Prospecting is a broken system being replaced by mods. Let’s fix it.

[Zane Mordien]

36 minutes ago, Copious Kobolds said:

I agree. A mechanic that players can't understand without a youtube video, and doesn't even guarantee success when you do, is a broken mechanic. I love almost everything about this game, but I genuinely don't know how I can continue enjoying it with progress locked behind this frustrating mechanic.

I would agree it needs a better in game tutorial for new players. The guarantee of success will not be a vannila change. From listening to Tyrons interviews that just isn't something he is going to change.

If you keep playing, you will realize how stupid easy it is to find the normal ores. I remember it was hard at first and the most popular video on prospecting leads you down a primrose path, which doesn't help the average player.

[Thorfinn]

3 hours ago, Zane Mordien said:

If you keep playing, you will realize how stupid easy it is to find the normal ores.

So very this!

Once it "clicks" that surface ore and deep ore are two different things, and the implications that has for propick readings, most stuff becomes second nature. This does not include micro-ores like chromite or cinnabar, though.

A good share of the drudgery comes from the 'tubes. They make a lot of creating some kind of grid, and it doesn't seem to occur to any of them that while they are demonstrating how to do this, they are using iron or better shovel, which is far removed from a flint or even copper shovel. If you are still knapping your shovel, you are vastly better off just going from outcrop to outcrop or cave entrance to cave entrance, particularly if you are using the map, which does all the record-keeping for you.

[Professor Dragon]

10 hours ago, Copious Kobolds said:

A mechanic that players can't understand without a youtube video, and doesn't even guarantee success when you do, is a broken mechanic.

It's a higher bar than that, even. My guess is that people would consult most of these if they seriously engage with the Prospecting system:

• Handbook and Prospecting Guide
• VS Wiki
• YouTube videos
• VS Forum/VS Discord/VS Reddit

And even when they are specifically talking about the Prospecting mechanic, you need to sort through the well-intentioned but non-Prospecting advice, such as:

• Use a mod.
• Go caving.
• Toughen up, it is meant to be hard. 
• I found it on my first try, what's your problem?
• Just get good.

A specific criticism I have is that the "in-game" player does not have access to a lot of that information.
Such as the spawn rates and generations of ores.
Or the levels that specific ores spawn at or under or above.

How is the in-game player meant to know at what levels the different ores spawn at?
It takes a LOT of mining attempts under different conditions before you can say from experience that "Ore X likely spawns between these levels."
And the thing about Prospecting, is that the default scenario that causes so many problems is Prospecting for an ore that you haven't searched for before, or is rare. So you don't have that benchmark. Does this ore spawn near the mantle, or near the surface, or do I need to sample every single space between?

Over which hangs the whole issue that the Density search result can be completely unreliable.

Thanks.
Professor Dragon.

EDIT
This change is very welcome. I wonder if it will fix some of my issues, as I'm very likely in this spot:
Fixed: Propick density search mode readings in areas originally created in very old saves (1.18 and older) could become incorrect when nearby (map border) areas were generated in game version 1.21.x 

 

 

Edited October 9, 2025 by Professor Dragon

[Thorfinn]

I think it all depends on what you want in a prospecting system. "Prospecting" that gives you a "sure thing" reading based the the location of high-grade ore nodes is not prospecting. Not in the game, not in real life. Finding the vein IRL is difficult at best. It involves repeated sampling and assay, and ultimately depends on a lot of luck and a lot of perseverance. There are indicator minerals that give you some idea that there might be something near, but no indication where, or even if it exists. In that respect, node search is massively more powerful. Just as with Minesweeper, getting back "0" tells you a lot more than getting any other result. 13^3 is a lot of blocks that you can just rule out. There are just 7 such all the way to the mantle.

I know you don't want to hear, "Use a mod", but...

[mayushii]

On 9/17/2025 at 11:09 AM, Thorfinn said:

Please don't dismiss us as saying, "Just deal with it." That's not what we are saying. Some of us think it's fine, or even too much of a participation trophy already. There's nothing wrong with wanting an easy mode. So install one. Don't try to force easy mode on everyone just because it's your preference. 

