Long story short, my friend and I used to play MC together a while back and we started trying to mob-proof our base area for the various farms we have. We started first by lighting caves, got sick of that, then started mining a lot of random areas out but my friend eventually got bored of the game and stopped playing entirely some time after we killed the dragon. I can't stand lighting caves so I thought I'd be lazy (oh the irony) and just start digging the whole perimeter out by hand. Because of a trading hall we have, perfect blacksmith, various farms, ender xp machine and such I knew I'd have the necessary tools to actually do it. Of course, I didn't fully realize how bad it would be but I kept going day by day until eventually it was done. Now I don't really have anyone to show, so I thought I'd put it here just in case anyone finds it entertaining or interesting. It makes it feel like less of a waste.
It's 256x256x51ish from the topmost bedrock layer up and leaving a thin layer for the ceiling, so the above-ground world and our base still all appears intact as if you were on solid ground (but also had to be lit up separately). Seen in the pics is an elevator which stealthily leads up through the inside of an over-sized tree trunk in the overworld and directly into our base, a slime farm (drowning style with auto-shutoff signal from base when supply is full), and some other artifacts/nostalgic things such as an old zombie spawner farm I decided to leave in its original position. In estimation the whole underground dig took about a month or so in total working 97% solo, a solid 4-6 hours per day.
Some pics!
Beacons are mandatory!
Remnants of a mineshaft on the perimeter border
Riding the elevator up directly into our base between dig sessions.
So useful to build one early on and specifically for this size of the job. Very lazy, much savings. Nearly mandatory.
A view right on the border. The walls look like swiss cheese.
I probably make it sound like I'm on adderall and started doing this all willy-nilly one day but there actually was a lot of planning, strategy and technique to this which I'm not sure anyone would care about. If anyone is thinking about doing the same thing and wants some advice, my recommendation is... just don't.
Lighting the caves strategically like a normal person is far less tedious, but you still have to spawn-proof the slime chunks a different way and should still use excessive torches everywhere, marking off all the dead ends and you'll save loads of time in the end, no question. Definitely don't bother with TnT unless you already have the sand stockpiled or a duplicator. I still didn't think it would take so long to speedmine and then got sucked into a nasty job which I couldn't stand to leave unfinished. If you really are that invested in quarrying out a 256x256 chunk like I was for whatever reason, I guess I can't stop you but I could answer any other questions in more detail.
Welp, finally got that off my back for now! /uninstalls
Cheers
A layer or two a day.. You can eat an elephant if you do it one bite at a time.
I don't really know what now though. Ideally I was going to build a regular mob farm that was super efficient afterward since I have total control of mob spawns now (basically only for witch sticks for a furnace array and ender pearls, have farms for them but obviously not near base), but anyway I don't have anyone to play with anymore so the game in general feels kind of pointless.
I've done most all the projects I can think of and care to actually do anyway, this was just the biggest one. I might keep playing here and there, might not. Anyway just for fun I'll post some pics of the upper side of our world and spoiler it below. If you look you might see why I was kind of running out of ideas for projects; we have virtually everything that is worth trying to hoard. This is all directly above the perimeter "room".
No offense but that was a waste of time, mining out 65535 blocks! You could have used that time to at least getsome TNT.
It's actually somewhere around 2-3 million blocks. Hard to calculate since there's a lot of empty space, lava, etc...
I thought plenty hard about it and did a lot of math, trust me. Including other ideas like abusing a Wither, or trying to sequester random people to play somehow and keep backups of my server but meh. TNT would have been a lot more fun in the final moments, no doubt, but in reality would have been far less efficient and just as tedious, if not more so. All that would have done was trade mining stone for mining somewhat an equivalent but lesser amount of sand, but then you'd have your inventory constantly filling with sand, and hundreds of double chests loaded to the brim with sand/powder to keep track of and then the huge job of crafting it all into TNT, piloting thousands of holes, planting all of it, setting up the redstone, etc etc... The method I used I'm 99% sure was the fastest way to actually get it dug out, just not the fastest way to mob-proof a perimeter. Caving definitely is what you should normally do. Still looks cool and have a ton of room to build whatever down there now!
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HOW DID YOU DO THIS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
My trusty MC1.7 Blacksmith with iron in the last slot and diamond picks for sale who I've kept locked up in a padded cell was a key component, as well as having the new 1.8 librarians with every type of max enchant for sale. You need somewhere in the range of 350-400ish diamond picks with full enchants which probably makes this nearly impossible to do the same way in pure 1.8 now. The enchants are a huge issue if you don't have access to the books; it's agony trying to manually enchant Eff5 Unb3 a hundred times so that ended real quick. It's a couple day project starting a trading hall from scratch with a breeder and getting together every book type so that's what I did near the beginning. You also needed a steady supply of emeralds, so.. whatever farms you got that villagers like.
Not having a job for a few months also helps.
Seriously though, I literally just did a "standing layer" (2m) once per day which took about 2-2.5 hours including repairing the tools, making new ones or buying books. We have an enderman XP farm which is almost a perfect replica of Etho's enderman farm using TNT, which basically trivializes the time it takes to gain levels. I did layer digs sometimes once every other day, or twice in one day, etc. Listened to a lot of music, drank a lot (coffee and booze). Magically in about 25 days it was done.
