I've now found 36 distinct biomes, with the latest being Tropical Swamp, also with the second witch hut I've found, and the first new biome-specific variation, using jungle wood instead of spruce and oak wood; unlike normal swamps (Swamplands) the terrain averages slightly higher than sea level with numerous one block deep water lakes dotting the surface, ranging in size from vanilla ponds (larger if they merge) to single blocks, and there are jungle trees in addition to swamp oaks (which are also a distinct variant of tree in TMCW), with jungle green foliage; this is also a valid spawn biome since it is relatively flat and it wouldn't take too much work to clear a space for my main base:
A loser look at the witch hut, also a rare occasion of actually finding one with a witch, due to finding it before I explored the area:
These are more screenshots of the Forest Mountains I found earlier (a month ago, actually; I returned to an old "return point" I'd made just outside of it); the highest peak reached y=130, just above the pre-1.7 terrain height limit, there were also some significant overhangs, which I treat like caves for the purposes of exploration, including lighting them up; as Forest Mountains has iron ore above sea level they are more profitable to explore than they would be in vanilla (unlike 1.18 the iron is simply an extension of the normal generation below sea level with the same concentration; the first version of TMCW also added iron ore everywhere above sea level at 1/3 the concentration, which I later made biome-specific):
This is the largest overhang after I "explored" it via caves that led to it, visible to the right of center in the previous screenshot (these are a lot like the large caves added in 1.18 since both are generated as noise in the terrain, rather than separately carving it out, except these will never have air below sea level and always have surface layers (dirt, grass, etc):
The Tropical Swamp is to the northeast of my location, easily visible from the multiple specks of water with a lighter blue color; Forest Mountains appears as a mixture of oak, spruce, and birch:
This also led to finding emerald ore for the first time in over 100 days of caving, which isn't actually that exceptional compared to vanilla, where I've gone longer (mainly when exploring Ice Plains or oceanic regions), this was also how I realized I'd gone into the Forest Mountains, which is also one of two main variants, the first variant, which is the one I found, has less height variation but may contain an "extreme" sub-biome, and the second variant has more height variation with Cherry Grove as a sub-biome:
Also, I thought to note that Birch Forest has areas of "Birch Forest M", as Mojang originally called the variant with taller birch trees, except in my case they are simply areas with taller trees, rather than adding a whole new biome just for this purpose; I also vary the number of attempts per chunk of generating trees in most biomes (some have had the opinion that biomes shouldn't even exist, just vary trees and other features using a separate noise field but I disagree with that, as well as how 1.18 mostly separated terrain and biomes):
As far as caving goes, my most interesting find was a very large "vanilla cave", the largest such cave I've ever found, and about twice as large as the largest such cave in my first world, with a volume of nearly 33,000 blocks; I checked various seeds and on average about one such cave generates within 1536 blocks of 0,0 (there were none in my previous world, others had as many as four). The cave was a bit wider than they can get in vanilla, up to 31 blocks compared to up to 27, but otherwise the same (vanilla caves also range in length from 85-112 blocks; various underground regions in TMCW increase the length to 144, while others reduce it to 80). There was also a toroidal cave with the largest size for the "original" variant below it ("type 1" is the original variant added in TMCWv5, I later added a "type 2" variant which can get larger, both generate in regions of low cave density with type 2 requiring more open space):
Center is -208, -368 and radius is 64 blocks (from -272, -432 to -145, -305)
Locations of largest caves by volume:
1. -185 37 -384 (type: 0, length: 108, width: 31, volume: 32831)
2. -184 22 -376 (type: 1, length: 261, width: 15, volume: 17330)
Locations of largest circular rooms by volume:
1. -186 38 -369 (width: 31, volume: 7367)
2. -166 27 -343 (width: 23, volume: 2988)
3. -166 4 -340 (width: 22, volume: 1821)
Locations of toroidal caves by volume:
1. -248 26 -354 (type: 1, toroid width: 64, tunnel width: 20, volume: 33162)
I found a large cave with a quite large lava lake, considering its size, one of the larger sizes of "type 1" (also the "original" variant of such caves, which have the widest size range but smallest average and maximum size, I later added "type 2", with a smaller size range but much larger average size, then 3 and 4, each larger still, and generating as multiple individual caves/tunnels from the same point for a more varied structure. Type 1 also has a chance to generate as a "cave cluster", with 2-4 caves, as in this case, where the total volume was over 100,000 blocks):
Center is -464, -464 and radius is 80 blocks (from -544, -544 to -385, -385)
Locations of largest caves by volume:
1. -424 23 -440 (type: 1, length: 171, width: 50, volume: 87525)
2. -424 29 -440 (type: 1, length: 154, width: 16, volume: 13013)
3. -456 34 -424 (type: 1, length: 149, width: 11, volume: 7958)
4. -408 26 -488 (type: 1, length: 336, width: 8, volume: 7570)
Locations of large cave clusters by volume:
1. -424 28 -440 (caves: 3, volume: 103614)
Locations of largest ravines by volume:
1. -408 25 -440 (type: 1, length: 110, width: 12, depth: 38, volume: 22609)
Locations of largest circular rooms by volume:
1. -489 13 -461 (width: 22, volume: 2498)
Last, but not least, I found several very large circular rooms, with the largest reaching 61 blocks in diameter, 10 blocks less than the maximum, and with a volume that is about 45 times larger than the largest rooms in vanilla (17 blocks wide):
This shows a larger area that I recently explored with the circular rooms in the upper-left, with various other cave variants visible, the caves in the bottom-center and to the right of that are most like vanilla:
The depression in the floor is about the same size as the largest circular room in vanilla, even in modern versions (the Wiki currently says they get up to 15 blocks wide, not sure if that is a misread of the source, which sets the initial radius to 1-7 but then adds 1.5 before actually generating a room or tunnel, hence it actually ranges from 2.5 to 8.5, or a width of 5 to 17 blocks):
This is actually 3 rooms stacked on top of one another (the third is right between them, they may otherwise barely touch or even have 1-2 blocks between them):
I also had a couple interesting diamond finds, one being a double vein, with 8 ores, less than the largest single veins (up to 10), but noteworthy due to how uncommon it is to find such deposits, and four separate deposits visible at once in the same relatively small cave (totaling 12 ores, a few blocks were removed for visibility):
Looking at your pics points out that vanilla has needed better trees for a VERY long time. Even in 1.6, it really needed those bigger and more varied trees. Do you get dayspawning?
Also, I thought to note that Birch Forest has areas of "Birch Forest M", as Mojang originally called the variant with taller birch trees, except in my case they are simply areas with taller trees, rather than adding a whole new biome just for this purpose; I also vary the number of attempts per chunk of generating trees in most biomes (some have had the opinion that biomes shouldn't even exist, just vary trees and other features using a separate noise field but I disagree with that, as well as how 1.18 mostly separated terrain and biomes)
Having done Better Forests, I can absolutely say all forests could be done with just one "Forest" biome. I've already got "Forest" able to do regular, birch, and spruce, along with the old growth varieties. Better Forests currently doesn't, because vanilla does have "Birch Forest", etc., varieties, so I tone it down to have regular forest vary in composition but still always have a lot of Oak. I could add in Jungle and Dark Forest by adding humidity to my calculations.
And I will also say I'm thinking about adding Plains to that, in the form of clearings, because sometimes it's hard to see all the pretty trees. One problem with the new biome system is that biome adjacencies are very restricted - for example Old Growth Spruce can *only* exist next to Taiga, Spruce, and Dark Forest, or to mountain biomes. You just can't get a sweeping view of Old Growth Spruce except from water, and that's a pity.
