kirabug's idea files

Day 746: Still clearing rubble, which is boring but makes things safer and nicer looking.

Plus I discovered that I dug under one of the ponds at some point and the sunlight is still filtering through the pond, and then down a couple of levels to here.

So actual sunlight! I know it doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re 20 meters underground and relying on a ton of torchlight to to make the place safe from monsters and navigable, a little tiny bit of actual sunlight is amazing for the morale.

I’m almost done here — I did a ton of work the first time apparently — so soon I dig back down.

Day 745: clearing rubble is so boring.

I’ve already cleared all of the ore out of this area, which is why it’s so big in the first place. And now I have to clear all the boring rock out of the way so that it’s a proper chamber with proper walls and supports and such. Mine collapses are bad news even when you have an entire crew, they’re totally out of the question when you’re alone.

Ok and let’s be honest here: any mining should be done with a partner. The smartest thing I could’ve done when I landed (crashed, appareted, whatever) here would have been to give up mining and become a full-time rancher.

On the other hand, most miners don’t have exploding giraffe-corgis to deal with and so far those monsters have blown through every wooden or mud-built building I’ve created. The andesite, diorite, and granite that I’ve dug up have been the only things they’ve withstood. So one could make the argument that solo mining is self-defense.

But it’s really dangerous self-defense. Like taking up solo swimming after meals for fun.

Day 744:

Dug up and found a chamber that I had dug previously was above me, dug up a little more and … wow.

I don’t actually remember working on this room though it’s obviously my handiwork. It’s huge. I vaguely remember maybe I was digging this direction to get to the village that I have still not found yet?

Did I mention huge? I’m guesstimating based  on the length of my stride but I think it’s something like 46 meters by 49 meters and definitely my work because, well, nobody else I’ve found so far is building stairs and they’re definitely the stairs that I build out of cobblestone rubble.

One knows that one has been in an area for too long when one forgets a chamber this size for too long.

More importantly, it doesn’t look like I finished it, which explains why  I didn’t add it to the map yet.  Looks like that’s my next job.

Day 743: down another two levels and digging into the ore that’s here, looking for diamonds. I don’t think I’m low enough toward the core to find them yet — these planetesimals tend to be stingy with diamonds and other pressure-formed rocks because they don’t really form enough pressure at the outer layers of the mantle to form them. (They also don’t tend to have a hot molten core like, say, Earth, or Mars did many many moons ago, which does call into question where all the ducking lava is coming from…)

Anyway, discovered a seam that will have me digging up again tomorrow, because this is how mining works. The ore never runs the direction you want to go because that would be convenient and a planetesimal covered in zombies is definitely not trying to be convenient.

I finally got all the ore out of this immediate area and without getting shot by skeletons so many times that my  armor gave in. That’s an accomplishment in my book. (And since this is my book, hey, accomplishment!)

Now, tomorrow, I dig another layer down in an area where I’ve never dug before. There could be diamonds! There could be ravines! There’s almost definitely skeletons.

I wonder if I could use their bones to build a ladder….