What Is Experience Points XP Miner
EXperience Points (XP) Moderator: kingscrown. Welcome to the world of eXperience Points Since the relaunch of XP earlier this year.
Today I decided to see how much experience I could get at one time by mining Nether quartz until either my pickaxe was about to break (a diamond pickaxe with Efficiency III and Unbreaking III, fully repaired beforehand) or I ran out of inventory space; I didn't actually need that much XP, only enough to enchant a few items on an anvil (I previously mined until I reached level 30 so I could enchant books). Quote from You weren't using Fortune? No, because I used my Fortune III book on my amethyst pickaxe, especially considering how hard it is to get Fortune on a book (enchanting the pickaxe directly is not an option, considering how rare amethyst is, much rarer than diamond, and less enchantable, same as a book actually, and more expensive to repair; I only mined 5 ore for the pickaxe and sword until I got Fortune, and only enchanted one diamond pickaxe which I used for general mining (I still got a stack of diamonds from my branch mine, more than enough to cover my needs until I got my amethyst tools and armor enchanted). Not like I'll use most of the quartz anyway, like the three double chests of iron blocks I mined in my first main world. Also, Fortune has no effect on XP drop rates, and makes it more expensive to repair, especially by combining with another pickaxe, which allows a 100% repair at minimal XP cost (it costs 35 levels to repair an Efficiency III, Fortune III, Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe - one unit or 25% at a time).
Yeah even in 1.7, there are more than enough XP lying around. Let's say you have a really big cow farm: 420 cows. 210 breeding = average 840 XPs. Killing 210 old cows to make room for the babies = avg 420 XPs. Smelting an avg of 420 Steaks (about 6.5 stacks) = another 147 XPs, on average. Plus on top of food for a good while you get about 210 Leather too.
XP total: about 1407 XPs on average Leveling up all the way from level 0 to level 30 costs 1395 XPs. Sure, 420 cows is a big farm. But you did ONLY ONE round of breeding there! But it isn't hard at all to have say 20 cows per cow pen say 8x8 sizes, and have a 3 x 7 of those cows pens right next to each other. A couple hours of 'work' and that's it, from zero to finish! And farm breeding isn't even the 'best' way to gain XP! In 1.8, what with the XP cost reduced by a factor of 10 per enchant AND the enchanting preview, I can't imagine even needing to do anything special to have more than enough XP for my enchants even with the 'can't repair forever' items.
Just playing normally will be MORE than enough and by a WIDE margin. EVEN if XP was tougher like in say version 1.1 (you needed 50 levels for a max enchant and each level cost a LOT more, more than twice the XP in fact!), I'd still be against having an XP being storable. Quote from Is that purple armor and sword a mod or a texture pack? Rodabon- Yep, I'm playing pure vanilla 1.8. I haven't been to the nether in probably 6 months IRL- I don't find it a very pleasant place. I usually play with headphones on at night and the constant ghast jibbering drives me up a wall (yes, I can turn them down or off, but then I won't know I'm in danger until the nether erupts in flames around me!). I have portal access tunnels running in the cardinal directions within a few blocks of the ceiling.
Obviously I don't use them much, but I'll likely just branch mine along them while extending them for possible future use. The occasional pigman pops up, but it keeps the rest of the riff-raff out of my way. I should probably man-up and get some practice fighting ghasts one of these days, but I've never even gotten around to finding netherwart yet, so no fire resist potions. It's on my list. Quote from rodabon- Yep, I'm playing pure vanilla 1.8.
I haven't been to the nether in probably 6 months IRL- I don't find it a very pleasant place. I usually play with headphones on at night and the constant ghast jibbering drives me up a wall (yes, I can turn them down or off, but then I won't know I'm in danger until the nether erupts in flames around me!).
I have portal access tunnels running in the cardinal directions within a few blocks of the ceiling. Obviously I don't use them much, but I'll likely just branch mine along them while extending them for possible future use. The occasional pigman pops up, but it keeps the rest of the riff-raff out of my way. I should probably man-up and get some practice fighting ghasts one of these days, but I've never even gotten around to finding netherwart yet, so no fire resist potions. It's on my list.
Cheers, tbg A few tips: • A power 4 bow can one shot them at full draw. (Ghast spawning seems less prevalent to me lately, perhaps that's just me though) • Pack a couple stacks of cobblestone and when you see a ghast while out in the open just stack a couple cobblestone to use as a shelter to block sight lines or duck behind to avoid fireballs. • Don't panic and remember that you can just shoot a fireball with an arrow once it gets close to avoid having to move around so much. • Biggest thing is watch out for nearby pigmen so you don't hit them on accident. • Avoid fighting ghasts on netherrack formations you know are thin without first putting down some cobblestone to stand on. • I tend to make paths with cobblestone slabs.
