Finding Limestone, Bauxite and other Stone Types via Rivers

[jerjerje]

Rivers in real life tend to carry sediment with them. I suggest that (if and when rivers are added) we could use rivers to find out what (sedimentary) rock types exist upstream of the river. I’m first going into how this system would work and then how it would improve gameplay. Finally, I’ll explain a rather massive problem, that could potentially prevent this system from ever being added to the game.

 

1. How would this system work

Using either a sieve or a wooden pan on the riverbed would allow the player to see what (sedimentary) rock types the river has flown through. Rivers (mostly) carry sedimentary rock types, thereby other rocks likely shouldn’t be shown.
The easiest way to display this information would be via a chat message. For example if the river had crossed a sandstone, a bauxite and a claystone biome upstream, then the chat message could look like this:

Found traces of Bauxite, Claystone and Sandstone

Optionally the chat message could also mention how much of each rock type was found. The further away the rock type is, the lower the concentration for that rock type would be. For example if the river had crossed a sandstone, a bauxite and a claystone biome upstream (in that order), then the chat message could look like this:

Found 3 rock types in this river:
High Claystone
Poor Bauxite
Minuscule amounts of Sandstone

 

2. How does this improve gameplay

Currently, it is common to see posts on the forum where players ask for help finding bauxite and lime. There are also many posts complaining about how hard these can be to find.
This system would allow players a (limited) way to search for specific rock types further away from them. If you get a reading for limestone from a river, then you know that this river has definitely crossed a limestone biome before. So you just need to follow the river upstream, and eventually you will find limestone. I am assuming rivers will be able to be many thousands of blocks long, so it may be quite a journey to get to the limestone.
Currently, your only chance of finding limestone and bauxite is by walking around aimlessly until you stumble upon them. It can happen that these rocks don’t spawn very close to spawn or that you simply haven’t walked the correct direction. Since this system would allow you to check rock types at a distance, this would massively reduce the RNG aspect of searching for a specific rock type. Even if you can’t find a river with the rocks you want, then you still know that you likely won’t find the desired rocks upstream of the river, so you don’t need to search that direction.

 

3. The big problem with this system

When it comes to programming, the question is never whether it is possible to implement, but whether it is possible to implement with good performance. Unfortunately, this system I propose may be impossible to implement without destroying the games' performance.

In order for the river to know what rock types it has flown through, the game would have to generate the entire river at once. This is, to put it mildly, not feasible performance wise. The amount of chunks this would need to generate would be absurd.
Of course, you don’t necessarily need to generate the entire chunk, only the parts necessary to know the position of the river and the rock types would be needed. But this may still be much to complex for the game to handle.

However, I don’t think it is possible to definitively say whether this system could be feasible or not, right now. We don’t even have rivers in the game yet, so we don’t know how complex they will be. (That is assuming that we will get rivers at all).

 

 

I would love to hear your thoughts on this suggestion!

If you have knowledge of procedural generation, I would like to hear your thoughts on the feasibility of this system. Can you think of any good performance optimizations?

Edited February 15 by jerjerje

[williams_482]

I have seen it suggested that VS could swap from generating chunks "as needed" to generating a very rough world map on initial world creation which contains very basic information (rock types, approximate elevation approximate terrain type, approximate rainfall, forest cover, and temperature, and the presence of oceans or rivers), then generate the complete chunks within those constraints as needed. This would allow for more realistic rivers and accompanying watersheds, and have the added benefit of enabling your idea here. 

[V1ncent]

I do highly appreciate this approach of locating those certain sedimentary rock layer in the game, but I would also like to point out that unlike locating peat and clay which are more like a hit or miss due to unfamiliar with those blocks' texture trace, sedimentary rock layer are not guaranteed to generate as the top layer (the 'shield' generation only have igneous rock layer) and the game tend to generate massive landscape of granite and andesite, leaving no room to any sedimentary rock. Besides the dominant igneous rock, the 'useful' sedimentary rock like bauxite and limestone have to compete with 'useless' ones e.g. chert and shale for a max thickness of 50 in standard setting.

Side notes, the sedimentary rock appears more like volcanic rock as tending to be found on higher attitude like mountain top, rather than sedimenting in lowland. So I guess more effort need to be input in the world gen along with river to implement the mentioned feature.  

7 hours ago, williams_482 said:

I have seen it suggested that VS could swap from generating chunks "as needed" to generating a very rough world map on initial world creation which contains very basic information (rock types, approximate elevation approximate terrain type, approximate rainfall, forest cover, and temperature, and the presence of oceans or rivers), then generate the complete chunks within those constraints as needed. This would allow for more realistic rivers and accompanying watersheds, and have the added benefit of enabling your idea here. 

I feel an approach similar to DF (dwarf fortress) style except the historical and cultural part would be similar to the imagined method, where world overview is generated at the beginning and player can reject unfavoured generated result and regenerate until game actually start and then the detailed local map, in VS' scenario the chunks, are generated as needed. I guess this hybrid method could be a feasible solution.

[Tabbot95]

On 2/16/2026 at 2:50 AM, V1ncent said:

I feel an approach similar to DF (dwarf fortress) style except the historical and cultural

I'd actually include them as to make the location of traders, story structures, and settlements a little more coherent, things like pre-generated roads that lead to at the very least the ruins of what was once a settlement.

I think a DF-approach might do a lot of wonders from the back-end as well, even in worlds where "Homo Sapiens" has been selected.

I'm mostly referring to things like "Migrating animals"/"Animal Packs", even "mega-beasts"/"titans"/"monsters"/"were-creatures"; that could be handled by the game in an abstract manner and be a little more interesting than the random-spawning animals of the present.. (though obviously there's downsides to that approach as well)

[Heegrim]

This is a good idea!

It would probably be simpler just to generate the occasional block of sedimentary gravel/sand speckled along the riverbed. It would get more common the closer the river gets to that rock strata. Then there wouldn't be a need to use a pan/sieve.

I hope they make the transitions between the "biomes" smoother in the future but I understand that this is a monumental programming task. I like the true-colour map but the boundaries between the rock types are so stark that it looks weird and I ended up turning it off and using the stylized map. The devs seem to be working hard on how they will implement rivers so I hope that comes with a full world generation overhaul/erosion simulation in the future.

[coolAlias]

Another approach would be to increase the chance of limestone and chalk around oceans, if that's not already the case, and make worlds with less % land and more % water the default rather the current 95+% land.