I'm on hour 8 of looking for clay

[webber]

I was pretty damn hype to play this game, and I enjoyed my first hour or so.

but here I am, 8 hours in. I went 4k blocks in every direction of spawn. made a new world with the colored map, nothing. watched videos, looked at threads there's just nothing and im starting to get really bored. I have a job and often cant play too often. so wandering the map for what's supposed to be a common find is just not super fun. 

the colored map did not help, I found loads of peat on it only. 

if anyone has some last shots in the dark for me that would be cool. but as of now I'm going to probably put this game down.

Edited January 3 by webber

[pigfood]

You are probably doing something wrong. Red clay deposits are extremely common and they are easily visible on the colored map (at least for me with excellent color vision). Chances are, there are at least several dozen deposits in a 4k block radius around you.

Edited January 3 by sushieater

[lobotorny]

Hi!! It took me like 5 hours to find clay, so I definitely relate. It's kind of difficult to see on ground-level since it can grow grass, but I had luck looking around mountains that had higher rain chances. If you press C, on the character menu it'll show you the chance of rain for the biome you're in. More rain = more likely to have clay. I hope that helps!

[Broccoli Clock]

It's literally 50 blocks the other direction you went. Honestly, it is.

[jerjerje]

Quote

but here I am, 8 hours in. I went 4k blocks in every direction of spawn. made a new world with the colored map, nothing. watched videos, looked at threads there's just nothing and im starting to get really bored. I have a job and often cant play too often. so wandering the map for what's supposed to be a common find is just not super fun. 

Could you post the game seed? I'm curious how your world looks if clay is that sparse. If I find any clay close to spawn, I can give you the coords.

Edited January 3 by jerjerje

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums(and the game)!

4 hours ago, webber said:

the colored map did not help, I found loads of peat on it only. 

The colored map can help, but the clay deposits will be harder to spot than the peat deposits since they are a slightly lighter discoloration, whereas peat deposits are slightly darker and more brownish. If you look at the images in the linked comment below, you'll see an example of red clay discoloration. Blue clay will have a grayish blue tinge.

 

4 hours ago, sushieater said:

Red clay deposits are extremely common and they are easily visible on the colored map (at least for me with excellent color vision).

I always forget about color vision. For those who are red/green colorblind, using the map to locate clay isn't a very good option.

 

4 hours ago, webber said:

if anyone has some last shots in the dark for me that would be cool. but as of now I'm going to probably put this game down.

The main things to remember is that clay needs adequate rainfall in order to spawn, so you can rule out deserts and most dry grasslands. Red clay tends to spawn more in highland regions, though it can spawn near sea level as well. Blue clay spawns around sea level, and it's not uncommon to find it on shorelines. Fire clay is the exception to the clay spawn rules, as it will only spawn naturally in bauxite biomes(including deserts) or underneath black coal/anthracite deposits(but not always).

As for spotting clay, it's easiest to spot when viewed from the side, as the clay texture and color is noticeably different than the surrounding dirt. From the top, it's harder to spot, but it will be covered in patchy grass with spots of the clay color peeking through. Overall, it's the kind of thing that's fairly difficult to find, until you're familiar with what clay looks like. 

Also keep in mind that as long as you are playing with lore content enabled, clay can sometimes be found in cracked vessels. You might also try checking with traders like Building Materials, Survival Goods, or Commodities to see if any clay is being sold, but unfortunately I don't recall for sure if traders sell it or not.

However, I will note that if you're getting frustrated with the game, putting it down and doing something else for a while isn't a bad idea. Vintage Story is a meaty game with a steep learning curve, and the basics are one of the areas that new players struggle in the most. In my experience, taking a break and coming back later with a fresh mind often helped me solve the problems I faced when new to the game. A fresh mind makes it easier to spot details that would otherwise be missed by a frustrated mind.

[cjc813]

Welcome to the game and forums.

I personally wouldn't give up without at least trying a new seed.

Clay is usually pretty common, and I almost always find it within the first few hours. Granted, I'm used to looking for it -- but it does spawn pretty regularly.

As mentioned, look for green, high rainfall areas without forest floors. Forest floor blocks will just say, "forest floor," and just turn into low fertility soil.

You can check the character screen to see the average rainfall in an area.

If you're looking in a non-forest, non-desert area with high rainfall, you *should* be able to find clay pretty easily.

[Zane Mordien]

18 hours ago, webber said:

if anyone has some last shots in the dark for me that would be cool. but as of now I'm going to probably put this game down.

If you haven't found it  yet, what is your game seed and did you change any world generation settings? I can create the same world and find it for you.

[Ratbatboo]

So, rather than start a new topic, I've decided to expand a bit on this one.

