Board Thread:Wiki/Forum Technical Support/@comment-33763020-20181103181003/@comment-33763020-20181104114147

Having given it a second thought, I realize that regarding Mithril, the less disciplined players could create a problem for others if the ores were always found at the same spot: if someone with a map in hand of given Mithril ore locations decides to mine the Misty Mountains ahead of everyone else, it would probably be a pretty fast exercise of only digging a few hundred blocks and not many layers, because he could avoid lava pools, avoid chasms, use existing caves to get there faster, thus basically mine the whole mountain in a few days and leaving no Mithril at all. This could discourage other players from mining for Mithril at all and possibly take away one of the fun aspects of the game. So I get the point in this one example.

Nonetheless, we would have to assume an immature attitude for such a problem to arise and this applies for multi-player servers only, not single player where you decide for yourself whether you want to choose the easy way or not.

I could easily assume that there may be technical solutions to circumvent this, I could come up with a few, top of my head:

- for example replace Mithril ore with Mystery ore, which is found in much larger quantities and due to its likeness to Mithril, only turns out to be Mithril or a worthless metal after smelting it in a forge :). The odds of whether it is Mithril would be RNG, so that the quantity of the mystery ore could be set in a way that digging for it would not make it worthwhile, even if all locations are known. This way, the same effort would need to be put into digging as without the knowledge of all locations. In other words, I would find as much mystery ore as iron and perhaps only 1% of it would be Mithril. 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.

- if technically not feasible, a trading 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 "evaluate" the ore 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 evaluating your ores.

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, not about the process of digging your tunnel in the most efficient way. 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 could even imagine a special mechanic for the dwarven smithy, perhaps a special table like the vanilla enchanting table: 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, the symbols flying to the table become Elvish or Dwarven letters, etc. The same type of RNG mechanic could apply like the ancient weapons now found in the Dead Marshes that are transformed to real weapons when you put them together.

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. More realistic would be that once you find ore, you still need to bring it somewhere 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.

I know it's quite a change for the sakes of justifying a single seed, but since it seems one of the very few showstoppers, perhaps it may make gameplay even more interesting than the routine mining and finding ore. I'll be sumbitting this to the idea forum, now that I come to think of interesting implications. :)