i just tried this technique..wow.
i just figured which layer was 12, and there was a redstone ore blocking the way i was gonna tunnel. i dig that redstone...and eureka! i find diamond. i keep digging, heartened, and eventually find another large-ish pocket of that blue beauty. then i stumble upon a natural cave system, where i find tons more...i exit thru a large waterfall to find a previously explored cave...and return home to plunk down in the chest...24 diamonds!! so use this tactic it really does work. i do agree that cave systems give more diamond simply because its like the map has dug out a tunnel for you, so basically all that can lead to is more diamond. :smile.gif:)))) 1 thing though. don't mine ores like coal and redstone that are positioned next to lava. uh. not good. at ALL.
In regards to your statement about how branch mining is a random thing.
Quite the contrary. Branch mining uses a specific pattern that is sure to expose the most veins possible, with the least amount of blocks mined.
The only reason you could possibly get more diamond from spelunking around lava is because more blocks are exposed, therefore it has a higher rate of efficiency.
Adding onto that, spelunking can also very because of the fact that diamond usually spawns 1 vein per chunk, and with this method it is very easy to miss all of the diamond in that chunk, while branch mining will always find that diamond vein.
Ironically, I found diamond before I found lava. =D Some gold too, useless as it is. Iron and coal, a butt load of redstone. I'll post again when I actually find lava.
EDITEDIT: Finally found some lava. It was a rather small pool with only a little air pocket above it. I started mining the rock around by two in every direction. Found some coal, iron, and redstone. Picked a random wall to start branching again and two blocks later found diamond once more. Mined around it, found some more redstone and another deposit of gold. Not bad. Only four pick axes this time.
9 Stone Pick axes, and about a Minecraft' night of work.
Final Conclusion: I think I'll stick to this method. I used to do nothing but branch mine, but this is easier all around and seems to churn out results in less time. (Or maybe I was just lucky. We'll see if my results keep up.) I feel like I can use my iron and diamonds more now. =D
In regards to your statement about how branch mining is a random thing.
Quite the contrary. Branch mining uses a specific pattern that is sure to expose the most veins possible, with the least amount of blocks mined.
The only reason you could possibly get more diamond from spelunking around lava is because more blocks are exposed, therefore it has a higher rate of efficiency.
Adding onto that, spelunking can also very because of the fact that diamond usually spawns 1 vein per chunk, and with this method it is very easy to miss all of the diamond in that chunk, while branch mining will always find that diamond vein.
i just say its "random" because it is. sometimes you get lucky and find 15 diamonds in an hour, sometimes youll go 3 hours and not find anything. if youre branch mining with diamond 1 block away from you the entire time, youll have to start an entire new branch to find it. whether or not you find diamond is completely based on chance.
by using this method you are GUARANTEED to find diamond within 30mins. no matter what. i have yet to come out of my mine empty handed, when i would frequently come out with no diamonds while branch mining. instead of randomly branch mining the entire time(you WILL have to do some random branch mining eventually), you simply follow the lava and it will LEAD you to diamonds in one way or another.
im glad to hear people are having so much success with this method tho! i thought it was "too good to be true", but it seems to be the new and improved way to mine diamonds!
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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 just say its "random" because it is. sometimes you get lucky and find 15 diamonds in an hour, sometimes youll go 3 hours and not find anything. if youre branch mining with diamond 1 block away from you the entire time, youll have to start an entire new branch to find it. whether or not you find diamond is completely based on chance.
by using this method you are GUARANTEED to find diamond within 30mins. no matter what. i have yet to come out of my mine empty handed, when i would frequently come out with no diamonds while branch mining. instead of randomly branch mining the entire time(you WILL have to do some random branch mining eventually), you simply follow the lava and it will LEAD you to diamonds in one way or another.
im glad to hear people are having so much success with this method tho! i thought it was "too good to be true", but it seems to be the new and improved way to mine diamonds!
Did you not read anything I typed? Branch mining is specifically designed so you DONT MISS ANYTHING.
