Can someone explain clay?

[barracuda546]

I dig in shallow water and I get ball clay, but if I dig in the same place after getting the clay I don't get anything.Can someone explain cause I've looked up the eiki and it just says dig in shallow water. Thanks

[Sarge]

Since the start of world 3, if I'm not mistaken, natural resources have been 'finite'. Clay (as water, soil, fish & mussels) also have quality nodes - these being circular areas where the quality exceeds the base natural quality found everywhere else of q10. When you dig for clay, in a q20 clay node as example, the quality will gradually reduce and eventually you will deplete the clay spot of resource entirely, the moment it goes below q10. It will gradually replenish itself, with quality grade recovery over time though.

You have therefore been digging outside of these reasonably scarce clay nodes, in a default q10 area and have depleted it of clay the moment you finished digging that one block of clay. You basically have to search for a clay node so that you can dig more clay from the same spot.

Edit: Btw, the sweet spot (highest q point) of a natural resource node is smack in the centre of the invisible circular node. This doesn't mean you are necessarily able to get to the seet spot though. E.g. you may be digging for ball clay in the shallows and the centre of the circle lies on land. The closest you can get to the sweet spot is obviously then the nearest point, within the shallows, to the centre of the node.

... that's why it's always a good idea, when finding nice quality water, to locate the nearest inland well position, as it might just be closer to the centre of the node.