I had one of the most extreme play sessions that I've ever had in terms of mob kills - 767 - the second-highest on record, behind 796 in TMCWv4 and ahead of 748 in World1:
On the day before that I was mobbed by a horde of as many as 50 zombies which had spawned from a dungeon, which spawn a pack of 6 mobs every 5-10 seconds so they can quickly accumulate when the dungeon is nearby but not obvious; I went from level 33 to 36 after killing all of them (about 270 XP or 54 mobs without equipment) - just the ones shown in the screenshots, with more elsewhere. One of the zombies also had full iron armor, although I wouldn't classify that as that very rare (I see one every few days; for comparison, diamond armor is about 32 times rarer):
I also found a double cave spider spawner, with the spawners only a few blocks apart; I found a total of 6 spawners within a small area of a single mineshaft (many times I destroy the spawners before I notice more nearby, even when they are in the same corridor, so I don't get many screenshots of multiple spawners):
I've also found several more large caves as well as a bizarre ravine which looped around on itself multiple times, the most unusual ravine that I've seen (at first I thought there were 2-3 ravines but it turned out to be just one, which was also quite long):
This is a complex intersection of multiple caves and a ravine:
This cave was quite long, extending over 100 blocks in length:
Another large cave:
How many ravines do you see? Just one, which intersects itself multiple times:
Also, I've now mined over 400,000 ore, including nearly 100,000 iron:
Notably, since my last update I mined an average of 3299 ore, killed 432 mobs, and gained 6078 XP per play session (for comparison, I averaged 3143 ore, 351 mobs, and 5308 XP per session over 121 sessions spent caving in TMCWv4, the one world which was fully documented in this regard):
(these numbers are total resoruces, total ore, coal, iron, gold, redstone, lapis, diamond, emerald, rails, cobwebs, moss stone, spawners, mobs, XP; I have close to 3 months of these recordings now, which are printed out by the client when I quit the game, and I've thought of making graphs of the data)
I've found quite a few interesting things since my last update, including an absolutely enormous cave which was easily twice the volume of any cave I've found so far, as well as numerous other large caves, and the largest abandoned mineshaft that I've ever found, which also resulted in 154 cave spiders killed in one play session, the most that I can ever recall.
First, I explored the mineshaft, which had more than 900 rails (895 mined plus a few more), considerably more than the previous record, 757 in TMCWv4; while not directly correlated to their size since whether a corridor section has rails is random I use this as a measure of the size of a mineshaft, which vary a lot more in TMCW than in vanilla (I've seen mineshafts with 10-500 structure pieces while testing a tool I made for the upcoming TMCWv5 that includes a listing of mineshafts by size. For comparison, vanilla mineshafts usually have 75-150 pieces based on Mineshaft.dat, which I disabled in TMCW to fix MC-33134, as there is no reason to save their structure data).
There were also 9 cave spider spawners, which along with their increased spawn rates and naturally spawning cave spiders (anywhere below sea level at 1/10 the rate of regular spiders, though they are more like 1/4 as common due to regular spiders having a higher failure rate die to their size), resulted in 154 cave spiders being killed, at one point more than any other mob and nearly a third of a total of 510 mobs; in the same session I also mined 5232 resources (only counting ore blocks, not drops):
This includes some stuff from a previous session; all the rails and cobwebs (from cave spider spawners) came from the current session:
The mineshaft then led to a quite large cave, including two large cylindrical sections rising high above lava level:
After this, I explored several networks of numerous large caves, many more than shown:
This is the same cave seen above:
This cave, which was nearly straight, was so long that it went out of render distance (as seen from each end):
There were many other relatively large caves, not exceptionally large for vanilla but a lot for the area I found them in:
After that I came across the biggest cave that I've found in this world, and one of the largest caves that I've found in any world (I analyzed it in MCEdit found about 153000 air blocks, about the same as the second largest cave in TMCWv4. This includes a few other caves nearby, while the caves in TMCWv4 were measured by themselves using a utility I made; the largest cave in TMCWv4 had about 251000 air blocks):
This was the first view that I got of the cave:
A view from a similar angle after I explored it; the other end disappears into the distance (you might notice that the underground fog is always black in recent screenshots; I partially re-implemented void fog (not the closeness part) and enhanced it so when below sea level fog is always black unless there is skylight):
The give an idea of the size of the cave, I had to increase render distance to 12 chunks (I normally play on 8 chunks out of preference even though I can go higher) in order to see the other end (taken from the same spot as the previous screenshot):
(I can't help but point out that at these settings the game is only using 135 MB of memory, while Mojang now allocates 2 GB by default for modern versions, which often use over 1 GB to just launch, and the server tick time is 2.1 ms, enough for over 20 players without server lag. Vsync is enabled but I get hundreds of FPS with it turned off, even at much higher settings, such as 20 chunks (note that the screenshot above no longer shows that Optifine is installed - I've completely replaced it with my own code, which is far superior and will be implemented in a public release of TMCW in the future, which includes many improvements to rendering, like fixing smooth lighting bugs (still not fixed despite a "new and improved rendering engine" in 1.15!), including smooth lighting on blocks like water (a Bedrock exclusive), increasing the biome blend radius from 3x3 to 7x7, actual darkness (these are with brightness on Bright but I rescaled the lightmap values so a light level of 0 is true, absolute pitch black; for comparison, In vanilla even Moody only goes down to 5% of minimum brightness - quite bad indeed (in addition to how ugly it looks when e.g. Night Vision is in effect). Many of these are things I fixed years ago (as part of a modified version of Optifine, hence why I never included them in a publicly available mod).
Also, this is a view of the cave in MCEdit:
As if that wasn't enough the giant cave lead to another cluster of large caves:
Here are renderings of the area I covered, from sea level down to lava level, and a cave rendering in MCMap:
Also, these are surface (night mode) and underground (layer 20) maps of what I've explored so far (click to view full size), after trimming away chunks without torches below sea level, which left 15930 chunks. On the surface map you can see a fairly large village at the northern end, which I recently found and the third one I've found in this world (there is another to the northeast of my base, near the center, and a very small (two building) village near the lower-right). Also includes is my map wall, which I've expanded to 5 level 4 maps (mostly just the center map has been filled in):
In addition, here is a surface rendering of the uncropped world in MCMap - even the first version of TMCW has far greater biome and terrain variety than anything you'll ever find since 1.7, especially for such a small area (this is still not every biome present in TMCW, which has increased since then; TMCWv5 will have triple the biomes and about twice as many "real" biomes (excluding minor variants):
There is something just so interesting about reading your posts. It's like a lecture but a fun one.
