PC Where has all the Nitrate gone?

markisit

New member
There used to be Nitrate piles on the surface in A16, but in A17 none. With the way that radiated Zombies show up earlier, it would be nice to be able to make enough Gunpowder to keep the ammo supplies up. I have had Feral, and Radiated Zombies in every poi since day 29. With the lack of nitrate it will become pointless to go into pois, because of the need for the ammo on horde nights. Even the Traders carry very little, plus very little gunpowder, if any at all.

 
Surface ores are no longer a thing in A17. My bad, I was about to fall asleep when I posted, lol.

 
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Surface deposits are gone but deposits usually exist below where resource boulders spawn on the surface. Go to the biome for nitrate and find a cluster of boulders and then start digging down through gravel deposits. The player journal specifies which biome is best for nitrate and also mentions the tip about digging below clusters of resource boulders.

 
Surface deposits are gone but deposits usually exist below where resource boulders spawn on the surface. Go to the biome for nitrate and find a cluster of boulders and then start digging down through gravel deposits. The player journal specifies which biome is best for nitrate and also mentions the tip about digging below clusters of resource boulders.
I've tried this, but it did not work for me. I went to the snow biome, located a large group of those boulders and started digging down in the middle between them. I dug down and around, but all I found was iron (and stone of course).

So I went to a different boulder group and tried again (larger groups, not just a couple rocks). I repeated that for an entire ingame day, but all I ever found was iron.

With 1500+ rounds per horde night and every POI glowing green, there has to be a better way to produce gunpowder in a reasonable amount of time?

Otherwise the gameplay degrades to "make ammo, defend horde night, make more ammo, defend the next hord night" and so on. Which is a shame when there are so many interesting POIs out there to loot and no time because far too much time has to be spent on ammo management.

 
Under the layer of iron should be the deposit you are looking for. The gravel on the surface tells you what to find in the depth. The best depth for deposits is between +25 and +30.
There is no "layer" of iron. The entire ground is laced with iron, from the top right down to bedrock. I dug down to bedrock and back up again, and there is no trace of anything else but iron.

I have to assume this is a bug.. a game-stopping one.

To the developers: if you fix this (and I hope you will), PLEASE also remove this entire stamina thing from the game while you're at it. It is only annoying and adds no value whatsoever. Other games don't have that either and no one has ever missed it.

 
So far in my experience I dig out the little patches of gravel on the surface around the boulders. They give sand, stone and a bit or iron or whatever resource MAY be down there. I just keep digging those patches until they give me some nitrate or whatever else I"m looking for then dig down,

Sometimes I get punked and it only has a few deposits of minerals but most of the time I hit a large pocket.

Been very consistent for me.

 
From my recent checks on gravel patches, it is extremely rare to find nitrate and coal. Iron is quite dominant, with lead showing up occasionally.

If you really do find nitrate, i am pretty sure you will find it underground, but its occurence surely is pretty low.

 
Surface deposits are still in the distributed prefab files. You can copy paste the lines for them from 16.4's biome.xml to A17's biome.xml and they will work just fine. I've done this myself already.

 
From my recent checks on gravel patches, it is extremely rare to find nitrate and coal. Iron is quite dominant, with lead showing up occasionally.
If you really do find nitrate, i am pretty sure you will find it underground, but its occurence surely is pretty low.
I suppose it really depends on the map and how much time you consider reasonible. In a real life half-hour I found 5 good nitrate mines running around digging the patches.

Coal on the other hand was rather elusive but at the end of the half hour I scored paydirt.

30 minutes of game time searching Snow, Burnt Wasteland Biomes.

5 Nitrate Mines

8 Lead mines (lead in snow? crazy right)

2 Coal Mines

 
I have tried digging under the boulders in the wasteland, and snow biome with no luck. Finding plenty of iron, but no nitrate yet. I am playing in a random gen world. Maybe it is better in Navezgane, but in RGW I think it might need some work. The seed that someone is using could also be effecting the chances of finding certain resources. My seed has very little Wasteland, it is in small spatters in the Desert. Used to be able to find it in the burnt biome, don't know if this is still true.

 
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Unfortunately, it isn't any better in Navezgane than in random.

I've driven all over the snow biome now, digging the gravel around boulders over and over again. I found iron all over the place, as well as the occasional lead, but no trace of nitrate in the entire biome. In random I might understand this, but in the standard map this is a joke.

Now the next horde night is coming up and I have zero ammo and zero nitrate, so I guess my only way of surviving the next night is to wait it out on a lake or to drive around in circles. Is that really how it is supposed to be in A17 now?

Is it just me or is this game developing backwards?

