Sluice's & Panning Thread & Discussion

[polar forge]

I would love to see sluices added alongside the new rivers and rapids system that is currently being worked on.
The basic idea is to introduce a slightly higher-tech extension of the existing panning system that integrates naturally with the new river and rapid mechanics.
Instead of replacing panning, sluices would enhance it by producing tailings that can then be panned for better yields.
E.g
Encourages interacting with rivers beyond travel
Builds directly on the existing panning mechanics
Adds a semi-passive but still interactive resource system
Reflects historical sediment sorting and mining techniques
Gives rivers a meaningful role in early-to-mid game progression which would expand on systems already in the game while fitting perfectly with the upcoming river and rapids mechanics. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------OP note: A bunch of great ideas have been suggested below in the comments and have fleshed out additional stuff i highly recommend reading through them!

Core Concept

Sluices would be placed in flowing river water where gravel and sediment can be slowly processed over time. Players would feed gravel into the sluice and the running water would gradually churn it through the sluice channels.
During this process there would be a chance to generate tailings, which represent concentrated ore bearing sediment containing higher rates of valuable materials.
Players would then pan the tailings using the existing panning mechanics, but with slightly improved ore chances compared to normal gravel panning.
The rock type and tailing quality could influence the percentage increase in ore yield when panning.
Tailings could be stored or transported using existing container types.
This would allow players to collect tailings in bulk and pan them later, making it a more efficient but still manual process.
Add rare world spawning sediment beds that spawn inside rivers where rarer ores could accumulate.
Additional prospecting pick Uses which readouts might indicate traces of nearby minerals or nearby sediment beds.

How It Might Work

Player adds gravel or sand to the sluice.
Running water processes it over time.
The sluice produces tailings as output.
Tailings can be collected and panned for increased ore chances.
could be balanced with the existing (Poor-Bountiful) system or by volume of tailings collected.

Example tailings
(Poor) Serpentine Tailings
(Normal) Granite Tailings
(Rich) Halite Tailings
Oak barrel: 64L (Bountiful) Andesite tailings
Wooden Pan: 0.5L (Poor) Serpentine Tailings

Sluice Chains
Multiple sluices could be connected together to form a longer channel system, similar to real historical sluice runs.
However, to prevent automation abuse there could be diminishing returns for longer chains.
The practical limit would likely taper off around 8 connected sluices.

Sluice 1–3: Full efficiency
Sluice 4–6: Reduced efficiency
Sluice 7–8: Minimal additional benefit

**I would love to hear what everyone else thinks comment your thoughts! **

[polar forge]

Another idea could be having a shaking machine powered by wind or water mill power to that could shake the gravel or bone soil through a sieve into tailings, into a bucket or barrel below the device, where it separates out rocks relics and tool parts beforehand simplifying the process.

[granite igloo]

Honestly I’d be happy if I could just set up a water powered panning system that takes in gravel or bone soil and lets you collect the outputs, no tailings or anything extra. The game should have a way for me to auto pan when the player is making iron, and making a new game system just to get your first 20 copper before mining feels a bit excessive.

I like panning as something that would obviously be part of building up from nothing, but it’s the least efficient method of getting metal in game by far, and the only way to make manual panning worth it post bronze is bony soil for gems. The drop rate needed for me to pan tailings after being able to get oodles of nuggets with a pickaxe would incredibly unrealistic and broken.

[polar forge]

I kind of like how base panning isnt too overpowered and it fits the realism but currently there is no reason to engage in panning mechanics midgame.

[granite igloo]

That's kinda my point. Even with increased ore rates hand panning gravel would never be worth it. Any sort of panning automation needs to allow players to completely skip hand panning forever IMO.

Now, one thing that could be quite cool is if we say, pulverized a bunch of the thousands of stone we get into gravel or tailings, we could then have those feed into the rapids panner to finally yield some bonus nuggets.

Would be an actual use for the crates of granite I have and would make panning relevant in the mid/late game. Ofc the drop rates need to be pretty low but I think it would be nice to reward automation with chutes and hoppers by letting players dump off all their stone for a pittance of nuggets and gems

[polar forge]

there's more of a chance to find ores in random bits of gravel than solid rock you crush down kinda unrealistic

[granite igloo]

I mean I'm fine with truly abysmal droprates

I have 5k granite in my second winter, I want something to do with it

[polar forge]

allowing bone soil to be sifted and sluiced is a great idea tbh. i kind of missed including that in the main ideas above.

