Cost to place a mine is:
No detailed information exists regarding optimal placement of mines. If you've got any ideas, we'd all love to know.
Once a mine is placed, the color of the crystals inside the mine building indicate what materials can be pulled from the mine. So far, the following colors have been spotted:
The gem types are
Each gem type comes in small, medium, large and huge varieties, in increasing rarities. Gems appear at random when mining any mine, including sand.
Getting higher yield per pull It appears that clicking crystals inside a mine in a random order, raises the number of ore you pull each time. Clicking the same spot or if a pattern is detected, lowers the output. It is probably an attempt to reward people who are not using simple point and click macros. Pinning menues from different crystals and then randomly clicking works, just as using the hot keys and pointing to different crystals. Using this method we were able to get up to 8 ore per pull with one person and up to 9 ore per pull with 2 people, so far. Also, it looks like mines collapse based on the number of pulls, so with higher yield you would get more ore before a collapse. More testing is needed.
: NOTE: I did not find that random clicking made any difference at all. Pinning and clicking one single window, the yield began at 1 and gradually climbed to 9. -Tilapya
Thats weird. Was there anyone else mining the same mine. Teppy might've changed it too, our yield dropped abruptly from 9 per pull to 6 per pull.
bort has a different theory, one that sounds quite plausible: yield per pull rises slowly from 1 ore as the total pulls on a mine increases, up to a peak; then the yield begins to drop back down again. Once you start hitting 1 ore per pull again, you know the mine's about to collapse. —AatonPulonich
I can confirm, I've not seen any improvement to yield by randomizing your clickpattern, there's just one mine to click on, no matter where you click on it. --Faile
A couple of us just tested an iron mine in southern Lower Egypt (yes, there's an iron mine here!) and found no change in yield: 1064 pulls before collapse, 2 ore per pull every single time. I trust both my eyes and the reports of variable yields over a mine's lifetime, but what explains both? —AatonPulonich
Pulling on a mine no longer triggers an END timer. Instead, it triggers a PER timer and a STR timer; both are roughly 5 seconds at base stats. The mine will store ore and gems pulled up during the process. Testing on a lead mine near the Nile Delta Academy guild hall showed an average pull of 2 lead ore, with a tiny bit of quartz gems in the mix as well. There appears to be no need for ore carts any longer.
Mines will eventually collapse after a certain number of pulls (around 1000) and will need repairing before mine operation can continue. Each repair takes 30 boards, 60 bricks, 2 slate and a certain amount of leather and water that increases with each repair (the first repair requires 6 water/4 leather, the second requires 7 water/7 leather, the third requires 9 water/12 leather, etc.) However, there is evidence that mines can regenerate on their own, allowing use beyond 1000 pulls:
Krae: if you are careful with the mine, it doesn't break
Krae: don't pull more than 900 or so times in one day
Krae: er... one Teppy-day
Krae: they break around 1k pulls+
Krae: 24 teppy hours
Nodjmet: and you go back 24 teppy hours later and you can pull another 900 times?
Krae: yes, Nodj
250 pulls from a dirt mine in LE (773 6300, beta 1) yielded the following:
Tale 3 Beta 2, LE Sand/Quartz mine (742,6241) yielded this before first collapse:
On any given pull, you may bring up a gem as well as the usual ore load. Small quartz appeared in 8.4% of the pulls while medium quartz appeared in 2.0% of the pulls.
Mines seem to be give 1 ore (or sand) per pull for the first 2 pulls, then 2 per pull after that. My sand mine gave 3 sand per pull after 150 pulls. Quartz yield was 16% small, 3.6% medium.
Another reference point: I had a sand mine producing diamonds. After around 3 hours of two people working it, the sand yeilds went from 1 to 7, and back down to 4 before it collapsed. In that time we pulled out 131 small, 43 med, 4 large and 1 huge diamond.
I also had the idea after 22 sand mines and no metal to use ecology/tadpoles to test for heavy metals. I checked it with 1800 tadpoles standing next to a known zinc mine, and found that all the tadpoles survived, indicating "no heavy metals present". This means that either I didn't use enough tads, or this is not a valid way to "dowse" for viens as in T1. Pitty
I've tested the tadpole theory next to a lead mine (heavy metal for sure) with 20745 tadpoles, all survived. Tadpoles are definitely not used to test for ores in the ground, I bet they are just there to test for pollution once heavy production gets underway. -- Faile:
Anyone know what lvl 2 mining (or 3) unlocks? /Akela
The description of level 2 says that it "Increases the production level of mines". Testing so far is inconclusive, on one lead mine ore rates climbed from 1 up to at least 5 before stopping, but in that case another person was working the mine simultaneously. On a copper mine, one extensively used that *always* produces 2 ore, the ore rate did not change at all, and the quartz pull rate actually seemed to drop. My only unfounded, and doubtful speculation is that it may increase the chance to strike metal upon building the mine. Or I've just been unlucky. -Ratio
Have a sand mine at 10k sand and still getting 7 per pull. 1st repair was at 7k sand( forgive me but i lost count of number of pulls for first repair, but well over 1.5k as it starts at 2 sand per pull) Still at 7 per pull, over 300 small quartz but no huge yet. Crystals do seem to have an infuence, as it goes down to 6 but after clicking random crystals it goes back to 7. What's worrying is lack of huge gems. - Reyzer
I've started a reference map to track ore locations. It color-codes each data point by mineral type, and it should hopefully prove more convenient than the wiki for locating mineral veins and understanding how they are distributed. I've entered the data points from the wiki as of 14 May 2006. Please help out by entering your mineral data on my site, even if you're adding it to the wiki as well. Thanks! - Dachannien