Why are diamonds so rare now?

[Guswut]

Then why are diamonds so rare?

I've yet to find that diamonds are any more rare on my better-than-Ultimate world versus my MindCrack world versus all of the vanilla worlds I've played on. Perhaps you should open creative mode, and try setting up a quarry at y20 and seeing how many diamonds you get that way, as you'll likely get at least one cluster.

 

[beckoner]

IIIRC, vanilla gen is one cluster per chunk, max 8 diamonds, av. 4, with loss to lava, caves dungeons etc.. I think vanilla gen gives you an average of 3.1 diamonds per chunk, (from a complete survey of 416k chunks Diamond Ore wiki page. There may be some loss to mods, but most mods only replace stone/dirt/gravel when placing their worldgen (e.g. redpower marble wrapped around pretty much anything else?)

 

[Zjarek_S]

In vanilla the only block that can be replaced by ore is stone, RP2 marble also have this feature. If you find single diamond ore next to the gravel, it means that probably gravel ore was already in place when diamond ore was generating and you can blame it for the size of diamond vein .

 

[KirinDave]

I've looked pretty hard for broken ore generation because I had a hard time with diamonds in my initial spawn. I can't see anything in the code that should cause diamonds to be less prevalent, but that doesn't mean there aren't "hidden effects" that might come out due to different biome characteristics.

Personally, I have given up trying to find diamonds in those redwood forest extra biomes. I've never found one there, even once. I had a steve's carts hardened drill hollow out 3/4 of a small example of that biome once (protip: do branch mining with multiple SC carts using hardened drills for true absurdity) and STILL never found one.

 

[Guswut]

STILL never found one.

I should pop over to your base, and dig around for ten minutes, and find you a cluster. Otherwise, in my MindCraft 8.0.1 world, I did not notice any diamond spawn issues with lush redwood forests, so it may be standard redwood forests acting up.

 

[KirinDave]

I should pop over to your base, and dig around for ten minutes, and find you a cluster. Otherwise, in my MindCraft 8.0.1 world, I did not notice any diamond spawn issues with lush redwood forests, so it may be standard redwood forests acting up.

It was DW20. And I don't know where you'd dig, I used those drills to branch mine in a way that is so absurd that the only way to navigate those tunnels is with a modular powersuit, a very fast mine cart, or haste boots and an advanced jetpack w/a remote recharging rig.

 

[Guswut]

And I don't know where you'd dig

Where ever those diamonds hid from you? Perhaps using nuclear means, mmm. Ah well, at least your more recent spawn is better.

 

[Deiaros]

Best Way to get diamonds is to use tier 5 soul shard with enderman and a 44 block high drop, the enderman drop enderpearls witch you can transmute with a minimum stone into iron then repeat iron to gold gold to diamond.

 

[tabs]

Weren't some of the mod authors claiming that the DW20 pack had low diamond ore gen? Wish I could find a link to that... I certainly noticed an improvement when I switched to ultimate. I put it down to luck though.

 

[OmegaPython]

Weren't some of the mod authors claiming that the DW20 pack had low diamond ore gen? Wish I could find a link to that... I certainly noticed an improvement when I switched to ultimate. I put it down to luck though.

DW20 pack did not have increased vanilla gen like the rest of the packs at that time.

 

[Moezso]

Macerator+compressor+coal+gravel=diamonds! Who wants to muck about in the bowels of the earth digging up shiny rocks when one can just have an automated machine make them for one's self.

 

[KirinDave]

Macerator+compressor+coal+gravel=diamonds! Who wants to muck about in the bowels of the earth digging up shiny rocks when one can just have an automated machine make them for one's self.

People who also need gold?

 

[Guswut]

People who also need gold?

Zombie pigmen are really easy to get a T5 spawner, which you can then farm for golden nuggets/bars/equipment to decraft into gold dust.

It'd be difficult, but I bet you could play a "never go underground" version of MineCraft.

 

[Geometry]

DW20 pack did not have increased vanilla gen like the rest of the packs at that time.

How was it increased?

 

[Varil]

In comparison, my Ultimate world seems to be flush with diamonds. I had half a stack pretty quickly, utilizing nothing but 4 turtles using tunnel mode. In my Direwolf world I had to do about twice as much mining to get 20ish diamonds.

 

[DWLooney]

idk, set my humble ol' mining turtle to mine a 50 block diameter on level 6, got 5 dimes in 20 minutes, when I went in and collected what was on the sides, came out to be 15... *shrugs*

 

[OmegaJasam]

If you can get just one, try the twilight forest. The big hills have heaps of em.

 

[Abdiel]

P.S.: We get these "why are diamonds rare" threads every time a new modpack comes out - just try the forum search. And every time someone goes and scans a statistically useful area with an external tool and gets exactly the expected average amount of diamonds per chunk. There is no actual shortage, people just think there is because of:

- Clustering Illusion: diamond distribution is fairly random, and it's perfectly possible to have a bad luck streak, but people misinterpretate it
- Increased Consumption: because each new mod adds additional needs for diamonds, people have a harder time satisfying the demand, and therefore it feels like diamond is harder to come by when in fact they still find the same amount as always
- Richie Rich Syndrome: Coming out of a well established world where quarries and turtles and tunnel bores funnel a neverending stream of diamonds into the storage chests without the player having to lift a finger, it feels twice as difficult when coming into a new world where they have to dig out every diamond by hand.

I would add one more: You mine a lot more other ores and gems than in vanilla. So you return from a mining trip with a backpack full of shinies, and "only" 4 diamonds. Where as in vanilla mining for the same length of time would give you a few stacks of iron, gold, redstone, and roughly the same amount of diamonds. But as their relative value is much higher, you will perceive that as much more.

 

[Moezso]

Zombie pigmen are really easy to get a T5 spawner, which you can then farm for golden nuggets/bars/equipment to decraft into gold dust.

It'd be difficult, but I bet you could play a "never go underground" version of MineCraft.

Plunder a few villages/totem rings until you can build a turtle, voila, you never have to go underground.