I head over to the trade hall and start trading. I sell the Essentia vendor some chicken nuggets to re-open his trades. Unfortunately I don't get another trade.
He's fascinated by Trunkie and Spunkie. I think this is the first time he's seen them - normally I leave them in my personal space one floor up. I have them here for convenience.
Revamp supposedly lets villagers open trap doors but either that's not working, or more likely it's not programmed to handle my system for blocking stairs with a trap door. So, as of yet, no villagers have gone into my personal space. Early on I would leave Trunkie and Spunkie in houses but this is a newer immigrant and came later.
Speaking of the houses, I head back to the second townhome I built (the first one that looked really good) to pick up some trade goods. There are some leather armors I bought trying to open trades. Through the hand mirror they go, to be stored by the gather golem in the Winter Tower yard. No inventory jam! I love hand mirrors!
I buy a mana bean from the other wizard merchant and that *does* open a trade - for wisp essences. Now *both* wizards offer essences, at cheap prices even (really, 1 emerald for 2 of the most valuable items in Thaumcraft? *Way* too cheap.)
I buy a pricey and useless book from the book vendor trying to open another trade but I don't get one. I don't want to sell books as long as I need Tutamen because leather -> armor is more efficient than leather -> books -> emeralds -> armor.
Ah, moonrise over the Lazy River (where the line of palm trees are.)
One of the merchant farmers is actually a merchant blacksmith. I should change his color-coding. I buy two chain boots from him trying to get another trade but get only diamond boots - a great trade in vanilla, but not for me.
Now I head out to trade with villagers not in the trade hall. As I step out I I get shot. I look around for a bit trying to find the skeleton. I get hit several times in the process.
I spot it on the west side of the town square. I'd like to shoot it but I'm concerned I might hit one of the Iron Golems. 4 Iron Golems can kill a Wither so I'd really prefer not to fight 6.
Eventually I have to take to the air to get a good shot and kill it. In spite of getting pincushioned (I looked pretty funny in the inventory screen) my shields were never breached and I took no damage. This Runic Armor is tough stuff!
Looking around it seems I've lost some villagers. At one point I had 4 Librarians and 2 Priests but now I can only find 3 and 1. I don't think they got zombied because I think that would have caused a big mess. I figure, most likely, fences are very leaky for villagers as they are for chickens. I did spot one Priest outside (with different trades, so likely actually the *third*) so there is some leakage.
The librarians become a real issue as when I trade with the one confined in the townhome his last trade changes to a compass sale. That makes him no longer a good trading partner, and he's the only librarian buying paper. My only librarian profit source now is a librarian who got stuck on a balcony fence who will buy written books. That trade is a pain, though, and I'll need to set up an alchemy system for the squid sacks I'll need.
This guy is strangely oblivious to the zombies hungering for his brains a few yards away. (Given how much brains the villagers have, I can understand why the zombies hunger!) However, standing next to them they don't hit me so maybe they're harmless behind that fence.
Come dawn I feather a bunch of zombies on the west wall at the back of some townhomes. I don't really need to, just felt like it. I get a bunch of drops I don't want to carry around - and don't have to, thanks to the hand mirror. Did I mention I love the hand mirror?
The terrain is kind of complicated right there, so I build a 3 wide path right next to the back of the townhomes. I'm thinking of another build to the west of town - either a church or a governor's mansion - and I'll want it for that. Right now I'm leaning towards a Governor's mansion build of green willow wood (from BoP) with an armory for a sword collection.
I want to start a little functional storage in my personal chamber in the trade hall. I build a Bibilocraft tool shelf but I can't put the Atlas on it. I have to add it to the list of shelvable tools. But, if I have to mod a config, I figure a bookcase is more appropiate and put it there instead.
I spend another night, hoping for a Endermen, but unsuccessfully
I do take a shot of the merchants with a current set of item frames for their trades.
Come morning I feather another gang of zombies, shear the sheep, and check the fishing golem's chest.
This time I find some nice books, including a Repair enchant and this Unbreaking. So I'll be able to use that Quicksilver pick after all. There's a lot of inventory-jamming stuff like the boots but - Hand Mirror! Did I mention..
Next episode - back to the Tower to finish my gear, then building a connection to the Nether Fortress.
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I stew on how to use the Repair and Unbreaking enchanted books. Eventually I decide to put the Repair on my sword as that will bring along Sharpness III. That leaves me without enough level for the Unbreaking, so that will have to wait.
I put the non-streaming axe on my tool rack (it's really only needed for the houses) along with a shovel. After a surprising amount of inventory juggling, I head home. It's dark when I get home, so I sleep on my original bed so I'll be able to go out in the yard to pick up the mirrored items in the chest.
In the morning I breed two puppies and then head for the chest. There's so much leather I can't fit it all i my inventory so first I shlep eight items over to be roasted. I put them in and go back to get the rest.
When I come back I realize the reason my alembics looked empty was that I wasn't wearing my Goggles of Revealing. They're actually full of Potentia and Ignis from some coal. I have to empty them for leather to be processed and since my inventory is currently full this ends up being a mess of vials of essentia popping out of my hands (since they can't go in my inventory) and annoyances with full warded jars. But eventually it's all done and I have plenty of Tutamen to upgrade my ring.
When I head out there's a skeleton and a creeper waiting at the front door. I manage to snipe the skeleton, but the creeper gets behind the window in a way that I just can't get it. Eventually I knock out the window to shoot it.
Out in the yard I do the infusion, remembering to face the tower for a better pic. I do feel very wizardly with my swirling Essentia, grove of magic trees, and looming tower.
I check the farming chest and it's getting full of seeds. I should just throw them away but I have this irrational dislike of "waste". So I decide to:
Breed some chickens. Really, with the automated egg collector/dispensor this is not a good use of my time but we all have our compulsions.
While I'm doing this I realize I can use the egg dispensor to dispose of excess items like all those feathers. I can put them in the dispensor chests and they'll be spit out into the chicken pen to despawn. Of course I could make another dispensor but this saves work. I stuff a bunch of extra feathers in the chests, which are currently about half-full.
So now I'm almost ready for my next project - building a connection to the Nether Fortress.
I head into my Nether connection to the place which is closest to the Nether Fortress. It's not the terminus for Lazy River Landing, actually, but an exit where my tunnel turns from east-west to north-south. I'm expecting a long epic expedition, and I've been building up for this for a while but when I head out and fly around a bit to plan a route -
The Nether Fortress is all of 30 blocks west and 30 blocks south of my exit. Some epic this is going to be. Plus it's downright embarrassing to have had such a hard time finding it when it was so close.
As I'm heading back in I get Firebatted. But *this* one I chop with my sword. Satisfying!
Building the connection does turn out to be a bit tedious because of things like this lava breakout. I have to head back some distance to place Trunkie and pull out my bucket, and than a long way again to dispose of the lava in a furnace.
And what's waiting for me?
My first survival Wither Skeleton! I have no idea why I've never seen one before. This is actually what I'm here for - I want to get some skeleton heads, for show, and perhaps for a Wither.
I'd been thinking about killing Wither Skeletons with my sword to improve the chance of a skull drop, but right behind him is a blaze spawner so I want to stick with my Frost Focus wand.
I head around the Nether Fortress pulling up my Arcane Lamps and dealing with occaisional annoying Blazes - and a Firebat, which I manage to smack with my sword. 2 for 2!
After never seeing Wither Skeletons before, I'm suddenly seeing a lot of them. I dispatch one near a Blaze spawner (there are actually two spawners here) and…
I get backstabbed by another one!
I kill this one, but I figure I'm about to die because my hearts are all gone. Only later do I realize they're just dark due to the wither effect. I try to hide in a side corridor but…
A ghast shows up with a perfect shot into the corridor, and enough cover that I have a hard time killing it with my bow. I kill it and fly over to look for a tear but - no dice.
After this I return to a slightly safer perch. The nether wort rooms are enclosed and I've left them lit as a sanctuary of sorts. I wait for monsters to come by or become visible, and this works well enough for a while as I bag two more Wither Skeletons (but no skulls, still).
After a while a Ghast wanders by and I head out to get it - but it's got a buddy!
I take to the skies and have the dogfight I'd expected to have long ago when I was searching for the fortress. I'm victorious and drop down to check the drops (they died over netherrack, not lava)
Woohoo! A Ghast Tear!
I head back to my perch to keep trying for a skull but
There are some new arrivals in the neighborhood. I'm not fond of the idea of accidentally infuriating the Nether Piggies with stray wand fire, so I decide to head home.
Next episode: Buffing!
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Having found I wasn't quite as invulnerable as I thought I was when facing complex fights in the Nether, I decide to improve my equipment some more. So I head back to the Winter Tower.
First, I use my prize from the last episode - the Ghast Tear - to brew a set of Potions of Regeneration.
Next I wanted to put Looting 3 on my sword - mostly because all the supplies were at hand.
I had to kill a spider at the front door on my way to the Infusion Altar
The infusion is routine apart from getting smacked by Thaumcraft as it drains the 15 levels for the Looting infusion. Damage Screenshots dutifully captured it.
For some of the other infusions, I was going to have to do some centrifuging, In addition I've been piling up Essentias like Pannus I'd like to get some use from. I'm not to the point of setting up a massive semi-automatic system, but I do want to be able to centrifuge more that one jar at a time.
