Is it my imagination or do abandoned mineshafts have more resource blocks than me going to a random area on my map and mining?
I think it's just because it's all open. In a mineshaft you can just mine ores, but when you start your own mine you need to find the ores first, so it feels like you're getting less.
Resources are even distributed across all the chunks of the world. It's just the circumstances you find them in that leads you to that conclusion.
A Mineshaft network that spiderwebs across many blocks and layers is going to seem like there are more resources because it's open and the resources are showing. Most caves are smaller and limit how much you can see. So you aren't going to see as much spelunking as in a Mineshaft even though the distribution is the same.
I believe that I recall reading someplace that, statistically, there are fewer ores than the denser stone areas of your map. I believe, the order of events are that the game distributes the ores randomly but relatively evenly in all chunks of the world and then the blocks for the mineshaft tunnels are removed. If this is correct (and I really think it is), then even though most of the removed blocks are just stone, some of them will be ores. It may seem like there are more ores, though, because more "faces" of the contents of the chunk are exposed and also because you don't have to actually mine away all that stone first to find them.
ETA: I stand corrected, the mineshafts generate before the ores. This means that they should have the same amount of ores as chunks in other parts of the map.
I think it's just because it's all open. In a mineshaft you can just mine ores, but when you start your own mine you need to find the ores first, so it feels like you're getting less.
A Mineshaft network that spiderwebs across many blocks and layers is going to seem like there are more resources because it's open and the resources are showing. Most caves are smaller and limit how much you can see. So you aren't going to see as much spelunking as in a Mineshaft even though the distribution is the same.
ETA: I stand corrected, the mineshafts generate before the ores. This means that they should have the same amount of ores as chunks in other parts of the map.