Mining Mining is important! It’s in the name of game! You’ll be doing it a lot. It’s how you get the precious ores that you so desire: iron, gold, redstone and more, but most of all: diamonds!

Buried Treasure This is what we are after: Ores in Minecraft Ore Where to Look Uses Coal Anywhere underground, but most abundant below layer 40. Torches, furnace fuel.

We do not recommend CPU mining Syscoin as the network hash is much too high at this stage. However should you.

Iron Anywhere underground, but most abundant below layer 40. Crafting tools and armour and building railways. Gold Deep underground, below layer 30. Crafting, brewing potions, powered rails. Redstone Below layer 16.

Redstone circuits, crafting, potion brewing. Lapis lazuli Below layer 30, most abundant near layer 12. Decorative Emerald Below layer 30, only in 'extreme hill' terrain. Trading with Villagers. Diamond Below layer 16. The best armour, tools and weapons.

Nether Quartz In the Nether. Quartz blocks and daylight detectors. Where to dig? As you can see from the table above, everything is available in layers 1&endash;16. You will want to get close to bedrock and build your mine there. However, there may be other underground structures in the way, such as abandoned mineshafts, cave systems or even strongholds. These things might make your route to bedrock more difficult than described here, but you will want to explore them on the way down.

Emerald ore is only found in “Extreme Hill” and “Extreme Hill”; you can tell what biome you are in. Emerald ore is also only found in single blocks, not veins, so you should build your tunnels closer together in your emerald mine. Altitude and Layers What’s all this about ‘layers’? The Minecraft world is 128 blocks high, from the bedrock at the bottom to the highest position you’re allowed to place blocks. Sea level is about level 64. What’s my altitude? Bedrock is found in layers 0–4, therefore if you are standing on the highest level of bedrock, you are standing on layer 4.

Layer 4 has a mixture of bedrock and normal stone. The other way to tell is to press F3 to bring up a messy screen of debug information, including your. Y is your height; the game reports both the level of your feet and your eye level, so. Starting Your Mine Start from somewhere low down, like a valley floor rather than the top of a mountain.

You’ll want to start digging in a safe place; a well-lit building or sealed cave, because it will likely be night when you come back to the surface. Since you’ve probably already built a house, why not start in the basement? At the head of your pit, you’ll want a crafting table, one or more furnaces, and some storage space. Equipment At first, the only equipment you’ll need (or indeed, have) is a few stone, a couple of, a pile of, and wood to make more torches. You should be able obtain more than enough coal for your lighting needs as you go along, and will soon find iron to make better tools. A suit of and some will be handy if you should break through into a cave or abandoned mineshaft.

Safety Some precautions: Torches, torches, torches Hostile mobs spawn in the dark. You will need to light the tunnels you dig and any caves you explore. If you are running out of wood for torches, it’s time to quit mining and go cut down some trees!

Never dig straight down Sooner or later you will dig away the block you’re standing on and find yourself plummeting into a lake of lava or a creeper convention. You might learn from this mistake. (It is possible to more safely dig a vertical shaft if it’s two blocks wide, and you correctly position yourself straddling the two blocks.) Be careful if you dig straight up If there is water or lava above the block you are about to dig, you should be able to see drips and know not to mine that block.

Sand and gravel are also dangerous, however, as they can suffocate you and give you no such warning. Placing a or at head level before digging upwards and it will stop anything nasty falling down. Abandoned mineshafts, caves and dungeons Often you will find that your mining leads you to one of these underground features.

These places present their own dangers and are discussed. Get Started Dig a diagonal shaft, as deep as you can go. You will find minerals on the way; coal and iron at first. Use your shovel to clear gravel and dirt deposits.

Place torches on the walls every 10 blocks as you go so monsters don’t spawn! (.) You should find plenty of coal and iron ore on the way. When your pickaxes are worn out, or when you have a good amount of iron ore, you will want to return to the surface to smelt your iron and make better tools (and maybe iron armour). You will probably want to make to make easier to get up and down the shaft.

