by Escaleone » Sat May 29, 2010 4:33 am
Find red splotchy-looking thing on the ground with (perception x exploration) >= 400. It's rustroot, which is used with the recipe given by Prospecting to make rustroot extract. Use the Prospect action, which expends 0.1L of rustroot extract (you get 0.4L per rustroot) to get a popup saying how close any existing mines are (max distance away = 1000 tiles; for example, it will say 95% if you are ~50 tiles away from the mine, or 1% if you're ~990 tiles away). The popup will stay up until you log out or close it, for the record.
Beyond that...no, the minimap isn't involved in prospecting. It doesn't tell you the direction of the mine, either; you just have to move around somehow and try again to figure out whether you're closer or farther.
P.S. - When you prospect while "99%" close to a mine, your character will automatically walk straight to it and put down a mine construction sign on it. Needs 100 wood blocks, so grab one once you get really close; if you walk away without a block in the site, you'll have to prospect it again.