How do you find sandstone?

[Light Spanker]

I am pretty new to this game, but I know that silver is the key to pretty much everything cool. And that it is found in sandstone. However, I cannot seem to find it. I have played the game for several hours, and found exactly one piece of sandstone. The scanner thing said it is common. It doesn't look like that to me. Is there some trick to finding it? Thanks.

[SkunkWerks]

Generally speaking you tend to find more silver in the caves- you know, where the crash fish are and of course the ever present threat of getting lost in a maze and not finding one's way back to the surface before you drown is.

You can get a dive reel of course, but that won't much help with the crash fish.

[ImHelping]

It can also show up in kelp forests, which can take longer (competing limestone spawns in my experience) but means less Crash fish or possibly getting lost.

Main snag is the fact even if you do find sandstone, it has a 2/3 chance to spawn either lead or copper.

Silver is one of the only actual "notable stopgap" material for me in this game. Due to the combination of it's limited spawn locations, and being inside a rock node with only 1/3 chance of having silver. (Stalker teeth when the RNG doesn't feel like making stalkers drop them after feeding them scrap metal 5 times is a runner up, but it's used much less often)

Everything else is either much more common, or sits out in the open directly. You will start of thinking gold is hard to find and then suddenly end up with an entire storage locker full of it.

[SkunkWerks]

Another place is the crash site- but this only works well if your game happens to have a modestly-sized land mass supporting the aurora- as mine happens to.

Silver seems to occur more often there anyway, but it is by definiation more dangerous.

[Ghosticus]

Kelp Forest and Grassy Plateaus. I get tons of silver from sandstone found inside of the red grass patches. I've never had an issues finding silver in my expierence.

[MrReciprocity]

All the deposits look exactly the same (as far as I can tell), they just increase in fanciness the farther out/down you go. Move away from the starting area, you'll find more sandstone and less limestone.

[or0b0ur0s]

I know of exactly 3 places for certain (okay, 4, but one's Reaper territory and no place you belong early game).

Caves do have Sandstone, but I've never gone deep enough in the Shallows caves to find much (too many Crash, no way to avoid getting blown up in a tiny, twisty tube with nowhere to run).

The Kelp Forest caves, and some ravines / crevices, do have a decent amount. Just carry caught fish in your hand and watch out for Stalkers (the dolphin-like toothy things). They won't bite you if there's fish in your hand to steal instead.

The majority of it you'll find in the Grassy Plateau (where all the red grass is). Unfortunately, as you swim over there you'll see a huge, churning mass of Biters (little, red, piranha knockoffs) and Sandsharks (the big, googly-eyed, segmented things with More Teeth Than the Osmond Family). All the Sandstone is just underneath all those vicious predators, hiding among the grass. It's a serious pain to get to even when you have a submarine and some non-lethal weaponry. Any rock nodes you find that don't have at least a half-dozen Sandsharks swarming right above it? Limestone. Always.

To get started, I almost always go to the Big Green Tube in the Shallows with 2 side-caves right in the middle of it (there are 2 others, but this description only fits 1). The side cave blocked by a rock can still be wiggled into, and there's 3 Sandstone right on the other side. Watch out for Crash that are sometimes there.

There are also a couple of thermal vents in the Shallows (the loud geysers that erupt), and they all have side-caves with Sandstone in them as well. Just be careful to time your entry & exit so you don't get par-boiled by the hot water eruptions; the side-caves themselves are safe. Those two spots alone ought to get you enough to make your Builder, first Fabricator, and eventually, your Seamoth, Modification Station, etc.

Sandstone also occurs in the Dunes, but they're far from the Shallows, full of Sandsharks, and home to Reaper Leviathans that are end-game-level hard to deal with. Fair warning.

[the_whorax]

It can be found in caves but the easier and safer way to find sandstone is looking along the floor of the great plateaus biome, that's where I get most of my silver. And as for getting silver from the sandstone, that's just chance.

[shade169]

i finds piles of it in the areas with red grass

[Antarata]

It's on the cliffs at the kelp biome that overlook the sand plain things. It's pretty deep so you'll want a few tanks.