Well, yes. But in caves I get disoriented and have to dig my way back to the surface and then trot over to my base. Is that what he does? I somehow think he has done this enough he never gets lost. Even temporarily. I get lost temporarily all the time lol
Hmm I never thought of marking cave areas like that - thats a good idea. I always hated caving before because I would get disoriented, running around in circles, and then just end up mining my way to the surface.
Some people consider "f3" to be "cheating". You won't have that in real life (hmm ... need a new term there).
For this, I respond: If I were really there, I'd have a much better ability to see the area around me, and a little accidental mouse-flick would not have me completely confused as to where I was looking. Not all of the stone passage ways would look absolutely identical, and I could have some sort of bearing.
But ... well, I'm known to know my torches when placed, and recognize where I'm looking at just by seeing a few of my torches down. Heck, I have even spotted when the light being shown does NOT match a torch placed earlier (smooth lighting off and a good brightness gradient).
And yes, I do get lost underground. Given the rate at which caves loop, "POSH" does not always help. Signs however ...
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Within a cave, there's lots of things you can do to help navigate. Always put torches on your right, so that you can keep them on your left to find where you came from. Block off parts that you have explored; and/or parts that you cannot explore right now - mark those in some way, such as a dot of redstone or a sand block. You can also indicate the direction of something by putting a torch on that side of a cobble. Or just put signs down.
I don't actually do any of those; I mainly just rely on memory and sense of direction, and advice like placing torches on the right doesn't really work that well when caves are so dense there aren't many recognizable tunnels (on average a cave system in 1.6.4 is nearly three times denser than since 1.7 and a cave system at least as large as the largest possible cave system in 1.7 is over 150 times more common, and as a result they are much more likely to merge together into even larger complexes*). Other than that, I carry a map with me so I can see where I am and have been in general (only the surface is shown but I can see where I am/was), and regularly make "markers" (cobblestone pillars) at the surface to mark where I returned from a caving session (usually around 1 1/2 to 2 play sessions long, depending on how much stuff (mainly dungeon and mineshaft loot) I find) or found a new area to explore later; for example, while exploring the current network of caves I've made the following markers, some not revisited yet:
-1177, 1445 (last marker I made before)
-1321, 1721 (I returned to this one to explore the latest area)
-1008, 1765 (marks an unexplored mineshaft)
-1368, 1866 (most recent marker)
-1264, 1858
-1137, 1958 (marks another unexplored mineshaft)
-1065, 2056 (an old marker from when I explored the map to the east, I never returned to it directly but explored caves that lead to it)
I often return to the same marker more than once before I finish exploring everything around it; often I'll explore far from it without exploring everything nearby first since I can just return to finish it later. I also make stops to smelt iron and gold to make more room (9 ingots = 1 block) and usually either do this in an area which is easy to remember (large cave, ravine, or near a marker; I currently have a couple dozen furnaces standing next to the most recent marker) or in a cave along the way to where I'm currently exploring (since I put half a stack of ore into each furnace it doesn't take that long to smelt so I don't explore too far).
Also, I do use coordinates (in fact, I even modded the game to display them in the inventory screen so i never have to press F3) but mainly to record the locations of markers, particularly those which I do not plan to return to anytime soon (which in this world can be years of real time; the last marker listed above was created close to two years ago), otherwise I can easily navigate to them with only a map.
*Here is a list of the frequencies of a cave system with at least a given number of caves in 1.6.4 and 1.7+:
The much greater frequency of larger cave systems in 1.6.4 (last column) also means that they are much more likely to intersect one another; to put this into perspective, I explore around 100 chunks in a given play session so on average I find a cave system as large as the largest found in 1.7+ every 12 sessions (the largest possible is even larger but considering that I simulated the equivalent of 700 million chunks for 1.7+ it is exceedingly unlikely you'll find anything larger). Even what I expect to find in one session is 6-7 times rarer in 1.7+.
Also, from checking out random seeds it is likely that I'll find an area of even higher cave density if I explore everything within 6144x6144 blocks, which had an average peak air volume of 314,400 within a 7 chunk radius across 5 seeds (compared to 280,000 for the area I'm exploring; each seed had 2-3 areas with a higher density, up to 353,000 or 26% denser, with 297 caves within the area. For comparison, the peak density I found in 1.7+ was 161,000 with 146 caves):
Seed: -3627471891619146571
Air volume of 353258 (16.48%) at -1512, 520
Size 33 cave system at -1488, 432; total number of caves: 48
Size 25 cave system at -1584, 448; total number of caves: 39
Size 17 cave system at -1472, 448; total number of caves: 33
Size 11 cave system at -1504, 464; total number of caves: 13
Size 13 cave system at -1424, 464; total number of caves: 16
Size 4 cave system at -1408, 464; total number of caves: 7
Size 11 cave system at -1472, 480; total number of caves: 17
Size 1 cave system at -1456, 480; total number of caves: 1
Size 23 cave system at -1440, 480; total number of caves: 33
Size 1 cave system at -1408, 496; total number of caves: 1
Size 26 cave system at -1584, 560; total number of caves: 38
Size 11 cave system at -1568, 560; total number of caves: 14
Size 2 cave system at -1472, 592; total number of caves: 2
Size 21 cave system at -1456, 592; total number of caves: 35
Number of cave systems: 14
Initial number of caves: 199
Total number of caves: 297
Additional circular room caves: 98
Number of small caves: 292; average width is 6.04
Number of large caves: 5; average width is 12.19
Number of circular rooms: 58; average width is 10.63
Additional caves per circular room: 1.69
Average caves per chunk: 1.8447205
Seed: -8139275988591273373
Air volume of 161123 (7.52%) at 2408, -1000
Size 1 cave system at 2448, -1120; total number of caves: 4
Size 6 cave system at 2320, -1104; total number of caves: 6
Size 1 cave system at 2464, -1104; total number of caves: 1
Size 8 cave system at 2384, -1088; total number of caves: 13
Size 1 cave system at 2336, -1072; total number of caves: 1
Size 3 cave system at 2320, -1056; total number of caves: 4
Size 5 cave system at 2384, -1056; total number of caves: 11
Size 8 cave system at 2288, -1040; total number of caves: 8
Size 1 cave system at 2288, -1024; total number of caves: 4
Size 6 cave system at 2496, -1024; total number of caves: 11
Size 6 cave system at 2512, -1024; total number of caves: 9
Size 1 cave system at 2352, -1008; total number of caves: 4
Size 1 cave system at 2384, -1008; total number of caves: 3
Size 3 cave system at 2464, -1008; total number of caves: 3
Size 1 cave system at 2368, -992; total number of caves: 4
Size 5 cave system at 2432, -992; total number of caves: 14
Size 4 cave system at 2448, -992; total number of caves: 7
Size 3 cave system at 2480, -992; total number of caves: 5
Size 1 cave system at 2352, -976; total number of caves: 1
Size 3 cave system at 2400, -976; total number of caves: 6
Size 1 cave system at 2384, -960; total number of caves: 1
Size 4 cave system at 2480, -960; total number of caves: 4
Size 6 cave system at 2416, -944; total number of caves: 12
Size 3 cave system at 2368, -928; total number of caves: 6
Size 1 cave system at 2416, -928; total number of caves: 1
Size 3 cave system at 2416, -912; total number of caves: 3
Number of cave systems: 26
Initial number of caves: 86
Total number of caves: 146
Additional circular room caves: 60
Number of small caves: 141; average width is 6.06
Number of large caves: 5; average width is 12.78
Number of circular rooms: 31; average width is 10.58
Additional caves per circular room: 1.94
Average caves per chunk: 0.9068323
(this is actually from a different seed, "-8138713038637852061", which is the same underground because the lower 48 bits were not changed; I added 2^48 twice to get a seed that had land over this area, the original seed was under an ocean on both default and large biomes)
Even with less than half the density 1.7+ is actually pretty impressive, but that does not change the fact that cave systems are denser and larger overall in 1.6.4 (even within these areas you can see the differences; 1.6.4 has multiple distinct areas of high density while 1.7 is much more uniform). It is entirely possible that 1.7+ may have areas as dense as the one shown for 1.6.4 but they would be extremely rare; in fact, I've explored at least 44 regions that have a higher density than the area in 1.7+ (these are just within the main area that I've explored, about full level 4 maps centered around 0,0, not including the map I'm currently exploring which includes the densest area I've found so far):
Top 43 regions found by air volume between layers 11-62:
Air volume of 279711 (13.05%) at 2104, 520
Air volume of 276199 (12.89%) at -840, 856
Air volume of 263090 (12.28%) at -408, 1064
Air volume of 253148 (11.81%) at 2376, -56
Air volume of 250933 (11.71%) at 152, -440
Air volume of 250000 (11.66%) at -1240, -840
Air volume of 248214 (11.58%) at -824, -1016
Air volume of 247231 (11.54%) at -888, 1592
Air volume of 246133 (11.48%) at 344, 1016
Air volume of 244265 (11.40%) at -824, -2376
Air volume of 242976 (11.34%) at 2728, -408
Air volume of 237503 (11.08%) at -1912, -472
Air volume of 237147 (11.06%) at 200, -1992
Air volume of 236674 (11.04%) at 8, 1880
Air volume of 236367 (11.03%) at 1368, -776
Air volume of 235994 (11.01%) at -1688, -40
Air volume of 228459 (10.66%) at 1432, -232
Air volume of 224563 (10.48%) at -1160, 808
Air volume of 224364 (10.47%) at 1816, 504
Air volume of 223765 (10.44%) at 648, -1400
Air volume of 223399 (10.42%) at -88, -1704
Air volume of 222821 (10.40%) at -2984, 152
Air volume of 222180 (10.37%) at 808, -1608
Air volume of 219635 (10.25%) at 760, -504
Air volume of 219573 (10.24%) at -408, 2248
Air volume of 214081 (9.99%) at -2776, 424
Air volume of 213372 (9.96%) at 520, 232
Air volume of 212094 (9.90%) at 248, 344
Air volume of 212001 (9.89%) at -2216, -648
Air volume of 209708 (9.78%) at -1736, -808
Air volume of 208031 (9.71%) at 2776, 56
Air volume of 207322 (9.67%) at -568, 1544
Air volume of 205640 (9.59%) at -1272, 600
Air volume of 205385 (9.58%) at 344, -2280
Air volume of 205052 (9.57%) at 712, 2472
Air volume of 201861 (9.42%) at 1368, 264
Air volume of 201318 (9.39%) at 56, 152
Air volume of 201289 (9.39%) at 2568, 184
Air volume of 201016 (9.38%) at -520, -1320
Air volume of 200948 (9.38%) at 536, -1080
Air volume of 198684 (9.27%) at 648, 760
Air volume of 198209 (9.25%) at -2296, 456
Air volume of 197950 (9.24%) at 1800, 120
I found a total of 5 intersecting ravines with a 6th ravine nearly intersecting them in the area where I had found at least 4 before - the most that I've found in this world for the third time; in all of my worlds I've only found more than 5 intersecting ravines once before, in my most recent modded world where an enormous ravine intersected 6 other ravines, and 5 ravines in another world (also modded but they were all normal size). I've also nearly found 7 in this world before; the first time I found 5 intersecting ravines there was also a double ravine that came very close to intersecting them (together with a large cave system they contributed to what was until now the densest region I've found within a 7 chunk radius, and still is for a 4 chunk radius, which I use to compare more typical cave systems; by this measure and for caves only the cave system at -800, -1050 still easily beats any others).
