That's only one small piece of the scaffolding you'd need though, right? Just seems to me like that's a lot of work.
I don't need to completely light up the ceiling though, just enough to see (I do the same on the ground but there I'm placing new light sources as I progress into unlit areas, while I can pillar up towards a dark area on the ceiling without lighting up the area between it and a nearby lit area, making branches off to the sides to access ores).
Adding more tree styles like you have could be a good tool, although it would be a lot of work and I'm not sure how to make them all growable with saplings.
I made it so they have a random chance of growing in each form, with the biome having an impact on the chance; my code for birch trees looks like this:
// Chance of larger variants of trees (e.g. big oak, set to 1/10 in vanilla)
int bigTreeChance = 8;
// Reduces growth chance of larger trees (only applied to 2x2 or larger sizes)
float growthChance = 1.0F;
// Large birch trees with 2x2 trunks
for (offsetX = 0; offsetX >= -1; --offsetX)
{
for (offsetZ = 0; offsetZ >= -1; --offsetZ)
{
if (this.isSameSapling(par1World, posX + offsetX, posY, posZ + offsetZ, 0, 1, treeType))
{
// 50% chance of growing (about 13 minutes or 9 bonemeal). Trees in Big Birch Forest and Mega Mixed Forest
// are taller and take longer to grow.
growthChance = 0.5F;
int min = 12;
int max = 20;
if (biome == BiomeGenBase.bigBirchForest || biome == BiomeGenBase.bigBirchForestHills)
{
growthChance = 0.375F;
min = 16;
max = 24;
}
else if (biome == BiomeGenBase.megaMixedForest || biome == BiomeGenBase.megaMixedForestHills)
{
growthChance = 0.25F;
min = 24;
max = 30;
}
treeGenerator = new WorldGenBigBirchTree(min, max);
trunkSize = 2;
break;
}
}
if (treeGenerator != null) break;
}
if (treeGenerator == null)
{
offsetX = 0;
offsetZ = 0;
if (par5Random.nextInt(bigTreeChance) == 0)
{
// Larger birch trees using Great Forest tree type; trees in Mega Mixed Forest average 8 blocks taller
boolean mmf = (biome == BiomeGenBase.megaMixedForest || biome == BiomeGenBase.megaMixedForestHills);
treeGenerator = new WorldGenGreatForestTree(BIRCH, mmf ? 20 : 12, mmf ? 28 : 20);
}
else
{
// 25% of birch saplings grow into poplar trees, 50% in Poplar Grove
int poplarChance = (biome == BiomeGenBase.poplarGrove || biome == BiomeGenBase.poplarGroveHills ? 2 : 4);
if (par5Random.nextInt(poplarChance) == 0)
{
treeGenerator = new WorldGenPoplarTree();
}
else
{
// Birch trees can grow taller in Birch Forest Hills
int heightVariation = (par5Random.nextInt(3) == 0 && biome == BiomeGenBase.birchForestHills ? 7 : 0);
treeGenerator = new WorldGenSmallTrees(5, heightVariation, BIRCH, BlockStates.leaves, BIRCH, false);
}
}
}
There is also another interesting mechanic visible here, I modify the chance of a sapling advancing its growth stage/growing a tree so larger trees grow more slowly, especially ones with 2x2 trunks (these otherwise grow faster because any one sapling can trigger growth of the whole tree).
Another variant of tree are "bushes", similar to the ones that cover the ground in jungles; these will generate if a tree failed to grow due to an obstruction 3-4 blocks above it:
// Attempts to generate a bush if tree failed to grow due to insufficient height (there must be a growth-blocking
// block 3 or 4 blocks above bush)
if (!flag && trunkSize == 1 && posY < 252 && (!WorldGenTMCW.canTreeGrowThroughBlock(chunkCache.getBlockId(posX, posY + 3, posZ), false) || !WorldGenTMCW.canTreeGrowThroughBlock(chunkCache.getBlockId(posX, posY + 4, posZ), false)))
{
if (this.blockID == BlockStates.sapling)
{
if (treeType == OAK || treeType == JUNGLE)
{
flag = (new WorldGenBush(Block.leaves.getBlockState(treeType), treeType, WorldGenBush.JUNGLE)).generate(chunkCache, posX, posY, posZ);
}
else if (treeType == SPRUCE)
{
flag = (new WorldGenBush(BlockStates.leaves_spruce, 1, WorldGenBush.PLAYER_GROWN)).generate(chunkCache, posX, posY, posZ);
}
}
else if (this.blockID == BlockStates.sapling2 && treeType <= AUTUMNAL_BROWN)
{
// Autumnal saplings
treeGenerator.setParameters(WorldGenAutumnalTrees.PLAYER_GROWN_BUSH | treeType & 3);
flag = treeGenerator.generate(chunkCache, posX, posY, posZ);
}
}
When I first added new types of trees I just made many biome-specific so they could use the vanilla saplings; 2x2 big oaks only grew in Big Oak Forest, otherwise becoming a "mega tree", palm trees grew from jungle saplings in beach biomes, and so on.
I also do have my own tree types with their own saplings and leaves, one interesting thing I did was add "Dark/Swamp Oak" saplings for dark oak and swamp oak trees respectively, the latter being ungrowable in vanilla (previously, and for my first world I made oak saplings become swamp oaks in swamps, they do still only have vines in swamps, as do small jungle trees in jungles, etc):
for (offsetX = 0; offsetX >= -1; --offsetX)
{
for (offsetZ = 0; offsetZ >= -1; --offsetZ)
{
if (this.isSameSapling(par1World, posX + offsetX, posY, posZ + offsetZ, 0, 1, treeType))
{
// Growth rate is about 10 minutes or 7 bonemeal
growthChance = 0.666667F;
treeGenerator = new WorldGenRoofedForestTree();
trunkSize = 2;
break;
}
}
if (treeGenerator != null) break;
}
// Roofed forest saplings also double as swamp oak saplings; trees in swamps generate with vines
if (treeGenerator == null)
{
offsetX = 0;
offsetZ = 0;
treeGenerator = new WorldGenSwampTree(biome == BiomeGenBase.swampland || biome == BiomeGenBase.swampRiver || biome == BiomeGenBase.tropicalSwamp);
}
I found a village for the first time in this world, it wasn't actually that far away, at 300, 450, but with the way I explore it could have been months before I found it (I've been mostly exploring towards the east-south as I already went in that direction to find a stronghold; on average a level 3 map takes about 1 1/2 months to explore and I completely explore a map before going to the next):
As far as generation goes the village was nearly perfect, no doors buried or too high, mainly because the ground was so flat; the biome was the second Meadow biome, aside from the one I spawned in, which was hillier, and is otherwise one of the flattest biomes. This is also helped by a change I made to help ensure the ground level is measured as accurately as possible (limited by chunk loading and population mechanics; vanilla only measures the ground level within a chunk-sized region while I do so within a 2x2 chunk region, in vanilla the worst-case results in just a single block being measured, i.e. a corner of the structure intersects the chunk-sized region, while in my case at least a 9x9 area can be measured). Another more recent improvement I made to villages was to prevent buildings from directly touching, with at least 1 block between them, similar to an earlier change I made to prevent mineshaft corridors from generating right on top of each other (only within a single structure, otherwise their spacing minimizes the chance of two intersecting).
I'll also note that villages aren't that uncommon at all, in TMCW or vanilla 1.6.4, despite popular perception that they have become much more common in newer versions, which I put down to changes in playstyles and biome layout/size. For example, in the first video here they found four villages, at 22:30 and 37.00 (both in the same world) and 1:06:00 and 125:45 (also both in the same world); the second video is of an established world where they set up base in a village with another within sight (at 16 chunk render distance):
Of course, your mileage may vary; in TMCWv5 the 5 villages I found were within a relatively small area to the northwest of spawn while there were none in the rest of the world; TMCWv4 was smaller but had 7 villages more spread out:
Another thing that is different about villages is the blacksmith, which may have more loot, including diamond equipment (which for the most part is equivalent to iron in vanilla, same damage, protection, speed), enchanted books with Efficiency (40%), Unbreaking (40%), or Mending (20%), and an actual anvil in the front where the double stone slab is (presumably supposed to be an anvil), which will be at least slightly damaged (out of 4 levels, including a new "moderately damaged" state):
Also, this shows that Giants are a bit more than just oversized zombies - I'd surrounded the village with a 3 block high wall yet it still got over it since I increased their jump/step height:
I found another biome, "Lake", as a sub-biome of Mixed Forest, and many others, as well as a full-size biome which contains islands of other biomes; they can be distinguished form areas that are simply underwater, which are otherwise less common than in vanilla, by the presence of water plants and mobs (similar to modern versions I made them, only able to spawn in rivers, oceans, and lakes, with the exception of squid underground, which spawn as glow squid):
The mesa biome had at least one "mesa mineshaft", generating at y=68, similar to the ones added in 1.10, except those seem to simply be normal mineshafts generated at a higher altitude, I actually have a second layer of mineshafts that generate higher up so mesas can have over twice as many mineshafts as other biomes, restricted by the size of the biome as they only generate if a mesa biome is within 32 blocks of the center, but not by the generation of other underground features within the area; they are also much smaller with a maximum span of only 32 blocks (about 40 blocks from their center since the length of a piece adds to this; for comparison, vanilla sets the span at 80 blocks / about 100 total, the difference in span/total being due to corridors having 2 segments in mesa mineshafts and 2-4 in normal mineshafts. The largest mineshafts in TMCW have a span of 110/130):
I'll also note that I implemented mesa mineshafts in a far better way than Mojang did; similar to them I have code that prevents pieces from generating fully exposed to the sky, but this check is only applied to surface mineshafts, not mineshafts in general, e.g. you can no longer create Superflat worlds with floating mineshafts and they will be missing in ravines exposed to the sky, and also seem to consider trees/leaves as blocking sky exposure as they will generate in trees (I ignore leaves and wood when checking for sky exposure):
Some other features unique to my mesa biomes include gold ore generated as part of the structure of mesa mineshafts (it is otherwise only generated deeper down as usual) and iron ore generated at all altitudes; ores above sea level only generate if they aren't exposed to the sky (above or adjacent), keeping the surface clean (this is also done in other biomes with surface blocks that allow ores to replace them, e.g. Rocky Mountains appears as all stone while having the normal dirt/gravel/coal under the surface):
There is also a quite large looking cave in the mesa which I haven't explored yet; I'm also getting close to the point (a 512 block radius from the origin, e.g. 368, 368 is a distance of 520) where I can start finding far larger caves and other features:
Elsewhere, I found a "vertical cave system" and "random cave cluster"; a "cave cluster" is a smaller scale variant of a larger cave system; "vertical" caves go up/down along diagonals/spirals while "random" caves are relatively narrow tunnels with randomized rooms of various shapes along them, the one shown is filled with random blocks; and the first clearly larger circular room with a diameter of 32 blocks, compared a maximum of 17 in vanilla (for statistical purposes I only count them if they reach at least twice this, or 34 blocks, and they can reach up to 71 blocks or about 73 times the volume of vanilla):
I ran into another new mob, "brown spider", a variant of normal spider which deals twice the damage (which is still only 4 on Normal, 6 on Hard) and inflicts either Weakness or Slowness (randomly applied one at a time, refreshed or changed once it wears off). Notably, the texture is based on a never-released version which first implemented spiders:
One of the more interesting types of dungeon - a creeper dungeon, with spawners modified so they can't be destroyed by creeper explosions (TNT does work); dungeons also have loot specific to the mob they spawn, with creeper dungeons having gunpowder and more rarely TNT (3 in this case, which is relatively uncommon):
I found one of the rarest and most valuable items in TMCW - a Smelting book, one of two "true treasure" enchantments which can only be found in chests and which makes iron and gold drop ingots and XP as if they were smelted in a furnace, as well as enables Fortune to be effectively used on them (I also added "raw ores", based on the 1.17 feature, as drops from ores when mined with a hammer item but I made Fortune only half as effective, plus hammers are slower, so Smelting is still a lot more valuable, besides the impact of not needing to smelt them with a furnace):
Another interesting enchantment I found was Swift Sneak, identical to the enchantment added in 1.19 except it isn't quite so rare; you can get it from the table but at a reduced chance and levels, as well as trading and fishing but only half as likely as other enchantments; as far as structure loot goes, Swift Sneak is most commonly found in mineshafts (added separately with its own chance in addition to normal enchanted books) while Smelting is most commonly found in "double dungeons", of which I haven't found any yet, but again can also be found on any book for any structure:
I also found an enchanted golden apple for the first time in this world; similar to 1.9 I removed the crafting recipe but did not nerf them (still with Regeneration V and Absorption I; 1.9 reduced Regeneration to II and increased Absorption to IV. IMO, such a nerf was unnecessary, considering it took over two real-time days of caving to find one and very few players ever do that much, I doubt even 1/10 as much, in a world, even if they are about twice as common per dungeon chest in modern versions (prior to 1.6 normal golden apples were about 4 times rarer, illustrating how Mojang has progressively made them more common, 1.6 increased the chance by nearly 10-fold and 1.9+ again more than tripled it, in addition to adding enchanted apples):
Now, I wanted to use Smelting, which is also especially valuable when you have like 3-4 different biome-specific ores to handle as it enables them (or the ingots they drop) to stack but you can't just add it to a pickaxe with Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending as it will be too expensive, and of these enchantments, Mending is the least valuable (yes, least valuable) since there is an alternative way to be able to indefinitely repair items while retaining the benefits of Efficiency and Unbreaking - similar to how renaming was intended(?) to work* you can use rubies with an item in the anvil to lower the prior work penalty by 6, or 3 workings (unlike 1.8+ the penalty increases by a flat 2 levels per working).
*The code for a renamed item looks like this (I made Mending work similarly except it just sets the penalty to 0, no subsequent addition of 2); this effectively reduces the penalty by 7 levels per working (-9 + 2), I assume that Mojang only wanted it to apply once, whether whether overall or per-rename is unknown (I consider this to be an official feature for 1.4-1.7 since they never bothered fixing what appears to have been known since it was added, possibly even before 1.4.2 was released (the Wiki already documented it by then), as with some other "features"; this is what happens when you have a bug-fixing policy like Mojang. Or perhaps they couldn't figure out a good alternative, as it is, repairing is so expensive that many didn't even bother, only two good enchantments on an item, or three but having to use single diamonds or grind down sacrifices? Way, way more balanced than 1.9 though, 6-7+ enchantments and only needing XP for the same effectiveness as Mending alone):
if (var6 != null && var10 < var6.getRepairCost()) var10 = var6.getRepairCost();
if (var5.hasDisplayName()) var10 -= 9;
if (var10 < 0) var10 = 0;
var10 += 2;
var5.setRepairCost(var10);
However, rubies can only be found in a handful of biomes; Autumnal Forest, Rocky Mountains, Savanna Mountains, Volcanic Wastelands; none of which I'd found yet, more due to the relatively small area I've explored so far than any of them being rare (in fact, along with Extreme Hills, Rocky Mountains has the highest probability of spawning of any biome in "normal " climate areas, with a weight of 5, or "common" plus "rare"). So in a significant departure from my normal playstyle I set out to find one of these biomes; I made a new map centered at 512, 512 (the same one I've been exploring) and set out to the south, then along the southern edge of the map; I didn't actually have to travel that far before I found one of these biomes, in fact, I almost did when going to the stronghold.
