Elizabeth Gold's MINER TEST LAB

Elizabeth Gold

Grandmaster
I have tested bits and pieces regarding mining on UOF and I spread some of that information trough forum posts or chat but I want to compile it into a single place. I'll update this post over time and maybe one day convert it into a full mining guide. Feel free to give feedback or throws in your own inputs in the replies.


Mining grid
Ever noticed if you mine out a tile, that the tile next to it is also empty and sometimes it isn't? That's because the map is devided into a grid that consists of 4x4 tiles. All the tiles with that 4x4 range are bound together into a single resournce node. Meaning if you mine out one tile, the other tiles will also be empty. Each resource node has it's own ore color, ore amount and respawn timer. Example:
jCkrFOT.png
Ore color: Some resource nodes have colored ore. These colors are fixed and will never change, so if you find a valorite node and come back later to mine it again, it will still give valorite. If you mine a node which has a colored ore, there is a 50% chance to get that colored ore, otherwise it will be iron ore. If you don't have sufficient mining skill, it only yield iron ore.

Ore amount: TODO - I noticed a node is exhausted after 5 to 16 mining cycles (it varries). This amount of mining cycles appears it be a fixed per mining node. Over the years, I noticed these amounts randomly changed. Not sure what triggered it. I'm guessing a server reboot, server upgrade or map update.

Respawn timer: It should be between 10 and 20 minutes but I had mixed results varying between 22 and 32 minutes. Needs more testing in regards to boundy values and exact behaviour.


Melting iron - double melting chance
When melting iron, there is a chance to have doubled results. I'm not sure if there is minimal mining skill required but at 100.0 skill and above the following formula applies:
melted ingots = iron ore * (1 + (Mining skill / 200))

Mining gloves are taken into account!
Test results can be found in reply below.


Bountiful Harvest
Bountiful harvest is one of many consumable perks that give your character a temporary boost. This particalur one will increase your mining yields (see Mining cycles and yield) for a limited time duration. The timer starts as soon as you activate the item in your backpack and can not be stopped (continues when outside backpack or when you log off). Once the timer runs out, it disappears. During activation, the item is blessed. These consumable perks can be obtained through:
  • Participating in Champion Spawns (distributed like a powerscroll at the end).
  • Loot inside a paragon metal chest.
The bountiful harvest perk does not stack, so don't activate multiple of these perks at once.


Mining cycles and yield
Every node supports a fixed number of mining cycles (not an amount of ore) before it get's exhaused. The amount of ore you get per mining cycle will vary:
  • You will always get 1 ore/granite per cycle by default.
  • Mining on the felucca facet (overland and original dungeons) will give an additional +1 ore/granite per cycle. RDA's and customized dungeons are located other facets and will not give you this bonus.
  • Mining with a bountiful harvest perk will give an additonal +1 ore/granite per cycle.
  • Mining after using a recall spell, you are limited to 1 ore/granite per cycle for 3 minutes. Note that this penalty can be avoided by using a gate spell.
An example with ore yields per cycle:
A mining node inside a cave nearby Britain is known to support 7 mining cycles before it's empty. You will get 2 ore per cycle due to the felucca facet bonus for a total of 14 ore. If you recalled recently, you will only get 7 ore before the node is exhausted.

When you have mining for granite enabled:
  • You have a 10% chance to get granite instead of ore.
  • The amount you dig up per cycle follows the same rules as with ore.
  • When you dig up granite, you will NOT exhaust the node.
An example with ore/granite yields per cycle:
A mining node inside a cave nearby Britain is known to support 7 mining cycles before it's empty. You will get 2 ore per cycle due to the felucca facet bonus and happen to strike granite twice, for a total of 14 ore and 4 granite. If you recalled recently, you will only get 7 ore and 2 granite before the node is exhausted.

