How to Build and Program a Turtle for Mining

Crafting and Fueling

Craft a Turtle. Place it in the world and right-click to open its inventory. Turtles need fuel to move and dig. Valid fuel includes coal, charcoal, and other burnable items — drop them into the Turtle's inventory slot.

Equip the Turtle with a pickaxe by placing one in its inventory. Without a pickaxe, the Turtle cannot mine stone-type blocks. A diamond pickaxe lasts longest, but any pickaxe works for short jobs.

Writing a Mining Program

Right-click the Turtle and open the Lua shell. Write a simple tunnel program:

`lua

for i = 1, 20 do

turtle.dig()

turtle.forward()

end

`

Save it with edit mine and run it with mine. The Turtle digs forward and moves one block at a time. Add turtle.digUp() or turtle.digDown() to clear a taller tunnel.

Upgrading the Turtle

Use a Computer Upgrade recipe to convert a Turtle into an Advanced Turtle, which gives it color output and more peripherals. Attach a Wireless Modem to the Turtle's side and call rednet.open("left") so you can send it commands from a base Computer. You can also attach a Wired Modem and run Networking Cable back to a fixed Computer if you prefer a physical link.