Etho Plays Minecraft - Episode 564: 1.18 Project Underground 

It feels very alien to have watched Etho's world for so long and now all of a sudden there's a spooky giant underground cave system even further below the mancave. Completely unexplored terrain right below, as if it had been there the whole time.

Have to mention the best part about the updating and building, mobs now require block light 0 to spawn instead of 7. Lot less torches are needed for builds.

I love how he keeps talking about how much he wants to build in the amplified where he never builds.

This update has really given me a glimmer of that old nostalgic feeling that I first had a decade ago exploring the game for the first time, exploring a new alien world, finding my first diamond, finding obsidian etc. Seeing etho this episode feels like he’s got new energy to play his world which has unlocked a whole new level underground, I love it basically

Etho's really been revolutionising minecraft-travel since the start of his career with the famous EATS road. Incredible, man.

4:17 "Ohhh snappers! We've got some redstone guys!" Wow an iconic Etho moment in 2021 on 1.18. Can't get better than that. "Ohh; we've got clay guys look at this!" 🤣

I cannot believe I have gone through my 20's watching you, and now the day before my 34th bday I get a new episode, I absolutely love watching your MC content, and it gives me a lot of ideas and inspiration for my own world, love the series Etho, and hope to be watching it into my 40's

Etho sounds so happy and giggly this episode, it made me smile the whole time :)

Random thought. But those caverns would make perfect “snowglobes” or “terrariums” if you ever continue Etho’s Lab. Have each one themed around a different biome or idea. Plus then it’s right under the mancave and would be more convenient to work on or look something up.

I think for me amplified quickly loses a lot of its WOW factor, because every corner you turn its the same giant mountains and floating islands, its a bit too chaotic for my liking. The new generation makes the big mountains rarer and therefor in my eyes a more satisfying find.

Hey Etho! I would think as another "Stage" for your underground caverns, you could add wildlife! Bees flying around, sheep eating the grass, and the horses going around. My only concern is they could be derpy and walk off the cliff. Also maybe minecarts going around for more "movement" Love the channel.

“Oh I was a mile away! Come on!” Loving that Last Life reference

New amplified is still the new generation, not the old amplified. It will be the same like the new world generation, just 'much more amplified'. So if you see something interesting in a seed, in the amplified it will be even more magnificent.

Only Etho would completely invent a whole new highway system that is easy to build and integrate in any terrain. Definitely using this over dolphin tubes.

Etho! I don’t know if you noticed or not, but there appears to be a geode in one of your caverns. You actually pointed your cursor at it a few times. (34:42) Perhaps this is something you could expose to add more color? I don’t know, your much more creative then me! Also, would it be possible to convince you to leave the water column the fish spawn in? It’s way more funny to me then it should be lol. Great video! Thanks for always being my friend even when I never had any!

I still remember watching 10 years ago when you chose to build in a cave because of the awesome new generation. In every world I've ever started I've tried to mimic the man cave in one aspect or another. I am very excited to see you build in the new, very spacious caves. I think it is a great way of coming full circle a decade later!

Hey Etho, for the noteblock music you should be safe with classical pieces so they might be a fun challenge.

I gotta say, having watched this series for about 9 years at this point it is incredibly surreal seeing such a new and dramatic change to such a familiar world. I can't wait to see all the wonderful things Etho will do in the new terrain!

2:42 Etho runs past his first ever slime farm of this world and a whole wave of nostalgia just hit me in the face.. Love ya Etho

I'm so happy you can still get half a million views etho! I've watched you for so long just like a lot of people here and you've changed our lives with your personality. Thank you.

23:16 These views make me feel like I'm playing a Vech's CTM map - ya know, the one with caverns and all? Absolutely wild update!

My favourite part about Etho, is that he'll ignore all the diamonds and get super excited for redstone. Every single time. I hope this never changes; It still makes me laugh.

I'm using "large biomes" for the the first time in 1.18. It goes really well with the new generation, makes it feel like you're in a proper world now.

"Oh I was a mile away" Last life moments flash right before my eyes

That entrance to the new cave was so hilariously on brand I find it hard to believe Etho didn’t plan it somehow

Oh man. Etho spamming torches like it's 1.17 then trying to find coal was really funny. Even glow lichen stops mob spawning now.

i love how happy etho is in this episode, glad he still enjoys himself after all these years

I was never into the amplified terrain thing. It looks amazing and certainly you can build really interesting stuff there, but it kinda gets old, maybe it's just too much to the eyes. Besides, building there is just so much harder. Think of it like this, much more projects are unfinished in your amplified base than in your main base area... Where do you want to spend most of your time? However, because of what Gnembon said, it might be worth it to leave your wolrd as amplified.

honestly at 4:43 i got kinda emotional cause we kinda felt that wonder and awe. It's like that feeling we used to get when we first opened up a new cave and see a beautiful ravine or some crazy terrain. This is so exciting!

