I don't think I know the difference. I go cave diving and abandoned minechaft/stronghold exploring. I also like making a strip mine close to my homestead too though. I don't know what its officially called but I dig down to (XYZ?) 12 and mine 3x3 tunnel then go mine 1x2 tunnels perpendicular to that. Is that branch or stip mine?
Cave exploring is great for easy coal and iron ore, and deep ones good for your first diamonds. Like Tree said, cleaning out abandoned mineshafts nets a huge amount of rail, posts and planks, not to mention ore. My old world had 6 of those, and I was able to build a railroad that looped around the map using only free rail (plus the powered rail I had to make).
Branch mining is a great way to find good ore. The trick for me is finding one of those huge lava levels at 12, finding the outer edge of it, then dig 1x2 shafts from there to the closest map edge, skipping 3 rows in between. I do the bottom three levels of branches to clean out up to 16, and you don't miss many diamonds (maybe the single block in your skipped row, but...). Sure, it's time consuming, and I don't do it all the time. But after you smelt your cobblestone and pop some coal & junk, you level up nicely.
I don't like strip mining. I did it once, when I had to move a mountain that was in my way. It took too much time for too little payoff, as ore goes. But at least the mountain was gone.
I don't think I know the difference. I go cave diving and abandoned minechaft/stronghold exploring. I also like making a strip mine close to my homestead too though. I don't know what its officially called but I dig down to (XYZ?) 12 and mine 3x3 tunnel then go mine 1x2 tunnels perpendicular to that. Is that branch or stip mine?
technically if your mine looks like it branches off like a tree, that is a branch mine.
If it is a hole in the ground the size of the map, that is strip mine. Basically taking all resources down to bedrock.
So what you actually did is branch mine, since you are building shafts that just spout off a main instead of clearing out every single block.
It is the way I see it.
OP: I prefer branch mining or caving over strip mining if it can be helped....:D
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I'm kind of a lazy miner, honestly. I cave mine and then branch mine once I've gotten all the easy ore if I think an area is worth mining further--usually level 11-12 areas around lava pools to root out any diamond ore. It seems in the Xbox edition, caves and ravines are very common, or perhaps that's how it is the PC edition too. But every world I've played in in the Xbox edition so far has been very riddled with caves. In my current world all my mines started with caverns, despite having started 6 major mines so far in various parts of the map, I know of about three other big cave networks I've yet to explore I suspect if I even tried strip mining in this world I'd just blow a hole into another cave network and end up cave mining anyhow. But despite my lazy approach to mining, I'm not doing so bad in my current game: so far I've got 23 mined diamonds (not counting the ones used to make two pickaxes and one sword) and 15 diamond ore I'm hanging on to until I can get a Fortune III enchanted pickaxe.
I don't really use TNT since I need to kill creepers for that and I hate creepers. One snuck out of the jungle when I was starting my farm and before I noticed it was there, it blew up my chicken pen and outdoor storage chest and so now I hate them even more than before. So I play on Peaceful until I need some monster loot, like string or sketelon's bows, and to do that, I load up on weapons and porkchops, go out into the desert near the village around dusk, save, exit and switch to Easy, then run around slaughtering everything until sunrise and then switch back to Peaceful. Even on Easy, one night of butchering monsters yields enough to meet my needs for quite a while. But I suck at killing creepers in Xbox (in PE it seems a lot easier to kill them before they blow up) so I rarely get any gunpowder.
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Formerly known as ORabbit around these parts.
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Branch mining is a great way to find good ore. The trick for me is finding one of those huge lava levels at 12, finding the outer edge of it, then dig 1x2 shafts from there to the closest map edge, skipping 3 rows in between. I do the bottom three levels of branches to clean out up to 16, and you don't miss many diamonds (maybe the single block in your skipped row, but...). Sure, it's time consuming, and I don't do it all the time. But after you smelt your cobblestone and pop some coal & junk, you level up nicely.
I don't like strip mining. I did it once, when I had to move a mountain that was in my way. It took too much time for too little payoff, as ore goes. But at least the mountain was gone.
technically if your mine looks like it branches off like a tree, that is a branch mine.
If it is a hole in the ground the size of the map, that is strip mine. Basically taking all resources down to bedrock.
So what you actually did is branch mine, since you are building shafts that just spout off a main instead of clearing out every single block.
It is the way I see it.
OP: I prefer branch mining or caving over strip mining if it can be helped....:D
If it's in a caved-out world, I will box mine, which is pretty much making a massive room (gotta find those Slimes somehow!).
Stay fluffy~
I don't really use TNT since I need to kill creepers for that and I hate creepers. One snuck out of the jungle when I was starting my farm and before I noticed it was there, it blew up my chicken pen and outdoor storage chest and so now I hate them even more than before. So I play on Peaceful until I need some monster loot, like string or sketelon's bows, and to do that, I load up on weapons and porkchops, go out into the desert near the village around dusk, save, exit and switch to Easy, then run around slaughtering everything until sunrise and then switch back to Peaceful. Even on Easy, one night of butchering monsters yields enough to meet my needs for quite a while. But I suck at killing creepers in Xbox (in PE it seems a lot easier to kill them before they blow up) so I rarely get any gunpowder.
Formerly known as ORabbit around these parts.