Mining

[Darmik]

Well I been prospecting my surroundings by a lot of time and 5 minimaps arround there is nothing... have not tried far than that but it would be really far form my place and I was wondering... what about if I make a minehole and prospect in it? is there more chance of finding minerals in deeper levels?

[ZeggyZon]

So this is what I do.

I map out as much of the caves as I can then save the map of the caves to disk. I then superimpose the caves over a map of the area. Then I prospect in areas I know that I can get to from the natural caves.

From your post I gather you don't have a cave entrance available to you, that makes things tougher (duh). I strongly suggest you scout the area for a natural cave then explore that. When you explore it you're almost guaranteed to find an ore node that some one has already started to mine.

Your next problem is transferring ore from a cave to your base. You can solve this problem by 1. Making ore smelters right next to the node or 2. Make a village claim and oath between idol and hearth fire or 3. just carry it and walk one way from your base. The first solution is nice but you're probably not going to build a good quality ore smelter outside of your base so quality will suffer. Second solution is also nice since you could build a good quality smelter in your base but you have to transfer using a village idol and building one is tough depending how far you are in the game.

If you haven't already make sure you mine with a character that is full industrial, otherwise its a waste.

ZZ

[KennyoftheSands]

Another solution, if the cave isn't that far for you to walk, is to just take 4 nuggets and 4 boards with you to build a small chest at the nodes. It takes 20 spots in your inventory but it will open 36 new spots. You can just tp back to your hearthfire carrying the chest.

[the_pilgrim]

Well I been prospecting my surroundings by a lot of time and 5 minimaps arround there is nothing... have not tried far than that but it would be really far form my place and I was wondering... what about if I make a minehole and prospect in it? is there more chance of finding minerals in deeper levels?

From my experience, mineral nodes tend to be fairly large, but they aren't everywhere. Try searching a bit further and you'll eventually find a node. It probably won't be near your base unless you prospected beforehand.

Deeper levels seem to have about the same chance of spawning mineral nodes, but they have higher base quality.

[Darmik]

Darn, in that case i should go prospecting till find then move my place to the ore vein that will make things rairly easly the only problem is transporting all my stuff... but well no sacrifice no glory, so ill stick to prospect far away till find one, thanks a lot for the answers

[ZeggyZon]

Darn, in that case i should go prospecting till find then move my place to the ore vein that will make things rairly easly the only problem is transporting all my stuff... but well no sacrifice no glory, so ill stick to prospect far away till find one, thanks a lot for the answers

Another suggestion, you can go ahead and make a minehole at your place and maybe you'll get lucky and it will connect to an existing cave network. You can then explore that network for partially mined nodes.

Another thing to consider, if you build a minehole to the second layer the ore is better quality but the hardness also goes up.

In this world securing a minehole is pretty easy. If you want prevent players from going up through the minehole you can place sign posts around the perimeter of the minehole. The opposite is true when entering, put signposts around the ladder to prevent players from going down.

ZZ

[Darmik]

and yet i found iron! but there is one problem... is near the shore and is bad to build near shore maybe ill have to keep searching

[ZeggyZon]

and yet i found iron! but there is one problem... is near the shore and is bad to build near shore maybe ill have to keep searching

How far is it from your claim? If you build a minehole in your claim there is a small chance that you can link up with existing caves and get to that node that way. If you do build a minehole don't build it right on top of the node you found, it will destroy some of the but ore nodes are pretty big so it may not that bad. You can build the minehole away from shore and build a palisade around minehole but that's a lot of resources.

I find it funny that you can see rustroot, bought prospecting, and found a node of iron before you found a cave.

ZZ

[the_pilgrim]

and yet i found iron! but there is one problem... is near the shore and is bad to build near shore maybe ill have to keep searching

Mineral nodes are usually fairly large. I'd suggest crossing the river and checking if it extends through to the other side.

You might be able to build on the other side of the node, where it isn't too close to water.

[KennyoftheSands]

If we're on the subject of transportation anyways, would it be possible to use crossroads between layers?