After nearly 101 days of playtime across 697 sessions and more than 3 1/2 years since I created the world I finally reached my ultimate goal in my first world - walking a distance equivalent to the Far Lands in Beta 1.7.3:
That's an almost unimaginable distance to walk - there are players who have tried walking that far yet either failed or are still walking after many years (see Far Lands or Bust). Note that it would take "only" about 33.8 days of non-stop walking at a speed of 4.3 m/s; my average walking speed was only about a third of this. In fact, it would take "only" 80.75 days to walk to the current world border at 30 million blocks.
Of course, I have not actually walked there, and indeed, have never been much more than a mere 3 km from spawn in any world, including this one. Much of that distance was covered while exploring underground, which leads to the thread title, though that is a bit misleading as well since the total length of all the caves, ravines, and abandoned mineshafts that I have explored are much less than that - but still an incredible distance.
How much? Precise figures are hard to come by but it is possible to determine how many chunks I have explored by deleting all chunks that do not have any torches in them with the help of Minecraft Map Auto Trim (it should still work even for 1.11 worlds), which I ran on a copy of my world with the following results:
While mineshafts have naturally generated torches I removed them with a mod so another utility that I use doesn't map unexplored areas, so this accurately reflects the number of chunks that I have actually explored, save a few that my railway crosses through; torches in bases and villages were excluded by only checking below y=63.
An average 1.6.4 world will have the following in 57,990 chunks:
25,914 individual caves totaling around 3,800 km in length
2,904 individual cave systems with an average of 8.9 caves each
379 individual cave systems at least as large as the largest possible since 1.7
28 individual cave systems at least twice as large as the largest possible since 1.7
One cave system about 2.57 times larger than the largest possible since 1.7
1,160 ravines totaling around 114 km in length
580 abandoned mineshafts totaling around 935 km in length
371 abandoned mineshafts in my world totaling around 600 km in length
1,358 dungeons
2,518 monster spawners (1,160 cave spider, 679 zombie, 339.5 each of skeleton and spider)
2,100 monster spawners in my world (same as above but 742 cave spider)
Total length of all major underground features: around 4,849 km / 4,514 km
The actual lengths, particularly for caves, will be less because they frequently overlap one another and caves can be below lava level or above the surface, but it is clear that there is a lot of stuff underground! I've also explored somewhat less since I occasionally miss some areas and other areas are not connected to anything (for example, I know that somewhere there is an entire mineshaft that I have not explored with caves that I explored below it) but it is safe to say that I've explored at least 90% of all of that; for example, the number of rails I've taken gives an average of 288 rails per mineshaft, which is 95% of the 303 found in an analysis of 30 mineshafts.
Some technical details (tldr) as to where these numbers came from:
In 1.6.4 the game generates a cave system with a "size" between 0 and 39 in one out of 15 chunks; since the size is randomized three times in a row and each random halves the average size the average is 39 / 8 or 4.875; with a 1/15 chance per chunk this becomes 0.325. This is not the average number of caves per chunk since there is a 25% chance that a circular room will be generated for each pass through the main cave generation loop, and an additional 0-3 caves will be generated for a total of 1-4 caves per circular room, leading to an overall average of 0.325 * (1 * 0.75 + 2.5 * 0.25) = 0.446875 caves per chunk. Over 57,990 chunks that's about 25,914 individual caves.
Since the size can be zero this reduces the effective frequency of cave systems to about 1/20 (1/19.97), so there are about 2,904 cave systems in 57,990 chunks. There is also a cave system that is at least as large as the largest single cave system (not counting two or more cave systems in adjacent chunks) in 1.7 and later versions every 153 chunks (determined by calculating the size many times and counting the number of times it was at least 14, the largest size in 1.7) for around 379 individual cave systems; a cave system that is twice this size can be found about once every 2,082 chunks, and the largest cave system that will likely be found in 57,990 chunks is 2.57 times larger (the largest possible cave system requires an average of 960,000 chunks, compared to 23,625 in 1.7 - meaning that a cave system as large as the largest in 1.7 is around 154 times more common).
The length of a single cave is randomized to between 85 and 112 blocks, averaging 98.5 blocks. However, caves also branch with the total length of the main cave and either of two branches being the total length, and the branch point is between 25-75% of the total length, averaging 50%, at which point each section is about 49 blocks long for an overall length of about 147 blocks (an more accurate calcualtion would also consider the fact that the overall length depends on the branch point; the overall length increases as the branch point moves towards the beginning; at the maximum length of 112 and a branch point of 25% the main cave will be 28 blocks long and each branch will be 84 blocks for an overall length of 196 blocks).