This is the path I took, along with a comparison of all three maps I've made for 512, 512 (stronghold, ruby, caving):
Along the way I found several new biomes and structures; Desert M, a variant of desert with more and taller cacti (growing up to 3-6 blocks tall depending on coordinates and naturally generating at their full height. I'll note that I fixed MC-234798 so cacti can otherwise never generate taller than 3 blocks) and Oasis sub-biomes with grass, water, palm trees, and passive mobs other than rabbits ("Desert M" was the name of a biome added in 1.7, which was just pre-1.6 desert with water lakes; as lakes were removed from the game entirely I assume there is no equivalent in 1.18+); another Quartz Desert with a Quartz Desert Pyramids, one of my own structures, a full-size Cherry Grove, and finally, a Rocky Mountains, partly off the southern edge of the map:
Desert M; in the distance is an Oasis:
Quartz Desert with Quartz Desert Pyramids:
Cherry Grove generated as a full-size biome, which is 1/128 of biomes in "normal" climate regions, otherwise you are more likely to find it as a small sub-biome within another biome:
Another Birch Forest, which I'd already found elsewhere:
Rocky Mountains, which is made up of multiple rings of sub-biomes to create large and relatively smooth mountains the size of an entire biome; the snow on top is the "summit" biome, rather than simply altitude (it is generally more variable than the relatively uniform snowline in 1.7+):
In another departure from my playstyle I did more "normal" caving, as I'd imagine most players do in order to find resources rather than just for the sake of it; I first looked around for a surface cave opening before digging down to find one (as common as caves may be underground surface openings can still be rare and widely scattered; complaints like this post are more due to being in an inconvenient location than indicative of their frequency, the Meadow I spawned in had 3-4 widely scattered cave openings, a couple next to each other). I collected a total of 37 rubies from 13 ores, out of a total of 629, making it about 4 times more common than diamond for this relatively small sample size (I didn't actually find any diamond, this is just based on what I average); overall ruby is about half as common based on what I found in TMCWv5:
This is an underground rendering of the entire world so far; aside from the mass of caves I've explored normally (as I do it) and a stronghold (normally the only underground structure I explore outside of my normal caving), and a few surface structures, you can see some caves and tunnels to the lower-left of the stronghold, which is where I found rubies:
I found two rubies almost right away while staircasing down, which yielded 7 rubies with Fortune III (they drop 1-2 rubies, multiplied by 1-4 with Fortune so you can get as many as 16 from two ores, averaging 6.6):
Rubies also generate differently from other ores; up to 5 blocks are placed in a configuration of a center block surrounded by blocks adjacent to it, thus they will all be directly connected, so no need to dig around for more (an exception is if the center block was displaced and it had two blocks to the sides in a line, in which case you'll initially find a single block but that could also be a normal deposit of 1):
Rocky Mountains also has its own unique mob - strays, which unlike modern versions can spawn anywhere as 50% of skeletons (instead of 80% on the surface only), and are a much more common experience in general due to the distribution of biomes and inclusion in several non-snowy biomes (Rocky Mountains, including the non-snowy variants, and Extreme Hills). You can also see another feature of Rocky Mountains - stone and andesite are swapped, with the base block being andesite with pockets of stone, a feature of various other biomes (in addition to biomes like desert replacing stone entirely):
After I collected what I wanted I returned and explored the Quartz Desert Pyramids I found; the main pyramid contains a series of mazes on two floors, plus a treasure room at the top; the two floors with mazes contain 3 husk and skeleton spawners and the walls of made out of a special block called "Reinforced Quartz Sandstone" which takes a couple minutes to break with an Efficiency V amethyst pickaxe, discouraging the player from simply mining through it, with a special button in the treasure room that converts it into normal quartz sandstone:
You'll definitely want to be prepared for the number of mobs you'll encounter:
Each floor has a ladder at some point that leads up to the next floor; the floors themselves are each randomly chosen from one of 16 patterns, giving a total of 256 unique combinations (the skeleton shows that there are still some vanilla bugs in TMCW, it is actually on the second floor, mobs in general can't use ladders properly):
You'll want to press that button if you want to be able to clear out or dismantle the structure, which converts the inner walls into normal sandstone:
The chest had some crazy loot - 4 enchanted books! (Luck of the Sea III, Fire Protection IV, Punch I, Aqua Affinity):
Last but not least I collected the spawners, two skeleton and one husk (I put the walls back after finding them; they are hard to find because I made spawners not produce particles if they are completely enclosed):
I had to spend several rubies right away in order to remove the prior work penalty that accumulated from making the pickaxe (I made Efficiency V from level 1 books, accumulating 4 workings, plus one more to add it to the pickaxe, then added Unbreaking III from a book I found, +1 more working, and Smelting, +1 working for a total of 7); the first one cost 29 levels, or 14 + 6 + 3x3, where 14 is the penalty, 6 is the cost per ruby (effectively double the penalty removed) and 3x3 is the enchantment cost for amethyst items (multiplier of 3, diamond is 2 and others are 1). A penalty of 14 means that this item is too expensive to repair even once after just being made as it would cost 57 levels (21 for the unit cost, 3 for the number of enchantments, 14 for the penalty, 5 for Efficiency V, 6 for Unbreaking III, 8 for Smelting; the cost without a penalty is 43, the same as what I was previously using since Mending has the same cost as Smelting):
The initial cost, you can use multiple rubies if the cost allows, which is capped to a maximum of 39 levels regardless of the item (for amethyst items only the repair cost is capped at 49 levels); this indicates that you could have up to 5 more workings on the item before it would be too expensive to even use rubies (you can use rubies while making an item to reset the cost. In a similar manner renaming an item in vanilla will permanently reduce the cost, you can even save items which became too expensive since renames are capped to 39 levels):
After using the first ruby; I could have used two but only used one since as seen next the cost is much lower (less XP than going to the next level):
I'll note that this was unnecessary since it only reduced the penalty by a single working (2 penalty cost + 2 ruby cost + 3x3 enchantment cost); once it reaches 0 you can no longer use rubies:
The repair cost will be 43-45-47 levels per ruby, which will cost 21 levels for an average of 2633 XP per repair, compared to 2177 for a constant 43 levels, so you are spending about 21% more XP and 33% more anvil uses compared to using Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending, which has the same zero penalty cost of 43 levels. You can also see the difference in my inventory, aside from multiple variants of ores ingots from chest loot or zombie drops also don't take up more slots since I already have slots for them:
After that I resumed my normal caving, finishing up what turned out to be the second largest mineshaft I've found so far, with a corridor length of 3,900 blocks:
These are all the mineshafts I've found so far, plus a mesa mineshaft (my tool doesn't check for these); most have been larger than average, which is a size of 127 and length of 1250, almost identical to that in vanilla but with more at the extremes (there are more mineshafts below the average than in vanilla):
A comparison of the size distribution of mineshafts to vanilla; there are three main sizes in TMCW, with "large" (a span of 10-11, which also alter the length of corridors so they are more often 3-4 sections long) being similar to mineshafts in Beta 1.8 (yes, they were much larger back then, reduced to the modern size shortly after), the low end of the range is truncated in TMCW since I don't allow them to generate with less than 25 structure pieces (75 for large, the corridor length is about 10 times this), including even just the main room, which occurs about 1/600 of the time in vanilla (I excluded these from the vanilla distribution, otherwise it is accurate). The overall distribution peaks at about 800 in TMCW and 1250 in vanilla, the latter close to the average while TMCW is below:
The large cave I previously mentioned turned out to be the second largest cave as well, with a volume of 100,000 blocks; as with the first such cave, and others on the smaller size range it was more of a tunnel than an open chamber:
I'll note that while I prevent mineshafts from generating too close to such caves their sizes do allow for significant overlap, given that the mineshaft was one of the most extensive that can generate; I checked with my cave mapping/locator tool and it was as close as it could get before being eliminated (just at the edge of a 5 chunk radius, if expanded by one chunk it gets replaced by a "small" mineshaft, and a bit further, completely removed; overall nearly half of mineshafts, which have about the same base chance as vanilla, get removed in this manner, with about a third of potential large mineshafts being replaced with a small one and another third removed entirely).
There was another large cave nearby with a volume of 64,000 blocks; this one was more of a large chamber (all are generated the same way, differing slightly by type, in the same manner as vanilla tunnels, just much longer and/or wider, the amount they twist and turn affecting the overall shape):
These are all the "large" caves that I've found so far, larger than what you can expect to find in vanilla (ravines only include those which reach a vanilla maximum):
I found two new types of cave systems for the first time in this world, a "combination cave system" and a "zigzag cave system"; combination cave systems contain several different types of caves, in this case the "CRM" variant, which mainly has circular rooms, "ravine caves" (caves shaped like small ravines), and "maze caves", with multiple right-angle branches in a maze-like fashion; "zigzag caves" have sharp bends instead of gradual curves and are basically a variant of normal cave, replacing those with a size of 20 or more in various regions:
A chart of all types of caves, showing the variants separately as "cave clusters":
I also saw a zombie/husk in amethyst armor, the third mob with diamond or amethyst:
Yes, the M biome system went away with the new world generation system, along the entire sub-biome business. Most of them are largely more mountainous versions of their parent biomes and aren't necessary now that new generation allows much greater terrain variation everywhere. Some M biomes were "rescued" into full biomes, all in the lowest humidity category, IIRC: Ice Spikes, Flower Forest (a particularly weird one for lowest humidity), and Sunflower Plains. IMO this was a mistake; they should have done those as structures in their source biomes. Now it can be super-hard to find them (well, Ice Spikes already was, but not the others).
Yeah, it does take the atmosphere of the desert temples that you can just dig them up and minimize the hazards. Although PvP types would have a field day with a block that takes minutes to break.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
You'll never guess what I saw five times over four days in a row, including twice in one day - zombies in diamond armor, normally an incredibly rare sight in vanilla, especially in modern versions with their regional difficulty system (this really includes any version since 1.6. but more so since 1.8):
Given that I've been playing on this world for well over 100 hours by now the chance of armor has reached its maximum of 20% on Normal, compared to 15% in vanilla and dependent on regional difficulty which is unlikely to ever reach its maximum except where a player might AFK, and only during a full moon (the reason why I say "more so since 1.8" is because they made it so instead of effects starting from 0 a "raw" value is scaled from 2-4 to 0-1, thus it must reach at least 2 to start having any effect. Also, 1.6.4 allows the value to effectively reach up to 1.25 on Hard, giving a 18.75% chance of armor, which is limited to 15% since 1.8), as seen in this inhabited time map of my previous world, where most of the world only reached about 25% of the maximum, or 50+ hours (green, with red being 50%, yellow 75% and white 100%. The variations mainly reflect variations in cave density):
Of course, I also significantly increased the chance of higher tiers of armor; here is the code and calculated probabilities for each tier:
// Vanilla
int tier = random.nextInt(2);
if (random.nextFloat() < 0.095F) ++tier;
if (random.nextFloat() < 0.095F) ++tier;
if (random.nextFloat() < 0.095F) ++tier;
When combined with the chance of any armor diamond and amethyst are together about 12 times more common than at maximum regional difficulty in vanilla, then factor in the fact that I encounter around 50% more mobs, so closer to 20 times more common; still, seeing 5 over 4 consecutive sessions is quite uncommon given I previously averaged one mob in diamond or amethyst every 4 sessions (111 mobs over 425 caving / 449 total sessions. I'll note that this would suggest 5-6 mobs in vanilla but I see maybe 2-3 over the same period in my first world, and largely because I made the inhabited time calculation start at 50%, or 37.5%-50% of maximum regional difficulty depending on moon phase).
I saw another mob for the first time - one that many players will also see once Mojang releases 1.21, a new variant of skeleton called a "bogged", whose most notable feature is that they fire arrows that inflict Poison (in my case rather than adding actual tipped arrows I have the entity the arrow hit check the entity that fired the arrow and if it is a bogged then Poison is applied, same for strays and Slowness):
I'll note that this is far from the first time I've released a feature that was going to be added in an upcoming vanilla update before it was actually released, one of the first being the 1.8 stone types, as well as the ability for caves to surface in biomes like desert (before then they could only cut through stone, dirt, and grass. I'll note that Mojang still hasn't gotten how caves work, just allow any block, then you wouldn't need to maintain an ever-larger list of blocks, with omissions to this day (note that the report was filed in May 2013 and was originally about deserts/mushroom islands). A separate check makes them avoid water and I avoid bedrock by simply limiting their minimum altitude, otherwise, they won't cut through e.g. trees and structures because they don't exist yet at the stage of world generation caves are generated at):
And even bugfixes (plus many more which Mojang never fixed over the past decade, or only after many years, e.g. it took until 1.18 to fix some bugs with cave generation and they still haven't fixed the issues mentioned here, at least for the "old" caves):
I found two "double dungeons", the first time I've found this dungeon variant, not to be confused with two dungeons connected together, of which I haven't found any yet (based on previous worlds and my first world around 1% of dungeons intersect); besides having two spawners, spawning different mobs at a slightly reduced rate, and 2-3 chests, one distinctive feature is the use of chiseled stone bricks in the floors, making it much easier (relatively speaking) to obtain (otherwise, there are only three per jungle temple; the 14 I've found in my first world are equal to a single double dungeon):
No, I haven't added ways to craft them or mossy cobblestone or the other variants of stone bricks, which can also be found in the walls of dungeons, as seen in the second one, and the infinite number of strongholds throughout the world (I think that making these craftable ruins their value as one of the main resources that I collect).
Double dungeons also have a much higher chance of having "Smelting" and "Vein Miner" enchantments, contributing to around half the total across all dungeons and structures (neither had either enchantment and the Smelting book I did find was in a mineshaft). I'll also note that one of the chests had an Eye of Ender as part of its mob loot (based on the mob the spawner is set to, with double dungeons alternating between the two for each chest), this does make it (very, very slowly) possible to get to the End without going to the Nether:
Another thing different about dungeons in TMCW is that unlike vanilla sand above them doesn't cave in, a feature which was also lost in newer vanilla versions; this was because some of the code was still changing blocks with the "notify neighbors" flag set, which is normally disabled during world generation. It is quite obvious when this happens since I added falling dust particles, as were also added in newer versions:
Again within a relatively short period of time I found three fossils, two skulls and a ribs, which generate as often as they do in newer versions (not sure how the changes to world depth in 1.18 affect their concentration), with one every 64 chunks, or 8x8 chunk region in the case of TMCW; only a fraction will be exposed in caves though and most players don't do that much caving so they are often perceived to be extremely rare or even nonexistent:
I got an interesting drop from a zombie - an iron hammer with Efficiency III, Fortune III, Unbreaking III; pretty high-level enchantments for what would be a level 22 enchantment at the most (on Hard it can go up to level 30 in TMCW, 26 in vanilla prior to 1.8, and 22 since):
I found a biome which I've only found in two out of six worlds I've made with TMCW; Ice Hills, which was added in TMCWv1 but I never found one until TMCWv5, in part because Ice Plains was less common / mostly relegated to "snowy" regions, as vanilla 1.6.4 had, along with the full-size Ice Hills biome; in this case it was two sub-biomes within a large Ice Plains (larger biomes are also more likely to have sub-biomes, not just because of their size but because they can't generate at the edges). The most unique feature is the underground, which is mostly made out of packed ice (or a "biome stone" equivalent), so it is quite slippery, with random patches of snow blocks on the floors of caves and in deposits in the place of dirt and gravel; caves below lava level have water instead of lava, a feature unique to Ice Hills and several other "ice" biomes:
Something else you might notice is the sugarcane surviving next to ice; this was a "feature" in vanilla 1.6.4, or rather, due to the game not checking if it is next to water when ticking the block (you can even make a waterless sugarcane farm as long as it is always at least 2 blocks tall so the bottommost block never sees a block update); I fixed this but allowed it to survive next to ice:
Not only that, I saw something far off in the distance, although I haven't considered exploring further in that direction at this time; this is also only the second world that I've found Ice Plains Spikes, also found as a sub-biome of Ice Plains and its own full-size biome (for perspective, Ice Hills is 0.36% of land and Ice Plains Spikes is 0.58%; Ice Plains itself is 3.66% and is the most common "normal" land biome. 3.66% doesn't fully reflect how common Ice Plains proper is since this includes the "edge" of various other biomes, but this does better reflect how common it actually is to find Ice Hills / Spikes; similarly, Oasis is only 0.024% of land but Desert M + Oasis is 0.94% and most Desert Ms will have at least one Oasis):
Another mob backport - polar bears, one of three bear variants (I've added more variants of many mobs in general, both vanilla and from newer versions; many forests may have brown bears and Autumnal Forest may have black bears):
As far as caving goes, I found two "large cave cave systems" right after each other (they were actually hundreds of blocks apart as I moved to a different area after exploring the first); these are based on a variant of cave system in TMCWv1, which has larger caves similar to the largest once in vanilla, plus a single extra long cave without branches (back then all large caves were generated this way); the total volume of each cave system was around 100,000 blocks and can range from 50,000 to 200,000:
I also found the first actual "large" circular room, as I define them, a diameter of 34 blocks or more, twice the maximum in vanilla, with a diameter of 50 blocks:
Perhaps my most interesting find is one that I haven't explored yet - what appears to be an extremely large open cave, in contrast with the caves I've previously found, which were smaller and had more distinct tunnels; it is hard to say exactly how large it is given the complete lack of visibility in the dark but I had a clear view of the lava sea at the bottom from high up in the ceiling:
Here is an update on my map wall; I've recently gone south along the path I took to find a biome with rubies but I'm in no hurry to reach it as the 30 or so I have is good for 3 months at the rate of one repair per day and one ruby every 3 days (I've actually considered only exploring to around 750 or so before going to another map, only going further out once I explore the entire area closer to my main base, then I'll make a secondary base and explore from 750-1500 around it):
The cave I mentioned at the end of my last update turned out to be the largest cave I've found in this world so far, at about 129,000 blocks, which is still small as far as the largest caves go (the largest caves I found in my previous world were over 4 times larger and the largest known cave is nearly 10 times larger):
Also, the cave took about two hours to explore, with 1,859 ores mined and 465 mobs killed, I'll note that most of the exploration, including immediately adjacent caves, took about half that time, then I spent about 20 minutes lighting up the ceiling, during which I discovered a major branch of the cave and some other caves in the ceiling:
:
One of the adjacent caves was a "ribbed tunnel cave system", a type of "vanilla-like" cave which combines the ledges seen in the sides of ravines with normal caves, hence their name:
Also, part of the giant cave was under an Oasis biome; this is one of several biomes, together with rivers, oceans, and lakes, which prevent caves from carving away blocks near sea level, and in the case of Oasis, which is considered to be a valid spawn biome, if very rare outside of world types like Large Biomes, they generate a layer of cobblestone under the surface layers so players that spawn in them have a source of cobblestone (otherwise, the only source of cobblestone in deserts is dungeons and lava/water mixing. I also added cobblestone to bonus chest loot for the same reason):
You'll never guess what I found almost immediately after I finished exploring the giant cave - another giant cave, or technically, two merged together, with each one having a volume of about 27,000 blocks, the smallest large caves I've found so far, while still covering a sizable area, comparable to that of the first cave (the map of these caves is 128x128 blocks while the giant cave is 112x112 blocks):
Both caves together contributed to a staggering 733 mob kills, a record for this world but short of my all-time record of 1,070 mobs; I'll also note that I only found a total of 6 diamond, about a third of the average, which was more down to luck than anything (compared to vanilla you can expect to find more diamond in the lowest layers; it still generates in the lowest 5 layers above lava level but the concentration doesn't drop off in the upper few layers and there is 25% more ore that only generates of exposed to air (yes, the exact opposite of 1.18), the intent of this being to offset differences in cave distribution and effective ground depth to give a similar overall abundance relative to coal and iron as you'd find in vanilla if you explore everything underground):
I was also able to cover a much larger area than usual due to the extent of the caves; there is a fairly large swamp in the middle of the map, part of the same one I first saw when going to a stronghold:
One thing I haven't really found yet is a large ravine, with one slightly larger than normal ravine but nothing else (on average there are slightly more ravines with a volume over 25,000 and nearly as many with a volume over 100,000; averaging 80 / 29 caves and 100 / 25 ravines within 1536 blocks; at my rate of exploration this comes out to an average of one cave every 4-5 / 12-13 days and one ravine every 3-4 / 14-15 days):
Are "ribbed caves" found in vanilla with any frequency? I don't recall any.
Virtually everything I mention is part of my mod, vanilla only has basic rooms/tunnels and ravines, the latter of which will never generate in a way as to appear like a normal cave/tunnel. Even 1.18 doesn't have as many new variants of caves as I've added:
Most of the new types of cave mentioned in the Wiki, such as "noodle" and "spaghetti" caves, don't look much different from the old caves, just generated differently (as noise instead of carving though the ground, basically like how the overall shape of Nether terrain is defined by noise, then it has caves carving through it), "cheese" caves would be closest to the large caves I added and there seems to be no equivalent to larger ravines (also, does it irk anybody else how they keep changing all the old names to new ones; "monster room"? I only see people calling them "dungeons", likewise, nobody calls ravines "canyons"):
https://minecraft.wiki/w/Cave (the description of the "old" / "carver" caves is nearly identical to 1.6.4 except tunnels can reach up to 38 blocks wide instead of 27; I'll note that the distribution used in 1.6.4 makes wider tunnels very rare. I'll also note that this chart is very outdated for TMCW, and the addition of new variants of larger caves and variations in length makes "width" rather meaningless, "volume" would be a better metric).
https://minecraft.wiki/w/Canyon (in 1.6.4 ravines range from 85-112 blocks long and up to 3-15 blocks wide and 9-45 blocks deep, so they did become slightly bigger in 1.18 but not by much; in TMCW they can get up to 384 blocks long, 50 blocks wide, and over 70 blocks deep, terrain permitting).
