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Noise Caves Feedback

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In the latest Snapshot brings in a huge change to how caves are generated in Minecraft, which will make up a major part of Caves & Cliffs later this year. With this being such an important part of the update, we want as much of your feedback as possible! Before you play and let us know what you think, there's a few things to bear in mind:

  • All the noise caves (the new caves) will be water-filled from sea level (y63) down to y30. That means many of the lakes on the surface are actually water-filled cave entrances. That will change later, when we have aquifers enabled at all heights.
  • No biomes generate yet
  • All ore placement at negative Y are tentative and will be updated later.
  • There are no larger bodies of lava underground. That will be added later.
  • Old worlds currently can't be opened in the new snapshot, because of some world conversion issues. That will be fixed in a future snapshot.

For more information on noise caves, aquifers, and everything else in the latest snapshot, check out the full changelog!

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  • 5
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    Problem I've encountered with the new cave system: Because they are so large now, I find it harder to explore them when first digging down from the surface. It seems to me that in order to get into the caves without taking falling damage, or dying from falling to high, you need to have gravel, sand, or scaffolding. These only work by placing blocks until they stack up to your height, but then you have to dig down again to lower yourself. That's why I think a new item/block is needed to help us safely lower ourselves in the new caves like a rope. In real life, spelunkers & cave explorers uses ropes to safely repel themselves down into the depths of the cave. Ropes would be useful in this case because we are coming in from the top down, not the bottom up. By placing a rope on the side of a block in front of us and the rope auto-extending to the bottom, we could have a much easier way to get down into the new caves. In a sense, it is like the opposite of a ladder, which can only be placed climbing upwards: we need something that can be placed upwards to help us get down. It functions basically like a water bucket, which is right now the only thing we have to lower ourselves from great heights without taking damage, but something like a rope would seem more purposeful and definitely help us adjust to exploring this new type of cave system. Keep up the good work guys!

  • 2
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    Here is one last observation i have with the new world height limit. perhaps with the increased limits you guys can create cubic chunks where you can only load chunks a certain distance up or down? like say if you are in layer y=0 you can only render from Y=128 to Y=-128, etc? Seems like a good idea to me and may save on the performance. Will make it easier to generate the layered biomes as well.

  • 2
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    JtStillPlays It would be cool if the lead could do that, just attach it to a fence or wall and you can lower yourself down

  • 5
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    While playing the snapshot, ive found many instances where I find rivers but they arent rivers at all, instead they are the said noise cave entrances. I love this feature and would love for it to be improved on. But the underwater caves feel so... empty, there is no sense of danger, seeing as there is many magma blocks and light sources, but no monsters to look out for.

  • 3
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    The new massive caves are so so cool, but I'm slightly worried about the amount of water in the new caves. Water is a pain to clear out, and if a player had plans for an underground base or had been running a tunnel bore and they run into an aquifer, they would have to decide whether to spend hours clearing out water or to relocate their base plans or tunnel bore. I suggest that either the massive aquifers are rarer, or we get a new way to clear out water in the coming update.

    Another thing I'm concerned about is farm optimization, because in the new caves, lighting everything up could take ages. I think this could be a good time to add a suggestion I've seen before a few times: a beacon effect that prevents mob spawns in its radius. This way it's still a lot of work to attain, but would be very rewarding for farm optimization. This could also open up a lot of opportunities for players to make dark bases without having to worry about mob spawns.

  • 9
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    Find the big caves a bit to rare in the current snapshot. like last week was to much I get it (I suppose) but now I've been flying around in a world for a bit and I barely find any big caves. and if they are they aren't that impressive anymore

  • 3
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    I love the differences between local water levels in huge caves, it has a mystical feel to it. However I do think the differences should maybe be a bit more accentuated so that I'm not stopped in the middle of rafting by a single block of stone. Maybe andesite and granite should generate in big veins as well so it doesn't look like out of place blotches on the walls. I also think noise caves are too rare.

  • 4
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    I've got some quick feedback for the new ore distribution/the added Grimstone.

    Lapis Lazuli should be much rarer and/or should spawn more commonly at the same level as gold. It's a relatively late-game item and would be a lot more interesting to be rare and precious. Besides, we have cornflowers now for blue dye.

