GregTech 6/Stones and Minerals

has hundreds of ores and more than a dozen types of stone to harvest. Some types of stone are themselves ores, or are valuable resources in their own right. This guide covers all of the different goods a GregTech 6 player can find in or beneath the earth.

Stones
GregTech 6 adds several new types of stone which will generate in the world. These new stones have various properties and mining levels, which form the basis of the new Ore Layers world generation. Each type of stone layer can be found at any world height, but the layers can only be ore-bearing when they are found at heights specific to those ores. Some types of stone can be processed for resources even when they do not contain ores.

Stones in the form of small Rocks found on the surface (sometimes informally called Pebbles) can be used to craft tools including Pickaxes and Hammers, allowing players to obtain tools with Diamond mining level early in the game. Having these tools will be essential to mining ores contained in layers of tough stones like Basalt and the Granites. Many of the surface Rocks will be Ore-bearing Rocks instead of simple stone Rocks. These special Rocks indicate that there is a block of Ore directly below the Rock, which may appear at any height. Ore-bearing Rocks are only found above buried Ore blocks that are part of an Ore Layer, Mix Vein, or Bedrock Ore, meaning that they will always indicate a large deposit of Ore rather than a single block.

Hammers made from these stones can be as durable as ones made from Lead, offering a substantial cost savings if they are used in place of metal Hammers. Cobblestone of each stone type except vanilla can be hammered to obtain their corresponding Rocks used to craft Hammers and Pickaxes.

Rock Ores
The ores Bauxite, Lignite Coal, Anthracite Coal (i.e. Vanilla Coal), Rock Salt, Salt, and Oil Shale are now considered Rock Ores, which means that instead of being found as ores within a layer of stone, they are now found as entire stone layers consisting of a solid mass of thousands of blocks of a single ore. They are also dense ores, that produce two Crushed Ores when mined with a Hammer, or four when processed in the Crusher.

Soft Earth
GregTech 6 adds Brown Clay, which is a substitute for vanilla Clay usable for crafting Crucibles, Molds, and other Ceramic equipment. Both Brown Clay and vanilla Clay will generate in large clay pits just beneath the surface of Plains and Savannah biomes. A Spade may be used to harvest both types of Clay as solid blocks instead of items.

Mud blocks will surround the water found in Swamp biomes, replacing any Dirt that would normally appear. Mud slows the movement speed of players and entities that walk across it, and may be smelted to obtain ordinary Dirt. A Spade may also be used to harvest Mud as solid blocks instead of items.

Black Sand forms large patches beside and under River biomes. It can be smelted as Magnetite, sifted or magnetically separated for Gold dust and nuggets plus Magnetite; but when centrifuged is the primary source of V2O5 (Vanadium Pentoxide, a catalyst in sulfuric acid production).

Ores
Like in previous versions of GregTech, standard Vanilla ore generation is disabled and all vanilla ores but Emerald will generate in Gregtech's unique distribution patterns. These patterns are compatible either by default or through configuration with almost all ores from almost all other mods, so unless explicitly noted, ore generation from other mods can and should be disabled, as GregTech will compensate.

GregTech ore blocks do not work exactly like other ore blocks. Most mods treat their ores as single blocks, with nothing special to them except for the few that must be harvested with Silk Touch or can be mined with a Fortune pick to increase yield. All GregTech ores are non-ticking Tile Entities, defined less by block ID or metadata than by TileEntity data. Each of these TEs contains only two variables: the internal ID of the ore, and a True/False boolean indicating whether the ore block was placed by world generation or by other means. This is mainly used to determine whether or not a Small Ore's drops can be enhanced by a Fortune pick. Their being TEs though has some unfortunate consequences: not all mods are prepared to deal with TE ore blocks, and so GregTech ores are not always mined by other mods' automated mining systems (for example, for several months, the  could not mine GregTech ores), or may be replaced with useless Empty Ore when moved by other mods (such as the Twilight Forest Miner's Tree, or in the pit of an Applied Energistics 2 meteor). The rendering of GregTech 6 ores is greatly improved over previous versions. Ores will no longer display telltale rendering artifacts when viewed at steep angles, nor will they noticeably interfere with smooth lighting and shading, affording them a much more natural look. (However, OptiFine's modifications to shading may still make them stand out.)

There are four types of ore generation: Small Ores, Mix Veins, Ore Layers, and Bedrock Ores. Both Ore Layers and Bedrock Ores are new in GregTech 6.

