I used MCMap, which in addition to the nice surface rendering has the unique (as far as I know) feature of only mapping underground areas around torches (I removed them from mineshafts and strongholds for this reason, and even improved MCMap itself by reducing the range it maps around a torch to a more realistic area based on the actual light range, though my version hasn't been made public).
Thanks! I'll check that out.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm on a bit of a hiatus from playing Minecraft, so I'm not so active in this forum, either. I still check it though, and participate in a few discussions.
I've decided to play on this world again after I found out that the last known backup was not from the final time I previously played on it; that is, I thought that I had deleted many of my older worlds but I came across a backup and decided to keep them, and any future worlds. However, I noticed that this world did not seem to be as large as I thought, and I was in the middle of caving, as opposed to at my base, which I normally return to before I stop playing on a world, and sure enough, there were areas I'd explored which were not explored yet, along with the statistics missing about 3 days of playtime:
These are the original stats and explored caves rendering:
The ones from the backup:
The saves menu before loading the backup for the first time in over 5 years:
I plan to explore at least as much as I did before; by the time I'm done I'll update the "official" stats for this world to reflect the new times/etc for the replayed version, not the original version (you can see the statistics for the original world here; I didn't post much about what I did in this thread, but in the general "what have you done recently" thread. You also have to love the "I won't play on it until/if it can be reverted back to the old mechanics", which was referring to the anvil changes in 1.8 - I still have yet to play on any other version since 1.6.4. I actually did make a mod for 1.8 that reverted the anvil system entirely back to before, even the higher repair/rename costs, and would even prefer it over Mending in 1.9 (TMCWv4 adds Mending as a direct replacement for renaming, in part to show how I think it should work), but never used it myself, this is also why I stopped making mods for newer versions since I've always primarily made them for my own use).
This world is also a bit different from all the worlds I've had since - I still used Fortune III to mine everything while caving, a practice I started after 1.6 came out, except for emerald ore (even for that it appears that I only recently started using Silk Touch since much of the emerald I had stored away was in blocks), and I can see why I stopped using it (besides the fact that the next version of TMCW added amethyst armor and tools, which are too expensive to use with Fortune), as my inventory filled up far faster, offset by a double-sized Ender chest (later versions of TMCW replaced this with a separate "Diamond Ender Chest", which can't be picked up even with Silk Touch), but I still had to stop a lot more often to clear out my inventory:
Also, such a pickaxe is extremely expensive to maintain - costing 37 levels or 1406 XP per repair with a single diamond, 5624 XP for the four repairs needed to restore full durability, or about 0.9 XP per use, compared to as little as 31 levels/887 XP to fully repair a pickaxe without Fortune with another one (slightly damaged, with the 12% anvil bonus making up for it, otherwise it is 33 levels/1032 XP); this isn't as much of an issue as the need to repair it so often; however, I also made diamond armor more durable (and expensive, since in 1.6.4 the amount of durability restored affects the repair cost. This is why an amethyst pickaxe with the same enchantments is too expensive, even as I increased the anvil cost limit to 49 for amethyst items):
Note that this showcases some features that will be in TMCWv5 (armor points and damage reduction, including enchantments, is displayed, and durability was fixed so items show their true durability (vanilla shows e.g. diamond tools as 0/1561 before breaking, instead of 1/1562. This was fixed in 1.13.1). This also includes an updated version of the "inventory stats", replacing the original ones from TMCWv1, as well as a few other changes. There is no Unbreaking on the armor because the cost increase on top of an already higher base cost isn't worth it; while vanilla sees a net benefit here the XP cost increases by more than the increase in durability gained (for TMCWv5 I've considered reducing armor durability and making Unbreaking as effective on armor as on tools; since Unbreaking can only be applied to armor and weapons with books in 1.6.4 I think this is a good tradeoff):
Other items are the same as I use in vanilla, such as my sword (14.25 attack damage is your base damage of 1 plus 7 for the sword and 6.25 for Sharpness V; vanilla 1.6.4 only shows the added damage from the sword, "+7", where I removed the "+" to indicate that this is the total damage dealt, as opposed to +13.25 in 1.8). Note that this sword is also too expensive to repair with another sword unless it is slightly damaged (in vanilla I kill chickens to wear it down by about 200 durability, which lowers the cost to 38 levels and gives a full repair after a 12% bonus; prior to then I repaired it with 2 diamonds at a time for 35 levels. Since all of my diamond items are repaired incrementally I don't have to worry about them breaking):
Interestingly, when I got back to my base I found that I had another pickaxe named "Mining Pickaxe" with Efficiency V and Unbreaking III - the same as what I use (and name) in my later worlds, which I presumably used while branch-mining. For consistency though I'll keep using the Fortune pickaxe while caving. I also enchanted a pair of shears with Silk Touch, Efficiency V, and Unbreaking III, as I started using after I added "cobweb blocks", before which I just crafted the string from mining cobwebs around cave spider spawners into wool (these and "rail blocks" are additions to a later version of TMCW, which I first added to my "personal" modded/optimized/bugfixed version of 1.6.4 that I use on my first world and other "vanilla" worlds, which is a base for my other mods; I simply took the modded jar and added most of the files for TMCW to it, plus a few patches for compatibility).
Another change is that I'm going to be using a single level 4 map instead of all the level 3 maps that I used, which don't even match up properly (the good old bad days when maps remained aligned to the center of the first map; I modded them to align to a multiple of the scale width like in 1.8 but centered starting at 0,0, which is just to the south of my base):
Also, an interesting thing about this world is that I did not originally name it "TheMasterCaversWorld"; it was "World1v4", as seen in the "level.dat_mcr" file (this file is no longer created by newer versions; it was intended to be a backup of level.dat when a world was converted from MCRegion to Anvil, though 1.6.4 always created the file, which is a good way to see when a world was created since it is never touched afterwards). As you may guess, I also had worlds named "World1v2" and World1v3", each of which reused the seed for my first world but with various modifications (World1v2 changed caves while World1v3 also doubled the ground depth):
The name of my namesake mod came later, possibly inspired by this reply on the first page (unlike later versions TMCW was originally just a world generation/bugfix/tweak mod that added no new blocks/items/etc; you can even open a world in vanilla and all that happens is that new biomes read as plains (but the save data isn't actually affected) and new chunks would mismatch; ender chests (changed to 54 slots) would lose the second half of their inventory but otherwise remain intact):
Dude, this is nuts. Awesomely so. Ever thought about combining all your patches/modifications into a single, concise mod for the public to use? This looks like something truly epic. A mod like this that slightly alters the game generation, but doesn't change it like a conventional mod (adding items, incompatible with vanilla, ect.) would probably gain popularity pretty quickly. "MasterCaver's WorldGeneration Mod." That would be cool. Whatever the case, this is impressive however you look at it.
Also, this shows a cutaway of my main base (the only one in this world), the largest base I've ever built at 70x88 blocks and 36 blocks high, including nearly 6,000 each of glass panes and stone slabs and more than 18,000 blocks in total (for the most part though I only use the storage room, potato farm, and tree farm. The only thing that would have changed since the last backup and when I stopped playing on it are the contents of the chests):
Another thing to note is that it isn't possible to recreate this world using the latest version of TMCWv1 because I added most of the new biomes while I was playing on this world (I originally only added Forest Mountains and Hilly Plains), but I avoided chunk borders by selectively replacing them after the initial biome map was created (for example, the plains biome where I spawned and where my base is is now a mesa biome) and ensuring that no altered biomes were next to generated areas; likewise, I made some changes to the underground and structures (I made them more common to offset a decrease in the frequencies of their biomes, which changed their locations. Because of the way biomes were replaced many of the newer biomes are rarer, with half of biomes being the original vanilla biomes plus the first two that I added):
// Selects a biome to use in place of the regular biome
private int getBiomeVariant(int biome)
{
if (this.nextInt(2) == 0)
{
if (biome == BiomeGenBase.desert.biomeID)
{
return BiomeGenBase.mountainousDesert.biomeID;
}
else if (biome == BiomeGenBase.swampland.biomeID)
{
int selection = this.nextInt(4);
switch (selection)
{
case 0:
return = BiomeGenBase.tropicalSwamp.biomeID;
case 1:
if (this.nextInt(2) == 0)
{
return BiomeGenBase.volcanicWasteland.biomeID;
}
else
{
return this.allowedBiomes[this.nextInt(this.allowedBiomes.length)].biomeID;
}
break;
case 2:
return BiomeGenBase.lake.biomeID;
}
}
else if (biome == BiomeGenBase.jungle.biomeID)
{
return BiomeGenBase.mixedForest.biomeID;
}
else if (biome == BiomeGenBase.hillyPlains.biomeID)
{
if (this.nextInt(4) > 0)
{
return BiomeGenBase.bushlands.biomeID;
}
else
{
return BiomeGenBase.megaTaiga.biomeID;
}
}
else if (biome == BiomeGenBase.plains.biomeID)
{
if (this.nextInt(2) == 1)
{
return BiomeGenBase.megaTreePlains.biomeID;
}
else
{
return BiomeGenBase.mesa.biomeID;
}
}
else if (biome == BiomeGenBase.extremeHills.biomeID)
{
int selection = this.nextInt(4);
switch (selection)
{
case 0:
return BiomeGenBase.snowlessTaiga.biomeID;
case 1:
return BiomeGenBase.birchForest.biomeID;
case 3:
return BiomeGenBase.megaForest.biomeID;
}
}
else if (biome == BiomeGenBase.forest.biomeID)
{
if (this.nextInt(2) == 0) return BiomeGenBase.bigOakForest.biomeID;
}
}
return biome;
}
Interestingly, I have yet to find two biomes I added in this version of TMCW in Survival, across four worlds - Ice Hills, a sub-biome of Ice Plains, and what is now TMCW Mega Taiga, with giant spruce trees with 3x3 trunks (I later added the vanilla 1.7 versions and renamed Mega Taiga to TMCW Mega Taiga):
I came across some interesting things today; first, I found two creeper dungeons (dungeons can spawn most Overworld mobs in TMCW):
The second dungeon had some quite good loot in it (dungeons and mineshafts in Extreme Hills and Forest Mountains can have emeralds):
I saw a spider jockey, a relatively rare occurrence even with my playstyle (many of them appear to suffocate the skeleton rider in caves, as otherwise I should expect to see one every day or two). Of course, TMCW also has "cave spider jockeys", a baby zombie riding a cave spider:
I found a quite large cave, by the standards of vanilla, which was connected to a ravine which was also quite large; while lighting up the cave I encountered a lot of mobs, with a total of 68 in this one cave out of a total of 417 killed:
