I hate 1x1 mining because I hate caves (even though I explore them often enough). But I realized there is one way to quickly mine 1x1 and get that 5:1 block ratio without much risk. It's a variation on the ladder approach where you place a ladder for every block you mine. That's slow because mining while holding onto the ladder slows your mining speed, and not holding it means you fall anyway, defeating the purpose.
But what if you only place a ladder on every second block on your way down? You can mine two blocks down from where you stand on a ladder, and you remove them as you go down so you're not stuck between two one block apart (this glitches the ladder mechanic out), which takes little time with a good axe and saves you having to have a million ladders on hand (you can jump-stack back up).
This way, you mine faster and have the safety of the ladder without the speed loss. All you need extra is two or three ladders and an iron axe.
Mining down from the surface is also a terrible way to find diamonds, which is what most players are after when they mine; only the lowest 13 layers or so (below y=16 down to the top layer of bedrock at y=1-5) will have any. If you want to reduce the amount of blocks mined you can make a 1x2 tunnel at y=11 and dig 1x1 peepholes in the walls, or go a few layers deeper and also dig up into the ceiling. This may take longer and requires more attention than simply mining 1x2 tunnels though; what I do is start mining 20-30 blocks in one direction, then go back to the start and mine a long tunnel perpendicular to the first, then at the other end make another 20-30 block long tunnel parallel to the first, then I can mine tunnels back and forth between them without paying attention to how far I've gone:
(this mine was entirely below lava level; IMO the risk of running into caves, as well as the danger of lava, is often exaggerated. I mined this deep sine I was looking for a mod ore (colored purple) which is much rarer than diamond except in the deepest layers, otherwise I'd mine at y=11)
I mine at Y=11 and I make my branching tunnels 1 wide by 3 high. I realize making the tunnels 3 blocks high takes longer, but you'd be amazed at how many extra diamonds I find in the ceiling that way. Beside, in the early game I'm often mining as much for cobblestone and iron as for diamonds. I need a lot of cobble for stone bricks to build my castles in the sky.
To get to Y=11 I bore straight down in a 2 x 1 space, putting ladders on only one side. Later I add ladder to both sides so I have a fall-proof ladder shaft that's easier to move around in than a 1x1 ladder shaft.
I simply put a small water pool at the bottom and jump down. And eventually when flush with iron, build a click-through minecart elevator for going up.
MasterCaver: rare deep purple mod ore... are you trying out Abyssalcraft?
I usually branch mine 3x1. Sure, it is slightly less efficient than 2x1 (3:8 vs 2:6 mined to exposed ratio) but I just like 3 tall tunnels a lot more. Especially when playing in VR, which I do quite often, 1x2 is decidedly claustrophobic.
Mining down from the surface is also a terrible way to find diamonds
Ores and resource-collection are not usually the point when digging vertical shafts. If I'm only digging a shaft so I can get down to a mine or other point of interest underground, I much prefer something bigger than a 1x1. However, I use 1x1 shafts to discover unexplored caves in the area. I personally keep the grid simple and dig a shaft in the center of each chunk, but I'm sure some more efficiency can be squeezed out of that.
MasterCaver: rare deep purple mod ore... are you trying out Abyssalcraft?
I'm a bit surprised that a lot of people still do not know that I play with my own mod, TheMasterCaver's World, without exception (aside from Optifine, the only mod not of my own making that I've used for the past 4+ years. Amethyst actually originated from a small mod I used back in 2013, later added to TMCW in a more balanced way (I actually edited that mod to reduce the damage the weapons deal). I probably can't even run the mod you mentioned since every Forge mod seems to require like 4 GB of memory, making them a no-go for somebody with a 32 bit OS (even the latest in-dev version of TMCW, which adds 6x more blocks than TMCWv4 and hundreds of new features, far exceeding what 1.13 is adding, is highly optimized and still only uses around 256 MB; I have no idea why any modpack, no matter how big would even need twice as much memory as vanilla unless they all use HD textures).
In any case, this is why I branch-mine at y=1 (TMCW only has one layer of bedrock at y=0) but otherwise ore distribution is the same as vanilla (cave lava level and rarer ores are deeper down; even though I mine below lava I don't find it to be much of an issue).
