[Rowebot]

For those who do not read ban threads, I got wordy when replying to an "x-ray"er.  Figured the info was too good not to repeat here to more readers.

When I first started in MC, I obsessively used MCEdit to clear 1000 x 1000 areas of stone, dirt, gravel and sand to study diamond distribution in a number of single player worlds and different biomes. I wanted to find the most efficient diamond mining strategy.  Turns out biomes don't matter much.

Natural caves are not much better than the same linear distance of tunneling.  I would MCEdit air to glass, then remove dross, fly around to see how many diamonds were against glass thus visible in caves.

Finger mining at y==11 is the most efficient method (diamond/stone ratio) that I have found by a tiny fraction than the next best alternative.  Finger mining is tunnels 13 blocks apart then every 3 along the tunnel finger in 5 at chest level on both sides -- lots of turning.

I prefer driving 1x2 tunnels every 4 blocks which is way easier to do mindlessly -- tunnel straight -- 100 block long tunnels side-by-side are much better because I have tunneled 1000 straight and not found any diamonds but lots in a tunnel 4 blocks over.  Yes diamond pockets tend to line up for 50 to 500 blocks at a time just often enough that I prefer to line up my tunnels over the first diamond pocket I find.

There is another method of drilling shafts down from higher up that is supposed to be slightly more efficient but I have not seen experimental numbers for the method; someone was way more obsessive than me and compiled numbers and graphs on the 2 methods that I use.  When I grind, I want mindless -- straight tunnels are easiest.

Take out every type of ore you find (diamonds tend to be in ore clusters) and pockets of dirt/gravel; many times you will expose the diamonds above or below you.

Both methods find all the diamonds available in an area 4 high and some above/below as well, which at y==11 is 1/2 the diamonds in an area. The remaining half are not worth the double effort compared to just mining another virgin area at y==11 for another 1/2; double effort because you have to repeat all the mining 4 blocks above for 1/4 and 4 blocks below y==11 for 1/4.

Every 1000x1000 area will yield about the same number of diamonds as any other 1000x1000 area.  You will find about 45% of the diamonds at y==11, 25% at y==7, 25% at y==15 and 5% is below y==6 or above y=19.  Yes, you will find 100x100 with very few diamonds around y==11 and the next 100x100 will have almost all the diamonds around y==11.  But those are rare, over 1000x1000 this averages out.

Now if you are tempted to xray -- DON'T! -- HT's default ban setting for xray is level "hardcore" -- perma ban -- your one life on HT is over.

If you find diamond pockets without drilling the equivalent of 100 to 150 x 2 blocks of tunnels on average PER POCKET, your mining will get scrutiny by multiple experts time and time again via logs and watching you in real-time. That is the average tunneling I had to do per diamond pocket on the old HT PVP server to get a full chest of diamond blocks (9 chests of diamonds) without any help!

People want to use xray to avoid that tunneling (grinding), or equivalent cave exploring distances. Sorry, you cannot avoid being detected if you do not grind, and if you grind to cover your xray, why risk of being banned.

---

Correction, for 1.8 the 4 high bands for mining are:

  y==11 at the top -- pro is at level of lava lakes -- has roughly 30% of diamonds and the most of other ores
  y==7 in middle -- has roughly 30% diamonds -- con is below lava lakes
  y==3 at bottom -- has roughly 30% diamonds but bedrock interferes with tunneling dramatically

[Sky]

Noice advice!!

[Rowebot]

And to xrayers, Frost added graphic evidence of what we see when xrayers are blatant and don't hide what they have done:

https://hometownmc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=827

Don't lie, we know exactly what blocks you broke in what order and when. And you can't hide grinding ratio or a high diamond break rate, suspects get staff grinding by watching them closely for enough evidence to convince other staff who double check before the perma ban.

[Thorsassin]

For me i like beacon mining as its faster and you clear everything within range at lvl 11, 2 blocks high. You'll rarely miss any diamonds its just a waiting game. If you have the money you can setup many beacons 100 blocks out from the other beacon and could mine for days, tons of ores and stone/cobble. This is what the most diamonds player in ht used, cough wiseman the xrayer

Nice work though David, good info. Any ideas on if the res world is better for diamond finding than normal world due to the updates? Me and wise think res world gives more, but would be nice to know for sure.

