I have been mining at level 12 in my world and found a 4 block vein of diamond ore, I made a pick and tests it out, so much faster than my usual stone pick I use and extremely durable, but I have been minig for about 30 min now and haven't found any more diamonds, my durability decreased by 2 points already, my question is, it it faster and more eficcent to use iron/stone picks and a lot of them and save the diamond pick for mining obsidian or other blocks or is it faster to use the diamond pick to find more diamonds, is it going to pay itself off in diamonds that I will find more than 3 diamonds from one diamond pick while minig at 12?
Unenchanted diamond picks last long enough that you can expect to at least recoup your investment. You probably will not gain much, just from the sheer amount of stone and not-diamond stuff in the way and from the fact there's zero way to legitimately tell where diamonds ARE versus where they can be found.
The real abundance of diamonds comes from enchantments like fortune (a chance at more than usual) and silk touch (collecting the raw ore for later fortune attempts).
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I think it's better if you use iron picks because iron is easy to find and you can mine diamonds with it. Once you think you have enough diamonds, then you can take a break from mining.
Yep, definitely agree with DuhDerp on that one. Diamond pick is worth it, generally, but the real gains come from using Fortune III. If you're really worried about running out of diamonds, then you could keep using an iron pick 'til you get more supplies, but the whole reason for making a diamond pick is so that you can mine faster, so there really isn't much point not using it.
Diamond tools and armor are all that I use, and I get an average of 2 diamond blocks worth of surplus per day, out of around 20-25 diamonds found, and branch-mining can be more efficient than caving (assuming you mine every single ore as I do; I mine around 200 blocks overall per diamond ore found, much of which is other ores), also considering repairing armor and weapons. Also, 200 blocks per ore may sound like a lot but an Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe can mine around 6,000 blocks (6,248 +/- a few if you use it to zero durability, not an empty durability bar), so that is around 30 diamonds per repair, 10% of what I need, plus other uses and I still have a large surplus.
In fact, I don't even use Fortune, which I consider to be detrimental if anything (well, I do mine around 2,000 coal ore... I did used to use an Efficiency V, Fortune III, Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe for all mining, which was entirely sustainable even in terms of XP, as each repair cost 37 levels for one diamond (restoring 390 durability or about 1,560 uses), prior to 1.8).
I can't even imagine using iron and especially stone while caving anymore; I mine around 4,000 blocks per play session, which is 15-16 iron pickaxes (around 4 even with Unbreaking III) or 30(!) stone pickaxes (which can't even mine many ores); similarly, I kill 200-300 mobs, which is 3-4 iron swords, and take perhaps 100-150 hits (armor durability). Unbreaking III applied to diamond gear is really the most valuable enchantment of all; even diamond tools aren't very good with those numbers (around 3 entire pickaxes, vs 2/3 of an Unbreaking III pickaxe).
As for branch-mining, the most efficient method is to mine 1x2 tunnels on layer 11 and space your tunnels at least 4 blocks apart (3 block thick walls between tunnels) as most veins are 2 blocks wide and you avoiding exposing the same vein twice (a wider spacing only decreases areal efficiency, which doesn't really matter give the size of the world; a single tunnel in a straight line is just as good, diamond ore is also randomly distributed so it doesn't matter where in a chunk you mine as long as it is mainly between layers 5-12).
One estimate of the efficiency of this is 128 blocks mined per diamond ore found, excluding ore mined from the walls; I get this from the fact that diamond ore is effectively distributed across 12 layers (i.e. 12 layers at the peak concentration, which is layers 5-12), a 1x2 tunnel exposes four layers, or a third of this range, and to cover one chunk across you need four tunnels, each of which requires 32 blocks mined.
Of course, since a vein is on average 5-6 ore (the overall average per chunk is less largely due to bedrock, plus the fact that veins of ore only generate downwards from their starting position, so veins generating at y=0 never generate at all) this means you have to mine 5-6 chunks to find one vein; that's 640-768 blocks.
Caving can also be much more efficient than my numbers suggest if you only mine ores you actually need (less than 1% of ores I mine are diamond; with branch-mining you'd achieve a much better ratio considering ores only, so the stone mined is the most significant negative factor).
Also, an interesting fact - iron ore is about 6 times more common than diamond ore within the latter's peak range - and diamond tools are about 6 times more durable - which cancels out; i.e. it is just as sustainable to use either material to mine with - and more so when you use enchanted diamond tools (enchanting costs, repair costs, and Fortune, which makes diamonds effectively more common than iron).
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As for branch-mining, the most efficient method is to mine 1x2 tunnels on layer 11 and space your tunnels at least 4 blocks apart (3 block thick walls between tunnels) as most veins are 2 blocks wide and you avoiding exposing the same vein twice (a wider spacing only decreases areal efficiency, which doesn't really matter give the size of the world; a single tunnel in a straight line is just as good, diamond ore is also randomly distributed so it doesn't matter where in a chunk you mine as long as it is mainly between layers 5-12).
^^ This. Works very well.
If you are newer to the game, try out enchanting! It's really not hard to make a table and it's so much better. Efficiency and and Unbreaking, even at lower levels, will blow your mind on how much easier it is. You can mine sand and dirt like cutting through butter when your shovel has EFF on it. (Same with cobble, once you get a beacon.)
Remember to use a anvil to layer enchants. So if you have two diamond pickaxes with EFF 1 - you get EFF 2. You can also enchant books and then move those enchantments onto items with the anvil.
Once you start mining with diamond you won't go back. I get 5 - 10 diamonds in 20 min now every time.
As well - once you start enchanting, you can use diamonds to repair the old tools. So don't let them break all the way. Even if your pick has very little life left you can still use the anvil to layer it on to another one. (IE - I have a EFF 1 diamond pickaxe with red health - I layer it onto another EFF 1 pickaxe, now I have an EFF 2 pickaxe. You can continue this process until you have max enchantments.)
I used to only use iron for mining too, but after using diamond eff 4 and 5 a few times, I noticed how much faster it really is. Efficiency is very time efficient, nuff said.
I use diamond. Also, I find that mining at layer 12/11 doesn't yield too much in the way of diamonds. I find the yield is much better branch mining at layers 6 and 9. My primary pickaxe is diamond with Efficiency IV and Unbreaking III, which allows for fast mining. When I come across diamond, emerald or coal, I use my secondary pickaxe which is diamond with Fortune III and Unbreaking III. That way, I don't have to deal with getting absurd amounts of lapis or redstone, while still allowing me to get extra diamonds, emeralds and coal (which is good to have extra when doing lots of smelting).
If you are newer to the game, try out enchanting! It's really not hard to make a table and it's so much better. Efficiency and and Unbreaking, even at lower levels, will blow your mind on how much easier it is. You can mine sand and dirt like cutting through butter when your shovel has EFF on it. (Same with cobble, once you get a beacon.)
Remember to use a anvil to layer enchants. So if you have two diamond pickaxes with EFF 1 - you get EFF 2. You can also enchant books and then move those enchantments onto items with the anvil.
Once you start mining with diamond you won't go back. I get 5 - 10 diamonds in 20 min now every time.
