An analysis that shows that the iron pickaxe is pretty much the same as the steel pickaxe

[itchyfart123]

I got curious about this when mining and thought "You know, given the constant nerfs to the steel pickaxe, I wonder if the iron one is better now?" Spoiler alert: it is.

Let me break down what I did here. Firstly, I gathered an entire inventory of level 6 iron pickaxes and an entire inventory of level 6 steel pickaxes from the creative menu. Since items vary in stats by a fairly large margin (20%) even on level 6s, this was necessary to eliminate the extra variable known as RNG. Secondly, I made sure to use the same mods on both of them so as to keep things consistent. The four mods were ergonomic grip, stone breaker, iron breaker, and diamond tip. Four mods that are probably the most logical to throw on pickaxes in order to maximize mining speed. Thirdly, I made sure to have all books read and all perks learned. Finally, I made sure to use buffs- rock breaker candy, skull crusher candy, and blackstrap coffee*.

For reference, the stats of a pickaxe are melee damage, power damage, block damage, stamina usage, swings per minute, and durability. In the case of the iron pickaxe, these values were 21/32/67/17/64/792 with mods**. In the case of the steel pickaxe, the values were 44/73/120/24/54/1162. The damage values to blocks of stone, respectively, were 139 and 246- four shot for the iron pickaxe, three shot for the steel pickaxe***.

For the sake of simplicity in my calculations, I'm going to ignore the mining book that gives a 20% chance to destroy ore. But, just for reference, it would have more of an impact on the iron pickaxe than on the steel pickaxe since the iron pickaxe has a higher APM. With four swings per block on the iron pickaxe and 64 APM, that's 16 blocks of stone/minute. For the steel pickaxe, with three swings per block and 54 APM, that's 18 blocks of stone/minute.

Now, the 18 blocks per minute of the steel pickaxe is a bit better, yes, but there are other things to keep in mind here. Firstly, I did not account for the 20% chance to instantly destroy ore. This would put the iron pickaxe at an even higher value- possibly surpassing the 18 BPM of the steel pickaxe. Secondly, stamina usage. Even with all perks and books learned, blackstrap coffee, and an ergonomic grip mod, the steel pickaxe STILL gradually depleted stamina whereas the iron pickaxe could continually without the need to rest. You could argue that durability has a role of making the steel pickaxe better, but with how rarely you repair a pickaxe late-game when using a diamond tip mod, I figured it made a negligible difference.

So what can be gathered from this? Assuming level 6 tools of similar RNG range, unless you have all relevant perks and books read, a constant blackstrap coffee going, and using the correct mods, the iron pickaxe will be better than the steel pickaxe.

Now for some post analysis notes and errors with this:
Firstly, the values shown in the tooltips of tools do not accurately reflect stats. These values are not only inaccurate, but don't reflect changes from perks and the like. Secondly, the skull crusher candy (extra melee damage) has no effect on mining, oddly enough. If it did, the iron pickaxe would be leaps and bounds ahead of the steel pickaxe in terms of efficiency for mining stone. Thirdly, I've heard that you can theoretically get a two shot steel pickaxe. I did not manage to get one after an entire inventory of level 6 steel pickaxes from the creative menu. This implies either outdated info, the creative menu having different stat ranges, or an exceedingly rare chance of a two shot steel pickaxe that can be obtained naturally. Either way, a three shot pickaxe is generally going to be what the player will end up with for a steel pickaxe for mining stone. Finally, regardless of the steel pickaxe or iron pickaxe, the auger still reigns supreme at almost triple the blocks/minute mined even without accounting for the instant break chance. Hooray for constant nerfs to the steel pickaxe...

[Malak]

Publicado originalmente por JimmyIowa:

Publicado originalmente por itchyfart123:

And no need to worry about offending me, this is just a civil discussion. :)

Cool. Btw - if you want actual tool imbalance to discuss, the stone axe is better than the steel axe. And yeah, they need to address that at some point. I still ran with a stone axe on my level 300 character last game. The pickaxe balance is okay though.