[Rowebot]

All my statistical info is 2 years old. Anecdotally, I find the 1.9 generated worlds not much different from before in diamond distribution when mining at y==11. Yes, I too have a vague feeling that I am finding more. I am lazy so I have not redone my MCEdit studies. I suspect the statistics that I found by a way more obsessive player have been updated -- you can google for minecraft diamond distribution probabilities. Unless that player found a new obsession .

My tendency in this situation is find the decompiled 1.7 source and 1.9 source and look at the diamond generation code for the probability parameters used -- except that is type of thing that I do for work and I prefer to play in MC instead. Besides it is Java code, yuck, or x86 assembly, double-yuck, or JVM bytecode, triple-yuck. And world generation is done in multiple passes which can wipe out a pocket of diamond to make a cave or a lake.

I eyeballed using MCEdit and the obsessive statistician actually measured the diamond distribution in generated worlds both by x-z distribution and y height distribution. He then overlayed mining tunnels and counted the diamonds found against what was there.

[Bigassmofo0204]

....Mind Blown

[Rowebot]

Ha, found lots of charts. I forgot one reason why I stuck with y==11 -- lava lakes and when wanting all ores, that is the best layer to work at.

https://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/minecra..._D_28x.jpg

My memory of stats is wrong above. The charts show that y==11 is actually the top band of 4 high for best results, not the middle band. So the bands are y==3, y==7 and y==11, not the what I said above.

Just need to google 1.9 vs 1.8 to see if anyone has found differences.

---

Found it.  I did remember the band stats correctly for pre 1.8.  1.8 stripped out the upper band:

---

Still don't know if 1.9 and now 1.10 has changed the distribution again.

Note that everyone saying diamonds are easier to find around lava are correct if you mean lava below y==11. Because lava generation takes away diamonds so the density of diamonds in stone below y==11 is higher. Less stone below y==11 but similar diamond numbers mean more diamonds per stone. Since there is only 1 pocket of diamonds per chunk on average, the pockets below 11 are larger (more ores together) than above 11. Thus if a chunk has diamond below 11 but the chunk has lots lava there, there is only a little stone in which the diamond can be in.

Wow, need to rethink diamond mining and maybe I will find a better mining technique. The secret is only 1 diamond pocket per chunk though sometimes none. Maybe mine at 12 (covers to 15) and if no diamond found in a chunk, then drill down the center 5x5 in that chunk with fingers out to find the pocket that is almost always there somewhere.

Does that sound like the technique you told me about a long time ago, Thorsassin?

---

And forgot the obsidian wear factor on diamond picks -- much cheaper on pickaxes to just work at y==11 than deal with digging through and around lava.

[Moonid]

I don't know why people feel x-raying is necessary, finding diamonds isn't hard.

I usually branch mine at 12, as it puts me right above the lava pools (instead of them being in my face!) and I usually end up with the bottom of caves at foot or face level. 

For those who don't know, branch mining is something like this:



The idea is that if they're 3 blocks apart, you're not digging more than necessary as that'll cover enough surface area to find diamonds since clusters are usually 2 wide and will likely touch at least one of the walls. I found a dozen or two dia within about 6 tunnels in my first branch min on res.

I've been experimenting with a zig-zag style of mining as of yesterday, however, wherein I dig four paces and turn left or right, leaving a 3 block gap between my turns hoping to cover as much surface area as I can without actually strip mining. I find strip mining to be very rough on pick resources if you're just starting out. 

It's kinda fun and I've had weird success with it (and I found a TON of caves this way yesterday???), assuming because it's not relying on going straight in one direction. I found nearly a stack of dia this way, using Fortune II, before I used up all my iron picks last night.

I think it's interesting seeing/hearing the different strategies people use and why.

[Wiseman738]

Beacons, good music, and patience for the win! Not to mention a crappton of eff v pickaxes!

[Thorsassin]

@david Can't remember )