Recommended prices
I often get people asking for advise when it comes to selling their goods. Some people use Blaine the Gypsy's Guide: Resource/Mod Default Prices which is an excellent overall resource guide which I often consult myself. Based on my own findings, I'd say the prices aren't as linear and would recommend these price ranges instead:
  • Iron 8-10 gp
  • Dull Copper 12-15 gp
  • Shadow Iron 28-33 gp
  • Copper 30-35 gp
  • Bronze 33-38 gp
  • Gold 41-45 gp
  • Agapite 45-50 gp
  • Verite 53-60 gp
  • Valorite 55-62 gp
Taken all factors into account, a bountiful harvest perk adds around 325 gp / minute for an average miner.
Updated September 2018


Miner related changes
  • Febuary 2018 (Discord #Patch-notes)
    Recall harvesting cooldown implemented. You no longer get the felucca double mining bonus after using 'recall' for 3 minutes.
  • January 2018
    Weapon slayer deeds have been added to the game. Which affect the demand for colored ores since the required materials are a mix of all available colored ores. This also implies that iron will be in lesser demand.
    Mining no longer causes to spawn mobs, Eppy stated it missed the intend to stop afk mining. (undocumented)
  • December 2017 (no patch notes available)
    Pets with less than 200 hitpoints do not suffer from skill loss, so pack horses and llama's are no longer affected by skill loss when resurrecting them. Giant beetles have exactly 200 hitpoints so they will still be affected (undocumented)
  • November 2017
    Mining spawns Earth elementals again instead of Trolls. Basicly reversing the changes from last month.
  • October 2017
    Mining spawns trolls now instead of earth elementals which is monster of the month for October. Miners are not allowed to have nice things (Undocumented).
  • September 2017
    Allow mining of crystal fragments: All Mineable crystal are now always spawning in reachable locations.
  • May 2017
    Blocked cave house mining: You are no longer able to mine inside the cave houses.
  • April 2017
    All swampy barding deeds now have the same damage reduction: Previously the damage reduction increased with ore color. Meaning valorite will be in a lesser demand now.
  • March 2017
    Mining now gives a chance to spawn mobs that drop nice stuff: Earth elementals will spawn during mining activities; see section about Earth Elementals above.
  • February 2017
    Added consumable perks and drop rate: Bountiful Harvest was introduced as a perk, which is a replacement for the old faction bonus; see section about Bountiful Harvest above.
  • November 2016
    Made granite stackable: Granite block can now be stacked. Previous each granit block was a seperate item.
 
Last edited:

Elizabeth Gold

Grandmaster
Test results used

Double melting chance on iron ore
10000 iron ore melted seperately using 120 mining skill and +5 mining gloves: 162.03% (expected 162.50%)
10000 iron ore melted seperately using 120 mining skill and +3 mining gloves: 160.36% (expected 161.50%)
10000 iron ore melted seperately using 120 mining skill and +1 mining gloves: 160.55% (expected 160.50%)
10000 iron ore melted seperately using 120 mining skill and no mining gloves: 160.30% (expected 160.00%)
10000 iron ore melted seperately using 115 mining skill and +5 mining gloves: 160.13% (expected 160.00%)
10000 iron ore melted seperately using 115 mining skill and no mining gloves: 157.12% (expected 157.50%)
Mining spawned Earth Elemental loot:
Total Elemental Kills 1759
Elemental Kills (normal) 1667
Elemental Kills (paragon) 92
Minimum gold (normal) 122
Maximum gold (normal) 207
Minimum gold (paragon) 735
Average gold (paragon) 778
Maximum gold (paragon) 826
Iron ingot drops 689
Minimum iron ingots 1
Average iron ingots 35
Maximum iron ingots 179
Agapite ingot drops 545
Minimum agapite ingots 35
Average agapite ingots 59
Maximum agapite ingots 84
Valorite ingot drops 524
Minimum valorite ingots 35
Average valorite ingots 59
Maximum valorite ingots 84
Bountiful harvest drops 10
 
Last edited:

Elizabeth Gold

Grandmaster
If anyone can provide more insight in regards to the mining of crystals; please message me. I assume this is RDA related, which is not my field of expertise.