Here are some screenshots:
Here are the posts where I mentioned the last two times I found 5 intersecting ravines in this world:
I have not done much in the way of searching for the most intersecting ravines but it would be easy to do by searching for areas with the most ravines within some radius and looking at them; the most that I know of is 8 in the seed "Digital" in 1.6.4 or earlier (they exist in the same locations with the same sizes and all in 1.7+ except that they curve differently from their starting point (at one end) due to a change in a value to accommodate 256 high terrain, even though they did not really need to do that and they never get even close to y=128; as a result they may or may not all intersect):
Also, this is what the markers I make look like (in the first screenshot the furnaces were temporarily placed to smelt ore while I explored the area; the ones in the second screenshot are older ones I made a few years back; I can tell because they are 21 blocks tall instead of 14 and I now only make them taller if they are in a jungle/forest or hilly area):
This is where I will be building a new base, at around -1500, 2560:
This is the 12th village that I have found in this world; I found it while digging a rail tunnel to at least x = -1024 or as far as land permitted and after I had reached x = -1024 I went to the surface and walked further west to see how far land went (further north ocean starts as far east as x=1024 but it appears that land goes further west as you go further south) and came across it. As with several other villages I've decided to build a base within it, which will also be the furthest away base in this world, a journey of around 4,000 blocks by rail from my main base.
Of note, the last time I found a village in this world was well over a year ago, in July 2016, around 7 months when only counting the time I've spent playing on it, which is by far the longest I've gone without finding one and is largely attributable to the last map I explored being mostly Ice Plains. There is also more Ice Plains to the south of this village, as can be seen on the left side of the screenshot, which is probably the same one that I found further south in the map to the east (aside from not having Ice Plains Spikes and having Frozen Ocean they are more or less the same as 1.7's snowy climate zones, and actually use some of the same code, minus the code that separates climate zones by temperature).
Also, I used Unmined to look at what I had explored over the past week - it was just as big as I thought, a densely intertwined network of caves extending 475 blocks north-south and averaging about 100 blocks wide; the "loop" that I mentioned earlier turned out to be a more separate area rather than part of the network (the way MCMap renders caves can make it appear as if they overlap when they do not since a cave at a higher altitude can render "above" a cave at a lower altitude and some distance away):
On the far left side near the center you can one of the areas that I'll be exploring next (the cave system I mentioned finding while exploring the ravines; only part of it shows since I used MMAT to trim away chunks without torches, there is another unexplored cave system to the east on the right side which is close to an old return point there).
Also, here is an analysis covering the entire cave system/network, which contains a total of 476 caves (I restricted the analysis to only check within rectangular regions which together cover the cave network, instead of the circular regions that it normally checks, similar to how I only analyze the entire world which I've explored):
Size 32 cave system at -1232, 1616; total number of caves: 44
Size 11 cave system at -1136, 1616; total number of caves: 17
Size 1 cave system at -1120, 1616; total number of caves: 1
Size 1 cave system at -1264, 1632; total number of caves: 3
Size 24 cave system at -1152, 1648; total number of caves: 27
Size 9 cave system at -1104, 1648; total number of caves: 12
Size 22 cave system at -1200, 1664; total number of caves: 30
Size 1 cave system at -1120, 1680; total number of caves: 1
Size 3 cave system at -1264, 1696; total number of caves: 7
Size 18 cave system at -1184, 1712; total number of caves: 26
Size 2 cave system at -1200, 1744; total number of caves: 2
Size 5 cave system at -1120, 1744; total number of caves: 7
Size 3 cave system at -1184, 1760; total number of caves: 3
Size 18 cave system at -1168, 1760; total number of caves: 26
Size 4 cave system at -1200, 1776; total number of caves: 8
Size 9 cave system at -1168, 1776; total number of caves: 9
Size 1 cave system at -1312, 1808; total number of caves: 1
Size 15 cave system at -1296, 1808; total number of caves: 21
Size 7 cave system at -1232, 1824; total number of caves: 10
Size 23 cave system at -1200, 1824; total number of caves: 35
Size 5 cave system at -1152, 1824; total number of caves: 6
Size 1 cave system at -1136, 1824; total number of caves: 1
Size 1 cave system at -1120, 1824; total number of caves: 1
Size 9 cave system at -1280, 1840; total number of caves: 10
Size 1 cave system at -1312, 1856; total number of caves: 4
Size 6 cave system at -1168, 1856; total number of caves: 6
Size 28 cave system at -1136, 1856; total number of caves: 33
Size 2 cave system at -1120, 1856; total number of caves: 2
Size 1 cave system at -1104, 1872; total number of caves: 1
Size 13 cave system at -1072, 1872; total number of caves: 16
Size 26 cave system at -1120, 1936; total number of caves: 41
Size 7 cave system at -1104, 1936; total number of caves: 7
Size 4 cave system at -1136, 1984; total number of caves: 6
Size 12 cave system at -1088, 2000; total number of caves: 21
Size 1 cave system at -1056, 2000; total number of caves: 1
Size 8 cave system at -1120, 2016; total number of caves: 8
Size 1 cave system at -1072, 2032; total number of caves: 1
Size 18 cave system at -1040, 2064; total number of caves: 21
Number of cave systems: 38
Initial number of caves: 353
Total number of caves: 476
Additional circular room caves: 123
Number of small caves: 465; average width is 6.04
Number of large caves: 11; average width is 12.03
Number of circular rooms: 77; average width is 11.54
Additional caves per circular room: 1.60
Average caves per chunk: 1.1226416 (424 chunks)
Average altitude: 33.24
Percentage of caves on layers 0 to 9: 21.01
Percentage of caves on layers 10 to 19: 18.91
Percentage of caves on layers 20 to 29: 17.65
Percentage of caves on layers 30 to 39: 7.98
Percentage of caves on layers 40 to 49: 7.35
Percentage of caves on layers 50 to 59: 9.87
Percentage of caves above layer 59: 17.23
To put things into perspective, the cave density within this area is 2.5 times higher than the average for 1.6.4 (0.446875 caves per chunk; 1.7+ averages 0.34375 caves per chunk). Also, here is a comparison to the largest and densest cave system that I know of as well as the densest one in this world:
It is likely that there are far larger networks similar to the one I just explored but they are difficult to find due to their irregular shape; the way I search for dense caves is by checking a circular or square radius and a radius large enough to cover the entire network I explored has a much lower cave density than within the network itself; it still shows up as the densest region within a 16 chunk circular radius, which covers the whole area; I found a peak air volume of 916,000 centered near the western edge:
Seed: -123775873255737467
Air volume of 916249 (8.55%) at -1256, 1832
Air volume of 895049 (8.35%) at 2552, 24
Air volume of 887386 (8.28%) at -984, 840
Air volume of 867375 (8.09%) at 1960, 376
Air volume of 864292 (8.07%) at 248, -2152
Air volume of 834232 (7.78%) at -1480, -776
Air volume of 825681 (7.71%) at -728, 1528
Air volume of 824063 (7.69%) at 392, -1096
Air volume of 784112 (7.32%) at 712, -1560
Air volume of 777536 (7.26%) at 1480, -712
Of note, all of the top 10 densest regions that I've explored so far are denser than the densest region in 5 other seeds I checked, even when including the entire +/- 3072 block area around the origin:
Seed: -7126978501944978399
Air volume of 728365 (6.80%) at -920, 2776
Air volume of 680648 (6.35%) at -184, 888
Air volume of 679651 (6.34%) at -520, 2360
Air volume of 677629 (6.32%) at -1288, -2328
Air volume of 669400 (6.25%) at 888, -2824
Air volume of 666178 (6.22%) at 1064, 2744
Air volume of 655096 (6.11%) at -2840, -1864
Air volume of 639132 (5.96%) at 1336, -2344
Air volume of 637859 (5.95%) at 3032, -2232
Air volume of 637680 (5.95%) at 1560, 104
Seed: 437892543908682598
Air volume of 747254 (6.97%) at 1560, -2936
Air volume of 726341 (6.78%) at 2888, 1016
Air volume of 721918 (6.74%) at -264, -2856
Air volume of 712197 (6.65%) at 1640, -1016
Air volume of 710439 (6.63%) at 984, -3064
Air volume of 695895 (6.49%) at -2904, 632
Air volume of 683526 (6.38%) at -2696, -1064
Air volume of 676556 (6.31%) at 2360, 1928
Air volume of 673100 (6.28%) at -1400, 1400
Air volume of 668399 (6.24%) at 1064, -1176
Seed: 7448419379893292932
Air volume of 770611 (7.19%) at 1720, 2728
Air volume of 741604 (6.92%) at 1784, 1768
Air volume of 739069 (6.90%) at -2536, 2728
Air volume of 735443 (6.86%) at 2840, -1480
Air volume of 726950 (6.78%) at 1656, -520
Air volume of 725423 (6.77%) at -1608, -1816
Air volume of 724349 (6.76%) at -1736, -936
Air volume of 700503 (6.54%) at -104, 2104
Air volume of 677693 (6.32%) at 72, -8
Air volume of 674580 (6.29%) at -2104, -1400
Seed: -5502727572495969600
Air volume of 718521 (6.71%) at 2472, 200
Air volume of 714704 (6.67%) at 40, 792
Air volume of 709545 (6.62%) at 1368, -1784
Air volume of 703753 (6.57%) at 40, -904
Air volume of 699338 (6.53%) at 2056, -520
Air volume of 665431 (6.21%) at 3016, 2584
Air volume of 657307 (6.13%) at 1480, 2664
Air volume of 653456 (6.10%) at -1320, 616
Air volume of 653213 (6.10%) at -1320, 2248
Air volume of 649978 (6.07%) at 2728, -632
Seed: 1225594636699254796
Air volume of 777344 (7.25%) at 344, 2120
Air volume of 720420 (6.72%) at 1224, 2888
Air volume of 704250 (6.57%) at 760, -1416
Air volume of 686598 (6.41%) at -1368, -936
Air volume of 661351 (6.17%) at 280, -360
Air volume of 658947 (6.15%) at 1656, 1736
Air volume of 658585 (6.15%) at -216, 616
Air volume of 650549 (6.07%) at -1496, 1464
Air volume of 650489 (6.07%) at 248, 1240
Air volume of 648141 (6.05%) at -216, -2312
Interestingly, the seed with the largest and densest cave system that I know of has a similar density distribution as my world; while every seed in theory has the exact same number and density of caves there may be differences in local distribution due to the fact that each chunk's seed is directly related to surrounding chunks since the game calculates a per-chunk seed by multiplying the x and z coordinates by two values derived from the world seed (notably, either of these can be 0 so every chunk has the same seed value based on the x or z coordinate):
Seed: -7501191248410737040
Air volume of 1002050 (9.35%) at -296, 104
Air volume of 902681 (8.42%) at -376, -1368
Air volume of 872144 (8.14%) at -168, -2216
Air volume of 871469 (8.13%) at 2024, -2152
Air volume of 832560 (7.77%) at 216, 1352
Air volume of 832261 (7.77%) at -2824, -2632
Air volume of 821456 (7.67%) at 2968, 1336
Air volume of 816007 (7.61%) at -1032, 2472
Air volume of 793162 (7.40%) at 616, 1976
Air volume of 792613 (7.40%) at 2200, 280
This is also supported by the fact that when compared to the "worst" of the 5 seeds above my world has only 0.8% more air underground within a 192 chunk radius of the origin, so caves must be more clustered together on a smaller scale, and there are actually fewer cave systems in my world (99.1% as many) but there are 1.82% more caves for 2.7% more caves per cave system, and caves and circular rooms are slightly larger in the "bad" seed:
