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Last Transmission
Aug 10, 2011

Trees and rocks are gated by Attack, too.
I think you need about 100 total with your tool equipped to be able to mine the big rocks/chop down any tree.

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LLSix
Jan 20, 2010

The real power behind countless overlords

TorakFade posted:

Coming back to say that I really like Portia, better than stardew valley even (at least long term - I love how it has this feeling of "building up" the city that Stardew doesn't have, except the collectathon for the CC which is kinda bad imo), but BY GOD it's grindy. I've made a bunch of extra crafting machines because the quests are getting pretty intense material requirements, but a full day of mining for copper/tin gives me just enough ore to last a couple days at this insane pace, and I'm still always without bronze bars. I'd have to spend 1 in 3 days in the mines which is honestly quite boring, is there some other way to get ores/metals in bulk?

I usually get 1k+ ores per day spent mining in the ruins.

The trick is that there are three reasons to go mining.

Reason 1, and probably what you're doing, is to get artifacts. In this case, you activate your glowing dot goggles and mine towards glowing dots. This is a good way to get artifacts that only drop in the mines and only that.

Reason 2 to go to the mines is to get ores. In this case, you want to find a copper or whatever patch and just mine it. Don't worry about anything else, just do all the mining you can. If you run out of stamina, eat food or go eat at Djangos and come back. Djangos is a very cost efficient source of extra stamina throughout the game. Especially if you only eat the special of the day.

Reason 3 to go to the mines is to get data disks. Good news, data disks don't just drop from the glowing dot goggle loot spots. They're a random drop with a low chance of happening any time you mine anything. The best, fastest way to get data disks, is to do the same thing you do when mining ores. Find a good spot and just mine, mine, mine.

As other people have pointed out, boosting your attack helps. So does having the various mining boosting skills in the middle skill tree. Even more important than those, there's an attack boosting skill in the left hand combat tree. You really want that talent maxed out for pretty much all builds. I also recommend you max out the xp boosting talent too, but that's more of a personal preference thing. XP booster talents in most games are usually trap options, but in Portia, you need to take something from that tier anyways, and there's more than enough levels/xp in the game for them to pay for themselves.

All that said, it is a grindy game. I usually have 4+ furnaces running at full tilt at all times.

Rynoto
Apr 27, 2009
It doesn't help that I'm fat as fuck, so my face shouldn't be shown off in the first place.

LLSix posted:

All that said, it is a grindy game. I usually have 4+ furnaces running at full tilt at all times.

4 :allears:

My last playthrough pre-factory tier had a good 20 Industrials and 4 Electricals. And a good half of those were always making Charcoal for Carbon Steel which you need mountains of if you plan to beat Higgins with the first month or two.

You really want as much throughput as possible.

Rynoto fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Jul 10, 2021

TorakFade
Oct 3, 2006

I strongly disapprove


LLSix posted:

As other people have pointed out, boosting your attack helps. So does having the various mining boosting skills in the middle skill tree. Even more important than those, there's an attack boosting skill in the left hand combat tree. You really want that talent maxed out for pretty much all builds. I also recommend you max out the xp boosting talent too, but that's more of a personal preference thing. XP booster talents in most games are usually trap options, but in Portia, you need to take something from that tier anyways, and there's more than enough levels/xp in the game for them to pay for themselves.

All that said, it is a grindy game. I usually have 4+ furnaces running at full tilt at all times.

Makes sense, thanks. I have 6 stone furnaces, 2 civil furnaces, 2 grinders, 2 civil cutters, 1 industrial cutter and 1 basic skiver right now, and about half the furnaces are making bronze bars non-stop because it seems everything at this stage needs a million bronze bars/pipes/plates, with the rest I'm slowly building up a stock of iron, bricks and charcoal.

My bottleneck starts being big trees now, I cleaned up around my house and they respawn fairly slowly, to get more ironwood I have to travel all over and lose a lot of time. I guess I should try to fix the tree farm ASAP

TurnipFritter
Apr 21, 2010
10,000 POSTS ON TALKING TIME

The Sandrock Demo is apparently back on Steam for a limited time

Zesty
Jan 17, 2012

The Great Twist
I've been playing Portia again.

