I understand I will need gold to build a tool that will allow me to warp between planets/worlds. The problem is I can’t really find it anywhere on Solum, which is my home world. I’ve been digging into icy mountains, going down through caves in jungles, and mining desert rocks like a madman, and all that I’ve found is a ton of copper, iron, coal and a small chunk of silver. But no gold anywhere.
Any suggestions on how and where to find it?
Desert mountains are where I have had the most success. Just following veins of coal/coppertunists eventually leads to small deposits of gold.
For what it’s worth: I have spent 60+ hours mining on Solum, have reached L35 Adept Miner, and I have found EXACTLY ONE unit of gold ore. I read in another thread that the devs feel that gold distribution is working as expected, but that doesn’t mean it’s working for players. I have read the prevailing theories about gold at a certain height (range), or in a certain biome (which I cannot seem to find), or following veins of other ores/resources, or in certain mountains with snow on top, etc., but as I said: 60+ hours later boring straight through and up and down into a number of mountains, I have only found a grand total of one unit of gold ore. That in combination with other users who are decrying a lack of gold on Solum leads me to believe that gold distribution is not working the way the devs think it is. Either we need a detection tool or gold needs to be spawned just a tad more than it is now. At the very least, make sure that any spawn of gold is at least five units (or whatever is needed to start building warp conduits) in size.
While I appreciate the idea that resources on one world are intended to be rare on another, and I even like the idea, lack of gold prevents me from visiting other planets. For all the beacons I’ve passed (and I’ve passed a large number of them) and homes/crafting bases partially set up, I’ve seen only one plinth which was empty (had nothing to sell). Granted I have not explored the entire planet either, but without fast ways to travel/warp back home, long distance travel is hard to accomplish with any real frequency or distance covered. No one wants to walk back home for over an hour on a regular basis. That completely ruins the idea of being able to log in, accomplish something in 30 minutes or less, then log back out again. Yes, multi-hour play is fun and enjoyable and even desirable, but not always achievable. I should be able to spend 30 minutes spelunking the caves near my home or mining the mountains and find what I need (even in very small quantities).
Sorry for the rambling stream of consciousness.
I started on Solum and had success finding about 25 gold ore in glacial/ice mountain areas. There was a post somewhere that said gold usually spawns most common in sand areas but not sure what depth it does.
Also, imagine that you probably won’t find gold in the middle of nowhere. In my experience the rarer stuff spawns not far from a beacon or two if you’re in the right biome
So far, no gold, but I do see the new textures they are using for the coal, copper, and iron ores. Can’t wait to see Silver. As for gold, still nothing. I haven’t found any desert biomes yet (at least that I can tell). I live in a snow/ice biome surrounded by forest/green biomes, and have traveled for 45 minutes in three out of four directions and have only come across more ice and more forest/green areas. What would I see in a “desert” biome? Maybe I’m not recognizing them.
Regardless, wherever I dig, I do not find gold. Yet. I’ll keep looking.
Most people have referred to gold as being at/around 130 to 150. I was presuming that was + as in up high in the mountains near the tops. Should I instead be looking at -130 to -150 down below (digging down)? I have made it to the lava floes inside several mountains and have walked across them (putting down cobblestone as a path). Haven’t tried digging down below that level yet. Is that where I need to be looking?
I completely feel your pain Solannis. I have mined for about 50 hours and have only found gold once. With the frequency that posts show up on the forums regarding gold issues, you would think the devs would look into the issue a little further.
Even following all the advice on the forums about biomes, locations, coordinates, etc., I still find gold to be an extremely and unpleasant roadblock in this game. There was good discussion on this topic that had a title in regards to the ancient tech components. James, a dev, even commented on the resource spawning and what possible options there may be.
Either way, in its current state, finding gold is nothing short of pure frustration and hours of time lost with no gain. For me, it is the one thing that is giving me negative thoughts about the game.
The starter worlds’ biomes are more or less set by latitude on the world - so if you head due north, or due south, you should eventually hit deserts. (general progression will be ice → forest → desert → forest → ice)
We have found plenty of gold by strip mining mountains. Seems like in our case at level 110 has been the sweet spot. It does seem that gold is typically surrounded by other minerals, especially Coal, not soft coal. If you find gold make sure to mine all around it because that is typically how we have found titanium too, they seem to be together.
We cut through the mountain from one end to the other in a straight line.
Then we go back through and on each side of the initial line we go perpendicular every two blocks on each side. This ensures that no block is missed on that level. Follow the veins of ore as they appear up or down as you go.
This method has also resulted in a considerable amount of Tech Components too.
It does appear that trying to find gold by exploring caves is not ideal, and from what we can tell there is no specific rules as to what level gold / titanium spawns on.
Just wanna add this here, im playing on therka but i suppose the starting planets on each server are the same so…
i’ve read all the suggestions where to find gold and finally mining trough icy mountain on height 100 worked for me, found an ore vein of 13 ores of gold, along with silber and medium coal, so i guess you are should try the icy mountain for a longer time x3
Just buy the gold you need to warp, then farm for it. It’s really hard to find on starter planet but not impossible. i can sell some to you if you want to get you started. i advise to look in high ground caves in mountains, digging senseless is too long, by strolling in cave you are eventually going to find uncovered seams.
i don’t think it should be that easy to find gold or else nobody will buy it. Anyway, i’ve played about 20 hours on Solum and got the gold i needed to warp. @Solannis talking about 30 min, god you are really not the patient type, try to find gold in real life, it’s gonna take you a lifetime.
