The long-awaited Caves and Cliffs Part 2 update for Minecraft brings a whole new ore generation system, introducing new ways to mine diamonds. Diamonds are the most precious materials in Minecraft. The 1.18 update adds tons of additional layers to the world, allowing players to dig deeper than ever before, and they will now have to do so in order to find the game's most important resource.
There are 64 additional layers that were added in the Caves and Cliffs Part 2 Minecraft update beyond where bedrock used to lie. The previous elevation designations have not changed; new layers were simply added to the top and bottom of the range, so the new layers are layers Y -1 to Y -64. Instead of regular stone, these layers are comprised mostly of deepslate, a darker and tougher material that takes a bit longer to break. There is also a new lava table, or, a depth at which lava is more commonly generated, and it is found at Y -54.
The big change to diamond ore generation in Minecraft is a complete shift in depth. Diamonds now generate far deeper than before but follow the same Y16 maximum height that they used to. The difference is, instead of only having 16 layers in which to spawn, diamondS will now spawn in all 80 layers, from Y16 and below. This means that it will be a bit tougher to narrow down all of the diamond veins, but they still follow a triangular distribution. The deeper players go, the more diamonds they will find. This will also help them explore the new biomes in Minecraft 1.18.
Best Places to Mine Diamonds in Minecraft 1.18
The best place to mine diamonds in Minecraft 1.18 is down near where bedrock spawns, but there is some question as to exactly how close players will want to get. Since diamonds will be more common the farther down players go, many may decide to branch mine all the way down in the Y -60 to Y -64 area to find the highest concentration of diamond deposits. The issue that arises with that method is that lava pools will be fairly common at these depths, and they will interrupt branches of a mine far more often.
Miners that want to be as time-efficient as possible will most likely be looking to create their branch mines at Y -53. This will make sure branches aren't interrupted as often by lava, increasing the speed and coverage of the mining operation by allowing for longer contiguous branches. While the diamond concentration won't be as high, players will also not have to double-back as often to create new branches when old ones are cut off by pools of lava. However, while mining for diamonds down at these depths, players' branches may still run into some of Minecraft's new scenic cave biomes.
Minecraft is available on PC, Android, iOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.