Seed: -123775873255737467
Air volume of 81189754 (5.27%) at 8, 8
Number of cave systems: 5787
Initial number of caves: 38186
Total number of caves: 52619
Additional circular room caves: 14433
Number of small caves: 50979; average width is 6.03
Number of large caves: 1640; average width is 11.79
Number of circular rooms: 9539; average width is 10.97
Additional caves per circular room: 1.51
Average caves per chunk: 0.4543445 (115813 chunks)
Seed: -7126978501944978399
Air volume of 80538948 (5.22%) at 8, 8
Number of cave systems: 5838
Initial number of caves: 37534
Total number of caves: 51678
Additional circular room caves: 14144
Number of small caves: 50011; average width is 6.04
Number of large caves: 1667; average width is 11.87
Number of circular rooms: 9426; average width is 11.06
Additional caves per circular room: 1.50
Average caves per chunk: 0.44621933 (115813 chunks)
Also, this is what the seed for my world looks like in 1.7+; air volume is 84.5% as high while the number of caves is 76.6% as high so air volume only fell by 2/3 of what would be expected. Cave systems are also 1.67 times more common but 45.9% as large:
Seed is -123775873255737467
Air volume of 68615775 (4.45%) at 8, 8
Number of cave systems: 9664
Initial number of caves: 29280
Total number of caves: 40321
Additional circular room caves: 11041
Number of small caves: 39109; average width is 6.03
Number of large caves: 1212; average width is 11.98
Number of circular rooms: 7378; average width is 10.99
Additional caves per circular room: 1.50
Average caves per chunk: 0.34815606 (115813 chunks)
This is the most badly generated village that I've ever found; when I first saw it I thought it wouldn't take much to fix it up since it appeared to be on relatively level ground:
The village was so dangerous that I trapped the villagers before they could kill themselves (in the lower-left you can see a cactus item, which was a cactus that one of the villagers tried to kill itself on); one had already been converted into a zombie villager, probably due to a lighting glitch in the house since it was day when I visited it both times:
Most of the time I spent playing today was fixing it up by terraforming the landscape around it; I ended up with this:
Also, instead of using one of the village houses I made my own since it would have more space and be more suitably located; the projection on the right side encloses a staircase going down to the railway:
I believe this is the first time I've actually made a house that looks like a house (in particular, the roof); I also used smooth sandstone to make it match the village houses. I still need to make potato, wheat and chicken farms, the latter two for getting emeralds (none of the villagers in the village currently have anything that I can trade for emeralds though, this is mainly for my main base), which will all be put underground (the village has a single farm which is entirely carrots, which I've used for food while fixing it up and building a base).
Also, while finishing the rest of the rail tunnel I also mined into a small cave with a dungeon; the cave was smaller than the dungeon itself and was probably the end of a cave that went up to the surface (prior to 1.8 caves cannot cut through sand or sandstone). I also ran into a couple other caves and a ravine, which I've left alone for now:
Here is a rendering of the area from x= -2048 to 0 and z = 1024 to 3072, with a rail line running south along the upper-right (eastern) edge and a couple branches to the west, including the one I just made near the bottom. The southern end of the north-south railway also branches to the east:
In one day I recovered half of the rails I recently used for my railway while exploring a triple mineshaft complex, with more than 900 rails collected in two days, and collected nearly 6,000 resources today, more if you include coal that I used for torches and fuel. I also found a quadruple ravine (one is not fully explored yet and there is another one nearby):
This is 4,962 mineral resources (548 blocks + 30 diamonds), 756 rails (84 rail blocks), 164 cobwebs (41 cobweb blocks), 83 moss stone, and 4 other items, including an Infinity book, for a total of 5,969 items. Note that the coal blocks represent 2385 coal so I used at least 473 coal (more when including coal found in chests) for at least 6,442 resources collected:
A triple ravine intersection:
Two of the ravines overlap along much of their length:
There is also a fourth ravine which I have not finished exploring yet; I also found one other ravine nearby but don't know if it intersects this one:
Out of a total of 94214 chunks I've explored about 71540 chunks in this world; this number comes from the number of chunks that were left after I used MMAT on a copy of the world to delete all chunks without torches, which is representative of how much I've explored by caving, minus a few chunks around the path of my latest railway and base.
Here are surface and underground renderings of the trimmed world; the latter is black and white since that was the only way I could get it under 1 MB in size and both are 1:2 scale, covering an area 6400x5680 blocks in size (3200x2840 pixels):
The area I'm currently exploring is to the north of the small projection to the west near the bottom, which is along my latest railway and base.
Also, to put things into perspective, on average 71540 chunks of a 1.6.4 world will contain the following:
85800 cave structures (includes all tunnels and rooms)
56000 tunnels (32000 initial tunnels; 75% branch with two branches at right angles, effectively forming one tunnel, or two tunnels forming a "T", and 3 separate tunnels overall)
5800 circular rooms (5/6 of tunnels and rooms are below sea level)
3577 individual cave systems, including 468 at least as large as the largest in 1.7+ (where about 3 are expected)
3105 monster spawners (1430 cave spider, 837 zombie, 419 skeleton, 419 spider)
1675 dungeons (containing 80400 moss stone and about 2931 chests, assuming an average of 1.75 each)
1430 ravines
715 abandoned mineshafts (containing about 214500 rails, 3575 minecarts, and 1430 cave spider spawners)
Unless the entire region is at least 1280 blocks from the origin there will be less mineshafts and (to a lesser extent) dungeons since mineshafts are less common within 1280 blocks of the origin, linearly decreasing in frequency from 100% (1% chance per chunk) to 0% at 0,0 (a mineshaft will never generate right at the origin); I also modded this world so they do not generate if there are too many caves nearby, reducing their frequency by about 25% (up to 536 mineshafts). The decrease in mineshafts near the origin can also be seen on the cave map above, which shows more open areas near the center (mineshafts are so common in 1.6.4 that they contain about 25% of the volume of caves and ravines; in other words, underground density increases by 20% as you go away from the origin).
This also includes the following amounts of each ore (based on the Wiki; figures for coal, iron, and emerald vary more due to differences in land/ocean/ice plains):
10.2 million coal ore
5.51 million iron ore
1.77 million redstone ore
586,000 gold ore
245,000 lapis ore
221,000 diamond ore
14,300 emerald ore
Also, I made an addition to my "inventory stats" mod which includes the total number of ores that I've mined, not just in the current session (as seen within MCP using the stats file for this world; I read the values directly from the stats while the current session stats count what was mined in that session):
Note that coal and iron alone account for over 90% of all ores mined with coal being 2/3rds of the total; as I've mentioned before the addition of coal blocks in 1.6 was the single biggest boost to my playstyle since it meant I could now mine all coal instead of just what I used, around 1/6 of what I mine, nearly tripling my ore collection rate (the time I spend actually mining ore is less than 10% of the time I spend caving. Some more time is needed to get to ores high up in walls and ceilings but it is still a relatively small percentage of the total time).
At the rate at which I collect ores I'll hit 2 million total ore mined within the next 2-3 weeks, and half a million iron in about a month. I'm also closing in on filling two double chests with gold blocks, after which I'll need to make more room for gold as I currently only have two double chests for it; an entire corridor of 16 double chests would let me collect 8 times as much, far more than I'll ever collect in this world even if I decide to go another map outwards after I explore the 3x3 inner area (including oceans; I currently do not explore that far from land), which would give me up to 409600 chunks or about 5.7 times the area to explore. This would also take close to 1000 days of playtime over 18 years of playing for 3 1/2 hours per day so that will likely never happen.
Also, I used MCEdit to see exactly how many rails I've used in my rail system; the stats for rails placed is not reliable since I changed some of the original railways (from the first time I played on this world) so they were mostly at y=58 instead of at sea level (because of this I've also not found quite as many rails as the stats say that I've mined, although it does not account for rails that get washed away by water or rails in chests); I've used 15280 regular rails and 592 powered rails for a total length of 15872 blocks, which is close to what I've previously estimated (14-15 km before the latest extension, which is 1474 blocks long, with a total round-trip distance of 7740 blocks as measured by stats). Note that the ratio of regular:powered rails, at 25.8:1, is considerably less than the 33:1 ratio I use for long straight tracks due to the way I use powered rails at the ends but this still requires only a 1:9.3 ratio of gold:iron, less than the near 1:8 ratio that I've mined, and loot in minecarts more than offsets the gold I've used so that doesn't even matter at all (for comparison, branch-mining below y=32 yields a near 1:5 ratio of iron:gold; in 1.10+ mesas it is 1.333:1 above y=32 and 1.1:1 overall).
Over the past few days I explored a complex of 5 intersecting mineshafts, plus two more for a total of 7, with 2,095 rails collected from them, far offsetting what I recently used for a railway. Here is a view with Unmined of what I've explored recently; the main area of 6 mineshafts (5 intersecting, which form an arc around the 6th mineshaft, as well as the quadruple ravine I mentioned earlier - which was in fact a quintuple ravine, the fourth occurrence I've found in this world and the second in two weeks) measures about 330 x 350 blocks while the entire area shown is 432 x 656 blocks. Note that there is another mineshaft at the very top but I've decided not to explore it at this time because it is quite far under the ocean:
Here is a closeup of the quintuple ravines:
Also, I decided to take a shortcut back to my base instead of going around an explored area between it and where I'm currently exploring and I came across a desert temple, the fifth one I've found in this world, about 200 blocks to the northeast of my current base; there was some decent loot in it including 3 diamonds:
Also, this is what my map wall looks like now, minus the bit that I explored today (I made a trip back to my main base first thing):
There is a sizable unexplored area that is mostly surrounded to the north of where I'm currently exploring, in the southwesternmost area; while this region is all ocean I may explore it to fill it in later (the northernmost part of this area is near land but was not explored because I did not find any caves leading to it).
Man, this stuff requires so much dedication, and I love it! I love every single one of these posts. These worlds are insanely cool, and I would love to see more activity on here!