Hitting Bottom Eventually, you will see bedrock, notice that there is a strange black fog, or press F3 and see your y coordinate approaching 6. This is the bottom! You will probably want to build another base down here, with storage, furnaces, and maybe a and. Branch Mining Now it’s time to find those diamonds! A branch mine is a long main corridor, with other tunnels going off to the sides, so that you have a good chance of finding all the diamonds in the area. Opinions differ on the best strategy, but here are some ideas. Main Corridor I make a main corridor that’s quite wide, with a railway down the middle.

You don’t need to be this ambitious, and it’s a lot of stone to dig out, but you get the idea. Which layers to mine? Diamonds are found only in the bottom 16 layers of the map, so this is where you will concentrate your mining. There is a lot of lava in layers 5–10, including large lava-lakes. Can You Mine Litecoin LTC With A Raspberry Pi. Some players prefer to avoid this by staying on layer 11 and above ( y=13.6 ). I prefer to mine at all levels, turning back when I hit lava, although it means many of my lower tunnels are short.

Whichever you choose, you must be on constant alert for lava and be ready to run back down your tunnel at any time! Side Branches Efficient mining What’s the best pattern for side branches? There are many different ideas on this front, but the goal is to find as much of the ore as possible whilst doing as little digging as possible. Branch-mining pattern.

Side-tunnels have 3 horizontal blocks between them, and one vertical layer. In the diagram above, black blocks are where you should dig the tunnels. Green blocks are the ones that you will be able to see directly. The light grey blocks are the ones you won’t see directly, but because ore seams are mostly bigger than one block, you will see some of the ore in the green blocks. Mining with this pattern is very efficient, and you will miss only the smallest ore veins.

The exception to this is if you are mining for Emeralds in Extreme Hill biomes. Emerald ore is present as single blocks, so if you really want to get all the emeralds you have to place your tunnels 2 blocks apart.

Contents • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Choosing layer to mine [ ] See also: • Levels ', 'Base with Bed ^', 'Zombie spawner this way', or 'mind the holes!' Signs can be stacked, which makes carrying a supply much easier. Signs can also block water and lava.

• (Optional). Useful not only for blocking off unexplored passages, but for containing waterfalls and rivers when you can't bucket the source. As noted above, you can also harvest these in abandoned mine shafts. • (Optional) Markers of various kinds. Aside from the above-mentioned signs, is available early, and turns up when you get deep enough.

If you have pumpkins available, provide both light and direction. • (Optional),,.

You'll certainly be picking some of these up along the way, but starting off with some cheap blocks lets you plug holes, make quick staircases, block off lava and bridge your way across pits and ravines if staircases are too expensive or time-consuming. • (Optional) and.

You can create an underground to replenish your supply of and a small to continuously grow wheat for, allowing you to stay underground for an infinite period of time. These should both be built in a safe, well-lit area, to prevent spawning of hostile mobs and to encourage growth. • (Optional).

In conjunction with solid blocks, wooden doors can be used to temporarily block off unexplored caves and prevent entering a secured area. The crafting recipe for wooden doors creates three doors from six, hence each door uses two wood planks - the same as what would be required to block a 2 x 1 hole but with the ability to pass through with ease, and return in a hurry if there are a large number of mobs on the other side. Some can break through wooden doors on, and consideration should be given to this when playing on this difficulty level. After an area is neutralized the doors may be mined and placed deeper in the cave system, or left as a marker/decoration as well as giving protection against a surprise explosion making a section of cave unsafe again. • (Optional). Having a bed around might be useful when you could be trapped in a cave or ravine if you surface during night time. Having a bed can help you set up a base camp if you're far from home and the surrounding area is filled with hostile or other dangers.

With the bed, you can sleep and avoid the danger of the night and return home safely in one piece. Shaft Mining [ ] Also known as Vertical Mining and Shafting, Shaft Mining consists of digging your own tunnels to expose hidden resources. The usual warning for digging applies: Watch out for uncorking lava or water or for digging into a deep drop or inhabited cavern. While doing this, make sure to be careful as you might remove a block holding back lava or separating you from a drop or hostile mobs.

A staircase mine. The advantage of a staircase is that you can always trivially climb back up, without need to place ladders. Crafting some of your harvested stone into makes getting down and up even easier (no jumping!), though you'll need to carve out an extra block of headroom. Any such staircase drops at most 1 block for each 3 blocks excavated (without the headroom).

