beginner's doubt about many things

[lilith99]

i would like to know how tedious this game is normally supposed to be in standard preset without any custom tweak, I'm trying to find limestone rock, in my world all i come across are only useless stones like conglomerate and shale stones, i have gone 3k blocks away and all i see still are these useless stones, in the handbook, you are told to dig through the sedimentary layers to find any other stones, but i don't know how far/blocks should i keep search/dig in between, or do limestones spawn in small patches covered and surround by useless stones, same with finding ores beyond copper, even using prospecting pick, it's still very vague on how much the range is long range search? and if finding strong reading, how much within the range should i need to do short range pick? it seems copper tools aren't recyclable from what i know(which doesn't make sense, a simple google search "is copper recyclable" would tell you it's fully recyclable), will there be enough copper for me to waste on grid-dot-way of mining all the stones for finding anything? I'm about 60 hours playtime, i still ignore hunger and die everyday after a year, because with current gears, dying to creatures after eating feels like a huge time waste on preparing food, i don't know if dying is normal and a viable choice when not exploring far even for a veteran player. And one more, why is the handbook states: "METAMORPHIC layers will always occur below sedimentary layers, but ABOVE IGNEOUS layers" then in next paragraph "IGNEOUS layers always occur below sedimentary AND METAMORPHIC layers" in my world, Andesite rocks always occur above Phyllite rocks.

Also I try to avoid reading any wiki information or guide, because i really hate it when people say"yeah "x" game is completely playable without wiki, the game tells you everything you need to progress" when it's clearly not. sure you can live and work without vehicle in real life, but is it practical? Sorry for my bad English.

[V1ncent]

Well, if you are looking for lime for leathermaking, some alternates exist. Both chalk and marble can also be grinded in quern to create lime.

Speaking of searching for certain rock layer, to my experience, mostly luck tbh. You will probably find bauxite or Peridotite the next obstacle sooner or later...

[Forceous]

Have you tried looking for white patches in mountains? I have Limestone rock all around me in mountains.

[lilith99]

2 hours ago, V1ncent said:

Well, if you are looking for lime for leathermaking, some alternates exist. Both chalk and marble can also be grinded in quern to create lime.

Speaking of searching for certain rock layer, to my experience, mostly luck tbh. You will probably find bauxite or Peridotite the next obstacle sooner or later...

i know there are other alts for lime, but still all i come across on surface are still only conglomerate and shale stone, i would dig through sedimentary layers to find it but i don't know how much range would those stones change horizontally.

21 minutes ago, Forceous said:

Have you tried looking for white patches in mountains? I have Limestone rock all around me in mountains.

on surface which are visible without digging? maybe not... i may miss, but it's still too rare? why are there excess amount of conglomerate and shale stones?

[Maelstrom]

The horizontal area for rock strata can be huge to massive.  Unlike TOBG where surface terrain changes within usually a couple hundred blocks, VS changes can be (and usually is) about 1,000 blocks.   Want to find a different surface rock strata?   Pack a lunch and run in a single direction for a day or so.   Consider yourself lucky that you didn't spawn in granite.  Those can be truly massive being close to 2,000 blocks to get away from that bland grayness.

[lilith99]

so can limestone layers occur like how excessive conglomerate stone are or only in small patches within other sedimentary rocks?

[williams_482]

Limestone (and chalk) absolutely can spawn in huge patches like the other rocks you mention. You aren't looking for a small deposit like with clay or peat, but a whole layer of white rock. As mentioned above these are easiest to spot when they form in mountainous regions and the bands of different rock colors become visible in a cliff edge, but it should be easy enough to tell if you've wandered into a flat limestone or chalk region by looking at what kind of loose rocks are lying on the ground. 

If you are desperate for lime and can't find any limestone, chalk, or marble, your two alternatives are prospecting for borax (requires a bronze or better pick) or grinding seashells to get lime. 

