Obligatory Clay is hard to find thread.

[Ap0calyp2e]

Seriously its a major problem. I've just started playing today and have been soft locked for 3 hours looking for clay. i've looked up the forums i know what it looks like  and seen the post about look for low lvl rain areas, i know its not in snow, dessert or gravel areas, ive gone threw forests slowly and looking around water. i know about how its suppose to be everywhere but ive explored over 1000 blocks from my base in every direction and found about 12 different ruins, 7 different traders, about 15 different peat deposits and found about every surface metal from iron, copper, quartz and found some zinc in a hole. but seriously where the fuck is the clay. Taking hours to find an early game resource isnt fun and tbh has started to kill my enthusiasm for the game. 

[Eepy_T1me]

1 hour ago, Ap0calyp2e said:

Seriously its a major problem. I've just started playing today and have been soft locked for 3 hours looking for clay. i've looked up the forums i know what it looks like  and seen the post about look for low lvl rain areas, i know its not in snow, dessert or gravel areas, ive gone threw forests slowly and looking around water. i know about how its suppose to be everywhere but ive explored over 1000 blocks from my base in every direction and found about 12 different ruins, 7 different traders, about 15 different peat deposits and found about every surface metal from iron, copper, quartz and found some zinc in a hole. but seriously where the fuck is the clay. Taking hours to find an early game resource isnt fun and tbh has started to kill my enthusiasm for the game. 

hey so if I can ask did you change the settings for your world or tweak any worldgen mechanics? I'm also fairly new to the game but I've found literally too much stuff like peat and clay in every world I make but I also don't use normal worldgen settings so I might be able to recommend some stuff

[hstone32]

The clay is precicely 150 meters from your house, but It's invisible until you have met a randomly generated quota of wasted time looking for it. This mechanic is to prepare you for when it gets repeated at a grander scale for tin, and then again for ilmonite and chromite /j

[Bruno Willis]

I spent several in game months hunting for clay in my current world, and it was, of course, 4 blocks away from my already partly cut peat bog.

I've found the best way to deal with these things is to put the goal on the mental back-burner while you look for other things. In my case I just started looking for mature wild flax instead, because I also spawned on a massive island with a total of 10 cat-tails and I needed more gear slots pronto. I now know the location of every surface ore deposit, have a whole lot of caves marked to explore, and found the best base location I've ever had, all because I spent so much time looking for clay. 

[Evilel]

if your exploring about you can just every now and then open your map and check for changes in coloring on your map and investigate those changes in coloring. also if you come across fire clay before blue/red definitely try not to use it up for pots and such.. normally fire clay is rarer than the others and it'll come back to haunt you 10 fold later game play. 
P.S. also the color difference could be peat.

Edited November 25, 2025 by Evilel
could potential be peat

[Ap0calyp2e]

6 hours ago, Eepy_T1me said:

hey so if I can ask did you change the settings for your world or tweak any worldgen mechanics? I'm also fairly new to the game but I've found literally too much stuff like peat and clay in every world I make but I also don't use normal worldgen settings so I might be able to recommend some stuff

No im using the default settings, as the dev intended the game to be played... im not interested in just cranking everything up, i just dont wanna take 5 hours to find something, actual time btw found blue clay 1800 blocks from my base, 

 

 

2 hours ago, Evilel said:

if your exploring about you can just every now and then open your map and check for changes in coloring on your map and investigate those changes in coloring. also if you come across fire clay before blue/red definitely try not to use it up for pots and such.. normally fire clay is rarer than the others and it'll come back to haunt you 10 fold later game play. 
P.S. also the color difference could be peat.

This looks nothing like my map, either im missing a major biome which is possible, or you are using a modded map.

 

Edited November 25, 2025 by Ap0calyp2e

[Evilel]

sorry.. that was the server map.. honestly thought it was closer to the in game map.. but there is still a color difference.

 

Edited November 25, 2025 by Evilel
added youtube link how to change it from not colored map to colored

[LadyWYT]

3 hours ago, Evilel said:

if your exploring about you can just every now and then open your map and check for changes in coloring on your map and investigate those changes in coloring

This is a great way to find clay once you learn which discolorations to investigate, but it also requires the true colors being enabled for the world map(they are disabled by default).

