None of my players can connect to my Java Realm, including myself, it keeps timing out. Also tried to close the realms and restart, but just gets stuck at the "Closing the realm..." process screen. Same thing with trying to switch the world. Is anyone else having these issues?
It is a myth that diamonds are rare in real life, and are artificially made far more valuable than they should be:
MYTH #1: Diamonds are expensive because they’re so rare.
Diamonds are not particularly rare. In fact, compared to other gemstones, they’re the most common precious stone found. Generally, the cost per carat (or weight of a gemstone) is based upon a stone’s rarity; the rarer the stone, the more expensive. Therefore, rubies, emeralds and sapphires are much rarer and, in turn, far more expensive than diamonds.
MYTH BUSTER: So, what makes diamonds so valuable? It’s simple: market demand.
For centuries, diamonds have been a sign of power, wealth and status. The stone was a rare find and therefore was worth more. However, in the 1800s, a veritable diamond trove was unearthed in Kimberly, South Africa. This newfound mine had the potential to flood the market with diamonds and bring down the cost for the precious stone. To prevent too many diamonds from hitting the market, De Beers quickly intervened, bought up the mine and maintained tight control over the global diamond supply. De Beers released only enough diamonds to meet annual demand. This gave the illusion that diamonds were exceedingly rare. In turn, the seemingly-limited supply inflated the cost of diamonds.
You just cited an article explaining that diamonds' high value over the course of history has been due to its immense scarcity, and even after DeBeers discovered a large trove of it in South Africa, its high value was maintained by deliberately keeping it scarce. Thank you for proving my point.
For comparison, a Minecraft world has around 52 trillion diamond ore which can make 5.8-13 trillion diamond blocks, with a total weight of 20-45 trillion metric tons (without Fortune to Fortune III).
My dude, you can't data troll away the fact that diamonds are, quite obviously, valuable due to their scarcity and high usefulness. If diamonds were as common as sand, you and I both know they would have no comparable value. The whole concept of diamonds, throughout history, literature, lore, culture, etc. is that of a precious, scarce gemstone, obsessively sought after and coveted for its beauty and usefulness. There is no mystery as to why they were added to the game, or what the concept of them was. Stop trying to pretend otherwise, it's embarrassingly disingenuous.
Also, I think it is bad game design to add something that can only be practically used by a small subset of players (like myself, who spends literally all their time caving).
No, it's bad game design to make a precious gemstone so preposterously over abundant that it becomes everyone's standard gear rather than the flex.
By the way, Iskall85 just mined 1,756 diamonds in a single day for an episode of Hermitcraft. He was only seeking to obtain 1,000. I mean, you can keep pretending that diamonds aren't preposterously over abundant, but it's comical at this point.
Assuming that you find iron first, you don't fall in lava or a cave when you're digging straight down, and you are able to fight off the mobs you encounter if you come across a cave...
Which is why you dig diagonally.
Are we really going to pretend it's hard or time consuming to safely dig down to level 12?
You also have a pretty great chance of hitting both iron and coal before you get to the bottom.
Ancient debris isn't nearly that common, some can ignite 10 explosions and not find it at all, while some can strip mine and find it faster (depending on their mining speed).
I literally just tested it out and confirmed that ancient debris is indeed that common. One stack of TNT is 64 explosions, which can easily cover a 128 block long tunnel, which will yield quite a lot of ancient debris. I was able to convert a complete set of diamond armor and some tools. Go try it.
Utilizing TNT is also a fairly dangerous way to mine, and gunpowder could be really hard to come across since it is only dropped by mobs, and not actually found anywhere.
I mean, first of all, gunpowder literally "found" in temples and dungeons and chests all over the place, not to mention it's a completely renewable item which you can easily have limitless supplies of with one rudimentary mob farm.
Second of all, utilizing TNT is actually perfectly safe. Dig a tunnel at level 14 Nether about 100 blocks long, then back up, placing TNT, once you're at the end, you ignite the last bit of TNT and walk back, away from the tunnel. All the explosions will be moving away from you. It's perfectly safe. And fun.
