Bug #514

Terrain Protrusions Blocking Carvers and Collectibles

Status:	New
Priority:	High
Added by:	vioxynteris on April 24, '25
Assigned to:	Unassigned
Due date:
Reported for:	S5.09

Steps to Reproduce

1. Begin a mission (ideally one in a noise-heavy biome and/or with a secondary objective that comes with a carver e.g. Apoca Blooms, Fossils, Glyphid Eggs, etc.)
2. Dig through decorative terrain and protruding mineral deposits to check for secondaries missing carvers
3. Check the map for small pockets in which collectibles could spawn
4. Rinse and repeat until you find something. I don't know, I've only ever come across these by chance and there's probably plenty more I've missed.

Explanation

Carver-type shapes occasionally fail to spawn, often preventing access to collectibles and objectives. In certain cases, terrain protrusions enclose smaller items that don't spawn with carvers (i.e. carvers around beer ingredients do not exist). This leads to collectibles being mostly (if not entirely) enclosed when they should otherwise be visible.

Most obstructions I've been able to observe so far have been decorative biome features (such as crystal formations in Salt Pits or Crystalline Caverns), but on occasion they will be objective-related (such as clusters of Oil Shale or Nitra). The "infected" terrain around Lithophage contagion spikes can also spawn over veins of minerals (including Nitra and Morkite). Mining "through" the terrain yields no minerals despite the infection taking its shape and could potentially cause mission softlocks.

This could be related to a few other carver-related issues, including but not limited to:

• RMA_CarverFacilityMinimal sometimes failing to replicate https://app.betahub.io/projects/pr-5632787018/issues/342
• Biome decorations & noise (e.g. stalactites in Glacial Strata, "ripples" in Dense Biozone or Magma Core) or mission-related carvers (e.g. RMA_CarverA in Industrial Sabotage) spawning after Core Stone placement, occasionally causing the Core Stone event to trigger on mission start (countless reports about this here already, mostly in sabotages)
• Mini-M.U.L.E.s spawning under the broken drop pod on Salvage Operations https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepRockGalactic/comments/1jnxqod/ever_seen_a_mini_mule_under_the_drop_pod/
• Uplinks in Salvage Operations spawning in small, disconnected caves https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepRockGalactic/comments/1c2qqbq/guess_who_spent_about_40_minutes_trying_to_find/
• Retrieval Drop Pods and Mineheads landing in high, difficult-to-reach places nestled above decorative terrain https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepRockGalactic/comments/1jqrpa4/totally_fair_drop_pod_spawn/

Here's a video with the examples I could find: https://youtu.be/3Fih5MYt5TE I play with many mods (all visual/informative, none are sandbox), so I don't host my missions. The host for all but one of these clips only plays with ModHub and Fast Forging, neither of which interfere with cavegen, carvers, or hitboxes.

List of cave seeds shown in video, in chronological order:

• (S05.05) 74440,15946,43874 (Glacial Strata, Mining Expedition)
• (S05.07) 17428,64407,65386 (Azure Weald, Escort Duty)
• (S05.07) 55516,11689,43328 (Azure Weald, Elimination)
• (S05.08) 86034,34023,25364 (Sandblasted Corridors, Deep Scan)
• (S05.08) 86034,34023,25364 (Salt Pits, On-Site Refining)
• (S05.09) 37479,70524,42470 (Crystalline Caverns, Mining Expedition)

A few workarounds I would consider:

• Switch around the order of generated carvers (cave shapes first -> biome noise & decor -> RMA_CarverA for machine events if applicable -> season events -> objectives -> collectibles and their carvers)
• Add a check after all cavegen completion that checks to see if collectibles' physical model is more than 50% (sample amount) embedded in any terrain, then reposition if yes
• Prevent small objectives from spawning in areas where they have less than a certain amount of space around them
• Force objectives to spawn on terrain that is not occupied by biome noise or decorations
• Copy-paste the spawn requirements for stationary ENEs and apply them to collectibles (but with less space requirements, the ability to generate on walls, so on and so forth)

All the best, rock and stone. <3

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