New Armor for miners: eMINE II (M) & (F)

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There is a little known armor in Entropia which was initially designed for Miners many many years ago. So many things have changed in Entropia since that time, among other things, we now have buffs on armors and I think it's way overdue that we show our miners some love with something that is designed specifically for them.

Here's the current eMINE:
emine_ii.jpg

It was generous with the Shrapnel protection for it's level but this is a damage type that's only useful in PvP really since they are very few mobs that are actually known to inflict Shrapnel damage. Other than that, the Burn/Pen is kind of low being only 12. The 19 Impact/Cut/Stab is nice but is sort of a contradiction with the whole mining theme here since most Player Killers snipe people from a distance.

Overview:
What I would really like to see is a true miner armor, something that would be worth it for those that wish to engage in mining lootable PvP areas almost exclusively. This armor could again be very generous with the Shrapnel protection but should have more Burn/Pen in order to actually be truly useful.

I would propose this armor be called eMINE II (M), eMINE II (F). It should have buffs on it that are truly great for miners mining in a PvP area, like for example a 100% excavator speed buff, Acceleration (run speed) buff and possibly increased hp to improve survival-ability when under attack, mining depth buff and mining skill gain buff. Also, in order to avoid miners and hunters competing for the same armor, it should have a debuff for hunters, like for example -75% to Reclaiming skill gain, which should help to make it a lot less attractive for robot hunters.

The acquisition process could happen via the Upgrade mission system. The idea here is to make it possible for anyone to work towards this acquisition (as opposed to crafted which would require skills, or looted which would require a lot of luck and probably skills too in order to be able to hunt the right mob or mobs). By having a list of ingredients which is mostly made up of relatively easy to craft mining gear, a miner could potentially make all this stuff him or herself and eliminate the middle men. Here's what I think should serve as a good starting point as far as ingredients go:

eMINE II Harness (M)
1 x eMINE PG/T (M,L)
2 x AP-54 Shrapnel (L)
2 x Moonshine plate 2 (L)
1000 x Open Source Code
200 x Graphene Polymer
7 x DSEC Seeker Amplifier 2 (L)
9 x TerraMaster 2 (L)
2 x ROCTEC M1-LF Finder (L)
2 x Xeremite Ingot
1 x (new mined treasure item)

This list is made up of 2,149 PED worth of items. This is for the Harness only so repeated 7 times should make the set base cost 15k PED but that doesn't take into account any markup or cost to actually craft these items. Some of the items listed have a markup around 200% already (for example Xeremite, Graphene Polymer and ROCTEC M1-LF Finder (L)) and so that could potentially add up to an actual set cost just over 20k ped (which makes it a good deal compared to what a set of unlimited Eon might cost for example but that makes sense since this eMINE has a narrower utility).

As you can see here there would be a great number of resources affected (I'm not going to list them all but basically there's lots of stuff from Ark, RT and Monria in there as well which is required to make the mining equipment...). There's really a bit of everything in there: looted items from Hell and Arkadia Underground, crafted items which require a lot of different mined resources, and since this armor set is intended for miners, all the ingredients actually do make sense.

I would recommend using different Shrapnel AP plates for the different parts, this would give these plates a purpose since right now there's just no other use for them other than against rocket launchers in PvP, which doesn't really amount to much demand at all. So for the Helmet, maybe use the AP-36 Shrapnel plates, for the Arms, use the AP-42 Shrapnel plates, etc...

The buffs:
Here's the best progression I think as far as the buffs are concerned on this set:

3 parts:
-75% Reclaiming skill gain
+25% Increased run speed

The reasoning behind the Reclaiming skill debuff is to make this armor set less attractive to robot hunters. Miners don't need this skill, and they really should have an armor that is made for them without having to compete for it against hunters who might want it to do something else with it.

The reasoning behind the Increased run speed buff is that this armor doesn't have a lot of Impact, Cut and Stab protection, so in case of an attack by a mob or another player in PvP using a close combat weapon like a Sword, the miner should have at least a chance to outrun danger and get out of the PvP zone with his loot.

5 parts:
+100% Excavator speed
+30 Health points

The reasoning for the buff to Excavator speed is to aid the miner in extracting the resources faster in PvP and be able to move on more quickly.

The reasoning behind the buff to hp is to increase the chances of the miner surviving an attack from a dangerous mob or other player in PvP.

