Having serious difficulty finding lithium veins in existing caves

[Pokeking]

Was looking for hints of lithium veins via the scanner in a large number of caves at about 80-100m down, and I'm not finding anything. I aware that is it's supposed to only start spawning below 120m deep, but not even a single lithium vein has come up on the scanner.

I don't have a strong desire to manually dig through blocks and blocks as I'm already doing that for my belts of tin, copper, and the occasional iron, on the surface (0m altitude) in a 7w 7h tunnel size (I like my space for belt organization and the height for transmitter room).

There's also no machines that would help digging downward or horizontally this early, even if I did get some lithium via the Macerator.


As such, I would appreciate some suggestions and/or encouragement.

[DukeSatan]

Lithium can be a pain to find, you either get lucky or you dont, alas it seems you are the latter, 120m down to 850 is usual for lithium, although I've rarely found it at around 120, usually more like 200.

Typically i will follow caves leaving a breadcrumb trail of lights and make small mods to the landscape to give me simple walkways and see what i can find, no more than 3 blocks with but could be a long walkway. Alternative is if you have a main shaft/lift down and no caves off in some directions, dig a 2 high tunnel to fit through and just keep going until you find a new cave to explore, soon as i find one, mark the exit with two lights and clear around it so its easier to spot to get back.

Once i have iron i start making rack rails now and use the vertical 3x3 shaft Auto Excavator (note it digs up only), then install cargo lifts directly connected to the hoppers of the extractors on the material vein up to the surface, this way there is no need for making belts or fighting off mynocks, all belts are then on the surface, saves building huge underground tunnels and you can easily get some power to the Auto Excavator, you will need the power for the extractor anyway.

Using the holoview can help you find where you are, so make use of it, also certain blocks can be placed and are much easier to see on there, so you can use them as reference points to get back to a place if needed. Lifts show up well, but not all blocks show up, so test different ones to see what you like.

Otherwise its scan, walk, scan, walk, scan. If you can/have, unlock/use the colour mode on the scanner, lithium is a cyan colour (light sky blue), that can help a lot finding a hint, even if its behind a wall you never thought to dig through. Often once you found a vein you like, you can find an easier way back out, so your temp tunnels are just a one time use.

One thing i have done and that is mapped the grapple hook key to a side mouse key, this is a massive help in getting around much quicker as basically its your one saving grace from falling to your death. These days i can walk across a ceiling with it and going up and down walls is very easy... until you hit the likes of the cold cavern, then its panic time, lol.

[steveman0]

Yeah, you're way too shallow. I usually hunt around 200m down. I assume you already found some before. Start searching with either the known ore ping or best to use lithium ore pings. If you activate one at 200m down you are virtually guaranteed to find a decent sized one on the scan.

If you don't have lithium ore to spare, you can macerate some spare conveyor belts until you have a few pieces to craft the lithium pings.

[Pokeking]

Found 2 sizable chunks of unknown material on the scanner in a cave just before I gave up. I Was 100m down and both clusters were another 40m or so down, and I don't know if it's actually going to be lithium.

[DukeSatan]

Sounds like your in the ball park there, also if you can make a Macerator, then feeding it with coal or later on crystal can give odd random ore chunks, worth throwing a few of them around if you can to help learn gold, titanium and nickel (from crystal), then you can scan for them easier with the colour scanner mode (scroll down to it in the scanner screen). Lithium chunks can be learnt in the same way with the right "dirt" chunks and/or coal (if memory serves).

[Pokeking]

Wait, the type of garbage block has an impact on ore type and rate from the macerator?

[DukeSatan]

Different blocks will give different tiers of materials, some will only give basics like tin, copper, iron and lithium, deeper blocks also give gold, nickel and titanium, not sure about the molybdenum and chromium because that comes after you start doing the Cold Caverns, something i've started a couple times but said, meah, not ready for that, will get to it one day :D Plenty of life left in this game for me, at 150-250 hours per game world, its one of the best games for waving bye bye to irl, lol.

