Because while mining it I mined the millionth coal ore I've mined in this world (I mined 5 more after mining the rest of the coal):
It only took more than 93 real-life days and mining more than 2.1 million blocks altogether to mine that much coal (only a fraction of the time was spent actually mining blocks):
In addition, I've crafted more than 107,000 blocks of coal; some of the coal was mined with Fortune but most of it was not (I only mined around 1/8 of all the blocks I've mined with a Fortune pickaxe with emerald and diamond having a disproportionately higher share):
To help show how much coal this is I used MCEdit on a copy of my world to show what one million coal ore and 107,078 coal blocks look like:
A 100x100x100 cube of coal ore next to my main base:
A 1000x1000 square one block thick:
How much space do coal blocks save when compared to raw ore? This shows a 42x51x50 cube of coal blocks, which is 107,100 blocks, approximately the number I've crafted - still pretty impressive:
For another comparison, there are an average of 142.6 coal ore per chunk - so to find one million coal ore you need to completely mine out about 7,013 chunks, which is approximately the area shown here (84x84 or 7,056 chunks. Note that if you exclude oceans there is around 15% more coal per chunk; the Wiki's averages may have been based on this chart, which shows a lot of water. Still, you'll have to mine out a very large area):
The average size of a coal vein is about 19.36 blocks, assuming they are fully intact and do not overlap (based on the figures here, for pre-1.8), which means that I've mined at least 51,653 veins of coal, which is at least 5,165 chunks (a total of 20 veins are generated per chunk but over 128 layers, meaning that only about half generate below sea level).
Here are the first three comparisons shown along with the entire world, which is 6032x5104 blocks and 72,834 chunks in size:
As much coal as I've mined I've mined hundreds of thousands of other ores and resources; including lapis, diamond, and emerald ore (not shown above), I've mined a total of 1,498,977 ore and crafted 199,757 mineral blocks (including 120 emerald blocks not shown above from back when I used Fortune, since then I've used Silk Touch to mine it) - representing 1,797,813 mineral resources. Then add in 96,481 rails (around 2,000 were mined when I restructured my rail system so are double-counted in the stats) and 41,131 cobwebs (mined from around cave spider spawners without Silk Touch, this explains all the wool I've crafted) taken from around 300 abandoned mineshafts and 45,122 moss stone taken from around 900 dungeons and I've gathered a total of around 1,980,547 resources, plus thousands of loot items from dungeons and mineshafts (in fact, I've crafted more gold and iron blocks than the ores I've mined can account for, the latter is particularly impressive since I used a few thousand early on and lost some from deaths or drops falling into lava but then I only need iron for anvils at this point).
Despite the renderings shown above I don't need that much space at all to store all of the resources I've gathered - a single chest can store 1,728 blocks or the equivalent of 15,552 resources - so 199,757 blocks only requires about 116 chests or 58 double chests (more when considering that only one type of block is stored in the same chest). I still have one more double chest left before I have to expend my storage ares for coal, which currently consists of two corridors with 16 double chests each; 107,078 coal blocks is slightly less than 31 double chests:
(this is a dated screenshot; I use signs to mark chests that are full and the ones on the far left have since been filled)
I still have a ways to go before I actually have one million coal in storage, which will be 111,111 coal blocks and slightly over 32 double chests, which requires mining another 36,297 coal before subtracting what I use for torches and fuel, which is around 1/6 of the coal I mine so I actually need to mine around 43,556 more, which will take a few more weeks if I mine as much coal every day as I did the last time, which was more or less typical (perhaps a bit less coal than usual; I only mined a bit over twice as much coal as iron when it has averaged about 2.73; it is interesting to note that despite both iron and coal generating everywhere below sea level, where the vast majority of caves are, the relative amounts of each vary quite a bit over areas hundreds of blocks across):
Also of interest, here is a close-up of the region I've been exploring lately, which includes one of the largest cave systems I've ever found, a 5 ravine system, only the second one I've found in this world, and a very large and dense network of caves/mineshafts/ravines (click image to open in new tab):
Here are some screenshots of caves in the area I took with MCEdit:
The large cave system at the top-center:
A closer look:
This is of the region to the south of the big cave, a perfect example of what they meant by the underground being like "Swiss cheese" in older versions; just amazing:
Well, congratulations, I guess. I don't think I've even mined more than a few hundred in all my years of playing the game, but I guess it's more to do with the fact that I consider caving to be rather boring and uneventful. Personally, I'm more impressed that you've managed to keep up with it so long. How do you keep such a repetitive mechanic that hasn't received a single update since emeralds were added (well, I guess there was 1.7, but that didn't really add anything) interesting?
(well, I guess there was 1.7, but that didn't really add anything)
1.7? Are you kidding? That's the main reason why I still play in 1.6.4; I've called it "The update that ruined the underground" and for good reason - 1.7 made cave systems much smaller and less varied, as well as made mineshafts and dungeons much rarer.
Here are some comparisons between 1.6 and 1.7:
Comparison of caves in two 4000x4000 worlds; 1.6 is on the left, while 1.7 is on the right; it is pretty obvious that cave systems in 1.7 are much smaller and caves are more uniformly spread out; despite the differences there are still 77% as many caves in 1.7, as well as the same number of ravines (only caves and ravines are shown; ravines are slightly different but otherwise unchanged; actually, they are not changed at all here):
Here is another comparison of the differences; I counted the number of caves within a 16 chunk radius of each chunk within a large area (using a program) and plotted the number of chunks with a given number for 1.6 and 1.7:
1.6 had anywhere from 60 to 570 caves while 1.7 had 80 to 360 - 1.6 has over twice as much variation (9.5:1 vs 4.5:1) and despite having 30% more caves overall even such a fairly large region (around 855 chunks, the area is actually a circle with a diameter of 33 chunks) can have fewer caves than 1.7. More notable is the difference at the high end, with the densest regions having 58% more caves in 1.6.
