And I'm off! My first target is a largely unexplored ocean area 1 map east and 2 maps north of spawn.
Here's a map showing my rough route there. The X is Lazy River Landing.
Once there I run a vaguely spiral seach pattern, finding:
No islands whatsoever. There could be some small ones lurking in some of the blank spaces, but I'm not interesting in that thorough a search.
From here I proceed west, to the map 2 north of spawn. I know there's some unexplored land here; at one point while I was skirting a landmass to my north I spotted some land to my south. I head for there. But before I get there:
I spot a jungle! I have to snooze on the boat, as it's getting dark. Come morning I disembark and swim to the coast to explore.
I love the way jungles look with the Halcyon Days pack I use. Dark, exotic, ominous, and beautiful.
However, as soon as I reach land, I find it's *not* a jungle. It's a (Highlands) Jungle Island. Encouraging, because that's more likely to be an island. As I mentioned in some previous episodes, Climate Control places the Highlands Island biomes as biomes in the "DEEP_OCEAN" climate - which is what's normally all Deep Ocean biomes. So sometimes in the deep ocean, you run into these islands. The latest version of climate control allows players to set any biome as "DEEP_OCEAN", meaning it will pop up in the deep ocean, generally as an island.
Unfortunately often they're not islands, because they're either in a deep ocean biome next to land (which happens) or they grow into "normal" land in the process of land generation. So I want to see if this "Island" is really an island - or just "is land".
As I head into the jungle, I soon spot a node. Sweet, I'm looking for those. I move in close and check it out with my goggles and:
Holy cow, what a find! 144 Vis, and providing all 4 of the "element" Vis (Herba is composed of Terra and Aqua, ultimately, and I can use it with my compound recharge focus at home). I immediately set about jarring it, which turns out to be very complicate because it's high off the ground and the jungle makes it hard to judge placement. As I'm jarring, it occurs to me I should scan it to make sure it's not pale or fading. A fading node generates new new Vis (so is useless for a node room) and pale nodes usually become fading when jarred. But that's only about 4% of nodes, so I don't bother.
Of course, when it's finally jarred, you can probably guess what I've got - a 144 Vis fading node. Great.
Continuing on, I spot another node. But, it seems I have to deal with a forest fire first. Forest firest can get pretty obnoxious in jungles, for obvious reasons. So I set about making firebreaks.
Once the fire is under control, I obsidianize the causative lava pool, and chop down a jungle giant which lost all its leaves. I shove a full stack of jungle wood through the mirror. I do get one buggish behavior- at one point my Thaumcraft Axe of the Stream starts chopping wood from trees not connected,as far as I can see, to the one I'm chopping. I have to chop the last few blocks with my hand.
Now I check the node - remembering to scan this time, and - holy cow, it's 66 Ignis, 78 Herba, *and* it's bright! What a find! Of course I jar this puppy, but it takes a while, just like the other did.
This is my first jungle island in survival, and it's coming out great. Low and swampy, it's very Amazonian. There's also some easily accessible clay patches in the water, and I take the opportunity to dig some up. I can make clay magically at home, but it's more work than digging. It's worth it to save a trip, but as long as I'm here I should take advantage of it.
Further on I find an *even bigger* node, 45 Aqua and 107 Terra. But I have enough Aqua and Terra for now, so I leave it.
I get to the bottom and confirm it is indeed an island. Climate Control did its job with this one.
Highlands mixes in some of its large oaks in with the jungle trees, and the increased tree variety works *really* well. Real jungles are one of the most diverse ecosystems on earth, and it's nice to see some diversity in the Minecraft version.
I return to my boat and commence a circumnavigation of the island, to make it look good on my map wall.
Before I even finish the circunavigation I spot the land I had known about before and had been heading for.
At this point, I need Ordo and Perdito nodes, and a snowy area is good for that, with restrictions. It's good, because Ordo is the primary Vis in snowy area, but bad, because it's hard to see nodes glowing against white snow. For now, I'm just going to search it. I'll consider a nighttime search by air later if I really need to.
The scenery at my landing point is great. This is Tall Pine Forest from Highlands. It's offset by a Stone Beach on the water, which Climate Control places for hillier terrains to reduce the often goofy-looking steep beaches vanilla will place here. It comes out in the local stone, Black Granite, which is great for looks as well.
From here I leave the boat and head in to explore the land
Next episode - new biomes, mod adjustments, nodes, and 1 goal accomplished.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
As I start my exploration, I soon spot a node - but not one I want to bring home.
Maybe I'll build a dark tower somewhere with a node room of nothing *except* sinister nodes. I certainly find enough of them! The sinister nodes would convert all the surrounding areas to Eerie biome, which would be very thematic - hmmm -
The terrain soon transitions from the impressive Tall Pines to more conventional Ice Plains. I spot some more nodes, but unfortunately Potentia isn't the only thing I forgot at home - I also forgot to make more Explorercraft map markers. I could make some on the trip - but only some, because some dyes (notably cactus green and lapis lazuli) are hard to get while exploring. So, for consistency, I don't bother with any.
I find a couple of nodes, but nothing exciting and nothing with Perdito.
Soon I transition to a Birch Hills. A nice biome, but it means I'm *not* on a medium island, because a medium island has only one climate. I might be on two islands that grew together, or on a large island.
When I crest that hill I'm treated to a spectacular view:
That's a Highlands Rock Mountain, done up in Underground biomes stone. It might be the best-looking Rock Mountain I've ever seen, because it's a little more irregular than they usually are (sometime the mountains are too close to perfect paraboloids) and the way two different stone types mix here adds even more texture and detail.
I didn't take a picture of the map here, but the shape of the land pretty much shows it's a large island at this point. Still, I plan to continue exploration - it's not one of the smaller islands I wanted to display, but I am having fun.
Shortly after this, I find a bright Ordo 64/Terra 62 node. That's one of the Vis I really need, so I jar it.
I crest the next hill at sunset, and I spot:
Badlands. I like Highlands Badlands, perhaps from fond memories of my first journal. But even better - these Badlands are in Greeschist stone, one of my goals, for the expedition! After a snooze I start looking around for a place to quarry. There's amber in the exposed rocks and I take the opportunity to collect some, as I've really been using those Arcane Lamps.
Ideally I'd quarry in the bottom of a ravine or something like that or at least at some depth so I can get ores along with my greenschist.
I spot a large promising cave but the ditch coming out connects to *another* large cave. On my "safe back" principle, I skip it.
As I'm exploring, I spot a vanilla Mesa Plateau. This is another biome that benefits from the Halcyon days pack. The more-neutral hardened clay colors have a much more naturalistic look than the somewhat cartoony look created by the vanilla colors. I run over to mine a stack of hardened clay - I don't have any particular planned use, but it will be nice to have a little on hand if the mood strikes me.
From the Mesa I spot an Autumn Woods and a Jungle. Notice that all the biomes are from Highlands or vanilla, even though I have Biomes o' Plenty installed. The reason is that I passed close to here earlier (with about 1000 blocks with a normal biome size) and Climate Control "locked" the biomes to prevent chunk walls.
I spot a vertical cave, so steep I have to fly down, but at the bottom is a large room with creepers and I decide it's not worth the hassle. I end up just quarrying 4 stacks of greenschist from the surface. I go ahead and send them home with the mirror.
I reenter the Tall Pines biome and get this upclose look at a large (2x2) fir. I'm not sure what their growth requirements are - it would be nice to have some of these near home, but all I've gotten so far is 1x1 firs.
I spot a wisp spawner and head over to loot the chest. It doesn't have much exciting, but it does have some iron horse armor I take as a collector's item.
Next I find an Extreme Hills biome.
I find a cluster of four nodes around a lava pool. The nodes are all medium sized and I don't take any although I'm very tempted by one with Perdito just because I need it so badly.
By now I've pretty much explored the landmass on this map, so I head back towards the boat. I pass through a level valley with steep hills like this on both side. I have a love-hate relationship with Extreme Hills - I love the complexity and the dramatic views, but I hate the often-crazified terrain. This is very much on the "love" side of the equation.
Back on the boat I've decided there are enough things I want to haul around and not just sent through the mirror that I need a little more mobile storage. So I make two chests and put them in the boat. Chests become part of Archimedes' Ships boats, so it'll travel along with me.
Next episodes: back to exploring the ocean, and maybe a special treat.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Here's the plan for this section of the expedition. Remember the map wall pic was made before I left home, so it doesn't show what I've explored since Episode 100. The X is where I am, on the coast of the large island I've been exploring. First I'm going to explore the blank area below me. It's still blank because I got here from Lazy River Landing, to the right of me. Then I'll come back, explore the coast of the large island. Next I'll explore some of the landmass above me, and finally I'll head over to the first volcanic island I saw back in Episode 34.
I go slightly east of my plan checking out the coast of the small island on the upper left corner of the next map. I know it's attached to the large island to its southeast, but I want to see if I can make a canal. I decide it's a little too much work and backtrack.
