Minuscule Amount of Borax

[funnyguyshun]

Hello.
So I'm trying to find borax so that I can make leather. With my prospecting pickaxe I found a place where it says minuscule amount of borax. I use Proscpecting together mod so that I can see the chunks on the map.
So to my understaing, when the propick says there's is a minuscule amounts of borax, it means that there is a few blocks of borax in the chunk. Also to my knowledge, borax is generated in the sedimentary layers blocks in this case conglomerate stone, and it doesn't generate in the granite layers under it. So I went 6 blocks diagonal from the bottom right corner of the chunk and dig until I hit the conglomerate layer, than dig either 3 more blocks or until I hit granite (which ever happened first) then used the propick in node search mode to check if any borax was nearby. Then I started doing this in a grid, where I went 12 blocks west and 12 blocks north where I repeated this sequence with the propick. I thought if I check the entire chunk with this method I will be checking all the blocks in the sedimentary layers and I will find borax for sure, but I didn't find any.
Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong here?
I'm trying to upload pictures maybe that will help.

[MKMoose]

1 hour ago, funnyguyshun said:

I use Proscpecting together mod so that I can see the chunks on the map.
So to my understaing, when the propick says there's is a minuscule amounts of borax, it means that there is a few blocks of borax in the chunk.

ProspectTogether's chunk display is misleading (and has a few other known issues). Neither the ore generation mechanism nor the vanilla prospecting mechanics are meaningfully affected by chunks from the player's perspective, and they can be generally considered to change continuously throughout the world with no chunk boundaries.

Only the node reading can tell you exactly whether there are any ores within a given range from the reading, but it just has a 6-block range by default (i.e. it tells you how many ore blocks are within a 13x13x13 cube centered around the reading).

When the prospecting pick returns you a density reading, the result is roughly proportional to the chance at that location that the world generator uses to spawn a deposit. Even an "ultra rich" reading is not a guarantee that you will find a deposit under it (for some common ores like copper or sphalerite it is fairly close to being a guarantee, but even then you shouldn't strictly treat it as such).

 

The permille (‰) number next to the descriptor is just a mathematical estimation which roughly tells you "if you dig out a huge area, it will on average have roughly this many ore blocks of this type as a permille of total rock blocks where the deposits can spawn" (e.g. 2‰ means 2 ore blocks per 1000 rock blocks). It's not even accurate, though, and has a couple bugs. The standard advice tends to just be "ignore the permille value".

The qualitative descriptor (e.g. "very poor", "poor", "decent"...) is also not fully reliable, as some ores (borax among them) can never reach readings above a certain threshold, but it is entirely sufficient. For borax specifically, even "poor" tends to be more than enough to find a few deposits.

The "minuscule" reading is not sufficient for almost anything. For most ores, it indicates a roughly ~0.2-5% of maximum possible density.

There are some tricks that you can use for certain deposits which allow you to say that "if the reading for this deposit is at least this much, it means that there is almost certainly at least one deposit within the chunk", but it is not something that most players will ever find notably useful.

 

You can also find some loose ore bits on the surface for some ores, indicating a deposit under them, which for borax can sometimes be a better way to find a deposit than prospecting.

 

1 hour ago, funnyguyshun said:

Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong here?

Two additional notes regarding the prospecting strategy, if you will:

• Sinking a shaft every 12 blocks is generally unnecessarily dense. Since deposits tend to have a couple blocks radius, you can detect most of them if you dig shafts every ~20-25 blocks, allowing you to cover a much greater area within a fraction of the time.
• Taking density readings closer than every ~100 blocks is usually unnecessary. The ore maps are fairly smooth, and it's rare to find hotspots that are so small as to squeeze in 100-block gaps. It is also unnecessary to search for the exact highest reading in a small area. Slightly denser can be fine in some cases, but taking a reading in every chunk is just more work for little to no benefit.

 

The prospecting guide in the in-game handbook can tell you some of this information. If you're interested, there is a fairly decent prospecting guide and ore deposit table on the wiki. They are not in any way necessary to get a solid grasp of the mechanics, but they might help you out if you're running into issues.

Edited Monday at 07:55 PM by MKMoose

[Professor Dragon]

@MKMoose is on the money with their comprehensive response.

Adding my two cents:

1) "I'm trying to find borax so that I can make leather."

My recommendation is to try and find instead a limestone or a chalk biome instead.
Do NOT deliberately set out to find enough Borax for leather working.

Run around for long enough and you'll encounter huge plains of limestone (or a chalk cliff), with more than you'll ever need for leather working. They're near white on the colour map.

2) "With my prospecting pickaxe I found a place where it says minuscule amount of borax."

Good news! You actually only need a miniscule amount of borax (when you find it . . .), but it is only a few pieces that you need for smithing your iron anvil and the like.
The better news is that you'll eventually likely stumble on borax if you keep wandering around, by finding a few pieces on the surface. You can then dig down exactly under that surface piece and hit a small vein - which will be more than enough than you'll ever need for steel working.

3) If you are not adverse to mods, then you want "Block Overlay."

Enter in the block you're trying to find, and it will show you exactly where it is located around you.
Is it cheating hard? Yes. However, there are valid use cases for it, given how prospecting works and world generation etc etc.

4) There are mods that tell you exactly what is in the column you are standing on.

An intermediate solution is any of the mods that show exactly what is in the column that you're standing on. So you do your normal prospecting, get a reading of "Decent" and then check with the mod if there is really anything below your feet. 

Professor Dragon.

Edited 18 hours ago by Professor Dragon