best place to mine early-game?

[gandalfsoda]

i need a bunch of machalite and usually i run to the three outcrops in the jungle and pick up some herbs on the way there, but it's rather rare from the jungle and unreliable. where is the best place to go mining instead, considering i've got the swamp, desert, and jungle unlocked -- and im pretty close to getting to the snowy mountains.

[Cubo]

The swamp is really good for mining. Has better chance for machalite and you can get jewels to craft decorations. I'd say going to the swamp

[Risky(Glyph)]

TL;DR: Mine the jungle with Leather Armor, Green Leggings, and 1 Gathering Decoration. Focus on honey and the areas that drop machalite. Kill Velocidrome repeatedly for money and quickly finishing the quest. Once you've unlocked the Volcano machalite will be irrelevant.

My recommendation is to just keep mining the jungle. You might not get a ton of machalite, but you'll get whetstones, iron, earth crystals, etc. You'll need a LOT of these over the course of the game.

The other thing: make sure you're gathering honey! The tougher monsters in the game will burn through your mega potions until you can dodge them consistently, and having an inventory of honey will prevent you from having to stop and farm it repeatedly.

Finally, one last thing: separate mining/gathering and (tough/important) hunting. Doing both in the same hunt is worse than doing them separately. You need the inventory space for gathering so you can carry it all and you need the space for hunting for items.

IN SUMMARY:
- Make a full set of Leather armor + Green Leggings. Upgrade the helmet to level 4 and put a gathering gem into it. This set will give you Gathering +2, which will almost always allow you to gather the maximum number of items from mining points and gathering nodes.

- Repeatedly run the Velocidrome hunt in the Jungle (in the summer or spring, don't do it in winter since there's no honey). Gather honey at all 3 spots (base camp, area 3, area 9). Mine ONLY at area 4, the lower part of area 7, and area 8 (these are the only spots that have machalite in the Jungle). THEN, kill Velocidrome.

You might end the hunt with less machalite than you'd have from the swamp, the desert, or the snowy mountains, BUT you'll finish the hunt MUCH faster AND you'll have a ton of honey, AND you can make a lot of money early on this way.

- Don't bother with gathering sunrise herbs if you can. Wait until the Peddling Granny shows up and stock up with 100 from her (it's only 1500z).

---

And once you unlock the volcano none of this will matter because it has TONS of machalite ore.

The swamp is really good for mining. Has better chance for machalite and you can get jewels to craft decorations. I'd say going to the swamp

The swamp can drop aquaglow jewels, however I believe there's a much better way to farm these... (spoilers)

Spoiler

Once you're near the end of the offline game and you're supposed to hunt Lunastra at the Tower... DON'T. Take the quest, but go in with nothing but pickaxes and bug nets. Mine all the dragonite ore, catch all the hercudrome. Then, in the last room before the top of the tower where Lunasta is, look for two piles of rocks on either side of the room - THESE WILL GIVE YOU TONS OF JEWELS. This is hands-down the best farm for jewels in the game that I know of. Once they're exhausted, continue to where Lunastra is but IGNORE HER. There is another pile of jewels to your right after entering the top of the tower. Just gather them and let her kill you - you'll fail the quest but you can keep trying it and stock up on rare, end-game materials! The Tower doesn't show up much after you beat her, so make sure you get what you need now!

You won't have fully upgraded armor or weapons so you won't really need decorations before then anyways...

Anyways, thanks for reading!

[Cubo]

Thanks for the advice. I like the swamp for early jewels so I can get some defensive decorations as I'm no expert and have tons of mining spots. I'll be using your advise for the rest of the village as I'm still advancing little by little

[Lutyrannus]

i need a bunch of machalite and usually i run to the three outcrops in the jungle and pick up some herbs on the way there, but it's rather rare from the jungle and unreliable. where is the best place to go mining instead, considering i've got the swamp, desert, and jungle unlocked -- and im pretty close to getting to the snowy mountains.

For early game mining, my pro-tip is Cold Season Swamp. It's the only time you can mine in the Swamp without getting shit tons of Sootstone, which is obviously useless if you aren't doing the Subquest.

Finally, one last thing: separate mining/gathering and (tough/important) hunting. Doing both in the same hunt is worse than doing them separately. You need the inventory space for gathering so you can carry it all and you need the space for hunting for items.

Why wouldn't you mine and hunt at the same time? Sure, it takes up some more inventory space, and as such requires a brain cell or two, but it's a much more efficient use of your time if you do it properly. It just takes a little effort.

- Don't bother with gathering sunrise herbs if you can. Wait until the Peddling Granny shows up and stock up with 100 from her (it's only 1500z).

Are you suggesting folks just go without potions for that long?

[Risky(Glyph)]

Why wouldn't you mine and hunt at the same time? Sure, it takes up some more inventory space, and as such requires a brain cell or two, but it's a much more efficient use of your time if you do it properly. It just takes a little effort.

Certainly it can be done, but as I said it's not something I'd bother with on a difficult hunt. If your weapons and armor aren't strong enough, or if you're not used to hunting the assigned monster, it's feasible to eat up a lot of your 50 minute time limit. And that's not even including things going wrong like getting carted a few times or being unable to find the monster at first.

I also don't agree that it's more efficient. The subquests in this game can usually be done in a very short time, without bringing extra items, so it's not necessary to hunt the main target to come home after mining.

I think by splitting your attention you lose time context switching. And your inventory is really limited! Let's say you run a hunt with a modest loadout + mining:

Potions
Mega Potions
Whetstones
Paintballs
Pickaxes

Imo you'll always want to grab supply items to save your own resources:

First Aid Med
Mini Whetstone
Map
Rations

And then you can get a ton of things from mining:

Stone
Whetstone
Earth Crystal
Ice Crystal
Sunlight Ore
Machalite Ore

Which leaves you with 5 spaces. 5 spaces is a lot until you need flash bombs, barrel bombs, sonic bombs, antidote, well done steak, nutrients/max potion, etc. It also means you're not gathering anything else like spider webs, mushrooms, etc.

And we're only talking about blademasters here. Gunners have even less space.

Overfilling your inventory is a huge time waste, because then you have to decide what to swap/replace or throw away what you just gathered. And sometimes you'll gather stone you don't need like 5 times in a row...

So can you do both? Yes. But I truly don't think it's more efficient. And that's not even considering that you probably don't want Leather Armor going up against a hard monster for the first time (but you will want it if you're going for Machalite).

Are you suggesting folks just go without potions for that long?

Not at all! Gather sunrise herbs if you absolutely need them, but it quickly becomes inefficient to do so in the long run because of how cheap they are.

[gandalfsoda]

okay, thanks for the tips. ill def keep this in mind next time i play dos. since im short on cash atm, i usually pick up some sunrise herbs, honey, and hit the mining spots in the jungle too, but i'll have to look at doing some mining in the swamp while farming for iodrome to talk to the granny about kushala