Quick Cave Mining Question

[Stanmyer]

Hi all, I'm new to both the game and these forums. I have a quick question about mining cave walls that I haven't seen specifically addressed on either the forums or the wiki.

Basically what I'm wondering is this: is it necessary to actually make a "dent" in the walls to find ore? By dent I mean removing a tile of cave wall so that the grey "mined" tile replaces it. I'm curious because I've read that if you're finding stone while mining a wall that there will be no ore present. Is this universally the case or only when you've made that "dent"?

[FatBob]

You can mine and get ore before getting a hole .

[Salanmander]

There can be ore in the first wall tile from a cave, as well as the ones behind it. You don't need to make a dent to check if there is ore there.

[CheeseMaster]

Rather than start a new thread..

What kind of strength does one need to be able to mine the walls of a cave? I can't work it out and would like to know what I'm aiming for.

[Sarge]

There seems to varying degrees of cave wall hardness, basis the messages returned. Like "the rock is just too hard for you to mine" through to "you didn't even make a scratch on the rock surface". In some places the rock is soft enough for you to mine with hardly any strength required. I am speculating that it is strength related, as it would make sense to me from these returned messages. If pickaxe q makes a diff, I do not know, but would suspect not.

I do not know how much is needed at which message level, but it seems to step up in requirement signifficantly per next hardness message. a flat out guess would also be that the rock becomes harder at every new z level.

So, if you are not strong enough, keep looking for softer spots in the cave wall.

[Labanakt]

i started mining copper with ~17 str and stone axe. IT WAS SLOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

[KoE]

The quality of your tool does make a difference (the assumption I've seen/made is that it's STR x quality). Pickaxes are also better the stone axes (though I have no numbers to throw around here). A stone axe boost got me mining our iron which was just too hard to mine, and I recently went from a q26 pickaxe to a q37 pickaxe that drastically reduced the time it takes the hourglass to fill up.

[Sarge]

Sweet, thanks KoE, will give that a bash.

[CheeseMaster]

I thought as much. I am stuck with Q7 stone axe right now until I can work out where to get some better quality branches and stones. Looks like metal is not gonna be something I am gonna get hold of anytime soon.

Legitimately anyway...

[Salanmander]

I thought as much. I am stuck with Q7 stone axe right now until I can work out where to get some better quality branches and stones. Looks like metal is not gonna be something I am gonna get hold of anytime soon.

Legitimately anyway...

Bump your survival up, you should be able to make a Q10 stone axe at least. Then work on strength. If you go full barbaric and manage to down a bear (for bear cape and bear tooth talisman), that will get your strength high very fast. I think I had a strength in the 80s when before modifiers it was around 30.

If you live near a mountain, you might get lucky and be able to dig higher quality stones from the mountain. Alternately, if anyone near you has access to metal, they'll probably be willing to trade some higher quality stones to you cheaply, they're a byproduct of getting metal.