Dungeons would be generated within "moat caves", open and expansive caves full of water. The dungeon would look similar to a castle, and would be primarily composed of lunalith stone, lunalith brick, and lunalith shingles. Lunalith stone is a naturally occuring stone that will actually eat away at any light nearby. Thus, it will be shrouded in darkness and be a major hostile mob spawning source. The block could be made into it's brick alternative in a similar manner to making stone bricks from stone. Lunalith shingles could also be crafted, and would be used solely for aesthetics, like lunalith bricks. Both brick and shingle forms of lunalith would still function as their parent block, producing darkness.
The lunalith dungeon can be seen in the center of this image. As you may notice, a mob spawner is also found within the dungeon, as is in vanilla Minecraft. However, spawners would act different. They could not be mined; in order to disable them, it would have to receive some form of direct light, such as a torch's light or sunlight. When exposed to light, the spawner would break on it's own, possibly dropping a bundle of any ore in it's most refined form, be it chunks of coal, iron or gold ingots, lapis lazuli slates, ground-up redstone, or freshly cut diamonds. This, though, would require some work. Lunalith also, besides creating darkness, will destroy any light sources within it's own darkness. Glowstone will break into dust, torches will pop off, ect. However, it will not break a light source if only the source's light infiltrates the block's darkness. In this case, it will only cover over the light that passes through. Because of all of this, one would first have to destroy the entire dungeon to rid the area of it's spawner.
The spawner itself should receive changes. The spawner would slowly destroy any player-placed blocks which surround it. It's the only idea I have for disabling mob traps. Course, one could make it so spawned mobs would fall a long distance into water, then build their mob trap their. To counter that, though, the mob spawner would only be able to spawn mobs on actual ground, meaning players would have to carefully shape the area into a mob trap instead of making one from scratch.
The two, branching-off towers you may see connected to the main dungeon room were just for aesthetics originally. But maybe instead, they could contain chests, which would then contain valuables. Possibly the chests would be made out of an unknown, jet black material, which would require exposure to light in order to unlock.
The dark-purple tubes and cage you see in the image above are just little additions I thought would be welcome if Notch ever decides on boss mobs. They are both still made from lunalith stone, they just appear darker to differentiate between them and the main dungeon room. The tubes are hollow, and lead to a large cage farther below the dungeon. In this cage could reside a boss monster. The room would be incredibly dark, and like before, a player would have to destroy the cage before they could place down some lighting. Perhaps, though, the cage-like structure could give the players an advantage in battle, as they could attack from the outside while the boss is too big to fight back. Bats could be introduced into the game, and would spawn upside down on blocks shrouded in darkness. This would make it hard to decide on keeping the cage for an advantage or destroying it to deploy light, as the former would cause bats and other mobs to spawn and the latter would take quite a while and rid you of an advantage.
While writing this, I realized that lunalith blocks would essentially become spawners themselves. So, perhaps the radius of darkness they produce could be shortened so much that they would only spawn spiders. And then the spawning rate for spawners themselves could be increased.
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If you made it this far, good for you! I apologize for the long, rambling text. The idea continued to grow as I was typing this up, so it might be extremely in-cohesive.
I also think that I may have used the word "light"/"lightness" at least 25 times. Sorry.
Very good idea! Just one point, the darkness have to be strong, but not that much that navigating in the dungeon with light set in the Options to the minimum is impossible...
Regarding darkness level, the darkness would simply be the darkest level of light a block could be. If you think it's too dark to navigate, I explored caves without torches for the first 5 days I played Minecraft. It was awesome, and possible. We need a bit of challenge in the game anyways.
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Dungeons would be generated within "moat caves", open and expansive caves full of water. The dungeon would look similar to a castle, and would be primarily composed of lunalith stone, lunalith brick, and lunalith shingles. Lunalith stone is a naturally occuring stone that will actually eat away at any light nearby. Thus, it will be shrouded in darkness and be a major hostile mob spawning source. The block could be made into it's brick alternative in a similar manner to making stone bricks from stone. Lunalith shingles could also be crafted, and would be used solely for aesthetics, like lunalith bricks. Both brick and shingle forms of lunalith would still function as their parent block, producing darkness.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/651/minecrafttherefore.png/
(this image appears extremely small, sorry, just squint your eyes a bit and try to imagine it as a two dimensional recreation of a Minecraft chunk.)
The lunalith dungeon can be seen in the center of this image. As you may notice, a mob spawner is also found within the dungeon, as is in vanilla Minecraft. However, spawners would act different. They could not be mined; in order to disable them, it would have to receive some form of direct light, such as a torch's light or sunlight. When exposed to light, the spawner would break on it's own, possibly dropping a bundle of any ore in it's most refined form, be it chunks of coal, iron or gold ingots, lapis lazuli slates, ground-up redstone, or freshly cut diamonds. This, though, would require some work. Lunalith also, besides creating darkness, will destroy any light sources within it's own darkness. Glowstone will break into dust, torches will pop off, ect. However, it will not break a light source if only the source's light infiltrates the block's darkness. In this case, it will only cover over the light that passes through. Because of all of this, one would first have to destroy the entire dungeon to rid the area of it's spawner.
The spawner itself should receive changes. The spawner would slowly destroy any player-placed blocks which surround it. It's the only idea I have for disabling mob traps. Course, one could make it so spawned mobs would fall a long distance into water, then build their mob trap their. To counter that, though, the mob spawner would only be able to spawn mobs on actual ground, meaning players would have to carefully shape the area into a mob trap instead of making one from scratch.
The two, branching-off towers you may see connected to the main dungeon room were just for aesthetics originally. But maybe instead, they could contain chests, which would then contain valuables. Possibly the chests would be made out of an unknown, jet black material, which would require exposure to light in order to unlock.
The dark-purple tubes and cage you see in the image above are just little additions I thought would be welcome if Notch ever decides on boss mobs. They are both still made from lunalith stone, they just appear darker to differentiate between them and the main dungeon room. The tubes are hollow, and lead to a large cage farther below the dungeon. In this cage could reside a boss monster. The room would be incredibly dark, and like before, a player would have to destroy the cage before they could place down some lighting. Perhaps, though, the cage-like structure could give the players an advantage in battle, as they could attack from the outside while the boss is too big to fight back. Bats could be introduced into the game, and would spawn upside down on blocks shrouded in darkness. This would make it hard to decide on keeping the cage for an advantage or destroying it to deploy light, as the former would cause bats and other mobs to spawn and the latter would take quite a while and rid you of an advantage.
While writing this, I realized that lunalith blocks would essentially become spawners themselves. So, perhaps the radius of darkness they produce could be shortened so much that they would only spawn spiders. And then the spawning rate for spawners themselves could be increased.
---
If you made it this far, good for you! I apologize for the long, rambling text. The idea continued to grow as I was typing this up, so it might be extremely in-cohesive.
I also think that I may have used the word "light"/"lightness" at least 25 times. Sorry.
Open to criticism and suggestions.
Regarding darkness level, the darkness would simply be the darkest level of light a block could be. If you think it's too dark to navigate, I explored caves without torches for the first 5 days I played Minecraft. It was awesome, and possible. We need a bit of challenge in the game anyways.