This simple setup will let me centrifuge 3 full jars at once. The three jar will feed into the centrifuge (from underneath) and the products will flow to the four jars above. In addition, centrifuging 3 full jars will produce full jars of each product along with a partially full jar of leftovers, which will simplify management. There's a minor headache with partially full jars because you can only empty them with phials if the amount is divisible by 8. This means less jar juggling.
I do a round in the mana bean farm as I centrifutge the Pannus to Instrumentum and Bestia, then the Bestia, plus more I have sitting around, to Motus and Victus, and then the Victus to Aqua and Terra. These I use to make two stacks of clay - more to clear them out than to get clay, although it's nice to get some use. I also centrifuge some extra Fames to make Vacuous.
This I use for my next infusion - the Amulet of Emergency Shielding. This nifty device adds 8 points to your Runic Sheilding when your shields are breached, up to once a minutes. Since it reduces the shielding of the amulet by one point, it effectively increases your shielding by 7. So I'll go from 18 to 25 (17, plus the bonus 8).
This is a long infusion, because it uses a fair amount of essentia, but I have no problems.
The resulting amulet has a neat glittery/glowy effect in its "gem" which unfortunately doesn't come across with screenshots.
I also put one level of Runic Shielding on my Harness. This is with a separate infusion that can infuse most Thaumcraft armors wth a few points of Runic Shielding. It gets very expensive in a hurry, though, as the Essentia requirements go up exponentially with each point.
I hear a baby zombie outside and go out and kill it for peace and quiet and peace of mind. It looks like an assasin with that sword, making me extra glad I killed it.
Next I put a Repair enchant on my Harness. Don't want to lose all the work I've put into it! I actually don't have to do this yet but it's been on my mind and I want to free up the mindspace.
A while back I said that making a Primal Staff was probably too much hassle. Probably still true, but the itch to do it has struck me for some reason. However, I have a lot of research to do.
Before I can research the Primal Staff, I have to research all the 7 basic staffs, which requires I reseach all 7 staff materials. These researches are the kind that have to be purchased with particular aspects, rather than by solving one of the research puzzles. This hasn't been a big issue before, but now I have to do about 10 (I've done a few) and they *all* need Instrumentum. Instrumentum is an expensive aspect - to make it from scratch, I'd need 1 aer, 3 aqua, 2 ordo, 1 perdito, and 4 terra. And I'll need about 100. Ouch.
So I need to find something to scan. After a bit of thought, I realize I can scan tools made from the various metallurgy metals. So I set to work.
This is indeed a lot of work. Each tool has to be made, tossed from my hand, scanned, and then put away. In several cases I have to smelt the material too.
A few axes I've already made, and I can scan them. But that requires a trip upstairs, which is more time.
Finally it's mostly done. But I still can't research the primal core, and I still need some more aspects.
I resort to an internet search - I have to scan a primal focus. OK, I can make one and do that …
Well, that certainly helps with the aspects! But still, I'm short. So, I decide to start making some staff components to scan them.
I make - via an infusion - and scan an Icy Rod. Still not enough.
I make another Icy Rod and combine it with a Primal Charm for an Icy Staff core. Still not enough
I take a break to butcher a round of chickens. I have so many chickens there's a noticeable pause every time I take a whack because the Sword of the Zephyr is an area effect weapon and the game has to handle a lot of dead chickens.
Now I make a Reed Rod - and *finally* I have enough aspects to purchase all the prerequisites for the Primal Staff. So downstairs I go to the research table.
The research is complex, but I'm used to this by now. I do discover I've made a mistake of sorts - I had thought you infused the 7 staff cores together for the primal staff core but actually you infuse the rod materials together and use 2 to make a primal staff core. So the Icy Staff Core I made isn't usable for a Primal Staff.
I'm out of Aqua shards so I can't make a Primal Staff right now. I can get more easily, since the tunnels and ravines under Lazy River Landing run under Backwater Bay, which as a water biome will have lots of Aqua shards, and it's easy to spot them in the ravines. But in the meantime, I may as well make a Icy Staff.
Next episode: making a staff, stuff around the Winter Tower, and back to the Landing.
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
At this point it's night so I go up for an Enderman check. I do these most nights; I don't generally mention them because I see nothing and they're not newsworthy. But this time I see one! I stare to draw it in and I hear the "angry Enderman" noise - but I can't find it. I go up and down the stairs without luck and then check the balconies. On the south balcony:
You're not an Enderman! Bad not-Enderman! (But nice shot composition! Thanks Mr. Zombie!)
It concerns me a little that the zombie was on the balcony - it's supposed to be inaccessible and spawn-proof. But first, I want a pearlie!
On the north balcony, I get ambushed by a spider. Geez, what is it with my balcony security? But from there I can spot the Enderman - but, frustratingly, not hit it. It's stuck just out of reach.
Eventually I take to the air to hit it. That works, but then it teleports down into the sheep pen at the front door. Some zombies are down there too (happens from time to time.)
So, to the old front door I go. I can hit the enderman - and some of the zombies - but, unfortunately, also some sheep. That's baaaad!
After the Enderman's dead, I have to kill a few more zombies, fearing they'll pick up the precious pearl. But fortunately they don't and I get my pearlie!
Make that THREE pearlies! Yay Looting! I get a zombie brain too - nice haul.
Come morning I'm still hearing zombie noises so I fly around the tower to see what's the problem.
It's another zombie, on the south balcony again. You can see the problem - you can step onto the balcony from the hill. I have no idea why I haven't had trouble before.
Since I can't use my Icy Staff Core for anything other than an Icy Staff, I do so. There is the matter of what caps to use. Thaumium caps are more efficient, but require infusions that need both Salis Mundus *and* Auram essentia (and time). I don't expect to be using the staff long, as I expect to supplant it quickly with a Primal Staff.
But, eventually I decide it's worth doing right, and head out to infuse the caps. If I hadn't gotten the Essence trades in the Landing I'd never have done this as it takes 6 Salis Mundus = 12 Essences. I'd certainly have gone with the gold caps in that case. The Auram comes from the mana bean converter and I'd never have done it if I didn't have that, too.
I leave the staff in the node room to charge - it's hungry - and head off -
To breed some chickens! Yeah, waste of time, compulsion to use everything, blahblah but this time there's a *huge* problem -
I start getting crazy lag. The FPS is fine, but the game becomes horribly nonresponsive. It takes five seconds just to open a chest. Just too many chickens, I guess. Well, this should finally cure me of my "use the seeds" compulsion.
I back away and when I'm far enough away not to hear them things get better. To pass the time until the chicks grow up I make a Bibliocraft hand drill. Before Bibliocraft had a power tool to adjust Bibliocraft items (orientation, decorative carpets, etc.) but that's not too thematic. Somewhat recently Nuchaz added a hand drill with the same functions but a more plausibly medieval depiction. It's also a lot easier to make (the power tool needs 3 orange-stained clay, which is kind of a pain.)
I also butcher, and then breed, the cows. I have a lot of cows and that might be worsening the lag.
I also butcher some strays. Fences seem much leakier in 1.7 than they did before. For chickens it's so bad I consider fenced chicken coops unusable. Cows are much better (probably because they're larger) and so it's usable but I still get a fair number of strays.
Now I can start on the chickens.
The din of ringing experience orbs sounds like a Vegas casino on overdrive. It takes a while to clear the room and I only get 6 stacks of raw chicken. Was the game actually jammed up by less than 300 chickens (remember I have looting)?
Of course I have over 30 levels, and in a casinoish mood, I do a level 30 enchant on some Thaumium leggings. My current Shadow Steel leggings have lasted a long time but they're almost worn out and I'll need to replace them soon. I get the sort of thing you actually win at a casino -
Fire Protection IV - and nothing else. Not bad, I can use it, but not "worth" 30 levels.
I noticed my outdoor mushrooms had grown while butchering the cows, so I head out to collect some, and butcher some more strays.
Some fir saplings haven't grown for ages, because the snow prevents them from having cleared surroundings. I've cleared it before but with the use the node room's been getting it comes back fast. I use some torches to keep it properly melted.
I do some more chicken ranching and at this point my staff is charged, I'm larded down with trade goods, and I'm ready to get some Aqua shards for a primal staff. So it's time to head back to the Landing.
Next episode: Troubles at the Landing.
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Nicely done, Zeno. And you can add a few extra to that figure 'cause I've somehow missed a heap of episodes. I'm catching up from ep 95. So close to 100!
I arrive at Lazy River Landing at dusk and head to the trade hall. I'm not too concerned about overnight attacks anymore.
I trade away a lot of chicken and wheat, and buy over 40 Essence (I still can't get over how cheap it is.) But the butcher who buys beef isn't in the trade hall, so I head out to look for him. Before I spot him:
Woo-hoo, another Enderman! I lure him in and whack him; he teleports to another place on the fence next to a bunch of moaning zombies. I run over, whack him again and:
<Bah-WHOOM!>
I hadn't even seen the creeper. I'm completely unharmed, but a large section of fence is missing. I can't chase the Enderman because suddenly I have big security issues, because, as you might have noticed in the pic, it's dawn. Door are popping open all over as the villagers come out for their morning constitutionals - with no fence to keep them in, and hungry zombies waiting outside.
Fortunately the zombies burn before they get anybody. But I don't even have fencing with me. I dash back to the hall to get some but by the time I get back and rebuild the fence about 5 villagers have wandered into the desert. Great.
