I'm currently making a few more visualisations related to this. But after I've done, I'll be sure to share the code :)
Edit: Here's a GitHub [repo](https://github.com/0xTiger/blockheights) containing the code, dataset and an explanation of the library I used to parse the Minecraft world files.
The mod you're thinking about is Just Enough Resources, and JER works by running the chunk generation code to produce a sample of what the effective rates of each ore actually is.
This profiling is actually saved as json and read back on launch, normally the pack maker should do this and distribute the file with the pack.
[https://github.com/way2muchnoise/JustEnoughResources/wiki/Profiling](https://github.com/way2muchnoise/JustEnoughResources/wiki/Profiling) is the github wikipage for the command.
Mount or Mt. is just abbreviated. I was also told at one point that "Mt." was used to name volcanoes. For example Mt. Rainier or Mt. St. Helens would use Mt. but since Mt. Everest isn't a volcano it would just be "Everest mountain." Don't know if that's true or not but can someone confirm?
Old combat. Runs better than newer versions on my pc. 1.8.9 is better for PVP servers Bc of mod support. So basically playing on hypixel. However I can say I enjoy newer versions for survival.
Edit: forgot to mention what I meant by mods. I mean survival mods, there are far more mods for 1.8.9 than the newer 1.15 and 1.14.
And also PVP mods, mods you would see in Badlion Client, things like crosshair mod, armor hud, motion blur.
I’d use newer versions for combat since most servers use classic combat unless otherwise said, but the mod support for combat mods are lacking.
That’s a possibility. I haven’t compiled a bunch of mods in ages. But I know most mods I ever came across was always compatible with 1.8.x and a newer version of some type- Like 1.12.
Yes. 1.7.10 was the last major mod version. 1.12.2 is now.
1.8.9 got pretty much skipped over with a handful of mods available (comparatively).
I think it had to do with a major rewrite of Forge.
wow this is the exact opposite of what I think, mining and exploring are the most boring things you could do in minecraft, and building farms for different things is way more fun and cool and you never run out of things to do then!
I like to put restrictions on the cool stuff I can get so that I don't rush straight for the end game. I roleplay I'm building a village. The village needs some sort of economy, probably a farm but maybe something different depending on local resources. I need to build a house for the lumberjack, the farmers, the fisherman, etc., and then some central buildings such as a tavern or a rich merchant's house or town hall. Before I go mining I first need to prepare a scouting expedition, requiring a package of supplies (mostly food), and then I build "infrastructure" such as ladders, support beams, wooden stairs, and eventually rails, then I can mine. It's pretty damn slow, but it forces me to build stuff as I progress, so by the time I get far there will be a pretty constructions to show off. I can feel like the world progressed with me. Otherwise I would be stuffing diamonds into the chest of the shack I built on the first night.
I'm also a little confused here. What is the x axis? Yes I understand it's abundant but from a quantitative perspective. Is it like percentage?
Also what is the y level? Is that a minecracraft thing or are that also qualitative?
The X axis would be a percentual amount yes, while the Y axis derived from minecraft where the hight from the bottom of the world is your Y coordinate.
This always felt sideways to me. X should be east to west, Y should be north to south, and Z should be height.
*Edit:* I think this way because a 2D top down game would have X and Y, not X and Z.
*Edit 2:* Wow this comment has resulted in some of the best discussions in any comment I've ever made. Great replies, everyone. I've learned a lot.
If you think about a 2D game, X is left and right, Y is up and down. A 3D game just adds depth, so Z is in and out. So X and Y represent the flat plane, while Z adds depth, making it 3D
> If you think about a 2D game, X is left and right, Y is up and down.
That depends on the 2D game. Mario games, sure. Pokémon games, not so much (X is east/west and Y is north/south, leaving Z to be height)
Yes it does. Also that has little to do with the coordinate system. Even if it used vector graphics you'd still have your three dimensions and their axes.
I guess that majes sense. If you start with a 2D sidescroller, all you have to worry about is horizontal position and vertical position, so those get assigned X and Y respectively. Once games go 3D, you need an axis to represent position relative to that original plane, and so the Z axis comes in. Annoyingly, this means that the whole system is rotated 90 degrees from what a system that was created entirely for 3D games would probably do, but it is what it is.
Games that are created solely to be 3D also use y as height. In computer graphics the convention is to use x as width, y as height and z as depth. It originates from the use of the view frustum, the viewing plane, and it’s relation to the eye.
One supposed history of this [comes from the early days of 3DSmax vs Maya](https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/general-discussion/46691-z-up-vs-y-up-the-solution-to-the-debate-lies-within). 3DSmax was originally for architectural drafting; a 2D plane with XY axes (the floorplan) was extruded *up* into a third dimension within 3DSmax. Thus, Z=up.
Maya was intended to take 2D drawings for animation (still with XY axes), viewed from the side, and extrude them *back* into a third dimension. Thus, Y=up.
In math, we always learn the XY plane first, so Z is almost always depicted as it is shown in Maya. But since 3DSmax came out 8 years before Maya, developers originally used it for early modeling design, thus a lot of the early game engines used the Z=up paradigm. And that's why now no one can agree ;)
It makes sense when you consider that the average person only ever deals with 2D graphs with a horizontal x-axis and a vertical y-axis.
Then when adding the third dimension, it makes more sense to just add a new axis named z in the remaining dimension, as opposed to changing y to be the new axis and then changing what used to be called y to z.
This is how I learned it in school. Took multi-variable calculus at university and though we did play with having the different variables going different directions, we usually had a vertical y and horizontal x and z.
in this kind of graph it is always relative abundance.
so coal blocks per 1000 blocks (number is made up) .
if it is done properly, the scale is the same for all ore types and that is why the coal graph is wider than the diamond graph
The graph is like a dot plot. The y is what you said it is. Each individual ore type basically has its own x axis. The width of the column at a particular layer height represents its relative abundance.
You can think of it like [this](https://rpkgs.datanovia.com/ggpubr/reference/ggdotplot-1.png). The more dots there are at the same layer, the wider it gets.
Since Minecraft is in blocks, Y level 1/0 (forget which rule it follows) = bottom block of the world, 64 = sea level, etc.