As well - once you start enchanting, you can use diamonds to repair the old tools. So don't let them break all the way. Even if your pick has very little life left you can still use the anvil to layer it on to another one. (IE - I have a EFF 1 diamond pickaxe with red health - I layer it onto another EFF 1 pickaxe, now I have an EFF 2 pickaxe. You can continue this process until you have max enchantments.)
I gather that you are not playing in 1.8 either, as doing stuff like combining Eff I pickaxes to get Eff II, III, etc is a very bad idea - you only get six anvil operations (of any kind) before it becomes impossible to repair or combine since the cost roughly doubles with each operation, plus to get Eff V from Eff I pickaxes you need to combine a total of 16 pickaxes; even prior to 1.8 that is a very poor way to get a maxed-out Eff pickaxe*! Similarly, repairing with new pickaxes is much cheaper; it only costs two levels, as opposed up to four, plus the prior work penalty, to repair something with a new item, and repairing anything less than 100% at a time is very wasteful due to the limited repairs.
*Though enchanting books for 1 level each (17 XP if your current level is 16 or less) was an effective way, both in XP and material costs, to get maxed-out Protection, Efficiency, Sharpness, and Power, but no more since books accumulate a cost as well (averted prior to 1.8 by renaming the item the book is used on). Of course, you need more levels to get other enchantments so you might as well directly enchant, then use books to upgrade (those four enchantments are the only ones, besides Thorns, that require combining to get the maximum level).
Also, in 1.8 you can just put your pickaxe on the table and mouse over the enchantments - it will display the first enchantment you'll get; if you don't see what you want, put a torch or two down to block bookshelves, then try again; if still no-go, try enchanting another item using the same process, before finally enchanting a junk item (a wooden shovel is the cheapest, one log makes two and it is easy to get more wood) for 1 level/lapis (assuming you have 30 levels you only lose 1/8 the XP compared to enchanting and losing all 30 levels under the old system - and not knowing what you'll get until it is too late).
I wouldn't even bother upgrading to Eff V in 1.8 unless it was through combining and repairing a worn-out pickaxe (giving you 5 more repairs with Eff V); the speed benefit on stone is negliable unless you have Haste II (which allows you to "instantly" mine stone) and on ore or other blocks it probably isn't worth it unless you mine a lot of it and isn't as relevant in branch-mining, plus you might accidentally mine ore you wanted to use Fortune on.
If you are newer to the game, try out enchanting! It's really not hard to make a table and it's so much better. Efficiency and and Unbreaking, even at lower levels, will blow your mind on how much easier it is. You can mine sand and dirt like cutting through butter when your shovel has EFF on it. (Same with cobble, once you get a beacon.)
Remember to use a anvil to layer enchants. So if you have two diamond pickaxes with EFF 1 - you get EFF 2. You can also enchant books and then move those enchantments onto items with the anvil.
Once you start mining with diamond you won't go back. I get 5 - 10 diamonds in 20 min now every time.
As well - once you start enchanting, you can use diamonds to repair the old tools. So don't let them break all the way. Even if your pick has very little life left you can still use the anvil to layer it on to another one. (IE - I have a EFF 1 diamond pickaxe with red health - I layer it onto another EFF 1 pickaxe, now I have an EFF 2 pickaxe. You can continue this process until you have max enchantments.)
I gather that you are not playing in 1.8 either, as doing stuff like combining Eff I pickaxes to get Eff II, III, etc is a very bad idea - you only get six anvil operations (of any kind) before it becomes impossible to repair or combine since the cost roughly doubles with each operation, plus to get Eff V from Eff I pickaxes you need to combine a total of 16 pickaxes; even prior to 1.8 that is a very poor way to get a maxed-out Eff pickaxe*! Similarly, repairing with new pickaxes is much cheaper; it only costs two levels, as opposed up to four, plus the prior work penalty, to repair something with a new item, and repairing anything less than 100% at a time is very wasteful due to the limited repairs.
*Though enchanting books for 1 level each (17 XP if your current level is 16 or less) was an effective way, both in XP and material costs, to get maxed-out Protection, Efficiency, Sharpness, and Power, but no more since books accumulate a cost as well (averted prior to 1.8 by renaming the item the book is used on). Of course, you need more levels to get other enchantments so you might as well directly enchant, then use books to upgrade (those four enchantments are the only ones, besides Thorns, that require combining to get the maximum level).
Also, in 1.8 you can just put your pickaxe on the table and mouse over the enchantments - it will display the first enchantment you'll get; if you don't see what you want, put a torch or two down to block bookshelves, then try again; if still no-go, try enchanting another item using the same process, before finally enchanting a junk item (a wooden shovel is the cheapest, one log makes two and it is easy to get more wood) for 1 level/lapis (assuming you have 30 levels you only lose 1/8 the XP compared to enchanting and losing all 30 levels under the old system - and not knowing what you'll get until it is too late).
I wouldn't even bother upgrading to Eff V in 1.8 unless it was through combining and repairing a worn-out pickaxe (giving you 5 more repairs with Eff V); the speed benefit on stone is negliable unless you have Haste II (which allows you to "instantly" mine stone) and on ore or other blocks it probably isn't worth it unless you mine a lot of it and isn't as relevant in branch-mining, plus you might accidentally mine ore you wanted to use Fortune on.
I am playing 1.8, just ignorant. Thanks for the info, especially the idea to use torches to change the enchantment options.
A quick question - Are you saying every time you combine a new pickaxe with a worn out one you get 5 more repairs? Or only when you level it up?
Neither - 6 anvil operations is the most allowed no matter what; even trying to transfer the enchantments to a new item (placing the damaged enchanted item in the second slot) will also transfer the prior work penalty over.
You can read about the anvil mechanics in the Wiki here; particularly the prior work penalty:
Each time an item is worked on an anvil, even if only a rename, its prior work penalty is multiplied by 2 and 1 level is added. Thus, if an item has been worked N times the penalty will be 2^N - 1. After six workings, the penalty will be 63 levels, making any further repair or enchantment impossible in survival...
...When combining two items, you pay both their penalties. The penalty on the combined item is based on that of the item with the higher penalty. For example, combining items with penalties 3 and 15 will pay a penalty of 18, and the combined item will have a penalty of 31 (15*2+1).
(also, I just noticed that my last post was somehow posted twice; the page did seem to reload itself twice within a second when I posted)
I use nothing but diamond picks after I find diamonds. In a new world, a diamond pick is the first thing I'll make and the first thing I'll enchant when it becomes available. I always carry two picks once I get a Fortune pick. One (usually with Eff IV or V and Unbreaking III) to do the bulk of the mining removal and the other pick with Fortune to only mine Diamonds, Emeralds and Coal when find them. Although after I deem I have enough coal, I'll just mine with the regular pick for XP.
As far as branch mining, I always start out with feet on 11 and mine the sideshafts to be 100 blocks long. Clear out 3 blocks high on the first pass...go 75-100 blocks, turn (go over 4 blocks so you have 3 in between as others have stated) and mine back the full distance to your main shaft. I always place torches on the lowest block by my feet as I go...about every 8 blocks or so. This will give me enough light so I don't have to place any more unless I do a little side excavating on a big iron or coal pocket.
After the initial pass, I'll turn back the way I came and mine out the next two layers while standing on 9. Then another two block pass to 7 and the final pass finishes with feet at 5. Thus you've effectively covered every layer you're likely to find diamonds.
