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Miner

Hired with a work contract, the miner works at the mining bench. It digs a tunnel into a hill from where you click: 3 blocks wide and 3 high, with wooden supports like a mineshaft, side tunnels if you want them, or stairs down. It digs out the ores along the way, seals off water and lava, and brings everything to its chest.

Setting it up

  1. Place a mining bench near the hill and link at least one chest (+ Chest in the Chests tab above the mill).
  2. Click Pick tunnel. The menu closes; right-click the side of the block where the tunnel starts. The tunnel goes straight into that block, away from the side you clicked; the block is the middle of its bottom row. It has to be within 16 blocks of the bench.
  3. Set the length with - and + (1 to 32 blocks), and the side tunnels (none, 4, 8, ... blocks).
  4. A hired villager without a job finds the bench by itself; Assign picks a specific one.
  5. Right-click the miner with its wage (emeralds) and a pickaxe. Fences and planks for the supports and torches are optional, and so is some cobblestone to start with (it keeps its own afterwards).

Without a chest or a pickaxe the miner does not work. It takes what it needs from a village chest nearby, too.

The tunnel

   seen from the side            seen from above (side tunnels 4)

   ┌───────────────────┐               │       │
   │ ▓ ▓ ▓ = ▓ ▓ ▓ = ▓ │         ──────┼───────┼──────
   │ ▓ ▓ ▓ | ▓ ▓ ▓ | ▓ │          ═════╪═══════╪═════   tunnel 3 wide
   │ ▓ ▓ ▓ | ▓ ▓ ▓ | ▓ │         ──────┼───────┼──────
   └───────────────────┘               │       │
     = planks, | fences                side tunnels 1 wide, 2 high
  • Tunnel: 3 wide, 3 high. Every 4th block a support: two fences at the walls and three planks under the ceiling, like in a mineshaft. Every 8th block a torch on the wall.
  • Side tunnels: every 4 blocks, left and right, 1 wide and 2 high: branch mining. They leave 3 blocks of stone between them, so you see most ores without digging everything.
  • Stairs: 1 wide, 3 high, one block down with every block forward. From the bottom you can pick a new tunnel. Switch between tunnel and stairs with the button next to the length.

How it works

During work hours the miner:

  1. walks to the end of the tunnel,
  2. seals water and lava around the next block of the tunnel with cobblestone,
  3. digs the next block of the tunnel from the top down. It takes about 6 times as long as you with the same pickaxe, at least 1.5 seconds per block,
  4. closes holes in the floor with cobblestone (a cave, a ravine), so the tunnel never ends in a drop,
  5. digs the ores in the walls, ceiling and floor, and the ores behind them, as far as it reaches from the tunnel,
  6. puts up the supports and torches where they are missing,
  7. brings everything to its chest when its pockets are full, after 96 blocks a day and when the tunnel is done.

Without fences, planks or torches it digs on and puts them up later, when it has some again. Make the tunnel longer with + and it goes on where it stopped.

What it digs and what not

  • It digs natural blocks: stone and its kinds, deepslate, dirt, gravel, sand, clay, ores, amethyst and cave plants. Data packs can change that with the block tag workingvillagers:mine_diggable, the ores it follows with workingvillagers:miner_ores.
  • Builds block the tunnel: planks, rails and chests of a mineshaft, bricks, spawners. The miner stops and says where (the tunnel is blocked at x y z). Take the block away and it goes on.
  • A block its pickaxe is too weak for (diamond ore with a stone pickaxe) stops it, too, until it has a better one.
  • An ore next to water or lava stays, so no liquid gets into the tunnel.
  • It keeps up to 16 cobblestone for sealing and delivers the rest with everything else. Without cobblestone it waits when there is water or lava to seal.
  • The pickaxe wears out like yours. Shortly before it breaks, the miner gives it back (Worn tools) and uses its spare; without one it waits for a new one.

The mill

For you, the mining bench is a mill, used like a stonecutter:

In Out
Cobblestone Cobblestone, cobbled deepslate, stone, andesite, diorite, granite, tuff Gravel Gravel
Gravel Gravel Sand Sand or Flint flint
Sandstone (all kinds) 4 Sand sand
Red sandstone (all kinds) 4 red sand

So the stone from the mine becomes sand for the kiln operator's glass. Data packs can add recipes of the type workingvillagers:milling.