BoP Coral Reef and Kelp Forest create number of small survival islands in the ocean, because their height ranges sometimes go above y = 63. But this island, which I stop on for the night, shows up as "Ocean" on F3. So I start wondering if vanilla still generates survival islands. However, when I'm writing this, I realize that it's right *next* to a Kelp Forest, so it's still probably a BoP survival island.
I run my search and find nothing in this area apart from survival islands. So I head back to the island I was exploring last episode to check out the coast.
This is a Stone Beach, placed by Climate Control next to the Mesa because Mesa is fairly rugged. Although usually Stone Beaches improve the coast of more rugged biomes, here it's not right. I immediately alter Climate Control to put sandy beaches next to Mesa (it's a one-line change).
Here's a pic of the island I was exploring last episode. As you can see, it extends off to the left (west) onto the next map.
At this point I make another change to my plan and explore some of the water between this island and my spawn continent, finding only survival islands.
On the next map to the west, I find a Woodlands or Forest Island (it's hard to tell from here). I suspect this is connected to the large island from last episode.
To the left of that is a jungle - probably a Highlands Jungle Island, actually, from the number of oaks.
I wrap around the east side of the coast and head back west, now on the north side of the jungle and forest. I notice from my map that the Forest has a lot of water channels and wonder if I can get through it.
I dig up a small sandbar blocking access to a particularly large and inviting channel. Once in, I discover via F3 that it is indeed a Forest Island. So what seems to have happened is that a Forest Island generated next to the large island, and a Jungle Island generated next to that, and they all grew together.
The channels are wide but convoluted and it's slow going. Finally I come to what looks like a dead end, *right* when I'm about to come out on the south side. Sighing, I turn around - but as I do I see that it's not a dead end, there's just a really sharp turn. Going through that, I'm on the ocean again. So I can boat through, although it's slow.
I go back around, and continue along the north side of the large island, I encounter an Outback. I saw some of these trees from a distance and thought there was a (vanilla) Savanna there, but it's this.
Next, a small Meadow, and the sea view of the Rock Mountains.
I get back to the map I'd been on at the start and then head north along the coast of a landmass I'd skirted back in Episode 35.
I soon encounter this imposing coastal grove of Highlands Redwoods. As I'm writing this, I mentally kick myself for not chopping one as I wanted some redwood for building. But I recall a Redwood grove not far from where I plan to quarry Blueschist, so I'll manage.
Next is a snowy biome. I'm not sure what it is, actually, but I think it's BoP Alps. I would have thought I was still to close to explorations pre-BoP installation to see a BoP biome, but sometimes the generation procedure can move biome boundaries a surprisingly large distance.
The next biome is *definitely* BoP, Decidous Forest, I think, although I don't stop to confirm.
Now I'm near the top of the map. I don't care to explore further, because it won't fit on my map wall, so I turn west and head for the Volcanic Island.
Remember when I first saw this, I'd be back when I had a Thaumostatic Harness to fly and look at it from the air? Well, I do, and I am!
I anchor my boat, and go to my inventory to pull out Trunkie, who has my spare Potentia essentia, for flying. My Harness' tank is almost empty. But…
Spunkie's not in my inventory.
O..M..G…
I must have left him somewhere. But I can't remember where. I pause the game to check my screenshots. But I don't take many screenshots of my inventory while I'm exploring. The last picture with Spunkie in the inventory is from when I got a stack of Hardened Clay in the Mesa. I'm pretty sure I haven't taken either trunk out during this episode, so that means I lost Spunkie in the second part of the last episode - which is a fairly large area. I don't even know whether I forgot to convert him back to an item with the bell or whether I missed collecting him into my inventory.
Well, I don't feel like sightseeing now. Sorry folks.
I go ahead and refill my Harness tank and then try to pick up Trunkie. But the Golem Bell doesn't work. Great. I move around the boat to see if I can get him from another angle..
And fall off the boat. This wouldn't be a problem - except Trunkie jumps in after me! AAAUGH! It turns out he can swim, but this is deep water and if I itemize him with the bell he'll sink into the depths where I can't see him. And I don't think he can climb the ladder into the boat.
Well, the Volcanic Island is too steep to climb, but I swim over and manage to find a ledge to scramble out. Trunkie swims up next to me and sits shivering on the shallows right beneath. Here I can pick him up - but my bell *still* isn't working. I log off and back on and *finally* the bell works and I can put Trunkie back in my inventory.
Well, that's fixed, but I'm still missing Spunkie. I could go back and look for him - but my concern is that I itemized him on the boat before I left and his item form is spinning at the bottom of the ocean. If I go back and look, he'll despawn, because I can't see underwater.
Frustrated, depressed, and not sure what to do next, I get back on my boat and close down the game.
Next episode: Back home to plan a rescue expedition
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
After a while in the real world my brain returned to normal and I started thinking about coping and solutions. First of all, I realized that from a strict game point of view it wasn't *that* bad. Generally speaking I keep food and equipment in Trunkie and materials in Spunkie, so generally the stuff in Spunkie is more disposable. Right now I remember Spunkie holding the Hound, some glass, and some wood - all of which could be replaced easily. So my *need* to get Spunkie back is purely sentimental.
Further, after thinking about it I remember pulling Spunkie out to put the chests on the boat. So I actually know where I lost him and don't have to worry about searching half a large island, with despawning a concern if I left him in item form. I just need a Potion of Night Vision to search the water (in case he's in item form). Most likely I left him in embodied form, in which case I'll certainly find him eventually, but I do want the Potion just in case.
So here's my plan. I still don't feel like sightseeing, but I don't fell like wasting a trip either, so I'm going to explore on the way home. I'll head south along the west side of my spawn continent, a bit out to look for islands. I'll explore the coast of the landmass to the south-west a bit, then head back of the south side of my spawn continent.
Shortly after reaching the latitude of my spawn continent, I spot land. I turn right, to explore the "outside" since I know it's limited on the side towards the continent.
This one is definitely a Climate Control medium island, the first of this trip. As is typical of CC medium islands, it has one climate but a fairly complex coastline.
On the next map south I encounter a largish survival island. This one, I suspect, is actually a part of the continent, which is very close, which got cut off with the convolutions of the coast during land generation. I didn't think to get off and check, though. It could also be a section of ocean that generated above sea level.
I see nothing else of note until I get to that snowy coast to the southwest of my spawn continent.
This has a variety of snowy biomes - Ice Plains and Tall Pines here, Cold Taiga a little further on.
I establish bounds on it but don't completely explore the coast. I can, however, say it's definitely a medium island too. From there, I head south, following my planned route - and quickly hit yet another snowy coast.
This looks like BoP Frost Forest, although I don't check. I'm now, again, far enough from pre-BoP exploration that CC can allow BoP Biomes without messing up the chunk walls. I turn east along the coast.
Next is a BoP seasonal forest. With two different climate zones, it's *not* a medium island and has to be larger. After this the coast veers south but I continue east. I know it's at least a large island and so exploration would 1) be a substantial detour and 2) activate maps to the south. I want to get home, so not today.
Next I run into an Outback. This could be connected to the landmass I just left, or it could be a separate one. I turn south to check.
I get near the edge of my map but the coast ahead seems to veer east, suggesting it's a separate landmass.
I end up going a little onto the next map to confirm it's a cape. Explorercraft creates a new tiled map for me - I still had five blank maxed-out maps for this.
Continuing on the coast, it's looking like a medium island (yay!) that isn't snowy (yay variety) but then:
Darn, another climate, and the coast has turned back south. But I continue, and soon I round a cape and the coast heads north-east. After a while it's clear this is a small landmass so I break away from the coast and head towards home.
Here's what it looks like on the map. This appears to be a medium island with the outback and some desert (didn't take a pic), conjoined with (probably) a Highlands Forest Island. It does seem like the Highlands "Island" biomes are ending up usually conjoined to other landmasses with my settings.
From here I head back to the Winter tower. I spot one more survival island, and a landmass in the distance nearby, but I don't investigate it apart from taking a pic to remind me.
Unlike Lazy River Landing, the Winter Tower isn't right next to the water. I anchor my boat at the mouth of the frozen river that goes by the Winter Tower. I first launched a boat from here back in episode 3. Wow, how time flies!
Soon, I'm in my yard, surrounded by the stately Silverwoods and Firs of home - and the less stately tumult of my dog run, golem farmers, and cow ranch. But it's not home without Spunkie!
Next episode: the rescue expedition.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Well, all my stuff came through the mirror, including the ordo/terra node which I wasn't sure whether I'd sent home or left in Spunkie. I take the node to the node room and place it there, leaving my Primal Staff to recharge. I also brew up a Potion of Night Vision.
While I'm here, might as well take a pic of the map wall, right? It looks pretty good - I'm getting what I want out of Climate Control There's landmasses of all sizes, from survival islands (just specks on this scale) to single-biome islands, to medium islands of a few biomes, to large islands like the one on the right, to the continent on the northeast edge. To put this in context, in a 1.6 vanilla map the entire map would easily fit inside an ocean - and in 1.7 it would easily fit in an ocean-free land.