For comparison, this shows the "skeleton" of the second large cave mentioned before (two caves joined together), with the "width" of the tunnels set to the minimum of 3 blocks, showing that they are structurally the same as vanilla tunnels, just a lot longer and/or wider (it looks like there are a lot more than two caves because each tunnel branches into two, forming a "T" intersection):
I've already found another cave even larger than the last one, with a volume of about 150,000 blocks, and yet another, still unexplored, that is probably larger still, if not even more than just a simple large cave:
This is the same view as the previous but with the render distance increased and fog turned off (I actually only increased it by 1 chunk but fog obscures the last 20% or so of the render distance, so 8 chunks is more like 100 blocks):
The abundance of granite in the walls is indicative of having reached the Cherry Grove I found while looking for a biome with rubies; this is the first time I actually explored within one, and they are one of several biomes which swap stone with a 1.8 stone variant (granite is the dominant block with deposits of granite replaced with stone):
If that seem large, I came across this right to the south, under the Cherry Grove I found while looking for a biome with rubies, and it definitely looks a lot bigger than anything I've found so far; a cave with such a varied structure is likely one of the largest variants, or possibly part of something much larger, a "giant cave region", given the huge mushrooms scattered about, although they could just be the normal ones that occasionally generate underground:
I also found a large ravine for only the second time, slightly larger than the first, with a volume of 35,000 blocks, with at least 4 other ravines intersecting it, including a triple intersection within the first cave (I actually thought there was another since one of the ravines loops around on itself and the middle was covered by the cave), and another ravine which appears to be similar in size to the largest of the first three, visible in the lower-right (I haven't fully explored it yet, a 5th ravine intersects it though):
Here is an underground rendering of the entire world; I've almost reached the Rocky Mountains where I collected rubies, at the end of a 4th ravine which intersects the three shown above (at the farthest right of the main explored area):
Also, I encountered a couple "mega slimes" in the swamp, which have a size of 8 or twice that of a large slime, and have 64 health, deal 8 damage, jump much higher and further, and split into 2-4 large slimes; these are a biome-specific mob variant found in swamps (surface and underground) and giant cave regions (underground):
Speaking of slimes, they split into magma cubes when they die in lava, so they are occasionally seen in caves (they also spawn in place of slimes in Volcanic Wastelands, including on the surface):
Also, I've decided to make a secondary base to the south (around 0, 1024) before continuing to explore the area as I've nearly reached the southern boundary of the current map (z=1024); this may be a bit earlier than what I've usually done but the changes to map centering means there is no longer such a well-defined boundary around my main base (previously I explored the entire map centered around it / 0,0, which is up to +/- 512 but now there are 4 maps, going up to +/- 1024 centered on the same area).
For the same reason +/- 1536 (previously the boundary of a 3x3 map area) is no longer such a hard limit (now +/- 2048 or 4x4 maps), which may thus lead me to explore further out than usual (I'll note that, as in my first world, oceans will likely become a limiting factor at some point; only the area within about 750-1000 blocks is guaranteed to be land, otherwise large continents generate as they do in vanilla, plus a mix of smaller landmasses which bring the percentage of ocean down from about 75% to 65% / land up from 25% to 35%).
I find the little deposits of granite etc. that vanilla puts in annoying. They're too large to ignore but too small to be a reasonable source of building material. I much prefer something like the real world (or your system) where areas are mostly one stone or another, ever since I ran across Underground Biomes 10 years ago.
Slimes dying into magma cubes in lava is a cute little easter egg.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I built a secondary base near 0, 1024 before continuing to explore the large cave, which happened to be in a vanilla Forest, pretty much unchanged, aside from new plants and a bugfix for big oak trees (prior to 1.13 they would only set their internal height variable once per instance of a biome per game instance so every tree within a biome would be nearly the same. I'll also note they were quite buggy in general, even causing a memory leak by keeping previously loaded worlds in memory). This was surrounded by Winter Forest to the west, essentially a snowy version of Forest, and a continuation of the Cherry Grove to the east:
I also got my final achievement, "On A Rail", which has unfortunately been removed from newer versions, a sign of how little most players even think of using railways these days (I still see some significant advantages to them; you still need to manually control the player when using horses or elytra, and need to travel in the open, and know exactly where to go / follow some trail or markers. As for the cost, well, I didn't even need to craft any powered rails because I found enough in minecart chests, while the rails on the ground cover my needs 5-10 times over and otherwise it takes only two hours to mine the necessary iron for a 1 km track, less for the necessary gold):
After that I explored the large cave, which was over twice as large as the previous largest with a volume of 385,000 blocks, continuing a trend along a north-south chain of caves, and I'll add, there is what appears to be an even larger cave further south which I've started to explore (this means exploring everything connected to them, which takes up the majority of the time I spend in/around them):
The checkered background is 1 chunk per square and the cave is about 13.5 chunks or 216 blocks long:
This is a rendering of the area I've recently explored, with three large caves from north to south:
Here are screenshots I took while exploring the cave, followed by after I was finished; most of it was under the Cherry Grove (as mentioned before Cherry Grove swaps stone and granite and mineshafts use cherry wood, leading to a unique appearance compared to the usual stone-dominated underground):
The foreground is mostly from a large cave cave system, rather than the giant cave:
There was also a "large cave cave system" with a volume of 137,000 blocks merged with the eastern end of the cave and a very large and dense cave system to the west; the latter made me think it was a "colossal cave system" until I analyzed the area but it was just vanilla caves, without any modifiers (the vanilla parameters seem to have been chosen to generate "swiss cheese" caves as nearly all caves I find like this are without any modifiers; a cave system like this is similar to the larger ones I find in my first world):
I also saw a skeleton in diamond armor for the second time in this world after a dry streak of diamond armored mobs (none since the four zombies in a row), this is also the 9th mob in diamond or amethyst (they may also have tools as weapons, which are more common. I'll note that drops still aren't that common, though I reduced the base chance from 8.5% to 5%, while I made Looting increase it by 2% instead of 1% per level so if you use it you'll get about the same drop rate. Amethyst items have twice the drop rate, including with Looting (I have it scale with the drop rate), resulting in them being 1.5 times rarer in terms of drops):
Similar to how I found the previous cave I found yet another large cave further south before I finished exploring it and this one looks like it will be the biggest one yet, with the impression that even 16 chunk render distance wouldn't be enough to see from one end to the other, at least with fog enabled (I disabled it for the post-exploration screenshots of the previous cave with the render distance set to 12):
The fog and sky normally become completely black underground so you can't see out of loaded chunks but skylight exposure makes it lighter (vanilla does this to a lesser extent):
This was from next to the lavafall near the left side of the previous screenshot, the tunnel I entered, near the center, is obscured by fog (this isn't actually where I first encountered the cave, which is at the bottom of the pit to the right):
Another view from a surface entrance:
I'll note that finding this many giant caves in such a short time is not typical; on average a cave with a volume of at least 100,000 generates every 1,268 chunks, or about two weeks of exploration for me; at the same time, I've still only found two moderately large ravines (30-35,000) when ravines with a volume of least 25-50,000 are more common than caves:
Seed is -4426978636490490569
Center is 0, 0 and radius is 16384 blocks (from -16384, -16384 to 16383, 16383); area is 4194304 chunks
643 colossal cave systems
1733 circular room cave systems
1699 ravine cave systems
1668 vertical cave systems
1646 maze cave systems
1707 CRM combination cave systems
1697 RZV combination cave systems
2154 random cave systems
2488 ribbed tunnel cave systems
2493 zigzag cave systems
1912 spiral cave systems
1916 large cave cave systems
2026 dense cave systems (total size >= 40)
324 giant cave regions
707 network cave regions
69146 total large caves
10278 large caves >= 25000
5015 large caves >= 50000
3307 large caves >= 100000
1666 large caves >= 200000
926 large caves >= 300000
506 large caves >= 400000
215 large caves >= 500000
83 large caves >= 600000
24 large caves >= 700000
7 large caves >= 800000
1 large caves >= 900000
986 large cave clusters >= 25000
96 large cave clusters >= 50000
74090 total ravines
12945 large ravines >= 25000
5847 large ravines >= 50000
3020 large ravines >= 100000
1527 large ravines >= 200000
704 large ravines >= 300000
270 large ravines >= 400000
62 large ravines >= 500000
15 large ravines >= 600000
6803 large circular rooms (width >= 34)
4000 toroidal caves
23975 mineshafts
2977 large mineshafts (length >= 2000)
511 strongholds
Caves do tend to be unevenly distributed, in part due to regional modifiers on their frequency, as shown by this map of the area within 1536 blocks in the seed I previously played on, which shows a complete lack of large caves within an area of about half a level 4 map to the north and another large area towards the south, covering most of the area I've explored so far in this world; a similar pattern can be seen in ravines (only the largest caves and ravines are shown here; there are also several of each that didn't exist when I played on this world):
Either way, they are probably more common than they are in 1.18, where I have the impression, based on personal anecdotes, that they are very common, yet based on some data I found 1.18 only seems to have the same percentages of blocks that are air on layer 62 as 1.7-1.17, with 1.6 having about 25% more and TMCW having twice as much, and a total volume that approaches that of 1.18, and an average air percentage that is about the same as the peak on any layer in 1.18 (the data for 1.6, 1.7, and TMCW is from my cave mapping/analysis tools, which generate underground features without actual terrain, just solid stone below sea level, and excluding dungeons and lakes):
Also, these examples give you some idea of how large caves can get; these were all with the render distance set to 16:
A large cave and ravine with a combined volume of 1.6 million blocks:
A surface ravine with a volume of half a million blocks:
An incredibly large cave with a volume of 1.3 million blocks:
Another cave with a volume of 1.2 million:
I'll also note that it wouldn't be so easy to automatically measure the volume of large caves in 1.18 since they are generated as noise in the terrain instead of discrete entities like the old and my caves (thanks to the use of numerical block IDs; 0 = air, 1 = stone, 11 = lava; my tool also uses essentially the same code as the actual game. I also modified the code when measuring the volume so instead of carving one chunk at a time it carves a 400x400 area, which is much faster since otherwise you'd have to call the carving code once per 16x16 chunk; a full analysis of all features within a 32768x32768 area takes about 4 minutes, or one level 4 map per second).
I have little doubt by now that I've found the largest cave that I've ever explored in any world, well over half a million blocks in volume:
No, you aren't seeing things, the spider is emitting potion particles, a feature I ported to all difficulties, not just Hard:
While exploring the perimeter, and anything directly intersecting the cave, I came across at least two more large caves, one of which I explored, which was two large circular rooms with diameters of about 50 blocks, the other appears to be a similar configuration; as well as a "large cave cave system" for the fourth time in this world and only 128 blocks to the south of the last one (this is quite close together in time given that on average they generate about once every 2200 chunks, or 22 days of exploration; this is also the second one to be merged with a giant cave):
I've also seen three more mobs in diamond or amethyst armor, including two in amethyst on the same day; it is only a matter of time before I see two of either at the same time (the closest I've ever come is about 5 minutes; I've never seen more than two in one session yet):
I came close to finding a double diamond vein, with two deposits one block apart; such an occurrence is extremely rare even for me with the last time I found one being nearly a year ago (such occurrences are more likely than this indicates, just that when caving you are less likely to find fully intact deposits; the one in the floor, one block deep, could have been a 2x2x2 cube and the one in the wall, also one block thick, could have extended further out and/or down so they would connect, even if just diagonally):
It also appears that I've reached the southern edge of the spawn continent, at around z = 1300, at least at this one particular location; I'm not sure how this actually compares to vanilla but TMCW ensures that the area within 750-1000 blocks of the origin is always land so the average spawn continent will be larger when including cases where vanilla fails to generate much, if any land there (anything outside this area will be due to the continent that vanilla tries to place around 0,0, which is highly variable in size and shape and "solidity", plus the possible merger of smaller landmasses and islands added by TMCW which increases the proportion of land by about 50%, which still leaves close to 2/3 of the world ocean):
Also, this is an example of a typical day spent exploring in/around a giant cave, most notably the number of mobs encountered, with zombies in particular tending higher than usual (which is still a third to half of all mobs) due to the long lines of sight; while rarer than diamond overall (based on my previous world) I've collected a lot more ruby than diamond recently, considering it averages 1.5 drops per ore (3.3 with Fortune); the cave and surrounding areas are under a large Rocky Mountains biome, the same one I found earlier, which forms a large mountain range:
Also, I've mined over 136,000 ores in this world, most of it in a little over a month (37 days) spent caving:
Another interesting statistic is that I made the number of "uses" for armor, which is never used in vanilla (always 0) count every time it took a hit; I've been hit 10,470 times while wearing amethyst armor, about a third as often as the number of times I've used my sword (all three pieces together have taken about as many uses as the sword). This also offers a way to know how many times I must have repaired it, given that each unit restores 1124 durability (1171 for tools) and Unbreaking III halves the chance of losing durability (I buffed it from vanilla, and in such a way that an infinite level of Unbreaking would give infinite durability; that is, vanilla has a 60% chance of completely ignoring Unbreaking so it caps out at a 1.66 times increase); my boots do not have it due to the cost so they get repaired twice as often, with a total of 36 repairs of my pickaxe (nearly one per day), 6 repairs of my sword, 9 repairs of my boots, and 4 repairs each of my chestplate and leggings, for a total of 59 repairs, which has consumed 59 out of 79 amethyst mined while caving (I have about 30 spares with the extra coming from chest loot):
Have you thought about having some sort of cave ecology for those really large caverns?
Also, did you do anything to prevent those (nice) palm trees from spawning near cold biomes?
Jungles do have "jungle caves", filled with jungle vegetation, which are generated as a separate feature and as part of the cave itself (I actually place them during chunk generation, as opposed to chunk population), otherwise, blocks and plants that normally generate on the surface may generate in caves; deserts may have cacti and dead bushes, jungles and tropical swamps have random patches of grass (unlike 1.7 you won't find normal flowers inside caves, except near light sources since 1.7 broken/removed their light requirement) and vines much deeper down than in vanilla. Giant cave regions (the largest type of cave when considered as a single entity) increase the amount of huge mushrooms and lakes underground and even have their own mob spawn ("mega slimes", size 8).
The only restriction on palm trees is the biome itself; sandy beaches generate next to most biomes, with colder biomes (not necessarily snowy) having gravel beaches, so you could have them right next to each other, just like how you can have Ice Plains next to Desert (as I found further north). Some features do check if the biome around them is suitable, including palm trees, which check for a sandy beach within 4 blocks (all points must be valid so they tend to generate in the middle of the beach, not at the edge); this is much like how villages only place buildings if they are entirely within one of their valid spawn biomes, a restriction removed in 1.10; just like them I do not go much further than the footprint of the feature (if the intent was to say, avoid seeing any palm trees within max render distance of a snowy biome then most would never generate given how biomes are (mostly) randomly laid out, and I'd never implement a climate system like in modern versions, after all, that is a major reason why I dislike them, I could still be exploring the same temperate/hot/cold zone all this time, instead of seeing multiple of each extreme (as I compared to a previous world, the 1.7 map shows no snowy or hot at all and mostly the same few temperate biomes repeating, with the modded world having been played on for 4 months at that point).
This is by far the largest cave I've ever explored, with a volume over more than three-quarters of a million blocks, plus an additional 50,000 blocks or so above sea level, with nearly the entire cave generating due to the terrain, surpassing the previous largest cave, in TMCWv5, by nearly a quarter-million blocks (the volume is normally measured up to sea level / layer 62, which is pretty close in the case of the cave I found in TMCWv5), and more than 50 times larger than the largest single cave I found in my first world (vanilla 1.6.4):
If the ground had been near sea level it would have generated a surface opening more than 100 blocks across, as indicated by the green areas in the renderings above (the color scheme was derived from Unmined) and in this cutaway at layer 62; as it was, only the end of one of the branches broke the surface (in the middle along the southern edge of the Cherry Grove), as well as a couple spots where a river cut into the side:
The maximum altitude would be one more than shown here (feet level):
Some cutaway renderings of the cave, at layer 40 in Minutor and MCMap, and from the sides; if you are wondering, I placed about 1,700 torches in the cave:
These were taken at maximum render distance (just barely enough):
For comparison, these were at 8 chunks:
And yes, I still pillared up all over to light up the ceiling, which by itself had over 2,000 ores, including in various other caves, of which there were also a lot under the floor, and contributed to its variance (only most types of special cave systems and mineshafts are disallowed from generating nearby, otherwise caves generate as normal in and around large caves):
I'll note that this brings some of its own hazards, besides falling, mobs spawning on the scaffolding if not properly lit; despite the height the danger of falling is more of an inconvenience than a threat thanks to Feather Falling (which I'll note is even more effective in newer versions, actually, in vanilla 1.6.4 a fall from as little as 45 blocks can be fatal, similar to 1.9 I removed the randomized protection from Protection enchantments, which was as little as 52%, but set the maximum to 75% instead of 80% (60% vs 64% for full Protection IV), which reduces the fatal fall distance from 103 to 83 blocks):
I also scaled the highest peak over the cave, which was at y=151, the first time I've found or measured terrain over y=128, the maximum in vanilla before 1.7, in this world (this is in contrast to TMCWv5, when I'd found a lot more such high terrain by now, in part due to biomes; I also have a noise field which modulates the height parameters of biomes over long distances which contributes to overall variability):
Here is my map wall; while I haven't shown it directly you can see there is more ocean to the south of the Rocky Mountains, which also has gravel beach in place of sandy beaches (gravel beaches were in vanilla prior to Beta 1.8 and never re-added, I also re-added the original gravel texture, which looks more like sand, as a variant of gravel called "gravel sand", as you may have seen in various screenshots (both generate underground and underwater in varying proportions, gravel beaches use gravel sand, except for Volcanic Wastelands Beach, which uses normal gravel):
Also, I thought it was interesting to note that when I analyzed the area I found something else:
Locations of largest ravines by volume:
1. 296 38 1160 (type: 1, length: 112, width: 13, depth: 61, volume: 41639)
Not a trace of it though; this would have been the largest ravine I'd found so far in terms of volume; this is actually a "vanilla" ravine, as indicated by a type of 1, which can get wider (up to 19 instead of 15 blocks) and deeper (3-5 times their width instead of fixed at 3 times). The cave itself is also effectively 4 separate caves generated from the same chunk, with a separation based on the maximum radius, hence "type 4" (type 3 is similar but with 3 caves; type 2 is more like a vanilla cave with the branches having their own branches, type 1 is the same as vanilla). The "length" listed is twice the length of an individual cave (types 1 and 2 are the actual length):
This shows how common and large each type of cave is; this was within a 32768x32768 area and based on volume up to layer 62; only caves with a volume of at least 5000 were counted and measured (this includes the majority of type 1 caves); the number of type 4 caves gives about one every two level 3 maps and about 4 within +/- 1536 blocks of the origin (excluding the area within a 512 block radius, which is about 1/11 the total area; type 3/4 caves within this area will be converted to type 2), so I can expect to find two more such caves, as well as 5 type 3 caves, with an average volume of a third of a million blocks, and an average of 30 types 2-4 (the average number of caves with a volume of at least 100,000 is several less as their size distribution is nonuniform):
32438 type 1 caves; min-avg-max volume: 5000 18726 296916
2301 type 2 caves; min-avg-max volume: 47136 157494 512412
603 type 3 caves; min-avg-max volume: 127587 332817 788238
507 type 4 caves; min-avg-max volume: 206090 463185 1206791
Also, this shows the impact of including the portion of caves above sea level, using a more extreme seed (you won't normally have that many such large caves or ravines); the depth of ravines can also exceed 70 blocks if there the terrain is high enough:
Something that you might have noticed is that most of the largest caves I've found, 4 out of the top 5, all have the same x-coordinate, 312, with three each being 256 blocks apart (648, 904, 1160):
This isn't entirely coincidence or some RNG bug since the largest caves and ravines generate every 8 chunks, alternating between caves and ravines, with a random chance of actually generating at each point, which just so happened to occur for caves at many of the same points along the x-axis.
