Minecraft Forums

1.6, aka the Horse Update, was released on July 1, 2013 and I updated to it on the same day (back then the only mod I used was Optifine, which is not essential for me) - and have been exclusively playing the same version ever since, mostly as 1.6.4 (1.6.4 is the last patch update for 1.6 and is identical to 1.6.2 in all respects unless you plan to update a world to 1.7+ since it only added saving of structures, and even then only if you use a witch farm or have not found a stronghold yet, neither of which are relevant to me. 1.6.2 fixed some bugs and added naturally spawning baby zombies) - I have never really played (never made a Survival world) in any newer version, only playing them to check something out, most recently 1.12 to verify a claim that caves had been changed (still the same since 1.7, which in turn decreased the size of cave systems from 1.6). The only other version that I've played on is 1.5, as 1.5.1-1.5.2, which is very similar to 1.6 as far as my playstyle is concerned.

One reason why I never upgraded is due to changes to the underground in 1.7, which made cave systems much smaller (about a third of the size and twice as common), mineshafts and dungeons much rarer (both about 40% as common, close to the decrease in cave system size), which significantly hampers my playstyle, where I regularly explore entire cave systems within a single 3-4 hour play session - cave systems larger than almost anything that I've seen in 1.7+ (the largest possible single cave system in 1.7+ is more than 150 times rarer than a cave system of the same size or larger in 1.6, which generates about once every 150 chunks).

Here is a comparison between caves in the seed "-123775873255737467", the seed for my first world; a few caves (circled) match between versions but you can see that cave systems are much smaller in 1.7+:

A comparison between caves only in 1.6 and 1.7 over an area of 4000x4000 blocks (cave density is much more variable in 1.6 and an area the size of the spawn chunks, as shown above, can have fewer caves than 1.7 or many more than average):

A couple AMIDST maps showing that mineshafts are much less common in newer versions (in either case they are less common close to the origin):

Another reason I never upgraded is because until about a year ago I had a potato computer which failed to meet even the minimum system requirements for 1.8+, which were significantly increased from older versions (where it met the recommended aside from RAM, which I never had any issues with), and even 1.7 had a bizarre FPS stuttering issue where every 10th frame (regardless of any settings) would have a long delay, enough to halve FPS (apparent FPS was 1/10 of this since your eyes notice the stuttering); sometimes it would go away if I paused and/or took focus away from the game with similar performance as 1.6. Due to the length of time that passed and other factors by the time I got a computer which could run current versions with no issues I had little interest in updating.

Also, I started using mods shortly after 1.6 came out, first mods that other people made, then later my own; in late 2013 I started making more complex mods, including changing world generation beyond just changing caves (making them even more variable than 1.6), which eventually lead to what is now "TheMasterCaver's World", a comprehensive mod on the scale of a modpack which modifies and adds to many aspects of the game, creating what I consider to be my own version, separate from 1.6 or any other version - IMO when you use a mod like this the version that it is based on is irrelevant (it includes various features from versions as recent as 1.10; many of these are altered from vanilla though so it is not simply like adding my own features to 1.10) and it is much easier to keep updating it for the same version than rewriting thousands of lines of code for a newer version all the time.

Another issue with updating to newer versions is what happens to older worlds unless you use mods to revert changes to world generation - you may as well just play that older version instead of going through all that trouble (many new features would also be lost since they are biome-specific); while I have made numerous worlds for each update to my mods, which have world generation that is as different as 1.6 and 1.7, I have one world which is special - my first world - by far my longest-played and the only world which I've kept over the years:

The final factor is my playstyle - even of all the blocks and items available in 1.6 I do not use the majority of them - for example, I have never used horses because I do not explore the world in a way that would make them useful and a rail system has many advantages when you are traveling between bases (e.g. you do not need to control a minecart beyond starting and transferring to another at intersections, when in an enclosed tunnel mobs are not an issue, they are faster though uneven or forested terrain unless you fix it up, which is probably more time-consuming than digging a 1x2 tunnel and laying track). The same would apply to elytra if I played in 1.9+. The only block added in 1.6 that I consider to be essential is the block of coal (prior to 1.6 I only mined what coal I needed; since then it has been about 2/3 of all ores I mine so that's quite a major increase); otherwise, I've used hay bales to compactly store wheat and have only used leads a few times (I have some horses tied up at my main base) and have never used hardened clay (or any clay-based block) for building except in a modded world when I built a "base" in a mesa biome ("base" since all my secondary bases are little more than places to store resources between trips back to my main base and restock on food and wood).

