Resource gathering in Firefall

[psijaka]

Gathering resources to craft better weapons and equipment forms an important part of the game; there are several ways of doing this:

- Playing PvP matches - an award of various resources is made at the end of the match. Not all resources are available this way though (Brimstone).

- Blowing up Silicate deposits on the surface - only small quantities of Coralite can be got this way though, and pretty tame.

- Calling down a Thumper from a ship above to extract resources from an underground deposit - this is by far the most important method.

To find the resources you use a "Scanhammer", which gives a visualindication of the resource concentration in an arc in front of you when you strike the ground with it, as well as a percentage breakdown of the resources below the strike point (I think). It can also be used as an Area of Effect weapon; very effective against concentrations of the smaller Aranhas that accumulate around the base of a Thumper.

This video shows me scanning for resources using the hammer, and then calling in a tiny Thumper, the smallest, the noise from which naturally attracts nasties from the surrounding area (in a predictable sequence at the moment, sadly).

The Light Thumper (next size up) really attracts hordes of bugs; absolute mayhem, and you really need to form a squad to share the resources to get this to 100% capacity - great team action and plenty of resources for all, as well as XP from killing the bugs.

[rudybojangles]

Had a squad of three (2 5's and a 4) and we got slaughtered in the light one, because there was another thumper on a hill where the massive hordes could not reach. Sadface. We didn't die, but we had to lift off before 100% and once the thumper died.

I guess we need groups of 4?

[psijaka]

Apr 10, 2012 17:53:00 GMT -5 rudybojangles said:

Had a squad of three (2 5's and a 4) and we got slaughtered in the light one, because there was another thumper on a hill where the massive hordes could not reach. Sadface. We didn't die, but we had to lift off before 100% and once the thumper died.

I guess we need groups of 4?

I just love the action you get when you run a Light Thumper. I normally just attach myself to a random group without squadding up and join in the fun; massive bug slaughtering mayhem ;D

Most people seem to run the Light Thumpers with 4-5 people, although some high ranked and skilled players can Solo them.

I tried the Light Thumper solo several times this morning on some 27% Coralite when out in the wilds on my own. Normally I would have just dropped a Tiny, but somehow the game seemed to have forgotten that I owned one, so I decided to chance my Light.

Things quickly start to get chaotic once you get into the "Thump", but when I thought that enough was enough, I just "Cratered" to clear the bugs and sent the thumper away early. Cleared up the remaining bugs and then called it in again for another short run. Easy. Did this 5 or 6 times on the rich Coralite bed that I had found, and accumulated over 1600 Coralite ore ;D Almost seems like an exploit. But you do need to watch out for the fiery explosive Aranhas; not a good idea to let these get close.

Also exploited the terrain and ran the Light Thumper on a 10% Coralite bed on top of the big grass topped rock outcrop to the North of Copa. Reached 100% easily enough, despite a health scare caused by an Explosive Aranha. A cheap way to earn 1100 Coralite - definately an exploit.

[psijaka]

Here's some Light Thumper action just below Copacabana. Frantic!

I had to use my Afterburner ability at one stage to secape the blast from Exploding Aranhas (lol), and I had a bit of help from a passing Mimigun wielding Dreadnaught towards the end, who helped with the big guy (Terrorclaw).



Edit - I've just uploaded the video;maybe it will take a little time to become "live".

[Usagi]

WHY IS BASALT SO HARD TO FIND FFFFFFUUUUUUUUU

[psijaka]

I started a new character just to see how difficult the starting missions were to newcomers since the bug AI improvements, and went on to try to play as an Engineer. I needed 30 basalt to craft a repair station; eventually found a 2% deposit and tried to Thump it.

Tried 3 times as a low level Engineer:

1st time - died, lost thumper. Made new thumper.
2nd time - died, lost thumper. Made new thumper.
3rd time - had to send thumper away after 10% of it's run. Then I died.

End result of all this - 1 Basalt ore!

[Usagi]

NOW I FIND BASALT EVERYWHERE BUT NO FERRITE

<3 the thumper buff though.

[mannon]

It may be something that varies over time. It used to do that back in SWG. Mebbe there's some sort of cycle.

(Actually SWG had a fairly complex system where a number of resources with unique stats would be created and then distributed around a world. Over time a popular resource would be mined out and eventually randomly generated new resources with new stats would replace it. So you could easily get a really good resource and have it mined out rather quickly, then spend weeks just mining junk. TBH the crafting system in SWG was the most complex and interesting one I've ever seen, though certainly not without it's faults. FireFall won't be going to that kind of depth, I'm sure.)

