Resources XVI: Manganese and Nickel Mining

nickel

magnanese

If we want good steel, we need manganese and nickel. Strictly speaking, these are ingredients of wrought iron, but I'm sticking them into steel. The Spartans may have lucked into manganese-rich iron ores, producing superior weapons.

Thankfully, nickel is easy. It's found in a form of limonite, which I've already categorized as an iron ore. So a tiny bit of limonite will yield nickel, and therefore it's not a Stage 0 raw resource.

Manganese is not terribly difficult to research either. It comes from pyrolusite (found, like everything else, with chalcopyrite). In the interest of fantasy-style names, I'll call it umber instead (which is a rich brown pigment made of crushed pyrolusite). In fact, I wonder what might be some more fantastical names for hematite, etc. Good subject for a future post.

Umber has an occurrence per hex of 2%, but this is improved by the presence of goethite, hematite, mountainous terrain, or boggy areas.