How do you keep track of what areas you haven't explored yet?
That's why I carry a map with me; I only look at it while caving so it reflects where I've been, and otherwise I regularly make "return points", either when I need to return or when I've found a new area; while I record their coordinates it is enough to just go near the edge of the mapped area and look around for one of their pillars, as I did when exploring the east-east map. I guess I also have a good memory? (I regularly get asked how I manage to navigate underground so easily). Of course, I do miss areas now and then (in particular, when a return point leads to more than one separate unexplored area, or I intersected caves above while digging up, and explore those instead when I return to it, but they don't connect to the ones deeper down, or vice-versa).
After several weeks I've probably finished exploring the map at 4096, -2048, or just the area around a collection of islands in the southwest corner, including a bit more of the map at 2048, -2048 (expanding a bit westwards from the desert island I made my last base in):
The most notable things I found since my last update include two rare mobs, one seen twice - two zombies in diamond armor and a pink sheep, the first time I've seen a mob in diamond armor since October 2021, and a pink sheep since November 2021 (both for this world only), or about 5 and 4 months respectively when counting daily sessions in this world; notably, all three mobs were seen within about a week:
I also found another close double cave spider spawner, 2 blocks apart; as noted before this can only happen in 1.6.2 and earlier versions, without structure saving (which I disabled for mineshafts to work around the effects of MC-33134 due to the size of the world and abundance of mineshafts; the pink sheep isn't entirely vanilla either since I fixed MC-2788, whose status is unknown as of the latest version. This makes it effectively much easier to encounter a pink sheep, but only one at a time instead of up to dozens, like my first encounter in this world (at least 3), then 6 years passed without seeing more until I fixed it, I've still only seen around 6 in total, while an MCEdit analysis suggested there should be 13-14):
I found what may be the largest lava lake from a single cave in this world, about 60 blocks long and up to 20 blocks wide, in the last cave system I explored within the area, fairly close to my base but not reached until much later; if it had been higher up it could have been the second largest cave I've found in terms of volume (about 14,000 blocks, vs 7,500 as-is):
There was another sizeable cave further to the south, with a volume of about 8,000 blocks:
These are all the caves with a volume of at least 5,000 within the area I've explored over the past few months; the first and third caves are shown above:
That's a heck of a lava cave. Is anything like this possible in vanilla?
Why do you think this is not vanilla? Unless I mention it anything I find is vanilla (as I noted with e.g the pink sheep, which otherwise is still "vanilla" as far as the probability of a sheep being pink goes, I just changed their locations. The diamond armored zombies are also vanilla,as far as armor chances go, though I modified the inhabited time calculation to start at 50% of the maximum so it is at a decent level (otherwise, in 1.6.4 you can see armored mobs on the first day, even on Easy, because effects started as soon as it became nonzero, as oppose to 1.8 and later, where the raw value must be at least 2).
Here are the first three caves I listed, including the two that I took screenshots of, in vanilla (the second one didn't look as interesting since it is narrower and straighter, so I didn't take a screenshot of it at the time):
At least as of 1.18, they can get much larger than that, but I don't know about before that.
The largest possible single cave in Beta 1.8 to 1.17 has a maximum diameter of 27 blocks and a volume on the order of 30,000 blocks; no such cave has ever been found, I have searched quite a lot of seeds with the largest known cave having a volume of about 26,000 (shown in the lower-right, along with the largest cave I've found in this world):
Obviously, multiple caves/cave systems can form larger open areas and/or contiguous areas of lava, the most extreme case in this world being a cave system around -800, -1050, with similarly dense areas found within many larger cave systems (the closest such cave system to spawn is at -16, 128):
The seed for this world is even featured as having the "biggest cave ever" on this seed site:
Also, this is a comparison of vanilla 1.6.4 to TMCW, showing just how different they are (as also shown in the chart above, which shows the largest caves I found in TMCWv4, TMCWv5, and vanilla 1.6.4), both areas are one level 4 map in size:
Vanilla 1.6.4; the threshold for caves is 5,000 and the threshold for ravines is 20,000:
TMCWv5; note that there are still more caves listed despite the threshold being 25,000 instead of 5,000; only three ravines reached this threshold in vanilla, which is why I use 25,000 as representative of a "larger than vanilla cave/ravine", with a volume of 100,000 being classified as a "giant" cave/ravine:
I've reached the final "million milestone" for quite a while, with one million torches crafted, and actually present in the world:
I analyzed the world with MCEdit and it found a total of 1,000,824 torches, slightly more than I've crafted, as some of which were naturally generated in mineshafts before I removed them, and in villages, there's also the feature I added where bats have a chance of dropping a torch when killed by a player (I do not intentionally kill them for this but it does slowly add up):
This also shows that the majority of the torches I place are on the ground (data value 5 is upright); I do not follow the common advice to place them on the wall on one side (so you can see which direction you came from) as they are less effective at lighting up open areas and many areas are too dense for that to work well (when I run into an intersection I often do place a cobblestone down to mark the way I entered, as my exploration method is to go through a chain of caves, lighting them up and clearing out mobs, before I reach a dead end or a new region, or just decide it is time to backtrack, then I backtrack back to where I started, going down all the side passages, this is also true of mineshafts, while very dense cave systems are explored more like I would a large open area).
Another interesting thing, which has shown up in every world I've had, is a slight bias towards placing more torches facing west and east (data values 1 and 2), perhaps indicative of a bias in cave generation (the bias is unaffected by whether I explored more to the west/east or north/south in a given world so that can't explain it; modded worlds do have significantly more wall torches due to larger caves).
Also notable is the amount of obsidian, the majority from myself flooding out lava while caving, with enough to cover a 1208x1208 block area (as much as this seems like on average there are about 9.8 blocks per chunk, compared to 104 lava per chunk, so not even 10% of what existed has been converted).
Here is a list of some other interesting blocks; the amount of cobblestone is significantly higher than what I've placed due to dungeons, of which there are still around 1,000 in the world despite the number I've found (they average about 48 moss stone each); there are also more than 1.4 million oak wood planks and 1 million fences, mostly in mineshafts (the other wood types are in my bases), with about a third of the rails listed in my rail system, and more than 6,600 chests (about 3,750 dungeons, with about 10% of the chests in my bases) and 5,400 minecart chests (about 1,000 mineshafts, on average a 148,000 chunk area has 1,480 but there are less within 80 chunks of the origin, and 20% less elsewhere due to my removal of them from dense cave systems. Compared to dungeons the proportion of mineshafts that I've found is relatively much higher as they are much more likely to intersect the general underground network, or at least a cave leading to the surface):
There are also 12 empty cauldrons, suggesting that there are at least that many witch huts (as mentioned before I never kept track of them in this world, I do have a cauldron at my main base, which is filled so it has a different data value, and may or may not have been crafted, haven't checked; all the minecarts I've used were originally minecart chests (shame on the person who filed this "bug" report). There are two stone pressure plates and 18 TNT, meaning there are two (intact) desert temples that I haven't found, totaling 8 (from looking at other worlds with mapping tools it isn't uncommon to have missed them due to being entirely buried, even in relatively low terrain), which is still a bit low compared to 12-13 jungle temples and witch huts (there were no chiseled stone bricks so I've found every jungle temple that has been generated).
Regardless of how much longer I play on this world for now it will be a while before any other statistics reach one million, with iron ore mined likely to be the next one, but it will take about 200 more sessions to reach it:
Blocks placed; the next candidate, dirt, is currently only 1/8 of the way to one million:
Blocks mined; iron ore has 165,822 to go, closely followed by stone, but the gap between them has been widening since I stopped making railways in the Overworld (I still dig out plenty to make underground rooms for my farms; the cobblestone collected is used for building the base with leftovers brought with me while caving, reducing the need to mine it):
Items depleted; nothing here will ever get close to one million, especially since I repair a lot of the helmets on the anvil, even making iron/chain helmets with Protection III renamed to "Helmet", which I wear for additional protection when swapping my armor out for sacrificial armor, but still mostly using gold due to the availability of drops, but I can also trade for them (I do this to take advantage of the 12% durability bonus when repairing items, this also reduces the need to have enough levels at the moment an item needs to be repaired, the exceptions being swords (sacrifices are worn down with chickens, in this case it is necessary to get the cost below 40 levels), shears (Silk Touch is required to harvest cobwebs), and bows (I use bows dropped by skeletons so I never need to make them, otherwise, they are very cheap to make):
Items crafted (or smelted, or bought by trading); iron is again in the lead by a large margin, slightly behind ore mined (the difference is less because I lost some than accidentally mining a furnace without emptying it):
Items used; with a diamond sword in the lead; with about 400,000 mob kills the average number of hits per mob is around 1.8, so I'll have killed around 555,000 mobs by the time it reaches one million uses:
For the third time this year I've made another secondary base, located near 3600, 1600 in a desert next to what appears to be the eastern boundary of the spawn continent (with various smaller landmasses scattered around the fringes); I've begun to explore the map at 4096, 2048 with the one to the north likely fully explored (all land areas), with just a bit of land left along the southern edge:
The following three screenshots were taken from the top of a hill to the west of my base; there are jungles to the north and south, with the western boundary of the desert not known (this illustrates just how restrictive I am about exploring the world outside of caving, or walking to/from my base/where I'm caving; if I spotted a village or temple I'd go to it but otherwise I don't actively seek them out, other than to come up when I see a desert or plains on the map to make sure I don't miss one and explore below it):
An Extreme Hills where I'm currently caving (near the bottom you can see one of the pillars I make to mark a return point), between the boundaries of both maps:
For all I know there could be land far to the east but for now I don't plan to try exploring until I reach it (eventually I will run out of land to explore but that will be be quite a while even if the remaining 4-5 level 4 maps to the east and south have a similar amount of land, and at some point I'll also switch to another modded world):
Also, this is a view of my Nether rail network taken from just below the root in MCEdit (it doesn't render Nether portals, or Nether quartz and related blocks properly as this version was released in early 2013; I don't mind though and the current version doesn't even list 1.6 as a supported version, nor has it been updated at all since 1.13 due to the effort in updating to the new chunk and block formats and/or the developer no longer having the time/incentive, sort of like how 1.13 also marked the end of my "old caves" mods), as well as maps made with Minutor at y=64 and 118 (it is quite obvious that I've only used the Nether for railways): Despite linking 3 bases so far it still totals less rails than a single segment between bases in the Overworld (averaging a bit over 1,000 blocks each; the most recent Nether rail segment was about 200 blocks long).
I think I was around 22,000 torches "used" according to statistics in my eldest hardcore world, where I felt like I've put a lot of caving time in, but that's only like 2% of a million. No doubt your world is older and you spend more of a percentage of your time caving, but that's a massive difference. I imagine my 22,000 is quite a bit compared to normal (for non-long term worlds, anyway) so you probably have a far high amount than most.
I also noticed in some of your screenshots you do place torches on the ground a lot. I actively almost never do that. I'm not sure if there's a real reason for it other than "I prefer the look on a wall". I'm not overly concerned with maximizing efficiency of torches anyway, so I just place them where I need light and where it's convenient. I typically alternate sides or sometimes stick the same side. It depends on the portion of the cave. I don't rely on torches to remember my way back. My memory has to pull that weight, and eventually I' do either find another way out (and then resume from that spot) or I simply find my way back.
I think I was around 22,000 torches "used" according to statistics in my eldest hardcore world, where I felt like I've put a lot of caving time in, but that's only like 2% of a million. No doubt your world is older and you spend more of a percentage of your time caving, but that's a massive difference. I imagine my 22,000 is quite a bit compared to normal (for non-long term worlds, anyway) so you probably have a far high amount than most.
I can't say anything about what a more typical usage would be but I once made a thread asking how many torches you'd used and some of the answers were interesting - exceeding even what I'd done back then (about 1/3 the current amount, with around the same number in all my other worlds, which is still more or less true):
Well in my current mp (I don't play single ) I have placed 433 thousand in 3 years. Not a total shock as I mine a lot and use a stack in 15 minutes game play. My base alone probably has 2000.
In my current world - around a year old, i started it as a test world when the first 1.9 snapshot came out - it looks like I've used 96,484 torches
I have NO idea. Many of my worlds have been lost though, so I cant check. Been playing since 1.4.7 so yeah... probably like well over a third of s million, maybye even half of a million overall.
Since I started playing in Alpha I'll throw out a wild guess that I've crafted at least 2 million torches across the 75-125 worlds I've played.
Well those first two seem atypical, and the second two are wild guesses.
I imagine your count, both in terms of frequency of use (relative to time) and total overall are pretty high. At least I feel mine are (just nowhere near something like yours though) so if yours aren't, mine are nothing. It says I've played for 12.83 days and crafted 28,796 torches, and placed 22,763. The disparity is because I have four shulker chests full of torches, and recently depleted them and crafted more to stock them. No idea how that stacks up in terms of torches per time played but it's only 2% of a million so I've along way to go, haha (I'll likely never reach that point anyway).
My oldest world for sure has more torches of course but the stats were lost/reset on occasions so I can't check those (plus there were multiple players playing), and it's too new of a version to open in MCEdit (no idea is the newer similar thing could check this), oh and I also pruned it so while it was minor, some were lost. Still doubt that one was anywhere near a million either though.