[Den]

May 15, 2012 2:00:36 GMT -5 mannon said:

The crafting system in SWG was the most complex and interesting one I've ever seen, though certainly not without it's faults.

Yes indeed. I'd love for material properties that resources in SWG had in some other game. However, SWG was one of the few MMOs that existed as a world rather than a themepark, as such there were no qualms about x weapon being fundamentally superior to all others.

Despite the influence such a resource system had in making a truly organic player driven economy (and especially the demand creating a truly competitive economic environment - ZarnKano was always on the ball hunting the absolute best materials in the entire galaxy and being a welcoming businessman, allowing him to maintain his reputation as the best weaponsmith merchant on Bloodfin for years), that kind of thing wouldn't work in the majority of games because everyone is so fervent about "balance". You know, like when they implemented the NGE and CU and completely ruined SWG.

Fixed stats and hard limits to keep PvP "balanced" is how Firefall will have to be.

[Usagi]

SWG? NGE? CU? What? Oh wait, Star Wars Galaxies? I've only ever heard of that game. I'm not an old geezer like you guys so I don't really know what it is.

BTW I found a 73% Coralite 6% Basalt and 6% Quartzite node last night. Only lasted for two thumps though :'C

[mannon]

tl;dr SWG was complex and unique... before the NGE and CU.

SWG = Star Wars Galaxies

NGE = New Game Enhancement
CU = Combat Upgrade

SWG was a unique freeform game where the players really had a massive amount of freedom. Rather than classes you had professions and you could decide how you wanted to train yourself. You could learn skills from any profession you had the prerequisites for. You could learn a total number of skills up to about 2 and a half professions. So you could completely master 2 and still have a few left over. Or you could spread them out more if you chose. There were no levels you just earned each skill individually. Usually each profession had 4 columns of skills and you would progress from the bottom up each column as you chose to. Each skill could also require different kinds of XP. Yes... XP came in flavors. Though most professions were really geared towards one kind or another. So crafting XP doesn't help you with Pistoleer and combat doesn't improve your Entertainer, ect... Yes... entertainer. ;p I actually had a character that was a Master Entertainer and a Master Dancer, and did that without "botting"... In other words without using a script to dance and play music afk. That left me enough points to get some Pistoleer too for running around with friends killing stuff.

The game also had rather unique character stats. It all starts with your three pools, HAM. Health, Action, and Mind. These function as both your life bar and your mana, basically, though Health is geared more towards life and the others somewhat more towards your special attacks and such. But there were attacks and weapons that could target each one individually. In fact it was quite popular to target Mind (All enemies also had HAM) as creatures were usually easy to take down that way. Each stat also had two supporting stats that determined how much your specials cost for that pool, and how fast your pool would regenerate.

Health = pool
Strength = cost of specials
Constitution = renegeneration

Action = pool
Stamina = cost of specials
Quickness = regeneration

Mind = pool
Focus = cost of specials
Willpower = regeneration


All of that, however, changed. The NGE and CU came out as major updates and they pretty much totally revamped the game to make it more like other MMO's... namely WoW. I guess SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) and Lucasarts thought they had to compete with WoW and the only way to do that was to make SWG less unique... O,o Even in testing the fans of SWG openly disliked the changes and they still did it anyway. I guess they figured that it would bring in more people than they lost... pretty wrong about that.


It's sad that the game died out like that. Even after that it was a ghost town but there were fun bits, particularly in space combat. And it was still a pretty open game. There were like 12 planets or so each with a 16 km by 16 km map. On most worlds you could go anywhere on the map, and you could put a house almost anywhere as well. Whole cities were created and developed by players, named, and had everything from taxes to politics.

On top of that you could have your own ships for the space part. Space was very similar to X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter in most respects, though you also had specials you could activate. Generally there was a large cubic area of space at each of the worlds with all sorts of things to do in it. It really impressed me that they actually used the third dimension as well instead of just laying everything out horizontally. It wasn't all combat either, there was also mining which was almost like a minigame of Asteroids.

You could totally customize your ships systems and upgrade them. Many of the ships could be manned by multiple players as well so you could have a friend come along and man a turret for you. Or some of the bigger ships could have a whole crew. For me the holy grail was the YT-1300, same model as the Millennium Foxtrotting Falcon! @,@ Plus the larger ships like that and some even bigger ones served as a house and you could decorate the interiors and walk around in them.

Anyway, it was all pretty special and I miss it... Not without it's problems, but very unique. I loved how before the NGE and CU your HAM was as good as anybody else's so even if you weren't that great at combat you could still go out with your friends on a big hunt and not just get roflstomped.

