Cave-ins and debris

[VDZ]

It used to be that the presence of debris (rocks etc) would increase the odds of getting a cave-in while mining. With the new tile-based cave-in trigger system, I assume this is no longer valid. Is there still any risk to mining near debris, such as more severe cave-ins (leading to potentially more damage)?

[Beezer12Washingbeard]

The mining section on this in Sevenless' Guide describes this really well.

Cavesweeper

Cave ins work in a similar fashion to minesweeper. Unstable tiles are randomly seeded throughout the caves, and mining into one will always cause a cave in. The game warns you if an unstable tile is nearby by displaying dust particles floating from the ceiling when you knock out an adjacent tile.



It's a little hard to convey in a static picture, but you get the idea. Now, this dust means one of the 8 tiles surrounding it is marked as unstable. When you're wall prospecting you don't get any warning and can mine straight into these unstable tiles causing a collapse. But when you're mining and/or making tunnels you can start to figure things out. Here's an example of an area I was clearing with coal. Any place you see a coal pile, there was dust from the ceiling. I screwed up and caused a collapse, that's marked by the bat hide.



And unfortunately, science demands sacrifice. I mined out the furthest right unstable tile that I'd marked, and got the painful but expected result.



And there you have it. If you'd prefer to dig support free, assuming there's not too many unstable tiles and you're careful you're more than able to do so if you choose. The technique I use (that will work with any client too) is to pave anywhere I see dust when mining out a vein supportless. Be careful not to pave with your fresh mined ore, drop that off in a stockpile first. Any square that doesn't have dust drop you are safe to mine all eight tiles that touch it (including diagonally). It's more time consuming than dropping supports, but for a small operation it's sufficient.

[VDZ]

I know how predicting cave-in tiles works. Problem is there's a wall I want to mine that quite possibly is a trigger tile (as the previous tile I mined out caused a cave-in and indicated a nearby trigger tile). I want to know if there's any chance it'll deal more damage to me than the previous cave-in or cause any other unexpected results. I'm prepared to take a normal cave-in hit, but I might not survive if, for instance, the cave-in is twice as severe.