IGN: LeJester Age: 24 How long have you been playing: mid-alpha Ever tried IndustrialCraft: Yes, solo only. How much do you play a week: Varies; almost none during weekdays, several hours on fri-sat-sun. Ever been banned: Nope Location: Eastern Canada eh!
-Small greek-like temple on top of a mountain, with a bed and chests
-Mine (duh)
-Slime farm
-Fortress with lava moat and draw bridge
-Exp farm (close to 2 spawners)
-Exp farm (skeleton)
-Farm (Wheat, chickens/eggs, sugar cane, melon, pumpkin, mushrooms)
-A balcony with a nice sunset view
-A wooden shack in a snow biome
-A "wizardry tower", with a Brewing stand, portal to netherwart farm, enchanting table w/bookshelves
-A blaze grinder
-Rails linking it all
-Iron golem grinder (in 1.2)
There are 2 other threads on here about how to efficiently mine diamonds but lots of disagreement.
So the logical thing to do is start a 3rd one. People who previously disagreed will now agree, work together and find a way to get 5 stacks of diamonds/hour.
It is expandable in every direction so you can completely decide where to dig. Besides that thinking there is a optimal height level for diamonds is a common misconception. Diamonds are nearly equally distributed in the bottom 16 layers except for the layers where bedrock has to be instead of diamond and the layers 13-14-15. But as you can not mine through bedrock you are logically unable to branch into those bottom layers and the fact that diamonds become rarer from layer 13 on does make branches on the supposedly "best" layer 12 even worse.
(The chart is for 1.1)
This method is essentially a multilayered branch mine. Although I see another pro to that method: if you start with the lowest level, you're pretty much assured that the higher levels are lava safe. This is particularly useful since 1.8 you have to dig into the lava layers to get the optimum diamond efficiency (as you mentionned).
And I'm personally not a fan of exposing EVERY block. You have to be quite unlucky for a vein to be 1 block wide, and be exactly in the row you can't see.
As of late I've been experimenting with some mining patterns. Spelunking is now incredibly easy with the addition of mine shafts, however, mine shafts tend to be at higher level than diamond/gold layers. They are the most efficient way to get tons of coal, iron and tracks, but are lacking if your goal is getting diamonds&gunsgold.
I also looked into NZPhoenix' patterns, which are great pieces of work, but there are 3 points about his patterns that I don't like:
They focus on being space efficient, rather than being time efficient; they don't have an optimal blocks exposed:mined ratio
They require you to count, and keep track of amount of blocks you have to mine in each row
They don't really take mine shafts/caverns in consideration
So I developed kind of an hybrid system, which balances space efficiency, time efficiency and has a good block exposed:mined ratio.
The blue square is obviously the landing/starting area. Nothing special.
The gray shafts going up and going down (on the picture) are fast travel shafts. They permit fast exploration and increase the chance meeting mine shafts & caverns.
The red rectangles are 1x1 windows that expose a good number of blocks for the number of blocks you mine.
The shafts left/right on the picture are snake style corridors, somewhat based on NZPhoenix' designs. The lengths of the green corridors is left to the user's discretion. While this is less space efficient than NZPhoenix' pattern, it is very simple to use; no counting necessary.
I also leave 3 blocks between each window/corridor because veins are rarely 1 block wide, so you are not gonna miss many of those precious diamonds. Once again this favors time efficiency over space efficiency.
So that's my pattern, I'd appreciate your comments/thoughts on this.
Can't you use the fact chest won't open if their is a solid block above them? So with a redstone lock of lets say 16 levers you can use pistons to pull away the blocks and thus make it possible to open your chest.
The problem with that, is that you want to mine south west of your spawn, since there are greater amounts of precious materials in that area.
A spiral mining like yours means that you will, at some point, reach into either the northern or the western quadrant, and eventually into the dreaded north-western quadrant.
Source to prove this? Also, NZPhoenix, I see room to expand, meaning that once you have done those branches, you clear out the reamaining stone and make the central room larger, and then continue doing more branches, eventually you hava a large room that can be used for many things, like a base, monster farm, etc.
