Chapter 21: In Which Innwich Sees Progress Toward a Variety of Different Objectives, Albeit in the Presence of Significant Obstacles.
Well, I've got a working Endoflame system, but not anything to feed it. I used most of my coal roasting Black Granite and other stones, and traded the rest to help pay for a book of Mending. I actually have enough Black Granite smoothstone to do the next step on the castle, but I figure for efficiency I should have the Endoflames going as I'm working. In addition I'm probably going to want a lot of torches for light in the next phase of the castle and I don't want to spare the coal for that.
So, it's back to the mines. I have a choice of directions to go, and decide to continue the 3x3 slime attractor tunnel to the north. I'll get less coal there, but I figure I'll break into another stone type soon enough.
There's a little more adventure on this trip as I break into a mineshaft that looks to have a spider spawner. I block it off, kill a few zombies through portholes, and investigate the other direction, but that turns out to be very short. So I continue on.
I turn out to be wrong on being about to break into another stone. After almost an hour I'm still grinding through black granite and finally quit as I'm pretty sick of it. I've gotten very little coal - so little I stop to snag a bucket of lava on the way home to smelt with.
After unloading my gains, it's back to the mines. THIS time I'm going to one of the other directions. East is a long way to find possible new stones (although it does have gabbro, one I want, and west I don't know how much black granite I have left, and I'm feeling a little gunshy after my north experience. So south it is, into the Gneiss. This is also the direction for a possible mob-safe connection to the Flower plains.
I head in mineminemineminemine but before long.
Oh dear, more black granite. Let's branch in a different direction.
Houston, we have a problem. There's black granite in the way to the flower plains.
Dejected, I head back in partial defeat.Partial because I did get some munchies for my Endoflame. I make and plant another, and speed up the clock slightly by setting the 11-tick clock to a 9-tick clock.
I've also got enough levels for another enchant. This offer looks VERY appealing after all this slow black granite mining, especially as I have Mending to keep it.
And adding Mending is only 2 more levels? O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
But since I still don't have a lot of coal it's back to the mines *again* …
But this time it's different! The Efficiency 4 really makes a difference! I decide to go to the west and although there's still black granite, it's far less unpleasant. The Efficiency 4 pick is about three times as fast and because I'm only cutting a 2x1 tunnel I'm removing 2/9s as much material. So it feels quite easy.
Then I reach Andesite, a comparatively soft stone, and I'm going even faster. The whitish Andesite is probably not a great building material but I need the coal.
I break into a cave and decide to give this one a go. Soon I am confronted by a dreaded --- bat ---- ok not so dreaded. The cave is small but basically goes further west, so I keep tunnelling on.
One odd thing is these annoying zapping noises I hear. I don't recognize them, and I can't find anything that would cause them. When I think to check my map, I'm already off it. I'm making good progress. I grind on, converting coal and redstone to blocks to extend my capacity.
Even better, I've been checking F3 from time to time. I moved off the island shores into deep ocean fairly early on. But as I'm doing a light check to see if I need another torch.
Oh ho ho! Coral reef is a coastal ocean biome, so that means there's probably land in this direction.
Eventually I get to the point that continuing to compess coal and redstone becomes more and more of a hassle, so I turn back. It takes a while just to walk back.
Back home I have enough coal to fire up all 5 of my furnaces and give my Endoflames several stacks of munchies. Plus, I know where I'm almost certain to find more land (yay exploring!). Oh, and...
The Endoflames made a measurable amount of mana from the half-stack of coal I fed them, so this setup will actually make usuable amounts of mana. All in all, some satisfying results.
(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 seems like a potentially simpler method for dropping coal to the flowers would be to have a dropper drop the coal on a pressure plate, then when the coal is consumed the pressure plate sends a signal to the dropper to drop another coal.
Chapter 22: Concerning Construction of the Castle Curtain Wall, Mentioning Moderate Mortifying but Manageable Mishaps, and Depicting Design Details
Before I head up to the castle, I cash in some levels, getting a Power IV bow (not too different from my Power III/Punch I bow) and a Blast Protection IV helmet. That last one would be useful if I go into the Nether, which is on my list, if not at the top.
I have about 30 stacks of Black Granite smoothstone, which by my rough estimate is about enough to finish the curtain wall around the outside.
On the way I do a little farming at the top of the village. The farmers don't bother the farm I'm at in the picture. I notice that I need to cover the side of that white spot on the townhouse roof as well as the top. Later.
I also farm some Pines because I anticipate I'll need a lot of wood for castle floors.
At the castle, the first thing I do is swap most of the dirt in the entrace for Black Granite (I missed a few spots in the back. This makes the castle much more imposing. I have once again made something of a face from the entrance, but that will disappear as I add more.
I put a floor over the "basement". I'm shaping the castle organically, trying to conform to the shape of the existing hill. This will make it a lot harder to decorate later but I'm taking that as a challenge. Here I start the floor at the existing wall and extend it in until it meets the hill. Then I adjust the hill a bit to get relatively straight walls. This is going to set the shape of the buildings. I fill in some bits of the wall as well.
Where I'm going to put walls is tentative and for now I make them from easy-to-remove gravel. For now I'm only flooring the north and east of the castle. The west and south areas are still open.
The it's up on the wall to build it up to the target height in one spot with the window, and place the second window above the first one.
I wrestle a bit with the heights of the interior rooms. Big heights look good for big rooms, but I anticipate some narrow corridors especially towards the back
Now I head over to the adjacent hill to get an idea of what it looks like. I'd noticed some differently colored trees in the valley and check them out.
They're harvestcraft Maple trees, as in syrup. This could be useful for some breakfast foods, although I'm not feeling much need to expand my food supply right now. Nice log texture, if you ask me.
From the adjacent hill it looks pretty good although the wall needs to be just a bit higher to got enough above the window. But, I used black granite walls for the window rather than black granite brick. Sigh.
Going back and forth to that view spot is annoying because it's to the southeast and my only entrance is to the north. So after I swap the walls I dig the dropshaft to the cow pen, which will serve as a hidden southeast entrance. I dig down and then south to hit the east-west corridor I built from the pen, but I get 40 blocks without hitting anything, so I did something wrong.
Up the shaft, out the front gate, around to the cow pen, feed the cows, and investigate. It turns out the east-west corridor was 2 blocks short.
As I head out - oh look, it's the irregularly scheduled afternoon rainstorm.
Still needs a little more height on the top
Now I set to completing the entire east facade. The weather is dreary but oh that view!
Here's the completed east facade from the inside, showing where the floors are. You don't see the lower windows because they're in the basement. I'll probably add yet another floor in at least part of the castle although I do want to leave space for a few big show rooms somewhere.
And here's the draft east facade. I like the look, but it's much more palatial and less martial that I'd anticipated. I'd been planning something like crenelations on the top but they might look out of place. That facade would go better with one of my typical fancy roofs, but the irregularly shaped building will probably make a fancy roof look terrible.
The style of the building, especially the windows, which are quite large but shaped like windows typically only a few feet high in the real world, disguises its size. That wall is about 20 blocks high, and with that height I'm glad I'm not playing hardcore, because if I were I'd have to build scaffolding for falls.
Next chapter: finishing the curtain wall and more pics
What I mean by "crazified" terrain is the physically impossible ones - floating islands, horizontal sticks of dirt in midair, etc. There are still extreme RTG terrains like crag (some slightly out of date pics here, but they're close). I wouldn't call the RTG version of BoP Rainforest bland either. I tried hard to capture the spirit of BoP biomes so if it's striking or memorable in the BoP world it should be in RTG as well, if perhaps in a different way, like Alps.
My computer is anything but cutting edge - it's a 4 yo Mac - and it doesn't have significant trouble with RTG/UB/BoP. I can creative fly at full speed almost all the time. The only thing that gives me trouble is dark Big Tree biomes, and the worst for that is Roofed Forest, from vanilla.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Chapter 23: Concerning Construction of the Castle Curtain Wall, Mentioning Moderate Mortifying but Manageable Mishaps, and Depicting Design Details
part 2
(After all the work I put into that title, I'm getting some reuse)
So, now to duplicate the design pattern all the way around the castle.
The floors I extend all the way around. They're easier to do from underneath, although still it's slow to place them as I'm backing up, especially after the first, when I have to start worrying about falling off the floor I'm on.
Where did he come from? It's the middle of the day. One of the problems with large irregular bases like this is that it's hard to make sure you've gotten every last little cranny properly lit. After I dispatch him I run around sticking torches in little nooks here and there, even though none seem improperly lit. I suspect I haven't yet found the problem zone. Maybe it's the village path blocks, with their 0 light levels? There were some in the basement and I don't think I've dug them all up yet.
I'm going back and forth on top of the wall adding blocks. It seems easiest to add 2 layers at a time. I manage to only fall off to the outside once during the whole operation, which I guess isn't too bad even though I feel really stupid when I step back to place one more block and WAaaaooooo…..!
Inspiring to work up here.
My estimate that I had enough blocks to finish the curtain wall is pretty close. I'm short about 2 stacks here. If I'd been super stingy with the various extra blocks I might have had enough (I have leftovers of all the brick items).
The village hill looks so small from up here! It's 30+ blocks high and boy do you notice going up and down but from up here it looks like a hillock.
This is the view from what will eventually be the courtyard. This is going to present a design challenge later. If I build the interior walls as high as the exterior this will be surrounded by walls about 15 blocks high and will be a little depressing and dour. I could leave walls off some places where the wallside building is just a corridor. I could perhaps make the buildings only go up to the second floor and put gardens on all the roofs (I may need that space for Botania stuff, actually, depending on whether things need to be outdoors). Or perhaps I can make the interior walls very decorative with large window, flower windowboxes, and the like. Another thing to think on.
The new front gate view. I see I missed part of a supporting pillar. It does good loom, doesn't it?
As I'm going around I spot a tiny tiny cave and light it up. No, it's not where the zombie came from because it's outside the walls.
You can't seem much from the west side because it's too steep.
Here's the "loom view" from the south side, towards Spawn Mountain. I was planning to have a few towers going above the outside walls, to break up the shape and add some visual interest. The two window in the middle look like they could be part of a tower, which would add some logic to that concave curve to their left, which looks a bit odd now that more is built. Also: I missed an entire window? How embarassing.
And a final shot showing the curtain wall against Spawn Mountain. That is one big mountain! It makes a 20 block high building look small.
It would have been good to take a view from the village top to finish the chapter, but I forgot to, for reasons that will become clear - in the next chapter.
Chapter 24 In which I Prepare for an Extended Overseas Exploration Trip.
When I come down to the village - it's quiet. The farms are untended. I head over to the center of town and spot two Iron Golems, but no visitors.
Then with an explosion of clattering doors and "Hrm" they come pouring out of the houses. I guess they get scared when I'm away? They don't trust the Golems to keep them safe (that would be the first smart thing I've ever heard about them).
For some reason the town has become noticeably laggy. There's a fair amount going on - a few dozen chickens, my redstone room, and presumably more villagers - but nothing I haven't had going in a number of villages so I'm a little surprised. I'm hoping there's a swarm of zombies in some grotto because otherwise I've got some performance issues.
Also, the apple sapling hasn't sprouted. I don't know why. I figure maybe it needs more room and knock out some blocks around it, including one cane 2 blocks away.
In addition to the two outside, there are now two iron golems inside the same house one was in before. Initially, I see no reason to get them out if they'll just respawn. Then, I realize I can lower the ceilings to 2 and they won't be able to spawn inside. So I shove them inside and install ugly drop ceilings to make sure there will be no more. Function before form.