Credit to @parsnip for clearing that out
Saw your mining test lab thread and noticed you were looking for info on the rda crystal updates ... this is what I posted on another thread: The "fragments", actually crystal shards, you mine from RDAs are different from portal focus fragments. The crystal shards were recently modified to prevent them from spawning in places were they couldn't be mined. They are used to craft a Crystal Workbench. The portal focus fragments remain unchanged in terms of drop locations - top scorer in RDA, tmap and MIB chests. The only thing that was changed with them recently was to add a counter so that you knew how many fragments had been combined. That's why you see 1/5 next to them now. So really, there hasn't been much of a change! Crystal shards are still obtained in the same way and do the same thing
 

Elizabeth Gold

Grandmaster
Changes:
- added patch notes for nov 2017 / jan 2018
- adapted the rest accordingly.
- adapted ore prices.
- below is the previous obsolete version n case I need to re-add elementals in the future.

I have tested bits and pieces regarding mining on UOF and I spread some of that information trough forum posts or chat but I want to compile it into a single place. I'll update this post over time and maybe one day convert it into a full mining guide. Feel free to give feedback or throws in your own inputs in the replies.


Mining grid
Ever noticed if you mine out a tile, that the tile next to it is also empty and sometimes it isn't? That's because the map is devided into a grid that consists of 4x4 tiles. All the tiles with that 4x4 range are bound together into a single resournce node. Meaning if you mine out one tile, the other tiles will also be empty. Each resource node has it's own ore color, ore amount and respawn timer. Example:
jCkrFOT.png
Ore color: Some resource nodes have colored ore. These colors are fixed and will never change, so if you find a valorite node and come back later to mine it again, it will still give valorite. If you mine a node which has a colored ore, there is a 50% chance to get that colored ore, otherwise it will be iron ore. If you don't have sufficient mining skill, it only yield iron ore.

Ore amount: TODO - On the felucca ruleset it varries between 10 and 35 ore. It appears it be a fixed amount per node, but I've seen it change a few times over the months. Not sure what triggered it. I'm guessing a server reboot, server upgrade or map update. The bountiful harvest perk doesn't appear to drain it faster, it just yields more per cycle. My guess is that I need to count cycles per node but that would imply that all results on felucca ruleset would be even (which is not the case). Clearly more testing is needed on this matter.

Respawn timer: TODO - I had mixed results varying between 22 and 32 minutes. Needs more testing in regards to boundy values and exact behaviour.


Melting iron - double melting chance
When melting iron, there is a chance to have doubled results. I'm not sure if there is minimal mining skill required but at 100.0 skill and above the following formula applies:
melted ingots = iron ore * (1 + (Mining skill / 200))

Mining gloves are taken into account!
Test results can be found in reply below.


Bountiful Harvest
Bountiful harvest is one of many consumable perks that give your character a temporary boost. This particalur one will increase your mining yields (see Mining yields) for a limited time duration. The timer starts as soon as you activate the item in your backpack and can not be stopped (continues when outside backpack or when you log off). Once the timer runs out, it disappears. During activation, the item is blessed. These consumable perks can be obtained through:
  • Participating in Champion Spawns (distributed like a powerscroll at the end).
  • Loot inside a paragon metal chest.
The bountiful harvest perk does not stack, so don't activate multiple of these perks at once.


Mining yields
Felucca facet (overland and the original dungeons):
Note: It appears cave houses are no longer permitted to be mined. This will be disabled in the future. I'm to blame for that, sorry to everyone affected.
  • 2 ore/granite per cycle.
  • 3 ore/granite per cycle with bountiful harvest perk.
Other facets (RDA's and the new dungeons):
  • 1 ore/granite per cycle.
  • TODO - check bountiful harvest perk.


Earth Elementals
During your mining activities, there is a chance an earth elemental will spawn. This was a measure against afk scripters/botters. While I have no data at the time how often they spawn and what's the exact trigger, I do know what there is a 5.23% chance it's a paragon earth elemental.

