Data on Mining at Two Falls Mine at 400 Skill

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Marcuson
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Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2021 1:29 am

Data on Mining at Two Falls Mine at 400 Skill

Post by Marcuson »

This is a collection of data I gathered while mining in Two Falls Mine at 400 Mining skill. My original intention was to determine what, if anything, affected mining rerolls. My results on that front were inconclusive, but I realized that there might be people interested in seeing the data, so I decided to make it available to all, along with other observations I made along the way.

Two Falls Mine has eleven rooms that can be mined in. I mined in each room of Two Falls Mine until I had filled up a minecart with 40 chunks of limestone, and I did this five times for each room over a period of three weeks. Thus, I took 55 samples of 40 chunks of limestone for a total of 2,200 chunks of limestone. Of those 2,200 chunks, 893 (40.6%) contained traces of iron.

General Observations:
At 400 Mining skill, each mining step costs 12 energy and gives 7 seconds of roundtime. One chunk of limestone requires 8 steps to produce. Thus, each chunk of limestone represents a total of 96 energy loss and 56 seconds of roundtime. With my samples, I would immediately stop and sit down once I reached "You are tired" status (200 energy). Resting back to a full 500 energy from that point required around 160 seconds of sitting time. I could mine four chunks before I had to rest, and therefore I rested nine times between mining 40 chunks. Therefore, the shortest amount of time in which I was able to fill one minecart with limestone (i.e., 40 chunks) was 58 minutes -- and was usually closer to 62 minutes.

Location-Specific Observations:
Different rooms in Two Falls Mine appear to yield no different amount of ore. On average, as long as no one else has been mining there recently, each room is as good as the next. As far as I can tell, light level, encumbrance level, and morale have no effect on mining rerolls. All of my results were within one standard deviation (+/- 5.2 chunks). Out of every 40 chunks of limestone I mined, the mean amount of iron found was 16.2 chunks.

Conclusions:
I suppose an average of ~16 iron chunks per hour is reasonable for someone with 400 Mining skill. From a blacksmith's perspective, that's a decent amount of iron. However, because of the price at which iron is sold, I cannot recommend mining as a sole profession. Maybe the profit of mining can be improved with the addition of gemstones and other discoveries unique to mining. I'll post some suggestions on this later.

Raw Data:
https://pastebin.com/FcU4QtBk
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