All of this was from the cave, the first thing I explored today as I stopped playing yesterday before exploring it:
Also, thanks to Fortune I've collected over 5,500 resources per day for the past two days, including nearly 4,000 coal (more when including the coal I used) - this shows the main reason why I stopped using it (anything that I convert to blocks is for permanent storage, aside from the occasional iron blocks used to make anvils and redstone blocks to power powered rails; either way, they are treated as uncraftable), plus I've been repairing my pickaxe 3 times per day (4218 XP, which is 78% of the XP I've collected per day. I also spent 1205 XP to repair my sword once, which leaves a surplus of 1162 XP, which was consumed due to exceeding the 37/35 levels necessary to repair them. It took a couple pickaxe repairs to catch up on durability after I repaired my sword but this is never an issue since it was still well over 50% by the first repair, normally done right after it drops below 75%):
The music discs came from a dungeon, not creepers as I made all of them generate (together about as common as cat and 13 in vanilla):
This is a pretty typical amount for me to mine during one play session, a bit low for redstone and diamond (I only found 18 and 1 yesterday as there were few caves going deep enough):
Also, this shows the total amount of ores I've mined in this world - 152,064, which actually isn't that high compared to many of my other worlds; my first world has about 2.4 million and TMCWv4 has about 380,000. Note that my score is not the total XP I've gained in this world because I did die three times before I started playing again (if I ever die again it won't be reset because I took advantage of the fact that the game uses two variables to track your experience, "experienceTotal" and "score", the latter of which is what the death screen shows, and I made the game always save "experienceTotal" on death. I'm not sure why there are two separate variables that are basically the same thing and always the same in vanilla (each handled separately, all I did was prevent one from being reset on death), possibly legacy code):
Here is an animation of what I explored over the past two days, with the first frame being made after the first session after I started playing on the world again (I didn't do that much caving before returning):
Another thing to note is that I'm testing some of the features that are being added to TMCWv5 while playing this world, which really requires actual playing to test, such as changes to the lighting engine and mob spawning; in particular, I made mobs spawn 1/4 as often, with 25% of chunks each having a chance of spawning mobs per spawn cycle and the number of individual spawn attempts is reduced by a factor of 3 (from 12 to 4 per pack) if the mob cap can't be kept more than halfway filled. Both are mainly optimizations as mob spawning is a significant part of the idle server tick time, especially when they can't spawn, which also causes a very high rate of memory churn on Superflat worlds (in vanilla there are up to 10,800 individual attempts to spawn a mob per cycle (225 chunks * 12 attempts per pack * 4 types of mobs), each of which can result in the creation of an actual entity in order to call its canSpawnHere() check. Since the elevation is so low a high percentage of pack centers will land on the surface (similar to 1.8+ TMCW uses the actual block height, not "LC" value) and lead to individual spawn attempts).
Interestingly, despite a much lower spawn rate I've actually killed a well above average number of mobs for the past two days, 362 yesterday and 417 today, compared to an average of 221 per play session, though this shouldn't be surprising given the number of individual spawn attempts:
I didn't take a screenshot yesterday but I know how much I mined and how many mobs I killed because I have the game print out most of the stats when quitting (the numbers are resources, ores, coal, iron, gold, redstone, lapis, diamond, emerald, rails, cobwebs, moss stone, spawners, mob kills, experience. The XP for yesterday is lower since I didn't smelt any iron/gold until today to make more room in my Ender chest):
This is also why I was highly skeptical of claims that a reduced failure rate of mob spawns in 1.13 supposedly greatly increased the number of mobs spawning - the only thing it would benefit is mob grinders, which my changes are in part a direct nerf to. I also previously (in TMCWv4) changed the despawn radius from a 128 block sphere to a 96 block cylinder (yet another nerf to farms, as building high up is useless), with mobs spawning within a 6 chunk circular radius, which roughly doubles the volumetric density of mobs around the player, but does reduce the number of chunks spawning mobs from 225 to 121. This means that there will be a worst-case total of only 1,452 spawn attempts per cycle (average, as 121 isn't evenly divisible by 4), about 13.4% of vanilla.
After 3 days of caving I returned back to my main base with 17,966 resources and a total of 18,157 items (give or take a few, I always keep some loose diamonds on hand for repairs and the amounts of other items is whatever is left over from crafting them into blocks) - around 6,000 per day. I mined a total of 9,527 ore, killed 1,125 mobs, found 5 dungeons (spawners, no mineshafts yet), and gained 16,673 XP:
This comes out to the following resources collected:
Also, I started out with 2 stacks of logs (128) and ended up with 56 left, which means I used 72 to make 2,304 torches, which requires 576 coal, plus another 338 coal to smelt the iron and gold I collected (minus some I found in chests), which means that I mined around 12,400 pieces of coal; likewise, I used 11 diamonds to repair my gear for around 92 collected.
In contrast to the last two days I found a lot more redstone and diamond, as well as more gold and lapis as I went deeper down in the same cave system I explored previously, which is typical for how I explore a large cave system (top down and outside in):
Also, these are all the maps I've created in this world, excluding the Nether; the one on the far right is the level 4 map I'm using instead of the original maps (level 3 and not aligned), while the first three maps from the left extend towards the southeast from spawn, fourth and fifth to the southwest, and the last one (level 4, the center is not the same as the map I'm using) I made when looking for a stronghold (the only time I explore more than 100 blocks or so away from spawn until I start caving):
2019-07-11 18:29:32 [CLIENT] [INFO] [CHAT] TheMasterCaver was slain by Zombie
This happened while exploring a cave which had an unbelievable number of mobs in it, likely since I was exploring within an area where everything else had already been explored and the area was largely under water/ice (reducing surface spawns at night); I was going through a previously explored area and came across a surface cave opening, which I naturally went into and it led to a cave system I'd previously missed (I found caves leading to previously explored areas), which included a few relatively large open areas, one of which seemed to have a zombie spawner (at least) due to the number of zombies that kept coming out of it, though I never found one.
By the time I finished playing I'd killed 542 mobs, possibly a single session record for this world, certainly at least since I started playing on it again (I didn't keep track of per-session mob kills when I last played on it):
Also, this is the first time I used a feature I added to TMCW - your death point is displayed in the inventory screen, which might be seen as cheating by some (there are other ways to find it though, like F3):
This is an example, I didn't take any screenshots:
Here are some screenshots from the cave system:
Also, I found out that the armor that I was wearing was basically iron armor and significantly weaker than what I usually wear; in this version of TMCW I reduced armor protection from 4% per armor point to 3.5%, meaning that a diamond chestplate+leggings+boots reduces damage by 59.5%, compared to 60% for full iron in vanilla, as well as the same as iron armor in TMCW (I increased the number of armor points for tiers below diamond to offset the reduction per point, so only diamond was nerfed. I realized this when I noticed that I had 17 armor points (instead of 15) after putting on iron armor before going back to get my stuff). While I did add Protection IV to my boots in later versions to offset this I did not have it, resulting in an overall reduction from 77.6% to 71.65%, which may not seem like much but it is effectively a decrease of 20 health (from about 90 to 70; likewise, even though full diamond in vanilla is "only" 20% better it halves the damage taken and effectively doubles your health compared to full iron. The nerf to diamond in TMCW makes it about 1.33 times better than iron). I'll add Protection IV to my boots the next time I return (I have plenty of books from looting chests, which is also how I made a pair of Silk Touch shears), which will bring up the overall damage reduction to 77.7%, nearly the same as vanilla.
One thing to note is that my "score" in the inventory hasn't been reset since I made it always be saved, unlike the one that is displayed in the death screen, which uses a separate variable to keep track of it (I'm not sure why there are two variables which are the same thing, it may be like how 1.6 added a "HealF" tag to store health as a float while keeping the "Health" tag, which is a short (whole number); "HealF" was removed in 1.9 with "Health" made a float). "Score" is what the death screen displays while "XpTotal" is what I use:
I also came across some interesting terrain; a Forest Mountains biome in an area I haven't previously explored (I also mentioned this in this thread, where at the time it was raining):
This is the same view at a lower render distance, making foreground features stand out more:
I rediscovered the largest single vein of diamond that I've ever found (that I can recall); while I originally found it 5 years ago it looked oddly familiar when I saw it again, as what appeared to be two separate veins next to each other, and sure enough, after removing some stone it turned out to be a single vein of 12 ore:
You're like the overlord of Minecraft or something, how do you find the time to do all this?
I do very little other than caving, so I don't spend any time building or anything else (past the "early-game", and the occasional very basic secondary "base"; in TMCWv4 an estimated 97% of the entire "end-game" was spent caving), and I can mine ores at rates exceeding 1,000 per hour, which many people find to be insane (I'm guessing that they don't really do much caving, I've even had people tell me that I must have jacked up ore rates). A large part of the extreme amounts of ores I collect is due to the fact that I even mine every single coal ore, which is twice as common as everything else combined.
Maybe I do spend more time playing than many people (this article claims that the average "gamer" (whatever that may mean) my age only plays for 7 hours a week, while I average about 24; various polls on the forums suggest a higher playtime), but certainly not as much as popularly assumed, since again, I literally just cave for much of the time I spend in a world - the only interruptions since I started playing on this world have been to go back to my main base to unload all the resources I collected and restock on food and wood, then I immediately go back to where I was exploring.
Also, of note, there is something called "ABBA caving", a competition to see who can collect the most points from mining ores while caving, and the average rates are pretty much in line with what I get:
On average, a 20-minute match consisting of 3 players in a good cave system will yield a total of 30 diamond ore, 40 lapis ore, 80 gold ore, 200 redstone ore, and 300 iron ore. for the winner to take away.