The individual landmasses could have a little more character to their climates, and you could get that by bumping up the climate zone sizes. There is a price in playability for that, though, in that you can end up on a very limiting start landmass of all snowy or all hot. The coastlines have pretty interesting shapes.
I plant some carrots (getting low), pick up some spare Potentia, breed some sheep, finish the potion, and make up the green and blue map markers I can't make on the road. My staff is completely recharged so maybe my node room is more adequate than I'd thought.
And it's back to the boat, via a well-traveled and familiar vista.
No major explorations on this leg, although I do fill in a few blank spot for looks on the map wall.
I figured it would take a while to get there - it's about 4000 blocks as the crow flies, and farther by boat, but I'm there in just a few minutes. Guess this Archimedes' boat is really fast! It's too close to dark to do my search - I want the full 5 minutes before despawning without additional time limits.
So I lawnmower around in the ocean for a while until sunset, and sleep on the boat.
Come morning I head back to where I'd stopped before, anchor the boat, and fall through the floor (happens sometimes when you disassemble an Archimedes' ship). Immediately I realize all my extensive and paranoid preparation were unnecessary - because I spot Spunkie in embodied form sitting in the shallow.
I get out of the water and Spunkie bounds out after me. It turns out he had one more valuable - my Pickaxe of the Core. But no matter, I have Spunkie back.
I could have just come right over, and he'd have been fine. But I didn't *know* that, so I regret nothing about all the work for the rescue expedition. Most was useful in its own right - all the exploration, and getting stuff from home. And the rest - well, it's worth some extra care to make sure your friends are OK for the holidays!
Next episode: a little more exploring, and picking up some exotic supplies.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I didn't take a screenie right when I opened him, but here's a screenie after I put in the extra glass I'd brought in:
About half that glass had been on me (in case I didn't find him, and had to jar nodes without his supplies), and I'd just put it in. The relevant stuff: the Hound, my Pickaxe of the core, 8 jungle giant saplings, the clay (white stuff). Everything else would be trivial to replace.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
My next goal is to collect some Blueschist for my envisioned faux sky for the Mana Bean farm. I took a pic of Blueshist in a ravine near the northeast of my explorations and I'm planning to go there. There's also a grove of Redwoods nearby and I plan to head there to chop a redwood for future building purposes.
Here's the route for this section of the expedition. The X is where I just retrieved Spunkie. I'll check out the coast of the first island I pass (a Tropical Island), then continue to the deep bay - almost a fjord. I'll land near an unexplored strip, to finish out the mapping, and continue to where the redwood grove is. I hope to spot the Blueschist ravine from my pics; if not I'll find some other way to quarry Blueschist.
I get stuck on a sandbar next to the Tropical Island. I also spot a node and stop to check it out, but it's only a 87 Vis Aqua node. No Perdito or interesting compound aspect, and I get plenty of Aqua due to all my sea exploration, so I skip it.
This goes through a very dramatic strait with mountains on both side. I forgot to get pictures here; I'll try on the way out. There's some islands where you could build an impressive-looking fort guarding the strait.
I come in to land at the beach of a taiga/taiga hills spot. I'm not sure why this wasn't turned into a Stone Beach - this is the kind of ugly "cliff beach" I want to suppress. However, Stone Beaches are intended for mountains and there is a range where the beaches are too steep but the Stone Beach is too high. I've considered making an intermediate beach biome. I may experiment with just shutting them off entirely in a certain range (smoothing in Minecraft will avert cliffs).
I cross the hilly Taiga to a meadow with a lot of flowers. Here you can see the apparently out-of-place Highlands acacia that made me suspect a (minorish) bug in CC (but see later in the episode.) I decide to collect a stack of yellow and red flowers, just to have them and the dyes available. So I run around this meadow for quite a while.
I spot a high-power node with all three of the aspects I'm looking for. Of course I take it.
At this point I decide to fill in a blank strip on my map. The area is a fairly rugged Taiga Hills, which is why I skipped in the first time out.
This shows why I didn't want to explore there before I got my flying harness.
I spot and label a couple of nodes but don't take any. Later, I wonder why I didn't take one, a pure aqua/ordo/victus node. I was thinking I didn't need those Vis, but it's kind of a thematic node and would be cool to have.
Finally I spot a trench where I can see some Blueschist. I don't quarry it because I remember a ravine and I'd like to have the chance to collect good ores as I quarry.
I don't spot the ravine before I reach the redwood grove. Quite impressive. Well, time to test the Axe of the Stream on the biggest tree yet.
So, I chop
and chop
and chop
and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and…
3 minutes and ten seconds, with an efficiency IV axe, and no need to move around. I get 7 stacks of redwood logs, which go through the mirror to home. I could have build the entire trade center solely of redwood planks with that. Not going to run out of redwood any time soon!
Ever the ecologist, I plant a sapling to replace it, although I'm not sure one sapling is enough.
I'm still looking for my Blueschist ravine, and I check my old screenshots - to discover it wasn't actually a ravine; it just looked like one. It was actually the trench I ignored earlier. Well, I'll just look around for a likely spot. Just across a small lake from the Redwood is a hill with exposed Blueschist. I head over and …
Oooh, a cave! Promising!
But, once again, it turns out to be too complex for the quickie quarrying I'd envisioned.
So, I decide I'll build a treehouse base with a dropshaft to do the mining. I consider a spiral staircase around a redwood but it narrows as it ascends and I find tight radius spiral staircases annoying. So I'll just make the dropshaft continue up the center of the tree. I head over to chop in, and realize my Axe of the Stream can't cut a shaft - it'll just chop the entire tree. So I end up parking the treehouse idea and just building the dropshaft. I build it in the center of the tree so I can make the treehouse later.
I build it differently this time - I dig all the way down, and then run up once placing ladders. It's actually faster this way because it's so easy to place the ladders.
At the bottom I encounter a cave - much more convenient to clear. I clear a moderate section, block off the rest, and start collecting and quarrying.
My biggest prize? Not one, but *two* diamond veins, both large. With the aid of my Fortune III pickaxe, I collect 31 diamonds. A worthwhile mining expedition!
Well, I'm already done with my block collecting goals for the expedition, so it's just exploring and nodes from here on out.
It does seem you skipped see the seeds seas pt 6.Other than that great journal!It must be a big challenge having to survive with everything in your world. Of course it must have been harder at the beginning.
Thanks for the catch, edited to 6. Yes, it's been hard to survive this long and there have been a couple of close calls. I almost starved right at the start, and I was almost killed by a baby furious zombie, off the top of my head. There have been some others. I should compile a list. Now, though, I'm pretty souped up and with my conservative play style, I'm fairly safe. Even so, there are still ways I could die. In some not-yet-blogged play I ended up swimming in the dark underneath a largish platform. I didn't ever take damage, but that sort of situation can go south in a hurry.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I'll veer out a bit to explore a little more, then board my boat and explore that large ocean going up and down. Of course, I'll probably find something, so most likely I won't finish today.
As I cross a ridge into the new territories I plan to explore, I discover the little savannah tree that I thought was a bug wasn't:
There's a Highlands Savannah right over the hill. So it was just a mildly fluky boundary, creating an "island" of Savannah in the "sea" of Meadow.
I spot a shallow lake with squid and collect half a stack of ink.
I reach the coast and head back to my boat.
On the way I encounter this node with Messis Vis (farming). Messis is a complex compound and this node will produce everything except Ignis, so I take it.
It's a beautiful coast, but I'm certainly glad I can fly over spots like this. To some extent flying helps me appreciate it as I see it as "pretty" rather than as "an obstacle". Eventually I end up dropping into my boat from above. I lift anchor and head out the fjord to the open ocean.
Last episode I promised a shot of the straits and here it is. I suspect this very narrow bay was formed by two landmasses merging, although I'm not positive.
And I'm back to searching. I head all the way down a few hundred blocks off the coast of the eastern continent without finding any islands, then turn at the bottom and head back.
Heading back (now about 1000 blocks from the coast of the continent on the west side of my maps):
Land Ho!
This one appears to be a medium island, with all hot biomes. After the desert, I find a Highlands Tropics, back to the desert, a vanilla Savanna, and an unidentifiable (from the coast) biome with shrubs.
There's a desert temple on the border of the Desert and the Savanna. I hadn't noticed it before, but the texture pack creates a nice texture for sandstone at a distance that's very convincing for a ruin.
Actually it seems a bit big for a medium island so maybe it's a large island.
I land and start to explore, starting near the center, in a desert. I have to be careful to avoid quicksand in these BoP-influenced deserts.
I come across a BoP Oasis, which works very well here. I chop some Palm trees and send the wood and saplings back home, just on general principle. I'll probably try mixing in these BoP palms with the Highlands Palms back at Lazy River Landing.
The unidentifiable biome turns out to be BoP Thornlands. Ouch! I don't get good pictures at this point because my son started watching and kept nagging me to jump in the Quicksand so he could see what happened.