    I think that the transition fro Stone to Grimstone is a little too rough right now. Maybe there could be patches of Stone, Tuff and Grimstone generating around Y=0 to make it more of a gradient. You could see a Grimstone patch and know you're getting deeper. If you want to go all out on the idea of a gradient, Clay patches could appear above Y=32 as well.

  • 11
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    I was flying around in spectator and noticed that the huge caves have all but vanished in the new snapshot, and I personally think that was a huge mistake, as my favourite feature from the previous snapshot was a huge cave that I found with several aquifers at different levels, giving it a magical feel to it. I mostly see old caves and a few of the new spaghetti caves but it looks very similar to the old generation. 

    Personally I think there need to be more huge caves and more aquifers in large caves, for magical looking underwater lakes. I also think the old caves should blend more with the new caves so that it doesn't look like it currently does, with larger caves spawning near the bottom and small caves being at the top. Also lava looks quite ugly falling from the ceilings, and personally I would limit its spawing to bellow y=-30. 

  • 0
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    OK, feedback time! First of all: The new caves are great. I've spent a lot of time just flying through them in spectator mode and gazing the structures. But I mostly use night vision for it, as in my opinion, the caves are still too dark. Lichen definetly help, but if you enter a big cave you will only see the few illuminated spots, while you won't be able to admire the rest of it without going through the trouble of lighting the whole thing up. I think this can be solved by making blocks at a distance appear brighter than those closeby. That way, the small caves will remain pretty much the same, as will the night on the surface, since even at moody lighting, everything is farely visible. And to be clear, I'm not suggesting increasing the light level at a distance, just making it appear slightly brighter to the player. I think it really would make caves much more enjoyable in early survival.

  • 12
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    Flew around in a world in a 21w07a world. I couldn't find a single massive, open cavern like what I could find in 21w06a.

    While I understand that these caverns could be tweaked, the massive scale and open-ness is what mattered and it feels like this was completely changed for the worse. Either these types of caves are now way too rare, since I couldn't find a single one, or they were made much, much smaller since I did find similar looking caves with pillars that were a lot smaller and felt more closed-in.

    I want this change reverted and for the massive, open caves to be more common again, the grand open-ness of the caverns are exactly what I like the most about this update.

  • 11
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    I wish the bigger caves were back

  • 10
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    I was checking the new snapshot (21w07a), and decided to say my thoughts in both 21w06a and 21w07a.

     

    The new caves are AMAZING, I checked them in spectator mode to see the underground, and after that I created a survival world to see how it would look like to explore, I found a cave as tall as shown in the 1.17 "trailer", it was awesome.

    But now in 07a the noise caves became rarer, I think that this is kinda great because now the old caves have more space, but I was exploring again in spectator just flying underground for something about 15min and then created a survival world again to see the exploring. 

    I couldn't find any huge and tall caves, they ones I found were still incredible and everything, but I miss the big big big caves (could just be my world generation "luck" and everything but yeah, miss them).

    Basically, I prefer the 06a cave generation.

     

    For me, mixing the 07a ore generation with the 06a cave generation, would be perfect, because we would still have lots of the new caves (could make the spawn rate a bit less if really want) and it wouldn't be so OP like a full set of diamond armor in the first 20 minutes of the game.

    Just my opinion, bye.

     

  • 9
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    I actually preferred the larger caves, but I know some people thought they were too big. It would be nice if we could set our preference between them in options, or if you could allow large regions to generate with different settings . . . perhaps the larger caves of the last version could generate under mountains, mesa, and extreme hills, while the smaller generation can be found in plains, forest, and swamp biomes.

    Speaking of swamps it would be nice if the swamp style water was standard once you got below a certain Y level. It really has that murky, deep underground, feel to it.

    Beyond that the new Grimstone is nice but it doesn't merge well with ores set into normal stone. I think it really needs it's own ores and the transition isn't very smooth. In my opinion Grimstone merges fairly well with Andesite but is just too rough to really set well next to regular stone blocks.


  • 13
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    I think the noise caves were nerfed a bit too much, but what's really upsetting is that there were no smaller caves added to compensate for the reduced noise caves. The noise caves are now mostly large tunnels, and the smaller caves weren't touched at all despite the world depth increase, making the underground even more empty. In terms of relativity, the density of caves is no higher than 1.16.5, kind of ruining the point of the cave update.

