Yeah, good point. So, I wrote that comment with an experience I had in Luanti in mind (which is basically a community-developed platform for Minecraft-like games).
In the worlds there, I’d find a cave and it would expand down several hundred blocks. The good ores also only start to appear down there, so because you’d need to dig down a lot more blocks, and because the caves allow you to descend so quickly, it is definitely not worth digging straight down.
But then those sprawling caves are also worth coming back to, because you will definitely not mine all of it in one go.
Even if you do deplete those caves, it’s still worth using them as a starting point for digging further down, where you’re also likely going to run into more caves.
All of that just means that it becomes worth your time to build out your mine.
Ladders are worth bringing right away, because the caves are so vertical, but when the way up or down takes several minutes, it’s also a good idea to build intermediate bases and minecart rails.
In my most built-out world, I think, I had like 500 blocks of minecart line to get to my second intermediate base. And the deepest point I reached was -3400, if I remember correctly. Found a massive cavern down there. Even just placing torches down to light it up needed several visits. Was considering building a city into there, but it was actually too large for that. I would’ve never been able to fill that cavern. 🥲
Yeah, good point. So, I wrote that comment with an experience I had in Luanti in mind (which is basically a community-developed platform for Minecraft-like games).
In the worlds there, I’d find a cave and it would expand down several hundred blocks. The good ores also only start to appear down there, so because you’d need to dig down a lot more blocks, and because the caves allow you to descend so quickly, it is definitely not worth digging straight down.
But then those sprawling caves are also worth coming back to, because you will definitely not mine all of it in one go.
Even if you do deplete those caves, it’s still worth using them as a starting point for digging further down, where you’re also likely going to run into more caves.
All of that just means that it becomes worth your time to build out your mine.
Ladders are worth bringing right away, because the caves are so vertical, but when the way up or down takes several minutes, it’s also a good idea to build intermediate bases and minecart rails.
In my most built-out world, I think, I had like 500 blocks of minecart line to get to my second intermediate base. And the deepest point I reached was -3400, if I remember correctly. Found a massive cavern down there. Even just placing torches down to light it up needed several visits. Was considering building a city into there, but it was actually too large for that. I would’ve never been able to fill that cavern. 🥲