I spot a cave, which I would normally ignore, but my son wants to see a fight so I oblige him. Note the stone on the left - Blueschist. Now that I've got it, by mining basically at the far end of my earth, of course I'm going to see it everywhere.
I whack monsters for a while and then return to my boat to continue exploring.
I continue north, reach the top of the area, turn around, and head back south. This will pretty much finish off the exploration.
Shortly after turning south I spot a mountainous coast, not far from the snowy medium island I spotted on my emergency trip home in Episode 105.
Yep, I knew it. Soon as I get the Blueschist, it's showing up everywhere.
next episode: another island explored, a cool new biome, and a lesson from history
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Episode 109: See the Seed's Seas, pt. 8 (is this thing running on, or what?)
This first biome is mountainous, but I can't see what one from the water. I start a circumnavigation of the island. Soon I come to a Swamp. I want to investigate, because Swamp tends to have more Perdito, one of my Vis goals.
I come ashore to find two things. First, right behind the Swamp is a BoP Jade Cliffs, which I'm thrilled to see. It's an impressive-looking biome and I've never seen one from the ground. Second, this is the hilliest swamp I've ever seen. This is part of a "bleed-over" effect I've observed before - the terrain effects of biomes actually extend past their boundaries. Mountains create hilly areas nearby; water creates submerged areas nearby. This isn't very noticeable in vanilla, because there's not enough mountains and not enough ocean. But with Climate Control and the biome mods going, it's noticeable.
The first node I spot is 70 Aer - no big deal. But the second:
61 Aer, 35 Aqua, and 44 Perdito. A great node for me. And aren't the Jade Cliffs a great backdrop for it?
Well, not much longer, because this thing's going to my node room. I build the glass jar around it right there (I have supplies in my inventory right now). It's a bit of a hassle since it's a bit up in the air, but I manage.
When I'm done I check my inventory to see if it degraded to Pale (the expected result, but I always hope) and…
Marx once said history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. Well, I guess my journal is functioning as history, because it just came true. One of my Travelling Trunks is missing - again.
And it's farce because this time I remember exactly what happened, and I know it's not a serious problem. I got out Trunkie to swap food right before I left the desert island earlier, and I forgot to pick him up. Ha-ha! (Nelson Muntz voice). He's bobbing around back there, perfectly fine.
I'll have to pick him up before I explore the interior because he's got the food. I do finish my circumnavigation first. The island has a *lot* of little rocky islands just off the coast.
The Jade Cliffs look great from the ocean, too.
I head back to where I'd had the boat parked at the desert island, and sure enough, Trunkie swims out to meet me, making the distinctive k-Chunk k-Chunk of a travelling trunk.
I drop anchor, swim ashore, swap foods, and pick him up. Nothing harmed. Well, maybe my ego.
As long as I'm here, I figure I'll explore some more of the desert island, especially the Tropics.
These are much darker than the ones near the Winter Tower, for whatever reason. I'm getting a substantial rate of daytime spawns.
Sniping creepers from the air is about as unsporting as shooting game from a helicopter. But man, is it satisfying!
It's got some big nodes, but they're Herba and Aqua/Herba, not ones I particularly want.
This was generated with rivers suppressed in it (a decision I made after seeing rivers in the one near home). Maybe that's why it's darker and generating more spawns. But visually, it has a nice sweep to it now.
With the Tropics explored, I boat back to the mountainous island and make a landing on the Jade Cliffs. Although it's a rugged biome, it does have low sections so I can walk onto it and up many of the hills.
It looks as great from the ground as it did from the air. I'm not happy with the green skies, though. I saw some green skies in China when I toured once - but they were greenish from pollution. China was great, but the pollution was awful, and that sky color brings back some unpleasant memories.
Oooh, another tree type for my collection!
Great vistas, and it would be playable even at start. Sort of difficult, but playable. The trees are sparse enough that there are more-open areas, not like vanilla forest. I got to this vista without flying, too.
Lots of caves, of course. Could make a memorable start.
I head north to the mountainous biome I couldn't identify from the water. It's Extreme Hills. Wait, is that marble?
It is, it is! It's like a Christmas present! As a very white stone, marble is fantastic for opulent-looking builds. But it's a little hard to find, and very hard to find exposed like this. I collect several stacks, and send them home via the mirror.
I also spot a bit of Highlands Steppe, but don't explore in detail.
All in all, this island has *great* personality because almost all the biomes are mountainous. It's pure luck, but it's still great. This kind of thing is possible only with medium islands, because only they are small enough to get a coherent set of biomes by luck like this.
A few more cliff pics as I head back to the boat, and cast off.
Next episode: Off to the south. What was that landmass I glimpsed from the boat in Episode 105?
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I'm thinking you might want to make a note to not forget to pull up your trunks when you leave somewhere. One of these days, you're going to come back to find he jumped in a pool of lava, or has been sitting on a cactus.
Also, glad to see you like Jade Cliffs. It's one of my favorite BoP biomes as well, and one of the few I would love to have in a vanilla world.
[quote=Zeno410;/members/Zeno410;/forums/minecraft-discussion/survival-mode/2171978-zenos-explorations-and-mod-development?comment=312]Episode 108: See the Seed's Seas, pt. 7
The unidentifiable biome turns out to be BoP Thornlands. Ouch! I don't get good pictures at this point because my son started watching and kept nagging me to jump in the Quicksand so he could see what happened.
I spot a cave, which I would normally ignore, but my son wants to see a fight so I oblige him. Note the stone on the left - Blueschist. Now that I've got it, by mining basically at the far end of my earth, of course I'm going to see it everywhere.
Ahh that made me laugh hard. Reminds me of my sons. Kids can be so adorably evil
Edit- and all caught up too, just in time for the new year. My new year's resolution is to get Underground Biomes Constructs into my world. I'm just a little confused about how to handle the ores. It seems you've got Thaumcraft, Metallurgy and vanilla sorted beautifully. That still leaves a few like Thermal Expansion, Tinkers gravel ores and Forestry apatite (which I'm spawning through CoFH), Applied Energistics (quartz) and Electrical age. I can probably spawn all of them through CoFH, so if it's possible for that to work, it should be easy. Else.. finding those ores will just have to become hard >:D
Most of the time ores shouldn't be an issue. If the mod uses the Forge isReplaceableOreGen test, everything will be fine. If it doesn't and just tests for =Blocks.Stone then you won't see generation if you're using inChunkGeneration and otherwise you will, but somewhat reduced due to the craziness of chunk decoration.
Forge added that check about 2 years ago so the only problem I had lately was with one mod that wasn't exclusively a Forge mod and so obviously couldn't use a Forge procedure, and Highlands, where one call had just been missed when it updated.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I'm thinking you might want to make a note to not forget to pull up your trunks when you leave somewhere. One of these days, you're going to come back to find he jumped in a pool of lava, or has been sitting on a cactus.
Also, glad to see you like Jade Cliffs. It's one of my favorite BoP biomes as well, and one of the few I would love to have in a vanilla world.
Preferably as a replacement to Extreme Hills.
Of course the problem with a note is that if I'm not remembering to pick up my trunks, how can I get myself to remember to check the note? lol. The first time was somewhat excusable because it was during separate play sessions (I logged off just before I left). The second time, not so much, but that's why I remembered exactly what had happened
.
With CC it's easy to make a vanilla world with Jade Cliffs instead of Extreme hills, and no other changes. They won't generate in the exact same places, but you can make the frequencies the same. IMO it would be better to have separate warm-biome and a cool-biome mountains, the way SirDave planned it- maybe Mountain or Alps for cool (many choices) and Jade Cliffs for warm.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I've explored the northern and western seas, so now it's time to head south. I caught a little bit of the coast of a larger landmass and I'll start by investigating that. The first biome is another new-to-me biome, the suspected Frost Forest.
It is indeed a Frost Forest. The Frost Forest is interesting in an almost antipodal way to the Jade Cliffs. The Jade Cliffs have a unique varied topography and a new type of tree, creating a lot of distinctiveness and variety, but have a slightly offputting (to me) palette with the green sky. The Frost Forest, on the other hand, looks almost exactly a vanilla (oak) forest, except there's snow and a different color palette. But *this* palette does a great job of capturing a grey midwinter, and I love it.
The one new block I see is this Frost Iris, which I think looks good, and take for decorative purposes.
An side comment - I've been showcasing a lot of BoP biomes lately, and not much Highlands. This isn't because I don't love the Highlands biomes, but because I've been playing with Highlands for almost a year, while I added BoP only a few months ago, and haven't yet done nearly as much explorations in BoP biomes. So they seem fresh and exciting now, but the Highlands biomes were fully as fresh and exciting when I first saw them.
I travel along the frozen river, which is wide and like a highway to me because of the Haste effect, and soon pass into a (Highlands) Tundra. I don't plan to explore it too much, but I spot the glow of a node. Triangulating reveals it's actually inside a hill, so I cut in to discover a cave.
The node is a large Aer/Victus node, which for some reason strikes my fancy, and I decide to take it. I light up the caves, collect a little loot, and snarf it up. This one *doesn't* degrade when jarred, and remains normal. Whoot!
