NEWER EDIT : This post was originally written in Dec. 2010. Some information may not be applicable or seriously outdated. I will not be revising the OP again to update it to the current patch. Any additional techniques or information I come up with will simply be added to the thread as new posts. Post #245(page 13) is an example of a new technique I'm using that I've been calling "vector mining", or sometimes "cluster mining". I now use this method in conjunction with my layer 11 technique detailed below for even higher diamond yields.
EDIT: revised to go better with IscopeU's video. HOPE IT HELPS!
heres an awesome video of the technique made by IscopeU.
so i noticed after the beta update that there seemed to be an increase to the number/size of deep lava pools being generated compared to alpha and decided to put an old theory of mine to the test. due to the seemingly higher lava pool generation, the probability of your finding mineral deposits surrounding these would also increase. THIS IS NOT DUE TO INCREASED MINERAL GENERATION SURROUNDING LAVA POOLS BUT BECAUSE OF THE INCREASED VISIBILITY LAVA POOLS WILL GIVE YOU, WHICH IN TURN INCREASES YOUR EFFICIENCY, similar to natural cave systems.
ive always thought that layer 12(when you hold F3 it should display your y coordinates as 12.6435435 or something) would be a great place to mine but always came up about even in terms of diamond finds when compared to more traditional 1x2 branch mines i was using on layers 6-14. layer 12 has a unique feature that no other layer in the game has, its the only place you can find large lava pools. you essentially want to use a bucket of water to turn these pools into a giant obsidian "highway" for you to walk on.
*THERE ARE MANY NUANCES TO THIS TECHNIQUE AS YOU ARE FREQUENTLY SPELUNKING TO FIND YOUR DIAMONDS AND MAY NOT BE FOR BEGINNERS WHO ARE EXPECTING TO MINDLESSLY MINE IN A STRAIGHT LINE AND FIND 345735983457934 DIAMONDS*
you will need to use your knowledge, intuition, experience and a little bit of luck for good results. just digging in a straight line may not yield as expected.
KEY THINGS TO NOTE THAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE BEEN IN THE ABOVE VIDEO-
1. you will NEED a bucket of water, just do it.
2. its a good idea to dig around lava pools with no exposed rock to check for adjoining pools/cave systems.
3. CHECK CAVES THOROUGHLY!!! IscopeU almost walks straight past the 2nd diamond vein in the above video simply because it was not easily visible.
4. BE AWARE. listen for water/monters/dungeons to help guide you to nearby caves.
5. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR WHEN BUILDING YOUR MINE! i suggest building your mine above or even inside(i generally build inside and use a 2x1 shaft with ladders straight down) large surface cave systems. this can dramatically increase the chance you will hit a deep cave network with all the "noise" in those chunks. i will generally hit large cave networks around layers 15-20 before i can even finish my main shaft when doing this.
6. DONT BE AFRAID TO START A NEW MINE!! when youre covering the kind of ground you should be in cave systems, you may end up with a HUGE sprawling "mine" and few unexplored caves nearby. dont be scared to go out into the world and start a new mine a thousand blocks away, link everything with nether portals. theyre in the game for a reason, what takes an hour to walk in the overworld takes 5mins in the nether. i realize that it wont be "next to your spawn", dont care. make a bed and you have a brand new spawn... so stop being a wuss and get out there exploring your infinite world to get your hands on some of those infinite diamonds!
7. its often a good idea to check around other mineral deposits for diamond even when youre not mining it. redstone can be a good indicator for diamond, gold ive found, is generally the opposite. The texture pack in the pic below is long lost in the old beta forums, so dont ask what it is, i dont know.
Somehow, looking for diamonds doesn't work for me. When I don't look for them, I find them everywhere. On a side note, I thought iron is located in sea level and below, I just found iron in a lava lake high in the mountains.
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Do you see a troll? Did you report it? Did you post on the topic? Did you lose? Yes, yes you did.
Except that there are no correlation between lava pools and diamond veins. People only believe that because the caves that are deep enough to have diamonds in them are flooded with lava.
