Better prospecting or better tools

[Beafush]

Hi.

I find mining as the must time consuming thing in the game, mostly when I look for Tin.
I don't know if it is because I dont understand how it work or what it is.
Tho for me it will be nice if my tolls was lasting longer, so I am able to look in a world counk if there any ore I need there, or prospecting was getting a hell lot easier to insure me what I am looking fore is there!

The game here is not like minecraft where you just make tunnels in a patten to see if there is anything worth mining, as if you do this in this game, you will end up no pickaxe as it will not give you enough resurses back to be able to do it.
But it dos not work like in the real world ether, where when you find a resurse in the grund, there is most of the time, so much of you can feed a country or more from that one mine.

I think it will be nice if mining in the game, became a bit easier, ether by when you fin a resurse, then you have plenty of it or make prospecting better.

I must say I spend so much time in the game, to try to mine, that I dont do anyting els, and it starts to get there, where I dont want to play, as the game for me, is just about finding tin.

[Thorfinn]

By default the prospecting pick is turned off. If you don't turn that on, the only options I know of are

1. Look for surface cassiterite nuggets (very rare),
2. Look at cliff faces for exposed cassiterite (very rare), and,
3. Go spelunking for cassiterite in appropriate stone layers (rare).

I don't know of any other sources of tin, though I've only been playing 16 for a few days, and there may be something new.

If you didn't know, press Shift-H when your cursor is on a rock to see what kinds of ores that rock might contain. No point in spelunking in caves that can't have tin.

[Philtre]

The simplest option for getting cassiterite (along with other hard-to-find but useful resources) is buying it from traders (commodity traders, specifically). If you need rusty gears, panning bony soil produces some, as well as a lot of random loot that can be sold to other traders, in particular the luxuries traders.

[Beafush]

I know this, but from you say there, prospecting is not part of it, and that is my point, prospecting is so useless that players go to other means to get the stof they need.

[Pestilence]

Install the ProspectorInfo mod and try it.

[Beafush]

I get you I can mod the hell out of the game, again there is more less useless functions in the game, prospecting, and I suggest that they make it more useful 

[Streetwind]

Prospecting isn't useless. It works great when you know what you're doing.

The actual problem that prospecting has is that the learning curve is pretty long and steep. So getting to "I know what I'm doing" takes a lot of practice, effort, and willingness to engage with and think about the mechanic.

The game could perhaps do more to make this learning process easier for the player. There aren't many good, immersive ways I can think of tthough, beyond something like integrating functionality similar to the VsProspectorInfo mod into the base game.

[Beafush]

I cant agree here.
The info you get is, when the world was made, there was this chance for the ore to spawn?
Will say, where it says nothing, there can be the ore I am looking for, where it says it can be there, I can dig for nothing.
That will say, no matter what, I dig in blindness.

[Philtre]

2 hours ago, Heiko külsen said:

The info you get is, when the world was made, there was this chance for the ore to spawn?
Will say, where it says nothing, there can be the ore I am looking for, where it says it can be there, I can dig for nothing.

If you dig at random, the overwhelming majority of the time you will find nothing at all. By prospecting with the density search mode, you know the relative chance of finding the ore you are looking for in that chunk, and can get a much higher success rate than by digging blindly. And by prospecting with the node search mode (which you have to enable), you can determine exactly whether there is any ore nearby.

[Beafush]

3 hours ago, Philtre said:

If you dig at random, the overwhelming majority of the time you will find nothing at all. By prospecting with the density search mode, you know the relative chance of finding the ore you are looking for in that chunk, and can get a much higher success rate than by digging blindly. And by prospecting with the node search mode (which you have to enable), you can determine exactly whether there is any ore nearby.

