How do I... Find metal?

[alioli]

So I have to find a cave and dig until I manage to find anything? Seems overly punishing to those that doesnt live near one.
Do I need to find metal in order to build a mineshaft of my own?

[TeckXKnight]

Metal comes naturally from 2 sources: Mining underground and ore rocks that are found by exploring above ground. Player who strike metal or find ore rocks quickly consume them and use them for their own purposes, so active areas rarely have either in easy to locate places.

To get to the underground you'll need to either build a mineshaft, which requires hard leather so you'll either need a beehive or a high enough perception * exploration to see candleberries, or to find a cave. Caves are prolific and generally can be found nearly everywhere.

Once you find underground walls that are soft enough to mine you can begin chipping walls for easily accessed ore: heavy earth, iron ochre, malachite, cassiterite, leaf ore, galena, etc..

If all of that fails then see if anyone in your local area is willing to sell you metal for anything. Metal is very abundant and even hermits can accumulate hundreds of bars of iron, copper, and tin with some dedication to exploring, mining, and smelting.

Finding and using rustroot to prospect on the surface can save you a lot of time and digging. Rustroot extract tells you what stone/ore is immediately below you and can point you in the direction of nearby metals.

[alioli]

Thank you for the reply I guess I'll try making a beehive or explore some more then, I think my best bet is to make my own mineshaft - as I've been exploring for days with no luck :/ Now I have a clear way to go at least

[TeckXKnight]

Cleaned up my post a bit. Sorry for the garbled nonsense that it was a moment ago, I think I'm a bit tired. =)

[alioli]

Haha that's fine, I have to ask if there's any "minimum strenght" req for mining metals?

[TeckXKnight]

Depends on how hard the stone in the area is. Some stone can be mined fine with 10 strength and a q10 stone axe and other stone will require 200+ str and much higher quality tools. Just keep trying to mine walls until you hit one that lets you dig into it.

[Sever]

What does it mean when you mine a wall and the hourglass keeps reloading? I did that for a while and gave up since it didn't seem to be getting anywhere.

[lordrio]

I'm guessing str (bla bla equation) axe ql (ql 10 - 1 dmg) or pickaxe (ql 10 - 2 dmg) = your mining damage output. So depending on wall toughness, everytime your hourglass filled, you will do X damage to the wall.

30 str + ql 10 axe, with amber client and hourglass percentage on, an increase of 6% per hit on the hourglass takes a wall down in 6-7 hourglass cycle.
an increase of 1% per hit, I tried more then 10 times then gave up.

* axe/pickaxe dmg from wiki

All of this is just speculation.

[DamJNeT]

Well With 30 like str, I've nearly depleted a full stamina bars on some walls...

[TeckXKnight]

What does it mean when you mine a wall and the hourglass keeps reloading? I did that for a while and gave up since it didn't seem to be getting anywhere.

Each time you clear an hourglass you have a chance to get a stone/ore of the wall type. Once a wall runs out of potential chances to give you stone/ore then it disappears revealing an empty tile. When it's cleared it will reveal the ore type of adjacent walls and has a chance to cause a cave-in. If you're hit by a cave-in you'll take a crap load of soft hitpoint damage but no hard hitpoint damage, so it can't kill you, just KO you.

I'm guessing

That determines the speed at which you can mine. If you can't mine fast enough to clear a tile before your stamina bar would drop below 15% then the game will not let you mine a wall. Instead it will tell you it's too hard. I think it's something like sqrt (str*tool quality) vs wall hardness but its been so long that I can't say with any accuracy that this is true. Mining faster is always better though so it's worth it to have more strength and better tools. Pickaxes mine faster than stoneaxes so a lower quality pickaxe can be better than a higher quality stoneaxe to some degree.

Well With 30 like str, I've nearly depleted a full stamina bars on some walls...

Yeah, it all depends on hardness. You really have to explore around to find adequately soft walls so that you can easily mine through them to explore or you'll spend days trying to find ore.