The clay struggle is VERY real. I've been trying to find a nice seed for my wife and I to poke out, because our first seed was clayless, low on early berry bushes and the like, and just turned into a real nightmare struggle with trying to share resources between two players.

I have tried eleven different randomized seeds now all with 'normal' rainfall, and perhaps my luck is just awful, but it's very frustrating to invest an hour or so in a seed trying to get reeds and tools and stay alive with berries-not-bears (that should totally be a mod name) only to learn that there's no clay anywhere in your vicinity. And by 'in your vicinity' I mean several thousand blocks.

How do I know? Because I became frustrated enough at this to load up a mod which gave a particle effect for clay (among other things) and went into creative mode and just flew back and forth executing a simple search pattern once I'd established the distance at which I could see the particles. I found more meteoric iron than I would've expected, but only three of those seeds had clay anywhere within a few thousand blocks of spawn, and I mostly spotted it in hillsides. REDACTED, please see last paragraph. Given what a bottleneck clay is, that's problematic...And the fact that a new player might invest those hours into a seed without realizing their dilemma repeatedly is no bueno.

I came to this game via That Other Game, and one of my favorite things several years ago was a mod called TerraFirmaCraft. Sound familiar? Yep. So I know how a lot of this stuff works. Many of the changes are absolutely breathtaking: the new voxel minigames for knapping and 3d clayforming in particular are certainly delightful upgrades, but I guess what I'm saying is that I'm quite familiar with a lot of the concepts behind Vintage Story, and this isn't exactly my first rodeo. The red clay in this game uses a very distinctive and not that dissimilar (other than color) texture to what I remember, and I'm 99% certain that the blue clay is exactly the texture from TFC.

TFC had one thing I don't see here that was an absolute lifesaver. It had types of flowers that very specifically grew only over clay deposits. Pillar up. No yellow flowers? Have a think about whether you want to continue.

I would like to suggest that the game (or an enterprising modder) reinstate those flowers, AND add a check for surface clay within a given distance of spawn (heck, maybe put it on a slider so newbies could go down to 100 blocks and the more daring could kick it up to 1000). If that check failed, either roll a new seed, or (if the seed was provided by the player) inform the player that the resulting world will not have easily accessible clay within 1000 blocks of the start, and did they wish to choose a new seed or continue?

Just my two palan.

EDIT:
You know EXACTLY what happened right after I posted this. EXACTLY.

Except not quite in the expected way. I was doing one last fly-over of an island and noted that on the map there was a very faintly off-color patch, so I dove down and checked it. Clay. On flat soil with no sides of blocks visible. Amazing. NO PARTICLES. Oops. So Particles Plus is performing just fine on cracked urns, meteoric iron, Pretay soil, and resinous trees but apparently not so much on clay. Odd. I don't remember seeing particles on the clay in the three seeds where I did find it, but those were cliffsides and I may've just assumed the particles were hidden.

Which means that any or all of the seeds whose maps I extensively gridded over the course of the last several hours might've had clay, too.

I can no longer make my plaint from the same foundation of data (limited though it was in any case) but I do believe that having better clay indicators and a 'No clay is nearby, do you wish to continue?' helper would save future players some frustration.

Edited January 25 by Ratbatboo

[jerjerje]

9 hours ago, Ratbatboo said:

Except not quite in the expected way. I was doing one last fly-over of an island and noted that on the map there was a very faintly off-color patch, so I dove down and checked it. Clay. On flat soil with no sides of blocks visible. Amazing. NO PARTICLES. Oops. So Particles Plus is performing just fine on cracked urns, meteoric iron, Pretay soil, and resinous trees but apparently not so much on clay. Odd. I don't remember seeing particles on the clay in the three seeds where I did find it, but those were cliffsides and I may've just assumed the particles were hidden.

Which means that any or all of the seeds whose maps I extensively gridded over the course of the last several hours might've had clay, too.

If you want to try and repeat this experiment you could try this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/xray

It is essentially an X-ray mod, that will find clay much easier than with particles. (Select the Sparse Grass Version of the clay, so you only get surface deposits)

I tried three worlds with Standard settings and recorded how many blocks away the closest clay was. I got these distances: 171 blocks, 65 blocks and 214 blocks.
Of course, you won't always find that closest clay deposit. But still, clay does seem to generate decently close on most seeds. That said, a large scale test would be nice to get more data points. There could be some rare outliers that don't generate clay close by that I would have missed.
My test also didn't check how abundant clay is. Maybe it would be better to test how many clay deposits spawn in a certain radius around spawn instead.

Edited January 25 by jerjerje

[pigfood]

18 minutes ago, jerjerje said:

If you want to try and repeat this experiment you could try this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/xray

Trying out that mod on some experimental save would be very enlightening. Most resources that people claim are rare are in fact extremely common and abundant. That specifically includes clay, bees and halite.

