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I've mainly spent the last few days building up farms and collecting emeralds and breeding villagers in the hopes of getting a librarian that offers Mending (I've gotten several different enchantments so far, but none were of any use; when it comes to this I'll trade out any offers that give emeralds and use a flint and steel to set them on fire; getting a Mending trade will be the most difficult part by far and might take 30+ villagers). My main source of emeralds have been wheat, carrots, and potatoes, the latter two new trades I added, though wheat is more effective until you get Fortune as I made carrots and potatoes much more expensive. I've also gotten a trade for ender pearls (formerly eyes of ender) so I don't need to wait around at night for endermen (from which I've only gotten one ender pearl from, at one point I started wondering if there was a bug (I made endermen in the End and from spawners have 1/5 the drop rate, and in general they require a player kill to drop, both as direct nerfs to AFK farms) but they averaged 1/2 an ender pearl in a test world).

In order to get villagers from the village to my villager breeder (a simple enclosure lined with doors) I made a channel between them and nudged villagers into the entrance in the village, then blocked it off and placed water down to push them along, as seen in this view:

This is another look at my progress later on (most of it has been underground and there won't be much changing on the surface until I start building a permanent base, which I have done after defeating the Ender Dragon in the last few worlds):

This is the first level 30 enchantment that I made:


The second one turned out to be much better, even if it only had one enchantment:


Immediately after getting it I went to mine the 16 amethyst ore (4 veins) that I'd found so far and got 32 drops from them:


These items are all part of my "caving gear" which I exclusively use while caving, and all of it will be enchanted using books as it is simply too risky to try directly enchanting and getting unwanted enchantments (even if this were 1.8+, with a preview, you can still get unwanted enchantments, e.g. it shows Efficiency IV on a pickaxe, which means it could get Fortune or Silk Touch, either of which would ruin it as they would make it too expensive to repair and Silk Touch doesn't drop the actual resources. I have considered adding grindstones but haven't done so yet):

These are the totals for the first three days/play sessions; this does not include 16 amethyst ore that I didn't mine until I'd gotten Fortune:

This is how I marked which tunnels had amethyst, including how much (four veins of 2, 5, 2, 7). Also, the floor is actually bedrock, which renders as a darker version of the "biome stone" within a biome (normal stone for most biomes):

I'm not sure how applicable this is to 1.6.4 (the site doesn't go that far back) but the chance of the highest (common) level for many enchantments levels off at around level 22-23 with only small increases afterwards; the enchantment that I need the most of is Unbreaking III, so I focus of getting enough of it first (unless a villager offers it, then most of the other enchantments can be obtained by enchanting books at level 1 so I may even do that if Efficiency/Protection are the only enchantments I need, even if it requires a lot of anvil uses; unlike 1.8+ the prior work penalty only increases by 2 per working):

As mentioned before, I went to the Nether to find a fortress and get blaze rods; while I did not add all the biomes and features like 1.16 did it was still a more interesting experience than vanilla 1.6.4/previous versions of TMCW. Terrain is generally more difficult to cover due to much more numerous caves and the addition of ravines, as well as pockets and veins of magma blocks, which will deal damage if walked on, and more lava flows and lakes of lava and magma blocks. However, cave maps enable you to map the Nether, as well as show the direction you are facing (on surface/vanilla maps the cursor randomly spins), which made it much easier to return from the fortress that I found, which was fairly far away from the portal (I fixed a bug which caused fortresses to generate in north-south lines; while they have about the same overall frequency they are more spread out. A similar change made in 1.16 explains in part why they are harder to find, though some of them were also replaced with bastions):

There are also more hostile mobs in the Nether which will attack the player (as opposed to mostly zombie pigmen, which only attack if the player attacks them), including Nether husks (a pink Husk variant), Endermen, and Nethermites (similar to Endermites but pink), and mobs are more commonly encountered because the spawn range is limited to 32 blocks above and below the player (this simulates the depth of the Overworld):

Other features that can be found in the Nether include dungeons and gold ore; dungeons are unique in that they can spawn pigmen which are always hostile but do not alert other pigmen when attacked (other mobs include Nether husks, normal skeletons, and witches). Wither skeletons can also spawn with enchantments on their sword. Also, netherrack stalagmites (placed as stalactites with a lava source above their support block) will gradually fill cauldrons with lava, making it renewable (this also works for stone stalactites in Volcanic Wasteland; otherwise, only water works, corresponding to the particles that visually drip from them).

