What is the most efficient way to clear large underground areas?

[Squirting Elephant]

I'm currently using excavators but they require a really lot of luminite for large numbers of super excavators. I also tried dynamites but they require iron + their blast radius is not squared.

Are excavators really the best way to go? I don't even need the blocks they return, I just need to clear large areas.

Also what do you use for flattening the upper surface of the world (grass and such)? Just the regular excavators or by hand?

[Voidstatic]

well normal excavators can clean the fossil and up to the surface while the advanced stalagtite and super below all that so you could probably get away with advanced which is cheap to make since you can make diamonds. Sometimes tnt helps just have to clean up a bit if you do it right.

[Mac]

As someone who has cleared most of a 16 claim area from surface to world end, I can confirm that excavators are your best friend. I use Advanced Excavators for most of the work and Super for the bottom two layers. Since you can simply make diamond the Advanced are fairly cheap to make and the ore you get back from clearing large areas will keep you going and then some. Normal Excavators are too expensive with the cost of iron, so avoid them and go straight to Advanced. Also keep some fire bombs (or flaming skulls) around to quickly clear away liquids and some frost bombs to freeze up the lava.


As for the surface, once again, Advanced Excavators. Clean, large cuts make the cost worth your time.

[Squirting Elephant]

Yeah I also noticed that iron is the most valuable ore. Really odd. Diamond is worth nothing. Same with cactus flowers (because they get farmed dry on servers) are even more valuable than any ore.

[aly]

For cactus flowers just grab 9 cactus plants and plop them on the ground at your base in a busy area where you're coming and going a lot. If you harvest the flowes everytime you see the flowers spawn youll have hundreds pretty quickly.

[Squirting Elephant]

Originally posted by auntielynds:

For cactus flowers just grab 9 cactus plants and plop them on the ground at your base in a busy area where you're coming and going a lot. If you harvest the flowes everytime you see the flowers spawn youll have hundreds pretty quickly.

Thanks I'll borrow a cactus from someone then for farming flowers.

[RSoM LuckySheep]

Pro tip: You don't need much cactus. They can be a row, they can be a couple blocks wide. They can be above the floor, top even with the floor, below the floor. Doesn't matter. Just put them somewhere you'll visit frequently. If you get 2 cactus every time you visit (4 on worlds with "more regrowth" in their settings) you're doing it right.

Make sure there are 2 blocks of space above them (flowers rarely grow on other flowers, but it happens). If you don't want them spawning Dustevils & such, light them up. They'll occasionally spawn Dustevils even with lighting (lighting never works 100%) but you can just kill them.

OH, TOPIC! I'm not afraid to use TNT on surface blocks. You get no return, but does anyone really need more grass, dirt, or stone? It's not a perfect cube, but it's slightly larger than the excavator cubes. Just overlap the ends of the TNT holes. If you really want the return, advanced excavators are the way to go. Never ever ever build normal excavators. I level claims with TNT all the time. Space them as you would excavators, ignore the overlap.

[Lucifer]

Excavators are sadly the only way even for flattening the world surface, believe it or not, I had to flatten 4 claims of land with excavators and with the mining cell, also patching some holes here and there... pretty annoying but when you're done with it you'll feel as if you've done something more like a miracle :p

[76561198301850182]

It doesn't seem like anyone mentioned this but, from my experience, the higher the quality of an Excavator, the more you can get from the resulting Loot Bags. At least, it's a higher average for each succeeding one.. :)

[Dark D. jesper]

you can apply the concept of tunnel mining with excavators to get blocks and ores faster.What i do is dig a huge tunnel straight and place excavators every 4 blocks and excavate the area,in this way i get the ores i am looking for along with other ores that i may require later

[SpaceCodet]

Originally posted by Mac:

As someone who has cleared most of a 16 claim area from surface to world end, I can confirm that excavators are your best friend. I use Advanced Excavators for most of the work and Super for the bottom two layers. Since you can simply make diamond the Advanced are fairly cheap to make and the ore you get back from clearing large areas will keep you going and then some. Normal Excavators are too expensive with the cost of iron, so avoid them and go straight to Advanced. Also keep some fire bombs (or flaming skulls) around to quickly clear away liquids and some frost bombs to freeze up the lava.


As for the surface, once again, Advanced Excavators. Clean, large cuts make the cost worth your time.

Advanced TNT for the surface layer (dirt, stone, grass and what have you). It'll save on iron which is what you could use for other things. And the best way of using it is to make a few hundred so you can just blast the whole area. Yes, it'll take a little more time to gather. The cost is worth it in my opinion.

If you don't have Advanced TNT unlocked, I'm sure you can get it from a public world like Playfulverse or one of the others.

[Gillsgills]

Originally posted by Dark D. jesper | ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.com:

you can apply the concept of tunnel mining with excavators to get blocks and ores faster.What i do is dig a huge tunnel straight and place excavators every 4 blocks and excavate the area,in this way i get the ores i am looking for along with other ores that i may require later

To add to this: carry with you a capture block, and use it as sonar to find ores. Don't waste an excavator for volumes without ores.

[Dark D. jesper]

Originally posted by Gillsgills:

Originally posted by Dark D. jesper | ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.com:

you can apply the concept of tunnel mining with excavators to get blocks and ores faster.What i do is dig a huge tunnel straight and place excavators every 4 blocks and excavate the area,in this way i get the ores i am looking for along with other ores that i may require later

To add to this: carry with you a capture block, and use it as sonar to find ores. Don't waste an excavator for volumes without ores.

wow buddy thanks for the suggestion even i did not think of this

[Gillsgills]

Originally posted by Dark D. jesper | ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.com:

Originally posted by Gillsgills:

To add to this: carry with you a capture block, and use it as sonar to find ores. Don't waste an excavator for volumes without ores.

wow buddy thanks for the suggestion even i did not think of this

Here's AstroBoy's guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1167590459