Anyway, hopefully once they add the cave update to the newer versions of MC it will be at least as good as yours. Caving is so boring these days I never do it. I want to walk around huge caverns and explore every nook and cranny to discover rare ores and gems.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Interested in playing on a long-term, complete vanilla world?
I saw a zombie in diamond armor for the third time in this world:
Also, while not particularly large (wide) the cave I found it in was quite long, being a smaller variant of large cave ("normal" caves vary in length from 80-128 blocks, "large" caves are 192 blocks long, and "giant" caves are 256 blocks long. For comparison, in vanilla caves vary in length from 84-112 blocks; in both cases "normal" caves branch at 25-75% of their length to form two narrow tunnels at 90 degree angles (this causes wider caves to have a teardrop shape as the main tunnel suddenly ends), while large/giant caves do not branch):
Also, I previously mentioned that I might make graphs of the data collected from each play session, which I did for a 100 day/session period, over which I mined 347596 resources, 325580 ore, killed 36092 mobs, and collected 550363 XP:
After nearly a month of playtime I finally found a way into the Volcanic Wasteland biome I found when I first played on this world, but never actually explored (underground), as I only go wherever the caves I'm exploring take me, aside from when I search for a stronghold early on. This is the rarest land-based biome in TMCW, with a 1 in 88 chance of being picked in this version; I found one in one other world, which wasn't as large as this one:
A view from above taken at night; lava lakes are more common higher up and the peaks are flattened so they are more likely to have lakes, simulating volcanic craters:
The terrain itself is generated as bare stone and is decorated with patches of gravel, cobblestone, obsidian, grass, lava lakes, and trees missing most of their leaves (later versions also include dead bushes and a leafless form of big oak which also generates in mesa biomes):
One thing that makes this biome unique is that magma cubes spawn, making them the only mob which naturally spawns in both the Overworld and Nether (in this version), as well as increased amounts of rarer ores, which generate higher up than usual:
This was the largest cave I found in it:
I also found the third and final stronghold in this world under it, only of a handful of worlds where I've found a stronghold while caving and only the second world where I've found all three strongholds by caving (including rediscovering the one found with Eyes of Ender):
Note that caves do not cut through strongholds, including in vanilla, where it is simulated by not overwriting air when generating the walls, but everything inside generates intact, including the portal room in its entirety. I also allowed them to generate underwater, years before it was implemented in vanilla in 1.13:
Strongholds in TMCW are more interesting and dangerous to explore due to spawners added to libraries (silverfish) and under the chests in corridors (skeletons, zombies, cave spiders, creepers, witches):
Also, one of the libraries was destroyed by a lava lake (this was patched in TMCWv4 by preventing lakes from generating around all structures except for mineshafts; notably, prior to 1.13 vanilla excluded lakes from villages, which was broken when they rewrote world generation):
Impressively, I found yet another zombie in full diamond armor just days after the last one:
Also, these are my stats for the past week, averaging about 200 more ore per play session than over a prior 100 day period, including about 50% more redstone and diamond (the 25th is anomalous due to mostly exploring caves near and above sea level, which are more common in mountainous biomes; Volcanic Wasteland also has the same amount of iron above sea level as below, while other biomes have 1/3 the normal abundance, so the amount of iron I found wasn't reduced. All the spawners on the 24th were from a stronghold):
I found two more enormous caves - and not only that, I found them on two consecut8ive days, the second one while exploring caves connected to the first, taking 4 days to completely explore them and their associated cave systems, including a third large cave nearby.
First cave; this is also the deepest such cave that I've found so far, about 50 blocks from floor to ceiling:
Second cave:
Third cave:
Here are renderings of the caves, including the entire area around them and the caves by themselves at the best depth for each one:
Today I had the most insane play session ever in terms of mobs - with 986 mobs killed, far exceeding my previous all-time record of 796, as well as an all-time record of 10561 XP gained in a single play session spent caving:
For comparison, this was my previous record for mobs; much of the difference was due to mobs other than zombies, including nearly twice as many spiders (less common in caves due to their space requirements; zombies, skeletons, spiders, and creepers all have the same weight in the list of mobs to spawn); 21 Endermen also has to be among the most I've killed before:
About two-thirds of the mobs were in a giant cave which was under the ocean, which helped contribute to the overall record number of mobs by limiting surface spawns; my previous record was also mainly due to a giant cave filled with mobs, as these caves are so large that mobs, especially zombies (due to their pathfinding range) can keep respawning on the other side as I slowly push my way into them (at times I only managed to place a single torch before having to backtrack to kill a new wave of mobs); the large flat areas also enhance spawning due to pack spawning mechanics:
Also, I've now played on this world for 32.7 real-time days and have mined more coal alone than total ores mined in any single world aside from my first world, with about 2.4 million total ores mined, followed by TMCWv4 with about 380000 ore mined (TMCWv4 has 22.46 days of playtime while my first world has 143.18 days):
This is also only my second world where I've explored more than one level 4 map, which may not seem that large to many people but I only explore the world by caving, except when I search for a stronghold and the area within 100 or so blocks of spawn:
Also, here is a table and charts of what I've done so far this month (ores mined, mob kills, XP gained per day/session); my averages have increased even more than from before, with an average of 3341 ore mined, 431 mobs, and 6075 XP gained per day (for comparison, over a 100 day period on the same world I averaged 3256 ore, 361 mobs, and 5504 XP, and in TMCWv4 I averaged 3141 ore, 351 mobs, and 5308 XP over 121 sessions):
This increase isn't necessarily because I've spent more time playing; on the 18th I mined 3461 ore in only 2 hours and 46 minutes - a rate of 1251 ore mined per hour, or 21 per minute, or about one every 3 seconds, which may be a record for the fastest I've ever mined during an entire play session (I've measured hourly rates of 1000+ per hour before):
I made an interesting discovery - two villages and a desert temple all within view of each other, the closest that I've ever two villages, as well as the first time I've found two in one day. This is also the first time that I've found a desert temple in this world, which have been rarer than other structures in my experience (they should be as common as jungle temples and witch huts in vanilla, but I've found about half as many in my first world, where deserts, swamps and jungles all have the same frequency):
Also, like many other things, desert temples are a bit more interesting than usual - there were two spawners, spawning zombies and skeletons in the upper area, and trapped chests in the lower area, with extra TNT under them (13 instead of 9); they can also generate the same as in vanilla (pressure plate and no spawners) or with both a pressure plate and trapped chests (a later version of TMCW replaced the wool with stained clay, as in 1.8):
I'm not much of a commenter, but it's neat to see the updates from your world. Now that I've stopped chasing the newest version, I've been staying on a single world as well, and it's funny how different that feels. I've been kicking around the idea of keeping a record myself, though (since I'm currently excavating a huge area for an underground "biome") it wouldn't be anywhere near as visually interesting, and I'd be tallying "double-chests of cobblestone excavated" instead of "ores collected and mobs killed".