I'd love to see a builder type have a go at something in one of your vast caverns.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Looking at your pics points out that vanilla has needed better trees for a VERY long time. Even in 1.6, it really needed those bigger and more varied trees. Do you get dayspawning?
I actually hacked the lighting engine (which I also completely replaced) so leaves alternately have a light opacity of 0 or 1 (the default) in "mega tree biomes", reducing the shading effect of larger canopies (this only needs to be applied to sky light since block light always assumes an opacity of at least 1):
// Used by sky light calculations in relightBlock and generateSkylightMap to treat leaves differently in biomes with huge
// trees so they aren't as dark.
private final int getLightOpacity(Chunk chunk, int index, boolean isMegaTreeBiome)
{
int block = chunk.getBlockIDByIndex(index);
if (Block.isLeafBlock(block) && isMegaTreeBiome) return BlockLeavesTMCW.getLightOpacityByIndex(index);
return clampedLightOpacity[block];
}
// Returns light opacity for leaves, dependent on coordinates. Index is chunk block index (y << 8 | z << 4 | x). Used by
// LightUpdater.getLightOpacity and World.setTransparentBlock
public static final int getLightOpacityByIndex(int index)
{
switch ((index >> 8) & 3) // extracts y
{
case 0: return (index + (index >> 4)) & 1; // alternates between 1 and 0 in checkerboard pattern
case 1: return 0;
case 2: return 1 - ((index + (index >> 4)) & 1); // reverses 0 and 1
case 3: return 0;
default: return 0;
}
}
There are occasional spots that are too dark but they are pretty limited and the chance of a mob spawning is reduced by 1/8 for every level above zero (so 7 means a 7/8 failure rate); the "mob counts" in the debug screen shows the number of "surface" and "cave" mobs, the latter either below sea level or with no sky light, and it generally only shows a couple mobs on the surface despite my changes to mob spawning (unlike vanilla surface and cave mobs have their own semi-independent mob caps, one of the biggest impacts is that surface mobs start spawning en masse as soon as it gets dark enough, no waiting for mobs in caves to despawn; conversely, the number of mobs in caves is not reduced at night):
This also shows the impact of my changes to leaf opacity; the "top" block is the highest non-air block while "light" is the highest block that blocks sky light (opacity of 1 or more), which will often be lower in these biomes, even as low as ground level (there must be at least 4 consecutive layers of leaf blocks to fully block light, once this happens light diffusion occurs as usual, with any other leaves below having no further effect).
Otherwise, overhangs that completely block sky light can be up to 7 blocks deep before it gets too dark since it also propagates sideways; this is also close to the maximum size of any tree in vanilla (+/- 8 blocks from the center) due to world generation constraints (I know you don't respect them); the biomes with the largest trees place one of the largest trees per chunk, other biomes space them apart, reducing overlap between canopies and even a single block of direct sunlight (or a column with no leaves with a nonzero opacity) will keep a large area bright enough to present spawns.
That's a really clean solution to the dayspawning issue, actually - just make leaf opacity not stack, or at least not stack too much. Certainly less compute work than the light tracking system I have to use.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I've found at least five more giant ravines in less than two weeks, only two of which have been explored, all in the same general area to the north of the first ravine (for a total of six in this area, three explored):
This is the first ravine I explored, and the second one listed, which was mostly in a Mega Taiga, bordering a Desert, and more covered up due to the generally higher terrain despite being much higher up (center at y=46), the estimated average ground depth increased its volume by about 20,000 over the portion below sea level:
There were also three dungeons close together on one side of the ravine (center-left, lower-right, and a third a bit above and to the left of it, all with stone brick walls), which don't often have dungeons attacked to them, much less this many close together:
A view of the Mega Taiga itself, which is the "plain" version (the one that I found earlier was Mega Spruce Taiga, only differing in the proportion of the leafier trees, which I have counted as separate biomes, making this the 37th biome):
The second ravine that I explored was slightly smaller, or larger, considering it was entirely below sea level:
Also, this is an animation that shows the effect of render distance, ranging from 8-16 chunks in steps of 2 chunks, then with fog turned off, which was still visible at the far end (as far as can be seen since they usually aren't straight enough to see from end to end):
The area between both ravines included several large caves, a large circular room, and a colossal cave system:
This is a rendering and analysis of the area including the three ravines I've explored so far; in contrast with what I found while exploring to the south I haven't found much in the way of extremely large caves recently:
Seed is -2808539875420101855
Center is 336, -832 and radius is 272 blocks (from 64, -1104 to 607, -561)
Showing up to 10 results for each category. Locations are the center/start.
Locations of colossal cave systems by volume:
1. 168 -888 (volume: 247919, type: NE-SW)
Locations of ravine cave systems:
1. 360 -584
Locations of vertical cave systems:
1. 264 -680
Locations of combination cave systems:
1. 136 -792 (type: CRM)
Locations of random cave systems:
1. 424 -1080
Locations of spiral cave systems:
1. 72 -568
Locations of large cave cave systems by volume:
1. 376 -952 (type: 2, volume: 153574)
2. 520 -968 (type: 1, volume: 126634)
Locations of largest caves by volume:
1. 456 21 -888 (type: 1, length: 280, width: 21, volume: 35333)
Locations of large cave clusters by volume:
1. 280 27 -568 (caves: 3, volume: 41405)
Locations of largest ravines by volume:
1. 440 35 -632 (type: 4, length: 380, width: 41, depth: 59, volume: 496117)
2. 312 25 -1016 (type: 3, length: 352, width: 25, depth: 52, volume: 217397)
3. 440 46 -888 (type: 4, length: 380, width: 25, depth: 45, volume: 201851)
4. 232 34 -808 (type: 2, length: 188, width: 13, depth: 41, volume: 47559)
5. 280 21 -568 (type: 2, length: 218, width: 9, depth: 31, volume: 29153)
6. 552 37 -1080 (type: 1, length: 98, width: 15, depth: 46, volume: 25534)
Locations of largest circular rooms by volume:
1. 329 55 -806 (width: 54, volume: 33816)
Locations of toroidal caves by volume:
1. 59 32 -1093 (type: 1, toroid width: 56, tunnel width: 20, volume: 28436)
2. 119 30 -1007 (type: 1, toroid width: 48, tunnel width: 10, volume: 8066)
Locations of abandoned mineshafts by corridor length:
1. 472 23 -1032 (span: 9, size: 134, length: 1255)
2. 248 22 -824 (span: 8, size: 126, length: 1215)
3. 152 22 -712 (span: 7, size: 106, length: 1185)
4. 344 19 -680 (span: 8, size: 107, length: 1010)
5. 584 8 -920 (span: 8, size: 68, length: 660)
6. 568 23 -568 (span: 7, size: 61, length: 525)
Generating map...
Generating caves... 6% 12% 18% 24% 31% 37% 43% 49% 56% 62% 68% 74% 80% 87% 93% 99%
Rendering map... 6% 12% 18% 25% 31% 37% 43% 50% 56% 62% 68% 75% 81% 87% 93% 100%
Total air volume is 2566204 blocks (14.697429%)
Saving map...
