For having an end-game world, I don't have much "liquid wealth"—loose emeralds, diamonds, gold, ghast tears and the like. Compared with other legit vanilla worlds about mine's age, worlds like Mr_N_Derman's and Courageous_Marinade's, I'm a pauper.
I do my share of branch mining, but it's certainly not one of my favorite aspects of game play. The part of it I like is discovering deep subterranean adventuring locations like caves, ravines and abandoned mineshafts. While branch mining, I've collected enough diamonds that, considering Mending, I'll likely never want for any ever again. I've also unearthed a fair amount of gold.
This gold farm is not meant to collect gold for the sake of having it sit around in chests in my treasury. Gold is a useful resource and some large-scale projects demand vast sums of the glittering metal. Plus, like I say, I really burned through it with all those apples. Not that I don't still have plenty of surplus, looking at my "bank account:"
Of course, I have a bit of gold scattered around at various brewing locations. I keep about a half dozen fairly well stocked, not to mention a "mobile lab" in a shulker box. But, the above pictures are a fairly close representation of my precious metals and stones, other than lapis, which I've always kept at the two enchanting locations, both of which are directly beside skeleton XP farms, one at Skull Gorge and the other beneath Castle Midgard. I also stopped keeping redstone. Whereas I try my best to avoid mining iron, coal, redstone and lapis to keep it from clogging my inventory, I'll actually throw away redstone and coal if I accidentally strike it. I'm sure I'm not the only one!
But, man, would I love to have all the gunpowder, zombie flesh and string I've tossed! I once told myself to stop hording all the stuff because I'd never find a use for it. Well, now that I burn through gunpowder to fuel my rockets and have villagers that will trade both zombie flesh and string for emeralds, I'm cursing myself for breaking six double chests full of the stuff and letting it fade away. Oh well!
***
After sharing private discourse with Mr_N_Derman, I've decided to use a design if not identical, then at least very similar to his. Regardless of the exact design, the first order of business is hollowing out a very large cube under the castle and in order to do that, I built a fully-powered beacon and engaged Haste II. For small projects, the time spent constructing and deconstructing a beacon can be counter intuitive, but for large-scale excavations—along with an Efficiency V, Mending, Unbreaking III diamond pick—it's a must!
If you've never used an Efficiency V diamond pick with Haste II against stone, it's like a laser beam. To say it's "instant" doesn't describe how fast it tears though stone. In fact, if you don't have a strong computer, it's so fast that Minecraft can sometimes glitch causing the block to enter an invisible half-solid state. It's annoying. It's like an invisible, indestructible spider web that also causes suffocation. It's why I don't hold left click with an Efficiency V diamond shovel while removing dirt scaffolding below me; dropping into such a glitched block invites suffocation. It's scary. Restarting Minecraft takes care of it, but I wish F3+A to reload all chunks sufficed.
Another concern when using Efficiency V diamond picks with Haste II is accidentally breaking the pick! One can rip through stone so fast that even with Unbreaking III and an already-amazing durability, it's not hard to buzz through a double-digit durability score in an instant. It's easy to forget to keep a close eye on your durability bar while mindlessly shredding stone. My jaw dropped when I saw how close I'd come to doing just that:
Last time I checked, I told myself it still had pleeennnty of red left on the meter. Yikes, that was close.
Another important precaution to remember is lighting the floor in such massive excavation projects, especailly against the danger of falling creepers. No amount of enchanted diamond armor will reliably protect a player against a kamikaze creeper. Ever since 1.4.2, creepers detonate when they drop on top of the player, which they actively seek to do.
No pictures for obvious reasons, but right after I engaged my beacon, I turned to see a creeper already fully charged and ready to blow. I was listening to music in my headphones and didn't hear the hiss of his fuse. BOOM! He exploded right in my face on the side of the iron pyramid, vaporizing four iron blocks and knocking loose another few. Took me to half hearts or so.
Didn't scare me nearly as much as when a spider dropped on me!