I don't think this is true. Ever single diamond I've found is my hollowing out the area around a lava pool. Hater's gonna hate our lava method I say.
I don't think this is true. Ever single diamond I've found is my hollowing out the area around a lava pool. Hater's gonna hate our lava method I say.
And every single diamond I found was away from lava pools, probably because I avoid lava like the plague (it burns and is annoying to get rid off). Please give proof of a magma pool / diamond correlation, and I'll believe you.
EDIT : Here are a few cartograph shots of a newly generated map, with only lava and diamonds shown. No signs of any correlation. ]
I overlayed the two maps. There are a large number of instances of diamonds touching the lava. Mining efficiency is 'number of exposed sides/time' using this method you are exposing a large number of sides in a very short amount of time.
IIRC, the chance that any tile contains diamons is static at around .3%. This doesnt change if a tile is touching lava or not.
Im my base I have a tunnel that on a 1/3 grade down to level 13, then straight on from there. I mine at night, build during the day. This method has givien me a much more efficient way to spend my nights, and get a bunch of obsian with out dealing with a farm.
The main reason lava and diamonds are together, is that they both appear on the same layer. So just by coincidence, they overlap. To add to that, lava has it's own cavern most of the time. So it is going to be easier to expose the diamond, as long as you don't fall in!
I think people are confusing "this is coincidental" with "this doesn't work" because there's a lot of bickering about whether this works or not.
I feel like this is a coincidental but reliable way to find diamonds. There's nothing in the map generation that makes diamonds appear near caverns. However, I think it stands that if you explore caverns it's more likely you'll find diamonds. Why?
Imagine if we had two maps: one with caverns and one without. Both maps have a 0.3% distribution of diamonds (we'll ignore veins and clusters and say that only one diamond is placed at a time.)
Now let's say you're branch mining making 1 wide and 2 tall branches through the solid (no caverns) map. Each time you mine out 2 blocks, you expose 6 blocks you couldn't see before. That gives you a 1.8% chance of finding diamonds and if you dig millions of branches you'll find that for roughly every 120 blocks you mine you find a diamond. This will remain constant throughout the entire map.
Now let's do the same thing in the map with caverns. We'll say that randomly distributed throughout the map are large, randomly-sized caverns and there remains a 0.3% distribution of diamonds. A 1x2 branch mine still reveals 6 blocks with a 1.8% chance of revealing a diamond, but now there's an unknown chance (I didn't want to try and calculate this) that you'll reveal a cavern. A 3x3x3 cavern exposes 36 blocks: that's got a 10.8% chance of exposing a diamond. A very large cavern might have dimensions like 8x10x30; that's going to give you a 720% chance of finding a diamond and unless there's wild variance in the distribution I'd say you can expect at least 1. Let's ballpark some numbers. If you think about the numbers, you can see that 6 blocks is the minimum you'll ever expose mining out a 1x2 branch, and it's probably safe to assume an average of 10 blocks revealed per 2 blocks mined. That's a 3% chance rather than a 1.8% chance; now you average roughly one diamond per 70 blocks mined. In real maps, caverns can be so large I wouldn't be surprised if the average blocks revealed by hunting caverns rather than diamonds is much higher than branch mining at higher layers.
Keep in mind that probability is a harsh mistress and averages always have outliers. You could easily start mining in an area where the map has generated no lava. Probability rarely guarantees anything. If the probability of an exposed diamond is 7.2 as above, the probability of *no* exposed diamonds is 240. That brings you right back to the 0.3% chance of finding a diamond at all. But at least when you find a cavern you don't have to dig out 100 blocks; you just walk to the end and keep moving if no ore is present, and there's a tiny chance you'll expose 100 diamonds in one fell swoop
(I'm pretty sure the cavern numbers are wrong as soon as I got a probability greater than 1. I think the more correct answer for the 720% case is some number very very close to 100%, but I think the logic is still sound: the more blocks you expose the more likely you'll find a diamond. If you'd like to recommend a probability text I'd love to read one.)
