In just one day I've already nearly reached the center of the map to the west, thanks to a very long ravine, one of the largest that I've found so far, and found yet another(!) biome, Desert - so far I've been finding new biomes at about 3 times the rate I found them in TMCWv4 during my first playthrough (31 biomes in 121 sessions spent caving; so far I've found 28 biomes in 40 sessions spent caving; I later found 5 more biomes in TMCWv4 during another 101 sessions; it can be expected that I'll find new biomes less often as time goes on). The Quartz Desert to the south of spawn has also proven to be very large, at least 700 blocks across, indicative of multiple biomes joined together (on average a single biome is about 256 blocks across), and due to the ease of crossing deserts and my main base being close to the eastern edge I don't plan building a secondary base for this map (normally I place them near the center):
For the third time recently I found low-level lava exposed to the sky, in this case, at the intersection of two ravines which went up to y=76, with the top of the lowest block over it at y=78, meaning a 74 block fall down to lava level at y=4 (this would deal 17.75 damage in my armor, which reduces fall damage by 75%; in vanilla 1.6.4 it is randomized to 52-80% while in 1.9+ it is 80%. The maximum survivable fall distance is 82 blocks in TMCW and 103(?) blocks in 1.9+ (? because of MC-130639, which I fixed, this is why a 23 block fall with no enchantments is not fatal when it should be) and 1.6.4, but 1.6.4 only guarantees survival from 44-45 blocks):
The desert also had something else in it - a desert temple, the first surface structure that I've found since the village near spawn:
Note that this is a "husk" spawner, a special variant of zombie spawner which exclusively spawns husks (in older versions they were normal zombies; mob spawners in desert temples is a feature added in TMCWv1):
Another way desert temples can be different is that the chest may be trapped chests with additional TNT under them; this one did not have a pressure plate but they were replaced with a special sandstone variant which is only triggered by players (they can have both traps, as well as no spawners with a total of 12 different combinations when including spawner types):
This is the loot in the chests, with the top row being taken (I only collect a couple saddles and diamond and amethyst horse armor):
Not only that, after I finished exploring it I saw something else in the far distance - a Quartz Desert Pyramids, a new structure that I added:
The treasure room, which is at the very top of the main pyramid; they have the same loot as desert temples and jungle temples:
There were three spawners placed under the walls, including two skeleton and one white husk spawner (there are always three spawners with 1 or 2 being for each mob):
These are examples of what the first and second floors look like:
The main pyramid contains three floors, two of which are mazes, with 16 different mazes for each floor (256 combinations), meaning that any two structures are likely to be unique, and there are several spawners placed under the walls, which are completely hidden as spawners will not produce particles if they are completely surrounded by solid blocks. The walls are made out of "Reinforced Quartz Sandstone", which has a hardness of 320, making it take about 14 seconds to mine with an amethyst pickaxe with Efficiency V (60 seconds without), which discourages simply mining through the walls. Once you reach the treasure room there is a button attached to a special "Quartz Desert Pyramids Unhardener" block which will transform itself and all nearby reinforced quartz sandstone into normal quartz sandstone (both types will drop normal sandstone if you mine them).
Also, I've found yet another huge cave, the third or fourth one that I've found recently (in post #16 I showed a large surface cave opening, I've actually only explored one so far), and with sky light visible from the surface down to a huge lava sea for the fourth time - if it wasn't obvious already the underground in TMCWv5 is truly Swiss cheese, much more so than any other mod I've ever made, with most of the increase from TMCWv4 due to caves like this and larger ravines being more common and larger; many of the new variants of caves and cave systems also generate in areas otherwise devoid of caves or other underground structures (as opposed to displacing them, as some variants do):
I've now found 31 biomes - as many as I found in TMCWv4 during the first period I played on it, but taking only about a third of the time (46 vs 121 days spent caving):
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
Two of the biomes, Savanna and Swampland, also had the second village and first witch hut I've found in this world, as well as the first Savanna village that I've found since I added biome-specific village variants in TMCWv4 (in this case, they use jungle wood based blocks since "acacia" trees use jungle wood, as they did when first added in 1.7 snapshots; I still haven't added new wood types). Witch huts were also slightly altered in that they have two witches instead of one and they have twice the normal health (52 instead of 26) and there is a black cat (untamed, the skin of an ocelot is set independently from its tamed status):
Even with all of these biomes I still haven't found several "common" vanilla biomes - Plains, Extreme Hills, Forest - the sheer number of biomes means that most biomes are less than 2% of land (including sub-biome variants; Extreme Hills proper is about 1.2% but overall it is about 2.4% when including Extreme Hills Edge and Extreme Mountains) and even the most common "land" biome, Ice Plains, is only about 4.67%, while the rarest biome, Oasis, is only 0.02697% of land (since it generates as a sub-biome of Desert M the overall frequency of Oasis + Desert M, about 1%, reflects how hard it actually is to find; conversely, some biomes, like Savanna, generate as "edge" biomes around Savanna Plateau and Savanna Mountains, as does Taiga around Mega Taiga variants, so the biomes by themselves are less common than indicated):
More notably, I saw two mobs in diamond armor on the same day, about 2 hours apart, for the first time in this world, and one of only four occurrences, two of them in TMCWv4 and one when I modded my first world with a special version of TMCW (otherwise, I have not increased armor changes/chances of higher tiers in my first world, where I've gone more than a year of daily playing between sightings of diamond armored mobs, averaging about one every 4 months, compared to one per week in TMCWv4):
Interestingly, I've seen the same number of skeletons and zombies in diamond armor, 4 each; normally zombies are much more common since they are more commonly encountered by a factor of 2-3 times, even including amethyst armor, which 2 zombies have had, the ratio is still much lower than expected (on average). I've also averaged one mob in diamond or amethyst every 4.6 play sessions, in part reflecting an increased number of mobs (the probabilities are the same as in TMCWv4).
I also found my first real double dungeon, two separate dungeons joined together, as opposed to the special variant of the same name, out of a total of 111 dungeons, illustrating how rare they are (about 2% of all dungeons; the "double dungeon" variant is about 5-6%):
I found the largest "toroidal cave" that can possibly generate, with a diameter of 64 blocks, tunnel width of 20 blocks, and a volume of about 34,000 blocks:
This is a list of all toroidal caves that I've found (I recently updated CaveFinder to show their volume):
I also found the densest "vanilla" cave system that I've found so far; at first I thought I'd found a "colossal cave system" but it wasn't large enough; all the caves in the area also had vanilla cave generation parameters (with the exception of TMCWv2 they still won't match vanilla due to changes to the RNG):
Here is an underground rendering of what I've explored so far and a list of everything that I've found, totaling 303 different caves and structures:
Play sessions spent caving: 46
Structures/caves found (by number):
103 normal dungeons (2 intersecting x1)
62 ravines (up to 4 intersecting)
24 mineshafts
20 vertical pit caves
9 large caves (volume >= 25000)
9 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
8 double dungeons
7 large ravines (volume >= 25000)
6 ravine cave clusters
5 circular room cave clusters
5 ribbed tunnel cave clusters
5 spiral cave systems
4 maze cave clusters
4 random cave clusters
4 toroidal caves
3 vertical cave systems
2 CRM combination cave systems
2 fossils
2 random cave systems
2 ravine cave systems
2 vertical cave clusters
2 villages (1 Meadow, 1 Savanna)
2 zigzag cave clusters
2 zigzag cave systems
1 desert temple
1 giant cave (volume >= 250000)
1 jungle cave
1 maze cave system
1 quartz desert pyramids
1 ribbed tunnel cave system
1 RZV combination cave system
1 stronghold (with eye of ender)
1 witch hut
(303 individual structures/caves)
The cave I mentioned in the second previous post turned out to be the second largest cave I've found so far in this world, with a volume of over 414,000 blocks:
As large as these caves are, the largest known cave is still larger than both of these combined (about 1.1 million blocks) and a giant cave region is even larger still (ranging from about 1.5 to 1.8 million blocks). I haven't actually fully explored it but I've seen enough of it to know that I'd seen all of it, otherwise I wait until I'm done before I analyze a cave to see how large it is and its structure. One of the its most notable features is the size of the surface opening/crater, the largest that I've ever found, with much of the rest of the cave coming within a few blocks of the surface; here are some more screenshots of the cave:
While exploring caves nearby I came across another cave that looks very large, if not as large as the ones above:
A relatively large ravine and medium-sized large cave; I have not found any extremely large ravines yet but the largest can get bigger than the largest cave I've found so far, with the largest caves and ravines within 1536 blocks of the origin likely to be at least as large as the largest that I found in TMCWv4 (about 250,000 blocks):
I also found two dungeons intersecting for the second time, quite soon after the first time; in this case they were on top of one another so it wasn't obvious until I mined the floor of the first (upper) dungeon (if I'd found the lower dungeon first the ceiling would have been a dead giveaway), as well as a zombie in diamond armor for the fifth time:
Here are more screenshots of the cave after I finished exploring it; most of the time spent in these caves is lighting up the ceiling, which I reach by pillaring up and bridging across; while not strictly necessary I also light up areas open to the sky, even as large as this cave:
Also, I found a second Quartz Desert Pyramids far to the west, which I spotted after I pillared up and increased the render distance to get a clear view of the cave:
As noted before, the Quartz Desert has proven to be extremely large - one of the largest single non-ocean biomes I've ever found, not including Ice Plains in vanilla, easily over a thousand blocks across (there are one or two biomes in my first world of similar size; having such a large biome in TMCW is more unusual because of the much greater number of biomes which reduces the chance of multiple instances of the same biome generating next to each other):
I've also now seen 10 mobs in diamond armor, 5 zombies and 5 skeletons, plus two zombies in amethyst armor, an average of one such mob every 16 hours spent caving (for comparison, in TMCWv4 I averaged one every 25 hours):
Also, these are the statistics for my most-used items; I've mined close to a quarter-million blocks while caving, averaging about 4,600 per session (I only use amethyst pickaxe while caving, otherwise I've used diamond in the Nether and other materials earlier on, and when I get around to it I'll use iron pickaxes collected from minecarts to dig a rail tunnel and work on a secondary base); since I fixed the statistics for many items you can also see how often I use a water bucket and a bow, the latter being used significantly more often relative to a sword than in vanilla due to larger and more open caves, but still relatively infrequently (about 6.6% of total uses of a bow and amethyst+diamond swords):
It only took about 200 hours of caving over nearly two months but I now have the ultimate mining enchantment:
As its name suggests, Vein Miner allows you to mine multiple blocks at once, effective on either ores when put on a pickaxe or wood when put on an axe; in the case of ores it will mine up to 4 blocks within a 3x3 block area up to 3 blocks away by taxicab at level 1 and up to 8 blocks within a 5x5 block area and up to 6 blocks away by taxicab at level 2, and in the case of wood it will mine up to 2 blocks below or above the block mined (3 total) depending on whether you are looking up or down, independent of the level (thus you only want to put level 1 on an axe). It is mostly only found as a level 1 enchantment, except in double dungeons, which may have level 2, and also have a higher chance of having a "true treasure enchantment" (Smelting and Vein Miner; these enchantments can only ever be found in loot chests, while Mending can also be traded so it falls in a less restrictive category).
That said, the benefit of Vein Miner is not really that high considering I only spend about 10% of the time mining ores while caving (an amethyst* pickaxe with Efficiency V can mine up to 8000 ores per hour while I find about 1/10 as much), and not every use will mine the maximum number of blocks, as shown in this chart from data collected while testing (about 25% of uses mined 8 blocks and another 25% mined only 1, with the chance otherwise decreasing between 2-7), and Smelting is probably more valuable as it eliminates the need to smelt iron and gold and enables you to use Fortune on them and also gives you more XP. I'll also need to find another Vein Miner book in order to get its full benefits, but in terms of my playstyle it will still have a bigger benefit (the only noticeable impact of my use of Smelting for the past few weeks is an increase of about 10% in the amount of XP per play session).
*Technically, you only need stone to mine ores within 0.15 seconds, or 0.45 when mining multiple blocks in succession (speed = hardness (ores = 3) * 1.5 / (toolModifier + efficiencyModifier), where stone = 4 and Efficiency V adds 5 * 5 + 1 = 26 for a total of 30. Values between >0.1 and <=0.15 are all the same due to game ticks being in intervals of 0.05; gold only reduces it to 0.118 so it is identical).
Also, this illustrates the issue of making certain items only obtainable via random chest loot - you could just as well search 10 times as much and not find anything; for comparison, I've found 5 amethyst horse armor, 4 enchanted golden apples, 3 Mending books, and 2 Smelting books, and the average probability of finding any one of 27 enchantments in a dungeon (0.218 enchanted books per chest * 1.65 chests per dungeon) is about 1.33%, or an average of 75 dungeons, of which I've found about two per day. Double dungeons have a 25% chance of having either Smelting or Vein Miner added to the first chest placed and have an average of 2.65 chests for a 14.6% chance of each enchantment but they are only about 5.8% of all dungeons.
It was also much easier to make a new pickaxe with Vein Miner as I'd collected most of the books I needed; I used some of the XP I had when I returned to my base to enchant books at level 1 until I got 4 Efficiency I so I could upgrade an Efficiency III book to Efficiency IV, which I then combined to get Efficiency V, and instead of returning to the Nether I used XP collected while caving to combine them and enchant the pickaxe; as with the Smelting pickaxe I did not put Mending on it as it would be too expensive, instead relying on rubies to periodically lower the prior work penalty (technically, I could have added Vein Miner I to the first pickaxe I made, with Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending and it would still be repairable for 48 levels, but I would not be able to upgrade it later on without making a new one).
The name I gave it, "Super Pickaxe", is a reference to the name I used for the Efficiency V, Fortune III, Unbreaking III pickaxes that I used to use from around the release of 1.6 up to TMCWv1; the main reason I stopped using Fortune was the addition of amethyst items, which would be too expensive to repair with these enchantments (prior to making rubies able to lower the prior work penalty, which enables repairing it for 47 and 49 levels per ruby); there was also no real benefit of using Fortune while caving, if anything, the opposite due to the space taken up by the additional drops.
