Crouch Vein Miner

Quickstart

1. Equip a pickaxe (or other appropriate tool) that can harvest the ore you want to mine.
2. Find an exposed ore block — coal, iron, copper, gold, redstone, lapis, diamond, emerald, or nether/deepslate variants.
3. Hold Crouch (Sneak) and start breaking the ore block.
4. Keep sneaking while you mine — the whole connected vein of matching ore will collapse block by block until it's exhausted.
5. Watch the action bar for a message telling you how many blocks were mined.

That's it — no crafting, no items, no setup. Just crouch and mine.

Overview

Crouch Vein Miner lets you clear out entire ore veins in one go. Instead of tediously breaking each ore block by hand, sneaking while mining an ore triggers a chain reaction that automatically breaks every connected block of the same ore type nearby.

Bigger veins take more time and effort to fully mine — the game slows down your breaking speed proportionally to how large the vein is, so a sprawling vein of ore will feel noticeably slower to clear than a small cluster.

What It Adds

• Vein mining behavior for all ore blocks (including deepslate and nether variants) — no new items, blocks, or recipes are introduced.
• Automatic chain breaking: mining one ore block while crouched breaks every directly connected block of the same ore family.
• Dynamic mining speed: the larger the detected vein, the slower each block breaks, keeping big veins balanced against small ones.
• Tool safety check: vein mining automatically stops if your tool is about to break, so you don't lose your pickaxe mid-vein.
• Feedback messages: an action bar message reports how many ore blocks were cleared from the vein.

How To Use

• Trigger vein mining: Hold the Sneak/Crouch key while breaking any ore block. Standing still or moving while crouched both work — the key is that you're sneaking at the moment you break the ore.
• Stop vein mining early: Simply stop sneaking, or move away — non-crouched mining breaks only a single block as normal.
• Tool requirements: You must be able to harvest the ore normally (correct tool tier/material) for vein mining to trigger on it. Blocks you couldn't normally break by hand or with your current tool won't be included.
• Vein detection: Only blocks of the same ore type touching each other (directly or through a connected chain) are included in a single vein-mining action.
• Vein size limits: Very large veins are capped at a maximum number of blocks per activation, so extremely long ore chains break in one sweep, up to a generous cap, without lag or runaway breaking.
• Tool durability protection: If your tool is about to break during a vein mining session, the process stops immediately and warns you so your last hit doesn't destroy the tool.

Abilities And Mechanics

• Ore family matching: The mod checks connected blocks against the same ore "family" (e.g., all iron ore variants) so mixed veins of different ores won't cross-trigger each other.
• Break speed scaling: The time it takes to break each ore block increases with the size of the vein being mined, meaning small clusters clear quickly while sprawling veins take noticeably longer per block.
• Creative Mode: Players in Creative Mode can vein mine without worrying about tool durability, since tool damage checks are skipped for them.
• Survival Mode: Tool durability is tracked carefully — the process halts safely before your tool would break from overuse.

Progression And Strategy

• Use vein mining to efficiently strip-mine known ore pockets instead of manually breaking each block, saving time when branch mining or cave diving.
• Be mindful of large veins: since bigger veins mine more slowly per block, it may sometimes be faster to break a few blocks manually first to split a very large vein into smaller ones.
• Keep an eye on your tool's durability before diving into a big vein — while vein mining protects your tool from breaking mid-chain, you'll still need to repair or swap tools between large mining sessions.
• Works well alongside any tools or enchantments that improve normal mining speed or reach, since it interacts with your existing tool without needing anything crafted or equipped specially.