Today (well, yesterday) was my one hundredth play session spent caving, during which time I found a total of 490 different types of caves or structures, mined around 309000 ore, and gathered around 363000 resources (mineral blocks, moss stone, rails, cobwebs, stone bricks, spawners. This does not include what I used, mainly coal, and includes chest loot) or about 5 finds, 3090 ore, and 3630 resources per play session. This is out of a total of 118 play sessions, so about 85% of the entire time I've spent in this world has been caving, a proportion which has increased since I started doing so because I spent the couple weeks getting established.
First, here is an updated list of everything that I've found so far (a few of these were not actually found while caving; the stronghold is the only structure that I wouldn't have found while caving though):
Play sessions spent caving: 100
Structures found (by number):
165 normal dungeons
143 ravines (up to 7 intersecting; large ravines counted separately)
55 mineshafts
33 large caves (larger than vanilla)
24 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
10 double dungeons (a special type, not two dungeons intersecting)
9 large ravines (larger than vanilla)
7 fossils
6 villages
5 circular rooms at least 34 blocks in diameter (twice as large as vanilla)
4 ravine cave clusters
3 circular room cave clusters
3 igloos (1 with basement)
3 jungle temples
3 ravine cave systems
3 vertical cave clusters
2 circular room cave systems
2 combination cave systems
2 network cave regions
2 vertical cave systems
1 colossal cave system
1 desert temple
1 desert well
1 maze cave cluster
1 maze cave system
1 stronghold
1 witch hut
Biomes found (by order found):
Plains (technical biome in Mixed Forest and others)
Mixed Forest
Lake (technical biome in Mixed Forest and others)
Jungle
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (technical biome in Birch Forest)
Desert
Tropical Swamp
Big Oak Forest
Taiga (snowless)
Rocky Mountains
Ice Plains
Roofed Forest
Mesa
Winter Forest
Forest Mountains
Bushlands
Mountainous Desert
Swampland
Hilly Plains
Winter Taiga
Frozen Lake (technical biome in Winter Forest and others)
Mega Tree Plains
Spruce Hills (technical biome in Mega Tree Plains)
Mega Forest
Plains
Forest (technical biome in Plains)
Forest
Lake
Savanna Mountains
Poplar Grove
Mega Mixed Forest
Savanna Plateau
(29 unique biomes)
Largest ravine:
296 blocks long, 31 blocks wide, 62 blocks deep (calculated volume of 255799)
Largest cave:
303 blocks long and 38 blocks wide (calculated volume of 116358; combined with another large cave with an overall measured volume of 139928)
Largest circular room:
57 blocks in diameter (calculated volume of 48391)
Largest mineshaft:
757 rails mined
Other:
2 skeletons in amethyst armor
2 skeletons in diamond armor
1 zombie in amethyst armor
8 zombies in diamond armor
3 Notch apples found in dungeon chests
406 mob spawners collected
Here is a list of resources that I mined and collected (counting blocks as individual resources):
Note that I have more of most resources than can be accounted for from ore; in particular, this shows just how little iron I use compared to most players, who build iron farms to get what they need. The discrepancies are due to loot from chests. Aside from amethyst and ruby resources that I have loose in chests are also not counted (around a stack each of everything aside from coal, of which many stacks are in furnaces. I also have 10 emerald blocks, but they were made from surplus from trading).
Also, I've spent a total of 449 hours playing this world, averaging 3.8 hours per play session, relatively higher than I spent in my first world (3.46 hours); in terms of hourly rates I mined an average of 811 ore and collected 950 resources per hour (if you include the coal I spent to make 94800 torches and smelt 85092 iron and gold I collected around 396340 resources, 1041 per hour. Some additional resources were used, such as iron to make 22 anvils (a bit skewed since I can craft a new anvil out of two very damaged anvils, increasing the number crafted). The time spent in this world is well above any other world aside from my first world, which has more than 102 days of playtime and will likely never be surpassed:
Here is a cropped underground map; nearly everything shown here has been explored and there are 8,548 chunks, meaning that I explored about 85 chunks per play session (the stronghold in the upper-left was not found while caving). I most recently explored the area in the upper-right, where a giant cave is clearly visible:
Here are some things I found recently:
A large circular room, measuring 43 blocks in diameter:
Yet another fossil, the 7th one I've found so far (these are as common as they are in vanilla but Mountainous Desert has more caves near to above sea level so they are easier to find; the increased number of caves is to take advantage of the higher terrain and unique underground, which is also found in several other biomes):
In the same desert I found a mineshaft made out of sand and sandstone, even the center room, which normally has dirt (this is actually a side effect of replacing stone, dirt, and gravel in deserts with sand and sandstone):
A very large cave with a giant lava lake:
I found another circular room cave system today, which I've only partially explored but it looks to be quite a bit larger than the last one (denser, with more rooms, as they are all the same size with rooms distributed across a 32 block circular radius):
A few more interesting caves:
A very deep vertical pit:
Another large cave (this is not actually one of the larger variants as I did not find anything when I checked the area):
All of these were found in the northeastern corner of the first map; I did not explore the area until now because I did not find any caves leading to the area until I'd explored eastwards then northwards, then west into this area. I've actually been returning to my main base instead of the base I made to the east during the last couple trips (I return to whichever one is closer):
A rendering of what I explored up to yesterday; the large circular room can be seen to the right, with the mineshaft above it, while the large cave filled with lava can be seen to the left:
Also, here is another seed, 7020998152397947523, which I got from this thread ("great cave seed" - maybe in 1.7 or later, but certainly not by pre-1.7 standards):
Here are renderings of the surface and underground:
I included surface renderings made with Unmined and Minutor, with Unmined showing height differences better while Minutor has more realistic colors:
I also used the same seed in vanilla 1.6.4 and 1.11.2 so you can see how caves differ between versions and my mod; TMCW is at the top, vanilla 1.6.4 middle, and 1.11.2 at the bottom and the left side shows all caves below sea level while the right shows caves in the lowest 10 layers above lava level. 1.11.2 is a clear outlier in terms of cave density, while TMCW has many more mineshafts, which are actually more common in vanilla 1.6.4 but only away from the origin, which these maps are centered around (note that what looks like a dense cave near the left side of the 1.7 map is mostly a mineshaft; the right side shows caves below layer 13 (TMCW) or 20 (vanilla), which are equivalent since lava level is 7 layers lower in TMCW, which also has about 13% more caves overall due to the extra space below sea level):
Spawn was in a forest near 97, -194, with a nice view of a large Ice Mountains in the distance:
To the south is a Volcanic Wasteland, one of the rarest biomes and a good place to mine amethyst, which is particularly more common above y=2, and emerald, which occurs in veins in addition to single blocks:
Next to it are these Winter Forest hills (or mountains):
A small Rocky Mountains is to the northeast:
And just to the east of that is the most extreme Mountainous Desert that I've ever seen, topping out at y=161. Despite this, a river winds its way through it with no interruptions, thanks to my modifications that let them cut through just about any terrain (Rocky Mountains is the exception, and that is because it replaces river with itself, one lower in elevation):
You'd never know it but at 874, -502 there is a desert temple with some nice loot, entirely underground:
(watch out - those are trapped chests. There are also zombie and skeleton spawners in the main part of the temple)
At -412, 453 is an interesting formation rising to y=164:
They don't call then Extreme Hills for nothing; these Extreme Hills around -550, -300 rise to as high as y=156:
To the southwest of spawn is a Mesa and Mega Mixed Forest:
Around -360, 680 is a large Ice Mountains range, peaking out just above y=130:
Also, there is a village around 475, 640:
Here is a list of the largest caves and nearest cave systems within 1536 blocks:
This cave nearly breaks the surface, close to 60 blocks deep:
The largest circular room:
And ravine:
Just to the west of the ravine is a large Ice Spikes biome, which is relatively rare (they can generate as full-size biomes in cold climate zones, as well as small sub-biomes within Ice Plains, which are much more common):
Also, while flying around I spotted this cave opening around -350, -550, which leads to a very large cave (7th largest within +/- 1536 blocks) and ravine (3rd largest within +/- 1536 blocks):
I've now found 30 "regular" biomes, with the latest being Flower Forest, recognizable from the number of flowers; they are also hillier than regular forests, with the height variation of normal hills sub-biomes but no sub-biomes themselves:
I still have quite a few regular biomes left to find, including one vanilla 1.6 biome, Extreme Hills (Mushroom Island as well but that is not a "regular" biome; by "regular" biomes I am also not including rivers and beaches, Ocean is also arguably in its own class). Notably, there has been a lack of emerald-bearing biomes in my world so far (Extreme Hills, Forest Mountains, Volcanic Wasteland) and I've only found 53 emerald ore so far in a single small Forest Mountains, making it over 25 times rarer than diamond, compared to 4.7 times rarer in my first world (both of which in turn have been rarer when compared to more common ores; in my first world I mined 585 times more coal than emerald while in this world I've mined 3934 times more, or 6.7 times less emerald). These biomes are not rare per se; two are "common" biomes with a 3.571% chance of generating within normal climate zones while Volcanic Wasteland is "rare", with a 0.893% chance; they can also generate in cold and hot climate zones with a reduced chance (due to more cold/hot biomes). Conversely, Jungle (a common biome) has been pretty common and I've found 2-3 of many other biomes. The rarest (full-size) biome is a variant of Ice Hills (more common as small sub-biomes within Ice Plains) which has Ice Spikes as an edge biome, with a 1% chance (per randomly chosen biome) of generating within cold climate zones, which are around 20% of landmasses (the only one I've seen outside of testing is around 1530, -2050 in the seed 10).
