Advises for vein hunting

[Vyndicu]

I have manage to build up a good starting base. I can get nearly all ores up to nickal reasonable quickly except for titanium.

Right now my current method of getting titanium is to hunt and kill slimes in cold cavern and I don't have to tell you twice how slow that is! I got enough to upgrade my poison filter and I plan to do build gun v2 upgrade next.

I tried to scan for colored ore near my current mining shaft at -360 depth. For some reason the ore location disappear too quickly for me to get a good bearing on their locations. Nevermind that there isn't a large deposit of titanium vein that I could see.

Since I already got the ore and scanned that means I can't just scan for unknown sadly.

I could do the blank ore ping but that means hunt and kill slimes to scan titanium which isn't ideal since I have a lot to do like setting up a cargo evelvator for ore transport.

Remember I can reach the poison cavern. Should I try to go deeper to find more?

[pHredric]

Titanium normally appears before nickel, try to scan about 60 meters above your current nickel vein and you should be able to finds some. That said, the lower you go the higher density the ore veins tend to have.

[Vyndicu]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=831042167

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=831042372

This is what I see at 296 and 317 and my nickel vein is at 360 depth.

[epgeek]

Spawn depths for T2 ores are:
gold: -300
titanium: -350
nickel: -400

Though it's oft repeated, I have seen no evidence to support the claim that deeper veins are larger. Indeed many of the "largest vein found" thread are much closer to the surface than down deep.

Ore vein "richness" is a worldgen setting: for the nine T1/2/4 ores "scarce" and "Greg" mode are 1024 ores per block; plentiful/casual is 2048. I think crystal ore and biomass (T3) are 128 and 256 per block, but I'd have to check in-game to be sure.

If you can't find any good veins near your mine shaft(s), dig outward a ways and scan some more. Using the ore pings really helps in my experience, if you're looking for a single ore. Once I got to the FF, I started setting up a BFL to make four shafts out from the main lift shaft, and scan using pings. At the stage of the game I'm at, power is abundant down to the magma cavern, and resources for minecarts and track is mostly not a concern.

[B()NE]

Originally posted by epgeek:

Spawn depths for T2 ores are:
gold: -300
titanium: -350
nickel: -400

Though it's oft repeated, I have seen no evidence to support the claim that deeper veins are larger. Indeed many of the "largest vein found" thread are much closer to the surface than down deep.

Ore vein "richness" is a worldgen setting: for the nine T1/2/4 ores "scarce" and "Greg" mode are 1024 ores per block; plentiful/casual is 2048. I think crystal ore and biomass (T3) are 128 and 256 per block, but I'd have to check in-game to be sure.

If you can't find any good veins near your mine shaft(s), dig outward a ways and scan some more. Using the ore pings really helps in my experience, if you're looking for a single ore. Once I got to the FF, I started setting up a BFL to make four shafts out from the main lift shaft, and scan using pings. At the stage of the game I'm at, power is abundant down to the magma cavern, and resources for minecarts and track is mostly not a concern.

Pings are the way to quickly find large veins, the more powerful the return the better but don't think the small return in the distance isnt something worth digging to just in case its huge. I tend to go on a prospecting mission for ores for long periods, finding the best and biggest veins before you actually run out gives you ample time to build what you need to extract it, usually more tubes or coveyors.

at 1152 meters, I found a Titanium vein of over 78 million...so yeah the deeper you got, to a point, the larger the vein sizes become, at least for gold, nickle and titanium. The T4 ores seem to be in fairly large veins on our server.

[Vyndicu]

I would use BFL-9000 but most of my lithium and gold ore are going into research for now.

[epgeek]

For every post about how a person found a massive vein near the magma cavern, another person complains about the massive vein right under their CPH. Allegory is not evidence.

To convince me that ore vein size is affected by depth would take either a rigorous survey (which is all but impossible in a venue like this :( ), a confirmation from DJ, or someone much smarter than I digging through the perlin noise decompiled code. Until then, I will remain highly skeptical of the claim.

[dragon-42]

As to the OP: Try using Ore Pings so you have less confusion on your pings. Expolre out. It does take some effort if you are not in a cave system. You don't have to explore just down.
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I would reply with a few things. I *tend* to find much more in the way of viens deeper. Since there is more ore over all deeper, then you are more likely to find big viens regardless of the actual chance. Since the probability of finding a vien is higher, you are more likely to find one that is larger.

But I do agree that you can find big viens all over. On my current map, my BIG viens that I am mining are all pretty close to their cieling, with the exception of my Nickel. Can't find anything close to my effective area above 1 million until I get down to the -900 area.

[Vyndicu]

A small update. I manage to find some titanium vein at roughly ~600 depth but they are smallish and scattered all over the place. Not to mention a 100 meter drop from the ceiling to bottom of the cave.

Look like I will have to power my first elevator down there.

[Nasabot]

When I start a game I go to ~380 (where my first energy laser ends) and I find everything there. Nickel is a little bit deeper(though it can actually apear slightly ABOVE 400)

[dragon-42]

Or you can just make a mid-air transfer platform if you prefer to Vyndicu.

[Vyndicu]

Originally posted by dragon-42:

Or you can just make a mid-air transfer platform if you prefer to Vyndicu.

Already did. The problem was that from the nickal vein to the first poison cavern area. It was a straight 154 depth 3 by 3 shaft hole. So trying to get power and elevator setup was tricky at points. Then after that first cavern area it was a straight ~80 depth drop to one of the cavern floor, I use floor as a loose term here.

Thankfully there was a titanium vein on the 154 shaft end point that I could dig.

My next goal is now biomass growth vein.

[someone3x7]

Something I noticed is that vein population is pretty consistent from level to level. The only exception being crystal. Cold caverns seem to use a different algorithm from everything else. My point being, however, if you see a bunch of veins clustered together on the surface your more likely to find bunches of veins beneath. Ignoring vein size and counting number of veins. While this doesn't gauruntee any particular ore type it is far more likely to find all ores under a packed location.

[syro]

Originally posted by epgeek:

For every post about how a person found a massive vein near the magma cavern, another person complains about the massive vein right under their CPH. Allegory is not evidence.

To convince me that ore vein size is affected by depth would take either a rigorous survey (which is all but impossible in a venue like this :( ), a confirmation from DJ, or someone much smarter than I digging through the perlin noise decompiled code. Until then, I will remain highly skeptical of the claim.

I submit this as confirmation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abrNfMhl0Lc

At 1:36:53, DJ says, "You know that veins get bigger the deeper you go, right?"

He then elaborates a bit and says that veins near the top of their spawn range will be meager, whereas "at like -800 you get insane-sized veins."

[Mazetar]

So you got some titanium, I assume then you could make titanum ore pings, go down deep and use 2-5 such pings to locate it?

[Innominate]

Yep specific ore pings make it VERY easy to track down specific ore. Just explore out a bit. If you're at -400 you should easily find a 1-2 mill titanium vein with a little exploration.