The reduced air exposure for diamond ore generating is a baffling change in caves and cliffs part 2. Caves are better than they've ever been, and yet the best way to get diamonds is to tediously strip mine at the lowest level possible. They've even made that worse now with the increased time to mine deepslate than stone. Why can't we get diamonds from exploring caves? what creative decision made this be the case? I want to explore the new caves, but it's just not worth it!
just this snapshot? or more snapshots that the latest one? so far i have found more diamonds in cave now with the latest snapshots. however i am still laddering down to the lower levels on this latest snapshot and i did look over the new ore chart. no comment on it yet.
Caves are massive enough you'll run into diamonds quite often still, at least more than I've encountered before. Mining deepslate isn't very fun in my experience, even if it is technically more viable.
If you want the highest chances while caving, consider exploring underwater caves as the air exposure rule doesn't include water.
snapshot 1.18.0.22 beta. laddered down to level 14. took a while. first tunnel of 60 length had no iron yet. then second tunnel 90 degrees of by my ladder had iron in two blocks, about 10 and a little farther had another 4. then laddered down to -7. in a tunnel 60 long found 9 diamond. then another tunnel 60 long and found nothing except for redstone and iron. that was the first redstone i found. there was more diamond than redstone this time. the way i play finding ore was acceptable. i am glad to find the diamond ok. i have found no caves yet or haven't found water yet.
Mojang seems afraid that ores will be too easy to find in the larger caves but my experience says otherwise:
TMCW World1
Coal 2225 2069
Iron 787 778
Redstone 109 112
Gold 84 94
Lapis 31 34
Diamond 14 16
Emerald 5 4
Total Ore 3256 3107
Rails 86 277
Cobwebs 36 114
Moss Stone 97 129
Grand Total 3476 3628
These are resources mined per play session (as blocks); I averaged slightly more ores in TMCW, with much larger and more varied caves, but more resources overall in World1 (slightly modified from vanilla 1.6.4 as I prevent mineshafts from generating in areas of high cave density, with around 20% removed); the reduction in ores could entirely be due to the increase in non-mineral resources. Interestingly, I found more rarer ores per session in World1, though the distribution of caves is not the same (lava level is also 4 instead of 11 with rarer ores adjusted downwards, but with more in the layers above lava level to offset the increased depth. Obviously, emerald also depends on the biome distribution, in TMCW mountain/plateau biomes also have more caves near to above sea level and to a lesser extent, iron). Both worlds also had a similar play session length (about 3.6 hours over the periods analyzed).
TMCW does have about 33% more ore exposed per chunk but this is clearly offset by the increased area you need to cover (i.e. ore exposure per block exposed is about the same as vanilla*), plus it is harder to extract ores from the ceilings of larger caves, as well as having to deal with the greater number of mobs in them (I've killed upwards of 600 mobs in a single giant cave and 1,900 in a "giant cave region", the largest single underground feature in TMCW; the latter did yield over 15,000 ores but the ratio of mobs/ore was higher than average, as was the hourly rate).
*Note that ores are more common in newer versions (up to 1.17, with no major changes to ores yet), a change made in 1.8 (the Wiki's current figures are similar to my analysis of a 1.8 snapshot, a bit higher for coal but that may be due to the terrain they analyzed; for the same reason 1.6.4 has slightly more coal and iron than what the Wiki used to state when oceans are excluded).
Also, here are charts of what I collected over 100/61 days (I'm currently working towards 100 days in World1); the main difference is that the amount of day-day variability is higher in TMCW, consistent with more underground variation, and mineshaft-related resources are much higher in World1:
I made a world when 21w39a came out. I did a bit of branch-mining at Y -54, with exceedingly poor results. After that, I mostly just strip-mined for building materials (deepslate/stone), which yielded extremely little in terms of ores. Pretty much all resources I found was by exploring caves in the vicinity of world spawn - which are downright massive, including two extensive mineshafts, one around Y 15, another at Y -50. Even with 'reduced air exposure', I found a lot of stuff, including about a stack and a half of diamonds, all of that from exposed veins.
In recap, I think this update is going to kill off resource mining as activity. It is just not worth the time anymore - but with new cave sizes, caving for resources yields a lot.
It seems Mojang haven't learned their lessons. This is not an RPG game, how many times does it need to be repeated to them? the only RPG element it has might be that it has XP, levels and level required to enchant. But at its core it's a sandbox/survival game.
