The Mishaps of Mining

At first glance, mining in Animal Parade is considerably better than in Tree of Tranquility.  For starters, the lighting is much better.  Now it's easy to see every pitfall and wall you could run into, making mistakes less common.  There are also stairs for every level, so you can mine without having to smash a rock or take chances with pitfalls to find a way out.  This, of course, is a very helpful addition as well.

But there are definitely the downfalls of mining this time around. The first complaint on my list is with "Wonderful" crystals, which are all the same, white tint.  Now instead of smashing blue crystal after blue crystal in the hopes of finding a Lapis Lazuli, you must smash a randomly selected white crystal, hoping the wonderful is blue and that when it's refined it's the right gem.

Of course this brings me to my next complaint, which also has to do with wonderfuls and ores.  You may know that in ToT, the number of sparkles determined the value of the wonderful once refined.  You could have up to three sparkles, but if there were no sparkles it would be refined to glass and worth nearly nothing.  This saved a lot of time, because any ore or wonderful that didn't sparkle wasn't even worth picking up.  Not only did this ensure you always knew what you were collecting, but you also knew that there would be no surprises when it came time to refine.  However, this time around, nothing sparkles.  You may pick up twenty rare ores in excitement, only to find them all refined to scrap metal.   This can be a real downer, as it means more trips into the mines and more disappointments at Koto Accessories.

You'll also remember Mira's refining business in ToT, and how the wonderfuls and ores in your rucksack were refined, free of charge.  This time around, it's a hefty 35G per item refined.  That wouldn't be so bad... If you knew what you were getting for your money.  But handing over 10 blue wonderfuls for 350G and getting 10 pieces of glass in return can be a little more than devastating.  Luckily, there's the beauty of restarting, but unless you're really fortunate, it won't make much of a difference.

Then of course, there's the whole "tool upgrade" disaster, but we'll save that for another time, as this completes my ranting for the evening.