On each of three consecutive days I found a witch hut, desert temple, and a village, and if you think they count as a structure, a desert well, with the desert temple, well, and village close enough to be seen in the same view, which may be the closest in time that I've found 3-4 structures in this world; these are also the 7th desert temple and 16th village I've found, and the first village I found in 6 months of playing (two play periods since October 2021) and first desert temple since January 2018, with around 400 sessions elapsed since then:
This is the first witch hut that was generated after I'd made witches spawned in huts persistent but I never saw one since it left it at some point while I was exploring nearby:
While they were relatively close together I did not see the village until later since this temple was technically past the edge of which I'd explored (underground) and I only made a special trip to check it out, not checking further into the desert until the next day (the fact I said this shows just restrictive I am at what I explore outside of caving):
The desert temple had a couple diamonds and 24 gold, quite a lot from what I can recall finding (this may not be so unusual for newer versions; since 1.9 loot is much less random and there can be more stacks per chest; I've seen people post screenshots of loot chests with all 27 slots filled; of course, I put all the loot into a single chest to take a screenshot. I also took the bones for bonemeal, I never take saddles once I've collected several):
I also later ran into the basement of the desert temple exposed in a cave:
Deserts are actually the "flattest" biomes in 1.6.4, flatter than Plains, yet as seen here they can still have a fair amount of elevation changes (I had to dig out or build staircases to several of the houses; not visible in this view is a field which had a 8-10 block drop to the surface below on one side). Another major difference from newer versions (or TMCW) is that there are no surface cave openings since caves can only cut through stone, dirt, and grass (I did semi-fix this fro this world by adding mycelium to the list; in TMCW I actually have no list, just anything goes, except for water, which has a separate check so they do not run right into it, and bedrock at y=0, by limiting the minimum y-coordinate to 1):
A view (taken at max FOV showing the village (left) and desert temple (right):
If you look closely you can also see a desert well near the center, shown zoomed-in here (similar to witch huts I never kept track of how many I've found in this world, which would be similar to other structures given a 1/1000 chance per chunk, compared to 1/1024 for structures):
I also recently found the largest complex of mineshafts since exploring the southeast map, when I found complexes of 8 and 9 mineshafts one after another, with a total of 5 mineshafts embedded between several large cave systems; surprisingly, despite the amount of caves there were no additional mineshafts in vanilla (due to my code that excludes them from near dense cave systems), so this is pretty much the most extreme case of intersection between caves and mineshafts that I may find:
This is an analysis of the area (the image was slightly cropped to fit the mineshafts):
Total air volume is 355819 blocks (8.24975%)
Number of cave systems: 20
Initial number of caves: 145; largest cave system: 29 (3744 736)
Total number of caves: 194; largest cave system: 35 (3744 736)
Additional circular room caves: 49
Number of small caves: 189; average width is 6.02
Number of large caves: 5; average width is 13.41; max width: 15.65 (3929 23 856)
Number of circular rooms: 32; average width is 10.29
Additional caves per circular room: 1.53
Average caves per chunk: 0.59876543 (324 chunks)
There were also two fairly large caves, which can be seen on the map (the first one is the largest green area towards the lower-left, which cuts it off above y=62, while the volume accounts for the part above as it was still underground, and the second is near the right-center):
Also, this is what happens to caves in deserts prior to 1.8, which allowed them to cut through more blocks (contrary to widespread belief caves can only cut through a small list of blocks, and even if any block is allowed, as in TMCW, they can't cut through non-terrain features, such as strongholds, which simply don't replace air blocks):
Also, these are screenshots I took of my maps while exploring, showing my general progression from day to day, and how far I may go into "explored" areas; also notable is that land has extended much further east than I expected, to at least x = 4200:
This was taken from near the northernmost point I'd reached from the land to the south; I had not originally explored south from the north because there were no caves leading from that area (and hundreds of blocks to the west, I made my way southwards close to the western edge of the map, not sure about east since I stopped due to ocean. It is common to have such "barriers" extending for hundreds of blocks, even a thousand or more, where there is no direct path between two interconnected regions):
This was taken from were I took a screenshot of the witch hut:
This is the furthest east I've explored at any point so far (I might have gone further east from the northern landmass if I'd found caves in that area):
This was taken from where I took a screenshot of the desert temple, which is near the northern edge of the same desert my latest base is in, 576 blocks south from the northern edge of the map, and from the looks of it, the village as well (this would be several "biome units" merged into one larger biome, common when there are only 7 biomes to choose from):
This is one of the largest cave systems that I've ever explored, only rivaled by one or two other cave systems / cave complexes in this world, the last of which I found 6 years ago; another includes the largest complex of mineshafts I've ever found and was found over 10 years ago and fully explored a year later
This is an analysis of the area and lists of the densest regions that I've explored in this world, not necessarily corresponding to a single cave system or dense network, especially at larger scales (the 12 and 16 chunk radii include other cave systems nearby) and not including mineshafts:
Center is 3712, 1104 and radius is 144 blocks (from 3568, 960 to 3855, 1247)
Size 3 cave system at 3744 960; total number of caves: 3
Size 6 cave system at 3648 976; total number of caves: 9
Size 3 cave system at 3664 992; total number of caves: 3
Size 20 cave system at 3744 992; total number of caves: 36
Size 1 cave system at 3776 1008; total number of caves: 1
Size 8 cave system at 3824 1008; total number of caves: 10
Size 8 cave system at 3760 1040; total number of caves: 10
Size 9 cave system at 3712 1056; total number of caves: 11
Size 21 cave system at 3760 1072; total number of caves: 30
Size 17 cave system at 3696 1088; total number of caves: 24
Size 3 cave system at 3808 1088; total number of caves: 4
Size 3 cave system at 3792 1104; total number of caves: 3
Size 16 cave system at 3728 1120; total number of caves: 28
Size 2 cave system at 3600 1136; total number of caves: 2
Size 32 cave system at 3712 1136; total number of caves: 40
Size 18 cave system at 3616 1152; total number of caves: 23
Size 32 cave system at 3648 1152; total number of caves: 48
Size 17 cave system at 3776 1152; total number of caves: 21
Size 3 cave system at 3616 1168; total number of caves: 3
Size 26 cave system at 3648 1184; total number of caves: 45
Size 8 cave system at 3840 1200; total number of caves: 10
Number of cave systems: 21
Initial number of caves: 256; largest cave system: 32 (3712 1136)
Total number of caves: 364; largest cave system: 48 (3648 1152)
Additional circular room caves: 108
Number of small caves: 353; average width is 6.06
Number of large caves: 11; average width is 11.37; max width: 15.93 (3730 40 1121)
Number of circular rooms: 67; average width is 11.88
Additional caves per circular room: 1.61
Average caves per chunk: 1.1234568 (324 chunks)
16 chunk radius:
949820 (8.86%) at 3624, 968
940376 (8.78%) at -984, 840
895049 (8.35%) at 2552, 24
867375 (8.09%) at 1960, 376
865090 (8.07%) at -1176, 1848
864292 (8.07%) at 248, -2152
835737 (7.80%) at -1496, -792
835603 (7.80%) at -2472, -2392
826039 (7.71%) at -744, 1544
824063 (7.69%) at 392, -1096
12 chunk radius:
599949 (9.86%) at 3608, 1032
597027 (9.81%) at -1192, 1784
564436 (9.28%) at 2024, 424
560131 (9.21%) at -1160, 728
551667 (9.07%) at -2536, -2344
545923 (8.97%) at 744, -1512
532153 (8.75%) at -808, 1560
531359 (8.73%) at -856, -2472
526885 (8.66%) at 2808, 152
516957 (8.50%) at 2680, 2504
10 chunk radius:
494276 (11.42%) at -1192, 1752
470638 (10.88%) at 3656, 1064
433431 (10.02%) at -808, 888
423998 (9.80%) at -2568, -2344
423158 (9.78%) at 1400, -776
422873 (9.77%) at 2040, 456
419340 (9.69%) at -1192, 744
418713 (9.68%) at -856, -2424
415114 (9.59%) at 2392, 40
411468 (9.51%) at 2776, 184
8 chunk radius:
367819 (12.97%) at -1208, 1736
361909 (12.76%) at 3672, 1080
336616 (11.87%) at -824, 872
318873 (11.25%) at -408, 1032
314378 (11.09%) at 1368, -776
308372 (10.88%) at -1256, -856
304039 (10.72%) at -2920, -2184
303397 (10.70%) at -824, -2392
302446 (10.67%) at -888, 1624
301923 (10.65%) at 2104, 520
I also analyzed the cave system with MCEdit and it found about 430,000 air blocks below sea level within a 256x240 area, along with 3,859 torches (this means I placed about 965 per day); another interesting fact is that the amount of ore I mined was over 20% of what had originally been present, ranging from 8.4% of emerald to 27% of coal, and averaging more than 60 per chunk (this analysis does not include all of the mineshafts extending from the cave system itself, but also includes some empty areas, either way, this shows the sheer amount of ore that can be exposed in 1.6.4-type caves due to the enormous surface area, far exceeding a single large open cave of the same volume; in this thread I found over 20,000 exposed ore in the spawn chunks alone):
As large as it was, it only took 4 days for me to explore it, with a total of 14,500 ores and 16,000 resource blocks mined from it and several mineshafts and other caves directly intersecting it (for comparison, it took up to 7 days to explore the largest complexes of mineshafts I've recently found, with up to twice as many resources extracted from them):
For perspective, the area at the top is the cave/mineshaft complex I previously mentioned; there are a couple relatively dense cave systems in the lower-left, all contributing towards a region of relatively high air volume::
There are also numerous other relatively large cave systems within the area I've been exploring over the past few weeks:
Here are some screenshots from the cave system, for the most part it was fairly dense, although not to the point where there were a lot of larger open areas from all the intersecting caves (cave systems this dense are generally smaller), with a triple ravine in the middle and a few larger caves forming the largest open areas:
Also, this is a relatively large cave and a double cave spider spawner (1 block apart) I found elsewhere:
Also, if you are wondering how unusual it is to find a cave system this large, these are the three densest areas within +/- 6144 blocks in the seed "8255665205000737968", with several other seeds each having similarly large cave systems (they are still the exception though, given that a +/- 6144 block area is about 4 times the area I've explored):
From left to right the coordinates are 2416 720, 1504 4400, 4432 -1856
Of interest, this seed is known for having the largest known cave system in 1.7-1.17 (the ones above are from 1.6.4, there is no relationship between the locations of the largest cave systems across versions):
This also shows just how different 1.6 and 1.7 are - cave systems like this, or even the smaller ones seen on the map above, are truly the exception in 1.7, as seen in this comparison of my world to that seed, which shows several comparable areas (the ones I mentioned finding years ago are in the southwest and north respectively) and an overall much greater density of cave systems in 1.6 (the difference in the actual number of caves isn't as great as suggested since they are much more clumpy in 1.6):
Size also isn't everything, the largest and densest (a combination of both) cave system I've ever found is still the cave system at -800, -1050, which I found more than 10 years ago, and a cave system this large and dense is remarkable (very few seeds will have anything like it within thousands of blocks of spawn), and likely impossible in 1.7 or later (this likely does include 1.18+ since they didn't change the density of "old" caves, still using the lame 1.7 generation, IDK what Mojang was even thinking and they never even mentioned the change anywhere, much less why. Large open caves are simply no substitute for "1.6.4 type cave systems", or vast mineshaft complexes (I see mineshafts as more of a variant of cave than a structure):
This is a comparison to the cave system I recently found at the layers of peak cave density; the cave system above appears as a single solid mass even when sliced at a single level (it does not appear as open as this suggests due to all the irregular block formations filling it):
I've found another desert temple just weeks after the last one - a quarter of all the desert temples I've found in this world in more than a decade - and the first time I've found two within a single biome, if you consider a narrow strip of desert as being part of the same deserts to the north and south, forming one of the largest single desert areas I've found:
I've explored far to the south over the past few days, past my base and into a region dominated by multiple large mineshaft complexes (3-4 mineshafts each) and relatively low cave density compared to the region to the north; it also appears that land extends quite a bit further east along the northern part of the map / southern part of the map to the north, while to the south the coastline appears to be running along x = 3850 or so:
Also, I thought to point out a quirk in the way 1.6 renders maps which makes it easier to spot structures in deserts - sandstone is shown as stone so temples and villages appear as gray dots which are easily visible, even at zoom level 4 (I changed this in TMCW but not World1; vanilla 1.6 only has 14 different base map colors, with a blocks' "material" determining its color, so all wool appears as the same shade of light gray ("Material.cloth"), gravel appears as sand since it is of "Material.sand", and so on):
There may be more structures to the west, between 3072-3340, as structures are placed within 24x24 chunk regions aligned to multiples of 32 chunks (e.g. 3072, 1024 to 3440, 1392, which I haven't fully explored/mapped yet, more so for a region at 3072, 1536 to 3440, 1904; whether there actually are any depends on whether the biome at a single location chosen within these regions is valid, and for villages, whether there is sufficient space to place at least 2 buildings).
