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xRILLIANx

Good Mining Practice

27 posts in this topic

So, after playing around, I settled down somewhere, threw up a campfire, and eventually made a charcoal pit, which turned out pretty successful (although it seemed to take about 3 Minecraft days instead of 18 Minecraft hours), and so I started mining. Then I had my first mine collapse in around me. Yay. I started digging my way out of shale cobblestone, which sucked ass.

Basically, I feel new to Minecraft again, which is awesome. Does anyone have any tips for good practice while mining now? Any good mine setups, or ways to ensure that my mine won't collapse and trap me in?

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I usually mine a 4 x 4 tunnel with support beams every 4 - 5 blocks.

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3x3 stair blocks. Dig the next block at the second or last stair 3 in and repeat.

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What are the rules of cave ins? I mean, How do you know if its safe to mine a block or not?

So far (im new) iv been going with, If the bottom of the block is touching air (aka no block there) dont mine it. So far thats been working, but im sure theres more to it than that.

Also, how do beams work? Whats there range? Do both vertical and horizontal stop cave ins?

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What are the rules of cave ins? I mean, How do you know if its safe to mine a block or not?

So far (im new) iv been going with, If the bottom of the block is touching air (aka no block there) dont mine it. So far thats been working, but im sure theres more to it than that.

Also, how do beams work? Whats there range? Do both vertical and horizontal stop cave ins?

The support beams work in about 5 or so blocks in every direction except up and down. It only supports one block above it and from my experiences, about 2 blocks below (horizontal) so if you plan on mining stone with air underneath it, use those support beams.

As for cave in chances, as of pre 27, it is less frequent but I am unsure about the percent chance of it falling.

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I found that as long as you dig a 1x2 tunnel, and always dig the top block first, you never get any cave-ins.

With the prospector's pick having a scan radius of twelve blocks, I usually dig top-4-blocks, bottom-4-blocks, and rinse repeat 3 times, and slap down a torch, giving me torch-marked tunnel sections 12 blocks long. By doubling up and digging a tunnel network where the tunnels are 24 blocks apart, the prospector's pick can scan the entire volume.

It appears to be 100% safe, with no need for support beams. It's also efficient, letting you scan the largest possible volume of blocks, with the smallest possible amount of digging.

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I found that as long as you dig a 1x2 tunnel, and always dig the top block first, you never get any cave-ins.

With the prospector's pick having a scan radius of twelve blocks, I usually dig top-4-blocks, bottom-4-blocks, and rinse repeat 3 times, and slap down a torch, giving me torch-marked tunnel sections 12 blocks long. By doubling up and digging a tunnel network where the tunnels are 24 blocks apart, the prospector's pick can scan the entire volume.

It appears to be 100% safe, with no need for support beams. It's also efficient, letting you scan the largest possible volume of blocks, with the smallest possible amount of digging.

I do something similar.

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I found that as long as you dig a 1x2 tunnel, and always dig the top block first, you never get any cave-ins.

With the prospector's pick having a scan radius of twelve blocks, I usually dig top-4-blocks, bottom-4-blocks, and rinse repeat 3 times, and slap down a torch, giving me torch-marked tunnel sections 12 blocks long. By doubling up and digging a tunnel network where the tunnels are 24 blocks apart, the prospector's pick can scan the entire volume.

It appears to be 100% safe, with no need for support beams. It's also efficient, letting you scan the largest possible volume of blocks, with the smallest possible amount of digging.

as of pre 17 this is no longer as safe as it was. As stated in the Change Log:

"Exploit Mining (the process of mining from the top down and not having to ever worry about collapses) has been nullified. It should now be in your best interest to mine with supports. To compensate for the difficulty, supports now stack to 8 instead of 4."

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I've only tried the pre28 that's installed on my jar. No cave-ins while digging top-down; not a single one, and my tunnel network is extensive. Thank goodness for that: I've tunnelled to scan well over 200,000 granit blocks, and I still haven't found even a trace of and copper ores. That's a lot of tunnels. If I had to use supports every few blocks, the process would take at the very least twice as long...

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I find that making a mine is hardly as beneficial as just going through natural caves looking for ore, or even on the surface

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I've occasionally had cave ins in 1x2 tunnels as of pre39. I got sick of rocks falling on me; now I use supports or bring a chisel.

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I've occasionally had cave ins in 1x2 tunnels as of pre39. I got sick of rocks falling on me; now I use supports or bring a chisel.

How would a chisel help?

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How would a chisel help?