Over the past couple days I explored a cave system with one of the largest continuous areas of exposed lava that I've found, extending across an area 75x80 blocks in size, in addition to being relatively large and dense, with a measured volume of about 103,000 air blocks; I also used about 1,500 torches to light it up and mined about 5,400 ore from it:
The following two screenshots were taken looking in opposite directions while standing in the middle of a large chamber:
Here is a series of renderings of the cave system; the first two at the top were made with Unmined at layers 62 and 20 while the third was made with Minutor at layer 11 and below them is a rendering made with MCMap (2x actual size):
This is not the largest "lava cave system" that I've found though, which still goes to the cave system that I found around -800, -1050 more than four years ago, which is also still the largest and densest (densest for its size) cave system that I've found, and a few hundred blocks to the south and east is another cave system that I found close to two years ago, which is smaller overall but has more continuously exposed lava (despite the distance I did not find the current cave system until now because it is on another map and after exploring the map it was on, to the south of spawn, I explored to the east and west before exploring the map the current cave system is on). Also shown is what is likely my first encounter with a "1.6.4 style" cave system (the sort that is extremely dense and unique to versions before 1.7), which is only 100 blocks away from spawn:
- Mine a total of 2 million ore (currently at 1.96 million), half a million iron (currently at 479,000), and fill up 2 double chests with gold blocks, which will take another 2-3 weeks and a month respectively, not exactly sure about the gold but there is less than one empty row left in the second double chest.
And just on time, the total amount of ore that I've mined in this world exceeded 2 million today - I think it is safe to say that never before has anybody ever mined that much ore in Minecraft until today:
This is what I mined today:
And overall:
Also, these are all of the resources that I've collected since my last trip back to my main base a few days ago, including what I found from the big cave system the other day (the 13 music disc was dropped by a creeper, I ignore those in chests; two potions of healing and 3 glowstone came from witches; and 76 rail and 46 cobweb blocks plus 11 rails (4 in my inventory) and 2 cobwebs total 695 rails and 186 cobwebs):
In terms of resources collected (including multiple drops from redstone and lapis and from when I used Fortune for a while) I've collected around 2.6 million resources over a total of 121.7 days - a third of a year - of playtime:
This represents 1245438 coal, 491715 iron, 370251 redstone, 168165 lapis, 61479 gold, and 12105 diamonds (the actual amount in storage is slightly less as I've used a couple hundred iron blocks for anvils and lost some when I died prior to using an Ender chest to store it while caving):
Note that most of the cobwebs were harvested without Silk Touch and crafted into wool, representing most of the 12005 wool I've crafted; the amount of moss stone corresponds to around 1282 dungeons and rails correspond to around 450 mineshafts (possibly more since the average of 300 I found for 30 mineshafts in a Superflat world may be a bit high for an actual world when factoring in rails washed away by springs; the last 17 mineshafts that I've found, since I started tracking them, have averaged 273 rails each, or around 493 mineshafts):
While I do not know how much of that time has been spent caving about 86.43% of the total time I spent in my previous world was spent caving, which translates to about 105.18 days for this world, meaning that I've mined an average of about 793 ore and collected 1030 resources per hour - every hour for around 2524 hours; the average session length of 3.498 hours gives 2774 ore mined and 3604 resources collected per session. I've also mined 2.83 million blocks with a diamond pickaxe for an average of 1121 per hour and 3922 per session (all these figures assume 86.43% of the total time and sessions).
Also, I found the ravine that I ran into while digging the latest railway again, except this time by exploring caves that lead to it, with the ravine being unexplored until now:
Near the center you can see a redstone block, which is under a powered rail and gave away the fact that this is the ravine I mentioned running into, along with a few blocks of sand that fell down:
Here are updated maps of what I've explored so far within the current level 4 map (the cave map excludes the area around the Mushroom Island near the top-center); I've gone all the way under my current base, visible as a gray dot near the edge of the desert west of my position, and the area I explored today was a mineshaft and cave system to the northwest (left on this image) of the big cave system I mentioned before, which is to the far right:
I found yet another large cave system, larger than the last one:
Also, I found a very large cave, one of the largest single caves that I've found, although much of it was below lava level with a lava lake measuring about 50 blocks long and 20 blocks wide, almost right under my base:
Here are renderings of the large cave system; large cave, along with other cave systems I recently explored; and everything that I've explored over the past month (within the current map, southwest of -1024,1024, excluding the area around the Mushroom Island, which was explored separately):
Of particular interest the large cave system has the second highest density of caves within a 9x9 chunk area of any cave system that I've found, with 168 caves, second only to the large cave system at -800, -1050, which has 174 caves (216 within a 13x13 chunk area centered at -864, -1040, which is not the most for this area, which is 223 at -1184, 1696 followed by 221 at -64, -1680):
Centered at -1472, 2752:
Size 1 cave system at -1520, 2688; total number of caves: 1
Size 11 cave system at -1504, 2704; total number of caves: 11
Size 15 cave system at -1488, 2704; total number of caves: 25
Size 9 cave system at -1536, 2720; total number of caves: 22
Size 2 cave system at -1520, 2736; total number of caves: 2
Size 17 cave system at -1472, 2736; total number of caves: 26
Size 7 cave system at -1440, 2736; total number of caves: 7
Size 6 cave system at -1408, 2736; total number of caves: 10
Size 7 cave system at -1440, 2768; total number of caves: 9
Size 20 cave system at -1440, 2784; total number of caves: 29
Size 19 cave system at -1440, 2816; total number of caves: 26
Number of cave systems: 11
Initial number of caves: 114
Total number of caves: 168
Additional circular room caves: 54
Number of small caves: 165; average width is 6.09
Number of large caves: 3; average width is 13.08
Number of circular rooms: 36; average width is 11.54
Additional caves per circular room: 1.50
Average caves per chunk: 2.074074 (81 chunks)
Average altitude: 36.26
Percentage of caves on layers 0 to 9: 19.64
Percentage of caves on layers 10 to 19: 20.24
Percentage of caves on layers 20 to 29: 11.31
Percentage of caves on layers 30 to 39: 16.67
Percentage of caves on layers 40 to 49: 4.76
Percentage of caves on layers 50 to 59: 5.36
Percentage of caves above layer 59: 22.02
Centered at -816, -1040:
Size 26 cave system at -816, -1104; total number of caves: 37
Size 3 cave system at -784, -1104; total number of caves: 3
Size 24 cave system at -832, -1072; total number of caves: 34
Size 2 cave system at -768, -1072; total number of caves: 2
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 3 cave system at -784, -1024; total number of caves: 3
Size 13 cave system at -800, -992; total number of caves: 18
Size 4 cave system at -864, -976; total number of caves: 7
Number of cave systems: 9
Initial number of caves: 118
Total number of caves: 174
Additional circular room caves: 56
Number of small caves: 171; average width is 6.04
Number of large caves: 3; average width is 12.18
Number of circular rooms: 33; average width is 10.38
Additional caves per circular room: 1.70
Average caves per chunk: 2.148148 (81 chunks)
Average altitude: 31.25
Percentage of caves on layers 0 to 9: 21.84
Percentage of caves on layers 10 to 19: 22.99
Percentage of caves on layers 20 to 29: 12.07
Percentage of caves on layers 30 to 39: 10.92
Percentage of caves on layers 40 to 49: 8.05
Percentage of caves on layers 50 to 59: 6.90
Percentage of caves above layer 59: 17.24
Also, this is the previous large cave system that I found, centered at -1104, 2736:
Size 4 cave system at -1152, 2672; total number of caves: 9
Size 5 cave system at -1136, 2672; total number of caves: 13
Size 27 cave system at -1120, 2672; total number of caves: 38
Size 1 cave system at -1040, 2672; total number of caves: 1
Size 7 cave system at -1152, 2688; total number of caves: 10
Size 1 cave system at -1072, 2720; total number of caves: 1
Size 16 cave system at -1104, 2752; total number of caves: 28
Size 4 cave system at -1104, 2800; total number of caves: 7
Number of cave systems: 8
Initial number of caves: 65
Total number of caves: 107
Additional circular room caves: 42
Number of small caves: 106; average width is 5.92
Number of large caves: 1; average width is 10.04
Number of circular rooms: 23; average width is 10.91
Additional caves per circular room: 1.83
Average caves per chunk: 1.3209877 (81 chunks)
Average altitude: 28.79
Percentage of caves on layers 0 to 9: 22.43
Percentage of caves on layers 10 to 19: 22.43
Percentage of caves on layers 20 to 29: 14.95
Percentage of caves on layers 30 to 39: 13.08
Percentage of caves on layers 40 to 49: 8.41
Percentage of caves on layers 50 to 59: 10.28
Percentage of caves above layer 59: 8.41
Here is a comparison of all three cave systems, in the order listed above:
I've filled up two double chests with gold blocks as well as 16 double chests with iron blocks - that's 62,208 gold and 497,664 iron; I'm on track to mine half a million iron ore within two more play sessions (currently at 499,092. I'd already have more than half a million iron stored, including 64 iron blocks in the floor, if I did not have to make 72 anvils):
My storage area is getting quite big (though still amazingly small compared to the number of resources it stores, especially if they were placed in the world as blocks), with a total of 242 double chests, most in 11 corridors of 16 each, including three for coal, two for iron, one each for redstone and lapis, one for gold/diamond/emerald/misc blocks, two for moss stone and one for cobwebs:
I took this screenshot by copying the region file my main base is in to a test world and using MCEdit to delete everything above my storage area; the blocks in the floor correspond to what is in most of the chests, with the short corridor extending down near the middle mostly containing chest loot with item frames marking their contents (the bottom-most four chests contain wool which was crafted with string from cobwebs until I used Silk Touch; the corridor for cobwebs also uses wool to mark its contents):
Also, I saved renderings from 10 days worth of playing and compiled them into the biggest animation of my progress that I've made so far; this shows everything that I explored since the last cave system I mentioned:
Here is a before and after of what I explored using Unmined (unexplored chunks were trimmed away); the new area I explored is about 700x700 blocks and goes as far south as z = 3296, well off the southern edge of the map and the furthest I've ever gone from the origin in one direction as well straight-line distance from spawn (about 3500 blocks. I've gone further from spawn in one direction when exploring to the east since spawn is at -92, 236, making the distance to the south 328 blocks shorter for the same distance along an axis); as well as updated MCMap renderings of the entire world (scaled to 10% of original size, as seen in the animation above. I've actually been updating these by stitching together smaller areas and I don't think I can even open a full-size rendering):
Here are some screenshots I took of various caves:
I went through a mineshaft fast enough that parts of it were still burning from lava by the time I reached them:
This is a good example of why I modified mineshafts so they do not generate in areas with high cave density (the method I use is not perfect and works best for larger cave systems (overall) and cave systems with a few larger single-chunk cave systems as opposed to multiple smaller ones):
I found a zombie in diamond armor today, one and a half months after the last one:
Also, after a longer than usual play session (4 hours and 12 minutes) I reached a total of more than half a million iron ore mined (I did not intentionally play until I reached the goal; I did not check to see how much I'd mined until I stopped playing):
I've also mined more than 11,000 diamond ore as of today, after surpassing 10,000 on August 17 (74 days ago), which represents an average of 13.5 per day (at this rate it would take about 815 days to mine the total, so this is mainly a product of the sheer amount of time I've spent caving, not efficiency; even with an above-average number of diamonds found today I averaged only 6.2 diamond ore per hour, 6.67 diamonds per hour including two from a mineshaft).