Then I must be using it wrong, as even when I find tin with prospecting, I dont find it when I dig.
I am mainly talking about tin as I have yet not got further with the game, as I have not fund it.
I know I can trade my self to it, but I just cant believe that that is nearly the only why to get it, or when you stumbles in to it in caves or on mountain sides.
I have looked a ton of youtube videos, and ben reading about it, and nearly all say it is nearly impossible to find tin.
Them there dont say it, use mods or this pro prospecting what is not vanilla so it is not on the server I am on, and I like to play the base game, and if a game need moddeds to fix there game, the game is lost.

One thing is to add extra thing, but fixing it is not good.

[Streetwind]

1 hour ago, Heiko külsen said:

Then I must be using it wrong, as even when I find tin with prospecting, I dont find it when I dig.

What kind of reading do you consider having "found" tin? Do you dig in an "ultra high" abundance area and get nothing? Or do you dig wherever any reading for cassiterite shows up at all? How do you dig, and how deep?

It is a very complex mechanic, no question there. I don't mind trying to help you get better at it, but it requires knowing what you are doing in great detail.

Looking at your username, perhaps you'd be more comfortable writing in German? Ich sprech auch Deutsch

[Thorfinn]

There are two modes of using the prospector pick. I'm guessing you are only using one of them. To get access to the second one, that lets you track down the ore veins, you need to enable it. If you are starting a game, select Customize, move down to Survival Challenges, and most of the way down is ProPick Node Search Radius. It defaults to disabled for some reason. Most set it to 8.

I'm guessing there is a way to enable it with a server command in an existing world, though it probably would require you to reload the world. 

[EDIT]

I should have looked before submitting the post. The command is:

/worldConfig propickNodeSearchRadius 8

or whatever radius you like. I wouldn't go much above 8, though. 8 will count the number of tin nodes within 8 nodes of you, i.e., a 17x17x17 box with you at the center, so it's going to count all tin in a region a little shy of 5,000 blocks.

More information is available at the mining page. There's even a couple of videos linked there.

[/EDIT]

Edited January 26, 2022 by Thorfinn

[Beafush]

Just now, Streetwind said:

What kind of reading do you consider having "found" tin? Do you dig in an "ultra high" abundance area and get nothing? Or do you dig wherever any reading for cassiterite shows up at all? How do you dig, and how deep?

It is a very complex mechanic, no question there. I don't mind trying to help you get better at it, but it requires knowing what you are doing in great detail.

Looking at your username, perhaps you'd be more comfortable writing in German? Ich sprech auch Deutsch

Well I run around in a area to try to find as hige reading as I can, but I cant find out what is a hige reading.
Then when I have a couple of cunkes where I have the resource I want to find, I start in the center counk, and dig staircase down to I hit the counk below

Well I live in Germany, but I do not speak German yet I am sorry hehe.
Just moved here, but yes from my name, part of my family is German yes, but they never spoke Gearman to me, only English. 

[Beafush]

9 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

There are two modes of using the prospector pick. I'm guessing you are only using one of them. To get access to the second one, that lets you track down the ore veins, you need to enable it. If you are starting a game, select Customize, move down to Survival Challenges, and most of the way down is ProPick Node Search Radius. It defaults to disabled for some reason. Most set it to 8.

I'm guessing there is a way to enable it with a server command in an existing world, though it probably would require you to reload the world. 

[EDIT]

I should have looked before submitting the post. The command is:

/worldConfig propickNodeSearchRadius 8

or whatever radius you like. I wouldn't go much above 8, though. 8 will count the number of tin nodes within 8 nodes of you, i.e., a 17x17x17 box with you at the center, so it's going to count all tin in a region a little shy of 8,000 blocks.

More information is available at the mining page. There's even a couple of videos linked there.

[/EDIT]

Yes I have seen videos about it, but I guesses there is a reason it is not in the default game, as again I play default, and I like to learn how to play it like that.
And that is where I am saying, if I play no mods, I dont change the game, mining is a pain in the dark spot.

Tho I am starting to think it is only me there find it a problem

[Thorfinn]

No, I prefer unmodded, too, using defaults to see how the game designer intended the game to be played. I just found it too tedious to spend that much time spelunking. Ore bombs are the only solution I found, though I had to find enough surface coal to build the first one. I would have just set it aside (or looked for a mining mod) if there were no way to get the second mode.