Further, creepers must be killed from a range or they'll blow up, dropping nothing.
A simple mob farm yields more gunpowder for TNT than you'll ever need.
Also, you can easily kill creepers melee. Run, hit, back up. Repeat three times.
In the nether, you could kill ghasts, but that isn't a guaranteed drop and ghasts are extremely hostile and annoying to deal with. The TNT method may be viable for 1 or 2 mining sessions but will end up getting expensive if you plan on doing it every time.
Gunpowder is 100% renewable, and sand is one of the most abundant materials in the game.
I'm not sure why we're pretending any of this is difficult. What's even more baffling is that anyone would resist the idea of mining with TNT, which is not only the obvious end game use of the item, but probably one of the most fun and satisfying activities you could be doing in the game.
Every one of these conversations makes me feel like I'm back in 2010 and people are coming up with heated arguments against adding smooth lighting to the game because it would make it less "Minecrafty". I've never seen people more blindly resistant to change than Minecraft players.
I'm now convinced that netherite might be a bit too common as well. Technically it's far more rare than diamond, however, obtaining ancient debris is exceedingly easy once you have TNT. Not to mention extremely fun.
Digging down to level 14 or so in the Nether, digging a 1 wide tunnel, and then laying down a line of TNT with maybe 1 or 2 space gap between each, and igniting them, unearths a wide tunnel exposing quite a lot of ancient debris. With one stack of TNT it seems you should be able to expose more than enough ancient debris to convert a full set of diamond armor or tools.
Once you've obtained supplies of gunpowder and sand to make TNT, netherite actually seems to be quite a lot easier to obtain than diamond. Of course, mining it with TNT is extremely fun. It reminds me that, back in the day, I always wanted diamond to be immune from TNT, so that you could use detonations to create efficient diamond mines, which seemed to be the obvious end goal of utilizing TNT. I never understood why they allowed diamonds to be destroyed by explosions.
I would actually love for diamond to be given explosion immunity. Mining for diamond would then become infinitely more fun with TNT, the way it always should have been.
Buddy, in short, I find diamonds a lot harder to find than you do, to the point where I *do* enchant my iron armour. You want to make diamonds not show up in trading or structures, sure. But it's not that common underground. You're a god of mining but you don't speak for everyone. You sound like a rich person telling the masses that they're not entitled to paying off their mortgages or student loans and that it's easy to get money.
You can cut 16 wood, craft a wood pickaxe, axe and shovel, dig straight down to level 12 and start mining for diamonds in less than 2 minutes.
Nepho, it's great that you were able to do that in such a short time, but I don't exactly want to be holding down the mouse button and moving forward for half an hour. Strip mining isn't what makes minecraft fun.
Then use iron gear.
Why do you feel entitled to surplus of the top precious resource in the game?
Should it be easy to build a castle made of diamond blocks in Survival mode? No. So what exactly should deter players from being able to build a castle made of diamond blocks in Survival mode? Scarcity. The same principle applies to diamond armor and gear. You simply feel entitled to having buku diamonds, I think it should be a perk / flex rather than the standard gear. Because, you know, they're d-i-a-m-o-n-d-s.
By the way, I just started a new world and timed myself to get diamond.
On my first try it took me 48 minutes to get a full set of diamond armor, weapons and tools, including a hoe. That's 35 diamonds in 48 minutes, including the time it took to collect wood, find a cave, dig down to level 12, fight off several skeletons, creepers, zombies, craft furnaces and smelt and craft a full set of iron armor, four iron pickaxes, and craft all of the diamond items.
That's 1 diamond every 1.4 minutes, (without Fortune III and Efficiency V).
I'm sorry, but diamonds are preposterously over-abundant.
What about what I keep saying about Mending? You only need 30-40 diamonds to make all the gear you'll ever need and making diamond ore rarer will only make it take longer to find enough
Then, like I said, use iron gear.
