Throwback to my first time cheating at multiplayer minecraft. Put your torches down, let me explain. And no, I haven’t done it since.
I don’t remember what version it was, only that it was a very long time ago. Food healed hearts directly, and- this is the important part- mossy cobblestone could not be crafted or mined anywhere in the overworld save the floors of dungeons.
It also was a brilliant, vibrant green, so much more aggressive than its current gentle texture, but that’s neither here nor there.
I was playing on a survival server I’ve long since forgotten the name of, and I was putting the finishing touches on my lovely brick house. But the floor, no no. I was a picky child; only the finest of flooring would do.
I wanted mossy cobblestone.
Immediately I was at an impasse. I could strip mine and explore caves in the hope of finding one dungeon; but I needed two whole stacks of it for my floor. There was no /locate command at the time, and I knew nobody else well enough to ask for it. And at the time, chunkbase and other seed scanning tools didn’t exist; not that it would have helped, since I didn’t have the world seed.
Perplexed, I logged off and consulted with friends at school the next day.
There, I was advised to try an x-ray texture pack.
So I did.
And it worked a treat! The dungeons were rendered perfectly visible to me, and I easily dug straight down (smart and subtle!) and raked in the precious mossy cobblestone I needed.
At one point, one of the mods asked me in chat if I was x-raying. Having just turned off the pack minutes before the message came through, I cheerfully said no and skipped off to finish my floor.
At no point during this entire exercise did it occur to child me to use the x-ray pack to mine for the diamonds I could clearly see.