As you can see here, I pretty much only use/craft/mine blocks and items which are directly related to caving, which takes up the vast majority of the time I spend in a world (86% in the case of my most recent world, well over 90% for my first world):

(also, you will lose your stats/progress if you update from 1.6 to 1.7 unless there is a converter than can convert 1.6 stats to 1.7)

Now, I'm curious if anybody else still plays on an older version and why; my case is probably fairly unique in that I have never even attempted to play on a newer version, instead of trying it out, then downgrading, or returning to an old version later on.

Congratulations. Good thing I switched to 1.6 in 2016.

I still have my first world when I first played Minecraft PC ( I first played Minecraft 360 in 2013 and got PC edition in late fall 2015), I just need to find it hidden in my old .minecraft (I have it somewhere in my main user account).

EDIT: I just realized I cleaned up my account couple months ago and deleted it and other old world, now I miss that iron ore jackpot(I got lucky)

Quote from ZaffreAqua»

The shots in the first spoiler alone are why I despise 1.7+ terrain. Look at how much more variety there is on the surface in the shots to the left. For a game called minecraft you'd think they'd put more encouragement and emphasis on caves.

I did not mention it but another annoying thing is that Mojang could not be bothered to add in customization, either to caves or structures (which Superflat has had for years), or biomes in 1.8, although the biome changes are not really a reason why I don't like 1.7. These changes, especially to caves/structures would be very easy to implement (for caves you only have to replace a couple hard-coded values with variables, which can then be changed with sliders. Structures already have these but only Superflat can change them). Biomes would be a bit more difficult and I actually do prefer to have a bit of biome grouping, just not to the extent that 1.7 has, particularly the size and relatively few biomes in each climate zone.

For example, these are the worlds that I've made with "TheMasterCaver's World"; in my most recent world I found 31 unique biomes within a 2500x2500 block area - and after four worlds I still have not found a couple biomes I added in the first version. The version used for the last world shown added a sort of climate system which changes the frequencies of extreme "hot" and "cold" biomes:

I don't have any one version I stick to, but I've never spent much time in anything later than 1.9. I find most newer additions to be cheesy, and I prefer pre 1.7 terrain. I like 1.6 too, but I have mixed feeling about some features such as regional difficulty. I don't cave anywhere near as much as you, but I agree that the older caves are much more interesting. The terrain is probably one of my biggest reasons for playing old versions. I don't play the game a whole lot though anyways.

Quote from ShelLuser»

First I'll share the cave structure from my most recently generated world (1.12). I dunno about you but that stuff looks huge, look at all those tunnels intertwining and such... If you're not careful you could be getting into an almost endless cave system...

This is why I prefer using a mapping utility that gives you a clear view of a wide area like Unmined - the gold standard for comparing cave generation between versions, and yeah, even the caves in 1.7+ can appear to be large when you are actually exploring them - indeed, I find that caves appear to be much smaller when flying through them in Creative, as this comment on a huge (modded) cave that I explored shows:

Quote from TheMasterCaver»

I think I've underestimated just how vast a giant cave region is; I've never actually explored one before and caves seem a lot smaller when flying through them in Creative, although it looks like I am getting to the end; mobs are becoming more concentrated and I've explored what appears to be the entire perimeter, with a huge chamber near the center left to explore.

