8.1 MINING

As well as rearing animals and growing crops, you can also set up mining for minerals, precious stones and other underworld goodies. Mining requires access to water and electricity so you will need to have set up the electricity system and also have a water tower near where you are mining.

(a) Mining equipment

To start mining you can put out one or more of the drilling items from the Mining platform (box 10) – these may be the SF Mine, SF Rig etc.

Mining equipment calls for power from th e power grid when needed so as long as there is enough stored on your grid you don’t need to do anything further. Mines also require water and you can add this manually (the same way you water plants, top up animal feeders etc.) or you can select the AutoWater option to have it pull water from the nearest water tower when needed.

Mining equipment can be used to mine for any of the items contained in its inventory. To add more items, just place a copy into the equipments inventory. All items take the same time, water and power which is set in the config notecard. If you wish to have different mining times for different products, you can create copies of the equipment set with different values.

# Mining time in seconds
LIFETIME=12000
#
# How many times water needed during one mining cycle
WATER_TIMES=2
#
# Offset when rezzing items
REZ_POSITION=<-1.0, 0.0, -2.0>
#
# Default language
LANG=en-GB

(b) Mining plants

Included in the mining platform you will find SF Gems which are plants that grow various crystals and minerals. You grow them in exactly the same way as trees with water and the option to add manure. They produce a wood object which is actually SF Mineral. Gem plants glow so look great in dark locations!
 

(c) Mining animals

Also included in this platform is the SF Rock Feeder which is the default animal feeder for the Pet Rock (you can rez this ‘animal’ from the standard animal rezer).  The rock feeder takes food in the form of minerals like phosphorous, sulfur iron ore etc.

Pet rocks behave much the same as any other animal although by default they are set no to walk around (although you can turn walking back on if you wish.) The adult male will move though if you select to mate with a female rock.
 

(d) Creating mining areas

Mines come in various types – surface mines are very easy to set up, jut put the mining equipment in a ‘mineral rich’ location in your region and off you go!

Alternatively you may wish to mine river channels, beaches etc.

And if you fancy an underground mine then you could use terraforming to create a hollowed out mound with a roof prim disguised to match the surrounding terrain.

If you don’t fancy tackling land terraforming (or don’t have the rights) then a great alternative is to create your mine as a sky-box and perhaps use an impact type teleport as the mine entrance. Although not included in the mining box, you will find items for making caves and mines at the main shop on Mintor (be warned though you will probably find you need quite a lot of patience!)

This work by Cnayl Rainbow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://satyrfarm.github.io/