The differences are even more pronounced for smaller areas, such as a 4 chunk radius:
Note that 1.6 has a spike at 0 - more chunks had no caves at all within a 4 chunk radius than any other count, and the peak otherwise occurs at about half the density of 1.7, which reflects the fact that caves are much more clustered together in 1.6, making cave systems much larger than a simple 30% increase in overall cave density would suggest while creating much larger cave-free regions between them (while this would seem to reduce how interconnected caves are the much lower density of cave systems in 1.7 results in caves often failing to intersect within cave "systems", which are really just multiple individual caves generated in the same chunk with no guarantee that they will interconnect. In 1.6 the majority of caves within most cave systems are interconnected, save for a few on the surface or near bedrock level).
Another way to look at things: the largest possible single cave system in 1.7 generates on average once every 23625 chunks; the frequency of a cave system of the same size or larger in 1.6? Once every 153 chunks - making them 154 times more common, and much more likely to generate close enough together to merge together to make a larger cave system. For perspective, the initial spawn area generated when you create a new world is 625 chunks, which will on average have about 4 such cave systems; here is what the spawn area for my world looks like; the largest cave system, near the upper-right, is about twice the size of the largest single cave system in 1.7:
Comparison of mineshafts in the same area of the same seed (which happens to be that for my world):
There are 70 mineshafts in the 1.6 map but only 29 in the 1.7 map, which is in line with a 60% decrease in their frequency. Combined with ravines these are the reason why everybody thought that caves became much bigger in Beta 1.8 when they were not actually changed; while some do not like the "infinite" underground that results (yes, I just explore new areas by going from one cave/mineshaft/ravine to the next though underground interconnections, and less often surface openings I happen to come across, which are almost always either caves that I missed which are connected to areas I explored before or small cave systems with only a few caves or ravines with nothing else connected to them).
As for how I stay interested, well, that has been asked of me before but I can't exactly say why I like caving or have remained interested in it for so long (I've had 6 other main worlds, which together represent nearly as much caving as in my first world, the one mentioned in this thread - that's right, I did not mention that this was just for a single world). Conversely, while it is very easy to mod newer versions (I've even modded snapshots without the usual modding tools) to replicate 1.6.4 cave generation the other features that have been added do not interest me enough; I have not even made use of most of the features added in 1.6, one version after I started playing. I do have a mod that adds in many features from 1.7 and later, as well as my own, to 1.6.4 but I mainly made it because I like modding.
1.7? Are you kidding? That's the main reason why I still play in 1.6.4; I've called it "The update that ruined the underground" and for good reason - 1.7 made cave systems much smaller and less varied, as well as made mineshafts and dungeons much rarer.
Well, yeah, it changed the underground, but it still didn't add anything to caving in general. The less frequent caves and mineshafts are a change I consider so minimal that I didn't even know about it until, incidentally, I saw a post about it from you more than a year after its release.
Pretty amazing- congrats, and thanks for sharing! I'm sure I'm not the only one here that appreciates your technical knowledge of the game as well as the efforts you go to to illustrate your points (I particularly like your "block of ore" visualizations- I wonder why!). I find it amazing that you were able to catch the 1,000,000 block mark- I do look at the stats once in a while, but usually only to answer some obscure question I have. Perhaps I'll pay closer attention to them in the future.
Of course, it's hard for anyone to put this in perspective without comparing your stats with their own. I've done some simple comparisons with my own stats, just to see how we differ. Spoiler: I've mined no where near 2,000,000 blocks all told- actually, not even close to 1,000,000!
First, I see you've played 2238.48 hours over 643 sessions for an average of 3.48 hours per session. I myself have played 979.92 hours over 1,497 sessions for an average of 0.65 hours per session. I often sit down and play for only 10 or 15 minutes at a time- I have no "standard play session" whatsoever except that I tend to play longer on weekend evenings. I started playing a couple days after 1.8 was released (767 days ago!), so on average I play 1.27 hours a day (can that possibly be correct?!?).
I also see you must do a heck of a lot more PvE fighting while caving than I do while (very cautiously) branch mining- I have only 4% of the kills you have but have died 3 times to your 12- disproportionately more often given your combat, though this was and continues to be my very first and only world, so chalk up a couple of those deaths to noob mistakes...
You have also done a lot more walking than I have. Adjusting the numbers to compensate for the longer time you've spent in-game (2.286 times as long as I), I still have only walked some 7,700 km compared to your 11,562 km. I don't see "time sprinted" in your version of the stats, but it occurred to me that I do do a lot of sprinting (apparently I sprint about a third of the time). If you add that in I'm getting closer to your distance walked (9,841 km adjusted to your 11.5). I have spent far more time, comparatively, riding minecarts though (1,547 km, adjusted), to your 627. I, too, calculate that I have about 14 km of rails in my world but I use them all the time to get from one base to another, often quite some distance away. In fact, at 192,512 fully mapped chunks my world is slightly over 2.5 times the size of yours, which is the result of my surveying the surface, not exploring every cave! This difference in style is borne out by the fact that, again adjusted for amount of play, you've crafted almost exactly four times as many torches as I have.
