That's funny. I typically make the trunk tunnel at least 500 long, and then each tunnel is measured in torch stacks, not blocks. I generally make each branch a full stack of torches minimum, spaced every 4th block at the poke holes. So 256 I guess? That's the standard branch. Typically takes two such branches to run me out of torches and inventory space.
Yeah my goal usually is to mine a branch until I hit a vein. 100 is most likely below the average, but was meant to give a general idea.
I tried that poke hole method and it drove me nuts. Your torch numbers gives me another excuse not to like it. Even if lets say I have to light 3 tunnels to that one tunnel of yours I would only expend 75 torches ( 1 torch every 10 blocks so 250*3/10=75).
I never understood why mining at 12 was safer than 11. if anything it is more dangerous. If the fear of falling into lava is the motivational factor, then falling from 12 is way worse as you can't get back out, whereas from 11 you can often save yourself if you're quick enough. And mining at 11 doesn't pose a higher risk of falling into lava, either. If you're paying attention, it won't matter what level you're on.
I never understood why mining at 12 was safer than 11. if anything it is more dangerous. If the fear of falling into lava is the motivational factor, then falling from 12 is way worse as you can't get back out, whereas from 11 you can often save yourself if you're quick enough. And mining at 11 doesn't pose a higher risk of falling into lava, either. If you're paying attention, it won't matter what level you're on.
The point is that if you're mining below lava level when you break into the lava it comes flowing in and can be dangerous that way, plus an obstacle to proceeding.
Whereas if you're at 12 when you break into a lava pocket you just get out your bucket of water and flood a path through it and keep going.
The point is that if you're mining below lava level when you break into the lava it comes flowing in and can be dangerous that way, plus an obstacle to proceeding.
Whereas if you're at 12 when you break into a lava pocket you just get out your bucket of water and flood a path through it and keep going.
They are talking about mining while standing on layer 11 vs layer 12; lava is at layer 10 so layer 11 is still above it, and as mentioned if you fall into water or lava you can only jump out if it is level with a block next to it.
(note - old versions of the game only displayed your eye position, which is 1.62 higher than your feet position, thus "layer 12" was referring to what is now seen as 11)
Also, as far as my mining style goes, I make rectangular grids of long parallel 1x2 tunnels spaced every 4th block, which gets nearly all ore on the layers I'm mining at, as shown in this example (I actually mined below lava level due to a mod ore that is most common just above bedrock, otherwise I'd mine at y=11):
This also shows that lava is not as common as popularly thought (some areas do have quite high concentrations though), even in a version (modded or otherwise) that has more caves than current versions (see also: Digging straight down is safer than I thought; I'd be more concerned about falling into a mob-infested cave).
They are talking about mining while standing on layer 11 vs layer 12; lava is at layer 10 so layer 11 is still above it, and as mentioned if you fall into water or lava you can only jump out if it is level with a block next to it.
(note - old versions of the game only displayed your eye position, which is 1.62 higher than your feet position, thus "layer 12" was referring to what is now seen as 11)
Yeah I can't keep it straight so keep saying the old way. Been playing too long with the old rule of thumb. Thanks for clarifying.
Especially since level 1 is mostly bedrock (ranging from 20% at layer 4 to 100% at layer 0)... That's also why there is less below layer 5; in the uppermost layers it decreases because veins only generate down from their starting y-coordinate, thus veins at layer 15 only overlap with lower layers. Even in a Superflat world (one layer of bedrock) it is best to mine at layer 5 or above since any veins you find in the floor (at y=4) can extend down to y=1 (veins extend across up to 4 layers, hence why the chart shows less above layer 12).
Made 2 branches with my method last night to test. Dealt with maybe 4 different lava spots, only one of which needed cobblestone blocking. Each branch was about 48 torches long, spaced every 4th block, so 192?
Found 43 diamonds, tons of all the other stuff, and the same 0.00 emeralds I always find. Maybe 90 minutes total...but I go slow and do a bunch of engineering to the lava/water/cave spots I find. I also do my obsidian greed thing and that slows me down a tad.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you shouldn't have to worry about light levels in a 1 by 2 passage, don't mobs need at least a 2X2 level area to spawn in? I space mine a lot further apart, only placing one when I have trouble seeing ores, and so far the only creepy I've found has been a small slime, which I was really thankful for, since I need slimeballs.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you shouldn't have to worry about light levels in a 1 by 2 passage, don't mobs need at least a 2X2 level area to spawn in? I space mine a lot further apart, only placing one when I have trouble seeing ores, and so far the only creepy I've found has been a small slime, which I was really thankful for, since I need slimeballs.
