How to Prospect an Entire Supergrid

[barra]

I’m going to make some basic assumptions, using what the wiki says.

A supergrid is 5000 by 5000 tiles.

Prospecting scans a radius of 1000 tiles around your character.



The circles represent the area scanned, and the dots are the location a character is standing when they use the rustroot extract. It should take 18 units of rustroot extract (1.8 litres) to check an entire supergrid for mines. You could do this systematically by simply counting how many minimap tiles passed, once you’ve found the corner of the grid.

Prospect, walk east (or west) for 16 minimaps, prospect , walk 16, prospect.
Walk 8 more minimaps, then walk south (or north) 8 minimaps.
Prospect again, and start working your way back west.



Checking an entire supergrid for mines should only need 5 units of raw rustroot (and a lot of free time). Any village larger than a couple of people probably has enough to do it in a cupboard somewhere. Once you’ve actually found a mine you need a lot more to zero in on it, of course.

I thought rustroot was rare at first, but once i got my explore a bit higher I haven't had a problem finding it. Does anyone else get the impression that there's a little bit too much rustroot available compared to how few mines are in the world? Even a new supergrid could be easily be swept for every mine on it within a week.

Update:
Regarding caves, Thurrok adds that unless a cave is deeper than 1000 tiles you should only need to prospect once inside the entrance to check it. Cave mines won't be detected from outside, so you see a cave on the way peek inside and use the rustroot extract.

[Jahng]

Wow this is really helpful.


thanks.




Though every super grid I travel to has towns and villages all over the supergrid.
Where be the unpopulated supergrids?



It's kind of ridiculous how far I have to travel just for a chance at having my own source of metal.
I wish the devs would put in more mines per supergrid. It would also help in the long run, if the playerbase grows alot.


Flame on

[Onionfighter]

How about if the circles are arranged in triangles?

[Phalacrox]

Yeah, I would really like to travel far and wide, but I'm afraid I wouldn't have access to Nople then.

[Giantmoth]

How do you count or keep track of supergrids? I'm real confused about the term, and how people know what constitutes as a supergrid or not.

[Thurrok]

Without any way of more or less keeping track of where you already have been, a task like the OP mentions is rather hard to pull off. I could think of doing this using gladkov's and counting pixels (1 pixel = 1 tile). Which supergrid you are in doesn't matter, you just start counting tiles from wherever you begin prospecting.

Cool picture tut, btw. IMHO it should be moved How-Tos and made sticky, that would reduce new prospectors' confusion on the subject.

Maybe add some info on cave prospecting (e.g. prospecting more than once in caves is useless unless it's a really huge cave)

[barra]

How about if the circles are arranged in triangles?

Dunno, give it a try.

How do you count or keep track of supergrids? I'm real confused about the term, and how people know what constitutes as a supergrid or not.

2x2 region maps (cartography skill) make up one supergrid.

Without any way of more or less keeping track of where you already have been, a task like the OP mentions is rather hard to pull off. I could think of doing this using gladkov's and counting pixels (1 pixel = 1 tile). Which supergrid you are in doesn't matter, you just start counting tiles from wherever you begin prospecting.

Cool picture tut, btw. IMHO it should be moved How-Tos and made sticky, that would reduce new prospectors' confusion on the subject.

Maybe add some info on cave prospecting (e.g. prospecting more than once in caves is useless unless it's a really huge cave)

I got the idea after messing about with gladkov's, but I'm trying to write this with someone who isn't using a mapping client in mind. Counting minimap tiles can be done with just the in-game cartography. In the case of anyone who wants to overlay a exported map, the minimap tiles are only 100 pixels but 125 tiles so you have reduce your circle down to a radius of 800 pixels (supergrid 4000x4000 pixels).

[Caliku]

Sure, there may be a ton of rustroot compared to the small amount of mines, but if you walk by ignoring rustroot, then you're missing out on some decent LP.

[DatOneGuy]

These circles work better for plotting out an exact square and looks pretty, but you are more effective setting the squares in triangles so that you lose less to overlapping.

[barra]

These circles work better for plotting out an exact square and looks pretty, but you are more effective setting the squares in triangles so that you lose less to overlapping.

A triangle pattern has the same number of nodes (19). A hexagonal pattern brings it down to 14 nodes (16 tessellating over multiple SGs), so I'll look over tomorrow with those and maybe update the OP. I'm using a big compiled map in photoshop with a layer pattern for my prospecting, but if someone is just using normal cartography it's probably easier to use the square pattern and count by minimap tiles in straight lines.

For anyone interested, I've checked two supergrids so far using this method. I started centered on my village which isn't in the middle so it wasn't a true SG, but it was still 5000x5000 units for each. roughy the grids were D2 and D1 both came up with nothing, including about six caves along the way in each SG. Very bare, no unclaimed mines in either grid unless it's in a well-hidden cave. I'll share the maps later.