And every single diamond I found was away from lava pools, probably because I avoid lava like the plague (it burns and is annoying to get rid off). Please give proof of a magma pool / diamond correlation, and I'll believe you.
EDIT : Here are a few cartograph shots of a newly generated map, with only lava and diamonds shown. No signs of any correlation. ]
I overlayed the two maps. There are a large number of instances of diamonds touching the lava. Mining efficiency is 'number of exposed sides/time' using this method you are exposing a large number of sides in a very short amount of time.
IIRC, the chance that any tile contains diamons is static at around .3%. This doesnt change if a tile is touching lava or not.
Im my base I have a tunnel that on a 1/3 grade down to level 13, then straight on from there. I mine at night, build during the day. This method has givien me a much more efficient way to spend my nights, and get a bunch of obsian with out dealing with a farm.
basically what Anon said and this.
Quote from SittenSpynne »
I think people are confusing "this is coincidental" with "this doesn't work" because there's a lot of bickering about whether this works or not.
like sitten explained, its not necessarily that theres some vast increase in diamonds around lava, but that you can actually FIND THEM, so it SEEMS that way. but why WOULDNT there be an increased amount of minerals around lava pools anyway(not just diamonds. i find MASSIVE amounts of redstone, dont even mine it anymore with the 15 stacks i already have)?? it makes perfect sense. heres brendan fraser with a "real life" minecraft example of why you never dig the block youre standing on!
how EFFECTIVE is branch mining anyway?? what methodology is there to it?? you go to the layers where diamond can spawn and start randomly mining, praying you find diamond. its essentially a patterned stripmine, completely based on chance. why not just use an ACTUAL strip mine?? because then youd have to mine a buttload of worthless stone, which takes TIME, thats why. if youre at a lower layer(below 10) it can also be kind of a headache dealing with lava. how many times have you branch mined into lava and then had to start a new branch to mine around it??
staying on layer 12 makes it so you never have to "avoid" lava, you just walk over it. large lava pools also create small "air pockets" above them which will more easily expose diamond(i also dig 1 block around the entirety of any pools because of my luck finding hidden minerals right next to them and to search for connecting pools since there isnt always an "air pocket" above the lava). the resource of diamonds themselves are infinite but my time is precious. i could make branch mines to expose every single block in a given chunk and find EVERY piece of diamond, but how long would that take?? how many picks would i have to go thru??
using traditional branch mining techniques the MOST diamond i ever came away with when using a single diamond pick to mine was 7 diamonds. using this technique the LEAST diamond ive walked away with was 9 and the most ive come out with was 31(!?!?!). yeah... 31 diamonds from a single pick and it took roughly the same amount of time to find them as the 7 diamonds when i was branch mining.
there also seems to be something magical about layer 12 in terms of standard branch mining as well, when i dont have access to any lava pools ill just start branch mining and ive had more success at layer 12 than any other layer(remember this includes adjacent layers both up and down, if i mine a big coal vein down 4 blocks and it connects to diamond ill be at layer 8. if i started on layer 8 and mined down 4 blocks id be trying to mine around bedrock).
this is what i like to hear though!
Quote from Finesse »
I believe this. I made a map just to try this out, and I got 7 diamonds in 10 minutes or so, all surrounding lava lakes.
Quote from flo_rida »
Found this minutes after mining to layer 12. Pretty good find huh?
Quote from murraycurry »
Okay so i dig at layer 6 no diamond, i dig at layer 16 no diamond. I read this dig at 12 now i have 45 diamond.
All i did was dig a 1x2 tunnel in a straight line and diamond started popping up on the walls of my tunnel layer 12 is most definitely the secret to finding diamond.
try it yourself and FEEL the POWER of DIAMONDS IN YOUR HANDS, no more hoarding!
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Quote from Swingerzetta »
This forum has made me decide that I now want kids, so that when they get old enough, I can forbid them from coming here. it's a terrible place.
