Better Than Wolves Forum

So new map for V4.9999... and I have several locations HCSed up to iron pick. My main base is pre windmill but extensively lit up below; so much that I have even found melon seeds and several ingots worth of gold.

I have two troll diamonds :(

Has anyone ever tried dredged the lava lakes before? I have been attacking the deep soil and gravel but I can't bare to make another shovel. Curious if anyone had a good turnout removing the lava before I start.

A troll diamond? What is that? A diamond block that has lava hidden behind it?

Since before I can remember I never break a diamond block without carefully removing all adjacent blocks in advance, even when its obvious they are safe. I'm paranoid that way. You never know...

Oh no lol, troll in that there were only two :P

I did find diamonds once beneath lava. It's not that bad to fill it with gravel/sand and dig it back out again. That doesn't help with your shovel problem though because you'll still spend a lot of time digging.

You might be better off using that gravel to build a nice gravel slab path to a new cave system.

Ah, I see... No, emptying a lava lake is a bad idea.. You know what I found is the best way to get diamonds?

Get a lot of food, a lot of chests, and put some music, or a podcast or something on. Then go to lvl 12 and dig forever in a straight shaft for 30 minutes to one hour. If your inventory is full, put a double chest down and store everything and continue. Keep everything, dirt and rock, you get on the way. You'll end up with a stack of diamonds.

This works best if you can melt your tools though.

Edit... Oh, wait... you still didn't get three diamonds, total, since the world started? Oh... that sucks then XD

Yeah our map we had trouble getting from iron to diamond. We had extensively searched around the caves around spawn (good for lighting them up:) ) but no diamonds. There was a lava level ravine and we dredged the entire thing with gravel and sand. Not 1 diamond. I would not recommend it. The amount of effort,risk and chance of reward are not very balanced

It took a few pool but I had a ton, only got two but that will do XD

Ty for replies.

Yeah, I think in terms of overall efficiency, you're much better off looking for another cave branch that goes into the bottom strata.

Finding diamonds is largely a question of how much exposed stone you're looking at. IMO, you'll get a lot more exposed stone in a given amount of time going through a tunnel than filling in lava pools or digging out dirt.

I usually only resort to digging when I have exhausted all other options in my current network or when I'm in need of dirt to block off passages anyways.

It might have just been a joke, but I wouldn't advise building a path to another surface level network either. Rather, dig along the top of the bottom strata until you find another one. The odds it will descend into the bottom strata are MUCH greater than anything you might find on the surface.

It feels like some may still have a mental block when it comes to using cave exploration for finding diamonds in that they view it as an either/or situation in terms of either mining OR exploring caves, and thus only explore caves they find on the surface. It's much more profitable IMO to use a combination of techniques and mine as deep as you can to find cave systems with which to gain access to deeper down.

I think in my situation is was pure bad luck.
3 of us had canvassed an enormous amount of area searching for diamonds.
The ravine that I mentioned I was sure would have diamonds. There was an enormous amount of caves winding through it around lava level. Took us a long time to get it and the caves lit from the top down to make it somewhat mob safe.
After no diamonds were found we resorted to dredging up the lava as it had to be unlikely that there would not be a diamond in an area with such a high surface area/volume... haha...
Some time later I stumbled over some after following a cave into a mineshaft (at diamond level) and then out into branching caves. It was crazily unprobable that we had not found any until that point.

Of course once we got the 3 diamonds it was clear sailing all the way.

But all that had its benefit. We only need to light up the caves in the top strata to make the mobfarm work at top capacity :)
edit: Oh and a double chest of coal :D

FlowerChild wrote:It might have just been a joke, but I wouldn't advise building a path to another surface level network either. Rather, dig along the top of the bottom strata until you find another one. The odds it will descend into the bottom strata are MUCH greater than anything you might find on the surface.

It wasn't really a joke, though I didn't mean to imply looking for surface caves. What I would do in the same situation is build a path to a new area, start a new base, then dig down to the top of the lowest strata and search for caves as you describe. Having more roads and bases is always a good idea for HCS. :)

there is also the option, if you have enough food to go and raid desert temples. the loot may have some diamonds in there.

Since I'm greedy and lazy, if I find "troll diamonds" near the lava I make sure I'll grab them instead of looking for more in another place. You don't need to dredge the whole lava lake, just the blocks around the diamonds in question. Then mine one block of sand [to make sure the diamond is at the same level as Steve?'s legs), and then mine the diamond itself with Shift to make sure that, in the event there is lava below them, they'll fall in your inventory and not in the lava.

