Need a suggestion!

[daemmon]

I'm playing with 3 friends and we are pretty new at this (1 week of playing so far). We had no problems in settling our place, palisade'd, etc. We found our own crappy clay node, no good water around, and seems like there is 1 cave and some nice place to make a mine around, which is why I'm posting.

The thing is, so far in the nearest cave ( that seems to be extremely abandoned and never tried to mine ) I prospected Iron, but with my crappy pickaxe/stone axe ( only q10, scavenged pickaxe fail ) and my 66 strenght I'm still far from mining there (still at TOO HARD). And prospecting the area doesnt seem to be anything better, I can barely found any rustroot with 735 exp*perc and I'm stuck with q10 water so the best extract I made was q19 which was pretty crappy to actually found something, only 1 pie slice that sent me back to my home where NO MINERAL ARE FOUND.

So after the background, the question is... WTF should I do?

-Keep prospecting and praying that the mine has a softer wall to mine?
-Try to get a better Q stone axe to try on the cave, at least to get some nice minerals to make a better pickaxe?
-Another option

Thanks!

[cobaltjones]

Prospecting only checks below you. If you want to check the cave then check the area outside of it.

Otherwise just start trying all the walls of the cave. Even if you don't find any ore, you're likely to find some higher q stones which will then make it easier to mine the harder walls.

[novaalpha]

When you prospect in cave, it shows you minerals one level below, ie the ones you would find if you build a mine inside a cave.

[daemmon]

When you prospect in cave, it shows you minerals one level below, ie the ones you would find if you build a mine inside a cave.

If the walls of the upper level are hard, the ones of the below level will be harder, softer or totally random?

[novaalpha]

When you prospect in cave, it shows you minerals one level below, ie the ones you would find if you build a mine inside a cave.

If the walls of the upper level are hard, the ones of the below level will be harder, softer or totally random?

Totally random.

[LimaZulu]

How are your skills/attributes so high if you've only been playing for a week? O_o

[daemmon]

How are your skills/attributes so high if you've only been playing for a week? O_o

Full barbarism, hunted a bear from boat, bear cape + talisman is enough strenght. Spectacles for +5 perc (bad q10)
Values are just LP farming, mostly by foraging+hunting (not only from boat, I have 50 UA)

When you prospect in cave, it shows you minerals one level below, ie the ones you would find if you build a mine inside a cave.

If the walls of the upper level are hard, the ones of the below level will be harder, softer or totally random?

Totally random.

Thanks A LOT for your help