The layer has nothing to do with the occurrence of diamonds... but the fact that it connects to air pockets more frequently than any other layer makes layer 12, specifically, much more efficient.
The layer has nothing to do with the occurrence of diamonds... but the fact that it connects to air pockets more frequently than any other layer makes layer 12, specifically, much more efficient.
in addition to the air pockets, layer 12 is also nicely situated in nearly the center of the "diamond zone". you generally want to dig at a max depth of layer 6 to avoid bedrock and below layer 14(if youre AT layer 14, the ceiling will be layer 16). that gives you roughly a -6 and +4 "diamond mining zone"(like mentioned above when mining down 4 blocks into a large coal vein to expose diamond), only layer 11 is more evenly distributed but you will then be IN the lava pools instead of on top of them.
also, as far as im aware, the LOWEST layer that natural caves can occur at is 12, everything below that will be solid(i have no idea if this is true or not, just going off personal experience and NEVER seeing a natural cave below layer 12). this will further increase your field of "diamond vision" rapidly without the need to mine.
sure it may not STATISTICALLY increase the number of diamonds on layer 12 ALONE within the chunk, but you WILL mine a LOT more of them in comparison to traditional mining methods because of the huge increase in efficiency from the air pockets, large number of connecting caves, and -6/+4 positioning within the diamond strata.
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Quote from Swingerzetta »
This forum has made me decide that I now want kids, so that when they get old enough, I can forbid them from coming here. it's a terrible place.
i'm supportive of this in general theory. i'm not much of a branch miner personally. and the times i do attempt branch mining, it seems like my best diamond hauls are when i break into a cavern system and explore the caverns instead of sticking to the staggered corridors. in fact, branch mining only ever seems to produce isolated diamonds for me. my best hauls are always from a cavern system, poking around lava pools or the areas near lava.
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Quote from Gladosexe »
(this is a public service message brought to you by the PAIIWTCLLPWTCD (people against immature idiots who think creepers look like penises when they clearly dont)
Except that there are no correlation between lava pools and diamond veins. People only believe that because the caves that are deep enough to have diamonds in them are flooded with lava.
I don't think this is true. Ever single diamond I've found is my hollowing out the area around a lava pool. Hater's gonna hate our lava method I say.
Look at the code. There is nothing but depth that puts them near each other. Most of Minecrafts diamond is in solid rock.
I like this method. Not only does it (seemingly) find me more diamond (8 in about half an hour of this method) it's also much funner than branch mining.
I like seeing what the map generator comes up with, getting confused when I see torches then realising that this connects to another cavern that I've already explored, taking risks with lava (like building 1 wide bridges across it because I forgot my bucket) and stuff. It's also fun having fights with enemies across lava then laughing when they jump in :tongue.gif:
So in short: I shall be using this technique a lot. Here is one of the many diamonds I have recently found using this technique for you sir:
Edit: Oh, and I'm pretty sure this technique works so well because all caverns at layer 12 or below are filled with lava by the map generator. So it's like spelunking... but in the diamond zone, and on top of lava. :biggrin.gif:
lol, i used to use the bridges way back before i figured out about using water! i would always get to the bottom of these huge caves and see a single diamond 6 blocks across from me sitting in a wall. its kind of the inspiration for this technique.
i like to think of it more as a cross between branch mining and spelunking tho. you want to keep in a very limited range(can only go up 4 blocks if you want to stay in diamond range) and should stick to layer 12 as much as possible(dont wander off in that cave! or hit F3 and make sure your y-coordinates are below 16). if you dont find any caves just start a random branch mine and youll soon hit another series. youre right, it sure is a LOT more fun than branch mining tho...
Quote from CasualTea »
When you say layer 12.. Do you mean you're standing on layer 11?
yes. you will be mostly mining layer 12/13 with 11/14 visible as the floor/roof. i just say "layer 12" because thats the number that displays when you hit F3.
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Quote from Swingerzetta »
This forum has made me decide that I now want kids, so that when they get old enough, I can forbid them from coming here. it's a terrible place.
