How to read a gold seam
- Grade
- The game’s gold rating, from 1 through 8 in gold-bearing cells. Grade 8 is the highest.
- Dig depth
- How far below the original ground or riverbed the top of the seam begins.
- Thickness
- The vertical amount of gold-bearing material below the top of the seam.
- Estimated volume
- The connected seam’s gold-bearing material in cubic meters, calculated from thickness across its footprint.
The map describes the starting terrain. Prospect again in a worked area to check how much material remains in your save.
Find shallow grade-8 ground
Open Best easy digs on the interactive map. Start with grade 8, a 1 m depth limit and Dry ground only. Pick a result to inspect the spot, then draw a slice to see how the seam continues beyond it.
Two surface-level spots in our analysis were (−350, 299) and (−131, 352). Both had 2.55 m of grade-8 material at the sampled point.
River seam #12
The river seam around The Hunter’s Watch covers 527 m² and holds about 1,326 m³ of grade-8 material in the starting map. Its top sits within 1.5 m of the ground or riverbed over 526 m² of that footprint.
Hunter’s Watch drill 8 lands at (−280.5, −188), where the seam meets the riverbed. A nearby point at (−282, −205) had 2.55 m of grade-8 material at the bed, with about 1.9 m of starting water above it.
Top 15 grade-8 seams
The rank is based on estimated material volume. The depth range describes the top of the seam across its footprint. Each link opens the map’s preset slice through that seam.
| Rank | Volume (m³) | Area (m²) | Depth (m) | Map cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | 7,027 | 2,960 | 0–9.375 | X −286 |
| #2 | 5,313 | 2,128 | 0–9.85 | X −355 |
| #3 | 2,380 | 942 | 0–2.3 | X −22 |
| #4 | 2,324 | 953 | 0.45–1.45 | Z −241 |
| #5 | 2,278 | 906 | 0–4.35 | Z 368 |
| #6 | 1,964 | 771 | 1.075–9.875 | Z −85 |
| #7 | 1,669 | 768 | 0.325–1.45 | Z −300 |
| #8 | 1,636 | 735 | 1.275–5.575 | X 168 |
| #9 | 1,473 | 581 | 0–2.8 | Z 346 |
| #10 | 1,461 | 574 | 0–8.55 | Z −198 |
| #11 | 1,435 | 567 | 0–2.875 | Z 264 |
| #12 | 1,326 | 527 | 0–1.65 | X −284 |
| #13 | 1,131 | 622 | 0.35–0.9 | Z −282 |
| #14 | 1,095 | 431 | 0–2.75 | Z −192 |
| #15 | 1,052 | 451 | 0–9.15 | X 138 |
Normal and Realistic
In two saves using the same map and seed, grade, seam elevation and thickness matched across all 591,105 playable cells. The saved abundance setting was 1.00× on Normal and 0.50× on Realistic. Recovered gold in grams still needs a controlled wash test.