New player looking for tips regarding: Bronze Acquisition

[Telios]

I've been traveling for a while all over around my home and the maps below are the results of cassiterite, sphalerite, and bismuthinite. The highest results I've found so far in order are 0.07‰ cassiterite, 0.50-0.59‰ sphalerite, and 2.06‰ bismuthinite. Hilariously enough I've found a 4.02‰ hemitite reading nearby. Are the readings for bronze alloy component materials usually that low?

I got lucky and found 12 bits of cassiterite from a ruin urn, but I don't quite have enough to make a bronze anvil and hammer to go into the iron age yet.

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[Zane Mordien]

10 minutes ago, Telios said:

0.07‰ cassiterite, 0.50-0.59‰ sphalerite, and 2.06‰ bismuthinite.

What does that translate to in the game for Poor, decent, etc...? Typically, a Decent reading is all you need to find any ore, but I will use a poor reading if it is right next to my base. It will take 3-4 tries usually and you find it.

[Telios]

2 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said:

What does that translate to in the game for Poor, decent, etc...?

Poor cassiterite, very poor sphalerite, and decent bismuthinite.

[LadyWYT]

59 minutes ago, Telios said:

Are the readings for bronze alloy component materials usually that low?

The percentile readings can be low, but the main thing to watch is the general reading description: Very Poor, Poor, etc. Typically it's best to dig at Decent or better, but if what you're looking for is rare or the best lead you have is Poor/Very Poor then it doesn't hurt to try digging at one of those readings.

When it comes to bronze, you can also buy tin, bismuth, and zinc from Commodities traders, if you happen to be a few ore short of what you need. Panning bony soil can also yield gold/silver nuggets that can be turned into a black bronze tool or two.

[Telios]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

the best lead you have is Poor/Very Poor then it doesn't hurt to try digging at one of those readings.

 

I've been digging around towards the east from my home, my best lead so far for cassiterite is 0.1‰. Fortunately enough, there's a massive vein of copper and limonite there!
 

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

When it comes to bronze, you can also buy tin, bismuth, and zinc from Commodities traders,

I've been finding what seems like ruined trading posts. I can't modify any blocks there as they are claimed by traders, but weirdly enough there weren't anyone around the structure. My area is strangely barren besides one tree house containing a building materials trader.

Update: I found the cassiterite vein at that 0.1‰ prospecting point. Thankfully this will make for a good amount of bronze for me in the near future, especially with the massive copper veins around me and the couple of iron veins around.

Edited Monday at 05:13 AM by Telios
Update!

[Zane Mordien]

8 hours ago, Telios said:

I've been finding what seems like ruined trading posts. I can't modify any blocks there as they are claimed by traders, but weirdly enough there weren't anyone around the structure. My area is strangely barren besides one tree house containing a building materials trader.

If the trader doesn't load thats a bug. It's been happening to me as well. When that happens I go into creative mode and pick the trader I want and load them in.

8 hours ago, Telios said:

I found the cassiterite vein at that 0.1‰ prospecting point.

That's better but not worth a long trip in my opinion. If it's reasonably close to your base or the same as the .07 then go for it. 

 

[Maelstrom]

On 3/29/2026 at 8:29 PM, Telios said:

I've been digging around towards the east from my home, my best lead so far for cassiterite is 0.1‰. Fortunately enough, there's a massive vein of copper and limonite there!

I'll reiterate what @LadyWYT said about the numbers.   Essentially ignore them. 

The only time they should be used is to get an indication of which direction is a better reading from other nearby readings. For instance, if you have two readings of poor, explore in the direction away from the lower numerical return.  Once you get the highest descriptive reading start exploratory mining and switch to node search mode on the pro pick.  Also as mentioned, if a reading is less than decent, it's better to find a different area to prospect for the ore your looking for.

Edited yesterday at 03:52 PM by Maelstrom

[MKMoose]

On 3/30/2026 at 3:18 AM, Telios said:

The highest results I've found so far in order are 0.07‰ cassiterite, 0.50-0.59‰ sphalerite, and 2.06‰ bismuthinite. Hilariously enough I've found a 4.02‰ hemitite reading nearby. Are the readings for bronze alloy component materials usually that low?

Contrary to seemingly popular opinion, the permille values can actually provide notably more information than the descriptors and allow you to find very nearly exact ore map values, but the catch is that to really use it you would need to be familiar with the prospecting and ore generation mechanics at a deeper level than most people would consider practical. It is not something that I would ask anyone to learn, because the descriptors are sufficient for almost all practical cases.