When you say layer 12.. Do you mean you're standing on layer 11?
yes. you will be mostly mining layer 12/13 with 11/14 visible as the floor/roof. i just say "layer 12" because thats the number that displays when you hit F3.
Actually, with your head at Y=12, your feet are at Y=11, which means that the floor you are standing on is layer 10. As previously mentioned, all natural caves at layer 10 and below are filled with lava, so this is a good place to be, as long as you've got a bucket handy (either to obsidian-floor the pools or to cart the lava away).
You're never completely safe, of course -- the new lava pool update means that lava can be hiding above layer 10 as well, so there's always a chance you'll dig into it (unless you're digging in old terrain).
EDIT: revised to go better with IscopeU's video. HOPE IT HELPS!
heres an awesome video of the technique made by IscopeU.
so i noticed after the beta update that there seemed to be an increase to the number/size of deep lava pools being generated compared to alpha and decided to put an old theory of mine to the test. due to the seemingly higher lava pool generation, the probability of your finding mineral deposits surrounding these would also increase. THIS IS NOT DUE TO INCREASED MINERAL GENERATION SURROUNDING LAVA POOLS BUT BECAUSE OF THE INCREASED VISIBILITY LAVA POOLS WILL GIVE YOU, WHICH IN TURN INCREASES YOUR EFFICIENCY, similar to natural cave systems.
ive always thought that layer 12(when you hold F3 it should display your y coordinates as 12.6435435 or something) would be a great place to mine but always came up about even in terms of diamond finds when compared to more traditional 1x2 branch mines i was using on layers 6-14. layer 12 has a unique feature that no other layer in the game has, its the only place you can find large lava pools. you essentially want to use a bucket of water to turn these pools into a giant obsidian "highway" for you to walk on.
*THERE ARE MANY NUANCES TO THIS TECHNIQUE AS YOU ARE FREQUENTLY SPELUNKING TO FIND YOUR DIAMONDS AND MAY NOT BE FOR BEGINNERS WHO ARE EXPECTING TO MINDLESSLY MINE IN A STRAIGHT LINE AND FIND 345735983457934 DIAMONDS*
you will need to use your knowledge, intuition, experience and a little bit of luck for good results. just digging in a straight line may not yield as expected.
KEY THINGS TO NOTE THAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE BEEN IN THE ABOVE VIDEO-
1. you will NEED a bucket of water, just do it.
2. its a good idea to dig around lava pools with no exposed rock to check for adjoining pools/cave systems.
3. CHECK CAVES THOROUGHLY!!! IscopeU almost walks straight past the 2nd diamond vein in the above video simply because it was not easily visible.
4. BE AWARE. listen for water/monters/dungeons to help guide you to nearby caves.
5. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR WHEN BUILDING YOUR MINE! i suggest building your mine above or even inside(i generally build inside and use a 2x1 shaft with ladders straight down) large surface cave systems. this can dramatically increase the chance you will hit a deep cave network with all the "noise" in those chunks. i will generally hit large cave networks around layers 15-20 before i can even finish my main shaft when doing this.
6. DONT BE AFRAID TO START A NEW MINE!! when youre covering the kind of ground you should be in cave systems, you may end up with a HUGE sprawling "mine" and few unexplored caves nearby. dont be scared to go out into the world and start a new mine a thousand blocks away, link everything with nether portals. theyre in the game for a reason, what takes an hour to walk in the overworld takes 5mins in the nether. i realize that it wont be "next to your spawn", dont care. make a bed and you have a brand new spawn... so stop being a wuss and get out there exploring your infinite world to get your hands on some of those infinite diamonds!
7. its often a good idea to check around other mineral deposits for diamond even when youre not mining it. redstone can be a good indicator for diamond, gold ive found, is generally the opposite. The texture pack in the pic below is long lost in the old beta forums, so dont ask what it is, i dont know.
The BEST way to mine diamond, layer 12 and you.
either way great guide. i will be trying this soon
kudos to you sir!
