Basic Mining Guide Part 3: Understanding The Nature of Ore Spawns

Every ore, and enmatter is found in only certain areas. No one really knows where the boundaries of these spawns exactly are located. However, there are some things we do know for sure.

You will only find a certain mix of deposits in a given area. And this mix changes from area to area. For instance, you can mine all you want on Treasure Island and you will not hit any Lanorium or Alferix. But you can go to Shinook and never hit any Cobalt. You also will not find any Lysterium on Treasure Island for that matter.

But let's look at the rarer stuff. Take land areas for example... Let's use Miners Heaven for my example, even though I am not affiliated with the owners, it is a wonderful place to mine and I don't mind putting in a good word for it, since I have globalled unamped lots of times, and have even hit a fair share of Kanerium and Redulite there.

I have only found Redulite on the very west end of the land area. Gazzurdite and Durulium are somewhat abundant too. I have not hit Redulite on the East end of the land area. As you head towards the middle and then the east, you start hitting mostly iron with some gazzurdite and durulium. But I never hit iron on the west end of the land area. And on the very east end, I tend to hit more durulium than anything else.

To put this into perspective, A large portion of the area may yield most of those ores. But there is one very small zone in all of that land maybe several hundred meters accross only, that is capable of producing Kanerium and Redulite.

I believe the scarcity of ores is controlled by how large the spawn areas are to some extent, because the smaller the spawn area is, the less likely you are to be directly over it when you are mining, and the less of it that will be produced.

So you will want to write down your coordinates of any rare finds. I think you will find that as you get more and more of these deposits, you will notice in a big search area, they will be mostly congregated in a somewhat small area.

You may have heard theory about veins, and from my experience, they do exist, but most people don't tend to follow them. See... I took the care to chart out where my hits on TI were one day. I mine north to south and south to north. Each pass I move over a hundred or two meters and go back. What I had noticed is, 80% of my claims lined up almost perfectly on a northwest south east axis. What was really interesting, was my globals lined up on these axis almost perfectly.  I do plan to do some runs and I will print out a map of where I mine, and mark down the approximate claim locations with pen, and then put this map of my run up on the blog so you can kind of see what I am talking about.

So I want to stress... LOCATION is VERY important... If your finder matches the average depth for Niksarium, you should be mining where Niksarium is found. If it matches for gazzurdite or durulium, you should go where those are found. There are areas where you are mostly going to hit rare ores if you hit anything at all, but these areas are not practical for most of us to go for.

So the lesson I wish to convey here is this:

1. Not every ore can be found in every location.
2. Pay attention to the specific areas you are finding something you want to find.
3. Watch for patterns and veins.
4. You might do well to track your claims... Make an Excel spreadsheet. If you don't have microsoft office, go to openoffice.org and install a free office suite. As my programming skills improve I hope to make a utility that you can load your spreadsheets and it will translate all the coordinates into spots on a map of the Entropia Universe. But tracking the areas where you are finding what will give you an idea of specific areas and relative concentrations of the ores so that way when you take up crafting for instance, or when prices skyrocket on one ore or another, you know where to go and can take full advantage of this.
5. Take rumors with a grain of salt. If testing theories, take notes, and don't risk peds you can't afford to lose.
6. Keep checking my blog for new information :-) And I am thinking about announcing a contest for my blog. I have some blueprints that aren't selling so I am going to find a unique way of giving them away. I will make this announcement once I've devised a way to do this. I have a 100QR BSM print and a 60 some QR MannMPH dlxe print. I will start planning something...

Good luck,,,

And in the words of Mr. Spock (sort of), "Live Long and Prospect" :-)