Andael

My 8yo nephew wanted to try this game I was playing... He took to it, but was creeped out by the rifts and almost paralyzed by fear of the drifters. So after buying a copy for him to play on a shared world he preferred the sound of "Explorer" mode. The wildlife at least fights back when injured, but the drifters are always passive... which he doesn't like now that he's gotten more comfortable. And it really does feel bad that these things littering the landscape and sounding all ominous are completely passive. The world configuration seems to only have the one setting for all hostility, with three states: aggressive/passive/off. Does "passive" mean that wildlife fights back but drifters never do? Or does Explore-mode have a finer distinction where drifters are set to "hostility=off"? I've been hesitant to experiment in case I can't re-set back to the Explorer default. I think "aggressive" might be too much for him, especially at the rate that wolves spawn. (Really, these baying nuisances can be too much... In my own world: 36 hides in 3 days, from around my home which I am constantly trying to keep clear of wolves? I've started to let hides rot... I'm overflowing in mostly-wolf leather.)

Swimming is a pretty safe way to travel it seems. Except it was still as cold as -20 while I was doing this journey... so I tried to avoid getting wet. When I did, I had to dig a little shelter from the wind and snow/sleet for a campfire to dry and warm-up. I keep forgetting to try a raft!

I finally found bauxite. Almost exactly 10000 blocks away from origin, to the north-northeast. With the advice here I decided to commit to a long run I'd probably die on... goal being bauxite or death. So I went lean, with only one old hunter's backpack, no heavier armor, old gear, and three sliced up pies (I should've taken more... got lucky with a lot of frozen berries though -- it was March and northerly). Because I was hedging my bet and traveling light, yet managed to return home safely... I had to make another trip -- properly equipped (with two mining sacks). You ain't kiddin'. From the translocator I started from, heading away from "home"... the world soon turned to granite, and granite... and granite. While I crossed fields of granite gravel... shorelines of only granite sand, and nothing exposed but granite beneath the thinnest topsoil... I kept thinking back to your comment. But I didn't have much choice in direction from this translocator, else I'd be headed toward explored territory. I went 11k blocks and still granite, so I began to loop back... and on that large loop I finally found the bauxite. In my initial searching I was trying to sweep "breadth-first", hoping to find the closest bauxite to home. I also didn't want to risk losing gear days away from spawn. But sometimes you need to clear large spans of a particular geology... so maybe better to just pick a direction and keep going, fast.

I find plenty of sconces in underground ruins. However, you might be thinking of lighting a larger base than I am. Base layout... it seems in every game I build into the environment. Never the same twice. In this case, I started in a tunnel: walled off the two openings, added doors. Over time fixed things up. Main room functions as the kitchen, still kept most of the natural sandstone and granite cave walls. Bedroom in an alcove. A slightly lower area for crafting: crucible and clay. Front porch has crates of stone, barrels for compost, and some garden tools leaning. Blue clay shingles extend from the natural cave opening. I have a small cellar (3x2) of ashlar blocks beside the kitchen area -- convenient to access for cooking, or for grabbing a meal from a crock. A tunnel runs through the mountain ridge I'm built into... which passes through a larger 7x7 room for tanning, brining, fruit juice, and distilling. This room formed as a side-effect of mining out granite blocks. Deeper along the tunnel I have a "temporal storm arena" with weapons, armor, and spawn-prevention except inside a fenced pit. Other side of the tunnel (south facing) exits into a greenhouse which I open during the summer for rainfall. A pigfarm is also nearby. A ladder goes up from the main room to the mechanized forge. Powered Quern, Helve Hammer, and Pulverizer. An iron anvil for smithing. From this raised forge, the windmill tower extends a bit higher. Elevation of the upper sails is only about 160 (I favor a reasonable aesthetic). I have two sails up there, plus one rigged directly into the forge's large-gear. The forge area is built into a natural ledge of the mountain slope -- basically I dug upward from my home until I emerged, then leveled it off, walled it up and added the shingled roof to match the roof down below. Having the forge area raised means I can barely hear the machinery working from the main room, plus the mechanical losses are less. Overall look from outside is kind of like some mountain monastery integrated into the rock. I get drifters moaning outside -- often get rifts up on the mountain slope above me, with drifters raining down. Annoying. I only get drifters inside in the prepared arena pit. Though during a storm I need to be in there to avoid getting ganked by something spawning behind me (twice I've had a corrupt do that in my kitchen -- I mean, spawning on my pie table!? Jerk).

Thank-you. Then I will avoid such caverns unless I know there's something I want. Or, if I want to explore nearby but with some peace rather than having my thoughts impeded by a blaring Bell.

