This is a very short guide (with pictures) to help you identify areas while you are mining that might have ores beneath the surface. When you are mining, it is very obvious which blocks contain ores such as iron, coal, silver and gold, when looking at the block from the side. However, there are also clues that you can use when looking at certain blocks from overhead to identify the locations of these ores. This guide addresses examples from dirt and mountain grass blocks. This method can also be used for mesa blocks in the desert mines or the mountain blocks, but doesn't necessarily work well for sand, snow, cave or other grass blocks.

If you are looking for the basics of mining, I'd recommend this guide by "BustedHipGaming" (formerly known as "Chicken Beak") on mining as it helped me the most when I started playing Cubic Castles: http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=434862198

When mining, there comes a point where you are done mining for ore based on identifying ore from seeing it in the sides of the blocks, and all you are left with is a base of dirt or mountain grass. There are a couple of patterns that you can look for to identify a block of ore that is beneath the surface.

For dirt blocks, you will see a halo like marking around the block if it has an ore in it. However, if you have a base of mountain grass, the marking will appear as a shadow around the block.

Here's a couple of pictures of the dirt and the mountain grass areas that have an ore beneath them:

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If you are unsure of the pattern, here are the same pictures with annotations of the areas containing a block of ore:

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**Note: This only works if you have removed at least one layer of blocks off the blocks you are looking at. So if you have dirt or grass on the top layer of the blocks, they will not show this pattern until you remove at least one layer of blocks. If you look closely, you may be able to spot these patterns in other blocks (such as mountain, sand, etc) as long as they aren't the top level blocks.

Here's a few pictures that verify there were actually ore found beneath the surface for the dirt and mountain blocks:

Sometimes it can be a bit confusing if there are multiple blocks next to each other as the whole area may appear with a highlight or shadow, but it's better to mine the blocks than leave them if you think there might be ores beneath the surface. Worst case you get some extra blocks. Best case, you get some addtional ores.

Here's an example of an area with mutliple ores in mountain blocks:


And here's the proof that there were multiple ores in the highlighted areas:


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Happy mining! Go get that ore that is waiting for you in the Cubic Castle mines!