It's somewhat safe... as long as you do not have mobs nearby. Specially because "HCS" stands more for "Here Comes the Skeleton" than Hardcore Spawn :P

EDIT: I made some mini-tutorial with pics. Really, it's simple stuff, but since |image| > 1000*|word|... enjoy :)
http://imgur.com/a/7XwXQ

ion wrote:there is also the option, if you have enough food to go and raid desert temples. the loot may have some diamonds in there.

I usually see temple diamonds and/or gold as a nice bonus: sure, it's great when you find them, but counting for them is a recipe for frustration. Specially because this is pre-Nether for him, so he would need to walk some kilometres... by foot. In the overworld. Ugh.

I think it would be much better if you dug out every gravel and dirt(mainly gravel) deposits you come around in lower strata, specially if on the ground, and then, once you have dug every possible place, use all that gravel to fill in lava pools. I've once gotten 15 diamonds with only 2 iron shovels(even though I lost it immediatly).

Just keep trying for caves.
Though if you've already found some diamond around the lava; then a stone shovel or two will sort that.

If theres a decent air pocket above the lava, bridge over it; sometimes theres a continuation of the cave or a side passage worth exploring.

A recent run of mine took 4 weeks to find diamonds- then I only got 2 (the other 2 were locked behind the strata).
Diamond sword in hand I went caving again; only to get gangbanged by zombies.
-It took another week to find a second diamond node.

it seems that i'm the only nub here that's doing all the exploration in the overworld first and only very late when i have the nether evil thing i just make faster passages in the nether

RalphKastro wrote:I've once gotten 15 diamonds with only 2 iron shovels(even though I lost it immediatly).

The thing is, there's so much variance involved with diamonds, a single statistical sample is basically worthless.

Don't get me wrong. It's possible your technique is indeed more efficient, depending on the peculiarities of the diamond gen code, and if you dig up enough dirt in the bottom strata, you're bound to hit diamonds sooner or later.

Personally though, I tend to cover as much ground as possible within caves under the theory that the more exposed stone you're looking at, the greater the likelihood you'll spot some diamonds. Digging out dirt or filling in lava, you aren't exposing all that much stone in comparison to the amount of cave wall you could move past in that same time.

Well if you look at this graph it clearly shows that diamond concentration drops off precipitously above about height 12. The lava level is height 10 and as far as I've seen caves don't go below it (or the part that does is always filled with lava. This means that for the sake of finding diamonds the vast majority of the stone you're exposing in caving is worthless, only the rare bits that are right down by lava level. And anything below lava level has a good chance for diamonds. I would say that digging any dirt or gravel deposits at that level seems a good investment considering how fast they can be dug. Filling in lava is sketchy because it takes longer and has higher risk involved.

Sarudak wrote:Well if you look at this graph it clearly shows that diamond concentration drops off precipitously above about height 12. The lava level is height 10 and as far as I've seen caves don't go below it (or the part that does is always filled with lava. This means that for the sake of finding diamonds the vast majority of the stone you're exposing in caving is worthless, only the rare bits that are right down by lava level. And anything below lava level has a good chance for diamonds. I would say that digging any dirt or gravel deposits at that level seems a good investment considering how fast they can be dug. Filling in lava is sketchy because it takes longer and has higher risk involved.

That's a fair point, and given that most times I find diamonds in caves on the floor, it matches my experience as well.

there is also the thing that in one chunk the game generates only one cluster of diamonds. so when you find diamonds in one chunk is not worth mining there again to find more. also this can be coupled with your digging lava and dirt under lava lakes for more chances.

EtherealWrath wrote: A recent run of mine took 4 weeks to find diamonds- then I only got 2 (the other 2 were locked behind the strata).
Diamond sword in hand I went caving again; only to get gangbanged by zombies.
-It took another week to find a second diamond node.

If I find a set of two diamonds, I will break the 3rd strata blocks strategicly with my iron pick in the hunt for the diagonal cluster. At most you break two blocks this way. You can still break 3rd strata, it just takes a long time, similar to harvesting obsidian. You just don't reap the cobble from it.

Rob wrote:-snip-

Derp! I did not even consider destroying blocks like that :P
For sure will try if I get trolled by two again.

Yeah, I should probably get rid of that. Any feature that encourages you to punch obsidian is probably a bad thing :P