I have an idea for the addition of a very realistic way of getting diamonds, instead of mining : SYNTHETIC DIAMONDS
A new block, "Graphite" should be added.
This can be created using coal, or found by mining.
A certain number of these graphite blocks can then be smelted in the blast furnace using a lot of coal or fuel to produce a single diamond.
Why this is realistic : Synthetic diamonds, in real life, are created by heating graphite to over 3000 degrees Celsius. This principle can be put to use in Minecraft to make the game more realistic, and diamonds more obtainable.
Rarity:
Graphite : Fairly rare, a tad bit more rare than coal.
Synthetic Diamonds : Should be time-consuming to make. For example, 10 blocks of graphite, smelted with 30 pieces of coal, make one diamond.
No Support. Just because it's realistic doesn't make it a good (or even a thematically fitting) idea for Minecraft, and it's both too unbalanced (it would be possible to make diamonds, which are meant to be rare and valuable, using only common ores) and too tedious (it would take quantities of coal that would require a wither skeleton farm, and time spent mining graphite comparable to the time you'd spend mining a comparable amount of diamond, to get enough diamonds for any practical use) to justify.
Maybe a bit of an exaggeration for long-term rates but I average over 600 coal per hour, and that's just actual ore mined, giving over 1,300 drops if Fortune III is used:
Assuming 30 coal per diamond made you could make 20 (45) diamonds, compared to my average rate of only 5 (11) diamond found per hour; as for graphite they claimed "a tad bit rarer than coal", which is hardly that rare at all (I'm assuming a similar distribution, so in 1.18+ you'd mine up in the mountains, where coal is more common as a percentage of ground blocks than it was before, this also means you wouldn't be finding any diamonds).
Either way, diamond is already common enough, much more so than it used to be (many people probably still mine at y=11 because every (outdated) tutorial says to but now y= -59 is the best layer):
Diamond ore generation occurs in four batches:
7 blobs of 1-5 ores per chunk, from Y=14 to Y=-63. There is a 50% chance to not generate an ore block if it is next to air.
1 blob of 1-23 ores every 1⁄9 chunks, from Y=14 to Y=-63. There is a 70% chance to not generate an ore block if it is next to air.
4 blobs of 1-10 ores per chunk, from Y=14 to Y=-63. Ore blocks do not generate if they are next to air.
2 blobs of 1-10 ores per chunk, from Y=-4 to Y=-63. There is a 50% chance to not generate an ore block if it is next to air.
They even made it more common in 1.20.2 because some people apparently thought it was still too rare; for comparison, in 1.6.4 there is only one deposit of 1-10, averaging about 3.1 ore, per chunk (while it is more spread out now the peak concentration on layer -59 is about 50% greater than it used to be on layers 5-12):
1.20.2 23w31a Diamond ore now generates more frequently in deepslate layers.
(I also see this as proof of just how little anybody actually wants to mine or go caving these days, you know, in a game called "Mine"craft, and originally, "Cave Game", the latter which is exactly what I see it as. It also doesn't help that a majority of ores do not generate exposed in caves, the exact opposite of what a cave update should have been)
Deepslate is slower to mine than stone, that's why they made it more common
Barely though, and I don't know why people make a big deal out of it - it has the same breaking speed as stone-based ores, which i mine by the thousands every day, yet they account for only 10% of the total time I spend caving, and enchanted tools make the difference even smaller:
Mining time = hardness * 1.5 / tool speed, rounded up to the next multiple of 0.05 seconds (1 tick)
Hardness of stone = 1.5
Hardness of deepslate = 3
So deepslate takes twice as long to mine as stone? Not quite:
Tool speed of Efficiency V diamond = 8 + 26 = 34 (8 is base speed, 26 is Efficiency, level * level + 1).
Stone: 1.5 * 1.5 / 34 = 0.066 seconds, rounded up to 0.1
Deepslate: 3 * 1.5 / 34 = 0.13 seconds, rounded up to 0.15
So 50% longer? But that is not all, unless the mining time is 0.05 seconds you must add another 0.3 seconds between each block broken in succession. Thus, stone takes 0.4 seconds and deepslate takes 0.45 seconds - a difference of only 12.5%, not 100% (twice as slow). Extrapolated over an hour, you can mine up to 9000 stone or 8000 deepslate (or stone-based ores; I only spend around 25 minutes per day actually mining ore, the other 3 hours or so are spent running around placing torches and killing mobs, and actually getting to the ore).
Also, consider what the Wiki says about diamond mining efficiency, assuming the original ore generation (as noted before, diamond is about 50% more concentrated in the lowest layers than it used to be on layers 5-12 - so multiply the Wiki;s figures by 1.5):
At this spacing, efficiency is about 0.017, corresponding to 1.7% of blocks removed being a diamond.
So, 8000 * 0.017 * 1.5 = 204 diamond ore per hour (the additional time needed to mine deepslate ore ore is negligible). Even if that is unreasonable (you must be mining nonstop the entire time) half this rate seems very doable. Though there are people who prefer to only use unenchanted stone tools to mine (in this case stone takes 0.9 seconds and deepslate takes 1.45 seconds, or 1.6 times longer, so I can definitely see an issue here. Even going to unenchanted iron reduces the times to 0.7 and 1.05 seconds, benefiting deepslate more (-0.2 and -0.4 seconds); the faster the tool, the smaller the difference).