Do also realize that 1.6 has a much larger variation in cave density than 1.7+ - if you look closely some areas in 1.6 can actually have fewer caves than 1.7 - even over a 16 chunk radius - with a variation of nearly 10:1 - compared to only half that for 1.7+:

A comparison of another seed, "7020998152397947523" in 1.6 and 1.7+ (claimed to have huge cave systems in 1.7):

And that's why I do not rely on personal observations.

Even better, I made a utility that searches a seed for the densest cave systems; here is a comparison using the seed "10" over a 128 chunk radius around the origin (about what I've explored in my first world when excluding chunks around the edge of the world) - the areas found in 1.6 are about twice as dense:

Also, I just finished exploring this cave system in my first world, which took me only two play sessions to explore - which is far from the densest cave system found in the seed above but still 40% denser than anything found in 1.7:

Your impression that there are more ravines in 1.7 is also just flat-out wrong - they have the exact same frequency in both versions and are even in the same locations (at the starting point, which is at one end), their curvature only differs because the RNG sequence was altered when they changed a value from 128 to 256 (despite the fact that ravines will never generate above y=127; their vertical distribution, as well as that of caves, was not changed).

I still play on 1.7.10 since it has the most stable modpacks and a few no longer updated mods that I couldn't live without, namely Ted80's old world gen mod. IMO since 1.7 the updates haven't added anything worthwhile for survival gameplay.

Quote from NightSky64»

Why would you rather have better caves than more features. It's not like caves are much different.

Did you even see the last part of my post? Elytra, even horses, are utterly useless to me; I have NEVER used at least half of all the blocks and items available in even 1.6.4; how do you even craft redstone repeaters or sticky pistons (which I've only taken out of jungle temples as trophies and just store them in a chest. I've used the dispensers, but only as a "chest" with 9 slots, not as dispensers)?

Also, stop claiming that caves are not different - give me a seed that you claim to have "big caves" and I'll show you just how different they are. Have you ever mined 2,700 rails (more than I used altogether in my most recent world) from a single cluster of mineshafts (plus over 12,000 ores and other resources)? Or explored 1000+ blocks though an interconnected chain of caves without surfacing or mining to find new ones?

Here is a look at an area I've recently explored including the aforementioned complex of 8 mineshafts, plus another nearby, from which I mined 16,000+ resources:

Also, here is another seed that I recently looked at because it was claimed to have a huge cave system going on for "miles":

I think the differences should be clear by now, and none of the seeds that I've compared were selected for having unusually large caves near spawn in 1.6.4 - if anything, the opposite - caves in 1.12 are more scattered with smaller, less dense cave systems, and also less distinct cave-free regions (likely the reason people think they are more common). Just because individual caves themselves still generate exactly the same, and the overall amount of air underground is only about 10% less in 1.7+ does not mean that they are the same overall (in fact, you only need to change a couple numbers in the code to perfectly replicate 1.6.4 cave generation in 1.12 or vice-versa).

Why do you think that I've made mods that further enhance the underground by adding more varied and bigger caves (even "TheMasterCaver's World" is mainly about the underground, not the biome generation and all that, and I don't even use most of the features I added and may as well just make the world all one biome that does not have villages, which are more of a distraction than anything else since I feel the need to build a wall around them to protect them, and not like possibly finding some diamonds in the chests, including temples, makes them worthwhile? Actually, I even did that in one of my "experimental worlds"; I used the seed for my first world set to Large Biomes and used NBTExplorer to change the spawn point to be in the middle of a large Extreme Hills biome so that is all I saw in that world).

Not to mention that as I mentioned in the OP I'd mod a newer version to replicate 1.6.4 world generation - all of it, not just the underground - if I were to ever upgrade my first world; so much for hardened clay (it does exist in 1.6 but I've never bothered crafting any), mansions, ocean monuments, and all the other biome-dependent features they've added. Make a new world? I sometimes think that making other worlds is a bit pointless; just imagine if I'd spent all of my playtime on my first world, which has seen around half of the total time I've spent playing. Even if I reach the point where hundreds of chests full of resources start to cause lag I can just spread them out around my main base so they are outside of the spawn chunks and not all loaded at once (and really, there is no reason why I can't just store most of them at my secondary bases; the only resources that I really use any of are coal and rails and most of the coal I use is consumed while caving; I never convert any of the blocks I've stored away back to resources).