I return to my boat in a lovely, peaceful, snowfall.
I follow the coast on the west side, heading south into the next map. The snowy climate changes to a temperate clime with an Orchard and then some mid-elevation biome.
Here's an example where the Stone Beaches placed by Climate Control work really well. This would look awful as a sand beach, but in stone, it's perfect.
Next is a BoP Bog. I have one of these near Lazy River Landing, but for some reason I feel like collecting resources here.
Lots of Swampflowers. They're nice but I could have gotten them elsewhere. I find a node I don't want to take, but I do recharge my staff from it because it's running low.
I figure as long as I'm here, I'll collect Willow wood. I'd been thinking of making my planned Governor's mansion in Lazy River Landing of (green) willow wood, basically because I like green. I collect plenty of stacks.
I do find lots of mushrooms, and that's one thing I need that the Bog near Lazy River Landing doesn't provide - it only has two of the three I need for Mushroom Salad. But I don't think this one has the one I'm missing either. Still, I collect a bunch.
I return to the boat, cast off, and continue along the coast. The coast new is running west, toward the edge of my map wall, and I don't plan to continue. The landmass is already too large for even a large island, so it's some variety of continent. But as I'm getting close to the edge:
A village! Only my second, in six months of play. This has a unique placement, in a bay of sorts. The two almost-twinned towers create a nice imposing effect. I anchor my boat and head in to meet the residents.
Next episode: Venice of the North?
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Here's a map showing my rough route there. The X is Lazy River Landing.
Once there I run a vaguely spiral seach pattern, finding:
No islands whatsoever. There could be some small ones lurking in some of the blank spaces, but I'm not interesting in that thorough a search.
From here I proceed west, to the map 2 north of spawn. I know there's some unexplored land here; at one point while I was skirting a landmass to my north I spotted some land to my south. I head for there. But before I get there:
I spot a jungle! I have to snooze on the boat, as it's getting dark. Come morning I disembark and swim to the coast to explore.
I love the way jungles look with the Halcyon Days pack I use. Dark, exotic, ominous, and beautiful.
However, as soon as I reach land, I find it's *not* a jungle. It's a (Highlands) Jungle Island. Encouraging, because that's more likely to be an island. As I mentioned in some previous episodes, Climate Control places the Highlands Island biomes as biomes in the "DEEP_OCEAN" climate - which is what's normally all Deep Ocean biomes. So sometimes in the deep ocean, you run into these islands. The latest version of climate control allows players to set any biome as "DEEP_OCEAN", meaning it will pop up in the deep ocean, generally as an island.
Unfortunately often they're not islands, because they're either in a deep ocean biome next to land (which happens) or they grow into "normal" land in the process of land generation. So I want to see if this "Island" is really an island - or just "is land".
As I head into the jungle, I soon spot a node. Sweet, I'm looking for those. I move in close and check it out with my goggles and:
Holy cow, what a find! 144 Vis, and providing all 4 of the "element" Vis (Herba is composed of Terra and Aqua, ultimately, and I can use it with my compound recharge focus at home). I immediately set about jarring it, which turns out to be very complicate because it's high off the ground and the jungle makes it hard to judge placement. As I'm jarring, it occurs to me I should scan it to make sure it's not pale or fading. A fading node generates new new Vis (so is useless for a node room) and pale nodes usually become fading when jarred. But that's only about 4% of nodes, so I don't bother.
Of course, when it's finally jarred, you can probably guess what I've got - a 144 Vis fading node. Great.
Continuing on, I spot another node. But, it seems I have to deal with a forest fire first. Forest firest can get pretty obnoxious in jungles, for obvious reasons. So I set about making firebreaks.
Once the fire is under control, I obsidianize the causative lava pool, and chop down a jungle giant which lost all its leaves. I shove a full stack of jungle wood through the mirror. I do get one buggish behavior- at one point my Thaumcraft Axe of the Stream starts chopping wood from trees not connected,as far as I can see, to the one I'm chopping. I have to chop the last few blocks with my hand.
Now I check the node - remembering to scan this time, and - holy cow, it's 66 Ignis, 78 Herba, *and* it's bright! What a find! Of course I jar this puppy, but it takes a while, just like the other did.
This is my first jungle island in survival, and it's coming out great. Low and swampy, it's very Amazonian. There's also some easily accessible clay patches in the water, and I take the opportunity to dig some up. I can make clay magically at home, but it's more work than digging. It's worth it to save a trip, but as long as I'm here I should take advantage of it.
Further on I find an *even bigger* node, 45 Aqua and 107 Terra. But I have enough Aqua and Terra for now, so I leave it.
I get to the bottom and confirm it is indeed an island. Climate Control did its job with this one.
Highlands mixes in some of its large oaks in with the jungle trees, and the increased tree variety works *really* well. Real jungles are one of the most diverse ecosystems on earth, and it's nice to see some diversity in the Minecraft version.
I return to my boat and commence a circumnavigation of the island, to make it look good on my map wall.
Before I even finish the circunavigation I spot the land I had known about before and had been heading for.
At this point, I need Ordo and Perdito nodes, and a snowy area is good for that, with restrictions. It's good, because Ordo is the primary Vis in snowy area, but bad, because it's hard to see nodes glowing against white snow. For now, I'm just going to search it. I'll consider a nighttime search by air later if I really need to.
The scenery at my landing point is great. This is Tall Pine Forest from Highlands. It's offset by a Stone Beach on the water, which Climate Control places for hillier terrains to reduce the often goofy-looking steep beaches vanilla will place here. It comes out in the local stone, Black Granite, which is great for looks as well.
From here I leave the boat and head in to explore the land
Next episode - new biomes, mod adjustments, nodes, and 1 goal accomplished.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Maybe I'll build a dark tower somewhere with a node room of nothing *except* sinister nodes. I certainly find enough of them! The sinister nodes would convert all the surrounding areas to Eerie biome, which would be very thematic - hmmm -
The terrain soon transitions from the impressive Tall Pines to more conventional Ice Plains. I spot some more nodes, but unfortunately Potentia isn't the only thing I forgot at home - I also forgot to make more Explorercraft map markers. I could make some on the trip - but only some, because some dyes (notably cactus green and lapis lazuli) are hard to get while exploring. So, for consistency, I don't bother with any.
I find a couple of nodes, but nothing exciting and nothing with Perdito.
Soon I transition to a Birch Hills. A nice biome, but it means I'm *not* on a medium island, because a medium island has only one climate. I might be on two islands that grew together, or on a large island.
When I crest that hill I'm treated to a spectacular view:
That's a Highlands Rock Mountain, done up in Underground biomes stone. It might be the best-looking Rock Mountain I've ever seen, because it's a little more irregular than they usually are (sometime the mountains are too close to perfect paraboloids) and the way two different stone types mix here adds even more texture and detail.
I didn't take a picture of the map here, but the shape of the land pretty much shows it's a large island at this point. Still, I plan to continue exploration - it's not one of the smaller islands I wanted to display, but I am having fun.
Shortly after this, I find a bright Ordo 64/Terra 62 node. That's one of the Vis I really need, so I jar it.
I crest the next hill at sunset, and I spot:
Badlands. I like Highlands Badlands, perhaps from fond memories of my first journal. But even better - these Badlands are in Greeschist stone, one of my goals, for the expedition! After a snooze I start looking around for a place to quarry. There's amber in the exposed rocks and I take the opportunity to collect some, as I've really been using those Arcane Lamps.
Ideally I'd quarry in the bottom of a ravine or something like that or at least at some depth so I can get ores along with my greenschist.
I spot a large promising cave but the ditch coming out connects to *another* large cave. On my "safe back" principle, I skip it.
As I'm exploring, I spot a vanilla Mesa Plateau. This is another biome that benefits from the Halcyon days pack. The more-neutral hardened clay colors have a much more naturalistic look than the somewhat cartoony look created by the vanilla colors. I run over to mine a stack of hardened clay - I don't have any particular planned use, but it will be nice to have a little on hand if the mood strikes me.
From the Mesa I spot an Autumn Woods and a Jungle. Notice that all the biomes are from Highlands or vanilla, even though I have Biomes o' Plenty installed. The reason is that I passed close to here earlier (with about 1000 blocks with a normal biome size) and Climate Control "locked" the biomes to prevent chunk walls.
I spot a vertical cave, so steep I have to fly down, but at the bottom is a large room with creepers and I decide it's not worth the hassle. I end up just quarrying 4 stacks of greenschist from the surface. I go ahead and send them home with the mirror.
I reenter the Tall Pines biome and get this upclose look at a large (2x2) fir. I'm not sure what their growth requirements are - it would be nice to have some of these near home, but all I've gotten so far is 1x1 firs.
I spot a wisp spawner and head over to loot the chest. It doesn't have much exciting, but it does have some iron horse armor I take as a collector's item.
Next I find an Extreme Hills biome.
I find a cluster of four nodes around a lava pool. The nodes are all medium sized and I don't take any although I'm very tempted by one with Perdito just because I need it so badly.