I collected all the blaze rods I'll ever need in one go (25 is enough for a brewing stand and 48 blaze powder/eyes of ender, and 36 ender chests after using 12 on the End portal), instead of going back to make Fire Resistance potions after I got one (or two but a magma cube dropped magma cream), as I mined up below a Blaze spawner and figured that I could easily attack them with relatively low risk of being attacked by letting them sink into a hole I dug, with a 1 block space at the bottom where I could attack without them seeing me:

Here is the path I took to the fortress on a cave map; the fortress was at the very edge of the map (level 3) so it was about 550 blocks away from the portal (parts of it are off the map to the south; the fact it is clearly visible with a map scale of 1024 blocks across shows how large they are):

After this I located a stronghold, discovering many new biomes, including another biome which was only added in TMCWv5, Autumnal Forest, and one of the rarest regular biomes, Volcanic Wasteland, as well as the highest terrain that I've ever found - twice in a row in two adjacent biomes, Extreme Savanna Mountains and Extreme Forest Mountains:

In fact, this is the highest terrain that I've ever seen in any seed in any version of TMCW (TMCWv3 enabled terrain to go above y=127 with an absolute cap at y=191, or 192 at feet level when standing on it); previously, I found terrain to y=189 in the seed "-4044260048752824454" in TMCWv4/4.5:

https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/survival-mode/2780836-themastercavers-world-version-4-4-5?comment=189

It is also interesting to note that despite the increase in the height limit in 1.18 it seems that terrain rarely, if ever goes above about y=224 based on the chart of ore distribution within a half-million chunks (some ores apparently peak at y=320, or would if there was actually anything up there):

https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Ore?file=OreDistribution_1-18-1.png

I also found a Tropical Swamp and Winter Forest (shown above along with Autumnal Forest), bringing the total number of biomes that I've found to 11:

Here is a list of the biomes that I've found so far in the order I found them ("Extreme" Savanna/Forest Mountains are technically sub-biomes within their "non-extreme" counterparts, much as e.g. Forest has Forest Hills):

Meadow (spawn biome)
Mushroom Forest
Jungle
Mixed Forest
Bushlands
Quartz Desert
Savanna Mountains
Forest Mountains
Autumnal Forest
Winter Forest
Volcanic Wasteland

After trading about 1,000 emeralds and going through around a dozen librarians I finally got a Mending trade, ending my trading for now (I could still try to get other enchantments):

This greatly understates the number of times I harvested crops since I used water to break most of them; likewise, sugar cane can drop up to two blocks per harvest:

I finally enchanted all of my "caving gear", as well as a few other items - which required mining a total of 15,618 quartz, the most that I've ever mined in any world (I mined 13,746 in TMCWv3 and 10,345 in TMCWv4). I also mined 10,000 netherrack, also the most that I've ever mined (compared to 5,719 in TMCWv3 and 3,801 in TMCWv4):

I've finally reached the "end-game", when I actually start doing what I enjoy the most - caving - which will take up the vast majority of the time I spend playing on this world, as with all of my other worlds. Interestingly, it only took one more play session (16 vs 15) than in TMCWv4, but as mentioned before I spent significantly more time playing, taking a total of 2.83 days compared to 2.44 days in TMCWv4:

TMCWv4:


TMCWv5:

Compared to TMCWv4, there are a lot more underground features to discover, in addition to more biomes, including biomes that I still have never found in Survival dating as far back as TMCWv1 - released nearly 8 years ago (Ice Hills and TMCW Mega Taiga; I've also never found Ice Plains Spikes, added in TMCWv3, or Great Forest, added in TMCWv4):

Cave variants in TMCWv4, which added most of the variants except for colossal cave systems and larger caves and ravines (interestingly, TMCWv1 had larger circular rooms, up to about twice that of vanilla, but for whatever reason I did not include them in TMCWv2-3):


Cave variants in TMCWv5; many of the variants that were previously added in TMCWv4 are now larger; a giant cave region averages about 1.7 million blocks, up from 1.2 million (a bugfix in TMCWv4.5 to the way large caves generate slightly increased their volume to 1.3 million), and the largest possible single caves can exceed a million blocks, 625,000 for the largest ravines (for comparison, the maximum sizes in TMCWv4 were about 500,000 and 425,000 and the largest ones that I found were 252,000 and 267,000). Another major difference is that only the very largest sizes of caves, colossal cave systems, and regional caves are excluded from a 512 block radius of the origin, so I'll start finding non-vanilla caves right away (as mentioned before, I suspect there is a circular room cave system where I started mining down):

This is the largest cave near the bottom, the largest known cave in TMCWv5, with a volume of 1.1 million blocks (for perspective, the small cave to the lower-left is a typical "large cave" in vanilla, from sometime in Beta to 1.17):






An example of a large ravine, which can get much larger, which also shows that biome-specific underground blocks now replace all stone/dirt/gravel down to bedrock, with ores to match the "biome stone" (which is actually a separate block which has the mining properties of stone and drops the block it mimics; this enables ores to replace it without having to worry about replacing the walls of villages and other structures, or as was previously done, placing ores first, then replacing stone with biome-specific blocks, which is both less performant and causes ores to get cut off along chunk borders):

