Made of rock, digging through rock. Meaning that the balance is positive. Unless you were using iron pickaxes, in which case I probably ought to berate you for using a valuable tool on mining a less valuable material - since cobblestone is a renewable resource (renewable for as long as you have access to water, lave, and at least one bucket), using higher-tier pickaxes for generic mining is considered to be a waste of resources (though it does save some time, I know, that's the conundrum most Minecraft players face - "time or resources"). Right now the only way to semi-reliably find more than single pieces of iron is cave exploration. The same about coal. Strip-mining is good for reliably finding redstone and gold (because they are pretty much everywhere on the lowest levels, so you are guaranteed to get some), and for getting high quantities of cobblestone, but outside of that it's just a way to waste time maybe getting something else than the above things. Charcoal, Althea. Burn logs to get charcoal, and then use it instead of coal (they burn for the same time, and they both can be used to make torches). Sure, you'd have to make a small tree farm to do that, but for as long as you place a torch near every tree (so that they could grow at night as well as during the day), 9 or 12 trees is a very good start.
Ohhh, right. Thanks for the charcoal tip! And yes, I was using stone pickaxes. I pretty much use stone tools exclusively but I have an iron sword (and a full set of iron armour). I've started a mini farm. I don't know why, I don't know what I'm growing or going to grow, although trees now sounds like a great idea. Also, I hate slimes. And I came in close contact with an Enderman.
How I mine: [1] The bedrock stripmine - Dig a stairway where every segment is 2(x)*6(z) blocks - Every 5 or so segments, make a tunnel opening - Mine down those small tunnels about 100 blocks in - Break every third block on headheight on both sides of the tunnel and dig 5 in - Whenever you see any ore or coal, dig the footheight blocks aswell and grab that loot - When you reach bedrock, mine out a little mining base of about 6(x)*6(y)*2(z) and plunk some furnaces and crafting benches down - Dig a humongous rectangular space of 2 high around the base, make everything open and place torches to prevent creepers from spawning in. - Whenever you find lava, close it in with some cobble - Whenever you find ores, mine every single one of them - If you find your base big enough (50*50 or so), dig out every third block on head height on every wall - Dig out 2 high tunnels in every one of them, about 20 or 30 blocks long. - Whenever you find ores, mine them and continue on digging. - If you find your tunnel to be long enough, start on the one next to it and continue on till every tunnel is finished [2] The dwarven adventurer - Find a nice hole in the ground, leading to adventure, and walk it down. - Whenever you come across any ores, mine them. - Be sure to have some kind of navigation through them. E.g: torch placement. - Whenever you come across a ravine, mine your way down with a staircase in the side. - Make sure every waterfall or lava pit is safe in some way, and light everything up. - If you come across a mineshaft, take note of it and eventually enter it. Don't mind caves. - If you're in a mineshaft, CLEAR IT! - Work your way down the mineshaft and clear all the annoying wood supports and blocks, so that every corridor is 3(x)*3(z) [3] The lava skimmer - Find a lava lake (possibly by a ravine) and dig a 1-block or so walkway around it, around ALL of it. - If you come across ores above lava, make a safe spot to mine it and to ensure that you get the drops. - If you come across ores in the wall, mine them. - When you're done with going around the lake, dig out the third block on head height everywhere around the lake. - If you find anything of value, mine it like you would with stripmining. - Make sure monsters won't spawn when you mine it out.
My diamond mining methodology is pretty simple but I have a lot of luck with it more often than not. Dig a staircase down to bedrock, then move seven blocks back up and wall off the rest. From there, dig a 3x3 straight tunnel. Every 4 blocks on each side, dig a 1x2 tunnel 15 blocks in and plop a torch down in the middle to prevent spawning. There's probably a more efficient way to mine, but this is the easiest I've found and yields a decent number of diamonds. Diamonds are most common at about Y level 12, so having that at roughly the dead center of the tunnel yields the best returns.