Before that, I was taking a progress picture:
See it on the edge of the very corner, there? Yeah, well, I didn't at the time. When it dropped on me I was so shocked that it physically hurt. I killed it with the pick, not because I didn't want to scroll to my sword, but because I wanted it to hurt more. It's lucky I didn't switch to my shovel.
(Above) About done with the first half
Notice the beacon is on the second "floor." I like to look straight up and walk forward as I mine. That keeps the ceiling level and I don't have to worry about "scratching" it (or walls), which is very easy to do!
(Above) The first half excavated
Take a look at that 1.7.10 terrain generation! No 1.8+ materials to clog up my inventory. Though I do like andesite, if I want it, I'll go mine it specifically. Granite is too de-saturated, too pink for my liking and diorite looks like rocky road ice cream; not something I'd use to build.
As Castle Midgard is built atop a cliff on the edge of the Olympian Mountain Range, I'm not too far below sea level here. The ceiling is Y=61, if I remember correctly. It's an important consideration as the pigmen must fall 25 blocks and the portal frames are 23. To get the hoppers under there, and to account for variation in bedrock level, one might conservatively estimate the killing floor needs to be no lower than Y=7-9 or so; that doesn't leave a whole lot of room!
***
The "spiral staircase" toward the left of the last two screenshots is from the end of the Stone Age. It was chiseled out by a stone pick. It leads from beside Old Tower down to a small ravine. It was dug going upwards from the cave connecting to the ravine and I recall being surprised when I exited the side of the cliff upon which the old fort was constructed. I didn't realize I was right below my base.
To procrastinate take a screenshot of the top of the staircase—which was sealed off long ago—I dug into the deepest recesses of my backup archive, all the way back to the Stone Age: August 26, 2014, when I have only just over a month of game play, real time. It was my third backup file, actually. I opened it in this version (actually 1.12 since I've not bothered to upgrade to 1.12.1 yet). It was a trip back in time.
I materialized in the Brinemire Swamp to the north of what would become Castle Midgard. No need for pictures, but it's a subterranean base and I spent a lot of time there. It's built into a ravine that intersects an abandoned mineshaft. Anyway, I was wearing iron armor, had all stone tools and was holding an iron sword with trivial enchantments that was dropped by a zombie. Reminiscing, I still remember how and where I lost this sword.
I changed to spectator mode and flew south toward the old fort. My first indication that I was approaching "home" was the same thing it was long ago when the meager 12- or 16-chunk render distance was half the 32 maximum I now use. I've never given the small rock formation a proper name, but internally I call it "The Point," though I've recently considered "Odin's Spear." It's shaped a bit like an arrow-pointing-up. I never bothered with a tall obelisk ("newbie tower") near the fort because The Point was always the first thing to load and it was always so highly visible.
(Above) "Where's the sky-scraping Tower Midgard? Where's Yggdrasil the World Tree? Oh, this is nearly three years past, August 26, 2014."
In the above screenshot, toward the left side on the skyline, the three trees barely visible through the mist at the edge of the render distance are called "The Three Kings" and grow near the summit of Mt. Olympus, the cloud-level (Y=127) world spawn. In current time, Yggdrasil grows atop the tallest crest of hills just to the right of The Point there in the center of the above screenshot. In the foreground, notice the brown sheep beside the torch. That's now part of King's Road (actually called King's Hill), a clearing through Bleach Bone Forest both to the west of the castle and to the north, stopping at the Brinemire Swamp. Brinemire is called that because it is bisected by an ocean ("brine" means salt water). So, actually, there would be both an East and West Brinemire, but I never, ever go to the east half. I did, however, map the whole region in a fully-zoomed out map by boat in 1.8, which is before we got the "off hand." Twice, as I lost the originals.
(Above) Closer, still facing south
My first ever laid cobblestone, and thus naturally the first standing stone as well, is barely visible to the left third of the screenshot. It sticks up like a tiny little finger. It's actually way past those mountains, but it looks like it's on the slope.
