You can break barnacles on reefbacks to get copper or silver. Don't be afraid to explore farther than you're used to to find materials.

And if you've got the drill arm you can mark copper with the scanner room, I sometimes will show you these big chunks that you can mine with the prawns drill arm so you need a prawn and a drill arm

Me when I need copper:doesn't find copper. Me when I dont need copper:finds a billion copper

Switch to Minecraft it’s everywhere now

Everytime I want Copper or Silver, I hear carefully.

Try it, if you know the sound, you can make the whole electronics crafting tree without breaking a non-renewable resources. I do it one time as challenge, protector of the ecosystem.

reefbacks got you covered

One

I find the most copper around the skeleton just before the Giant Cove Tree. Where there are thermal vents around, in the circular brine pool around the skeleton. 4 or 5 drillables of copper usually, with some gold and silver, too. Dunes is good, too, if you're brave enough. Sometimes, the long lava tunnel from GCT to the ILZ can spawn tons of copper.

The lost river is the BEST place. That and the lava zone. It’s the best place and if you have a ton of storage in your cyclops, it’s good for a long voyage

I was just gunna say go to large copper deposits, and build a base around there. I'm building a base with a shit ton of glass, so I started building it where there's a shit ton of large glass deposits to be able to upkeep for all those resources.

Build scanner rooms in places where limestone nodes appear (which is virtually everywhere, to be honest) and scan for them.

There are several large copper deposits around the area between the NE mushroom forest and the bulb zone, combined with the occasional limestone gathering, that's got me suited up with two full lockers

For those who never tried to find silver: it is a joke. Technically, barnacles also contains silver. I found maybe 1 or 2 out of ~50 barnacles.

Hello! The best way to find silver, gold, copper etc. is to build a scanner room attached to your base and scan for limestone and sandstone chunks

Good luck on finding those resources!

Early game, just look all over for limestone deposits.
Mid game, scan for limestone deposits.
Late game, scan for copper deposits.

You can get it from barnacles on the back of reefback leviathans.

Back in my day we stalked passive leviathans who stomped the copper from the ground! *shakes cane at sky* Ah the beta days...

pretend you don't need it and look through limestone deposits because you know your not getting any copper when you actually need it

REEFBACKS, JUST BREAK THE BARNACLES

Near were you start, u will found a something like a forest, you can find it any way you can find in the rocks like titanium breaking this rocks

Slightly less efficient, but renewable: go to the deep-ish sandy area with the red grass. You’ll see some massive creatures that look like a cross between a whale and a squid. These are friendly Reefbacks. On their backs you’ll find blue glowing stones. Break them, and you’ll get either copper or silver.

There should be a large coral tube not far from the starting reef. That will provide most of your early to mid game need for copper.

In the safe shadows anyway look for the Limestone Outcrop stuck into the walls of the biome of safe shadows

Wich is the werid glowing mushrooms biome?

Avoid jump-running like low sanity. Lot of empty running does not let to see things. Might need eventually everything so be observant, take notes. I usually want to find bees and flax seeds early more than copper. And by the time I have found bees and enough flax seeds I know several copper deposits too.

Surface copper deposits are not the nuggets you find laying on the ground. The deposit is actually a small deposit below those nuggets, and it should be more than enough for some tools and an anvil.

Don't run

Make a prospecting pick before you make an anvil - use it to find the deep copper veins that are much larger.

Couple things: Always mark your floor candy deposits are beneath them, make a pickaxe and hammer first, and if all else fails: turn up your ore distribution and how common copper and tin are when setting up your world.

Ways to find copper/ore

Surface Deposit: You may find copper nuggets at the surface, that mean in 100% there will be a copper vein under the Stone layer (sometime directly under the dirt, sometime a few Stone block under). This also work for tin, quartz, olivine, coal and borax.

Prospecting: The prospecting has 2 mode, density search and node search.

Density search tell you the percentage of an ore in the chunk you are in, if you mined every single block in the chunk x% of it would be of that ore, it also indicate you on a more broad side "how much" there is, (poor, decent, high etc), to search you must mine 3 Stone block (sample) that must be separated by at least 3 blocks.

Node search is usefull after you found an area with a satisfying amount of ore in it, it will tell you if there is ore in a 8 block sphere radius (its customizable), allowing you to actually pin point the vein. To search you simply have to break one block and it will tell you if there is ore in a 8 block radius.

In the end all you gotta do is search for a high or decent chunk, mine down and switch to node search and break a block every 8 or so blocks down

Surface copper don't necesseraly mean there will be a lot of copper in that place.

The prospecting pickaxe have two mode, one allow you to check the concentration of ore in the area, the other give you the information if there are actual ore withing a certain radius (that radius can be changed so normaly IIRC it's 6 block around you)

The usual procedure is to go around taking sample on the surface with the first mode of the prospecting pickaxe, and once you get a high enought return (usualy for copper i prefer finding a place with like at leas 20% copper) dig down, check every 10 block or so with the second mode, if there is no return, go deeper, if there is a return chek around using one again the pickaxe second mode to triangulate the position of the ore deposit. That may take a bit of time but usualy you don't need more than one spot to get enought copper for you to be fine with that one deposit until much latter in the game.

I should link this reply I made to someone asking how to find copper if you're not having any luck with surface ore bits:
https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageStory/comments/1imyclv/comment/mchbp4c/

When you find copper nuggets dig straight down, should be no more than 10 blocks.

Otherwise, sometimes you have to search far to find good deposits

I've gotten copper rich just from finding deposits below copper chunks. I've found a lot in a biome with sparse spruce trees and hills of granite gravel, very easy to see the surface bits and they seem decently common there

I had this same issue. Look for tall hills. Those will extend DOWN, as well as up, and the water's only... 20 deep, or so? So if you dig at the base of a hill, you can usually go straight down, get below the bottom of the water, and then head sideways. Just bring a stack of soil in case you poke a hole in the ocean.

Also, "Native" copper is usually pretty deep down, like at y=40 to 70. So, be prepared.. full stack of ladder, torch or lamp, stuff like that.

How did you get the game to mark it like that?

Yup, have came across flooded caves before. I think the best way to deal with them is to fill what you can using low health full blocks (dirt is recommended as you can dig it with bare hands) - that will get rid of any source blocks, then dig the dirt up and repeat until you get rid of all of the water. Please correct me if there's a better way to do this, this is how I do this.

Is the water deep? If it is you should dive down and see if you can find in copper in the rocks underwater.

That is one deep pond