Ravines have a 1/50 chance of generating per chunk and have the same length variation as caves; one could also include the length of the ledges on the sides of a ravine; for example, a ravine with a single set of ledges would have an effective length of 255-336 blocks.
Mineshafts have a 1/100 chance of generating per chunk, which would yield about 580 mineshafts in 57,990 chunks but they are less common closer to the origin, with the chance linearly decreasing from 100% at 80 or more chunks away to 0% at the origin. This area is 25,600 chunks in size and is mostly explored in my world, leading to less mineshafts. Another factor leading to less mineshafts in my world is that I modified them so that they will not generate in areas of high cave density, which reduces their chance by around 25%; I only applied this reduction to mineshafts away from the near-origin area since I had explored most of that area before I added my modification.
The length of mineshafts is a bit harder to figure out but I analyzed 30 individual (no overlaps with one another and no other underground caves/features) mineshafts and found an average of 14,513 blocks per mineshaft, including air and everything else; divide this by 9 (corridors are 3x3; some blocks on their ceilings are stone and were not counted; conversely, crossings and the central room are larger) and you get about 1,612 blocks of corridor length per mineshaft. The same mineshafts also had an average of 303 rails each; when combined with the number of rails I've taken from them this supports my estimate for the number in my world (note that normally generated mineshafts will have fewer rails due to water and lava springs washing some of them away).
As for the frequency of dungeons and monster spawners, I recently found one dungeon every 50.6 chunks in a 1.6.4 world, and an estimated one spawner every 25 chunks based on the average number per mineshaft that I found (60 in the 30 mineshafts above) and their frequency further away from the origin, which I previously found one spawner every 23 chunks over a larger area, which I used to adjust the frequency of dungeons to one every 42.7 chunks (it is expected that they would be slightly more common since mineshafts provide more opportunities for them to generate).
For comparison, since 1.7 there are about 77% as many caves and 40% as many mineshafts and dungeons (the latter was inadvertently(?) made much rarer when they doubled their y-altitude range from 128 to 256, not solely because of a reduction in caves as the Wiki claims); however, since cave systems are much less dense the difference in terms of air volume is much less, as I found by comparing the amount of air, which also means that the length is also not affected as much (the main difference is far less local-scale variation in cave density, both inside and outside of cave systems, which are more than twice as common but nearly 3 times smaller in 1.7).
The fact that larger cave systems are so much more common in 1.6.4 is largely responsible for the much larger size of cave systems beyond the difference in size/chance values, since many cave systems are multiple single cave systems merged together; for example, here is an analysis of the cave system I most recently explored, which contains the equivalent of about 4 max-size cave systems (size 14) in 1.7, and that many within a few chunks is exceedingly unlikely considering that only one is expected in a given 23625 chunk area:
Seed is -123775873255737467
Center is -2208, -48 (chunk -138, -3)
Radius is 3 chunks (circular)
Version used is <= 1.6.4
Size 13 cave system at -2224, -64; total number of caves: 21
Size 21 cave system at -2224, -48; total number of caves: 33
Size 24 cave system at -2208, -48; total number of caves: 37
Number of cave systems: 3
Initial number of caves: 58
Total number of caves: 91
Additional circular room caves: 33
Number of small caves: 88; average width is 5.99
Number of large caves: 3; average width is 11.85
Number of circular rooms: 16; average width is 9.82
Additional caves per circular room: 2.06
Average altitude: 32.48
Percentage of caves on layers 0 to 9: 21.98
Percentage of caves on layers 10 to 19: 17.58
Percentage of caves on layers 20 to 29: 10.99
Percentage of caves on layers 30 to 39: 13.19
Percentage of caves on layers 40 to 49: 7.69
Percentage of caves on layers 50 to 59: 15.38
Percentage of caves above layer 59: 13.19
Note that the maximum starting altitude of a cave is y=126, yet only 13% of caves were above layer 60 (on average about 17% are above sea level), which is why increasing the ground depth with Customized doens't do much to the volume of caves, and why the doubling of the altitude range of dungeons in 1.7 didn't make any sense and just made them much rarer.
