Miner Class Discussion Thread

[Jamison]

• All the prospects share the same recast timer, as do all the lay of the lands. I guess I see why they did that, but it's a little disappointing. I was hoping to be able to alternate between two of them while running through lower level zones.
• At level 20, if you've gone far enough in the main storyline quests, you should be able to start the first Miner's Guild quest "A Piece of History". It's a lot of running around, but not hard at all. One note, when they point out the areas where you can find items, it isn't that exact location. But if you find the nearest mining point to it, you should have no problems finding what you are looking for.
• Reward is 20k gil, 2000 guild marks, and access to Beastkin Eluder, Deep Vigor, Solid Reason and Prospect IV. There's a good walkthrough in the Zam forums, as much as I'd rather not plug that site. There's no mention on the description of ANY of these abilities about an optimal rank.

[rothhaas2]

Anyone reading these?

One of the stats directly effects how many times you can mine from a particular node, but I can't isolate which one. Updating all my gear, at rank 21, and I could finally mine a grade three point 4 times instead of 3. Trying different combinations I couldn't get it to drop back down without changing my pickaxe. I'd like to assume "Output" is the stat for that, but knowing SE, who can say for sure? Anyways, here's the range where this kicked in. Gathering is between 23-36, Output between 13-27, and perception between 15-30.

I really wish I had gear with the stats that would let me narrow down that range more.

At this point, I'm assuming...

Output is number of attempts at a node (only other logical thing I can think of is quantity of items received)...

Gathering is either the range of how close you have to be for success, or an "attack value" determining if the gathering is successful or needs another hit...'

Scanning/Perception is either the range of how close you have to be for success, or something else that I can't think of. I don't see how it could have anything to do with Lay of the Land or Prospect, but it might.

Again, these are all assumptions at this point.

Edit: with the new gear, I definitely feel like I can get rare stuff easier, sometimes with one strike in a best case scenario. Before, in a worst case scenario, I've struck the zone three times in a row and still damaging the ore. Long story short, 18+ is when I would suggest starting to make a serious effort to get decent gear.

Thanks for this Jamison, this has been a nice mini-guide for me so far, rank 11 now!

[Jamison]

A little more food for thought...

• I had nearly ideal conditions for grinding last night... (three nodes close together with no one else, 4 hits per node, a very high success rate) and was able to pull in about 9k/hour. I'm kind of considering that the cap of what's feasible, unless one of the core mechanics changes down the road. Normally I'd say the average you could expect to get is about 6-7k/hour.
• So one of the stats does expand the hit zone for success, and at the moment I'm leaning towards that being scanning. Since all the mini-game messages are about your perception of where the correct spot is, that does have some logic to it.
• Along with the success zone expanding, the "something promising" zone almost certainly does not expand. This has led to a situation where the "something promising" zone can get quite small (from the success zone eating into it) potentially putting the edge of "nothing promising" to "success" much closer together than they are at lower levels..
• Did some reallocation of stats last night (figured I don't play THM that much anyways) and put everything I could into VIT and MND. I noticed a HUGE increase in my remainder bar... to the point I would *always* get 4 hits per attempt, even on the rarest ores. I'm assuming that VIT was the stat.
• Still unsure of what stat, but I'm definitely noticing that I can successfully get rare ores on one hit much more often. Before I upgraded gear, I've gone (in a worst-case scenario) three hits in the success zone while still damaging the ore. I'm going to assume this is the gathering stat for now.

[Jamison]

So the level 30 mining leves are still in Ul'dah, right? I'm rank 24, I can get the ~30 battlecraft leves, but not the ones for my class.

I was finally about to narrow down some information about output. At rank 22, I would get 4 hits on a grade 3 node. At rank 23, I was able to get either 4 or 5 hits, depending on Output. At Output 36, 4 hits. At Output 41, 5 hits. So somewhere in between the magic number. And all this still seems to depend on level as well.

Edit: They are level 25, see below.

[Skycaptain]

thankyou for posting this. If I'm reading you correctly I can only get lvl 20 leves from LL even when my home city is Gridania? If yes then that answeres why I can't get 20 leves for mining/logging but, I can get them for fishing at camp Tranquil.

[Sephiroth]

Could someone please tell me about this?

Nald'thal's Ward - Temporarily increases your chance to obtain fire crystals.

