No major encouragement for exploring the deeps? [To Cave or Not To Cave]

I'm sure you guys must have realized by now as well, the "caves" in planets are not really caves, they go for about 20-30 blocks with a puddle of water in the bottom. After a few hours of gameplay, I find myself swimming in copper and iron with barely any silver or gold, because it feels like there's not much of an encouragement to dig deeply and greedily. The lower tier mining tools and their sub-par mining speed aren't helping either.

What do you feel about it? To me it's been about going from planet to planet, making a full circle without really digging underground unless I encounter a dungeon etc.

 

Have to agree, my underground adventures have been quite boring, even the few unique structures I found down there were empty, I have 7 diamonds and yet I still haven't found a single platinum, and can't even craft the gold armor.

 

The caves may be more deep than you realize. When you get to the bottom of a cave, use the matter manipulator to 'see through' the walls around you; you may find that there is more cave just a few blocks away. Doing this you can explore all the way down to a planets core with relatively little digging.

 

Caves have the most interesting randomly generated zones in the game right now. Underground Cemeteries are my favorite, besides obelisks.

 

90% of my loot has been from the surface, and 90% of my ore has been from cave dives.

As they add more and more valuable encounters underground, it will be more worth-while. I'm talking about abandoned mines that were caved-in, secret underground labs, villages of mole people or who knows what else. Dungeon generation type stuff. The random terrain generator just isn't interesting enough by comparison.

There ARE things worth finding down there, but they are perhaps too rare atm or not rewarding enough.

 

You gotta dig deep down, it get's pretty cool with big cave expansions farther down. May also see some structures.

 

Also, dig away sand and gravel. It gets you more ore incredibly fast, and you can dump the stacks into water/lava/poison/whatever to make adventuring easier in general.

 

Sewage blocks... Need I say more?

 

I agree, they will have to overhaul the ore progression at some point (I think they might be doing so in the next patch actually). I have no idea about the higher level planets, but the lower level ones in their current state are somewhat boring to dig down through and search for silver and gold, which is the stage I am at. Easiest way to fix this particular problem would be to stick more silver and gold around the place, especially lower down. That wouldn't be a very good 'fix' though. Of course, I have to add the disclaimer that obviously there might be features that just aren't implemented yet that fix this. I don't know about any of those, though, so I would make sure the cave system generation makes big, interesting cave systems (I have found a few of these anyway), put a bunch more hazards down below along with more valuable ores (stuff like gas pockets I suppose) and obviously you have to stick in a heap of underground structures and abandoned mines and labs and all that stuff. It seems a bit too easy to dig all the way down at the moment, also. Maybe stick some tough cave monsters down deep I guess.

 

I don't know, even when I bother to go on with my expedition, usually there's nothing worth my time in those "big" caves either. Some silver, yeah, but nothing interesting or worth seeing.

I know beta is beta but in terms of spelunking, I feel like there are still some moves that need to be made, I just don't get that "down below lies a great adventure, full of richness and rewards waiting to be spoiled!" feeling when I go digging. I don't have the excitement I had in terraria when I saw a faint blue light on the edge of my screen, mining in excitement to see there's an underground mushroom jungle with a chest that has an awesome item.

The feeling I get is more along the lines of "dig down, look, another puddle of water, continue, 3 silver ores in 100 cobblestone blocks, grind some more, a sneak attack by a one-shotting monster, lose pixels and start trying to reach the excavation site altogether."

 

Armor isn't really all that necessary, so everyone does dungeon grinding for weapons. :/ Hopefully the new update will change that.

 

I found a decent amount of ores and a double jump tech in a cave I explored. I would say causing massive gravelanches is reason enough for me to continue cave diving, but the possibility for more high tech chests is a nice bonus!

 

I HIGHLY disagree with OP's statement. I usually start every planet by immediately digging straight down as much as I can (shifting left and right slightly so I can climb back up). after maybe a couple minutes, I hit an underground cave. These caves usually take me deeper and deeper without having to actually dig other than to extract the huge clusters of ore. These cave systems usually last me maybe 20-30 minutes of exploration and mineral gathering until I reach a dead end. At that point I dig down for maybe 10-30 seconds until I hit another cave system. Usually it only takes 2-3 cave systems until I hit the core of the planet.
Im swimming in silver. Gold is still pretty rare, but I had enough to make a pickaxe and full armor

 

I agree with the OP

A simple fix, in theory. They just need to have more caves that go deeper, and I mean WAY deeper, maybe even all the way through to the other side of the planet if that's possible. Have the player digging less and exploring more.

 

I like not getting one shot by monsters.

However, Im more concerned about fall damage, in deep caves, there are huge crevices that monsters will knock you into which will also kill you instantly

 

dig straight down for about 30 seconds. and you will get exactly those kinds of caves

 

I've dug straight down many times, but what I usually get is the straight line I'm digging occasionally interrupted by a small cave with dead ends on all sides.

One major exception, though, which was when my little mineshaft (which I'd been digging for roughly a half-hour at this point) broke into a massive chasm. Took me a while to build to the bottom, but it was very exciting.

 

Hmm strange. 80% of my attempts lead me to a cave system worth about a half hour of exploration and takes me halfway down to the planet's core (this varies depending on the size of the planet)

 

i've run into some silly large caves underground. finding them can be a bit of a pain mind, but they are there. gravel and sand are your friend for finding them as well. clearing out a giant gravel/sand pit reveals a TON of stuff around you.

 

the best part is that when you mine a block of gravel or sand, ALL the connected blocks chain react and detach themselves and fall down. Along with all the ores inside them!!!

And then all the ores basically roll down to you