Same. Easy to repair. Can hammer also.

[Knight525]

Word to the wise, wall of text like this gives people readers block.

[Uscari]

This is an intriguing discussion, but why bother comparing these when you can just use the auger? Wouldn't it be objectively the best since it benefits the most from the 20% chance of 1-shotting ore?

[Juice]

Wouldn't it have made more sense to do an unmodded iron and steel pick with no buffs at all? Base stats across the board? Craft the pickaxes so they don't have the variable stats (at least, that's what I was told when a16 exp. dropped)? Seems you'd still get the results if the results are accurate to begin with.

Honestly asking, I'm bad at math. I've done similar tests before and the only thing I saw was that mining with a steel pick gave you significantly more XP, otherwise it was almost identical to the iron pick (unless you include stam usage). That was a good long while ago, though. Did the same with tungsten picks back in the day, the difference in the two was staggering iirc.

[Hurkaleez]

Publicado originalmente por Juice:

Wouldn't it have made more sense to do an unmodded iron and steel pick with no buffs at all?

No, you want to get a 2 shot mining if you can so the mods are necessary to achieve that threshold.

[Malak]

Publicado originalmente por Uscari:

This is an intriguing discussion, but why bother comparing these when you can just use the auger? Wouldn't it be objectively the best since it benefits the most from the 20% chance of 1-shotting ore?

Yes, but you need to either buy or find one or get the perk. Usually takes awhile.

[Lord Hawkeye]

I noticed the Steel tools tend to not be worth it unless you are completely loaded with supporting perks/mods. Which at that point you wont really need them. I'd rather see them buffed by a fair bit but remove them from the crafting pool.

[itchyfart123]

Publicado originalmente por Lord Hawkeye:

I noticed the Steel tools tend to not be worth it unless you are completely loaded with supporting perks/mods. Which at that point you wont really need them. I'd rather see them buffed by a fair bit but remove them from the crafting pool.

Personally, I’d just like them to be buffed a bit and kept in the crafting pool. As of currently, the auger is about 3x as fast as a comparable steel pickaxe. IMO, steel picks should be buffed to where they can end up with augers only being about 1.5x as fast. That way you have a trade off of either speed or noise. As it stands, the auger is just so much better that the trade off isn’t even close to being worth it.

[Uscari]

Publicado originalmente por itchyfart123:

Publicado originalmente por Lord Hawkeye:

I noticed the Steel tools tend to not be worth it unless you are completely loaded with supporting perks/mods. Which at that point you wont really need them. I'd rather see them buffed by a fair bit but remove them from the crafting pool.

Personally, I’d just like them to be buffed a bit and kept in the crafting pool. As of currently, the auger is about 3x as fast as a comparable steel pickaxe. IMO, steel picks should be buffed to where they can end up with augers only being about 1.5x as fast. That way you have a trade off of either speed or noise. As it stands, the auger is just so much better that the trade off isn’t even close to being worth it.

The answer is nerfing the Auger my dramatically increasing the fuel consumption rate or the rate at which it degrades. That way it remains the most powerful option, but more costly to use.

[JimmyIowa]

Publicado originalmente por Lord Hawkeye:

I noticed the Steel tools tend to not be worth it unless you are completely loaded with supporting perks/mods. Which at that point you wont really need them. I'd rather see them buffed by a fair bit but remove them from the crafting pool.

Quite frankly, I think the much better solution would be to nerf the overperfoming tools until there is a sense of of stepwise balance along the stone-iron-steel progression.