I don't think this is true. Ever single diamond I've found is my hollowing out the area around a lava pool. Hater's gonna hate our lava method I say.
I overlayed the two maps. There are a large number of instances of diamonds touching the lava. Mining efficiency is 'number of exposed sides/time' using this method you are exposing a large number of sides in a very short amount of time.
IIRC, the chance that any tile contains diamons is static at around .3%. This doesnt change if a tile is touching lava or not.
Im my base I have a tunnel that on a 1/3 grade down to level 13, then straight on from there. I mine at night, build during the day. This method has givien me a much more efficient way to spend my nights, and get a bunch of obsian with out dealing with a farm.
I feel like this is a coincidental but reliable way to find diamonds. There's nothing in the map generation that makes diamonds appear near caverns. However, I think it stands that if you explore caverns it's more likely you'll find diamonds. Why?
Imagine if we had two maps: one with caverns and one without. Both maps have a 0.3% distribution of diamonds (we'll ignore veins and clusters and say that only one diamond is placed at a time.)
Now let's say you're branch mining making 1 wide and 2 tall branches through the solid (no caverns) map. Each time you mine out 2 blocks, you expose 6 blocks you couldn't see before. That gives you a 1.8% chance of finding diamonds and if you dig millions of branches you'll find that for roughly every 120 blocks you mine you find a diamond. This will remain constant throughout the entire map.
Now let's do the same thing in the map with caverns. We'll say that randomly distributed throughout the map are large, randomly-sized caverns and there remains a 0.3% distribution of diamonds. A 1x2 branch mine still reveals 6 blocks with a 1.8% chance of revealing a diamond, but now there's an unknown chance (I didn't want to try and calculate this) that you'll reveal a cavern. A 3x3x3 cavern exposes 36 blocks: that's got a 10.8% chance of exposing a diamond. A very large cavern might have dimensions like 8x10x30; that's going to give you a 720% chance of finding a diamond and unless there's wild variance in the distribution I'd say you can expect at least 1. Let's ballpark some numbers. If you think about the numbers, you can see that 6 blocks is the minimum you'll ever expose mining out a 1x2 branch, and it's probably safe to assume an average of 10 blocks revealed per 2 blocks mined. That's a 3% chance rather than a 1.8% chance; now you average roughly one diamond per 70 blocks mined. In real maps, caverns can be so large I wouldn't be surprised if the average blocks revealed by hunting caverns rather than diamonds is much higher than branch mining at higher layers.
Keep in mind that probability is a harsh mistress and averages always have outliers. You could easily start mining in an area where the map has generated no lava. Probability rarely guarantees anything. If the probability of an exposed diamond is 7.2 as above, the probability of *no* exposed diamonds is 240. That brings you right back to the 0.3% chance of finding a diamond at all. But at least when you find a cavern you don't have to dig out 100 blocks; you just walk to the end and keep moving if no ore is present, and there's a tiny chance you'll expose 100 diamonds in one fell swoop
(I'm pretty sure the cavern numbers are wrong as soon as I got a probability greater than 1. I think the more correct answer for the 720% case is some number very very close to 100%, but I think the logic is still sound: the more blocks you expose the more likely you'll find a diamond. If you'd like to recommend a probability text I'd love to read one.)
basically what Anon said and this.
like sitten explained, its not necessarily that theres some vast increase in diamonds around lava, but that you can actually FIND THEM, so it SEEMS that way. but why WOULDNT there be an increased amount of minerals around lava pools anyway(not just diamonds. i find MASSIVE amounts of redstone, dont even mine it anymore with the 15 stacks i already have)?? it makes perfect sense. heres brendan fraser with a "real life" minecraft example of why you never dig the block youre standing on!
how EFFECTIVE is branch mining anyway?? what methodology is there to it?? you go to the layers where diamond can spawn and start randomly mining, praying you find diamond. its essentially a patterned stripmine, completely based on chance. why not just use an ACTUAL strip mine?? because then youd have to mine a buttload of worthless stone, which takes TIME, thats why. if youre at a lower layer(below 10) it can also be kind of a headache dealing with lava. how many times have you branch mined into lava and then had to start a new branch to mine around it??
