This is why Minecraft needs a more robust transportation system. We need working airships, naval vessels (not just row boats), and trains.
How does that relate the the amount of time it has taken me to explore about a level 4 map's worth of the underground? None of those would help, not at all; I do use railways to link my bases together but you need to have first placed railway to even take advantage of them. The time I spend traveling to and from where I'm currently caving and my nearest base is also insignificant, even more so in newer versions (due to skulker boxes; as it is an ender chest is usually enough for a couple sessions and I can travel the distance in a few minutes by foot; less often, I make trips back to my main base to store the resources I collected over many sessions). Even my first world is quite small from what I've seen others explore - not even 3x3 full level 4 maps (as I mentioned in this tread I wouldn't mind at all if the world size were like only +/-10000 blocks as I've only ever gone a third of that distance. For comparison, with rocket-powered elytra you can travel 20000 blocks in only 10 minutes, 75 seconds if you use the Nether).
Otherwise, Mojang themselves are forcing players to have to travel absurd distances to find anything, ranging from the awful biome layout in 1.7 to structures so rare they may be more than 10,000 blocks away (for comparison, I found at least one of every structure, surface and underground, within about 12511 chunks - and that's with a 32 chunk radius "exclusion zone" centered around the origin where only normal variants of caves can generate. I also found a total of 570 structures and 31 unique biomes, excluding minor biomes like hills and rivers, or duplicates, within this area). Then again, as noted above you can travel 10000 blocks in less than a minute with elytra and the Nether.
There's also the matter of world file size, as I noted in this thread (you also need to factor in the space and time required by backups); world generation would need to be completely changed if the game is to only save chunks that were modified by the player (currently, if you delete chunks there will be ugly seams where trees and other features and structure are cut off, which is why I used a copy of the world to make the maps of explored-only chunks. This is due to the fact that while the game places features centered within chunk-sized regions most are more than 1x1 blocks in size so they will overlap with adjacent chunks, furthermore, the order chunks are generated in can change the placement of features, for example, trees only generate on the highest exposed grass/dirt blocks so they can be blocked by other trees nearby, which will in turn affect the entire RNG sequence used to place everything after trees).
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Using the Elytra is impractical in certain situations. And in my opinion yes, Mojang is forcing players to travel absurd distances if they want to go back and forth between their base and wherever they are exploring. Players are forced to carry a bed with them where ever they go. I know this from experience because I happen to die once without a bed at my base and was spawned at the original map spawn point. I could not find my base and spent days....real world days looking in vain for my base. I had to research how to go into creative and start flying around to look for my base. It still took me several hours to find my base. I took a screenshot of the coordinates so I would never have to go through that again. It was very frustrating. During my time flying around though I got a sense of how large and vast my world was. Even flying at speed the world was huge. No, I'm not going to be traveling all of that on foot unless I become a nomad and carry my bed with me. I don't know how large my world is but it is definitely not small.
You have a point about the trains. But we need something besides rocket powered glider wings. If you have a job that requires you to commute to work I would bet you a dollar you are not flying there with a pair of wings strapped to your back while holding a large fireworks rocket in your hand.
It only took 81 dungeons and 26 mineshafts over 39 days but I finally found a Mending book in a dungeon chest:
This illustrates how impractical it is to actually find an enchantment by looting dungeons and other structures, especially when considering that I enchanted 10 items with Mending (3x armor, 2x pickaxe, sword, bow, shears, axe, hoe), which is why I've never even began to consider them as a source of enchanted books (also since I wouldn't be able to make my "caving gear" before I started caving), and I've reconsidered making new enchantments that will be added to TMCWv5 exclusive to chests as a result, either that, or add them separately from other books (i.e. normal books have a random chance of being any enchantment while these would be added as separate items with fixed enchantments) or make them more expensive to get from trading (I already doubled the cost of Mending from villager trades; when I first added it in TMCWv4 it cost the same as any other level 1 enchantment, 5-19 emeralds, but in TMCWv4.5 I doubled the cost to 10-38 emeralds).
Also, I found another "special" cave system, a "maze cave system", which is made up of caves which generate in a maze-like fashion, either aligned to the x-z axes or diagonal, with 8-9 layers. They also often have multiple dungeons in them (this one had 5, including the one with Mending and a near-double dungeon) since the size and shape of the tunnels are near-ideal for dungeons to generate (for the same reason they are much more common in mineshafts, while denser normal cave systems may not have any dungeons despite a much greater volume):
More notably, I found a new biome for the first time ever, as well as since I started playing on this world again (this is the first biome that I've found that I didn't already find before); a Meadow with a Meadow Forest sub-biome, which is similar to Plains and its associated Forest sub-biomes but has greener vegetation, more flowers, occasional big oak trees which have foliage clusters based on normal small trees instead of round balls (Meadow Forest also has another tree variant which is like 3 normal trees stacked), and villages made with spruce wood and cracked stone brick paths:
This is what a Meadow village looks like (from a different world); the logs have all-bark sides:
This is one of 4 new biomes added in TMCWv4, 6 including their unique sub-biomes (besides just hills/edge); Desert M and Oasis, Great Forest, Meadow and Meadow Forest, and Rocky Mountains; I haven't found a Desert M yet, which differs from the vanilla variant of the same name (now called "Desert Lakes") by having small tropical-like Oasis with jungle foliage and palm trees instead of water lakes as well as allowing villages and temples to generate and cactus that grows up to 6 blocks tall (the height ranges from 3-6 depending on the coordinates), or a Great Forest, which contains the same trees as Rocky Mountains and other medium-sized trees:
Desert M and Oasis:
Great Forest:
Interestingly, there are two biomes which were added in the first version of TMCW that I still haven't found yet; Ice Hills and TMCW Mega Taiga, as well as many others added in other versions, such as Ice Plains Spikes; even with the way biomes generate you may have to explore thousands of blocks in all directions from spawn to find every biome. For example, the seed "10" has 82 out of 93 biomes within +/-1536 blocks of the origin, corresponding to 3x3 level 3 maps:
I made a discovery for the first time despite having played for more than 7 years as I never tried repairing a hoe in the anvil before; I decided to repair the diamond hoe (Fortune III, Unbreaking III, Mending) that I use to harvest potatoes for food, which was at about half-durability - I placed it and a couple diamonds in the anvil and got... nothing (no output item and no level cost; it should have cost 38 levels for two diamonds). I then looked up the issue and found a bug report which was closed as "works as intended", at least for the versions it was reported for (1.4-1.9, including duplicates); in these versions it is only possible to repair hoes with another hoe, not units (the Wiki indicates that this must have changed sometime since then; the page was edited on September 25, 2019 to add in unit repair).
Well, definitely not intended far as I'm concerned, since in order to repair the aforementioned hoe with a new item you'd need to be able to spend 43 levels, which is impossible due to the anvil cost limit of 39 levels (you could wear down the sacrifice by a few hundred uses as the repair cost depends on the durability of the sacrifice). This is much worse for amethyst items, even with a higher limit of 49 levels due to the much higher repair cost (in fact, even unit repair is too expensive in this case, then again, you could harvest close to 60000 potatoes before it broke. Without Mending and adding enchantments using two books with no prior work penalty the cost of the first repair is 45 levels, enabling a total of 3 repairs for 1.75x the lifetime).
Then again, there is very little reason to ever enchant a hoe, much less use anything higher than wood/stone in vanilla 1.6.4 but in TMCWv4 they are necessary if you want Fortune to work on crops (Fortune on any other item will have no effect) and breaking any block, including crops, takes away durability (they do not damage other tools since they are coded so only blocks with a nonzero hardness damage them).
Not that this was an issue as I just fixed it, leaving the other items mentioned in the report alone since most of them don't really have a specific material and they are all pretty cheap to repair with sacrifices (I don't even make new bows, I just pick up skeleton drops and craft a few together to full durability. Unit repair can also be much more expensive when it only costs 1-4 levels for a sacrifice repair, and less materials in most cases), or you'd rarely ever have any reason to enchant and repair them (e.g. flint and steel, which can only get Unbreaking and Mending).
