Works for me on 1.21.5. I'm running this alongside Ancient Dungeons, BetterRuins, and Underground Mines. My preference is fewer and wider caverns, so I tweaked my config as follows. I'm using Terra Prety as my cornerstone worldgen mod with world height 320.

florins I've been testing this alongside Ancient Dungeons and things look fine underground.

McTaco thank you, your info was very helpful!

Is this mod going to be updated to 1.21.0?

Is this mod good to add to an existing world or would it be best to start a new one before using it?

What settings to use to make surface cave pits appear less often? The whole damn land is full with them huge holes. Can't go through the forest without falling into a few.

Is this compatible with Ancient Dungeons https://news.kalataka.ru/thedungeon ?

McTaco Thanks for the in-depth analysis! This is one of my first ever mods for this game and it was created in a short period of time, so I will be the first to admit that it definitely has it's faults. It's understandable that you don't wish to use it for your playthrough. I'm unsure when I will get around to fixing and improving this mod, I've recently been working on other projects and playing other games, so Vintage Story has been less of a focus for me.

I toyed with this mod for a while, and first and formost, wow, what a ram hog. Its got an expensive resursive funtion in that just chewed up my ram and hard froze me for a few seconds, this is even while being at spawn, 30 minutes after starting the world, new chunks far off were still being calcualed.

Provided settings:

Here we see 9 caves directly around spawn. all verticle shafts.

We also see 20GB ram usage (12gb other) shortly after starting this world. I believe this is mostly the expensive recursive cave generation.

Recommended settings:

Here we see only 3 real shafts, the two on the left are the same cave, just two openings. and the one in the bottom right is a very shallow slope to enter the cave

Same seed used. just different cave settings. It should be noted I also used 75% trees in the first picture

Here is a control test of no cave mod. 3 shafts. less ram usage.

It should be known I have 100 mods installed, thats likely where all the ram is going. but I did notice a steep increase when using this mod and freezes when I run out of ram.

Recommended settings:

{
"CaveAmountDivisor": 80,
"TunnelHorizontalSizeMultiplier": 1.2,
"TunnelVerticalSizeMultiplier": 0.9,
"TunnelCurvinessMultiplier": 1.1,
"CreateShafts": false,
"ModVersion": "1.2.0"
}

Some words about stuff:

{
"CaveAmountDivisor": 80, // This value controls how many levels of caves you will have, its (world hieght - 20) / CaveAmountDivisor. This will give you a larger value on taller worlds unless you increase this number. im betting 64 is designed for 256 worlds, so raising this to 80 to 100, seems to result in less caves overall. the resulting value is an int, so it drops any decimal values. at 256, the result is 3. on 320, using 80 gives us the same value of 3. to reduce it further you could bring it over 100, like 101, to bring the result down to 2.
"TunnelHorizontalSizeMultiplier": 1.2, // shrug
"TunnelVerticalSizeMultiplier": 0.9, // I believe its affecting how high a vertical tunnel can be, smaller, should mean less poking through the ground
"TunnelCurvinessMultiplier": 1.1, // also reduce the curviness to help prevent peak throughs.
"CreateShafts": false,
"ModVersion": "1.2.0"
}

the leading theory is that caves bob and weave around eventually reaching the surface, popping out, and then 10 blocks later curving back down underground. Which leads to the many more shafts people are seeing. A true fix here, would be to check if y+10 blocks are air, and if so, not go up.

Here is a test using some more extreme settings:

{
"CaveAmountDivisor": 101,
"TunnelHorizontalSizeMultiplier": 1.2,
"TunnelVerticalSizeMultiplier": 0.5,
"TunnelCurvinessMultiplier": 0.9,
"CreateShafts": false,
"ModVersion": "1.2.0"
}

Here we see 3 shafts, but all very shallow and doesn't navigate far down at all.

This is kind of expected when using a value above 100. Using less curviness seems to produce less diverse caves, and same with verical size. We chopped that value in half here, and that may be why we dont see caves going very deep.

The mod is very intricate, and I love the work, but I think I wont be using it in our next playthrough. the larger save size, and ram usage, is a bit offputting.