Here is an Unmined rendering of the cropped world (click to view full size) - I've explored nearly everything that you see here:
Another view which shows that virtually all exposed lava has been converted into obsidian; you can also see how dense some cave systems are (a few are only that dense near lava level; conversely, I've found caves just as dense at higher elevations but with little at lava level, with caves on average becoming denser deeper down):
An analysis of the cropped world made with MCEdit - in addition to 446,549 torches, 7.7 per chunk, there is enough obsidian to cover 2,516 chunks one layer deep. Note also that there are only 212 monster spawners, around 10% of what would be expected:
A closer look at what I've explored over the last week, which is the westernmost point seen on the maps above:
On the right you can see what appears to be three mineshafts; the northernmost "mineshaft" is actually three that overlap, and all five directly intersect one another; a couple more mineshafts can be seen to the west (each by themselves, with caves and ravines connecting them to the ones to the east), and part of an 8th mineshaft that I've just started to explore near the lower-left (the marker shows my location). There's also cave systems of various sizes scattered around, including a relatively dense one that I just explored (most of the caves in this region are not particularly large or dense by 1.6.4 standards):
The amount of resources that I've gotten from those caves is equally incredible with more than 1.6 million ore mined, as well as more than 100,000 rails (around 2,000 were mined again when I changed my rail system), 48,000 moss stone (the average dungeon has 48 so this is more than a thousand dungeons), and 45,000 cobwebs from cave spider spawners (only recently have I been harvesting them directly; I crafted more than 12,000 wool before then, which included a lot of string dropped by cave spiders). When counting resources crafted into blocks I've accumulated more than 2.1 million resources, and mined even more (for example, I've used more than 160,000 coal to craft torches and smelt iron and gold):
Also, my current run on my first world is by far the longest that I've ever played on one world non-stop; I started in early September 2015 so it has been close to 15 months and around 2/3rds of the entire time that I've spent playing the world; this followed a long spell of playing on other worlds, including a copy of this world that was modded with TMCW, but not until I'd spent a couple months playing, which were not reverted; preceded by 5-6 months of playing after I first got the game, again interrupted by playing on other worlds. All of these other worlds (6 main worlds and a few minor worlds, including a custom map and seed-based map) lasted for no more than 3-4 months with the most time played on them being around 15 days; based on my daily playtime in my first world my total playtime is around 195 days, which also means that I've done close to twice the things mentioned here.
However, I plan to start a new world soon using an updated version of "TheMasterCaver's World"; I still plan to finish up a few areas before I stop playing my first world.
Of course, I'll be playing that world the same way once I get established, just as I've played most of my other worlds (in TMCWv3 it took about 2 days to get established and kill the Ender Dragon, which I see as the start of my "normal" gameplay, then I spent about 13 more days, so around 87% of the time I spent was caving).
How do you use all those rescources? Do you have projects for them or do they go into storage as trophies? I typically only mine when I need stuff for projects so I was curious what your goals were with the world.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Download and play my new Survival Map!
Space Expedition to EPIC 204:Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
How do you use all those rescources? Do you have projects for them or do they go into storage as trophies? I typically only mine when I need stuff for projects so I was curious what your goals were with the world.
I'm cracking a great big smile at this comment dana. The Master Caver's main goal is purely caving, he just collects the resources.
haha, well fair enough then. I was just curious if he was converting it all to some fantastic castle build or something.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Download and play my new Survival Map!
Space Expedition to EPIC 204:Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
Or better, here's the direct link; I last updated it a week ago (I have not played on the world since because I'm planning to make a new modded world; you can get a good idea of what I do in those worlds in this thread - pretty much the same thing); it is a pretty large download at 290 MB (only the Overworld is included, not that I ever did anything in the Nether and End besides finding a fortress, mining some quarts, and killing the dragon): https://www.dropbox.com/s/mjsawpqbhq1pbdv/World1.zip
Note that while I've used a few mods, including some changes to the world itself, it should be fully compatible with vanilla since the only new blocks/items I added should not be present, which were blocks to compactly store rails and cobwebs until I got back to my main base. Naturally, world generation is only compatible with 1.6.4 (a few mineshafts generated in new chunks will be cut off); if you want to check out the Nether you'll want to delete "Fortress.dat" so fortresses generate correctly (the game will not regenerate chests and spawners unless this is deleted).
