Best Mining Techniques

[LtGerbal]

Hey folks. Newish player here, still below the 100hr mark. I've played a few saves and can reliably get to the copper age, but once it comes time to find tin and iron, I struggle. I find oodles of copper using the surface nuggets trick, but never properly figured out how to find ores where that trick doesn't apply. So far the only methods I've thought of are to guess and check for an asinine amount of time with the propick or just quarry an entire chunk.

What do you guys do to find crucial ore? Any techniques and/or tricks to make it feel less like shooting blind?
 

[Sashimi]

You need a prospecting pickaxe, it has a radius check, and a big area check, that tells you the concentration of ores. So you can sort of probe like that. And also a bit of luck, and searching. 

Good luck. 

[ArgentLuna]

I like to cave dive and have found a lot of my metals that way but having the ProPick augments that and not everyone plays a Blackguard who likes to spelunk

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums(and the game)!

1 hour ago, LtGerbal said:

What do you guys do to find crucial ore? Any techniques and/or tricks to make it feel less like shooting blind?

The typical method I use for locating most ores is using the density search mode on the propick to take samples across a wide range of territory. When I find a spot that looks promising for whatever ore I'm looking for, I'll do a few more density searches in that specific area to get an idea of the best digging spot, then sink a shaft straight down with ladders and sample every 12 blocks or so with the propick's node search to see what's actually there. If I don't find any leads in the shaft itself, I'll sometimes dig a few branches outwards and take more node search samples to see if there is any ore that I missed by a hair; if no luck I return to the surface and dig somewhere else.

When it comes to picking a spot to dig, you generally want a reading that is Decent or better, but if it's a rare mineral like chromite or otherwise the only lead you have on that mineral, it doesn't hurt to check Poor or Very Poor readings as well, especially for common minerals like tin.

Do note that when it comes to tin, you really only need tin bronze to make the pickaxe for the treasure hunter's quest, and even then tin bronze picks can be purchased from other traders so making one isn't a hard requirement. Bismuth bronze and black bronze are options as well, though black bronze isn't very feasible since it's an alloy of gold, silver, and copper. Bismuth bronze is an alloy of bismuth, zinc, and copper, so if you're having trouble locating tin it's a good idea to keep an eye out for those minerals instead.

Iron can be a bit harder to track down due to the sheer size of the deposits. I want to say there's some bit in the code that's meant to keep too many iron veins from spawning near each other since each one is so massive, but I'm not 100% sure. In any case, if there's one at your dig site, it will be easy to find, as they are pretty hard to miss. I would say the more important thing to consider here is what kind of iron ore you're looking for. Hematite tends to be the easiest one to find, while magnetite is very hit or miss. I'd recommend checking hematite readings before magnetite readings, unless the rock layers are predominantly andesite, as magnetite is the only iron ore that andesite can host. Limonite I've only found once, and that was purely by accident, so I don't recommend searching for this one specifically unless you have an actual reading on it.

[LtGerbal]

59 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Welcome to the forums(and the game)!

The typical method I use for locating most ores is using the density search mode on the propick to take samples across a wide range of territory. When I find a spot that looks promising for whatever ore I'm looking for, I'll do a few more density searches in that specific area to get an idea of the best digging spot, then sink a shaft straight down with ladders and sample every 12 blocks or so with the propick's node search to see what's actually there. If I don't find any leads in the shaft itself, I'll sometimes dig a few branches outwards and take more node search samples to see if there is any ore that I missed by a hair; if no luck I return to the surface and dig somewhere else.

When it comes to picking a spot to dig, you generally want a reading that is Decent or better, but if it's a rare mineral like chromite or otherwise the only lead you have on that mineral, it doesn't hurt to check Poor or Very Poor readings as well, especially for common minerals like tin.

Do note that when it comes to tin, you really only need tin bronze to make the pickaxe for the treasure hunter's quest, and even then tin bronze picks can be purchased from other traders so making one isn't a hard requirement. Bismuth bronze and black bronze are options as well, though black bronze isn't very feasible since it's an alloy of gold, silver, and copper. Bismuth bronze is an alloy of bismuth, zinc, and copper, so if you're having trouble locating tin it's a good idea to keep an eye out for those minerals instead.

Iron can be a bit harder to track down due to the sheer size of the deposits. I want to say there's some bit in the code that's meant to keep too many iron veins from spawning near each other since each one is so massive, but I'm not 100% sure. In any case, if there's one at your dig site, it will be easy to find, as they are pretty hard to miss. I would say the more important thing to consider here is what kind of iron ore you're looking for. Hematite tends to be the easiest one to find, while magnetite is very hit or miss. I'd recommend checking hematite readings before magnetite readings, unless the rock layers are predominantly andesite, as magnetite is the only iron ore that andesite can host. Limonite I've only found once, and that was purely by accident, so I don't recommend searching for this one specifically unless you have an actual reading on it.

Thank you for the comprehensive advice. Will definitely try my luck with this.

 

[pigfood]

IME, iron is a lot easier to find than large amounts of copper and the other components for bronze. The iron deposit size is huge.

I wouldn't go for bismuth bronze, unless I stumbled upon deposits. The alloy component deposits for tin/bismuth/zinc are small and you need a lot more for bismuth bronze compared to tin bronze.

You only need small amounts of tin to progress to the iron age and buying it from a commodities trader is a very viable option. Meteoric iron is also very easy to find, if you know what to look for. I'm sitting on 250 ingots worth in my current game. You need an iron anvil to process meteoric iron and an iron pick-axe to mine it, but you get to skip the bloom processing stuff with meteoric iron.

In terms of digging mining shafts down, you only need a ladder every other block. You should be placing ladders while you dig, otherwise you will hit and fall into a cave sooner or later with decent chance of dying.

Edited Sunday at 11:00 AM by pigfood

[williams_482]

An alternative to placing ladders as you dig is to dig down in a two-block column, straddling the two blocks so that even if you dig into a cavern, you'll still have a block to stand on*. A nice side benefit of this is that because you can dig three blocks below you at a time and your initial node searches with the prospecting pick should be done 12 blocks apart, it's easy to maintain the correct increments.

Obviously, you will still want the ladders to get back up again. You just don't need to pause every other block to place them. 

* Technically it is still possible to fall using this approach. If the block you are standing on was entirely supported by the block you broke, it will drop out from under you as a relieved stone block, plunging you into some god forsaken pit filled with who knows what. But that's very unlikely, so why worry about it?

[Vexxvididu]

rope ladders!  They are reusable.  I carry a stack of them everywhere.