Tutorials/Cobblestone farming/Basic CSGs

Notes about the schematics here: Gold blocks indicate "any (suitable) block". For a cobblestone generator, "suitable" probably means "fireproof". Water and lava source blocks may be marked with "s" when there is possible confusion. Cobblestone or smooth stone appear only where they form. An "x" indicates a place to stand while mining the cobblestone.

Basic Generators
For the basic trench generators, you should place the water first, because if the lava flows before the water reaches it, it may "resist" the water and not form cobblestone. Of course, if you place them both fast enough, the lava won't have time to flow anyway.

Design A is most basic of all, design B (from this video) is slightly more compact (and safer). However, both will lose some cobble to the lava. Design C (from this video) will wash the mined cobblestone towards the player, so as to minimize loss. When building design C, you can leave a block where the cobblestone will form, and mine it to start the process.

Fountain Generator
Design D is a more complex construction, which begins with an 8&times;5 wall with a 4&times;4 pool at the base. It uses a total of 80 blocks, 4 buckets of water, and 2 buckets of lava. The obsidian is optional, but using obsidian instead of other blocks helps prevent accidentally mining through the back wall. Place the water after building, and the lava last of all. (For the adventurous, a fair bit of the back wall could be removed after building the other blocks off it.) The building and use of this design is demonstrated in this video. The finished design will produce two blocks of cobblestone at a time, and when mined, those will fall into the water and be washed towards the player.

"From Below" generator
This design is in fact a midsize building, with the generator core on the roof. The interior is flooded, and you mine from within. As with any building, unless you're in Peaceful difficulty or Creative mode, you'll want to secure it against monsters.