This is my main base, which is simpler in some ways than the base I built in TMCWv4; I did not include farms for every crop, only potatoes, as it is unlikely I'll actually need to grow more of anything other than sugarcane for paper for maps, which I can just harvest from a nearby river after the several stacks that I have runs out (which will be a long time) and the village nearby has wheat and carrot farms. I've also made extensive use of many new blocks, such as "smooth quartz" (uses the bottom texture of quartz slabs on all sides, crafted with 2x2 slabs; the block itself is actually a double stone slab block), barrels instead of chests for most of my storage, "light blocks" instead of glowstone (crafted by smelting it; of interest, the texture is actually one I made and used for glowstone over 8 years ago, as seen in this thread), wood-specific fence variants (in addition to oak), flower pot variants, and more:

One thing to note is that I did not place as many lights on the ground as usual because I reduced the block light level that prevents hostile mobs from spawning from 8 to 6, which matches the threshold used by cave maps (6 or higher within 8 blocks of a torch):


It is hard to see but I have a couple cats at each entrance (front and back), which use two of the new variants I added (the same as later vanilla versions, with the original three variants unaltered). I generally find cats to be more useful than wolves because they scare creepers away (I'd already had one explode and destroy the fence/gate). Also, you can see a berry bush near the right, based on sweet berries, which I got from the Autumnal Forest:


Note the flower pots next to the windows, which contain actual trees instead of saplings, with many variants which can be chosen from; the larger trees are in a "large flower pot" variant which is 10x10 pixels instead of 6x6:


In the corner near the center is a composter, essentially a garbage bin (most plant-based items can be composted to eventually yield a dirt block, otherwise items can be thrown inside to despawn):


Instead of chests I've used barrels for my mineral storage area:


The barrels above the bookshelves will be used to store enchanted books that I find while caving, otherwise, I don't actually enchant anything at this point other than iron pickaxes I find in minecarts, and at level 1 (I use them to dig tunnels for railways and work on secondary bases, with my amethyst pickaxe solely used while caving):


The bookshelves that you see are also a bit different from vanilla - each one actually stores 12 books, 156 total (112 * 13, minus two that are hidden in the corner) which can be removed by right-clicking with an empty hand; conversely, you can add books to an "empty bookshelf" (the vanilla recipe crafts an "original" bookshelf which appears identical but does not have this special functionality, same for naturally generated bookshelves. Enchantment tables require a bookshelf with at least 3 books):


I decided to only have a potato farm as anything else is rarely, if ever used after this point:


The animals in the pen are mainly decorative as I do not use them after this point; I'll replace the sheep with pink sheep when I find one:


I saved a few of the villagers that I'd originally bred to get Mending, with the Mending villager locked up for extra safety; Mending books themselves are stored in the barrel to the left (I had 3 extra books left over and will put any books I find while caving here):


These are surface (left) and cave(right) maps of the area around my base/branch-mine; of note, the cave maps must never be taken down after I start caving as they will update when held and any explored caves in the area will be rendered and ruin them (if this ever happens I could restore a backup of the map data files):


These are the other maps that I made of the path I took to the stronghold, the stronghold on cave maps (fun fact: I actually went back to the stronghold just to make a second cave map of the part that went off the edge of the one I'd made when I originally explored it), and the map I used in the Nether:


For comparison, this will be my map wall, currently a single level 3 map centered at 0,0, with space for up to a 3x3 map area, the maximum I plan to explore (such an area represents about a full year of daily playing at the rate of 100 chunks per play session; I could enlarge the area by storing the copies I carry around elsewhere but it is unlikely I'll actually explore all 9 maps; in TMCWv4 I explored about 2/3 of the area over two main play periods):

Also, I've also been making minor updates to TMCWv5; for example, I just added the ability for fence gates to take on the wood type of the fences they are adjacent to (I used spruce fences around my base and realized that fence gates wouldn't match, so I fixed it on the spot; while there are some limitations (you can't have more than 2 non-oak gates in a row or by themselves/with nether brick fences or walls) adding "render-only" block states means no actual block IDs or items are required):

It is interesting to note that while I've fixed various bugs in TMCWv5 itself many of the bugs I've fixed recently have actually been vanilla bugs, such as fences and walls incorrectly connecting to fence gates (MC-9565), which I noticed when testing the aforementioned change, hence the fence gate shown between a fence and wall, showing that they no longer connect improperly, or non-block items or blocks that use the "2D" item model not being centered properly when rotated in an item frame (MC-8660; the insane thing about this bug report is that it was marked as "invalid" just because they were using a mod), or missing item use animations and statistics when shearing and dying sheep.

