About mine levels and variety of ore

[Antvgr]

Fair enough to rustroot once to see if there’s nearby ore but there often won’t be or it wont be ores you want. Constant prospecting is kind of a waste of time for several reasons; as others have said the best way to find ore is to strip mine or pick at cave walls because it’s more about covering a large area.

Eh, why? Before going to next level, I usually rustroot all nearby ore spots, mark them and then transpose on next level map to know where to dig immediately. You can spend insane amounts of metal building supports strip mining and find nothing, while walking just a few tiles next to ore.

[abt79]

my brother, what’s the deepest level you’ve mined on?

Prospecting l1 from the surface is almost reasonable but with each level below that the ore in immediate vicinity of your minehole ladder is less likely to be useful and finding faraway ore will probably require more mining on the level you’re prospecting from. If you find all your ore with rustroot you’re essentially doubling the amount of mining you need to do. Rustroot is also kind of stupid and unreliable, it gets flummoxed if there are two veins in opposite directions and points to shitty useless ores like lead - and ofc you can’t tell what ore you’re tracking until you’ve found it. If you do use rustroot I hope you’re using Low Q so you don’t get stuck chasing leadglance 100 tiles from you.

I suppose some of my reasoning comes from the fact that I mine at extreme quantities (or, one vein of a given ore will not be enough, while I get way more than enough tin before I ever crack l2) so strip mining becomes inevitable - cavewall picking remains the fastest method if you just need a little ore. But that assumes there’s any caves near your ladder; you’re often stuck strip mining anyways. From my perspective Rustroot is mostly a waste of time/noobtrap either way. It’s not like you’ll miss the ore right next to your minehole.

[Antvgr]

my brother, what’s the deepest level you’ve mined on?

Prospecting l1 from the surface is almost reasonable but with each level below that the ore in immediate vicinity of your minehole ladder is less likely to be useful and finding faraway ore will probably require more mining on the level you’re prospecting from. If you find all your ore with rustroot you’re essentially doubling the amount of mining you need to do. Rustroot is also kind of stupid and unreliable, it gets flummoxed if there are two veins in opposite directions and points to shitty useless ores like lead - and ofc you can’t tell what ore you’re tracking until you’ve found it. If you do use rustroot I hope you’re using Low Q so you don’t get stuck chasing leadglance 100 tiles from you.

I suppose some of my reasoning comes from the fact that I mine at extreme quantities (or, one vein of a given ore will not be enough, while I get way more than enough tin before I ever crack l2) so strip mining becomes inevitable - cavewall picking remains the fastest method if you just need a little ore. But that assumes there’s any caves near your ladder; you’re often stuck strip mining anyways. From my perspective Rustroot is mostly a waste of time/noobtrap either way. It’s not like you’ll miss the ore right next to your minehole.

I am currently on level 4. Maybe i am misunderstanding something here. But before going down to 4, I rustrooted along the level 3s' tunnels, and natural caverns finding a couple of silver spots and a few normal ores. That allowed me to know where to dig on level 4. I didn't rustroot level 2->3 and for me it was mostly useless level as i found no spots strip mining.