Once upon a time I was saving up to buy a guild hall with the idea of starting up a mall and renting out space to vendors. heh heh Had I actually done that it would have been one of if not the first such malls in the game. But I wound up not playing for about a year and when I came back there were lots of them. ;p

That was another thing I loved. Not just a single auction house, no... Each world had it's own, but on top of that there were vendors all over the place selling players loot and goods. I loved trolling the markets for good deals. lol OOohhhh a crate of those chairs I like for a great price! YAY (Never run out of those chairs again.) heh heh I loved crates! Only take up 1 inventory slot, but store tons of items. Of course you couldn't recrate stuff after you take it out, but that's okay.

I always wished the houses had more slots, though. I think they set the house inventories unnecessarily low. They should have increased it, made it not include items stored in containers, or both. It made it difficult to decorate a house and use it for storage. Many players took to bulding a factory for storage. ;p I wound up using one of my ships.

Oldskool SWG had more in common with EVE than WoW... and that's when it was best.

[mannon]

Anyway... To get back on topic...

It was mainly running around with the scan hammer that first reminded me of surveying back in SWG. I had a character that did quite a bit of surveying way WAY back... (even before speeders were in game, so I had to leg it everywhere.) It was kinda fun trying to find high concentrations.

In Firefall I haven't quite got the hang of it. I undestand that it scans a wedge in front of you and it gives you a waypoint to the best spot in the scan. I watch the ripples and try to see if I can use that to lead me to even higher concentrations. It somewhat seems to work, but often I'll go to the spot that had the largest and highest waves and get a creally crap scan there. I turn around thinking I passed it and get another crap scan. Go back to my original spot and there's a decent scan. O,o

It's a bit fiddly...

[mannon]

Ferrite, quartzite, and basalt currently becoming quite a grind... ;-/ Progress was just ramping up and getting quite fun and now it's like we've hit a wall. We need something like 150 or 200 or so of each just to be able to make 1 or 2 items due to needing to refine it, and we're only getting like 3 to 5 per tiny thumper... ;-(

Is our only recourse to get a bigger squad and run a light thumper? Because I'm nowhere near being able to build light thumpers yet. heh

Actually considering just thumping sifted earth since we got some juicy stuff from refining it. But I'm thinking that the thumper probably doesn't return quite enough to make that actually better, just easier to find.

[psijaka]

May 20, 2012 0:48:36 GMT -5 mannon said:

Ferrite, quartzite, and basalt currently becoming quite a grind... ;-/ Progress was just ramping up and getting quite fun and now it's like we've hit a wall. We need something like 150 or 200 or so of each just to be able to make 1 or 2 items due to needing to refine it, and we're only getting like 3 to 5 per tiny thumper... ;-(

Is our only recourse to get a bigger squad and run a light thumper? Because I'm nowhere near being able to build light thumpers yet. heh

Actually considering just thumping sifted earth since we got some juicy stuff from refining it. But I'm thinking that the thumper probably doesn't return quite enough to make that actually better, just easier to find.

Light Thumpers are definately the way to go. Make one as soon as possible and forget the Tiny (or Personal Thumper Beacon, as they now call it. Then equip Assault with Regen, available level 5-6, and away you go. Quite exciting and very lucrative to solo it to say 20%, as far as you are comfortable with; then send it away, kill the remaining bugs and repeat.

Or if you are a really sneaky fellow like me, choose this spot



Possible to solo the light with pretty much any class from here; the only bugs that give any real trouble are the Tidal Scavengers at around 40%. And the Rageclaw at the end if you are running the Tiny, as in this video.

[mannon]

Yeah that hill is badass. My GF and I started dong LT's on it today, just the two of us. Even if it was just sifted earth we'd both get 3K of the stuff from a fully thump! Really the only threats are the fliers and the acid spitters. The Terrorclaw can't really do much and the Rage claw is easy to find and dispatch quickly. Anything that happened to actually jump up there was easily killed by my turret with little fuss.

Trying to LT elsewhere didn't go so well. We lost a couple trying a quartzite spot in the Bay of Bones. But then we were able to go about 50% before returning it a couple times and that worked pretty decent. The fliers really tear up the thumper and if we actually let the terrorclaw spawn he's a real problem when there's still so many other things there, but it kinda sorta worked. Bad spot for dealing with the terrorclaw, though, because it was a narrow path and not much room to dodge or distract it. Out in the open I can just circle strafe them and solo them without damage, but in that spot not so much.

Doing sifted earth was very effective for me, but my GF got unlucky and didn't really get what she needed. Pretty random, but I don't really mind random as long as I'm getting some useful stuff. Honestly I think I'm pretty much okay with doing an LT on just plain sifted earth if I'm getting 3k per thumper.

