Pit digger¶
Hired with a work contract, the pit digger works at the pit stake. It digs out a pit that you mark with string on the ground: layer by layer, down to the depth you set, with a ladder as the way in and out. Everything it digs goes to its chest. Good for basements, foundations, sand and clay pits and as a simple quarry.
Setting it up¶
- Place a pit stake at the edge of the area to dig.
- Lay string on the ground in a closed ring around the area that touches the stake: the stake may stand in the ring like a piece of string, or right next to it. The string connects to the stake, and the stake takes the ring as its pit by itself. While you hold string, every pit stake within 24 blocks shows its pit as a white outline, down to the floor; a ring that is no pit yet shows its strings, the ones that are the problem in red (the open end, or the whole ring if it is too big). Green particles show a ring that just became a pit, angry ones where the problem is. Strings only connect straight (north, south, east, west), not diagonally, at most one block up or down, and each one has to lie on ground (dirt paths, farmland and slabs count too). The ring may follow the terrain, up and down by up to 4 blocks.
- Right-click the stake to open its overview. It shows the size of the pit, e.g. Pit: 8×8, 64 blocks, or what is wrong with the ring, and how big and deep the pit digger may dig (At most 64 blocks, 8 deep).
- Set the depth with - and + (1 to 8 blocks for a novice).
- Link at least one chest (+ Chest). A hired villager without a job finds the stake by itself; Assign picks a specific one.
- Right-click the pit digger with its wage (emeralds), a shovel, a pickaxe and ladders, one per block of depth. Torches are optional.
Without a chest, a shovel, a pickaxe or ladders the pit digger does not work.
The ring¶
- Everything inside the ring is dug, seen from above. Any shape works, not only rectangles.
- The blocks under the strings stay: they are the rim of the pit, and the strings stay where they are.
- At most 64 blocks of ground inside for a novice, e.g. 8×8 or 4×16, and at least 2. See Size and level.
- Make the ring bigger or change its shape whenever you like: the stake takes the new ring the next time you open its overview or the pit digger looks at it.
- If a string is taken away, the pit digger waits (the string ring is broken) until it is back in the same place.
If the ring is not right, the overview and the pit digger's status say why: not closed (with the place where it ends), too big or too uneven.
Size and level¶
How big and how deep a pit may be grows with the pit digger's level:
| Level | Ground inside | Depth |
|---|---|---|
| Novice | 64 (8×8) | 8 |
| Apprentice | 100 (10×10) | 10 |
| Journeyman | 144 (12×12) | 12 |
| Expert | 196 (14×14) | 14 |
| Master | 256 (16×16) | 16 |
The pit digger does not trade, so for now it stays a novice; levels for work are planned. Without a pit digger at the stake the novice's limits apply. A depth set deeper than the pit digger may dig is kept; it digs as deep as it may.
Storeys¶
A pit deeper than 8 blocks gets storeys: at a depth of 8, 12, ... the pit digger lays a floor of planks across the whole pit (the ladder column stays open), carried by pillars of logs every 4 blocks. Each floor is a level you can use, and nobody stands above a deep hole. A floor only comes where at least 2 layers are left below it.
- Once the three layers below a floor are dug, it lays the floor from below before it digs on. Where a pillar goes, it puts a log into every block it digs, so the pillars grow down with the pit, from the bottom up to the first floor.
- Give it planks and logs like ladders, or put them into a village chest. It only takes them while its pit gets floors. Without them it climbs out and waits (needs planks for the floor, needs logs for the pillars).
- The overview says what the storeys take, e.g. 1 floor(s): 99 planks, 8 logs; holding string shows the floors and pillars in orange.
| Pit | Floors | Planks | Logs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10×10, 10 deep | 1 | 99 | 8 |
| 12×12, 12 deep | 1 | 143 | 36 |
| 14×14, 14 deep | 2 | 381 | 54 |
| 16×16, 16 deep | 2 | 494 | 128 |
Depth¶
The depth counts from the highest string of the ring: with a depth of 4 the pit goes 4 blocks down from the ground under that string. Higher ground inside the ring (a hill) is dug away too.
How it works¶
During work hours the pit digger:
- takes the top layer of the pit, starting next to the ladder,
- digs every block of the layer with the shovel or the pickaxe, whichever is faster. It takes about 6 times as long as you with the same tool, at least 1.5 seconds per block,
- puts a ladder against the wall as soon as the ladder column gets deeper, so the ladder always reaches the bottom,
- goes down the next layer, and so on until the depth is reached,
- climbs out and brings everything to its chest when its pockets are full, after 160 blocks a day and when the pit is done. At the end of the work day it climbs out too.
It only goes in and out by the ladder. The ladder goes into the column inside the ring closest to the stake; Ladder in the menu moves it: click it, then right-click the string where the ladder should go. The ladders stay in the finished pit, so you can climb out too.
With torches it lights the floor of the pit, about every six blocks, so nothing spawns in it at night.
What it digs and what not¶
- It digs natural blocks: dirt, grass, sand, gravel, clay, mud, snow, stone and its kinds (granite, diorite, andesite, tuff, deepslate, ...), ores and plants. Data packs can add more, see Data packs.
- Builds stay: planks, bricks, glass, chests, logs and the like. A column under such a block stays as a pillar, so nothing is left hanging in the air.
- A block its pickaxe is too weak for (a diamond ore with a stone pickaxe) stays as a pillar. With a better pickaxe it digs it next time.
- It never digs a block next to water or lava, so the pit does not flood. The status says water or lava in the pit.
- Sand and gravel that fall down are dug in the next round.
- Everything it digs goes to the chest, nothing is thrown away. If the chest is full, it waits.
- The shovel and the pickaxe wear out like yours. Shortly before one breaks, it gives it back (Worn tools) and uses its spare; without one it waits for a new one.