In the first day of caving I explored a circular room cave system, which as mentioned before I'd suspected there was one in the area where I started my branch-mine, a mineshaft, and two ravines, as well as a possible "random" cave system, or possibly a "random cave cluster", as I analyzed the area I explored but it only listed the circular room cave system and mineshaft (only full-sized cave systems are listed, not cave clusters). I also found anew biome - Rocky Mountains, a realistic-looking (as opposed to "Minecraft-style" mountains) mountainous biome mostly made up of exposed stone and andesite (ores and springs are not allowed to generate exposed to the surface) and snow-capped peaks with a gradual transition to coarse dirt, then grass with large spruce trees at lower elevations. I haven't actually seen the biome from the surface but there is no mistaking it on a map:

An example of Rocky Mountains, which was added in TMCWv4:

I've been caving for just two days but have already seen or found two very rare things, or at least, one is very rare in vanilla - a zombie in diamond armor and an enchanted golden apple:

A rendering of the cave with another large cave nearby (only "large" caves are shown here, it was part of a much larger cave system); a ravine that overlaps above it allowed be to get a better view down into the cave (as indicated by the sand it would of had lava visible from the surface):


A list of the largest caves I've found in my first world, with a volume of at least 10,000 blocks (the largest known cave in vanilla has a volume of about 26,000 blocks, just slightly larger than the minimum for a "large cave" in TMCW, which can exceed a million blocks at the high end):

1. 2851 27 1678 (length: 103, width: 21, volume: 15378)
2. -967 27 1614 (length: 96, width: 20, volume: 12851)
3. 2303 39 2348 (length: 111, width: 17, volume: 11730)
4. 25 35 1868 (length: 106, width: 19, volume: 11228)
5. 285 29 -1678 (length: 109, width: 17, volume: 11175)
6. 2360 29 1351 (length: 97, width: 17, volume: 11036)
7. 1070 29 835 (length: 92, width: 20, volume: 10896)
8. -175 10 -2769 (length: 101, width: 20, volume: 10700)
9. -1223 8 -866 (length: 103, width: 18, volume: 10568)
10. -409 48 2804 (length: 101, width: 21, volume: 10362)
11. -2632 30 -761 (length: 110, width: 17, volume: 10191)

The first item in the fourth row is "quartz sandstone iron ore", as opposed to "stone iron ore", which is the "normal" variant found in stone, which I found in some caves that went into a Quartz Desert:




It is interesting to note that I've still mined more gold than iron due to all the gold I found in the Nether; quartz is still more than half the total but this will change soon and eventually become a small fraction of the total as I will never mine more:

Amazingly, I saw another zombie in diamond armor today, this time fully enchanted; neither of them have dropped anything. Unlike the first one this one was outside my base, which I'd returned to after 3 days of caving, where zombies regularly congregate in an attempt to get to the villagers:

For perspective, at the maximum difficulty factor on Normal, which reaches a constant maximum after 100 hours have passed, there is a 20% chance of a zombie or skeleton having armor and of that there is a 0.3% chance of it being diamond, averaging one every 1667 mobs; for comparison, in vanilla 1.6.4 the chance is one in 15551 mobs (a 15% chance of armor and a 0.04287% of being diamond) and only in chunks that have been loaded by a player for at least 50 hours. TMCW's amethyst armor is 1/3 as likely as diamond (one in 5000 mobs and one in 1250 mobs for either diamond or amethyst).

Notably, in TMCWv4 I actually saw two diamond or amethyst armored mobs on the same day on two separate occasions - just minutes apart in one case (they likely did in fact exist at the same time).

Also, I found my first "real" large cave today, as in one of the special variants that generate independently of cave systems and can get far larger than anything in vanilla; this one was on the smaller side with a volume of about 40,000 blocks, which is still much larger than anything that can exist in vanilla 1.6.4 (up to 1.17), and it merged with a smaller cave to form a single cave with a volume of over 50,000 blocks:

-168 21 72 (length: 216, width: 25, volume: 40845)
-200 23 136 (length: 248, width: 14, volume: 14207)

Here is a rendering of what I've explored over the past three days:

After I returned to my base I decided to start exploring from a cave that lead in the opposite direction from the circular room cave system that I started exploring from, which lead to a fairly large "1.6.4-style" cave system below my base (this means a cave system which is extremely dense such that the tunnels merge together to form random chambers with little recognizable tunnels, which is typical of larger/denser cave systems in 1.6.4 but much rarer and more limited in size since 1.7):

Large cave: -472 25 -200 (length: 336, width: 21, volume: 38032)
Large ravine: -488 28 -200 (length: 206, width: 14, depth: 41, volume: 53244)

Large ravine: -440 24 -152 (length: 180, width: 20, depth: 45, volume: 85026)







Large cave: -376 18 -120 (length: 248, width: 25, volume: 39563)

Structures/caves found (by number):
16 normal dungeons
10 ravines
4 vertical pit caves
3 large caves (volume >= 25000)
2 large ravines (volume >= 25000)
1 fossil
1 large cave system (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
1 maze cave cluster
1 mineshaft
1 random cave cluster
1 ribbed tunnel cave cluster
1 stronghold (with eye of ender)
1 toroidal cave
1 village (1 Meadow)
(44 individual structures/caves)

Large caves (volume >= 25000, in order found):
1: -168 21 72 (length: 216, width: 25, volume: 40845)
2: -472 25 -200 (length: 336, width: 21, volume: 38032)
3: -376 18 -120 (length: 248, width: 25, volume: 39563)

Large ravines (volume >= 25000, in order found):
1: -488 28 -200 (length: 206, width: 14, depth: 41, volume: 53244)
2: -440 24 -152 (length: 180, width: 20, depth: 45, volume: 85026)

I don't have much interest in the forums anymore as they are all but dead but I will try to continue making updates for as long as I play on this world.

