Drop Rate for Geodes in Cavern becomes very low when using explosives

[grave yoke]

Title Drop Rate for Geodes in Cavern becomes very low when using explosives
Reproduction Steps 1) Go to Cavern, 2) Use explosives in any shaft (tested in Wind, Water, Fire). 3) Geodes never drop.
Game Platform: Steam, Win 11 Home, Alienware x17 R2 Laptop
Processor: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900HK 2.50 GHz
32 GB Memory, Active GPU during gameplay: Nvidia RTX 3080
Game Version v1.1-1226
Input Mode Keyboard and mouse
Attachments: n/a

I don't think this is by intent. I'm really struggling to find geodes so I can get Savannah unlocked. Also not getting drops for bat wings to complete Alter offering.

[novel harness]

Hello @grave yoke. Thank you for reaching out to us. Can you tell me how many levels you checked and used the explosive, and it doesn't drop any geodes? 😮

[grave yoke]

I've tested in 3, Wind, Water, and Fire and have video of those runs (done on 3 different days), but the file would be too large to upload here. My mining level is above 8, I believe, and I've selected all the options available to increase rare drops, plus I'm wearing that ring you get in the final levels for the Fire cavern. This should mean, I would think, I'd get at least 2 to 3 geodes per floor. I'm attaching my most recent daily save file.

[grave yoke]

I visited the Fire Cavern for today's run, and managed to do 4 floors. Screenshot of Inventory at start of next day, showing drops. 1 geode, with no bat wings.

[grave yoke]

I took the recording made during that run thru the Fire cavern covering from floor 30 to 35 (screenshot of Inventory posted previously). Editing it down to just that time frame dropped the video timer to just over 10 minutes. Current upload file size for Discord is now 10 GB, with a normal render at standard setting still suited. I feared I'd have to change resolution and/or compression, but it worked!

[novel harness]

Really appreciate you sharing the info, it helps a lot!

I'll be checking on this with the teams and get back to you again! 🙌

[novel harness]

Hello again @grave yoke. I've checked this with the teams, and they confirmed that we did some balancing with the geodes drop in Cavern. So now it's normal for you to clear 4-5 floors and only get around 1-2 geodes

I'll close this report shortly since this isn't an issue anymore. Thank you! 😉

[grave yoke]

You're missing my point! In reviewing my recordings, I had done 5 different runs covering an average of 5 floors in the different caverns using explosives. Only on that one run, shown in the posted recording, did ONE geode drop. Not one on all other runs. So, either the "balancing" is not accurate when using explosives or their usage is impacting in some other way to drop it to such a low return. BTW, I did a "regular" run thru levels 30 to 35 in the fire cavern NOT using explosives, but whacking everything with my gold pickaxe. My drop for that run was 3 geodes.

[novel harness]

Hi hi! Yes, I've seen your video and I also noticed you didn't hit all the rocks on 1 floor 🙂

Our teams also testing this issue by going to the fire mine level 31-32 and below is the result:

Level 31 using pickaxe only and hits all the rocks, resulting in 1 mystery geode and 1 fire geode

Level 32 using explosive II and III, hits all the rocks, resulting in 2 mystery geode and 2 fire geode

Geodes drop follows a probability system, where outcomes are influenced by chance, and using both pickaxe and explosive doesn't affect the drop rate. Therefore, this isn't an issue