Two of the three ravines that I haven't explored yet are off to the east with another to the north; I've left the ones to the east for later exploration once I make a secondary base in that area (each one services a roughly 1000x1000 block area centered on it), while the one to the north looks quite large, and much like the first large ravine I found earlier I noticed it as a big spot of lava near the edge of a desert, Mountainous Desert in this case:
The first ravine (or fourth overall), located to the east of the first ravine I recently explored:
The second ravine, located to the north of the second ravine I recently explored, and within range of my current base so it will be explored sometime soon, this also appears to be the largest of the three shown here (hard to be sure since their length is a factor and the others aren't as visible without lighting them up):
The sixth ravine, partly under an Ice Plains Spikes, you can see where the lava transitions to water, with a separation between them; as well as the ravine shown above as a big red spot on the map:
Some more screenshots of terrain, including Big Birch Forest, Ice Plains Spikes, and Mountainous Desert:
Big Birch forest, as seen from the other side from where I saw it from my base:
Ice Plains Spikes, as a full-sized biome, as opposed to a sub-biome of Ice Plains (I believe the first one I saw, a long time ago, was a sub-biome, I never got close enough to get a good look), they may also generate as an edge biome around the full-size variant of Ice Hills:
As with many other special biomes , Ice Plains Spikes changes the default stone-based underground to one with snow blocks (as "biome stone" so it behaves like stone, dropping snowballs unless mined with Silk Touch) and deposits of packed ice instead of dirt and gravel, and a unique new block, "dry ice", which was based on a since-deleted suggestion (unfortunately it was never properly archived, a victim of the GDPR purge):
A couple views of the Mountainous Desert above one of the ravines; the first may look nice and smooth while the second, behind the first, has more classic Beta-like terrain (to this day there are still many who prefer this over "realism", Alpha and Beta versions are actually quite popular from what I've seen):
Also, to put the size of the ravines I've recently found into perspective, I analyzed 1,000 seeds within +/- 1536 blocks of 0,0, of which about 90% had at least 20 ravines over 100,000 (only these seeds were used to compute the averages for the top 20), averaging about 25 (this figure includes all seeds, the two figures are for below sea level and the entire ravine); the largest ravine I've found so far would be the largest expected in a given seed while the other two are the 12-13th largest:
Making beyond-view-distance black is a much better choice than having the sky show through (especially when it's the not-yet-risen sun or moon, blech.)
Maybe those lava pools could be a little less circular?
I really like the first mountainous desert. I wouldn't call it "smooth"; "non-crazified" is a better way to distinguish it from the second. At some point I want to rework the RTG hills to be more irregular using the techniques I developed for Extreme Hills but that's not going to be any time soon.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
The circular lava pools in ravines are an artifact of how they are generated, as a line of cylindrical segments which vary in size, and can be seen in vanilla ravines, if to a lesser extent because they are much smaller:
Vanilla (they really are that common and this applies to all versions until 1.18):
I finally got around to exploring one of the large ravines that I previously hadn't explored yet, the one to the north in a desert, which turned out to be the second largest ravine I've explored in any world, with a volume of around 466,000 blocks, and very similar to the largest ravine, mainly differing in length and altitude, with the surrounding terrain being generally higher so more of it could generate below the surface:
I set the render distance to 12 and kept fog on, rather than disabling it, since I think it give more depth than just maxing it out/without fog:
I also found a couple more giant caves (volume > 100,000) around the ravine, one partly within Ice Plains Spikes and the other in the same desert:
These are renderings of the area I've explored recently around the giant ravine:
This includes one of the ravines I previously explored, near the bottom; also visible are a couple large caves to the east and west of the giant ravine and a large cave cave system to the southwest of the western cave:
A rendering of special caves only, followed by all ravines only:
I've also found three more biomes; Taiga, Mega Mixed Forest, and Savanna Mountains, for a total of 40 biomes, which is getting close to the 49 I found in TMCWv5, which I played on for about three times longer. Taiga is basically just the snowless variant of the vanilla 1.6.4 biome of the same name, itself renamed to Winter Taiga (in contrast to what was officially done; the original was made warmer and a new "Cold Taiga" was added). Mega Mixed Forest contains all the largest variants of trees, including variants of oak, spruce, birch, jungle, and "mega", and Savanna Mountains is equivalent to 1.7's Savanna Plateau M and includes the most extreme terrain in TMCW, often exceeding y=180, along with Extreme Hills:
Another view of the Mountainous Desert, which peaked at y=132:
An insignificant structure but a structure nonetheless, and the first one I've found, they can also generate in quartz and red sandstone variants in the appropriate biomes and even a special Nether variant in a Nether single-biome world (as one of the only sources of water):
A view of a Taiga and Mega Mixed Forest in the other direction:
Savanna Mountains, which is well past -1536 but there is no real reason not to explore that far (I've gone as far north as -1700 and went as far as 2000 in TMCWv5 to fully explore a biome); I can tell that at least one of the peaks goes way past y=128 (so far I haven't found as many particularly high peaks in this world as in my last world, a total of 6 biomes with a peak over 128, up to 151; compared to 7 over 180 and 15 over 151 in TMCWv5):
I finally found one of the rarest structures in TMCW for the first time - a woodland mansion, with an estimated frequency of one every 23,800 chunks and only surpassed by quartz desert pyramids (one in 30,000; I've found three across two worlds. These figures are far, far, far more common than mansions in vanilla and are mainly determined by the rarity of their respective biomes, which have quite high chances of having a structure, in fact, mansions attempt to generate once per 15x15 chunk region, compared to 80x80 chunks in vanilla, a difference of 28.4-fold. About 2/3 of attempts fail due to terrain that is too steep or too close to an invalid biome (they can generate in Meadow, a sub-biome of Roofed Forest, if at least half the mansion is in a Roofed Forest; Meadow itself also attempts to place mansions to ensure they don't reduce the number of attempts near their edges):
These are also the most complex structure that I've added, with three floors containing a total of 10 rooms chosen from a total of 35 rooms; following are screenshots and descriptions of each room as I explored it:
The first room I entered on the first floor, a sort of "witch hut" room with a chest containing various potions; most rooms contain at least one witch which generates as part of the structure, with twice the health of naturally spawned witches and the whole structure acts like a witch and cave spider spawner:
The second room is filled with various flowers:
A larger room runs along the width of the back side of then mansion, in this case, a "mushroom room", which has a barrel on the platform above the mushrooms which has various loot (including more valuable items than what I found,. e.g. diamond/amethyst hoes):
The back room has a ladder that leads up to the second floor's back room, also the full width of the mansion:
The first side room had shelves with chests and barrels, one of which has loot:
The other room contained two zombie villagers behind bars with a chest that can be used to cure both of them (it will always have enough apples and gold to make two golden apples, or just those):
Going up to the third floor, which has four rooms, the first one I entered had a huge mushroom in it:
The rooms on this floor are arranged so you'll go from one room to the next, which led to a library, which has the same loot as stronghold libraries:
Next was a room with snow and a snow golem; this is one of the few rooms that never has a witch (for obvious reasons):
The last room is a small maze (hard to show):
I spotted the mansion as a brown 2x2 square on the map, within a sizable Roofed Forest, the second one that I found in the past few days, the other being smaller and to the northeast (the northernmost point along the right side), also visible on the map are some lighter areas within the ocean, which are Topical Ocean, together bring the total number of biomes up to 42, and which led to finding the first sponges in a couple dungeons, which have the same functionality as they have in modern versions (they can also be found in shipwrecks, I never added ocean monuments):
I did not take screenshots of the surface but Tropical Ocean mainly differs from regular ocean in that the seafloor is lined with sand (normal and quartz in random patches) instead of dirt/sand/gravel/clay, and contains larger patches of coral (regular ocean has the occasional chunk-sized patch):
In another rare find I found a pink sheep for the first time in this world, interestingly, not far from my current base, and given the size of the world and passive mob spawn rates there are likely more that I haven't seen:
I've also finally found every underground feature, with the last being a "network cave region", an expansive area of long and relatively straight tunnels extending up to 400 blocks across, which underlies the Roofed Forest, with various other caves generating within it, as well as mineshafts, the only "special" cave system that allows them to generate within/near them (you'd spend a lot of time gong down long tunnels without running into anything else if that was all there was):
I have not finished exploring the area but the example here is representative of what they look like, minus the other features that can generate within them:
Also, I've found three "double dungeons" within the area so far -a third of the 9 I've found so far in this world, within three days, including two in one day, as network cave regions increase the chance by about 4-fold (around 20% of all dungeons). This is still far less than I should have found, and I went as far as to analyze areas I previously explored to see if the lack of double dungeons was real; for some reason the failure rate is much higher than normal (normally slightly less than normal dungeons), which doesn't seem explainable by things like variations in caves, or not having found any network cave regions until now:
Generated 194 dungeons and 6 double dungeons (3.0%) in 8320 chunks
Total attempts: 70355 (66554 dungeons and 3801 double dungeons)
Attempts per chunk: 8.45613 (7.999279 dungeons and 0.45685098 double dungeons)
Dungeon pass rate is 0.2914926%; double dungeon pass rate is 0.1578532%
Chunks per dungeon: 42.886597; chunks per double dungeon: 1386.6666
For comparison, this is a more average result:
Generated 705 dungeons and 45 double dungeons (6.0%) in 29632 chunks
Total attempts: 252250 (237051 dungeons and 15199 double dungeons)
Attempts per chunk: 8.512756 (7.999831 dungeons and 0.5129252 double dungeons)
Dungeon pass rate is 0.29740435%; double dungeon pass rate is 0.2960721%
Chunks per dungeon: 42.031204; chunks per double dungeon: 658.4889
I also found a large complex of caves which together formed one of the largest caves I've found in quite a while, and further south I found another large ravine with a volume of 187,000 blocks, as well as the third largest mineshaft I've found in this world, with a corridor length of about 3 km:
The ravine partly visible at the bottom is the one shown below; a separate ravine with a volume of 90,000 blocks leads south from the cave complex, and the network cave region is visible to the southwest:
That mansion would make a nice base. Why doesn't the witch seem to be attacking you?
