There could be different underground places or predetermined areas for mining (such as mines on the sides of mountains), which is made of a special stone only pickaxes can break and you can’t use attacks to break them. There is a chance to get ores such as bronze and iron and sometimes gems. Or it could be there are predetermined ores that are physical, and mining them drops it as an item that can then be picked up? This way it doesn’t seem like it’s just luck. This could be used as a player profession in the future as well.
The deeper you are the more rare loot you get, the deepest is where most of the gems and wanted minerals are found, while higher up there’s things like coal.
You can buy pickaxes from npcs and there could be better ones that are more expensive. There are enchants as well for increasing area, chance to get ore, speed, etc. (Ores are mainly used for selling, but maybe could have another purpose such as blacksmith profession or deckhand upgrade requirements).
There could also be quests for this such as an npc betting who gets gold first, etc.
Reason for this is for another thing for people to do, alternate source of money (better than cargo if you have the best pickaxes maybe), and more immersion/functionality into the game (ravenna mines and whispering caverns are now useful).
Things that are already in the game that could be found:
Rare gems
Coal
Bones
Potion reagents
Galleons
Old weapons or armor occasionally (modified)
Deeper down:
Exotic gems
Exotic potion ingredients
Ores could be added that already make up things in game, such as gold, titanium, bronze, etc. These would be sold to any npc or just the blacksmith
could be a feature if ao also had a crafting system for armor/weapons that requires the ores and materials in question, and if it had a crafting system, mining could encourage players to explore the world as there would be more rewards to it
but rn tho i dont see this as any necessary, it’d just be another way to mindlessly grind
Works as a new way to earn money ig since t1 gems are either sold in npc shops or used as an upgrade which most of the time it’s the former, tho having exotic gems obtainable on a hella easy to macro feature is ehhhhhh…
so like the prisoner mining cave in ravenna. perhaps this will then also be the time/place where you get your first pickaxe, as well as a little tutorial/explanation on how mining works. the ores from the prisoner mining cave can also function as a mining spot, purely giving bronze, which can be used for
(for crafting, you would be able to craft bronze items with it i.e. shovel, fishing rod, pickaxe, other items)
dug-up gear could also get an earthly modifier(chosen stats given are not upto me). this idea could perhaps also give way to an archeologist profession(someone design one)
edit: the ‘spoiler’ parts are there cuz the mentioned part belongs to a later part of the bronze sea story
eh, cool idea but I really don’t think we need an entire mining system, what we have right now probably works just fine and there isn’t really an advanced crafting system to take full advantage of something like this (some kind of armor and weapon crafting system? Artisan Weapons?). I also don’t think AO is the kind of game where skilling takes up most of the gameplay so we also don’t need another filler stat for people to grind up. Really this would work way in the future like 2 years from now.
Idea: instead of needing to buy piackaxes, to manually mine stuff, you can instead buy “Arcanium Pickaxe”s, which allows your attacks to break the rocks in a set number of blasts. Because stopping to slowly mine rocks is boring.
i think this might work better if there’s a blacksmithing profession when professions drop, as the game is right now it’s probably not necessary but i do acknowledge its potential for the future
