I created a new world, spawned in next to a village, and when I kept hearing zombies in the village, I dug down a little bit and found a zombie dungeon/spawner just under the surface. That's the closest I've ever spawned in to a dungeon. Here's how close to the surface it is.
If you're interested, the seed is -3862324979240034042
The dungeon I found under my base in my most recent world is pretty close to the surface, but not as close at that! Which I suppose is a good thing, because I had to raise the ground to make enough room for the mob grinder as it was. It would be an interesting challenge to build a zombie farm with that one. Be sure to let us know what you do with it.
Mine's not quite so close to the surface, but I started a second world a while back and found one like right next to where I spawned. In this photo, you can see the beacon marking my original spawn location, 25 blocks north and 5 blocks west of where I'm standing. Ten blocks beneath my feet, is the spawner. It's a skelet-spawner too, couldn't ask for anything better!
The dungeon I found under my base in my most recent world is pretty close to the surface, but not as close at that! Which I suppose is a good thing, because I had to raise the ground to make enough room for the mob grinder as it was. It would be an interesting challenge to build a zombie farm with that one. Be sure to let us know what you do with it.
I was thinking maybe put a roof over it, and make a opening where the zombies can walk out into the sunlight to chase me, and I can just stand there and whack them as they come out. The good thing about zombies is they always come toward you, so you don't have to use a water flusher to collect them like you do with skelly spawners.
The closest accessible spawner I've found is 1000 blocks from my spawn, deep beneath the surface at Y=15, and just because my End Portal happened to land there.
I actually one found a double skeleton spawner off of my main forest. You have to go into a cave, but it's actually around 5 blocks under where the Extreme Hills it's in is.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Watch out for the crabocalypse. Some say the day will never come. But it will.
Feel free to drop by for a chat whenever.
If you'd like to talk with me about other games, here are a few I play.
Team Fortress 2
Borderlands series (Borderlands 2 is my favorite game, ever. TPS combat is a lot of fun and makes up for the lower-quality story, in my opinion)
Elder Scrolls series
Warframe (IGN is something like That_One_Flesh_Atronach)
Pokémon series (HGSS forever)
Rocket League
Fallout series
Left 4 Dead 2 (Boomer files always corrupt though)
SUPERHOT (SUPERHOT is the most innovative shooter I've played in years!)
Dead Rising series (Dead Rising 2 is one of my favorite games, and the 3rd was a lot of fun. 1st has poor survivor AI and the 4th is bad)
Just Cause series
Come to think of it, I mainly play fighting-based games.
Also, and this one isn't quite as close to spawn but it's only a snowball's throw from where I decided to make my base in my first, main world. I don't know if it counts as "shallow" because there's over 40 blocks of extreme hill above it before you reach actual "surface" but I found this one at y=68:
Also I have no idea where or even in what world this one is, but it may be even higher than that:
The closest accessible spawner I've found is 1000 blocks from my spawn, deep beneath the surface at Y=15, and just because my End Portal happened to land there.
Despite popular perception spawners are actually pretty common; I analyzed a 1.11 world I'd created to compare cave generation to 1.6.4 and in 3043 chunks there were 32 spawners, or one every 95 chunks; of these, 28 were dungeons and 4 were cave spider spawners in one mineshaft (mineshafts are less common near the origin; when at least 80 chunks away in any direction there is an average of one per 250 chunks, or about 12 mineshafts; from an analysis of 30 mineshafts by themselves they had an average of 2 cave spider spawners each). Away from the origin the same area would have around 52 spawners, or one every 58.5 chunks, with about half being cave spider spawners.
For comparison, the 1.6.4 world had 70 spawners in 3338 chunks, or one every 47 chunks, which included the same 4 cave spider spawners (the layout of the mineshaft was exactly the same in both versions; there was a second mineshaft with no spawners) and 66 dungeons, which is in line with my estimates of about 40% as many dungeons in 1.7 and later versions (almost entirely not due changes to caves, as claimed by the Wiki, but because they doubled their altitude range from 128 to 256, despite terrain and caves not taking advantage of the height increase, even in Customized (caves do not generate above y=126 and are not customizable). Mineshafts were made 40% as common so overall there are about 40% as many spawners; away from the origin 1.6.4 worlds will have around one spawner every 25 chunks, slightly more often in both versions since mineshafts add additional space for them to generate (in another analysis I found one spawner every 23 chunks in a 1.6.4 world away from the origin).
To put these numbers in perspective, I've explored all the caves in around 55000 chunks in my first world (76000 total), so I've probably found a couple thousand spawners by now, supported by the amount of moss stone I've taken from dungeons and about half being cave spider spawners (interestingly, the amount of cobwebs around a cave spider spawner is similar to the amount of moss stone in a dungeon), and there are still around a thousand left in the world (mostly around the edges of explored chunks, some also generate connected to underground lakes or the rare (for 1.6.4) isolated cave).
That said, in one of my recent worlds some zombies came after me from a cave (not visible at the time) just across a river right after I spawned and I later found a zombie dungeon there (I destroyed the spawner since they are useless to me):
A nice start to a new world?
(this was in a modded world, and in 1.6.4 so the seed is of no relevance to vanilla or current versions)
Also, this is what I mean by the commonness of spawners; each of the yellow boxes is a tile entity (chest or spawner), looking southwest from spawn in the seed "-123775873255737467" (the seed for my Survival world) in 1.6.4:
There are no dangerous weapons. There are only dangerous people. R.A. Heinlein
If you aren't part of the solution, then you obviously weren't properly dissolved.
I created a new world, spawned in next to a village, and when I kept hearing zombies in the village, I dug down a little bit and found a zombie dungeon/spawner just under the surface. That's the closest I've ever spawned in to a dungeon. Here's how close to the surface it is.
