They were trapped by flowing water, which prevented them from getting out. Somebody else recently had something similar happen with zombies, except they also did not despawn because they were picking up ink sacs dropped by squid which spawned in the water (such mobs do not count towards the mob cap so an unlimited number can build up):
Another question, do skeletons get Punch II on Normal Mode on your mod?
The maximum enchantment level is 22, which only gives you Punch I according to this calculator (the probabilities of enchantments should be the same; I added Mending but it should never show up or affect the chances since I made its enchantability a ridiculously high number):
Output log: (This output was calculated 10,000 times, but results may still vary)
Possible enchants for wood bow at level 22...
Power III: 55.4%
Flame I: 16.6%
Punch I: 16.4%
Infinity I: 9.1%
Power II: 2.1%
You have a 24% chance of getting a 2nd enchant.
You have a 13% chance of getting a 3rd enchant.
You have a 7.5% chance of getting a 4th enchant.
Note that the level is randomized between 5-22 (difficulty, including the time played, only increases the maximum) so the chance of even Punch I is lower than indicated.
Even on Hard Punch II is not very likely since it only appears at level 27 or higher:
Possible levels for a Punch II wood bow...
27: <0.1%
28: 1.7%
29: 4.3%
30: 7.6%
At first glance this would give a chance of about half a percent for a range of 5-30, or (0.1% + 1.7% + 4.3% + 7.6%) / 26, where 26 is the number of possible levels between 5 and 30, although there are actually always 18 possible levels regardless of difficulty because of the way it is calculated (this is unchanged from vanilla, the only thing that changes is the range of the difficulty factor):
"nextInt(18)" returns a number from 0 to 17, which is multiplied by up to 0.5 on Easy, 1 on Normal, and 1.5 on Hard, and after adding 5 to this value the result is rounded down to a whole number*, which means that on Hard the possible levels that can get Punch II are 27, 29, and 30, or 3 out of 18 possible levels, with an average chance of (0.1% + 4.3% + 7.6%) / 18 = 0.67%, which is slightly higher but still pretty low. Either way, Punch I is still pretty powerful, adding 4 blocks of knockback.
*I'm not actually 100% sure if Normal tops out at level 22 because if the value is calculated as 21.999 due to floating point precision error it will round down to 21 (changing the 5.0 to 5.25 would avoid this. The unrounded maximum on Easy is 13.5 while Hard is 30.5, which would still round down to 13 and 30 if 0.25 is added. In some of my own code I've added small values like this to ensure proper rounding).
Also, here are the probabilities of all enchantments at level 30; the biggest differences from level 22 are with Power and Punch while the chances of other enchantments are not much higher (in some cases they can even decrease; the chance of getting any level of Feather Falling on diamond boots decreases past level 25 because other enchantments displace it):
Possible enchants for wood bow at level 30...
Power IV: 32.5%
Power III: 21.1%
Flame I: 18.2%
Punch I: 11%
Infinity I: 9.4%
Punch II: 7.5%
You have a 32% chance of getting a 2nd enchant.
You have a 17% chance of getting a 3rd enchant.
You have a 9.5% chance of getting a 4th enchant.
Here are more screenshots from the second day of exploring the giant cave region:
No, you are not seeing things; both red and brown big mushrooms generate in both styles (only within giant cave regions, which use my own code; Mushroom Island and player-grown mushrooms use the vanilla code):
This is the only vein of amethyst that I've found so far:
Here are the stats for this session, and what I've gotten overall:
If you compare this to last time you might notice the even the relative amounts of iron and coal vary quite a bit between play sessions, even though I was entirely below sea level and the same amounts of each generate in every chunk:
Here is a sequence showing what I explored over the past two days:
Also, here is an underground rendering of the entire world:
Notably, I've placed more than 115,000 torches - more than I did in my first world during the entire 6 months I spent playing it the first time, but only taking about 4 months of caving (I did not start my caving playstyle for a month or so; however, I only placed about 4 times as many torches overall over nearly 24 months of playing; I've similarly mined more than half a million blocks in this world, close to 1/4 as many as my first world):
(by default MCMap prints out the location of every torch it finds but I modified it to instead count them and display the results; all the console spam from printing out the locations actually slows it down a lot on my worlds)
The legendary 10th zombie in diamond armor (a reference to this post), which interrupted me as I was loading ore into furnaces; it also dropped its chestplate:
So far I've killed a total of 1,223 mobs, including 687 zombies, mined 11,435 ore, including 46 diamonds (plus one from a chest) and 9 amethyst (not shown here), collected 11,472 resources and loot, and gained 18,512 XP, pushing my total to over 700,000 (also the total XP I've gained in this world):
Here are screenshots from the third day:
I found two veins of amethyst this time, totaling four ore (one was only a single ore):
An updated sequence of what I explored over three days; I've used well over 3,000 torches so far:
I think I've underestimated just how vast a giant cave region is; I've never actually explored one before and caves seem a lot smaller when flying through them in Creative, although it looks like I am getting to the end; mobs are becoming more concentrated and I've explored what appears to be the entire perimeter, with a huge chamber near the center left to explore.
Some more screenshots from the fourth day:
I found this vein of amethyst while mining a coal vein:
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:
(obsidian with a data value of 1 is amethyst ore)
Here are a couple animations, the first showing what I explored each day and the second a series of slices made with Unmined (layer 10,20,30,40,50):
A pretty fitting end to what became my second-longest played world by far, only surpassed by my first world.
Here are maps of the entire world:
Unmined (surface):
Unmined (underground; unexplored chunks were cropped away):
MCMap (surface):
MCMap (underground):
Overall statistics; I played for 22.46 days (539 hours) over 140 sessions, averaging 3.85 hours per day; of that, 121 sessions were spent caving, during which I mined 380,131 ore (less some from branch-mining, but practically ignorable), or 3,141 per session and 816 per hour (assuming I spent the same amount of time per play session when caving as not), plus 18,053 rails and 8,850 cobwebs (about 301 and 148 per mineshaft), 10,173 moss stone (50 per dungeon, including 191 normal dungeons and 11 double dungeons), around 742 stone bricks (chiseled stone bricks from 11 double dungeons and 3 jungle temples, and a stack of each of the other types from a stronghold), and mined 529,346 blocks with an amethyst pickaxe while caving (I used iron/diamond while branch-mining and iron to dig tunnels for railways), an average of 4,375 per session and 1,136 per hour (for comparison, each repair restores 1171 durability or 4,684 uses with Unbreaking III, or one repair every 247 minutes and about 113 repairs). I also placed about 118,834 torches, minus a few from villages (the actual number counted in the world, not from the stats. I also placed a few hundred in the Nether, with torches found in minecarts offsetting much of this):
Play sessions spent caving: 121
Structures/caves found (by number):
191 normal dungeons
171 ravines (up to 7 intersecting; large ravines counted separately)
60 mineshafts
35 large caves (larger than vanilla, not including giant caves)
28 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
11 double dungeons (a special type, not two dungeons intersecting)
11 large ravines (larger than vanilla)
7 circular rooms at least 34 blocks in diameter (twice as large as vanilla)
7 fossils
6 villages
5 giant caves (>50000 in volume)
4 ravine cave clusters
3 circular room cave clusters
3 circular room cave systems
3 combination cave systems
3 igloos (1 with basement)
3 jungle temples
3 ravine cave systems
3 vertical cave clusters
2 maze cave systems
2 network cave regions
2 vertical cave systems
1 colossal cave system
1 desert temple
1 desert well
1 giant cave region
1 maze cave cluster
1 stronghold (found with Eye of Ender)
1 witch hut
(570 individual structures/caves)
Biomes found (by order found):
Plains (technical biome in Mixed Forest and others)
Mixed Forest
Lake (technical biome in Mixed Forest and others)
Jungle
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (technical biome in Birch Forest)
Desert
Tropical Swamp
Big Oak Forest
Taiga (snowless)
Rocky Mountains
Ice Plains
Roofed Forest
Mesa
Winter Forest
Forest Mountains
Bushlands
Mountainous Desert
Swampland
Hilly Plains
Winter Taiga
Frozen Lake (technical biome in Winter Forest and others)
Mega Tree Plains
Spruce Hills (technical biome in Mega Tree Plains)
Mega Forest
Plains
Forest (technical biome in Plains)
Forest
Lake
Savanna Mountains
Poplar Grove
Mega Mixed Forest
Savanna Plateau
Flower Forest
Extreme Hills
(31 unique biomes)
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher, highest peak in an instance of a biome):
165 (Ice Mountains)
160 (Extreme Hills)
156 (Rocky Mountains)
148 (Savanna Mountains)
139 (Extreme Hills)
130 (Jungle Hills)
128 (Roofed Forest Hills)
Largest cave:
293 blocks long and 61 blocks wide, volume of 251257
Largest circular room:
57 blocks in diameter, volume of 46870
Largest ravine:
336 blocks long, 28 blocks wide, 55 blocks deep, volume of 266923
Largest mineshaft:
757 rails mined (average is 301 per mineshaft)
Other:
3 skeletons in amethyst armor
3 skeletons in diamond armor
2 zombies in amethyst armor
10 zombies in diamond armor
3 Notch apples found in dungeon chests (27 regular golden apples, 30 total)
10249 chunks explored, 118834 torches placed in world
Of the 223 amethyst ore I mined, including 22 with Fortune II, yielding 15 extra drops, and a few dozen (not counted) amethyst found in dungeon and mineshaft chests, I ended up with less than a stack of surplus; when subtracting the 22 amethyst and 91 diamond I found while branch-mining I found 201 and 1507 respectively while caving, a ratio of 7.5 times more diamond than amethyst, more than the 9:1 ratio they generate in (this is more likely due to mining other ores that extend below y=3 rather than random chance since the same ratio has been seen in other worlds; as shown in this old chart, which is still accurate except I added extra lapis below y=3, amethyst is much more common below y=3).
An AMIDST map showing landmasses and climate zones (biomes are not shown since they cause AMIDST to crash, hence why I made specially modified GenLayer classes that only include climate zones), and the same map in vanilla 1.6.4. My initial impression of spawning in/near a hot climate zone, based on the biomes near spawn (at 0, -224) and along the way to the stronghold to the northeast, wasn't that far off, with one starting a couple hundred blocks to the north of spawn; conversely, the cluster of snowy biomes to the south, which I thought might be a cold climate zone, was not one. I also noticed the edge of an ocean near the northern edge of the Unmined map but it is just a small lake, with another "ocean lake" to the southwest:
Finally, here is what CaveFinder found within +/- 1536 blocks of the origin*; I found the largest cave, largest circular room, and largest ravine within this area, as well as 9 of the 10 closest mineshafts (all caves found and explored marked with a *; I also found a combination cave system which was outside of this area and a few others I found but did not explore; I came within 100 blocks of finding the third stronghold and actually reached the edge of the third colossal cave system):
*Note that if you use the downloadable mod to recreate my world it will not be exactly the same due to some changes I made, mainly to ensure that there is always a colossal cave system and a giant cave region within 1024 blocks of the origin since some seeds did not have either within even 1536 blocks (even 1024 blocks, or 16384 chunks or a level 4 map centered around the origin, is more than I explored in this world, with an extrapolated exploration time of 193 days).
Note that this must only be opened with the mod I used or it will be corrupted (here is what happens if you open it in vanilla 1.6.4, I do not know what 1.12 would do, as it would enable using Spectator mode to look underground). My previous post includes a list of the various caves that I found in the last spoiler, and aside from those there isn't much else of note other than the sheer amount of caves that I explored; the Nether and End are also included but there is pretty much nothing of interest in them (they are not modified and I did not build anything in them, nor have I built anything besides my bases in the Overworld, unless you count the 6 villages I walled in).
I'm now just wondering, if you open the chests in vanilla, will the game crash?
Mod items, as well as blocks, will just be missing, although the Mending villager that I saved offered an enchanted book with no enchantments which caused the game to crash when I tried to add it to an item (I did not check to see what happened to diamond items with Mending; either the enchantment was lost or the item was deleted). If you load the world in 1.9+ Mending should be retained since I gave it the same ID as 1.9; likewise, the 1.8 stone types are also the same (interestingly, they do not lose their metadata if loaded in an older version unless you mine them, the same applies to many other mod blocks, which are mostly variants of existing blocks).
Here is a thread about reverting to an older version from 1.8, which has pretty much the same consequences, except that all items disappear since they changed the way the ID is stored (note that stained glass replaced the ID of locked chests in 1.7 so it did not disappear; I have no idea why the slime blocks survived):
Mineshafts can extend up to 110 blocks from the center, or 220x220 blocks, with the smallest being +/- 64 or 128x128 blocks; for comparison, in vanilla these are +/- 80 and 160 blocks, though they rarely actually get that large in either case (just the limit to how long a corridor can get). The number of "sections" also varies between 5 and 11 (8 for vanilla/average), which is basically how many pieces can be added from the central room, including branches (that is, with 8 sections you could have 2 sections, then a 4-way split with up to 6 more sections per branch, or 20 total, and typically more than 100 for the whole mineshaft. A single corridor section has 1-4 segments, each with one support). Also, most mineshafts are near vanilla size (the average number of rails I found per mineshaft in this world was almost exactly the same as what I found when I used MCEdit to analyze 30 mineshafts in vanilla) and the largest size has only a 1/32 chance of generating. The largest mineshaft that I found had 757 rails, compared to about 300 for the average mineshaft, so it was about 2.5 times bigger than average; on the other extreme I found one that only had a couple dozen rails (rails may not be the best measure for smaller mineshafts in particular since there is a random chance of a corridor having rails but it wasn't that big).
Here is the largest mineshaft that I found, which measures 153x217 blocks and covers layers 15-41 (floor level) with 5 main levels. Note that most of the mineshaft was within the 160x160 limit in vanilla:
For comparison, this is the smallest one, measuring only 71x63 blocks and on layers 8-17 (essentially all one level with no corridors overlapping on different levels):
Also, smaller mineshafts have a higher chance of a minecart generating in each corridor section, with the chance being 1/100 (the vanilla chance) for a size of 8-11 sections and increasing to 1/70 for a size of 5 (this is the chance for two separate attempts, one on each side of a corridor, so there is a 1/10000 chance of two in the same spot). You'll still find a lot more loot in the largest mineshafts though.
That said, in vanilla it isn't uncommon to find 2,3 or more separate mineshafts joined together, like these mineshafts that I recently found in my first world, with four at the bottom and two at the top; the quadruple mineshaft covers a 317x214 block area:
I was just playing around in the seed for this world while testing some changes (no effect on biomes or terrain) and came across this enormous mountain going up to y=184, at 1241, -693, a few hundred blocks away from the last area I explored; this is the highest mountain that I've found in this world (if not while playing on it in Survival) and any of the various seeds I showcased, and about the highest they can get (terrain is limited to y=192, leaving 64 blocks of space above):
I wonder if the Master Cavers World version 5 will work with Windows XP?
According to this thread it should work as long as the launcher itself still works as I have not done anything that might require some native libraries beyond what the game already needs; the code itself is still complied to Java 6 (MCP tells the JDK to compile to this version by default, which is also the same version Mojang used; I've never had it tell me that my code required a later version so I've never tried changing it. The "CaveFinder" utility is compiled with JDK 7, which I haven't bothered updating due to the aforementioned) so even if a newer Java version were incompatible (apparently, Java 8 does not fully support Windows XP) it would still work; of course, using the older launcher which does not download its own JRE, which is required anyway to properly download sounds (which should continue to work in the native launcher as it is just a download issue, and it may have been fixed in a recent update).
(also, TMCWv5 has not been released yet and I think you meant to post this in the mod's thread; this one was for a Survival world I made with it. Either way, the information above applies to the current TMCWv4 release and all of my other mods with the exception of the "old caves" mods for newer versions).
I played on this world for the first time in 3 years yesterday while testing a major update to TMCW, TMCWv4.5, which is still considered to be TMCWv4 as it is compatible with worlds created in that version, but has extensive optimizations and vanilla bugfixes (plus a few of my own bugs, including one which caused one of the branches of large caves to be smaller than intended, as seen in this comparison; the giant cave region shown increased in volume from 1.16 to 1.24 million), many of which were planned to be included in TMCWv5 but I decided to backport them; the underlying game engine has been changed so much that TMCW is really more of its own version now than just a mod, and gets around 10 times the performance of the latest vanilla releases if what I've seen is any indication (I haven't actually played on them but I see people getting like 40 FPS when I get around 10 times that in the most demanding situation imaginable (it is hard to tell but I have leaves set to Fancy).
There are also some changes to game mechanics, most of which affect mob farms (they are vastly less effective now; iron golems need to be manually killed and above-Nether gold farms are entirely out of the question as mobs do not spawn there and you take void damage in Survival; of course, none of this affects me since I don't use such exploits) and a few new features, such as replacing the per-mob attack "cooldown"/penalty with a generalized version which is much more like the one in 1.9 (previously, the penalty would only occur if you attacked a mob too fast and would only apply to that mob; now it also applies if you miss and affects all mobs. That said, it is less restrictive in other ways; a missed/bad hit or two will not noticeably activate it (it gradually increases/decreases and a Sharpness V amethyst sword (same as diamond in vanilla) deals 14.25 damage, plenty of overkill for a 20 HP mob to be killed in 2 hits) and you can attack as fast as damage immunity allows and miss no more than once per second; essentially, it nerfs the mindless spam-clicking where you click like 10 times per second).
Also, dark caves are pitch black so it is impossible to see unless you have a light source or Night Vision (IMO, the fact that vanilla does not have true darkness is a major flaw, I also prevent you from setting gamma to invalid values, along with all other settings in options.txt (now a separate file to avoid issues with vanilla, especially newer evrsions, not that you should ever run them in the same game directory). I previously used a personal mod to fix this and many other bugs but didn't release it until now as I'd modified Optifine, which can't be publicly distributed). A full list of changes can be found on the mod's thread (link in signature); while not considered to be a major content update it is still by far the largest update in the history of TMCW, double the size of TMCWv4 (TMCW_v4_old is prior to an update earlier this year).
That said, while I didn't find anything particularly notable as far as large caves or ravines go, I did find 5 dungeons in one day the last time I played, which has to be at or close to a record for one day; I've been exploring an area near the southwest corner of the spawn area map (upper-left, centered at 0,0) which I previously hadn't explored (I noticed that part of the map wasn't filled in and went there to see if there were any caves I might have missed, which I did find, nearly hidden behind a pile of gravel, which lead to a network of caves including a mineshaft and a couple ravines).
Another area that I know has unexplored caves and plan to investigate is near the center of the map to the south; while I trimmed away unexplored chunks (without torches) prior to mapping the underground with Unmined I can tell that there are caves that I found but didn't explore (about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom, the strip running down the middle is due to a railway). Otherwise, the northern part of the map to the east and most of the map to the southeast are unexplored.
Also, as before I'll be keeping track of everything that I find, which currently includes 5 dungeons, 2 ravines, and 1 mineshaft (previously, I found 202 dungeons (including 11 double dungeons), 171 ravines, and 60 mineshafts over 121 play sessions spent caving).
I came across some interesting terrain in a Mountainous Desert, including a quite large mountain that easily reaches past the clouds:
I also found a couple large caves (not giant caves), and another that went quite deep from the surface:
Also, I found a fossil, the 8th one that I've found so far in this world, while mining a vein of coal (which was actually the coal that generates around fossils; I did not completely excavate the fossil, which was the smallest size of spine), and found a new mineshaft while mining another vein of coal in the same cave:
Notably, so far I've only found a single vein of 5 amethyst ore in 3 play sessions totaling around 10 hours, a rate of just one ore every 2 hours, and giving me less than the 6 that I've used so far to repair my gear (I just barely break even over the long run, it can also be found in loot chests though none of the 9 dungeons and 2 mineshafts I've explored so far had any). It is still not the rarest ore that I've found, with less ruby and emerald, but those only generate in certain biomes:
I've considered building a new secondary base at -1024, 0, in the middle of the map I'm currently exploring, to the west of the spawn map, as I've gone as far west as around -760 and it would be much closer than my main base at around 0, -250 (terrain is a big factor in determining how far apart I place my bases, in my first world I've explored up to 1000 blocks away from the nearest base when there is relatively flat terrain, such as Ice Plains or ocean, while terrain in TMCW is generally more rugged and harder to traverse).
Here is a list of everything that I've found and a day-by-day rendering of what I've explored since I started playing on the world again:
Play sessions spent caving: 3
Structures/caves found (by number):
9 normal dungeons
5 ravines
2 large caves (larger than vanilla, not including giant caves)
2 mineshafts
1 fossil
(19 individual structures/caves)
As mentioned before, I built a new secondary base near -1024, 0, which happened to be in a Flower Forest with some quite interesting terrain:
Just to the east is a large mountain, possibly part of an extremely large mountain range from what I saw further east when I came up to see what the terrain was like (I had no idea what would be around the location I chose beforehand and I wanted to be sure it was suitable, if not then I'd relocate east or west as needed); I didn't take a screenshot but there was a giant mountain with giant overhangs further east, easily the most extreme terrain I've found in this world so far:
There is also a fairly large ravine right next to my base, visible in the screenshots above:
Here is an underground rendering of the entire world, with the rail tunnel leading to my current base extending to the lower-left (I haven't actually laid down rails yet), with the base itself visible as only my potato farm, which is underground, as MCMap apparently ignores glass (it only maps caves if they have a ceiling, so surface caves/ravines won't be visible either, or only as indentations in the walls):
Also, I came across a rather odd bug; there was a Roofed Forest along the way and the leaves were a blue-green color, due to a change I made to the way the biome colormap works, which didn't noticeably affect the colors of other biomes so I never thought to check all of them, and I've since replaced it with an entirely hardcoded color, along with swamps (both of these biomes combined the colormap with a hardcoded color, as was done in vanilla, but this doesn't make much sense as you can't really change them. I've also thought of replacing the vanilla colormap entirely with a palette indexed by biome ID, enabling you to easily set each biome's color).
I saw a zombie in full diamond armor, which is quite rare in vanilla, and once every few months in my first world, which has the inhabited time modified so it starts at 50% of the maximum (otherwise, it barely reaches any meaningful level in the areas I'm exploring), but quite common in TMCW, averaging about one every 9 days in this world; this is the first one I've seen since I started playing on it again but the 14th diamond armored mob overall (11 zombies and 3 skeletons; both have the same armor probabilities but zombies are much more commonly encountered), and the 19th mob in diamond or amethyst, which is 1/3 as common as diamond, both over 126 play sessions spent caving:
3 skeletons in amethyst armor
2 zombies in amethyst armor
3 skeletons in diamond armor
11 zombies in diamond armor
Right after that I saw a zombie in full enchanted iron armor, which itself is seen several times per day, along with fun things like skeletons with Flame and Punch bows. both also much rarer in vanilla (mobs can get level 30 enchantments on their gear on Hard difficulty):
This is not just because of the changes to regional difficulty but because the chance of armor as well as higher tiers was increased; the zombie also took quite a lot of hits to kill as they have 22 armor points in full diamond (vanilla limits them to 20); skeletons can also have 22 armor points in full amethyst, which has 22 armor points when worn by a mob but 20 when worn by a player; likewise, diamond gives mobs 20 armor points but players only get 18, and each point is 4% damage reduction on a mob and 3.33% on a player, so the best mob armor is 88% compared to 66.7% for players. This is equivalent to mobs having up to 167 health and players 60, so mob armor is effectively 2.78 times stronger than player armor; for comparison, a Sharpness V amethyst sword deals 14.25 damage so it takes 12 hits to kill a maxed-out mob (this can be reduced to 6 hits if you use an axe, which penetrates armor using the same formula as in 1.9, however, amethyst has armor toughness which reduces the effect).
Also, I scaled the desert mountain I saw earlier, which went up to y=134, the 8th time I've come across terrain exceeding y=128 (the maximum in vanilla prior to 1.7, and quite rare after that; only three of these were in biomes that can exceed this in default worlds in 1.7+. Technically, this is the 9th occurrence as there is a single block at y=128 in a Winter Forest Mountains but I don't count that, likewise, trees exceeding cloud level do not count, only actual terrain):
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher, highest peak in an instance of a biome):
165 (Ice Mountains)
160 (Extreme Hills)
156 (Rocky Mountains)
148 (Savanna Mountains)
139 (Extreme Hills)
134 (Mountainous Desert Hills)
130 (Jungle Hills)
128 (Roofed Forest Hills)
You may notice the difficulty in the debug screen is 1.000, which is the maximum it can reach on Normal (Easy is 0.500 and Hard is 1.500, with all effects linearly scaled, unlike 1.8+, where it must reach at least 2 (raw value, which is scaled from 2-4 to 0-1 when used internally) to have any effect. Vanilla 1.6 has the same behavior so even on Easy you can see armored mobs on the first day, but never at all in 1.8+ as it never gets high enough), which has been the case since 100 hours of playtime, effectively making the game behave as it did in versions prior to 1.6 (1.5 didn't have regional difficulty so it was basically at the maximum all the time).
I scaled the mountain to the east of my base and it turned out to be part of a single enormous mountain covering most of the Flower Forest biome, reaching as high as y=145, making it some of the most extreme terrain I've come across - not only that, Flower Forest doesn't even have a hills sub-biome, though it does have greater height variation than most normal biomes, but less than their hills counterparts:
This also includes a huge overhang, the largest that I can recall ever seeing (including in test worlds) in terms of height and extent; this was similar to my first view of the mountain when I came up from digging a rail tunnel to see what he surface was like:
The ravine next to my base also continues on the other side of the mountain, as well as much further west of my base, and is long enough that the other end isn't visible:
They were trapped by flowing water, which prevented them from getting out. Somebody else recently had something similar happen with zombies, except they also did not despawn because they were picking up ink sacs dropped by squid which spawned in the water (such mobs do not count towards the mob cap so an unlimited number can build up):
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/survival-mode/2819152-has-the-spawn-rate-for-mobs-increased
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?
Another question, do skeletons get Punch II on Normal Mode on your mod?
The maximum enchantment level is 22, which only gives you Punch I according to this calculator (the probabilities of enchantments should be the same; I added Mending but it should never show up or affect the chances since I made its enchantability a ridiculously high number):
Note that the level is randomized between 5-22 (difficulty, including the time played, only increases the maximum) so the chance of even Punch I is lower than indicated.
Even on Hard Punch II is not very likely since it only appears at level 27 or higher:
At first glance this would give a chance of about half a percent for a range of 5-30, or (0.1% + 1.7% + 4.3% + 7.6%) / 26, where 26 is the number of possible levels between 5 and 30, although there are actually always 18 possible levels regardless of difficulty because of the way it is calculated (this is unchanged from vanilla, the only thing that changes is the range of the difficulty factor):
"nextInt(18)" returns a number from 0 to 17, which is multiplied by up to 0.5 on Easy, 1 on Normal, and 1.5 on Hard, and after adding 5 to this value the result is rounded down to a whole number*, which means that on Hard the possible levels that can get Punch II are 27, 29, and 30, or 3 out of 18 possible levels, with an average chance of (0.1% + 4.3% + 7.6%) / 18 = 0.67%, which is slightly higher but still pretty low. Either way, Punch I is still pretty powerful, adding 4 blocks of knockback.
*I'm not actually 100% sure if Normal tops out at level 22 because if the value is calculated as 21.999 due to floating point precision error it will round down to 21 (changing the 5.0 to 5.25 would avoid this. The unrounded maximum on Easy is 13.5 while Hard is 30.5, which would still round down to 13 and 30 if 0.25 is added. In some of my own code I've added small values like this to ensure proper rounding).
Also, here are the probabilities of all enchantments at level 30; the biggest differences from level 22 are with Power and Punch while the chances of other enchantments are not much higher (in some cases they can even decrease; the chance of getting any level of Feather Falling on diamond boots decreases past level 25 because other enchantments displace 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?
Here are more screenshots from the second day of exploring the giant cave region:
No, you are not seeing things; both red and brown big mushrooms generate in both styles (only within giant cave regions, which use my own code; Mushroom Island and player-grown mushrooms use the vanilla code):
This is the only vein of amethyst that I've found so far:
Here are the stats for this session, and what I've gotten overall:
If you compare this to last time you might notice the even the relative amounts of iron and coal vary quite a bit between play sessions, even though I was entirely below sea level and the same amounts of each generate in every chunk:
Here is a sequence showing what I explored over the past two days:
Also, here is an underground rendering of the entire world:
Notably, I've placed more than 115,000 torches - more than I did in my first world during the entire 6 months I spent playing it the first time, but only taking about 4 months of caving (I did not start my caving playstyle for a month or so; however, I only placed about 4 times as many torches overall over nearly 24 months of playing; I've similarly mined more than half a million blocks in this world, close to 1/4 as many as my first world):
(by default MCMap prints out the location of every torch it finds but I modified it to instead count them and display the results; all the console spam from printing out the locations actually slows it down a lot on my worlds)
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 legendary 10th zombie in diamond armor (a reference to this post), which interrupted me as I was loading ore into furnaces; it also dropped its chestplate:
So far I've killed a total of 1,223 mobs, including 687 zombies, mined 11,435 ore, including 46 diamonds (plus one from a chest) and 9 amethyst (not shown here), collected 11,472 resources and loot, and gained 18,512 XP, pushing my total to over 700,000 (also the total XP I've gained in this world):
Here are screenshots from the third day:
I found two veins of amethyst this time, totaling four ore (one was only a single ore):
An updated sequence of what I explored over three days; I've used well over 3,000 torches so far:
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 think I've underestimated just how vast a giant cave region is; I've never actually explored one before and caves seem a lot smaller when flying through them in Creative, although it looks like I am getting to the end; mobs are becoming more concentrated and I've explored what appears to be the entire perimeter, with a huge chamber near the center left to explore.
Some more screenshots from the fourth day:
I found this vein of amethyst while mining a coal vein:
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 fifth and final day:
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:
(obsidian with a data value of 1 is amethyst ore)
Here are a couple animations, the first showing what I explored each day and the second a series of slices made with Unmined (layer 10,20,30,40,50):
A pretty fitting end to what became my second-longest played world by far, only surpassed by my first world.
Here are maps of the entire world:
Unmined (surface):
Unmined (underground; unexplored chunks were cropped away):
MCMap (surface):
MCMap (underground):
Overall statistics; I played for 22.46 days (539 hours) over 140 sessions, averaging 3.85 hours per day; of that, 121 sessions were spent caving, during which I mined 380,131 ore (less some from branch-mining, but practically ignorable), or 3,141 per session and 816 per hour (assuming I spent the same amount of time per play session when caving as not), plus 18,053 rails and 8,850 cobwebs (about 301 and 148 per mineshaft), 10,173 moss stone (50 per dungeon, including 191 normal dungeons and 11 double dungeons), around 742 stone bricks (chiseled stone bricks from 11 double dungeons and 3 jungle temples, and a stack of each of the other types from a stronghold), and mined 529,346 blocks with an amethyst pickaxe while caving (I used iron/diamond while branch-mining and iron to dig tunnels for railways), an average of 4,375 per session and 1,136 per hour (for comparison, each repair restores 1171 durability or 4,684 uses with Unbreaking III, or one repair every 247 minutes and about 113 repairs). I also placed about 118,834 torches, minus a few from villages (the actual number counted in the world, not from the stats. I also placed a few hundred in the Nether, with torches found in minecarts offsetting much of this):
Structures/caves found (by number):
191 normal dungeons
171 ravines (up to 7 intersecting; large ravines counted separately)
60 mineshafts
35 large caves (larger than vanilla, not including giant caves)
28 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
11 double dungeons (a special type, not two dungeons intersecting)
11 large ravines (larger than vanilla)
7 circular rooms at least 34 blocks in diameter (twice as large as vanilla)
7 fossils
6 villages
5 giant caves (>50000 in volume)
4 ravine cave clusters
3 circular room cave clusters
3 circular room cave systems
3 combination cave systems
3 igloos (1 with basement)
3 jungle temples
3 ravine cave systems
3 vertical cave clusters
2 maze cave systems
2 network cave regions
2 vertical cave systems
1 colossal cave system
1 desert temple
1 desert well
1 giant cave region
1 maze cave cluster
1 stronghold (found with Eye of Ender)
1 witch hut
(570 individual structures/caves)
Biomes found (by order found):
Plains (technical biome in Mixed Forest and others)
Mixed Forest
Lake (technical biome in Mixed Forest and others)
Jungle
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (technical biome in Birch Forest)
Desert
Tropical Swamp
Big Oak Forest
Taiga (snowless)
Rocky Mountains
Ice Plains
Roofed Forest
Mesa
Winter Forest
Forest Mountains
Bushlands
Mountainous Desert
Swampland
Hilly Plains
Winter Taiga
Frozen Lake (technical biome in Winter Forest and others)
Mega Tree Plains
Spruce Hills (technical biome in Mega Tree Plains)
Mega Forest
Plains
Forest (technical biome in Plains)
Forest
Lake
Savanna Mountains
Poplar Grove
Mega Mixed Forest
Savanna Plateau
Flower Forest
Extreme Hills
(31 unique biomes)
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher, highest peak in an instance of a biome):
165 (Ice Mountains)
160 (Extreme Hills)
156 (Rocky Mountains)
148 (Savanna Mountains)
139 (Extreme Hills)
130 (Jungle Hills)
128 (Roofed Forest Hills)
Largest cave:
293 blocks long and 61 blocks wide, volume of 251257
Largest circular room:
57 blocks in diameter, volume of 46870
Largest ravine:
336 blocks long, 28 blocks wide, 55 blocks deep, volume of 266923
Largest mineshaft:
757 rails mined (average is 301 per mineshaft)
Other:
3 skeletons in amethyst armor
3 skeletons in diamond armor
2 zombies in amethyst armor
10 zombies in diamond armor
3 Notch apples found in dungeon chests (27 regular golden apples, 30 total)
2 pink sheep
453 mob spawners collected (191 dungeons, 11 double dungeons (2 each), 240 cave spider (4 per mineshaft))
10249 chunks explored, 118834 torches placed in world
Of the 223 amethyst ore I mined, including 22 with Fortune II, yielding 15 extra drops, and a few dozen (not counted) amethyst found in dungeon and mineshaft chests, I ended up with less than a stack of surplus; when subtracting the 22 amethyst and 91 diamond I found while branch-mining I found 201 and 1507 respectively while caving, a ratio of 7.5 times more diamond than amethyst, more than the 9:1 ratio they generate in (this is more likely due to mining other ores that extend below y=3 rather than random chance since the same ratio has been seen in other worlds; as shown in this old chart, which is still accurate except I added extra lapis below y=3, amethyst is much more common below y=3).
An AMIDST map showing landmasses and climate zones (biomes are not shown since they cause AMIDST to crash, hence why I made specially modified GenLayer classes that only include climate zones), and the same map in vanilla 1.6.4. My initial impression of spawning in/near a hot climate zone, based on the biomes near spawn (at 0, -224) and along the way to the stronghold to the northeast, wasn't that far off, with one starting a couple hundred blocks to the north of spawn; conversely, the cluster of snowy biomes to the south, which I thought might be a cold climate zone, was not one. I also noticed the edge of an ocean near the northern edge of the Unmined map but it is just a small lake, with another "ocean lake" to the southwest:
Finally, here is what CaveFinder found within +/- 1536 blocks of the origin*; I found the largest cave, largest circular room, and largest ravine within this area, as well as 9 of the 10 closest mineshafts (all caves found and explored marked with a *; I also found a combination cave system which was outside of this area and a few others I found but did not explore; I came within 100 blocks of finding the third stronghold and actually reached the edge of the third colossal cave system):
*Note that if you use the downloadable mod to recreate my world it will not be exactly the same due to some changes I made, mainly to ensure that there is always a colossal cave system and a giant cave region within 1024 blocks of the origin since some seeds did not have either within even 1536 blocks (even 1024 blocks, or 16384 chunks or a level 4 map centered around the origin, is more than I explored in this world, with an extrapolated exploration time of 193 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?
If anybody is still interested (I did get a request before) I've made a download for this world available:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/53yct2fmjnjolb4/TMCWv4.zip?dl=0 (102 MB)
Note that this must only be opened with the mod I used or it will be corrupted (here is what happens if you open it in vanilla 1.6.4, I do not know what 1.12 would do, as it would enable using Spectator mode to look underground). My previous post includes a list of the various caves that I found in the last spoiler, and aside from those there isn't much else of note other than the sheer amount of caves that I explored; the Nether and End are also included but there is pretty much nothing of interest in them (they are not modified and I did not build anything in them, nor have I built anything besides my bases in the Overworld, unless you count the 6 villages I walled in).
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'm now just wondering, if you open the chests in vanilla, will the game crash?
Mod items, as well as blocks, will just be missing, although the Mending villager that I saved offered an enchanted book with no enchantments which caused the game to crash when I tried to add it to an item (I did not check to see what happened to diamond items with Mending; either the enchantment was lost or the item was deleted). If you load the world in 1.9+ Mending should be retained since I gave it the same ID as 1.9; likewise, the 1.8 stone types are also the same (interestingly, they do not lose their metadata if loaded in an older version unless you mine them, the same applies to many other mod blocks, which are mostly variants of existing blocks).
Here is a thread about reverting to an older version from 1.8, which has pretty much the same consequences, except that all items disappear since they changed the way the ID is stored (note that stained glass replaced the ID of locked chests in 1.7 so it did not disappear; I have no idea why the slime blocks survived):
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/recent-updates-and-snapshots/2201993-so-what-happens-if-you-create-something-in-1-8-and
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?
In your mod, how many blocks is the biggest mineshaft?
Mineshafts can extend up to 110 blocks from the center, or 220x220 blocks, with the smallest being +/- 64 or 128x128 blocks; for comparison, in vanilla these are +/- 80 and 160 blocks, though they rarely actually get that large in either case (just the limit to how long a corridor can get). The number of "sections" also varies between 5 and 11 (8 for vanilla/average), which is basically how many pieces can be added from the central room, including branches (that is, with 8 sections you could have 2 sections, then a 4-way split with up to 6 more sections per branch, or 20 total, and typically more than 100 for the whole mineshaft. A single corridor section has 1-4 segments, each with one support). Also, most mineshafts are near vanilla size (the average number of rails I found per mineshaft in this world was almost exactly the same as what I found when I used MCEdit to analyze 30 mineshafts in vanilla) and the largest size has only a 1/32 chance of generating. The largest mineshaft that I found had 757 rails, compared to about 300 for the average mineshaft, so it was about 2.5 times bigger than average; on the other extreme I found one that only had a couple dozen rails (rails may not be the best measure for smaller mineshafts in particular since there is a random chance of a corridor having rails but it wasn't that big).
Here is the largest mineshaft that I found, which measures 153x217 blocks and covers layers 15-41 (floor level) with 5 main levels. Note that most of the mineshaft was within the 160x160 limit in vanilla:
For comparison, this is the smallest one, measuring only 71x63 blocks and on layers 8-17 (essentially all one level with no corridors overlapping on different levels):
Also, smaller mineshafts have a higher chance of a minecart generating in each corridor section, with the chance being 1/100 (the vanilla chance) for a size of 8-11 sections and increasing to 1/70 for a size of 5 (this is the chance for two separate attempts, one on each side of a corridor, so there is a 1/10000 chance of two in the same spot). You'll still find a lot more loot in the largest mineshafts though.
That said, in vanilla it isn't uncommon to find 2,3 or more separate mineshafts joined together, like these mineshafts that I recently found in my first world, with four at the bottom and two at the top; the quadruple mineshaft covers a 317x214 block area:
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 was just playing around in the seed for this world while testing some changes (no effect on biomes or terrain) and came across this enormous mountain going up to y=184, at 1241, -693, a few hundred blocks away from the last area I explored; this is the highest mountain that I've found in this world (if not while playing on it in Survival) and any of the various seeds I showcased, and about the highest they can get (terrain is limited to y=192, leaving 64 blocks of space above):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I wonder if the Master Cavers World version 5 will work with Windows XP?
I cannot use this account anymore
According to this thread it should work as long as the launcher itself still works as I have not done anything that might require some native libraries beyond what the game already needs; the code itself is still complied to Java 6 (MCP tells the JDK to compile to this version by default, which is also the same version Mojang used; I've never had it tell me that my code required a later version so I've never tried changing it. The "CaveFinder" utility is compiled with JDK 7, which I haven't bothered updating due to the aforementioned) so even if a newer Java version were incompatible (apparently, Java 8 does not fully support Windows XP) it would still work; of course, using the older launcher which does not download its own JRE, which is required anyway to properly download sounds (which should continue to work in the native launcher as it is just a download issue, and it may have been fixed in a recent update).
(also, TMCWv5 has not been released yet and I think you meant to post this in the mod's thread; this one was for a Survival world I made with it. Either way, the information above applies to the current TMCWv4 release and all of my other mods with the exception of the "old caves" mods for newer versions).
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 played on this world for the first time in 3 years yesterday while testing a major update to TMCW, TMCWv4.5, which is still considered to be TMCWv4 as it is compatible with worlds created in that version, but has extensive optimizations and vanilla bugfixes (plus a few of my own bugs, including one which caused one of the branches of large caves to be smaller than intended, as seen in this comparison; the giant cave region shown increased in volume from 1.16 to 1.24 million), many of which were planned to be included in TMCWv5 but I decided to backport them; the underlying game engine has been changed so much that TMCW is really more of its own version now than just a mod, and gets around 10 times the performance of the latest vanilla releases if what I've seen is any indication (I haven't actually played on them but I see people getting like 40 FPS when I get around 10 times that in the most demanding situation imaginable (it is hard to tell but I have leaves set to Fancy).
There are also some changes to game mechanics, most of which affect mob farms (they are vastly less effective now; iron golems need to be manually killed and above-Nether gold farms are entirely out of the question as mobs do not spawn there and you take void damage in Survival; of course, none of this affects me since I don't use such exploits) and a few new features, such as replacing the per-mob attack "cooldown"/penalty with a generalized version which is much more like the one in 1.9 (previously, the penalty would only occur if you attacked a mob too fast and would only apply to that mob; now it also applies if you miss and affects all mobs. That said, it is less restrictive in other ways; a missed/bad hit or two will not noticeably activate it (it gradually increases/decreases and a Sharpness V amethyst sword (same as diamond in vanilla) deals 14.25 damage, plenty of overkill for a 20 HP mob to be killed in 2 hits) and you can attack as fast as damage immunity allows and miss no more than once per second; essentially, it nerfs the mindless spam-clicking where you click like 10 times per second).
Also, dark caves are pitch black so it is impossible to see unless you have a light source or Night Vision (IMO, the fact that vanilla does not have true darkness is a major flaw, I also prevent you from setting gamma to invalid values, along with all other settings in options.txt (now a separate file to avoid issues with vanilla, especially newer evrsions, not that you should ever run them in the same game directory). I previously used a personal mod to fix this and many other bugs but didn't release it until now as I'd modified Optifine, which can't be publicly distributed). A full list of changes can be found on the mod's thread (link in signature); while not considered to be a major content update it is still by far the largest update in the history of TMCW, double the size of TMCWv4 (TMCW_v4_old is prior to an update earlier this year).
That said, while I didn't find anything particularly notable as far as large caves or ravines go, I did find 5 dungeons in one day the last time I played, which has to be at or close to a record for one day; I've been exploring an area near the southwest corner of the spawn area map (upper-left, centered at 0,0) which I previously hadn't explored (I noticed that part of the map wasn't filled in and went there to see if there were any caves I might have missed, which I did find, nearly hidden behind a pile of gravel, which lead to a network of caves including a mineshaft and a couple ravines).
Another area that I know has unexplored caves and plan to investigate is near the center of the map to the south; while I trimmed away unexplored chunks (without torches) prior to mapping the underground with Unmined I can tell that there are caves that I found but didn't explore (about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom, the strip running down the middle is due to a railway). Otherwise, the northern part of the map to the east and most of the map to the southeast are unexplored.
Also, as before I'll be keeping track of everything that I find, which currently includes 5 dungeons, 2 ravines, and 1 mineshaft (previously, I found 202 dungeons (including 11 double dungeons), 171 ravines, and 60 mineshafts over 121 play sessions spent caving).
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 came across some interesting terrain in a Mountainous Desert, including a quite large mountain that easily reaches past the clouds:
I also found a couple large caves (not giant caves), and another that went quite deep from the surface:
Also, I found a fossil, the 8th one that I've found so far in this world, while mining a vein of coal (which was actually the coal that generates around fossils; I did not completely excavate the fossil, which was the smallest size of spine), and found a new mineshaft while mining another vein of coal in the same cave:
Notably, so far I've only found a single vein of 5 amethyst ore in 3 play sessions totaling around 10 hours, a rate of just one ore every 2 hours, and giving me less than the 6 that I've used so far to repair my gear (I just barely break even over the long run, it can also be found in loot chests though none of the 9 dungeons and 2 mineshafts I've explored so far had any). It is still not the rarest ore that I've found, with less ruby and emerald, but those only generate in certain biomes:
I've considered building a new secondary base at -1024, 0, in the middle of the map I'm currently exploring, to the west of the spawn map, as I've gone as far west as around -760 and it would be much closer than my main base at around 0, -250 (terrain is a big factor in determining how far apart I place my bases, in my first world I've explored up to 1000 blocks away from the nearest base when there is relatively flat terrain, such as Ice Plains or ocean, while terrain in TMCW is generally more rugged and harder to traverse).
Here is a list of everything that I've found and a day-by-day rendering of what I've explored since I started playing on the world again:
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 mentioned before, I built a new secondary base near -1024, 0, which happened to be in a Flower Forest with some quite interesting terrain:
Just to the east is a large mountain, possibly part of an extremely large mountain range from what I saw further east when I came up to see what the terrain was like (I had no idea what would be around the location I chose beforehand and I wanted to be sure it was suitable, if not then I'd relocate east or west as needed); I didn't take a screenshot but there was a giant mountain with giant overhangs further east, easily the most extreme terrain I've found in this world so far:
There is also a fairly large ravine right next to my base, visible in the screenshots above:
Here is an underground rendering of the entire world, with the rail tunnel leading to my current base extending to the lower-left (I haven't actually laid down rails yet), with the base itself visible as only my potato farm, which is underground, as MCMap apparently ignores glass (it only maps caves if they have a ceiling, so surface caves/ravines won't be visible either, or only as indentations in the walls):
Also, I came across a rather odd bug; there was a Roofed Forest along the way and the leaves were a blue-green color, due to a change I made to the way the biome colormap works, which didn't noticeably affect the colors of other biomes so I never thought to check all of them, and I've since replaced it with an entirely hardcoded color, along with swamps (both of these biomes combined the colormap with a hardcoded color, as was done in vanilla, but this doesn't make much sense as you can't really change them. I've also thought of replacing the vanilla colormap entirely with a palette indexed by biome ID, enabling you to easily set each biome's color).
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 saw a zombie in full diamond armor, which is quite rare in vanilla, and once every few months in my first world, which has the inhabited time modified so it starts at 50% of the maximum (otherwise, it barely reaches any meaningful level in the areas I'm exploring), but quite common in TMCW, averaging about one every 9 days in this world; this is the first one I've seen since I started playing on it again but the 14th diamond armored mob overall (11 zombies and 3 skeletons; both have the same armor probabilities but zombies are much more commonly encountered), and the 19th mob in diamond or amethyst, which is 1/3 as common as diamond, both over 126 play sessions spent caving:
Right after that I saw a zombie in full enchanted iron armor, which itself is seen several times per day, along with fun things like skeletons with Flame and Punch bows. both also much rarer in vanilla (mobs can get level 30 enchantments on their gear on Hard difficulty):
This is not just because of the changes to regional difficulty but because the chance of armor as well as higher tiers was increased; the zombie also took quite a lot of hits to kill as they have 22 armor points in full diamond (vanilla limits them to 20); skeletons can also have 22 armor points in full amethyst, which has 22 armor points when worn by a mob but 20 when worn by a player; likewise, diamond gives mobs 20 armor points but players only get 18, and each point is 4% damage reduction on a mob and 3.33% on a player, so the best mob armor is 88% compared to 66.7% for players. This is equivalent to mobs having up to 167 health and players 60, so mob armor is effectively 2.78 times stronger than player armor; for comparison, a Sharpness V amethyst sword deals 14.25 damage so it takes 12 hits to kill a maxed-out mob (this can be reduced to 6 hits if you use an axe, which penetrates armor using the same formula as in 1.9, however, amethyst has armor toughness which reduces the effect).
Also, I scaled the desert mountain I saw earlier, which went up to y=134, the 8th time I've come across terrain exceeding y=128 (the maximum in vanilla prior to 1.7, and quite rare after that; only three of these were in biomes that can exceed this in default worlds in 1.7+. Technically, this is the 9th occurrence as there is a single block at y=128 in a Winter Forest Mountains but I don't count that, likewise, trees exceeding cloud level do not count, only actual terrain):
You may notice the difficulty in the debug screen is 1.000, which is the maximum it can reach on Normal (Easy is 0.500 and Hard is 1.500, with all effects linearly scaled, unlike 1.8+, where it must reach at least 2 (raw value, which is scaled from 2-4 to 0-1 when used internally) to have any effect. Vanilla 1.6 has the same behavior so even on Easy you can see armored mobs on the first day, but never at all in 1.8+ as it never gets high enough), which has been the case since 100 hours of playtime, effectively making the game behave as it did in versions prior to 1.6 (1.5 didn't have regional difficulty so it was basically at the maximum all the 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?
I scaled the mountain to the east of my base and it turned out to be part of a single enormous mountain covering most of the Flower Forest biome, reaching as high as y=145, making it some of the most extreme terrain I've come across - not only that, Flower Forest doesn't even have a hills sub-biome, though it does have greater height variation than most normal biomes, but less than their hills counterparts:
This also includes a huge overhang, the largest that I can recall ever seeing (including in test worlds) in terms of height and extent; this was similar to my first view of the mountain when I came up from digging a rail tunnel to see what he surface was like:
The ravine next to my base also continues on the other side of the mountain, as well as much further west of my base, and is long enough that the other end isn't visible:
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?