abculatter_2 wrote:Using up THAT much iron without finding a single entrance to the deepest strata seems very unusual to me... have you been exploring caves in their entirety? Or have you not gone into the deeper sections?
Yes, I've explored caves in their entirety. The first I did was the initial stairwell from my starter base -- I always do that, since I initially need the cobble for starter tools anyway. That stairwell is usually only hampered by my initial lack of coal -- the first one or two surface-accessible seams of coal tends to get me deep enough to the first one or two shovel-pockets (dirt / gravel) especially if I stretch my torching prolly a little thinner than it should. Once I finish shoveling out the first few chambers, I have enough dirt to start compartmentalizing and de-torching areas as necessary until I have the coal to re-torch properly. (Which I look forward too because the mob-sounds can get pretty loud, especially in a swamp with all the slimes above and below ground, and especially since by shoveling out the chambers I initially end up creating *new* spawn locations for mobs.) As I said above, luck had it that I stumbled upon a mid-strata lava pool, which prompted me to invest in my first bucket, mostly for safety reasons obviously. That stairwell ended at the transition line to the bottom strata, as I was unable to dig further. At that point, iron was still in short supply, and my pick was about 40% remaining, so instead of digging laterally from there at the time I returned to the surface and found three other cave-mouths near my base. Each one took approximately 10-15 stone shovels to clear out, and yielded a net-profit of 1.5-2 stacks of new torches, all the while leaving rooms probably-a-bit-too-dim, and I used my excess dirt to compartmentalize for safety. I have done this for a total of four cave systems, including the first one from my stairwell (which I managed to pave with gravel and gravel slabs derived from said caving.) Notably, I got a whopping seventeen ingots and change of iron from just the third of the four caves I cleared. That, I initially stockpiled, but at that point my hoe was ready for recycling, and for good measure that's also when I chose to make two more picks -- one went untouched into storage marked for use in the nether, and the other one was made ready for when the first one was done. The most common iron-drop from zombies is shovels (though I did get a triple-enchanted sword that had no uses left on it :( and a halfway decent chestplate, which I wear when exploring far afield on the surface.)
I've developed something of an OCD-level terraforming habit, and for stone tool usage, I've divided my terraforming plots into cobble-rich and shovel-favored sections, mostly on the surface but not exclusively. I've managed to build up a chicken flock large enough that two or three rounds of feeding will net me almost an entire half-chest of eggs, which is enough to keep a bank of dedicated food-furnaces going pretty much constantly. In fact, I've scaled back on cooking because I think at one point I had 3 stacks of scrambled eggs (used for surface exploring, when inventory space is as a premium) and almost the rest of a half-chest of cooked fried eggs, which is what I eat when puttering around the base -- which is enough to jump and run with impunity, at least while terraforming around the base.
My progress comes in fits, due to the slow progress, and that most of the surface terraforming necessarily involves de-torching sections, which means I can't work there safely at night (I leave the armor in my storage for the most part, not only due to calorie usage but because I'm a lot more careful around the base and I wanna conserve it.) Generally, making a full-inventory-load of stone tools (I go back and forth between shovel-focus and pick-focus, just for the convenience of inventory-slot management) takes me about 2 day-cycles to use and break for shovels, and a little bit longer than a day-cycle for picks, before forcing me to go back and swap out materials for new tools. I have a wood farm large enough that it takes more than a full day cycle to chop them all down with stone axes and re-plant, and with each tree cycle, I get further ahead in my stored wood supplies (I haven't found any spruce yet, and I'll be sure to grab a few saplings when I see them, but with ample amounts of birch for the furnaces, jungle for chopping into sawdust and shafts for tools, it hasn't been a priority.) I had one furnace devoted exclusively to baking glass blocks, which I now have about 12 stacks of, after having used about 5 stacks to create my subaquatic greenhouse, so I've lowered my priority on digging and baking sand. I have about three chests of packed earth stacks, about two chests of cobble, more than a full chest of gravel, and at least 5 or 6 stacks of all three species of logs on hand.
With all of this happening -- as to your question, if I haven't delved into deep strata. The answer is that I have not, but not for lack of wanting to or willingness to. I simply haven't found any access. One dirt-chamber went about 3 blocks deep into that level, whereupon I did grab three nuggets of gold and two blocks of lapis, which was nice, but no redstone, no diamonds, no emeralds, and no exit except from whence I'd already came by shovel. I even went BACK into my previously-explored caves JUST to reevaluate torch light levels and to make sure I didn't miss anything, all to no avail (though somehow I did miss a single block of coal...)
abculatter_2 wrote:Personally, if I haven't found a cave that goes into the deepest strata and have the iron to spare, I just go to the very bottom of the middle strata and just start mining in a straight line until I hear cave sounds. Digging out any dirt and gravel deposits along the way helps, too. The goal is to find a cave or mine shaft that extends down to diamond/redstone level. You'll also get plenty of cobblestone, which will be useful for exploring and colonizing the nether.
I've done that, to the tune of at least two dozen iron pickaxes. Broke into a few chambers, of course, which I fear I'm starting to lose track of due to how far afield they were -- I'm taking a break from systematically checking them all, going so far as to leave wood signs to myself to mark exact time and realworld date of the gaming session where I went through and checked it. Of the systems I've run into from that horizontal-tunneling method, I've located five breakthrough locations, though I suspect that three of them are interconnected somehow (meaning three systems total, if I'm correct on that.) All of them generally go *up*, though I'm in the process of checking. Given my iron shortage, I've resorted to actually stone-picking the mid-strata blocks where necessary in order to fit through to adjacent chambers, which is time consuming and foregoes the cobble, but I'm ok on cobble as I noted above. My issue at this point is the grind of doing so, and which I also look forward to nethering with, but at this point I'm going through about four stacks of cobble per cave system.
Those accidental-xray-moments, where chunk load errors cause you to be able to see caves and lava pits you haven't discovered yet, tells me that the chambers exist, but until I've begun some strip-mining in earnest to REALLY start torching up and branching out, that info, even if it's "accidentally cheating" doesn't really tell me much about how to go about finding it, not only because of depth perception but also because it's usually only on my screen for narrow fields of view, views which fill in and correctly re-load anyway once I start moving either my mouse or my WASD-position. I have yet to pierce into any mineshafts (I wouldn't mind some melon seeds right about now, though I suspect that melon wouldn't be around within the same radius of abandoned villages anyway so I don't have my hopes up.)
With unlimited crucible-tech, even if pre-SFS, I know that the move now is to just start strip-mining for ores of opportunity as well as piercing into gravel and dirt chambers, especially those which are sealed to the brim and therefore
wouldn't generate mob sounds anyway, which from previous playthroughs I know are a lot more common when you're not dealing with the lava pits down near bedrock. Statistically, just based on the amount of digging I had to have completed in order to generate the cobble surplus and recycle-chest that I have, I know it's very good odds that I've passed one or two or more cave systems and just haven't heard anything yet. :-\