Cave Generation

Hey,

I've been playing for awhile and had a note about the cave generation in the worlds. For the most part when you're exploring the surface and see a cave, they're pretty short and don't go down all that far. If you really want to explore you need to dig a great deal deeper when things seem to open up and really have options to explore around.

I find that digging a ton to find areas to explore is tedious. It might be fun if more of the surface caves had a chance to really extend deeper into the world that required only minimal digging instead of requiring a vast amount of tunneling. I'll do that on worlds with 'softer' ground so it goes quickly, but once it hits cobblestone or something that takes longer, it's just too tedious.

The most fun exploring I've had is when I run into caves like this, or a cave with an interesting biome like the abandoned mine I found once.

I don't think we need *ALL* caves like this, just have it more likely than it is now so folks who find digging more tedious can find a longer cave. The folks who dig digging will still have plenty cave fragments to find.

 

Terraria got it right somehow. Not sure what SB needs to do to make going deeper more engaging. In Terraria, i get addicted to digging and think "just one more cave". In SB, i kinda go deep, see a cave then think "meh, i'll go back up now"

It could be because i'm not taking any playthrough seriously during beta though, i still have fun.

 

Ha. Dig digging.

Back on point, I've found some caves that go quite a ways down, and the hardest cobblestone is close to the core of the planet anyway. I think avoiding having the intersting stuff on the surface might be intentional, too-- avoid giving up the goods right away sort of thing.

 

Oh yeah, totally. I like when you find interesting bases/biomes deep below the surface. It's really fun for explorer minded people to find things like that underground instead of just on the surface. I have found a few that do that, but it's very rare. Like I said once I hit a certain depth level I feel like it opens up a ton and it's easy to progress through it, it's just that initial part. I rarely find a surface cave that connects to that big underground part.

 

The devs can easily change the way caves are set up.

They use a "noise generator" that determines how large, cramped, frequent the caves are.

Really, it's only 7-8 variables, so they can balance that very easily.

I think you can even change it yourself in the game files.

 

Ah, I think I understand your point better-- more caves down from the surface to avoid digging quite so much?

I personally haven't run into too many barriers to that interesting stuff, but I know the frustration of having to mine through the harder cobblestone for the interesting stuff. Maybe if they just make that cobblestone a little less time-consuming to mine? For that matter, do you know why they made it so hard to mine in the first place?

 

You mean the hardest stone is near the core of the planet, the stone blocks you mine that are naturally on the planet aren't cobblestone blocks.

 

I've always found digging into dungeons is the most disappointing thing ever

the best I ever found was a frog merchant in some kind of abandoned frog shrine, and he was selling bombs

other than that.. Ive found: (all of them are really deep down and no music plays anymore)

Poop sewage
Avian tomb
Wooden ruin (glitch?)
Scary looking avian tomb
White bricks with dwarf looking houses (no idea what that is)


And thats about it, but I haven't gotten anything good from finding them

I think they need to change that up, like make the underground chests 100% drop a legendary or something cool

 

caves that actually extended all the way down into the depths of the planet would make the game much more interesting. I rarely explore the depths of planets because its so much work to get down there in the first place.

 

They aren't? Huh. I need to work on my reading retention.

 

They are cobblestone blocks but....

The stuff that's really hard to break and near the bottom and looks NOTHING like cobble stone....

they're both called cobblestone >_>

I think the naming for the multitude of varying block materials are just placeholders and will probably be changed in the future

 

They aren't cobblestone blocks, all the blocks you get cobblestone from are called unrefined stone blocks... They just drop cobblestone, the same way stone blocks in Minecraft drop cobblestone. The block dropping cobblestone doesn't mean the block itself is cobblestone.

 

I'd like to thank both Noobverest and MyLittleBurger for the emotional rollercoaster they've just sent me on.

 

To be honest, some of the unrefined stone blocks textures do look like cobblestone though (to bad the cobblestone dropped is the same for all unrefined stone blocks).

 

Yes, especially since the different types don't stack(or at least they didn't last I checked).

 

They don't...? I could have sworn they did. Though I did notice that now and then I would have like 2 different non full stacks of cobblestone (not counting some cobblestone whose description said something about worms moving behind it or something).

On to the caves though, I does seem weird that you mostly find the extremely large caves deep, deep underground.

 

yea they don't stack

pink dirt and green dirt and blue dirt and purple dirt don't stack

cobblestone on the surface, cobble stone underground, things that look like quartz but when broken is called cobble stone don't stack

Which was what I was talking about so weeeee

 

My issue is that the caves that spawn on the surface aren't large enough, and the caves that spawn in the ground are TOO big.

Too often you're left on the edge of a huge cavern with no choice but to a) turn back b) dig through the wall lower, or c) build some sort of platform system down.