Just as effective for stopping ghast fireballs, easier to just run up onto, and your cobblestone goes farther. A quick update re: gathering netherquartz. For the first time in over 26 *days* of playing!
And the galling thing? It was a totally avoidable noob mistake. Actually, the quartz mining went quite well- it took me about an hour and a half to accumulate 2.5 stacks of quartz blocks (what I estimated to be the 'first installment' of what I'll need for my build). Much of it was done by your typical branch mining at y=109, though towards the end I started off in another area and was mining around y=75 or so.
I found many more caves and nooks and crannies down lower and I have to admit, 'caving' is significantly faster at generating quartz ore than branch mining is (while still avoiding wide open ghast-prone areas). Given quartz's even distribution in the nether, the amount of exposed surface in caves as well as the increased mobility for dodging the odd lava makes it preferable to branch mining. Anyhoo, I sent my quartz back home and, since I was doing pretty well, I went back for a little more. And a little more.
I probably had another two stacks of quartz blocks when I happened upon a fortress. I actually found the flat roof of the fortress (it was partially buried in netherwrack) and had to dig down into the hallway to have a look around. I didn't get very far, but set up some markers for a return trip, then went back up to the roof. Standing on the roof, I decided to poke my head through the netherwrack and have a quick look around only to find a couple of blazes aways off. I popped one, but the other fired, I mis-dodged and you can guess what happened next- yep- it blew me clean off the roof and down down down into the lava of no return. I'm bummed about losing a bunch of good gear (and my hard-won quartz blocks!), but I was able to re-quip myself as well or better than before with spares I had back at the base (I did have to spend some down time breeding animals and whatnot to get the XP necessary to add a book enchantment here and there).
I can think of two take-home messages from this: one, never ever fight on the flat roof of a nether fortress- if you absolutely must, add 'guard rail' blocks prior to combat. What was I thinking? Two, keep a duplicate set of armor and tools specifically enchanted for the nether. I was able to re-quip pretty easily, but losing that amount of good gear kinda stung. I'd rather bring my back-up gear next time. And, uh, three, it's going to take a while for me to get all the quartz that I want! Quote from Thanks for making me feel even worse!
There were no ghasts- I must've simply run off the edge while trying to dodge the blaze attack. What a numnut I am!
Cheers, tbg That kind of thing happens all the time, so don't beat yourself up! Eventually the seasoned Nether traveller acquires a habit of being aware what kind of thing they are standing on, where the edge is, how fragile the thing is, what kind of critters are near you on the thing, and how close you and they are to the edge. A Wither skeleton can give you a pretty good swat (not to mention Ghast blasts!) so yeah if I'm on a flat Fortress roof I am very nervously looking around. On the walkways I make sure I have guardrails and even then try to stand in the middle of the walkway to fight Wither skeletons.
Likewise any cobblestone bridge over lava must really have guardrails. If they do, they make great places to fight Ghasts from, though - since you know your footing won't disappear and throw you into the lava! It's pretty safe but if a Ghast got the perfect shot it could probably bump you over the guardrail so don't abuse this too much. Electroneum ETN Mining Estimate.
And yes - as Rodabon said - cobblestone slabs! They look better for bridges and let your few stacks of cobble imported into the Nether last longer. You should even consider making stairs from slabs, although this is not practical on a steep pitch.
Quote from TMC- A couple quick questions: from your maps it looks like this quartz haul was from caving in the nether and not any type of structured mining, correct? If so, were the size/distribution of the nether caves modified in any way? Which world or version is this? I've found myself in need of a large amount of quartz for a build and am pondering mining strategies in the nether.
Cheers, tbg I've never thought of modifying the Nether in any way; this was from my world, back when I also pretty much only modified caves and used a few mods like the minimap (at that time the amethyst armor and tools were actually, not my own). (note that since 1. Mining In Bytecoin BCN. 8 zombie pigmen are far more dangerous; ghast fireballs will anger them and they have the AI of regular zombies; in older versions they only chase you from a mere 16 blocks away, even when aggroed, and the aggro range is only 32 blocks though they stay aggroed until they despawn due to a bug, but you usually only have to deal with a few if you do aggro one). There used to be a bug in 1.8 where the piggies would get angry if you killed something that had hurt one of them (typically a Ghast) - weird logic right? -but they fixed that.