TL;DR: we're quiet, but your readers are here and enjoying your posts!
I found the most extreme cave system possible in this version of TMCW - a colossal cave system, which is the largest that a single cave system can get in this version because of how caves generate (unlike vanilla, which randomly generates cave systems of various sizes, TMCWv1 generates "large" cave systems at 0,0 and 7,7 relative to a 14x14 chunk grid, which vary in size from 16 to 39, plus "scattered" caves with 2/3 the size and the same frequency as vanilla 1.7+. Based on seed-searching it is extremely unlikely a cave system (actually, a cluster of cave systems) this large can ever generate in 1.7+, though I've found much larger cave systems in 1.6.4). There was also another giant cave nearby which had the largest single lava lake that I've found so far in this world; following is a series of renderings of the region I recently explored:
Here are screenshots from the colossal cave system, including at least two adjacent cave systems merged with it (it is the solid central mass seen above, with two smaller cave systems to the northwest and southwest):
The giant cave; part of the cave isn't visible here since the ceiling nearly went down to lava level (on the left side of the first image, which opened up a bit further in):
Also, I saw a zombie in diamond armor for the fifth time in this world:
I found a desert temple - and a Volcanic Wasteland biome - for the second time in this world:
On average, 1 in 88 land-based biomes will be a Volcanic Wasteland, and there are 64 biomes per level 4 map since their "scale" is 16 chunks, so to find two requires exploring an average of 1.375 level 4 maps (22528 chunks). They are rarer in newer versions due to the addition of more biomes, about 1 in 112 in TMCWv4 (in both cases this excludes "snowy zones", where non-snowy biomes are less common). For comparison, I've only found one Snowless Taiga and one Mega Forest so far (both more common), and I haven't found several other biomes at all yet (even across every world that I've made with TMCW).
Here are renderings of the world, which is currently at 30722 chunks, 23041 of which have been explored underground (the second Volcanic Wasteland is near the bottom-center, I haven't generated much of it yet since I haven't explored into it, I only went as far as the desert temple after spotting it from a distance when I came up to see what a gray spot on the map was (sandstone appears as stone on maps in 1.6.4); otherwise, I only explore by caving):
Notably, I've also placed around 225,000 torches in this world (this includes some naturally generated torches in villages, but probably less than a hundred):
(this is a modified version of MCMap; the normal version prints out the location of every single torch it finds, causing it to run quite a bit slower on my worlds; I just count them and print out the results)
As far as caving goes, I haven't found anything particularly notable lately, aside from this largish cave (by TMCW standards):
Since my last update I've found several more large caves, including a giant cave, and had an interesting time today due to a zombie dungeon which spawned around 160 zombies before I was able to take it down.
This was the first large cave that I found (all of these are in the order I found them):
After that I found an extremely deep double ravine, part of a quadruple ravine system, that was more than 60 blocks deep (it went a few blocks higher than where I was standing; lava level in this version is y=6). It did not break the surface since it was under a mesa biome:
Next, I found a cave that went almost straight down from the surface to lava level (the sky was visible from the bottom and likewise you could see obsidian at y=5 from the surface but sunlight didn't actually reach down that far due to a staircase I made to get up it):
After that, I came across another giant cave, this one more of a large spherical chamber than a tunnel (they are all generated in the same way as a normal cave/tunnel but are much wider and longer, this one happened to curve around within a smaller area). I took some screenshots while exploring it:
Notably, I came across a skeleton and zombie in iron armor at almost the same time while exploring a side cave:
Then today I encountered a huge horde of zombies in a cave which took several minutes to kill, only for even more to come, at which point I suspected there was a dungeon nearby, which took a while to find, by which then I'd killed around 160 zombies (I picked up 2 1/2 stacks of rotten flesh, averaging one per zombie):
I went from level 15-22 after the first wave:
Only for more to show up:
And more (this was after I retreated after going further into the cave, now up to 27 levels):
And finally, I found the dungeon, reaching level 37 after picking up the remaining XP - an overall gain of 22 levels:
I picked up most of the rotten flesh they dropped so I could count them (each one drops 0-2 pieces, averaging 1 each); around half of the zombies that I'd killed at this point came from this one dungeon (plus additional zombies that came to help):
This is quite the exception, I found another zombie dungeon about 10 minutes later and had only killed 13 more zombies during that time, including from the dungeon, which is still more than in vanilla due to their very slow spawn rates (dungeons should be a challenge. IMO, their slow spawn rate is partly due to the fact that if they spawned as fast as they do in TMCW they would be a major farming exploit, especially since TMCW also includes many other mobs in dungeons. Notably, if I'd been playing in TMCWv4 I'd only have gotten around 50 rotten flesh and much less XP since spawners "burn out" with a long recovery time after spawning that many mobs in succession, as a anti-farm measure. Most of the time I destroy them before they reach that point):
By the time I stopped playing I'd killed 708 mobs, including 404 zombies:
I also found another relatively large cave today (compared to vanilla):
As of today I've been playing on this world for more than 3,000 in-game days, or 40.82 days of real-time, still less than a third as long as my first world (143.18 days) but nearly double that of my next longest played world (TMCWv4, 22.46 days) and triple of what I originally played on this world for (14.72 days, 11.32 on the backup copy I started playing on; this means I've spent a total of 44.22 days on this world):
Also, these are some of my other statistics; the most impressive one is that I've crafted nearly a million coal into blocks, out of around 1.1 million drops from nearly half a million ore. I've also mined more than a million blocks in total and placed a quarter million torches:
I also found another giant cave, as well as several smaller caves, while exploring into the Volcanic Wasteland biome I found several weeks ago (despite coming within 100 blocks or so of it back then it took until now to fully explore the area leading up to it, then find a way into it, which involved a long circuitous route leading first away from it to the southeast, then tracking westwards for a few hundred blocks before going north into it):
This was the giant cave, which I discovered from both ends but didn't explore it until I'd explored everything connected to it
There were also two ravines intersecting it; this end was below a desert, hence the sandstone walls and ceiling, which lines the walls of caves down to around y=48, deeper in later versions and replacing all stone since TMCWv4 (ores can generate in this sandstone since it is placed afterwards, in contrast to the sand/sandstone layer at the surface):
The following screenshot are of 3 separate caves; all of these are "vanilla" large caves, meaning that they were generated the same way as larger caves/tunnels in vanilla, but with a larger width variation (most tunnels in vanilla have a maximum diameter of 3-9 blocks, while 1/10 of tunnels can get up to 27 blocks in diameter; in this version of TMCW they can get up to 63 blocks in diameter):
Also, i plan to stop playing on this world soon, perhaps after I finish exploring the area around the Volcanic Wasteland, so I can focus more on what may as well be called the "TMCW game engine", a near-total rewrite of much of the game's world generation and rendering systems which I've been working on for much the the past year, and which will eventually be ported to TMCW itself (currently it is based on what I call "World1", the mostly bugfix/optimization mod that I use when playing on my first world, while TMCW itself includes new features like different types of caves, biomes, blocks, and more). This includes a possible intermediate update to TMCW based on version 4, rather than going all the way to version 5 (which originally added many of the bugfixes/optimizations and will need to be rewritten, especially since I'd written a lot of "hacky" code to get around modifying classes modified by Optifine, which will no longer be supported, or necessary).
