Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-33763020-20181104122838

Short version of my suggestion: replace Mithril ore by Mystery ore, so only after smelting it turns out whether you found Mithril or some worthless quartz. The quantity of Mystery ore to be found is about 100 times higher than Mithril ore, the odds of a Mithril ingot after smelting is about 1% (through RNG). The smelting takes place at a Dwarven smithy or through setting up an enchanted smelting table, pretty much the same as the vanilla enchanting table. Benefits: 1. the time invested in mining is equal to the odds of finding Mithril, instead of being just lucky (a few ores within an hour) or totally unlucky (none even after many hours). 2. on servers with obsessed miners, you would see immediately if someone mined for Mithril in a cave or mine, by missing all Mystery ore. Saves a lot of time instead of a useless search in an already empty area. 3. Gives a more realistic feeling to finding Mithril, as the ore needs expert knowledge to turn to ingots. It also brings back the vanilla crafting table (with lapis lazuli) to good use with nice runes, etc. More Minecraft, more LotR mod immersion, a win-win! 4. On the long run: enables a single-seed map for copying structures and smoothless landscaping, without exploitation of all known Mithril locations in advance by lazy players.

The long version and explanations:

As I was looking for arguments to have a single-seed map for the game (whereby landscaping is always the same, making it quite easy to populate the map with huge structures through copy/pasting inbetween any player's map and any server) I came onto one good reason why a fixed seed could be an issue: all Mithril ore would be known in advance, as on every map all ore locations would be the same. I thought of a new mechanic to avoid this being an issue while bringing in a new and exciting mechanic: make Mithril non-detectable in advance.. How to do this: instead of Mithril ore, you only find "Mystery ore" upon mining and only after examining/smelting it at a dwarven smithy at a special forge, do you find out whether it is Mithril or some worthless (quartz) metal! Pretty much the same as the Dead Marshes loot, that only turns to value once you put pieces together. Mystery ore is much more frequent than Mithril (like iron for example, about a hundredfold) and therefore mining it would be about the same effort for those who know all the ore locations as for those who do not. It would work like this:

The odds of whether it is Mithril would be RNG (= a Random Generated Number), so that the quantity of the Mystery ore could be set in a way that mining for it with a location map in hand would not make it more worthwhile than randomly mining and finding the ores. In other words, I would find as much Mystery ore as iron ore and perhaps only 1 ingot of it would be Mithril after smelting 100 ores, but maybe even none, or up to 3, etc.. Lazy players using a map with known Mystery ore locations are still forced to mine for hours on end and still end up with the same quantity of Mithril. In fact, it would probably take them longer to mine for the ore than just digging a straight tunnel to the known locations.

If technically not feasible to do the smelting ourselves, a trading or smelting system could be invented like we have with mushrooms in market places: since most of us do not know the difference between edible and poisonous mushrooms, experts can tell us what we picked in the forest. Likewise, Mystery ore would be brought to dwarven smithies who then "test" the ore through smelting and give you back only the part containing Mithril. The same way as in my above point, the % of RNG odds could be fixed and this RNG factor makes for the "Aha!" feeling when you find Mithril! The only difference would be that you do not get this kick while mining and suddenly bumping on the glittering ore, but at the smithy, who is smelting your ores (or at your base, if you can set up the required smelting process yourself).

I understand that the feeling of finding Mithril ore during digging is the real thing, especially if you have been doing it for hours. Those who have done it however, will agree with me that after the first few finds, it becomes a boring chore. Let's be honest: it's about the value that you find, which makes the process of digging your tunnel in the most efficient way fun. Similarly, I'm not sure that the feeling of finding Mystery ore would give less of a kick: since there is much more of it around, each block gives you the hope that you found Mithril, making the exercise the more exciting and gratifying.

I would suggest a special mechanic for the dwarven smithy, a special table like the vanilla enchanting table: you place your Mystery ore on the table, put some lapis lazuli in it and some coal and after smelting each ore, it produces Mithril at the given RNG factor. The use of lapis lazuli would suddenly become much more interesting as well, in addition there is little in the way of coding that needs to be changed, as it would be almost identical to the vanilla enchanting mechanic. The bookshelf would regain their purpose, the RNG factor could increase with the number of bookshelves placed and the symbols flying to the table become Elvish or Dwarven letters, etc. In a sense the same type of RNG mechanic could apply like the ancient weapons now found in the Dead Marshes that are transformed to different weapons when you put them together, except here no new mechanic needs to be invented, just the existing vanilla enchanting modified to ME standards.

The whole process would make mining more realistic as well: currently you can easily bring with you a whole workshop and when you find mithril ore, you have the ingot in minutes and craft a weapon/armour right after. I always found that a bit too easy, it takes away from the importance of finding Mithril. More realistic would be that once you find ore, you still need to bring it to experts where through complicated means it is found out whether it is Mithril in the first place and then processed to a useful ingot. The Dwarven smithy in this case or alternatively your home base with the special smelting set-up, rather than just a simple crafting table you have in your pouch...

I hope this makes gameplay even more interesting than the routine mining and finding ore. In addition, if there are obsessed Mithril miners on servers, they cannot "cherrypick" all the Mithril away from others, as there will always be plenty of Mystery ore around and the time invested into mining will increase the chance of getting Mithril. In addition, if someone enter a cave or mine and sees there is no Mystery ore around, clearly someone has already been there and mined it all, so you can go and look elsewhere. If the person was only looking for Mithril, you would never find out simply by walking through the same cave, but it may have been picked from all Mithril for many chunks around you. 