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How to find Basalt?


Nivaeli

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Explore the world, and you might be lucky to find whole biomes with basalt. Can take some extensive travel, as such biomes are not common according to my own explorations. If not, dig deep down, and you will almost always find some at y-level 12 and bellow.

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If you play with colored map, just set your view distance to as high as your rig can handle. With a little practice, you can probably tell the difference between shale, slate and basalt. If nothing inside that range, turn view distance back to whatever your rig runs well on, go out to where the expanded view will reveal a lot of the map, stop, and turn the view distance back up. Lather rinse repeat.

If you don't play with colored map, ladders or nerdpoles are your friends. Climb up to just short of the clouds and look around. Note the landmarks on your horizon, move to that landmark, repeat.

Or just dig down. Like @xXx_Ape_xXx says, that's a really common stone above the mantle.

Edited by Thorfinn
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Mantle level basalt spawning is dubious.  It comes in patches, kinda like quartz and isn't a consistent layer just above the mantle.  Plus in vanilla with cave-ins enabled digging out basalt from above causes weird block collapsing behavior.  blocks disappear into the mantle leaving a void, but that happens BELOW the level of blocks you're digging at.

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1 hour ago, Echoweaver said:

I... Did not know that. Back to the wiki I go.

It's worthwhile if you've got it, but not something to make yourself crazy over trying to find. Flint is marginally better than the other stone types you can use.

Copper comes quickly. Bone handle for stone knives though, axes if you are feeling saucy, but they are more impactful on the knife.

Also something the wiki doesn't tell you and #1 thing I wish I knew when I started: Make a crude shield ASAP, like as soon as you've got your 4 baskets the next 3 reeds you collect go to a shield. It is a lifesaver.

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25 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Shield might be a good idea in 1.20, now that there are credible threats other than brown bears on the surface. TBH, I forgot about the shield until you mentioned it just now.

Dunno. Whenever I'm out after dark, I need that offhand for a torch.

Oh, I dunno, I thought getting mobbed by drifters before leather armor was a credible threat. The animals were a lot more aggressive in  1.19 too. 1.20 is insane, I don't like being a pincussion.

I just put the lantern on the ground, kill everything that needs killing and pickup the lantern and go about my business.

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16 hours ago, Krougal said:

It's worthwhile if you've got it, but not something to make yourself crazy over trying to find.

Coming back to this, I'd say obsidian is a really good thing to have even where I am, solidly in the copper age. The thing about knapping is that you can carry around the raw materials and then craft whatever tool head you happen to need. I keep a stack of flint in inventory so that if my axe/knife/whatever breaks while I'm out and about, I can make a replacement and keep going without disruption. (I assume that's not unusual.) Carrying an entire set of backup metal tools isn't practical.

I didn't know about bone handles either, so thanks for the heads up on that.

So, obsidian is like ore, so that a surface rock indicates a deposit below ground?

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Improvised armor is also a life saver.  It will get destroyed with the first melee attack, but it gives you a second chance to survive a surprise encounter with a wolf, bear or other mean nasty that can one shot you early on.  Plus it doesn't take up the off-hand.

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1 hour ago, Echoweaver said:

So, obsidian is like ore, so that a surface rock indicates a deposit below ground?

Correct.  

I, too, carry a stack of flint when I enter the copper age just to make sure If my precious copper tool breaks before I have more copper to replace it with, I'll still have a tool.  I usually don't craft anything but picks and hammers until I have a good supply of copper though.

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16 hours ago, Krougal said:

I just put the lantern on the ground, kill everything that needs killing and pickup the lantern and go about my business.

I just run. Only animals and double-headed drifters have drops worth bothering with, IMO. The rest can just despawn and save me the durability on spears.

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Oh, hey, apparently I am excessively reactive because I was just informed I've used up my reactions for today. So consider your comments liked. 

Huh. I've never been on a forum with a reaction limit that I've noticed. I'm sure there's some stupid way to abuse reactions that I haven't bothered to think of. I just like folks to know I found their comments useful.

Edited by Echoweaver
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