To enable map colors: /worldconfigcreate bool colorAccurateWorldMap true

6 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

I spent several in game months hunting for clay in my current world, and it was, of course, 4 blocks away from my already partly cut peat bog.

I've found the best way to deal with these things is to put the goal on the mental back-burner while you look for other things. In my case I just started looking for mature wild flax instead, because I also spawned on a massive island with a total of 10 cat-tails and I needed more gear slots pronto. I now know the location of every surface ore deposit, have a whole lot of caves marked to explore, and found the best base location I've ever had, all because I spent so much time looking for clay. 

Pretty much. Typically, you'll find whatever you aren't looking for at the time.

 

1 hour ago, Ap0calyp2e said:

No im using the default settings, as the dev intended the game to be played... im not interested in just cranking everything up, i just dont wanna take 5 hours to find something, actual time btw found blue clay 1800 blocks from my base, 

Honestly, I would say it's probably just that you aren't yet used to where to look for the clay. It's one thing to look at a picture on the internet, but it's quite another thing entirely to actually try to find what's pictured in the game. Once you've found a deposit or two, it should become much easier to find deposits in the future.

I'd also chalk it up to potentially really bad map RNG. Most of the time the RNG is pretty good, but it's not unusual to have a key resource or two be difficult to find. Usually that resource is something like borax or bauxite, which isn't necessary until much later in the game, but sometimes it happens to be clay or some other early-game resource, which makes for a rough start. 

My advice is to stick with it a little longer, as pretty much everyone who has ever played Vintage Story has been in your shoes at least once. However, if you're really not enjoying your current map, it may be better to start over on a new one better suited to your liking.

[Maelstrom]

7 hours ago, hstone32 said:

The clay is precicely 150 meters from your house, but It's invisible until you have met a randomly generated quota of wasted time looking for it. This mechanic is to prepare you for when it gets repeated at a grander scale for tin, and then again for ilmonite and chromite /j

Not to mention Limestone/Chalk, Borax, Bauxite, Bees, Iron and any other resources you are in desparate need of finding.   I once spent half of the first day just trying to find one reed.  Just one lousy, stinking reed!   The rest of the day spent trying to find even more to get the 40 reeds needed for initial inventory space.

VS be like
 

[Maelstrom]

2 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I'd also chalk it up to potentially really bad map RNG. Most of the time the RNG is pretty good, but it's not unusual to have a key resource or two be difficult to find.

And sometimes it's my own dang pathing.   I just happen to walk inbetween the deposits as if I had mapped out the perfect way to avoid exactly what I'm looking for.

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, Maelstrom said:

And sometimes it's my own dang pathing.   I just happen to walk inbetween the deposits as if I had mapped out the perfect way to avoid exactly what I'm looking for.

I mean, I had a map that I walked about 1000 blocks away just to find my first clay deposit...only to find there was a clay deposit right over the little hill out back of my base all along. And I say that as a veteran player.  I've also found that slowing to a walk instead of running everywhere can help with resource spotting, but it's not foolproof since you still need to actually be within visual range of the thing and notice it.

[Slam]

It feels like for clay that it’s really easy to find, but impossible to find blue clay, or it’s impossible to find, but the first clay you do find is blue clay.

[Thorfinn]

To no one's surprise, I'm going to suggest making a couple dozen ladders so you can get a bird's eye view. That makes it SO much easier.

[Ap0calyp2e]

So didn't know you could change the map coloring in the options. The video someone posted about changing it also mentioned that you cant see clay or peat on the new sepia style map so that's where most of my confusion came from. I thought like I was being gaslit with everyone saying you can see it on the map. Turns out I just don't have the option enabled for that to be true. 

[LadyWYT]

5 minutes ago, Ap0calyp2e said:

Turns out I just don't have the option enabled for that to be true. 

The good news is that you can enable/disable the map coloring at any time. You'll need to reload the world after running the command and then revisit uncolored chunks in order to render them in color.

[Evilel]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

To no one's surprise, I'm going to suggest making a couple dozen ladders so you can get a bird's eye view. That makes it SO much easier.