As for what I do with all the resources I get, that was pretty much explained by rodabon; I do use a few, such as rails, gold, and redstone for my railways (I don't even need iron since I get more than enough rails from mineshafts, by a factor of around 8:1, and that after slightly modding the world so mineshafts don't generate too close to large cave systems (e.g. here is one large cave system I found as seen in vanilla), reducing their frequency to about 75% of vanilla 1.6.4, and around 1.875 times that of 1.7+). Gold in mineshaft chests more than offset the gold used for powered rails, with more gold blocks than the ore I've mined can account for, same for iron despite using more iron early on), but for the most part I just store them.
That said, while most of my bases are not very complex the last base I made is a bit different; instead of using cobblestone I used quartz and built it in a style closer to my main bases in other worlds, using up all the quartz I had on hand and I had to go to the Nether for the first time in more than three years in this world to get more (I mainly mine quartz to get XP for enchanting, something that I only do once early on, and normally never go back to the Nether):
Also, here is another look at the world mentioned in this thread; each set of renderings are from after the first, second, and third times I played on the world, so you can see how it has grown over time; plus my map wall (I modified map rendering to be similar to that in 1.7+, as well as map centering to be like 1.8+):
Here is what I did during the last few days I played on the world, which was filling in a previously unexplored part of of a map (the northeastern part of the map to the east of center in the spoiler above; prior to that I was exploring the map to the west of center):
A sequence of renderings made with MCMap showing my day-to-day progress:
A series of renderings made with Unmined of the area, showing the surface (the white dots near the center are cobblestone markers I made when I had to return. You can also see sets of "bubbles" in the ocean due to a mineshaft generation bug in versions before 1.8), below sea level, layer 20 (the layer I most often use to compare the density of cave systems), and layer 12 (just above lava level):
This shows what I got on the second to last day; while above average it is far from the most that I've explored/mined in one day, which has included entire large cave systems (as seen in the second day above on the left side, such a cave system is larger than anything you'll ever find since 1.7 (perhaps very, very rarely) and up to 3-4 separate abandoned mineshafts (I've found more than 10 directly interconnected before; easily half or more of all mineshafts in 1.6.4 intersect at least one other mineshaft), and 5-6 ravines, or combinations of these:
Of interest, despite all that I've explored in the since the first time I still haven't found another cave system larger and denser than one that I found over three years ago, although I recently did find one that came close and many other notably dense cave systems; in particular, the area to the west and southwest of that cave has the most extensive and densest region of caves I've ever seen, with two very large and dense cave systems to the south:
This is from an analysis of all of the caves within the areas shown above; I only included the locations of all of the cave systems that are larger than the largest cave system in 1.7 or later (size 14); the three largest cave systems seen above are all multiple smaller cave systems merged together:
Size 15 cave system at -1936, -1248; total number of caves: 21
Size 16 cave system at -1968, -1232; total number of caves: 22
Size 16 cave system at -1328, -1136; total number of caves: 20
Size 21 cave system at -1648, -1120; total number of caves: 31
Size 26 cave system at -816, -1104; total number of caves: 37
Size 24 cave system at -832, -1072; total number of caves: 34
Size 23 cave system at -816, -1056; total number of caves: 39
Size 20 cave system at -800, -1024; total number of caves: 31
Size 31 cave system at -1088, -1008; total number of caves: 42
Size 20 cave system at -896, -1008; total number of caves: 28
Size 25 cave system at -1296, -944; total number of caves: 31
Size 23 cave system at -1600, -928; total number of caves: 30
Size 18 cave system at -1648, -912; total number of caves: 25
Size 18 cave system at -1744, -880; total number of caves: 30
Size 15 cave system at -1232, -880; total number of caves: 23
Size 18 cave system at -1184, -800; total number of caves: 35
Size 18 cave system at -1344, -768; total number of caves: 24
Size 22 cave system at -1248, -768; total number of caves: 26
Size 31 cave system at -1744, -736; total number of caves: 49
Size 19 cave system at -1424, -656; total number of caves: 31
Size 22 cave system at -784, -640; total number of caves: 29
Size 17 cave system at -1584, -624; total number of caves: 19
Size 16 cave system at -1120, -576; total number of caves: 23
Size 31 cave system at -1904, -528; total number of caves: 39
Size 15 cave system at -1856, -512; total number of caves: 22
Size 15 cave system at -864, -512; total number of caves: 26