By now I've pretty much explored the landmass on this map, so I head back towards the boat. I pass through a level valley with steep hills like this on both side. I have a love-hate relationship with Extreme Hills - I love the complexity and the dramatic views, but I hate the often-crazified terrain. This is very much on the "love" side of the equation.
Back on the boat I've decided there are enough things I want to haul around and not just sent through the mirror that I need a little more mobile storage. So I make two chests and put them in the boat. Chests become part of Archimedes' Ships boats, so it'll travel along with me.
Next episodes: back to exploring the ocean, and maybe a special treat.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
And I'm off!
Here's the plan for this section of the expedition. Remember the map wall pic was made before I left home, so it doesn't show what I've explored since Episode 100. The X is where I am, on the coast of the large island I've been exploring. First I'm going to explore the blank area below me. It's still blank because I got here from Lazy River Landing, to the right of me. Then I'll come back, explore the coast of the large island. Next I'll explore some of the landmass above me, and finally I'll head over to the first volcanic island I saw back in Episode 34.
I go slightly east of my plan checking out the coast of the small island on the upper left corner of the next map. I know it's attached to the large island to its southeast, but I want to see if I can make a canal. I decide it's a little too much work and backtrack.
BoP Coral Reef and Kelp Forest create number of small survival islands in the ocean, because their height ranges sometimes go above y = 63. But this island, which I stop on for the night, shows up as "Ocean" on F3. So I start wondering if vanilla still generates survival islands. However, when I'm writing this, I realize that it's right *next* to a Kelp Forest, so it's still probably a BoP survival island.
I run my search and find nothing in this area apart from survival islands. So I head back to the island I was exploring last episode to check out the coast.
This is a Stone Beach, placed by Climate Control next to the Mesa because Mesa is fairly rugged. Although usually Stone Beaches improve the coast of more rugged biomes, here it's not right. I immediately alter Climate Control to put sandy beaches next to Mesa (it's a one-line change).
Here's a pic of the island I was exploring last episode. As you can see, it extends off to the left (west) onto the next map.
At this point I make another change to my plan and explore some of the water between this island and my spawn continent, finding only survival islands.
On the next map to the west, I find a Woodlands or Forest Island (it's hard to tell from here). I suspect this is connected to the large island from last episode.
To the left of that is a jungle - probably a Highlands Jungle Island, actually, from the number of oaks.
I wrap around the east side of the coast and head back west, now on the north side of the jungle and forest. I notice from my map that the Forest has a lot of water channels and wonder if I can get through it.
I dig up a small sandbar blocking access to a particularly large and inviting channel. Once in, I discover via F3 that it is indeed a Forest Island. So what seems to have happened is that a Forest Island generated next to the large island, and a Jungle Island generated next to that, and they all grew together.
The channels are wide but convoluted and it's slow going. Finally I come to what looks like a dead end, *right* when I'm about to come out on the south side. Sighing, I turn around - but as I do I see that it's not a dead end, there's just a really sharp turn. Going through that, I'm on the ocean again. So I can boat through, although it's slow.
I go back around, and continue along the north side of the large island, I encounter an Outback. I saw some of these trees from a distance and thought there was a (vanilla) Savanna there, but it's this.
Next, a small Meadow, and the sea view of the Rock Mountains.
I get back to the map I'd been on at the start and then head north along the coast of a landmass I'd skirted back in Episode 35.
I soon encounter this imposing coastal grove of Highlands Redwoods. As I'm writing this, I mentally kick myself for not chopping one as I wanted some redwood for building. But I recall a Redwood grove not far from where I plan to quarry Blueschist, so I'll manage.
Next is a snowy biome. I'm not sure what it is, actually, but I think it's BoP Alps. I would have thought I was still to close to explorations pre-BoP installation to see a BoP biome, but sometimes the generation procedure can move biome boundaries a surprisingly large distance.
The next biome is *definitely* BoP, Decidous Forest, I think, although I don't stop to confirm.
Now I'm near the top of the map. I don't care to explore further, because it won't fit on my map wall, so I turn west and head for the Volcanic Island.
Remember when I first saw this, I'd be back when I had a Thaumostatic Harness to fly and look at it from the air? Well, I do, and I am!
I anchor my boat, and go to my inventory to pull out Trunkie, who has my spare Potentia essentia, for flying. My Harness' tank is almost empty. But…
Spunkie's not in my inventory.
O..M..G…
I must have left him somewhere. But I can't remember where. I pause the game to check my screenshots. But I don't take many screenshots of my inventory while I'm exploring. The last picture with Spunkie in the inventory is from when I got a stack of Hardened Clay in the Mesa. I'm pretty sure I haven't taken either trunk out during this episode, so that means I lost Spunkie in the second part of the last episode - which is a fairly large area. I don't even know whether I forgot to convert him back to an item with the bell or whether I missed collecting him into my inventory.
Well, I don't feel like sightseeing now. Sorry folks.
I go ahead and refill my Harness tank and then try to pick up Trunkie. But the Golem Bell doesn't work. Great. I move around the boat to see if I can get him from another angle..
And fall off the boat. This wouldn't be a problem - except Trunkie jumps in after me! AAAUGH! It turns out he can swim, but this is deep water and if I itemize him with the bell he'll sink into the depths where I can't see him. And I don't think he can climb the ladder into the boat.
Well, the Volcanic Island is too steep to climb, but I swim over and manage to find a ledge to scramble out. Trunkie swims up next to me and sits shivering on the shallows right beneath. Here I can pick him up - but my bell *still* isn't working. I log off and back on and *finally* the bell works and I can put Trunkie back in my inventory.
Well, that's fixed, but I'm still missing Spunkie. I could go back and look for him - but my concern is that I itemized him on the boat before I left and his item form is spinning at the bottom of the ocean. If I go back and look, he'll despawn, because I can't see underwater.
Frustrated, depressed, and not sure what to do next, I get back on my boat and close down the game.
Next episode: Back home to plan a rescue expedition
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
It is actually working, but the terrain isn't matching up with the previous version, which is a very frustrating bug to fix.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Further, after thinking about it I remember pulling Spunkie out to put the chests on the boat. So I actually know where I lost him and don't have to worry about searching half a large island, with despawning a concern if I left him in item form. I just need a Potion of Night Vision to search the water (in case he's in item form). Most likely I left him in embodied form, in which case I'll certainly find him eventually, but I do want the Potion just in case.
So here's my plan. I still don't feel like sightseeing, but I don't fell like wasting a trip either, so I'm going to explore on the way home. I'll head south along the west side of my spawn continent, a bit out to look for islands. I'll explore the coast of the landmass to the south-west a bit, then head back of the south side of my spawn continent.
Shortly after reaching the latitude of my spawn continent, I spot land. I turn right, to explore the "outside" since I know it's limited on the side towards the continent.
This one is definitely a Climate Control medium island, the first of this trip. As is typical of CC medium islands, it has one climate but a fairly complex coastline.
On the next map south I encounter a largish survival island. This one, I suspect, is actually a part of the continent, which is very close, which got cut off with the convolutions of the coast during land generation. I didn't think to get off and check, though. It could also be a section of ocean that generated above sea level.
I see nothing else of note until I get to that snowy coast to the southwest of my spawn continent.
This has a variety of snowy biomes - Ice Plains and Tall Pines here, Cold Taiga a little further on.
I establish bounds on it but don't completely explore the coast. I can, however, say it's definitely a medium island too. From there, I head south, following my planned route - and quickly hit yet another snowy coast.
This looks like BoP Frost Forest, although I don't check. I'm now, again, far enough from pre-BoP exploration that CC can allow BoP Biomes without messing up the chunk walls. I turn east along the coast.
Next is a BoP seasonal forest. With two different climate zones, it's *not* a medium island and has to be larger. After this the coast veers south but I continue east. I know it's at least a large island and so exploration would 1) be a substantial detour and 2) activate maps to the south. I want to get home, so not today.
Next I run into an Outback. This could be connected to the landmass I just left, or it could be a separate one. I turn south to check.
I get near the edge of my map but the coast ahead seems to veer east, suggesting it's a separate landmass.
I end up going a little onto the next map to confirm it's a cape. Explorercraft creates a new tiled map for me - I still had five blank maxed-out maps for this.
Continuing on the coast, it's looking like a medium island (yay!) that isn't snowy (yay variety) but then:
Darn, another climate, and the coast has turned back south. But I continue, and soon I round a cape and the coast heads north-east. After a while it's clear this is a small landmass so I break away from the coast and head towards home.
Here's what it looks like on the map. This appears to be a medium island with the outback and some desert (didn't take a pic), conjoined with (probably) a Highlands Forest Island. It does seem like the Highlands "Island" biomes are ending up usually conjoined to other landmasses with my settings.
From here I head back to the Winter tower. I spot one more survival island, and a landmass in the distance nearby, but I don't investigate it apart from taking a pic to remind me.