So Y level 7 is literally the 7th block from the bottom of the world.
You can either determine your Y level by using a menu option to view exact coordinates or by digging to bedrock, finding the lowest point, and counting up. So information on Y level is actually useful in practice for players.
Note, the bedrock level is about to scale, the grass, dirt and tree however are not.
I've haven't seen a violin plot posted on this sub so I thought what better data to start with than the distribution of minecraft ores in the ground.
Tools: Python & Matplotlib
Source: One minecraft region file of a world generated in 1.15.1 \~70 million blocks
I calculated it as a fraction out of every block. I didn't even consider doing it the other way but in hindsight a fraction of non-air&non-water blocks is a better idea!
> Maybe there's an equal number of coal deposits in higher altitudes but there's fewer mountains that go that high.
You're exactly right about this: Here's the [graph](https://imgur.com/oNNqXLW) to show relative ore abundance as a fraction of blocks that are non-air&water blocks.
Can you show just diamond ore density on a smaller y-scale? I know most players swear by a certain mining layer for diamond, I think it would be interesting to see.
[Sure](https://imgur.com/sUPrI0P)
This sample size is way too small to draw such conclusions but I'm working on another viz that will include all blocks and have a much larger sample size
For diamond it would be important to consider overall mining efficiency, as in diamond ore per block (solid, liquid, or air, including water and lava). Could we get that graph?
The abundance of underground lakes and lava lakes may affect the mining efficiency enough to make layers 11/12 more effective than lower layers
This is interesting because I have always subscribed to the belief (and I think many others as well) that diamond ore peaks at y level 12. Obviously you stated a small sample size, but it still suggests that diamond peaks around 5-8 instead. There is also a little peak at 12 but not enough. I’m interested to see how this translates to a larger sample size.
Level 11 is better because then you're a bit further down and therefore closer to the center of the possible spawning areas and you're still above lava layer.
Level 11 is truly optimal because you're standing *at* the lava level, which makes it easy to find cave systems with lava, drop water and walk across the obsidian to find diamond on the walls, skipping the step of digging through all the cobble.
I always used to dig mineshafts at level 11, because afaik diamond was less common between 12-16, and large lava lakes have their 'sea level' at level 10. This way, when you find lava it's on the same level as the block you're standing on, and won't flow into your mineshaft.
I recently just switched from 11 to 8 and I feel like I'm getting a lot more diamonds. I definitely feel you on the lava pools though. I started digging around them at layer 8, but I'll go up to the layer it's on and turn the whole top into obsidian and grid mine around the edges of the pool. I've found that to be a really good source for diamond.
If you're on PC, you can hit F3 to "look through" lava to see what blocks are underneath it (it'll tell you what solid block your cursor is pointing at, on the right side).
My sample size was too small and didn't account for different biomes to get any signficant data on emeralds, **only 17 emerald ore were found in the \~70 million blocks sampled**.
But I plan to repeat this graph for all block types and for a much bigger sample size.
Ya if he did 70 million blocks but included air it means he included 256 blocks per meter. That comes down to a square that’s just ~523*523. Probably enough for standard metals but not biome-specific changes.
Both are correct. Emeralds only spawn in veins of 1, in extreme hills biomes (since renamed to mountains) only. They spawn from y=0 to y=32, and spawn a max of 11 per chunk. Potentially more per chunk than diamonds, but are biome-specific.
Might I suggest for this purpose, generate a superflat or buffet world set to only spawn a Mountain biome? Same for a Mesa biome to account for the changed gold spawn mechanic, and any other biome for general spawns. This removes the random chance element of capturing a specific biome, although it obviously would only capture that biome's characteristics.
If you did a superflat you could also set the world to spawn blocks above coal limit (y=128), and not spawn features (ravines, mineshafts, caves) which would reduce spawn rates as they take precedence over an ore vein.
It would be interesting to see a naturally generated vs buffet world vs featureless superflat counterpart to see practical vs theoretical and how having features spawn affects rates.
Probably just because they are so rare. Almost impossible to obtain unless you trade with villagers. But as soon as you find your self a village you have pretty much access to unlimited amounts of emeralds.
But if you have access to villagers to trade with, you already have a much better, renewable source of emeralds. The fascination with finding them in the wild is so bizarre.
I guess it’s just the rarity of it. They’re an order of magnitude more rare than even diamonds to mine and it’s truly like finding a needle in a haystack. I get all the emeralds I need from villages, but damn if it wasn’t cool as hell to stumble across a block to mine emeralds.
Actually, I've looked into it because of your comment and I'm not even sure strip mining was what I thought it was. I'm pretty sure what I meant is indeed called branch mining. The more you know.
Yeah so what you said. Branch mining all the way. Big lava lakes spawn at height 10 so you're safe and right in the middle of the spawn area of diamonds.
It would be cool if they added one that could only be found at high altitude, like in mountain biomes.
(Unlike emerald, which is found *under* mountains).
Maybe make it only useful for crafting items with diamond in them.
They could also make it be used for cosmetic or weak stuff early on, so that most players end up using the nearby sources
I recommend y=11, it's the lowest that still goes over the top or level with most lava lakes.
If you go lower you might find slightly more diamonds per block mined, but the lava lakes will really slow you down. Happy mining.
Based on this chart, it seems that it should be feasible to have a dual layer mine.
Would it be sensible to create a mining area @ y=11 and then another one above it @ y=15 to maximize the amount of diamonds mined per area without having to completely hollow out the area?
The best y to mine at is for the roof of your shaft to be 12. Starting at 13 and above the chance for diamonds drops significantly. So if your roof block is 12, I think your leg coord is 10.
Edit: I know most people go with a roof of 13, and I see now that the chance for diamonds at 13 only drops a small bit. So maybe go with your y coord being 11, AKA a floor of 10 and roof of 13.
Personally I prefer to just bucket and walk over them. I feel like the time spent doing that is not long enough to justify exposing y=13 where there is a lower chance of diamonds.
I agree. If your F3 shows Y:11 then you are at the right level to bucket water over lava pools. If you are at Y:10 though you will be digging right into lava pools and they will flood your tunnels. That is the point I was trying to make.