[Forceous]

The clay struggle was real for me as well, but not as bad as some others in this thread, it took me about 2 hours to find my first clay, later on I found so many that I think I’m set for my whole play through when it comes to clay. Although I just wish it was easier to find it, I think it might deter a lot of people from playing the game.

[vinnland]

In game settings, put realistic map colors on (i forgot the name), and on the mini map, clay is really easy to see.

[Ravensblade]

I understand that struggle. I spend few hours to search for clay in several seeds. Then after finally finding it in 4 seed i noticed like 4 more in return trip, the closest one was like 50 blocks from my camp. I think the hard part is If I'm new player I don't know what to look for, similar i couldn't find flint or most crops and need to check every stone and flower. After a while I can notice them easily.

What i did on my 4th seed was just typing /time stop, check around my vicinity if i have all basic resources with no rush, then returning to spawn and typing /time resume. It's very hard at the beginning when you need to check every recipe, have no idea what you need next and you have time limit to night etc.

Edited January 27 by Ravensblade

[YordaEatsMelon]

Hi! Something that helped make finding clay easier is when using the Terra Prety mod; the deposits are easier to make out and learn to distinguish, though the terrain generation still includes vanilla's notoriously hard to find versions of clay deposits. I attached a screenshot of what that looks like. The light-pink rock/cloud icon up top and to the west is clay; you can see ive dug up some already--this is one i found using the map. The other deposits, in a lavender rock/cloud icon color are peat; these are by far the easiest to see on the map.

The ability to see it heavily depends on two things, which I think others have mentioned already: 1) your ability to perceive color, and 2) the screen or display you are using. An example of the latter... I have an identical twin sister who plays VS with me sometimes. However, we have two very different monitors. Though resolution difference (2k vs 4k) doesn't make much of a difference, the screen quality is insane in how it affects our ability to detect deposits depending on which pc we are looking at. Mine is an OLED, hers is a backlit LED but an older kind where the color balance is often iffy even with correction and it doesnt look good unless you are square in front of it (off-angle viewing is terrible). They were both clearance laptops, but still--we sometimes have to rely on my screenshots in-between play sessions to collaborate on where resources, verified and possible, are found.

 

[Toroic]

Clay can be super annoying if you get a bad seed, I generally reroll the world if I didn't find some within the first 30 minutes of exploring as it can vary wildly based on seed.  I've done some debug checks and I've had numerous red clay deposits, one huge blue clay deposit, or nothing within the first 200 blocks of spawn.

Unfortunately both clay and iron tend to go from "I'm progression gated until I find this critical resource" to "This one source is enough for 10 years in-game"

[Bruno Willis]

My favorite world so far was one I didn't find clay in for many, many hours. I think 3 days of playing. I also had a total of 10 cat-tails on the land-mass I was on. I had to invest a huge amount of time exploring, gathering seeds, building, doing any other task, and at the end of it I really understood my area, and really knew where was the best spot for a long-term base. And it turned out a huge deposit of clay was 10 blocks away from my main garden the whole time. 

This game isn't about rushing progression. Take your time, if there's no clay, focus on something else. It'll be there, and you'll see it as soon as you stop looking.

[LadyWYT]

16 minutes ago, Bruno Willis said:

his game isn't about rushing progression. Take your time, if there's no clay, focus on something else. It'll be there, and you'll see it as soon as you stop looking.

It's also not unusual for one or two resources to be missing from the world spawn/whatever area was settled in, and require the player to do a bit of searching to find the resource that they're after. Sometimes it's clay, sometimes it's borax, sometimes it's limestone/chalk, sometimes it's bauxite, etc. What is rather unusual is getting everything needed for progression within a reasonable stroll of the world spawn.

[Broccoli Clock]

As someone who watches quite a lot of "playing blind" videos for VS, I recognise there is definitely some confusion with clay, and I think the issue manifests due to a very specific influence. Because people have played Minecraft they just assume this is the same. Its clay appears as light grey blocks in water, and just about every first time player has gone to grey blocks underwater expecting clay. It's going to be sand, of course, but the problem is their meta is so driven by another game that when they find that clay is not the same, it is somehow a slight on VS. 

Should VS bend to the will of Microsoft and change clay? Obviously not. However, as it does seem to be a bit of a problem for people starting their playthrough, and you obviously want to onboard people as quickly as possible as early game frustration can kill any positive vibes a player starts with, then perhaps the spawning mechanic could be altered so that there are a few blocks (not much, but enough for the player to recognise for future use) of clay are spawned near your initial spawn point. It seems that almost every playthrough I've had there has been a trader near my spawn point, and I've always assumed (I could be wrong) that this is done for onboarding as the traders are a source for the initial lore. Could the same be done for clay? I wouldn't want a spawn point to have all the riches laid out for you, but having some clay nearby your start wouldn't (imo) alter the balance of the early game. In fact, due to beds not setting a spawn point, and presumably the player dying a few times in their first attempt, it would mean more traffic around the area of your spawn and in turn increase the chance your player has of finding it.