The problem is visibility in the poke holes to see any ores. Perhaps you have the brightness turned up? At any rate that's another reason that method drove me nuts. Usually you would see ores and have to mine in anyway. I really only see it as advantageous if you're only targeting a specific ore and remained disciplined enough to just move on if you saw other ores.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you shouldn't have to worry about light levels in a 1 by 2 passage, don't mobs need at least a 2X2 level area to spawn in? I space mine a lot further apart, only placing one when I have trouble seeing ores, and so far the only creepy I've found has been a small slime, which I was really thankful for, since I need slimeballs.
I already mentioned being torch nutty. I drop a torch on the floor at every poke, so every 4th block. My mines are very well lit.
Okay, here is the easiest way to get diamonds. On a survival world, I have around 4 stacks of them.
List of things you will need
Four iron pickaxes
Stack of torches
Bow
Sword
Water
Food
Fortune pick (if you have it)
Cobblestone (you will get it on the way)
First, make a staircase mine down to level 12 (you will see lava but not fall into it)
Make a room around 5 by 5,. This will serve as your hub.
Next, mine in one line. Make a 1 block wide and two block tall tunnel. Important, do not make a 2x2 or a 2x3 tunnel. This will just waste time and resources.
Eventually, you will find diamonds this way, probably not after too long. But, along the way you will find caves. Using your water bucket to turn all lava you see into obsidian, mine all the ore you see. If you start going to high up (above level 26 or so), mine along a different branch of the cave that goes deeper. If you find a large lava lake, you will probably find diamonds near it.
THIS IS IMPORTANT
Once you get your first 10 diamonds or so, make a cow, wheat and sugarcane farm. Then, make an enchanting room out of bookshelves. Enchant a pick with fortune!
Until you have fortune you will never be able to get a lot of diamonds. Get fortune!
Once you have fortune, continue line mining like above. If your line gets to long, start to make branches.
As a plus side of this you can get up to four stacks of iron per trip.
Digging in a straight line or staying at a specific level is not a very good idea. To understand this, it really helps to study the ore distribution via mcedit, fill command or xray. Make a new creative world for this purpose and just check it out.
For branch mining, this tutorial probably describes the most efficient method:
I tend to do something similar to that. If I hit a small cave, I explore and light it. A large cave/ravine, I plug up the branch and put a sign over branch entrance. Same if I hit a body of lava. If I hit a vein of ore, I mine it out, then fill it with cobblestone. If I break into a mineshaft or stronghold, I put in a door. Mineshafts are great source of wood, fences and rails. Strongholds also offer loads of goodies, especially books. Use main tunnel to hold chests, furnaces for gold/iron smelting and crafting tables.
Important: soon as you got your first 5 diamonds, use 3 to make a pick, create some obsidian, and make an enchanting table. You want full 15 bookshelf set around it, and you want lvl 30 xp. Do not come back until you got fortune III on that pick. A typical 2*2*2 vein yields a chestplate worth of diamonds. With a fortune III pick, same vein can get you a full armor set.
Digging in a straight line and at the same level has been far and away the best strategy for me. The point is not how the ores are distributed but how quickly a given technique finds them.
At a particular level, you cannot usefully predict the location of ore so the important point is how much of a given ore is found in a given time. I don't see how any technique can do this any more quickly than just digging in a straight line. Branch mining involves a lot of faffing about running backwards and forwards that is not required if you just travel in a straight line.
How does doing anything other than digging in a straight line improve your chances of finding valuable ores in a hour's mining?
Even a single straight line you have to walk back the entire distance dug, so adding branches actually adds no additional walking time.
[edit]
In fact if you looped your branches you would actually walk less. I don't do this, but if saving time was something I was worried about I probably would.
Digging in a straight line and at the same level has been far and away the best strategy for me. The point is not how the ores are distributed but how quickly a given technique finds them.
At a particular level, you cannot usefully predict the location of ore so the important point is how much of a given ore is found in a given time. I don't see how any technique can do this any more quickly than just digging in a straight line. Branch mining involves a lot of faffing about running backwards and forwards that is not required if you just travel in a straight line.
How does doing anything other than digging in a straight line improve your chances of finding valuable ores in a hour's mining?
What happens when digging in a straight line means that you have to walk thousands of blocks back to your base? That's why most people don't dig in a straight line.
