Stripmining is a viable choice at endgame when you have a haste beacon, Efficiency V diamond pickaxes and an experience farm to repair those pickaxes. And you'll burn through those tools quite fast even if you have Unbreaking on them.
Though, until then? Branchmining all the way, yup.
I meant, nobody ever recommends ACTUAL strip mining. In other words, the "real" meaning of the term which people are for some reason demanding be known by players of a computer game.
I meant, nobody ever recommends ACTUAL strip mining. In other words, the "real" meaning of the term which people are for some reason demanding be known by players of a computer game.
The fact that people use the term "strip-mining" has no relevance to their intentions. If I called someone a ****tarded dickwad, and among my small group of insane friends that was the highest honour to be bestowed upon someone, I can't blame them if they hit me. "Hey man, no-one would ACTUALLY call you a ****tarded dickwad, it means something the complete opposite of what you think it is".
Be aware of the terminology you use. If someone asks "What is the best way to mine" and you say "strip mine". What do you think they are going to do? They aren't going to clue onto the opposite meaning, they will probably Google it. Even if they find the Minecraft wiki page, even it has strip mining as being an "open cut" mine.
I think people just need to be aware of illogical terminology for newbies.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long, the grasshopper kept burying acorns for the winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns. And also he got a racecar. Is any of this getting through to you?"
Stripmining is a viable choice at endgame when you have a haste beacon, Efficiency V diamond pickaxes and an experience farm to repair those pickaxes. And you'll burn through those tools quite fast even if you have Unbreaking on them.
Try that in 1.8... at the most you can only repair items six times, less if you combine to get maxed out enchantments (e.g. make an Efficiency V pickaxe from Eff IV picks). I don't know why anybody would do that anyway; for me "end-game" mining is exploring caves, if just for fun, but I don't explore any caves, besides anything my mine runs into, until I've done everything up to defeating the Ender dragon.
Also, of note, caving gets you plenty of XP to repair items without XP farms (which I've never used even for initial enchanting, mining quartz instead); I can get 65 levels (67 one time recently) before having to repair my Efficiency V, Unbreaking III pickaxe for only 33 levels (playing prior to 1.8 of course), which is a profit margin of around 7-fold; I can even repair my armor and sword between repairs and still get around 50 levels; a typical play session nets 4-5,000 XP.
I also suspect branch-mining at diamond level easily gives you an XP surplus as well, especially if you mine every single ore; redstone is nearly as common as coal and gives you triple the XP on average; if you feel it takes up too much space do what I do; I bring an Ender chest with a crafting table so I can make resource blocks of all the ores I mine, including stops to smelt iron/gold (I also bring an anvil so I can repair as necessary without returning to my base); for redstone, with an average of 4.5 dust per ore you can store 2-4.5 times as much redstone, compared to using Silk Touch or not converting the dust; note that even Fortune only averages around 6 dust since it is less effective on redstone, so that's still 50% more storage.
Also, did I mention to mine every ore? I find quite a few diamonds this way; when caving you should mine every ore below y=16 even if you otherwise only mine valuable ores (I know that some people even mine out all dirt and gravel, which can be mined pretty quickly with unenchanted stone shovels; a diamond shovel with Unbreaking III is also a pretty good investment since it needs only one diamond to repair it for another 6,000+ uses).
The best way to mine for diamonds, in a normal survival world, is to go down to layer 10. Then, you dig a 1 by 1 by 3 tall tunnel for about one hundred blocks. Then, go and make more 1 by 1 by 3 tunnels every 3 three blocks down your first tunnel. This works best because diamond spawns in chunks of 4-ish, therefore if you leave three blocks apart with your tunnels, there's no chance of any diamonds getting left behind. Also, you should mine at layer 10 because diamonds spawn most frequently on layers 10, 11 and 12. (Hence the three tall tunnels...)
Uhm, so? Whether you stripmine, branchmine, tunnelmine or cavemine, your pickaxe will run out anyway. It's just they'll run out faster when you do beacon-assisted stripmining but you'll also get resources faster. Which is a reason why people could prefer that over caving or branchmining.