I can see why some complain that structures are too common; within the area I've explored over the past few weeks you could find a total of 4 structures, including a witch hut just to the north of the current map, within minutes even by walking (the desert temples are 784 blocks or 49 chunks apart so at 32 chunk render distance, 25 with fog disabled, you could see the first desert temple and village to the north, then turn around and see the second desert temple to the south), aggravated by changes to world generation since 1.7, where individual biomes, or clusters of the same biome (the large desert I've been exploring is multiple "biome units", each averaging 256 blocks across) are much larger, especially since 1.18, which also allows villages to spawn in more biomes (referring to 1.6 generation, simply adding villages to Taiga would make them 50% more common, and modern versions have a significant bias towards more of the original biomes, plus Savanna, than most of the fancy new ones).
Here is what i found in a vanilla world - the exact same structures:
Also, here is what ChunkBase shows for desert temples (using an archived page because they don't care about versions older than 1.7 anymore) - and yes, I revealed the location of a third temple in the same desert just to show that they actually exist in vanilla, not some "modded version" (like TMCW, which does in fact make structures more common to offset their spawn biomes being rarer). This is also a good illustration of why structures are so much more common in newer versions - or they seem to be - thanks to the ridiculous size of biomes (an average size biome, meaning a single "biome unit" only has a 25% chance of having a structure), and changes to playstyles (more exploration, in large part because you are forced to if you want to find everything):
Now, you can actually see one difference between vanilla and this world; village wells always use cobblestone in 1.6.4 due to a bug introduced in that version (fixed in 1.8). There are also no ugly patches of exposed stone ("basins") in my world (often made uglier by the fact that there is a bug with the noise field where it doesn't align properly along chunk borde5rs, a relic of a far older bug dating back to Alpha). There will also be differences in decorations where the mineshafts I removed are supposed to be, but I took care to retain the random calls when placing torches that I otherwise removed so MCMap doesn't show unexplored mineshafts (in TMCW I later replaced them with redstone torches, then a new "dim" torch variant, with torches in villages, etc being replaced with "fake" torches, in this world I always set it to y=63 or below to avoid revealing undiscovered villages).
Another oddity I found in vanilla is the number of pigs in the Extreme Hills near the first desert temple, likely related to MC-2788, which I fixed, in a recreation using my World1 mod I found a reasonable mix of sheep (more color variation as well), pigs, and chickens (as noted before this means that any pink sheep I find do not exist in vanilla but the probability is the same. The only known pink sheep in this world in vanilla are around 500, 1450 and you must use 1.5.2):
Also, my "World1 custom client" mod does make a significant change to world generation - mineshafts are equally as common near the origin as anywhere else as I removed vanilla's reduction within 1280 blocks (scaled linearly from 0-100% from 0-80 chunks) but this has no impact on this world since I'd already generated the entire area:
Vanilla, and yes, mineshafts are THAT common and form complexes that large/dense in vanilla prior to 1.7. There are 609 (properly generated) mineshafts here, averaging one every 107.6 chunks, compared to an average of one every 100 chunks outside of the near-origin area (these maps are +/- 2048 blocks):
World1; the reduction in frequency closer to the origin was removed but about 20% of mineshafts are removed due to being in areas of high cave density; this led to slightly less mineshafts overall, with 560 found (one every 117 chunks, compared to 100 in vanilla outside of the near-origin area). Note that many of the larger complexes have at least one mineshaft missing, meaning I'm actually less likely to find crazy huge complexes than if I hadn't made this change (the fact I still do, with 1800 rails mined (about 6 mineshafts worth) over the past 3 days, just furthers their overabundance; Mojang nerfed them by a factor of 2.5 in 1.7, though they removed the reduction near the origin in 1.13 so they are now more common within 512 blocks of 0,0 than they are in vanilla 1.6.4, thus you are a lot more likely to find one near spawn, and they are still not spaced apart, as they are in TMCW to minimize overlap):
Another change not visible is a bugfix for mineshafts which fail to generate any corridors (hence why I mentioned "properly generated"; 4 out of 613 mineshafts in vanilla failed to generate properly), with one such example close to spawn (mentioned in this thread):
The 8 smallest mineshafts found in vanilla and World1:
I have made various other small improvements/tweaks to world generation such as village paths generating on water using wood planks over water (a feature I also added to TMCW, along with villages generating as low as y=63 instead of 64, the latter of which makes it impossible for villagers to reach the doors if a village generates on water or ground at y=63), or snow generating under trees and Frozen River generating in all snowy biomes (not just Ice Plains, in vanilla even Ice Mountains uses River):
This is at the border of old (vanilla snow) and new (modified snow) chunks, which otherwise seamlessly match since aside from temperature Frozen River and River have the same parameters and snowcover is a minor decorative feature (the appearance of "snow blocks" on the ground, even in vanilla terrain, is due to my "better grass" feature, which uses the top texture on the sides, along with "better snow", which makes grass blocks appear as snowy when there are partial blocks with snow next to them on top):
Also, how come Mojang never did this (Superflat caves)? I also added "snow" and "animal" tags to the preset code so you can have those as well (that is, generated at world generation, Superflat otherwise lacks automatic snowcover and only spawns up to 10-odd animals in loaded chunks. As I removed spawn chunks this is less of an issue but even at 8 chunks it is still 10x less than what a normal world has, or in this case, where the "mob counts" shows 96 passive mobs):
(you keep implying that various features in this world are the result of mods; you previously suggested that a landmass I found or a particularly large cave couldn't have been vanilla, and now structures? If this were actually TMCW I'd have probably found at least 3-4 desert temples in a desert of the same size, given that I increased the frequency of structures to compensate for their spawn biomes being rarer)
Also, I was wrong when I said I'd never found two desert temples in the same desert before, because I did, in the largest desert in this world, about 1200 blocks from west to east and 975 from north to south:
There are a total of 6 structures on this map (marked) - two desert temples, two jungle temples, a village, and a witch hut. Not that I'm saying they are too common for me, just noting that I see so many complaints about villages, etc everywhere (and not just structures in general but specific structures like villages) - they have always been common but changes to world generation (much larger areas of the same biome and low variety across large regions), the need to explore much further due to said changes and more biome-specific resources, means of taster travel, and a tendency to play at higher render distances makes them much more commonly encountered (for perspective, the area covered by the map would take me more than a month to explore; regardless of render distance if I'm only looking at a map most of the time I can only see things within their 128 block update radius)
I can see why some complain that structures are too common; within the area I've explored over the past few weeks you could find a total of 4 structures, including a witch hut just to the north of the current map, within minutes even by walking (the desert temples are 784 blocks or 49 chunks apart so at 32 chunk render distance, 25 with fog disabled, you could see the first desert temple and village to the north, then turn around and see the second desert temple to the south), aggravated by changes to world generation since 1.7, where individual biomes, or clusters of the same biome (the large desert I've been exploring is multiple "biome units", each averaging 256 blocks across) are much larger, especially since 1.18, which also allows villages to spawn in more biomes (referring to 1.6 generation, simply adding villages to Taiga would make them 50% more common, and modern versions have a significant bias towards more of the original biomes, plus Savanna, than most of the fancy new ones).
Haha, you finally seem to get it now.
Yeah, looking at map or seed generators might not give the impression of how much worse it can be in modern versions, because averaged out, and over a larger area, maybe certain structures are not much more common... but when newer versions give you "regions" of similar biomes and they all cluster together, then there's more types of structures, and more valid places for them to spawn... it makes the world seem very "littered with structures". I'm pretty happy with almost all structures the modern version has... but they are just far too common. I miss how it was back in 1.6 (though I found villages slightly too rare, I would rather them be a bit more rare than I like, than for everything to be way more common than I like).
And then a lot of these structures (ruined portals, shipwrecks, etc.) are just small "free loot" spawns. I know jungle temples and desert temples haven't aged well (I think they could benefit from the treatment that bastion remnants and ancient cities have whereby they are randomized to some degree, and maybe reworked and slightly larger), but they were fine at the time.
I remember playing on a render distance of 32 in my 1.6 and earlier generated world and structures were still rather sparse to see in general. I did see a spot where two villages spawned so close you could probably see them even on 1.6's version of "far" (so, just 10 chunks?) but that was an exception and not a norm. And one of those villages was like three buildings too so I'm not sure how much that counts.
In 1.18, it seems like any new world I start up will always be one where I can find a village before first nightfall if I wanted to, at least if I do nothing but run to start looking for one. Maybe not always, but almost always, whereas in 1.6 I'd find that rather uncommon. Possible, yes, but not expected.
Out of curiosity didn't you say you also made them more uncommon in your mod? Or was that only mineshafts? I figure since most of your time is spent underground you might leave surface stuff more alone?
Out of curiosity didn't you say you also made them more uncommon in your mod? Or was that only mineshafts? I figure since most of your time is spent underground you might leave surface stuff more alone?
Mineshafts are the only structure I made less common, and more to prevent them from generating on top of denser cave systems (as I also do in this world) or in the middle of giant caves (I've still found mineshafts that were mostly floating near the end of a cave), otherwise, their base frequency is about the same (one every 98 chunks, or in alternate 7x7 chunk regions), which makes it feel like there was no change in terms of how often I encounter them (that is to say, instead of often finding 2-3 or more intersecting most of them are single):
On the left is vanilla 1.6 while TMCW is on the right; the latter appears to have much smaller and less dense complexes, even as individual mineshafts can get much larger (the average size is nearly the same so this means there are more smaller mineshafts as well), but the number of complexes appears to be similar; the largest single mineshafts, like one to the left of center, are similar to 3-4 overlapping mineshafts in vanilla (of course, much cleaner due to the lack of weird intersections, I even prevent corridors from running right on top of each other, with at least 1 block of space between them, i.e. the floor is part of the bounding box so the self-intersection check accounts for it):
Other than dungeons (unchanged) other structures are all more common, some significantly so, in terms of the base attempt rate (before considering biomes or terrain); villages have a spacing of 24, meaning they are 32^2 / 24^2 = 1.777 times more common, but their spawn biomes are less common even as I added more, e.g. Plains is about 1/4 as common as in vanilla, Desert is about a third as common, etc, plus I reduced their spawn rate in several biomes (75% in normal desert and 50% in Ice Plains, since these biomes are more common than others). Villages also make up to 5 attempts to generate with different offsets from the center of the origin chunk to help marginal cases generate (the pre-1.10 restriction that a village must stay within its valid spawn biomes causes a percentage of villages to fail to generate). Altogether, I've calculated that they should be about as common as in vanilla.
Jungle temples have the highest increase, with a spacing of 20, making them 2.56 times more common, but jungles are about 3.5 times rarer, and I only found one in my last world (but 3 in a previous world within a smaller area, so random variation is always a factor. On average you can expect to find one per level 4 map, and 9 within the area I've explored in this world, where I actually found 13, with a sizable amount of ocean (my structure frequency calculations assume land only). Similar changes apply to desert temples and witch huts (their biomes are more common so their spacing is larger).
For non-vanilla structures (backported and/or my own), igloos have a spacing of 16 (4 times more common) but they have a failure rate of about 50% due to unsuitable terrain (too uneven) and I only consider igloos with a basement as a complete structure; the only igloo in my last world generated at the very edge of the explored area (I never saw it in game), then again, I found 4 in a previous world. My own structures have even higher rates, with a spacing of only 14 (5.22 times more common) for quartz desert pyramids, pumpkin houses, and woodland mansions (for comparison, vanilla uses a spacing of 80 for mansions, making them 33 times rarer in terms of base spawn attempts). All these have significant failure rates due to unsuitable terrain.
I also added shipwrecks, with a spacing of 19, but only the largest size, which has a loot chest, is counted, thus they effectively have a spacing of about 32 (vanilla uses a spacing of 24 so they are about twice as common in terms of loot potential. I also only place them on the seafloor so they are harder to find).
Strongholds are a special case; unlike vanilla they generate infinitely throughout the world at the rate of one every 8192 chunks, so in a sense they really have the biggest increase of any structure, but if you just consider the three that generate in vanilla 1.6 and the area enclosed within the maximum distance of 1152 blocks (16286 chunks) then they are about 2/3 as common.
Here is a complete list of what I found in TMCWv5:
41834 chunks explored (within 1 chunk of a torch, 49997 total), 98.43 per caving session
Structures/caves found (by number):
855 normal dungeons (2 intersecting x3, normal+double x1)
205 mineshafts
64 double dungeons (a special type of dungeon with 2 spawners and 2-3 chests)
5 villages (1 Desert, 2 Meadow, 1 Plains, 1 Savanna)
4 desert temples
4 shipwrecks (1 large, 2 medium, 1 small)
4 strongholds (3 found by caving)
4 witch huts
2 mesa mineshafts
2 pumpkin houses
2 quartz desert pyramids
1 jungle temple
A map and list of the biomes within 1536 blocks (I explored a bit past this); you have to go quite far down the list to find "common" biomes like Plains (1.3% of the total area, 1.36% of land; on average it is about 1.94% of land). The most notable deviation from the average is Quartz Desert, 4 times more common than expected, and similar to the large deserts in World1 I found two quartz desert pyramids in a single very large Quartz Desert (the tan colored area to the left of center. Based on debug results the game attempts to place 2 more but they fail). The frequency of Savanna, which is near average, is a bit misleading since it generates as an "edge" biome around Plateau and Mountains (it i unlikely for villages to generate here due to lack of space):
Igloos are indeed rather rare, one of the few structures that are, so if you invalidated the ones without basements then I'm not surprised you so seldomly find one. (Edit: oh, you also made more common, but in my experience they would still be rare with those chances you gave, especially for your pace of exploration.)