I've really been tearing through the underground lately; I've already gone as far east as x=1300:
I'm currently exploring some sort of massive cave system/complex of caves which includes multiple large caves and at least 7 ravines, including another extremely large ravine on the easternmost edge (I have not taken any screenshots of anything yet).
Also, I forgot to mention in my last post the amount of XP that I averaged per play session, which has been slightly more than 5000, and about 1330 per hour, which is enough to make a level 30 enchantment every 37 minutes, or 136 minutes to get enough to repair my most expensive item (sword, which costs 48 levels or 3012 XP; the total XP cost, excluding enchanting, has been at least 43008 XP for 14 repairs, more since I often repair items when I have more than enough levels. This is far less than I've spent to repair my pickaxe, at around 198107 XP for 91 repairs at 43 levels or 2177 XP each. The equivalent items in vanilla (with the same damage and speed) would have cost around 16350 and 70176 each, and less if you took advantage of the 12% anvil bonus as these are full item repairs (the sword requires using a slightly damaged sword to reduce the cost to 39 levels, which is still more than enough to restore full durability).
In addition, I've made a significant update to the CaveFinder utility - it now measures the actual volume of caves by generating them and counting the number of air blocks (which are actually 1s in an array initialized with 0s for ease of counting; instead of 16x16x256 chunks I use a 400x400x59 array, equivalent to 25x25 chunks between lava and sea levels; a single large array avoids having to run the cave generator multiple times with a significant speedup). Some caves have decreased in size while others have gotten larger, with errors of +/-50% or more in some cases, while ravines and circular rooms were close to the calculated values except when they were partly below/above lava/sea level:
I can't wait for the 10th zombie with Diamond armor!
As it happens, I just saw another one, the 9th one in diamond armor and 10th in either diamond or amethyst (which is rarer than diamond, thus both together are equivalent to diamond or better):
It didn't drop anything but here is a screenshot of when I killed it the chance of a fully armored mob dropping anything in my mod is only about 18.5%, with a 5% chance per piece (the chance any drops is 1 - 0.95^4; for amethyst the base chance is 10% or 34.4% for a full set, and vanilla uses an 8.5% chance for 30%):
Also, I previously mentioned that I'd been finding many large caves lately, part of a giant cave system, and I took some screenshots (I actually saw the diamond armored zombie while doing so, it came out of a cave I'd missed):
Swiss cheese is a common description used for dense cave systems but it really isn't very accurate; if your cheese had this much empty space in it you are probably getting scammed:
This was the largest cave, and where I saw the diamond zombie:
This is one of the large caves that I saw a couple weeks ago (post #99); I only now got around to exploring this area. Part of the cave opening was covered with water, hence the shelf of land covering it (in vanilla you'd find a vertical wall going down to the bottom along a chunk boundary that runs through the cave since the cave generator excludes entire vertical sections if any water is encountered and cannot see across chunk boundaries):
The other cave nearby:
There were three large caves, plus several "normal" large caves (the larger caves that you occasionally find in vanilla), and several open spaces formed by the sheer density of caves. Here are details on the three largest caves:
Found cave with length of 143, width of 27, and volume of 29588 at 984, 21, 216
Found cave with length of 112, width of 33, and volume of 26874 at 968, 22, 328
Found cave with length of 222, width of 21, and volume of 32349 at 1176, 28, 376
The indicated volume is the actual measured volume between layers 4-59 (not considering whether they intersect other caves, which reduces the overall volume; in particular, while 1.7 has 23% fewer caves than 1.6.4 the underground air volume is only about 10% less because cave systems are less dense, reducing overlap).
I found an absolutely enormous cave; I have not explored it yet but it is likely one of the largest possible caves, going all the way from lava level (y=4) to y=80 and beyond, with a lava sea visible from the surface; I came across the cave while exploring the second maze cave system that I've found:
Not only that, I'm currently exploring a massive ravine which appears to rival the largest one that I've found so far:
Both of these are under the mesa biome I built my current base in; the ravine crosses the entire biome from east to west and beyond, with the eastern end going into an Extreme Hills biome, the first one that I've found (and just after mentioning that I had not found one yet):
As if that weren't enough, there are two other huge caves nearby, also unexplored, for a total of six within about a third of a level 3 map, a quite extraordinary concentration of such caves, which on average generate once every 2560 chunks, an area about twice the size:
These are the first three giant caves that I found; I included their type so I can see whether they are the largest variant or not (type 0, with type 1 being a much more common smaller variant which can get just as large but very rarely); they were all type 0, confirming that they were the rarest variant:
Results found for the area from 512, 560 to 527, 575:
Found type 0 large cave with length of 326, width of 34, and volume of 122184 at 520, 23, 568
Results found for the area from 512, 304 to 527, 319:
Found type 0 large cave with length of 314, width of 23, and volume of 94256 at 520, 19, 312
Results found for the area from 768, -208 to 783, -193:
Found type 0 large cave with length of 303, width of 38, and volume of 138174 at 776, 29, -200
Notably, the second cave listed had a calculated volume of only 51651 but was actually nearly twice the size (these are actual measured volumes). The three caves mentioned in my last post were all type 1; besides their size the difference between these is how they generate, with type 1 generating like normal caves (starting from one end of a main cave with two branches at the other end) and type 0 generating as three caves from the start (equivalent to a normal branched cave) with two of the caves (branches) having their own branches (a large unbranched main cave, two primary branches and four secondary branches).
I've also found another circular room cave system, the third one so far; all three have been found within a relatively short time with the first two just to the south and north of the current map:
Another relatively large circular room, 37 blocks in diameter, with a bank of furnaces smelting for scale (I regularly set up furnaces in a secured area to smelt iron and gold so I can craft them into blocks, as otherwise I'd have to return a couple times per play session):
Most of the furnaces have half a stack of iron or gold in them; this is what I got from them, as well as from the circular room after I mined it out (the stack of resources and unsmelted ore):
Also, I repaired my pickaxe prior to emptying the furnaces; I had 55 levels, spent 43, and ended up with 29:
Here is a rendering of what I've explored so far within the current level 3 map; the mesa biome my base is in also had a lot of caves in it, much more than the other two that I've found (one is at the bottom center, with only a small amount of stained clay visible). Part of the massive ravine can be seen just to the left of top-center (I've explored the sides about halfway to the bottom), with a maze cave system further left; the massive cave mentioned at the beginning would be to the left of that once I light it up. Also, another giant ravine, which I mentioned a while back, is at the far right, where a spiral staircase to the surface can be seen, marked for returning to in the future so I can explore it:
Also, here is another seed, "7123971208804842550":
Maps of the surface and underground:
Some screenshots of biomes and landforms:
The view from spawn, near the intersection of TMCW Mega Taiga, Roofed Forest, Bushlands, and Ice Plains with a Mega Forest visible in the distance:
To the south is a Mountainous Desert with a desert temple; a Winter Taiga lies to the west of the desert:
Further south I came across Savanna Mountains, reaching as high as y=178:
The floating bit above the rightmost peak is at y=170, otherwise the rightmost two peaks reach y=156:
Then I noticed this nearby, at -715, 375 - a ravine that goes from the surface down to lava level - not just a large ravine but one of the largest possible:
At -850, 50 I came across two stacked ravines (both normal-sized) which also go all the way through the ground:
A fossil was exposed by one of the ravines:
The ravines were on the eastern edge of another Mountainous Desert, with a large relatively flat area (partly regular Desert, which is a sub-biome):
At around -670, -740 is a triple mountain biome intersection; Extreme Hills, Savanna Mountains, and Rocky Mountains, the latter an uncommon case where no snowy peaks generated:
The Extreme Hills was rather, well, extreme; the highest bits went up to y=183:
There is a village in the Ice Plains to the northwest of spawn:
To the north of the village is a Mega Mixed Forest, with Roofed Forest separating it from another Mega Forest:
Another village is to the southwest of spawn, also in an Ice Plains (both are at -250, -333 and -730, 180):
This was the largest cave found within 1536 blocks of the origin; the ravine I came across while flying around was the second largest ravine and just slightly smaller than the largest, which was twice as far away, so I did not show it (the other large ravine seen on the cave map was the third largest and is at 56, 24, -632; all of these had volumes of 270000-324000 with the large cave being the largest):
Also, I used this same seed with "NoExclusion" and separately generated each type of cave so you can see them separately:
All caves (similar to the above but caves within 512 blocks of the origin are different):
All caves, in the lowest layers:
Caves only, pretty much like what the underground was like prior to Beta 1.8:
Mineshafts only; considering that they are only about 60% as common as vanilla they are a quite major part of the underground in vanilla:
Ravines only; they have the same overall frequency as vanilla with about 3 ravines per mineshaft (2 in vanilla):
Special cave systems only:
Large caves only:
Large circular rooms (larger than the largest in vanilla) only:
I explored both the largest cave and largest ravine that I've found so far; with the cave being one of the other two caves that I mentioned finding (the one in the 4th spoiler, not the one that looks to be really big). Not only that, I killed a mind-boggling number of mobs - nearly 800, shattering my all-time single play session record - with most of them in the giant cave - including my third skeleton in amethyst armor, which despite being rarer than diamond has been more common on skeletons (3 amethyst, 2 diamond, whereas zombies are 1 amethyst and 9 diamond).