One other thing I'd do, although this is adjacent rather than specific, but I'd try and find a way for players to be aware if the info box at the top of the screen. Countless times new players look at something, it'll display what it is at the top of the screen, it'll be something the player will need, yet they will be unaware of that despite the game clearly telling them so. The amount of first time players that do not read that text is as surprising as it is frustrating to watch!

[CastIronFabric]

16 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

 

This game isn't about rushing progression. Take your time, if there's no clay, focus on something else. It'll be there, and you'll see it as soon as you stop looking.

Lets be fair, you kinda cant.

when its time you really need it otherwise you are stuck

Edited January 30 by CastIronFabric

[marmarmar34]

50 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

Lets be fair, you kinda cant.

when its time you really need it otherwise you are stuck

Clay is definitely an integral resource to have, especially starting out. It's also required throughout every tier of progression. That being said, it's also the simplest to aquire.

Newer players don't seem to understand the power panning provides. It will get you flint, copper, clay, and other more rare resources you'd be hard pressed acquiring later on. As long as you are able to find 2 stones for knapping, 1 stick for a tool's shaft, and a tree, you will have access to a wide variety of valuable resources.

[CastIronFabric]

15 minutes ago, marmarmar34 said:

Clay is definitely an integral resource to have, especially starting out. It's also required throughout every tier of progression. That being said, it's also the simplest to aquire.

Newer players don't seem to understand the power panning provides. It will get you flint, copper, clay, and other more rare resources you'd be hard pressed acquiring later on. As long as you are able to find 2 stones for knapping, 1 stick for a tool's shaft, and a tree, you will have access to a wide variety of valuable resources.

no.

I can not agree that panning is a good solution for not finding clay. Unless your on a trek to go 10,000 blocks south you are going to need a lot of clay within your first hour of game play. Your not going to get 125 clay pieces by panning and putting all the extra stuff in reed baskets.

Edited January 30 by CastIronFabric

[marmarmar34]

6 hours ago, CastIronFabric said:

no.

I can not agree that panning is a good solution for not finding clay. Unless your on a trek to go 10,000 blocks south you are going to need a lot of clay within your first hour of game play. Your not going to get 125 clay pieces by panning and putting all the extra stuff in reed baskets.

Erm, yes actually. 

It's a reliable source of consistent copper, flint, and clay. Granted, you're not going to end up with oodles of clay, but you'd have more than enough for the bare essentials. 

[Bruno Willis]

7 hours ago, CastIronFabric said:

Lets be fair, you kinda cant.

when its time you really need it otherwise you are stuck

There is a progression tree which requires you to have clay, sure. But the game isn't about chugging through a progression tree, it's about setting up to survive winter, then getting ready and getting into the story. When I can't find clay, that means no cooking pot and no storage vessels through crafting. I think about my goals before winter: garden, house, food supply. I'll do hunting runs, looking for seeds (and clay), and I'll get my garden sorted. If I still don't have clay I'll improve my home base, keep looking for seeds (and clay), and get some bear armor and an improvised shield to start surviving fights. Then if I still don't have clay I'll go looking for caves (and clay) and run through the caves. You never know: you can find cooking pots, bowls, storage vessels, even little bits of clay in ruins. If you do manage to get set up from looting ruins, I guarantee you'll find a big deposit of clay right next to your base the following day. 

The point is not to obsess over tech progression to the detriment of game progression. There are other useful things to do. Think of it as a challenge run.

[CastIronFabric]

15 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

There is a progression tree which requires you to have clay, sure. But the game isn't about chugging through a progression tree, it's about setting up to survive winter, then getting ready and getting into the story. When I can't find clay, that means no cooking pot and no storage vessels through crafting. I think about my goals before winter: garden, house, food supply. I'll do hunting runs, looking for seeds (and clay), and I'll get my garden sorted. If I still don't have clay I'll improve my home base, keep looking for seeds (and clay), and get some bear armor and an improvised shield to start surviving fights. Then if I still don't have clay I'll go looking for caves (and clay) and run through the caves. You never know: you can find cooking pots, bowls, storage vessels, even little bits of clay in ruins. If you do manage to get set up from looting ruins, I guarantee you'll find a big deposit of clay right next to your base the following day. 

The point is not to obsess over tech progression to the detriment of game progression. There are other useful things to do. Think of it as a challenge run.

I am not going to engage in such a conversation about clay