I assume it is bought with marks. But when can I buy it and what's the requirements, just obtain 5000 marks and purchase it? How often do you get fire crystals with it?

[miokomioko]

All the 'Ward' traits must be equipped like any other learned trait. It activates randomly while gathering like all the others. It's not ultra effective, and if your affinity is pushed into a different element hard enough, it's going to smother any effect from the Ward trait when it's active.

[Sephiroth]

That's disappointing because I obviously want to keep my elements on wind. But I want fire crystals too. So not worth spending marks on it?

[miokomioko]

I wouldn't, at least not right away. I only bought it because we were at the last few days of beta and it was still a disappointment. I would rather get the next tier of the Quickening ability expanding the areas in which you can run fast in. Maybe I'd buy a Ward if I'm brimming with Marks and not high enough rank for anything else.

[Jamison]

@skycaptain - yeah, you have to go to LL if you want to do level 20 leves, regardless of your home city.

I'm out of town for a few days, but here is what I remember from the notes I took before I left:

• Already reported elsewhere, but there is not a new class quest at 25. It should be at 30, however.
• At 25, level 30 leves unlock in Ul'dah. They are in the Horizon area, specifically at N-something wells.
• They are exactly the same style of leve as all the other camps.
• They are grade 4 nodes, and at 25 with pretty good equipment it could still be tough to hit stuff. Certainly node 4+ items were nearly impossible to get (most often a 1-hit fail). Getting the HQ items for that version leve didn't seem as bad, but it can take a full 1-2 nodes just to get one item.
• Small aggro concerns from Footpads, but really didn't seem to be a problem.
• The evaluate mining spots leve will send you inside the mesa rock formations, and you need to know what to look for on the map for the entrances. It's the squiggly lines at one of the corners that will have an opening.
• Despite the difficulty, the skill points were really good and I got 6000 from the 2 leves (with favor). The base guild marks for one of the leves was ~1500.
• I don't know if this is true of other regions as well, but this means that technically there are both grade 3 and grade 4 nodes in the same zone.
• King's Yield is 7 points to set, and it hasn't kicked in once for me yet.
• After upgrading to Iron Pickaxe, the ONLY grade 3 item that wasn't a 1-hit success was obsidian. (I'd imagine other regions would have an item as well, like blacklip oyster. Still haven't mined grade 3 Ul'dah to any extent). It's late, so I can't remember what testing I did, but earlier I was chalking this up to the gathering stat.
• I started to see gathering fatigue yesterday and today. You start to get critical fails on items/situations where you shouldn't. It seemed to be multi-tiered, at first I'd "autofail" about 1/3rd of the attempts, after a short while closer to 2/3rds. This really hurts if you are trying to grind out the last little bit of a level.
• After taking a break for about 2 hours, I got about 30 minutes more of good mining before it set in again. After being logged out for about 8-10 hours, I got almost another whole level in before it came back.
• In terms of trying to grind skill points, I think that output is a crucial stat. Getting an extra hit or two in per node comparatively makes a noticeable difference in how quickly you can level up.

I'm out for a couple of days, and looking forward to getting back to the grind soon!

[Greedouw]

so output > gathering? Haven't seen too many pieces of equipment specifically with output. Mind posting your equipment set?

[miokomioko]

A few things about all gathering classes...

There is no "crucial" stat. It's not even like you get a lot of options to pick between Gathering/Output/Perception... most gear slots are going to offer only one of those 3. Not to mention, I don't believe Output affects how many attempts you get at any given point whatsoever. If anything it's only directly and obviously affected by your current Rank. My stats have hardly budged from my low rank Fishing to Rank-20 as I'm still using a piece of shit weathered tool. In this time, I've gone from 1 attempt at Grade-3 Spearfishing to 3 attempts.

Either way, if your intention is to only grind away at skill, just find a highest grade location that you can still consistently succeed at that has 2 Mining/Fishing/Logging points and 1 Quarrying/Spearfishing/Harvesting point. No matter what type of gathering point it is, if you exhaust 2 points, as soon as you exhaust the third, the first will become available again. You can cycle endlessly amongst 3 points if you do them in order.

Either way, from my experience, I theorize...

Gathering: Remainder usage
Output: +1/2/3s and Quantity
Perception: Item rarity

Actual Rank-to-Grade relation appears to have a much more potent effect on everything than stats.

