What's the most efficient Minecraft mining strategy?

Question

When I'm not exploring fresh caves or lands in minecraft, I'm busy trying to find deposits of diamond, gold and iron deep in the earth. So far I've just been digging around just above bedrock on a whim to look for these rare minerals but I've started thinking that I should be taking a more controlled, efficient approach to mining.

What is the optimal mining strategy that yields the most rare minerals while minimizing blocks removed and time spent digging and traveling?

Edit: The existing answers are great for mining, but no one has addressed travel time to and from the mine which is usually ~60 blocks downward and incredibly tedious. Solutions?

Answer 1

Mining

Branch mining is the most efficient. Someone did a mathematical analysis on it in the official forums (now mirrored on the VoxelWiki).

Here's a brief description of branch mining:

You dig down to the bedrock, because that's where you're going to find the most different kinds of stuff. One or two layers above the bedrock, so you don't have it interfering with your work, you dig a long tunnel, 2 high and 1 wide, which will serve as the trunk. Then, every 4 squares on either side of the trunk, you dig perpendicular tunnels extending out 20 blocks (or as far as you want). You leave 3 undug blocks between because veins are generally 2x2 horizontally, so you will see ore in the vein even though there is technically one row of unexplored blocks. When you finish that layer, you can start one a layer above, offsetting the branches by one block so that you are more likely to find veins you could possibly have missed the first time.

So essentially, a long hallway (the trunk) with perpendicular hallways (the branches) coming off either side.

█▒▒▒ █ blocks you should mine
█▒▒▒ ▒ blocks you can see
▒▒█▒ _ blocks you can't see if you don't mine ▒ blocks (there's none!)
▒▒█▒ Repeat this pattern as many times as needed

From a head on view

Travel

As with any mine, travel is most easily accomplished using minecarts. You can place a booster to get your cart traveling at max speed in a short distance so that you can make the trip up quickly, and you can even attach chests to mine carts to carry all your findings from the mine up the track very quickly.

Short of minecarts, make sure you're using stairs and ladders to their fullest potential. You don't want to be jumping up one block at a time all the way from your mine to your base.

Answer 2

The same people who did the mathematical analysis showed slightly lower in this thread that:

▒█▒__▒__ █ blocks you should mine
▒█▒__▒__ ▒ blocks you can see
_▒__▒█▒_ _ blocks you can't see if you don't mine ▒ blocks
_▒__▒█▒_ Repeat this pattern as many times as needed

is more efficient, by about double, than what Strix Suggests.

If your high density branch mine gets you 100% diamonds, the low density branch mine would give you 212.6% ores in the same time, minus 3% from the earlier probability worked out before.

But I use this in single player:

▒█▒_▒_   █ blocks you should mine
▒█▒_▒_   ▒ blocks you can see
_▒_▒█▒   _ blocks you can't see if you don't mine ▓ blocks
_▒_▒█▒   Repeat this pattern as many times as needed

As it is a little more dense, and ore deposits are smaller in single player.

To use the pattern, dig a hall 1x2 across the middle of the diagram, so that it crosses both the upper and lower branch tunnels. Then dig down or up one each time.

Also, you ought to build it so that the floor of the lowest tunnel is on level 11, to avoid falling in lava. If you find that there are few cave systems near your mine, feel free to dig lower, but caves tend to cluster, and caves level 10 and below are filled with lava.

Also, I dig my main tunnel on both sides of the area I want to cover, then dig back and forth in a zigzag patten, which means I'm always digging, never walking.

As for transit? I use a long two wide straight staircase that goes all the way to bedrock. Minecarts work well for getting me deep into the mine.

Answer 3

If you're not married to building a completly man made mine, the answer is find a deep tunnel.

Getting down to the bottom is correct, as that is where the highest concentration of useful minerals is located, but digging a tunnel doesn't expose you to nearly the same amount of blocks as using a generated cave system.

In my primary game I dug a mine down to the bottom clearing out a large amount of stone, which only resulted in some coal, and very few iron, where as at the bottom I discovered a cave network (filled with lava, but some water solved that), which resulted in a large amount of coal and iron, as well as diamond and gold.

Answer 4

Just dig 2 high in one direction for a very long time, say around an hour... it's not like you'll run out of map.

Then move 3 or four along once you've used half of your axe/s, and go back to where you started.

This will yield more in terms of ore versus time, as you are not mucking around walking between shafts and veins, and are spending almost all the time mining. Bring with you a diamond pick axe, and a shovel, since dirt and gravel still spawn underground. Use the cobblestone you will inevitably mine for traversing lava pools, and make sure you have torches (place them every 10 or so blocks).

Answer 5

I've found that no matter which mining pattern I used I my diamond finds were barely enough to keep me in diamond pickaxes for mining diamonds. It was a vicious circle. I've started mining with TNT now and it's much faster. Here's how I do it:

I use the branch mining technique. For a branch off the trunk I'll use 64 TNT and 32 torches. I'll dig a 2-high tunnel off the trunk, placing a torch every 10 blocks in. When I run out of torches I know I'm 320 blocks away from the trunk.