This is amazing! For the first time I looked at my own pitiful stats and hung my head in shame.
I am interested to see that you even light up the ceiling areas of the cave. What method do you use to get up there? Do you pillar? If so what material do you use?
This is amazing! For the first time I looked at my own pitiful stats and hung my head in shame.
I am interested to see that you even light up the ceiling areas of the cave. What method do you use to get up there? Do you pillar? If so what material do you use?
I use cobblestone to pillar up and make walkways; in smaller caves I can jump up to place torches as needed to see if there are any ores or cave openings in the ceiling, while most caves don't need any additional lighting besides that from torches on the ground (I may still pillar up to reach ores in the ceiling); ravines are lit up in a similar manner except I mainly use ladders to climb the walls and go along the natural ledges, expanding them as necessary. Other uses include making staircases to get up/down (for example, I previously mentioned finding a very deep vertical cave, which I got up by making a staircase around the sides) and to bridge across gaps in the floor:
This screenshot is from a different world, which I specifically took to show how I access the ceiling of these large caves:
You can see where I filled in gaps in the ledges of this ravine, as well as made a staircase against a wall to the left of center, with the higher part mined out, the top reaches the uppermost ledge at the bottom-center (I use ladders for temporary access while staircases are a permanent way to get up/down):
This is a cave that goes nearly straight down, I made a staircase around the sides to get up/down:
In the upper-left I placed cobblestone to get to another cave while on the right I used it to fill in a recess in the wall so I could use a ladder to get up (it is cheaper to place a few cobblestone then ladders than it is to pillar up all the way):
Some more examples, including several bridges (upper-left and center) and a single piece placed near the lower-right to get up up a 2 block rise:
For perspective, I've placed about 228,000 and mined 51,000 cobblestone so far in this world, along with 22,000 ladders (most of the ladders are reused while only cobblestone used for pillars/scaffolding is reused).
As mentioned in my last update, I decided that it was time to stop playing on this world, which became my longest-played world by far aside from my first world, with 3,138 in-game days, 1,021 hours of playtime, 773,152 ores yielding more than 1.5 million resources and more than a million blocks mined, more than 255,000 torches used, and nearly 100,000 mobs killed:
The mineral blocks crafted amount to more than a million coal alone:
Here are several maps of the world:
This covers parts of 8 level 4 maps, including all of the center map
A surface rendering made with Minutor (all of the following images can be clicked to view full size); one of the more interesting things is that there are two more villages and a desert temple near where I found two villages and a desert temple close together (around the desert at the bottom-center):
An Unmined rendering of all caves below sea level:
Another rendering at y=30; you can see many of the larger caves that I found, as well as several unexplored caves, such as in the lower-left (I came close to discovering the second cave from the bottom, but decided not to explore a ravine that connected to it); it is also interesting to note that there is another colossal cave system just to the east of the one that I found, near the upper-right, as well as a third one in the upper-left:
A third rendering just above lava level; you can see the branch-mine I made to get my first resources near the center; this image is also at full size (the others are half size to keep the file size down):
Here are surface and explored caves renderings of most of the worlds that I've had; TMCWv1 is overall about a third of the size of my first world and about twice as large as TMCWv4 in terms of explored caves:
These are my playtime statistics for each of these worlds; the totals do not include the time from when I started playing on this world again to when I'd originally stopped playing on it (3.4 days, so I actually played on this world for 45.96 days); likewise, the original version of InfiniteCaves isn't counted at all as I have no records of it other than "about a week" of playtime (not included are several other worlds, including a Survival Island world, a custom map (these are my only "non-caving" worlds, both within the first month or two after I started playing), and a couple worlds I made just to explore a massive cave system I found with a program I wrote to find them):
World1 143.18 days 3436.32 hours 985 sessions (3.49 hours/session)
TMCWv1 (replayed) 42.56 days 1021.44 hours 284 sessions (3.59 hours/session)
TMCWv4 22.46 days 539.04 hours 140 sessions (3.85 hours/session)
TMCWv3 15.83 days 379.92 hours 104 sessions (3.65 hours/session)
InfiniteCaves (recreation) 15.62 days 374.96 hours 122 sessions (3.07 hours/session)
World1v2 8.57 days 205.68 hours 73 sessions (2.82 hours/session)
TripleHeightTerrain 8.25 days 198.00 hours 53 sessions (3.74 hours/session)
World1v3 7.27 days 174.48 hours 59 sessions (3.08 hours/session)
TMCWv2 5.62 days 134.88 hours 52 sessions (2.59 hours/session)
Total 269.36 days 6464.72 hours 1869 sessions (3.46 hours/session)
TMCWv1 (original) 14.72 days 353.28 hours 103 sessions (3.43 hours/session)
(replayed started from 11.32 days / 83 sessions)
Also, here are screenshots of caves I found since the last update, including a quite large lava lake:
The following three screenshots are of the same cave:
This was my first look at what turned out to be a very large lava lake (this cave can be seen on the third Unmined map in the second spoiler as the large cave furthest to the southwest that isn't lava):
This was a fairly large cave but it cut off below the seafloor above (this cave wouldn't exist at all in vanilla since the cave generator completely aborts generating spherical (cylindrical for ravines) segments if there is water by them; as far as I know TMCW is the only mod that makes caves check for water on a per-block basis instead of per-segment. Note also the sandstone in the ceiling, which is the bottom layer of sand patches in the seafloor, preventing them from collapsing):
I had one of the most extreme play sessions that I've ever had in terms of mob kills - 767 - the second-highest on record, behind 796 in TMCWv4 and ahead of 748 in World1:
On the day before that I was mobbed by a horde of as many as 50 zombies which had spawned from a dungeon, which spawn a pack of 6 mobs every 5-10 seconds so they can quickly accumulate when the dungeon is nearby but not obvious; I went from level 33 to 36 after killing all of them (about 270 XP or 54 mobs without equipment) - just the ones shown in the screenshots, with more elsewhere. One of the zombies also had full iron armor, although I wouldn't classify that as that very rare (I see one every few days; for comparison, diamond armor is about 32 times rarer):
I also found a double cave spider spawner, with the spawners only a few blocks apart; I found a total of 6 spawners within a small area of a single mineshaft (many times I destroy the spawners before I notice more nearby, even when they are in the same corridor, so I don't get many screenshots of multiple spawners):
I've also found several more large caves as well as a bizarre ravine which looped around on itself multiple times, the most unusual ravine that I've seen (at first I thought there were 2-3 ravines but it turned out to be just one, which was also quite long):
This is a complex intersection of multiple caves and a ravine:
This cave was quite long, extending over 100 blocks in length:
Another large cave:
How many ravines do you see? Just one, which intersects itself multiple times:
Also, I've now mined over 400,000 ore, including nearly 100,000 iron:
Notably, since my last update I mined an average of 3299 ore, killed 432 mobs, and gained 6078 XP per play session (for comparison, I averaged 3143 ore, 351 mobs, and 5308 XP per session over 121 sessions spent caving in TMCWv4, the one world which was fully documented in this regard):
(these numbers are total resoruces, total ore, coal, iron, gold, redstone, lapis, diamond, emerald, rails, cobwebs, moss stone, spawners, mobs, XP; I have close to 3 months of these recordings now, which are printed out by the client when I quit the game, and I've thought of making graphs of the data)
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 the closest double spawner I've ever seen. Cool ravine, too. Good pics!
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
I've found quite a few interesting things since my last update, including an absolutely enormous cave which was easily twice the volume of any cave I've found so far, as well as numerous other large caves, and the largest abandoned mineshaft that I've ever found, which also resulted in 154 cave spiders killed in one play session, the most that I can ever recall.
First, I explored the mineshaft, which had more than 900 rails (895 mined plus a few more), considerably more than the previous record, 757 in TMCWv4; while not directly correlated to their size since whether a corridor section has rails is random I use this as a measure of the size of a mineshaft, which vary a lot more in TMCW than in vanilla (I've seen mineshafts with 10-500 structure pieces while testing a tool I made for the upcoming TMCWv5 that includes a listing of mineshafts by size. For comparison, vanilla mineshafts usually have 75-150 pieces based on Mineshaft.dat, which I disabled in TMCW to fix MC-33134, as there is no reason to save their structure data).
There were also 9 cave spider spawners, which along with their increased spawn rates and naturally spawning cave spiders (anywhere below sea level at 1/10 the rate of regular spiders, though they are more like 1/4 as common due to regular spiders having a higher failure rate die to their size), resulted in 154 cave spiders being killed, at one point more than any other mob and nearly a third of a total of 510 mobs; in the same session I also mined 5232 resources (only counting ore blocks, not drops):
This includes some stuff from a previous session; all the rails and cobwebs (from cave spider spawners) came from the current session:
The mineshaft then led to a quite large cave, including two large cylindrical sections rising high above lava level:
After this, I explored several networks of numerous large caves, many more than shown:
This is the same cave seen above:
This cave, which was nearly straight, was so long that it went out of render distance (as seen from each end):
There were many other relatively large caves, not exceptionally large for vanilla but a lot for the area I found them in:
After that I came across the biggest cave that I've found in this world, and one of the largest caves that I've found in any world (I analyzed it in MCEdit found about 153000 air blocks, about the same as the second largest cave in TMCWv4. This includes a few other caves nearby, while the caves in TMCWv4 were measured by themselves using a utility I made; the largest cave in TMCWv4 had about 251000 air blocks):
A view from a similar angle after I explored it; the other end disappears into the distance (you might notice that the underground fog is always black in recent screenshots; I partially re-implemented void fog (not the closeness part) and enhanced it so when below sea level fog is always black unless there is skylight):
The give an idea of the size of the cave, I had to increase render distance to 12 chunks (I normally play on 8 chunks out of preference even though I can go higher) in order to see the other end (taken from the same spot as the previous screenshot):
(I can't help but point out that at these settings the game is only using 135 MB of memory, while Mojang now allocates 2 GB by default for modern versions, which often use over 1 GB to just launch, and the server tick time is 2.1 ms, enough for over 20 players without server lag. Vsync is enabled but I get hundreds of FPS with it turned off, even at much higher settings, such as 20 chunks (note that the screenshot above no longer shows that Optifine is installed - I've completely replaced it with my own code, which is far superior and will be implemented in a public release of TMCW in the future, which includes many improvements to rendering, like fixing smooth lighting bugs (still not fixed despite a "new and improved rendering engine" in 1.15!), including smooth lighting on blocks like water (a Bedrock exclusive), increasing the biome blend radius from 3x3 to 7x7, actual darkness (these are with brightness on Bright but I rescaled the lightmap values so a light level of 0 is true, absolute pitch black; for comparison, In vanilla even Moody only goes down to 5% of minimum brightness - quite bad indeed (in addition to how ugly it looks when e.g. Night Vision is in effect). Many of these are things I fixed years ago (as part of a modified version of Optifine, hence why I never included them in a publicly available mod).