The trend of finding caves of ever-increasing size to the south has finally culminated in the rarest and most extreme underground feature in TMCW - a giant cave region (GCR), with an average volume of about 1.7 million blocks, twice that of the cave I found previously, though a giant cave region is a lot more like a normal cave system, just scaled up (they contain more than 100 individual caves, averaging about the size of the largest single cave in my first world but longer with some reaching several times that size, with their starting points within a 13x13 chunk region, plus a 4 chunk wide border where most other features are excluded):
Locations of giant cave regions by volume:
1. 88 1288 (volume: 1696108)
On average there is one giant cave region every 13107 chunks, with at least one per 128x128 chunk region (a level 4 map, plus a 25% chance of a second one), excluded from within a 32 chunk radius of the origin (distances are measured to each corner); this results in an average of 2-3 within 1536 blocks. One will be guaranteed to generate within +/- 65 chunks or 1040 blocks (meaning at least one chunk within the 13x13 chunk area is within this distance), which also means the one I found isn't the closest one to the origin (the northern edge is at 1184).
Here are some screenshots, it was pretty obvious what I'd found almost right away due to its size (as opposed to say, a large cave cave system, which can be seen as a miniature version of a GCR), frequent huge mushrooms (only the largest variants will generate), and water and lava lakes, which are made much more common within GCRs:
This will be the fifth GCR that I've explored since I added them to TMCW; I found one in TMCWv4 (when they were added, averaging about 1.25 million blocks in size and generating once every 16384 chunks) and three in TMCWv5 (which increased their size and frequency), and is also by far the fastest I've found one, taking about a third of the time (which still means real-time days of caving); in previous worlds I found one at about the same distance to the east, which I explored after fully exploring the maps around 0,0 and 0,1024 (when they were centered at those locations). It has taken me about 5-6 days to explore them (a bit over 5 full sessions); here is a look at the first one I found in TMCWv5:
This compares it to the largest cave and (near) largest ravine:
A layer by layer cutaway; I'll note that the cave in the lower-left corner, appearing separate at layer 30, is a separate large cave with a volume of 125,000 blocks, illustrating how they can merge:
An analysis of a 350x350 area including the giant cave region and immediate vicinity, with a total of nearly 2 million air blocks and 7,770 torches:
A day to day breakdown while exploring it; this reflects what I'll be getting from the current one (except emerald is replaced with ruby due to the biomes, the last day is also a partial session):
All the resources I collected:
Also, right after I finished exploring the giant cave I returned to the complex of ravines I found while exploring a previous cave, which ended up at 7 intersecting ravines, the third most I've found in any world, followed by 8 in TMCWv5 and 10 in TMCWv4, which also has an occurrence of 7 (for comparison, the most ever found in vanilla was 7 in the seed "Digital" in 1.6.4 or equivalent. I'll note this is from a video which says there are 8 but I only found 7 when mapping them separately. My first world would also have 7 if not for an ocean disrupting them, which can still exist in "sister seeds" with the same underground but different biomes, as detailed in this post, otherwise, the most I've found is 5 on multiple occasions (modded worlds do benefit from longer ravines but TMCWv4 would still have 8 if all were normal size):
You mentioned a cave that went up to y=151; I assume that's in a mountain area, and how do you get your caves to interact with the surface? That would just leave a big hole in most biomes.
Also, how big can your caves get? Can you estimate from the code?
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You mentioned a cave that went up to y=151; I assume that's in a mountain area, and how do you get your caves to interact with the surface? That would just leave a big hole in most biomes.
Also, how big can your caves get? Can you estimate from the code?
That was the peak of the mountain over the cave, which itself went up to y=80; they are generated like normal vanilla caves, so they just do the same thing, with some tweaks to ensure they stay mostly underground (if a tunnel strays too close to the surface they will be pushed downwards by changing the "direction" variable):
// Constrains caves to y=4-56 (max depends on radius); used by giant cave regions
if (vertVar == 0)
{
if (y > 56.0D - radiusW * 0.5D)
{
varY = -0.25F;
}
else if (y < 4.0D)
{
varY = 0.25F;
}
}
else if (vertVar == 15 && y > 60.0D - radiusW * 0.5D)
{
// Used by the largest caves
varY = -0.25F;
}
As for how big they can get, I've not just estimated but actually measured them; I wrote my own "CaveFinder" tool which generates and measures caves using the code from the actual game (with some modifications; thanks to the use of numerical block IDs and arrays of simple numerical data it is very easy to transplant the vanilla cave generation code, or mine, to a standalone program, the same also goes for biomes / the GenLayer classes; both have proven to be invaluable as development aids, no more generating worlds and/or using "Unmined" to slowly (relatively) map them to see the results, most of my development of caves/biome layout is with these external tools, then I copy the code to the game).
This is also how I get the details on what I find while playing, I'll record their coordinates (the middle of a cave, or if it is a smaller one and the "start" is visible, that; the middle of a ravine; the main room of a mineshaft; center of a cave system (circular rooms); for example, the last time I played I found a ravine that seemed a bit large so I recorded its coordinates, 200, 1288, which were its actual coordinates (in TMCW all ravines always start in the middle of a chunk and in the middle of their span, unlike vanilla, which randomizes the start within the chunk and starts at one end), with a "radius" of 16 added to give a margin in case I was off:
@echo off
java CaveFinder seed -2808539875420101855 center 200 1288 range 16 threshold 0
pause
These are the contents of a batch file I run (I distribute an actual jar file with the download for TMCW, otherwise I just have a collection of class files); there are many other arguments which can be used, "threshold 0" overrides the default of 25000 so it will list anything (except for the smallest "vanilla" caves and ravines), which gave the following output:
Seed is -2808539875420101855
Center is 192, 1280 and radius is 16 blocks (from 176, 1264 to 207, 1295)
Showing up to 10 results for each category. Locations are the center/start.
Locations of largest ravines by volume:
1. 200 49 1288 (type: 1, length: 108, width: 12, depth: 44, volume: 30426)
Here are charts of the frequency of caves and ravines by volume, both measured over 100 seeds within 8192 blocks of the origin (1048576 chunks each) and excluding the smallest "vanilla" caves and ravines (else it would take a lot longer to run), the first shows the number that reach a given volume and the second shows the inverse (number of chunks to find a cave with that volume), this only considers volume below sea level and ignores terrain (basically like a Superflat world at y=63; I initialize the "chunk" data to solid "stone" and count the number of "air" blocks):
An easy way to see how large they can possibly get is to set the "width" and "length" variables to their maximums; due to random generation they will still vary in shape and size, I've estimated that caves as large as 1.5 million blocks are possible:
These are renderings of the first three caves; the circular checkerboard area represents the range over which they can generate without getting cut off (that is, for each chunk that is generated the game scans a range of chunks, 17x17 in vanilla, and "generates" / "traces out" every cave found within the area, carving out blocks in the current chunk if they intersect it. Yes, this sounds inefficient but it is quite fast, my tool can generate a 4096x4096 area in half a minute, a generation rate that is about 8 times faster than the actual game at complete world generation, and I use an increased radius of 11 chunks. The biggest single optimization I made, which can also more than halve the time taken by vanilla caves, is replacing Java's obsolete "Random" with a better implementation, or even just overriding it to not use "AtomicLong" (which ensures thread safety but the game never uses it across multiple threads), my custom RNG is also fully 64 bit and avoids all the bugs mentioned here (not all due to the RNG itself, which does greatly reduce the number of unique seeds):
I'll note that the cave I recently found is more unusual for its higher altitude, you usually find lava pools as shown here but the only ones were from other caves overlapping it.
This is one of the largest caves that actually exists and that I checked out in-game, which I found with a large-scale search (modifying my tool to check thousands of seeds and outputting the largest cave found across all of them):
This also shows how my caves interact with water; vanilla will just bail out entirely, leaving a wall of solid ground down to bedrock (and with obvious chunk walls, as seen in this example (also see the top comment), not surprisingly, I fixed this at the same time I added such large caves), while my caves contour around them, leaving a couple blocks between them and the liquid:
And yes, these were taken at 16 chunk render distance:
Here are some examples of large caves I found while playing, and some others, which broke the surface over large areas:
A cave I found in a test world in TMCWv3:
The largest cave opening I found while playing in TMCWv4; the underlying cave had a volume of 133,000 blocks, and likely a lot more above sea level (I didn't measure this back then):
The largest cave opening I found in TMCWv5; the underlying cave had a volume of 414,000 blocks (the cave is now a bit different; the opening is smaller as more of it is now underground adding about 35,000 blocks to the volume below sea level; when measured above sea level the total volume is 460,000 blocks):
These were from the same cave, the one with a volume of 584,000 blocks (there are only about 6,000 more blocks above above sea level so the ground is near sea level):
A cave I came across in a test world, so large it goes out of render distance at 8 chunks (by which I mean the surface opening):
As far as "giant cave regions" go, due to how they generate they are far less variable in size, ranging from 1.6 to 1.8 million blocks, as shown in this example for a given seed, which had 84 within 1048576 chunks; the largest one that I've ever seen was about 1.87 million blocks, and they are also much less variable in number from seed to seed, there will always be at least one within 1040 blocks and two within 1536 blocks (my cave generator class includes a mini-search in its constructor which will check if at least a certain number of GCRs, colossal cave systems, and "mega caves" exist and if not, either re-seed the RNG they use to randomize their locations or add special locations at which caves will generate at. The time this adds to world load is negligible, on the order of 30 ms, I do not actually measure the volume of the largest caves, just their tunnel width):
Also, my cave mapping/analysis tool can also generate maps that show what each chunk contains, as far as "special" cave systems go, showing the large-scale layout better than an actual underground map; the first map is 1024x1024 chunks and the second is 192x192 chunks, enlarged 4x (one chunk is one pixel); the large pink squares are giant cave regions, blue are network cave regions (a type of cave I haven't found yet), surrounded by a 4 chunk wide "regional exclusion" zone which only allows larger caves and ravines to generate. It is apparent that there is an underlying pattern to regional caves as they generate within 64x64 chunk regions, with one regional cave per region, with one or two (1.25 average) regions per 2x2 region area being giant cave regions; colossal cave systems and strongholds (larger circles, strongholds are red with a green exclusion zone) alternate with one every 8192 chunks, plus a 25% chance of a CCS within a stronghold region (placed so they never overlap; exclusion zones can overlap):
This is what a complete normal analysis looks like (in this case, for the seed with the largest known cave):
These are all the resources I collected; some of the music discs came from creepers, others from dungeons (and yes, I made them stack so I only need a single chest to store all 12 variants), all the potions came from witches (I save them as trophy items):
Here is an animation of the area in intervals of 5 blocks from y=60 down to 5, as well as the surface; parts of it were under an ocean but this didn't significantly impact it. You can also see part of the massive cave I found earlier in the top-right corner and a very large ravine to the south:
This shows what it looks like under the seafloor; the ceiling is 2 blocks thick and sand and gravel patches place sandstone and cobblestone over air so they don't collapse; a post-generation step fills in 1 block high caves (I keep track of where caves reached the seafloor and check if they were only one block high). I didn't bother lighting up most of these areas since there are no ores or other caves in them:
A full-size rendering of everything I've explored so far, with the giant cave region circled (at the bottom), showing just how large it is, and an updated map wall, with a sizable new area added to the south; the only more expansive feature is a "network cave region", a network of very long tunnels extending upwards of 400 blocks across (both of these features may clip outside of the 400x400 area that CaveFinder uses to measure them, more often for network cave regions):
The total air volume within a 350x350 block area centered on it was 1.83 million blocks, as measured with MCEdit (so the actual volume below sea level when accounting for features like oceans); the difference from that shown above (1696108) reflects other features that merged with the fringes, including various other large caves and ravines; I also placed a total of 7,109 torches within this area:
All the blocks marked as "future block" are unrecognized by MCEdit and are mostly decorative blocks, amounting to half the total variants (I can't easily say what most are just by looking at them but I know that the last one, 200, is amethyst ore, there are multiple entries for many ores due to biome-specific variants, in this case, sandstone in beach biomes. Even bedrock has variants, "stone" in stone-based biomes and "andesite" in Rocky Mountains, matching its stone variant). It is also notable that I mined over 26% of the coal, 17% of the iron, and 14% of the diamond that was originally present, illustrating just how much ore was exposed (the interior of a giant cave region can exceed 50% air on its peak layers).
Also, this is a list of the individual caves within the giant cave region, with a total of 108 caves with a total volume of 2.09 million blocks when generated individually (without overlap; the difference indicates an overlap of about 19%), with a range of 6,700 to 45,000 blocks; about half exceeded the volume of the largest cave in my first world (16,036 blocks) and a quarter exceeded the 25,000 threshold I use for a "large cave" in TMCW. Another thing you may notice is that they are all at two specific altitudes, 15 and 45, which forms two distinct levels, which can also be seen in the sliced animation above:
Here are more screenshots I took while and after exploring it, mainly of the larger chambers:
Among other things that directly intersected it, I found my first real large ravine, with a volume of 137,000 blocks, over three times larger than anything I'd found until now, as well as a smaller ravine with a volume of 60,000 (I didn't actually finish exploring the latter until after I made the animation, where it can be seen on the right, the larger ravine is to the south):
Another interesting finding was a mineshaft going down to y=2, the deepest they can possibly go (in TMCW or vanilla before 1.18), except in TMCW there is no bedrock above the lowest layer so they don't look any different (I only noticed when I mined ore in the floor and there was bedrock below it, which itself is just a darker version of the stone used in the biome):
There is also a large cave to the west of the giant cave region, which I've left for later (I'll explore other features directly connected to the main one I'm exploring but not anything connected to them, same for going off the edge of a map):
Another notable thing is the sheer number of mobs I killed on the last two days, with the 882 killed on the 6th day being a record for this world and only surpassed by one or two other days in all my time playing (the record is 1070, not surprisingly, while exploring another giant cave region):
These screenshots attempt to convey the number of mobs:
An enhanced zoom of the previous image:
After I ran through the area to place some torches (including an invisible spider, a feature I added to all difficulties; why should Hard have exclusive features, an issue I often bring up when it is suggested to add even more such features):
I also encountered several "mega slimes", no large magma cubes though so none died in lava:
Two music discs at the same time:
And yes, I did have to hole up several times to order to get away from the mobs, getting down to a couple hearts once (without poison):
A skeleton dropped one of the most highly enchanted items I've ever seen; a bow with Power III, Punch I, Infinity, and Flame (fortunately the "ranged damage" only applies to a critical shot fired by a player, not skeleton):
Also, I'll even repair/replace underground features like huge mushrooms if they get damaged by a creeper explosion, as in this example:
This shows how I collect ores that are on a thin ledge above a long drop; I mine a hole next to them and put water in it, then get in and mine the ores next to it (I still make sure there are no mobs nearby):
Also, this is a summary of the 46 days I've spent caving so far; while they may look extreme the amounts that I've mined are typical of previous worlds, including my first world, with the biggest difference from the latter being the amount of mineshaft-related blocks, which is about half as high since they are less common and effectively made more so by the increase in caves (even my first world doesn't fully reflect vanilla due to removing mineshafts from dense cave systems, reducing the total by about 20%, which comes out to about a third more mineshafts, with a similar average size). I also haven't mined any emerald ore yet due to not finding any of the several biomes that have them (the amounts that I've found in TMCW have varied wildly, from almost none in TMCWv4 to the most of any single world in TMCWv5):
Here are charts covering all 64 sessions, including pre-caving (the first 17 sessions) and building a secondary base (the 48th session):
I don't need to completely light up the ceiling though, just enough to see (I do the same on the ground but there I'm placing new light sources as I progress into unlit areas, while I can pillar up towards a dark area on the ceiling without lighting up the area between it and a nearby lit area, making branches off to the sides to access ores).
I made it so they have a random chance of growing in each form, with the biome having an impact on the chance; my code for birch trees looks like this:
// Chance of larger variants of trees (e.g. big oak, set to 1/10 in vanilla) int bigTreeChance = 8; // Reduces growth chance of larger trees (only applied to 2x2 or larger sizes) float growthChance = 1.0F; // Large birch trees with 2x2 trunks for (offsetX = 0; offsetX >= -1; --offsetX) { for (offsetZ = 0; offsetZ >= -1; --offsetZ) { if (this.isSameSapling(par1World, posX + offsetX, posY, posZ + offsetZ, 0, 1, treeType)) { // 50% chance of growing (about 13 minutes or 9 bonemeal). Trees in Big Birch Forest and Mega Mixed Forest // are taller and take longer to grow. growthChance = 0.5F; int min = 12; int max = 20; if (biome == BiomeGenBase.bigBirchForest || biome == BiomeGenBase.bigBirchForestHills) { growthChance = 0.375F; min = 16; max = 24; } else if (biome == BiomeGenBase.megaMixedForest || biome == BiomeGenBase.megaMixedForestHills) { growthChance = 0.25F; min = 24; max = 30; } treeGenerator = new WorldGenBigBirchTree(min, max); trunkSize = 2; break; } } if (treeGenerator != null) break; } if (treeGenerator == null) { offsetX = 0; offsetZ = 0; if (par5Random.nextInt(bigTreeChance) == 0) { // Larger birch trees using Great Forest tree type; trees in Mega Mixed Forest average 8 blocks taller boolean mmf = (biome == BiomeGenBase.megaMixedForest || biome == BiomeGenBase.megaMixedForestHills); treeGenerator = new WorldGenGreatForestTree(BIRCH, mmf ? 20 : 12, mmf ? 28 : 20); } else { // 25% of birch saplings grow into poplar trees, 50% in Poplar Grove int poplarChance = (biome == BiomeGenBase.poplarGrove || biome == BiomeGenBase.poplarGroveHills ? 2 : 4); if (par5Random.nextInt(poplarChance) == 0) { treeGenerator = new WorldGenPoplarTree(); } else { // Birch trees can grow taller in Birch Forest Hills int heightVariation = (par5Random.nextInt(3) == 0 && biome == BiomeGenBase.birchForestHills ? 7 : 0); treeGenerator = new WorldGenSmallTrees(5, heightVariation, BIRCH, BlockStates.leaves, BIRCH, false); } } }There is also another interesting mechanic visible here, I modify the chance of a sapling advancing its growth stage/growing a tree so larger trees grow more slowly, especially ones with 2x2 trunks (these otherwise grow faster because any one sapling can trigger growth of the whole tree).
