Mining

[aWolfSurviving]

I've been playing for...well I don't know how to check but I have been playing for a while and have gotten to the point where I now need metal as my main form of weaponry and defense. However I heavily dislike prospecting and seeing as I am playing on my own things take a very long time. Is there a way to automate this process or just make it easier?
I do enjoy the class system but once again I am on my own here thus I can not fully grasp the intricacies of the class system as I have gone commoner for my first go.
I do like this game, making pots and what not is the most fun thing I've done, but this prospecting really drains me and pulls away from the fun for me.

[Streetwind]

There is no way to get most ores without prospecting for it, no... unless you count spawning it in from the creative menu.

Prospecting is the most difficult mechanic in the game to get right for new players, because it heavily relies on both player experience and developing a reliable methodology. If you are still in your first world, it's normal to be struggling; it gets easier the longer you play. I can also offer you a how-to guide.

If however you dislike the mechanic as a whole, regardless of how much or how little time and effort you have to spend interacting with it... then I'm not sure what to tell you. This might not be the right game for you then.

 

Edited September 2, 2023 by Streetwind

[l33tmaan]

Install ProspectorInfo or ProspectTogether. That'll help.

[Bumber]

You can find ores sometimes exposed in caves. Repairing and using translocators will get you to far away caves with different ores. This means dealing with drifters and locusts, however. Bring torches, ladders, packed dirt, and spears.

You can also get ores from traders and cracked vessels.

Edited September 2, 2023 by Bumber

[TENMILLIONBEES]

26 minutes ago, Bumber said:

You can find ores sometimes exposed in caves. Repairing and using translocators will get you to far away caves with different ores. This means dealing with drifters and locusts, however. Bring torches, ladders, packed dirt, and spears.

You can also get ores from traders and cracked vessels.

Can I ask why the need for packed dirt specifically?

[l33tmaan]

I bet someone plays with dirt gravity on.

[aWolfSurviving]

4 hours ago, l33tmaan said:

Install ProspectorInfo or ProspectTogether. That'll help.

I actually did since it auto maps the ores as you find them

[aWolfSurviving]

3 hours ago, Bumber said:

You can find ores sometimes exposed in caves. Repairing and using translocators will get you to far away caves with different ores. This means dealing with drifters and locusts, however. Bring torches, ladders, packed dirt, and spears.

You can also get ores from traders and cracked vessels.

The only trader I found is the general trader I have been trying to find the artisan one just so I can FINALLY get rid of all this damn peat. I have so much!

[aWolfSurviving]

6 minutes ago, l33tmaan said:

I bet someone plays with dirt gravity on.

Wait you can give dirt gravity? On the topic of gravity I like how the blocks fall in all manner of directions and not straight down. The ones with gravity I mean.

[Thorfinn]

Until you want to do the Resonance Archive,  you can get by fine with flint spears and gambeson. You can even finish RA with nothing more. If you can resist the temptation to pick up everything...

[Owktree]

2 hours ago, Mister Pony said:

The only trader I found is the general trader I have been trying to find the artisan one just so I can FINALLY get rid of all this damn peat. I have so much!

That will take a while depending on how much you dug out.  The traders demand for peat is not that massive and it can take a while for it to reset as well.

I have been going through peat and firewood simply firing bricks, shingles, and other clay products to use in the various buildings.

[ArgentLuna]

5 hours ago, l33tmaan said:

I bet someone plays with dirt gravity on.

Even without gravity on its useful to have and mark as different from the surrounding landscape

[Retsof90]

There is also the block overlay xray mod if you really don't want to prospect.

https://mods.vintagestory.at/xray

[Aryan van der L]

Xray is the way to go there is so much in the world to find that you will never see if you don't use this.
Lots of things don't even show up when prospecting.

[Maelstrom]

But that takes all the fun challenge out of the game.  Might as well just play that other block game, what's it called?  Minesoft?

[Bumber]

1 hour ago, Maelstrom said:

But that takes all the fun challenge out of the game.  Might as well just play that other block game, what's it called?  Minesoft?

Minestrone?

[Maelstrom]

yes!