Did you not read anything I typed? Branch mining is specifically designed so you DONT MISS ANYTHING.
you just dont get it...
when youre STARTING a branch mine, how do you decide which direction to go initially after youre at the desired layer?? you just pick one and hope for the best right?? like i said earlier, its a patterned strip mine, if you dont have time to complete the ENTIRE thing, you could still be missing a lot
lets say you generate a brand new world. you start on a sand island, are completely surrounded by water. theres a mountain in front of you and oceans on all other sides. you obviously need wood and coal fast, are you going to head for the mountain or just close your eyes and pick a direction to go?? of course not! youre going to swim across a giant ocean because you can only see one tree on the mountain, no visible coal and you KNOW there could be a rain forest biome across the ocean, you DONT WANT TO MISS ANYTHING right??
the mountain will LEAD you to wood and coal like the lava will LEAD you to redstone/diamond. while branch mining youre simply picking a random direction and mining out the entire chunk hoping for the best as you go.
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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.
Did you not read anything I typed? Branch mining is specifically designed so you DONT MISS ANYTHING.
you just dont get it...
when youre STARTING a branch mine, how do you decide which direction to go initially after youre at the desired layer?? you just pick one and hope for the best right?? like i said earlier, its a patterned strip mine, if you dont have time to complete the ENTIRE thing, you could still be missing a lot
lets say you generate a brand new world. you start on a sand island, are completely surrounded by water. theres a mountain in front of you and oceans on all other sides. you obviously need wood and coal fast, are you going to head for the mountain or just close your eyes and pick a direction to go?? of course not! youre going to swim across a giant ocean because you can only see one tree on the mountain, no visible coal and you KNOW there could be a rain forest biome across the ocean, you DONT WANT TO MISS ANYTHING right??
the mountain will LEAD you to wood and coal like the lava will LEAD you to redstone/diamond. while branch mining youre simply picking a random direction and mining out the entire chunk hoping for the best as you go.
Lava has no correlation with diamonds and redstone, and definitely does not lead you to them. They are just generated at the same layers. Also, I don't care if all of the diamonds you have found is by lava, they are not spawned together.
However, your mining technique does have some logic behind it. Ordinary spelunking usually does not yield many diamonds. By specifically searching out caves at the diamond layer, you increase efficiency. Pretty neat.
Lava has no correlation with diamonds and redstone, and definitely does not lead you to them. They are just generated at the same layers. Also, I don't care if all of the diamonds you have found is by lava, they are not spawned together.
However, your mining technique does have some logic behind it. Ordinary spelunking usually does not yield many diamonds. By specifically searching out caves at the diamond layer, you increase efficiency. Pretty neat.
i guess you dont get it either...
mountains have no correlation with wood and coal, and definitely does not lead you to them. they are just generated at the same layers. also, i dont care if all of the wood and coal you have found is by mountains, they are not spawned together.
the TL;DR of the OP was this...
"i used to use this cool mining technique with lava in the alpha that didnt work too well when compared with branch mining. i guessed notch increased the size and frequency of deep lava pools in the beta after seeing a large number of surface lava pools and increased amounts of cave lava/water.
i tried my old technique and got a metric asston of diamonds extremely quickly. post thread."
i never said there was x more diamond blocks in a given chunk because you use this method... but you WILL find more redstone and diamond using this method in a given period of time than strip branch mining however. you will simply get more diamond per x,z block using multi-level branch mining and this method will give a higher y block ratio because youre trying your best to stick to 2 layers(since youre 2 blocks tall and thats generally the size of the air pockets).
like everyone has mentioned, the reason why it seems that theres "more" diamond around the pools is because of the visibility they give. if the size and frequency of the lava pools was increased during generation, this would become more prominent(i have no idea if they actually were or not but this works tremendously compared to my attempts in the alpha).
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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.
Did you not read anything I typed? Branch mining is specifically designed so you DONT MISS ANYTHING.
you just dont get it...
when youre STARTING a branch mine, how do you decide which direction to go initially after youre at the desired layer?? you just pick one and hope for the best right?? like i said earlier, its a patterned strip mine, if you dont have time to complete the ENTIRE thing, you could still be missing a lot
lets say you generate a brand new world. you start on a sand island, are completely surrounded by water. theres a mountain in front of you and oceans on all other sides. you obviously need wood and coal fast, are you going to head for the mountain or just close your eyes and pick a direction to go?? of course not! youre going to swim across a giant ocean because you can only see one tree on the mountain, no visible coal and you KNOW there could be a rain forest biome across the ocean, you DONT WANT TO MISS ANYTHING right??
the mountain will LEAD you to wood and coal like the lava will LEAD you to redstone/diamond. while branch mining youre simply picking a random direction and mining out the entire chunk hoping for the best as you go.
