The other advantage of a Fancy Grinder should be less energy needed to grind. Grinding takes a lot of energy now (a lot more than smelting, for example).
@Demon Thinker. You're right. Tinkering would've helped, but once I was in the caverns, working on the quest, and didn't have a tinkering tool, that was sort of out the window. Next time!
never noticed how fragile it is, since I've had the tinkertooling skill since forever.
tinkertooling is rather vital now that all the tools break. not picking up the skill costs bigtime money over the long haul due to all the replacement tools you'll buy.
We still need a fancy grinder. Just being able to grind 150 at time is annoying. One of the annoying factors is that 150 is an option it's just the grinders max. So I have to sort and count the ore before grinding. I don't mind the fixing the grinder after breaking so much as the small limit. If I have the energy I should be able to grind. I would mind being able to even use multiple grinders so I could do 300 at once for 2 grinders. Cooking and other crafting has improved so much. Please give this some much needed attention!
Agreed, on all accounts--the grinder doesn't have very many uses compared to how easy it is to obtain ore--You get 50 per rock, but can't grind very many before the grinder is dead, so I very often get the message of "you don't have enough uses left in your grinder to do that", even though I really don't have that much to grind considering the space it's taking up in my inventory. (I don't have any hard numbers right now, and the game is closed or I would check.... All I know is that the grinder ran out of uses WAY sooner than any other tool I was using). It also takes an enormous amount of energy to grind things, compared to other activities.
I don't mind the amount of energy it takes to grind nearly as much as the lack of grinds the grinder has in it before it breaks. I can't even use the whole buff from a Flaming Humbaba before my grinder breaks and then I end up wasting the rest of the buff repairing it rather than grinding.
I definitely think either the number of uses before it breaks needs to be raised or a fancy grinder added to the hardware vendors. Otherwise Flaming Humbabas are way less useful than Earthshakers without any real reasoning for it to be so that I can see.
I think being able to create a 'fancy grinder' via player mechanisms would be soooo cool. The players themselves creating something you can't get in the shops. Seriously though, I've had a wonderful set of 3 mortal and pestles (one since college) and they don't really wear out... course I use them to grind spices and not rocks, so that bit took some getting used to.
I would not mind better equipment, maybe stuff you have to make your self? I have 3 hoes for projects and gardening because they break at the blink of an eye.
It is annoying when you're not allowed to grind all 200 of your rocks because there aren't enough uses left in your grinder, but the next largest option is 30, so you have to do it in batches of 30, fix your grinder, then grind the rest.
I would settle for the ability to:
1) Be able to put in any amount to grind and not just ALL / 10 / 20 / 30 (when you have a lot)
and/or
2) Be able to grind until it breaks.