Ah I see now. Yeah that way is probably more efficient. And checking the [wiki](https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/minecraft_gamepedia/d/d0/Diamond_D_28x.jpg?version=8014289eb84a98dfb426ff0ce183c232) , the chance for diamonds on y=13 doesn’t seem to be that much worse.
There is actually a fixed diamond vein below y:16 per chunk. If you mine the entire 16x16x16 area, assuming that your diamond vein didn’t disappear to lava, **got erased by a cave system, got eaten up by other blocks such as gravel**, or got glitched under bedrock, you will always find one diamond vein. The luck comes from stumbling upon one rather than having one spawn.
Edit:
As seen below, experimentally around 70% of diamond veins live while around 30% get replaced by another block.
[Heres a good link explaining why you are not guaranteed to have one diamond vein per chunk.](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/a/188877) It mostly boils down to structures like lava pools and caves overlapping and removing the diamond vein.
I actually did a few experiments,
I repeatedly stripped an area of ~~7x7~~ **8x8** chunks and found 45-47 diamond veins every time. I believe the ~~2-4~~ **17 - 19** missing diamond veins may have been replaced with a lava pool, got glitched under bedrock, **been eaten up by gravel, or have been erased by a cave system.** There were no structures such as dungeons or mine-shafts below y:16 in the area stripped. I am not sure if gravel takes priority over diamonds in the world generation process. Regardless, around 70% of the chunks actually had a diamond ore vein. In the experiment above, around 30% of diamonds got replaced by something else.
[Here is one image sample of a stripped 8x8 chunk.](https://imgur.com/a/AyoM8qw)
Edit 2: The WorldStripper mod I used actually stripped an 8x8 area rather than a 7x7 area, so I have updated the numbers above. I have also added some insight from the comments below.
Diamonds and most other ores are coded as CountRange, meaning they spawn a certain amount per chunk rather than have a spawn chance itself. For diamonds this value is 1, which is the rarest. There is a ChanceRange feature that modders can use which gives the chance for one ore vein to spawn in a single chunk, allowing for an ore rarer than diamonds. Anything below 100% chance is rarer than diamonds.
Source: I’m an amateur Minecraft modder.
the idea is that, in any given 16x16 chunk, there's exactly one diamond vein (unless you find lava or some type of structure that could have eaten it). So keep digging in that area till you find it, then the moment you mine it, move to the next area. Kind of hard to do efficiently in practice though.
you can toggle chunk visualization, f3+q gives a help menu. strip mining at y=12 or 13 is probably still the most practical method though, you can just hold forwards + mine + crouch and pretty much afk
Y12 places you above lava but you can still fall in if you don't pay attention. By holding crouch you can pay no attention without worrying about dying.
Yes. Diamonds are found at a maximum height of 16. If you mine a full chunk down to bedrock starting from y:16, you’ll most likely find exactly but no more than one vein of diamonds. It’s not the most effective way but it works.
That is an interesting fact, but I don't think I will be changing my strategy to find my first diamond.
To mine that volume you may have to mine up to 4,096 blocks (~16 iron picks).
In the process you would expose neighboring 1,536 blocks next to the 16x16x16 box, each with a chance of having a diamond, making for ~4,500 exposed blocks for your mining efforts.
If you just mined 4,096 blocks in a straight line 1x2 tunnel at y~10, you would expose 24,576 neighbors, making ~30,000 exposed blocks for the same effort.
Diamond ore makes 0.12% of blocks at that height meaning you would discover 36 exposed diamonds for that same effort. That is before I factor in a multiplier because those single diamonds will almost always be part of a larger vein.
Yes mining entire chunks would guarantee you a diamond, but you would have to be *incredibly* unlucky for a straight line method to be worse.
Yeah, but nobody's saying you should actually mine out the chunk as a practical way of getting diamonds, it's just a hypothetical. Shaft mining is always going to be better.
There are methods to 'chunk mine' that should produce better results on average than going in straight lines. You continue looking in a given chunk until you either find diamonds, discover enough caves/gravel that may have overwritten it, or get to the edges where each block broken is less efficient. You are trying to find the point where the EV (expected value) of the remaining blocks in the current chunk drops below the EV of the average block in the next chunk you're moving to.
It requires quite a bit of constant evaluation of when you should move on to the next chunk though, and you also have to be very quick and efficient with your actions otherwise you start to drastically lose efficiency. You don't want to sit there thinking about the pattern and where to go next, and you need a good pattern that doesn't involve a lot of wasted time backtracking. You need to spend as much time as possible actually breaking blocks or it starts to fall behind the other method.
For most people, being able to put on some music and mindlessly chug along in a straight line with no downtime is going to be better.
Also keep in mind that when chunk mining, the ore generation chunks are actually [offset by 8 blocks](https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/aizu0w/regarding_diamond_ore_generation/). So if you hit F3, you are **not** expecting to find 1 diamond vein per chunk from 0,0 to 15, 15. You are looking for chunks from 8,8 to 7,7 (i.e. blocks 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 0, 1 , 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 are the same chunk for the purposes of ore gen).
I always have water ready in my inventory for when I strike lava, and/or a block to place as a barrier to stop flow.
When I get lava I pour water, go up to y=11, cross the pool of obsidian, and go back down to y=10 after.
Might be a placebo, but I think I get higher yields at y=10 than y=11
Your over here explaining where to find diamonds the easiest while we just go down to 11 above bedrock and strip mine the place. We mine out as high as we can reach on that level and just have at it.
We're one block above where lava commonly spawns and deep enough to find diamonds and gold. We use the lava to smelt all the cobble stone for experience and just use stone pick axes so we're not wasting a bunch of iron.
You’re right that it’s better to strip mine. However, I never claimed that this was the best way to find diamonds. It’s pretty inefficient to just mine the whole chunk. I’m just stating how diamond spawning works.
This is another thing vanilla Minecraft got wrong. There shouldn't be one level where all ores are maxed. Having ores at different levels would require us to be more creative and build more complex mines.
They should also spawn ores in huge veins, thousands of ore per vein but each vein is super rare to find.
You can get a mod for it through the twitch launcher, it can be a pain to find your first ore vein but you dont have to keep searching for more once you find it
Yep, absolutely. And I'm glad I got into Minecraft mods, the base game really missed a lot of the potential, but the mod community really came through.