Well, some people prefer to make branch tunnels every 3 blocks instead, but it's arguable which method is more efficient (doing it every 3 blocks means you won't miss any veins, no matter how small, while doing it every 4 blocks means you cover a bigger area in the same amount of time).
The best way is to leave 2 blocks in between the tunnels. Or to mine at the sides at head height if you leave more in between 2 tunnels. Leaving 10 blocks in between 2 tunnels means you can cover a 14*x*3 area where x is the length of your tunnel; almost a chunk. If you do this in every layer between 35 and 0, you can get all diamonds in a single chunk while mining only 28*x blocks in that chunk.
I mine every fourth row actually, since the chances of missing a vein are extremely slim. You only miss it when the vein is exactly in the middle layer you can't see, and chances are that at least one block will border your tunnels. However, with the introduction of emeralds, this no longer holds true. Mojang evidently hates mining with a passion, first the swiss cheese ground and now this. Mining is almost worthless these days since spelunking is so much more lucrative :/
I think in this particular case the problem is with the endless cavern systems. But yes, potholing was always the better way to gather materials, as naturally-large tunnels mean that you have higher chances of noticing any ore there might be.
In the past, spelunking was not a good way to gather diamonds. Coal and iron usually yes, but there were few accessible caves that low on the map, so stripmining was the best way to get diamonds/redstone. That was back then when water elevators still worked :/
Unless you started stripping lava lakes too, in which case it was actually viable (and I know stripping lava lakes is insane, but I just couldn't bear the thought of not gathering all that potential obsidian/liquid light). Or unless you used the oldie mod "Cubic Chunks", which made generation below the height level of 0 still possible (instead of 0~128, or the current 0~256, it gave you -4096~4096) and thus made it possible to actually get caves below that. Often caves with "holy carp, lava-falls outside of nether), but caves nonetheless.
I'm currently making mods for Minecraft with Forge. It feels like the code itself hates you. Everything from vanilla Minecraft you want to use is useless because everything you declare gets shifted, and because every "Enum" (index with standard values for e.g tool materials) shouldn't be edited, cause else it's incompatible with other mods.
I wish the MC modding community would untangle itself from Forge. Forge has caused me endless grief hosting and there are few if any mods left that don't require it.
Okay; why Forge? 1) Forge is updated every time, and is quite reliable 2) The coding is easier than vanilla minecraft 3) To start off with it, just use install.exe (Modloader has a really complicated, unnecessary way to start off) 4) There's better tutorials on it (Still, it's better to learn from the vanilla code) 5) You can use your own spritesheets! And it's easy! Also, I tried making mods with Modloader. I didn't understand it, cause all tutorials are on Minecraft.net but I can't connect to it. This Forge tutorial and this one are on another side, and are a bit more understandable. Even better: most mods use it, so it's compatible with most, and if you want ingotCopper to fit in your crafting recipes, it's just a matter of using some Forge functions!
The API might be great for modding; I don't mod though, I only come from the stance of someone who hosts a server for a small (<12) group of people. Seems like a large number of the "popular" Forge mods replicate very similar functions and overlap constantly with each other. I'm experimenting with a simple IC2/BC/RP2/Forestry server right now and there's three different kinds of copper, three different kinds of tin, and five or six wrenches. What the? The idea of an API which allows mods to be (usually) compatible with each other sounds great but I don't want to install every mod ever when a lot of the better mods (I'm thinking of Aether, BTW, Mystcraft, and Thaumcraft) really seem to work better as standalones. Forge has its' place, I just wish that its' place wasn't "the only API anyone uses" because I've had endless technical issues with it.
If you were a new modder, you'd start on Forge, because it's the API that's the most popular. If you were a known modder and you'd make something like Thaumcraft, you'd get a lot more respect/publicity if you made the mod easy to use with everything else. It's always better to use Forge if you think you're gonna have conflicts with other mods. You can use the oreDictionary function, which makes those copper ingots compatible with eachother. By the way, there's people making add-ons for existing mods aswell. Those can generally be used without getting a shitload of new ores.