Sorry mate, your wrong here. If every block in the diamond layers have a 0.3% chance of being a diamond block then for every 1,000 blocks you view mine you will gain 3 diamond blocks on average. When you are dealing with small numbers then yes probability determine that there is some luck. You may get 5 or 1 in your first 1,000 blocks. But statistics shows that the more you repeat a probable iteration, the more even the results become. After 1,000,000 blocks you will discover very close to 3,000 diamond (Not 1,000 or 5,000. Approx 3,000). There is no luck involved in branch mining if it is performed on a very large scale. It's simple mathematics.
This is a strange first post but I found this guide sometime yesterday and so far it's paid off lol.
Seriously, I went from having 8 or some diamonds if not a bit less - to 32 in day and a half. 20 of which were all found this afternoon. So thanks for the tips, because I always had a harder time finding diamonds when I mined, when all my friends were practically swimming in them.
Edit: I should also mention, I was running low on iron but this excavation trip has netted me almost two full stacks. I'm pretty excited.
I've been branch mining (on layer 14) under a sky trap I'm building and have come out with about 50-55 diamonds so far. Took maybe 3-3.5 hours. Of the 3 lava pools I've come across, none have diamonds, BUT I do see how you would find more around them.
Nah, the new map generation doesn't improve on it because the lava pools are almost entirely filled with lava. So you would have to fill them in because seeing anything.
wait... wut??
Quote from bluevein »
Sorry mate, your wrong here. If every block in the diamond layers have a 0.3% chance of being a diamond block then for every 1,000 blocks you view mine you will gain 3 diamond blocks on average. When you are dealing with small numbers then yes probability determine that there is some luck. You may get 5 or 1 in your first 1,000 blocks. But statistics shows that the more you repeat a probable iteration, the more even the results become. After 1,000,000 blocks you will discover very close to 3,000 diamond (Not 1,000 or 5,000. Approx 3,000). There is no luck involved in branch mining if it is performed on a very large scale. It's simple mathematics.
sigh... reading comprehension difficulties much??
VERY LARGE SCALE
Quote from Adversity »
if you dont have time to complete the ENTIRE thing, you could still be missing a lot
so what if you only have time to ever make 4 branches between all the building youre doing?? just one in every direction?? do you make it two multi level branches heading off in opposite directions or 4 off in the same direction?? why dont you just strip mine the ENTIRE CHUNK?? you dont want to miss anything right??
Quote from ExSeaD »
I kind of understand it because there are no pics. Why did you remove them?
ill try to get some back up.
Quote from 228.zip »
I think I should recommend watching kiershar's tutorial on mining for diamonds here, since it's actually quite accurate.
this is where i learned my branch mining technique. youll also notice that he specifically says YOU HAVE TO GET LUCKY using that technique, at one point saying "maybe ill have better luck in the bottom shaft". sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt.
this technique will guarantee a high amount of diamonds in a very short period of time with a minimal resource investment.
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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.
On the contrary. Branch mining makes it so that you miss none.
Are you seriously going to tell me that diamond is always by lava, and that if you find a lava pool, you will never miss a diamond vein in that chunk?
You don't seem to grasp the fact that branch mining eliminates the chance that you will miss something on your layer. You seem to think that people dig straight down, and break random blocks and hope for diamond, but that isn't the case. I don't know how many times I will have to say this, but branch mining is a science, and an almost perfected one at that. There is no correlation between lava pools and diamond veins save for the fact that they spawn on the same levels.
this is where i learned my branch mining technique. youll also notice that he specifically says YOU HAVE TO GET LUCKY using that technique, at one point saying "maybe ill have better luck in the bottom shaft". sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt.
this technique will guarantee a high amount of diamonds in a very short period of time with a minimal resource investment.