It has been awhile since my last update so this will be quite big as I've found many things since then. First, I officially found the ocean for the first time in this world (I'd previously noted that I saw it on the map but I didn't actually come across it until later):
This shows how snowy biomes have gravel beaches, instead of sand, a throwback to Beta 1.7.3, the last vanilla version to have gravel beaches (not related to the biomes they border in that version). You can also find gold ore buried under the gravel (in TMCWv5 this will be replaced with "gravel gold ore", a form of gravel which drops gold nuggets):
Next I found a couple large caves, one of which was three smaller "large caves" combined (the last three caves listed, by themselves none of them reached the 25000 volume threshold I use for large caves):
This is a rendering and analysis of the cave complex, including a ravine and maze cave cluster; while one cave is shown to break the surface (green) it was entirely below the surface as that just means it went above sea level (volume above this point isn't measured so the cave was slightly larger than indicated):
Three more caves intertwined to form a larger complex area; I suspected there was more than one cave in this area which turned out to be correct after I analyzed it and found it to be 3 separate caves (it also appears to be within multiple slime chunks based on the number I saw after I left it for a bit to explore other caves):
Next I found a massive ravine, though I wouldn't actually explore it until much later as it went off the northern edge of the map I was on:
After that, I went back to the southern part of the map to finish exploring it and soon came across another Meadow biome with a village in it, the first one that I've found in a very long time (I found 6 within the first two maps I explored, around spawn and to the south, but none in the third, to the east):
This happens outside of every village every night, even without proper sieges (they were broken in 1.6.4 and I even entirely removed the code, rather than fixing it, to avoid wasted CPU cycles on failed start attempts):
I then went back to the return point marking the massive ravine, which I explored over the next 3 1/2 play sessions, and was the largest ravine that I've found since playing on this world again, 326 blocks long with a maximum width of 25 blocks and a volume of about 186,000, making it nearly as large as the largest cave that I've found recently (199,000):
This is a rendering of all underground features (except for dungeons) I made using CaveFinder, with the massive ravine to the left:
A rendering of ravines only; 5 smaller ravines intersect the massive ravine for a total of 6 intersecting ravines (for perspective, I've never found more than 5 intersecting in my first world, with a far larger area explored), including a triple ravine intersection at the top. There is also a triple ravine near the top-center which I also explored (when I first found them I wasn't sure if they intersected the others), while the ravines going off the right side are part of the 10-ravine complex I found earlier:
With only "special" caves shown, including ravines that are wider and/or longer than the maximum size in vanilla, which includes one of the smaller ravines; you can also see the large caves I mentioned above near the bottom:
This is a 4-day animation, with much of the first three days spent exploring other ravines and caves connected to it, including a separate triple ravine:
Following are screenshots I took during and after exploring the massive ravine:
This is the intersection of 3 ravines, including one end of the massive ravine:
Part of the massive ravine reaches the seafloor but there was no water flowing in since sand and gravel patches generate sandstone and cobblestone over air (I originally used stone for gravel but underground gravel veins can replace it, this also gives the ceiling a more distinctive look):
After exploring the ravine I went back to the south again, off the southern edge of the map I started exploring (so over this time I'd gone back and forth from north to south several times) and found a couple large caves as well as the first large circular rooms (at least 34 blocks in diameter, or twice the maximum vanilla width) that I've found since I started playing on this world again, each one was 43 blocks in diameter, compared to 17 for the largest rooms in vanilla (the Wiki erroneously claims 30 blocks but those aren't circular rooms, which are perfectly circular and have a height that is about half the width, while larger tunnels can have circular-looking sections (a tunnel is just semi-spherical segments that vary in width generated along a path that randomly changes direction; the maximum width of a tunnel is 27 blocks, with larger chambers where they fold around on themselves):
A rendering of the large caves, with the bottom half at a lower level to show them better:
The first cave; this is actually just a large "vanilla" cave/tunnel, not one of TMCW's "large caves" which are separate from normal cave generation, which does have an increased size multiplier for larger caves though (most caves/tunnels in vanilla range in width from 3-9 blocks, with a multiplier applied 10% of the time which allows them to reach up to 27 blocks, heavily weighted towards the lower end). There is also more to the cave that isn't easily visible as the ceiling was 1-2 blocks above lava level:
The second cave, which is also a "vanilla" large cave and merges with a fairly large circular room (width of 28 blocks) at lava level:
The large circular rooms; there was also a fairly large surface crater above them; one of them also merges with a large cave (it wans't clear that it was a circular room until I'd lit it up):
Finally, I found a fossil, the 10th one in this world, above one of the large circular rooms (also visible in the upper-left corner of the second to last screenshot above), and more interesting terrain in another Mountainous Desert:
Also, over this period I saw two zombies in diamond and amethyst armor (one each) and two in full iron armor at the same time (the one in diamond armor disappeared by the time I reached the area I saw it), and got an amethyst sword with full durability from a zombie after I gave it my sword (a bit risky, considering it has Sharpness V, but I made sure there were no other mobs nearby, using my pickaxe to kill it):
Here is a full-size rendering of everything that I've explored west of x = -512, mostly since I started playing on this world again, as well as an updated list of what I've found over that period:
Play sessions spent caving: 50
Structures/caves found (by number):
92 normal dungeons
77 ravines
30 mineshafts
16 large caves (larger than vanilla, not including giant caves)
11 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
7 maze cave clusters
7 ravine cave clusters
6 large ravines (larger than vanilla)
3 circular room cave clusters
3 double dungeons (one combined with a normal dungeon for 3 spawners)
3 fossils
3 giant caves (>50000 in volume)
3 vertical cave clusters
2 circular rooms at least 34 blocks in diameter (twice as large as vanilla)
2 combination cave systems
1 colossal cave system
1 desert temple
1 maze cave system
1 network cave region
1 ravine cave system
1 vertical cave system
1 village
1 witch hut
(273 individual structures/caves)
Biomes found (in order found for first time in this world):
Meadow
Meadow Forest
Ocean
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher, highest peak in an instance of a biome):
153 (Winter Forest Mountains)
145 (Flower Forest)
134 (Mountainous Desert Hills)
Other:
4 zombies in diamond armor
1 skeleton in amethyst armor
1 skeleton in diamond armor
1 zombie in amethyst armor
1 Notch apple
I can't remember if I replied here before to say this, but I'm oddly happy this is still going, and that you are still playing and involved with the game. I don't know why, but I am. Reminds me of the 2012 to 2014 days with the forum, community, and game (though, no, I don't like the game any less today).
I found another enchanted golden apple, the fifth one that I've found in this world and the second one from a mineshaft (a new addition in TMCWv4.5, which removed the crafting recipe so I added them to more structures, not just dungeons) as well as a zombie in diamond armor, which also dropped its chestplate, with Projectile Protection IV, the first time that I've gotten a drop from a diamond armored mob since playing on this world again (while they are much more common than in vanilla I reduced the drop chance from 8.5% to 5%, with Looting increasing it by 2% per level instead of 1%. Amethyst items have a 10% drop chance):
Also, I've officially finished exploring the level 3 map centered at -1024, 0, even if a small area along the southwestern edge hasn't been explored, as I didn't find any caves leading into it. Here is a full-size rendering of the area made with MCMap; the Flower Forest in the center stands out from all the "dandelions" (MCMap doesn't recognize that I added more flower variants), while to the left is a Winter Forest with mountains reaching as high as y=154, the highest terrain I found, followed by y=145 in the Flower Forest and y=134 in the Mountainous Desert to the right:
Here is a biome map; there are a total of 48 biomes, including all minor variations, with the most common biome being Flower Forest (the large pink area near the center; to the west is a Jungle, with another at the center of the northern edge, which stand out due to the small lakes that dot them, a feature also present in vanilla 1.6.4 but not 1.7+; to the northwest of the Flower Forest is a Winter Forest, which is light green with darker green Hills and Mountain and a couple Frozen Lake sub-biomes, then to the east of that is a Bushlands, then Swampland (this also has small lakes not present in 1.7+; these are "river" biomes in vanilla and Swamp/Jungle River in TMCW, which do not have the special height treatment that make rivers able to cut through all terrain), then Roofed Forest (dark green) to the east, and Mountainous Desert with patches of Hills and normal Desert to the southeast. South of the Flower Forest is a Plains, with Meadow (brighter green) and Mega Tree Plains further south):
Interestingly, just along the very western edge, which I didn't see while playing, is the smallest Rocky Mountains biome, and I believe any full-size biome, that I've ever seen, only a couple small hills along a river; such a small biome may be the result of a climate zone transition as their borders may not be aligned to biome borders and biomes usually change across them, same for biomes next to the ocean:
Also, these are CaveFinder renderings of the underground, first with all caves/ravines/mineshafts then with only special variants; the largest ravine within this area (not as large as the ravine I found last time, which is partly visible in the far upper-left corner) is actually within the area that I did not explore, near the middle of the left edge; just to the north is the edge of a network cave region which I found but didn't explore as it would go far off the edge of the map and I did not plan on making further maps, but if I had I could have followed one of the caves down to where the ravine is; there is also an unexplored large cave further to the south:
Currently, I'm exploring along the northern edge of the map to the south and will go along it to the east, then south along the eastern edge, so once I'm finished there will be a natural border to the mapped area. At some point I'll also go back the the base I made around 0, 1024 (in the middle of the map to the south of the origin map) as it will be closer to where I'm exploring.
I've found a stronghold solely by caving for the first time in this world, one of a handful of worlds where I've found one in this manner, not including the stronghold that I found with eyes of ender (I intentionally reached it by exploring caves that lead to it after I previously located it, but the location of the second stronghold was unknown):
I haven't explored it yet but they can be quite interesting due to the spawners found under the chests in the hallways and in libraries; here is when I explored the first one.