In the case of the steel pickaxe it already mines a meter of stone in two hits. Looking at this fairly (without comparing it to iron for a moment and deciding it isn't good enough by comparison) this is insanely good. We can mine entire caverns and long tunnels through stone in a few minutes. We are basically World Breaker Hulk with a pickaxe. Maybe a bit stronger than him, actually. So...buffing things so much that caverns of rock take mere seconds seems a wee bit hard to stomach for a survival game. Instead they should tone down the iron tools a bit to create more sense of progression.

[...👑 JOST AMMAN 👑...]

IMO they won't be able to balance mining/axing until they raise the blocks HP for the most common soils/ores. What I mean is that to actually notice a difference (i.e.) when mining, you need to distribute the tier progress over a bigger hit points range on the blocks you're going to mine.

[itchyfart123]

Publicado originalmente por JimmyIowa:

Publicado originalmente por Lord Hawkeye:

I noticed the Steel tools tend to not be worth it unless you are completely loaded with supporting perks/mods. Which at that point you wont really need them. I'd rather see them buffed by a fair bit but remove them from the crafting pool.

Quite frankly, I think the much better solution would be to nerf the overperfoming tools until there is a sense of of stepwise balance along the stone-iron-steel progression.

In the case of the steel pickaxe it already mines a meter of stone in two hits. Looking at this fairly (without comparing it to iron for a moment and deciding it isn't good enough by comparison) this is insanely good. We can mine entire caverns and long tunnels through stone in a few minutes. We are basically World Breaker Hulk with a pickaxe. Maybe a bit stronger than him, actually. So...buffing things so much that caverns of rock take mere seconds seems a wee bit hard to stomach for a survival game. Instead they should tone down the iron tools a bit to create more sense of progression.

Clearly you and I have very different views on the speed at which we mine. For a sandbox game, the mining in 7d2d is fairly slow. Mining out large areas solo can take well over a month of in-game days.

[JimmyIowa]

Publicado originalmente por itchyfart123:

Clearly you and I have very different views on the speed at which we mine.

This sentence I agree with.

Publicado originalmente por itchyfart123:

For a sandbox game, the mining in 7d2d is fairly slow. Mining out large areas solo can take well over a month of in-game days.

If I go and mine a iron patch for a few hours game time (a few minutes real time) I end up with a cavern so large I have difficulty finding my way back to the entrance hole I started from, 100% literally. And enough iron for months of game time.

I'm a sadly proficient in this game, (thousands of hours for the past 6 years), and I'm honestly, don't take this personally, not comprehending how it could possibly take multiple game-months to mine something.

[...👑 JOST AMMAN 👑...]

Publicado originalmente por itchyfart123:

Clearly you and I have very different views on the speed at which we mine. For a sandbox game, the mining in 7d2d is fairly slow. Mining out large areas solo can take well over a month of in-game days.

This is the most ridiculous and border-troll statement of this discussion.

[itchyfart123]

Publicado originalmente por ⚜ JOST AMMAN ⚜:

Publicado originalmente por itchyfart123:

Clearly you and I have very different views on the speed at which we mine. For a sandbox game, the mining in 7d2d is fairly slow. Mining out large areas solo can take well over a month of in-game days.

This is the most ridiculous and border-troll statement of this discussion.

In what way is this a troll? Assuming no collapses and constant mining, a steel pickaxe (the subject of this discussion) with two shot capabilities and 55 apm, it very much does take a while. I believe the default length of a 24 hour cycle in game is an hour.

Say I am mining out a small 20x20x20 block area. That’s 8000 blocks. For the sake of simplicity, we will assume that’s all stone. That’s 16000 swings with 55apm, putting it at 17454 seconds assuming no downtime at all. That’s 4.84 hours, or 4.84 days in-game. That’s for a small area. For medium areas of, say, 40x40x40? That’s 19 in-game days. One of my old bases, which was roughly 60x60x60 would have taken 65 in-game days (two months) with this rate. Even with an auger, that’s still almost an entire in-game month.

In comparison to other sandbox games (Valheim, Minecraft, Terraria, etc.), the rate of mining in this is much slower.