The ravine I found earlier turned out to be the largest ravine I've ever explored, with a volume of nearly 400,000 blocks, likely more since CaveFinder only counts the volume below y=63 and as often is the case the ground was deeper:
If you are wondering how I took this screenshot, I actually copied the region files with the ravines to a Creative world to take the screenshots, partly so I could set the render distance to 16 without generating more chunks than necessary, as well as to set the time to night:
These are before and after screenshots of my map, with the ravine clearly visible near the upper-right; I'm standing at the western end in the first one:
Not only that, it was one of 8 intersecting ravines, including two other large ravines (volume >= 25,000 blocks), 7 if you don't count one ravine which was almost entirely overwritten by the mega ravine; either way, this is the second most intersecting ravines I've ever found, behind 10 in TMCWv4; 7 is also the most intersecting ravines in vanilla:, with another occurrence of 7 intersecting ravines found in this world. The total volume of all the ravines was also over half a million blocks:
This is the same map but with the width divided by 10, revealing an 8th ravine (#2 in this image) which is almost entirely overwritten (a bit of one end sticks out to the north near the middle of the largest ravine):
Also, this is one of the large caves I found before, which had a volume of about 149,000 blocks, along with yet another large cave which I haven't explored yet (or the one with a large surface opening near where I built my latest base):
This is actually a separate cave which was connected to the cave:
Another large cave which I haven't explored yet, the far end extends into a Volcanic Wasteland biome, as seen by the veins of magma blocks:
Also, this shows just how much I've explored in just a few days - my playing has reached unprecedented levels as my online social presence has declined to near zero (I simply cannot fathom what happened to the millions of people who used to frequent this site, with literally days passing without a single post in this section, and only person posting in this thread in over half a YEAR. I've even searched for many of them yet they all seem to be dead/inactive online, or it isn't as common as I thought to reuse the same names elsewhere, or they simply aren't posting for whatever reason - they do realize that they are only contributing to the decline of the site if they don't post, right?):
In fact, I've set a new goal for this world - to mine one million ores, a goal which I'm more than two-thirds of the way to, and a third as many as I mined in my first world; I've also had to expand my storage area as I ran out of space for coal (at first I stacked barrels, then I dug out a basement area similar to the one in my first world, with everything moved down to it so I can effectively start fresh with the original storage).
Also of note, I've found another seed with a record large (single) cave, this time with a volume of 1.19 million blocks (this is still less than 100,000 blocks larger than the cave that was the largest for over a year, but simulations show that caves of up to 1.5 million are possible):
The seed also has some interesting terrain, as well as a desert temple and woodland mansion near spawn:
Here is a surface rendering and CaveFinder analysis; you might notice that I've added additional information, such as the type of cave, where 1 is the smallest and 4 is the largest (both on average; types 1-2 are the "original" variants since TMCWv2 while 3 and 4 are a new larger type added in TMCWv5, same for type 4 ravines, which are the same as type 3 except they have an additional random length/width added). There is also another cave with a volume of two-thirds of a million and a ravine with volume of half a million:
Today... I had my most extreme play session ever recorded with a staggering 7,150 resource blocks and 6,286 ores mined - including 4,325 coal and 1,715 iron - more than the majority of players have likely ever mined in their entire time playing:
I collected a total of 6,875 resources and other items; the discrepancy being due to the fact that I crafted at least 2,000 torches (I started with 2 stacks of logs, with additional torches crafted with sticks dropped by witches), consuming around 500 coal, plus another 188 coal to smelt around 1,500 iron and gold:
This before and after shows the area I covered today (which is still relatively small by most standards, a single large mineshaft covers most of the area):
Despite the record amount of ores and resources mined I did not set new records for mob kills or XP collected, even for this world (862 mobs and 9,830 XP, excluding non-caving sessions), and a disproportionate amount of ore was coal and iron as most of the caves and a mineshaft I explored were higher up (in particular, 7 out of 22 diamonds came from minecarts). Also, I've mined nearly 4,000 ores per session over the past 7 sessions, including 2,600 coal and 1,040 iron, easily the most extreme such period on record (it is no coincidence that I've only posted twice over the same period, I also say "session" and not "day/week" because I've played twice in one day on recent weekends, today was just a single session).
That said, my actual playtime was about 5 hours and 49 minutes, or 5.82 hours, or only about 50% longer than usual, which also means that I mined an average of 1,229 resource blocks and 1,081 ores per hour, both about 25% above the long-term average (much of the day-day variation in ores mined is due to variations in rates, not session length):
Also, this world will soon surpass TMCWv4 as my third longest-played world, behind TMCWv1 and World1, with 35.88 days of playtime:
World1 180.61 days 4334.64 hours 1228 sessions (3.53 hours/session)
TMCWv1 (replayed*) 42.56 days 1021.44 hours 284 sessions (3.59 hours/session)
TMCWv4 38.95 days 934.80 hours 243 sessions (3.85 hours/session)
TMCWv5 35.88 days 861.12 hours 219 sessions (3.93 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 359.16 days 8619.92 hours 2437 sessions (3.54 hours/session)
*TMCWv1 (original) 14.72 days 353.28 hours 103 sessions (3.43 hours/session)
(replayed started from 11.32 days / 83 sessions
As for what I was exploring to play for so long, I'd found the second giant cave region in this world a couple days earlier and today I came across a mineshaft that intersected it, in enough places that I eventually decided to explore the mineshaft (not just the parts intersecting, as I've previously done), which turned out to be one of the largest mineshafts I've found - I explored the entire thing, plus additional caves and ravines intersecting it.
Here are various screenshots I took in recent days, many from the giant cave region, with about a third of it explored so far based on the time the last one took (minus the time spent on exploring the mineshaft); I also found another Ice Hills (a small sub-biome within Ice Plains, as opposed to a full-size biome) and an Ice Plains Spikes, with the giant cave region intersecting both of them (the lower layers under the Ice Plains Spikes should be interesting, with water instead of lava, this also makes it a lot safer to explore, otherwise you need to treat them as if you are exploring the Nether due to the large drops and the size of the lava lakes; of course, you can use water on it):
A skeleton killed two creepers in a row on the same spot:
After 6 days I've fully explored the second giant cave region I've found in this world, and the third one overall (one in TMCWv4); compared to the first one I collected significantly more resources, with a total of 22,810 ores and 24,344 resource blocks mined, though part of that was from the mineshaft I mentioned before; the giant cave region itself was slightly smaller with a total volume of 1.82 million blocks and 7,369 torches within a 350x350 block area centered on it:
A comparison of the three giant cave regions I've explored, with the one I just explored in the center and on the right is the one I found in TMCWv4; the difference in volume is due to their size being increased in TMCWv5:
Here is a day-to-day animation and a layer-by-layer animation:
Notably, this is likely the closest giant cave region to the origin, and the one that generated within 1040 blocks (65 chunks) to ensure that there is always at least one within that area (this is due to their relative rarity, it is otherwise possible to not have any within 1536 blocks; outside of this area they are guaranteed to generate once every 16384 chunks, plus a random 25% chance for an overall average of one every 13107 chunks).
Also, this is an analysis of the giant cave region with every individual cave listed, of which there were a total of 109 (there are always 108 or 109 caves which generate in a checkerboard pattern within a 13x13 chunk area, except around the edges, which all have caves), with 23 having a volume of at least 25,000 and one exceeding 50,000; on average they aren't actually that large with the average volume being 18,554 blocks (which is still larger than any cave I've found in my first world, where I've found only 11 caves with a volume of at least 10,000). The total volume of the caves by themselves was about 2 million blocks, indicating an overlap of about 20%:
Also, I came close to finding one of the largest veins of diamond ore that I've found, with two veins with a total of 13 ore (5 and 8) within 1 block of each other; I can only remember a few occasions where they actually did merge, despite mining upwards of 30,000 diamond ore in all my time playing:
After more than 200 play sessions spent caving I've found every new biome added in TMCWv5, with the most recent biome being Badlands, a combination of Mesa and a red sand(stone) desert, with the underground being mostly the latter and including patches of red clay, similar to Mesa, and red sand, both in place of dirt and gravel (hardened clay mainly generates on the surface), with spikes similar to those found in Mesa Bryce (former 1.7 name) and small plateaus of hardened clay:
This is the 46th normal biome that I've found so far (excluding hills, edges. rivers, beaches, etc); notably, I still haven't found one vanilla biome, Extreme Hills (and Mushroom Island, but that is highly unlikely as I don't explore oceans, I've only ever found one in my first world). Notably, I've also found a third Volcanic Wasteland, one of the rarest full-size biomes, adjacent to the Badlands as shown above (I never explored the one I found when I located a stronghold early on, which is north of 0, -1024).
Here are surface and underground renderings of what I've explored so far within and to the east/south of the current map (east/south of 512, 512), which I've spent 33 sessions exploring:
As far as caving goes, I've found several more large caves, a third colossal cave system, and a circular room that was nearly the largest possible, merged with one of the large caves, shown in the order I found them:
The largest cave is the one I previously mentioned in post #45 and had a volume of 199,000 blocks:
The second large cave, with a volume of 62,000 blocks, which is still 4 times larger than the largest cave I've found in my first world:
The third cave and circular room, which were what I saw when I was digging a rail tunnel (post #43), and had a combined volume of around 230,000 blocks, with the cave having a volume of about 156,000 and circular room 80,000, with a diameter of 70 blocks, just one less than the maximum, and by far the largest one that I've ever found, and about 70 times the volume of the largest vanilla rooms (17 blocks in diameter; as noted before this represents the most extreme increase in size from a vanilla feature, for the largest known caves and ravines the ratios are 46 and 20 respectively):
Some other screenshots, including an interesting-looking cave within an Ice Hills; this was just a "vanilla large cave" (a larger variant of vanilla cave/tunnel), and multiple mobs in diamond/amethyst armor, of which I've now seen 61 (37 zombies and 24 skeletons, with 48 diamond and 13 amethyst):
Also, the increased ore density in the Volcanic Wasteland led to my most extreme mining rates by far during the week I spent exploring it, which included part of the first large cave, the second large cave, most of the colossal cave system, and three mineshafts, two of which were very large, with an average of 4,368 ores mined per session, with amethyst having the largest relative increase out of normal ores, with up to a third as much as diamond, compared to a normal ratio of 1/8 (above y=2; the lower 2 layers normally have about 1/3 as much); however, emerald is the most anomalously abundant ore (compared to the other biomes that have it), with as much as 170 mined in a single session and a total of 624 over the period, which is more than a third of all the emerald I've found in this world:
Unlike other biomes emerald ore generates in veins as well as single blocks (8-16 single blocks and 4 veins of "size" 7 between layers 1-63; other biomes only have the single blocks, which gives a per-layer density that is about the same as vanilla, 3-8 between layers 4-31):
Some more screenshots of the Volcanic Wasteland; the peaks are intended to look like volcanoes, with lava lakes on top:
After 47 days I've finished exploring the map centered at 1024, 1024; this animation covers the entire area to the south and east of 384, 384, up to about 1600, 1700, the furthest east and south I explored:
Here are renderings and an analysis I made with CaveFinder, covering the map itself (512, 512 to 1535, 1535), with the second image only showing special cave variants and large mineshafts; the analysis itself includes the largest "vanilla" cave systems (20 or more individual caves/tunnels) and their overall statistics, as well as shows a new way I've been measuring the size of mineshafts; the total length of their corridors, which more closely reflects their size than the number of structure pieces (crossings and stairways don't have rails/spawners/chests); the largest mineshaft, with a size of 363, is also the largest mineshaft I've found in this world and is below the colossal cave system near the lower-right, which has another large mineshaft just to its north:
Seed is -4426978636490490569
Center is 1024, 1024 and radius is 512 blocks (from 512, 512 to 1535, 1535)
Showing up to 100 results for each category. Locations are the center unless noted.