Size 18 cave system at -1888, -496; total number of caves: 35
Size 23 cave system at -1456, -496; total number of caves: 38
Size 27 cave system at -1840, -480; total number of caves: 37
Size 24 cave system at -1456, -480; total number of caves: 38
Size 23 cave system at -1360, -448; total number of caves: 46
Number of cave systems: 242
Initial number of caves: 1672
Total number of caves: 2386
Additional circular room caves: 714
Number of small caves: 2319; average width is 6.01
Number of large caves: 67; average width is 11.61
Number of circular rooms: 453; average width is 10.71
Additional caves per circular room: 1.58
Average altitude: 32.79
Percentage of caves on layers 0 to 9: 22.09
Percentage of caves on layers 10 to 19: 18.73
Percentage of caves on layers 20 to 29: 13.66
Percentage of caves on layers 30 to 39: 10.60
Percentage of caves on layers 40 to 49: 9.81
Percentage of caves on layers 50 to 59: 7.17
Percentage of caves above layer 59: 17.94
Also, I modified MCMap to print out the number of torches it found within the area rendered (normally it prints out the relative coordinates of each torch, which i disabled since the console spam significantly slows it down; I also modified the way MCMap renders areas around torches to be more realistic; by default it renders a square with a radius of +/- 18 blocks, which is obviously far too large when torch light is only effective up to 6 blocks away and closer to a circle:
For comparison, my last world, TMCWv3, had around 74,000 torches so that's nearly half as many, and other worlds I've had only had that many in total
Gotta say, it is very impressive the dedication you have to this world, for me once I beat the bosses, expand, and automate everything I usually stop and make a new world with different rules/ challenges. I will take a look at this as soon as destiny finishes it supdate.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
this guy here deserves attention. go visit him pls.
After nearly 101 days of playtime across 697 sessions and more than 3 1/2 years since I created the world I finally reached my ultimate goal in my first world - walking a distance equivalent to the Far Lands in Beta 1.7.3:
That's an almost unimaginable distance to walk - there are players who have tried walking that far yet either failed or are still walking after many years (see Far Lands or Bust). Note that it would take "only" about 33.8 days of non-stop walking at a speed of 4.3 m/s; my average walking speed was only about a third of this. In fact, it would take "only" 80.75 days to walk to the current world border at 30 million blocks.
Of course, I have not actually walked there, and indeed, have never been much more than a mere 3 km from spawn in any world, including this one. Much of that distance was covered while exploring underground, which leads to the thread title, though that is a bit misleading as well since the total length of all the caves, ravines, and abandoned mineshafts that I have explored are much less than that - but still an incredible distance.
How much? Precise figures are hard to come by but it is possible to determine how many chunks I have explored by deleting all chunks that do not have any torches in them with the help of Minecraft Map Auto Trim (it should still work even for 1.11 worlds), which I ran on a copy of my world with the following results:
While mineshafts have naturally generated torches I removed them with a mod so another utility that I use doesn't map unexplored areas, so this accurately reflects the number of chunks that I have actually explored, save a few that my railway crosses through; torches in bases and villages were excluded by only checking below y=63.
An average 1.6.4 world will have the following in 57,990 chunks:
25,914 individual caves totaling around 3,800 km in length
2,904 individual cave systems with an average of 8.9 caves each
379 individual cave systems at least as large as the largest possible since 1.7
28 individual cave systems at least twice as large as the largest possible since 1.7
One cave system about 2.57 times larger than the largest possible since 1.7
1,160 ravines totaling around 114 km in length
580 abandoned mineshafts totaling around 935 km in length
371 abandoned mineshafts in my world totaling around 600 km in length
1,358 dungeons
2,518 monster spawners (1,160 cave spider, 679 zombie, 339.5 each of skeleton and spider)
2,100 monster spawners in my world (same as above but 742 cave spider)
Total length of all major underground features: around 4,849 km / 4,514 km
The actual lengths, particularly for caves, will be less because they frequently overlap one another and caves can be below lava level or above the surface, but it is clear that there is a lot of stuff underground! I've also explored somewhat less since I occasionally miss some areas and other areas are not connected to anything (for example, I know that somewhere there is an entire mineshaft that I have not explored with caves that I explored below it) but it is safe to say that I've explored at least 90% of all of that; for example, the number of rails I've taken gives an average of 288 rails per mineshaft, which is 95% of the 303 found in an analysis of 30 mineshafts.