The fact that nobody ever really even bothers to enchant iron gear illustrates that diamonds are way, way, way overly abundant. You and I both agree that the grind of mining should deter players from amassing enough diamonds, for example, to build a diamond castle, I happen to believe that that same principle should be extended to gear. You don't want to work to obtain a precious resource? Fine, use iron gear. Iron should be the standard anyway, diamond should be the flex. You can do literally everything in the game with a set of iron gear and 9 diamonds for instamine tools. But you refuse to accept that because you simply feel entitled to the top precious resource in the game.
Btw, your point about only needing 30-40 diamonds to make all the gear you'll ever need actually supports my argument better than yours.
Many players even feel that iron isn't common enough to justify mining it and were so outraged when Mojang decided to nerf iron golem drops that they "had" to revert the changes. This says it all; yes, somebody actually made a petition on change.org to protest the nerf, and I've seen others say they would quit playing if such changes were made, or even have quit due to the threat:
Iron holds a completely different role in the game than diamond because of the fact that it is used to create a large variety of technical materials that are required in mass quantities for large scale projects, so it makes perfect sense for them to be renewable. Diamonds on the other hand are used only for tiny niche items that are ultimately only necessary in a quantity of one, and their main function is just stronger yet redundant overlap with the role iron already serves: defense against mobs, and faster mining.
Also, I doubt Mojang wants the game to be that hard, considering the main demographic it is targeted to, and being easy is a major selling point of the game (see the third item listed; for me the the main attraction is the second one):
Considering the fact that the game has both a "Hard" mode as well as a "Hardcore" mode illustrates that it was indeed intended to provide sincere challenge. The fact that the survival aspects of the game are well known to be strongly based on the absolutely brutal and unforgivable ADOM RPG illustrates this further. I'm all in favor of the game facilitating easier play for some people, but it's not unreasonable for other players to have diamond abundance balanced such that they are only viable as a flex rather than an easily obtainable standard material for gear. I'd say that the measure by which I'd judge this balance is, unless players are regularly enchanting their iron gear, then diamonds are overly abundant. In my view that seems to be a perfectly reasonable standard option for many players.
For comparison, it took me about 58.6 hours to "complete" the game in my last world, which would most closely fall under "Main Story" since I don't bother with things like the Wither, only the Ender Dragon, and don't try to find structures or biomes other than a stronghold and Nether fortress; everything after this point is caving for fun, which took another 466 hours to find at least one of every underground feature, plus 14.5 additional hours to build secondary bases, railways, and wall in villages. This is also longer than I'd take in vanilla 1.6.4, and probably current versions since in vanilla 1.6.4 you only need to rename your items to keep the cost down, while I added my own version of Mending to the same effect, which meant I had to breed and trade with villagers, just as I would in 1.9+, and it is easier to get a specific enchanted book trade, including Mending, in 1.8+. I also wouldn't need to mine as much quartz, which takes around 12 hours, to get XP for enchanting, especially with 1.8's enchanting and 1.14's grindstone
Like I said, you only need about 9 diamonds to do literally every activity in the game, with full mining speed.
You just feel entitled to easily obtaining the top flex item in the game. In which case, why even call it diamond?
I can tell you very clearly that I artificially make the game harder for myself by setting up a bunch of rules that seem pointless to most people, but to me, keep the game feeling natural and keep me tense.
Well that's adorable, but pretending that diamond resources aren't abundant to induce the illusion of a challenge is not the same as an actual challenge, and the value dynamic of precious gems quickly falls apart when a player who is genuinely trying to find diamonds has to voluntarily pretend that diamonds aren't abundantly available. This would be like a billionaire LARPing as a penniless entrepreneur and thinking they experienced a genuine economic challenge. If the limitations aren't forcibly imposed by the framework of the game, they're not real limitations, and they're not real challenges.
