Thinking about Digging in BTW (where are mining charges?)

[dawnraider]

One of FC's prime statements is that you shouldn't tailor stuff around having a use. artificially trying to bring souldust use up because its useless is a bad way to go about imo

This isn't just trying to give soul dust a use, this is trying to protect a niche it already has. Netherrack is widely abundant, but it is still not automatable and as such I think that blood woods have some value, if small given how plentiful souls from netherrack are. I think you're right in that blood woods are their own discussion and aren't in a great place, but I don't think the solution is completely smothering that as a way to automate souls by allowing a nether mob farm to do that. I think blazes are a great thematic way to get brimstone, I just don't really like having soul filtering involved in that.

[EpicAaron]

Back to the big picture:

Assuming that the agriculture and pig factories required to make tallow (even with a buffed tallow output) require both anvil and a lot of auto-planters (block dispensers, pistons, considerable adventuring to even find carrots/potatoes), manufacturing explosives at a certain useful scale has to wait until pretty late. This makes sense; we wouldn't want bumpkins to walk out of their dirt holes and immediately start manufacturing this shit.

Since every piece of dynamite requires a fuse, and a single piece of brimstone produces two gunpowder (2 fuses per gunpowder), that means we need two brimstone per mining charge. That's two stacks of brimstone for a stack of charges, which might take a while to get even with an automated blaze setup. Manual setup would probably take longer.

At this point, my sense of scale falters. I think I need to play through the game with adjusted animal eating values and see how tallow goes. Maybe kibble feeding can make pig farming possible without worrying about using up a ton of gold? In that case, I would like to balance gunpowder acquisition around not having to build a nether-trap so that players can actually use explosives during trap construction!

This is a tough cookie to crack, and I wonder if it isn't better to just let gunpowder remain at the end of the tech tree and give players Efficiency V earlier?

EDIT: wording

[dawnraider]

Yeah I think a lot of the balance for mining charges is also dependent on upcoming animal rebalancing as well.

[8bitBob]

TLDR: I think we need to either give players earlier access to high efficiency picks or make mining charges accessible again. Since explosives are really fucking cool, I think the latter is the better option.

I spent hundreds of hours making a proper silverfish breeding farm back in the day, so I know exactly how painful it is to get those scrolls. Silverfish breeding definitely needs to be looked at in some way. That being said, on top of also liking explosions, I actually like the idea that you need to completely conquer the game for the fastest pick possible. It's the ultimate status symbol while also being really useful so you want it.

So, I agree, let's fix mining charges and actually get to mining with them, because mass excavation isn't generally done by hand. Putting them earlier in the tech tree and making pig breeding a less herculean task is a good start, but I'd also like to see them made more practical to actually use. Right now, I find there's only two ways to use them semi effectively:

1. Block Dispenser pointing down on a timer. Useful for uncovering caves, but you're likely to run into issues with water or lava.
2. Blowing up entire walls with like six charges in a row to take advantage of the chain effect.

Neither of these methods feel great for the player. Carpet bombing walls is very inefficient and is incompatible with how most people mine shafts. It's also very finicky to keep placing them all over and over. Block Dispenser pointing down is pretty niche and you can end up wasting charges in liquids you didn't expect.

In my mind, mining charges should be the go to method for haphazard mass tunneling. To get them in a good place, I think a few potential things could be done:

1. Introduce a method reduce the time it takes to explode, or outright just reduce it in general. A big reason we don't use them to mine shafts is because you need to wait so long for them to go off, so pick mining is just faster unless you use multiple at the same time.

2. Double the volume of the explosion to 3x3x6 if possible. This would make them useful for searching off to the sides of your main shaft. Right now, it's way better to just use a pick because it reaches farther and is faster.

3. Introduce a way to automatically have them explode after being placed to reduce tool swapping in big excavations. Personally, I really like the idea of having the Lens trigger them when the spotlight is focused on them. Not sure if this is technically feasible though.

4. Maybe increase crafting yield? I find it pretty hard to justify the expenditure on them currently.

Even if we just did the first two, I know I'd find myself reaching for them way more often. Curious how others feel about it though.

[EpicAaron]

Wonderful post, this is really informative. It seems you have way more experience with endgame construction than I do. In fact, I am writing from a totally theoretical standpoint. I have never used explosives at a massive scale, only casually a long time ago back before this was a survival overhaul. I tried them on a server once to tunnel directly ahead of me, but you are right--it's not currently great for that, the pick felt so much easier.

I was thinking of making them cheap so that one could overcome the fact that the blast radius isn't so large, but simply upping the explosive capabilities of each charge sounds like a great idea.

[dawnraider]

Silverfish breeding definitely needs to be looked at in some way.

This has actually already been completed and is coming next release. Massive thanks to Hiracho for tackling that :)

[8bitBob]

Wonderful post, this is really informative. It seems you have way more experience with endgame construction than I do.

Thanks, glad to be of help. Endgame construction and automation has indeed always been my main draw to BTW. The years of focusing on early game updates are probably the reason I stopped playing as much, to be honest.

This has actually already been completed and is coming next release. Massive thanks to Hiracho for tackling that :)

I cannot accurately express how happy this made me. I had to lurk the Discord for spoilers and the changes look great! Already got a build in mind.

You folks are the best.

[hawk]

They really are the best!

And you don't have to lurk, Bob! Things are much friendlier nowadays and you can speak your mind, here or on discord (the latter was mostly safe anyway the whole time). You seem to have some intimate knowledge with the mod; please share ideas to your hearts content. Also, https://github.com/BTW-Community/BTW-Public/issues is a great place to list any bugs or very well thought out suggestions.

[EpicAaron]

On that note, Bob, we have been keeping an eye out for players that have managed to beat the enderdragon in singleplayer BTW in the most recent (AAAAAAHHH) versions of the game. Only six have been accounted for so far. We suspect there are more lurking around the internet. Are you a dragon slayer?

The reward for completing this incredible task is a GOLDEN discord name, a special "Dragon Slayer" title role, and great respect among BTW players everywhere.

[hawk]

Damn, lol. I've killed the dragon post Ahhhhhh. But I lost my discord password and don't have that email address anymore. I'll re-sign up at some point, lol

[EpicAaron]

ANOTHER EMERGES!
PRAISE!