You are about to live the ultimate experience of an epic, huge, awesome and useless absolutely worthy wall of text with images on this forum, the copy or broadcasting of the following content will be totally allowed, moreover, leaving a comment with your thoughts will be absolutely appreciated. Disclaimer: Cuervo won't be responsible of personal damage to individuals that this post could cause, he can't guarantee the safety of your eyeballs if you keep reading. Read this at your own risk. Cuervo's quirky mining technique Good afternoon everybody. I decided to post this after some hours of hesitation, at first I didn't thought it was going to be useful, then I just realized that it was wrong and that it's better to try something than doing nothing, so here we go! In this small guide I'll try to explain my own way of gathering underground resources, mainly ores and specially, diamonds. I'm using my time to write this as I've never seen anyone mining with this technique (I discovered it could be of use yesterday), and it could be interesting if any of you could share your own ways of gathering ores in the comments below so I can tweak this technique and pass it on to everybody who cares! I'll separate the process in sections from the preparation to the way back home so everybody can focus on the aspect they prefer. Disclaimer 2: Skip to Step #3 if you're only interested on my technique to dig artificial mines Step #1: Preparation!(everything you need before venturing into the wastes) This is a list of the equipment I've found useful to acquire before going travelling into the real thing after five years of experience: Food: everything will do, just remember that an empty slot is a good gathering spot, do not fill up your inventory with different types of food. Armor/Weapon: in EMC, this sections depends a lot on your own way of playing the game, if your only objective is to gather materials, you can set the difficulty to 1, go naked and armed with a stick into the cave, but I'll always recommend to use the best armor and weapon possible, you don't want a true challenge here, you want those ingots, diamonds and emeralds in your pockets. Tools/Utility items: Here's where the real fun begins, I'll just remember that what is written here is the best load-out I found, you can go with what you have if you find it more useful. This is a tip This is a must-do A diamond pickaxe enchanted with: Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Silk Touch I. A diamond pickaxe enchanted with: Fortune III, Unbreaking III <- This will stay at home A diamond shovel enchanted with: Efficiency V, the minimum is III to remove the dirt instantly; (Unbreaking III). A bucket full of water: this is a MUST as it will be your best way to survive if you find lava on the lower layers, it's REALLY useful. An Ender chest: even thought it's always good to carry a portable single chest, I know that not everybody has one of those, if you have it, take it, as you will recover it if you pick it with your brand-new Silk Touch pickaxe. Torches: I don't have much to say about these, you can either use them, increase your gamma to the maximum or just don't care at all, do as you wish and just make sure that your eyes don't hurt while mining. Image: Step #2: The actual adventure! (venturing into the waste) Ok, you are ready! Go, go, go! Type /waste as fast as you can and become millionaire! Sadly... No. You don't need to read what I'm going to write now, that's why it is between brackets, but if you do, I just want to make you meditate before becoming a weapon of mass destruction... The wastes you see nowadays are beautiful, none of us wants to look at the landscape from an outpost and see a colossal, gigantic, enormous hole to the nether that will steal your soul if you keep staring at it... I'm not telling you to move five thousand blocks away to mine, but at least, cover the entrance of your little hole with the same dirt you removed before going deeper into the real thingy. This step is really simple, you have to arrive to the eleventh layer and you can do it as you want, I'll post some images and small tips of the most efficient and secure way of doing it I've found: All you have to do is keep digging-mining the block immediately in front of you and the two behind that one, jump and repeat, easy. Get to the eleventh layer and this step is done! Step #3: Mining! 1/2(the actual gathering technique) We've arrived to the real concept, this is the core of the guide. I got this idea while I was looking at these graphics: This one is a graph that shows the possibility of finding an ore (Y-axis) by layer (X-axis) And this is a simple distribution of diamond layer by layer
I had to cut this because it's longer than 10.000 characters, which is the max for a comment, whopsie. Step #3: Mining! 2/2(the actual gathering technique)Someone did the data for me, and if it's reliable, I can say that most of the diamonds are between the layers 13-5 (I'll exclude 4 for a reason you'll understand see later). After explaining this, I must introduce my system, let's try to explain it the easiest way I can, there will be loads of images, but I'll try to keep this simple: 1. You have to build a main corridor, which will communicate the tunnels, this will be of 1 width and 2 height; about the lenght: as this corridor will be your only way to organize the tunnelss (which is REALLY important), it's lenght must be of 1 + 4 x tunnel, and the number of pairs tunnels must be pair (2 pair of tunnels, for instance, means 2 tunnels to the left and 2 to the right of the corridor) ALWAYS (the best way of doing this is simply creating a 2x1 hole in the wall every 4 blocks of corridor, that is because the tunnels MUST ALWAYS be separated