Information embargo? Why? Also, "Hard" does not equal good.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Clearly I'm doing something wrong. Respectfully, I'd like to know what.

I don't fucking know what to DO. I'm sitting here tearing my hear out and all I get from forum members is "You just want it handed to you. You should join a server so other people can do the work for you."

I want to do it myself, but I need to know HOW before I can.

I love this mod. I like almost everything about it, and the thinks I don't love I understand the logic behind. I just can't find the stuff I need to do the stuff I love. I either need advice or the stuff needs to be easier to find. I'd prefer the advice.

If you want advice on a specific topic, I'd suggest you log into IRC and ask about it. We're more than happy to give you little hints in the right direction if you give us something specific that you are curious about. We aren't however, going to tell you how to do absolutely anything and everything and just hand it to you in the wiki.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

~Double Post~

[Gwtheyrn 70]

BTW, joining a server is the best way to learn. It's not so that people can "do the work for you", but so they can TEACH you. I learned way, way more working with a team than I ever did alone.

[tyriael-soban 12]

You could also watch Spumwack's Series, even though he dropped it before he really got anywhere imo.

[PanRouge 5]

You can try to teach yourself to your heart's content. But don't be surprised if you can't teach yourself something that you don't know.

[ToySoldierAlan 8]

You're right. There is a world of difference between joining a server to learn and demanding information on a forum.

But I shouldn't have to do either, is my point. It should either be intuitive enough to learn by doing in the game, or the wiki should have hints. There's also a discrepancy between what is considered ok to share and what is verboten.

Like the smithing system. The wiki gives you information on how it works without giving you the exact recipe of strikes to make it work. There's also information on the wiki that gives you all the information you would want on metal temp. That information coupled with basic logic makes smithing tools easy.

But when it comes to finding below ground metals (read: not metals that can be found by breaking rocks on the surface) the wiki has nothing. Well, not really nothing. It tells you what rock they spawn in. But veins of rock can be massive and may not even contain the metal you're looking for, and are impossible to predict from the surface. And sluices lack any kind of significant description as to how they function. I was sluicing so much yesterday that I have a double chest full of gems and tiny pieces of metal in another, but it's all surface metals. So sluices, the main way to determine if there are metals below you, are useless at finding non-surface metals. At least as far as I know how to use them. And I dont know if I'm doing anything wrong because there's no good tutorials that I can find and the wiki isn't well maintained.

Here's my main point. The consensus seems to be that it's fine if I get tips by asking somebody, but it's not ok to put it out in public. That's like saying it's fine to pass notes with the answers to a test in class but not to allow textbooks. I'm getting the information either way, it's just one way is communally available to all and the other means I have to join a club and be buddy buddy with other humans. This seems unnecessarily clique-ish and exclusionary to new people.

[Dijayus 8]

I would suggest watching Lets plays on Youtube. There are a few really good series out there that I've learned a lot from. Just check the dates to make sure they aren't too out of date.

While the wiki isn't perfect, it does provide a ton of useful information and is more thorough than the majority of mods out there.

[Gwtheyrn 70]

Really, because this is right at the very top of the sluice wiki page, telling you EXACTLY how a sluice works and the area it searches in:

The sluice is a powerful tool in aiding the player as a form of prospecting. It can yield small pieces of ores that yield 1/4 of the metal that a mined piece of ore would give. The sluice aids in prospecting by scanning an area roughly 100m around itself and 60m deep. It will only provide ore that it can find in that area as well as any assortment of gems. Feeding sand to a sluice box will have a higher chance to find gems and gravel increases the chances that you’ll find ore. Soil can be provided by emptying the contents a gold pan into the sluice by right clicking with the gold pan in your hand on the sluice(adds 7 soil, max 50). Alternatively you may throw individual blocks of gravel or sand into the water feed that flows into the sluice. Upon reaching the sluice, if able, it will be auto consumed providing 20 soil.

So... it works in an area measuring 100 x 100 meters and 60 below its location. I'm not sure what else you would need to know about it.

[ToySoldierAlan 8]

No, it doesn't tell me EXACTLY how a sluice works, it tells me approximately how a sluice works.

Here's what I want to know about sluices.

Is the wiki correct? I heard somewhere else that it searches 100 deep and 60 around itself. Which is it?

How does it find more advanced ores? Does it need to be running for a while before it finds something? Because I've been sluicing all over the place and I get nothing but worthless gems and surface ores. Either I have the WORST luck in placing sluices or the things need to run for a long ass time and consume a buttload of gravel before they find the iron below.

