Finding Salt

[Crabble]

I get the premise of making things rare and making the journey worthwhile, but there comes a point when the reward is not worth the effort. I've spent about 6 sessions looking for salt. Within those sessions, I have begun to research more into it. I've walked 11,000 blocks to find a desert and look. I've looked in all the sedimentary blocks. I've dug into the thickest parts of the sediment and mined around to find some. Not only have I done this, but 2 other people in my world have also done this. It really burns you out. I think there needs to be some extra incentive or hint at where to find it. I don't have a whole lot of time to play these days and it is not fun to spend the time running thousands of blocks looking for something.

TL;DR 60 hours in... still no salt.

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums and the game!

Just now, Evan Scharpf said:

I think there needs to be some extra incentive or hint at where to find it.

Prospecting can give you an idea of where to look, however, to my knowledge caving is supposed to be the more reliable way of finding salt deposits, and not so much the standard mineshaft method of extracting ore. According to the handbook, thicker sediment layers are more likely to host salt deposits, and warmer climates may contain salt buried beneath the sand of dry lake beds.

However, I will also note that the times I have found salt deposits in the game have been by accident; that is, I wasn't looking for salt at the time and just stumbled across it. While finding a deposit is very useful, do keep in mind that if you are playing with lore content enabled, trading for salt is an option. Commodities and Survival Goods traders often carry it, for very reasonable prices. Trading is the usual way I acquire mine.

[Zane Mordien]

@Crabble Yeah, but salt is also just optional. You don't need it to progress through the story or make better gear at all. I treat it as a "nice to have", but I don't loose sleep if I can't find it.

[Heart_Afire]

[Insert obvious Salt pun here]

Obvious puns aside, we usually trade for salt as well, though we do prospect for it while we are out exploring. I've managed to find a few salt domes peppered around the various worlds that way, but they're still rare enough that I relish the moment I find the halite readings that indicate their presence. But the honest answer is, unless you get lucky, you'll likely have to grind your salt out at the traders.

But, like Zane said, that doesn't really leave you in a pickle, because salt isn't really a cure for anything necessary in the game. It makes things easier and is necessary for making cheese, but that's about it. So don't worry if you can't catch up on the salt thing, because by the time you've mustered up all the other resources you need for the stuff salt helps out, you'll already have found some.

Personally, I still think we should just be able to make it from Seawater, which would give us a reason to go saline on the oceans rather than stay inland.

[MKMoose]

10 hours ago, Crabble said:

I've walked 11,000 blocks to find a desert and look. I've looked in all the sedimentary blocks. I've dug into the thickest parts of the sediment and mined around to find some.

I don't know how much you've looked into the actual halite generation, but there's a few things that you may want to know to make sure you're looking where salt can actually generate:

• halite rock cannot be detected by the prospecting pick's node search, whereas density search is only useful for salt domes and not the salt beds in deserts,
• salt domes can generate anywhere with a thick enough layer of sedimentary rock and they can be found using the prospecting pick's density search - if you want to find salt as soon as possible, you have to get a reasonable reading for halite (I don't think it's actually possible to find a "decent" reading, "poor" is actually good for halite) and mine horizontal tunnels at any depth below the lowest sedimentary layer in ~20 block intervals (or a bit more dense if you really need to, since the domes can have a diameter anywhere from 5 to 37 if I recall correctly); keep in mind that you can take density readings while deep underground to make sure that you're still in an area with a lot of halite - the reading accounts for the amount of sedimentary rock above you so you don't need to double-check it,
• dry lake salt beds should generate in dry, hot and flat areas (sandy deserts, specifically 0 to 0.3 rainfall and 15 to 40 average temperature), directly under the surface (just under sand/gravel), near the sea level (Y < 117, I think); I would actually need it confirmed that they can generate at all and I'm not certain about the exact generation requirements, though, as I have yet to see one myself.

Edited December 16, 2025 by MKMoose
Minor corrections.

[EmperorPingu]

I kinda like the idea of being able to cook up seawater

[Slam]

12 hours ago, Zane Mordien said:

but salt is also just optional.

I NEED MY CHEESE

[LadyWYT]

9 hours ago, Heart_Afire said:

But, like Zane said, that doesn't really leave you in a pickle

The obvious joke being that if you have no salt, you have no pickle to be left in.