minecraft-java-edition
I would like to mine lots of obsidian without paying a lot of attention. I was thinking about a 1X1 column of obsidian going straight to bedrock so could look down and put a weight on my track pad button.
What is the best way to make a 1X1 column of obsidian underground? I would prefer if I did not need a huge number of lava buckets. I was thinking maybe something about the redstone to obsidian glitch.
You should try setting up an obsidian farm! It requires at least one bucket, but will go faster the more buckets you have. Consider the following picture:
Surround a 1x7 trough with some safe blocks. It doesn't matter what it's made of, as long as the blocks won't burn away (so avoid wood, cloth, etc). This is the object outlined in green below.
Now you should have a 1x7 depression -- you want to put lava blocks into this. Be careful when emptying your lavabuckets, because if you try to place a lava source block on top of another lava source block you'll empty your bucket, losing the lava. I didn't have lava accessible, so for the picture I used cloth. It is outlined in Red.
After you've got your seven lava blocks, simply place a water block on the rim of trough, indicated by the light blue outlined wood block in the picture. The water will flow over each of the seven lava blocks, turning them into obsidian.
This is known colloquially as "obsidian farming".
Mining while underwater or swimming takes 5 times as long.
Best Answer
Whether you use lava buckets or redstone to obsidian, my recommendation for the actual mining part would be to get a copy of InfinitiesLoop's controlpack mod.
It contains a couple features which will help, specifically auto-run and auto-mine. With one keypress each you will be able to mine and move without any further input. It's a client-side mod (it'll work fine with your server) and works with mcpatcher.
Also, making a line of obsidian to mine is FAR easier and less time consuming than making a column.
One last suggestion is to consider building molds for your lava blocks wherever you want obsidian and then cooling it in place instead of making it somewhere else, mining it, and then placing it. Forming it in place with molds saves me a lot of time when I'm building obsidian structures.