Where's the copper?

[Thorfinn]

What do you do on those occasions when you should have copper, but can't seem to find it? When the gods of the RNG just aren't doing it for you? Panning is boring as heck, but on the other hand, by the time I get enough for a pick, I usually have at least a couple tin and often a temporal gear. Alternatively, I can run around for a couple days and maybe find more, maybe not if the RNG is still uncooperative.

I've encountered that a lot in multi-player worlds, where running around finds me nothing, and eventually I find a mine shaft that explains it. There's just no way of knowing whether someone has cleared the area unless you find the mine shaft. Not that I know of, anyway. And unless propick was turned on, finding enough copper to just replace your tools is touch and go. With my luck, I usually have to top up by panning just to keep going long enough to be able to mine iron, which is everywhere in massive quantities.

So what's the answer? Essentially turn a multi-player game into a single player game by going far enough away from everyone else? Seems to defeat the purpose. Maybe it's something for a mod? You pan enough to be able to build a sluice box so you don't have to just sit there in the water all day, you can spend your time gathering sand, filling the sluice box and collecting what it finds? Still tedious, but at least you are more or less guaranteed something for your trouble, while running around looking for surface copper is not. Maybe if the sand was left behind as tailings you would have some clue where has been explored?

Thoughts?

[DX65]

Panning sand and gravel(not muddy sand, muddy sand is useless right now) is a way to get resources like copper, flint, silver, gold and other stuff. It's slow. Boney soil gives good stuff too. I find it a relaxing activity to do when I want to be in my worlds but don't want to build, explore or chisel. It's also why I keep building a panning bathtubs in my worlds;) Maybe its boring activity and works different in other settings but I like doing it and tend to do it when I am watching videos or listening to music to relax.

Edited March 9, 2022 by DX65

[Thorfinn]

Certainly a valid way of playing the game if you are looking to relax. I just don't find that relaxing. I keep thinking, "If I wasn't in this stupid multiplayer world, I could be running around picking up nuggets and seeing some advancement."

But I'm starting to wonder if maybe that's not a good way to look at it. Maybe panning enough to make a bronze pickaxe, hammer, anvil and a copper prospecting pick is enough. Rush to iron. And by rush, I mean rush. Potentially as early as day 4 if you spawn in a sufficiently large deposit of sand/gravel. But that's like 2 hours of nothing but just sitting there clicking, taking a food break here and there as needed. Not exactly my idea of fun, even if it is effective.

[DX65]

I panned literally for days got more copper, maybe enough silver or gold for one ingot but it was easier on me in my personal situation but I can see if you're the player that wants to do lot of stuff it would be boring.

I personally like the relaxing and creative part of the game.

And until they change how food decay works I won't be playing multiplayer especially very crowded one or any that have more then few people. Plus I don't know if resources respawn the same in single player because when I played Terrafirmacraft in multiplayer once a resource was used up, there was no more.

I don't know if resources work the same or if you have to travel farther and farther to find resources. Its not really my thing personally. I wander into cave and saw several spooky yellow bugs that I forgot name of and it bothered me even though my game settings are they can't attack me.

But everyone has their own way of enjoying games and virtual game worlds.

 

Edited March 9, 2022 by DX65

[Thorfinn]

2 minutes ago, DX65 said:

And until they change how food decay works I won't be playing multiplayer.

Yeah, that is suboptimal, for sure. I've just come to the point that I only save absurdly long-lived stuff like grain and preserves, and forever stuff like seeds, then replant whenever I restart. It's not that horrible. Nurse turnips along and they mature in 4 days. It's easy to just get by on porridge that long. Only real problem is when you quit it's spring and when you log back in it's winter and everything in your house is rotted. Just trashes the immersion. I don't know how to address that, though. If someone has been playing non-stop, and it's now fall for him, how can it also be spring for you?

 

8 minutes ago, DX65 said:

once a resource was used up, there was no more.

