Geologist Skill Tree

Edit July 7, 2013: Changing views on most skills after noticing things that are not like they were on the test server.
Here's what I see so far:
Even though the skill says "while searching" it really seems to mean "while finding". This means that the skill hasn't worked for me 100% of the time while all mines of that type were up.
For me it would mean only 2 skill points in "Hidden Stone Stash" no choice there. I would avoid the "Ore Mining Surplus" skills and skip "Nature's Gift" because I have no idea if it works when all mines are found.
The only way to get the "Ore Mining Surplus" skills to work at all times right now is by demolishing ore mining spots. Put in something to build that you don't have the materials for first, then place your mine after it. Your mine will be stuck in the building queue waiting for the building that is missing resources to build. Just cancel the mine and the ore find will disappear and be ready to find again. Very tedious and not really worth getting that skill in my opinion, but if you must get it then that's a little trick for it. The same will go for "Nature's Gift" if it's working just like "Ore Mining Surplus".

The good news is I've asked for confirmation about all this from support. I'll edit this thread once I get this confirmation.



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The following is what I feel would be best for my own geologists. You can certainly try a totally different setup and my opinions on the different skills might not apply to your gameplay. So please take the following simply as a suggested geologist skill tree setup.

No matter what skill you decide to choose for your geologist, you will always be able to send him to search for any type of ore or rock. The only difference is that with better skills in certain areas he will be able to perform best in those areas.

When you click on your geologist you will notice that the window has changed at the top.
http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...psa41e882b.png

You can now name your geologists, which will be useful later on to quickly see what type of setup you might have used in their skill tree.
Click the blue pencil to change the geologist's name.
http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps4f83be97.png

You'll see below why I decided to name him Stone for the moment.
http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...psa09b3102.png

To start adding skills to the geologist tree, click the Open Skill Tree button at the top right.
http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...psc74ab2fc.png

You will be presented with this new window.
http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...psd9101e5a.png

A very important thing is to remember that you can only use 31 skill points and that to get to one of the top skills in this tree you will only be able to use 5 skill points per row. Using more than 5 points per row will not stop your geologist from using all the skills you've chosen but it will prevent him from being able to get one of those top row skills.

If you make a mistake or for whatever reason you decide you want to start over your skill tree, you have the option to do so in two ways.
You can reset your skill tree by accepting to receive 50% of the resources you spent in all your skills.
http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...psb14d3e65.png ---->> http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps933ebbb4.png
The refund for a full tree with 1 skill at the top would be 5 of each book.

Or you can decide to keep all the books you've used so far and pay gems instead.
http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps59397b9c.png
The gem price for a full tree with 1 skill at the top would be 1550 gems

To add a skill you will need to click the icons that look like buttons.
This is what a skill that is available looks like.
http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...psdabcadc0.png

And this one, which is greyed out and has a flat background is what a skill that is unavailable looks like.
http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps49a0526e.png

Once you're happy with the skill(s) you've chosen you need to click the confirm selection checkmark for this new skill to take effect.
http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2b6b26c1.png
After you've clicked this checkmark you will not be able to change your skill tree unless you use one of the reset buttons in the Reset area to the right side as mentioned above.

To reset your choices BEFORE you click the Confirm Selection checkmark you can use this Reset Selection button as many times as you like while figuring out where you'd like your skills.
http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps68040973.png

Once you've confirmed your selection you will be able to see how many books you've used on the geologist at the top of the previous window.
http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps92f84344.png

[rule]

Skill opinions and advice.
Keep in mind again that these are my own opinions and my own preference for what I would like to find on my island.


http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...psb2d20bfe.png
You can keep sending your geologist every minute looking for stone even if they're all found and he will still have a chance to bring back a stack of 25 of some random resource. It's not always stone and pinewood planks, I've gotten marble and hardwood planks also.


http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps4a643d8b.png
Not a bad skill but with endless copper mines and the speed a geologists naturally finds copper mines having more ore per mine isn't really as beneficial as the Hidden Stone Stash skill.

[rule]

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps6a0e0c05.png
If you've found all your marble mines then this skill becomes useless. It's a toss up between this and the Natural Stone Vein. I suppose you could put 1 in each of those two just to have both but it's probably best to just put two in one of them and I usually go for the Natural Stone Vein.

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps4a20a7cb.png
This is a very important skill for anyone wanting to place an endless copper mine. Once a mine is found that has copper that can be mined faster, you will be able to keep this bonus when you place the endless copper mine. It's still not a bad skill to have even without the endless copper mines. Fast mines get ore out in half the time as a normal mine. So where a regular copper mine would take 3 minutes a mine found with this skill active would only take 1.5 minutes. In essence your level 5 endless copper mine would act as if it were a level 10. Now imagine that buffed :)

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps25e51003.png
Not really that great of a skill since stone can be found in a minute but I prefer it over Two Marble in One and usually give it 2 skill points.