Another variant of tree are "bushes", similar to the ones that cover the ground in jungles; these will generate if a tree failed to grow due to an obstruction 3-4 blocks above it:
// Attempts to generate a bush if tree failed to grow due to insufficient height (there must be a growth-blocking // block 3 or 4 blocks above bush) if (!flag && trunkSize == 1 && posY < 252 && (!WorldGenTMCW.canTreeGrowThroughBlock(chunkCache.getBlockId(posX, posY + 3, posZ), false) || !WorldGenTMCW.canTreeGrowThroughBlock(chunkCache.getBlockId(posX, posY + 4, posZ), false))) { if (this.blockID == BlockStates.sapling) { if (treeType == OAK || treeType == JUNGLE) { flag = (new WorldGenBush(Block.leaves.getBlockState(treeType), treeType, WorldGenBush.JUNGLE)).generate(chunkCache, posX, posY, posZ); } else if (treeType == SPRUCE) { flag = (new WorldGenBush(BlockStates.leaves_spruce, 1, WorldGenBush.PLAYER_GROWN)).generate(chunkCache, posX, posY, posZ); } } else if (this.blockID == BlockStates.sapling2 && treeType <= AUTUMNAL_BROWN) { // Autumnal saplings treeGenerator.setParameters(WorldGenAutumnalTrees.PLAYER_GROWN_BUSH | treeType & 3); flag = treeGenerator.generate(chunkCache, posX, posY, posZ); } }When I first added new types of trees I just made many biome-specific so they could use the vanilla saplings; 2x2 big oaks only grew in Big Oak Forest, otherwise becoming a "mega tree", palm trees grew from jungle saplings in beach biomes, and so on.
I also do have my own tree types with their own saplings and leaves, one interesting thing I did was add "Dark/Swamp Oak" saplings for dark oak and swamp oak trees respectively, the latter being ungrowable in vanilla (previously, and for my first world I made oak saplings become swamp oaks in swamps, they do still only have vines in swamps, as do small jungle trees in jungles, etc):
for (offsetX = 0; offsetX >= -1; --offsetX) { for (offsetZ = 0; offsetZ >= -1; --offsetZ) { if (this.isSameSapling(par1World, posX + offsetX, posY, posZ + offsetZ, 0, 1, treeType)) { // Growth rate is about 10 minutes or 7 bonemeal growthChance = 0.666667F; treeGenerator = new WorldGenRoofedForestTree(); trunkSize = 2; break; } } if (treeGenerator != null) break; } // Roofed forest saplings also double as swamp oak saplings; trees in swamps generate with vines if (treeGenerator == null) { offsetX = 0; offsetZ = 0; treeGenerator = new WorldGenSwampTree(biome == BiomeGenBase.swampland || biome == BiomeGenBase.swampRiver || biome == BiomeGenBase.tropicalSwamp); }TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I found a village for the first time in this world, it wasn't actually that far away, at 300, 450, but with the way I explore it could have been months before I found it (I've been mostly exploring towards the east-south as I already went in that direction to find a stronghold; on average a level 3 map takes about 1 1/2 months to explore and I completely explore a map before going to the next):
As far as generation goes the village was nearly perfect, no doors buried or too high, mainly because the ground was so flat; the biome was the second Meadow biome, aside from the one I spawned in, which was hillier, and is otherwise one of the flattest biomes. This is also helped by a change I made to help ensure the ground level is measured as accurately as possible (limited by chunk loading and population mechanics; vanilla only measures the ground level within a chunk-sized region while I do so within a 2x2 chunk region, in vanilla the worst-case results in just a single block being measured, i.e. a corner of the structure intersects the chunk-sized region, while in my case at least a 9x9 area can be measured). Another more recent improvement I made to villages was to prevent buildings from directly touching, with at least 1 block between them, similar to an earlier change I made to prevent mineshaft corridors from generating right on top of each other (only within a single structure, otherwise their spacing minimizes the chance of two intersecting).
I'll also note that villages aren't that uncommon at all, in TMCW or vanilla 1.6.4, despite popular perception that they have become much more common in newer versions, which I put down to changes in playstyles and biome layout/size. For example, in the first video here they found four villages, at 22:30 and 37.00 (both in the same world) and 1:06:00 and 125:45 (also both in the same world); the second video is of an established world where they set up base in a village with another within sight (at 16 chunk render distance):
Of course, your mileage may vary; in TMCWv5 the 5 villages I found were within a relatively small area to the northwest of spawn while there were none in the rest of the world; TMCWv4 was smaller but had 7 villages more spread out:
Another thing that is different about villages is the blacksmith, which may have more loot, including diamond equipment (which for the most part is equivalent to iron in vanilla, same damage, protection, speed), enchanted books with Efficiency (40%), Unbreaking (40%), or Mending (20%), and an actual anvil in the front where the double stone slab is (presumably supposed to be an anvil), which will be at least slightly damaged (out of 4 levels, including a new "moderately damaged" state):
Also, this shows that Giants are a bit more than just oversized zombies - I'd surrounded the village with a 3 block high wall yet it still got over it since I increased their jump/step height:
I found another biome, "Lake", as a sub-biome of Mixed Forest, and many others, as well as a full-size biome which contains islands of other biomes; they can be distinguished form areas that are simply underwater, which are otherwise less common than in vanilla, by the presence of water plants and mobs (similar to modern versions I made them, only able to spawn in rivers, oceans, and lakes, with the exception of squid underground, which spawn as glow squid):
The mesa biome had at least one "mesa mineshaft", generating at y=68, similar to the ones added in 1.10, except those seem to simply be normal mineshafts generated at a higher altitude, I actually have a second layer of mineshafts that generate higher up so mesas can have over twice as many mineshafts as other biomes, restricted by the size of the biome as they only generate if a mesa biome is within 32 blocks of the center, but not by the generation of other underground features within the area; they are also much smaller with a maximum span of only 32 blocks (about 40 blocks from their center since the length of a piece adds to this; for comparison, vanilla sets the span at 80 blocks / about 100 total, the difference in span/total being due to corridors having 2 segments in mesa mineshafts and 2-4 in normal mineshafts. The largest mineshafts in TMCW have a span of 110/130):
I'll also note that I implemented mesa mineshafts in a far better way than Mojang did; similar to them I have code that prevents pieces from generating fully exposed to the sky, but this check is only applied to surface mineshafts, not mineshafts in general, e.g. you can no longer create Superflat worlds with floating mineshafts and they will be missing in ravines exposed to the sky, and also seem to consider trees/leaves as blocking sky exposure as they will generate in trees (I ignore leaves and wood when checking for sky exposure):
MC-103559 Abandoned mineshafts in Superflat no longer float
(I'll also note that it seems that mineshafts can no longer generate in Superflat worlds at all as they removed the feature generation options that were added in 1.4, it seems that you can't even change how common they are even with datapacks as there is no such option listed here, "placeholder values, have no effect")
Some other features unique to my mesa biomes include gold ore generated as part of the structure of mesa mineshafts (it is otherwise only generated deeper down as usual) and iron ore generated at all altitudes; ores above sea level only generate if they aren't exposed to the sky (above or adjacent), keeping the surface clean (this is also done in other biomes with surface blocks that allow ores to replace them, e.g. Rocky Mountains appears as all stone while having the normal dirt/gravel/coal under the surface):
There is also a quite large looking cave in the mesa which I haven't explored yet; I'm also getting close to the point (a 512 block radius from the origin, e.g. 368, 368 is a distance of 520) where I can start finding far larger caves and other features:
Elsewhere, I found a "vertical cave system" and "random cave cluster"; a "cave cluster" is a smaller scale variant of a larger cave system; "vertical" caves go up/down along diagonals/spirals while "random" caves are relatively narrow tunnels with randomized rooms of various shapes along them, the one shown is filled with random blocks; and the first clearly larger circular room with a diameter of 32 blocks, compared a maximum of 17 in vanilla (for statistical purposes I only count them if they reach at least twice this, or 34 blocks, and they can reach up to 71 blocks or about 73 times the volume of vanilla):
I ran into another new mob, "brown spider", a variant of normal spider which deals twice the damage (which is still only 4 on Normal, 6 on Hard) and inflicts either Weakness or Slowness (randomly applied one at a time, refreshed or changed once it wears off). Notably, the texture is based on a never-released version which first implemented spiders:
One of the more interesting types of dungeon - a creeper dungeon, with spawners modified so they can't be destroyed by creeper explosions (TNT does work); dungeons also have loot specific to the mob they spawn, with creeper dungeons having gunpowder and more rarely TNT (3 in this case, which is relatively uncommon):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
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Curse PremiumAs usual, you mention a lot of nice features. Pity you don't work for Mojang. Oh I wish mineshafts had that spacing improvement!
Millenaire manages to almost alway place its building without egregious terrain problems, by flattening the terrain immediately around the building.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Another interesting enchantment I found was Swift Sneak, identical to the enchantment added in 1.19 except it isn't quite so rare; you can get it from the table but at a reduced chance and levels, as well as trading and fishing but only half as likely as other enchantments; as far as structure loot goes, Swift Sneak is most commonly found in mineshafts (added separately with its own chance in addition to normal enchanted books) while Smelting is most commonly found in "double dungeons", of which I haven't found any yet, but again can also be found on any book for any structure:
I also found an enchanted golden apple for the first time in this world; similar to 1.9 I removed the crafting recipe but did not nerf them (still with Regeneration V and Absorption I; 1.9 reduced Regeneration to II and increased Absorption to IV. IMO, such a nerf was unnecessary, considering it took over two real-time days of caving to find one and very few players ever do that much, I doubt even 1/10 as much, in a world, even if they are about twice as common per dungeon chest in modern versions (prior to 1.6 normal golden apples were about 4 times rarer, illustrating how Mojang has progressively made them more common, 1.6 increased the chance by nearly 10-fold and 1.9+ again more than tripled it, in addition to adding enchanted apples):
Now, I wanted to use Smelting, which is also especially valuable when you have like 3-4 different biome-specific ores to handle as it enables them (or the ingots they drop) to stack but you can't just add it to a pickaxe with Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending as it will be too expensive, and of these enchantments, Mending is the least valuable (yes, least valuable) since there is an alternative way to be able to indefinitely repair items while retaining the benefits of Efficiency and Unbreaking - similar to how renaming was intended(?) to work* you can use rubies with an item in the anvil to lower the prior work penalty by 6, or 3 workings (unlike 1.8+ the penalty increases by a flat 2 levels per working).
*The code for a renamed item looks like this (I made Mending work similarly except it just sets the penalty to 0, no subsequent addition of 2); this effectively reduces the penalty by 7 levels per working (-9 + 2), I assume that Mojang only wanted it to apply once, whether whether overall or per-rename is unknown (I consider this to be an official feature for 1.4-1.7 since they never bothered fixing what appears to have been known since it was added, possibly even before 1.4.2 was released (the Wiki already documented it by then), as with some other "features"; this is what happens when you have a bug-fixing policy like Mojang. Or perhaps they couldn't figure out a good alternative, as it is, repairing is so expensive that many didn't even bother, only two good enchantments on an item, or three but having to use single diamonds or grind down sacrifices? Way, way more balanced than 1.9 though, 6-7+ enchantments and only needing XP for the same effectiveness as Mending alone):
However, rubies can only be found in a handful of biomes; Autumnal Forest, Rocky Mountains, Savanna Mountains, Volcanic Wastelands; none of which I'd found yet, more due to the relatively small area I've explored so far than any of them being rare (in fact, along with Extreme Hills, Rocky Mountains has the highest probability of spawning of any biome in "normal " climate areas, with a weight of 5, or "common" plus "rare"). So in a significant departure from my normal playstyle I set out to find one of these biomes; I made a new map centered at 512, 512 (the same one I've been exploring) and set out to the south, then along the southern edge of the map; I didn't actually have to travel that far before I found one of these biomes, in fact, I almost did when going to the stronghold.
This is the path I took, along with a comparison of all three maps I've made for 512, 512 (stronghold, ruby, caving):
Along the way I found several new biomes and structures; Desert M, a variant of desert with more and taller cacti (growing up to 3-6 blocks tall depending on coordinates and naturally generating at their full height. I'll note that I fixed MC-234798 so cacti can otherwise never generate taller than 3 blocks) and Oasis sub-biomes with grass, water, palm trees, and passive mobs other than rabbits ("Desert M" was the name of a biome added in 1.7, which was just pre-1.6 desert with water lakes; as lakes were removed from the game entirely I assume there is no equivalent in 1.18+); another Quartz Desert with a Quartz Desert Pyramids, one of my own structures, a full-size Cherry Grove, and finally, a Rocky Mountains, partly off the southern edge of the map:
Quartz Desert with Quartz Desert Pyramids:
Cherry Grove generated as a full-size biome, which is 1/128 of biomes in "normal" climate regions, otherwise you are more likely to find it as a small sub-biome within another biome:
Another Birch Forest, which I'd already found elsewhere:
Rocky Mountains, which is made up of multiple rings of sub-biomes to create large and relatively smooth mountains the size of an entire biome; the snow on top is the "summit" biome, rather than simply altitude (it is generally more variable than the relatively uniform snowline in 1.7+):
In another departure from my playstyle I did more "normal" caving, as I'd imagine most players do in order to find resources rather than just for the sake of it; I first looked around for a surface cave opening before digging down to find one (as common as caves may be underground surface openings can still be rare and widely scattered; complaints like this post are more due to being in an inconvenient location than indicative of their frequency, the Meadow I spawned in had 3-4 widely scattered cave openings, a couple next to each other). I collected a total of 37 rubies from 13 ores, out of a total of 629, making it about 4 times more common than diamond for this relatively small sample size (I didn't actually find any diamond, this is just based on what I average); overall ruby is about half as common based on what I found in TMCWv5:
I found two rubies almost right away while staircasing down, which yielded 7 rubies with Fortune III (they drop 1-2 rubies, multiplied by 1-4 with Fortune so you can get as many as 16 from two ores, averaging 6.6):
Rubies also generate differently from other ores; up to 5 blocks are placed in a configuration of a center block surrounded by blocks adjacent to it, thus they will all be directly connected, so no need to dig around for more (an exception is if the center block was displaced and it had two blocks to the sides in a line, in which case you'll initially find a single block but that could also be a normal deposit of 1):
Rocky Mountains also has its own unique mob - strays, which unlike modern versions can spawn anywhere as 50% of skeletons (instead of 80% on the surface only), and are a much more common experience in general due to the distribution of biomes and inclusion in several non-snowy biomes (Rocky Mountains, including the non-snowy variants, and Extreme Hills). You can also see another feature of Rocky Mountains - stone and andesite are swapped, with the base block being andesite with pockets of stone, a feature of various other biomes (in addition to biomes like desert replacing stone entirely):
After I collected what I wanted I returned and explored the Quartz Desert Pyramids I found; the main pyramid contains a series of mazes on two floors, plus a treasure room at the top; the two floors with mazes contain 3 husk and skeleton spawners and the walls of made out of a special block called "Reinforced Quartz Sandstone" which takes a couple minutes to break with an Efficiency V amethyst pickaxe, discouraging the player from simply mining through it, with a special button in the treasure room that converts it into normal quartz sandstone:
Each floor has a ladder at some point that leads up to the next floor; the floors themselves are each randomly chosen from one of 16 patterns, giving a total of 256 unique combinations (the skeleton shows that there are still some vanilla bugs in TMCW, it is actually on the second floor, mobs in general can't use ladders properly):
You'll want to press that button if you want to be able to clear out or dismantle the structure, which converts the inner walls into normal sandstone:
The chest had some crazy loot - 4 enchanted books! (Luck of the Sea III, Fire Protection IV, Punch I, Aqua Affinity):
Last but not least I collected the spawners, two skeleton and one husk (I put the walls back after finding them; they are hard to find because I made spawners not produce particles if they are completely enclosed):
I had to spend several rubies right away in order to remove the prior work penalty that accumulated from making the pickaxe (I made Efficiency V from level 1 books, accumulating 4 workings, plus one more to add it to the pickaxe, then added Unbreaking III from a book I found, +1 more working, and Smelting, +1 working for a total of 7); the first one cost 29 levels, or 14 + 6 + 3x3, where 14 is the penalty, 6 is the cost per ruby (effectively double the penalty removed) and 3x3 is the enchantment cost for amethyst items (multiplier of 3, diamond is 2 and others are 1). A penalty of 14 means that this item is too expensive to repair even once after just being made as it would cost 57 levels (21 for the unit cost, 3 for the number of enchantments, 14 for the penalty, 5 for Efficiency V, 6 for Unbreaking III, 8 for Smelting; the cost without a penalty is 43, the same as what I was previously using since Mending has the same cost as Smelting):
After using the first ruby; I could have used two but only used one since as seen next the cost is much lower (less XP than going to the next level):
I'll note that this was unnecessary since it only reduced the penalty by a single working (2 penalty cost + 2 ruby cost + 3x3 enchantment cost); once it reaches 0 you can no longer use rubies:
The repair cost will be 43-45-47 levels per ruby, which will cost 21 levels for an average of 2633 XP per repair, compared to 2177 for a constant 43 levels, so you are spending about 21% more XP and 33% more anvil uses compared to using Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending, which has the same zero penalty cost of 43 levels. You can also see the difference in my inventory, aside from multiple variants of ores ingots from chest loot or zombie drops also don't take up more slots since I already have slots for them:
After that I resumed my normal caving, finishing up what turned out to be the second largest mineshaft I've found so far, with a corridor length of 3,900 blocks:
These are all the mineshafts I've found so far, plus a mesa mineshaft (my tool doesn't check for these); most have been larger than average, which is a size of 127 and length of 1250, almost identical to that in vanilla but with more at the extremes (there are more mineshafts below the average than in vanilla):
A comparison of the size distribution of mineshafts to vanilla; there are three main sizes in TMCW, with "large" (a span of 10-11, which also alter the length of corridors so they are more often 3-4 sections long) being similar to mineshafts in Beta 1.8 (yes, they were much larger back then, reduced to the modern size shortly after), the low end of the range is truncated in TMCW since I don't allow them to generate with less than 25 structure pieces (75 for large, the corridor length is about 10 times this), including even just the main room, which occurs about 1/600 of the time in vanilla (I excluded these from the vanilla distribution, otherwise it is accurate). The overall distribution peaks at about 800 in TMCW and 1250 in vanilla, the latter close to the average while TMCW is below:
The large cave I previously mentioned turned out to be the second largest cave as well, with a volume of 100,000 blocks; as with the first such cave, and others on the smaller size range it was more of a tunnel than an open chamber:
I'll note that while I prevent mineshafts from generating too close to such caves their sizes do allow for significant overlap, given that the mineshaft was one of the most extensive that can generate; I checked with my cave mapping/locator tool and it was as close as it could get before being eliminated (just at the edge of a 5 chunk radius, if expanded by one chunk it gets replaced by a "small" mineshaft, and a bit further, completely removed; overall nearly half of mineshafts, which have about the same base chance as vanilla, get removed in this manner, with about a third of potential large mineshafts being replaced with a small one and another third removed entirely).