This is an in-game map of what I've explored in 15 play sessions spent caving:

This includes another Autumnal Forest (the first one I found is well to the north where I found the stronghold), which is clearly visible in the southeast, a Flower Forest (appearing as relatively treeless as they have a low tree density and map pixels use the most common block) to the south of the Rocky Mountains near the center, with the edge of another Rocky Mountains visible to the east, a Taiga far to the south, and a Mega Tree Plains to the south of the Quartz Desert to the west, which brings the total number of biomes that I've found up to 15:

Meadow (spawn biome)
Mushroom Forest
Jungle
Mixed Forest
Bushlands
Quartz Desert
Savanna Mountains
Forest Mountains
Autumnal Forest
Winter Forest
Volcanic Wasteland
Rocky Mountains
Mega Tree Plains
Flower Forest
Taiga

I've already mined more than 50,000 resources over this period (this does not including anything from before I started caving); the relative amounts of ores are pretty close to vanilla/TMCWv4, but rarer ores are slightly more common due to changes I made to ore distribution (in particular, there are additional ores added which only generate if exposed in caves, particularly diamond, redstone, and amethyst, where this is 25% of the normal generation). I've also already mined 4 times as much ruby ore as I did over 222 days of caving in TMCWv4, where I only found one relatively small Rocky Mountains (plus a "failed" biome which was smaller than many sub-biomes, which can happen between climate zone or land-ocean transitions) and this was the only "common" biome with ruby; I also doubled the number of veins per chunk (I initially added it as a fun thing to find, with a block as the only use; in TMCWv4.5 I added the ability for rubies to reduce the prior work penalty, making it much more valuable):

Some of the underground features I've found for the first time include a "double dungeon", a variant of dungeon with 2 spawners, each spawning a different type of mob, and 2-3 chests; in this case, skeletons and endermen, the latter of which are more dangerous as they will become hostile if the player comes within 8 blocks (as with looking at them wearing a pumpkin will prevent this); of course, they still have the weakens of 2 block high spaces; I got it under control by mining around the top and placing torches:

Also, one of the chests had some quite interesting loot - two eyes of ender, which have a 10% chance in place of ender pearls (stacks of 1 instead of 1-4); this makes it possible, as in vanilla 1.6.4, to find a stronghold and even get to the End without going to the Nether, but it would be quite difficult to find enough (these are the only ones I've found so far out of 33 normal dungeons and 1 double dungeon, of which an average of 1/11 or 3 spawners will have endermen, though I've found closer to 5):

Next I found a "spiral cave system", consisting of caves which form spirals of various pitch/diameters; while each individual cave forms a perfectly regular spiral they will intersect each other differently at each turn, giving the cave system more variety overall:

Notably, these were based on caves in "Triple Height Terrain", a mod I made in late 2013/early 2014, before TMCW; in this mod they were used to ensure that cave systems were vertically connected due to the ground depth (192 layers) and were the only caves that could appear on the surface.

After that I saw a zombie in full amethyst armor, the third such mob in either diamond or amethyst with the latter being 3 times rarer, but still more common than diamond armor in vanilla at maximum regional difficulty; speaking of which, I've spent more than 100 hours in this world, which means that the difficulty factor is now at its maximum and will remain there forever (moon phase still controls a few things like slime spawning in swamps).

I also saw a unique mob - an Autumnal Creeper, which exclusively spawn within Autumnal Forest, where their color blends in better, other than that, they have the same behavior as regular creepers and may drop a ruby as a rare drop, making it renewable (they were pretty much taken directly from the suggestion I based Autumnal Forest on, including the texture itself):

Notably, I also found another enchanted golden apple, the second one so far out of around 55 dungeon chests (based on the averages per dungeon, they can also be found much less often in mineshaft chests), while on average one can be found every 122 chests (the chance of two is slightly less than twice this as multiple can be found in one chest). Here is a list of the probabilities of golden apples, enchanted books, and amethyst horse armor for all structures, as well as vanilla dungeons:

For comparison, in the latest vanilla version the chance of an enchanted golden apple in a dungeon chest is about 3.1%, or about 4 times more common, and more than half as common as normal golden apples in 1.6.4, 5.7% (which were even rarer in 1.5.2, just 0.6%). I also included enchanted books since this can give the probability of finding a particular enchantment; with an average of about 0.218 per dungeon chest and 27 different enchantments an average of 123.6 chests need to be searched to find a particular enchantment, including Smelting and Vein Miner, which can only be found in loot chests (maybe this is too rare, I did consider making them easier to find in some way; that said, I can still expect to find 5-6 of each if I find as many dungeons as I did in TMCWv4, plus more from other structures. This still means around 150 hours of caving per book, and Vein Miner can only be found at level 1). Another rare item is amethyst horse armor, with a 2.7% probability of being found in a dungeon chest (an average of 37 chests, which is less than I've found but I haven't found it so far).