The fact that there's a Lush Cave beneath the Mancave, the biome obviously inspired by the Mancave, is just perfection. Also, Etho laughing at his own Etho-ism at 4:28 is also perfection.

For whatever it's worth, I'm not really a fan of the amplified terrain. It makes everything over the top, when part of the joy in normal Minecraft is exploring and seeing all the different variations in terrain, and then when you do find something that's out of the ordinary, it feels more special.

Fitting that under Etho's man cave is a natural cave that has green in it. Since one of the first things he did was track dirt into his cave to bring in grass so it wouldn't be so dull and grey like other underground homes he'd seen at the time.

Etho, you should definitely build a mancave 2.0 underneath your mancave with the new cave, that would be a really cool project for you to do. Making a new base of operations would be a nice change of pace, instead of something as drastic as starting a new world.

Alright, controversial opinion ahead Etho: Although "Amplified" is more eye-catching at first glance, it's kind of a single trick thing on the whole map, it's the same spaghetti terrain everywhere compared to the new terrain which has a bit of everything. Also, I don't think it actually encourages you to build on it since it's so complicated, you've been using amplified since a long time ago and you've mostly stuck to regular terrain. This and adding the performance benefit, I think you should go with new terrain.

The amplified just fits so incredibly well with your playstyle as you said. On top of that the terrain generation reminds me of classic jrpg artwork

Oh man, blast from the past. I used to love watching ethos. it's time to get back on watching his content

The main benefit I see for switching to vanilla is having a good mixture between flat areas and mountainous terrain. Flat areas can be useful for some aspects of the game, like finding large, flat deserts to blow up for sand. Also, I’d imagine that vanilla is far more optimized and would overall perform better than amplified.

you know you gotta drop everything and watch etho when he uploads! im excited to see what etho can do with the new update.

Etho is so happy that his world is updated. The most giddy dude ever I love it.

"Today we're gonna build a path." Immediate ZPM flashbacks, good thing we cant expect Etho to go path-crazy in a dissolving world

4:58 "I was a mile away" sudden traumatic flashbacks to last life :/

I cannot imagine a world without the etho LP. His let's play has changed history.

13:31 this place was cool! Imagine building a nice castle on the flat area, you have a huuge moat around it!

love how etho keeps finding ways to make his mine craft experience better day by day, truly the goat!!

It's been a long time since I've heard Etho sound as excited as he did when he was caving at the start of the video. The new underground pathways look super fun. The only real case I can think of to make for the new generation is that when it does something spectacular, it's more unusual, so it really stands out more and that can help a build look cooler too because it's not just lost in everything around it. That said, it the new amplified terrain looks more fun to you, you should absolutely do it. The series is most fun when you're having fun.

Etho seems so happy and positive lately.. I love it And I agree with you, this world is historical at this point, you can't, we can't abandon it

I'm pretty sure you can NBT edit the world's noise parameters to make it crazy like amplified

I haven’t watched a Minecraft video for months, but an Etho video will always draw me right back in.

I'm only 5 minutes in and you can hear how excited Etho is in this episode! Makes me excited to watch the rest of it too!

You haven't seen one of those massive mountains Etho. They go up to y256, and they're vanilla mountains. They are a sight to behold and very rare. If you go on with amplified, your entire world would be like that, so in the end the choice is yours.

It's been a few years since I last watched one of your episodes. Last time I watched an episode in your let's play, I was in middle school. I'm now a sophomore in college. Time flies. Videos are still as great as ever

It wouldn't be too difficult to edit the vanilla world generation datapack to increase the height variation and wackiness of the terrain without going as far as it is on amplified, instead making the terrain more akin to how it looked pre-beta 1.8. I think it would be a nice compromise between the largely flat vanilla worlds and the craziness of amplified.

Man, when etho got excited about the clay, started laying a underground road with vanilla blocks and grabbed the buckets, I was just sure he found some way to make an EATS road work again. It was like way back when l, when every update was making the EATS work that somehow got systematically broken with every update.

you should upload a long and unedited version of you caving in the new caves, i greatly enjoyed seeing you mill about. it’s great fun to see you walk through creeps praying “i’ll live, i’ll live”

It’s crazy to see the mancave over the last decade then suddenly there is so much new terrain right below

He said “ OH SNAP, we got clay guys.” A North American treasure.