The loottable on these earth elementals has been slighly enhanced, I assume as a compensation for the inconvicience for the honest miners. Additional drops:
  • Extra ingots (100% chance):
    • 39% chance for iron ingots, amount varying between 1-179 (avg 35)
    • 31% chance for agapite ingots, amount varying between 35-84 (avg 59)
    • 30% chance for valorite ingots, amount varying between 35-84 (avg 59)
  • Bountiful harvest perk (0.57% chance)
Test results can be found in reply below.

During October, earth elementals are Monster of the Month. They got replaced with trolls during that time. They have the same additional drops as earth elementals. On the regular troll loottable there is a chance of getting a flayer skinning knive. I've seen these drop on the mined trolls as well. They have about 35% more health and less valued standard loot, however the upside is that they yield slightly more talisman xp.

Recommended ingot prices
I often get people asking for advise when it comes to selling their goods. Some people use Blaine the Gypsy's Guide: Resource/Mod Default Prices which is an excellent overall resource guide which I often consult myself. Based on my own findings, I'd say the prices aren't as linear and would recommend these price ranges instead:
  • Iron 8-9
  • Dull Copper 11-14
  • Shadow Iron 27-35
  • Copper 26-30
  • Bronze 26-30
  • Gold 38-42
  • Agapite 38-40
  • Verite 53-60
  • Valorite 48-50
Updated October 2017


Miner related changes
  • Oktober 2017 (unofficial): Mining spawns trolls now instead of earth elementals (which is monster of the month for October).
  • September 2017 Allow mining of crystal fragments: All Mineable crystal are now always spawning in reachable locations.
  • May 2017 Blocked cave house mining: You are no longer able to mine inside the cave houses.
  • April 2017 All swampy barding deeds now have the same damage reduction: Previously the damage reduction increased with ore color. Meaning valorite will be in a lesser demand now.
  • March 2017 Mining now gives a chance to spawn mobs that drop nice stuff: Earth elementals will spawn during mining activities; see section about Earth Elementals above.
  • February 2017 Added consumable perks and drop rate: Bountiful Harvest was introduced as a perk, which is a replacement for the old faction bonus; see section about Bountiful Harvest above.
  • November 2016 Made granite stackable: Granite block can now be stacked. Previous each granit block was a seperate item.
 
Last edited:

Grebdnil

New Member
You say in September of 17 they added the ability to mine crystal frags, is this still a thing? How does that work?
 

Elizabeth Gold

Grandmaster
Changes:
- added patch notes for febr 2018 and addapted yields in guide.
- adapted ore prices.

In addition, people asked me what a bountiful harvest perk should be going for.
For the average miner, you can gain about 325gp/minute while having the perk active.
 

Elizabeth Gold

Grandmaster
Changes:
  • rewrote the entire part about mining cycles and yield
  • added colored ore distribution
  • adapted ore prices.
  • below is the previous obsolete version.
I have tested bits and pieces regarding mining on UOF and I spread some of that information trough forum posts or chat but I want to compile it into a single place. I'll update this post over time and maybe one day convert it into a full mining guide. Feel free to give feedback or throws in your own inputs in the replies.


Mining grid
Ever noticed if you mine out a tile, that the tile next to it is also empty and sometimes it isn't? That's because the map is devided into a grid that consists of 4x4 tiles. All the tiles with that 4x4 range are bound together into a single resournce node. Meaning if you mine out one tile, the other tiles will also be empty. Each resource node has it's own ore color, ore amount and respawn timer. Example:
jCkrFOT.png
Ore color: Some resource nodes have colored ore. These colors are fixed and will never change, so if you find a valorite node and come back later to mine it again, it will still give valorite. If you mine a node which has a colored ore, there is a 50% chance to get that colored ore, otherwise it will be iron ore. If you don't have sufficient mining skill, it only yield iron ore.