I've felt somewhat encouraged to resume the search -- to just load up on pies and travel overland forever... but waiting until winter passes again so I don't have snow obscuring things. To bide my time, I'm again searching for translocators. Only found one more so far, but nothing immediately interesting on the other end -- I'll probably use it as the launch-point for my later walkabout. On the speculations of where to find translocators... I've wondered if rusty gears in caves could be a hint? I could easily be seeing coincidence, since a rusty gear leads me to search more thoroughly. So far, four translocators in my world are within about 300 blocks of home (which is right at 0, 0). So they do seem fairly common. I've been trying to find and fully explore every cave during this winter... except the deep occupied caverns I'm not comfortable tackling. It's what I'd like steel plate for. My iron chain gets shredded too easily. About those particularly bad caverns with nests, bells, and everything spawning... I've only cleared two, but there wasn't really anything worthwhile to gain aside from access to more cavern -- ultimately deadends and the usual loot drops of nests and bells. They don't seem very worthwhile to tackle compared to the resources to repair armor and make new weapons. So I'm wondering if I'm missing something of value there or have just been unlucky?

It can't be found under other sedimentary layers? It seems my world has endless strata of claystone/limestone/sandstone/shale overlapping each other, sometimes with soil on top. Thick enough that steep cliffsides are often just the sedimentary rock without any visible metamorphic layer. After struggling to find any visible bauxite I started boring holes until I find the underlying metamorphic. Or am I wrong here and bauxite will only be on top aside from soil or igneous?

Ha, okay thanks for that. I've been checking a commodity trader on occasion, just in case. I've repaired five translocators, and made use of them to extend my reach. I keep checking caves for more. But it's getting to the point where I have to range far even to explore new caves. Is there a rough "density" of translocators to be expected? Two of mine are about a 15min run away. I imagine there must be many more closer. Also, are they guaranteed to be connected to caves? I found a ruin structure completely sealed underground, at something like y=-60. Only found it because of a drifter sloshing around in water surrounding the ruin in it's sealed chamber. It might be neat to have a Jonas-type device you could make which resonated with other such machinery, like a dowsing rod. That would certainly be something I'd invest some effort into in this world to help my otherwise blind and desperate search. Every time I find a translocator, that's been the hope! Only to feel that hope drain away into misery over the course of the following game-week as I explore around and eventually make the trek home the long-way, overland. All of my destinations have been very similar/familar, except one with redwoods which was nice. Still with rocks like "home" though.

Someone has to be worst-case. It's one of the things about statistics... a specific sample case isn't guaranteed to fall into normal, and *someone* will be an outlier. Perhaps I have more running to do. Some of this terrain is so arduous. Like swiss-cheese mountains having vertical pits extending deep below sealevel. I imagine the terrain generation parameters at some extremes.

Thanks for the tip about granite, I hadn't seen that before. The world I got had me starting in sandstone with underlying granite and andesite. Traveling out from here most directions gets me hills and plains of thick claystone, limestone, or shale. I'll burrow 40 blocks before I hit granite or andesite (checking in case bauxite has been hiding beneath all this sedimentary layering). Really, it seems like my situation should be ideal -- the sedimentary layers are so thick and layered; I need to dig deep to even find the underlying hard rock. Just hasn't been any bauxite in the mix. Plenty of every other sedimentary rock. When I went through translocators I basically find more of the same. Two of them exited deep under limestone hills. I can only imagine that those having trouble finding limestone must be living on top of bauxite or something, being my karmic complement. I've had no end of limestone. I imagine borax can be a problem, since you pretty much have to stumble into it. With that I've been lucky in three worlds -- finding borax rather early in caves, and then more later. I've rarely found ores in caves, as many recommend. Instead I find brown coal, sulfur, saltpeter, and borax. Ores I've been getting almost entirely by prospecting and vertical shafts.

I've read some comments about how some have loved the struggle to find bauxite... but that's after they eventually found it. In a recent playthrough I was ready for steel at about 80h in. My primary focus became "find bauxite". I spent winters delving caves for translocators. Found and repaired five in total. I spent summers exploring the lands they sent me to. I toggled the map settings to the old "truecolor" to help reveal exposed bauxite (with the intent to turn it back after finding, which never happened). I traveled from each of the translocator endpoints back to "home", and then even between the endpoints, desperate to fill out the map. I bored holes through the sedimentary layers periodically to check for a bauxite layer beneath all the dirt, lime, clay, and sand... I used someone's tip about lapis lazuli occuring in only a few rock types including bauxite... but it was always limestone. I found olivine and titanium. And trunks of iron ore, waiting. As the search continues, the overhead to even get to the frontiers increases. I considered heading out minimally and just dying to respawn at home... but that feels bad to intentionally use the mechanic in this way. That's not surviving, and not fun for me... though I wasn't having fun anymore anyway. So I began a fresh game, after over 200h. I estimate that more than 50h of my life was spend just racing across terrain scanning for bauxite and boring sample-holes. Stress on the boring. It didn't even spark much emergent gameplay, unlike the hunt for metals. I'm not enjoying this new playthrough as much though... I like what I'd accomplished in the prior game. Vintage Story really stresses the effort needed to accomplish things, and this amplifies the value of achievements... but also has been killing my interest to re-do it, especially when aspects of the current world make results feel worse. It would be nice if there was something to be done to make this effort seem progressive... rather than searching a map which ultimately feels devoid of bauxite because of the way random numbers turned out. Alternative materials, a longer process, sifting bauxite bits from conglomerate gravel... something. Sad tuba noises.