Mining Techniques

[Rotten Babe]

Do you peeps have any good mining techniques to share? Personally I've been using the one I used to use in Minecraft:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1306212276

i.e. you dig a horizontal tunnel every 2 blocks so you see what's on each side. However, this doesn't seem to be as effective as I remember it being on Minecraft. I've been able to find more diamonds this way than iron. What's up with that? Are there different techniques for different layers/ores?

Please share any mining techniques you use to find coal, obsidian, iron and diamonds!

[aly]

I get a coal/diamond farm up and running as soon as possible and then use advanced excavators to excavate one full claim. Then use the empty space for a corruption/warmworm spawner.

[Rotten Babe]

Originally posted by auntielynds:

I get a coal/diamond farm up and running as soon as possible and then use advanced excavators to excavate one full claim. Then use the empty space for a corruption/warmworm spawner.

But what does such farm look like? What's the best way to farm coal, obsidian, iron and diamonds?

[entuland]

Coal and Diamonds are better farmed by building a 7x7x7 tar pit and freeze-bombing it (tar turns into coal nodes). Once you've got coal nodes, you can fire bomb them to get diamond nodes. I've got an old BP for that but I've since then improved the design (doesn't change a lot, it's just matter of placing the tar on the ceiling in a checkered manner to save on it).

Iron and Obsidian can be found as Ore into Diamond Treasure Chests (corruption) and into Iron Treasure Chests (lava). If you are in a hurry and you need lots of iron and obsidian, Strong TNT placed in sequence underground between the Fossil (for obsidian nodes) and Stalactite (for iron nodes) layers. Super extractors on both and you get the most bang for the bucks (if you're organized and you keep 4 processors on Obsidian and three on Iron, to make the needed slabs).

For Lumite it depends. You need to extract it at the corruption layer and you can either use the "wander and leave a trail of lamps" technique, the "find a corrupted mountain and spam Super Excavators" technique or the "who cares, let's Super TNT the place" technique. In all cases you would be better making yourself a good amount of corrupted food to protect you - or corruption resistance potion, but nothing beats food, cause you can happily bathe in corrupted water _and_ get healed by it.

I've published blueprints for spawners, farms and fountains. Farm and fountains are definitely one of the first things I build in any world, food is a huge help for gathering resources of all kinds, hunting and whatnot.

[Rotten Babe]

Cool, now I have to go look for tar, which seems to be the most rare bloody thing since I haven't been able to found any in my 110+ hours of playing. :/

[entuland]

Originally posted by ▓▓▓♥▓▓▓:

Cool, now I have to go look for tar, which seems to be the most rare bloody thing since I haven't been able to found any in my 110+ hours of playing. :/

Well that's pretty strange. In any case, craft yourself a chair, a wooden one will be fine, turn it upside down and sit, you'll be able to see underground. Look for a long cave that goes down and find where it surfaces. All long caves that go hoops and loops in the stalactite layer have tar somewhere. In certain cases tar can be found pretty close to the surface, at the fossil layer or even under the open sky (but this is really rare). Caves that start from the sea (or even beneath it) may have better chances to lead you to tar quickly, but this may be more of a legend than a fact.

[Aphroidite]

usually to find iron i do something similar to you (a tunnel) but wider than 2 blocks and using strong TNT xD

[Aphroidite]

or else a capture block, and search for empty spaces (those are either minerals or just empty space)

[Rotten Babe]

Alright, those were really great tips, entuland, thanks! Now I'm kinda drowning in diamonds and TNTing my way through caves lol.

As I was roaming through caves I realised why I dislike doing it and why I haven't done much of that in my 110+ hours of gameplay - you can't just mine the ores and then move on. In Minecraft or Terraria you find some ores, you mine them using a pickaxe, and then you continue making your way down the cave. In Creativerse you have to deploy an extractor, which takes a long time to extract the ores, so you have to wait around. You could continue exploring the cave, sure, but it can be difficult to find your way back, and it's annoying too.

[Aphroidite]

you can always deploy a beacon to find your extractors again

[entuland]

Originally posted by ▓▓▓♥▓▓▓:

Alright, those were really great tips, entuland, thanks! Now I'm kinda drowning in diamonds and TNTing my way through caves lol.

As I was roaming through caves I realised why I dislike doing it and why I haven't done much of that in my 110+ hours of gameplay - you can't just mine the ores and then move on. In Minecraft or Terraria you find some ores, you mine them using a pickaxe, and then you continue making your way down the cave. In Creativerse you have to deploy an extractor, which takes a long time to extract the ores, so you have to wait around. You could continue exploring the cave, sure, but it can be difficult to find your way back, and it's annoying too.

You're welcoime!

The point you raised about exploring caves: that's the reason why the coal torches are described as the spelunker's best friend: you can lay down a trail of them not to get lost (that also helps you not having to wait for extractors to complete: just place them down and make sure they start working, then move on; backtrack when you feel or need to do so, removing the trail of torches at the same time and collecting the extractors).

[Rotten Babe]

Originally posted by Aphroidite:

you can always deploy a beacon to find your extractors again

Aren't beacons near useless and mostly an aesthetic thing? Like, you can't see them through walls and neither are they marked on the map. Am I missing something?

[Rotten Babe]

Originally posted by entuland:

Originally posted by ▓▓▓♥▓▓▓:

Alright, those were really great tips, entuland, thanks! Now I'm kinda drowning in diamonds and TNTing my way through caves lol.

As I was roaming through caves I realised why I dislike doing it and why I haven't done much of that in my 110+ hours of gameplay - you can't just mine the ores and then move on. In Minecraft or Terraria you find some ores, you mine them using a pickaxe, and then you continue making your way down the cave. In Creativerse you have to deploy an extractor, which takes a long time to extract the ores, so you have to wait around. You could continue exploring the cave, sure, but it can be difficult to find your way back, and it's annoying too.

You're welcoime!

The point you raised about exploring caves: that's the reason why the coal torches are described as the spelunker's best friend: you can lay down a trail of them not to get lost (that also helps you not having to wait for extractors to complete: just place them down and make sure they start working, then move on; backtrack when you feel or need to do so, removing the trail of torches at the same time and collecting the extractors).

Well, the issue is that I don't have Pro, so I need to use coal torches as light source rather than trail markers.

[entuland]

Oh I see... I guess you're also having to deal with hostile mobs if you're in your own world then... yes, you surely need lots of lights to keep the cave somewhat safe. You could though use different lights (such as the wood burning lamps) to make the main trail, or the other way around.

You're right, beacons are pretty much useless for keeping track of the extractors. They have great technical uses to align positions and heights while building, even through the ground or so, but that's unrelated to the task at hand.

[Adun]

I prefer not to dig when I can just find a nice big cave that reaches from the surface to the lava layer. There are dozens of those around, the fun is just finding them. By the time I'm done with it, I've got all the coal, obsidian, iron and sometimes even diamond (if I brought heat resistance potions) that I can carry.

[Aphroidite]

actually i just dig down from the surface following the beacon light