by PlanckWalk » Wed Dec 12, 2012 5:36 am
At least on Roanoke, it looks like drain starts kicking in at about 46° (where fully lighted is 56°). Using a program I wrote to stich together saved map tiles, that looks like about 19km from Roanoke. Note that the elevation reported by Ender's client is per 100x100 map patch, but the actual drain varies within such a patch. Each patch outward from the capital in darkness is approximately 1° elevation.
The normal recovery rate is 0.300*capacity per minute (3% per "tick" of 6 seconds). That means for a 5-stat new player, they can only linger in areas with drain less than 1.5 per minute. Since my exploring character was not far from a noob, I could only get good readings out to about 40°.
At 46.22°, drain was less than 0.04 per minute (probably zero).
At 45°, it was 0.46/min
At 44°, 0.96/min
At 43°, 1.30/min
At 42°, 1.79/min
At 40.38° (inner edge of patch), 2.57/min
Also at 40.38° (outer edge of patch), 3.015/min.
So at least for the shallow darkness edges I could explore, it looks pretty much linear at 0.5/min extra drain for each degree of elevation below 46°, which is also about a 100-"tile" map patch. Exploring the deeper darkness will need more experienced players, and I suspect most of those aren't willing to divulge information.