This technique guarantees nothing except that you will not use as much stone or wood for pickaxes (heavens no!), and that you will probably lose your life to the lava.
I could look aroudn all of my lava caves, and find nothing at all. It is all chance the way you are doing it, and there is no technique save for find lava, then dig around it.
On the contrary. Branch mining makes it so that you miss none.
Are you seriously going to tell me that diamond is always by lava, and that if you find a lava pool, you will never miss a diamond vein in that chunk?
You don't seem to grasp the fact that branch mining eliminates the chance that you will miss something on your layer. You seem to think that people dig straight down, and break random blocks and hope for diamond, but that isn't the case. I don't know how many times I will have to say this, but branch mining is a science, and an almost perfected one at that. There is no correlation between lava pools and diamond veins save for the fact that they spawn on the same levels.
This technique guarantees nothing except that you will not use as much stone or wood for pickaxes (heavens no!), and that you will probably lose your life to the lava.
I could look aroudn all of my lava caves, and find nothing at all. It is all chance the way you are doing it, and there is no technique save for find lava, then dig around it.
quote me where ive said that diamond is ALWAYS by lava. the world is randomly generated and theres some randomness to it.
again the reason you will get more diamonds is because of the increased number of exposed veins. you WILL NOT expose EVERY diamond block in a chunk using a branch mine unless you complete it entirely, which is very time intensive(the resources are simply a measure of time spent mining). this technique is a combination of both branch mining and spelunking that will give you natural sight of a wide layer range from the associated "cave" systems and interconnected mineral veins. sometimes you will need to pick a random direction and just go to town with a pick tho.
how is "dig to x layer then start a bunch of 1x2 shafts with 2 empty blocks between them in random direction, *commence praying as you dig each branch*." any more of a technique than "dig to layer 12, hope you hit lava. start 1x2 shaft in random direction if you dont."?? branch mining IS digging down to a certain layer and then breaking a bunch of random blocks... you just break SO MANY of them that you will mine out the entire area. if you want to explain this "science" behind it let me know.
i have also never died since using this technique in the beta(standing in water makes you literally invincible to lava). i guess its not exactly a technique for novices though with the lava involved.
Quote from 228.zip »
Guarantee ?
Randomness doesn't give you any guarantee.
I will somewhat differ with Crory on the point of branch mining being that you miss none though. It's more about uncovering as many blocks as fast as possible. The fact that you want to reduce travel distance usually forces you to make your tunnel close to one another.
have you read some of the replies in this thread?? is EVERYONE ELSE just incredibly lucky as well as myself?? randomness can go both ways... the proof is in the pudding.
and i already said that multi-leveled branch mining will give you a more compact design while this technique will sprawl across layer 12.
fortunately chunks are generated as you travel horizontally, while diamond generation is limited within a chunk. diamond will be infinitely generated across the horizontal axis.
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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 jump is easy to make, especially since all the above statements are not necessarily true.
i guess i worded the first quote wrong. i meant the probability of finding diamond would be increased by the larger air pockets more lava below layer 12 would generate, as well as higher number of cave connections.
the guarantee to find diamond was not because you will necessarily find it next to a lava pool, but you will find it.
i also find on avg a natural cave system connected to roughly 1/3 of the lava pools that LEADS me to diamond almost instantly.
branch mining will also guarantee you to find diamond(pretty much anything you do if youre in a layer that diamond generates will guarantee you to find diamond if you do it long enough), this is simply faster with a higher return.
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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.
Once again, branch mining is superior. You say that looking in caves will give you a better chance of finding diamond, which is generally true in the fact that more faces are exposed, but you still neglect to realize that the same goes for branch mining. you will miss a huge amount of rocks if you just look in caves, and by branch mining all of the time, you can find these caves AND expose the rock around you at a great efficiency.
Also,
you WILL have to do some random branch mining eventually), you simply follow the lava and it will LEAD you to diamonds in one way or another.
Theres where you say that diamond is always near lava.
Since only one diamond vein occurs per chunk, wouldn't it be better to search individual chunks for diamonds? It would be more consistent, and from my calculations, diamond veins should require about 4000 exposed sides, on average.