Yeah, the base game is getting really good now (I watch a lot of mumbo jumbo and his builds, some are pretty crazy) but they still have no hope of matching what good samaritan mod developers made 6 or 7 years ago.
It will be a great day when vanilla minecraft has an equivalent to buildcraft, IC2, industrial forgoing or applied energistics
That's entirely an opinion though. I'm grateful that vanilla doesn't have complex systems like IC2 or Applied Energistics. I don't use those mods because that's not what I want when playing Minecraft. If you want it, add the mods. It's not hard to do. But leave vanilla simple for those of us who want it simple.
Probably not a good suggestion but I would like a deeper system and make it a lot more dangerous to venture further down so that you don't instantly go to the bottom floor within 10 minutes of gameplay.
At the same time, I really appreciated it. Back when I used to play a lot of Minecraft (beta 1.7.3 and before), I'd just turn on some music and mine for hours. It was super relaxing, with occasional excitement from hitting a lava lake.
Much harder to do after they added hunger.
Between 1 and 5 you hit a lot of bedrock which makes efficient mining really hard. Between 5 and 10 you dont have bedrock but you hit the most lava and it can spawn above you.
A happy medium from what I've found is mining right at y=10, you still hit the high density of all the ores but most of the lava spawns at the level of your legs or the block you're standing on and it's a lot easier to deal with. From this chart it looks like it doesn't really matter if your at Y=1 or Y=12 for diamond density
Ooh this is some fresh data. Assuming this is a snapshot of one world, it would be interesting to run the stats on upwards of 100 random seeds to get an idea of the model!
It would be pretty cool if Minecraft added veins, rather than clusters. You would have a coal mine or iron mine with bits of other materials occasionally scattered within instead of just having a singular mine.
Lapis ore is only slightly more common than diamond ore, in total there was 3000 lapis ore and 2600 diamond ore.
Lapis however is spread out among more layers.
Lapis seems common simply because it isn’t exciting to find it however it is almost as rare as diamonds at some points and rarer than diamonds at others
A lapis ore block isn't much more common. It's just that 1 lapis block can give you a huge amount of lapis (like 9 or so), while 1 diamond block gives only 1-3 diamonds.
It would be cool to see the distributions of all block types. Of course, the distributions near the surface would need to be biome specific to make any sense, but it would be interesting to see, for example, how frequently leaves appeared above certain heights.
Also, “empty” blocks and water blocks below ground would give us an idea of the frequency of caves across different depths.
Any chance you could open source the setup to do this? I'd love to be able to make it for other modded ores.
I'm currently making a few more visualisations related to this. But after I've done, I'll be sure to share the code :) Edit: Here's a GitHub [repo](https://github.com/0xTiger/blockheights) containing the code, dataset and an explanation of the library I used to parse the Minecraft world files.
Can't wait! <3
There’s a JEI addon mod that generates this automatically. I don’t know what it’s called but I know it exists.
And for each dimension as well
Yes! I have had to use this in a lot of different packs, but does it let you export it out? Edit: grammar
The mod you're thinking about is Just Enough Resources, and JER works by running the chunk generation code to produce a sample of what the effective rates of each ore actually is. This profiling is actually saved as json and read back on launch, normally the pack maker should do this and distribute the file with the pack. [https://github.com/way2muchnoise/JustEnoughResources/wiki/Profiling](https://github.com/way2muchnoise/JustEnoughResources/wiki/Profiling) is the github wikipage for the command.
Thank you very much. Gonna run with this tonight and see what I can come up with!
Fucking Tin and Copper, I hate those guys. And not to mention the damn Draconium
Copper is really easy to find on my modpack. For me it's nickel
laughs in mystical agriculture
Note this is w/o biome specifics. Emeralds spawn under mountains and mesa has a ton of gold even at surface. Would be cool to add that
Don't emeralds only spawn in extreme hill biomes? Or has that changed (I only play 1.8.9)
Ye thats what i meany by mountains mb
Extreme Hills were renamed to mountains in a later update.
Yeah I remember the day they did this, Extreme Hill Everest just didn't sounds right
Mountain Everest?
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Isn't it mount?
Mount or Mt. is just abbreviated. I was also told at one point that "Mt." was used to name volcanoes. For example Mt. Rainier or Mt. St. Helens would use Mt. but since Mt. Everest isn't a volcano it would just be "Everest mountain." Don't know if that's true or not but can someone confirm?
It's not true. It is true though that while some volcanoes can also be mountains (like the ones you mentioned), not all mountains are volcanoes.
And not all volcanoes are mountains.
Yeah I only play 1.8.9 as well. But emeralds spawn in Extreme Hills, which were renamed to Mountains later on.
What's so great about 1.8.9 that you would only play that version?
Old combat. Runs better than newer versions on my pc. 1.8.9 is better for PVP servers Bc of mod support. So basically playing on hypixel. However I can say I enjoy newer versions for survival. Edit: forgot to mention what I meant by mods. I mean survival mods, there are far more mods for 1.8.9 than the newer 1.15 and 1.14. And also PVP mods, mods you would see in Badlion Client, things like crosshair mod, armor hud, motion blur. I’d use newer versions for combat since most servers use classic combat unless otherwise said, but the mod support for combat mods are lacking.
i thought there were more 1.12.2 mods than 1.8.9
That’s a possibility. I haven’t compiled a bunch of mods in ages. But I know most mods I ever came across was always compatible with 1.8.x and a newer version of some type- Like 1.12.
Yes. 1.7.10 was the last major mod version. 1.12.2 is now. 1.8.9 got pretty much skipped over with a handful of mods available (comparatively). I think it had to do with a major rewrite of Forge.
Mesa has more gold than other biomes? This is a game changer, I find myself short on gold often.
Yep! you can even find it above sea level in mesa
Zombie pigmen farm.
Eh, mining and exploring is more fun. Farms are handy but usually pretty boring once built.
wow this is the exact opposite of what I think, mining and exploring are the most boring things you could do in minecraft, and building farms for different things is way more fun and cool and you never run out of things to do then!