[polar forge]

sediment beds/deposits being a random in-river generation akin to meteorites or finding buried treasure, would be cool as well!

[craggy sapphire]

i want sluices because i hate panning, i love the idea!

however, i am a man of argument and i should make this fair
the work involved in panning is tedious, yes but it makes the reward so much better
you dont pan because you want to, you pan because you want copper, and when you get copper it feels earned
adding sluices would remove that feeling for new and experienced players

[torn briar]

as mentioned before, the process still needs panning to actually get the material

sluices just give you sediments that give higher chances for that material when you pan it

so you still have to put the work in, but it's more worth it :D

[polar forge]

Yeah you might of skimmed and missed the part where u actually need to pan out the tailings by hand, im personally a fan of adding systems to games that dont completely destroy gameplay loops e.g making them not worth doing, instead i like to see devs build off of whats allready there c:

[granite igloo]

If we have to pan by hand at least add a metal grated pan that goes faster

[polar forge]

Now this is a great idea panning speed by hand can be slow, so to make it quicker in a realistic way building off of the system we could have multiple pans that range in size by tier of the type of metal, size-by-volume=tier That hold more, so for every pan size up it could be double the previous tiers pan size.

So it would double the speed while keeping the speed the same, or balanced slightly slower than double etc..

Scale perfectly to endgame

And not have to change the code for panning much

10/10 idea boop

This is exactly why i love having a community give their feedback on ideas :)

[polar forge]

The speed could also be balanced by the (Poor-Bountiful) quality system less time to pan for higher tiers of minerals.

[dire crag]

Not just that, you also have to actually build a sluice... which might just be gated behind at least basic copper at first

And after you can mine, panning is.. kind of redundant anyhow

[torn briar]

honestly, you could probably make a ceramic one

https://youtu.be/OPIUMpiV0IY?si=DWMIu0nbiw6Vp216&t=9

[dire crag]

well yes, but you should also be able to make molds for more than one ingot at a time

[polar forge]

realisticly sluices are not made out of ceramic primarily because the material is impractical for the demanding, rugged conditions of gold prospecting and mining. While ceramics are durable in terms of hardness, they lack the necessary properties for a portable, high-impact tool.

[dire crag]

or molds for nails and strips

[torn briar]

more just a show of a primitive sluice using pottery
very impractical, still possible

[polar forge]

that was kinda obvious, it being gated for start to mid game would be nails strips boards etc

[torn briar]

but yeah, actual balance, probably better to have it be copper gated

[polar forge]

The balance is meant to be a stepping stone the basic panning to sluices to possibly tech if the vintage story devs ever decide to add such

[dire crag]

I pointed it out as a counter argument to [this really](#1481155155134124072 message)

by the time you're building a sluice, you're not panning anymore, so it not "feeling earned" is kinda silly

[polar forge]

kinda beating a dead horse :P

[dire crag]

fair enough, if ya want I'll delete

[polar forge]

this is a discussion all is welcome :)

[polar forge]

Maybe we could have meteoric iron pieces being found super rarely from higher tier tailings

or even gemstones

[polar forge]

i think these would fit in with some of the cool things we could allready find from gravel

[dire crag]

Tiny bits of meteoric iron being pannable would be cool yea

Though much like other pannable resources, the sheer inefficiency and time investment makes it infeasible to actually engage with that

More reason for sluices!

[balmy summit]

i like this since it doesn't automate the process fully but still saves time since you get more concentrated material to pan. i also seen some people want fully automated panning which i disagree with, i like that in this game you cannot fully automate anything like in Minecraft.