I also found a new biome for the first time in this world, and since it was added to TMCW (in version 4); Desert M, which I noticed at the very edge of the render distance when I pillared up to mark a return point and zoomed in to see multiple cacti up to 6 blocks tall, which only generate in this biome (they naturally generate at full height, which ranges from 3-6 blocks depending on the coordinates, as do player-grown cactus). Otherwise, the odds of finding multiple cacti more than 3 blocks tall in the same area is astronomical:
I haven't actually gone into it yet, or seen its Oasis sub-biomes, which are its other distinguishing feature (the name is taken from the original name for what is now Desert Lakes, except the lakes are oasis), as I'll only do so once I've explored caves that lead into it (this shows just how restrictive my playstyle is - I really mean it when I say I only explore the world by caving, aside from finding a stronghold to get to the End and securing/looting villages and structures that I spot in the distance). Likewise, I came across a Savanna Mountains biome which goes well above cloud level but haven't gotten close enough to the highest peak to see how high it is (the one I was standing on went to y=128):
There seems to be a large floating island far above cloud level in the top-center of this screenshot:
I also found my fourth "real" double dungeon (two dungeons connected together, as opposed to a "double dungeon", which are 5% of dungeons and recognizable by the chiseled stone bricks in the floor), out of a total of 317 dungeons found so far, showing just how rare it is for two dungeons to generate connected together even in older versions (TMCW has the same base dungeon frequency as vanilla 1.6.4, which is substantially higher than in 1.7 and later):
And the 11th fossil, bridging across a ravine:
A medium-sized large cave with a volume of about 37,000 air blocks:
I also came across two other large caves which I haven't explored yet:
All of these were found while exploring a network cave region, the 4th one that I've found/explored so far, enabling me to cover a very large area very quickly with multiple return points marking various things that I've found, which I'll be exploring over the next few days; I've already explored most of the northern and eastern edges of a level 3 map centered at -1024, 1024 (adjacent to maps fully explored to the north and east) and while I intended not to explore too far inwards (more than around 256 blocks) I'll probably be going farther west as I fully explore the network cave region and associated caves (I have not built any bases in the corner maps, only the maps to the west, south, and east of the center map, with my main base, so if I explored all the way to the center I'd be 1024 blocks away from the nearest base):
In addition, I saw two more zombies in diamond and amethyst armor, the latter of which dropped its chestplate, along with a huge horde of zombies which forced me to wall in the cave they were in (often this means there is a dungeon nearby but I didn't find one) and dropped enough XP to get me from level 42 to 44 (about 60 mobs at 5 XP each, with mobs with equipment dropping more):
I remember reading once (or multiple times) that you sometimes add in changes from newer versions to your own version, but also that one of the (many) reasons you stayed with the old version was that a majority of the changes aren't make or break for you, and so you don't add many of them.
My question is, and this is super serious important here... have you added the llamas? Please tell me the llamas are free and roaming in that much more virtual space. They must be free.
My question is, and this is super serious important here... have you added the llamas? Please tell me the llamas are free and roaming in that much more virtual space. They must be free.
The only mobs that I've added (none of them in the current release) are rabbits, endermites, husks, and strays; I've also considered adding bears (not just polar bears, much as I added multiple variants of husks; yellow for normal desert, red for mesa, whitish for quartz desert; silverfish similarly have new variants to blend in with biome-specific underground blocks, and endermites have pink "nethermite" variants for the Nether). Most of these are simply variants of existing mobs/entities, which are much easier to add then entirely new mobs (e.g. same/similar models, of which I'm not sure exactly how they work. I actually used another mod (open source) that backported 1.8+ features to help me add rabbits, which required code modifications from the original 1.8 code, plus additional modifications to adapt to 1.6.4, and I'm not sure how to add proper sounds for them).
That said, I've been working on an update which will add many more features and changes originally planned for TMCWv5, which may include the aforementioned (basically anything that doesn't impact or directly depend on world generation can be added; each major release from TMCWv1 to TMCWv4 has been marked by significant changes to world generation, such that you get entirely different worlds for the same seed and I obviously want to avoid that for worlds I'm playing on; likewise, TMCWv5 will add new biomes and otherwise change biome placement and land/ocean/underground generation, even more so than previous versions due to changes to the RNG itself):
1. Added variants of rail blocks for all types of rails (normal, activator, detector, powered); texture was also changed to include separate end and side textures (side textures are all the same while end texture matches the top and bottom textures) and block model is sized to the width of rails so they look like a stack of rails (before the same texture was used on all sides and they were full cubes). They can also be placed in two orientations depending on the direction you are facing, north-south or east-west.
2. Burning zombies can now set the player on fire while they are holding an item (this is/was intended in vanilla, MC-14396, but it adds difficulty).
3. Rubies reduce the prior work penalty by up to 6 levels per ruby, for a cost of up to 6 levels plus the prior work penalty and number of enchantments (e.g. one ruby on an unenchanted item with a prior work penalty of 8 will cost 14 levels, or 6 + 8; two rubies will cost 16 levels, or 6 + 2 + 8. If the item has 3 enchantments the costs will be 17 and 22 respectively). This enables indefinitely repairing items which would be too expensive with Mending (e.g. an amethyst pickaxe with Efficiency V, Fortune III, Unbreaking III, Mending would cost 56 levels; without Mending the cost is 43 levels and you get 4 repairs before it becomes too expensive; with rubies you can use one every 3 repairs to reset the penalty to 0 for a cost of 43, 45, 47 per repair, then 15 for a ruby). Note that the cost of using rubies is capped to 39 levels, even for amethyst items (normally 49).
4. Reduced cost of Thorns from 8 to 4 per level and reduced durability penalty to 1 extra durability lost and only when reflecting damage, making it more viable to use (previously Thorns III would increase the base cost by 24 levels and take an average of 2.9 times the durability away; now it costs 12 levels and 1.45 times durability, 0.725 times with Unbreaking III compared to no Thorns/Unbreaking). Multiple items with Thorns will also lose durability at random instead of just the bottommost item.
5. Renaming an item now only costs 1 level regardless of the item or the stack size (plus the prior work penalty and enchantment costs, if applicable; because of this, it is best to rename an item you want to enchant before doing so, or while adding new enchantments, combining, or repairing).
6. There is a chance (3.226% of slimes or 1/10 as common as each smaller size, which have equal chances) of a size 8 "mega slime" spawning in swamps, which has double the aggro range (32 blocks), 64 health, deals 8 damage (on Normal difficulty), can jump over obstacles 4 blocks high, fall up to 8 blocks with no fall damage, and drops 8 XP and splits into 2-4 large slimes when killed (up to 85 slimes and 120 XP total).
7. If a medium or larger slime is killed by lava it will split into magma cubes instead of slimes.
8. Oak/spruce bushes (like the ones in Bushlands or Jungle) now only grow if there are only 2 blocks of clearance above a sapling (a non-air/leaves/wood block 3 blocks above sapling; previously, spruce saplings only grew bushes in Bushlands, making spruce less viable in that biome).
9. All-bark logs are now craftable; 4 normal logs give you 4 bark logs (instead of 3 like 1.13+ does so there is no loss) and Silk Touch is needed to harvest them (they naturally generate in trees, even unbranched trees (topmost block so the inside of the log is not visible on Fancy graphics), so it would be a bit of pain if they dropped themselves; Silk Touch is basically just a convenience since you can easily recraft them in the inventory). They can also be directly crafted into planks.
10. Smooth stone, sandstone, and quartz double slabs (named as Smooth Stone, Full Smooth Sandstone, and Smooth Quartz Block) can be crafted using 2x2 of their respective half slabs, giving you two of their full blocks. They also drop themselves when mined, thus act like normal blocks and not double slabs. Smooth quartz blocks also use the bottom texture on all sides (instead of the top texture, which makes it look too much like normal quartz blocks).
11. Petrified Oak Wood Slabs (the original wood slabs) can be crafted with a stone slab sandwiched between 2 oak wood slabs on top of each other, giving you 2 petrified slabs, which look like wood but are mined with a pickaxe and do not burn.
12. Added spruce, birch, and jungle wood fences, which have the same crafting recipe as 1.8+ except you get 4 fences instead of 3, or slightly less than one fence per plank block. Villages also use different types of wood for fences; Plains = oak, Savanna = jungle, Meadow = spruce, Ice Plains and Desert = birch.
13. Added 12 new wall variants for stone, granite, diorite, andesite, sandstone, brick, stone brick, mossy stone brick, end stone, nether quartz, netherrack, and hardened clay.
14. Snow layers drop up to two snowballs per layer instead of one when harvested with Fortune (similarly to glowstone higher levels give a higher chance of two; Fortune I-III = 1.25, 1.5, 1.75). Also, multi-layer blocks melt by one layer at a time instead of all at once.
15. Silk Touch can now pick up an intact (uneaten) cake.
16. Fixed MC-190, most noticeable when using custom textures on blocks like stairs (hard to see with default textures), and MC-41825 (some entities render black with no light and Night Vision).
17. Shears and shovels can now be fully repaired with 2 units instead of 4, making repairs twice as efficient in terms of both materials and XP (it is still cheaper XP-wise to repair shears with new shears instead of units but it can be more convenient, e.g. running out of durability halfway through clearing a cave spider spawner and not having enough levels, which can be avoided by repairing with a unit when durability falls below 50%. For shovels the benefit can be much greater, especially for amethyst, e.g. Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending costs 43 levels for a one unit repair, which now restores twice the durability).
18. Leaves have a 5% chance of dropping a stick, increased to 10% with Fortune III; jungle leaves have 2/3 the drop rate.