7 hours ago, lilith99 said:

I'm about 60 hours playtime, i still ignore hunger and die everyday after a year, because with current gears, dying to creatures after eating feels like a huge time waste on preparing food, i don't know if dying is normal and a viable choice when not exploring far even for a veteran player.

God, that sounds miserable! No, constantly starving to death is not typical for veteran players under anything but the most extreme circumstances. If you dig up every wild crop you find and plant all the seeds in tilled medium fertility soil adjacent to water, you should have all the vegetables and grains you could hope to eat after a couple of in-game months. It also helps to grab the bush whenever you pick berries, and replant it near your base for easy access when it fruits again in two months.

Hunting is more dangerous and labor intensive while animal husbandry is more complicated and benefits greatly from having farms set up, so those are less worth worrying about, but farming is very easy once you get the hang of what wild crops look like, and very lucrative. I'd strongly recommend prioritizing setting up a good sized farm over traversing hill and dale to find lime for leather.

[lilith99]

but i would still die from 2-3 hits from bear, wolf or mobs, doesn't that make preparing food and eating a waste? and having armor equipped at all time slow down movement by a lot to me... though it only hinders small amount of things which are mostly neglectable as i'm not traveling far. i do have a bunch of vegs preserved and not eating, i still able to collect what's around respawn point...

[williams_482]

Eating gives you more hit points to work with (+2.5 max HP per nutrition bar, and you should be able to max out fruit, veg, and grain from just berries and your farm). Not starving all the time also means you will slowly heal damage instead of slowly wasting away. Having a larger and full hit point pool gives you a much better chance of surviving when you do get into a fight. And of course you won't have to deal with the nonstop sad clarinet (or whatever voice you chose) as you constantly take starvation damage. 

You should be able to greatly limit your exposure to bears and wolves by avoiding forested areas. Wolves are tricky to fight, but manageable with a few flint spears and maybe a crude shield. Just be careful to take them on one at a time, as getting swarmed is much more problematic. Bears are another story, fighting them is hopeless without iron gear and/or a lot of experience.

When you do find a bear in an area you want to access you have a few options, but the simplest is to dig a 4 deep pit, put a light source at the bottom, get the bear to chase you towards the pit, and then jump over it so the bear falls in. If you do this with nothing in your inventory you can also just jump into the pit and let the bear kill you. Once the bear is in the pit with an artificial light source, just leave it there (but mark it somehow, so you don't fall in yourself by accident). It will not be able to escape and no other bears will spawn in that immediate area. 

As for drifters and the like, limit your time outside at night unless rift levels are calm. If you're at home you can make clay stuff, pan bony soil, cook food, or do whatever other indoor tasks need doing. If you're out and about, dig yourself a little safe space in the side of a hill and use a hay bed to sleep through the night. 

Edited February 3 by williams_482

[LadyWYT]

8 hours ago, lilith99 said:

I'm trying to find limestone rock, in my world all i come across are only useless stones like conglomerate and shale stones

Those rocks aren't as useless as you might think. Assuming that you're looking for limestone for leatherworking purposes, there are other ways to get what you need. Chalk and marble can both be crushed into lime, though the latter is a rare find that you'll more likely want for building if you find it. Borax is a mineral that spawns in sediment rocks(which includes conglomerate and shale) and is not only more efficient than lime for leatherworking, but also required for working steel and meteoric iron.

Seashells can also be crushed for lime, producing two lime per shell, though this is also a tedious way to get lime. Commodities and Survival Goods traders often have lime to sell, so if you can't find a source then you might consider trade.

8 hours ago, lilith99 said:

you are told to dig through the sedimentary layers to find any other stones

While rock layers are a thing, generally it's better to find some cliffs or caves and examine the layers that way, rather than dig. 

 

8 hours ago, lilith99 said:

even using prospecting pick, it's still very vague on how much the range is long range search? and if finding strong reading, how much within the range should i need to do short range pick? it seems copper tools aren't recyclable from what i know(which doesn't make sense, a simple google search "is copper recyclable" would tell you it's fully recyclable), will there be enough copper for me to waste on grid-dot-way of mining all the stones for finding anything?

