Digging
Description
Digging requires a Shovel. Activate shovel ---> Right-click a tile (any but rock) and select Dig. This will lower the ground and put 1x of the tile compound in your inventory. The ground is lowered at the closest corner to where you are standing, rather than where you click.
So if you want to lower a tile stand in the corner of the tile activate your shovel, right click>Dig this will lower the corner you are standing on. To lower the whole tile, you must stand in each of the four corners in turn and dig. This is the same for raising a tile, just drop dirt instead of dig.
When you think you have a tile nearly flat you can find out if it is perfectly flat by right clicking>flatten. You will then get the message 'The ground is flat here' in the event window.
A better way to check the flatness of an edge of the tile is to press 'c' key, then look at one tile and if the line is straight, then you are sure it is flat.
Digging for rock
If you want to dig for a rock tile you must be aware that you probably have to dig a lot of dirt. To start you must dig a reasonable distance above water, keep digging in one corner till you "hit rock" or you do not have enough skill to dig deeper. Once you hit rock in one corner you must then dig until you hit rock in the other corners of the tile. When you hit rock in all four corners the rock tile will be uncovered.
Flattening Guide
The times given when you start to flatten correspond to the number of dirt 'difference' these are :
0 = "The ground is flat now." 1..3 = 9 secs 4..7 = 19 secs 8..11 = 29 secs 12..15 = 39 secs 16..19 = 49 secs etc
so the time is the "number of dirt difference" / 4, rounded down, * 10 + 9.
The 'number of dirt difference' is the difference between the highest and lowest points.
so a 9 secs timer could be from tiles like this...
0---1 or 0---3 or 0---0 | | | | | | 1---2 3---3 0---3
If At the end of the timer, the tile is in the 1-3 dirt difference range, and the following happens :
1 = "You assemble some dirt from a corner." (and you get one dirt added to inventory). 2 = "You assemble some dirt from a corner." (and you get one dirt added to inventory). 3 = If you are carrying at least one dirt you get "You use some of the dirt in one corner." or if you are not carrying any dirt then you get "If you carried some dirt, it would be used to fill the 1 corners that need it."
Note that after flattening, its a good idea to flatten again if you got the "assemble" message, as there may have been 2 dirt extra. Also if you did not have a dirt on you to use, you may want o dig one (from another tile) and reflatten so it can use it.
Main problem with flattening a large area, is that is it hard to tell how many dirt a certain tile needs. I'll try to explain...
3 tiles in a row.
0---1---1---2 | A | B | C | 0---0---3---1
Flatten tile A and C and end up with...
0---0---2---2 | A | B | C | 0---0---2---2
Note after flattening tile A, you would get a dirt in inventory, and flattening tile C will use that dirt.
Now, when you test tile B (flatten, and then stop, making note of the timer), you will see that its timer was 9 seconds, but will not know if its like ...
0---0---1---1 or 0---0---2---2 or 0---0---3---3 | A | B | C | | A | B | C | | A | B | C | 0---0---1---1 0---0---2---2 0---0---3---3
So you will need to add dirt (in multiples of 4 (one to each corner maybe easiest)) to tile A (or remove dirt in mutliples of 4 from C (one from each corner maybe easiest)) and check again,
Repeat until you get the "The ground is flat now." message.
Small digging guide
For those that had trouble with any of the above guides, here is a small picture that may clarify it.
This is the result of dropping a small amount of dirt on the corner of a tile.
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