If that is for 3 players then each one averages about 650 ore (excluding coal) per hour, which is actually more than twice what I average (of course, the time spent mining coal decreases the rate of other ores; the relative amounts of rarer ores also suggests they try to stay as deep as possible while I explore everything, reducing my rates further since the overall density of ores is higher deeper down; modifications that increase the number and toughness of mobs is yet another factor against me). For comparison, these were the rates I got in another world (modded ores are negligible); when excluding coal I only averaged 265 ore per hour:
Blocks mined over 121 sessions/466 hours spent caving:
percent /session /hour
Coal ore: 256837 67.5654 2122.62 551.15
Iron ore: 93786 24.6720 775.09 201.26
Redstone ore: 12831 3.3754 106.04 27.53
Gold ore: 10857 2.8561 89.73 23.30
Lapis ore: 3754 0.9876 31.02 8.06
Diamond ore: 1598 0.4204 13.21 3.43
Amethyst ore: 223 0.0567 1.84 0.48
Ruby ore: 153 0.0402 1.26 0.33
Emerald ore: 92 0.0242 0.76 0.20
Total ore: 380131 3141.58 815.73
Rails: 18053 149.20 38.74
Moss stone: 10173 84.07 21.83
Cobwebs: 8850 73.14 18.99
Ore+other: 417207 78.8156 3447.99 895.29
Spawners: 444 3.67 0.95
Stone mined: 95777 18.0935 791.55 205.53
Total blocks: 529346 (pickaxe) 4374.76 1135.94
538196 (+cobwebs) 4447.90 1154.93
Notes:
Percentages for ores are relative to total ore
Percentages for ore+other and stone are relative to total blocks mined with an amethyst pickaxe
(only used while caving. Spawners are not counted in any totals)
Total blocks is all blocks mined with an amethyst pickaxe plus cobwebs (mined with shears)
Over the past week I explored down a chain of caves more than 1,000 blocks long that I'd explored before, partly to map the area but also to explore anything that I might have missed the first time, including new areas I never explored before; here is a before and after comparison since I started playing on this world again, I also explored the area near the middle, which I'd previously explored after the last backup, again including additional areas I never explored before:
From before I started playing on this world again:
My current progress so far:
For comparison, this is what I explored in the original world; while I've explored new areas I didn't explore back then there is an area near the top that I haven't explored again yet:
Here is my map "wall" (if two maps can be called such) of the area I've covered so far (not including everything I've explored previously; I found that I'd originally gone so far to the south that I went off the first map so I made a second map:
For the most part, I haven't come across anything that I recognized from before, aside from the vein of diamond mentioned before. I'd definitely recognize the giant caves that I found though, both of which I'd explored before the last backup (if/when I come across them again I'll light up and mine ores from the ceiling; the second cave shown yielded over 300 ores from the lower half):
This was the first "giant" cave that I found; in either case I didn't light up the ceilings, which can have a considerable amount of ores exposed (these were taken from before my "true darkness" mod, as the computer I was using at the time displayed darkness as nearly black; I can still only see slight outlines of blocks in the ceiling):
Also, I've found the rarest land-based biome in TMCW in this world, which I've only found in one other world - Volcanic Wasteland, a mountainous biome with gravel covered mountains with lots of lava and no water (it appears that water lakes were still allowed in this version but later versions don't have any form of water aside from rivers). In this version there is a 1 in 88 chance of the game choosing this biome (in TMCWv5 the chance is 1 in 117, which has progressively decreased as more biomes are added, even as it has become relatively more common compared to a "common" biome. For comparison, a level 4 map has an average of 64 different biomes, including duplicates). There are also more ores of all kinds generating higher up than usual. I originally found this biome before and in either case I haven't actually explored under it yet since none of the caves I've explored have lead into it:
Also, these are some of the larger caves that I came across (some already explored from before):
The following three screenshots are of the same cave:
Another large cave:
These three screenshots are also of the same cave as seen from different angles:
A large circular room up to 29 blocks in diameter (mostly under lava though), which is the largest they can get in this version, compared to 17 in vanilla:
An Enderman dungeon in a mineshaft; one such dungeon in TMCWv4 made it it very easy to get the Ender pearls that I needed to locate a stronghold and go to the End (for TMCWv5 I've modified the Endermen that spawn from spawners so that in addition to their normal behavior they are hostile like other mobs - they will attack any players they see within 8 blocks - and they have a reduced chance of dropping Ender pearls):
I've now played on this world for as many sessions as I originally did:
Original final stats:
Current stats (I started playing with 83 sessions and 11.32 days):
It is interesting to note that I spent less time playing compared to before, 3.17 vs 3.4 days, but mined significantly more ore; previously I mined a total of 193897 ore while currently I've mined 206466, or an increase of 62051 and 49482 respectively from the 144415 I started with - a 25.4% increase in 93.2% of the time - in other words, I mined 34.5% more ores per hour, a significant increase from 5 years ago, especially when you factor in the fact that I've re-explored many previously explored caves. This is also 3102 ore per session and 815 per hour, the latter nearly identical to what I averaged in TMCWv4 (played on in the first half of 2017).
Also, I've killed significantly more mobs due to playing with changes added to later versions of TMCW (TMCWv1 did not make any changes to mob spawning other than to add witches and cave spiders to natural spawns), 7899 compared to 5365 before, an increase of 47.2% per session and 57.9% over time. Surprisingly, this doesn't seem to have affected my caving efficiency, even as I've had episodes of seemingly endless waves of mobs, including several where I killed over 100 within 10-15 minutes; the average of 395 mobs per play session is well above the 351 per session in TMCWv4, with mostly the same mechanics (TMCWv4 has a larger volume of caves which may explain the difference, otherwise, I have the y-coordinate be calculated using the actual highest block instead of loaded chunk section, a change which was also made in vanilla in 1.8, and can significantly reduce the range). Despite this, I've taken significantly less damage per mob, averaging 1.76 while I originally averaged 2.67, a decrease of about a third, and less than what I took in TMCWv4, 2.06 over the entire time I played (this would include passive mobs I killed early on).
I'm not sure how much XP I gained originally but so far I've gained 108832 XP, averaging 5442 per session, compared to 5308 in TMCWv4. For comparison, I've repaired my pickaxe about 3 times per session, with each repair costing 1406 XP for a total of 84360 (assuming "perfect" repairs where it can be repaired just as I hit level 37), or about 77% of the total XP that I've gained spent on this one item (I reach level 40 or so before I have to repair it, then after repairing other items I catch up over the next 1-2 cycles until I again have more than 37 levels when it needs to be repaired, with the occasional big XP boost when I smelt accumulated iron/gold; the durability has never fallen to below 55-60% after alternating between repairing it and several other items so not having enough XP has never been a concern).
Also, the last time I returned I brought back my biggest haul yet - more than 24000 resources and other items, partly because I came across areas I previously missed and tried to explore everything, even as my Ender chest was completely filled so I started accumulating stacks of blocks in my inventory, until I finally gave in after I found what appeared to be a whole new large cave system. Also, the day before I collected more resources than usual, with more than 5000 ores and other blocks mined:
This is equivalent to the following (including items in my inventory, or what was left after I emptied it out, e.g. I crafted the 13 individual diamonds into a diamond block with 4 left over):
Minerals::
14247 coal
3308 iron
2574 redstone
1926 lapis
387 gold
135 diamond
22577 total
Other items:
903 rails
400 cobwebs
218 moss stone
17 miscellaneous items
1538 total
Grand total: 24115
Also, this is from the previous session, the most productive one so far; I collected an estimated 6000 coal alone (6436 including I used based on the drop rate with Fortune III):
I also got an interesting drop from a zombie; iron boots with Feather Falling IV and Fire Protection II (If you've seen my previous post I've added additional stats to items like the number of armor points and protection values; I originally had the percentage but since enchantment protection depends on the whole set I changed it to show the EPF. Fire and Blast Protection also show the reduction in burn time/knockback (this can still be misleading since the game uses the highest level on any worn item to calculate the total, not the sum of every item):
This also gives you an idea how the number of mobs I've encountered at once:
I re-discovered one of the largest caves that I've found in this world (I'd already discovered it but I finished lighting it up by lighting up and mining ores in the ceiling):
Also, these are a couple large caves I found nearby, which I haven't explored before (the whole area I'm currently exploring was not explored any further last time):
World generation can be weird sometimes; I was in a Mega Tree Plains biome, a plains-like biome with occasional "mega trees" which can get up to 64 blocks tall, and noticed a cow high up in a tree:
This happens because the code that spawns passive mobs during world generation only looks for the highest solid block, including wood (grass and light are only required for random spawning), with the blocks above it being any non-opaque block, including leaves. I fixed this in a later version by only allowing them to spawn on certain blocks and excluding leaves as a valid transparent block (if there are leaves directly over a valid block, common in jungles, they will be spawned on top of the leaves. This still doesn't prevent them from being encased in leaves when trees generate in adjacent chunks but it is much less common). I also later prevented passive mobs from spawning below sea level (such as at the bottom of a ravine) and modified the pathfinding code so they favor blocks above sea level, as well as sky light over block light (e.g. torches in cave openings; in an extreme case I found a flock of sheep that had somehow made its way down to lava level), and biomes which can spawn animals.
That is a monstrous cave, TMC, and I say that knowing pictures rarely do cave size any justice. Is that vanilla or semi-vanilla generation?
Clearly bigger than what I believe is probably my largest of that open, continuous tunnel style.
I'm going to fly over and snap a few pictures of mine, but like I say, yours is certainly larger, so I'm by no means trying to upstage you in your thread. Just giving a reference point.
Discovered April 23, 2018, probably generated in 1.8.x:
Same three pictures with night vision potion:
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
That is a monstrous cave, TMC, and I say that knowing pictures rarely do cave size any justice. Is that vanilla or semi-vanilla generation?
