Hog Pan Area: Shovel Only vs Buckets

[Pwnocchio]

In my mad dash to try an get enough funds for the Large Excavator before permafrost sets in I decided to return to Arnolds hog pan area and shovel like a madman.

My first tour in the Hog Pan zone went something like this.

1. Spread white buckets all over the place making sure the buckets landed level (like 15 of them).
2. Fill the hog pan hopper with my shovel (pump off)
3. Fill all the buckets with my shovel
4. Turn pump on and dump all the buckets in the hopper
5. Repeat steps 1 through 4 to get mats to 100%
6. Clean Out
7. Repeat steps 1 through 6 until ~11pm
8. Run all concentrate through magnetite remover and wash table.
9. Go bed.

I feel like I was getting about 5 or 6 buckets per day of concentrate this way.

However, I felt like I was wasting a ridiculous amount of time on step 1 because it takes forever to get the buckets level, and if they aren't level it takes 4 to 6 shovels to fill each bucket rather than 3. Worse, I felt like I was probably destroying gold in the sold whenever I'd pour into an unlevel bucket, so I decided to change my approach this time around.

This time I decided to abandon the transfer from shovel to bucket, and just run around like the Tasmanian Devil shoveling directly into the hopper like this...

1. Fill the hog pan hopper to 100% (pump off)
2. Turn on pump
3. Run around shovelling into the hopper until I saw the continous stream of CoCo Puffs (Dirt kibbles) broke in the sluice.
4. Turn off pump
5. Repeat steps 1 through 4 until the matts were 100%.
6. Clean out
7. Repeat 1 through 6 until 11pm
8. Run all concentrate through magnetite remover and wash table.
9. Go bed.

On my first day I was able to generate 7 buckets of concentrate and without a doubt I lost much less gold into the bedrock by way of spillage.

Anyone else do testing on this strategy?

[Waterjoe]

Yes, i have test it and you are correct. Move around is verry faster.

[dogwalker1]

If I were to do the hogpan area over again I would stick to the shovel-only approach just because of the flaky issues with buckets and lost paydirt. Honestly I'm still not sure we fully understand that one, because one or two times I tried shovelling dirt into a bucket lying on it's side and on those occasions it did fill up fairly quickly (3-5 shovel loads). If our theory is true about some paydirt missing the bucket when the horizontal plane is reduced due to a bucket being on a slope, then the horizontal plane of the base of a bucket lying on its side is 0 and it should literally take me forever to fill that bucket. So why do I otherwise lose so much paydirt shovelling into buckets? Whatever, not sure I even care anymore. Short story, bucket + shovel = wonky, so avoid.

[Metallos]

Since 1.4.4 you can get magnetite out of the hogpan mats, before that you had to dig into buckets and run them through the magsep first before the hogpan.

[Tater Snaps]

thats what i do all shovel all the time

[TangOscar]

We discussed this about the same problem two days ago here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/451340/discussions/0/1736595227852914421/

1 shovel is 1% for the 4 mats. A bucket fill the mats for 3%. Now the problem:To fill a bucket you need about 3-x times more shovles. As you mentioned, too much dirt is wasted by falling through the bedrock.

Another alternative could be, to palce th buckets onto the dig-able dirt. The lost dirt will be catched.

[Suprnova74]

Originally posted by TangOscar:

We discussed this about the same problem two days ago here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/451340/discussions/0/1736595227852914421/

1 shovel is 1% for the 4 mats. A bucket fill the mats for 3%. Now the problem:To fill a bucket you need about 3-x times more shovles. As you mentioned, too much dirt is wasted by falling through the bedrock.

Another alternative could be, to palce th buckets onto the dig-able dirt. The lost dirt will be catched.

i know this was 3 years ago, but i think losing the dirt into buckets is no longer an issue. it's always 3 shovels full to fill a bucket now regardless of direction etc. However, I'm uncertain as to whether it's faster or not. The time it takes to reset the buckets I think eats into efficiency. it *feels* faster but I think it's because I'm doing different actions other than just running back and forth with a shovel to the hog pan.

Now when I try doing the shovel only method, I've noticed i'm losing %. if each shovel is 1%, i filled the hog pan and added another 16 scoops, that should have been 27%. However when it's done processing, it was only 22%. Anyone else notice this?

[Metallos]

Maybe because the process calculated in "ticks".
I've noticed that and to prevent from gold loss I fill the hopper first (full), start the pump and while it washes I continue with digging. If the hopper is empty then I switch off the pump and fill again.

[Suprnova74]

I was doing that too and kept getting an underperformance as far as shovels to % when trying to keep it fed. i.e. fill the hog pan which should move the mats 11%. So before it got to 11% I addded quite a few shovels. Anyway, i got tired of hand digging so bought the smaller backhoe. i was trying to hold out for the bigger backhoe but got too impatient. :)

[YouRock379]

The best way I've found as of now is to:

1. Get however many buckets you want and fill them up, preferably further from the hog-pan so you don't eat into the dirt that's easy to shovel straight into the machine/
2. Fill the pan to 100%
3. Run the pump and shovel dirt directly in
4. Once the level of dirt starts getting low, dump a couple buckets in to get it close to full, then back to shoveling

By doing this, I can get the mats up close to 50% with just 6 buckets being pre-filled. One thing I did learn at Palmer's claim is that, even though you can technically grab as many shovels of dirt as you want after you've hit bedrock, you get an insanely low amount of gold from that dirt. I got like .3oz from 4 100% mats just shoveling the bedrock next to the pan, thinking I'm saving time not running around to grab fresh dirt. Once I tried grabbing actual dirt, I got like 2 oz, which makes me wonder since we can't put the drill in the hogpan area.. Is there better dirt further from the pan site, and also is there better dirt deeper down?

Let me know if you have any info on those last questions.