Methods to find big caves consistently

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Uniquepotatoes113 messagesstarted Aug 2, 2026, 9:23 PM

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago(edited)

Oftentimes games can be decided by who finds a “god cave” first. Currently there is little in terms of strategies to find these.

The main strats I see is running around in f5 looking around, and digging in ocean caves to see if they are just above a big normal cave. The c counter can also be used, but it’s sometimes inconsistent.

Ideas I’ve seen so far involve checking the hostile mob cap on low RD. Another idea was checking bats on pie but the cap for them apparently might fill up too fast.

An example of something to explore would be understanding when an ocean cave has a big normal cave 1 block under and if there’s any way to know before swimming down. But even something like a way to read terrain could be good.

Hopefully people have some ideas can be tested and lead to new strategies here.

aga

NADDY2 months ago

lowering rd to 2 and checking how fast hostile mob cap fills up is pretty good

NADDY2 months ago

if it fills in less than 2 seconds u have a big cave

NADDY2 months ago

if its like 10 mobs per second then meh

NADDY2 months ago

oh my god

NADDY2 months ago

cave noise is on the f3 screen

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

oh you can see that shit?

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

does it tell you anything useful

NADDY2 months ago

Yes

NADDY2 months ago

Cheese caves (giant ones) generate at negative values

NADDY2 months ago

So in theory all you have to do is lower the cave noise value

NADDY2 months ago

But it's like really variable

NADDY2 months ago

Could be useful along c count though when deciding when you feel like you're close to a cave and just digging

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

oh so you could check this when deciding where to dig down

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

that's useful yeah

NADDY2 months ago

Not from surface

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

oh i see

NADDY2 months ago

Only when already in like a carver cave or when digging around

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

which f3 setting is it

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

chunk generation stats?

NADDY2 months ago

Yes it's first value

NADDY2 months ago

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

i see

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

the wiki says caves depends on 3 noise maps, can you see the other ones too?

NADDY2 months ago

Idk I'll check when I'm back at my pc

NADDY2 months ago

But the mega caves are definitely just that one

NADDY2 months ago

I know there are also noodle and spaghetti caves

NADDY2 months ago

Carver caves are not based on noise

NADDY2 months ago

These generate like how rivers generate based off weirdness

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

Yeah the issue is that if the noise is in the region you want you should already be in the cave

NADDY2 months ago

It's about the gradient

NADDY2 months ago

Noise cannot transition from high to low instantly

NADDY2 months ago

If you go in the direction of a lower noise value you might not hit one but all cheese caves are found through lower noise

NADDY2 months ago

Type shit

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

Yeah true

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

One thing is that I think underwater caves sortof correspond to the structure of the cave roof underneath them if there is one

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

I guess the question is which cave is influenced by which

sam2 months ago(edited)

yes this is what I do, it's very consistent but can have false negatives (which is better than false positive obviously)

biome params are not very useful, i ran like a regression on real terrain and they just don't have much signal

NADDY2 months ago

Can it be used for checking the bottom of ocean caves

NADDY2 months ago

Quickly

sam2 months ago

just curious, did you find the hostile mob cap tech from me or elsewhere. not sure if i invented it

NADDY2 months ago

Just thought of it now

sam2 months ago

ok ya obv pretty easy to think of anyway lol. it's been very consistent for me in game, but can have false negatives due to
1. lush cave light
2. lava light
3. water filled caves

NADDY2 months ago

Yeah you can at least be aware lush caves can be below you with the vegetation value

NADDY2 months ago

But not that helpful ig

sam2 months ago

yes

NADDY2 months ago

I will check this

sam2 months ago

also, one small signal you have from rising m counter is the size of the ticks i.e. the pack size that's spawning. it's hard to practice seeing but helps to rule out the case of having a bunch of independent layers of spaghetti caves, which is the only kind of false positive case

sam2 months ago

since you need open cave terrain for consistent 4 packs

sam2 months ago

this is a good idea, i really only looked at correlation of biome params with big caves below so im not sure

sam2 months ago

and in the code the carver functions and stuff have like, very noisy relationships with biome params obviously

sam2 months ago

sorry for clarity when i said noise params i meant the x/z biome params. not sure if your noise param tech works or not, only evaluated surface based tech

NADDY2 months ago

if you swim along the bottom of an ocean cheese cave and it is the true bottom N is very close to 0 like >-0.005

NADDY2 months ago

i dont think it works for long distances but maybe for very short ones (e.g. digging a 3 block tall gap and jumping to see a noticeable decrease in N

sam2 months ago

interesting

NADDY2 months ago

this should be swimming into a corner

NADDY2 months ago

i guess

sam2 months ago

something else i considered is while moving on RD 2 you can see how many hostile mobs despawn when you cross chunk borders, and get an idea of relative concentration of mobs for those 5 chunks you just deloaded vs the other 20 you have loaded

sam2 months ago

overlaps with moving in overworld but like, comes at the expense of information from seeing your surroundings

GracefulBeauty2 months ago(edited)

one method ive been using for cave finding (and navigation while already in a cave) is thin macro + look straight down and then slightly up + look at C counter + spin around

NADDY2 months ago

thats a lotta chunks tho

NADDY2 months ago

i think macros are not allowed

GracefulBeauty2 months ago

they are

sam2 months ago

it's just zoom macros that arent allowed

NADDY2 months ago

this is really good info in trial chambers actually

GracefulBeauty2 months ago

resizing the window outside of monitor bounds isn't allowed, thin is within bounds

NADDY2 months ago

you know where to dig out for a cave

NADDY2 months ago

ohhh ok

GracefulBeauty2 months ago(edited)

for this, you have to be aware of how C counter works. basically it culls caves that aren't connected to the space you're currently in, but it can "xray" through walls that aren't fully blocking the boundary between two sub-chunks

NADDY2 months ago

also big for checking if a wall is real or generated to cover a trial chamebr

NADDY2 months ago

wait

NADDY2 months ago

this is awesome

sam2 months ago

i'm gonna write a script to see how predictive the gradient is

sam2 months ago

just in case digging 3 blocks actually straight up tells you if there's a cheese cave

sam2 months ago(edited)

c counter usually only works if you're already dug down right?

sam2 months ago(edited)

like i don't think it ever reveals a y-10 full buried cheese cave

NADDY2 months ago

i think if the cave is within like a chunk yeah

NADDY2 months ago(edited)

or somehow air is connected

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

yea c counter gets culled very easily if its multiple chunks away

GracefulBeauty2 months ago

nice thing about c though is you don't get false positives at least

GracefulBeauty2 months ago

lots of false negatives

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

yea theres always something

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

sometimes it goes away after digging for a while though

GracefulBeauty2 months ago

thin macro + spin helps with that

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

so you have to check other directions

GracefulBeauty2 months ago

it's cause you're going the wrong way and you cross into a sub-chunk that's actually not on the way

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

yeah true thin is good to narrow it down

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

just unlucky the way caves generate you cant really detect them using noise until youre almost in them

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

you cant like preemptive for caves somehow right

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

ik it usually uses block entities just thinking if theres something else on the pie

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

i guess you could eray maybe

GracefulBeauty2 months ago

i think eray has the same culling logic as cray

GracefulBeauty2 months ago

but if not exactly the same, ik eray does have its own culling situation

NADDY2 months ago

just found a cheese cave from a normal cave using n value

NADDY2 months ago

hard to tell if i got lucky or not

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

tas

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

at that point c counter probably works as well

AKI2 months ago

just look at a water cave and u can just see if theres something below it if u know what your looking for

sam2 months ago

please share your method

UniquepotatoesOP2 months ago

how can see ?

AKI2 months ago

if it looks like theres a cave that means theres a cave

sam2 months ago

oh i tried that sometimes theres not a cave sadly

AKI2 months ago

then it didnt look like there was a cave there

AKI2 months ago

u just thought it looked like that

sam2 months ago

oh ok

CuberInACube2 months ago

https://youtube.com/shorts/gYMdYwyuyAc?si=BY8_yFO6eUSDUFkq

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CuberInACube2 months ago

This is useful sometimes

luxuryz4 weeks ago(edited)

no aki is right tho

luxuryz4 weeks ago

i swear its really easy to tell when there "is" a cave under a water cave

luxuryz4 weeks ago(edited)

sometimes the "caves" are htose like 10x10 shit air pockets that got like intersected with water caves and IDK if theres info to be gained from that or not

luxuryz4 weeks ago

Oh so yea basically what camman said.