My Endoflames have produced a useful amount of mana from the 3 stacks of coal I fed them - 1/4 to 1/5 of a pool. That means a full pool will need about 15 stacks of coal. A lot, but doable.
I do some routine work - planting some spinach for Beef Wellington, making some Chili as my food stores are getting a little low, and doing an enchantment, which ends up with Prot IV boots.
Oh look, time for an afternoon rainstorm.
Now I want to start making a Davinci's Ships boat for exploration. They are groups of blocks that move, which is great since you can brind a small base with you and they are much faster than vanilla boats. The one thing you need is a Ship's helm, which is easily make with a little wood and iron.
I also want a "shore buffer": basically a block to separate your dock from your ship as the ship algorithm can't figure out which wood belongs in the boat and which in the dock. This needs ink, so I swim out to butcher some squids. It's surprisingly difficult to get the ink when maneuvering in 3 dimensions in poorly lit fighting.
I do get this shot of castle and town while out there. The castle looks more martial from this side. The white house which is a bit garish up close looks great from out here, which is a typical rule of design. Bright, complex, and out-of-place things look better when small.
And now it's time to make a boat. I want a fancier one later but this is just a basic one with railings to keep out mobs when stop, gate for me to get in, the helm for control (the wheel you see), a crafting table, and a bed.
I have to build it out of the water because if it's built in the water when it's first activated the mod thinks the water is missing and has water flow in from all directions, making it almost impossible to move. Strangely, once the boat has activated once that won't happen; but construction has to take place in drydock. The black block in back is the shore buffer to indicate the end of the ship.
Once I'm satisfied, I climb on top of the crafting table (to get a better view), right-click the helm, "assemble" and "mount". And it works! I go a short distance to make sure everything is fine, then return to the dock.
It's not particularly relevant to boating, but I remember I want a sheild when I'm able to do something about it so I make one.
Some compasses and two stacks of paper I've saved up and I'm ready to go exploring!
Chapter 25: Over Sea, Over Dale, I Have Hit the Swampy Trail, and Great Pictures Keep Coming Along.
I soon find the source of the zapping noises in Chapter 21:
A Ocean Monument. I lack the gear to go after them so I zoom on by.
Shortly after I leave the spawn map, I stop the boat to make a new map. That's another useful feature of Davinci's Ships - you can't do that on a vanilla boat.
But wait! I've already reached land? That sure was quick.
I come ashore to a bucolic BoP meadow and set to collecting flowers. None of the red, light gray, and gray I need most but I take them anyway.
Beyond that is an Overgrown Cliffs. I head over to explore
But quickly find they're not kidding when they say Overgrown. It looks had to penetrate and I suspect it will get day spawns which could be very problematic in close confined quarters (imagine, when you can scarcely move, hearing "ssssss". Eerk!)
I return to the boat and continue west along the Overgrown Cliff Coast.
Soon I come to some more land - Dead Swamp and some forest biome - connected to the Overgrown Cliffs by a narrow sandbar. I hop off to dig a passage through the sandbar. I dig about a stack and a half of sand
before finding it's just a bay and there's no significant value to a canal. Well, back to the boat to sleep.
I decide to go ashore here and try to explore some by land.
The forest biome turns out to be Rainforest. It's extremely dense and I expect day spawns, so I stay out for now. Those of you who were complaining about how the BoP Flowering Oak Leaves blocks looked can notice that I've switched to fancy graphics and they appear properly now.
The Dead Swamp is, appropriately, most barren and rather dreary. I choose to climb onto the Prairie I saw to get a better view, since it's elevated. And from there:
Ooooh, aren't those the Sacred Springs trees?If so this will be the first time I've seen them in Survival.
Indeed it is, and there's one of the Sacred Springs. I'm not sure what's in it or what happens if you get in. I presume it's good, but I'm not sure. To investigate I snap up a bucket of it - and just get water. Well, that's pretty boring - I guess the Sacred Springs are just plain water with a funky color (very common in BoP) and that heat effect. I put the water back to neaten up the pool
KACHUNG! The water just looks like water, and the two adjacent Spring blocks turn into stone as if they were lava. OK, I guess it's NOT just water. But, now suspecting a retextured lava, I leave it alone.
Later, investigating out of the game, I find it confers a regeneration effect while in the pool.
I don't want to stay, though, because the biome is extremely dense and will produce lots of day spawns if it's not flagged to not spawn mobs. So I retreat and head back to the swamps.
The BoP addons make the Swamp very Swampy!
The map's small from being in one hand but you can still use it to see my route for this chapter. The blob in the upper right is the Meadow I landed on. The largely unmapped connection to the rest of the landmass is the Overgrown Cliffs. The unmapped area on the upper left is the Sacred Springs. The dark green region near the center is counterintuitively the Prairie. The very wet section of the swamps is the Swampland and Fen. The lighter colored area with ponds is the Dead Swamp from where I took the picture.
I'm pretty much done with mapping this map for now (the remaining land areas are too overgrown) so I continue to the south.
I make another map once I'm outside the one I've been on. I find the Dead Swamp is a great place to hunt Botania flowers because it's flat and has little vegetation. You'd think that included Botania flowers but that's one mod interaction that didn't work out right.
Even normally hard-to-find flowers like gray and light gray are readily visible. I've noticed that, like vanilla, Botania seems to have a system where one biome has only a limited set of flowers. I've already found red flowers in the Swampland and there are gray and light gray here, so I'm set for flowers for a while.
The Dead Swamp needs more mud, though. It's too easy to get around in.
Soon I come to ocean to the south. I can see small sandy islands to the south so this isn't the absolute end but I'll need the boat to continue.
So I hear north back towards the boat.
I reach it soon enough and confirm the Rain Forest produces day spawns. I showed up in the middle of the day but still got Mr. Creeper there, as well as another creeper and a helmeted zombie I didn't get pics of. One zombie makes it out to the boat and I bash its head in, then take off before anything else pesters me.
Chapter 26: A Dramatic Fight Teaches Some Valuable Life Lessons
I head south, to find the islands are islands of another landmass to the south of this. I head into a sort of bay to find
Well! I do believe that's Bryce, which I have also never seen in legitimate survival. Two super rare biomes in one trip - this is turning out to be quite the expedition. I disembark for a closeup view but find it's not traversable on foot and head further south.
South of that is a Savanna and a Mesa biome. I turn back to the east, as it looks like there's kind of a peninsula I want to fill out, after which I'll return to the boat.
Oh look, afternoon rain again. Did they change the weather programming? I don't think I've seen it start raining before 1:30 in the afternoon *once* the entire game. In other games I've definitely seen rain start even early in the morning, which can be very annoying if I want to go out.
I get back to the boat and - I can't reform it. The problem is that DaVinci's Vessels considers the Underground Biomes stones to be legitimate boat materials and I've parked the boat in a shallows with exposed stone. I could add them to the config exclusion list, but I'm in a hurry.
and chop the boat free from underneath.
My inventory is getting full, but I'm still up for more exploring and continue south along the coast.
Here's the map so far. The bay is where I ran the boat aground, The area that looks like abstract art is the Bryce and the Mesa is below that.
South of there I come to an Orchard with very large trees and come ashore to check them out. They look too large to be from the Orchard.
but that is indeed what they're from. OK, OK, they do look a lot nicer when the Flowering Oak Leaves render properly.
Adjacent to the Orchard is a Desert
With this poor piggy stuck in quicksand.
The desert looks endless.
But of course, it isn't, although there was a big desert hill to cross to get here.
Continuing east I come to a Lush Swamp. This appears to have poison pools in it, which I don't remember. I check a pool with my bucket and it does indeed have poison, which I put back without any drama like I got with the Sacred Spring.
I spot some trees that look like HarvestCraft Walnut trees and I hang around for them to ripen as Walnuts can be used for cooking oil, which is useful in a lot of recipes.
Oh lookie, afternoon shower time! It's like Phoenix in the summer, but not so hot.
I pillar up on a tree to sleep the night but do it a little early. I don't have anything to do, but the scenery is plenty enjoyable, even in the rain.
The Walnut trees, however, are actually Pecan Trees, which I don't think can be used for cooking oil in Harvestcraft (although I have seen it in my supermarket). I take a few anyway.
As I'm walking along through the Lush Swamp I spot - an Enderman! Holding a grass block. I haven't been discussing this, but I have an Enderman problem - or, rather, a lack of Enderman problem. My normal way to collect Ender Pearls is, once I have a base secure, to work through the night and fight with Endermen I see. Well, in the village my base isn't secure and even once it is it will be hard to spot Endermen due to the shape of the hill. The castle will be bad for collecting Endermen as they'll tend to teleport outside and then run up to the walls. My problems are magnified by the need for Ender Pearls in a couple of Botania recipes.
Up to now I haven't seen any Endermen anywhere although I have heard the teleport noises in the village, of all places.
So I walk up to him, stare him in the leg, and take a swat. He screams, tp's off, and we trade blows a couple of times. But then he successfully backstabs me twice when I don't turn around precisely enough to swat him. My extremely rusty combat skills are getting me into big trouble. By this point he's hit me five times and even with full diamond armor I figure I'm doomed. That would be so embarrassing - killed by greed 2000 block from home and forced to slog back out here to get my stuff. But just then he freezes into shaking "anger" mode and I swat him twice for the kill, scoring my badly wanted Ender Pearl.
(Exciting screenshots unprovided to you by the nonexistent 1.10 Damage Screenshot mod. I didn't even take an establishing shot, because I'm so in the habit of using the first DS shot from a fight. I am SO updating that mod.)
Phew! That was close! I check my health bar to see how close I came to death and -
I'm unharmed? After five hits by an Enderman? Whaaa? How is that possible?
A little bit later I notice that I've got a grass block in my inventory. The only thing I can think of is that the Enderman was hitting me with the grass block for some miniscule damage amount, which between diamond armor and health recovery left me unharmed. I can't find anything on the web referring to Endermen attacking with a block instead of their native punch, so it's a puzzlement. Did I actually find something new in 1.10? My relatively short mod list is unlikely to piddle with Enderman behavior.
At this point I'm ready to head home even though there appears to be a lot left of this landmass. I start heading back to the boat by a new route to add to my maps.
The Lush Swamp certainly lives up to its name. There's a lot of different Harvestcraft trees here as well.
I wander through several different biomes, including Mountain Foothills and some Forest complexes.
I spot one hill in the Forest that doesn't quite look like a Forest Hills to me and head up to check. It is an ordinary Forest Hills, so even after dozens of hours in RTG terrain it can still surprise me. But from the top of the hill I spot:
This bucolic village. I don't know why, but I really like the looks of this village. I guess it's the way it nestles into the rolling plains, with the varied trees in the background. I set up the basic safety measures - knock out the stairs and light up the houses. The town also has a librarian, so I check his book trade - Thorns II. Yuck. I continue on towards my boat.
After the majestic forests, rampantly lush swamps, and stony hills, just a broad sweeping Plains can be inspiring. Variety is the Spice of Life (no, that's one of my mods. Strike the caps.)
I get to my boat, board, and head for home.
Man these things are everywhere.
It gets dark before I reach the village, but I can just deactivate my boat and sleep out on the ocean under the stars.
As I approach the village I up my view distance to 16 to get a shot of the village and the castle with Spawn Mountain. The castle does good loom even from out here, but looks a little undefined and blobby. I have some ideas for dealing with this.
