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DashAshfell

How big are your veins?

31 posts in this topic

I've had a sneaking suspicion that the ore vein sizes do not work very well for more than 5 people in the same mine, that they will dry up in about an hour. I've cleared major veins of iron in two trips. 

I want to know from everyone: How much ore do you pull out of a mine, how long does it take, how large is the space you excavate, and do you build any structures around the entrance?

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I guess it depends on how many pottery vessels I bring with me. Also, I am pretty sure you can change ore spawning stuff like size, layer, etc. in the ore config. That would hopefully fix the issue of multiple people not getting enough from a vein.

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I've gone everywhere from a few stacks of an ore to several vessels full.

 

Smaller veins I tend to mine out quickly, or if they are very sparse then I often give up and look elsewhere, those mines get very little celebration, normally just a hole marked with a torch but bigger mines might get a small hut with a chest or two. Any sort of stone mine will normally be longer lived so usually get a small hut, particularly if its on a server where multiple people might use that mine, in which case I'll normally also keep a few tools at hand in the hut so that anyone caught at night will be able to get some resource gathering done.

 

Sparse veins I might leave with stil a medium sample left, unless it is of rich quality whereby I might search a bit harder. Most other veins will get down to small or very small before leaving the last few bits of ore.

 

I tend to excavate far more than is required, particularly if it is in a stone type I'll likely build with, in which case I would take roughly equal amounts of cobble (for bricks) and smooth stone. These larger spaces normally get some support although I tend to be careful and work down so its debateable whether the support is necessary. Larger stone mines will see supports form more of an aesthetic than actual support and I'll break out into rooms and corridors and build structures out of the mine, often bringing fairly large amounts of wood down to form door frames etc, sometimes building mezzanine floors and even using the hot springs to form waterfalls or wells.

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On the only adventure for meatal I ever went on due to the fact it was enough to make a bloomery and a bronze anvil and I have iron in 2 places next to my house I found 2 copper veins and 1 rich cassarite the rich cassarite gave about 4 stacks and the copper 5 or so stacks each no changeing just a single player world each in the middle of a stone type theres roboly copper down there still I just got to the core of the vein where most of the ore is

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Thank you all. I was hoping the ore veins get a little bigger,

 

I really wanted to make a permanent mine on a large ore vein, but they keep running out before I get two chests out. I may tinker with the generation sizes. 

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minor tangent here, but this is something I always think about when I read discussions about transportation infrastructure and inventory reduction. The goal of both is generally to force players to really establish mines, set up camp and do ore processing on site, etc, but the current veins just don't seem nearly big enough to support that to me. Even with some of the most extreme inventory reduction people have suggested, I still can't picture it being worth the time to set up any real kind of camp, beyond the most basic essentials like food, water, and perhaps beds. For a permanent mining base to make sense, veins need to be something you're digging away at for years of in-game time, even in SMP scenarios where you may have several people digging at it together. Sure, if you cripple players' ability to carry things around sufficiently, you might be able to force it to take that long with current veins, but it'd be a pretty miserable experience for players if it took a team years of game-time to extract only as much ore as is in a vein now.

tl;dr: if you want to encourage/reward establishing long-term mining camps and building transportation routes, veins should be much bigger and much more rare.

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that's what i was thinking when i think mine today i thing MASSIVE pit with huge trucks that have been there for years and are not done and in ancient Rome for instance they had mines that provided enough for years maybe even a centery

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that's what i was thinking when i think mine today i thing MASSIVE pit with huge trucks that have been there for years and are not done and in ancient Rome for instance they had mines that provided enough for years maybe even a centery

frankly, the romans weren't mining cubic meters of stone in a few seconds.

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true but our day is shorter in TFC so we mine i think about the same

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also i just learned on the pro pick page that if you find a ore nugget it means some where beneath you is a deposit even if its at bedrock

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also i just learned on the pro pick page that if you find a ore nugget it means some where beneath you is a deposit even if its at bedrock

 

No. Not even remotely close. Did you even read the page? On the propick page it states:

 

  • The prospector's pick has a shorter scanning range than the requirement for small ore pieces to spawn. If using the prospector's pick on the surface in an area where small ore pieces are found, and only negative readings are given, it means that the vein is deeper underground.

If you then go and look at the Ores & Minerals page, it says:

 

  • Small ores can be found scattered around on the surface of the ground. These are samples of what ore veins are located within 35 blocks underneath the soil, so they're somewhat important. In the majority of cases, it is a sample of a vein in the top layer of stone. However, in areas where the top layer is thin enough, the vein may be located in the upper section of the middle stone layer. This means that it is possible to find small ore pieces in areas where the top layer of stone is not able to spawn the ore. Note: The maximum distance from the surface to a vein required for a small ore piece to generate is larger than the scanning range of the Prospector's Pick. If using the prospector's pick on the surface in an area where small ore pieces are found, and only negative readings are given, it means that the vein is deeper underground.