That is the result of my own mod, later versions of which have even bigger caves, one of which exceeds a million blocks in volume (technically not a single cave but generated as a single cave structure):
This is the largest single cave that I found in TMCWv4, with a volume of about a quarter-million air blocks. Note that lava level is y=4 instead of y=11 so the bottom is 7 blocks deeper than if it were vanilla:
A slightly smaller cave:
Another giant cave; I found a total of 5 caves of this size, plus many smaller caves, with caves closer to the vanilla size being more common:
The following were from a "giant cave region", a vast regional-scale cave feature made up of giant caves which is about 300 blocks across and 1.25 million air blocks in volume (this is equivalent to the underground volume of an average of 2,131 chunks in 1.7+):
Ravines can also get much larger; this ravine was over 300 blocks long and 30 blocks wide, and deep enough to reach the surface if it had been higher up:
Here is an Unmined rendering of part of the world, showing the largest cave, ravine, and giant cave region, which all happened to generate near each other; for scale the area covered is about 600x380 blocks; the smaller ravines, like near the upper-left and upper-right corners, are the same size as vanilla:
As for vanilla, the largest possible cave will be 84 blocks long and up to 27 blocks wide (more if it curves in on itself. This also does not include two branches which are always 3-5 blocks wide; unbranched caves are up to 112 blocks long while branched caves (all caves more than 5 blocks in maximum width) branch at a maximum of 75% of their length. There are also circular rooms, which get up to 17 blocks wide and half the height, which are not included here):
(this only goes up to 26 blocks since the width as an integer is rounded down, so 26 blocks means 26 to just under 27. the "incidence of x width or more" is how many chunks you have to explore on average to find a cave of at least that size, so in vanilla you have to explore about 6528 chunks to find a cave that is at least 20 blocks wide. Of course, since 1.7 caves are 23% less common so the area you have to cover is 30% larger, otherwise the generation of tunnels themselves wasn't changed, just the size and density of individual cave systems)
These are some of the larger single caves that I found in my first world:
This would have been much larger if it had been higher up; as it was, it was the largest lava lake that I've found that wasn't the result of a ravine or multiple caves, about 50 blocks long and 20 blocks wide:
Another very large cave:
Another huge cave:
This is the largest open area that I've found, formed by a ravine and several large caves:
Of course, there are also cave systems like this, which is what I refer to when i say that caves in 1.6.4 are much larger and denser (not the size of individual caves):
Over the last few days I found two more giant caves, as well as a cave system made up of large caves and another that was so dense all the caves merged together into a huge open chamber.
First, I came across a cave system so dense that all the tunnels merged together into a huge open chamber with virtually no solid ground remaining; this was a new area that I hasn't previously explored (as far as I can tell, I didn't find any mention of this in threads like "what have you done recently" or remember it):
This was a large single cave that was associated with the cave system:
Next, I found the largest cave that I've found so far in this world, which I'd previously found; as with the last one I hadn't lit up the ceiling so I did that, discovering some more caves in the process:
This is the same view as the screenshot I originally took after I lit it up (minus the ceiling) and before I mined the ores from it:
A while later I found this cave system (also already explored, as with the other large caves I pillared up to light up the ceilings); unlike the giant caves this is multiple large caves intersecting in a special type of cave system which has much larger caves than usual, like a smaller version of the giant cave regions added to TMCW in version 4:
There was also a river embedded in the ceiling of one of the caves; unlike vanilla caves in TMCW will generate around water instead of aborting entirely (in vanilla, this often causes chunk walls, more apparent with larger caves, as in this example, when there is water directly on the other side of a chunk border since the cave generator can't see across them, so it thinks one chunk is valid while the other isn't. Obviously, this would be highly objectionable so I fixed it by checking for water before each individual block is carved out; this is also considered to be a bug in vanilla, MC-125033). Note also that the sand patches that generate underwater use sandstone instead if there is air underneath so it doesn't collapse:
Then I found a third giant cave, perhaps a bit smaller than the first one I found:
Here are Unmined renderings of all of the caves, including the first giant cave I found:
The first giant cave (mentioned in comment #39):
The second giant cave, the largest in terms of volume:
The third giant cave (lower-left) along with the cave system with large caves (upper-right):
The dense cave system, the densest one I've found so far in this world:
The area containing all of these caves (763x789 blocks). All of these except the dense cave shown above are at layer 32 to remove caves that obscure them higher up (the dense cave is at layer 18 which shows the hollow center best):
Also, I made a bridge out of lily pads across a swamp so it was easier to cross without having to bring a boat; I got all the lily pads by taking advantage of a feature I added to TMCW - using bonemeal on a lily pad produces several more nearby, making them renewable (they are otherwise not renewable in 1.6.4 or TMCW):
Today I saw a zombie in diamond armor, which may be the first diamond armored mob that I've seen in this world (I didn't find any mention in old posts), and the second one this year (I saw a skeleton with a diamond helmet in another world on April 2; I haven't seen that many recently since I didn't increase the chance of armored mobs/higher tiers as I did in later versions, where they were a weekly occurrence; I am however using the mod I use with my first world which makes regional difficulty start at 50% of its maximum, as otherwise it never gets that high by the time I explore the area). It also dropped its helmet (only 26 durability left):
Also, in another uncommon occurrence skeletons killed two creepers at nearly the same time, both dropping "13" music discs (one is hard to see due to its angle and being in front of gunpowder, it is to the right of center):
This was while exploring another cave system with many large caves, possibly an area I never explored before (I've now done significantly more caving in this world than before and have gone though all the areas I previously explored, so pretty much everything from now on will be new areas):
This was the first cave that I came across, from the ravine near the right; it is a bit separated from the rest of the cave system, as is the cave in the next screenshot:
This was the only significant area that reached lava level, aside from a few small tunnels (I found one vein of 4 diamond ore in the entire cave system):
This is the center of the main area, at the intersection of multiple large caves:
There were also a great number of mobs in this cave system, with a total of 523 killed and seas of XP orbs left behind as I killed waves of mobs, similar to an experience I had in TMCWv4 which lead to the most mobs I'd ever killed in one play session:
I found yet another epic cave of the sort that can only be found in TMCW, this time with a massive lava lake:
This was taken just after I found it, before I flooded the lava out and lit it up:
Screenshots taken after I explored it (the first one was taken from the same spot as the one above):
Here are renderings of the cave in Minutor (layer 6, which is equivalent to layer 11 in vanilla; later versions lowered it further to layer 4) and Unmined (layer 20):
Also, I came across a quite rare double emerald vein:
I found another giant cave while exploring a new map to the west of the first map, which I decided to make after exploring off the edge; this is the third level 4 map that I've made, with the first one mostly filled in. There is also a mesa biome just to the south, the first one that I've come across in this world (though if it is recreated there is one where spawn originally was, due to the fact that I initially only added Hilly Plains and Forest Mountains, then I added all the other biomes while I was playing on the world, in a way that avoided chunk borders; because of this, the number of different biomes that I've found is much lower than in later worlds):
Here are screenshots of the cave:
One end of the cave had 4 emerald ore near each other (it was also quite infested with mobs; I'd noticed a relative lack of mobs before I discovered it, but ended up killing more than 500 by the time I stopped playing - the mob spawning algorithm favors flat, open areas as individual pack members must all spawn at the same y-coordinate):
Also, earlier I came across the stronghold that I'd originally found with Eyes of Ender, which had been generated before I changed the code that determines whether they can overwrite air blocks (what I consider to be the biggest myth in the game is caves destroying strongholds, even portals, when it is simply because the stronghold generator refuses to replace air blocks when walls, but not anything inside, are generated, which can easily be disproven by comparing what happens in caves to a Superflat world):
This is the second time I've found a stronghold while caving in this world (I found the first one the first time I played on it), and only one of a handful of worlds where I've done so; I've found all three strongholds in my first world and I found one in TMCWv3.
Another notable find was a double skeleton dungeon, which was quite fun to take down considering how quickly I made spawners spawn mobs; even with my playstyle it is quite uncommon to find a double dungeon (directly connected together):
All the drops, which would be 32-33 skeletons based on an average of one bone and arrow each:
I also found a couple other rather large caves, one of them forming one of the largest open surface craters that I've seen:
Also, I may stop playing on this world soon as I've considered making an update to TMCWv4 that adds in the optimizations and fixes that I've added to TMCWv5 (and previously, my own personal modded Optifine) due to the time it has taken (adding them to TMCWv4 wouldn't take that long, minus the more intensive changes which essentially rewrite large portions of the vanilla code; for example, complete darkness only requires replacing a reference to a previously unmodified vanilla class; "new EntityRenderer" to "new EntityRendererTMCW"), in which case I'll play on that world again to make sure everything works (and probably more; in that world I have an entire level 3 map that I could fill in to make the explored world a square, which would take more than a month of daily playing).
I saw a zombie villager in full diamond armor today, the second diamond armored mob that I've seen in this world, and the third this year; like the last one, it also dropped a piece, the chestplate this time:
Also the other day I got 3 music discs at once from a horde of mobs in a ravine; the skeletons managed to kill all the creepers without making any of them explode:
I also found a relatively large cave, not quite as large as the giant caves that I've found but still very large by vanilla standards (the largest single cave/tunnel in vanilla will be up to 27 blocks in diameter and 84 blocks long for the main part, which has the shape of a cone, from 3 blocks wide at the start to 27 blocks at the end, which then branches into 2 branches at right angles which are always no more than 4-5 blocks wide):
Another notable thing is that this world is about to become my second-longest played world, with 21.47 days of playtime, and already has if you include the time from the time I made the backup to when I originally stopped playing on it; 21.47 + (14.72 - 11.32), which would total 24.87 days of playtime; for comparison, my first world has 143.18 days of playtime and TMCWv4 has 22.46 days:
I've also mined 354527 ores so far, including 237400 coal, 88030 iron, and 1887 diamond, the latter being the second-most of any world (I mined 1598 in TMCWv4 and 12587 in my first world; TMCWv4 still leads in total ores mined at 380131 while my first world has nearly 2.4 million, an amount that is unlikely to ever by surpassed by any other world):
If you consider the effect of Fortune III I've collected around 752826 drops, including over half a million pieces of coal (some of the emerald ore was mined with Fortune while I later used Silk Touch, including for all the ore I've mined since playing on this world again). Also, 210112 of those ores were mined since I started playing on the world again, averaging 3232 per play session (the overall average is only 2379 since this is influenced by the time I spent during the "early-game", which is everything I did before caving. However, as I mentioned before the rate of which I mine ores appears to have increased by 30% over the years. Part of this is influenced by the fact that I didn't mine every single coal vein before, with the percentage of ore being coal now closer to other worlds, then again I likely didn't average as many ores per hour while re-exploring previously explored caves).