I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but modern versions take care of the "floating" mineshafts by giving them support log structures and chains. While they're probably something that some people think should only generate "in terrain", I find it at least makes them look less unsightly than simply floating like before. I'm not sure if you also made them more rare just because you want less of them though (I know I would), but I don't spend as much time underground as you do so I can tolerate them as they are too).
Igloos are indeed rather rare, one of the few structures that are, so if you invalidated the ones without basements then I'm not surprised you so seldomly find one. (Edit: oh, you also made more common, but in my experience they would still be rare with those chances you gave, especially for your pace of exploration.)
Igloos are no rarer than other structures though, prior to accounting for the frequency of their spawn biomes - they use the same "spacing" of 32 as temples and villages, which gives one structure per 512x512 block region:
You may be missing a lot because they are small and hard to spot (especially with features like "better snow/grass"); in TMCW they are twice as common (spacing of 16, or one every 256x256 block region, with a failure rate of 50% due to bad terrain) and even only counting ones with a basement still gives the same frequency as vanilla (actually, a while ago I increased the chance of a basement from 1/2 to 2/3). Here is some of the actual code (comments) from TMCW's source that indicates how common structures are; if the probabilities seem rare, you must remember they include the frequency of the biomes they generate in (they will likely be far rarer than one per 1024 chunks in vanilla):
public class MapGenVillageTMCW extends MapGenStructureTMCW
{
// Maximum distance (grid size) reduced from 32 to 22 to compensate for rarer spawn biomes. Relative frequency is
// 32^2 / 22^2 = 2.11 times more common per base spawn attempt (one every 484 chunks vs 1024 in vanilla; Ice Plains
// has one every 968 chunks and Desert one every 645 chunks; spawn biomes are about 13% of land for about one
// attempt every 3725 chunks.
// Desert temples use a grid size of 24 chunks for about one every 9723 chunks and 1.78 times more likely per spawn
// biome (chances are relative to a grid size of 32 and 100% success rate per attempt; frequency considers biome frequency).
if (TYPE == DESERT_TEMPLE && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 24, 8))
// Jungle temples use a grid size of 20 chunks for about one every 16549 chunks and 2.56 times more likely per spawn
// biome (frequency is slightly less due to only generating in Jungle River if a swamp is within 4 blocks).
if (TYPE == JUNGLE_TEMPLE && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 20, 8))
// Witch huts use a grid size of 22 chunks for about one every 12170 chunks and 2.12 times more likely per spawn
// biome (frequency is slightly less due to only generating in Swamp River if a swamp is within 4 blocks).
if (TYPE == WITCH_HUT && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 22, 8))
// Igloos use a grid size of 16 chunks for about one every 11176 chunks and 2 times more likely per spawn biome when
// accounting for the frequency of spawn biomes and a pass rate of 50%.
if (TYPE == IGLOO && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 16, 4))
// Quartz desert pyramids use a grid size of 14 chunks for about one every 42529 chunks and 1.67 times more likely
// per spawn biome when accounting for the frequency of spawn biomes and a pass rate of 32%.
if (TYPE == QUARTZ_PYRAMID && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 14, 6))
// Woodland mansions use a grid size of 14 chunks for about one every 33869 chunks and 1.57 times more likely per
// spawn biome when accounting for the frequency of spawn biomes and a pass rate of 30%. Note that grid size and
// spacing must be the same as in checkForMansion.
if (TYPE == WOODLAND_MANSION && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, this.mansionDistance, MIN_DISTANCE))
// Pumpkin houses use a grid size of 14 chunks for about one every 26616 chunks and 2.09 times more likely per spawn
// biome when accounting for the frequency of spawn biomes and a pass rate of 40%.
if (TYPE == PUMPKIN_HOUSE && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 14, 6))
// Generates shipwrecks, one every 361 chunks with a random offset of 0-14 within a 19 chunk grid. Chance of a large
// shipwreck with loot is one every 1083 chunks (similar to vanilla structure frequency of 1/1024)
public void generateShipwreck(WorldGenChunkCache chunkCache, int chunkX, int chunkZ)
// caveLimitSmall is set for a frequency that is about 55% of vanilla for all mineshafts and caveLimitLarge is set so
// large mineshafts are about 1/8 of all mineshafts (base chance is 2/7 of all mineshafts). Failed attempts at large
// mineshafts will be rechecked as a small mineshaft so their lower frequency does not affect the frequency set by
// caveLimitSmall. Use CaveFinder.COUNT_MINESHAFTS to calculate chances. Cave limit near center is reduced by
// 171/256.
private static final int caveLimitSmall = 18; // center = 12
private static final int caveLimitLarge = 11; // center = 7
I'm not sure if you also made them more rare just because you want less of them though (I know I would), but I don't spend as much time underground as you do so I can tolerate them as they are too).
I only made them rarer because I don't want them ruining massive cave systems (just about every noteworthy cave system that I've mentioned in this thread has at least one mineshaft in the middle of it when I look at it in vanilla, sometimes to a ridiculous extent), or being right in the middle of giant open caves.
Otherwise, I consider them to be an essential part of the underground and treat them as more of a variant of cave than a structure- all those complaints since Beta 1.8 of caves being too large / never-ending? All due to the addition of mineshafts and (to a lesser extent) ravines, as shown by these examples which show all features, caves only, ravines only, and mineshafts only across two 1024x1024 block regions with different cave density; even the higher density region has no visible connections between caves in the western and eastern halves, but mineshafts and ravines fill in the gaps in multiple places (even then there can be stretches over 1000 blocks long where there are no direct connections, as shown in the "interconnected caves" maps I posted here, these maps do understate things though since e.g. ore veins or just liquid dripping from the ceiling, or even mobs sticking through walls, can reveal nearby caves):
High cave density (similar to a region I recently explored):
Seed is -123775873255737467
Center is 8192, 0 and radius is 512 blocks (from 7680, -512 to 8703, 511)
Number of cave systems: 225
Initial number of caves: 1634; largest cave system: 31 (7904 -432)
Total number of caves: 2297; largest cave system: 45 (8000 -272)
Additional circular room caves: 663
Number of small caves: 2224; average width is 5.99
Number of large caves: 73; average width is 12.00; max width: 20.09 (7936 79 508)
Number of circular rooms: 420; average width is 10.99
Additional caves per circular room: 1.58
Average caves per chunk: 0.560791 (4096 chunks)
88 ravines
37 mineshafts
Low cave density (both have about the same number of ravines and mineshafts):
Seed is -123775873255737467
Center is 12800, 0 and radius is 512 blocks (from 12288, -512 to 13311, 511)
Number of cave systems: 188
Initial number of caves: 1181; largest cave system: 38 (12736 -304)
Total number of caves: 1643; largest cave system: 54 (13024 -112)
Additional circular room caves: 462
Number of small caves: 1598; average width is 6.02
Number of large caves: 45; average width is 11.72; max width: 17.20 (12476 18 46)
Number of circular rooms: 304; average width is 11.00
Additional caves per circular room: 1.52
Average caves per chunk: 0.40112305 (4096 chunks)
89 ravines
35 mineshafts
For comparison, this is an example from TMCW; mineshafts are much less important due to the much greater volume of caves, with the total volume being more than double even the "high density" example in vanilla (this is also on the higher end for TMCW due to the "giant cave region", which I included to demonstrate how they prevent other caves and structures from generating over them. Mineshafts even prevent various small cave features from generating near them; and strongholds likewise prevent anything but the smallest cave systems and ravines from generating nearby (the code I use to decide what can generate is extremely complex and adding a new feature means a lot of time to verify that everything is working properly, this is a large reason why I wrote my own cave mapping/analysis tool, instead of having to generate an actual world in-game):
These maps also include larger special cave variations (third frame) and strongholds (last frame); the data for the number of cave systems, caves, etc only includes "vanilla" caves, which are also displaced by "special" cave variants, otherwise the base density/chance parameters are the same as vanilla (in vanilla "large caves" range in width from 9-27 blocks, with values above 20 being very rare; circular rooms range from 5-17 blocks; these were increased to 9-33 and 5-71 respectively, with "special" large caves being generated separately):
Seed is -4426978636490490569
Center is 976, -96 and radius is 512 blocks (from 464, -608 to 1487, 415)
Number of cave systems: 135
Initial number of caves: 963; largest cave system: 28 (1064 -280)
Total number of caves: 1286; largest cave system: 31 (696 312)
Additional circular room caves: 239
Additional lava level caves: 38
Additional sea level caves: 46
Number of small caves: 1034; average width is 5.72
Number of large caves: 252; average width is 13.00; max width: 27.10 (1227 40 105)
Number of circular rooms: 359; average width is 14.78; max width: 60.43 (1445 45 211)
Additional caves per circular room: 0.67
Average caves per chunk: 0.31396484 (4096 chunks)
1 colossal cave systems
2 circular room cave systems
1 ravine cave systems
1 vertical cave systems
1 maze cave systems
2 random cave systems
3 ribbed tunnel cave systems
3 zigzag cave systems
3 spiral cave systems
4 large cave cave systems
1 giant cave regions
1 network cave regions
12 large caves (volume >= 25000)
9 large caves (volume >= 50000)
6 large caves (volume >= 100000)
3 large caves (volume >= 200000)
2 large caves (volume >= 300000)
1 large caves (volume >= 400000)
2 large cave clusters (volume >= 25000)
60 total ravines
9 large ravines (volume >= 25000)
4 large ravines (volume >= 50000)
2 large ravines (volume >= 100000)
2 large ravines (volume >= 200000)
1 large ravines (volume >= 300000)
13 large circular rooms (width >= 34)
5 toroidal caves
18 mineshafts
4 large mineshafts (length >= 2000)
1 strongholds
Igloos are no rarer than other structures though, prior to accounting for the frequency of their spawn biomes - they use the same "spacing" of 32 as temples and villages, which gives one structure per 512x512 block region
When most people talk about how common or rare a structure is, they're probably not referring to whatever numeric values the code uses. That's just a single variable, that by itself means nothing. They're talking about the practical end results.
Igloos could be trying to spawn ten times more than villages, but if other variables make them less common despite that, then... they are less common.
You may be missing a lot because they are small and hard to spot (especially with features like "better snow/grass")
This is more of a fair point (I don't often use better grass though [I use it in only one of four "active" worlds] so that one won't be a hindrance to me). I have no doubt I'm missing some. Maybe even most?
However, even to this point I'd sort of say that if a structure is by nature easier to miss, then even if it does spawn, in effect this still adds to its [i]effective[/i] rarity in practice, no? I certainly would see it that way, but that's a matter of opinion.
To that second point, you could say "they aren't as rare as they seem" and that would be appropriate, but the bit about them being as common as something else because they share one single variable is arbitrary. A single variable on its own means nothing.
That's why I carry a map with me; I only look at it while caving so it reflects where I've been, and otherwise I regularly make "return points", either when I need to return or when I've found a new area; while I record their coordinates it is enough to just go near the edge of the mapped area and look around for one of their pillars, as I did when exploring the east-east map. I guess I also have a good memory? (I regularly get asked how I manage to navigate underground so easily). Of course, I do miss areas now and then (in particular, when a return point leads to more than one separate unexplored area, or I intersected caves above while digging up, and explore those instead when I return to it, but they don't connect to the ones deeper down, or vice-versa).
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?
After several weeks I've probably finished exploring the map at 4096, -2048, or just the area around a collection of islands in the southwest corner, including a bit more of the map at 2048, -2048 (expanding a bit westwards from the desert island I made my last base in):
The most notable things I found since my last update include two rare mobs, one seen twice - two zombies in diamond armor and a pink sheep, the first time I've seen a mob in diamond armor since October 2021, and a pink sheep since November 2021 (both for this world only), or about 5 and 4 months respectively when counting daily sessions in this world; notably, all three mobs were seen within about a week:
I also found another close double cave spider spawner, 2 blocks apart; as noted before this can only happen in 1.6.2 and earlier versions, without structure saving (which I disabled for mineshafts to work around the effects of MC-33134 due to the size of the world and abundance of mineshafts; the pink sheep isn't entirely vanilla either since I fixed MC-2788, whose status is unknown as of the latest version. This makes it effectively much easier to encounter a pink sheep, but only one at a time instead of up to dozens, like my first encounter in this world (at least 3), then 6 years passed without seeing more until I fixed it, I've still only seen around 6 in total, while an MCEdit analysis suggested there should be 13-14):
I found what may be the largest lava lake from a single cave in this world, about 60 blocks long and up to 20 blocks wide, in the last cave system I explored within the area, fairly close to my base but not reached until much later; if it had been higher up it could have been the second largest cave I've found in terms of volume (about 14,000 blocks, vs 7,500 as-is):
There was another sizeable cave further to the south, with a volume of about 8,000 blocks:
These are all the caves with a volume of at least 5,000 within the area I've explored over the past few months; the first and third caves are shown above:
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?
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Curse PremiumThat's a heck of a lava cave. Is anything like this possible in vanilla?
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
At least as of 1.18, they can get much larger than that, but I don't know about before that.
