Currently, and as you all know, caves provide us with long snaky tunnels that intersect, sometimes they lead up to very large hemispherical rooms where they branch off more. They also provide water and lava springs coming out of the walls, ores all over the place, long drops when the snaky tunnels suddenly point downward, lava and water pools, dungeons, and dirt or gravel pockets.
How about we take it a step farther? Well here are some suggestions, then!
Flooded Caves
I don't think anyone here could disagree that this would add to the experience, cave spelunking just isn't that without having a submerged area with pockets of air in the ceiling, this would make it very difficult to continue exploring caves without some proper equipment. Perhaps there could be an item that would increase breathing time to 30 or more seconds?
Stalagmites/Stalactites
Think of these as the cave's form of long grass, except you collide with them, and falling on them/having them fall on you will cause a lot of damage. When broken they simply give cobblestone, no making spike traps out of stone, (iron would be better). This would be fun for making seemingly harmless drops much more dangerous! Make sure to look around for them.
Loose Ceiling Boulders
I think that there is no better way to reinforce the "Never dig up" rule than this. There would be a roughly 0.5% chance of this rock spawning in all the rocks, it would look exactly the same, however it will not be activated by gravity without the help of being interacted with directly. When touched, or an adjacent block is mine, or hit, (read HIT, not mined) the physics on this block will be activated, and it will come tumbling down, dealing a hefty bunch of damage (~3 hearts). Remember never to dig up!
Webs
There are already webs that were added in 1.5, though I think that these could be made very useful! These could be spawned randomly in clusters and only found in caves, rather at the occasional chance (30% of the time). It also makes spiders spawn around them way more than often. Touching them will not only slow you down like nuts, but will also alert all spiders within 16 blocks of your presence, and they will pathfind their way to you! Breaking them yields 1-3 strings, so it's not all bad!
Bones
Skeletons are something that you don't want to find whilst near lava or pits in caves, which is almost all the time. So why not make it happen way more often? This is the skeleton version of spider's webs. It increases the chance of skeletons spawning near them. However they also give 1-3 bones upon breaking the pile! Walking on them makes a loud clunking/crunching noise which attracts skeletons and tells players about skeletons with all the combined clunking.
Cave Rock
Cave rock is something that will help builders greatly reduce the spawn rate of monsters in their underground homes. It looks like smooth stone with a bit of a darker tint with more random cuts into it. Basically this rock will be made with whatever smooth stone block is directly adjacent to air. This would not only give the look of corrosion, but will affect the monster spawn rate. Monsters are FAR more likely to spawn on cave rock than they are on smoothstone/cobblestone. This will make caves look more cave-like in comparison to excavated areas. So yes, in addition to lighting, retexturing the area will make it safer if you have the time and patience!
Super Caves
These caves can be found at random levels, and will be very much like the caves in dwarf fortress, instead of being snake like, they have a large expansive area on a relatively limited z level, they can have slopes, although they're very gradual ones at that. These super caves will be extremely expansive, with all kinds of things in them like mushroom trees, spider webs/skeleton bones, cave grass or large amounts of water!
Mushroom Trees
When you're deep underground, mining away at seemingly endless amounts of ores, you'll start to run low on wood for your crafting table, bridges, tools and torches. Sooner or later you'll run out, with no way to continue on a cave that you may never find again! So to fix this we could perceive there being mushroom trees underground, providing you with mushroom logs that make can be crafted into wood or used as fancy blue logs for building. The mushroom heads will act like leaves in the sense that they disintegrate, but they cannot be seen through, and emit a faint glow of light (Light level of 7-8?). It'll be useful for stranded miners!
Cracked Rock
This rock is very, very brittle. It looks like smooth stone with the same cracks that you see when mining something. Every time you move on it it has a 5% chance of breaking into cobblestone and dropping you to whatever happens to be beneath. Very hazardous if you're traveling the dark! Will only be able to spawn if there is an air block directly above and below it, The rest of the side must be surrounded by whatever else.
Lava Encrusted Rock
You know ice? It makes you slip, and breaking it turns it into water! Think of the fire version of that. Lava Encrusted Rock deals damage at half a heart every 2 seconds when standing on it unless you are wearing some sort of shoes, whose durability will slowly be drained (without the hurt animation on it). Breaking these will turn them into lava, and they can only be found on the same level as lava pools. Again, another reason not to dig straight down!
Comments, feedback, constructive criticism? I appreciate it all!
Any other comments or ideas that could be added? I'd like to see this gain many good ideas for caves, because let's be honest, that's where all the adventuring fun is at!