All that said, you yourself have a threshold by which you would also consider diamonds to be too common, for example if diamonds were as common as granite, diorite and andesite you would consider that preposterous and it would immensely dampen the joy of Survival gameplay, so you know full well that expecting players to LARP as though diamonds aren't abundant is not an actual solution. I suspect you and I would also agree that players should not be able to easily build an entire castle out of diamond or netherite, which means that you and I both agree that the grind of mining should limit players from amassing large quantities of precious gems, we simply disagree about the appropriate level of work-reward balance.
I think the game would actually become far richer and more emotionally rewarding if iron was the highest tier in the game to effortlessly maintain, and diamond and netherite were genuine challenges to reach and maintain. As it stands now, diamond is so insanely over-abundant that there's literally no reason to even bother enchanting any iron items at all, because you can have a full set of diamond gear in like 20 minutes. Yet you are perfectly capable of playing the entire game in iron tier, with one diamond pickaxe. Iron meets all your gameplay needs, except for the mere 9 diamond it takes to craft an entire set of insta-mining tools. You simply feel entitled to effortless access to the top resources in the game. I disagree.
Let's be perfectly clear, you and all other players have a limit to which you would tolerate "grinding" for diamonds. Which means that making diamonds more rare wouldn't make the game more "grindy", it would just mean you would have less diamonds.
I genuinely don't know what to tell a person who thinks that Minecraft players can just "artificially" pretend like they're being challenged to find diamond and netherite even if they're overly abundant. You can't make believe that something is a challenge.
If you don't want to mine or explore for diamonds, then don't. Have less diamonds. You'll quickly find out that, suddenly, they hold quite a lot more value when they're scarce. Which is the entire point. It shouldn't be easy to always remain in diamond tier.
Starting in the 1.16 Java Nether Update, a community of talented architects, redstoners and relatively speaking considerate pranksters will begin a Fresh New World, spawning together on a tiny island in an Emerald Sea, and shall venture off together into the unknown to develop a collaborative community Shopping District, Mini Games and More. If you're an artistically gifted player looking for a collaborative Hermitcraft-like community, show us what you can bring to the table by posting a picture or video here of your proudest Minecraft creations, and message me for more information about this sixth dimension beyond that which is known to Steve, an area which we call... THE BLOCKY PLACE
1
None of my players can connect to my Java Realm, including myself, it keeps timing out. Also tried to close the realms and restart, but just gets stuck at the "Closing the realm..." process screen. Same thing with trying to switch the world. Is anyone else having these issues?
0
You just cited an article explaining that diamonds' high value over the course of history has been due to its immense scarcity, and even after DeBeers discovered a large trove of it in South Africa, its high value was maintained by deliberately keeping it scarce. Thank you for proving my point.
My dude, you can't data troll away the fact that diamonds are, quite obviously, valuable due to their scarcity and high usefulness. If diamonds were as common as sand, you and I both know they would have no comparable value. The whole concept of diamonds, throughout history, literature, lore, culture, etc. is that of a precious, scarce gemstone, obsessively sought after and coveted for its beauty and usefulness. There is no mystery as to why they were added to the game, or what the concept of them was. Stop trying to pretend otherwise, it's embarrassingly disingenuous.
No, it's bad game design to make a precious gemstone so preposterously over abundant that it becomes everyone's standard gear rather than the flex.
By the way, Iskall85 just mined 1,756 diamonds in a single day for an episode of Hermitcraft. He was only seeking to obtain 1,000. I mean, you can keep pretending that diamonds aren't preposterously over abundant, but it's comical at this point.
0
Which is why you dig diagonally.
Are we really going to pretend it's hard or time consuming to safely dig down to level 12?
You also have a pretty great chance of hitting both iron and coal before you get to the bottom.
I literally just tested it out and confirmed that ancient debris is indeed that common. One stack of TNT is 64 explosions, which can easily cover a 128 block long tunnel, which will yield quite a lot of ancient debris. I was able to convert a complete set of diamond armor and some tools. Go try it.
