Locating precious mineral deposits for mining will be essential to expand your village in Foundation, in this guide you will learn the different types of ore and their uses.
How to Discover Mineral Deposits
There are five types of mineral deposits available for mining, you will have to discover them in order to build a mine and prospect their ore.
As you expand your Territory you will get closer to mineral nodes and a notification will appear that a Mineral Deposit is nearby, you will also see this note when you are using the Territory tool to purchase hexagons for expansion.
When you next have a “Bailiff available for mandate” quest, you can send your Bailiff to prospect nearby Mineral Deposits. Clicking on the quest will offer multiple quests, select the locate icon to see how close the minerals are, this will help to search for the nearest deposits, they can be located outside your Territory. Start the quest for 100 gold coins and your Bailiff will be off to prospect. Once the Bailiff returns you will get another notification of their findings.
Mineral Deposit Types
Mining Mineral Deposits
To start mining a mineral deposit it must be inside your Territory border. Click on the mineral deposit and an info panel will display build options. Here you can set up two mining scaffolds and a crane. These items are mandatory to build the mine. Just like the Stonecutter Camp you can assign Miners to mine the ore. They will deposit the minerals and sometimes rare Gems into the Crane.
Set up a Warehouse nearby and some Transporters to move the ore from the crane and stock it up for production. All of these minerals can be sold to Traders too.
Ore Uses
Crystal is processed by a Glassblower to make Glass.
Gold is smelted by a Gold Smelter into Gold Bars and then used to make Jewelry. The Gold Bars are also needed to build certain masterpieces.
Marble is used to sculpt statues and masterpieces by the Builders Workshop: Sculptor.
Iron is smelted by an Iron Smelter into Iron Bars. The bars are used to make several items including Tools, Swords, Candles, Barrels, and Common Wares. In my experience Iron can become a rare commodity and you may consider buying Iron Bars from a trader if you can’t mine enough to produce goods.
Stone is mined by a Miner and used for many construction projects. Loose stone can be found all around your map without the need for discovery.
Mining Towns
Because the area around your mineral deposits will become low desirability (red) assign Serfs to work the mines, they won’t mind housing in low desire areas and will need a market, well, and services nearby. I found that building a small mining town is very productive and efficient.
Now let’s talk about Farming.