19. Fixed brightness of XP orbs so they do not appear dimmer from certain angles (MC-108003, unfixed as of 1.16.2).
The Savanna Mountains biome that I found earlier had the highest terrain that I've ever found in Survival, with the highest peak reaching y=179, 14 blocks higher than the second highest terrain that I've found in this world, and any other world (excluding TripleHeightTerrain, which had sea level at y=191, but otherwise vanilla 1.6.4 terrain):
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher, highest peak in an instance of a biome):
179 (Extreme Savanna Mountains)
165 (Ice Mountains)
160 (Extreme Hills)
156 (Rocky Mountains)
153 (Winter Forest Mountains)
148 (Savanna Mountains)
145 (Flower Forest)
139 (Extreme Hills)
134 (Mountainous Desert Hills)
130 (Jungle Hills)
128 (Roofed Forest Hills)
These are looking down in various directions from the peak; I turned fog and clouds off for a clear view:
Even Mega Trees don't look that tall compared to these mountains (they can get up to 64 blocks tall)
There was also a secondary peak reaching y=146; only the highest peak is listed above (several biomes are listed multiple times since I list the highest peak in an individual biome; I previously found another Savanna Mountains which reached y=148); in the distance is the peak reaching y=179, which I ascended later:
Following are various other screenshots I took:
These were taken after I finished exploring the area; I don't normally light up the areas under overhangs but there were a lot of exposed caves and mobs were spawning even during the day:
Also, there were multiple large hollows/overhangs, some entirely enclosed (the Wiki claims that hollows are as rare as Jungle Edge M, the rarest biome in the game; of course, they are referring to vanilla):
This was by far the largest one, partly open to the sky:
I also came across the 12th fossil that I've found, at the bottom of a surface ravine that I came across while exploring around the Savanna Mountains (it was not connected to anything so i didn't find it until I happened to come across it on the surface):
As far as caving goes, I've explored most of the area around the network cave region and have found at least 7 large caves, 4 of which have been explored so far (the first one is the cave I previously showed):
This is the second cave listed, and the second largest cave that I've found in this world, with a volume of about 209,000 air blocks:
After that I explored what turned out to be two large caves connected together, with one forming a huge surface crater:
There are at least several more large caves around the area, including one at the other end of a large ravine leading from the double caves (visible as a dark area near the center of the second to last screenshot), and what appears to be two separate caves nearby, one of which is the second unexplored cave I mentioned in post #177, which I came across again at a lower level and got a better view of (I originally saw it from the cave near the top to the left of center - a long drop into a huge lava sea):
I also found a circular room cave system, the first one that I've found since playing on this world again; this also means that I've found at least one of every type of structure/feature except for a giant cave region (I previously found one):
Also, this is a rendering of the network cave region by itself, covering a 400x400 block area with volume of about 127,000 (a few of the caves extend even further off the edge):
Also, to put the size of these caves into perspective, caves and ravines make up about 5.27% of the underground in vanilla 1.6.4, meaning on average there are about 700 air blocks between layers 11-62 (52 layers) - the largest cave shown above is equivalent to about 300 chunks of vanilla caves, or 15.7 chunks with nothing but air between layers 11-62 (or 13.8 chunks between layers 4-62, the usable depth in TMCW due to a lower lava level).
After 10 days I've explored the entire area around the network cave region, including a total of 9 large caves, 7 over 25,000 and 3 over 50,000 in volume with a combined volume of more than half a million, with about half the volume across the entire area taken up by large caves, ravines, and the network cave region:
Analysis of area centered at -752, 944, radius 256:
Locations of circular room cave systems:
1: -696 744
Locations of network cave regions:
1: -744 952 (volume: 127146)
Locations of largest caves by volume:
1: -632 21 952 (length: 344, width: 49, volume: 209804)
2: -888 28 952 (length: 346, width: 30, volume: 99253)
3: -760 20 1080 (length: 347, width: 33, volume: 69535)
4: -584 20 904 (length: 172, width: 24, volume: 37445)
5: -888 23 872 (length: 222, width: 21, volume: 31315)
6: -968 21 920 (length: 235, width: 32, volume: 31042)
7: -808 29 1032 (length: 311, width: 21, volume: 29922)
Locations of largest ravines by volume:
1: -904 27 872 (length: 204, width: 13, depth: 37, volume: 48155)
2: -568 33 1016 (length: 132, width: 14, depth: 39, volume: 31873)
Locations of abandoned mineshafts by size (center of central room):
1: -584 1096 (size: 241)
2: -936 776 (size: 178)
3: -824 872 (size: 157)
4: -696 984 (size: 151)
Total air volume is 1433801 blocks (9.270368%)
The first cave that I explored after the previous ones was at the end of a medium-sized large ravine which lead from one of the other large caves:
After that I explored another double large cave, one of which had a huge lava sea and was the third largest cave in the area:
The lava in the center is from a larger cave below:
I also found two smaller caves which weren't large enough to be analyzed with CaveFinder, but still quite large by vanilla standards (the largest open cave chamber that I can recall finding in my first world was a bit over 30 blocks or 2 chunks across; such large chambers are the result of a cave folding in on itself as the maximum width of a vanilla cave is 27 blocks). The second cave was relatively straight, giving a higher volume relative to its size parameters (for the largest caves the actual volume is well under half the volume they would have if they were straight):
Also, I've released an update with the features mentioned in a previous post; the most immediate impact on my gameplay is that I may encounter a "mega slime" in a swamp near where I'm exploring, which has a size of 8, deals 8 damage, jumps 4 blocks high, has 64 health and splits into large slimes (size 4, then 2, then 1, with as many as 64 tiny slimes created), and has a sight range of 32 blocks (similar to spiders slimes can see through solid blocks so if I'm within 32 blocks of the surface they will follow me). Magma cubes may also be found around areas of lava as they are created when a size 2 or more slime dies in lava, so they are no longer exclusive to Volcanic Wasteland, where they naturally spawn in place of slimes.
I've found another Savanna Mountains biome - with even more extreme terrain than the last one, reaching y=181, near the maximum height of terrain in TMCW (just under y=192, the point where terrain would cut off; the highest terrain that I've ever found in a test world was y=187):
I also found a large ravine under it, 282 blocks long, 16 blocks wide, and a volume of about 87,000; it also intersected a vertical cave system, the second one that I've found recently:
This is the vertical cave system, with the ravine intersecting it near the top:
I explored the stronghold I found earlier after coming across it again - which happened to be the end portal room, of all parts:
This shows one way strongholds are more interesting than vanilla; there are spawners under the chests in the hallways (zombies, skeletons, witches, creepers, cave spiders), as well as in libraries (silverfish):
Also, I found two Oasis biomes in the Desert M that I found earlier; of note, these are the rarest biome by far in terms of area, at about 0.01884% of all land and 0.00617% of the world, if not by how hard it is to find them since they generate as part of a larger biome (Desert M and Oasis together are 0.72649% of land):
This is a list of the frequencies of all biomes, from a total area of more than 16.7 billion blocks (1000 random 4096x4096 areas from 1000 random seeds, excluding the area near the origin due to the forced generation of a landmass there so this is representative of the world as a whole; a 4096x4096 area near the origin has about twice as much land on average):
I had an incredible experience the last time I played - two skeletons in diamond and amethyst armor within a minute or two and about 16 blocks of each other; I first saw one in diamond and after I killed it and turned the corner to go up a staircase I ran into one in amethyst - any closer and I'd have seen them at the same time; as it is, this is only the second time that I've ever seen two mobs in diamond or better in the same play session, the other time being more than 5 years ago:
(note the HUD in both screenshots, the only difference is some additional XP, a couple torches/cobblestone placed, and one baked potato eaten after I'd killed other mobs)
To give an idea of the chance of this happening, there is a 20% chance that a skeleton or zombie will have armor at maximum difficulty on Normal (which is all the time after the first 100 hours) and a 0.3% chance that it will be diamond and 0.1% chance that it will be amethyst, which translates to a one in 8.333 million chance that any two randomly chosen mobs will have diamond and amethyst (this only applies for any two mobs, there were quite a few skeletons and zombies in the area, but the chance is still quite low). They were also in full armor, making them even rarer (there is a 65.1% chance of full armor on Normal, reducing the probability to one in 19.66 million).
For comparison, the chances in vanilla are 15% for any armor at maximum regional difficulty (of note, in 1.6.4 the chance is up to 18.75% on Hard as it can reach 1.25; since 1.8 it is always clamped to 1), 0.04287% for diamond, and 42.19% for full armor, giving a probability of one in 242 million for any diamond armor and one in 1.36 billion for full diamond.
Also, I've seen a total of 30 mobs in diamond or amethyst in this world; interestingly, the same number of skeletons have had either while the number for zombies matches the expected ratio (4:1 diamond:amethyst):
16 zombies in diamond armor
5 skeletons in amethyst armor
5 skeletons in diamond armor
4 zombies in amethyst armor
This also translates to about one mob every 2,500 total mobs killed, about half the expected if all were zombies and skeletons (1 in 1250 mobs), and an average of one every 7 play sessions (this suggests that the chance of seeing two diamond or higher mobs is one in 49 sessions so I should have seen four instances by now; if you use the time played per session instead I've seen them within the time spent in a single session but split across two sessions on several occasions):
Over the past couple days I explored three enormous caves within 160 blocks of each other, one of which formed a gigantic crater more than 50 blocks across:
The first cave that I explored was the largest, with a volume of about 180,000, and is near the top of the renderings shown above, just to the south of the vertical cave system I found earlier:
The second cave (to the lower-right) was actually the first one that I found after I noticed large gray spot dotted with lava on the map; my first thought was that it was a Volcanic Wasteland biome but it turned out to be an enormous crater; rather than exploring it from the surface I explored it from caves that lead from the first giant cave:
The third cave (to the lower-left) was a slightly smaller version of the second cave, with the top breaking the surface in multiple places, partly obstructed by water (unlike vanilla caves can generate if there is water in the way but they will leave a 2 block wide rim round it) and higher terrain:
Also, the map I'm currently exploring has had the highest concentration of large caves of any map so far, including three fully explored maps (plus the map centered around 0,0 but most of that area is excluded from having large caves); so far I've found 10 caves with a volume of at least 25,000, 6 with a volume of at least 50,000, and 4 (almost 5) with a volume of at least 100,000; while the most found in a fully explored map is 10/4/3 in the map centered at 1024, 0 (these are listed in the order I filled them in, with several partial maps not shown; only one large cave is within the map centered at 0,0 and one was found in the map centered at 0, -1024):
This is why Minecraft needs a more robust transportation system. We need working airships, naval vessels (not just row boats), and trains.