I explored the ravine first, which was fairly uneventful as far as mobs go; it was slightly narrower but longer than the previous largest ravine with a volume of about 267,000:
These two screenshots were taken from near the middle of its length:
Then came the cave... never before have I ever seen so many mobs; they just kept on coming in rentless waves, spawning as quickly as I could kill them and I could see more spawning in the far reaches of the cave, which basically was the only place they could spawn since I'd explored everything else around it; only when night fell (presumably) did they slacken off enough for me to make some progress in lighting up the cave:
When all was said and done I'd killed 796 mobs; I'm not sure exactly how many were in the cave but when I looked at the inventory stats after having killed a good number it said 246 and I estimate that I easily killed at least 600 in this one cave alone:
This event also pushed the total number of mobs that I've killed in this world to over 40,000, averaging 321 per play session, and likely much more when only counting time spent caving:
One of the mobs was a skeleton in full amethyst armor, which dropped its chestplate:
I finally did get the cave lit up though and mined around a thousand ores from it, can't say if that was worth so many mobs though if you wanted to mine one out for the ores:
This shows some of the scaffolding I made to reach the ceiling of the cave to light it up and mine any ores I found:
As large as these are the largest possible ravine has a volume of around 425,000 and the largest cave 570,000 (I have not found any seeds with caves this large, I modified CaveFinder to make all ravines and caves the maximum size):
Results found for the area from 992, -112 to 1071, -33:
Found type 2 ravine with length of 336, width of 28, depth of 55, and volume of 266923 at 1032, 29, -72
Results found for the area from 992, 32 to 1071, 111:
Found type 0 large cave with length of 248, width of 42, and volume of 153115 at 1032, 23, 56
Here is a series of renderings/cutaways of both the ravine and cave:
My current base is near the center of the first (surface) rendering, right between the ravine and cave. The next two are horizontally sliced, day and night, then sliced vertically, also day and night, then underground mode:
The same way you can make a darkroom mob spawner; all you need to do is make sure that they can't spawn anywhere else and you can get thousands of mobs spawning per hour as long as the mob cap isn't reached. One time in my first world I came across a ravine which I hadn't previously explored since the only indication of it was a few blocks of sand that had fallen into it and there were no other caves leading to it, with everything else around it explored. There were at least a hundred mobs in it; even vanilla ravines are long enough that you can stand in the center and have more mobs spawn at the ends, which only requires a distance of 24 blocks from the player (48 blocks across; vanilla ravines are 85-112 blocks long). Zombies will also target players from 40-100 blocks away in vanilla 1.6.4 (in TMCW it starts at 30 and increases to 45-60-75 on Easy-Normal-Hard).
I explored the cave I mentioned a couple posts back and while it was not like the other one I still killed more than 300 mobs; these caves can get so large that nearly the entire spawnable area can fit inside them. This one had an enormous lava lake (ocean?) in it, which helped cut down on mob spawning, in a similar manner to the giant ravine, which only had narrow ledges on the sides (the mob spawning algorithm favors large flat areas for maximum spawning) and was wide enough that the water I poured down the sides did not reach all the way to the middle, leaving a strip of lava to light the bottom until I reached it.
Here are some screenshots of the cave, which was by far the largest cave that I've found so far, more than a quarter million air blocks in volume, as well as having the largest lava lake that I've ever seen (in my previous world I found one that was nearly as large):
When including the cave and ravine I explored the day before the total volume that I've explored is more than two-thirds of a million blocks, equivalent to the volume of all the caves and ravines in about 1000 chunks in vanilla:
Results found for the area from 992, -272 to 1071, -193:
Found type 0 large cave with length of 293, width of 60, and volume of 251257 at 1032, 22, -200
As with the cave and ravine, here is a series of renderings of the cave (rotated 180 degrees) and an updated rendering of the whole map I'm exploring (includes the one from a couple days earlier):
I explored the third large cave that I'd found, which turned out to be the second largest circular room that I've found, at 52 blocks in diameter:
There was also a quite dense cave system near the circular room, part of a much larger complex that underlies most of a mesa biome:
All three caves and the ravine can be seen in these Unmined renderings; another large circular room, the one I had the furnaces in, can be seen near the bottom. Between the giant cave at the top and the ravine is a maze cave system, while a circular room cave system is to the south of the huge cave complex near the center:
At a glance, it should be, but you won't get the cave generation from TMCW since Superflat Caves uses its own cave generator, only the biomes, and a few biomes will replace whatever blocks you specify with their own if you enable decoration (for example, Mesa will replace stone, dirt, and gravel with hardened/stained clay and deserts will likewise replace these with sand and sandstone, unless the world is less than 40 blocks deep). Strongholds also generate like they normally do (3 per world between 640-1152 blocks away from 0,0 instead of an infinite number outside of 640) and mineshafts are random (I did leave out the reduction in frequency around 0,0). Villages and temples do generate with the same loot though, which means that you can get every type of wood (all four saplings can be found in blacksmith chests), although many of the tree types cannot be grown since the require the right biome (Plains will give you small oak, big oak, mega forest (2x2), birch, poplar, small spruce, 2x2 spruce, 3x3 spruce, small jungle, 2x2 jungle).
Also, I'm curious as to what you do when playing with my mod, besides fighting mobs; it'd be interesting to see some sort of Survival journal from somebody else (there was one here but they abandoned it after a few entries).
Of course, most of what I do is caving; I explored another giant ravine, one which I found about a week ago but did not explore until now, as well as a combination cave system, the third one I've found so far, and a cluster of large caves.
The ravine was the fourth largest one that I've found so far with a volume of about 183,000; unlike the other large ravines it was higher up and did not have lava at the bottom, with the top rising a few blocks above sea level (but still buried; this makes the ravine slightly larger and deeper than indicated since I do not count anything below y=4 or above y=62):
A look from the top; notice that the void is blue, as it is above sea level:
It would be rather bad if you fell down this one-block hole to the surface:
There were also two other smaller ravines (one see in the second screenshot above) and a mineshaft intersecting it, the latter with its center room right inside it:
Also, this was the last part of the ravine that I lit up (there are no zombies since they all walked away since their pathfinding enables them to find a long way around an obstacle):
I also found what appeared to be a single large cave (compared to normal caves) but after analyzing the area I found that it was actually four separate caves that generated in the same chunk (there is a 10% chance of 2-4 caves instead of just one):
Here are the results of analyzing the area with the ravine and caves; the latter were not particularly wide but their overall length made them much larger than a vanilla cave, which has an average length of 98 and width of 6 (12 for the caves that have a 10% chance of increased width):
Found type 2 ravine with length of 336, width of 23, depth of 49, and volume of 183371 at 1288, 39, 440
Found type 1 large cave with length of 143, width of 12, and volume of 7625 at 1288, 17, 472
Found type 1 large cave with length of 336, width of 12, and volume of 26788 at 1288, 18, 472
Found type 1 large cave with length of 155, width of 9, and volume of 4980 at 1288, 18, 472
Found type 1 large cave with length of 238, width of 12, and volume of 20507 at 1288, 19, 472
What does your mod really include? And would you provide us the download link for this world? cant wait for it!
