annoyedoldplayer

Chaos is the PvP server...

Its been a long time since I prospected, but as I recall when prospecting on the surface the ore tile is detectable out to a certain distance on the grid. I forget what the distance is.. you should be able to find that on one of the pages or tutorials. I think it was 3, and I'll use that number for explaining, but look it up to find out for sure. Anyway, prospect in a straight line, and as soon as you can detect ore you know you've reached that max distance.. thus (using the number I think it is) you know the ore tile is exactly 3 away in the direction you were moving. But you don't know where it is along the other axis, so then you start prospecting perpendicular to the original path. Eventually you will stop detecting the ore. Go back to the last square you detected it in, and you know its exact location is diagonally 3 away (3 squares over still, since you're still in the row or column where you first detected it, and 3 back along the perpendicular path you took.) That's how to triangulate its location on a 2-axis grid. Now, if your skill is so low you can't see what it is you're detecting, and just detect 'an ore vein' then the view can be muddied if you come across two in the area you're checking. Then you can just keep going and eventually you'll find edges and triangulate one, and can then go back to check on the other. They can't be in the same spot, so in some direction you'll be able to find the edges where what you see isn't "muddied." And if it seems the ore veins just go on and on, congratulations! Get in there and mine a grid of tunnels since there's lots of veins to find. And be the envy of your friends and neighbors!

Where do we get a magic chest?

I just think of Wurm's surface as a sheet of rubber nailed to a million poles with differing heights. That would make a very facetted landscape, like in some early computer games, but Wurm's graphics engine smoothes it out.