If they do take a long time to find iron, how long do I have to wait? I don't want to spend a month of in-game time feeding gravel into a sluice when it's only going to give me tiny pieces of sphalerite and copper, both of which I have chests full of back at my base.

Is iron spawning at all based on location from my spawn? If yes, how far away do I have to go?

Also, at this point I'm not really asking for information, because I've learned a lot since I started asking, and I'm relatively sure I'm not going to be getting anything worthwhile out of this. I'm arguing that there needs to be a on-site resource for this kind of thing so other people don't have to go through what I'm going through. Either the wiki needs to be updated with a tutorial or there needs to be a guide dedicated to this on the forums.

If I have to fight kicking and screaming to learn about something that's supposed to be a major part of the progression in the game, there's a problem. Some people aren't as dedicated as me, and might give up on an awesome mod because something's needlessly obtuse.

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

There are no tips or tricks to finding below ground metals. They're rare, go look for them. Although if you're going to be so whiny about it, try looking at y level 60. It supposedly spawns more ore due to a bug.

[PanRouge 5]

I'm pretty sure the sluice description is correct. 100 deep would be too powerful. You're not going to get iron from a surface sluice. You'll get tin, copper, nickel, zinc, etc. Build your sluice at level 60, you'll get gold, iron, zinc, copper, nickel, or anything else that you want as long as it's present. Every biome has a different ore composition. The rock type will tell you what you MAY find in that area. If you have Dacite, you could probably find gold in it. Keep in mind that some ores will be deeper than others. Gold is often close to the lava level, so you can look for gold in Dacite rock near height 13. Just use your brain. If you want to find iron, you look for: Hematite, Limonite, or Magnetite in the second or third rock layer of Andesite, Basalt, Dacite, Rhyolite, Chalk, Chert, Claystone, Conglomerate, Dolomite, Limestone, Mudstone, Rock Salt, Shale, Siltstone, or Chalk.

You MAY be able to find it in the top layer, but I highly doubt it. Anywho, all of this info is on the wiki.

http://terrafirmacraft.com/wiki/Ores

But the fastest way to find iron is to just go look for it.

[Gwtheyrn 70]

Life is needlessly obtuse.

Luck plays a part in it. Go search with your pro-pick or make yourself a mod- Call it the "easymode pro-pick" made from a stick. Just a stick. It gives you exact XYZ coordinates of the nearest bit of whatever ore type you're looking for, mines it for you, and even changes your diaper. You'll never have to lift a finger again.

[ToySoldierAlan 8]

Gwtheyrn, are you being difficult intentionally? I've stated multiple times that I'm interested in playing by the rules of the mod, using the tools of the mod to progress. If I wanted to cheat, I'd use, oh I don't know, CREATIVE MODE? You're useless.

PanRouge, you are the most helpful person I've run into. The little nugget of information that sluices won't find iron is a bit of a game changer, to say the least. The "just use your brain" comment wasn't necessary, though. The "just go look for it" phrase is similarly useless, as I've been looking for it for the last week. I didn't (until recently) know HOW.

If this stuff is supposed to be common knowledge, why isn't it on the wiki? If you're supposed to be able to figure it out yourself, how? This is my point. The mod should either be able to teach you how to look for/do things, or there should be a centralized external location to find out how.

[Krski 36]

A little anger-over flow , maybe ?

The wiki is there for you to if you are not smart figure out the game , so you can actually play the mod , without going on the forums to whinine about how the mod is bad or how you can't dig a hole .....

How did you not know how to dig a hole in one directon prospecting along the way to find something let me give you a equation :

x=propick y=you p=pick w=wold h=hole t=tunel

y + p + x = (h,t)

If you played minecraft any time ever you would know how to dig a 5km tunnel to try find something ...........yeezzzzzz...........

Please tell my how did you forget to dig ?

So there are 3 layers of rock .... iron must be somewhere in the middle or somewhere down , it couldn't be in the upper part of the crust , i mean the devs wouldn't have made it so easy and it would be compatible to RL

Is it that hard .....the wiki isn't a how to book , the aim of the mod is common sense and things that are belivable , so something that would be logical not dragons in the sky eating sheep and spitting gold ...

Sorry if i am being rude but , dude .....

Sorry again ...

my 5 cents

[ToySoldierAlan 8]

Yes, anger overload, because apart from like 4 helpful people all I've had to deal with are assholes and trolls.

