaints.

An alternative to the stack on/off suggestion would be an item stacking function such that items are stacked automatically according to the range: 1-50; 51-100; 101-150, etc. This would reduce the number of inventory slots required. This is also probably just a pipe dream.

[Venalan]

Are the ground score units going to remain there to pick up and be a standard quality?

If you pick a flower they will, at the moment be Q50. The update only changes mined/harvested materials.

Will the npc merchants pay a per quality rate for ores, because I wouldn't unless the quality of the metal made a difference to the quality of a finished product.

Everything has a price scale dependent on Q. A higher Q ore will (technically, but probably not everytime due to the random factor) make a better Q finished product.

Will the merchants that sell products that cannot be acquired elsewhere, milk or whatever, at several different qualities or will those items remain q50 or become available from free sources?

At the moment they are all just Q50.

[Gilrond]

Venalan: Is it possible to address the stacking problem?

[Venalan]

Probably, but obviously not without someone coding a system.

This is similar to having all the different Qs in the crafting containers but without the 'take and stack all button'. Some sort of user defined stacking brackets would be nice to have, or, as you suggested with the fixed 50 Q brackets. So 'no stacking', 'stack all' and 'bracket stacking' options in the settings somewhere.

[Gilrond]

And probably good idea to provide some command to cycle between these modes, so it could be bound to some key.

[Eonwind]

There's one things I want to clarify: the new rules won't give a quality penalty but only bonuses so the worst quality you can mine/harvest will be 50q (which is the normal quality gettable at the moment).

[Bonifarzia]

If you use shortcuts, you can stack items by adding two commands to drop and pick them up.
With light items, you can put your high quality materials and finished stacks in containers to avoid dropping them.
This might be useful as a workaround, but it gets impractical if you want to work with many stacks of 65 items.

[Cirerey]

Bravo! 

Well done people. Just to make sure someone says it:

You have been steadily making the game better and it is noticed and appreciated.

[bilbous]

Another thing I have thought of in relation to this is that it would be good to have some kind of quality indicator that can be recognized at a glance in the inventory. The biggest problem with the individually stacked by quality is that to make your own averaged range stacks by opening the info window for each item. Some kind of color coded bar running along the bottom of the icon or even as a full border would be useful. A red border would be 0-50q, an orange one 51-100, etc. This might be easier than coding bracket stacking and would make it easier to do so manually. (Roy G. Biv.)

Another thing to consider is to have only integer stacks so that q101.024 would stack with q101.24 in a stack of q 101. Standard rounding rules could apply -- round off might be more suitable than round up or round nearest as the two latter might make getting to 300 too easy.

I understand Eonwind's point about base quality of harvested-mined-fished item not being reduced but the stacking system is used for other processes as well which can reduce quality below 50 on abject failure.

[dadela]

Good bye ore market and welcome hyperinflation.