Size 13 cave system at 1176 536; total number of caves: 21
Size 48 cave system at 1096 648; total number of caves: 48
Size 25 cave system at 568 808; total number of caves: 26
Size 30 cave system at 696 824; total number of caves: 30
Size 19 cave system at 584 872; total number of caves: 20
Size 18 cave system at 1336 872; total number of caves: 26
Size 19 cave system at 1528 1048; total number of caves: 25
Size 30 cave system at 1528 1128; total number of caves: 39
Size 60 cave system at 1368 1240; total number of caves: 60
Size 11 cave system at 1064 1288; total number of caves: 21
Size 56 cave system at 1272 1352; total number of caves: 56
Size 15 cave system at 1480 1400; total number of caves: 29
Size 15 cave system at 1016 1448; total number of caves: 23
Size 18 cave system at 1160 1448; total number of caves: 27
Size 21 cave system at 1368 1464; total number of caves: 21
Size 13 cave system at 824 1528; total number of caves: 20
Number of cave systems: 144
Initial number of caves: 1075; largest cave system: 60 (1368 1240)
Total number of caves: 1383; largest cave system: 60 (1368 1240)
Additional circular room caves: 243
Additional lava level caves: 41
Additional sea level caves: 24
Number of small caves: 1244; average width is 5.70
Number of large caves: 139; average width is 12.40; max width: 30.71 (727 -7 1429)
Number of circular rooms: 359; average width is 12.60; max width: 70.12 (1040 49 1247)
Additional caves per circular room: 0.68
Average caves per chunk: 0.33764648 (4096 chunks)
Average altitude: 23.46
Percentage of caves on layers -7 to 2: 22.63
Percentage of caves on layers 3 to 12: 21.91
Percentage of caves on layers 13 to 22: 14.46
Percentage of caves on layers 23 to 32: 11.50
Percentage of caves on layers 33 to 42: 7.38
Percentage of caves on layers 43 to 52: 6.80
Percentage of caves on layers 53 to 62: 5.50
Percentage of caves above layer 62: 9.83
Locations of colossal cave systems:
1. 1288 1144 (volume: 253227, type: C)
Locations of circular room cave systems:
1. 872 680
Locations of ravine cave systems:
1. 1000 1192
Locations of vertical cave systems:
1. 1240 952
Locations of maze cave systems:
1. 632 664
Locations of combination cave systems:
1. 968 520 (type: CRM)
2. 888 536 (type: CRM)
Locations of ribbed tunnel cave systems:
1. 1176 1096
2. 904 1304
3. 648 1336
Locations of zigzag cave systems:
1. 1016 1016
2. 1160 1160
Locations of spiral cave systems:
1. 1416 1288
2. 776 520
Locations of large cave cave systems:
1. 1272 1448 (type: 1, volume: 117547)
Locations of giant cave regions:
1. 744 1032 (volume: 1636600)
Locations of network cave regions:
1. 1312 672 (volume: 146301)
Locations of largest caves by volume:
1. 1192 23 872 (type: 2, length: 334, width: 45, volume: 199485)
2. 1064 25 1256 (type: 2, length: 367, width: 42, volume: 156802)
3. 1064 20 744 (type: 2, length: 425, width: 46, volume: 149343)
4. 1192 25 1128 (type: 2, length: 373, width: 25, volume: 62729)
5. 584 28 920 (type: 1, length: 250, width: 18, volume: 29595)
6. 776 24 776 (type: 1, length: 115, width: 29, volume: 28627)
7. 1224 17 1416 (type: 1, length: 260, width: 17, volume: 28194)
8. 1144 28 1240 (type: 1, length: 298, width: 17, volume: 27471)
9. 1432 36 968 (type: 1, length: 180, width: 20, volume: 25337)
Locations of largest ravines by volume:
1. 1448 35 744 (type: 3, length: 338, width: 38, depth: 59, volume: 398702)
2. 1192 36 1512 (type: 4, length: 340, width: 24, depth: 59, volume: 232191)
3. 552 32 616 (type: 3, length: 276, width: 26, depth: 57, volume: 189448)
4. 664 31 856 (type: 2, length: 172, width: 18, depth: 49, volume: 69217)
5. 1096 25 1384 (type: 2, length: 234, width: 12, depth: 39, volume: 52020)
6. 1528 40 856 (type: 2, length: 178, width: 12, depth: 40, volume: 39609)
7. 1384 23 1096 (type: 2, length: 216, width: 11, depth: 38, volume: 38659)
8. 600 24 872 (type: 1, length: 102, width: 15, depth: 44, volume: 31943)
9. 568 14 1272 (type: 1, length: 86, width: 15, depth: 48, volume: 30530)
10. 1528 24 1432 (type: 2, length: 180, width: 9, depth: 33, volume: 26258)
11. 1144 15 616 (type: 1, length: 86, width: 17, depth: 37, volume: 25903)
12. 1432 44 1208 (type: 1, length: 94, width: 15, depth: 42, volume: 25617)
Locations of largest circular rooms by volume:
1. 1040 49 1247 (width: 70, volume: 80197)
2. 1479 11 758 (width: 38, volume: 13111)
Locations of toroidal caves by volume:
1. 731 11 1486 (type: 1, toroid width: 58, tunnel width: 18, volume: 24774)
2. 655 35 1432 (type: 1, toroid width: 46, tunnel width: 12, volume: 9925)
3. 1334 22 962 (type: 1, toroid width: 48, tunnel width: 10, volume: 7731)
Locations of abandoned mineshafts by corridor length (center of central room):
1. 1240 22 1256 (span: 10, size: 363, length: 3655)
2. 936 29 904 (span: 10, size: 263, length: 2985)
3. 808 24 1256 (span: 10, size: 248, length: 2735)
4. 1240 31 1048 (span: 9, size: 224, length: 2120)
5. 824 40 1480 (span: 8, size: 204, length: 1930)
6. 1048 28 568 (span: 11, size: 172, length: 1880)
7. 712 15 1352 (span: 9, size: 193, length: 1855)
8. 1032 17 1048 (span: 8, size: 167, length: 1675)
9. 1384 20 920 (span: 9, size: 146, length: 1545)
10. 936 38 1368 (span: 8, size: 148, length: 1370)
11. 584 29 1256 (span: 10, size: 111, length: 1370)
12. 1256 16 792 (span: 7, size: 140, length: 1280)
13. 920 7 1160 (span: 7, size: 134, length: 1255)
14. 680 29 712 (span: 7, size: 100, length: 990)
15. 1464 38 1480 (span: 7, size: 87, length: 950)
16. 1352 29 1384 (span: 6, size: 101, length: 830)
17. 1160 43 680 (span: 7, size: 67, length: 770)
18. 600 26 792 (span: 8, size: 74, length: 740)
19. 1160 43 1368 (span: 8, size: 81, length: 695)
20. 1480 29 584 (span: 7, size: 55, length: 575)
21. 808 20 584 (span: 7, size: 32, length: 365)
A full-sized surface rendering of the southernmost part of the area (south of z=1280); from left to right the biomes are Mega Mixed Forest; Hilly Plains; Rocky Mountains; Badlands, with Roofed Forest to the north and Savanna Plateau to the south; Volcanic Wasteland, with Swampland to the north and Ocean to the south; Flower Forest, with Winter Forest to the north:
I've completed one of my goals in this world - collecting one of every variant of amethyst ore, of which there are 8; stone, snow, quartz sandstone, sandstone, red sandstone, hardened clay, blue ice, packed ice (in the same order as the screenshot, clockwise starting from top-right; all other ores have the same variants, with gold also having a netherrack variant, which all correspond to the blocks that replace stone in biome-specific undergrounds). However, while amethyst is the rarest ore non-stone variants of emerald are much rarer as they can only generate outside of stone-based biomes where they are next to other biomes and I've only found a few such blocks (packed ice and red sandstone):
This was the first time I saw red sandstone amethyst ore but it wasn't actually the one I mined with Silk Touch:
Also, for the first time since I added it in TMCWv2 I've crafted blocks of amethyst as storage blocks (I've crafted one or two before as decorative blocks); while I've found more than in previous worlds, mainly due to multiple Volcanic Wasteland biomes, the amount I've collected is still extremely small compared to other resources (I've mined about 500 amethyst ore out of over 800,000 ores, including about 4 times as much emerald, the second rarest ore):
The most notable cave I found since my last update was a large ravine (previously shown in the screenshots of the Badlands) with a volume of 232,000 blocks, the 5th largest ravine I've found so far:
The number of lavafalls is due to being under a Volcanic Wasteland, which adds an additional 60 lavafalls per chunk below sea level (uniformly distributed) to the 20 per chunk in other biomes (distributed between 0-253 with a nonlinear distribution concentrated towards y=0; in both cases they only generate if exactly one side is exposed so there are far less than 20/80 per chunk):
There were also a lot of fairly large caves nearby (seen just to the north in the renderings above); the first screenshot is a large toroidal cave which was mostly off the map:
The usual assortment of mobs in diamond/amethyst armor, as well as a fossil in a surface ravine, the 14th one I've found (diamond armored mobs have been about 4 times more common, though fossils aren't quite that rare, with one every 64 chunks in swamps, deserts (their vanilla biomes), badlands, and one every 128 chunks in oceans with half on the seafloor and the other half underground):
This is a visualization of just how much mining and caving that I've done in this world (and so far this year); the areas of each ore/block are if they were laid out one block thick:
Some additional charts and the numbers:
This table only includes what I've mined while caving, 231 out of 251 sessions, and is what I used to determine the area for each ore/block:
The number of torches that I've placed outside of caving is probably less than a thousand, with a few hundred each in my branch-mine and rail system, and a few dozen at each of three bases and a couple villages:
As impressive as these numbers may be I've still done about four times as much caving in my first world:
World1 is about 4 1/2 times larger in terms of overall area, mainly due to a lower cave density, which is pretty apparent in the underground renderings; TMCWv5 has more than twice the density in terms of air volume, though surface area, which is about 33% higher, is probably a better indicator, and suggests the actual explored area (cave renderings) is about 6 times larger in World1. The overall area of TMCWv5 is also inflated due to the 8 chunk border loaded around explored areas due to render distance being more less significant than in World1 (a level 4 map would have 26.6% additional chunks loaded around it; for 2x2 level 4 maps it is 12.9%, and so on):
Interestingly, I've mined nearly as much emerald in TMCWv5, though it is still only about 0.27% of all ores, illustrating just how rare it is in vanilla (0.08% of 3.1 million ores mined):
Since my last update I've been exploring the rest of the map to the west, which I'd explored about half of from my main base before stopping to explore in other directions; one reason I didn't make a secondary base and finish exploring it was because I wanted to get "on a rail", the last achievement I get and a base within this map would be too close, same for the map to the north (my main base is to the northwest of 0,0), thus I decided to build one to the south first, then east, then southeast before returning to the western and northern parts of the world.
Here is what I've explored over the past couple weeks, mostly the lower-left half; my latest base is in the desert near the upper-left:
As it turns out, this area has had the most extreme concentration of giant ravines that I've ever explored, with three ravines larger than anything I found before this world and multiple other large ravines, as part of two huge complexes with 7 and 8 ravines each, the most I've found so far in this world (I found 10 intersecting ravines in TMCWv4; the most known in vanilla is 7).
The first complex of ravines included two of the largest ravines I've found, with volumes of 355,000 and 279,000 blocks, and a total volume of 688,000 across 7 intersecting ravines:
From left to right are all underground features, special caves only, and ravines only:
These are the stats for the "large" ravines (larger than vanilla in some way, the third ravine is not considered to be "large" as far as its volume goes), whose numbers matching the numbers on the rightmost rendering:
This was the first look I got of the largest ravine, the first one I found:
The intersection of the two largest ravines:
The top of the ravine went to y=70 (the underground fog/sky darkening effect is not applied above sea level); the actual volume of the ravine could be closer to 400,000 as CaveFinder only measures below sea level:
Only a day or two after I finished exploring this complex I found yet another complex of ravines, totaling 8 ravines with the largest having a volume of 363,000 blocks and a total interconnected volume of 546,000; while lower than the first there were more large ravines, 5 instead of 2 (exceeding 25,000 in volume, 3 if any size of "large" ravine is included):
From left to right are all underground features, special caves only, and ravines only:
The numbers again correspond to the numbers on the rendering:
This is the largest cave I found, with a volume of 111,000 blocks, which is visible in the upper-right of the rendering for the first ravine complex:
Another notable finding was an extremely dense cave system which formed a large ragged chamber with a total volume of around 155,000 blocks, the result of an extreme number of "vanilla" large caves and circular rooms:
"Large cave" in this context means a cave with a width of at least 9 blocks, otherwise, vanilla caves/tunnels range in width from 3-9 blocks (there is a 10% chance of an additional multiplier in vanilla which results in a total range of 3-27), with only caves with a width of at least 15 listed; circular rooms likewise must have a diameter of at least 34 blocks, twice the maximum in vanilla (I use these thresholds to pick out caves that are notably large, on the order of 10000 blocks, which is so rare in vanilla that I've only found 10 caves this large in my first world):
Size 14 cave system at -968 -88; total number of caves: 24
Size 21 cave system at -968 -72; total number of caves: 29
Number of cave systems: 2
Initial number of caves: 35; largest cave system: 21 (-968 -72)
Total number of caves: 53; largest cave system: 29 (-968 -72)
Additional circular room caves: 14
Additional lava level caves: 0
Additional sea level caves: 4
Number of small caves: 21; average width is 6.74
Number of large caves: 32; average width is 12.49; max width: 17.38 (-972 19 -73)
Number of circular rooms: 8; average width is 32.51; max width: 51.73 (-969 22 -68)
Additional caves per circular room: 1.75
Average caves per chunk: 13.25 (4 chunks)
Average altitude: 26.06
Percentage of caves on layers -7 to 2: 11.32
Percentage of caves on layers 3 to 12: 9.43
Percentage of caves on layers 13 to 22: 32.08
Percentage of caves on layers 23 to 32: 20.75
Percentage of caves on layers 33 to 42: 3.77
Percentage of caves on layers 43 to 52: 11.32
Percentage of caves on layers 53 to 62: 9.43
Percentage of caves above layer 62: 1.89
Locations of largest caves by volume:
1. -967 18 -68 (type: 0, length: 110, width: 16, volume: 10568)
2. -968 19 -69 (type: 0, length: 98, width: 16, volume: 5650)
3. -968 9 -85 (type: 0, length: 85, width: 17, volume: 5360)
Locations of largest circular rooms by volume:
1. -969 22 -68 (width: 52, volume: 33917)
2. -963 13 -84 (width: 44, volume: 21495)
3. -974 21 -89 (width: 43, volume: 19544)
4. -967 13 -74 (width: 43, volume: 19207)
Here are some of the other things I've found:
A skeleton in diamond armor, which dropped its chestplate and leggings:
A slightly larger than vanilla ravine:
A large cave cave system:
A zombie in diamond armor:
A large cave formed from a cluster of large caves with a total volume of about 50,000 blocks:
A circular room with a diameter of 48 blocks just to the south of the largest ravine in the first complex, visible to the left; on the right is a ravine (neither had been (fully) explored at this time) which came close to intersecting the other ravines:
A toroidal cave with a diameter of 56 blocks at the intersection of the two largest ravines in the first complex:
A circular room with a diameter of 45 blocks near the northern end of the first ravine complex:
I also found a desert temple and a village, both for the third time in this world, and on the same day; notably, the last time I found a village was over half a year ago, illustrating just how long it takes me to explore a reasonably sized area (on average villages should be about as common as they are in vanilla, and over twice as likely to spawn in a given biome); there is also a Mega Taiga near the village, the 47th normal biome and the second of two "vanilla" Mega Taiga variants that I've found; and I found a pink sheep for the second time in this world:
I've now finished exploring the map to the west, the 5th map I've fully explored, and have started exploring the map to the northwest (both relative to spawn/the map centered around 0,0).
