Its never been easier to gather materials, gathering is faster, crafting is faster and you have cumulative timeouts for gathering aswell as the old one for crafting.
Before: dig, wait 6 minutes full of watching Red/Youtube, dig, wait (YT), dig, wait (YT, pee), dig, overweight, OK I'm done, 20+ minutes disappeared out of your life, eaten by YT and boredom.
Now: dig, dig, dig, Hi there bro, what's up?, dig, dig, I'm fine, wanna ride to kill something after that digging?, dig, Oh, I have a place for one more pile of rocks, dig, workbench/tent/base, Hmmm, let's get back to digging business. 20 minutes of
playing, talking, collecting itanz and wandering around.
Think twice before whining of how bad and shitty is new mining system.