[dire crag]

You actually kinda can, you can automate the input/output of a quern and pulveriser

I wouldn't be opposed to automation in a "realistic" fashion, so actually having to engineer solutions instead of magic boxes into which one item goes and another comes out

But that's beyond this topic really

[polar forge]

cant wait until that's changed tbh

i would much rather more realistic automation

[dire crag]

I mean, their input and output already is pretty realistic

material goes in on one end, gets crushed or milled, and comes out the other

the only thing you could adjust for the quern would maybe be a specific "automatic quern" that has a conical grinding stone and can only be powered and fed from above through a special hopper/axle combination, and only outputs underneath itself

[polar forge]

The current forms for automation dont feel right, slapping a axel connection to a hand crank quern instead of it being fitted to a proper Millstone just seems wrong and lazy, not to mention just magically being pulled out between the stones, and just popping into shoots or chests, personally id love to see Screw conveyors to move objects horizontally or vertically upwards, and the current shoots for downward or diagonal movement of items.

[polar forge]

Back to topic, Sluices could have inserts too, the base being copper , all the way up to steel where they wear out and break over time, stronger higher tiers last longer?

This could give more consistant higher tier tailings

[polar forge]

could be crowbarred out when swapping and chiseled for bits to recycle

[granite igloo]

honestly I feel like you should make a mod with all these ideas

[polar forge]

If only

[harsh flax]

https://discord.com/channels/302152934249070593/1348944005831856149

If you search for Sluice, this thread comes up as a suggested thing roughly every year since 2024

[polar forge]

yeah with rivers being an upcoming update the topic is more prevalent than ever :)

And what would be more fitting with running rivers and rapids than prospecting using it as a mechanic!

[polar forge]

Id love every other person that posted this as a suggestion unite & lets all rub our little neurons together to help the devs make something awesome that we all can enjoy.

[wicked cairn]

It's a neat suggestion but panning actually has an express purpose within the larger design of the game: To mitigate scarcity of mineral nuggets, particularly copper.

In the event that a player generates a new world without much copper nugget generation directly in their vicinity, they can just resort to panning to get the copper that they need to craft the basic equipment they need to get into the copper age without having to travel out very far. A risk-free way of getting copper nuggets, particularly useful in higher difficulties.

Likewise, it is also useful in multiplayer since nuggets that are panned are essentially infinite, regardless of if other players have already picked the chunk clean of nuggets.

Sluicing could be helpful in that second endeavor I just mentioned, but I doubt it would be a priority. The game keeps incentivizing the player to venture out and explore for ores rather than play safe and stay in one place. Panning (or sluicing) really is just a last resort.

[harsh flax]

Yeah, except panning boning soil is a very much end-game thing, but the tools you get are literally early game. So you have to do a lot of manual panning of bony soil because... uhhh yeah because you just have to ok?

As we talked in #1481155155134124072 message, end-game you don't care about a few nuggets here and there anyway, they won't matter. That's not why you want this. You want it to automate the process of extracting more interesting items from bony soil

And you can balance it by reducing the drop rate of certain types of items, or the quality (e.g. gem quality).

Also you can introduce a layer to it which you'd be required to produce something, such as the sieve part of this machine, which will get worn down over time, and you need to replace it. Creating the sieve could be a tedious thing, similar to chainmail

[wicked cairn]

You want it to automate the process of extracting more interesting items from bony soil

Apologies if I haven't read the entire backlog, but what kind of items?

[harsh flax]

https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Bony_soil/en

[wary quartz]

Bony soil has a better loot table, and can drop things like lore books, fancy jewelry, and gemstones

I'd be interested in having a more archeological method of panning bony soil specifically, like a dry sieve or a shake table; all the neat bits of bony soil are large enough to get filtered out, and dipping ancient lore books in water to extract then from dirt is weird

[harsh flax]

Yes all was discussed already

[polar forge]

A shaker table that pre sifts gravel sand etc. just for separating the loot tables from the artifacts and other drops from tailings was kind of the idea that everyone has pitched together, it allows a comprehensive way to simplify the loot tables and balance them independently.

It would also be cool to add a percent (Just for the gravel) to find crystalized chunks of ore just from the sifting method, be it a sifting pan before panning, or an automated powered rumble table into a sifter, realistic too because in the wilds sometimes you find a giant nugget or specimen

[polar forge]

Also dependent on stone type example: your not gonna get gold crystal chunks from stone that doesn't have gold deposits, or quartz.

[livid wadi]

Abysmal drops rates and a slice would kick ass honestly.

I am all in favor of significantly reduced efficacy for less labor

[harsh flax]

I mean you know the saying.... work smarter not harder.