That is a really nice job! I once dug out an area that was about a quarter as big and it still took me a very long time, digging that large of an area... that is amazing.
I'm actually considering doing something similar on my server. However, after doing some tests last night, I've determined that my spawn chunks are 12 chunks x 12 chunks, which would be a 192x192 area to clear, instead of 256x256. Even so, I'm probably insane, or will be before I finish I plan to do it a little at a time, and since I have a design for a fantastic XP farm (ImpulseSV's X79- I've made it in my SSP world, but not yet on my server, it is just amazing), enchanting many picks won't be a problem.
The way I tested was to separate out chunks (did all this in creative) with blocks, then build a small holding pen for chickens in each one. Then, I'd spawn some baby chicks in them using eggs, then head out about 1200-1500 blocks away and wait for at least 20 minutes (actually closer to 30, to be sure). Then, when I went back, noted which chickens had matured, and which were still babies. After several tests on different chunks, I finally managed to find the full square of exactly what chunks always stay loaded as long as someone is logged in. I still have it marked off, but I threw away any incidentals I got so as not to cheat. I actually haven't found any chickens yet, so I made sure to get rid of any drops from them, as well as kill off any that managed to escape. Once I get it fully marked out with blocks actually earned in survival mode, I'll go back and remove the markers still there (they're way up in the air).
Many people note that just mining is somehow therapeutic and I must say that I have considered doing something like this in the past.
I'd definitely agree with the statement but at some point it completely degrades into mind-cramping tediousness. Doing about 1/4 of a layer (2m high, 128x128) with speedmining is about the limit of it being "therapeutic". Then it's like... k, gotta just do this 3 more times today and I'm done. Right there it gets annoying. Then you need to do all that 24 more times. I don't see a way of anyone rationalizing that it's still fun. You just get hand cramps and carpal tunnel.
I'm actually considering doing something similar on my server. However, after doing some tests last night, I've determined that my spawn chunks are 12 chunks x 12 chunks, which would be a 192x192 area to clear, instead of 256x256.
Even though the numbers seem close, it actually is substantially less because of squaring. Then again, even though it might be literally half of the work, it is still a crapton of work. Don't have much recommendation there... if you have a buddy or two to help then it would make it much more reasonable. If you're good with knocking off a bit at a time by yourself, then it's not so bad. Couple weeks assuming you have the appropriate preparations.
The room... HOW?! All of those beacons... again, HOW?! The materials to make the powered beacons, HOW?! WHY?! Uhh, dergj... gdhkfl-
ithinki'mbroken
The beacons are a combination of iron blocks (obvious where those come from) or gold (the weird prismatic shape thing in my base in the second post is an automatic gold farm). The beacon items themselves were not that big of a deal to farm, you just need a half-assed nether fortress setup with the floors cleared out and Looting 3, of course.
Yeah, I was thinking more like 2 months, or even more. I'm not planning on doing a lot at a time. Just until I get bored, then move on to something else. I also find mining to be relaxing, until it feels tedious. That's when I'll stop for that session. I started on it last night, and actually found that I was wanting more time to dig, since I have so many other projects to get done.
I've done stuff like this with mods before, and even using BC quarries, this can take a while. Doing it by hand will take exponentially more time, but my current server world is 1.8.1 vanilla, so....
A little at a time, don't set a time limit, it will get done eventually.
It's 256x256x51ish from the topmost bedrock layer up and leaving a thin layer for the ceiling, so the above-ground world and our base still all appears intact as if you were on solid ground (but also had to be lit up separately). Seen in the pics is an elevator which stealthily leads up through the inside of an over-sized tree trunk in the overworld and directly into our base, a slime farm (drowning style with auto-shutoff signal from base when supply is full), and some other artifacts/nostalgic things such as an old zombie spawner farm I decided to leave in its original position. In estimation the whole underground dig took about a month or so in total working 97% solo, a solid 4-6 hours per day.
Some pics!
Beacons are mandatory!
Remnants of a mineshaft on the perimeter border
Riding the elevator up directly into our base between dig sessions.
So useful to build one early on and specifically for this size of the job. Very lazy, much savings. Nearly mandatory.
A view right on the border. The walls look like swiss cheese.
I probably make it sound like I'm on adderall and started doing this all willy-nilly one day but there actually was a lot of planning, strategy and technique to this which I'm not sure anyone would care about. If anyone is thinking about doing the same thing and wants some advice, my recommendation is... just don't.
Lighting the caves strategically like a normal person is far less tedious, but you still have to spawn-proof the slime chunks a different way and should still use excessive torches everywhere, marking off all the dead ends and you'll save loads of time in the end, no question. Definitely don't bother with TnT unless you already have the sand stockpiled or a duplicator. I still didn't think it would take so long to speedmine and then got sucked into a nasty job which I couldn't stand to leave unfinished. If you really are that invested in quarrying out a 256x256 chunk like I was for whatever reason, I guess I can't stop you but I could answer any other questions in more detail.