The OP has a link to the mod which describes most of the main features (most of the stuff for previous versions applies to the latest version, it's a really, really long read).
As far as a download, if you've seen my first world you've seen them all; the only real notable thing about them is the sheer amount of caves that I've explored and resources that I've collected, the only thing I really use my main base for is to store all the stuff that I get (in my first world I actually traded with the villagers in my main base/part of a naturally generated village for diamond gear but in this world I do not use it and amethyst cannot be traded for so they are rather useless after I used them to get Mending). I did put up one of my modded worlds for download before but I actually just used MCEdit to copy my base to a recreated world (what fun is it to explore caves which were already explored and mined out?) and the mod I used back then only made the ground deeper, otherwise being fully compatible with vanilla. My first world is vanilla and can be loaded in any version since 1.6.x, including 1.8+ (the best way to view it would be to enable cheats and go into Spectator mode and fly around underground). Loading a modded world in vanilla is a rather bad idea, though the last time I did this (with TMCWv4) nothing really bad happened (besides disappearing mod items/blocks, except those which use metadata like stones, which will actually be unchanged in 1.8+).
Does Your PC even Lag while creating Large Minecart Rails? (referring to all the worlds).
PS. Yes I have seen your world... I have been exploring the caves since then.
There is no reason why the game should lag with a large rail network; it only has to load chunks as you move around, which is much less resource intensive than generating new chunks (such as by riding a horse or boat; railways will always be within existing chunks); chunks are also only loaded as long as a player is nearby, the only potential issue being a bug with structure-saving (mineshafts are extremely common and the game loads all the structure data for every single mineshaft in the world at once, which causes high memory and CPU usage; for this reason I disabled it in my mod, which has no effects since the game does not actually use it, unlike strongholds or witch huts, and even then only if you load the world in a version with different world generation). I also don't have any issues with hundreds of chests and signs at my main base (they are both tile entities and since I build int he spawn chunks they are always loaded and always being ticked; just to be safe though I started using a single sign to mark a completely filled corridor instead of one sign per chest). This was also on a computer that does not even meet the current minimum system requirements, as of 1.8+ (I've since gotten a better one).
If you opened the world in a newer version it could possibly cause issues as the game needs to convert various things to newer formats (item IDs, tile entity NBT data) and I've heard of people getting lag when loading a world in a newer version, but no lag with a newly generated world.
As far as my mod goes, the most noticeable lag is terrain generation in the mega tree biomes, but I only get some short lag spikes when they generate, more significant is lag caused by fires at the edge of loaded chunks (for whatever reason this causes lag spikes, even as being next to the fire does not; it is highly localized).
It is amazing how many giant caves I've been finding within a single level 3 map; I found the 6th one today, which represents nearly 4 times the average density of such caves, assuming that this is the last one that I find within it (a level 3 map is 4096 chunks, these caves generate once every 2560 chunks on average in most areas for an average of 1.6 per map, slightly less common overall since a couple other caves and strongholds prevent them from generating too close to them):
I'm still not done with the current map, to the east. The map to the south did not have any giant caves, only the more common smaller variant, same for the center map, though most of that map (about 78%) is covered by the near-origin exclusion zone (they can only generate in the corners):
On average an area equivalent to 9 (3x3) level 3 maps contains about 14 of these caves (13 if you exclude the area near the origin), so I've found about half of what I may expect to find within such an area if I explore all of it.
I found another zombie in (full) amethyst armor, the second zombie and fifth mob that I've found with it:
I ran into it while exploring a massive cave system which was Swiss cheese from the surface down; despite the density it was not a colossal cave system, or what you might call a naturally generated one, like the several similarly dense cave systems I found in my first world:
I found another Extreme Hills, with peaks reaching y=160, the second highest terrain that I've found in this world so far, and still around 30 blocks below the maximum height of terrain in my mod, which can be reached in Savanna Mountains (most likely), Extreme Hills, Forest Mountains, and possibly in any other biome with mountains, which can get at least as high as y=160, and even just regular hills (e.g. Forest Hills), can exceed y=128, except for Mesa and Volcanic Wasteland, which are limited to the original height limit of y=128 so they have flatter peaks, and any "flat" biomes like Plains:
I also found another pink sheep, the second one that I've seen in this world, making it the only world where I've found more than one and in two very different locations (in my first world I found several in the same area but vanilla has a bug that causes sheep colors to be the same within entire regions instead of being tied to individual chunks, which I fixed, keeping their color based on the world seed. Most other mob variations are not tied to the world seed at all; found a village with a Mending villager (as an initial offer)? They won't offer the same trade if you recreate the world. By fixing the bug I probably made it easier to find pink sheep since each pack within a region has a separate chance of having one, instead of all packs being the same; even though you'll probably only find one at a time you can breed them with any other color to get more):
A few days ago I mentioned that I'd found yet another giant cave; well, it turned out to be much, much more than a simple cave; at first I thought it was several caves that had generated close together but then I saw this:
There is only one place you'll find giant mushrooms underground - I found the rarest and most extreme form of cave - a giant cave region, which is basically a cave system made up of giant caves, stretching across an area around 300 blocks across and averaging more than a million air blocks in volume (4-5 times larger than the largest single cave or ravine that I've found), and generating once every 16,384 chunks (a level 4 map; they cover about 2.4% of the area/world when including a 4 chunk exclusion zone around a central 12x12 chunk area where caves generate; most other caves and mineshafts cannot generate within either area):
This is one from a different world:
Note that this includes the lowest 4 layers, and caves are mostly below y=50, so they are more concentrated than indicated (21.5% air):
A full rendering of another world, which shows just how large they are; the area shown is 1500 blocks across:
These are the 10 nearest giant cave regions in the seed "10", with the origin near the center; the closest one in this seed is centered around -750, 400 and the 10th closest around 800, -3100:
This also means that I've more or less completed my goal to find every single type of cave, after 117 play sessions and around 450 hours spent caving. I still have not found another stronghold but that doesn't really matter since they are not really an addition to my mod (except that you can find an unlimited number as far as the world generates).
Here are more screenshots; I spent a good amount of time exploring it but still have a lot to go; even then, it will likely only take a few play sessions to explore it all - the same volume of vanilla caves and ravines would require around 1,800 chunks and around 3 weeks to explore:
If you look closely you can see more giant mushrooms in the distance:
A rare combination - diamond and emerald ore next to each other (probably even rarer than diamond and amethyst since emerald only generates in a few biomes and is less concentrated):
I saw yet another skeleton in full diamond armor, the third one, and 6th skeleton and 17th mob overall with diamond or amethyst:
Also, I came across this in a mineshaft:
I'm also keeping track of what I got from this cave; so far I've mined 4,005 ore, netting 4,248 resources (I crafted about 1,500 torches; other than coal I did not use anything else), killed 451 mobs, and found one dungeon with 50 moss stone and 4 emeralds (they are biome-specific chest loot in Extreme Hills) and a diamond (any iron, etc was combined with drops from ore and bread/wheat was eaten). Dungeons are very uncommon in giant cave regions due to the lack of valid spawning locations; they spawn best when caves are no more than a few blocks high since any openings they connect to can't include the floor or ceiling (maze cave systems are pretty ideal with 4-5 in each of the two I've found, mineshafts are also a good place). The Instant Health potion was dropped by a witch:
Here is an updated list of everything that I've found so far:
Play sessions spent caving: 117
Structures/caves found (by number):
190 normal dungeons
168 ravines (up to 7 intersecting; large ravines counted separately)
60 mineshafts
35 large caves (larger than vanilla, not including giant caves)
28 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
11 double dungeons (a special type, not two dungeons intersecting)
11 large ravines (larger than vanilla)
7 circular rooms at least 34 blocks in diameter (twice as large as vanilla)
7 fossils
6 villages
5 giant caves (>50000 in volume)
4 ravine cave clusters
3 circular room cave clusters
3 circular room cave systems
3 combination cave systems
3 igloos (1 with basement)
3 jungle temples
3 ravine cave systems
3 vertical cave clusters
2 maze cave systems
2 network cave regions
2 vertical cave systems
1 colossal cave system
1 desert temple
1 desert well
1 giant cave region
1 maze cave cluster
1 stronghold (found with Eye of Ender)
1 witch hut
(566 individual structures/caves)
Biomes found (by order found):
Plains (technical biome in Mixed Forest and others)
Mixed Forest
Lake (technical biome in Mixed Forest and others)
Jungle
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (technical biome in Birch Forest)
Desert
Tropical Swamp
Big Oak Forest
Taiga (snowless)
Rocky Mountains
Ice Plains
Roofed Forest
Mesa
Winter Forest
Forest Mountains
Bushlands
Mountainous Desert
Swampland
Hilly Plains
Winter Taiga
Frozen Lake (technical biome in Winter Forest and others)
Mega Tree Plains
Spruce Hills (technical biome in Mega Tree Plains)
Mega Forest
Plains
Forest (technical biome in Plains)
Forest
Lake
Savanna Mountains
Poplar Grove
Mega Mixed Forest
Savanna Plateau
Flower Forest
Extreme Hills
(31 unique biomes)
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher, highest peak in an instance of a biome):
165 (Ice Mountains)
160 (Extreme Hills)
156 (Rocky Mountains)
148 (Savanna Mountains)
139 (Extreme Hills)
130 (Jungle Hills)
128 (Roofed Forest Hills)
Largest cave:
293 blocks long and 60 blocks wide, volume of 251257
Largest circular room:
57 blocks in diameter, volume of 46870
Largest ravine:
336 blocks long, 28 blocks wide, 55 blocks deep, volume of 266923
Largest mineshaft:
757 rails mined (average is 301 per mineshaft)
Other:
3 skeletons in amethyst armor
3 skeletons in diamond armor
2 zombies in amethyst armor
9 zombies in diamond armor
Today (well, yesterday) was my one hundredth play session spent caving, during which time I found a total of 490 different types of caves or structures, mined around 309000 ore, and gathered around 363000 resources (mineral blocks, moss stone, rails, cobwebs, stone bricks, spawners. This does not include what I used, mainly coal, and includes chest loot) or about 5 finds, 3090 ore, and 3630 resources per play session. This is out of a total of 118 play sessions, so about 85% of the entire time I've spent in this world has been caving, a proportion which has increased since I started doing so because I spent the couple weeks getting established.