I use the Emerald lure from Revamp to lure them it. The villagers are supposed to follow emeralds like animals follow food. However, it doesn't work very well; the villagers have a very short attention span and I just can't get many of them in. After spending most of the day I manage to get two in but there are still three outside.
Late in the day I'm up on the roofs trying to plan a strategy to get them back when I see:
A baby furious zombie! Aagh! I dash down to kill it as otherwise I'm not going to have any villagers outside to rescue. It really should have gotten to the villagers first but for some reason it runs around a bit and so I manage to kill it before it snags any villagers.
The next day I finally find and trade with a new butcher with a beef purchase. But now I'm spotting even *more* villagers outside, even ones who were inside after I patched the fences.
I suspect the problem is this part of fencing which is actually easy to walk out of. IME villagers won't use even this but maybe with the Revamp pathing they can. Oddly, perhaps, I don't bother to patch it, as there aren't many villagers I really need to keep. The two free "old reliables" I've been trading with, a librarian and a butcher, are already outside. The only one I really care about is the original wizard, and that's purely for sentimental reasons - his trades stink.
So I actually embark on trying to improve looks and functionality of my private quarters atop the trade hall. I'm going for an open plan, as usual, since Minecraft walls take up a ridiculous amount of space. Here I put in a Bibliocraft table, with dinner plates. The dinner plates actually have food on them and can be eaten from, which means I don't have to worry about hauling food around in town. I place the table with a prime view out the east window.
I also make a Bibliocraft grandfather clock. Besides looks, it can chime at particular times of the day, whch I'm hoping will help let me know when to go to sleep. I'm being scrupulous about sleep hygiene as I don't want the villagers outside the wall to get zombified - well, not yet. Unfortunately for whatever reason I don't hear the chimes.
To get the grandfather clock, which requires two vanilla clocks to make, I buy some clocks from the old paper purchasing librarian. Not really a good purchase, but it saves me a trip back to the Winter Tower. My old paper purchasing librarian now wants a compass sale to refresh his dealings, making him pretty useless for paper sales. So I try, again, to open some more slots in the librarian in the trade hall - and this time I succeed, opening - a paper trade! I promptly sell him multiple stacks of paper, eventually opening yet another trade for a bookshelf sale. Well, less useful now although I can still get some profit from him.
Next to the grandfather clock I put a Fancy Workbench. This can store up to nine "recipe books" which record a recipe *and* can pull ingredients from you inventory to make it, which is a nice convenience. It's also nice to have an in-game system to look up recipes, although you can only search from a fairly limited set: the ones you've recorded. But I'm forever forgetting whether I want Stone or Cobblestone or Stone slabs for recipes, so it'll be useful for me.
I use this feature to help make chairs for the dining table, which I've decided looks a bit bare. Note that Bibliocraft lets you put carpet underneath its furniture, which solves a big problem with decorative carpets in vanilla.
The extra wood panel to the left of the window is a tool rack. As soon as I saw this picture I realized I should place it on the window border so as not to disrupt the wall pattern.
The far corner still looks a bit bare and I was thinking about what to put there. But I couldn't think of any compelling use so I'll skip it for now.
Next episode: Looking for Aqua shards under Backwash Bay.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Ooh! Mee! Mee! I dunno if it's in the version of thaumcraft you've got(I'm assuming it is, because you've got node bullying), but you should totally put a node on a node stabilizer right there, for the sake of small recharges! Perhaps an aqua node, for recharging after defending the village with the ice focus? That way, you won't have to run back to the winter tower or run around the continent to recharge. That's what I would do!
(if you don't actually have stabilizers for whatever reason, you could totally just fake it with a metallurgy block and some redstone torches!)
Every time I read your journal it makes me ache to play. Now more than ever.
PS !! episode 99! What's in store for 100?
Glad to hear you find my play and writing inspirational! The feeling is mutual.
I had kind of been toying with the idea of doing something special for episode 100. But I hadn't really planned for it and - OMG, it's almost here and I've done no planning. I can probably combine digging for shards with making the Primal Staff into one episode - that's a substantive accomplishment.
Empour writes:
Ooh! Mee! Mee! I dunno if it's in the version of thaumcraft you've got(I'm assuming it is, because you've got node bullying), but you should totally put a node on a node stabilizer right there, for the sake of small recharges! Perhaps an aqua node, for recharging after defending the village with the ice focus? That way, you won't have to run back to the winter tower or run around the continent to recharge.
That's what I would do!
Putting some nodes in the trade hall for recharges is a great idea. Actually the trade hall is a good size and shape for a node "room". This is by accident, unless Azanor planned out his distances to favor medium-sized high-symmetry buildings, which happens to be my style. I probably won't put in enough to need stabilizers, though - you can fit in 26 before you need stabilizers, and I just don't see needing that many. I may play around with your idea of decorative nodes while I'm at it.
edit: the editor is *so* messed up.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Rather than focusing on thaumcraft, how about doing something to highlight your mods, and exploration of the world? (That's a lot more interesting to me than Thaumcraft, actually).
(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?
Rather than focusing on thaumcraft, how about doing something to highlight your mods, and exploration of the world? (That's a lot more interesting to me than Thaumcraft, actually).
Yeah, that would probably be better, but like I said, 100 is already here. I have actually been holding off on exploring for a while because I was hoping to do a Mystcraft bridge first but I haven't yet gotten to it and it looks like I won't have time. I'm planning a big deep ocean exploration to look at the medium island creation in Climate Control and I think I'll do it next. I had been thinking about rewriting the separation routines first but I can rewrite them during the trip and maybe do a before vs. after comparison.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
In an ideal world, this would have been a special episode, carefully planned out weeks in advance to address themes that have been long flowing through the journal.
In an ideal world.
If any of you ever manage to visit it, could you drop me a postcard?
In *this* world, I got up to Episode 98 before I knew it and the long-term plans I had (adding some more features to Climate Control, and touring some new areas to see how they work and show them off) weren't even started. So I scrabbled about for some accomplishment for Episode 100, and came up with finishing a Primal Staff. After this I'll set off on a big expedition to look at what is probably one of the best features of Climate Control, the ability to make medium and small islands that actually fit on vanilla Minecraft maps.
So, it was time to head down under Lazy River Landing and dig up so Aqua shards.
I add one post to the iffy spot on the fence so the villager at least can't just walk out. I also put aside my Hasted boots because they are about to break, and I need to reserve them for safe situations.
I head downstairs to the ravines, offing one slime on the way. When I reach them I proceed along a shelf I'd carved earlier well above the ravine floor.
There's a large lava pool below and they always make me nervous. But water falls pretty well and I obsidianize it from here.
Rather than connecting to the big cave complex and a big exploration, the ravine dead ends not far from where I'd stopped before. So, no big fights for now.
With my back secure, I drop down to the ravine floor and proceed back to make sure it's reasonably safe.
Obviously not entirely safe yet. But this guy, I want to fight! And I do get a pearl out of it.
I start collecting the resources, finding the Aqua shards I wanted. There's a lot here. But I keep getting hostiles at a slow rate - a slime, a zombie, and a creeper.
Around this time I realize I've forgotten to sleep for the night. It's dark outside which means - the stray villagers are zombified. Whoops. Oh well, it was going to happen eventually.
Working back towards the landing, I spot a likely source for the spawns.
I head in and there are TWO creepers waiting for me. I try to fly up and snipe them, but the ceiling is a little low, and they still blow up. I'm high enough not to take much damage, though they leave a big hole in the floor.
I drop an Arcane lamp and the spawns stop. I collect the goodies from the side cave and then go back checking to see if there's anything valuable I missed (I do find a few iron ores I'd missed.)
I have an itch to find my stray Nether Portal in some cave somewhere. So I start cutting a tunnel into the side to see if I can find it. Unfortunately I didn't take any screenshots of the portal coordinates so I don't know where it is exactly. Around the location where I estimate it will be I do hear some zombies. I'm digging at diamond level, which is a bit low, so I figure I'm below them.
Well, I have a way to find them now. I unleash the Hound!
And he just stands there. They're loud enough, but apparently not close enough. I try several other spots for the same result.
At this point, I've collected about a half stack of Aqua Shards, so I have what I need. So I put off the great cave search for another day and head back to the village.
As I head back I spot a loose wizard. I check his trades, and he has a knowledge fragment trade. Nice! I can use these to pick up stray researches.
You can sit in Bibliocraft chairs, so I do so to check the view from the dining table. New moon rising. I have to eat dinner here someday.
I head back through the Nether connection, but I forget to switch to my Haste boots. It is *way* slower with the regular boots. But, still a lot faster than the boat.
I've been using the Hand Mirror to send back the items I collect, apart from coal which I wanted to trade with the villagers. When I get back to the Winter Tower, I check the mirror chest to make sure everything is right, and pick up what I want.
Worked like a charm! A side benefit is that I can use this as a kind of accumulator - I can let rarer ores stack up and haul it down for processing only when there's a full stack, or I need it.
I need to brew up some Gelum before starting, so while that's on I head downstairs for upkeep. I toss some ores in the crusher, some stones in the furnace, and use my levels to make another trophy sword, this of Metallurgy Orichalcum.
That one is pretty nice, actually.
