52e Experimentation: Ores

[Duncan 6]

After many many many fruitless hours of searching for iron in the raisercraft server, I started wondering what I was doing wrong. I found this thread, and requested an update for the current version. None was forthcoming, so I took it upon myself to conduct some science of my own. I was not happy with the methodology in the previous thread however as raw numbers of the proportional occurrence of ores is not really the information I wanted. I wanted to know about the way the ores were distributed, how big the veins were, how deep they were and what the influence of different stone types was.

So here is what i did:

I took the minecraft.yaml file from the previous thread, and added in all the basic stone types. Then I created a custom texture pack for mcedit. The textures were very rough and ready, I basically just added blocks with 0,1,2,X,V and + written on them in different colours. The numbers were for the tiers of ore, + was for iron as that was my main goal and I didnt want to get confused by gold and nickel, X was for the two stone types that dont contain iron, and V for the two that do. The texture packs enabled me to fly around in mcedit underground and see the exact position and configuration of the different ore types and the stone layers they were in. I somewhat regret not making 4 stone textures as there might be a big difference between igneous extrusive and sedimentary rocks, maybe next time. My sample size was also quite small. I sampled 4 random worlds, analysing an area (sightRadius*2)² or around 30 million blocks per world. The rarity of iron in these samples fits perfectly with my own luck in the game at finding iron, but not with reports from others on the same server. I never saw any really large iron deposits at all. I may do some further testing at a later date to see if there is some conditions that give rise to these giant iron deposits i keep hearing about, or I might not. A lot more research is certainly needed to make me confident of ever finding iron in my lifetime.

These were the results:

Short version:

When engaging in exploratory mining for tier 0 ores, coal, and iron you should go to the rock layer border at y=55 to 60.

Gold and platinum seem to occur higher up, around y=90.

Iron is rare so it may still take you forever to find any.

It is good to mine in an area with a sedimentary layer above you, ie the layer 55-90.

In depth:

Bear in mind when I say 'world' I mean one small part of a world near the spawn.

I have spreadsheets of the exact mineral breakdowns of my four worlds if anyone is interested. Highlights follow:

One world had no hematite one had no limonite. The total iron ore ranged from 120 to 800 blocks. some worlds also had very low native copper. Sphalerite was the most common ore in 2 worlds, with galena and bismithunite being the most common in the other two. One sphalerite world and the bismithunite one had over 60,000 blocks. The world with galena as the commonest ore was really poor, with only about 10,000 blocks of ore in total, this should not give the impression that galena means a poor world, all the worlds had roughly the same amount of galena, it was just that this world had so little of the normally common ores.

The configuration of ores was somewhat surprising.

Layers:

Igneous layers seemed to have the ores spread out, so that you might think you hit the very large deposit only to find that it was only 3 blocks, and then digging further you would find another 3 and the 2 and then 5. These are a major hassle to mine and also a greater risk of cave-ins. Sedimentary rock had the ores in nice round blobs. In the top layer you get small to medium veins of ore of all tiers but not including iron, often close to the surface. The bulk of the ore on every map was just above the border between the second and third stone layer, at around y60. Having sedimentary for layer 2 is therefore ideal as this means you get giant (1000+ blocks easily) veins quite consistently and they are nice and uniform and round. Having an igneous layer 2 also gave very large deposits, but they were mixed and spread out as mentioned above. I was also surpised to find that ores also occur between layer 3 and the lava layer y=9, with pretty much the same rules as above. The trouble here is that the ores are mostly against the lava and mining them out will cause them to drop in and burn making them pretty difficult to get at. Many maps had a significant proportion of their iron at this layer.

Epic blobs: Sphalerite and bituminous coal occur in massive ridiculous blobs that would keep an entire nation going indefinitely. As mentioned above these are biggest and easiest to mine at the bottom of a sedimentary layer 2. You may also assume that if you find one such massive blob, there will be others nearby, not that you will need them.

Mixed ores: Limonite almost aways occurs mixed in with another ore type. This makes it easy to go past as the propick will be spamming 'large sphalerite' and you might not get a reading on the limonite at all. If you do get both readings, assume that they are in the same place. Magnetite can also occur mixed.

