Talk:Prospecting

I've been looking into some rumors and a theory of mine. I've found that the different colors of rock on grassy tiles seem to indicate the type of ore in the vicinity. I've found copper near greenish rocks and iron near the large gray rocks. It should be noted that greenish rocks were not present where I found iron and visa virsa. I'm still looking into this and would love more information regarding this subject to the degree it could be added to this page. --Fishybows 16:17, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

It's random tile decoration. To date I've not seen any evidence that the tile decoration is based on the ore in the vicinity. In fact the tile decoration changes every now and then. --Ago 17:22, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

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Apparently new descriptions have been added: Whatever you discover, please help me record the info in here:

Description	Lower Ql	Highest Ql
Poor	1	?
Acceptable	?	?
Normal	?	?

There might be more to this than expected. I have a vein which prospects to "pretty bad". However, if I prospect outside the cave, it says "acceptable". - Dashiva 12:21, 5 December 2006 (CST)

Although the reported quality's are probably wrong, the list in the wiki is all the types I've seen since the game went gold. I've not seen 'acceptable' anywhere since the end of beta. Suspecting there's a bug around - Manny

I have all three near my place, so it's not a name change at least. - Dashiva 14:05, 5 December 2006 (CST)

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"Gems appear randomly during all mining, and cannot be prospected." - Can anyone with 90+ prospecting confirm that this is absolutely true? My testing has indicated that gems occur in clusters of tiles much like flint and salt, and I suspect that they are prospectable at some point, probably 80 if the 20 skill increments are any indication. --Telarin 13:50, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

In all my mining gems have come very randomly. The best was 6 shards mined in between two gems just recently and the worst stretch was 4k mining actions without a gem. I also mined away 7 veins so far and they all gave gems at some point except for the one iron vein that popped after about 700 iron. So far I got 140 gems. 92 on rock with a ratio of 1 in 975 shards mined and 48 on ore with a ration of 1 in 926 ore mined. So to me it seems that every tile really has the chance to give gems but rock tiles simply break to fast ;) --Ago 17:38, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

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I have a prospecting skill of 21 and I am able to detect salt from the surface. -- Kaptkaos 14:30, 4 June 2011 (PST)

"Anyone can detect veins within 3 tiles."

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What's that supposed to mean? Needs clarification. Xandaros (talk) 21:10, 26 June 2013 (CEST)