Also, I'm not sure why you would want to surface mine when you can find the exact same resources and more deeper down; the only inconvenience of deeper mining is that you'll spend more time getting to and from the level you are mining on but you can spend a long time mining if you bring chests to store mined materials and a crafting table and furnaces to craft/smelt resources into blocks (this is how I can spend hours at a time caving, collecting upwards of 1,000 resources per hour, without having to return due to lack of space; instead of chests I use an Ender chest and only collect minimal amounts of non-resource blocks/cobblestone but the principle is the same).
I probably can't even run the mod you mentioned since every Forge mod seems to require like 4 GB of memory
I know you're all about statistics and data and all that, but I think you might want to check your math again unless you're saying that mods prior to 1.7.10 are really that horribly coded as to be unplayable on the systems they were written for. gigabytes of ram is what an entire modpack requires: lightweight packs with at most 20-30 mods only require around 2-3GB ram, middleweight packs (50ish to 150ish mods) usually require between 3 and 5GB, and the heavyweight packs (those with 200+ mods, or containing mods that do intensive and/or extended AI/rendering work) require around 6-8GB (never actually seen a pack that recommended having more than 6, however).
Granted, between older hardware and smaller allocation limits, 32-bit systems won't be able to run any of the heavyweight packs nor some of the middleweight packs.
I know you're all about statistics and data and all that, but I think you might want to check your math again unless you're saying that mods prior to 1.7.10 are really that horribly coded as to be unplayable on the systems they were written for. gigabytes of ram is what an entire modpack requires: lightweight packs with at most 20-30 mods only require around 2-3GB ram, middleweight packs (50ish to 150ish mods) usually require between 3 and 5GB, and the heavyweight packs (those with 200+ mods, or containing mods that do intensive and/or extended AI/rendering work) require around 6-8GB (never actually seen a pack that recommended having more than 6, however).
Granted, between older hardware and smaller allocation limits, 32-bit systems won't be able to run any of the heavyweight packs nor some of the middleweight packs.
Maybe I meant modpack, but the amounts of memory they need are insane by any means and there is no sane reason that I can see for it; for example, the current developmental version of TMCW adds 221 new textures, most of them 16x16, which is about 221 KB of memory required to store them (1 KB per 16x16 texture at the standard 4 bytes per pixel) - even ten times that would still only be a couple MB. The code for most blocks is several more KB (TMCWv5 currently has 3.2 MB of source, but this is much less when compiled into bytecode; even the largest class shown is less than 50 KB when compiled), and actual memory usage in-game is almost solely dependent on the number of blocks loaded, not the number of different blocks. I know that some mods really go overboard on tile entities but a reasonable number (present in the world) will not consume a significant amount of memory; even a chunk filled with 65536 furnaces has no noticeable impact (I even tried a Superflat world with 256 layers and while it did lag severely due to the time needed to tick them it still used less than 1 GB for nearly 29 million furnaces).
Consistent with this is the fact that the only time I needed to allocate more than 512 MB was when I played with a mod that tripled the normal ground depth (close to 3x more blocks loaded; Amplified has that "beefy computer" warning for much the same reason), and that was still just 768 MB (at least on my older computer, which was nearly the same in terms of memory available (both 32 bit, 3 GB vs 3.2 GB usable, Win7 vs Win10) allocating 1 GB has resulted in a "Minecraft has run out of memory" error screen despite F3 showing plenty of free memory so I guess this was due to the Java process itself running out).
If anything, I've offset the memory needed by new code and textures by removing a 10 MB "memory reserve" array from the game (the game allocates this array and only frees it if the client (not server) thread encounters an out of memory condition. From testing this makes no difference since it deallocates memory anyway when it closes the current world and clears the renderer. Also, since the array is a public static field you can simply call "Minecraft.memoryReserve = null" without editing any code, so any mod can clear it during startup).
I know you run your own but no idea what else it supports and what mods can be added.
While resource overconsumption is not a good thing, I am not much bothered by it in this case, having 32GB RAM. Also, I suspect that in my game, JMap is a bigger offender than Abyssalcraft. I was suffering horrendous garbage collection lag with 1GB assigned to MC. Setting it to 4 completely fixed the problem. I actually did not try anything in between...
With respect to 1x1 mining, ladder or not... seems like an awful waste. If done from surface, 64-16 are practically waste to get to 15-5, so ratio of blocks dug to useful blocks exposed goes way down.
