[bcbarton]

2. What is the point of digging straight down? Are stairs that hard? All time saved is lost when you have to go back up for your stuff.

2. Stairs would require a 3x3 hole, making you do 9 times the digging.

Stairs only require 3 blocks dug per one block dropped like this:

=+===
=++==
=+++=
==++=
===+=

No need to hollow out all the 3x3 area you're spiraling into. And anyway, spiraling isn't the best way to tunnel down because you would keep passing by the same area on the way down. Instead it should be a straight 45degree angle downward to maximize the distance traveled when going down. Statistically, that will bring you within range of more cave systems.

[Agentred]

What about fire resistance potions? Very important!

Good guide though. A fun read, nice job fritter

[eah]

What I like: Inventory space efficiency. No weapons and no food means you can fit more ores and rares in your inventory before you split.
What I don't like: 3 stacks of torches aren't needed. Coal is readily available in caves.

I tend to easily get lost while exploring. I like to come back to the same cave to keep the deeper caves from being unexplored, so I must find a way to get back to the same place I left off. I'm a systematic person. I don't like random. I like order. So, what I do is place torches on the right wall as I am coming into a cave. This way, I can see where I've come from (torches on the left wall). I also explore the rightmost caves first as I come to them. When I reach a dead end, I back track till I reach unexplored caves. There's a slight flaw in my system, though. Occasionally, I will run into two branches with torches on the left wall do to caves looping back into themselves. This causes problems when I need to back track or just get out. Yes, I realize /home and /spawn are options on minerealm, but that doesn't work on SP. Hope this helps people like me from getting lost.

[bcbarton]

What I like: Inventory space efficiency. No weapons and no food means you can fit more ores and rares in your inventory before you split.
What I don't like: 3 stacks of torches aren't needed. Coal is readily available in caves.

Actually, you will save a lot more inventory space if you smelt the ores on-site in multiples of 9 when you get more than one stack so that you can make iron/gold blocks. I never finish spelunking unless I have at least 2 stacks of iron blocks (18 stacks of iron ore).

Agreed about the torches though. Best to take a stack of logs and get the coal while spelunking.

[kroxic]

Inefficiencies I saw at first glance

1. Iron silk touch.... Yea you MAY lose less when you die with it... but obtaining it is actually more costly than diamond because your experience pays off less on a tool with less enchantability and less durability.

2. What is the point of digging straight down? Are stairs that hard? All time saved is lost when you have to go back up for your stuff.

3. Level 1 enchants on diamond picks.... again why? If you were using xp properly to get a silk touch on diamond pick, you will have leftover unbreak/eff diamond picks.

1. Except for the fact you can buy one at maybe a tenth of the cost. I obtained one for ~500rc.
2. Stairs would require a 3x3 hole, making you do 9 times the digging.
3. If you don't enchant your diamond picks with at least level I, then you are wasting both time (eff) and money (unbreaking).

Honestly, I never enchant anything. Nor do I understand people's obsessions with enchanted items.

1. how often do people have silk touch iron picks for sale? at level 14 you have a 1% chance of getting silk touch on an iron pick. If you want to rely on noobs enchanting iron tools and getting lucky AND you getting lucky that they will sell their iron tools at a low price, that's your choice, but i hardly think such a strategy is worth mentioning in the context of a guide.

2. So your argument to stairs(breaking 3 blocks for each 1 block drop) is to break the blocks(1), go back up over the same blocks(2), then break them again(3) to get back down?

3. You misunderstand. enchanting with level 1 is a waste. you should have leftover highlevel enchants from getting a fortune 3 pick. You are missing the point that by enchanting at level one you are in fact missing out on opportunity on those diamonds in the pick. The cost of the diamonds is significantly higher than the cost to get some extra levels.

[fritterdonut]

3. You misunderstand. enchanting with level 1 is a waste. you should have leftover highlevel enchants from getting a fortune 3 pick. You are missing the point that by enchanting at level one you are in fact missing out on opportunity on those diamonds in the pick. The cost of the diamonds is significantly higher than the cost to get some extra levels.

You misunderstand. I don't enchant my items. I have ONE diamond fortune III pick that I purchased, and ONE diamond silk touch, also purchased. I don't find it fun to grind at a spawner for hours on end to gamble on "high level enchants".

In the time you spend to gain 50 levels at a decent spawner setup, you could have made at least 3K rc and bought yourself another 10 diamond picks.

[kroxic]

3. You misunderstand. enchanting with level 1 is a waste. you should have leftover highlevel enchants from getting a fortune 3 pick. You are missing the point that by enchanting at level one you are in fact missing out on opportunity on those diamonds in the pick. The cost of the diamonds is significantly higher than the cost to get some extra levels.

You misunderstand. I don't enchant my items. I have ONE diamond fortune III pick that I purchased, and ONE diamond silk touch, also purchased. I don't find it fun to grind at a spawner for hours on end to gamble on "high level enchants".

In the time you spend to gain 50 levels at a decent spawner setup, you could have made at least 3K rc and bought yourself another 10 diamond picks.

if you are going to level 50, you are doing it wrong. if it takes you hours to get to level 50, you are doing it wrong.

Even using a silk pick for mining is actually doing it wrong. You spend $ on the silk just to spend $ on a fort3 to break it later. Its not that hard to stay alive. I had not mined in about 6 months until about a week ago and i dug all the way out to the edge of Minerealm and another 1k blocks sideways without dying. For someone who has a bit of practice, not dying is almost a joke.

not to mention the increased speed that you mine at with a eff3 pick.

I also think it's entirely pointless to come back to the surface when mining for almost ANY reason. It only serves to make you break blocks that will not possibly reveal diamond.

[Prodigy9]

if it takes you hours to get to level 50, you are doing it wrong.

Let me fix that for ya.

if it takes you hours to get to level 50, your server limits the number of mobs that can be accumulated in an area.

[Agentred]

3. You misunderstand. enchanting with level 1 is a waste. you should have leftover highlevel enchants from getting a fortune 3 pick. You are missing the point that by enchanting at level one you are in fact missing out on opportunity on those diamonds in the pick. The cost of the diamonds is significantly higher than the cost to get some extra levels.

You misunderstand. I don't enchant my items. I have ONE diamond fortune III pick that I purchased, and ONE diamond silk touch, also purchased. I don't find it fun to grind at a spawner for hours on end to gamble on "high level enchants".

In the time you spend to gain 50 levels at a decent spawner setup, you could have made at least 3K rc and bought yourself another 10 diamond picks.

if you are going to level 50, you are doing it wrong. if it takes you hours to get to level 50, you are doing it wrong.

Even using a silk pick for mining is actually doing it wrong. You spend $ on the silk just to spend $ on a fort3 to break it later. Its not that hard to stay alive. I had not mined in about 6 months until about a week ago and i dug all the way out to the edge of Minerealm and another 1k blocks sideways without dying. For someone who has a bit of practice, not dying is almost a joke.

not to mention the increased speed that you mine at with a eff3 pick.

I also think it's entirely pointless to come back to the surface when mining for almost ANY reason. It only serves to make you break blocks that will not possibly reveal diamond.

I stopped bringing my fort.3 pick with me when I died to a /home glitch. Had no chance of living.

Happened to me just recently after mining, thank god I was able to survive by logging. Now I just bring a cheaper 5k pick to mine diamond.

[SuperCreeper007]

I silk my diamond and fortune it later in a safe area, or use it for building. Since my home is a 2 min walk from spawn, I /sethome on the diamond, walk to my home, get my silk out, /home, and then break the ore. This is kinda tedious, but I've found like 2 veins.