clay *-*

[Saitada]

they will regen 1 Q every 8 hours.

[MagicManICT]

So to sum up this thread:

Clay, along with everything else, comes in nodes. The important thing to know about clay is that once it drops below q10, you can't dig more. That's why you only get one at a time unless you're on a node. Everything else stays at q10 no matter how much more you remove.

Nodes can be rather large (an entire minimap). Therefore, checking more than once every 50 tiles is pointless until you do find a node. Once you find one, check frequently until the numbers quit going up, then check ever tile to find the peak.

Gathering from a node depletes its quality (applies to water, dirt, clay only). This regenerates at a rate of about 1 pt per day. This means that effectively, yes, you can never destroy a node, but you can ruin one to the point it'll take a month for it to recover.

For the rate of decrease, think of a node as a large pile of sand with the volume of sand in that pile related to the quality. When you start digging, the sand around it slides and fills in where you were digging at, so you really won't notice quality going down much unless you're looking at the peak. However, if you dig at the peak, you can create a pretty good crater there before sand starts sliding in from the sides, so you notice the quality drop pretty fast.

[evilboy666]

they decrease in q pretty fast but regen fast too. dont have exact numbers for ya.

yeah there was a 32 q clay and it dropped to 31 in about 1.5-2 full crates

[krikke93]

Wild guess: about 30-45 clay until one quality drop?

[ApocalypsePlease]

Wild guess: about 30-45 clay until one quality drop?

From personal experience I'd say the higher the quality, the faster the quality drops. I have no way of verifying this though.

[min_the_fair]

From personal experience I'd say the higher the quality, the faster the quality drops. I have no way of verifying this though.

Yeah, I'd been assuming there was a square root formula in there somewhere

I haven't been digging much quality clay this world, but seem to remember from w5 that I could get maybe 8-10 pieces of the best available q (not the centre of a node though), then more of the next couple, then as much as I liked at qualities I didn't really care about.

Is there evidence that the strategy of digging a node from the edge to the centre will increase quantity available (e.g. when you're trying to get a whole wall out of a small node all at once)? I probably should have tried working this out myself, but have no immediate plans for any further quantity of bricks.

--

Ball clay can be acquired by digging in shallow water, and Acre clay can be acquired by digging on Mudflats. Each of the listed areas holds 1 unit of clay, except for areas with a clay quality point that hold larger amounts. Therefore when digging be on the watch for clay with quality 10 and up. At these clay deposits, the character can continue extracting clay until either the inventory is full or the player can instruct the character to do otherwise.

I have to say that this doesn't make quite as much sense as it might. Does anyone more awake/articulate than me want to try rewriting, preferably to include the word 'node' and clarify that there are some muflats that don't have nodes?

[ApocalypsePlease]

Does anyone more awake/articulate than me want to try rewriting, preferably to include the word 'node' and clarify that there are some muflats that don't have nodes?

Done.

Changed this:

Ball clay can be acquired by digging in shallow water, and Acre clay can be acquired by digging on Mudflats. Each of the listed areas holds 1 unit of clay, except for areas with a clay quality point that hold larger amounts. Therefore when digging be on the watch for clay with quality 10 and up. At these clay deposits, the character can continue extracting clay until either the inventory is full or the player can instruct the character to do otherwise.

Into this:

Ball clay is obtained by digging in shallow water, whilst Acre clay is obtained by digging on mudflats. Simply digging on either terrain type will not yield clay unless there is a clay node present. However, on occasion it is possible to receive a single piece of 10 quality clay even when not digging on a node. A node can be identified if you receive multiple units of quality 10 clay, or a unit of clay over 10 quality.

For more tips on finding clay, view the Finding high quality water, clay, and soil page.

It can still be refined some more, and either I'll get around to it some other time or another wiki editor will