Sidfu tested it as well and can confirm theres more dead-drop caves now

dont think it mod is workign fully right. i get FAR to many caves. on my current game within 50 blocks of my base i  have literaly  10 caves and 6 of the are vertical shafts. think the issue si that in making them more complex its causign them to  wrap  back to surface and be differnt entrance to same cave.

update.
ok took and used teh same seed and settings for  ame world on mutipe gens and yep that seems to be the case. cave tweaks is causing some of the caves to seem to duplicate and also for others to loop back to surface causing you to have even more caves at surface.

I think you need to update that Vanilla Terrain Reformed link since it's Terra Prety now!

Is there a way to add a config for the amount of cave entrances? I'd like to reduce the amount of cave entrances but keep the complexity so that finding a cave entrance can be rewarding.

Caves at the default setting feel too clustered together, you may find 6 cave entrances close together with 4 of them just being little holes that lead to nothing and 2 that lead to the same cave system. I tried increasing CaveAmountDiviser which helped reduce the cave entrances but that appears to reduce caves overall so all they ended up being less complex due to less intersections.

Any chance you could change the variety of cave openings and cave chambers so we can get larger cave mouths and more sprawling caverns that can appear at any depth? Is it also possible to introduce some sort of world gen system that propogates caves with troglodyte/subterranean flora/fauna as well? Having kinda moved on from Minecraft and ;into Vintage Story, one of the things I missed frrom Minecraft is the wonder and enjoyment of finding crazy cave openings and vast caverns full of all kinds of sights.

I know Vintage Story's whole thing is immersion and realism, but I think it can pull that off even with more fantastical elements like cave ecosystems/environments. I mean, we've already got ancient steampunk magic, interdimensional zombies, and cosmic/eldritch horror in the game, afterall.

Arkinson
If you're still looking for a mod to reduce large vertical falls, this might help!

I'm using this mod but I'm not sure I've noticed a difference just yet. I still find deep vertical shafts and caves don't really lead anywhere 90% of the time.

I really like the idea of having less vertical shafts to fall in. but I would like there to be less interconnectivity at deeper lvls. And fewer caves over all. Would it be possible to go in that direction with the config settings you mentioned.

wojtek16 I'm pretty sure it will? You'll just have to find new chunks to generate to see the new caves of course

Do you know if this would work with already created worlds? Of course would give it a try, but just wanted to check before needing to backup, etc.

Masta_Squidge I had some responsibilities and other projects to attend to, but I will update the mod very soon!

Any status update on "fixing" the mass amounts of surface holes?

Pseudonym_Tim That would be awesome, thanks

Blazha For the next version of the mod I'm planning on adding configurable settings and whatnot for everything you might want to tweak

Is there a chance to make a version of this mod that reduces the amount of caves? I find them too overwhealming in vanilla world generation, and too empty in most cases - not worth exploring

Roidgy Should be compatible, I tested it out just now and saw a good plenty of ruins I'd never seen before.

Is this compatible with Better Ruins? Haven't encountered a single mod ruin since installing this, while they were super abundant before. 

This works fine with VanillaPlus WorldGen and Rivers

Would this be compatible with other world-gen mods like for example the "Vanilla Terain Reformed (VTR)" mod?

ivyoary This is due to the increased chance of surface caves essentially. I might just rip that logic out or decrease the chance!

I've been looking for something like this, but my one issue is that it seems to make the surface layer extremely patchy.

https://imgur.com/D41YKB2 This might be on the more severe side of examples, but is there any way to reduce the surface entrances to caves?

DanaCraluminum Whoops, yeah, I actually even messed up the mod config

Why it is both if generation is completely server side?

I hope this works with Cave Content - it's old but extremely necessary after the jonas parts were introduced. You can just go deep hunting for compacted machinnery blocks and get the parts you need.

m00n I'm unsure actually, as long as those mods don't touch cave generation? I can do some testing later and update the description of the mod to reflect if it's compatible or not!

would this be compatible with terrain generation mods like plains and valleys or vanilla terrain reformed?

Cave tweaks are sorely needed. Cheers!