There was another large cave nearby with a volume of 64,000 blocks; this one was more of a large chamber (all are generated the same way, differing slightly by type, in the same manner as vanilla tunnels, just much longer and/or wider, the amount they twist and turn affecting the overall shape):
These are all the "large" caves that I've found so far, larger than what you can expect to find in vanilla (ravines only include those which reach a vanilla maximum):
I found two new types of cave systems for the first time in this world, a "combination cave system" and a "zigzag cave system"; combination cave systems contain several different types of caves, in this case the "CRM" variant, which mainly has circular rooms, "ravine caves" (caves shaped like small ravines), and "maze caves", with multiple right-angle branches in a maze-like fashion; "zigzag caves" have sharp bends instead of gradual curves and are basically a variant of normal cave, replacing those with a size of 20 or more in various regions:
A chart of all types of caves, showing the variants separately as "cave clusters":
I also saw a zombie/husk in amethyst armor, the third mob with diamond or amethyst:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
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Curse PremiumI continue to be envious of your map colors.
Yes, the M biome system went away with the new world generation system, along the entire sub-biome business. Most of them are largely more mountainous versions of their parent biomes and aren't necessary now that new generation allows much greater terrain variation everywhere. Some M biomes were "rescued" into full biomes, all in the lowest humidity category, IIRC: Ice Spikes, Flower Forest (a particularly weird one for lowest humidity), and Sunflower Plains. IMO this was a mistake; they should have done those as structures in their source biomes. Now it can be super-hard to find them (well, Ice Spikes already was, but not the others).
Yeah, it does take the atmosphere of the desert temples that you can just dig them up and minimize the hazards. Although PvP types would have a field day with a block that takes minutes to break.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
You'll never guess what I saw five times over four days in a row, including twice in one day - zombies in diamond armor, normally an incredibly rare sight in vanilla, especially in modern versions with their regional difficulty system (this really includes any version since 1.6. but more so since 1.8):
Given that I've been playing on this world for well over 100 hours by now the chance of armor has reached its maximum of 20% on Normal, compared to 15% in vanilla and dependent on regional difficulty which is unlikely to ever reach its maximum except where a player might AFK, and only during a full moon (the reason why I say "more so since 1.8" is because they made it so instead of effects starting from 0 a "raw" value is scaled from 2-4 to 0-1, thus it must reach at least 2 to start having any effect. Also, 1.6.4 allows the value to effectively reach up to 1.25 on Hard, giving a 18.75% chance of armor, which is limited to 15% since 1.8), as seen in this inhabited time map of my previous world, where most of the world only reached about 25% of the maximum, or 50+ hours (green, with red being 50%, yellow 75% and white 100%. The variations mainly reflect variations in cave density):
Of course, I also significantly increased the chance of higher tiers of armor; here is the code and calculated probabilities for each tier:
int tier = random.nextInt(2);
if (random.nextFloat() < 0.095F) ++tier;
if (random.nextFloat() < 0.095F) ++tier;
if (random.nextFloat() < 0.095F) ++tier;
// resulting distribution
0 = 37.04782%
1 = 48.73492%
2 = 12.9009%
3 = 1.27254%
4 = 0.04382%
// TMCW
int tier = random.nextInt(2);
if (random.nextFloat() < 0.2F) ++tier;
if (random.nextFloat() < 0.2F) ++tier;
if (random.nextFloat() < 0.2F) ++tier;
if (tier == 4 && random.nextFloat() < 0.25F) ++tier;
// resulting distribution
0 = 25.58678%
1 = 44.81009%
2 = 23.99558%
3 = 5.20507%
4 = 0.30101%
5 = 0.10147%
0 = leather, 1 = gold, 2 = chain, 3 - iron, 4 = diamond, 5 = amethyst
When combined with the chance of any armor diamond and amethyst are together about 12 times more common than at maximum regional difficulty in vanilla, then factor in the fact that I encounter around 50% more mobs, so closer to 20 times more common; still, seeing 5 over 4 consecutive sessions is quite uncommon given I previously averaged one mob in diamond or amethyst every 4 sessions (111 mobs over 425 caving / 449 total sessions. I'll note that this would suggest 5-6 mobs in vanilla but I see maybe 2-3 over the same period in my first world, and largely because I made the inhabited time calculation start at 50%, or 37.5%-50% of maximum regional difficulty depending on moon phase).
I saw another mob for the first time - one that many players will also see once Mojang releases 1.21, a new variant of skeleton called a "bogged", whose most notable feature is that they fire arrows that inflict Poison (in my case rather than adding actual tipped arrows I have the entity the arrow hit check the entity that fired the arrow and if it is a bogged then Poison is applied, same for strays and Slowness):
I'll note that this is far from the first time I've released a feature that was going to be added in an upcoming vanilla update before it was actually released, one of the first being the 1.8 stone types, as well as the ability for caves to surface in biomes like desert (before then they could only cut through stone, dirt, and grass. I'll note that Mojang still hasn't gotten how caves work, just allow any block, then you wouldn't need to maintain an ever-larger list of blocks, with omissions to this day (note that the report was filed in May 2013 and was originally about deserts/mushroom islands). A separate check makes them avoid water and I avoid bedrock by simply limiting their minimum altitude, otherwise, they won't cut through e.g. trees and structures because they don't exist yet at the stage of world generation caves are generated at):
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding-java-edition/minecraft-mods/1294926-themastercavers-world?comment=16
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding-java-edition/minecraft-mods/1294926-themastercavers-world?comment=58
And even bugfixes (plus many more which Mojang never fixed over the past decade, or only after many years, e.g. it took until 1.18 to fix some bugs with cave generation and they still haven't fixed the issues mentioned here, at least for the "old" caves):
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding-java-edition/minecraft-mods/1294926-themastercavers-world?comment=13
I found two "double dungeons", the first time I've found this dungeon variant, not to be confused with two dungeons connected together, of which I haven't found any yet (based on previous worlds and my first world around 1% of dungeons intersect); besides having two spawners, spawning different mobs at a slightly reduced rate, and 2-3 chests, one distinctive feature is the use of chiseled stone bricks in the floors, making it much easier (relatively speaking) to obtain (otherwise, there are only three per jungle temple; the 14 I've found in my first world are equal to a single double dungeon):
No, I haven't added ways to craft them or mossy cobblestone or the other variants of stone bricks, which can also be found in the walls of dungeons, as seen in the second one, and the infinite number of strongholds throughout the world (I think that making these craftable ruins their value as one of the main resources that I collect).
Double dungeons also have a much higher chance of having "Smelting" and "Vein Miner" enchantments, contributing to around half the total across all dungeons and structures (neither had either enchantment and the Smelting book I did find was in a mineshaft). I'll also note that one of the chests had an Eye of Ender as part of its mob loot (based on the mob the spawner is set to, with double dungeons alternating between the two for each chest), this does make it (very, very slowly) possible to get to the End without going to the Nether:
Another thing different about dungeons in TMCW is that unlike vanilla sand above them doesn't cave in, a feature which was also lost in newer vanilla versions; this was because some of the code was still changing blocks with the "notify neighbors" flag set, which is normally disabled during world generation. It is quite obvious when this happens since I added falling dust particles, as were also added in newer versions:
Again within a relatively short period of time I found three fossils, two skulls and a ribs, which generate as often as they do in newer versions (not sure how the changes to world depth in 1.18 affect their concentration), with one every 64 chunks, or 8x8 chunk region in the case of TMCW; only a fraction will be exposed in caves though and most players don't do that much caving so they are often perceived to be extremely rare or even nonexistent:
I got an interesting drop from a zombie - an iron hammer with Efficiency III, Fortune III, Unbreaking III; pretty high-level enchantments for what would be a level 22 enchantment at the most (on Hard it can go up to level 30 in TMCW, 26 in vanilla prior to 1.8, and 22 since):
I found a biome which I've only found in two out of six worlds I've made with TMCW; Ice Hills, which was added in TMCWv1 but I never found one until TMCWv5, in part because Ice Plains was less common / mostly relegated to "snowy" regions, as vanilla 1.6.4 had, along with the full-size Ice Hills biome; in this case it was two sub-biomes within a large Ice Plains (larger biomes are also more likely to have sub-biomes, not just because of their size but because they can't generate at the edges). The most unique feature is the underground, which is mostly made out of packed ice (or a "biome stone" equivalent), so it is quite slippery, with random patches of snow blocks on the floors of caves and in deposits in the place of dirt and gravel; caves below lava level have water instead of lava, a feature unique to Ice Hills and several other "ice" biomes:
Not only that, I saw something far off in the distance, although I haven't considered exploring further in that direction at this time; this is also only the second world that I've found Ice Plains Spikes, also found as a sub-biome of Ice Plains and its own full-size biome (for perspective, Ice Hills is 0.36% of land and Ice Plains Spikes is 0.58%; Ice Plains itself is 3.66% and is the most common "normal" land biome. 3.66% doesn't fully reflect how common Ice Plains proper is since this includes the "edge" of various other biomes, but this does better reflect how common it actually is to find Ice Hills / Spikes; similarly, Oasis is only 0.024% of land but Desert M + Oasis is 0.94% and most Desert Ms will have at least one Oasis):
Another mob backport - polar bears, one of three bear variants (I've added more variants of many mobs in general, both vanilla and from newer versions; many forests may have brown bears and Autumnal Forest may have black bears):
As far as caving goes, I found two "large cave cave systems" right after each other (they were actually hundreds of blocks apart as I moved to a different area after exploring the first); these are based on a variant of cave system in TMCWv1, which has larger caves similar to the largest once in vanilla, plus a single extra long cave without branches (back then all large caves were generated this way); the total volume of each cave system was around 100,000 blocks and can range from 50,000 to 200,000:
Large cave cave systems:
1. 504 56 (type: 1, volume: 105234)
2. 248 456 (type: 1, volume: 93269)
I also found the first actual "large" circular room, as I define them, a diameter of 34 blocks or more, twice the maximum in vanilla, with a diameter of 50 blocks:
1. 722 11 -19 (width: 50, volume: 30797)
Perhaps my most interesting find is one that I haven't explored yet - what appears to be an extremely large open cave, in contrast with the caves I've previously found, which were smaller and had more distinct tunnels; it is hard to say exactly how large it is given the complete lack of visibility in the dark but I had a clear view of the lava sea at the bottom from high up in the ceiling:
Here is an update on my map wall; I've recently gone south along the path I took to find a biome with rubies but I'm in no hurry to reach it as the 30 or so I have is good for 3 months at the rate of one repair per day and one ruby every 3 days (I've actually considered only exploring to around 750 or so before going to another map, only going further out once I explore the entire area closer to my main base, then I'll make a secondary base and explore from 750-1500 around it):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
The cave I mentioned at the end of my last update turned out to be the largest cave I've found in this world so far, at about 129,000 blocks, which is still small as far as the largest caves go (the largest caves I found in my previous world were over 4 times larger and the largest known cave is nearly 10 times larger):
312 23 648 (type: 2, length: 317, width: 42, volume: 129027)
Also, the cave took about two hours to explore, with 1,859 ores mined and 465 mobs killed, I'll note that most of the exploration, including immediately adjacent caves, took about half that time, then I spent about 20 minutes lighting up the ceiling, during which I discovered a major branch of the cave and some other caves in the ceiling:
One of the adjacent caves was a "ribbed tunnel cave system", a type of "vanilla-like" cave which combines the ledges seen in the sides of ravines with normal caves, hence their name:
Also, part of the giant cave was under an Oasis biome; this is one of several biomes, together with rivers, oceans, and lakes, which prevent caves from carving away blocks near sea level, and in the case of Oasis, which is considered to be a valid spawn biome, if very rare outside of world types like Large Biomes, they generate a layer of cobblestone under the surface layers so players that spawn in them have a source of cobblestone (otherwise, the only source of cobblestone in deserts is dungeons and lava/water mixing. I also added cobblestone to bonus chest loot for the same reason):
You'll never guess what I found almost immediately after I finished exploring the giant cave - another giant cave, or technically, two merged together, with each one having a volume of about 27,000 blocks, the smallest large caves I've found so far, while still covering a sizable area, comparable to that of the first cave (the map of these caves is 128x128 blocks while the giant cave is 112x112 blocks):
376 25 472 (type: 1, length: 147, width: 25, volume: 27533)
408 21 472 (type: 1, length: 237, width: 18, volume: 27189)
Both caves together contributed to a staggering 733 mob kills, a record for this world but short of my all-time record of 1,070 mobs; I'll also note that I only found a total of 6 diamond, about a third of the average, which was more down to luck than anything (compared to vanilla you can expect to find more diamond in the lowest layers; it still generates in the lowest 5 layers above lava level but the concentration doesn't drop off in the upper few layers and there is 25% more ore that only generates of exposed to air (yes, the exact opposite of 1.18), the intent of this being to offset differences in cave distribution and effective ground depth to give a similar overall abundance relative to coal and iron as you'd find in vanilla if you explore everything underground):
I was also able to cover a much larger area than usual due to the extent of the caves; there is a fairly large swamp in the middle of the map, part of the same one I first saw when going to a stronghold:
One thing I haven't really found yet is a large ravine, with one slightly larger than normal ravine but nothing else (on average there are slightly more ravines with a volume over 25,000 and nearly as many with a volume over 100,000; averaging 80 / 29 caves and 100 / 25 ravines within 1536 blocks; at my rate of exploration this comes out to an average of one cave every 4-5 / 12-13 days and one ravine every 3-4 / 14-15 days):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
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Curse PremiumAre "ribbed caves" found in vanilla with any frequency? I don't recall any.
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Virtually everything I mention is part of my mod, vanilla only has basic rooms/tunnels and ravines, the latter of which will never generate in a way as to appear like a normal cave/tunnel. Even 1.18 doesn't have as many new variants of caves as I've added:
Most of the new types of cave mentioned in the Wiki, such as "noodle" and "spaghetti" caves, don't look much different from the old caves, just generated differently (as noise instead of carving though the ground, basically like how the overall shape of Nether terrain is defined by noise, then it has caves carving through it), "cheese" caves would be closest to the large caves I added and there seems to be no equivalent to larger ravines (also, does it irk anybody else how they keep changing all the old names to new ones; "monster room"? I only see people calling them "dungeons", likewise, nobody calls ravines "canyons"):
https://minecraft.wiki/w/Cave (the description of the "old" / "carver" caves is nearly identical to 1.6.4 except tunnels can reach up to 38 blocks wide instead of 27; I'll note that the distribution used in 1.6.4 makes wider tunnels very rare. I'll also note that this chart is very outdated for TMCW, and the addition of new variants of larger caves and variations in length makes "width" rather meaningless, "volume" would be a better metric).
https://minecraft.wiki/w/Canyon (in 1.6.4 ravines range from 85-112 blocks long and up to 3-15 blocks wide and 9-45 blocks deep, so they did become slightly bigger in 1.18 but not by much; in TMCW they can get up to 384 blocks long, 50 blocks wide, and over 70 blocks deep, terrain permitting).
For comparison, this shows the "skeleton" of the second large cave mentioned before (two caves joined together), with the "width" of the tunnels set to the minimum of 3 blocks, showing that they are structurally the same as vanilla tunnels, just a lot longer and/or wider (it looks like there are a lot more than two caves because each tunnel branches into two, forming a "T" intersection):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I've already found another cave even larger than the last one, with a volume of about 150,000 blocks, and yet another, still unexplored, that is probably larger still, if not even more than just a simple large cave:
440 19 776 (type: 2, length: 387, width: 37, volume: 150646)
This is the same view as the previous but with the render distance increased and fog turned off (I actually only increased it by 1 chunk but fog obscures the last 20% or so of the render distance, so 8 chunks is more like 100 blocks):
The abundance of granite in the walls is indicative of having reached the Cherry Grove I found while looking for a biome with rubies; this is the first time I actually explored within one, and they are one of several biomes which swap stone with a 1.8 stone variant (granite is the dominant block with deposits of granite replaced with stone):
If that seem large, I came across this right to the south, under the Cherry Grove I found while looking for a biome with rubies, and it definitely looks a lot bigger than anything I've found so far; a cave with such a varied structure is likely one of the largest variants, or possibly part of something much larger, a "giant cave region", given the huge mushrooms scattered about, although they could just be the normal ones that occasionally generate underground:
I also found a large ravine for only the second time, slightly larger than the first, with a volume of 35,000 blocks, with at least 4 other ravines intersecting it, including a triple intersection within the first cave (I actually thought there was another since one of the ravines loops around on itself and the middle was covered by the cave), and another ravine which appears to be similar in size to the largest of the first three, visible in the lower-right (I haven't fully explored it yet, a 5th ravine intersects it though):
424 17 824 (type: 2, length: 176, width: 13, depth: 34, volume: 34598)
Here is an underground rendering of the entire world; I've almost reached the Rocky Mountains where I collected rubies, at the end of a 4th ravine which intersects the three shown above (at the farthest right of the main explored area):
Also, I encountered a couple "mega slimes" in the swamp, which have a size of 8 or twice that of a large slime, and have 64 health, deal 8 damage, jump much higher and further, and split into 2-4 large slimes; these are a biome-specific mob variant found in swamps (surface and underground) and giant cave regions (underground):
Speaking of slimes, they split into magma cubes when they die in lava, so they are occasionally seen in caves (they also spawn in place of slimes in Volcanic Wastelands, including on the surface):
Also, I've decided to make a secondary base to the south (around 0, 1024) before continuing to explore the area as I've nearly reached the southern boundary of the current map (z=1024); this may be a bit earlier than what I've usually done but the changes to map centering means there is no longer such a well-defined boundary around my main base (previously I explored the entire map centered around it / 0,0, which is up to +/- 512 but now there are 4 maps, going up to +/- 1024 centered on the same area).
For the same reason +/- 1536 (previously the boundary of a 3x3 map area) is no longer such a hard limit (now +/- 2048 or 4x4 maps), which may thus lead me to explore further out than usual (I'll note that, as in my first world, oceans will likely become a limiting factor at some point; only the area within about 750-1000 blocks is guaranteed to be land, otherwise large continents generate as they do in vanilla, plus a mix of smaller landmasses which bring the percentage of ocean down from about 75% to 65% / land up from 25% to 35%).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
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Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
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Curse PremiumI find the little deposits of granite etc. that vanilla puts in annoying. They're too large to ignore but too small to be a reasonable source of building material. I much prefer something like the real world (or your system) where areas are mostly one stone or another, ever since I ran across Underground Biomes 10 years ago.