Far as I know, same. There are no wild crops, the peat is gone, the minerals are gone, the clay is gone. If you want to progress, you kind of have to spread out into the hinterlands. So far as I know. And again, I don't know that there is an answer to that. A survival game might simply not be applicable to multiplayer, unless everyone agrees to play at the same time.

[DX65]

There are commands to stop time or freeze food decay to zero, I use it often personally but I doubt they do it on multiplayer or those who want rough and hard survival play through.

I am currently building my own world with the only cave like structures places I have my home or workspaces in.

I like the controls that go with single player. I am chronically ill and exhausted and I don't enjoy the stress of harder version personally.

I remember watching last year Mischief of Mice on youtube playing this game on server, they get busy go off for few days and all their food spoiled because literally a year had passed. I never liked that part of the game even personally even when it was Minecraft mod. 

Edited March 9, 2022 by DX65

[daretmavi]

I suggested once to stop food decay in claimed areas,  when you (and people with claim rights) are offline. Some people was affraid that it could be missused, but in multiplayer with seeds, you can get more food than you can use.

The food decay is just annoying if you log back and everything is spoiled.

[AlphaRay]

On 3/9/2022 at 10:10 PM, DX65 said:

I panned literally for days got more copper, maybe enough silver or gold for one ingot but it was easier on me in my personal situation but I can see if you're the player that wants to do lot of stuff it would be boring.

Panning about 10 sandblocks should be anought to get minimum of 20 copper.  That's how i do it.

[Ashery]

It'll usually be a fair bit more than ten blocks. The stats show 1/8.33 chance, which means a bit less than one per sand/gravel block. That lines up with my recent experience where I panned for ~12hours in game due to a combination of it being late at night and a heavy temporal storm that started around sunrise.

[AlphaRay]

1/8.33 per block or per 1/10 of a block?  It was maybe more..but not more than 15 blocks. I had sometimes up to 3 ores per block. But only in sand. Gravel drops almost nothing.
 

[Streetwind]

Beware the low sample size bias, @AlphaRay

Gravel and sand, of all rock types, use exactly the same drop table. There are only two panning drop tables in Vintage Story: "bony soil" and "everything else". You can actually find them in the game files and confirm that this is true. That you got different results for different materials is simply a result of random variance across too few tries.

In playing over 500 total hours across four different worlds, I've determined for myself the rule of the thumb of "one copper nugget per panned block". So if I grab 20 blocks of gravel, then I expect to get somewhere around 20 copper nuggets, plus/minus some because of low sample size.

I did not know the actual probability, but what @Ashery says lines up pretty well with that. One in 8.33 attempts, so overall, slightly fewer than one per block (each block is eight panning attempts). In my 1.16 world, I ended up spawning in an area with an absolute dearth of copper (I entered the iron age without ever seeing a better result than "very poor" for copper ore on the propick), and at one point I resigned myself to panning 64 blocks of sand in order to make some progress. It gave me 58 copper nuggets. Slightly fewer than the 61 that math says is the average for a chance of 1 in 8.33, or the 64 that my rule of thumb said. But that's still pretty close.

 

Edited March 23, 2022 by Streetwind

[lOgAnmalONE]

I'm using a copper prospecting pickaxe and finding no copper anywhere after randomly digging holes and surveying  which shows no copper anywhere...yet.   The Wiki shows no tips. I've consumed 14 prospecting axes in my search so far its exhausting. There must be an accurate method, but I've not found one yet.  Do anyone find copper while exploring caves, in lake bottoms, etc ? 

[Thorfinn]

Last game I found copper while digging a hole to make charcoal in. Never looked in lake bottoms, but cliff faces and caves, yeah. More luck that way than prospecting, for sure. Though I do use the pick to decide whether to even bother spelunking. But more often than not, I just move somewhere else. It's a big world. I'm likely to find surface copper somewhere.

Wow, 14 picks? Could have just skipped straight to iron.

