I've been thinking a lot about how to make mining a better experience.
The main things I feel are missing from the mining experience are a sense of exploration and connection with the surface biomes, and the ability to observe the environment and use those observations to find specific ores. I think the following would make progress toward improving the mining experience (tho it's long read heh).
New Heavy Stone Block (like smooth stone but darker), requires iron pick to mine (acquired as a heavy stone block not a cobble), from bedrock up about 20-30 blocks, replaces smooth stone at this level
Other block layers:
-much thicker (20-30 meters/blocks) dirt layer in wet biomes
-much thicker (30-40) sandstone layer in desert biomes
-much thinner stone layer in big oceans (so that oceans can go much deeper)
-thick (2-5) snow block layer in snow biomes
Have resources no longer found based on block depth, instead found at any depth but only in proper block type:
-coal in dirt (coal acquired with a shovel instead of a pick)
-gold in sandstone (requiring only stone+ picks to mine, gold is soft)
-iron in stone
-lapis in stone (more common in cold biomes)
-diamonds in heavy stone (more common under wet biomes)
-redstone in heavy stone (more common under hot biomes)
New land features:
-Deep Fissure: big opening in the ground that can extend all the way down into the heavy stone layer
-Mega caverns: rare underground caverns so big you can build an idyllic house surrounded by large trees, with small lakes, practically a mini biome all in one cave
-Deep rooted mountain: heavy stone layer extends up above sea level, with a thinner layer of smooth stone and next to no dirt layer
-Mountain Volcano: Huge magma chamber from bedrock extending all the way to the surface and higher with a thinner heavy stone layer (sometimes missing entirely allowing lava to flow out the sides), thin smooth stone layer, and patchy dirt layer, and occasional obsidian around
-Deep trench: like a deep fissure, but in the ocean and wider at its opening
-Floating islands in the ocean: like the airborne kind, but islands in the water with no connection to the ground beneath, so you could swim under the entire island
-Mega Ore Deposits: extremely rare huge ore deposits, beyond the limit of whats normal, so instead of 5 diamonds, itd have 20 diamonds all together, with smaller normal deposits being the nearest other deposits to it (so if you found several small diamond deposits near each other it might indicate that there's a huge deposit nearby)
-ice and snow deposits under snow biomes (fun random thing to come across and would hint at what biome you're under)
-Rogue deposits: large deposits of dirt, sandstone, smooth stone, or heavy stone outside their normal spots, much the way you can find dirt deposits deep underground currently. Ex: might find a large ball of heavy stone in the dirt layer, which could contain diamonds since its heavy stone
New Nether land features:
-Sulfur deposits in netherrack: can use a stone+ shovel to dig it up, 4 gunpowders drop from each block, if hit with anything other than a shovel it ignites like tnt
-Obsidian deposits in netherrack: so that you can actually gain obsidian in the nether
-Obsidian stalagmites/stalactites extending from the top and bottom bedrocks, sometimes with a hot magma center
Been reading a lot of other suggestions (which has shaped my thoughts on this subject), and tried to combine a lot of different things together in a way that's simple, towards one purpose and without adding a bunch of new ores and such (only 1 new stone type and a block to get gunpowder from).
Basically all this works together to make mining less of a random ordeal (i.e. go to level 12, branchmine, and hope for the best, or follow random natural cave systems) and more of an interesting situation where you can better focus your efforts towards your current goal.
For instance, if you want iron, you could focus your mining in the smooth stone layer, avoiding deserts (which would have a thinner smooth stone layer that's partially replaced with sandstone) and wet climates (which would have thicker dirt layer), and instead focus on more moderate biomes and ones with mountains with more exposed smooth stone.
In these ways your observations of the surface could help you mine in specific locations to get more of the ores you want.
The other key thing about this is that the heavy stone layer would require iron picks and be just for diamond and redstone mining (excepting random deposits of smooth stone or dirt within it), so you couldn't just get a stone pick and head down to bedrock and immediately start the level 12 mining, as you'd first need a decent supply of iron (without which you'd quickly run out of iron picks and be forced to return to the smooth stone layer). Mining at bedrock level would become a minor achievement in itself.
The new land features would add some fun exploration and variety to underground mining, you could be deep underground, but then suddenly mine your way into a deep ocean and swim up to find a floating island to continue mining in, or into the side of a fissure and be able to see the sun and sky, or you might find a huge cavern to build a house in, or a motherlode of diamonds to mine.
They'd also improve exploration by presenting "soft" barriers that you need to work around. A large wall of lava from volcano generally halts your forward movement in its direction, as would a deep water trench, though some ingenuity can overcome both.