I find more than my share of diamonds in this fashion and really never run out. Diamonds really aren't that scarce so you don't need to be afraid to use them. They're much more efficient and last longer than anything else.
A lot of good information here for sure. I would just add to everything by saying that you can trade for diamond picks from villagers. If you do not like the enchantments they give you on them, you can always combine two on a crafting table and enchant them again yourself. That way you do not lose any diamonds you find while mining and can make diamond helmets, leggings, and boots which you cannot trade for.
The easiest set up for this is an infinite villager breeder with some sort of auto farm. I find chicken farms to be the easiest personally.
Unenchanted diamond picks last long enough that you can expect to at least recoup your investment. You probably will not gain much, just from the sheer amount of stone and not-diamond stuff in the way and from the fact there's zero way to legitimately tell where diamonds ARE versus where they can be found.
The real abundance of diamonds comes from enchantments like fortune (a chance at more than usual) and silk touch (collecting the raw ore for later fortune attempts).
If I were you, I would use iron pick for everything but diamond, emerald, and obsidian.
Beware - books accumulate a prior work penalty as well (any item does, actually)! This means that if you try to, for example, make a Sharpness V book by combining Sharpness I books you'll get charged for 5 anvil operations by the time you apply it to a sword (5 instead of 16 since only successive stages of combining count, i.e. 16 level I books -> 8 level II -> 4 level III -> 2 level IV -> 1 level V -> applied to sword). It is only really practical to use a book to upgrade e.g. Sharpness IV to V (using a Sharpness IV book) and generally a Sharpness IV sword (or Efficiency IV pickaxe) is just as good. This may be a good idea for special use items though, such as a Smite V sword for Wither skeletons or the Wither (compared to Sharpness, Smite adds twice as much damage; Smite V is equivalent to Sharpness X; going from Smite IV to V is two levels of Sharpness).
For armor it is even worse - it is worthwhile to apply an Unbreaking III book to tools and weapons but it is nearly useless on armor (Unbreaking I on tools is over twice as effective) and most of the gain in durability will be offset by a lost repair; luckily, it is the most common enchantment on armor at level 30, even more so than on other items, likely to reflect this. Other items that have disadvantages include shears, as they can't be directly enchanted; if you get a Silk Touch book though it is very worthwhile putting it on shears; you can use them to mine most blocks that require Silk Touch (e.g. glass, glowstone) and not wear them out.
Of course, if you can get books from trading then you can get a reliable supply of enchantments so it doesn't really matter how long your tools last; you might as well even just make a new one once the one you have wears out instead of repairing at all (repairing armor can save resources though; regardless of how much material it took to make four units restores full durability to any item, thus repairing a chestplate with four units takes half the resources as making a new chestplate, at the cost of a couple levels, as each unit costs four while a new item costs two; because of this, you also never want to repair items like shovels with units, as that uses up to four times the resources it takes to make a new one, though Unbreaking offsets this; for example, I use a sword that costs 35 levels to repair with two diamonds (using the pre-1.8 system), which uses twice as many diamonds as making a new sword but still uses less than if it didn't have Unbreaking despite then being repairable with a new sword).
Also, an interesting note - blocks that break instantly by hand don't damage tools (except for using shears on tall grass, since they are meant to harvest it), and Fortune affects carrots and potatoes; by using Fortune to harvest potatoes I get enough food to last for about a 24 hours of playtime from a single harvest of an 8x8 farm (baked potatoes were nerfed a bit in 1.8 but the difference isn't that significant). Although this doesn't really matter since you could get over 18,000 from a single repair with an Unbreaking diamond tool; similar logic applies to using a Looting sword to kill animals for meat; you'll probably never need to repair it unless you play the world for years and years.
Given that MOST diamond ore veins are about 2x2 sized, we can assume that diggin a tunnel will see most diamond ores up that are to 2 blocks to each side of the tunnel (including up and down).
It is rarely vital to get ALL the diamonds in each chunk. Maybe in a very small size world server, that is also quite old with "already mined" tunnels just about *everywhere*. Otherwise, what really counts is the total "diamonds per hour of work", including the time to go into the mine and to turn back. even then it is easy to make secondary bases to hide our treasures along the way. Many servers allow warping or teleporting straight to home and back into your mine, which makes even that consideration moot.
We can take advantage that most diamond ore veins fit in a 2x2x2 shape. We accept to miss a few, but can space out our tunnels wider apart, so that overall we still get more diamonds per hour.
It means there is less point to waste time on layers <5 or >13. This gives only 9 "really worthwhile" layers total to mine diamonds into. maybne layers 4 and 14 are still ok, but anything outside is increasingly and quickly suffirng from diminishing returns.
Assume the world is big. No need to waste time and energy maximing out per-chunk-percentage-of-extracted-diamonds. Ignore the cobble, drop it all in lava, or when inventory is full and you need space for more diamonds just dig a tiny hole and drop 1 or 2 cobble stacks in it to make room.
Make a main tunnel let's say East-West, make it have something in it so you know easily it's YOUR tunnel you would be coming into, if you were digging inside it from the walls "coming in". Making it 3 wide and 3 high with jack o lanterns in the ground every 5 blocks, for example.
From that tunnel, make a 1x2 perpendicular North-South tunnel. Make sure the main tunnels extends at least 5 blocks on each side of that entrance.
Then in the little 1x2 tunnel dig straight for HOURS carrying LOTS of food, until you're bored out of your mind or have spent nearly half of your food. Then shift to the side 5 blocks, take a break, and turn back. Eventually you will HAVE to fall back right into your main tunnel. Well, that is, only if you always stayed 100% straight forward, never deviating a single block to the sides !
Forget digging along mutiple layers. You want speed, and meeting with lava pools not merely in front of you under feet level, but in front of you right at leg level, eye level or even above, tends to slow you down a LOT. So dig with feet at layer 11. Thus, if you meet with lava it will not flow towards you and you can just spread water to get a nice quick path to gn on forward.
As you go along the 1x2 tunnel, you are actually "finding" all the diamond veins in a 6 tall, 5 wide long rectangular "tube" (minus 1 block at each of the 4 corners), covering layers 9 to 14 and preventijng any "overlap" of what veins are revealed where from one tunnel to the next parallel ones.
While layer 14 is not optimal, the simplified lava-layer interaction from digging at layer 11 ends up with a win of performance. If you feel able to react very quickly when meeting lava, dig at layer 10 instead of 11, and you'll get a bit more diamonds, and skipping over lava areas is only going 1 blocks up then 1 block back down. But that requires a bit more skill.
The best combo is Efficiency + Unbreaking for the main digging pick, and Fortune (or Silk Touch and then Fortune used in the safety of main base) for the diamond-ore-extracting pick. Always use maximum Fortune III if able.
"Ore per time unit of work"
Chunks are 16 blocks long. So you need to break 32 blocks to make your "5x6-minus-corners ore-revealing tunnel" cross through a chunk, allowing you finding to ores in 16x5x6 minus 16x4 (for the tunnel's corners) = 16x26 = 416 blocks.
Remember that each chunk has exactly 1 diamond vein. Given the shape of diamond vein distribution, triangular shape from layers 1 to 5, then plauteau-ed from layers 5 to 13, then triangular again from layers 14 to 18, we can guesstimate that this is like having about the same ore probability (compared to your digging work) as having a full plateau shape accross 13 layers total = 13 * 16 *16 = 3328 blocks.