by 3 blocks) it's done this way because not a single group of ores can be of 1 block of width as they're procedurally generated and not totally random, so you'll see at least one ore of that group from at least one of the tunnels separated by 3 walls, you'll profit the space and your time. As this info can be hard to process, there's an screenshot of a main corridor with 4 pairs of tunnels: 2. Now that you have, for instance, 4 pairs of 2x1 holes on the wall, separated by 3 blocks each starting from your main corridor, STARTING FROM ANY OF THE MOST LATERAL HOLES, you have to extend those holes to make a tunnel about 30-40 blocks lenght, the easiest way to do it is by crouching and walking straight while maintaining the left click and aiming to the lower block in front of you, with the pickaxe mentioned before, you won't collide with the wall you're breaking at this pace. Soon, you'll have this. 3. Whenever you finish extending that first lateral tunnel, don't run back to the main corridor, move 4 blocks on the opposite direction of the lateral you chose (if you went to the most right tunnel, break 4 blocks to the left) and start mining on the opposite direction, you'll return to your main corridorwithout losing time. (I think you just understood why the number of tunnels must be pair, right? You'll be mining back and forth from your main corridor without having to lose hunger and time by running back from the tunnel you just extended.) I don't have any image for this, any of the ones before will do, this isn't the hardest part anyway. Rinse and repeat this until you've finished with the 4 pair of tunnels. 4. Here is where the quirkiness starts... I've never seen anybody do this before, and I hope this helps a lot of people. Whenever you finish, return to your main corridor, step on the block between two tunnels, and...Break 5 blocks below you (take care about the possible lava, use your water bucket before mining if needed). And now, recreate the exact same main corridor and the exact same pair of tunnels you had on the upper level, this time you'll be mining 3 blocks down the tunnels you did before (I do this because I've applied the same concept used on the 1st part of this step, there we did it horizontally, it has to be applied vertically now). I'm 5 blocks below my main corridor And I just had to recreate it And that's it! You mine as quirky as I do, now you can feel special too! Small tips and tricks about point 4 and 5. How to avoid dying by lava while on the 6th layer: If you find lava right above you while mining on this layer, you'll have to avoid it by digging yourself a stair above it and pass over it, use your bucket of water if needed, I know that mining on the lower layers is riskier, but it's also a lot more rewarding. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to make sure you're not extending a tunnel too much: While building the tunnels, you'll often think that you've extended one so far away from the one at it's side or the directly upper one, the easiest way to be sure that you haven't overextended it is mining 3 blocks facing where the tunnel of reference is (either up, to the side or both), and you'll see if the tunnel you're into is longer or shorter than the tunnelss you dig around them. I saw that there was another tunnel at my right, so I wasn't overextending the one I was digging 5. Now, whenever you have your pockets full of shiny diamonds and heavy gold ingots, it's time to get away without dying. Here's my personal tip: break 5 blocks above you, jump and put a block right below you x 5, repeat until you reach freedom. Run to the nearest outpost (which won't be so far away if you've done this correctly), and write /home, press enter, you're back. Mission accomplished! I'll leave a small image of what I got in about 30 mins of digging this morning: Before recollecting the resources with my Fortune III pickaxe After recollecting the resources with my Fortune III pickaxe Pros and cons about my method (step #3)(so far, feedback will be appreciated) Pros: -The only worth way I've found of mining below the 11th layer. (some resources seem to be more common around the 6th and 7th layer). -You'll profit the space at a hundred per cent, inspecting all the layers that have high probabilities of containing diamonds, and you won't create straight tunnels of kilometrical lengths under our beloved waste. -Fast to perform when you're experienced. Cons: -It may be weird and complicated at first -You could have problems with lava below the 11th layer. As I final note, I'd say that, as I've seen through the years, most of the times you just have to be lucky to find a specific resource on Minecraft, but I feel that using this ways I'm increasing the odds of finding iron, gold and specially diamond. I hope this three hours of writing helped someone. I'm tired but I love you. Cuervo. Edit: please, if you fin'd any error at the formatting just tell me, my head hurts so much right now Edit 2: I think I've gone too far, I just hope that someone reads this
no need to be sorry. you have the right to make your post as long as you want. and it is nice of you to make a practical guide the EMC community that like mining. i read it
Thank you so much! I just think that this is too much for anybody to read, maybe, but if anybody asks me how to mine I'll probably have a link to this as an explanation This needs some tweaking anyway, I'll try it tomorrow! Thanks for reading! Cuervo
Edits 1 and 2: Additional info that I always forgive, I'm using Dokucraft Light as resource pack and SEUS 10.1 as Shader Pack...[/quote] I just don't use the shaders for mining because they gave me FPS issues sometimes (That's an extraction from my Mini-town thread (spam) Thanks!
