Can't Find Copper Veins

[GoBlue1976]

I've been panning for awhile now, created my pickaxe and the prospecting axe... I've even used the prospecting axe and found a location with "Decent Native Copper @ 11.27%"

I've dug all around 15 - 20 blocks deep in three locations and the prospector axe when in short range mode says "No ore within range"

I'm pulling my hair out, do I need to get a better ore deposit? IMO There needs to be a better way of locating ore I'm going thru resources (ladders, torches, food) like mad.

[Streetwind]

1 hour ago, GoBlue1976 said:

I've dug all around 15 - 20 blocks deep

You didn't dig nearly deep enough.

The game generates a special kind of surface copper for new players to find. Those are the ones you recognize from the ore bits lying on the surface, and they have a deposit less than a dozen blocks beneath them. If this was the kind of copper you were looking for, your strategy would have found it.

However, as mentioned, that kind of copper is special. It works completely different from normal ores. Normal ores are the kind of thing the prospecting pick finds. So the kind of copper it indicated to you spawns in a different way from the special surface copper that's meant to get you started. It won't be found until at least 40% of the way down towards the bottom of the world.

Generally, for all normal ores, you should employ the following strategy:
- Find the best-described spot you can with the prospecting pick; ideally "ultra high", but not all spots go that high, so if you've got a lesser peak, work with that.
- Dig a vertical shaft straight down. Ores generate as horizontal discs, and so, just like firing an arrow at a target, you have the best chances of hitting it if you come at the disc head-on.
- You can proof yourself against the dangers of digging vertically down by making a two-wide shaft and standing in the middle, or by standing on a ladder you keep building down as you dig down. There is a rope ladder that can be retracted and reused.
- You can memorize at which heights the ore you're looking for generates... but 99% of players don't. Just dig all the way to the unbreakable mantle. Sometimes you may even find something else you weren't even looking for.
- As you dig down, you can occasionally use mode 2 of the prospecting pick (node search) to check for ore behind the walls, which you have just narrowly missed.

 

Edited December 10, 2024 by Streetwind

[Thorfinn]

45 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

- You can proof yourself against the dangers of digging vertically down by making a two-wide shaft and standing in the middle, or by standing on a ladder you keep building down as you dig down

Since you are going to need a ladder at least every other block to get back out, there's not a whole lot of point in burning through durability for more than just a single shaft. I'm sure you know that. Just pointing it out for @GoBlue1976.

Speaking of which, welcome to the forums, @GoBlue1976!

Edited December 10, 2024 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, Streetwind said:

- Find the best-described spot you can with the prospecting pick; ideally "ultra high", but not all spots go that high, so if you've got a lesser peak, work with that.

To try to elaborate on this: the "ultra high/high/decent" and other descriptors refer to the quality of ore; that is, how many nuggets each chunk will yield. You want "Decent" or better, typically. The numeric percentage is important too though--that gives you an idea of how much ore is actually down there. A high percentage even with a "poor" quality ore can still be worth digging for, as it probably means there are multiple ore blocks to find. Likewise, a low percentage with an "ultra high" reading is also worth digging for, as it means that the few blocks that are there are going to be high-yield.

It's also worth noting that some kinds of ore are found in small deposits only, typically without exceptional yields, so you may not ever see any reading higher than "decent" or high percentage numbers. One example of this that I would cite is cinnabar. In these cases, you'll want to find the highest reading in that area that you can, and then dig to see if there's anything there.

Last but not least...it's not a common occurrence, but just because there is a reading doesn't mean that the ore is actually there. The prospecting numbers are pretty much just the chances of what you can find in that particular chunk, unless something has changed. So it's possible you could have a really high reading, dig all the way to mantle, and find absolutely nothing. This is also why you want to use the node search mode every so often when digging--it'll tell you what, if anything, is nearby.

[Streetwind]

5 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

To try to elaborate on this: the "ultra high/high/decent" and other descriptors refer to the quality of ore; that is, how many nuggets each chunk will yield. You want "Decent" or better, typically. The numeric percentage is important too though--that gives you an idea of how much ore is actually down there. A high percentage even with a "poor" quality ore can still be worth digging for, as it probably means there are multiple ore blocks to find. Likewise, a low percentage with an "ultra high" reading is also worth digging for, as it means that the few blocks that are there are going to be high-yield.

What? No, this is wildly incorrect. Please don't go around telling people that.

The descriptive adjective ("decent"/"high"/etc) is the spawn chance. More specifically, it is the probability of the ore succeeding on each of its attempts to place a deposit in the current chunk. Each ore tries a number of times to do this; for example, copper tries 25 times per chunk. A reading of "decent" means just that - each of the 25 attempts witll have "decent" chances to succeed.

The permille (not percentage) number is more akin to debug output than any useful information and should, in most cases, be outright ignored. It is true that the number scales up along with the spawn chance, so you can use it sometimes for judging in which direction a reading increases when the descriptive adjective didn't change. But trying to infer anything beyond that is a recipe for misunderstandings. For starters, the number is different for each individual ore. I've seen people look at 0.2‰ cassiterite and think it was not worth digging there because they were used to seeing 25.0‰ copper deposits, when in fact they were standing right on top of an "ultra high" cassiterite reading and would very likely have found multiple deposits if they had dug there. The same misunderstanding drives people insane when they see a 30.0‰ halite reading and spend hours digging in futility, while disregarding that the adjective gave them "very poor" chances.

Finally, as to ore quality - the prospecting pick does not indicate this at all. It cannot, because this is not information it has access to. All it does is read the spawn chance from the ore map. The quality of a deposit is only decided during the process of actually generating it in the world. Even mode 2 (node search), which finds actual ore blocks in the world, does not evaluate their quality.