I see this assertion a lot in gaming and entirely reject it.

Harder difficulty ==/== More time spent exclusively.

Current prospecting system is extremely grindy and has a bit of luck thrown into it Point is, I wouldn't equate the want to not RNG hours of your life away in this game to wanting an "easy mode". Nor do I think their current system needs entirely replaced.

If you want to have it your way, sure, but make the default a bit less grindy or make a toggle in the world settings for it moving forward is my take. The system is not terrible, I just work a full time job AND play other games. I want to make incremental progress in this game without wasting my time. That's all!

[mayushii]

On 10/8/2025 at 10:09 AM, Copious Kobolds said:

I've even seen people compare prospecting to a full-time job. Having spent 12 hours and still not found any zinc, I agree.

Highly recommending Better Prospecting (mod). It balances prospecting really well IMO. Probably not the perfect solution or the one the devs would go with in the future, but it feels (mostly) similar to most vanilla mechanics and IMO is just enough help without feeling like you're cheating.

I do NOT think the system is a failure without mods, it is just as the poster above said. It feeling like a full-time job is NOT because it takes a long time to yield results inherently. There are many systems in even VS itself that take a very long time to payoff. It's not the easiest to describe for me.

Prospecting involves a lot of similar and not particularly engaging actions. You bring lots of food with you, run out of food or out of (one of two) pickaxe durability, or your sanity is too low... All these things early on (when searching for alloys for Bronze is a good example) bring tons of frustration to the process. I think you CAN make small bursts of progress, and yet:

GAMBLING, BABY! I understand this is a realism thing, and for some this makes prospecting "better" for you. Fantastic, love to hear it, keep it in. But I personally would love for there to be an option to make it guaranteed. Better Prospecting fixes this by making them guaranteed.

I just wanted to present in my short post here why some of us may prefer to NOT have it this way and that I personally will not advocate for them to remove the way you like to play. I do think it's inevitable that the devs will change this as the system feels bad for almost every person I've introduced to this game. Has made even the most grindy of friends I've met quit playing / lose interest.

If the devs ever do remove the way you all enjoy playing, I cannot wait to suggest an inevitable mod that restores your way of playing! (You cannot hear my tone, but please imagine this as being lighthearted.)

[Thorfinn]

2 hours ago, mayushii said:

it feels (mostly) similar to most vanilla mechanics and IMO is just enough help without feeling like you're cheating.

2 hours ago, mayushii said:

Better Prospecting fixes this by making them guaranteed.

I'm not getting how these belong in the same coherent idea. And how is a guaranteed ore find not easy mode?

I get you don't want to spend a lot of time learning how the system works, that you have a life outside VS. And Better Prospecting is a pretty good way of maximizing the time you can spend on things you like. It does so by eliminating all false positives. By telling you where the ore is. Which is somehow not easier?

[Echo Weaver]

On 10/8/2025 at 5:23 PM, Professor Dragon said:

Such as the spawn rates and generations of ores.

This is present in propick readings -- it's what the much-maligned per-mille value is telling us. The qualitative (e.g. "High") reading is more useful because it takes into account just how plentiful you can expect from each ore, but the per-mille tells you how dense that would be.

On 10/8/2025 at 5:23 PM, Professor Dragon said:

Or the levels that specific ores spawn at or under or above.

This, I think, is just available on the wiki, so I agree with you. (I guess I don't remember whether it's in the handbook, but I certainly didn't find it there.) Having to know to dig this up on the wiki is a big deal. It actually seems like the depth range of the ore is also something that could be part of the propick readout.

On 10/8/2025 at 5:23 PM, Professor Dragon said:

you need to sort through the well-intentioned but non-Prospecting advice, such as:

• Use a mod.
• Go caving

This is getting to be more and more frustrating to me. If one wants the game to behave differently than it does, "Use a mod," IS the helpful answer -- particularly if it links to a mod, which it often does. This is true even if the response agrees with with the criticism. It is getting more and more frustrating to me how many forum complainers seem to find it explosively offensive that other players don't agree with a given criticism.

