[SmG Yoshi]

In the game Minecraft, mining is an incredibly useful practice that gives you a fast (though challenging) means of obtaining strong minerals such as iron, redstone, and diamond. You can mine in a number of ways, so use whichever method suits you best. Below i will detail four effective methodologies for how to mine quickly and yield the best results:

• Cave Mining
  
• Branch Mining
  
• Staircase Mining
  
• Quarry Mining
  

Cave mining

Cave mining is challenging yet fruitful. To start, you must find a large cave — perhaps while working on another mine or exploring. If you can find a large cave, you have a useful resource at your disposal.

Cave mining lets you obtain many scattered resources without wearing out your tools trying to plow through stone. However, caves can sometimes be deadly labyrinths, and you may lose your items if your avatar dies. You have to decide whether the payoff in resources is worth the risk of losing them.

Cave mining tips

When mining in a cave, simply light the way and skim the walls for minerals you can use. Iron ore is common, but keep an eye out for it to collect it, anyway. If you can mine deep enough, you may find useful materials such as redstone, gold, and diamond. However, you may also come across lava — the bane of careless miners. Lava flows slowly and destroys items (and you!), so avoid it and ensure that your precious ores don’t fall anywhere near it.

Ravines and canyons

Sometimes, while exploring or mining, you come across ravines. These narrow, deep gaps can appear underground or on the surface. Although ravines can contain lots of lava and monsters and are cumbersome to navigate, they expose a lot of surface area and are useful for finding minerals.
Ravines are great places to find iron and coal. Ravines are usually on the surface, making them easy to spot. However, because they are not deep, you cannot mine some types of valuable material, including diamonds, gold, and redstone.
A ravine also provides an excellent shelter because mobs cannot spawn on the walls of the ravine. You need to light the bottom around you using torches.



Branch mining

If you’re new to Minecraft and you don’t yet have the weaponry necessary to brave a cavern, branch-mining is an effective way to obtain lots of stone and minerals. Follow these steps to dig a branch mine:

1. Dig your way underground.
   Dig any way you want, just do not dig straight down; you might fall into a pit, or into lava.At the bottom of every world is a layer of unbreakable bedrock. Ores in minecraft are most commonly located only a few blocks above this layer, so dig until your character’s y-coordinate is 13 or so. (Press F3 to see this value.)
2. Dig a tunnel.
   The smallest tunnel that your character can fit into is one block wide and two blocks tall. Use torches to light the area, or else your tunnel will attract unwanted guests.
   
3. Build more tunnels that branch off from the first one.
   By building extra tunnels that split off from the main route, you can look for ores over a large area. Position the tunnels two blocks apart to be able to inspect a large surface area and not miss anything (see the following figure).
   

Staircase mining

In the staircase method, you dig deeply and quickly to search for caves, find a suitable spot for a branch mine, search for minerals en route to destinations, or simply build an attractive staircase.

Many players build a staircase mine to Level 5 or Level 12 because those are the most diamond-rich levels. At that point, you would build a branch mine. However, you might encounter a cave before you reach those levels. You need to immediately light up the caves and kill the mobs within. Caves are usually the most ore rich, so do not miss the opportunity.



Quarry mining

A quarry is the simplest type of mining, and digging one is a useful way to gather lots of cobblestone — and to ensure that you don’t miss any materials. Simply dig a rectangle out of the ground, and then another one under it, and so on, until you have a sizeable hole from which you’ve unearthed every possible resource. Build a stairwell or ladder to exit and reenter the quarry. The following figure shows a classic quarry.



Hopefully you enjoyed this thread about mining efficiently in Minecraft i spent a lot of hard work on making this thread possible, so if your having any trouble with mining be sure to check my thread out!