[qpoiuwer]

A few things about all gathering classes...

There is no "crucial" stat. It's not even like you get a lot of options to pick between Gathering/Output/Perception... most gear slots are going to offer only one of those 3. Not to mention, I don't believe Output affects how many attempts you get at any given point whatsoever. If anything it's only directly and obviously affected by your current Rank. My stats have hardly budged from my low rank Fishing to Rank-20 as I'm still using a piece of shit weathered tool. In this time, I've gone from 1 attempt at Grade-3 Spearfishing to 3 attempts.

Either way, if your intention is to only grind away at skill, just find a highest grade location that you can still consistently succeed at that has 2 Mining/Fishing/Logging points and 1 Quarrying/Spearfishing/Harvesting point. No matter what type of gathering point it is, if you exhaust 2 points, as soon as you exhaust the third, the first will become available again. You can cycle endlessly amongst 3 points if you do them in order.

Either way, from my experience, I theorize...

Gathering: Remainder usage
Output: +1/2/3s and Quantity
Perception: Item rarity

Actual Rank-to-Grade relation appears to have a much more potent effect on everything than stats.

One of the stats (most likely Output) definitely does increase the amount of attempts you get at a point.

[miokomioko]

We'll probably just have to wait until the "Ask the Devs! Disciples of the Land" Lodestone article to clear that one up.

[Jamison]

@greedouw - I would say no one stat is more important than the other, just not to overlook output. As Mio said, a particular slot of gear only usually has one specific +stat on it, so you never have to choose. Going from memory, I think hands and feet have output, body and legs have gathering, and head has perception. I could be wrong on that. Belts have 2 stats, I forget which ones.

@Mio

I say this with all due respect because I've followed your gathering info throughout beta and such, but the output stat does have a measurable difference in attempts per node. Level remains the most important factor, but you can go from, for example, 3 hits to 4 hits per node a level (maybe even 2 levels) before you would based on level alone.

I think my earlier posts have more information, but I can say for sure (I may be misremembering the numbers slightly) that at level 24 I could go back and forth between 4 or 5 hits depending on equipping +output gear, and at 25 I now get 6 attempts per node. I'm willing to bet without the gear (just haven't tested it yet) that I'd only be getting 5.

It is also possible, although imo unlikely, that stats have somewhat differing effects on the differing gathering classes.

Edit: I should add to clarify: my testing showed that at some specific levels, +output gear does not have enough +output to get you to the next tier for another attempt, but at other levels it does.

[qpoiuwer]

Also for reference, there was a time when I would get 3 attempts at grade 3 points with my gear on, but only 2 without it. I also get 4 attempts with an iron pickaxe, but 3 with plumed.

[miokomioko]

I could easily be wrong about my theories regarding the effects of Gathering/Output/Perception... but I did a little tiny test. If your gear really makes a difference regarding how many attempts you get at any exhaustible gathering point, it's probably from the Gathering stat. Also, I really doubt that these three stats would have different effects on the different Disciples of the Land.

At Rank-21 Fisher, full gear, I can get 3 attempts at a Grade-3 school of fish. If I strip off every piece of Output/Perception gear (aside from Weathered Fishing Rod), leaving my Gathering stat the same, I still get 3 attempts.

I'll test again when I come across a fresh Grade-3 spot for Output and Perception to make the experiment complete. It's just, assuming being naked would drop my attempts by at least 1, this would suggest what "Gathering +#" might do for you.

edit...

Stripping down to only my Output+ gear did not affect my attempts per gathering point.

Stripping down to only my Perception+ gear did not affect my attempts per gathering point.

This would suggest that either none of these stats affect the # of attempts, or my gear is not supplying an amount large enough to break from 3 to 4 and my raw rank is barely pushing me into the 3 threshold.

[qpoiuwer]

lv17 botanist with a bronze scythe, 34 gathering, 25 perception, 29 output, 3 attempts harvesting grade 3
lv17 botanist with a bronze scythe, 34 gathering, 25 perception, 17 output, 2 attempts harvesting grade 3

[miokomioko]

What about any other combination of gear?

[Sephiroth]

Fatigue sucks. I was doing fine and then I suddenly broke about seven digs in a row, shit like copper/yellow ore at rank 17. I don't understand this gathering fatigue, it seems something different to surplus. I mean, I was only mining four hours before it appeared.