Olivine and Prospecting Pick

[Whosewe]

I'm trying to get into the steel process, but the requirements are throwing me for a loop. Bauxite I understand is a rock, and I will no doubt find it eventually. I have seen titanium deposits, but olivine is just not showing up. I had wandered far for bauxite and came across a section of peridotite, but no matter where I prospected along it's line, never did olivine show up as a mineral. In fact, some places has 0 ore whatsoever. While quartz is common, and easily spotted above ground, it doesn't always show up in the prospecting. Is olivine in the same boat and I have to wander more to find those obvious spots? I've already checked in 3 different sections of peridotite, no luck prospecting, and they've been covered by peridotite sand so no obvious rock faces to watch for gem deposits.

[Thalius]

Olivine is a quartz like deposit that does not show up as a mineral when prospecting.  I find it in peridotite quite often, but it can only be prospected with the node search setting when you are close enough to it.

[Whosewe]

That's what I was afraid of, but thanks for letting me know. 

[Streetwind]

It's probably hiding in plain sight. I live in an all-igneous area with plenty of peridotite in my current world, and I can tell you, the place is absolutely lousy with olivine. I've stopped bothering to mark the deposits long ago, and the area I've seriously explored is a miniscule fraction of the total expanse of peridotite on my map.

Thalius said "quartz-type", but that is not strictly correct. Quartz is actually its own generation type, which no other ore shares. Olivine is a surface-type. That means it follows the same rules as those surface copper deposits you use to get your first few bars of copper in any world: 1.) it spawns within the first ten stone blocks below the dirt layer; and 2.) it generates surface pebbles above itself. (Actually neither me nor Thalius were quite correct, but in the end Olivine does leave surface pebbles and can be found close to the surface somewhat reliably, so the following bit still holds true.)

So by far the most reliable way of finding olivine is walking around, looking for surface pebbles, and also cave mouths, crevasses, sinkholes, and so on. Wherever there is blank rock exposed below sea level. Due to the ten-block limit, you don't even have to go delving deeply into them - most of the time, you can determine whether anything is there just by looking in from the outside. But you could climb in and take some readings with the node search mode of the propick if you wanted to.

Once you have found even one speck of it, you're probably set for life. Olivine is the second largest ore deposit type in the game, after quartz. I've marked six deposits on my map and ignored at least six more, but I don't personally expect to dig up more than one of them.

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by Streetwind