I could forgive the excessive tedium if it involved something like overleveling a character and building their stats beyond what was needed to have a good chance of winning a fight against an enemy or group of enemies, you know, becoming literally overpowered that it felt like you had god mode on. But there is simply no excuse for this, I don't have the exact figures on me, but judging by the numerous complaints based on our experiences with 1.17/1.18 experimental and also the numbers TMC had given there is enough evidence to suggest strip mining has become a repetitive and non rewarding task, it's just the sort of thing I had been concerned about for many months, diamonds had got nerfed, it wasn't that easy to mine from the start, it was already one of the rarest resources in the game that could only be mined closed to bedrock.
for the type of projects I do, and perhaps you do also, we need diamonds, so we can make multiple super durable shovels that didn't need repairing too often. We don't just use diamonds for combat or fighting hostile mobs, it's also used to collect materials and change the landscape so you can build up your town. Of course you can use Iron shovels but they don't have anywhere near the amount of durability diamond shovels do, 250 vs 1561. I've suggested the addition of steel alloy raising tool durability to 750 points, as a compromise for Iron tools lackluster durability, but nobody except friends and anyone on this forum which is not affiliated with Mojang listens to me on that one, so we're not getting this material in an update.
Instead of forcing this feature on everyone it should've just been a custom world feature, or some type of alternate mode that challenges players who have a glutton for punishment. Still though I don't recall games that are overly tedious being well received in reviews, in fact these types of games more often than not do get bad reviews. Why? because no one enjoys monotonous gameplay, or in this case mining for hours and not getting even one job done. I've just generated a 1.17 world for a friend to play on and it took him hours just to find one set of diamond ores in his side of the strip mine, not a stack, just one group of naturally generated diamond ore. Keep in mind diamond is needed for armour, not only tools.
Mojang seems afraid that ores will be too easy to find in the larger caves but my experience says otherwise:
TMCW World1
Coal 2225 2069
Iron 787 778
Redstone 109 112
Gold 84 94
Lapis 31 34
Diamond 14 16
Emerald 5 4
Total Ore 3256 3107
Rails 86 277
Cobwebs 36 114
Moss Stone 97 129
Grand Total 3476 3628
These are resources mined per play session (as blocks); I averaged slightly more ores in TMCW, with much larger and more varied caves, but more resources overall in World1 (slightly modified from vanilla 1.6.4 as I prevent mineshafts from generating in areas of high cave density, with around 20% removed); the reduction in ores could entirely be due to the increase in non-mineral resources. Interestingly, I found more rarer ores per session in World1, though the distribution of caves is not the same (lava level is also 4 instead of 11 with rarer ores adjusted downwards, but with more in the layers above lava level to offset the increased depth. Obviously, emerald also depends on the biome distribution, in TMCW mountain/plateau biomes also have more caves near to above sea level and to a lesser extent, iron). Both worlds also had a similar play session length (about 3.6 hours over the periods analyzed).
TMCW does have about 33% more ore exposed per chunk but this is clearly offset by the increased area you need to cover (i.e. ore exposure per block exposed is about the same as vanilla*), plus it is harder to extract ores from the ceilings of larger caves, as well as having to deal with the greater number of mobs in them (I've killed upwards of 600 mobs in a single giant cave and 1,900 in a "giant cave region", the largest single underground feature in TMCW; the latter did yield over 15,000 ores but the ratio of mobs/ore was higher than average, as was the hourly rate).
*Note that ores are more common in newer versions (up to 1.17, with no major changes to ores yet), a change made in 1.8 (the Wiki's current figures are similar to my analysis of a 1.8 snapshot, a bit higher for coal but that may be due to the terrain they analyzed; for the same reason 1.6.4 has slightly more coal and iron than what the Wiki used to state when oceans are excluded).
Also, here are charts of what I collected over 100/61 days (I'm currently working towards 100 days in World1); the main difference is that the amount of day-day variability is higher in TMCW, consistent with more underground variation, and mineshaft-related resources are much higher in World1:
So they made a boring game as a "fix", congratulations.
It wouldn't be the first time a game developer did something like this which probably wasn't even play tested.
Moving diamond layer further down than the previous bedrock layer as well as deepslate taking longer to mine than stone, is already a considerable nerf, don't you agree? but no, Mojang weren't satisfied with that result and insisted on trolling their fans with this griefing update of theirs by making diamond not generate anywhere near as often as it did before near bedrock layer.
The wow factor of the new cave systems quickly loses their appeal when you consider the fact that ores take much longer to reach, more than double the time often case. Part of the reason you go caving is to mine ores, if I wanted to just look at terrain structures all the time I'd load a world in creative mode.
Not even Fortune enchantment makes up for this madness.
We could've had more neutral and hostile mobs as a compromise to add more challenge to survival, or even more environmental hazards like hypothermia in cold climate biomes in Overworld, making another use for leather as I had suggested one time, so no one armour type does everything,
but instead we get this, and the result? as evidenced on this forum and this thread in particular, no one is happy about it.
Gotta say, I kinda find myself warming to the concept. I never liked mining much, but diving to Y 11 and doing branches was a very time-efficient way of getting all kinds of resources in early game. But it was helluva boring. At the same time, caves were generally very dark and mob infested, and generally took a lot more time to get resources needed.
