One Hour One Life Forums

Some of this is going to be really basic, but with the amount of ground iron, perceived scarcity, number of veins out there, etc, it's clear a limited number of us do iron runs.

1) Always, always, always set a home marker.

2) Find a backpack if possible, it isn't necessary, but is extremely useful. Clothes also make it easier. if you say you're going on an iron run, an elderly person will probably give you clothes over an infant that may or may not be useless.

3) Chain your yum a bit with things you can't find in the wilds, eat some popcorn, sauerkraut, etc. If you're going to be gone a long time, wasting a bit of food for your yum chain isn't a big deal. Even eating a corn is fine in this scenario, the advantages of getting a 15 yum chain while doing this are huge [anyone who thinks that isn't worth it to get 14-15 iron for a village can bite me]

4) pack a piece of bread and a pie flavor you havent ate yet.

5) Grab a horse and cart if at all possible. They aren't that expensive, so if you die and lose one in the wilds it isn't a huge deal compared to the possible rewards. If there's already iron and no horses, consider making one. Though i've had successful iron expeditions just dragging a cart. If you have the time, don't take any baskets, make them in the wilds

6) Choose a direction to leave town. You can ask at the smith if they know what direction people have gone for iron. they usually won't. Tell them what direction you intend to go.

7) Follow the biome edges, it allows you to see way more biomes. Avoid going through the desert, as rattlesnakes will tip your horsecart. Usually, the very very near iron is picked out close enough this matters more once you've reached 250 or more tiles.

8) If you're not already carrying one, make a sharp stone at the first opportunity. You can carry a knife if you wish, but it has no extra applications in the wild, and you can later abandon a sharp stone for a ground iron. Your return trip will be surprisingly fast. [so you won't need a sharp stone for foraging]

9) make baskets at the first swamp. Be careful of boars. Remember you need to be hopping on and off of this horse all the time. If you can find a bunch of reeds in one place it's way easier, it kind of cages your horse in and l keeps the boar out.

10) Collect foods you need for yum along the way as you see them

11) Watch the spawn patterns. This is a double edged sword, because you're also looking for ruins to loot, but anywhere that is new spawn will have ground iron. it is sometimes that case that straight north of your camp has been seen, but 50 tiles to one side is new spawn. This means iron is unpicked. You'll be amazed how close by there is new spawn, if you don't do this often.

12) Once you get to a new Badland, make a reasonable effort to search the whole thing, unless it appears picked out and you want to continue onward. Badlands are dangerous, and horses run away. This was my biggest initial problem. To avoid danger and awkwardness you want to collect iron in a very specific way. Get off of the horse, preferably standing on the iron or something else, swap it with the basket, set the iron down in basket, set it back in, and hop on the horse. if you take any longer or are not on a tile, a wolf can kill you at any time, and chasing the horse over the badlands is never fun. It's crucial that this is done quickly and safely.

13) Note any iron veins. Do not take up space with a stanchion kit and a pick unless you know where they are. Remember, things can be hard to find again in this game. There's not a good reason to set up mines until ground iron is picked out. But if it is picked out and veins are available, take your current load home, and head back out with a pick and a stanchion kit. Some nice individuals leave stanchion kits next to horse carts, but they are also not difficult to make, if there is carpentry tools and a rope available.

14) If the iron pickings are decent, continue until you have a near full load. Hopefully, the remains of a pie are the only thing in your pack, so you can collect 15 iron. One could abandon the pie- it's worth it for an iron- but i'd say better safe than sorry, even if you get home surprisingly quick and could easily live on gooseberries. If iron pickings are slim, go home on a different route with an under-full load, you may find the rest of it on the way home. Usually, at this point my yum chain has just broken, and i run home eating pie.

15) If you travel more than 1k, you've gone farther than is usually necessary, and should consider going home along a different route, where you will often pass by other iron. though if you've just gotten to new spawn, there's no reason to leave the trip underutilized. It may be more efficient to just run this far anyway, instead of stopping to inspect every nearer badlands.

16) Return to your village, usually to great praise and adulation. Report your findings and the location of veins to the smith, or to the people in the nursery. Note any useful identifiers, such as wild horses, abandoned village, biome edges, etc. or even consider stopping to pull down tree branches on your way back. i suppose leaving a note would be a good thing to do, but there's rarely paper and a pencil around.

17) if you're young enough and so inclined, do it again, choosing a direction based on your findings. If you found a good spot that you can easily return to that is over 1k, a horse goes there directly pretty damn fast, but be careful of snakes. [amazingly, the one time i hit a snake, there was a lasso right there...though three horses were trapped in a tiny desert biome, so they may have been put there by another player, and it wasn't a wild lasso...] If it was bad pickings, go another direction. it's not uncommon to find plenty of iron within 500 or so tiles even in a mature civ. If you start when you become old enough to take the horse cart, you have time for roughly three iron runs in your life.

18) Have fun and get annoyed by how bitchy people are about iron, given it's widespread availability. [Though ALWAYS recycle your tools, some people like me put a lot of work into gathering iron! it should at least serve a purpose, instead of just being wasted]

I hope people find this helpful, some of this is really obvious, but it's clear a limited number of us are doing the lion's share of long distance iron gathering, and that we can afford more tools than we're living with. I'm of the side that civilizations are not failing due to lack of iron, they're failing due to not going to get it (if that, i've been in a few situations where iron actually runs out in town). Even if you have to go 2k to find iron, that's not too time prohibitive, as long as you run straight there, as opposed to circling every biome for iron.