What's going on with Clay?

[SteveHanley]

So I'll admit I'm relatively new to the game, still in my "Looking around" phase, and noticed something odd: In the multiple worlds I've gone thru, not once have I found a single block of red, blue, or fire clay in the wild. I have gone thru the tutorials and guides, checked everywhere I'm supposed to, used every map trick I can get my hands on, have found several quartz deposits and multiple surface ore veins from how much I've searched, even going so far as flying around for 20 minutes in creative mode specifically looking for clay, and cannot find any. If it weren't for the handbook telling me about pottery, I wouldn't even know clay is a thing.

Because of this, I have two questions.

1. What gives? Clay is supposed to be an early game gateway to metals, so what's going on? 

2. Why can't we pan for clay out of claystone gravel? It's kinda in the name that that would be expected. 

[LadyWYT]

First off, welcome to the forums!

1 hour ago, SteveHanley said:

1. What gives? Clay is supposed to be an early game gateway to metals, so what's going on? 

Clay is a resource that's fairly common unless you're either in the arctic(changing in 1.21 I believe) or in a desert region. Once you've seen the blocks it's easy to find, but until you know what to look for it can be hard to distinguish deposits from surrounding grass. The most noticeable difference is the side texture of the block, as it will have a mottled reddish, bluish, or tan color depending on the kind of clay. The top of the block will be grassy, but patches of the clay will show through. If you are playing with true colors enabled for your map, clay deposits and peat deposits often show up as circular discolorations in grassy areas.

The two main types of clay you can find are red clay and blue clay. Red clay is probably the most common, spawning at a variety of elevations(except perhaps mountain peaks) as long as the region isn't too cold and has enough rainfall. Blue clay has the same temperature and rainfall requirements, however, blue clay will only spawn near sea level, usually by a body of water. 

Fire clay is the clay type you will want for industrial purposes, however, it only spawns naturally under black coal and anthracite deposits, or in bauxite biomes. If you don't have a natural deposit of fire clay available, you can easily craft fire clay from the other clay types by mixing them with powdered calcinated flint.

1 hour ago, SteveHanley said:

2. Why can't we pan for clay out of claystone gravel? It's kinda in the name that that would be expected. 

Blue clay can be panned from any sand or gravel. It is, however, a somewhat uncommon drop. If you're relying on panning to acquire clay, you will need to do a LOT of panning in order to get clay in any decent quantity that way.

[majestik]

At first I used the colored map technique, combined with checking the rainfall in the area with C, every so often. After a while it became easier to spot clay without the map. But yeah, Like LadyWYT said you'll realise that clay is common, just need a bit of practice to spot it.

But if you want, I suggest this mod, i really like it and it helps to spot some other ressources too.

Edited July 9, 2025 by majestik

[SteveHanley]

18 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

First off, welcome to the forums!

Thank you for the welcome!

Most of my searching has been through forest biomes, I’ve studied all three variations in a creative world as well as several YT tutorials on the matter, and part of my efforts was panning pretty much an entire a field of claystone gravel. It’s good I suppose to know you can pan clay, but hasn’t helped. Tons of copper, quartz, and other goodies, but no clay of any kind. I’m totally serious when I say I spent almost two hours last night just looking for naturally occurring clay. 

Could it be come kind of bug? This is going on in every world I have.

[dakko]

I watch quite a few Let's Plays and can assure you that it is very common for new players to be standing right on top of clay without realizing it. Just last week I was watching a group that was hurting from a lack of clay, went out on a (long) journey to find it, only to return home and see that their base was built at the edge of a field of clay.

Having said that, I don't recall having found clay in a forest biome before... although that could partly be because I tend to avoid them.

(eta: I don't linger in forest biomes because of the potential for bears and wolves)

Edited July 9, 2025 by dakko

[LadyWYT]

10 minutes ago, SteveHanley said:

Most of my searching has been through forest biomes, I’ve studied all three variations in a creative world as well as several YT tutorials on the matter, and part of my efforts was panning pretty much an entire a field of claystone gravel. It’s good I suppose to know you can pan clay, but hasn’t helped. Tons of copper, quartz, and other goodies, but no clay of any kind. I’m totally serious when I say I spent almost two hours last night just looking for naturally occurring clay. 

Could it be come kind of bug? This is going on in every world I have.

Try searching in plains and other grassy areas instead of forests. It's not that clay can't spawn in forests(I've found a deposit or two in a forest before), but I think it's more unlikely. The bigger issue with searching in forests is that if it does spawn, the forest floor will cover the top of the deposit, so even if the clay is there it's not likely to be at all visible. In a grassy area though, bits of clay should poke through the grass on top, making it much easier to locate a deposit.

It's probably not a bug, but it could be a world with fewer clay deposits than normal around spawn. You might try making a throwaway world or two and run around in creative(/gm 1, though it could be /gm 2, I don't recall for sure) to see if you have any better luck finding clay deposits. If you do, then it's probably just bad luck with the world you're playing on.

[majestik]

It's /gm 2 for creative, /gm 1 for survival - and SteveHanley if you need it, when double-jump on creative you can fly (or using F3) and with F1 and F2 adjust your speed.

And yeah, it'll be easier to search clay deposit in plains rather than forests. 

[SteveHanley]

On 7/9/2025 at 7:38 PM, LadyWYT said:

Try searching in plains and other grassy areas instead of forests. It's not that clay can't spawn in forests(I've found a deposit or two in a forest before), but I think it's more unlikely. The bigger issue with searching in forests is that if it does spawn, the forest floor will cover the top of the deposit, so even if the clay is there it's not likely to be at all visible. In a grassy area though, bits of clay should poke through the grass on top, making it much easier to locate a deposit.

It's probably not a bug, but it could be a world with fewer clay deposits than normal around spawn. You might try making a throwaway world or two and run around in creative(/gm 1, though it could be /gm 2, I don't recall for sure) to see if you have any better luck finding clay deposits. If you do, then it's probably just bad luck with the world you're playing on.

I ended up doing a reinstall of the originally downloaded game files and that seemed to work. 

[Maelstrom]

What's going on with Clay?   

Well, he's a pretty shy fellow.  I've seen him from time to time, but he doesn't like meeting strangers unless someone introduces them to him.

 

Oh.  You're talking about the stuff for pottery.   Yeah, Clay doesn't do pottery.  

Edited July 15, 2025 by Maelstrom

[Pervy]

On 7/12/2025 at 11:44 PM, SteveHanley said:

I ended up doing a reinstall of the originally downloaded game files and that seemed to work. 

Do you still have the old save file laying around?

[SteveHanley]

18 hours ago, Pervy said:

Do you still have the old save file laying around?

Save files, multiple, if you’re talking about worlds. And no, I wiped the slate clean before reinstalling

Edited July 16, 2025 by SteveHanley

[Toroic]

Clay frequency seems worse/less consistent in 1.21.0-rc6 than it was in 1.20, to the point I think it's probably better to start a world and if you don't find clay in the first day or two looking in the usual spots, just make a new world.

Making a few worlds and flying around, it's definitely not hard to spot from the air, but for something that is so essential to progression and particularly food storage I think it should be more common.

Took me 3 hours of normal playtime to find a single (admittedly massive) blue clay deposit in one world from rc-4 (and for some reason zero wild crops to harvest seeds from), and flying around in a freshly generated world I've found a lot more red clay but in a very feast or famine sort of pattern.

All this testing was done on Standard and default settings, with no worldgen affecting mods.

[Maelstrom]

I'd be interested in what you find in seed -13.  I had copious amounts of red clay near spawn and an absolutely obscene amount of high fertifility soil nor far to the southeast from spawn.