The generator tends to generate one vein of diamond per chunk.
@ adversitys newest post.
I'm not even going to try anymore. All of that (And much more iron, coal, and redstone) would have been found if you were using a branch mine, along with many building resources.
That is my final post in this thread because you can't seem to grasp the fact that this is all chance.
Well Crory, you just don't seem to understand that this method is more efficient simply because it would naturally be faster. Given an unlimited amount of time, of course branch mining would be more efficient. However, the fact that you could walk down a giant lava river with thousands of exposed blocks makes this method very fast and very efficient.
Sure, you could run into these caverns as you stated earlier. But if you already know where one such cavern is, it'd be faster than branch mining. If you don't know where one such cavern is, then you should probably be worried about finding iron instead of diamonds anyhow.
The generator tends to generate one vein of diamond per chunk.
Yes it tends to on average generate one vein per chunk. But thats not a rule.
We have found from cartographer that diamond occupies 0.08% of all blocks within the diamond range
We have also found from code that each block has approx a 0.03% chance to be a diamond source block
A chunk is 16x16x128
Diamond veins can only spawn on layers 1-17 (veins in layer 17 often extend to layer 19, but 17 is the highest vein spawn location)
16x16x17=4352
0.03% of 4352 is 3.4816
If an average vein is 3-4 blocks and a chunk statistically generates an average of 3.48 diamond then yes. On average there will be 1 diamond vein per chunk. But this is not a coded limitation in the game. You can not assume that since I found diamond in this chunk I should stop searching it and move on to the next chunk. There is an equal chance that there will be 2 veins in 1 chunk and none in the next as there is that the 2 chunks both have 1 vein.
Trying to base mining techniques on the '1 vein per chunk' idea is incorrect interpretation of the data. That is the point I was trying to make. Because I'm seeing more and more threads discussing the concept and its implications, and we all need to try to be aware of how data is being interpreted so that it is not incorrectly used.
What are these 'layers' you speak of. Is that how many blocks down you are? (Level 12 = 12 blocks dug down?)
The system we use to reference depth in minecraft is from the bottom of the world (which we call 0) up to the highest place you can put a block (which is 128). The ocean is approx 64, the lava lakes near the bottom are at 10. Diamond can spawn between 0 and 17. You will see references to blocks based on this system across the forum, so it might be worth trying to research it a bit.
Welcome to the forums btw.
I'm not even going to try anymore. All of that (And much more iron, coal, and redstone) would have been found if you were using a branch mine, along with many building resources.
That is my final post in this thread because you can't seem to grasp the fact that this is all chance.
you have fun with that branch mine, ill be over here rolling in diamonds. i guess youre right tho, i totally need more than 2 large chests full of cobblestone to build with for every few hours spent mining...
Quote from Codyscheer »
Given an unlimited amount of time, of course branch mining would be more efficient.
at least cody gets it.
i guess crory should be glad he has an unlimited amount of time to play this game, my time is precious.
i also just posted a bunch of screenshots with MULTIPLE diamond veins directly adjacent to lava in THE SAME SCREENSHOT(my OP also had mutliple screenshots displaying the same thing before i removed them). go branch mine for two hours and see how many screenshots you can get with multiple diamond veins in the same screenshot that ARENT in close proximity to lava. tell me what the "chance" for that is. lawl.
i decided to do another test as well. THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES!
this one took me about an hour. since i built the last mine at a dense cave system i decided to test it out in an area devoid of surface caves. i cut a little mine into a hill next to a desert biome that had a lot of water and sand around it. no surface cave entrances in sight.
i went straight to 12.62 using F3 and started a branch straight in front of me. i went quite a little ways and never hit any lava pools. i found a single 4 block diamond vein before running into this odd generation... the bottom of the pool is at y-coordinate 6, guess there goes everyones "all caves below layer 12 are filled with lava"...
i thought, "ok, well thats interesting... no lava and a bigass freakin cave pool..."(maybe an aquifer below the desert biome??). i kept hearing an unusual amount of dungeon sounds slightly above me and i need a bit of mossy cobble to finish a house i was building, so i turned right went 1 block over and 1 block up, hit a major cave system.
i started hearing quite the ruckus as i was trying to track down the sound. i found 2 diamond veins in these caves before stumbling on this...
there were i think 8 spiders spawned at once in there, most spiders ive ever seen...
