Begining to mine with out risk of death.

[umulium]

So, given that mine supports needs a metal bar to be contructed.

how do you go about getting that first, before mining, if you dont want to risk getting squased.

i might have been unlucky, but i have cuased atleast 2 caveins, out of 3 times i have mined into a cave wall.
so basicly with out having to risk your life starting to get metal going for you.
you would need to hit up an alt, with its life meaning nothing. proding and mining out the first ~10 ores, to get the first metal.

am i missing something?

atleast first level mining wooden supports shouldnt use metal, so you could get going.

[xTrainx]

tbh, the chance of getting a cave in in the first wall you hit in a cave are pretty low as if. IF you REALLY want to have 0 percent chance of getting cave ins to start mining, your option would be to make a mine hole, wich acts as a support by itself

[umulium]

guess im pretty unlucky.

first one.


second one.
dropped a boulder on top of me.

[abt79]

The cave walls can fuck you up, and tbh they really shouldn't be able to but whatever suck it up.

after getting thru em just pave every tile that drops dust and don't mine a tile next to the paved tiles unless there is an unpaved tile next to it.

It's like minesweeper (err literally I guess)

[kilakan]

You can also like, buy a metal bar at this point of the world for your first support or two. I'm sure you can find someone willing to sell you some for like, foragables or whatnot. Otherwise yeah, standard practice for me at least is to wait to mine till we can make the first minehole on a known ore node, not that hard when you need to wait for tar kilns to finish anyways.

[abt79]

Or just man up and mine without supports, it's really not hard and even with a well developed metal industry I've built 0 supports because I'm not a weak shit

[ZeggyZon]

Why didn't anyone mention prospecting? You can prospect on the surface to find metal nodes below. Prospecting is really simple compared to legacy IMHO.

I know that rustroot doesnt start appearing until a certain expxperc and perhaps he wants to start mining before he can see it but if he wants to safely mine this is what I suggest. Even a tin node will get you a bar of tin which can be used for a wooden mine support.

Another alternative is to explore any caves you come upon and maybe someone else has found an ore node that you can mine from.

[Kirche]

Why didn't anyone mention prospecting? You can prospect on the surface to find metal nodes below. Prospecting is really simple compared to legacy IMHO.

while this is helpful for locating the ore, there's still no guarantee that you won't be caved in on, however cave-ins are actually not -that- bad because they are mostly healed with leeches and on average do less than 30 damage.

[abt79]

Concussions are an absolute bitch though, especially because a reduced Masonry will fuck the q of the ore you mine

[ZeggyZon]

Why didn't anyone mention prospecting? You can prospect on the surface to find metal nodes below. Prospecting is really simple compared to legacy IMHO.

while this is helpful for locating the ore, there's still no guarantee that you won't be caved in on, however cave-ins are actually not -that- bad because they are mostly healed with leeches and on average do less than 30 damage.

Yeah I realized that after I gave it some thought after I posted.

I recommend scouting out all local caves that you come across. Get a bunch of rustroot and on the surface prospect around the length of the caves below you. Hopefully you come across some Cassiterite near side of a wall which by default has a 30% chance to smelt into tin. Use the tin to build wooden mine supports.

ZZ