Back upstairs, I make another Icy Rod for the Primal staff infusion. I already have a Reed Rod from before so 2 down, 7 to go.
I have to roast some mushrooms for Tenebrae for the next rod, Obsidian.
While that's going I plant some more mushrooms downstairs to keep my supply going. I have red mushrooms in my tunnels to complement the brown mushroom in the forest outside.
I also convert the essences I bought into 21 (!) Salis Mundus. An embarassment of riches!
Back upstairs, it's dark, so I do an Enderman check, and find one.
As usual, I chase it around quite a bit. The tower is a lousy place to fight Endermen because there are so many places they can get stuck, and most times I whack it it teleports to *another* hiding spot. After several encounters and teleports, I hit it on the west balcony but either it didn't drop a pearl, or I didn't kill it and this time it teleported away.
I grind through the rest of the primal aspect rods, which are easy infusions, although there are a lot of them.
Now it's time to make the silverwood rods to serve as the base for the infusion. This actually needs more of all the primal essentias than the individual rods did. I'm out of Ordo, so I roast some buttons for Machina which I spin down to Ordo. I'm also piling up some Essentias, so I spin some Arbor down to get Terra (which I also need).
For symmetry, I place each shard for the infusion next to the matching primal essentia.
When I'm finally ready, it seems the world is trying to stop me. It starts raining in the Magical Forest and snowing in the surrounding Cold Taiga and Tundra. This produces a weird effect as the snowflakes drift over the biome boundary and mix with the rain where I'm standing.
Even though it's day, a zombie wanders up to try to stop me too (he can because it's precipitating.) But he can't get across the fence.
I fire up the infusion. It takes a while, and I turn around and zap the zombie with my Icy Staff to pass the time.
Now it's time for the Primal Staff infusion itself - and it turns out to need even *more* essentia than all the previous stuff put together. Bleah. Ordo itself is starting to be a particular headache because every method for making it produces other essentia I don't want (mostly Aer) or uses nonrenewables I don't want to waste (like glass).
My old division between mining level and ground level is breaking down with the demands of making all these staff components. I have to make several trips up and down to get things that have run out at one of the levels. I'm getting tired of staring at ladders, all this work is getting to be serious drudgery and I'm regretting the choice to go ahead with the Primal Staff at this point. However, I really don't want to look like a flake on my 100th episode, so I power on through.
I butcher a round of chickens while this is going on to get chicken nuggets, which several of the wizard villagers have a taste for. Don't tell McDonald's; the golden arches would clash with my building style. This produces a lot of excess roast chicken, which I plan to convert to essentia. I may need to build a dedicated system to cut down on the drudgery, though.
I finally decide to tackle my ever-growing collection of Aer with a void jar. However, even though it's supposed to draw Essentia while full, I can't get it to empty another jar.
However, on the centrifuge it works as advertised, drawing off and disposing of excess Aer. I can't believe I ended up centrifuging Motus (which I've often been short of) for Ordo but - that's what I did. So I won't get any more, but for now I'm stuck with 30+phials of useless Aer.
The cold climate seems to be affecting Spunkie and he's huddling next to the Alchemical Furnace for heat.
Finallly - FINALLY! - I have everything I need and I'm ready to go.
The infusion is huge - 256 Vis and 9 items. The instability is so high I'm seeing instability flashes in spite of my big candle room, which worries me. In the end, nothing goes wrong, but it does take 2 and and half minutes to run.
I have my staff core! I'm done! I'm done! I'm - wait, I'm not done, I still need to make caps.
Oh great, I have to roast a little more Auram for that.
When that's done I put everything on the Arcane Workbench to be assembled and -
Insufficient Vis. I have a maxed-out sceptre and it still needs to be COMPLETELY full to make this. Well, at least that's easy to fix - with yet another trip on the tower ladders.
Finally I'm done - for real this time.
I take a selfie with my trophy in the armory. It might not look all that remarkable - although it does have some cool runes I can see when it's in my hand - but it's a real powerhouse. If I can get a Frugal enchantment, it can jar 4 nodes by itself. It also auto-recharges up to 25 Vis, so it can always use foci even without any source of Vis.
Next episode: preparing to explore the deep oceans.
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.
I take a selfie with my trophy in the armory. It might not look all that remarkable - although it does have some cool runes I can see when it's in my hand - but it's a real powerhouse. If I can get a Frugal enchantment, it can jar 4 nodes by itself. It also auto-recharges up to 25 Vis, so it can always use foci even without any source of Vis.
Next episode: preparing to explore the deep oceans.
That staff sounds amazing. Is there a wand/scepter version of it?
Also- You mentioned small and medium islands being something CC can do, but looking through the configs, I see nothing for small islands. Are they some magical 1-biome thing that you only have in your version?
##########################################################################################################
# ocean control parameters
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
# Frequencies are x per thousand but a little goes a very long way because seeds grow a lot. About half the total continent frequencies is the percent land. For worlds with 1.7-like generation set large island seeds to about 300. That will largely fill the oceans after seed growth.
##########################################################################################################
"ocean control parameters" {
# frequency of large continent seeds, about 8000x16000
I:"Large Continent Frequency"=0
# frequency of large island seeds, about 1000x2000
I:"Large Island Frequency"=10
# frequency of medium continent seeds, about 4000x8000
I:"Medium Continent Frequency"=0
# frequency of medium island seeds, about 500x1000
I:"Medium Island Frequency"=60
# True reduces the chance of landmasses merging
B:SeparateLandmasses=true
# frequency of small continent seeds, about 2000x4000
I:"Small Continent Frequency"=0
}
This is what I have for that area of the config for my secret project. Is there something I'm missing? I'd love to have tiny 1-biome islands, they sound adorable.
The 1-biome islands are created with the trick I mentioned in our discussion on the CC thread: setting a biome's climate to "DEEP_OCEAN".
Your secret project config will work pretty well, except that there won't be many bridgeable gaps. I'll see about making the separation procedure work for same size landmasses (I know how to do it; it's just kind of persnickety work). I'll also check the functionality, based on sirdave's comment.
Edit: I'm pretty sure that at least for my version of TC, there's only a primal staff. I think Azanor deliberately wanted it to be impossible to use a self-recharging item for crafting.
Now that I'm pretty loaded on Thaumcraft stuff, I'm ready for another big expedition. This will be my fifth, I think, and possibly the biggest yet.
I want to look at the small islands Climate Control can place in the oceans. In my biggest expedition so far, I explored the coastline of the lands beyond the ocean around my spawn continent. This time i'm going to explore the oceans between those coasts and my spawn continent.
This is my most recent map wall pic. My spawn continent is the landmass near the center. My boat, however, is at Lazy River Landing, at the left edge of the almost-fully explored island on the far right. My expedition will launch from there. I'm going to go counterclockwise around the central landmass, running search patterns in the ocean to try to find the medium islands. I plan to run fairly tight patterns, as the medium islands can be just single biomes, (about 256 blocks across) although they are usually somewhat bigger.
With the settings I currently have, medium islands can often merge with other landmasses, including each other. I recently wrote a new version that would reduce that and was planning to install it to see how it worked. However, I realized it might produce some obnoxious problems. The problem is that it works at all levels. It's a bit complicated to explain, but basically when I switch, I may get large islands or even continents appearing where I have water now. They will be truncated by the chunk wall prevention system, so I won't even have a good idea of their real coastlines. I'd rather not see that, so I'm going to stick with the current system.
I have a number of other goals for this expedition. First, I'm going to collect a number of nodes for my node room. I'll bring a *lot* of glass for this. Wood I can chop onsite if needed. Second, I'm going to look for stones to create a faux sky and ground for my Mana Bean farm. I'm planning for greenschist for the ground and blueschist for the sky. I (think I) know some locations, both quite a ways from my Winter Tower base, but they're pretty close to where I'm going to seach, so I can pick them up. Third, I'm hoping to collect some of the woods for Biomes o' Plenty and Highlands for more building options. Lastly, I'm going to try to build some outposts on this trip.
The first thing I'll need is a place to put all the stuff I hope to collect. Trunkie and Spunkie can only hold so much. So, most of it I'll send back by hand mirror. But, I need space to collect it at my base where the mirror will send things too. So I expand the chest set to three double chests. Along with the hungry chest recieving the items and the three hoppers, I have a storage of 4 double chests.
I butcher all the chickens in the lower pen before I go. They might be in a spawn chunk and I don't want them slowing the game down. The egg producers in the upper pen stay.
I figure out why some of my fir saplings haven't been sprouting. The problem is fir leaves above them, which are apparently blocking their growth (since they aren't air). Because they're big trees, sometimes it's not too obvious there's no room for growth. This means firs aren't good for tree farms, as it's easy to plant "dud" seedlings. I'll still leave them out around the tower, as they look good; I'll just have to go a little farther out to chop wood.
I use my levels from the chicken ranch to make another trophy sword, this of Metallurgy Ceruclase. It looks pretty good, and I pick up Smite IV on the enchant. This could be very useful against the Wither someday.
I charge up my staves more before I go. Even after multiple chargings, I still don't have enough Perdito, Ordo, Ignis, or even Terra. I definitely will be able to use the nodes I plan to get.
With the Winter Tower basically boarded up for my trip, I head through the Nether connection to Lazy River Landing, and my boat. Of course, I do some trading there first.