Efficiency is important though; while with my playstyle I'm constantly getting more new diamonds and other stuff than I use other people may not want to spend the time to mine. Indeed, some people even try to completely avoid mining by making iron farms or getting villagers with diamond tool/armor trades (including doing so in 1.7 so they can have the trades in 1.8).
Also, is mining out entire chunks (below y=16) really more efficient in terms of diamonds per unit time? Sure, you are guranteed to find any diamonds in the chunk but it surely can't be faster than just branch-mining over several layers, or even one layer; as I mentioned, you can cover a whole chunk over four layers by mining only 128 blocks, while mining every block across 12 layers (guesstimate, minus whatever can't be extracted from bedrock) means 3,072 blocks mined - in other words, you'll be able to cover only two chunks, averaging around 7 diamond ore, per Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe (including dirt/gravel will only slightly affect this especially since 1.8 made them rarer; gravel is hardly more common than coal now, even in 1.6.4 they are only around 10% of all blocks).
By comparison, covering a third of those layers with my method would enable you to cover about 49 chunks per pickaxe, getting about as many diamonds as 16 whole chunks - about 8 times as many diamonds in 1/8 the time, even more when you factor in diamonds mined vs. diamonds used up, even if you use Fortune to mine them. So it looks like branch-mining is a clear winner.
The fact that people use the term "strip-mining" has no relevance to their intentions. If I called someone a ****tarded dickwad, and among my small group of insane friends that was the highest honour to be bestowed upon someone, I can't blame them if they hit me. "Hey man, no-one would ACTUALLY call you a ****tarded dickwad, it means something the complete opposite of what you think it is".
Be aware of the terminology you use. If someone asks "What is the best way to mine" and you say "strip mine". What do you think they are going to do? They aren't going to clue onto the opposite meaning, they will probably Google it. Even if they find the Minecraft wiki page, even it has strip mining as being an "open cut" mine.
I think people just need to be aware of illogical terminology for newbies.
I would never try to coach a new player by simply saying "go strip mine." I would describe what I was suggesting them to do, and then say what it is called. The fact is, in the minecraft community, strip mine is used to mean something different than it means in the real life mining community. That happens in other types of communities, too. Perhaps that irritates you for some reason, and I guess it might be "nice" if people used it like the real life mining community does, but you're overreacting when you call it "the stupidest thing you ever heard" and suggest the people who make the mistake are airheads and ignorant of the english language like you did in this post:
The fact that somehow strip mining means to to dig tunnels is the stupidest thing I have ever heard... It is almost like people on the internet have no concept of the outside world, or the English language
Perhaps "tunnel mining" or "line mining" would be better. Fair enough if you are having a conversation between fellow airheads, but if you were talking to a new player, or someone that has any form of knowledge on real-world mining, I think it is worth using a term that is self explanatory to save everyone problems with inevitable misinterpretation.
If the community uses the term so much why is it not defined on the wiki? Everything I have found, outside of a few people on this forum, indicates branch mining is the term used for digging long repetitive tunnels?
Considering the official wiki has contradictory information I fail to see why we should perpetuate the idea that strip mining means something other than what strip mining is defined as (in both Minecraft and real world applications). It is "hella" confusing.
Also I apologise if I offended with previous airhead/stupid comments, I tend to get pretty abrasive when faced with these illogical internet idioms as it tends to reinforce rote learning (memorise this because this is correct) as opposed to analytic thinking (here is what makes sense because of these supporting arguments). I will step back a notch, but I still believe my point to be valid.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long, the grasshopper kept burying acorns for the winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns. And also he got a racecar. Is any of this getting through to you?"
When mining and you encounter a lava lake that the top is at head level, how do you guys/gals handle that?
In the past I would just block off that branch and put a sign up letting me know not to continue on that path. I even got to the point where I would decorate it as an abandoned mine shaft. I no longer do that and actually take steps to allow safe passage past/through that spot to continue my mining.
When mining and you encounter a lava lake that the top is at head level, how do you guys/gals handle that?
In the past I would just block off that branch and put a sign up letting me know not to continue on that path. I even got to the point where I would decorate it as an abandoned mine shaft. I no longer do that and actually take steps to allow safe passage past/through that spot to continue my mining.