In other words, everybody should know by now that nothing will ever change my mind - after all, it has been over four years.

Quote from NightSky64»

Elytras and horses aren't the only things added in the past updates. Many new stuff were added, changing the game allot. Many blocks, mobs, structures, biomes, items... Barely (if any) cave change is nothing compared to the updates.

Like what? Those funny-looking blocks you get from smelting terracotta (stained clay)? Why would I use those?

You could build that in Alpha (well, Ender chests are 1.3+). I never travel out of my way to find anything except for a stronghold.

Yeah:

Quote from Aurell»

Though your architecture is hideous.

Quote from Adversity»

I'd assume because he doesn't really build much, his sole build on the world is very simplistic. As seen below it's pretty much just a box, the rest is all on the first page...

Like I said, my playstyle is a major factor in why I have not upgraded.

Well, I have used stained clay in building one of my bases - only because the location I chose for it happened to be in a mesa biome and I collected it while clearing an area for it - not that it was any different:

Likewise, I've built my main bases out of quartz since I mine it for the XP and may as well use it; on the other hand, the one in my first world has been practically unchanged for more than 4 years despite being haphazardly slapped together over time and not being much more than what you see above (at least my later bases are more organized but most players would upgrade their bases after that much time has passed and their building/planning skills improved). Same for my railways; I just dig a 1x2 tunnel for them, not even bothering to decorate the walls as any others do (why spend 3-4x longer on something you don't even see most of the time. Some people even decorate or tidy up the caves they have explored, and not because they make them their home...).

I could easily mod in most of the new stuff that has been added but have not precisely because I do not use them, and even blocks like the new stone types are just to make the underground a bit more varied (I made it so they drop cobblestone unless you use Silk Touch; guess what I do not have on my main pickaxe?), and a lot of the rest has been added for fun and to show off my own ideas of how things could be implemented.

And you keep denying all the evidence I post showing the differences in caves - you just can't miss the differences (assuming you even looked at the spoilers; maybe I'll stop using spoilers so you can't miss them).

Quote from NightSky64»

Glazed Terracota is not the only thing added in all of the newer updates. There are many other things you probably don't know about.

Also, you compare your progress in a modded world with unmodded ones.

I'll just save TMC some time and mention that just perhaps, he has different tastes than you? I don't understand it either, but it's simply his playstyle. He has played in more recent versions but just hasn't found any of the new features fun, so he'd rather work on his own world in the same version so it can't be corrupted. He is one of the most technically minded posters on this forum, and being a modder, he probably knows more about 1.12 than you do. His mods are pretty light as well, and they keep the spirit of the original Minecraft very well.

TMC, I do wonder, just how much do you find your playstyle fun? Is caving a time killer? ("I don't have anything else to do/play, so I might as well work on extending my records") Or do you find it to be a really fun experience? ("Hey, TMC, you want to play the new Elder Scrolls game?" "Nah, those caves are calling to me!") Do you prefer an uninterrupted caving experience, getting annoyed by mob attacks, or does the thrill of danger make it all worth it?

Cool to see you've got your own thread for this now. Must be relieving to only need to copy a single link rather than copy/paste or write all this every time.

I myself am on 1.12 because while I enjoy resource gathering and caving to some degree, I enjoy exploring the surface and building above-ground. It's hard to be indifferent to any block when you may need it to build something. And nothing I have disliked has been enough to say "yeah, I don't want bugfixes, future features, or the ability to play with my friends anymore."

Out of curiosity, under what conditions would you update to the newest version? I understand that there are several parts of the game in 1.7-1.12 that you have criticized, but other than underground customization, what would need to be changed/fixed/improved?

