Gold

General
1

What the kitten.

98 hours on Boundless. Not a single gold ore. Strip mining? Yes, done that from elevations 10-150.

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2

Unlike typical mining in minecraft, think of gold like minecraft’s emeralds. It spawns with the most frequency in glacial mountain biomes and sometimes in desert mountain biomes. It is exceptionally rare in other biomes.

  1. Move your mining operations to a glacial mountain biome.
  2. Locate a region dense with other resources such as coal or copper in that biome.
  3. Follow every vein of resources as far as possible. Gold often connects or interweave with other minerals.

Strip mining is ineffective unless done in the proper biome.

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3

Good suggestions; I thank you for taking this time in responding and after such a vast amount of time spent searching for the illusive gold (that I am told is in this game) I recently (along with 3 of my friends) stripped a glacial topped mountain from this game which was underneath someone’s house. And by stripped, I mean… his house is floating about 50 blocks above the ground. That was one of three ice/glacier covered mountains at the altitude ranging from 80-150, that we’ve deleted and have yet to find a single gold.

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4

Oof, that’s some tough luck! Have you considered trading for some gold? Compact coal is always in high demand, as is iron and components, maybe somebody on your planet can make you a trade? You must have a decent purse of coin by now with all of the mining.

5

Very much, but I’ve yet to come across anybody active or have anything more than a crafting station, or workbench, in their wide-open base. Or even a trading spot. If you know of anyone with gold to spare, on the beginner world, I’ll be happy to travel to the ends of it for a trade.

6

Which world might that be, by the way? There are a handful of beginning worlds based on geographic location.

7

My friends and I are on the world; Solum.

1 Like
8

Haven’t heard great reports of gold on solum, but it should be in big jagged mountains that have lots of coal/copper/iron on the outside as said above.

I’ve found it in altitudes from 90 to 150, have also found titanium on the starter worlds.

There are several on this forum (myself included) that are willing to warp players to other planets for the cost of coins, just put your coords up and we’ll agree a time or PM me

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9

Gold is most likely to be found at least 30 blocks under deserts and at least 15 blocks away from cave surfaces.

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10

So not ice mountains? That’s where I’ve had my luck

11

most likely

12

Haha okay, and am I right in thinking mountains have the best luck because the calculations mean the 30 blocks below the surface is high up in the air?

13

Kinda - from digging around the game files, it looks like resources bias towards different surface block types, altitudes, and other variables, but there’s some randomness involved too.

For example, given the settings for gold (in that linked file, and pasted below), and @james’ helpful hint, here’s how I interpret it:

  • Gold is most likely to spawn under surface sand - (surfaceFavourite)
    • It also has a chance to spawn under surface dirt - (surfaceSecondFavourite)
  • It prefers spawning…
    • …30+ blocks under the surface (blocksAboveMin?)
    • …15+ blocks away from caves (distanceMin?)
    • …at an altitude of 100+ (altitudeBestLower)

So you’re looking for desert mountains that reach up to an altitude of 130+, and you want to start digging into them at around 100+, I think

Here’s the gold specific settings from that file. The servers might have different values, so take it with a grain of salt:

"METAL_GOLD_SEAM": {
    "shape": "VEIN",
    "sizeMin": 5,
    "sizeMax": 15,
    "altitudeMax": 255,
    "altitudeMin": 0,
    "altitudeBestLower": 100,
    "altitudeBestUpper": 255,
    "blocksAboveMax": 200,
    "blocksAboveMin": 30,
    "blocksAboveBestLower": 50,
    "blocksAboveBestUpper": 130,
    "distanceMax": 200,
    "distanceMin": 15,
    "distanceBestLower": 25,
    "distanceBestUpper": 130,
    "surfaceFavourite": "SAND",
    "surfaceSecondFavourite": "DIRT",
    "liquidFavourite": "WATER",
    "liquidSecondFavourite": "WATER",
    "caveWeighting": 1,
    "threeDWeighting": 1,
    "liquidAboveMax": 64,
    "liquidAboveMin": 0,
    "liquidAboveBestLower": 0,
    "liquidAboveBestUpper": 64
},
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14

Aha, that explains a lot - my snowy mountains have a large amount of sand in them :smiley:

15

I think it only spawns (or prefers to) if that sand actually breaks the surface, though

16

I’m beginning to think these files should not be accessible to the client with people like @nevir sniffing through the files. :smile: Might be another avenue for people to exploit. This is coming, however, from a person who doesn’t know how feasible exploitation and implementing a limitation of access would be. :slight_smile:

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17

It’s already covered - client side configs are only to speed things up on the local machine. The servers still have to validate and parse that code on that side as well.

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18

Like Havok40k said it does seem to connect with other resources and spawn a lot more in the colder areas. I had found 26 gold ore in one spot while mining for copper and iron. Also had found titanium in that same area. It was on Solum

19

I understand your point though I was pertaining more on the “understanding” game logic/design rather than modifying it. For this instance, he has an edge on other players where to look for gold seam no matter how trivial that info would be.

20

If we couldn’t get it this way, players would eventually build a stat base and work it out anyway :slight_smile: doesn’t really matter