I'll play with some of the block totals tomorrow if I get a chance- I'm about out of steam for tonight. Again, thanks for sharing- it's fun to compare notes!
I also see you must do a heck of a lot more PvE fighting while caving than I do while (very cautiously) branch mining- I have only 4% of the kills you have but have died 3 times to your 12- disproportionately more often given your combat, though this was and continues to be my very first and only world, so chalk up a couple of those deaths to noob mistakes...
but I have spent far more time, comparatively, riding minecarts (1,547 km, adjusted), to your 627.
For the first, the number of deaths is low since I started playing this world in 1.5 and it did not record deaths due to a bug which was not fixed until 1.6 (like in your case it is also my first world); the deaths that you do see occurred in the months after 1.6 came out - with no deaths for the past couple years; I first spent around 6 months playing the world, then started getting into mods and playing on modded worlds (mostly with modded cave generation, in some cases rather extreme, like when I tripled the depth of the ground and scaled caves up by the cube of that...), then after about a year I played on a modded copy of the world for a few months (what I did then is partly reflected in the stats; I did play on it for a bit before modding it and that is the state I left off the "original" world and its stats at), then played other modded worlds for a while until I started playing on this world again last year, for the past 13 months - with no deaths since the first period; in my last modded world I had zero deaths while playing it for around 1/6 of the time.
As for my minecart usage, it has increased over time as I've explored further and further away; just today I completed a 1.5 km extension, totaling about 2.2 km back to my main base, and in the process I added another 10 km to the total distance ridden while traveling back and forth to get materials, plus a round-trip to drop off a double chest of resources, of which about half is mineral resources as blocks, so that's around 15,000 resources per trip back and with an average of 2,796 resources mined per session I make a trip back about once every 5-6 days; the longest railway I have is about 6.4 km round-trip so that's an average of about 1.2 km traveled per day (actually, a bit more often since 2,796 resources assumes all of my time is spent caving; if you assume I spend 90% of my time caving it becomes 3,107 and 4-5 days/1.3 km).
Also, the distance I've traveled by boat is so small since I do not explore more than a couple hundred blocks under oceans (if a cave or mineshaft extends underneath I'll explore the entire thing; however, if I find a new one that is more than about 100 blocks from land I'll leave it; the same applies for when I leave the edge of a map into an unmapped area, except I'll mark it for future exploration when I start on that map; and I have not used them for months at a time.
1.6.4 doesn't record distance by horse and in fact I think it isn't counted at all but I do not use them since minecarts seem like a much more effective way, even if not as fast as the fastest horses, to travel between fixed points, and otherwise I often travel hundreds of blocks underground during a caving session, which is around 2 play sessions, limited by storage space (note that while I've referred to "modded" worlds this world is not entirely vanilla; I added a "rail block" so I can compact rails like you can with minerals; I've thus carried as many as 2,000 rails back to my main base as just 4 stacks of blocks, which would otherwise take up more than half the space I can carry back at a time (I convert them back into rails for permanent storage) - and that's after I modded mineshafts to prevent them from generating in large cave systems, reducing their frequency by about 25%, which is still nearly double that in 1.7 and later).
The distance flown stat is also misleading because I stopped the game from recording non-Creative flight as flying, which even includes things like sprint-jumping, after somebody pointed it out as evidence that I used Creative mode.
Also, the stats for resource blocks crafted can't be directly compared with ores mined in most cases because I used Fortune to mine all ores for a while (a few months) after 1.6 came out, and on diamond and emerald before then. In the case of emerald I started mining it with Silk Touch later on; with 120 emerald blocks crafted before then I mined around 491 ore with Fortune, out of 1,840 total ore. Applying this to diamond, of which I've mined 8,287 ore, around 2,211 was mined with Fortune, yielding a total of 10,941 diamonds; the 1,065 diamond blocks I've crafted required 9,585 diamonds so I've used about 1,356, which would have been even higher if I had not started trading for diamond gear.
The number of diamonds I would have used on pickaxes (and other gear) is also higher than the 335 crafted (or bought from villagers) would suggest since I repaired the Fortune pick with individual diamonds due to the repair cost, 37 levels for one diamond; in the case of swords I'd only crafted several until i started trading since I repaired them with individual diamonds (a new sword is too expensive but I realized that a slightly damaged sword can be used and even restore full durability, so now I use the sacrifice swords to kill passive mobs so they can be used for repairs). It is harder to calculate just how many of other ores I mined with Fortune but the "surplus" coal that I have is around 120,000 after adding what I used to craft torches and as fuel, which suggests 100,000 ore was mined with Fortune; I do remember that I'd mined around 284,000 blocks with a diamond pickaxe back then and before 1.6 I mined a lot less since I only mined what coal I needed, which is currently about 2/3 of all the ores and half the blocks I've mined.
Quick question- do you use redstone blocks for your powered rails just to avoid having to place a redstone torch under the rail or off to the side (breaking the 1x2 symmetry), or is there some other reason?
And yes, meaningfully comparing resource blocks becomes messy with Fortune. Except in two cases I've used Fortune for pretty much everything since I first got the enchantment. The exceptions are when I want raw ore blocks for decorative purposes (this is rare, but at one time I stockpiled a bunch just in case) and emerald ore. It took a long, long time in my world to find my first village and that was a long, long way from my base. Eventually I found more convenient villages and once I realized how easy it was to accumulate emeralds through trade I started silk-touching the emerald ore I found to provide a more accurate estimation of my activity (but darn, of course I don't have the numbers with me).