2 chests with nothing good and around 45 mossy cobble. alright, cool. i continue exploring the lower levels of the cave and found another diamond vein(i really disliked this cave system, it was multi-level and very open with many waterfalls. a creeper sky bombed me from a waterfall and killed me shortly after finding the diamond, slowing me down a bit).
i kept hearing dungeon sounds as i explored and eventually started hearing a mob of zombies...
they totally ambushed me the first time when i got caught in some water, so i died again, another setback(didnt lose any items either death). but things were different this time...
only 1 chest but if you look behind it diagonally from the cobblestone block, diamond. and guess what was directly below it?? why of course, a lava pool. so what was in the chest?? PIG SADDLE, OH YEAH!
so after about an hour using only two diamond picks, with me dying twice and having to run back... i come out with 14 diamonds, two stacks of iron, 12 gold, 2 stacks of coal and a large chest of cobblestone. of course the kicker was a stack and a half of mossy cobblestone and... A PIG SADDLE!
1/5 of the diamond veins was found with branch mining. 3/5 were found within a few blocks of lava. 1/5 was found next to the bottom of a large waterfall.
TL;DR??
if you want a lot of diamonds very quickly, you should do this near large surface cave systems. if you try it in an area with no cave systems you might find a bunch of dungeons??
like ive said, this may not be a technique for novices and is an ADVANCED mining technique. instead of mindlessly strip mining away entire chunks, you must use your intuition, instinct, and knowledge of layers/how cave systems interconnect to find the diamond quickly across a number of layers. while also using branch mines when no caves or lava pools are available. mining at layer 12 will simply give you the highest percentage of finding both air pockets in front of you, as well as major cave systems that terminate at the same layers.
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Quote from Swingerzetta »
This forum has made me decide that I now want kids, so that when they get old enough, I can forbid them from coming here. it's a terrible place.
running around deep cave systems poking around lava level = 8 diamonds
strip mining at lvl 12 = 31 diamonds
(i skipped everything that wasnt in my way)
imo strip mining at lava level has always yielded more diamonds. plus if you dont feel like wandering/traveling far away you still have many chances at getting diamonds in supposedly dried up caverns.
in mcedit i actually saw 1 pair of diamonds that was under a block of bedrock and maddening to see all the diamonds i missed by 2 or 3 blocks.
I personally Branch mine until i find a lava cave... and then continue my branch mine, imo branch mining is better but there's nothing wrong with giant lava caves :biggrin.gif:
ive always thought that layer 12(when you hold F3 it should display your y coordinates as 12.6435435 or something) would be a great place to mine but always came up about even in terms of diamond finds when compared to more traditional 1x2 branch mines i was using on layers 6-14
Okay, here's what I don't get: How is this any different than just branch mining on level 12, flooding and exploring any lava caves you stumble across, then continuing, which is what I've been doing since forever?
I mean, I completely agree that level 12 is the best level because you are very unlikely to open up the cave to lava that will pour into your mine, and it's easy to just dump water then walk across the obsidian, and caves expose a lot of blocks so you can quickly find minerals in them (this of course being the only connection between caves and additional resource veins).
But it seems like what you're doing is trying to find a lava cave, exploring it, then digging around afterwards. What I do is dig around, and if I find a lava cave, I explore it, then keep digging. Sounds like the same thing to me. So you find a cave that goes down to bedrock, you find the lava at the bottom, you get any minerals that may or may not exist... Then what? Sounds like you start digging.
Is the difference really just that you make no attempt to find all the minerals that lie embedded in solid rock, and just dig off in a straight line until you find another cave?
The generator tends to generate one vein of diamond per chunk.
Yes it tends to on average generate one vein per chunk. But thats not a rule.
Right. It's the sheer improbability of a diamond vein existing in the first place that makes it highly unlikely that there will be more than one diamond vein per chunk.
It's just like how there is usually at most one Royal Flush per poker game, because having any at all is rare. If someone got a royal flush, you wouldn't suggest that you end that game and begin a new one so as to increase the odds of another royal flush. By the same token if you found a diamond vein, you should not immediately rush off to the next chunk hoping to increase your chance of finding a diamond.