The "long straightish caves" would be an interesting underground feature everywhere at low density. Like an underground subway network.
The witch had but I took it between taking damage and I have potion particles disabled (just for the player though, a setting I added to remove the annoying particles around me, but not disabling them, or all particles, entirely. I'd also turn off particles when taking screenshots with Night Vision).
As for having "horizontal caves" (as I called them) everywhere, this is what it was like in some of my older mods, where cave systems were more discrete units and wouldn't otherwise be linked together, many of the "special" cave systems in TMCW also have 1-2 "horizontal link caves" extending outwards to help ensure they connect to other caves (these cave systems prevent normal caves from generating within a 3-5 chunk radius, or generate in regions lacking any other caves within a similar area; many times I'll find a "cave cluster" which is only linked to anything via such a cave):
An example from "Double Height Terrain" (unlike most such renders this is from an actual world, using the mapping tool "Unmined"), which generated cave systems very differently from vanilla, instead of being completely random they generate aligned to a grid, similar to structures like villages, with mineshafts between them (which were quite rare in this mod, considering the doubled ground depth as well). Not visible here are "vertical caves" which generate from the bottom to the surface, helping ensure that cave systems are vertically connected (they would often generate in layers with gaps between them due to the depth, more so in "TripleHeightTerrain", and were also the only caves that could break the surface (grass/dirt; there was very little indication of what was underground in these mods, no surface ravines either, which could have otherwise gone all the way down to bedrock/lava level):
This is an "interconnected caves" map of an area I recently explored; in the upper-left is a "maze cave cluster", which is shown to not be interconnected on the right side because I disabled their "horizontal link cave", which appears as an extra cave to the south on the left side (these caves are more like normal caves in curviness but can't curve so much as to loop around or go backwards relative to their starting direction):
After 10 days I've finished exploring the network cave region and surrounding areas; this is more than it took to explore the giant cave regions (7-8 days) despite having only a fraction of the volume, but being closer when considering everything within and around it; this also included significantly more mineshafts than I've been finding on average, with the number of rails/cobwebs being closer to what I average in my first world (about 250 rails per day, compared to around 150 in TMCW):
Several renderings of the network cave region and surrounding area, and an updated screenshot of my map wall (I left the background in to give more perspective to its size, 2x4 level 3 maps, with space for up to 4x4); CaveFinder lists the volume at about 128,000 blocks but it would be a bit larger since parts of it go outside the 400x400 area I use to measure the volume (I chose this size since it does capture most of everything, the larger it is the slower the analysis will run, given it can analyze up to 1 million chunks, I do use a smaller data array for smaller features):
Caves are generated on three distinct layers, 10, 30, and 50, with each layer having 8 nodes / 24 total which have 2-4 horizontal tunnels (each 112 to 176 blocks long and 4-12 blocks wide, the altitude is also limited to +/-5 blocks from their starting altitude) and a 50% chance of a vertical cave to the surface, with a circular room generating when there are at least 3 tunnels:
All features; the total volume within this area (560x512 blocks) is about the same as a giant cave region:
Special caves and larger mineshafts only; the network cave region itself contains numerous "cave clusters" as part of its structure, not included in the standalone analysis:
Ravines only; the largest ravines to the right are the ones I found last time; the core of the network cave region (a 12x12 chunk area) will never have any ravines, and large ravines are less likely to generate within a 20x20 chunk area (this area also prevents most other caves from generating, but not smaller "cave clusters" or mineshafts):
Mineshafts only; the way they are laid out is quite apparent here, where they generate at 0,0 - 2,2 and 7,7 - 9,9 relative to a 14x14 chunk grid, giving them about the same base frequency as in vanilla 1.6.4 (1/98 vs 1/100 per chunk), with about 50% removed due to being too close to various caves / dense cave systems; their regular layout is usually not apparent when exploring since they usually aren't explored in a straight line and more are usually missing, and a second layer will attempt to place smaller "filler mineshafts" between the first layer if they failed to generate around a point (at offsets 0,7 - 2,9 and 7,0 - 9,2; there do not appear to be any such mineshafts here; this increases the overall frequency to about 60% of vanilla). Note that none of the mineshafts intersect, which I've only seen a couple times so far in this world, and one case was only a couple blocks (vanilla just randomly places them, with intersections, including extensive overlap, being the norm):
I've explored as far north as z -1700; I have not gone far into the ocean to the northwest but it seems like it is completely or mostly surrounded by land (I've mapped a bit more along the western side since the last time I returned to my main base). The shallower body of water to the southwest of the ocean / west of the Roofed Forest is a full-size "Lake" biome and the area shown above is more or less centered on the Roofed Forest:
I also found four double dungeons, 40% of the total in this world, out of a total of 275 dungeons, a still rather low 3.6% of the total (with one intersecting pair of dungeons, so if you count all "double dungeons" then my special variant is 90% of the total), with one having only the second "Vein Miner" book I've found in this world (I have not had anybody tell me they are too rare but they should probably be easier to find as structure chests are the only way to obtain them, as well as "Smelting", I could just make them guaranteed in double dungeons, which still averages about a day of caving for me to find one with their average frequency). Here is a list of all the features I've found in this world, totaling 886, with nearly a third being dungeons (entries like "mineshafts" do not include "large" or "mesa" mineshafts, same for caves/ravines ">= 25000" and ">- 100000", so the totals for these are the sums of each number):
Structures/caves found (by number):
265 dungeons (2 intersecting x1)
179 ravines (up to 7 intersecting)
85 vertical pit caves
49 mineshafts
31 large caves (volume >= 25000)
25 large ravines (volume >= 25000 and length >= 112 or width >= 15 or depth >= 45)
16 dense cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
16 ribbed tunnel cave clusters
15 toroidal caves
12 giant caves (volume >= 100000)
12 large circular rooms (width >= 34)
12 maze cave clusters
12 vertical cave clusters
11 circular room cave clusters
11 large mineshafts (length >= 2000)
11 random cave clusters
11 ravine cave clusters
10 double dungeons (a special type with 2 spawners and 2-3 chests)
10 ribbed tunnel cave systems
10 zigzag cave clusters
9 large cave cave systems
8 fossils (5 Desert, 2 Swamplands, 1 Tropical Swamp)
7 giant ravines (volume >= 100000)
6 CRM combination cave systems
6 random cave systems
5 vertical cave systems
5 zigzag cave systems
4 circular room cave systems
4 RZV combination cave systems
4 spiral cave systems
3 maze cave systems
3 ravine cave systems
2 colossal cave systems
2 desert temples
2 giant cave regions
2 igloos (1 Winter Forest, 1 Winter Taiga, 2 with basement)
2 villages (1 Desert, 1 Meadow)
2 witch huts (1 Swamplands, 1 Tropical Swamp)
1 desert well (1 Desert)
1 mesa mineshaft
1 network cave region
1 pumpkin house
1 quartz desert pyramids
1 stronghold (with eyes of ender)
1 woodland mansion
(total of 886 features)
A more detailed list of everything I've found, showing how well I document my worlds:
