copper & coal is rare

Seriously, I've spend 2 hours in search for copper and all I keep getting is silver, gold, iron.

I would probably actually leave gold behind right now, because of how bad I need copper.

The only difficulty about this current patch is obtaining copper to progress early on, everything aside from coal and copper is like everywhere...

Is this bad luck, anybody else having the same issue?

I mean I never would have thought I'd be frustrated at not getting copper, but this is just ridiculous. When I do find a bit of copper it's always in like pairs of 1 or 2 ores. I find silver in more abundance than this.

actually, I've found larger veins of diamonds than I have of copper!

 

Copper and Coal is usually found in larger veins near the surface, rather than down in the deep.

But that is just my personal experience.

 

The randomization in the game hasn't been tamed yet, especially in the early stages of the game when the player is more limited in options. Minerals are very unstable gathering from the responses in this forum. It's best to either pic up and leave the planet using wood as fuel, or to restart the game if that isn't an option to spare yourself the 2+ hours of work if that's not your thing.

 

Huh, does wood work as fuel again?

 

Wood isn't a fuel anymore, so if you don't find enough coal, you're out of luck.

 

If you're finding diamonds, you're most likely not in the Alpha sector. If you're exclusively looking for copper n' coal I'd recommend you going back to your starting solar system and mine those out first, they'll be more likely to have copper and coal, rather that the later levels.

 

sadly no
but i hope it does soon

 

True, I would also recommend to go back to the Alpha sector. Forest planets seems to have plenty of coal at the surface.

 

Because I'm fairly sure as of now, it's scaled to be something like this.

Apha
Copper/Coal - High
Gold/Silv/Iron - Low
Plat/Diamond - Nowhere

Beta/Whateverthe3rdoneis
Copper/Coal - Low
Gold/Silv/Iron - High
Plat/Diamond - Low

 

Coal is extremely hard to find all around for some of us. There are numerous threads about it. I spent around 5 hours playing last night in Alpha sector and only managed to gather around 300 total while actively searching for it. This was across 3 different planets.

 

After the character wipe i've started two characters and with neither of those i have found anywhere near enough coal to go to another planet and start progressing. Also i've had extremely bad luck with these two starting planets since both of them had only those rose trees (that give you plant fibre) and no buildings/cities/labs whatsoever.
I don't know if their intention was to make you stay at your starting planet for a long while or is it just bad luck in my part?
Third character here i go.

Has anyone else gotten pretty much stranded at their starting planet?

 

Yep.

 

You went around the whole planet and didn't find a single different tree? Usually, a planet has at least 2 biomes and some structures. That was quite unlucky.

I haven't started a new character after the latest patch which apparently screwed up the ore balance, so I can't give you my take on it, but it does seem to be pretty bad. Digging around should net you enough coal to at least visit another nearby planet, though.

 

I started up a second character to see how it goes to start out again in the new patch(my first I got lucky.

In the first hour or two was hard going, but not impossible. The dive bombing birds sucks but nothing too bad. Now the mining and getting coal was to be honest, pretty brutal. There was no desert planet in the system and no sand to 'surf mine'. I ended up with the needed 100 coal (200 fuel for an interstellar trip) in around45-60 minutes after getting stable. After that I just went to a desert planet and started sand surfing. Sure I died quite often getting long drops or mobs falling on my head, but cash wasn't an issue that early.

It seems to new patch makes starting out slower and the mobs hitting harder make it 'harder' to progress, but the coal issue (not realyl an issue, but more an annoyance) is surmountable but time consuming to do. Even now in my main character, I have issues with coal and am taking it VERY slowly in Beta sector (going slow on purpose, I enjoy mining and exploring underground).

Using it as the sole fuel early game and required for torches (very important if your a miner) and to make steel makes it the true bottleneck currently. I know you can go to the asteroids and get plutonium, however witht eh birds currently, it's VERY hard as they agro from off screen most of the time and just a single hit knocks you off your derp pillar.

I assume the fuel issue gets much easier as youfinally progress past haivng it as your sole fuel source however.


One thing I would suggest is maybe have random events like in Terraria with a meteor impact that can deposite some of the higher tier fuels, iron and platinum. I think I saw something aboutr random events planned for much later in the beta so it is a possibility.

 

After I started my new one, on my starting planet the first thing I found was some diamond near the surface. I was really surprised and thought myself lucky but up to now I also find a lot more silver and gold than copper or coal. Even on the surface. I have just enough coal to craft my torches and need much more copper to get my armour, while in silver I nearly have enough to get the armour.

I'd really appreciate that the "(not anymore) rare" ores are placed much deeper and copper and coal are returned in their old quantity (or at least a bit more than now).

 

Are there asteroids above every planet? I haven't been up there yet.

The meteor wasn't exactly random in Terraria. There was a chance one would show up after destroying a shadow orb/demon heart - a high enough chance that at least one, often more would land on your world. But yes, I'm looking forward to random events.

 

I have had the same issue. I deleted my characters after I noticed they fixed the weapon tiers and immediately started struggling really badly with the game. It's playable, but it is certainly less enjoyable in its present state.

My first world was a "forest" world that had no trees in the immediate vicinity of beam down and I finally founds some, with great difficulty half way around the planet. The mobs are all super fast and I can barely kill one because they recover and rush me faster than I can swing my sword... then there's the flying mobs that drop air lightning blasts at me for 69 points of damage (I can't make that number up!) and I literally found enough to smelt 7 copper bars. Not even enough for a pickaxe, and I have so little coal that I am debating on whether I'm better off trying to jump to a new planet with it or make torches

 

Yeah those first two planets were downright stupid

I made that third character and crafted a pickaxe ASAP and dug straight down for about a screen and started to dig a horizontal tunnel. This resulted in 124 coal ore in about 10-15 minutes using only 2 torches.
Coal ore (in small amounts) seems to be fairly common around that depth.

I recommend trying this out at the beginning if you're low on fuel.

 

The asteroids are always there, just VERY high up.

Also yeah I know the meteor impact was triggered from breaking the orbs, think it was teh second and 4th orb broken made there be a high/guaranteed (?) chance of a meteor hitting within a few game days. Was fun as it made a static world a little more dynamic. Will be fun to see if soemthing similar is done in SB

 

I'm going to agree with this observation. Both coal and copper are harder to find in the alpha sector now. On the other hand large deposits of iron are plentiful, silver is much easier to find, and even large veins of gold aren't that rare.