Can't find a ravine

[MisterFister]

Anyone following my previous posts would likely be happy to know that I overcame my food crisis. I managed to bag a chicken and even a trio of cows, but while caving I forgot to dirt-barricade my cow paddock and now only have one cow. I've considered going out for another one for future reference and possibly a pair of sheep on the same basis, but my food supply right now is right where it needs to be in order to move forward. As for the water-source issue, I now know what I need to do to solve it, I'm just not in a position to execute yet.

Anyway, I've actually made the windmill, and my stockpile of unground hemp is piling up, which is a good thing. In my initial stairway down from my base, I managed to hid a mid-strata lava pool (there's my obsidian) but I can't break into the deep strata yet and I cannot for the life of me figure out where else to go for redstone or diamonds. I've trekked out a decent radius all around on the surface, but on stone tools, the grind is painful. (Yes, I know that's the point.) Without at least one gearbox (preferably several, of course) that windmill is useless to me.

My problem is that this is plain becoming less fun for the time being. Even a small deposit of redstone will be welcome, as I simply want to be able to make a map, a switch or two for my windmill, and once I open a portal I'll grab some netherrack and quartz for a cauldron and maybe even a clock because those would be nice, but my actual primary need right now is a crucible -- I've been very fortunate on zombies dropping some iron tools, as well as what I've exhumed from the cave exploring I have already accomplished, but my base building is taking ages without at least iron tools.

I'm open to both types of suggestions, legit in-game suggestions or the cheaty-kind. I know there's one technique of tunneling at the bottom of soft-strata and just listening for caves, how do you determine a direction to go? How far would I go? Finding a village is way off in my future for the moment, but I know there's a cheaty utility for finding villages, can it be used to find ravines or lava-level cave systems?

[Ancilangeli]

Cheaty wise: x-ray machine.
Proper: i found my first bits of redstone in an abandoned jungle temple, there are also free pistons and dispensers in there. You need the gold for a clock to use the crucible anyway (i think). and (it seems to me) ravines are more common in swamps and usually connect to multiple cave systems and mine shafts.
I actually didn't find much gold in the over world, i think we're meant to make nether pig farms (the mod tends to lean in the direction of mob farms, though last i knew witch farms were fixed to not make mining and other farms obsolete).

Edit: also on the proper front... If you make the more expensive wind mill you don't need a gear box to power the mill stone.

Hope something here ( other than the first) helps

[Gilberreke]

I've trekked out a decent radius all around on the surface, but on stone tools, the grind is painful. (Yes, I know that's the point.)

It's not the point. Why the hell are you using stone tools? You use stone tools to get your first iron pick, then never ever again. Iron is so plentiful, it's everywhere, make use of it.

[MisterFister]

I've trekked out a decent radius all around on the surface, but on stone tools, the grind is painful. (Yes, I know that's the point.)

It's not the point. Why the hell are you using stone tools? You use stone tools to get your first iron pick, then never ever again. Iron is so plentiful, it's everywhere, make use of it.

I apologize, as I was unclear.

I have been using iron tools. I have more than 1.5 chests full of used tools that need to be melted down in a crucible. In pickaxes alone, I estimate that I've gone through at least 200 ingots of iron. This doesn't count the tools that I've grabbed from overworld zombie drops, a set of shears that I went through, two hoes, and an iron sword that I made and used like an idiot. Of course, I've made a full set of iron armor, an unused iron sword, an unused iron shovel, and an unused iron pick, all set aside for my first forays into the nether, which I anticipate needing.

Yes, iron is abundant. I'm running out anyway. I apologize.

[abculatter_2]

Using up THAT much iron without finding a single entrance to the deepest strata seems very unusual to me... have you been exploring caves in their entirety? Or have you not gone into the deeper sections?

Personally, if I haven't found a cave that goes into the deepest strata and have the iron to spare, I just go to the very bottom of the middle strata and just start mining in a straight line until I hear cave sounds. Digging out any dirt and gravel deposits along the way helps, too. The goal is to find a cave or mine shaft that extends down to diamond/redstone level. You'll also get plenty of cobblestone, which will be useful for exploring and colonizing the nether.

[MisterFister]

Using up THAT much iron without finding a single entrance to the deepest strata seems very unusual to me... have you been exploring caves in their entirety? Or have you not gone into the deeper sections?