I then found the largest cave that I've found so far in this world, with a volume of about 75,000 blocks, which is still small as far as these caves go, but larger than their average size (as an example, a 262,144 chunk area of a random seed had a total of 484 caves with a volume of at least 25,000; 160 had a volume of at least 75,000; 48 had a volume of at least 225,000 (another factor of 3 in size); and the largest had a volume of 655,000):

After that I came across a "vertical cave system", where all the caves go up/down at relatively steep and twisting angles; these screenshots are from the intersection of several of the larger caves, of which there are a total of 50-60 in various sizes and start/end points:

I then came across what has so far turned out to be a triple intersecting mineshaft complex, a rather unusual find given that mineshafts are spaced out, however, unlike vanilla the overlapping areas have been very small - in fact, I only recognized one because the wood type of the supports changed from spruce to jungle, and they only touched at the very ends without any actual overlap:

Also, this is the central room of one of the mineshafts in a large cave (part of which is also shown); as noted before, all parts generate wooden platforms over air and the only places they will be disrupted is where they caught fire:

One of the mineshafts, as well as another large cave, intersected a "jungle cave", a special cave structure which generates as an irregular room lined with cobblestone and filled with jungle vegetation which can be found under jungles and tropical swamps; both biomes also have random patches of grass on cave floors (tall grass/ferns are of a variant known as "cave grass", which can survive in the dark, unlike normal grass/ferns):

The part of the right side is a skylight which leads to the surface from the middle of a jungle cave, though about half of this cave had been overwritten by another cave (or more accurately, jungle caves do not overwrite air but the effect is the same, much as strongholds are commonly perceived to be overwritten by caves but they are just coded to not generate walls over air, while the interior parts remain intact):

Here is a list of everything that I've found so far:

Play sessions spent caving: 15

Structures/caves found (by number):
33 normal dungeons
22 ravines
8 vertical pit caves
6 large caves (volume >= 25000)
5 mineshafts
3 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
3 maze cave clusters
3 random cave clusters
2 large ravines (volume >= 25000)
2 ribbed tunnel cave clusters
2 spiral cave systems
1 circular room cave cluster
1 double dungeon
1 fossil
1 jungle cave
1 stronghold (with eye of ender)
1 toroidal cave
1 vertical cave cluster
1 vertical cave system
1 village (1 Meadow)
(98 individual structures/caves)


Large caves (volume >= 25000, in order found):
1: -168 21 72 (length: 216, width: 25, volume: 40845)
2: -472 25 -200 (length: 336, width: 21, volume: 38032)
3: -376 18 -120 (length: 248, width: 25, volume: 39563)
4. 24 22 168 (length: 336, width: 27, volume: 75050)
5. 168 34 120 (length: 183, width: 22, volume: 28289)
6. 136 33 -200 (length: 202, width: 22, volume: 28027)

Large ravines (volume >= 25000, in order found):
1: -488 28 -200 (length: 206, width: 14, depth: 41, volume: 53244)
2: -440 24 -152 (length: 180, width: 20, depth: 45, volume: 85026)

I found two of the rarest and most valuable items in the game (TMCW) - amethyst horse armor and an enchanted book with Smelting, both of which can only be found in loot chests:

Air: 62577
Wood Planks: 6821
Fence: 5780
Rail: 1638
Web: 1479
Redstone Torch: 161
Dirt: 99
Minecart Chest: 21
Mob Spawner: 16

Corridor length = fences / 4 * 5 = 7225 blocks
Size: 213 x 223 x 37 blocks

TMCWv5:
Found 500000 mineshafts (chance: 0.0055193417); small: 436692 (pass: 0.5069085); large: 63308 (pass: 0.2401414; large/total: 0.126616)
Average size: 127.78415 (small: 113.21909, large: 228.25238; range: 4-707)

Vanilla 1.6.4*:
Found 500000 mineshafts (chance: 0.0099865766)
Average size: 127.01622; range: 4-441

*with a fix for mineshafts that have no corridors (only the central room), which affects about 1 in 500 mineshafts

Next to it is a Mega Tree Plains, with isolated Mega Trees, which as shown can reach the clouds from sea level (up to 64 blocks tall):