(Above) Closer still
That cobblestone decent at the base of the cliff in the above screenshot is still there and it leads directly to the Treasury Vault at Y=12 below the castle. Back then, it led to what I called the "Underdark" after the Dungeons & Dragons module of the same name. More and more caves beneath the fort.
Finally, there it is, just below the fort, the former location of the exit to the head of that staircase that now runs into the gold farm:
My trip to nostalgia wasn't quite satiated and I loaded up an Oct. 11, 2014 save, this one well into the Iron Age yet before the time of the First Nether Crusade, a grandiloquent, over-the-top name for the couple days or so I spent running around in the Nether killing wither skeletons for their skulls to summon the first Wither.
(Above) The old fort Oct. 11, 2014. Horses! Kitt in gold armor, his mate Kat, their colt Bandit, Cloud Jumper, Speedy and two without names
Here's a screenshot from today of a somewhat-similar angle as the above two pictures, though not exact as that would have just been a face full of stone bricks:
In the above screenshot, notice that the cobble standing stone on the right side of the Oct. 11, 2014 image is still there today. It marks the north-south axis of something far off to the west. I've forgotten what. Might have just been a proto-Longbridge, but I believe it's a western obelisk on the edge between the seemingly-endless Bleach Bone Forest and the expansive plains that stretch past the horizon. Remember, this is a large biome world, so that's not altogether hyperbole.
***
Having returned back to the future-present, I cleared the second, lower half of the gold farm room:
After that, I wiped away the floor separating the two halves:
After vacuuming:
Here's the haul:
Of those 7 double chests about 3 are of stone, 1.5 of cobble, and one-half of dirt. I also mined about 1.5 stacks of iron ore, 2.5 stacks of coal ore and a whole lot of loose coal, and 3 stacks of gravel.
That unfinished stair case leads down to the Treasury Vault, so carting it all down there didn't take too long.
Before that, I must "recharge" Everbite, my Silk Touch pick down at the skeleton spawner XP farm . . .
(Above) The stairs leading down to the skeleton XP farm; all floors are slabbed
(Above) A four-way intersection, looking east; again, all floors are slabs—lighting is for visibility or decoration
(Above) Looking north (left from the intersection in the last screenshot), the door leads to what was once "The Underdark," but the darkness has long since been illuminated
(Above) Looking south (right from the intersection) at the AFK area and enchantment table (Not pictured: a brewing station to the right of the enchantment area)
(Above) Continuing south up the short stairs from the intersection
I looked for a skeleton spawner for more than a year and finally found one about 1km from the castle (at Skull Gorge, one of three "bases"), only to much later find one right directly below the castle! Ahead and to the left is a small but well-furnished outpost:
The iron doors to the left and right lead to now-lit caves (and a ravine) and the four double chests contain a bit of supplies but are otherwise full of drops and materials from caving. Of course, now that all the caves have been explored, I never use this area any longer, but it saved me from having to climb the 1,000 stairs all the way to Old Tower each time my inventory needed emptied. Outposts built before Mending each at least got a "ceremonial" anvil. While I doubt actually used this one, I've went through several at outposts.
Yes, Castle Midgard is so expansive it has outposts in its basement.
(Above) Rounding the corner of the skeleton spawner, looking to the left at the enchanting and brewing station
Gah! Just noticed there's a slab instead of a stair in that corner. Gotta fix that.
I didn't take a pic, but to the left is a hallway to a (temporary) cactus farm and a balcony overlooking a ravine in a large room. The cacti came from a desert that I found during my return trip from my six real-time-day journey to the south to find a jungle in this large-biome world. It's the only desert I've found and I don't want to ever have to travel 25km (25,000 blocks) to return!
(Above) The brewing and enchanting station beside the AFK area
The bookshelves slide away after the press of a button (to a T-flip-flop) to storage for enchanted items and a passage through a glass-walled lava pit that eventually leads back to a hallway close to the gold farm room.