As for caving, there seems to be a legitimate debate amongst players who basically like the prospecting system as to whether caving or propick is the more effective way to find ore. So how is this not helpful advice? Because we don't all agree? See above paragraph.

On 10/8/2025 at 5:23 PM, Professor Dragon said:

Over which hangs the whole issue that the Density search result can be completely unreliable.

What leads you to say this? Is there a bug you know of? If one is using the propick as it actually works, I have not found it to be unreliable.

2 hours ago, mayushii said:

If the devs ever do remove the way you all enjoy playing, I cannot wait to suggest an inevitable mod that restores your way of playing! (You cannot hear my tone, but please imagine this as being lighthearted.)

I don't think that it is at all guaranteed that prospecting will be changed to remove randomness. There may well be other ways it can be changed to be more fun.

But, yeah, I'll totally look for a mod if the system is changed in a way that reduces immersion for me. I have plenty of mods that make things harder in the service of immersion.

[Zane Mordien]

5 hours ago, mayushii said:

Prospecting involves a lot of similar and not particularly engaging actions. You bring lots of food with you, run out of food or out of (one of two) pickaxe durability, or your sanity is too low...

I get your point, but I think that is just how Tyron wants the game to be played. He doesn't want you to run around underground like in Minecraft and bring up easy hauls of ore. 

1) Stability - This is the backbone of the lore, so it is fully intended to inhibit you as you mine.

2) Food - You shouldn't be traveling that far from your base to find most ores. I think that is why there are so many options of bronze. People get so stuck on one ore they travel far and wide instead of realizing what is around them. I'm not saying this is you, but some people get stuck on the idea they have to find high or very high readings when they don't need anything better than decent. Heck even poor is good enough sometimes.

3) Durability - Definatly this is my bane as well, but again I think this is 100% intended to force you to make more copper pickaxes early on.

 

All of that being said, there are some really cursed seeds out there where you could drive yourself crazy trying to find what you want. I've played countless seeds and 1-2 of them would have made my life miserable as a new player. I was pretty lucky that my first seed was very easy with ore and lack of bears/wolves near spawn.

[Thorfinn]

43 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said:

3) Durability - Definatly this is my bane as well, but again I think this is 100% intended to force you to make more copper pickaxes early on.

And, of course, it's easy to give tools more durability. I know a guy who plays nothing but the highest tool durability setting (400%?), pretty much everything else on default.

Food is pretty easy to deal with, too. Just crank the hunger rate down to what one is comfortable with.

I do get that if you only have an hour in the evening after the kids are in bed, you want to maximize the parts of the game you enjoy. Between settings and mods, most of it is covered.

[mayushii]

15 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I'm not getting how these belong in the same coherent idea. And how is a guaranteed ore find not easy mode?

I get you don't want to spend a lot of time learning how the system works, that you have a life outside VS. And Better Prospecting is a pretty good way of maximizing the time you can spend on things you like. It does so by eliminating all false positives. By telling you where the ore is. Which is somehow not easier?

I learned how the system works. I consumed tons of content and made it work for me. That is how I developed this nuanced opinion.

Playing with the aforementioned mod still takes effort to survive and properly find ore. This just swaps frustration for fair challenge. Tons of players quit VS over this tedium, calling it a progression killer, not 'depth'. RNG induced tedium does not equal difficulty in my mind. To me it is not more difficult, because the challenge remains nearly identical. It just takes longer. Deliberate time wasting is not, has never, and will never be good game design in my opinion.

I don't want an "easy mode". This mod does not give you xray or anything equivalent, it gives you slightly more tools and a guaranteed reading so you don't waste your time. I love the depth the system has and I wish to interact with it. There is still risk/reward in this process without masochism or unemployment.