[Rhyagelle]

Unfortunately, sort of cheating via creative or using an overlay mod, no. You'll need to put work into using and understanding prospecting. It's really difficult to get as a new player, but if you stick with it and start a new world in creative, give yourself a prospect and then just try it out, you'll get it. 

[Lesdmark]

Since the world already exists, It's too late to tweak the world settings so that more ore exists overall. I feel like it makes your first experience a bit less painful if ore hunting is not your thing.

[Thorfinn]

11 hours ago, Lesdmark said:

Since the world already exists, It's too late to tweak the world settings so that more ore exists overall. I feel like it makes your first experience a bit less painful if ore hunting is not your thing.

Is that true? Wouldn't newly created blocks use the new parameters, like they do with other mapgen changes?

[Aryan van der L]

On 9/26/2023 at 1:36 AM, Rhyagelle said:

Unfortunately, sort of cheating via creative or using an overlay mod, no. You'll need to put work into using and understanding prospecting. It's really difficult to get as a new player, but if you stick with it and start a new world in creative, give yourself a prospect and then just try it out, you'll get it. 

I did and still you will be shocked how much of the stuff underground you miss since it doesn't show op while prospecting.
Searching for coal or any ore while you sit on top of it and so on, and it's not like you can afford to just stripmine for days like in minecraft.

The searching i don't mind but not for hours and hours.

[Thorfinn]

Pretty much anything other than black coal is a waste of time. Charcoal does everything  but make blasting powder, and does it better. And you can live without ore bombs. Really, you can.

[VaelophisNyx]

I'd like to say that prospecting in its current form is a bit obtuse, even for something meant to be difficult (and really, should it be SO difficult that every player has to burn 10+ propicks to learn it?)

That paired with a lot of interesting valuables just straight up not being prospectable is annoying

It does feel like the development direction is torn in two directions: supporting very high player populations on multiplayer servers, and letting singleplayers actually play the game and advance alone; when it really shouldn't be torn in either direction. Both are possible.

Edited October 7, 2023 by VaelophisNyx

[Maelstrom]

I think I burned half of one pro-pick learning how to find ores.  Then again, I watched some videos and did some research in that process to deal with the frustration.

[Thorfinn]

I went through too many prospecting picks thinking ore veins were chunk-based. I mean, they are, sort of, but they aren't. The prospecting mod confuses a lot of people. It is useful, but you have to keep in mind what it's telling you. A better implementation of the mod would be a heatmap of not squares, but circles of either different size or different color intensity depending on the probability of that ore in that particular sample. You should only need the pro-pick to find the approximate highest ore likelihood, unless you are using the radius search. Then, yeah, you could chew through a lot of them even if you are doing something more than just blindly checking within high-probability deposits. 

Knowing something about the disc generation and radius of ore veins makes it much easier.

Things like surface cassiterite are easy to miss. It's possible (though unlikely) for mining shafts every 6 blocks to miss the disc entirely. It's even possible to miss trying every 5, but extremely unlikely if you keep shafts on one axis in a line, and offset each line so it's mineshafts are between the ones on the other line. Still, I find every 9 works fine, with adjacent rows 9 apart, offset by 5. Either there really is nothing there, or you are guaranteed to find it sinking another shaft in the middle of each triangle. But that's not pro-picks, rather copper picks you are going through.

Things like iron are much easier. Mineshafts every 30 or so are plenty, even overkill. Yeah, one could sneak through, but you will catch 90% of them. And once you find one, that's all you need to go through the current game content.

@Streetwind wrote up a good treatment of ore-finding somewhere. Maybe in the Guides section of the forum.

If you are playing Survival, you can almost always find tin as surface nuggets if you explore enough of the map in igneous surface strata. Even a single nugget points out where you can find enough tin to jump into iron.

You are correct that there are minerals that cannot be detected, like halite, but nothing that is necessary to any playthrough. Worst case, your cementation furnace goes through more refactory bricks than it would if you had found olivine, or you have to preserve meats in the form of sealed crocks of stew. Neither wrecks the game experience. I think it enhances the experience, each game having it's own character depending one what resources are found.