I've recently spent a fair few hours mining and it appears to be very difficult to find the amount of rare ore's to smith a weapon. So a few idea's...
Make each mining room load the rarer ore's on different %, one room with a high % chance to load rare ore's, two with medium % and one with a low % yield. This would work only if the room could be changed every boot, ensuring people would still have to work to find the rare ore load.
Alertantivly make each room load specific ores, perahaps copper, aluminum and gold, or coal, iron and obsidian. That way you could at least reduce the time spent looking for the materials you need.
Lastly, and this may already be the case, using a particular pickaxe will generate different ore's. A smooth hafted pick for the more common, coal, tin and copper 70% of the time, weathers the rarer two handed pick with a 50% chance for the common ores and a equal chance to gather the rarer ores.
Thoughts?
