SUGGEESTION: Traders should be able to sell a map with location of specific resources

[A_British_Lass]

So the basis of the idea is that sometimes world gen absolutely screws you over (chalk, copper, tin and other examples) and while I find it fun to search for these myself sometimes it gets draining to walk 10k blocks just to be met with nothing but the same granite stone that you don't need

my proposal is that traders should be able to sell maps with "approximate" locations of these materials, say for example I want to find a specific type of sand: I'd find a trader of any type (or certain traders might only be able to help with certain materials who knows) and I ask them if they know where "chert sand is" they'd be able to sell me a cheap map with the approximate location of chert within a certain range, the price increasing the larger range you ask for (EX: asking for a map of chert sand within 1000 blocks will be maybe 1 gear but chert sand within 10k blocks might be 10 gears)

to add to this idea, the rarer the resource you ask for the more pricey the map will be initially (EX: a copper map will be 3 gears for a 1000 block map and meteoric iron will be 7 gears for a 1000 block map) while I've not strongly thought the balancing out I feel this would be a better alternative over just outright upping the spawn rates for certain materials while also giving the player themselves the choice of whether they want to spend the gears on finding thee blocks or materials they want or to explore for themselves

(also I want to note that traders won't be able to sell a map for an item/block unless the block is within that range, EX: I want to buy a red clay map, but it's not within range the option will be greyed out and the first map that has the resource in range will be purchasable)

thank you for your time in reading this, I wish everyone a good day!

 

Edited July 19, 2025 by A_British_Lass
fixing some spelling