You should be rewarded for spending time on ways that can reduce tediousness so you can enjoy the other parts of the game

There's so much to do for 1 single person anyway, but you should be rewarded for moving "up" in the tech ladder

[polar forge]

for it to make sense and be used mid game it cant have abysmal rates for ores :P

[polar forge]

the problem now is what do we call the sifted gravel sand or bone soil before it gets sluiced

because with the system i suggested, tailings would be post sluice that are the main ore containing component after all is cleaned up just waiting to be hand panned

Bone soil would probably just make soil or compost seems realistic

Would it even have to be a block ? maybe its stackable the same way coal is aswell?

[idle herald]

either this stage or after: Sluice Juice

[polar forge]

LOL

[harsh flax]

In ECO there's the concept of pollution, any industrial processing yields "tailings" which increases pollution in an area if not dealt with.

I think it's a good idea to add a byproduct that you can further sift through (manually?).

Again all I want is a way to extract the most valuable stuff out of bony soil in the end. I don't care about copper bits or whatever

[livid wadi]

This is relative.

Panning is incredibly time consuming and tedious, but i have had decent luck on returns.

I would gladly take a significantly reduced drop rate if I could dump an entire stack of sand and hit the Shaker before walking off.

Now I pan when I have some other activity to do around the house and will come back and click a new block.

[dire crag]

what if you just stick the whole block in, and can't really remove it after?

or turn it into "gravel / bone soil portions"

[polar forge]

you misunderstand so sifting a block, gravel/sand is called classifying to get rid of bigger media in prospecting, so its a pre process to the sluice

[dire crag]

Right

You could also just call it sifted sand/gravel tho

Why so complicated

[polar forge]

because sluices realistically would only catch the smallest items

Tailings are basically dust and the smalliest pieces

[polar forge]

i dunno just brainstorming for cool accurate names for it

[polar forge]

Even the name tailings that i used is kinda scuffed but it works, usually tailings are the leftover garbage thats sifted out

[polar forge]

Imagine being able to seal and move full barrels of stuff aswell.

Because it would be rough having to immediately pan, use buckets etc to deal with tailings immediately and maybe you would want to stock up to do that later!

[polar forge]

also because it would be weird to get drops like copper tool heads jewelery from panning through the dust/tailings at the end process so seperating it out with an earlier process eg the shaker table or sifting would be better.

[dire crag]

The question was in regards to why the name needs to be something special, calling it what it is should be good enough

[polar forge]

Theres also so many different kinds of gravel, sand etc and so many different drop tables for different ores that drop from the different types so trying to keep the new items down is another reason

[dire crag]

I don't think it's particularly viable to make fully real drop tables for every type of gravel or sand, since that depends on what's upstream

[polar forge]

Gravel and sand isnt just from rivers, sediment beds would account for that

and be more biome based

[polar forge]

imagine they take in account of what rock stratas were layered in the area

And that they have drops including all the ores from each inside the sediment patches you could find!

[dire crag]

Not really biome, more rock strata and geological province... but in that case you need to give the sand and gravel a way to save where they came from

[polar forge]

no no no its not gravel and sand

^ from above Add rare world spawning sediment beds that spawn inside rivers where rarer ores could accumulate.
Additional prospecting pick Uses which readouts might indicate traces of nearby minerals or nearby sediment beds.

[dire crag]

Ah that

That sounds more feasible

[polar forge]

yeah so like an onion layers of complexity

[dire crag]

But I would just have it use an average of the surrounding chunks' possible ores for it

[polar forge]

simple geological ores from what type of sand gravel, sediment beds general area of stratas and ores/ gems found within thoes strata

Also slowly warming to the rock crusher idea

turning your stones into gravel, ^ Imagine collecting suevite crushing it up and sifting for chances to find diamonds

Or additional chunks of metorite when sluiced

So many cool ideas :)

imagine smashing up a bunch of quartz and extracting the gold and silver and lead from it

Super realistic

[past quail]

I love the idea i just wanted to say thanks for actually putting a good amount of effort into writing about it.