 

So you're waaaaaaay off with the "bedrock" assumption. An ore nugget just means there is a deposit within 35 blocks below you... bedrock is closer to 100 blocks below you.

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In the past I have found very large coal veins. Once I found over 4000 pieces in a single area, it was something like a 10x12x35 solid block of lignite.

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k thanks also the veins dont need to be bigger i just got 160 normal ore from a native copper vein in a underground hotsprings

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Nice to see a few more informative posts.

 

In my quest to completely clear a mine my world unfortunately got destroyed by logging in with a vanilla version. I have started a new world and will post more about how each mine looks and information on how I mined it with pictures of the pretty supports. also writing down the start and end times for each mining run. This will take a small amount of time, currently exiting stone age. 

 

If posting these pictures and times is against forum rules, please notify me, I will check within the week.

 

I hope this data will be of use for everyone building survival mode structures.

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If posting these pictures and times is against forum rules, please notify me, I will check within the week.

 

Not against the rules at all. We encourage this kind of discussion. The only numbers that we really want to keep off of these forums are stuff like the numbers behind smithing, and durability of tools because once you see them it's really hard to un-see, and it can ruin the magic and fun of some of the game mechanics.

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Thank you for your swift reply, I was worried that ore gen was as secret a game mechanic. To clarify, may I post numbers like length/width/height, picks used, propicks used and stone/ore excavated?

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Go right ahead. The majority of vein size information is already readily available in your config folder through TFCOres.cfg

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Than you, looking at config files has greatly increased my interest in how ore generation looks in regard to those numbers. I will compare these numbers to future ore excavations.

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iore veins tend to snake orignaly i thought there were peices scattered around a core with 2 to 3 stacks in it also i ussual finf=d a ore peice on the surface go down till i have a strong reading then make a big 2 high square around where i came down and gathere all the ore i find then i use supports to mine up to the surfuce....... or i make a huge pit in the first place

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Any one knows if there is a config option to disable scattered veins?

I don't mind if a vein is small or rare. But those veins where you find one piece here and have to go looking around to find a second piece just drive me nuts.

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Any one knows if there is a config option to disable scattered veins?

I don't mind if a vein is small or rare. But those veins where you find one piece here and have to go looking around to find a second piece just drive me nuts.

 

Do you even try to read the wiki before you post?

 

http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Configuration#TFCOre.cfg

 

Crank up the horizontal and vertical density if you want veins to be less scattered, aka more dense.

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this is an interesting topic. i would tend to agree with the OP somewhat about the vein density however i have just found a rich hematite vein that is the largest vein i have ever come across. its in the second layer and ive already made 2 trips back to base and filled 1+1/2 double chests with it. i would estimate by the range of my pro pick readings and bore hole length there is at least 3x as much again down there. im considering setting up a small base up top with a bloomery to smelt it as i pull it out.

 

though in general i would say that the veins i find vary massively in size. on my current world i have cleared out 3 bismuth veins which yielded less than 5 full stacks each and ive found a sphalerite mine which i doubt will ever run out, a cassiterite mine with enough tin to make a baked beans factory jealous and a surface garnierite vein with what seems to be more than ill ever need. the copper veins i have been finding have been on the small side though (i found a malachite vein with only 9 pieces though it did spawn on a join between 2 rock types)

 

i for one would prefer if the veins are like my afore mentioned hematite mine but much rarer, i find that my pro pick will last for as long as 6-7 picks just because surface veins are imo so darn easy to find and so common. sure you have to travel a little way to find everything but the main point of the mod is exploring (imo anyway)

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vaguely related to this, particularly my own earlier comments, I was always interested in the Custom Ore Gen mod (thread for the latest here, has link to the original, now outdated, thread), which created much more massive and interesting but also much more rare veins of ore. It was conceived and created on the premise that permanent mining infrastructure was only justified by much larger but more rare mines, mines players would spend tremendous amounts of game time mining out, not all in one go but in multiple sessions. Also, mining diamonds around it's lava tubes was just one of the most entertaining bits of mining I've ever done in any MC configuration, lol.

 

Larger but rarer veins are just one of the many things people have suggested, along with reduced inventories and transportation-related features, to try to make it not just a roleplaying thing, but a practical, beneficial gameplay objective to build elaborate mining outposts and transportation networks connecting remote sites together. I don't claim to know what the perfect formula for achieving that is, but I suspect all three would need to come into play, along with, fairly obviously, a server configuration that doesn't allow just teleporting about freely.

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funny story guys, I was looking for bismuth today and came across a vein of gypsum, which was connected to a vein of coal, hematite, lignite, and limonite. finally got 10 chunks of poor bismuth. good news is that the copper mine is a lot more intact.

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