Prospecting for marble
What follows is an extremely easy and and pretty cheap method. It is based, of course, on all the other methods posted on this wiki, and some of my own devising.
Searching
The easiets way is to uses a staggered search pattern, like this:
Preparation
The prospector(s) pick up slate (say 100-200) and a quarry kit:
You and your partner position yourself (30,30) coordinates apart. Below, I will assume that the prospector is at (200,300) and her partner is (230,330). Decide for a search direction of your search. Below I assume North and East.
Search
This step is meant to find the general area of marble. How long this takes depends heavily on the marble type; for some expect 50+ searches, for Oyster Shell 2 searches is usually enough.
At every step, test for marble. If both person are tuned, you can search for 2 types of marble. Do this using special->prospect for marble type. If you get a one-break, you move as described below. If you get a two-break, move to the
- Start out with moving both prospector and partner 30 coordinates to the North. Repeat this until...
- ...you feel that you have gotten far enough North, move both 35 coordinates East and 15 coordinates South (and prospect). Then proceed to...
- ... moving both 30 coordinates South (and prospect). Do this until you feel you are far enough Sourth, then start from the top.
Narrowing
At this step, you have a wide circle containing the marble... it's the circle that has the line between you and your partner as diagonal, and thus have a diameter of about 42 coordinates and area of about 1414 coordinates. The goal of this is step is to narrow this area down to an are containing a few coordinates.
The idea is at each step to find a smaller circle containing the marble. The circles used in this method always has the same sizes, as given in the table below:
| Step | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| | | | | | | | | | |
| Diameter | 42 | 30 | 21 | 15 | 11 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Area | 1414 | 707 | 346 | 177 | 95 | 50 | 28 | 13 | 7 | 3 | 1 |
The step 0 is the circle we start out with. At each step, we partition the circle in 4 smaller circle and pick the one with the marble. This is not hard at all! Just follow these simple steps.
- Move your partner to the midpoint between you and him. At the first step, this means moving (15,15) coordinates towards you (to 215,315 in this example). After you will only have to move in one coordinate direction (N,S, E or W).
- Pick a coordinate direction, say North. move so that you are directly North and as many coordinates away as indicated in the table above. E.g, for the first time, you would move 30 coordinates North of your partner, to (215,345)
- Prospect. If you get a 2-break, you have just narrowed the circle to the next step! Congratulations, move on to the next step (i.e., smaller size).
- If you get a 1-break, try the next direction, e.g. East. E.g, continuing the example, you would move to (245,315). Keep doing this until you get a 2-break. E.g, continuing the example, try (215,285) and (185,215). As soon as you get a 2-break, go to the next step as above.
The marble quarries should always be build on coordinate intersections. Continue the above until you have 1-3 coordinate intersections within your cirle, then test those intersections. Build the quarry, and you are done :)
It might be confusing that you do not simply halve the distance between you and your partner. This is because doing so would leave 4 small areas unchecked. A drawing would really help, I know. Trust me, or draw it yourself :)