The need to obtain Bismanol and the inability to extract Bismuthu and Manganese normally turns the game into an endless, ugly grind. Can this be changed?

Is there not mine able patches that spawn?

in the next update the manganese processing tech will be after bismoth and before electricity, that way yo will be able to smelt manganese, as far as bismuth goes, the amount you get from the other ores has been enough in testing. Let me know if you find this to be incorrect and if so please provide as much info as possible. thanks :)

You need chlorine to mine

Stuck here myself as Bismuth is un-mineable without Chlorine. I think if you remove the fluid requirement it should be ok. The amount I got from other ores was super tiny and all of it was needed to feed what few rifle magazines it could.

Have a decent amount of Manganese pre-electricity, but there's not much to do with it. Maybe make Bismanol, but I have nowhere near enough Bismuth to make that worthwhile. Bismuth should unlock before Bismanol, I think.

if you use the alternative recipe to make rifle ammo (2xcoal,1xcopper,1xlead,1xbrass) you will get quite a bit more as all of these raw materials output bismuth. If you prioritize what materials are used were in the early stages of the game that should almost fully eliminate the shortage problem, as I believe the general idea of the mod was to have bismuth be not mainly used for everything tell you can actually mine it. If you still find it to be a problem I would recommend submitting a request to the mod author.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/bismuth

Yes, but you don't get copper until after electricity. And only lead has bismuth as a decent byproduct before that IIRC.

Maybe I should just stop playing with rampant lol.

I'm just going to change the bismuthinite.lua in the Bismuth mod to make it need water instead of chlorine for now to see if that balances it out a bit better for my play style.

bismuth just adds a new optional recipe for ammo.. without it you would still have the lead recipe be exactly the same