As for raw coal ore, I've mined 60,488 adjusted to 138,275 compared to your 1,000,000. I branch mine and tunnel my subways at y=11+12 and so occasionally run into caves, but rarely do I follow the larger ones to exhaustion (I also don't think I've ever *completely* cleared out a mineshaft- the amount of rails I've harvested is miniscule compared to yours!). When I get a wild hair and do some extensive caving, I do notice an uptick in coal and iron recovery relative to my mining activity, but I don't have any hard numbers for it.
My ratio of coal blocks crafted to ore mined (28,378 : 138,275 , adjusted) is comparatively twice as high as yours (107,078 : 1,000,000) as I've faithfully used Fortune for a long, long time and switched from coal to charcoal for all my torches and virtually all my smelting needs.
Whups, gotta go- maybe I can get back to this a little later...
Congrats! To this day I am still astonished that you can write such long posts. You always have a lot to say (not that it's a bad thing). Next up, 1,000,000 iron ore mined!
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Congrats! To this day I am still astonished that you can write such long posts. You always have a lot to say (not that it's a bad thing). Next up, 1,000,000 iron ore mined!
That's probably not going to happen as it would require playing on the same world for 2.7 times longer, and I would have to explore an area larger than 9 level 4 maps (3x3 maps, 6144x6144 blocks), which is all that I currently see myself exploring; I have not even marked any new areas that I found that were off the edges (past 3072 x/z), similar to how I don't go too far under the ocean, which would eventually become another limiting factor (continents in 1.6.4 are often huge, sometimes over 20000x20000 blocks, but not unlimited, and oceans are even larger as the world is around 90% ocean; you only often spawn on a continent because one is forced to generate around the origin). I could use the Nether for faster transportation though (3072 blocks becomes only 384, which is closer than all but one of my secondary bases).
Even in all of my worlds put together* I haven't reached that point since it would require around 4.8 years of playing the same amount every day and I've only had the game for about 3.5 years; most of the other worlds that I've had were played the same way (I did not start caving as I currently do until a month or two after I started playing; during that period I even played a custom map, Stratosphere Survival, after AKSpartanKiIIer, one of the YouTubers who got me into Minecraft, started playing it, finishing it before they did (they are now pretty much dead, as are several others I watched like TobyGames and UberHaxorNova, the latter in terms of Minecraft content); I also played a Survival Island map, where I almost exclusively branch-mined, I don't think I ever explored a large cave system that was right under the island, as I found after looking at a recreated world much later).
*I have a summary of most of my other "main worlds" here, including my first world, shown as the version modded with a version of TMCW; since then I've had another world. The total time spent on the two longest played worlds besides my first world totaled around 30 days with other worlds being around 10 each; simply extrapolating the time spent in my first world gives around 4,400 hours or 185 days of playtime, which is slightly less since while making mods the time spent cuts into my playtime; otherwise, my playtime has remained pretty steady over the entire time; here is a screenshot of the general stats for my first world from almost exactly one year before, which also had 3.48 hours per session (in fact, the difference is only 3 seconds!) with nearly always one per day (370 sessions over that period).
How do you get the motivation to do this? I struggle to stay on my worlds for long periods of time.
I played on this one world for almost a year (albeit on and off). You can check it out in my signature. I don't play on it anymore though. And to answer your question, you shouldn't try too hard to get motivated to play a world. If you get burnout give yourself a break no matter how long. One day you may have an unexplainable urge to start playing on your world for hours on end. Giving yourself too many goals or goals that are too large can also be a cause of burnout. Just have fun, and don't let what others think affect your playstyle or how long you play on a world.
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I don't have the problems you addressed in your post, I only start to lose interest because I get bored of the worlds I play on. I was asking how other people are able to stay invested in their worlds.
I myself dont ever mine coal. Isn't what you get in your path while branch mining enough.