Also, here are some screenshots of caves I explored as well as a before/after rendering of what I explored today; you can see that I finished exploring an area to the right (mainly a mineshaft, plus some caves and a ravine) before leaving that area and going to an area I'd previously marked to the northwest, where I finished exploring a cave system, then I went through a ravine going to the north with more caves leading from the northern end. Yet another ravine, not explored yet, is near the northern end of those caves:
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
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That's a crazy amount of blocks mined
Whenever I see an obsidian floor it makes me smile, Those kind of finds can be a killer sometimes And I have fallen into that kind of lava more often than I care to admit
From a noob - how do you not get lost?
Well, yes. But in caves I get disoriented and have to dig my way back to the surface and then trot over to my base. Is that what he does? I somehow think he has done this enough he never gets lost. Even temporarily. I get lost temporarily all the time lol
Hmm I never thought of marking cave areas like that - thats a good idea. I always hated caving before because I would get disoriented, running around in circles, and then just end up mining my way to the surface.
Some people consider "f3" to be "cheating". You won't have that in real life (hmm ... need a new term there).
For this, I respond: If I were really there, I'd have a much better ability to see the area around me, and a little accidental mouse-flick would not have me completely confused as to where I was looking. Not all of the stone passage ways would look absolutely identical, and I could have some sort of bearing.
But ... well, I'm known to know my torches when placed, and recognize where I'm looking at just by seeing a few of my torches down. Heck, I have even spotted when the light being shown does NOT match a torch placed earlier (smooth lighting off and a good brightness gradient).
And yes, I do get lost underground. Given the rate at which caves loop, "POSH" does not always help. Signs however ...
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
I don't actually do any of those; I mainly just rely on memory and sense of direction, and advice like placing torches on the right doesn't really work that well when caves are so dense there aren't many recognizable tunnels (on average a cave system in 1.6.4 is nearly three times denser than since 1.7 and a cave system at least as large as the largest possible cave system in 1.7 is over 150 times more common, and as a result they are much more likely to merge together into even larger complexes*). Other than that, I carry a map with me so I can see where I am and have been in general (only the surface is shown but I can see where I am/was), and regularly make "markers" (cobblestone pillars) at the surface to mark where I returned from a caving session (usually around 1 1/2 to 2 play sessions long, depending on how much stuff (mainly dungeon and mineshaft loot) I find) or found a new area to explore later; for example, while exploring the current network of caves I've made the following markers, some not revisited yet:
-1177, 1445 (last marker I made before)
-1321, 1721 (I returned to this one to explore the latest area)
-1008, 1765 (marks an unexplored mineshaft)
-1368, 1866 (most recent marker)
-1264, 1858
-1137, 1958 (marks another unexplored mineshaft)
-1065, 2056 (an old marker from when I explored the map to the east, I never returned to it directly but explored caves that lead to it)
I often return to the same marker more than once before I finish exploring everything around it; often I'll explore far from it without exploring everything nearby first since I can just return to finish it later. I also make stops to smelt iron and gold to make more room (9 ingots = 1 block) and usually either do this in an area which is easy to remember (large cave, ravine, or near a marker; I currently have a couple dozen furnaces standing next to the most recent marker) or in a cave along the way to where I'm currently exploring (since I put half a stack of ore into each furnace it doesn't take that long to smelt so I don't explore too far).
Also, I do use coordinates (in fact, I even modded the game to display them in the inventory screen so i never have to press F3) but mainly to record the locations of markers, particularly those which I do not plan to return to anytime soon (which in this world can be years of real time; the last marker listed above was created close to two years ago), otherwise I can easily navigate to them with only a map.
*Here is a list of the frequencies of a cave system with at least a given number of caves in 1.6.4 and 1.7+:
The much greater frequency of larger cave systems in 1.6.4 (last column) also means that they are much more likely to intersect one another; to put this into perspective, I explore around 100 chunks in a given play session so on average I find a cave system as large as the largest found in 1.7+ every 12 sessions (the largest possible is even larger but considering that I simulated the equivalent of 700 million chunks for 1.7+ it is exceedingly unlikely you'll find anything larger). Even what I expect to find in one session is 6-7 times rarer in 1.7+.
Also, from checking out random seeds it is likely that I'll find an area of even higher cave density if I explore everything within 6144x6144 blocks, which had an average peak air volume of 314,400 within a 7 chunk radius across 5 seeds (compared to 280,000 for the area I'm exploring; each seed had 2-3 areas with a higher density, up to 353,000 or 26% denser, with 297 caves within the area. For comparison, the peak density I found in 1.7+ was 161,000 with 146 caves):
Air volume of 353258 (16.48%) at -1512, 520
Size 33 cave system at -1488, 432; total number of caves: 48
Size 25 cave system at -1584, 448; total number of caves: 39
Size 17 cave system at -1472, 448; total number of caves: 33
Size 11 cave system at -1504, 464; total number of caves: 13
Size 13 cave system at -1424, 464; total number of caves: 16
Size 4 cave system at -1408, 464; total number of caves: 7
Size 11 cave system at -1472, 480; total number of caves: 17
Size 1 cave system at -1456, 480; total number of caves: 1
Size 23 cave system at -1440, 480; total number of caves: 33
Size 1 cave system at -1408, 496; total number of caves: 1
Size 26 cave system at -1584, 560; total number of caves: 38
Size 11 cave system at -1568, 560; total number of caves: 14
Size 2 cave system at -1472, 592; total number of caves: 2
Size 21 cave system at -1456, 592; total number of caves: 35
Number of cave systems: 14
Initial number of caves: 199
Total number of caves: 297
Additional circular room caves: 98
Number of small caves: 292; average width is 6.04
Number of large caves: 5; average width is 12.19
Number of circular rooms: 58; average width is 10.63
Additional caves per circular room: 1.69
Average caves per chunk: 1.8447205
Seed: -8139275988591273373
Air volume of 161123 (7.52%) at 2408, -1000
Size 1 cave system at 2448, -1120; total number of caves: 4
Size 6 cave system at 2320, -1104; total number of caves: 6
Size 1 cave system at 2464, -1104; total number of caves: 1
Size 8 cave system at 2384, -1088; total number of caves: 13
Size 1 cave system at 2336, -1072; total number of caves: 1
Size 3 cave system at 2320, -1056; total number of caves: 4
Size 5 cave system at 2384, -1056; total number of caves: 11
Size 8 cave system at 2288, -1040; total number of caves: 8
Size 1 cave system at 2288, -1024; total number of caves: 4
Size 6 cave system at 2496, -1024; total number of caves: 11
Size 6 cave system at 2512, -1024; total number of caves: 9
Size 1 cave system at 2352, -1008; total number of caves: 4
Size 1 cave system at 2384, -1008; total number of caves: 3
Size 3 cave system at 2464, -1008; total number of caves: 3
Size 1 cave system at 2368, -992; total number of caves: 4
Size 5 cave system at 2432, -992; total number of caves: 14
Size 4 cave system at 2448, -992; total number of caves: 7
Size 3 cave system at 2480, -992; total number of caves: 5
Size 1 cave system at 2352, -976; total number of caves: 1
Size 3 cave system at 2400, -976; total number of caves: 6
Size 1 cave system at 2384, -960; total number of caves: 1
Size 4 cave system at 2480, -960; total number of caves: 4
Size 6 cave system at 2416, -944; total number of caves: 12
Size 3 cave system at 2368, -928; total number of caves: 6
Size 1 cave system at 2416, -928; total number of caves: 1
Size 3 cave system at 2416, -912; total number of caves: 3
Number of cave systems: 26
Initial number of caves: 86
Total number of caves: 146
Additional circular room caves: 60
Number of small caves: 141; average width is 6.06
Number of large caves: 5; average width is 12.78
Number of circular rooms: 31; average width is 10.58
Additional caves per circular room: 1.94
Average caves per chunk: 0.9068323
(this is actually from a different seed, "-8138713038637852061", which is the same underground because the lower 48 bits were not changed; I added 2^48 twice to get a seed that had land over this area, the original seed was under an ocean on both default and large biomes)
Even with less than half the density 1.7+ is actually pretty impressive, but that does not change the fact that cave systems are denser and larger overall in 1.6.4 (even within these areas you can see the differences; 1.6.4 has multiple distinct areas of high density while 1.7 is much more uniform). It is entirely possible that 1.7+ may have areas as dense as the one shown for 1.6.4 but they would be extremely rare; in fact, I've explored at least 44 regions that have a higher density than the area in 1.7+ (these are just within the main area that I've explored, about full level 4 maps centered around 0,0, not including the map I'm currently exploring which includes the densest area I've found so far):
Air volume of 279711 (13.05%) at 2104, 520
Air volume of 276199 (12.89%) at -840, 856
Air volume of 263090 (12.28%) at -408, 1064
Air volume of 253148 (11.81%) at 2376, -56
Air volume of 250933 (11.71%) at 152, -440
Air volume of 250000 (11.66%) at -1240, -840
Air volume of 248214 (11.58%) at -824, -1016
Air volume of 247231 (11.54%) at -888, 1592
Air volume of 246133 (11.48%) at 344, 1016
Air volume of 244265 (11.40%) at -824, -2376
Air volume of 242976 (11.34%) at 2728, -408
Air volume of 237503 (11.08%) at -1912, -472
Air volume of 237147 (11.06%) at 200, -1992
Air volume of 236674 (11.04%) at 8, 1880
Air volume of 236367 (11.03%) at 1368, -776
Air volume of 235994 (11.01%) at -1688, -40
Air volume of 228459 (10.66%) at 1432, -232
Air volume of 224563 (10.48%) at -1160, 808
Air volume of 224364 (10.47%) at 1816, 504
Air volume of 223765 (10.44%) at 648, -1400
Air volume of 223399 (10.42%) at -88, -1704
Air volume of 222821 (10.40%) at -2984, 152
Air volume of 222180 (10.37%) at 808, -1608
Air volume of 219635 (10.25%) at 760, -504
Air volume of 219573 (10.24%) at -408, 2248
Air volume of 214081 (9.99%) at -2776, 424
Air volume of 213372 (9.96%) at 520, 232
Air volume of 212094 (9.90%) at 248, 344
Air volume of 212001 (9.89%) at -2216, -648
Air volume of 209708 (9.78%) at -1736, -808
Air volume of 208031 (9.71%) at 2776, 56
Air volume of 207322 (9.67%) at -568, 1544
Air volume of 205640 (9.59%) at -1272, 600
Air volume of 205385 (9.58%) at 344, -2280
Air volume of 205052 (9.57%) at 712, 2472
Air volume of 201861 (9.42%) at 1368, 264
Air volume of 201318 (9.39%) at 56, 152
Air volume of 201289 (9.39%) at 2568, 184
Air volume of 201016 (9.38%) at -520, -1320
Air volume of 200948 (9.38%) at 536, -1080
Air volume of 198684 (9.27%) at 648, 760
Air volume of 198209 (9.25%) at -2296, 456
Air volume of 197950 (9.24%) at 1800, 120
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 total of 5 intersecting ravines with a 6th ravine nearly intersecting them in the area where I had found at least 4 before - the most that I've found in this world for the third time; in all of my worlds I've only found more than 5 intersecting ravines once before, in my most recent modded world where an enormous ravine intersected 6 other ravines, and 5 ravines in another world (also modded but they were all normal size). I've also nearly found 7 in this world before; the first time I found 5 intersecting ravines there was also a double ravine that came very close to intersecting them (together with a large cave system they contributed to what was until now the densest region I've found within a 7 chunk radius, and still is for a 4 chunk radius, which I use to compare more typical cave systems; by this measure and for caves only the cave system at -800, -1050 still easily beats any others).
