So heres the story. I am building an underground fortress that can fully sustain itself without ever having to go back to the surface, if nuclear warfare or insanity ever happened up above. I have a good set of living quarters, bedrooms, lounge area, panic room surrounded by lava, the works. I am currently working on a treefarm and actual farm for pigs and cows and such. Also, I was working on a mine. I have one mine shaft thats basically a staircase down to bedrock, which has been less fruitful than a 2 week old cow patty. My second attempt, a spiral staircase that went about 20 blocks under my keep, however, has been VERY VERY fruitful. First i found this neat little cave system that branched out and beared about 35 and about double . Then i found this little pool of lava. I hallowed it out, as I always do, and found an open path to another, bigger lava pool. Since then, I have spent 3 whole days hollowing out all the lava pools I've found and have collected about 300 , 750 , 50 , about 40 , and countless redstone that i dont bother with. in my 5 months of playing this game, I've NEVER seen a cave system this expansive, and I'm not even finished with it yet.
TLDR?
Whats the biggest cave system you have ever found? How much ore have you found there, and how long did it take you to explore it all?
My biggest cave system is still under exploration. I hit it when one of my branch mines hit a cavern lit by lava (huzzah for no creepers!), so I started trying to hollow out the lava to proceed. Three days and 225 units of lava later, I'd bailed my way into a cavern which, evidently, stopped at the bedrock level when it filled with lava.
I left the find alone for a week, as I was just doing one leg of my branch mine in order to get some quick materials for a project at the center of my mine (a large, 75x75 city zone). Chunk resets plague my world save, so I was forced to use the cave when a reset destroyed my surface access ladders (all three of them, in seperate chunks!!!) just as I used up my last pick. I spent two days using the half-stack of torches I had (the rest were lighting my project or destroyed by a lava spill caused by the chunk glitch) to navigate my way through the cavern. I explored about five different branches, each with countless branches of their own, before finding a sixth route to the surface. I ended up on an island ten minutes away from my base - by boat.
I didn't have a pick, so mining was out, but here are estimates I took down of stuff I saw (and average vein sizes for the visible parts):
650+ coal
700 iron
30 diamond
150 gold
A comically absurd amount of redstone
A pig?
When I want to start a new save, I generate repeatedly until I like my spawn point, then build a bunker around it with a 5x5 spiral shaft down to bedrock. For my current save, the levels where I normally strip mine for diamonds (10-16) opened into a lava lake.
I started clearing it out. It branched into a cave.
That branched into several more caves.
Those caves had branches to underground waterfalls, and to more lakes, and some branched back to connect each other.
I'm still nowhere near done exploring it. There are so many side passages and ceiling caverns that drop into it that it can be nerve-wracking to clear out new space when I know a creeper could drop in behind me from another cave.
One cave system I found I explored total time (Just exploring, not mining) for about 7-8 hours and I never found the end. It had this MASSIVE central cavern that was about 200x200 and was nearly empty when I first found it save for a few "bridges" of stone across it. The central cavern started at almost sea level and descended down nearly to the bedrock and it shot off into about 30-50 different tunnels. All of the tunnels branched into more tunnels that traveled very very far. This was one of my first saves while I was still getting to know the game and didn't know about cartographer yet. Sadly my computer crashed while I was playing it and deleted all of my minecraft files that it called "corrupted". It was a shame. I cry about it a lot as I never even got into mining it for resources, and I didn't even come close to exploring all of the tunnels and sub-tunnels. It was the kind of cave system that would make a Minecraft lover weep tears of joys for three centuries. None of my worlds since have ever been near so as epic.
When I want to start a new save, I generate repeatedly until I like my spawn point, then build a bunker around it with a 5x5 spiral shaft down to bedrock. For my current save, the levels where I normally strip mine for diamonds (10-16) opened into a lava lake.
I started clearing it out. It branched into a cave.
That branched into several more caves.
Those caves had branches to underground waterfalls, and to more lakes, and some branched back to connect each other.
I'm still nowhere near done exploring it. There are so many side passages and ceiling caverns that drop into it that it can be nerve-wracking to clear out new space when I know a creeper could drop in behind me from another cave.