I lost the thread proving it, but you can prove it yourself. Start a new world explore a bit in all directions(to get a better overall view), then, use cartograph and stack renders of 1) Gold and Diamond only and 2) Normal map
You will clearly see the difference between quadrants(SW has the most, followed by NW and SE, with NE quadrant having very few)
As NZPhoenix said, it's a problem with the code and how it rounds stuff up(don't ask me the exact explanation)
The problem with that, is that you want to mine south west of your spawn, since there are greater amounts of precious materials in that area.
A spiral mining like yours means that you will, at some point, reach into either the northern or the western quadrant, and eventually into the dreaded north-western quadrant.
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Age: 24
How long have you been playing: mid-alpha
Ever tried IndustrialCraft: Yes, solo only.
How much do you play a week: Varies; almost none during weekdays, several hours on fri-sat-sun.
Ever been banned: Nope
Location: Eastern Canada eh!
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-Small greek-like temple on top of a mountain, with a bed and chests
-Mine (duh)
-Slime farm
-Fortress with lava moat and draw bridge
-Exp farm (close to 2 spawners)
-Exp farm (skeleton)
-Farm (Wheat, chickens/eggs, sugar cane, melon, pumpkin, mushrooms)
-A balcony with a nice sunset view
-A wooden shack in a snow biome
-A "wizardry tower", with a Brewing stand, portal to netherwart farm, enchanting table w/bookshelves
-A blaze grinder
-Rails linking it all
-Iron golem grinder (in 1.2)
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So the logical thing to do is start a 3rd one. People who previously disagreed will now agree, work together and find a way to get 5 stacks of diamonds/hour.
You sir are truly a genius!
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This works on the same principle as branch mining, only without the backtracking.
I also proposed a new version of that, here.
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This method is essentially a multilayered branch mine. Although I see another pro to that method: if you start with the lowest level, you're pretty much assured that the higher levels are lava safe. This is particularly useful since 1.8 you have to dig into the lava layers to get the optimum diamond efficiency (as you mentionned).
And I'm personally not a fan of exposing EVERY block. You have to be quite unlucky for a vein to be 1 block wide, and be exactly in the row you can't see.
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Major con: does not dig at optimal y levels
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The windows are as good as you can get on exposing a bunch of blocks by not mining much.
By mining 4 blocks, you expose 13 blocks.
You could even add them at the end of each green corridor.
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gunsgold.I also looked into NZPhoenix' patterns, which are great pieces of work, but there are 3 points about his patterns that I don't like:
So I developed kind of an hybrid system, which balances space efficiency, time efficiency and has a good block exposed:mined ratio.
The blue square is obviously the landing/starting area. Nothing special.
The gray shafts going up and going down (on the picture) are fast travel shafts. They permit fast exploration and increase the chance meeting mine shafts & caverns.
The red rectangles are 1x1 windows that expose a good number of blocks for the number of blocks you mine.
The shafts left/right on the picture are snake style corridors, somewhat based on NZPhoenix' designs. The lengths of the green corridors is left to the user's discretion. While this is less space efficient than NZPhoenix' pattern, it is very simple to use; no counting necessary.
I also leave 3 blocks between each window/corridor because veins are rarely 1 block wide, so you are not gonna miss many of those precious diamonds. Once again this favors time efficiency over space efficiency.
So that's my pattern, I'd appreciate your comments/thoughts on this.
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You can simply destroy the chest then
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I lost the thread proving it, but you can prove it yourself. Start a new world explore a bit in all directions(to get a better overall view), then, use cartograph and stack renders of 1) Gold and Diamond only and 2) Normal map
You will clearly see the difference between quadrants(SW has the most, followed by NW and SE, with NE quadrant having very few)
As NZPhoenix said, it's a problem with the code and how it rounds stuff up(don't ask me the exact explanation)
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A spiral mining like yours means that you will, at some point, reach into either the northern or the western quadrant, and eventually into the dreaded north-western quadrant.