We're gonna have to get some help for other locations, though. Sadly that will cut my split down to 2k, but oh well. That's still pretty good.



For when we were doing tiny thumpers I actually developed something of a nonintuitive strategy. I've been playing engineer with turret and repair station. Since it was just the two of us I kept experimenting and found critters LOVE to chew on the repair station. I've actually started putting the repair station quite near the thumper and then place the turret so that both the thumper and repair station are within it's arc so it protects both by default. I then stand within range of the repair station for most of the thump. The idea here is both me and my repair station tank for the thumper. We attract the bugs and then my GF, the turret, or I myself kill them. The repair station and I heal each other so damage is generally not a problem, at least on tiny thumpers. When the terrorclaw is about to spawn I leave the spot and go find him so I can distract him from the thumper and kill him, and do the same for mr rageclaw. If you're on top of it usually neither one ever attacks the thumper. I've been doing this with my GF, but honestly I'm pretty sure I could solo a tiny thumper like this just about anywhere with enough open area.

For light thumpers, however, I don't dare try it. It might still be viable, but there are so many mobs that if I were to stay next to the thumper like that I'd be FPS lagged from all the particle effects that go along with killing bugs right up in your face. Plus I wouldn't be able to use a grenade launcher since they'd be in my face. (Well I could jet up and drop it under me.)

Still getting the hang of LT's, but it's fun. It's a new challenge, and much more intense.

[psijaka]

That hill really is too easy! Makes me feel rather cheap.



Doesn't stop me using it though

[mannon]

heh heh My GF is reluctant to share our minerals, because it's become such a pain to get them in any sort of quantity just so we can make our new equipment. So I don't feel too bad when we're running a light thumper there, since it's quite difficult for us to run one anywhere else. I think we need at least a 3rd person, which wouldn't be that much worse a split. I'm somewhat reluctant to go 4 since that cuts the split in half from what it is with just the two of us...

[Usagi]

Just doing TSE is a really bad idea. 10k refining gets you around 180 Crystite and thats it. Unless you're feeling ambitious and going for the 1mil TSE refining. Even then you'll probably only get a few thousand Crystite.

EDIT: Hey I got an idea, why don't we make an archive of how much each refining process creates, as well as how many resources are generated for different concentrations and thumpers.

[psijaka]

The returns from Thumper Sifted Earth are very variable; there's some actual figures from a Developer on this on the Firefall Beta Forum. Sometimes you only get 170 coralite but at other times you get Brimstone and Quartzite whatever thrown in.

But I do agree; I regard it as a by product; nothing more. The only time I would thump TSE 100% would be if I was in an easy spot and wanted to farm bugs fro XP - not often in other words.

[psijaka]

May 21, 2012 12:16:13 GMT -5 mannon said:

heh heh My GF is reluctant to share our minerals, because it's become such a pain to get them in any sort of quantity just so we can make our new equipment. So I don't feel too bad when we're running a light thumper there, since it's quite difficult for us to run one anywhere else. I think we need at least a 3rd person, which wouldn't be that much worse a split. I'm somewhat reluctant to go 4 since that cuts the split in half from what it is with just the two of us...

2 people running to say 50% (before the big guy arrives) is actually more efficient that 4 people running to 100% in terms of time, and if thimgs are going well, you could push on to 60-70%. No harm in sending away early and repeating.

One of my best thumping sessions was with one other random person that I came across well out in the wilds. We pushed to 80% and had to send the thumper away several times; risky stuff; but did manage to run to 100% a few times. Lots of frantic action and very lucrative.

[psijaka]

Night Time Light Thumping Easy Mode!

This hill really is too easy.

I play Recon here, with the Marksman Rifle and Grenade Launcher secondary. Watch out for Resonating Bolts and Long Range Mine.

[mannon]

I'm not sure what our issue is. Hell last night we actually failed twice on tiny thumpers. O,o It was silly. We basically just got overrun by the Terrorclaw at a really bad time and once one of us went down the other died trying to revive them. (Prolly the main mistake.) Then again I wasn't running my usual classes either and was low level so that didn't help.

I don't know why the terrorclaw is such a bigger problem with just the two of us. It must be that there are lots of other bugs nibbling away our health and distracting us. Usually when we have a group and enough room for me to actually move around I can solo a terrorclaw by just evading it.

Game performance is a bit of an issue as we are both right at the bottom end of performance in the game. Usually we manage, but every now and then we get hit with really bad FPS lag spikes for a few seconds. (Like when she hits crater on a nice swarm or when the thumper takes off, or just semi randomly...)

