Minecraft wiki entry for Mining, associated text: Simply create a staircase to the desired depth and make a tunnel to find pockets of dirt or gravel. With a shovel, mine all dirt/gravel and search the created cave. It is very similar to caving, except they are making their own cave. This technique is very useful on older server where all caves had been explored. The advantage is that players don't need to spend too many resources on tools, because they mainly use shovels, a cheap and reasonably fast tool. On the other hand, yields are smaller than from caving or strip mining.