Here are some screenshots:
Here are the posts where I mentioned the last two times I found 5 intersecting ravines in this world:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/survival-mode/297957-what-have-you-done-recently?comment=5154
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/survival-mode/297957-what-have-you-done-recently?comment=5440
I have not done much in the way of searching for the most intersecting ravines but it would be easy to do by searching for areas with the most ravines within some radius and looking at them; the most that I know of is 8 in the seed "Digital" in 1.6.4 or earlier (they exist in the same locations with the same sizes and all in 1.7+ except that they curve differently from their starting point (at one end) due to a change in a value to accommodate 256 high terrain, even though they did not really need to do that and they never get even close to y=128; as a result they may or may not all intersect):
Also, this is what the markers I make look like (in the first screenshot the furnaces were temporarily placed to smelt ore while I explored the area; the ones in the second screenshot are older ones I made a few years back; I can tell because they are 21 blocks tall instead of 14 and I now only make them taller if they are in a jungle/forest or hilly area):
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?
This is the 12th village that I have found in this world; I found it while digging a rail tunnel to at least x = -1024 or as far as land permitted and after I had reached x = -1024 I went to the surface and walked further west to see how far land went (further north ocean starts as far east as x=1024 but it appears that land goes further west as you go further south) and came across it. As with several other villages I've decided to build a base within it, which will also be the furthest away base in this world, a journey of around 4,000 blocks by rail from my main base.
Of note, the last time I found a village in this world was well over a year ago, in July 2016, around 7 months when only counting the time I've spent playing on it, which is by far the longest I've gone without finding one and is largely attributable to the last map I explored being mostly Ice Plains. There is also more Ice Plains to the south of this village, as can be seen on the left side of the screenshot, which is probably the same one that I found further south in the map to the east (aside from not having Ice Plains Spikes and having Frozen Ocean they are more or less the same as 1.7's snowy climate zones, and actually use some of the same code, minus the code that separates climate zones by temperature).
Also, I used Unmined to look at what I had explored over the past week - it was just as big as I thought, a densely intertwined network of caves extending 475 blocks north-south and averaging about 100 blocks wide; the "loop" that I mentioned earlier turned out to be a more separate area rather than part of the network (the way MCMap renders caves can make it appear as if they overlap when they do not since a cave at a higher altitude can render "above" a cave at a lower altitude and some distance away):
On the far left side near the center you can one of the areas that I'll be exploring next (the cave system I mentioned finding while exploring the ravines; only part of it shows since I used MMAT to trim away chunks without torches, there is another unexplored cave system to the east on the right side which is close to an old return point there).
Also, here is an analysis covering the entire cave system/network, which contains a total of 476 caves (I restricted the analysis to only check within rectangular regions which together cover the cave network, instead of the circular regions that it normally checks, similar to how I only analyze the entire world which I've explored):
Size 11 cave system at -1136, 1616; total number of caves: 17
Size 1 cave system at -1120, 1616; total number of caves: 1
Size 1 cave system at -1264, 1632; total number of caves: 3
Size 24 cave system at -1152, 1648; total number of caves: 27
Size 9 cave system at -1104, 1648; total number of caves: 12
Size 22 cave system at -1200, 1664; total number of caves: 30
Size 1 cave system at -1120, 1680; total number of caves: 1
Size 3 cave system at -1264, 1696; total number of caves: 7
Size 18 cave system at -1184, 1712; total number of caves: 26
Size 2 cave system at -1200, 1744; total number of caves: 2
Size 5 cave system at -1120, 1744; total number of caves: 7
Size 3 cave system at -1184, 1760; total number of caves: 3
Size 18 cave system at -1168, 1760; total number of caves: 26
Size 4 cave system at -1200, 1776; total number of caves: 8
Size 9 cave system at -1168, 1776; total number of caves: 9
Size 1 cave system at -1312, 1808; total number of caves: 1
Size 15 cave system at -1296, 1808; total number of caves: 21
Size 7 cave system at -1232, 1824; total number of caves: 10
Size 23 cave system at -1200, 1824; total number of caves: 35
Size 5 cave system at -1152, 1824; total number of caves: 6
Size 1 cave system at -1136, 1824; total number of caves: 1
Size 1 cave system at -1120, 1824; total number of caves: 1
Size 9 cave system at -1280, 1840; total number of caves: 10
Size 1 cave system at -1312, 1856; total number of caves: 4
Size 6 cave system at -1168, 1856; total number of caves: 6
Size 28 cave system at -1136, 1856; total number of caves: 33
Size 2 cave system at -1120, 1856; total number of caves: 2
Size 1 cave system at -1104, 1872; total number of caves: 1
Size 13 cave system at -1072, 1872; total number of caves: 16
Size 26 cave system at -1120, 1936; total number of caves: 41
Size 7 cave system at -1104, 1936; total number of caves: 7
Size 4 cave system at -1136, 1984; total number of caves: 6
Size 12 cave system at -1088, 2000; total number of caves: 21
Size 1 cave system at -1056, 2000; total number of caves: 1
Size 8 cave system at -1120, 2016; total number of caves: 8
Size 1 cave system at -1072, 2032; total number of caves: 1
Size 18 cave system at -1040, 2064; total number of caves: 21
Number of cave systems: 38
Initial number of caves: 353
Total number of caves: 476
Additional circular room caves: 123
Number of small caves: 465; average width is 6.04
Number of large caves: 11; average width is 12.03
Number of circular rooms: 77; average width is 11.54
Additional caves per circular room: 1.60
Average caves per chunk: 1.1226416 (424 chunks)
Average altitude: 33.24
Percentage of caves on layers 0 to 9: 21.01
Percentage of caves on layers 10 to 19: 18.91
Percentage of caves on layers 20 to 29: 17.65
Percentage of caves on layers 30 to 39: 7.98
Percentage of caves on layers 40 to 49: 7.35
Percentage of caves on layers 50 to 59: 9.87
Percentage of caves above layer 59: 17.23
To put things into perspective, the cave density within this area is 2.5 times higher than the average for 1.6.4 (0.446875 caves per chunk; 1.7+ averages 0.34375 caves per chunk). Also, here is a comparison to the largest and densest cave system that I know of as well as the densest one in this world:
It is likely that there are far larger networks similar to the one I just explored but they are difficult to find due to their irregular shape; the way I search for dense caves is by checking a circular or square radius and a radius large enough to cover the entire network I explored has a much lower cave density than within the network itself; it still shows up as the densest region within a 16 chunk circular radius, which covers the whole area; I found a peak air volume of 916,000 centered near the western edge:
Air volume of 916249 (8.55%) at -1256, 1832
Air volume of 895049 (8.35%) at 2552, 24
Air volume of 887386 (8.28%) at -984, 840
Air volume of 867375 (8.09%) at 1960, 376
Air volume of 864292 (8.07%) at 248, -2152
Air volume of 834232 (7.78%) at -1480, -776
Air volume of 825681 (7.71%) at -728, 1528
Air volume of 824063 (7.69%) at 392, -1096
Air volume of 784112 (7.32%) at 712, -1560
Air volume of 777536 (7.26%) at 1480, -712
Of note, all of the top 10 densest regions that I've explored so far are denser than the densest region in 5 other seeds I checked, even when including the entire +/- 3072 block area around the origin:
Air volume of 728365 (6.80%) at -920, 2776
Air volume of 680648 (6.35%) at -184, 888
Air volume of 679651 (6.34%) at -520, 2360
Air volume of 677629 (6.32%) at -1288, -2328
Air volume of 669400 (6.25%) at 888, -2824
Air volume of 666178 (6.22%) at 1064, 2744
Air volume of 655096 (6.11%) at -2840, -1864
Air volume of 639132 (5.96%) at 1336, -2344
Air volume of 637859 (5.95%) at 3032, -2232
Air volume of 637680 (5.95%) at 1560, 104
Seed: 437892543908682598
Air volume of 747254 (6.97%) at 1560, -2936
Air volume of 726341 (6.78%) at 2888, 1016
Air volume of 721918 (6.74%) at -264, -2856
Air volume of 712197 (6.65%) at 1640, -1016
Air volume of 710439 (6.63%) at 984, -3064
Air volume of 695895 (6.49%) at -2904, 632
Air volume of 683526 (6.38%) at -2696, -1064
Air volume of 676556 (6.31%) at 2360, 1928
Air volume of 673100 (6.28%) at -1400, 1400
Air volume of 668399 (6.24%) at 1064, -1176
Seed: 7448419379893292932
Air volume of 770611 (7.19%) at 1720, 2728
Air volume of 741604 (6.92%) at 1784, 1768
Air volume of 739069 (6.90%) at -2536, 2728
Air volume of 735443 (6.86%) at 2840, -1480
Air volume of 726950 (6.78%) at 1656, -520
Air volume of 725423 (6.77%) at -1608, -1816
Air volume of 724349 (6.76%) at -1736, -936
Air volume of 700503 (6.54%) at -104, 2104
Air volume of 677693 (6.32%) at 72, -8
Air volume of 674580 (6.29%) at -2104, -1400
Seed: -5502727572495969600
Air volume of 718521 (6.71%) at 2472, 200
Air volume of 714704 (6.67%) at 40, 792
Air volume of 709545 (6.62%) at 1368, -1784
Air volume of 703753 (6.57%) at 40, -904
Air volume of 699338 (6.53%) at 2056, -520
Air volume of 665431 (6.21%) at 3016, 2584
Air volume of 657307 (6.13%) at 1480, 2664
Air volume of 653456 (6.10%) at -1320, 616
Air volume of 653213 (6.10%) at -1320, 2248
Air volume of 649978 (6.07%) at 2728, -632
Seed: 1225594636699254796
Air volume of 777344 (7.25%) at 344, 2120
Air volume of 720420 (6.72%) at 1224, 2888
Air volume of 704250 (6.57%) at 760, -1416
Air volume of 686598 (6.41%) at -1368, -936
Air volume of 661351 (6.17%) at 280, -360
Air volume of 658947 (6.15%) at 1656, 1736
Air volume of 658585 (6.15%) at -216, 616
Air volume of 650549 (6.07%) at -1496, 1464
Air volume of 650489 (6.07%) at 248, 1240
Air volume of 648141 (6.05%) at -216, -2312
Interestingly, the seed with the largest and densest cave system that I know of has a similar density distribution as my world; while every seed in theory has the exact same number and density of caves there may be differences in local distribution due to the fact that each chunk's seed is directly related to surrounding chunks since the game calculates a per-chunk seed by multiplying the x and z coordinates by two values derived from the world seed (notably, either of these can be 0 so every chunk has the same seed value based on the x or z coordinate):
Air volume of 1002050 (9.35%) at -296, 104
Air volume of 902681 (8.42%) at -376, -1368
Air volume of 872144 (8.14%) at -168, -2216
Air volume of 871469 (8.13%) at 2024, -2152
Air volume of 832560 (7.77%) at 216, 1352
Air volume of 832261 (7.77%) at -2824, -2632
Air volume of 821456 (7.67%) at 2968, 1336
Air volume of 816007 (7.61%) at -1032, 2472
Air volume of 793162 (7.40%) at 616, 1976
Air volume of 792613 (7.40%) at 2200, 280
This is also supported by the fact that when compared to the "worst" of the 5 seeds above my world has only 0.8% more air underground within a 192 chunk radius of the origin, so caves must be more clustered together on a smaller scale, and there are actually fewer cave systems in my world (99.1% as many) but there are 1.82% more caves for 2.7% more caves per cave system, and caves and circular rooms are slightly larger in the "bad" seed:
Air volume of 81189754 (5.27%) at 8, 8
Number of cave systems: 5787
Initial number of caves: 38186
Total number of caves: 52619
Additional circular room caves: 14433
Number of small caves: 50979; average width is 6.03
Number of large caves: 1640; average width is 11.79
Number of circular rooms: 9539; average width is 10.97
Additional caves per circular room: 1.51
Average caves per chunk: 0.4543445 (115813 chunks)
Seed: -7126978501944978399
Air volume of 80538948 (5.22%) at 8, 8
Number of cave systems: 5838
Initial number of caves: 37534
Total number of caves: 51678
Additional circular room caves: 14144
Number of small caves: 50011; average width is 6.04
Number of large caves: 1667; average width is 11.87
Number of circular rooms: 9426; average width is 11.06
Additional caves per circular room: 1.50
Average caves per chunk: 0.44621933 (115813 chunks)
Also, this is what the seed for my world looks like in 1.7+; air volume is 84.5% as high while the number of caves is 76.6% as high so air volume only fell by 2/3 of what would be expected. Cave systems are also 1.67 times more common but 45.9% as large:
Seed is -123775873255737467
Air volume of 68615775 (4.45%) at 8, 8
Number of cave systems: 9664
Initial number of caves: 29280
Total number of caves: 40321
Additional circular room caves: 11041
Number of small caves: 39109; average width is 6.03
Number of large caves: 1212; average width is 11.98
Number of circular rooms: 7378; average width is 10.99
Additional caves per circular room: 1.50
Average caves per chunk: 0.34815606 (115813 chunks)
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?