The odds of finding two diamond veins in the same chunk is the same as finding a diamond vein in one chunk, and then another diamond vein in the next chunk over, or the same as finding two diamond veins in any two specific chunks!
Okay technically it is slightly less probable to find two diamond veins in the same chunk, because you already use up N blocks in the first diamond vein, which leaves that many fewer blocks to spawn new diamonds. But the ratio of the probabilities would be something like (4096-N)/4096, or very close to 1.
running around deep cave systems poking around lava level = 8 diamonds
strip mining at lvl 12 = 31 diamonds
you just got lucky in your strip mine(amidointhisrite??). i also have a feeling youre doing something terribly wrong if youre just "poking around lava level" in deep cave systems.
Quote from wyrmhole »
Okay, here's what I don't get: How is this any different than just branch mining on level 12, flooding and exploring any lava caves you stumble across, then continuing, which is what I've been doing since forever?
priorities. when branch mining i will not deviate from my branches for any reason. the specific layout of the mine will expose EVERY block in a chunk, all i have to do is dig straight forward. i may go quickly look around air pockets and caves but will immediately return to digging my initial branch. its also a single layer approach in comparision to the general mutli-layered design of a branch mine(if you arent making multi-level branch mines, youre doing it all wrong).
this is what my typical branch mines look like except with 3 levels. one level of the mines is on layer 6, one on layer 10 and one on layer 14. this will give you coverage of essentially every layer except those with high amounts of bedrock. each branch shaft itself is separated by 2 blocks. the floor of each shaft connects to the roof of the one below it while each block on the right side of a shaft will be touching the left blocks of the adjacent shaft. this will give you 100% exposure of all blocks by simply digging your shafts in a 1x2 straight line. you can see i have branches going in literally every direction from the central "hub" where my stairs to the surface are.
i actually did this as another "surface geography" test. the mine is basically under an ocean. normally i use a modified version of my branches to find lava pools but decided to use my traditional branch mine after mr "i got 31 diamonds strip mining at layer 12". usually i use 2x2 shafts spaced every 10-20 blocks since youre looking for lava pools which can sometimes be 30 blocks wide instead of a single diamond block. i started digging branches in my search for lava pools. each shaft extends over 100 blocks in a given direction. this was the only "cave" i found of any kind...
the bottom of the pool is at y-coordinate 7... second mine in a row with one of these "aquifers" that ive never seen before.
guess how many shafts i had to dig before i found my first diamond vein?? TWELVE... thats right, TWELVE freakin shafts over 100 blocks in length... when i finally hit that first diamond vein, guess what i saw as soon as i broke the first block of diamond?? why my first lava pool of course... after digging around that for 30 seconds...
if i had been branch mining, i wouldnt have bothered digging around the redstone i saw(which uncovered the diamond) because the branch mine on the level below wouldve found that same diamond anyway.
But it seems like what you're doing is trying to find a lava cave, exploring it, then digging around afterwards. What I do is dig around, and if I find a lava cave, I explore it, then keep digging. Sounds like the same thing to me. So you find a cave that goes down to bedrock, you find the lava at the bottom, you get any minerals that may or may not exist... Then what? Sounds like you start digging.
Is the difference really just that you make no attempt to find all the minerals that lie embedded in solid rock, and just dig off in a straight line until you find another cave?
its not really... but then again it is. with this technique you should never actually see bedrock. youre pretty much ignoring anything below layer 8. ive never seen a natural cave extend all the way to bedrock. there are also key things youre missing like digging around the lava pools to lead you to other pools(instead of just digging off in random direction x). you can tell which way the pools are "flowing" even without the air pockets, sometimes "multiple" pools are actually just one pool which are not visibly connected from layer 12. mining around visible minerals is something i wouldnt bother doing in a branch mine either, as i mentioned. its simply a waste of time while branch mining. but when youre confining yourself to a "single" layer, this will help increase the layer range youre searching. like ive said previously, this may not be a technique suited for novices. "dig in a straight line until you randomly hit diamond" may be more suited to their style.
like ive already said, you WILL have to do SOME branch mining to even find the pools/caves but it is not the priority.
