Breaking all the adjacent blocks to get a full Rock block is boring and tedious.
So I managed to create a little mechaninc a bit more immersive and dynamic. This is Salty's Stone Harvesting.

Okay first things first, This can get a little confusing at first but the concept is pretty simple. Now the rock blocks are divided in "quadrants", each face of the block has eight of them:

Quadrant Mapping:

upper left
upper center
upper right
left center
right center
lower left
lower center
lower right

The blocks still looks the same and those quadrants have no specific visual representation, you'll have a natural feeling once you get used to the block face layout, and a sound clue will play when you hit a quadrant.

Explanation:
The mod will create quadrants for any FACE of a rock block you left click with a hammer and chisel in hand, and from that will read for any and all side adjacent blocks for the FACE you clicked. It will read all eight blocks surrounding that FACE SIDES and from that it will register what quadrants are connecting to the adjacent blocks on that face and that you need to click. Each hit on quadrants consumes one durability from the chisel (this can be disabled in the config files).

The mod do not counts for any adjacent block on the front or the back of the face you're working on. Only the sides.

The mod will work with any direction the face you're working on is facing: north, south, east, weast, up, and down. And will translate the quadrants positions accordingly. This means you can work with any rock above or below you.

Confused?

Imagine that the rock you want to collect is stuck and that you need to "loosen" all the edges holding it in place to get it.

So let's go to the tutorial, i've prepared some scenarios that you may face using the mod:

Pillar:

This is the most basic and easiest to understand:

See how with a single hit the block dropped? That's because It only had one adjacent block for the face I clicked (or for any face that I could've clicked, besides up) this adjacent block being the block below it. So in that case, the only chiseling needed was the lower center quadrant since it was the one connecting to the adjacent block.

Cross:

The cross shape is still very simple, but does require more clicks:

Here I analyse that the Rock I want to harvest has 4 adjacent blocks on the sides of the face I'm aiming. So in this case I need to click the quadrants Upper Center, Right Center, Lower Center and Left Center since they´re the ones connecting to the rocks around it. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. The order that you click the quadrants makes no difference but all of the required quadrants in a single face needs to be completed for the block to drop.

Wall:

Now a scenario that uses all the 8 adjacent blocks and the 8 quadrants of the block face:

In this one I understand that the face I was looking had in all it sides adjacent blocks. In that case I will need to chisel all eight quadrants of that face. The last click didn't triggered the sound clue for the quadrant hit so I had to left click it again, not because I missed the quadrant, but because the cooldown was still active. (The cooldown is meant to prevent aimless and unwanted clicks)

There's countless other scenarios to make as an example but now it's up to you! Read the environment, analyse the adjacent blocks, experiment with the mod and get that sweet sweet rock block! ;D

check out my other mods here:

SaltyWater