I also found another rare thing for the first time - a pink sheep, which are in ways easier and harder to find than in vanilla 1.6.4; easier because I fixed a bug that caused sheep colors to mostly be the same over 32x32 chunk regions (or the region size used by villages, which is currently 22x22 in TMCW) instead of per-chunk, resulting in 1024 times the variation, harder because only one is ever likely to exist within the area, as opposed to the multiple pink sheep that can be found together in vanilla (the bug report is still unresolved but I'm pretty sure it was fixed in 1.13 because I have seen no reports of it for 1.13 or later):
I've also found three more biomes, now totaling 34; Plains (where I found the pink sheep), Forest (as a sub-biome of Plains), and Big Oak Forest (visible in the screenshot above; all the trees are big oak trees, including a 2x2 form which exists in the vanilla code but is unused); after I finished exploring the big cave in the Quartz Desert I started exploring northwards towards the stronghold I originally found with Eyes of Ender, to which I've come within a couple hundred blocks, but it may still be a while before I actually reach it:
As far as caving goes, I found several circular rooms with diameters of at least 34 blocks, or twice the maximum in vanilla, for the first time; the largest circular rooms tend to be clustered because they occur when specific cave generation parameters are set to enable larger circular rooms and a higher width multiplier (unlike larger caves/tunnels, which are generated separately, they generate as part of normal cave generation):
The entire area around them also had numerous large caves, where "large" means like the larger caves/tunnels found in vanilla, as opposed to the much larger caves TMCW adds (vanilla tunnels have a base width of 3-9 blocks with a 10% chance of a multiplier which may increase their width to as much as 27, and in this context any cave with a width of at least 9 is counted as "large"):
This is an analysis of one of the cave systems which had a large circular room; 80% of the caves were "large", compared to an average of only 3.3% in vanilla:
Normal cave system parameters for center chunk:
largerCircularRooms: true
circularRoomChance: 1/16
largerLargeCaves: true
largeCaveChance: 1/20
widthMultiplier: 2.0
maxLength: 80
curviness: 0.4
verticalVariation: 1/6
circularRoomCaves: 2-3
minWidth: 3.0
extraBranchChance: 0%
extraLavaLevelCaves: true
extraSeaLevelCaves: false
Size 15 cave system at -136 -584; total number of caves: 20
Number of cave systems: 1
Initial number of caves: 15
Total number of caves: 20
Additional circular room caves: 4
Additional lava level caves: 1
Additional sea level caves: 0
Number of small caves: 4; average width is 5.44
Number of large caves: 16; average width is 12.99; max width: 18.29 (-151 29 -589)
Number of circular rooms: 2; average width is 25.57; max width: 41.56 (-105 33 -613)
Additional caves per circular room: 2.00
Here are renderings of the area I recently explored using MCMap and CaveFinder, showing all caves and only special variants, which account for about 2/3 of the total air volume within this area; the three large circular rooms form a triangle in the upper half, along with several smaller rooms which are at least 17 blocks in diameter (I only count >= 34 as "large" but anything larger than vanilla is shown here), as well as "normal" caves with a width of at least 15 blocks (I use 15 and not 9 to reduce clutter); in the bottom-center is a vertical cave system and in the center is a ravine cave system, both one of several that I've found so far:
Also, while not technically a cave I found a large room filled with water as the result of what the Wiki calls a "hollow" (they have surface cover; grass/dirt/etc); otherwise, the only water-filled caves are found at lava level in "ice" biomes, which have water instead of lava (there are also water "lakes", which Mojang removed in 1.18 for some reason; conversely, I added larger variants exclusively found underground, and underground water lakes can also be found in deserts, whereas vanilla 1.6+ removed them entirely):
This is the longest animation I've ever made of my explorations while caving - 60 days:
Here are more renderings of the world, including the surface (unexplored chunks were cropped away to within 2 chunks of a torch to minimize gaps and revealing anything I haven't seen yet; the cropped world is 7529 chunks, of which 5334 contain torches), in-game maps, and a slice at layer 32 in Minutor:
Here are the statistics for what I've mined over this period, with a comparison to what I did in my first world over 4 months (122 days):
The most interesting difference between TMCWv5 and World1 is the hourly rates; I think this soundly debunks the idea that more and bigger caves (TMCWv5 has over double the underground air volume of vanilla 1.6.4/World1) significantly increases ore collection rates, which is the logic that Mojang used to justify reducing the amount of exposed ores (my guess is, they've never really done much caving at all, just like the vast majority of players). Even the addition of ores that only generate if exposed in caves (25% more in the case of diamond and redstone, 12.5% more for gold and lapis) only offsets differences in cave distribution; the doubling of emerald is coincidental but I did double its range and count to offset its biomes being rarer. The difference in resources from mineshafts (rails and cobwebs) is mainly due to mineshafts being less common, both in absolute terms (about 60% as common) and relative to caves (using volume alone gives around 30% as many mineshafts relative to caves; in actuality the difference is smaller as surface area is only about 33% higher based on exposed ores per chunk).
The differences in hourly rates may diminish, or even reverse, due to the use of Vein Miner; just a couple days after I found the first book I found another one so now I have Vein Miner II and can mine most smaller veins in a single use; the time savings appears to be larger than just a 10% increase based on time only spent mining as I don't need to move from block to block and don't need to pay as much attention to or deal with mobs in the time it takes to mine a vein. Either way, it seems that the majority of players think it takes too long to collect resources by mining or caving to be worthwhile, instead relaying on farms (for example, in this thread somebody accuses me of trolling when I show how easy it is for me to collect resources - it is very clear that to most players the game is not called "Minecraft" and major changes are needed to restore it).
Here are more charts of what I did over the entire time I've played on this world, 77 sessions (the first 16 and day 38 were not spent caving; days 6-13 and 38 were spent mining quartz in the Nether; the Ender Dragon was killed on day 14; I spent days 14-16 building my base; and days 55-56 and day 69 were when I explored the two largest caves that I've found so far):
This shows the relative rarity of diamond and amethyst, which generates 1/8 as often above layer 2 (the highest layer not directly exposed in caves), and it is common not to find any for several days at a time (it can also be found in chest loot, which is a fairly significant contributor despite being 1/3 as common as diamond):
Here is a list of all the structures, caves, biomes, and other things that I've found so far:
Structures/caves found (by number):
125 normal dungeons (2 intersecting x2)
81 ravines (up to 4 intersecting)
29 mineshafts
28 vertical pit caves
12 double dungeons
12 large ravines (volume >= 25000)
10 large caves (volume >= 25000)
10 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
7 fossils
7 ravine cave clusters
7 ribbed tunnel cave clusters
6 circular room cave clusters
6 maze cave clusters
5 random cave clusters
5 spiral cave systems
5 vertical cave systems
4 ravine cave systems
4 toroidal caves
3 circular rooms at least 34 blocks in diameter
3 random cave systems
3 zigzag cave clusters
3 zigzag cave systems
2 CRM combination cave systems
2 giant caves (volume >= 250000)
2 quartz desert pyramids
2 ribbed tunnel cave systems
2 vertical cave clusters
2 villages (1 Meadow, 1 Savanna)
1 desert temple
1 jungle cave
1 large cave cave system
1 maze cave system
1 network cave region
1 RZV combination cave system
1 stronghold (with eye of ender)
1 witch hut
(395 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)
(34 unique biomes, not including variants like Hills, River, Edge)
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher, highest peak in an instance of a biome):
189 (Extreme Forest Mountains)
188 (Extreme Savanna Mountains)
157 (Rocky Mountains)
142 (Rocky Mountains)
Largest mineshafts (>= 200 structure pieces):
1. -328 344 (size: 351), 1047 rails
2. 360 120 (size: 332), 898 rails
3. -536 360 (size: 324), 740 rails
4. 24 -216 (size: 289), ~600 rails (merged with two other mineshafts so hard to tell)
5. -200 -184 (size: 212), 542 rails
Other:
6 zombies in diamond armor
2 zombies in amethyst armor
5 skeletons in diamond armor
0 skeletons in amethyst armor
1 pink sheep
6 amethyst horse armor
4 enchanted golden apples
5 Mending books
3 Smelting books
2 Vein Miner books
306 mob spawners
131 from mineshafts
125 from dungeons
24 from double dungeons
8 from strongholds
8 from nether dungeons
6 from quartz desert pyramids
2 from desert temples
2 from nether fortresses
The latest new thing that I've found is a network cave region, one of the two largest underground structures, consisting of a network of very long and relatively straight tunnels up to 400 blocks across; unlike other special cave variants only normal caves are excluded from generating within them and "cave clusters" (3-6 of one of 6 special variants of cave) are made much more common:
This is a network cave region I found in TMCWv4, with all other underground features included and by itself (a few of the tunnels go outside of the 400x400 area I use to analyze them to measure their volume):
I also found a "large cave cave system", a special variant of cave system based on a variation from TMCWv1 where all the caves are larger than usual (unlike later versions TMCWv1 generated most caves completely differently from vanilla; "large cave systems" generated aligned to a 14x14 chunk grid at offsets 0,0 and 7,7, the opposite of mineshafts, which still use this layout, with "scattered caves" similar to those in 1.7 randomly generating):
The only types of caves I still haven't found yet are a colossal cave system, which are based on the largest and densest cave system in my first world, and a giant cave region, the largest underground feature in TMCW, as well as rarest, with one per 128x128 chunk region (equivalent to a level 4 map, of which I've explored about 1/3 of so far, in TMCWv4 it took 117 play sessions spent caving to find one, and only one over 222 sessions); I also haven't found any extremely large ravines yet (the largest that I've found is about 85,000 blocks, a third of the volume of the largest ravines I found in TMCWv4, while the largest in TMCWv5 can get larger than the largest cave I've found so far). That said, I did recently come across a ravine that goes from the surface nearly down to lava level, with diamond and amethyst ore directly exposed to the sky:
I found another giant cave, the third largest cave that I've found so far with a volume of about 195,000 blocks, intersected by a ravine with a volume of about 50,000, and only a few hundred blocks away from spawn; I didn't find it until now because there was no direct path to it, instead I explored a large loop that went well to the north of the map around spawn before coming back to the south further west, which is typical of my explorations (likewise, I only explored the eastern half of the map after I'd explored quite far to the south as only then did I find caves leading further east, and the southeastern corner is still unexplored as nothing directly leads into it):
As seen here the cave nearly broke the surface, with a couple unrelated caves actually doing so with a couple blocks at lava level having direct sky exposure:
Due to the fact that I found the cave after having explored everything around it it was absolutely packed with mobs, with a total of 783 killed on the day I explored it, with most of them in the cave (for comparison, I killed about half as many mobs per day when exploring the other two large caves as both were at the edge of the area I've explored; similarly, my (then) all-time record session of 796 mob kills occurred when I explored a giant cave surrounded by previously explored areas).
I've also seen three more mobs in diamond armor, including two skeletons in the same mineshaft:
I also had the most extreme play session so far in this world in terms of ores/resources mined - 4,828 blocks and 4,690 ores mined in 4 hours, a rate of 1,207 and 1,172 per hour, while exploring the main part of the network cave region, partly due to the use of Vein Miner but also due to the relative simplicity of the caves (mostly very long unbranched tunnels) and apparently more exposed ores than usual (I haven't actually looked into this but it does seem that some areas have more exposed ores and vice-versa, the amount of coal in particular was quite high, which could very well reflect variations in vertical distribution since on average only half of coal veins generate below sea level); I've had higher peak mining rates before, including 1,211 ores per hour in "infiniteCaves":
I finally decided to make a new secondary base, near the center of the map to the south, which I chose since it was one of the furthest directions from spawn/my main base and hadn't been explored much at all (both the maps to the west and north have been explored to near their centers; even part of the southern part of the map around the origin hasn't been explored yet due to a lack of caves leading into the area); in the process of digging the rail tunnel I discovered yet another new biome, full-size Ice Hills, which is more distinctly a separate biome from its small sub-biome counterpart within Ice Plains (rather than just being a larger version it includes pockets of Ice Hills River to make the terrain more variable and is surrounded by a double-wide edge of Ice Plains Spikes and Ice Plains); that said, I'm counting both variants as a single unique biome):
I found a zombie in diamond armor in a 2 block deep hole while building the base:
Notably, full-size Ice Hills and Ice Hills sub-biomes, as well as as island variant that generates within Frozen Ocean, are actually "separate" biomes in the code; in order to achieve many of TMCW's complex biome patterns I added many "virtual" biome IDs which are converted into real biome IDs in the last generation stage, without having to create actual biome objects for them or use up any of the the 256 real IDs (of which 126 are used, plus 35 virtual IDs for a total of 161 unique IDs):
// These are not real biome IDs but placeholders that are used by GenLayer and are later converted to actual biome IDs.
// IDs range from 256 to 511 and are converted to real biome IDs by GenLayerRivers.RIVERBANKS, the final stage in the
// GenLayer chain.
public static final int icePlains_iceHills = 256;
public static final int icePlains_icePlainsSpikes = 257;
public static final int tropicalOcean_jungleIsland = 258;
public static final int tropicalOcean_tropicalSwampIsland = 259;
public static final int tropicalOcean_mixedForestIsland = 260;
public static final int tropicalOcean_forestIsland = 261;
public static final int tropicalOcean_quartzBeach = 262;
public static final int gravelBeach_frozenOcean = 263;
public static final int frozen_ocean = 264;
public static final int frozenOcean_winterForestIsland = 265;
public static final int frozenOcean_winterTaigaIsland = 266;
public static final int frozenOcean_icePlainsSpikesIsland = 267;
public static final int frozenOcean_iceHillsIsland = 268;
public static final int frozenOcean_icelandIsland = 269;
public static final int winterForestMountains_subbiome = 270;
public static final int winterForestMountains_edge = 271;
public static final int extremeMountains_subbiome = 272;
public static final int forestHills_subbiome = 273;
public static final int winterTaigaHills_subbiome = 274;
public static final int jungleHills_subbiome = 275;
public static final int hillyPlainsHills_subbiome = 276;
public static final int mixedForestHills_subbiome = 277;
public static final int birchForestHills_subbiome = 278;
public static final int taigaHills_subbiome = 279;
public static final int bigOakForestHills_subbiome = 280;
public static final int winterForestHills_subbiome = 281;
public static final int roofedForestHills_subbiome = 282;
public static final int meadowForest_subbiome = 283;
public static final int mushroomForestHills_subbiome = 284;
public static final int bigBirchForestHills_subbiome = 285;
public static final int autumnalForestHills_subbiome = 286;
public static final int poplarGroveHills_subbiome = 287;
public static final int greatForestHills_subbiome = 288;
public static final int quartzDesertHills_subbiome = 289;
public static final int swampRiver_lake = 290;
It only took a few days to explore far enough south to reach the Ice Hills, and a few more to reach the center of the map - aided by the largest ravine that I've found so far, with a volume of 245,000 blocks, nearly three times that of the second-largest ravine:
These are all the large ravines (volume of 25,000 or more) that I've found so far with the largest one being the one shown here:
Note that half of the lava shown in the CaveFinder rendering above is actually water due to caves in Ice Hills and Ice Plains Spikes having water instead of lava:
Earlier, I found the largest circular room that I've found so far while exploring around the northeastern corner of the map around the origin, with a diameter of 53 blocks, with another room with a diameter of 41 blocks on top of it:
These are all the "large" circular rooms that I've found so far, with a diameter of at least 34 blocks, or twice the maximum in vanilla (this also means at least 8 times the volume, less parts that go below lava level or above the surface; CaveFinder only measures below sea level); the ones shown below are the first and fourth ones, you may also notice that they are all within two regions, due to the fact that they only reach their maximum size when the normal cave parameters within 12x12 chunk regions are set to enable larger circular rooms and a higher base width multiplier:
Here are renderings of what I explored over 6 days, within the current map; I've explored in a more or less straight line from near the northwest corner of the map to near the center (this is due to following interconnected caves, with nothing branching off until the giant ravine area, some caves also lead into the mesa biome near the left, where I started exploring southwards, but I've left them for now as they go off the edge of the current map):
This is a full-size version of the last frame:
There are also at least 3 other ravines intersecting the giant ravine, not all of which have been explored yet (in TMCWv4 I found a giant ravine with 6 other ravines intersecting it; another was part of a chain of 10 ravines), and an area with more large circular rooms to the east, the largest of which so far was 32 blocks across.
This is what happens when the forums you used to spend time on discussing the game die with no real substitute; I've been spending more and more time playing to offset the loss:
Never mind 3,000 ores per play session, I may soon reach the 4,000 mark, and already have in total resource blocks, after being relatively stable for years. The overall averages for this world (that was just the past week) are also easily the highest of any world with a noticeable upwards trend apparent; part of this is due to the use of Vein Miner but even the weekly hourly rate is only about 10% higher than in my first world:
This is an animation and renderings of what I explored over the past month or so (49 play sessions), covering a level 3 map centered at 0, 1024; even with as much playing as I've done recently it still took longer than average to explore the map due to the huge volume of caves (there is about 30% more surface area than vanilla 1.6.4, which more closely corresponds to exploration time than the more than doubling in volume):
This is a larger version of the last frame:
A cutaway at layer 23 in Minutor, where some of the largest caves stand out best:
A couple renderings of the surface (4 chunks larger than a level 3 map to the east/west/south; the second is rotated 180 degrees):
The entire world on in-game maps:
Among other things, I found one of the most extreme concentrations of large caves, with two huge caves with volume of a third of a million blocks each and several other smaller large caves and a "large cave cave system" all merging to form a single cave with a volume of about 800,000 blocks, and nearly 1.1 million when including everything else within their bounds (252x308x63 blocks):
A rendering made with CaveFinder; the volume within this area is 1.13 million blocks, 858,000 when only including special caves:
An analysis of a 252x308x63 area around the caves (the exact area covered, different than shown above); I used about 4,400 torches to light everything up over 4 play sessions:
The two largest caves individually, which are the 3rd and 4th largest caves that I've found so far:
This is actually where I first encountered the caves, leading from a ravine near the top-right of the renderings shown above:
This is one of the areas that links the two largest caves together, which is actually a separate cave from either of them (a "large cave cave system", which has larger caves like the larger ones in vanilla and was re-added from TMCWv1, generated between them):
This is still far from the most extreme thing I might find - a giant cave region averages around 1.7 million blocks, even more when including other caves that might merge with them (only around the edges); in TMCWv4, when they were smaller, I found one with a volume of about 1.25 million blocks, which remains the largest single cave or cave complex that I've ever explored. I haven't found one, or a colossal cave system, in this world yet (colossal cave systems are around 250,000 blocks, similar to the largest and densest cave system in my first world), which are some of the rarest underground features, even as they are more common than before (from one giant cave region every 16384 chunks in TMCWv4 to one every 13107 chunks and one colossal cave system every 8192 to 6554 chunks; unlike most other caves these are still excluded from generating too close to the origin).