Now, mining is effectively dead. Caves, however, are massive, more interesting, and generally better lit which often keeps mobs from spawning and makes exploration less stressful. Enormous amount of exposed surface makes caving for resources actually quite lucrative. My current 1.18 world started at 21w39a, I literally did zero resource mining. And the enormous caves under my base still got a ton of uncollected exposed ore should I need it.
Gotta say, I kinda find myself warming to the concept. I never liked mining much, but diving to Y 11 and doing branches was a very time-efficient way of getting all kinds of resources in early game. But it was helluva boring. At the same time, caves were generally very dark and mob infested, and generally took a lot more time to get resources needed.
Now, mining is effectively dead. Caves, however, are massive, more interesting, and generally better lit which often keeps mobs from spawning and makes exploration less stressful. Enormous amount of exposed surface makes caving for resources actually quite lucrative. My current 1.18 world started at 21w39a, I literally did zero resource mining. And the enormous caves under my base still got a ton of uncollected exposed ore should I need it.
Which completely defeats the point of it being called Minecraft. There is a reason it has "mine" in the name, it's like Jeb doesn't even understand Notch's vision of the game. If he did he wouldn't be punishing people for strip or branch mining with these asinine updates.
The last few replies to this thread seem to be in direct contradiction to the topic; how does reduced air exposure benefit caving and kill off branch-mining?
Also, exactly how efficient is it to go caving in 1.18 (obviously, I'm not going to play in it just to check)? Today I mined 3885 ores in 3 hours and 10 minutes - that's a rate of 1227 per hour, or more than one every 3 seconds:
Of course, the underground in 1.6.4 is a completely different experience from 1.7-1.17, the only versions the majority of players have ever played on - back then people were complaining about the frequency and size/density of caves and other underground features (the average cave system was 2.8 times larger and denser, with a much higher chance of merging into larger complexes, and mineshafts were 2.5 times more common, with the majority directly intersecting at least one other mineshaft):
It seems to me that almost every time I attempt to build an underground mine network or structure, I run into a GIGANOURMOUS MONSTER cave network. I'm talking large enough to spend half an IRL day on, fuel the world's furnace demands with coal, and fill chests with iron BLOCKS just by spelunking alone.
Running Cartograph and Minecraft X-Ray scans for the 10 experimental worlds I generated recently shows that in numerous chunks, the frequency of Air blocks actually somehow outnumbers the Stone. Around the 30 altitude mark lies vast expanses of Abandoned Mineshafts and interconnected caves, spanning in some cases over 3 kilometers long in a continuous network.
How does it make the game too easy? Well, I can just walk around or dig for 10 minutes, find a cave system, and walk out 10 minutes later with a stack of iron and 3 stacks of coal. There's no point in mining anymore, and in fact, mining would just be disrupted because you would hit caves every few minutes. Caves and ravines aren't special anymore, they're just annoying now. I look in my chest of coal and iron, and it just feels wrong. I'm not proud of having so much resources, because it doesn't feel like I actually worked for them. All I did was accidentally find a cave, and now I have more resources than I'll ever need.
Another flaw of the current generator is the underground generation. There are simply too many caves, and this problem is existent in every world, just like our height variation problem. Often, I find myself bored in-game, because within the first five minutes of a newly created world, I'm already set for life because I found a cave that extends on and on. Literally, we can now find stacks of iron ore and enough diamond to last us half a year within the first hour of gameplay!
The last few replies to this thread seem to be in direct contradiction to the topic; how does reduced air exposure benefit caving and kill off branch-mining?
It does not.
The new ore distribution and deepslate mining speed is what makes branch-mining significantly less effective.
The new cave generation, and new light sources, combined with new mob spawn rules (i.e nothing will spawn within 14 blocks of lava or within 6 blocks of glow lichen) is what makes caving significantly more effective.
Reduced air exposure decreases effectiveness of caving, but not near enough to offset the above two factors.
The new ore distribution and deepslate mining speed is what makes branch-mining significantly less effective.
The new cave generation, and new light sources, combined with new mob spawn rules (i.e nothing will spawn within 14 blocks of lava or within 6 blocks of glow lichen) is what makes caving significantly more effective.
Reduced air exposure decreases effectiveness of caving, but not near enough to offset the above two factors.
The resources being further down than on previous worlds in addition to deepslate taking longer to mine than stone is the only downsides with regard to mining this update should have entailed, but instead Mojang have proven that they can abuse their power and grief you by forcing in an update like this by also nerfing ore distribution severely, which evidently by some others here not just myself, isn't well received, but there's nothing we can do about it, we can hope Mojang reconsiders their decision, but sometimes it's hopeless, it's similar to Jeb's attitude toward gold being renewable off Drowned Zombies, although he was the one who implemented it to begin with, now he hypocritically backstabs his fans by removing the feature all for the sake of making Drowned Zombies drop copper, seriously who even asked for this? nobody here did, he already removed the crafting recipe for the Notch apple which was enough of a nerf to anything gold related, this shows nothing in the game is sacred and anything can happen, but I don't consider this to be a good thing, because taking a scatterbrained approach to game development rarely helps anything.