The prospecting pick's density search covers the general area of that chunk; it's a bit more complex than that, technically, but for general gameplay purposes it servers good enough. Once you've sampled an area, you don't need to sample again(unless you're trying to pinpoint the best dig site for a specific ore) and should sample much further away in order to cover the most territory.

Do note that the density search will only give you an idea of what ore could have spawned in that area, and not what actually did. When it comes to finding ore, you'll want to dig a mineshaft(going straight down via ladder is fine--you won't fall off ladders unless you physically move off the ladder block) and sample every twelve blocks or so with the propick's node search--that will tell you exactly what ore is there, if the ore is within the six block search radius. Generally, you will want to dig at readings that are Decent or better, but it doesn't hurt to check Poor/Very Poor readings if that's all you're got to work with or the ore you're looking for is rare.

As for whether there's enough copper to keep yourself equipped with copper equipment...yes, there should be plenty of surface copper to work with by default. If it's a big concern though, you might consider seeking out a deep copper deposit via prospecting, as deep ore deposits are much more lucrative than surface deposits.

8 hours ago, lilith99 said:

i still ignore hunger and die everyday after a year

Food supply should be your primary concern in Vintage Story, regardless if you are a new player or veteran player. If you don't have a good supply established, you're going to find doing anything else in the game to be very difficult.

 

8 hours ago, lilith99 said:

dying to creatures after eating feels like a huge time waste on preparing food, i don't know if dying is normal and a viable choice when not exploring far even for a veteran player.

Dying to creatures is fairly normal, even for veteran players, but the player should still take precautions to avoid death by creature, such as practicing situational awareness(stop and look around for threats every so often) and being equipped to handle threats that can't otherwise be avoided.

Dying regularly to starvation, however, is not normal outside of occasional early game difficulties. As I said above, establishing a food supply is the first goal a player should work towards.

8 hours ago, lilith99 said:

And one more, why is the handbook states: "METAMORPHIC layers will always occur below sedimentary layers, but ABOVE IGNEOUS layers" then in next paragraph "IGNEOUS layers always occur below sedimentary AND METAMORPHIC layers" in my world, Andesite rocks always occur above Phyllite rocks.

It's probably an oversight, as the handbook, while solid, is still being refined. However, igneous rock will always form the bottom layers of the strata, while sediment rock will always be the very top layers when it generates. Metamorphic rock will either be on the very top or very bottom.

 

8 hours ago, lilith99 said:

Also I try to avoid reading any wiki information or guide, because i really hate it when people say"yeah "x" game is completely playable without wiki, the game tells you everything you need to progress" when it's clearly not. sure you can live and work without vehicle in real life, but is it practical?

Playing this way is fine, but it's also not a bad idea to look up information or otherwise ask for help if you find yourself getting stuck, lost, or otherwise confused when playing the game. The handbook does have all the information that a player needs to learn to play, however, sometimes it helps to watch a visual guide or get a more detailed answer from a more experienced player.

 

29 minutes ago, lilith99 said:

but i would still die from 2-3 hits from bear, wolf or mobs, doesn't that make preparing food and eating a waste? and having armor equipped at all time slow down movement by a lot to me...

Bears and wolves are lethal, yes, but they can also be avoided with relative ease. Pay attention to your surroundings and be especially careful in areas like forest and shrubland where it's much easier for threats to sneak up on you. As for armor, wearing it will increase hunger and slow movement, but the penalties also depend on armor class and player class. While it's easier to outrun threats when unencumbered by armor, it's easier to fight threats if you wear armor. Armor doesn't make you invincible, but it can mitigate enough damage to allow you to survive fights you otherwise would have died in. I will also note that you don't need to wear armor all the time either; it's fine to only equip it when you need to.

As for "wasting food"...if you're starving to death, that food you saved is already getting wasted. Most food will spoil, and if you're dying to starvation despite food being available it's the same as the food being non-existent. As @williams_482 also noted already, food provides nutrition, and nutrition provides boosts to maximum health, which helps you stay alive. When you die, that nutrition is cut in half.