Here is list of the frequencies of every underground feature; for comparison, a level 3 map is 4096 chunks:
Chunks per underground feature (large caves/ravines >= volume includes all larger sizes; likewise, mineshafts includes large mineshafts; combination cave systems include two variants with equal probability):
Dungeons: 38
Mineshafts: 181
Large ravines (>=25000): 438
Large caves (>=25000): 442
Double dungeons: 604
Large circular rooms: 707
Large ravines (>=50000): 803
Large caves (>=50000): 927
Toroidal caves: 1048
Combination cave systems: 1194
Large caves (>=100000): 1505
Large mineshafts: 1528
Ribbed tunnel cave systems: 1715
Zigzag cave systems: 1715
Large ravines (>=100000): 1740
Random cave systems: 1951
Spiral cave systems: 2068
Large cave cave systems: 2224
Vertical cave systems: 2429
Circular room cave systems: 2447
Ravine cave systems: 2447
Maze cave systems: 2572
Large ravines (>=200000): 3447
Large caves (>=200000): 3988
Large cave clusters: 4351
Network cave regions: 5656
Colossal cave systems: 6554
Large ravines (>=300000): 7426
Strongholds: 8192
Large caves (>=300000): 9404
Giant cave regions: 13107
Large ravines (>=400000): 20601
Large caves (>=400000): 25086
Notably, the chance of finding a cave with a volume of at least 400,000, of which I've found two, is once every 25,000 chunks, over twice the area that I've explored so far; this is still two orders of magnitude more common than they were in TMCWv4, which in turn is higher than earlier versions (the current method of generating large caves actually hasn't changed much since TMCWv2, the biggest change in TMCWv5 is the addition of a larger variant which is 1/6 of the previous larger type, and these two variants are together twice as common. The same is also true of ravines, which are relatively more common at the higher end due to less variability in structure even as caves can get much larger, the largest possible cave is about 1.1 million while the largest ravine is about 625,000).
In addition, I also found another complex of two large caves with a combined volume of about 187,000 blocks, located in a mesa biome in the top-left of the renderings shown above:
Other significant findings include three very large ravines, one of which I showed before, and another part of a complex of 7 intersecting ravines, the most that I've found so far in this world (I found 10 intersecting ravines in TMCWv4), as well as a stronghold, the first one that I've found exclusively by caving:
This is the second largest ravine that I've found so far, with a volume of 189,000 blocks; one of the intersecting ravines is also larger than normal while the others are vanilla sized (an 8th ravine is just above one of the intersecting ravines near the bottom):
A smaller ravine with a volume of 152,000 blocks, which is still about 5 times larger than the largest ravine in vanilla:
A jungle cave, the second one that I've found:
A mesa mineshaft, which are in addition to normal mineshafts deeper down and have gold ore generated in their walls as part of the structure (this is the only place gold generates above its normal range):
Some other large caves/cave systems:
Fun fact: the stronghold helped me fix a vanilla bug where one of the rooms ("5-way crossing", which actually has up to 6 entrances/exits) doesn't clear the proper entrances (the two on each side of the archway), causing them to be blocked off, most notably, including the portal room in this stronghold, which is a common cause of "missing" portal rooms, along with other parts of a stronghold (I only found the portal room because a cave intersected it; I'd noticed this before but finding a portal room affected by it led me to look at the code, and sure enough, I found it wasn't accounting for the orientation of the room when clearing the entrances, making it an actual bug and not a "feature", which would still be unacceptable (I actually first modified the portal room itself to forcibly clear away the entrance, but then I wondered if there was more to the story):
Some interesting terrain, including two of the highest peaks that I've found, both at y=168:
I haven't scaled this mountain as it is at the edge of the area I've explored (I literally do only explore the world by caving, this even includes checking out something like this, though I do make exceptions for structures, including the desert temple from which I saw this):
I only found one surface structure, a desert temple, which had the vanilla pressure plate trap in addition to spawners; one significant difference is the pressure plate, which is a new sandstone variant which is only activated by players (thus mobs won't set them off) and very hard to see from above, making it especially important to check before stepping down (or opening the chest, which may be trapped chests):
I've reached a significant milestone in this world - half a million ores mined, in only 163 play sessions, of which 144 were "caving" sessions (entirely spent caving); this is an overall average of 3,085 ores mined per play session, significantly more if only counting what I mined while caving (the majority of ores mined otherwise were quartz and some gold in the Nether):
Here are the general statistics and some of my most used/crafted blocks/items; I've also crafted more than 160,000 torches and mined over 700,000 blocks while caving (I've only used an amethyst pickaxe while caving, along with shears to mine cobwebs. I mainly used diamond pickaxes while branch-mining and in the Nether and iron pickaxes (taken from minecarts and enchanted at level 1 and combined) to dig out rail tunnels and work on secondary bases):
As far as caving goes, I've been exploring the map to the east (centered at 1024, 0), with between 1/3 and 1/2 of the map explored so far, in which I've found three giant caves and a giant ravine, with the largest cave and ravine intersecting with a combined volume of over half a million blocks:
A full-size rendering of what I've explored east of x=512, up to a bit past z +/- 512:
These are the largest caves, ravines, and circular rooms that I've found so far:
A screenshot of my map wall:
The following descriptions and screenshots are in the order I found them in:
One of the larger ravines that I found:
A very rare intersection of a double dungeon with a normal dungeon, forming a "triple dungeon", only the second time I've found this since I added double dungeons in TMCWv4, both once in each version, and the third time in this world I've found two dungeons of any type intersecting out of a total of 323 dungeons (as many as this is I've found slightly less dungeons over time than in my first world):
A zombie in full diamond armor:
One of the largest caves that I found, which my rail tunnel intersected so this was technically the first thing that I found (aside from a lavafall it was pitch black so I had no idea how large it was other than its depth directly below):
A "large cave cave system", I first saw the surface opening several months ago while exploring the eastern edge of the map around 0,0; the total volume was about 113,000 blocks but it is less like a single cave than multiple medium-large caves similar to the larger ones in vanilla:
A skeleton in amethyst armor (just an helmet), one of 5 such mobs so far, but still much more common than diamond armor in vanilla (there is a one in 333 chance of armor being diamond and a one in 1000 chance of amethyst compared to a one in 15551 chance of diamond in vanilla):
Some interesting terrain in a Roofed Forest, though this makes it unlikely that a woodland mansion will generate (all of the structures I've added will only generate if the terrain is flat enough; only about 20% of mansions successfully generate but due to their spacing being so low, averaging one attempt every 196 chunks, the chance of a mansion in a given Roofed Forest is about the same as the chance of a jungle or desert having a temple in vanilla, with one attempt every 1024 chunks and a 100% success rate):
A Big Birch Forest, a new biome added in TMCWv5, along with larger variants of birch trees, including a 2x2 form so all vanilla trees have one (I actually had a request to add a larger variant of birch tree):
One of the three giant caves I found, with a volume of about 146,000 blocks (I actually explored it after the second one but saw it first):
This is pretty typical of the mobs in these caves:
There were multiple large circular rooms in the same general area, due to a regional variation to "vanilla" caves which increases their base width and/or enables a chance of an additional multiplier to the size of circular rooms:
I saw another zombie in diamond armor outside my main base after returning to store away what I'd collected over the past few days; also included is a screenshot of dozens of zombies lined up outside it on another day which I thought was interesting:
A zombie dropped leggings enchanted with Swift Sneak, the first time I've seen this enchantment since I added it a month before the release of 1.19, with the same functionality (unlike 1.19 it is not a "treasure" enchantment but it is unlikely to be obtained from enchanting; the best way to find it is in mineshafts, where it is about 10 times more common than other enchantments, along with Long Fall, another new enchantment I added at the same time which increases the maximum distance you can fall without taking damage by 1 block per level, mutually exclusive with Feather Falling):
The second giant cave I found, with a volume of about 201,000 blocks:
The largest ravine and cave, which intersected with volumes of 213,000 and 308,000 blocks respectively; despite its size the cave is only the 5th largest cave that I've found so far, but still larger than the largest cave I found in TMCWv4, with a volume of about 252,000, while I still haven't found a ravine larger than the largest one I found in TMCWv4, with a volume of about 267,000:
A rare triple diamond vein in the same view, there was a fourth vein just out of sight around a bend but I only got 6 diamonds from all of them:
I found a third stronghold, the second one found exclusively by caving; one of the chests also had an enchanted golden apple, the 7th one I've found so far out of 68 golden apples (on average 10% of golden apples are enchanted, however, I found the first 6 much closer together, followed by weeks without finding one):
A Great Forest biome, added in TMCWv4 but this is the first time I've found one; it has a mixture of various tall trees found in Rocky Mountains and Meadow Forest which vary on a regional scale within the biome. This is also the 39th biome I've found, 3 more than I found during the entire time I played on TMCWv4, which I played on for about 50% longer (243 sessions, 222 spent caving, with slightly more ground covered per session):
This is the largest ravine that I've ever explored in any world, with a volume of over a third of a million blocks, making it an order of magnitude larger than the largest ravine in vanilla:
These were taken when I first found the ravine and went along one side; it just kept going on and on for a total length of 368 blocks, the longest a ravine can get (the actual straight-line distance from end-end is about 300 blocks since it curves), and 3.3 times longer than the longest ravine in vanilla (112 blocks), and a maximum width of 34 blocks, more than twice that of vanilla (15 blocks):
I took these after exploring it, which was two days later as I explored all the caves and a mineshaft intersecting it first:
To put the size of this ravine, as well as the caves I've recently found, into perspective, these are the 10 largest caves and ravines in the seed with the largest known ravine in vanilla, "-4625688978827764752" (note: it might be underwater, in which case adding a multiple of 2^48 to the seed will eventually give one that has the ravine under land; this will not work in TMCWv5 as it uses a full 64 bit RNG), and the same seed in TMCWv5, both within 8192 blocks of 0,0 (an area of 1,048,576 chunks):
TMCWv5; notably, the largest ravine is only 776 blocks away from the origin with another ravine nearly as large 768 blocks to the south and a third ravine larger than the one in my world 256 blocks to the west of it (the x/z coordinates matching is not entirely a coincidence; the largest caves and ravines generate at 0,0 and 7,7 relative to a 16x16 chunk grid, with a random chance to generate so on a large scale the pattern is random, when exploring via interconnected caves as I do the path I take further randomizes things on a local scale):
I found a colossal cave system for the first time in this world, with a volume of about a quarter-million blocks and similar in size and density to a cave system in my first world (unlike single caves and ravines cave systems can get far larger in vanilla - the largest I've found while searching seeds for the densest concentrations of caves has a volume of over a million blocks, which is much less likely to occur in TMCWv5 because "vanilla" cave systems are broken up by special cave and cave system variants):
Another notable finding is an Iceland biome, one of several new biomes added in TMCWv5, which is similar to Mesa except instead of stained/hardened clay it has packed ice and snow, including a new packed ice variant, "opaque ice", which is an intermediate between normal ice and packed ice (4 ice crafts 2 opaque ice, 4 opaque ice crafts 2 packed ice, and 4 packed ice crafts 2 blue ice so it takes 4 ice to make one packed ice and 8 ice to make one blue ice; previously, 4 ice crafted one packed ice so the cost is the same). This is also the 40th biome that I've found in this world:
While it goes off the eastern edge of the current map, and the area I planned to explore (within 1536 blocks of 0,0) I plan to make two more maps to the east specifically to explore under this biome because of its uniqueness, there is also a quite large cave under it which extends all the way from the surface to cave "liquid" level (water in the case of Iceland and other "ice" biomes, with a separation between normal lava filled caves which can be seen here):
Yet another new finding was an enchanted book with Swift Sneak I; as mentioned before, I added this about a month before the release of 1.19 and made it most commonly found in mineshaft chests, though this was a dungeon, where they have the same probability as other enchantments:
Once I get Swift Sneak III I may add it to my leggings, where it would help as I always sneak while mining (1.6.4/TMCW does not separately track sneak distance but it would have to be pretty high). I'd have to make a new pair without Mending but as with my pickaxe I can use rubies to reset the prior work penalty every 3 repairs and the additional cost is negligible with my playstyle (rubies last a very long time as well, I currently use one every 3 days or so to reset my pickaxe so a stack lasts over half a year, and a piece of armor wouldn't use much more).
While not particularly large I thought this cave looked interesting enough to take screenshots (despite being only about half the size I consider to be a "large" cave, 25,000 blocks, a cave this size is still extremely rare in vanilla - I've only found two caves larger than this in my first world despite exploring about 8 times the area of this world so far):
The first of two "large cave cave systems" that I found:
A large cave with a volume of about 52,000 blocks (such a cave was counted as a "giant" cave in TMCWv4 but I now reserve that for caves over 100,000):
I found the largest variant of toroidal cave that can generate, with a toroid width of 80 blocks and a tunnel width of 28 blocks (in a previous post I said the same thing except the widths were 64/20; this is because I added a new larger variant later on, one of several such changes; these changes do not affect existing caves, in this case, there is a 1.25/15 additional chance of a toroidal cave when a normal cave system with a size of 0 attempts to generate, which is 25% of the time, or the generation of a largest possible cave variant fails with a 127/128 chance):
The second "large cave cave system", the very edge of which intersected the mega ravine (such ravines can completely cut through special cave systems since the minimum center-center distance is only 4 chunks along both axes; the largest exclusion zones are around strongholds and colossal cave systems, up to 6 chunks):
Some interesting terrain in the Big Oak Forest where my current base is:
A dual-biome (Forest Mountains and Winter Taiga) mountain reaching y=157 (the highest ground block is under a tree, hence F3 shows y=156):
I've also seen five more mobs in diamond or amethyst armor, including one each on thee consecutive days spent exploring the colossal cave system and another in the mega ravine:
Here are renderings of the caves, ravines, and cave systems mentioned above and what I've explored past x = 1024:
I also included the largest ravine I've found in vanilla 1.6.4 while searching seeds, in the lower-right below the mega ravine:
The first large cave cave system is in the lower-right while the second is near the upper-left; the colossal cave system is near the center, the toroidal cave is near the top-right, and the mega ravine is near the top-center, partially obscured by surrounding caves and ravines:
I've finally found the rarest and most extreme underground feature in TMCW - a giant cave region, with a volume of more than 1.65 million blocks, more than three times larger than the largest single cave I've found so far, with at least two separate large caves intersecting it for an effective total volume of at least 1.8 million, and possibly more (these are just within the area I've explored so far):
This is a map of a random seed (-3504287701961080328) within +/-1536 blocks of the origin which shows special cave variations, including two giant cave regions to the west and southeast of center, as well as part of a third near the upper-right, to give you an idea of their size and frequency; on average there are 2-3 within such an area (including a 32 chunk radius circular exclusion zone around the origin which they can never generate in or intersect):
This is the first screenshot I took, a couple days ago, before I found out what it was:
These are additional screenshots taken during the first full day spent exploring it, some are actually the two caves mentioned above, which are technically separate but merged with it, which I explored starting the day before:
Similar to when I explored one in TMCWv4 I'm keeping track of what I did on each day:
Based on TMCWv4 it will take around 5-6 days to completely explore it; back then they were smaller and it took a bit over 4 full play sessions with the following results:
Overall, I mined 15,563 ore, killed 1,912 mobs, found two dungeons, three ravines (technically not part of a giant cave region but they intersected the edges), and saw a skeleton and a zombie in diamond armor. I did not keep track of the number of torches that I used but MCEdit found 5,509 within a 300x300 area centered over the giant cave region, which also had a total of more than 1.26 million air blocks.