Also notable is the number of mob kills, which has averaged 384 mobs per play session since I started playing on the world again, compared to only 207 per session before; this is largely due to the changes I made to mob spawning in TMCWv4, which I backported to this world (using a patched version of TMCWv1 rather than the original mod); the spawn/despawn radius was reduced from 128 (spherical) to 96 (cylindrical) blocks, representing an increase in density by a factor of about 1.8 when excluding the no-spawn zone around the player (this assumes that the 128 block spherical radius is effectively a cylinder as it doesn't curve in much at the top and bottom when the player is near the middle of the ground layer, which is about 60 blocks deep; (128^2 * 60 - 24^3) / (96^2 * 60 - 24^3) = 1.8).
In addition, here are surface and underground renderings of the world (at 50% of original size from MCMap); perhaps the most notable feature is the huge mesa biome, the largest one that I've found in any world (by TMCW standards, where mesas are the size of a normal biome); I'm currently exploring the area near the top-left, which is the northwest corner of the map centered around 0,0, which is otherwise mostly filled in except for the northeastern corner:
Here are to-scale comparisons of each world I've made with TMCW:
I've reached several significant milestones in this world - the second longest played, most ores mined, and most torches used:
These all surpass TMCWv4 as the second most that I've done in any world; TMCWv4 had 22.46 days of playtime, 380131 ores mined, and 118834 torches placed. Also, I had to expand my storage area for coal blocks, which had 16 double chests, or a capacity of 55296 blocks or 497664 resources, as I've since crafted 56919 blocks - more than 512000 pieces of coal (255601 ore drops around 562322 pieces with Fortune III, so I've used around 50000 pieces of coal; 127328 torches requires 31832 coal, plus another 13103 coal to smelt 104821 iron and gold). For now I just added two double chests in the spaces between two sets of 8 chests each (as seen here; afterwards I'll place chests on top of the first set for as many as 36 double chests. Unlike my first world, where my storage area is underground, it isn't easy to actually expand it by adding more corridors).
Thanks! I'll check that out.
I've decided to play on this world again after I found out that the last known backup was not from the final time I previously played on it; that is, I thought that I had deleted many of my older worlds but I came across a backup and decided to keep them, and any future worlds. However, I noticed that this world did not seem to be as large as I thought, and I was in the middle of caving, as opposed to at my base, which I normally return to before I stop playing on a world, and sure enough, there were areas I'd explored which were not explored yet, along with the statistics missing about 3 days of playtime:
The ones from the backup:
The saves menu before loading the backup for the first time in over 5 years:
I plan to explore at least as much as I did before; by the time I'm done I'll update the "official" stats for this world to reflect the new times/etc for the replayed version, not the original version (you can see the statistics for the original world here; I didn't post much about what I did in this thread, but in the general "what have you done recently" thread. You also have to love the "I won't play on it until/if it can be reverted back to the old mechanics", which was referring to the anvil changes in 1.8 - I still have yet to play on any other version since 1.6.4. I actually did make a mod for 1.8 that reverted the anvil system entirely back to before, even the higher repair/rename costs, and would even prefer it over Mending in 1.9 (TMCWv4 adds Mending as a direct replacement for renaming, in part to show how I think it should work), but never used it myself, this is also why I stopped making mods for newer versions since I've always primarily made them for my own use).
This world is also a bit different from all the worlds I've had since - I still used Fortune III to mine everything while caving, a practice I started after 1.6 came out, except for emerald ore (even for that it appears that I only recently started using Silk Touch since much of the emerald I had stored away was in blocks), and I can see why I stopped using it (besides the fact that the next version of TMCW added amethyst armor and tools, which are too expensive to use with Fortune), as my inventory filled up far faster, offset by a double-sized Ender chest (later versions of TMCW replaced this with a separate "Diamond Ender Chest", which can't be picked up even with Silk Touch), but I still had to stop a lot more often to clear out my inventory:
Also, such a pickaxe is extremely expensive to maintain - costing 37 levels or 1406 XP per repair with a single diamond, 5624 XP for the four repairs needed to restore full durability, or about 0.9 XP per use, compared to as little as 31 levels/887 XP to fully repair a pickaxe without Fortune with another one (slightly damaged, with the 12% anvil bonus making up for it, otherwise it is 33 levels/1032 XP); this isn't as much of an issue as the need to repair it so often; however, I also made diamond armor more durable (and expensive, since in 1.6.4 the amount of durability restored affects the repair cost. This is why an amethyst pickaxe with the same enchantments is too expensive, even as I increased the anvil cost limit to 49 for amethyst items):
Note that this showcases some features that will be in TMCWv5 (armor points and damage reduction, including enchantments, is displayed, and durability was fixed so items show their true durability (vanilla shows e.g. diamond tools as 0/1561 before breaking, instead of 1/1562. This was fixed in 1.13.1). This also includes an updated version of the "inventory stats", replacing the original ones from TMCWv1, as well as a few other changes. There is no Unbreaking on the armor because the cost increase on top of an already higher base cost isn't worth it; while vanilla sees a net benefit here the XP cost increases by more than the increase in durability gained (for TMCWv5 I've considered reducing armor durability and making Unbreaking as effective on armor as on tools; since Unbreaking can only be applied to armor and weapons with books in 1.6.4 I think this is a good tradeoff):
Other items are the same as I use in vanilla, such as my sword (14.25 attack damage is your base damage of 1 plus 7 for the sword and 6.25 for Sharpness V; vanilla 1.6.4 only shows the added damage from the sword, "+7", where I removed the "+" to indicate that this is the total damage dealt, as opposed to +13.25 in 1.8). Note that this sword is also too expensive to repair with another sword unless it is slightly damaged (in vanilla I kill chickens to wear it down by about 200 durability, which lowers the cost to 38 levels and gives a full repair after a 12% bonus; prior to then I repaired it with 2 diamonds at a time for 35 levels. Since all of my diamond items are repaired incrementally I don't have to worry about them breaking):
Interestingly, when I got back to my base I found that I had another pickaxe named "Mining Pickaxe" with Efficiency V and Unbreaking III - the same as what I use (and name) in my later worlds, which I presumably used while branch-mining. For consistency though I'll keep using the Fortune pickaxe while caving. I also enchanted a pair of shears with Silk Touch, Efficiency V, and Unbreaking III, as I started using after I added "cobweb blocks", before which I just crafted the string from mining cobwebs around cave spider spawners into wool (these and "rail blocks" are additions to a later version of TMCW, which I first added to my "personal" modded/optimized/bugfixed version of 1.6.4 that I use on my first world and other "vanilla" worlds, which is a base for my other mods; I simply took the modded jar and added most of the files for TMCW to it, plus a few patches for compatibility).
