Need help finding Tin/Using prospecting pick

[futt bucker]

I've come to the part of the game where I need to find tin in order to make bronze gear and progress further into the game. However, I'm have an extremely tough time trying to find the stuff. I tried searching over the surface to find some native tin bits, but I've found zero so far. I also tried searching through caves, but that also yielded no results. The last thing that I tried was using the prospecting pick, and I found an area that has "very high" amounts of the tin ore. That's great, but I don't know how to actually search for the stuff in the area. Should I try looking at the sides of mountains for ore? Should I try searching in caves? Or am I misreading the prospecting results? 

Another thing that I noticed is that the pick is acting weird with reading ores in the area; There is this area that I found while exploring that has has an extremely high amount of lead ore in the side of the mountains, but when I use the pick, it says that there are "very poor" amounts of lead in the area, which is concerning...

[zand]

Greetings,

The prospecting pick had 2 modes: density search and node search.

You start with density search, which samples the heatmaps that the world gen uses to determine whether to spawn each type of ore at that X and Z coordinate. The readings are in ‰, which is per 1000, not 100 as it is with %. So a reading of 1‰ means that on average, the game will try to spawn 1 block of ore for every 1000 blocks in that area.

Once you find an area with a high density, you should switch to node search and start digging vertical shafts. Node search scans all the surrounding blocks within a short range and tells you about how much of each ore it found. What I normally do is dig a vertical shaft and sample every 8th block as I go down. Once you do get a reading in node search, it means that the ore is just a few blocks away.

Other notes are that high density does not mean that there is ore, just that there is a chance of ore. Even if you mine all the ore out of an area, the density reading will remain the same.

[mattk2003]

Dig deeper than you think. About 45 blocks should do. Then just move horizontally and use the node search.

Edited July 22, 2025 by mattk2003

[futt bucker]

thanks a bunch!

[Zane Mordien]

5 hours ago, futt bucker said:

but when I use the pick, it says that there are "very poor" amounts of lead in the area, which is concerning..

Also you don't need to find a high reading. I personally just use the highest reading that is no more than 500-1000 blocks from my base. If you find a decent reading that's good enough.