So let's talk Minecraft.

[The Mance]

I'm a new player as well. Just started in earnest last week and I've gotten a hang of all the basic stuff. Have a safe home base with various craft stations and furnaces etc, tree and wheat growing areas (although its much easier to go steal wheat from the settled villages around :devil: ), although I hadn't known about corralling animals. When ever I establish a new (extensive) mining operation I set up a small "forward operating base" with craft table, furnaces, crates, bed etc so i don't have to run home for new tools materials etc.

My world has got several huge (100+ blocks long by 5-10 blocks wide by 50+ blocks deep) natural underground chasms that I've been exploring around but mostly I"ve just been finding coal and iron ore. There has been a bit of redstone near the bottom of one chasm, but I can't seem to find much of anything else even after digging well off to the side and all the way down to bedrock.

So what are some people's more successful mining strategies? Do you just make giant caverns/pits/shafts, explore natural cavities, excavate in measured grids? What and where?

[Hereward]

Must... resist...

[MinDonner]

I only have the one (huge) mine so far, but I've been using the natural caverns to get down as low as I can without it being too lava-y (my mine-bottom base is at around level 12) then digging a branch mine off to the side. So, one main corridor, then every 3 blocks a new 2x1 tunnel off to the side, straight on until I hit lava or another obstacle. Natural cavities are good to look around and light up in case there are easy minerals to extract, but the branch strategy has been working pretty well for the main mining operation.

Only found 2 lots of diamonds so far and still need more gold to power my newly-formed minecart track, but there's been redstone a-plenty (and obsidian).

[awesome possum]

:lol: I feel like the person who just walked into an AA meeting with a bottle of tequila going "so, booze, right? Is it good or what?"

Last night I was mostly obsidian mining. Pain in the arse and takes forever, but at least I didn't die, so there's that. I WILL have my midnight-black castle on a crag, damn it!

If you can find more diamond, make a diamond pickaxe. Makes mining obsidian go so much faster (I think it's only 10 hits as opposed to 30 or more with iron).

So what are some people's more successful mining strategies? Do you just make giant caverns/pits/shafts, explore natural cavities, excavate in measured grids? What and where?

Travel, travel, travel.

I start from my home base, head in a direction (say, North) until I find a cave/mine/chasm or nightfall, then build a bunker and dig. If I haven't found a cavern/mine by daylight, I head SW/SE and keep going until I've basically gone in a giant circle. When I do find a cavern/mine I'll then build a railway from there to my home base; using pistons and a storage cart you can basically send all your material back to home base. Once the circle is complete I expand it by doing basically the same thing, running in a specific direction until I find something worthwhile or nightfall comes.

As I mentioned before, there are at least 2 or 3 dungeons naturally spawning on every map, and finding one of those will provide a ton of the resources. Once you light the place up it even makes a cozy base as all of the major building has been done already.

Chasms are also great place to get the basics like coal and iron, and they usually lead into more extended caverns or mines, which are great for getting rails without using up your iron. Mines are also guaranteed to bag you some of the more rare ores like diamond.

Another tip I just remembered, if you have wheat in your hand you can make any animal follow you.

[MinDonner]

That strategy probably works better in a flatter landscape than the one I have! It's pretty much impossible to go in a straight line anywhere because there are huge steep mountains in the way (like, everywhere) and trees blocking the valleys; you'd have to hack your way through whatever and probably get about 20 yards by nightfall. :D

Wheat didn't seem to work for chickens, but wheat seeds did.

[Poobah]

So what are some people's more successful mining strategies?

Dig deep!

[Alex.]

Can someone delete this thread please? I've had my cursor hovering over the "buy" button all day, trying to justify how I could put it through as a work expense. Not sure the boss would believe that I'm modelling houses with it.

[Clueless Northman]

When mining, I use the same pattern than I used in Dwarf Fortress, to canvas entirely the area: I dig a shaft every 3 blocs, so that I uncover absolutely everything. Usually at a height of 9/10, so that I can get diamonds.

Basically, my deep mines look like this:

XXXXXX

X..X..X.

X..X..X.

X..X..X.

X..X..X.

X..X..X.

X..X..X.

All features are present on every map, but you might spawn far from some. Chasms aren't specific to some maps and absent from others, for instance ;)

There are also 3 strongholds at 1.500 blocs at most from your spawning point. Though they're underground usually and not easy to find - basically, using a mapmaker mod that would map the caves is useful here ;)

Another tip I just remembered, if you have wheat in your hand you can make any animal follow you.

