Supplemental Advancement to Copper

[TomatoThief 53]

Hit a copper vein with a stone hammer, get a chunk of low yield ore. Rather than consuming the block, it just reverts to regular stone (you chipped out the visible part of the ore). The drawback here is that you are losing a 15-35 yield block in order to get, say, a 5-10 yield nugget. But now you have an option to getting those last few nuggets to cast your copper pick instead of running all over Creation, punching rocks and screaming at your dog for not understanding your frustration.

 

TT

[Copper 7]

This is good and original. Support!

[mossman 15]

Hammers or sledges should have uses as mining tools. I like this idea.

[Euphoric 48]

And how do you find this copper-bearing vein without pick and propick when it is usually under stone?

[TomatoThief 53]

In about half my games, I stumble across an exposed copper vein. My current world in particular has very high, slender mountains where I can see copper along the walls. If I'm lucky, a couple rocks nearby these veins will be copper bearing, but often there are none. I have also seen veins in fissures, and hot spring depressions.

 

This suggestion provides a situational option for supplementing your copper search. If it were easy to exploit in most places, then gaining copper may become too easy, where it is rightly *the* challenge of the stone age. The part about ruining the high yield block in favor of a low yield nugget is intended to present a difficult choice for the player. Even if you found a small vein of copper, you would still want to spend a couple days searching surface rocks, lest you ruin your vein. But if your search is fruitless, ruining that vein block to eek out the last bit of your pick/saw mold might be worth while.

 

My original thought was to make sluices constructable with just sticks. But since I've never actually sluiced in this game, I wasn't sure of the ramifications to balance and pacing.

[landryx 36]

the game must more focus on gold panning at the beginning the game rather than mining exposed ores along walls or fissures.

it's just like: "oh nice gold ores down there!!!!! sweet, must remember the spot, I'll come back with my pickaxe later!!

[Euphoric 48]

I wonder if this ore generation with exposed veins on the surface or right under dirt is intentional. And I'm not sure if I like it or not.

[kurzninja 10]

I'd like to see the ability to strike a fruit tree with a hammer and have it knock the fruit off the leaves. Sometimes the fruit can be hard to get to. Maybe give it a chance of damaging or destroying the treento balance out the convenience.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Keep in mind that gold panning was reintroduced with 78.4, and is not based on whether or not there are ore veins around you. If you really need those last few pieces of copper, start panning and you'll have a handful in no-time. This is balanced by the fact that you can only pan so many blocks from a chunk.

[landryx 36]

oh cool!!! that's very nice! And does it just give copper nuggets ?

[Kittychanley 1,002]

It gives nuggets of any of the native metals: copper, gold, silver, platinum

[landryx 36]

the platinum is useless at the moment am i right? 

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Correct, platinum is still useless.

[mossman 15]

So you're intentionally abandoning panning/sluicing as a prospecting mechanic?

That's dissapointing.

[landryx 36]

panning only, not sluicing right ?

well, could it be more rewarding that when you find copper nuggets at surface or any other ores, then you start to panning around for 7-10 nuggets per exemple.

it's just to easy and random to pan anywhere for small nuggets right now.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Sluices will likely just be the same mechanic as the gold pan, but you can use it more times within a chunk. The reason the scanning of the terrain (and therefore prospecting) is likely to be removed is because of how commonly it was abused. All the player had to do was find a small vein of a rare ore (like garnierite), and then just plunk down a sluice next to it and feed it gravel for infinite garnierite. All of the mechanics we could think of to get around this exploit would just cause more lag.

 

It should also be noted that the sluice was one of the very first things that Bioxx coded.. and its code hasn't been updated very much since then.

[landryx 36]

ah well too bad, thank you kittychanley.

[AllenWL 186]

Keep in mind that gold panning was reintroduced with 78.4, and is not based on whether or not there are ore veins around you. If you really need those last few pieces of copper, start panning and you'll have a handful in no-time. This is balanced by the fact that you can only pan so many blocks from a chunk.

How does it work?

Looked in the wiki and found no results

[landryx 36]

here you are

http://terrafirmacraft.com/wiki/Gold_Pan

[TomatoThief 53]

Kitty, I didn't even know panning was a "thing". I apparently came to TFC when it wasn't implemented, and must have assumed in the Wiki that "panning" simply referred to a step in sluicing. After reading  your post and several others, it seems that panning provides exactly the result I was looking for with my OP - a slow but reliable means of gaining copper/bronze.

 

Thanks!

-TT