Unlike Lazy River Landing, the Winter Tower isn't right next to the water. I anchor my boat at the mouth of the frozen river that goes by the Winter Tower. I first launched a boat from here back in episode 3. Wow, how time flies!
Soon, I'm in my yard, surrounded by the stately Silverwoods and Firs of home - and the less stately tumult of my dog run, golem farmers, and cow ranch. But it's not home without Spunkie!
Next episode: the rescue expedition.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Well, all my stuff came through the mirror, including the ordo/terra node which I wasn't sure whether I'd sent home or left in Spunkie. I take the node to the node room and place it there, leaving my Primal Staff to recharge. I also brew up a Potion of Night Vision.
While I'm here, might as well take a pic of the map wall, right? It looks pretty good - I'm getting what I want out of Climate Control There's landmasses of all sizes, from survival islands (just specks on this scale) to single-biome islands, to medium islands of a few biomes, to large islands like the one on the right, to the continent on the northeast edge. To put this in context, in a 1.6 vanilla map the entire map would easily fit inside an ocean - and in 1.7 it would easily fit in an ocean-free land.
The individual landmasses could have a little more character to their climates, and you could get that by bumping up the climate zone sizes. There is a price in playability for that, though, in that you can end up on a very limiting start landmass of all snowy or all hot. The coastlines have pretty interesting shapes.
I plant some carrots (getting low), pick up some spare Potentia, breed some sheep, finish the potion, and make up the green and blue map markers I can't make on the road. My staff is completely recharged so maybe my node room is more adequate than I'd thought.
And it's back to the boat, via a well-traveled and familiar vista.
No major explorations on this leg, although I do fill in a few blank spot for looks on the map wall.
I figured it would take a while to get there - it's about 4000 blocks as the crow flies, and farther by boat, but I'm there in just a few minutes. Guess this Archimedes' boat is really fast! It's too close to dark to do my search - I want the full 5 minutes before despawning without additional time limits.
So I lawnmower around in the ocean for a while until sunset, and sleep on the boat.
Come morning I head back to where I'd stopped before, anchor the boat, and fall through the floor (happens sometimes when you disassemble an Archimedes' ship). Immediately I realize all my extensive and paranoid preparation were unnecessary - because I spot Spunkie in embodied form sitting in the shallow.
I get out of the water and Spunkie bounds out after me. It turns out he had one more valuable - my Pickaxe of the Core. But no matter, I have Spunkie back.
I could have just come right over, and he'd have been fine. But I didn't *know* that, so I regret nothing about all the work for the rescue expedition. Most was useful in its own right - all the exploration, and getting stuff from home. And the rest - well, it's worth some extra care to make sure your friends are OK for the holidays!
Next episode: a little more exploring, and picking up some exotic supplies.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
About half that glass had been on me (in case I didn't find him, and had to jar nodes without his supplies), and I'd just put it in. The relevant stuff: the Hound, my Pickaxe of the core, 8 jungle giant saplings, the clay (white stuff). Everything else would be trivial to replace.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Here's the route for this section of the expedition. The X is where I just retrieved Spunkie. I'll check out the coast of the first island I pass (a Tropical Island), then continue to the deep bay - almost a fjord. I'll land near an unexplored strip, to finish out the mapping, and continue to where the redwood grove is. I hope to spot the Blueschist ravine from my pics; if not I'll find some other way to quarry Blueschist.
I get stuck on a sandbar next to the Tropical Island. I also spot a node and stop to check it out, but it's only a 87 Vis Aqua node. No Perdito or interesting compound aspect, and I get plenty of Aqua due to all my sea exploration, so I skip it.
This goes through a very dramatic strait with mountains on both side. I forgot to get pictures here; I'll try on the way out. There's some islands where you could build an impressive-looking fort guarding the strait.
I come in to land at the beach of a taiga/taiga hills spot. I'm not sure why this wasn't turned into a Stone Beach - this is the kind of ugly "cliff beach" I want to suppress. However, Stone Beaches are intended for mountains and there is a range where the beaches are too steep but the Stone Beach is too high. I've considered making an intermediate beach biome. I may experiment with just shutting them off entirely in a certain range (smoothing in Minecraft will avert cliffs).
I cross the hilly Taiga to a meadow with a lot of flowers. Here you can see the apparently out-of-place Highlands acacia that made me suspect a (minorish) bug in CC (but see later in the episode.) I decide to collect a stack of yellow and red flowers, just to have them and the dyes available. So I run around this meadow for quite a while.
I spot a high-power node with all three of the aspects I'm looking for. Of course I take it.
At this point I decide to fill in a blank strip on my map. The area is a fairly rugged Taiga Hills, which is why I skipped in the first time out.
This shows why I didn't want to explore there before I got my flying harness.
I spot and label a couple of nodes but don't take any. Later, I wonder why I didn't take one, a pure aqua/ordo/victus node. I was thinking I didn't need those Vis, but it's kind of a thematic node and would be cool to have.
Finally I spot a trench where I can see some Blueschist. I don't quarry it because I remember a ravine and I'd like to have the chance to collect good ores as I quarry.
I don't spot the ravine before I reach the redwood grove. Quite impressive. Well, time to test the Axe of the Stream on the biggest tree yet.
So, I chop
and chop
and chop
and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and chop and…
3 minutes and ten seconds, with an efficiency IV axe, and no need to move around. I get 7 stacks of redwood logs, which go through the mirror to home. I could have build the entire trade center solely of redwood planks with that. Not going to run out of redwood any time soon!
Ever the ecologist, I plant a sapling to replace it, although I'm not sure one sapling is enough.
I'm still looking for my Blueschist ravine, and I check my old screenshots - to discover it wasn't actually a ravine; it just looked like one. It was actually the trench I ignored earlier. Well, I'll just look around for a likely spot. Just across a small lake from the Redwood is a hill with exposed Blueschist. I head over and …
Oooh, a cave! Promising!
But, once again, it turns out to be too complex for the quickie quarrying I'd envisioned.
So, I decide I'll build a treehouse base with a dropshaft to do the mining. I consider a spiral staircase around a redwood but it narrows as it ascends and I find tight radius spiral staircases annoying. So I'll just make the dropshaft continue up the center of the tree. I head over to chop in, and realize my Axe of the Stream can't cut a shaft - it'll just chop the entire tree. So I end up parking the treehouse idea and just building the dropshaft. I build it in the center of the tree so I can make the treehouse later.
I build it differently this time - I dig all the way down, and then run up once placing ladders. It's actually faster this way because it's so easy to place the ladders.
At the bottom I encounter a cave - much more convenient to clear. I clear a moderate section, block off the rest, and start collecting and quarrying.
My biggest prize? Not one, but *two* diamond veins, both large. With the aid of my Fortune III pickaxe, I collect 31 diamonds. A worthwhile mining expedition!
Well, I'm already done with my block collecting goals for the expedition, so it's just exploring and nodes from here on out.
Next episode: back to the water and more islands.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Come to kspcity! Transportation
http://kerbalcity.myminicity.com/ http://kerbalcity.myminicity.com/tra
Industry
http://kerbalcity.myminicity.com/ind
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I'll veer out a bit to explore a little more, then board my boat and explore that large ocean going up and down. Of course, I'll probably find something, so most likely I won't finish today.
As I cross a ridge into the new territories I plan to explore, I discover the little savannah tree that I thought was a bug wasn't:
There's a Highlands Savannah right over the hill. So it was just a mildly fluky boundary, creating an "island" of Savannah in the "sea" of Meadow.
I spot a shallow lake with squid and collect half a stack of ink.
I reach the coast and head back to my boat.
On the way I encounter this node with Messis Vis (farming). Messis is a complex compound and this node will produce everything except Ignis, so I take it.
It's a beautiful coast, but I'm certainly glad I can fly over spots like this. To some extent flying helps me appreciate it as I see it as "pretty" rather than as "an obstacle". Eventually I end up dropping into my boat from above. I lift anchor and head out the fjord to the open ocean.
Last episode I promised a shot of the straits and here it is. I suspect this very narrow bay was formed by two landmasses merging, although I'm not positive.
And I'm back to searching. I head all the way down a few hundred blocks off the coast of the eastern continent without finding any islands, then turn at the bottom and head back.
Heading back (now about 1000 blocks from the coast of the continent on the west side of my maps):
Land Ho!
This one appears to be a medium island, with all hot biomes. After the desert, I find a Highlands Tropics, back to the desert, a vanilla Savanna, and an unidentifiable (from the coast) biome with shrubs.
There's a desert temple on the border of the Desert and the Savanna. I hadn't noticed it before, but the texture pack creates a nice texture for sandstone at a distance that's very convincing for a ruin.
Actually it seems a bit big for a medium island so maybe it's a large island.
I land and start to explore, starting near the center, in a desert. I have to be careful to avoid quicksand in these BoP-influenced deserts.
I come across a BoP Oasis, which works very well here. I chop some Palm trees and send the wood and saplings back home, just on general principle. I'll probably try mixing in these BoP palms with the Highlands Palms back at Lazy River Landing.