For example, this mine has over 5,000 blocks worth of tunnels, yielding 85 diamond ore (I did not use Fortune because the time spent to get an enchanting setup and Fortune III likely outweighs the time spent mining some more; I only mined this much because this was for a modded world and my main goal was an ore rarer than diamond; I did get Fortune for that but in retrospect I could have put the 10,000 XP I spent (this in 1.6.4, so 30 whole levels per enchant and no preview) to better use; that was about 1/6 of the XP I spent enchanting all of my gear; and just mined perhaps 5-10 more tunnels):
If you ever had to run hundreds of blocks back to your base or build remote caches that take long time to get to, you have lost out. With branch, you dig, say, 100 blocks out, then 4 to the right, then turn right again and dig back to main. 200 blocks dug, and you are right back at your base. You can dig out over 12k worth of unique tunnel and never be more than 150 blocks from base. Since every 200 blocks dug puts you back at base, resupply and stashing is a breeze. Saves time later too - no need to run miles of tunnels to get all those stacks of granite. I used to dig long lines too. Then switched to branch. Never going back.
Yeah my goal usually is to mine a branch until I hit a vein. 100 is most likely below the average, but was meant to give a general idea.
I tried that poke hole method and it drove me nuts. Your torch numbers gives me another excuse not to like it. Even if lets say I have to light 3 tunnels to that one tunnel of yours I would only expend 75 torches ( 1 torch every 10 blocks so 250*3/10=75).
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
I never understood why mining at 12 was safer than 11. if anything it is more dangerous. If the fear of falling into lava is the motivational factor, then falling from 12 is way worse as you can't get back out, whereas from 11 you can often save yourself if you're quick enough. And mining at 11 doesn't pose a higher risk of falling into lava, either. If you're paying attention, it won't matter what level you're on.
The point is that if you're mining below lava level when you break into the lava it comes flowing in and can be dangerous that way, plus an obstacle to proceeding.
Whereas if you're at 12 when you break into a lava pocket you just get out your bucket of water and flood a path through it and keep going.
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
They are talking about mining while standing on layer 11 vs layer 12; lava is at layer 10 so layer 11 is still above it, and as mentioned if you fall into water or lava you can only jump out if it is level with a block next to it.
(note - old versions of the game only displayed your eye position, which is 1.62 higher than your feet position, thus "layer 12" was referring to what is now seen as 11)
Also, as far as my mining style goes, I make rectangular grids of long parallel 1x2 tunnels spaced every 4th block, which gets nearly all ore on the layers I'm mining at, as shown in this example (I actually mined below lava level due to a mod ore that is most common just above bedrock, otherwise I'd mine at y=11):
This also shows that lava is not as common as popularly thought (some areas do have quite high concentrations though), even in a version (modded or otherwise) that has more caves than current versions (see also: Digging straight down is safer than I thought; I'd be more concerned about falling into a mob-infested cave).
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?
Yeah I can't keep it straight so keep saying the old way. Been playing too long with the old rule of thumb. Thanks for clarifying.
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
Another tip is to stay on level 1. Diamonds are most common there;
.Please click!
No they aren't:
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/File:Diamond_D_28x.jpg
Especially since level 1 is mostly bedrock (ranging from 20% at layer 4 to 100% at layer 0)... That's also why there is less below layer 5; in the uppermost layers it decreases because veins only generate down from their starting y-coordinate, thus veins at layer 15 only overlap with lower layers. Even in a Superflat world (one layer of bedrock) it is best to mine at layer 5 or above since any veins you find in the floor (at y=4) can extend down to y=1 (veins extend across up to 4 layers, hence why the chart shows less above layer 12).
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?
thank you all for the help I couldn't choose just one method so i put them all together in a super method which found me 8 diamonds
Made 2 branches with my method last night to test. Dealt with maybe 4 different lava spots, only one of which needed cobblestone blocking. Each branch was about 48 torches long, spaced every 4th block, so 192?
Found 43 diamonds, tons of all the other stuff, and the same 0.00 emeralds I always find. Maybe 90 minutes total...but I go slow and do a bunch of engineering to the lava/water/cave spots I find. I also do my obsidian greed thing and that slows me down a tad.
This is 1x2 at y=10, poke holes at y=11.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you shouldn't have to worry about light levels in a 1 by 2 passage, don't mobs need at least a 2X2 level area to spawn in? I space mine a lot further apart, only placing one when I have trouble seeing ores, and so far the only creepy I've found has been a small slime, which I was really thankful for, since I need slimeballs.