Yes, I've explored caves in their entirety. The first I did was the initial stairwell from my starter base -- I always do that, since I initially need the cobble for starter tools anyway. That stairwell is usually only hampered by my initial lack of coal -- the first one or two surface-accessible seams of coal tends to get me deep enough to the first one or two shovel-pockets (dirt / gravel) especially if I stretch my torching prolly a little thinner than it should. Once I finish shoveling out the first few chambers, I have enough dirt to start compartmentalizing and de-torching areas as necessary until I have the coal to re-torch properly. (Which I look forward too because the mob-sounds can get pretty loud, especially in a swamp with all the slimes above and below ground, and especially since by shoveling out the chambers I initially end up creating *new* spawn locations for mobs.) As I said above, luck had it that I stumbled upon a mid-strata lava pool, which prompted me to invest in my first bucket, mostly for safety reasons obviously. That stairwell ended at the transition line to the bottom strata, as I was unable to dig further. At that point, iron was still in short supply, and my pick was about 40% remaining, so instead of digging laterally from there at the time I returned to the surface and found three other cave-mouths near my base. Each one took approximately 10-15 stone shovels to clear out, and yielded a net-profit of 1.5-2 stacks of new torches, all the while leaving rooms probably-a-bit-too-dim, and I used my excess dirt to compartmentalize for safety. I have done this for a total of four cave systems, including the first one from my stairwell (which I managed to pave with gravel and gravel slabs derived from said caving.) Notably, I got a whopping seventeen ingots and change of iron from just the third of the four caves I cleared. That, I initially stockpiled, but at that point my hoe was ready for recycling, and for good measure that's also when I chose to make two more picks -- one went untouched into storage marked for use in the nether, and the other one was made ready for when the first one was done. The most common iron-drop from zombies is shovels (though I did get a triple-enchanted sword that had no uses left on it :( and a halfway decent chestplate, which I wear when exploring far afield on the surface.)

I've developed something of an OCD-level terraforming habit, and for stone tool usage, I've divided my terraforming plots into cobble-rich and shovel-favored sections, mostly on the surface but not exclusively. I've managed to build up a chicken flock large enough that two or three rounds of feeding will net me almost an entire half-chest of eggs, which is enough to keep a bank of dedicated food-furnaces going pretty much constantly. In fact, I've scaled back on cooking because I think at one point I had 3 stacks of scrambled eggs (used for surface exploring, when inventory space is as a premium) and almost the rest of a half-chest of cooked fried eggs, which is what I eat when puttering around the base -- which is enough to jump and run with impunity, at least while terraforming around the base.

My progress comes in fits, due to the slow progress, and that most of the surface terraforming necessarily involves de-torching sections, which means I can't work there safely at night (I leave the armor in my storage for the most part, not only due to calorie usage but because I'm a lot more careful around the base and I wanna conserve it.) Generally, making a full-inventory-load of stone tools (I go back and forth between shovel-focus and pick-focus, just for the convenience of inventory-slot management) takes me about 2 day-cycles to use and break for shovels, and a little bit longer than a day-cycle for picks, before forcing me to go back and swap out materials for new tools. I have a wood farm large enough that it takes more than a full day cycle to chop them all down with stone axes and re-plant, and with each tree cycle, I get further ahead in my stored wood supplies (I haven't found any spruce yet, and I'll be sure to grab a few saplings when I see them, but with ample amounts of birch for the furnaces, jungle for chopping into sawdust and shafts for tools, it hasn't been a priority.) I had one furnace devoted exclusively to baking glass blocks, which I now have about 12 stacks of, after having used about 5 stacks to create my subaquatic greenhouse, so I've lowered my priority on digging and baking sand. I have about three chests of packed earth stacks, about two chests of cobble, more than a full chest of gravel, and at least 5 or 6 stacks of all three species of logs on hand.

With all of this happening -- as to your question, if I haven't delved into deep strata. The answer is that I have not, but not for lack of wanting to or willingness to. I simply haven't found any access. One dirt-chamber went about 3 blocks deep into that level, whereupon I did grab three nuggets of gold and two blocks of lapis, which was nice, but no redstone, no diamonds, no emeralds, and no exit except from whence I'd already came by shovel. I even went BACK into my previously-explored caves JUST to reevaluate torch light levels and to make sure I didn't miss anything, all to no avail (though somehow I did miss a single block of coal...)

Personally, if I haven't found a cave that goes into the deepest strata and have the iron to spare, I just go to the very bottom of the middle strata and just start mining in a straight line until I hear cave sounds. Digging out any dirt and gravel deposits along the way helps, too. The goal is to find a cave or mine shaft that extends down to diamond/redstone level. You'll also get plenty of cobblestone, which will be useful for exploring and colonizing the nether.