Which is fine as long as you aren't on an island :D

[Crown]

It's not as much fun as it used to be...

I need to get my cousin to play again. Together is a lot more fun than alone.

[Ferrum Aeternum]

Another curious onlooker here...been intrigued by this game for what seems like years but never dug too deep (har!) into the possibility of buying. I might have to take the plunge...

[Rhom]

Another curious onlooker here...been intrigued by this game for what seems like years but never dug too deep (har!) into the possibility of buying. I might have to take the plunge...

That's exactly what's happening to me... I'm like Alex, I've had the download page minimized on my screen for the past two days. It has been a touch and go contest of wills!

[The Mance]

using pistons and a storage cart you can basically send all your material back to home base.

I couldn't figure out how to make pistons move my cart. What's the set up? I tried a piston on the side of a block facing in line with the end of the rail but the piston only extends as far as the rail and then stops without pushing the cart.

Basically, my deep mines look like this:

Yes, thats been my most successful method too. Exposes the most area with the least hacking.

Natural cavities are good to look around and light up in case there are easy minerals to extract, but the branch strategy has been working pretty well for the main mining operation.

The natural caves are tempting to explore but they seem to branch on forever without yielding much. I've only done the one measured grid so far and then got distracted, first by a zombie infestation, and then by excavating the extent of a rather large lava flow.

[awesome possum]

That strategy probably works better in a flatter landscape than the one I have! It's pretty much impossible to go in a straight line anywhere because there are huge steep mountains in the way (like, everywhere) and trees blocking the valleys; you'd have to hack your way through whatever and probably get about 20 yards by nightfall. :D

Very true. I purposely chose a map that was flat lands for quite a bit of space near the village where I spawned, so that strategy worked for me. With mountains, etc, I usually will try to go straight through.

I couldn't figure out how to make pistons move my cart. What's the set up? I tried a piston on the side of a block facing in line with the end of the rail but the piston only extends as far as the rail and then stops without pushing the cart.

The key, for me at least, is to use just one piston and to have the powered rails (gold+redstone+redstone torch to activate) to take care of the rest. The piston will be placed at the starting point to give the first push and the powered rails will take care of the rest. You can also build a minecart with a furnace inside of it, and when you put coal in the furnace it will push any carts in front of it.

My favorite is the powered rails, because it takes no effort. Just a push onto the first powered rail and you're off to the races. The only problem is finding enough gold to build the powered rails (it's 6 gold ingots for 1 rail), especially if you have a very long track as it's something like 1 powered rail for every 35 regular rails to maintain speed. More if you want to go faster.

[Tobin]

And surface lava is always on the map too, as a red dot.

That's actually how I mark my bases on the map - I build a large square pool of lava on the roof so it shows bright red against everything else.

(helps if I can't find my list of coords)

I tend to play on peaceful, build a nice place, collect animals for a farm, dye some sheep, mine down to the bottom, explore some caves and then quit.

I turn peaceful off to run my skeleton mill (drown trap), but that's pretty much it. If I could find a good mod to turn off the explosion factor on Creepers, I might be more inclined to try it on survival. I hate doing all that work to just have it go boom...

For diamond mines, I do the Spider method like mentioned above -- staircase dig downward from a secure location, at levels 10-12 dig in a straight line and then do branching digs as far as you can reach every third block. I put torches in each pocket on the forward side so I know which direction I've been heading. When I'm done with a shaft, I put a torch at the end to make it easy to check off my list.

I keep a small central work station with at least 2 furnaces and double chests in the heart of the Spider. I'll run a looping cart track to make it quicker back and forth to the surface.

I've seen some people clear the entire lvl 10-12, but I think that's a bit excessive.

I have a texture pack I was working on, but have kind of let fall to the side. It's a huge amount of work and I got distracted by playing WoW again.

There are some screenshots of my stuff on the download page and others on my blog (which is horribly outdated too).

I have three main housing complexes, all built using natural formations. My first was essentially an expanded cave series that has an underground garden that actually spreads out under a glass roof below a lake.

Second building is my largest and is essentially a huge Pagoda built into the inside of a natural cove. The master bedroom has its own library, huge bathroom and a glassed in walk/view of the cove/boat house. You can also see the huge lava helix lighthouse with the glowstone observatory on top. The Pagoda is also where the lava-lit 'Temple of the Red God' is with my enchanting table.