Some technical details (tldr) as to where these numbers came from:
Since the size can be zero this reduces the effective frequency of cave systems to about 1/20 (1/19.97), so there are about 2,904 cave systems in 57,990 chunks. There is also a cave system that is at least as large as the largest single cave system (not counting two or more cave systems in adjacent chunks) in 1.7 and later versions every 153 chunks (determined by calculating the size many times and counting the number of times it was at least 14, the largest size in 1.7) for around 379 individual cave systems; a cave system that is twice this size can be found about once every 2,082 chunks, and the largest cave system that will likely be found in 57,990 chunks is 2.57 times larger (the largest possible cave system requires an average of 960,000 chunks, compared to 23,625 in 1.7 - meaning that a cave system as large as the largest in 1.7 is around 154 times more common).
The length of a single cave is randomized to between 85 and 112 blocks, averaging 98.5 blocks. However, caves also branch with the total length of the main cave and either of two branches being the total length, and the branch point is between 25-75% of the total length, averaging 50%, at which point each section is about 49 blocks long for an overall length of about 147 blocks (an more accurate calcualtion would also consider the fact that the overall length depends on the branch point; the overall length increases as the branch point moves towards the beginning; at the maximum length of 112 and a branch point of 25% the main cave will be 28 blocks long and each branch will be 84 blocks for an overall length of 196 blocks).
Ravines have a 1/50 chance of generating per chunk and have the same length variation as caves; one could also include the length of the ledges on the sides of a ravine; for example, a ravine with a single set of ledges would have an effective length of 255-336 blocks.
Mineshafts have a 1/100 chance of generating per chunk, which would yield about 580 mineshafts in 57,990 chunks but they are less common closer to the origin, with the chance linearly decreasing from 100% at 80 or more chunks away to 0% at the origin. This area is 25,600 chunks in size and is mostly explored in my world, leading to less mineshafts. Another factor leading to less mineshafts in my world is that I modified them so that they will not generate in areas of high cave density, which reduces their chance by around 25%; I only applied this reduction to mineshafts away from the near-origin area since I had explored most of that area before I added my modification.
The length of mineshafts is a bit harder to figure out but I analyzed 30 individual (no overlaps with one another and no other underground caves/features) mineshafts and found an average of 14,513 blocks per mineshaft, including air and everything else; divide this by 9 (corridors are 3x3; some blocks on their ceilings are stone and were not counted; conversely, crossings and the central room are larger) and you get about 1,612 blocks of corridor length per mineshaft. The same mineshafts also had an average of 303 rails each; when combined with the number of rails I've taken from them this supports my estimate for the number in my world (note that normally generated mineshafts will have fewer rails due to water and lava springs washing some of them away).
As for the frequency of dungeons and monster spawners, I recently found one dungeon every 50.6 chunks in a 1.6.4 world, and an estimated one spawner every 25 chunks based on the average number per mineshaft that I found (60 in the 30 mineshafts above) and their frequency further away from the origin, which I previously found one spawner every 23 chunks over a larger area, which I used to adjust the frequency of dungeons to one every 42.7 chunks (it is expected that they would be slightly more common since mineshafts provide more opportunities for them to generate).
For comparison, since 1.7 there are about 77% as many caves and 40% as many mineshafts and dungeons (the latter was inadvertently(?) made much rarer when they doubled their y-altitude range from 128 to 256, not solely because of a reduction in caves as the Wiki claims); however, since cave systems are much less dense the difference in terms of air volume is much less, as I found by comparing the amount of air, which also means that the length is also not affected as much (the main difference is far less local-scale variation in cave density, both inside and outside of cave systems, which are more than twice as common but nearly 3 times smaller in 1.7).
