Topic

Is mining really the best money maker?

I haven't REALLY crunched the numbers but it seems to me that if people are doing the entire mining and alchemizing process and producing molybdenum to sell... Well, there are probably much more energy efficient (literally ;)) ways to earn currants. With higher Kinship, Gardening, and Cooking levels, which are actually pretty fast skills compared with mining, it seems cooking and selling the excess would actually make a lot more.

It seems worth it to try and get all your gems for the day, but mining as the main form of making money doesn't actually seem like the best way to earn ;) 

Thoughts?

Posted 16 months ago by Liza Throttlebottom Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • For me it's the fastest way to get xp
    Posted 16 months ago by xoxJulie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I have no idea how much mining makes as I avoid it.

    But from just harvesting and selling, I can pretty easily make 50 - 100k in a (real life) day of playing when I have the inclination to knuckle down and concentrate for a while. It helps if I have something in mind I want to spend on to motivate me, as I do tend to be incredibly lazy at times.   
     
    I have made 50k in a Glitch day a couple of times just from harvesting and selling, but that is too much like hard work to do very often.  It takes me away from chat time, and Glitch without friends to talk to becomes work rather than play, and...who wants that? o_o  
    Posted 16 months ago by Ebil Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I have a mental block on selling food to a vendor. I quite literally have hundreds of stacks of food on the floor of my house because I'm afraid I'll run out if I vendor it. I guess that makes me a Glitchorder.
    Next test I'm going to run some numbers on ₡/hr for the different professions and see what I come up with, but I would be surprised to see mining on top. Still need some skills for processing mining mats though.
    Posted 16 months ago by Skwid Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ebil what do you harvest?
    For me, I collect tons of meat from rhk, abuse the ten chickens on isaland interval and collect allspice for sammiches. For each stake of 60 meats=970c from l4e
    Posted 16 months ago by Djoe6897 Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Djoe -  Usually everything I can get my glitchy paws on other than eggs and wood (I don't bother with eggs and wood, as neither really sell for very much. Also eggs are in horrible locations. I don't like dimly lit areas of the game, I like harvesting in the open. My Glitch gets claustrophobia lol) 
      
    Vapour, Spice, Bubbles, Beans and Cherries (in that order usually), but I watch what's selling well too, so if one day cherries are going like hotcakes and aren't struggling to sell, I'll be in Groddle. If another day they're not selling fast, I'll focus on something different :)
    That's what I like about harvesting and auctions, it's fun seeing how the economy changes. Sometimes (actually, usually) I have no idea what's going on with projects until I see what's selling fast on auctions, then I know "Ahh, must be a fruit project!" lol :D 
    Posted 16 months ago by Ebil Subscriber! | Permalink
  • mining is pretty darn profitable.

    let's talk about hyper-grinding.

    assume that someone is *only* mining 3 rocks per earthshaker [1 per minute], at Mining IV, alone.

    3 rocks = 150 chunks at 6 currants per chunk = 900 currants - 120 for an Earthshaker from Helga = profit of 780 currants per earth shaker

    each earth shaker lasts 3 minutes, so that's about 2.5k currants every 10 minutes.

    so 200 minutes of mining to make 50k currants, which is approximately 3.3 hours, which if you're taking breaks here and there is about 50k currants per 4 hour "game day". you can relax for 42 minutes of each game day.

    that's just the baseline, because on top of that you add gems.

    let's say that in 3 hours of mining [with rubeweed] you get 8 pleasing ambers, 4 showy sapphires, 3 modestly sized rubies, 2 luminous moonstones and 1 diamond - which if you're a miner you will recognize as a pretty average take over 3 hours. that's another 8900 currants.

    then there is the freely dropped guano you collect while you go around mining. you can auction this stuff for 50 currants each and i'd say that over the course of 3 hours you'll find something like 50 guanos to sell. so 2500 currants minus listing fees and all that is maybe 2000 currants? even if you just sell the poop to an NPC vendor for 20 currants each you still end up with an additional 1000 currants.

    so in a pure grind mode, we're talking something approaching 60000 currants per 4 hour game day.

    the Earthshaker prices may have gone up a little at Helga's [i got my pricing info from the wiki], but we are still talking about the ability to purchase the equivalent of a large alakol house every 4 hours if you're really dedicated.
    Posted 16 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • That logic IS valid for a very high level approach. However, it's five days or so to learn Mining IV. With a clean slate I think getting the gardening and Kinship skills would be faster.
    Posted 16 months ago by Liza Throttlebottom Subscriber! | Permalink
  • but that isn't the big benefit of mining.

    it might be more profitable to harvest and cook - i'd like to see the math for profit over time, not just profit per energy unit expended - but there are issues of warm up and cool down times also.