Ore amount: TODO - On the felucca ruleset it varries between 10 and 35 ore. It appears it be a fixed amount per node, but I've seen it change a few times over the months. Not sure what triggered it. I'm guessing a server reboot, server upgrade or map update. The bountiful harvest perk doesn't appear to drain it faster, it just yields more per cycle. My guess is that I need to count cycles per node but that would imply that all results on felucca ruleset would be even (which is not the case). Clearly more testing is needed on this matter.

Respawn timer: TODO - I had mixed results varying between 22 and 32 minutes. Needs more testing in regards to boundy values and exact behaviour.


Melting iron - double melting chance
When melting iron, there is a chance to have doubled results. I'm not sure if there is minimal mining skill required but at 100.0 skill and above the following formula applies:
melted ingots = iron ore * (1 + (Mining skill / 200))

Mining gloves are taken into account!
Test results can be found in reply below.


Bountiful Harvest
Bountiful harvest is one of many consumable perks that give your character a temporary boost. This particalur one will increase your mining yields (see Mining yields) for a limited time duration. The timer starts as soon as you activate the item in your backpack and can not be stopped (continues when outside backpack or when you log off). Once the timer runs out, it disappears. During activation, the item is blessed. These consumable perks can be obtained through:
  • Participating in Champion Spawns (distributed like a powerscroll at the end).
  • Loot inside a paragon metal chest.
The bountiful harvest perk does not stack, so don't activate multiple of these perks at once.


Mining yields
Felucca facet (overland and the original dungeons):
Note: It appears cave houses are no longer permitted to be mined. This will be disabled in the future. I'm to blame for that, sorry to everyone affected.
  • 2 ore/granite per cycle.
  • 3 ore/granite per cycle with bountiful harvest perk.
Other facets (RDA's and the new dungeons):
  • 1 ore/granite per cycle.
  • TODO - check bountiful harvest perk.
Recall harvest cooldown: If you recalled you get a 3 minute cooldown when mining. During this cooldown you only get 1 ore/granite per cycle. To clarify: this means you get less ore from the node until it's empty.

Recommended ingot prices
I often get people asking for advise when it comes to selling their goods. Some people use Blaine the Gypsy's Guide: Resource/Mod Default Prices which is an excellent overall resource guide which I often consult myself. Based on my own findings, I'd say the prices aren't as linear and would recommend these price ranges instead:
  • Iron 8,5-9,5
  • Dull Copper 14-15
  • Shadow Iron 28-33
  • Copper 30-35
  • Bronze 33-38
  • Gold 41-45
  • Agapite 44-48
  • Verite 53-60
  • Valorite 55-62
Updated May 2018
Expectations: Agapite/ will slowly rise in price again. There is heavy iron speculation right now due to a few leaked details in regards to the crafting meta.



Miner related changes
  • Febuary 2018 (Discord #Patcj-notes)
    Recall harvesting cooldown implemented. You no longer get the felucca double mining bonus after using 'recall' for 3 minutes.
  • January 2018
    Weapon slayer deeds have been added to the game. Which affect the demand for colored ores since the required materials are a mix of all available colored ores. This also implies that iron will be in lesser demand.
    Mining no longer causes to spawn mobs, Eppy stated it missed the intend to stop afk mining. (undocumented)
  • December 2017 (no patch notes available)
    Pets with less than 200 hitpoints do not suffer from skill loss, so pack horses and llama's are no longer affected by skill loss when resurrecting them. Giant beetles have exactly 200 hitpoints so they will still be affected (undocumented)
  • November 2017
    Mining spawns Earth elementals again instead of Trolls. Basicly reversing the changes from last month.
  • October 2017
    Mining spawns trolls now instead of earth elementals which is monster of the month for October. Miners are not allowed to have nice things (Undocumented).
  • September 2017
    Allow mining of crystal fragments: All Mineable crystal are now always spawning in reachable locations.
  • May 2017
    Blocked cave house mining: You are no longer able to mine inside the cave houses.
  • April 2017
    All swampy barding deeds now have the same damage reduction: Previously the damage reduction increased with ore color. Meaning valorite will be in a lesser demand now.
  • March 2017
    Mining now gives a chance to spawn mobs that drop nice stuff: Earth elementals will spawn during mining activities; see section about Earth Elementals above.
  • February 2017
    Added consumable perks and drop rate: Bountiful Harvest was introduced as a perk, which is a replacement for the old faction bonus; see section about Bountiful Harvest above.
  • November 2016
    Made granite stackable: Granite block can now be stacked. Previous each granit block was a seperate item.
 
