there's this mod that lets you create a mineshaft, which is instanced so it might work for letting people find metals when its hard once everyone has excavated most stuff https://valheim.thunderstore.io/package/GoldenJude/Mineshafts/
#Possible solution to metals not respawning?
sweet needle
mystic lantern
We should have added a server side mod to reset ores. I'm not sure if it's working as intended if nothing has respawned yet? But mineshafts is broken right now and is waiting on an update. In some cases mineshafts can cause a lot of server lag if they get too big, so I don't think it would be a good addition to the server. We do want ores to be replenished, so will be getting that working for the official launch.
ripe olive
We should have added a server side mod to reset ores. I'm not sure if it's worki...
something i was thinking about to decrease lag was your ore caves mod idea and limiting mining ores at all to that
mystic lantern
Yeah that's the whole idea behind it. It will have the ability to turn off terrain changes. Those used to be notoriously bad for lag, especially with a lot of players due to the amount of data it takes up to store the changes. More of a theory right now, but think it would help. Need a big test server when it's done