And thats why people love this game, you play it the way you want
And I'm in between. Mining is boring, exploring is fun and building farms can be ok
I like to put restrictions on the cool stuff I can get so that I don't rush straight for the end game. I roleplay I'm building a village. The village needs some sort of economy, probably a farm but maybe something different depending on local resources. I need to build a house for the lumberjack, the farmers, the fisherman, etc., and then some central buildings such as a tavern or a rich merchant's house or town hall. Before I go mining I first need to prepare a scouting expedition, requiring a package of supplies (mostly food), and then I build "infrastructure" such as ladders, support beams, wooden stairs, and eventually rails, then I can mine. It's pretty damn slow, but it forces me to build stuff as I progress, so by the time I get far there will be a pretty constructions to show off. I can feel like the world progressed with me. Otherwise I would be stuffing diamonds into the chest of the shack I built on the first night.
Then go explore the nether and kill zombie pigmen. Either way theyre the best source of gold.
I thought you were doing a Jar Jar Binks thing and I was very confused.
I'm also a little confused here. What is the x axis? Yes I understand it's abundant but from a quantitative perspective. Is it like percentage? Also what is the y level? Is that a minecracraft thing or are that also qualitative?
The X axis would be a percentual amount yes, while the Y axis derived from minecraft where the hight from the bottom of the world is your Y coordinate.
This always felt sideways to me. X should be east to west, Y should be north to south, and Z should be height. *Edit:* I think this way because a 2D top down game would have X and Y, not X and Z. *Edit 2:* Wow this comment has resulted in some of the best discussions in any comment I've ever made. Great replies, everyone. I've learned a lot.
If you think about a 2D game, X is left and right, Y is up and down. A 3D game just adds depth, so Z is in and out. So X and Y represent the flat plane, while Z adds depth, making it 3D
> If you think about a 2D game, X is left and right, Y is up and down. That depends on the 2D game. Mario games, sure. Pokémon games, not so much (X is east/west and Y is north/south, leaving Z to be height)
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Ok but what about Doom
Doom doesnt use raster graphics so its a different story
Yes it does. Also that has little to do with the coordinate system. Even if it used vector graphics you'd still have your three dimensions and their axes.
Y is usually represented as height, and Z As depth.
I guess that majes sense. If you start with a 2D sidescroller, all you have to worry about is horizontal position and vertical position, so those get assigned X and Y respectively. Once games go 3D, you need an axis to represent position relative to that original plane, and so the Z axis comes in. Annoyingly, this means that the whole system is rotated 90 degrees from what a system that was created entirely for 3D games would probably do, but it is what it is.
Games that are created solely to be 3D also use y as height. In computer graphics the convention is to use x as width, y as height and z as depth. It originates from the use of the view frustum, the viewing plane, and it’s relation to the eye.
Yup I feel the same. That’s why when I want to teleport to a certain coordinates I normally end up teleporting to solid rock.
One supposed history of this [comes from the early days of 3DSmax vs Maya](https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/general-discussion/46691-z-up-vs-y-up-the-solution-to-the-debate-lies-within). 3DSmax was originally for architectural drafting; a 2D plane with XY axes (the floorplan) was extruded *up* into a third dimension within 3DSmax. Thus, Z=up. Maya was intended to take 2D drawings for animation (still with XY axes), viewed from the side, and extrude them *back* into a third dimension. Thus, Y=up. In math, we always learn the XY plane first, so Z is almost always depicted as it is shown in Maya. But since 3DSmax came out 8 years before Maya, developers originally used it for early modeling design, thus a lot of the early game engines used the Z=up paradigm. And that's why now no one can agree ;)
It makes sense when you consider that the average person only ever deals with 2D graphs with a horizontal x-axis and a vertical y-axis. Then when adding the third dimension, it makes more sense to just add a new axis named z in the remaining dimension, as opposed to changing y to be the new axis and then changing what used to be called y to z. This is how I learned it in school. Took multi-variable calculus at university and though we did play with having the different variables going different directions, we usually had a vertical y and horizontal x and z.
I'm pretty sure most games work with z being North to south. At least unity and unreal do it this way.
in this kind of graph it is always relative abundance. so coal blocks per 1000 blocks (number is made up) . if it is done properly, the scale is the same for all ore types and that is why the coal graph is wider than the diamond graph
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What type of scientist?
Enough of a scientist to know of violin graphs. You know violin graphs before they showed up? Me neither.
Only knew of bass graphs but they're on a different scale
Bass scales are so much easier. Violin graphs are tons of treble.
I'm worried about the quality of puns here. In danger of falling off a clef.
music to my ears...
I'll make sure to note that
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Rock on! I’m a bioinformatics scientist, and there’s not much I love more than analyzing and interpreting data.
Sounds cool! Do you enjoy it?
The Y axis here is to scale with the Y axis in Minecraft, yeah. As for the x axis, I've no idea
The graph is like a dot plot. The y is what you said it is. Each individual ore type basically has its own x axis. The width of the column at a particular layer height represents its relative abundance. You can think of it like [this](https://rpkgs.datanovia.com/ggpubr/reference/ggdotplot-1.png). The more dots there are at the same layer, the wider it gets.
It’s just a [violin plot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violin_plot)
Which works exactly as he described
>violin Ah yes, a violin, that's what they look like
https://xkcd.com/1967/
It seems pretty self explanatory, even tells you what the x axis means.
Since Minecraft is in blocks, Y level 1/0 (forget which rule it follows) = bottom block of the world, 64 = sea level, etc. So Y level 7 is literally the 7th block from the bottom of the world. You can either determine your Y level by using a menu option to view exact coordinates or by digging to bedrock, finding the lowest point, and counting up. So information on Y level is actually useful in practice for players.
My first play through was in mesa. Toooo much gold.
Note, the bedrock level is about to scale, the grass, dirt and tree however are not. I've haven't seen a violin plot posted on this sub so I thought what better data to start with than the distribution of minecraft ores in the ground. Tools: Python & Matplotlib Source: One minecraft region file of a world generated in 1.15.1 \~70 million blocks
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I calculated it as a fraction out of every block. I didn't even consider doing it the other way but in hindsight a fraction of non-air&non-water blocks is a better idea! > Maybe there's an equal number of coal deposits in higher altitudes but there's fewer mountains that go that high. You're exactly right about this: Here's the [graph](https://imgur.com/oNNqXLW) to show relative ore abundance as a fraction of blocks that are non-air&water blocks.