I think using a chisel on a "ceiling" block used to stop it from caving in as the changelog for 52d stated "Its no longer possible to smooth/slab/stair the ceiling with a chisel when mining to evade cave-ins."

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I find that making a mine is hardly as beneficial as just going through natural caves looking for ore, or even on the surface

i find that quite sad...

would love to make proper mines with minecarts to carry all the good stuff out...

i think that finding ores without mining should be something of very early game and not as productive as mining (of course i am not sugesting to pump mines just that they nerf ores in the surface and on caves)

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I find that making a mine is hardly as beneficial as just going through natural caves looking for ore, or even on the surface

I've never heard of ore veins appearing on the surface.

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Something I ran into on a lets play is marking the locations of ore on the surface. So like when he punched a rock and ore would pop out instead, he would mark the location and said that there was a chance that there was ore underneath it? Something like that anyways. So if that's not the case, I just recently got out of the stone age and I realized I don't know what to do now. I got the majority of my ore from sluices...

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Something I ran into on a lets play is marking the locations of ore on the surface. So like when he punched a rock and ore would pop out instead, he would mark the location and said that there was a chance that there was ore underneath it? Something like that anyways. So if that's not the case, I just recently got out of the stone age and I realized I don't know what to do now. I got the majority of my ore from sluices...

I have been doing that on my let's play and it has served me very well. The wiki does state that the stones on the surface indicate what ore is in the first rock layer.

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Something I ran into on a lets play is marking the locations of ore on the surface. So like when he punched a rock and ore would pop out instead, he would mark the location and said that there was a chance that there was ore underneath it? Something like that anyways. So if that's not the case, I just recently got out of the stone age and I realized I don't know what to do now. I got the majority of my ore from sluices...

That always worked great for me in earlier versions, but since version 51, the range has been increased, and finding the ore under the rock is a lot more difficult.

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How far do you usually have to dig down to reach the vein, if one is there?

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i dig down around 8 ro 12 maybe more blocks to find some ore veins on the first rock layer, of curse i dig where i found the small ores and with the help of a pro pick, usually i get a reading un the fisrt 5 blocks down i woudl start counting 10 blocks down and start making a small tunels about 15 or 20 long and start discarting the places where the propick readings get lower, if i cant find it at that high i would go down 5 more blcoks and repeat the process till i find the vein :) hope it helps

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i dig down around 8 ro 12 maybe more blocks to find some ore veins on the first rock layer, of curse i dig where i found the small ores and with the help of a pro pick, usually i get a reading un the fisrt 5 blocks down i woudl start counting 10 blocks down and start making a small tunels about 15 or 20 long and start discarting the places where the propick readings get lower, if i cant find it at that high i would go down 5 more blcoks and repeat the process till i find the vein :) hope it helps

Talk about a run on sentence!

So you dig down below where you found the small ore about 10 blocks. You then pro pick around and discard the places where it's lower. Ok and if you can't find it then you dig down some more and try again. got it thanks.

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That always worked great for me in earlier versions, but since version 51, the range has been increased, and finding the ore under the rock is a lot more difficult.

I did not know that, at least it still gives you a rough idea. I would rather have a rough idea than digging around looking for a needle some haystacks. It seems this is more like looking for a needle in a haystack but at least you know which haystack it is in!

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If you use it correctly, the propick can let you zero in on clusters with alarming precision. This is a more specific version of what danagor was describing:

  • Get your first reading of a vein.
  • Pick a direction at random and dig that way, checking for readings every few blocks. If your readings get stronger, keep going until they get weaker.
  • When the readings get weaker, stop and mark it off. I usually mark the boundary between "traces" and "nothing of interest found".
  • Turn around and go in the opposite direction until you find a similar boundary.
  • Count the number of blocks between your markers. Walk to the halfway point and start two tunnels perpendicular to your first one. (you're making a '+')
  • Find two more edges of the vein with these tunnels using steps 3-4.
  • Find the center using the method in step 5. The vein is now either above you or below you.
  • Dig shafts/stairways up and down from this new center. If your propick gives you a boundary between traces and nothing, then the vein is in the opposite direction.
  • Congratulations, ore! Unless you've been chasing some mineral.
Obviously if you hit the vein before completing these steps, then you don't have to keep going through it. I frequently hit the vein at step 7.

One warning to consider is that this method can be thrown off by the presence of multiple veins of the same ore in a small area. If you establish a "center" across all three dimensions and find no ore there, you might be near two veins. I've not yet had this happen, so I don't have a plan for dealing with it.

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