staying on layer 12 makes it so you never have to "avoid" lava, you just walk over it. large lava pools also create small "air pockets" above them which will more easily expose diamond(i also dig 1 block around the entirety of any pools because of my luck finding hidden minerals right next to them and to search for connecting pools since there isnt always an "air pocket" above the lava). the resource of diamonds themselves are infinite but my time is precious. i could make branch mines to expose every single block in a given chunk and find EVERY piece of diamond, but how long would that take?? how many picks would i have to go thru??
using traditional branch mining techniques the MOST diamond i ever came away with when using a single diamond pick to mine was 7 diamonds. using this technique the LEAST diamond ive walked away with was 9 and the most ive come out with was 31(!?!?!). yeah... 31 diamonds from a single pick and it took roughly the same amount of time to find them as the 7 diamonds when i was branch mining.
there also seems to be something magical about layer 12 in terms of standard branch mining as well, when i dont have access to any lava pools ill just start branch mining and ive had more success at layer 12 than any other layer(remember this includes adjacent layers both up and down, if i mine a big coal vein down 4 blocks and it connects to diamond ill be at layer 8. if i started on layer 8 and mined down 4 blocks id be trying to mine around bedrock).
this is what i like to hear though!
try it yourself and FEEL the POWER of DIAMONDS IN YOUR HANDS, no more hoarding!
The BEST way to mine diamond, layer 12 and you.
in addition to the air pockets, layer 12 is also nicely situated in nearly the center of the "diamond zone". you generally want to dig at a max depth of layer 6 to avoid bedrock and below layer 14(if youre AT layer 14, the ceiling will be layer 16). that gives you roughly a -6 and +4 "diamond mining zone"(like mentioned above when mining down 4 blocks into a large coal vein to expose diamond), only layer 11 is more evenly distributed but you will then be IN the lava pools instead of on top of them.
also, as far as im aware, the LOWEST layer that natural caves can occur at is 12, everything below that will be solid(i have no idea if this is true or not, just going off personal experience and NEVER seeing a natural cave below layer 12). this will further increase your field of "diamond vision" rapidly without the need to mine.
sure it may not STATISTICALLY increase the number of diamonds on layer 12 ALONE within the chunk, but you WILL mine a LOT more of them in comparison to traditional mining methods because of the huge increase in efficiency from the air pockets, large number of connecting caves, and -6/+4 positioning within the diamond strata.
The BEST way to mine diamond, layer 12 and you.
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Retired StaffLook at the code. There is nothing but depth that puts them near each other. Most of Minecrafts diamond is in solid rock.
lol, i used to use the bridges way back before i figured out about using water! i would always get to the bottom of these huge caves and see a single diamond 6 blocks across from me sitting in a wall. its kind of the inspiration for this technique.
i like to think of it more as a cross between branch mining and spelunking tho. you want to keep in a very limited range(can only go up 4 blocks if you want to stay in diamond range) and should stick to layer 12 as much as possible(dont wander off in that cave! or hit F3 and make sure your y-coordinates are below 16). if you dont find any caves just start a random branch mine and youll soon hit another series. youre right, it sure is a LOT more fun than branch mining tho...
yes. you will be mostly mining layer 12/13 with 11/14 visible as the floor/roof. i just say "layer 12" because thats the number that displays when you hit F3.
The BEST way to mine diamond, layer 12 and you.
Actually, with your head at Y=12, your feet are at Y=11, which means that the floor you are standing on is layer 10. As previously mentioned, all natural caves at layer 10 and below are filled with lava, so this is a good place to be, as long as you've got a bucket handy (either to obsidian-floor the pools or to cart the lava away).
You're never completely safe, of course -- the new lava pool update means that lava can be hiding above layer 10 as well, so there's always a chance you'll dig into it (unless you're digging in old terrain).