In addition to fun exploration, these features would give more connection to the surface. The fissure lets you know if its daytime, or what the weather is like; coming across a huge pocket of lava that extends up and up tells you that you might find a volcano on the surface; if you're mining in the smoothstone layer and suddenly you find heavy stone ahead of you it tells you there's likely a mountain on the surface nearby; finding pockets of ice would tell you breaking up to the surface would likely mean a snow biome.
The nether features are straightforward but should add more of a reason to mine in the nether, and a bit more danger as well. Plus it'd be cool to turn a huge obsidian stalactite into a base.
Overall, I think all this together would make mining a better experience.
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Still no infinite strongholds D:
Already posted topic. Please use search next time. Blah blah. Oh gosh. HELP ME SOME1!
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I am just a guy looking for good suggestions that are original, creative, and match the theme of Mine-craft. I have some mob ideas that I need help forming which is a community project.
Hmm... although it's a little less thought out than the geology thread. I like it a lot more. I was pretty disappointed when I mined down nearly to bedrock within the first hour of playing. One of the things I don't support on this though is larger dirt deposits. Nothing is worse than clearing out dirt and gravel in my quarry. Also, you should be able to mine heavy stone with a stone pick but it would just be very slow.
Hmm... although it's a little less thought out than the geology thread. I like it a lot more. I was pretty disappointed when I mined down nearly to bedrock within the first hour of playing. One of the things I don't support on this though is larger dirt deposits. Nothing is worse than clearing out dirt and gravel in my quarry. Also, you should be able to mine heavy stone with a stone pick but it would just be very slow.
I've read the geology thread and found it quite interesting and well thought out (and it helped me form my idea), but it doesn't address the main problems with mining for me, and the suggestions there are more about making a much more realistic model rather than what I'm looking for.
I want a simpler solution with less added blocks and the like.
About dirt issues, my thought was a thicker dirt layer in wet climates, like in forests where more compost and such would accumulate, so it wouldn't be more dirt everywhere, just in those specific places. But to make dirt more interesting it would have coal deposits (even to the point or changing the coal ore block to being a dirt block with black coal spots in it and you use a shovel to get it). For me that would make digging through dirt a much more rewarding experience akin to how mining through smooth stone is currently.
I have the same problem with the nether as I do with dirt as it is now, that is, that you dig through netherrack/dirt, and there's no hope of finding anything better in it.
About stone picks on heavy stone, I was thinking you could break it slowly, but that it would yield no heavy stone blocks. That way you could mine through it with stone picks, and save your iron for diamonds/redstone (as I do currently) but the difference would be that you gain no heavy stone from it.
Having it as a "soft" barrier to overcome is its main purpose tho, so stone picks only being slower but still yielding blocks would still achieve the desired effect.
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Evidence suggests that many people quote posts without reading them in their entirety.
Still no infinite strongholds D:
The main things I feel are missing from the mining experience are a sense of exploration and connection with the surface biomes, and the ability to observe the environment and use those observations to find specific ores. I think the following would make progress toward improving the mining experience (tho it's long read heh).
New Heavy Stone Block (like smooth stone but darker), requires iron pick to mine (acquired as a heavy stone block not a cobble), from bedrock up about 20-30 blocks, replaces smooth stone at this level
Other block layers:
-much thicker (20-30 meters/blocks) dirt layer in wet biomes
-much thicker (30-40) sandstone layer in desert biomes
-much thinner stone layer in big oceans (so that oceans can go much deeper)
-thick (2-5) snow block layer in snow biomes
Have resources no longer found based on block depth, instead found at any depth but only in proper block type:
-coal in dirt (coal acquired with a shovel instead of a pick)
-gold in sandstone (requiring only stone+ picks to mine, gold is soft)
-iron in stone
-lapis in stone (more common in cold biomes)
-diamonds in heavy stone (more common under wet biomes)
-redstone in heavy stone (more common under hot biomes)
New land features:
-Deep Fissure: big opening in the ground that can extend all the way down into the heavy stone layer
-Mega caverns: rare underground caverns so big you can build an idyllic house surrounded by large trees, with small lakes, practically a mini biome all in one cave
-Deep rooted mountain: heavy stone layer extends up above sea level, with a thinner layer of smooth stone and next to no dirt layer
-Mountain Volcano: Huge magma chamber from bedrock extending all the way to the surface and higher with a thinner heavy stone layer (sometimes missing entirely allowing lava to flow out the sides), thin smooth stone layer, and patchy dirt layer, and occasional obsidian around
-Deep trench: like a deep fissure, but in the ocean and wider at its opening
-Floating islands in the ocean: like the airborne kind, but islands in the water with no connection to the ground beneath, so you could swim under the entire island
-Mega Ore Deposits: extremely rare huge ore deposits, beyond the limit of whats normal, so instead of 5 diamonds, itd have 20 diamonds all together, with smaller normal deposits being the nearest other deposits to it (so if you found several small diamond deposits near each other it might indicate that there's a huge deposit nearby)
-ice and snow deposits under snow biomes (fun random thing to come across and would hint at what biome you're under)
-Rogue deposits: large deposits of dirt, sandstone, smooth stone, or heavy stone outside their normal spots, much the way you can find dirt deposits deep underground currently. Ex: might find a large ball of heavy stone in the dirt layer, which could contain diamonds since its heavy stone
New Nether land features:
-Sulfur deposits in netherrack: can use a stone+ shovel to dig it up, 4 gunpowders drop from each block, if hit with anything other than a shovel it ignites like tnt
-Obsidian deposits in netherrack: so that you can actually gain obsidian in the nether
-Obsidian stalagmites/stalactites extending from the top and bottom bedrocks, sometimes with a hot magma center
Been reading a lot of other suggestions (which has shaped my thoughts on this subject), and tried to combine a lot of different things together in a way that's simple, towards one purpose and without adding a bunch of new ores and such (only 1 new stone type and a block to get gunpowder from).
