PC Tried a new, to me, mining method: spot bore mining

[FileMachete]

Edit: to clarify, this is not a subsitute for larger, open-pit mines as Boidster did a nice job explaining & a pic below, this is just a minor improvement for when you may be out in the wild and hitting ore as you come across it.

I had been just hitting the various ore nodes 3 'next-to-it' surface ore blocks.

Noticed when I started a new 'full' iron mine that there was a vertical streak that went down about 5 blocks, all ore blocks.

So decided to try that in the wild.

Every few days I usually spend a day out hunting, chopping trees & farming those top layer ore blocks, no POIs, so room for ores.

Was suprised to find that simply digging straight down where there was a lower ore block typically led to at least a few more, some went a dozen deep with only a few sand blocks before hitting stone. Then I just nerd poled back up and went to the next one.

Additional advantage was I started filling in the other holes so no more face plants when driving.

Sure, a bit dangerous if a wandering horde comes by, but a junk turret set up above will help some, unless you get lucky and wind up deeper than it's control range.

Anyway, just thought I'd share this in case anyone finds it useful. I know it's a bit of a coffee-in-a-teabag thing; obvious once you think of it , but old habits die hard and, thankfully, I was getting pretty burned out on all the strip mining I'd usually do to open up a mine. & nice/bad side effect is that I don't have a gazillion stacks of clay laying around, I actually had to intentionally mine some last night, who'd a thunk?

 

[Boidster]

The surface nodes actually indicate a large sub-surface ore field. If you're nomadic and just want some quick extra ore hits, then doing one vertical hole will net you some extra, but if you have time and expand your mining pit you'll get thousands more ore, often of several types. The general rule, once you're below the surface dirt/sand, is: follow the gravel. 99% of the time ore blocks will have gravel on at least one side. So if you dig out gravel you will uncover ore blocks.

My usual method is:

1) Find surface node that I want to turn into a mine

2) Dig out a 10x10 or so pit, 3 deep, centered on the surface node

3) Survey the floor of the pit to see where the ores seem to be - sometimes only one side of the pit has ore (the rest being rock) and sometimes the ore is all over the pit floor

4) Dig out all of the gravel I can see on the floor of the pit (1 layer only)

5) Mine all the newly-exposed ore (the rest of that layer) - the pit floor is now smooth again and 1 block lower

6) Repeat at #4, dropping the pit one layer each time

If there is significant ore in the wall of the pit (and most of the time there is - there is no guarantee that the ore field will be directly underneath the surface boulder), then I'll start digging out the gravel of the walls, being mindful of structural integrity issues (especially in the desert where the surface layers are sand and very weak). I often end up with a 10x10 surface opening with very deep sub-surface 'wings' where I've dug out a bunch of ore. Wood frames used to support the ceiling of the wings.

Once the pit is 10 blocks deep, usually I'll have enough visible ore veins that pulling 30-40K ore out of one daytime mining trip is pretty easy with an auger.

 

[Boidster]

For example, here's an iron mine we've got going (also produces some nitrate and coal), which of course started with a surface boulder. We've started digging out the walls (green arrows) and the floor is covered in iron ore (blue arrows) and gravel. There is probably at least 6-10K iron visible just in this picture (I am 4/5 on Mother Lode perk, tho). Who knows how far down it goes, but we'll keep digging as long as there is gravel.

 

[FileMachete]

@Boidster, fully agree, and that's an excellent description as well. Similar to what I do for a 'real mine' except I tend to keep clearing away all the overburden as I follow the ore, instead of simply tunneling into the side. I need to give that a try as I can end up with a major 'strip-mine' 40 blocks long

Apologies that I wasn't clearer in my post; what I should have said was something like, "you can significantly increase your random ore harvesting by boring a vertical shaft or two when out and about. Kind of like when we used to all harvest the clusters of surface, mixed-ore boulders in earlier alphas."

But it's not a replacement for full on mines. It's a pretty quick, and cheap, expansion to just skimming the top layer of cream off the ore deposits,

Also can be useful earlier on when you're still using lower tech & digging clay takes 3 hits per block. By not investing a significant chunk of Food & Time into digging out a lot of clay that you may not yet have need for.

Or like my current case. New playthrough, day 17, nearest city & trader are in snow biome, so I want to relocate south to warmer climes.