Regarding the question, permille values are roughly correct with a few caveats and they do tell you how much ore is expected in the vicinity, with an especially big caveat for cassiterite. Cassiterite's permille value is currently bugged even more than for other ores, and its actual density is more than 10 times higher than shown - your 0.07‰ reading is actually more like 0.7‰ or more (I'd have to calculate again to tell you the exact value). You might also see it referred to as "ppt" or "parts per thousand", so for example on a 2‰ reading you can expect to find roughly 2 blocks of ore per 1000 rocks, on average. If you wanted to mine a large area for massive quantities of a specific resource, you could use this to estimate how much you'd have to mine for the desired return, but it's not as important if your goal is to find just a single deposit or a few of them.

That said, the descriptors themselves can also be misleading, mainly because some ores cannot normally reach the highest reading values. Limonite, for example, will never reach a reading higher than ~0.5 => ~7‰ ("high") outside of certain edge cases (e.g. underwater mining), and a roughly 3‰ reading can be easily considered a highly valuable limonite spot due to how rare it is, despite it being technically "poor". Granted, besides pigment it has nothing going for it over hematite and magnetite anyways, but it serves as a good example.

Regarding your readings, they are pretty normal, though you've been getting a lot of low ones and not many green dots. You might want to consider spacing out your reading locations a bit further apart to cover a larger area, not unlike others have suggested. I usually take readings in a roughly 100-block grid, sometimes up to 300-400 in especially empty areas - it's good enough resolution that it's rare to miss any significant hotspots, and past that it really doesn't matter whether you hit the exact local peak or a slightly lower reading a few dozen blocks away.

For all three of these specific ores (cassiterite, sphalerite, bismuthinite), looking for at least "decent" readings is perfectly fine, especially for your purpose of just finding a bit for a jump to iron. For higher quantities, I would recommend "high" or better. It can go all the way up to "ultra high", but you shouldn't treat that as the goal. You can find these three ores almost anywhere, as the only notable limitations are that cassiterite primarily spawns near the middle between surface and mantle, and bismuthinite doesn't form in sedimentary rocks.

Edited yesterday at 06:01 PM by MKMoose

[Telios]

4 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

For instance, if you have two readings of poor, explore in the direction away

I have been doing that! That lead me to the cassiterite vein. It's not a gigantic vein, but it definitely was enough to get me started into the bronze age - and soon iron age. As a bonus it's right next to a limonite vein and very close to my home.

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2 hours ago, MKMoose said:

You might want to consider spacing out your reading locations

I've been trying to but I dare not to travel too far with winter coming in. I have managed to get lucky with a couple spots.

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[Michael Gates]

I see  a couple things here, so I'm'a drag them together..
 

6 hours ago, MKMoose said:

That said, the descriptors themselves can also be misleading, mainly because some ores cannot normally reach the highest reading values. Limonite, for example, will never reach a reading higher than ~0.5 => ~7‰ ("high") outside of certain edge cases (e.g. underwater mining), and a roughly 3‰ reading can be easily considered a highly valuable limonite spot due to how rare it is, despite it being technically "poor". Granted, besides pigment it has nothing going for it over hematite and magnetite anyways, but it serves as a good example.

This is because limonite only shows up at the top layers (chert, shale, basalt). All of the sedimentary-only ores give much lower numbers and descriptors than you would normally expect, because the reading for them in 90% of the rock column is zero! Also applies to coal, borax, lapis.. a couple other things maybe?

 

4 hours ago, Telios said:

I have been doing that! That lead me to the cassiterite vein. It's not a gigantic vein, but it definitely was enough to get me started into the bronze age - and soon iron age. As a bonus it's right next to a limonite vein and very close to my home.

If you go back to your mined-out ore disc, dig a lil' tunnel out maybe half a dozen blocks in a cardinal direction, and from there dig out some further one-block-high holes four blocks further and nodesearch at the ends of those, you will almost always find more. Ore gets placed in *fields* of discs, all at the same level. Sometimes they get shoved up or down by a block or two because the surface topography shoves the rock column up and down a little, but no further. This even works with iron; I once found three hematite discs in a row, right next to each other, and if there were anything I wanted to do with five or six hundred iron ingots I'd be in business.

[MKMoose]

14 hours ago, Michael Gates said:

This is because limonite only shows up at the top layers (chert, shale, basalt). All of the sedimentary-only ores give much lower numbers and descriptors than you would normally expect, because the reading for them in 90% of the rock column is zero! Also applies to coal, borax, lapis.. a couple other things maybe?

Lignite, bituminous coal, anthracite, malachite, galena, sulfur, borax, lapis lazuli, halite, limonite, rhodochrosite, fluorite, graphite, ketnite, phosphorite. For different ores to various extents - it doesn't matter much for lignite, for example, but can have a pretty extreme effect on galena, sulfur or borax, among other things.

 

17 hours ago, Michael Gates said:

Ore gets placed in *fields* of discs, all at the same level.

Ore depth is randomized independently for every deposit. There is nothing that I know of besides pure chance which could make multiple close-by deposits generate at the same depth.