How do you deal with temporal instability? especially while mining.

[estancio]

done quite a few searches, and watched quite a few youtubers and none of them seem to address this simple question. how to deal with mining in unstable regions.

it seems every time i find a mine, for example cassiterite, its deep underground in a region that was very unstable before i started spelunking. From the time i head towards the mine, not from the time i start delving, but as i start to head there, i have maybe one and half, to two minutes. to get in, search and find it before my stability hits 60 and i start hearing bells.  Then its back out,, heading to somewhere usually far off to putz around till it recovers enough to make another go.

it can get ridiculous when i can't quite seem to find the vein, which ofcourse makes matters worse as i end up with a rats nest of tunnels to navigate when i do find something.

its quite frustrating. really almost feels like the instability indicator is a better indicator of resources that the pro pick. "ultra high" likely hood, maybe, but if its spinning backwards fast, there is something there.

am i missing something? Doing it worng? unlucky or just terrible at the game? i can only imagine its going to get worse from here.

Advice appreciated

[Streetwind]

Well, to start with, you don't need to flee the moment you hit 60. You can go quite a bit lower. I think actually dangerous stuff only happens when you fall below 25 or so.

But yes, this puts a hard limit on how long you can go spelunking for. Is that really such a problem, though? Once you have found the ore deposit and know where it is, you can get there much faster next time. You can get a lot of ore in a pretty short time if all you have to do is swing the pickaxe.

Additionally, at least as far as I am personally concerned... I don't spelunk for ore. I might explore caves to look for ruins and translocators and such, but ore? If my prospecting pick says that I'm on top of an "ultra high" location for cassiterite, I'll just dig a vertical shaft straight down. Ore deposits in Vintage Story generate as horizontal discs, so finding them is much easier if you come at them head-on instead of from the side. And having that shaft means I don't have to walk through any caves to get to the ore. I just climb down the ladder, fill my inventory, and head back up.

 

Edited December 13, 2023 by Streetwind

[estancio]

25 or so, really?

I let it get below 60, got turned around on my way out, so it dipped a bit lower, and ended up getting swarmed by drifters, over a dozen between what i could see and hear,..was that then the portal activity hitting apocalyptic or something else completely unrelated? cause i assumed, based on timing, it was the sanity meter.

[Streetwind]

Yep, that was the rift activity. "Apocalyptic" basically means an unending swarm as long as you are in a dark area.

You do get fake drifter spawns on very low stability, but definitely not above a quarter.

 

Edited December 13, 2023 by Streetwind

[Maelstrom]

Bad stuff doesn't start appearing until about 25%.  Things get much worse once you get below 15%. 

I routinely mine until I'm at 25% before heading out. In these situations I make sure I have a direct route to my exit to the surface. 

If I have heavy armor on (iron or steel plate armor) I may just stick around and slay some higher tier drifters which can provide a huge boost to stability.  I think 2 nightmare drifters gives about 70 - 80% stability.

[Thorfinn]

Yeah, unfortunately, spelunking is not a very good way to find metal ore. Even when you do, quite often the cavern has overwritten most of the cassiterite blocks, and you are left with the stragglers out to the edge of the disk. On the other hand, you don't need all that much cassiterite. 

If you want to loot ruins or find translocators anyway, spelunking is probably worthwhile. But unless you are willing to savescum, the translocator doesn't connect anywhere worthwhile, and why bother to go to somewhere random if you intentionally selected the place you settled because it had the resources you wanted?

47 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

I routinely mine until I'm at 25% before heading out. In these situations I make sure I have a direct route to my exit to the surface. 

This. Well, not quite. Unless I'm right under a lake or some other water, I generally start digging straight up to the surface at about a third. By the time I've dropped everything off, I'm often good to climb back down. If I'm not quite topped up, making a small charcoal pit while I'm waiting is always useful.

[estancio]

6 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Yep, that was the rift activity. "Apocalyptic" basically means an unending swarm as long as you are in a dark area.

You do get fake drifter spawns on very low stability, but definitely not above a quarter.

 

okay, that makes things much more manageable, thank you. they were only a threat because of confined area and having left many spears at home to save space. but if i don't have to keep running away at 60,just do a better job walling myself in, then thats much less tedious.

 

5 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

Bad stuff doesn't start appearing until about 25%.  Things get much worse once you get below 15%. 