First, here is an updated list of everything that I've found so far (a few of these were not actually found while caving; the stronghold is the only structure that I wouldn't have found while caving though):
Structures found (by number):
165 normal dungeons
143 ravines (up to 7 intersecting; large ravines counted separately)
55 mineshafts
33 large caves (larger than vanilla)
24 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
10 double dungeons (a special type, not two dungeons intersecting)
9 large ravines (larger than vanilla)
7 fossils
6 villages
5 circular rooms at least 34 blocks in diameter (twice as large as vanilla)
4 ravine cave clusters
3 circular room cave clusters
3 igloos (1 with basement)
3 jungle temples
3 ravine cave systems
3 vertical cave clusters
2 circular room cave systems
2 combination cave systems
2 network cave regions
2 vertical cave systems
1 colossal cave system
1 desert temple
1 desert well
1 maze cave cluster
1 maze cave system
1 stronghold
1 witch hut
Biomes found (by order found):
Plains (technical biome in Mixed Forest and others)
Mixed Forest
Lake (technical biome in Mixed Forest and others)
Jungle
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (technical biome in Birch Forest)
Desert
Tropical Swamp
Big Oak Forest
Taiga (snowless)
Rocky Mountains
Ice Plains
Roofed Forest
Mesa
Winter Forest
Forest Mountains
Bushlands
Mountainous Desert
Swampland
Hilly Plains
Winter Taiga
Frozen Lake (technical biome in Winter Forest and others)
Mega Tree Plains
Spruce Hills (technical biome in Mega Tree Plains)
Mega Forest
Plains
Forest (technical biome in Plains)
Forest
Lake
Savanna Mountains
Poplar Grove
Mega Mixed Forest
Savanna Plateau
(29 unique biomes)
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher):
165 (Ice Mountains)
156 (Rocky Mountains)
148 (Savanna Mountains)
130 (Jungle Hills)
128 (Roofed Forest Hills)
Largest ravine:
296 blocks long, 31 blocks wide, 62 blocks deep (calculated volume of 255799)
Largest cave:
303 blocks long and 38 blocks wide (calculated volume of 116358; combined with another large cave with an overall measured volume of 139928)
Largest circular room:
57 blocks in diameter (calculated volume of 48391)
Largest mineshaft:
757 rails mined
Other:
2 skeletons in amethyst armor
2 skeletons in diamond armor
1 zombie in amethyst armor
8 zombies in diamond armor
3 Notch apples found in dungeon chests
406 mob spawners collected
Here is a list of resources that I mined and collected (counting blocks as individual resources):
Note that I have more of most resources than can be accounted for from ore; in particular, this shows just how little iron I use compared to most players, who build iron farms to get what they need. The discrepancies are due to loot from chests. Aside from amethyst and ruby resources that I have loose in chests are also not counted (around a stack each of everything aside from coal, of which many stacks are in furnaces. I also have 10 emerald blocks, but they were made from surplus from trading).
Also, I've spent a total of 449 hours playing this world, averaging 3.8 hours per play session, relatively higher than I spent in my first world (3.46 hours); in terms of hourly rates I mined an average of 811 ore and collected 950 resources per hour (if you include the coal I spent to make 94800 torches and smelt 85092 iron and gold I collected around 396340 resources, 1041 per hour. Some additional resources were used, such as iron to make 22 anvils (a bit skewed since I can craft a new anvil out of two very damaged anvils, increasing the number crafted). The time spent in this world is well above any other world aside from my first world, which has more than 102 days of playtime and will likely never be surpassed:
Here is a cropped underground map; nearly everything shown here has been explored and there are 8,548 chunks, meaning that I explored about 85 chunks per play session (the stronghold in the upper-left was not found while caving). I most recently explored the area in the upper-right, where a giant cave is clearly visible:
Here are some things I found recently:
A large circular room, measuring 43 blocks in diameter:
Yet another fossil, the 7th one I've found so far (these are as common as they are in vanilla but Mountainous Desert has more caves near to above sea level so they are easier to find; the increased number of caves is to take advantage of the higher terrain and unique underground, which is also found in several other biomes):
In the same desert I found a mineshaft made out of sand and sandstone, even the center room, which normally has dirt (this is actually a side effect of replacing stone, dirt, and gravel in deserts with sand and sandstone):
A very large cave with a giant lava lake:
I found another circular room cave system today, which I've only partially explored but it looks to be quite a bit larger than the last one (denser, with more rooms, as they are all the same size with rooms distributed across a 32 block circular radius):
A few more interesting caves:
Another large cave (this is not actually one of the larger variants as I did not find anything when I checked the area):
All of these were found in the northeastern corner of the first map; I did not explore the area until now because I did not find any caves leading to the area until I'd explored eastwards then northwards, then west into this area. I've actually been returning to my main base instead of the base I made to the east during the last couple trips (I return to whichever one is closer):
A rendering of what I explored up to yesterday; the large circular room can be seen to the right, with the mineshaft above it, while the large cave filled with lava can be seen to the left:
Also, here is another seed, 7020998152397947523, which I got from this thread ("great cave seed" - maybe in 1.7 or later, but certainly not by pre-1.7 standards):
I also used the same seed in vanilla 1.6.4 and 1.11.2 so you can see how caves differ between versions and my mod; TMCW is at the top, vanilla 1.6.4 middle, and 1.11.2 at the bottom and the left side shows all caves below sea level while the right shows caves in the lowest 10 layers above lava level. 1.11.2 is a clear outlier in terms of cave density, while TMCW has many more mineshafts, which are actually more common in vanilla 1.6.4 but only away from the origin, which these maps are centered around (note that what looks like a dense cave near the left side of the 1.7 map is mostly a mineshaft; the right side shows caves below layer 13 (TMCW) or 20 (vanilla), which are equivalent since lava level is 7 layers lower in TMCW, which also has about 13% more caves overall due to the extra space below sea level):
Spawn was in a forest near 97, -194, with a nice view of a large Ice Mountains in the distance:
To the south is a Volcanic Wasteland, one of the rarest biomes and a good place to mine amethyst, which is particularly more common above y=2, and emerald, which occurs in veins in addition to single blocks:
Next to it are these Winter Forest hills (or mountains):
A small Rocky Mountains is to the northeast:
And just to the east of that is the most extreme Mountainous Desert that I've ever seen, topping out at y=161. Despite this, a river winds its way through it with no interruptions, thanks to my modifications that let them cut through just about any terrain (Rocky Mountains is the exception, and that is because it replaces river with itself, one lower in elevation):
You'd never know it but at 874, -502 there is a desert temple with some nice loot, entirely underground:
(watch out - those are trapped chests. There are also zombie and skeleton spawners in the main part of the temple)
At -412, 453 is an interesting formation rising to y=164:
They don't call then Extreme Hills for nothing; these Extreme Hills around -550, -300 rise to as high as y=156:
To the southwest of spawn is a Mesa and Mega Mixed Forest:
Around -360, 680 is a large Ice Mountains range, peaking out just above y=130:
Also, there is a village around 475, 640:
Here is a list of the largest caves and nearest cave systems within 1536 blocks:
Here is a closer look at the largest caves found:
This cave nearly breaks the surface, close to 60 blocks deep:
The largest circular room:
And ravine:
Just to the west of the ravine is a large Ice Spikes biome, which is relatively rare (they can generate as full-size biomes in cold climate zones, as well as small sub-biomes within Ice Plains, which are much more common):
Also, while flying around I spotted this cave opening around -350, -550, which leads to a very large cave (7th largest within +/- 1536 blocks) and ravine (3rd largest within +/- 1536 blocks):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I can't wait for the 10th zombie with Diamond armor!
