Geode Crushing Tip
If you haven't unlocked the Geode Crusher yet, you'll want to complete the Cave Patrol Special Order for Clint (from the Special Order board outside of Mayor Lewis's house). Once you've unlocked the Geode Crusher, you can craft it from the following material:
- Gold Bar (2)
- Stone (50)
- Diamond (1)
Geode Crushers allow you to open geodes using 1 coal instead of paying Clint 25g. It's intended to be a convenience thing, so you don't have to visit Clint every time you want to open geodes (or maybe it's so you can mass open geodes without being stuck in a menu for a long time).
But there's a trick with opening geodes using the Geode Crusher...
Geode Crushers will always produce the same item as what Clint opened at his shop. If you ask Clint to open an Omni Geode and you get Marble, immediately place an Omni Geode in a Geode Crusher and you'll get a Marble an hour later. While the Geode Crusher is processing the geode, it's safe to go back to Clint to crack more geodes. Whenever you find an item you'd like more of, repeat the process -- placing the same geode in the Geode Crusher then crushing more geodes.
This trick is particularly helpful if you're looking for specific minerals from ores. I originally used this trick to essentially duplicate Marble so I could create Marble Braziers a little more efficiently without using official glitches (I don't consider this a glitch and it seems like the speed running community agrees).
Side Note: Minerals can be placed in a Crystalarium and in most cases are reproduced in about 3.5 days. This is a good alternative to using the Geode Crusher trick if you expect to use the specific mineral a lot.
From a technical/programming standpoint, this works because the geode crusher uses a different index value (i-1) to determine what the geode gives you while Clint uses the normal index value (i) when cracking geodes.
To make this as convenient as possible for you, make a few Geode Crushers and put them in Clint's Blacksmith. Here's a screenshot of where I've placed some Geode Crushers. If you need more space, you can find an image of safe areas to place objects here.
You can see I've also placed a chest to the left of the counter. If I'm crushing a lot of geodes, I'll put all of my equipment in the chest then use a macro (or keyboard script) to constantly click my mouse to crush geodes automatically.
Here's a simple AutoHotkey script to click the mouse for you, place your mouse over the area where Clint breaks the geode for you and press F2 to start or stop the script:
#MaxThreadsPerHotkey, 2
toggle := 0
$F2::
toggle := !toggle
While (toggle)
{
Click
sleep 200
}