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.
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.
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.
Every dig rolls three separate loot tables:
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.
| 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% |
All of these numbers are defaults and every one of them is configurable.
Teach a detector to look for one specific item:
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.