The original wizard (yes, it's him, even though the screenie can't show it) is looking wistfully out into the desert here. No doubt he misses his original librarian, who wandered out into the desert, ignored my pleas to come inside (seriously, I spent about half an hour trying to lure him and the other strays back in), and hasn't been seen for days. Life can be tragic sometimes.
Trading with another village wizard, I get a real prize of a trade: a shard trade! This is fantastic, as it makes the main nonrenewable Thaumcraft resource renewable.
I do use one Explorercraft feature I should have used a long time ago - the ability to make maps with arbitrary centers. Vanilla maps now have to be on a grid, to make it realistically possible to make map walls, but Explorercraft has other ways to align maps. So, I make a Explorercraft 1x1 blank map with a compass and a piece of Explorercraft map paper, and activate in the town square. This makes a map nicely centered on the town rather than wherever the grid comes out. This will be useful for future plans, and for describing village events. The little brown "island" in the mouth of the river is my Archimedes' Ships boat, which I'll use for my expedition.
One last snooze in my own bed before I go. It might be a really long time before I sleep in a nice place like this.
And, of course, one last selfie on the prow of my boat before I set out.
Next episode: the northwestern seas.
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.
I noticed your Harness tank is only half full. Good luck on the expedition, and you should probably refill that if you expect to see anything mountainous.
Trunkie has 11 spare phials of Potentia. It actually goes surprisingly far, even with the Thaumostatic Girdle. I had more phials at home I was planning to bring, but I forgot them. However, since I'll mostly be on a boat and exploring islands, I think I'll be fine.
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.
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He's fascinated by Trunkie and Spunkie. I think this is the first time he's seen them - normally I leave them in my personal space one floor up. I have them here for convenience.
Revamp supposedly lets villagers open trap doors but either that's not working, or more likely it's not programmed to handle my system for blocking stairs with a trap door. So, as of yet, no villagers have gone into my personal space. Early on I would leave Trunkie and Spunkie in houses but this is a newer immigrant and came later.
Speaking of the houses, I head back to the second townhome I built (the first one that looked really good) to pick up some trade goods. There are some leather armors I bought trying to open trades. Through the hand mirror they go, to be stored by the gather golem in the Winter Tower yard. No inventory jam! I love hand mirrors!
I buy a mana bean from the other wizard merchant and that *does* open a trade - for wisp essences. Now *both* wizards offer essences, at cheap prices even (really, 1 emerald for 2 of the most valuable items in Thaumcraft? *Way* too cheap.)
I buy a pricey and useless book from the book vendor trying to open another trade but I don't get one. I don't want to sell books as long as I need Tutamen because leather -> armor is more efficient than leather -> books -> emeralds -> armor.
Ah, moonrise over the Lazy River (where the line of palm trees are.)
One of the merchant farmers is actually a merchant blacksmith. I should change his color-coding. I buy two chain boots from him trying to get another trade but get only diamond boots - a great trade in vanilla, but not for me.
Now I head out to trade with villagers not in the trade hall. As I step out I I get shot. I look around for a bit trying to find the skeleton. I get hit several times in the process.
I spot it on the west side of the town square. I'd like to shoot it but I'm concerned I might hit one of the Iron Golems. 4 Iron Golems can kill a Wither so I'd really prefer not to fight 6.
Eventually I have to take to the air to get a good shot and kill it. In spite of getting pincushioned (I looked pretty funny in the inventory screen) my shields were never breached and I took no damage. This Runic Armor is tough stuff!
Looking around it seems I've lost some villagers. At one point I had 4 Librarians and 2 Priests but now I can only find 3 and 1. I don't think they got zombied because I think that would have caused a big mess. I figure, most likely, fences are very leaky for villagers as they are for chickens. I did spot one Priest outside (with different trades, so likely actually the *third*) so there is some leakage.
The librarians become a real issue as when I trade with the one confined in the townhome his last trade changes to a compass sale. That makes him no longer a good trading partner, and he's the only librarian buying paper. My only librarian profit source now is a librarian who got stuck on a balcony fence who will buy written books. That trade is a pain, though, and I'll need to set up an alchemy system for the squid sacks I'll need.
This guy is strangely oblivious to the zombies hungering for his brains a few yards away. (Given how much brains the villagers have, I can understand why the zombies hunger!) However, standing next to them they don't hit me so maybe they're harmless behind that fence.
Come dawn I feather a bunch of zombies on the west wall at the back of some townhomes. I don't really need to, just felt like it. I get a bunch of drops I don't want to carry around - and don't have to, thanks to the hand mirror. Did I mention I love the hand mirror?
The terrain is kind of complicated right there, so I build a 3 wide path right next to the back of the townhomes. I'm thinking of another build to the west of town - either a church or a governor's mansion - and I'll want it for that. Right now I'm leaning towards a Governor's mansion build of green willow wood (from BoP) with an armory for a sword collection.
I want to start a little functional storage in my personal chamber in the trade hall. I build a Bibilocraft tool shelf but I can't put the Atlas on it. I have to add it to the list of shelvable tools. But, if I have to mod a config, I figure a bookcase is more appropiate and put it there instead.
I spend another night, hoping for a Endermen, but unsuccessfully
I do take a shot of the merchants with a current set of item frames for their trades.
Come morning I feather another gang of zombies, shear the sheep, and check the fishing golem's chest.
This time I find some nice books, including a Repair enchant and this Unbreaking. So I'll be able to use that Quicksilver pick after all. There's a lot of inventory-jamming stuff like the boots but - Hand Mirror! Did I mention..
Next episode - back to the Tower to finish my gear, then building a connection to the Nether Fortress.
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.
Began playing during Alpha 1.2.6.
I put the non-streaming axe on my tool rack (it's really only needed for the houses) along with a shovel. After a surprising amount of inventory juggling, I head home. It's dark when I get home, so I sleep on my original bed so I'll be able to go out in the yard to pick up the mirrored items in the chest.
In the morning I breed two puppies and then head for the chest. There's so much leather I can't fit it all i my inventory so first I shlep eight items over to be roasted. I put them in and go back to get the rest.
When I come back I realize the reason my alembics looked empty was that I wasn't wearing my Goggles of Revealing. They're actually full of Potentia and Ignis from some coal. I have to empty them for leather to be processed and since my inventory is currently full this ends up being a mess of vials of essentia popping out of my hands (since they can't go in my inventory) and annoyances with full warded jars. But eventually it's all done and I have plenty of Tutamen to upgrade my ring.
When I head out there's a skeleton and a creeper waiting at the front door. I manage to snipe the skeleton, but the creeper gets behind the window in a way that I just can't get it. Eventually I knock out the window to shoot it.
Out in the yard I do the infusion, remembering to face the tower for a better pic. I do feel very wizardly with my swirling Essentia, grove of magic trees, and looming tower.
I check the farming chest and it's getting full of seeds. I should just throw them away but I have this irrational dislike of "waste". So I decide to:
Breed some chickens. Really, with the automated egg collector/dispensor this is not a good use of my time but we all have our compulsions.
While I'm doing this I realize I can use the egg dispensor to dispose of excess items like all those feathers. I can put them in the dispensor chests and they'll be spit out into the chicken pen to despawn. Of course I could make another dispensor but this saves work. I stuff a bunch of extra feathers in the chests, which are currently about half-full.
So now I'm almost ready for my next project - building a connection to the Nether Fortress.
I head into my Nether connection to the place which is closest to the Nether Fortress. It's not the terminus for Lazy River Landing, actually, but an exit where my tunnel turns from east-west to north-south. I'm expecting a long epic expedition, and I've been building up for this for a while but when I head out and fly around a bit to plan a route -
The Nether Fortress is all of 30 blocks west and 30 blocks south of my exit. Some epic this is going to be. Plus it's downright embarrassing to have had such a hard time finding it when it was so close.
As I'm heading back in I get Firebatted. But *this* one I chop with my sword. Satisfying!
Building the connection does turn out to be a bit tedious because of things like this lava breakout. I have to head back some distance to place Trunkie and pull out my bucket, and than a long way again to dispose of the lava in a furnace.
And what's waiting for me?
My first survival Wither Skeleton! I have no idea why I've never seen one before. This is actually what I'm here for - I want to get some skeleton heads, for show, and perhaps for a Wither.
I'd been thinking about killing Wither Skeletons with my sword to improve the chance of a skull drop, but right behind him is a blaze spawner so I want to stick with my Frost Focus wand.
I head around the Nether Fortress pulling up my Arcane Lamps and dealing with occaisional annoying Blazes - and a Firebat, which I manage to smack with my sword. 2 for 2!
After never seeing Wither Skeletons before, I'm suddenly seeing a lot of them. I dispatch one near a Blaze spawner (there are actually two spawners here) and…
I get backstabbed by another one!
I kill this one, but I figure I'm about to die because my hearts are all gone. Only later do I realize they're just dark due to the wither effect. I try to hide in a side corridor but…
A ghast shows up with a perfect shot into the corridor, and enough cover that I have a hard time killing it with my bow. I kill it and fly over to look for a tear but - no dice.
After this I return to a slightly safer perch. The nether wort rooms are enclosed and I've left them lit as a sanctuary of sorts. I wait for monsters to come by or become visible, and this works well enough for a while as I bag two more Wither Skeletons (but no skulls, still).
After a while a Ghast wanders by and I head out to get it - but it's got a buddy!