The problem is visibility in the poke holes to see any ores. Perhaps you have the brightness turned up? At any rate that's another reason that method drove me nuts. Usually you would see ores and have to mine in anyway. I really only see it as advantageous if you're only targeting a specific ore and remained disciplined enough to just move on if you saw other ores.
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
I already mentioned being torch nutty. I drop a torch on the floor at every poke, so every 4th block. My mines are very well lit.
Okay, here is the easiest way to get diamonds. On a survival world, I have around 4 stacks of them.
List of things you will need
Four iron pickaxes
Stack of torches
Bow
Sword
Water
Food
Fortune pick (if you have it)
Cobblestone (you will get it on the way)
First, make a staircase mine down to level 12 (you will see lava but not fall into it)
Make a room around 5 by 5,. This will serve as your hub.
Next, mine in one line. Make a 1 block wide and two block tall tunnel. Important, do not make a 2x2 or a 2x3 tunnel. This will just waste time and resources.
Eventually, you will find diamonds this way, probably not after too long. But, along the way you will find caves. Using your water bucket to turn all lava you see into obsidian, mine all the ore you see. If you start going to high up (above level 26 or so), mine along a different branch of the cave that goes deeper. If you find a large lava lake, you will probably find diamonds near it.
THIS IS IMPORTANT
Once you get your first 10 diamonds or so, make a cow, wheat and sugarcane farm. Then, make an enchanting room out of bookshelves. Enchant a pick with fortune!
Until you have fortune you will never be able to get a lot of diamonds. Get fortune!
Once you have fortune, continue line mining like above. If your line gets to long, start to make branches.
As a plus side of this you can get up to four stacks of iron per trip.
Image Removed
NEVER dig straight down
Digging in a straight line or staying at a specific level is not a very good idea. To understand this, it really helps to study the ore distribution via mcedit, fill command or xray. Make a new creative world for this purpose and just check it out.
For branch mining, this tutorial probably describes the most efficient method:
http://www.minecraft101.net/g/mining.html
I tend to do something similar to that. If I hit a small cave, I explore and light it. A large cave/ravine, I plug up the branch and put a sign over branch entrance. Same if I hit a body of lava. If I hit a vein of ore, I mine it out, then fill it with cobblestone. If I break into a mineshaft or stronghold, I put in a door. Mineshafts are great source of wood, fences and rails. Strongholds also offer loads of goodies, especially books. Use main tunnel to hold chests, furnaces for gold/iron smelting and crafting tables.
Important: soon as you got your first 5 diamonds, use 3 to make a pick, create some obsidian, and make an enchanting table. You want full 15 bookshelf set around it, and you want lvl 30 xp. Do not come back until you got fortune III on that pick. A typical 2*2*2 vein yields a chestplate worth of diamonds. With a fortune III pick, same vein can get you a full armor set.
Even a single straight line you have to walk back the entire distance dug, so adding branches actually adds no additional walking time.
[edit]
In fact if you looped your branches you would actually walk less. I don't do this, but if saving time was something I was worried about I probably would.
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
What happens when digging in a straight line means that you have to walk thousands of blocks back to your base? That's why most people don't dig in a straight line.
For example, this mine has over 5,000 blocks worth of tunnels, yielding 85 diamond ore (I did not use Fortune because the time spent to get an enchanting setup and Fortune III likely outweighs the time spent mining some more; I only mined this much because this was for a modded world and my main goal was an ore rarer than diamond; I did get Fortune for that but in retrospect I could have put the 10,000 XP I spent (this in 1.6.4, so 30 whole levels per enchant and no preview) to better use; that was about 1/6 of the XP I spent enchanting all of my gear; and just mined perhaps 5-10 more tunnels):
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?
Guess the bottom line is if you are finding diamonds and are happy about the rate at which you are, then your system is working well for you.
My branch mining technique is working for me.
If you ever had to run hundreds of blocks back to your base or build remote caches that take long time to get to, you have lost out. With branch, you dig, say, 100 blocks out, then 4 to the right, then turn right again and dig back to main. 200 blocks dug, and you are right back at your base. You can dig out over 12k worth of unique tunnel and never be more than 150 blocks from base. Since every 200 blocks dug puts you back at base, resupply and stashing is a breeze. Saves time later too - no need to run miles of tunnels to get all those stacks of granite. I used to dig long lines too. Then switched to branch. Never going back.
That does'nt help,
dont trust him, i can give you a seed where diamonds a plenty
jpgaming