16x16 chunk, 12 layers where they can occur in a full vein, or they end up deleted 90% of the time. That's 3,072 blocks. But 75% of the time, the vein is deleted by gravel, dirt, or bedrock, bringing it up to 4000 blocks In a 1x2 branch, you expose 4 sides per block mined, meaning you have a 0.1% chance of finding a diamond vein per block mined, or 0.3% per diamond ore. If you systematically mine each chunk for diamonds, you should be able to halve the amount mined, since you can stop mining that chunk once you found the vein. But getting out of a chunk in a one-layer mine takes more blocks mined than saved.
The keyword here is random.
If you want to roll a 6, you'd better roll lots of dices.
Again, you were lucky to find diamonds in all those caves. Heck, you were lucky to find caves to begin with. Reducing the RNG's role by uncovering as many blocks as possible is key in branch mining. Your method simply relies too much on luck to be "The best" as you claim it to be. Not only that, but you also write a lot of imprecisions and outright errors.
If I were to base diamond searching off my personal experience, I probably wouldn't even bother with caves, as I barely found a dozen of diamonds in them, total. I probably wouldn't even bother looking for diamonds given how unlucky I seem to be compared to others.
sigh...
just to show you how "random" this is, i started a new mine. the only thing luck has to do with it is if i get UNLUCKY and CANT find any lava pools, then i have to resort to traditional branch mining across layer 12. i based my mine in a small cave i found near an extensive cave network with 8-12 surface entrances(i figured this would be the best place to start a mine of this nature).
the first block i broke on layer 12 had lava beneath it and there was redstone directly in front of me. i dug out around the redstone looking for connected mineral veins and found 6 blocks of diamond where i am standing in the screenshot.
as i proceeded along the "obsidian highway", there were two caves above me to the right and left. i simply lit them up a little and kept following the lava. this is what it LED me to(just for crory).
to the left of where im standing was another "lava branch" that led to a VERY LARGE cave system.
after two mins of poking around i found this.
i checked around a few of the lava pools after running out of connections and found yet another connecting pool which led me to this.
after cleaning that up, i decided to keep going in the direction i was going initially and found this.
i decided i was tired of going this direction and for kicks went back to my stairs to the surface. i started digging in the opposite direction and this is what i found, the stairs are the 3 torches directly in front of me. i wonder how much redstone that is... there was another vein of redstone and iron above/behind me and another to my left which is shown in the final screenshot.
i thought it would be a good idea to do a little bit of digging around the lava pool and redstone vein, guess what i found?? theres also another two iron veins behind me and a redstone vein.
i continued to do a little more branch mining away from the pools along layer 12 and came up near empty handed finding only 3 smaller diamond veins in roughly the same amount of time. this is also considering i was spending extra time clearing away pointless blocks for better screenshots.
i did it all in around 2-2 1/2 hours. i think i used 4 diamond picks(maybe it was 5 with 3 used for branch mining) and only carried one on me at a time. my inv was generally full by the time it broke to reduce travel time. being like crory and using stone picks is a rookie mistake. diamond tools will only further increase your efficiency.
all told i came out with 62(i think??) diamonds, roughly 6 1/2 stacks of iron, around 9 stacks of coal, 2/3 a stack of gold, ignored all redstone and nearly 2 large chests full of cobblestone.
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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 just figured which layer was 12, and there was a redstone ore blocking the way i was gonna tunnel. i dig that redstone...and eureka! i find diamond. i keep digging, heartened, and eventually find another large-ish pocket of that blue beauty. then i stumble upon a natural cave system, where i find tons more...i exit thru a large waterfall to find a previously explored cave...and return home to plunk down in the chest...24 diamonds!! so use this tactic it really does work. i do agree that cave systems give more diamond simply because its like the map has dug out a tunnel for you, so basically all that can lead to is more diamond. :smile.gif:)))) 1 thing though. don't mine ores like coal and redstone that are positioned next to lava. uh. not good. at ALL.
:smile.gif:
Quite the contrary. Branch mining uses a specific pattern that is sure to expose the most veins possible, with the least amount of blocks mined.
The only reason you could possibly get more diamond from spelunking around lava is because more blocks are exposed, therefore it has a higher rate of efficiency.