One can establish a branch network at y=12 and make drop shafts to y=5 from there, which should be fairly safe. But you pretty much need to spend half your time pillaring back up or messing with ladders. It might be more effective in terms of blocks dug to blocks exposed, but in terms of new blocks exposed per minute, it definitely loses out.
I hate 1x1 mining because I hate caves (even though I explore them often enough). But I realized there is one way to quickly mine 1x1 and get that 5:1 block ratio without much risk. It's a variation on the ladder approach where you place a ladder for every block you mine. That's slow because mining while holding onto the ladder slows your mining speed, and not holding it means you fall anyway, defeating the purpose.
But what if you only place a ladder on every second block on your way down? You can mine two blocks down from where you stand on a ladder, and you remove them as you go down so you're not stuck between two one block apart (this glitches the ladder mechanic out), which takes little time with a good axe and saves you having to have a million ladders on hand (you can jump-stack back up).
This way, you mine faster and have the safety of the ladder without the speed loss. All you need extra is two or three ladders and an iron axe.
I'm curious, are you digging your shafts from the surface , or from a 2X1 tunnel at diamond depth?
Even with a good axe, wouldn't all those steps take longer than exposing the same number of blocks with a 2X1 tunnel?
I'd say that time was a more valuable resource than pickaxes.
Just testing.
Mining down from the surface is also a terrible way to find diamonds, which is what most players are after when they mine; only the lowest 13 layers or so (below y=16 down to the top layer of bedrock at y=1-5) will have any. If you want to reduce the amount of blocks mined you can make a 1x2 tunnel at y=11 and dig 1x1 peepholes in the walls, or go a few layers deeper and also dig up into the ceiling. This may take longer and requires more attention than simply mining 1x2 tunnels though; what I do is start mining 20-30 blocks in one direction, then go back to the start and mine a long tunnel perpendicular to the first, then at the other end make another 20-30 block long tunnel parallel to the first, then I can mine tunnels back and forth between them without paying attention to how far I've gone:
(this mine was entirely below lava level; IMO the risk of running into caves, as well as the danger of lava, is often exaggerated. I mined this deep sine I was looking for a mod ore (colored purple) which is much rarer than diamond except in the deepest layers, otherwise I'd mine at y=11)
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?
I mine at Y=11 and I make my branching tunnels 1 wide by 3 high. I realize making the tunnels 3 blocks high takes longer, but you'd be amazed at how many extra diamonds I find in the ceiling that way. Beside, in the early game I'm often mining as much for cobblestone and iron as for diamonds. I need a lot of cobble for stone bricks to build my castles in the sky.
To get to Y=11 I bore straight down in a 2 x 1 space, putting ladders on only one side. Later I add ladder to both sides so I have a fall-proof ladder shaft that's easier to move around in than a 1x1 ladder shaft.
I simply put a small water pool at the bottom and jump down. And eventually when flush with iron, build a click-through minecart elevator for going up.
MasterCaver: rare deep purple mod ore... are you trying out Abyssalcraft?
I usually branch mine 3x1. Sure, it is slightly less efficient than 2x1 (3:8 vs 2:6 mined to exposed ratio) but I just like 3 tall tunnels a lot more. Especially when playing in VR, which I do quite often, 1x2 is decidedly claustrophobic.
I was talking about surface mining, as are 99% of people talking about 1x1s.
Ores and resource-collection are not usually the point when digging vertical shafts. If I'm only digging a shaft so I can get down to a mine or other point of interest underground, I much prefer something bigger than a 1x1. However, I use 1x1 shafts to discover unexplored caves in the area. I personally keep the grid simple and dig a shaft in the center of each chunk, but I'm sure some more efficiency can be squeezed out of that.
I'm a bit surprised that a lot of people still do not know that I play with my own mod, TheMasterCaver's World, without exception (aside from Optifine, the only mod not of my own making that I've used for the past 4+ years. Amethyst actually originated from a small mod I used back in 2013, later added to TMCW in a more balanced way (I actually edited that mod to reduce the damage the weapons deal). I probably can't even run the mod you mentioned since every Forge mod seems to require like 4 GB of memory, making them a no-go for somebody with a 32 bit OS (even the latest in-dev version of TMCW, which adds 6x more blocks than TMCWv4 and hundreds of new features, far exceeding what 1.13 is adding, is highly optimized and still only uses around 256 MB; I have no idea why any modpack, no matter how big would even need twice as much memory as vanilla unless they all use HD textures).
