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MetalDetector

Fishing is Minecraft's sit-still loot loop. Metal detecting is the walk-around one. Craft a detector, hold it, and go for a walk. Find junk, collectables or treasure! What are you waiting for?
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Description

How It Works

1. Hold a detector and walk

Hold a detector in either hand and the mod scans around you every tick for buried treasure inside your detector's range.

Ground only counts as sweepable if it's in the detectable block tag: sand, red sand, gravel, dirt, grass block, coarse dirt, podzol, rooted dirt and mud in the overworld; soul sand, soul soil and both nyliums in the Nether; end stone in the End. Stone, dirt paths, and anything you've paved over don't hide anything.

2. Read the beeps

The detector beeps at the nearest treasure it can see. Both the rate and the pitch climb as you close in, so a rising, quickening beep means you're getting warmer:

Distance Beep every Pitch
12+ blocks 1.0 s low (0.6)
8–12 blocks 0.8 s 0.9
5–8 blocks 0.6 s 1.2
3–5 blocks 0.4 s 1.5
under 3 blocks 0.2 s high (1.8)

The beep is also emitted from a point up to 2 blocks toward the treasure rather than from you, so vanilla stereo panning tells you which way to walk. Turn it down or off with beep_direction_offset if you'd rather hear it centred.

3. Activate and dig

Get within about 5 blocks and the spot becomes activated: it's now a real, loot-bearing spot, and it permanently remembers which tier of detector found it. Activated spots sparkle with particles when you're near — and better detectors show those sparkles from farther away (8 / 12 / 16 blocks by tier).

Then right-click the spot with any shovel. The normal shovel action still happens, and the treasure comes up with it.

4. What comes out

Every dig rolls three separate loot tables:

  1. Junk — the terrain's base table. Always rolled. This is most of what you'll get.
  2. Treasure — the ground's rarer, biome-flavoured table.
  3. Tier bonus — based on the detector that activated the spot, not the one in your hand. Better detectors mean better odds of the good stuff.

If your detector is attuned, there's a fourth roll for the attuned item. If you're carrying a Lucky Horseshoe, the tier bonus rolls one extra time.


Three Detectors, Three Tiers

Tier Detector Range Sparkle Attunable Artifact chance
1 Metal Detector 16 blocks 8 0.15%
2 Prospector's Detector 24 blocks 12 5% 0.4%
3 Resonant Detector 32 blocks 16 10% 1%
  • Metal Detector — iron, copper, redstone. Junk, with a rare emerald, gold, map or diamond.
  • Prospector's Detector — diamond, glowstone, redstone. Richer finds, and it can be attuned.
  • Resonant Detector — Prospector's + Netherite Ingot + Eye of Ender. The best hauls: diamonds, enchanted worn tools, enchanted books, echo shards, music discs, even the rare enchanted golden apple.

All of these numbers are defaults and every one of them is configurable.

Attunement

Teach a detector to look for one specific item:

  • Hold a Prospector's or Resonant detector in your main hand.
  • Put the item you want in your off hand.
  • Sneak + right-click the air. The off-hand item is not consumed.
  • Sneak + right-click with an empty off hand to clear it.

From then on, every dig gets an extra roll (5% / 10%) to also drop one of that item. By default you may only attune to items that appear in the mod's own loot tables.


 

 

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