Best Way to Mine in TFC

[charlotterose23 0]

Hey guys

I'm pretty new to playing TFC so I was wondering if you guys could give me some advice?

I've made a pickaxe and prospectors pick etc. and I'm looking for copper but on my current world, I haven't found a single piece whilst picking up the rocks on the surface? Should I keep wandering around until I find some or just make a mine near my home and start to mine and look for stuff as I go?

Maybe we got super lucky, but on the server that me and my bf have, we found copper on the surface right near our house and without even using the prospectors pick managed to find a huge vein of copper.. not having this kind of luck on my single player world tho

So what do you guys usually do? Search for copper on the surface first or just wing it and start a mine and search using the prospectors pick? How far down do you start?

Thanks for the help in advance and sorry if my questions seem 'nooby'

xx

[Gwtheyrn 70]

You'll have to find it on the surface or get very lucky on the second tier, unfortunately. You'll have to find nuggets on the surface. A sluice might help you out as well.

[stringburka 72]

I generally just beat rocks on the surface until some copper drops. You might have to travel quite far.

Generally, I make sure to get a phat stack of food (either porkchops or stuff for making meals of speed if I have them), a bow and arrows, a bed, and a book and quill (they're harder to use nowadays though, right? have hardly played since b75) and some leather armor.

Then I just go out hitting rocks until I find something interesting, meanwhile noting useful info (fruit tree locations, sequia forests, clay etc) in the book and quill.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

I generally just beat rocks on the surface until some copper drops. You might have to travel quite far.

Generally, I make sure to get a phat stack of food (either porkchops or stuff for making meals of speed if I have them), a bow and arrows, a bed, and a book and quill (they're harder to use nowadays though, right? have hardly played since b75) and some leather armor.

Then I just go out hitting rocks until I find something interesting, meanwhile noting useful info (fruit tree locations, sequia forests, clay etc) in the book and quill.

Writing in books has been changed to using the scribing table, however due to the buggy nature writing in books is currently disabled until future build. Bows and Arrows are also currently nerfed until Build 77 because Bioxx oopsied and forgot to give them TFC instead of vanilla damage while updating the bow code. Skeletons still hit like a boss though because they don't actually "use" their bow.

Back to the topic of mining techniques; What I usually do is while running around collecting surface rocks, if I find a piece of or I will mark the spot, typically by placing a piece of cobblestone with a torch on top in the spot. I then run around in that area and collect all of the rocks/ores, marking as I go.

Once the area is cleaned out of surface rocks I look for the densest area of markers and start my mine there. Clear out the dirt in a spiral staircase down until you hit stone and then tap around with the prospector's pick. Nine times out of ten I get a reading for the same ore I had found on the surface. From there use a technique like ones listed on the wiki: http://terrafirmacraft.com/wiki/Prospector%27s_Pick

As for higher tier metals, this requires a little bit more work. To find say, garnierite, I look on the wiki to see what stone it spawns in. Wiki says gabbro, and I know that higher tier metals tend to spawn in the middle or bottom layer of stone. So I travel great distances on the surface, looking for changes in biomes and surface rock and dig straight down to see what the 3 layers of stone are. If I find gabbro, great! Time to start mining around with a prospector's pick and hope I get lucky. A note to keep in mind is that not all layers change in the exact same spot, so it's best to run a little bit into the new biome/surface rock before digging straight down.

[aliceingame 114]

I said eveything I had to say in my pro pick post in the guide section.

[Bihlbo 29]

Aliceingame's guide is fantastic, I second that.

tl;dr version:

1. Mark each spot where you find a small ore in a surface rock (I use torches since it takes nothing to retrieve them). That'll give you a rough idea of the area of a vein under the surface.

2. Get yourself about 10-20 blocks below the beginning of the rock layer, centered (more or less) in the area you discovered in step 1.

3. Pick a direction and mine.

4. When your propick goes from "very large sample" to "large sample", drop a torch and count 13 blocks back the way you came.

5. Turn 90 degrees and do it again. This should give you a spot strong enough to register as "very large".

6. Dig up or down until you hit ore. If the rock changes to a different type (or to dirt), you've probably gone too far.

If you mine a block that has nothing below it (like when mining straight up), there's the possibility of triggering a cave-in. Always mine from the top down to minimize this. Stand on a torch if you get nervous and have not used supports to prevent your death.

[mayaknife 82]

I'm looking for copper but on my current world, I haven't found a single piece whilst picking up the rocks on the surface? Should I keep wandering around until I find some or just make a mine near my home and start to mine and look for stuff as I go?

Note that copper only occurs in andesite, basalt, dacite and rhyolite. So if you pick up a rock and it's not one of those types then there's no need in checking out that area any further, just move on until you get to a new rock type. You'll also find that each type of rock is associated with its own type of dirt. In particular, the dirt sitting on top of a basalt layer is very dark, as is basalt itself. This means that you can often look around at the distant mountains to see if any of them look much darker than the others. If so then there's a good chance that they contain basalt rock so head in that direction.

[HudsonR 0]

Some tutorial please?

[ChunkHunter 73]

12 hours ago, HudsonR said:

Some tutorial please?

Look up 2 and 3 posts there's a good guide.
As to a video tutorial, search on YouTube for ProPick TFC or something - there are plenty of videos out there if you look

e.g.

(the information is a little outdated but in essence it's good - the thread is after all 3 years old)

Edited 26 Sep 2016 by ChunkHunter