3328 / 416 = 8. You'll need on average to cross through 8 chunks to find the site of 1 diamond vein, in any given tunnel. Actually it will be require crossing a bit more as some of these veins's locations fall into empty air or lava. Also, in a 16 blocks wide chunk, you can make 3 tunnels, meaning that when digging the second and third parralel tunnel, along those 8 average chunks, 1 and then 2 of the chunks you cross through will (on average) already have "given you their diamond vein" in a previous tunnel. If you don't care about moving a LOT, then make each tunnel 16 blocks apart (15 blocks of wall in between tunnels).
You won't get 100% of the veins because some might have a smaller-than-2x2x2-shape. Let's say you get only 5/6. While this is NOT a negligible loss, when compared to having to having to dig tunnels say every 3 or 4 blocks instead of 5, this is still a huge gain in terms of "diamonds ores per hour of digging" gains.
Diamond ore veins are sized 3-8 blocks. But the average of this is NOT 5.5. In a typical vein, parts of it may be missing because of the presence of non-stone blocks (air, lava, etc.), so you'll obtain more like only 4 diamond ore block per vein on average.
Fortune III (or at last I or II) is absolutely vital as it more than doubles diamond output. Just carry 2 pickaxes so you don't waste the rare Fortune enchantmnet on tunnel digging and can use it only on the diamonds and emeralds (*maybe* other ores like lapis, coal, and redstone).
So, about crossing 2 chunks per diamond ore, on average (with Fortune III).
So you need, per 3 diamonds to repair pickaxe or make a new one (breaking about 198 blocks along 6 chunks. A typical diamong pickaxe has 1562 durability. Which means enough diamonds to craft 8 more pickaxes.
Efficiency vs Unbreaking analysis:
So with Unbreaking III, you spend only 1/4 the amount of diamond. But each pickaxe already gives you more than a half a dozen new pickaxes. So the "diamonds per hour of work" savings here are not a really big deal.
Meanwhile Efficiency is a direct flat digging speed gain, easily allowing you to more than double your diamond-ores-per-hour.
Just go with the best Efficiency you can get (but beware how 1.8 hugely screws up repair costs). Unbreaking is a minimal diamonds gain compared to Efficiency. Sure, having both is nice, but Eff V repairable 5 times is better than Eff IV + Unbreaking III repairable only 4 times. Sure, both can be repaired 6 times but I'm talking about repairing only as long as it stays a REASONABLE repair cost here. Banch mining will not give you fast enough that 63th shiny level to make that 6th repair. So if you want to g at it for hours at a time, you won't beable to fully repair "to the last repair" while you are "as you go" in that super long 1x2 tunnel. The deal here is that you are not maxing out "make that nice pickaxe last", but trying to max out "diamond ores per hour", and if you have to stop for hours to go back home and then level grind in order to be able to repair that oh so special pickaxe just one more extra time, then that is time during which you're NOT getting any new diamonds .... so... totally not worth spending more XP for repairs, that what you will get from directly mining straight forward in the tunnel. Ergo, 1 big enchant is often better than 2 moderate ones here.
Just don't take Efficiency so high that you're constantly making mistakes. Mistakes can be dangerous especially around lava, you will often break an ore block without Fortune wihich means less diamonds per vein, and take time to fix your path. Efficiency III (server with minimal lag) or IV (solo) are enough for me.
Torches:
Bring LOTS of wood too. Getting wood from abandoned mineshafts found on the way is actually slower than digging a stairway straight to the surface, filling up on wood, and then going back down the same stairway (never dig straight up - especially when caryring stacks of diamonds lol), because for same inventory space allocated to wood, you'd have to stop 4 times more often because 1 log = 4 planks).
Or just forget placing tons of torches altogether ! Mobs don't spawn near player anyway and don't spawn much in long 1x2 tunnels, and because of the spawning algorithm which spreads packs of sawned mobs into surface area, ten checking for obstacle, in a 1x2 tunnel you'll rarely more than a single mob at a time anyway. And you're constantly moving forward, so you get out of mob aggro range really quick, too. And if you're branch mining it won't be long before you have full enchanted diamond armor, making you nearly invicible. So just jack up your Video Brightness to the max ! Only use torches temporarily then grab tem bac, and/or if you need to stop for a bit, just use way-too-abundant cobble to block the tunnel behind you in order to avoid the occasionnal surprise (you're never going back that way anyway).
By branch mining like this you can easily get more than a stack of diamond per hour. In solo I usually put 16 blocks of wall space in-between tunnels, to make sure each vein found doesn't mean that when I am in the other 2nd and 3rd tunnels, I don't get a "paycut" about 1 chunk of odds of getting diamonds, every 10 chunks crossed (average). On typical servers with a lot of space I do it the 3 tunnels every 5 blocks way, to leave some mining space of others. Only in tiny servers (say, 8000x8000 or less with lots of players and old) do I dig along two "floors" of tunnels.
Still, even there, I start with my 1 long tunnel, which become a "main" tunnel in all 4 cardinal directions, then tunnels at the extremetries, forming a giant mining square around my official territory. I place stuff to make that "outside ring" of tunnels easily identifiable. Then from center out, normal tunnels every 16 blocks to form the "chunks grid". Only once the entire territory is gridded, do I start with the extra tunnels 5 blocks away from each on both sides of each chunk-grid tunnels). ONLY THEN I would start working on the "floor below" (first by chunk gridding then with 2ndary and ternary tunnels 5 blocks on the sides of those) doing it 5 (offseted 2 blocks aside) or 6 blocks down (straight). But usually by that time I have enough diamonds to make a house out of them lol and become much more interested in building than mining. And I so hate getting a lava shower.
So yeah, branch mines requires a LOT of world space. Too bad solo worlds are "only" millions of block wide, heh ? Still don't do the "best" technique on servers. A 10000 blocks long single branch mine tunnel, right up to world border and then back 16 blocks away, all the way to the OTHER side of the worlfd, is sign of a player that is saying "I am way more important than everybody else!". A bit of respect is worth way more than squeezing say 10% more performance out of of your quest for more diamond-ore. Only the most disrecpetful players will go and eat one tenth of a cake that is in fact destined to be shared by hundreds. And only only the truly obsessive compulsive would feel the need to get every last diamond from every last chunk.
Personally, I'd be Mojang, first thing I'd do is make the underground way deeper and most of all make most of the ore generation part and parcel of caves generation, and drop the "totally random in any chunk" ore generated by a factor of 5 or 10 or even more. In natural caves, ore could be seen and would be hidden in the walls only a few blocks away (as long as it's in the general area of the tunnel network), but in the "without caves" thick stone only areas ? Branch mining would be for those wanting to mine "simply and in safely", not for it's efficiency. So there would be a real tradeoff of cave vs branch mining. Presently, branch mining is superior is ALL aspects *EVEN* when counting the fact that you have to repair your pickaxe or make new ones way more often. IMHO bigger risks should lead to bigger rewards, not the other way around.