Wooooooow... I was really, really hoping this suggestion would not come back. Something being realistic doesn't somehow make an idea good. By that logic, annoying cave-ins and oh-so-hated thirst bars would be added by now. This just seems like a lazy way to get diamonds instead of just mining for them like you're supposed to.
Making the process time-consuming also doesn't make the idea good.
Another notable issue is that this [the original suggestion] would make diamonds renwable: for good or ill this would be a major change to the game…
RE Deepslate slower to mine:
Much of the unhappiness with this situation (at least that I have seen) is based on it not being possible to insta-mine deepslate even with a Haste II beacon.
For players who had made beacon supported open chamber mines a major way of obtaining resources, this was a major nerf.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why does everything have to be so stoopid?" Harvey Pekar (from American Splendor)
WARNING: I have an extemely "grindy" playstyle; YMMV — if this doesn't seem fun to you, mine what you can from it & bin the rest.
I have an idea for the addition of a very realistic way of getting diamonds, instead of mining : SYNTHETIC DIAMONDS
Why this is realistic : Synthetic diamonds, in real life, are created by heating graphite to over 3000 degrees Celsius. This principle can be put to use in Minecraft to make the game more realistic, and diamonds more obtainable.
Rarity:
No Support. Just because it's realistic doesn't make it a good (or even a thematically fitting) idea for Minecraft, and it's both too unbalanced (it would be possible to make diamonds, which are meant to be rare and valuable, using only common ores) and too tedious (it would take quantities of coal that would require a wither skeleton farm, and time spent mining graphite comparable to the time you'd spend mining a comparable amount of diamond, to get enough diamonds for any practical use) to justify.
My suggestions: Enhancements - Throwable Fire Charges - On Phantoms and Elytra. Also check out The Minecraftian Language. This signature is not here to waste your space.
Right, as if 30 coal is that hard to find:
Maybe a bit of an exaggeration for long-term rates but I average over 600 coal per hour, and that's just actual ore mined, giving over 1,300 drops if Fortune III is used:
Assuming 30 coal per diamond made you could make 20 (45) diamonds, compared to my average rate of only 5 (11) diamond found per hour; as for graphite they claimed "a tad bit rarer than coal", which is hardly that rare at all (I'm assuming a similar distribution, so in 1.18+ you'd mine up in the mountains, where coal is more common as a percentage of ground blocks than it was before, this also means you wouldn't be finding any diamonds).
Either way, diamond is already common enough, much more so than it used to be (many people probably still mine at y=11 because every (outdated) tutorial says to but now y= -59 is the best layer):
They even made it more common in 1.20.2 because some people apparently thought it was still too rare; for comparison, in 1.6.4 there is only one deposit of 1-10, averaging about 3.1 ore, per chunk (while it is more spread out now the peak concentration on layer -59 is about 50% greater than it used to be on layers 5-12):
(I also see this as proof of just how little anybody actually wants to mine or go caving these days, you know, in a game called "Mine"craft, and originally, "Cave Game", the latter which is exactly what I see it as. It also doesn't help that a majority of ores do not generate exposed in caves, the exact opposite of what a cave update should have been)
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?
Deepslate is slower to mine than stone, that's why they made it more common
Barely though, and I don't know why people make a big deal out of it - it has the same breaking speed as stone-based ores, which i mine by the thousands every day, yet they account for only 10% of the total time I spend caving, and enchanted tools make the difference even smaller:
So deepslate takes twice as long to mine as stone? Not quite:
So 50% longer? But that is not all, unless the mining time is 0.05 seconds you must add another 0.3 seconds between each block broken in succession. Thus, stone takes 0.4 seconds and deepslate takes 0.45 seconds - a difference of only 12.5%, not 100% (twice as slow). Extrapolated over an hour, you can mine up to 9000 stone or 8000 deepslate (or stone-based ores; I only spend around 25 minutes per day actually mining ore, the other 3 hours or so are spent running around placing torches and killing mobs, and actually getting to the ore).
Also, consider what the Wiki says about diamond mining efficiency, assuming the original ore generation (as noted before, diamond is about 50% more concentrated in the lowest layers than it used to be on layers 5-12 - so multiply the Wiki;s figures by 1.5):
So, 8000 * 0.017 * 1.5 = 204 diamond ore per hour (the additional time needed to mine deepslate ore ore is negligible). Even if that is unreasonable (you must be mining nonstop the entire time) half this rate seems very doable. Though there are people who prefer to only use unenchanted stone tools to mine (in this case stone takes 0.9 seconds and deepslate takes 1.45 seconds, or 1.6 times longer, so I can definitely see an issue here. Even going to unenchanted iron reduces the times to 0.7 and 1.05 seconds, benefiting deepslate more (-0.2 and -0.4 seconds); the faster the tool, the smaller the difference).
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?
Wooooooow... I was really, really hoping this suggestion would not come back. Something being realistic doesn't somehow make an idea good. By that logic, annoying cave-ins and oh-so-hated thirst bars would be added by now. This just seems like a lazy way to get diamonds instead of just mining for them like you're supposed to.
Making the process time-consuming also doesn't make the idea good.
Absolutely no support.
Another notable issue is that this [the original suggestion] would make diamonds renwable: for good or ill this would be a major change to the game…
RE Deepslate slower to mine:
Much of the unhappiness with this situation (at least that I have seen) is based on it not being possible to insta-mine deepslate even with a Haste II beacon.
For players who had made beacon supported open chamber mines a major way of obtaining resources, this was a major nerf.