You could say the same for everything else I mine, even diamond (I've nearly filled a chest with diamond blocks; since I made this thread I've mined around 60% more resources in my first world - over 3 million total in storage including rails, moss stone, and cobwebs) - I only cave for the fun of it; mining every ore and killing every mob is what makes it so fun, in addition to the exploration; conversely, I only branch-mine for a bit at the start of a world to get the resources that I need (later on caving gives me more of everything than I could ever need, such as coal for torches and fuel or iron for the occasional anvil and gold and redstone for powered rails), avoiding any caves I come across beyond checking if they lead somewhere:
This is a comparison of the area I covered while branch-mining as opposed to caving in my first world - branch-mining is all but insignificant, though it did yield around 10 times more diamonds over time and as a percentage of all ores, one of the main reasons why I do it to get resources at the start (it is also much safer and I want to save caving as an end-game activity):
This is an up-to-date rendering of the same world, showing how much more caving I did, but no more branch-mining:
This is from another world; you can see my branch-mine as a grid of lines near the top-center; I did more mining in this world due to a much rarer than diamond mod ore (the world above is vanilla) but it is still insignificant (5.7% of diamond ore and 0.52% of all ores came from branch-mining; for my modded ore nearly 10% came from branch-mining - I only found a total of 223 (22 from branch-mining) out of over 380000 ores mined):
This vein of coal is rather special:
Because while mining it I mined the millionth coal ore I've mined in this world (I mined 5 more after mining the rest of the coal):
It only took more than 93 real-life days and mining more than 2.1 million blocks altogether to mine that much coal (only a fraction of the time was spent actually mining blocks):
In addition, I've crafted more than 107,000 blocks of coal; some of the coal was mined with Fortune but most of it was not (I only mined around 1/8 of all the blocks I've mined with a Fortune pickaxe with emerald and diamond having a disproportionately higher share):
To help show how much coal this is I used MCEdit on a copy of my world to show what one million coal ore and 107,078 coal blocks look like:
A 100x100x100 cube of coal ore next to my main base:
A 1000x1000 square one block thick:
How much space do coal blocks save when compared to raw ore? This shows a 42x51x50 cube of coal blocks, which is 107,100 blocks, approximately the number I've crafted - still pretty impressive:
For another comparison, there are an average of 142.6 coal ore per chunk - so to find one million coal ore you need to completely mine out about 7,013 chunks, which is approximately the area shown here (84x84 or 7,056 chunks. Note that if you exclude oceans there is around 15% more coal per chunk; the Wiki's averages may have been based on this chart, which shows a lot of water. Still, you'll have to mine out a very large area):
The average size of a coal vein is about 19.36 blocks, assuming they are fully intact and do not overlap (based on the figures here, for pre-1.8), which means that I've mined at least 51,653 veins of coal, which is at least 5,165 chunks (a total of 20 veins are generated per chunk but over 128 layers, meaning that only about half generate below sea level).
Here are the first three comparisons shown along with the entire world, which is 6032x5104 blocks and 72,834 chunks in size:
As much coal as I've mined I've mined hundreds of thousands of other ores and resources; including lapis, diamond, and emerald ore (not shown above), I've mined a total of 1,498,977 ore and crafted 199,757 mineral blocks (including 120 emerald blocks not shown above from back when I used Fortune, since then I've used Silk Touch to mine it) - representing 1,797,813 mineral resources. Then add in 96,481 rails (around 2,000 were mined when I restructured my rail system so are double-counted in the stats) and 41,131 cobwebs (mined from around cave spider spawners without Silk Touch, this explains all the wool I've crafted) taken from around 300 abandoned mineshafts and 45,122 moss stone taken from around 900 dungeons and I've gathered a total of around 1,980,547 resources, plus thousands of loot items from dungeons and mineshafts (in fact, I've crafted more gold and iron blocks than the ores I've mined can account for, the latter is particularly impressive since I used a few thousand early on and lost some from deaths or drops falling into lava but then I only need iron for anvils at this point).
Despite the renderings shown above I don't need that much space at all to store all of the resources I've gathered - a single chest can store 1,728 blocks or the equivalent of 15,552 resources - so 199,757 blocks only requires about 116 chests or 58 double chests (more when considering that only one type of block is stored in the same chest). I still have one more double chest left before I have to expend my storage ares for coal, which currently consists of two corridors with 16 double chests each; 107,078 coal blocks is slightly less than 31 double chests:
(this is a dated screenshot; I use signs to mark chests that are full and the ones on the far left have since been filled)
I still have a ways to go before I actually have one million coal in storage, which will be 111,111 coal blocks and slightly over 32 double chests, which requires mining another 36,297 coal before subtracting what I use for torches and fuel, which is around 1/6 of the coal I mine so I actually need to mine around 43,556 more, which will take a few more weeks if I mine as much coal every day as I did the last time, which was more or less typical (perhaps a bit less coal than usual; I only mined a bit over twice as much coal as iron when it has averaged about 2.73; it is interesting to note that despite both iron and coal generating everywhere below sea level, where the vast majority of caves are, the relative amounts of each vary quite a bit over areas hundreds of blocks across):
Also of interest, here is a close-up of the region I've been exploring lately, which includes one of the largest cave systems I've ever found, a 5 ravine system, only the second one I've found in this world, and a very large and dense network of caves/mineshafts/ravines (click image to open in new tab):
Here are some screenshots of caves in the area I took with MCEdit:
The large cave system at the top-center:
A closer look:
This is of the region to the south of the big cave, a perfect example of what they meant by the underground being like "Swiss cheese" in older versions; just amazing:
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?
Well, congratulations, I guess. I don't think I've even mined more than a few hundred in all my years of playing the game, but I guess it's more to do with the fact that I consider caving to be rather boring and uneventful. Personally, I'm more impressed that you've managed to keep up with it so long. How do you keep such a repetitive mechanic that hasn't received a single update since emeralds were added (well, I guess there was 1.7, but that didn't really add anything) interesting?
Want to see my suggestions? Here they are!
I am also known as GameWyrm or GameWyrm97. You can also find me at snapshotmc.com
Amazing!
Congratulations!
Just testing.
1.7? Are you kidding? That's the main reason why I still play in 1.6.4; I've called it "The update that ruined the underground" and for good reason - 1.7 made cave systems much smaller and less varied, as well as made mineshafts and dungeons much rarer.
Here are some comparisons between 1.6 and 1.7:
Here is another comparison of the differences; I counted the number of caves within a 16 chunk radius of each chunk within a large area (using a program) and plotted the number of chunks with a given number for 1.6 and 1.7:
1.6 had anywhere from 60 to 570 caves while 1.7 had 80 to 360 - 1.6 has over twice as much variation (9.5:1 vs 4.5:1) and despite having 30% more caves overall even such a fairly large region (around 855 chunks, the area is actually a circle with a diameter of 33 chunks) can have fewer caves than 1.7. More notable is the difference at the high end, with the densest regions having 58% more caves in 1.6.