I'll make it as simple as I can for you. One is a chess play, coordinating and finding a guaranteed checkmate. The other is playing the entire game of chess, and the checkmate being determined by a dice roll. That, to ME, would not make chess "harder". It would simply add a lottery system. To everyone here that enjoys it, fantastic, keep it that way. I just hope something akin to this mod gets added to vanilla so less players quit out due to the ore gacha system lol. I think the new tools can make it easier, and I would agree to THOSE not being added. But the guarantee? Praying for this lol. I have no interest in wondering down a cave a la Minecraft and finding a full set of armour. I just hate RNG!

Edited October 13, 2025 by mayushii

[Thorfinn]

7 hours ago, mayushii said:

Deliberate time wasting is not, has never, and will never be good game design in my opinion.

Agreed. But a strong element of good game design is that it leaves one with a feeling of accomplishing something. Something significant, I mean. Terraria's "Congratulations! You chopped down a tree!" is pretty meh when they give you the axe.

7 hours ago, mayushii said:

This mod does not give you xray or anything equivalent, it gives you slightly more tools and a guaranteed reading so you don't waste your time.

They must have taken out the OP stuff then. When I tested it, all one had to do was take three readings (in a right triangle to keep the math easy), swing the arcs, go to that location and repeat the three readings to fine-tune exactly where to dig. That was not very different than x-ray. And it worked much, much better in low probability regions, because there were so few possible ore bodies for it to read.

7 hours ago, mayushii said:

The other is playing the entire game of chess, and the checkmate being determined by a dice roll.

It's not, though. You can prove it to yourself. Start a new game using some x-ray mod, and Creative yourself a steel propick. Knowing exactly where the ore body is makes it a whole lot easier to see how the numbers on the propick do point you in the right direction. Only very, very rarely do you end up with no ore if you see even Decent readings.  

[Vivien_Hardgas]

my few bits and pieces to the whole things would be some quality of life things. 

i am personally overwhelmed with the data given each time i prospect. idk if there is a filter mechanic but i would prefer one that highlights the chances for ore X,Y in chat so i get a little focused overview for what i am looking for. 

idk how the marker color of prospecting is based on (30hr save just joined)  but it would be nice to bind the colors to the filtering system so the color changes for the ore you are looking for. 

example if i get redings like: Very High Native Copper 30,83% 
                                              Good Magnetite  18,18%
                                              Poor  Bismuth  4,89% 

the marker color changes according to my filter settings. 

this would help at least me to accell a little faster in my mining speeds because i get a better overview. 
 

[Never Jhonsen]

39 minutes ago, Vivien_Hardgas said:

idk how the marker color of prospecting is based on (30hr save just joined)  but it would be nice to bind the colors to the filtering system so the color changes for the ore you are looking for

Good news, it does!

When you have your map open, there are two drop down menus; one messes with the map markers, and one is for prospecting.

If you're looking for a specific ore, you can select it in that drop down box, and the prospecting dots will change colors based on the ore in the area

I think by default it's set to "Native Copper".

[Tabulius]

On 10/13/2025 at 5:01 PM, Thorfinn said:

It's not, though. You can prove it to yourself. Start a new game using some x-ray mod, and Creative yourself a steel propick. Knowing exactly where the ore body is makes it a whole lot easier to see how the numbers on the propick do point you in the right direction. Only very, very rarely do you end up with no ore if you see even Decent readings.  

I think you two are using different definitions of easy. You seem to mean it as what takes less exertion, which you would be correct it does take less exertion. Where as mayushii seems to mean it as takes less skill. Which as far as I can see is also right. It doesn't really take any more skill in vanilla. There isn't anything you can do to better narrow ore down aside from taking readings and knowing your biome. So the only real difference is how much trial and error you have to do after.

[Tabulius]

On 9/22/2025 at 5:19 PM, OwenODST said:

Memes, the DNA of the SOUL.

I'm in amused disbelief that you made a novels worth of boomer memes for a forum thread

[mayushii]

On 10/13/2025 at 8:01 PM, Thorfinn said:

Agreed. But a strong element of good game design is that it leaves one with a feeling of accomplishing something. Something significant, I mean. Terraria's "Congratulations! You chopped down a tree!" is pretty meh when they give you the axe.