I don't want to blame her but I think she's also just a tad inexperienced when it comes to shooters, especially with a mouse. And she has some video artifact issues that seem to contribute. I dunno. I need to experiment more.

Everywhere but that hill seems to be pretty tough to run a LT with 2 people. Then again we had some good runs last night with a crew of 4. We did try 3 a time or two and that got a bit hairy.

Mebbe we really just need to be more willing to send it back. Problem is by the time we decide it's gone to hell one of us usually dies trying to get to it or something. Once things are out of control they go downhill really fast! heh


That spot is definitely easy mode! I did a few solo LT's there as a low level recon the other night. heh I didn't get any to 100% and I did let one blow up because I didn't notice the hissers on it while I was distracted by the flying bugs. >,> Eh... I'm still a noobie at recon, usually play engineer.

Anyway... Yeah the TSE is gonna just be bonus. I think we were just getting really unlucky at finding the resources we needed. We were thumping 2.4's and such because that's all we could find and getting less than 10 of those resources in a tiny thumper and were frustrated because we kept losing LT's even when we intended to send it back.

I think we just need a little more practice at running LT's. Luckily we have gotten some of that on the hill. Honestly I hope they keep the hill. It's a good place to learn thumping. To learn the waves and such and figure things out without tooooo much risk. Though they should probably permanently nerf the mineral content there... but not kill it completely. It'd be nice to have as a noobie hill. ;p

[mannon]

I think we just had to get the hang of it, because last night we F'ing rocked.

We did still lose a thumper at one point when the Terrorclaw killed my GF and then I was so lagged I was unable to return the thumper. And we did return a couple, but all night long we were pulling off 100% extractions with just the two of us! It was pretty bad ass. The fact that I finally got a 3 slot backpack and was able to use my forcefield has certainly helped quite a bit. I'm also making sure to keep a repair gun with homing bolts on secondary fire instead of heavy bolts, for one reason alone. I find them quiet handy for quickly dispensing with the fliers. Between that and marking them for the turret I can usually clear them out in seconds if I can see them.

In one spot where we were getting Basalt (YES!!) we were even managing to finish off the thump with over 80% health on the thumper a lot of times, (except one when two explosive aranhas got too close to it and there wasn't much we could do... but they only knocked it down to like 62% anyway). Oh and that was NOT the noobie hill OR the coral thingy not far from it.

That location is a spot SouthWest from Copa at a bend in the path down to the angled bridge with health on top of it's roof. At the elbow of the path is a cliff overlooking said bridge. The spot is badass if there's resources there because the grounds bugs can only come from two directions. Place the turret in the elbow on the rocks and it's sensor arc covers both roads. I put the repair station in front of it so it gets covered by the turret and provides us with a home base. Then the thumper went down just on the corner of the path in front of that. After thumper drop I put my forcefield facing the downhill path. Then it's a cakewalk. In fact I alone could handle the downhill path by simply standing in my repair station's field and lobbing grenades at the bugs as they gathered up on the forcefield or shot acid at me. As long as it's upgraded it resupplies ammo! lol I didn't know that until recently. >,> Although I have been upgrading it for a while. (I just thought I was getting ammo pickups or something.)

As for the Terrorclaw you really just have to distract him. The fact that you have the path funneling everything into a line (a curvy line) makes it feel like it's hard to get away from him, but actually it's easy. All you have to do is jetpack up or jump down a level and he has to go all the way around the long way to get to you.

Anyway... Happy thumping.

[Usagi]

I was soloing a LT as a medic for almost an hour last night on that hill. Even when it's just TSE, you get 6k of it. Now I've got 44k TSE sitting in my inventory. I just keep calling down thumpers on it without even scanning it. If you're soloing you get so many resources that it doesn't matter. You either get 6k TSE, or 3k TSE + 1.5k Coralite + 80 of whatever mineral decides to show up.

[mannon]

Gotten so that we're reluctant to even add people to our squad now. My GF and I can usually handle an LT by ourselves, often even if I'm not playing engi. ;p Need bigger thumpers to justify full squads. heh

[psijaka]

2 the ideal number, IMO.

Soloing can be a bit too risky at times, with no backup if things go wrong.

Anyway, here are some of my favourite spots: www.firefallthegame.com/community/threads/are-these-thumping-spots-exploits.41987/#post-1066123

I particularly like running a Light Thumper on the hill near the Incursion; a dangerous game to play but very satisfying to see the Chosen suffer at the hands of "my" bugs - especially the Terrorclaw. Battle Royale!