That is all for now, I hope this helps as I know finding ores can be a bit daunting at times.

[Leosallespoli 338]

If you really going to do this, I would suggest mIdas, much less work.

But if you do, you'll go to hell. yeah... It's a sin...

[VegasGoat 51]

Did you include magnetite in the iron count? What are the stats on nickel (garnierite)? What is the sight radius?

[Deviator 51]

If you really going to do this, I would suggest mIdas, much less work.

But if you do, you'll go to hell. yeah... It's a sin...

I agree this is the best way to do research on ore distribution, it is much better than mcedit. Just make sure you change the patch file to match the current item id's as they change from time to time and you might end up showing no ore at all.

[Duncan 6]

If you really going to do this, I would suggest mIdas, much less work.

But if you do, you'll go to hell. yeah... It's a sin...

I was already concerned about going to hell for what I have already done. Building a deeper personal understanding of TFC geology is fine but then giving away that information in the form of 'mine at 60' to everyone seems to ruin the point of having such complex geology. What I have posted so far is not too bad but I may learn more, and I don't know if I should post it.

Did you include magnetite in the iron count? What are the stats on nickel (garnierite)? What is the sight radius?

Yes magnetite is included. Never saw any nickel on any of the worlds, not sure if there was any gabbro at all. For nickel you really need to be looking for gabbro layers and then analysing those.

This midas program sounds like the one mentioned in the old thread, I asked for details but I didn't get them, and now I have them. Thanks. Now that I have my own system though I am not sure I still want it. Unless I am mistaken it removes all the stone just leaving the ores floating. This means I can't tell what kinds of stone the ores are occuring in. My purpose is not to find a seed with heaps of ore at spawn, if I wanted that I could just make one. What I am trying to achieve is a better understanding of the geology so that I know where to dig, even without access to the seed. Please correct me if I am wrong about the nature of midas.

Last note: It seems that saltpeter and bismuthinite also occur in these giant blobs, and also that limonite is often mixed with bismuthinite and magnetite is often mixed with saltpeter.

Edit: Oh forgot to answer that question. Sight radius is about 200 blocks

[VegasGoat 51]

200 blocks may not be enough for a valid sample. In my personal experience I've often traveled over 500 to 1000 blocks away to find ores. It would be interesting to try something like a 1000 block radius instead (if possible) and see what you get. It's probably safe to assume, based on the way this mod is said to be designed for large SMP servers, that you're not supposed to have a lot of every ore in a single 400x400 area.

Don't worry about going to hell. This is part of the fun of minecraft, the meta game of trying to figure out how things work. At least you're doing it the right way with actual testing and experimentation. I cheated and decompiled the mod and looked at the source to find info about the crops.

[Leosallespoli 338]

I was already concerned about going to hell for what I have already done. Building a deeper personal understanding of TFC geology is fine but then giving away that information in the form of 'mine at 60' to everyone seems to ruin the point of having such complex geology. What I have posted so far is not too bad but I may learn more, and I don't know if I should post it.

Yes magnetite is included. Never saw any nickel on any of the worlds, not sure if there was any gabbro at all. For nickel you really need to be looking for gabbro layers and then analysing those.

This midas program sounds like the one mentioned in the old thread, I asked for details but I didn't get them, and now I have them. Thanks. Now that I have my own system though I am not sure I still want it. Unless I am mistaken it removes all the stone just leaving the ores floating. This means I can't tell what kinds of stone the ores are occuring in. My purpose is not to find a seed with heaps of ore at spawn, if I wanted that I could just make one. What I am trying to achieve is a better understanding of the geology so that I know where to dig, even without access to the seed. Please correct me if I am wrong about the nature of midas.

Last note: It seems that saltpeter and bismuthinite also occur in these giant blobs, and also that limonite is often mixed with bismuthinite and magnetite is often mixed with saltpeter.

Edit: Oh forgot to answer that question. Sight radius is about 200 blocks

You're not wrong, BUT the ores still occur on the rocks like naturally, so if you know the collor of the rock behind the ore you'll know where it has spawned.

