Mining for minerals, how do you do it?

[Toaster]

In our current campaign we are at The Aphotic Plateau biome, but we have no idea how to find minerals except if it is a mission of "Mining X" or "Clear a nest of X" because those are in caves and they always have stuff. Wiki doesn't help much, just shows a screenshot of a mineral scanner being used and how it marks the specific type of mineral on the sonar. Our submarine does not have that so we used the handheld one, but we never found a single thing with it, ever. So is it just useless or is this specific biome devoid of any material?

[FourGreenFields]

Handheld sonars no longer work inside the submarine.

Look for caves. They exist even without being mission-targets, and allways contain goodies.

And take a look outside the sub, sometimes there just randomly are clusters of minerals/plants on normal walls.

[sokolov]

You can often find minerals on "Islands" that stand out as a sphere-looking thingy on the sonar.

Staying close to the level's floors is also a good thing to do if you have someone that could sit on bottom guns and watch for minerals/plants the whole time.

[Buggy Boy]

Aye, I hardly bother with the handheld mineral scanner, just explore caves and have people looking through periscopes as you pilot close to the cavern walls. The Abyss usually has one or two islands containing rare or alien minerals, be prepared to kill an Abyss creature though.

I explored every cave I came across (usually two per round) up until about the third biome, by that time I had enough minerals to last the rest of the game bar a few of the rare ones, I explore wrecks and send in the mechanic and engineer with their talents for scrap etc, once I've cleared out the critters.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

As others have said, but also getting the Super Sonar mod might help.

[Toaster]

We found some ore once I swam around the bottom floor with the sonar in hand, so there's that. But it was mostly ore we don't need. We're going to switch a deep diver with (hopefully) a built-in mineral scanner for it. Thanks for the answers guys.

[sokolov]

Originally posted by Toaster:

We're going to switch a deep diver with (hopefully) a built-in mineral scanner for it.

None of the vanilla submarines have that atm, but it will become a purchaseable upgrade soon. :)

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by Sokolov:

Originally posted by Toaster:

We're going to switch a deep diver with (hopefully) a built-in mineral scanner for it.

None of the vanilla submarines have that atm, but it will become a purchaseable upgrade soon. :)

Are you trying to give a wrong answer just to get the right answer more quickly? Because it's working.

Berilia. R-29. Didn't check the rest.

[sokolov]

Originally posted by FourGreenFields:

Originally posted by Sokolov:

None of the vanilla submarines have that atm, but it will become a purchaseable upgrade soon. :)

Are you trying to give a wrong answer just to get the right answer more quickly? Because it's working.

Berilia. R-29. Didn't check the rest.

I stand corrected. I didn't really check those ships because they are not for me and from the threads I've seen people rather talked about it being an feature for custom submarines than saying it also exists on vanilla subs.