Like you, Krski. I don't even know how to respond. What you described is exactly what I tried. I tried it for days. You must think I have a learning disability or am missing a frontal lobe. You also didn't read any of the thread, as what you described is what I talked about doing in my third post. So in addition to talking to me like I've never touched minecraft before after I mentioned that I've dealt with Feed The Beast extensively and had moderate success with this mod up until iron tech, you've made yourself look like more of a fool than I could have if I tried. So congrats.

If the only hint there is for finding iron and other metals is really to just dig in one direction until you hit it, then there is a serious flaw in this mod. I get difficulty. I get things being hard to find. But blind mining is NOT a selling point. The whole point of this mod from what I can discern is to make things more realistic and more engaging. The Prospector's Pick and Sluices are good examples of this, additions to make the game easier that are based on reality. They work fine for starter metals. Past that (and again, this is from my experience with the mod), they fail to aid in increasing tech level.

More importantly, you would not, in the real world, find iron by digging into the earth randomly and just mining in a direction. There has to be SOME above ground method for finding the stuff, otherwise we would have never made it out of the bronze age. We'd still be down there, picking away at rock hoping to get lucky.

If the only solution to finding tier 3 and above metals is to just mine in a line, then no, this mod is not for me. I sincerely hope that idiot mining isn't the only way, because I would hate to see a mod this refined and engaging fall flat on it's face like that.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Essentially yes, that is the way to find metals that spawn lower down. You dig down to the bottom layer of rock, check the wiki to see if the ore you want spawns in that rock. If it does, you start mining shafts and using a prospectors pick and hope you hit an ore reading. If not, go back up to the surface until the surface rock changes and repeat.

[ToySoldierAlan 8]

Thanks for confirming what I feared, Kittychanley. Nice to see a civil person who gives a straight answer.

Well, I guess I've said my piece. I'm out. To the rest of you, enjoy your days of mining in the dark praying for minerals. I'll hold out hope for an update that makes more sense.

[Gwtheyrn 70]

Gwtheyrn, are you being difficult intentionally? I've stated multiple times that I'm interested in playing by the rules of the mod, using the tools of the mod to progress. If I wanted to cheat, I'd use, oh I don't know, CREATIVE MODE? You're useless.

PanRouge, you are the most helpful person I've run into. The little nugget of information that sluices won't find iron is a bit of a game changer, to say the least. The "just use your brain" comment wasn't necessary, though. The "just go look for it" phrase is similarly useless, as I've been looking for it for the last week. I didn't (until recently) know HOW.

If this stuff is supposed to be common knowledge, why isn't it on the wiki? If you're supposed to be able to figure it out yourself, how? This is my point. The mod should either be able to teach you how to look for/do things, or there should be a centralized external location to find out how.

REDACTED

[Tinkerella 0]

REDACTED

And this, my dear friends, is what happens when my husband hits his limit. I don't have anything else of value to add, really, that hasn't already been said.

[Ardent 21]

There should always be a red flag popping up in your mind if you ever feel compelled to use expletives on a forum. It means you're too emotionally invested in the topic and probably starting/perpetuating a flame-war. Please try to keep things civil. It only serves to hurt your reputation to get vindictive.

As for my two cents, I personally disapprove of the restrictions put on information available about the mod for these reasons:

-These data are always available with other mods, and it's part of MC culture to be open about these things

-The data for this mod is already publicly available, just mildly obfuscated (i.e. raw code) so that the lay-man can't understand it

-The policy for the wiki 'only info that can be found out in-game' is actually worded more mildly than the enforcement of it

-Working with inaccurate measuring tools (lack of data) doesn't make the game feel any more 'magical'

Given this, I have no formal objection to the way this is carried out because:

-The rules of the forums and wiki are set by those who run it, and at their discretion

and

-There is no legal measure that can be taken against you should you choose to publish any of those numbers as long as you do not publish any actual code or other copyrighted material and you do so in a place that doesn't explicitly forbid you from doing so (AKA the official forums or wiki)

Everyone's opinion about this issue has been made known and is unlikely to change, but think about this: Thaumcraft has 3 wikis - Industrialcraft is covered extensively by at least 5. Most of these wikis are well made, operated by third parties, and are fully covered under 'fair use' laws.

[tripLjXD 1]

I apologize in advance to everyone except TSA, but I've reached the limits of my patience.