7 parts:
+20% Increased mining skill gain
+15% Increased Finder Range

The reasoning on the skill gain buff is pretty self-explanatory, this being a set designed for miners, it goes without saying that it should do something for the miner's skill and profession standings, so the skill buff would accomplish this.

The reasoning for the Increased range buff is to give the miner wearing this armor an edge over other miners in the area.

Protection design:
Close damage:
16 Impact
17 Cut
13 Stab

Ranged damage:
37 Burn
30 Pen
52 Shrapnel

Special damage:
13 Cold
13 Electric

Durability should be 20k since this decay is a pure loss to the miner since he will most likely not kill the mobs that decay his armor and certainly will not kill the players attacking him in PvP, and thus will never recover this decay in loot.

Potential unintended consequences:
1. Of course this Armor set could still be used by hunters with some benefit on Mutants and Animals and that is of course their option, but the set has much more value to someone that intends to use it for what it was intended and that's all that really matters. For Mayhem, it could be used with some benefit in the Easter Mayhem but seeing as this is the Robot Mayhem, it would also come with a big disadvantage (-75% robot looter skill gain).

2. A very frugal hunter could also use only 2 parts of this armor without any penalty for hunting robots (and use 5 parts of something else like limited Hermes or Eon which is usually pretty cheap). This could lead to a situation where miners are unable to obtain a set because too many hunters are using 2 parts each. I think this is unlikely as the majority of hunters I deal with insist on being able to obtain the full set of something and if there is 1 part missing, they usually are not interested. But if there is a fear of this potentially happening, the -75% to robot looter penalty could be applied with the 1st part being worn and that would solve the issue.

20k Durability would undoubtedly be a very nice thing to have for a hunter but I really don't think it's worth losing 3/4 of your Robot Looter skills for that.

Final thoughts:
In order to fully realize the potential on this one, it's really important that MindArk takes this opportunity to make mining in lootable-PvP more rewarding overall. Move some resources around and make lootable-PvP mining a real gold-rush type of situation (what comes to mind is something similar to what happened with Redulite recently).

Legends
 
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reserved ...
 
I'm a nearly-exclusively hunter but I rarely hunt robots at all.. I like this set... I don't mine...
 
I'm a nearly-exclusively hunter but I rarely hunt robots at all.. I like this set... I don't mine...

Yeah for ~20k ped you can have a low-level armor with 20k Durability, it's another way to look at it... The Impact, Cut and Stab is weaker then Ghost, but the Cold/Electric is sort of in between Ghost and Ghoul, so it's actually decent. There's many uses for this set for sure, and there are some mobs that do a combination of Burn/Pen damage that are not robots, for example Elvis dragons on RT, Oratan on Ark...

Lots of possibilities with it.

Maybe we just add a 'No Lefty' clause :laugh:

Legends
 
Yeah for ~20k ped you can have a low-level armor with 20k Durability, it's another way to look at it... The Impact, Cut and Stab is weaker then Ghost, but the Cold/Electric is sort of in between Ghost and Ghoul, so it's actually decent. There's many uses for this set for sure, and there are some mobs that do a combination of Burn/Pen damage that are not robots, for example Elvis dragons on RT, Oratan on Ark...

Lots of possibilities with it.

Maybe we just add a 'No Lefty' clause :laugh:

Legends
Well hey, high durability imp/cut/cold armor is very nice for melee mobs on Calypso :girl:
 
The run speed buff, though it's not in the game so far afaik but one could make that conditional, only if no tool/weapon is equipped.
 
In keeping with the original idea of an armor set for Miners for mining in PvP areas, another option would be a low tt limited set that has this design which could be purchased from an NPC token trader. The parts could have a very low tt like for example 4 PED, similar to the CDF weapons you can currently obtain that way. Since the armor is for mining in PvP, you wouldn't need much tt on it in the first place anyway and even with 4 PED tt, the part would last a very long time.
 
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Bump - I still think this would be a good idea..
 
i have worn this EMine for years, as you can see on my avatar pic, i think it is an extremely good set of armor, extremely good looking, shining in the moonlight, a little above boar, not as good as tiger or jag, but eco, good for 16600 Araneatrox and a lot more. I´d love to see it improved or upgraded in a way!
 
Increase carry capacity would be useful for miners.

If possible, a new buff (let's call it stealth) which reduces mob agro.
 
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