I take to the skies and have the dogfight I'd expected to have long ago when I was searching for the fortress. I'm victorious and drop down to check the drops (they died over netherrack, not lava)
Woohoo! A Ghast Tear!
I head back to my perch to keep trying for a skull but
There are some new arrivals in the neighborhood. I'm not fond of the idea of accidentally infuriating the Nether Piggies with stray wand fire, so I decide to head home.
Next episode: Buffing!
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.
Having found I wasn't quite as invulnerable as I thought I was when facing complex fights in the Nether, I decide to improve my equipment some more. So I head back to the Winter Tower.
First, I use my prize from the last episode - the Ghast Tear - to brew a set of Potions of Regeneration.
Next I wanted to put Looting 3 on my sword - mostly because all the supplies were at hand.
I had to kill a spider at the front door on my way to the Infusion Altar
The infusion is routine apart from getting smacked by Thaumcraft as it drains the 15 levels for the Looting infusion. Damage Screenshots dutifully captured it.
For some of the other infusions, I was going to have to do some centrifuging, In addition I've been piling up Essentias like Pannus I'd like to get some use from. I'm not to the point of setting up a massive semi-automatic system, but I do want to be able to centrifuge more that one jar at a time.
This simple setup will let me centrifuge 3 full jars at once. The three jar will feed into the centrifuge (from underneath) and the products will flow to the four jars above. In addition, centrifuging 3 full jars will produce full jars of each product along with a partially full jar of leftovers, which will simplify management. There's a minor headache with partially full jars because you can only empty them with phials if the amount is divisible by 8. This means less jar juggling.
I do a round in the mana bean farm as I centrifutge the Pannus to Instrumentum and Bestia, then the Bestia, plus more I have sitting around, to Motus and Victus, and then the Victus to Aqua and Terra. These I use to make two stacks of clay - more to clear them out than to get clay, although it's nice to get some use. I also centrifuge some extra Fames to make Vacuous.
This I use for my next infusion - the Amulet of Emergency Shielding. This nifty device adds 8 points to your Runic Sheilding when your shields are breached, up to once a minutes. Since it reduces the shielding of the amulet by one point, it effectively increases your shielding by 7. So I'll go from 18 to 25 (17, plus the bonus 8).
This is a long infusion, because it uses a fair amount of essentia, but I have no problems.
The resulting amulet has a neat glittery/glowy effect in its "gem" which unfortunately doesn't come across with screenshots.
I also put one level of Runic Shielding on my Harness. This is with a separate infusion that can infuse most Thaumcraft armors wth a few points of Runic Shielding. It gets very expensive in a hurry, though, as the Essentia requirements go up exponentially with each point.
I hear a baby zombie outside and go out and kill it for peace and quiet and peace of mind. It looks like an assasin with that sword, making me extra glad I killed it.
Next I put a Repair enchant on my Harness. Don't want to lose all the work I've put into it! I actually don't have to do this yet but it's been on my mind and I want to free up the mindspace.
A while back I said that making a Primal Staff was probably too much hassle. Probably still true, but the itch to do it has struck me for some reason. However, I have a lot of research to do.
Before I can research the Primal Staff, I have to research all the 7 basic staffs, which requires I reseach all 7 staff materials. These researches are the kind that have to be purchased with particular aspects, rather than by solving one of the research puzzles. This hasn't been a big issue before, but now I have to do about 10 (I've done a few) and they *all* need Instrumentum. Instrumentum is an expensive aspect - to make it from scratch, I'd need 1 aer, 3 aqua, 2 ordo, 1 perdito, and 4 terra. And I'll need about 100. Ouch.
So I need to find something to scan. After a bit of thought, I realize I can scan tools made from the various metallurgy metals. So I set to work.
This is indeed a lot of work. Each tool has to be made, tossed from my hand, scanned, and then put away. In several cases I have to smelt the material too.
A few axes I've already made, and I can scan them. But that requires a trip upstairs, which is more time.
Finally it's mostly done. But I still can't research the primal core, and I still need some more aspects.
I resort to an internet search - I have to scan a primal focus. OK, I can make one and do that …
Well, that certainly helps with the aspects! But still, I'm short. So, I decide to start making some staff components to scan them.
I make - via an infusion - and scan an Icy Rod. Still not enough.
I make another Icy Rod and combine it with a Primal Charm for an Icy Staff core. Still not enough
I take a break to butcher a round of chickens. I have so many chickens there's a noticeable pause every time I take a whack because the Sword of the Zephyr is an area effect weapon and the game has to handle a lot of dead chickens.
Now I make a Reed Rod - and *finally* I have enough aspects to purchase all the prerequisites for the Primal Staff. So downstairs I go to the research table.
The research is complex, but I'm used to this by now. I do discover I've made a mistake of sorts - I had thought you infused the 7 staff cores together for the primal staff core but actually you infuse the rod materials together and use 2 to make a primal staff core. So the Icy Staff Core I made isn't usable for a Primal Staff.
I'm out of Aqua shards so I can't make a Primal Staff right now. I can get more easily, since the tunnels and ravines under Lazy River Landing run under Backwater Bay, which as a water biome will have lots of Aqua shards, and it's easy to spot them in the ravines. But in the meantime, I may as well make a Icy Staff.
Next episode: making a staff, stuff around the Winter Tower, and back to the Landing.
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.
You're not an Enderman! Bad not-Enderman! (But nice shot composition! Thanks Mr. Zombie!)
It concerns me a little that the zombie was on the balcony - it's supposed to be inaccessible and spawn-proof. But first, I want a pearlie!
On the north balcony, I get ambushed by a spider. Geez, what is it with my balcony security? But from there I can spot the Enderman - but, frustratingly, not hit it. It's stuck just out of reach.
Eventually I take to the air to hit it. That works, but then it teleports down into the sheep pen at the front door. Some zombies are down there too (happens from time to time.)
So, to the old front door I go. I can hit the enderman - and some of the zombies - but, unfortunately, also some sheep. That's baaaad!
After the Enderman's dead, I have to kill a few more zombies, fearing they'll pick up the precious pearl. But fortunately they don't and I get my pearlie!
Make that THREE pearlies! Yay Looting! I get a zombie brain too - nice haul.
Come morning I'm still hearing zombie noises so I fly around the tower to see what's the problem.
It's another zombie, on the south balcony again. You can see the problem - you can step onto the balcony from the hill. I have no idea why I haven't had trouble before.
Since I can't use my Icy Staff Core for anything other than an Icy Staff, I do so. There is the matter of what caps to use. Thaumium caps are more efficient, but require infusions that need both Salis Mundus *and* Auram essentia (and time). I don't expect to be using the staff long, as I expect to supplant it quickly with a Primal Staff.
But, eventually I decide it's worth doing right, and head out to infuse the caps. If I hadn't gotten the Essence trades in the Landing I'd never have done this as it takes 6 Salis Mundus = 12 Essences. I'd certainly have gone with the gold caps in that case. The Auram comes from the mana bean converter and I'd never have done it if I didn't have that, too.
I leave the staff in the node room to charge - it's hungry - and head off -
To breed some chickens! Yeah, waste of time, compulsion to use everything, blahblah but this time there's a *huge* problem -
I start getting crazy lag. The FPS is fine, but the game becomes horribly nonresponsive. It takes five seconds just to open a chest. Just too many chickens, I guess. Well, this should finally cure me of my "use the seeds" compulsion.
I back away and when I'm far enough away not to hear them things get better. To pass the time until the chicks grow up I make a Bibliocraft hand drill. Before Bibliocraft had a power tool to adjust Bibliocraft items (orientation, decorative carpets, etc.) but that's not too thematic. Somewhat recently Nuchaz added a hand drill with the same functions but a more plausibly medieval depiction. It's also a lot easier to make (the power tool needs 3 orange-stained clay, which is kind of a pain.)
I also butcher, and then breed, the cows. I have a lot of cows and that might be worsening the lag.
I also butcher some strays. Fences seem much leakier in 1.7 than they did before. For chickens it's so bad I consider fenced chicken coops unusable. Cows are much better (probably because they're larger) and so it's usable but I still get a fair number of strays.
Now I can start on the chickens.
The din of ringing experience orbs sounds like a Vegas casino on overdrive. It takes a while to clear the room and I only get 6 stacks of raw chicken. Was the game actually jammed up by less than 300 chickens (remember I have looting)?
Of course I have over 30 levels, and in a casinoish mood, I do a level 30 enchant on some Thaumium leggings. My current Shadow Steel leggings have lasted a long time but they're almost worn out and I'll need to replace them soon. I get the sort of thing you actually win at a casino -
Fire Protection IV - and nothing else. Not bad, I can use it, but not "worth" 30 levels.
I noticed my outdoor mushrooms had grown while butchering the cows, so I head out to collect some, and butcher some more strays.
Some fir saplings haven't grown for ages, because the snow prevents them from having cleared surroundings. I've cleared it before but with the use the node room's been getting it comes back fast. I use some torches to keep it properly melted.
I do some more chicken ranching and at this point my staff is charged, I'm larded down with trade goods, and I'm ready to get some Aqua shards for a primal staff. So it's time to head back to the Landing.
Next episode: Troubles at the Landing.