Why do you think this is not vanilla? Unless I mention it anything I find is vanilla (as I noted with e.g the pink sheep, which otherwise is still "vanilla" as far as the probability of a sheep being pink goes, I just changed their locations. The diamond armored zombies are also vanilla,as far as armor chances go, though I modified the inhabited time calculation to start at 50% of the maximum so it is at a decent level (otherwise, in 1.6.4 you can see armored mobs on the first day, even on Easy, because effects started as soon as it became nonzero, as oppose to 1.8 and later, where the raw value must be at least 2).
Here are the first three caves I listed, including the two that I took screenshots of, in vanilla (the second one didn't look as interesting since it is narrower and straighter, so I didn't take a screenshot of it at the time):
The largest possible single cave in Beta 1.8 to 1.17 has a maximum diameter of 27 blocks and a volume on the order of 30,000 blocks; no such cave has ever been found, I have searched quite a lot of seeds with the largest known cave having a volume of about 26,000 (shown in the lower-right, along with the largest cave I've found in this world):
Obviously, multiple caves/cave systems can form larger open areas and/or contiguous areas of lava, the most extreme case in this world being a cave system around -800, -1050, with similarly dense areas found within many larger cave systems (the closest such cave system to spawn is at -16, 128):
The seed for this world is even featured as having the "biggest cave ever" on this seed site:
https://minecraft-seeds.net/seed/1.6-1.6.2/123775873255737467/
Also, this is a comparison of vanilla 1.6.4 to TMCW, showing just how different they are (as also shown in the chart above, which shows the largest caves I found in TMCWv4, TMCWv5, and vanilla 1.6.4), both areas are one level 4 map in size:
TMCWv5; note that there are still more caves listed despite the threshold being 25,000 instead of 5,000; only three ravines reached this threshold in vanilla, which is why I use 25,000 as representative of a "larger than vanilla cave/ravine", with a volume of 100,000 being classified as a "giant" cave/ravine:
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've reached the final "million milestone" for quite a while, with one million torches crafted, and actually present in the world:
I analyzed the world with MCEdit and it found a total of 1,000,824 torches, slightly more than I've crafted, as some of which were naturally generated in mineshafts before I removed them, and in villages, there's also the feature I added where bats have a chance of dropping a torch when killed by a player (I do not intentionally kill them for this but it does slowly add up):
This also shows that the majority of the torches I place are on the ground (data value 5 is upright); I do not follow the common advice to place them on the wall on one side (so you can see which direction you came from) as they are less effective at lighting up open areas and many areas are too dense for that to work well (when I run into an intersection I often do place a cobblestone down to mark the way I entered, as my exploration method is to go through a chain of caves, lighting them up and clearing out mobs, before I reach a dead end or a new region, or just decide it is time to backtrack, then I backtrack back to where I started, going down all the side passages, this is also true of mineshafts, while very dense cave systems are explored more like I would a large open area).
Another interesting thing, which has shown up in every world I've had, is a slight bias towards placing more torches facing west and east (data values 1 and 2), perhaps indicative of a bias in cave generation (the bias is unaffected by whether I explored more to the west/east or north/south in a given world so that can't explain it; modded worlds do have significantly more wall torches due to larger caves).
Also notable is the amount of obsidian, the majority from myself flooding out lava while caving, with enough to cover a 1208x1208 block area (as much as this seems like on average there are about 9.8 blocks per chunk, compared to 104 lava per chunk, so not even 10% of what existed has been converted).
Here is a list of some other interesting blocks; the amount of cobblestone is significantly higher than what I've placed due to dungeons, of which there are still around 1,000 in the world despite the number I've found (they average about 48 moss stone each); there are also more than 1.4 million oak wood planks and 1 million fences, mostly in mineshafts (the other wood types are in my bases), with about a third of the rails listed in my rail system, and more than 6,600 chests (about 3,750 dungeons, with about 10% of the chests in my bases) and 5,400 minecart chests (about 1,000 mineshafts, on average a 148,000 chunk area has 1,480 but there are less within 80 chunks of the origin, and 20% less elsewhere due to my removal of them from dense cave systems. Compared to dungeons the proportion of mineshafts that I've found is relatively much higher as they are much more likely to intersect the general underground network, or at least a cave leading to the surface):
(5:0),Wood Planks,1412580
(5:1),Wood Planks,1350
(5:2),Wood Planks,387
(5:3),Wood Planks,2720
(8:0),Water,170304225
(10:0),Lava,15469182
(14:0),Gold Ore,1147873
(15:0),Iron Ore,11313264
(16:0),Coal Ore,19825366
(21:0),Lapis Lazuli Ore,484131
(30:0),Web,181142
(46:0),TNT,18
(48:0),Moss Stone,50514
(56:0),Diamond Ore,451056
(66:0),Rail,35929
(66:1),Rail,35656
(66:2),Rail,32
(66:3),Rail,42
(66:4),Rail,49
(66:5),Rail,23
(66:6),Rail,15
(66:7),Rail,18
(66:8),Rail,21
(66:9),Rail,21
(70:0),Stone Pressure Plate,2
(73:0),Redstone Ore,3619921
(74:0),Redstone Ore (glowing),20
(85:0),Fence,1050926
(118:0),Cauldron,12
(129:0),Emerald Ore,47416
Entities,45030
MinecartChest,5435
MinecartRideable,25
TileEntities,8508
Chest,6630
MobSpawner,1326
There are also 12 empty cauldrons, suggesting that there are at least that many witch huts (as mentioned before I never kept track of them in this world, I do have a cauldron at my main base, which is filled so it has a different data value, and may or may not have been crafted, haven't checked; all the minecarts I've used were originally minecart chests (shame on the person who filed this "bug" report). There are two stone pressure plates and 18 TNT, meaning there are two (intact) desert temples that I haven't found, totaling 8 (from looking at other worlds with mapping tools it isn't uncommon to have missed them due to being entirely buried, even in relatively low terrain), which is still a bit low compared to 12-13 jungle temples and witch huts (there were no chiseled stone bricks so I've found every jungle temple that has been generated).
Regardless of how much longer I play on this world for now it will be a while before any other statistics reach one million, with iron ore mined likely to be the next one, but it will take about 200 more sessions to reach it:
Blocks mined; iron ore has 165,822 to go, closely followed by stone, but the gap between them has been widening since I stopped making railways in the Overworld (I still dig out plenty to make underground rooms for my farms; the cobblestone collected is used for building the base with leftovers brought with me while caving, reducing the need to mine it):
Items depleted; nothing here will ever get close to one million, especially since I repair a lot of the helmets on the anvil, even making iron/chain helmets with Protection III renamed to "Helmet", which I wear for additional protection when swapping my armor out for sacrificial armor, but still mostly using gold due to the availability of drops, but I can also trade for them (I do this to take advantage of the 12% durability bonus when repairing items, this also reduces the need to have enough levels at the moment an item needs to be repaired, the exceptions being swords (sacrifices are worn down with chickens, in this case it is necessary to get the cost below 40 levels), shears (Silk Touch is required to harvest cobwebs), and bows (I use bows dropped by skeletons so I never need to make them, otherwise, they are very cheap to make):
Items crafted (or smelted, or bought by trading); iron is again in the lead by a large margin, slightly behind ore mined (the difference is less because I lost some than accidentally mining a furnace without emptying it):
Items used; with a diamond sword in the lead; with about 400,000 mob kills the average number of hits per mob is around 1.8, so I'll have killed around 555,000 mobs by the time it reaches one million uses:
For the third time this year I've made another secondary base, located near 3600, 1600 in a desert next to what appears to be the eastern boundary of the spawn continent (with various smaller landmasses scattered around the fringes); I've begun to explore the map at 4096, 2048 with the one to the north likely fully explored (all land areas), with just a bit of land left along the southern edge:
An Extreme Hills where I'm currently caving (near the bottom you can see one of the pillars I make to mark a return point), between the boundaries of both maps:
For all I know there could be land far to the east but for now I don't plan to try exploring until I reach it (eventually I will run out of land to explore but that will be be quite a while even if the remaining 4-5 level 4 maps to the east and south have a similar amount of land, and at some point I'll also switch to another modded world):
Also, this is a view of my Nether rail network taken from just below the root in MCEdit (it doesn't render Nether portals, or Nether quartz and related blocks properly as this version was released in early 2013; I don't mind though and the current version doesn't even list 1.6 as a supported version, nor has it been updated at all since 1.13 due to the effort in updating to the new chunk and block formats and/or the developer no longer having the time/incentive, sort of like how 1.13 also marked the end of my "old caves" mods), as well as maps made with Minutor at y=64 and 118 (it is quite obvious that I've only used the Nether for railways): Despite linking 3 bases so far it still totals less rails than a single segment between bases in the Overworld (averaging a bit over 1,000 blocks each; the most recent Nether rail segment was about 200 blocks long).
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 think I was around 22,000 torches "used" according to statistics in my eldest hardcore world, where I felt like I've put a lot of caving time in, but that's only like 2% of a million. No doubt your world is older and you spend more of a percentage of your time caving, but that's a massive difference. I imagine my 22,000 is quite a bit compared to normal (for non-long term worlds, anyway) so you probably have a far high amount than most.
I also noticed in some of your screenshots you do place torches on the ground a lot. I actively almost never do that. I'm not sure if there's a real reason for it other than "I prefer the look on a wall". I'm not overly concerned with maximizing efficiency of torches anyway, so I just place them where I need light and where it's convenient. I typically alternate sides or sometimes stick the same side. It depends on the portion of the cave. I don't rely on torches to remember my way back. My memory has to pull that weight, and eventually I' do either find another way out (and then resume from that spot) or I simply find my way back.
I can't say anything about what a more typical usage would be but I once made a thread asking how many torches you'd used and some of the answers were interesting - exceeding even what I'd done back then (about 1/3 the current amount, with around the same number in all my other worlds, which is still more or less true):
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/survival-mode/2699620-how-many-torches-have-you-used
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?
Well those first two seem atypical, and the second two are wild guesses.
I imagine your count, both in terms of frequency of use (relative to time) and total overall are pretty high. At least I feel mine are (just nowhere near something like yours though) so if yours aren't, mine are nothing. It says I've played for 12.83 days and crafted 28,796 torches, and placed 22,763. The disparity is because I have four shulker chests full of torches, and recently depleted them and crafted more to stock them. No idea how that stacks up in terms of torches per time played but it's only 2% of a million so I've along way to go, haha (I'll likely never reach that point anyway).
My oldest world for sure has more torches of course but the stats were lost/reset on occasions so I can't check those (plus there were multiple players playing), and it's too new of a version to open in MCEdit (no idea is the newer similar thing could check this), oh and I also pruned it so while it was minor, some were lost. Still doubt that one was anywhere near a million either though.
On each of three consecutive days I found a witch hut, desert temple, and a village, and if you think they count as a structure, a desert well, with the desert temple, well, and village close enough to be seen in the same view, which may be the closest in time that I've found 3-4 structures in this world; these are also the 7th desert temple and 16th village I've found, and the first village I found in 6 months of playing (two play periods since October 2021) and first desert temple since January 2018, with around 400 sessions elapsed since then:
While they were relatively close together I did not see the village until later since this temple was technically past the edge of which I'd explored (underground) and I only made a special trip to check it out, not checking further into the desert until the next day (the fact I said this shows just restrictive I am at what I explore outside of caving):
The desert temple had a couple diamonds and 24 gold, quite a lot from what I can recall finding (this may not be so unusual for newer versions; since 1.9 loot is much less random and there can be more stacks per chest; I've seen people post screenshots of loot chests with all 27 slots filled; of course, I put all the loot into a single chest to take a screenshot. I also took the bones for bonemeal, I never take saddles once I've collected several):
I also later ran into the basement of the desert temple exposed in a cave:
Deserts are actually the "flattest" biomes in 1.6.4, flatter than Plains, yet as seen here they can still have a fair amount of elevation changes (I had to dig out or build staircases to several of the houses; not visible in this view is a field which had a 8-10 block drop to the surface below on one side). Another major difference from newer versions (or TMCW) is that there are no surface cave openings since caves can only cut through stone, dirt, and grass (I did semi-fix this fro this world by adding mycelium to the list; in TMCW I actually have no list, just anything goes, except for water, which has a separate check so they do not run right into it, and bedrock at y=0, by limiting the minimum y-coordinate to 1):
A view (taken at max FOV showing the village (left) and desert temple (right):
If you look closely you can also see a desert well near the center, shown zoomed-in here (similar to witch huts I never kept track of how many I've found in this world, which would be similar to other structures given a 1/1000 chance per chunk, compared to 1/1024 for structures):
I also recently found the largest complex of mineshafts since exploring the southeast map, when I found complexes of 8 and 9 mineshafts one after another, with a total of 5 mineshafts embedded between several large cave systems; surprisingly, despite the amount of caves there were no additional mineshafts in vanilla (due to my code that excludes them from near dense cave systems), so this is pretty much the most extreme case of intersection between caves and mineshafts that I may find:
This is an analysis of the area (the image was slightly cropped to fit the mineshafts):
There were also two fairly large caves, which can be seen on the map (the first one is the largest green area towards the lower-left, which cuts it off above y=62, while the volume accounts for the part above as it was still underground, and the second is near the right-center):
Also, this is what happens to caves in deserts prior to 1.8, which allowed them to cut through more blocks (contrary to widespread belief caves can only cut through a small list of blocks, and even if any block is allowed, as in TMCW, they can't cut through non-terrain features, such as strongholds, which simply don't replace air blocks):
Also, these are screenshots I took of my maps while exploring, showing my general progression from day to day, and how far I may go into "explored" areas; also notable is that land has extended much further east than I expected, to at least x = 4200:
This was taken from were I took a screenshot of the witch hut:
This is the furthest east I've explored at any point so far (I might have gone further east from the northern landmass if I'd found caves in that area):
This was taken from where I took a screenshot of the desert temple, which is near the northern edge of the same desert my latest base is in, 576 blocks south from the northern edge of the map, and from the looks of it, the village as well (this would be several "biome units" merged into one larger biome, common when there are only 7 biomes to choose from):
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?