You didn't know HOW to use a prospector's pick? It's right in the goddamned wiki. It even explains its range. There's even a video. Oh, but just like the sluices, maybe you HEARD from someplace somewhere (in your goddamned imagination) that it might only work in a 10x10x10 area, so clearly the information on the official wiki is completely unreliable and useless.

Fucking.

Moron.

You clearly DON'T want to play within the rules of the mod. You obviously can't be bothered to figure it out for yourself despite the fact that people have (repeatedly) pointed you in the right direction. No, you want the mod to change to fit you instead of making the effort to LEARN. Apparently, you've found it a lot easier to come onto the forums and snivel like a little BITCH about how hard it is to find iron and other non-surface ores.

All of the rest of us figured it out from the information available. Just because you're apparently too impatient and mentally deficient to do likewise isn't our problem and isn't the mod's problem. It's yours.

One last time, and I'll be sure to use small words so you can understand: No trick to find ore in the second and third layer of rock. NONE. You must either be very anal or very lucky. That is the only advice anyone can give you. Deal with it, because I'm through listening to your whining. No one is going to hold your hand in this mod. It's designed to be challenging. It's designed to take a lot of effort.

Seriously, just go play vanilla with an ore finder or x-ray mod and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. I'm done with you.

This right here. The brutal, honest truth has never before been spoken so clearly. I commend you.

[tripLjXD 1]

Double post .....

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

Gwtheyrn, are you being difficult intentionally? I've stated multiple times that I'm interested in playing by the rules of the mod, using the tools of the mod to progress. If I wanted to cheat, I'd use, oh I don't know, CREATIVE MODE? You're useless.

PanRouge, you are the most helpful person I've run into. The little nugget of information that sluices won't find iron is a bit of a game changer, to say the least. The "just use your brain" comment wasn't necessary, though. The "just go look for it" phrase is similarly useless, as I've been looking for it for the last week. I didn't (until recently) know HOW.

If this stuff is supposed to be common knowledge, why isn't it on the wiki? If you're supposed to be able to figure it out yourself, how? This is my point. The mod should either be able to teach you how to look for/do things, or there should be a centralized external location to find out how.

sluices can find iron. I don't know where that information came from, but there aren't many things you should take as fact unless told so by the wiki or by myself or bioxx.

I apologize in advance to everyone except TSA, but I've reached the limits of my patience.

You didn't know HOW to use a prospector's pick? It's right in the goddamned wiki. It even explains its range. There's even a video. Oh, but just like the sluices, maybe you HEARD from someplace somewhere (in your goddamned imagination) that it might only work in a 10x10x10 area, so clearly the information on the official wiki is completely unreliable and useless.

Fucking.

Moron.

You clearly DON'T want to play within the rules of the mod. You obviously can't be bothered to figure it out for yourself despite the fact that people have (repeatedly) pointed you in the right direction. No, you want the mod to change to fit you instead of making the effort to LEARN. Apparently, you've found it a lot easier to come onto the forums and snivel like a little BITCH about how hard it is to find iron and other non-surface ores.

All of the rest of us figured it out from the information available. Just because you're apparently too impatient and mentally deficient to do likewise isn't our problem and isn't the mod's problem. It's yours.

One last time, and I'll be sure to use small words so you can understand: No trick to find ore in the second and third layer of rock. NONE. You must either be very anal or very lucky. That is the only advice anyone can give you. Deal with it, because I'm through listening to your whining. No one is going to hold your hand in this mod. It's designed to be challenging. It's designed to take a lot of effort.

Seriously, just go play vanilla with an ore finder or x-ray mod and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. I'm done with you.

Watch it buddy. It's been a while since I've had to step in on a thread with abusive language. This is against the rules of the forum. I don't want to see you talking that way again, to ToySoldierAlan or anyone else.

[Gwtheyrn 70]

Alright. Point taken. I'll remove the post. Sorry.

[ToySoldierAlan 8]

I make it a point to always attempt to resist my urges to judge by first impressions because people are always more complex than they appear. A person's motives can very rarely be 100% judged by a couple of text posts because 1) text removes any emphasis that would be placed on words through tone of voice or body language, 2) a person's posting can be heavily influenced by their mood and end up being a poor reflection of their actual opinions, and 3) the text you read is filtered through your mind and preconceptions and takes on a shape that fits your expectations, often in contradiction to the original poster's intentions.

On the other hand, sometimes people are exactly as they appear.

(takes screenshots for personal vindication)