 
Before you have a auger just harvest surface boulders

As soon as yopu have a auger make mines

Nitrat = snow biome

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Surface deposits are gone but deposits usually exist below where resource boulders spawn on the surface. Go to the biome for nitrate and find a cluster of boulders and then start digging down through gravel deposits. The player journal specifies which biome is best for nitrate and also mentions the tip about digging below clusters of resource boulders.
I went around the Snow biome yesterday for a full game day, and did nothing but dig by the boulder clusters, 90% had iron under them, the others were lead. Also went into the Wasteland, and dug around with an auger, still no nitrate. Don't know what the variable for nitrate is in the game now, but it needs a little boost. Maybe even put some back on the surface. The amount you get from boulders is not very much either.

 
I went around the Snow biome yesterday for a full game day, and did nothing but dig by the boulder clusters, 90% had iron under them, the others were lead. Also went into the Wasteland, and dug around with an auger, still no nitrate. Don't know what the variable for nitrate is in the game now, but it needs a little boost. Maybe even put some back on the surface. The amount you get from boulders is not very much either.
I did the same, with pretty much the same result. Tried the snow biome, the wasteland and the burned forest. The only nitrate I ever found was 5-6 units in the burned forest in top soil.

Other than that I found some coal in the burned forest, and plenty of iron everywhere I go.

So it´s not just my game being broken or something, because if two players have exactly the same experience in independent games, then it is either a feature or a bug.

One way or the other, nitrate seems to be extremely rare in the game now, to say the least. Which makes it impossible to craft larger amounts of ammo.

That makes me wonder how other players deal with that? How do you defend on horde night if you can't make ammo?

 
I have finally found nitrate, by doing something I wanted to avoid: cheating. But there seems to be no other way.

So, here is my almost-legit guide to finding nitrate (or any other resource). Hopefully it can help people who have the same problems I had.

1. open the file blocks.xml (make a copy of the original first) and find the comment line saying "ore block visualisation. Uncomment this section to make ore visible".

Do what it says: uncomment the entire section. This is key because it will show you where the ore is when flying underground.

(In case you're not familiar with editing XML: add "-->" to the end of the first line of the block to make it look like this:

"<!-- ore block visualisation start. uncooment this section to make underground ore visible. -->"

Then add "<!--" to the beginning of the last line of the block to make it look like this:

"<!-- ore block visualisation end -->"

This way, only those two lines remain comments and the lines in-between are now active. Or, you could simply delete both lines..)

2. start the game, open the console with F1 and enter "debugmenu on". This will give you an additional menu in the pause screen.

3. in the debug menu, check "fly mode" and "no collision". This will allow you to fly both above and below the surface. You ascend with the <space> key and descend with the key for crouch (not toggle crouch! usually <C>).

4. fly around and descend below the surface level. Because of the blocks.xml edit, you will see the ore blocks. Fly around until you find the ore you're looking for, and put a marker on the map for later reference.

5. exit the game, and copy the original version of the blocks.xml back in order to hide the underground ore again. This is necessary because as long as it is visible, mining is messed up for some reason (in my case, hitting nitrate yields glass).

I find it helpful to keep two copies of the original and edited version of the file, so I can quickly change it back and forth.

6. enter the game again, go to your marked spot, get out the auger, and mine away.

This way, I found a large deposit of nitrate in a few seconds. It was NOT in the snow biome, and it was NOT near any boulders either. Instead it was in the forest south of the farm. I mined 5000+ nitrate in no time and haven't even mined half of it yet.

I could also confirm that there are even larger deposits in the snow biome, but they are few and far between. Finding them without taking a look underground is pretty much like playing the lottery.

So, thanks to the devs for leaving the debug tools accessible! They saved my game. It's cheating but still better than quitting the game.

 
Here is how I find, everytime, sometimes it takes longer than others. I have posted this many times, streamed it many times to show it works as well.

Go to the edge of the Snow Biome, dig straight down towards bedrock. When at bedrock, mine towards the center of the biome. I have literally found Nitrate every time doing this, and all other ores (aside from iron, but that is abundant more towards the surface).

 
Go to the edge of the Snow Biome, dig straight down towards bedrock. When at bedrock, mine towards the center of the biome. I have literally found Nitrate every time doing this, and all other ores (aside from iron, but that is abundant more towards the surface).
Seeing how few nitrate deposits I could find underground, this still sounds like a lottery game to me. Makes me wonder.. is the distribution/location of ore deposits generated randomly at each new game start (I mean the standard game, not random worlds) or is it always the same?

 
Seeing how few nitrate deposits I could find underground, this still sounds like a lottery game to me. Makes me wonder.. is the distribution/location of ore deposits generated randomly at each new game start (I mean the standard game, not random worlds) or is it always the same?
I wonder if a dev could confirm that? Also, to clarify, mine attempts are in RWG. I haven't played Navezgane since 17.0e.

 
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