I found a Jungle and Desert as an island within a full-size "Lake", which can have small islands of various non-frozen biomes (or frozen in the case of its Frozen Lake counterpart); it was within sight of where I surfaced in the Roofed Forest but I somehow missed it at the time (the jungle is also obvious on the map as a lighter green than a regular forest):
The underground of jungles contains vines much deeper down than in vanilla (becoming less common deeper down) and patches of "cave grass", a special variant of grass which does not spread or uproot in the dark (I did this for aesthetics, so they remain as patches when they generate on dirt; the grass blocks drop normal grass when mined with Silk Touch while the tall grass and ferns drop "cave grass" when sheared and can be placed in the dark (unlike 1.7 I did not make non-crop plants not require light), when placed in flower pots they use a different color, rather than making them biome-dependent). Tropical Swamp also has the patches of grass but not vines:
Also, I did a couple of "experiments"; one was to skip repairing my pickaxe while I repaired all three pieces of armor and sword in succession; even with this my pickaxe still had 1534 durability left (out of 4686) and it took four successive repairs to get back to full durability (this includes using a ruby once to reduce the prior work penalty as it does not / can't get Mending), with each one ending with 600-700 more durability than the last (out of 1171 restored, so this gives a margin of over 2-fold for how much XP I collect vs what I spend):
The other was more of an observation; in TMCW all pieces of armor have the same durability and Unbreaking III reduces the chance of taking damage by 50% (more than in vanilla, my formula also allows for infinite stacking, vanilla asymptotically reaches a 40% chance as the level goes to infinity), which makes it easier to see how well they track over time; I'd taken a total of 38,318 hits while wearing it and they were still pretty close together (one reason I note this is because some people have expressed concern over the random chance of Unbreaking but the departure quickly becomes insignificant as the durability / number of sues increases), with the boots having been repaired twice as often as they do not have Unbreaking due to the cost (the chestplate and leggings cost 42 levels while the boots cost 44; the difference is that Unbreaking III costs 6 levels and Feather Falling IV costs 8; Protection IV costs 4, Mending costs 8, and a unit costs (21 + enchantments), or 24 for three):
This also puts the costs of these items into perspective; I've repaired my pickaxe about 133 times, sword 22 times, chestplate and leggings 16 times each and boots 33 times (all these are after the initial use), for a total of 220 repairs and units of amethyst consumed, with about 1 1/2 stacks of surplus after all this time (I have a storage chest for amethyst blocks but still haven't used it as I can store two stacks in my "supplies" chest and ender chest).
Another interesting thing is that I still have quite a few shears left over from trading as I'd buy them to unlock trades, which are gradually being used up as I use them to repair my shears used to clear cave spider spawners, but will still last for quite a while, over twice as many uses as I've used so far, so I've never had to craft more since.
A loser look at the witch hut, also a rare occasion of actually finding one with a witch, due to finding it before I explored the area:
These are more screenshots of the Forest Mountains I found earlier (a month ago, actually; I returned to an old "return point" I'd made just outside of it); the highest peak reached y=130, just above the pre-1.7 terrain height limit, there were also some significant overhangs, which I treat like caves for the purposes of exploration, including lighting them up; as Forest Mountains has iron ore above sea level they are more profitable to explore than they would be in vanilla (unlike 1.18 the iron is simply an extension of the normal generation below sea level with the same concentration; the first version of TMCW also added iron ore everywhere above sea level at 1/3 the concentration, which I later made biome-specific):
This is the largest overhang after I "explored" it via caves that led to it, visible to the right of center in the previous screenshot (these are a lot like the large caves added in 1.18 since both are generated as noise in the terrain, rather than separately carving it out, except these will never have air below sea level and always have surface layers (dirt, grass, etc):
The Tropical Swamp is to the northeast of my location, easily visible from the multiple specks of water with a lighter blue color; Forest Mountains appears as a mixture of oak, spruce, and birch:
This also led to finding emerald ore for the first time in over 100 days of caving, which isn't actually that exceptional compared to vanilla, where I've gone longer (mainly when exploring Ice Plains or oceanic regions), this was also how I realized I'd gone into the Forest Mountains, which is also one of two main variants, the first variant, which is the one I found, has less height variation but may contain an "extreme" sub-biome, and the second variant has more height variation with Cherry Grove as a sub-biome:
Also, I thought to note that Birch Forest has areas of "Birch Forest M", as Mojang originally called the variant with taller birch trees, except in my case they are simply areas with taller trees, rather than adding a whole new biome just for this purpose; I also vary the number of attempts per chunk of generating trees in most biomes (some have had the opinion that biomes shouldn't even exist, just vary trees and other features using a separate noise field but I disagree with that, as well as how 1.18 mostly separated terrain and biomes):
As far as caving goes, my most interesting find was a very large "vanilla cave", the largest such cave I've ever found, and about twice as large as the largest such cave in my first world, with a volume of nearly 33,000 blocks; I checked various seeds and on average about one such cave generates within 1536 blocks of 0,0 (there were none in my previous world, others had as many as four). The cave was a bit wider than they can get in vanilla, up to 31 blocks compared to up to 27, but otherwise the same (vanilla caves also range in length from 85-112 blocks; various underground regions in TMCW increase the length to 144, while others reduce it to 80). There was also a toroidal cave with the largest size for the "original" variant below it ("type 1" is the original variant added in TMCWv5, I later added a "type 2" variant which can get larger, both generate in regions of low cave density with type 2 requiring more open space):
I found a large cave with a quite large lava lake, considering its size, one of the larger sizes of "type 1" (also the "original" variant of such caves, which have the widest size range but smallest average and maximum size, I later added "type 2", with a smaller size range but much larger average size, then 3 and 4, each larger still, and generating as multiple individual caves/tunnels from the same point for a more varied structure. Type 1 also has a chance to generate as a "cave cluster", with 2-4 caves, as in this case, where the total volume was over 100,000 blocks):
Last, but not least, I found several very large circular rooms, with the largest reaching 61 blocks in diameter, 10 blocks less than the maximum, and with a volume that is about 45 times larger than the largest rooms in vanilla (17 blocks wide):
The depression in the floor is about the same size as the largest circular room in vanilla, even in modern versions (the Wiki currently says they get up to 15 blocks wide, not sure if that is a misread of the source, which sets the initial radius to 1-7 but then adds 1.5 before actually generating a room or tunnel, hence it actually ranges from 2.5 to 8.5, or a width of 5 to 17 blocks):
I also had a couple interesting diamond finds, one being a double vein, with 8 ores, less than the largest single veins (up to 10), but noteworthy due to how uncommon it is to find such deposits, and four separate deposits visible at once in the same relatively small cave (totaling 12 ores, a few blocks were removed for visibility):
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?