There are several sorts possible: Straight Staircases [ ] A straight staircase heads down, but also over. This may or may not be useful—with a, you might learn about more of the surface you're going under, but if you need to dig your way back up a different way, you may come out in unknown territory. Also, a long staircase from your base may take you out of chunk-update range from your base, or at least far enough out that further exploration will take you out of range. Then your crops won't grow and so forth while you're mining. All of these can be 1, 2, or even 3 blocks wide. The most basic strategy is to mine in a straight line at a 45° angle downwards, moving one block across for every block down. If you dig out four blocks above each step instead of three, climbing back up is easier, since you won't 'hit your head' with each jump up the steps.

Placing a torch every 5th block helps you keep track of your elevation, and maintain a decent light level. Alternatively, you can dig diagonally. Face a corner, and imagine that the corner block is the missing block of a 2×2×2 cube. Now dig that cube. Repeat, adding torches at every step. This takes more effort for each level dropped, but exposes more blocks along the way.

You can also dig a shallower stair, two blocks ahead for each block down. This takes you even farther away horizontally, but makes it much easier to run minecart trains up the stair. Spiral [ ] Spiral staircases are slightly more complicated since they have frequent turns, but have the advantage of leading straight down, thus staying in the same chunk(s). This gives you a more targeted dig, and can often reach bedrock quicker and more safely than straight staircases.

2×2 Spiral Staircase [ ] Starting from a flat floor, dig one block ahead of you, then dig 2 blocks down to the right of that. Then move forward into the first place you dug, turn right to face the second step, and to its right dig 3 blocks down from the floor. The fourth step puts you below your original floor—leave the floor block to become a ceiling, and dig the three blocks below it down to the new step. Continue with this pattern—note that each turn of the stair becomes the ceiling for the next turn.

This design drops 4 layers per full turn, but if you run into gravel, you need to place dirt or cobblestone to replace it for your stairway. Turning right gets you a clockwise spiral, you can of course go the other way for a counter-clockwise stair. 3×3 Spiral Staircase [ ] One design is a 3×3 horizontal grid. By digging one block down at a time, and moving around the perimeter of your 3x3 area, you leave enough head room as you move down the staircase. You can also add stair blocks to this setup as well. You can optionally leave the central column for a barrier, or mine it out to place ladders for speedy transit.

Instead of ladders, you could use a waterfall, but you'd have to place that after 'finishing' the stair (dig an extra pit beneath the bottom of the column to prevent flooding). You'll also have to dodge out of the water column occasionally to breathe. The basic design drops 8 layers per full turn. You could build this as a shallower stair (4 layers per turn) for minecarts, but minecarts have trouble with the corners anyway, because of the rock around them. 5×5 Spiral Staircase [ ] This is similar to the 3×3, except that you dig out the edge of a 5 by 5 grid. The center column is cleared, acting as a supply of light on the way down.

The middle acts as a safety barrier, and the outer ring has the staircase itself. The middle can also be hollowed (digging straight down should be safe so long as you didn't find any caves or lava pools as you made the staircase) out and a ladder or waterfall can be placed in it, with openings at different levels to allow for quick and easy access. Note that climbing ladders does not deplete hunger, unlike walking and jumping used to travel the outer ring.

Swimming does deplete hunger, but since you have less distance to travel, you still come out ahead. This design drops you 16 layers each full turn, and provides an exploratory dig over a wider region. At the same time, it has a bigger chance to miss things in-between the spirals. Additional Staircases With a shaft of 4×4 or more, two staircases on opposite sides of the shaft going in the same clockwise direction can be added, allowing horizontal 'satellite shafts' to be added on each flight of stairs on opposite sides if the shaft, allowing for extremely efficient and exhaustive mining, and in shafts of 5×5 or more, a staircase can be added on every side of the shaft for an even more productive mine. Room Spiral [ ] This is variation of the spiral which consists of a spiral of 5×5 rooms leading down.

Simply dig a straight staircase down for a short while, then dig out a 5×5 room and add a torch or two. Turn right or left, and dig another staircase for a short while, and dig out another 5×5 room, add a torch, and so on. Remember to always turn the same way. This method allows you to find a large number of ores and such. If you hit bedrock, don't worry — go back up to your first room and turn the opposite direction this time. It is very helpful if you want to avoid lava and such. It also has the tendency to open up underground caves, which are always well-stocked with ores and gems.

