The Weird History of Minecraft Triple Chests

Creating a double chest in Minecraft is no big deal. But what about a triple chest? Turns out that at one point, they could actually be created and used in survival Minecraft! Today, I'm going to explore the history of Minecraft Triple Chests.

[Zorty]

There's three different calculations we need to make, in order to get a good approximation of the total probability of such an event accuring, these are:
1.) The probability of a dungeon and a mineshaft chest spawning in the same chunk
2.) The probability of a dungeon containing a double chest
3.) The probability of the mineshaft chest to be right next to the dungeon double chest (y-Level needs to match as well)

Some of these are practically impossible to calculate, since Minecraft generates dungeons/mineshafts, as well as chests within dungeons in a very unpredictable way. That's why I had to do some sampling on chunkbase to obtain some good estimations.

After doing sampling of around 14'592 chunks, I counted 234 dungeons, as well as 108 mineshaft chests. This means that dungeons have a 1.6% chance of generating in each chunk and mineshaft chests have a probability of around 0.74% of doing so. Combining these, we get the probability of around 0.012% (or 1 in 8425) of a dungeon and a mineshaft chest spawning in the same chunk.

Dungeons spawn in different sizes with different amount of chests inside them (0-2). All dungeon sizes (5x5, 5x7, 7x7) are equally likely, but the average amount of chests within a dungeon can't be calculated that easily. After manually checking around 50 dungeons myself, I concluded that about half of all dungeons contain two chests within them.
Note that for a chest to generate within a dungeon, it needs to be placed next to exactly one solid block (disregarding the mob spawner). This means that double chests can only spawn vertically to the wall, or along the wall if there is an opening right where the chest is. There are around 2*((n-2)+(m-2))-1 ways for a double chest to be generated vertical to the wall, for every nxm sized dungeon. Considering a dungeon has 2 openings on average, this gives around 3 more possible arrangements for double chests to spawn. (Normally you get more openings the bigger the room is). For each nxm sized dungeon, there exist around 2*((n-2)+(m-2))-1 ways for the first chest to be placed. The amount of different possibilities for the second to be placed is highly dependent on the placement of the first chest and the openings, so we can only make assumptions, that there is about 10 ways for 5x5, 13 for 5x7 and 16 for 7x7. (You can draw the possible placements on paper regarding different opening positions and this is the approximation i came up with.) Using these numbers we get the following probabilities of a double chest generating:
- 5x5: = 14/110 = 0.127 = around 1 in 8.
- 5x7: 18/195 = 0.092 = around 1 in 11.
- 7x7: (2*(5+5)-1+3)/(2*(5+5)-1)*16) = 22/304 = 0.076 = around 1 in 14.
Since all of these dungeon sizes are equally likely, we get a total probability of 0.097 for double chest accuring in a double chest room or a probability of 0.047 (about 1 in 21) of a double chest accuring in any dungeon.

We now already have all calculations needed to calculate the probability of a dungeon double chest and a mineshaft chest being in the same chunk. Now we just need to account for the placement of these chests with respect to each other. For this I assumed that dungeons/mineshafts would generate around Y=10-60, therefore there are exactly 50*16^2 = 12'800 possible blocks where the chests could spawn at. The dungeon chest has exactly 6 adjacent blocks, so the probability of the mineshaft chest being one of those 6 is about 6/12'800, or 1 in 2133.

Combining all the different probabilities we calculated, we obtain a pretty good estimate of around 1/8425 * 1/21 * 1/2133 = 1/369'396'908 for a natural triple chest accuring in every chunk. This means that there is approximatly one triple chest in every 300'000x300'000 block area, or about 40'000 naturally generated triple chests in each minecraft world.

(Note that I used rounded fractions so it would be easier to read)

EDIT: At first this seemed much too common to be true, since 40'000 such triple chests within every minecraft world seems like a lot to barely happen. But this might not seem that weird considering that you'll need to check 5-6 million dungeons on average, before finding one with a triple chest. It's not actually that surprising that there has only been one natural triple chest found on 2b2t so far.

[SalC]

Update: Before I pin a comment with the probability of a triple chest spawning, you MUST get your work checked by others replying to your comment. I just want to make sure I pin something that's accurate.

[graf]

I remember seeing a triple chest for the first time on some hey0mod Towny server around the Beta days, some guys used the chest block as their land claim border and it was basically a whole line of them. Thanks for the nostalgia trip, Sal.

[OfficialMaxBox]

It's just nuts that there are still things to learn about this game and its history.

[TechX]

Back when I used to play 4b4t, we figured out that during heavy lag, you could make invisible chests that even chest esp couldn't pick up, but if you knew where to click, you could open the chest. I still have a few on that server somewhere

[Weisz]

Super interesting video, i love seeing the old busted minecraft game mechanics hahaha

[ahoy]

The change in how Chests were rendered actually provided an interesting application to lining up invalid chests, as with the proper placement only the first two blocks would be rendered, allowing you to create entire walls of invisible, tangible blocks. Before Barriers, this was one way of preventing players from going places they weren't meant to in custom maps.

[open]

The chance of a dungeon spawning with a double chest is 0.2% on its own. Adding the probability of a minechaft of spawning in it and the chest in the exact place for a triple chest to spawn, its about 0.00007% chance of a dungeon spawning with a doublechest

[ProtonProductions]

This phenomenon was always in the back of my mind throughout my years playing minecraft but I've never ever seen it covered with such nuance and precision.

[ConnorPugs]

Sal, great video again. I know this is kinda generic but your videos are always super interesting and I really appreciate the lengths you go to get and organize all the information and technical details. You’re a beauty.

[NICK....]

What I find even more interesting is that the glitched chest worked, maybe in some long forgotten time chests were meant to be infinitely expandable

[Bedwar]

I remember using world edit back in the day to make invisible blocks for custom maps or plot servers before barrier blocks were a thing, cool history behind the vanilla side of things though!

[Xeebakou]

I remember seeing a tutorial on how to create a triple chest with commands, it was really cool to mess around with. I hope Mojang adds a storage unit with more slots like that

[kryall]

i remember many years ago i came across ~2 dungeons that had spawned on top of one another, the chests of which had somehow glitched together to form a triple chest; its gui was like that of a normal double chest, but the actual slots were larger in number and were disjointed from the slots in the graphic. it was ages ago, probably around 1.4-7, and i never got the seed, which sucks.

[ponteirodorato]

Yesterday I was playing older versions with my friends, I totally got confused when I tried to place double chests next to each other and nothing happened

[Jmcgee]

5:43 you say this, but they patched item shadowing (a very, very awesome and super useful update suppression trick) in the snapshot immediately following its public reveal. Mojang left triple chests because it couldn't be abused, not because they have better things to do.

[AWalYT]

Had a lot of fun making these with WorldEdit back in the beta days, though I do remember some combinations were broken, which was unfortunate.

Also I though I recognized that Radiarc track when it played...because reasons...

[Radiarc_]

Can't believe I didn't see this! Thank you so much for using one of my songs! I've been watching you here and there for a little bit, so this was quite unexpected. Best of luck to ya!

[justanotheryoutubechannel]

This reminds me of something I read about with pocket edition apparently in super early versions (before iOS or common android versions were released) you couldn’t create double chests like normal, however you could create VERTICAL double chests, which was super weird and caused a lot of glitches with the graphics. It was a bug, and was fixed after a few versions.

[itsintheworksdotdotdot]

Even though this is not 2b2t content, this is still a great video!