Yeah first of all i found myself not only the warp upgrade to buy (gold not actually) and some location markers but i found actually a really effective way to find gold.
This is seriously my final resolution to this, there have been many ideas arround it:
-look into caves
-strip mine mountains
-desert mountains
-icy mountains
-just more on other planets
But what i found was a little conversation between wichall and the dev james and nevir from january
check it out here Gold.
So the best way to find gold is indeed go into the deserts, look for a mountain or rather a plateau which is at a height of 130 or higher, the higher the better actually, than dig 30 blocks deep inside of it and strip mine it to all directions, only going deeper while staying above height 100 but at least 30 blocks under the surface and actually stay at least 15 blocks away from caves. I can’t tell if this is really necessary but i never found any gold in caves surfaces so i would assume it’s actually not a good idea to look into caves. I found gold pretty fast and in decent amounts that way and it works mostly everytime. Sure sometimes it takes very long and i leave that mountain without gold but next time i might as well find 2 veins and besides from that i found a lot of silver and a lot of medium coal which is very nice too.
There you have it folks, i dont know about other planets yet but thats definitely the way to go on starter planets ;D and i think a lot of players especially new ones don’t know about that.
And if i gave away the secret art of finding gold to the masses than call me a revolutionary, or a freedom fighter, or a liberator, or just someone who wan’t everyone to have equal chances to find gold xD. It still needs a lot of time, patience and a good portion of luck to find decent amounts to build your golden hut :D.
I’m on therka. I found info shared in forums that I should go to desert biome and try the big steep mountains. I did and by following other ores on height 80 to 130 I found 12 gold for 3-4 hours of digging. I was happy.
You need to know the spots i discribed just have the highest chance to spawn gold (“it’s more likely” they said) so i guess technically you can find gold everywhere beneath the surface with enough luck, but if you plan to find certain amounts of gold than you should go with what i discribed 
I think it’s like with placing beacon too soon. Looks like a lot of starting players get themselves into digging for hours before asking for advice or simply before exploring planet and finding spots where you can see ores on surface. Same way some place beacon and start building and storing resources before they find good spot and then they have to move a lot of things.
Far from the best strategy if you ask me. Desert biome don’t mean anything, they just said that spawn rate is better under sand, but reality check, there is sand everywhere in every biome.
Strip mining take way too much time. I told the best way in my answer a little bit higher. I can make 300 silver,100 gold, 25 titanium, tons of med coal and good amount of hard coal in no more than 5 hours.
If you want to continue strip mining, it’s your choice, but i don’t think that saying out loud that it’s the best way of doing it is representative.
If you want the truth, play lots of hours exploring and when you find a planet and area with crazy spawning rate, save the coords and go back there to mine. Still, the best way time wise is still to stroll in high caves.
Well i said that i don’t know about other planets for a reason, but if this amount of ressources you mentioned are actually true than it would somewhat disappoint me, so long finding gold and silver really gave me a smile but this way it would already seem to lose its value.
Since you need to keep in mind one thing. The value of a ressource not only comes from how rare it is but for what you need it as well. Compared to what i need gold yet (except building a golden fortress) this already seems to be too much. But maybe you are just an extreme example, and finding highground caves isn’t that easy, i would say on Therka there aren’t even some,
But believe it or not strip mining a mountain the way i do right now, for me, is more entertaining than running aimless through a cave. Since their is a little system behind it and i know for certain i can clear that area out and know there is no gold left. But running through the cave i could easily get lost, probaly missing a lot of it and don’t know how much might inside the walls too.
So for therka i keep to my strategy, on other planets i will see…
because my strategy isn’t so bad actually since you can mine a lot of copper iron and coal in general this way and might as well stumble over good amounts of silver and gold too. I mean when i mine at all i mine this way and so i always have a good chance to find gold so i guess thats a good thing
EDIT: Oh and good that you mentioned marking a location with “crazy spawning rate” and going back to this all the time. If you ask me thats a major problem. I know its a game but even for that this seems somewhat unrealistic, it kinda destrory the purpose of making a certain ressource rare at all. Just find that one magic spot and visit it over and over again and you get rich with relative low effort. I don’t like that. I have some ideas about that but im going to make a topic about that once i explored the game a bit more
I always run around the lava caves under the back of the Therka Market (it’s grassy, bit of ice back there, not desert but there’s sand and gravel with the stone making up the cave ledges)
I’ve found 2 patches of regularly spawning gold and a titanium spawn which is in the area more often then not but hard to see. They seem to spawn within 20 blocks height of the lava.
I think it’s probably much better than digging away half a mountain from the top down.
While it holds true that when you branch mine you get a hold of more resources, it requires more time investment. Question is how much time you want to invest into getting gold, your way guarantees to hit the gold and collect resources along the way, but with a huge time usage, dooms way, might not get him as much of other resources, and he can “lose” some gold in that cave, but it’s far more efficient, he only doesn’t gather as much. At the end of the day, it’s a question of what you want to do, branch mining or search for mining heaven
If my way is one of the better or not, im glad at least that i could trigger the more experienced players to give their advise and i appreciate it. I guess people can read this and decide for themselfs which way they go now :D.
But seriously coming from minecraft looking arround lava caves was my first guess too and i tried that a long time but i didnt find a single gold ore and titanium i have yet to find at all xD.
Could it be that each player sees some ressources that others don’t see OO , is this a hidden aspect we all don’t know about? who can say that he has found the same ressources together with someone else xD?.