Marble

Using a Quarry

Stone Quarries are buildings used to extract marble from the ground. Quarrying generally requires four people operating in unison, although there are technologies -- Marble Mechanics and Advanced Marble Mechanics -- which reduce this manpower need.

Marble is extracted one piece at a time. Each piece must be successfully lifted 7 times before it is fully extracted.

At every lift attempt, each quarry worker receives a list of four directions, randomly generated. Directions have two components, one taken from each of these two lists:

• Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western
• Up, Down, Left, Right

An example of a direction might be Southern-Left, often abbreviated as SL.

All four quarry workers receive the same directions, but the order in which they are listed is different for each person.

To successfully raise the marble, each worker must work one of the four directions, and no two people can work the same direction. Thus, coordination is crucial. If one direction is chosen by two or more people, then the lifting attempt fails, and the marble slides down one level. Lifting will also fail if one of the workers clicks on their direction twice.

Provided each worker selects a different direction, the marble will be lifted one level. When the piece of marble is lifted to level 7, it is fully extracted and goes into a worker's inventory.

The direction list is randomized with each lifting attempt, whether the last attempt was a success or failure.

Quarries break after a while. It is possible that dropping a piece of marble may cause a quarry to break sooner, but this is unconfirmed. Reports range from 10 to 30 marble sheets before breaking. Remember that it’s quite easy to find more marble nearby and if you want a serious dig, set up several quarries beforehand.

Quarrying Strategies

Each quarrier sees the list of directions in a different order, so coordination is not as simple as saying "Person A always chooses the first direction, Person B chooses the second direction, etc." Instead, two techniques have proven the most widespread for marble quarrying, both being (with practice) accurate and reasonably quick.

The alphabet method: Before starting, each worker is designated a number: Quarrier 1, Quarrier 2, etc. Then, during lifting, each worker simply chooses whichever direction corresponds to their number in alphabetical order. For example, if the list is "WL NU SD ER", you should alphabetize it to "ER NU SD WL"; then quarrier 1 pulls Eastern-Right, 2 Northern-Up, etc. This method is usually the faster of the two, and has the additional advantage of requiring no communication between the participants. Tip: give people who struggle with the alphabet position 1 or 4.

The call method: Each worker is assigned a number, just as above; additionally, one worker is designated as the "caller". During lifting, the caller shouts out the list of directions ("WL NU SD ER") in the order that he sees them. The order given by the caller is the order in which the workers take their positions (quarrier 1 pulls Western-Left, 2 pulls Northern-Up, etc).

Finding a quarry

You need to tune yourself to the relevant marble under Rock of the Ages at any School of Conflict for a cost of 10 slate. You need the correct perception level (minimum 1) to get admitted to the class - see marble for a list of perception levels for various marbles. Food does count, though you still need the correct perception level every time you wish to prospect so have several portions nearby. Tuning to a marble doesn't wear off as in Tale 1 - you stay attuned until you change it manually (and even if your food wears off). In order to prospect, you need a partner, although only the person attempting to shatter slate needs to be attuned to the marble. Your partner is a person standing in range.

You prospect from the special menu by throwing two pieces of slate down (Self->Special->Prospect for <marble>).

• All intact means your partner is out of range (32 in each coordinate - 512 feet - is the maximum)
• A single broken piece means you scanned and found nothing (you see an emote of throwing some slate down)
• Two broken pieces means you found some marble in-between you (you see an emote: bless)

Use one of the prospecting strategies below to home in on the exact location of a marble spot. Expect to use 30-50 slate when prospecting for a quarry.

Once a quarry spot has been found and built on (and the quarry removed after), you cannot get more marble from the same spot though it will show up as a valid quarry spot when prospecting. Attempting to build on the used spot or a non-existent spot will give you a dirt quarry. Except for the fact that you can detect marble at the spot, there is no way to distinguish between those two cases. Note that this guide incorrectly described a message "Although enough remnants of the stone remain to confuse you, the area has been stripped clean.", tests show this not to be the case.

Also of interest, the spots are always at coordinate tile corners, just where the coordinates change values. These spots are fairly easy to see, especially in desert, and can help tremendously when you get down to the 2-3 coord range.

Warning

If you build a dirt quarry it will wipe nearby marble, as such if you just miss the vein it can be gone for good

Has anyone confirmed this in T2? - Cappu
This doesn't seem to be true - Al-Bilal

Prospecting strategies

• Cappu's Guide, efficient and fairly easy to follow. 18-45 slate to get down to a 2-coord circle diameter.
• Tortanick's Method, by Tortanick
• House of Bes quarry guide, by Dors
• Sord's quarry guide (has pretty pictures)
• Prospecting For Marble, by MarvL, is a Search Circle Quartering theory that only uses an average of 38.5 Slate to find a Quarry.