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 trade away a lot of chicken and wheat, and buy over 40 Essence (I still can't get over how cheap it is.) But the butcher who buys beef isn't in the trade hall, so I head out to look for him. Before I spot him:
Woo-hoo, another Enderman! I lure him in and whack him; he teleports to another place on the fence next to a bunch of moaning zombies. I run over, whack him again and:
<Bah-WHOOM!>
I hadn't even seen the creeper. I'm completely unharmed, but a large section of fence is missing. I can't chase the Enderman because suddenly I have big security issues, because, as you might have noticed in the pic, it's dawn. Door are popping open all over as the villagers come out for their morning constitutionals - with no fence to keep them in, and hungry zombies waiting outside.
Fortunately the zombies burn before they get anybody. But I don't even have fencing with me. I dash back to the hall to get some but by the time I get back and rebuild the fence about 5 villagers have wandered into the desert. Great.
I use the Emerald lure from Revamp to lure them it. The villagers are supposed to follow emeralds like animals follow food. However, it doesn't work very well; the villagers have a very short attention span and I just can't get many of them in. After spending most of the day I manage to get two in but there are still three outside.
Late in the day I'm up on the roofs trying to plan a strategy to get them back when I see:
A baby furious zombie! Aagh! I dash down to kill it as otherwise I'm not going to have any villagers outside to rescue. It really should have gotten to the villagers first but for some reason it runs around a bit and so I manage to kill it before it snags any villagers.
The next day I finally find and trade with a new butcher with a beef purchase. But now I'm spotting even *more* villagers outside, even ones who were inside after I patched the fences.
I suspect the problem is this part of fencing which is actually easy to walk out of. IME villagers won't use even this but maybe with the Revamp pathing they can. Oddly, perhaps, I don't bother to patch it, as there aren't many villagers I really need to keep. The two free "old reliables" I've been trading with, a librarian and a butcher, are already outside. The only one I really care about is the original wizard, and that's purely for sentimental reasons - his trades stink.
So I actually embark on trying to improve looks and functionality of my private quarters atop the trade hall. I'm going for an open plan, as usual, since Minecraft walls take up a ridiculous amount of space. Here I put in a Bibliocraft table, with dinner plates. The dinner plates actually have food on them and can be eaten from, which means I don't have to worry about hauling food around in town. I place the table with a prime view out the east window.
I also make a Bibliocraft grandfather clock. Besides looks, it can chime at particular times of the day, whch I'm hoping will help let me know when to go to sleep. I'm being scrupulous about sleep hygiene as I don't want the villagers outside the wall to get zombified - well, not yet. Unfortunately for whatever reason I don't hear the chimes.
To get the grandfather clock, which requires two vanilla clocks to make, I buy some clocks from the old paper purchasing librarian. Not really a good purchase, but it saves me a trip back to the Winter Tower. My old paper purchasing librarian now wants a compass sale to refresh his dealings, making him pretty useless for paper sales. So I try, again, to open some more slots in the librarian in the trade hall - and this time I succeed, opening - a paper trade! I promptly sell him multiple stacks of paper, eventually opening yet another trade for a bookshelf sale. Well, less useful now although I can still get some profit from him.
Next to the grandfather clock I put a Fancy Workbench. This can store up to nine "recipe books" which record a recipe *and* can pull ingredients from you inventory to make it, which is a nice convenience. It's also nice to have an in-game system to look up recipes, although you can only search from a fairly limited set: the ones you've recorded. But I'm forever forgetting whether I want Stone or Cobblestone or Stone slabs for recipes, so it'll be useful for me.
I use this feature to help make chairs for the dining table, which I've decided looks a bit bare. Note that Bibliocraft lets you put carpet underneath its furniture, which solves a big problem with decorative carpets in vanilla.
The extra wood panel to the left of the window is a tool rack. As soon as I saw this picture I realized I should place it on the window border so as not to disrupt the wall pattern.
The far corner still looks a bit bare and I was thinking about what to put there. But I couldn't think of any compelling use so I'll skip it for now.
Next episode: Looking for Aqua shards under Backwash Bay.
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.
Thank you.
PS !! episode 99! What's in store for 100?
(if you don't actually have stabilizers for whatever reason, you could totally just fake it with a metallurgy block and some redstone torches!)
Glad to hear you find my play and writing inspirational! The feeling is mutual.
I had kind of been toying with the idea of doing something special for episode 100. But I hadn't really planned for it and - OMG, it's almost here and I've done no planning. I can probably combine digging for shards with making the Primal Staff into one episode - that's a substantive accomplishment.
Empour writes:
Putting some nodes in the trade hall for recharges is a great idea. Actually the trade hall is a good size and shape for a node "room". This is by accident, unless Azanor planned out his distances to favor medium-sized high-symmetry buildings, which happens to be my style. I probably won't put in enough to need stabilizers, though - you can fit in 26 before you need stabilizers, and I just don't see needing that many. I may play around with your idea of decorative nodes while I'm at it.
edit: the editor is *so* messed up.
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.
Rather than focusing on thaumcraft, how about doing something to highlight your mods, and exploration of the world? (That's a lot more interesting to me than Thaumcraft, actually).
* 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?
Yeah, that would probably be better, but like I said, 100 is already here. I have actually been holding off on exploring for a while because I was hoping to do a Mystcraft bridge first but I haven't yet gotten to it and it looks like I won't have time. I'm planning a big deep ocean exploration to look at the medium island creation in Climate Control and I think I'll do it next. I had been thinking about rewriting the separation routines first but I can rewrite them during the trip and maybe do a before vs. after comparison.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
In an ideal world.
If any of you ever manage to visit it, could you drop me a postcard?
In *this* world, I got up to Episode 98 before I knew it and the long-term plans I had (adding some more features to Climate Control, and touring some new areas to see how they work and show them off) weren't even started. So I scrabbled about for some accomplishment for Episode 100, and came up with finishing a Primal Staff. After this I'll set off on a big expedition to look at what is probably one of the best features of Climate Control, the ability to make medium and small islands that actually fit on vanilla Minecraft maps.
So, it was time to head down under Lazy River Landing and dig up so Aqua shards.
I add one post to the iffy spot on the fence so the villager at least can't just walk out. I also put aside my Hasted boots because they are about to break, and I need to reserve them for safe situations.
I head downstairs to the ravines, offing one slime on the way. When I reach them I proceed along a shelf I'd carved earlier well above the ravine floor.
There's a large lava pool below and they always make me nervous. But water falls pretty well and I obsidianize it from here.
Rather than connecting to the big cave complex and a big exploration, the ravine dead ends not far from where I'd stopped before. So, no big fights for now.
With my back secure, I drop down to the ravine floor and proceed back to make sure it's reasonably safe.
Obviously not entirely safe yet. But this guy, I want to fight! And I do get a pearl out of it.
I start collecting the resources, finding the Aqua shards I wanted. There's a lot here. But I keep getting hostiles at a slow rate - a slime, a zombie, and a creeper.
Around this time I realize I've forgotten to sleep for the night. It's dark outside which means - the stray villagers are zombified. Whoops. Oh well, it was going to happen eventually.
Working back towards the landing, I spot a likely source for the spawns.
I head in and there are TWO creepers waiting for me. I try to fly up and snipe them, but the ceiling is a little low, and they still blow up. I'm high enough not to take much damage, though they leave a big hole in the floor.
I drop an Arcane lamp and the spawns stop. I collect the goodies from the side cave and then go back checking to see if there's anything valuable I missed (I do find a few iron ores I'd missed.)
I have an itch to find my stray Nether Portal in some cave somewhere. So I start cutting a tunnel into the side to see if I can find it. Unfortunately I didn't take any screenshots of the portal coordinates so I don't know where it is exactly. Around the location where I estimate it will be I do hear some zombies. I'm digging at diamond level, which is a bit low, so I figure I'm below them.
Well, I have a way to find them now. I unleash the Hound!
And he just stands there. They're loud enough, but apparently not close enough. I try several other spots for the same result.
At this point, I've collected about a half stack of Aqua Shards, so I have what I need. So I put off the great cave search for another day and head back to the village.
As I head back I spot a loose wizard. I check his trades, and he has a knowledge fragment trade. Nice! I can use these to pick up stray researches.
You can sit in Bibliocraft chairs, so I do so to check the view from the dining table. New moon rising. I have to eat dinner here someday.
I head back through the Nether connection, but I forget to switch to my Haste boots. It is *way* slower with the regular boots. But, still a lot faster than the boat.
I've been using the Hand Mirror to send back the items I collect, apart from coal which I wanted to trade with the villagers. When I get back to the Winter Tower, I check the mirror chest to make sure everything is right, and pick up what I want.
Worked like a charm! A side benefit is that I can use this as a kind of accumulator - I can let rarer ores stack up and haul it down for processing only when there's a full stack, or I need it.
I need to brew up some Gelum before starting, so while that's on I head downstairs for upkeep. I toss some ores in the crusher, some stones in the furnace, and use my levels to make another trophy sword, this of Metallurgy Orichalcum.
That one is pretty nice, actually.
Back upstairs, I make another Icy Rod for the Primal staff infusion. I already have a Reed Rod from before so 2 down, 7 to go.
I have to roast some mushrooms for Tenebrae for the next rod, Obsidian.
While that's going I plant some more mushrooms downstairs to keep my supply going. I have red mushrooms in my tunnels to complement the brown mushroom in the forest outside.