The fact that larger cave systems are so much more common in 1.6.4 is largely responsible for the much larger size of cave systems beyond the difference in size/chance values, since many cave systems are multiple single cave systems merged together; for example, here is an analysis of the cave system I most recently explored, which contains the equivalent of about 4 max-size cave systems (size 14) in 1.7, and that many within a few chunks is exceedingly unlikely considering that only one is expected in a given 23625 chunk area:
Center is -2208, -48 (chunk -138, -3)
Radius is 3 chunks (circular)
Version used is <= 1.6.4
Size 13 cave system at -2224, -64; total number of caves: 21
Size 21 cave system at -2224, -48; total number of caves: 33
Size 24 cave system at -2208, -48; total number of caves: 37
Number of cave systems: 3
Initial number of caves: 58
Total number of caves: 91
Additional circular room caves: 33
Number of small caves: 88; average width is 5.99
Number of large caves: 3; average width is 11.85
Number of circular rooms: 16; average width is 9.82
Additional caves per circular room: 2.06
Average altitude: 32.48
Percentage of caves on layers 0 to 9: 21.98
Percentage of caves on layers 10 to 19: 17.58
Percentage of caves on layers 20 to 29: 10.99
Percentage of caves on layers 30 to 39: 13.19
Percentage of caves on layers 40 to 49: 7.69
Percentage of caves on layers 50 to 59: 15.38
Percentage of caves above layer 59: 13.19
Here is an Unmined rendering of the cropped world (click to view full size) - I've explored nearly everything that you see here:
Another view which shows that virtually all exposed lava has been converted into obsidian; you can also see how dense some cave systems are (a few are only that dense near lava level; conversely, I've found caves just as dense at higher elevations but with little at lava level, with caves on average becoming denser deeper down):
An analysis of the cropped world made with MCEdit - in addition to 446,549 torches, 7.7 per chunk, there is enough obsidian to cover 2,516 chunks one layer deep. Note also that there are only 212 monster spawners, around 10% of what would be expected:
A closer look at what I've explored over the last week, which is the westernmost point seen on the maps above:
The amount of resources that I've gotten from those caves is equally incredible with more than 1.6 million ore mined, as well as more than 100,000 rails (around 2,000 were mined again when I changed my rail system), 48,000 moss stone (the average dungeon has 48 so this is more than a thousand dungeons), and 45,000 cobwebs from cave spider spawners (only recently have I been harvesting them directly; I crafted more than 12,000 wool before then, which included a lot of string dropped by cave spiders). When counting resources crafted into blocks I've accumulated more than 2.1 million resources, and mined even more (for example, I've used more than 160,000 coal to craft torches and smelt iron and gold):
Also, my current run on my first world is by far the longest that I've ever played on one world non-stop; I started in early September 2015 so it has been close to 15 months and around 2/3rds of the entire time that I've spent playing the world; this followed a long spell of playing on other worlds, including a copy of this world that was modded with TMCW, but not until I'd spent a couple months playing, which were not reverted; preceded by 5-6 months of playing after I first got the game, again interrupted by playing on other worlds. All of these other worlds (6 main worlds and a few minor worlds, including a custom map and seed-based map) lasted for no more than 3-4 months with the most time played on them being around 15 days; based on my daily playtime in my first world my total playtime is around 195 days, which also means that I've done close to twice the things mentioned here.
However, I plan to start a new world soon using an updated version of "TheMasterCaver's World"; I still plan to finish up a few areas before I stop playing my first world.
Of course, I'll be playing that world the same way once I get established, just as I've played most of my other worlds (in TMCWv3 it took about 2 days to get established and kill the Ender Dragon, which I see as the start of my "normal" gameplay, then I spent about 13 more days, so around 87% of the time I spent was caving).
See also:
I just mined one million coal ore
TheMasterCaver's First World
What's the longest you've played on one world? (includes some details on most of my other worlds)
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?
Cool map. You have a lot of dedication.
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Check out my map:http://www.planetminecraft.com/project/industrialcraft-2-bunker/
orhttp://www.planetminecraft.com/project/reverse-skyblock/
or youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVscM9Izs_YsQjOqVWM5aDg
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Impressive.
You should start a civilization of mole people that live down in the mines.
Cool map! That's a lot of caves!
nice work mastercaver!
How do you use all those rescources? Do you have projects for them or do they go into storage as trophies? I typically only mine when I need stuff for projects so I was curious what your goals were with the world.
Download and play my new Survival Map!
Space Expedition to EPIC 204: Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
you should post a copy of your world save, i would love to be able to explore a map with so much dedication to see what I could learn from it.
this guy here deserves attention. go visit him pls.
My youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF6TkzZmHZQWQx23sNZBcMw
I'm cracking a great big smile at this comment dana. The Master Caver's main goal is purely caving, he just collects the resources.
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
haha, well fair enough then. I was just curious if he was converting it all to some fantastic castle build or something.
Download and play my new Survival Map!