Ive seen this most commonly with shipwrecks, and usually it's a low quantity (per slot) of either iron or gold nuggets filling much of the space.
This is one of the largest cave systems that I've ever explored, only rivaled by one or two other cave systems / cave complexes in this world, the last of which I found 6 years ago; another includes the largest complex of mineshafts I've ever found and was found over 10 years ago and fully explored a year later
This is an analysis of the area and lists of the densest regions that I've explored in this world, not necessarily corresponding to a single cave system or dense network, especially at larger scales (the 12 and 16 chunk radii include other cave systems nearby) and not including mineshafts:
Size 3 cave system at 3744 960; total number of caves: 3
Size 6 cave system at 3648 976; total number of caves: 9
Size 3 cave system at 3664 992; total number of caves: 3
Size 20 cave system at 3744 992; total number of caves: 36
Size 1 cave system at 3776 1008; total number of caves: 1
Size 8 cave system at 3824 1008; total number of caves: 10
Size 8 cave system at 3760 1040; total number of caves: 10
Size 9 cave system at 3712 1056; total number of caves: 11
Size 21 cave system at 3760 1072; total number of caves: 30
Size 17 cave system at 3696 1088; total number of caves: 24
Size 3 cave system at 3808 1088; total number of caves: 4
Size 3 cave system at 3792 1104; total number of caves: 3
Size 16 cave system at 3728 1120; total number of caves: 28
Size 2 cave system at 3600 1136; total number of caves: 2
Size 32 cave system at 3712 1136; total number of caves: 40
Size 18 cave system at 3616 1152; total number of caves: 23
Size 32 cave system at 3648 1152; total number of caves: 48
Size 17 cave system at 3776 1152; total number of caves: 21
Size 3 cave system at 3616 1168; total number of caves: 3
Size 26 cave system at 3648 1184; total number of caves: 45
Size 8 cave system at 3840 1200; total number of caves: 10
Number of cave systems: 21
Initial number of caves: 256; largest cave system: 32 (3712 1136)
Total number of caves: 364; largest cave system: 48 (3648 1152)
Additional circular room caves: 108
Number of small caves: 353; average width is 6.06
Number of large caves: 11; average width is 11.37; max width: 15.93 (3730 40 1121)
Number of circular rooms: 67; average width is 11.88
Additional caves per circular room: 1.61
Average caves per chunk: 1.1234568 (324 chunks)
16 chunk radius:
949820 (8.86%) at 3624, 968
940376 (8.78%) at -984, 840
895049 (8.35%) at 2552, 24
867375 (8.09%) at 1960, 376
865090 (8.07%) at -1176, 1848
864292 (8.07%) at 248, -2152
835737 (7.80%) at -1496, -792
835603 (7.80%) at -2472, -2392
826039 (7.71%) at -744, 1544
824063 (7.69%) at 392, -1096
12 chunk radius:
599949 (9.86%) at 3608, 1032
597027 (9.81%) at -1192, 1784
564436 (9.28%) at 2024, 424
560131 (9.21%) at -1160, 728
551667 (9.07%) at -2536, -2344
545923 (8.97%) at 744, -1512
532153 (8.75%) at -808, 1560
531359 (8.73%) at -856, -2472
526885 (8.66%) at 2808, 152
516957 (8.50%) at 2680, 2504
10 chunk radius:
494276 (11.42%) at -1192, 1752
470638 (10.88%) at 3656, 1064
433431 (10.02%) at -808, 888
423998 (9.80%) at -2568, -2344
423158 (9.78%) at 1400, -776
422873 (9.77%) at 2040, 456
419340 (9.69%) at -1192, 744
418713 (9.68%) at -856, -2424
415114 (9.59%) at 2392, 40
411468 (9.51%) at 2776, 184
8 chunk radius:
367819 (12.97%) at -1208, 1736
361909 (12.76%) at 3672, 1080
336616 (11.87%) at -824, 872
318873 (11.25%) at -408, 1032
314378 (11.09%) at 1368, -776
308372 (10.88%) at -1256, -856
304039 (10.72%) at -2920, -2184
303397 (10.70%) at -824, -2392
302446 (10.67%) at -888, 1624
301923 (10.65%) at 2104, 520
I also analyzed the cave system with MCEdit and it found about 430,000 air blocks below sea level within a 256x240 area, along with 3,859 torches (this means I placed about 965 per day); another interesting fact is that the amount of ore I mined was over 20% of what had originally been present, ranging from 8.4% of emerald to 27% of coal, and averaging more than 60 per chunk (this analysis does not include all of the mineshafts extending from the cave system itself, but also includes some empty areas, either way, this shows the sheer amount of ore that can be exposed in 1.6.4-type caves due to the enormous surface area, far exceeding a single large open cave of the same volume; in this thread I found over 20,000 exposed ore in the spawn chunks alone):
(1:0),Stone,2763499
(2:0),Grass,3264
(3:0),Dirt,200710
(4:0),Cobblestone,3057
(5:0),Wood Planks,855
(7:0),Bedrock,184618
(9:0),Water,38299
(11:0),Lava,58954
(12:0),Sand,24999
(13:0),Gravel,75268
(14:0),Gold Ore,1585
(15:0),Iron Ore,17117
(16:0),Coal Ore,26196
(17:0),Wood,1
(21:0),Lapis Lazuli Ore,611
(24:0),Sandstone,17518
(24:1),Sandstone,16
(24:2),Sandstone,98
(30:0),Web,115
(31:1),Tall Grass,10
(37:0),Flower,2
(39:0),Brown Mushroom,78
(40:0),Red Mushroom,88
(49:0),Obsidian,7865
(50:1),Torch,120
(50:2),Torch,129
(50:3),Torch,135
(50:4),Torch,132
(50:5),Torch,3343
(54:2),Chest,4
(54:3),Chest,6
(54:4),Chest,5
(54:5),Chest,3
(56:0),Diamond Ore,682
(65:3),Ladder,2
(65:4),Ladder,13
(65:5),Ladder,16
(66:0),Rail,16
(66:1),Rail,1
(73:0),Redstone Ore,5178
(82:0),Clay,738
(85:0),Fence,664
(97:0),Hidden Silverfish (Smooth Stone),3063
(129:0),Emerald Ore,437
As large as it was, it only took 4 days for me to explore it, with a total of 14,500 ores and 16,000 resource blocks mined from it and several mineshafts and other caves directly intersecting it (for comparison, it took up to 7 days to explore the largest complexes of mineshafts I've recently found, with up to twice as many resources extracted from them):
For perspective, the area at the top is the cave/mineshaft complex I previously mentioned; there are a couple relatively dense cave systems in the lower-left, all contributing towards a region of relatively high air volume::
There are also numerous other relatively large cave systems within the area I've been exploring over the past few weeks:
Here are some screenshots from the cave system, for the most part it was fairly dense, although not to the point where there were a lot of larger open areas from all the intersecting caves (cave systems this dense are generally smaller), with a triple ravine in the middle and a few larger caves forming the largest open areas:
Also, this is a relatively large cave and a double cave spider spawner (1 block apart) I found elsewhere:
Also, if you are wondering how unusual it is to find a cave system this large, these are the three densest areas within +/- 6144 blocks in the seed "8255665205000737968", with several other seeds each having similarly large cave systems (they are still the exception though, given that a +/- 6144 block area is about 4 times the area I've explored):
Of interest, this seed is known for having the largest known cave system in 1.7-1.17 (the ones above are from 1.6.4, there is no relationship between the locations of the largest cave systems across versions):
Largest cave system in Minecraft 1.7+
This also shows just how different 1.6 and 1.7 are - cave systems like this, or even the smaller ones seen on the map above, are truly the exception in 1.7, as seen in this comparison of my world to that seed, which shows several comparable areas (the ones I mentioned finding years ago are in the southwest and north respectively) and an overall much greater density of cave systems in 1.6 (the difference in the actual number of caves isn't as great as suggested since they are much more clumpy in 1.6):
Size also isn't everything, the largest and densest (a combination of both) cave system I've ever found is still the cave system at -800, -1050, which I found more than 10 years ago, and a cave system this large and dense is remarkable (very few seeds will have anything like it within thousands of blocks of spawn), and likely impossible in 1.7 or later (this likely does include 1.18+ since they didn't change the density of "old" caves, still using the lame 1.7 generation, IDK what Mojang was even thinking and they never even mentioned the change anywhere, much less why. Large open caves are simply no substitute for "1.6.4 type cave systems", or vast mineshaft complexes (I see mineshafts as more of a variant of cave than a structure):
This is a comparison to the cave system I recently found at the layers of peak cave density; the cave system above appears as a single solid mass even when sliced at a single level (it does not appear as open as this suggests due to all the irregular block formations filling it):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I've found another desert temple just weeks after the last one - a quarter of all the desert temples I've found in this world in more than a decade - and the first time I've found two within a single biome, if you consider a narrow strip of desert as being part of the same deserts to the north and south, forming one of the largest single desert areas I've found:
I've explored far to the south over the past few days, past my base and into a region dominated by multiple large mineshaft complexes (3-4 mineshafts each) and relatively low cave density compared to the region to the north; it also appears that land extends quite a bit further east along the northern part of the map / southern part of the map to the north, while to the south the coastline appears to be running along x = 3850 or so:
Also, I thought to point out a quirk in the way 1.6 renders maps which makes it easier to spot structures in deserts - sandstone is shown as stone so temples and villages appear as gray dots which are easily visible, even at zoom level 4 (I changed this in TMCW but not World1; vanilla 1.6 only has 14 different base map colors, with a blocks' "material" determining its color, so all wool appears as the same shade of light gray ("Material.cloth"), gravel appears as sand since it is of "Material.sand", and so on):
There may be more structures to the west, between 3072-3340, as structures are placed within 24x24 chunk regions aligned to multiples of 32 chunks (e.g. 3072, 1024 to 3440, 1392, which I haven't fully explored/mapped yet, more so for a region at 3072, 1536 to 3440, 1904; whether there actually are any depends on whether the biome at a single location chosen within these regions is valid, and for villages, whether there is sufficient space to place at least 2 buildings).
I can see why some complain that structures are too common; within the area I've explored over the past few weeks you could find a total of 4 structures, including a witch hut just to the north of the current map, within minutes even by walking (the desert temples are 784 blocks or 49 chunks apart so at 32 chunk render distance, 25 with fog disabled, you could see the first desert temple and village to the north, then turn around and see the second desert temple to the south), aggravated by changes to world generation since 1.7, where individual biomes, or clusters of the same biome (the large desert I've been exploring is multiple "biome units", each averaging 256 blocks across) are much larger, especially since 1.18, which also allows villages to spawn in more biomes (referring to 1.6 generation, simply adding villages to Taiga would make them 50% more common, and modern versions have a significant bias towards more of the original biomes, plus Savanna, than most of the fancy new ones).
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?
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Curse PremiumI spotted that glitch with desert temples years ago and always thought it was really sloppy.
If you think structures are too common in your modded 1.6, imagine adding in ruined portals, pillager bases, and shipwrecks.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
Here is what i found in a vanilla world - the exact same structures:
Also, here is what ChunkBase shows for desert temples (using an archived page because they don't care about versions older than 1.7 anymore) - and yes, I revealed the location of a third temple in the same desert just to show that they actually exist in vanilla, not some "modded version" (like TMCW, which does in fact make structures more common to offset their spawn biomes being rarer). This is also a good illustration of why structures are so much more common in newer versions - or they seem to be - thanks to the ridiculous size of biomes (an average size biome, meaning a single "biome unit" only has a 25% chance of having a structure), and changes to playstyles (more exploration, in large part because you are forced to if you want to find everything):
https://web.archive.org/web/20160601192937/http://chunkbase.com/apps/desert-temple-finder#-123775873255737467
Now, you can actually see one difference between vanilla and this world; village wells always use cobblestone in 1.6.4 due to a bug introduced in that version (fixed in 1.8). There are also no ugly patches of exposed stone ("basins") in my world (often made uglier by the fact that there is a bug with the noise field where it doesn't align properly along chunk borde5rs, a relic of a far older bug dating back to Alpha). There will also be differences in decorations where the mineshafts I removed are supposed to be, but I took care to retain the random calls when placing torches that I otherwise removed so MCMap doesn't show unexplored mineshafts (in TMCW I later replaced them with redstone torches, then a new "dim" torch variant, with torches in villages, etc being replaced with "fake" torches, in this world I always set it to y=63 or below to avoid revealing undiscovered villages).