I collected a total of 1,047 rails from the mineshaft that I found yesterday - surpassing the previous record (757 rails) by 38%; I analyzed the mineshaft and it had 351 structure pieces according to CaveFinder, while MCEdit found 1,142 rails when I analyzed the mineshaft in a Superflat world (some will be washed away and I do occasionally miss areas, and I usually don't collect the ones under minecarts):

-328 344 (size: 351)



(0:0),Air,33824
(1:0),Stone,1246440
(3:0),Dirt,80
(5:0),Wood Planks,3362
(30:0),Web,801
(52:0),Monster Spawner,6
(66:0),Rail,508
(66:1),Rail,629
(66:2),Rail,2
(66:6),Rail,1
(66:7),Rail,1
(66:9),Rail,1
(75:1),Redstone Torch (off),16
(75:2),Redstone Torch (off),15
(75:3),Redstone Torch (off),20
(75:4),Redstone Torch (off),26
(85:0),Fence,3228
MinecartChest,16

Size: 190 x 212 x 32 blocks
Corridor length: 4035 blocks (fences / 4 * 5)

Quote from TheMasterCaver»

I've mainly spent the last few days building up farms and collecting emeralds and breeding villagers in the hopes of getting a librarian that offers Mending

Probably you know this already, but if you have a villager you've never traded with, you can isolate him, and repeatedly place a lectern and destroy it until a mending trade shows up since mending is a treasure enchantment but can still be selected for a novice Librarian.

Quote from Palin»

Probably you know this already, but if you have a villager you've never traded with, you can isolate him, and repeatedly place a lectern and destroy it until a mending trade shows up since mending is a treasure enchantment but can still be selected for a novice Librarian.

I'm sorry I was supposing, without any proof, that you started a new world to play the latest 1.18.

This is the same ravine that was shown intersecting the huge cave in the previous spoiler, the second time recently that I've found caves exposing low-level lava to the surface (I've never found such an occurrence in my first world, with around 120,000 chunks explored, unless you count cave-ins below the seafloor):

Largest mineshafts:
-328  344 (size: 351), 1047 rails
 360  120 (size: 332),  898 rails
-536  360 (size: 324),  740 rails
  24 -216 (size: 289), ~600 rails (merged with two other mineshafts so hard to tell)
-200 -184 (size: 212),  542 rails

Seed: 6511199847387183207
  1:  1096  -488 (size: 426)
  2:   312  1416 (size: 371)
  3:  1096 -1400 (size: 363)
  4:  1320  -248 (size: 340)
  5:  -136  1192 (size: 312)
  6:   760  -168 (size: 311)
  7:  -344  1416 (size: 288)
  8:  1304  1512 (size: 288)
  9:  -248  1096 (size: 283)
 10:   776  -808 (size: 266)

Seed: -5565062877316731835
  1:   488 -1048 (size: 381)
  2:   360  1112 (size: 338)
  3: -1176  -472 (size: 326)
  4: -1288  -824 (size: 268)
  5:  -728  1080 (size: 252)
  6:  -968  -264 (size: 251)
  7:  -392 -1256 (size: 247)
  8: -1432   424 (size: 245)
  9: -1528   312 (size: 226)
 10: -1416   872 (size: 225)

Seed: 1543134366592474245
  1:   296   824 (size: 370)
  2:   936   -56 (size: 355)
  3:   856   712 (size: 343)
  4:  -408   -72 (size: 338)
  5:   -40   504 (size: 336)
  6:   824  -168 (size: 295)
  7:  -824 -1416 (size: 294)
  8:  -600 -1432 (size: 281)
  9:   -72  -840 (size: 277)
 10:  -824   600 (size: 276)

After spending a couple days exploring the remaining explorable parts of the map centered at 0,0 (a couple areas in the northeast and southeast are still unexplored as I found no caves leading into those areas) I've started exploring the massive cave I found earlier, which is easily the largest single cave that I've ever explored in any world - it is so massive that that the part I've explored so far can't be seen from the surface opening that was my first view of the cave, and likewise, from where I've been exploring only the very edge of a giant lava sea can be seen - and even from the edge of that area the far end still fades away into the distance:

This was taken from the edge of the mineshaft shown in the spoiler below; in the distance you can make out the edge of the lava sea that is shown below:


Note that the sunlight on the left side is from a different surface opening than the one from which I first saw the cave:


The huge mushrooms near the left side may be the ones just visible in the far distance (near top-center) in this screenshot I took when I first found the cave; I revisited it later but couldn't see any light from the part I've explored so far:

There was also most of a mineshaft suspended in the cave, giving you an idea of just how large it is, especially given that mineshafts can't generate within 6 chunks of the start of the largest caves (in this case, the intersection of 3 or 4 main tunnels, which may or may not be distinctly separated, in this cave them seem to be as one screenshot shows what looks like a triple intersection), yet the central room was entirely within the cave:

Mineshafts no longer generate like this in newer versions (since 1.10 to at least 1.16/17) but I think it makes for some interesting exploration and even made them generate more intact by adding platforms below staircases and the central room, and around the sides of the second floor of crossings:

For comparison, this was the largest single cave I found in TMCWv4, with a volume of 252,000 blocks; I say "single cave" since the largest underground feature I found, a giant cave region, had a volume of 1.26 million blocks, which is larger than the largest known single cave, about 1.1 million:

Winter Taiga (originally just Taiga in vanilla):


Frozen Lake, with numerous polar bears, which can uniquely spawn on ice; in the distance is a Winter Forest, which I'd previously found when I found a stronghold (a different biome to the north, this is one of three biomes that I've found at least twice so far):


TMCW Mega Taiga, my own implementation of Mega Taiga, and originally named just that, before I added the "vanilla" variants from 1.7 with 2x2 trees, podzol, and coarse dirt:

This is what caves under Ice Plains Spikes look like; the "snow" is actually "Snow Block Biome Stone", which has the mining properties of stone and drops snowballs when mined (or snow blocks with Silk Touch, as with other variants "biome stone" is a technical block and never drops itself, only the block it mimics). The "smoking" block on the right side is "Dry Ice", which deals freezing damage when walked upon, not unlike how magma blocks deal fire damage (as with fire-dealing blocks some mobs, like skeletons, endermen, and polar bears, are immune to dry ice), and if it comes into contact with water it will form ice (flowing water) or packed ice (water sources); this makes it possible to make an ice generator in analogy with cobblestone generators. If it touches lava it will explode and turn it into obsidian or cobblestone; the entire idea for dry ice came from a since-deleted suggestion which was unfortunately never properly archived:


Another unique feature of "ice" biomes is that caves have water instead of lava, which are separated as shown here; there is also no lava anywhere else within the biome (excepting springs that flow into it; the opposite extreme, lava only, is found within Volcanic Wasteland):


I saw two more mobs in diamond/amethyst armor recently, they skeleton dropped down from the huge cave which was directly above while the zombie was in a mineshaft I was exploring in the remaining part of the quartz desert within the first map (I explored a lot of small scattered regions over a day by revisiting old return points). Another skeleton has a diamond sword (skeletons can spawn with a sword instead of a bow; like Wither skeletons they move much faster with baby skeletons having no boost as they are already fast):




A new mob drop which I hadn't gotten yet; hammers are a new tool I added which can "uncraft" many blocks (e.g. cobblestone drops gravel, which in turn drops gravel sand, then sand, thus making it renewable, if with 3 separate steps required. Other blocks, such as chests, drop several of the materials they were made with, with Fortune increasing the yield; a few blocks, like quartz and mineral blocks, do give 100% back. So far I've only used them to mine glowstone in the Nether until I got Silk Touch since they are the effective tool for "glass" based blocks):


A large hill in the Mixed Forest to the west of spawn:

Near the upper-left is the circular room cave system from which I started caving, with my base just to the north; I could have extended my branch-mine much further east without any issues, until reaching the long ravine near top-center (it extends to the eastern edge and just to the south of the spiral cave system to the west of it):

This is a comparison of the cave to the largest caves I found in TMCWv4, World1 (my first world), and the largest known cave in vanilla 1.6.4, which is just above the threshold for what I consider to be a "large" cave in TMCW - with a volume of over half a million blocks it is more than twice as large as the largest cave in TMCWv4, 22.5 times larger than the largest known cave in vanilla 1.6.4, and 38 times larger than the largest cave I found in my first world - and even then it is still far from the largest known cave in TMCWv5, which has nearly double the volume (the largest known cave in TMCWv4 is slightly smaller than this cave):



For another perspective, this cave is nearly 8 times larger than the second largest cave that I've found so far, and larger than all other caves combined, and is actually even larger than indicated since CaveFinder only measures the volume below sea level and parts of it extend above, as does the terrain (conversely, caves below a body of water can be smaller than measured):

 1.  552 28  232 (length: 448, width: 44, volume: 584150)
 2.   24 22  168 (length: 336, width: 27, volume:  75050)
 3.  232 25  -40 (length: 336, width: 30, volume:  63014)
 4: -168 21   72 (length: 216, width: 25, volume:  40845)
 5: -376 18 -120 (length: 248, width: 25, volume:  39563)
 6: -472 25 -200 (length: 336, width: 21, volume:  38032)
 7. -344 36 -536 (length: 127, width: 30, volume:  31968)
 8.   -8 32 -376 (length: 153, width: 24, volume:  31058)
 9.  168 34  120 (length: 183, width: 22, volume:  28289)
10.  136 33 -200 (length: 202, width: 22, volume:  28027)

Here is a full size rendering of the underground, with the cave near the far right (circled):

Coal:      1381
Iron:       471
Redstone:    78
Gold:        61
Lapis:       19
Diamond:     17
Total ore: 2027

Mob kills   412

XP:        4434