Adding onto that, spelunking can also very because of the fact that diamond usually spawns 1 vein per chunk, and with this method it is very easy to miss all of the diamond in that chunk, while branch mining will always find that diamond vein.
EDIT:
Ironically, I found diamond before I found lava. =D Some gold too, useless as it is. Iron and coal, a butt load of redstone. I'll post again when I actually find lava.
Diamond: 1 deposit of 6
Gold: 1 deposit
Iron: 2 deposits
Coal: 3 deposits
Redstone: 5 deposits
Only used 5 stone pick axes.
EDITEDIT: Finally found some lava. It was a rather small pool with only a little air pocket above it. I started mining the rock around by two in every direction. Found some coal, iron, and redstone. Picked a random wall to start branching again and two blocks later found diamond once more. Mined around it, found some more redstone and another deposit of gold. Not bad. Only four pick axes this time.
Final Results:
Diamond: 2 Deposits, 6 + 4 = 10
Gold: 2 Deposits
Iron: 3 Deposits
Coal: 4 Deposits
Redstone: 7 Deposits
9 Stone Pick axes, and about a Minecraft' night of work.
Final Conclusion: I think I'll stick to this method. I used to do nothing but branch mine, but this is easier all around and seems to churn out results in less time. (Or maybe I was just lucky. We'll see if my results keep up.) I feel like I can use my iron and diamonds more now. =D
i just say its "random" because it is. sometimes you get lucky and find 15 diamonds in an hour, sometimes youll go 3 hours and not find anything. if youre branch mining with diamond 1 block away from you the entire time, youll have to start an entire new branch to find it. whether or not you find diamond is completely based on chance.
by using this method you are GUARANTEED to find diamond within 30mins. no matter what. i have yet to come out of my mine empty handed, when i would frequently come out with no diamonds while branch mining. instead of randomly branch mining the entire time(you WILL have to do some random branch mining eventually), you simply follow the lava and it will LEAD you to diamonds in one way or another.
im glad to hear people are having so much success with this method tho! i thought it was "too good to be true", but it seems to be the new and improved way to mine diamonds!
The BEST way to mine diamond, layer 12 and you.
Did you not read anything I typed? Branch mining is specifically designed so you DONT MISS ANYTHING.
you just dont get it...
when youre STARTING a branch mine, how do you decide which direction to go initially after youre at the desired layer?? you just pick one and hope for the best right?? like i said earlier, its a patterned strip mine, if you dont have time to complete the ENTIRE thing, you could still be missing a lot
lets say you generate a brand new world. you start on a sand island, are completely surrounded by water. theres a mountain in front of you and oceans on all other sides. you obviously need wood and coal fast, are you going to head for the mountain or just close your eyes and pick a direction to go?? of course not! youre going to swim across a giant ocean because you can only see one tree on the mountain, no visible coal and you KNOW there could be a rain forest biome across the ocean, you DONT WANT TO MISS ANYTHING right??
the mountain will LEAD you to wood and coal like the lava will LEAD you to redstone/diamond. while branch mining youre simply picking a random direction and mining out the entire chunk hoping for the best as you go.
The BEST way to mine diamond, layer 12 and you.
Lava has no correlation with diamonds and redstone, and definitely does not lead you to them. They are just generated at the same layers. Also, I don't care if all of the diamonds you have found is by lava, they are not spawned together.
However, your mining technique does have some logic behind it. Ordinary spelunking usually does not yield many diamonds. By specifically searching out caves at the diamond layer, you increase efficiency. Pretty neat.
The New Boat Elevator
Simple Drowning Trap
Complex Drowning Trap
Note Blocks - The Blue Danube
Minecart Rider Detection System
i guess you dont get it either...
mountains have no correlation with wood and coal, and definitely does not lead you to them. they are just generated at the same layers. also, i dont care if all of the wood and coal you have found is by mountains, they are not spawned together.
the TL;DR of the OP was this...