I wouldn't even bother upgrading to Eff V in 1.8 unless it was through combining and repairing a worn-out pickaxe (giving you 5 more repairs with Eff V); the speed benefit on stone is negliable unless you have Haste II (which allows you to "instantly" mine stone) and on ore or other blocks it probably isn't worth it unless you mine a lot of it and isn't as relevant in branch-mining, plus you might accidentally mine ore you wanted to use Fortune on.
Too bad I didn't read this before I used an Efficiency IV pickaxe to repair a work pickaxe for Efficiency V: I mean, I needed to make the repair anyway and Efficiency IV seems to be a common enchantment on picks, so it's not that big a deal, but, yeah, I'm not noticing any real difference in mining speed and I could have saved that towards another reserve work pickaxe or something.
I only started playing since 1.8 so I have no experience with the prior system, but the usefulness of books does seem to be limited by the fact it costs you one repair per book on the final tool, whereas you can add an enchantment via an enchantmed tool during a repair. (Of course, that means I have enchantments I really want to put on tools -- like Efficiency IV on my Unbreaking III diamond axe and on my Unbreaking III Silk Touch pickaxe -- that I have to either wait FOREVER until they need repair for, or waste a repair). It's too back you can't add a book and make a repair in the same working the way you can rename and repair in the same working, or something.
*****
But yeah, my experience so far has been that once you have Fortune III, diamonds don't seem to be a problem if you're just using them for tools and armor. I haven't even used up the repairs on my first two diamond work pickaxes yet and I have a bunch in reserve. (And most of those actually have Fortune III as well, might just go ahead and use one of those as my next work pickaxe to get rid of the "accidentally mining something you wanted to use Fortune on thing.)
I have been mining at level 12 in my world and found a 4 block vein of diamond ore, I made a pick and tests it out, so much faster than my usual stone pick I use and extremely durable, but I have been minig for about 30 min now and haven't found any more diamonds, my durability decreased by 2 points already, my question is, it it faster and more eficcent to use iron/stone picks and a lot of them and save the diamond pick for mining obsidian or other blocks or is it faster to use the diamond pick to find more diamonds, is it going to pay itself off in diamonds that I will find more than 3 diamonds from one diamond pick while minig at 12?
Unenchanted diamond picks last long enough that you can expect to at least recoup your investment. You probably will not gain much, just from the sheer amount of stone and not-diamond stuff in the way and from the fact there's zero way to legitimately tell where diamonds ARE versus where they can be found.
The real abundance of diamonds comes from enchantments like fortune (a chance at more than usual) and silk touch (collecting the raw ore for later fortune attempts).
I think it's better if you use iron picks because iron is easy to find and you can mine diamonds with it. Once you think you have enough diamonds, then you can take a break from mining.
Flash Fan
Arrow Fan
Supergirl Fan
Yep, definitely agree with DuhDerp on that one. Diamond pick is worth it, generally, but the real gains come from using Fortune III. If you're really worried about running out of diamonds, then you could keep using an iron pick 'til you get more supplies, but the whole reason for making a diamond pick is so that you can mine faster, so there really isn't much point not using it.
Diamond tools and armor are all that I use, and I get an average of 2 diamond blocks worth of surplus per day, out of around 20-25 diamonds found, and branch-mining can be more efficient than caving (assuming you mine every single ore as I do; I mine around 200 blocks overall per diamond ore found, much of which is other ores), also considering repairing armor and weapons. Also, 200 blocks per ore may sound like a lot but an Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe can mine around 6,000 blocks (6,248 +/- a few if you use it to zero durability, not an empty durability bar), so that is around 30 diamonds per repair, 10% of what I need, plus other uses and I still have a large surplus.
In fact, I don't even use Fortune, which I consider to be detrimental if anything (well, I do mine around 2,000 coal ore... I did used to use an Efficiency V, Fortune III, Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe for all mining, which was entirely sustainable even in terms of XP, as each repair cost 37 levels for one diamond (restoring 390 durability or about 1,560 uses), prior to 1.8).
I can't even imagine using iron and especially stone while caving anymore; I mine around 4,000 blocks per play session, which is 15-16 iron pickaxes (around 4 even with Unbreaking III) or 30(!) stone pickaxes (which can't even mine many ores); similarly, I kill 200-300 mobs, which is 3-4 iron swords, and take perhaps 100-150 hits (armor durability). Unbreaking III applied to diamond gear is really the most valuable enchantment of all; even diamond tools aren't very good with those numbers (around 3 entire pickaxes, vs 2/3 of an Unbreaking III pickaxe).
As for branch-mining, the most efficient method is to mine 1x2 tunnels on layer 11 and space your tunnels at least 4 blocks apart (3 block thick walls between tunnels) as most veins are 2 blocks wide and you avoiding exposing the same vein twice (a wider spacing only decreases areal efficiency, which doesn't really matter give the size of the world; a single tunnel in a straight line is just as good, diamond ore is also randomly distributed so it doesn't matter where in a chunk you mine as long as it is mainly between layers 5-12).
One estimate of the efficiency of this is 128 blocks mined per diamond ore found, excluding ore mined from the walls; I get this from the fact that diamond ore is effectively distributed across 12 layers (i.e. 12 layers at the peak concentration, which is layers 5-12), a 1x2 tunnel exposes four layers, or a third of this range, and to cover one chunk across you need four tunnels, each of which requires 32 blocks mined.
Of course, since a vein is on average 5-6 ore (the overall average per chunk is less largely due to bedrock, plus the fact that veins of ore only generate downwards from their starting position, so veins generating at y=0 never generate at all) this means you have to mine 5-6 chunks to find one vein; that's 640-768 blocks.
Caving can also be much more efficient than my numbers suggest if you only mine ores you actually need (less than 1% of ores I mine are diamond; with branch-mining you'd achieve a much better ratio considering ores only, so the stone mined is the most significant negative factor).
Also, an interesting fact - iron ore is about 6 times more common than diamond ore within the latter's peak range - and diamond tools are about 6 times more durable - which cancels out; i.e. it is just as sustainable to use either material to mine with - and more so when you use enchanted diamond tools (enchanting costs, repair costs, and Fortune, which makes diamonds effectively more common than iron).
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?
My reply is really dumb X3
Flash Fan
Arrow Fan
Supergirl Fan
^^ This. Works very well.
If you are newer to the game, try out enchanting! It's really not hard to make a table and it's so much better. Efficiency and and Unbreaking, even at lower levels, will blow your mind on how much easier it is. You can mine sand and dirt like cutting through butter when your shovel has EFF on it. (Same with cobble, once you get a beacon.)
Remember to use a anvil to layer enchants. So if you have two diamond pickaxes with EFF 1 - you get EFF 2. You can also enchant books and then move those enchantments onto items with the anvil.
Once you start mining with diamond you won't go back. I get 5 - 10 diamonds in 20 min now every time.
As well - once you start enchanting, you can use diamonds to repair the old tools. So don't let them break all the way. Even if your pick has very little life left you can still use the anvil to layer it on to another one. (IE - I have a EFF 1 diamond pickaxe with red health - I layer it onto another EFF 1 pickaxe, now I have an EFF 2 pickaxe. You can continue this process until you have max enchantments.)
Mind your Craft.
I used to only use iron for mining too, but after using diamond eff 4 and 5 a few times, I noticed how much faster it really is. Efficiency is very time efficient, nuff said.