I've kind of adjusted my starts around panning, as a more sure way of getting copper age by day 2, 3 at the outside. Get a stack of clay, a stack of peat, a stack or two of sand/gravel, then set up shop in an area with good trees. It's not too hard to be able to get 12-16 stacks of charcoal started before dark, then spend the dark hours getting the 6 essential clay items firing, and then pan until dawn.

[DX65]

My sample size must be very small But I don't care I usually do creative, unless doing so isn't going to work for me. I realize chiseling in survival is better to prevent accidents. I just pan recreationally. I don't really need the drops and often they are very small. I can go through at least 6 or more stacks before I get enough metals to make anything.

But its just busy work for me, if I was depending on it and couldn't just make the stuff appear it might get annoying fast.

Edited March 23, 2022 by DX65

[Ashery]

7 hours ago, lOgAnmalONE said:

I'm using a copper prospecting pickaxe and finding no copper anywhere after randomly digging holes and surveying  which shows no copper anywhere...yet.   The Wiki shows no tips. I've consumed 14 prospecting axes in my search so far its exhausting. There must be an accurate method, but I've not found one yet.  Do anyone find copper while exploring caves, in lake bottoms, etc ? 

Which prospecting mode were you using?

[lOgAnmalONE]

I'm using Node Search Mode with a radius of 4

[Ashery]

35 minutes ago, lOgAnmalONE said:

I'm using Node Search Mode with a radius of 4

That's your issue.

Node search mode is useful when you're already close to where ores are likely to spawn and you're just trying to narrow down exactly where they are without strip mining.

You use the other mode when you're trying to cover a lot of ground and find a region with decent ore density as you'll get a rough reading for the entire chunk as opposed to just a 8x8x8 block.

[DX65]

@IOgAnmalONE

Do you remember your world settings? I think you set the copper to super rare. I am not sure there is way to change that in survival after a world has made.

If I was making a survival world and couldn't find ore I would go create another world and make sure my propick setting is working and has settings on the way you want. And make sure to set copper and ores to common.

My current world, WE Doodle is creative, flat, basically I use for building, world edit, chisel. It has no propick, no ores. I wouldn't be able to get them through regular survival means except through recreational panning or getting it out of the creative assets.

[lOgAnmalONE]

@Ashery:  I watched a YouTube video from the games Wiki page detail that Density Search Mode only scans the density map only, but not the actual ore deposited in the created world.  It states that  "it does not detect the actual presence of ore blocks; but detects the chance that ores are present."     I used 14  prospecting picks using this methods and found no copper ore at all, not even a single nugget.  Using this method over several real life days and many more ingame days.  I abandoned using this method because it was non-reliable and only wasted my time. It granted me the fruit of having no success and a lesson well learned.  LOL   

@DX65: I looked at it just now.  My game settings the  Surface Copper Deposit Frequency = Rare.   Tin is set to Extremely Rare   Thanks

 

 

 

[DX65]

29 minutes ago, lOgAnmalONE said:

@DX65: I looked at it just now.  My game settings the  Surface Copper Deposit Frequency = Rare.   Tin is set to Extremely Rare   Thanks

I am no expert but that might be why its so hard to find plus there is another setting that makes all ores hard to find too in that same setting area. Its in the customize settings when you create a world very close to that setting.

Edited March 24, 2022 by DX65

[lOgAnmalONE]

Copper should be the easiest metal to find in the game. I thought it would be quicker using the prospecting pick rather than wandering the entire world looking for surface copper bits.  I' I just passed the winter season where snow covered the ground making identifying surface copper extremely difficult. I've not seen or discovered copper in any caves that I've explored, and in fact when I used spectator mode to fly through caves to check, I see no copper either.   

Right now, I'm thinking this specific game mechanic with the pro-pick needs polished so that new players are not stuck in early game with no reliable method to find ore. I know higher tier ores were said to be more difficult to find as we progress, however copper should not be this difficult. The game Wiki does not address this problem nor give advice how to overcome it. I guess I'll go back to wandering the world like a zombie looking for copper bits again.   