Just remember to be careful of monsters, so always bring a sword when using this method. Vertical shaft mining [ ] Vertical shafts are mined vertical tunnels used to gain access to underground mining sites. They can be of any width starting from (if you're crazed) 1×1 blocks. Don't forget to keep a water bucket *and* a stack of blocks in your hotbar, to deal with lava quickly.

1×1 [ ] Aka, 'Digging straight down'. Do not do it.You will fall into a cavern or lava. If you absolutely must be the crazy one, try this: Put a bed and a chest at the top. Sleep in the bed, and put everything from your inventory into the chest except for pickaxes, ladders, a stack each of gravel and cobblestone, and perhaps some torches. Dig down until you die or reach your target depth, placing ladders above you as you go.

Every 5 levels or so, cut a 2-block high foothold opposite the ladder. If you fell into a cavern and survived, pillar jump back to the hole you fell out of, and/or build a cobble pillar in front of you, and put ladders on that. If you fall into a cavern and die, the footholds might let you break the ladders below it so you can drop gravel for a pillar, and perhaps retrieve any ore you found on the way down (watch out for mobs). If you fell into lava, you can forget about the ore, but perhaps you can drop water to quench the lava. It is possible to do this method safely, but it is very time consuming. It's the same as before, except hold ⇧ Shift to cling to your ladder while mining straight down. This way, if you mine into a pit or lava, you won't fall into it unless you let go of shift (shift won't let you move down the ladder, but makes you mine slower).

If you do find a cave, you can climb up a little bit, remove the last ladder you put down, and put a bucket of water there instead. Now you can swim down, and if there was lava under you, it will turn into obsidian, and will be harmless. You can also dig 1 deep/2 wide alcoves in the side, giving you a place to put a torch, rest, and most importantly dig the hole deeper (as far as you can reach) without having to hold onto the ladder. Note that mining upward in a 1×1 shaft can actually be safer, if you are placing ladders as you go up. Lava will be blocked by the ladder, which can't burn (and even if it could, there's no place for a fire block to appear). 1×2 [ ] • Pick a place where you want your shaft • Mine a first block adjacent to the block you are standing at • Step down • Mine a block you were standing at and one below it • Place a ladder every block (as of Beta 1.5 you cannot go up ladders with gaps) • Go to 2 • Continue in above pattern until you reach desired depth. From then on use a horizontal mining method of your choice Simpler variant • Pick a place where you want your shaft • Stand on the dividing line between two blocks • Mine the two blocks you are standing on, being ready to stop if need be • Place a ladder every block • Go to 1 • Continue in above pattern until you reach desired depth.

From then on use a horizontal mining method of your choice 1×3 [ ] Similar to 1×2, but you have more room to place torches, ladders, or footholds in case you fall off the ladder. You also get more warning of gravel masses, caverns, or lava, and an extra block of room to deal with them.

This is relatively safe, and is a good way to start a mine from within your base. The more common version runs the ladders down the middle of the wide side (put blocks to break your fall on both sides every few levels, and at your mining levels), but another way to do it is to put ladders on one end, and put a waterfall on the other. You can then put a few blocks in the middle to prevent falls, but leave plenty of spaces to pop out of the waterfall for a breath. 2×2 [ ] You want to excavate one level at a time, placing ladders down one corner of the square. Also relatively safe. Cutaway of the bottom of the mineshaft. Note the placement of torches in the ascent and descent shafts.

(1) Ascent shaft (2) Descent shaft (3) Water pit (4) Side passage to utility room/mining area. A vertical mine shaft can be built quickly and allows safe, fast access to the deepest regions of the map. To descend to the bottom, simply walk into the shaft. You will pass over the ascent shaft, fall into the descent shaft, and land in the water pit. To ascend, climb the ladder and hop out.

This guide describes the construction of a vertical mine shaft with the following properties: • Provides quick access to the lowest mining levels • Fast construction • Requires a decent amount of wood Drawbacks: • Unsuitable for minecarts Materials: • 64 • 2 • 20 • and The requirements amount to approximately 60 blocks of wood. Construction [ ] Overview: • Gather all materials • Dig 3-wide pit to bedrock • Dig utility room • Dig and fill water pit • Place ladders in ascent shaft • Fill in center of shaft Details: First, gather and manufacture the materials. Be sure to fill the buckets with water. How Fast Do You Mine BitcoinDark BTCD.