    2.5k is the highest price for any single item in the game. i know that i can go to the caves with 3 or 4 earthshakers and make that money in 10 minutes. no warm up, hardly any time spent waiting for streets to load [which is a problem with tree harvesting], 10 minutes and out.

    no moving from region to region in order to collect both spice and bubbles, no waiting for garden crops to mature for harvest. none of that stuff.

    the 'acceleration' of mining is very quick. i think piggy nibbling in a high density piggy area [house pen] is also very quick but starts to hit a ceiling as it becomes difficult to find a piggy you haven't nibbled yet
    Posted 16 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "That logic IS valid for a very high level approach. However, it's five days or so to learn Mining IV. With a clean slate I think getting the gardening and Kinship skills would be faster."

    it doesn't take 5 days to learn mining IV .. are you kidding? the mining itself allows for increased learning by way of donations, which can allow you to slice that time in half.

    and how long is 5 days when the game is open 24/7?

    and even at mining II or III it isn't like you aren't making *any* profit.

    and animal kinship VI, the one that you need in order to nibble without petting, is a 16 hour skill just like mining III. all the mining logic still works at mining III, but is just somewhat less profitable.
    Posted 16 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I really wish I had a counterpoint to that xD But the game being offline and me not having considered this before that happening means I can't examine the auction prices for raw materials, which is the big profit area for gardening and kinship skills. I also don't yet have a timeframe for the harvesting and such. I'll be sure to get back to you with some more accurate, or, ya know, actually existing, data ;P

    Heck, maybe I'll have to convert to mining. I never actually tried the whole earthshaker route. I wasn't aware of their existence for the longest time. And then the game turned off. How sad.
    Posted 16 months ago by Liza Throttlebottom Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The big profit area for gardening and croppery is the insane amount of music blocks that you get.  And I earn a great deal of money selling produce on auction.  So much so that I didn't need to mine to get my Alakol house.
    Posted 16 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm still not sure what's the point of making a lot of currants in the game. It's not like there a lot of things to buy all the time. Once you have all the tools you need and a house... not really sure why I'd need a ton of currants.
    Posted 16 months ago by Zany Serendipity Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "It's not like there a lot of things to buy all the time."

    are you currently learning a skill? then you have things to buy. go to vendors or to auction and buy items to donate to the shrines, and you convert currants into favor.

    even after you are done learning all the skills or even just all the skills you want, favor is needed for emblems, and emblems are needed for rook fighting. currants = emblems.

    need energy right now? convert currants into food for energy.

    need ingredients for your recipes? even if you harvest everything yourself there are still items only available at the groceries vendor. even if you decide never to cook recipes that require grocery vendor items, those recipes are very often required for street building donations so if you want to help build streets you're going to need plenty of currants.
    Posted 16 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • And currants are still not really necessary once you have all the tools and a house. I agree you don't need a ton. All of the things you suggested can be accomplished without having a stockpile of currants.
    Posted 16 months ago by Audaria Subscriber! | Permalink
  • But if you're greedy...
    Posted 16 months ago by shipwreck Subscriber! | Permalink
  • and yes gardening/croppery is super profitable. probably more profitable than mining on a 'currants in, currants out' basis. it's just that in the time it takes to grow the crops a miner can get lots of mining done, and so is very good at "sustainable currants per minute".

    although not everyone wants to make currants as quickly as possible or tap at their keyboard and run around a lot. that's what gardening is for.

    of course gardening benefits from guano now, and you find guano while mining : /

    it all depends on what you mean by the 'best' way to earn currants. do you mean fastest/most currants or do you mean easiest/least player action required?

    mining occupies one end of that spectrum, and gardening/cooking the other.
    Posted 16 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "And currants are still not really necessary once you have all the tools and a house. I agree you don't need a ton. All of the things you suggested can be accomplished without having a stockpile of currants."

    well, for one they are necessary if you want to make recipes that require grocery vendor components.

    but zany serendipity asked "I'm still not sure what's the point of making a lot of currants in the game." .. NOT whether currants were 'necessary'.

    they are not strictly necessary for donating things to shrines, since you can always make things to donate instead, but the currants are arguably the fastest and most efficient way to generate that favor.

    the point of making a lot of currants is obvious. they allow you to do many things in the game well after you have all the tools and a house. it isn't like the only reason to generate currants is to sit on some imagined giant pile of currants. the point is that the currants let you do all the things i listed, with varying degrees of efficiency.
    Posted 16 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • plus you can do fun things with currants like buying houses for other people.
    Posted 16 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I haven't been able to really read all the responses before mine cause I'm on my phone, but from a few hours of mining with earthshakers (which are very easy to make) I have made 30k currants from sparkly chunks alone after donating the gems.

    It cost no energy
    Posted 16 months ago by Laurali Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oops double post, but on a side note my favorite thing about having a lot if currants is using then to help noobs!

    I never had people help me when I was lower level, so I always try to share the wealth with players who need it
    Posted 16 months ago by Laurali Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I don't like mining, and I really make a lot of money with caterpillars and bricks on tool vendor and auction.
    Posted 16 months ago by acreditando Subscriber! | Permalink