    To fix this, more caves should generate in the world, whether they're large, small, or something in between.

  • 8
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    I must say I really like the new caves and really like the increased size and volume of caves - especially being a keen caver. I’m hopeful they won’t be decreased in size as it makes for really fun exploration. Whilst I do like the new grimestone and think it’s a really nice building material, I’m not really keen on texture within the caves themselves; personally I don’t think it looks like a natural cavern material because it looks more ‘brick like’ or artificial and thus spoils the natural aroma of the cave. I’d prefer if the cave texture to look more natural but as a pure building block it looks great.

    Once more really looking forward to future snapshots and seeing the dripstone within this new epic gave generation. I also think a light foggy touch would make caves seem more adventurous in the bigger caves.

    Hope that was helpful :)

  • 1
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    I'm not really sure I like the new ore textures at all. They may work when in the new grim stone however I'd prefer to keep the regular texture when it comes to regular stone.

  • 3
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    I feel like grimstone should have its own cave biome it generates in rather than taking up everything below a certain level, I think we should have a combination of regular stone cave biomes, and grimstone cave biomes. Maybe several cave biomes layered throughout deep underground.

  • 13
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    Personally, I feel like 21w07 made the big caves a bit too rare. However, I think that rather than reverting making the big caves bigger (on the horizontal axis) would fix the problem. I do like rare things in Minecraft and having these caves as a rare feature is great, however as of now when you do find them, they are not as impressive as in the previous snapshot.

     

    A second, in my opinion important point, is that the new caves just don't seem to connect like to old ones. Before it was easy enough to find really long cave networks of many caves connecting, eventually leading you to the bottom of the world without breaking a single block. To make this happen in the new caves as well, eighter the old caves should spawn bellow y 0 or the new caves need to be longer to have more intersections.

     

    In summary, Big caves are now too rare/not big enough and the new caves don't connect enough. 

     

    P.S. I love the new ores and the new grimstone as well as the way all of these generate. The caves need tweaking but I'm sure the final result will be breathtaking. 

  • 8
    Registered User commented
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    in 21w07a caves are now to small

     

  • 1
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    I think the new ire textures should have a more classic Minecraft feel. Instead of just being 3d and rounder a more simplistic look I think could work. I'm not saying they should all be the same but I like that feel.

  • 3
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    Exposed bedrock in the big caves was actually pretty cool in 21w06a, it should come back

  • 14
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    Disappointed caves have been made smaller in this snapshot as concluded by my testing results by comparison with the previous snapshot. I thought Caves were made rarer, not smaller, but I found the following results:
    I compared a large cave system I found in 21w06a with 21w07a (the exact same seed and coords). This particular cave system in 21w06a was much more freely connected with tunnels and had more volume in certain parts of the cave, and in some parts, it was really epic the way massive tunnels connected.

    Interestingly in 21w07a, the cave features had been maintained including certain passageways and shapes, but in general I found the volume had decreased, and there were certain pockets that weren't connected. After flying around, comparing coords and using the unmined third party tool to analyze cave view below Y0 I saw that it had vastly decreased in size and once more there were pockets that weren't connected to the main cave system. The overall immensity of the cave had been lost (even though it was still sizable in places).

    I'm loving the new cave generation in general but I was sad to see this, after seeing 21w06a I was really hoping the immensity of the caves would be retained. I'm fine with making them a little rarer though (even though I still actually preferred the abundance of caves in 21w06a), but not shrinking the sizes of the caves themselves.

  • 13
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    I agree with the people saying that the new caves in 21w07a are a massive downgrade from the previous snapshot.

    99% of the videos of 21w06a I saw included some version of people saying "this is amazing" while *flying* through a wonderful new underground world. That wouldn't be possible in the current implementation. The caves in 21w07a feel like nothing more than a tiny, insubstantial upgrade compared to 1.16 and aren't at all following the vision you guys showed us during Minecon Live.

    Really hope this was just overcompensation. Please bring back the big noise caves from 21w06a. They are not nearly big or numerous enough right now. I want to feel like I am entering a dwarven cave, not just some random air pocket in the ground.