I've done that, to the tune of at least two dozen iron pickaxes. Broke into a few chambers, of course, which I fear I'm starting to lose track of due to how far afield they were -- I'm taking a break from systematically checking them all, going so far as to leave wood signs to myself to mark exact time and realworld date of the gaming session where I went through and checked it. Of the systems I've run into from that horizontal-tunneling method, I've located five breakthrough locations, though I suspect that three of them are interconnected somehow (meaning three systems total, if I'm correct on that.) All of them generally go *up*, though I'm in the process of checking. Given my iron shortage, I've resorted to actually stone-picking the mid-strata blocks where necessary in order to fit through to adjacent chambers, which is time consuming and foregoes the cobble, but I'm ok on cobble as I noted above. My issue at this point is the grind of doing so, and which I also look forward to nethering with, but at this point I'm going through about four stacks of cobble per cave system.

Those accidental-xray-moments, where chunk load errors cause you to be able to see caves and lava pits you haven't discovered yet, tells me that the chambers exist, but until I've begun some strip-mining in earnest to REALLY start torching up and branching out, that info, even if it's "accidentally cheating" doesn't really tell me much about how to go about finding it, not only because of depth perception but also because it's usually only on my screen for narrow fields of view, views which fill in and correctly re-load anyway once I start moving either my mouse or my WASD-position. I have yet to pierce into any mineshafts (I wouldn't mind some melon seeds right about now, though I suspect that melon wouldn't be around within the same radius of abandoned villages anyway so I don't have my hopes up.)

With unlimited crucible-tech, even if pre-SFS, I know that the move now is to just start strip-mining for ores of opportunity as well as piercing into gravel and dirt chambers, especially those which are sealed to the brim and therefore wouldn't generate mob sounds anyway, which from previous playthroughs I know are a lot more common when you're not dealing with the lava pits down near bedrock. Statistically, just based on the amount of digging I had to have completed in order to generate the cobble surplus and recycle-chest that I have, I know it's very good odds that I've passed one or two or more cave systems and just haven't heard anything yet. :-\

[MisterFister]

Update -- in today's play session, I did manage to locate ONE diamond (I dug out in a 3-block radius in all directions around it just to make sure... :( ) and also a single redstone block.

Now I can make a single gearbox. Yay...?...!...?

[Taleric]

Oh geez, good luck to you!

Yeah standard diamond hunt should have been your focus, finding the beautiful blue in the darkness.

Once you can strip mine, red stone just appears in the further diamond hunt.

Before diamond pick, iron used for other than hunting the deep strata or for gathering backup iron is kind of a waste.

[Mesh]

yeah you shoudln't be making iron armour yet, at least imo. Save it for Iron picks and shears, go strip mining on the bottom of the second strat until caves open up. Spelunking on the surface eventually leads to a deep cave, you just have to keep looking.

As for gold, I find that temples (with a bit of luck) yield a fine amount of gold. Hitting just one temple (outside of HC Spawn range ofc) can give you enough gold to see you well on your way further into the tech, added bonus, you sometimes find diamond in them too. If I were you I would pick a direction, make a compass and just go off exploring for deserts and skirt the edges of jungles looking for temples.

Oh and you shouldn't be using iron tools in the nether until you have an established safe area there, it's too easy to die in early game down there.

[MisterFister]

If I were you I would pick a direction, make a compass and just go off exploring for deserts and skirt the edges of jungles looking for temples.

This (and the rest) of your advice here seems good, as I do have some past experience with this mod and simply put it down for a while. (Of course, this is my first solo-attempt.) That said... part of my problem is my lack of redstone for a compass (Ideally, I wanna make two, one going into a map.)

My seed, if anyone is curious, is 5939968174303818863 (I think... never had to access seed info before.)

Update -- I've schlepped about a few km west of OS and set up a slanty-shanty shitshack. I brought with me two stacks of birch logs, three stacks of unhatched eggs, my hoe, a stack of pumpkins, three stacks of torches, two stacks of cobble, a stack of hemp seeds, my windmill, the half-stack of axles I'd made, a sprig of grass, a stack of packed earth, a stack of glass blocks, three buckets, a few chests, and whatever other stone tools and cooked food I could carry (which wasn't much.)

[Mesh]

Well, remember you need Soul Urns to make maps

[Ethinolicbob]

I would go for a large trip also.
Aye maps are a bit far along and are not needed and are really small for doing big trips (max size only has a 2k radius)
Compass is handy but you don't need it as you can leave beacons on the way pointing the way back.
Bring food of course but you can hunt pigs and chickens on the trip. Cooked eggs are great because you can cook pork and make ham and eggs.
If you can afford it bring along an iron pick
Wood is great as you will probably spend your nights in a dirt hole digging cobble to make your axes for the next day and making a furnace to cook the meat you hunted.
Just wander out in one direction for a few MC days paying extra attention to biomes of interest (deserts, swamps, plains, jungles)