GregTech Community Edition/Ores

GregTech Community Edition has dozens of ores with complex processing chains that produce hundreds of different materials. Almost every element on the Periodic Table and many kinds of real-life mineral and ore deposits are represented in the mod. This guide lists all of the various ores.

Ores
GregTech by default does not disable vanilla ore generation although such a change can be easily done via the config, thus replacing it with its own ore generation 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.

Unlike GregTech 5 Unofficial, the Community Edition introduces only one type of ore generation in the form of mixed veins. They can generate different amounts of vein per section (3x3 chunk area), depending on the config. By default, the minimal amount of veins per section is 0.

Mixed veins can contain hundreds or even thousands of blocks of up to four different types of ore. Contents are dependent upon height and dimension, but are not dependent upon biome. Veins usually generate as ellipsoids with dimensions ranging from 13x13 to 18x18, with very few and small gaps between ore blocks. However, ore veins can only generate where they have Stone, Red/Black Granite, Netherrack, or End Stone that can be replaced by ore blocks.

Mix Veins come in four parts: Primary, Secondary, Inbetween, and Around. Each of them can be a different ore. When viewed from a distance either via an X-Ray mod or after having removed all Stone in the area, ore Mix Veins look like large, oval-shaped American football balls. Ore vein generation takes place as a series of steps. First, at the center of every 3x3 chunk area a random ore mix is chosen. If that ore mix cannot generate within the current dimension, the generator tries again. If the ore vein is allowed, a random height will be chosen within the mix vein's Minimum and Maximum height values, and ore generation will propagate out from that point. However, as ores are placed by replacing Stone, Red/Black Granite, Netherrack, or End Stone, if the generation area contains none of those materials ore blocks will not generate. As such, it is possible to encounter areas that do not contain mix veins. In Forests, Plains, and similar biomes, this happens about a quarter of the time. In mountains or extreme hills, it happens fairly rarely, while deep oceans often will not have mixed veins below them. Name: The name given to the mix in configuration. This does not have an effect in-game.

Density: How tightly packed the ores are in a vein. Lower values can cause small gaps between ore blocks.

Max Height: The maximum height at which the vein can generate.

Min Height: The minimum height at which the vein can generate.

Primary ore: Name of the Primary ore in the vein

Secondary ore: Name of the Secondray ore in the vein

Inbetween ore: Name of the Inbeween ore in the vein

Sporadic ore: Name of the Around ore in the vein

Weight: How likely it is for this vein to spawn. The higher this value is, the better the chance. This value is relative to the total of the RandomWeight values of all the ore veins. The default configuration has a total weight of 1850, so for example,a vein with a Weight of 160 has a 160/2348 (7,15%) chance to spawn per generation attempt.

Size: The maximum area an ore vein can occupy

Overworld: Can this vein generate in the Overworld? (Yes/No)

Nether: Can this vein spawn in the Nether? (Yes/No)

End: Can this vein spawn in the End? (Yes/No)

Indicator: A metal nugget associated with the vein

Surface rocks
Many of the veins have associated surface vein indicators in the form of metal nuggets, which help players in finding veins. The surface nuggets indicate that there is a corresponding vein beneath, in the same chunk (compare with the spreadsheet above).