Slimes dying into magma cubes in lava is a cute little easter egg.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I also got my final achievement, "On A Rail", which has unfortunately been removed from newer versions, a sign of how little most players even think of using railways these days (I still see some significant advantages to them; you still need to manually control the player when using horses or elytra, and need to travel in the open, and know exactly where to go / follow some trail or markers. As for the cost, well, I didn't even need to craft any powered rails because I found enough in minecart chests, while the rails on the ground cover my needs 5-10 times over and otherwise it takes only two hours to mine the necessary iron for a 1 km track, less for the necessary gold):
After that I explored the large cave, which was over twice as large as the previous largest with a volume of 385,000 blocks, continuing a trend along a north-south chain of caves, and I'll add, there is what appears to be an even larger cave further south which I've started to explore (this means exploring everything connected to them, which takes up the majority of the time I spend in/around them):
This is a rendering of the area I've recently explored, with three large caves from north to south:
Locations of ribbed tunnel cave systems:
1. 328 760
2. 344 664
3. 296 584
Locations of zigzag cave systems:
1. 184 680
Locations of large cave cave systems by volume:
1. 376 952 (type: 2, volume: 137019)
Locations of dense cave systems by total caves:
1. 184 824 (size: 56, caves: 56)
2. 200 888 (size: 52, caves: 52)
Locations of largest caves by volume:
1. 312 28 904 (type: 4, length: 420, width: 41, volume: 385746)
2. 440 19 776 (type: 2, length: 387, width: 37, volume: 150646)
3. 312 23 648 (type: 2, length: 317, width: 42, volume: 129027)
Locations of largest ravines by volume:
1. 424 17 824 (type: 2, length: 176, width: 13, depth: 34, volume: 34598)
Locations of toroidal caves by volume:
1. 182 27 586 (type: 1, toroid width: 51, tunnel width: 16, volume: 18762)
2. 247 56 639 (type: 1, toroid width: 53, tunnel width: 14, volume: 14352)
Locations of abandoned mineshafts by corridor length:
1. 456 36 968 (span: 9, size: 213, length: 2140)
2. 152 35 632 (span: 8, size: 192, length: 1920)
3. 264 18 1000 (span: 8, size: 145, length: 1325)
Here are screenshots I took while exploring the cave, followed by after I was finished; most of it was under the Cherry Grove (as mentioned before Cherry Grove swaps stone and granite and mineshafts use cherry wood, leading to a unique appearance compared to the usual stone-dominated underground):
The foreground is mostly from a large cave cave system, rather than the giant cave:
There was also a "large cave cave system" with a volume of 137,000 blocks merged with the eastern end of the cave and a very large and dense cave system to the west; the latter made me think it was a "colossal cave system" until I analyzed the area but it was just vanilla caves, without any modifiers (the vanilla parameters seem to have been chosen to generate "swiss cheese" caves as nearly all caves I find like this are without any modifiers; a cave system like this is similar to the larger ones I find in my first world):
I also saw a skeleton in diamond armor for the second time in this world after a dry streak of diamond armored mobs (none since the four zombies in a row), this is also the 9th mob in diamond or amethyst (they may also have tools as weapons, which are more common. I'll note that drops still aren't that common, though I reduced the base chance from 8.5% to 5%, while I made Looting increase it by 2% instead of 1% per level so if you use it you'll get about the same drop rate. Amethyst items have twice the drop rate, including with Looting (I have it scale with the drop rate), resulting in them being 1.5 times rarer in terms of drops):
Similar to how I found the previous cave I found yet another large cave further south before I finished exploring it and this one looks like it will be the biggest one yet, with the impression that even 16 chunk render distance wouldn't be enough to see from one end to the other, at least with fog enabled (I disabled it for the post-exploration screenshots of the previous cave with the render distance set to 12):
The fog and sky normally become completely black underground so you can't see out of loaded chunks but skylight exposure makes it lighter (vanilla does this to a lesser extent):
This was from next to the lavafall near the left side of the previous screenshot, the tunnel I entered, near the center, is obscured by fog (this isn't actually where I first encountered the cave, which is at the bottom of the pit to the right):
Another view from a surface entrance:
I'll note that finding this many giant caves in such a short time is not typical; on average a cave with a volume of at least 100,000 generates every 1,268 chunks, or about two weeks of exploration for me; at the same time, I've still only found two moderately large ravines (30-35,000) when ravines with a volume of least 25-50,000 are more common than caves:
Seed is -4426978636490490569 Center is 0, 0 and radius is 16384 blocks (from -16384, -16384 to 16383, 16383); area is 4194304 chunks 643 colossal cave systems 1733 circular room cave systems 1699 ravine cave systems 1668 vertical cave systems 1646 maze cave systems 1707 CRM combination cave systems 1697 RZV combination cave systems 2154 random cave systems 2488 ribbed tunnel cave systems 2493 zigzag cave systems 1912 spiral cave systems 1916 large cave cave systems 2026 dense cave systems (total size >= 40) 324 giant cave regions 707 network cave regions 69146 total large caves 10278 large caves >= 25000 5015 large caves >= 50000 3307 large caves >= 100000 1666 large caves >= 200000 926 large caves >= 300000 506 large caves >= 400000 215 large caves >= 500000 83 large caves >= 600000 24 large caves >= 700000 7 large caves >= 800000 1 large caves >= 900000 986 large cave clusters >= 25000 96 large cave clusters >= 50000 74090 total ravines 12945 large ravines >= 25000 5847 large ravines >= 50000 3020 large ravines >= 100000 1527 large ravines >= 200000 704 large ravines >= 300000 270 large ravines >= 400000 62 large ravines >= 500000 15 large ravines >= 600000 6803 large circular rooms (width >= 34) 4000 toroidal caves 23975 mineshafts 2977 large mineshafts (length >= 2000) 511 strongholdsCaves do tend to be unevenly distributed, in part due to regional modifiers on their frequency, as shown by this map of the area within 1536 blocks in the seed I previously played on, which shows a complete lack of large caves within an area of about half a level 4 map to the north and another large area towards the south, covering most of the area I've explored so far in this world; a similar pattern can be seen in ravines (only the largest caves and ravines are shown here; there are also several of each that didn't exist when I played on this world):
Either way, they are probably more common than they are in 1.18, where I have the impression, based on personal anecdotes, that they are very common, yet based on some data I found 1.18 only seems to have the same percentages of blocks that are air on layer 62 as 1.7-1.17, with 1.6 having about 25% more and TMCW having twice as much, and a total volume that approaches that of 1.18, and an average air percentage that is about the same as the peak on any layer in 1.18 (the data for 1.6, 1.7, and TMCW is from my cave mapping/analysis tools, which generate underground features without actual terrain, just solid stone below sea level, and excluding dungeons and lakes):
Also, these examples give you some idea of how large caves can get; these were all with the render distance set to 16:
A surface ravine with a volume of half a million blocks:
An incredibly large cave with a volume of 1.3 million blocks:
Another cave with a volume of 1.2 million:
I'll also note that it wouldn't be so easy to automatically measure the volume of large caves in 1.18 since they are generated as noise in the terrain instead of discrete entities like the old and my caves (thanks to the use of numerical block IDs; 0 = air, 1 = stone, 11 = lava; my tool also uses essentially the same code as the actual game. I also modified the code when measuring the volume so instead of carving one chunk at a time it carves a 400x400 area, which is much faster since otherwise you'd have to call the carving code once per 16x16 chunk; a full analysis of all features within a 32768x32768 area takes about 4 minutes, or one level 4 map per second).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I have little doubt by now that I've found the largest cave that I've ever explored in any world, well over half a million blocks in volume:
No, you aren't seeing things, the spider is emitting potion particles, a feature I ported to all difficulties, not just Hard:
While exploring the perimeter, and anything directly intersecting the cave, I came across at least two more large caves, one of which I explored, which was two large circular rooms with diameters of about 50 blocks, the other appears to be a similar configuration; as well as a "large cave cave system" for the fourth time in this world and only 128 blocks to the south of the last one (this is quite close together in time given that on average they generate about once every 2200 chunks, or 22 days of exploration; this is also the second one to be merged with a giant cave):
1. 464 12 1026 (width: 51, volume: 32676)
2. 470 11 1039 (width: 50, volume: 30301)
Large cave cave systems:
1. 376 952 (type: 2, volume: 137019)
2. 392 1080 (type: 1, volume: 113515)
I've also seen three more mobs in diamond or amethyst armor, including two in amethyst on the same day; it is only a matter of time before I see two of either at the same time (the closest I've ever come is about 5 minutes; I've never seen more than two in one session yet):
I came close to finding a double diamond vein, with two deposits one block apart; such an occurrence is extremely rare even for me with the last time I found one being nearly a year ago (such occurrences are more likely than this indicates, just that when caving you are less likely to find fully intact deposits; the one in the floor, one block deep, could have been a 2x2x2 cube and the one in the wall, also one block thick, could have extended further out and/or down so they would connect, even if just diagonally):
It also appears that I've reached the southern edge of the spawn continent, at around z = 1300, at least at this one particular location; I'm not sure how this actually compares to vanilla but TMCW ensures that the area within 750-1000 blocks of the origin is always land so the average spawn continent will be larger when including cases where vanilla fails to generate much, if any land there (anything outside this area will be due to the continent that vanilla tries to place around 0,0, which is highly variable in size and shape and "solidity", plus the possible merger of smaller landmasses and islands added by TMCW which increases the proportion of land by about 50%, which still leaves close to 2/3 of the world ocean):
Also, this is an example of a typical day spent exploring in/around a giant cave, most notably the number of mobs encountered, with zombies in particular tending higher than usual (which is still a third to half of all mobs) due to the long lines of sight; while rarer than diamond overall (based on my previous world) I've collected a lot more ruby than diamond recently, considering it averages 1.5 drops per ore (3.3 with Fortune); the cave and surrounding areas are under a large Rocky Mountains biome, the same one I found earlier, which forms a large mountain range:
Also, I've mined over 136,000 ores in this world, most of it in a little over a month (37 days) spent caving:
Another interesting statistic is that I made the number of "uses" for armor, which is never used in vanilla (always 0) count every time it took a hit; I've been hit 10,470 times while wearing amethyst armor, about a third as often as the number of times I've used my sword (all three pieces together have taken about as many uses as the sword). This also offers a way to know how many times I must have repaired it, given that each unit restores 1124 durability (1171 for tools) and Unbreaking III halves the chance of losing durability (I buffed it from vanilla, and in such a way that an infinite level of Unbreaking would give infinite durability; that is, vanilla has a 60% chance of completely ignoring Unbreaking so it caps out at a 1.66 times increase); my boots do not have it due to the cost so they get repaired twice as often, with a total of 36 repairs of my pickaxe (nearly one per day), 6 repairs of my sword, 9 repairs of my boots, and 4 repairs each of my chestplate and leggings, for a total of 59 repairs, which has consumed 59 out of 79 amethyst mined while caving (I have about 30 spares with the extra coming from chest loot):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
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Curse PremiumHave you thought about having some sort of cave ecology for those really large caverns?
Also, did you do anything to prevent those (nice) palm trees from spawning near cold biomes?
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Jungles do have "jungle caves", filled with jungle vegetation, which are generated as a separate feature and as part of the cave itself (I actually place them during chunk generation, as opposed to chunk population), otherwise, blocks and plants that normally generate on the surface may generate in caves; deserts may have cacti and dead bushes, jungles and tropical swamps have random patches of grass (unlike 1.7 you won't find normal flowers inside caves, except near light sources since 1.7 broken/removed their light requirement) and vines much deeper down than in vanilla. Giant cave regions (the largest type of cave when considered as a single entity) increase the amount of huge mushrooms and lakes underground and even have their own mob spawn ("mega slimes", size 8).
The only restriction on palm trees is the biome itself; sandy beaches generate next to most biomes, with colder biomes (not necessarily snowy) having gravel beaches, so you could have them right next to each other, just like how you can have Ice Plains next to Desert (as I found further north). Some features do check if the biome around them is suitable, including palm trees, which check for a sandy beach within 4 blocks (all points must be valid so they tend to generate in the middle of the beach, not at the edge); this is much like how villages only place buildings if they are entirely within one of their valid spawn biomes, a restriction removed in 1.10; just like them I do not go much further than the footprint of the feature (if the intent was to say, avoid seeing any palm trees within max render distance of a snowy biome then most would never generate given how biomes are (mostly) randomly laid out, and I'd never implement a climate system like in modern versions, after all, that is a major reason why I dislike them, I could still be exploring the same temperate/hot/cold zone all this time, instead of seeing multiple of each extreme (as I compared to a previous world, the 1.7 map shows no snowy or hot at all and mostly the same few temperate biomes repeating, with the modded world having been played on for 4 months at that point).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
If the ground had been near sea level it would have generated a surface opening more than 100 blocks across, as indicated by the green areas in the renderings above (the color scheme was derived from Unmined) and in this cutaway at layer 62; as it was, only the end of one of the branches broke the surface (in the middle along the southern edge of the Cherry Grove), as well as a couple spots where a river cut into the side:
The maximum altitude would be one more than shown here (feet level):
Some cutaway renderings of the cave, at layer 40 in Minutor and MCMap, and from the sides; if you are wondering, I placed about 1,700 torches in the cave:
These were taken at maximum render distance (just barely enough):
For comparison, these were at 8 chunks:
And yes, I still pillared up all over to light up the ceiling, which by itself had over 2,000 ores, including in various other caves, of which there were also a lot under the floor, and contributed to its variance (only most types of special cave systems and mineshafts are disallowed from generating nearby, otherwise caves generate as normal in and around large caves):
I'll note that this brings some of its own hazards, besides falling, mobs spawning on the scaffolding if not properly lit; despite the height the danger of falling is more of an inconvenience than a threat thanks to Feather Falling (which I'll note is even more effective in newer versions, actually, in vanilla 1.6.4 a fall from as little as 45 blocks can be fatal, similar to 1.9 I removed the randomized protection from Protection enchantments, which was as little as 52%, but set the maximum to 75% instead of 80% (60% vs 64% for full Protection IV), which reduces the fatal fall distance from 103 to 83 blocks):
I also scaled the highest peak over the cave, which was at y=151, the first time I've found or measured terrain over y=128, the maximum in vanilla before 1.7, in this world (this is in contrast to TMCWv5, when I'd found a lot more such high terrain by now, in part due to biomes; I also have a noise field which modulates the height parameters of biomes over long distances which contributes to overall variability):
Here is my map wall; while I haven't shown it directly you can see there is more ocean to the south of the Rocky Mountains, which also has gravel beach in place of sandy beaches (gravel beaches were in vanilla prior to Beta 1.8 and never re-added, I also re-added the original gravel texture, which looks more like sand, as a variant of gravel called "gravel sand", as you may have seen in various screenshots (both generate underground and underwater in varying proportions, gravel beaches use gravel sand, except for Volcanic Wastelands Beach, which uses normal gravel):
Also, I thought it was interesting to note that when I analyzed the area I found something else:
Not a trace of it though; this would have been the largest ravine I'd found so far in terms of volume; this is actually a "vanilla" ravine, as indicated by a type of 1, which can get wider (up to 19 instead of 15 blocks) and deeper (3-5 times their width instead of fixed at 3 times). The cave itself is also effectively 4 separate caves generated from the same chunk, with a separation based on the maximum radius, hence "type 4" (type 3 is similar but with 3 caves; type 2 is more like a vanilla cave with the branches having their own branches, type 1 is the same as vanilla). The "length" listed is twice the length of an individual cave (types 1 and 2 are the actual length):
This shows how common and large each type of cave is; this was within a 32768x32768 area and based on volume up to layer 62; only caves with a volume of at least 5000 were counted and measured (this includes the majority of type 1 caves); the number of type 4 caves gives about one every two level 3 maps and about 4 within +/- 1536 blocks of the origin (excluding the area within a 512 block radius, which is about 1/11 the total area; type 3/4 caves within this area will be converted to type 2), so I can expect to find two more such caves, as well as 5 type 3 caves, with an average volume of a third of a million blocks, and an average of 30 types 2-4 (the average number of caves with a volume of at least 100,000 is several less as their size distribution is nonuniform):
Also, this shows the impact of including the portion of caves above sea level, using a more extreme seed (you won't normally have that many such large caves or ravines); the depth of ravines can also exceed 70 blocks if there the terrain is high enough:
Something that you might have noticed is that most of the largest caves I've found, 4 out of the top 5, all have the same x-coordinate, 312, with three each being 256 blocks apart (648, 904, 1160):
This isn't entirely coincidence or some RNG bug since the largest caves and ravines generate every 8 chunks, alternating between caves and ravines, with a random chance of actually generating at each point, which just so happened to occur for caves at many of the same points along the x-axis.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
The trend of finding caves of ever-increasing size to the south has finally culminated in the rarest and most extreme underground feature in TMCW - a giant cave region (GCR), with an average volume of about 1.7 million blocks, twice that of the cave I found previously, though a giant cave region is a lot more like a normal cave system, just scaled up (they contain more than 100 individual caves, averaging about the size of the largest single cave in my first world but longer with some reaching several times that size, with their starting points within a 13x13 chunk region, plus a 4 chunk wide border where most other features are excluded):
On average there is one giant cave region every 13107 chunks, with at least one per 128x128 chunk region (a level 4 map, plus a 25% chance of a second one), excluded from within a 32 chunk radius of the origin (distances are measured to each corner); this results in an average of 2-3 within 1536 blocks. One will be guaranteed to generate within +/- 65 chunks or 1040 blocks (meaning at least one chunk within the 13x13 chunk area is within this distance), which also means the one I found isn't the closest one to the origin (the northern edge is at 1184).
Here are some screenshots, it was pretty obvious what I'd found almost right away due to its size (as opposed to say, a large cave cave system, which can be seen as a miniature version of a GCR), frequent huge mushrooms (only the largest variants will generate), and water and lava lakes, which are made much more common within GCRs:
This will be the fifth GCR that I've explored since I added them to TMCW; I found one in TMCWv4 (when they were added, averaging about 1.25 million blocks in size and generating once every 16384 chunks) and three in TMCWv5 (which increased their size and frequency), and is also by far the fastest I've found one, taking about a third of the time (which still means real-time days of caving); in previous worlds I found one at about the same distance to the east, which I explored after fully exploring the maps around 0,0 and 0,1024 (when they were centered at those locations). It has taken me about 5-6 days to explore them (a bit over 5 full sessions); here is a look at the first one I found in TMCWv5:
A layer by layer cutaway; I'll note that the cave in the lower-left corner, appearing separate at layer 30, is a separate large cave with a volume of 125,000 blocks, illustrating how they can merge:
An analysis of a 350x350 area including the giant cave region and immediate vicinity, with a total of nearly 2 million air blocks and 7,770 torches:
A day to day breakdown while exploring it; this reflects what I'll be getting from the current one (except emerald is replaced with ruby due to the biomes, the last day is also a partial session):
All the resources I collected:
Also, right after I finished exploring the giant cave I returned to the complex of ravines I found while exploring a previous cave, which ended up at 7 intersecting ravines, the third most I've found in any world, followed by 8 in TMCWv5 and 10 in TMCWv4, which also has an occurrence of 7 (for comparison, the most ever found in vanilla was 7 in the seed "Digital" in 1.6.4 or equivalent. I'll note this is from a video which says there are 8 but I only found 7 when mapping them separately. My first world would also have 7 if not for an ocean disrupting them, which can still exist in "sister seeds" with the same underground but different biomes, as detailed in this post, otherwise, the most I've found is 5 on multiple occasions (modded worlds do benefit from longer ravines but TMCWv4 would still have 8 if all were normal size):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
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Curse PremiumYou mentioned a cave that went up to y=151; I assume that's in a mountain area, and how do you get your caves to interact with the surface? That would just leave a big hole in most biomes.