Here are surface and underground renderings of the map, including as far west as I explored along the western boundary of the continent, which is just to the west of the map itself (x = -1536); the underground rendering includes everything I explored to the north and south; as well as my map wall of the entire world:
Here are underground renderings and an analysis of the area made with CaveFinder:
All underground features:
Special caves and large mineshafts only:
An analysis of the area; I originally explored the eastern half of the map during the first month or two of caving:
The most notable thing I found since my last update was a Savanna Mountains biome (near the left side of the surface rendering above) with two peaks reaching y=186, the third highest terrain that I've found in this world, and the highest since the mountains I found on the way to a stronghold before I started caving; I also found a Forest Mountains (near the bottom of the surface rendering) with a peak to y=182:
I found the Forest Mountains first:
The two highest peaks in the Savanna Mountains were about 130 blocks apart:
I also found yet another complex of multiple intersecting ravines, smaller than the last two, but still more than I've ever found in my first world (5 on multiple occasions), with the largest ravine having a volume of 95,000 blocks, and 169,000 blocks for the entire complex:
Here are more screenshots of various large caves, including a large cave cave system, of which I've found 11 of so far:
Also, while technically in the map to the northwest (north of the one I just explored) I found a large cave with a volume of 101,000 blocks, the 18th cave with a volume of at least 100,000 and 53rd cave with a volume of at least 25,000 (about as large as the largest known cave in vanilla 1.6.4):
Here are lists of all the large caves and ravines that I've found (with a volume of at least 25,000, and in the case of ravines, at least as large as the largest in vanilla in length/width/depth since vanilla ravines occasionally exceed 25,000 in volume); as well as the highest terrain that I've found per instance of a biome (only the highest peak in a single biome is counted):
This is the largest cave that I've found in four months, since exploring the Icelands biome in July, and the fourth largest cave I've found in this world, with a volume of 371,000 blocks, merged with another cave with a volume of 83,000:
Following are other notable findings:
Two complexes of ravines near each other, each with a large ravine with a volume of over 100,000; the westernmost ravine went right under the Savanna village I found back in March:
The fourth colossal cave system I've found in this world, and the closest one to the origin - it is quite notable that it took 9 months to fully explore everything within just 1000 blocks of the origin (I did explore further out in most directions), illustrating why I want worlds with a lot of variety within a relatively small area (as I've often pointed out with regards to the biome changes in 1.7):
A complex of several large caves, including the widest possible "vanilla" cave, which have a maximum diameter of 33 blocks in TMCW (27 in vanilla; the only difference is that I changed a multiplier from 1-4 to 1-5; there is also an additional width multiplier applied to all caves within a region but it is applied in such a way that the maximum width is always 33); when I found this I thought it was a "large cave cave system" until I analyzed it:
A toroidal cave with the largest possible size for an "original" cave, 64 blocks in diameter with a tunnel width of 20 blocks (I added a larger variant, up to 80/28, later on; I'd have found two more such caves if I'd added them before I started playing on this world):
A large ravine with a length of 246, width of 15, depth of 41, and volume of 76105, slightly more than twice the size of the largest possible ravine in vanilla:
A complex of multiple large circular rooms, the largest of which was 58 blocks across and had a volume of about 48,000 blocks; the largest "vanilla" cave in the lower-left (coming from the circular room with lava) is the largest one in terms of volume that I've found, with a volume of about 21,600 blocks; the map also shows the toroidal cave and the large ravine mentioned previously:
Some more screenshots of mobs, including a zombie wearing a pumpkin I found outside my main base on Halloween (I've collected all such mobs in my first world on a couple occasions):
Another notable finding was two more villages, bringing the total in this world up to 5, and the third one I've found recently; notably, every village has been within a level 3 map-sized area to the northwest of spawn (there haven't been that many village spawn biomes elsewhere and/or they just failed to choose a valid location). One village also had a zombie dungeon under it; it was also rather sloppily generated with buildings offset well off the ground (I'd reduced the height variation of vanilla Plains but there can still be noticeable height differences, especially near other biomes):
I also found a shipwreck for the first time, the smallest of three sizes, with the largest having a chest beneath the deck; as well as a sponge in a dungeon under the ocean (they can also be found in large shipwrecks as guaranteed loot; they have the same water-absorbing properties as 1.8):
Here is a screenshot of my map wall and an underground rendering of what I've explored within the current map, northwest of -512, -512:
Also, I'm less than 40,000 ores away from mining a million ores in this world while caving, and have already mined more than a million "resource" blocks when including moss stone, rails, and cobwebs:
I've found more than three strongholds in a single world for the first time; in TMCWv4 I changed their generation so they are infinite in number with an average of one every 8192 chunks (in every other 1024x1024 block region in a checkerboard pattern), with an average of 3-4 strongholds within +/- 1536 blocks of the origin (they do not generate within 800 blocks, formerly 640). In this case the fourth stronghold was just outside of this area, which I've generally stayed within and up to around 100 blocks outside; I know for a fact that I've found all the strongholds within 1536 blocks due to the locations of the other three (a fourth stronghold would have been to the west of 0,0; it so happens that in this seed stronghold/colossal cave system regions appear to be aligned to be fully within level 3 maps but this is not always the case as the underlying grid is randomly offset per seed, as was the case in TMCWv4, where they were split across parts of 4 maps):
Here are some screenshots, as usual, there were creeper/witch/skeleton/cave spider spawners under the chests in hallways and silverfish spawners under the bookshelves in libraries (an interesting addition in TMCWv5 is that spawners do not produce flame/smoke particles if they are completely surrounded by solid blocks, making them harder to find), I also found a creeper dungeon that generated inside the stronghold:
Also, I found a giant cave region for the third time in this world, and fourth time overall, it was mostly under an ocean, otherwise it was slightly larger than the first one I found (being under an ocean didn't have much impact though as it was mostly only the highest ceilings that were affected; I collected about the same amount of resources as the first one):
(for a sense of scale, the width of this image is equivalent to 1127 blocks)
Some screenshots; there was a fossil in it due to adding them to ocean biomes, on and below the seafloor:
Notably, while exploring the giant cave region I set a new all-time record for the most mobs killed in a single play session - 1,070:
Here are surface and underground renderings of what I've explored to the north and west of -512, -512; the giant cave region is near the top-center while the stronghold is on the left side 1/4 the way up from the bottom:
Also of note, there is an insane complex of huge caves and ravines far to the west, around -2136, -920 (as I've done before I analyze the border maps after I've finished exploring their edges to see what is in them) - the cave has a volume of 847,000 blocks, so large it is larger than the largest caves I've found so far - in TMCWv4 and TMCWv5 combined (584,000 and 252,000 blocks, 836,000 total), with two ravines with volumes of 530,000 and 420,000 blocks, both larger than the largest ravine I've found so far (398,000 blocks):
In fact, this area has the largest cave and 5th largest ravine within 8192 blocks or 1048576 chunks; the largest cave and ravine I've found so far are the 14th and 48th largest respectively (I used CaveFinder's "nocoords" mode to list everything without showing where they actually were):
Another interesting thing is that one of the giant cave regions I've found is the smallest one within this area, which is just as exceptional as being the largest; the other two are also near the bottom of the list (there were a total of 79 giant cave regions), though the difference between the largest and smallest is less than 10%:
Also, here is a comparison of my world's seed (only listing what I've found so far within 1536 blocks) and 5 random seeds; while I've found things that far exceed anything I previously found it is not particularly notable for TMCWv5 (likewise, I've made many random seeds that spawned my near new/"rare" biomes, or rare structures like woodland mansions, which I haven't found yet, or even more common structures like igloos; the most notable biome-related feature is the very large Quartz Desert to the southwest of spawn, with two Quartz Desert Pyramids, which are the rarest structure overall):
In addition, this is the most extreme giant cave seed that I've found so far - 7 caves exceeding half a million blocks with the largest reaching 840,000 (not the largest cave within 1536 blocks):
This is the most interesting area and includes the three largest caves
Also, a feature I recently added to CaveFinder is the ability to set the surface level, defaulting to 62 (highest layer below sea level) to as high as y=95 to more accurately measure the volume when terrain is deeper; this also shows the true maximum depth of ravines (most were previously listed as 59 blocks because that is the number of layers between lava level and sea level, 4-62):
In addition, this is the most extreme giant cave seed that I've found so far - 7 caves exceeding half a million blocks with the largest reaching 840,000 (not the largest cave within 1536 blocks):
I noticed an unintentional optimization. Since there are 10x more air blocks, The game will be a lot faster. As the game seems to be happier with less non-air blocks in general.
I noticed an unintentional optimization. Since there are 10x more air blocks, The game will be a lot faster. As the game seems to be happier with less non-air blocks in general.
I have not seen any impact from this; only the height of the highest blocks matters as far as resource usage goes - even an entirely "empty" section is always being loaded, especially since I fixed MC-911 (caused by empty sections not being generated at all; I always initialize all sections below sea level) and MC-80966 (caused by the server not sending "empty" sections to the client; this had a particularly adverse effect on Superflat worlds until I fixed how they generate; vanilla always generates all 16 sections regardless of the true depth so this caused them to use far more memory than default worlds; in TMCW the default preset can use less than 30 MB). Also, air is still only about 11% of the underground (layers 4-62), about twice as much as vanilla 1.6.4 (layers 11-62), so the impact wouldn't be that significant (even the "extreme" cave seed I last mentioned is only 11.87% air across a 3072x3072 area, about 8% more than average).
Otherwise, the only impact of air blocks is that they aren't randomly ticked, but there isn't much difference here either as the game still has to select blocks to tick, In fact, I removed an optimization where vanilla keeps track of whether a section has any blocks to tick with no noticeable impact on server tick time (which is dominated by entities); conversely, the game no longer needs to check if a block ticks on every setBlock call* (I also removed support for 4096 block IDs, eliminating additional checks, since 256 is plenty for the foreseeable future given my extensive use of metadata and "render only" states; if I decided to add more variants of wooden doors I'd probably use a tile entity to store the variant as then I don't have to modify code (in currently unmodified classes) that expects "Block.doorWood" (e.g. villager pathfinding and "house" determination). The impact of tile entities is low as long as they don't use a "TileEntitySpecialRenderer", which is called every frame for every block, and is why chests are so bad compared to barrels, which are rendered as a "standard" block).
*This shows how much I simplified the code in what was "ExtendedBlockStorage" - literally a single line instead of a few dozen:
This is from vanilla's "ExtendedBlockStorage" class, which executes up to 7 "if" conditions, many with multiple conditions, every time it is called:
This is from my "ChunkSection" class, which is functionally identical but internally very different; all the references to "blockMSBArray", "blockRefCount", and "tickRefCount" were removed (I also completely removed "removeInvalidBlocks", which is called when a chunk is loaded server-side or received client-side and checks that every block is valid and adds up the number of blocks/ticking blocks; there can be no invalid/null block IDs in TMCW because all unallocated IDs were assigned to a "placeholder block"; if vanilla had done the same thing then there would be no missing blocks if you accidentally downgraded a world (vanilla 1.6.4 does ignore invalid metadata; granite/andesite/diorite and many other blocks will remain intact if you downgrade TMCW to 1.6.4 and vice-versa):
public void setBlockID(int posX, int posY, int posZ, int block)
{
this.blockArray[posY << 8 | posZ << 4 | posX] = (byte)block;
}
I also added methods which accept a single index which can reduce the number of calculations (instead of re-calculating the entire index, and passing 3 parameters, it can be calculated once with offsets added to it to access surrounding blocks. For a similar reason I added "get/setBlockState", which handles a single integer value which combines a block ID and metadata; if I ever add support for 4096 block IDs I could do so by making "blockArray" a short and packing a 12 bit ID and 4 bit metadata into it, eliminating the need for a separate metadata array, if making saving/loading chunks slightly more complicated to maintain compatibility with 3rd party tools):
public void setBlockIDByIndex(int index, int block)
{
this.blockArray[index] = (byte)block;
}
Also, lighting up caves leads to a significant increase in save size, as well as chunk packets, which is proportional to the underground volume - the largest region files in my world are over 9 MB in size, compared to 6 MB for my first world, and correspond to giant cave regions, the locally highest density areas (around 30% air over 300x300 blocks). This is due to the decreased compressibility of a more complex block light map (the actual amount of data doesn't change; save size is mainly dependent on how much it can be compressed, as demonstrated here - a world filled to the height limit with only stone (or any other block) uses far less space than a normal world; even a default Superflat world may be larger as it has at least 4 different blocks).
