Results of my test to the new changes to resource gathering. (Lumberjacking)

I decide that I wanted to see the affects of the new resources respawn.

The affect that the new system would have with causal players.

Causal players (My definition only) : players who play for 2 hours or less a day.

Or total hours logged in is less than 15 hours a week.

The experiment:

I set up the following:

Using an elf character at grandmaster lumberjack for the knowledge of nature.
(Greater chance of finding colored wood)

I decided to review my colored wood runebooks and remove any runes marked for the

Three (3) rarest woods: Heartwood, Bloodwood, Frostwood.

After review, I found that I had five (5) frostwood spots,

three (3) heartwood spots and

(3) bloodwood spots. Giving me a total of eleven (11) runes to use.

I decided to use my rarest spots because :

1) With the new changes, I figured that these spots would have been stripped out already. Giving me a base to see how long it took to respawn the initial color at that spot.

2) There were spots on every facet (felucca and trammel) except tokuno.

3) These were the best spots I personally found and marked since the introduction of colored woods. I used no rune libraries to try and limit the more commonly known spots for colored wood.

I decided to use each rune one hundred (100) times. I would break this

down into four

(4) cycles of twenty-five (25) attempts each. At each spot I would

lumberjack until I saw

the “There’s not enough wood here to harvest” message. Then I would

record what type

of colored wood (if any) received then proceed to the next spot.

I decided to not to keep a total on the number of regular wood harvested. It

is a resource that can be purchased from npcs. Besides I was only interest in the rate and volume of colored wood.

After completing my one hundred (100) uses, the following are the totals for all colored woods.

I have not converted any into boards, not that it matters, just wanted to be

accurate.

OAK ----------------- 17414 LOGS
ASH ---------------- 3794 LOGS
YEW ---------------- 3140 LOGS
HEARTWOOD -------- 2770 LOGS
BLOODWOOD --------- 6235 LOGS
FROSTWOOD -------- 310 LOGS

AMBER ------------ 11 PIECES

I have a complete record of my four (4) runs, and if you wish I will post/pm them.

Personal observations :

This change will have negative impact on causal players. No longer can a

player who needs a few boards to either enhance items or make a few items of colored furniture be able to acquire them in their limited playing time. Unless they get a "lucky" strike or purchase them.

Prices will go up. It is just basic supply and demand.

With the current changes a scripter can sit in his home and if near enough to trees,

Just happily chop away and stack up the wood. Because eventually if you respawn the tree enough times you will get every color.

You might have some people decide to close their accounts.

I think this change should have been tested and discussed more before being released.

Although not as exhaustive, I have been doing some fact gathering on mining.
Race: Elf
Skill: Mining
Skill lvl: 100
Facet: Felluca

Standing in a mining house, with two spots accessed. Once was valorite, the other was gold.

Mining each spot for 3 hours a day, since the change, I have gotten every color of ingot. Results rounded, will post better numbers when I get home.
12k Iron
8K DC
1K copper
1K Bronze
3K gold
1K agapite
750 verite
50 valorite

Those numbers are fairly close to what I got when I ran my test over on test center before they went live. Although I never found any valorite.

Did They Explain What The Main Reason To Change The Mining And Lumberjacking Was Considering There Are Bigger Problems At Hand

Yes it was for the purpose of making rare resources "rare" in the future. EA decided it was silly for a person to have a known good spot. So they fixed it

Vepl

LOL, sure did. I now have ALL good spots. So the new uber mining house is not one with two colored ore, it is one with four ore spots mineable from the same location.

How long does it take for a ore/wood spot to respawn?

about 8 to 10 minutes, before it respawns.

Basically when I was running my test. If I started with rune #1 and stripped ever rune it took me about 15 minutes to hit them all (also sometime to record the wood type found). If after hitting my last rune, I took my load back to my house and then prodceed to hit rune #1 again. The tree had respawned by that time.

So basically if you wanted to run a script/bot they would always find some tyrpe of ore/wood by recalling from one rune, go home empty backpack, recall to next rune, go home empty backpack, etc...

Run this mining test on test center before the changes went live to all shards.

Ok I was just on test center 1 for the last hour and a half. Testing the new resource changes. I just tested mining at this time:

Test was done with a human with 120 Blacksmithing, 120 Tinkering, 100 Mining using pickaxes/shovels for a total of 1000 mining attempts. Just stripped mined walking the ore (iron) as I went. No access to any marked runebooks, prospectors’ tools, or gargoyle pickaxes.

Just mined for ore not stone. And I did not care what size ore pile I got, I counted each ore size as 1 hit no matter the size.

1000 mining attempts yielded:

873 Iron hits yielding 1775 ingots

49 Dull Copper hits yielding 96 ingots
15 Shadow hits yielding 28 ingots
3 Copper hits yielding 6 ingots
10 Bronze hits yielding 18 ingots
28 Gold hits yielding 56 ingots
16 Agapite hits yielding 24 ingots
6 Verite hits yielding 6 ingots
0 Valorite hits yielding 0 ingots

Also pulled 2 blue diamonds, 2 ercu citrine, 1 fire ruby

Gonna reload and run it again will post back on second run. Also I did not see any other miner out on my initial run.

Ok Second Run: (about 2 hours later than first run)(Same set up as before exact same area(s) mined):

1000 mining attempts yielded:

833 Iron hits yielding 1693 ingots
64 Dull Copper hits yielding 139 ingots
26 Shadow hits yielding 51 ingots
12 Copper hits yielding 22 ingots
10 Bronze hits yielding 20 ingots
25 Gold hits yielding 46 ingots
23 Agapite hits yielding 46 ingots
7 Verite hits yielding 11 ingots
0 Valorite hits yielding 0 ingots

Also pulled 1 blue diamond, 1 dark sapphire, 2 turquoise, 1 fire ruby

That's exactly how mining/lumberjacking scripts work now. Only now, they're going to be hitting their runes and getting yields similar to your test results.

Yup but I can not play 23/7 (one hour maintainance) while the scripter can.

So while over the next four days, I might get somewhere near, what I pulled from my first totals (I doubt that, since its random now). I know since I have finished my test I have not even looked at a tree. Its been time to kill.

The scripter will most definitely be pulling more in. But now scripters are safer.
If it does not matter where you mine/chop. Just mark 16 random spots in fel (I mean way out of the way. Think some of the unnamed islands, down south of trinsic in the jungles.) I think you get my drift. Or heck just stand in your house and hit the mountain/trees near you. At least with known spots in fel, you had a chance to hunt them. Now are you going to look in every out of the way place that they might be?

So what you are saying is that 1000 hearwood is probably worth close to 100 million UO gold I guess all those scripters just benifitted from the changes since they probably have a house full of wood. Unlike myself who just got to gm ljacking and will never find enough of the high end wood.