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Curse PremiumLooking at your pics points out that vanilla has needed better trees for a VERY long time. Even in 1.6, it really needed those bigger and more varied trees. Do you get dayspawning?
Having done Better Forests, I can absolutely say all forests could be done with just one "Forest" biome. I've already got "Forest" able to do regular, birch, and spruce, along with the old growth varieties. Better Forests currently doesn't, because vanilla does have "Birch Forest", etc., varieties, so I tone it down to have regular forest vary in composition but still always have a lot of Oak. I could add in Jungle and Dark Forest by adding humidity to my calculations.
And I will also say I'm thinking about adding Plains to that, in the form of clearings, because sometimes it's hard to see all the pretty trees. One problem with the new biome system is that biome adjacencies are very restricted - for example Old Growth Spruce can *only* exist next to Taiga, Spruce, and Dark Forest, or to mountain biomes. You just can't get a sweeping view of Old Growth Spruce except from water, and that's a pity.
I'd love to see a builder type have a go at something in one of your vast caverns.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I actually hacked the lighting engine (which I also completely replaced) so leaves alternately have a light opacity of 0 or 1 (the default) in "mega tree biomes", reducing the shading effect of larger canopies (this only needs to be applied to sky light since block light always assumes an opacity of at least 1):
// Used by sky light calculations in relightBlock and generateSkylightMap to treat leaves differently in biomes with huge // trees so they aren't as dark. private final int getLightOpacity(Chunk chunk, int index, boolean isMegaTreeBiome) { int block = chunk.getBlockIDByIndex(index); if (Block.isLeafBlock(block) && isMegaTreeBiome) return BlockLeavesTMCW.getLightOpacityByIndex(index); return clampedLightOpacity[block]; } // Returns light opacity for leaves, dependent on coordinates. Index is chunk block index (y << 8 | z << 4 | x). Used by // LightUpdater.getLightOpacity and World.setTransparentBlock public static final int getLightOpacityByIndex(int index) { switch ((index >> 8) & 3) // extracts y { case 0: return (index + (index >> 4)) & 1; // alternates between 1 and 0 in checkerboard pattern case 1: return 0; case 2: return 1 - ((index + (index >> 4)) & 1); // reverses 0 and 1 case 3: return 0; default: return 0; } }There are occasional spots that are too dark but they are pretty limited and the chance of a mob spawning is reduced by 1/8 for every level above zero (so 7 means a 7/8 failure rate); the "mob counts" in the debug screen shows the number of "surface" and "cave" mobs, the latter either below sea level or with no sky light, and it generally only shows a couple mobs on the surface despite my changes to mob spawning (unlike vanilla surface and cave mobs have their own semi-independent mob caps, one of the biggest impacts is that surface mobs start spawning en masse as soon as it gets dark enough, no waiting for mobs in caves to despawn; conversely, the number of mobs in caves is not reduced at night):
This also shows the impact of my changes to leaf opacity; the "top" block is the highest non-air block while "light" is the highest block that blocks sky light (opacity of 1 or more), which will often be lower in these biomes, even as low as ground level (there must be at least 4 consecutive layers of leaf blocks to fully block light, once this happens light diffusion occurs as usual, with any other leaves below having no further effect).
Otherwise, overhangs that completely block sky light can be up to 7 blocks deep before it gets too dark since it also propagates sideways; this is also close to the maximum size of any tree in vanilla (+/- 8 blocks from the center) due to world generation constraints (I know you don't respect them); the biomes with the largest trees place one of the largest trees per chunk, other biomes space them apart, reducing overlap between canopies and even a single block of direct sunlight (or a column with no leaves with a nonzero opacity) will keep a large area bright enough to present spawns.
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?
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Curse PremiumThat's a really clean solution to the dayspawning issue, actually - just make leaf opacity not stack, or at least not stack too much. Certainly less compute work than the light tracking system I have to use.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
This is the first ravine I explored, and the second one listed, which was mostly in a Mega Taiga, bordering a Desert, and more covered up due to the generally higher terrain despite being much higher up (center at y=46), the estimated average ground depth increased its volume by about 20,000 over the portion below sea level:
There were also three dungeons close together on one side of the ravine (center-left, lower-right, and a third a bit above and to the left of it, all with stone brick walls), which don't often have dungeons attacked to them, much less this many close together:
A view of the Mega Taiga itself, which is the "plain" version (the one that I found earlier was Mega Spruce Taiga, only differing in the proportion of the leafier trees, which I have counted as separate biomes, making this the 37th biome):
The second ravine that I explored was slightly smaller, or larger, considering it was entirely below sea level:
Also, this is an animation that shows the effect of render distance, ranging from 8-16 chunks in steps of 2 chunks, then with fog turned off, which was still visible at the far end (as far as can be seen since they usually aren't straight enough to see from end to end):
The area between both ravines included several large caves, a large circular room, and a colossal cave system:
This is a rendering and analysis of the area including the three ravines I've explored so far; in contrast with what I found while exploring to the south I haven't found much in the way of extremely large caves recently:
Two of the three ravines that I haven't explored yet are off to the east with another to the north; I've left the ones to the east for later exploration once I make a secondary base in that area (each one services a roughly 1000x1000 block area centered on it), while the one to the north looks quite large, and much like the first large ravine I found earlier I noticed it as a big spot of lava near the edge of a desert, Mountainous Desert in this case:
The second ravine, located to the north of the second ravine I recently explored, and within range of my current base so it will be explored sometime soon, this also appears to be the largest of the three shown here (hard to be sure since their length is a factor and the others aren't as visible without lighting them up):
The sixth ravine, partly under an Ice Plains Spikes, you can see where the lava transitions to water, with a separation between them; as well as the ravine shown above as a big red spot on the map:
Some more screenshots of terrain, including Big Birch Forest, Ice Plains Spikes, and Mountainous Desert:
Ice Plains Spikes, as a full-sized biome, as opposed to a sub-biome of Ice Plains (I believe the first one I saw, a long time ago, was a sub-biome, I never got close enough to get a good look), they may also generate as an edge biome around the full-size variant of Ice Hills:
As with many other special biomes , Ice Plains Spikes changes the default stone-based underground to one with snow blocks (as "biome stone" so it behaves like stone, dropping snowballs unless mined with Silk Touch) and deposits of packed ice instead of dirt and gravel, and a unique new block, "dry ice", which was based on a since-deleted suggestion (unfortunately it was never properly archived, a victim of the GDPR purge):
A couple views of the Mountainous Desert above one of the ravines; the first may look nice and smooth while the second, behind the first, has more classic Beta-like terrain (to this day there are still many who prefer this over "realism", Alpha and Beta versions are actually quite popular from what I've seen):
Also, to put the size of the ravines I've recently found into perspective, I analyzed 1,000 seeds within +/- 1536 blocks of 0,0, of which about 90% had at least 20 ravines over 100,000 (only these seeds were used to compute the averages for the top 20), averaging about 25 (this figure includes all seeds, the two figures are for below sea level and the entire ravine); the largest ravine I've found so far would be the largest expected in a given seed while the other two are the 12-13th largest:
Average volume of top 20 largest ravines (906 / 934 seeds):
1. 483241 / 529484
2. 428941 / 463402
3. 380530 / 406590
4. 348610 / 369110
5. 323996 / 341924
6. 302663 / 318003
7. 284245 / 297708
8. 266644 / 279244
9. 252156 / 262720
10. 238182 / 248359
11. 225105 / 234253
12. 212778 / 221193
13. 202107 / 209680
14. 192043 / 198829
15. 182135 / 188684
16. 173012 / 178544
17. 163649 / 169216
18. 155049 / 160134
19. 147569 / 151993
20. 139795 / 143753
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?
