YUNG's Better Caves in FTB Evolution 2

YUNG's Better Caves completely overhauls Minecraft's cave systems. Near the surface the caves are small and unassuming, but the deeper you dig, the crazier they get.^[1]

Down there you can run into lava caverns, underground lakes and rivers, flooded caverns, and more. So when you head underground for ore, expect the terrain to change as you go down.^[1]

Configuration

The mod is described as powerful and customizable, with dozens of options and support for dimension-specific configuration. The mod's own wiki covers how to use the extensive configuration.^[1]

Version in this pack

This pack ships YUNG's Better Caves 26.1.2-NeoForge-4.1.2. It was already in the pack in version 1.0.2 or earlier, so it is not a recent addition.^[2]

YUNG's Better Caves is a cave generation overhaul, so it changes the world you dig into rather than adding something for you to build. Your first steps are about exploring.^[1]

Caves are small and unassuming at the surface, but the deeper you go, the crazier things get. The mod describes lava caverns, underground lakes and rivers, and flooded caverns as part of that.^[1]

What to do first

1. Explore the shallow caves first. They are the small, unassuming ones near the surface.^[1]
2. Go deeper when you are ready for the bigger finds. Lava caverns, underground lakes and rivers, and flooded caverns all show up as you descend.^[1]
3. If you want to see how liquids are set up in this pack, check the liquid regions config described below.^[3]

The pack's liquid region settings

In the liquid regions file, this pack sets these Overworld values: liquidRegions.minecraft:overworld.liquid_altitude is -55, liquidRegions.minecraft:overworld.liquid_region_size is 0.001, and liquidRegions.minecraft:overworld.water_region_spawn_chance is 40.^[3]

The mod is customizable, with dozens of options and support for dimension-specific configuration. Its own wiki covers how to use the configuration in depth.^[1]

Unverified The sources here do not show any recipes or quests tied to this mod, so what the pack's quest book or recipes offer for it is unverified.

YUNG's Better Caves is a world generation mod, so there is nothing to craft or plug in here. Its whole job is to change how caves are carved when new chunks generate. The sources for this mod show how it does that and which settings the pack changes.^[1]

Swapping out the vanilla caves

The mod uses biome modifiers on every biome in the overworld tag. One adds the mod's own carvers, YUNG's Better Caves's better_cave and surface_cave, at the air step. The other removes the vanilla minecraft:cave and minecraft:cave_extra_underground carvers. In this pack's overworld, those vanilla cave carvers are replaced by the mod's own.^[4][5]

The better_cave carver

This is the main carver. It is split into cave layers and cavern layers, and each layer holds two carver types. Each one has its own noise settings, and the spawn weight decides how often a type is picked within its layer.^[6]

• Cave layer: two carver types with spawn weights of 10 and 5. Both run from Y -63 up to Y 80 and have a surface cutoff distance of 15. The layer's cave spawn chance is 100.0 and its region size frequency is 0.008.^[6]
• Cavern layer: two carver types, both with a spawn weight of 10. The first runs from Y -63 to Y -18 and is not floored. The second runs from Y -63 to Y -28 and is floored. The layer's cavern spawn chance is 23.0 and its region size frequency is 0.005.^[6]
• Terrain it may carve: the carver replaces blocks in the overworld carver replaceables tag. Surface detection is not overridden.^[6]
• Debug mode: the mod includes debug settings, but they are disabled.^[6]

The two cave carver types shape their tunnels differently. The first uses CubicFractal noise with a noise threshold of 0.95, a y compression of 5.0 and an xz compression of 1.6. The second uses SimplexFractal noise with a threshold of 0.82, a y compression of 2.2 and an xz compression of 0.9. Both use 2 noise generators.^[6]

The surface_cave carver

This one is a vanilla-style cave carver with a probability of 0.15. It works at heights from 80 above the bottom of the world up to Y 180, so it covers the higher parts of the terrain. Its horizontal radius multiplier ranges from 0.7 to 1.4 and its vertical radius multiplier from 0.8 to 1.3.^[7]

Liquid regions in this pack

The mod also generates underground lakes, rivers and lava oceans. The pack sets the overworld liquid values in the liquidregions config file. Liquid altitude is -55, liquid region size is 0.001 and water region spawn chance is 40.^[1][3]

• liquidRegions.minecraft:overworld.liquid_altitude: -55^[3]
• liquidRegions.minecraft:overworld.liquid_region_size: 0.001^[3]
• liquidRegions.minecraft:overworld.water_region_spawn_chance: 40^[3]

YUNG's Better Caves doesn't have tiers. What the sources show is a change to how the Overworld is carved, so this section covers what it swaps in and the depth ranges its carvers use.^[4][5]

Unverified Whether the pack's quest book has any quest or chapter involving this mod, and whether any recipe produces its items, is not shown in the sources here, so no progression path can be described.

What the mod swaps in

In every Overworld biome, the mod removes the vanilla carvers minecraft:cave and minecraft:cave_extra_underground. In their place it adds two carvers, bettercaves:better_cave and bettercaves:surface_cave, at the air step.^[4][5]

Depth ranges

• Cave layer: two carver types share a layer, both running from Y -63 to Y 80. Their spawn weights are 10 and 5, and the layer's cave spawn chance is 100.0.^[6]
• Cavern layer: two carver types again, both starting at Y -63. One tops out at Y -18 and the other, which is floored, at Y -28. Each has a spawn weight of 10, and the layer's cavern spawn chance is 23.0.^[6]
• Surface caves: this carver has a probability of 0.15. Its Y range runs from 80 above the world bottom up to an absolute Y of 180.^[7]

YUNG's Better Caves is built to be customizable, with dozens of options and support for dimension-specific configuration. The values this pack sets in its liquid regions file are listed below.^[1]

Overworld liquid regions

These are the Overworld values in the pack's liquid regions config file, exactly as the pack has them.^[3]

• liquidRegions.minecraft:overworld.liquid_altitude is set to -55.^[3]
• liquidRegions.minecraft:overworld.liquid_region_size is set to 0.001.^[3]
• liquidRegions.minecraft:overworld.water_region_spawn_chance is set to 40.^[3]

FTB Evolution 2 1.1.0 ships YUNG's Better Caves version 26.1.2-NeoForge-4.1.2. The pack's mod list says the mod was first included in FTB Evolution 2 1.0.2 or earlier, so it has been part of the pack for a while.^[2]

4.1.2 (the version in this pack)

The mod's own changelog for this release lists three changes, all about stability and logging rather than how caves look:^[8]

• The aquifer error message is more helpful and less spammy. It is suppressed entirely if Moderner Beta is installed.^[8]
• An unsafe call to ServiceLoader#load was fixed.^[8]
• The mixin refmap was removed, which reduces log spam.^[8]

In practice, that means a cleaner log if you are hunting down a problem in your world.^[8]