If you're on Java you at least have the option to just load an older version.
Legacy console players don't have to put up with this either, as the last update for that edition was Aquatic, which was in my opinion one of the best updates besides the End update. Bedrock edition users on the other hand are stuck with an inferior version of the game, bedrock edition is the most optimized version performance wise, but due to lack of content parity and no official launcher system, we have to put up with whatever updates we're given, I'd love to be able to make a custom server that was still vanilla, but was version locked, so achievements are still switched on for survival mode, but we get to block an update if there is more we dislike about it than like. The new caves themselves are awesome, so are the new materials like deepslate as well as the increased build height, but the screwed up ore distribution negates this in my opinion.
I wish "air exposure" didn't mean inside cave walls but instead inside the deeper parts of the cave, farthest away from the entrance. This would give players the motivation to explore caves and also make it worth it.
If this idea were to be added instead of whatever the hell we have now, it would incentivize people to go deep into caves for rewards, also this idea would go really well with the upcoming Warden mob because eventually you'd run into it and want to avoid it.
The way caves are built, there isn't really a defined entrance and exit in practice.
It does not.
The new ore distribution and deepslate mining speed is what makes branch-mining significantly less effective.
The new cave generation, and new light sources, combined with new mob spawn rules (i.e nothing will spawn within 14 blocks of lava or within 6 blocks of glow lichen) is what makes caving significantly more effective.
Reduced air exposure decreases effectiveness of caving, but not near enough to offset the above two factors.
Still, have you actually tried timing how quickly you can collect ores? As mentioned before, I averaged one ore every 3 seconds (more precisely, 2.93) - that's quite an extreme rate, don't you agree? I can also sustain this indefinitely thanks to the underground being literally one gigantic network; I simply move on from one cave system/mineshaft/ravine to the next entirely through interconnected caves underground:
Even a single cave system (or rather, cluster of cave systems) has thousands of exposed ore; this is what I was exploring yesterday, with close to 4,000 ores mined from it, and I've found cave systems far, far larger (I've mined over 15,000 ores from the largest cave systems and mineshaft networks):
Size 10 cave system at 2832 2752; total number of caves: 21
Size 7 cave system at 2848 2752; total number of caves: 11
Size 9 cave system at 2880 2784; total number of caves: 14
Size 2 cave system at 2896 2800; total number of caves: 2
Size 6 cave system at 2816 2816; total number of caves: 9
Number of cave systems: 5
Initial number of caves: 34; largest cave system: 10 (2832 2752)
Total number of caves: 57; largest cave system: 21 (2832 2752)
Additional circular room caves: 23
Number of small caves: 56; average width is 6.00
Number of large caves: 1; width is 9.49 (2844 0 2757)
Number of circular rooms: 11; average width is 10.86
Additional caves per circular room: 2.09
Average caves per chunk: 0.890625 (64 chunks)
Average altitude: 20.49
Percentage of caves on layers 0 to 9: 38.60
Percentage of caves on layers 10 to 19: 12.28
Percentage of caves on layers 20 to 29: 21.05
Percentage of caves on layers 30 to 39: 17.54
Percentage of caves on layers 40 to 49: 1.75
Percentage of caves on layers 50 to 59: 7.02
Percentage of caves above layer 59: 1.75
Here is a larger scale view of what I've been exploring over the past couple weeks, including cave systems larger and denser than the one I just explored, near the bottom:
I've even had people accuse me of using hacks to find/mine ores more easily or mods to increase ore generation because they could simply not believe that I can find ores that quickly, which IMO just shows how little caving most players actually do (I did find only 8 diamond out of 3885 ores mined, though statistically I'd have found 26 based on diamond being 1/8 as common as redstone, and 19 based on my long-term average; the caves I explored had an unusually low altitude, averaging 20.49 vs 33.25 on average).
Still, have you actually tried timing how quickly you can collect ores? As mentioned before, I averaged one ore every 3 seconds (more precisely, 2.93) - that's quite an extreme rate, don't you agree? I can also sustain this indefinitely thanks to the underground being literally one gigantic network; I simply move on from one cave system/mineshaft/ravine to the next entirely through interconnected caves underground:
Even a single cave system (or rather, cluster of cave systems) has thousands of exposed ore; this is what I was exploring yesterday, with close to 4,000 ores mined from it, and I've found cave systems far, far larger (I've mined over 15,000 ores from the largest cave systems and mineshaft networks):
Here is a larger scale view of what I've been exploring over the past couple weeks, including cave systems larger and denser than the one I just explored, near the bottom:
I've even had people accuse me of using hacks to find/mine ores more easily or mods to increase ore generation because they could simply not believe that I can find ores that quickly, which IMO just shows how little caving most players actually do (I did find only 8 diamond out of 3885 ores mined, though statistically I'd have found 26 based on diamond being 1/8 as common as redstone, and 19 based on my long-term average; the caves I explored had an unusually low altitude, averaging 20.49 vs 33.25 on average).