TBH, I'm not exactly sure why the modes could not be combined.

[Jon Engen]

 

Beafush, I would like to suggest to you to try the method you have done before to find the chunks that are relevant to your ore search, in this case: tin. Instead of digging straight down or in a staircase, I usually try and find some of the caves (I like the vertical ones) and use ladders to descend until you are in a larger space and use the Node search on walls, cave ceilings, and floors as you go down to help you locate a space that has the ore you're after and then you can proceed with the tutorial videos that you've mentioned.

I think the struggle that you're having is the disconnect between finding a chunk that is likely to have it (remember that those numbers that it gives you are not percentages (parts per 100), but instead per mille (per 1000)) and finding a starting point for the node search. 

Alternatively, when I was first learning the propick, I started a clean world and went straight for creative mode, gave myself a lanturn and propick and searched until I got to an area that had what I was after and used it as practice without the baddies. (when you use the pro-pick in creative, you only need one rock instead of the 3 for the density search)
 

 

Edited January 27, 2022 by Jon Engen
Edited to reflect new name of addressed.

[Streetwind]

1 hour ago, Heiko külsen said:

Well I run around in a area to try to find as hige reading as I can, but I cant find out what is a hige reading.
Then when I have a couple of cunkes where I have the resource I want to find, I start in the center counk, and dig staircase down to I hit the counk below

Well I live in Germany, but I do not speak German yet I am sorry hehe.
Just moved here, but yes from my name, part of my family is German yes, but they never spoke Gearman to me, only English. 

One big trick to it is: ignore the numbers in the density search readout. Focus on the adjective only. The numbers that show up are different for each ore, and on top of that, they do not mean what you think they mean. Trust me. Even if I don't know what you think they mean, I can confidently say that. They're more debug output than usable data. There is merit in considering them in a few isolated cases, to find out in which direction a result increases; but in most cases you're better off straight-up ignoring them. Especially if you're still learning how prospecting works in the first place.

I once wrote a guide to finding tin here, a few months back. Yes, it's long. But it includes more than just swinging the prospecting pick. It also talks about methodology, and which areas might be more suitable than others. It may give you a glimpse at just how complex prospecting really is... but also gives you a step by step instruction list you can just blindly follow. By all accounts, it should lead you to find tin, guaranteed... but I can't guarantee it'll be quick. It all depends what you'll find in your world. If you get an "ultra high", I'll buy myself a hat just to eat it if you don't find a vein in your first shaft. But if the best hotspot you have to work with is just a "high" or a "decent", then you might need more than one shaft. Or perhaps to find another, better hotspot.

[Maelstrom]

I believe I read that guide when I purchased this game and greatly appreciate it!  Helped me find three deposits of iron in my first world and look forward to finding many more in the world I just started.

Edited January 26, 2022 by Maelstrom

[Beafush]

14 hours ago, Streetwind said:

One big trick to it is: ignore the numbers in the density search readout. Focus on the adjective only. The numbers that show up are different for each ore, and on top of that, they do not mean what you think they mean. Trust me. Even if I don't know what you think they mean, I can confidently say that. They're more debug output than usable data. There is merit in considering them in a few isolated cases, to find out in which direction a result increases; but in most cases you're better off straight-up ignoring them. Especially if you're still learning how prospecting works in the first place.

I once wrote a guide to finding tin here, a few months back. Yes, it's long. But it includes more than just swinging the prospecting pick. It also talks about methodology, and which areas might be more suitable than others. It may give you a glimpse at just how complex prospecting really is... but also gives you a step by step instruction list you can just blindly follow. By all accounts, it should lead you to find tin, guaranteed... but I can't guarantee it'll be quick. It all depends what you'll find in your world. If you get an "ultra high", I'll buy myself a hat just to eat it if you don't find a vein in your first shaft. But if the best hotspot you have to work with is just a "high" or a "decent", then you might need more than one shaft. Or perhaps to find another, better hotspot.