A full set of iron armor is your friend. I've been tag teamed by two direct creeper hits and lived to tell the tale. Armor makes all the difference. And iron is the best (cost wise).
now put 1 K Tnt on the surface of that mine to see if its really nuclear-proof
you know, I was thinking about actually making the keep a nuclear shelter, but DAMN thats a lot of obsidian. I've dedicated the entire project to legitimacy, so that would take an unfathomable amount of time.
As for the rest of the thread, I'm loving it. Its so satisfying to bust around 25 iron axes and come back to the "surface" with a motherload. Plus, the creeper thing is quite terrifying.
When I want to start a new save, I generate repeatedly until I like my spawn point, then build a bunker around it with a 5x5 spiral shaft down to bedrock. For my current save, the levels where I normally strip mine for diamonds (10-16) opened into a lava lake.
I started clearing it out. It branched into a cave.
That branched into several more caves.
Those caves had branches to underground waterfalls, and to more lakes, and some branched back to connect each other.
I'm still nowhere near done exploring it. There are so many side passages and ceiling caverns that drop into it that it can be nerve-wracking to clear out new space when I know a creeper could drop in behind me from another cave.
How do you go about clearing a lava lake? With buckets, one source block at a time? Or is it a matter of filling it in with gravel?
When I want to start a new save, I generate repeatedly until I like my spawn point, then build a bunker around it with a 5x5 spiral shaft down to bedrock. For my current save, the levels where I normally strip mine for diamonds (10-16) opened into a lava lake.
I started clearing it out. It branched into a cave.
That branched into several more caves.
Those caves had branches to underground waterfalls, and to more lakes, and some branched back to connect each other.
I'm still nowhere near done exploring it. There are so many side passages and ceiling caverns that drop into it that it can be nerve-wracking to clear out new space when I know a creeper could drop in behind me from another cave.
How do you go about clearing a lava lake? With buckets, one source block at a time? Or is it a matter of filling it in with gravel?
i usually leave them be. I usually dedicate one pool for taking lava from for other projects. Otherwise I just hallow out about 2-3 blocks away from it so i can have a good walking area around it. It looks amazing and provides plenty of light so I can save my torches for off-shoots and unlit caverns.
TLDR?
Whats the biggest cave system you have ever found? How much ore have you found there, and how long did it take you to explore it all?
I left the find alone for a week, as I was just doing one leg of my branch mine in order to get some quick materials for a project at the center of my mine (a large, 75x75 city zone). Chunk resets plague my world save, so I was forced to use the cave when a reset destroyed my surface access ladders (all three of them, in seperate chunks!!!) just as I used up my last pick. I spent two days using the half-stack of torches I had (the rest were lighting my project or destroyed by a lava spill caused by the chunk glitch) to navigate my way through the cavern. I explored about five different branches, each with countless branches of their own, before finding a sixth route to the surface. I ended up on an island ten minutes away from my base - by boat.
I didn't have a pick, so mining was out, but here are estimates I took down of stuff I saw (and average vein sizes for the visible parts):
650+ coal
700 iron
30 diamond
150 gold
A comically absurd amount of redstone
A pig?
That what he said.
I started clearing it out. It branched into a cave.
That branched into several more caves.
Those caves had branches to underground waterfalls, and to more lakes, and some branched back to connect each other.
I'm still nowhere near done exploring it. There are so many side passages and ceiling caverns that drop into it that it can be nerve-wracking to clear out new space when I know a creeper could drop in behind me from another cave.
A full set of iron armor is your friend. I've been tag teamed by two direct creeper hits and lived to tell the tale. Armor makes all the difference. And iron is the best (cost wise).
you know, I was thinking about actually making the keep a nuclear shelter, but DAMN thats a lot of obsidian. I've dedicated the entire project to legitimacy, so that would take an unfathomable amount of time.
As for the rest of the thread, I'm loving it. Its so satisfying to bust around 25 iron axes and come back to the "surface" with a motherload. Plus, the creeper thing is quite terrifying.
How do you go about clearing a lava lake? With buckets, one source block at a time? Or is it a matter of filling it in with gravel?
yeezy taught me
i usually leave them be. I usually dedicate one pool for taking lava from for other projects. Otherwise I just hallow out about 2-3 blocks away from it so i can have a good walking area around it. It looks amazing and provides plenty of light so I can save my torches for off-shoots and unlit caverns.