Its a nice contrast to the single sentence suggestions

[coarse fulcrum]

Stand in rapid water(not falling from top) and the panning becomes automated(maybe slower than player proccesing even)

[winter hawk]

The devs wont ever allow panning to be a reliable source of metal the best you can hope for is small, generated deposits of "metal rich" gravel in rivers which could be panned for higher than average yeild of select metals like gold, silver, platinum

[harsh flax]

Panning is never a reliable source of metal even IRL, maybe for gold. And tbh, nobody is asking for it

[dire crag]

it already is reliable

it simply isn't viable beyond the first one, two ingots.

and this idea is something that happens after the first ingot as well as being incredibly slow, making it really more of a small trickle than even a proper supplement for mining

honestly this is something I'd want added largely so I can add a cool functional decoration piece to base builds.

[dire crag]

functional but decorative things are underrated as hell

[polar forge]

Thats the thing its built off of panning so it wouldn't make the original pans and gameplay loop obsolete, ( it would keep it just as it is with slight tweaks with the pan metal types and size changes, which would increase the speed of panning out by what tier of metal pan you have by the amount of gravel/sand per pan load ), In addition this makes the process of cleaning up your sluices tailings quicker too, which is just the end point of allowing your machines to passively condense down classifying gravel and sand to more condensed ore returns. :)

[polar forge]

Its meant to build off the system realistically using real true to life processes, (but also not hyper realistic we want a happy balance), to bring prospecting and panning to midgame

and endgame possibly with the inserts idea where you get better returns with higher metal quality inserts and higher health pools so they dont need to be replaced as often

[polar forge]

It absolutely is for iron because iron isnt found in big chunks of ore deposits In real life its spread out in everything, the most you would get is from black sand/magnitite and rust collections from the bottoms of rivers oceans and lakes that it was collecting at the bottom for millions of years then becoming rock :P

Its crazy how just the oxidized collected iron from oceans millions of years ago is what we mine today

There have been so many good ideas i wish there was a way to add on to the first post/suggestion... With all the condensed refined ideas so that people at a passing glance could get an updated idea of all the ideas that have been collected together.

[shadow crow]

Ores ought need washed roasted concentrated etc. Metallurgy as it is in the game rn lacks alchemy.

[polar forge]

make a sugestion for it make it well thought out and maybe they could add some cool new stuff :)

[dire crag]

Could be fun to also have a magnetic insert

Gives a chance for iron nuggets

[polar forge]

If this was implemented it would have to be gated behind jonas parts so that its not op

[dire crag]

I don't see how it would be op though?

Since the nuggets still need to be processed in a bloomery to become useful, and then worked on at least a bronze anvil, meaning you can't skip progression like you technically can by skipping copper if you find enough tin nuggets

And with how tiny the amount of material we're talking about is, it sure as hell won't replace mining those frankly gigantic iron seams

[polar forge]

magnets or electricity is replaced by jhonas tech, so it just makes sense logically.

[polar forge]

With the mod update they teased metal mechanical parts

This Idea absolutely would fit in with them

[polar forge]

using metal mechanical parts with the shaker table/sifter should increase the speed, probably about 20% give or take

[polar forge]

speed increased by % of total mechanical power

[gilded zealot]

lodestones exist naturally
iron can be magnetized without electricity by heating red hot and quenching in direction of the planets poles
or by repetitive blows in direction of the planets poles

[polar forge]

not in the strengths to reliably seperate magnitite from sand

you could do this to make a compass needle

[polar forge]

ones that would posibly be strong enough are found where lightning strikes iron containing stones :)

[gilded zealot]

if iron particles are suspended in water it is possible to seperate them reliably, you just need a sizable chunk of iron, going by this historical account of experiments with thermoremanent magnetism
the forces imparted on these larger masses of iron are orders of magnitude higher than what would be necessary to move iron particles
https://archive.org/details/williamgilbertof00gilb/page/48/mode/2up

[dire crag]

if we wanna go for something gamey

you could give the role of "magnet" to meteoric iron

[lean plover]

You can also create such magnets using copper wire and a lightning rod, according to Dr.Stone.

Definitely enjoy the idea of mining out a quarry, using mechanical power to grind the stone into gravel or sand, sluice it, and then panning out the ores. Seems like an appropriate progression of mining technology.

