Redistribute existing ores

[careeoki]

Our ores are very close together and don't start very deep in the world.
I think most important is the placement of diamond, and then other ores can be placed around it.

[careeoki]

128: Coal
20: Copper
-200: Iron
-500: Gold (Copper stops.)
-1000: Diamond and Sulfur
-1500: Uranium

[IntegratedQuantum]

Should coal maybe always be present? It is pretty fundamental and if you spawn on a mountain you would be screwed otherwise.

[careeoki]

Yeah, anywhere on the surface makes sense. If there's no other suggestions I'll do this after sulfur is merged

[Argmaster]

I think we may have a bit too much coal, or maybe its just survivor bias or sth

[IntegratedQuantum]

Maybe? But at the same time most of the coal in this cave is not directly accessible. Like what if you only have a small cave next to spawn.

Also a thing to consider: I wouldn't too many boring/empty caves. Maybe a better way to balance this here would be to require more coal in recipes (torches, smelting)

[Argmaster]

That is tricky mixed with the fact that caves are pitch black, either you are lucky to find coal next to the entrance or well, you have to find a cave that has coal close to entrance. Honestly I don't think having that having high coal spawn rate makes sense, since it spawns everywhere you will always have aboudance of it, only thing you can do is force player to mine more of it and i dont think that's fun. I was actually thinking about making separate weaker torches that can be crafted just with planks/branches that would give much less light (eg. 4 blocks) but would be enough to see literally anything in those pich black caves in the begging. At the same time I would make coal less all preset or maybe we could make its spawn chance a z dependant sinusoid so there are regions with coal and regions without it. In general for ores to be special they must be somewhat unique, if you just see the wherever you look then you won't enjoy finding a vein as much. To make caves less empty we can just have more rock formations, maybe more fancy cave generation, maybe some additional decoration blocks

Additionally I would be also interested in making magnesium torches that would give cold white ligth with higher intensity than normal torches if engine allows for that. This would be a kind of progression path for torches C:

If you want use for coal, well, there is steel idea C: This would mean that you would always have a use case for two of the most common ores.

[IntegratedQuantum]

Yeah, weaker torchers also seems like a reasonable compromise, and yeah bright white torches are supported (for reference, white glow crystals currently have the highest intensity/radius supported by the engine)

[careeoki]

Coal veins could probably be a bit less common, they are pretty dense anyway. Or they could be much smaller, requiring you to find multiple veins.

[careeoki]

If we make basic torches dimmer we should have a sconce-style torch crafted with a metal that is about as bright as torches are currently. Sulfur torches could be brighter than the regular torches.

[ikabod-kee]

We could also make some ores cave biome-dependent :)

[Argmaster]

If we make basic torches dimmer we should have a sconce-style torch crafted with a metal that is about as bright as torches are currently. Sulfur torches could be brighter than the regular torches.

The idea is not to change brightness of coal torches but to add torches made just of wood with lower brightness in case you don't find coal near entrance.

Imo coal veins should be big but rare, this means that they are not such a common sight but there is a lot of it if you need it. I would also argue that coal veins should be more flat in Z axis.

[Argmaster]

We could also make some ores cave biome-dependent :)

Sure, but which ones? The ones we have right now are quite generic and critical for player aren't they? Maybe sulphur could have more special cave biome as you don't need a lot of it and its modifier would make it kind of special.

[IntegratedQuantum]

We could also make some ores cave biome-dependent :)

Sure, but which ones?

In my opinion for every ore the spawn rate should be higher in some biomes. Makes it more rewarding to explore.