[rule]

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps97539546.png
Not too bad, a bit more marble per mine than usual is good.

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...psb0e7a2cf.png
This to me is a must max skill. While you have every single mine found you can still send out your geologists to find copper and he has a chance to return to you with a nice little stack of ore. It varies but i've had them come back with 250 on rare occasion.

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...psc63d4a2b.png
Again this is just like the Two Marble in One skill. This would only really be useful if you weren't able to get extra geos or didn't have time to send your geologists out more than once. But then again if you had extra in your mines you wouldn't have to send them back so often. Once again another toss-up but you should probably stick to one of those two and use the 2 skill in only one instead of splitting it to 1 skill each.

[rule]

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2e372388.png
Ok now why would I possibly put skill points in something coal related. I'll tell you why below the next picture.

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps4a2d5e45.png
I send my geologists as soon as I log in for stone, then copper, then marble. This takes minutes and while they look for marble I take care of the rest of my island, emails and quests. In no time they are back. Then off they go to find iron and gold and rarely coal. So they're pretty much done searching by then. Making them come back faster won't really help out at all when they're all done looking. I suppose you could experiment with some sort of mean marble searching machine type skill tree, but why waste the books.

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps1c487106.png
Same as for the copper surplus above. This skill has given me so much gold ore on the test server. Just keep sending them over and over. If you're stuck with low resources to build a gold mine, this will get you gold without building the mine.

[rule]

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps3b67fc3c.png
Obviously there's a mistake in the text that they have yet to correct but this should be saying coal instead of iron.
As much as I like finding stashes of resources while sending my geos, finding stashes of coal is not a resource I would even want. There comes a point at a certain level and then upwards where you end up with way too much coal, so why would you even want more.

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps24c9b5f1.png
Yay more iron stashes. Yes that's a definite maxed skill.

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...psa956fb82.png
Sure I could have chosen to have larger amounts of gold ore in my mines but this is more ore on one mine. Once it's found that's it. You can't send the geo back to refind that one mine and add more ore to it like you can keep resending the geo with the Iron Mining Surplus skill and keep finding iron ore stashes over and over.

[rule]

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps05d9e660.png
Well since I barely ever put up coal mines this is a very useless skill for me. Compared to the Ore Collector finding copper and gold faster it's even more useless. So my suggestion is to not even touch this one.

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps1dc4c343.png
Mmmm Gold that can be mined twice as fast as a regular speed mine. Now that's what I'm talking about. Max this baby out.

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...psb92eee9a.png
Yup put 2 skills in here. Not too bad to have a geo find gold faster. Heck of a lot better than finding two coal mines at once.

[rule]

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...ps66cd636d.png
I would at least get 1 geologist to have this last skill. It's the only way you can find the extra marble mine in sector 1 and the extra iron mine in sector 5.

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...psae0d0d71.png
This would give you 8% more ore per deposit no matter which deposit you were looking for. This may be a good skill for people that don't play the game very long. Once your mines are found this skill has no more value, but if you're not online to keep resending geologists then having the Nature's Gift skill isn't that useful either.

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...psf091cfdc.png
This may have been fixed but on the test server this skill would not show up on the mine once a mine had been refilled for about 2 minutes or until you relogged or went to another island. So at first I thought it rarely worked. It is 10% after all. But after logging back in and relooking at my mines I noticed a lot more had been refilled than I had previously seen.
So if you ever feel like the skill isn't working or to make sure you see the actual skill on each mine, just visit someone's island and come back and all bonuses should then be on your mines.
I play this game twice daily and for hours at a time each time I log in, so a skill like this for me would be very useful. Since it doesn't matter what you send your geologist to find you could send him to look for stone and every minute you would have a 10% chance to also refill a random active deposit. Of course that could mean just a few ores in an almost full mine but it could mean way more than 8% extra ore. Not only this but if you're sending out your geologists continuously to look for those ore stashes you will also be getting that chance to refill a random mine.

[rule]

http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...pse9044c80.png
Here is the final setup for one of my two geologists I had finding the two extra mines. They need to be sent a few times before you find them... unless you're very lucky of course.
With this same skill line and only the top skill changed to Nature's Gift you would have a geologist that could be sent out, over and over, to find random stacks of 25, or sent out for stacks of copper, iron or gold, all the while having a 10% chance of refilling a random active mine. This is the skill set I use for all my other geologists.