The topic is about reduced air exposure, so naturally this would mean caving is a less effective way to mine resources than it was before, since exposed ores are also less common. You've been on your world for a long time, so that explains why you've got a large total amount of ores, on top of this, up until now, you haven't showed off any large scale builds in screenshots, which gives us the impression that building isn't your play style.
No offence, but there are some people who can't end up with large surpluses of iron purely because of the fact they use so much of it for their projects. I once had a factory build on an old MC world where the catwalks themselves would consume multiple stacks of iron ingots.
Caves and Cliffs update was purely a survival orientated update, it did almost nothing for builders, because of the wrecked ore distribution it means some resources are a lot more scarce, and there have been posts suggesting Iron Golem farms don't work as efficiently as they used to, meaning more people need to mine for the item. We can't even mitigate this problem with a custom world option, you could theoretically use your old world with 1.17 and keep some of the old ore distribution system, but people who have just started a new world won't have that option, bedrock edition certainly doesn't.
You've been on your world for a long time, so that explains why you've got a large total amount of ores, on top of this, up until now, you haven't showed off any large scale builds in screenshots, which gives us the impression that building isn't your play style.
Completely irrelevant - I'm asking somebody to show much much ore they can collect within a short time period, such as one hour, not how much they have mined over the entire lifetime of a world while doing almost nothing but caving - surely anybody can go caving for a single hour, or even less:
How does it make the game too easy? Well, I can just walk around or dig for 10 minutes, find a cave system, and walk out 10 minutes later with a stack of iron and 3 stacks of coal. There's no point in mining anymore, and in fact, mining would just be disrupted because you would hit caves every few minutes. Caves and ravines aren't special anymore, they're just annoying now. I look in my chest of coal and iron, and it just feels wrong. I'm not proud of having so much resources, because it doesn't feel like I actually worked for them. All I did was accidentally find a cave, and now I have more resources than I'll ever need.
(granted, 10 minutes is nowhere near enough time to extrapolate long-term rates from, even an hour is 6 times the sample size in terms of time)
For example, this person recorded what they mined in a hour of branch-mining (these are drops with Fortune while I measured actual ore blocks, thus only iron and gold are directly comparable):
846 redstone dust (= 94 blocks)
498 coal (= 55.33 blocks, not including coal used for torches or smelting)
218 lapis (= 3.40 blocks)
111 iron ingots (= 12.33 blocks, none needed for repairs)
26 gold ingots (= 2.88 blocks)
25 diamonds (three used subsequently for repairs)
13 emeralds
I also found some statistics for "ABBA caving", where a group of players attempt to collect as many points as possible by mining ores; the amounts shown would be equivalent to a single player over an hour, and presumably staying within the deeper layers (300 iron per hour is about what I collected while I had 1/3 the rate for most other ores since I explore everything underground):
On average, a 20-minute match consisting of 3 players in a good cave system will yield a total of 30 diamond ore, 40 lapis ore, 80 gold ore, 200 redstone ore, and 300 iron ore. for the winner to take away.
Completely irrelevant - I'm asking somebody to show much much ore they can collect within a short time period, such as one hour, not how much they have mined over the entire lifetime of a world while doing almost nothing but caving - surely anybody can go caving for a single hour, or even less:
(granted, 10 minutes is nowhere near enough time to extrapolate long-term rates from, even an hour is 6 times the sample size in terms of time)
For example, this person recorded what they mined in a hour of branch-mining (these are drops with Fortune while I measured actual ore blocks, thus only iron and gold are directly comparable):
I also found some statistics for "ABBA caving", where a group of players attempt to collect as many points as possible by mining ores; the amounts shown would be equivalent to a single player over an hour, and presumably staying within the deeper layers (300 iron per hour is about what I collected while I had 1/3 the rate for most other ores since I explore everything underground):
What's the point in caving when ores are so absurdly difficult to find now? it's not a small difference, it's a difference that has been big enough to initiate multiple complaints on this forum. I even noticed something was off about the mining system even before lizking52011 brought it up to me months ago.
And if what I've been told is correct, deepslate emerald ore is about to be removed in 1.18, which again creates even less incentives to go caving or strip mining. Even without this problem, taking an extra couple of hours just to find a small group of lapis or diamonds completely messes with your mind. And reduced air exposure would imply caving is less effective now than it was in older versions of the game.
