Did a search and all that I find are from old threads, so hoping for some help with using it.
Son and I were on Gyosha Ophin yesterday, getting some sand I needed and looking for coal. We both had new atlases and put a piece of coal we got from the planet. It was black all over except for a section that was mainly white with some yellow lines.
That was it, no little box to show where we could find the veins of coal. We were at level 20, ran into some lava and would just put some rocks on top so we could walk. In about three hours I found just 45 coal and 20 iron. My son had more coal but just around 10 iron. I’ve found more coal on Tana VII in less time.
So, what did we do wrong with the atlases?
Did you go to where the white hotspot was?
The atlas only gives you the general area, doesnt say anything about height…
Also some ores are distributed at different elevations. If you’re not getting much of what you came for and you’re still on the hotspot then try a different elevation 
Yes, we traveled to one of the white hotspots was and we found some, but not much.
I think we just have a lousy location, my son just randomly picked a spot to put down a outpost. I’ve suggested that we set up a outpost elsewhere and once we figure out how to use the atlas use it to pick a spot for a outpost.
We are a good distance from the city where the portal we us is, found a decent hill and a small overhang, put down a plot, made steps down to where it ended, another plot and then dug out our outpost.
Also, look at the resources tab in world’s (each world you’ve explored has it’s own tab). This shows the likelihood of the resources your looking for spawning/dropping. Not all world’s are equal for a particular resource. If you have enough points to get decent protection, I can take you to one of my guilds mines and you can get a lot more coal.
It sounds like you put in Coal but needed to put in Soft Coal. Coal is higher tier, Soft Coal is far more abundant.
A picture would help I think.
Did you had a region explored?
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When you say it was just lines, was it anything like this?
yeah honestly I think elevation is the issue here… what height were you mining at? did you try a wide range of elevation or mainly in one area? were you in a cave or did you dig into a mountain?
oh yeah, good point. but as Janna said, the spots were white meaning there should be tons of it. the devs said they balanced the atlas hotspot bitmap to be equal in appearance according to the quantity of the resource, but I could be misunderstanding that.
to be able to see that there were colours, I would assume they had at least one region uncovered 
plus since there were white areas instead of blue or green then theres not much reason to explore more if that’s what you’re looking for. dig away!
but yeah I would just try digging higher and lower. Gyoza Orphan might have a different distribution height for coal than other planets.
it’s good that atlases update instantly now so you should be able to tell if you’re making a dent in the numbers.
Yes, I suspect that it is an elevation issue. However, If they are mining with 1x1 tools and not using chisel mining, it can be hard to find what your after. I like chisel mining and am usually able to hone in on what I’m after quite well but it takes expirience. For instance, if I were after hard coal, I would find the max world that I had protection for, then find a long hotspot and chisel down to 16 or so. Then I would verify by half block chiseling down and branching that the lava is not above me (chisel tunnels are hard to quickly block up). Then I would orient myself along the hotspot and create a chisel tunnel (chisel through the middle of 4 blocks). This exposes 8 blocks and so is slightly better than the 6 blocks exposed with a hammer alone. I go all the way through the hotspot and if I don’t see any ore, coal,… for a while (maybe 8-10 blocks) then I chisel straight up in that vacant area. The material will be there, its just a matter of finding the elevation that it is hiding at…
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It is EXTREMELY useful to invest in control if this is the style of mining that you use. It is a lot cheaper than 3x3 God Hammer mining but NOTHING is as time efficient and using 3x3’s with there clearance and extra damage. They are ABSOLUTELY WORTH THE COST. In my opinion, resource gathering embedded materials is divided between before you use a God hammer and AFTER you use a God Hammer. They are totally different games.
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The first images fits what it was like. As for exploring, without a atlas we had been over part of the planet. With the atlas, we got them out when we were underground and had some coal we found, don’t remember if it was soft or medium. The planet is a coal planet so was hoping to find a nice amount.
It showed up as black until we put the coal in, then it went white and yellow.
Wish I could get my computer to take photos, going to have to do a search and see why I can’t do the prt screen, Microsoft did something that messes it up.
on my mac I changed the button for it but on my PC it’s still default which should be F12. I think it’s a steam thing rather than a windows thing. ( i suppose some people can do both)
Taking a break from playing Right now we are just using the regular heavy iron hammers. My son had made himself a gold hammer, but to me they wear out so fast I’d rather go with the iron. The better ones are too expensive to waste on a coal planet, if we were searching for gold or gems I’d go for one.
I don’t feel the rush that many here do, I’m content to advance slower and have the fun exploring some planets, even the lower level ones. Seeing other players builds, finding .little settlements/hamlets and seeing what they are selling.
But was frustrated at the lack of coal. Went to another planet, level 1 and got around 60 coal in one hour and stupidly sent my girl to the sanctum when hubby was needing help putting up a ceiling fan. I had a good size iron vein.
I was nice and helped him put it up, but goofed and lost that nice vein of iron. Oh well.
If you knew what was involved with the fan you would understand why it was nice that I helped him; he was in the dog house over it. I got tired of him suffering from cranial inversion.
On the planet, I think we need to try a different area.
Aside- steam default screenshot is F12,
Windows key bind should be ctrl+PrntScr - this will copy to clipboard and should allow you to paste in paint or similar.
For coal planets I’ve found that running through any cave systems you can find usually pay more coal per effort than deep mining. Even pretty high caves arent bad.
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This a good tip.
Also theres alot of mountains where you can just spot materials on the sides. Which might be easier for newer players.
That is what I do when out by myself on level 1 and 2 planets. Don’t do level 3 alone. Die to often to make it worthwhile. I can get enough on them to get what I needed I had just hoped to get a nice huge amount. My son is playing Fallout76 right now, so will be stuck on that for a while.
Look for coal or even copper, copper can sometimes lead to coal and coal can lead to iron. Behind gravel and sand you can find coal and or iron. Sand makes glass.