Here's a convenient Villager Gift spreadsheet I made for myself. If it's helpful for you, feel free to make a copy and edit it to your preferences.

LLSix
Jan 20, 2010

The real power behind countless overlords

Zesty posted:

I've been playing Portia again.

Here's a convenient Villager Gift spreadsheet I made for myself. If it's helpful for you, feel free to make a copy and edit it to your preferences.

Cool.

Pinky, the cat, will eat almost any kind of fish. Including catfish and frog fish, so I usually give any spare fish to her rather than selling them after the early game.

Zesty
Jan 17, 2012

The Great Twist
Oh yeah, everyone has plenty of preferences. I just picked out ones that were both easy to do and worth a lot of reputation per day. And mostly stuff you can do relatively early in the game.

Zesty
Jan 17, 2012

The Great Twist
Edit: Changed the link and scope. Here's a fresh spreadsheet with a few more bells and whistles.

Zesty fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Aug 18, 2021

Zesty
Jan 17, 2012

The Great Twist
Portia is $7.50 for the next two days. That's a hell of a steal.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
I Kickstarted Sandrock and got a Closed Beta key in the mail. You might have gotten one as well.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
My Time at Sandrock Early Access comes to Steam and Epic on May 26, 2022.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzMeCOArrGA

Daztek
Jun 2, 2006



Finally :toot:

Zesty
Jan 17, 2012

The Great Twist

kloa
Feb 14, 2007


I put a solid 100 hours into Portia. Looking forward to similar in Sandrock :getin:

DreadUnknown
Nov 4, 2020

Bird is the word.
I liked what I played of Sandrock far more than Portia, it has a way better tutorial and a bunch of qol improvements.

Bussamove
Feb 25, 2006

I loved the hell out of Portia but good god, Sandrock felt so much better in every way. Stoked to dig into the EA.

Daztek
Jun 2, 2006



7 more days!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dwl3HsuyZOk

Perestroika
Apr 8, 2010

Bussamove posted:

I loved the hell out of Portia but good god, Sandrock felt so much better in every way. Stoked to dig into the EA.

Yeah, absolutely same. Portia was really good fun, but I certainly noticed some of the rougher edges here and there. Even just the very early Sandrock demo felt a lot more cohesive and polished.

Zesty
Jan 17, 2012

The Great Twist
I’m excited to play it but I’d really prefer it was 1.0 instead of the slow drip of Early Access.

Mordiceius
Nov 10, 2007

If you think calling me names is gonna get a rise out me, think again. I like my life as an idiot!

Zesty posted:

I’m excited to play it but I’d really prefer it was 1.0 instead of the slow drip of Early Access.

Same. I'll be waiting for 1.0. I don't ever gently caress with early access games.

Paper Tiger
Jun 17, 2007

🖨️🐯torn apart by idle hands

Zesty posted:

I’m excited to play it but I’d really prefer it was 1.0 instead of the slow drip of Early Access.



Mordiceius posted:

Same. I'll be waiting for 1.0. I don't ever gently caress with early access games.

:same:

Judging from My Time at Portia I'll have at most one full playthrough in me, and it might as well be when the content and everything is reasonably finished.

kloa
Feb 14, 2007


I probably put as much time into EA as I did come full release for Portia, so I'll probably end up doing the same with Sandrock :getin:

30.5 Days
Nov 19, 2006
Well, it's out. How we feeling?

Mysticblade
Oct 22, 2012

Aw man, it's not importing data from the demo. I've gotta remake my character or figure out something new.

Drakenel
Dec 2, 2008

The glow is a guide, my friend. Though it falls to you to avert catastrophe, you will never fight alone.
Don't chop the cactus.

Cactus balls are fine. But the ones that stand taller? Oh noooo the fun police runs you down instantly.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
If you decide to chop some trees, like the piece-of-poo poo tree murderer that you are, do it after dark.

