Well claw, i watch a youtuber called The Syndicate Project, i'm not sure if you heard of him or not. He recently finished a series called Lonely Island Hardcore. In this series, he survives on an island in hardcore mode. For multiple episodes of the series, he goes strip mining in random directions (up, down, diagonal, sideways) and finds diamonds and multiple precious ores. Me being a fan of Syndicate, i thought i would give that method a try, and it worked for me. Now it is coincidental that there were many ores in the directions i mined in, and since there were, i continued with that method. I can see that you have doubts, but i promise you it was all by luck, and that i do not have the x-ray mod, or any mod at all.