So I played up to tier 10 and really enjoyed what I played. One thing that I would strongly suggest is to change caves from what they are now. Here's my experience with caves so far: I go in and look for ore or treasure, go down a couple of blocks and come to the end filled with water. If I dig down more I'll most likely find a huge open cave that I have to use ctrl to even see the bottom of. The last part I have no problem with. The first part about going down and just finding water is where I do have a problem. Terraria's cave system was great. When you found one you could just explore it without having to actually dig to find things like chests, mobs and ore. The cave system right now is very boring because a lot of caves that you find on the surface just end up either leading to water or leading to nothing (And it honestly seems like a lot of the caves are the same in terms of how they are built). There's no exploration involved in caves unless you dig. I'm not saying caves should all be leading you without you having to dig but it would be nice to see something besides a cave with water at the end. I understand that this can come with some problems though, like the hellevator issue where you just needed to dig a long hole and find tons and tons of caves. All in all caves seem very boring and don't encourage that much exploration since a lot of the cool things are on the surface and since most of the caves just lead to water. I know in a recent patch they buffed the treasure chest spawns in caves which is a good start.
my experience is the same, although i havent played as far as you. i absolutely loved cave exploring in terraria, in starbound i've yet to find a single cave that doesnt end in water only a couple of meters down.. kind of a disappointment really..
Yeah, maybe I haven't played enough, but I've been thinking that surface caves could stand to have a bit more variation. Perhaps they will in a future update, I don't know. I wouldn't mind seeing not just different sizes, but maybe even some that drop straight down like a shaft, just for the sake of variety, once in a while.
