How to Prospect an Entire Supergrid

[Onionfighter]

A hexagonal pattern would be made up of triangles.

[barra]

A hexagonal pattern would be made up of triangles.

That's right, I should have said setting the squares in triangles not a triangle pattern.

[Darkren]

Another note on caves. I'm fairly certain that, considering from what I know and further read from loftar in IRC, all caves are on one single map (just like the entire overworld is). This means that, if you prospect inside a cave, and it states metal within 1000 tiles, it could be in a completely different cave. This would mean you don't need to prospect every single cave, but rather enough caves to cover all cave area... Which is basically nearly impossible to determine. And you can't use the prospecting pattern that OP posted.

Cave mines suck, though.

[DatOneGuy]

Another note on caves. I'm fairly certain that, considering from what I know and further read from loftar in IRC, all caves are on one single map (just like the entire overworld is). This means that, if you prospect inside a cave, and it states metal within 1000 tiles, it could be in a completely different cave. This would mean you don't need to prospect every single cave, but rather enough caves to cover all cave area... Which is basically nearly impossible to determine. And you can't use the prospecting pattern that OP posted.

Cave mines suck, though.

I've found them myself and can confirm they work this way.

Goddamn tin in a cave, like a slap in the face...

[Zamte]

Another note on caves. I'm fairly certain that, considering from what I know and further read from loftar in IRC, all caves are on one single map (just like the entire overworld is). This means that, if you prospect inside a cave, and it states metal within 1000 tiles, it could be in a completely different cave. This would mean you don't need to prospect every single cave, but rather enough caves to cover all cave area... Which is basically nearly impossible to determine. And you can't use the prospecting pattern that OP posted.

Cave mines suck, though.

I've found them myself and can confirm they work this way.

Goddamn tin in a cave, like a slap in the face...

I concur. Half hour walk from town with a boat overhead is fail for tin. Only ever done one load because of this. I'd rather trade for it.

[DatOneGuy]

Slightly easier with the new walk speed in caves for carts.

[Sever]

The scans are 1414 [ 2000 * √(2) ] tiles apart, horizontally, and 1707 [ ??? ] tiles apart and offset by 707 [ 1000 * √0.5 ], vertically. Results in 12 scans which cover 99.6% of the entire grid. If you just scan several grids at a time, you're really covering everything in about 10 scans. Realistically, you would probably scan every 14 sectors/areas, and jump down 17 areas and start 7 areas left or right.

A triangle pattern should be more efficient, not less. Drawing it with paint does not sound like fun to me, though, so I didn't.

Also the red squares are 141x141 in the image, which represent the maximum square that can fit in the scan radius (1414x1414).