    Someone here mentioned how cool it would be to have the regular, "old" caves connect to the new ones so you are guided from the surface down to bedrock. Being able to really explore this new "dimension" would be amazing.

    Could you also please rethink how you approach negative coordinates? If anything, the point where + and - coords meet should be the surface, sea level in the real world. But I'd prefer if bedrock was still zero and everything above was positive, right up to build limit. (The sea level model follows the real world, the latter approach is more logical within the Minecraft world. The current implementation doesn't make sense in either world.)

    Also, more light is desperately needed in that ocean of grimstone. ;-)

    Thanks for reading this <3

  • 5
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    I don't know if it's just me, but Diamonds still feel way too easy to get, even with the changes. Since regular caves don't spawn below zero yet, I can only see this problem getting worse.

    I think either give Diamond the Lapis treatment and make it mostly buried, or reduce how often it spawns/how many ore blocks are in a vein.

    Also I think noise caves could be just a bit more common than right now, especially with biomes coming up!

  • 1
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    I think since the Glow Lichen is trying to be a "light source in disguise", it should be transparent to blend in more. The texture for it doesn't look that great and I think this could help with that.

  • 4
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    I agree that the noise caves should retain the size that they had in 21w06a, but be a bit rarer. The use of grimstone to make mining more difficult lower down should be kept, but the caves could definitely use more of that sort of feature. Maybe have three levels of stone with increasing difficulty to mine, enough that you start out using mostly stone tools, then have to really start using iron, and finally have it difficult to mine even with the iron, incentivizing the use of bronze (if added with tin) or even diamond? The andesite/granite/diorite as well as ores should certainly spawn in a more vein like or layer like fashion. In regard to diamond spawn rate, it should still be much rarer. Even in 1.16.5 I feel that diamonds are two easy to acquire, as just a quick staircase down and you can have diamonds in five minutes, with more to come through some strip mining. Diamonds should be far rarer, also allowing for new more common things or tiers, maybe. Glow lichen should spawn in larger patches for lighting and aesthetic appeal. The transition between aquifers and the wall thickness between caves need to be improved from what I have seen flying around in spectator. It would make more sense if we just put 0 as sea level. Finally, I am worried that the underground is still to small. To truly make caves and cave biomes feel right, we need to have enough space for 3 cave biomes to be layered on top of each other. Finally, a light filled mushroom biome to top off the update.

  • 4
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    I think We need huge caves to be more abundant than in snaphot 21w07a.

    I have been playing since 2011 and strip mining bores me. I think big noise caves should be the main focus of mining, and they will diminish the amount of strip mining which is quite redundant in my opinion.

    By having more big caves, the player can't strip mine and earn easy diamonds in a safe way but rather has more risk involved.

    I like the idea that caves are in fact harder to light up. Maybe you can't light up the whole caves to prevent all mob spawning, and that is a good thing.

    More Choices early game : Save coal for smelting ores or use coal for more torches? We have become used to light up all areas of the caves but, maybe mining got too comfortable, and I like the idea of the caves being so big there almost impossible to light up every area ( unless you are very dedicated).

    I also like the idea of Potions like Invisibility and Night vision being used for mining. That makes potions a lot more interesting. (And Invisibility potion being also useful in singleplayer)

    I think the vastness of the noise caves in 21w06a was close to perfect in size, but in 21w07a they are too small and too rare.

  • 7
    Registered User commented
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    Please give us the large caves again.

      and just make diamonds and other ores less common or make it so not as many generate in caves

  • 3
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    I can't believe that just about every comment here says revert cave sizes back to 21w06a. Are these people out of their minds?

    I think that the new cave sizes are perfect! I also think that the new ore generation is relatively well balanced (45 minutes of caving got me 12 diamonds, seems fair). I also think that the new grimstone is great. It makes it harder to see in caves at lower y levels because everything is so dark. None of these things should be changed.

    If you do think about increasing the cave sizes, remember this: players who are satisfied with the changes will usually not go out of their way to say so. Mostly only the dissatisfied ones will be giving feedback. The only reason I am commenting now is because of how many people do not like the new cave sizes!

    Keep up the brilliant work!