I use diamond. Also, I find that mining at layer 12/11 doesn't yield too much in the way of diamonds. I find the yield is much better branch mining at layers 6 and 9. My primary pickaxe is diamond with Efficiency IV and Unbreaking III, which allows for fast mining. When I come across diamond, emerald or coal, I use my secondary pickaxe which is diamond with Fortune III and Unbreaking III. That way, I don't have to deal with getting absurd amounts of lapis or redstone, while still allowing me to get extra diamonds, emeralds and coal (which is good to have extra when doing lots of smelting).
I gather that you are not playing in 1.8 either, as doing stuff like combining Eff I pickaxes to get Eff II, III, etc is a very bad idea - you only get six anvil operations (of any kind) before it becomes impossible to repair or combine since the cost roughly doubles with each operation, plus to get Eff V from Eff I pickaxes you need to combine a total of 16 pickaxes; even prior to 1.8 that is a very poor way to get a maxed-out Eff pickaxe*! Similarly, repairing with new pickaxes is much cheaper; it only costs two levels, as opposed up to four, plus the prior work penalty, to repair something with a new item, and repairing anything less than 100% at a time is very wasteful due to the limited repairs.
*Though enchanting books for 1 level each (17 XP if your current level is 16 or less) was an effective way, both in XP and material costs, to get maxed-out Protection, Efficiency, Sharpness, and Power, but no more since books accumulate a cost as well (averted prior to 1.8 by renaming the item the book is used on). Of course, you need more levels to get other enchantments so you might as well directly enchant, then use books to upgrade (those four enchantments are the only ones, besides Thorns, that require combining to get the maximum level).
Also, in 1.8 you can just put your pickaxe on the table and mouse over the enchantments - it will display the first enchantment you'll get; if you don't see what you want, put a torch or two down to block bookshelves, then try again; if still no-go, try enchanting another item using the same process, before finally enchanting a junk item (a wooden shovel is the cheapest, one log makes two and it is easy to get more wood) for 1 level/lapis (assuming you have 30 levels you only lose 1/8 the XP compared to enchanting and losing all 30 levels under the old system - and not knowing what you'll get until it is too late).
I wouldn't even bother upgrading to Eff V in 1.8 unless it was through combining and repairing a worn-out pickaxe (giving you 5 more repairs with Eff V); the speed benefit on stone is negliable unless you have Haste II (which allows you to "instantly" mine stone) and on ore or other blocks it probably isn't worth it unless you mine a lot of it and isn't as relevant in branch-mining, plus you might accidentally mine ore you wanted to use Fortune on.
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 gather that you are not playing in 1.8 either, as doing stuff like combining Eff I pickaxes to get Eff II, III, etc is a very bad idea - you only get six anvil operations (of any kind) before it becomes impossible to repair or combine since the cost roughly doubles with each operation, plus to get Eff V from Eff I pickaxes you need to combine a total of 16 pickaxes; even prior to 1.8 that is a very poor way to get a maxed-out Eff pickaxe*! Similarly, repairing with new pickaxes is much cheaper; it only costs two levels, as opposed up to four, plus the prior work penalty, to repair something with a new item, and repairing anything less than 100% at a time is very wasteful due to the limited repairs.
*Though enchanting books for 1 level each (17 XP if your current level is 16 or less) was an effective way, both in XP and material costs, to get maxed-out Protection, Efficiency, Sharpness, and Power, but no more since books accumulate a cost as well (averted prior to 1.8 by renaming the item the book is used on). Of course, you need more levels to get other enchantments so you might as well directly enchant, then use books to upgrade (those four enchantments are the only ones, besides Thorns, that require combining to get the maximum level).
Also, in 1.8 you can just put your pickaxe on the table and mouse over the enchantments - it will display the first enchantment you'll get; if you don't see what you want, put a torch or two down to block bookshelves, then try again; if still no-go, try enchanting another item using the same process, before finally enchanting a junk item (a wooden shovel is the cheapest, one log makes two and it is easy to get more wood) for 1 level/lapis (assuming you have 30 levels you only lose 1/8 the XP compared to enchanting and losing all 30 levels under the old system - and not knowing what you'll get until it is too late).
I wouldn't even bother upgrading to Eff V in 1.8 unless it was through combining and repairing a worn-out pickaxe (giving you 5 more repairs with Eff V); the speed benefit on stone is negliable unless you have Haste II (which allows you to "instantly" mine stone) and on ore or other blocks it probably isn't worth it unless you mine a lot of it and isn't as relevant in branch-mining, plus you might accidentally mine ore you wanted to use Fortune on.
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 am playing 1.8, just ignorant. Thanks for the info, especially the idea to use torches to change the enchantment options.
A quick question - Are you saying every time you combine a new pickaxe with a worn out one you get 5 more repairs? Or only when you level it up?
Mind your Craft.
Neither - 6 anvil operations is the most allowed no matter what; even trying to transfer the enchantments to a new item (placing the damaged enchanted item in the second slot) will also transfer the prior work penalty over.
You can read about the anvil mechanics in the Wiki here; particularly the prior work penalty:
(also, I just noticed that my last post was somehow posted twice; the page did seem to reload itself twice within a second when I posted)
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?
Thanks for taking the time to reply - quite helpful. I will focus on books much more heavily now when I enchant.
Also - I found this, it's a enchanting calculator that tells you what your odds are based on your current level and item you are enchanting:
http://www.minecraftenchantmentcalculator.com/rev6/index.html
Mind your Craft.
I use nothing but diamond picks after I find diamonds. In a new world, a diamond pick is the first thing I'll make and the first thing I'll enchant when it becomes available. I always carry two picks once I get a Fortune pick. One (usually with Eff IV or V and Unbreaking III) to do the bulk of the mining removal and the other pick with Fortune to only mine Diamonds, Emeralds and Coal when find them. Although after I deem I have enough coal, I'll just mine with the regular pick for XP.
As far as branch mining, I always start out with feet on 11 and mine the sideshafts to be 100 blocks long. Clear out 3 blocks high on the first pass...go 75-100 blocks, turn (go over 4 blocks so you have 3 in between as others have stated) and mine back the full distance to your main shaft. I always place torches on the lowest block by my feet as I go...about every 8 blocks or so. This will give me enough light so I don't have to place any more unless I do a little side excavating on a big iron or coal pocket.
After the initial pass, I'll turn back the way I came and mine out the next two layers while standing on 9. Then another two block pass to 7 and the final pass finishes with feet at 5. Thus you've effectively covered every layer you're likely to find diamonds.
I find more than my share of diamonds in this fashion and really never run out. Diamonds really aren't that scarce so you don't need to be afraid to use them. They're much more efficient and last longer than anything else.
A lot of good information here for sure. I would just add to everything by saying that you can trade for diamond picks from villagers. If you do not like the enchantments they give you on them, you can always combine two on a crafting table and enchant them again yourself. That way you do not lose any diamonds you find while mining and can make diamond helmets, leggings, and boots which you cannot trade for.
The easiest set up for this is an infinite villager breeder with some sort of auto farm. I find chicken farms to be the easiest personally.
If I were you, I would use iron pick for everything but diamond, emerald, and obsidian.