Stairstep up to the lava with cobblestone. Pour water over the lava lake surface. Cut a path through the obsidian at y=11 and set up water to cut the path deeper again at y=10 so as to continue your path uninterrupted. Who's boss anyhow, you or the lava?
Anybody who comes around and finds your branch mine going straight through a lava lake will be impressed.
For extra self back patting, do this in such a way so that just the minimal amount of lava is frozen into obsidian (there IS a limited supply of lava source blocks in the world you know!)
Stairstep up to the lava with cobblestone. Pour water over the lava lake surface. Cut a path through the obsidian at y=11 and set up water to cut the path deeper again at y=10 so as to continue your path uninterrupted. Who's boss anyhow, you or the lava?
Anybody who comes around and finds your branch mine going straight through a lava lake will be impressed.
For extra self back patting, do this in such a way so that just the minimal amount of lava is frozen into obsidian (there IS a limited supply of lava source blocks in the world you know!)
I'm the boss, not the lava. I just like to see what other people do. Converting it to obsidian and mining through it is kind of boring to me now, but it's what I've been doing. I'm planning my next lava encounter to use glass blocks to wall off the lava. My mines get pretty big sometimes and I'll forget I walled off lava using cobble just to break it later on and "surprise!" lava pit. This should add some neat decor and keep me from accidentally tearing the wall down.
I'm the boss, not the lava. I just like to see what other people do. Converting it to obsidian and mining through it is kind of boring to me now, but it's what I've been doing. I'm planning my next lava encounter to use glass blocks to wall off the lava. My mines get pretty big sometimes and I'll forget I walled off lava using cobble just to break it later on and "surprise!" lava pit. This should add some neat decor and keep me from accidentally tearing the wall down.
The glass idea sounds pretty cool. I just hope you don't ever end up sharing your tunnel through lava with a creeper
Nice to know that I'm not the only one bothered by it.
Just testing.
Just testing.
I meant, nobody ever recommends ACTUAL strip mining. In other words, the "real" meaning of the term which people are for some reason demanding be known by players of a computer game.
The fact that people use the term "strip-mining" has no relevance to their intentions. If I called someone a ****tarded dickwad, and among my small group of insane friends that was the highest honour to be bestowed upon someone, I can't blame them if they hit me. "Hey man, no-one would ACTUALLY call you a ****tarded dickwad, it means something the complete opposite of what you think it is".
Be aware of the terminology you use. If someone asks "What is the best way to mine" and you say "strip mine". What do you think they are going to do? They aren't going to clue onto the opposite meaning, they will probably Google it. Even if they find the Minecraft wiki page, even it has strip mining as being an "open cut" mine.
I think people just need to be aware of illogical terminology for newbies.
"It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long, the grasshopper kept burying acorns for the winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns. And also he got a racecar. Is any of this getting through to you?"
Try that in 1.8... at the most you can only repair items six times, less if you combine to get maxed out enchantments (e.g. make an Efficiency V pickaxe from Eff IV picks). I don't know why anybody would do that anyway; for me "end-game" mining is exploring caves, if just for fun, but I don't explore any caves, besides anything my mine runs into, until I've done everything up to defeating the Ender dragon.
Also, of note, caving gets you plenty of XP to repair items without XP farms (which I've never used even for initial enchanting, mining quartz instead); I can get 65 levels (67 one time recently) before having to repair my Efficiency V, Unbreaking III pickaxe for only 33 levels (playing prior to 1.8 of course), which is a profit margin of around 7-fold; I can even repair my armor and sword between repairs and still get around 50 levels; a typical play session nets 4-5,000 XP.
I also suspect branch-mining at diamond level easily gives you an XP surplus as well, especially if you mine every single ore; redstone is nearly as common as coal and gives you triple the XP on average; if you feel it takes up too much space do what I do; I bring an Ender chest with a crafting table so I can make resource blocks of all the ores I mine, including stops to smelt iron/gold (I also bring an anvil so I can repair as necessary without returning to my base); for redstone, with an average of 4.5 dust per ore you can store 2-4.5 times as much redstone, compared to using Silk Touch or not converting the dust; note that even Fortune only averages around 6 dust since it is less effective on redstone, so that's still 50% more storage.