Although I didn't take a pic, I glanced at my health bar almost immediately after the fight and it was already full, so something was going on besides health regen. I did some calcs and five hits should have had me near death (but not actually dead) and regen isn't THAT fast even now.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Chapter 27: In Which I Experience Ups and Downs, Both Literally and Metaphorically in Both Cases.
Well, I think it's time for a map wall:
So, I think I know what happen with my unexpected large island start. It looks like the start small continent is the landmasses on the left, and just by the variance of terrain generation it was moved to the left (the zero line is in the center). A large island got placed on the right and then the keepaway routines in Geographicraft kept them apart. When spawn got placed both the start continent and the large island were about the same distance from 0,0 and I just happened to end up on the large island. I'm not complaining, because I've gotten some really spectacular scenery out of this start.
My mana pool is now about 3/4 full, so it's time to use it. I make a Runic Alter (5 LivingStone + one Mana Diamond) and place it near the pool, with a Mana Spreader next to the pool feeding it mana. I then set up for a Rune of Air creations (1 mana powder, 1 mana steel, 1 feather, 1 carpet, and one string) by placing them all on the Altar. The Spreader detects the Altar needs mana and starts feeding it.
Botania has complex animated graphics. Of course I envisioned this happening in a suitably grand room up in the castle, not in a cramped grotto full of dead Hydroangeas, but the castle's not anywhere near ready and here I am.
After the enchantment picks up enough mana, I toss a LivingStone onto the Altar and tap it with the Wand of the Forest to get my Runes.
I then use one of the Runes of Air (I got two for that) along with a Redstone Root (redstone plus grass) and some flower petals to make a Hopperhock. The Hopperhock is the "pickup" item for Botania, picking up items and placing them in adjacent inventories. Unusually for Botania functional flowers, it works without mana. This is currently a big advantage for me, as I don't want to build a mana network to keep it fed which I plan to abandon in a bit when I move this operation to the castle.
The point of this is to collect eggs from the chicken ranch, which I plan to use to make Egg Salad to feed a mana generating flower, the Gourmaryllis. So I head up to the chicken room to expand it a little to fit in the Hopperhock and a double chest.
Unfortunately I accidentally cut into the grotto adjacent to the chicken farm (for some reason Biomes o Plenty places grottos in almost every chunk in Mountain Peaks). The chickens rush for the exit, which I block off.
But then the chickens all proceed to commit suicide by jumping up on that block. Every time they do, they take suffocation damage and soon almost all are dead. I figure out they couldn't actually get out, but there are two blocks touching diagonally, and the chickens seem to see it as an exit even through it's not.
Eventually I get it all straighted out and toss a couple stacks of eggs to replenish my chickens.
Now it's time to make the Gourmaryllis. But..
Uhoh. It needs a slime ball, and I've yet to see a slime. In addition, one of the components needs Nether Brick, and I haven't been to the Nether yet. So all my great plans have to go on hold for a while.
As consolation, I decide to make a Rod of the Skies. This item allow you to jump extremely high, over 30 blocks high. Initially that didn't seem too useful other then providing some amusement park-style fun, but I have one great use for it:
Chopping Pine trees. They're (usually) too big to chop from the ground and it's a pain to pillar up or ladder up to take them down. But with this, one jump and I'm on top of the tree and just chop to the ground. And it *is* kind of fun.
After that I decide to go to the Nether. It's about time, and I need the Nether Brick now. I do chores around the village -prepping food and trading with villagers - load up on Andesite Cobblestone, my 10 Obsidian, food, wood, and Flint and Steel.
I head up to the castle to place the Nether Gate. Of course I don't want Nether Piggies wandering the castle, or the annoying noises it makes. However, I have a good place to put it.
When building a passage from the castle to the underground cow ranch, I missed the connector and dug a long excess tunnel going away from the castle. This is almost 30 blocks below the castle and I can put on a door to keep the Piggies in. Having the Nether Portal deep in black rock seems thematic too.
I go a ways out into the tunnel, and then dig an area to the side just big enoud to put in a minimal 3x2 portal. A flick of the Flint and Steel, and I'm ready to go.
(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?
Chapter 28: In Which A Great Find Almost Makes Me Lose.
I pop up in the Nether and, as usual, dash over to a slope to burrow in so I won't have to worry about Ghast bombardment damaging the neighborhood. Once that's done, I start building a cobble shelter between the hideyhole and the Nether Gate so I can come and go in safety.
Wow, and there's a Glowstone Chandelier on the floor just a few blocks away. I'm used to these long painful explorations for finding Glowstone like in my previous journal and here it just gets plopped in my lap.
The shelter is hideous but it will prevent Ghast fire.
After the shelter is built I head over to get the Glowstone.
And then there's a Nether Quartz deposit. Man, this is the easiest Nether start ever! I jump down to collect my quartz and OH NO THAT'S A HOOOOOLLLLLLEEEEE!!!!!!!
God how embarassing. Overconfidence comes before a fall, quite literally. And I'm going to lose all this stuff too. I was thinking I was going to go into a lava ocean. Even if not, how could I find my stuff in 5 minutes without falling through the same hole, creating the same problem?
WHOOMP!
I'm still alive??!! I'm so shocked it takes me a couple seconds to react. I make a panicked scramble for the walls to burrow in, so much so that I trip over a Nether flame and light myself to add to the fun. I have some Fire Protection on, though, so it's not too bad.
I burrow into the walls and start staircasing up, using my unpatented "Hakuna Matata" system of always having a 1x1 hole in front of me to take flows from lava breakouts. Lava breakouts in up staircases are normally very painful - but not here! I can lackadaisically find my bucket in my inventory to snarf up that pesky lava block. "It's our problem-free philosophy".
After 20 blocks up I break out into the open. I figure I fell about 30 blocks (I was wearing some protection) so I climb a little more and look around, but I can't find my base anywhere. The Nether is very disorienting and I start dropping Andesite Cobble blocks like breadcrumbs (don't eat them, though - they're bad for your teeth!)
Eventually i spot my shelter - it had been behind a lava flow. Has anything so ugly ever looked so beautiful?
In my defense, this is what I saw when I stepped down into the hole. You don't see the hole until you're almost in it. I block up the hole so I won't go through again.
Well, I have what I wanted - Nether Brick, and also Glowstone and Quartz. After that mishap I don't feel like any more Nether adventuring, and since I don't need anything else I just head back.
One Nether Piggie came through, and I dispatch it without incident.
Chapter 29: In Which I am Reminded that Although Violence Generally Is a Poor Solution to Problems, It Can Be Very Satisfying
I'm going to head into the mines because I want some more coal for my Endoflames, stone for building, and - hopefully - some slimes.
There's another Botania Item I could have made earlier but didn't - the Sojourner's Sash.
This one is Botania's "accelerated movement" item. You can move faster, jump higher, and autocross 1 block gaps, and it reduces fall damage. I'm making it now because I'm planning to go to the end of one of my tunnels, which is a ways, and I'd like to get there faster.
I take the east tunnel, which currently ends at the tamed Zombie Spawner. There's Gabbro that way, which I think will be a good roof on the castle, and also a lot of mineshafts I'm hoping to find Slimes in.
Snarfing some coal on the way out.
When I reach the zombie spawner, I head into a side mineshaft that connects at the spawner. I follow my usual system of having all corridors blocked off except the one I'm exploring to avert nasty backstabs.
Plenty of locals take umbrance at my arrival, but I have surprisingly little trouble with them - even 2 witches I fought at once but didn't get pictures of. It was basically Hehehehehe - splash - twang - twang - twang - twang - collect goodies.
Big open spaces like this I ignore.
My creeper skills remain painfully rusty. This one should have been easy what with it climbing some stairs but I didn't move in the right direction and it managed to inflict property damage, if not personal damage.
After quite a bit of fighting - but no slimes - I decide I'm tired of it and return to heading east, planning to get more Gabbro. There is *another* mineshaft coming east from the Zombie spawner, so I go through there, collecting cobweb string to sell to the fletchers. I was a little surprised when this arrow came at me. It's not easy to see a skeleton in the middle of a bunch of cobwebs against a medium gray background. Of course, since he's in the middle of cobwebs he can barely move, and is easily dispatched once I manage to see him.
I didn't realize mining corridors went through bedrock. Whoever built this must have had some impressive mining equipment.
This mineshaft ends, so I continue on mining my own 3x3 mineshaft (for slime spawning). After a while I break into yet another mineshaft which turns out to be connected to the mineshaft system I'd be exploring earlier.
Enderman sighting! I attack - and he neither teleports nor even hits back ?! Why are Endermen suddenly so easy?
Apparently still riled up, the locals attack in greater numbers but I have positional advantage and win easily.
Continuing on
Ugh, I hate these things. In the game I thought it was a regular spider although it's clear as can be in the screenshot. It takes some back and forth before I finally get that blocked off.
I resume mineshaft clearing, but still not finding much. Even the chests seem really heavy on stuff like Beetroot seeds.
What, another one? Grrr.
Eventually I'm almost full so I turn around and head back. I snooze just beyond village range because It's not quite morning. I walk the length of the north corridor (the 3x3 going through black granite) hoping for slimes but not finding any. I should have checked it before I went out to catch any slimes that spawned while I was upstairs.
With lots of coal and Gabbro but (sniff) no slime, I head back upstairs.
I try the Rod of the Skies to see if it can jump up my mineshafts and - it can! Fun *and* much faster!
Whee!
Chapter 30: In Which I Finally Have the Guts to Add Some Guts To Innwich Castle after Buying Some Guts
Back upstairs I put away the goodies I collected, most especialy the coal for furnaces and Endoflame food. However, when I check on the Endoflame feeder, I discover it's not dropping anything. After some fiddling, I find the problem is that I accidentally set the 9 - tick clock to a 10- tick clock, which is a multiple of the 5- tick clock. This means they aren't guaranteed to fire only once per the multiple of their cycle time. They're actually out of sync so they never fire at the same time. A few flicks of the repeater times fixes this easily enough.
I do some farming and trade to get some Mending books. But I make an amazing discovery!
Clerics now trade Ender *Pearls* instead of Ender *Eyes*. This is a big change! There are a fair number of mod recipes in Botania and Waystones that need the pearls, and I have always found it challenging/tedious to try to collect pearls from a mob that's one of the rarest and toughest, with the ability to escape via teleportation. In this whole game, I'd collected only two so far, plus I think I saw one more enderman I wasn't able to go after. I also complained back in Chapter 26 that my base will make my normal Enderman hunting methods much less effective. But now I'll be able to buy them with any of a number of easily farmed goods.
And now - it's castle construction time. I grab a dozen or so each of Black Granite and Gabbro smoothstones and head up to the castle.
When I get there I discover I no longer need my trapdoor gate because with the the Sojourner's Sash I can just jump up two blocks. I'd need a normal gate for visitors, but I'm not forseeing any player visitors and I'd rather the squidwards stayed out. I'll take it out later and just leave the jump up.
My first step will be to finish the basement, which will define the exterior building shapes and the remaining courtyard. I took this pic jumping up onto some trees in the way. I'm going to just extend the lower ring of wood floor until it hits the hill and then adjust a little to straighten the walls. I've already done this on the bottom and the right (the east and north sides) although the resulting floors are mostly hidden by the interface in this pic.
And - I forgot to take a matching after shot, but he're a shot from later in the episode where you can see the wooden floor areas (which will be buildings) and the remaining courtyard area. Unfortunately it's from the south side, not the north, and rotated 90 degrees to the left. What was the top (and mostly green) is now the comparatively wide wood floor to the left.