They must have taken out the OP stuff then. When I tested it, all one had to do was take three readings (in a right triangle to keep the math easy), swing the arcs, go to that location and repeat the three readings to fine-tune exactly where to dig. That was not very different than x-ray. And it worked much, much better in low probability regions, because there were so few possible ore bodies for it to read.

It's not, though. You can prove it to yourself. Start a new game using some x-ray mod, and Creative yourself a steel propick. Knowing exactly where the ore body is makes it a whole lot easier to see how the numbers on the propick do point you in the right direction. Only very, very rarely do you end up with no ore if you see even Decent readings.  

So... it is then? You just said I can prove it to myself, then ended by saying, well, technically, it is RNG.

Also I think Vintage Story even with the aforementioned mod is no where NEAR the level of "giving you the axe to chop down the tree" in terms of how accomplished you feel for doing it. You described in detail here how you still need to triangulate the readings then dig down and use nodes to locate the ore.

Does having it be guaranteed make it feel any less accomplished than if there was a chance that you were digging for nothing?

Again I think you and many others here are defending what is essentially tedium due to poor game design and RNG. Disagree all you'd like, there's really no arguing with the RNG part.

[Thorfinn]

2 hours ago, mayushii said:

So... it is then? You just said I can prove it to myself, then ended by saying, well, technically, it is RNG.

What?

2 hours ago, mayushii said:

You described in detail here how you still need to triangulate the readings then dig down and use nodes to locate the ore.

Sure. It's that whole triangulate step that replaces the hotter/colder game you would otherwise play. One check gets you in the ballpark, rather than several, maybe a dozen or more. And if that's what you want, whether you call that easy or speedy or whatever, you be you. Better Prospecting is your thing. Don't take anything I say as dismissive of your preferences.

 

2 hours ago, mayushii said:

Does having it be guaranteed make it feel any less accomplished than if there was a chance that you were digging for nothing?

For me, yes. It just has the feeling of a participation trophy. You obviously have a different opinion. Better Prospecting probably makes a whole lot of sense to you.

[Echo Weaver]

4 hours ago, mayushii said:

Does having it be guaranteed make it feel any less accomplished than if there was a chance that you were digging for nothing?

Again I think you and many others here are defending what is essentially tedium due to poor game design and RNG. Disagree all you'd like, there's really no arguing with the RNG part.

I really don't see the value in insulting people who like the current system. I like it because it's a decent simplified simulation of real prospecting, which I'm pretty sure is the goal of the design. I'm not trying to play my game faster. Prospecting gives me another incentive to explore. I don't think any of us are disagreeing that RNG is involved. The question is whether this is a bad thing.

What's bothering you about the conversation here? You feel that your gameplay preferences are not being taken seriously? Are you insulted because everyone in the thread didn't jump in and tell you you're right? That's never going to happen. We have a huge diversity of play styles on the forum, and there is essentially no suggestion that isn't going to get pushback. Come to discuss, not to proselytize.

It's not intended as an insult to point you to a mod. Your concerns aren't unique, as evidenced by the other folks expressing the same dislike on this thread. The whole point to a moddable game is that we can make adjustments to suit what we enjoy.

As an example, I never play without Player Corpse. I easily slide into over-caution, and if I run the risk of losing difficult-to-obtain items when I die, I will just never carry around those items. Moreover, my caution generally means I don't die trivially, so it's likely to be someplace dangerous to return to, increasing the chance of dying on my way back to my body and otherwise timing out before I can get my stuff. My only other vanilla option is to retain all inventory on death, which I find trivializes death. Player Corpse allows me to drop my stuff but set it to never time out, which is the balance I want -- it gives me a death penalty that I want and avoids risk paralysis.

What I don't do is tell everyone who prefers the risk of losing items on death (or, y'know, Thorfinn, who is in a class of his own) that they're wrong. I just play the way I want to play.

If you want to talk about being offended, I find it very offensive when folks come in with a perspective on the game and then actively deny that anyone else's perspective is valid. 