Another change is that I'm going to be using a single level 4 map instead of all the level 3 maps that I used, which don't even match up properly (the good old bad days when maps remained aligned to the center of the first map; I modded them to align to a multiple of the scale width like in 1.8 but centered starting at 0,0, which is just to the south of my base):
Also, an interesting thing about this world is that I did not originally name it "TheMasterCaversWorld"; it was "World1v4", as seen in the "level.dat_mcr" file (this file is no longer created by newer versions; it was intended to be a backup of level.dat when a world was converted from MCRegion to Anvil, though 1.6.4 always created the file, which is a good way to see when a world was created since it is never touched afterwards). As you may guess, I also had worlds named "World1v2" and World1v3", each of which reused the seed for my first world but with various modifications (World1v2 changed caves while World1v3 also doubled the ground depth):
The name of my namesake mod came later, possibly inspired by this reply on the first page (unlike later versions TMCW was originally just a world generation/bugfix/tweak mod that added no new blocks/items/etc; you can even open a world in vanilla and all that happens is that new biomes read as plains (but the save data isn't actually affected) and new chunks would mismatch; ender chests (changed to 54 slots) would lose the second half of their inventory but otherwise remain intact):
Also, this shows a cutaway of my main base (the only one in this world), the largest base I've ever built at 70x88 blocks and 36 blocks high, including nearly 6,000 each of glass panes and stone slabs and more than 18,000 blocks in total (for the most part though I only use the storage room, potato farm, and tree farm. The only thing that would have changed since the last backup and when I stopped playing on it are the contents of the chests):
Another thing to note is that it isn't possible to recreate this world using the latest version of TMCWv1 because I added most of the new biomes while I was playing on this world (I originally only added Forest Mountains and Hilly Plains), but I avoided chunk borders by selectively replacing them after the initial biome map was created (for example, the plains biome where I spawned and where my base is is now a mesa biome) and ensuring that no altered biomes were next to generated areas; likewise, I made some changes to the underground and structures (I made them more common to offset a decrease in the frequencies of their biomes, which changed their locations. Because of the way biomes were replaced many of the newer biomes are rarer, with half of biomes being the original vanilla biomes plus the first two that I added):
Interestingly, I have yet to find two biomes I added in this version of TMCW in Survival, across four worlds - Ice Hills, a sub-biome of Ice Plains, and what is now TMCW Mega Taiga, with giant spruce trees with 3x3 trunks (I later added the vanilla 1.7 versions and renamed Mega Taiga to TMCW Mega Taiga):
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 came across some interesting things today; first, I found two creeper dungeons (dungeons can spawn most Overworld mobs in TMCW):
The second dungeon had some quite good loot in it (dungeons and mineshafts in Extreme Hills and Forest Mountains can have emeralds):
I saw a spider jockey, a relatively rare occurrence even with my playstyle (many of them appear to suffocate the skeleton rider in caves, as otherwise I should expect to see one every day or two). Of course, TMCW also has "cave spider jockeys", a baby zombie riding a cave spider:
I found a quite large cave, by the standards of vanilla, which was connected to a ravine which was also quite large; while lighting up the cave I encountered a lot of mobs, with a total of 68 in this one cave out of a total of 417 killed:
All of this was from the cave, the first thing I explored today as I stopped playing yesterday before exploring it:
Also, thanks to Fortune I've collected over 5,500 resources per day for the past two days, including nearly 4,000 coal (more when including the coal I used) - this shows the main reason why I stopped using it (anything that I convert to blocks is for permanent storage, aside from the occasional iron blocks used to make anvils and redstone blocks to power powered rails; either way, they are treated as uncraftable), plus I've been repairing my pickaxe 3 times per day (4218 XP, which is 78% of the XP I've collected per day. I also spent 1205 XP to repair my sword once, which leaves a surplus of 1162 XP, which was consumed due to exceeding the 37/35 levels necessary to repair them. It took a couple pickaxe repairs to catch up on durability after I repaired my sword but this is never an issue since it was still well over 50% by the first repair, normally done right after it drops below 75%):
This is a pretty typical amount for me to mine during one play session, a bit low for redstone and diamond (I only found 18 and 1 yesterday as there were few caves going deep enough):
Also, this shows the total amount of ores I've mined in this world - 152,064, which actually isn't that high compared to many of my other worlds; my first world has about 2.4 million and TMCWv4 has about 380,000. Note that my score is not the total XP I've gained in this world because I did die three times before I started playing again (if I ever die again it won't be reset because I took advantage of the fact that the game uses two variables to track your experience, "experienceTotal" and "score", the latter of which is what the death screen shows, and I made the game always save "experienceTotal" on death. I'm not sure why there are two separate variables that are basically the same thing and always the same in vanilla (each handled separately, all I did was prevent one from being reset on death), possibly legacy code):
Here is an animation of what I explored over the past two days, with the first frame being made after the first session after I started playing on the world again (I didn't do that much caving before returning):
Another thing to note is that I'm testing some of the features that are being added to TMCWv5 while playing this world, which really requires actual playing to test, such as changes to the lighting engine and mob spawning; in particular, I made mobs spawn 1/4 as often, with 25% of chunks each having a chance of spawning mobs per spawn cycle and the number of individual spawn attempts is reduced by a factor of 3 (from 12 to 4 per pack) if the mob cap can't be kept more than halfway filled. Both are mainly optimizations as mob spawning is a significant part of the idle server tick time, especially when they can't spawn, which also causes a very high rate of memory churn on Superflat worlds (in vanilla there are up to 10,800 individual attempts to spawn a mob per cycle (225 chunks * 12 attempts per pack * 4 types of mobs), each of which can result in the creation of an actual entity in order to call its canSpawnHere() check. Since the elevation is so low a high percentage of pack centers will land on the surface (similar to 1.8+ TMCW uses the actual block height, not "LC" value) and lead to individual spawn attempts).
Interestingly, despite a much lower spawn rate I've actually killed a well above average number of mobs for the past two days, 362 yesterday and 417 today, compared to an average of 221 per play session, though this shouldn't be surprising given the number of individual spawn attempts:
I didn't take a screenshot yesterday but I know how much I mined and how many mobs I killed because I have the game print out most of the stats when quitting (the numbers are resources, ores, coal, iron, gold, redstone, lapis, diamond, emerald, rails, cobwebs, moss stone, spawners, mob kills, experience. The XP for yesterday is lower since I didn't smelt any iron/gold until today to make more room in my Ender chest):
2019-07-04 18:22:09 [CLIENT] [INFO] 3239 3205 2273 823 54 18 24 1 12 0 0 34 1 362 4787
2019-07-05 18:13:58 [CLIENT] [INFO] 3398 3263 2183 836 105 88 20 11 20 0 0 135 3 417 6016
This is also why I was highly skeptical of claims that a reduced failure rate of mob spawns in 1.13 supposedly greatly increased the number of mobs spawning - the only thing it would benefit is mob grinders, which my changes are in part a direct nerf to. I also previously (in TMCWv4) changed the despawn radius from a 128 block sphere to a 96 block cylinder (yet another nerf to farms, as building high up is useless), with mobs spawning within a 6 chunk circular radius, which roughly doubles the volumetric density of mobs around the player, but does reduce the number of chunks spawning mobs from 225 to 121. This means that there will be a worst-case total of only 1,452 spawn attempts per cycle (average, as 121 isn't evenly divisible by 4), about 13.4% of vanilla.
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 3 days of caving I returned back to my main base with 17,966 resources and a total of 18,157 items (give or take a few, I always keep some loose diamonds on hand for repairs and the amounts of other items is whatever is left over from crafting them into blocks) - around 6,000 per day. I mined a total of 9,527 ore, killed 1,125 mobs, found 5 dungeons (spawners, no mineshafts yet), and gained 16,673 XP:
This comes out to the following resources collected:
Also, I started out with 2 stacks of logs (128) and ended up with 56 left, which means I used 72 to make 2,304 torches, which requires 576 coal, plus another 338 coal to smelt the iron and gold I collected (minus some I found in chests), which means that I mined around 12,400 pieces of coal; likewise, I used 11 diamonds to repair my gear for around 92 collected.
In contrast to the last two days I found a lot more redstone and diamond, as well as more gold and lapis as I went deeper down in the same cave system I explored previously, which is typical for how I explore a large cave system (top down and outside in):
Also, these are all the maps I've created in this world, excluding the Nether; the one on the far right is the level 4 map I'm using instead of the original maps (level 3 and not aligned), while the first three maps from the left extend towards the southeast from spawn, fourth and fifth to the southwest, and the last one (level 4, the center is not the same as the map I'm using) I made when looking for a stronghold (the only time I explore more than 100 blocks or so away from spawn until I start caving):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
It has been a very long time since this happened:
This happened while exploring a cave which had an unbelievable number of mobs in it, likely since I was exploring within an area where everything else had already been explored and the area was largely under water/ice (reducing surface spawns at night); I was going through a previously explored area and came across a surface cave opening, which I naturally went into and it led to a cave system I'd previously missed (I found caves leading to previously explored areas), which included a few relatively large open areas, one of which seemed to have a zombie spawner (at least) due to the number of zombies that kept coming out of it, though I never found one.
By the time I finished playing I'd killed 542 mobs, possibly a single session record for this world, certainly at least since I started playing on it again (I didn't keep track of per-session mob kills when I last played on it):
Also, this is the first time I used a feature I added to TMCW - your death point is displayed in the inventory screen, which might be seen as cheating by some (there are other ways to find it though, like F3):
Here are some screenshots from the cave system:
Also, I found out that the armor that I was wearing was basically iron armor and significantly weaker than what I usually wear; in this version of TMCW I reduced armor protection from 4% per armor point to 3.5%, meaning that a diamond chestplate+leggings+boots reduces damage by 59.5%, compared to 60% for full iron in vanilla, as well as the same as iron armor in TMCW (I increased the number of armor points for tiers below diamond to offset the reduction per point, so only diamond was nerfed. I realized this when I noticed that I had 17 armor points (instead of 15) after putting on iron armor before going back to get my stuff). While I did add Protection IV to my boots in later versions to offset this I did not have it, resulting in an overall reduction from 77.6% to 71.65%, which may not seem like much but it is effectively a decrease of 20 health (from about 90 to 70; likewise, even though full diamond in vanilla is "only" 20% better it halves the damage taken and effectively doubles your health compared to full iron. The nerf to diamond in TMCW makes it about 1.33 times better than iron). I'll add Protection IV to my boots the next time I return (I have plenty of books from looting chests, which is also how I made a pair of Silk Touch shears), which will bring up the overall damage reduction to 77.7%, nearly the same as vanilla.
One thing to note is that my "score" in the inventory hasn't been reset since I made it always be saved, unlike the one that is displayed in the death screen, which uses a separate variable to keep track of it (I'm not sure why there are two variables which are the same thing, it may be like how 1.6 added a "HealF" tag to store health as a float while keeping the "Health" tag, which is a short (whole number); "HealF" was removed in 1.9 with "Health" made a float). "Score" is what the death screen displays while "XpTotal" is what I use:
I also came across some interesting terrain; a Forest Mountains biome in an area I haven't previously explored (I also mentioned this in this thread, where at the time it was raining):
This is the same view at a lower render distance, making foreground features stand out 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?
I rediscovered the largest single vein of diamond that I've ever found (that I can recall); while I originally found it 5 years ago it looked oddly familiar when I saw it again, as what appeared to be two separate veins next to each other, and sure enough, after removing some stone it turned out to be a single vein of 12 ore:
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 overlord of Minecraft or something, how do you find the time to do all this?
I do very little other than caving, so I don't spend any time building or anything else (past the "early-game", and the occasional very basic secondary "base"; in TMCWv4 an estimated 97% of the entire "end-game" was spent caving), and I can mine ores at rates exceeding 1,000 per hour, which many people find to be insane (I'm guessing that they don't really do much caving, I've even had people tell me that I must have jacked up ore rates). A large part of the extreme amounts of ores I collect is due to the fact that I even mine every single coal ore, which is twice as common as everything else combined.
Maybe I do spend more time playing than many people (this article claims that the average "gamer" (whatever that may mean) my age only plays for 7 hours a week, while I average about 24; various polls on the forums suggest a higher playtime), but certainly not as much as popularly assumed, since again, I literally just cave for much of the time I spend in a world - the only interruptions since I started playing on this world have been to go back to my main base to unload all the resources I collected and restock on food and wood, then I immediately go back to where I was exploring.