Quote from jdc997»

I'll just save TMC some time and mention that just perhaps, he has different tastes than you? I don't understand it either, but it's simply his playstyle. He has played in more recent versions but just hasn't found any of the new features fun, so he'd rather work on his own world in the same version so it can't be corrupted. He is one of the most technically minded posters on this forum, and being a modder, he probably knows more about 1.12 than you do. His mods are pretty light as well, and they keep the spirit of the original Minecraft very well.

TMC, I do wonder, just how much do you find your playstyle fun? Is caving a time killer? ("I don't have anything else to do/play, so I might as well work on extending my records") Or do you find it to be a really fun experience? ("Hey, TMC, you want to play the new Elder Scrolls game?" "Nah, those caves are calling to me!") Do you prefer an uninterrupted caving experience, getting annoyed by mob attacks, or does the thrill of danger make it all worth it?

As far as mods go, I have only ever created one world in vanilla, my first world, and even that has been lightly modded; I removed torches from mineshafts so a mapping utility that I use does not map unexplored mineshafts (it looks for torches underground and renders a small area around them; I even modified the utility to make it better, as seen in the lower-half here) and made it so that they do not generate in dense cave systems (one of my biggest pet peeves, in addition to mineshafts overlapping other mineshafts; I recently explored 8 such mineshafts, an impossibility in my modded worlds which also change how they are placed), and added a couple blocks to help with carrying rails and cobwebs (until recently I just crafted string into wool but that is like not using Silk Touch to mine emerald ore, as emeralds themselves are not very valuable and easily obtained from trading; without much effort I've obtained nearly three times as many emeralds from trading as from mining).

As for why I cave so much it is the main fun in the game for me; I even save it for the "end-game" as a major goal to work towards and in some of my earlier worlds I just skipped over all of that by using MCEdit to copy my base over so I could get right to the point. Mobs are not just a distraction, they are part of the fun, which is why my "inventory stats" mod includes the number that I've killed in the current session, including detailed stats on each common Overworld mob:

In the most recent version of TMCW I even modified mob spawning/despawning mechanics to increase the density of mobs around the player; they spawn/despawn within 96 blocks instead of 128, and cranked up the spawn rates of mob spawners, to as often as 6 mobs every 5-10 seconds (vs 4 every 10-40 in vanilla; spawn rates depend on the type of mob), as well as made spawners keep counting down even when they are "inactive" so the spawn mobs as soon as you come within range, and take longer to mine, balanced around an Efficiency V diamond pickaxe (it is a bit underwhelming when you can run up to a spawner and break it before it has a chance to spawn anything; when first generated they have a delay of 1 second before the first spawn cycle but while caving you can easily come close enough to activate them before finding them much later). In fact, I even modified the spawner logic in my first world to halve the maximum delay when a spawner is loaded and added the other changes (without altering the save data).

Also, many of the features in TMCW represent my own ideas of how they could have implemented features; for example, new biomes, and in particular, the "climate system"; here is a rendering of my most recent world:

There are 31 unique biomes there, not including hills, rivers, edges, etc, and covering the entire range of climates (there are "climate zones" in a sense but they just make hot/cold extremes more common and exclude the opposite extreme, much of the world allows nearly any biome to generate) - for comparison, here is the same seed as seen in 1.7+, covering the same area - while it is only 2048x2048 blocks it takes me around half a year to explore this much and I've only explored more in my first world (about half of a 6144x6144 block area):

Even with only 7 common biomes vanilla 1.6.4 is more interesting than that; just plains, forests, roofed forest, extreme hills, and a jungle (which is actually reasonably sized; ice plains, mega taiga, and mesa are also excessively large since they can get as large as an entire 1000-2000+ block wide climate zone). There is also more variation in terrain height, with nearly every non-flat biome (plains, etc) being able to exceed y=128 and multiple biomes with mountains able to reach y=160 or higher (the max height of terrain is y=192, set so you still have a decent amount of space to the height limit).