Also, this is a view of the cave in MCEdit:
As if that wasn't enough the giant cave lead to another cluster of large caves:
Here are renderings of the area I covered, from sea level down to lava level, and a cave rendering in MCMap:
Also, these are surface (night mode) and underground (layer 20) maps of what I've explored so far (click to view full size), after trimming away chunks without torches below sea level, which left 15930 chunks. On the surface map you can see a fairly large village at the northern end, which I recently found and the third one I've found in this world (there is another to the northeast of my base, near the center, and a very small (two building) village near the lower-right). Also includes is my map wall, which I've expanded to 5 level 4 maps (mostly just the center map has been filled in):
In addition, here is a surface rendering of the uncropped world in MCMap - even the first version of TMCW has far greater biome and terrain variety than anything you'll ever find since 1.7, especially for such a small area (this is still not every biome present in TMCW, which has increased since then; TMCWv5 will have triple the biomes and about twice as many "real" biomes (excluding minor variants):
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?
There is something just so interesting about reading your posts. It's like a lecture but a fun one.
Anyway, hopefully once they add the cave update to the newer versions of MC it will be at least as good as yours. Caving is so boring these days I never do it. I want to walk around huge caverns and explore every nook and cranny to discover rare ores and gems.
Interested in playing on a long-term, complete vanilla world?
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/servers-java-edition/pc-servers/2979860-shroom-smp-1-14-4-small-community-oriented
I saw a zombie in diamond armor for the third time in this world:
Also, while not particularly large (wide) the cave I found it in was quite long, being a smaller variant of large cave ("normal" caves vary in length from 80-128 blocks, "large" caves are 192 blocks long, and "giant" caves are 256 blocks long. For comparison, in vanilla caves vary in length from 84-112 blocks; in both cases "normal" caves branch at 25-75% of their length to form two narrow tunnels at 90 degree angles (this causes wider caves to have a teardrop shape as the main tunnel suddenly ends), while large/giant caves do not branch):
Also, I previously mentioned that I might make graphs of the data collected from each play session, which I did for a 100 day/session period, over which I mined 347596 resources, 325580 ore, killed 36092 mobs, and collected 550363 XP:
More charts can be found on this Imgur album (I also posted it on Reddit): https://imgur.com/a/nSlPECk
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 nearly a month of playtime I finally found a way into the Volcanic Wasteland biome I found when I first played on this world, but never actually explored (underground), as I only go wherever the caves I'm exploring take me, aside from when I search for a stronghold early on. This is the rarest land-based biome in TMCW, with a 1 in 88 chance of being picked in this version; I found one in one other world, which wasn't as large as this one:
A view from above taken at night; lava lakes are more common higher up and the peaks are flattened so they are more likely to have lakes, simulating volcanic craters:
The terrain itself is generated as bare stone and is decorated with patches of gravel, cobblestone, obsidian, grass, lava lakes, and trees missing most of their leaves (later versions also include dead bushes and a leafless form of big oak which also generates in mesa biomes):
One thing that makes this biome unique is that magma cubes spawn, making them the only mob which naturally spawns in both the Overworld and Nether (in this version), as well as increased amounts of rarer ores, which generate higher up than usual:
This was the largest cave I found in it:
I also found the third and final stronghold in this world under it, only of a handful of worlds where I've found a stronghold while caving and only the second world where I've found all three strongholds by caving (including rediscovering the one found with Eyes of Ender):
Strongholds in TMCW are more interesting and dangerous to explore due to spawners added to libraries (silverfish) and under the chests in corridors (skeletons, zombies, cave spiders, creepers, witches):
Also, one of the libraries was destroyed by a lava lake (this was patched in TMCWv4 by preventing lakes from generating around all structures except for mineshafts; notably, prior to 1.13 vanilla excluded lakes from villages, which was broken when they rewrote world generation):
Impressively, I found yet another zombie in full diamond armor just days after the last one:
Also, these are my stats for the past week, averaging about 200 more ore per play session than over a prior 100 day period, including about 50% more redstone and diamond (the 25th is anomalous due to mostly exploring caves near and above sea level, which are more common in mountainous biomes; Volcanic Wasteland also has the same amount of iron above sea level as below, while other biomes have 1/3 the normal abundance, so the amount of iron I found wasn't reduced. All the spawners on the 24th were from a stronghold):
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 two more enormous caves - and not only that, I found them on two consecut8ive days, the second one while exploring caves connected to the first, taking 4 days to completely explore them and their associated cave systems, including a third large cave nearby.
First cave; this is also the deepest such cave that I've found so far, about 50 blocks from floor to ceiling:
Second cave:
Third cave:
Here are renderings of the caves, including the entire area around them and the caves by themselves at the best depth for each one:
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 had the most insane play session ever in terms of mobs - with 986 mobs killed, far exceeding my previous all-time record of 796, as well as an all-time record of 10561 XP gained in a single play session spent caving:
For comparison, this was my previous record for mobs; much of the difference was due to mobs other than zombies, including nearly twice as many spiders (less common in caves due to their space requirements; zombies, skeletons, spiders, and creepers all have the same weight in the list of mobs to spawn); 21 Endermen also has to be among the most I've killed before:
About two-thirds of the mobs were in a giant cave which was under the ocean, which helped contribute to the overall record number of mobs by limiting surface spawns; my previous record was also mainly due to a giant cave filled with mobs, as these caves are so large that mobs, especially zombies (due to their pathfinding range) can keep respawning on the other side as I slowly push my way into them (at times I only managed to place a single torch before having to backtrack to kill a new wave of mobs); the large flat areas also enhance spawning due to pack spawning mechanics:
Also, I've now played on this world for 32.7 real-time days and have mined more coal alone than total ores mined in any single world aside from my first world, with about 2.4 million total ores mined, followed by TMCWv4 with about 380000 ore mined (TMCWv4 has 22.46 days of playtime while my first world has 143.18 days):
This is also only my second world where I've explored more than one level 4 map, which may not seem that large to many people but I only explore the world by caving, except when I search for a stronghold and the area within 100 or so blocks of spawn:
Also, here is a table and charts of what I've done so far this month (ores mined, mob kills, XP gained per day/session); my averages have increased even more than from before, with an average of 3341 ore mined, 431 mobs, and 6075 XP gained per day (for comparison, over a 100 day period on the same world I averaged 3256 ore, 361 mobs, and 5504 XP, and in TMCWv4 I averaged 3141 ore, 351 mobs, and 5308 XP over 121 sessions):
This increase isn't necessarily because I've spent more time playing; on the 18th I mined 3461 ore in only 2 hours and 46 minutes - a rate of 1251 ore mined per hour, or 21 per minute, or about one every 3 seconds, which may be a record for the fastest I've ever mined during an entire play session (I've measured hourly rates of 1000+ per hour before):
Server log (this reflects the actual times when I loaded and quit the world):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I made an interesting discovery - two villages and a desert temple all within view of each other, the closest that I've ever two villages, as well as the first time I've found two in one day. This is also the first time that I've found a desert temple in this world, which have been rarer than other structures in my experience (they should be as common as jungle temples and witch huts in vanilla, but I've found about half as many in my first world, where deserts, swamps and jungles all have the same frequency):
Also, like many other things, desert temples are a bit more interesting than usual - there were two spawners, spawning zombies and skeletons in the upper area, and trapped chests in the lower area, with extra TNT under them (13 instead of 9); they can also generate the same as in vanilla (pressure plate and no spawners) or with both a pressure plate and trapped chests (a later version of TMCW replaced the wool with stained clay, as in 1.8):
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'm not much of a commenter, but it's neat to see the updates from your world. Now that I've stopped chasing the newest version, I've been staying on a single world as well, and it's funny how different that feels. I've been kicking around the idea of keeping a record myself, though (since I'm currently excavating a huge area for an underground "biome") it wouldn't be anywhere near as visually interesting, and I'd be tallying "double-chests of cobblestone excavated" instead of "ores collected and mobs killed".