There is one possible benefit of larger caves - there is less to render, or relatively less than you'd expect (there is about 1.33 times more surface area based on the amount of ore exposed per chunk, compared to about 2.33 times the volume, or 1.75 times less surface area per unit volume), which can impact FPS without occlusion culling (I don't see much of a difference, though on my old computer enabling Advanced OpenGL doubled FPS; on Intel/AMD it may actually substantially decrease FPS due to their poor support for OpenGL, otherwise it depends on whether rendering more geometry is faster than the additional calls to perform occlusion checks (1.8 claims to have improved culling but it doesn't cull as many chunks (I'd expect no more than a couple dozen in this example, not 130, as indicated by the "C:" value), and is entirely done in software on the CPU).
I've now found 7 mineshafts larger than the largest mineshaft I found in TMCWv4, and 10 mineshafts larger than the largest in my first world (World1 / vanilla 1.6.4), including 3 within the past week (1, 3, and 9, the last not fully explored yet. I also haven't kept track of the number of rails collected in my first world; I previously used this as a way to measure their size until I added the "size", and later on "length", statistics to CaveFinder):
Here are renderings of the mineshafts, as well as the largest known mineshaft in TMCWv5, which was found after searching the equivalent of about 10 million mineshafts worth of seeds within 1536 blocks, and is nearly twice the size of the largest mineshaft I've explored, with 8170 blocks of corridors within a volume of 225x225x49 blocks and containing 1919 rails, 26 chests, and 16 spawners:
Despite being able to get much larger, and larger mineshafts being much more common, the average size is about the same as vanilla, or even slightly smaller, with more mineshafts below the average than above, as shown in this chart of the distribution of corridor lengths, and in vanilla 1.6.4 they very frequently intersect other mineshafts, the largest complexes I've found in my first world dwarf the largest mineshaft shown above (I estimated that I collected more than 5000 rails from one such complex; another complex yielded over 2700):
There are 3 main size distributions in TMCWv5; "small" mineshafts have a "span" of 5-9 (this is the number of pieces that can be added in a line from the central room, and the distance in blocks is max(60, span * 10), or 60-90); "large" mineshafts have a span of 10-11, as well longer corridors on average; and "filler" mineshafts have a span of 7 but are limited to 48 blocks instead of 70 (these mineshafts attempt to generate in areas between normal mineshafts and where there are no other mineshafts with a span of more than 6 nearby; as mineshafts can't generate due to high cave density or special cave variants nearby this helps fill in large areas that might be devoid of mineshafts):
Another difference from vanilla is that mineshafts must have at least 25 structure pieces, while the smallest mineshafts in vanilla had 4, which is reflected in the size ranges (actually, the minimum is 1, or just the center room, but this is with a bug fix so they always have at least one exit from the room, which I included in my :"World1" mod, otherwise, they are vanilla)
Notably, the largest known mineshaft directly intersects another large mineshaft, with a third nearly intersecting it (close enough that they could easily be thought to intersect, same for two smaller mineshafts nearby):
Also, here are more details on the seed with the largest mineshaft (1508089632190745000), which also has the longest and widest possible ravine, 368 blocks long and 50 blocks wide with a volume of nearly 600,000 blocks (the largest known ravine is about 645,000 blocks), which interacts another large ravine with a volume of over 300,000 blocks, which intersect 5 other ravines for a total volume of nearly a million blocks:
The largest ravine, part of a complex of 7 intersecting ravines, including another extremely large ravine:
The largest cave, with a volume of 664,000 blocks:
Some interesting terrain and biomes around spawn:
A surface rendering of the areas I visited, along with a biome map, special cave map, and analysis:
The largest mineshaft is near the left side, 1/4 the way up from the bottom; while the largest cave and ravine are near the upper-left:
Also, I found a total of 4 shipwrecks in the ocean in the northwest map, including a large shipwreck, the only size that has loot, which included 3 sponges, bringing the total up to 4 (1 was from a dungeon). Also shown are a couple of icebergs in a Frozen Ocean:
I also found a desert well for the first time in this world, which was also the first time I've found the quartz desert variant (I added them after I started playing on this world so I'd likely have found more):
Here is a rendering of what I've explored so for in the map to the north, where I've made the 5th secondary base in this world (I made 3 in TMCWv4 and no more than one in any other world other than my first world, which has 21):
This is a summary of what I did while playing Minecraft, all on this world, in 2022; I spent a total of 55.98 days playing over 343 sessions, easily the most I've ever spent playing in a single year, with only a few days off since I created the world, all spent on updating TMCW:
Likewise, the amount of caving I did is easily a record, with 1.11 million ores and 1.21 million "ore/resource" blocks out of a total of 1.59 million blocks mined, and 356,000 torches placed within an estimated 32,052 chunks explored (chunks remaining after trimming way those without torches within 1 chunk; the overall world was 40,567 chunks); 321 of the 343 play sessions were spent caving (excluding some that I did prior to returning and starting on a new base/railway):
As noted before, the table above only includes "caving" sessions:
This is the output from MCMap, which shows the actual number of torches in the Overworld (minus torches placed in the Nether and including torches taken from minecarts; all naturally generated torches use different block IDs):
I also set multiple other single session/world records, from the most ores mined (6,286) to the most mobs killed (1,070) to the most mobs in diamond/amethyst armor in one day (3), and explored the largest caves, ravines, and mineshafts I've ever found, and found 4 strongholds in a single world; I also mined more emerald ore than in any other world, even my first world (2741 vs 2485; notably, I only mined 145 in TMCWv4, 210 when adjusted for playtime, due to a lack of emerald-bearing biomes, the amount in TMCWv5 is also partly due to increasing the altitude to sea level and finding 3 Volcanic Wasteland biomes, even so it was less than 0.25% or 1 in 400 of all ores mined):
I found a total of 2,039 features (caves and structures) in this world, as well as 48 unique biomes, averaging about 6 per play session and one every 7 play sessions respectively (the rate of finding new biomes has significantly dropped over time as I've found most of the "normal" biomes):
Structures/caves found (by number):
619 normal dungeons (2 intersecting x3, normal+double x1)
407 ravines (up to 8 intersecting)
155 vertical pit caves
153 mineshafts
62 large ravines (volume >= 25000 and length >= 112 or width >= 15 or depth >= 45)
48 large caves (volume >= 25000)
47 large circular rooms (width >= 34)
44 dense cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
43 double dungeons
36 random cave clusters
34 toroidal caves
30 maze cave clusters
30 ravine cave clusters
29 circular room cave clusters
24 ribbed tunnel cave clusters
24 zigzag cave clusters
24 zigzag cave systems
22 fossils (3 ocean)
22 giant caves (volume >= 100000)
22 spiral cave systems
22 vertical cave clusters
16 vertical cave systems
15 ravine cave systems
14 circular room cave systems
14 giant ravines (volume >= 100000)
13 CRM combination cave systems
13 large cave cave systems
13 maze cave systems
13 random cave systems
12 ribbed tunnel cave systems
10 RZV combination cave systems
5 villages (1 Desert, 2 Meadow, 1 Plains, 1 Savanna)
4 Icelands vertical pit caves
4 network cave regions
4 colossal cave systems
4 desert temples
4 shipwrecks (1 large, 2 medium, 1 small)
4 strongholds (3 found by caving)
3 giant cave regions
2 jungle caves
2 mesa mineshafts
2 pumpkin houses
2 quartz desert pyramids
2 witch huts
1 desert well (1 quartz)
(2039 individual structures/caves)
Biomes found (by order found):
Meadow (spawn biome)
Mushroom Forest
Jungle
Mixed Forest
Bushlands
Lake (sub-biome of various biomes)
Quartz Desert
Savanna Mountains
Forest Mountains
Autumnal Forest
Winter Forest
Volcanic Wasteland
Rocky Mountains
Mega Tree Plains
Flower Forest
Taiga
Mega Mixed Forest
Mesa
Roofed Forest
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (sub-biome of Birch Forest)
Ice Plains
Ice Hills (sub-biome of Ice Plains)
Ice Plains Spikes
Frozen Lake
Winter Taiga
TMCW Mega Taiga
Desert
Savanna Plateau
Swampland
Savanna
Plains
Forest (sub-biome of Plains)
Big Oak Forest
Poplar Grove (full-size biome)
Lake (full-size biome)
Ice Hills (full-size biome)
Mountainous Desert
Mega Forest
Spruce Hills (sub-biome of Mega Tree Plains)
Big Birch Forest
Great Forest
Forest (full-size biome)
Icelands
Ocean
Tropical Ocean
Frozen Ocean
Mega Spruce Taiga
Hilly Plains
Badlands
Mega Taiga
Meadow Forest
(48 unique biomes, not including variants like Hills, River, Edge)
In particular, I found a total of 70 caves with a volume of at least 25,000, near the largest known in vanilla, of which 22 reached 100,000 and 8 exceeded the largest cave I explored prior to this world; likewise, I found 76 ravines with a volume of at least 25,000 and reaching the vanilla maximum in at least one dimension (this criteria excludes clearly "vanilla"-size ravines), of which 14 reached 100,000 and 6 exceeded the largest ravine I explored prior to this world; in the case of mineshafts 7 exceeded the largest mineshaft I previously found with 25 having at least 200 structure pieces ("large" mineshafts, where the average is about 127, including in vanilla); and I found a total of 47 circular rooms with a diameter of at least 34 blocks, twice the size and up to 8 times the volume of the largest rooms in vanilla, including one of the largest possible, 70 blocks wide and 80,000 in volume, and 4 larger than the largest one I previously found:
Here are surface and underground renderings of the world (25% of original size), and all of my worlds together (5% of original size):
Also, this is a map of special cave variants within the areas I explored:
It is pretty safe to say that this world alone could set an actual world record for the most caving ever done by a single player in Minecraft (see my signature about my first world, which is about 3.5 times larger); even after 1.18 the majority of players never give caving a second thought based on the results of threads I made asking about how much caving you do (on these forums and Reddit, which did just as poorly so "the forums are dead" is not an excuse, I haven't even posted to r/Minecraft since then since it is clear that nobody has any interest in me).
I've found a new contender for the largest ravine I've ever explored, with a volume of more than 400,000 blocks; the actual volume is a bit lower than the largest ravine I previously found due to partly being under the ocean but this doesn't affect it that much (the other ravine may be as large as 440,000 due to being located under terrain higher than y=63; both have about the same width while the one I just found is 30 blocks longer):
These measurements assume that the ground is deep enough to accommodate the entire ravine (I recently added an option to set the maximum altitude to higher than 62 in CaveFinder, which normally only counts the volume between layers 4-62); in both cases they go as high as layer 70, which part of the second ravine did get to:
One of the most interesting things about the ravine is how it happened to align with a narrow strip of land between an ocean and lake; when it first appeared on the map it looked like lava in the middle of the ocean (many of the screenshots shown here were taken after I copied the regions to a Creative world):
Here are screenshots I took when I found it:
This is the same view as above but with the render distance increased:
These were taken after I explored it (copied to a Creative world to more easily get better views):
Also, while these ravines seem very large on average you can expect to find a larger ravine, averaging 471,000 blocks, within 1536 blocks in a given seed; for comparison, the largest cave I've found (584,000) is slightly larger than the average:
Largest known cave:
seed 2631215042548004820 at 1496 27 -1240 (length: 504, width: 65, volume: 1202346)
Largest known ravine (maxY 62):
seed 5988371847149133234 at 104 32 984 (length: 368, width: 50, depth: 59, volume: 645639)
Largest known ravine (maxY 95):
seed 6962622224558688445 at -424 38 -648 (length: 368, width: 50, depth: 71, volume: 716760)
Average volume of top 10 largest caves (1000 seeds):
1. 578214
2. 466649
3. 407292
4. 364477
5. 328270
6. 295873
7. 269903
8. 246816
9. 227566
10. 211418
Average volume of top 10 largest ravines (998 seeds):
1. 471119
2. 407277
3. 362661
4. 330540
5. 303241
6. 279118
7. 257877
8. 238967
9. 221394
10. 206206
Another notable finding is an extremely large Savanna Mountains biome, more than 500 blocks across (twice the average biome size); the highest peaks reached y=188:
For perspective, these are all the peaks I've found reaching y=128 (the limit for terrain before 1.7; in practice, a few blocks less), based on the highest peak within a given biome (that is to say, I've found 18 separate biomes with such high terrain):
I've now been caving for an entire year of play sessions (365 days); over this period I mined 1.27 million ore and 1.39 million "resource" blocks out of a total of 1.8 million blocks, placed 400,000 torches, and killed 181,000 mobs:
Also, this is the past 30 days/sessions, showing that the shorter-term averages are even higher (the long-term averages have been gradually rising) - averaging an unprecedented 3,674 ore and 4,015 resource blocks mined per play session; notably, the average playtime per session was actually slightly lower than the long-term average (3.81 hours vs 3.89 hours, which itself has slightly dropped over time); this may more accurately reflect my usage of "vein miner" than the long-term rates (I've previously noted that despite this I've only mined about 3% more ore per hour than in my first world; the rate here is close to 12% higher, consistent with estimates that I spend about 10% of my time mining ores; aside from that, my mining rate has slowly increased over the years, as also evident in my first world. Increases are also evident in non-mining stats, like mob kills, which shows the same increase relative to the overall average):
Here are more statistics; overall I've now played on this world for 62.95 days over 388 sessions (23 "non-caving" sessions, mostly before the "end-game" and when building new secondary bases):
I've continued exploring the map to the northeast, with around 3/4 of it filled in; since the mega ravine I've found several more large ravines and caves:
First I found a cave with a volume of 119,000 blocks, one of several caves reaching at least 25,000 (the others were only slightly larger than this so I did not post them here), and the 23rd cave I've found with a volume of at least 100,000:
Next I found two large ravines intersecting, with the larger one having a volume of 104,000 blocks, the 17th ravine I've found with a volume of at least 100,000; as with caves I also found several smaller ravines exceeding 25,000 (I've found a total of 76 caves and 84 ravines this large):
I most recently explored a "large cave cave system", the 15th one I've found so far, with a volume of 141,000 blocks; I've now found a total of 62 underground features with a volume of 100,000 or more (23 caves, 17 ravines, 15 large cave cave systems, 4 colossal cave systems, 3 giant cave regions), with a total volume of 17.5 million blocks*:
*A breakdown and listing of features by volume, only counting those reaching at least 100,000 (guaranteed for giant cave regions and colossal cave systems):
Just when I was thinking that I'd never find one in this world I found a jungle temple while digging a rail tunnel to the 8th and final secondary base in this world, within the map to the southwest, after more than 64 days of playtime (for comparison, in TMCWv4 I found 3 within about half the area; while they are rarer in TMCWv5 due to more biomes they are also more likely to generate within a given jungle, from one attempt every 484 chunks to one every 400 chunks, compared to one every 1024 in vanilla):
The total time I've played on this world is listed on the 4th line on the left (this time directly affects the "difficulty" factor, which rises to 1 after 100 hours on Normal and replaces "regional difficulty/inhabited time". Moon phase still has an effect until then):
The temple itself had rather ordinary loot, a couple diamonds , some gold, iron, an emerald, and bones; the contents of the dispensers may be more interesting, with fire charges in addition to arrows, a feature I added in TMCWv1:
One thing that is very different from vanilla is that the 3 chiseled stone bricks aren't anywhere near as valuable since they replace cobblestone in the floor of "double dungeons", from which I've collected almost two chest fulls (I did not make it, or mossy cobblestone, craftable as this would destroy their value for me, as they are one of the resources I collect while caving. Mossy/cracked stone bricks are also effectively unlimited due to strongholds being infinite, and some dungeons have them in place of cobblestone for the walls).