Edit: One thing I forgot to mention: if you're struggling with the game at the default settings, you might consider turning down certain features like creature damage and hunger rate. Most settings can even be changed after creating the world by running a command or two and reloading the world for the changes to take effect.

Edited February 3 by LadyWYT

[lilith99]

but the real thing i feel is that, when im not worry about hunger, i won't always be on toes while maintaining hunger, it's less things to manage, and more relax to me that i don't have to keep worrying about will i lose all my nutrition buffs... maybe because im not traveling, it doesn't affect much of what i need to do around respawn point, and yes the hurting sound from starving is really annoying, i would just turn down volume.

Edited February 3 by lilith99

[LadyWYT]

19 minutes ago, lilith99 said:

i won't always be on toes while maintaining hunger, it's less things to manage

It might be less things to manage, but the lack of food will severely impede your ability to progress in the rest of the game. Securing a food supply is managing your hunger, and it's something that players need to do throughout the game. Farms and livestock make the management easier, but it's a challenge that is always present. 

 

21 minutes ago, lilith99 said:

more relax to me that i don't have to keep worrying about will i lose all my nutrition buffs...

While it's true that you don't need to worry about losing nutrition buffs if you never acquire them, the same could be said about pretty much every else in the game. That's not really a very fun way to play the game though, at least for most players.

Nutrition buffs also aren't terribly hard to build back up after death. Eating a good meal or two is typically enough to restore most lost nutrition.

24 minutes ago, lilith99 said:

maybe because im not traveling, it doesn't affect much of what i need to do around respawn point

With all due respect, you're not going to get very far in Vintage Story if you limit yourself to staying in the general area around spawn. If the default hunger rate is proving to be a bit much to manage, I highly recommend turning it down so that it won't be as much of a concern.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

With all due respect, you're not going to get very far in Vintage Story if you limit yourself to staying in the general area around spawn. If the default hunger rate is proving to be a bit much to manage, I highly recommend turning it down so that it won't be as much of a concern.

Yeah, given that some story locations are several thousand blocks away, if you never eat, you'll never make it there before you die.

[Ratbatboo]

Lilith, I've been playing for about three weeks, and while it was a tough start, the advice you're being given is hugely helpful here. Similar advice helped me enjoy the game a lot more.

Right now you're stuck looking for lime. Pack a couple of crockpots of meals and a dish to eat them with, and go on a long range adventure, burrowing into hills and bedding down on beds made from dry grass overnight. Pack light. Run like hell from predators. Scavenge berries and shrooms as you go to make your home-cooked meals last longer. Loop back (because the route you took will have fewer berries and shrooms now, AND you want to see a different area on the way back!). Look for white stones on the ground. Check your radar often. Sometimes you'll see white patches on your radar where an open-roofed cave is showing its stone floor. But lime/marble/tanning aside, in the long run:

#1, this is a game about survival in a harsh, primitive environment. You can eventually make it less primitive, but survive first! Dying is the opposite of how you should be playing (with some small exceptions like the above comment about using your bod to lure a bear into a pit (Make sure it's 3x3! They said 4 deep, but it needs to be wide, too. Bears are big!)
#2, eating well makes you stronger. Period. Full stop. Secure your food supply first. Winter is coming, and if you think the wolves and the bears are unforgiving, have I got bad news for you about THE COLD. Prioritize a farm and make sure it has adjacent water and medium soil. Rings of eight blocks around a block of water are good, feel free to plunk that medium soil down in shallow water to make it that way before you can get a bucket. Plant all the seeds you can find. Later you'll need to worry about soil chemistry, but your first year needs to be all about surviving winter! Move thirty or forty berry bushes near your temporary home so once they start bearing fruit again you'll have a steady supply (later, you can use all those berries you aren't eating for making better soil, etc.). Mark edible mushroom patches when you harvest them, they will return in a few months.
#3, find clay and make lots of storage jars and crock pots. Both of these make your food last longer, even uncooked. (They also make hides last longer if you're out of fat to preserve them with!) Find bees. Crank up your volume in the forest and follow the buzzing sounds, keeping an eye on the trees (I also use a few mods for this, one called buzzwords and one called Buzzy Bees: these give you a visual written signal that you can use to home in on a hive as well as particle bees that are easier to see...It's HARD to keep track of listening for a buzzy sound when you're keeping an eye out for wolves, bears, and veggies!). Make a skep and set it within 5 blocks of the hive (vertical counts!) along with a bunch of flowers. Once it's populated, you can pick it up in a bag slot and take it home and put it near your crops. The bees will make your crops grow faster and provide honey and beeswax. The beeswax can be used to seal crockpots to make them last crazy long.
4, after you've got all of the above sorted (except perhaps the bees), then it's time to go adventure mode, grab copper and bootstrap yourself into metal working, make leather, and then maybe go looking for trouble.

At this point, I usually can sort out individual wolves using improvised armor, a club, a couple of spears (for throwing, both to start the fight and to finish it when they run) and a crude shield, but I'm playing a Malefactor so most of the time when I scouting I just run like there's wolves after me. XD Bears? Run. When you've got your spear-chucking down, you can think about jousting with a bear, putting a spear in it, then running back past it at an angle until you get enough range to turn and throw again, picking up fallen spears on the go, but I'm sure not there yet.

Grab yourself a couple of box lunches and a dish, and travel! You'll probably find some useable stone within a handful of hours, and you'll see a lot more of the world and maybe spot some places you'd like to move a base to.

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, Ratbatboo said:

Secure your food supply first. Winter is coming

For what it's worth, winter is survivable without food stores. It's just going to be very brutal. Hunting will pretty much be the only option, as crops(wild or otherwise) won't be growing. Currently, if you venture into newly generated chunks, you can find mushrooms and berries to harvest regardless of time of year, but that's really not a method that a player should be reliant on when it comes to staying alive.

[Thorfinn]

5 hours ago, Ratbatboo said:

Pack a couple of crockpots of meals and a dish to eat them with

I'd swap one of those crocks with a cooking pot. It's pretty easy to forage enough while running, and then you have something to do before bedding down for the night. Other than that, good, solid advice.

 

12 hours ago, williams_482 said:

If you do this with nothing in your inventory you can also just jump into the pit and let the bear kill you.

Or, you can build your pit such that you can take advantage of the fact that a bear can't fit in a 1-wide corridor.

[lilith99]

i have to be clear that it's not that i want to stay starving the entire game, it's just that the terrain are so huge and no information on how much range it changes horizontally, i don't know what to do beside running around spawn point collecting things i come across, and because it's near spawn point, i find that constantly starving to death does not hinder me from doing that, i know how to hunt wolf and bear when i see them first, but to travel far it's inevitable to face forest and need to pass through, sometimes those trees even obscuring me to run toward terrain dead end when fleeing from predators, i will die no matter how much i eat, even i don't die, i still need to go back and heal passively, i would never want to make healing items because how fast i would burn through stacks of them and spend time again collecting resources...

once i know more about how terrain changes and generated, of course i would start maintaining hunger, with not knowing how to find anything what i want, it feel aimless and a waste of time maintaining hunger and nutrition buff.

Edited February 4 by lilith99

[lilith99]

initially i thought "i don't know what would come at me, and how long winter lasts till crops-farm-able time, why bother before i know more about the game?" so i preserved all crops i farm and not eating, then as i keep playing, i'm just used to the "starve to death cycle" and keep doing it, because i don't know what to do beside collecting things i see around.