I routinely mine until I'm at 25% before heading out. In these situations I make sure I have a direct route to my exit to the surface. 

If I have heavy armor on (iron or steel plate armor) I may just stick around and slay some higher tier drifters which can provide a huge boost to stability.  I think 2 nightmare drifters gives about 70 - 80% stability.

That much stability, really? the way i (mis)read the wiki it sounded like miniscule amounts were recovered.That answers another question. I was noticing how bad my sanity dipped during storms and worried the heavy ones might be fatal if i didn't 'horde night' it. so you can slay just a few and stay stable if it was ever a going to be a problem anyway?

 

4 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Yeah, unfortunately, spelunking is not a very good way to find metal ore. Even when you do, quite often the cavern has overwritten most of the cassiterite blocks, and you are left with the stragglers out to the edge of the disk. On the other hand, you don't need all that much cassiterite. 

If you want to loot ruins or find translocators anyway, spelunking is probably worthwhile. But unless you are willing to savescum, the translocator doesn't connect anywhere worthwhile, and why bother to go to somewhere random if you intentionally selected the place you settled because it had the resources you wanted?

This. Well, not quite. Unless I'm right under a lake or some other water, I generally start digging straight up to the surface at about a third. By the time I've dropped everything off, I'm often good to climb back down. If I'm not quite topped up, making a small charcoal pit while I'm waiting is always useful.

I was actually, for the most part, being stupidly colorful with the "spelunking" comment. my last cassiterite mine i dug straight down, missed it, went back up and started searching. it was small, and on three levels, stepping down. wouldn't you know i danced right on top of, and around, it. so annoyed when i found it cause it broke into all my search tunnels. 1 block away. took several trips though because the stability was so low.

my first cassiterite mine i actually bisected two depoisites, one a little higher than me, one lower, lead to some extremely confusing propick results, between them was small but turn towards either and it dipped to trace. honestly not really sure how that worked, but it did., all the cassiterite i ever needed, but man was that mine a labrynthe, again, low stability, and numberous trips, especaily because of how messy the caves got. unfortunately 1.18.15 corrupted the save.

but so far i have never actually managed to hit the disc on anything but a surface copper deposite. i've always had to branch out and hunt for it. and my technique probably sucks if i am not just unlucky.

 

[l33tmaan]

The only percentage of stability that matters is the last 5-10%, whereupon you start taking damage. That's a good cue to leave!

[Maelstrom]

I argue 15% due to drifter spawnage, but that also depends on armor being warn.

[idiomcritter]

realize its difficult to obtain early game, Ore blasting bombs go a long way to quick mining

[Cetasaya]

its takes a LOOOONG time to dip below 10% stability for me wherever i mine.  maybe ive just never encountered an especially unstable area/chunk but ive mined in a bunch of spots

i can mine out 20+ stacks (filling my inventory) of casserite ore long before any baddies spawn

the problem becomes getting back to the ladder after mining out a literal maze chasing all the ore veims before the stability dips below the threshold lol

but i think its wild that youre down there long enough for this to be a problem.  i guess unstable areas are really that much worse.  in that case i would suggest not mining there and finding another spot

 

[Maelstrom]

Easier said than done, when the only iron for kilometers is in such an unstable area.  My first iron deposit (serendipitously directly under my starter dirt hut) was unstable enough that I could dash down to the mine, gather almost 1 stack of chunks before my stability was down to about 20 to 25 percent.

[estancio]

On 12/25/2023 at 3:44 PM, Cetasaya said:

its takes a LOOOONG time to dip below 10% stability for me wherever i mine.  maybe ive just never encountered an especially unstable area/chunk but ive mined in a bunch of spots

i can mine out 20+ stacks (filling my inventory) of casserite ore long before any baddies spawn

the problem becomes getting back to the ladder after mining out a literal maze chasing all the ore veims before the stability dips below the threshold lol

but i think its wild that youre down there long enough for this to be a problem.  i guess unstable areas are really that much worse.  in that case i would suggest not mining there and finding another spot

 

 

like i said, the places i was finding are so unstable i am tanking my sanity before i even reach the dig site, just running towards it,, much less going down and start digging.where it really starts to plunge. I really hope they give a pass on the temporarily stability mechanic, cause unless i am just incredibly unlucky, which it sounds like i might be,, i am finding alot of places on the surface (usually right where i want to build) where its pretty nasty, much less underneath