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Curse PremiumMaking beyond-view-distance black is a much better choice than having the sky show through (especially when it's the not-yet-risen sun or moon, blech.)
Maybe those lava pools could be a little less circular?
I really like the first mountainous desert. I wouldn't call it "smooth"; "non-crazified" is a better way to distinguish it from the second. At some point I want to rework the RTG hills to be more irregular using the techniques I developed for Extreme Hills but that's not going to be any time soon.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
The circular lava pools in ravines are an artifact of how they are generated, as a line of cylindrical segments which vary in size, and can be seen in vanilla ravines, if to a lesser extent because they are much smaller:
TMCW:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I finally got around to exploring one of the large ravines that I previously hadn't explored yet, the one to the north in a desert, which turned out to be the second largest ravine I've explored in any world, with a volume of around 466,000 blocks, and very similar to the largest ravine, mainly differing in length and altitude, with the surrounding terrain being generally higher so more of it could generate below the surface:
I also found a couple more giant caves (volume > 100,000) around the ravine, one partly within Ice Plains Spikes and the other in the same desert:
These are renderings of the area I've explored recently around the giant ravine:
A rendering of special caves only, followed by all ravines only:
I've also found three more biomes; Taiga, Mega Mixed Forest, and Savanna Mountains, for a total of 40 biomes, which is getting close to the 49 I found in TMCWv5, which I played on for about three times longer. Taiga is basically just the snowless variant of the vanilla 1.6.4 biome of the same name, itself renamed to Winter Taiga (in contrast to what was officially done; the original was made warmer and a new "Cold Taiga" was added). Mega Mixed Forest contains all the largest variants of trees, including variants of oak, spruce, birch, jungle, and "mega", and Savanna Mountains is equivalent to 1.7's Savanna Plateau M and includes the most extreme terrain in TMCW, often exceeding y=180, along with Extreme Hills:
An insignificant structure but a structure nonetheless, and the first one I've found, they can also generate in quartz and red sandstone variants in the appropriate biomes and even a special Nether variant in a Nether single-biome world (as one of the only sources of water):
A view of a Taiga and Mega Mixed Forest in the other direction:
Savanna Mountains, which is well past -1536 but there is no real reason not to explore that far (I've gone as far north as -1700 and went as far as 2000 in TMCWv5 to fully explore a biome); I can tell that at least one of the peaks goes way past y=128 (so far I haven't found as many particularly high peaks in this world as in my last world, a total of 6 biomes with a peak over 128, up to 151; compared to 7 over 180 and 15 over 151 in TMCWv5):
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 are also the most complex structure that I've added, with three floors containing a total of 10 rooms chosen from a total of 35 rooms; following are screenshots and descriptions of each room as I explored it:
The second room is filled with various flowers:
A larger room runs along the width of the back side of then mansion, in this case, a "mushroom room", which has a barrel on the platform above the mushrooms which has various loot (including more valuable items than what I found,. e.g. diamond/amethyst hoes):
The back room has a ladder that leads up to the second floor's back room, also the full width of the mansion:
The first side room had shelves with chests and barrels, one of which has loot:
The other room contained two zombie villagers behind bars with a chest that can be used to cure both of them (it will always have enough apples and gold to make two golden apples, or just those):
Going up to the third floor, which has four rooms, the first one I entered had a huge mushroom in it:
The rooms on this floor are arranged so you'll go from one room to the next, which led to a library, which has the same loot as stronghold libraries:
Next was a room with snow and a snow golem; this is one of the few rooms that never has a witch (for obvious reasons):
The last room is a small maze (hard to show):
I spotted the mansion as a brown 2x2 square on the map, within a sizable Roofed Forest, the second one that I found in the past few days, the other being smaller and to the northeast (the northernmost point along the right side), also visible on the map are some lighter areas within the ocean, which are Topical Ocean, together bring the total number of biomes up to 42, and which led to finding the first sponges in a couple dungeons, which have the same functionality as they have in modern versions (they can also be found in shipwrecks, I never added ocean monuments):
I did not take screenshots of the surface but Tropical Ocean mainly differs from regular ocean in that the seafloor is lined with sand (normal and quartz in random patches) instead of dirt/sand/gravel/clay, and contains larger patches of coral (regular ocean has the occasional chunk-sized patch):
In another rare find I found a pink sheep for the first time in this world, interestingly, not far from my current base, and given the size of the world and passive mob spawn rates there are likely more that I haven't seen:
I've also finally found every underground feature, with the last being a "network cave region", an expansive area of long and relatively straight tunnels extending up to 400 blocks across, which underlies the Roofed Forest, with various other caves generating within it, as well as mineshafts, the only "special" cave system that allows them to generate within/near them (you'd spend a lot of time gong down long tunnels without running into anything else if that was all there was):
Also, I've found three "double dungeons" within the area so far -a third of the 9 I've found so far in this world, within three days, including two in one day, as network cave regions increase the chance by about 4-fold (around 20% of all dungeons). This is still far less than I should have found, and I went as far as to analyze areas I previously explored to see if the lack of double dungeons was real; for some reason the failure rate is much higher than normal (normally slightly less than normal dungeons), which doesn't seem explainable by things like variations in caves, or not having found any network cave regions until now:
Total attempts: 70355 (66554 dungeons and 3801 double dungeons)
Attempts per chunk: 8.45613 (7.999279 dungeons and 0.45685098 double dungeons)
Dungeon pass rate is 0.2914926%; double dungeon pass rate is 0.1578532%
Chunks per dungeon: 42.886597; chunks per double dungeon: 1386.6666
For comparison, this is a more average result:
Generated 705 dungeons and 45 double dungeons (6.0%) in 29632 chunks
Total attempts: 252250 (237051 dungeons and 15199 double dungeons)
Attempts per chunk: 8.512756 (7.999831 dungeons and 0.5129252 double dungeons)
Dungeon pass rate is 0.29740435%; double dungeon pass rate is 0.2960721%
Chunks per dungeon: 42.031204; chunks per double dungeon: 658.4889
I also found a large complex of caves which together formed one of the largest caves I've found in quite a while, and further south I found another large ravine with a volume of 187,000 blocks, as well as the third largest mineshaft I've found in this world, with a corridor length of about 3 km:
-72 24 -1144 (type: 3, length: 328, width: 21, depth: 54, volume: 187037)
A closer look at a large cobblestone formation where waterfalls and lavafalls mixed:
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?
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Curse PremiumThat mansion would make a nice base. Why doesn't the witch seem to be attacking you?
The "long straightish caves" would be an interesting underground feature everywhere at low density. Like an underground subway network.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
The witch had but I took it between taking damage and I have potion particles disabled (just for the player though, a setting I added to remove the annoying particles around me, but not disabling them, or all particles, entirely. I'd also turn off particles when taking screenshots with Night Vision).
As for having "horizontal caves" (as I called them) everywhere, this is what it was like in some of my older mods, where cave systems were more discrete units and wouldn't otherwise be linked together, many of the "special" cave systems in TMCW also have 1-2 "horizontal link caves" extending outwards to help ensure they connect to other caves (these cave systems prevent normal caves from generating within a 3-5 chunk radius, or generate in regions lacking any other caves within a similar area; many times I'll find a "cave cluster" which is only linked to anything via such a cave):
This is an "interconnected caves" map of an area I recently explored; in the upper-left is a "maze cave cluster", which is shown to not be interconnected on the right side because I disabled their "horizontal link cave", which appears as an extra cave to the south on the left side (these caves are more like normal caves in curviness but can't curve so much as to loop around or go backwards relative to their starting direction):
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?