Of course, the same is also true of the underground, compared to either vanilla version; I modify various cave generation parameters within 16x16 chunk regions (moreso in a new update I've been working on) and add in larger variants of caves and ravines as well as new types of caves and cave systems:

These are some of the more interesting things that I found:

These are all still much smaller than the largest caves possible (1.7+ has the exact same size variation as 1.6.4 but with 77% as many caves. The volumes shown here are based on calculated values which assume that a cave does not overlap itself or go above ground level/below lava level (it would be far too slow to actually measure 1 billion chunks worth of caves), which can also form chambers wider than than the maximum width shown):

Of course, that's not counting a giant cave region, which has a volume of around 1.2 million and is essentially a cave system scaled up in every aspect except for ground depth:

Even such a huge cave only took me 5 (closer to 4) play sessions to explore, although that is not comparable to the same volume of vanilla caves:

Also, some biomes replace stone, as well as dirt and gravel, with biome-specific blocks to a depth of around y=40; biomes with higher terrain have extra caves above sea level, which are otherwise less common since normal caves are 7 layers deeper down:

Also, to get an idea of how obsessed I am with Minecraft it is literally the only game that I've played for more than four years; even the most dedicated Minecraft YouTubers have at least occasionally played other games during/after that time (which fuels claims that the game is dying or people are losing interest in it). Minecraft is also the only game that I've bought; before I found it I played free Flash games on sites like Newgrounds; my original username and skin were based on a character in the game Happy Wheels, which I stopped playing not long after I found Minecraft; I first used the name "TheMasterCaver" on these forums, then I changed my IGN to it when name changes came out (I did not start playing as I do now for a month or two; I even played on a custom map and a Survival Island seed, neither of which involved much caving, if any).

That takes some serious dedication! Lol.

Quote from TheMasterCaver >>

I have never really played (never made a Survival world) in any newer version, only playing them to check something out, most recently 1.12 to verify a claim that caves had been changed (still the same since 1.7, which in turn decreased the size of cave systems from 1.6). The only other version that I've played on is 1.5, as 1.5.1-1.5.2, which is very similar to 1.6 as far as my playstyle is concerned.

When I went caving recently, I couldn't help but feel it had changed. I'm finding cave systems on top of other cave systems, styles of cave generation I've never seen in my many hours of caving in 1.7 through 1.9. I haven't caved all that much in 1.10 or 1.11 (they weren't even out very long before the next version came out!) so it's possible the change occurred earlier. Also possible is that I found a rare cave system. But that seems unlikely as the changes seem to persist out past that cave system and into other areas.

At one point I found a very large cavern, larger even than those shown in this old forum thread:

Possibly... largest CAVE in MINECRAFT 1.8?

Here's the cave after using torches to light it up:

It may not excite you, MasterCaver, but it's really a step apart from what I'm used to and I think there must have been some stealth change to cave generation at some point recently.

There is an abandoned mineshaft running through this area, but rather than cut through everything else, it seems these caves have cut right through it. I've found at least 3 small pieces of it completely cut off from the rest of the structure. One piece is isolated from the rest by a few chunks. I've checked in spectator mode and verified that I'm not missing any of the structure. After exploring the entire bit that survived terrain generation, I have to say it is not even half the size of the abandoned mineshafts I'm used to.

All of these caves and mineshaft parts cut through a stronghold. Now I'm used to strongholds meshing oddly with caves and ravines, but I haven't experienced cave systems spawning right on top of each other very often, abandoned mineshafts are always large and sprawling, and they rarely get chopped off by cave systems. The large cavern has, I count, twenty different cave units protruding into it, five of which are coming through the ceiling. Another five come into an upper level which initially made a seven block high cliff, preventing access without breaking or placing blocks.

It took me over an hour just to light up the cavern, I spent more than half of the time fighting off swarms of mobs coming at me from all directions, including right out of the ceiling. It was a gauntlet, at times it was difficult to advance faster than the mobs pushed me back. In that cavern alone, I collected more than a full stack of most basic mob loot items. I didn't manage to shut off the siege until over half of the cave system had been explored. The whole bit was actually fairly small, with the cavern taking up a significant fraction of it.

