Not All Ores Are Created Equal

Not All Ores Are Created Equal

I’ve been playing Terraria for about a decade now. And despite playing this game for as long as I have, I constantly learn new facts and mechanics about this game. And recently, while scrolling through the Terraria wiki, I learned something I hadn’t known about in the most unlikely of places. Oes. Now, in Terraria, there’s a whopping 21 ores in the game with the general progression looking a little something like this. And if you’ve ever played Terraria before, you’ve probably picked up by now that certain ores are interchangeable with others, but both cannot generate in the same world. for example, copper and tin, iron and lead, silver and tungsten along with gold and platinum and free hard mode along with the three tiers of hard mode ores, but we’ll be getting back to those later in the video. While I’ve always known that different ores are interchangeable with each other, I never really thought about how the game decides which ores it should generate with. I mean, it can’t be a coin flip upon generation since the same world seed will always have the same preh hard mode ores. So, how does the game do it? Well, with math, of course, but not any math equation. this math equation. Okay, so this equation may be a bit confusing and maybe even a little intimidating considering that there’s not only several really large numbers in a handful of letters, but an entire word smack dab in the middle. But if you take a moment to just take it all in, it’s really not all that bad. So, let’s break down this equation in a way that makes it more digestible. First things first, let’s understand what these terms mean. In this equation, S simply stands for your world seed, an integer between 0 and 2 bill147,483,647, otherwise known as the upper end of the 32-bit integer limit. Next up, F and C are just constants taken from this table for each ore. So if you want to know if your world will have copper or tin, you just substitute 1 bill582,116,761 in for F and 626,863,973 for C. Okay, now that we’ve covered the first three terms, let’s talk about mod. Now in mathematics, mod stands for the modulo operator, which essentially pays zero attention to the quotient in a division problem and focuses solely on the remainder. For example, 5 mod 2 would be equal to 1. Since 2 goes into 5 twice, leaving one behind as the remainder. So in our equation, you would divide the number inside the parenthesis by 2 bill147,483,647, which is again the 32bit integer limit. And if the result is greater than 1 bill73,741,823, then the equation is true. Meaning the world will generate with the default or respective to which constant values you used. Meaning that if you want to know what all four ores your world is going to have, you’re going to have to do this equation four separate times. So, let’s do a quick example. Right now, I’m about to create a new world with the seed being 1 bill253,841,412. And if we plug this number into these four equations, solve inside the parenthesis, and then divide this number by 2 bill147,483,647 in order to find the remainder, which by the way, I use calculator.net’s big number calculator to do this. we get the following result. When deciding whether we get copper or tin, we get a mod result of 1 bill523,755,990, which is larger than 1 bill73,741,823, meaning we’ll have copper. For iron or lead, we get 1 bill675,418,331, meaning we’ll have iron. For silver or tungsten, we get 2 billion 31,225,615, meaning we’ll have silver. And for gold or platinum, we get 1 bill885,650,630, meaning we’ll have gold. And sure enough, when we join the world, we have exactly what we predicted. Now, even though the game isn’t actually flipping a coin to decide which ores will generate in each world, because again, the results are directly dependent on the world seed. You still have essentially a 50/50 chance to get any of these eight ores in any given run. However, despite these ores being interchangeable with each other, they aren’t actually treated equally to one another, as the alternate ores will always be better than the default ones with armor giving more defense, weapons more damage, and tools overall being more powerful. But these are just the ores from preh hard mode. So, what about the hard mode ores? Well, first of all, unlike the prehard mode ores, the ores that generate from breaking alters isn’t predetermined when creating a world, but is actually a 50/50 chance in the spur of the moment. However, once your world is blessed with any of these ores, you will not be able to get the opposite ore to generate. So, if you get cobalt, you will not be able to get palladium. Also, much like the preh hard mode ores, certain hard mode ores are better than their counterparts. However, the most interesting thing to me isn’t any of these details, but rather the generation process. Now, as we all know, breaking alters upon entering hard mode will cause three tiers of ores to generate. However, the amount of ore that generates isn’t random, but rather the game uses yet another calculation. this one being well a little complicated. But All right, so just like the previous calculation, which looked a little daunting at first glance, this one can be rewritten in a way that makes it more comprehensible. So let’s understand what’s going on here. First off, we have the world size. And to calculate the world size for this calculation, we’ll be dividing the width of a TRA world by 4200. So for a small world, this number would be 1. For a medium world, 1.524 and two for a large world. Next up, we have the ore tier. This, of course, being the three tiers of ores that you can get from breaking altars. However, instead of starting at one for global and platium, the order goes 0 1 and two. Next, for the division section, we have what appears to be the number of altars destroyed divided by three with the result having one added afterwards. However, that’s not the case as these brackets aren’t actually parenthesis, but rather a floor function, meaning the value inside will always be rounded down to a whole number. So, if this value was not.33, as it would be should only one ultra be broken, the value would be rounded down to zero. But if the number was not 666, such as the case as two alters being broken, it would still be rounded down to zero with the plus one added afterwards. Lastly, we have the factor with this number being taken from this chart right here. 1.05 for cobalt, one for myithil and adamanti each, 0.945 for palladium, and 0.94 oracical and titanium. And once you plug all these numbers into the equation, we can see the number of ore veins that generate for each ore. But wait a second, why are the number of veins different for each ore, even if they’re from the same tier? Well, looking back at the factor variable, we can see that palladium or Kelkum and Titanium, the alternate ores, have a frequency 10% less than that of the default ores. Meaning that if your world has the alternate ores, you’ll have 10% less ore than a world with cobalt, mithril, and adamantite. However, since the alternate ores are also the stronger ores, this honestly seems rather balanced, all things considered. So yeah, ore generation in Terraria is strange. It’s complicated, involves a ton of math, and we almost never consider what’s going on behind the scenes. And honestly, I think that’s one of the positive aspects of a game like Terraria. Have the players be immersed in the world in action and have the game run seamlessly in the background so as to not break the immersion. And as a content creator, I respect that as I try to do the same thing with my videos. All the cuts from scene to scene, the change in music, the animations, and sound effects. If you do a good enough job at the end of the day, nobody will notice a thing since it all feels so natural. But anyway, that’s all I really wanted to talk about today. Just a wacky game mechanic I recently learned about and thought was interesting enough to make a video on. I very much for watching and I’ll see you in the next one. Bye.

Ore generation in Terraria is very strange- so today I decided to dive into this mechanic to see just how the game decides which ores to generate with, along with why and how certain ores are better than others from the same tier.

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