Taking the luck out of pottery

[Vintarian]

When I start a new game one of the things I dread most is trying to find clay. I have had some runs where I find it in the first 5 minutes of starting and others where after 4 in game days I still haven't found a single patch of clay. Since clay is mandatory to progress as you can't do any smelting without it, I feel like this is a massive flaw in an otherwise great game. Instead you should be able to make poor quality clay using a bucket (made from a log and a knife) filled with water and sand. It would only get you a few small pieces of clay and the pottery molds you make will shatter after one use if molten metal is added to it. This way players are still incentivized to find normal clay but can still progress if they have bad luck and are unable to find any.

[SnapJelly]

While I agree that it would make sense for clay to be craftable in some way it's much less likely that there actually isn't any clay close by than that you just missed it while exploring, most of the time when I struggle to find clay I end up eventually finding clay deposits much closer to my home that I initially just walked past and didn't spot but I don't really think that's a ''luck'' thing, it's just me not paying close attention.

If it doesn't bother you you could try the xray mod, put it on red clay and set the radius only to 200 blocks or so and you'll be able to see if there is clay close by that you missed without really cheating all that much

[MKMoose]

1 hour ago, Vintarian said:

Instead you should be able to make poor quality clay using a bucket (made from a log and a knife) filled with water and sand.

While I broadly agree with the premise, I think there's a lot that could be improved about clay generation, and circumventing it instead doesn't seem like a good solution. And especially not circumventing it by mixing something else with water, because clay is just... clay. Very fine-grained (< 5 ɥm grain size) natural soil containing a high proportion of clay minerals, to be specific. It can't be substituted with another material (there are certain caveats, but they're generally modern substitutes), because it has unique properties that very few other materials have.

Even somehow grinding sand to the right grain size wouldn't necessarily make clay, because sand is often more rich in silica and it's not common for it to have enough clay minerals. You could get something usable out of shale and claystone or possibly some other clay-rich rocks, but that may require thoroughly pulverizing that rock, which may not be viable in the early game.

 

1 hour ago, Vintarian said:

Since clay is mandatory to progress as you can't do any smelting without it, I feel like this is a massive flaw in an otherwise great game.

What I would do is just make clay more intuitive and less RNG-dependent to find. I happen to have just mentioned what I see as significant problems with clay in another thread here - for the most part, it boils down to the fact that in-game clay is found very uniformly throughout the world with almost nothing that may indicate its presence. Finding clay often boils down to running about, looking at hillsides and hoping to stumble upon something, and it doesn't have particularly much to do with how clay is found realistically.

The easiest, most intuitive association with clay is rivers and lakes. While realistic clay deposition is naturally quite complex and just generating blobs of it doesn't do it justice, I think making it spawn much more frequently near water would be a very simple first step at least.

[Facethief]

Can’t you get clay from panning sand? It’s not much, but it’d do in a pinch.

[Hanril]

Is the lack of clay a gravel/desert thing? Peat and clay are usually pretty bountiful in average grassy fields with some ponds, but I noticed getting spawned in a barren biome is kind of a bad experience, especially for newcomers. 

[MKMoose]

16 minutes ago, Facethief said:

Can’t you get clay from panning sand? It’s not much, but it’d do in a pinch.

It's a 3% chance for blue clay, so on average 0.24 blue clay per block of sand or gravel. Will do in a pinch to get the absolute basics like a pot (4 clay), bowl (1 clay) and crucible (2 clay), but will be a problem once you're looking to make tool molds which require 11-13 clay each depending on the tool. If you wanted to make a pot, a bowl, a crucible and molds for a hammer, a pickaxe and a prospecting pick, you'd need 44 clay which requires panning through ~183 blocks of sand and gravel on average. Not what I would consider practical.

If we're talking alternatives, then it may be worth mentioning that:

• cracked vessels can sometimes have blue or fire clay (specifically forage vessels and arctic supplies),
• the commodities trader can sell fire clay (16 clay for 2 gears on average, 5x16 stock on average).

Granted, neither is particularly accessible to new players.

 

1 minute ago, Hanril said:

Is the lack of clay a gravel/desert thing? Peat and clay are usually pretty bountiful in average grassy fields with some ponds, but I noticed getting spawned in a barren biome is kind of a bad experience, especially for newcomers. 

I'm not certain how much that contributes to new players' problems, but yes, clay does not usually spawn in gravel and sand.

• Red clay spawns more or less uniformly, only in soil.
• Blue clay spawns rarely, only roughly at sea level or a bit below, only in soil.
• Fire clay spawns very rarely, only in bauxite sand and gravel.
• All of the above doesn't apply to very cold climates (< -10 °C), where only small deposits of red clay can appear in soil or even less commonly in gravel.
• Fire clay can also be found underlying bituminous coal and anthracite deposits (only under some deposits).

Additional limitations are as follows:

• Clay is a bit less likely to generate in rough areas with a lot of elevation changes.
• Forest soil replaces clay when it generates, so clay can spawn in forests but will be hidden under the top layer.
• Even where clay can spawn, whether it does is ultimately just random.