effective ways to mine?

[Carthang 11]

In my current world I've found only a single lump of sphalerite. Found it yesterday after I went Sand Shopping to follow up on a suggestion from a friend.

On my way back after collecting some four stacks of sand, I punched small rocks.

Don't remember the exact values, but it was close to this:

12 copper

3 gold

1 garnierite

5 cassiterite

3 malachite

1 magnetite

1 sphalerite

That isn't the first gold I've punched up, but it is the second area where it's happened in the same world. Third time I've seen magnetite (although the other two lumps I didn't mark in a special way, as I didn't realize I'd popped magnetite; thought it was cassiterite at the time). Not the first instance of garnerite in my world either, although the the other instance is in a sluice some 25 blocks underground.

That is some seriously awesome stuff to get from just small rocks. Knowing for a fact now that you have garnierite is awesome, not sure how it is now after build49, but before that it was possible for a world to spawn with practically none of it at all.

[Draco18s 46]

That is some seriously awesome stuff to get from just small rocks. Knowing for a fact now that you have garnierite is awesome, not sure how it is now after build49, but before that it was possible for a world to spawn with practically none of it at all.

I forget if I ran the MCedit filter trace minerals or not. I know I used it as a basis to add redstone to my world (I combined TFC with Buildcraft) but I don't remember if I ran the original. :X

I probably did, given that I think I've got b48, and that some metals were ungodly rare / non-existent.

Edit: I do have b48, as the earliest change log for b49 is not true in my game.

In which case, I didn't expect them to show up so close to the surface! Although no one knows how deep small rocks look when they search for materials.

(I didn't look at the interior of my world after running the script(s), as I wanted it to remain unknown, and I did my tests on a different world, to get the redstone depth and density where I wanted it; it's still about half as common as it is in vanilla,* but it should still be easy enough to find down around Y=80**)

*vanilla has a redstone density of about 0.05% of all blocks, my script produced a density of about 0.03%

**Depth chosen as a distance from the ocean surface. Vanilla ocean is at 62, with redstone down around 0-10. TFC ocean at 145, so I went down "about 60" to Y=80 with a spread of about 16 up and down.

[loquid 0]

So the one thing ive been itching to know is the rocks on the surface. i know that they show the first layer of rock you will encounter if you dug straight down.

but does anybody know the relation to the ores you find? when i find one i will put a weightpoint with rei's and search the area for about 15m and mark the

number appropriately (i.e. Small Cass (L) x4... the L meaning loose on the surface). but ive dug down under a spot that had 6 Cass nuggets, but when i dug down

to like 40y there was nothing but a cave system with a fairly large copper deposit but there was NO copper for like 200m on the surface, but there was no trace of Cass with

a propick in the cave anywhere.

Does anybody know how far or deep the surface stones 'look' when they replace the stone with an ore... this may explain why ive found ores in stones that dont contain

the ores ive found.

[Draco18s 46]

Nope, no clue.