Stone prospecting.

[SaiphMester]

Seriously? Nobody thought of this? The game itself promotes art in many form (chiseling for example), and 95% of the time you just cant find the right material. I played on a server where we did not even have bauxite for weeks, because we could not find any. I found 1 suggestion in this forum for propicks to find chalk/lime, and thats about it. Please for the love of god and that is HOLY, can somebody make it so that the propick can prospect for the different stones that are in the game? It could work like regular prospecting, its just listing all the stones that are in that chunk.

Like 38% basalt, 32% chert, 30% sandstone and so forth.

It would be the best thing since bread. Can this even be doable by modder?

[Streetwind]

Could work. Would probably do less than you think it would, though. By their nature, chalk, lime, and bauxite are almost always top-layer stones, and thus visible on the map and in person without any need to dig or prospect.

That said, "almost always" is not "always", so there would be a few instances where it would help.

[Fredrik Blomquist]

I have suggested that rocks should be able to travel by rivers or existing/historical glaciers, so panning and searching would give you an idea of that stones can be found in neighbouring regions or layers.

[Silent Shadow]

You can run past mountains and cave delve to find the various rock layers. Bauxite is a sedimentary rock and so is almost always on top. You would probably see it in bit or gravel form before the propick would pick it up. Usually I find it on the mini-map before I see it thanks to its distinct orange color.

Rock types persist over quite a ways, so distance is the real enemy here. I have found that rock types do tend to change faster in the east/west direction than north/south though so give that a try.

[Streetwind]

9 minutes ago, Silent Shadow said:

I have found that rock types do tend to change faster in the east/west direction than north/south though so give that a try.

...Interesting observation. It was certainly true in my last singleplayer world, but at the time I thought it was coincidence. If this can be proven to be a pattern, it would greatly help with searching.