In any case, this is why I branch-mine at y=1 (TMCW only has one layer of bedrock at y=0) but otherwise ore distribution is the same as vanilla (cave lava level and rarer ores are deeper down; even though I mine below lava I don't find it to be much of an issue).
Also, I'm not sure why you would want to surface mine when you can find the exact same resources and more deeper down; the only inconvenience of deeper mining is that you'll spend more time getting to and from the level you are mining on but you can spend a long time mining if you bring chests to store mined materials and a crafting table and furnaces to craft/smelt resources into blocks (this is how I can spend hours at a time caving, collecting upwards of 1,000 resources per hour, without having to return due to lack of space; instead of chests I use an Ender chest and only collect minimal amounts of non-resource blocks/cobblestone but the principle is the same).
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?
I know you're all about statistics and data and all that, but I think you might want to check your math again unless you're saying that mods prior to 1.7.10 are really that horribly coded as to be unplayable on the systems they were written for. gigabytes of ram is what an entire modpack requires: lightweight packs with at most 20-30 mods only require around 2-3GB ram, middleweight packs (50ish to 150ish mods) usually require between 3 and 5GB, and the heavyweight packs (those with 200+ mods, or containing mods that do intensive and/or extended AI/rendering work) require around 6-8GB (never actually seen a pack that recommended having more than 6, however).
Granted, between older hardware and smaller allocation limits, 32-bit systems won't be able to run any of the heavyweight packs nor some of the middleweight packs.
Maybe I meant modpack, but the amounts of memory they need are insane by any means and there is no sane reason that I can see for it; for example, the current developmental version of TMCW adds 221 new textures, most of them 16x16, which is about 221 KB of memory required to store them (1 KB per 16x16 texture at the standard 4 bytes per pixel) - even ten times that would still only be a couple MB. The code for most blocks is several more KB (TMCWv5 currently has 3.2 MB of source, but this is much less when compiled into bytecode; even the largest class shown is less than 50 KB when compiled), and actual memory usage in-game is almost solely dependent on the number of blocks loaded, not the number of different blocks. I know that some mods really go overboard on tile entities but a reasonable number (present in the world) will not consume a significant amount of memory; even a chunk filled with 65536 furnaces has no noticeable impact (I even tried a Superflat world with 256 layers and while it did lag severely due to the time needed to tick them it still used less than 1 GB for nearly 29 million furnaces).
Consistent with this is the fact that the only time I needed to allocate more than 512 MB was when I played with a mod that tripled the normal ground depth (close to 3x more blocks loaded; Amplified has that "beefy computer" warning for much the same reason), and that was still just 768 MB (at least on my older computer, which was nearly the same in terms of memory available (both 32 bit, 3 GB vs 3.2 GB usable, Win7 vs Win10) allocating 1 GB has resulted in a "Minecraft has run out of memory" error screen despite F3 showing plenty of free memory so I guess this was due to the Java process itself running out).
If anything, I've offset the memory needed by new code and textures by removing a 10 MB "memory reserve" array from the game (the game allocates this array and only frees it if the client (not server) thread encounters an out of memory condition. From testing this makes no difference since it deallocates memory anyway when it closes the current world and clears the renderer. Also, since the array is a public static field you can simply call "Minecraft.memoryReserve = null" without editing any code, so any mod can clear it during startup).
(this is getting a bit off-topic)
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?
I know you run your own but no idea what else it supports and what mods can be added.
While resource overconsumption is not a good thing, I am not much bothered by it in this case, having 32GB RAM. Also, I suspect that in my game, JMap is a bigger offender than Abyssalcraft. I was suffering horrendous garbage collection lag with 1GB assigned to MC. Setting it to 4 completely fixed the problem. I actually did not try anything in between...
With respect to 1x1 mining, ladder or not... seems like an awful waste. If done from surface, 64-16 are practically waste to get to 15-5, so ratio of blocks dug to useful blocks exposed goes way down.
One can establish a branch network at y=12 and make drop shafts to y=5 from there, which should be fairly safe. But you pretty much need to spend half your time pillaring back up or messing with ladders. It might be more effective in terms of blocks dug to blocks exposed, but in terms of new blocks exposed per minute, it definitely loses out.