If you're interested, the seed is -3862324979240034042
Cool find Crypto!
The dungeon I found under my base in my most recent world is pretty close to the surface, but not as close at that! Which I suppose is a good thing, because I had to raise the ground to make enough room for the mob grinder as it was. It would be an interesting challenge to build a zombie farm with that one. Be sure to let us know what you do with it.
Mine's not quite so close to the surface, but I started a second world a while back and found one like right next to where I spawned. In this photo, you can see the beacon marking my original spawn location, 25 blocks north and 5 blocks west of where I'm standing. Ten blocks beneath my feet, is the spawner. It's a skelet-spawner too, couldn't ask for anything better!
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.
I was thinking maybe put a roof over it, and make a opening where the zombies can walk out into the sunlight to chase me, and I can just stand there and whack them as they come out. The good thing about zombies is they always come toward you, so you don't have to use a water flusher to collect them like you do with skelly spawners.
The closest accessible spawner I've found is 1000 blocks from my spawn, deep beneath the surface at Y=15, and just because my End Portal happened to land there.
I actually one found a double skeleton spawner off of my main forest. You have to go into a cave, but it's actually around 5 blocks under where the Extreme Hills it's in is.
Watch out for the crabocalypse. Some say the day will never come. But it will.
Feel free to drop by for a chat whenever.
If you'd like to talk with me about other games, here are a few I play.
Team Fortress 2
Borderlands series (Borderlands 2 is my favorite game, ever. TPS combat is a lot of fun and makes up for the lower-quality story, in my opinion)
Elder Scrolls series
Warframe (IGN is something like That_One_Flesh_Atronach)
Pokémon series (HGSS forever)
Rocket League
Fallout series
Left 4 Dead 2 (Boomer files always corrupt though)
SUPERHOT (SUPERHOT is the most innovative shooter I've played in years!)
Dead Rising series (Dead Rising 2 is one of my favorite games, and the 3rd was a lot of fun. 1st has poor survivor AI and the 4th is bad)
Just Cause series
Come to think of it, I mainly play fighting-based games.
Also, and this one isn't quite as close to spawn but it's only a snowball's throw from where I decided to make my base in my first, main world. I don't know if it counts as "shallow" because there's over 40 blocks of extreme hill above it before you reach actual "surface" but I found this one at y=68:
Also I have no idea where or even in what world this one is, but it may be even higher than that:
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.
Despite popular perception spawners are actually pretty common; I analyzed a 1.11 world I'd created to compare cave generation to 1.6.4 and in 3043 chunks there were 32 spawners, or one every 95 chunks; of these, 28 were dungeons and 4 were cave spider spawners in one mineshaft (mineshafts are less common near the origin; when at least 80 chunks away in any direction there is an average of one per 250 chunks, or about 12 mineshafts; from an analysis of 30 mineshafts by themselves they had an average of 2 cave spider spawners each). Away from the origin the same area would have around 52 spawners, or one every 58.5 chunks, with about half being cave spider spawners.
For comparison, the 1.6.4 world had 70 spawners in 3338 chunks, or one every 47 chunks, which included the same 4 cave spider spawners (the layout of the mineshaft was exactly the same in both versions; there was a second mineshaft with no spawners) and 66 dungeons, which is in line with my estimates of about 40% as many dungeons in 1.7 and later versions (almost entirely not due changes to caves, as claimed by the Wiki, but because they doubled their altitude range from 128 to 256, despite terrain and caves not taking advantage of the height increase, even in Customized (caves do not generate above y=126 and are not customizable). Mineshafts were made 40% as common so overall there are about 40% as many spawners; away from the origin 1.6.4 worlds will have around one spawner every 25 chunks, slightly more often in both versions since mineshafts add additional space for them to generate (in another analysis I found one spawner every 23 chunks in a 1.6.4 world away from the origin).
To put these numbers in perspective, I've explored all the caves in around 55000 chunks in my first world (76000 total), so I've probably found a couple thousand spawners by now, supported by the amount of moss stone I've taken from dungeons and about half being cave spider spawners (interestingly, the amount of cobwebs around a cave spider spawner is similar to the amount of moss stone in a dungeon), and there are still around a thousand left in the world (mostly around the edges of explored chunks, some also generate connected to underground lakes or the rare (for 1.6.4) isolated cave).
That said, in one of my recent worlds some zombies came after me from a cave (not visible at the time) just across a river right after I spawned and I later found a zombie dungeon there (I destroyed the spawner since they are useless to me):
(this was in a modded world, and in 1.6.4 so the seed is of no relevance to vanilla or current versions)
Also, this is what I mean by the commonness of spawners; each of the yellow boxes is a tile entity (chest or spawner), looking southwest from spawn in the seed "-123775873255737467" (the seed for my Survival world) in 1.6.4:
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?
Here's one reasonably close to the closest village to spawn in the seed: "455183159361683197" using PCMC v1.11.
It had no stone ceiling. I just removed all dirt blocks above the dungeon.
(and a tree or three).
BTW: it's a skeleton spawner with one chest.
Also, if you look carefully right at the center top edge of that image you can just see the Mansion in the Roofed Forest north of the village.
There are no dangerous weapons. There are only dangerous people. R.A. Heinlein
If you aren't part of the solution, then you obviously weren't properly dissolved.
The latest release of Amidst, version 4.6 can be found here:
https://github.com/toolbox4minecraft/amidst/releases
You should probably also read this:
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding-java-edition/minecraft-tools/2970854-amidst-map-explorer-for-minecraft-1-14
You can find me on the Minecraft Forums Discord server.
https://discord.gg/wGrQNKX