I'm going onto different games now, I have a reasonable size game collection that I can get thrills off those, and many of them are not nearly as repetitive and boring as this game. At least some sandboxes don't punish you for collecting resources.
The reduced air exposure for diamond ore generating is a baffling change in caves and cliffs part 2. Caves are better than they've ever been, and yet the best way to get diamonds is to tediously strip mine at the lowest level possible. They've even made that worse now with the increased time to mine deepslate than stone. Why can't we get diamonds from exploring caves? what creative decision made this be the case? I want to explore the new caves, but it's just not worth it!
just this snapshot? or more snapshots that the latest one? so far i have found more diamonds in cave now with the latest snapshots. however i am still laddering down to the lower levels on this latest snapshot and i did look over the new ore chart. no comment on it yet.
Caves are massive enough you'll run into diamonds quite often still, at least more than I've encountered before. Mining deepslate isn't very fun in my experience, even if it is technically more viable.
If you want the highest chances while caving, consider exploring underwater caves as the air exposure rule doesn't include water.
snapshot 1.18.0.22 beta. laddered down to level 14. took a while. first tunnel of 60 length had no iron yet. then second tunnel 90 degrees of by my ladder had iron in two blocks, about 10 and a little farther had another 4. then laddered down to -7. in a tunnel 60 long found 9 diamond. then another tunnel 60 long and found nothing except for redstone and iron. that was the first redstone i found. there was more diamond than redstone this time. the way i play finding ore was acceptable. i am glad to find the diamond ok. i have found no caves yet or haven't found water yet.
Mojang seems afraid that ores will be too easy to find in the larger caves but my experience says otherwise:
These are resources mined per play session (as blocks); I averaged slightly more ores in TMCW, with much larger and more varied caves, but more resources overall in World1 (slightly modified from vanilla 1.6.4 as I prevent mineshafts from generating in areas of high cave density, with around 20% removed); the reduction in ores could entirely be due to the increase in non-mineral resources. Interestingly, I found more rarer ores per session in World1, though the distribution of caves is not the same (lava level is also 4 instead of 11 with rarer ores adjusted downwards, but with more in the layers above lava level to offset the increased depth. Obviously, emerald also depends on the biome distribution, in TMCW mountain/plateau biomes also have more caves near to above sea level and to a lesser extent, iron). Both worlds also had a similar play session length (about 3.6 hours over the periods analyzed).
TMCW does have about 33% more ore exposed per chunk but this is clearly offset by the increased area you need to cover (i.e. ore exposure per block exposed is about the same as vanilla*), plus it is harder to extract ores from the ceilings of larger caves, as well as having to deal with the greater number of mobs in them (I've killed upwards of 600 mobs in a single giant cave and 1,900 in a "giant cave region", the largest single underground feature in TMCW; the latter did yield over 15,000 ores but the ratio of mobs/ore was higher than average, as was the hourly rate).
*Note that ores are more common in newer versions (up to 1.17, with no major changes to ores yet), a change made in 1.8 (the Wiki's current figures are similar to my analysis of a 1.8 snapshot, a bit higher for coal but that may be due to the terrain they analyzed; for the same reason 1.6.4 has slightly more coal and iron than what the Wiki used to state when oceans are excluded).
Also, here are charts of what I collected over 100/61 days (I'm currently working towards 100 days in World1); the main difference is that the amount of day-day variability is higher in TMCW, consistent with more underground variation, and mineshaft-related resources are much higher in World1:
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 made a world when 21w39a came out. I did a bit of branch-mining at Y -54, with exceedingly poor results. After that, I mostly just strip-mined for building materials (deepslate/stone), which yielded extremely little in terms of ores. Pretty much all resources I found was by exploring caves in the vicinity of world spawn - which are downright massive, including two extensive mineshafts, one around Y 15, another at Y -50. Even with 'reduced air exposure', I found a lot of stuff, including about a stack and a half of diamonds, all of that from exposed veins.
In recap, I think this update is going to kill off resource mining as activity. It is just not worth the time anymore - but with new cave sizes, caving for resources yields a lot.
the caves are so big that with normal generation diamonds would bee too common. But i stil agree. Maybe they should make mineshafts have double ores.
Also, it's reduced AIR exposure, which does mean that you can dive into a water cave to find ores. Just bring plenty of doors with you!
even though im a new-ish player i like playng older versions for fun but also new versions
It seems Mojang haven't learned their lessons. This is not an RPG game, how many times does it need to be repeated to them? the only RPG element it has might be that it has XP, levels and level required to enchant. But at its core it's a sandbox/survival game.