The differences are even more pronounced for smaller areas, such as a 4 chunk radius:
Note that 1.6 has a spike at 0 - more chunks had no caves at all within a 4 chunk radius than any other count, and the peak otherwise occurs at about half the density of 1.7, which reflects the fact that caves are much more clustered together in 1.6, making cave systems much larger than a simple 30% increase in overall cave density would suggest while creating much larger cave-free regions between them (while this would seem to reduce how interconnected caves are the much lower density of cave systems in 1.7 results in caves often failing to intersect within cave "systems", which are really just multiple individual caves generated in the same chunk with no guarantee that they will interconnect. In 1.6 the majority of caves within most cave systems are interconnected, save for a few on the surface or near bedrock level).
Another way to look at things: the largest possible single cave system in 1.7 generates on average once every 23625 chunks; the frequency of a cave system of the same size or larger in 1.6? Once every 153 chunks - making them 154 times more common, and much more likely to generate close enough together to merge together to make a larger cave system. For perspective, the initial spawn area generated when you create a new world is 625 chunks, which will on average have about 4 such cave systems; here is what the spawn area for my world looks like; the largest cave system, near the upper-right, is about twice the size of the largest single cave system in 1.7:
Comparison of mineshafts in the same area of the same seed (which happens to be that for my world):
There are 70 mineshafts in the 1.6 map but only 29 in the 1.7 map, which is in line with a 60% decrease in their frequency. Combined with ravines these are the reason why everybody thought that caves became much bigger in Beta 1.8 when they were not actually changed; while some do not like the "infinite" underground that results (yes, I just explore new areas by going from one cave/mineshaft/ravine to the next though underground interconnections, and less often surface openings I happen to come across, which are almost always either caves that I missed which are connected to areas I explored before or small cave systems with only a few caves or ravines with nothing else connected to them).
As for how I stay interested, well, that has been asked of me before but I can't exactly say why I like caving or have remained interested in it for so long (I've had 6 other main worlds, which together represent nearly as much caving as in my first world, the one mentioned in this thread - that's right, I did not mention that this was just for a single world). Conversely, while it is very easy to mod newer versions (I've even modded snapshots without the usual modding tools) to replicate 1.6.4 cave generation the other features that have been added do not interest me enough; I have not even made use of most of the features added in 1.6, one version after I started playing. I do have a mod that adds in many features from 1.7 and later, as well as my own, to 1.6.4 but I mainly made it because I like modding.
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?
Well, yeah, it changed the underground, but it still didn't add anything to caving in general. The less frequent caves and mineshafts are a change I consider so minimal that I didn't even know about it until, incidentally, I saw a post about it from you more than a year after its release.
Want to see my suggestions? Here they are!
I am also known as GameWyrm or GameWyrm97. You can also find me at snapshotmc.com
TheMasterCaver-
Pretty amazing- congrats, and thanks for sharing! I'm sure I'm not the only one here that appreciates your technical knowledge of the game as well as the efforts you go to to illustrate your points (I particularly like your "block of ore" visualizations- I wonder why!). I find it amazing that you were able to catch the 1,000,000 block mark- I do look at the stats once in a while, but usually only to answer some obscure question I have. Perhaps I'll pay closer attention to them in the future.
Of course, it's hard for anyone to put this in perspective without comparing your stats with their own. I've done some simple comparisons with my own stats, just to see how we differ. Spoiler: I've mined no where near 2,000,000 blocks all told- actually, not even close to 1,000,000!
First, I see you've played 2238.48 hours over 643 sessions for an average of 3.48 hours per session. I myself have played 979.92 hours over 1,497 sessions for an average of 0.65 hours per session. I often sit down and play for only 10 or 15 minutes at a time- I have no "standard play session" whatsoever except that I tend to play longer on weekend evenings. I started playing a couple days after 1.8 was released (767 days ago!), so on average I play 1.27 hours a day (can that possibly be correct?!?).
I also see you must do a heck of a lot more PvE fighting while caving than I do while (very cautiously) branch mining- I have only 4% of the kills you have but have died 3 times to your 12- disproportionately more often given your combat, though this was and continues to be my very first and only world, so chalk up a couple of those deaths to noob mistakes...
You have also done a lot more walking than I have. Adjusting the numbers to compensate for the longer time you've spent in-game (2.286 times as long as I), I still have only walked some 7,700 km compared to your 11,562 km. I don't see "time sprinted" in your version of the stats, but it occurred to me that I do do a lot of sprinting (apparently I sprint about a third of the time). If you add that in I'm getting closer to your distance walked (9,841 km adjusted to your 11.5). I have spent far more time, comparatively, riding minecarts though (1,547 km, adjusted), to your 627. I, too, calculate that I have about 14 km of rails in my world but I use them all the time to get from one base to another, often quite some distance away. In fact, at 192,512 fully mapped chunks my world is slightly over 2.5 times the size of yours, which is the result of my surveying the surface, not exploring every cave! This difference in style is borne out by the fact that, again adjusted for amount of play, you've crafted almost exactly four times as many torches as I have.
I'll play with some of the block totals tomorrow if I get a chance- I'm about out of steam for tonight. Again, thanks for sharing- it's fun to compare notes!
cheers,
tbg
I don't really know what to say other than congratulations. I don't think I will ever be able to mine that much coal on one world.