Also, how big can your caves get? Can you estimate from the code?
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That was the peak of the mountain over the cave, which itself went up to y=80; they are generated like normal vanilla caves, so they just do the same thing, with some tweaks to ensure they stay mostly underground (if a tunnel strays too close to the surface they will be pushed downwards by changing the "direction" variable):
// Constrains caves to y=4-56 (max depends on radius); used by giant cave regions if (vertVar == 0) { if (y > 56.0D - radiusW * 0.5D) { varY = -0.25F; } else if (y < 4.0D) { varY = 0.25F; } } else if (vertVar == 15 && y > 60.0D - radiusW * 0.5D) { // Used by the largest caves varY = -0.25F; }As for how big they can get, I've not just estimated but actually measured them; I wrote my own "CaveFinder" tool which generates and measures caves using the code from the actual game (with some modifications; thanks to the use of numerical block IDs and arrays of simple numerical data it is very easy to transplant the vanilla cave generation code, or mine, to a standalone program, the same also goes for biomes / the GenLayer classes; both have proven to be invaluable as development aids, no more generating worlds and/or using "Unmined" to slowly (relatively) map them to see the results, most of my development of caves/biome layout is with these external tools, then I copy the code to the game).
This is also how I get the details on what I find while playing, I'll record their coordinates (the middle of a cave, or if it is a smaller one and the "start" is visible, that; the middle of a ravine; the main room of a mineshaft; center of a cave system (circular rooms); for example, the last time I played I found a ravine that seemed a bit large so I recorded its coordinates, 200, 1288, which were its actual coordinates (in TMCW all ravines always start in the middle of a chunk and in the middle of their span, unlike vanilla, which randomizes the start within the chunk and starts at one end), with a "radius" of 16 added to give a margin in case I was off:
These are the contents of a batch file I run (I distribute an actual jar file with the download for TMCW, otherwise I just have a collection of class files); there are many other arguments which can be used, "threshold 0" overrides the default of 25000 so it will list anything (except for the smallest "vanilla" caves and ravines), which gave the following output:
Here are charts of the frequency of caves and ravines by volume, both measured over 100 seeds within 8192 blocks of the origin (1048576 chunks each) and excluding the smallest "vanilla" caves and ravines (else it would take a lot longer to run), the first shows the number that reach a given volume and the second shows the inverse (number of chunks to find a cave with that volume), this only considers volume below sea level and ignores terrain (basically like a Superflat world at y=63; I initialize the "chunk" data to solid "stone" and count the number of "air" blocks):
An easy way to see how large they can possibly get is to set the "width" and "length" variables to their maximums; due to random generation they will still vary in shape and size, I've estimated that caves as large as 1.5 million blocks are possible:
These are renderings of the first three caves; the circular checkerboard area represents the range over which they can generate without getting cut off (that is, for each chunk that is generated the game scans a range of chunks, 17x17 in vanilla, and "generates" / "traces out" every cave found within the area, carving out blocks in the current chunk if they intersect it. Yes, this sounds inefficient but it is quite fast, my tool can generate a 4096x4096 area in half a minute, a generation rate that is about 8 times faster than the actual game at complete world generation, and I use an increased radius of 11 chunks. The biggest single optimization I made, which can also more than halve the time taken by vanilla caves, is replacing Java's obsolete "Random" with a better implementation, or even just overriding it to not use "AtomicLong" (which ensures thread safety but the game never uses it across multiple threads), my custom RNG is also fully 64 bit and avoids all the bugs mentioned here (not all due to the RNG itself, which does greatly reduce the number of unique seeds):
I'll note that the cave I recently found is more unusual for its higher altitude, you usually find lava pools as shown here but the only ones were from other caves overlapping it.
This is one of the largest caves that actually exists and that I checked out in-game, which I found with a large-scale search (modifying my tool to check thousands of seeds and outputting the largest cave found across all of them):
This also shows how my caves interact with water; vanilla will just bail out entirely, leaving a wall of solid ground down to bedrock (and with obvious chunk walls, as seen in this example (also see the top comment), not surprisingly, I fixed this at the same time I added such large caves), while my caves contour around them, leaving a couple blocks between them and the liquid:
And yes, these were taken at 16 chunk render distance:
Here are some examples of large caves I found while playing, and some others, which broke the surface over large areas:
The largest cave opening I found while playing in TMCWv4; the underlying cave had a volume of 133,000 blocks, and likely a lot more above sea level (I didn't measure this back then):
A large cave opening somebody else found while playing on TMCWv4:
The largest cave opening I found in TMCWv5; the underlying cave had a volume of 414,000 blocks (the cave is now a bit different; the opening is smaller as more of it is now underground adding about 35,000 blocks to the volume below sea level; when measured above sea level the total volume is 460,000 blocks):
These were from the same cave, the one with a volume of 584,000 blocks (there are only about 6,000 more blocks above above sea level so the ground is near sea level):
A cave I came across in a test world, so large it goes out of render distance at 8 chunks (by which I mean the surface opening):
As far as "giant cave regions" go, due to how they generate they are far less variable in size, ranging from 1.6 to 1.8 million blocks, as shown in this example for a given seed, which had 84 within 1048576 chunks; the largest one that I've ever seen was about 1.87 million blocks, and they are also much less variable in number from seed to seed, there will always be at least one within 1040 blocks and two within 1536 blocks (my cave generator class includes a mini-search in its constructor which will check if at least a certain number of GCRs, colossal cave systems, and "mega caves" exist and if not, either re-seed the RNG they use to randomize their locations or add special locations at which caves will generate at. The time this adds to world load is negligible, on the order of 30 ms, I do not actually measure the volume of the largest caves, just their tunnel width):
Also, my cave mapping/analysis tool can also generate maps that show what each chunk contains, as far as "special" cave systems go, showing the large-scale layout better than an actual underground map; the first map is 1024x1024 chunks and the second is 192x192 chunks, enlarged 4x (one chunk is one pixel); the large pink squares are giant cave regions, blue are network cave regions (a type of cave I haven't found yet), surrounded by a 4 chunk wide "regional exclusion" zone which only allows larger caves and ravines to generate. It is apparent that there is an underlying pattern to regional caves as they generate within 64x64 chunk regions, with one regional cave per region, with one or two (1.25 average) regions per 2x2 region area being giant cave regions; colossal cave systems and strongholds (larger circles, strongholds are red with a green exclusion zone) alternate with one every 8192 chunks, plus a 25% chance of a CCS within a stronghold region (placed so they never overlap; exclusion zones can overlap):
This is what a complete normal analysis looks like (in this case, for the seed with the largest known cave):
Interestingly, the sign-reversed version of this seed (making it negative) also has a cave near 1 million blocks:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
These are all the resources I collected; some of the music discs came from creepers, others from dungeons (and yes, I made them stack so I only need a single chest to store all 12 variants), all the potions came from witches (I save them as trophy items):
Here is an animation of the area in intervals of 5 blocks from y=60 down to 5, as well as the surface; parts of it were under an ocean but this didn't significantly impact it. You can also see part of the massive cave I found earlier in the top-right corner and a very large ravine to the south:
This shows what it looks like under the seafloor; the ceiling is 2 blocks thick and sand and gravel patches place sandstone and cobblestone over air so they don't collapse; a post-generation step fills in 1 block high caves (I keep track of where caves reached the seafloor and check if they were only one block high). I didn't bother lighting up most of these areas since there are no ores or other caves in them:
A full-size rendering of everything I've explored so far, with the giant cave region circled (at the bottom), showing just how large it is, and an updated map wall, with a sizable new area added to the south; the only more expansive feature is a "network cave region", a network of very long tunnels extending upwards of 400 blocks across (both of these features may clip outside of the 400x400 area that CaveFinder uses to measure them, more often for network cave regions):
The total air volume within a 350x350 block area centered on it was 1.83 million blocks, as measured with MCEdit (so the actual volume below sea level when accounting for features like oceans); the difference from that shown above (1696108) reflects other features that merged with the fringes, including various other large caves and ravines; I also placed a total of 7,109 torches within this area:
(1:0),Stone,2499172
(1:1),Stone,296704
(1:3),Stone,254680
(1:5),Stone,1125639
(1:8),Stone,59578
(2:0),Grass,950
(3:0),Dirt,282085
(4:0),Cobblestone,19824
(4:1),Cobblestone,59
(5:0),Wood Planks,199
(5:2),Wood Planks,44
(7:1),Bedrock,91422
(7:2),Bedrock,31078
(9:0),Water,732094
(11:0),Lava,41673
(12:0),Sand,66283
(12:1),Sand,416
(13:0),Gravel,61138
(13:1),Gravel,106245
(13:3),Gravel,283
(14:0),Gold Ore,2790
(15:0),Iron Ore,26571
(15:1),Iron Ore,384
(16:0),Coal Ore,40450
(16:1),Coal Ore,568
(17:0),Wood,2
(21:0),Lapis Lazuli Ore,1432
(24:0),Sandstone,16224
(24:3),Sandstone,109
(30:0),Web,55
(39:0),Brown Mushroom,354
(39:1),Brown Mushroom,195
(39:2),Brown Mushroom,215
(39:3),Brown Mushroom,196
(39:4),Brown Mushroom,310
(48:0),Moss Stone,45
(49:0),Obsidian,23295
(50:1),Torch,581
(50:2),Torch,568
(50:3),Torch,460
(50:4),Torch,466
(50:5),Torch,5044
(52:0),Monster Spawner,2
(54:2),Chest,5
(54:3),Chest,5
(54:4),Chest,4
(54:5),Chest,5
(56:0),Diamond Ore,751
(65:3),Ladder,26
(65:4),Ladder,3
(65:5),Ladder,3
(66:0),Rail,57
(66:1),Rail,39
(73:0),Redstone Ore,6432
(75:1),Redstone Torch (off),1
(75:2),Redstone Torch (off),1
(75:3),Redstone Torch (off),3
(75:4),Redstone Torch (off),1
(75:12),Redstone Torch (off),1
(82:0),Clay,3295
(85:0),Fence,208
(85:2),Fence,4
(98:0),Stone Bricks,423
(98:1),Mossy Stone Bricks,66
(98:2),Cracked Stone Bricks,36
(99:0),Huge Brown Mushroom,1
(99:1),Huge Brown Mushroom (Northwest),37
(99:2),Huge Brown Mushroom (North),23
(99:3),Huge Brown Mushroom (Northeast),37
(99:4),Huge Brown Mushroom (West),23
(99:5),Huge Brown Mushroom (Top),29
(99:6),Huge Brown Mushroom (East),23
(99:7),Huge Brown Mushroom (Southwest),37
(99:8),Huge Brown Mushroom (South),22
(99:9),Huge Brown Mushroom (Southeast),37
(99:10),Huge Brown Mushroom (Stem),35
(99:11),Huge Brown Mushroom,5
(100:1),Huge Red Mushroom (Northwest),49
(100:2),Huge Red Mushroom (North),38
(100:3),Huge Red Mushroom (Northeast),49
(100:4),Huge Red Mushroom (West),38
(100:5),Huge Red Mushroom (Top),96
(100:6),Huge Red Mushroom (East),38
(100:7),Huge Red Mushroom (Southwest),49
(100:8),Huge Red Mushroom (South),38
(100:9),Huge Red Mushroom (Southeast),49
(100:10),Huge Red Mushroom (Stem),59
(162:0),Future Block!,603
(164:1),Future Block!,39
(164:2),Future Block!,41
(164:3),Future Block!,39
(164:4),Future Block!,41
(164:5),Future Block!,215
(164:6),Future Block!,41
(164:7),Future Block!,39
(164:8),Future Block!,41
(164:9),Future Block!,39
(164:10),Future Block!,62
(164:11),Future Block!,10
(165:1),Future Block!,62
(165:2),Future Block!,48
(165:3),Future Block!,62
(165:4),Future Block!,48
(165:5),Future Block!,142
(165:6),Future Block!,48
(165:7),Future Block!,62
(165:8),Future Block!,48
(165:9),Future Block!,62
(165:10),Future Block!,68
(165:11),Future Block!,15
(166:1),Future Block!,57
(166:2),Future Block!,46
(166:3),Future Block!,57
(166:4),Future Block!,46
(166:5),Future Block!,171
(166:6),Future Block!,46
(166:7),Future Block!,57
(166:8),Future Block!,46
(166:9),Future Block!,57
(166:10),Future Block!,69
(166:11),Future Block!,9
(168:0),Future Block!,52215
(179:0),Future Block!,30
(179:1),Future Block!,30
(179:2),Future Block!,53
(179:3),Future Block!,58
(179:4),Future Block!,39
(179:5),Future Block!,37
(179:6),Future Block!,4
(180:0),Future Block!,36
(180:4),Future Block!,71
(180:8),Future Block!,13
(181:0),Future Block!,2123
(185:0),Future Block!,1081
(185:1),Future Block!,8
(185:8),Future Block!,2249
(185:9),Future Block!,7
(186:0),Future Block!,1176
(186:1),Future Block!,8
(186:8),Future Block!,2296
(186:9),Future Block!,6
(187:0),Future Block!,120
(187:1),Future Block!,3
(187:8),Future Block!,300
(188:0),Future Block!,780
(188:1),Future Block!,957
(188:2),Future Block!,1069
(188:3),Future Block!,981
(188:4),Future Block!,978
(188:5),Future Block!,1041
(188:6),Future Block!,1262
(188:7),Future Block!,1338
(188:8),Future Block!,1180
(188:9),Future Block!,1214
(188:10),Future Block!,1264
(189:0),Future Block!,651
(189:1),Future Block!,687
(189:2),Future Block!,656
(189:3),Future Block!,650
(189:4),Future Block!,670
(189:5),Future Block!,678
(189:6),Future Block!,665
(189:7),Future Block!,646
(189:8),Future Block!,660
(189:9),Future Block!,669
(189:10),Future Block!,156
(189:11),Future Block!,116
(189:12),Future Block!,120
(189:13),Future Block!,127
(189:14),Future Block!,159
(190:0),Future Block!,12
(190:1),Future Block!,12
(190:2),Future Block!,17
(190:3),Future Block!,11
(190:4),Future Block!,11
(190:5),Future Block!,10
(190:6),Future Block!,1
(200:0),Future Block!,136
All the blocks marked as "future block" are unrecognized by MCEdit and are mostly decorative blocks, amounting to half the total variants (I can't easily say what most are just by looking at them but I know that the last one, 200, is amethyst ore, there are multiple entries for many ores due to biome-specific variants, in this case, sandstone in beach biomes. Even bedrock has variants, "stone" in stone-based biomes and "andesite" in Rocky Mountains, matching its stone variant). It is also notable that I mined over 26% of the coal, 17% of the iron, and 14% of the diamond that was originally present, illustrating just how much ore was exposed (the interior of a giant cave region can exceed 50% air on its peak layers).
Also, this is a list of the individual caves within the giant cave region, with a total of 108 caves with a total volume of 2.09 million blocks when generated individually (without overlap; the difference indicates an overlap of about 19%), with a range of 6,700 to 45,000 blocks; about half exceeded the volume of the largest cave in my first world (16,036 blocks) and a quarter exceeded the 25,000 threshold I use for a "large cave" in TMCW. Another thing you may notice is that they are all at two specific altitudes, 15 and 45, which forms two distinct levels, which can also be seen in the sliced animation above:
Here are more screenshots I took while and after exploring it, mainly of the larger chambers:
Among other things that directly intersected it, I found my first real large ravine, with a volume of 137,000 blocks, over three times larger than anything I'd found until now, as well as a smaller ravine with a volume of 60,000 (I didn't actually finish exploring the latter until after I made the animation, where it can be seen on the right, the larger ravine is to the south):
Another interesting finding was a mineshaft going down to y=2, the deepest they can possibly go (in TMCW or vanilla before 1.18), except in TMCW there is no bedrock above the lowest layer so they don't look any different (I only noticed when I mined ore in the floor and there was bedrock below it, which itself is just a darker version of the stone used in the biome):
There is also a large cave to the west of the giant cave region, which I've left for later (I'll explore other features directly connected to the main one I'm exploring but not anything connected to them, same for going off the edge of a map):
Another notable thing is the sheer number of mobs I killed on the last two days, with the 882 killed on the 6th day being a record for this world and only surpassed by one or two other days in all my time playing (the record is 1070, not surprisingly, while exploring another giant cave region):
These screenshots attempt to convey the number of mobs:
An enhanced zoom of the previous image:
After I ran through the area to place some torches (including an invisible spider, a feature I added to all difficulties; why should Hard have exclusive features, an issue I often bring up when it is suggested to add even more such features):
I also encountered several "mega slimes", no large magma cubes though so none died in lava:
Two music discs at the same time:
And yes, I did have to hole up several times to order to get away from the mobs, getting down to a couple hearts once (without poison):
A skeleton dropped one of the most highly enchanted items I've ever seen; a bow with Power III, Punch I, Infinity, and Flame (fortunately the "ranged damage" only applies to a critical shot fired by a player, not skeleton):
Also, I'll even repair/replace underground features like huge mushrooms if they get damaged by a creeper explosion, as in this example:
This shows how I collect ores that are on a thin ledge above a long drop; I mine a hole next to them and put water in it, then get in and mine the ores next to it (I still make sure there are no mobs nearby):
Also, this is a summary of the 46 days I've spent caving so far; while they may look extreme the amounts that I've mined are typical of previous worlds, including my first world, with the biggest difference from the latter being the amount of mineshaft-related blocks, which is about half as high since they are less common and effectively made more so by the increase in caves (even my first world doesn't fully reflect vanilla due to removing mineshafts from dense cave systems, reducing the total by about 20%, which comes out to about a third more mineshafts, with a similar average size). I also haven't mined any emerald ore yet due to not finding any of the several biomes that have them (the amounts that I've found in TMCW have varied wildly, from almost none in TMCWv4 to the most of any single world in TMCWv5):
Here are charts covering all 64 sessions, including pre-caving (the first 17 sessions) and building a secondary base (the 48th session):
A zoomed-in look at rarer resources:
Mineshaft / dungeon / mobs:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?