The unidentifiable biome turns out to be BoP Thornlands. Ouch! I don't get good pictures at this point because my son started watching and kept nagging me to jump in the Quicksand so he could see what happened.
I spot a cave, which I would normally ignore, but my son wants to see a fight so I oblige him. Note the stone on the left - Blueschist. Now that I've got it, by mining basically at the far end of my earth, of course I'm going to see it everywhere.
I whack monsters for a while and then return to my boat to continue exploring.
I continue north, reach the top of the area, turn around, and head back south. This will pretty much finish off the exploration.
Shortly after turning south I spot a mountainous coast, not far from the snowy medium island I spotted on my emergency trip home in Episode 105.
Yep, I knew it. Soon as I get the Blueschist, it's showing up everywhere.
next episode: another island explored, a cool new biome, and a lesson from history
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I come ashore to find two things. First, right behind the Swamp is a BoP Jade Cliffs, which I'm thrilled to see. It's an impressive-looking biome and I've never seen one from the ground. Second, this is the hilliest swamp I've ever seen. This is part of a "bleed-over" effect I've observed before - the terrain effects of biomes actually extend past their boundaries. Mountains create hilly areas nearby; water creates submerged areas nearby. This isn't very noticeable in vanilla, because there's not enough mountains and not enough ocean. But with Climate Control and the biome mods going, it's noticeable.
The first node I spot is 70 Aer - no big deal. But the second:
61 Aer, 35 Aqua, and 44 Perdito. A great node for me. And aren't the Jade Cliffs a great backdrop for it?
Well, not much longer, because this thing's going to my node room. I build the glass jar around it right there (I have supplies in my inventory right now). It's a bit of a hassle since it's a bit up in the air, but I manage.
When I'm done I check my inventory to see if it degraded to Pale (the expected result, but I always hope) and…
Marx once said history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. Well, I guess my journal is functioning as history, because it just came true. One of my Travelling Trunks is missing - again.
And it's farce because this time I remember exactly what happened, and I know it's not a serious problem. I got out Trunkie to swap food right before I left the desert island earlier, and I forgot to pick him up. Ha-ha! (Nelson Muntz voice). He's bobbing around back there, perfectly fine.
I'll have to pick him up before I explore the interior because he's got the food. I do finish my circumnavigation first. The island has a *lot* of little rocky islands just off the coast.
The Jade Cliffs look great from the ocean, too.
I head back to where I'd had the boat parked at the desert island, and sure enough, Trunkie swims out to meet me, making the distinctive k-Chunk k-Chunk of a travelling trunk.
I drop anchor, swim ashore, swap foods, and pick him up. Nothing harmed. Well, maybe my ego.
As long as I'm here, I figure I'll explore some more of the desert island, especially the Tropics.
These are much darker than the ones near the Winter Tower, for whatever reason. I'm getting a substantial rate of daytime spawns.
Sniping creepers from the air is about as unsporting as shooting game from a helicopter. But man, is it satisfying!
It's got some big nodes, but they're Herba and Aqua/Herba, not ones I particularly want.
This was generated with rivers suppressed in it (a decision I made after seeing rivers in the one near home). Maybe that's why it's darker and generating more spawns. But visually, it has a nice sweep to it now.
With the Tropics explored, I boat back to the mountainous island and make a landing on the Jade Cliffs. Although it's a rugged biome, it does have low sections so I can walk onto it and up many of the hills.
It looks as great from the ground as it did from the air. I'm not happy with the green skies, though. I saw some green skies in China when I toured once - but they were greenish from pollution. China was great, but the pollution was awful, and that sky color brings back some unpleasant memories.
Oooh, another tree type for my collection!
Great vistas, and it would be playable even at start. Sort of difficult, but playable. The trees are sparse enough that there are more-open areas, not like vanilla forest. I got to this vista without flying, too.
Lots of caves, of course. Could make a memorable start.
I head north to the mountainous biome I couldn't identify from the water. It's Extreme Hills. Wait, is that marble?
It is, it is! It's like a Christmas present! As a very white stone, marble is fantastic for opulent-looking builds. But it's a little hard to find, and very hard to find exposed like this. I collect several stacks, and send them home via the mirror.
I also spot a bit of Highlands Steppe, but don't explore in detail.
All in all, this island has *great* personality because almost all the biomes are mountainous. It's pure luck, but it's still great. This kind of thing is possible only with medium islands, because only they are small enough to get a coherent set of biomes by luck like this.
A few more cliff pics as I head back to the boat, and cast off.
Next episode: Off to the south. What was that landmass I glimpsed from the boat in Episode 105?
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Also, glad to see you like Jade Cliffs. It's one of my favorite BoP biomes as well, and one of the few I would love to have in a vanilla world.
Preferably as a replacement to Extreme Hills.
I spot a cave, which I would normally ignore, but my son wants to see a fight so I oblige him. Note the stone on the left - Blueschist. Now that I've got it, by mining basically at the far end of my earth, of course I'm going to see it everywhere.
Edit- and all caught up too, just in time for the new year. My new year's resolution is to get Underground Biomes Constructs into my world. I'm just a little confused about how to handle the ores. It seems you've got Thaumcraft, Metallurgy and vanilla sorted beautifully. That still leaves a few like Thermal Expansion, Tinkers gravel ores and Forestry apatite (which I'm spawning through CoFH), Applied Energistics (quartz) and Electrical age. I can probably spawn all of them through CoFH, so if it's possible for that to work, it should be easy. Else.. finding those ores will just have to become hard >:D
Happy new year, Zeno.
Forge added that check about 2 years ago so the only problem I had lately was with one mod that wasn't exclusively a Forge mod and so obviously couldn't use a Forge procedure, and Highlands, where one call had just been missed when it updated.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Of course the problem with a note is that if I'm not remembering to pick up my trunks, how can I get myself to remember to check the note? lol. The first time was somewhat excusable because it was during separate play sessions (I logged off just before I left). The second time, not so much, but that's why I remembered exactly what had happened
.
With CC it's easy to make a vanilla world with Jade Cliffs instead of Extreme hills, and no other changes. They won't generate in the exact same places, but you can make the frequencies the same. IMO it would be better to have separate warm-biome and a cool-biome mountains, the way SirDave planned it- maybe Mountain or Alps for cool (many choices) and Jade Cliffs for warm.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
It is indeed a Frost Forest. The Frost Forest is interesting in an almost antipodal way to the Jade Cliffs. The Jade Cliffs have a unique varied topography and a new type of tree, creating a lot of distinctiveness and variety, but have a slightly offputting (to me) palette with the green sky. The Frost Forest, on the other hand, looks almost exactly a vanilla (oak) forest, except there's snow and a different color palette. But *this* palette does a great job of capturing a grey midwinter, and I love it.
The one new block I see is this Frost Iris, which I think looks good, and take for decorative purposes.
An side comment - I've been showcasing a lot of BoP biomes lately, and not much Highlands. This isn't because I don't love the Highlands biomes, but because I've been playing with Highlands for almost a year, while I added BoP only a few months ago, and haven't yet done nearly as much explorations in BoP biomes. So they seem fresh and exciting now, but the Highlands biomes were fully as fresh and exciting when I first saw them.
I travel along the frozen river, which is wide and like a highway to me because of the Haste effect, and soon pass into a (Highlands) Tundra. I don't plan to explore it too much, but I spot the glow of a node. Triangulating reveals it's actually inside a hill, so I cut in to discover a cave.
The node is a large Aer/Victus node, which for some reason strikes my fancy, and I decide to take it. I light up the caves, collect a little loot, and snarf it up. This one *doesn't* degrade when jarred, and remains normal. Whoot!
I return to my boat in a lovely, peaceful, snowfall.
I follow the coast on the west side, heading south into the next map. The snowy climate changes to a temperate clime with an Orchard and then some mid-elevation biome.
Here's an example where the Stone Beaches placed by Climate Control work really well. This would look awful as a sand beach, but in stone, it's perfect.
Next is a BoP Bog. I have one of these near Lazy River Landing, but for some reason I feel like collecting resources here.
Lots of Swampflowers. They're nice but I could have gotten them elsewhere. I find a node I don't want to take, but I do recharge my staff from it because it's running low.
I figure as long as I'm here, I'll collect Willow wood. I'd been thinking of making my planned Governor's mansion in Lazy River Landing of (green) willow wood, basically because I like green. I collect plenty of stacks.
I do find lots of mushrooms, and that's one thing I need that the Bog near Lazy River Landing doesn't provide - it only has two of the three I need for Mushroom Salad. But I don't think this one has the one I'm missing either. Still, I collect a bunch.
I return to the boat, cast off, and continue along the coast. The coast new is running west, toward the edge of my map wall, and I don't plan to continue. The landmass is already too large for even a large island, so it's some variety of continent. But as I'm getting close to the edge:
A village! Only my second, in six months of play. This has a unique placement, in a bay of sorts. The two almost-twinned towers create a nice imposing effect. I anchor my boat and head in to meet the residents.
Next episode: Venice of the North?
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.