Let me share some screenshots to get everyone on the same page. I'd also like to ask
@TightSqueeze if he knows of any towns besides Drastikos that have pistoned ores into their region? I was under the impression (given the mod/admin interest in seeing the machine in action and watching our first farm) that we were the first. I can confirm that the ammount of ores we have now was
several dozens of hours spaced out across several weeks of hard work.
@Symbolite and
@gtastuntdude can break down how much work this is as they designed the piston machine that brought the ores into region once they were lined up into the machine.
@Kainzo I think we are all on the same page that ores that drop on break like iron and gold as well as ores that are silk touch'd are not meant to be placed back down. This would be a dangerous exploit of the amount of exp they drop and I was there on Zeal to see this change go live myself. Of course that shouldn't be allowed.
What
@LordZelkova is talking about is something our town did with pistons. Since ores on this map leave behind spider webs after breaking and regenerate
5 IRL days later, we can break them again for the exp. To take advantage of this we used pistons to line them up into a large piston machine and move them into our regions so we can break them once a week for big exp gains. Like I said at the start of this post, the actual moving of these ores was a monumental ammount of time and I don't think anybody has done it but us, at least not on this scale. The only other township that rivals Drastikos in manpower to even try this is probably
@Skaahr's town.
This is what it looks like in our farms right now:
The first time we broke the ores
@ironee212 changed classes to smith (for exp gain purposes she was a tier2 combat class for this) and in a party of about 7 people she went from 1 - 55 smith. This was also with all 5 castles captured and I bought a serverwide 200% experience boost. The people in our party who were tier1 combat classes did not get very much experience (
@Sidgil and
@Hydroking77 for reference) and were a bit disappointed.
I don't feel like this should be considered exploitation in any way because the server decides when these ores respawn from cobwebs and that duration of time can be increased if it becomes a problem. I'm also not kidding that to get the ores in my picture above it required multiple people and several dozen hours to perform.
Pics of the piston machine in action: (this was the first version that was not automated, we had someone sitting at every turn in the zig zag pulling levers)
The pictures above are actually the quick and easy part. Most of the time spent in making this machine is moving the ores into a line from wherever they were found. It's only pheasable to do this with ores around or already inside our region as the town expands. Even though our town has this blob of ores in our farm our members still spend alot of time mining in the middle of nowhere for exp and material gain, which seems a little contrary to the original post - as they are very much still in danger. If there exists a town out there that has done this kind of work in their farm that is bigger and better I'd like to see it, because I'm not convinced such a thing exists.