Other information:
Every 10 books you build in your bookbinder will increase the next amount of materials needed by 10%
Here's a post about this subject.
http://forum.tsotesting.com/threads/...of-manuscripts


Here is another guide by LordStevie that you really should take a look at. It goes through this system in a LOT of detail. Mine is more of a personal notes on the system. http://forum.thesettlersonline.net/t...e-and-Tutorial

You put a lot of time and effort into this huh.

Please note. Every time you make 10 Manuscripts, the price to building them is increased by 10%

Nice thread.

Awesome job.

Very comprehensive and helpful.

Thank you for taking the time and effort to put this together.

Hello Aquila,
I did a write up on this a while back with multiple examples of them.
I know it took a long time doing it, mine did as well. Thank you for sharing.

Still, check out this thread.
http://forum.thesettlersonline.net/t...e-and-Tutorial

Stevie

Thank you LordStevie I added your link to the bottom of my first post. That's an amazing guide.

I will be keeping this plan up as it is now for the time being but if I find that they've reworked how the geologists skills behave I will then rework my own view on these skills and post a new guide here. Until then, here's what I think so far.

This was all a good plan but I've been noticing a few things that have changed since the test server. It seems that if the ore or mineral is down or not found yet, the skill will work at 100% when you find what you had searched for. (this is only for the live servers, seems the test server is working properly for this one lol) On the other end of things, all skills that did work even if all mines of that type had been found now do not work at all.(both test and live servers) I've sent the geologists numerous times now looking for hidden stone stashes and copper mining surplus (on test server) with no result where it had previously worked before.

Please don't be fooled into thinking the skills will always be working at 100% no matter what their description says and only put 1 point into each skill. This is an obvious error and I'm sure they will be fixing it soon.

What I'm more concerned about is the fact that the other skills are dependent on whether you have a mine that needs to be found or not. This would completely change my outlook on what I view as a needed skill or not. Not being able to have a skill work even though the geologist ends up not finding what he was looking for will make them useless once all mines are found unless you go through the trouble of destroying the ore mines before they are built. How much fun will that be?!?

Hidden stone stash and anything that gives you a surplus of ore would become useless in my mind if the above were to be how the skills really were intended to work.

The skills don't say "discover" or "finding (ore) deposit" as specified in other skills, so it's not like this is something that was lost in translation. It says a % of chance to find treasure/ore when "searching" for that particular resource. You might not find it but it doesn't mean you didn't send out your geologist to search for it nonetheless.

For now I suggest you either wait before you put in any skill and keep making your books daily because you will need them, or if you do want to build up a skill tree, avoid any of the get extra mineral/ore while searching skills and do NOT put in only 1 point per skill unless that is the percentage you truly want once they have fixed the geologist rates.

I can confirm that you do get mined copper ores when you do the copper ore search over and over. EVEN when all the mines are being used.

So if you have 6 mines for copper. And you send your guy to go out and find copper. He does bring back mined copper.

I'm still trying to determine if sending him out over and over for stone (even though all stones have been found) if Nature's Gift still works.

If Nature's Gift can't be trigged when all stones/marbles are found. And all mined copper mines being found. Then I think it's a useless skill.

Okay based on what I can tell from my testing so far.

I noticed that Nature's Gift does NOT trigger unless the geo discovers something. This means something has to be depleted/exhausted first.
(Honestly, this is really stupid, that something has to be depleted first in order for this to trigger to refill something else. What's the point of a refill if everything has to be depleted).

Okay, so when Nature's Gift did trigger. It only 'randomly' applies the refill on the SAME type that you searched. And what happens is that it 'shows the Nature's Gift icon on the deposit it just found. However, the amount found is not more than what it would normally be without nature's gift. There is a 'second' nature's gift icon that appears on another deposit that is actually currently being mined (must be the same type).

So here's what happened:

I have 5 copper mined. 1 exhausted. I found a new copper deposit. it showed 816 ores (and it had the icon nature's gift on it). After I logged out and logged back in. I saw "Nautre's Gift" icon on another deposit (copper mined). The amount it refilled was about ~16 extra copper ores. Hardly worth anything. Seriously? The copper deposit had about 19 left. When I logged back on it had about 35 left. So it's about ~16 that got added.

This is the worst talent skill ever. And it needs to be fixed and buffed. It needs to allow you to refill anything regardless of how many already are found.


I was able to test this buy demolishing the one copper mine, and made it search. And then placed the mine on the newly found. and then demolished/cancelled the build and then sent him out again to search. I did this about 10-20 times to get a result.

I did it about 30-40 times with everything already found and no results. so I can say it only works when something can be found.

The test server needs more of your feedback on nature's gift.

http://forum.tsotesting.com/threads/...Gift-Mechanics

Hopefully if you guys complain enough about how terrible it is. they'll actually fix it.