Nothing is buried until you sweep
Treasure spots do not physically exist in the world. Each chunk has at most one candidate spot, worked out from the world seed and the chunk position, so a given seed always hides treasure in the same places. A candidate only becomes a real, loot-bearing spot once you walk within about 5 blocks of it with a detector, and it remembers which detector activated it. Blind-digging finds nothing at all.
Tip: Special biomes are richer ground than plain dirt; heartland dirt keeps only about a third of its candidates.
The beep is a compass
Hold a detector over detectable ground and it beeps on a proximity curve: far away is slow and low, right on top is rapid and high. The sound is not played at your feet. It is emitted from a point shifted 2 blocks toward the treasure, so stereo panning tells you which way to walk. Activated spots also sparkle with particles, and better detectors show those sparkles from farther away.
Tip: Set beep_direction_offset to 0 in the config if you would rather the beep came from your own position.
Digging
Right-click an activated spot with any shovel. The normal shovel action still happens and the treasure comes up as well. Every dig rolls three things: a junk table for that ground, a rarer biome treasure table, and a tier bonus table decided by the detector that activated the spot. There is a hard cap of 8 finds per region (a 4x4 chunk area), so no single beach can be farmed forever.
Tip: Junk is not dead weight: nails, spoons, cans and bottle caps each smelt into an iron nugget.
Three detectors
The basic Metal Detector reaches 16 blocks and turns up junk with a rare emerald, gold, map or diamond. The Prospector's Detector (diamond, glowstone, redstone) reaches 24 and pulls decent emeralds, maps and enchanted worn iron tools. The Resonant Detector, which is a Prospector's plus a netherite ingot and an eye of ender, reaches 32 and is the only one that turns up enchanted books, echo shards, music discs and the occasional enchanted golden apple.
Tip: All three ranges are config values; a server can retune them without a resource pack.
Attunement
Prospector's and Resonant detectors can be attuned to one item type. Hold the detector in your main hand, put the item you want in your off hand, then sneak and right-click the air. The off-hand item is not consumed and a chat line confirms it. Every later dig gets an extra roll (5% Prospector, 10% Resonant) to also drop that item. Sneak and right-click with an empty off hand to clear it.
Tip: By default you can only attune to items the mod's own loot tables can produce; allow_any_attunement removes that limit.
Twelve buried artifacts
Each ground hides exactly one artifact, and it works passively as long as it sits anywhere in your inventory. The Tide Locket grants Water Breathing under beaches, the Sunstone Idol Fire Resistance under deserts, the Canopy Feather cancels fall damage under jungles, and so on through the Nether and the End to the Stillstar, which makes Levitation unable to lift you. Per-dig odds are 0.15% on a basic detector, 0.4% on a Prospector's and 1% on a Resonant.
Tip: The Lucky Horseshoe from the badlands makes every later dig roll its tier bonus one extra time.
The Treasure Journal
A book plus a copper ingot makes a Treasure Journal; right-click to open it. Every collectible, sherd and artifact you unearth is recorded on one page per ground, 51 entries across twelve collections. Entries you have not found stay a gray "?" and "???" so nothing is spoiled. Completing a collection gives a chime, a chat line and an advancement; progress is stored per player with the world.
Tip: Collections are per player, so on a server everyone keeps their own book of what they personally dug up.
The Nether and the End
Carry a detector through a portal and it keeps working. In the Nether the soul sand valleys are its beaches, with crimson, warped and ashen grounds each hiding their own junk, collectible and artifact. In the End the ground to sweep is end stone; all five End biomes feed one grand collection but each hides a different collectible. Detectors also beep toward untouched vanilla buried-treasure chests in range: the real thing, not a mod spot.
Tip: Modded biomes fall back by dimension: Nether biomes give Ashen loot, End biomes give End Barrens loot.