Edited October 16, 2025 by Echo Weaver

[Rexvladimir]

Ah, I love seeing this post slowly get found by more and more average players looking for help or guides for this broken system — and ending up right here. It’s almost like the “average player” doesn’t want to play an RNG simulator with resources that take hours to gather, only to be wasted on bad luck. Yet the same people defending this system (outside of Thorfinn) are the ones using mods because they themselves don’t want to deal with it. BTW as a small update me, my wife, and my friend have quit this game for the time being due to me refusing to prospect or continue cheating to find ores. Wife then made her own world using different settings thinking it would be better that way and quit within 7 days once she had to prospect for iron. 

As a great meme poster in this thread once said, “You don’t need to mod good game mechanics.”

This system is pure gatekeeping. It will keep Vintage Story trapped in a niche corner of forum obsessives. There’s nothing wrong with offering a mod as a temporary fix, but let’s not forget — this is the Suggestions Forum, a place for proposing changes to the unmodded game. Why is that so hard for the diehards to understand? Oh right — because they’ve already solved the problem by modding it out. And since they “fixed” it for themselves, everyone else is just expected to bend the knee and accept that the system must stay untouched.

I saw the same mentality when someone suggested adding fishing. The same crowd flooded the post saying “just download the fishing mod.” And guess what? That fishing mod is also one of the top 30 most downloaded of all time. My point extends to them too — there’s zero reason a game like this shouldn’t have fishing, just like there’s zero reason prospecting should require modding if it were truly a good system.

Anyway, I’ll check back as more and more regular players stumble onto this thread and share their thoughts. Because when enough people speak up, even the defenders won’t be able to gaslight the truth out of this conversation. 

PS

@Zane Mordien Posted this:

"1) Stability - This is the backbone of the lore, so it is fully intended to inhibit you as you mine.

2) Food - You shouldn't be traveling that far from your base to find most ores. I think that is why there are so many options of bronze. People get so stuck on one ore they travel far and wide instead of realizing what is around them. I'm not saying this is you, but some people get stuck on the idea they have to find high or very high readings when they don't need anything better than decent. Heck even poor is good enough sometimes.

3) Durability - Definatly this is my bane as well, but again I think this is 100% intended to force you to make more copper pickaxes early on"

This 100% can and will be used to further my argument on why this RNG system has got to go.

1) Stability
You’re not meant to be in the mines long-term due to the sanity meter, which means you don’t have time to be guessing where ore might be. You need confirmation that the ore is in that chunk. Without it, the system punishes players for staying too long in a place the game itself tells you not to stay.

2) Food
Hungry miners are dead miners. With food spoilage, you’ve got maybe 2–4 days of exploration before heading home to resupply. That puts you on a timer. You either need to be making consistent progress toward finding your target ore or actually finding it within a reasonable window—otherwise, you’re just running laps around your base.
Sure, the “prospecting defenders” might tell you to relocate to continue the RNG grind, but that’s not realistic for anyone who isn’t unemployed. When your time and food supply are finite, you need predictable progress.

3) Durability
You need a tin pick to mine iron, not copper. To get tin, you have to prospect—so now you’re trapped in a cycle of gambling with your tools for a chance at progress. Down to your last tin pick? Welp you have two options: keep a tin pick on hand, only use copper picks due to cheaper cost and faster gathering until RNJesus finally blesses your poor soul with some iron; or you are now back to looking for tin, to then smelt it, to then rebuild your supply”—thus meaning you are forced to put your goal on hold because RNJesus didn’t bless you this run. That’s not rewarding gameplay—that’s punishment by design.

Now i want to add one more point that you missed. 