You put a lot of thought and hard work into this, bravo. Of the top, one of my biggest bitches is string needs to be spider only, this is to prevent peaceful acquisition of a bow.
How about we take it a step farther? Well here are some suggestions, then!
Flooded Caves
I don't think anyone here could disagree that this would add to the experience, cave spelunking just isn't that without having a submerged area with pockets of air in the ceiling, this would make it very difficult to continue exploring caves without some proper equipment. Perhaps there could be an item that would increase breathing time to 30 or more seconds?
Stalagmites/Stalactites
Think of these as the cave's form of long grass, except you collide with them, and falling on them/having them fall on you will cause a lot of damage. When broken they simply give cobblestone, no making spike traps out of stone, (iron would be better). This would be fun for making seemingly harmless drops much more dangerous! Make sure to look around for them.
Loose Ceiling Boulders
I think that there is no better way to reinforce the "Never dig up" rule than this. There would be a roughly 0.5% chance of this rock spawning in all the rocks, it would look exactly the same, however it will not be activated by gravity without the help of being interacted with directly. When touched, or an adjacent block is mine, or hit, (read HIT, not mined) the physics on this block will be activated, and it will come tumbling down, dealing a hefty bunch of damage (~3 hearts). Remember never to dig up!
Webs
There are already webs that were added in 1.5, though I think that these could be made very useful! These could be spawned randomly in clusters and only found in caves, rather at the occasional chance (30% of the time). It also makes spiders spawn around them way more than often. Touching them will not only slow you down like nuts, but will also alert all spiders within 16 blocks of your presence, and they will pathfind their way to you! Breaking them yields 1-3 strings, so it's not all bad!
Bones
Skeletons are something that you don't want to find whilst near lava or pits in caves, which is almost all the time. So why not make it happen way more often? This is the skeleton version of spider's webs. It increases the chance of skeletons spawning near them. However they also give 1-3 bones upon breaking the pile! Walking on them makes a loud clunking/crunching noise which attracts skeletons and tells players about skeletons with all the combined clunking.
Cave Rock
Cave rock is something that will help builders greatly reduce the spawn rate of monsters in their underground homes. It looks like smooth stone with a bit of a darker tint with more random cuts into it. Basically this rock will be made with whatever smooth stone block is directly adjacent to air. This would not only give the look of corrosion, but will affect the monster spawn rate. Monsters are FAR more likely to spawn on cave rock than they are on smoothstone/cobblestone. This will make caves look more cave-like in comparison to excavated areas. So yes, in addition to lighting, retexturing the area will make it safer if you have the time and patience!
Super Caves
These caves can be found at random levels, and will be very much like the caves in dwarf fortress, instead of being snake like, they have a large expansive area on a relatively limited z level, they can have slopes, although they're very gradual ones at that. These super caves will be extremely expansive, with all kinds of things in them like mushroom trees, spider webs/skeleton bones, cave grass or large amounts of water!
Mushroom Trees
When you're deep underground, mining away at seemingly endless amounts of ores, you'll start to run low on wood for your crafting table, bridges, tools and torches. Sooner or later you'll run out, with no way to continue on a cave that you may never find again! So to fix this we could perceive there being mushroom trees underground, providing you with mushroom logs that make can be crafted into wood or used as fancy blue logs for building. The mushroom heads will act like leaves in the sense that they disintegrate, but they cannot be seen through, and emit a faint glow of light (Light level of 7-8?). It'll be useful for stranded miners!
Cracked Rock
This rock is very, very brittle. It looks like smooth stone with the same cracks that you see when mining something. Every time you move on it it has a 5% chance of breaking into cobblestone and dropping you to whatever happens to be beneath. Very hazardous if you're traveling the dark! Will only be able to spawn if there is an air block directly above and below it, The rest of the side must be surrounded by whatever else.
Lava Encrusted Rock
You know ice? It makes you slip, and breaking it turns it into water! Think of the fire version of that. Lava Encrusted Rock deals damage at half a heart every 2 seconds when standing on it unless you are wearing some sort of shoes, whose durability will slowly be drained (without the hurt animation on it). Breaking these will turn them into lava, and they can only be found on the same level as lava pools. Again, another reason not to dig straight down!
Comments, feedback, constructive criticism? I appreciate it all!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/286780-adv-church-of-lehparsi-released/
Also I'm placeing a post here.
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/286780-adv-church-of-lehparsi-released/
Also, no to the bones for the same reason.
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