Third building is actually a keyholed mountain that has two pools, several bedrooms (in themed colors) and several open-air livingrooms.

It's funny, I had just started poking around with Minecraft again this week after a few months of ignoring it.

I like to describe it to other people as 'digital legos'.

[Tobin]

My favorite is the powered rails, because it takes no effort. Just a push onto the first powered rail and you're off to the races. The only problem is finding enough gold to build the powered rails (it's 6 gold ingots for 1 rail), especially if you have a very long track as it's something like 1 powered rail for every 35 regular rails to maintain speed. More if you want to go faster.

This is true if you have nothing in the cart or the terrain is all flat. I've found that doubleing the powered rails every 7 to 10 tracks keep the speed up no matter what is in the cart.

I have systems of rails running from three of my bigger structures and two houses (under water in glass tunnels in some cases - which took FOREVER to build) and I've probably overkilled it with power, but it goes fast!

I found a great video on how to do an automatic cart return system, but that was for a few versions ago and may not work now. I was going to have it parked behind the indoor fountain here.

Talking about mods - I haven't gotten many of them to work, but the one I've been dying to give a try is the Clay Soldiers one (in depth video review).

[DivisionByZero]

It's funny, I had just started poking around with Minecraft again this week after a few months of ignoring it.

I like to describe it to other people as 'digital legos'.

That's exactly how I think about it! In fact, you can even get actual Minecraft Legos, which seems redundant or something, but... http://shop.lego.com...Minecraft-21102

My brothers and I have a map we've been working on in multiplayer that's turning out really nice. We had our initial dig site where we were sort of using the natural openings and digging somewhat randomly as we found veins of resources, but iron was really, really scarce in that area. We just had a basic dirt and gravel fort on top of it (Fort Gravel).

So we moved over to a hill beside a large lake and got a bit more formal and organized with our mining operation. We had a workshop built into the side of the hill with storage boxes, forges, and a bunk room. Then we extended that new mine in a long slant until we hit a huge underground cavern complex. We added other shafts branching off from the main one and eventually built up some good stores of iron, stone, gold, and some diamonds.

We also set up a chicken coop, a sheep pen for our dyed sheep, a pig pen (that we've bred so many pigs in we now call it the Pig Sea. Sooo many pigs... *shudder*), a cow pasture, and wheat and sugarcane fields. Basically everything we need is mined, grown, or raised there.

On the other side of our big lake, there was a really interesting area with one hill/cliff rising up and then an arch of land over to another tall mountain. We built some powered tracks between our main mine and the cool mountain so we can transport goods to the town we're building there. So far we have guard towers on either side of the arch, a storehouse, Ye Olde Shoppe, and a small keep with one main tower, two really, really tall towers, and a zeppelin dock. I've just about finished the zeppelin, which has been really interesting to build without cheats or creative mode that high in the air over the side of a cliff...

If you do find that you are dying a lot, here's some helpful advice:

[Tobin]

I have a pet project on one world to make a huge evil fortress in the middle of a bay surrounded by a lava and stone Tzimisce clan emblem.

i haven't gotten very far though...

[MisterOJ]

Noob question time.

So far, I just have a very basic house. I've been happy just mining for ores so far. I've not really felt the need to do a big, elaborate house yet. But, I have an idea of what I want to do when I get around to it.

In the meantime, though, I have started a pretty good collection of cobblestone. I've just been putting stacks and stacks of it (and dirt and gravel) in chests in my house. But, I'm starting to wonder if I should just start chucking it somewhere? Do y'all do that? Or do you store it? And if you chuck it, where do you dispose of it?

Thanks!

[awesome possum]

The surefire way to dispose of anything would be to dump it in lava. But it's worth keeping, because you never know when you'll need some cobblestone. And if you put it in a furnace, it'll turn back into stone which is much more pleasing for construction.

Dirt and gravel are much more expendable because they're easier to find and get, but it never hurts to keep a chest full of a specific material.

[MisterOJ]

I have loads more cobblestone than dirt and gravel right now. But, I guess it is more useful than dirt and gravel, though.

I've been periodically dropping cobblestone in the furnace to get regular stone. I figure when I get around to building my dream house, this is what it's gonna be made out of. I was going to do that with my small, utilitarian house I have now, but I ran out of stone, so it's like half stone, half cobblestone. Pretty ghetto really. But, it's temporary.

I haven't really done much exploring yet. Maybe I've seen a third of the map. But I haven't seen a village yet. Do they have those in the Xbox version? Anyone know?