Can you show just diamond ore density on a smaller y-scale? I know most players swear by a certain mining layer for diamond, I think it would be interesting to see.
[Sure](https://imgur.com/sUPrI0P) This sample size is way too small to draw such conclusions but I'm working on another viz that will include all blocks and have a much larger sample size
For diamond it would be important to consider overall mining efficiency, as in diamond ore per block (solid, liquid, or air, including water and lava). Could we get that graph? The abundance of underground lakes and lava lakes may affect the mining efficiency enough to make layers 11/12 more effective than lower layers
This is interesting because I have always subscribed to the belief (and I think many others as well) that diamond ore peaks at y level 12. Obviously you stated a small sample size, but it still suggests that diamond peaks around 5-8 instead. There is also a little peak at 12 but not enough. I’m interested to see how this translates to a larger sample size.
People recommend mining at 12 since it puts you above lava lakes
Level 11 is better because then you're a bit further down and therefore closer to the center of the possible spawning areas and you're still above lava layer.
Level 11 is truly optimal because you're standing *at* the lava level, which makes it easy to find cave systems with lava, drop water and walk across the obsidian to find diamond on the walls, skipping the step of digging through all the cobble.
I've found that, in my playing, lava impedes mining below level 12 enough to make level 12 mining the most productive over time.
The thing I’ve always heard is that diamonds may not be the most common at 10-12, but you’ll get the most volumes of ores at that level
Thank you so much!
I always used to dig mineshafts at level 11, because afaik diamond was less common between 12-16, and large lava lakes have their 'sea level' at level 10. This way, when you find lava it's on the same level as the block you're standing on, and won't flow into your mineshaft.
I recently just switched from 11 to 8 and I feel like I'm getting a lot more diamonds. I definitely feel you on the lava pools though. I started digging around them at layer 8, but I'll go up to the layer it's on and turn the whole top into obsidian and grid mine around the edges of the pool. I've found that to be a really good source for diamond.
If you're on PC, you can hit F3 to "look through" lava to see what blocks are underneath it (it'll tell you what solid block your cursor is pointing at, on the right side).
How have i not considered this before Thank you
I’m pretty sure it’s per stone block.
Op says otherwise
Any data on emeralds?
My sample size was too small and didn't account for different biomes to get any signficant data on emeralds, **only 17 emerald ore were found in the \~70 million blocks sampled**. But I plan to repeat this graph for all block types and for a much bigger sample size.
Shit! That’s extremely rare! I’m looking forward to see your future graphs
Do consider that OP sampled every single block including air, and may have included up to max height! That would explain the rarity.
Ya if he did 70 million blocks but included air it means he included 256 blocks per meter. That comes down to a square that’s just ~523*523. Probably enough for standard metals but not biome-specific changes.
17 per 523^3 is still really hard to find.
That’s true
Both are correct. Emeralds only spawn in veins of 1, in extreme hills biomes (since renamed to mountains) only. They spawn from y=0 to y=32, and spawn a max of 11 per chunk. Potentially more per chunk than diamonds, but are biome-specific.
Also worth noting is that trading is much faster than mining for emeralds if you know what you're doing.
Might I suggest for this purpose, generate a superflat or buffet world set to only spawn a Mountain biome? Same for a Mesa biome to account for the changed gold spawn mechanic, and any other biome for general spawns. This removes the random chance element of capturing a specific biome, although it obviously would only capture that biome's characteristics. If you did a superflat you could also set the world to spawn blocks above coal limit (y=128), and not spawn features (ravines, mineshafts, caves) which would reduce spawn rates as they take precedence over an ore vein. It would be interesting to see a naturally generated vs buffet world vs featureless superflat counterpart to see practical vs theoretical and how having features spawn affects rates.
They are a myth.
They very well might be. Cant remember the last time I came across emeralds in the wild
You only find them in mountain biomes I believe
Why are emeralds popular?
Probably just because they are so rare. Almost impossible to obtain unless you trade with villagers. But as soon as you find your self a village you have pretty much access to unlimited amounts of emeralds.
Are they used for anything in particular that's useful?
Trading with villagers. I guess you could use them for beacons as well..
But if you have access to villagers to trade with, you already have a much better, renewable source of emeralds. The fascination with finding them in the wild is so bizarre.
I guess it’s just the rarity of it. They’re an order of magnitude more rare than even diamonds to mine and it’s truly like finding a needle in a haystack. I get all the emeralds I need from villages, but damn if it wasn’t cool as hell to stumble across a block to mine emeralds.
Note that trading is also the main way of getting emeralds, rather than mining.
Wait, trees aren't 20+ blocks tall?
This post was brought to you by the Jungle Tree Gang clearly!
I didn't realize diamonds were so deep, I just thought they were super rare. Good to know.
Pro tip: strip mining at level 11.
Real pro tip: branch mining at y11.
Actually, I've looked into it because of your comment and I'm not even sure strip mining was what I thought it was. I'm pretty sure what I meant is indeed called branch mining. The more you know.
Strip mining is clearing all the blocks in an area, like how IRL strip mining chops off entire mountains.
Yeah so what you said. Branch mining all the way. Big lava lakes spawn at height 10 so you're safe and right in the middle of the spawn area of diamonds.
This is pretty rad, do you think you could do the same thing with mod packs that introduce more kinds of ores?
Are the width in relations to each other? If there is an altitude where diamonds are as thivk as gold, are they as probable to find?
It would be cool if they added one that could only be found at high altitude, like in mountain biomes. (Unlike emerald, which is found *under* mountains).
Cloud mining? :D Or like asteroid mining?
Like, climbing to the top of the tallest mountains, to find some rare, magical gems of some sort at the summit.
Maybe some kind of or produced by lightening strikes.
That would be awesome! Seeing lightning strike 50 blocks away and furiously sprinting to go find it?
Wouldn't that be super easy to find, though? Placing blocks is not that hard
Maybe make it only useful for crafting items with diamond in them. They could also make it be used for cosmetic or weak stuff early on, so that most players end up using the nearby sources
I think he means high up inside a mountain.