I've now found 30 "regular" biomes, with the latest being Flower Forest, recognizable from the number of flowers; they are also hillier than regular forests, with the height variation of normal hills sub-biomes but no sub-biomes themselves:
I still have quite a few regular biomes left to find, including one vanilla 1.6 biome, Extreme Hills (Mushroom Island as well but that is not a "regular" biome; by "regular" biomes I am also not including rivers and beaches, Ocean is also arguably in its own class). Notably, there has been a lack of emerald-bearing biomes in my world so far (Extreme Hills, Forest Mountains, Volcanic Wasteland) and I've only found 53 emerald ore so far in a single small Forest Mountains, making it over 25 times rarer than diamond, compared to 4.7 times rarer in my first world (both of which in turn have been rarer when compared to more common ores; in my first world I mined 585 times more coal than emerald while in this world I've mined 3934 times more, or 6.7 times less emerald). These biomes are not rare per se; two are "common" biomes with a 3.571% chance of generating within normal climate zones while Volcanic Wasteland is "rare", with a 0.893% chance; they can also generate in cold and hot climate zones with a reduced chance (due to more cold/hot biomes). Conversely, Jungle (a common biome) has been pretty common and I've found 2-3 of many other biomes. The rarest (full-size) biome is a variant of Ice Hills (more common as small sub-biomes within Ice Plains) which has Ice Spikes as an edge biome, with a 1% chance (per randomly chosen biome) of generating within cold climate zones, which are around 20% of landmasses (the only one I've seen outside of testing is around 1530, -2050 in the seed 10).
I've really been tearing through the underground lately; I've already gone as far east as x=1300:
I'm currently exploring some sort of massive cave system/complex of caves which includes multiple large caves and at least 7 ravines, including another extremely large ravine on the easternmost edge (I have not taken any screenshots of anything yet).
Also, I forgot to mention in my last post the amount of XP that I averaged per play session, which has been slightly more than 5000, and about 1330 per hour, which is enough to make a level 30 enchantment every 37 minutes, or 136 minutes to get enough to repair my most expensive item (sword, which costs 48 levels or 3012 XP; the total XP cost, excluding enchanting, has been at least 43008 XP for 14 repairs, more since I often repair items when I have more than enough levels. This is far less than I've spent to repair my pickaxe, at around 198107 XP for 91 repairs at 43 levels or 2177 XP each. The equivalent items in vanilla (with the same damage and speed) would have cost around 16350 and 70176 each, and less if you took advantage of the 12% anvil bonus as these are full item repairs (the sword requires using a slightly damaged sword to reduce the cost to 39 levels, which is still more than enough to restore full durability).
In addition, I've made a significant update to the CaveFinder utility - it now measures the actual volume of caves by generating them and counting the number of air blocks (which are actually 1s in an array initialized with 0s for ease of counting; instead of 16x16x256 chunks I use a 400x400x59 array, equivalent to 25x25 chunks between lava and sea levels; a single large array avoids having to run the cave generator multiple times with a significant speedup). Some caves have decreased in size while others have gotten larger, with errors of +/-50% or more in some cases, while ravines and circular rooms were close to the calculated values except when they were partly below/above lava/sea level:
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?
As it happens, I just saw another one, the 9th one in diamond armor and 10th in either diamond or amethyst (which is rarer than diamond, thus both together are equivalent to diamond or better):
It didn't drop anything but here is a screenshot of when I killed it the chance of a fully armored mob dropping anything in my mod is only about 18.5%, with a 5% chance per piece (the chance any drops is 1 - 0.95^4; for amethyst the base chance is 10% or 34.4% for a full set, and vanilla uses an 8.5% chance for 30%):
Also, I previously mentioned that I'd been finding many large caves lately, part of a giant cave system, and I took some screenshots (I actually saw the diamond armored zombie while doing so, it came out of a cave I'd missed):
This was the largest cave, and where I saw the diamond zombie:
This is one of the large caves that I saw a couple weeks ago (post #99); I only now got around to exploring this area. Part of the cave opening was covered with water, hence the shelf of land covering it (in vanilla you'd find a vertical wall going down to the bottom along a chunk boundary that runs through the cave since the cave generator excludes entire vertical sections if any water is encountered and cannot see across chunk boundaries):
The other cave nearby:
There were three large caves, plus several "normal" large caves (the larger caves that you occasionally find in vanilla), and several open spaces formed by the sheer density of caves. Here are details on the three largest caves:
The indicated volume is the actual measured volume between layers 4-59 (not considering whether they intersect other caves, which reduces the overall volume; in particular, while 1.7 has 23% fewer caves than 1.6.4 the underground air volume is only about 10% less because cave systems are less dense, reducing overlap).
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?
Not only that, I'm currently exploring a massive ravine which appears to rival the largest one that I've found so far:
Both of these are under the mesa biome I built my current base in; the ravine crosses the entire biome from east to west and beyond, with the eastern end going into an Extreme Hills biome, the first one that I've found (and just after mentioning that I had not found one yet):
As if that weren't enough, there are two other huge caves nearby, also unexplored, for a total of six within about a third of a level 3 map, a quite extraordinary concentration of such caves, which on average generate once every 2560 chunks, an area about twice the size:
These are the first three giant caves that I found; I included their type so I can see whether they are the largest variant or not (type 0, with type 1 being a much more common smaller variant which can get just as large but very rarely); they were all type 0, confirming that they were the rarest variant:
Notably, the second cave listed had a calculated volume of only 51651 but was actually nearly twice the size (these are actual measured volumes). The three caves mentioned in my last post were all type 1; besides their size the difference between these is how they generate, with type 1 generating like normal caves (starting from one end of a main cave with two branches at the other end) and type 0 generating as three caves from the start (equivalent to a normal branched cave) with two of the caves (branches) having their own branches (a large unbranched main cave, two primary branches and four secondary branches).
