Fast tunnel mining on Minecraft Bedrock with LLS EZ Miner: setup, aiming and a strip-mining plan

LLS EZ Miner turns one pickaxe of your choice into a tunnel borer: every block it breaks takes a 3 wide, 4 tall face with it. Your other picks keep mining one block at a time, so you can dig with one and collect ores with another.

This guide covers setting it up, how to aim so the tunnel comes out clean, what the pattern deliberately leaves behind, and a strip-mining layout that makes the most of it. It’s written against version 0.1.0, a beta.

Setting it up

Every player gets an EZ Miner item the first time they spawn with the pack on. If you lose it, craft another from one stick, shapeless.

1. Name a pickaxe. Put it in an anvil, type a name, and take it out. Renaming costs one level of experience. Any name works; something short like Tunnel is easiest to spot.
2. Carry it and right-click the EZ Miner. A menu opens:
   • EZ mining on: the master switch
   • Pattern: Tunnel, 3 wide, 4 tall is the only one in 0.1.0
   • Pickaxe that mines the pattern: lists every renamed pickaxe you’re carrying. Choose yours
   • Leave ores for my other pickaxe: on by default (see below)
3. Save. Chat confirms the setting, for example on, Tunnel, 3 wide, 4 tall, with Tunnel.

Settings belong to each player, so everyone on a Realm or server sets up their own pick. The binding is by name, so any pickaxe with exactly that name mines the pattern. If your tunnel pick breaks, rename a new one the same and it picks up where the old one left off.

“I crafted a stick and got a Zone Viewer”

LLS Night Lite’s Zone Viewer is also one stick, and Bedrock only shows one result for identical recipes. Put the Zone Viewer back in the grid on its own and it turns into an EZ Miner, and an EZ Miner on its own turns back into a Zone Viewer.

Aiming: keep the floor level

The tunnel face is built around the block you hit: that block’s row, one row below it and two rows above, one block either side. Which row you hit decides where the floor ends up.

• Hit the block at head height (the upper of the two blocks in front of you). The face then runs from your feet to two blocks over your head. The floor stays level and you get a 4-tall tunnel you can walk straight down.
• Hit the block at your feet and the face drops one row: it digs a block below your floor. Every swing does it, so the tunnel steps down into a trench.

The direction comes from the way you’re looking, snapped to north, east, south or west. Looking diagonally picks whichever is closer. Looking up or down doesn’t tilt the pattern; it always cuts a vertical face.

Walking pace: break the head-height block, step forward, break the next one. Each swing clears 12 blocks of wall, and the tunnel is wide enough to put a rail or a path down the middle with room either side.

What the pattern leaves behind

The pattern only takes what you’d get something from, and it never takes what you’d regret:

• Ores stay in the wall while Leave ores for my other pickaxe is on. Swap to your Fortune pick, or Silk Touch, and mine them by hand. Switch the option off and ores come out with the face.
• Anything this pick can’t harvest stays, for example diamond ore with a stone pick or obsidian with an iron one.
• Anything that would drop nothing stays, for example glass and ice.
• Never touched: chests, barrels, furnaces and anything else with an inventory, water and lava, spawners and trial spawners, vaults, budding amethyst, portals, bedrock and command blocks.

Durability, enchantments and XP

Mining is fair: every extra block costs durability the same as mining it by hand, and Unbreaking applies to each one. Fortune and Silk Touch apply to every block in the face, and ores mined without Silk Touch drop their usual experience.

The pattern stops one hit before the pick would break. At that point it only mines the block you hit, and chat tells you to repair it or swap picks. Mending, an anvil or a grindstone all work; just keep the name.

Sneak while mining to break a single block with the tunnel pick, for example to take a torch spot or a step without cutting a whole face.

A strip mine at diamond level

A 3×4 tunnel is ideal for strip mining: it shows a lot of wall per block walked, and the spare height leaves room for lighting and a track.

Where to dig. In current Bedrock, diamond ore is most common deep in the deepslate layer, around Y -58. Bedrock has no F3 screen, so turn on Show Coordinates in the world settings to see your height. The bedrock floor starts at Y -64, so -58 sits a few blocks above it.

Layout:

1. Dig a staircase or a water drop down to about Y -58, and set up a base room.
2. Run one main tunnel in a straight line.
3. Every few blocks, turn and run side tunnels off it at right angles. Since each tunnel is three wide, a gap of three or four solid blocks between side tunnels lets you see into every block of rock between them.
4. Leave ores in the walls (the default) and work back along each side tunnel with your Fortune pick.

Watch for lava. Lava pools are common this deep, and a 3×4 face opens a lot of rock at once. Carry a bucket of water and blocks to plug a leak. The pattern never breaks liquids, but it will open the stone holding one back.

Light as you go. A deep tunnel needs lighting to stay clear of mobs. Torches every few blocks work, or a few lamps from LLS Night Lite spawn-proof the whole mine at any light level.

Turning it off

Open the menu and switch EZ mining on off, or set the pickaxe to None. Every pick then mines normally. Your settings stay saved for next time.

Patterns planned for later updates include a staircase down and a 1×2. Ideas for others are welcome on the Discord.