Beware - books accumulate a prior work penalty as well (any item does, actually)! This means that if you try to, for example, make a Sharpness V book by combining Sharpness I books you'll get charged for 5 anvil operations by the time you apply it to a sword (5 instead of 16 since only successive stages of combining count, i.e. 16 level I books -> 8 level II -> 4 level III -> 2 level IV -> 1 level V -> applied to sword). It is only really practical to use a book to upgrade e.g. Sharpness IV to V (using a Sharpness IV book) and generally a Sharpness IV sword (or Efficiency IV pickaxe) is just as good. This may be a good idea for special use items though, such as a Smite V sword for Wither skeletons or the Wither (compared to Sharpness, Smite adds twice as much damage; Smite V is equivalent to Sharpness X; going from Smite IV to V is two levels of Sharpness).
For armor it is even worse - it is worthwhile to apply an Unbreaking III book to tools and weapons but it is nearly useless on armor (Unbreaking I on tools is over twice as effective) and most of the gain in durability will be offset by a lost repair; luckily, it is the most common enchantment on armor at level 30, even more so than on other items, likely to reflect this. Other items that have disadvantages include shears, as they can't be directly enchanted; if you get a Silk Touch book though it is very worthwhile putting it on shears; you can use them to mine most blocks that require Silk Touch (e.g. glass, glowstone) and not wear them out.
Of course, if you can get books from trading then you can get a reliable supply of enchantments so it doesn't really matter how long your tools last; you might as well even just make a new one once the one you have wears out instead of repairing at all (repairing armor can save resources though; regardless of how much material it took to make four units restores full durability to any item, thus repairing a chestplate with four units takes half the resources as making a new chestplate, at the cost of a couple levels, as each unit costs four while a new item costs two; because of this, you also never want to repair items like shovels with units, as that uses up to four times the resources it takes to make a new one, though Unbreaking offsets this; for example, I use a sword that costs 35 levels to repair with two diamonds (using the pre-1.8 system), which uses twice as many diamonds as making a new sword but still uses less than if it didn't have Unbreaking despite then being repairable with a new sword).
Also, an interesting note - blocks that break instantly by hand don't damage tools (except for using shears on tall grass, since they are meant to harvest it), and Fortune affects carrots and potatoes; by using Fortune to harvest potatoes I get enough food to last for about a 24 hours of playtime from a single harvest of an 8x8 farm (baked potatoes were nerfed a bit in 1.8 but the difference isn't that significant). Although this doesn't really matter since you could get over 18,000 from a single repair with an Unbreaking diamond tool; similar logic applies to using a Looting sword to kill animals for meat; you'll probably never need to repair it unless you play the world for years and years.
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?
Given that MOST diamond ore veins are about 2x2 sized, we can assume that diggin a tunnel will see most diamond ores up that are to 2 blocks to each side of the tunnel (including up and down).
It is rarely vital to get ALL the diamonds in each chunk. Maybe in a very small size world server, that is also quite old with "already mined" tunnels just about *everywhere*. Otherwise, what really counts is the total "diamonds per hour of work", including the time to go into the mine and to turn back. even then it is easy to make secondary bases to hide our treasures along the way. Many servers allow warping or teleporting straight to home and back into your mine, which makes even that consideration moot.
We can take advantage that most diamond ore veins fit in a 2x2x2 shape. We accept to miss a few, but can space out our tunnels wider apart, so that overall we still get more diamonds per hour.
Understand this graph:
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/File:PercentOfOreByHeight.png
It means there is less point to waste time on layers <5 or >13. This gives only 9 "really worthwhile" layers total to mine diamonds into. maybne layers 4 and 14 are still ok, but anything outside is increasingly and quickly suffirng from diminishing returns.
Assume the world is big. No need to waste time and energy maximing out per-chunk-percentage-of-extracted-diamonds. Ignore the cobble, drop it all in lava, or when inventory is full and you need space for more diamonds just dig a tiny hole and drop 1 or 2 cobble stacks in it to make room.
Make a main tunnel let's say East-West, make it have something in it so you know easily it's YOUR tunnel you would be coming into, if you were digging inside it from the walls "coming in". Making it 3 wide and 3 high with jack o lanterns in the ground every 5 blocks, for example.
From that tunnel, make a 1x2 perpendicular North-South tunnel. Make sure the main tunnels extends at least 5 blocks on each side of that entrance.
Then in the little 1x2 tunnel dig straight for HOURS carrying LOTS of food, until you're bored out of your mind or have spent nearly half of your food. Then shift to the side 5 blocks, take a break, and turn back. Eventually you will HAVE to fall back right into your main tunnel. Well, that is, only if you always stayed 100% straight forward, never deviating a single block to the sides !
Forget digging along mutiple layers. You want speed, and meeting with lava pools not merely in front of you under feet level, but in front of you right at leg level, eye level or even above, tends to slow you down a LOT. So dig with feet at layer 11. Thus, if you meet with lava it will not flow towards you and you can just spread water to get a nice quick path to gn on forward.
As you go along the 1x2 tunnel, you are actually "finding" all the diamond veins in a 6 tall, 5 wide long rectangular "tube" (minus 1 block at each of the 4 corners), covering layers 9 to 14 and preventijng any "overlap" of what veins are revealed where from one tunnel to the next parallel ones.
While layer 14 is not optimal, the simplified lava-layer interaction from digging at layer 11 ends up with a win of performance. If you feel able to react very quickly when meeting lava, dig at layer 10 instead of 11, and you'll get a bit more diamonds, and skipping over lava areas is only going 1 blocks up then 1 block back down. But that requires a bit more skill.
The best combo is Efficiency + Unbreaking for the main digging pick, and Fortune (or Silk Touch and then Fortune used in the safety of main base) for the diamond-ore-extracting pick. Always use maximum Fortune III if able.
"Ore per time unit of work"
Chunks are 16 blocks long. So you need to break 32 blocks to make your "5x6-minus-corners ore-revealing tunnel" cross through a chunk, allowing you finding to ores in 16x5x6 minus 16x4 (for the tunnel's corners) = 16x26 = 416 blocks.
Remember that each chunk has exactly 1 diamond vein. Given the shape of diamond vein distribution, triangular shape from layers 1 to 5, then plauteau-ed from layers 5 to 13, then triangular again from layers 14 to 18, we can guesstimate that this is like having about the same ore probability (compared to your digging work) as having a full plateau shape accross 13 layers total = 13 * 16 *16 = 3328 blocks.
3328 / 416 = 8. You'll need on average to cross through 8 chunks to find the site of 1 diamond vein, in any given tunnel. Actually it will be require crossing a bit more as some of these veins's locations fall into empty air or lava. Also, in a 16 blocks wide chunk, you can make 3 tunnels, meaning that when digging the second and third parralel tunnel, along those 8 average chunks, 1 and then 2 of the chunks you cross through will (on average) already have "given you their diamond vein" in a previous tunnel. If you don't care about moving a LOT, then make each tunnel 16 blocks apart (15 blocks of wall in between tunnels).
You won't get 100% of the veins because some might have a smaller-than-2x2x2-shape. Let's say you get only 5/6. While this is NOT a negligible loss, when compared to having to having to dig tunnels say every 3 or 4 blocks instead of 5, this is still a huge gain in terms of "diamonds ores per hour of digging" gains.
