6 ms·

I'm no Microsoft apologist, but I believe you've misunderstood the intention and the effect of the changes. Previously, the time-optimal strategy to acquire ir

I'm no Microsoft apologist, but I believe you've misunderstood the intention and the effect of the changes. Previously, the time-optimal strategy to acquire iron and diamonds was to dig a hole deep into the earth and then bore straight paths. This was exceptionally grindy (fans would say zen, detractors would say tedious), but effective. With 1.18, the optimal strategy is now to enter a cave and find the resources there. The holes in the ground that you dislike are entry points to that system, where many resources are available -- though at the risk of encounters with monsters. So the transition is from a static grind to the new system based on cave exploration and risk. It's more dynamic and engaging, directly the opposite of your claim here. You mention iron, claiming that progress is slower, but in actuality it's significantly easier to acquire useful amounts of iron now. Jump into any random cave and it's all over the place. Sure, there's a lot of relatively useless copper too, but no one is forcing you to mine it. Just skip what you don't need and you don't need to manage it in your inventory. Likewise, the new topology with increased heights means that rivers are significantly more important for exploring. You point out that it makes it more difficult to go from one peak to the next, which is accurate (though in my opinion you overstate the difficulty), but regardless it is quite easy to make long journeys if you follow the rivers and low terrain. So yeah it's harder to go directly in a straight line than it was in before, but now you're paying attention to the terrain in the world and adapting your gameplay as a result. It just requires different navigation techniques. Like it or not, you're absolutely not stuck at spawn.

honkdaddy 5y ago
Is the strategy you're talking about (digging straight down upon spawn, as I've seen people do) just applicable to speedrunning, or does your average player learn to do that eventually as well?
- joconde 5y ago
  After doing the basics (stone tools, safe base, light and food), I'd always do that as soon as possible. Diamond stuff is very useful for later parts of the game, and you'll need a lot of redstone to build interesting circuits. It's its own form of exploration, at least in the versions with fun cave generation: you always end up in some cave complex that you can then explore. But I'm happy to see that it's less needed now, because interesting caves are more commonly accessible from aboveground.
- officeplant 5y ago
  I've been playing since the release of beta and once it was understood in what layers diamond spawned more frequently it became very common. I've seen some people refuse to do it just because it kinda kills the wandering exploration vibes.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  It's also what I figured out when I was a kid.
- peeters 5y ago
  Digging straight down is a speedrun strategy of last resort for modern versions. The typical progression to enter the Nether is to start by getting 7 iron (3 for an iron pick, 3 for a bucket, 1 for a flint and steel). You want to get that, grab some food, and be in the nether at around 3 minutes. Doing that by digging down is not really feasible. There are two main routes. In the village route, you spawn next do a village with a blacksmith. You get some iron or an iron pick from the blacksmith, kill the iron golem for the remaining iron, grab some wheat and then find a nearby lava pool or completable ruined portal. There are variations where you can trade with a villager for a bucket, but by then most speedrunners would have already reset. The second and more typical modern route is using ocean. You locate a shipwreck which gives you iron and food. Then you find a ravine that has magma blocks (indicating there's lava underneath) and use that to build your portal. To my knowledge this isn't viable in 1.18's world gen though. When speedrunners do go underground in the overworld, they'll usually try to find a cave first to find exposed iron and lava. Digging down is the last choice.
- Levitz 5y ago
  At some point every player goes "Where, oh where in the world is the goddamned iron I need?", they google it, find ores spawn differently at certain heights and go from there.
- lemoncookiechip 5y ago
  It's called strip/branch mining (https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials/Mining#Branch_Mining https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials/Mining#Branch_Mi...) by players. Everyone (including children) learns this method over time, be it by checking tutorials online, reading a wiki, or just naturally due to how simple and efficient it is. You just had to mine straight down to y 8/13 (this changed in the new patch), make a long corridor and then just branch out of that corridor in lines.
- esyir 5y ago
  Speedrunners don't do that, for one. They don't generally go searching for diamonds, only grabbing them if it's in an easy location like a chest.
MildlySerious 5y ago
> I believe you've misunderstood the intention and the effect of the change. No, and I don't think I have made any comment on the intention. I understand what they were going for. My point is specifically what you are saying: It massively changes the game play. If I wanted different game play I would play a different game. Every update so far, including the ones since MS takeover have felt like natural progression of the game to me. I enjoyed those updates and have lots of good things to say about them and the way they expanded the game. This update feels to me like it should have been a different game, or a mod. That's the contrast I was trying to highlight with my comment. It's worth noting I'm not claiming anything as a fact. I was stating my personal opinion and concern for the direction the game is headed in, relative to my own expectations, after a decade of playing Minecraft. I explained why I think that way, because we're on HN. > The holes in the ground that you dislike are entry points to that system Those existed before, just that covering them and getting the materials for it if you're not a fan of big craters and abysses in the ground wasn't a project of its own before. > So the transition is from a static grind to the new system based on cave exploration and risk. Cave exploration and mob bashing is still grinding. This will get old fast if you just want to get to it and build your base or whatever self assigned goal you have. > It's more dynamic and engaging, directly the opposite of your claim here. That is entirely subjective. > You point out that it makes it more difficult to go from one peak to the next, which is accurate (though in my opinion you overstate the difficulty) That wasn't my claim, no. I said it is now more difficult to see directly from the water, because the landscape is raised so much relatively the water. Overcoming that is just tedious, not difficult, because you have to get out of the boat every so often to get a view of the landscape. For me it is comparable to amplified maps no longer being opt-in, basically. It's fun for a change, but not the game experience I am looking for most of the time. Now I no longer get to pick unless I stick with old versions, which of course sucks for online play.
orbital-decay 5y ago
> Previously, the time-optimal strategy to acquire iron and diamonds was to dig a hole deep into the earth and then bore straight paths. This was exceptionally grindy (fans would say zen, detractors would say tedious), but effective. I'm not a big Minecraft player, but I'm pretty sure the time-optimal strategy for getting diamonds consistently was to set up a deliberate mine topology which is mathematically efficient, not just dig forward in straight lines. AFAIK diamond mining was the only thing that couldn't be automated; for iron the time-optimal way is to construct an iron farm, i.e. engineering, not grinding.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Unless you're really working to hit ore in a limited space, you pretty much just want to make a bunch of long parallel tunnels at the right height.
  - orbital-decay 5y ago
    If I recall correctly (I've played it years ago), efficient mining methods make use of 1x1 branches and optimized spacing between branches, which exposes more potential ore spots in less time than a simple 2x1 tunnel. Someone solved the optimization problem and calculated the optimal branch spacing to minimize the time spent on removing the blocks per one block of ore.
    - Tumblewood 5y ago
      Feather mining (the style that uses the 1x1 branches) is more efficient per block mined, but it requires a lot more attention compared to a straight 2x1 hole because of all the turning you need to do. So 2x1 is what most people do. People who have enough resources to make beacons usually speed-mine instead, though. That's because with a beacon giving you Haste II and an Efficiency V pickaxe, you can mine stone blocks instantly, allowing you to clear out 2-tall spaces rapidly. This destroys more blocks per ore but is much faster than anything else in terms of time. That said, in the 1.18 update, diamond ore can only be found at levels where deepslate generates instead of stone. Deepslate cannot be instant-mined, so caving is once again the most efficient way to find ores. I consider this more fun than the old style of mining, so I'm glad they made this change.
II2II 5y ago
One of the great things about Minecraft is game play can be tailored to a player's particular tastes. In this instance: if you want to dig straight down and build a branch mine to get diamonds and iron, you can; if you want to take the more risky route of exploring caves, you can. Personally, I fall into the former category since my main interests lay in exploration and building. Dropping down to the bottom of the world is a quick way to get the resources required to craft an enchantment table and suit up in armor, leaving more time to explore the surface for things like jungles, mesas, sunken ships, and anything else that will provide the resources for my latest build. Does 1.18 change things? I'm trying to keep an open mind, trying to convince myself that the new ore distribution adds nuance to my opening moves. When that conviction fails, I look for other things that hold promise. Something that I've toyed around with doing in the past is creating a Zork-esque underground empire, but have always held back on those plans since the old cave networks were bland and cramped. Yet the new underground biomes make such a project more appealing.

