Originally posted by Migz - DH:

Originally posted by MistrBill:

I'm pretty sure the veins are there whether you detect them with the wishbone or not. I've seen the tip of one poking out on the surface, where you could just run across it without even having the wishbone, and there's a youtube video of the same thing out there.

Hmm. I've seen two silver veins sticking out of the ground before, but I think that I had the wishbone equipped both times. Definitely equipped for one of the two times. <shrug>

Before I got the wishbone, and knew what the deal was with silver mining, I got frustrated and used the freefly command to try to find the next metal, which I thought was in the mountain biome. I never found anything besides obsidian, which I couldn't mine at the time, cuz I also didn't know about the odd way that iron was gained then either.

Either the silver veins weren't there yet, or I failed to find the veins that were there. I can't say for certain which it was.

<shrug> Magic. :-p

This might or might not be an answer, but small mountain biomes might not have any silver to begin with. The first one I found was like that. I was all over it with the wishbone, and nada.