 I didn't even think of that for this application or others.. and from what i remember you can just break the bottom ladder and the entire thing comes tumbling down like a tree.

[hstone32]

4 hours ago, Ap0calyp2e said:

i just dont wanna take 5 hours to find something,

Oof. Hate to break it too you, but that's pretty normal. Maybe not for clay, but you will find yourself spending lots of time searching for stuff all throughout the game.

I hesitate to give you my advice, because it might be considered a spoiler. I'll just say that because most resources generate in a geolocal distribution, the thing that works for me is traveling to very far distant areas where the distributions are different. If you keep exploring, you might find a certain something that makes traveling to distant locations much easier.

[Ap0calyp2e]

1 minute ago, hstone32 said:

Oof. Hate to break it too you, but that's pretty normal. Maybe not for clay, but you will find yourself spending lots of time searching for stuff all throughout the game.

I hesitate to give you my advice, because it might be considered a spoiler. I'll just say that because most resources generate in a geolocal distribution, the thing that works for me is traveling to very far distant areas where the distributions are different. If you keep exploring, you might find a certain something that makes traveling to distant locations much easier.

Yeah that was poorly worded, i dont mind the search for resources in the later game stuff, but something critical to progression within the first hour of the game shouldn't take 5 hours to find imo, and in reality they are right, it isn't hard to find once you have the proper options to find it. The problem is knowledge. You cant change what you don't know is an option to be changed.  
I know they just made the sepia style map but it seems worse in every way. Why make it the default? Why make it so you cant see the crucial resources on it? Why not add some way to make that choice more visible? I know 95% of the screenshots ive seen is without the sepia one. it seems like most people agree if that's the case. 

I do want to say even tho i've being critical of this specific aspect of the game, it really is something minor in the long run. I'm excited to progress farther and still think its a pretty good game so far. I dont wanna come off as overly negative. Thanks for all the suggestions guys 

[Bruno Willis]

38 minutes ago, Ap0calyp2e said:

I know they just made the sepia style map but it seems worse in every way. Why make it the default? Why make it so you cant see the crucial resources on it? Why not add some way to make that choice more visible? I know 95% of the screenshots ive seen is without the sepia one. it seems like most people agree if that's the case. 

I think the map thing is a compromise really. I used the colour version when I was starting, but it quickly made gameplay too easy for me so I switched to sepia. I'm now considering figuring out how to get rid of the map entirely, and I do know some people play without the map. The sepia version is still a serious aid to navigation, but it doesn't show you where clay and peat and ruins and traders are - so they're still a challenge and a nice surprise, but not as much as if there was no map at all. 

[Maelstrom]

The initial learning curve is steep.  My hardest thing was finding wild grain in a sea of grass.   After playing for a good 30 or 40 hours I realized that wild grains grow in a square pattern whereas grass grows in a cross pattern.   Forever after that grain jumps out at me like the sorest of sore thumbs.

The same will happen for you with clay, hopefully much quicker than the few dozen hours my epiphany took.  I will note clay as I'm running hither and yon for other resources.   If it's close to home I'll stop and mark it.  Clay is one of my day one materials along with reeds, flint and sticks so on day one I'm constantly looking for it.   In my most recent world I ran about 1,000 blocks before finding clay.  Not because it was that rare, but because the route I took before finally stumbling across it at sunset.   Along the way I found surface copper, surface gold nugget, multiple bee nests and blue clay (which I didn't want to use on the mundane early pottery uses).

I've since found clay closer to spawn that I would have stumbled across if I had gone 10 or 20 blocks different than the way I ran through the forest.

4 minutes ago, Bruno Willis said:

I'm now considering figuring out how to get rid of the map entirely

There's a check box that you can uncheck during world creation.  Otherwise, I'm sure there's a command for it.

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, Ap0calyp2e said:

I know they just made the sepia style map but it seems worse in every way. Why make it the default?

I'm guessing the change is mainly because the sepia style looks more like an actual map, and not a miniature birds-eye view of the world. I'll also note that the true color map, while very useful, is also...pretty ugly, in a way. It ends up a hodge-podge of colors by the end of the first year, since the map will only update things when you actually visit the areas. The sepia map will have a consistent look year-round.