Plus I decided to initially live in a cool POI from Combo Pack, the wood frontier fort one, so I didn't build a base on top of an iron deposit like I usually do.

Luckily day 16 restock had a motorcycle, and I was able to afford it thanks to looting 3 treasure maps! (love those things; expecting them to get nerfed though)

So basically I didn't want to invest too many resources into an area I knew I'd be leaving yet still needed to mine resources.

 

[Boidster]

But it's not a replacement for full on mines. It's a pretty quick, and cheap, expansion to just skimming the top layer of cream off the ore deposits,

Got it. After posting and then re-reading, I had a suspicion that the "new to you" part was just the quick vertical spelunk for a few more blocks, not the fact that underground ore exists at all. I mean, you aren't a n00b around here. Maybe a n00b will happen upon this thread later and find it useful.

 

[canadianbluebeer]

only 40 block strip mine? Way, way too small.  I do strip mining, mountain reduction style diggery.



I don't like cave'ins on me, so just let it fall, dig out the clay and rocks and keep going.

I gotta remember to NOT dig out the roads tho, or if I do, put bridge in..  oops!

 

[FileMachete]

My bad writing strikes again @Boidster. I added an Edit to the op to hopefully clarify for future readers

Had a nice one to report using this. Hit a Coal node that went straight down, 38 blocks, to bedrock.

Wound up mining 10 holes, all were quite crammed w Coal (really helps that you can see deposits in the walls as you dig down). Used all the gas I had, ~6500?, and collected ~10,000+ coal. Started about 21:00 so was out w the runners, and had a couple decide to join me. The Nurse didn't do much damage, except to my eyes... when she landed on my head I looked up and well... she is -not- a healthy girl! :eek-new: The Spider was crazy~comical, he was trying to jump, I was trying to jump, I'm sure it would have been hysterical to anyone watching.

That one was an exception though. Most have seemed ok, yielding 3-6 ores before petering out a dozen blocks down. And some are just bad, hardly any nodes in the hole and same in the walls.

Next up I'm going to try doing this like 'test-holes' to establish the boundry for an iron mine. But I need more shale for gas first!

only 40 block strip mine? Way, way too small.  I do strip mining, mountain reduction style diggery.

Ha! Very likely , & if there's ever any kind of heavy equipment mod that works to strip mine like a Boss (and collect ore), I'll be all over it!

<mining w crazy contraptions is one of my favorite things in Space Engineers>

But I'm one of those that really doesn't like using the Auger, except vertically. Horizontal mining w Auger is frustrating for me w it's minimal range, always having to bump forward to keep it in contact w the next block... While drilling down is a nice no-brainer.

 

[canadianbluebeer]

Sideways does take some work.

Shovel to get all the gravel/sand on the main level (or the sides). It's a one hit with steel, so ....

Auger for main ores/rocks.  Drifting around the blocks being mined.

Controlled collapses for sides.

I've got some rather large open pit mines.  (I'll try and make a couple short clips tonight/this weekend)

 

[Boidster]

Wound up mining 10 holes, all were quite crammed w Coal

You know, this may be something I try as a sort of 80/20 solution to getting all the ore in a given field. Instead of digging out the pit and then following all the gravel, I'll start punching boreholes in a checkerboard pattern, digging down to rock and then nerd-poling back up to start another hole. I guess it would be more of a 50/50 solution, assuming roughly equal distribution of ore both horizontally and vertically.

It would be much faster to drill all those holes, though, so an entire "mine" could probably be harvested in a day. In fact now that I think about it, with the nerdpoles in place I could actually go back and drill the other half of the checkerboard and get nearly a 100% resource extraction with zero concern for losing ore to SI failures. Then I just reclaim the huge, deep volume of frames and move on to the next pristine forest area to defile.

 

[FileMachete]

Then I just reclaim the huge, deep volume of frames and move on to the next pristine forest area to defile.

heh indeed!  If you do decide to, or find a good place where you intend to mine a large, contiguous area, if you do 1 full 'row', then a 2nd row, you can run back n forth over the first row picking up the frames to use for the 3rd row.

I've done this on a limited scale and learned to leave a row to rest your back on, so you're not slipping off the cliff so to speak.