Last edited:

Elizabeth Gold

Grandmaster
Slight hic-up. Appearantly I reached the maximum number of characters one I can put in a post. So i'll dump this information here until I can find a proper way to format/add it to the original post:

Colored ore distribution
After analysing big data, I came to the conclusion that color distribution is NOT randomized! All nodes follow a fixed distribution, only the locations are randomized. For every 72 nodes there are:

  • 36 iron ore nodes (50,000%)
  • 8 dull copper ore nodes (11,111%)
  • 7 shadow ore nodes (9,722%)
  • 6 copper ore nodes (8,333%)
  • 5 bronze ore nodes (6,944%)
  • 4 gold ore nodes (5,556%)
  • 3 agapite ore nodes (4,167%)
  • 2 verite ore nodes (2,778%)
  • 1 valorite ore nodes (1,389%)

But that is just the node distribution. When mining a node you have a 50/50 chance to mine iron/colored actual ore results will have 50% more iron. This is assuming you have don't fail mining up the colored ore. If you fail the skillcheck (see Colored mining and melting), you'll have to reattempt the mining cycle, meaning you are faced with a 50/50 chance to get iron/colored again, thus lowering the overall colored output. When mining with 120 mining skill and ringmail mining gloves (+5 skill), you get this ore distribution:

  • iron ore (75,000%)
  • dull copper ore (5,556%)
  • shadow ore (4,861%)
  • copper ore(4,167%)
  • bronze ore (3,472%)
  • gold ore (2,778%)
  • agapite ore (2,083%)
  • verite ore (1,389%)
  • valorite ore (0,694%)

Mining and melting chances
When mining or melting a skillcheck is performed. If you fail, you won't mine up ore or lose ore melting it. If you want to melt an entire stack of ore at once, you need 100% chance to succeed. With legendary mining skill (120) you still only have 92% chance to mine/melt valorite and you will need + 5 skill from ringmail mining gloves to get your chances up to 100%. At least, that is in theory. For some reason, mining gloves screw up the logic behind this system when it comes to melting an entire stack of ore at once rule. I'm going to assume this is a bug for now.


I haven't bothered/figured out the formula for iron ore yet.
The only thing that really matters is you need 75.0 mining skill to get 100% mining/ meling chance.

To calculate your mining/melting chances for colored ores:
Code:
mining/melting chance = 50% + (your mining skill - minimum skill required for the color) * 2%

Example for mining/melting valorite (99 required mining skill) at legendary mining (120):
92% chance for mining/melting valorite = 50 % + (120.0 - 99.0) * 2%

So to save you the trouble, here's the list:
  • dull ore: 65 minimal mining skill, 90 mining skill to get 100% mining/melting chance.
  • shadow ore: 70 minimal mining skill, 95 mining skill to get 100% mining/melting chance.
  • copper ore: 75 minimal mining skill, 100 mining skill to get 100% mining/melting chance.
  • bronze ore: 80 minimal mining skill, 105 mining skill to get 100% mining/melting chance.
  • gold ore: 85 minimal mining skill, 110 mining skill to get 100% mining/melting chance.
  • agapite ore: 90 minimal mining skill, 115 mining skill to get 100% mining/melting chance.
  • verite ore: 95 minimal mining skill, 120 mining skill to get 100% mining/melting chance.
  • valorite ore: 99 minimal mining skill, 124 mining skill to get 100% mining/melting chance.
 
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