Gold Panning Questions:

[Hans_Lemurson 3]

• Is there any difference in nugget yields between filling the goldpan with Sand vs. Gravel?
• Do overworked areas recover over time?
• Why are Gold, silver and Platinum so abundant in panning?  Are they no longer rare minerals?  Black bronze is now the cheapest early metal as opposed to being a luxury.
• Why are native Copper and Silver nuggets even pannable?  Gold and Platinum will form nuggets because the tiny grains washed down streams will cold-weld together due to their lack of an oxide coating.  Copper and SIlver in river gravel is quite rare, only in the immediate vicinity of a deposit and is often highly corroded.
• Why no other minerals?  Cassiterite was classically gathered from alluvial deposits in streams, and Magnetite is famous for it's "black sands" or "iron sands" found around the world.  At a minimum, panning for Cassiterite would fit in well.

Questions 3-5 are more about my personal opinion and being put off by the relative cheapness of Black Bronze.  I do (more or less) understand why panning was done this way, according to the devblog.

[Temujen 31]

1.  I havent noticed a difference in yields, but that's based on experience not reviewing code

 

2.  Yes, slowly. I used a mobile camp to work my way up a river, panning at night.  After 3-4 nights, I returned to my first camp (exposed copper nearby) and was able to pan 10-15 times before it was overworked again.  Again, experience not code.

 

3-5 -> no clue on the history, but yeah Black Bronze is too easy to acquire now.  Personally I'd rather see the chance of a nugget *at all* reduced and the odds of that nugget being silver/gold/platinum drastically reduced.  This would allow you to pan for starting copper, but return Black Bronze to a rarity.

 

 

At the current rate of nugget return, you can get 20+ nuggets a night and easily have a full set of black bronze tools in your first few days.  Compared to the difficulty involved in most other aspects of TFC survival, this seems far too easy.  I'd rather see 2-3 nights of panning = 1 copper tool, while I desperately use those daylight hours looking for either a real copper deposit or something to mix with my panned nuggets.

[aliceingame 114]

5. because it will be for the sluices when it's reworked and working again.