1581

Tree chopping tip:

Set fire to a bunch of trees in an area.

Probably makes sense to create a fire break around the area or you may burn up the entire map.

When all the leaves are burned up but not the trunks, go around chopping down the trunks.

This takes lots less time than dealing with leaves.

1582

I’ve found that keeping a man-made forest is a good way to get lots of logs if you can wait a long while before building with them. Plus, it looks cool.

For instance, chop down a bunch of trees near your castle, re-plant a thick forest, then go quarrying/mining/exploring. Every once in a while, come back to the forest and chop everything down, then re-plant again.

I like it because it serves to break up the gameplay a bit, and you don’t spend hours at a time chopping down trees. If you spread torches throughout the forest on the ground, the trees will grow faster, as well.

1583

Where can I find diamond? I’ve been digging a lot, deep underground, and can’t seem to find any…

1584

First, dig down enough. Diamonds seems to show near the same level of redstuff, some people claim that near lava lakes… I doubt it. Your best bet is caves near adminium, or dig a lot near adminium.

Random numbers generators can be a flicky thing… If you have problems with lack of iron mining, reserve iron for rich ores, and dig rocks with rock-based pickaxes.

1585

You don’t actually have to got THAT deep for diamond. When you start seeing lava lakes thats about the depth were diamonds spawn, which can be quite a few levels above admium.
I also think there is no direct relation between lava lakes and diamonds, except that they share the same depth and lava lakes simply uncover tiles not unlike caves.

1586

What do you mean “reserve iron for rich ores?”

I generally do dig with pickaxes, and save my iron for armor and a sword or two.

I guess it’s a random number generator thing. I’m…I dunno…50 tiles below sea level? There’s a lavafall (see my earlier post about busting some rock to make an underground river flow into the lavafall, which is so awesome).

1587

You can’t mine diamond, redstone, or gold without at least an iron pickaxe.

1588

Diamonds are best found between 10 and 15 levels from the bottom of the world. Find the top level of bedrock, go up 10 levels or so and start mining in various directions.

1589

Meaning, you’ll be able to break the rock with a stone pick axe, but you won’t get any of the ore unless you use an iron or diamond pickaxe

1590

This game scares the shit out of me sometimes. Please tell me I’m not the only one!

1591

Is there any point for obsidian other than looking as a foreboding building material?

Also, remind me later on to buy the game when it’s next possible.

1592

here’s a random slice of a chuck of one of my worlds for those interested in ore patterns

The numbers are floors above bedrock so add 3 for the actual data value.
The colors are mostly logical, orange is iron, red squares are redstone, red patches are lava. Pink is gravel.
Some of my observations: diamond quits at 15 levels up, possibly maybe less rare under 10 but rare at all levels. Redstone quits one level after diamond, so the depth you find redstone you can also find diamond. Coal might have a bit of a ‘lull’ in the middle depths where dungeons are. Ores and dirt & gravel do have a little bit of clumping, leaving a number of empty pockets with nothing but stone. While ore doesn’t seem to be attracted to lava dirt and gravel you seem to have better odds if you follow these non-ore materials around in mostly horizontal ways. This kinda confirms my experience of clearing out dirt and gravel and shallow probing in caverns rather than mining long corridors.

edit: lava spring pools start at 6 levels above bedrock and thus is where most obsidian occurs.
edit2: redstone and diamond actually quit at the same level, diamond is just exceedingly rare at that point.

1593

It might be interesting to see a break out of levels 1 to 15 in more detail since those are the ones most likely to have diamonds. Level 1 is where you first find bedrock, right? Even though you can sometimes go down a bit to find more bedrock, but its the level above which you will never find bedrock, I assume.

From those coarse slices it seems diamonds are best found at level 5 to 10, or adjusted, 8 to 13. A more detailed scan of the last levels should clarify the best diamond areas, and perhaps find if there are patterns such that diamonds are frequently found near other resources or never near red-stone, etc…

1594

My slices start one level above bedrock actually. Level 0 would be the start of bedrock which is 4 levels deep before the oblivion. So in data values, 0-3 are bedrock and my slice level 1 is 4.

Bedrock seems to be a diffuse scatter with no regard for ore patterns. It seems that it will interrupt what should be natural veins of ore, so while bedrock levels have a similar ore composition as the bottom non-bedrock levels, there’s certainly diminishing returns as the bedrock intrudes.

I’ll do a closer study of the bottom 20 or so with a different sample a little later.

1595

It looks like minecraft.net is back up, so the free-to-play weekend is probably over (if not now, then soon). Also, when I launched the game there was an update, which at the very least provides music and sound if you were missing it over the past couple days.

1596

Why did I have to discover this game a day before Civilization V release instead of, say, two or three weeks ago? Now I have the gaming equivalent of a quarterback controversy.

1597

The Hollywood Treatment Trailer

1598

Kinda doesn’t work right now. Doesn’t seem to like my launcher build and I can’t dl another one. Sometimes it just hangs, sometimes it lets me play in offline mode.

1599

Has anyone read anything about zombies now spawning even in well lit mines (after yesterday’s release)?

One of my friends reported that. But that would seem like a big and sudden change. I wonder if he had some poorly lit tunnels or an undiscovered entrance. But would be good to know for sure or I’m going to have a heart attack next time I carelessly stroll into my mine. :)

Wendelius

1600

The launcher download is fine now. Just got a new version ( http://www.minecraft.net/download.jsp ).

Wendelius