Olivine?

[Uriel Cain]

I can't seem to find much on olivine and how to find it. All I get from the handbook is that it's only found in Peridotite. Google searches corroborate that, but that's about it, other than to say that it can only be found with the propick in node search and not density search. That implies that the only way to find it is by mining a tunnel through Peridotite and using the propick every several blocks until you find it? I've been doing this with no luck so far and it makes me feel I must be going about it wrong...

[Never Jhonsen]

Olivine is about as common in Peridotite as Quartz is in other rocks, with the exception that it won't spawn in as big of a disk as Quartz does. Peridotite is a stone like Granite or Limestone, so to find that you'll have to wander about until you see it.

Usually, you can find some surface Olivine stones, similar to surface copper. Otherwise, running through some Peridotite caves will eventually revel some.

You can also try my Quartz hunting technique, albeit not as effective for olivine: Pick a spot in a Peridotite area and mine straight down, and if you reach the mantle with no hit, move over 32 blocks and try again. For quartz, it'll take 1-3 holes before you find some. With Olivine being smaller, it may take a few more attempts.

[Uriel Cain]

So, if I understand correctly, I shouldn't just dig through deep Peridotite? I should instead be looking for Peridotite "areas"? It should be closer to the surface? All the Peridotite I've found so far is in the lowest few layers, just above mantle.

[Professor Dragon]

1 minute ago, Uriel Cain said:

So, if I understand correctly, I shouldn't just dig through deep Peridotite? I should instead be looking for Peridotite "areas"? It should be closer to the surface? All the Peridotite I've found so far is in the lowest few layers, just above mantle.

Yes.

If you wander far enough (and it may be a few thousand or ten thousand blocks if you're unlucky), you should come across big surface Peridotite areas - in the same way that you come across big shale or bauxite areas.

These areas are often sparsely covered, so you may even have a good chance of finding some Olivine fragments on the surface, which you should dig down from.
 

I would never recommend digging down to deep ores unless  you have to.

 

 

[Uriel Cain]

Okay, thanks. Bleh. I guess I'm fine with T1 refractory bricks for the foreseeable future. I'm leery of exploring on the surface too much due to the constant presence of bears, lol. I keep killing them, but they keep coming back. I feel safer going into caves and just jumping around via translocator. Maybe I'll eventually find one that drops me into such an area. ^.^

[Professor Dragon]

12 minutes ago, Uriel Cain said:

Okay, thanks. Bleh. I guess I'm fine with T1 refractory bricks for the foreseeable future. I'm leery of exploring on the surface too much due to the constant presence of bears, lol. I keep killing them, but they keep coming back. I feel safer going into caves and just jumping around via translocator. Maybe I'll eventually find one that drops me into such an area. ^.^

Stay away from bears

The surface is a fine place to be - much safer than caves. 

• If you have decent armour, such as Gambeson, and a shield
• You don't wander into places without clear sight lines (of bears or wolves), such as a forest

I'm too scared to go into caves, so translocators and underground riches are restricted to me currently.

Professor Dragon.

[Uriel Cain]

The thing about caves is I have a lot more control. I can see the routes and I can use walls to create barriers and lanterns to create safe areas. Every creature I might encounter down there has a tell: Drifters moan and even if they manage to throw a rock, which they will always start with when they get in range, it'll barely hurt and give them away. Bowtorn always screech as they wind up a shot, so I can quickly duck behind cover or raise my shield. Shivers make distinctive and loud slurping noises if they're anywhere in the vicinity. Those are the only ones I've actually fought. I have heard bells, but never seen one. The first time I heard it, it was pretty obvious it was something bad, so I immediately ran away. The only reason I even know it's a bell is due to posts I've read when looking up other things, didn't mean to spoil it.  And locusts, they glow. I saw a light deep in a tunnel (near my house, btw, which I still haven't gotten around to clearing out because I feel I'm not yet prepared for it) and approached it cautiously, knowing it wasn't something I put down there. Saw a bunch of insects crawling around and a rusty structure just ahead of me with the tooltip "locust nest".

Bears, I'm lucky if I hear a growl or grunt before they jump out of the grass. I don't even have to be anywhere near a forest. There's a route near my home that I travel all the time. One day, I turn the corner directly into a brown fuzzy maw. I also saw one traveling the sandstone hills just a little farther west of there. I never go into forest anymore and still see them everywhere. I've made it a habit to try clearing away all the birch leaves and tall grass, because they hide in that, too. It takes a long time to clear, so I'm going into my third winter without having gone too far across the surface, but I've travelled thousands of blocks via TLs. Luckily one of them landed me near Iron because I had no luck finding that anywhere near my house.

I should say, I'm still in Improvised armor. I don't much care for hunting. What leather I have is from wolves and bears that come too close and I've used that to make the jerkin and leggings for my eventual chain armor, as well as backpacks. I'm still very low on cloth, though I've grown a lot. It all went into sails for windmills, candles for lanterns, and patches for my winter clothing. So, I can only take a single hit from a bear, if that.

[Maelstrom]

Since Peridotite is an igneous rock it can spawn under the surface layer.   Hopefully you will run into a layer of it mining for minerals.   I've found that olivine is usually three blocks deep and sometimes four while quartz is rarely three and hardly ever four.

[Echo Weaver]

In both my long-term games, an area adjoining my spawn was a peridotite area. I've seen a lot of folks complain about not being able to find any hard rock but granite, but mine seems to be peridotite. That's not terribly useful to you, but I do think that areas with peridotite as their primary rock aren't THAT uncommon. I wouldn't be hanging out in very deep peridotite layers looking for olivine. 

[Uriel Cain]

I only last night finally found olivine. It was on the other side of a translocator. I dug up, as I do when I travel through a new translocator, and dug straight through olivine. ><

[Thorfinn]

Quite often, I find enough with just surface nuggets, as @Never Jhonsen says but if you pay attention to your peridotite outcrops in more rugged terrain, olivine is rather common. Get to some high point, put your LOS slider as far as you can get away with, and slowly look around. I won't say its always somewhere in your view distance, but if you find a good rugged spot with lots of outcrops, I'd say its more than half. Install the spyglass mod or zoom mod to help you learn what those deposits look like. It can be a little subtle if it's a little ways away.

[Uriel Cain]

My issue was just that I was having trouble finding a peridotite area; all I could find was down by mantle. I searched far to the north, the northeast and the southwest with no luck. I finally found it far to the southeast.

For anyone else looking for help finding it, the solution was to just keep traveling and you eventually get to a peridotite area. My recommendation would be to not go looking for it, because there's no good way to search for it, similar to bauxite. Just generally explore and you'll come across it eventually. 

[Maelstrom]

Limestone and chalk also fall into this category as well. 

Sedementary rocks can be multiple layers think but do not spawn below igneous rocks, although basalt is an exception to that rule.