The shaft will be constructed to the side of an existing room. Start by excavating a 3-block deep alcove. If the top of the shaft is above ground, it should be surrounded by fences or walls with only one entrance on a narrow side. Place one torch in the end of the alcove as illustrated. Next, a 3-block wide pit will be dug all the way down to the bedrock.

Do not dig out the block you are standing on. Dig out a 3-high by 2-wide section, then hop down into it and dig out the 3-high column that you were standing on. Place torches on both sides (ascent and descent) at regular intervals, excavating 1 block to place them in. In the ascent shaft, torches should be placed in the wide sides so they don't interfere with the ladder.

In the descent shaft, torches should be place in the narrow side, primarily so that you can keep track of which side is ascent and which is descent. Be on your guard when digging out any blocks beside you! Lateral breaches into lava pools or monster caves can be hazardous. Be ready to plug the hole, or hop up and throw blocks down so you can escape upwards.

Also, be sure that the 3x2 section hasn't opened into a cavern before you hop down. Keep the pit well-lit.

When you reach the bedrock, make a 3-deep pit on the descent side. Fill in the middle and ascent sides as needed, as in the screenshot. The water trough in the utility room.

In the middle of the shaft, cut a side shaft. Due to the fact that the landing pit must be 3 deep, you may want to stairstep downward a few blocks in this shaft. Next, dig out a utility room.

Cut a 3×1 horizontal trough in this room for water. Empty each bucket into the end of this trough. The water should fill it in and become still.

Fill the buckets again from the center of the water trough. Use the water to fill the pit at the bottom of the descent shaft. Be sure that the pit is 3 deep, and each block is filled with water. Now it's time to place the ladders and to fill in the center of the shaft.

Stand in the ascent shaft and face away from the descent shaft. Place ladders on the wall in front of you and climb. Build the ladder all the way to the top. Descend to the bottom again using the ladder.

Be careful, because the center of the shaft is not filled in yet, and it's possible to fall to your death. Once at the bottom, stand in the middle of the shaft and fill it with blocks. Hop upward and place blocks beneath yourself. When you reach the top, leave the central pillar 1 block below the surface (see screenshot). Leaving it 1 block lower allows you to enter the descent shaft simply by walking in. Alternate landing Instead of a 3-block deep water landing pit, if you place a single block of water (use two blocks if the drop is greater than 60) at the bottom of the shaft in the ceiling of your utility room at the bottom and 'hold it in place' with a sign on the wall below the shaft, it will break your fall as you fall through it and you will land without damage on the bottom of your utility room area.

Beware this may be taking advantage of a bug in the code but it is the fastest and easiest way to go down a deep shaft. Horizontal Mining (or Resource Mining/Stratifying) [ ] Safety: Horizontal mining is not as dangerous as vertical. But there are some similar suggestions. Carry a water bucket and some blocks of some disposable, NON FLAMMABLE material (ex: sand, gravel, cobblestone) somewhere on your hot bar. A block can be used to quickly plug the leakage in cases of lava, and water can be poured over source lava to turn it into obsidian, as well as to put out fires. (Flowing lava will usually turn to cobblestone, occasionally smooth stone, if the water is a source block.) Terms and Definitions Main shaft/access shaft: a 1×2 or 2×2 tunnel use accessing other tunnels.

Efficiency: how many ores you get for the amount of effort you put into the mine, or how many ores you get/how many cobble you dig to find them. Thoroughness: how many of the ores you extract per chunk. The tradeoff: a mine can be made more thorough at the price of efficiency, or vice versa. Layout: the top-down view of the mine.

Branch: the tunnels dug purely to gather ores. Branch-length: how many blocks you dig your branches out.

One recommendation is to measure a length with the durability of a stone pickaxe. Spacing: how far apart the branches are. Completely Thorough: a mine that reveals 4 new blocks/block dug, and reveals every block within a chunk, is completely thorough.