I have to say that every analysis that you do based on few worlds won't be enough, even if you do it with more than one billion blocks for each, it won't be statistically true even less geostatistically true, it may be true for that world and that world only. The only way to be sure, or have a little bit of real information is to dig into bioxx code, but then again it's a sin and a mortal sin. Plus the game will lose it's meaning even to you, it is like opening pandora's box.

[Treyflix 277]

I like your approach to this much better then the previous thread, I think this "TFC geology" is extremely interesting and helpfull. Things like the mixed ores and sedimentary clumping are VERY interesting and it's that sort of stuff I want to learn more. I personally think that as long as this sort of information stays this way, doesn't become raw numbers, doesn't go on the wiki or any tutorials, and you don't look at the source code then it's fine.

I think you should do a second study with a 1000 radius if possible. That seems much more accurate. Also, how many samples did you take?

I'm curious if you noticed ANY other tendencys with any of the other ores, ore and other mixed ores?

P.S, I wouldn't mind seeing the spreadsheets as well.

EDIT: you say igneous rocks form scatterered ore veins, does that include both igneous intrusive and extrusive? And what about metamorphic? What does that form?

[Duncan 6]

I analysed a 1000x1000 world. Flying around generating all the chunks took a long time so I won't be doing it again, but if anyone wants to upload a pre-explored world I don't mind running an analysis.

My rules about rock types and spread out vs concentrated veins, as well as what mixes with what, should be taken as examples not rules. Even in cases where I have not seen any counter examples as my sample size is still far too small to be reliable. I saw veins of limonite that weren't mixed. These veins were interesting as well in that they were quite large and occurred at the bottom of the map against the lava. They account for a significant percentage of the limonite found. It was at the bottom of a shale layer3. At the bottom of limestone and rocksalt layer2s there were some decent veins of magnetite and one of hematite. garnierite (nickel) occurs at the same l2-l3 border as the majority of other ores but it doesn't seem to matter whether gabbro is the 2nd or 3rd layer. Gold was much rarer than any other mineral. There was surprisingly little native copper.

The forum won't let me upload a spreadsheet so I will try to simply display the info in the post. Sorry about the formatting

The last 3 numbers are the percentage of the total blocks that this material makes up, the percentage of total mineable blocks the material makes up (mineable simply excludes air, water lava and bedrock) and lastly the percentage of the total ore that the mineral makes up.