honkdaddy 5y ago

Is the strategy you're talking about (digging straight down upon spawn, as I've seen people do) just applicable to speedrunning, or does your average player learn to do that eventually as well?

joconde 5y ago
After doing the basics (stone tools, safe base, light and food), I'd always do that as soon as possible. Diamond stuff is very useful for later parts of the game, and you'll need a lot of redstone to build interesting circuits. It's its own form of exploration, at least in the versions with fun cave generation: you always end up in some cave complex that you can then explore. But I'm happy to see that it's less needed now, because interesting caves are more commonly accessible from aboveground.
officeplant 5y ago
I've been playing since the release of beta and once it was understood in what layers diamond spawned more frequently it became very common. I've seen some people refuse to do it just because it kinda kills the wandering exploration vibes.
sudosysgen 5y ago
It's also what I figured out when I was a kid.
peeters 5y ago
Digging straight down is a speedrun strategy of last resort for modern versions. The typical progression to enter the Nether is to start by getting 7 iron (3 for an iron pick, 3 for a bucket, 1 for a flint and steel). You want to get that, grab some food, and be in the nether at around 3 minutes. Doing that by digging down is not really feasible. There are two main routes. In the village route, you spawn next do a village with a blacksmith. You get some iron or an iron pick from the blacksmith, kill the iron golem for the remaining iron, grab some wheat and then find a nearby lava pool or completable ruined portal. There are variations where you can trade with a villager for a bucket, but by then most speedrunners would have already reset. The second and more typical modern route is using ocean. You locate a shipwreck which gives you iron and food. Then you find a ravine that has magma blocks (indicating there's lava underneath) and use that to build your portal. To my knowledge this isn't viable in 1.18's world gen though. When speedrunners do go underground in the overworld, they'll usually try to find a cave first to find exposed iron and lava. Digging down is the last choice.
Levitz 5y ago
At some point every player goes "Where, oh where in the world is the goddamned iron I need?", they google it, find ores spawn differently at certain heights and go from there.
lemoncookiechip 5y ago
It's called strip/branch mining (https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials/Mining#Branch_Mining https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials/Mining#Branch_Mi...) by players. Everyone (including children) learns this method over time, be it by checking tutorials online, reading a wiki, or just naturally due to how simple and efficient it is. You just had to mine straight down to y 8/13 (this changed in the new patch), make a long corridor and then just branch out of that corridor in lines.
esyir 5y ago
Speedrunners don't do that, for one. They don't generally go searching for diamonds, only grabbing them if it's in an easy location like a chest.