For the first, the number of deaths is low since I started playing this world in 1.5 and it did not record deaths due to a bug which was not fixed until 1.6 (like in your case it is also my first world); the deaths that you do see occurred in the months after 1.6 came out - with no deaths for the past couple years; I first spent around 6 months playing the world, then started getting into mods and playing on modded worlds (mostly with modded cave generation, in some cases rather extreme, like when I tripled the depth of the ground and scaled caves up by the cube of that...), then after about a year I played on a modded copy of the world for a few months (what I did then is partly reflected in the stats; I did play on it for a bit before modding it and that is the state I left off the "original" world and its stats at), then played other modded worlds for a while until I started playing on this world again last year, for the past 13 months - with no deaths since the first period; in my last modded world I had zero deaths while playing it for around 1/6 of the time.
As for my minecart usage, it has increased over time as I've explored further and further away; just today I completed a 1.5 km extension, totaling about 2.2 km back to my main base, and in the process I added another 10 km to the total distance ridden while traveling back and forth to get materials, plus a round-trip to drop off a double chest of resources, of which about half is mineral resources as blocks, so that's around 15,000 resources per trip back and with an average of 2,796 resources mined per session I make a trip back about once every 5-6 days; the longest railway I have is about 6.4 km round-trip so that's an average of about 1.2 km traveled per day (actually, a bit more often since 2,796 resources assumes all of my time is spent caving; if you assume I spend 90% of my time caving it becomes 3,107 and 4-5 days/1.3 km).
Also, the distance I've traveled by boat is so small since I do not explore more than a couple hundred blocks under oceans (if a cave or mineshaft extends underneath I'll explore the entire thing; however, if I find a new one that is more than about 100 blocks from land I'll leave it; the same applies for when I leave the edge of a map into an unmapped area, except I'll mark it for future exploration when I start on that map; and I have not used them for months at a time.
1.6.4 doesn't record distance by horse and in fact I think it isn't counted at all but I do not use them since minecarts seem like a much more effective way, even if not as fast as the fastest horses, to travel between fixed points, and otherwise I often travel hundreds of blocks underground during a caving session, which is around 2 play sessions, limited by storage space (note that while I've referred to "modded" worlds this world is not entirely vanilla; I added a "rail block" so I can compact rails like you can with minerals; I've thus carried as many as 2,000 rails back to my main base as just 4 stacks of blocks, which would otherwise take up more than half the space I can carry back at a time (I convert them back into rails for permanent storage) - and that's after I modded mineshafts to prevent them from generating in large cave systems, reducing their frequency by about 25%, which is still nearly double that in 1.7 and later).
The distance flown stat is also misleading because I stopped the game from recording non-Creative flight as flying, which even includes things like sprint-jumping, after somebody pointed it out as evidence that I used Creative mode.
Also, the stats for resource blocks crafted can't be directly compared with ores mined in most cases because I used Fortune to mine all ores for a while (a few months) after 1.6 came out, and on diamond and emerald before then. In the case of emerald I started mining it with Silk Touch later on; with 120 emerald blocks crafted before then I mined around 491 ore with Fortune, out of 1,840 total ore. Applying this to diamond, of which I've mined 8,287 ore, around 2,211 was mined with Fortune, yielding a total of 10,941 diamonds; the 1,065 diamond blocks I've crafted required 9,585 diamonds so I've used about 1,356, which would have been even higher if I had not started trading for diamond gear.
The number of diamonds I would have used on pickaxes (and other gear) is also higher than the 335 crafted (or bought from villagers) would suggest since I repaired the Fortune pick with individual diamonds due to the repair cost, 37 levels for one diamond; in the case of swords I'd only crafted several until i started trading since I repaired them with individual diamonds (a new sword is too expensive but I realized that a slightly damaged sword can be used and even restore full durability, so now I use the sacrifice swords to kill passive mobs so they can be used for repairs). It is harder to calculate just how many of other ores I mined with Fortune but the "surplus" coal that I have is around 120,000 after adding what I used to craft torches and as fuel, which suggests 100,000 ore was mined with Fortune; I do remember that I'd mined around 284,000 blocks with a diamond pickaxe back then and before 1.6 I mined a lot less since I only mined what coal I needed, which is currently about 2/3 of all the ores and half the blocks I've mined.
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?
TMC-
Quick question- do you use redstone blocks for your powered rails just to avoid having to place a redstone torch under the rail or off to the side (breaking the 1x2 symmetry), or is there some other reason?
And yes, meaningfully comparing resource blocks becomes messy with Fortune. Except in two cases I've used Fortune for pretty much everything since I first got the enchantment. The exceptions are when I want raw ore blocks for decorative purposes (this is rare, but at one time I stockpiled a bunch just in case) and emerald ore. It took a long, long time in my world to find my first village and that was a long, long way from my base. Eventually I found more convenient villages and once I realized how easy it was to accumulate emeralds through trade I started silk-touching the emerald ore I found to provide a more accurate estimation of my activity (but darn, of course I don't have the numbers with me).
As for raw coal ore, I've mined 60,488 adjusted to 138,275 compared to your 1,000,000. I branch mine and tunnel my subways at y=11+12 and so occasionally run into caves, but rarely do I follow the larger ones to exhaustion (I also don't think I've ever *completely* cleared out a mineshaft- the amount of rails I've harvested is miniscule compared to yours!). When I get a wild hair and do some extensive caving, I do notice an uptick in coal and iron recovery relative to my mining activity, but I don't have any hard numbers for it.