Also, of note, there is something called "ABBA caving", a competition to see who can collect the most points from mining ores while caving, and the average rates are pretty much in line with what I get:
If that is for 3 players then each one averages about 650 ore (excluding coal) per hour, which is actually more than twice what I average (of course, the time spent mining coal decreases the rate of other ores; the relative amounts of rarer ores also suggests they try to stay as deep as possible while I explore everything, reducing my rates further since the overall density of ores is higher deeper down; modifications that increase the number and toughness of mobs is yet another factor against me). For comparison, these were the rates I got in another world (modded ores are negligible); when excluding coal I only averaged 265 ore per hour:
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?
My current progress so far:
For comparison, this is what I explored in the original world; while I've explored new areas I didn't explore back then there is an area near the top that I haven't explored again yet:
Here is my map "wall" (if two maps can be called such) of the area I've covered so far (not including everything I've explored previously; I found that I'd originally gone so far to the south that I went off the first map so I made a second map:
For the most part, I haven't come across anything that I recognized from before, aside from the vein of diamond mentioned before. I'd definitely recognize the giant caves that I found though, both of which I'd explored before the last backup (if/when I come across them again I'll light up and mine ores from the ceiling; the second cave shown yielded over 300 ores from the lower half):
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/survival-mode/297957-what-have-you-done-recently?comment=2566
A couple days later I found an even larger cave:
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/survival-mode/297957-what-have-you-done-recently?comment=2580
Also, I've found the rarest land-based biome in TMCW in this world, which I've only found in one other world - Volcanic Wasteland, a mountainous biome with gravel covered mountains with lots of lava and no water (it appears that water lakes were still allowed in this version but later versions don't have any form of water aside from rivers). In this version there is a 1 in 88 chance of the game choosing this biome (in TMCWv5 the chance is 1 in 117, which has progressively decreased as more biomes are added, even as it has become relatively more common compared to a "common" biome. For comparison, a level 4 map has an average of 64 different biomes, including duplicates). There are also more ores of all kinds generating higher up than usual. I originally found this biome before and in either case I haven't actually explored under it yet since none of the caves I've explored have lead into it:
Also, these are some of the larger caves that I came across (some already explored from before):
Another large cave:
These three screenshots are also of the same cave as seen from different angles:
A large circular room up to 29 blocks in diameter (mostly under lava though), which is the largest they can get in this version, compared to 17 in vanilla:
An Enderman dungeon in a mineshaft; one such dungeon in TMCWv4 made it it very easy to get the Ender pearls that I needed to locate a stronghold and go to the End (for TMCWv5 I've modified the Endermen that spawn from spawners so that in addition to their normal behavior they are hostile like other mobs - they will attack any players they see within 8 blocks - and they have a reduced chance of dropping Ender pearls):
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 now played on this world for as many sessions as I originally did:
Current stats (I started playing with 83 sessions and 11.32 days):
It is interesting to note that I spent less time playing compared to before, 3.17 vs 3.4 days, but mined significantly more ore; previously I mined a total of 193897 ore while currently I've mined 206466, or an increase of 62051 and 49482 respectively from the 144415 I started with - a 25.4% increase in 93.2% of the time - in other words, I mined 34.5% more ores per hour, a significant increase from 5 years ago, especially when you factor in the fact that I've re-explored many previously explored caves. This is also 3102 ore per session and 815 per hour, the latter nearly identical to what I averaged in TMCWv4 (played on in the first half of 2017).
Also, I've killed significantly more mobs due to playing with changes added to later versions of TMCW (TMCWv1 did not make any changes to mob spawning other than to add witches and cave spiders to natural spawns), 7899 compared to 5365 before, an increase of 47.2% per session and 57.9% over time. Surprisingly, this doesn't seem to have affected my caving efficiency, even as I've had episodes of seemingly endless waves of mobs, including several where I killed over 100 within 10-15 minutes; the average of 395 mobs per play session is well above the 351 per session in TMCWv4, with mostly the same mechanics (TMCWv4 has a larger volume of caves which may explain the difference, otherwise, I have the y-coordinate be calculated using the actual highest block instead of loaded chunk section, a change which was also made in vanilla in 1.8, and can significantly reduce the range). Despite this, I've taken significantly less damage per mob, averaging 1.76 while I originally averaged 2.67, a decrease of about a third, and less than what I took in TMCWv4, 2.06 over the entire time I played (this would include passive mobs I killed early on).
I'm not sure how much XP I gained originally but so far I've gained 108832 XP, averaging 5442 per session, compared to 5308 in TMCWv4. For comparison, I've repaired my pickaxe about 3 times per session, with each repair costing 1406 XP for a total of 84360 (assuming "perfect" repairs where it can be repaired just as I hit level 37), or about 77% of the total XP that I've gained spent on this one item (I reach level 40 or so before I have to repair it, then after repairing other items I catch up over the next 1-2 cycles until I again have more than 37 levels when it needs to be repaired, with the occasional big XP boost when I smelt accumulated iron/gold; the durability has never fallen to below 55-60% after alternating between repairing it and several other items so not having enough XP has never been a concern).
Also, the last time I returned I brought back my biggest haul yet - more than 24000 resources and other items, partly because I came across areas I previously missed and tried to explore everything, even as my Ender chest was completely filled so I started accumulating stacks of blocks in my inventory, until I finally gave in after I found what appeared to be a whole new large cave system. Also, the day before I collected more resources than usual, with more than 5000 ores and other blocks mined:
This is equivalent to the following (including items in my inventory, or what was left after I emptied it out, e.g. I crafted the 13 individual diamonds into a diamond block with 4 left over):
Minerals::
14247 coal
3308 iron
2574 redstone
1926 lapis
387 gold
135 diamond
22577 total
Other items:
903 rails
400 cobwebs
218 moss stone
17 miscellaneous items
1538 total
Grand total: 24115
Also, this is from the previous session, the most productive one so far; I collected an estimated 6000 coal alone (6436 including I used based on the drop rate with Fortune III):
I also got an interesting drop from a zombie; iron boots with Feather Falling IV and Fire Protection II (If you've seen my previous post I've added additional stats to items like the number of armor points and protection values; I originally had the percentage but since enchantment protection depends on the whole set I changed it to show the EPF. Fire and Blast Protection also show the reduction in burn time/knockback (this can still be misleading since the game uses the highest level on any worn item to calculate the total, not the sum of every item):
This also gives you an idea how the number of mobs I've encountered at once:
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 re-discovered one of the largest caves that I've found in this world (I'd already discovered it but I finished lighting it up by lighting up and mining ores in the ceiling):
Also, these are a couple large caves I found nearby, which I haven't explored before (the whole area I'm currently exploring was not explored any further last time):
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?
World generation can be weird sometimes; I was in a Mega Tree Plains biome, a plains-like biome with occasional "mega trees" which can get up to 64 blocks tall, and noticed a cow high up in a tree:
This happens because the code that spawns passive mobs during world generation only looks for the highest solid block, including wood (grass and light are only required for random spawning), with the blocks above it being any non-opaque block, including leaves. I fixed this in a later version by only allowing them to spawn on certain blocks and excluding leaves as a valid transparent block (if there are leaves directly over a valid block, common in jungles, they will be spawned on top of the leaves. This still doesn't prevent them from being encased in leaves when trees generate in adjacent chunks but it is much less common). I also later prevented passive mobs from spawning below sea level (such as at the bottom of a ravine) and modified the pathfinding code so they favor blocks above sea level, as well as sky light over block light (e.g. torches in cave openings; in an extreme case I found a flock of sheep that had somehow made its way down to lava level), and biomes which can spawn animals.
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?
That is a monstrous cave, TMC, and I say that knowing pictures rarely do cave size any justice. Is that vanilla or semi-vanilla generation?
Clearly bigger than what I believe is probably my largest of that open, continuous tunnel style.
I'm going to fly over and snap a few pictures of mine, but like I say, yours is certainly larger, so I'm by no means trying to upstage you in your thread. Just giving a reference point.
Discovered April 23, 2018, probably generated in 1.8.x:
Same three pictures with night vision potion:
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
That is the result of my own mod, later versions of which have even bigger caves, one of which exceeds a million blocks in volume (technically not a single cave but generated as a single cave structure):
A slightly smaller cave:
Another giant cave; I found a total of 5 caves of this size, plus many smaller caves, with caves closer to the vanilla size being more common:
The following were from a "giant cave region", a vast regional-scale cave feature made up of giant caves which is about 300 blocks across and 1.25 million air blocks in volume (this is equivalent to the underground volume of an average of 2,131 chunks in 1.7+):
Ravines can also get much larger; this ravine was over 300 blocks long and 30 blocks wide, and deep enough to reach the surface if it had been higher up:
Here is an Unmined rendering of part of the world, showing the largest cave, ravine, and giant cave region, which all happened to generate near each other; for scale the area covered is about 600x380 blocks; the smaller ravines, like near the upper-left and upper-right corners, are the same size as vanilla:
As for vanilla, the largest possible cave will be 84 blocks long and up to 27 blocks wide (more if it curves in on itself. This also does not include two branches which are always 3-5 blocks wide; unbranched caves are up to 112 blocks long while branched caves (all caves more than 5 blocks in maximum width) branch at a maximum of 75% of their length. There are also circular rooms, which get up to 17 blocks wide and half the height, which are not included here):
(this only goes up to 26 blocks since the width as an integer is rounded down, so 26 blocks means 26 to just under 27. the "incidence of x width or more" is how many chunks you have to explore on average to find a cave of at least that size, so in vanilla you have to explore about 6528 chunks to find a cave that is at least 20 blocks wide. Of course, since 1.7 caves are 23% less common so the area you have to cover is 30% larger, otherwise the generation of tunnels themselves wasn't changed, just the size and density of individual cave systems)
These are some of the larger single caves that I found in my first world:
This would have been much larger if it had been higher up; as it was, it was the largest lava lake that I've found that wasn't the result of a ravine or multiple caves, about 50 blocks long and 20 blocks wide:
Another very large cave:
Another huge cave:
This is the largest open area that I've found, formed by a ravine and several large caves:
Of course, there are also cave systems like this, which is what I refer to when i say that caves in 1.6.4 are much larger and denser (not the size of individual caves):
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 last few days I found two more giant caves, as well as a cave system made up of large caves and another that was so dense all the caves merged together into a huge open chamber.