Also, I've seen it said that in newer versions you can just go around and loot structures for all your resource needs, I simply can't see how that is possible, the Wiki indicates that they are no more common than in vanilla 1.6.4 (a "spacing" of 32 means one attempts to generate every 32x32 chunk region, hence the 1024 chunks mentioned above), with no attempts to offset their biomes becoming rarer as new ones are added so a given type of structure is much rarer overall (of course, given how large deserts can be there can be a lot of desert temples in as single desert, same for oceans and shipwrecks/ruins).
I've also yet to find an igloo, of which I found 4 of in TMCWv4, or woodland mansions, which are more common than quartz desert pyramids (of which I found two, thanks to an unusually large quartz desert, which have also been quite common overall), and vastly more common than they are in vanilla.
As if that weren't enough, from the top of the temple I saw a biome for the first time in this world, and the first new biome in 3 months and 49th biome overall - Extreme Hills, which is pretty similar to vanilla 1.6.4 except it can get much higher (near y=192 instead of y=128) and has spruce trees in addition to oak trees; there are also more caves and iron ore generated above sea level and emerald ore generates up to sea level:
This is my latest secondary base, the 8th one I've built in this world (one in each level 3 map around the origin map, which has my main base), compared to only 2 in TMCWv4 and none at all in many earlier worlds (I used a backpack mod back then, or just never built in in TMCWv1 as having a double-sized Ender chest means I don't have to make trips back as often); I've trended towards making them all like this, as also seen by the most recent one I built in my first world:
Here is an underground rendering of the map to the southwest, extended to the north and east by 4 chunks; I'd previously explored most of a mesa biome in the northeast corner, otherwise, not much else yet; the first thing I'll explore is another network cave region, which I'd found a long time ago but haven't counted as explored until I actually do so, which will be the 7th one I've found:
You'll note that I said this is the final map I'll explore since at that point I've have explored everything within 1536 blocks, for the first time in any world other than my first world (and even then I haven't actually explored everything within that area as part of the area to the northeast is ocean; however, I've otherwise explored much of the area within 3072 blocks, or 3x3 level 4 maps (as opposed to level 3 maps for this world), and as far to the west and north as land allowed. After than I'll probably play on my first world, which will also allow for more changes to be made to TMCW that might otherwise cause unwanted disruptions (at the same time I place less priority on updates when playing on my first world, part of the reason why TMCWv5 took 5 years, if with a significant intermediate update a couple years before).
As far as caving goes, I found a couple large caves near a network cave region in the far northeastern part of the northeast map, as well as another instance of terrain exceeding y=128, a relatively moderate Forest Mountains:
The first cave, with a volume of about 42,000:
The second cave, with a volume of 98,000, almost enough to be the 24rd "giant cave" (as I've defined caves reaching 100,000). I also had a mishap while exploring this cave which resulted in falling about 20 blocks into the lava; I landed near an obsidian platform and was able to get out without taking too much damage though:
A Forest Mountains reaching y=130:
This is a surface rendering of the area to the northeast of 512, -512, including areas I explored much earlier (the Icelands biome to the east):
These are underground renderings made with CaveFinder, showing everything and special caves only (minus the minor types like cave clusters, and larger vanilla caves), and a list of everything within the area (some of these I explored along ago while exploring the map to the south; the giant cave region is almost entirely within it):
As I've done before, I looked at what was further north (in areas I don't plan to ever explore) and as it happens I came very close to finding what would have been the largest ravine I've ever explored, with a volume of more than half a million blocks; further to the west is another ravine with a volume of 285,000:
There are also more interesting things further to the north, including an enormous mineshaft 5 times larger than the average mineshaft in vanilla and a cave with the largest lava lake I've ever seen from a single cave; there is also a stronghold just to the north of the aforementioned ravine, the 5th one in this world (with 4 actually found while playing):
The ravines are near the bottom-center, the mineshaft is near the left side, just to the east of a network cave region, and the cave is in the upper-right:
There's also a quite large ravine leading from the cave from the north:
Also, these are various biomes and landforms to the north; a jungle whose southern edge is just within generated chunks contains a jungle temple near its northern edge, which is next to a Desert M, a biome which I haven't found yet:
A Desert with Savanna Mountains in the background:
More Desert (maybe Mountainous Desert) and Extreme Hills:
The other end of the same Extreme Hills with Quartz Desert and Badlands in the foreground:
An Icelands bordered by Frozen Ocean:
Some relatively mild Forest Mountains (recognizable by spruce trees in addition to oak and birch; unlike some other such-named biomes this is less a mountainous variant of Forest than a forested variant of Extreme Hills, with its other biome-specific features):
A very large surface ravine in a swamp with a witch hut next to it (saved by the water it is in as caves can't cut through it); in the background is a quite hilly Birch Forest:
A Flower Forest:
An impressively large mountain in a Mushroom Forest, reaching y=142, which is quite rare for a non-mountainous biome:
Two large ravines intersecting:
A "rare" TMCW Mega Taiga (I still think of it as rare since I never found one while playing on a world until TMCWv5, despite having added it in TMCWv1, but it is about as common as a "common" biome can get, considering that such biomes are only a few percent or less of the world):
Another Desert M with a Mega Forest in the background:
If you are wondering how I took this screenshot, I actually copied the region files with the ravines to a Creative world to take the screenshots, partly so I could set the render distance to 16 without generating more chunks than necessary, as well as to set the time to night:
These are before and after screenshots of my map, with the ravine clearly visible near the upper-right; I'm standing at the western end in the first one:
Not only that, it was one of 8 intersecting ravines, including two other large ravines (volume >= 25,000 blocks), 7 if you don't count one ravine which was almost entirely overwritten by the mega ravine; either way, this is the second most intersecting ravines I've ever found, behind 10 in TMCWv4; 7 is also the most intersecting ravines in vanilla:, with another occurrence of 7 intersecting ravines found in this world. The total volume of all the ravines was also over half a million blocks:
This is the same map but with the width divided by 10, revealing an 8th ravine (#2 in this image) which is almost entirely overwritten (a bit of one end sticks out to the north near the middle of the largest ravine):
Also, this is one of the large caves I found before, which had a volume of about 149,000 blocks, along with yet another large cave which I haven't explored yet (or the one with a large surface opening near where I built my latest base):
This is actually a separate cave which was connected to the cave:
Another large cave which I haven't explored yet, the far end extends into a Volcanic Wasteland biome, as seen by the veins of magma blocks:
Also, this shows just how much I've explored in just a few days - my playing has reached unprecedented levels as my online social presence has declined to near zero (I simply cannot fathom what happened to the millions of people who used to frequent this site, with literally days passing without a single post in this section, and only person posting in this thread in over half a YEAR. I've even searched for many of them yet they all seem to be dead/inactive online, or it isn't as common as I thought to reuse the same names elsewhere, or they simply aren't posting for whatever reason - they do realize that they are only contributing to the decline of the site if they don't post, right?):
In fact, I've set a new goal for this world - to mine one million ores, a goal which I'm more than two-thirds of the way to, and a third as many as I mined in my first world; I've also had to expand my storage area as I ran out of space for coal (at first I stacked barrels, then I dug out a basement area similar to the one in my first world, with everything moved down to it so I can effectively start fresh with the original storage).
Also of note, I've found another seed with a record large (single) cave, this time with a volume of 1.19 million blocks (this is still less than 100,000 blocks larger than the cave that was the largest for over a year, but simulations show that caves of up to 1.5 million are possible):
The seed also has some interesting terrain, as well as a desert temple and woodland mansion near spawn:
Here is a surface rendering and CaveFinder analysis; you might notice that I've added additional information, such as the type of cave, where 1 is the smallest and 4 is the largest (both on average; types 1-2 are the "original" variants since TMCWv2 while 3 and 4 are a new larger type added in TMCWv5, same for type 4 ravines, which are the same as type 3 except they have an additional random length/width added). There is also another cave with a volume of two-thirds of a million and a ravine with volume of half a million:
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 my most extreme play session ever recorded with a staggering 7,150 resource blocks and 6,286 ores mined - including 4,325 coal and 1,715 iron - more than the majority of players have likely ever mined in their entire time playing:
I collected a total of 6,875 resources and other items; the discrepancy being due to the fact that I crafted at least 2,000 torches (I started with 2 stacks of logs, with additional torches crafted with sticks dropped by witches), consuming around 500 coal, plus another 188 coal to smelt around 1,500 iron and gold:
This before and after shows the area I covered today (which is still relatively small by most standards, a single large mineshaft covers most of the area):
Despite the record amount of ores and resources mined I did not set new records for mob kills or XP collected, even for this world (862 mobs and 9,830 XP, excluding non-caving sessions), and a disproportionate amount of ore was coal and iron as most of the caves and a mineshaft I explored were higher up (in particular, 7 out of 22 diamonds came from minecarts). Also, I've mined nearly 4,000 ores per session over the past 7 sessions, including 2,600 coal and 1,040 iron, easily the most extreme such period on record (it is no coincidence that I've only posted twice over the same period, I also say "session" and not "day/week" because I've played twice in one day on recent weekends, today was just a single session).
That said, my actual playtime was about 5 hours and 49 minutes, or 5.82 hours, or only about 50% longer than usual, which also means that I mined an average of 1,229 resource blocks and 1,081 ores per hour, both about 25% above the long-term average (much of the day-day variation in ores mined is due to variations in rates, not session length):
2022-08-13 15:55:36 [CLIENT] [INFO] (Session ID is)
2022-08-13 15:55:36 [CLIENT] [INFO] LWJGL Version: 2.9.0
2022-08-13 15:55:36 [CLIENT] [INFO] Reloading ResourceManager: Default
2022-08-13 16:09:49 [CLIENT] [INFO] [CHAT] Saved screenshot as 2022-08-13_16.09.48.png
2022-08-13 17:12:04 [CLIENT] [INFO] [CHAT] Saved screenshot as 2022-08-13_17.12.04.png
2022-08-13 17:24:51 [CLIENT] [INFO] [CHAT] Saved screenshot as 2022-08-13_17.24.51.png
2022-08-13 17:43:32 [CLIENT] [INFO] [CHAT] Saved screenshot as 2022-08-13_17.43.32.png
2022-08-13 21:44:44 [CLIENT] [INFO] [CHAT] Saved screenshot as 2022-08-13_21.44.44.png
2022-08-13 21:44:48 [CLIENT] [INFO] [CHAT] Saved screenshot as 2022-08-13_21.44.48.png
2022-08-13 21:44:50 [CLIENT] [INFO] [CHAT] Saved screenshot as 2022-08-13_21.44.50.png
2022-08-13 21:45:14 [CLIENT] [INFO] [CHAT] Saved screenshot as 2022-08-13_21.45.14.png
2022-08-13 21:46:08 [CLIENT] [INFO] [CHAT] Saved screenshot as 2022-08-13_21.46.08.png
2022-08-13 21:46:27 [CLIENT] [INFO] Session stats: 7150 6286 4325 1715 139 62 30 15 0 0 0 0 611 207 46 6 679 9680
Also, this world will soon surpass TMCWv4 as my third longest-played world, behind TMCWv1 and World1, with 35.88 days of playtime:
As for what I was exploring to play for so long, I'd found the second giant cave region in this world a couple days earlier and today I came across a mineshaft that intersected it, in enough places that I eventually decided to explore the mineshaft (not just the parts intersecting, as I've previously done), which turned out to be one of the largest mineshafts I've found - I explored the entire thing, plus additional caves and ravines intersecting it.
