Make Ancient Cities Easier to Find with Skulk on Surface

Ancient Cities are entirely way too hard to find, after 26 hours of mining under mountains I "caved" in HAHAHA and downloaded an xray resource pack... Why are they so hard to find???? I am frustrated with this new structure and its disappointing how hard new content is to find...  This is on a server without the seed, so no chunkbase either, you shouldnt need these tools to find a structure in a reasonable amount of time... Rarer structures like Woodland Mansions have explorer maps so why dont ancient cities... Better yet just have skulk on the surface so that people have something to look for... 

I really am so frustrated with the design choice to make them this hard to find, it should never take near 30 hours to find something... Im so done and I dont even want to play any more, I never want to mine again...