Also, did I mention to mine every ore? I find quite a few diamonds this way; when caving you should mine every ore below y=16 even if you otherwise only mine valuable ores (I know that some people even mine out all dirt and gravel, which can be mined pretty quickly with unenchanted stone shovels; a diamond shovel with Unbreaking III is also a pretty good investment since it needs only one diamond to repair it for another 6,000+ uses).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Hope I helped someone!
Efficiency is important though; while with my playstyle I'm constantly getting more new diamonds and other stuff than I use other people may not want to spend the time to mine. Indeed, some people even try to completely avoid mining by making iron farms or getting villagers with diamond tool/armor trades (including doing so in 1.7 so they can have the trades in 1.8).
Also, is mining out entire chunks (below y=16) really more efficient in terms of diamonds per unit time? Sure, you are guranteed to find any diamonds in the chunk but it surely can't be faster than just branch-mining over several layers, or even one layer; as I mentioned, you can cover a whole chunk over four layers by mining only 128 blocks, while mining every block across 12 layers (guesstimate, minus whatever can't be extracted from bedrock) means 3,072 blocks mined - in other words, you'll be able to cover only two chunks, averaging around 7 diamond ore, per Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe (including dirt/gravel will only slightly affect this especially since 1.8 made them rarer; gravel is hardly more common than coal now, even in 1.6.4 they are only around 10% of all blocks).
By comparison, covering a third of those layers with my method would enable you to cover about 49 chunks per pickaxe, getting about as many diamonds as 16 whole chunks - about 8 times as many diamonds in 1/8 the time, even more when you factor in diamonds mined vs. diamonds used up, even if you use Fortune to mine them. So it looks like branch-mining is a clear winner.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I would never try to coach a new player by simply saying "go strip mine." I would describe what I was suggesting them to do, and then say what it is called. The fact is, in the minecraft community, strip mine is used to mean something different than it means in the real life mining community. That happens in other types of communities, too. Perhaps that irritates you for some reason, and I guess it might be "nice" if people used it like the real life mining community does, but you're overreacting when you call it "the stupidest thing you ever heard" and suggest the people who make the mistake are airheads and ignorant of the english language like you did in this post:
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorials/Mining_techniques#Simple_Strip_Mining
http://www.wikihow.com/Find-and-Mine-Diamonds-Fast-on-Minecraft
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/survival-mode/204106-whats-a-strip-mine
Considering the official wiki has contradictory information I fail to see why we should perpetuate the idea that strip mining means something other than what strip mining is defined as (in both Minecraft and real world applications). It is "hella" confusing.
Also I apologise if I offended with previous airhead/stupid comments, I tend to get pretty abrasive when faced with these illogical internet idioms as it tends to reinforce rote learning (memorise this because this is correct) as opposed to analytic thinking (here is what makes sense because of these supporting arguments). I will step back a notch, but I still believe my point to be valid.
"It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long, the grasshopper kept burying acorns for the winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns. And also he got a racecar. Is any of this getting through to you?"
In the past I would just block off that branch and put a sign up letting me know not to continue on that path. I even got to the point where I would decorate it as an abandoned mine shaft. I no longer do that and actually take steps to allow safe passage past/through that spot to continue my mining.
Ropes: Leads, just better -Deonyi
Stairstep up to the lava with cobblestone. Pour water over the lava lake surface. Cut a path through the obsidian at y=11 and set up water to cut the path deeper again at y=10 so as to continue your path uninterrupted. Who's boss anyhow, you or the lava?
Anybody who comes around and finds your branch mine going straight through a lava lake will be impressed.
For extra self back patting, do this in such a way so that just the minimal amount of lava is frozen into obsidian (there IS a limited supply of lava source blocks in the world you know!)
I'm the boss, not the lava. I just like to see what other people do. Converting it to obsidian and mining through it is kind of boring to me now, but it's what I've been doing. I'm planning my next lava encounter to use glass blocks to wall off the lava. My mines get pretty big sometimes and I'll forget I walled off lava using cobble just to break it later on and "surprise!" lava pit. This should add some neat decor and keep me from accidentally tearing the wall down.
Ropes: Leads, just better -Deonyi
The glass idea sounds pretty cool. I just hope you don't ever end up sharing your tunnel through lava with a creeper