I will take look at your quide.
Tho what I dont understand is that most tell, take a sample before a hole, see if there is any, and then go in, but the samples only work for that chunk you tog the first sample in.
Will say if you take a sample in a chunk, then you go down in a mine, and then go over to a new chunk berceuse you go deep, then your first sample mean nothing, then it is pure luck you find what you are look for?

I use the ".debug wireframe chunk" command to see the chunks I am working in, and I know when I pass the black line, I need to take a new sample, if it is up, down or to the sides.

I have now looked at your guide, I have don a lot of what you type there, but not to the point, I will try, but what if you dont have node search mode.
The server I paly on is 100 % standard, and dont have it on.

Edited January 27, 2022 by Heiko külsen

[Philtre]

14 minutes ago, Heiko külsen said:

Tho what I dont understand is that most tell, take a sample before a hole, see if there is any, and then go in, but the samples only work for that chunk you tog the first sample in.
Will say if you take a sample in a chunk, then you go down in a mine, and then go over to a new chunk berceuse you go deep, then your first sample mean nothing, then it is pure luck you find what you are look for?

Use ladders and dig straight down. You can dig while standing on a ladder, so you don't have to worry about falling into holes. It also uses less pickaxe durability than digging staircases. If you don't have a lot of sticks, there is a second ladder recipe that uses mostly boards.

[Streetwind]

1 hour ago, Heiko külsen said:

Will say if you take a sample in a chunk, then you go down in a mine, and then go over to a new chunk berceuse you go deep, then your first sample mean nothing, then it is pure luck you find what you are look for?

Ore distribution does not change much from one chunk to the next, actually. If you are in a chunk that has a "high" abundance, then the next chunk over may have "decent", or it may have "very high", or it may even have "high" as well. You won't find a case where it drops to nothing across a chunk border.

Perhaps it'll help you seeing it visually represented? It certainly helped me, back in the day where I was trying to figure out how everything worked under the hood. I went on a crazy prospecting spree and recorded everything I found in an excel sheet (first image). Then I used conditional formatting to color in the cells based on the prospecting results for a single ore, for example tin (second image).

Now keep in mind that the cells are not squares like the chunks are ingame, so the view is stretched horizontally. But each cell represents a chunk. And you can see quite clearly in the second image that ore spawn areas often generate as very large circles, sometimes dozens of chunks across, with abundance increasing towards the middle. There's two such areas visible, one on the left, basically surrounding the lake, and having high abundance spots (including one "ultra high") in the middle of said lake. The other is halfway to the right, I just clipped its lower edge while exploring eastward. But you can still see the vaguely circular shape of the orange "poor" results there with a bit of "decent" above as it approaches the center.

So if you get a good reading in one chunk, you will be somewhere inside a field that stretches for many chunks in multiple directions. It won't disappear on you with a few steps to the side.

 

1 hour ago, Heiko külsen said:

I have now looked at your guide, I have don a lot of what you type there, but not to the point, I will try, but what if you dont have node search mode.

If you don't have node search mode available, you can:

• Ask your server admin to turn it on (but it requires a world restart, so they may not want to do it on the spot); or,
• Follow the guide anyway, and in the second part where you dig down, simply do not use the propick at all, and just dig without a pause all the way to the bottom. You will find less ore this way - the chance of not finding any at all will be higher. You may have to dig multiple shafts nearby.

[Beafush]

@StreetwindI think you for your info, and I will try it out in the game.
Tho I still think that is here, is something they can make a tiny bit more less time consuming, at the hole progress in the game bottleneck in to this mining and find things like tin, as it seems a lot of players have problems with.

I think to have the different stof in different biomes is a great idea, for a server it is even better, as that make trade a thing.
But I have never ever played a game, where I think things like mining is such a grind.
And I come from games like Wurm online, Life Is feudal and so on, where you truly can say the grind is real.

