SV Prospecting

Before anyone dug a mine, they panned the river. Storm Veil Prospecting adds the Panning Sluice: a wooden trough set on a riverbank with its outlet out over the water. Shovel sand into the head, and the current washes the light sediment away and leaves the heavy metal grains in the riffles. It is an early, slow way to get a little of every metal, open to anyone with a shovel and a river. Nothing in the game is overridden.

Placing it

• Built at the Workbench (Mining 1): 20 Wood, 4 Wood Board, 10 Plant Fibers. No room and no power needed.
• It is two blocks long. The head stands on solid ground; the outlet must hang over water, and the placement ghost shows which block is wrong. Rivers, lakes and sea beaches all work.
• If the water under the outlet ever drains away, the sluice switches itself off, says so in its status, and comes back on when the water returns.

Panning (Mining 1, at the sluice; 20 sand a job by default)

• Pan for Gold gives 1 Gold Flakes, vanilla's own electronics item, so panned gold also feeds circuits directly. 8 wash into a Gold Concentrate.
• Pan for Copper gives 1 Copper Nugget; 6 wash into a Copper Concentrate.
• Pan for Iron gives 2 Black Sand; 8 wash into an Iron Concentrate.
• Pan for Tin gives 2 Stream Tin; 6 wash into a Tin Concentrate. Only with Storm Veil Bronze Age installed: the sluice looks for it at startup, so neither mod needs the other.

The washing happens at the sluice too, so a new player has a concentrate in hand long before anyone owns a Rocker Box. A concentrate costs 120 to 160 sand: a trace next to real mining, but a start.

Settings (Mods/StormVeilProspecting.json, or the Prospecting tab in the server console; restart to apply)

• SandPerPan (20): sand a job takes.
• FindsMultiplier (1.0): multiplies what every pan finds, rounded and never below 1. The wash ratios stay fixed.
• PanGold, PanCopper, PanIron, PanTin (all true): which metals the sluice offers.

Installation

Extract the zip into your server's Mods/ folder, so the files land in Mods/StormVeilMods/Prospecting/ beside Mods/StormVeilMods/StormVeilFramework_<version>.dll (bundled; if another Storm Veil mod already gave you the same or a newer framework, keep one copy). Works on any world, new or old. Players don't install anything: the server sends them the sluice model and the icons (Prospecting.unity3d).

Made by Storm Veil Gaming. Bugs and suggestions welcome in the comments.