[DX65]

5 hours ago, lOgAnmalONE said:

Copper should be the easiest metal to find in the game. I thought it would be quicker using the prospecting pick rather than wandering the entire world looking for surface copper bits.  I' I just passed the winter season where snow covered the ground making identifying surface copper extremely difficult. I've not seen or discovered copper in any caves that I've explored, and in fact when I used spectator mode to fly through caves to check, I see no copper either.   

Right now, I'm thinking this specific game mechanic with the pro-pick needs polished so that new players are not stuck in early game with no reliable method to find ore. I know higher tier ores were said to be more difficult to find as we progress, however copper should not be this difficult. The game Wiki does not address this problem nor give advice how to overcome it. I guess I'll go back to wandering the world like a zombie looking for copper bits again.   

Games are suppose to be fun in my humble opinion if you're in a world that you can change which you can do at least in changing settings, do so. Find a better world with ores being found is common.  I get if you built something and don't want to lose it or start over that is understandable but seriously becoming a zombie over copper bits just isn't worth it.

But if you gotta become a zombie just don't starting eating trader's brains ok? Its your world you can do what you want, I guess including turning trader's brains into snacks.

And nobody can stop you in whatever that is you decide to do..

Edited March 25, 2022 by DX65

[Thorfinn]

My guess is incredibly bad luck. Either that or there's some mod interfering with mapgen. I was just messing around doing first day runs, and have 57 copper in hand at 3PM. Yes, way over the norm, but I'm usually within spitting distance of 20 by dusk. All that's really important is 20 by dusk of day 2, 40 by around 2PM of day 3, though. It's easy to have that with just panning.

Did you crank your copper scarcity all the way down? Or are you playing on a MP server? Something weird must be going on. Since I had a clue, I've never had such a start. And I've never had the circumstance of not having copper by winter, even in MP. If you want to post your seed, I'd be happy to take a look.

[EDIT]

Alternatively, 1789142442, all survival defaults except propick radius 8 is a very nice seed. There are copper bits right underfoot at spawn, and they are all around the lake just south of you. Plus, more than enough reeds, a big deposit of clay, more than enough food. And it's right on top of limestone, so you know where it is when you need it. There's even a bee tree not far away. What's not to like?

[/EDIT]

Edited March 25, 2022 by Thorfinn

[Maelstrom]

21 hours ago, lOgAnmalONE said:

@DX65: I looked at it just now.  My game settings the  Surface Copper Deposit Frequency = Rare.   Tin is set to Extremely Rare   Thanks

Pro pick on density search mode doesn't detect surface ore deposits.  Surface ore can only be found through node search mode or direct observation (surface nuggets or seeing the raw ore in rock).  

Using the density search mode on pro pick, it is best to disregard the number and focus on the wordy description.  take a few readings and see where the description is most favorable and keep going in directions that indicate better readings until you get to the highest reading you can find.  I have rarely failed to find ores that have Ultra-high and Very High readings and have found ores off of a Decent reading as well.  The only time I look at the number is if I have multiple readings with the same description (i.e. two+ readings of decent) to indicate to me where the better reading is.  Hope this helps.

[lOgAnmalONE]

@DX65, @Thorfinn,  @Maelstrom:

Thanks for the replies and I really appreciate your feedback. 

I've completely lost faith in the games ore search mechanic to provide a reliable method in finding copper during the winter season other than using visual observations at the surface given that copper is covered with snow. Using the pro pick was very interesting in testing although it fails in both Node and Density search modes for copper. Pro pick usage results provided me with data that strongly suggests that it’s very likely  to be unreliable at finding other ores given that it can't even find basic copper deposits. I'm exhausted from searching for copper over the last 12 days [real life days] and I've decided to shelve the game until early 2024. I hope that the game mechanic using the pro pick is addressed and fixed by then. I'll definitely continue to support the game because I want to see it succeed.  Someone mentioned that it could be a mod, however the only mod I'm using is the primitive survival mode for fishing and trapping animals. It has nothing to do with mining ores.