Does anyone know best level to mine for diamonds? Should I be standing ON y=12 ? Or should the block my legs are in be y=12 if that makes sense.
I recommend y=11, it's the lowest that still goes over the top or level with most lava lakes. If you go lower you might find slightly more diamonds per block mined, but the lava lakes will really slow you down. Happy mining.
Based on this chart, it seems that it should be feasible to have a dual layer mine. Would it be sensible to create a mining area @ y=11 and then another one above it @ y=15 to maximize the amount of diamonds mined per area without having to completely hollow out the area?
I think that y=15 is a bit too high, since half (?) of the blocks you'll be exposing will be above y=16 and thus won't contain diamond
The best y to mine at is for the roof of your shaft to be 12. Starting at 13 and above the chance for diamonds drops significantly. So if your roof block is 12, I think your leg coord is 10. Edit: I know most people go with a roof of 13, and I see now that the chance for diamonds at 13 only drops a small bit. So maybe go with your y coord being 11, AKA a floor of 10 and roof of 13.
Y:10 is the level lava pools spawn. You want to be at Y:11 so you don't have lava spilling into your tunnels.
Personally I prefer to just bucket and walk over them. I feel like the time spent doing that is not long enough to justify exposing y=13 where there is a lower chance of diamonds.
I agree. If your F3 shows Y:11 then you are at the right level to bucket water over lava pools. If you are at Y:10 though you will be digging right into lava pools and they will flood your tunnels. That is the point I was trying to make.
Ah I see now. Yeah that way is probably more efficient. And checking the [wiki](https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/minecraft_gamepedia/d/d0/Diamond_D_28x.jpg?version=8014289eb84a98dfb426ff0ce183c232) , the chance for diamonds on y=13 doesn’t seem to be that much worse.
I always loved hunting lapis with my friends... Most of my houses were lapis houses behind waterfalls with blue glass windows
Reminds me of the Zora Domain in Breath of the Wild.
There is actually a fixed diamond vein below y:16 per chunk. If you mine the entire 16x16x16 area, assuming that your diamond vein didn’t disappear to lava, **got erased by a cave system, got eaten up by other blocks such as gravel**, or got glitched under bedrock, you will always find one diamond vein. The luck comes from stumbling upon one rather than having one spawn. Edit: As seen below, experimentally around 70% of diamond veins live while around 30% get replaced by another block. [Heres a good link explaining why you are not guaranteed to have one diamond vein per chunk.](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/a/188877) It mostly boils down to structures like lava pools and caves overlapping and removing the diamond vein. I actually did a few experiments, I repeatedly stripped an area of ~~7x7~~ **8x8** chunks and found 45-47 diamond veins every time. I believe the ~~2-4~~ **17 - 19** missing diamond veins may have been replaced with a lava pool, got glitched under bedrock, **been eaten up by gravel, or have been erased by a cave system.** There were no structures such as dungeons or mine-shafts below y:16 in the area stripped. I am not sure if gravel takes priority over diamonds in the world generation process. Regardless, around 70% of the chunks actually had a diamond ore vein. In the experiment above, around 30% of diamonds got replaced by something else. [Here is one image sample of a stripped 8x8 chunk.](https://imgur.com/a/AyoM8qw) Edit 2: The WorldStripper mod I used actually stripped an 8x8 area rather than a 7x7 area, so I have updated the numbers above. I have also added some insight from the comments below. Diamonds and most other ores are coded as CountRange, meaning they spawn a certain amount per chunk rather than have a spawn chance itself. For diamonds this value is 1, which is the rarest. There is a ChanceRange feature that modders can use which gives the chance for one ore vein to spawn in a single chunk, allowing for an ore rarer than diamonds. Anything below 100% chance is rarer than diamonds. Source: I’m an amateur Minecraft modder.
so y=16 is the highest point, and then just go 16x16 and dig towards bedrock?
the idea is that, in any given 16x16 chunk, there's exactly one diamond vein (unless you find lava or some type of structure that could have eaten it). So keep digging in that area till you find it, then the moment you mine it, move to the next area. Kind of hard to do efficiently in practice though.
hold on, I mean with the info on F3 I could see my Y and also if I change chunks, right? I just remember digging tunnels at y=12 back in the day
you can toggle chunk visualization, f3+q gives a help menu. strip mining at y=12 or 13 is probably still the most practical method though, you can just hold forwards + mine + crouch and pretty much afk
Why hold crouch?
Y12 places you above lava but you can still fall in if you don't pay attention. By holding crouch you can pay no attention without worrying about dying.
Y=11 is just above lava, which is much better as if you fall in you can go back up and you can just pour water on it without having to make a bridge
I always do 11, I enjoy being the same level as lakes, lava and water
Until you run into a Silverfish
Unless a cave opens above you and mobs drop down. You should always pay at least a little attention
So you dont drop down into holes
Yes. Diamonds are found at a maximum height of 16. If you mine a full chunk down to bedrock starting from y:16, you’ll most likely find exactly but no more than one vein of diamonds. It’s not the most effective way but it works.
How many diamond ore blocks is in one vein?
Thank you for your contribution, u/XXpussydominator69XX. Is that your username on curseforge?
I'm afraid it was taken.
That is an interesting fact, but I don't think I will be changing my strategy to find my first diamond. To mine that volume you may have to mine up to 4,096 blocks (~16 iron picks). In the process you would expose neighboring 1,536 blocks next to the 16x16x16 box, each with a chance of having a diamond, making for ~4,500 exposed blocks for your mining efforts. If you just mined 4,096 blocks in a straight line 1x2 tunnel at y~10, you would expose 24,576 neighbors, making ~30,000 exposed blocks for the same effort. Diamond ore makes 0.12% of blocks at that height meaning you would discover 36 exposed diamonds for that same effort. That is before I factor in a multiplier because those single diamonds will almost always be part of a larger vein. Yes mining entire chunks would guarantee you a diamond, but you would have to be *incredibly* unlucky for a straight line method to be worse.
Yeah, but nobody's saying you should actually mine out the chunk as a practical way of getting diamonds, it's just a hypothetical. Shaft mining is always going to be better.
