clay search questions

[saltire]

Hi,

Do my survival and exploration skills effect my chances of finding clay?

eg - now my exp is bumped i can see taproot and herbs a lot, is the effect the same for clay?

what ive done so far (as suggested by the wiki) is to go up and down river shallows and the mudflats. I got 2 bits of clay and no more, so i carried on and on, and on.

looking at the quantities needed for a lot of the clay based stuff it cant be that hard to find, right?

Does anyone have a sure fire way of getting clay regularly? I dont care about quality at this point, just want to play with it.

[Oskatat]

your tactic of exploring rivers and mudflats is the way to go
just keep on going and when you hit a spot of higher than q10, you know you found some

[TeckXKnight]

No, no stat or skill effects your ability to find clay (with the exception of gray clay and cave clay). Ball clay (Shallow water) and Acre clay (Red mud flats) are a natural resource which you can always dig up if there is any available at a location.
The way it works is that there is a node somewhere. This node is a central point for all of the clay in the area it covers. The closer to the center of the node you are, the higher the quality of the clay; so the edges have the lowest quality clay while the center has the highest quality. When a spot within the node reaches lower than quality 10, the node stops giving clay for 2 days in that spot until it has a chance to restore itself to its full quality again. Go closer to the center of a node for the best clay finding results.
You're hitting q10 nodes which die after giving you one or two pieces of clay.

There is an exception to this rule with gray clay and cave clay. You need exp*per = 250 for gray clay and exp*per = 600 for cave clay. Gray clay will look like a gray block on water shallows and can be harvested for 0-2 pieces of clay (usually 0 if you're full nature, always 2 if you're full industry). Cave clay only appears in shallow water located within a cave and obeys the same rules as gray clay (0-2 pieces, etc.) The quality of the clay will be determined by the quality of the node it's sitting on but it will not detract from the node quality if you harvest it and it will still appear even if the nodes quality has dropped below 10, though the base quality of the clay itself will never go below 10.