Spelunking. It is addictive and horrible all at once.
I just cleared out a gigantic cavern system, one of the larger ones I've seen (can't really say if it's the largest, they all seem horrid and convoluted and going on forever and ever).
12 hours of game play in a giant cavern system:
Coal: 400+, I stopped bothering collecting coal after the second day
Iron: 316
Gold: 108
Lapis: 98
Diamonds: 27 (including 5 I fell into lava with this morning)
Dungeons: 3 (one spider, 2 skeleton)
10 brown mushrooms
3 red mushrooms
5 stacks of cobble
Times died: 2 (both falling into lava)
12 hours of game play in a branch mine at levels 12-15-18:
Coal: 80
Iron: 107
Gold: 19
Lapis: 32
Diamond: 8
Dungeons: 0
Mushrooms: 0
20+ stacks of cobble
Times died: 0
12 hours of game play in a 3x3 vertical shaft (ended in lava at level 18)
Coal: At least 2 stacks, not sure
Iron: 90
Gold: 22
Lapis: 6 (This was before the lapis update gave multiple dyes)
Diamond: 0
Dungeons: 0
9 red mushrooms
4 1/2 stacks of cobble
Overall if you just want to be safe and have plenty of time, branch mining is probably the best way. Drop a shaft, set up a long horizontal tunnel, then branch mine from the horizontal tunnel. You get more cobble and building materials from this as well.
If you need ores quickly but dont have a lot of space or time, drop a spiral shaft and branch off from there.
If you are bored and want to get rich quick and possibly lose everything several times a day, spelunk.
you sir had a lot of time to test things out... however, I believe your branch mining info to be somewhat ... unbelievable.
I did a similar test for 30m in a randomly generated world and had acquired:
22 stacks of cobble
47 iron
15 redstone (i ignored this as it took up too much time)
37 lapis lazuli
13 gold
14 diamonds.
30minutes. even not counting special blocks, I got about the same amount of cobblestone as you did in 1/24th the time? this seems almost mathematically impossible unless you've left out some info.
anyway. this cake is great, so delicious and moist.
Oh, made a tunnel through 13-14 eastward on my smp server cause I wanted to find a desert for my new facility and pyramid, and I got about 70 diamonds. (but I went about 2500 blocks eastward :biggrin.gif:) (also some came from caves i found, and unrenderd spaces rarely showed a vein.)
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I like making walls of Text.
You have now been Officially been warned!
Climbing through caves for hours is the best way to get lots of ore and stuff but I don't like doing it. My FAVOURITE way is dig stairs to level 13 and dig tunnels.
I've also started surface mining, mostly for sand/sandstone. I found a sandy hill and am now levelling it.
[edit] Another way I like to mine is to find a cave system at the lower levels and expand it into a large cavern.
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Grid mining gets you enough diamond to refresh your picks and a few extras on the side. Not to mention those stacks, and stacks, and stacks of iron. I've stopped bothering to mine iron because of it >_<
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Checked the poll results. First place was unsurprising, I figured spelunking would win that place. But strip mining made second, and I didn't expect that :/ third place as of now goes to mining straight down, which made me lol. How many deaths has that caused...?
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I do a little of everything. I'll mine Down to about level 15 then start strip mining the entire place. I'll end up with about a 50x50x10 room that I use to grow trees and crops. Then I create a tunnel to some other place and do the same thing. It works great of your looking for a nice big area underground and lots of minerals.
I start with a transportation method that gets me up and down with minimal resources required to start, and this is usually a water ladder.
After I install the water ladder, I climb down to bedrock (layer 5) and set up base with a few chests, then I start to gather basic resources like 2 stacks of wood + saplings etc.
When I am ready with at least 1 double chest full of stone pickaxes, I label every layer of the water ladder with the corresponding numbers, and then head to around layer 13.
At layer 13 or a close number that contains diamond, I start to create some paths in each direction, the dimensions of each path is 2x1, each path can continue for however far you want it, but too much travel will cut down on efficiency.
When digging the paths, I will come across caverns quite regularly, so if you don't want minimum efficiency, you'll need to explore it and set up multiple trips into it. Remember, stone pickaxes are used as their somewhat acceptable durability is worth their very low cost, assuming you already have a tree farm.
When I am exploring a cavern in this manner, I usually do 1-3 trips just to light it all up and make sure nothing hostile is going to spawn, while the next 1-2 trips will be primarily for clearing out every visible ore.
