Hi everyone!

It is my great pleasure to announce that Mining is now available!

Before I get into the specifics, I would like to give a massive shout out to Razmael for the enormous amount of work he's put into this system, and to the many people on the team (some of whom are sadly no longer with us) that have had a big hand in bringing this project to completion.

Onward!

WHAT IS MINING?
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Mining joins Farming as the second of our Agriculture skills, centred around setting up and staffing your own mining operation in order to extract metal ores from the earth.

Like Farming, it is a fully realised skillset with a full slew of abilities from hiring Gnome workers, building offices, and actually mining ores to the laying of track networks for carts and the use of controlled bomb detonations.

AB MINING has extensive details on how everything works, and HELP MINING exists as an overview of the system.

WHERE CAN I LEARN THE SKILL AND OBTAIN EQUIPMENT?
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The Mining skill can be obtained from Philbert at a cost of 10,000 gold with LEARN ABILITY OF MINING FROM PHILBERT. Enemies of Gorshire will find the cost is significantly higher.

Those who supported Philbert in the recent Gorshire elections will be able to pick it up at no gold cost. Once obtained, the skill is learned like any other.

Philbert will also supply a variety of basic equipment from both the Syndicate headquarters in Lodi and at the various outposts across the world.

AGRICULTURE SKILLS
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Our plan for Agriculture skills is for everyone to be able to hold two of the three that will become available when the system is complete. With that in mind:

* Agriculture skills now work on a slot based system. Everyone begins with one slot, and the second slot can be obtained for a cost of 150,000 gold. Use AGRICULTURE EXPAND CAPACITY to do this.

* If you already possess Farming and wish to convert it to Mining, you may do so for no cost using AGRICULTURE SWITCH. THIS WILL DELETE ALL OF YOUR FARMS AND YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO RETRIEVE THEM. CHOOSE WISELY.

This option will remain available until the end of September.

HOW TO GET STARTED
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Once you've obtained the skill and picked up your equipment, you'll want to head to your city's outpost. These operate on the overhead wilderness map similarly to Farming, though fair warning: the mining maps are MUCH bigger.

Bloodloch | The Mhojave Desert | v53195
Duiran | The Western Ithmia | v68504
Enorian | The Shamtota Hills | v68550
Spinesreach | The Telfinne Caverns | v68946

Once there, you simply ENTER OUTPOST and you can begin searching for a desirable mine.

PROSPECT per room to discern the ores available and in what approximate volumes. PROSPECT AREA to scan the whole map at once and see an at a glance view of what ore is most common on which tile. The ore presence on each tile is set until the next Howling, at which point it will be rerolled.

When you're happy with a spot, you can then MINING DELVE to enter the mine and explore it.

If you decide that you wish to keep the mine you've just opened, return to the surface and CLAIM MINE WITH DEED.

NOTE: As with Farming on its release, you can only have one Mining deed for now. As the system settles into place, we will consider opening up multiple deeds.

With that, you are ready to build an office and get started. I strongly recommend reading through all of AB MINING, as the volume of information is too much to write here.

DEPOSITS AND VEINS
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You will find ores in two different states within mines: deposits, and veins. Deposits appear in the room like a normal item and can be mined with your pickaxe. Whereas veins are tiles on the map that must be mined by your Gnome workers. Refer to AB MINING PICKAXE and AB MINING VEINS for more details.

GRAPHICAL MAP
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At this time, there's no graphical map for Mining like Farming has. A graphical map for Mining holds significantly more challenges than Farming did, and we did not want to hold up the entire system for it. We'll still look at doing it in the future, but it will depend on whether we can overcome the difficulties posed by it.

USEFUL FILES
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- AB MINING
- HELP MINING
- HELP AGRICULTURE
- HELP PRODUCTION
- HELP DEVELOPMENT PRODUCTION

As this is such a big release, we'll be monitoring it over the coming days and making adjustments as necessary. Please report any bugs or typos you encounter, and feel free to ask if anything in the ABs or HELPs is not clear.

Enjoy!

Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 20th of Niuran, in the year 497 MA.
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