Prospecting

You remembered where you picked up those Small Metal Nuggets, right? Finding additional ores may require extensive exploration and mining. You should become very familiar with Ores and Minerals. If you need a specific resource, you must find the rock type it spawns in either under your feet or across the world.

When picking up small nuggets becomes unsatisfying, it is time to start prospecting to find ore veins:

• Small nuggets occur when ore is nearby, within 15 blocks horizontally and 35 vertically. If you find the center of a group of nuggets, it's likely that the vein is beneath you.
• Exposed ore can occur in cliffs and water bodies, which may be seen from farther away.

If you're looking for metal ores or mineral veins (which have no nuggets), and you can't find the vein by guessing, it's time to pull out the Prospector's Pick. It searches the 25x25x25 area centered on the block clicked, and reports to the action bar the amount and type of ore located.

To make a Prospector's Pick, you can knapp an unfired mold out of clay as shown above.

Once the mold has been knapped, it needs to be fired to create a Propick Head Mold.

To create the tool head, cast liquid metal into the mold.

A Prospector's Pick Head can also be smithed out of an ingot of any tool metal on an Anvil.

The Prospector's Pick is then created by crafting the tool head with a stick.

The Prospector's Pick will never report finding something when nothing is actually there. However, it may incorrectly say nothing is there when a vein is in range. Higher tier tools will reduce or eliminate these false negatives.

Prospector's Picks at the same tier give identical results when used on the same block unless ores were removed.

If the Prospector's Pick finds multiple ores nearby, it will only report one.

Right-clicking a Prospector's Pick on a block will report finding one of these possible results:

• Nothing (may be false)
• Traces
• A Small Sample
• A Medium Sample
• A Large Sample
• A Very Large Sample

Very large samples indicate at least eighty and potentially many more blocks.