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Issues Mining (Zinc)


Avarice

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I've read and watched the mining guides, and understand them for the most part, but I'm having a lot of issues mining zinc near my base.

I have the Prospector Info mod installed, I've mapped large grid sections around my home and the highest reading I got was ultra high in 3 squares next to each other before dropping off in all directions.

I then went to those 3 grid sections and every 10 blocks took more readings until I got the highest possible, which was 5.7 per mille. 

I dug down through lime and into Andesite, about -67 depth. 

I went all direction taking samples every 8 blocks with the secondary prospector pick setting.

This is where it became confusing, I kept getting large amounts detected in almost every direction, until about 20+ blocks out each way, N,S,E, and W, so I figured it must be above or below me, so I checked both directions and got large amounts found up and down,so I went up and dug tunnels, same results, went down and dug and got the same results.

At this point I gave up trying to Triangulate it and started randomly mining and the only thing I could find was small 4-6 blocks of  zinc in random locations, there didn't seem to be any disc of it like the wiki talks about, just 5-6 pieces here and there, and I found 3-4 clusters of these all over the place, many blocks away from each other in all directions, with lots of empty blocks between.

 

So I guess my question is, is this normal?

And can there be multiple supposed "discs" of ore near each other that confuses the prospector pick?

Even multiple discs stacked on top of each other at different heights, because this is sort of what I found, only not discs, just a handful of ore blocks quite a distance from each other and not connected in any way. 

 

Thanks, 

 

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Ok, I answered my own question right after I posted this, apologies.

I went into creative mode out of frustration, and removed all the blocks where I was getting the conflicting readings.

There was a large "disc" above where I was and below, with 4 small ones, not really disc shaped with only 5-6 ores each sandwiched under both the large ones.

All of them were roughly 20 blocks or so apart in the various directions.

So multiple can spawn in the same chunk, and it can confuse your prospecting pick readings if they are close enough together like mine were.

I recommend strip mining at that point, or "cheating" like I did in creative to see what's going on and where they are located. 

 

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Not to accuse you personally but Zinc is kinda legendary in how hard it is to spot even if you do find it and arent looking right at it and reading it. Assuming that inst the case I also recommend going into another save and in creative mode use the eraser tool with a wide size to "replace with air" and remove all the stone and soil in an area with similar readings to get an idea of what they actually look like.

 

Frustratingly you may find that even poor readings seem absolutely flush with ore, but when not cheating it can be a major pain to find it. In truth when you find stuff like copper you're really just playing a numbers game with better odds. Theres TONS of copper discs in a single 4x4 chunk area and you usually just find one or two in a cursory search

 

so yeah... can be a challenge

 

I changed my Zinc texture to something more obvious to help as well but again that assumes you might have missed some ore

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9 hours ago, Copperman said:

Not to accuse you personally but Zinc is kinda legendary in how hard it is to spot even if you do find it and arent looking right at it and reading it. Assuming that inst the case I also recommend going into another save and in creative mode use the eraser tool with a wide size to "replace with air" and remove all the stone and soil in an area with similar readings to get an idea of what they actually look like.

 

Frustratingly you may find that even poor readings seem absolutely flush with ore, but when not cheating it can be a major pain to find it. In truth when you find stuff like copper you're really just playing a numbers game with better odds. Theres TONS of copper discs in a single 4x4 chunk area and you usually just find one or two in a cursory search

 

so yeah... can be a challenge

 

I changed my Zinc texture to something more obvious to help as well but again that assumes you might have missed some ore

The main issue for me was the readings being all over the place, that's why I cheated in creative mode and just manually removed blocks and carved out all the "discs". It was the first time I even went into creative mode, so I didn't know about the eraser tool method you mentioned, if I have this issue again I'll do that for sure. 

I was also just assuming each chunk would have one disc at some variable depth depending on the rock type, but like I found out multiple discs can spawn in each area and that makes it difficult to get proper readings when they are close together. 

Funny how it's so hard to find ore in the first place, and then I ran into the bigger problem of finding too much and not being able to figure out which direction to mine to get to it. lol

I agree the zinc texture is a pain to see, I relied on the block info to tell what I was looking at most of the time. 

Getting a texture mod is probably a good idea.

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