Tiering: 'stacking' one branch mine on top of another, in order to obtain a much greater degree of thoroughness without sacrificing too much efficiency. Efficiency vs Thoroughness Efficiency in Minecraft mining is defined as how many ore blocks you mine, relative to the time spent reaching them. Thoroughness is the percentage of the ores you extract from a given chunk. Efficiency is approximated by blocks revealed per blocks mined, while thoroughness is approximated by blocks revealed per blocks in a chunk. Since both include 'blocks revealed', they are often confused. If we assume that all ores spawn in 2×2×2 cubes or larger, then there is no need to reveal every block. Mining three spaces wide, with four blocks between each shaft will be completely thorough.

If we assume that 90% of ores are 2×2×2, but 10% are 1x1x1; while obtaining 100% unitary thoroughness then requires a spacing of 3 and a tiering distance of 2, the original mine (the 3-space 4-tiering) maintains a thoroughness of 98%. The 100% thorough mine requires mining twice as much stone while only increasing the total yield by 2%, resulting in half the efficiency. In order to give an actual number for efficiency, we can use efficiency=100*(number of ores collected / number of blocks mined)-or, equivalently,%efficiency = (number of ores collected/number of blocks mined) Several assumptions must be made: • Ore is distributed randomly • Ore is orientated randomly • Ore occupies a certain width, whereby two tunnels running too close to each other would intersect the same orebody twice. In Minecraft these assumptions are essentially true, though there is some distortion since diamonds only spawn once per chunk. So we reach the crux of the argument; tunnel spacing.

In the traditional 'efficient' mining methods, tunnels are spaced close together in order to 'observe' the maximum number of blocks possible, therefore removing all of the ore from an area. So, let's consider a spacing of 1; that is one tunnel separated by one block from another tunnel. During the digging of the first tunnel, several ore bodies are encountered. This tunnel has a high efficiency (in fact, the maximum efficiency possible, as we shall see later).

The second tunnel has a very low efficiency because almost all of the ore bodies it encounters have already been removed by the first tunnel. This causes the efficiency of the mining operation to plummet. A spacing of 1 is incredibly inefficient. Now we move to a spacing of 2. This is a spacing that a lot of people use because it leads to 100% observed blocks in a single layer.

However, with a spacing of 2, the second tunnel still encounters several ore bodies that have already been removed, so it is also quite inefficient. We can go on like this; as long as the second tunnel has a chance of encountering ore bodies which have already been removed by the adjacent tunnel, it will have a less than maximum efficiency. It follows that the most efficient way to mine is to place the second tunnel far enough away from the adjacent tunnel that there is no chance of encountering ores that have already been removed. I have modeled the problem in matlab using a 2D slice of a real Minecraft level and a virtual mining procedure. The model mines a 1 block wide tunnel through the 2D layer and removes all diamonds it encounters, just like a real player would do. The model is limited to diamonds but the principle applies to all ores. It repeats the mining for different tunnel spacings, from 1 to 10.

The model then records how many diamonds were mined for each case, how many blocks were removed, and calculates the efficiency of each spacing. A simple graph is produced: The results indicate what is expected — that when tunnels are close together they are not efficient because the miner will encounter diamonds which were already removed by the adjacent tunnel(s). A maximum efficiency is reached at a spacing of around 6 blocks (that is, 6 solid blocks left in-between the tunnels). At this spacing, efficiency is about 0.017, corresponding to 1.7% of blocks removed being a diamond. At this spacing, the tunnels effectively become independent of each other and so, statistically speaking, the chance of encountering an ore are maximized because there is no chance the ore has been removed by an adjacent tunnel. Above a spacing of 6, efficiency does not increase greatly because ore collection rate is simply a function of the distribution of ores within the level.

Note: in the above graph, efficiency appears to drop-off at a spacing of 10. This is simply a limitation of the size of the level used to model the process, resulting in a large error at high spacings. If a larger level were used, the line would smoothly come to a maximum efficiency and stay there. In summary: • The term 'efficiency' is often applied to the practice of making every block observable, however this is not usually the objective of a miner. • A more practical definition of 'efficiency' describes the percentage of blocks removed that are ores, in other words efficiency = (ores removed / blocks removed). • Maximum efficiency is reached when adjacent tunnels become independent of each other, since there is no chance that an adjacent tunnel has already removed an ore.