After you have cleared the entire cavern of all visible ores, it is at that point when you move on to expanding the paths.
When a path could be considered to be saturated of all adjacent ores, mine out the traditional strip mine branches (10-20 blocks on each side every 2-3 blocks).
My reasoning for this method is to not only add extra efficiency, but exploring caverns is also a lot more fun than only branch mining.
Um...how much time do you have on your hands...?
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Grid mining gets you enough diamond to refresh your picks and a few extras on the side. Not to mention those stacks, and stacks, and stacks of iron. I've stopped bothering to mine iron because of it >_<
I'm actually curious as to what this is, rather, how it differs from strip mining....
also, mathematically speaking, the digging down in a systematic pattern can unveil the most per strike, but is by far the most dangerous (go figure eh?) (also: not so bad with mob finder goggles :smile.gif: you can just avoid lava)
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I like making walls of Text.
You have now been Officially been warned!
Leaving 2 block wide corridors between each square thingy. It gets you a massive grid (And lots of caves)
Then you build a second grid on top of that to catch anything you missed.
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I dig a 1x1 tube down to the bedrock, fill it with ladders, and then dig side tunnels all over it. Those side tunnels get side tunnels that get side tunnels. Once i got lost, after that I put in signs. Its a massive network in my 1 world.
I dig 25x25 pits to bedrock in all my maps, and build a mob trap in them. gets me lots of iron for minecarts and tools, and i dont get too much cobble because i then use it to build the trap.
NO MINING! I like to stay above ground and build all the time. spelunking is scary because monsters are in caves and other types of mining are sorta boring.
NO MINING! I like to stay above ground and build all the time. spelunking is scary because monsters are in caves and other types of mining are sorta boring.
Spelunking may be scary on your first time, but with full diamond armor and a steel-diamond sword you can pwn them caves. (My armor is badly hurt from a me vs 5 ghast battle. It seems that diamond is about as good as leather when it's as hurt as mine :/)
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I've recently been mining out a 15*15 square just above bedrock, where diamond spawns. If I stumble upon a cave, I explore it, then fill it in with cobble. If the cavern's too big, I just wall it off and build a 2*1 tunnel out of the way of the cave, and repeat the process.
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you sir had a lot of time to test things out... however, I believe your branch mining info to be somewhat ... unbelievable.
I did a similar test for 30m in a randomly generated world and had acquired:
22 stacks of cobble
47 iron
15 redstone (i ignored this as it took up too much time)
37 lapis lazuli
13 gold
14 diamonds.
30minutes. even not counting special blocks, I got about the same amount of cobblestone as you did in 1/24th the time? this seems almost mathematically impossible unless you've left out some info.
anyway. this cake is great, so delicious and moist.
Oh, made a tunnel through 13-14 eastward on my smp server cause I wanted to find a desert for my new facility and pyramid, and I got about 70 diamonds. (but I went about 2500 blocks eastward :biggrin.gif:) (also some came from caves i found, and unrenderd spaces rarely showed a vein.)
You have now been Officially been warned!
Climbing through caves for hours is the best way to get lots of ore and stuff but I don't like doing it. My FAVOURITE way is dig stairs to level 13 and dig tunnels.
I've also started surface mining, mostly for sand/sandstone. I found a sandy hill and am now levelling it.
[edit] Another way I like to mine is to find a cave system at the lower levels and expand it into a large cavern.
“Patience up to a point. Know your time, but work your wyrd always.”
Um...how much time do you have on your hands...?
You realize that creepr spawners don't exist..right?
I'm actually curious as to what this is, rather, how it differs from strip mining....
also, mathematically speaking, the digging down in a systematic pattern can unveil the most per strike, but is by far the most dangerous (go figure eh?) (also: not so bad with mob finder goggles :smile.gif: you can just avoid lava)
You have now been Officially been warned!
[] = dug
= not dug
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Leaving 2 block wide corridors between each square thingy. It gets you a massive grid (And lots of caves)
Then you build a second grid on top of that to catch anything you missed.
Only way to reach the end of the world is through the nether =/
Spelunking may be scary on your first time, but with full diamond armor and a steel-diamond sword you can pwn them caves. (My armor is badly hurt from a me vs 5 ghast battle. It seems that diamond is about as good as leather when it's as hurt as mine :/)