Interestingly, in both worlds the largest cave and ravine that I found, as well as the giant cave region, were all within the same map, centered at 1024, 0, with all three close together in TMCWv4, shown here; you can also see just how many more special cave variants there are in TMCWv5 by comparing the full map to the one for the random seed mentioned above, in TMCWv4 they were also mostly excluded from near the origin, except for "vanilla" large caves and slightly larger ravines:
So far I've mined 6,895 ore and killed 1,037 mobs, and have been generally exploring along the edge to as far north as z = -600, before starting to go eastwards; I've also found 4 dungeons and explored part of a mineshaft, though I'm avoiding exploring anything that doesn't extend into the giant cave region (I often take several days, even a week, to explore a large cave or ravine as I explore everything connected to it when I could otherwise explore it within one day):
Also, I saw two "mega slimes" for the first time in this world (they were added in TMCWv4.5); slimes with a size of 8, twice the maximum in vanilla, can occasionally (1/31 of all slimes or 1/10 of each vanilla size) spawn in swamps and within giant cave regions (both types of regional caves are effectively like biomes which also affect various things like mob spawning and world generation, the latter is why giant cave regions have lots of huge mushrooms, while network cave regions have a much higher chance of double dungeons); they split into 2-4 large (size 4) slimes and at the extreme a single mega slime can split into 64 tiny slimes (I generally only kill the larger sizes, unless they get in the way); as well as the second mob in diamond or amethyst armor in as many days:
Here are screenshots from the third and fourth days; I've now explored around the entire edge and have started exploring the interior:
Here are the stats for each day; I've now mined 13,840 ore and killed 2,316 mobs, including another zombie in diamond armor, also the 40th mob in diamond or amethyst in this world, and found three more dungeons:
Day 3:
Day 4:
A sequence of what I've explored over the past four days:
Of interest, I found one of the rarest ore variants in the game - packed ice emerald ore, also the first time I've found a non-stone variant, which only generates when an emerald-bearing biome generates adjacent to Iceland or Ice Hills since the only biomes that have emerald have the normal stone-based underground (ores and other features are generated per-chunk based on the biome in the center of the chunk, or offset-by-8 chunk, thus they can slightly extend into adjacent biomes):
After 6 days I've finally finished exploring the giant cave region, with a total of 17,485 ores mined, 18,752 resources and other items collected, 3,614 mobs killed, and 36,381 XP gained; MCEdit found 7,770 torches within a 350x350 area centered on the giant cave region, which also had a total volume of 1.98 million blocks (this includes unrelated caves and ravines near the edges, which may as well be included):
Here is a day to day animation of my progress and a view of the giant cave region in Minutor from layer 50 to layer 5 in increments of 5 layers:
Here is a comparison of the giant cave region to the largest single cave and ravine that I found:
Here are more screenshots from the 5th and 6th days:
Day 5:
Session stats:
Day 6:
Session stats:
Notably, on the 5th day I killed 862 mobs, a record for this world; the next day I killed 436 despite mining only 861 ores; the extreme spike in mobs was the result of them becoming confined as I lit up the surrounding area, increasing their density (the safest way to cave is to actually not use any light sources, just Night Vision, which will give full visibility and keep the mob cap spread out; despite this, many people still think that you need to spawnproof the area to limit mob spawns (regarding the discussion in the link, reducing the light level threshold for spawning to 0 would have almost no effect on how many torches I place; the vast majority are placed for visibility, with only a handful of torches placed in the remaining dark spots).
Also, about half the mobs on the 6th day were slimes, including many magma cubes from slimes that died in lava, including at least one mega slime (spawning 2-4 large magma cubes, otherwise only small and medium magma cubes spawn this way). This would have been much worse if I hadn't placed a cap on the number of slimes that can spawn (25; vanilla has no cap so up to 70 can spawn, this also makes it easier to prevent more from spawning by keeping tiny slimes alive).
Overall, I've played on this world for 28.92 days over 179 sessions, of which 160 were spent caving; for comparison, in TMCWv4 it took 22.46 days over 140 sessions (121 spent caving) to find at least one of every underground feature, of which I've found a total of 1,006, including a handful of surface structures; about a third of these were dungeons (352 of both types), followed by ravines (240 of all types) and mineshafts (75):
Structures/caves found (by number):
323 normal dungeons (2 intersecting x2, normal+double x1)
210 ravines (up to 7 intersecting)
75 mineshafts
65 vertical pit caves
29 double dungeons
25 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
25 large ravines (volume >= 25000 and length >= 112 or width >= 15 or depth >= 45)
20 circular room cave clusters
18 large caves (volume >= 25000)
18 ravine cave clusters
17 maze cave clusters
16 random cave clusters
14 ribbed tunnel cave clusters
13 large circular rooms (width >= 34)
13 spiral cave systems
12 toroidal caves
10 giant caves (volume >= 100000)
10 vertical cave clusters
10 zigzag cave systems
9 fossils
9 ravine cave systems
9 zigzag cave clusters
8 ribbed tunnel cave systems
8 vertical cave systems
7 large cave cave systems
6 maze cave systems
5 circular room cave systems
5 giant ravines (volume >= 100000)
5 random cave systems
4 CRM combination cave systems
3 network cave regions
3 strongholds (2 found by caving)
2 desert temples
2 jungle caves
2 mesa mineshafts
2 quartz desert pyramids
2 RZV combination cave systems
2 villages (1 Meadow, 1 Savanna)
1 colossal cave system
1 giant cave region
1 witch hut
(1006 individual structures/caves)
Despite this, and the amount of time I've spent on this world I've only explored the equivalent of a single level 4 map (16384 chunks, based on chunks remaining after using MMAT on a copy to remove chunks without torches), consistent with an average of about 100 chunks explored per play session, and even then I haven't found everything within that area, such as dungeons and ravines (averaging about 400 and 275 per level 4 map) as they are not always interconnected/connected to caves that are.
Since my last post I've been exploring within and around the Iceland biome I found earlier and have so far found the largest circular room I've ever found, with a diameter of 65 blocks and a volume of more than 65,000 blocks, as well as the second colossal cave system in this world, the second largest ravine, with a volume of 272,000 blocks, and the second largest cave, with a volume of 566,000 blocks.
The first thing I explored was the large-looking cave I mentioned when I first found the Iceland biome, which turned out to be a large cave cave system, the 5th one that I've found within a single level 3 map (on average they generate about once every 2200 chunks, or a bit less than 2 per map). I also saw a zombie (or a husk, from a nearby Quartz Desert) in amethyst armor while exploring it:
Next I found the large circular room; at 65 blocks in diameter it is only 6 blocks smaller than the largest they can possibly get, although their maximum volume is about 30% larger (71^3 / 65^3, with a maximum volume of about 90,000 blocks; CaveFinder under-reports the volume because it goes a few blocks above sea level but it was still fully underground, thus its volume is a bit larger than 65,000 blocks. For another comparison, they can get up to 17 blocks wide in vanilla, making this one about 56 times larger in terms of volume; while they have the smallest volume of any type of "large" cave circular rooms are the most extreme form of cave when considering how much larger they can get compared to vanilla):
I then found the second colossal cave system in this world, with a volume of about 252,000 blocks, about 10,000 larger than the first one, and significantly denser in areas:
This then led to the second largest ravine that I've found so far in this world, with a volume of 272,000 blocks; it was higher up than the others so there was only a small area that had lava/water (split between Iceland and Quartz Desert) and it extended up to y=72 (as with the circular room its true volume is higher as the ground was above sea level except where a river crossed it):
The ravine in turn led to an absolutely enormous cave which turned out to be the second largest cave I've found so far in this world, with a volume of 566,000 blocks, nearly as large as the largest cave; I have not actually finished exploring it yet but I've seen enough of it to know how large it is so I analyzed it now:
Here are renderings of all of the caves I found, including a couple toroidal caves, and an underground rendering of what I've explored recently:
The large circular room is to the far right with the large cave cave system tot he left of it, the large ravine crosses most of the image from left to right, the colossal cave system is near the left side, and the giant cave is partly rendered behind/above the ravine (only what I've explored/lit up so far, around most of the edge):
It also appears that I'll be spending a bit more time than anticipated exploring the Iceland biome, which is fairly large and represents a significant deviation from my exploration of the map at 1024, 0 (the map shown is centered at 2048, -1024 and it extends into the map at 2048, 0 as well):
Here are screenshots of the giant cave after I explored it:
Also, this gives you an idea of just how many mobs there were in the last part of the cave that I lit up, with pretty much the entire mob cap packed within a few chunks, including a skeleton with a Flame bow in diamond armor (Flame and Punch are pretty common); overall, I killed 565 mobs and mined 1564 ores by the time I finished exploring it (not including from the day before):
Also, I found a new biome - or rather, three new biomes - all three variants of ocean, including Tropical Ocean, a new ocean variant added in TMCWv5 which has lighter turquoise colored water, a seafloor of predominately quartz sand, and patches of coral reefs, which this one had along the shore (patches the size of a single chunk may also be found in normal ocean). Frozen Ocean is also different from vanilla in that it has darker blue water, gravel instead of the dirt/sand/clay of normal oceans, is only partially frozen (water only), and can have icebergs (I didn't see any):
Note that there are two new coral variants in addition to the ones in 1.13; cyan and orange, with cyan based on prismarine and an early texture for red coral which was recolored and orange having my own texture:
In addition, I came across yet another massive ravine, which I've decided not to explore as it extends far to the east - I analyzed it with CaveFinder and it is actually slightly larger than the largest ravine I've found so far, at 348,000 blocks:
Of interest, the seed "-5565062877316731835" has the largest known combination of large cave and ravine, similar to what I just explored, with a combined volume of over 1.5 million blocks; it also has the largest surface ravine (mostly exposed) that I've seen, nearly the largest possible circular room, and 5 giant cave regions, all within +/- 1536 blocks of the origin:
After nearly two weeks I've finished exploring the Iceland biome, going as far northeast as the center of the map at 2048, -1024 and adding two more maps to my map wall, outside of the 3x3 map area I'd originally planned to explore within, and had never gone outside of in any world other than my first world:
Here are full-size renderings of the surface and explored caves and a couple screenshots I took after scaling the highest peak, which reached y=153, with a floating island going higher (I didn't try getting on top of it):
There was also yet another huge cave at the northeasternmost point I explored to, with a volume of 343,000 blocks, making it the 5th largest cave I've found so far, as well as the 12th cave with a volume of at least 100,000 and 30th cave with a volume of at least 25,000:
I took these screenshots while exploring it to help show just how I light them up; I progress around the edges before advancing into the interior, and pillar up and make walkways to access the ceiling:
For perspective, the largest cave I found in TMCWv4 had a volume of 252,667 blocks, meaning that I've found 7 caves that are larger, and two of those are larger than the largest cave I've ever found in TMCWv4 through searching:
Also, these are underground renderings and a list of caves within of a level 3 map area centered at 2048, -1024 (I don't plan to explore this area any further); the two large caves I found were by far the largest caves within the area, I also came within 100 blocks of reaching the 4th stronghold I'd have found in this world (part of it did generate within loaded chunks); much of this area is also ocean so even if I'd kept exploring I'd have stopped anyway after reaching it:
After nearly two months I've finished exploring the map to the east (1024, 0), which took considerably longer than the map to the south (0, 1024) because of the diversion to explore the Iceland biome, which added about two weeks; even then, I'm not quite done yet due to a significant finding in the map to the southeast (1024, 1024).
Here is a surface rendering, including everything I explored further north and east:
Here are underground renderings and a list of everything within a 1024x1024 area centered at 1024, 0, including all caves and only special caves (plus large mineshafts and strongholds); the total air volume within this area is about 8.68 million blocks, of which 6.65 million (76.6%) are from special caves (for comparison, 1.6.4 averages about 2.87 million and 1.7-1.17 averages 2.4 million, both assuming flat ground at sea level, thus, the actual volume depends on the surface terrain and TMCW has additional caves generated above sea level and/or deeper/higher ravines in mountain/plateau biomes which are not included):
The most significant findings since my last update include the second-largest circular room that I've found so far, with a diameter of 60 blocks, and the largest within 1536 blocks (I'd have never found the largest one overall if not for the Iceland biome), along with numerous other large circular rooms and large "vanilla" caves as part of a region of increased vanilla cave width (these caves can very rarely exceed 25,000, the threshold I use for a "large" cave, but for the most part they are between 5,000-10,000, thus CaveFinder does not measure or list them unless you tell it to), a large cave with a volume of 149,000 blocks, and various other smaller large caves and ravines, including a "large cave cluster" with a total volume of 111,000:
This is a list of the caves I found since the last update; the first large cave cluster is not listed as such by CaveFinder unless the threshold is set higher than the largest cave (it will instead list caves that exceed the threshold, defaulting to 25000; only if no single cave exceeds the threshold will it check if the volume of the entire cluster exceeds the threshold. Conversely, for the second cave cluster setting the threshold to 0 will cause each individual cave to be listed):
This includes the two largest caves and the cave clusters:
These are all from the largest cave:
I also found the first case of terrain reaching y=128 or higher in this world that was not part of a "mountain" biome, Roofed Forest Hills reaching y=132; it is possible for "normal" biomes to go even higher but for the most part they are below the original terrain height limit; also shown are screenshots of various other terrain:
There are also two mountain biomes along the far eastern edge of generated chunks (on the far right side of the rendering in the first spoiler), Rocky Mountains and Savanna Mountains, with terrain reaching y=150-180, but I haven't measured them.
Notably, I found a biome for the first time since I added it in TMCWv3 - Mega Spruce Taiga, and the first time I've found one of two "vanilla" Mega Taiga biomes since TMCWv3 (there are two Mega Taigas, to the far left and near the top-center); I actually realized that I'd found it while caving when I came across a patch of podzol, which generates when underground dirt is exposed as one of the more minor biome-specific underground variations:
I've now seen a total of 47 mobs in diamond or amethyst armor, by far the most of any world (I saw 34 in TMCWv4, which I played on for about 6 more days of playtime. This reflects the increased number of mobs I've encountered, not a change to increase the chance of armor/higher tiers):
That said, my most significant find, which will extend the time I spend exploring to the east, was in the map to the south (1024, 1024, and possibly to the east of that (2048, 1024); I'd pillared up at the edge of an Autumnal Forest and in the distance I noticed what looked like a large cave opening - on closer inspection it turned out to be what appears to be a truly colossal ravine, possibly the largest ravine I've ever found with a huge lava river exposed to the sky, though I haven't explored it yet and it will take some time before I actually reach it, well to the south:
While looking at the ravine I also spotted something else far in the distance - a Pumpkin House - a new structure I added as part of the Autumnal Forest biome, directly taken from the suggestion I based it on, which is essentially a variation of a witch hut, although they do not respawn (both structures generate with two witches, with twice as much health, and a black cat, which ran out the door when I opened it):
This was all in one chest; there are two but one or both may have loot, which is mostly witch drops:
Notably, this gave me access to a previously unobtainable block - (normal) skeleton skulls, of which there are three; they can also be obtained by making a charged creeper explode (a future vanilla feature I backported) but I've only ever seen one in Survival (I also saw one in a Superflat test world; it is likely that there have been multiple charged creepers while playing but I never saw them, same for zombie pigmen spawned by lightning), and woodland mansions may have a room with creeper, skeleton, zombie, and player heads, the latter only obtainable in this manner.