Welp, finally got that off my back for now! /uninstalls
Cheers
I don't really know what now though. Ideally I was going to build a regular mob farm that was super efficient afterward since I have total control of mob spawns now (basically only for witch sticks for a furnace array and ender pearls, have farms for them but obviously not near base), but anyway I don't have anyone to play with anymore so the game in general feels kind of pointless.
I've done most all the projects I can think of and care to actually do anyway, this was just the biggest one. I might keep playing here and there, might not. Anyway just for fun I'll post some pics of the upper side of our world and spoiler it below. If you look you might see why I was kind of running out of ideas for projects; we have virtually everything that is worth trying to hoard.
Cool stuffs in spoiler
It's actually somewhere around 2-3 million blocks.
I thought plenty hard about it and did a lot of math, trust me. Including other ideas like abusing a Wither, or trying to sequester random people to play somehow and keep backups of my server but meh. TNT would have been a lot more fun in the final moments, no doubt, but in reality would have been far less efficient and just as tedious, if not more so. All that would have done was trade mining stone for mining somewhat an equivalent but lesser amount of sand, but then you'd have your inventory constantly filling with sand, and hundreds of double chests loaded to the brim with sand/powder to keep track of and then the huge job of crafting it all into TNT, piloting thousands of holes, planting all of it, setting up the redstone, etc etc... The method I used I'm 99% sure was the fastest way to actually get it dug out, just not the fastest way to mob-proof a perimeter. Caving definitely is what you should normally do. Still looks cool and have a ton of room to build whatever down there now!
My trusty MC1.7 Blacksmith with iron in the last slot and diamond picks for sale who I've kept locked up in a padded cell was a key component, as well as having the new 1.8 librarians with every type of max enchant for sale. You need somewhere in the range of 350-400ish diamond picks with full enchants which probably makes this nearly impossible to do the same way in pure 1.8 now. The enchants are a huge issue if you don't have access to the books; it's agony trying to manually enchant Eff5 Unb3 a hundred times so that ended real quick. It's a couple day project starting a trading hall from scratch with a breeder and getting together every book type so that's what I did near the beginning. You also needed a steady supply of emeralds, so.. whatever farms you got that villagers like.
Not having a job for a few months also helps.
Seriously though, I literally just did a "standing layer" (2m) once per day which took about 2-2.5 hours including repairing the tools, making new ones or buying books. We have an enderman XP farm which is almost a perfect replica of Etho's enderman farm using TNT, which basically trivializes the time it takes to gain levels. I did layer digs sometimes once every other day, or twice in one day, etc. Listened to a lot of music, drank a lot (coffee and booze). Magically in about 25 days it was done.
Okay so umm...go..good build...ha..have a cake...
**Teleports out of thread**
But this? This just makes me look pathetic :/ NICE JOB!
But this.... This is ... Extravagant.
Have a diamond, and a couple of cakes...
[insert signature here]
[cannot compute signature]
[try using something that isn't too weird]
[cannot compute]
[signature terminated]
player.me/felinoel
The way I tested was to separate out chunks (did all this in creative) with blocks, then build a small holding pen for chickens in each one. Then, I'd spawn some baby chicks in them using eggs, then head out about 1200-1500 blocks away and wait for at least 20 minutes (actually closer to 30, to be sure). Then, when I went back, noted which chickens had matured, and which were still babies. After several tests on different chunks, I finally managed to find the full square of exactly what chunks always stay loaded as long as someone is logged in. I still have it marked off, but I threw away any incidentals I got so as not to cheat. I actually haven't found any chickens yet, so I made sure to get rid of any drops from them, as well as kill off any that managed to escape. Once I get it fully marked out with blocks actually earned in survival mode, I'll go back and remove the markers still there (they're way up in the air).
ithinki'mbroken
"If we were to play SkyBlock in hardcore, Trevor would die in the first 5 minutes! We would live until we die of old age!" ~rball99
I'd definitely agree with the statement but at some point it completely degrades into mind-cramping tediousness. Doing about 1/4 of a layer (2m high, 128x128) with speedmining is about the limit of it being "therapeutic". Then it's like... k, gotta just do this 3 more times today and I'm done. Right there it gets annoying. Then you need to do all that 24 more times. I don't see a way of anyone rationalizing that it's still fun. You just get hand cramps and carpal tunnel.
Even though the numbers seem close, it actually is substantially less because of squaring. Then again, even though it might be literally half of the work, it is still a crapton of work. Don't have much recommendation there... if you have a buddy or two to help then it would make it much more reasonable. If you're good with knocking off a bit at a time by yourself, then it's not so bad. Couple weeks assuming you have the appropriate preparations.
The beacons are a combination of iron blocks (obvious where those come from) or gold (the weird prismatic shape thing in my base in the second post is an automatic gold farm). The beacon items themselves were not that big of a deal to farm, you just need a half-assed nether fortress setup with the floors cleared out and Looting 3, of course.
I've done stuff like this with mods before, and even using BC quarries, this can take a while. Doing it by hand will take exponentially more time, but my current server world is 1.8.1 vanilla, so....
A little at a time, don't set a time limit, it will get done eventually.