It's just like how there is usually at most one Royal Flush per poker game, because having any at all is rare. If someone got a royal flush, you wouldn't suggest that you end that game and begin a new one so as to increase the odds of another royal flush. By the same token if you found a diamond vein, you should not immediately rush off to the next chunk hoping to increase your chance of finding a diamond.
what are the odds of getting a royal flush without shuffling the deck after all 4 aces were played in the first hand??
id say about exactly zero...
rushing off to the next chunk is simply "shuffling" your deck. diamond is an INFINITE resource, what dont people understand about that?? im not trying to get ALL the diamond, im just trying to get the MOST i can, the FASTEST i can.
a multi-leveled branch mine is like trying to get a royal flush with a single deck. this method is like trying to get a royal flush with 5 decks since you will cover a larger area across the horizontal axis(if youre doing it right and dont get incredibly unlucky), which is how chunks are generated(they arent generated across the vertical axis in case you didnt know).
i also believe the surface biomes WILL affect your success with this type of mine. i would steer clear of desert biomes and large bodies of water and if you see one of those "aquifers" id just go start a new mine, ive had beyond horrible luck even FINDING lava pools when i see one of those in my mine. stick to mountainous regions with very little surface water and large cave networks. you can say "random generation bro", but trees generate randomly right?? would you expect to find more trees in a tundra or a rain forest?? would you expect to find more lava in the hawaiian islands or in the sahara desert?? the generation is "random" but in reality it isnt. it follows specific algorithms which will create general trends(like interconnecting mineral veins where i find at least 40% of my diamond), it is impossible to design "true" randomness or there WOULD be chunks made entirely of diamond or iron or coal. random is random after all.
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Quote from Swingerzetta »
This forum has made me decide that I now want kids, so that when they get old enough, I can forbid them from coming here. it's a terrible place.
I would just like to point out that when pressing f3 where it says your coordinates is where your head is(not your feet). so you are actually standing on layer 10 when doing this not layer 12
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GENERATION 23: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Quote from Frickinchance »
Yeah its really rare. Only like 3 people have ever found a diamond. Your really lucky
Diamonds are indeed generated at a dispersion of about one per chunk, but the way it is generated, the chunks are shifted 50% in each direction. Therefore, although there can certainly be more than one diamond vein per chunk, by nature of the generation algorithm, it is best to spread out your search.
The logic behind this method makes a lot of sense. By following the lava caves, you expose more surfaces per block destroyed. According to most of the replies, it also works in the practical sense. I understand the arguments for branch mining, but the point is not to get all the diamond in the explored world. People who say this are forgetting that the Minecraft world is infinite, so any semblance of efficiency is based solely on the amount of TIME it takes per diamond.
Finally, as the first point shows, you do indeed have better odds of finding diamond if you keep moving after you find any, unlike in branch/strip mining, where, if the proper pattern is applied, you will get almost as high efficiency, but LESS DIAMOND.
Inb4 you are lying about the algorithm: LOOK IT UP.
And, OP: Have a :Diamond:. Oh wait, you already have a ton... alright then:
May the light of a thousand suns guide you to your destination.
The best way to find diamonds is to have a filled bucket of water, an iron pick or better, and 64 TNT. Go to the bedrock (straight down) with your pickaxe, after that fill it all up with TNT and then blow it up. Then put water on 1 of the edges and you will find diamonds.
I think its random. I once had a world where 90% of the diamonds where ONLY at lava level. After 3 days of digging and not finding 1 diamond i thought it was weird so i used an xray app the find them. And they Where ALL under lava....
Well, there is one thing that should probably be clarified about this. Everyone knows that all caverns below layer 12 are filled with lava, but out of curiosity, I checked the wiki for the official measurements on where lava can appear, and according to the Altitude page, the point at which lava is common below is layer 16, not 12!
So everyone remember, just because lava is always in caves below layer 12, the tops of the pools can still go ABOVE layer 12.
...unless someone has been trolling the wiki site and no one noticed...
There is no such limitation. There can be more than one diamond vein per chunk.
The generator tends to generate one vein of diamond per chunk.
@ adversitys newest post.
I'm not even going to try anymore. All of that (And much more iron, coal, and redstone) would have been found if you were using a branch mine, along with many building resources.
That is my final post in this thread because you can't seem to grasp the fact that this is all chance.