TL;DR: we're quiet, but your readers are here and enjoying your posts!
I found the most extreme cave system possible in this version of TMCW - a colossal cave system, which is the largest that a single cave system can get in this version because of how caves generate (unlike vanilla, which randomly generates cave systems of various sizes, TMCWv1 generates "large" cave systems at 0,0 and 7,7 relative to a 14x14 chunk grid, which vary in size from 16 to 39, plus "scattered" caves with 2/3 the size and the same frequency as vanilla 1.7+. Based on seed-searching it is extremely unlikely a cave system (actually, a cluster of cave systems) this large can ever generate in 1.7+, though I've found much larger cave systems in 1.6.4). There was also another giant cave nearby which had the largest single lava lake that I've found so far in this world; following is a series of renderings of the region I recently explored:
Here are screenshots from the colossal cave system, including at least two adjacent cave systems merged with it (it is the solid central mass seen above, with two smaller cave systems to the northwest and southwest):
The giant cave; part of the cave isn't visible here since the ceiling nearly went down to lava level (on the left side of the first image, which opened up a bit further in):
Also, I saw a zombie in diamond armor for the fifth time in this world:
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 a desert temple - and a Volcanic Wasteland biome - for the second time in this world:
On average, 1 in 88 land-based biomes will be a Volcanic Wasteland, and there are 64 biomes per level 4 map since their "scale" is 16 chunks, so to find two requires exploring an average of 1.375 level 4 maps (22528 chunks). They are rarer in newer versions due to the addition of more biomes, about 1 in 112 in TMCWv4 (in both cases this excludes "snowy zones", where non-snowy biomes are less common). For comparison, I've only found one Snowless Taiga and one Mega Forest so far (both more common), and I haven't found several other biomes at all yet (even across every world that I've made with TMCW).
Here are renderings of the world, which is currently at 30722 chunks, 23041 of which have been explored underground (the second Volcanic Wasteland is near the bottom-center, I haven't generated much of it yet since I haven't explored into it, I only went as far as the desert temple after spotting it from a distance when I came up to see what a gray spot on the map was (sandstone appears as stone on maps in 1.6.4); otherwise, I only explore by caving):
Also, here is a link to a full-size image of the underground (9480x4352, 5.64 MB, the ones above are 25% of full size): https://www.dropbox.com/s/xz1ud9kogm5mlc4/tmcw_caves.png?dl=0
Notably, I've also placed around 225,000 torches in this world (this includes some naturally generated torches in villages, but probably less than a hundred):
(this is a modified version of MCMap; the normal version prints out the location of every single torch it finds, causing it to run quite a bit slower on my worlds; I just count them and print out the results)
As far as caving goes, I haven't found anything particularly notable lately, aside from this largish cave (by TMCW standards):
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'll be studying your survival diary to try and better my own skills, your posts are really informative yet concise
Since my last update I've found several more large caves, including a giant cave, and had an interesting time today due to a zombie dungeon which spawned around 160 zombies before I was able to take it down.
This was the first large cave that I found (all of these are in the order I found them):
After that I found an extremely deep double ravine, part of a quadruple ravine system, that was more than 60 blocks deep (it went a few blocks higher than where I was standing; lava level in this version is y=6). It did not break the surface since it was under a mesa biome:
Next, I found a cave that went almost straight down from the surface to lava level (the sky was visible from the bottom and likewise you could see obsidian at y=5 from the surface but sunlight didn't actually reach down that far due to a staircase I made to get up it):
After that, I came across another giant cave, this one more of a large spherical chamber than a tunnel (they are all generated in the same way as a normal cave/tunnel but are much wider and longer, this one happened to curve around within a smaller area). I took some screenshots while exploring it:
Notably, I came across a skeleton and zombie in iron armor at almost the same time while exploring a side cave:
Then today I encountered a huge horde of zombies in a cave which took several minutes to kill, only for even more to come, at which point I suspected there was a dungeon nearby, which took a while to find, by which then I'd killed around 160 zombies (I picked up 2 1/2 stacks of rotten flesh, averaging one per zombie):
I went from level 15-22 after the first wave:
Only for more to show up:
And more (this was after I retreated after going further into the cave, now up to 27 levels):
And finally, I found the dungeon, reaching level 37 after picking up the remaining XP - an overall gain of 22 levels:
I picked up most of the rotten flesh they dropped so I could count them (each one drops 0-2 pieces, averaging 1 each); around half of the zombies that I'd killed at this point came from this one dungeon (plus additional zombies that came to help):
This is quite the exception, I found another zombie dungeon about 10 minutes later and had only killed 13 more zombies during that time, including from the dungeon, which is still more than in vanilla due to their very slow spawn rates (dungeons should be a challenge. IMO, their slow spawn rate is partly due to the fact that if they spawned as fast as they do in TMCW they would be a major farming exploit, especially since TMCW also includes many other mobs in dungeons. Notably, if I'd been playing in TMCWv4 I'd only have gotten around 50 rotten flesh and much less XP since spawners "burn out" with a long recovery time after spawning that many mobs in succession, as a anti-farm measure. Most of the time I destroy them before they reach that point):
By the time I stopped playing I'd killed 708 mobs, including 404 zombies:
I also found another relatively large cave today (compared to 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?