Now I have to work on interior walls. The courtyard is only going to be about as wide as it's tall so I think if I use relatively flat black walls like on the outside, it's going to be depressing, and boring to boot since black granite is too dark to see patterns. My idea to fight back is to have the interior walls full of windows.
I quickly find this will be difficult with my floor plans. An attractive window usually needs a frame, and then some wall around it, and in practice I find I need walls at least 5 high to fit it in. My floors are only 4 high. I've known this since my Basilica build years ago but I wasn't planning windowed interior walls initially. I try a couple of shapes like this hoping for an arcade effect but I'm not happy with any of them.
I want a re-minable material for this so I go back to the village to pick up some black granite cobble. While there I do some farming and discover the apple seedling still hasn't grown. Clearly it's got some growth requirement I'm unaware of. Maybe it's biome limited?
Back at the castle I finally manage to get this tolerable arcade design. It really needs some framing but there just isn't room. I am surprised to discover, however, that unlike vanilla cobble, black granite cobble *isn't* ugly and actually looks a little decorative. This could be a useful resource.
I try the same design with the black granite smoothstone and you can immediately see a problem - it's way too flat. I try various ways to pretty it up like various types of support columns with limited success.
I get to this and decide to leave it for now. The black granite cobble columns help, and skipping every other floor means I have space for a little framing and maybe something decorative between the floors. But I don't have any ideas at the moment so I park it to let things percolate in my mind for a few chapters.
Now I want to address the inadequately militaristic appearance of the castle. At present it looks more palatial from the east and a little blobbish from the west. My idea to fix this is these archer turrets. They are functional, in keeping with my usual goal of making things both look good and work well. The basic idea is that you can stand on the wall pillar in the middle and the pillars to the left, right, and forward make it impossible for you to fall off while only minimally restricting your vision and firing. I'm going to stick some on top of the walls so I can safely and easily shoot mobs at the walls, and I expect these spikey things will look aggressive and martial as well.
(I'm planning to use black granite smoothstone on the walls, but here I used some brick because otherwise it would be hard to see the shape).
I climb up to the walls to put some on - and promptly fall off. You move pretty fast with the Sash and it's easy to miss the exact brief time to stop on top of a 1 wide wall. Fortunately I have some Feather Falling boots now, and the Sash, so I don't take too much damage, and the Rod of the Skies lets me jump back up.
I try putting on some walls but the auto-step-up feature of the sash make walking along this like a bad carnival ride as i pop up and down on the wall. (As opposed to the good carnival ride of the Rod of the Skies). So I chop the floor (earning a few more falls) and move it a block higher, which fixes the problem.
I'm ready to put up the turret - wait, no, not yet; I have to finish the wall which isn't topped out everywhere.
A few stacks of Black Granite later and NOW I'm ready to put up the turret.
As I'm putting them up, I realize I can raise the peak and the framing safety pillars another block and still not fall out because of the extra half-block raise from standing on the pillar. With this modification I have almost unlimited field of fire downward, but I can't fall out, or presumably get knocked out by arrow fire.
I dying to know what they look like, of course. I pack my remaining building supplies into storage in the castle basement and head back to the village. I do some farming on the way and then take the boat out a bit to get a look. (with my render distance upped to see Spawn Mountain).
Oh my YES, that's great. They look like some kind of siege engine, not an arrow turret, but they certainly look martial and, along with the safety railing they convert the castle's west facade from from "what's that black blobby thing" to "don't mess with this castle".
I don't want to finish the turrets yet because I still want to put up a tower or three above the walls, and I want them to fit in with the buildings below (obviously) and that means finishing the courtyard walls, which I'm not ready to do yet. So while that percolates, it's time for my next stage in Botania - time to:
Chapter 31: Seeking Slimes and Snow, I Set Up to Search the Seas In Spite of Strange Sailing Situations
Hungry for a hungry Gourmaryllis, I drop down to the mines and walk through the 3x3 tunnels I'd built to hopefully spawn them.
I went quite a distance, but they're empty. I want some slime to progress now, and waiting and hoping isn't enough of a plan.
I have two ways to get slimes. First, they spawn outdoors in Swamp biomes at night. Just hanging around in a Swamp biome is tedious, but if I have to I have to, and maybe I could drop a shaft and mine some stones. The other option is the Botania Alchemy Catalyst, which can convert Cactus to slimeballs. That, however, requires Blaze Rods, which require Blazes, which require finding a Nether Fortress, which can be quite a project itself. In addition, I'm also going to need snow to progress in Botania, and oddly I haven't found any yet. Normally it's easy to come by, but my only mountain biome so far is the Mountain Peaks, and that's a warm mountain biome without any snow even far up.
So, that means exploring is the way to go. I have found some swamp biomes already, but the Swampland was not big and the Dead Swamp not inspiring, so since I want to find a snowy/cold mountain biome anyway, I'll do some more exploring first.
My current boat can get into rivers, but it's too small for deep exploration. I enlarge it by one block on each side, giving me room for some double chests and a furnace on board for a credible mobile base.
Unfortunately there's a problem. Rebuilding the boat reset whatever DaVinci's Ships does to remember which water blocks should be replaced when the boat is assembled and now the boat assembles in a "hole" of water and can't get away. I disassemble the boat and use a bucket to trigger refilling the exposed holes. Then I reactivate the boat.
Still stuck. Deactivate and fill holes.
Still stuck. Repeat.
Finally!
During this process I went overboard a couple times to find it's problematically dark under the boat. So, I figure I'll hide a Jack'o'Lantern in the deck to light it up, so I can see to get out if I go underneath.
But the Jack'o'Lantern has to be placed on dirt, which I can't place underneath because it's too dark, so I have to chop a hole in the deck so I can see where to place that from underneath, and then chop the dirt and rebuild the deck.
AND after all that I can barely see the stupid lantern anyway so it's not actually much help as a safety device.
***AND*** after all that the boat is stuck again and I now have to do FOUR rounds to get it free. OK, lesson learned: no below-waterline boat alterations with DaVinci's ships.
That was a long day. I end up coming home late, watching the Iron Golems preparing to defend the village during the night. Is that one on the roof getting instructions from the castle?
After that it's time to prep for travelling.
I make the ultimate Harvestcraft recipe for satiety: Beef Wellington for 9 shanks. It's surprisingly easy to make for such a high power recipe - much easier than a lot of other top recipes like burgers. I do have to hunt in a number of little crannies I'm growing mushrooms in.
I do a round of trading to get another Mending book. There used to be a bunch of villagers buying string but now I can only find one Fletcher. I'm begining to suspect the others have gotten zombied or suffocated in a corner somewhere.
But I eventually find two stuck in the attic of the building that used to spawn the Iron Golems. Their pathing won't let them get back down the ladder. They actually block ME from going down too and I have to chop through the attic floor to get out. I'd worry about getting fined by the building inspector for unsafe construction but they haven't even fixed the 0 light paths yet so I'll probably be fine.
I have enough juice for an enchantment, and eventually decided on an Efficiency IV shovel, which conveniently comes with Unbreaking III. I'll put Mending on it later, when it needs it.
One of the nice things about the B3M mod is that it gets you up a little earlier in the morning than vanilla, which adds a little more time to the day but also lets me enjoy morning light. I like Minecraft worlds at dusk and dawn and a little more pretty is always nice.
And then THAT ruins my wonderful morning mood by shooting me. I kill it as much for my aesthetic indignation as the desire for bones.
I can get another enchantment, and end up taking Protection IV on a diamond chestplate. My Efficiency III axe is getting a little low and since I have enough Mendings I put a Mending on it. It's not the perfect superaxe but it will do and now I'll not have to worry about an axe ever again.
I take my cooking equipment and enough paper, iron, and redstone for 4 maps. I'll load these into the boat which will serve as a mobile base. I probably won't bring the cooking equipment back; I'll just make more at home when I return. I have lot of food, but if I do run out I'll "live off the land" with my boatside kitchen.
Next chapter: Some Botania work, and then some exploring.
It seems like a potentially simpler method for dropping coal to the flowers would be to have a dropper drop the coal on a pressure plate, then when the coal is consumed the pressure plate sends a signal to the dropper to drop another coal.
Enjoying reading your journal.
Yeah, that would have been a better solution for the coal. I forgot that (some) pressure plates can sense items. Wouldn't work for the Gourmaryllis, however, because it eats whether it needs to or not. There are ways to detect the energy release, but the current system is probably good enough, especially since I can tune the rate by adjusting clock cycles or disconnecting a clock from the system.
I've found the Harvestcraft fruit trees to be surprisingly finicky about space. I'm not sure what the actual requirements are but if you treat your apple like a jungle giant and make sure it's got 3x3 all round then chuck some bonemeal at it, it should pop up soon enough. Pretty sure it's not biome limited, I've grown them in all sorts of places.
Liking the castle build so far. Those arrow turrets are sweet!
I'm pretty sure there's already 3x3 around the fruit tree. I wouldn't want to make it any bigger because you can already see the dent in the hill. I'll try moving it up to the flat area on top of the village eventually (but not soon threadwise as I have almost 2 weeks of banked chapters).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Chapter 32: In Which a Short Detour Fails to Change My Course
Just before I leave I hear the sound of zombies again and I recall there's a Botania item that can locate mobs through walls. I have to hunt through my Lexica Botanica to identify it - the Third Eye.
Oh look, afternoon shower time.
The Third Eye requires an Eye of Ender, which requres blaze powder. Normally this would be hard to get, but Botania provides a method for that too, the Fel Pumpkin:
This is crafted from a pumpkin and drops from the four "classic" Minecraft mobs. If placed atop two iron bars (rather like a snowman) it becomes an altered Blaze that drops Blaze Powder rather than Blaze Rods. I assume thats because Blaze Rods are a particularly critical gateway component and this would make it too easy to get them.
I summon it in a sealed room and dispatch it easily.
Then it's time to make the Third Eye. Lots of Golden Carrots needed, hahaha. It goes in a body spot, a slot for trinket items like amulets in addition to the armor slots, added by the Bauble mod.
It allows me to see these outlines, which makes it easy to identify the grotta they're hiding in, break in, and off them. Blessed silence! This thing is going to be a great improvement to my quality of life!
Of course I try to use it to spot slimes down in the mines and save myself a trip. However, although it's a help to clear mineshafts, I don't actually spot any slimes on the hunt so I go ahead with the boat trip.
Last time I was making stops and doing most of my exploration on the ground. Now I'm going to use my more common start, which is to circumnavigate the continent on the boat first to get an overview.
The boat is really fast, and before 8 in the morning I'm exploring new territory on the north side. I'm going to go counterclockwise to find new land first.
The Sacred Springs are indeed at the end and this upper region is also large island sized. I continue to the southern landmass on the next map.
At first I'm not sure what this is, but I remember it's a Lush Desert after a while and don't bother landing. Next is another Prairie where I see a village but don't investigate, and then a BoP Woodland. I move off the map, and stop the boat to make another map, to the west. The coast now turns south past a vanilla forest and then
Bingo! Snowy Zone! (Cold Taiga, to be exact). I leap ashore to collect some snow, getting over a stack of snow blocks.
Now that I've landed, I decide to explore on foot from here. I trudge through Cold Taiga for a while, and then pass into a Dead Swamp late in the day. Dead Swamp is one way to get those slimeballs, so this is promising.
Just as it's about sunset I spot this village in the swamps in the distance. I need a place to sleep, and dash over and jump into a house just in time to slap down my bed before the mobs come out.
My rather surprised roomie is a Librarian with a good Enchanted Books. I consider setting up here to trade but there's a problem.
