This is a pretty detailed guide, and I couldn't help picking up a few tips myself despite my avid LOVE of spelunking. One thing you forgot, though (and this helps a TON with the exit, believe me) is the right-hand rule, though for cave exploration this may be difficult. Anyways, I'd like to share a few things for those of you who are decently experienced with a more specific section: Mineshaft exploration.
First and foremost make a chest in your mine. Put anything you don't IMMEDIATELY need in it because there is a really good chance you'll die down there if you're not careful. Good supplies to take with are an axe, pickaxe, sword (I prefer bows), torches, throwaway blocks (dirt/grass/sand/gravel) and torches.
Torch placement: This helps a ton with your exit so you're not digging up 500+ blocks away from your house. This method is called the right-hand rule and goes as such: Place any and all torches on the left side of the mineshaft. This way you can follow a path back looking for torches on the RIGHT hence the right-hand part of the title.
Next: Dungeons- Most commonly you'll find cave spider dungeons. These will wreck your **** if you're not careful. My favorite way to deal with them is estimate the distance to the spawner, dig 2-3 blocks above it and drop a bucket of lava. This works for killing the little buggers while also lighting the room in case of a double dungeon (they are more than just possible).
Lava-I like blocking everything off except the source and the two vertically exposed blocks in front of it. This gives me a free light source and also serves as a landmark for when I'm leaving.
Multiple branches-Pick one and stick with it. At first, block them off and come back to them when you're done with your corridor, but pick one and stay with it because it prevents you from getting jumped from behind.
These are just some basic guidelines I follow, but kudos to you for a decently extensive guide that is sure to turn anyone on to cave exploring.
On my Gargamel seed world I built a huge cabin extending out of a cliff. I made it all out of wood and like an idiot tried to put in a fireplace. About 30 seconds later the whole floor was destroyed and I fell about 70 blocks while slowly burning to death.
Fill one chunk with TNT. Hide. Blow TNT up. Reboot minecraft. TaDa! you're in the past before the TNT exploded.
*Disclaimer: Minecraft time travel refuses to work on supercomputers that have the processing power to cope with almost 33,000 blocks of TNT exploding.
Are you in an overpopulated area with lots of sky-high structures and huge pits? One factor in lag is the amount of blocks exposed to air per chunk. Also, never play with tiny render distance, especially with lots of lag to begin with. Tiny increases the amount of landscape that needs to be rendered per step(s) you take, so probably normal or short (normal works best for me on SMP) would help there. Far is unnecessary.
Level the entire world until you have enough resources to make a ton of floating spherical islands. Connect all of them with bridges and then flood everything below them with lava. No MCEdit stuff or infinite damage armor/tools.
Is this your server? If it is, just connect to 127.0.0.1 or localhost in the multiplayer menu (works for me). If not, ask the owner to restart it and give you the IP.
1. Turn down your graphics. There is absolutely no need to play with far-rendered fancy graphics the whole time. At the same time, don't play on tiny because the game engine has to work harder to render more blocks per chunk as you move. I personally play on normal render distance with fast graphics. Something else that helps is to turn off smooth lighting, especially if you do a lot of caving.
2. Are you in a densely populated area? Lag in minecraft is calculated based on the number of blocks exposed to air per chunk. Huge sky-high structures coupled with deep mines and caves is a lag spike straight from the nether itself.
3. Close any nonessential programs while you play. You don't need itunes, facebook, your email and MCEdit running at the same time while you're trying to download...whatever people download these days. If you want other music, use an mp3 player or Ipod.
4. If all else fails, go into your task manager and give minecraft a higher-than-normal priority. This increases the amount of memory it can pull from your system.
I do all of these on a slow-as-sh*t school issued computer and everything works out fine. If you still have problems try running a virus scan as well as upgrading your computer RAM, as all of these slow down your computer increasing the number of tasks it spreads its processing power over.
Two words: strip mining. I got 7 diamond blocks from strip mining on a server. Start with a 5x5 room, dig out 20 blocks and then every other block dig a tunnel as long as you want. Guaranteed to hit any diamonds on that level if you dig long enough.
I was digging through a cave I had opened up, I had about 10 diamonds on me and I see a lava pool to my right, no big deal. I turn to my left, there's a slime. I walk up to hit him, I die immediately. Full hearts to dead in less than a second. Wondering just what the hell happened, I go back down.. and now he's just many, many baby slimes. They are invincible, and due to there being a TON of them they eventually push me through my diamonds laying on the ground and into the lava pool. I go back, totally frustrated and attempt to kill them again. I can't even hurt them. As I type this, there are several just bouncing on top of me (as they do no damage like usual) and I can't even get out of the hole I'm in. I can't mine the walls because they bounce in the way of the pick on every side. Awesome huh? What's going on?
*sobs*...Welcome to minecraft. stuff happens, we lose items and ultimately find our house and start over again. The world is 8 TIMES THE SURFACE AREA OF THE EARTH. So for some simple math:
Earth=510,072,000,000,000 m
MC World=510,072,000,000,000 blocks
1 Chunk=32768 blocks
MC World=15566162109.375 chunks with an utmost minimum of 1 diamond per chunk. Even if diamond was only in 50% of the chunks that is a HELL of a lot of diamond, so losing 10 is nothing in the large scope of things. Here's a violin if it means so much to you to go back into the SAME CAVE YOU DIED IN 3 separate times to try and do better.
Skeletons that are completely behind something, as in, I cannot see even the slightest bit of white OR hear them are able to hit me with arrows. The arrows come THROUGH the wall or whatever it may be they're sitting behind.
Simple noclip bug. if their bow sticks through into a block surrounded by air it registers them being in that block and able to shoot you. No source code is perfect in beta.
Creepers 90% of the time do not have a hiss, they just explode the second they get within range.
Creepers have a unique path-finding algorithm. They can actually hide somewhere on your path and sneak up behind you as you walk by. If you've actually taken a creeper head on, their hissing isn't very audible unless you're blasting it through some good speakers and due to the dynamic sounds in the game you probably won't hear it behind you until it jumps on your back to give you a nice big creeper hug. Protip: Burn down every forest you can see within 100 blocks of your house. it minimizes lag and also prevents a lot of the creeper/spider spawning.
The small slimes are completely invincible. To swords, to tools, to my fist, to TNT.. completely and utterly invincible. The big slimes kill me in one hit.
Read up a little on some of your mob "problems" on Minepedia or something. This has been a bug since the 1.3 update. Protips: 1. just leave. It's not worth three sets of spelunking gear trying to take out a slime. 2. If you're in SMP, turn off monster spawning or have the host do it just to get rid of them. 3. If you're in SSP, leave your area of activity. I believe it is 9x9 chunks (anybody?), so moving 145 horizontal blocks away from them for a few minutes will cause them to despawn.
So as you can see, your "problems" are the result of a lack of research, accepting buggy source codes and patience.
Alternative solution: Don't assume there is a cave right under your feet when you hear the sounds. They can travel up to 20 blocks in any pattern away from the source, so you would need to excavate a 20x20x20 cube to be absolutely sure you find the cave. I just live with it, but then again, I usually play with the sound off to begin with. Otherwise there is a sound file that can be deleted if it really gets to you that much.
I know all about falling into lava and losing all your items, I have deleted worlds on occasion as a result. After more deaths than I care to remember, I decided that if I found anything valuable I will take it up to my hovel immediately and put it in a nice safe chest.
It's worked well so far, though it's not the most efficient method.
Yes, whether you're mining or spelunking signs are imperative. I keep my spirits up while spelunking/mining/being lost by writing witty signs to mark off lava, explored caves, water floes and, occasionally, looted dungeons. Don't know how to write witty signs? You don't need to! just put something as a place-marker.
Cheesy example:
Lava lake="What's orange, really hot, pisses me off and seems to be everywhere in this cave?"
2
First and foremost make a chest in your mine. Put anything you don't IMMEDIATELY need in it because there is a really good chance you'll die down there if you're not careful. Good supplies to take with are an axe, pickaxe, sword (I prefer bows), torches, throwaway blocks (dirt/grass/sand/gravel) and torches.
Torch placement: This helps a ton with your exit so you're not digging up 500+ blocks away from your house. This method is called the right-hand rule and goes as such: Place any and all torches on the left side of the mineshaft. This way you can follow a path back looking for torches on the RIGHT hence the right-hand part of the title.
Next: Dungeons- Most commonly you'll find cave spider dungeons. These will wreck your **** if you're not careful. My favorite way to deal with them is estimate the distance to the spawner, dig 2-3 blocks above it and drop a bucket of lava. This works for killing the little buggers while also lighting the room in case of a double dungeon (they are more than just possible).
Lava-I like blocking everything off except the source and the two vertically exposed blocks in front of it. This gives me a free light source and also serves as a landmark for when I'm leaving.
Multiple branches-Pick one and stick with it. At first, block them off and come back to them when you're done with your corridor, but pick one and stay with it because it prevents you from getting jumped from behind.
These are just some basic guidelines I follow, but kudos to you for a decently extensive guide that is sure to turn anyone on to cave exploring.
Teck
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Title: Combination Lock
Author: Teck
Pictures:
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*Disclaimer: Minecraft time travel refuses to work on supercomputers that have the processing power to cope with almost 33,000 blocks of TNT exploding.
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Do you accept?
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1. Turn down your graphics. There is absolutely no need to play with far-rendered fancy graphics the whole time. At the same time, don't play on tiny because the game engine has to work harder to render more blocks per chunk as you move. I personally play on normal render distance with fast graphics. Something else that helps is to turn off smooth lighting, especially if you do a lot of caving.
2. Are you in a densely populated area? Lag in minecraft is calculated based on the number of blocks exposed to air per chunk. Huge sky-high structures coupled with deep mines and caves is a lag spike straight from the nether itself.
3. Close any nonessential programs while you play. You don't need itunes, facebook, your email and MCEdit running at the same time while you're trying to download...whatever people download these days. If you want other music, use an mp3 player or Ipod.
4. If all else fails, go into your task manager and give minecraft a higher-than-normal priority. This increases the amount of memory it can pull from your system.
I do all of these on a slow-as-sh*t school issued computer and everything works out fine. If you still have problems try running a virus scan as well as upgrading your computer RAM, as all of these slow down your computer increasing the number of tasks it spreads its processing power over.
Hope this helps!
Teck
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Diagram:
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
etc...
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*sobs*...Welcome to minecraft. stuff happens, we lose items and ultimately find our house and start over again. The world is 8 TIMES THE SURFACE AREA OF THE EARTH. So for some simple math:
Earth=510,072,000,000,000 m
MC World=510,072,000,000,000 blocks
1 Chunk=32768 blocks
MC World=15566162109.375 chunks with an utmost minimum of 1 diamond per chunk. Even if diamond was only in 50% of the chunks that is a HELL of a lot of diamond, so losing 10 is nothing in the large scope of things. Here's a violin if it means so much to you to go back into the SAME CAVE YOU DIED IN 3 separate times to try and do better.
Simple noclip bug. if their bow sticks through into a block surrounded by air it registers them being in that block and able to shoot you. No source code is perfect in beta.
Creepers have a unique path-finding algorithm. They can actually hide somewhere on your path and sneak up behind you as you walk by. If you've actually taken a creeper head on, their hissing isn't very audible unless you're blasting it through some good speakers and due to the dynamic sounds in the game you probably won't hear it behind you until it jumps on your back to give you a nice big creeper hug. Protip: Burn down every forest you can see within 100 blocks of your house. it minimizes lag and also prevents a lot of the creeper/spider spawning.
Read up a little on some of your mob "problems" on Minepedia or something. This has been a bug since the 1.3 update. Protips: 1. just leave. It's not worth three sets of spelunking gear trying to take out a slime. 2. If you're in SMP, turn off monster spawning or have the host do it just to get rid of them. 3. If you're in SSP, leave your area of activity. I believe it is 9x9 chunks (anybody?), so moving 145 horizontal blocks away from them for a few minutes will cause them to despawn.
So as you can see, your "problems" are the result of a lack of research, accepting buggy source codes and patience.
Hope this helps,
Teck
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0
Yes, whether you're mining or spelunking signs are imperative. I keep my spirits up while spelunking/mining/being lost by writing witty signs to mark off lava, explored caves, water floes and, occasionally, looted dungeons. Don't know how to write witty signs? You don't need to! just put something as a place-marker.
Cheesy example:
Lava lake="What's orange, really hot, pisses me off and seems to be everywhere in this cave?"
0
In front of the house:
Interior floor design:
There are two of these "wings"- 1 on each side as well as a modified one off of the front door:
The back of the house, built into the cliff behind it: