Minecraft's new cheese and spaghetti caves are seriously impressing fans

Minecraft maker Mojang has released a new Caves and Cliffs test live for PC, and fans are seriously impressed by the changes it makes.

The 1.18 experimental snapshot allows for some truly spectacular world generation, including realistic-looking mountain peaks and Mines of Moria-like cave structures.

The only thing which disappointed me was these "cheese", "spaghetti" and "noodle" caves were not actually places you could mine out Italian foodstuffs. (Those names simply reflect the holey or elongated shapes created by the snapshot's cave generation algorithm.)

Writing on the official Minecraft reddit, Mojang designer MrHenrik2 explained that its unusual step of releasing an experimental snapshot separate to the main Java and Bedrock game clients reflected the "pretty big changes" it brings.

"We need to sort out some technical things before we can ship these in a normal Java snapshot or Bedrock beta, so in the meantime we've created an experimental snapshot for Java that you can download separately," MrHenrik2 wrote. "That way, you can try out the all new world generation and provide us with feedback while we continue our grand work of terraforming the world of Minecraft and integrating it into our normal snapshot/beta series."

You can nab the snapshot yourself from Minecraft.net here. It features new world height and depth, additional mountain biomes, new cave generation (cheese, spaghetti, noodle), local water and lava levels underground, cave biomes (lush, dripstone), natural variation in terrain independent from biomes, plus new ore distribution and large ore veins. Finally, monsters will only spawn in complete darkness.

Enough words. Here's what fans have been enjoying:

I just gave the @Minecraft 1.18 experimental snapshot a go and holy heck, the world generation is BEAUTIFUL. These two mountains I found side by side look amazing. 1.18 is looking to be seriously good pic.twitter.com/RzB4jTiL1t

after the 1.18 minecraft experimental release, im so hyped for the new update pic.twitter.com/makYFiQpYn

The new mountains are in Minecraft now and they are incredible! I'm really excited for 1.18's release. pic.twitter.com/bMpVnLL06X

Mojang released the first half of Minecraft's big Caves and Cliffs update last month for both Bedrock and Java editions of the game. The second half - including these experimental changes - will now arrive "around the holiday season".

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