• This maximum efficiency, for diamonds, is reached at a spacing of 6. Since other ores are usually collected in copious amounts compared to diamonds, this spacing is recommended for every-day mining operations. Branch Mining [ ] Branch mining consists of mining out side tunnels from an access shaft to expose as many blocks as possible with a minimum of blocks removed. Creating a Branch Mine is simple.

First, dig deep underground until 0-16 blocks above the bottom level. To keep track of this, press F3, and the Y-Axis tells the level of depth the player character is currently at (It is best to mine at level 11 because it is easier to deal with lava lakes on that height). Upon reaching the desired level, begin to dig at least 20 blocks into a wall to create a shaft. Come out of the shaft, move at least 3 blocks to the left or right, and do the same again, digging 20 blocks into the wall. Each shaft made will almost always contain a resource block ranging from,, to even and.

There is a tradeoff between the distance chosen for each branch of your mine. A distance of 2 blocks per branch means that you will end up exposing almost every block, but at the cost of a lot of work.

A distance of 5 blocks per branch will give you a wider distance covered but there is the possibility of missing some ore veins, especially or which can appear in veins of less than 4 blocks. Using the diagram titled Better 3 Space leaves no ores hidden, however requires you mine more stone. It is recommended to use this method if you don't mind mining a bit extra and really need the gold, redstone, diamond, iron, and coal.

Layout 1 [ ] The trade-off for distance can be minimized by making a branch mine a level above and below the branch mine that is offset. (This is a side view) For example. Layout 3 [ ] Antennae layout An effective technique if you want to find rare resources with minimal effort. It is basically mining down to any level, usually to bedrock, and then mining outwards to the sides, much like a tree with a trunk and branches. • Use the staircase method to dig down to bedrock. • Go up 2 blocks and fill any space below you mined out.

• Dig a 3×3 room. • Dig a straight 2×1 tunnel in a straight line then dig out 32 blocks every 4th block.

• (Optional) If you don't want to count to 32 every branch,dig out a 'Marker' 1×1 tunnel 4 blocks in and stop by it in the next branch. • To further increase efficiency, you can end the 20-block tunnel by digging 4 blocks of an 1×1 tunnels as each of the mined block reveals more than a 2×1 tunnel.

This method is based on the relatively low probability of desirable blocks being created without any neighbors, so it will occasionally miss small/narrow ore deposits that fall entirely between the branches, but it covers ground faster, so you'll usually get more ore for your time. If you'd rather be sure of 100% coverage, simply place the tunnels closer together. It is also meant to be done quickly. Diagram: X = Tunnel 'Trunk' B = Branch S = Staircase Y = Outpost (for supplies, etc.) - = (Optional) 1×1 block tunnel B-------B B-------B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B YYY B B X X X X X X X X X X X X X YYY X X X X X X X X X X X X B B YYY B B B B S B B B B S B B B B S B B B B S B B B-------B S B-------B Each branch can be any length, but about 32 blocks long is a good length to begin with, as it can be measured with the durability of a stone pickaxe. Layout 4 [ ]. A pinwheel mine with a spacing of 2 Pinwheel Mining System.

The Pinwheel Mining layout: The Pinwheel Mining layout is designed to cover large squares of land, over long periods of time. • Get to the diamond layer by your preferred method, • Dig out a room-as large as 10×10×8 if you want to set it up as a self-sufficient base, or as small as 4×4×2 if you just want to get mining.

(use even numbers if you like 2×2 access shafts; odd numbers if you prefer 1×2 access shafts) • Mark the access shafts into the middle of the walls; the picture shows 2×2 tunnels. (if you do not use the wide tunnels, mark the main shafts with signposts.) • Dig a given access shaft out until your inventory is full. (you'll have plenty of chances to get the ores out of the access shafts) • Note: If you use a simple straight staircase to get down, you may need to leave off the south tunnel for a while.

• Mark the branches at the desired interval. The picture shows a spacing of 2, which is 100% thorough but inefficient. • Dig out each branch until your inventory is 3 spaces away from full, then turn around • On the way back, place torches in any dark spots, and collect any missed ores—collecting all the coal is advised, but not required. As always, you can use any spacing; a spacing of three provides both reasonable efficiency and reasonable thoroughness. This layout can compete with the phoenix mine in terms of efficiency, and is easier to modify if necessary, but it does require a lot of time for each trip.

Layout 5 [ ] Room and fork layout • Dig a room that is 7 blocks long, 10 blocks wide and 3 blocks high. Have your stairway/ladder in the middle of one of the 10 block walls, preferably 2 spaces wide. • Starting in one of the corners, dig parallel to one of the walls of the room you just dug, for 20 spaces, placing a torch every 5 blocks. • Then, dig another 20 block tunnel that has two blocks between it and the previous tunnel.

• Continue until you reach the other side of the room. Diagram (dirt: tunnels, stair blocks: a staircase): By utilizing this variant properly you can uncover all the blocks in quite a large area, and the mineral yields are quite high. Having the stairs 2 blocks wide allows for thorough strip mining as they can be strip mined around. Also, a good length for each tunnel is 20 blocks long. Layout 6 [ ] Branch mining with 'pokeholes'. A branch mine with pokeholes is a variation on a traditional branch mine, but designed to have a better blocks-revealed to blocks-mined ratio. Like a traditional branch mine, branch mines with pokeholes have several parallel 2×1 shafts that branch out of a main trunk shaft.

However, they are much further apart than in a branch mine (11 blocks as opposed to 3). The reason for this is that as you dig the 2×1 shafts, every 4th block forward you go, you dig a 1×1 hole to the left and the right, revealing many previously hidden blocks. This technique used to be called 'feather mining', but after video covering this method, it's more commonly known as 'branch mining with poke holes', or simply 'pokehole mining'. The mine got its old name from its feather-like shape when viewed in a cave map or with an x-ray. This is what a branch mine with pokeholes might look like (top view). This setup allows for linear navigation along tunnels by first selecting depth, then choosing an appropriate tunnel at that depth.

Tiered branch mining is the art of stacking shaft mines on top of one another. If you decide to stack your mineshafts, however, you should use an odd-spacing, or you'll get inefficiency AND blind spots. For instance, the following tiering has the advantage of being very thorough, while finding any 2×2×2 cube of valuable ore. It has the disadvantage of missing some of the smaller veins, though it doesn't miss as many as you might expect-it yields somewhere between 80 and 90% of the ores in a region.

(mine at y=12, y=16, and y=8) oxoooxoooxooo oxoooxoooxooo ooooooooooooo ooooooooooooo oooxoooxoooxo oooxoooxoooxo ooooooooooooo ooooooooooooo oxoooxoooxooo oxoooxoooxooo ooooooooooooo ooooooooooooo (bedrock begins.) (x=branch, o=stone) This is a good mine for single player if you can't stand the mere possibility of leaving a 2x2x2cube of diamonds just below or above your initial mineshaft-this will find them. The next one has a tiering distance of 3, and is noticeably less thorough, but it finds at least 90% of the diamonds in a chunk: oooxoooxoooxo oooxoooxoooxo ooooooooooooo oxoooxoooxooo oxoooxoooxooo ooooooooooooo oooxoooxoooxo oooxoooxoooxo ooooooooooooo oxoooxoooxooo oxoooxoooxooo (bedrock begins.) This is a good mine for somewhat crowded multiplayer, where thoroughness is actually worth something. Should you be willing to sacrifice efficiency in exchange for revealing every last block, you can use a tiering distance of 2: oooxoooxoooxo oooxoooxoooxo oxoooxoooxooo oxoooxoooxooo oooxoooxoooxo oooxoooxoooxo oxoooxoooxooo oxoooxoooxooo This particular tiering, however, is not only inefficient, but requires one of the access methods shown in the pictures-either an 8 tall, 2-3 wide tunnel with staircases as shown in the gray picture, or with one access shaft for 2 sets of layers. This should be used only in ridiculously crowded multiplayer servers, when what matters is finding that one redstone vein that got missed by all the random-miners. However, nearly any spacing and layout can be used with a given tiering distance., as it is fairly thorough, only slightly less efficient than a straight shaft, and it can be transformed into nearly any level of thoroughness without wasting effort. Nearly any layout, spacing, and branch-length can be combined with any tiering distance, though doing it with a phoenix mine on the compact spacing is NOT recommend for anyone who gets headaches easily. Windmill mining [ ].