The most recent data pack for part 2 of the Caves and Cliffs update introduced giant ore veins for iron and copper, providing an excellent, game-knowledge based alternative to iron farming for acquiring these materials in bulk. Currently, they seem about as common as mineshafts, which might be a bit too common given their ideally late-game use. You wouldn't usually want to stumble across that much iron on your first cave expedition in the early game - that would be too easy. It makes sense to make the veins rarer, something you have to travel to find, perhaps almost as rare as strongholds. However, a player can't possibly explore every cave in the world looking for something so rare. This begs the question: other than through blind luck, how would a player find much rarer giant ore veins?
IRL, major iron deposits often cause local anomalies in the Earth's magnetic field that can affect compasses. What if standing in a chunk with a higher than normal iron (or copper) content caused the player's compass to go haywire? That way, knowledgeable players could locate areas with giant ore veins while they explore the surface by bringing their compass with them. It gives players a reason to explore wide areas searching for resources, and to keep coming back once the resource has been found. I predict this sort of search would be a mid to late game activity, which would be ideal.
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