Sure, you could run into these caverns as you stated earlier. But if you already know where one such cavern is, it'd be faster than branch mining. If you don't know where one such cavern is, then you should probably be worried about finding iron instead of diamonds anyhow.
Yes it tends to on average generate one vein per chunk. But thats not a rule.
We have found from cartographer that diamond occupies 0.08% of all blocks within the diamond range
We have also found from code that each block has approx a 0.03% chance to be a diamond source block
A chunk is 16x16x128
Diamond veins can only spawn on layers 1-17 (veins in layer 17 often extend to layer 19, but 17 is the highest vein spawn location)
16x16x17=4352
0.03% of 4352 is 3.4816
If an average vein is 3-4 blocks and a chunk statistically generates an average of 3.48 diamond then yes. On average there will be 1 diamond vein per chunk. But this is not a coded limitation in the game. You can not assume that since I found diamond in this chunk I should stop searching it and move on to the next chunk. There is an equal chance that there will be 2 veins in 1 chunk and none in the next as there is that the 2 chunks both have 1 vein.
Trying to base mining techniques on the '1 vein per chunk' idea is incorrect interpretation of the data. That is the point I was trying to make. Because I'm seeing more and more threads discussing the concept and its implications, and we all need to try to be aware of how data is being interpreted so that it is not incorrectly used.
Everything is on me, the drinks is on me, the b!tches, the hotel, the weed is all free.
The system we use to reference depth in minecraft is from the bottom of the world (which we call 0) up to the highest place you can put a block (which is 128). The ocean is approx 64, the lava lakes near the bottom are at 10. Diamond can spawn between 0 and 17. You will see references to blocks based on this system across the forum, so it might be worth trying to research it a bit.
Welcome to the forums btw.
you have fun with that branch mine, ill be over here rolling in diamonds. i guess youre right tho, i totally need more than 2 large chests full of cobblestone to build with for every few hours spent mining...
at least cody gets it.
i guess crory should be glad he has an unlimited amount of time to play this game, my time is precious.
i also just posted a bunch of screenshots with MULTIPLE diamond veins directly adjacent to lava in THE SAME SCREENSHOT(my OP also had mutliple screenshots displaying the same thing before i removed them). go branch mine for two hours and see how many screenshots you can get with multiple diamond veins in the same screenshot that ARENT in close proximity to lava. tell me what the "chance" for that is. lawl.
i decided to do another test as well. THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES!
this one took me about an hour. since i built the last mine at a dense cave system i decided to test it out in an area devoid of surface caves. i cut a little mine into a hill next to a desert biome that had a lot of water and sand around it. no surface cave entrances in sight.
i went straight to 12.62 using F3 and started a branch straight in front of me. i went quite a little ways and never hit any lava pools. i found a single 4 block diamond vein before running into this odd generation... the bottom of the pool is at y-coordinate 6, guess there goes everyones "all caves below layer 12 are filled with lava"...
i thought, "ok, well thats interesting... no lava and a bigass freakin cave pool..."(maybe an aquifer below the desert biome??). i kept hearing an unusual amount of dungeon sounds slightly above me and i need a bit of mossy cobble to finish a house i was building, so i turned right went 1 block over and 1 block up, hit a major cave system.
i started hearing quite the ruckus as i was trying to track down the sound. i found 2 diamond veins in these caves before stumbling on this...
there were i think 8 spiders spawned at once in there, most spiders ive ever seen...
2 chests with nothing good and around 45 mossy cobble. alright, cool. i continue exploring the lower levels of the cave and found another diamond vein(i really disliked this cave system, it was multi-level and very open with many waterfalls. a creeper sky bombed me from a waterfall and killed me shortly after finding the diamond, slowing me down a bit).
i kept hearing dungeon sounds as i explored and eventually started hearing a mob of zombies...
they totally ambushed me the first time when i got caught in some water, so i died again, another setback(didnt lose any items either death). but things were different this time...
only 1 chest but if you look behind it diagonally from the cobblestone block, diamond. and guess what was directly below it?? why of course, a lava pool. so what was in the chest?? PIG SADDLE, OH YEAH!
so after about an hour using only two diamond picks, with me dying twice and having to run back... i come out with 14 diamonds, two stacks of iron, 12 gold, 2 stacks of coal and a large chest of cobblestone. of course the kicker was a stack and a half of mossy cobblestone and... A PIG SADDLE!