My ratio of coal blocks crafted to ore mined (28,378 : 138,275 , adjusted) is comparatively twice as high as yours (107,078 : 1,000,000) as I've faithfully used Fortune for a long, long time and switched from coal to charcoal for all my torches and virtually all my smelting needs.
Whups, gotta go- maybe I can get back to this a little later...
cheers,
tbg
Congrats! To this day I am still astonished that you can write such long posts. You always have a lot to say (not that it's a bad thing). Next up, 1,000,000 iron ore mined!
If you're interested in an awesome, white-listed, pure vanilla server, consider applying!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/servers/pc-servers/2811770-axiba-smp-community-focused-vanilla-survival#c4
That's probably not going to happen as it would require playing on the same world for 2.7 times longer, and I would have to explore an area larger than 9 level 4 maps (3x3 maps, 6144x6144 blocks), which is all that I currently see myself exploring; I have not even marked any new areas that I found that were off the edges (past 3072 x/z), similar to how I don't go too far under the ocean, which would eventually become another limiting factor (continents in 1.6.4 are often huge, sometimes over 20000x20000 blocks, but not unlimited, and oceans are even larger as the world is around 90% ocean; you only often spawn on a continent because one is forced to generate around the origin). I could use the Nether for faster transportation though (3072 blocks becomes only 384, which is closer than all but one of my secondary bases).
Even in all of my worlds put together* I haven't reached that point since it would require around 4.8 years of playing the same amount every day and I've only had the game for about 3.5 years; most of the other worlds that I've had were played the same way (I did not start caving as I currently do until a month or two after I started playing; during that period I even played a custom map, Stratosphere Survival, after AKSpartanKiIIer, one of the YouTubers who got me into Minecraft, started playing it, finishing it before they did (they are now pretty much dead, as are several others I watched like TobyGames and UberHaxorNova, the latter in terms of Minecraft content); I also played a Survival Island map, where I almost exclusively branch-mined, I don't think I ever explored a large cave system that was right under the island, as I found after looking at a recreated world much later).
*I have a summary of most of my other "main worlds" here, including my first world, shown as the version modded with a version of TMCW; since then I've had another world. The total time spent on the two longest played worlds besides my first world totaled around 30 days with other worlds being around 10 each; simply extrapolating the time spent in my first world gives around 4,400 hours or 185 days of playtime, which is slightly less since while making mods the time spent cuts into my playtime; otherwise, my playtime has remained pretty steady over the entire time; here is a screenshot of the general stats for my first world from almost exactly one year before, which also had 3.48 hours per session (in fact, the difference is only 3 seconds!) with nearly always one per day (370 sessions over that period).
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 played on this one world for almost a year (albeit on and off). You can check it out in my signature. I don't play on it anymore though. And to answer your question, you shouldn't try too hard to get motivated to play a world. If you get burnout give yourself a break no matter how long. One day you may have an unexplainable urge to start playing on your world for hours on end. Giving yourself too many goals or goals that are too large can also be a cause of burnout. Just have fun, and don't let what others think affect your playstyle or how long you play on a world.
If you're interested in an awesome, white-listed, pure vanilla server, consider applying!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/servers/pc-servers/2811770-axiba-smp-community-focused-vanilla-survival#c4
Oh. I don't know, it just stays really fun, lol.
If you're interested in an awesome, white-listed, pure vanilla server, consider applying!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/servers/pc-servers/2811770-axiba-smp-community-focused-vanilla-survival#c4
I'd ask if you want a cookie, but I don't have any so I won't. Ummm...congrats...I guess....
I myself dont ever mine coal. Isn't what you get in your path while branch mining enough.
You could say the same for everything else I mine, even diamond (I've nearly filled a chest with diamond blocks; since I made this thread I've mined around 60% more resources in my first world - over 3 million total in storage including rails, moss stone, and cobwebs) - I only cave for the fun of it; mining every ore and killing every mob is what makes it so fun, in addition to the exploration; conversely, I only branch-mine for a bit at the start of a world to get the resources that I need (later on caving gives me more of everything than I could ever need, such as coal for torches and fuel or iron for the occasional anvil and gold and redstone for powered rails), avoiding any caves I come across beyond checking if they lead somewhere:
This is an up-to-date rendering of the same world, showing how much more caving I did, but no more branch-mining:
This is from another world; you can see my branch-mine as a grid of lines near the top-center; I did more mining in this world due to a much rarer than diamond mod ore (the world above is vanilla) but it is still insignificant (5.7% of diamond ore and 0.52% of all ores came from branch-mining; for my modded ore nearly 10% came from branch-mining - I only found a total of 223 (22 from branch-mining) out of over 380000 ores mined):
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 love your caving reports.
The longest time that I played was 1 year with 12 real-life days in 2014.
=== WALKING TO THE FARLANDS ==
== MARKS ==
Start (0 blocks): 22-6-2020.
3 km mark (3.000 blocks): 22-6-2020.
10 km mark (10.000 blocks): 25-6-2020.
25 km mark (25.000 blocks): 2-7-2020.
50 km mark (50.000 blocks): 10-7-2020.
75 km mark (75.000 blocks): 12-7-2020.
100 km mark (100.000 blocks): 14-7-2020
1% mark (At 125.000 blocks): 5-9-2020.
Topic about my journey: https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/survival-mode/3026000-walking-to-the-mysterious-far-lands-at-12-575-km?page=3