How to find iron?

[Vage]

I know, this has been explained multiple times and read them all. I use both modes on the prospecting pick and watched several videos. I just hit the 30 cave mark on exploration, 3 had locust and Im not  ready to fight them.  I think Im doing something wrong. I can not find iron. There not in any of the caves I looked through, I have 70 hours in game and am coming up to my second winter. I have only found miniscule amounts prospecting. I even dug down shafts in that area to mantle, thought I would hit caves with all the shafts I dug, but no. The area im in is mostly granite with claystone and periodite rock. Ive found tons of quartz, silver, bismuth, some tin, olivine, im copper rich. I even just found my first teleporter. Theres no chalk stone in my area or limestone, I would like to find salt too.

Thanks for any feedback.

[Streetwind]

Iron veins are huge but rare. There is no way around them being hard to find. Even in a high yield area, you may need multiple shafts. Magnetite is especially bad, but thankfully you have granite and peridotite, which means you get hematite ore instead, which is somewhat more common.

Because iron veins are so rare, but so gigantic when they do spawn, cave exploration is a viable (if very dangerous) avenue. But it sounds like you've exhausted that approach. Then you're left with prospecting. You say you've only found miniscule readings? Then you need to search some more. Most likely, you haven't had a structured approach to prospecting yet, and only took some random samples here and there; this is unfortunately not going to work out for you. If you want proper, useful prospecting results, especially for something as elusive as iron, then planning how to prospect and knowing how to interpretate the data is actually more important than the actual act of going out there and hitting rocks. That is why the prospecting pick has such a steep learning curve.

Go to this thread, find my second post (it's an insufferable wall of text, you can't miss it ), and read the prospecting exercise I gave the other guy. You can use the same approach to prospect for any other ore, including iron. Ideally start in an area where you remember there being at least some sort of reading; it's still better than to start where nothing is and hope you run into smething eventually.

The upside to all of this, by the way: once you have found a vein, then as a single player, you'll most likely never need to look for another one again.

[Vage]

Thank you, I   will try that process.

[Vage]

Allright, I tried the grid pattern with bad results, using 40 blocks as a start.

I started at -10 y 360 with miniscule amounts

i went west 40 block and found miniscule

I went west again with no results

I went back to start and went north 40 with no results

back to start and went east 40 with no results

back to start south with 40 with miniscule

south again 40(into a lake) with no results

Should I concentrate on that small area of south and west and try grid patterns again? if so smaller grid patterns or is this a bust with miniscule results or I just have to keep going to find better?

Thank you again

[Streetwind]

Looks like there won't be anything useful in that location, no.

Make your grid pattern far larger, for starters. Sample 160 blocks apart. You might feel like you'll walk past something, but trust me, you won't. Ore hotspots are easily large enough for you to at least clip them reliably with a 160-block grid. I mean, technically there's nothing wrong with doing 40-block steps all the way; if you want to create a detailed map of all ores, then you'll eventually want to sample most grid points anyway. But personally, when I'm just looking for one specific ore, I'd rather cover a lot of ground quickly and figure out where it's even worth spending additional time.

Look for any result of "decent" or better, or "poor" if you're not feeling confident. Once you have found that, do one more sample 160 blocks forward, so see if it gets better still, or worse again. Then, starting from your best result, narrow the grid down to 80-block steps, and then finally to 40-block steps when you're very close to pinpointing it.

Here is an example of how the magnetite ore distribution looks in my current world. I initially did a 120-block grid there, then later did additional offset rows within the pattern to get more detail. You can see how large the hotspot is from the coordinates of the samples I took; and this is actually a fairly small one. It didn't even go all the way to ultra high. Just two results of very high in neighboring 40-block spaces. This can happen; sometimes hotspots are narrow and somtimes they are broad, sometimes they are steep and sometimes the are relatively flat. You can also see a fairly large area of "nothing" in the northwest where I did a lot of results - that is actually a cassiterite hotspot. I don't have a visible copper hotspot because I didn't have to search for one; I just randomly hit an ultra high just with my initial large grid pattern and made a shaft at that spot.

[Domkrats]

Actually there is one way you could try to find iron more easily, but that method needs lantern, as you will be in water.
Find deep waters and find deeper areas in it. Once found, mark that place and dig straight down while holding space so you are swimming just in case below is cave. That is good way to eventually find good veins of materials or even fall straight into new caves.  Easy swimming back will be possible unless you fall in deep cave whiich then means you will have to pillar up somehow back to water falling above. 

I know it might seem cheaty for some players, but while there isn't any breathing restrictions in game, this can be used, Having experience with often finding iron very deep or finding some good stuff below water or pounds, it seems this is how it could maybe even be planned to do. At least for me, that's the only way i have found iron and i don't feel like cheating, as it is still dangerous if you are not carefull.  

Edited March 23, 2021 by Domkrats