Digging for diamonds

There are advices on how to get diamonds from the mine, while different numbers are spread on how many explosions it needs to get one diamond. My own findings are that it needs about 8 explosions to get one gem. This is an average and I thought it would be great if we found a global number.

Some people say it takes them 45 shovels to receive 10 gems. Or even 15. They say this number is based on a "feeling", because once they blow their mine up, they might receive a diamond with the next or second next explosion as well. As they only have a handful shovels, they do not realise that their further 20 explosions might not yield in anything else but ores piling up in your barn, eating valuable storage space...

In order to come to realistic numbers, you should keep track of at least 100 explosions, the more, the better. You do not need to do them all in one go, just keep track of the results after every single explosion. My personal average is 1:8, meaning that I need around 80 explosions to yield 10 diamonds. This number may vary, it would be great if you could post your own ratio so that we can compare!

I prefer to use shovels and anyway, them I am getting the most when wheating. I am thinking very well about the right moment to blow the mine, since e.g. 80 explosions will clutter my barn with 80x4 = 320 ores. My barn is quite large but best time is always after having expanded silo and barn since this gives me well more than 300 free spaces.

What is your personal ratio, do you need 80 explosions for 10 diamonds as well?

I ran some statistics a while back, tracking almost 200 explosions. I came up with a ratio of ~1 diamond for every 20-22 ore mined (i.e. 1 diamond per 5 shovels, 1 diamond per 6.6 TNT, 1 diamond per 10 dynamite).

Here the overall results. Do not read too much into the exact percentages, especially in TNT / dynamite - due to the low drop rates there, only 1 diamond more or less has a big impact on the percentages.

	explosions	diamonds	ore	diamonds/expl.	diamonds/ore
shovels	139	25	556	18.0%	4.5%
tnt	24	4	72	16.7%	5.6%
dynamite	34	3	68	8.8%	4.4%

Which then brings you to the question - can Tom be profitable?
if you get him for 10 days on special, that is 90 diamonds spent. in 10 days, you can send him off ~80 times (yes, theoretically more, but I like to sleep). 80 times with ~8 shovels each time = 640 shovels. with an 185 drop rate per shovel, that should give 115 diamonds in return - 25 more than you spent. Although calling tom 80 times in 10 days is pretty intense.

If you only get him for 1 day at 15 diamonds, it is not profitable (8 orders = 64 shovels = 12 diamonds = loss of 3).

Thanks for this precise response! I was just counting explosions regardless of the used mean, it is very interesting to see that it is the number of ores but not the explosion itself which yield in diamonds. Using my more rough way to calculate, your average ratio again is near 1:8 or closer to 1:7 (3 diamonds for 21.6 explosives -> taken from how many of which kind of explosive yield in 1 diamond)

Since I refuse to buy diamonds before there is a confirmation button and I am wasting too many diamonds of the free ones, it is nearly impossible to safe 90 gems. If I hire Tom, then for 15 gems/1 day. He will never be able to pay back is rental price but he might be usefull for making xp and/or coins.

It wpuld be great if more people could add their ratios to be more on the safe side.