"i used to use this cool mining technique with lava in the alpha that didnt work too well when compared with branch mining. i guessed notch increased the size and frequency of deep lava pools in the beta after seeing a large number of surface lava pools and increased amounts of cave lava/water.
i tried my old technique and got a metric asston of diamonds extremely quickly. post thread."
i never said there was x more diamond blocks in a given chunk because you use this method... but you WILL find more redstone and diamond using this method in a given period of time than strip branch mining however. you will simply get more diamond per x,z block using multi-level branch mining and this method will give a higher y block ratio because youre trying your best to stick to 2 layers(since youre 2 blocks tall and thats generally the size of the air pockets).
like everyone has mentioned, the reason why it seems that theres "more" diamond around the pools is because of the visibility they give. if the size and frequency of the lava pools was increased during generation, this would become more prominent(i have no idea if they actually were or not but this works tremendously compared to my attempts in the alpha).
The BEST way to mine diamond, layer 12 and you.
Sorry mate, your wrong here. If every block in the diamond layers have a 0.3% chance of being a diamond block then for every 1,000 blocks you view mine you will gain 3 diamond blocks on average. When you are dealing with small numbers then yes probability determine that there is some luck. You may get 5 or 1 in your first 1,000 blocks. But statistics shows that the more you repeat a probable iteration, the more even the results become. After 1,000,000 blocks you will discover very close to 3,000 diamond (Not 1,000 or 5,000. Approx 3,000). There is no luck involved in branch mining if it is performed on a very large scale. It's simple mathematics.
8
and more than 64
and a
Seriously, I went from having 8 or some diamonds if not a bit less - to 32 in day and a half. 20 of which were all found this afternoon. So thanks for the tips, because I always had a harder time finding diamonds when I mined, when all my friends were practically swimming in them.
Edit: I should also mention, I was running low on iron but this excavation trip has netted me almost two full stacks. I'm pretty excited.
wait... wut??
sigh... reading comprehension difficulties much??
so what if you only have time to ever make 4 branches between all the building youre doing?? just one in every direction?? do you make it two multi level branches heading off in opposite directions or 4 off in the same direction?? why dont you just strip mine the ENTIRE CHUNK?? you dont want to miss anything right??
ill try to get some back up.
this is where i learned my branch mining technique. youll also notice that he specifically says YOU HAVE TO GET LUCKY using that technique, at one point saying "maybe ill have better luck in the bottom shaft". sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt.
this technique will guarantee a high amount of diamonds in a very short period of time with a minimal resource investment.
The BEST way to mine diamond, layer 12 and you.
Are you seriously going to tell me that diamond is always by lava, and that if you find a lava pool, you will never miss a diamond vein in that chunk?
You don't seem to grasp the fact that branch mining eliminates the chance that you will miss something on your layer. You seem to think that people dig straight down, and break random blocks and hope for diamond, but that isn't the case. I don't know how many times I will have to say this, but branch mining is a science, and an almost perfected one at that. There is no correlation between lava pools and diamond veins save for the fact that they spawn on the same levels.
This technique guarantees nothing except that you will not use as much stone or wood for pickaxes (heavens no!), and that you will probably lose your life to the lava.
I could look aroudn all of my lava caves, and find nothing at all. It is all chance the way you are doing it, and there is no technique save for find lava, then dig around it.
I call BS
Catgirl12446: Infdev= INFinite DEVelopment
Ranavalona: FUUUUUUU-
Tell me what that means for a +1 respect
quote me where ive said that diamond is ALWAYS by lava. the world is randomly generated and theres some randomness to it.
again the reason you will get more diamonds is because of the increased number of exposed veins. you WILL NOT expose EVERY diamond block in a chunk using a branch mine unless you complete it entirely, which is very time intensive(the resources are simply a measure of time spent mining). this technique is a combination of both branch mining and spelunking that will give you natural sight of a wide layer range from the associated "cave" systems and interconnected mineral veins. sometimes you will need to pick a random direction and just go to town with a pick tho.
how is "dig to x layer then start a bunch of 1x2 shafts with 2 empty blocks between them in random direction, *commence praying as you dig each branch*." any more of a technique than "dig to layer 12, hope you hit lava. start 1x2 shaft in random direction if you dont."?? branch mining IS digging down to a certain layer and then breaking a bunch of random blocks... you just break SO MANY of them that you will mine out the entire area. if you want to explain this "science" behind it let me know.
i have also never died since using this technique in the beta(standing in water makes you literally invincible to lava). i guess its not exactly a technique for novices though with the lava involved.
have you read some of the replies in this thread?? is EVERYONE ELSE just incredibly lucky as well as myself?? randomness can go both ways... the proof is in the pudding.
and i already said that multi-leveled branch mining will give you a more compact design while this technique will sprawl across layer 12.
fortunately chunks are generated as you travel horizontally, while diamond generation is limited within a chunk. diamond will be infinitely generated across the horizontal axis.