I could forgive the excessive tedium if it involved something like overleveling a character and building their stats beyond what was needed to have a good chance of winning a fight against an enemy or group of enemies, you know, becoming literally overpowered that it felt like you had god mode on. But there is simply no excuse for this, I don't have the exact figures on me, but judging by the numerous complaints based on our experiences with 1.17/1.18 experimental and also the numbers TMC had given there is enough evidence to suggest strip mining has become a repetitive and non rewarding task, it's just the sort of thing I had been concerned about for many months, diamonds had got nerfed, it wasn't that easy to mine from the start, it was already one of the rarest resources in the game that could only be mined closed to bedrock.
for the type of projects I do, and perhaps you do also, we need diamonds, so we can make multiple super durable shovels that didn't need repairing too often. We don't just use diamonds for combat or fighting hostile mobs, it's also used to collect materials and change the landscape so you can build up your town. Of course you can use Iron shovels but they don't have anywhere near the amount of durability diamond shovels do, 250 vs 1561. I've suggested the addition of steel alloy raising tool durability to 750 points, as a compromise for Iron tools lackluster durability, but nobody except friends and anyone on this forum which is not affiliated with Mojang listens to me on that one, so we're not getting this material in an update.
Instead of forcing this feature on everyone it should've just been a custom world feature, or some type of alternate mode that challenges players who have a glutton for punishment. Still though I don't recall games that are overly tedious being well received in reviews, in fact these types of games more often than not do get bad reviews. Why? because no one enjoys monotonous gameplay, or in this case mining for hours and not getting even one job done. I've just generated a 1.17 world for a friend to play on and it took him hours just to find one set of diamond ores in his side of the strip mine, not a stack, just one group of naturally generated diamond ore. Keep in mind diamond is needed for armour, not only tools.
So they made a boring game as a "fix", congratulations.
It wouldn't be the first time a game developer did something like this which probably wasn't even play tested.
Moving diamond layer further down than the previous bedrock layer as well as deepslate taking longer to mine than stone, is already a considerable nerf, don't you agree? but no, Mojang weren't satisfied with that result and insisted on trolling their fans with this griefing update of theirs by making diamond not generate anywhere near as often as it did before near bedrock layer.
The wow factor of the new cave systems quickly loses their appeal when you consider the fact that ores take much longer to reach, more than double the time often case. Part of the reason you go caving is to mine ores, if I wanted to just look at terrain structures all the time I'd load a world in creative mode.
Not even Fortune enchantment makes up for this madness.
We could've had more neutral and hostile mobs as a compromise to add more challenge to survival, or even more environmental hazards like hypothermia in cold climate biomes in Overworld, making another use for leather as I had suggested one time, so no one armour type does everything,
but instead we get this, and the result? as evidenced on this forum and this thread in particular, no one is happy about it.
Gotta say, I kinda find myself warming to the concept. I never liked mining much, but diving to Y 11 and doing branches was a very time-efficient way of getting all kinds of resources in early game. But it was helluva boring. At the same time, caves were generally very dark and mob infested, and generally took a lot more time to get resources needed.
Now, mining is effectively dead. Caves, however, are massive, more interesting, and generally better lit which often keeps mobs from spawning and makes exploration less stressful. Enormous amount of exposed surface makes caving for resources actually quite lucrative. My current 1.18 world started at 21w39a, I literally did zero resource mining. And the enormous caves under my base still got a ton of uncollected exposed ore should I need it.
Which completely defeats the point of it being called Minecraft. There is a reason it has "mine" in the name, it's like Jeb doesn't even understand Notch's vision of the game. If he did he wouldn't be punishing people for strip or branch mining with these asinine updates.
The last few replies to this thread seem to be in direct contradiction to the topic; how does reduced air exposure benefit caving and kill off branch-mining?
Also, exactly how efficient is it to go caving in 1.18 (obviously, I'm not going to play in it just to check)? Today I mined 3885 ores in 3 hours and 10 minutes - that's a rate of 1227 per hour, or more than one every 3 seconds:
Of course, the underground in 1.6.4 is a completely different experience from 1.7-1.17, the only versions the majority of players have ever played on - back then people were complaining about the frequency and size/density of caves and other underground features (the average cave system was 2.8 times larger and denser, with a much higher chance of merging into larger complexes, and mineshafts were 2.5 times more common, with the majority directly intersecting at least one other 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?
It does not.
The new ore distribution and deepslate mining speed is what makes branch-mining significantly less effective.
The new cave generation, and new light sources, combined with new mob spawn rules (i.e nothing will spawn within 14 blocks of lava or within 6 blocks of glow lichen) is what makes caving significantly more effective.
Reduced air exposure decreases effectiveness of caving, but not near enough to offset the above two factors.
