Hey folks!

A few years ago I put out my first mining cheatsheets with the goal of having a quick way to reference where I should be looking when it comes to mineable materials. Mining has been and still is one of the most enjoyable gameplay loops for me, and I found the in-game information to be severely lacking. With the help of Rockseeker from the UEMC, I was able to figure out how to extract the game source files and I could work my magic from there.

Keeping these charts updated became a ritual for me every patch. I spent hours on end trying to optimize my workflow so that I could get updated charts done in an hour or two, rather than making it into a weekend project. They became a staple in the community and it’s been something I’ve been particularly proud of!

With 4.0, all that data has now been migrated away from the client data and on to the server. That spells a lot of good news for the future – with the ability to tweak mineral distributions without requiring a client patch – but it also means that I am no longer able to extract and analyze that data to generate my cheatsheets.

I was able to pull data from the Tech Preview in Nov 2023, but the newest minerals weren’t implemented at the time and so the data thats available is incomplete (You can view the run down of the limited Pyro data here if you’re insterested https://redmonstergaming.com/2023/11/03/pyro-mineable-location-data-now-available/)

While I have to discontinue my mining cheatsheets in their current form, there are a few opportunities on the horizon that I’m putting my efforts in to.

The first is the Regolith Survey Corps, an initiative that Raychaser from Regolith.rocks has started and I’m a proud partner for. This will use some of the intelligent web-based tools that Regolith uses to automate portions of the rock scanning process so that we as a community can perform large scale surveys to gather distribution data. That would include surveyors reputation, as well as leaderboards, and I think creates some great opportunities for exploration gameplay!

And the second is to keep putting pressure on the developers to improve the in-game tools that support the mining gameplay loop. We need things like missions, a mining guild with reputation, and rewards tied to a players ability to go out and mine difficult materials.

We saw some glimpses of the changes that will come to mining before the 1.0 release, and there will be some fundamental shifts that will certainly impact distribution. The major point here is that we are going to see single mineral deposits instead of our current rock types where multiple minerals can appear. There is also going to be the introduction of mineral quality that carries forward into more efficient or more powerful crafted items. While a lot of this has only been talked about at a high level, it will change distribution and gameplay significantly as it makes its way into the game engine.

So while I may be retiring the mining cheatsheets, I’ll still be supporting community-driven tools, I’m still hosting the Sunday Morning Mining Sessions, and I plan to continue making videos as major changes arrive.

Thanks for everything, and I’ll see you around the verse!

-Red