Also, I found a new contender for the largest known cave in TMCW, with a volume of 1.13 million blocks, more than a year after I found the previous record holder, and as much as 1.31 million if a smaller cave that is connected to it is included (nearly the entire underground may as well be a single huge cave if you want to include anything that is connected so this is a bit subjective, in this case I include direct intersections between the main parts of the caves, as opposed to smaller tunnels/other caves). I also had to search though more than 100,000 seeds representing more than 3.7 billion chunks (each within 1536 blocks, or 36864 chunks), and I found a second cave which is larger than the previous record:
Here are screenshots; the cave is over 300 blocks long/wide so it isn't possible to view the entire cave at once
The seed also has a total of 3 caves exceeding half a million and 6 caves exceeding 400,000 (about 4 times their average frequency, about 1.5 per 36,864 chunks), as well as two mineshafts with over 400 structure pieces; also included is a surface rendering of the area around spawn and the cave, which is between the desert and autumnal forest near the right:
I've decided to fully explore the map at 1024, 1024, with the huge ravine mentioned before, and built a new secondary base, the third one so far, a bit to the south and east of the center, partly to put it closer the the center of the unexplored area (the northern and western edges include explored caves that extended into it from adjacent maps), as well as to place it in a suitable location due to terrain - similar to the map to the south (0, 1024) there is a full-size Ice Hills biome near the center of the map, with a Volcanic Wasteland to the east of it; I placed my base in a swamp to the south of the Volcanic Wasteland:
The terrain close to where I located my base (I decided to place it a bit further east):
There's something quite interesting here:
This is a view from where I placed my base, visible at the bottom, there is also a witch hut nearby, the second one I've found in this world:
This is the black cat that spawned with the witch hut:
This is a map I specifically made to map the area as I dug the tunnel for the railway; when I first saw the lava to the north I thought it was some sort of huge cave or ravine but it is probably from the Volcanic Wasteland which is more visible to the south (the red dot to the northwest is a surface lava lake):
An underground rendering to the southeast of 448, 448; the railway leads back to the base I made near 1024, 0:
Also, being close to a Volcanic Wasteland brings a unique hazard - magma cubes continuously spawn at all times of the day and go off into surrounding biomes, including where my base is; I had a large magma cube jump over the wall (4 blocks high) before I could place a ceiling in:
This is also the first time I've built a base in a "corner" map in a world other than my first world, which have all been in maps adjacent to the center map (or straight outwards / in one direction).
There are also at least two giant caves within the area, including a huge cave opening just to the south of the center of the map, which can also be seen in a screenshot above; the other cave was found while caving and in part prompted me to fully explore the map (otherwise, I was considering exploring the rest of the maps to the west and north, which I explored about halfway; one reason I went on to explore the map to the south is because I had to build a railway at least 1000 blocks long to get "On a Rail" and my main base is to the northwest of 0,0, hence why I initially explored further in those directions):
Here are some more screenshots, mostly of various terrain, including two more peaks over y=128 in adjacent biomes (Mountainous Desert and Forest Mountains):
In just one day I've already nearly reached the center of the map to the west, thanks to a very long ravine, one of the largest that I've found so far, and found yet another(!) biome, Desert - so far I've been finding new biomes at about 3 times the rate I found them in TMCWv4 during my first playthrough (31 biomes in 121 sessions spent caving; so far I've found 28 biomes in 40 sessions spent caving; I later found 5 more biomes in TMCWv4 during another 101 sessions; it can be expected that I'll find new biomes less often as time goes on). The Quartz Desert to the south of spawn has also proven to be very large, at least 700 blocks across, indicative of multiple biomes joined together (on average a single biome is about 256 blocks across), and due to the ease of crossing deserts and my main base being close to the eastern edge I don't plan building a secondary base for this map (normally I place them near the center):
For the third time recently I found low-level lava exposed to the sky, in this case, at the intersection of two ravines which went up to y=76, with the top of the lowest block over it at y=78, meaning a 74 block fall down to lava level at y=4 (this would deal 17.75 damage in my armor, which reduces fall damage by 75%; in vanilla 1.6.4 it is randomized to 52-80% while in 1.9+ it is 80%. The maximum survivable fall distance is 82 blocks in TMCW and 103(?) blocks in 1.9+ (? because of MC-130639, which I fixed, this is why a 23 block fall with no enchantments is not fatal when it should be) and 1.6.4, but 1.6.4 only guarantees survival from 44-45 blocks):
The desert also had something else in it - a desert temple, the first surface structure that I've found since the village near spawn:
Note that this is a "husk" spawner, a special variant of zombie spawner which exclusively spawns husks (in older versions they were normal zombies; mob spawners in desert temples is a feature added in TMCWv1):
Another way desert temples can be different is that the chest may be trapped chests with additional TNT under them; this one did not have a pressure plate but they were replaced with a special sandstone variant which is only triggered by players (they can have both traps, as well as no spawners with a total of 12 different combinations when including spawner types):
This is the loot in the chests, with the top row being taken (I only collect a couple saddles and diamond and amethyst horse armor):
Not only that, after I finished exploring it I saw something else in the far distance - a Quartz Desert Pyramids, a new structure that I added:
The treasure room, which is at the very top of the main pyramid; they have the same loot as desert temples and jungle temples:
There were three spawners placed under the walls, including two skeleton and one white husk spawner (there are always three spawners with 1 or 2 being for each mob):
These are examples of what the first and second floors look like:
The main pyramid contains three floors, two of which are mazes, with 16 different mazes for each floor (256 combinations), meaning that any two structures are likely to be unique, and there are several spawners placed under the walls, which are completely hidden as spawners will not produce particles if they are completely surrounded by solid blocks. The walls are made out of "Reinforced Quartz Sandstone", which has a hardness of 320, making it take about 14 seconds to mine with an amethyst pickaxe with Efficiency V (60 seconds without), which discourages simply mining through the walls. Once you reach the treasure room there is a button attached to a special "Quartz Desert Pyramids Unhardener" block which will transform itself and all nearby reinforced quartz sandstone into normal quartz sandstone (both types will drop normal sandstone if you mine them).
Also, I've found yet another huge cave, the third or fourth one that I've found recently (in post #16 I showed a large surface cave opening, I've actually only explored one so far), and with sky light visible from the surface down to a huge lava sea for the fourth time - if it wasn't obvious already the underground in TMCWv5 is truly Swiss cheese, much more so than any other mod I've ever made, with most of the increase from TMCWv4 due to caves like this and larger ravines being more common and larger; many of the new variants of caves and cave systems also generate in areas otherwise devoid of caves or other underground structures (as opposed to displacing them, as some variants do):
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?
Two of the biomes, Savanna and Swampland, also had the second village and first witch hut I've found in this world, as well as the first Savanna village that I've found since I added biome-specific village variants in TMCWv4 (in this case, they use jungle wood based blocks since "acacia" trees use jungle wood, as they did when first added in 1.7 snapshots; I still haven't added new wood types). Witch huts were also slightly altered in that they have two witches instead of one and they have twice the normal health (52 instead of 26) and there is a black cat (untamed, the skin of an ocelot is set independently from its tamed status):
Even with all of these biomes I still haven't found several "common" vanilla biomes - Plains, Extreme Hills, Forest - the sheer number of biomes means that most biomes are less than 2% of land (including sub-biome variants; Extreme Hills proper is about 1.2% but overall it is about 2.4% when including Extreme Hills Edge and Extreme Mountains) and even the most common "land" biome, Ice Plains, is only about 4.67%, while the rarest biome, Oasis, is only 0.02697% of land (since it generates as a sub-biome of Desert M the overall frequency of Oasis + Desert M, about 1%, reflects how hard it actually is to find; conversely, some biomes, like Savanna, generate as "edge" biomes around Savanna Plateau and Savanna Mountains, as does Taiga around Mega Taiga variants, so the biomes by themselves are less common than indicated):
More notably, I saw two mobs in diamond armor on the same day, about 2 hours apart, for the first time in this world, and one of only four occurrences, two of them in TMCWv4 and one when I modded my first world with a special version of TMCW (otherwise, I have not increased armor changes/chances of higher tiers in my first world, where I've gone more than a year of daily playing between sightings of diamond armored mobs, averaging about one every 4 months, compared to one per week in TMCWv4):
Interestingly, I've seen the same number of skeletons and zombies in diamond armor, 4 each; normally zombies are much more common since they are more commonly encountered by a factor of 2-3 times, even including amethyst armor, which 2 zombies have had, the ratio is still much lower than expected (on average). I've also averaged one mob in diamond or amethyst every 4.6 play sessions, in part reflecting an increased number of mobs (the probabilities are the same as in TMCWv4).
I also found my first real double dungeon, two separate dungeons joined together, as opposed to the special variant of the same name, out of a total of 111 dungeons, illustrating how rare they are (about 2% of all dungeons; the "double dungeon" variant is about 5-6%):
I found the largest "toroidal cave" that can possibly generate, with a diameter of 64 blocks, tunnel width of 20 blocks, and a volume of about 34,000 blocks:
I also found the densest "vanilla" cave system that I've found so far; at first I thought I'd found a "colossal cave system" but it wasn't large enough; all the caves in the area also had vanilla cave generation parameters (with the exception of TMCWv2 they still won't match vanilla due to changes to the RNG):
Here is an underground rendering of what I've explored so far and a list of everything that I've found, totaling 303 different caves and structures:
Play sessions spent caving: 46
Structures/caves found (by number):
103 normal dungeons (2 intersecting x1)
62 ravines (up to 4 intersecting)
24 mineshafts
20 vertical pit caves
9 large caves (volume >= 25000)
9 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
8 double dungeons
7 large ravines (volume >= 25000)
6 ravine cave clusters
5 circular room cave clusters
5 ribbed tunnel cave clusters
5 spiral cave systems
4 maze cave clusters
4 random cave clusters
4 toroidal caves
3 vertical cave systems
2 CRM combination cave systems
2 fossils
2 random cave systems
2 ravine cave systems
2 vertical cave clusters
2 villages (1 Meadow, 1 Savanna)
2 zigzag cave clusters
2 zigzag cave systems
1 desert temple
1 giant cave (volume >= 250000)
1 jungle cave
1 maze cave system
1 quartz desert pyramids
1 ribbed tunnel cave system
1 RZV combination cave system
1 stronghold (with eye of ender)
1 witch hut
(303 individual structures/caves)
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
The cave I mentioned in the second previous post turned out to be the second largest cave I've found so far in this world, with a volume of over 414,000 blocks:
As large as these caves are, the largest known cave is still larger than both of these combined (about 1.1 million blocks) and a giant cave region is even larger still (ranging from about 1.5 to 1.8 million blocks). I haven't actually fully explored it but I've seen enough of it to know that I'd seen all of it, otherwise I wait until I'm done before I analyze a cave to see how large it is and its structure. One of the its most notable features is the size of the surface opening/crater, the largest that I've ever found, with much of the rest of the cave coming within a few blocks of the surface; here are some more screenshots of the cave:
While exploring caves nearby I came across another cave that looks very large, if not as large as the ones above:
A relatively large ravine and medium-sized large cave; I have not found any extremely large ravines yet but the largest can get bigger than the largest cave I've found so far, with the largest caves and ravines within 1536 blocks of the origin likely to be at least as large as the largest that I found in TMCWv4 (about 250,000 blocks):
I also found two dungeons intersecting for the second time, quite soon after the first time; in this case they were on top of one another so it wasn't obvious until I mined the floor of the first (upper) dungeon (if I'd found the lower dungeon first the ceiling would have been a dead giveaway), as well as a zombie in diamond armor for the fifth time:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Here are more screenshots of the cave after I finished exploring it; most of the time spent in these caves is lighting up the ceiling, which I reach by pillaring up and bridging across; while not strictly necessary I also light up areas open to the sky, even as large as this cave:
Also, I found a second Quartz Desert Pyramids far to the west, which I spotted after I pillared up and increased the render distance to get a clear view of the cave:
As noted before, the Quartz Desert has proven to be extremely large - one of the largest single non-ocean biomes I've ever found, not including Ice Plains in vanilla, easily over a thousand blocks across (there are one or two biomes in my first world of similar size; having such a large biome in TMCW is more unusual because of the much greater number of biomes which reduces the chance of multiple instances of the same biome generating next to each other):
I've also now seen 10 mobs in diamond armor, 5 zombies and 5 skeletons, plus two zombies in amethyst armor, an average of one such mob every 16 hours spent caving (for comparison, in TMCWv4 I averaged one every 25 hours):
Also, these are the statistics for my most-used items; I've mined close to a quarter-million blocks while caving, averaging about 4,600 per session (I only use amethyst pickaxe while caving, otherwise I've used diamond in the Nether and other materials earlier on, and when I get around to it I'll use iron pickaxes collected from minecarts to dig a rail tunnel and work on a secondary base); since I fixed the statistics for many items you can also see how often I use a water bucket and a bow, the latter being used significantly more often relative to a sword than in vanilla due to larger and more open caves, but still relatively infrequently (about 6.6% of total uses of a bow and amethyst+diamond swords):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
As its name suggests, Vein Miner allows you to mine multiple blocks at once, effective on either ores when put on a pickaxe or wood when put on an axe; in the case of ores it will mine up to 4 blocks within a 3x3 block area up to 3 blocks away by taxicab at level 1 and up to 8 blocks within a 5x5 block area and up to 6 blocks away by taxicab at level 2, and in the case of wood it will mine up to 2 blocks below or above the block mined (3 total) depending on whether you are looking up or down, independent of the level (thus you only want to put level 1 on an axe). It is mostly only found as a level 1 enchantment, except in double dungeons, which may have level 2, and also have a higher chance of having a "true treasure enchantment" (Smelting and Vein Miner; these enchantments can only ever be found in loot chests, while Mending can also be traded so it falls in a less restrictive category).
That said, the benefit of Vein Miner is not really that high considering I only spend about 10% of the time mining ores while caving (an amethyst* pickaxe with Efficiency V can mine up to 8000 ores per hour while I find about 1/10 as much), and not every use will mine the maximum number of blocks, as shown in this chart from data collected while testing (about 25% of uses mined 8 blocks and another 25% mined only 1, with the chance otherwise decreasing between 2-7), and Smelting is probably more valuable as it eliminates the need to smelt iron and gold and enables you to use Fortune on them and also gives you more XP. I'll also need to find another Vein Miner book in order to get its full benefits, but in terms of my playstyle it will still have a bigger benefit (the only noticeable impact of my use of Smelting for the past few weeks is an increase of about 10% in the amount of XP per play session).
*Technically, you only need stone to mine ores within 0.15 seconds, or 0.45 when mining multiple blocks in succession (speed = hardness (ores = 3) * 1.5 / (toolModifier + efficiencyModifier), where stone = 4 and Efficiency V adds 5 * 5 + 1 = 26 for a total of 30. Values between >0.1 and <=0.15 are all the same due to game ticks being in intervals of 0.05; gold only reduces it to 0.118 so it is identical).
Also, this illustrates the issue of making certain items only obtainable via random chest loot - you could just as well search 10 times as much and not find anything; for comparison, I've found 5 amethyst horse armor, 4 enchanted golden apples, 3 Mending books, and 2 Smelting books, and the average probability of finding any one of 27 enchantments in a dungeon (0.218 enchanted books per chest * 1.65 chests per dungeon) is about 1.33%, or an average of 75 dungeons, of which I've found about two per day. Double dungeons have a 25% chance of having either Smelting or Vein Miner added to the first chest placed and have an average of 2.65 chests for a 14.6% chance of each enchantment but they are only about 5.8% of all dungeons.
It was also much easier to make a new pickaxe with Vein Miner as I'd collected most of the books I needed; I used some of the XP I had when I returned to my base to enchant books at level 1 until I got 4 Efficiency I so I could upgrade an Efficiency III book to Efficiency IV, which I then combined to get Efficiency V, and instead of returning to the Nether I used XP collected while caving to combine them and enchant the pickaxe; as with the Smelting pickaxe I did not put Mending on it as it would be too expensive, instead relying on rubies to periodically lower the prior work penalty (technically, I could have added Vein Miner I to the first pickaxe I made, with Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending and it would still be repairable for 48 levels, but I would not be able to upgrade it later on without making a new one).
The name I gave it, "Super Pickaxe", is a reference to the name I used for the Efficiency V, Fortune III, Unbreaking III pickaxes that I used to use from around the release of 1.6 up to TMCWv1; the main reason I stopped using Fortune was the addition of amethyst items, which would be too expensive to repair with these enchantments (prior to making rubies able to lower the prior work penalty, which enables repairing it for 47 and 49 levels per ruby); there was also no real benefit of using Fortune while caving, if anything, the opposite due to the space taken up by the additional drops.