[Thorfinn]

I had issues finding tin in the first couple dozen worlds I played, but that was mostly because I was going with the idea in mind that ore would be distributed more like minecraft or minetest. I should have realized that this was not the experience Vintage Story was going for from the absence of a stone pick. The methods I had come up with in those games simply would not work in this game, because chipping away at stone nodes does not give the materials for a new pick. For a while I messed with the prospector pick, but because it was not the default, figured that was not the creator's vision for the game, either.

So I had to come up with a playstyle that would work with this game's defaults. The best one I've figured out turns out to  be more of a nomadic lifestyle, settling in one spot only long enough to tap all the resources in the region, then moving on. The prospector's pick in default mode tells me nothing more than how much effort I should put into exploring this area's cliff faces and caves. If there are no exposed ore veins, cest la vie. I'll go check out that outcropping off on the horizon. Maybe there's some ore there. It's a huge world. There's always another outcropping.

True, it helps that I'm not interested in building cathedrals or towers or anything. I usually don't even bother with a roof, just a packed earth overhang above the pit kilns and firepits. With the way drifters now work, even large, open concept houses are a bad idea. Which probably explains why all those are in ruins...

  

 

Edited January 27, 2022 by Thorfinn

[Philtre]

3 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

So I had to come up with a playstyle that would work with this game's defaults. The best one I've figured out turns out to  be more of a nomadic lifestyle, settling in one spot only long enough to tap all the resources in the region, then moving on.

Not a fan of this idea: it cuts you off from all of the more time-consuming or equipment-intensive crafting, such as leather-working, as well as from using windmills to automate stuff, animal husbandry, etc.

If you're having trouble finding large amounts of metal, it is completely viable to just continue to use stone for anything that does not absolutely require metal until you have a good stash of metal, then use the lowest-tier metal that will get the job done until you have a good stash of higher-tier metal. Basically, prioritize using metal for essential items like saws and for tasks that will get you more metal. Ores are not actually all that rare, just tedious to find: you can go for years on what you can find as surface deposits or exposed in caves just within a day or so's travel from your base, as long as you use stone for everyday axes and shovels and whatnot.

And large houses are fine in the current version, you just have to light them well. Which means lots of lanterns. Which means a helve hammer, because making plates by hand is a pain....

[Thorfinn]

Leather is not that big of a deal. You have 4 or 5 days at each location waiting for flax to ripen. If you replant once, you are golden. It's not like you need a lot of leather anyway. One set of backpacks. Some clothes. More jerkins when you need to replace armor. That's about it. And realistically, when I find iron, I'm probably there for a good month anyway, so it can cure while I'm delving.

I'd really like to like steel, but from what I can tell, I don't see much of a difference between meteoric and steel. Yeah, some of the numbers look like it would be a good idea, but practically speaking, I don't see much difference in terms of actual battle. The amount of effort involved in getting a steel longblade vs. a meteoric longblade, when all it gives you is roughly double the durability, is just discouraging. For the most part, avoiding combat is by far the better idea anyway. I've probably had 3-4 drops from locusts, and it was never worth the risk or the expense in terms of damage to equipment or use of bandages. Now maybe there are combats worth doing where the tier makes a difference. It's just not enough of a difference that I've noticed it.

And sure, windmill power. Did it once. Check. For as much effort as it took, I might as well have done it by hand. Not true for all people, I'm sure. People who like that kind of thing will find it's the kind of thing they like, and all that.

The reason I'm starting a new game every few days, and trying out mods, is best captured by Helga in Erik the Viking. "If the only reason for going on an expedition is the killing and looting and the only reason for the killing and looting is to pay for the next expedition, they cancel each other out." I need to produce steel so that I can produce more steel to replace the steel equipment I've worn out seeking more steel.

Nah, I'll just start a new game and get the edge of my seat game experience dodging wolves for the first couple days again. My actions and choices for the first few months make a big difference. Later in the game, all it does is give me AFK time.