I've also found another circular room cave system, the third one so far; all three have been found within a relatively short time with the first two just to the south and north of the current map:
Another relatively large circular room, 37 blocks in diameter, with a bank of furnaces smelting for scale (I regularly set up furnaces in a secured area to smelt iron and gold so I can craft them into blocks, as otherwise I'd have to return a couple times per play session):
Most of the furnaces have half a stack of iron or gold in them; this is what I got from them, as well as from the circular room after I mined it out (the stack of resources and unsmelted ore):
Also, I repaired my pickaxe prior to emptying the furnaces; I had 55 levels, spent 43, and ended up with 29:
Here is a rendering of what I've explored so far within the current level 3 map; the mesa biome my base is in also had a lot of caves in it, much more than the other two that I've found (one is at the bottom center, with only a small amount of stained clay visible). Part of the massive ravine can be seen just to the left of top-center (I've explored the sides about halfway to the bottom), with a maze cave system further left; the massive cave mentioned at the beginning would be to the left of that once I light it up. Also, another giant ravine, which I mentioned a while back, is at the far right, where a spiral staircase to the surface can be seen, marked for returning to in the future so I can explore it:
Also, here is another seed, "7123971208804842550":
Some screenshots of biomes and landforms:
To the south is a Mountainous Desert with a desert temple; a Winter Taiga lies to the west of the desert:
Further south I came across Savanna Mountains, reaching as high as y=178:
The floating bit above the rightmost peak is at y=170, otherwise the rightmost two peaks reach y=156:
Then I noticed this nearby, at -715, 375 - a ravine that goes from the surface down to lava level - not just a large ravine but one of the largest possible:
At -850, 50 I came across two stacked ravines (both normal-sized) which also go all the way through the ground:
A fossil was exposed by one of the ravines:
The ravines were on the eastern edge of another Mountainous Desert, with a large relatively flat area (partly regular Desert, which is a sub-biome):
At around -670, -740 is a triple mountain biome intersection; Extreme Hills, Savanna Mountains, and Rocky Mountains, the latter an uncommon case where no snowy peaks generated:
The Extreme Hills was rather, well, extreme; the highest bits went up to y=183:
There is a village in the Ice Plains to the northwest of spawn:
To the north of the village is a Mega Mixed Forest, with Roofed Forest separating it from another Mega Forest:
Another village is to the southwest of spawn, also in an Ice Plains (both are at -250, -333 and -730, 180):
This was the largest cave found within 1536 blocks of the origin; the ravine I came across while flying around was the second largest ravine and just slightly smaller than the largest, which was twice as far away, so I did not show it (the other large ravine seen on the cave map was the third largest and is at 56, 24, -632; all of these had volumes of 270000-324000 with the large cave being the largest):
Also, I used this same seed with "NoExclusion" and separately generated each type of cave so you can see them separately:
All caves (similar to the above but caves within 512 blocks of the origin are different):
All caves, in the lowest layers:
Caves only, pretty much like what the underground was like prior to Beta 1.8:
Mineshafts only; considering that they are only about 60% as common as vanilla they are a quite major part of the underground in vanilla:
Ravines only; they have the same overall frequency as vanilla with about 3 ravines per mineshaft (2 in vanilla):
Special cave systems only:
Large caves only:
Large circular rooms (larger than the largest in vanilla) only:
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 explored the ravine first, which was fairly uneventful as far as mobs go; it was slightly narrower but longer than the previous largest ravine with a volume of about 267,000:
These two screenshots were taken from near the middle of its length:
Then came the cave... never before have I ever seen so many mobs; they just kept on coming in rentless waves, spawning as quickly as I could kill them and I could see more spawning in the far reaches of the cave, which basically was the only place they could spawn since I'd explored everything else around it; only when night fell (presumably) did they slacken off enough for me to make some progress in lighting up the cave:
When all was said and done I'd killed 796 mobs; I'm not sure exactly how many were in the cave but when I looked at the inventory stats after having killed a good number it said 246 and I estimate that I easily killed at least 600 in this one cave alone:
This event also pushed the total number of mobs that I've killed in this world to over 40,000, averaging 321 per play session, and likely much more when only counting time spent caving:
One of the mobs was a skeleton in full amethyst armor, which dropped its chestplate:
I finally did get the cave lit up though and mined around a thousand ores from it, can't say if that was worth so many mobs though if you wanted to mine one out for the ores:
This shows some of the scaffolding I made to reach the ceiling of the cave to light it up and mine any ores I found:
As large as these are the largest possible ravine has a volume of around 425,000 and the largest cave 570,000 (I have not found any seeds with caves this large, I modified CaveFinder to make all ravines and caves the maximum size):
Here is a series of renderings/cutaways of both the ravine and cave:
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?
How did all those mobs spawn in that cave?
The same way you can make a darkroom mob spawner; all you need to do is make sure that they can't spawn anywhere else and you can get thousands of mobs spawning per hour as long as the mob cap isn't reached. One time in my first world I came across a ravine which I hadn't previously explored since the only indication of it was a few blocks of sand that had fallen into it and there were no other caves leading to it, with everything else around it explored. There were at least a hundred mobs in it; even vanilla ravines are long enough that you can stand in the center and have more mobs spawn at the ends, which only requires a distance of 24 blocks from the player (48 blocks across; vanilla ravines are 85-112 blocks long). Zombies will also target players from 40-100 blocks away in vanilla 1.6.4 (in TMCW it starts at 30 and increases to 45-60-75 on Easy-Normal-Hard).
I explored the cave I mentioned a couple posts back and while it was not like the other one I still killed more than 300 mobs; these caves can get so large that nearly the entire spawnable area can fit inside them. This one had an enormous lava lake (ocean?) in it, which helped cut down on mob spawning, in a similar manner to the giant ravine, which only had narrow ledges on the sides (the mob spawning algorithm favors large flat areas for maximum spawning) and was wide enough that the water I poured down the sides did not reach all the way to the middle, leaving a strip of lava to light the bottom until I reached it.
Here are some screenshots of the cave, which was by far the largest cave that I've found so far, more than a quarter million air blocks in volume, as well as having the largest lava lake that I've ever seen (in my previous world I found one that was nearly as large):
When including the cave and ravine I explored the day before the total volume that I've explored is more than two-thirds of a million blocks, equivalent to the volume of all the caves and ravines in about 1000 chunks in vanilla:
As with the cave and ravine, here is a series of renderings of the cave (rotated 180 degrees) and an updated rendering of the whole map I'm exploring (includes the one from a couple days earlier):
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?
That large cave is amazing.
I explored the third large cave that I'd found, which turned out to be the second largest circular room that I've found, at 52 blocks in diameter:
There was also a quite dense cave system near the circular room, part of a much larger complex that underlies most of a mesa biome:
All three caves and the ravine can be seen in these Unmined renderings; another large circular room, the one I had the furnaces in, can be seen near the bottom. Between the giant cave at the top and the ravine is a maze cave system, while a circular room cave system is to the south of the huge cave complex near the center:
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?
Is this mod compatible with Superflat Caves?
At a glance, it should be, but you won't get the cave generation from TMCW since Superflat Caves uses its own cave generator, only the biomes, and a few biomes will replace whatever blocks you specify with their own if you enable decoration (for example, Mesa will replace stone, dirt, and gravel with hardened/stained clay and deserts will likewise replace these with sand and sandstone, unless the world is less than 40 blocks deep). Strongholds also generate like they normally do (3 per world between 640-1152 blocks away from 0,0 instead of an infinite number outside of 640) and mineshafts are random (I did leave out the reduction in frequency around 0,0). Villages and temples do generate with the same loot though, which means that you can get every type of wood (all four saplings can be found in blacksmith chests), although many of the tree types cannot be grown since the require the right biome (Plains will give you small oak, big oak, mega forest (2x2), birch, poplar, small spruce, 2x2 spruce, 3x3 spruce, small jungle, 2x2 jungle).
Also, I'm curious as to what you do when playing with my mod, besides fighting mobs; it'd be interesting to see some sort of Survival journal from somebody else (there was one here but they abandoned it after a few entries).
Of course, most of what I do is caving; I explored another giant ravine, one which I found about a week ago but did not explore until now, as well as a combination cave system, the third one I've found so far, and a cluster of large caves.
The ravine was the fourth largest one that I've found so far with a volume of about 183,000; unlike the other large ravines it was higher up and did not have lava at the bottom, with the top rising a few blocks above sea level (but still buried; this makes the ravine slightly larger and deeper than indicated since I do not count anything below y=4 or above y=62):
A look from the top; notice that the void is blue, as it is above sea level:
It would be rather bad if you fell down this one-block hole to the surface:
There were also two other smaller ravines (one see in the second screenshot above) and a mineshaft intersecting it, the latter with its center room right inside it:
Also, this was the last part of the ravine that I lit up (there are no zombies since they all walked away since their pathfinding enables them to find a long way around an obstacle):
I also found what appeared to be a single large cave (compared to normal caves) but after analyzing the area I found that it was actually four separate caves that generated in the same chunk (there is a 10% chance of 2-4 caves instead of just one):
Here are the results of analyzing the area with the ravine and caves; the latter were not particularly wide but their overall length made them much larger than a vanilla cave, which has an average length of 98 and width of 6 (12 for the caves that have a 10% chance of increased width):
Several renderings of the 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?
What does your mod really include? And would you provide us the download link for this world? cant wait for it!
The OP has a link to the mod which describes most of the main features (most of the stuff for previous versions applies to the latest version, it's a really, really long read).
As far as a download, if you've seen my first world you've seen them all; the only real notable thing about them is the sheer amount of caves that I've explored and resources that I've collected, the only thing I really use my main base for is to store all the stuff that I get (in my first world I actually traded with the villagers in my main base/part of a naturally generated village for diamond gear but in this world I do not use it and amethyst cannot be traded for so they are rather useless after I used them to get Mending). I did put up one of my modded worlds for download before but I actually just used MCEdit to copy my base to a recreated world (what fun is it to explore caves which were already explored and mined out?) and the mod I used back then only made the ground deeper, otherwise being fully compatible with vanilla. My first world is vanilla and can be loaded in any version since 1.6.x, including 1.8+ (the best way to view it would be to enable cheats and go into Spectator mode and fly around underground). Loading a modded world in vanilla is a rather bad idea, though the last time I did this (with TMCWv4) nothing really bad happened (besides disappearing mod items/blocks, except those which use metadata like stones, which will actually be unchanged in 1.8+).
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?
Does Your PC even Lag while creating Large Minecart Rails? (referring to all the worlds).