This is the most badly generated village that I've ever found; when I first saw it I thought it wouldn't take much to fix it up since it appeared to be on relatively level ground:
The village was so dangerous that I trapped the villagers before they could kill themselves (in the lower-left you can see a cactus item, which was a cactus that one of the villagers tried to kill itself on); one had already been converted into a zombie villager, probably due to a lighting glitch in the house since it was day when I visited it both times:
Most of the time I spent playing today was fixing it up by terraforming the landscape around it; I ended up with this:
Also, instead of using one of the village houses I made my own since it would have more space and be more suitably located; the projection on the right side encloses a staircase going down to the railway:
I believe this is the first time I've actually made a house that looks like a house (in particular, the roof); I also used smooth sandstone to make it match the village houses. I still need to make potato, wheat and chicken farms, the latter two for getting emeralds (none of the villagers in the village currently have anything that I can trade for emeralds though, this is mainly for my main base), which will all be put underground (the village has a single farm which is entirely carrots, which I've used for food while fixing it up and building a base).
Also, while finishing the rest of the rail tunnel I also mined into a small cave with a dungeon; the cave was smaller than the dungeon itself and was probably the end of a cave that went up to the surface (prior to 1.8 caves cannot cut through sand or sandstone). I also ran into a couple other caves and a ravine, which I've left alone for now:
Here is a rendering of the area from x= -2048 to 0 and z = 1024 to 3072, with a rail line running south along the upper-right (eastern) edge and a couple branches to the west, including the one I just made near the bottom. The southern end of the north-south railway also branches to the east:
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?
In one day I recovered half of the rails I recently used for my railway while exploring a triple mineshaft complex, with more than 900 rails collected in two days, and collected nearly 6,000 resources today, more if you include coal that I used for torches and fuel. I also found a quadruple ravine (one is not fully explored yet and there is another one nearby):
This is 4,962 mineral resources (548 blocks + 30 diamonds), 756 rails (84 rail blocks), 164 cobwebs (41 cobweb blocks), 83 moss stone, and 4 other items, including an Infinity book, for a total of 5,969 items. Note that the coal blocks represent 2385 coal so I used at least 473 coal (more when including coal found in chests) for at least 6,442 resources collected:
A triple ravine intersection:
Two of the ravines overlap along much of their length:
There is also a fourth ravine which I have not finished exploring yet; I also found one other ravine nearby but don't know if it intersects this one:
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?
Out of a total of 94214 chunks I've explored about 71540 chunks in this world; this number comes from the number of chunks that were left after I used MMAT on a copy of the world to delete all chunks without torches, which is representative of how much I've explored by caving, minus a few chunks around the path of my latest railway and base.
Here are surface and underground renderings of the trimmed world; the latter is black and white since that was the only way I could get it under 1 MB in size and both are 1:2 scale, covering an area 6400x5680 blocks in size (3200x2840 pixels):
The area I'm currently exploring is to the north of the small projection to the west near the bottom, which is along my latest railway and base.
Also, to put things into perspective, on average 71540 chunks of a 1.6.4 world will contain the following:
85800 cave structures (includes all tunnels and rooms)
56000 tunnels (32000 initial tunnels; 75% branch with two branches at right angles, effectively forming one tunnel, or two tunnels forming a "T", and 3 separate tunnels overall)
5800 circular rooms (5/6 of tunnels and rooms are below sea level)
3577 individual cave systems, including 468 at least as large as the largest in 1.7+ (where about 3 are expected)
3105 monster spawners (1430 cave spider, 837 zombie, 419 skeleton, 419 spider)
1675 dungeons (containing 80400 moss stone and about 2931 chests, assuming an average of 1.75 each)
1430 ravines
715 abandoned mineshafts (containing about 214500 rails, 3575 minecarts, and 1430 cave spider spawners)
Unless the entire region is at least 1280 blocks from the origin there will be less mineshafts and (to a lesser extent) dungeons since mineshafts are less common within 1280 blocks of the origin, linearly decreasing in frequency from 100% (1% chance per chunk) to 0% at 0,0 (a mineshaft will never generate right at the origin); I also modded this world so they do not generate if there are too many caves nearby, reducing their frequency by about 25% (up to 536 mineshafts). The decrease in mineshafts near the origin can also be seen on the cave map above, which shows more open areas near the center (mineshafts are so common in 1.6.4 that they contain about 25% of the volume of caves and ravines; in other words, underground density increases by 20% as you go away from the origin).
This also includes the following amounts of each ore (based on the Wiki; figures for coal, iron, and emerald vary more due to differences in land/ocean/ice plains):
10.2 million coal ore
5.51 million iron ore
1.77 million redstone ore
586,000 gold ore
245,000 lapis ore
221,000 diamond ore
14,300 emerald ore
Also, I made an addition to my "inventory stats" mod which includes the total number of ores that I've mined, not just in the current session (as seen within MCP using the stats file for this world; I read the values directly from the stats while the current session stats count what was mined in that session):
Note that coal and iron alone account for over 90% of all ores mined with coal being 2/3rds of the total; as I've mentioned before the addition of coal blocks in 1.6 was the single biggest boost to my playstyle since it meant I could now mine all coal instead of just what I used, around 1/6 of what I mine, nearly tripling my ore collection rate (the time I spend actually mining ore is less than 10% of the time I spend caving. Some more time is needed to get to ores high up in walls and ceilings but it is still a relatively small percentage of the total time).
At the rate at which I collect ores I'll hit 2 million total ore mined within the next 2-3 weeks, and half a million iron in about a month. I'm also closing in on filling two double chests with gold blocks, after which I'll need to make more room for gold as I currently only have two double chests for it; an entire corridor of 16 double chests would let me collect 8 times as much, far more than I'll ever collect in this world even if I decide to go another map outwards after I explore the 3x3 inner area (including oceans; I currently do not explore that far from land), which would give me up to 409600 chunks or about 5.7 times the area to explore. This would also take close to 1000 days of playtime over 18 years of playing for 3 1/2 hours per day so that will likely never happen.
Also, I used MCEdit to see exactly how many rails I've used in my rail system; the stats for rails placed is not reliable since I changed some of the original railways (from the first time I played on this world) so they were mostly at y=58 instead of at sea level (because of this I've also not found quite as many rails as the stats say that I've mined, although it does not account for rails that get washed away by water or rails in chests); I've used 15280 regular rails and 592 powered rails for a total length of 15872 blocks, which is close to what I've previously estimated (14-15 km before the latest extension, which is 1474 blocks long, with a total round-trip distance of 7740 blocks as measured by stats). Note that the ratio of regular:powered rails, at 25.8:1, is considerably less than the 33:1 ratio I use for long straight tracks due to the way I use powered rails at the ends but this still requires only a 1:9.3 ratio of gold:iron, less than the near 1:8 ratio that I've mined, and loot in minecarts more than offsets the gold I've used so that doesn't even matter at all (for comparison, branch-mining below y=32 yields a near 1:5 ratio of iron:gold; in 1.10+ mesas it is 1.333:1 above y=32 and 1.1:1 overall).
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?
Over the past few days I explored a complex of 5 intersecting mineshafts, plus two more for a total of 7, with 2,095 rails collected from them, far offsetting what I recently used for a railway. Here is a view with Unmined of what I've explored recently; the main area of 6 mineshafts (5 intersecting, which form an arc around the 6th mineshaft, as well as the quadruple ravine I mentioned earlier - which was in fact a quintuple ravine, the fourth occurrence I've found in this world and the second in two weeks) measures about 330 x 350 blocks while the entire area shown is 432 x 656 blocks. Note that there is another mineshaft at the very top but I've decided not to explore it at this time because it is quite far under the ocean:
Here is a closeup of the quintuple ravines:
Also, I decided to take a shortcut back to my base instead of going around an explored area between it and where I'm currently exploring and I came across a desert temple, the fifth one I've found in this world, about 200 blocks to the northeast of my current base; there was some decent loot in it including 3 diamonds:
Also, this is what my map wall looks like now, minus the bit that I explored today (I made a trip back to my main base first thing):
There is a sizable unexplored area that is mostly surrounded to the north of where I'm currently exploring, in the southwesternmost area; while this region is all ocean I may explore it to fill it in later (the northernmost part of this area is near land but was not explored because I did not find any caves leading to 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?
Man, this stuff requires so much dedication, and I love it! I love every single one of these posts. These worlds are insanely cool, and I would love to see more activity on here!
