Mining Update

[Adrillf]

Mining seems to be significantly nerfed, and I think that it's time that we look at it again and potentially help improve parts of it.

Mining used to have some redeeming values, but after spending a good amount of time with it recently I think some things need to be discussed

1 - LVL 4 stone rates seem to be extremely low. The rates on them are very low and out of the 200+ picks I've gone through today, I only got one. Mining is a significantly slower source for those stones than trying to farm them off the monsters that spawn once per hour. Is this intentional?

2 - Oricalcium (or whatever the item is for the mining hat) drops at an even lower rate than level 4 stones. Compared to fishing and fish pots, getting a mining hat is taking FOREVER. I've done a few full mining trips (full cart + 90% weight in picks) with 100 mining points at the advanced spot, and have only managed to get one of these. And it's expected that I get 50 of them? This seems a bit extreme.

3 - I understand why the miner pops up with questions, but could there possibly be more benefits than a pickaxe to his questions? Even minor exp from him would make him less frustrating and more of a benefit to seeing him. In slight relation to that . . . .

4- The mining plant/poring/custom mob killing warp thingy to make sure you're not AFK was easily the highlight of mining. I wish this happened more. Maybe not as crazy often as the miner quizzes, but it'd be nice to see this more often because the benefits of it were worth the interruption in mining. The miner showing up was a headache and an annoyance. Getting warped to kill some monsters that rewarded me with something of value while I was mining was a very welcome break.

I understand that some things had to be removed from mining (like the gold that it dropped) and that makes sense. But it feels like it's been nerfed so hard that it's no longer valuable for anyone to use, and the hat portion of it is out of the reach of anyone that isn't willing to sink 300+ hours of uninterrupted mining. Seriously, from my experience, it has taken about 6 hours to get one, the request is for 50. That seems a bit extreme of an investment for a very limited reward.

What do the rest of you think?