Because the village is so low and on the water a lot of the inhabitants are bobbing around in the water. I know this is really bad for their pathing, and I don't want to deal with that hassle. Plus a lot of buildings are flush with the water level so I can't secure them by breaking the stairs. So I bid the Infinity enchantment goodbye and continue on.
I continue on through a small Extreme Hills and then a Chaparral, where I turn back to find a Woodland - and get this pic of all three at once. On the other side of the Woodland is a Swampland (there have been quite a few swampy biomes on this landmass pair), and:
A village - on the border of a Steppe biome. This village doesn't go into the water like the last one did so I think this will be a good base for Slime Hunting.
Chapter 21: In Which Innwich Sees Progress Toward a Variety of Different Objectives, Albeit in the Presence of Significant Obstacles.
So, it's back to the mines. I have a choice of directions to go, and decide to continue the 3x3 slime attractor tunnel to the north. I'll get less coal there, but I figure I'll break into another stone type soon enough.
There's a little more adventure on this trip as I break into a mineshaft that looks to have a spider spawner. I block it off, kill a few zombies through portholes, and investigate the other direction, but that turns out to be very short. So I continue on.
I turn out to be wrong on being about to break into another stone. After almost an hour I'm still grinding through black granite and finally quit as I'm pretty sick of it. I've gotten very little coal - so little I stop to snag a bucket of lava on the way home to smelt with.
After unloading my gains, it's back to the mines. THIS time I'm going to one of the other directions. East is a long way to find possible new stones (although it does have gabbro, one I want, and west I don't know how much black granite I have left, and I'm feeling a little gunshy after my north experience. So south it is, into the Gneiss. This is also the direction for a possible mob-safe connection to the Flower plains.
I head in mineminemineminemine but before long.
Oh dear, more black granite. Let's branch in a different direction.
Houston, we have a problem. There's black granite in the way to the flower plains.
Dejected, I head back in partial defeat.Partial because I did get some munchies for my Endoflame. I make and plant another, and speed up the clock slightly by setting the 11-tick clock to a 9-tick clock.
I've also got enough levels for another enchant. This offer looks VERY appealing after all this slow black granite mining, especially as I have Mending to keep it.
And adding Mending is only 2 more levels? O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
But since I still don't have a lot of coal it's back to the mines *again* …
But this time it's different! The Efficiency 4 really makes a difference! I decide to go to the west and although there's still black granite, it's far less unpleasant. The Efficiency 4 pick is about three times as fast and because I'm only cutting a 2x1 tunnel I'm removing 2/9s as much material. So it feels quite easy.
Then I reach Andesite, a comparatively soft stone, and I'm going even faster. The whitish Andesite is probably not a great building material but I need the coal.
I break into a cave and decide to give this one a go. Soon I am confronted by a dreaded --- bat ---- ok not so dreaded. The cave is small but basically goes further west, so I keep tunnelling on.
One odd thing is these annoying zapping noises I hear. I don't recognize them, and I can't find anything that would cause them. When I think to check my map, I'm already off it. I'm making good progress. I grind on, converting coal and redstone to blocks to extend my capacity.
Even better, I've been checking F3 from time to time. I moved off the island shores into deep ocean fairly early on. But as I'm doing a light check to see if I need another torch.
Oh ho ho! Coral reef is a coastal ocean biome, so that means there's probably land in this direction.
Eventually I get to the point that continuing to compess coal and redstone becomes more and more of a hassle, so I turn back. It takes a while just to walk back.
Back home I have enough coal to fire up all 5 of my furnaces and give my Endoflames several stacks of munchies. Plus, I know where I'm almost certain to find more land (yay exploring!). Oh, and...
The Endoflames made a measurable amount of mana from the half-stack of coal I fed them, so this setup will actually make usuable amounts of mana. All in all, some satisfying results.
Next: To the Castle!
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.
What are you using that gives you seasons?
* 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?
BM3 has a year cycle which changes the length of the days, but that's the only "seasonal" feature I have. There's no changes to climate, etc.
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 seems like a potentially simpler method for dropping coal to the flowers would be to have a dropper drop the coal on a pressure plate, then when the coal is consumed the pressure plate sends a signal to the dropper to drop another coal.
Enjoying reading your journal.
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
Chapter 22: Concerning Construction of the Castle Curtain Wall, Mentioning Moderate Mortifying but Manageable Mishaps, and Depicting Design Details
I have about 30 stacks of Black Granite smoothstone, which by my rough estimate is about enough to finish the curtain wall around the outside.
On the way I do a little farming at the top of the village. The farmers don't bother the farm I'm at in the picture. I notice that I need to cover the side of that white spot on the townhouse roof as well as the top. Later.
I also farm some Pines because I anticipate I'll need a lot of wood for castle floors.
At the castle, the first thing I do is swap most of the dirt in the entrace for Black Granite (I missed a few spots in the back. This makes the castle much more imposing. I have once again made something of a face from the entrance, but that will disappear as I add more.
I put a floor over the "basement". I'm shaping the castle organically, trying to conform to the shape of the existing hill. This will make it a lot harder to decorate later but I'm taking that as a challenge. Here I start the floor at the existing wall and extend it in until it meets the hill. Then I adjust the hill a bit to get relatively straight walls. This is going to set the shape of the buildings. I fill in some bits of the wall as well.
Where I'm going to put walls is tentative and for now I make them from easy-to-remove gravel. For now I'm only flooring the north and east of the castle. The west and south areas are still open.
The it's up on the wall to build it up to the target height in one spot with the window, and place the second window above the first one.
I wrestle a bit with the heights of the interior rooms. Big heights look good for big rooms, but I anticipate some narrow corridors especially towards the back
Now I head over to the adjacent hill to get an idea of what it looks like. I'd noticed some differently colored trees in the valley and check them out.
They're harvestcraft Maple trees, as in syrup. This could be useful for some breakfast foods, although I'm not feeling much need to expand my food supply right now. Nice log texture, if you ask me.
From the adjacent hill it looks pretty good although the wall needs to be just a bit higher to got enough above the window. But, I used black granite walls for the window rather than black granite brick. Sigh.
Going back and forth to that view spot is annoying because it's to the southeast and my only entrance is to the north. So after I swap the walls I dig the dropshaft to the cow pen, which will serve as a hidden southeast entrance. I dig down and then south to hit the east-west corridor I built from the pen, but I get 40 blocks without hitting anything, so I did something wrong.
Up the shaft, out the front gate, around to the cow pen, feed the cows, and investigate. It turns out the east-west corridor was 2 blocks short.
As I head out - oh look, it's the irregularly scheduled afternoon rainstorm.
Still needs a little more height on the top
Now I set to completing the entire east facade. The weather is dreary but oh that view!
Here's the completed east facade from the inside, showing where the floors are. You don't see the lower windows because they're in the basement. I'll probably add yet another floor in at least part of the castle although I do want to leave space for a few big show rooms somewhere.
And here's the draft east facade. I like the look, but it's much more palatial and less martial that I'd anticipated. I'd been planning something like crenelations on the top but they might look out of place. That facade would go better with one of my typical fancy roofs, but the irregularly shaped building will probably make a fancy roof look terrible.
The style of the building, especially the windows, which are quite large but shaped like windows typically only a few feet high in the real world, disguises its size. That wall is about 20 blocks high, and with that height I'm glad I'm not playing hardcore, because if I were I'd have to build scaffolding for falls.
Next chapter: finishing the curtain wall and more pics
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.
What I mean by "crazified" terrain is the physically impossible ones - floating islands, horizontal sticks of dirt in midair, etc. There are still extreme RTG terrains like crag (some slightly out of date pics here, but they're close). I wouldn't call the RTG version of BoP Rainforest bland either. I tried hard to capture the spirit of BoP biomes so if it's striking or memorable in the BoP world it should be in RTG as well, if perhaps in a different way, like Alps.
My computer is anything but cutting edge - it's a 4 yo Mac - and it doesn't have significant trouble with RTG/UB/BoP. I can creative fly at full speed almost all the time. The only thing that gives me trouble is dark Big Tree biomes, and the worst for that is Roofed Forest, from vanilla.
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.
Chapter 23: Concerning Construction of the Castle Curtain Wall, Mentioning Moderate Mortifying but Manageable Mishaps, and Depicting Design Details
(After all the work I put into that title, I'm getting some reuse)
So, now to duplicate the design pattern all the way around the castle.
The floors I extend all the way around. They're easier to do from underneath, although still it's slow to place them as I'm backing up, especially after the first, when I have to start worrying about falling off the floor I'm on.
Where did he come from? It's the middle of the day. One of the problems with large irregular bases like this is that it's hard to make sure you've gotten every last little cranny properly lit. After I dispatch him I run around sticking torches in little nooks here and there, even though none seem improperly lit. I suspect I haven't yet found the problem zone. Maybe it's the village path blocks, with their 0 light levels? There were some in the basement and I don't think I've dug them all up yet.
I'm going back and forth on top of the wall adding blocks. It seems easiest to add 2 layers at a time. I manage to only fall off to the outside once during the whole operation, which I guess isn't too bad even though I feel really stupid when I step back to place one more block and WAaaaooooo…..!
Inspiring to work up here.
My estimate that I had enough blocks to finish the curtain wall is pretty close. I'm short about 2 stacks here. If I'd been super stingy with the various extra blocks I might have had enough (I have leftovers of all the brick items).
The village hill looks so small from up here! It's 30+ blocks high and boy do you notice going up and down but from up here it looks like a hillock.
This is the view from what will eventually be the courtyard. This is going to present a design challenge later. If I build the interior walls as high as the exterior this will be surrounded by walls about 15 blocks high and will be a little depressing and dour. I could leave walls off some places where the wallside building is just a corridor. I could perhaps make the buildings only go up to the second floor and put gardens on all the roofs (I may need that space for Botania stuff, actually, depending on whether things need to be outdoors). Or perhaps I can make the interior walls very decorative with large window, flower windowboxes, and the like. Another thing to think on.
The new front gate view. I see I missed part of a supporting pillar. It does good loom, doesn't it?
As I'm going around I spot a tiny tiny cave and light it up. No, it's not where the zombie came from because it's outside the walls.
You can't seem much from the west side because it's too steep.
Here's the "loom view" from the south side, towards Spawn Mountain. I was planning to have a few towers going above the outside walls, to break up the shape and add some visual interest. The two window in the middle look like they could be part of a tower, which would add some logic to that concave curve to their left, which looks a bit odd now that more is built. Also: I missed an entire window? How embarassing.
And a final shot showing the curtain wall against Spawn Mountain. That is one big mountain! It makes a 20 block high building look small.
It would have been good to take a view from the village top to finish the chapter, but I forgot to, for reasons that will become clear - in the next chapter.
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.
Chapter 24 In which I Prepare for an Extended Overseas Exploration Trip.
Then with an explosion of clattering doors and "Hrm" they come pouring out of the houses. I guess they get scared when I'm away? They don't trust the Golems to keep them safe (that would be the first smart thing I've ever heard about them).
For some reason the town has become noticeably laggy. There's a fair amount going on - a few dozen chickens, my redstone room, and presumably more villagers - but nothing I haven't had going in a number of villages so I'm a little surprised. I'm hoping there's a swarm of zombies in some grotto because otherwise I've got some performance issues.
Also, the apple sapling hasn't sprouted. I don't know why. I figure maybe it needs more room and knock out some blocks around it, including one cane 2 blocks away.