Basically all this works together to make mining less of a random ordeal (i.e. go to level 12, branchmine, and hope for the best, or follow random natural cave systems) and more of an interesting situation where you can better focus your efforts towards your current goal.
For instance, if you want iron, you could focus your mining in the smooth stone layer, avoiding deserts (which would have a thinner smooth stone layer that's partially replaced with sandstone) and wet climates (which would have thicker dirt layer), and instead focus on more moderate biomes and ones with mountains with more exposed smooth stone.
In these ways your observations of the surface could help you mine in specific locations to get more of the ores you want.
The other key thing about this is that the heavy stone layer would require iron picks and be just for diamond and redstone mining (excepting random deposits of smooth stone or dirt within it), so you couldn't just get a stone pick and head down to bedrock and immediately start the level 12 mining, as you'd first need a decent supply of iron (without which you'd quickly run out of iron picks and be forced to return to the smooth stone layer). Mining at bedrock level would become a minor achievement in itself.
The new land features would add some fun exploration and variety to underground mining, you could be deep underground, but then suddenly mine your way into a deep ocean and swim up to find a floating island to continue mining in, or into the side of a fissure and be able to see the sun and sky, or you might find a huge cavern to build a house in, or a motherlode of diamonds to mine.
They'd also improve exploration by presenting "soft" barriers that you need to work around. A large wall of lava from volcano generally halts your forward movement in its direction, as would a deep water trench, though some ingenuity can overcome both.
In addition to fun exploration, these features would give more connection to the surface. The fissure lets you know if its daytime, or what the weather is like; coming across a huge pocket of lava that extends up and up tells you that you might find a volcano on the surface; if you're mining in the smoothstone layer and suddenly you find heavy stone ahead of you it tells you there's likely a mountain on the surface nearby; finding pockets of ice would tell you breaking up to the surface would likely mean a snow biome.
The nether features are straightforward but should add more of a reason to mine in the nether, and a bit more danger as well. Plus it'd be cool to turn a huge obsidian stalactite into a base.
Overall, I think all this together would make mining a better experience.
Still no infinite strongholds D:
I've read the geology thread and found it quite interesting and well thought out (and it helped me form my idea), but it doesn't address the main problems with mining for me, and the suggestions there are more about making a much more realistic model rather than what I'm looking for.
I want a simpler solution with less added blocks and the like.
About dirt issues, my thought was a thicker dirt layer in wet climates, like in forests where more compost and such would accumulate, so it wouldn't be more dirt everywhere, just in those specific places. But to make dirt more interesting it would have coal deposits (even to the point or changing the coal ore block to being a dirt block with black coal spots in it and you use a shovel to get it). For me that would make digging through dirt a much more rewarding experience akin to how mining through smooth stone is currently.
I have the same problem with the nether as I do with dirt as it is now, that is, that you dig through netherrack/dirt, and there's no hope of finding anything better in it.
About stone picks on heavy stone, I was thinking you could break it slowly, but that it would yield no heavy stone blocks. That way you could mine through it with stone picks, and save your iron for diamonds/redstone (as I do currently) but the difference would be that you gain no heavy stone from it.
Having it as a "soft" barrier to overcome is its main purpose tho, so stone picks only being slower but still yielding blocks would still achieve the desired effect.
Still no infinite strongholds D: