Can you kill the wither or raid an ocean monument (if the mod supports that)?
I don't have the incentive to kill the Wither; I've only ever gotten two Wither skeleton skulls, in separate worlds, by accident and don't want to invest the time into getting more, plus the reward is not very useful to me unless it could work anywhere in the world (which would be overpowered); a 100x100 block area is not that large at all - the largest caves in my mod can get larger than that and even vanilla-sized ravines get up to 112 blocks long. Not that I haven't killed it before (after building one in a Creative test world and killing it in Survival mode).
I did not add ocean monuments, largely because of their complexity (just to add in igloos or fossils required more than 600 lines of code each) and that I do not want to add any mobs or blocks that require new rendering methods since it would destroy compatibility with Optifine (I could easily mod Optifine itself for compatibility for myself but distributing it would be illegal). Even if I did add them I don't seek out any structures except for a stronghold; as I mentioned in this thread I basically explore the world from underground - the only things that I have not found while caving are the biomes around spawn and along the path to the stronghold, the stronghold itself, a village along the way to the stronghold, and a dungeon connected to a cave I found while branch-mining for resources.
That said, I was about to post an update on what I found recently - a fossil, a double dungeon, and a new biome:
The fossil before and after I excavated it; it was the smallest type of spine. These generate similarly to fossils in 1.10, with a 1/64 chance per chunk (not entirely random, but to an 8x8 chunk grid with a relative offset of 0-6, so you'll never find two in adjacent chunks, which could cause them to overlap). Also, they only have missing blocks if there is air where a block will be placed, and coal ore generates around bone blocks instead of replacing them, so they will be entirely intact if they are completely buried. They also only generate if at least 3 out of 8 corners are not exposed, to prevent them from generating in midair inside of larger caves or ravines:
I also found a double dungeon - not two normal dungeons connected together but a special type of dungeon with 2 spawners and 2-3 chests, and chiseled stone bricks in place of cobblestone in the floor (like normal dungeons the walls may be cobblestone, stone bricks or a mix of normal/cracked/mossy stone bricks). They also come in two sizes, 7x11 or 9x13 (overall size, normal dungeons are 7x7, 7x9, or 9x9, with the interior being 2 blocks smaller), with the latter having the spawners offset from the center. This one was a 9x13 dungeon with a zombie and a witch spawner; the spawners will always be of different types:
These were both found in a large cave system (by 1.6.4 standards; I would say it is certainly within the 20 largest that I've found in my first world), including a triple ravine:
Two of the ravines ran right on top of each other, forming a very deep drop:
A third, smaller ravine intersected the upper ravine:
Also, you may have noticed that the walls in some areas are sandstone; this is because sandstone extends much deeper underground than it does in vanilla, down to around y=40 with some variation. the floors of caves within this layer will be sand as well; both are placed after ores are generated, which otherwise only replace stone. Dirt and gravel pockets are also replaced with sand within these layers:
I also got this screenshot of a zombie dying after I knocked it down (almost into lava):
Finally, after I surfaced to return home I checked out what was obviously a new biome on the map, which turned out to be Bushlands, a relatively flat, plains-like biome with small bushes, the largest ones similar to the groundcover in jungles but made up of spruce leaves and 1-2 spruce logs, while the smallest have one log placed in the ground with as few as one leaf block over it (only the larger variant will grow if you plant a spruce sapling in this biome since the smaller variant destroys the block it grows on):
Here are updated maps and a list of what I've found so far:
The fossil shows up as orange on this map, near the top of the sandstone areas on the left; they are orange because my bone blocks use ID 180, which is red sandstone stairs in vanilla (this can be changed with a custom colors file):
Play sessions spent caving: 17
Structures found (by number):
29 dungeons
23 ravines (up to 3 intersecting)
9 mineshafts
3 large cave systems
2 jungle temples
2 villages
1 double dungeon
1 fossil
1 stronghold
Biomes found (by order found):
Plains (technical biome)
Mixed Forest
Lake (technical biome)
Jungle
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (technical biome)
Desert
Tropical Swamp
Big Oak Forest
Snowless Taiga
Rocky Mountains
Ice Plains
Roofed Forest
Mesa
Winter Forest
Forest Mountains
Bushlands
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher):
156 (Rocky Mountains)
165 (Ice Mountains)
Also, in contrast to my experience earlier on, I have not found any new mineshafts since my last post, since they can only generate in areas with a low enough cave density. I should also start finding more interesting caves soon, since I've been exploring up to and just past the 32 chunk/512 block radius within which only vanilla-like caves generate.
I gave a link to it on the first page, where you can also find older versions (this is the fourth version I've made; note that for the most part they are not compatible with each other; at the least you'll get chunk walls where world generation changed).
I also regularly update it; for example, I recently added giant mushrooms to giant cave regions (25% of 2x2 chunk areas) to make them more unique, similar to how network cave regions increase the chance of a double dungeon from 5% to 20%:
I've also included several utilities within the download for TMCWv4; one gives you the locations of all types of special caves, strongholds, and mineshafts so you don't need to search for them if you want to see them yourself (I originally made it to easily find them and verify that they generated correctly); for example, this is for the seed which I mainly used while testing:
Seed is 10
Range is +/- 8192 blocks (+/- 512 chunks)
Showing up to 5 results for each category
Searching for caves...
Locations of nearest colossal cave systems (locations are the center unless noted):
1: -1336, -552
2: 1608, 232
3: 600, 1512
4: -488, -1768
5: -1448, 1656
Locations of nearest circular room cave systems:
1: -8, 584
2: -8, -584
3: -648, -56
4: 792, -328
5: 648, -680
Locations of nearest ravine cave systems:
1: -376, -424
2: 264, 584
3: 280, -568
4: 776, 72
5: -904, 312
Locations of nearest vertical cave systems:
1: 264, 472
2: 136, -824
3: -888, -424
4: 1176, -440
5: 408, 1240
Locations of nearest maze cave systems:
1: -744, -72
2: 120, 840
3: -760, 840
4: 280, -1208
5: 1288, -40
Locations of nearest combination cave systems:
1: -744, -232
2: 616, 568
3: 408, 760
4: -856, -280
5: 552, -936
Locations of nearest giant cave regions (NW and SE corners):
1: -832, 304 to -641, 495
2: 1120, 320 to 1311, 511
3: 1680, 912 to 1871, 1103
4: 560, 1920 to 751, 2111
5: 720, -2208 to 911, -2017
Locations of nearest network cave regions (NW and SE corners):
1: 752, -192 to 943, -1
2: -304, 816 to -113, 1007
3: -208, -1136 to -17, -945
4: -1248, -208 to -1057, -17
5: 624, -1232 to 815, -1041
Locations of largest caves by distance:
1: -328, 30, -504 (length: 334, width: 23, volume: 53227)
2: -696, 25, 8 (length: 294, width: 56, volume: 228159)
3: -312, 18, 648 (length: 244, width: 29, volume: 58142)
4: 488, 28, 744 (length: 336, width: 23, volume: 51597)
5: 200, 22, 904 (length: 247, width: 38, volume: 98144)
Locations of largest caves by volume:
1: 2632, 28, -1528 (length: 329, width: 72, volume: 403489)
2: -5304, 24, 2056 (length: 333, width: 71, volume: 399755)
3: 8136, 25, -3448 (length: 330, width: 71, volume: 397649)
4: 4168, 25, -3064 (length: 334, width: 70, volume: 387398)
5: 200, 21, -7544 (length: 327, width: 66, volume: 345426)
Locations of largest ravines by distance:
1: 72, 19, 648 (length: 286, width: 20, volume: 130340)
2: -184, 25, -632 (length: 266, width: 23, volume: 142661)
3: -184, 43, 904 (length: 262, width: 22, volume: 129308)
4: -792, 24, -536 (length: 140, width: 18, volume: 54678)
5: -952, 29, 136 (length: 276, width: 20, volume: 126334)
Locations of largest ravines by volume:
1: 3656, 40, 8072 (length: 336, width: 39, volume: 422937)
2: 1736, 38, -2296 (length: 336, width: 39, volume: 422089)
3: 8008, 25, 6280 (length: 336, width: 37, volume: 394517)
4: 4552, 25, 3592 (length: 336, width: 35, volume: 364054)
5: -1848, 33, 1800 (length: 336, width: 35, volume: 362058)
Locations of nearest strongholds (starting points):
1: -476, -556
2: 1012, 692
3: -1244, 244
4: 1572, -364
5: -348, 1700
Locations of nearest abandoned mineshafts:
1: 120, -88
2: 104, 120
3: -120, 104
4: -120, -120
5: -24, 216
(the volume of caves and ravines is very approximate and does not account for factors like going below lava level or above sea level or curving around on themselves, which can also make them appear wider than they actually are. The largest possible cave has a length of 336 and width of 85 while the largest ravine is 336 and 39)
Also, I think I'll make a version (really just a patch, since only a couple classes need to be changed) that does not have the "exclusion zone" near the origin, which I mainly added so it takes a bit of exploring to find everything (which was not that much back then, where there were only "colossal" cave systems, similar to a large cave system in my first world, and larger caves and ravines. I even did this for structures like villages at one point so I would not spawn next to one but later removed it). Even then, "giant cave regions" only occur once every 16384 chunks on average, covering less than 2% of that area (for perspective, I explored around 60000 chunks in my first world over about 100 days of playtime so that's more than 27 days, 6 months when factoring in daily playtime).
I do not really have any notable seeds that I found while testing since I mainly used one seed, "10", which spawns you in a Hilly Plains (more properly, a Plains sub-biome within it, similar to how I spawned in one within a Mixed Forest) next to a Mega Forest, with Rocky Mountains to the south, a Desert further south, Extreme Hills to the west, a Mesa to the northwest, and Ice Plains, including a village, off to the east:
As I mentioned previously, I added an update that removes the exclusion of special types of caves from near the origin so they are easier to find without searching; for example, here is a comparison of the seed "10" with and without the exclusion:
Even ordinary cave systems are altered, with more/fewer/wider/narrower/curvier/straighter/etc caves within 3/4 of 16x16 chunk regions, with each region using a different (randomized) set of values. Caves and ravines near the corners are unchanged since they are outside of the exclusion zone.
This is a good example of what I mean by more interesting things when I've referred to finding them in previous posts - a ravine so large that it cuts all the way through the ground, more than 60 blocks deep (lava level is y=4 and sea level is y=63 so the underground is 7 layers deeper than in vanilla) and so long that even on Far render distance the other end goes out of rendered chunks (a smaller ravine runs right into the northern end, with the entire thing well over 300 blocks long):
I also made a minor tweak to ravine generation; I noticed that by excluding larger ones from near the origin they were slightly less common (one every 54.5 chunks instead of one every 50 chunks) so I added a small additional chance of one generating within that area (in the normal mod) which adds an extra ravine about once every 630 chunks (existing ravines are not affected and the chances of one generating at the edges of existing chunks is very low so I'll likely not run into cut-off ravines; this increase amounts to 2 additional ravines when considering what I've found so far).
I found another double dungeon, with skeleton and witch spawners - and something much rarer - a skeleton in full amethyst armor:
It took quite a bit of effort to bring it under control as you can see from the holes mined in the walls and torches scattered about; I dug around the outside so I could place them. Not only that, there was a cave spider spawner right next to it, though the cobwebs slowed down the mobs spawned by the dungeon (I came in from the cave spider side, otherwise it would have been even harder to bring down; cave spider spawners spawn mobs faster than vanilla as well, with half the maximum delay, 10-20 seconds instead of 10-40).
The chance of a mob with amethyst armor at maximum "regional" difficulty on Normal is one in 5,000; a 50/50 chance of leather or gold followed by three 20% chances of incrementing it by one tier, then if it is diamond a 25% chance of amethyst, for the following probabilities of various tiers, multiplied by a 20% chance of any armor:
The chance of a full set of armor is 65.1% on Normal* so this was a one in 7,680 event. *Unlike vanilla this increases between Easy and Normal, with Hard being the same as vanilla, a 72.9% chance, and Easy having a 51.2% chance, higher than vanilla's 42.19%. It is also dependent on "regional" difficulty, increasing from a minimum of 21.6% on all difficulty levels. As mentioned before my "regional" difficulty is based on total time played and moon phase (until it reaches the cap) and I've spent more than 100 hours playing (122 to be exact) so these chances are fixed at these values.
Despite a higher chance of dropping amethyst gear (10% vs 5%, and 8.5% in vanilla) it did not drop anything (it may have with Looting, which acts as a multiplier instead of adding a fixed 1% per level so normal drops have up to a 11% chance (vs 11.5% in vanilla) and amethyst a 22% chance of dropping).
Only a day after seeing a skeleton in amethyst armor I saw a zombie in full diamond armor:
I also saw another cave spider jockey:
A skeleton with a Flame bow, which is more common than the others; I've gotten several in one day, as well as skeletons with Punch bows (which is often self-defeating; if they knock you back too far they stop tracking you):
I also found another fossil, one of the larger ribs, although I did not excavate this one; it was in a cave connected to what is technically the first ravine that I found, while searching for a stronghold (I do not count ravines as explored until I've fully lit them up and mined them out so this was the 31st ravine that I've found so far):
Also, part of the desert I found the village in is actually a Mountainous Desert, which I thought was just Desert Hills when I saw it earlier; Mountainous Desert is basically like all-Desert Hills, plus its own hills sub-biome with even higher peaks (I've seen them up to y=140 while testing), as well as normal desert sub-biomes, sometimes large enough to generate villages (this desert appears to be two separate biomes given the size of the regular desert and the fact that sub-biomes are always surrounded by their parent biome, except where rivers cut through).
Mountainous Desert is also one of several biomes with more caves near to above sea level, taking advantage of the biome-specific underground, which in deserts is all sandstone down to y=40 (with random variation as with vanilla sandstone), with sand lining the floors of caves and pockets of sand replacing dirt and gravel. Other biomes like this are Mesa (hardened/stained clay with pockets of normal clay, there are also extra caves above sea level here), Ice Hills (packed ice with pockets of snow), and Ice Plains Spikes (snow with pockets of packed ice):
Here is an update on what I've found/explored so far; I still have not found any larger caves or ravines or other variants of caves but I've still found a lot more interesting things than in vanilla:
Play sessions spent caving: 21
Structures found (by number):
32 dungeons
32 ravines (up to 3 intersecting)
11 mineshafts
4 large cave systems
2 double dungeona
2 fossils
2 jungle temples
2 villages
1 stronghold
Biomes found (by order found):
Plains (technical biome)
Mixed Forest
Lake (technical biome)
Jungle
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (technical biome)
Desert
Tropical Swamp
Big Oak Forest
Snowless Taiga
Rocky Mountains
Ice Plains
Roofed Forest
Mesa
Winter Forest
Forest Mountains
Bushlands
Mountainous Desert
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher):
156 (Rocky Mountains)
165 (Ice Mountains)
(the definition of "large cave system" is a bit subjective; I'm using it to refer to cave systems dense enough to appear as a solid mass on this map)
Also, here is a comparison of my current world to my first world:
Eventually, I will move off of the current map (centered around 0,0) and make a secondary base at the center of a new map, most likely either to the north or east, the latter of which would get me "on a rail", the only achievement that I have not gotten yet, since level 3 map centers are 1024 blocks apart (my base is near 0, -256 so if I went north I would only be 768 blocks from the center; when going east I would make a railway going south to 0,0 before turning east). I've found enough rails to make a track more than twice as long, plus a dozen or so powered rails (I replaced regular rails in minecarts with powered/activator/detector rails). This also means that I'll certainly start finding new types of caves soon; the new types of caves and cave systems that I added make up around 20% of the underground, with 75% of the remaining 80% of "normal" caves altered in some way.
Here is a simple ASCII map that shows how caves are placed; the square around the center represents a level 3 map centered around 0,0, while the whole area covers a level 4 map, which includes everything for this particular seed (12) but is not guaranteed to (an area larger than about +/- 1500 blocks from the origin is guaranteed to have everything due to their spacing and placement; Eyes of Ender were designed with a maximum distance to the nearest stronghold of no more than 2048 blocks along an axis, any further and they will not work):
For an example of how far away strongholds, which have a 40 chunk exclusion radius, can be, here are the closest strongholds for seeds 1-50 (these locations are the center of the spiral staircase that is their starting point, offset to the southeast by 4 blocks from the northwest corner of the chunk they start in):
After 22 days of caving I've finally something different from the usual vanilla-like caves - a ravine that was about 150 blocks long, 21 blocks wide and 50 blocks deep:
The ravine was not quite straight enough to see into unloaded chunks; I measured the distances by calculating the straight-line distances between the ends and the center.
Note that lava level is y=4 instead of y=11, so just below me is a 58 block drop though the ceiling of a cave just below the ravine, which went down to y=9 (if I did fall I'd get close to 7 hearts of damage due to Feather Falling + Protection maxing out at 75% damage reduction; unlike vanilla, which is a random 52-80% this is a fixed amount; since 1.9 it is also fixed at up to 80% or about 5 1/2 hearts of damage):
As far as giant ravines go, this one was relatively small; they can reach up to 336 blocks long, 39 blocks wide, and 70 blocks deep, with an air volume of over 400,000 blocks (for perspective, that is more than twice the volume of the largest cave system I found in my first world, with more than 200 individual caves and several ravines. The largest caves can get even larger, around half a million air blocks):
These were the largest caves and ravines found within a level 4 map centered around the origin in the seed 10 (only counting ones with an estimated volume of 50000 or more):
The same seed but using a range of +/-8192 blocks (the maximum range my search utility accepts; a search takes about half a minute at this point) and showing only the top 10 results:
So, I was exploring a huge mineshaft (one of the larger ones that can be found more than 512 blocks from the origin) and came across not one but TWO creeper dungeons almost next to each other - and one of them had something very rare and valuable in it:
The first dungeon:
The second dungeon:
Both dungeons can be seen here:
And here is what I found in the second dungeon:
A Notch apple, by far the rarest thing that can be found in any chests, and far rarer than they are in 1.9 since they only generate in dungeon chests and the chance is much lower, as seen by these results when I calculated the chances of a chest having 1 or more, as well as any golden apples:
Chance of a chest with 1 Notch apple is one in 121.7204
Chance of a chest with 2 Notch apples is one in 31026.994
Chance of a chest with 3 Notch apples is one in 10000000
Chance of a chest with at least one Notch apple is one in 121.24328
Chance of a chest with 1 golden apple is one in 13.077961
Chance of a chest with 2 golden apples is one in 332.91718
Chance of a chest with 3 golden apples is one in 13352.918
Chance of a chest with 4 golden apples is one in 641025.6
Chance of a chest with 5 golden apples is one in 50000000
Chance of a chest with at least one golden apple is one in 12.571542
For comparison, since 1.9 the chance of a golden apple (both types) in a dungeon chest is one in 4 and the chance of a Notch apple is one in 32. Prior to 1.9 there was a one in 13.9 chance of a regular golden apple (in both cases, the chance of any; to determine the chances given above I looped over the code that places items into a chest 100 million times and counted the number placed during each run).
Also, in theory, up to 20 apples or stacks of other items can be found in a chest since up to 20 attempts are made at placing items in a chest, although the distribution is non-uniform and previously placed items can be overwritten (the minimum number of attempts is 6, but as few as 2 items were placed over 100 million runs):
Chance of a chest with 2 items is one in 173611.11
Chance of a chest with 3 items is one in 2228.0151
Chance of a chest with 4 items is one in 113.3517
Chance of a chest with 5 items is one in 16.935019
Chance of a chest with 6 items is one in 6.38618
Chance of a chest with 7 items is one in 4.897235
Chance of a chest with 8 items is one in 4.8192306
Chance of a chest with 9 items is one in 6.5858517
Chance of a chest with 10 items is one in 12.201224
Chance of a chest with 11 items is one in 20.71199
Chance of a chest with 12 items is one in 27.997072
Chance of a chest with 13 items is one in 42.170536
Chance of a chest with 14 items is one in 74.95094
Chance of a chest with 15 items is one in 166.78146
Chance of a chest with 16 items is one in 499.14896
Chance of a chest with 17 items is one in 2169.2915
Chance of a chest with 18 items is one in 14925.373
Chance of a chest with 19 items is one in 180831.83
Chance of a chest with 20 items is one in 11111111
Average number of items in a chest is 8.132884
So far I've found 39 regular dungeons and 2 double dungeons, with an average of somewhat less than 2 chests per dungeon (regular dungeons have 1-2 and double dungeons have 2-3; unlike vanilla, which makes 3 attempts each at placing 2 chests I make 20 attempts each of placing 1-2 or 2-3 chests; the high number of attempts per chest means that they are nearly guaranteed to generate and makes it easier to control how many chests there are), so statistically speaking I have not found quite enough chests yet to find one Notch apple; I've found a total of 7 golden apples (of either type), which comes out to 88 chests, and 122 for one Notch apple.
I also found a "real" double dungeon, as in two regular dungeons joined together, rather than one of my "double dungeons" ("double double dungeons" are also possible and I found one while testing with an increased dungeon count); overall, I found 5, the most I've found in one day so far:
Finally, I found my first "big cave", with the main part being about 130 blocks long and up to 20 blocks wide:
Also, I modified my mod's associated "CaveFinder" utility to show cave/ravine information in a 3x3 chunk area centered around a given coordinate pair so I can see just how large the caves and ravines I find are without running the full search, which will find everything within a large area centered around the origin (the cave that I found is also not large enough to be shown by the utility; I only show caves with a calculated volume of 50000 or more, same for ravines):
Results found for the area from -96, -544 to -49, -497:
Found ravine with length of 160, width of 24, depth of 53, and volume of 91922 at -88, 35, -520
Results found for the area from -368, -464 to -321, -417:
Found cave with length of 210, width of 16, and volume of 18696 at -344, 18, -440
The ravine given is the one I found earlier, which I'd estimated to be 150 blocks long, 21 blocks wide, and 50 blocks deep (actual width is dependent in how far in the ledges along the sides extend, so ravines are often a 1-3 blocks narrower). The total length of a cave also includes branches, with the width applying to the width of the main cave segment, with branches at 50-75% of the total length and 33-66% of the width; unlike normal caves branches are much wider with a width dependent on the width of the main cave; unlike ravines caves can appear wider than they actually are because they are much curvier (in some older versions of my mods you could find ravines that looped around on themselves, sometimes multiple times, but I restricted their curvature to +/- 45 degrees from their initial heading, giving a maximum bend of 90 degrees).
I've also explored all the way to the extreme northwest corner of the map, at -512, -512:
The "huge" mineshaft that I mentioned before turned out to be quite large indeed - I mined a total of 757 rails from it - nearly four times as many as I got from each of the 11 mineshafts I'd explored previously (about 200 each), and about a quarter of all the rails I've collected so far. This was a single mineshaft, with only one dirt room (the starting point); a mineshaft this large in vanilla would be at least 2 separate mineshafts intersecting one another, which is a very common thing in 1.6.4 (I once generated 30 separate mineshafts in vanilla to see how large they were on average and found about 300 rails and 5 minecarts per mineshaft, and they took up about 0.9% of all blocks below sea level, or about a quarter of what caves take up, with ravines being about a third the volume of caves; the addition of mineshafts and ravines in Beta 1.8 increased the underground by 40-50% when accounting for overlap).
This is a zoomed-in screenshot of the "end" of a mineshaft corridor - or rather, unloaded chunks since it was that long (even vanilla-size mineshafts can span up to 160 blocks from end to end, enough to go out of Normal render distance, while the largest in TMCW can span 220; this is not very common in vanilla though since a corridor has to generate straight in two different directions from the center room):
The mineshaft also connected to another large cave - actually, two that generated in the same chunk (there is a 10% chance of 2-4 caves instead of just one, which forms the "large cave cluster" seen on the far right of center); one of the caves was only as wide as the widest "normal" cave, but longer (part of it went below the lava surface) while the other was 20 blocks wide, making it larger than the one I found before:
Results found for the area from -448, -496 to -401, -449:
Found cave with length of 200, width of 20, and volume of 24356 at -424, 24, -472
Found cave with length of 183, width of 9, and volume of 6375 at -424, 28, -472
These caves are actually quite common with an average of about one every 124 chunks, more common than mineshafts (about 1/167), but their average width is only about 13 blocks and ranges between 7-85; a rarer variant varies between 16-77 blocks, averaging 38.
Another thing that I found was a circular room which was at least 23 blocks in diameter, larger than the largest ones in vanilla (17 blocks). It was probably wider since it was mostly under lava. The largest can reach 50 blocks in diameter; unlike the largest types of caves these are normal circular rooms with additional width multipliers applied (one varies between 1-2 and controls circular rooms only; the other varies from 0.5-2 and controls all caves. The chance of a circular room also varies between 12.5%, 25% (the default) and 50%, with the chance of the circular room-specific width multiplier varying from 50%, 25%, 12.5% (the inverse of circular room chance, so the overall chance is always 6.25% or 1/16):
Here is an animation I made showing the large caves and mineshaft (not entirely shown; I go up in increments of 5 blocks starting from y=10; there were many levels):
I was returning to where I last left off from caving and came across an igloo, without a basement, in the Winter Forest that I first found 3 weeks ago; I did not find it until now because I didn't pass through this particular area until then, and the small size make it easy for trees to obstruct it (it was right at the edge, bordering ice plains but I never looked from that direction until now. Also, trees do not generate in chunks with igloos, so they will be in a small clearing if surrounded by forest):
Also, I got my first diamond drop from a mob; a diamond axe with Efficiency II and 25 durability left, dropped by a zombie, which can spawn with diamond tools (up to a 6.6% chance of weapons on Normal difficulty with a 80% being iron, 16% diamond, and 4% amethyst, with a 25% chance each of shovels, pickaxes, axes, and swords):
While I'm keeping it as a trophy even tools with 25, or even 0, durability can be used to repair other gear since you get a 5-12% bonus added, which in the case of the anvil (12%) adds 187 extra durability for diamond and 562 for amethyst (for comparison, repairing with a single unit restores 390 and 1171 durability, so a 25 durability item is worth 54% and 50% of a unit. Not really worth the repair cost but I have plenty of XP to spare).
Since the last time I posted an update I've found 3 more biomes for a total of 21 unique biomes (18 full-size biomes); Swampland, which is almost the same as vanilla 1.6.4 except sand does not generate and they have more clay and gravel and blue orchids (the one I found was mostly land. Blue orchids, as with all flowers, can be grown anywhere with bonemeal so they are only unique in this aspect in world generation), Hilly Plains, which is a variant of plains with increased height variation (no villages generate but horses do, there are also regular Plains as sub-biomes which could possibly be large enough for a village, particularly on Large Biomes), and Winter Taiga, which is basically the same as vanilla Taiga (Cold Taiga in 1.7+. I still wonder why Mojang made the old Taiga snowless instead of adding a snowless version as a new biome so older worlds would be unaffected). Igloos can also generate in Winter Taiga; compared to other structures they have a relatively high spawn rate, once per 256 chunks, but only around a quarter of attempts succeed (the main reason they fail is because the ground must be flat enough, plus they have to be entirely within a snowy biome, excluding Frozen River. Only Winter Forest and Taiga attempt to generate igloos, not just any snowy biome):
Play sessions spent caving: 29
Structures found (by number):
49 dungeons
41 ravines (up to 3 intersecting)
12 mineshafts
6 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
2 double dungeons (a special type counted separately, not two dungeons intersecting)
2 fossils
2 jungle temples
2 large caves (larger than vanilla)
2 villages
1 igloo (no basement)
1 large ravine (larger than vanilla)
1 stronghold
Biomes found (by order found):
Plains (technical biome)
Mixed Forest
Lake (technical biome)
Jungle
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (technical biome)
Desert
Tropical Swamp
Big Oak Forest
Snowless Taiga
Rocky Mountains
Ice Plains
Roofed Forest
Mesa
Winter Forest
Forest Mountains
Bushlands
Mountainous Desert
Swampland
Hilly Plains
Winter Taiga
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher):
156 (Rocky Mountains)
165 (Ice Mountains)
Largest ravine:
160 blocks long, 24 blocks wide, 53 blocks deep
I do not wear a helmet as part as my normal armor but I pick up any helmets that mobs drop and wear them, which may be leather, chain, gold, or iron. Sometimes I get more than one at a time; I had a second chain helmet ready to be combined with the one I was wearing when it lost enough durability. Some of them have also had quite good enchantments, such as a gold helmet I recently found with Projectile Protection IV, Respiration III, and Aqua Affinity, which I would have kept (the material doesn't matter since I only wear it when needed) if I had not already made a helmet using books I got from enchanting with the latter two enchantments for underwater work, such as gathering sand or building a railway, which often pass through water since I build them just below sea level.
One interesting thing that I've noticed is that if a mob picks up an item dropped by another mob it may drop what it is wearing - at full durability; I've (unintentionally) gotten several intact helmets this way and despite a lower drop chance (5% instead of 8.5%; Looting III increases this to 11%, about the same as vanilla, 11.5%, but I don't use it) I've been able to wear a helmet most of the time; I have also not been keeping every one that drops unless it is the same material or has more durability or better enchantments.
Another uncommon source of helmets is dungeons, which have a small chance of any piece of iron armor and iron swords; I believe I've found one iron helmet so far, as well as one in the stronghold, where they are much more likely to be found, if not strongholds themselves (at my rate of exploration I'd find one stronghold about every 3 months).
Also, it is worth mentioning that I've only used up about half the durability of my bow in nearly a month of use (194 the last time I looked at it), which amounts to about 26 uses per day (760 total with Unbreaking III); I mention this since the nerf to Mending and Infinity bows in 1.11 means that you have to choose between Infinity or Mending, neither of which are necessary in my case (I've killed at least twice as many skeletons per day, which drop an average of 1 arrow each, and I could repair it 10 times, after accounting for 2 operations to add Power V and Unbreaking III, before it became too expensive). Usually though, I partially repair it with bows dropped by skeletons by around 50% when it gets to around 25% durability so I repair it about twice as often as necessary (incremental repairs have the advantage that you do not *need* to repair your items when they *can* be repaired at the cost of more XP, and in the case of tools, resources, though it is not possible to fully repair amethyst items regardless of enchantments).
For comparison, I've had to repair my armor and sword twice so far, both times all in succession; in other words, they all went below 25% durability at about the same time; since armor has 4500 durability and tools have 4686 this means that each repair restores 1124 for armor and 1171 for tools (4684 uses with Unbreaking, which is not used on armor, so I've dealt about 4 hits for every hit taken). My pickaxe has seen around 21 repairs so far, with more than 100,000 uses already; this alone has consumed nearly half the amethyst I've found while caving and a much greater portion of resources compared to using diamond gear in vanilla when I used individual diamonds to repair armor and sword, prior to trading for them (I used around 1/5-1/4 of the diamonds I found for repairs, with about half that for my pickaxe).
I know that you have played on the download for my first world; this world is not really that different at all, aside from the modded items and world generation, which also means that you can only play this world with the mod installed in 1.6.4, while my first world should be compatible with any later vanilla version. If you want to play with the mod I'd suggest making a new world to get the full experience of the mod; the seed I used is "TMCWv4" or "-1816924181"; using the "NoExclusion" patch included removes the restriction on special types of caves near the origin so you can easily find them without searching (or you can use the included "CaveFinder" utility to find them, which came out of a program I used to find them while testing).
Also, my modded amethyst items, which I've seen you using before instead of the diamond items that I use, are not any better than vanilla diamond with more durability, and actually worse when you consider how expensive they are to repair (I have no problem getting enough XP but everybody else seems to reply on XP farms even with Mending (vanilla's version) greatly reducing costs):
That's exactly the same as a renamed diamond sword in vanilla 1.6.4 (renamed so the prior work penalty does not increase, which is what my version of Mending does; I did not even rename my armor since it is now only cosmetic) - which costs only 39 levels to fully repair with a slightly damaged sword (1512 durability or less, which can fully restore it because there is a 12% bonus added) for 33% more durability and 40% of the per-use cost (of course, in TMCWv4 diamond swords deal 1 less damage, the same as iron in vanilla; similarly, diamond armor is basically like vanilla iron with 6 times the durability, even amethyst armor only blocks 66% of damage for about twice the per-repair durability for a chestplate, and has a similarly high repair cost (35 levels for one unit for Protection IV + Mending; if you add Unbreaking III it costs 42 levels) and amethyst being 3-8 times rarer depending on how you find it).
Meanwhile, I saw some more interesting things today; first, while going through a cave system that I'd pretty much finished exploring I found a cave that I'd missed which was absolutely packed with mobs; by the time I killed all of them I had 34 levels, up from 26. This included a spider dungeon, which spawned a dozen or so spiders before I cleared it; overall I killed more than 500 mobs today, including 250 zombies and 100 each of skeletons and creepers, and have been killing far more than in vanilla lately (I averaged about 275 mobs per play session in my first world while lately 300-400 is typical; this is largely because I reduced the radius within which hostile mobs spawn from 128 to 96 blocks. My all-time single play session record is 748, set in my first world; I could easily kill more than 1000 with an extended session as I did then; that session is also my all-time record for most resources mined and XP gathered, while caving):
(the cave continued on to the right, blocked with cobblestone, with even more mobs)
Later on I came across another zombie with amethyst armor (they came from a nearby surface opening, where it was night, hence the zombie holding an egg. Also, while not the issue it was in 1.7.4, zombies picking up eggs and other items and going into caves and other sheltered areas do slowly accumulate over time; MCEdit showed around 150 excess zombies in my first world):
I found a Roofed Forest hills going up to y=128, the third time I've come across such high terrain (fourth if you count a single floating block). The treetops went as high as y=135:
As is often the case, i saw the hill (mountain) while returning to where I last left off, as seen by the marker near the center:
Unlike the other cases this was just a "normal" hills biome, which mostly have a base height of 0.75 and a height variation of 1, which compares to 0.2 and 0.7 for most biomes (only a relative handful of biomes use different values; this makes terrain variation much like Beta, where biomes did not affect height variation) and 0.3 and 1.5 for vanilla Extreme Hills (so they should be able to easily exceed y=128 if it weren't for the game compressing heights starting around y=100. In 1.7 they basically reversed the values so most of their elevation is due to the ground being pushed up, not height variation).
I also found a third double dungeon today, spawning witches and spiders, the 56th dungeon (53 normal dungeons) that I've found so far, as well as the 14th mineshaft and 45th ravine. Over 32 sessions this comes out to one double dungeon every 10.67 sessions, one mineshaft every 2.29 sessions, 1.4 ravines per session, and 1.75 dungeons per session.
I've also mined the following ores so far; while there are some differences in ore distribution compared to vanilla to account for the ground being slightly deeper the relative amounts are all pretty much the same as what I found in my first world, aside from emerald and the two mod ores (emerald is expected to be about half as common overall based on the frequency of the biomes it generates in compared to vanilla; amethyst is technically more common than emerald or ruby but most of it is in the lowest 2 layers):
One thing that would make a difference would be finding a Volcanic Wasteland biome, which has more of all ores, including relatively more of the rarer ores than coal or iron, with emerald (in actual veins, not just single blocks) and amethyst being particularly common (elsewhere it has the same range and other stats as diamond but only 1/8 of chunks can have ore above y=2, in addition to the normal chance of a vein being above that layer, which is 6/16; this means there is a 1 in 21.3 chance of a vein above y=2, while diamond is 1 in 2.67). In the long run though it wouldn't do much given how much I mine; it is also one of the rarest biomes, with a 0.89% chance of generating in normal climate zones (0.36% in hot and 0.29% in cold).
I came across another village, the third one so far, just off the southern edge of the map:
Well, not just a village; I saw this while building a wall around the village (surprised that I didn't see it earlier, as it was right in the open):
Another igloo; like the first one it did not have a basement. Here is another screenshot of both structures after I secured the village:
In addition, I found wolves in the taiga near the village; if this were vanilla they would have despawned long ago and I've never seen any in vanilla since 1.6 (1.6 added the 2 minute despawn timer, which I removed in one of the first versions of TMCW, long before Mojang removed it in 1.10):
Also, I found what appeared to be a quite large mineshaft - actually, it was two separate mineshafts connected together, which is very common in vanilla 1.6.4, and often with more than two, but is the exception in TMCW, and the only actual overlap was this 3 support long section:
You can see why overlapping mineshafts can be quite obnoxious; the only way through this is to mine the fences sticking out of the ground, or just go around it as I did; they can also be arranged so there is only 1 block of vertical space between floors.
Also, the mineshaft crosses over what appears to be a very large cave or ravine (or ravine over a big cave); I did not get a good look except there is a giant lake of lava far below, wide enough that water flows from the sides went only about a quarter of the way across.
I've nearly filled in the map centered around the origin; the location marker at the bottom is where the village and igloo are:
I did a lot of jumping today, a lot more than usual - because I found a vertical cave system, one of the special types of cave systems that I added, which mainly consists of caves which go up/down at a steep angle, in contrast with ordinary caves, which are mostly horizontal (for normal caves there is a 1 in 6 chance that vertical variation will be increased, leading to the caves that go straight up/down but they are not always vertical, and in this case, a bit too vertical to make an entire cave system with them):
There are often very long water/lava flows in these cave systems since it can often flow uninterrupted from the top to the bottom of a cave; I first discovered it by going up a cave which had lava flowing from y=45 to y=15:
This is a side view of a vertical cave system, as seen by itself in MCEdit (not the one I explored but in a test world; I used a filter to place the torches):
I also got a better look at the giant ravine I saw before, which has turned out to be at least 4 intersecting ravines (the most I've found so far, previously two separate sets of 3), one of which is very large indeed; I have only explored two of them so far since I got distracted by the vertical cave system, which was at the end of one of the two ravines:
A surreal sight - the rising sun seen underground:
Another look a bit further in; there is normal size ravine on the left:
Here is an update on what I've explored so far; I included a separate rendering of the vertical cave in the lower-right:
Play sessions spent caving: 35
Structures found (by number):
57 dungeons
52 ravines (up to 3 intersecting)*
17 mineshafts
7 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
4 double dungeons (a special type, not two dungeons intersecting)
3 villages
2 fossils
2 jungle temples
2 igloos (no basements)
2 large caves (larger than vanilla)
2 large ravines (larger than vanilla)
1 stronghold
1 vertical cave system
Biomes found (by order found):
Plains (technical biome)
Mixed Forest
Lake (technical biome)
Jungle
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (technical biome)
Desert
Tropical Swamp
Big Oak Forest
Snowless Taiga
Rocky Mountains
Ice Plains
Roofed Forest
Mesa
Winter Forest
Forest Mountains
Bushlands
Mountainous Desert
Swampland
Hilly Plains
Winter Taiga
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher):
165 (Ice Mountains)
156 (Rocky Mountains)
128 (Roofed Forest Hills)
*Ravines does not include the other two ravines, only the two that I fully explored (lit up and mined out).
**The large ravine I just found is definitely the largest one I've found so far but this will not be updated until I've explored it.
I decided that it was time to build a new base after having gone quite far off the map while exploring what has turned out to be a very large complex of caves, ravines, and mineshafts, including the ravines mentioned before, as well as at least one large cave (about as large as the other two that I've found; it is at the top the giant ravine and is where I had my first look at it. I've likely found several more but they have not stood out as being unusually large).
I dug a railway south towards z=1024, coming up at around z=950 to see what the terrain was like since I didn't want to build in a mountainous area or in one of several biomes with giant trees; I ended up stopping just short of z=1024 in the middle of a Frozen Lake (a separate biome, not land that dipped below sea level) and built a base right on top of the ice:
My secondary bases are basically just places to restock on food and wood and temporarily store resources before bringing them back to my main base, so they are nothing fancy:
Here is a look at the map before I zoomed it out:
I also got my last achievement:
Ironically, I didn't even make any (normal) rails since I've gotten more than 4,000 from mineshafts (including more than 1,000 over the past few days), same for the minecarts themselves (I actually didn't collect any minecarts until today, when I went to the nearest mineshaft to my main base to get some), and half the powered rails I used came from them as well since I added them to minecarts, along with activator and detector rails (I've never used those).
It took me more than a week of real time playing to get it, although that was just because I didn't want to make a rail just to get an achievement which doesn't really do anything:
Aside from a couple rivers and lakes and a few caves (I ran into none for the first 700 blocks) I did not run into any major obstacles; I half-expected to hit a giant cave or ravine, even the one I've mentioned previously (a ravine that wide is wide enough to cut through the entire ground below sea level if it is near the center; the largest can do so if they are within a +/- 5 block range).
It is interesting to note that despite the number of snowy biomes I've been finding to the south it doesn't appear that there is a cold climate zone, or a small one (around 1000x1000 blocks), since I've seen several "hot" biomes which are not allowed to generate in cold climate zones, including the desert I recently found with a village, as well as a jungle close to where I built my new base, and a mesa in the (unrendered) southeastern corner of the spawn map (none are within it so it may be a small one; I don't know how far south it goes).
After a full week I've finally finished exploring the region around the giant ravine I found - one of the biggest ravines that I've ever explored, with the possible exception of my triple height terrain mod. It was also one of five intersecting ravines, the most that I've ever found in Survival, previously on three other occasions, two of them in my first world and the other in my previous world (all of these were normal-sized), and I found another large ravine nearby. Overall, I explored a total of 9 ravines and 5 mineshafts around the area; it took me so long to explore the giant ravine because my method of exploring them usually involves exploring all the side caves and mineshafts first and there were a lot of them.
After analyzing the area I found that it was 336 blocks long - making it the longest ravine possible:
Results found for the area from -144, 544 to -97, 591:
Found ravine with length of 336, width of 24, depth of 53, and volume of 194787 at -120, 24, 568
The other large ravine was only 100 blocks long and distinguishable from normal ravines by its width, as well as the depth at the ends (in vanilla ravines have a fixed height:width ratio of 3, while in TMCW normal ravines increase up to 4.5 and large ravines increase up to 6, with the latter decreasing down to about 1.8 at the maximum width so they are not so deep, 70 blocks instead of 117):
Results found for the area from -400, 416 to -353, 463:
Found ravine with length of 100, width of 19, depth of 47, and volume of 41529 at -376, 22, 440
There was also a large cave at the top of one end of the giant ravine, where I had the first look at it; the cave was not actually as large as it appeared since it curved around on itself but was recognizable due to the fact that their branches are wider than usual (vanilla and normal caves have branches that are always 4-5 blocks in maximum width; large caves are 1/3-2/3 of the maximum diameter. The minimum diameter of the main cave and branches also increases from 3.5 to 5 blocks as width increases):
Results found for the area from -304, 560 to -257, 607:
Found cave with length of 115, width of 14, and volume of 8088 at -280, 26, 584
I've likely found several other large caves but I'm only counting ones that stand out as unusually large (this cave is just over the maximum vanilla length of 112 blocks, while they can reach up to 27 blocks in maximum width; however, this width will only be attained if they branch no sooner than 50% of their length, while large caves always branch at or past that point).
This is the smaller large ravine, which intersected another normal-sized ravine:
Note that if this ravine had been larger it would have prevented the mineshaft in it from generating; in addition to caves and special cave systems larger caves and ravines also prevent them from generating, which includes both the width of individual caves and ravines as well as the sum of the width of all large caves and ravines in the area (so several smaller ones can disable them).
And now the giant ravine:
These screenshots were both taken from the same point along the x-axis near the middle of its length; I only moved a bit to the south to take the second one due to the curvature:
Yes, that is a separate mineshaft from the one seen above, with yet another mineshaft further away at one end:
Also, these are the other ravines that intersected it, in the order I found (explored) them:
The first ravine shown also intersected another ravine, the first one I actually found:
There was also a large cave at the top of one end of the giant ravine:
In addition I saw my third diamond armored mob, a zombie in full enchanted diamond armor:
Here is an updated underground map; the giant ravine is near the lower-right but is mostly obscured by all the mineshafts and caves around it, so I included a couple slices showing all five intersecting ravines and the big ravine more clearly:
This is probably the last time I can make a full-size map without reducing the quality beyond 256 indexed colors since if it exceeds 1 MB Imgur will resize it. You can also see my railway cutting across across the map from the top-center to the lower-right (my new base is further off the map, likewise, I have not been including the stronghold I found, which would be well off to the left):
All five intersecting ravines, along with the center rooms of three mineshafts, can be seen here:
A deeper slice of the giant ravine by itself:
Interestingly, despite how cluttered it appears on the cave rendering there don't seem to be that many caves; the numerous caves that are visible about a third of the way from the left end of the ravine and above it are from the vertical cave system.
Can you kill the wither or raid an ocean monument (if the mod supports that)?
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC21Z2rupws5IulGQMxB1Plg
I don't have the incentive to kill the Wither; I've only ever gotten two Wither skeleton skulls, in separate worlds, by accident and don't want to invest the time into getting more, plus the reward is not very useful to me unless it could work anywhere in the world (which would be overpowered); a 100x100 block area is not that large at all - the largest caves in my mod can get larger than that and even vanilla-sized ravines get up to 112 blocks long. Not that I haven't killed it before (after building one in a Creative test world and killing it in Survival mode).
I did not add ocean monuments, largely because of their complexity (just to add in igloos or fossils required more than 600 lines of code each) and that I do not want to add any mobs or blocks that require new rendering methods since it would destroy compatibility with Optifine (I could easily mod Optifine itself for compatibility for myself but distributing it would be illegal). Even if I did add them I don't seek out any structures except for a stronghold; as I mentioned in this thread I basically explore the world from underground - the only things that I have not found while caving are the biomes around spawn and along the path to the stronghold, the stronghold itself, a village along the way to the stronghold, and a dungeon connected to a cave I found while branch-mining for resources.
That said, I was about to post an update on what I found recently - a fossil, a double dungeon, and a new biome:
The fossil before and after I excavated it; it was the smallest type of spine. These generate similarly to fossils in 1.10, with a 1/64 chance per chunk (not entirely random, but to an 8x8 chunk grid with a relative offset of 0-6, so you'll never find two in adjacent chunks, which could cause them to overlap). Also, they only have missing blocks if there is air where a block will be placed, and coal ore generates around bone blocks instead of replacing them, so they will be entirely intact if they are completely buried. They also only generate if at least 3 out of 8 corners are not exposed, to prevent them from generating in midair inside of larger caves or ravines:
I also found a double dungeon - not two normal dungeons connected together but a special type of dungeon with 2 spawners and 2-3 chests, and chiseled stone bricks in place of cobblestone in the floor (like normal dungeons the walls may be cobblestone, stone bricks or a mix of normal/cracked/mossy stone bricks). They also come in two sizes, 7x11 or 9x13 (overall size, normal dungeons are 7x7, 7x9, or 9x9, with the interior being 2 blocks smaller), with the latter having the spawners offset from the center. This one was a 9x13 dungeon with a zombie and a witch spawner; the spawners will always be of different types:
These were both found in a large cave system (by 1.6.4 standards; I would say it is certainly within the 20 largest that I've found in my first world), including a triple ravine:
A third, smaller ravine intersected the upper ravine:
Also, you may have noticed that the walls in some areas are sandstone; this is because sandstone extends much deeper underground than it does in vanilla, down to around y=40 with some variation. the floors of caves within this layer will be sand as well; both are placed after ores are generated, which otherwise only replace stone. Dirt and gravel pockets are also replaced with sand within these layers:
I also got this screenshot of a zombie dying after I knocked it down (almost into lava):
Finally, after I surfaced to return home I checked out what was obviously a new biome on the map, which turned out to be Bushlands, a relatively flat, plains-like biome with small bushes, the largest ones similar to the groundcover in jungles but made up of spruce leaves and 1-2 spruce logs, while the smallest have one log placed in the ground with as few as one leaf block over it (only the larger variant will grow if you plant a spruce sapling in this biome since the smaller variant destroys the block it grows on):
Here are updated maps and a list of what I've found so far:
The fossil shows up as orange on this map, near the top of the sandstone areas on the left; they are orange because my bone blocks use ID 180, which is red sandstone stairs in vanilla (this can be changed with a custom colors file):
Play sessions spent caving: 17
Structures found (by number):
29 dungeons
23 ravines (up to 3 intersecting)
9 mineshafts
3 large cave systems
2 jungle temples
2 villages
1 double dungeon
1 fossil
1 stronghold
Biomes found (by order found):
Plains (technical biome)
Mixed Forest
Lake (technical biome)
Jungle
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (technical biome)
Desert
Tropical Swamp
Big Oak Forest
Snowless Taiga
Rocky Mountains
Ice Plains
Roofed Forest
Mesa
Winter Forest
Forest Mountains
Bushlands
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher):
156 (Rocky Mountains)
165 (Ice Mountains)
Also, in contrast to my experience earlier on, I have not found any new mineshafts since my last post, since they can only generate in areas with a low enough cave density. I should also start finding more interesting caves soon, since I've been exploring up to and just past the 32 chunk/512 block radius within which only vanilla-like caves generate.
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?
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC21Z2rupws5IulGQMxB1Plg
I gave a link to it on the first page, where you can also find older versions (this is the fourth version I've made; note that for the most part they are not compatible with each other; at the least you'll get chunk walls where world generation changed).
I also regularly update it; for example, I recently added giant mushrooms to giant cave regions (25% of 2x2 chunk areas) to make them more unique, similar to how network cave regions increase the chance of a double dungeon from 5% to 20%:
I've also included several utilities within the download for TMCWv4; one gives you the locations of all types of special caves, strongholds, and mineshafts so you don't need to search for them if you want to see them yourself (I originally made it to easily find them and verify that they generated correctly); for example, this is for the seed which I mainly used while testing:
(the volume of caves and ravines is very approximate and does not account for factors like going below lava level or above sea level or curving around on themselves, which can also make them appear wider than they actually are. The largest possible cave has a length of 336 and width of 85 while the largest ravine is 336 and 39)
Also, I think I'll make a version (really just a patch, since only a couple classes need to be changed) that does not have the "exclusion zone" near the origin, which I mainly added so it takes a bit of exploring to find everything (which was not that much back then, where there were only "colossal" cave systems, similar to a large cave system in my first world, and larger caves and ravines. I even did this for structures like villages at one point so I would not spawn next to one but later removed it). Even then, "giant cave regions" only occur once every 16384 chunks on average, covering less than 2% of that area (for perspective, I explored around 60000 chunks in my first world over about 100 days of playtime so that's more than 27 days, 6 months when factoring in daily playtime).
I do not really have any notable seeds that I found while testing since I mainly used one seed, "10", which spawns you in a Hilly Plains (more properly, a Plains sub-biome within it, similar to how I spawned in one within a Mixed Forest) next to a Mega Forest, with Rocky Mountains to the south, a Desert further south, Extreme Hills to the west, a Mesa to the northwest, and Ice Plains, including a village, off to the east:
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 I mentioned previously, I added an update that removes the exclusion of special types of caves from near the origin so they are easier to find without searching; for example, here is a comparison of the seed "10" with and without the exclusion:
Even ordinary cave systems are altered, with more/fewer/wider/narrower/curvier/straighter/etc caves within 3/4 of 16x16 chunk regions, with each region using a different (randomized) set of values. Caves and ravines near the corners are unchanged since they are outside of the exclusion zone.
This is a good example of what I mean by more interesting things when I've referred to finding them in previous posts - a ravine so large that it cuts all the way through the ground, more than 60 blocks deep (lava level is y=4 and sea level is y=63 so the underground is 7 layers deeper than in vanilla) and so long that even on Far render distance the other end goes out of rendered chunks (a smaller ravine runs right into the northern end, with the entire thing well over 300 blocks long):
I also made a minor tweak to ravine generation; I noticed that by excluding larger ones from near the origin they were slightly less common (one every 54.5 chunks instead of one every 50 chunks) so I added a small additional chance of one generating within that area (in the normal mod) which adds an extra ravine about once every 630 chunks (existing ravines are not affected and the chances of one generating at the edges of existing chunks is very low so I'll likely not run into cut-off ravines; this increase amounts to 2 additional ravines when considering what I've found 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 found another double dungeon, with skeleton and witch spawners - and something much rarer - a skeleton in full amethyst armor:
It took quite a bit of effort to bring it under control as you can see from the holes mined in the walls and torches scattered about; I dug around the outside so I could place them. Not only that, there was a cave spider spawner right next to it, though the cobwebs slowed down the mobs spawned by the dungeon (I came in from the cave spider side, otherwise it would have been even harder to bring down; cave spider spawners spawn mobs faster than vanilla as well, with half the maximum delay, 10-20 seconds instead of 10-40).
The chance of a mob with amethyst armor at maximum "regional" difficulty on Normal is one in 5,000; a 50/50 chance of leather or gold followed by three 20% chances of incrementing it by one tier, then if it is diamond a 25% chance of amethyst, for the following probabilities of various tiers, multiplied by a 20% chance of any armor:
Leather: 25.6%
Gold: 44.8%
Chain: 24%
Iron: 5.2%
Diamond: 0.3%
Amethyst: 0.1%
The chance of a full set of armor is 65.1% on Normal* so this was a one in 7,680 event. *Unlike vanilla this increases between Easy and Normal, with Hard being the same as vanilla, a 72.9% chance, and Easy having a 51.2% chance, higher than vanilla's 42.19%. It is also dependent on "regional" difficulty, increasing from a minimum of 21.6% on all difficulty levels. As mentioned before my "regional" difficulty is based on total time played and moon phase (until it reaches the cap) and I've spent more than 100 hours playing (122 to be exact) so these chances are fixed at these values.
Despite a higher chance of dropping amethyst gear (10% vs 5%, and 8.5% in vanilla) it did not drop anything (it may have with Looting, which acts as a multiplier instead of adding a fixed 1% per level so normal drops have up to a 11% chance (vs 11.5% in vanilla) and amethyst a 22% chance of dropping).
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?
Only a day after seeing a skeleton in amethyst armor I saw a zombie in full diamond armor:
I also saw another cave spider jockey:
A skeleton with a Flame bow, which is more common than the others; I've gotten several in one day, as well as skeletons with Punch bows (which is often self-defeating; if they knock you back too far they stop tracking you):
I also found another fossil, one of the larger ribs, although I did not excavate this one; it was in a cave connected to what is technically the first ravine that I found, while searching for a stronghold (I do not count ravines as explored until I've fully lit them up and mined them out so this was the 31st ravine that I've found so far):
Also, part of the desert I found the village in is actually a Mountainous Desert, which I thought was just Desert Hills when I saw it earlier; Mountainous Desert is basically like all-Desert Hills, plus its own hills sub-biome with even higher peaks (I've seen them up to y=140 while testing), as well as normal desert sub-biomes, sometimes large enough to generate villages (this desert appears to be two separate biomes given the size of the regular desert and the fact that sub-biomes are always surrounded by their parent biome, except where rivers cut through).
Mountainous Desert is also one of several biomes with more caves near to above sea level, taking advantage of the biome-specific underground, which in deserts is all sandstone down to y=40 (with random variation as with vanilla sandstone), with sand lining the floors of caves and pockets of sand replacing dirt and gravel. Other biomes like this are Mesa (hardened/stained clay with pockets of normal clay, there are also extra caves above sea level here), Ice Hills (packed ice with pockets of snow), and Ice Plains Spikes (snow with pockets of packed ice):
Here is an update on what I've found/explored so far; I still have not found any larger caves or ravines or other variants of caves but I've still found a lot more interesting things than in vanilla:
Structures found (by number):
32 dungeons
32 ravines (up to 3 intersecting)
11 mineshafts
4 large cave systems
2 double dungeona
2 fossils
2 jungle temples
2 villages
1 stronghold
Biomes found (by order found):
Plains (technical biome)
Mixed Forest
Lake (technical biome)
Jungle
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (technical biome)
Desert
Tropical Swamp
Big Oak Forest
Snowless Taiga
Rocky Mountains
Ice Plains
Roofed Forest
Mesa
Winter Forest
Forest Mountains
Bushlands
Mountainous Desert
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher):
156 (Rocky Mountains)
165 (Ice Mountains)
(the definition of "large cave system" is a bit subjective; I'm using it to refer to cave systems dense enough to appear as a solid mass on this map)
Also, here is a comparison of my current world to my first world:
Eventually, I will move off of the current map (centered around 0,0) and make a secondary base at the center of a new map, most likely either to the north or east, the latter of which would get me "on a rail", the only achievement that I have not gotten yet, since level 3 map centers are 1024 blocks apart (my base is near 0, -256 so if I went north I would only be 768 blocks from the center; when going east I would make a railway going south to 0,0 before turning east). I've found enough rails to make a track more than twice as long, plus a dozen or so powered rails (I replaced regular rails in minecarts with powered/activator/detector rails). This also means that I'll certainly start finding new types of caves soon; the new types of caves and cave systems that I added make up around 20% of the underground, with 75% of the remaining 80% of "normal" caves altered in some way.
Here is a simple ASCII map that shows how caves are placed; the square around the center represents a level 3 map centered around 0,0, while the whole area covers a level 4 map, which includes everything for this particular seed (12) but is not guaranteed to (an area larger than about +/- 1500 blocks from the origin is guaranteed to have everything due to their spacing and placement; Eyes of Ender were designed with a maximum distance to the nearest stronghold of no more than 2048 blocks along an axis, any further and they will not work):
For an example of how far away strongholds, which have a 40 chunk exclusion radius, can be, here are the closest strongholds for seeds 1-50 (these locations are the center of the spiral staircase that is their starting point, offset to the southeast by 4 blocks from the northwest corner of the chunk they start in):
1: -716, -684 (990 blocks away)
2: -716, -652 (968 blocks away)
3: -860, -332 (922 blocks away)
4: -684, -540 (871 blocks away)
5: -124, 836 (845 blocks away)
6: 36, 772 (773 blocks away)
7: -60, -796 (798 blocks away)
8: -92, -700 (706 blocks away)
9: -508, -524 (730 blocks away)
10: -476, -556 (732 blocks away)
11: -620, -156 (639 blocks away)
12: 484, 644 (806 blocks away)
13: 372, -1004 (1071 blocks away)
14: 244, -796 (833 blocks away)
15: 52, -652 (654 blocks away)
16: -668, 916 (1134 blocks away)
17: 1028, -732 (1262 blocks away)
18: 980, 1124 (1491 blocks away)
19: -620, 180 (646 blocks away)
20: 676, -652 (939 blocks away)
21: -620, 452 (767 blocks away)
22: -636, 596 (872 blocks away)
23: -620, -1180 (1333 blocks away)
24: -540, 788 (955 blocks away)
25: -908, -748 (1176 blocks away)
26: -748, -1148 (1370 blocks away)
27: 628, -348 (718 blocks away)
28: -732, -444 (856 blocks away)
29: 20, 708 (708 blocks away)
30: -44, 692 (693 blocks away)
31: 596, 292 (664 blocks away)
32: 84, 1028 (1031 blocks away)
33: 772, 308 (831 blocks away)
34: 756, 212 (785 blocks away)
35: -860, -492 (991 blocks away)
36: 596, 468 (758 blocks away)
37: -892, -60 (894 blocks away)
38: -652, -684 (945 blocks away)
39: -140, 852 (863 blocks away)
40: 404, 804 (900 blocks away)
41: -236, -828 (861 blocks away)
42: 772, 116 (781 blocks away)
43: 308, 580 (657 blocks away)
44: 900, 804 (1207 blocks away)
45: -620, -284 (682 blocks away)
46: 788, 644 (1018 blocks away)
47: 404, -764 (864 blocks away)
48: -828, 260 (868 blocks away)
49: -764, 980 (1243 blocks away)
50: 1060, 436 (1146 blocks away)
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
After 22 days of caving I've finally something different from the usual vanilla-like caves - a ravine that was about 150 blocks long, 21 blocks wide and 50 blocks deep:
Note that lava level is y=4 instead of y=11, so just below me is a 58 block drop though the ceiling of a cave just below the ravine, which went down to y=9 (if I did fall I'd get close to 7 hearts of damage due to Feather Falling + Protection maxing out at 75% damage reduction; unlike vanilla, which is a random 52-80% this is a fixed amount; since 1.9 it is also fixed at up to 80% or about 5 1/2 hearts of damage):
As far as giant ravines go, this one was relatively small; they can reach up to 336 blocks long, 39 blocks wide, and 70 blocks deep, with an air volume of over 400,000 blocks (for perspective, that is more than twice the volume of the largest cave system I found in my first world, with more than 200 individual caves and several ravines. The largest caves can get even larger, around half a million air blocks):
The same seed but using a range of +/-8192 blocks (the maximum range my search utility accepts; a search takes about half a minute at this point) and showing only the top 10 results:
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?
So, I was exploring a huge mineshaft (one of the larger ones that can be found more than 512 blocks from the origin) and came across not one but TWO creeper dungeons almost next to each other - and one of them had something very rare and valuable in it:
The second dungeon:
Both dungeons can be seen here:
And here is what I found in the second dungeon:
A Notch apple, by far the rarest thing that can be found in any chests, and far rarer than they are in 1.9 since they only generate in dungeon chests and the chance is much lower, as seen by these results when I calculated the chances of a chest having 1 or more, as well as any golden apples:
For comparison, since 1.9 the chance of a golden apple (both types) in a dungeon chest is one in 4 and the chance of a Notch apple is one in 32. Prior to 1.9 there was a one in 13.9 chance of a regular golden apple (in both cases, the chance of any; to determine the chances given above I looped over the code that places items into a chest 100 million times and counted the number placed during each run).
Also, in theory, up to 20 apples or stacks of other items can be found in a chest since up to 20 attempts are made at placing items in a chest, although the distribution is non-uniform and previously placed items can be overwritten (the minimum number of attempts is 6, but as few as 2 items were placed over 100 million runs):
So far I've found 39 regular dungeons and 2 double dungeons, with an average of somewhat less than 2 chests per dungeon (regular dungeons have 1-2 and double dungeons have 2-3; unlike vanilla, which makes 3 attempts each at placing 2 chests I make 20 attempts each of placing 1-2 or 2-3 chests; the high number of attempts per chest means that they are nearly guaranteed to generate and makes it easier to control how many chests there are), so statistically speaking I have not found quite enough chests yet to find one Notch apple; I've found a total of 7 golden apples (of either type), which comes out to 88 chests, and 122 for one Notch apple.
I also found a "real" double dungeon, as in two regular dungeons joined together, rather than one of my "double dungeons" ("double double dungeons" are also possible and I found one while testing with an increased dungeon count); overall, I found 5, the most I've found in one day so far:
Finally, I found my first "big cave", with the main part being about 130 blocks long and up to 20 blocks wide:
Also, I modified my mod's associated "CaveFinder" utility to show cave/ravine information in a 3x3 chunk area centered around a given coordinate pair so I can see just how large the caves and ravines I find are without running the full search, which will find everything within a large area centered around the origin (the cave that I found is also not large enough to be shown by the utility; I only show caves with a calculated volume of 50000 or more, same for ravines):
The ravine given is the one I found earlier, which I'd estimated to be 150 blocks long, 21 blocks wide, and 50 blocks deep (actual width is dependent in how far in the ledges along the sides extend, so ravines are often a 1-3 blocks narrower). The total length of a cave also includes branches, with the width applying to the width of the main cave segment, with branches at 50-75% of the total length and 33-66% of the width; unlike normal caves branches are much wider with a width dependent on the width of the main cave; unlike ravines caves can appear wider than they actually are because they are much curvier (in some older versions of my mods you could find ravines that looped around on themselves, sometimes multiple times, but I restricted their curvature to +/- 45 degrees from their initial heading, giving a maximum bend of 90 degrees).
I've also explored all the way to the extreme northwest corner of the map, at -512, -512:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
The "huge" mineshaft that I mentioned before turned out to be quite large indeed - I mined a total of 757 rails from it - nearly four times as many as I got from each of the 11 mineshafts I'd explored previously (about 200 each), and about a quarter of all the rails I've collected so far. This was a single mineshaft, with only one dirt room (the starting point); a mineshaft this large in vanilla would be at least 2 separate mineshafts intersecting one another, which is a very common thing in 1.6.4 (I once generated 30 separate mineshafts in vanilla to see how large they were on average and found about 300 rails and 5 minecarts per mineshaft, and they took up about 0.9% of all blocks below sea level, or about a quarter of what caves take up, with ravines being about a third the volume of caves; the addition of mineshafts and ravines in Beta 1.8 increased the underground by 40-50% when accounting for overlap).
This is a zoomed-in screenshot of the "end" of a mineshaft corridor - or rather, unloaded chunks since it was that long (even vanilla-size mineshafts can span up to 160 blocks from end to end, enough to go out of Normal render distance, while the largest in TMCW can span 220; this is not very common in vanilla though since a corridor has to generate straight in two different directions from the center room):
The mineshaft also connected to another large cave - actually, two that generated in the same chunk (there is a 10% chance of 2-4 caves instead of just one, which forms the "large cave cluster" seen on the far right of center); one of the caves was only as wide as the widest "normal" cave, but longer (part of it went below the lava surface) while the other was 20 blocks wide, making it larger than the one I found before:
These caves are actually quite common with an average of about one every 124 chunks, more common than mineshafts (about 1/167), but their average width is only about 13 blocks and ranges between 7-85; a rarer variant varies between 16-77 blocks, averaging 38.
Another thing that I found was a circular room which was at least 23 blocks in diameter, larger than the largest ones in vanilla (17 blocks). It was probably wider since it was mostly under lava. The largest can reach 50 blocks in diameter; unlike the largest types of caves these are normal circular rooms with additional width multipliers applied (one varies between 1-2 and controls circular rooms only; the other varies from 0.5-2 and controls all caves. The chance of a circular room also varies between 12.5%, 25% (the default) and 50%, with the chance of the circular room-specific width multiplier varying from 50%, 25%, 12.5% (the inverse of circular room chance, so the overall chance is always 6.25% or 1/16):
Here is an animation I made showing the large caves and mineshaft (not entirely shown; I go up in increments of 5 blocks starting from y=10; there were many levels):
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 returning to where I last left off from caving and came across an igloo, without a basement, in the Winter Forest that I first found 3 weeks ago; I did not find it until now because I didn't pass through this particular area until then, and the small size make it easy for trees to obstruct it (it was right at the edge, bordering ice plains but I never looked from that direction until now. Also, trees do not generate in chunks with igloos, so they will be in a small clearing if surrounded by forest):
Also, I got my first diamond drop from a mob; a diamond axe with Efficiency II and 25 durability left, dropped by a zombie, which can spawn with diamond tools (up to a 6.6% chance of weapons on Normal difficulty with a 80% being iron, 16% diamond, and 4% amethyst, with a 25% chance each of shovels, pickaxes, axes, and swords):
While I'm keeping it as a trophy even tools with 25, or even 0, durability can be used to repair other gear since you get a 5-12% bonus added, which in the case of the anvil (12%) adds 187 extra durability for diamond and 562 for amethyst (for comparison, repairing with a single unit restores 390 and 1171 durability, so a 25 durability item is worth 54% and 50% of a unit. Not really worth the repair cost but I have plenty of XP to spare).
Since the last time I posted an update I've found 3 more biomes for a total of 21 unique biomes (18 full-size biomes); Swampland, which is almost the same as vanilla 1.6.4 except sand does not generate and they have more clay and gravel and blue orchids (the one I found was mostly land. Blue orchids, as with all flowers, can be grown anywhere with bonemeal so they are only unique in this aspect in world generation), Hilly Plains, which is a variant of plains with increased height variation (no villages generate but horses do, there are also regular Plains as sub-biomes which could possibly be large enough for a village, particularly on Large Biomes), and Winter Taiga, which is basically the same as vanilla Taiga (Cold Taiga in 1.7+. I still wonder why Mojang made the old Taiga snowless instead of adding a snowless version as a new biome so older worlds would be unaffected). Igloos can also generate in Winter Taiga; compared to other structures they have a relatively high spawn rate, once per 256 chunks, but only around a quarter of attempts succeed (the main reason they fail is because the ground must be flat enough, plus they have to be entirely within a snowy biome, excluding Frozen River. Only Winter Forest and Taiga attempt to generate igloos, not just any snowy biome):
Structures found (by number):
49 dungeons
41 ravines (up to 3 intersecting)
12 mineshafts
6 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
2 double dungeons (a special type counted separately, not two dungeons intersecting)
2 fossils
2 jungle temples
2 large caves (larger than vanilla)
2 villages
1 igloo (no basement)
1 large ravine (larger than vanilla)
1 stronghold
Biomes found (by order found):
Plains (technical biome)
Mixed Forest
Lake (technical biome)
Jungle
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (technical biome)
Desert
Tropical Swamp
Big Oak Forest
Snowless Taiga
Rocky Mountains
Ice Plains
Roofed Forest
Mesa
Winter Forest
Forest Mountains
Bushlands
Mountainous Desert
Swampland
Hilly Plains
Winter Taiga
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher):
156 (Rocky Mountains)
165 (Ice Mountains)
Largest ravine:
160 blocks long, 24 blocks wide, 53 blocks deep
Largest cave:
200 blocks long, 20 blocks wide
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?
Why do you have a chain helmet? Vanity purposes?
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC21Z2rupws5IulGQMxB1Plg
I do not wear a helmet as part as my normal armor but I pick up any helmets that mobs drop and wear them, which may be leather, chain, gold, or iron. Sometimes I get more than one at a time; I had a second chain helmet ready to be combined with the one I was wearing when it lost enough durability. Some of them have also had quite good enchantments, such as a gold helmet I recently found with Projectile Protection IV, Respiration III, and Aqua Affinity, which I would have kept (the material doesn't matter since I only wear it when needed) if I had not already made a helmet using books I got from enchanting with the latter two enchantments for underwater work, such as gathering sand or building a railway, which often pass through water since I build them just below sea level.
One interesting thing that I've noticed is that if a mob picks up an item dropped by another mob it may drop what it is wearing - at full durability; I've (unintentionally) gotten several intact helmets this way and despite a lower drop chance (5% instead of 8.5%; Looting III increases this to 11%, about the same as vanilla, 11.5%, but I don't use it) I've been able to wear a helmet most of the time; I have also not been keeping every one that drops unless it is the same material or has more durability or better enchantments.
Another uncommon source of helmets is dungeons, which have a small chance of any piece of iron armor and iron swords; I believe I've found one iron helmet so far, as well as one in the stronghold, where they are much more likely to be found, if not strongholds themselves (at my rate of exploration I'd find one stronghold about every 3 months).
Also, it is worth mentioning that I've only used up about half the durability of my bow in nearly a month of use (194 the last time I looked at it), which amounts to about 26 uses per day (760 total with Unbreaking III); I mention this since the nerf to Mending and Infinity bows in 1.11 means that you have to choose between Infinity or Mending, neither of which are necessary in my case (I've killed at least twice as many skeletons per day, which drop an average of 1 arrow each, and I could repair it 10 times, after accounting for 2 operations to add Power V and Unbreaking III, before it became too expensive). Usually though, I partially repair it with bows dropped by skeletons by around 50% when it gets to around 25% durability so I repair it about twice as often as necessary (incremental repairs have the advantage that you do not *need* to repair your items when they *can* be repaired at the cost of more XP, and in the case of tools, resources, though it is not possible to fully repair amethyst items regardless of enchantments).
For comparison, I've had to repair my armor and sword twice so far, both times all in succession; in other words, they all went below 25% durability at about the same time; since armor has 4500 durability and tools have 4686 this means that each repair restores 1124 for armor and 1171 for tools (4684 uses with Unbreaking, which is not used on armor, so I've dealt about 4 hits for every hit taken). My pickaxe has seen around 21 repairs so far, with more than 100,000 uses already; this alone has consumed nearly half the amethyst I've found while caving and a much greater portion of resources compared to using diamond gear in vanilla when I used individual diamonds to repair armor and sword, prior to trading for them (I used around 1/5-1/4 of the diamonds I found for repairs, with about half that for my pickaxe).
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?
Can I have a world download?
I know that you have played on the download for my first world; this world is not really that different at all, aside from the modded items and world generation, which also means that you can only play this world with the mod installed in 1.6.4, while my first world should be compatible with any later vanilla version. If you want to play with the mod I'd suggest making a new world to get the full experience of the mod; the seed I used is "TMCWv4" or "-1816924181"; using the "NoExclusion" patch included removes the restriction on special types of caves near the origin so you can easily find them without searching (or you can use the included "CaveFinder" utility to find them, which came out of a program I used to find them while testing).
Also, my modded amethyst items, which I've seen you using before instead of the diamond items that I use, are not any better than vanilla diamond with more durability, and actually worse when you consider how expensive they are to repair (I have no problem getting enough XP but everybody else seems to reply on XP farms even with Mending (vanilla's version) greatly reducing costs):
That's exactly the same as a renamed diamond sword in vanilla 1.6.4 (renamed so the prior work penalty does not increase, which is what my version of Mending does; I did not even rename my armor since it is now only cosmetic) - which costs only 39 levels to fully repair with a slightly damaged sword (1512 durability or less, which can fully restore it because there is a 12% bonus added) for 33% more durability and 40% of the per-use cost (of course, in TMCWv4 diamond swords deal 1 less damage, the same as iron in vanilla; similarly, diamond armor is basically like vanilla iron with 6 times the durability, even amethyst armor only blocks 66% of damage for about twice the per-repair durability for a chestplate, and has a similarly high repair cost (35 levels for one unit for Protection IV + Mending; if you add Unbreaking III it costs 42 levels) and amethyst being 3-8 times rarer depending on how you find it).
Meanwhile, I saw some more interesting things today; first, while going through a cave system that I'd pretty much finished exploring I found a cave that I'd missed which was absolutely packed with mobs; by the time I killed all of them I had 34 levels, up from 26. This included a spider dungeon, which spawned a dozen or so spiders before I cleared it; overall I killed more than 500 mobs today, including 250 zombies and 100 each of skeletons and creepers, and have been killing far more than in vanilla lately (I averaged about 275 mobs per play session in my first world while lately 300-400 is typical; this is largely because I reduced the radius within which hostile mobs spawn from 128 to 96 blocks. My all-time single play session record is 748, set in my first world; I could easily kill more than 1000 with an extended session as I did then; that session is also my all-time record for most resources mined and XP gathered, while caving):
(the cave continued on to the right, blocked with cobblestone, with even more mobs)
Later on I came across another zombie with amethyst armor (they came from a nearby surface opening, where it was night, hence the zombie holding an egg. Also, while not the issue it was in 1.7.4, zombies picking up eggs and other items and going into caves and other sheltered areas do slowly accumulate over time; MCEdit showed around 150 excess zombies in my first world):
Then a cave spider jockey in a mineshaft:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I found a Roofed Forest hills going up to y=128, the third time I've come across such high terrain (fourth if you count a single floating block). The treetops went as high as y=135:
As is often the case, i saw the hill (mountain) while returning to where I last left off, as seen by the marker near the center:
Unlike the other cases this was just a "normal" hills biome, which mostly have a base height of 0.75 and a height variation of 1, which compares to 0.2 and 0.7 for most biomes (only a relative handful of biomes use different values; this makes terrain variation much like Beta, where biomes did not affect height variation) and 0.3 and 1.5 for vanilla Extreme Hills (so they should be able to easily exceed y=128 if it weren't for the game compressing heights starting around y=100. In 1.7 they basically reversed the values so most of their elevation is due to the ground being pushed up, not height variation).
I also found a third double dungeon today, spawning witches and spiders, the 56th dungeon (53 normal dungeons) that I've found so far, as well as the 14th mineshaft and 45th ravine. Over 32 sessions this comes out to one double dungeon every 10.67 sessions, one mineshaft every 2.29 sessions, 1.4 ravines per session, and 1.75 dungeons per session.
I've also mined the following ores so far; while there are some differences in ore distribution compared to vanilla to account for the ground being slightly deeper the relative amounts are all pretty much the same as what I found in my first world, aside from emerald and the two mod ores (emerald is expected to be about half as common overall based on the frequency of the biomes it generates in compared to vanilla; amethyst is technically more common than emerald or ruby but most of it is in the lowest 2 layers):
One thing that would make a difference would be finding a Volcanic Wasteland biome, which has more of all ores, including relatively more of the rarer ores than coal or iron, with emerald (in actual veins, not just single blocks) and amethyst being particularly common (elsewhere it has the same range and other stats as diamond but only 1/8 of chunks can have ore above y=2, in addition to the normal chance of a vein being above that layer, which is 6/16; this means there is a 1 in 21.3 chance of a vein above y=2, while diamond is 1 in 2.67). In the long run though it wouldn't do much given how much I mine; it is also one of the rarest biomes, with a 0.89% chance of generating in normal climate zones (0.36% in hot and 0.29% in cold).
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 another village, the third one so far, just off the southern edge of the map:
Well, not just a village; I saw this while building a wall around the village (surprised that I didn't see it earlier, as it was right in the open):
Another igloo; like the first one it did not have a basement. Here is another screenshot of both structures after I secured the village:
In addition, I found wolves in the taiga near the village; if this were vanilla they would have despawned long ago and I've never seen any in vanilla since 1.6 (1.6 added the 2 minute despawn timer, which I removed in one of the first versions of TMCW, long before Mojang removed it in 1.10):
Also, I found what appeared to be a quite large mineshaft - actually, it was two separate mineshafts connected together, which is very common in vanilla 1.6.4, and often with more than two, but is the exception in TMCW, and the only actual overlap was this 3 support long section:
You can see why overlapping mineshafts can be quite obnoxious; the only way through this is to mine the fences sticking out of the ground, or just go around it as I did; they can also be arranged so there is only 1 block of vertical space between floors.
Also, the mineshaft crosses over what appears to be a very large cave or ravine (or ravine over a big cave); I did not get a good look except there is a giant lake of lava far below, wide enough that water flows from the sides went only about a quarter of the way across.
I've nearly filled in the map centered around the origin; the location marker at the bottom is where the village and igloo are:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I did a lot of jumping today, a lot more than usual - because I found a vertical cave system, one of the special types of cave systems that I added, which mainly consists of caves which go up/down at a steep angle, in contrast with ordinary caves, which are mostly horizontal (for normal caves there is a 1 in 6 chance that vertical variation will be increased, leading to the caves that go straight up/down but they are not always vertical, and in this case, a bit too vertical to make an entire cave system with them):
There are often very long water/lava flows in these cave systems since it can often flow uninterrupted from the top to the bottom of a cave; I first discovered it by going up a cave which had lava flowing from y=45 to y=15:
This is a side view of a vertical cave system, as seen by itself in MCEdit (not the one I explored but in a test world; I used a filter to place the torches):
I also got a better look at the giant ravine I saw before, which has turned out to be at least 4 intersecting ravines (the most I've found so far, previously two separate sets of 3), one of which is very large indeed; I have only explored two of them so far since I got distracted by the vertical cave system, which was at the end of one of the two ravines:
Another look a bit further in; there is normal size ravine on the left:
Here is an update on what I've explored so far; I included a separate rendering of the vertical cave in the lower-right:
Play sessions spent caving: 35
Structures found (by number):
57 dungeons
52 ravines (up to 3 intersecting)*
17 mineshafts
7 large cave systems (the sort of swiss cheese cave found prior to 1.7)
4 double dungeons (a special type, not two dungeons intersecting)
3 villages
2 fossils
2 jungle temples
2 igloos (no basements)
2 large caves (larger than vanilla)
2 large ravines (larger than vanilla)
1 stronghold
1 vertical cave system
Biomes found (by order found):
Plains (technical biome)
Mixed Forest
Lake (technical biome)
Jungle
Birch Forest
Poplar Grove (technical biome)
Desert
Tropical Swamp
Big Oak Forest
Snowless Taiga
Rocky Mountains
Ice Plains
Roofed Forest
Mesa
Winter Forest
Forest Mountains
Bushlands
Mountainous Desert
Swampland
Hilly Plains
Winter Taiga
Highest terrain found (y=128 or higher):
165 (Ice Mountains)
156 (Rocky Mountains)
128 (Roofed Forest Hills)
Largest ravine:
160 blocks long, 24 blocks wide, 53 blocks deep**
Largest cave:
200 blocks long, 20 blocks wide
Largest mineshaft:
757 rails mined
*Ravines does not include the other two ravines, only the two that I fully explored (lit up and mined out).
**The large ravine I just found is definitely the largest one I've found so far but this will not be updated until I've explored it.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I decided that it was time to build a new base after having gone quite far off the map while exploring what has turned out to be a very large complex of caves, ravines, and mineshafts, including the ravines mentioned before, as well as at least one large cave (about as large as the other two that I've found; it is at the top the giant ravine and is where I had my first look at it. I've likely found several more but they have not stood out as being unusually large).
I dug a railway south towards z=1024, coming up at around z=950 to see what the terrain was like since I didn't want to build in a mountainous area or in one of several biomes with giant trees; I ended up stopping just short of z=1024 in the middle of a Frozen Lake (a separate biome, not land that dipped below sea level) and built a base right on top of the ice:
Here is a look at the map before I zoomed it out:
I also got my last achievement:
It took me more than a week of real time playing to get it, although that was just because I didn't want to make a rail just to get an achievement which doesn't really do anything:
Aside from a couple rivers and lakes and a few caves (I ran into none for the first 700 blocks) I did not run into any major obstacles; I half-expected to hit a giant cave or ravine, even the one I've mentioned previously (a ravine that wide is wide enough to cut through the entire ground below sea level if it is near the center; the largest can do so if they are within a +/- 5 block range).
It is interesting to note that despite the number of snowy biomes I've been finding to the south it doesn't appear that there is a cold climate zone, or a small one (around 1000x1000 blocks), since I've seen several "hot" biomes which are not allowed to generate in cold climate zones, including the desert I recently found with a village, as well as a jungle close to where I built my new base, and a mesa in the (unrendered) southeastern corner of the spawn map (none are within it so it may be a small one; I don't know how far south it goes).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
After a full week I've finally finished exploring the region around the giant ravine I found - one of the biggest ravines that I've ever explored, with the possible exception of my triple height terrain mod. It was also one of five intersecting ravines, the most that I've ever found in Survival, previously on three other occasions, two of them in my first world and the other in my previous world (all of these were normal-sized), and I found another large ravine nearby. Overall, I explored a total of 9 ravines and 5 mineshafts around the area; it took me so long to explore the giant ravine because my method of exploring them usually involves exploring all the side caves and mineshafts first and there were a lot of them.
After analyzing the area I found that it was 336 blocks long - making it the longest ravine possible:
The other large ravine was only 100 blocks long and distinguishable from normal ravines by its width, as well as the depth at the ends (in vanilla ravines have a fixed height:width ratio of 3, while in TMCW normal ravines increase up to 4.5 and large ravines increase up to 6, with the latter decreasing down to about 1.8 at the maximum width so they are not so deep, 70 blocks instead of 117):
There was also a large cave at the top of one end of the giant ravine, where I had the first look at it; the cave was not actually as large as it appeared since it curved around on itself but was recognizable due to the fact that their branches are wider than usual (vanilla and normal caves have branches that are always 4-5 blocks in maximum width; large caves are 1/3-2/3 of the maximum diameter. The minimum diameter of the main cave and branches also increases from 3.5 to 5 blocks as width increases):
I've likely found several other large caves but I'm only counting ones that stand out as unusually large (this cave is just over the maximum vanilla length of 112 blocks, while they can reach up to 27 blocks in maximum width; however, this width will only be attained if they branch no sooner than 50% of their length, while large caves always branch at or past that point).
This is the smaller large ravine, which intersected another normal-sized ravine:
Note that if this ravine had been larger it would have prevented the mineshaft in it from generating; in addition to caves and special cave systems larger caves and ravines also prevent them from generating, which includes both the width of individual caves and ravines as well as the sum of the width of all large caves and ravines in the area (so several smaller ones can disable them).
And now the giant ravine:
These screenshots were both taken from the same point along the x-axis near the middle of its length; I only moved a bit to the south to take the second one due to the curvature:
Yes, that is a separate mineshaft from the one seen above, with yet another mineshaft further away at one end:
Also, these are the other ravines that intersected it, in the order I found (explored) them:
The first ravine shown also intersected another ravine, the first one I actually found:
There was also a large cave at the top of one end of the giant ravine:
In addition I saw my third diamond armored mob, a zombie in full enchanted diamond armor:
Here is an updated underground map; the giant ravine is near the lower-right but is mostly obscured by all the mineshafts and caves around it, so I included a couple slices showing all five intersecting ravines and the big ravine more clearly:
All five intersecting ravines, along with the center rooms of three mineshafts, can be seen here:
A deeper slice of the giant ravine by itself:
Interestingly, despite how cluttered it appears on the cave rendering there don't seem to be that many caves; the numerous caves that are visible about a third of the way from the left end of the ravine and above it are from the vertical cave system.
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?