I can't find copper. Quit and start new seed or is it him skill issue? (new player)

[Hiro Protagonist]

So yes, I can pan for copper bit. I have a copper pick and hammer as advised from videos. However, I have, as yet, never once found a copper bit on the ground indicating copper below ground.

My seed isn't very good (or so it feels to me). There are no trees bigger than a single log within a 5 minute run of spawn. There are no animals except a single bear guarding a small grove of trees about 5 minute away. I heard a chicken, can't find it. It's just endless fields of flowers interrupted by some lakes and sudden very tall jutting stone peaks, devoid of trees.

  It's very pretty, but now I have a copper pick and nothing of value to hit with it. I did see some gold in a cave but there 5 of those crawling guys in there so that's their gold.

Should I start over on a new seed or is this not luck but my lack of knowledge and understanding of the game? No video I could find talks about this issue. I don't want to pan my way through the copper tier.

[Shoom]

I'd suggest migrating to another area, I traveled about 11k blocks south before eventually finding a spot to settle down, along the way I found plenty of copper, clay, resin, ruins, etc.

Some areas are just naturally devoid of ores, or the ores that do generate are deep underground, if you can somehow get a prospecting pick that would likely help you out a lot.

[Thorfinn]

I would not pan for copper, ever, because it's pretty much death. You will not have found enough surface copper deposits to produce the anvil, so will have to pan another 1000 units (900+100) to progress. Meanwhile, you are not making headway on your homestead, delaying your food independence and automation and tools.

I'd advise doing as @Shoom suggests. Don't settle down until you find a better spot. Either that or restart. Tough enough learning curve without putting yourself at a further disadvantage.

[Robert Johnson]

Okay, this is going to sound a bit cheaty. But, given the game provides the Survival Handbook and expects you to use it to some degree, here we go.

Open the Handbook with 'H' and make sure you're in the 'Blocks and Items' or 'Everything' tab on the left. Now, type in 'chunk of native copper' in the search field. This will limit your search to showing every kind of rock chunk that can contain native copper, both normal and crystalized, as well as all the qualities available for a given rock type.

In case you don't want to take the time to parse and jot down all the relevant data, here you are:

 

Chunk of Native Copper (Includes Crystalized variants) + Qualities

Andesite - Poor, Medium, Rich

Chalk - Poor, Medium

Chert - Poor, Medium

Conglomerate - Poor, Medium

Claystone - Poor, Medium

Granite - Poor, Medium, Rich

Sandstone - Poor, Medium

Shale - Poor, Medium

Basalt - Poor, Medium, Rich, Bountiful

Peridotite - Poor, Medium, Rich

Phyllite - Poor, Medium, Rich

Slate - Poor, Medium, Rich

You can see what the surface stones for native copper containing rocks look like by typing in 'native copper bits'.

 

So, after examining each of the types of 'chunk of native copper', 'crystalized chunk of native copper', or 'native copper bits' you discover that there are 12 different rock types that can contain native copper. Any rock types not listed here will either never contain native copper, or only copper in the form of malachite. Speaking of which, if you perform the same search as above, but using 'chunk of malachite' instead of chunk of native copper, you can glean the following info.

 

Chunk of Malachite (Includes Crystalized variants) + Qualities

Limestone - Poor, Medium, Rich, Bountiful

White Marble - Poor, Medium, Rich

Pink Marble - Poor, Medium, Rich

Green Marble - Poor, Medium, Rich

You can see what the surface stones for malachite containing rocks look like by typing in 'copper ore bits'.

 

Likewise, as above, examining each of the types of 'chunk of malachite', or 'copper ore bits' will show there are four types of rock that can house this form of copper.

 

So now, with all this info, you can look and see if the type of rock in the area you are searching for native copper or malachite is one of these 16 rock types. If not, you will need to search further until the surface rock type changes. In case you accidentally turned it off, the 'Block info overlay' that allows you to see the name of the block or thing you are looking at can be toggled on and off with CTRL + B.

It can also be helpful to break all the ground foliage and low-hanging tree branches with your bare hands as you search around to make seeing the ground easier. Once you do find some native copper bits or any other type of bits for later, make sure to mark the spot on your map. Digging with your hands or a shovel down to the rock layer, and then going anywhere from 2-3 and sometimes as much as 10 blocks down with your pick, you will always find a vein of whatever the 'bits' were on the surface. I've found this even applies to things such as flint and obsidian, too. I like to use the 'rock' icon if I have yet to grab the bits, or a pickaxe icon if I grabbed the bits and am ready to dig.

Edited Sunday at 03:09 PM by Robert Johnson

[Hiro Protagonist]

Thanks all for the replies. After posting this I decided to just pick a direction and run. after about 20 minutes or so (i've got to learn distance better), I found some surface copper. Very excited! it was close to a vendor that sells weapons so even better. I set up a little base and got to digging. I was rather disappointed to find that it was Olivine in Peridotite which takes bronze to break. the sadness.