I also found another rare thing for the first time - a pink sheep, which are in ways easier and harder to find than in vanilla 1.6.4; easier because I fixed a bug that caused sheep colors to mostly be the same over 32x32 chunk regions (or the region size used by villages, which is currently 22x22 in TMCW) instead of per-chunk, resulting in 1024 times the variation, harder because only one is ever likely to exist within the area, as opposed to the multiple pink sheep that can be found together in vanilla (the bug report is still unresolved but I'm pretty sure it was fixed in 1.13 because I have seen no reports of it for 1.13 or later):
I've also found three more biomes, now totaling 34; Plains (where I found the pink sheep), Forest (as a sub-biome of Plains), and Big Oak Forest (visible in the screenshot above; all the trees are big oak trees, including a 2x2 form which exists in the vanilla code but is unused); after I finished exploring the big cave in the Quartz Desert I started exploring northwards towards the stronghold I originally found with Eyes of Ender, to which I've come within a couple hundred blocks, but it may still be a while before I actually reach it:
As far as caving goes, I found several circular rooms with diameters of at least 34 blocks, or twice the maximum in vanilla, for the first time; the largest circular rooms tend to be clustered because they occur when specific cave generation parameters are set to enable larger circular rooms and a higher width multiplier (unlike larger caves/tunnels, which are generated separately, they generate as part of normal cave generation):
The entire area around them also had numerous large caves, where "large" means like the larger caves/tunnels found in vanilla, as opposed to the much larger caves TMCW adds (vanilla tunnels have a base width of 3-9 blocks with a 10% chance of a multiplier which may increase their width to as much as 27, and in this context any cave with a width of at least 9 is counted as "large"):
Here are renderings of the area I recently explored using MCMap and CaveFinder, showing all caves and only special variants, which account for about 2/3 of the total air volume within this area; the three large circular rooms form a triangle in the upper half, along with several smaller rooms which are at least 17 blocks in diameter (I only count >= 34 as "large" but anything larger than vanilla is shown here), as well as "normal" caves with a width of at least 15 blocks (I use 15 and not 9 to reduce clutter); in the bottom-center is a vertical cave system and in the center is a ravine cave system, both one of several that I've found so far:
Also, while not technically a cave I found a large room filled with water as the result of what the Wiki calls a "hollow" (they have surface cover; grass/dirt/etc); otherwise, the only water-filled caves are found at lava level in "ice" biomes, which have water instead of lava (there are also water "lakes", which Mojang removed in 1.18 for some reason; conversely, I added larger variants exclusively found underground, and underground water lakes can also be found in deserts, whereas vanilla 1.6+ removed them entirely):
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 longest animation I've ever made of my explorations while caving - 60 days:
Here are more renderings of the world, including the surface (unexplored chunks were cropped away to within 2 chunks of a torch to minimize gaps and revealing anything I haven't seen yet; the cropped world is 7529 chunks, of which 5334 contain torches), in-game maps, and a slice at layer 32 in Minutor:
Here are the statistics for what I've mined over this period, with a comparison to what I did in my first world over 4 months (122 days):
The most interesting difference between TMCWv5 and World1 is the hourly rates; I think this soundly debunks the idea that more and bigger caves (TMCWv5 has over double the underground air volume of vanilla 1.6.4/World1) significantly increases ore collection rates, which is the logic that Mojang used to justify reducing the amount of exposed ores (my guess is, they've never really done much caving at all, just like the vast majority of players). Even the addition of ores that only generate if exposed in caves (25% more in the case of diamond and redstone, 12.5% more for gold and lapis) only offsets differences in cave distribution; the doubling of emerald is coincidental but I did double its range and count to offset its biomes being rarer. The difference in resources from mineshafts (rails and cobwebs) is mainly due to mineshafts being less common, both in absolute terms (about 60% as common) and relative to caves (using volume alone gives around 30% as many mineshafts relative to caves; in actuality the difference is smaller as surface area is only about 33% higher based on exposed ores per chunk).
The differences in hourly rates may diminish, or even reverse, due to the use of Vein Miner; just a couple days after I found the first book I found another one so now I have Vein Miner II and can mine most smaller veins in a single use; the time savings appears to be larger than just a 10% increase based on time only spent mining as I don't need to move from block to block and don't need to pay as much attention to or deal with mobs in the time it takes to mine a vein. Either way, it seems that the majority of players think it takes too long to collect resources by mining or caving to be worthwhile, instead relaying on farms (for example, in this thread somebody accuses me of trolling when I show how easy it is for me to collect resources - it is very clear that to most players the game is not called "Minecraft" and major changes are needed to restore it).
Here are more charts of what I did over the entire time I've played on this world, 77 sessions (the first 16 and day 38 were not spent caving; days 6-13 and 38 were spent mining quartz in the Nether; the Ender Dragon was killed on day 14; I spent days 14-16 building my base; and days 55-56 and day 69 were when I explored the two largest caves that I've found so far):
This shows the relative rarity of diamond and amethyst, which generates 1/8 as often above layer 2 (the highest layer not directly exposed in caves), and it is common not to find any for several days at a time (it can also be found in chest loot, which is a fairly significant contributor despite being 1/3 as common as diamond):
Here is a list of all the structures, caves, biomes, and other things that I've found so far:
125 normal dungeons (2 intersecting x2)
81 ravines (up to 4 intersecting)
29 mineshafts
28 vertical pit caves
12 double dungeons
12 large ravines (volume >= 25000)
10 large caves (volume >= 25000)
10 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
7 fossils
7 ravine cave clusters
7 ribbed tunnel cave clusters
6 circular room cave clusters
6 maze cave clusters
5 random cave clusters
5 spiral cave systems
5 vertical cave systems
4 ravine cave systems
4 toroidal caves
3 circular rooms at least 34 blocks in diameter
3 random cave systems
3 zigzag cave clusters
3 zigzag cave systems
2 CRM combination cave systems
2 giant caves (volume >= 250000)
2 quartz desert pyramids
2 ribbed tunnel cave systems
2 vertical cave clusters
2 villages (1 Meadow, 1 Savanna)
1 desert temple
1 jungle cave
1 large cave cave system
1 maze cave system
1 network cave region
1 RZV combination cave system
1 stronghold (with eye of ender)
1 witch hut
(395 individual structures/caves)
Nether structures:
8 nether dungeons
3 nether fortresses
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)
(34 unique biomes, not including variants like Hills, River, Edge)
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher, highest peak in an instance of a biome):
189 (Extreme Forest Mountains)
188 (Extreme Savanna Mountains)
157 (Rocky Mountains)
142 (Rocky Mountains)
Large caves (volume >= 25000):
1. 552 28 232 (length: 448, width: 44, volume: 584150)
2. -856 25 104 (length: 472, width: 54, volume: 414142)
3. 24 22 168 (length: 336, width: 27, volume: 75050)
4. 232 25 -40 (length: 336, width: 30, volume: 63014)
5. -168 21 72 (length: 216, width: 25, volume: 40845)
6. -376 18 -120 (length: 248, width: 25, volume: 39563)
7. -472 25 -200 (length: 336, width: 21, volume: 38032)
8. -344 36 -536 (length: 127, width: 30, volume: 31968)
9. -8 32 -376 (length: 153, width: 24, volume: 31058)
10. 168 34 120 (length: 183, width: 22, volume: 28289)
11. 136 33 -200 (length: 202, width: 22, volume: 28027)
12. -808 30 -312 (length: 215, width: 19, volume: 25771)
Large ravines (volume >= 25000):
1. -440 24 -152 (length: 180, width: 20, depth: 45, volume: 85026)
2. 472 32 -104 (length: 216, width: 16, depth: 45, volume: 79197)
3. -728 50 -56 (length: 218, width: 15, depth: 44, volume: 75361)
4. -824 28 -344 (length: 180, width: 17, depth: 46, volume: 70061)
5. -488 28 -200 (length: 206, width: 14, depth: 41, volume: 53244)
6. -776 23 -488 (length: 246, width: 12, depth: 38, volume: 52980)
7. -440 21 232 (length: 130, width: 17, depth: 41, volume: 45825)
8. 120 18 248 (length: 108, width: 14, depth: 36, volume: 28822)
9. 344 30 56 (length: 179, width: 13, depth: 40, volume: 28204)
10. -152 18 -504 (length: 110, width: 15, depth: 37, volume: 27742)
11. -968 23 -488 (length: 194, width: 9, depth: 31, volume: 25265)
12. -56 15 -344 (length: 246, width: 9, depth: 27, volume: 25198)
Large circular rooms (width >= 34):
1. 10 51 -664 (width: 45, volume: 22422)
2. -105 33 -613 (width: 42, volume: 17519)
3. 29 15 -580 (width: 39, volume: 14943)
Toroidal caves:
1. -585 30 87 (toroid width: 64, tunnel width: 20, volume: 34112)
2. -130 35 514 (toroid width: 39, tunnel width: 16, volume: 12826)
3. -107 28 -377 (toroid width: 41, tunnel width: 14, volume: 11010)
4. -66 7 64 (toroid width: 36, tunnel width: 10, volume: 5336)
Largest mineshafts (>= 200 structure pieces):
1. -328 344 (size: 351), 1047 rails
2. 360 120 (size: 332), 898 rails
3. -536 360 (size: 324), 740 rails
4. 24 -216 (size: 289), ~600 rails (merged with two other mineshafts so hard to tell)
5. -200 -184 (size: 212), 542 rails
Other:
6 zombies in diamond armor
2 zombies in amethyst armor
5 skeletons in diamond armor
0 skeletons in amethyst armor
1 pink sheep
6 amethyst horse armor
4 enchanted golden apples
5 Mending books
3 Smelting books
2 Vein Miner books
306 mob spawners
131 from mineshafts
125 from dungeons
24 from double dungeons
8 from strongholds
8 from nether dungeons
6 from quartz desert pyramids
2 from desert temples
2 from nether fortresses
The latest new thing that I've found is a network cave region, one of the two largest underground structures, consisting of a network of very long and relatively straight tunnels up to 400 blocks across; unlike other special cave variants only normal caves are excluded from generating within them and "cave clusters" (3-6 of one of 6 special variants of cave) are made much more common:
I also found a "large cave cave system", a special variant of cave system based on a variation from TMCWv1 where all the caves are larger than usual (unlike later versions TMCWv1 generated most caves completely differently from vanilla; "large cave systems" generated aligned to a 14x14 chunk grid at offsets 0,0 and 7,7, the opposite of mineshafts, which still use this layout, with "scattered caves" similar to those in 1.7 randomly generating):
The only types of caves I still haven't found yet are a colossal cave system, which are based on the largest and densest cave system in my first world, and a giant cave region, the largest underground feature in TMCW, as well as rarest, with one per 128x128 chunk region (equivalent to a level 4 map, of which I've explored about 1/3 of so far, in TMCWv4 it took 117 play sessions spent caving to find one, and only one over 222 sessions); I also haven't found any extremely large ravines yet (the largest that I've found is about 85,000 blocks, a third of the volume of the largest ravines I found in TMCWv4, while the largest in TMCWv5 can get larger than the largest cave I've found so far). That said, I did recently come across a ravine that goes from the surface nearly down to lava level, with diamond and amethyst ore directly exposed to the sky:
Another ravine also had a fossil in it:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I found another giant cave, the third largest cave that I've found so far with a volume of about 195,000 blocks, intersected by a ravine with a volume of about 50,000, and only a few hundred blocks away from spawn; I didn't find it until now because there was no direct path to it, instead I explored a large loop that went well to the north of the map around spawn before coming back to the south further west, which is typical of my explorations (likewise, I only explored the eastern half of the map after I'd explored quite far to the south as only then did I find caves leading further east, and the southeastern corner is still unexplored as nothing directly leads into it):
As seen here the cave nearly broke the surface, with a couple unrelated caves actually doing so with a couple blocks at lava level having direct sky exposure:
Due to the fact that I found the cave after having explored everything around it it was absolutely packed with mobs, with a total of 783 killed on the day I explored it, with most of them in the cave (for comparison, I killed about half as many mobs per day when exploring the other two large caves as both were at the edge of the area I've explored; similarly, my (then) all-time record session of 796 mob kills occurred when I explored a giant cave surrounded by previously explored areas).
I've also seen three more mobs in diamond armor, including two skeletons in the same mineshaft:
I also had the most extreme play session so far in this world in terms of ores/resources mined - 4,828 blocks and 4,690 ores mined in 4 hours, a rate of 1,207 and 1,172 per hour, while exploring the main part of the network cave region, partly due to the use of Vein Miner but also due to the relative simplicity of the caves (mostly very long unbranched tunnels) and apparently more exposed ores than usual (I haven't actually looked into this but it does seem that some areas have more exposed ores and vice-versa, the amount of coal in particular was quite high, which could very well reflect variations in vertical distribution since on average only half of coal veins generate below sea level); I've had higher peak mining rates before, including 1,211 ores per hour in "infiniteCaves":
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I found a zombie in diamond armor in a 2 block deep hole while building the base:
Notably, full-size Ice Hills and Ice Hills sub-biomes, as well as as island variant that generates within Frozen Ocean, are actually "separate" biomes in the code; in order to achieve many of TMCW's complex biome patterns I added many "virtual" biome IDs which are converted into real biome IDs in the last generation stage, without having to create actual biome objects for them or use up any of the the 256 real IDs (of which 126 are used, plus 35 virtual IDs for a total of 161 unique IDs):
It only took a few days to explore far enough south to reach the Ice Hills, and a few more to reach the center of the map - aided by the largest ravine that I've found so far, with a volume of 245,000 blocks, nearly three times that of the second-largest ravine:
These are all the large ravines (volume of 25,000 or more) that I've found so far with the largest one being the one shown here:
Note that half of the lava shown in the CaveFinder rendering above is actually water due to caves in Ice Hills and Ice Plains Spikes having water instead of lava:
Earlier, I found the largest circular room that I've found so far while exploring around the northeastern corner of the map around the origin, with a diameter of 53 blocks, with another room with a diameter of 41 blocks on top of it:
Here are renderings of what I explored over 6 days, within the current map; I've explored in a more or less straight line from near the northwest corner of the map to near the center (this is due to following interconnected caves, with nothing branching off until the giant ravine area, some caves also lead into the mesa biome near the left, where I started exploring southwards, but I've left them for now as they go off the edge of the current map):
This is a full-size version of the last frame:
There are also at least 3 other ravines intersecting the giant ravine, not all of which have been explored yet (in TMCWv4 I found a giant ravine with 6 other ravines intersecting it; another was part of a chain of 10 ravines), and an area with more large circular rooms to the east, the largest of which so far was 32 blocks across.
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?
Never mind 3,000 ores per play session, I may soon reach the 4,000 mark, and already have in total resource blocks, after being relatively stable for years. The overall averages for this world (that was just the past week) are also easily the highest of any world with a noticeable upwards trend apparent; part of this is due to the use of Vein Miner but even the weekly hourly rate is only about 10% higher than in my first world:
This is an animation and renderings of what I explored over the past month or so (49 play sessions), covering a level 3 map centered at 0, 1024; even with as much playing as I've done recently it still took longer than average to explore the map due to the huge volume of caves (there is about 30% more surface area than vanilla 1.6.4, which more closely corresponds to exploration time than the more than doubling in volume):
This is a larger version of the last frame:
A cutaway at layer 23 in Minutor, where some of the largest caves stand out best:
A couple renderings of the surface (4 chunks larger than a level 3 map to the east/west/south; the second is rotated 180 degrees):
The entire world on in-game maps:
Among other things, I found one of the most extreme concentrations of large caves, with two huge caves with volume of a third of a million blocks each and several other smaller large caves and a "large cave cave system" all merging to form a single cave with a volume of about 800,000 blocks, and nearly 1.1 million when including everything else within their bounds (252x308x63 blocks):
A rendering made with CaveFinder; the volume within this area is 1.13 million blocks, 858,000 when only including special caves:
An analysis of a 252x308x63 area around the caves (the exact area covered, different than shown above); I used about 4,400 torches to light everything up over 4 play sessions:
The two largest caves individually, which are the 3rd and 4th largest caves that I've found so far:
This is actually where I first encountered the caves, leading from a ravine near the top-right of the renderings shown above:
This is one of the areas that links the two largest caves together, which is actually a separate cave from either of them (a "large cave cave system", which has larger caves like the larger ones in vanilla and was re-added from TMCWv1, generated between them):
This is still far from the most extreme thing I might find - a giant cave region averages around 1.7 million blocks, even more when including other caves that might merge with them (only around the edges); in TMCWv4, when they were smaller, I found one with a volume of about 1.25 million blocks, which remains the largest single cave or cave complex that I've ever explored. I haven't found one, or a colossal cave system, in this world yet (colossal cave systems are around 250,000 blocks, similar to the largest and densest cave system in my first world), which are some of the rarest underground features, even as they are more common than before (from one giant cave region every 16384 chunks in TMCWv4 to one every 13107 chunks and one colossal cave system every 8192 to 6554 chunks; unlike most other caves these are still excluded from generating too close to the origin).