4) Real-Life Time Investment

How many hours is fair to gamble for ores? 1 hour? 2 hours? 10 hours? 24 hours? How many? You have to factor all the time you spend in order to find ore. The moment you say “time for iron,” you account for food, gear sets for protection, the pickaxes, the prospecting tools, travel time, the mineshafts, ladders, the travel time back, the smelting to replace broken gear, the finding of more ore to continue the search, the temporary storm that interrupts you, etc. These are all things that can reasonably happen while simply in search of iron. Now for some players (because the current system is a gamble) they find it within hour one. Good for you. However what about the player like me that went five hours with nothing and being down to my last pickaxe for the whole base? Then welcome another five hours of resupplying then ??? hours gambling to find iron. I heard the caving argument made to help "reduce search time" and I laughed. I checked my world and found 1 exposed vein in a cave after flying around in Creative for 2 hours peeking into caves. How much time would that take a regular player not in creative searching? Oh right— we don't have a conclusive answer because that system IS ALSO a gamble. So how many hours is acceptable to gamble: 1, 2, 3, 5, etc.? My system would just simply put a cap on your real-life time investment. Basically after X amount of hours (I don’t know exactly what that number is) you will find whatever ore you seek within this chunk.

Conclusion; Zane’s argument actually proved my point perfectly: with the current mechanics and survival constraints, an RNG prospecting system is a terrible design that needs to be fixed (or, as even its defenders quietly admit, modded out like they do)

Also I find it hilarious that no one has offered a real tangible change or proposal to fixing this system like I have. I’ve made the point many times: if you have a different idea of how to fix it, I would love to hear it, as maybe there is a better answer than hot and cold. And no—leaving it as is is not an acceptable answer.

[Facethief]

9 hours ago, Rexvladimir said:

Hungry miners are dead miners. With food spoilage, you’ve got maybe 2–4 days of exploration before heading home to resupply. That puts you on a timer. You either need to be making consistent progress toward finding your target ore or actually finding it within a reasonable window—otherwise, you’re just running laps around your base.

Charred bread and cured meat are my No. 1s. Shoutout to them.

9 hours ago, Rexvladimir said:

You’re not meant to be in the mines long-term due to the sanity meter, which means you don’t have time to be guessing where ore might be. You need confirmation that the ore is in that chunk. Without it, the system punishes players for staying too long in a place the game itself tells you not to stay.

Nobody’s making you use stability. In fact, I play without it, and find the game to be a lot better for exploration and such, whatever that’s worth; but if you make a rant thread about stability, you didn’t hear that here.

By the way, it’s sketchy as hell that you didn’t quote for this. You can multi quote, by the way, by just selecting whatever you want to quote. If you’re using a phone, it sometimes doesn’t work, but whatever.

P.S: as I am currently on a phone, and quoting has decided to crap out, they are looking into adding fishing. Just like with any of these really heated threads, the “just use mods” song and dance is an interim solution; if you keep the thread civil, rational, and readable for the devs, it’s far more likely that they’ll listen, and if they don’t, nobody’s stopping you from throwing them an @.

[MKMoose]

9 hours ago, Rexvladimir said:

Ah, I love seeing this post slowly get found by more and more average players looking for help or guides for this broken system — and ending up right here.

Focusing on this group (humongous sample size of 3, since your previous post) seems like a very basic logical error to me. Remind me what it was? Selection...? Survival something?

Every single game has a target audience, and the games with widest appeal tend to be shallow and generic. If a mechanic is not to your liking, then mods are your friend, not a way to wave you off for the people who don't see the need for it to be changed. If a mod becomes popular, then devs have more reason to implement something similar into the base experience, and also have a working example of the functionality which reduces uncertainty that would come with implementing a completely new and untested feature.

 

9 hours ago, Rexvladimir said:

Yet the same people defending this system (outside of Thorfinn) are the ones using mods because they themselves don’t want to deal with it.

You'd be more likely to be listened to if you actually listened to others yourself. But I don't know if you want to engage with it, since there's no guarantee that it will work.

You're clinging to the idea that prospecting is being replaced by mods while ignoring two explanations of what the most popular prospecting mod actually does, seemingly unable to check it yourself as well. And you're maintaining that people who don't want the system changed (aside from Thorfinn) use mods that "fix" prospecting, despite multiple explicit statements to the contrary.

 

10 hours ago, Rexvladimir said:

[...] if you have a different idea of how to fix it, I would love to hear it, as maybe there is a better answer than hot and cold.

