Fire clay....

[Zôe Hobz]

So.... 20 hours into the game still aimlessly running around trying to locate any fireclay at all... none in chests, none on the surface, none underground... and I am at a completely standstill on what to do without it... There has got to be a better way of locating it. I look everywhere on the map and anything that looks even remotely like a different color I check and STILL no fireclay...  what do I do...

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums! 1.20 changed the way that fire clay spawns--now it only spawns naturally under black coal or anthracite deposits, or in small deposits in bauxite biomes. You can, however, craft fire clay from one of the other clay types simply by adding calcined flint powder. You get this powder by baking flint into calcined flint chunks in a firepit, and then grinding those chunks into powder.

[Zôe Hobz]

!!!! omg that would help so much! I have found TONS of red clay and have just been aimlessly and desperately trying to find fire clay  thanks so much i'll see if i can make some

 

[Thomas Hawkins]

Confirmed found the fireclay in a bauxite gravel desert! I was only able to find in a black coal vein previously.

Edited April 26, 2025 by Thomas Hawkins

[VaelophisNyx]

Yeah fire clay is excessively rare now. This really has to be reverted, it should not be soooooo rare (and flint isn't cheap since it's not renewable!)

[Zane Mordien]

As long as I pick up flint as I run around in my daily travels I don't have too much of an issue, but I am always running around exploring. If you prefer to spend more time at your base building early on I could see this would be an issue. I think they should at least give you more flint when you mine it from rocks. I was disappointed to find out you just get 1-2 pieces the same as picking it up on the ground. 

[V1ncent]

My major way to obtain flint is from panning. They are the harmless byproduct of my attempt to lanternizing my base without wild copper hunting. 

Granite is somewhat replacing flint in my min-max tool consumption, but I am already bored of constantly crafting granite axes all day for those charcoal in steel. 

Flint is not that rare and should suffice if saved in daily usage.

[Zane Mordien]

10 hours ago, V1ncent said:

My major way to obtain flint is from panning. They are the harmless byproduct of my attempt to lanternizing my base without wild copper hunting. 

Panning flint sounds painful. Are you panning all the copper you need to make lanterns? No sand on the beaches in your world. I hope you are using a panning mod.

[Thorfinn]

23 hours ago, Zane Mordien said:

I think they should at least give you more flint when you mine it from rocks.

.\assets\survival\blocktypes\stone\ore-ungraded.json

		"ore-flint-*": [
			{ type: "item", code: "flint",  quantity: { avg: 1.5, var: 0 }, lastDrop: true },
		],

[EDIT]

Probably.

Edited April 29, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Brady_The]

On 4/28/2025 at 7:51 PM, Zane Mordien said:

I think they should at least give you more flint when you mine it from rocks.

Interesting idea!

If you don't mind using mods, I added this functionality to this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/bradyrockyextraction

If you mine flint ore with a hand it'll drop 4 - 5 instead 1 - 2, and if you mine the host rock with a pickaxe it'll yield anything between 6 - 18 flint.

[V1ncent]

12 hours ago, Zane Mordien said:

Panning flint sounds painful. Are you panning all the copper you need to make lanterns? No sand on the beaches in your world. I hope you are using a panning mod.

I do have more than one mod affecting panning, and the new drop form mods added to the panning pool like uranium make the process not that painful(though most minerals are just for pigment, the discovery is still interesting). The mods also kinda make the process almost without block cost: the loose stone from panning can be crushed and made into more gravel/sand for panning. The shell fragment from panning also complements my bad luck with no chalk/limestone/other lime-containing-mineral nearby.

As I have enough lanterns for my base and all in steel age though, night-time is mostly spent for cultivating the warm-weather crops instead. 

[Thorfinn]

4 hours ago, Brady_The said:

I added this functionality to this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/bradyrockyextraction

Was just thinking about the common complaint in multiplayer, that of running out of flint in long established worlds.  Maybe a solution might be that any rock that can drop flint has something like a 0.01 drop rate of flint? Or 0.02? Dunno. Still takes a lot of mining to run steel, but it would be easy to get enough for a few bloomeries and a couple ovens.