 

4 hours ago, Ap0calyp2e said:

Why make it so you cant see the crucial resources on it?

Technically, you can still pick out some resources, but realistically, you shouldn't be relying on the map to find resources. Maps are more for recording various information, like the location of critical resources, in order to make things easier to find/work with later.

Granted, that's not what's going to happen with the true color map, but still...

4 hours ago, Ap0calyp2e said:

Why not add some way to make that choice more visible?

It would be nice, however, that could be said of most of the options available in the game. And it's not really practical to point out each option to the player either. In this case, I think it's just part of the learning curve for new players, in that they learn just how many options Vintage Story offers them, and then tinker with said options until they find the results that please them.

 

3 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

I think the map thing is a compromise really. I used the colour version when I was starting, but it quickly made gameplay too easy for me so I switched to sepia. I'm now considering figuring out how to get rid of the map entirely, and I do know some people play without the map. The sepia version is still a serious aid to navigation, but it doesn't show you where clay and peat and ruins and traders are - so they're still a challenge and a nice surprise, but not as much as if there was no map at all. 

If you do end up turning it off, you may want to install a mod like this one: https://mods.vintagestory.at/craftablecartography

That way, you'll still have access to the map, but you'll also have to do a bit of work to get it. It's a nice compromise between the obvious videogame mechanic of the current map, and turning the map off entirely.

[Mowdan]

It took me awhile to find it but once I did find i, I would find it from time to time.It certainly was not easy to find. Sometimes your spawn is just weird. My spawn had like no vegetables or grain. Then I moved to an outpost not only was there grain and tons of berries and clay. The key to this game is looking around real good and not missing anything. I mark everything so the amount of icons on the map tell me how much I've searched the area or it is a bit barren.

It's real easy to find the clay on my map not because changed the colors but because I placed a clay colored rock pin that says clay on the map...jokes aside, don't care how others play, We all play different for different reasons. I like to mark every little thing on the map. It does sometimes come with risk a animal may sneak up on you when you are pinning something.Just do what feels like the most fun.

[YoFonLinging]

On 11/25/2025 at 8:51 PM, Bruno Willis said:

I think the map thing is a compromise really. I used the colour version when I was starting, but it quickly made gameplay too easy for me so I switched to sepia. I'm now considering figuring out how to get rid of the map entirely, and I do know some people play without the map. The sepia version is still a serious aid to navigation, but it doesn't show you where clay and peat and ruins and traders are - so they're still a challenge and a nice surprise, but not as much as if there was no map at all. 

Thank You! You, among all helped Me regain courage to look for clay and finding my first deposit of it was so rewarding!
The comment earlier by LadyWYT about exploring many blocks made Me realise I was to complacent with my exploration and now after  traveling 500 blocks in 3 cardinal directions I got it!

TLDR: I kept looking after getting motivated here.

[Bruno Willis]

39 minutes ago, YoFonLinging said:

TLDR: I kept looking after getting motivated here.

I'm glad the forums help. This is such an interesting game, with a really good following.

I find it is always worth sticking with you goal just a bit longer, and if that doesn't work, switching tasks instead of quitting the game. VS. doesn't give you guaranteed dopamine hits, but it slowly rewards all the struggles as long as you keep struggling and keep noting things down. Take nothing for granted and good luck!

[MKMoose]

On 11/25/2025 at 8:51 PM, Bruno Willis said:

The sepia version is still a serious aid to navigation, but it doesn't show you where clay and peat and ruins and traders are - so they're still a challenge and a nice surprise, but not as much as if there was no map at all. 

Can I mention that the medieval world map still allows to find ruins very easily, at least the larger ones? Traders also aren't difficult to notice if you know what and where to look for (if they're not in a forest), and some clay patches (fire clay in bauxite, red clay in cold climates) can stand out against gravel (but not against soil).

I would really love to have something in-between the current navigational aids (map and coordinates) and nothing at all. Something to allow me to mark down important spots and avoid getting lost without a lot of ugly dirt pillars or whatnot, but without outright giving me a view of an entire large area.

Left: two large ruin groups; middle: trader wagon (a bit more difficult to see due to snow); right: fire clay patch in bauxite gravel.