In addition to the two outside, there are now two iron golems inside the same house one was in before. Initially, I see no reason to get them out if they'll just respawn. Then, I realize I can lower the ceilings to 2 and they won't be able to spawn inside. So I shove them inside and install ugly drop ceilings to make sure there will be no more. Function before form.
My Endoflames have produced a useful amount of mana from the 3 stacks of coal I fed them - 1/4 to 1/5 of a pool. That means a full pool will need about 15 stacks of coal. A lot, but doable.
I do some routine work - planting some spinach for Beef Wellington, making some Chili as my food stores are getting a little low, and doing an enchantment, which ends up with Prot IV boots.
Oh look, time for an afternoon rainstorm.
Now I want to start making a Davinci's Ships boat for exploration. They are groups of blocks that move, which is great since you can brind a small base with you and they are much faster than vanilla boats. The one thing you need is a Ship's helm, which is easily make with a little wood and iron.
I also want a "shore buffer": basically a block to separate your dock from your ship as the ship algorithm can't figure out which wood belongs in the boat and which in the dock. This needs ink, so I swim out to butcher some squids. It's surprisingly difficult to get the ink when maneuvering in 3 dimensions in poorly lit fighting.
I do get this shot of castle and town while out there. The castle looks more martial from this side. The white house which is a bit garish up close looks great from out here, which is a typical rule of design. Bright, complex, and out-of-place things look better when small.
And now it's time to make a boat. I want a fancier one later but this is just a basic one with railings to keep out mobs when stop, gate for me to get in, the helm for control (the wheel you see), a crafting table, and a bed.
I have to build it out of the water because if it's built in the water when it's first activated the mod thinks the water is missing and has water flow in from all directions, making it almost impossible to move. Strangely, once the boat has activated once that won't happen; but construction has to take place in drydock. The black block in back is the shore buffer to indicate the end of the ship.
Once I'm satisfied, I climb on top of the crafting table (to get a better view), right-click the helm, "assemble" and "mount". And it works! I go a short distance to make sure everything is fine, then return to the dock.
It's not particularly relevant to boating, but I remember I want a sheild when I'm able to do something about it so I make one.
Some compasses and two stacks of paper I've saved up and I'm ready to go exploring!
Next episode: What's out there?
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.
Chapter 25: Over Sea, Over Dale, I Have Hit the Swampy Trail, and Great Pictures Keep Coming Along.
A Ocean Monument. I lack the gear to go after them so I zoom on by.
Shortly after I leave the spawn map, I stop the boat to make a new map. That's another useful feature of Davinci's Ships - you can't do that on a vanilla boat.
But wait! I've already reached land? That sure was quick.
I come ashore to a bucolic BoP meadow and set to collecting flowers. None of the red, light gray, and gray I need most but I take them anyway.
Beyond that is an Overgrown Cliffs. I head over to explore
But quickly find they're not kidding when they say Overgrown. It looks had to penetrate and I suspect it will get day spawns which could be very problematic in close confined quarters (imagine, when you can scarcely move, hearing "ssssss". Eerk!)
I return to the boat and continue west along the Overgrown Cliff Coast.
Soon I come to some more land - Dead Swamp and some forest biome - connected to the Overgrown Cliffs by a narrow sandbar. I hop off to dig a passage through the sandbar. I dig about a stack and a half of sand
before finding it's just a bay and there's no significant value to a canal. Well, back to the boat to sleep.
I decide to go ashore here and try to explore some by land.
The forest biome turns out to be Rainforest. It's extremely dense and I expect day spawns, so I stay out for now. Those of you who were complaining about how the BoP Flowering Oak Leaves blocks looked can notice that I've switched to fancy graphics and they appear properly now.
The Dead Swamp is, appropriately, most barren and rather dreary. I choose to climb onto the Prairie I saw to get a better view, since it's elevated. And from there:
Ooooh, aren't those the Sacred Springs trees?If so this will be the first time I've seen them in Survival.
Indeed it is, and there's one of the Sacred Springs. I'm not sure what's in it or what happens if you get in. I presume it's good, but I'm not sure. To investigate I snap up a bucket of it - and just get water. Well, that's pretty boring - I guess the Sacred Springs are just plain water with a funky color (very common in BoP) and that heat effect. I put the water back to neaten up the pool
KACHUNG! The water just looks like water, and the two adjacent Spring blocks turn into stone as if they were lava. OK, I guess it's NOT just water. But, now suspecting a retextured lava, I leave it alone.
Later, investigating out of the game, I find it confers a regeneration effect while in the pool.
I don't want to stay, though, because the biome is extremely dense and will produce lots of day spawns if it's not flagged to not spawn mobs. So I retreat and head back to the swamps.
The BoP addons make the Swamp very Swampy!
The map's small from being in one hand but you can still use it to see my route for this chapter. The blob in the upper right is the Meadow I landed on. The largely unmapped connection to the rest of the landmass is the Overgrown Cliffs. The unmapped area on the upper left is the Sacred Springs. The dark green region near the center is counterintuitively the Prairie. The very wet section of the swamps is the Swampland and Fen. The lighter colored area with ponds is the Dead Swamp from where I took the picture.
I'm pretty much done with mapping this map for now (the remaining land areas are too overgrown) so I continue to the south.
I make another map once I'm outside the one I've been on. I find the Dead Swamp is a great place to hunt Botania flowers because it's flat and has little vegetation. You'd think that included Botania flowers but that's one mod interaction that didn't work out right.
Even normally hard-to-find flowers like gray and light gray are readily visible. I've noticed that, like vanilla, Botania seems to have a system where one biome has only a limited set of flowers. I've already found red flowers in the Swampland and there are gray and light gray here, so I'm set for flowers for a while.
The Dead Swamp needs more mud, though. It's too easy to get around in.
Soon I come to ocean to the south. I can see small sandy islands to the south so this isn't the absolute end but I'll need the boat to continue.
So I hear north back towards the boat.
I reach it soon enough and confirm the Rain Forest produces day spawns. I showed up in the middle of the day but still got Mr. Creeper there, as well as another creeper and a helmeted zombie I didn't get pics of. One zombie makes it out to the boat and I bash its head in, then take off before anything else pesters me.
Next chapter: Go south, middle-aged man!
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.
Chapter 26: A Dramatic Fight Teaches Some Valuable Life Lessons
Well! I do believe that's Bryce, which I have also never seen in legitimate survival. Two super rare biomes in one trip - this is turning out to be quite the expedition. I disembark for a closeup view but find it's not traversable on foot and head further south.
South of that is a Savanna and a Mesa biome. I turn back to the east, as it looks like there's kind of a peninsula I want to fill out, after which I'll return to the boat.
Oh look, afternoon rain again. Did they change the weather programming? I don't think I've seen it start raining before 1:30 in the afternoon *once* the entire game. In other games I've definitely seen rain start even early in the morning, which can be very annoying if I want to go out.
I get back to the boat and - I can't reform it. The problem is that DaVinci's Vessels considers the Underground Biomes stones to be legitimate boat materials and I've parked the boat in a shallows with exposed stone. I could add them to the config exclusion list, but I'm in a hurry.
and chop the boat free from underneath.
My inventory is getting full, but I'm still up for more exploring and continue south along the coast.
Here's the map so far. The bay is where I ran the boat aground, The area that looks like abstract art is the Bryce and the Mesa is below that.
South of there I come to an Orchard with very large trees and come ashore to check them out. They look too large to be from the Orchard.
but that is indeed what they're from. OK, OK, they do look a lot nicer when the Flowering Oak Leaves render properly.
Adjacent to the Orchard is a Desert
With this poor piggy stuck in quicksand.
The desert looks endless.
But of course, it isn't, although there was a big desert hill to cross to get here.
Continuing east I come to a Lush Swamp. This appears to have poison pools in it, which I don't remember. I check a pool with my bucket and it does indeed have poison, which I put back without any drama like I got with the Sacred Spring.
I spot some trees that look like HarvestCraft Walnut trees and I hang around for them to ripen as Walnuts can be used for cooking oil, which is useful in a lot of recipes.
Oh lookie, afternoon shower time! It's like Phoenix in the summer, but not so hot.
I pillar up on a tree to sleep the night but do it a little early. I don't have anything to do, but the scenery is plenty enjoyable, even in the rain.
The Walnut trees, however, are actually Pecan Trees, which I don't think can be used for cooking oil in Harvestcraft (although I have seen it in my supermarket). I take a few anyway.
As I'm walking along through the Lush Swamp I spot - an Enderman! Holding a grass block. I haven't been discussing this, but I have an Enderman problem - or, rather, a lack of Enderman problem. My normal way to collect Ender Pearls is, once I have a base secure, to work through the night and fight with Endermen I see. Well, in the village my base isn't secure and even once it is it will be hard to spot Endermen due to the shape of the hill. The castle will be bad for collecting Endermen as they'll tend to teleport outside and then run up to the walls. My problems are magnified by the need for Ender Pearls in a couple of Botania recipes.
Up to now I haven't seen any Endermen anywhere although I have heard the teleport noises in the village, of all places.
So I walk up to him, stare him in the leg, and take a swat. He screams, tp's off, and we trade blows a couple of times. But then he successfully backstabs me twice when I don't turn around precisely enough to swat him. My extremely rusty combat skills are getting me into big trouble. By this point he's hit me five times and even with full diamond armor I figure I'm doomed. That would be so embarrassing - killed by greed 2000 block from home and forced to slog back out here to get my stuff. But just then he freezes into shaking "anger" mode and I swat him twice for the kill, scoring my badly wanted Ender Pearl.
(Exciting screenshots unprovided to you by the nonexistent 1.10 Damage Screenshot mod. I didn't even take an establishing shot, because I'm so in the habit of using the first DS shot from a fight. I am SO updating that mod.)
Phew! That was close! I check my health bar to see how close I came to death and -
I'm unharmed? After five hits by an Enderman? Whaaa? How is that possible?
A little bit later I notice that I've got a grass block in my inventory. The only thing I can think of is that the Enderman was hitting me with the grass block for some miniscule damage amount, which between diamond armor and health recovery left me unharmed. I can't find anything on the web referring to Endermen attacking with a block instead of their native punch, so it's a puzzlement. Did I actually find something new in 1.10? My relatively short mod list is unlikely to piddle with Enderman behavior.
At this point I'm ready to head home even though there appears to be a lot left of this landmass. I start heading back to the boat by a new route to add to my maps.
The Lush Swamp certainly lives up to its name. There's a lot of different Harvestcraft trees here as well.
I wander through several different biomes, including Mountain Foothills and some Forest complexes.
I spot one hill in the Forest that doesn't quite look like a Forest Hills to me and head up to check. It is an ordinary Forest Hills, so even after dozens of hours in RTG terrain it can still surprise me. But from the top of the hill I spot:
This bucolic village. I don't know why, but I really like the looks of this village. I guess it's the way it nestles into the rolling plains, with the varied trees in the background. I set up the basic safety measures - knock out the stairs and light up the houses. The town also has a librarian, so I check his book trade - Thorns II. Yuck. I continue on towards my boat.
After the majestic forests, rampantly lush swamps, and stony hills, just a broad sweeping Plains can be inspiring. Variety is the Spice of Life (no, that's one of my mods. Strike the caps.)
I get to my boat, board, and head for home.
Man these things are everywhere.
It gets dark before I reach the village, but I can just deactivate my boat and sleep out on the ocean under the stars.
As I approach the village I up my view distance to 16 to get a shot of the village and the castle with Spawn Mountain. The castle does good loom even from out here, but looks a little undefined and blobby. I have some ideas for dealing with this.