Other mods tend to be gamey or bloat the prospecting pick with multiple largely redundant modes, but the most significant ones from what I've seen at a glance are:

- depth-independent (usually high-range) Node Search variant - also suggested in this thread,

- proximity to nearest ore block - seemingly the most common suggestion, and probably the least creative as well,

- long-range search for rock types instead of ores.

I think there's also a mod which overrides the permille value to correspond to the actual amount of ore blocks in an area.

There are some ideas for various, minor or major, ore generation changes. Some ores could have surface-level signs, like discolored vegetation near sulfide deposits. Veins could be larger (but low-yield) to reduce the frequency of shafts that have to be sunk.

Lastly, there are other suggestions which focus on adding less random alternatives to prospecting, primarily through processing large amounts of low-grade ore.

And I probably missed a whole lot, still. Any of those strike your fancy?

[Teh Pizza Lady]

On 9/14/2025 at 11:36 AM, Rexvladimir said:

My Proposal

Keep the system mostly the same, but make the second percentage number meaningful. Turn it into a hot/cold indicator that guarantees the ore is in that chunk—you just have to locate it.

Veterans: "Here's a mod that does what you're asking."

11 hours ago, Rexvladimir said:

This system is pure gatekeeping. It will keep Vintage Story trapped in a niche corner of forum obsessives. There’s nothing wrong with offering a mod as a temporary fix, but let’s not forget — this is the Suggestions Forum, a place for proposing changes to the unmodded game. Why is that so hard for the diehards to understand? Oh right — because they’ve already solved the problem by modding it out. And since they “fixed” it for themselves, everyone else is just expected to bend the knee and accept that the system must stay untouched.

real "mic drop" moment here, folks.

[Thorfinn]

13 hours ago, Rexvladimir said:

That fishing mod is also one of the top 30 most downloaded of all time.

Primitive Survival isn't really a fishing mod. It has fish in it, yes, but it's not really about fishing. It creates "fish" ex nihilo, and is basically traps. There was a fishing mod that had a fishing pole (which must be hidden at the moment -- probably not updated) which also created fish instead of catching the ones that were swimming around.  From hints over the years, the intended fishing mechanic will catch the ones you see. I think that's waiting for the fish to be developed, though.

This is a digression, though. Like people are patiently explaining, it will probably happen. (Prospecting, probably not.) But until then, if it's really important to you, just use a mod.

Incidentally, you do not need to prospect for tin if you are playing defaults. Tin is an Extremely Rare (?) surface deposit, so it's pretty easy to bump into it as you are collecting seeds. Plus, there are merchants that sell tin nuggets (cassiterite) and even tin pickaxes, It also drops in cracked vessels. Plus, you can make it all but omnipresent by setting it to Very Common, or, alternatively, have much better luck prospecting by simply cranking the global deposit rate all the way up.

The devs have made all kinds of options for people who don't have the time or attention span to play the game as designed. Why not at least try some of them?

 

[Echo Weaver]

2 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Every single game has a target audience, and the games with widest appeal tend to be shallow and generic. If a mechanic is not to your liking, then mods are your friend, not a way to wave you off for the people who don't see the need for it to be changed. If a mod becomes popular, then devs have more reason to implement something similar into the base experience, and also have a working example of the functionality which reduces uncertainty that would come with implementing a completely new and untested feature.

This is really well-said. 

4 hours ago, Facethief said:

they are looking into adding fishing

Yeah, they've had fishing on the roadmap for all the time I've been playing. The question hasn't been whether we'll have fishing but what it will look like and what its priority will be. Since hanging out on the forum and playing a lot more myself, my opinion on this subject has changed a lot. I originally really wanted the same fishing mechanic you see in most games, where you cast out a fishing line and the game generates something to hook onto it. I see now that this is just not thematic for VS, and I'm sure that's why it hasn't been released yet. 

If someone shows up and asks for fishing, we'll point 'em to a mod -- we already know fishing has the devs' attention, but there's no telling when it will show up.

4 hours ago, Facethief said:

Charred bread and cured meat are my No. 1s. Shoutout to them.

This is also the point of pies, right?

(Also, I want to know how Thorfinn managed to get credit for using unmodded prospecting when none of the rest of us did. )