[Forceous]

58 minutes ago, lilith99 said:

i have to be clear that it's not that i want to stay starving the entire game, it's just that the terrain are so huge and no information on how much range it changes horizontally, i don't know what to do beside running around spawn point collecting things i come across, and because it's near spawn point, i find that constantly starving to death does not hinder me from doing that, i know how to hunt wolf and bear when i see them first, but to travel far it's inevitable to face forest and need to pass through, sometimes those trees even obscuring me to run toward terrain dead end when fleeing from predators, i will die no matter how much i eat, even i don't die, i still need to go back and heal passively, i would never want to make healing items because how fast i would burn through stacks of them and spend time again collecting resources...

once i know more about how terrain changes and generated, of course i would start maintaining hunger, with not knowing how to find anything what i want, it feel aimless and a waste of time maintaining hunger and nutrition buff.

Focus on getting your food situation solved, progress through the ages, build and expand on your base and make it cozy, there is tons of hours of content by just doing these three things. You say you don't know what to do except running around the spawn point and collecting stuff, solving your hunger problem is something to do, progressing through the ages is one of the main progression lines in the game. Once you solve your hunger problem and get a proper base and tools, you'll unlock most of the game, you will be able to explore far and not stay stuck within your base. I haven't died to starvation once because that was one of my initial goals when I started my world, it's very easy to not die from starvation if you just run around look for berries and take the bushes with you back to the base.

Also don't hunt wolf and bear, it's the biggest waste of time and energy, the bushmeat is low quality, expires fast and doesn't give much satiety. Instead hunt boar, sheep, goats, bunnies, they give high quality red meat which you can cook into stews and last for much longer and gives lots of satiety. Find seeds and grow crops, make an oven and you can bake bread and pies with berries and the crops which last for a very long time especially in a cellar. The game's main goal isn't to progress as fast as possible but to survive, a lot of great tips have been already said in this thread just make sure to follow them.

Edited February 4 by Forceous

[lilith99]

I'm more surprised that it seems like only me doing this thing people considered terrible and miserable? it's just not wanting to waste resource before i know more about the game, eating full meal just to get kill afterward is more discouraging than starving to death... at least it's what i feel.

normally if i die this many times when i play other games, i would lose motivation, but not in this game, it certainly mean that it's not that punishing "WHEN I'M NOT TRAVELLING"

 

thanks for all your advice, after all i still don't know what to do with prospecting pick for finding ore beyond copper, am i just supposed to find high reading places then randomly decide how much range should i proceed to do dot-grid short range pick? because this thought makes me think it's inefficient and tedious...

[Forceous]

2 minutes ago, lilith99 said:

I'm more surprised that it seems like only me doing this thing people considered terrible and miserable? it's just not wanting to waste resource before i know more about the game, eating full meal just to get kill afterward is more discouraging than starving to death... at least it's what i feel.

Don't think about it like that, it's not hard to not die in the game as long as you're careful, and the food you're saving is just rotting away. Again once you have a proper food making system going on at your base you'll never really run out of food and you won't need to be afraid of wasting anything.

Dying is just part of the game sometimes, you shouldn't be afraid of death, if it comes it comes and you just get half of your hunger bar taken away.

4 minutes ago, lilith99 said:

thanks for all your advice, after all i still don't know what to do with prospecting pick for finding ore beyond copper, am i just supposed to find high reading places then randomly decide how much range should i proceed to do dot-grid short range pick? because this thought makes me think it's inefficient and tedious...

You can read a guide about it, or watch a YouTube video. There are lots of effective methods on how to use it, and most people say that it's a fun activity.

[lilith99]

i play many other survival games, i don't look at external info or guide because i hate those people saying "you don't need wiki", and want to prove them wrong, initially i still struggle to find berries, yes there maybe tons of them, but some places don't have any when i search the wrong place, also they spoil so quickly, sometimes i get surpass amount, sometimes i get nothing till starving to death. also the hunger rate decrease too fast and food value compare to other survival games, a bear and a wolf only last about 1.5 day, all the veggies i preserved are still well with many months left even after a year, i read every guide in handbook, but still stuck after getting copper.