Downside is all the jumping, which does seem to burn food, but since augering straight down is a, 'just hold down the button' thing it seems a fair trade off

While I haven't tried this yet I've been considering packing a genie & 4 turrets to defend me if I go for a full on vertically bored large mine. Might be useful what with the heat likely to draw a screamer?

Which reminds me, I still need to figure out how to allow multiple Land Claim blocks. at least I've finally learned to put the LCs somewhere accessible, in case I place a new one somewhere (I used to put them in a major support column, doh).

 

[Boidster]

Which reminds me, I still need to figure out how to allow multiple Land Claim blocks.

If you're on Windows and assuming single-player, open RegEdit and change this key (make sure game is not running):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\The Fun Pimps\7 Days To Die\LandClaimCount_h3672927595

(I am unsure if that 'h3672927595' part changes from install to install; seems kinda of odd hanging off there...)

Nevermind I am unable to read the list of game prefs available in console. Better to listen to canadianbluebeer below.

 

[FileMachete]

(I am unsure if that 'h3672927595' part changes from install to install; seems kinda of odd hanging off there...)

Same number here. Thanks a bunch for this Boidster, I had a dim memory that someone had figured out how to change this but couldn't recall how!

and i'm not sure but is our newest member Maria writing in Haikus ??  (heh heh gotta love them "ai" bots right)

Edit: aww, Maria is gone... I was looking forward to the next Haiku!

 

[canadianbluebeer]

Multiple LCB?  before loading the game, dropdown the console and type:   sg landclaimcount 10     and it sets it to 10

It works if you do it before you start a new game,  and I think it will change it for current ones.

For servers, there is a setting in the serverconfig file for it.

 

[Boidster]

LOL, I'm blind. I did 'gg' before I typed that about the registry and just passed right over LandClaimCount in the list. I saw the other LandClaim prefs, but not that one.

Definitely the console command is the way to go. DUH.

 

[strask]

before loading the game, dropdown the console and type:   sg landclaimcount 10

I've been typing 'sg landclaimcount 99' just after dismissing my Noah note and noob quest when starting a new game, that works as well. So the "before loading the game" part isn't required. And the value seems to get saved in the save file, so you only ever have to do it once per game

(edit: pardon the messed up quote, attribution is canadianbluebeer, two posts up. )

 

[Boidster]

Noticed when I started a new 'full' iron mine that there was a vertical streak that went down about 5 blocks, all ore blocks.

So decided to try that in the wild.

I finally got some free-ranging time last night to try this out. It was excellent. One hole was 20 blocks deep, 19 of them ore blocks. Great way to get a quick load of ore when you're out traveling - 3-5x the amount you'd get from just the 4 or so surface blocks. On the way back up (nerdpoling) I probably could have gotten another 20-30 blocks just digging out the sides of the hole. I may give up pit mining entirely...

 

[eXSe]

I keep to traditions of old and just dig the node straight down through that one wide hole and then follow the ore around. It's messy as all hell

 

[FileMachete]

Nice @Boidster

And no idea why but I haven't dug the ore out of the sides... I think my brain is trained to just go straight up when I start nerd poling.. likely from the hundreds of foundation pillars I've dug in 7dtd. Started doing that way back in 14 or 15 when it clicked that building your base over an iron deposit really simplified mining through the night, but having an unsupported base over a huge pit wasn't a great idea, heh.

Definately need to add 'side mining' to this! Just need to curb my greed. Which is why I'd stopped 'chasing' ore 'the old fashioned way' @eXSe , kept burying myself... o_0

In case there's any interest I'm attaching a zip of a little modlet I made that will show Ore Blocks when you go into god mode and fly around underground.

***Not for daily use*** as it creates a ton of vertices and can hang the game if you run out of ram.

That said, while I've had no other issues running it; no corruption or other bad stuff, certainly would be safest to make a backup or use a copy of your map to investigate.

Cobbled this together in a17.1 so I just ran it on my current map, a NitroGen rwg one, and a18.4. Still works as 'well' as it used to.

Edit: it color codes the Ore blocks: white=nitrate, lightblue=lead, red=iron, darkgrey=coal, yellow=oilshale (not shown in pic)



View attachment FileMachete_MakeOreBlocksVisibleMineable.zip