Here's a video which shows the cavern and cave system plus some of the weird terrain around the cave and stronghold from spectator mode:

Quote from reaverofdarknes1»

It may not excite you, MasterCaver, but it's really a step apart from what I'm used to and I think there must have been some stealth change to cave generation at some point recently.

Every time somebody says this I compare the latest version to 1.7.2 and I see the exact same caves - absolutely no changes whatsoever (not counting cave openings in deserts and mesas, which is simply due to adding more blocks that they can cut through) - which I've also confirmed by looking at the code (incidentally, my first post on these forums was to give proof that 1.7 changed cave generation):

In fact, the only real difference in the code between 1.6.4 and the latest version is a change to two hard-coded values which determine the size and chance of cave systems - editing them back to 1.6.4 perfectly replicates that version's cave generation (ravines are a bit different due to a change in a value from 128 to 256 but this only affects their curvature; their position, altitude, starting direction, and size are otherwise the same).

Even mineshafts are still the same; the only change in 1.7 is that they are 40% as common and any mineshaft (outside of mesa biomes in 1.10+, and that may only affect their altitude) that exists in 1.7+ exists in the same configuration as in 1.6.4, as seen in the seed "-77415187845230931" at around 320, -175:

The largest possible single cave (not cave system!) in any version is 112 blocks long with the main cave extending for 83 blocks before branching into two branches at right angles which each continue for the remainder of the length; branches are always 4-5 blocks wide, and up to 27 blocks wide (assuming the cave branches at 50% or more of its full length), and the overall number of caves did not decrease that much in 1.7+; in fact, since cave systems are much less dense and ravines (with about 1/3 as much air volume overall as caves) were unchanged the decrease in underground air volume is even less. Here is a chart of the width distribution of caves in 1.6.4; 1.7+ is the same except that caves are 77% as common (multiply chunks by 1.3; the table gives figures for each map zoom level plus 3x3 level 3 maps, representing the maximum distance I explore in most of my worlds):

It took me over an hour just to light up the cavern

An hour? I consider that to be a small cave system; the average cave system (yes, average) in 1.6.4 takes more than a full 3-4 hour play session to explore with more than 3,000 ores mined. The largest? This is the largest cave system I found in my first world - far from the largest that I've seen in any world (and arguably not the largest in this world depending on how you define a cave system, such as whether a large network of highly interconnected cave systems (but still separated enough to identify them) is a single cave system):

Likewise, a large mineshaft complex? I recently mined more than 16,000 resources from one in my first world, including more than 1,000 rails in two sessions each:

And that's not the largest one either; in the same world I found one that was twice as large, combined with a huge cave system.

Here are screenshots I took using MCEdit, plus some other caves, to try to show just how vast caves are in 1.6.4 (which again means cave systems, not individual caves); what you see is only a tiny part of the world:

Also, these renderings I often post of my world?

To help put the scale of those into perspective here is how large the world is - more than 6000x6000 blocks, nearly 90,000 chunks, and with more than half a million torches (all placed by me except for a handful in villages; mineshafts were modified to remove them so they do not render on the cave view, which only renders caves with torches in them) and enough obsidian (mostly from me pouring water on lava) to cover more than 3,100 chunks (about 892x892 blocks):

There is an abandoned mineshaft running through this area, but rather than cut through everything else, it seems these caves have cut right through it.

That is due to MC-105035; the changes made to mineshafts in 1.10 so they do not generate above the surface in mesas often affects mineshafts even when deep underground because they apparently added the code used for all mineshafts, not just ones in mesas, and it is buggy, this also ruins Superflat worlds with floating mineshafts (MC-103559); caves do not and never have been able to cut apart any kind of structure since they generate in an entirely separate stage of terrain generation (the cave generator operates on the raw data produced by the terrain generator before it is used to initialize a chunk with all other features being added when a chunk is populated; in my mods I even let caves cut through all blocks except for water and bedrock with no issues. Strongholds and dungeons fake this by not overwriting air where there should be walls, unless it is the portal room, and anything inside (such as chests and doors) generates unless there is water or lava in the way).