Another oddity I found in vanilla is the number of pigs in the Extreme Hills near the first desert temple, likely related to MC-2788, which I fixed, in a recreation using my World1 mod I found a reasonable mix of sheep (more color variation as well), pigs, and chickens (as noted before this means that any pink sheep I find do not exist in vanilla but the probability is the same. The only known pink sheep in this world in vanilla are around 500, 1450 and you must use 1.5.2):
Also, my "World1 custom client" mod does make a significant change to world generation - mineshafts are equally as common near the origin as anywhere else as I removed vanilla's reduction within 1280 blocks (scaled linearly from 0-100% from 0-80 chunks) but this has no impact on this world since I'd already generated the entire area:
World1; the reduction in frequency closer to the origin was removed but about 20% of mineshafts are removed due to being in areas of high cave density; this led to slightly less mineshafts overall, with 560 found (one every 117 chunks, compared to 100 in vanilla outside of the near-origin area). Note that many of the larger complexes have at least one mineshaft missing, meaning I'm actually less likely to find crazy huge complexes than if I hadn't made this change (the fact I still do, with 1800 rails mined (about 6 mineshafts worth) over the past 3 days, just furthers their overabundance; Mojang nerfed them by a factor of 2.5 in 1.7, though they removed the reduction near the origin in 1.13 so they are now more common within 512 blocks of 0,0 than they are in vanilla 1.6.4, thus you are a lot more likely to find one near spawn, and they are still not spaced apart, as they are in TMCW to minimize overlap):
Another change not visible is a bugfix for mineshafts which fail to generate any corridors (hence why I mentioned "properly generated"; 4 out of 613 mineshafts in vanilla failed to generate properly), with one such example close to spawn (mentioned in this thread):
The 8 smallest mineshafts found in vanilla and World1:
I have made various other small improvements/tweaks to world generation such as village paths generating on water using wood planks over water (a feature I also added to TMCW, along with villages generating as low as y=63 instead of 64, the latter of which makes it impossible for villagers to reach the doors if a village generates on water or ground at y=63), or snow generating under trees and Frozen River generating in all snowy biomes (not just Ice Plains, in vanilla even Ice Mountains uses River):
This is at the border of old (vanilla snow) and new (modified snow) chunks, which otherwise seamlessly match since aside from temperature Frozen River and River have the same parameters and snowcover is a minor decorative feature (the appearance of "snow blocks" on the ground, even in vanilla terrain, is due to my "better grass" feature, which uses the top texture on the sides, along with "better snow", which makes grass blocks appear as snowy when there are partial blocks with snow next to them on top):
Also, how come Mojang never did this (Superflat caves)? I also added "snow" and "animal" tags to the preset code so you can have those as well (that is, generated at world generation, Superflat otherwise lacks automatic snowcover and only spawns up to 10-odd animals in loaded chunks. As I removed spawn chunks this is less of an issue but even at 8 chunks it is still 10x less than what a normal world has, or in this case, where the "mob counts" shows 96 passive mobs):
(you keep implying that various features in this world are the result of mods; you previously suggested that a landmass I found or a particularly large cave couldn't have been vanilla, and now structures? If this were actually TMCW I'd have probably found at least 3-4 desert temples in a desert of the same size, given that I increased the frequency of structures to compensate for their spawn biomes being rarer)
Also, I was wrong when I said I'd never found two desert temples in the same desert before, because I did, in the largest desert in this world, about 1200 blocks from west to east and 975 from north to south:
There are a total of 6 structures on this map (marked) - two desert temples, two jungle temples, a village, and a witch hut. Not that I'm saying they are too common for me, just noting that I see so many complaints about villages, etc everywhere (and not just structures in general but specific structures like villages) - they have always been common but changes to world generation (much larger areas of the same biome and low variety across large regions), the need to explore much further due to said changes and more biome-specific resources, means of taster travel, and a tendency to play at higher render distances makes them much more commonly encountered (for perspective, the area covered by the map would take me more than a month to explore; regardless of render distance if I'm only looking at a map most of the time I can only see things within their 128 block update radius)
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?
Haha, you finally seem to get it now.
Yeah, looking at map or seed generators might not give the impression of how much worse it can be in modern versions, because averaged out, and over a larger area, maybe certain structures are not much more common... but when newer versions give you "regions" of similar biomes and they all cluster together, then there's more types of structures, and more valid places for them to spawn... it makes the world seem very "littered with structures". I'm pretty happy with almost all structures the modern version has... but they are just far too common. I miss how it was back in 1.6 (though I found villages slightly too rare, I would rather them be a bit more rare than I like, than for everything to be way more common than I like).
And then a lot of these structures (ruined portals, shipwrecks, etc.) are just small "free loot" spawns. I know jungle temples and desert temples haven't aged well (I think they could benefit from the treatment that bastion remnants and ancient cities have whereby they are randomized to some degree, and maybe reworked and slightly larger), but they were fine at the time.
I remember playing on a render distance of 32 in my 1.6 and earlier generated world and structures were still rather sparse to see in general. I did see a spot where two villages spawned so close you could probably see them even on 1.6's version of "far" (so, just 10 chunks?) but that was an exception and not a norm. And one of those villages was like three buildings too so I'm not sure how much that counts.
In 1.18, it seems like any new world I start up will always be one where I can find a village before first nightfall if I wanted to, at least if I do nothing but run to start looking for one. Maybe not always, but almost always, whereas in 1.6 I'd find that rather uncommon. Possible, yes, but not expected.
Out of curiosity didn't you say you also made them more uncommon in your mod? Or was that only mineshafts? I figure since most of your time is spent underground you might leave surface stuff more alone?
Mineshafts are the only structure I made less common, and more to prevent them from generating on top of denser cave systems (as I also do in this world) or in the middle of giant caves (I've still found mineshafts that were mostly floating near the end of a cave), otherwise, their base frequency is about the same (one every 98 chunks, or in alternate 7x7 chunk regions), which makes it feel like there was no change in terms of how often I encounter them (that is to say, instead of often finding 2-3 or more intersecting most of them are single):
Other than dungeons (unchanged) other structures are all more common, some significantly so, in terms of the base attempt rate (before considering biomes or terrain); villages have a spacing of 24, meaning they are 32^2 / 24^2 = 1.777 times more common, but their spawn biomes are less common even as I added more, e.g. Plains is about 1/4 as common as in vanilla, Desert is about a third as common, etc, plus I reduced their spawn rate in several biomes (75% in normal desert and 50% in Ice Plains, since these biomes are more common than others). Villages also make up to 5 attempts to generate with different offsets from the center of the origin chunk to help marginal cases generate (the pre-1.10 restriction that a village must stay within its valid spawn biomes causes a percentage of villages to fail to generate). Altogether, I've calculated that they should be about as common as in vanilla.
Jungle temples have the highest increase, with a spacing of 20, making them 2.56 times more common, but jungles are about 3.5 times rarer, and I only found one in my last world (but 3 in a previous world within a smaller area, so random variation is always a factor. On average you can expect to find one per level 4 map, and 9 within the area I've explored in this world, where I actually found 13, with a sizable amount of ocean (my structure frequency calculations assume land only). Similar changes apply to desert temples and witch huts (their biomes are more common so their spacing is larger).
For non-vanilla structures (backported and/or my own), igloos have a spacing of 16 (4 times more common) but they have a failure rate of about 50% due to unsuitable terrain (too uneven) and I only consider igloos with a basement as a complete structure; the only igloo in my last world generated at the very edge of the explored area (I never saw it in game), then again, I found 4 in a previous world. My own structures have even higher rates, with a spacing of only 14 (5.22 times more common) for quartz desert pyramids, pumpkin houses, and woodland mansions (for comparison, vanilla uses a spacing of 80 for mansions, making them 33 times rarer in terms of base spawn attempts). All these have significant failure rates due to unsuitable terrain.
I also added shipwrecks, with a spacing of 19, but only the largest size, which has a loot chest, is counted, thus they effectively have a spacing of about 32 (vanilla uses a spacing of 24 so they are about twice as common in terms of loot potential. I also only place them on the seafloor so they are harder to find).
Strongholds are a special case; unlike vanilla they generate infinitely throughout the world at the rate of one every 8192 chunks, so in a sense they really have the biggest increase of any structure, but if you just consider the three that generate in vanilla 1.6 and the area enclosed within the maximum distance of 1152 blocks (16286 chunks) then they are about 2/3 as common.
Here is a complete list of what I found in TMCWv5:
A map and list of the biomes within 1536 blocks (I explored a bit past this); you have to go quite far down the list to find "common" biomes like Plains (1.3% of the total area, 1.36% of land; on average it is about 1.94% of land). The most notable deviation from the average is Quartz Desert, 4 times more common than expected, and similar to the large deserts in World1 I found two quartz desert pyramids in a single very large Quartz Desert (the tan colored area to the left of center. Based on debug results the game attempts to place 2 more but they fail). The frequency of Savanna, which is near average, is a bit misleading since it generates as an "edge" biome around Plateau and Mountains (it i unlikely for villages to generate here due to lack of space):
Seed is -4426978636490490569 and world type is Default Center is 0, 0 and radius is 1536 blocks (from -1536, -1536 to 1535, 1535) Biome Name Area Percentage (without ocean) Total Land 8972416 95.07514% Total Ocean 464768 4.92486% Quartz Desert 373328 3.95593% 4.16084% Forest Mountains 2 335040 3.55021% 3.73411% Desert 316256 3.35117% 3.52476% Taiga 311152 3.29709% 3.46787% Savanna 286880 3.03989% 3.19736% Roofed Forest 273472 2.89781% 3.04792% Lake 263504 2.79219% 2.93682% Ice Plains 254448 2.69623% 2.83589% Birch Forest 253136 2.68233% 2.82127% River 250816 2.65774% 2.79541% Bushlands 250800 2.65757% 2.79523% Mixed Forest 198480 2.10317% 2.21211% Forest Mountains 1 196944 2.08689% 2.19499% Riverbank 190112 2.01450% 2.11885% Autumnal Forest 185568 1.96635% 2.06821% Tropical Ocean 184416 1.95414% Winter Forest 182928 1.93837% 2.03878% Big Oak Forest 176608 1.87141% 1.96834% Forest 173344 1.83682% 1.93197% Tropical Swamp 171024 1.81224% 1.90611% Mega Mixed Forest 170128 1.80274% 1.89612% Poplar Grove 168480 1.78528% 1.87776% Winter Taiga 164192 1.73984% 1.82996% Ocean 159392 1.68898% Flower Forest 156112 1.65422% 1.73991% Quartz Desert Hills 137552 1.45755% 1.53305% Big Birch Forest 136704 1.44857% 1.52360% Mushroom Forest 134304 1.42314% 1.49685% Savanna Plateau 133920 1.41907% 1.49257% Plains 122496 1.29801% 1.36525% Mega Tree Plains 120320 1.27496% 1.34100% Hilly Plains 120176 1.27343% 1.33939% Jungle 116576 1.23528% 1.29927% Meadow 110096 1.16662% 1.22705% Mixed Forest Hills 102464 1.08575% 1.14199% Extreme Savanna Mountains 101984 1.08066% 1.13664% Savanna Mountains 100784 1.06795% 1.12326% Volcanic Wastelands 100160 1.06133% 1.11631% Ice Hills 99136 1.05048% 1.10490% Mountainous Desert 84544 0.89586% 0.94227% Frozen Lake 84080 0.89094% 0.93709% Sandy Ocean Shallows 82432 0.87348% Forest Hills 81424 0.86280% 0.90749% Swamplands 80832 0.85653% 0.90089% Extreme Mountains 78160 0.82821% 0.87111% Mesa 76400 0.80956% 0.85150% Mega Taiga 75984 0.80516% 0.84686% Rocky Mountains Peak 1 74560 0.79007% 0.83099% Ice Plains Spikes 67760 0.71801% 0.75520% Rocky Mountains Edge 65152 0.69038% 0.72614% Extreme Hills 64800 0.68665% 0.72221% Rocky Mountains 64672 0.68529% 0.72079% Roofed Forest Hills 60800 0.64426% 0.67763% Big Oak Forest Hills 60496 0.64104% 0.67424% Mega Spruce Taiga 51008 0.54050% 0.56850% Beach 49168 0.52100% 0.54799% TMCW Mega Taiga 47776 0.50625% 0.53248% Extreme Hills Edge 43648 0.46251% 0.48647% Volcano 40032 0.42419% 0.44617% Poplar Grove Hills 39552 0.41911% 0.44082% Rocky Mountains Peak 2 38976 0.41300% 0.43440% Frozen River 34816 0.36892% 0.38803% Autumnal Forest Hills 34560 0.36621% 0.38518% Mega Forest 32992 0.34960% 0.36770% Frozen Ocean 30720 0.32552% Birch Forest Hills 30496 0.32315% 0.33989% Great Forest 30160 0.31959% 0.33614% Mesa Plateau 28160 0.29839% 0.31385% Big Birch Forest Hills 27792 0.29449% 0.30975% Mesa Edge 26736 0.28330% 0.29798% Rocky Mountains Summit 24240 0.25686% 0.27016% Volcanic Peak 22592 0.23939% 0.25179% Desert Hills 22544 0.23888% 0.25126% Icelands 21632 0.22922% 0.24109% Extreme Forest Mountains 20720 0.21956% 0.23093% Ice Mountains 20272 0.21481% 0.22594% Frozen Riverbank 19888 0.21074% 0.22166% Desert River 19776 0.20955% 0.22041% Ice Hills River 19248 0.20396% 0.21452% Winter Taiga Hills 18688 0.19803% 0.20828% Swamp River 17840 0.18904% 0.19883% Desert Riverbank 16704 0.17700% 0.18617% Winter Forest Hills 16496 0.17480% 0.18385% Mega Taiga Hills 15632 0.16564% 0.17422% Meadow Forest 14800 0.15683% 0.16495% Jungle River 12848 0.13614% 0.14319% Quartz Desert River 12560 0.13309% 0.13998% Mega Mixed Forest Hills 12016 0.12733% 0.13392% Quartz Desert Riverbank 10880 0.11529% 0.12126% Badlands 9520 0.10088% 0.10610% Badlands Edge 9360 0.09918% 0.10432% Mountainous Desert Hills 9168 0.09715% 0.10218% Mesa Plateau Forest 9152 0.09698% 0.10200% Great Forest Hills 7984 0.08460% 0.08898% Winter Forest Mountains 7904 0.08375% 0.08809% Quartz Sand Ocean Shallows 7808 0.08274% Volcanic Wastelands River 7680 0.08138% 0.08560% Taiga Hills 6768 0.07172% 0.07543% Mesa River 6048 0.06409% 0.06741% Mesa Riverbank 5200 0.05510% 0.05796% Quartz Desert Beach 4912 0.05205% 0.05475% Badlands Mesa Edge 4880 0.05171% 0.05439% Gravel Beach 4528 0.04798% 0.05047% Rocky Mountains River 3600 0.03815% 0.04012% Mega Spruce Taiga Hills 3440 0.03645% 0.03834% Icelands Mesa 3184 0.03374% 0.03549% Quartz Beach 2944 0.03120% 0.03281% Jungle Hills 2928 0.03103% 0.03263% Spruce Hills 2368 0.02509% 0.02639% Badlands Mesa 1952 0.02068% 0.02176% Ice Plains Spikes River 1184 0.01255% 0.01320% Badlands River 1040 0.01102% 0.01159% Icelands River 1024 0.01085% 0.01141% Mega Forest Hills 816 0.00865% 0.00909% TMCW Mega Taiga Hills 400 0.00424% 0.00446% Volcanic Wastelands Beach 96 0.00102% 0.00107% Missing biomes: Desert Beach Mushroom Island Icelands Mountains Mushroom Island Shore Hilly Plains Hills Desert M Oasis Mushroom Forest Hills 116 out of 124 biomes presentTheMasterCaver'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?