Cool stuffs in spoiler
Over the past couple days I explored a cave system with one of the largest continuous areas of exposed lava that I've found, extending across an area 75x80 blocks in size, in addition to being relatively large and dense, with a measured volume of about 103,000 air blocks; I also used about 1,500 torches to light it up and mined about 5,400 ore from it:
The following two screenshots were taken looking in opposite directions while standing in the middle of a large chamber:
Here is a series of renderings of the cave system; the first two at the top were made with Unmined at layers 62 and 20 while the third was made with Minutor at layer 11 and below them is a rendering made with MCMap (2x actual size):
This is not the largest "lava cave system" that I've found though, which still goes to the cave system that I found around -800, -1050 more than four years ago, which is also still the largest and densest (densest for its size) cave system that I've found, and a few hundred blocks to the south and east is another cave system that I found close to two years ago, which is smaller overall but has more continuously exposed lava (despite the distance I did not find the current cave system until now because it is on another map and after exploring the map it was on, to the south of spawn, I explored to the east and west before exploring the map the current cave system is on). Also shown is what is likely my first encounter with a "1.6.4 style" cave system (the sort that is extremely dense and unique to versions before 1.7), which is only 100 blocks away from spawn:
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?
Today I reached a major milestone:
And just on time, the total amount of ore that I've mined in this world exceeded 2 million today - I think it is safe to say that never before has anybody ever mined that much ore in Minecraft until today:
And overall:
Also, these are all of the resources that I've collected since my last trip back to my main base a few days ago, including what I found from the big cave system the other day (the 13 music disc was dropped by a creeper, I ignore those in chests; two potions of healing and 3 glowstone came from witches; and 76 rail and 46 cobweb blocks plus 11 rails (4 in my inventory) and 2 cobwebs total 695 rails and 186 cobwebs):
In terms of resources collected (including multiple drops from redstone and lapis and from when I used Fortune for a while) I've collected around 2.6 million resources over a total of 121.7 days - a third of a year - of playtime:
This represents 1245438 coal, 491715 iron, 370251 redstone, 168165 lapis, 61479 gold, and 12105 diamonds (the actual amount in storage is slightly less as I've used a couple hundred iron blocks for anvils and lost some when I died prior to using an Ender chest to store it while caving):
Note that most of the cobwebs were harvested without Silk Touch and crafted into wool, representing most of the 12005 wool I've crafted; the amount of moss stone corresponds to around 1282 dungeons and rails correspond to around 450 mineshafts (possibly more since the average of 300 I found for 30 mineshafts in a Superflat world may be a bit high for an actual world when factoring in rails washed away by springs; the last 17 mineshafts that I've found, since I started tracking them, have averaged 273 rails each, or around 493 mineshafts):
While I do not know how much of that time has been spent caving about 86.43% of the total time I spent in my previous world was spent caving, which translates to about 105.18 days for this world, meaning that I've mined an average of about 793 ore and collected 1030 resources per hour - every hour for around 2524 hours; the average session length of 3.498 hours gives 2774 ore mined and 3604 resources collected per session. I've also mined 2.83 million blocks with a diamond pickaxe for an average of 1121 per hour and 3922 per session (all these figures assume 86.43% of the total time and sessions).
Also, I found the ravine that I ran into while digging the latest railway again, except this time by exploring caves that lead to it, with the ravine being unexplored until now:
Here are updated maps of what I've explored so far within the current level 4 map (the cave map excludes the area around the Mushroom Island near the top-center); I've gone all the way under my current base, visible as a gray dot near the edge of the desert west of my position, and the area I explored today was a mineshaft and cave system to the northwest (left on this image) of the big cave system I mentioned before, which is to the far right:
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 yet another large cave system, larger than the last one:
Also, I found a very large cave, one of the largest single caves that I've found, although much of it was below lava level with a lava lake measuring about 50 blocks long and 20 blocks wide, almost right under my base:
Here are renderings of the large cave system; large cave, along with other cave systems I recently explored; and everything that I've explored over the past month (within the current map, southwest of -1024,1024, excluding the area around the Mushroom Island, which was explored separately):
Of particular interest the large cave system has the second highest density of caves within a 9x9 chunk area of any cave system that I've found, with 168 caves, second only to the large cave system at -800, -1050, which has 174 caves (216 within a 13x13 chunk area centered at -864, -1040, which is not the most for this area, which is 223 at -1184, 1696 followed by 221 at -64, -1680):
Size 11 cave system at -1504, 2704; total number of caves: 11
Size 15 cave system at -1488, 2704; total number of caves: 25
Size 9 cave system at -1536, 2720; total number of caves: 22
Size 2 cave system at -1520, 2736; total number of caves: 2
Size 17 cave system at -1472, 2736; total number of caves: 26
Size 7 cave system at -1440, 2736; total number of caves: 7
Size 6 cave system at -1408, 2736; total number of caves: 10
Size 7 cave system at -1440, 2768; total number of caves: 9
Size 20 cave system at -1440, 2784; total number of caves: 29
Size 19 cave system at -1440, 2816; total number of caves: 26
Number of cave systems: 11
Initial number of caves: 114
Total number of caves: 168
Additional circular room caves: 54
Number of small caves: 165; average width is 6.09
Number of large caves: 3; average width is 13.08
Number of circular rooms: 36; average width is 11.54
Additional caves per circular room: 1.50
Average caves per chunk: 2.074074 (81 chunks)
Average altitude: 36.26
Percentage of caves on layers 0 to 9: 19.64
Percentage of caves on layers 10 to 19: 20.24
Percentage of caves on layers 20 to 29: 11.31
Percentage of caves on layers 30 to 39: 16.67
Percentage of caves on layers 40 to 49: 4.76
Percentage of caves on layers 50 to 59: 5.36
Percentage of caves above layer 59: 22.02
Size 3 cave system at -784, -1104; total number of caves: 3
Size 24 cave system at -832, -1072; total number of caves: 34
Size 2 cave system at -768, -1072; total number of caves: 2
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 3 cave system at -784, -1024; total number of caves: 3
Size 13 cave system at -800, -992; total number of caves: 18
Size 4 cave system at -864, -976; total number of caves: 7
Number of cave systems: 9
Initial number of caves: 118
Total number of caves: 174
Additional circular room caves: 56
Number of small caves: 171; average width is 6.04
Number of large caves: 3; average width is 12.18
Number of circular rooms: 33; average width is 10.38
Additional caves per circular room: 1.70
Average caves per chunk: 2.148148 (81 chunks)
Average altitude: 31.25
Percentage of caves on layers 0 to 9: 21.84
Percentage of caves on layers 10 to 19: 22.99
Percentage of caves on layers 20 to 29: 12.07
Percentage of caves on layers 30 to 39: 10.92
Percentage of caves on layers 40 to 49: 8.05
Percentage of caves on layers 50 to 59: 6.90
Percentage of caves above layer 59: 17.24
Size 5 cave system at -1136, 2672; total number of caves: 13
Size 27 cave system at -1120, 2672; total number of caves: 38
Size 1 cave system at -1040, 2672; total number of caves: 1
Size 7 cave system at -1152, 2688; total number of caves: 10
Size 1 cave system at -1072, 2720; total number of caves: 1
Size 16 cave system at -1104, 2752; total number of caves: 28
Size 4 cave system at -1104, 2800; total number of caves: 7
Number of cave systems: 8
Initial number of caves: 65
Total number of caves: 107
Additional circular room caves: 42
Number of small caves: 106; average width is 5.92
Number of large caves: 1; average width is 10.04
Number of circular rooms: 23; average width is 10.91
Additional caves per circular room: 1.83
Average caves per chunk: 1.3209877 (81 chunks)
Average altitude: 28.79
Percentage of caves on layers 0 to 9: 22.43
Percentage of caves on layers 10 to 19: 22.43
Percentage of caves on layers 20 to 29: 14.95
Percentage of caves on layers 30 to 39: 13.08
Percentage of caves on layers 40 to 49: 8.41
Percentage of caves on layers 50 to 59: 10.28
Percentage of caves above layer 59: 8.41
Here is a comparison of all three cave systems, in the order listed above:
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?
Good Survival ;D
I've filled up two double chests with gold blocks as well as 16 double chests with iron blocks - that's 62,208 gold and 497,664 iron; I'm on track to mine half a million iron ore within two more play sessions (currently at 499,092. I'd already have more than half a million iron stored, including 64 iron blocks in the floor, if I did not have to make 72 anvils):
My storage area is getting quite big (though still amazingly small compared to the number of resources it stores, especially if they were placed in the world as blocks), with a total of 242 double chests, most in 11 corridors of 16 each, including three for coal, two for iron, one each for redstone and lapis, one for gold/diamond/emerald/misc blocks, two for moss stone and one for cobwebs:
I took this screenshot by copying the region file my main base is in to a test world and using MCEdit to delete everything above my storage area; the blocks in the floor correspond to what is in most of the chests, with the short corridor extending down near the middle mostly containing chest loot with item frames marking their contents (the bottom-most four chests contain wool which was crafted with string from cobwebs until I used Silk Touch; the corridor for cobwebs also uses wool to mark its contents):
Also, I saved renderings from 10 days worth of playing and compiled them into the biggest animation of my progress that I've made so far; this shows everything that I explored since the last cave system I mentioned:
Here is a before and after of what I explored using Unmined (unexplored chunks were trimmed away); the new area I explored is about 700x700 blocks and goes as far south as z = 3296, well off the southern edge of the map and the furthest I've ever gone from the origin in one direction as well straight-line distance from spawn (about 3500 blocks. I've gone further from spawn in one direction when exploring to the east since spawn is at -92, 236, making the distance to the south 328 blocks shorter for the same distance along an axis); as well as updated MCMap renderings of the entire world (scaled to 10% of original size, as seen in the animation above. I've actually been updating these by stitching together smaller areas and I don't think I can even open a full-size rendering):
Here are some screenshots I took of various caves:
I went through a mineshaft fast enough that parts of it were still burning from lava by the time I reached them:
This is a good example of why I modified mineshafts so they do not generate in areas with high cave density (the method I use is not perfect and works best for larger cave systems (overall) and cave systems with a few larger single-chunk cave systems as opposed to multiple smaller ones):
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 zombie in diamond armor today, one and a half months after the last one:
Also, after a longer than usual play session (4 hours and 12 minutes) I reached a total of more than half a million iron ore mined (I did not intentionally play until I reached the goal; I did not check to see how much I'd mined until I stopped playing):
I've also mined more than 11,000 diamond ore as of today, after surpassing 10,000 on August 17 (74 days ago), which represents an average of 13.5 per day (at this rate it would take about 815 days to mine the total, so this is mainly a product of the sheer amount of time I've spent caving, not efficiency; even with an above-average number of diamonds found today I averaged only 6.2 diamond ore per hour, 6.67 diamonds per hour including two from a mineshaft).
Also, here are some screenshots of caves I explored as well as a before/after rendering of what I explored today; you can see that I finished exploring an area to the right (mainly a mineshaft, plus some caves and a ravine) before leaving that area and going to an area I'd previously marked to the northwest, where I finished exploring a cave system, then I went through a ravine going to the north with more caves leading from the northern end. Yet another ravine, not explored yet, is near the northern end of those caves:
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?
Oh that looks fun!!
That's a crazy amount of blocks mined
Whenever I see an obsidian floor it makes me smile, Those kind of finds can be a killer sometimes And I have fallen into that kind of lava more often than I care to admit
Signature removed by popular demand.