How does that relate the the amount of time it has taken me to explore about a level 4 map's worth of the underground? None of those would help, not at all; I do use railways to link my bases together but you need to have first placed railway to even take advantage of them. The time I spend traveling to and from where I'm currently caving and my nearest base is also insignificant, even more so in newer versions (due to skulker boxes; as it is an ender chest is usually enough for a couple sessions and I can travel the distance in a few minutes by foot; less often, I make trips back to my main base to store the resources I collected over many sessions). Even my first world is quite small from what I've seen others explore - not even 3x3 full level 4 maps (as I mentioned in this tread I wouldn't mind at all if the world size were like only +/-10000 blocks as I've only ever gone a third of that distance. For comparison, with rocket-powered elytra you can travel 20000 blocks in only 10 minutes, 75 seconds if you use the Nether).
Otherwise, Mojang themselves are forcing players to have to travel absurd distances to find anything, ranging from the awful biome layout in 1.7 to structures so rare they may be more than 10,000 blocks away (for comparison, I found at least one of every structure, surface and underground, within about 12511 chunks - and that's with a 32 chunk radius "exclusion zone" centered around the origin where only normal variants of caves can generate. I also found a total of 570 structures and 31 unique biomes, excluding minor biomes like hills and rivers, or duplicates, within this area). Then again, as noted above you can travel 10000 blocks in less than a minute with elytra and the Nether.
There's also the matter of world file size, as I noted in this thread (you also need to factor in the space and time required by backups); world generation would need to be completely changed if the game is to only save chunks that were modified by the player (currently, if you delete chunks there will be ugly seams where trees and other features and structure are cut off, which is why I used a copy of the world to make the maps of explored-only chunks. This is due to the fact that while the game places features centered within chunk-sized regions most are more than 1x1 blocks in size so they will overlap with adjacent chunks, furthermore, the order chunks are generated in can change the placement of features, for example, trees only generate on the highest exposed grass/dirt blocks so they can be blocked by other trees nearby, which will in turn affect the entire RNG sequence used to place everything after trees).
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?
Using the Elytra is impractical in certain situations. And in my opinion yes, Mojang is forcing players to travel absurd distances if they want to go back and forth between their base and wherever they are exploring. Players are forced to carry a bed with them where ever they go. I know this from experience because I happen to die once without a bed at my base and was spawned at the original map spawn point. I could not find my base and spent days....real world days looking in vain for my base. I had to research how to go into creative and start flying around to look for my base. It still took me several hours to find my base. I took a screenshot of the coordinates so I would never have to go through that again. It was very frustrating. During my time flying around though I got a sense of how large and vast my world was. Even flying at speed the world was huge. No, I'm not going to be traveling all of that on foot unless I become a nomad and carry my bed with me. I don't know how large my world is but it is definitely not small.
You have a point about the trains. But we need something besides rocket powered glider wings. If you have a job that requires you to commute to work I would bet you a dollar you are not flying there with a pair of wings strapped to your back while holding a large fireworks rocket in your hand.
It only took 81 dungeons and 26 mineshafts over 39 days but I finally found a Mending book in a dungeon chest:
This illustrates how impractical it is to actually find an enchantment by looting dungeons and other structures, especially when considering that I enchanted 10 items with Mending (3x armor, 2x pickaxe, sword, bow, shears, axe, hoe), which is why I've never even began to consider them as a source of enchanted books (also since I wouldn't be able to make my "caving gear" before I started caving), and I've reconsidered making new enchantments that will be added to TMCWv5 exclusive to chests as a result, either that, or add them separately from other books (i.e. normal books have a random chance of being any enchantment while these would be added as separate items with fixed enchantments) or make them more expensive to get from trading (I already doubled the cost of Mending from villager trades; when I first added it in TMCWv4 it cost the same as any other level 1 enchantment, 5-19 emeralds, but in TMCWv4.5 I doubled the cost to 10-38 emeralds).
Also, I found another "special" cave system, a "maze cave system", which is made up of caves which generate in a maze-like fashion, either aligned to the x-z axes or diagonal, with 8-9 layers. They also often have multiple dungeons in them (this one had 5, including the one with Mending and a near-double dungeon) since the size and shape of the tunnels are near-ideal for dungeons to generate (for the same reason they are much more common in mineshafts, while denser normal cave systems may not have any dungeons despite a much greater volume):
More notably, I found a new biome for the first time ever, as well as since I started playing on this world again (this is the first biome that I've found that I didn't already find before); a Meadow with a Meadow Forest sub-biome, which is similar to Plains and its associated Forest sub-biomes but has greener vegetation, more flowers, occasional big oak trees which have foliage clusters based on normal small trees instead of round balls (Meadow Forest also has another tree variant which is like 3 normal trees stacked), and villages made with spruce wood and cracked stone brick paths:
This is what a Meadow village looks like (from a different world); the logs have all-bark sides:
This is one of 4 new biomes added in TMCWv4, 6 including their unique sub-biomes (besides just hills/edge); Desert M and Oasis, Great Forest, Meadow and Meadow Forest, and Rocky Mountains; I haven't found a Desert M yet, which differs from the vanilla variant of the same name (now called "Desert Lakes") by having small tropical-like Oasis with jungle foliage and palm trees instead of water lakes as well as allowing villages and temples to generate and cactus that grows up to 6 blocks tall (the height ranges from 3-6 depending on the coordinates), or a Great Forest, which contains the same trees as Rocky Mountains and other medium-sized trees:
Great Forest:
Interestingly, there are two biomes which were added in the first version of TMCW that I still haven't found yet; Ice Hills and TMCW Mega Taiga, as well as many others added in other versions, such as Ice Plains Spikes; even with the way biomes generate you may have to explore thousands of blocks in all directions from spawn to find every biome. For example, the seed "10" has 82 out of 93 biomes within +/-1536 blocks of the origin, corresponding to 3x3 level 3 maps:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I made a discovery for the first time despite having played for more than 7 years as I never tried repairing a hoe in the anvil before; I decided to repair the diamond hoe (Fortune III, Unbreaking III, Mending) that I use to harvest potatoes for food, which was at about half-durability - I placed it and a couple diamonds in the anvil and got... nothing (no output item and no level cost; it should have cost 38 levels for two diamonds). I then looked up the issue and found a bug report which was closed as "works as intended", at least for the versions it was reported for (1.4-1.9, including duplicates); in these versions it is only possible to repair hoes with another hoe, not units (the Wiki indicates that this must have changed sometime since then; the page was edited on September 25, 2019 to add in unit repair).
Well, definitely not intended far as I'm concerned, since in order to repair the aforementioned hoe with a new item you'd need to be able to spend 43 levels, which is impossible due to the anvil cost limit of 39 levels (you could wear down the sacrifice by a few hundred uses as the repair cost depends on the durability of the sacrifice). This is much worse for amethyst items, even with a higher limit of 49 levels due to the much higher repair cost (in fact, even unit repair is too expensive in this case, then again, you could harvest close to 60000 potatoes before it broke. Without Mending and adding enchantments using two books with no prior work penalty the cost of the first repair is 45 levels, enabling a total of 3 repairs for 1.75x the lifetime).
Then again, there is very little reason to ever enchant a hoe, much less use anything higher than wood/stone in vanilla 1.6.4 but in TMCWv4 they are necessary if you want Fortune to work on crops (Fortune on any other item will have no effect) and breaking any block, including crops, takes away durability (they do not damage other tools since they are coded so only blocks with a nonzero hardness damage them).
Not that this was an issue as I just fixed it, leaving the other items mentioned in the report alone since most of them don't really have a specific material and they are all pretty cheap to repair with sacrifices (I don't even make new bows, I just pick up skeleton drops and craft a few together to full durability. Unit repair can also be much more expensive when it only costs 1-4 levels for a sacrifice repair, and less materials in most cases), or you'd rarely ever have any reason to enchant and repair them (e.g. flint and steel, which can only get Unbreaking and Mending).
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?
Interesting find. Leaving bugs as closed just so old versions are messed up. Shame.