Several renderings of the network cave region and surrounding area, and an updated screenshot of my map wall (I left the background in to give more perspective to its size, 2x4 level 3 maps, with space for up to 4x4); CaveFinder lists the volume at about 128,000 blocks but it would be a bit larger since parts of it go outside the 400x400 area I use to measure the volume (I chose this size since it does capture most of everything, the larger it is the slower the analysis will run, given it can analyze up to 1 million chunks, I do use a smaller data array for smaller features):
All features; the total volume within this area (560x512 blocks) is about the same as a giant cave region:
Special caves and larger mineshafts only; the network cave region itself contains numerous "cave clusters" as part of its structure, not included in the standalone analysis:
Ravines only; the largest ravines to the right are the ones I found last time; the core of the network cave region (a 12x12 chunk area) will never have any ravines, and large ravines are less likely to generate within a 20x20 chunk area (this area also prevents most other caves from generating, but not smaller "cave clusters" or mineshafts):
Mineshafts only; the way they are laid out is quite apparent here, where they generate at 0,0 - 2,2 and 7,7 - 9,9 relative to a 14x14 chunk grid, giving them about the same base frequency as in vanilla 1.6.4 (1/98 vs 1/100 per chunk), with about 50% removed due to being too close to various caves / dense cave systems; their regular layout is usually not apparent when exploring since they usually aren't explored in a straight line and more are usually missing, and a second layer will attempt to place smaller "filler mineshafts" between the first layer if they failed to generate around a point (at offsets 0,7 - 2,9 and 7,0 - 9,2; there do not appear to be any such mineshafts here; this increases the overall frequency to about 60% of vanilla). Note that none of the mineshafts intersect, which I've only seen a couple times so far in this world, and one case was only a couple blocks (vanilla just randomly places them, with intersections, including extensive overlap, being the norm):
I've explored as far north as z -1700; I have not gone far into the ocean to the northwest but it seems like it is completely or mostly surrounded by land (I've mapped a bit more along the western side since the last time I returned to my main base). The shallower body of water to the southwest of the ocean / west of the Roofed Forest is a full-size "Lake" biome and the area shown above is more or less centered on the Roofed Forest:
I also found four double dungeons, 40% of the total in this world, out of a total of 275 dungeons, a still rather low 3.6% of the total (with one intersecting pair of dungeons, so if you count all "double dungeons" then my special variant is 90% of the total), with one having only the second "Vein Miner" book I've found in this world (I have not had anybody tell me they are too rare but they should probably be easier to find as structure chests are the only way to obtain them, as well as "Smelting", I could just make them guaranteed in double dungeons, which still averages about a day of caving for me to find one with their average frequency). Here is a list of all the features I've found in this world, totaling 886, with nearly a third being dungeons (entries like "mineshafts" do not include "large" or "mesa" mineshafts, same for caves/ravines ">= 25000" and ">- 100000", so the totals for these are the sums of each number):
265 dungeons (2 intersecting x1)
179 ravines (up to 7 intersecting)
85 vertical pit caves
49 mineshafts
31 large caves (volume >= 25000)
25 large ravines (volume >= 25000 and length >= 112 or width >= 15 or depth >= 45)
16 dense cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
16 ribbed tunnel cave clusters
15 toroidal caves
12 giant caves (volume >= 100000)
12 large circular rooms (width >= 34)
12 maze cave clusters
12 vertical cave clusters
11 circular room cave clusters
11 large mineshafts (length >= 2000)
11 random cave clusters
11 ravine cave clusters
10 double dungeons (a special type with 2 spawners and 2-3 chests)
10 ribbed tunnel cave systems
10 zigzag cave clusters
9 large cave cave systems
8 fossils (5 Desert, 2 Swamplands, 1 Tropical Swamp)
7 giant ravines (volume >= 100000)
6 CRM combination cave systems
6 random cave systems
5 vertical cave systems
5 zigzag cave systems
4 circular room cave systems
4 RZV combination cave systems
4 spiral cave systems
3 maze cave systems
3 ravine cave systems
2 colossal cave systems
2 desert temples
2 giant cave regions
2 igloos (1 Winter Forest, 1 Winter Taiga, 2 with basement)
2 villages (1 Desert, 1 Meadow)
2 witch huts (1 Swamplands, 1 Tropical Swamp)
1 desert well (1 Desert)
1 mesa mineshaft
1 network cave region
1 pumpkin house
1 quartz desert pyramids
1 stronghold (with eyes of ender)
1 woodland mansion
(total of 886 features)
A more detailed list of everything I've found, showing how well I document my worlds:
I found a Jungle and Desert as an island within a full-size "Lake", which can have small islands of various non-frozen biomes (or frozen in the case of its Frozen Lake counterpart); it was within sight of where I surfaced in the Roofed Forest but I somehow missed it at the time (the jungle is also obvious on the map as a lighter green than a regular forest):
The underground of jungles contains vines much deeper down than in vanilla (becoming less common deeper down) and patches of "cave grass", a special variant of grass which does not spread or uproot in the dark (I did this for aesthetics, so they remain as patches when they generate on dirt; the grass blocks drop normal grass when mined with Silk Touch while the tall grass and ferns drop "cave grass" when sheared and can be placed in the dark (unlike 1.7 I did not make non-crop plants not require light), when placed in flower pots they use a different color, rather than making them biome-dependent). Tropical Swamp also has the patches of grass but not vines:
Also, I did a couple of "experiments"; one was to skip repairing my pickaxe while I repaired all three pieces of armor and sword in succession; even with this my pickaxe still had 1534 durability left (out of 4686) and it took four successive repairs to get back to full durability (this includes using a ruby once to reduce the prior work penalty as it does not / can't get Mending), with each one ending with 600-700 more durability than the last (out of 1171 restored, so this gives a margin of over 2-fold for how much XP I collect vs what I spend):
The other was more of an observation; in TMCW all pieces of armor have the same durability and Unbreaking III reduces the chance of taking damage by 50% (more than in vanilla, my formula also allows for infinite stacking, vanilla asymptotically reaches a 40% chance as the level goes to infinity), which makes it easier to see how well they track over time; I'd taken a total of 38,318 hits while wearing it and they were still pretty close together (one reason I note this is because some people have expressed concern over the random chance of Unbreaking but the departure quickly becomes insignificant as the durability / number of sues increases), with the boots having been repaired twice as often as they do not have Unbreaking due to the cost (the chestplate and leggings cost 42 levels while the boots cost 44; the difference is that Unbreaking III costs 6 levels and Feather Falling IV costs 8; Protection IV costs 4, Mending costs 8, and a unit costs (21 + enchantments), or 24 for three):
This also puts the costs of these items into perspective; I've repaired my pickaxe about 133 times, sword 22 times, chestplate and leggings 16 times each and boots 33 times (all these are after the initial use), for a total of 220 repairs and units of amethyst consumed, with about 1 1/2 stacks of surplus after all this time (I have a storage chest for amethyst blocks but still haven't used it as I can store two stacks in my "supplies" chest and ender chest).
Another interesting thing is that I still have quite a few shears left over from trading as I'd buy them to unlock trades, which are gradually being used up as I use them to repair my shears used to clear cave spider spawners, but will still last for quite a while, over twice as many uses as I've used so far, so I've never had to craft more since.
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?