Igloos are indeed rather rare, one of the few structures that are, so if you invalidated the ones without basements then I'm not surprised you so seldomly find one. (Edit: oh, you also made more common, but in my experience they would still be rare with those chances you gave, especially for your pace of exploration.)
I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but modern versions take care of the "floating" mineshafts by giving them support log structures and chains. While they're probably something that some people think should only generate "in terrain", I find it at least makes them look less unsightly than simply floating like before. I'm not sure if you also made them more rare just because you want less of them though (I know I would), but I don't spend as much time underground as you do so I can tolerate them as they are too).
Igloos are no rarer than other structures though, prior to accounting for the frequency of their spawn biomes - they use the same "spacing" of 32 as temples and villages, which gives one structure per 512x512 block region:
https://minecraft.wiki/w/Custom#Structure_defaults
You may be missing a lot because they are small and hard to spot (especially with features like "better snow/grass"); in TMCW they are twice as common (spacing of 16, or one every 256x256 block region, with a failure rate of 50% due to bad terrain) and even only counting ones with a basement still gives the same frequency as vanilla (actually, a while ago I increased the chance of a basement from 1/2 to 2/3). Here is some of the actual code (comments) from TMCW's source that indicates how common structures are; if the probabilities seem rare, you must remember they include the frequency of the biomes they generate in (they will likely be far rarer than one per 1024 chunks in vanilla):
{
// Maximum distance (grid size) reduced from 32 to 22 to compensate for rarer spawn biomes. Relative frequency is
// 32^2 / 22^2 = 2.11 times more common per base spawn attempt (one every 484 chunks vs 1024 in vanilla; Ice Plains
// has one every 968 chunks and Desert one every 645 chunks; spawn biomes are about 13% of land for about one
// attempt every 3725 chunks.
// Desert temples use a grid size of 24 chunks for about one every 9723 chunks and 1.78 times more likely per spawn
// biome (chances are relative to a grid size of 32 and 100% success rate per attempt; frequency considers biome frequency).
if (TYPE == DESERT_TEMPLE && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 24, 8))
// Jungle temples use a grid size of 20 chunks for about one every 16549 chunks and 2.56 times more likely per spawn
// biome (frequency is slightly less due to only generating in Jungle River if a swamp is within 4 blocks).
if (TYPE == JUNGLE_TEMPLE && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 20, 8))
// Witch huts use a grid size of 22 chunks for about one every 12170 chunks and 2.12 times more likely per spawn
// biome (frequency is slightly less due to only generating in Swamp River if a swamp is within 4 blocks).
if (TYPE == WITCH_HUT && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 22, 8))
// Igloos use a grid size of 16 chunks for about one every 11176 chunks and 2 times more likely per spawn biome when
// accounting for the frequency of spawn biomes and a pass rate of 50%.
if (TYPE == IGLOO && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 16, 4))
// Quartz desert pyramids use a grid size of 14 chunks for about one every 42529 chunks and 1.67 times more likely
// per spawn biome when accounting for the frequency of spawn biomes and a pass rate of 32%.
if (TYPE == QUARTZ_PYRAMID && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 14, 6))
// Woodland mansions use a grid size of 14 chunks for about one every 33869 chunks and 1.57 times more likely per
// spawn biome when accounting for the frequency of spawn biomes and a pass rate of 30%. Note that grid size and
// spacing must be the same as in checkForMansion.
if (TYPE == WOODLAND_MANSION && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, this.mansionDistance, MIN_DISTANCE))
// Pumpkin houses use a grid size of 14 chunks for about one every 26616 chunks and 2.09 times more likely per spawn
// biome when accounting for the frequency of spawn biomes and a pass rate of 40%.
if (TYPE == PUMPKIN_HOUSE && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 14, 6))
// Generates shipwrecks, one every 361 chunks with a random offset of 0-14 within a 19 chunk grid. Chance of a large
// shipwreck with loot is one every 1083 chunks (similar to vanilla structure frequency of 1/1024)
public void generateShipwreck(WorldGenChunkCache chunkCache, int chunkX, int chunkZ)
// caveLimitSmall is set for a frequency that is about 55% of vanilla for all mineshafts and caveLimitLarge is set so
// large mineshafts are about 1/8 of all mineshafts (base chance is 2/7 of all mineshafts). Failed attempts at large
// mineshafts will be rechecked as a small mineshaft so their lower frequency does not affect the frequency set by
// caveLimitSmall. Use CaveFinder.COUNT_MINESHAFTS to calculate chances. Cave limit near center is reduced by
// 171/256.
private static final int caveLimitSmall = 18; // center = 12
private static final int caveLimitLarge = 11; // center = 7
I only made them rarer because I don't want them ruining massive cave systems (just about every noteworthy cave system that I've mentioned in this thread has at least one mineshaft in the middle of it when I look at it in vanilla, sometimes to a ridiculous extent), or being right in the middle of giant open caves.
Otherwise, I consider them to be an essential part of the underground and treat them as more of a variant of cave than a structure- all those complaints since Beta 1.8 of caves being too large / never-ending? All due to the addition of mineshafts and (to a lesser extent) ravines, as shown by these examples which show all features, caves only, ravines only, and mineshafts only across two 1024x1024 block regions with different cave density; even the higher density region has no visible connections between caves in the western and eastern halves, but mineshafts and ravines fill in the gaps in multiple places (even then there can be stretches over 1000 blocks long where there are no direct connections, as shown in the "interconnected caves" maps I posted here, these maps do understate things though since e.g. ore veins or just liquid dripping from the ceiling, or even mobs sticking through walls, can reveal nearby caves):
High cave density (similar to a region I recently explored):
Seed is -123775873255737467
Center is 8192, 0 and radius is 512 blocks (from 7680, -512 to 8703, 511)
Air volume (layers 11-62):
Total: 6.981%
Caves: 4.584%
Ravines: 1.726%
Mineshafts: 0.873%
Number of cave systems: 225
Initial number of caves: 1634; largest cave system: 31 (7904 -432)
Total number of caves: 2297; largest cave system: 45 (8000 -272)
Additional circular room caves: 663
Number of small caves: 2224; average width is 5.99
Number of large caves: 73; average width is 12.00; max width: 20.09 (7936 79 508)
Number of circular rooms: 420; average width is 10.99
Additional caves per circular room: 1.58
Average caves per chunk: 0.560791 (4096 chunks)
88 ravines
37 mineshafts
Low cave density (both have about the same number of ravines and mineshafts):
Seed is -123775873255737467
Center is 12800, 0 and radius is 512 blocks (from 12288, -512 to 13311, 511)
Air volume (layers 11-62):
Total: 5.671%
Caves: 3.223%
Ravines: 1.779%
Mineshafts: 0.795%
Number of cave systems: 188
Initial number of caves: 1181; largest cave system: 38 (12736 -304)
Total number of caves: 1643; largest cave system: 54 (13024 -112)
Additional circular room caves: 462
Number of small caves: 1598; average width is 6.02
Number of large caves: 45; average width is 11.72; max width: 17.20 (12476 18 46)
Number of circular rooms: 304; average width is 11.00
Additional caves per circular room: 1.52
Average caves per chunk: 0.40112305 (4096 chunks)
89 ravines
35 mineshafts
For comparison, this is an example from TMCW; mineshafts are much less important due to the much greater volume of caves, with the total volume being more than double even the "high density" example in vanilla (this is also on the higher end for TMCW due to the "giant cave region", which I included to demonstrate how they prevent other caves and structures from generating over them. Mineshafts even prevent various small cave features from generating near them; and strongholds likewise prevent anything but the smallest cave systems and ravines from generating nearby (the code I use to decide what can generate is extremely complex and adding a new feature means a lot of time to verify that everything is working properly, this is a large reason why I wrote my own cave mapping/analysis tool, instead of having to generate an actual world in-game):
Seed is -4426978636490490569
Center is 976, -96 and radius is 512 blocks (from 464, -608 to 1487, 415)
Air volume (layers 4-62):
Total: 14.473%
Caves: 11.976%
Special: 10.403%
Ravines: 2.461%
Mineshafts: 0.268%
Strongholds: 0.027%
Number of cave systems: 135
Initial number of caves: 963; largest cave system: 28 (1064 -280)
Total number of caves: 1286; largest cave system: 31 (696 312)
Additional circular room caves: 239
Additional lava level caves: 38
Additional sea level caves: 46
Number of small caves: 1034; average width is 5.72
Number of large caves: 252; average width is 13.00; max width: 27.10 (1227 40 105)
Number of circular rooms: 359; average width is 14.78; max width: 60.43 (1445 45 211)
Additional caves per circular room: 0.67
Average caves per chunk: 0.31396484 (4096 chunks)
1 colossal cave systems
2 circular room cave systems
1 ravine cave systems
1 vertical cave systems
1 maze cave systems
2 random cave systems
3 ribbed tunnel cave systems
3 zigzag cave systems
3 spiral cave systems
4 large cave cave systems
1 giant cave regions
1 network cave regions
12 large caves (volume >= 25000)
9 large caves (volume >= 50000)
6 large caves (volume >= 100000)
3 large caves (volume >= 200000)
2 large caves (volume >= 300000)
1 large caves (volume >= 400000)
2 large cave clusters (volume >= 25000)
60 total ravines
9 large ravines (volume >= 25000)
4 large ravines (volume >= 50000)
2 large ravines (volume >= 100000)
2 large ravines (volume >= 200000)
1 large ravines (volume >= 300000)
13 large circular rooms (width >= 34)
5 toroidal caves
18 mineshafts
4 large mineshafts (length >= 2000)
1 strongholds
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?
When most people talk about how common or rare a structure is, they're probably not referring to whatever numeric values the code uses. That's just a single variable, that by itself means nothing. They're talking about the practical end results.
Igloos could be trying to spawn ten times more than villages, but if other variables make them less common despite that, then... they are less common.
This is more of a fair point (I don't often use better grass though [I use it in only one of four "active" worlds] so that one won't be a hindrance to me). I have no doubt I'm missing some. Maybe even most?
However, even to this point I'd sort of say that if a structure is by nature easier to miss, then even if it does spawn, in effect this still adds to its [i]effective[/i] rarity in practice, no? I certainly would see it that way, but that's a matter of opinion.
To that second point, you could say "they aren't as rare as they seem" and that would be appropriate, but the bit about them being as common as something else because they share one single variable is arbitrary. A single variable on its own means nothing.