Minecraft wiki entry for Mining, associated text: This involves digging a long tunnel. The player will need a lot of planks (for sticks), and optimally, crafting tables, chests, and furnaces. The simplest tunnel is 2 high by 1 wide (1 high by 1 wide using suffocation prevention with trapdoors‌[Java Edition only]), but the wider and higher the tunnel, the more cobblestone they get per chunk, the more they have explored (they will not gather cobblestone any faster, also they will get less ores). Dig at about level 50 if under land; 40 if underwater; or 11 if for precious ores such as diamonds. The player may want to use the cobblestone to seal off caves already explored. This is like a quarry — but more useful since less resources are spent going through the dirt/sand layer, and it can also be used in conjunction with minecart tracks to go from one base to another. A 4×3 tunnel that is 1800 blocks long will yield as much as an 18×18 quarry to bedrock, though arguably safer as they won't hit the lava layer, and it will yield more diamond/redstone if at layer 12, as well as the fact that falling in is completely non-lethal.