MildlySerious 5y ago

> I believe you've misunderstood the intention and the effect of the change. No, and I don't think I have made any comment on the intention. I understand what they were going for. My point is specifically what you are saying: It massively changes the game play. If I wanted different game play I would play a different game. Every update so far, including the ones since MS takeover have felt like natural progression of the game to me. I enjoyed those updates and have lots of good things to say about them and the way they expanded the game. This update feels to me like it should have been a different game, or a mod. That's the contrast I was trying to highlight with my comment. It's worth noting I'm not claiming anything as a fact. I was stating my personal opinion and concern for the direction the game is headed in, relative to my own expectations, after a decade of playing Minecraft. I explained why I think that way, because we're on HN. > The holes in the ground that you dislike are entry points to that system Those existed before, just that covering them and getting the materials for it if you're not a fan of big craters and abysses in the ground wasn't a project of its own before. > So the transition is from a static grind to the new system based on cave exploration and risk. Cave exploration and mob bashing is still grinding. This will get old fast if you just want to get to it and build your base or whatever self assigned goal you have. > It's more dynamic and engaging, directly the opposite of your claim here. That is entirely subjective. > You point out that it makes it more difficult to go from one peak to the next, which is accurate (though in my opinion you overstate the difficulty) That wasn't my claim, no. I said it is now more difficult to see directly from the water, because the landscape is raised so much relatively the water. Overcoming that is just tedious, not difficult, because you have to get out of the boat every so often to get a view of the landscape. For me it is comparable to amplified maps no longer being opt-in, basically. It's fun for a change, but not the game experience I am looking for most of the time. Now I no longer get to pick unless I stick with old versions, which of course sucks for online play.

orbital-decay 5y ago

> Previously, the time-optimal strategy to acquire iron and diamonds was to dig a hole deep into the earth and then bore straight paths. This was exceptionally grindy (fans would say zen, detractors would say tedious), but effective. I'm not a big Minecraft player, but I'm pretty sure the time-optimal strategy for getting diamonds consistently was to set up a deliberate mine topology which is mathematically efficient, not just dig forward in straight lines. AFAIK diamond mining was the only thing that couldn't be automated; for iron the time-optimal way is to construct an iron farm, i.e. engineering, not grinding.

Dylan16807 5y ago
Unless you're really working to hit ore in a limited space, you pretty much just want to make a bunch of long parallel tunnels at the right height.
- orbital-decay 5y ago
  If I recall correctly (I've played it years ago), efficient mining methods make use of 1x1 branches and optimized spacing between branches, which exposes more potential ore spots in less time than a simple 2x1 tunnel. Someone solved the optimization problem and calculated the optimal branch spacing to minimize the time spent on removing the blocks per one block of ore.
  - Tumblewood 5y ago
    Feather mining (the style that uses the 1x1 branches) is more efficient per block mined, but it requires a lot more attention compared to a straight 2x1 hole because of all the turning you need to do. So 2x1 is what most people do. People who have enough resources to make beacons usually speed-mine instead, though. That's because with a beacon giving you Haste II and an Efficiency V pickaxe, you can mine stone blocks instantly, allowing you to clear out 2-tall spaces rapidly. This destroys more blocks per ore but is much faster than anything else in terms of time. That said, in the 1.18 update, diamond ore can only be found at levels where deepslate generates instead of stone. Deepslate cannot be instant-mined, so caving is once again the most efficient way to find ores. I consider this more fun than the old style of mining, so I'm glad they made this change.

II2II 5y ago

One of the great things about Minecraft is game play can be tailored to a player's particular tastes. In this instance: if you want to dig straight down and build a branch mine to get diamonds and iron, you can; if you want to take the more risky route of exploring caves, you can. Personally, I fall into the former category since my main interests lay in exploration and building. Dropping down to the bottom of the world is a quick way to get the resources required to craft an enchantment table and suit up in armor, leaving more time to explore the surface for things like jungles, mesas, sunken ships, and anything else that will provide the resources for my latest build. Does 1.18 change things? I'm trying to keep an open mind, trying to convince myself that the new ore distribution adds nuance to my opening moves. When that conviction fails, I look for other things that hold promise. Something that I've toyed around with doing in the past is creating a Zork-esque underground empire, but have always held back on those plans since the old cave networks were bland and cramped. Yet the new underground biomes make such a project more appealing.