Next I found a couple large caves, one of which was three smaller "large caves" combined (the last three caves listed, by themselves none of them reached the 25000 volume threshold I use for large caves):
This was the largest single cave:
Three more caves intertwined to form a larger complex area; I suspected there was more than one cave in this area which turned out to be correct after I analyzed it and found it to be 3 separate caves (it also appears to be within multiple slime chunks based on the number I saw after I left it for a bit to explore other caves):
Next I found a massive ravine, though I wouldn't actually explore it until much later as it went off the northern edge of the map I was on:
After that, I went back to the southern part of the map to finish exploring it and soon came across another Meadow biome with a village in it, the first one that I've found in a very long time (I found 6 within the first two maps I explored, around spawn and to the south, but none in the third, to the east):
This happens outside of every village every night, even without proper sieges (they were broken in 1.6.4 and I even entirely removed the code, rather than fixing it, to avoid wasted CPU cycles on failed start attempts):
I then went back to the return point marking the massive ravine, which I explored over the next 3 1/2 play sessions, and was the largest ravine that I've found since playing on this world again, 326 blocks long with a maximum width of 25 blocks and a volume of about 186,000, making it nearly as large as the largest cave that I've found recently (199,000):
This is a rendering of all underground features (except for dungeons) I made using CaveFinder, with the massive ravine to the left:
A rendering of ravines only; 5 smaller ravines intersect the massive ravine for a total of 6 intersecting ravines (for perspective, I've never found more than 5 intersecting in my first world, with a far larger area explored), including a triple ravine intersection at the top. There is also a triple ravine near the top-center which I also explored (when I first found them I wasn't sure if they intersected the others), while the ravines going off the right side are part of the 10-ravine complex I found earlier:
With only "special" caves shown, including ravines that are wider and/or longer than the maximum size in vanilla, which includes one of the smaller ravines; you can also see the large caves I mentioned above near the bottom:
This is a 4-day animation, with much of the first three days spent exploring other ravines and caves connected to it, including a separate triple ravine:
Following are screenshots I took during and after exploring the massive ravine:
This is the intersection of 3 ravines, including one end of the massive ravine:
Part of the massive ravine reaches the seafloor but there was no water flowing in since sand and gravel patches generate sandstone and cobblestone over air (I originally used stone for gravel but underground gravel veins can replace it, this also gives the ceiling a more distinctive look):
After exploring the ravine I went back to the south again, off the southern edge of the map I started exploring (so over this time I'd gone back and forth from north to south several times) and found a couple large caves as well as the first large circular rooms (at least 34 blocks in diameter, or twice the maximum vanilla width) that I've found since I started playing on this world again, each one was 43 blocks in diameter, compared to 17 for the largest rooms in vanilla (the Wiki erroneously claims 30 blocks but those aren't circular rooms, which are perfectly circular and have a height that is about half the width, while larger tunnels can have circular-looking sections (a tunnel is just semi-spherical segments that vary in width generated along a path that randomly changes direction; the maximum width of a tunnel is 27 blocks, with larger chambers where they fold around on themselves):
The first cave; this is actually just a large "vanilla" cave/tunnel, not one of TMCW's "large caves" which are separate from normal cave generation, which does have an increased size multiplier for larger caves though (most caves/tunnels in vanilla range in width from 3-9 blocks, with a multiplier applied 10% of the time which allows them to reach up to 27 blocks, heavily weighted towards the lower end). There is also more to the cave that isn't easily visible as the ceiling was 1-2 blocks above lava level:
The second cave, which is also a "vanilla" large cave and merges with a fairly large circular room (width of 28 blocks) at lava level:
The large circular rooms; there was also a fairly large surface crater above them; one of them also merges with a large cave (it wans't clear that it was a circular room until I'd lit it up):
Finally, I found a fossil, the 10th one in this world, above one of the large circular rooms (also visible in the upper-left corner of the second to last screenshot above), and more interesting terrain in another Mountainous Desert:
Also, over this period I saw two zombies in diamond and amethyst armor (one each) and two in full iron armor at the same time (the one in diamond armor disappeared by the time I reached the area I saw it), and got an amethyst sword with full durability from a zombie after I gave it my sword (a bit risky, considering it has Sharpness V, but I made sure there were no other mobs nearby, using my pickaxe to kill it):
Here is a full-size rendering of everything that I've explored west of x = -512, mostly since I started playing on this world again, as well as an updated list of what I've found over that period:
Play sessions spent caving: 50
Structures/caves found (by number):
92 normal dungeons
77 ravines
30 mineshafts
16 large caves (larger than vanilla, not including giant caves)
11 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
7 maze cave clusters
7 ravine cave clusters
6 large ravines (larger than vanilla)
3 circular room cave clusters
3 double dungeons (one combined with a normal dungeon for 3 spawners)
3 fossils
3 giant caves (>50000 in volume)
3 vertical cave clusters
2 circular rooms at least 34 blocks in diameter (twice as large as vanilla)
2 combination cave systems
1 colossal cave system
1 desert temple
1 maze cave system
1 network cave region
1 ravine cave system
1 vertical cave system
1 village
1 witch hut
(273 individual structures/caves)
Biomes found (in order found for first time in this world):
Meadow
Meadow Forest
Ocean
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher, highest peak in an instance of a biome):
153 (Winter Forest Mountains)
145 (Flower Forest)
134 (Mountainous Desert Hills)
Other:
4 zombies in diamond armor
1 skeleton in amethyst armor
1 skeleton in diamond armor
1 zombie in amethyst armor
1 Notch apple
Large caves (volume >= 25000, in order found):
-1016 24 -200 (length: 291, width: 37, volume: 103092)
-1112 30 -328 (length: 241, width: 19, volume: 32935)
-1144 23 184 (length: 342, width: 48, volume: 199065)
-920 21 376 (length: 204, width: 22, volume: 37256)
-504 22 -712 (length: 319, width: 31, volume: 75527)
-1160 23 -488 (length: 327, width: 23, volume: 48632)
-1320 24 -408 (length: 295, width: 19, volume: 32106)
Large ravines (volume >= 25000, in order found):
-808 30 -88 (length: 204, width: 11, depth: 31, volume: 34110)
-1000 51 8 (length: 212, width: 16, depth: 33, volume: 58839)
-1000 35 200 (length: 210, width: 8, depth: 28, volume: 25372)
-1144 21 -456 (length: 334, width: 17, depth: 40, volume: 118583)
-1528 25 -584 (length: 326, width: 25, depth: 49, volume: 186192)
Large circular rooms (width >= 34, in order found):
-1353 24 606 (width: 43, volume: 18913)
-1423 35 602 (width: 43, volume: 19678)
Colossal cave systems (in order found):
-872 280 (volume: 236737)
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 can't remember if I replied here before to say this, but I'm oddly happy this is still going, and that you are still playing and involved with the game. I don't know why, but I am. Reminds me of the 2012 to 2014 days with the forum, community, and game (though, no, I don't like the game any less today).
I found another enchanted golden apple, the fifth one that I've found in this world and the second one from a mineshaft (a new addition in TMCWv4.5, which removed the crafting recipe so I added them to more structures, not just dungeons) as well as a zombie in diamond armor, which also dropped its chestplate, with Projectile Protection IV, the first time that I've gotten a drop from a diamond armored mob since playing on this world again (while they are much more common than in vanilla I reduced the drop chance from 8.5% to 5%, with Looting increasing it by 2% per level instead of 1%. Amethyst items have a 10% drop chance):
Also, I've officially finished exploring the level 3 map centered at -1024, 0, even if a small area along the southwestern edge hasn't been explored, as I didn't find any caves leading into it. Here is a full-size rendering of the area made with MCMap; the Flower Forest in the center stands out from all the "dandelions" (MCMap doesn't recognize that I added more flower variants), while to the left is a Winter Forest with mountains reaching as high as y=154, the highest terrain I found, followed by y=145 in the Flower Forest and y=134 in the Mountainous Desert to the right:
Here is a biome map; there are a total of 48 biomes, including all minor variations, with the most common biome being Flower Forest (the large pink area near the center; to the west is a Jungle, with another at the center of the northern edge, which stand out due to the small lakes that dot them, a feature also present in vanilla 1.6.4 but not 1.7+; to the northwest of the Flower Forest is a Winter Forest, which is light green with darker green Hills and Mountain and a couple Frozen Lake sub-biomes, then to the east of that is a Bushlands, then Swampland (this also has small lakes not present in 1.7+; these are "river" biomes in vanilla and Swamp/Jungle River in TMCW, which do not have the special height treatment that make rivers able to cut through all terrain), then Roofed Forest (dark green) to the east, and Mountainous Desert with patches of Hills and normal Desert to the southeast. South of the Flower Forest is a Plains, with Meadow (brighter green) and Mega Tree Plains further south):
Interestingly, just along the very western edge, which I didn't see while playing, is the smallest Rocky Mountains biome, and I believe any full-size biome, that I've ever seen, only a couple small hills along a river; such a small biome may be the result of a climate zone transition as their borders may not be aligned to biome borders and biomes usually change across them, same for biomes next to the ocean:
Also, these are CaveFinder renderings of the underground, first with all caves/ravines/mineshafts then with only special variants; the largest ravine within this area (not as large as the ravine I found last time, which is partly visible in the far upper-left corner) is actually within the area that I did not explore, near the middle of the left edge; just to the north is the edge of a network cave region which I found but didn't explore as it would go far off the edge of the map and I did not plan on making further maps, but if I had I could have followed one of the caves down to where the ravine is; there is also an unexplored large cave further to the south:
Currently, I'm exploring along the northern edge of the map to the south and will go along it to the east, then south along the eastern edge, so once I'm finished there will be a natural border to the mapped area. At some point I'll also go back the the base I made around 0, 1024 (in the middle of the map to the south of the origin map) as it will be closer to where I'm exploring.