I mean, first of all, gunpowder literally "found" in temples and dungeons and chests all over the place, not to mention it's a completely renewable item which you can easily have limitless supplies of with one rudimentary mob farm.
Second of all, utilizing TNT is actually perfectly safe. Dig a tunnel at level 14 Nether about 100 blocks long, then back up, placing TNT, once you're at the end, you ignite the last bit of TNT and walk back, away from the tunnel. All the explosions will be moving away from you. It's perfectly safe. And fun.
A simple mob farm yields more gunpowder for TNT than you'll ever need.
Also, you can easily kill creepers melee. Run, hit, back up. Repeat three times.
Gunpowder is 100% renewable, and sand is one of the most abundant materials in the game.
I'm not sure why we're pretending any of this is difficult. What's even more baffling is that anyone would resist the idea of mining with TNT, which is not only the obvious end game use of the item, but probably one of the most fun and satisfying activities you could be doing in the game.
Every one of these conversations makes me feel like I'm back in 2010 and people are coming up with heated arguments against adding smooth lighting to the game because it would make it less "Minecrafty".
I've never seen people more blindly resistant to change than Minecraft players.
0
I'm now convinced that netherite might be a bit too common as well. Technically it's far more rare than diamond, however, obtaining ancient debris is exceedingly easy once you have TNT. Not to mention extremely fun.
Digging down to level 14 or so in the Nether, digging a 1 wide tunnel, and then laying down a line of TNT with maybe 1 or 2 space gap between each, and igniting them, unearths a wide tunnel exposing quite a lot of ancient debris. With one stack of TNT it seems you should be able to expose more than enough ancient debris to convert a full set of diamond armor or tools.
Once you've obtained supplies of gunpowder and sand to make TNT, netherite actually seems to be quite a lot easier to obtain than diamond. Of course, mining it with TNT is extremely fun. It reminds me that, back in the day, I always wanted diamond to be immune from TNT, so that you could use detonations to create efficient diamond mines, which seemed to be the obvious end goal of utilizing TNT. I never understood why they allowed diamonds to be destroyed by explosions.
I would actually love for diamond to be given explosion immunity. Mining for diamond would then become infinitely more fun with TNT, the way it always should have been.
0
You can cut 16 wood, craft a wood pickaxe, axe and shovel, dig straight down to level 12 and start mining for diamonds in less than 2 minutes.
0
Then use iron gear.
Why do you feel entitled to surplus of the top precious resource in the game?
Should it be easy to build a castle made of diamond blocks in Survival mode? No. So what exactly should deter players from being able to build a castle made of diamond blocks in Survival mode? Scarcity. The same principle applies to diamond armor and gear. You simply feel entitled to having buku diamonds, I think it should be a perk / flex rather than the standard gear. Because, you know, they're d-i-a-m-o-n-d-s.
0
By the way, I just started a new world and timed myself to get diamond.
On my first try it took me 48 minutes to get a full set of diamond armor, weapons and tools, including a hoe. That's 35 diamonds in 48 minutes, including the time it took to collect wood, find a cave, dig down to level 12, fight off several skeletons, creepers, zombies, craft furnaces and smelt and craft a full set of iron armor, four iron pickaxes, and craft all of the diamond items.
That's 1 diamond every 1.4 minutes, (without Fortune III and Efficiency V).
I'm sorry, but diamonds are preposterously over-abundant.
0
Then, like I said, use iron gear.
The fact that nobody ever really even bothers to enchant iron gear illustrates that diamonds are way, way, way overly abundant. You and I both agree that the grind of mining should deter players from amassing enough diamonds, for example, to build a diamond castle, I happen to believe that that same principle should be extended to gear. You don't want to work to obtain a precious resource? Fine, use iron gear. Iron should be the standard anyway, diamond should be the flex. You can do literally everything in the game with a set of iron gear and 9 diamonds for instamine tools. But you refuse to accept that because you simply feel entitled to the top precious resource in the game.