ID Name Blocks % Total % Minable % Ores(210:5) Limestone 30311420 18.8667 25.3073 13,127.2823(0:0) Air 24252556 15.0955 20.2487 10,503.3070(212:0) Quartzite 23103212 14.3801 19.2891 10,005.5486(210:2) Shale 12675912 7.8898 10.5832 5,489.6892(209:2) Gabbro 10809815 6.7283 9.0252 4,681.5192(210:8) Chert 9874213 6.1460 8.2441 4,276.3283(210:4) Rock Salt 9139671 5.6888 7.6308 3,958.2125(9:0) Water 8784597 5.4678 7.3343 3,804.4369(11:0) Lava 5692941 3.5434 4.7531 2,465.5012(211:3) Dacite 4451335 2.7706 3.7165 1,927.7860(212:1) Slate 4207572 2.6189 3.5129 1,822.2170(212:2) Phyllite 3837235 2.3884 3.2037 1,661.8313(212:3) Schist 3532835 2.1989 2.9496 1,530.0016(209:0) Granite 2100352 1.3073 1.7536 909.6213(7:0) Bedrock 1972224 1.2276 1.6466 854.1316(212:4) Gneiss 1478521 0.9203 1.2344 640.3185(175:3) Future Block! 1476451 0.9190 1.2327 639.4220(216:0) Future Block! 1251168 0.7788 1.0446 541.8564(211:0) Rhyolite 345576 0.2151 0.2885 149.6622(210:9) Chalk 311619 0.1940 0.2602 134.9561(213:12) Sphalerite 192437 0.1198 0.1607 83.3407(10:0) Lava (active) 185437 0.1154 0.1548 80.3091(213:15) Lignite 136917 0.0852 0.1143 59.2961(213:14) Bituminous Coal 129828 0.0808 0.1084 56.2260(210:7) Dolomite 95414 0.0594 0.0797 41.3219(210:0) Siltstone 70339 0.0438 0.0587 30.4624(13:0) Gravel 36177 0.0225 0.0302 15.6676(213:7) Bismuthinite 35323 0.0220 0.0295 15.2977(214:13) Saltpeter 31311 0.0195 0.0261 13.5602(214:1) Gypsum 25162 0.0157 0.0210 10.8972(215:0) Borax 17056 0.0106 0.0142 7.3866(212:5) Marble 11971 0.0075 0.0100 5.1844(213:10) Magnetite 10607 0.0066 0.0089 4.5937(213:11) Limonite 9938 0.0062 0.0083 4.3040(213:5) Cassiterite 8700 0.0054 0.0073 3.7678(214:8) Jet 8270 0.0051 0.0069 3.5816(214:15) Sylvite 8170 0.0051 0.0068 3.5383(211:2) Andesite 7410 0.0046 0.0062 3.2091(211:1) Basalt 7118 0.0044 0.0059 3.0827(213:6) Galena 5952 0.0037 0.0050 2.5777(210:3) Claystone 4536 0.0028 0.0038 1.9645(213:9) Malachite 3966 0.0025 0.0033 1.7176(209:1) Diorite 2092 0.0013 0.0017 0.9060(213:13) Tetrahedrite 2076 0.0013 0.0017 0.8991(214:11) Cinnabar 1703 0.0011 0.0014 0.7375(214:4) Graphite 1292 0.0008 0.0011 0.5595(215:1) Olivine 766 0.0005 0.0006 0.3317(213:0) Native Copper 603 0.0004 0.0005 0.2611(214:5) Kimberlite 510 0.0003 0.0004 0.2209(213:3) Hematite 408 0.0003 0.0003 0.1767(214:6) Petrified Wood 408 0.0003 0.0003 0.1767(213:8) Garnierite 137 0.0001 0.0001 0.0593(213:1) Native Gold 46 0.0000 0.0000 0.0199		Total  160,661,305  Total Minable  119,773,550  Total Ores  230,904  

[agproch 0]

i ran into the problem of the rarity of gold. after digging around (branch mining in the right rock layers at y=75) for 10+ hours and not getting a traces of gold reading on the pro-pick I got fed up, and used MCEdit to see if there was any gold near me. I analyzed a 1000*1000 area which was the 25 blocks high the pro-pick finds blocks in. Not a single piece of gold in 25m blocks. I resorted to using MCEdit to find a 200*200 area where gold is in and finding it with the pro-pick, but I know that this is cheating. Am I doing anything wrong, or is it really possible to spend tens of hours digging for one ore type?

Edit: i typed 1000*100 in the original post instead of 1000*1000.

[VegasGoat 51]

Yeah, it's really possible to spend tens of hours looking. It took me over a week (probably about 30 hours in game) to find some nickel, and when I did it was buried in lava. Spent about 4 hours getting them all and only ended up with 25 pieces. I consider that a success, since in Duncan's 1000x1000 test there was only 137 pieces. I should be able to make a black steel anvil now with about 10 black steel ingots left over (a teammate already found a large gold deposit). Then I'll probably take a break and work on my base for a while, because that was way too much mining.

[agproch 0]

I hoped that it was my fault for misunderstanding some of TFC geology. Hope that a future update will make mining motr fun and less tedious so that I can start a new world and get to black/blue/red steel without cheating

[VegasGoat 51]

Yeah I'm anxiously awaiting any kind of update from Bioxx on whether the poll he added about SSP vs. SMP will have any effect on the mod. It seems the way things are now is balanced for large SMP, where you'd have several people working together to search large areas for ore, and one person can't do it all without putting in the same man-hours. So I'm assuming that's why ore is as rare as it is now.

[abandoned mines 119]

is there an updated filter for MCedit that works with TF craft?

[Leosallespoli 338]

I would like to see that too