Diamond ore veins are sized 3-8 blocks. But the average of this is NOT 5.5. In a typical vein, parts of it may be missing because of the presence of non-stone blocks (air, lava, etc.), so you'll obtain more like only 4 diamond ore block per vein on average.
Fortune III (or at last I or II) is absolutely vital as it more than doubles diamond output. Just carry 2 pickaxes so you don't waste the rare Fortune enchantmnet on tunnel digging and can use it only on the diamonds and emeralds (*maybe* other ores like lapis, coal, and redstone).
So, about crossing 2 chunks per diamond ore, on average (with Fortune III).
So you need, per 3 diamonds to repair pickaxe or make a new one (breaking about 198 blocks along 6 chunks. A typical diamong pickaxe has 1562 durability. Which means enough diamonds to craft 8 more pickaxes.
Efficiency vs Unbreaking analysis:
So with Unbreaking III, you spend only 1/4 the amount of diamond. But each pickaxe already gives you more than a half a dozen new pickaxes. So the "diamonds per hour of work" savings here are not a really big deal.
Meanwhile Efficiency is a direct flat digging speed gain, easily allowing you to more than double your diamond-ores-per-hour.
Just go with the best Efficiency you can get (but beware how 1.8 hugely screws up repair costs). Unbreaking is a minimal diamonds gain compared to Efficiency. Sure, having both is nice, but Eff V repairable 5 times is better than Eff IV + Unbreaking III repairable only 4 times. Sure, both can be repaired 6 times but I'm talking about repairing only as long as it stays a REASONABLE repair cost here. Banch mining will not give you fast enough that 63th shiny level to make that 6th repair. So if you want to g at it for hours at a time, you won't beable to fully repair "to the last repair" while you are "as you go" in that super long 1x2 tunnel. The deal here is that you are not maxing out "make that nice pickaxe last", but trying to max out "diamond ores per hour", and if you have to stop for hours to go back home and then level grind in order to be able to repair that oh so special pickaxe just one more extra time, then that is time during which you're NOT getting any new diamonds .... so... totally not worth spending more XP for repairs, that what you will get from directly mining straight forward in the tunnel. Ergo, 1 big enchant is often better than 2 moderate ones here.
Just don't take Efficiency so high that you're constantly making mistakes. Mistakes can be dangerous especially around lava, you will often break an ore block without Fortune wihich means less diamonds per vein, and take time to fix your path. Efficiency III (server with minimal lag) or IV (solo) are enough for me.
Torches:
Bring LOTS of wood too. Getting wood from abandoned mineshafts found on the way is actually slower than digging a stairway straight to the surface, filling up on wood, and then going back down the same stairway (never dig straight up - especially when caryring stacks of diamonds lol), because for same inventory space allocated to wood, you'd have to stop 4 times more often because 1 log = 4 planks).
Or just forget placing tons of torches altogether ! Mobs don't spawn near player anyway and don't spawn much in long 1x2 tunnels, and because of the spawning algorithm which spreads packs of sawned mobs into surface area, ten checking for obstacle, in a 1x2 tunnel you'll rarely more than a single mob at a time anyway. And you're constantly moving forward, so you get out of mob aggro range really quick, too. And if you're branch mining it won't be long before you have full enchanted diamond armor, making you nearly invicible. So just jack up your Video Brightness to the max ! Only use torches temporarily then grab tem bac, and/or if you need to stop for a bit, just use way-too-abundant cobble to block the tunnel behind you in order to avoid the occasionnal surprise (you're never going back that way anyway).
By branch mining like this you can easily get more than a stack of diamond per hour. In solo I usually put 16 blocks of wall space in-between tunnels, to make sure each vein found doesn't mean that when I am in the other 2nd and 3rd tunnels, I don't get a "paycut" about 1 chunk of odds of getting diamonds, every 10 chunks crossed (average). On typical servers with a lot of space I do it the 3 tunnels every 5 blocks way, to leave some mining space of others. Only in tiny servers (say, 8000x8000 or less with lots of players and old) do I dig along two "floors" of tunnels.
Still, even there, I start with my 1 long tunnel, which become a "main" tunnel in all 4 cardinal directions, then tunnels at the extremetries, forming a giant mining square around my official territory. I place stuff to make that "outside ring" of tunnels easily identifiable. Then from center out, normal tunnels every 16 blocks to form the "chunks grid". Only once the entire territory is gridded, do I start with the extra tunnels 5 blocks away from each on both sides of each chunk-grid tunnels). ONLY THEN I would start working on the "floor below" (first by chunk gridding then with 2ndary and ternary tunnels 5 blocks on the sides of those) doing it 5 (offseted 2 blocks aside) or 6 blocks down (straight). But usually by that time I have enough diamonds to make a house out of them lol and become much more interested in building than mining. And I so hate getting a lava shower.
So yeah, branch mines requires a LOT of world space. Too bad solo worlds are "only" millions of block wide, heh ? Still don't do the "best" technique on servers. A 10000 blocks long single branch mine tunnel, right up to world border and then back 16 blocks away, all the way to the OTHER side of the worlfd, is sign of a player that is saying "I am way more important than everybody else!". A bit of respect is worth way more than squeezing say 10% more performance out of of your quest for more diamond-ore. Only the most disrecpetful players will go and eat one tenth of a cake that is in fact destined to be shared by hundreds. And only only the truly obsessive compulsive would feel the need to get every last diamond from every last chunk.
Personally, I'd be Mojang, first thing I'd do is make the underground way deeper and most of all make most of the ore generation part and parcel of caves generation, and drop the "totally random in any chunk" ore generated by a factor of 5 or 10 or even more. In natural caves, ore could be seen and would be hidden in the walls only a few blocks away (as long as it's in the general area of the tunnel network), but in the "without caves" thick stone only areas ? Branch mining would be for those wanting to mine "simply and in safely", not for it's efficiency. So there would be a real tradeoff of cave vs branch mining. Presently, branch mining is superior is ALL aspects *EVEN* when counting the fact that you have to repair your pickaxe or make new ones way more often. IMHO bigger risks should lead to bigger rewards, not the other way around.
Too bad I didn't read this before I used an Efficiency IV pickaxe to repair a work pickaxe for Efficiency V: I mean, I needed to make the repair anyway and Efficiency IV seems to be a common enchantment on picks, so it's not that big a deal, but, yeah, I'm not noticing any real difference in mining speed and I could have saved that towards another reserve work pickaxe or something.
I only started playing since 1.8 so I have no experience with the prior system, but the usefulness of books does seem to be limited by the fact it costs you one repair per book on the final tool, whereas you can add an enchantment via an enchantmed tool during a repair. (Of course, that means I have enchantments I really want to put on tools -- like Efficiency IV on my Unbreaking III diamond axe and on my Unbreaking III Silk Touch pickaxe -- that I have to either wait FOREVER until they need repair for, or waste a repair). It's too back you can't add a book and make a repair in the same working the way you can rename and repair in the same working, or something.
*****
But yeah, my experience so far has been that once you have Fortune III, diamonds don't seem to be a problem if you're just using them for tools and armor. I haven't even used up the repairs on my first two diamond work pickaxes yet and I have a bunch in reserve. (And most of those actually have Fortune III as well, might just go ahead and use one of those as my next work pickaxe to get rid of the "accidentally mining something you wanted to use Fortune on thing.)