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 a stronghold solely by caving for the first time in this world, one of a handful of worlds where I've found one in this manner, not including the stronghold that I found with eyes of ender (I intentionally reached it by exploring caves that lead to it after I previously located it, but the location of the second stronghold was unknown):
I haven't explored it yet but they can be quite interesting due to the spawners found under the chests in the hallways and in libraries; here is when I explored the first one.
I also found a new biome for the first time in this world, and since it was added to TMCW (in version 4); Desert M, which I noticed at the very edge of the render distance when I pillared up to mark a return point and zoomed in to see multiple cacti up to 6 blocks tall, which only generate in this biome (they naturally generate at full height, which ranges from 3-6 blocks depending on the coordinates, as do player-grown cactus). Otherwise, the odds of finding multiple cacti more than 3 blocks tall in the same area is astronomical:
I haven't actually gone into it yet, or seen its Oasis sub-biomes, which are its other distinguishing feature (the name is taken from the original name for what is now Desert Lakes, except the lakes are oasis), as I'll only do so once I've explored caves that lead into it (this shows just how restrictive my playstyle is - I really mean it when I say I only explore the world by caving, aside from finding a stronghold to get to the End and securing/looting villages and structures that I spot in the distance). Likewise, I came across a Savanna Mountains biome which goes well above cloud level but haven't gotten close enough to the highest peak to see how high it is (the one I was standing on went to y=128):
There seems to be a large floating island far above cloud level in the top-center of this screenshot:
I also found my fourth "real" double dungeon (two dungeons connected together, as opposed to a "double dungeon", which are 5% of dungeons and recognizable by the chiseled stone bricks in the floor), out of a total of 317 dungeons found so far, showing just how rare it is for two dungeons to generate connected together even in older versions (TMCW has the same base dungeon frequency as vanilla 1.6.4, which is substantially higher than in 1.7 and later):
And the 11th fossil, bridging across a ravine:
A medium-sized large cave with a volume of about 37,000 air blocks:
I also came across two other large caves which I haven't explored yet:
All of these were found while exploring a network cave region, the 4th one that I've found/explored so far, enabling me to cover a very large area very quickly with multiple return points marking various things that I've found, which I'll be exploring over the next few days; I've already explored most of the northern and eastern edges of a level 3 map centered at -1024, 1024 (adjacent to maps fully explored to the north and east) and while I intended not to explore too far inwards (more than around 256 blocks) I'll probably be going farther west as I fully explore the network cave region and associated caves (I have not built any bases in the corner maps, only the maps to the west, south, and east of the center map, with my main base, so if I explored all the way to the center I'd be 1024 blocks away from the nearest base):
In addition, I saw two more zombies in diamond and amethyst armor, the latter of which dropped its chestplate, along with a huge horde of zombies which forced me to wall in the cave they were in (often this means there is a dungeon nearby but I didn't find one) and dropped enough XP to get me from level 42 to 44 (about 60 mobs at 5 XP each, with mobs with equipment dropping more):
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?
You're like the Indiana Jones of the Minecraft world I swear!
Loved this thread years ago , still loving it now.
I remember reading once (or multiple times) that you sometimes add in changes from newer versions to your own version, but also that one of the (many) reasons you stayed with the old version was that a majority of the changes aren't make or break for you, and so you don't add many of them.
My question is, and this is super serious important here... have you added the llamas? Please tell me the llamas are free and roaming in that much more virtual space. They must be free.
The only mobs that I've added (none of them in the current release) are rabbits, endermites, husks, and strays; I've also considered adding bears (not just polar bears, much as I added multiple variants of husks; yellow for normal desert, red for mesa, whitish for quartz desert; silverfish similarly have new variants to blend in with biome-specific underground blocks, and endermites have pink "nethermite" variants for the Nether). Most of these are simply variants of existing mobs/entities, which are much easier to add then entirely new mobs (e.g. same/similar models, of which I'm not sure exactly how they work. I actually used another mod (open source) that backported 1.8+ features to help me add rabbits, which required code modifications from the original 1.8 code, plus additional modifications to adapt to 1.6.4, and I'm not sure how to add proper sounds for them).
That said, I've been working on an update which will add many more features and changes originally planned for TMCWv5, which may include the aforementioned (basically anything that doesn't impact or directly depend on world generation can be added; each major release from TMCWv1 to TMCWv4 has been marked by significant changes to world generation, such that you get entirely different worlds for the same seed and I obviously want to avoid that for worlds I'm playing on; likewise, TMCWv5 will add new biomes and otherwise change biome placement and land/ocean/underground generation, even more so than previous versions due to changes to the RNG itself):
2. Burning zombies can now set the player on fire while they are holding an item (this is/was intended in vanilla, MC-14396, but it adds difficulty).
3. Rubies reduce the prior work penalty by up to 6 levels per ruby, for a cost of up to 6 levels plus the prior work penalty and number of enchantments (e.g. one ruby on an unenchanted item with a prior work penalty of 8 will cost 14 levels, or 6 + 8; two rubies will cost 16 levels, or 6 + 2 + 8. If the item has 3 enchantments the costs will be 17 and 22 respectively). This enables indefinitely repairing items which would be too expensive with Mending (e.g. an amethyst pickaxe with Efficiency V, Fortune III, Unbreaking III, Mending would cost 56 levels; without Mending the cost is 43 levels and you get 4 repairs before it becomes too expensive; with rubies you can use one every 3 repairs to reset the penalty to 0 for a cost of 43, 45, 47 per repair, then 15 for a ruby). Note that the cost of using rubies is capped to 39 levels, even for amethyst items (normally 49).
4. Reduced cost of Thorns from 8 to 4 per level and reduced durability penalty to 1 extra durability lost and only when reflecting damage, making it more viable to use (previously Thorns III would increase the base cost by 24 levels and take an average of 2.9 times the durability away; now it costs 12 levels and 1.45 times durability, 0.725 times with Unbreaking III compared to no Thorns/Unbreaking). Multiple items with Thorns will also lose durability at random instead of just the bottommost item.
5. Renaming an item now only costs 1 level regardless of the item or the stack size (plus the prior work penalty and enchantment costs, if applicable; because of this, it is best to rename an item you want to enchant before doing so, or while adding new enchantments, combining, or repairing).
6. There is a chance (3.226% of slimes or 1/10 as common as each smaller size, which have equal chances) of a size 8 "mega slime" spawning in swamps, which has double the aggro range (32 blocks), 64 health, deals 8 damage (on Normal difficulty), can jump over obstacles 4 blocks high, fall up to 8 blocks with no fall damage, and drops 8 XP and splits into 2-4 large slimes when killed (up to 85 slimes and 120 XP total).
7. If a medium or larger slime is killed by lava it will split into magma cubes instead of slimes.
8. Oak/spruce bushes (like the ones in Bushlands or Jungle) now only grow if there are only 2 blocks of clearance above a sapling (a non-air/leaves/wood block 3 blocks above sapling; previously, spruce saplings only grew bushes in Bushlands, making spruce less viable in that biome).
9. All-bark logs are now craftable; 4 normal logs give you 4 bark logs (instead of 3 like 1.13+ does so there is no loss) and Silk Touch is needed to harvest them (they naturally generate in trees, even unbranched trees (topmost block so the inside of the log is not visible on Fancy graphics), so it would be a bit of pain if they dropped themselves; Silk Touch is basically just a convenience since you can easily recraft them in the inventory). They can also be directly crafted into planks.
10. Smooth stone, sandstone, and quartz double slabs (named as Smooth Stone, Full Smooth Sandstone, and Smooth Quartz Block) can be crafted using 2x2 of their respective half slabs, giving you two of their full blocks. They also drop themselves when mined, thus act like normal blocks and not double slabs. Smooth quartz blocks also use the bottom texture on all sides (instead of the top texture, which makes it look too much like normal quartz blocks).
11. Petrified Oak Wood Slabs (the original wood slabs) can be crafted with a stone slab sandwiched between 2 oak wood slabs on top of each other, giving you 2 petrified slabs, which look like wood but are mined with a pickaxe and do not burn.
12. Added spruce, birch, and jungle wood fences, which have the same crafting recipe as 1.8+ except you get 4 fences instead of 3, or slightly less than one fence per plank block. Villages also use different types of wood for fences; Plains = oak, Savanna = jungle, Meadow = spruce, Ice Plains and Desert = birch.
13. Added 12 new wall variants for stone, granite, diorite, andesite, sandstone, brick, stone brick, mossy stone brick, end stone, nether quartz, netherrack, and hardened clay.
14. Snow layers drop up to two snowballs per layer instead of one when harvested with Fortune (similarly to glowstone higher levels give a higher chance of two; Fortune I-III = 1.25, 1.5, 1.75). Also, multi-layer blocks melt by one layer at a time instead of all at once.
15. Silk Touch can now pick up an intact (uneaten) cake.
16. Fixed MC-190, most noticeable when using custom textures on blocks like stairs (hard to see with default textures), and MC-41825 (some entities render black with no light and Night Vision).
17. Shears and shovels can now be fully repaired with 2 units instead of 4, making repairs twice as efficient in terms of both materials and XP (it is still cheaper XP-wise to repair shears with new shears instead of units but it can be more convenient, e.g. running out of durability halfway through clearing a cave spider spawner and not having enough levels, which can be avoided by repairing with a unit when durability falls below 50%. For shovels the benefit can be much greater, especially for amethyst, e.g. Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending costs 43 levels for a one unit repair, which now restores twice the durability).