Btw, your point about only needing 30-40 diamonds to make all the gear you'll ever need actually supports my argument better than yours.
Iron holds a completely different role in the game than diamond because of the fact that it is used to create a large variety of technical materials that are required in mass quantities for large scale projects, so it makes perfect sense for them to be renewable. Diamonds on the other hand are used only for tiny niche items that are ultimately only necessary in a quantity of one, and their main function is just stronger yet redundant overlap with the role iron already serves: defense against mobs, and faster mining.
Considering the fact that the game has both a "Hard" mode as well as a "Hardcore" mode illustrates that it was indeed intended to provide sincere challenge. The fact that the survival aspects of the game are well known to be strongly based on the absolutely brutal and unforgivable ADOM RPG illustrates this further. I'm all in favor of the game facilitating easier play for some people, but it's not unreasonable for other players to have diamond abundance balanced such that they are only viable as a flex rather than an easily obtainable standard material for gear. I'd say that the measure by which I'd judge this balance is, unless players are regularly enchanting their iron gear, then diamonds are overly abundant. In my view that seems to be a perfectly reasonable standard option for many players.
Like I said, you only need about 9 diamonds to do literally every activity in the game, with full mining speed.
You just feel entitled to easily obtaining the top flex item in the game. In which case, why even call it diamond?
0
Well that's adorable, but pretending that diamond resources aren't abundant to induce the illusion of a challenge is not the same as an actual challenge, and the value dynamic of precious gems quickly falls apart when a player who is genuinely trying to find diamonds has to voluntarily pretend that diamonds aren't abundantly available. This would be like a billionaire LARPing as a penniless entrepreneur and thinking they experienced a genuine economic challenge. If the limitations aren't forcibly imposed by the framework of the game, they're not real limitations, and they're not real challenges.
All that said, you yourself have a threshold by which you would also consider diamonds to be too common, for example if diamonds were as common as granite, diorite and andesite you would consider that preposterous and it would immensely dampen the joy of Survival gameplay, so you know full well that expecting players to LARP as though diamonds aren't abundant is not an actual solution. I suspect you and I would also agree that players should not be able to easily build an entire castle out of diamond or netherite, which means that you and I both agree that the grind of mining should limit players from amassing large quantities of precious gems, we simply disagree about the appropriate level of work-reward balance.
I think the game would actually become far richer and more emotionally rewarding if iron was the highest tier in the game to effortlessly maintain, and diamond and netherite were genuine challenges to reach and maintain. As it stands now, diamond is so insanely over-abundant that there's literally no reason to even bother enchanting any iron items at all, because you can have a full set of diamond gear in like 20 minutes. Yet you are perfectly capable of playing the entire game in iron tier, with one diamond pickaxe. Iron meets all your gameplay needs, except for the mere 9 diamond it takes to craft an entire set of insta-mining tools. You simply feel entitled to effortless access to the top resources in the game. I disagree.
Let's be perfectly clear, you and all other players have a limit to which you would tolerate "grinding" for diamonds. Which means that making diamonds more rare wouldn't make the game more "grindy", it would just mean you would have less diamonds.
0
If you don't want to mine or explore for diamonds, then don't. Have less diamonds. You'll quickly find out that, suddenly, they hold quite a lot more value when they're scarce. Which is the entire point. It shouldn't be easy to always remain in diamond tier.
0
Starting in the 1.16 Java Nether Update, a community of talented architects, redstoners and relatively speaking considerate pranksters will begin a Fresh New World, spawning together on a tiny island in an Emerald Sea, and shall venture off together into the unknown to develop a collaborative community Shopping District, Mini Games and More. If you're an artistically gifted player looking for a collaborative Hermitcraft-like community, show us what you can bring to the table by posting a picture or video here of your proudest Minecraft creations, and message me for more information about this sixth dimension beyond that which is known to Steve, an area which we call...
THE BLOCKY PLACE 
Poppin' Fresh in a Poppin' Fresh New 1.16 World.