Hey Etho, you can clear out the deepslate pretty quickly using moss and bonemeal, so you won't have to use so much tnt. Though the tnt tunnels also look really cool, so you may wish to continue with that. Great video as always, can't wait to see how project underground goes!

If you want to stick to amplified, go for it! I think I’m happy with normal, but I agree the major drawback to amplified in the new world would be the performance. With 50% more terrain vertically, the lag could get pretty bad. Whatever you choose I’ll be happy with, hope all this new terrain under the mancave keeps you inspired!

man its crazy watchin you as a kid and coming back as an adult watching every now and again Etho you are amazing

Etho is the one Minecraft LP I watch that somehow makes bricks look good

4:35 Hey everyone, welcome back to LEGENDARY! The vex cave vibes are pretty real here.

The caves with the glow berries, give me massive nostalgia for vechs’ super hostile maps.

I love this video and the fact you're still going. Just seeing these long time Minecraft youtubers still around inspires me to have fun in the game, and to keep going with everything in life. You're great at what you do, Etho.

I haven't watched etho in years, glad to see he's still around

"Oh, snappers! We got some redstone, guys!" Good ol' Etho. Gotta love it.

it's fun to see etho go caving again. I know how much he talked about finding a reason to go caving again and here it is!

Absolutely love the 'New base' idea with the highway! Awesome concept

So good to see that you’re still having fun with the series Etho!❤️

Amplified looks better. The old amplified was chaotic with huge cliffs everywhere, which made it look a bit like just test generation, while the new looks more like real biomes. Sure, the new vanilla terrain can look great, but there are also huge areas where not much interesting happens. It can be a good choice - if you get the interesting terrain to generate where you want it - but amplified means you'll get more of the interesting terrain, which means a much better chance of getting what you want. This is an old, old world, so there's no option to just spawn new worlds until you find something you like.

Thanks for the response on the note block music! Good to know, loved the video as always! Dolphin path looks really fun

Found my first underground cave. Man this update is crazy. Minecraft is one of the only games that keeps improving over time

Hey Etho For the note block thing If you don’t have 7 notes in a row that are the exact same as the original its considered its own thing so you can normally change the song very slightly and its ok.

Hey Etho, if you want to dig tunnels through deepslate fast and cheap, then use moss! It replaces deepslate and other blocks when bonemealed, and can be insta-mined with a hoe very easily. The moss can then be put back into a composter to recoup some of the cost.

Change it back to vanilla terrain, in my opinion! I’ve been super excited to see your thoughts regarding the new degree of variety and verticality. As for more dramatic terrain than the world you flew through, shattered terrain can generate in any biome with 1.18 and biomes can get super mountainous, it just varies with location (I think dramatic terrain being a cool find is nice). Another feature I really enjoy is the much larger rivers and the gorges they often occupy

Very reminiscent of the old EATS road system! Oh how far the game has come!

I hope this world never dies ! I go back and forth between Minecraft we’re I play then have no interest but everytime I come back I come straight to etho !

Hey Ergo, one of my favourite things about your world is that it tells a story through the updates. By now you have 10s of thousand blocks loaded in amplified that you can always utilise however; personally I think it would be nice for you to have an authentic 1.18 area given that it’s such a big update. You can always change back to amplified for new chunks later. That being said I’ve loved everything you’ve done in this world so do what’s right for you.

This update is huge. The Mojang team really delivered in my opinion. Its an invetation to built underground and explore. I also really like the way caves blend into the suface, it feels more realistic and grand. I would have prefered if they increased the world hight in the nether though, so its less spawn- proofing with goldfarms, because you just build way up above the nether roof.

Hey Etho, I would recommend using night vision pots in the caves to see better and farther. Although, the glow berries and other sources of light in the caves add to the effect. Just practically speaking, the night vision pots may help.

So I had to put down two of my dogs this weekend, and it’s been really tough for me. I want to thank you, Etho, for making this video (and all of your videos for that matter)! It’s really helped to put a smile on my face during this hard time! Thank you!!

It's like this update was made for you Ergo lol. Really looking forward to seeing how the man cave will evolve from here!

Hey Etho, I'd love to see Project Underground built in a Dwarven theme similar to your Hermitcraft Season 3 base. The darker tones of deep slate would provide the perfect backdrop for a medieval mine shaft.

