I've been following Clockwork Empire for a while and had been planning on picking it up after it came out of early access. ... but even with the release just around the corner I couldn't wait any longer so I picked it up yesterday. One thing I haven't been able to figure out is how to get iron. I'm at the point in my game where I really need it to progress. I have a mine right now but all I get are rocks and coal at the moment. I have naturalists surveying for minerals but I don't understand how to figure out where those minerals they find actually are. When the notification comes up it just zooms over to where the naturalist is and not where they found the mineral. Is there any way to see where these minerals are? Is there any other reliable way to get iron if they don't find any? I think they've only found native gold and malachite so far. Once I actually find hematite what do I do? I'm assuming I have to build a mine way out wherever I find it, but does it just have to be close to where the ore is or do I have to put it in a specific spot? I also have some unrelated questions about future features. Are there any plans to make it possible to scroll the map with the mouse instead of the keyboard? Also would it be possible to make it so you can zoom to a workshop by clicking on the notification that a job is finished? Anyway I've been enjoying my time with the game so far and look forward to trying the release build!
Welcome to the Clockwork Empires community! Iron is smelted from hematite. You can find hematite ore on the surface as those red-brown lumps, or you can mine it out of the ground (more on mines later). When a Naturalist surveys for minerals, what they're doing is walking over to one of those gold arrows and revealing what a Mine on that location would produce. Unfortunately, as you'd noticed, the notification zooms on the Naturalist rather than the survey location. The best you can do at present is scroll around and look for the closet survey point. A Naturalist will certainly reveal buried hematite deposits (and every other mineral type) in the course of a survey, provided it's present. A mine will produce the surveyed mineral as long as it is within 10 squares of the survey location.
Thanks for the reply. Part of my problem was that I was trying to mouse over the mine symbol that was above the gold arrow to get a tooltip. Oddly enough when I reloaded my savegame today most of those symbols were gone leaving just the gold arrows, which I was able to hover over and discover what minerals lay beneath (if they were surveyed).