I think I might try a new seed. With all of this very helpful information starting over will be much much easier. VS is challenging, that's a good thing.                      

[LadyWYT]

6 hours ago, Hiro Protagonist said:

I was rather disappointed to find that it was Olivine in Peridotite which takes bronze to break. the sadness.

Oh the happiness.  My friend and I wanted olivine on our last world but couldn't find any. It's a handy thing to have access to later in the game.

Also, welcome to the forums and the game! Surface copper can be hard to spot, so while I would say it's probably just a lack of experience, some world seeds are just lacking when it comes to easy-to-find surface deposits. If you are playing on Homo Sapiens or Wilderness Survival it will also be harder to find surface copper since the frequency of the deposits is turned down, however, I doubt either difficulty is the problem here since most new players will start on Standard or Exploration.

When it comes to rock types that copper can form in, to my knowledge it's all except bauxite(which is bright orange), so you should be able to find it most anywhere. Slowing to a walk instead of sprinting everywhere can help you spot details you might otherwise miss. Likewise, gravel plains and deserts are prime spots to look for surface deposits, since there is very little vegetation to block your view of ore bits and threats.

Worst case scenario, you can pan for a pickaxe, hammer, and prospecting pick, and then prospect for a deep copper deposit(this is basically what I'm doing in my current world). Those are relatively common finds, and while it does take a bit more work and risk to extract that ore, it can be a decent way to advance without just restarting the world. Simply find a good dig site, sink a vertical shaft with ladders and use the node search every so often to pinpoint the location of the copper deposit. If you have access to traders, also keep in mind that some of them will sell pickaxes, so if you want to do some bartering that can be a great way to get an early bronze pick.

[coolAlias]

I second LadyWYT's suggestion. It's what I did in my current world - all you need is to find one copper deposit with that first prospecting pick, using the heat graph one to get close then drilling down and using the node finder every once in a while to see if there's anything nearby.

Highly recommend rope ladders - they take a lot of cattails / reeds, but they are awesome because you can pull them all back up from the top.

[Hiro Protagonist]

I wound up making a second world and spawned into a massive gavel area, but within 5 minutes I found 3 sets of surface copper. Then found forest, a ruin gave me a copper shovel and copper falx. It did take another couple of hours to find clay, but while looking I found 5 more surface copper spots. It's a great seed and definitely my new home. I'm on a huge lake with seemingly endless supply of cattails.

I've seen videos on prospecting, it's a bit intimidating but I skill I will need to learn.

Thanks again all.

[Zane Mordien]

3 hours ago, Hiro Protagonist said:

I've seen videos on prospecting, it's a bit intimidating but I skill I will need to learn.

Be careful of those videos they will lead you down a primrose path. You don't need to hunt down "Very High" readings for most ore. A decent reading is often good enough and even poor if it is really close to base and you don't want to look further. Iron for example has very large ore veins that are hard to miss. 

 

3 hours ago, Hiro Protagonist said:

I wound up making a second world and spawned into a massive gavel area, but within 5 minutes I found 3 sets of surface copper.

Sometimes the RNG makes a massive difference. Save your old world and when you want a challenge after you understand the mechanics of the game better go back and finish the playthrough. I did that with my first world and it was a lot of fun for me to go back and see just how much easy stuff I was missing before.

[Maelstrom]

On 3/9/2026 at 10:15 AM, Zane Mordien said:

Be careful of those videos they will lead you down a primrose path. You don't need to hunt down "Very High" readings for most ore. A decent reading is often good enough and even poor if it is really close to base and you don't want to look further. Iron for example has very large ore veins that are hard to miss. 

But the likelihood of more ore is worth hunting down those Very High (or better yet Ultra High) readings.  In my last world I found an Ultra High copper reading.   Sank my first shaft and came back up with a backpack full of copper that was more than enough to fund a normal playthrough.   The only reason I went back was to be obnoxious about my copper usage.  Made a stack or more of lanterns and then an automated quad-quern settup that drained all querns into a single chest.  I've also stumbled across magnetite in a very poor reading, so yes, ore will spawn just about anywhere; but the higher the reading the less work it takes tracking it down once you are below the surface.

[Zane Mordien]

45 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

In my last world I found an Ultra High copper reading.

It's so rare I even look for copper beyond the surface ore deposits. On that note, maybe I should turn them down in the settings to force me to find copper. Surface copper is just so abundant, which I understand is needed for newer players since they aren't as good at finding it.

[Maelstrom]

Surface deposits are small compared to deeper deposits.  In that ultra high reading I came across three deposits of copper continguous to each other.  The deposit was 4 blocks deep of poor quality ore but nestled amongst that was a regular sized rich deposit.  That one find was about 20 or 30 blocks in diameter, most of which as 3-4 blocks deep.  It took me two trips to haul all of the copper ore chunks out of that deposit.