1/5 of the diamond veins was found with branch mining. 3/5 were found within a few blocks of lava. 1/5 was found next to the bottom of a large waterfall.
TL;DR??
if you want a lot of diamonds very quickly, you should do this near large surface cave systems. if you try it in an area with no cave systems you might find a bunch of dungeons??
like ive said, this may not be a technique for novices and is an ADVANCED mining technique. instead of mindlessly strip mining away entire chunks, you must use your intuition, instinct, and knowledge of layers/how cave systems interconnect to find the diamond quickly across a number of layers. while also using branch mines when no caves or lava pools are available. mining at layer 12 will simply give you the highest percentage of finding both air pockets in front of you, as well as major cave systems that terminate at the same layers.
The BEST way to mine diamond, layer 12 and you.
running around deep cave systems poking around lava level = 8 diamonds
strip mining at lvl 12 = 31 diamonds
(i skipped everything that wasnt in my way)
imo strip mining at lava level has always yielded more diamonds. plus if you dont feel like wandering/traveling far away you still have many chances at getting diamonds in supposedly dried up caverns.
in mcedit i actually saw 1 pair of diamonds that was under a block of bedrock and maddening to see all the diamonds i missed by 2 or 3 blocks.
Okay, here's what I don't get: How is this any different than just branch mining on level 12, flooding and exploring any lava caves you stumble across, then continuing, which is what I've been doing since forever?
I mean, I completely agree that level 12 is the best level because you are very unlikely to open up the cave to lava that will pour into your mine, and it's easy to just dump water then walk across the obsidian, and caves expose a lot of blocks so you can quickly find minerals in them (this of course being the only connection between caves and additional resource veins).
But it seems like what you're doing is trying to find a lava cave, exploring it, then digging around afterwards. What I do is dig around, and if I find a lava cave, I explore it, then keep digging. Sounds like the same thing to me. So you find a cave that goes down to bedrock, you find the lava at the bottom, you get any minerals that may or may not exist... Then what? Sounds like you start digging.
Is the difference really just that you make no attempt to find all the minerals that lie embedded in solid rock, and just dig off in a straight line until you find another cave?
Right. It's the sheer improbability of a diamond vein existing in the first place that makes it highly unlikely that there will be more than one diamond vein per chunk.
It's just like how there is usually at most one Royal Flush per poker game, because having any at all is rare. If someone got a royal flush, you wouldn't suggest that you end that game and begin a new one so as to increase the odds of another royal flush. By the same token if you found a diamond vein, you should not immediately rush off to the next chunk hoping to increase your chance of finding a diamond.
The odds of finding two diamond veins in the same chunk is the same as finding a diamond vein in one chunk, and then another diamond vein in the next chunk over, or the same as finding two diamond veins in any two specific chunks!
Okay technically it is slightly less probable to find two diamond veins in the same chunk, because you already use up N blocks in the first diamond vein, which leaves that many fewer blocks to spawn new diamonds. But the ratio of the probabilities would be something like (4096-N)/4096, or very close to 1.
you just got lucky in your strip mine(amidointhisrite??). i also have a feeling youre doing something terribly wrong if youre just "poking around lava level" in deep cave systems.
priorities. when branch mining i will not deviate from my branches for any reason. the specific layout of the mine will expose EVERY block in a chunk, all i have to do is dig straight forward. i may go quickly look around air pockets and caves but will immediately return to digging my initial branch. its also a single layer approach in comparision to the general mutli-layered design of a branch mine(if you arent making multi-level branch mines, youre doing it all wrong).
this is what my typical branch mines look like except with 3 levels. one level of the mines is on layer 6, one on layer 10 and one on layer 14. this will give you coverage of essentially every layer except those with high amounts of bedrock. each branch shaft itself is separated by 2 blocks. the floor of each shaft connects to the roof of the one below it while each block on the right side of a shaft will be touching the left blocks of the adjacent shaft. this will give you 100% exposure of all blocks by simply digging your shafts in a 1x2 straight line. you can see i have branches going in literally every direction from the central "hub" where my stairs to the surface are.