First, I came across a cave system so dense that all the tunnels merged together into a huge open chamber with virtually no solid ground remaining; this was a new area that I hasn't previously explored (as far as I can tell, I didn't find any mention of this in threads like "what have you done recently" or remember it):
This was a large single cave that was associated with the cave system:
Next, I found the largest cave that I've found so far in this world, which I'd previously found; as with the last one I hadn't lit up the ceiling so I did that, discovering some more caves in the process:
A while later I found this cave system (also already explored, as with the other large caves I pillared up to light up the ceilings); unlike the giant caves this is multiple large caves intersecting in a special type of cave system which has much larger caves than usual, like a smaller version of the giant cave regions added to TMCW in version 4:
There was also a river embedded in the ceiling of one of the caves; unlike vanilla caves in TMCW will generate around water instead of aborting entirely (in vanilla, this often causes chunk walls, more apparent with larger caves, as in this example, when there is water directly on the other side of a chunk border since the cave generator can't see across them, so it thinks one chunk is valid while the other isn't. Obviously, this would be highly objectionable so I fixed it by checking for water before each individual block is carved out; this is also considered to be a bug in vanilla, MC-125033). Note also that the sand patches that generate underwater use sandstone instead if there is air underneath so it doesn't collapse:
Then I found a third giant cave, perhaps a bit smaller than the first one I found:
Here are Unmined renderings of all of the caves, including the first giant cave I found:
The second giant cave, the largest in terms of volume:
The third giant cave (lower-left) along with the cave system with large caves (upper-right):
The dense cave system, the densest one I've found so far in this world:
The area containing all of these caves (763x789 blocks). All of these except the dense cave shown above are at layer 32 to remove caves that obscure them higher up (the dense cave is at layer 18 which shows the hollow center best):
Also, I made a bridge out of lily pads across a swamp so it was easier to cross without having to bring a boat; I got all the lily pads by taking advantage of a feature I added to TMCW - using bonemeal on a lily pad produces several more nearby, making them renewable (they are otherwise not renewable in 1.6.4 or TMCW):
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?
Today I saw a zombie in diamond armor, which may be the first diamond armored mob that I've seen in this world (I didn't find any mention in old posts), and the second one this year (I saw a skeleton with a diamond helmet in another world on April 2; I haven't seen that many recently since I didn't increase the chance of armored mobs/higher tiers as I did in later versions, where they were a weekly occurrence; I am however using the mod I use with my first world which makes regional difficulty start at 50% of its maximum, as otherwise it never gets that high by the time I explore the area). It also dropped its helmet (only 26 durability left):
Also, in another uncommon occurrence skeletons killed two creepers at nearly the same time, both dropping "13" music discs (one is hard to see due to its angle and being in front of gunpowder, it is to the right of center):
This was while exploring another cave system with many large caves, possibly an area I never explored before (I've now done significantly more caving in this world than before and have gone though all the areas I previously explored, so pretty much everything from now on will be new areas):
This was the only significant area that reached lava level, aside from a few small tunnels (I found one vein of 4 diamond ore in the entire cave system):
This is the center of the main area, at the intersection of multiple large caves:
There were also a great number of mobs in this cave system, with a total of 523 killed and seas of XP orbs left behind as I killed waves of mobs, similar to an experience I had in TMCWv4 which lead to the most mobs I'd ever killed in one play session:
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 found yet another epic cave of the sort that can only be found in TMCW, this time with a massive lava lake:
This was taken just after I found it, before I flooded the lava out and lit it up:
Screenshots taken after I explored it (the first one was taken from the same spot as the one above):
Here are renderings of the cave in Minutor (layer 6, which is equivalent to layer 11 in vanilla; later versions lowered it further to layer 4) and Unmined (layer 20):
Also, I came across a quite rare double emerald vein:
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 found another giant cave while exploring a new map to the west of the first map, which I decided to make after exploring off the edge; this is the third level 4 map that I've made, with the first one mostly filled in. There is also a mesa biome just to the south, the first one that I've come across in this world (though if it is recreated there is one where spawn originally was, due to the fact that I initially only added Hilly Plains and Forest Mountains, then I added all the other biomes while I was playing on the world, in a way that avoided chunk borders; because of this, the number of different biomes that I've found is much lower than in later worlds):
Here are screenshots of the cave:
One end of the cave had 4 emerald ore near each other (it was also quite infested with mobs; I'd noticed a relative lack of mobs before I discovered it, but ended up killing more than 500 by the time I stopped playing - the mob spawning algorithm favors flat, open areas as individual pack members must all spawn at the same y-coordinate):
Also, earlier I came across the stronghold that I'd originally found with Eyes of Ender, which had been generated before I changed the code that determines whether they can overwrite air blocks (what I consider to be the biggest myth in the game is caves destroying strongholds, even portals, when it is simply because the stronghold generator refuses to replace air blocks when walls, but not anything inside, are generated, which can easily be disproven by comparing what happens in caves to a Superflat world):
This is the second time I've found a stronghold while caving in this world (I found the first one the first time I played on it), and only one of a handful of worlds where I've done so; I've found all three strongholds in my first world and I found one in TMCWv3.
Another notable find was a double skeleton dungeon, which was quite fun to take down considering how quickly I made spawners spawn mobs; even with my playstyle it is quite uncommon to find a double dungeon (directly connected together):
All the drops, which would be 32-33 skeletons based on an average of one bone and arrow each:
I also found a couple other rather large caves, one of them forming one of the largest open surface craters that I've seen:
Also, I may stop playing on this world soon as I've considered making an update to TMCWv4 that adds in the optimizations and fixes that I've added to TMCWv5 (and previously, my own personal modded Optifine) due to the time it has taken (adding them to TMCWv4 wouldn't take that long, minus the more intensive changes which essentially rewrite large portions of the vanilla code; for example, complete darkness only requires replacing a reference to a previously unmodified vanilla class; "new EntityRenderer" to "new EntityRendererTMCW"), in which case I'll play on that world again to make sure everything works (and probably more; in that world I have an entire level 3 map that I could fill in to make the explored world a square, which would take more than a month of daily playing).
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 saw a zombie villager in full diamond armor today, the second diamond armored mob that I've seen in this world, and the third this year; like the last one, it also dropped a piece, the chestplate this time:
Also the other day I got 3 music discs at once from a horde of mobs in a ravine; the skeletons managed to kill all the creepers without making any of them explode:
I also found a relatively large cave, not quite as large as the giant caves that I've found but still very large by vanilla standards (the largest single cave/tunnel in vanilla will be up to 27 blocks in diameter and 84 blocks long for the main part, which has the shape of a cone, from 3 blocks wide at the start to 27 blocks at the end, which then branches into 2 branches at right angles which are always no more than 4-5 blocks wide):
Another notable thing is that this world is about to become my second-longest played world, with 21.47 days of playtime, and already has if you include the time from the time I made the backup to when I originally stopped playing on it; 21.47 + (14.72 - 11.32), which would total 24.87 days of playtime; for comparison, my first world has 143.18 days of playtime and TMCWv4 has 22.46 days:
I've also mined 354527 ores so far, including 237400 coal, 88030 iron, and 1887 diamond, the latter being the second-most of any world (I mined 1598 in TMCWv4 and 12587 in my first world; TMCWv4 still leads in total ores mined at 380131 while my first world has nearly 2.4 million, an amount that is unlikely to ever by surpassed by any other world):
If you consider the effect of Fortune III I've collected around 752826 drops, including over half a million pieces of coal (some of the emerald ore was mined with Fortune while I later used Silk Touch, including for all the ore I've mined since playing on this world again). Also, 210112 of those ores were mined since I started playing on the world again, averaging 3232 per play session (the overall average is only 2379 since this is influenced by the time I spent during the "early-game", which is everything I did before caving. However, as I mentioned before the rate of which I mine ores appears to have increased by 30% over the years. Part of this is influenced by the fact that I didn't mine every single coal vein before, with the percentage of ore being coal now closer to other worlds, then again I likely didn't average as many ores per hour while re-exploring previously explored caves).
Also notable is the number of mob kills, which has averaged 384 mobs per play session since I started playing on the world again, compared to only 207 per session before; this is largely due to the changes I made to mob spawning in TMCWv4, which I backported to this world (using a patched version of TMCWv1 rather than the original mod); the spawn/despawn radius was reduced from 128 (spherical) to 96 (cylindrical) blocks, representing an increase in density by a factor of about 1.8 when excluding the no-spawn zone around the player (this assumes that the 128 block spherical radius is effectively a cylinder as it doesn't curve in much at the top and bottom when the player is near the middle of the ground layer, which is about 60 blocks deep; (128^2 * 60 - 24^3) / (96^2 * 60 - 24^3) = 1.8).
In addition, here are surface and underground renderings of the world (at 50% of original size from MCMap); perhaps the most notable feature is the huge mesa biome, the largest one that I've found in any world (by TMCW standards, where mesas are the size of a normal biome); I'm currently exploring the area near the top-left, which is the northwest corner of the map centered around 0,0, which is otherwise mostly filled in except for the northeastern corner:
Here are to-scale comparisons of each world I've made with TMCW:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I've reached several significant milestones in this world - the second longest played, most ores mined, and most torches used:
These all surpass TMCWv4 as the second most that I've done in any world; TMCWv4 had 22.46 days of playtime, 380131 ores mined, and 118834 torches placed. Also, I had to expand my storage area for coal blocks, which had 16 double chests, or a capacity of 55296 blocks or 497664 resources, as I've since crafted 56919 blocks - more than 512000 pieces of coal (255601 ore drops around 562322 pieces with Fortune III, so I've used around 50000 pieces of coal; 127328 torches requires 31832 coal, plus another 13103 coal to smelt 104821 iron and gold). For now I just added two double chests in the spaces between two sets of 8 chests each (as seen here; afterwards I'll place chests on top of the first set for as many as 36 double chests. Unlike my first world, where my storage area is underground, it isn't easy to actually expand it by adding more corridors).
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?