Awesome idea man, you always got something up your sleeve

I've watched every lets play episode for the last ten years, and love everything youve done. That being said I would love the idea of a new world! would be so nostalgic to have a fresh start.

Hi, Etho! This put a huge smile on my face, your enthusiasm is infectious! I love the super fast tunnel, the different methods you used for adding speed layered over another were interesting! I have a suggestion: The TNT carved out quite a nice natural shape in the tunnel, maybe if you wanted to add to the look of it in terms of aesthetics, I think some lanterns hanging down chains of varying lengths from the ceiling would not only light it up well, but perhaps add an element of story to the place; if, say you also incorporated a mineshaft-like theme to it, it would be cohesive with the mineshafts in the area, the wooden block palette could look great with the brick colour, and going back to the story element, maybe it would suggest that the miners who built the mineshafts were now exploring the new lush caves! Maybe there’s something rare and precious they are searching for that is in the lush caves. I’m excited to see what you do with the place, it looks beautiful as is, and I think it’d look even cooler with your unique flair added to it! Thank you so much for another video, this made my day! I’ve been getting very into your content recently, and I’ve noticed it’s had a very positive impact on me. Once again, thank you, and I hope you have a day as wonderful as you are!

The only issue with Amplified imo is you might not get the new impressive mountains generating as cleanly

I have 2 ideas for the underground caverns/scenic route - 1) each cavern can be a mini-spotlight of each of the different biomes (underground desert, ocean, forest, etc.) 2) DWARVEN KINGDOM

This is the first time I’ve experience the new caves. I’m glad it was with you

Is it just me or do the new caves almost seem to be TOO cool. Before it was always really cool when you find a cave system that just sprawls on forever. But now every cave you come across is just absolutely amazing (which is a good issue to have xD)

Hey Etho, this was great! My main argument against amplified is that it makes the terrain super wacky and cool, but it feels difficult to landmark things because it’s really cluttered. _everything_ is just a little too cool that it drowns out any build, so it’s kind of an immersion breaker the standard terrain seems more like we get to see a world that’s fun and immersive ^because^ of Etho, but i think the balance is off centered when amped. That said, amplified is definitely a great place for fun one-off projects which may be better suited, so either way you choose will most definitely work great :)

Holy i used to watch etho everyday when i was like 12 or something. He was my fav youtuber. Crazy that his yt profile pic is still the same and he hasnt changed one bit. 10/10 RU-vidr

Awesome video Etho! I can't wait to see what cool things you build with these new large caverns.

Definitely go with whatever inspires you most. Sounds like that is amplified.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I really do think you should give the new terrain a try! You already have quite a bit of amplified generated and your biggest/longest term project is in the amplified terrain, so it's not like it's going away. At worst you can just switch when/if you get bored, but at the end of the day I can't really argue with your preference

Etho! I think I have a really good idea! I think you should use the new terrain, but limit it to five episodes or whatever you deem necessary. I think it would be really cool if you used the new terrain, generated a little bit of it, then once you're happy with the amount you have you switch back to the amplified. That way the update is completely cemented in your world and if you don't like the terrain that was generated then you can focus on the amplified. Also!!!! Try changing deepslate to moss, maybe it will be more efficient!!!

I think a cool idea for the world would be to use the default terrain for maybe a year or two, then change back to amplified, so it’s almost like you have different eras to your world from the old generation, to amplified, then new generation and new amplified

I've been out of the loop for many years now, so I appreciate it whenever you summarize what's new in an update. The new caves look amazing, and it's kind of what my imagination ran to when I was much younger playing Minecraft. It'd be cool to see you take over a cavern and make a mini man-cave with the lush plant life. I also like the raw look of the blasted tunnel. There's a lot of depth in the walls so I think it'd be cool to keep it that way. The next step to the music challenge is writing your own melody! That way you can't get claimed lol

My thoughts on the terrain as a long time viewer; I think you might want to consider the new terrain sans amplified for the sole purpose of making things easier to build. The amplified base was really fun, but everything you build has to fit the terrain, making it harder. I think after the initial WOW factor, you would probably be better served with non-amplified. But, depends if you really want to venture out and create in the new areas. If you think it's just going to be something to stop in and out of for exploring then the amplified is what you want.

I absolutely love the way the tune looks like it’s been blown up my tnt

such a nostalgia hit at 2:43, i remember watching way back in the day when you were out there the first time. love the videos