[LadyWYT]

58 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Was just thinking about the common complaint in multiplayer, that of running out of flint in long established worlds.  Maybe a solution might be that any rock that can drop flint has something like a 0.01 drop rate of flint? Or 0.02? Dunno. Still takes a lot of mining to run steel, but it would be easy to get enough for a few bloomeries and a couple ovens.

Or perhaps make flint available as a trade item sold by certain NPCs? That would solve the issue for really old worlds, while also acting as a currency sink for players that would rather spend a few gears instead of looking for flint themselves.

5 hours ago, Brady_The said:

If you mine flint ore with a hand it'll drop 4 - 5 instead 1 - 2, and if you mine the host rock with a pickaxe it'll yield anything between 6 - 18 flint.

I like this idea better though.

[Brady_The]

7 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Maybe a solution might be that any rock that can drop flint has something like a 0.01 drop rate of flint? Or 0.02?

It's either too early or the part of my brain that's responsible for math doens't work. (It's the latter. )

Any of these rocks with inclusions should be able to drop how many? Taking the original setup ("avg: 1.5"), you are speaking of 1 drop with a 1%/2% chance of dropping 2, I believe.

Or all rocks of the same material, even without the inclusions?

[Thorfinn]

The latter. That might be all sedimentary rocks? Which is why I think it should be a very low number. If you were mining malachite disc, you might end up with 4 stacks of limestone rocks, but, off-hand,  I'd say a half-dozen flint, a dozen max. It's an option if absolutely, positively can't find anything anymore in a reasonable range.

I think what you've done with the ones with flint nodules is great, BTW. Hadn't occurred to me to give a greater yield for using a pickaxe. Great idea!

Edited April 30, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Thorfinn]

13 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I like this idea better though.

Me, too. But that just means that in 3-4 year old worlds, those will now be gone, too. There should be something other than just panning. Or force n00bs to do the 50k exploration loops, to get outside the range that's picked clean. Maybe a low frequency spawn? Once a month or so a couple pieces of tall grass per chunk care replaced by a loose flint?

[Brady_The]

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

The latter. That might be all sedimentary rocks? Which is why I think it should be a very low number. If you were mining malachite disc, you might end up with 4 stacks of limestone rocks, but, off-hand,  I'd say a half-dozen flint, a dozen max. It's an option if absolutely, positively can't find anything anymore in a reasonable range.

I think what you've done with the ones with flint nodules is great, BTW. Hadn't occurred to me to give a greater yield for using a pickaxe. Great idea!

Interesting. I know nothing about geology, so I have no idea about the density of flint in those rocks. Maybe ore-flint is already simulating this density?

Out of curiosity I did a test with a 1% drop chance.
8x8x8 or 512 stone blocks resulted in
1288 stone and
4 flint drops.

While those 4 pieces are passive income, you are probably better off using one of the sieving mods which pan soil automatically. Still, a very low drop chance would definitely be the way to go in my opinion.

[Thorfinn]

Oh, yeah, my bad. 1% is too low. Not sure what I was thinking there. Must have multiplied something wrong in my head.

Realistic geology is tough. Flint is quite common in mudstone or siltstone (maybe what the game is calling claystone?) because it's the result of river rocks being carried out in floods. Even more common in conglomerate and sandstone. Deepwater deposits like limestone or chalk would require a special situation, like how the seafloor falls away so fast like Monterey Bay in California. But I'd just keep it simple and make them all the same. Find a sedimentary layer and you can get a small but useful amount of flint.

Gameplay-wise, I'd think something like a quarter or possibly half stack of flint would be reasonable for your test case of 512 blocks. Might be a bit rich for those who quarry a lot of blocks, or even those who build with cobblestone. Think it's roughly what I'd try for a first iteration, anyway. If my players thought it was too common, I'd nerf it. I'm looking for that sweet spot -- if you can come up with a couple dozen flint, that will cover all your fireclay needs until you are ready to make you 30k trip in search of more flint, or with luck, fireclay.

[Dilan Rona]

Give the Clay processing mod a try. https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/22134. It does take work to make fire clay, but does help when its needed in large amounts.

[Thorfinn]

Tried it a couple weeks ago.  It's a late game solution, as you need pulverizers. I'd like an early game solution that is simultaneously not OP in later game.