Small Ores
Small Ores generate as semi-common single blocks. They are intended as a way to get started and acquire initial tools, but are not intended to be used as primary sources of metal for machinery. When broken, they drop a Crushed Ore or, if applicable, a Gem. They may also drop a Dust or a Dirty Dust of the Stone they were found in. Small Ores cannot be picked up with a Silk Touch Pickaxe, however a Fortune Pickaxe will slightly increase their yields. Importantly, Small Ores can be mined at 1 mining level lower than the ores they contain (to a minimum of the stone type's mining level), allowing a miner with a Stone-level pickaxe to obtain enough Copper and Tin to begin crafting Bronze tools and machines. In GregTech 6, Small Ores can appear in any type of GregTech stone, and will also appear in Sand or Gravel. As a result, Deserts and Beaches present a large number of Small Ores clearly visible on the surface.

Mix Veins
Mix Veins are the 3x3 chunk veins familiar to GregTech 5 players. Mix Veins can contain up to four different ores. Vein contents are dependent upon height and dimension, but are not dependent upon biome. Veins can range in size from 16x16x5 up to 80x80x8 blocks, with very few and small gaps between ore blocks. In GregTech 6, ores found in Mix Veins can replace any type of GregTech stone, and will also appear in Sand or Gravel. By default, Mix Veins will not generate in the Overworld (due to being replaced by the new ore layer system described below) nor the EnviroMine Cave Dimension, only appearing in the Nether, the End, the Twilight Forest, and several other dimensions added by supported mods.

Ore Layers
Ore Layers are new in GregTech 6 and by default will generate only in the Overworld (and the EnviroMine Cave Dimension). Ore Layers replaces not only the vanilla ore generation, but also the generation of Stone underground. Vanilla Stone is replaced by large layers of the various GregTech (and other modded) stones, each six to twelve blocks thick and several chunks across. A single column of rock will be made of several layers of different stones. Each type of stone layer can appear at any height, with some types of stone being more common than others.

Each layer of stone has a chance to be an ore-bearing stone. If the stone layer is found at the correct height, many of its stone blocks will instead be ore blocks corresponding to the stone type and height level. Ore blocks near the top and bottom edges of the layer will be small ores, while those near the middle will be normal-sized ores. Each type of ore is associated with a type of stone, so Chalcopyrite Ore for example will only ever be found in a layer of Marble, and never in a layer of Granite. (If Chalcopyrite appears in a Granite layer, that's a clue that it is part of a Bedrock Ore deposit, and it will also be found close to Bedrock.)

The number of layered ore veins that may be found in a single column of rock is only limited by the number of different stones in that column. Unlike in previous version of GregTech, multiple veins may be found in a single chunk. When several layered veins appear above and beneath each other, Ore-bearing Rocks can be found on the surface indicating many of the veins that are below it. When multiple ores are listed for the same stone type and elevation they will generally be interspersed; however Basalt, Limestone, Diorite, and Andesite each have two sets of ores that will not cross-mix, while vanilla Stone has four (meaning, for example, that a vein of Thaumcraft crystals will always be a single pure type; except when Vinteum ore is in the Order Infused stone.)

Ores found in stone layers are still blocks of that particular stone and will inherit its minimum mining level, so a Pickaxe or Hammer of mining level 3 is needed to mine any ores found in layers of Black or Red Granite. As noted above, those stones themselves can be used to make Pickaxes of the appropriate type.

Some ores will only be present in specific types of biomes. Ores originating from many supported mods will also generate in ore layers.

Appropriate to its nickname of "Fool's Gold", Pyrite ores are labeled "Gold Ore" when initially found and mined. They cannot be distinguished from actual Gold until crushed, or by reading the contained materials list shown by pressing F3+H. True Gold Ore will only be found in layers of Andesite, or blooming from a Bedrock Gold vein.

Some ores will only be found where a particular stone layer is directly above another stone layer. If an ore requires one layer above another, it will be present in both layers in the nearest two or three blocks to the interface; the Rock Ores cannot have other ores in them though.

Bedrock Ores
New in GregTech 6, many ores can be found embedded in the Bedrock at the bottom of the world. These Bedrock Ores provide an infinite supply of ores, but cannot be harvested by hand, so the Bedrock Mining Drill must be used to extract them. Bedrock Ore deposits are indicated by flowers found on the surface (if the surface blocks can support them), and also by a cloud of Normal and Small ores in the stone directly above Bedrock. These indicator ores will spawn in any stone type, so if an ore is found at depth in a type of stone where it does not normally appear, this means a Bedrock Ore deposit is indicated beneath it. Only one Bedrock Ore deposit can occur in any chunk.