Space Expedition to EPIC 204: Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
You can find a download in this thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/survival-mode/2365421-themastercavers-first-world
Or better, here's the direct link; I last updated it a week ago (I have not played on the world since because I'm planning to make a new modded world; you can get a good idea of what I do in those worlds in this thread - pretty much the same thing); it is a pretty large download at 290 MB (only the Overworld is included, not that I ever did anything in the Nether and End besides finding a fortress, mining some quarts, and killing the dragon): https://www.dropbox.com/s/mjsawpqbhq1pbdv/World1.zip
Note that while I've used a few mods, including some changes to the world itself, it should be fully compatible with vanilla since the only new blocks/items I added should not be present, which were blocks to compactly store rails and cobwebs until I got back to my main base. Naturally, world generation is only compatible with 1.6.4 (a few mineshafts generated in new chunks will be cut off); if you want to check out the Nether you'll want to delete "Fortress.dat" so fortresses generate correctly (the game will not regenerate chests and spawners unless this is deleted).
As for what I do with all the resources I get, that was pretty much explained by rodabon; I do use a few, such as rails, gold, and redstone for my railways (I don't even need iron since I get more than enough rails from mineshafts, by a factor of around 8:1, and that after slightly modding the world so mineshafts don't generate too close to large cave systems (e.g. here is one large cave system I found as seen in vanilla), reducing their frequency to about 75% of vanilla 1.6.4, and around 1.875 times that of 1.7+). Gold in mineshaft chests more than offset the gold used for powered rails, with more gold blocks than the ore I've mined can account for, same for iron despite using more iron early on), but for the most part I just store them.
That said, while most of my bases are not very complex the last base I made is a bit different; instead of using cobblestone I used quartz and built it in a style closer to my main bases in other worlds, using up all the quartz I had on hand and I had to go to the Nether for the first time in more than three years in this world to get more (I mainly mine quartz to get XP for enchanting, something that I only do once early on, and normally never go back to the Nether):
(this base is located around -1710, -320, accessible from a railway heading west from my main base, and also has a small structure with zombies and skeletons wearing pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns in front, the first time I captured any on Halloween)
Also, here is another look at the world mentioned in this thread; each set of renderings are from after the first, second, and third times I played on the world, so you can see how it has grown over time; plus my map wall (I modified map rendering to be similar to that in 1.7+, as well as map centering to be like 1.8+):
Here is what I did during the last few days I played on the world, which was filling in a previously unexplored part of of a map (the northeastern part of the map to the east of center in the spoiler above; prior to that I was exploring the map to the west of center):
A series of renderings made with Unmined of the area, showing the surface (the white dots near the center are cobblestone markers I made when I had to return. You can also see sets of "bubbles" in the ocean due to a mineshaft generation bug in versions before 1.8), below sea level, layer 20 (the layer I most often use to compare the density of cave systems), and layer 12 (just above lava level):
This shows what I got on the second to last day; while above average it is far from the most that I've explored/mined in one day, which has included entire large cave systems (as seen in the second day above on the left side, such a cave system is larger than anything you'll ever find since 1.7 (perhaps very, very rarely) and up to 3-4 separate abandoned mineshafts (I've found more than 10 directly interconnected before; easily half or more of all mineshafts in 1.6.4 intersect at least one other mineshaft), and 5-6 ravines, or combinations of these:
Of interest, despite all that I've explored in the since the first time I still haven't found another cave system larger and denser than one that I found over three years ago, although I recently did find one that came close and many other notably dense cave systems; in particular, the area to the west and southwest of that cave has the most extensive and densest region of caves I've ever seen, with two very large and dense cave systems to the south:
This is from an analysis of all of the caves within the areas shown above; I only included the locations of all of the cave systems that are larger than the largest cave system in 1.7 or later (size 14); the three largest cave systems seen above are all multiple smaller cave systems merged together:
Also, I modified MCMap to print out the number of torches it found within the area rendered (normally it prints out the relative coordinates of each torch, which i disabled since the console spam significantly slows it down; I also modified the way MCMap renders areas around torches to be more realistic; by default it renders a square with a radius of +/- 18 blocks, which is obviously far too large when torch light is only effective up to 6 blocks away and closer to a circle:
For comparison, my last world, TMCWv3, had around 74,000 torches so that's nearly half as many, and other worlds I've had only had that many in total
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?
Gotta say, it is very impressive the dedication you have to this world, for me once I beat the bosses, expand, and automate everything I usually stop and make a new world with different rules/ challenges. I will take a look at this as soon as destiny finishes it supdate.
this guy here deserves attention. go visit him pls.
My youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF6TkzZmHZQWQx23sNZBcMw