resource shortage/mines

[tolga]

i saw that there is only 1 mine per island, what happens after i discovered all mines? No more copper and iron for me? I was selling all my bars for quick cash.

[Rhyono]

That's correct. Sell crops instead.

[Rossell]

This genuinely makes zero sense to me, and honestly feels quite terrible. I just purchased the game today and without any information/warning this feels like an obvious flaw in the game. The games beginning makes a CLEAR effort to inform the player they get 1.5 times their value by selling directly to the Smith as a way of earning money. Why would you lead the player towards this direction if its a finite resource? It just feels bad.

[Zethix]

Originally posted by Rossell:

This genuinely makes zero sense to me, and honestly feels quite terrible. I just purchased the game today and without any information/warning this feels like an obvious flaw in the game. The games beginning makes a CLEAR effort to inform the player they get 1.5 times their value by selling directly to the Smith as a way of earning money. Why would you lead the player towards this direction if its a finite resource? It just feels bad.

i agree i was doing the same thing

[Psyringe]

Resources are finite but very abundant. I think you'll run out of reasons to obtain more metal (or more money) long before you'll run out of metal. Also, side note: If you're collecting tons of metal to earn money, I think you're wasting a lot of time. There is a much better way to quickly amass exponentially growing amounts of money later in the game.

That said, trees and grass were finite as well when the game was released, and the devs have recently added ways to regrow them. And moonstones respawn too now, which they did not in the release version. Perhaps they are open to giving metals a similar treatment.

[Rossell]

How I play, or what I do in the game is not subject to your opinion. I buy games to play them how I want and enjoy. If I want to spend 40+ hours mining metal to get rich thats my choice. When the game teaches you to sell metal to earn money and then limits the resource its simply bad design. This is a fact, not a opinion.

Metal should respawn, or simply remove the tutorial steps that teach (very very early in the game) players to sell it for money. People will always choose the easier path. Selling crops for 40-65 coins each once every 6-9 days per harvest OR sell 1 metal bar that takes 2 minutes to cook up. Which do you think 99% of players will be doing?

[Psyringe]

Originally posted by Rossell:

How I play, or what I do in the game is not subject to your opinion. I buy games to play them how I want and enjoy. If I want to spend 40+ hours mining metal to get rich thats my choice. When the game teaches you to sell metal to earn money and then limits the resource its simply bad design. This is a fact, not a opinion.

I'm sorry, but you can't stop people from having opinions. That's not how the world works. ;) You also can't stop some of these opinions from disagreeing with you. In which case you can then disagree with them. :)

I think the playstyle that you seem to prefer is horribly inefficient. You're spending 40+ hours on a task that could be accomplished in a fraction of that time by using a method of exponentially growing income. But you're of course free to play the game in a very inefficient way (as I am free to point out just how inefficient it is, which might be useful information for people who aren't so keen on wasting 40+ hours on a repetitive task that could be done much faster.)

Claiming that the developers need to cater specifically to your own inefficient playstyle when better strategies are available seems a bit solipsistic, though. But they might, of course, and it wouldn't affect players who different playstyles, so there isn't really a downside apart from the devs having to spend time and money to implement it. And again, they _did_ introduce renewable trees and grass as well as respawning moonstones already, so they seem quite open to such ideas.

Originally posted by Rossell:

Metal should respawn, or simply remove the tutorial steps that teach (very very early in the game) players to sell it for money. People will always choose the easier path. Selling crops for 40-65 coins each once every 6-9 days per harvest OR sell 1 metal bar that takes 2 minutes to cook up. Which do you think 99% of players will be doing?

The vast majority of players are either doing neither (because you don't need to sell metal _or_ crops to get enough money for buying everything you'll ever need, there are better ways of making money), or they sell stuff in numbers so low that it doesn't matter whether resources are finite or not. Again - not everyone insists on unnecessarily doing things inefficiently. ;)

[Surreal]

I would like resources to respawn just so I dont feel pressured to hang onto materials because "There is a limited amount."

I have only sold materials the quests tell me to as well as fish and other renewable materials like Spirit poop items. Clay sells at 50g a pop and you can get infinite with an auto feeder.

Im not sure what 'late game awesome' money maker Psy is talking about but I did make my first potion and it sells for 300g with only 100g of invested materials (not counting alch table cost). So maybe that?

Iunno but farming seems like easily infinite money with minor upkeep cause sprinklers are cheap and learned early on. Just takes awhile to start it up and get a Greenhouse (can you get more than 1? If so, easily infinite money).

[Rhyono]

Originally posted by Surreal:

(can you get more than 1? If so, easily infinite money).

Only one greenhouse, but it can be upgraded to have 16 plots and 4 water areas.

[Psyringe]

Originally posted by Surreal:

Im not sure what 'late game awesome' money maker Psy is talking about but I did make my first potion and it sells for 300g with only 100g of invested materials (not counting alch table cost). So maybe that?

No, the thing I'm talking about has much, much higher profit margins. In case you're interested in the details:

You'll get a blueprint for a machine that costs 3 moonstone to build, and produces moonstones every day, forever. So you build the machine, collect moonstones, use those to build more machines, and so on, as long as you want to. You can cover entire islands with these machines if you so desire. And whenever you want to cash in, you just stop building new machines and sell hundreds or thousands of moonstones to the smith instead. And then you collect new moonstones the next day. Or, if you want to increase your profit margin even more, you can melt the moonstones into bars before selling them.

At this point, you're effectively making infinite money with no maintenance cost whatsoever.

[CluelessWonder8]

I understand that requires defeating the last boss, which may or may not (haven't bothered to check) require clearing all the dungeons first.

Rather than "late game", shouldn't it rather be referred to as "post-game"?

[Psyringe]

Originally posted by CluelessWonder8:

I understand that requires defeating the last boss, which may or may not (haven't bothered to check) require clearing all the dungeons first.

Rather than "late game", shouldn't it rather be referred to as "post-game"?

Fair question, but defeating that boss does not end the game. You can do it pretty early if you focus on it, way before the main story finishes at the end of the year, and then do the side quests, socializing, more exploration, and build-up of your spirit collection (including holo hunting) afterwards. The game gives you a lot of freedom in that regard.

"Post-game" would, for me at least, indicate something that happens after a game has finished and there's nothing left to do (because, for example, the credits have rolled and there is no way of continuing). That's not the case here.

Though I honestly don't think the terminology matters that much in this case. ;) Because before you get access to this infinite money-making method, there's never a need to grind for lots of money to begin with - you'll get enough from spirit research to buy anything you need, and you can always sell a few metal bars if you're in a pinch. The question here in this thread was about "getting rich", i.e. obtaining more money than you need, which can make sense if you're hunting achievements. But when you're in that position, then the moonstone machines are always the better option (and should be available to the player, since they need to beat the main boss for another achievement anyway).