As of today I've been playing on this world for more than 3,000 in-game days, or 40.82 days of real-time, still less than a third as long as my first world (143.18 days) but nearly double that of my next longest played world (TMCWv4, 22.46 days) and triple of what I originally played on this world for (14.72 days, 11.32 on the backup copy I started playing on; this means I've spent a total of 44.22 days on this world):
Also, these are some of my other statistics; the most impressive one is that I've crafted nearly a million coal into blocks, out of around 1.1 million drops from nearly half a million ore. I've also mined more than a million blocks in total and placed a quarter million torches:
I also found another giant cave, as well as several smaller caves, while exploring into the Volcanic Wasteland biome I found several weeks ago (despite coming within 100 blocks or so of it back then it took until now to fully explore the area leading up to it, then find a way into it, which involved a long circuitous route leading first away from it to the southeast, then tracking westwards for a few hundred blocks before going north into it):
There were also two ravines intersecting it; this end was below a desert, hence the sandstone walls and ceiling, which lines the walls of caves down to around y=48, deeper in later versions and replacing all stone since TMCWv4 (ores can generate in this sandstone since it is placed afterwards, in contrast to the sand/sandstone layer at the surface):
The following screenshot are of 3 separate caves; all of these are "vanilla" large caves, meaning that they were generated the same way as larger caves/tunnels in vanilla, but with a larger width variation (most tunnels in vanilla have a maximum diameter of 3-9 blocks, while 1/10 of tunnels can get up to 27 blocks in diameter; in this version of TMCW they can get up to 63 blocks in diameter):
Also, i plan to stop playing on this world soon, perhaps after I finish exploring the area around the Volcanic Wasteland, so I can focus more on what may as well be called the "TMCW game engine", a near-total rewrite of much of the game's world generation and rendering systems which I've been working on for much the the past year, and which will eventually be ported to TMCW itself (currently it is based on what I call "World1", the mostly bugfix/optimization mod that I use when playing on my first world, while TMCW itself includes new features like different types of caves, biomes, blocks, and more). This includes a possible intermediate update to TMCW based on version 4, rather than going all the way to version 5 (which originally added many of the bugfixes/optimizations and will need to be rewritten, especially since I'd written a lot of "hacky" code to get around modifying classes modified by Optifine, which will no longer be supported, or necessary).
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?
This is amazing! For the first time I looked at my own pitiful stats and hung my head in shame.
I am interested to see that you even light up the ceiling areas of the cave. What method do you use to get up there? Do you pillar? If so what material do you use?
I use cobblestone to pillar up and make walkways; in smaller caves I can jump up to place torches as needed to see if there are any ores or cave openings in the ceiling, while most caves don't need any additional lighting besides that from torches on the ground (I may still pillar up to reach ores in the ceiling); ravines are lit up in a similar manner except I mainly use ladders to climb the walls and go along the natural ledges, expanding them as necessary. Other uses include making staircases to get up/down (for example, I previously mentioned finding a very deep vertical cave, which I got up by making a staircase around the sides) and to bridge across gaps in the floor:
You can see where I filled in gaps in the ledges of this ravine, as well as made a staircase against a wall to the left of center, with the higher part mined out, the top reaches the uppermost ledge at the bottom-center (I use ladders for temporary access while staircases are a permanent way to get up/down):
This is a cave that goes nearly straight down, I made a staircase around the sides to get up/down:
In the upper-left I placed cobblestone to get to another cave while on the right I used it to fill in a recess in the wall so I could use a ladder to get up (it is cheaper to place a few cobblestone then ladders than it is to pillar up all the way):
Some more examples, including several bridges (upper-left and center) and a single piece placed near the lower-right to get up up a 2 block rise:
For perspective, I've placed about 228,000 and mined 51,000 cobblestone so far in this world, along with 22,000 ladders (most of the ladders are reused while only cobblestone used for pillars/scaffolding is reused).
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?
As mentioned in my last update, I decided that it was time to stop playing on this world, which became my longest-played world by far aside from my first world, with 3,138 in-game days, 1,021 hours of playtime, 773,152 ores yielding more than 1.5 million resources and more than a million blocks mined, more than 255,000 torches used, and nearly 100,000 mobs killed:
The mineral blocks crafted amount to more than a million coal alone:
Here are several maps of the world:
A surface rendering made with Minutor (all of the following images can be clicked to view full size); one of the more interesting things is that there are two more villages and a desert temple near where I found two villages and a desert temple close together (around the desert at the bottom-center):
An Unmined rendering of all caves below sea level:
Another rendering at y=30; you can see many of the larger caves that I found, as well as several unexplored caves, such as in the lower-left (I came close to discovering the second cave from the bottom, but decided not to explore a ravine that connected to it); it is also interesting to note that there is another colossal cave system just to the east of the one that I found, near the upper-right, as well as a third one in the upper-left:
A third rendering just above lava level; you can see the branch-mine I made to get my first resources near the center; this image is also at full size (the others are half size to keep the file size down):
Here are surface and explored caves renderings of most of the worlds that I've had; TMCWv1 is overall about a third of the size of my first world and about twice as large as TMCWv4 in terms of explored caves:
These are my playtime statistics for each of these worlds; the totals do not include the time from when I started playing on this world again to when I'd originally stopped playing on it (3.4 days, so I actually played on this world for 45.96 days); likewise, the original version of InfiniteCaves isn't counted at all as I have no records of it other than "about a week" of playtime (not included are several other worlds, including a Survival Island world, a custom map (these are my only "non-caving" worlds, both within the first month or two after I started playing), and a couple worlds I made just to explore a massive cave system I found with a program I wrote to find them):
Also, here are screenshots of caves I found since the last update, including a quite large lava lake:
The following three screenshots are of the same cave:
This was my first look at what turned out to be a very large lava lake (this cave can be seen on the third Unmined map in the second spoiler as the large cave furthest to the southwest that isn't lava):
This was a fairly large cave but it cut off below the seafloor above (this cave wouldn't exist at all in vanilla since the cave generator completely aborts generating spherical (cylindrical for ravines) segments if there is water by them; as far as I know TMCW is the only mod that makes caves check for water on a per-block basis instead of per-segment. Note also the sandstone in the ceiling, which is the bottom layer of sand patches in the seafloor, preventing them from collapsing):
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?