Next episode: Let's play with Botania some.
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.
Although I didn't take a pic, I glanced at my health bar almost immediately after the fight and it was already full, so something was going on besides health regen. I did some calcs and five hits should have had me near death (but not actually dead) and regen isn't THAT fast even now.
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.
Chapter 27: In Which I Experience Ups and Downs, Both Literally and Metaphorically in Both Cases.
So, I think I know what happen with my unexpected large island start. It looks like the start small continent is the landmasses on the left, and just by the variance of terrain generation it was moved to the left (the zero line is in the center). A large island got placed on the right and then the keepaway routines in Geographicraft kept them apart. When spawn got placed both the start continent and the large island were about the same distance from 0,0 and I just happened to end up on the large island. I'm not complaining, because I've gotten some really spectacular scenery out of this start.
My mana pool is now about 3/4 full, so it's time to use it. I make a Runic Alter (5 LivingStone + one Mana Diamond) and place it near the pool, with a Mana Spreader next to the pool feeding it mana. I then set up for a Rune of Air creations (1 mana powder, 1 mana steel, 1 feather, 1 carpet, and one string) by placing them all on the Altar. The Spreader detects the Altar needs mana and starts feeding it.
Botania has complex animated graphics. Of course I envisioned this happening in a suitably grand room up in the castle, not in a cramped grotto full of dead Hydroangeas, but the castle's not anywhere near ready and here I am.
After the enchantment picks up enough mana, I toss a LivingStone onto the Altar and tap it with the Wand of the Forest to get my Runes.
I then use one of the Runes of Air (I got two for that) along with a Redstone Root (redstone plus grass) and some flower petals to make a Hopperhock. The Hopperhock is the "pickup" item for Botania, picking up items and placing them in adjacent inventories. Unusually for Botania functional flowers, it works without mana. This is currently a big advantage for me, as I don't want to build a mana network to keep it fed which I plan to abandon in a bit when I move this operation to the castle.
The point of this is to collect eggs from the chicken ranch, which I plan to use to make Egg Salad to feed a mana generating flower, the Gourmaryllis. So I head up to the chicken room to expand it a little to fit in the Hopperhock and a double chest.
Unfortunately I accidentally cut into the grotto adjacent to the chicken farm (for some reason Biomes o Plenty places grottos in almost every chunk in Mountain Peaks). The chickens rush for the exit, which I block off.
But then the chickens all proceed to commit suicide by jumping up on that block. Every time they do, they take suffocation damage and soon almost all are dead. I figure out they couldn't actually get out, but there are two blocks touching diagonally, and the chickens seem to see it as an exit even through it's not.
Eventually I get it all straighted out and toss a couple stacks of eggs to replenish my chickens.
Now it's time to make the Gourmaryllis. But..
Uhoh. It needs a slime ball, and I've yet to see a slime. In addition, one of the components needs Nether Brick, and I haven't been to the Nether yet. So all my great plans have to go on hold for a while.
As consolation, I decide to make a Rod of the Skies. This item allow you to jump extremely high, over 30 blocks high. Initially that didn't seem too useful other then providing some amusement park-style fun, but I have one great use for it:
Chopping Pine trees. They're (usually) too big to chop from the ground and it's a pain to pillar up or ladder up to take them down. But with this, one jump and I'm on top of the tree and just chop to the ground. And it *is* kind of fun.
After that I decide to go to the Nether. It's about time, and I need the Nether Brick now. I do chores around the village -prepping food and trading with villagers - load up on Andesite Cobblestone, my 10 Obsidian, food, wood, and Flint and Steel.
I head up to the castle to place the Nether Gate. Of course I don't want Nether Piggies wandering the castle, or the annoying noises it makes. However, I have a good place to put it.
When building a passage from the castle to the underground cow ranch, I missed the connector and dug a long excess tunnel going away from the castle. This is almost 30 blocks below the castle and I can put on a door to keep the Piggies in. Having the Nether Portal deep in black rock seems thematic too.
I go a ways out into the tunnel, and then dig an area to the side just big enoud to put in a minimal 3x2 portal. A flick of the Flint and Steel, and I'm ready to go.
Next: Time to Go Deeper.
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 thought that in 1.10 and 1.11, when you have saturation and a full hunger bar, healing is crazy fast.
It basically makes being well-fed a key factor in PvP fights -- you can have almost twice as many effective hit points for being well fed.
* 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?
Chapter 28: In Which A Great Find Almost Makes Me Lose.
Wow, and there's a Glowstone Chandelier on the floor just a few blocks away. I'm used to these long painful explorations for finding Glowstone like in my previous journal and here it just gets plopped in my lap.
The shelter is hideous but it will prevent Ghast fire.
After the shelter is built I head over to get the Glowstone.
And then there's a Nether Quartz deposit. Man, this is the easiest Nether start ever! I jump down to collect my quartz and OH NO THAT'S A HOOOOOLLLLLLEEEEE!!!!!!!
God how embarassing. Overconfidence comes before a fall, quite literally. And I'm going to lose all this stuff too. I was thinking I was going to go into a lava ocean. Even if not, how could I find my stuff in 5 minutes without falling through the same hole, creating the same problem?
WHOOMP!
I'm still alive??!! I'm so shocked it takes me a couple seconds to react. I make a panicked scramble for the walls to burrow in, so much so that I trip over a Nether flame and light myself to add to the fun. I have some Fire Protection on, though, so it's not too bad.
I burrow into the walls and start staircasing up, using my unpatented "Hakuna Matata" system of always having a 1x1 hole in front of me to take flows from lava breakouts. Lava breakouts in up staircases are normally very painful - but not here! I can lackadaisically find my bucket in my inventory to snarf up that pesky lava block. "It's our problem-free philosophy".
After 20 blocks up I break out into the open. I figure I fell about 30 blocks (I was wearing some protection) so I climb a little more and look around, but I can't find my base anywhere. The Nether is very disorienting and I start dropping Andesite Cobble blocks like breadcrumbs (don't eat them, though - they're bad for your teeth!)
Eventually i spot my shelter - it had been behind a lava flow. Has anything so ugly ever looked so beautiful?
In my defense, this is what I saw when I stepped down into the hole. You don't see the hole until you're almost in it. I block up the hole so I won't go through again.
Well, I have what I wanted - Nether Brick, and also Glowstone and Quartz. After that mishap I don't feel like any more Nether adventuring, and since I don't need anything else I just head back.
One Nether Piggie came through, and I dispatch it without incident.
Next Chapter: Adventuring in the Mines.
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.
Chapter 29: In Which I am Reminded that Although Violence Generally Is a Poor Solution to Problems, It Can Be Very Satisfying
There's another Botania Item I could have made earlier but didn't - the Sojourner's Sash.
This one is Botania's "accelerated movement" item. You can move faster, jump higher, and autocross 1 block gaps, and it reduces fall damage. I'm making it now because I'm planning to go to the end of one of my tunnels, which is a ways, and I'd like to get there faster.
I take the east tunnel, which currently ends at the tamed Zombie Spawner. There's Gabbro that way, which I think will be a good roof on the castle, and also a lot of mineshafts I'm hoping to find Slimes in.
Snarfing some coal on the way out.
When I reach the zombie spawner, I head into a side mineshaft that connects at the spawner. I follow my usual system of having all corridors blocked off except the one I'm exploring to avert nasty backstabs.
Plenty of locals take umbrance at my arrival, but I have surprisingly little trouble with them - even 2 witches I fought at once but didn't get pictures of. It was basically Hehehehehe - splash - twang - twang - twang - twang - collect goodies.
Big open spaces like this I ignore.
My creeper skills remain painfully rusty. This one should have been easy what with it climbing some stairs but I didn't move in the right direction and it managed to inflict property damage, if not personal damage.
After quite a bit of fighting - but no slimes - I decide I'm tired of it and return to heading east, planning to get more Gabbro. There is *another* mineshaft coming east from the Zombie spawner, so I go through there, collecting cobweb string to sell to the fletchers. I was a little surprised when this arrow came at me. It's not easy to see a skeleton in the middle of a bunch of cobwebs against a medium gray background. Of course, since he's in the middle of cobwebs he can barely move, and is easily dispatched once I manage to see him.
I didn't realize mining corridors went through bedrock. Whoever built this must have had some impressive mining equipment.
This mineshaft ends, so I continue on mining my own 3x3 mineshaft (for slime spawning). After a while I break into yet another mineshaft which turns out to be connected to the mineshaft system I'd be exploring earlier.
Enderman sighting! I attack - and he neither teleports nor even hits back ?! Why are Endermen suddenly so easy?
Apparently still riled up, the locals attack in greater numbers but I have positional advantage and win easily.
Continuing on
Ugh, I hate these things. In the game I thought it was a regular spider although it's clear as can be in the screenshot. It takes some back and forth before I finally get that blocked off.
I resume mineshaft clearing, but still not finding much. Even the chests seem really heavy on stuff like Beetroot seeds.
What, another one? Grrr.
Eventually I'm almost full so I turn around and head back. I snooze just beyond village range because It's not quite morning. I walk the length of the north corridor (the 3x3 going through black granite) hoping for slimes but not finding any. I should have checked it before I went out to catch any slimes that spawned while I was upstairs.
With lots of coal and Gabbro but (sniff) no slime, I head back upstairs.
I try the Rod of the Skies to see if it can jump up my mineshafts and - it can! Fun *and* much faster!
Whee!
Next Chapter: some work on Innwich Castle.
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Keep up the good work
Chapter 30: In Which I Finally Have the Guts to Add Some Guts To Innwich Castle after Buying Some Guts
Back upstairs I put away the goodies I collected, most especialy the coal for furnaces and Endoflame food. However, when I check on the Endoflame feeder, I discover it's not dropping anything. After some fiddling, I find the problem is that I accidentally set the 9 - tick clock to a 10- tick clock, which is a multiple of the 5- tick clock. This means they aren't guaranteed to fire only once per the multiple of their cycle time. They're actually out of sync so they never fire at the same time. A few flicks of the repeater times fixes this easily enough.
I do some farming and trade to get some Mending books. But I make an amazing discovery!
Clerics now trade Ender *Pearls* instead of Ender *Eyes*. This is a big change! There are a fair number of mod recipes in Botania and Waystones that need the pearls, and I have always found it challenging/tedious to try to collect pearls from a mob that's one of the rarest and toughest, with the ability to escape via teleportation. In this whole game, I'd collected only two so far, plus I think I saw one more enderman I wasn't able to go after. I also complained back in Chapter 26 that my base will make my normal Enderman hunting methods much less effective. But now I'll be able to buy them with any of a number of easily farmed goods.
And now - it's castle construction time. I grab a dozen or so each of Black Granite and Gabbro smoothstones and head up to the castle.
When I get there I discover I no longer need my trapdoor gate because with the the Sojourner's Sash I can just jump up two blocks. I'd need a normal gate for visitors, but I'm not forseeing any player visitors and I'd rather the squidwards stayed out. I'll take it out later and just leave the jump up.
My first step will be to finish the basement, which will define the exterior building shapes and the remaining courtyard. I took this pic jumping up onto some trees in the way. I'm going to just extend the lower ring of wood floor until it hits the hill and then adjust a little to straighten the walls. I've already done this on the bottom and the right (the east and north sides) although the resulting floors are mostly hidden by the interface in this pic.
And - I forgot to take a matching after shot, but he're a shot from later in the episode where you can see the wooden floor areas (which will be buildings) and the remaining courtyard area. Unfortunately it's from the south side, not the north, and rotated 90 degrees to the left. What was the top (and mostly green) is now the comparatively wide wood floor to the left.