Here are various screenshots I took in recent days, many from the giant cave region, with about a third of it explored so far based on the time the last one took (minus the time spent on exploring the mineshaft); I also found another Ice Hills (a small sub-biome within Ice Plains, as opposed to a full-size biome) and an Ice Plains Spikes, with the giant cave region intersecting both of them (the lower layers under the Ice Plains Spikes should be interesting, with water instead of lava, this also makes it a lot safer to explore, otherwise you need to treat them as if you are exploring the Nether due to the large drops and the size of the lava lakes; of course, you can use water on it):
A skeleton killed two creepers in a row on the same spot:
These were both seen about 30 minutes apart:
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?
Love your dedication buddy keep it up
A comparison of the three giant cave regions I've explored, with the one I just explored in the center and on the right is the one I found in TMCWv4; the difference in volume is due to their size being increased in TMCWv5:
Here is a day-to-day animation and a layer-by-layer animation:
Notably, this is likely the closest giant cave region to the origin, and the one that generated within 1040 blocks (65 chunks) to ensure that there is always at least one within that area (this is due to their relative rarity, it is otherwise possible to not have any within 1536 blocks; outside of this area they are guaranteed to generate once every 16384 chunks, plus a random 25% chance for an overall average of one every 13107 chunks).
Also, this is an analysis of the giant cave region with every individual cave listed, of which there were a total of 109 (there are always 108 or 109 caves which generate in a checkerboard pattern within a 13x13 chunk area, except around the edges, which all have caves), with 23 having a volume of at least 25,000 and one exceeding 50,000; on average they aren't actually that large with the average volume being 18,554 blocks (which is still larger than any cave I've found in my first world, where I've found only 11 caves with a volume of at least 10,000). The total volume of the caves by themselves was about 2 million blocks, indicating an overlap of about 20%:
Here are more screenshots:
Also, I came close to finding one of the largest veins of diamond ore that I've found, with two veins with a total of 13 ore (5 and 8) within 1 block of each other; I can only remember a few occasions where they actually did merge, despite mining upwards of 30,000 diamond ore in all my time playing:
Also, this is my map wall:
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?
TMC, you never come short of amazing me with these feats of persistence in modding and mining.
After more than 200 play sessions spent caving I've found every new biome added in TMCWv5, with the most recent biome being Badlands, a combination of Mesa and a red sand(stone) desert, with the underground being mostly the latter and including patches of red clay, similar to Mesa, and red sand, both in place of dirt and gravel (hardened clay mainly generates on the surface), with spikes similar to those found in Mesa Bryce (former 1.7 name) and small plateaus of hardened clay:
This is the 46th normal biome that I've found so far (excluding hills, edges. rivers, beaches, etc); notably, I still haven't found one vanilla biome, Extreme Hills (and Mushroom Island, but that is highly unlikely as I don't explore oceans, I've only ever found one in my first world). Notably, I've also found a third Volcanic Wasteland, one of the rarest full-size biomes, adjacent to the Badlands as shown above (I never explored the one I found when I located a stronghold early on, which is north of 0, -1024).
Here are surface and underground renderings of what I've explored so far within and to the east/south of the current map (east/south of 512, 512), which I've spent 33 sessions exploring:
As far as caving goes, I've found several more large caves, a third colossal cave system, and a circular room that was nearly the largest possible, merged with one of the large caves, shown in the order I found them:
The largest cave is the one I previously mentioned in post #45 and had a volume of 199,000 blocks:
The second large cave, with a volume of 62,000 blocks, which is still 4 times larger than the largest cave I've found in my first world:
The third cave and circular room, which were what I saw when I was digging a rail tunnel (post #43), and had a combined volume of around 230,000 blocks, with the cave having a volume of about 156,000 and circular room 80,000, with a diameter of 70 blocks, just one less than the maximum, and by far the largest one that I've ever found, and about 70 times the volume of the largest vanilla rooms (17 blocks in diameter; as noted before this represents the most extreme increase in size from a vanilla feature, for the largest known caves and ravines the ratios are 46 and 20 respectively):
Some other screenshots, including an interesting-looking cave within an Ice Hills; this was just a "vanilla large cave" (a larger variant of vanilla cave/tunnel), and multiple mobs in diamond/amethyst armor, of which I've now seen 61 (37 zombies and 24 skeletons, with 48 diamond and 13 amethyst):
Also, the increased ore density in the Volcanic Wasteland led to my most extreme mining rates by far during the week I spent exploring it, which included part of the first large cave, the second large cave, most of the colossal cave system, and three mineshafts, two of which were very large, with an average of 4,368 ores mined per session, with amethyst having the largest relative increase out of normal ores, with up to a third as much as diamond, compared to a normal ratio of 1/8 (above y=2; the lower 2 layers normally have about 1/3 as much); however, emerald is the most anomalously abundant ore (compared to the other biomes that have it), with as much as 170 mined in a single session and a total of 624 over the period, which is more than a third of all the emerald I've found in this world:
Unlike other biomes emerald ore generates in veins as well as single blocks (8-16 single blocks and 4 veins of "size" 7 between layers 1-63; other biomes only have the single blocks, which gives a per-layer density that is about the same as vanilla, 3-8 between layers 4-31):
Some more screenshots of the Volcanic Wasteland; the peaks are intended to look like volcanoes, with lava lakes on top:
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 47 days I've finished exploring the map centered at 1024, 1024; this animation covers the entire area to the south and east of 384, 384, up to about 1600, 1700, the furthest east and south I explored:
Here are renderings and an analysis I made with CaveFinder, covering the map itself (512, 512 to 1535, 1535), with the second image only showing special cave variants and large mineshafts; the analysis itself includes the largest "vanilla" cave systems (20 or more individual caves/tunnels) and their overall statistics, as well as shows a new way I've been measuring the size of mineshafts; the total length of their corridors, which more closely reflects their size than the number of structure pieces (crossings and stairways don't have rails/spawners/chests); the largest mineshaft, with a size of 363, is also the largest mineshaft I've found in this world and is below the colossal cave system near the lower-right, which has another large mineshaft just to its north:
A full-sized surface rendering of the southernmost part of the area (south of z=1280); from left to right the biomes are Mega Mixed Forest; Hilly Plains; Rocky Mountains; Badlands, with Roofed Forest to the north and Savanna Plateau to the south; Volcanic Wasteland, with Swampland to the north and Ocean to the south; Flower Forest, with Winter Forest to the north:
I've completed one of my goals in this world - collecting one of every variant of amethyst ore, of which there are 8; stone, snow, quartz sandstone, sandstone, red sandstone, hardened clay, blue ice, packed ice (in the same order as the screenshot, clockwise starting from top-right; all other ores have the same variants, with gold also having a netherrack variant, which all correspond to the blocks that replace stone in biome-specific undergrounds). However, while amethyst is the rarest ore non-stone variants of emerald are much rarer as they can only generate outside of stone-based biomes where they are next to other biomes and I've only found a few such blocks (packed ice and red sandstone):
Also, for the first time since I added it in TMCWv2 I've crafted blocks of amethyst as storage blocks (I've crafted one or two before as decorative blocks); while I've found more than in previous worlds, mainly due to multiple Volcanic Wasteland biomes, the amount I've collected is still extremely small compared to other resources (I've mined about 500 amethyst ore out of over 800,000 ores, including about 4 times as much emerald, the second rarest ore):
The most notable cave I found since my last update was a large ravine (previously shown in the screenshots of the Badlands) with a volume of 232,000 blocks, the 5th largest ravine I've found so far:
There were also a lot of fairly large caves nearby (seen just to the north in the renderings above); the first screenshot is a large toroidal cave which was mostly off the map:
The usual assortment of mobs in diamond/amethyst armor, as well as a fossil in a surface ravine, the 14th one I've found (diamond armored mobs have been about 4 times more common, though fossils aren't quite that rare, with one every 64 chunks in swamps, deserts (their vanilla biomes), badlands, and one every 128 chunks in oceans with half on the seafloor and the other half underground):
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 a visualization of just how much mining and caving that I've done in this world (and so far this year); the areas of each ore/block are if they were laid out one block thick:
Some additional charts and the numbers:
This table only includes what I've mined while caving, 231 out of 251 sessions, and is what I used to determine the area for each ore/block:
The number of torches that I've placed outside of caving is probably less than a thousand, with a few hundred each in my branch-mine and rail system, and a few dozen at each of three bases and a couple villages:
As impressive as these numbers may be I've still done about four times as much caving in my first world:
Interestingly, I've mined nearly as much emerald in TMCWv5, though it is still only about 0.27% of all ores, illustrating just how rare it is in vanilla (0.08% of 3.1 million ores mined):
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?
Here is what I've explored over the past couple weeks, mostly the lower-left half; my latest base is in the desert near the upper-left:
As it turns out, this area has had the most extreme concentration of giant ravines that I've ever explored, with three ravines larger than anything I found before this world and multiple other large ravines, as part of two huge complexes with 7 and 8 ravines each, the most I've found so far in this world (I found 10 intersecting ravines in TMCWv4; the most known in vanilla is 7).
The first complex of ravines included two of the largest ravines I've found, with volumes of 355,000 and 279,000 blocks, and a total volume of 688,000 across 7 intersecting ravines:
These are the stats for the "large" ravines (larger than vanilla in some way, the third ravine is not considered to be "large" as far as its volume goes), whose numbers matching the numbers on the rightmost rendering:
This was the first look I got of the largest ravine, the first one I found:
The intersection of the two largest ravines:
The top of the ravine went to y=70 (the underground fog/sky darkening effect is not applied above sea level); the actual volume of the ravine could be closer to 400,000 as CaveFinder only measures below sea level:
Only a day or two after I finished exploring this complex I found yet another complex of ravines, totaling 8 ravines with the largest having a volume of 363,000 blocks and a total interconnected volume of 546,000; while lower than the first there were more large ravines, 5 instead of 2 (exceeding 25,000 in volume, 3 if any size of "large" ravine is included):
The numbers again correspond to the numbers on the rendering:
This is the largest cave I found, with a volume of 111,000 blocks, which is visible in the upper-right of the rendering for the first ravine complex:
Another notable finding was an extremely dense cave system which formed a large ragged chamber with a total volume of around 155,000 blocks, the result of an extreme number of "vanilla" large caves and circular rooms:
"Large cave" in this context means a cave with a width of at least 9 blocks, otherwise, vanilla caves/tunnels range in width from 3-9 blocks (there is a 10% chance of an additional multiplier in vanilla which results in a total range of 3-27), with only caves with a width of at least 15 listed; circular rooms likewise must have a diameter of at least 34 blocks, twice the maximum in vanilla (I use these thresholds to pick out caves that are notably large, on the order of 10000 blocks, which is so rare in vanilla that I've only found 10 caves this large in my first world):
Here are some of the other things I've found:
A slightly larger than vanilla ravine:
A large cave cave system:
A zombie in diamond armor:
A large cave formed from a cluster of large caves with a total volume of about 50,000 blocks:
A circular room with a diameter of 48 blocks just to the south of the largest ravine in the first complex, visible to the left; on the right is a ravine (neither had been (fully) explored at this time) which came close to intersecting the other ravines:
A toroidal cave with a diameter of 56 blocks at the intersection of the two largest ravines in the first complex:
A circular room with a diameter of 45 blocks near the northern end of the first ravine complex:
I also found a desert temple and a village, both for the third time in this world, and on the same day; notably, the last time I found a village was over half a year ago, illustrating just how long it takes me to explore a reasonably sized area (on average villages should be about as common as they are in vanilla, and over twice as likely to spawn in a given biome); there is also a Mega Taiga near the village, the 47th normal biome and the second of two "vanilla" Mega Taiga variants that I've found; and I found a pink sheep for the second 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?
