Non-existent uranium deposits

[Okkuas]

I've just recently purchased the game and I'm now on an irradiated planet searching for uranium - my scanner shows an uranium deposit, but when I get there, there's nothing there to find. Is this a bug, or is there some non-obvious way of mining it? I've searched the net and the steam forum for info on that, but have not found anything conclusive or up-to-date info on the issue ("just make launch fuel", "search for metal fingers" which aren't there, etc.)

[Mr. Bufferlow]

In rare cases, the uranium is there...just in very small quantities...also could be a cave under the location you have to drill down. Best case is to find it for sale and just buy what you need. It goes a long way so even half a stack can keep you rolling for a very long time.

Super rare, but I have seen a mineral only available as a secondary product of mining trees/rocks. It is a PITA, but just get enough until you find a more viable source.

[echox66]

When you approach any metal deposit, you see the floor hasa different color.

You have to dig it with terrain operator that you have to unlock and place into your multi tool unpgrade inventory. ( A kind of round red beam and press G to switch).

If you don't see the uranium, just look for another deposit or another planet.

[seismic7]

At the beginning of the game, you are not in a position to buy anything. You can only mine.

In the past I have marked locations of mineral deposits or other buried items, and upon reaching the destination, there was nothing there, but that would be a rare occurrence.

Have you checked game file integrity, to make sure there isn't any corruption?

[Emaulligu]

What Echox said, to mine ore you need to use the terrain manipulator on that weird shiny spot on the ground.

On the other hand I'm not too sure what you're wanting uranium for, I know it can be used in hazard protection systems and to refuel your ships but all the other alternatives are much more accessible.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

Originally posted by Emaulligu:

What Echox said, to mine ore you need to use the terrain manipulator on that weird shiny spot on the ground.

On the other hand I'm not too sure what you're wanting uranium for, I know it can be used in hazard protection systems and to refuel your ships but all the other alternatives are much more accessible.

uranium is the ultimate fuel source. No need to make anything, it just works. Fully upgraded, my ship was only using 8 units of Uranium for every lift off....do the math.

[Emaulligu]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

uranium is the ultimate fuel source. No need to make anything, it just works. Fully upgraded, my ship was only using 8 units of Uranium for every lift off....do the math.

I never ran out of launch thruster power as soon as I installed the solar recharging module.
It's not like launch fuel is hard to craft either, and di-hydrogen much easier to find than uranium.

[Okkuas]

I must have lucked out at first because I found about 120 units of uranium quite early, about the same time I got my Terrain Manipulator working during the "tutorial" mission (still in the starting system) - I didn't pay attention to where I got it because at the time I had no idea it was so rare, but it must have been an actual deposit. If it weren't so difficult to find, it would make a good fuel for the thrusters, because it takes up only single inventory slot (launcher fuel materials take up several), doesn't require any crafting, doesn't take much to recharge, and you could gather a whole lot of it into that single slot - if you could actually find it. I haven't found the solar recharging module for sale yet, either.

I'm still kind of wondering if the non-existent deposits are a bug or not - or is it just so that the "deposit" is only a game marker for "here should be something" and then the RNG determines how much of it is there, and since uranium is supposed to be rare, it often rounds out to 0... But I searched three different uranium deposits on that particular planet, and not one had any uranium, despite me digging a huge open-pit mine down to the water level with the manipulator.

[Emaulligu]

There should be a metallic-looking patch on the ground to dig into, if you don't see it then there most likely isn't any ore there, but it's very strange the game keeps pointing you to site that are empty.

Starship launch fuel can be stacked up to 40 though you probably won't need that many, and all it requires is di-hydrogen and metal platings made from ferrite dust which you should always have enough of.
So you can craft a few units ahead of time and leave them in your starship inventory so they don't take slots on yourself.

The solar recharge module will be available to you later, story spoiler stuff, and while it's pretty expensive to craft at first, I still recommand looking into it.

[Okkuas]

I'm now fairly sure this is a bug of some kind - I went to a different planet with uranium listed as a resource, and the first deposit drew a blank (the ground showed the small bump, signal booster showed the deposit "lattice" but the ground was the same color as elsewhere, and there was no uranium), but the next three deposits were like normal and yielded about 600 units all told. I guess that if I went back to the first planet and searched more, I would find actual deposits - but that planet had a lot of water and was difficult to explore for deposits because of that. I think I should report this in the bugs section, in case HG reads those messages.

[steventirey]

Originally posted by Okkuas:

but the next three deposits were like normal and yielded about 600 units all told.

Do you mean 600 units in total from all 3 nodes? Thats rather low. Are you remembering to use the smallest setting on the terrain manipulator when mining? (The R key makes it smaller and you will get more resources out of a node while the T key makes it bigger and you get a lot less of the resource.)

[umop-apisdn]

This.
Material is acquired based on time spent "digging" with the terrain manipulator.
Press "R" to make the "nozzle" smaller to get more out of the deposit, or press "T" to make it larger and empty the deposit more quickly instead.

[Felis_Exploria]

If you are within 100u of a building or are along the shore of a body of water, there is often a ghost deposit, where the is nothing at the marker. I rarely find minable deposits in these situations, so I typically avoid searching them. I have heard that they may be buried deep or that they were there and marked, then when the flat terrain & building are rendered, the actual deposits are removed. Overall, I found about 2% of all marked deposits have none, so just go to the next one.

[Okkuas]

Originally posted by steventirey:

Originally posted by Okkuas:

but the next three deposits were like normal and yielded about 600 units all told.

Do you mean 600 units in total from all 3 nodes? Thats rather low. Are you remembering to use the smallest setting on the terrain manipulator when mining?

I didn't even realize such a setting exists... The game has a lot to absorb and when you come to it at this stage as a complete newbie, it's all a bit overwhelming and you tend to miss a lot of quite simple things. Thanks a bunch for the tip!

[UncreativelyNamed]

Uranium isn't rare at all. It's ubiquitous on all radioactive planets but ONLY on radioactive planets. However, some radioactive planets have more than others. When you scan a planet from space, the list of major resources you see after the scan lists the three major mineral deposits that every planet has in order of rarity, with the most common resource at the top of the list. So, if uranium is the last resource listed, it'll be the least common kind of major deposit on that planet, but it should still be easy to find.

On rare occasions, the deposit can be very sparse. You can only see wisps of the uranium mixed with the "regular" rock that makes up the ground and you won't get much when you mine it, especially if you have the Terrain Manipulator on its largest setting . On even rarer occasions, the deposit could be in a cavern underground, so you'll need to dig down to the cavern to find the uranium deposit. But 95% of the time, there should be a deposit on the ground in plain sight, which you should be able to mine. I would say that if you go to every single deposit site that your scanner pings and there's nothing there, then something is wrong somewhere. Is it only uranium deposits where this is an issue? If so, that's even more puzzling. A screenshot of what you're seeing might be helpful.

[Rexxer]

Scanable ore deposits:
(1) Vary in quantity
(2) Vary in depth
Most are on the surface leading you to think they all should be there in the exact same way. Sometimes the deposit is quite deep, inside a cave under the scan point.