The Unsung Hero: The Optical Drill

[toxicprime]

After getting my hands on a decent sentinel tool and discovering that installing the normal mining beam in addition to the sentinel mining beam makes it a mining beast,
I realized that most of the other bonuses to mining become rather trivial. nice to have for sure, but the real king once you can mine things in such short time, is maximizing their yield.

On that note, I imagine the ideal setup is a sentinel tool with a charged slot that has open slots on all four sides (i.e. not along an edge).
Slot in that Optical Drill and surround it by other upgrades.

What im curious about is what would be the best candidates to surround it to boost its resource yield? Would it be the 2 mining drill components, advanced drill, and then an upgrade?

Im sure others are already doing this, and i know there is info out there on what kind of adjacency bonuses techs/upgrades give, but ive had trouble finding current info.

Thoughts?

[Caramirdan]

Nomansskyresources.com is my go-to for adjacency questions

[toxicprime]

Originally posted by Caramirdan:

Nomansskyresources.com is my go-to for adjacency questions

Ive been using this site a lot, but some of its info is either not up to date, or has a different philosophy. I also dont see a page with info on adjacency bonuses, just a lot of pages that have a "best layout" shown. But those layouts dont take supercharged slots into consideration, or sentinel multitools double mining beam, or for mining in particular, they focus on boosting mining speed but not mining yield.

[Yxklyx]

Are you using a pistol for mining - those have the best yield. Check the multi-tool section of the wiki.

[toxicprime]

Originally posted by Yxklyx:

Are you using a pistol for mining - those have the best yield. Check the multi-tool section of the wiki.

They dont have the best yield, they have the best multiplier for mining speed.

What im not sure whether a Sentinel with double mining beams is faster than a perfect S class pistol with just 1 mining beam.

But thats a different discussion, ignoring mining speed (pistol or sentinel), whats the optimal way to boost the optical drill? And since sentinel gets an extra tech, i think it might be the better option.

Im testing right now but i dont have a sentinel tool with a well placed supercharge slot.

[dreamrider]

I am getting wonderful results with an "A" Pistol, set up purely for mining and terrain manip, max X upgrades, Op Drill in the SC, etc, with just a bit of scanning (I never go more than 300u from ship / exocraft for scanned goodies anyway, usually much less.)

(It is surprising how much stuff you can handle with a Mining Beam that is so fast that it explodes Bio Horrors when it hits them. Also good on even Sentinels if you are inside the door of a Factory. I love shooting it out with as sole survivor doggie, laser-a-laser, and my laser is winning!)


Then in the next quick slot I have an "S" Experimental, with all the bells and whistles for three major weapons (Boltcaster w/ maxxed Sentinel support, Scatter Blaster, & Blaze Javelin), plus stun grenades, cloak, shield, max scanner (hey, it IS an Experimental - might as well take advantage), etc.

(Actually, with all the success I have had on BC upgrades, regular and Sentinel, I almost never use the SB any more. It only has a 1K dmg advantage over the tricked BC, and is slower, cools slower, uses more ammo, and of course range.)

[Jaggid Edje]

My recommendation, use a dedicated multi-tool specifically for mining and don't worry about adjacency bonuses, instead put the optical drill in a supercharge slot and the 3 mining upgrades in the other 3 supercharge slots, regardless of where those slots are.

That leaves only the advancing mining beam and the (2) mining lasers for adjacency...and honestly, at that point it mines like a beast no matter how you do those adjacencies.

Supercharge slots trump adjacency bonuses.

[toxicprime]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

My recommendation, use a dedicated multi-tool specifically for mining and don't worry about adjacency bonuses, instead put the optical drill in a supercharge slot and the 3 mining upgrades in the other 3 supercharge slots, regardless of where those slots are.

That leaves only the advancing mining beam and the (2) mining lasers for adjacency...and honestly, at that point it mines like a beast no matter how you do those adjacencies.

Supercharge slots trump adjacency bonuses.

still i want to know, and am testing so if i dont get the answer i'll find out, the best way to optimize yield. currently with 1 S upgrade, and the 2 beam techs adjacent, my sentinel tool is getting roughly 2x the yield.

In general i think your advice is great, but im thinking of the context of something like Fungal Mould farming, where i want to get the most out of 1 node.

[Jaggid Edje]

2x yields is what you get just from supercharging the Optical drill, without even any other upgrades installed on the multi-tool. No other modules have a yield increase function other than the optical drill, so I suspect that particular bonus doesn't actually benefit from adjacency.

[toxicprime]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

2x yields is what you get just from supercharging the Optical drill, without even any other upgrades installed on the multi-tool. No other modules have a yield increase function other than the optical drill, so I suspect that particular bonus doesn't actually benefit from adjacency.

Before supercharging, one could get about 74% more yield from adjacency bonus.

Supercharge puts it at 88%, not 100%. But I think the 2 mining beams might affect the optimal adjacency bonus.