Now I'll place a block of cobblestone on the ground at the very end with a block of TNT on top. Then I back up while placing cobblestone on the ground only, putting a block of TNT on top of every 5th cobblestone block so there are 4 empty spaces between TNT blocks.

When I get back to the trunk I set off the TNT and then run along behind the blast placing torches on the wall as I go. When I get to the end I walk back to the trunk mining whatever I see along the way and picking up anything on the ground.

Each trunk takes me about 30 minutes to dig, blast and mine. I use only a fraction of a diamond pickaxe in the process. I've been mining 12-13 levels up from the bottom and getting 15-20 diamonds per trunk. The most tedious part is collecting the sand to make the TNT. I have a mob trap that I use to collect the gunpowder at night.

Give it a shot and see what you think, it's working well for me. I have mine cart tack with periodic boosters running along my trunk line to get me back and forth to my storage area quickly.

Answer 6

I've dug straight down to bedrock as well and at the bottom carved out a 40 long by 20 wide room 4 high. This netted me a full stack of redstone, lots of lava. 2 diamond, lots of coal, almost no iron.

The straight down to bedrock approach I find is really good for redstone but not much else. I find that in the generated caves there is a lot more ore along the walls. So you really need both I think.

I've made a waterfall going down my vertical bedrock mine shaft and shoot up to the top with a boat for fast surface access.

Answer 7

Dig down to bedrock with a staircase. Then make a room about 10 by 10. Finally branch out on each side of the wall. Pick one side and go with it untill it is to long. Then get another side. Once all four are branched, branch off them. I now have about 15-20 BLOCKS of diamond 20-23 BLOCKS of gold like 30-50 stacks of coal no red (I don't mine it just go around) and 40-45 BLOCKS of iron all totaling about 7 hrs of work

Answer 8

In regards to getting to and from your mine:

My solution is to never leave the mine. Bring down some saplings, some wheat seeds, and whatever else, and build your base underground near your mine. It's a lot safer and more predictable than living on the surface, since you can completely light your cave system.

The only downside is that eventually your character turns pale and starts muttering about "My precious..."

Answer 9

I find the easiest way to get to the bottom of a mineshaft is to set your ladder 2 blocks onto the wall. That way you can carefully fall almost the entire way to the bottom and simply hold the backwards key to reattatch yourself to the ladder just before you hit the ground.

Answer 10

Referring to your edited question about the distances to and from your mine:

For the way down to my mines I usually use a minecart.
For the way up, this would be a nice construction: Piston Elevator

Answer 11

The easiest way to mine is to mine a 2x2 tunnel horizontally. You can cover 8 blocks that way, with the same amount of blocks mined as a branch mine, which only reveals 6 blocks. As for getting up and down, use a water fall cushion (to jump into, must be 2 deep) and a water LADDER (check the youtube videos to see what it is).

Answer 12

personally for getting up and down I use 2 vertical shafts, one completely filled with water, and the other with a 1 block deep layer of water at the bottom and use a boat

Answer 13

try to find a huge, generated cave, the deepest place of that cave sometimes has diamond. Most of the time you'll find dungeons too, if you set your difficulty on peaceful, its very easy to get it

Answer 14

When you find a dirt vein, pursue the dirt vein till it is exhausted (usually coming away with 5-10 coal, with the potential of getting 5-10 iron, 2-6 red, 2-6 blue, and/or 1-5 gold.) Dirt is so much easier and cheaper to mine, since you only need a shovel, and it mines twice as fast as cobblestone.

When you hit bedrock mine out all the dirt, and open a huge main mine area (roughly 75/75 blocks. You can get another 40 or so Iron, 20 or so Gold and Diamond, and atleast another 120 redstone (Well, that's what I got anyawy. I might have been really lucky).

Also, to save on resources, use stone picks and shovels instead of iron.

Answer 15

A nice method if you don't like staircasing down is to mine a 1x2 tunnel down to bedrock and then using water to get up and down. To get down, drop a water bucket in and then remove it to float down with the water. To get up, simply place blocks of water above you and then remove and replace them to work your way up. Also, mining around y 3-6 is a good strategy.

Answer 16

Have you ever thought of getting the minions mod? Once you get it you have to get up to 8 levels of experiance (8 levels is recomended) then you press the "m" key then commit to evil in which you then pick one of three things, repeat untill you get the master staff, with it you right click the ground four times, one minion will appear wherever you right click in those four times. Once you have your four minions, you press the "m" key again and select the "dig mineshaft", once you have selected(right clicked) where the mineshaft is going to be, your minions will automaticly dig the mineshaft down into bedrock and place a cobblestone staircase. Once they finish that then you can press the "m" botton (once again!) and select "strip mine", once you have selected an area then one minion will work on it, going a certain number of blocks forward.