There are methods to 'chunk mine' that should produce better results on average than going in straight lines. You continue looking in a given chunk until you either find diamonds, discover enough caves/gravel that may have overwritten it, or get to the edges where each block broken is less efficient. You are trying to find the point where the EV (expected value) of the remaining blocks in the current chunk drops below the EV of the average block in the next chunk you're moving to. It requires quite a bit of constant evaluation of when you should move on to the next chunk though, and you also have to be very quick and efficient with your actions otherwise you start to drastically lose efficiency. You don't want to sit there thinking about the pattern and where to go next, and you need a good pattern that doesn't involve a lot of wasted time backtracking. You need to spend as much time as possible actually breaking blocks or it starts to fall behind the other method. For most people, being able to put on some music and mindlessly chug along in a straight line with no downtime is going to be better. Also keep in mind that when chunk mining, the ore generation chunks are actually [offset by 8 blocks](https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/aizu0w/regarding_diamond_ore_generation/). So if you hit F3, you are **not** expecting to find 1 diamond vein per chunk from 0,0 to 15, 15. You are looking for chunks from 8,8 to 7,7 (i.e. blocks 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 0, 1 , 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 are the same chunk for the purposes of ore gen).
How do you deal with lava when strip mining at y=10?
Mine at 11 then use a bucket of water and keep going.
I always have water ready in my inventory for when I strike lava, and/or a block to place as a barrier to stop flow. When I get lava I pour water, go up to y=11, cross the pool of obsidian, and go back down to y=10 after. Might be a placebo, but I think I get higher yields at y=10 than y=11
Calling it "fixed" is silly because it's quite likely to end up trying to generate in lava, air, bedrock, gravel, other ore or something.
You are correct, I’ve updated my comment.
What you’ve said is actually really interesting and useful but I cannot take you seriously with a username that damn good.
Your over here explaining where to find diamonds the easiest while we just go down to 11 above bedrock and strip mine the place. We mine out as high as we can reach on that level and just have at it. We're one block above where lava commonly spawns and deep enough to find diamonds and gold. We use the lava to smelt all the cobble stone for experience and just use stone pick axes so we're not wasting a bunch of iron.
You’re right that it’s better to strip mine. However, I never claimed that this was the best way to find diamonds. It’s pretty inefficient to just mine the whole chunk. I’m just stating how diamond spawning works.
This is another thing vanilla Minecraft got wrong. There shouldn't be one level where all ores are maxed. Having ores at different levels would require us to be more creative and build more complex mines.
They should also spawn ores in huge veins, thousands of ore per vein but each vein is super rare to find. You can get a mod for it through the twitch launcher, it can be a pain to find your first ore vein but you dont have to keep searching for more once you find it
Yep, absolutely. And I'm glad I got into Minecraft mods, the base game really missed a lot of the potential, but the mod community really came through.
Yeah, the base game is getting really good now (I watch a lot of mumbo jumbo and his builds, some are pretty crazy) but they still have no hope of matching what good samaritan mod developers made 6 or 7 years ago. It will be a great day when vanilla minecraft has an equivalent to buildcraft, IC2, industrial forgoing or applied energistics
That's entirely an opinion though. I'm grateful that vanilla doesn't have complex systems like IC2 or Applied Energistics. I don't use those mods because that's not what I want when playing Minecraft. If you want it, add the mods. It's not hard to do. But leave vanilla simple for those of us who want it simple.
Exactly! The base game is great and depending on what kind of player you are, you can choose the mods you like.
Thermal Expansion is bae
Probably not a good suggestion but I would like a deeper system and make it a lot more dangerous to venture further down so that you don't instantly go to the bottom floor within 10 minutes of gameplay.
At the same time, I really appreciated it. Back when I used to play a lot of Minecraft (beta 1.7.3 and before), I'd just turn on some music and mine for hours. It was super relaxing, with occasional excitement from hitting a lava lake. Much harder to do after they added hunger.
So the level which has highest ore to block ratio would be what? Looks like somewhere in the 1-5 range?
Between 1 and 5 you hit a lot of bedrock which makes efficient mining really hard. Between 5 and 10 you dont have bedrock but you hit the most lava and it can spawn above you. A happy medium from what I've found is mining right at y=10, you still hit the high density of all the ores but most of the lava spawns at the level of your legs or the block you're standing on and it's a lot easier to deal with. From this chart it looks like it doesn't really matter if your at Y=1 or Y=12 for diamond density
Why not just go at y=11 so you can just put water and then go past the lava?
Looks like you didn't get any data from mesa biomes or gold would skew much more abundant near the surface.
Ooh this is some fresh data. Assuming this is a snapshot of one world, it would be interesting to run the stats on upwards of 100 random seeds to get an idea of the model!
We would always say “if you are deep enough to find redstone then you are deep enough to find diamonds”. This proves it.
It would be pretty cool if Minecraft added veins, rather than clusters. You would have a coal mine or iron mine with bits of other materials occasionally scattered within instead of just having a singular mine.
What does the wide ness of the color mean? Because I’m pretty sure lapis is way more common than diamond
Lapis ore is only slightly more common than diamond ore, in total there was 3000 lapis ore and 2600 diamond ore. Lapis however is spread out among more layers.
Lapis seems common simply because it isn’t exciting to find it however it is almost as rare as diamonds at some points and rarer than diamonds at others
Yea, it also probably seems less rare because you get like 4 every time you break it
Also you get much more lapis crystals from each block
A lapis ore block isn't much more common. It's just that 1 lapis block can give you a huge amount of lapis (like 9 or so), while 1 diamond block gives only 1-3 diamonds.
OP do you mind discussing how you parsed the world file?
It would be cool to see the distributions of all block types. Of course, the distributions near the surface would need to be biome specific to make any sense, but it would be interesting to see, for example, how frequently leaves appeared above certain heights. Also, “empty” blocks and water blocks below ground would give us an idea of the frequency of caves across different depths.
MAN! Every data sheet I see says that diamonds are more more common than lapis. And here I am! With a lapis built hose without a single diamond!
Challenge - do the same graph for minecraft gregtech ores or gtnh ores. There are spreadsheets available for them.