Edited February 4 by lilith99

[MKMoose]

1 hour ago, lilith99 said:

i still don't know what to do with prospecting pick for finding ore beyond copper, am i just supposed to find high reading places then randomly decide how much range should i proceed to do dot-grid short range pick? because this thought makes me think it's inefficient and tedious...

If you're interested, then the general strategy is to perform a density search every ~80-200 blocks, and once you scan a nearby area this way, then sink vertical shafts in areas with decently high readings for the ores you're after. It's generally not necessary to dig the shafts more frequently than every ~20-25 blocks. Ladders are often favored for vertical movement, especially rope ladders since they are more easily reusable. If you're not familiar with the exact generation mechanisms, then it's often optimal to sink the shafts nearly all the way down to the mantle (~110 blocks deep), and repeat until you get what you're after.

While digging a shaft, take a node search (short-range) reading every ~5-10 blocks (assuming you're using the default range of 6). This allows you to determine the approximate depth of deposits, e.g. if you take readings at 8-block intervals and get a result two times in a row, then it's quite likely that the deposit is near the middle depth between these samples. Once you have an approximate depth, dig horizontal side tunnels at that depth in different directions to attempt to locate higher short-range readings at ~5-block intervals, and dig a couple blocks up and down when you find higher readings to see if the deposit is slightly above or below.

Be careful about temporal stability while underground - if you notice the cyan gear in the middle of the hotbar rotating counterclockwise and turning more gray, then you may want to return back up to the surface after a couple of minutes and regenerate your stability back up before it drops too low (sometimes even the surface is unstable, then you need to move elsewhere to regenerate stability).

There's a lot of complexity beyond this which you can feel free to read up on or ask about, but the above should get you started with a good baseline.

[lilith99]

25 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

If you're interested, then the general strategy is to perform a density search every ~80-200 blocks, and once you scan a nearby area this way, then sink vertical shafts in areas with decently high readings for the ores you're after. It's generally not necessary to dig the shafts more frequently than every ~20-25 blocks. Ladders are often favored for vertical movement, especially rope ladders since they are more easily reusable. If you're not familiar with the exact generation mechanisms, then it's often optimal to sink the shafts nearly all the way down to the mantle (~110 blocks deep), and repeat until you get what you're after.

is this assuming if i don't use the short range search mode? how is that possible to get that amount of copper pickaxe to mine those absurd amount of rocks? isn't 20-25 far enough that those ore generated in between? what if all those tools used up without getting anything? there are more than multiple ways that may need unknown amount of copper like building dream underground rooms, repairing armor, losing resource due to occasional unretrievable loot on death...etc.

[MKMoose]

59 minutes ago, lilith99 said:

is this assuming if i don't use the short range search mode? how is that possible to get that amount of copper pickaxe to mine those absurd amount of rocks? isn't 20-25 far enough that those ore generated in between?

If you're using node search (short-range mode) in each of these vertical shafts (roughly the way I described in the second paragraph), then you will find most of the deposits and only miss some small ones.

 

59 minutes ago, lilith99 said:

what if all those tools used up without getting anything?

It's pretty rare for that to happen, as long as you search efficiently enough in reasonably rich areas. Even if you actually dig a 110-block shaft, it's literally just 110 blocks, which is less than half the durability of a copper pickaxe, and may allow you to find multiple deposits within a single shaft. It's preferable to keep some spare resources just in case, but usually it's pretty easy to get more ore than you use up on mining.

If you still use up all of your tools without finding anything, then you'll have to resort to panning and/or locate some surface copper deposits again.

 

59 minutes ago, lilith99 said:

there are more than multiple ways that may need unknown amount of copper like building dream underground rooms, repairing armor, losing resource due to occasional unretrievable loot on death...etc.

True, although when a single surface copper deposit easily yields some 5-10 ingots of metal, and underground ones yield much more, it will be pretty rare to lose or use up all of it after a decent mining session. And that's still talking about copper, while bronze and iron will allow you to get a higher quantity of more durable gear.

Edited February 4 by MKMoose