Honestly that is maddening. Nice spot, temperate, water nerby, cat tails, farmable animals, berries, lovely veiw, no bears, the perfect spot, now look at how fast that wheel spins backwards. ugh!

but yeah, i have a few mines in my current game where i just climb a couple rungs back up the ladder to recover, which is laughable when you are at 40 or 50 height and when i have others where i'm 100-110 up and going bat crap crazy, fast and no hope of recover till i get a few hundred blocks away.

even knowing i can let it dip alot lower than i was letting my sanity go, thats still 3 to 4(double) minutes *tops* for a *round* trip. doable but not filling my inventory.

[Maelstrom]

In general temporal stability decreases as you descend into the depths.  If'n it's slightly unstable at the surface that iron deposit close to the mantle is going to go berserk.

[Kriss]

Imo Vintage Story made the wrong turn when they decided to add temporal stuff to the game, as its quite a bit to learn just to be able to play with it on. I just feel like today's survival games are better off with simplicity, just basic zombies or other wandering mobs would be great.

I've been playing with temporal storms and everything related to it off ever since i found out about it, i just find it a bit unrealistic. Don't get me wrong, it does add content to the game, but i just feel its been overly complicated for no reason at all - and the fact that it is possible to turn off, I'll forever be grateful for =D

[Quixote]

"Imo Vintage Story made the wrong turn when they decided to add temporal stuff to the game, as its quite a bit to learn just to be able to play with it on. I just feel like today's survival games are better off with simplicity, just basic zombies or other wandering mobs would be great."

Please no.  Why do you want it to be just another  yawn fest with the way overdone zombies and other nonsense?  Go play Minecraft or something if that's what you want.  This is a different flavor of game and I for one am very glad they didn't go with the snooze fest "zombie horde" mentality.  So sick of zombies and vampires and werewolves and all that gothic crap.  So overdone in movies and games, no imagination.  At least Vintage Story has something new and fresh and not the same old tired tropes.  I know that drifters basically fill that niche of being 'zombies' but it's with flavor and some Eldritch spice, which I hope is expanded on in future releases.  Certainly much more interesting than the same old boring zombie mentality.

Edited January 5 by Quixote

[Kriss]

2 hours ago, Quixote said:

"Imo Vintage Story made the wrong turn when they decided to add temporal stuff to the game, as its quite a bit to learn just to be able to play with it on. I just feel like today's survival games are better off with simplicity, just basic zombies or other wandering mobs would be great."

Please no.  Why do you want it to be just another  yawn fest with the way overdone zombies and other nonsense?  Go play Minecraft or something if that's what you want.  This is a different flavor of game and I for one am very glad they didn't go with the snooze fest "zombie horde" mentality.  So sick of zombies and vampires and werewolves and all that gothic crap.  So overdone in movies and games, no imagination.  At least Vintage Story has something new and fresh and not the same old tired tropes.  I know that drifters basically fill that niche of being 'zombies' but it's with flavor and some Eldritch spice, which I hope is expanded on in future releases.  Certainly much more interesting than the same old boring zombie mentality.

Oops, looks like i struck a nerve with my comment.

I'm not saying Vintage Story has to be like every other survival game that we know of in today's age. That was an example of what simplicity could be. At this point, you're just assuming that I'm some kind of zombie-vampire-witch lover.

Instead of all this temporal doodoo stuff, mobs alone could be enough. Not to mention a bed spawn - its pissing me off knowing i need temporal gears to set a bed spawn, thats just silly.

Quote

Go play Minecraft or something if that's what you want.

That does not make much sense. You do realize I'm playing Vintage Story because its a better alternative than Minecraft, and any other survival game for that matter.

I clearly just triggered you in some way, which was obviously not my intention. I was just expressing how i feel about the temporal stability stuff. I will not be commenting further on this, as I'm expecting another hostile response.

[Quixote]

Struck a nerve?  Assuming?  Triggered?  Expecting hostile response?  WTF with your language.  You're just going to use a bunch of loaded words to toss it back in my face because I disagreed with your opinion about zombies?  Whatever, that's lame.  You should check yourself before you wreck yourself.  Very passive-aggressive behavior, how could anyone talk to you with that fight and flight mechanism.  Good bye.