Mine Crafting 1.0.1b Patreon Preview

Mine Crafting enables your sim to build mines and extract either metals or crystals from them. It adds the Mineralogy skill that allows your sim to smelt valuable purified metal ingots from several pieces of metal at the Mineral Smelting Station, as well as cut gems from crystals on the Archaeology table.

The Mineralogy Skill provides levels 1 - 5, so it's a minor skill (like Bowling). Higher levels of mineralogy skill will allow your sim to extract more resources from the mine each trip. In addition to increasing your mining skill by mining or smelting ingots, there is also a Mineralogy skill book available (Basic Mineralogy). As you gain skill levels, you will find more minerals during each mining excavation.

Mines are built with Mining Charges, which can be bought from the Smelting Station. The Mining Charge is an explosive device that has the same footprint as the Mine itself, so anywhere it fits, the mine can fit. You can place the charge on the ground, then select Build Mine. Your sim will back away from it, it will explode, and a mine will appear.

Mines produce either Crystals or Metals, chosen randomly when the mine is created. There is a chance of finding a large deposit of various valuable Crystals and Metals, after which the mine will return that item exclusively.  Both Gold and Silver have been added as findable metals. If you build a mine on Sixam, it will only return Alien crystals and metals. Getting to Sixam is left as an exercise for the reader.

To Extract Metals or Crystals from the mine, you will need a Pickaxe, which can be purchased from the Smelting Station. Your pickaxe will wear out after being used for a while, and you will need to replace it. I plan to add a few other varieties of pickaxes (like a Diamond one), etc.

Mining has hazards and maintenance requirements of its own, including cleaning debris from the mine, increasing the depth of the mine to access more rare resources (as well as replenish a mine that has exhausted its resources). If you get lucky, you might find large deposits of valuable items like gold, silver or diamonds. If you get unlucky you might end up with a flooded or collapsed mine that you will need to repair.

Clutter and debris will build up over time in the mine. A Cluttered mine will reduce the amount of bonus items you receive, and an Obstructed mine (very cluttered) will restrict the output of the mine even further. Select Remove Debris on the mine to clear the clutter and return the output of the mine to normal.

A mine's resources will become exhausted after a while. In order to extract more Crystals and Metals from the mine, you will need to increase the depth of the mine, found under the mine's Upgrade menu. There are three depth settings, each of which returns a slightly different composition of materials, getting more rare as you dig deeper. NOTE: To extract the maximum amount of stuff from a mine, work it until it's exhausted each time before you make it deeper.

Mining is difficult, dirty work, so your energy and hygiene will decrease a bit faster as you work in the mine. This difficulty also provides a benefit to your fitness skill however, so you become more fit as you mine, as well as increasing your mineralogy skill.

You can sleep in the mine like a tent, as well as wash yourself in an underground spring to improve your hygiene. If you had access to a barbecue grill and a toilet of some sort (such as my portable one), you could more or less live in the mine full time.

Mines can also be explored, with different adventures available in different mines. There are currently four different 'adventures' for mines, and each mine gets assigned one of them randomly when it's created. I may add more, since these were kind of fun in a text adventure sort of way. Your sims can find rewards, including shortcuts to travel to other lots, treasure, and access to new customers for your mining products. Try not to release the Balrog, as it will cause your mine to become haunted...

Smelting

Any of the metals in the game can be smelted into valuable ingots on the Smelting Station. This is mostly meant as a way to provide a bit more income for mining itself, as well as make it more convenient to manage lots of items

Stacks of ingots can be smelted out of 6 items of the same metal. The value of the ingots is (6 x the cost of one piece of metal) * 150% (to account for the greater purity of the metal).

Ingots and other mining products can be sold to the Receptionist at the Science Lab, in addition to the other usual ways of selling crafted items. You will need to introduce yourself first. You can get to the science lab by choosing 'Go To Science Lab' under the travel section of your Sim's phone.

Known Bugs (in this build):

• The mechanics around mine 'disasters' (flooding/haunting/collapse) is a bit in flux, and I'm not sure I've provided an in-game way to repair all of them. You can set all of the internal states for a mine, including repair state, adventure type, resource type, etc, using Debug Cheat menus (shift-click) available on the mine. I'm going to spend some time focusing on this aspect for the next build.

As always, I'm happy to hear your suggestions and input! Thanks again!

Change Log:

• 12/14/2022, 1.0b, Initial Patreon Release
• 1/2/2023, 1.0.1b, Patreon WIP, bug fixes,  3x faster smelting, additional exploration adventures, consistent behavior on Sixam, price adjustments, clutter changes. Added a bathroom to the pub in the underground gnome city.