Now I have to work on interior walls. The courtyard is only going to be about as wide as it's tall so I think if I use relatively flat black walls like on the outside, it's going to be depressing, and boring to boot since black granite is too dark to see patterns. My idea to fight back is to have the interior walls full of windows.
I quickly find this will be difficult with my floor plans. An attractive window usually needs a frame, and then some wall around it, and in practice I find I need walls at least 5 high to fit it in. My floors are only 4 high. I've known this since my Basilica build years ago but I wasn't planning windowed interior walls initially. I try a couple of shapes like this hoping for an arcade effect but I'm not happy with any of them.
I want a re-minable material for this so I go back to the village to pick up some black granite cobble. While there I do some farming and discover the apple seedling still hasn't grown. Clearly it's got some growth requirement I'm unaware of. Maybe it's biome limited?
Back at the castle I finally manage to get this tolerable arcade design. It really needs some framing but there just isn't room. I am surprised to discover, however, that unlike vanilla cobble, black granite cobble *isn't* ugly and actually looks a little decorative. This could be a useful resource.
I try the same design with the black granite smoothstone and you can immediately see a problem - it's way too flat. I try various ways to pretty it up like various types of support columns with limited success.
I get to this and decide to leave it for now. The black granite cobble columns help, and skipping every other floor means I have space for a little framing and maybe something decorative between the floors. But I don't have any ideas at the moment so I park it to let things percolate in my mind for a few chapters.
Now I want to address the inadequately militaristic appearance of the castle. At present it looks more palatial from the east and a little blobbish from the west. My idea to fix this is these archer turrets. They are functional, in keeping with my usual goal of making things both look good and work well. The basic idea is that you can stand on the wall pillar in the middle and the pillars to the left, right, and forward make it impossible for you to fall off while only minimally restricting your vision and firing. I'm going to stick some on top of the walls so I can safely and easily shoot mobs at the walls, and I expect these spikey things will look aggressive and martial as well.
(I'm planning to use black granite smoothstone on the walls, but here I used some brick because otherwise it would be hard to see the shape).
I climb up to the walls to put some on - and promptly fall off. You move pretty fast with the Sash and it's easy to miss the exact brief time to stop on top of a 1 wide wall. Fortunately I have some Feather Falling boots now, and the Sash, so I don't take too much damage, and the Rod of the Skies lets me jump back up.
I try putting on some walls but the auto-step-up feature of the sash make walking along this like a bad carnival ride as i pop up and down on the wall. (As opposed to the good carnival ride of the Rod of the Skies). So I chop the floor (earning a few more falls) and move it a block higher, which fixes the problem.
I'm ready to put up the turret - wait, no, not yet; I have to finish the wall which isn't topped out everywhere.
A few stacks of Black Granite later and NOW I'm ready to put up the turret.
As I'm putting them up, I realize I can raise the peak and the framing safety pillars another block and still not fall out because of the extra half-block raise from standing on the pillar. With this modification I have almost unlimited field of fire downward, but I can't fall out, or presumably get knocked out by arrow fire.
I dying to know what they look like, of course. I pack my remaining building supplies into storage in the castle basement and head back to the village. I do some farming on the way and then take the boat out a bit to get a look. (with my render distance upped to see Spawn Mountain).
Oh my YES, that's great. They look like some kind of siege engine, not an arrow turret, but they certainly look martial and, along with the safety railing they convert the castle's west facade from from "what's that black blobby thing" to "don't mess with this castle".
I don't want to finish the turrets yet because I still want to put up a tower or three above the walls, and I want them to fit in with the buildings below (obviously) and that means finishing the courtyard walls, which I'm not ready to do yet. So while that percolates, it's time for my next stage in Botania - time to:
Get Serious About Slime
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Chapter 31: Seeking Slimes and Snow, I Set Up to Search the Seas In Spite of Strange Sailing Situations
I went quite a distance, but they're empty. I want some slime to progress now, and waiting and hoping isn't enough of a plan.
I have two ways to get slimes. First, they spawn outdoors in Swamp biomes at night. Just hanging around in a Swamp biome is tedious, but if I have to I have to, and maybe I could drop a shaft and mine some stones. The other option is the Botania Alchemy Catalyst, which can convert Cactus to slimeballs. That, however, requires Blaze Rods, which require Blazes, which require finding a Nether Fortress, which can be quite a project itself. In addition, I'm also going to need snow to progress in Botania, and oddly I haven't found any yet. Normally it's easy to come by, but my only mountain biome so far is the Mountain Peaks, and that's a warm mountain biome without any snow even far up.
So, that means exploring is the way to go. I have found some swamp biomes already, but the Swampland was not big and the Dead Swamp not inspiring, so since I want to find a snowy/cold mountain biome anyway, I'll do some more exploring first.
My current boat can get into rivers, but it's too small for deep exploration. I enlarge it by one block on each side, giving me room for some double chests and a furnace on board for a credible mobile base.
Unfortunately there's a problem. Rebuilding the boat reset whatever DaVinci's Ships does to remember which water blocks should be replaced when the boat is assembled and now the boat assembles in a "hole" of water and can't get away. I disassemble the boat and use a bucket to trigger refilling the exposed holes. Then I reactivate the boat.
Still stuck. Deactivate and fill holes.
Still stuck. Repeat.
Finally!
During this process I went overboard a couple times to find it's problematically dark under the boat. So, I figure I'll hide a Jack'o'Lantern in the deck to light it up, so I can see to get out if I go underneath.
But the Jack'o'Lantern has to be placed on dirt, which I can't place underneath because it's too dark, so I have to chop a hole in the deck so I can see where to place that from underneath, and then chop the dirt and rebuild the deck.
AND after all that I can barely see the stupid lantern anyway so it's not actually much help as a safety device.
***AND*** after all that the boat is stuck again and I now have to do FOUR rounds to get it free. OK, lesson learned: no below-waterline boat alterations with DaVinci's ships.
That was a long day. I end up coming home late, watching the Iron Golems preparing to defend the village during the night. Is that one on the roof getting instructions from the castle?
After that it's time to prep for travelling.
I make the ultimate Harvestcraft recipe for satiety: Beef Wellington for 9 shanks. It's surprisingly easy to make for such a high power recipe - much easier than a lot of other top recipes like burgers. I do have to hunt in a number of little crannies I'm growing mushrooms in.
I do a round of trading to get another Mending book. There used to be a bunch of villagers buying string but now I can only find one Fletcher. I'm begining to suspect the others have gotten zombied or suffocated in a corner somewhere.
But I eventually find two stuck in the attic of the building that used to spawn the Iron Golems. Their pathing won't let them get back down the ladder. They actually block ME from going down too and I have to chop through the attic floor to get out. I'd worry about getting fined by the building inspector for unsafe construction but they haven't even fixed the 0 light paths yet so I'll probably be fine.
I have enough juice for an enchantment, and eventually decided on an Efficiency IV shovel, which conveniently comes with Unbreaking III. I'll put Mending on it later, when it needs it.
One of the nice things about the B3M mod is that it gets you up a little earlier in the morning than vanilla, which adds a little more time to the day but also lets me enjoy morning light. I like Minecraft worlds at dusk and dawn and a little more pretty is always nice.
And then THAT ruins my wonderful morning mood by shooting me. I kill it as much for my aesthetic indignation as the desire for bones.
I can get another enchantment, and end up taking Protection IV on a diamond chestplate. My Efficiency III axe is getting a little low and since I have enough Mendings I put a Mending on it. It's not the perfect superaxe but it will do and now I'll not have to worry about an axe ever again.
I take my cooking equipment and enough paper, iron, and redstone for 4 maps. I'll load these into the boat which will serve as a mobile base. I probably won't bring the cooking equipment back; I'll just make more at home when I return. I have lot of food, but if I do run out I'll "live off the land" with my boatside kitchen.
Next chapter: Some Botania work, and then some exploring.
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Yeah, that would have been a better solution for the coal. I forgot that (some) pressure plates can sense items. Wouldn't work for the Gourmaryllis, however, because it eats whether it needs to or not. There are ways to detect the energy release, but the current system is probably good enough, especially since I can tune the rate by adjusting clock cycles or disconnecting a clock from the system.
I'm pretty sure there's already 3x3 around the fruit tree. I wouldn't want to make it any bigger because you can already see the dent in the hill. I'll try moving it up to the flat area on top of the village eventually (but not soon threadwise as I have almost 2 weeks of banked chapters).
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Chapter 32: In Which a Short Detour Fails to Change My Course
Oh look, afternoon shower time.
The Third Eye requires an Eye of Ender, which requres blaze powder. Normally this would be hard to get, but Botania provides a method for that too, the Fel Pumpkin:
This is crafted from a pumpkin and drops from the four "classic" Minecraft mobs. If placed atop two iron bars (rather like a snowman) it becomes an altered Blaze that drops Blaze Powder rather than Blaze Rods. I assume thats because Blaze Rods are a particularly critical gateway component and this would make it too easy to get them.
I summon it in a sealed room and dispatch it easily.
Then it's time to make the Third Eye. Lots of Golden Carrots needed, hahaha. It goes in a body spot, a slot for trinket items like amulets in addition to the armor slots, added by the Bauble mod.
It allows me to see these outlines, which makes it easy to identify the grotta they're hiding in, break in, and off them. Blessed silence! This thing is going to be a great improvement to my quality of life!
Of course I try to use it to spot slimes down in the mines and save myself a trip. However, although it's a help to clear mineshafts, I don't actually spot any slimes on the hunt so I go ahead with the boat trip.
Last time I was making stops and doing most of my exploration on the ground. Now I'm going to use my more common start, which is to circumnavigate the continent on the boat first to get an overview.
The boat is really fast, and before 8 in the morning I'm exploring new territory on the north side. I'm going to go counterclockwise to find new land first.
The Sacred Springs are indeed at the end and this upper region is also large island sized. I continue to the southern landmass on the next map.
At first I'm not sure what this is, but I remember it's a Lush Desert after a while and don't bother landing. Next is another Prairie where I see a village but don't investigate, and then a BoP Woodland. I move off the map, and stop the boat to make another map, to the west. The coast now turns south past a vanilla forest and then
Bingo! Snowy Zone! (Cold Taiga, to be exact). I leap ashore to collect some snow, getting over a stack of snow blocks.
Now that I've landed, I decide to explore on foot from here. I trudge through Cold Taiga for a while, and then pass into a Dead Swamp late in the day. Dead Swamp is one way to get those slimeballs, so this is promising.
Just as it's about sunset I spot this village in the swamps in the distance. I need a place to sleep, and dash over and jump into a house just in time to slap down my bed before the mobs come out.
My rather surprised roomie is a Librarian with a good Enchanted Books. I consider setting up here to trade but there's a problem.
Because the village is so low and on the water a lot of the inhabitants are bobbing around in the water. I know this is really bad for their pathing, and I don't want to deal with that hassle. Plus a lot of buildings are flush with the water level so I can't secure them by breaking the stairs. So I bid the Infinity enchantment goodbye and continue on.
I continue on through a small Extreme Hills and then a Chaparral, where I turn back to find a Woodland - and get this pic of all three at once. On the other side of the Woodland is a Swampland (there have been quite a few swampy biomes on this landmass pair), and:
A village - on the border of a Steppe biome. This village doesn't go into the water like the last one did so I think this will be a good base for Slime Hunting.
Next episode - The prep - and the hunt.
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.