Here are surface and underground renderings of the map, including as far west as I explored along the western boundary of the continent, which is just to the west of the map itself (x = -1536); the underground rendering includes everything I explored to the north and south; as well as my map wall of the entire world:
Here are underground renderings and an analysis of the area made with CaveFinder:
Special caves and large mineshafts only:
An analysis of the area; I originally explored the eastern half of the map during the first month or two of caving:
The most notable thing I found since my last update was a Savanna Mountains biome (near the left side of the surface rendering above) with two peaks reaching y=186, the third highest terrain that I've found in this world, and the highest since the mountains I found on the way to a stronghold before I started caving; I also found a Forest Mountains (near the bottom of the surface rendering) with a peak to y=182:
The two highest peaks in the Savanna Mountains were about 130 blocks apart:
I also found yet another complex of multiple intersecting ravines, smaller than the last two, but still more than I've ever found in my first world (5 on multiple occasions), with the largest ravine having a volume of 95,000 blocks, and 169,000 blocks for the entire complex:
Here are more screenshots of various large caves, including a large cave cave system, of which I've found 11 of so far:
Also, while technically in the map to the northwest (north of the one I just explored) I found a large cave with a volume of 101,000 blocks, the 18th cave with a volume of at least 100,000 and 53rd cave with a volume of at least 25,000 (about as large as the largest known cave in vanilla 1.6.4):
Here are lists of all the large caves and ravines that I've found (with a volume of at least 25,000, and in the case of ravines, at least as large as the largest in vanilla in length/width/depth since vanilla ravines occasionally exceed 25,000 in volume); as well as the highest terrain that I've found per instance of a biome (only the highest peak in a single biome is counted):
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 the largest cave that I've found in four months, since exploring the Icelands biome in July, and the fourth largest cave I've found in this world, with a volume of 371,000 blocks, merged with another cave with a volume of 83,000:
Following are other notable findings:
Two complexes of ravines near each other, each with a large ravine with a volume of over 100,000; the westernmost ravine went right under the Savanna village I found back in March:
The fourth colossal cave system I've found in this world, and the closest one to the origin - it is quite notable that it took 9 months to fully explore everything within just 1000 blocks of the origin (I did explore further out in most directions), illustrating why I want worlds with a lot of variety within a relatively small area (as I've often pointed out with regards to the biome changes in 1.7):
A complex of several large caves, including the widest possible "vanilla" cave, which have a maximum diameter of 33 blocks in TMCW (27 in vanilla; the only difference is that I changed a multiplier from 1-4 to 1-5; there is also an additional width multiplier applied to all caves within a region but it is applied in such a way that the maximum width is always 33); when I found this I thought it was a "large cave cave system" until I analyzed it:
A toroidal cave with the largest possible size for an "original" cave, 64 blocks in diameter with a tunnel width of 20 blocks (I added a larger variant, up to 80/28, later on; I'd have found two more such caves if I'd added them before I started playing on this world):
A large ravine with a length of 246, width of 15, depth of 41, and volume of 76105, slightly more than twice the size of the largest possible ravine in vanilla:
A complex of multiple large circular rooms, the largest of which was 58 blocks across and had a volume of about 48,000 blocks; the largest "vanilla" cave in the lower-left (coming from the circular room with lava) is the largest one in terms of volume that I've found, with a volume of about 21,600 blocks; the map also shows the toroidal cave and the large ravine mentioned previously:
Some more screenshots of mobs, including a zombie wearing a pumpkin I found outside my main base on Halloween (I've collected all such mobs in my first world on a couple occasions):
Another notable finding was two more villages, bringing the total in this world up to 5, and the third one I've found recently; notably, every village has been within a level 3 map-sized area to the northwest of spawn (there haven't been that many village spawn biomes elsewhere and/or they just failed to choose a valid location). One village also had a zombie dungeon under it; it was also rather sloppily generated with buildings offset well off the ground (I'd reduced the height variation of vanilla Plains but there can still be noticeable height differences, especially near other biomes):
I also found a shipwreck for the first time, the smallest of three sizes, with the largest having a chest beneath the deck; as well as a sponge in a dungeon under the ocean (they can also be found in large shipwrecks as guaranteed loot; they have the same water-absorbing properties as 1.8):
Here is a screenshot of my map wall and an underground rendering of what I've explored within the current map, northwest of -512, -512:
Also, I'm less than 40,000 ores away from mining a million ores in this world while caving, and have already mined more than a million "resource" blocks when including moss stone, rails, and cobwebs:
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?
Here are some screenshots, as usual, there were creeper/witch/skeleton/cave spider spawners under the chests in hallways and silverfish spawners under the bookshelves in libraries (an interesting addition in TMCWv5 is that spawners do not produce flame/smoke particles if they are completely surrounded by solid blocks, making them harder to find), I also found a creeper dungeon that generated inside the stronghold:
Also, I found a giant cave region for the third time in this world, and fourth time overall, it was mostly under an ocean, otherwise it was slightly larger than the first one I found (being under an ocean didn't have much impact though as it was mostly only the highest ceilings that were affected; I collected about the same amount of resources as the first one):
(for a sense of scale, the width of this image is equivalent to 1127 blocks)
Some screenshots; there was a fossil in it due to adding them to ocean biomes, on and below the seafloor:
Notably, while exploring the giant cave region I set a new all-time record for the most mobs killed in a single play session - 1,070:
Here are surface and underground renderings of what I've explored to the north and west of -512, -512; the giant cave region is near the top-center while the stronghold is on the left side 1/4 the way up from the bottom:
Also of note, there is an insane complex of huge caves and ravines far to the west, around -2136, -920 (as I've done before I analyze the border maps after I've finished exploring their edges to see what is in them) - the cave has a volume of 847,000 blocks, so large it is larger than the largest caves I've found so far - in TMCWv4 and TMCWv5 combined (584,000 and 252,000 blocks, 836,000 total), with two ravines with volumes of 530,000 and 420,000 blocks, both larger than the largest ravine I've found so far (398,000 blocks):
In fact, this area has the largest cave and 5th largest ravine within 8192 blocks or 1048576 chunks; the largest cave and ravine I've found so far are the 14th and 48th largest respectively (I used CaveFinder's "nocoords" mode to list everything without showing where they actually were):
Another interesting thing is that one of the giant cave regions I've found is the smallest one within this area, which is just as exceptional as being the largest; the other two are also near the bottom of the list (there were a total of 79 giant cave regions), though the difference between the largest and smallest is less than 10%:
Also, here is a comparison of my world's seed (only listing what I've found so far within 1536 blocks) and 5 random seeds; while I've found things that far exceed anything I previously found it is not particularly notable for TMCWv5 (likewise, I've made many random seeds that spawned my near new/"rare" biomes, or rare structures like woodland mansions, which I haven't found yet, or even more common structures like igloos; the most notable biome-related feature is the very large Quartz Desert to the southwest of spawn, with two Quartz Desert Pyramids, which are the rarest structure overall):
In addition, this is the most extreme giant cave seed that I've found so far - 7 caves exceeding half a million blocks with the largest reaching 840,000 (not the largest cave within 1536 blocks):
This is the most interesting area and includes the three largest caves
Also, a feature I recently added to CaveFinder is the ability to set the surface level, defaulting to 62 (highest layer below sea level) to as high as y=95 to more accurately measure the volume when terrain is deeper; this also shows the true maximum depth of ravines (most were previously listed as 59 blocks because that is the number of layers between lava level and sea level, 4-62):
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 noticed an unintentional optimization. Since there are 10x more air blocks, The game will be a lot faster. As the game seems to be happier with less non-air blocks in general.
I have not seen any impact from this; only the height of the highest blocks matters as far as resource usage goes - even an entirely "empty" section is always being loaded, especially since I fixed MC-911 (caused by empty sections not being generated at all; I always initialize all sections below sea level) and MC-80966 (caused by the server not sending "empty" sections to the client; this had a particularly adverse effect on Superflat worlds until I fixed how they generate; vanilla always generates all 16 sections regardless of the true depth so this caused them to use far more memory than default worlds; in TMCW the default preset can use less than 30 MB). Also, air is still only about 11% of the underground (layers 4-62), about twice as much as vanilla 1.6.4 (layers 11-62), so the impact wouldn't be that significant (even the "extreme" cave seed I last mentioned is only 11.87% air across a 3072x3072 area, about 8% more than average).
Otherwise, the only impact of air blocks is that they aren't randomly ticked, but there isn't much difference here either as the game still has to select blocks to tick, In fact, I removed an optimization where vanilla keeps track of whether a section has any blocks to tick with no noticeable impact on server tick time (which is dominated by entities); conversely, the game no longer needs to check if a block ticks on every setBlock call* (I also removed support for 4096 block IDs, eliminating additional checks, since 256 is plenty for the foreseeable future given my extensive use of metadata and "render only" states; if I decided to add more variants of wooden doors I'd probably use a tile entity to store the variant as then I don't have to modify code (in currently unmodified classes) that expects "Block.doorWood" (e.g. villager pathfinding and "house" determination). The impact of tile entities is low as long as they don't use a "TileEntitySpecialRenderer", which is called every frame for every block, and is why chests are so bad compared to barrels, which are rendered as a "standard" block).
*This shows how much I simplified the code in what was "ExtendedBlockStorage" - literally a single line instead of a few dozen:
This is from my "ChunkSection" class, which is functionally identical but internally very different; all the references to "blockMSBArray", "blockRefCount", and "tickRefCount" were removed (I also completely removed "removeInvalidBlocks", which is called when a chunk is loaded server-side or received client-side and checks that every block is valid and adds up the number of blocks/ticking blocks; there can be no invalid/null block IDs in TMCW because all unallocated IDs were assigned to a "placeholder block"; if vanilla had done the same thing then there would be no missing blocks if you accidentally downgraded a world (vanilla 1.6.4 does ignore invalid metadata; granite/andesite/diorite and many other blocks will remain intact if you downgrade TMCW to 1.6.4 and vice-versa):
I also added methods which accept a single index which can reduce the number of calculations (instead of re-calculating the entire index, and passing 3 parameters, it can be calculated once with offsets added to it to access surrounding blocks. For a similar reason I added "get/setBlockState", which handles a single integer value which combines a block ID and metadata; if I ever add support for 4096 block IDs I could do so by making "blockArray" a short and packing a 12 bit ID and 4 bit metadata into it, eliminating the need for a separate metadata array, if making saving/loading chunks slightly more complicated to maintain compatibility with 3rd party tools):
Also, lighting up caves leads to a significant increase in save size, as well as chunk packets, which is proportional to the underground volume - the largest region files in my world are over 9 MB in size, compared to 6 MB for my first world, and correspond to giant cave regions, the locally highest density areas (around 30% air over 300x300 blocks). This is due to the decreased compressibility of a more complex block light map (the actual amount of data doesn't change; save size is mainly dependent on how much it can be compressed, as demonstrated here - a world filled to the height limit with only stone (or any other block) uses far less space than a normal world; even a default Superflat world may be larger as it has at least 4 different blocks).
There is one possible benefit of larger caves - there is less to render, or relatively less than you'd expect (there is about 1.33 times more surface area based on the amount of ore exposed per chunk, compared to about 2.33 times the volume, or 1.75 times less surface area per unit volume), which can impact FPS without occlusion culling (I don't see much of a difference, though on my old computer enabling Advanced OpenGL doubled FPS; on Intel/AMD it may actually substantially decrease FPS due to their poor support for OpenGL, otherwise it depends on whether rendering more geometry is faster than the additional calls to perform occlusion checks (1.8 claims to have improved culling but it doesn't cull as many chunks (I'd expect no more than a couple dozen in this example, not 130, as indicated by the "C:" value), and is entirely done in software on the CPU).
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?
Here are renderings of the mineshafts, as well as the largest known mineshaft in TMCWv5, which was found after searching the equivalent of about 10 million mineshafts worth of seeds within 1536 blocks, and is nearly twice the size of the largest mineshaft I've explored, with 8170 blocks of corridors within a volume of 225x225x49 blocks and containing 1919 rails, 26 chests, and 16 spawners:
Despite being able to get much larger, and larger mineshafts being much more common, the average size is about the same as vanilla, or even slightly smaller, with more mineshafts below the average than above, as shown in this chart of the distribution of corridor lengths, and in vanilla 1.6.4 they very frequently intersect other mineshafts, the largest complexes I've found in my first world dwarf the largest mineshaft shown above (I estimated that I collected more than 5000 rails from one such complex; another complex yielded over 2700):
Another difference from vanilla is that mineshafts must have at least 25 structure pieces, while the smallest mineshafts in vanilla had 4, which is reflected in the size ranges (actually, the minimum is 1, or just the center room, but this is with a bug fix so they always have at least one exit from the room, which I included in my :"World1" mod, otherwise, they are vanilla)
Notably, the largest known mineshaft directly intersects another large mineshaft, with a third nearly intersecting it (close enough that they could easily be thought to intersect, same for two smaller mineshafts nearby):
Also, here are more details on the seed with the largest mineshaft (1508089632190745000), which also has the longest and widest possible ravine, 368 blocks long and 50 blocks wide with a volume of nearly 600,000 blocks (the largest known ravine is about 645,000 blocks), which interacts another large ravine with a volume of over 300,000 blocks, which intersect 5 other ravines for a total volume of nearly a million blocks:
The largest ravine, part of a complex of 7 intersecting ravines, including another extremely large ravine:
The largest cave, with a volume of 664,000 blocks:
Some interesting terrain and biomes around spawn:
A surface rendering of the areas I visited, along with a biome map, special cave map, and analysis:
The largest mineshaft is near the left side, 1/4 the way up from the bottom; while the largest cave and ravine are near the upper-left:
Also, I found a total of 4 shipwrecks in the ocean in the northwest map, including a large shipwreck, the only size that has loot, which included 3 sponges, bringing the total up to 4 (1 was from a dungeon). Also shown are a couple of icebergs in a Frozen Ocean:
I also found a desert well for the first time in this world, which was also the first time I've found the quartz desert variant (I added them after I started playing on this world so I'd likely have found more):
Here is a rendering of what I've explored so for in the map to the north, where I've made the 5th secondary base in this world (I made 3 in TMCWv4 and no more than one in any other world other than my first world, which has 21):
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?