The BEST way to mine diamond, layer 12 and you.
i guess i worded the first quote wrong. i meant the probability of finding diamond would be increased by the larger air pockets more lava below layer 12 would generate, as well as higher number of cave connections.
the guarantee to find diamond was not because you will necessarily find it next to a lava pool, but you will find it.
i also find on avg a natural cave system connected to roughly 1/3 of the lava pools that LEADS me to diamond almost instantly.
branch mining will also guarantee you to find diamond(pretty much anything you do if youre in a layer that diamond generates will guarantee you to find diamond if you do it long enough), this is simply faster with a higher return.
The BEST way to mine diamond, layer 12 and you.
Once again, branch mining is superior. You say that looking in caves will give you a better chance of finding diamond, which is generally true in the fact that more faces are exposed, but you still neglect to realize that the same goes for branch mining. you will miss a huge amount of rocks if you just look in caves, and by branch mining all of the time, you can find these caves AND expose the rock around you at a great efficiency.
Also,
Theres where you say that diamond is always near lava.
16x16 chunk, 12 layers where they can occur in a full vein, or they end up deleted 90% of the time. That's 3,072 blocks. But 75% of the time, the vein is deleted by gravel, dirt, or bedrock, bringing it up to 4000 blocks In a 1x2 branch, you expose 4 sides per block mined, meaning you have a 0.1% chance of finding a diamond vein per block mined, or 0.3% per diamond ore. If you systematically mine each chunk for diamonds, you should be able to halve the amount mined, since you can stop mining that chunk once you found the vein. But getting out of a chunk in a one-layer mine takes more blocks mined than saved.
sigh...
just to show you how "random" this is, i started a new mine. the only thing luck has to do with it is if i get UNLUCKY and CANT find any lava pools, then i have to resort to traditional branch mining across layer 12. i based my mine in a small cave i found near an extensive cave network with 8-12 surface entrances(i figured this would be the best place to start a mine of this nature).
the first block i broke on layer 12 had lava beneath it and there was redstone directly in front of me. i dug out around the redstone looking for connected mineral veins and found 6 blocks of diamond where i am standing in the screenshot.
as i proceeded along the "obsidian highway", there were two caves above me to the right and left. i simply lit them up a little and kept following the lava. this is what it LED me to(just for crory).
to the left of where im standing was another "lava branch" that led to a VERY LARGE cave system.
after two mins of poking around i found this.
i checked around a few of the lava pools after running out of connections and found yet another connecting pool which led me to this.
after cleaning that up, i decided to keep going in the direction i was going initially and found this.
i decided i was tired of going this direction and for kicks went back to my stairs to the surface. i started digging in the opposite direction and this is what i found, the stairs are the 3 torches directly in front of me. i wonder how much redstone that is... there was another vein of redstone and iron above/behind me and another to my left which is shown in the final screenshot.
i thought it would be a good idea to do a little bit of digging around the lava pool and redstone vein, guess what i found?? theres also another two iron veins behind me and a redstone vein.
i continued to do a little more branch mining away from the pools along layer 12 and came up near empty handed finding only 3 smaller diamond veins in roughly the same amount of time. this is also considering i was spending extra time clearing away pointless blocks for better screenshots.
i did it all in around 2-2 1/2 hours. i think i used 4 diamond picks(maybe it was 5 with 3 used for branch mining) and only carried one on me at a time. my inv was generally full by the time it broke to reduce travel time. being like crory and using stone picks is a rookie mistake. diamond tools will only further increase your efficiency.
all told i came out with 62(i think??) diamonds, roughly 6 1/2 stacks of iron, around 9 stacks of coal, 2/3 a stack of gold, ignored all redstone and nearly 2 large chests full of cobblestone.
The BEST way to mine diamond, layer 12 and you.