The resources being further down than on previous worlds in addition to deepslate taking longer to mine than stone is the only downsides with regard to mining this update should have entailed, but instead Mojang have proven that they can abuse their power and grief you by forcing in an update like this by also nerfing ore distribution severely, which evidently by some others here not just myself, isn't well received, but there's nothing we can do about it, we can hope Mojang reconsiders their decision, but sometimes it's hopeless, it's similar to Jeb's attitude toward gold being renewable off Drowned Zombies, although he was the one who implemented it to begin with, now he hypocritically backstabs his fans by removing the feature all for the sake of making Drowned Zombies drop copper, seriously who even asked for this? nobody here did, he already removed the crafting recipe for the Notch apple which was enough of a nerf to anything gold related, this shows nothing in the game is sacred and anything can happen, but I don't consider this to be a good thing, because taking a scatterbrained approach to game development rarely helps anything.
If you're on Java you at least have the option to just load an older version.
Legacy console players don't have to put up with this either, as the last update for that edition was Aquatic, which was in my opinion one of the best updates besides the End update. Bedrock edition users on the other hand are stuck with an inferior version of the game, bedrock edition is the most optimized version performance wise, but due to lack of content parity and no official launcher system, we have to put up with whatever updates we're given, I'd love to be able to make a custom server that was still vanilla, but was version locked, so achievements are still switched on for survival mode, but we get to block an update if there is more we dislike about it than like. The new caves themselves are awesome, so are the new materials like deepslate as well as the increased build height, but the screwed up ore distribution negates this in my opinion.
The way caves are built, there isn't really a defined entrance and exit in practice.
Still, have you actually tried timing how quickly you can collect ores? As mentioned before, I averaged one ore every 3 seconds (more precisely, 2.93) - that's quite an extreme rate, don't you agree? I can also sustain this indefinitely thanks to the underground being literally one gigantic network; I simply move on from one cave system/mineshaft/ravine to the next entirely through interconnected caves underground:
Even a single cave system (or rather, cluster of cave systems) has thousands of exposed ore; this is what I was exploring yesterday, with close to 4,000 ores mined from it, and I've found cave systems far, far larger (I've mined over 15,000 ores from the largest cave systems and mineshaft networks):
Here is a larger scale view of what I've been exploring over the past couple weeks, including cave systems larger and denser than the one I just explored, near the bottom:
I've even had people accuse me of using hacks to find/mine ores more easily or mods to increase ore generation because they could simply not believe that I can find ores that quickly, which IMO just shows how little caving most players actually do (I did find only 8 diamond out of 3885 ores mined, though statistically I'd have found 26 based on diamond being 1/8 as common as redstone, and 19 based on my long-term average; the caves I explored had an unusually low altitude, averaging 20.49 vs 33.25 on average).
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?
The topic is about reduced air exposure, so naturally this would mean caving is a less effective way to mine resources than it was before, since exposed ores are also less common. You've been on your world for a long time, so that explains why you've got a large total amount of ores, on top of this, up until now, you haven't showed off any large scale builds in screenshots, which gives us the impression that building isn't your play style.
No offence, but there are some people who can't end up with large surpluses of iron purely because of the fact they use so much of it for their projects. I once had a factory build on an old MC world where the catwalks themselves would consume multiple stacks of iron ingots.
Caves and Cliffs update was purely a survival orientated update, it did almost nothing for builders, because of the wrecked ore distribution it means some resources are a lot more scarce, and there have been posts suggesting Iron Golem farms don't work as efficiently as they used to, meaning more people need to mine for the item. We can't even mitigate this problem with a custom world option, you could theoretically use your old world with 1.17 and keep some of the old ore distribution system, but people who have just started a new world won't have that option, bedrock edition certainly doesn't.
Completely irrelevant - I'm asking somebody to show much much ore they can collect within a short time period, such as one hour, not how much they have mined over the entire lifetime of a world while doing almost nothing but caving - surely anybody can go caving for a single hour, or even less:
(granted, 10 minutes is nowhere near enough time to extrapolate long-term rates from, even an hour is 6 times the sample size in terms of time)
For example, this person recorded what they mined in a hour of branch-mining (these are drops with Fortune while I measured actual ore blocks, thus only iron and gold are directly comparable):
I also found some statistics for "ABBA caving", where a group of players attempt to collect as many points as possible by mining ores; the amounts shown would be equivalent to a single player over an hour, and presumably staying within the deeper layers (300 iron per hour is about what I collected while I had 1/3 the rate for most other ores since I explore everything underground):
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?
(deleted)
What's the point in caving when ores are so absurdly difficult to find now? it's not a small difference, it's a difference that has been big enough to initiate multiple complaints on this forum. I even noticed something was off about the mining system even before lizking52011 brought it up to me months ago.
And if what I've been told is correct, deepslate emerald ore is about to be removed in 1.18, which again creates even less incentives to go caving or strip mining. Even without this problem, taking an extra couple of hours just to find a small group of lapis or diamonds completely messes with your mind. And reduced air exposure would imply caving is less effective now than it was in older versions of the game.
I'm going onto different games now, I have a reasonable size game collection that I can get thrills off those, and many of them are not nearly as repetitive and boring as this game. At least some sandboxes don't punish you for collecting resources.