PS. Yes I have seen your world... I have been exploring the caves since then.
There is no reason why the game should lag with a large rail network; it only has to load chunks as you move around, which is much less resource intensive than generating new chunks (such as by riding a horse or boat; railways will always be within existing chunks); chunks are also only loaded as long as a player is nearby, the only potential issue being a bug with structure-saving (mineshafts are extremely common and the game loads all the structure data for every single mineshaft in the world at once, which causes high memory and CPU usage; for this reason I disabled it in my mod, which has no effects since the game does not actually use it, unlike strongholds or witch huts, and even then only if you load the world in a version with different world generation). I also don't have any issues with hundreds of chests and signs at my main base (they are both tile entities and since I build int he spawn chunks they are always loaded and always being ticked; just to be safe though I started using a single sign to mark a completely filled corridor instead of one sign per chest). This was also on a computer that does not even meet the current minimum system requirements, as of 1.8+ (I've since gotten a better one).
If you opened the world in a newer version it could possibly cause issues as the game needs to convert various things to newer formats (item IDs, tile entity NBT data) and I've heard of people getting lag when loading a world in a newer version, but no lag with a newly generated world.
As far as my mod goes, the most noticeable lag is terrain generation in the mega tree biomes, but I only get some short lag spikes when they generate, more significant is lag caused by fires at the edge of loaded chunks (for whatever reason this causes lag spikes, even as being next to the fire does not; it is highly localized).
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?
It is amazing how many giant caves I've been finding within a single level 3 map; I found the 6th one today, which represents nearly 4 times the average density of such caves, assuming that this is the last one that I find within it (a level 3 map is 4096 chunks, these caves generate once every 2560 chunks on average in most areas for an average of 1.6 per map, slightly less common overall since a couple other caves and strongholds prevent them from generating too close to them):
I'm still not done with the current map, to the east. The map to the south did not have any giant caves, only the more common smaller variant, same for the center map, though most of that map (about 78%) is covered by the near-origin exclusion zone (they can only generate in the corners):
On average an area equivalent to 9 (3x3) level 3 maps contains about 14 of these caves (13 if you exclude the area near the origin), so I've found about half of what I may expect to find within such an area if I explore all of 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?
I found another zombie in (full) amethyst armor, the second zombie and fifth mob that I've found with it:
I ran into it while exploring a massive cave system which was Swiss cheese from the surface down; despite the density it was not a colossal cave system, or what you might call a naturally generated one, like the several similarly dense cave systems I found in my first world:
I found another Extreme Hills, with peaks reaching y=160, the second highest terrain that I've found in this world so far, and still around 30 blocks below the maximum height of terrain in my mod, which can be reached in Savanna Mountains (most likely), Extreme Hills, Forest Mountains, and possibly in any other biome with mountains, which can get at least as high as y=160, and even just regular hills (e.g. Forest Hills), can exceed y=128, except for Mesa and Volcanic Wasteland, which are limited to the original height limit of y=128 so they have flatter peaks, and any "flat" biomes like Plains:
I also found another pink sheep, the second one that I've seen in this world, making it the only world where I've found more than one and in two very different locations (in my first world I found several in the same area but vanilla has a bug that causes sheep colors to be the same within entire regions instead of being tied to individual chunks, which I fixed, keeping their color based on the world seed. Most other mob variations are not tied to the world seed at all; found a village with a Mending villager (as an initial offer)? They won't offer the same trade if you recreate the world. By fixing the bug I probably made it easier to find pink sheep since each pack within a region has a separate chance of having one, instead of all packs being the same; even though you'll probably only find one at a time you can breed them with any other color to get more):
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?
There is only one place you'll find giant mushrooms underground - I found the rarest and most extreme form of cave - a giant cave region, which is basically a cave system made up of giant caves, stretching across an area around 300 blocks across and averaging more than a million air blocks in volume (4-5 times larger than the largest single cave or ravine that I've found), and generating once every 16,384 chunks (a level 4 map; they cover about 2.4% of the area/world when including a 4 chunk exclusion zone around a central 12x12 chunk area where caves generate; most other caves and mineshafts cannot generate within either area):
Note that this includes the lowest 4 layers, and caves are mostly below y=50, so they are more concentrated than indicated (21.5% air):
A full rendering of another world, which shows just how large they are; the area shown is 1500 blocks across:
These are the 10 nearest giant cave regions in the seed "10", with the origin near the center; the closest one in this seed is centered around -750, 400 and the 10th closest around 800, -3100:
This also means that I've more or less completed my goal to find every single type of cave, after 117 play sessions and around 450 hours spent caving. I still have not found another stronghold but that doesn't really matter since they are not really an addition to my mod (except that you can find an unlimited number as far as the world generates).
Here are more screenshots; I spent a good amount of time exploring it but still have a lot to go; even then, it will likely only take a few play sessions to explore it all - the same volume of vanilla caves and ravines would require around 1,800 chunks and around 3 weeks to explore:
If you look closely you can see more giant mushrooms in the distance:
A rare combination - diamond and emerald ore next to each other (probably even rarer than diamond and amethyst since emerald only generates in a few biomes and is less concentrated):
I saw yet another skeleton in full diamond armor, the third one, and 6th skeleton and 17th mob overall with diamond or amethyst:
Also, I came across this in a mineshaft:
I'm also keeping track of what I got from this cave; so far I've mined 4,005 ore, netting 4,248 resources (I crafted about 1,500 torches; other than coal I did not use anything else), killed 451 mobs, and found one dungeon with 50 moss stone and 4 emeralds (they are biome-specific chest loot in Extreme Hills) and a diamond (any iron, etc was combined with drops from ore and bread/wheat was eaten). Dungeons are very uncommon in giant cave regions due to the lack of valid spawning locations; they spawn best when caves are no more than a few blocks high since any openings they connect to can't include the floor or ceiling (maze cave systems are pretty ideal with 4-5 in each of the two I've found, mineshafts are also a good place). The Instant Health potion was dropped by a witch:
Here is an updated list of everything that I've found so far:
Structures/caves found (by number):
190 normal dungeons
168 ravines (up to 7 intersecting; large ravines counted separately)
60 mineshafts
35 large caves (larger than vanilla, not including giant caves)
28 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
11 double dungeons (a special type, not two dungeons intersecting)
11 large ravines (larger than vanilla)
7 circular rooms at least 34 blocks in diameter (twice as large as vanilla)
7 fossils
6 villages
5 giant caves (>50000 in volume)
4 ravine cave clusters
3 circular room cave clusters
3 circular room cave systems
3 combination cave systems
3 igloos (1 with basement)
3 jungle temples
3 ravine cave systems
3 vertical cave clusters
2 maze cave systems
2 network cave regions
2 vertical cave systems
1 colossal cave system
1 desert temple
1 desert well
1 giant cave region
1 maze cave cluster
1 stronghold (found with Eye of Ender)
1 witch hut
(566 individual structures/caves)
Biomes found (by order found):
Plains (technical biome in Mixed Forest and others)
Mixed Forest
Lake (technical biome in Mixed Forest and others)
Jungle
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (technical biome in Birch Forest)
Desert
Tropical Swamp
Big Oak Forest
Taiga (snowless)
Rocky Mountains
Ice Plains
Roofed Forest
Mesa
Winter Forest
Forest Mountains
Bushlands
Mountainous Desert
Swampland
Hilly Plains
Winter Taiga
Frozen Lake (technical biome in Winter Forest and others)
Mega Tree Plains
Spruce Hills (technical biome in Mega Tree Plains)
Mega Forest
Plains
Forest (technical biome in Plains)
Forest
Lake
Savanna Mountains
Poplar Grove
Mega Mixed Forest
Savanna Plateau
Flower Forest
Extreme Hills
(31 unique biomes)
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher, highest peak in an instance of a biome):
165 (Ice Mountains)
160 (Extreme Hills)
156 (Rocky Mountains)
148 (Savanna Mountains)
139 (Extreme Hills)
130 (Jungle Hills)
128 (Roofed Forest Hills)
Largest cave:
293 blocks long and 60 blocks wide, volume of 251257
Largest circular room:
57 blocks in diameter, volume of 46870
Largest ravine:
336 blocks long, 28 blocks wide, 55 blocks deep, volume of 266923
Largest mineshaft:
757 rails mined (average is 301 per mineshaft)
Other:
3 skeletons in amethyst armor
3 skeletons in diamond armor
2 zombies in amethyst armor
9 zombies in diamond armor
3 Notch apples found in dungeon chests
2 pink sheep
452 mob spawners collected (190 dungeon, 22 double dungeon, 240 cave spider, 4 per mineshaft)
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?
How do mobs spawn like that in a small spot?