My agreement with yours shown below ] it's much more efficient IMO. The new surface sites don't respawn, and the old "drive around and listen/look" was unreliable to me. Barnacle behavior is very predictable, although I haven't taken the time to measure it. They do not respawn quickly (I wanna guess a week??), so when you ate all the needles from one field, take off and go to another.LOL. We posted nearly identical findings a couple hours apart in different threads
Also, am I the only one who skips surface prospecting for raws and instead checks the ripe barnacle list for one that is on a planet with the raws needed? Barnacles spawn mats based on planet composition, and due to reload feature [not exploit
Also once in a while the thargoids visit and you can use your thrusters to ram their ship with your SRV which is f**&^ing hilarious.
Volcanism prospecting is WAY faster than bug killer, but only after you've mapped a planet AND found one of the larger fields. As you probably know, but I'll reiterate for posterity, the various crystal formations correlate directly to the grade of mats they drop...Piceous cobble will always drop something from the g1 pool for that body, crystalline fragments always g2 pool, crystalline clusters always g3 pool and needle crystals always g4 pool.
This means if you deliberately select a body from eddb that only has ONE g5 material in its pool, EVERY needle crystal will drop 3 of those, without exception, which is highly efficient.
Don't even get me started on how things will be after they fix the exploit....
I did definitely mean quicker for targeted materials...
Example...
I want ruthenium...
I go to eddb.io, and I go to bodies, I put in ruthenium, pristine reserves, metal rich body (cos they are close to stars and almost always have volcanism), and the optional field I put volcanism, so I can immediately ignore any results that don't have it.
Then I start clicking on candidates I like. If I see one that has Ruthenium and Technetium, I ignore it and keep looking until I find one that ONLY has Ruthenium from the Grade 4s. As mentioned before, this ensures that EVERY needle crystal, without exception, drops a ruthenium node.
Since I've already picked out suitable planets for the majority of G4 raws, I don't have to do the mapping any more, so I take that out of the equation for 'time spent'. What makes it efficient is that you just park your ship, get in the SRV and do a search pattern, while constantly watching the left (contacts) panel for needle crystals (I often try to get a body that has G3s that I want as well, like tungsten and cadmium, whcih are often found together, so I also go for crystalline clusters), when I'm pretty confident I got all the needle crystals at least, it's back to the ship and take off and go to the next site. Since they aren't often far away, it's not too bad on time to take off and land again, you don't need to leave orbital flight to do it, and it's kind of a fun game to see how much throttle you can use and not overshoot the next field.
As you find bigger and richer fields, you'll make a note of them on a bookmark, so in future you can go striaght back to the rich fields.
Once this legwork is done, it becomes extremely efficient. I'd say I get at least 4 needle crystals from small sites and as many as 10 from large sites (but they take longer to search, naturally. If you ask me, this is an exactly perfect mechanism in terms of how to get what you want (wihtout fail!) and with reasonable effort/reward ratio.
Relogging? Tut tut , who would do something as terrible as that?I think it's a week, but haven't been checking, that's a gut assumption,and we all know what they are worth.
One thing for sure though, reinstancing and relogging do not refresh anything.
I did definitely mean quicker for targeted materials...
Example...
I want ruthenium...
I go to eddb.io, and I go to bodies, I put in ruthenium, pristine reserves, metal rich body (cos they are close to stars and almost always have volcanism), and the optional field I put volcanism, so I can immediately ignore any results that don't have it.
Then I start clicking on candidates I like. If I see one that has Ruthenium and Technetium, I ignore it and keep looking until I find one that ONLY has Ruthenium from the Grade 4s. As mentioned before, this ensures that EVERY needle crystal, without exception, drops a ruthenium node.
Since I've already picked out suitable planets for the majority of G4 raws, I don't have to do the mapping any more, so I take that out of the equation for 'time spent'. What makes it efficient is that you just park your ship, get in the SRV and do a search pattern, while constantly watching the left (contacts) panel for needle crystals (I often try to get a body that has G3s that I want as well, like tungsten and cadmium, whcih are often found together, so I also go for crystalline clusters), when I'm pretty confident I got all the needle crystals at least, it's back to the ship and take off and go to the next site. Since they aren't often far away, it's not too bad on time to take off and land again, you don't need to leave orbital flight to do it, and it's kind of a fun game to see how much throttle you can use and not overshoot the next field.
As you find bigger and richer fields, you'll make a note of them on a bookmark, so in future you can go striaght back to the rich fields.
Once this legwork is done, it becomes extremely efficient. I'd say I get at least 4 needle crystals from small sites and as many as 10 from large sites (but they take longer to search, naturally. If you ask me, this is an exactly perfect mechanism in terms of how to get what you want (wihtout fail!) and with reasonable effort/reward ratio.
I look forward to hearing what you think. Please give yourself a chance to find a really good field or two, they do vary. Good luck. o7