i actually did this as another "surface geography" test. the mine is basically under an ocean. normally i use a modified version of my branches to find lava pools but decided to use my traditional branch mine after mr "i got 31 diamonds strip mining at layer 12". usually i use 2x2 shafts spaced every 10-20 blocks since youre looking for lava pools which can sometimes be 30 blocks wide instead of a single diamond block. i started digging branches in my search for lava pools. each shaft extends over 100 blocks in a given direction. this was the only "cave" i found of any kind...
the bottom of the pool is at y-coordinate 7... second mine in a row with one of these "aquifers" that ive never seen before.
guess how many shafts i had to dig before i found my first diamond vein?? TWELVE... thats right, TWELVE freakin shafts over 100 blocks in length... when i finally hit that first diamond vein, guess what i saw as soon as i broke the first block of diamond?? why my first lava pool of course... after digging around that for 30 seconds...
if i had been branch mining, i wouldnt have bothered digging around the redstone i saw(which uncovered the diamond) because the branch mine on the level below wouldve found that same diamond anyway.
its not really... but then again it is. with this technique you should never actually see bedrock. youre pretty much ignoring anything below layer 8. ive never seen a natural cave extend all the way to bedrock. there are also key things youre missing like digging around the lava pools to lead you to other pools(instead of just digging off in random direction x). you can tell which way the pools are "flowing" even without the air pockets, sometimes "multiple" pools are actually just one pool which are not visibly connected from layer 12. mining around visible minerals is something i wouldnt bother doing in a branch mine either, as i mentioned. its simply a waste of time while branch mining. but when youre confining yourself to a "single" layer, this will help increase the layer range youre searching. like ive said previously, this may not be a technique suited for novices. "dig in a straight line until you randomly hit diamond" may be more suited to their style.
like ive already said, you WILL have to do SOME branch mining to even find the pools/caves but it is not the priority.
what are the odds of getting a royal flush without shuffling the deck after all 4 aces were played in the first hand??
id say about exactly zero...
rushing off to the next chunk is simply "shuffling" your deck. diamond is an INFINITE resource, what dont people understand about that?? im not trying to get ALL the diamond, im just trying to get the MOST i can, the FASTEST i can.
a multi-leveled branch mine is like trying to get a royal flush with a single deck. this method is like trying to get a royal flush with 5 decks since you will cover a larger area across the horizontal axis(if youre doing it right and dont get incredibly unlucky), which is how chunks are generated(they arent generated across the vertical axis in case you didnt know).
i also believe the surface biomes WILL affect your success with this type of mine. i would steer clear of desert biomes and large bodies of water and if you see one of those "aquifers" id just go start a new mine, ive had beyond horrible luck even FINDING lava pools when i see one of those in my mine. stick to mountainous regions with very little surface water and large cave networks. you can say "random generation bro", but trees generate randomly right?? would you expect to find more trees in a tundra or a rain forest?? would you expect to find more lava in the hawaiian islands or in the sahara desert?? the generation is "random" but in reality it isnt. it follows specific algorithms which will create general trends(like interconnecting mineral veins where i find at least 40% of my diamond), it is impossible to design "true" randomness or there WOULD be chunks made entirely of diamond or iron or coal. random is random after all.
The BEST way to mine diamond, layer 12 and you.
The logic behind this method makes a lot of sense. By following the lava caves, you expose more surfaces per block destroyed. According to most of the replies, it also works in the practical sense. I understand the arguments for branch mining, but the point is not to get all the diamond in the explored world. People who say this are forgetting that the Minecraft world is infinite, so any semblance of efficiency is based solely on the amount of TIME it takes per diamond.
Finally, as the first point shows, you do indeed have better odds of finding diamond if you keep moving after you find any, unlike in branch/strip mining, where, if the proper pattern is applied, you will get almost as high efficiency, but LESS DIAMOND.
Inb4 you are lying about the algorithm: LOOK IT UP.
And, OP: Have a :Diamond:. Oh wait, you already have a ton... alright then:
May the light of a thousand suns guide you to your destination.
[simg]http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa418/d3st0r3r/2011-01-23_131451.png[/simg]
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So everyone remember, just because lava is always in caves below layer 12, the tops of the pools can still go ABOVE layer 12.
...unless someone has been trolling the wiki site and no one noticed...