Here is list of the frequencies of every underground feature; for comparison, a level 3 map is 4096 chunks:
Notably, the chance of finding a cave with a volume of at least 400,000, of which I've found two, is once every 25,000 chunks, over twice the area that I've explored so far; this is still two orders of magnitude more common than they were in TMCWv4, which in turn is higher than earlier versions (the current method of generating large caves actually hasn't changed much since TMCWv2, the biggest change in TMCWv5 is the addition of a larger variant which is 1/6 of the previous larger type, and these two variants are together twice as common. The same is also true of ravines, which are relatively more common at the higher end due to less variability in structure even as caves can get much larger, the largest possible cave is about 1.1 million while the largest ravine is about 625,000).
In addition, I also found another complex of two large caves with a combined volume of about 187,000 blocks, located in a mesa biome in the top-left of the renderings shown above:
Other significant findings include three very large ravines, one of which I showed before, and another part of a complex of 7 intersecting ravines, the most that I've found so far in this world (I found 10 intersecting ravines in TMCWv4), as well as a stronghold, the first one that I've found exclusively by caving:
A smaller ravine with a volume of 152,000 blocks, which is still about 5 times larger than the largest ravine in vanilla:
A jungle cave, the second one that I've found:
A mesa mineshaft, which are in addition to normal mineshafts deeper down and have gold ore generated in their walls as part of the structure (this is the only place gold generates above its normal range):
Some other large caves/cave systems:
Fun fact: the stronghold helped me fix a vanilla bug where one of the rooms ("5-way crossing", which actually has up to 6 entrances/exits) doesn't clear the proper entrances (the two on each side of the archway), causing them to be blocked off, most notably, including the portal room in this stronghold, which is a common cause of "missing" portal rooms, along with other parts of a stronghold (I only found the portal room because a cave intersected it; I'd noticed this before but finding a portal room affected by it led me to look at the code, and sure enough, I found it wasn't accounting for the orientation of the room when clearing the entrances, making it an actual bug and not a "feature", which would still be unacceptable (I actually first modified the portal room itself to forcibly clear away the entrance, but then I wondered if there was more to the story):
Some interesting terrain, including two of the highest peaks that I've found, both at y=168:
I haven't scaled this mountain as it is at the edge of the area I've explored (I literally do only explore the world by caving, this even includes checking out something like this, though I do make exceptions for structures, including the desert temple from which I saw this):
I only found one surface structure, a desert temple, which had the vanilla pressure plate trap in addition to spawners; one significant difference is the pressure plate, which is a new sandstone variant which is only activated by players (thus mobs won't set them off) and very hard to see from above, making it especially important to check before stepping down (or opening the chest, which may be trapped chests):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I've reached a significant milestone in this world - half a million ores mined, in only 163 play sessions, of which 144 were "caving" sessions (entirely spent caving); this is an overall average of 3,085 ores mined per play session, significantly more if only counting what I mined while caving (the majority of ores mined otherwise were quartz and some gold in the Nether):
Here are the general statistics and some of my most used/crafted blocks/items; I've also crafted more than 160,000 torches and mined over 700,000 blocks while caving (I've only used an amethyst pickaxe while caving, along with shears to mine cobwebs. I mainly used diamond pickaxes while branch-mining and in the Nether and iron pickaxes (taken from minecarts and enchanted at level 1 and combined) to dig out rail tunnels and work on secondary bases):
As far as caving goes, I've been exploring the map to the east (centered at 1024, 0), with between 1/3 and 1/2 of the map explored so far, in which I've found three giant caves and a giant ravine, with the largest cave and ravine intersecting with a combined volume of over half a million blocks:
These are the largest caves, ravines, and circular rooms that I've found so far:
A screenshot of my map wall:
The following descriptions and screenshots are in the order I found them in:
One of the larger ravines that I found:
A very rare intersection of a double dungeon with a normal dungeon, forming a "triple dungeon", only the second time I've found this since I added double dungeons in TMCWv4, both once in each version, and the third time in this world I've found two dungeons of any type intersecting out of a total of 323 dungeons (as many as this is I've found slightly less dungeons over time than in my first world):
A zombie in full diamond armor:
One of the largest caves that I found, which my rail tunnel intersected so this was technically the first thing that I found (aside from a lavafall it was pitch black so I had no idea how large it was other than its depth directly below):
A "large cave cave system", I first saw the surface opening several months ago while exploring the eastern edge of the map around 0,0; the total volume was about 113,000 blocks but it is less like a single cave than multiple medium-large caves similar to the larger ones in vanilla:
A skeleton in amethyst armor (just an helmet), one of 5 such mobs so far, but still much more common than diamond armor in vanilla (there is a one in 333 chance of armor being diamond and a one in 1000 chance of amethyst compared to a one in 15551 chance of diamond in vanilla):
Some interesting terrain in a Roofed Forest, though this makes it unlikely that a woodland mansion will generate (all of the structures I've added will only generate if the terrain is flat enough; only about 20% of mansions successfully generate but due to their spacing being so low, averaging one attempt every 196 chunks, the chance of a mansion in a given Roofed Forest is about the same as the chance of a jungle or desert having a temple in vanilla, with one attempt every 1024 chunks and a 100% success rate):
A Big Birch Forest, a new biome added in TMCWv5, along with larger variants of birch trees, including a 2x2 form so all vanilla trees have one (I actually had a request to add a larger variant of birch tree):
One of the three giant caves I found, with a volume of about 146,000 blocks (I actually explored it after the second one but saw it first):
This is pretty typical of the mobs in these caves:
There were multiple large circular rooms in the same general area, due to a regional variation to "vanilla" caves which increases their base width and/or enables a chance of an additional multiplier to the size of circular rooms:
I saw another zombie in diamond armor outside my main base after returning to store away what I'd collected over the past few days; also included is a screenshot of dozens of zombies lined up outside it on another day which I thought was interesting:
A zombie dropped leggings enchanted with Swift Sneak, the first time I've seen this enchantment since I added it a month before the release of 1.19, with the same functionality (unlike 1.19 it is not a "treasure" enchantment but it is unlikely to be obtained from enchanting; the best way to find it is in mineshafts, where it is about 10 times more common than other enchantments, along with Long Fall, another new enchantment I added at the same time which increases the maximum distance you can fall without taking damage by 1 block per level, mutually exclusive with Feather Falling):
The second giant cave I found, with a volume of about 201,000 blocks:
The largest ravine and cave, which intersected with volumes of 213,000 and 308,000 blocks respectively; despite its size the cave is only the 5th largest cave that I've found so far, but still larger than the largest cave I found in TMCWv4, with a volume of about 252,000, while I still haven't found a ravine larger than the largest one I found in TMCWv4, with a volume of about 267,000:
A rare triple diamond vein in the same view, there was a fourth vein just out of sight around a bend but I only got 6 diamonds from all of them:
I found a third stronghold, the second one found exclusively by caving; one of the chests also had an enchanted golden apple, the 7th one I've found so far out of 68 golden apples (on average 10% of golden apples are enchanted, however, I found the first 6 much closer together, followed by weeks without finding one):
A Great Forest biome, added in TMCWv4 but this is the first time I've found one; it has a mixture of various tall trees found in Rocky Mountains and Meadow Forest which vary on a regional scale within the biome. This is also the 39th biome I've found, 3 more than I found during the entire time I played on TMCWv4, which I played on for about 50% longer (243 sessions, 222 spent caving, with slightly more ground covered per session):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
These were taken when I first found the ravine and went along one side; it just kept going on and on for a total length of 368 blocks, the longest a ravine can get (the actual straight-line distance from end-end is about 300 blocks since it curves), and 3.3 times longer than the longest ravine in vanilla (112 blocks), and a maximum width of 34 blocks, more than twice that of vanilla (15 blocks):
I took these after exploring it, which was two days later as I explored all the caves and a mineshaft intersecting it first:
To put the size of this ravine, as well as the caves I've recently found, into perspective, these are the 10 largest caves and ravines in the seed with the largest known ravine in vanilla, "-4625688978827764752" (note: it might be underwater, in which case adding a multiple of 2^48 to the seed will eventually give one that has the ravine under land; this will not work in TMCWv5 as it uses a full 64 bit RNG), and the same seed in TMCWv5, both within 8192 blocks of 0,0 (an area of 1,048,576 chunks):
TMCWv5; notably, the largest ravine is only 776 blocks away from the origin with another ravine nearly as large 768 blocks to the south and a third ravine larger than the one in my world 256 blocks to the west of it (the x/z coordinates matching is not entirely a coincidence; the largest caves and ravines generate at 0,0 and 7,7 relative to a 16x16 chunk grid, with a random chance to generate so on a large scale the pattern is random, when exploring via interconnected caves as I do the path I take further randomizes things on a local scale):
A rendering (all caves and only special caves) and CaveFinder output (top 10 results) for the area around the two ravines mentioned:
I found a colossal cave system for the first time in this world, with a volume of about a quarter-million blocks and similar in size and density to a cave system in my first world (unlike single caves and ravines cave systems can get far larger in vanilla - the largest I've found while searching seeds for the densest concentrations of caves has a volume of over a million blocks, which is much less likely to occur in TMCWv5 because "vanilla" cave systems are broken up by special cave and cave system variants):
Another notable finding is an Iceland biome, one of several new biomes added in TMCWv5, which is similar to Mesa except instead of stained/hardened clay it has packed ice and snow, including a new packed ice variant, "opaque ice", which is an intermediate between normal ice and packed ice (4 ice crafts 2 opaque ice, 4 opaque ice crafts 2 packed ice, and 4 packed ice crafts 2 blue ice so it takes 4 ice to make one packed ice and 8 ice to make one blue ice; previously, 4 ice crafted one packed ice so the cost is the same). This is also the 40th biome that I've found in this world:
While it goes off the eastern edge of the current map, and the area I planned to explore (within 1536 blocks of 0,0) I plan to make two more maps to the east specifically to explore under this biome because of its uniqueness, there is also a quite large cave under it which extends all the way from the surface to cave "liquid" level (water in the case of Iceland and other "ice" biomes, with a separation between normal lava filled caves which can be seen here):
Yet another new finding was an enchanted book with Swift Sneak I; as mentioned before, I added this about a month before the release of 1.19 and made it most commonly found in mineshaft chests, though this was a dungeon, where they have the same probability as other enchantments:
Once I get Swift Sneak III I may add it to my leggings, where it would help as I always sneak while mining (1.6.4/TMCW does not separately track sneak distance but it would have to be pretty high). I'd have to make a new pair without Mending but as with my pickaxe I can use rubies to reset the prior work penalty every 3 repairs and the additional cost is negligible with my playstyle (rubies last a very long time as well, I currently use one every 3 days or so to reset my pickaxe so a stack lasts over half a year, and a piece of armor wouldn't use much more).
While not particularly large I thought this cave looked interesting enough to take screenshots (despite being only about half the size I consider to be a "large" cave, 25,000 blocks, a cave this size is still extremely rare in vanilla - I've only found two caves larger than this in my first world despite exploring about 8 times the area of this world so far):
The first of two "large cave cave systems" that I found:
A large cave with a volume of about 52,000 blocks (such a cave was counted as a "giant" cave in TMCWv4 but I now reserve that for caves over 100,000):
I found the largest variant of toroidal cave that can generate, with a toroid width of 80 blocks and a tunnel width of 28 blocks (in a previous post I said the same thing except the widths were 64/20; this is because I added a new larger variant later on, one of several such changes; these changes do not affect existing caves, in this case, there is a 1.25/15 additional chance of a toroidal cave when a normal cave system with a size of 0 attempts to generate, which is 25% of the time, or the generation of a largest possible cave variant fails with a 127/128 chance):
The second "large cave cave system", the very edge of which intersected the mega ravine (such ravines can completely cut through special cave systems since the minimum center-center distance is only 4 chunks along both axes; the largest exclusion zones are around strongholds and colossal cave systems, up to 6 chunks):
Some interesting terrain in the Big Oak Forest where my current base is:
A dual-biome (Forest Mountains and Winter Taiga) mountain reaching y=157 (the highest ground block is under a tree, hence F3 shows y=156):
I've also seen five more mobs in diamond or amethyst armor, including one each on thee consecutive days spent exploring the colossal cave system and another in the mega ravine:
Here are renderings of the caves, ravines, and cave systems mentioned above and what I've explored past x = 1024:
The first large cave cave system is in the lower-right while the second is near the upper-left; the colossal cave system is near the center, the toroidal cave is near the top-right, and the mega ravine is near the top-center, partially obscured by surrounding caves and ravines:
The same area but limited to y=13 or below:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I've finally found the rarest and most extreme underground feature in TMCW - a giant cave region, with a volume of more than 1.65 million blocks, more than three times larger than the largest single cave I've found so far, with at least two separate large caves intersecting it for an effective total volume of at least 1.8 million, and possibly more (these are just within the area I've explored so far):
This is a map of a random seed (-3504287701961080328) within +/-1536 blocks of the origin which shows special cave variations, including two giant cave regions to the west and southeast of center, as well as part of a third near the upper-right, to give you an idea of their size and frequency; on average there are 2-3 within such an area (including a 32 chunk radius circular exclusion zone around the origin which they can never generate in or intersect):
This is the first screenshot I took, a couple days ago, before I found out what it was:
These are additional screenshots taken during the first full day spent exploring it, some are actually the two caves mentioned above, which are technically separate but merged with it, which I explored starting the day before:
Similar to when I explored one in TMCWv4 I'm keeping track of what I did on each day:
Based on TMCWv4 it will take around 5-6 days to completely explore it; back then they were smaller and it took a bit over 4 full play sessions with the following results:
Interestingly, in both worlds the largest cave and ravine that I found, as well as the giant cave region, were all within the same map, centered at 1024, 0, with all three close together in TMCWv4, shown here; you can also see just how many more special cave variants there are in TMCWv5 by comparing the full map to the one for the random seed mentioned above, in TMCWv4 they were also mostly excluded from near the origin, except for "vanilla" large caves and slightly larger ravines:
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 more screenshots from the second day:
So far I've mined 6,895 ore and killed 1,037 mobs, and have been generally exploring along the edge to as far north as z = -600, before starting to go eastwards; I've also found 4 dungeons and explored part of a mineshaft, though I'm avoiding exploring anything that doesn't extend into the giant cave region (I often take several days, even a week, to explore a large cave or ravine as I explore everything connected to it when I could otherwise explore it within one day):
Also, I saw two "mega slimes" for the first time in this world (they were added in TMCWv4.5); slimes with a size of 8, twice the maximum in vanilla, can occasionally (1/31 of all slimes or 1/10 of each vanilla size) spawn in swamps and within giant cave regions (both types of regional caves are effectively like biomes which also affect various things like mob spawning and world generation, the latter is why giant cave regions have lots of huge mushrooms, while network cave regions have a much higher chance of double dungeons); they split into 2-4 large (size 4) slimes and at the extreme a single mega slime can split into 64 tiny slimes (I generally only kill the larger sizes, unless they get in the way); as well as the second mob in diamond or amethyst armor in as many days:
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 screenshots from the third and fourth days; I've now explored around the entire edge and have started exploring the interior:
Here are the stats for each day; I've now mined 13,840 ore and killed 2,316 mobs, including another zombie in diamond armor, also the 40th mob in diamond or amethyst in this world, and found three more dungeons:
Day 3:
Day 4:
A sequence of what I've explored over the past four days:
Of interest, I found one of the rarest ore variants in the game - packed ice emerald ore, also the first time I've found a non-stone variant, which only generates when an emerald-bearing biome generates adjacent to Iceland or Ice Hills since the only biomes that have emerald have the normal stone-based underground (ores and other features are generated per-chunk based on the biome in the center of the chunk, or offset-by-8 chunk, thus they can slightly extend into adjacent biomes):
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 6 days I've finally finished exploring the giant cave region, with a total of 17,485 ores mined, 18,752 resources and other items collected, 3,614 mobs killed, and 36,381 XP gained; MCEdit found 7,770 torches within a 350x350 area centered on the giant cave region, which also had a total volume of 1.98 million blocks (this includes unrelated caves and ravines near the edges, which may as well be included):
Here is a day to day animation of my progress and a view of the giant cave region in Minutor from layer 50 to layer 5 in increments of 5 layers:
Here is a comparison of the giant cave region to the largest single cave and ravine that I found:
Here are more screenshots from the 5th and 6th days:
Day 5:
Day 6:
Notably, on the 5th day I killed 862 mobs, a record for this world; the next day I killed 436 despite mining only 861 ores; the extreme spike in mobs was the result of them becoming confined as I lit up the surrounding area, increasing their density (the safest way to cave is to actually not use any light sources, just Night Vision, which will give full visibility and keep the mob cap spread out; despite this, many people still think that you need to spawnproof the area to limit mob spawns (regarding the discussion in the link, reducing the light level threshold for spawning to 0 would have almost no effect on how many torches I place; the vast majority are placed for visibility, with only a handful of torches placed in the remaining dark spots).