[Pokeking]

Yeah, the manual digging part is definitely one of the things that is quite lacking in improvements to. Had to figure out how to make my own mod (a lesser version of the Mk2 Extractor mod) to just to make things far less of a problem. I just have to find some lithium to be able to test it, but after that things should be far smoother.

[DukeSatan]

Lithium is always the big hurdle getting started because it makes Charged Coils, which are needed in so much of the power systems early on. Yes you can get away with using T1 power transmitters, so long as you can find crystals to make lenses and boost their throughput, that can be a huge help.

Personally I've not had to many issues with digging, the Auto Excavator has one useful feature, you can place it underground near where you think the storage hoppers and extractor will sit and without any power on it, it still shows the cutting shaft it will make, then go back to the surface and you can see where the exit will be. (up to 512m from AE)

If the exit is to high and going to be a problem later, power it and let it cut out the shaft, cap it over and make an under floor path from it into your production floor, typically i will have the surface as defence, first floor about 5-8 blocks below as the production floor and under that a second floor for cross conveyors, coal feeding lines and incoming ore/ingot belts from surface extractors/other cargo lifts.

Lately once getting induction charging (more lithium) and smelters means i'm now putting the induction charge on the top of the cargo lift 3x3 blocks, then on the top place the smelters, 3 or 5, then hoppers around the outside of the cargo shaft and conveyor the ores up, 3 or 5 belts to feed the smelter hoppers. Finally, one belt of ingots goes off to production, power pyros can be added on the edges of the induction charger no problem.

So long as everything is above -30 meters then its all good, many machines like pryos wont work below that level, having a nice clean defence surface is essential to knowing you have all quadrants defended the same, plus you will need space for folcars, garbage sorting, solar panels, etc etc.

[Pokeking]

The factory design part of the game is not the big issue for me, it's how much manual digging is required, the lack of upgrades/improvements for such (without modding in such), and how hard of a time finding the resources I want despite spending lots of looking while minimizing the manual digging needed.

I finally got 5 lithium bars from the macerator, so I now have an excavator to dig around to a lithium vein with much less manual work.

[DukeSatan]

Well done getting some lithium bars, other than the auto excavator i typically just right click excavate, got a quick finger and mouse so not a bother, there are other machines that come later to dig horizontal trenches i think and flat 3 high workfloors, but I've barely ever used them, setting up the power to one takes longer than me just digging it out myself.

[Pokeking]

Power transmission without mk1 transmitters is definitely slow, so carrying a pryothermal gen is useful, as is a spare battery and feeding it suit energy.
But not having an option for distant power transmission that doesn't force an offset from the attached block is also quite annoying. ie there's no option to orient a power transmitter vertically. Conduits from loading screens clearly do just that, but those are 2 way and also only much later in the game.

[DukeSatan]

Originally posted by Pokeking:

Power transmission without mk1 transmitters is definitely slow, so carrying a pryothermal gen is useful, as is a spare battery and feeding it suit energy.
But not having an option for distant power transmission that doesn't force an offset from the attached block is also quite annoying. ie there's no option to orient a power transmitter vertically. Conduits from loading screens clearly do just that, but those are 2 way and also only much later in the game.

Power transmitters can be placed in any orientation, look at the surface you want it placed on and build, from there yes it will rotate in only one plane, but as there is no cost to removing and replacing means you can easily use a temp block or two to put them up, then attach to that temp block and remove any unnecessary blocks after.

Then you can easily make L type beams with two transmitters, i'm sure you can do this already, the world grid can be a pain when things are one block out, that's where a storage block can help, also gives you a point of powering up if needed, you get use to it as well as better at aligning your systems in time.

Getting the crystals is a massive help early on if you can find them, pyros are great on the surface and yep, carry a small setup later to tackle the worms, couple pyros, storage, enriched coal and a couple T2 turrets, soon kill them off, lol.