Ngtjyty

This Question neatly describes the best way to mine for incredibly rare ores. This is all well and good.

I don't want the rare stuff though, as crazy as that sounds. I want stacks upon stacks upon STACKS of cobblestone to build myself a sprawling elaborate stone fortress.

I am aware that Cobblestone Generators exist, but I feel my one-block-at-a-time generator is incredibly inefficient, and especially so when, half of the time, my cobblestone falls into the lava and I have to wait for a new one to appear.

I also feel like it's distinctly possible that "just digging' may be my best bet, but I keep running into massive blocks of dirt and gravel that annoy me to no end.

So, what is the quickest, easiest, and most efficient way to mine a ton of cobblestone?

One way would be to expand your cobblestone farm a little and go with this design

I found that even with iron pick It took two of us to keep up.

P.S put A Non-Pushable Block above the outputs to stop it getting too high

1. Make an efficiency IV or V diamond pickaxe


2. Mine stone ('just dig')


3. There is no step 3

the fastest way I can think of is some variation on one of these designs by youtubers and ZipKrowd players Panda4994 and DanielKotes

The Idea is to spawn a Wither Boss in a trap that prevents its escape. For details of how to do that, please watch one or both of the above videos, but the general technique in Panda's version is to use a field of bedrock, which the wither cannot break, and in Daniel's version, the wither is spawned near mobs it can't quite reach, and continuously tracks them, keeping it from firing the "blockbuster" projectiles that would allow it to escape.

cobblestone (or other materials, such as wood, smooth stone, or even obsidian!), can be pushed or created in the 3 x 4 x 3 area surrounding the wither. When the wither is damaged, he will unleash a shockwave, breaking all of the (non-bedrock/end portal) blocks in that area, causing them to drop, as items, where they can be collected and stored.

I have such a setup, following Panda's design. When I'm using it for cobblestone, it produces around a stack of cobblestone every 10 or so seconds, although i haven't timed it out precisely. Although it was quite a lot of work to set up, it's now a matter of flipping a lever, and figuring out how i'll transport all of the chests full of cobblestone to where I need it.

It's simple. Just dig around the dirt and gravel, there is 1000's of blocks of stone around you, it isn't hard to just dig stone.
If you want tons of cobble, don't go for the cobble generator. Yes, you are more safe, and there is no gravel, dirt, or any type of ore, first of all just dig around the other blocks. Second of all, the cobble generator creates cobblestone. Cobblestone takes a bit longer to mine than stone, so just go strip mining.

Use a lot of TNT. You can easily get a lot of gunpowder from a mob grinder.
for sand it is easy to take down a desert with torches. If you need more sand the worlds on PC are infinite and on Xbox One/PS4 they are effectively but not literally infinite. Therefore [nearly] infinite deserts!