Also, about half the mobs on the 6th day were slimes, including many magma cubes from slimes that died in lava, including at least one mega slime (spawning 2-4 large magma cubes, otherwise only small and medium magma cubes spawn this way). This would have been much worse if I hadn't placed a cap on the number of slimes that can spawn (25; vanilla has no cap so up to 70 can spawn, this also makes it easier to prevent more from spawning by keeping tiny slimes alive).
Overall, I've played on this world for 28.92 days over 179 sessions, of which 160 were spent caving; for comparison, in TMCWv4 it took 22.46 days over 140 sessions (121 spent caving) to find at least one of every underground feature, of which I've found a total of 1,006, including a handful of surface structures; about a third of these were dungeons (352 of both types), followed by ravines (240 of all types) and mineshafts (75):
Structures/caves found (by number):
323 normal dungeons (2 intersecting x2, normal+double x1)
210 ravines (up to 7 intersecting)
75 mineshafts
65 vertical pit caves
29 double dungeons
25 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
25 large ravines (volume >= 25000 and length >= 112 or width >= 15 or depth >= 45)
20 circular room cave clusters
18 large caves (volume >= 25000)
18 ravine cave clusters
17 maze cave clusters
16 random cave clusters
14 ribbed tunnel cave clusters
13 large circular rooms (width >= 34)
13 spiral cave systems
12 toroidal caves
10 giant caves (volume >= 100000)
10 vertical cave clusters
10 zigzag cave systems
9 fossils
9 ravine cave systems
9 zigzag cave clusters
8 ribbed tunnel cave systems
8 vertical cave systems
7 large cave cave systems
6 maze cave systems
5 circular room cave systems
5 giant ravines (volume >= 100000)
5 random cave systems
4 CRM combination cave systems
3 network cave regions
3 strongholds (2 found by caving)
2 desert temples
2 jungle caves
2 mesa mineshafts
2 quartz desert pyramids
2 RZV combination cave systems
2 villages (1 Meadow, 1 Savanna)
1 colossal cave system
1 giant cave region
1 witch hut
(1006 individual structures/caves)
Despite this, and the amount of time I've spent on this world I've only explored the equivalent of a single level 4 map (16384 chunks, based on chunks remaining after using MMAT on a copy to remove chunks without torches), consistent with an average of about 100 chunks explored per play session, and even then I haven't found everything within that area, such as dungeons and ravines (averaging about 400 and 275 per level 4 map) as they are not always interconnected/connected to caves that are.
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?
Since my last post I've been exploring within and around the Iceland biome I found earlier and have so far found the largest circular room I've ever found, with a diameter of 65 blocks and a volume of more than 65,000 blocks, as well as the second colossal cave system in this world, the second largest ravine, with a volume of 272,000 blocks, and the second largest cave, with a volume of 566,000 blocks.
The first thing I explored was the large-looking cave I mentioned when I first found the Iceland biome, which turned out to be a large cave cave system, the 5th one that I've found within a single level 3 map (on average they generate about once every 2200 chunks, or a bit less than 2 per map). I also saw a zombie (or a husk, from a nearby Quartz Desert) in amethyst armor while exploring it:
Next I found the large circular room; at 65 blocks in diameter it is only 6 blocks smaller than the largest they can possibly get, although their maximum volume is about 30% larger (71^3 / 65^3, with a maximum volume of about 90,000 blocks; CaveFinder under-reports the volume because it goes a few blocks above sea level but it was still fully underground, thus its volume is a bit larger than 65,000 blocks. For another comparison, they can get up to 17 blocks wide in vanilla, making this one about 56 times larger in terms of volume; while they have the smallest volume of any type of "large" cave circular rooms are the most extreme form of cave when considering how much larger they can get compared to vanilla):
I then found the second colossal cave system in this world, with a volume of about 252,000 blocks, about 10,000 larger than the first one, and significantly denser in areas:
This then led to the second largest ravine that I've found so far in this world, with a volume of 272,000 blocks; it was higher up than the others so there was only a small area that had lava/water (split between Iceland and Quartz Desert) and it extended up to y=72 (as with the circular room its true volume is higher as the ground was above sea level except where a river crossed it):
The ravine in turn led to an absolutely enormous cave which turned out to be the second largest cave I've found so far in this world, with a volume of 566,000 blocks, nearly as large as the largest cave; I have not actually finished exploring it yet but I've seen enough of it to know how large it is so I analyzed it now:
Here are renderings of all of the caves I found, including a couple toroidal caves, and an underground rendering of what I've explored recently:
The large circular room is to the far right with the large cave cave system tot he left of it, the large ravine crosses most of the image from left to right, the colossal cave system is near the left side, and the giant cave is partly rendered behind/above the ravine (only what I've explored/lit up so far, around most of the edge):
It also appears that I'll be spending a bit more time than anticipated exploring the Iceland biome, which is fairly large and represents a significant deviation from my exploration of the map at 1024, 0 (the map shown is centered at 2048, -1024 and it extends into the map at 2048, 0 as well):
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 gives you an idea of just how many mobs there were in the last part of the cave that I lit up, with pretty much the entire mob cap packed within a few chunks, including a skeleton with a Flame bow in diamond armor (Flame and Punch are pretty common); overall, I killed 565 mobs and mined 1564 ores by the time I finished exploring it (not including from the day before):
Also, I found a new biome - or rather, three new biomes - all three variants of ocean, including Tropical Ocean, a new ocean variant added in TMCWv5 which has lighter turquoise colored water, a seafloor of predominately quartz sand, and patches of coral reefs, which this one had along the shore (patches the size of a single chunk may also be found in normal ocean). Frozen Ocean is also different from vanilla in that it has darker blue water, gravel instead of the dirt/sand/clay of normal oceans, is only partially frozen (water only), and can have icebergs (I didn't see any):
Note that there are two new coral variants in addition to the ones in 1.13; cyan and orange, with cyan based on prismarine and an early texture for red coral which was recolored and orange having my own texture:
In addition, I came across yet another massive ravine, which I've decided not to explore as it extends far to the east - I analyzed it with CaveFinder and it is actually slightly larger than the largest ravine I've found so far, at 348,000 blocks:
Of interest, the seed "-5565062877316731835" has the largest known combination of large cave and ravine, similar to what I just explored, with a combined volume of over 1.5 million blocks; it also has the largest surface ravine (mostly exposed) that I've seen, nearly the largest possible circular room, and 5 giant cave regions, all within +/- 1536 blocks of the origin:
A list of the largest caves:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Here are full-size renderings of the surface and explored caves and a couple screenshots I took after scaling the highest peak, which reached y=153, with a floating island going higher (I didn't try getting on top of it):
There was also yet another huge cave at the northeasternmost point I explored to, with a volume of 343,000 blocks, making it the 5th largest cave I've found so far, as well as the 12th cave with a volume of at least 100,000 and 30th cave with a volume of at least 25,000:
I took these screenshots while exploring it to help show just how I light them up; I progress around the edges before advancing into the interior, and pillar up and make walkways to access the ceiling:
For perspective, the largest cave I found in TMCWv4 had a volume of 252,667 blocks, meaning that I've found 7 caves that are larger, and two of those are larger than the largest cave I've ever found in TMCWv4 through searching:
Also, these are underground renderings and a list of caves within of a level 3 map area centered at 2048, -1024 (I don't plan to explore this area any further); the two large caves I found were by far the largest caves within the area, I also came within 100 blocks of reaching the 4th stronghold I'd have found in this world (part of it did generate within loaded chunks); much of this area is also ocean so even if I'd kept exploring I'd have stopped anyway after reaching it:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
After nearly two months I've finished exploring the map to the east (1024, 0), which took considerably longer than the map to the south (0, 1024) because of the diversion to explore the Iceland biome, which added about two weeks; even then, I'm not quite done yet due to a significant finding in the map to the southeast (1024, 1024).
Here is a surface rendering, including everything I explored further north and east:
Here are underground renderings and a list of everything within a 1024x1024 area centered at 1024, 0, including all caves and only special caves (plus large mineshafts and strongholds); the total air volume within this area is about 8.68 million blocks, of which 6.65 million (76.6%) are from special caves (for comparison, 1.6.4 averages about 2.87 million and 1.7-1.17 averages 2.4 million, both assuming flat ground at sea level, thus, the actual volume depends on the surface terrain and TMCW has additional caves generated above sea level and/or deeper/higher ravines in mountain/plateau biomes which are not included):
The most significant findings since my last update include the second-largest circular room that I've found so far, with a diameter of 60 blocks, and the largest within 1536 blocks (I'd have never found the largest one overall if not for the Iceland biome), along with numerous other large circular rooms and large "vanilla" caves as part of a region of increased vanilla cave width (these caves can very rarely exceed 25,000, the threshold I use for a "large" cave, but for the most part they are between 5,000-10,000, thus CaveFinder does not measure or list them unless you tell it to), a large cave with a volume of 149,000 blocks, and various other smaller large caves and ravines, including a "large cave cluster" with a total volume of 111,000:
This includes the two largest caves and the cave clusters:
These are all from the largest cave:
I also found the first case of terrain reaching y=128 or higher in this world that was not part of a "mountain" biome, Roofed Forest Hills reaching y=132; it is possible for "normal" biomes to go even higher but for the most part they are below the original terrain height limit; also shown are screenshots of various other terrain:
There are also two mountain biomes along the far eastern edge of generated chunks (on the far right side of the rendering in the first spoiler), Rocky Mountains and Savanna Mountains, with terrain reaching y=150-180, but I haven't measured them.
Notably, I found a biome for the first time since I added it in TMCWv3 - Mega Spruce Taiga, and the first time I've found one of two "vanilla" Mega Taiga biomes since TMCWv3 (there are two Mega Taigas, to the far left and near the top-center); I actually realized that I'd found it while caving when I came across a patch of podzol, which generates when underground dirt is exposed as one of the more minor biome-specific underground variations:
I've now seen a total of 47 mobs in diamond or amethyst armor, by far the most of any world (I saw 34 in TMCWv4, which I played on for about 6 more days of playtime. This reflects the increased number of mobs I've encountered, not a change to increase the chance of armor/higher tiers):
That said, my most significant find, which will extend the time I spend exploring to the east, was in the map to the south (1024, 1024, and possibly to the east of that (2048, 1024); I'd pillared up at the edge of an Autumnal Forest and in the distance I noticed what looked like a large cave opening - on closer inspection it turned out to be what appears to be a truly colossal ravine, possibly the largest ravine I've ever found with a huge lava river exposed to the sky, though I haven't explored it yet and it will take some time before I actually reach it, well to the south:
While looking at the ravine I also spotted something else far in the distance - a Pumpkin House - a new structure I added as part of the Autumnal Forest biome, directly taken from the suggestion I based it on, which is essentially a variation of a witch hut, although they do not respawn (both structures generate with two witches, with twice as much health, and a black cat, which ran out the door when I opened it):
This was all in one chest; there are two but one or both may have loot, which is mostly witch drops:
Notably, this gave me access to a previously unobtainable block - (normal) skeleton skulls, of which there are three; they can also be obtained by making a charged creeper explode (a future vanilla feature I backported) but I've only ever seen one in Survival (I also saw one in a Superflat test world; it is likely that there have been multiple charged creepers while playing but I never saw them, same for zombie pigmen spawned by lightning), and woodland mansions may have a room with creeper, skeleton, zombie, and player heads, the latter only obtainable in this manner.
Also, I found a new contender for the largest known cave in TMCW, with a volume of 1.13 million blocks, more than a year after I found the previous record holder, and as much as 1.31 million if a smaller cave that is connected to it is included (nearly the entire underground may as well be a single huge cave if you want to include anything that is connected so this is a bit subjective, in this case I include direct intersections between the main parts of the caves, as opposed to smaller tunnels/other caves). I also had to search though more than 100,000 seeds representing more than 3.7 billion chunks (each within 1536 blocks, or 36864 chunks), and I found a second cave which is larger than the previous record:
Here are screenshots; the cave is over 300 blocks long/wide so it isn't possible to view the entire cave at once
The seed also has a total of 3 caves exceeding half a million and 6 caves exceeding 400,000 (about 4 times their average frequency, about 1.5 per 36,864 chunks), as well as two mineshafts with over 400 structure pieces; also included is a surface rendering of the area around spawn and the cave, which is between the desert and autumnal forest near the right:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I've decided to fully explore the map at 1024, 1024, with the huge ravine mentioned before, and built a new secondary base, the third one so far, a bit to the south and east of the center, partly to put it closer the the center of the unexplored area (the northern and western edges include explored caves that extended into it from adjacent maps), as well as to place it in a suitable location due to terrain - similar to the map to the south (0, 1024) there is a full-size Ice Hills biome near the center of the map, with a Volcanic Wasteland to the east of it; I placed my base in a swamp to the south of the Volcanic Wasteland:
There's something quite interesting here:
This is a view from where I placed my base, visible at the bottom, there is also a witch hut nearby, the second one I've found in this world:
This is the black cat that spawned with the witch hut:
This is a map I specifically made to map the area as I dug the tunnel for the railway; when I first saw the lava to the north I thought it was some sort of huge cave or ravine but it is probably from the Volcanic Wasteland which is more visible to the south (the red dot to the northwest is a surface lava lake):
An underground rendering to the southeast of 448, 448; the railway leads back to the base I made near 1024, 0:
Also, being close to a Volcanic Wasteland brings a unique hazard - magma cubes continuously spawn at all times of the day and go off into surrounding biomes, including where my base is; I had a large magma cube jump over the wall (4 blocks high) before I could place a ceiling in:
This is also the first time I've built a base in a "corner" map in a world other than my first world, which have all been in maps adjacent to the center map (or straight outwards / in one direction).
There are also at least two giant caves within the area, including a huge cave opening just to the south of the center of the map, which can also be seen in a screenshot above; the other cave was found while caving and in part prompted me to fully explore the map (otherwise, I was considering exploring the rest of the maps to the west and north, which I explored about halfway; one reason I went on to explore the map to the south is because I had to build a railway at least 1000 blocks long to get "On a Rail" and my main base is to the northwest of 0,0, hence why I initially explored further in those directions):
Here are some more screenshots, mostly of various terrain, including two more peaks over y=128 in adjacent biomes (Mountainous Desert and Forest Mountains):
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?