I also convert the essences I bought into 21 (!) Salis Mundus. An embarassment of riches!
Back upstairs, it's dark, so I do an Enderman check, and find one.
As usual, I chase it around quite a bit. The tower is a lousy place to fight Endermen because there are so many places they can get stuck, and most times I whack it it teleports to *another* hiding spot. After several encounters and teleports, I hit it on the west balcony but either it didn't drop a pearl, or I didn't kill it and this time it teleported away.
I grind through the rest of the primal aspect rods, which are easy infusions, although there are a lot of them.
Now it's time to make the silverwood rods to serve as the base for the infusion. This actually needs more of all the primal essentias than the individual rods did. I'm out of Ordo, so I roast some buttons for Machina which I spin down to Ordo. I'm also piling up some Essentias, so I spin some Arbor down to get Terra (which I also need).
For symmetry, I place each shard for the infusion next to the matching primal essentia.
When I'm finally ready, it seems the world is trying to stop me. It starts raining in the Magical Forest and snowing in the surrounding Cold Taiga and Tundra. This produces a weird effect as the snowflakes drift over the biome boundary and mix with the rain where I'm standing.
Even though it's day, a zombie wanders up to try to stop me too (he can because it's precipitating.) But he can't get across the fence.
I fire up the infusion. It takes a while, and I turn around and zap the zombie with my Icy Staff to pass the time.
Now it's time for the Primal Staff infusion itself - and it turns out to need even *more* essentia than all the previous stuff put together. Bleah. Ordo itself is starting to be a particular headache because every method for making it produces other essentia I don't want (mostly Aer) or uses nonrenewables I don't want to waste (like glass).
My old division between mining level and ground level is breaking down with the demands of making all these staff components. I have to make several trips up and down to get things that have run out at one of the levels. I'm getting tired of staring at ladders, all this work is getting to be serious drudgery and I'm regretting the choice to go ahead with the Primal Staff at this point. However, I really don't want to look like a flake on my 100th episode, so I power on through.
I butcher a round of chickens while this is going on to get chicken nuggets, which several of the wizard villagers have a taste for. Don't tell McDonald's; the golden arches would clash with my building style. This produces a lot of excess roast chicken, which I plan to convert to essentia. I may need to build a dedicated system to cut down on the drudgery, though.
I finally decide to tackle my ever-growing collection of Aer with a void jar. However, even though it's supposed to draw Essentia while full, I can't get it to empty another jar.
However, on the centrifuge it works as advertised, drawing off and disposing of excess Aer. I can't believe I ended up centrifuging Motus (which I've often been short of) for Ordo but - that's what I did. So I won't get any more, but for now I'm stuck with 30+phials of useless Aer.
The cold climate seems to be affecting Spunkie and he's huddling next to the Alchemical Furnace for heat.
Finallly - FINALLY! - I have everything I need and I'm ready to go.
The infusion is huge - 256 Vis and 9 items. The instability is so high I'm seeing instability flashes in spite of my big candle room, which worries me. In the end, nothing goes wrong, but it does take 2 and and half minutes to run.
I have my staff core! I'm done! I'm done! I'm - wait, I'm not done, I still need to make caps.
Oh great, I have to roast a little more Auram for that.
When that's done I put everything on the Arcane Workbench to be assembled and -
Insufficient Vis. I have a maxed-out sceptre and it still needs to be COMPLETELY full to make this. Well, at least that's easy to fix - with yet another trip on the tower ladders.
Finally I'm done - for real this time.
I take a selfie with my trophy in the armory. It might not look all that remarkable - although it does have some cool runes I can see when it's in my hand - but it's a real powerhouse. If I can get a Frugal enchantment, it can jar 4 nodes by itself. It also auto-recharges up to 25 Vis, so it can always use foci even without any source of Vis.
Next episode: preparing to explore the deep oceans.
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.
hahaha nice. congrats!
Also- You mentioned small and medium islands being something CC can do, but looking through the configs, I see nothing for small islands. Are they some magical 1-biome thing that you only have in your version?
##########################################################################################################
# ocean control parameters
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
# Frequencies are x per thousand but a little goes a very long way because seeds grow a lot. About half the total continent frequencies is the percent land. For worlds with 1.7-like generation set large island seeds to about 300. That will largely fill the oceans after seed growth.
##########################################################################################################
"ocean control parameters" {
# frequency of large continent seeds, about 8000x16000
I:"Large Continent Frequency"=0
# frequency of large island seeds, about 1000x2000
I:"Large Island Frequency"=10
# frequency of medium continent seeds, about 4000x8000
I:"Medium Continent Frequency"=0
# frequency of medium island seeds, about 500x1000
I:"Medium Island Frequency"=60
# True reduces the chance of landmasses merging
B:SeparateLandmasses=true
# frequency of small continent seeds, about 2000x4000
I:"Small Continent Frequency"=0
}
Your secret project config will work pretty well, except that there won't be many bridgeable gaps. I'll see about making the separation procedure work for same size landmasses (I know how to do it; it's just kind of persnickety work). I'll also check the functionality, based on sirdave's comment.
Edit: I'm pretty sure that at least for my version of TC, there's only a primal staff. I think Azanor deliberately wanted it to be impossible to use a self-recharging item for crafting.
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 want to look at the small islands Climate Control can place in the oceans. In my biggest expedition so far, I explored the coastline of the lands beyond the ocean around my spawn continent. This time i'm going to explore the oceans between those coasts and my spawn continent.
This is my most recent map wall pic. My spawn continent is the landmass near the center. My boat, however, is at Lazy River Landing, at the left edge of the almost-fully explored island on the far right. My expedition will launch from there. I'm going to go counterclockwise around the central landmass, running search patterns in the ocean to try to find the medium islands. I plan to run fairly tight patterns, as the medium islands can be just single biomes, (about 256 blocks across) although they are usually somewhat bigger.
With the settings I currently have, medium islands can often merge with other landmasses, including each other. I recently wrote a new version that would reduce that and was planning to install it to see how it worked. However, I realized it might produce some obnoxious problems. The problem is that it works at all levels. It's a bit complicated to explain, but basically when I switch, I may get large islands or even continents appearing where I have water now. They will be truncated by the chunk wall prevention system, so I won't even have a good idea of their real coastlines. I'd rather not see that, so I'm going to stick with the current system.
I have a number of other goals for this expedition. First, I'm going to collect a number of nodes for my node room. I'll bring a *lot* of glass for this. Wood I can chop onsite if needed. Second, I'm going to look for stones to create a faux sky and ground for my Mana Bean farm. I'm planning for greenschist for the ground and blueschist for the sky. I (think I) know some locations, both quite a ways from my Winter Tower base, but they're pretty close to where I'm going to seach, so I can pick them up. Third, I'm hoping to collect some of the woods for Biomes o' Plenty and Highlands for more building options. Lastly, I'm going to try to build some outposts on this trip.
The first thing I'll need is a place to put all the stuff I hope to collect. Trunkie and Spunkie can only hold so much. So, most of it I'll send back by hand mirror. But, I need space to collect it at my base where the mirror will send things too. So I expand the chest set to three double chests. Along with the hungry chest recieving the items and the three hoppers, I have a storage of 4 double chests.
I butcher all the chickens in the lower pen before I go. They might be in a spawn chunk and I don't want them slowing the game down. The egg producers in the upper pen stay.
I figure out why some of my fir saplings haven't been sprouting. The problem is fir leaves above them, which are apparently blocking their growth (since they aren't air). Because they're big trees, sometimes it's not too obvious there's no room for growth. This means firs aren't good for tree farms, as it's easy to plant "dud" seedlings. I'll still leave them out around the tower, as they look good; I'll just have to go a little farther out to chop wood.
I use my levels from the chicken ranch to make another trophy sword, this of Metallurgy Ceruclase. It looks pretty good, and I pick up Smite IV on the enchant. This could be very useful against the Wither someday.
I charge up my staves more before I go. Even after multiple chargings, I still don't have enough Perdito, Ordo, Ignis, or even Terra. I definitely will be able to use the nodes I plan to get.
With the Winter Tower basically boarded up for my trip, I head through the Nether connection to Lazy River Landing, and my boat. Of course, I do some trading there first.
The original wizard (yes, it's him, even though the screenie can't show it) is looking wistfully out into the desert here. No doubt he misses his original librarian, who wandered out into the desert, ignored my pleas to come inside (seriously, I spent about half an hour trying to lure him and the other strays back in), and hasn't been seen for days. Life can be tragic sometimes.
Trading with another village wizard, I get a real prize of a trade: a shard trade! This is fantastic, as it makes the main nonrenewable Thaumcraft resource renewable.
I do use one Explorercraft feature I should have used a long time ago - the ability to make maps with arbitrary centers. Vanilla maps now have to be on a grid, to make it realistically possible to make map walls, but Explorercraft has other ways to align maps. So, I make a Explorercraft 1x1 blank map with a compass and a piece of Explorercraft map paper, and activate in the town square. This makes a map nicely centered on the town rather than wherever the grid comes out. This will be useful for future plans, and for describing village events. The little brown "island" in the mouth of the river is my Archimedes' Ships boat, which I'll use for my expedition.
One last snooze in my own bed before I go. It might be a really long time before I sleep in a nice place like this.
And, of course, one last selfie on the prow of my boat before I set out.
Next episode: the northwestern seas.
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.
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.