Struggling to find a single cave after landing at the prospect site? Feeling exhausted, getting critically low on food and water after making two circles around the entire perimeter of your landing site? The bad news is, yes, you probably missed a cave or two. Now, the good news is, as soon as you know what you are looking for the only thing you will need to find your first cave is a basic pickaxe.
This means that their entrances do not sit in plain sight and are instead underwater or are covered up, often by large stone slabs. The underwater caves might take you some time to find, and not all fish on Icarus are peaceful (you might have noticed that you sometimes emerge from lakes with several stacks of poison debuff), so you may want to start by looking for the nearby covered caves first.
The layer of stone cover blends these caves in with their surroundings and makes them harder to spot at first, but once you know what to look for, the flat appearance of the covered entrance will actually aid you in hunting them down.
Ta-dah! The illusion is now forever broken. Come to think of it, this one looks like a gate, doesn’t it?
Pull out your pickaxe, the type doesn’t matter: the standard Stone Pickaxe will work just fine.
Start walking along the edge of one of the nearby mountain, looking for areas that look unnaturally flat (see the image above).
Once you suspect an area, approach it with your pickaxe out. You will see a small green pickaxe icon pop up and a label that will indicate that the slab in front of you can be mined (small image on the left).
Now, just mine your way through it and enjoy your precious ore! It’s about a time your pickaxe got an upgrade to the iron tier, right?
Remember that caves come in different sizes and (ore) rarity tiers, and some may even function as tunnel passages. If you are willing to search underwater or venture into the unforgiving blizzards of the arctic biome, you might locate some giant formations with massive supplies of ore. Some of these caves even come with multiple levels!
Walking along the stone wall with your trusty pickaxe is a great way to find secret stashes of valuable resources and more unusual secrets within — these discoveries are great for crafting and leveling alike. A very helpful website was put together by u/FinallyRage during the early beta phases of the game, mapping a variety of caves found by contributing players: give it a look!
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Mila Grish
Dedicated contributor at EIP Gaming and a part-time collector of books she will never have time to actually read. Jumps on the newest releases just as quickly as on the uncovered dusty collections from the basement. For her, shiny graphics can never be an excuse to not have a polished player experience or an immersive story.