And they do grow back eventually, thankfully.

LLSix
Jan 20, 2010

The real power behind countless overlords

Drakenel posted:

Don't chop the cactus.

Cactus balls are fine. But the ones that stand taller? Oh noooo the fun police runs you down instantly.

Harming Saguaro cactuses is illegal by state law in Arizona in and can result in a maximum of 3 years and 9 months of jail time. This is because it takes 35-75 years for them to flower and they usually don't reach full height until over 100 years of age. They're rare enough that it is still profitable to illegally harvest adult saguaro's and sell them to collectors for bragging rights.

I'm guessing that it's a nod to that, or some other real-world conservation effort.

Bussamove
Feb 25, 2006

Is that all cacti or just ones in/around Sandrock? I remember people got mad if you chopped trees nearby but never tried a cactus.

Gonna dig into this again tonight, I’ve been waiting on this EA drop.

Sydin
Oct 29, 2011

Another spring commute
Is there any sense yet of how far along in early access the game is? If it's at the state Portia is when I bought it: story is largely finished, you can play to the intended end, but it's still missing stuff around the edges like voice acting and all the character events then I'll pick it up. But if it's at the state where the main story is still unfinished and they intend to add in more core mechanics, I might hold off for now.

TurnipFritter
Apr 21, 2010
10,000 POSTS ON TALKING TIME

Sydin posted:

Is there any sense yet of how far along in early access the game is? If it's at the state Portia is when I bought it: story is largely finished, you can play to the intended end, but it's still missing stuff around the edges like voice acting and all the character events then I'll pick it up. But if it's at the state where the main story is still unfinished and they intend to add in more core mechanics, I might hold off for now.

The official word seems to be that only the first act of the main story is currently implemented, and also as I understand it Marriage and Babbies aren't implemented yet, as well as at least one character, nor the multiplayer mode.

Sydin
Oct 29, 2011

Another spring commute
Got it, thanks. Will probably hold off for now then, at least until they have the full story in place.

Unlucky7
Jul 11, 2006

Fallen Rib
I was about to concider trying out Sandrock, then I remembered that I still have my mound of unclaimed Humble Monthly/Choice keys and found that I have Portia, so I will try that out first.

Drakenel
Dec 2, 2008

The glow is a guide, my friend. Though it falls to you to avert catastrophe, you will never fight alone.

LLSix posted:

Harming Saguaro cactuses is illegal by state law in Arizona in and can result in a maximum of 3 years and 9 months of jail time. This is because it takes 35-75 years for them to flower and they usually don't reach full height until over 100 years of age. They're rare enough that it is still profitable to illegally harvest adult saguaro's and sell them to collectors for bragging rights.

I'm guessing that it's a nod to that, or some other real-world conservation effort.

Perhaps, but the ones they got mad at me for certainly aren't Saguaro cactuses.

For a game set in what's essentially post-post apocalyptic, I suppose I can forgive being conscious of resources. It was just very jarring to have a fat man come flailing at me while trying to clear out the nearby brush for resources.

Panfilo
Aug 27, 2011

EXISTENCE IS PAIN😬
Customization can make for some creepy rear end "neon glowing star shaped pupils" look haha.

BrainMeats
Aug 20, 2000

We have evolved beyond the need for posting.

Soiled Meat
Only two facial hair options right now but "hair" and "bangs" are separate categories and to me that is a breakthrough in character customization.

Zesty
Jan 17, 2012

The Great Twist
Yeaaah. I loved Portia. I’ll give this a pass until a sale or 1.0. But totally into anyone posting funny screenshots.

Bussamove
Feb 25, 2006

Business in the front, nothin’ in the back.

Drakenel
Dec 2, 2008

The glow is a guide, my friend. Though it falls to you to avert catastrophe, you will never fight alone.
I appreciate the ability to make some abominations of nature in the character creator.

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Mysticblade
Oct 22, 2012

Yeah, I made a horrific anime edgelord back in the demo, I still haven't figured out if I want to do that again in the main game or not.

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