Factorio Forums

I can't seem to find niobium ore on my map.
Explored quite far and didn't find a single source.
Is it supposed to be this rare?

I'm giving up. Keep exploring and not one patch found.

Started new game, with max setting on niobium frequency, and still can't locate it. Am I missing something?

Ran into this same problem. I tried previewing a new map with every resource turned off except niobium and there was no niobium showing. Only way I got niobium to spawn on a map was to use the custom pymods resource generator in the mod settings.

Same here. When I used the custom one, I got it to spawn, but it looks "ugly" with the squares.
Ended up using "resource spawning in game" mod to add it to my game. Felt like cheating, but couldn't proceed without it

Discovered that the niobium ore patches are affected by the starting area size slider on setup. The larger your starting area size the farther away the first spawn of niobium is. Everything else being equal and niobium set to maximum frequency, with starting area at 100% the first niobium patch going due south was 12 chunks away. With starting area at max (600%) the first patch due south was 66 chunks away. And with minimum starting area size (17%) the first niobium spawn was in the first chunk.