[brisk vigil]

Some solid ideas here! Definitely some desire for this based on the number of auto-panning mods. I use the modded panning machine which sounds quite in line with a lot of these suggestions--gated behind copper (and mechanical power, which with 1.22 encourages use of the water wheel even more), and slightly reduces the yield per block (default 6 from 8; arguably could be even lower, especially if you want to add material tiers to the machine) so that you can't completely abuse the mechanic and are still incentivized to carefully hand-pan bony soil for rare drops. Still arguable that any mod that lets you generate gravel or sand (e.g. quarry mod's debris box) is a little abusable, but that does require tool durability.

[restive trench]

I literally came on here to suggest Slucing. I am sure it's a hot topic.

[polar forge]

We all sluice down here

[polar forge]

Who knows maybe with the new metal mechanical stuff maybe the sluice boxes could be fully metal giving a slight boost to insert durability, or even a slight recovery bonus

[elder charm]

in 1.21 i played with a passive sluice mod, and that kinda broke everything in terms of balance

was able to get bronze and copper in pretty good quantities from it

easier than searching for a vein

[brisk vigil]

it can't be added in a vacuum, need something like the Wilderlands approach--lower drops overall, less gravel, unpannable sand, and/or rarer rich gravel that has most of the good drops

otherwise yeah, you can just excavate a gravel desert for hundreds of units of 'free' metal. and even worse if you have something like the quarry mod that lets you generate gravel from loose stones

[polar forge]

Glad to see my fears that i was accounting for are true :)

[zealous pasture]

excavating a whole gravel desert and then having to process the gravel isn't exactly "free", especially compared to how easy it is to just find a metal deposit.
currently panning is pointless, if this makes panning even half as good as prospecting then it might give players a new, parallel way to progress. which is good.
if you go dig up a whole gravel desert and get a couple "hundred" units of metal, it's still not gonna be super useful for people with the capacity to venture out and prospect everywhere, but it's gonna be a great boost for people still short on metal.
(and obviously balancing around mods is pointless so what the quarry mod does is a non starter)

[harsh flax]

I just want to pan my bony soil that I accumulate without wasting time with the tediousness.

How would a sluice be any more different then e.g. having a helve hammer.

Here's an example of automation: the helve hammer doesn't get used, it automates a few tedious aspects of forging. Just have no ore drops from regular sand. Or something to 'balance it out', if anything. But what Black Metal Jesus said, If people want to waste time carving out a whole desert just to get a few nuggets, let them.. It's still time wasted if you ask me

[brisk vigil]

sorry, "can't" was a strong word. mechanical sluicing fundamentally changes the cost-benefit analysis between panning and mining for some players' playstyles, and would substantially alter the vanilla game experience. As the range of mining, ore generation, and panning mods shows, players have a wide range of preferences for how these systems work and which approaches are 'rewarded'.

Personally, I love the panning machine mod, because manually panning bony soil in year two or three is painful but it still has some desirable rare drops.

[dire crag]

Honestly I agree with this, nothing is actually free

Ultimately it costs your time and patience

If you wanna spend the time you can play on digging up gravel because you for some reason feel you can't prospect... I mean, go ahead, but I find that incredibly silly

[polar forge]

yeah we had this brought up, thats why in one of the earlier messages i suggested the shaker machine to seperate the loot tables,relics etc from the actual ores. thought its a worthwile idea

[polar forge]

allows them to be ballanced induvidually rather than together

[polar forge]

Still hoping for content like this to be added with rivers :)

[lean plover]

I'm hype for it. I doubt this update, but I hope sometime

[broken haven]

Well, we can use Fleece as matting, believe it or not! No seriously, this was an actual mining technique. Miners would place fleece at the bottom of a sluice to catch the gold and then burn it.
Yes, this could be the inspiration behind the reference in Jason and The Argonauts.

[polar forge]

Fleece mats are such a great idea! Maybe they should give the Tailor the recipes to make fleece, and wire mesh for sifters!

[polar forge]

Or instead the recipes for the tailor are more efficient recipes!

[polar forge]

Rivers, Sluices & Panning Thread & Discussion

[polar forge]

Would also love to see different types of clay deposits that match to whatever ore strata the rivers run through.

[polar forge]

I wonder how radfast's work is coming along there hasn't been any update about rivers in some time.