18. Leaves have a 5% chance of dropping a stick, increased to 10% with Fortune III; jungle leaves have 2/3 the drop rate.
19. Fixed brightness of XP orbs so they do not appear dimmer from certain angles (MC-108003, unfixed as of 1.16.2).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
The Savanna Mountains biome that I found earlier had the highest terrain that I've ever found in Survival, with the highest peak reaching y=179, 14 blocks higher than the second highest terrain that I've found in this world, and any other world (excluding TripleHeightTerrain, which had sea level at y=191, but otherwise vanilla 1.6.4 terrain):
These are looking down in various directions from the peak; I turned fog and clouds off for a clear view:
Even Mega Trees don't look that tall compared to these mountains (they can get up to 64 blocks tall)
There was also a secondary peak reaching y=146; only the highest peak is listed above (several biomes are listed multiple times since I list the highest peak in an individual biome; I previously found another Savanna Mountains which reached y=148); in the distance is the peak reaching y=179, which I ascended later:
Following are various other screenshots I took:
These were taken after I finished exploring the area; I don't normally light up the areas under overhangs but there were a lot of exposed caves and mobs were spawning even during the day:
Also, there were multiple large hollows/overhangs, some entirely enclosed (the Wiki claims that hollows are as rare as Jungle Edge M, the rarest biome in the game; of course, they are referring to vanilla):
This was by far the largest one, partly open to the sky:
I also came across the 12th fossil that I've found, at the bottom of a surface ravine that I came across while exploring around the Savanna Mountains (it was not connected to anything so i didn't find it until I happened to come across it on the surface):
As far as caving goes, I've explored most of the area around the network cave region and have found at least 7 large caves, 4 of which have been explored so far (the first one is the cave I previously showed):
This is the second cave listed, and the second largest cave that I've found in this world, with a volume of about 209,000 air blocks:
After that I explored what turned out to be two large caves connected together, with one forming a huge surface crater:
There are at least several more large caves around the area, including one at the other end of a large ravine leading from the double caves (visible as a dark area near the center of the second to last screenshot), and what appears to be two separate caves nearby, one of which is the second unexplored cave I mentioned in post #177, which I came across again at a lower level and got a better view of (I originally saw it from the cave near the top to the left of center - a long drop into a huge lava sea):
I also found a circular room cave system, the first one that I've found since playing on this world again; this also means that I've found at least one of every type of structure/feature except for a giant cave region (I previously found one):
Also, this is a rendering of the network cave region by itself, covering a 400x400 block area with volume of about 127,000 (a few of the caves extend even further off the edge):
Also, to put the size of these caves into perspective, caves and ravines make up about 5.27% of the underground in vanilla 1.6.4, meaning on average there are about 700 air blocks between layers 11-62 (52 layers) - the largest cave shown above is equivalent to about 300 chunks of vanilla caves, or 15.7 chunks with nothing but air between layers 11-62 (or 13.8 chunks between layers 4-62, the usable depth in TMCW due to a lower lava level).
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 10 days I've explored the entire area around the network cave region, including a total of 9 large caves, 7 over 25,000 and 3 over 50,000 in volume with a combined volume of more than half a million, with about half the volume across the entire area taken up by large caves, ravines, and the network cave region:
The first cave that I explored after the previous ones was at the end of a medium-sized large ravine which lead from one of the other large caves:
After that I explored another double large cave, one of which had a huge lava sea and was the third largest cave in the area:
The lava in the center is from a larger cave below:
I also found two smaller caves which weren't large enough to be analyzed with CaveFinder, but still quite large by vanilla standards (the largest open cave chamber that I can recall finding in my first world was a bit over 30 blocks or 2 chunks across; such large chambers are the result of a cave folding in on itself as the maximum width of a vanilla cave is 27 blocks). The second cave was relatively straight, giving a higher volume relative to its size parameters (for the largest caves the actual volume is well under half the volume they would have if they were straight):
Also, I've released an update with the features mentioned in a previous post; the most immediate impact on my gameplay is that I may encounter a "mega slime" in a swamp near where I'm exploring, which has a size of 8, deals 8 damage, jumps 4 blocks high, has 64 health and splits into large slimes (size 4, then 2, then 1, with as many as 64 tiny slimes created), and has a sight range of 32 blocks (similar to spiders slimes can see through solid blocks so if I'm within 32 blocks of the surface they will follow me). Magma cubes may also be found around areas of lava as they are created when a size 2 or more slime dies in lava, so they are no longer exclusive to Volcanic Wasteland, where they naturally spawn in place of slimes.
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 Savanna Mountains biome - with even more extreme terrain than the last one, reaching y=181, near the maximum height of terrain in TMCW (just under y=192, the point where terrain would cut off; the highest terrain that I've ever found in a test world was y=187):
I also found a large ravine under it, 282 blocks long, 16 blocks wide, and a volume of about 87,000; it also intersected a vertical cave system, the second one that I've found recently:
This is the vertical cave system, with the ravine intersecting it near the top:
I explored the stronghold I found earlier after coming across it again - which happened to be the end portal room, of all parts:
This shows one way strongholds are more interesting than vanilla; there are spawners under the chests in the hallways (zombies, skeletons, witches, creepers, cave spiders), as well as in libraries (silverfish):
Also, I found two Oasis biomes in the Desert M that I found earlier; of note, these are the rarest biome by far in terms of area, at about 0.01884% of all land and 0.00617% of the world, if not by how hard it is to find them since they generate as part of a larger biome (Desert M and Oasis together are 0.72649% of land):
This is a list of the frequencies of all biomes, from a total area of more than 16.7 billion blocks (1000 random 4096x4096 areas from 1000 random seeds, excluding the area near the origin due to the forced generation of a landmass there so this is representative of the world as a whole; a 4096x4096 area near the origin has about twice as much land on average):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I had an incredible experience the last time I played - two skeletons in diamond and amethyst armor within a minute or two and about 16 blocks of each other; I first saw one in diamond and after I killed it and turned the corner to go up a staircase I ran into one in amethyst - any closer and I'd have seen them at the same time; as it is, this is only the second time that I've ever seen two mobs in diamond or better in the same play session, the other time being more than 5 years ago:
(note the HUD in both screenshots, the only difference is some additional XP, a couple torches/cobblestone placed, and one baked potato eaten after I'd killed other mobs)
To give an idea of the chance of this happening, there is a 20% chance that a skeleton or zombie will have armor at maximum difficulty on Normal (which is all the time after the first 100 hours) and a 0.3% chance that it will be diamond and 0.1% chance that it will be amethyst, which translates to a one in 8.333 million chance that any two randomly chosen mobs will have diamond and amethyst (this only applies for any two mobs, there were quite a few skeletons and zombies in the area, but the chance is still quite low). They were also in full armor, making them even rarer (there is a 65.1% chance of full armor on Normal, reducing the probability to one in 19.66 million).
For comparison, the chances in vanilla are 15% for any armor at maximum regional difficulty (of note, in 1.6.4 the chance is up to 18.75% on Hard as it can reach 1.25; since 1.8 it is always clamped to 1), 0.04287% for diamond, and 42.19% for full armor, giving a probability of one in 242 million for any diamond armor and one in 1.36 billion for full diamond.
Also, I've seen a total of 30 mobs in diamond or amethyst in this world; interestingly, the same number of skeletons have had either while the number for zombies matches the expected ratio (4:1 diamond:amethyst):
This also translates to about one mob every 2,500 total mobs killed, about half the expected if all were zombies and skeletons (1 in 1250 mobs), and an average of one every 7 play sessions (this suggests that the chance of seeing two diamond or higher mobs is one in 49 sessions so I should have seen four instances by now; if you use the time played per session instead I've seen them within the time spent in a single session but split across two sessions on several occasions):
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?
Over the past couple days I explored three enormous caves within 160 blocks of each other, one of which formed a gigantic crater more than 50 blocks across:
The first cave that I explored was the largest, with a volume of about 180,000, and is near the top of the renderings shown above, just to the south of the vertical cave system I found earlier:
The second cave (to the lower-right) was actually the first one that I found after I noticed large gray spot dotted with lava on the map; my first thought was that it was a Volcanic Wasteland biome but it turned out to be an enormous crater; rather than exploring it from the surface I explored it from caves that lead from the first giant cave:
The third cave (to the lower-left) was a slightly smaller version of the second cave, with the top breaking the surface in multiple places, partly obstructed by water (unlike vanilla caves can generate if there is water in the way but they will leave a 2 block wide rim round it) and higher terrain:
Also, the map I'm currently exploring has had the highest concentration of large caves of any map so far, including three fully explored maps (plus the map centered around 0,0 but most of that area is excluded from having large caves); so far I've found 10 caves with a volume of at least 25,000, 6 with a volume of at least 50,000, and 4 (almost 5) with a volume of at least 100,000; while the most found in a fully explored map is 10/4/3 in the map centered at 1024, 0 (these are listed in the order I filled them in, with several partial maps not shown; only one large cave is within the map centered at 0,0 and one was found in the map centered at 0, -1024):
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?
Oh my lord! You found that cave that way? How are you able to find places like this? Are you on foot like Iron_Kevin walking non-stop in your world?