Likewise, the amount of caving I did is easily a record, with 1.11 million ores and 1.21 million "ore/resource" blocks out of a total of 1.59 million blocks mined, and 356,000 torches placed within an estimated 32,052 chunks explored (chunks remaining after trimming way those without torches within 1 chunk; the overall world was 40,567 chunks); 321 of the 343 play sessions were spent caving (excluding some that I did prior to returning and starting on a new base/railway):
As noted before, the table above only includes "caving" sessions:
This is the output from MCMap, which shows the actual number of torches in the Overworld (minus torches placed in the Nether and including torches taken from minecarts; all naturally generated torches use different block IDs):
I also set multiple other single session/world records, from the most ores mined (6,286) to the most mobs killed (1,070) to the most mobs in diamond/amethyst armor in one day (3), and explored the largest caves, ravines, and mineshafts I've ever found, and found 4 strongholds in a single world; I also mined more emerald ore than in any other world, even my first world (2741 vs 2485; notably, I only mined 145 in TMCWv4, 210 when adjusted for playtime, due to a lack of emerald-bearing biomes, the amount in TMCWv5 is also partly due to increasing the altitude to sea level and finding 3 Volcanic Wasteland biomes, even so it was less than 0.25% or 1 in 400 of all ores mined):
I found a total of 2,039 features (caves and structures) in this world, as well as 48 unique biomes, averaging about 6 per play session and one every 7 play sessions respectively (the rate of finding new biomes has significantly dropped over time as I've found most of the "normal" biomes):
619 normal dungeons (2 intersecting x3, normal+double x1)
407 ravines (up to 8 intersecting)
155 vertical pit caves
153 mineshafts
62 large ravines (volume >= 25000 and length >= 112 or width >= 15 or depth >= 45)
48 large caves (volume >= 25000)
47 large circular rooms (width >= 34)
44 dense cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
43 double dungeons
36 random cave clusters
34 toroidal caves
30 maze cave clusters
30 ravine cave clusters
29 circular room cave clusters
24 ribbed tunnel cave clusters
24 zigzag cave clusters
24 zigzag cave systems
22 fossils (3 ocean)
22 giant caves (volume >= 100000)
22 spiral cave systems
22 vertical cave clusters
16 vertical cave systems
15 ravine cave systems
14 circular room cave systems
14 giant ravines (volume >= 100000)
13 CRM combination cave systems
13 large cave cave systems
13 maze cave systems
13 random cave systems
12 ribbed tunnel cave systems
10 RZV combination cave systems
5 villages (1 Desert, 2 Meadow, 1 Plains, 1 Savanna)
4 Icelands vertical pit caves
4 network cave regions
4 colossal cave systems
4 desert temples
4 shipwrecks (1 large, 2 medium, 1 small)
4 strongholds (3 found by caving)
3 giant cave regions
2 jungle caves
2 mesa mineshafts
2 pumpkin houses
2 quartz desert pyramids
2 witch huts
1 desert well (1 quartz)
(2039 individual structures/caves)
Biomes found (by order found):
Meadow (spawn biome)
Mushroom Forest
Jungle
Mixed Forest
Bushlands
Lake (sub-biome of various biomes)
Quartz Desert
Savanna Mountains
Forest Mountains
Autumnal Forest
Winter Forest
Volcanic Wasteland
Rocky Mountains
Mega Tree Plains
Flower Forest
Taiga
Mega Mixed Forest
Mesa
Roofed Forest
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (sub-biome of Birch Forest)
Ice Plains
Ice Hills (sub-biome of Ice Plains)
Ice Plains Spikes
Frozen Lake
Winter Taiga
TMCW Mega Taiga
Desert
Savanna Plateau
Swampland
Savanna
Plains
Forest (sub-biome of Plains)
Big Oak Forest
Poplar Grove (full-size biome)
Lake (full-size biome)
Ice Hills (full-size biome)
Mountainous Desert
Mega Forest
Spruce Hills (sub-biome of Mega Tree Plains)
Big Birch Forest
Great Forest
Forest (full-size biome)
Icelands
Ocean
Tropical Ocean
Frozen Ocean
Mega Spruce Taiga
Hilly Plains
Badlands
Mega Taiga
Meadow Forest
(48 unique biomes, not including variants like Hills, River, Edge)
In particular, I found a total of 70 caves with a volume of at least 25,000, near the largest known in vanilla, of which 22 reached 100,000 and 8 exceeded the largest cave I explored prior to this world; likewise, I found 76 ravines with a volume of at least 25,000 and reaching the vanilla maximum in at least one dimension (this criteria excludes clearly "vanilla"-size ravines), of which 14 reached 100,000 and 6 exceeded the largest ravine I explored prior to this world; in the case of mineshafts 7 exceeded the largest mineshaft I previously found with 25 having at least 200 structure pieces ("large" mineshafts, where the average is about 127, including in vanilla); and I found a total of 47 circular rooms with a diameter of at least 34 blocks, twice the size and up to 8 times the volume of the largest rooms in vanilla, including one of the largest possible, 70 blocks wide and 80,000 in volume, and 4 larger than the largest one I previously found:
Here are surface and underground renderings of the world (25% of original size), and all of my worlds together (5% of original size):
Also, this is a map of special cave variants within the areas I explored:
It is pretty safe to say that this world alone could set an actual world record for the most caving ever done by a single player in Minecraft (see my signature about my first world, which is about 3.5 times larger); even after 1.18 the majority of players never give caving a second thought based on the results of threads I made asking about how much caving you do (on these forums and Reddit, which did just as poorly so "the forums are dead" is not an excuse, I haven't even posted to r/Minecraft since then since it is clear that nobody has any interest in me).
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 wonder if You could apply for any world records, Happy New Year!
I've found a new contender for the largest ravine I've ever explored, with a volume of more than 400,000 blocks; the actual volume is a bit lower than the largest ravine I previously found due to partly being under the ocean but this doesn't affect it that much (the other ravine may be as large as 440,000 due to being located under terrain higher than y=63; both have about the same width while the one I just found is 30 blocks longer):
These measurements assume that the ground is deep enough to accommodate the entire ravine (I recently added an option to set the maximum altitude to higher than 62 in CaveFinder, which normally only counts the volume between layers 4-62); in both cases they go as high as layer 70, which part of the second ravine did get to:
One of the most interesting things about the ravine is how it happened to align with a narrow strip of land between an ocean and lake; when it first appeared on the map it looked like lava in the middle of the ocean (many of the screenshots shown here were taken after I copied the regions to a Creative world):
Here are screenshots I took when I found it:
This is the same view as above but with the render distance increased:
These were taken after I explored it (copied to a Creative world to more easily get better views):
Also, while these ravines seem very large on average you can expect to find a larger ravine, averaging 471,000 blocks, within 1536 blocks in a given seed; for comparison, the largest cave I've found (584,000) is slightly larger than the average:
Another notable finding is an extremely large Savanna Mountains biome, more than 500 blocks across (twice the average biome size); the highest peaks reached y=188:
For perspective, these are all the peaks I've found reaching y=128 (the limit for terrain before 1.7; in practice, a few blocks less), based on the highest peak within a given biome (that is to say, I've found 18 separate biomes with such high terrain):
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?
Also, this is the past 30 days/sessions, showing that the shorter-term averages are even higher (the long-term averages have been gradually rising) - averaging an unprecedented 3,674 ore and 4,015 resource blocks mined per play session; notably, the average playtime per session was actually slightly lower than the long-term average (3.81 hours vs 3.89 hours, which itself has slightly dropped over time); this may more accurately reflect my usage of "vein miner" than the long-term rates (I've previously noted that despite this I've only mined about 3% more ore per hour than in my first world; the rate here is close to 12% higher, consistent with estimates that I spend about 10% of my time mining ores; aside from that, my mining rate has slowly increased over the years, as also evident in my first world. Increases are also evident in non-mining stats, like mob kills, which shows the same increase relative to the overall average):
Here are more statistics; overall I've now played on this world for 62.95 days over 388 sessions (23 "non-caving" sessions, mostly before the "end-game" and when building new secondary bases):
I've continued exploring the map to the northeast, with around 3/4 of it filled in; since the mega ravine I've found several more large ravines and caves:
First I found a cave with a volume of 119,000 blocks, one of several caves reaching at least 25,000 (the others were only slightly larger than this so I did not post them here), and the 23rd cave I've found with a volume of at least 100,000:
Next I found two large ravines intersecting, with the larger one having a volume of 104,000 blocks, the 17th ravine I've found with a volume of at least 100,000; as with caves I also found several smaller ravines exceeding 25,000 (I've found a total of 76 caves and 84 ravines this large):
I most recently explored a "large cave cave system", the 15th one I've found so far, with a volume of 141,000 blocks; I've now found a total of 62 underground features with a volume of 100,000 or more (23 caves, 17 ravines, 15 large cave cave systems, 4 colossal cave systems, 3 giant cave regions), with a total volume of 17.5 million blocks*:
*A breakdown and listing of features by volume, only counting those reaching at least 100,000 (guaranteed for giant cave regions and colossal cave systems):
Here is a rendering of what I've explored to the northeast of 512, -512:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
The temple itself had rather ordinary loot, a couple diamonds , some gold, iron, an emerald, and bones; the contents of the dispensers may be more interesting, with fire charges in addition to arrows, a feature I added in TMCWv1:
One thing that is very different from vanilla is that the 3 chiseled stone bricks aren't anywhere near as valuable since they replace cobblestone in the floor of "double dungeons", from which I've collected almost two chest fulls (I did not make it, or mossy cobblestone, craftable as this would destroy their value for me, as they are one of the resources I collect while caving. Mossy/cracked stone bricks are also effectively unlimited due to strongholds being infinite, and some dungeons have them in place of cobblestone for the walls).
Also, I've seen it said that in newer versions you can just go around and loot structures for all your resource needs, I simply can't see how that is possible, the Wiki indicates that they are no more common than in vanilla 1.6.4 (a "spacing" of 32 means one attempts to generate every 32x32 chunk region, hence the 1024 chunks mentioned above), with no attempts to offset their biomes becoming rarer as new ones are added so a given type of structure is much rarer overall (of course, given how large deserts can be there can be a lot of desert temples in as single desert, same for oceans and shipwrecks/ruins).
I've also yet to find an igloo, of which I found 4 of in TMCWv4, or woodland mansions, which are more common than quartz desert pyramids (of which I found two, thanks to an unusually large quartz desert, which have also been quite common overall), and vastly more common than they are in vanilla.
As if that weren't enough, from the top of the temple I saw a biome for the first time in this world, and the first new biome in 3 months and 49th biome overall - Extreme Hills, which is pretty similar to vanilla 1.6.4 except it can get much higher (near y=192 instead of y=128) and has spruce trees in addition to oak trees; there are also more caves and iron ore generated above sea level and emerald ore generates up to sea level:
This is my latest secondary base, the 8th one I've built in this world (one in each level 3 map around the origin map, which has my main base), compared to only 2 in TMCWv4 and none at all in many earlier worlds (I used a backpack mod back then, or just never built in in TMCWv1 as having a double-sized Ender chest means I don't have to make trips back as often); I've trended towards making them all like this, as also seen by the most recent one I built in my first world:
Here is an underground rendering of the map to the southwest, extended to the north and east by 4 chunks; I'd previously explored most of a mesa biome in the northeast corner, otherwise, not much else yet; the first thing I'll explore is another network cave region, which I'd found a long time ago but haven't counted as explored until I actually do so, which will be the 7th one I've found:
You'll note that I said this is the final map I'll explore since at that point I've have explored everything within 1536 blocks, for the first time in any world other than my first world (and even then I haven't actually explored everything within that area as part of the area to the northeast is ocean; however, I've otherwise explored much of the area within 3072 blocks, or 3x3 level 4 maps (as opposed to level 3 maps for this world), and as far to the west and north as land allowed. After than I'll probably play on my first world, which will also allow for more changes to be made to TMCW that might otherwise cause unwanted disruptions (at the same time I place less priority on updates when playing on my first world, part of the reason why TMCWv5 took 5 years, if with a significant intermediate update a couple years before).
As far as caving goes, I found a couple large caves near a network cave region in the far northeastern part of the northeast map, as well as another instance of terrain exceeding y=128, a relatively moderate Forest Mountains:
The first cave, with a volume of about 42,000:
The second cave, with a volume of 98,000, almost enough to be the 24rd "giant cave" (as I've defined caves reaching 100,000). I also had a mishap while exploring this cave which resulted in falling about 20 blocks into the lava; I landed near an obsidian platform and was able to get out without taking too much damage though:
A Forest Mountains reaching y=130:
This is a surface rendering of the area to the northeast of 512, -512, including areas I explored much earlier (the Icelands biome to the east):
These are underground renderings made with CaveFinder, showing everything and special caves only (minus the minor types like cave clusters, and larger vanilla caves), and a list of everything within the area (some of these I explored along ago while exploring the map to the south; the giant cave region is almost entirely within it):
As I've done before, I looked at what was further north (in areas I don't plan to ever explore) and as it happens I came very close to finding what would have been the largest ravine I've ever explored, with a volume of more than half a million blocks; further to the west is another ravine with a volume of 285,000:
There are also more interesting things further to the north, including an enormous mineshaft 5 times larger than the average mineshaft in vanilla and a cave with the largest lava lake I've ever seen from a single cave; there is also a stronghold just to the north of the aforementioned ravine, the 5th one in this world (with 4 actually found while playing):
A partial list of features in the area:
There's also a quite large ravine leading from the cave from the north:
Also, these are various biomes and landforms to the north; a jungle whose southern edge is just within generated chunks contains a jungle temple near its northern edge, which is next to a Desert M, a biome which I haven't found yet:
A Desert with Savanna Mountains in the background:
More Desert (maybe Mountainous Desert) and Extreme Hills:
The other end of the same Extreme Hills with Quartz Desert and Badlands in the foreground:
An Icelands bordered by Frozen Ocean:
Some relatively mild Forest Mountains (recognizable by spruce trees in addition to oak and birch; unlike some other such-named biomes this is less a mountainous variant of Forest than a forested variant of Extreme Hills, with its other biome-specific features):
A very large surface ravine in a swamp with a witch hut next to it (saved by the water it is in as caves can't cut through it); in the background is a quite hilly Birch Forest:
A Flower Forest:
An impressively large mountain in a Mushroom Forest, reaching y=142, which is quite rare for a non-mountainous biome:
Two large ravines intersecting:
A "rare" TMCW Mega Taiga (I still think of it as rare since I never found one while playing on a world until TMCWv5, despite having added it in TMCWv1, but it is about as common as a "common" biome can get, considering that such biomes are only a few percent or less of the world):
Another Desert M with a Mega Forest in the background:
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?