 

9 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Since you are going to need a ladder at least every other block to get back out, there's not a whole lot of point in burning through durability for more than just a single shaft. I'm sure you know that.

Eh, I do both. I find digging on a ladder in a single-block shaft to be quite annoying. You constantly have to hold down keys, and you have to aim very precisely to place ladders below yourself, and you can't light the shaft up properly. So sometimes I go two-wide just because convenience is worth more to me than a few measly points of durability that are effortlessly replaced.

 

Edited December 11, 2024 by Streetwind

[LadyWYT]

12 hours ago, Streetwind said:

What? No, this is wildly incorrect. Please don't go around telling people that.

The descriptive adjective ("decent"/"high"/etc) is the spawn chance. More specifically, it is the probability of the ore succeeding on each of its attempts to place a deposit in the current chunk. Each ore tries a number of times to do this; for example, copper tries 25 times per chunk. A reading of "decent" means just that - each of the 25 attempts witll have "decent" chances to succeed.

The permille (not percentage) number is more akin to debug output than any useful information and should, in most cases, be outright ignored. It is true that the number scales up along with the spawn chance, so you can use it sometimes for judging in which direction a reading increases when the descriptive adjective didn't change. But trying to infer anything beyond that is a recipe for misunderstandings. For starters, the number is different for each individual ore. I've seen people look at 0.2‰ cassiterite and think it was not worth digging there because they were used to seeing 25.0‰ copper deposits, when in fact they were standing right on top of an "ultra high" cassiterite reading and would very likely have found multiple deposits if they had dug there. The same misunderstanding drives people insane when they see a 30.0‰ halite reading and spend hours digging in futility, while disregarding that the adjective gave them "very poor" chances.

Finally, as to ore quality - the prospecting pick does not indicate this at all. It cannot, because this is not information it has access to. All it does is read the spawn chance from the ore map. The quality of a deposit is only decided during the process of actually generating it in the world. Even mode 2 (node search), which finds actual ore blocks in the world, does not evaluate their quality.

Oh, oops. I had always understood that to be the case. Then again, I was also pretty tired when I wrote that, which never really helps, but always makes reading the next morning rather interesting. Thank you for clarifying!

In any case, my general experience has been that Decent or better readings are the spots to dig. The percentage value I don't really pay attention to unless I'm desperate enough to dig in a questionable spot, in which case I'll use the percentages to decide where I want to dig in the hopes of finding something. The only exception I can think of is in the case of halite--I've never seen a reading higher than Poor or Very Poor, but I have seen high percentages. However, I will also note that I generally opt for buying halite from traders instead of looking for it myself.

[Kevin Eric Snell]

Struggling with this problem now... new player digging into an ultra high copper zone, no hits so far digging down to depth 70 or so. Though I did wander around and find a little bit of sulfur, which is worthless to me now but might be useful later. I gotta go back with more ladders. But as I understand it, it's entirely possible that this area which registers as "ultra high" could be completely empty, right?

Oh, and it's not just that I'm digging in an ultra high area. I've taken several readings and carefully triangulated where the percentage is highest before digging down, still nothing.

Edited December 19, 2024 by Kevin Eric Snell

[Thorfinn]

I'd just dig another mine shaft 10-20 blocks away. It's possible you threaded through the gaps between several discs. I'm still learning by doing, so I'd rather not read the code quite yet, but I have never failed to find copper in an ultra-high region. From experimenting, looking where the margins of the discs actually were, I have never seen a case where a herringbone pattern of "wavelength" 17 missed everything. That is, holes every 17, but every other row offset to fill the gaps.

O   O   O   O   O

  O   O   O   O   O

O   O   O   O   O

Just make sure you are going deep enough.

[EDIT]

Oh, and if you have the node option, you can spread it out more than that. Maybe as much as double. I just don't play with that mode, but assuming an 8 range sees something 8 N and 8 E and 8 D from your position, and you are diligent about using your propick at the right vertical locations, you should be able to get by with at least every 30. 

Edited December 19, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Echo Weaver]

Heh. I dug around a bunch in an ultra-high tin region and failed to find any ore. This is the area that I failed to notice was temporally unstable, and I ended up running home at night in the rust realm while taking damage. Note to self -- if you start hearing drifters and can't find them, look at your !@#$ HUD.

I realized later that my problem was probably that I was trying to use the prospecting pick wrong. When there are multiple deposits within its range, its readings are really noisy, and imprecision is likely to thread you between deposits. It might have been better to just dig blind in a structured manner. I think I have become more proficient at using the node search on the pick, but I also found high tin chunks that are stable, so I likely won't return there.

[LadyWYT]

12 hours ago, Kevin Eric Snell said:

But as I understand it, it's entirely possible that this area which registers as "ultra high" could be completely empty, right?

I think so, but I've also only seen that happen once, and it was a modded world. So it could have easily been a mod that caused an issue with ore generation, and not just incredibly bad luck.

12 hours ago, Kevin Eric Snell said:

Struggling with this problem now... new player digging into an ultra high copper zone, no hits so far digging down to depth 70 or so.

The likely culprit is you haven't dug deep enough. I've seen the big copper deposits spawn near the mantle, so you may need to dig another 50 blocks or so before you find it. Make sure you're using the node search on your prospecting pick every so often--that will tell you for sure if there is any ore nearby or not.

[Kevin Eric Snell]

Fortunately, I had slightly better luck at the site I found to the southwest that registered as "decent" for bismuthite. I triangulated a couple times and stumbled upon about 7 or 8 chunks. That, combined with all the zinc I found panning in gravel, gave me my first bronze. So now I can go back to my copper motherlode with better tools and keep searching.