The button near the glass between the Nether wart pours water from the ceiling. The wart than filters through the soul sand and is pushed up into the chest on the left. One can open the chest and watch it quickly fill up with wart.
Most of my other brewing stations, other than the one in Old Tower, have a health potion in an item frame as a decoration. This one, however, has a night vision potion. This brewing station was needed because I was swigging down night vision potions while building the skeleton XP farm. Otherwise, I would have been blind most of the time. No, I won't up my brightness from the default, "moody." That's cheating as everyone will agree (just kidding!).
And finally, the AFK station:
That little chest contains Flame/Infinity/Mending bow drops (not that I don't have a double chest full of them) and gold stuff for smelting. On the other side is a water-filled "trashcan" for bones, arrows, and other junk. It doubles as a water basin for the nearby brewing station.
I'd say I "charged" my Silk Touch pick twice and my Fortune III pick once (then topped them both off after finishing). Though I hated the new max-cramming rule forced upon SSP by default, all it actually did was make me check the game a little more often. In the process, I found that I was AFK'ing for way, way too long before the rule, so it was actually beneficial to me!
I don't know how long it takes to get 25 skeletons built up. Not long enough for me to notice while I'm surfing. Usually, I let it go longer than necessary because I'm not done surfing the Web or writing a post like this or whatever. So, it's as "optimized" as it needs to be for me.
This post is approaching 3,000 words long, so we're going to have to save pictures of the Treasury Vault for another time.
Thanks for reading!
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Skelly, just widen the kill-spot to 3x1, so more can build up. BTW, are you sure the light level inside it is <7? I see a torch sorta close in your picture, I can't tell how many blocks away.
And regarding the style, you might like this little idea; item frame and cobble slab;
Well, cats are all the way back at the jungle, though getting there by rocket-powered elytra might not take too long, I'd say I'd need more than the two pair (both Mending, Unbreaking III) I have to make the round trip. It would be roughly 50,000 blocks round trip. Of course, I could shorten the distance (but not the time getting there), by a fair amount through the Nether, but that would still be more than 6,000-block trip. However, I'm just not that motivated to undertake such a huge journey. I wouldn't mind having cats, but I honestly don't like "pets" in this game. I had one dog, Fang, in another SSP world before this one. His AI was so woefully stupid he was way more trouble than he was worth.
In real life, I have four horses and two dog companions that accompanies me on most my rides and hikes. They aren't so stupid that they would, say, walk off a cliff or through glowing-hot lava.
The AI in Minecraft is so poor that villagers and animals don't seem like living things to me. I mean, everyone has to have a little bit of a suspension of disbelief when playing video games—we know characters, animals, monsters and such aren't really alive—but in Minecraft, they just don't behave close enough to life for me to have any desire to interact with them as such.
Add to that the fact that they like to suffocate in nearby walls and randomly teleport by your side no matter where you are though they are supposed to be sitting back at home and I just don't want the hassle.
I could widen the drop area, you're very right, and I might do so. That's so simple I can't believe I hadn't considered it. Thanks!
I checked all the light levels long ago before adding the water.
Yeah, those "wall sconces" have been around for a long time and when I first built the castle I gave them a go. However, I felt the holders drew the eye too much. I may go back to using them in certain places, though. We'll see.
Thanks for the advice!
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Well, cats are all the way back at the jungle, though getting there by rocket-powered elytra might not take too long, I'd say I'd need more than the two pair (both Mending, Unbreaking III) I have to make the round trip. It would be roughly 50,000 blocks round trip.
Really tiny update, but first a tad more nostalgia:
Looking off the crenelations of the old fort in one of the Stone or Iron Age backup saves, forget which
View today from the same exact spot
Also, while I don't have much time to play, I did open a portal to hell in the gold farm room, just to make sure nothing would go haywire. The first portal I ever opened was in the old fort's basement and I kept the 10 obsidian in a chest after tearing it down. So, I used it to test the spot.
Just a portal to Hell in my basement
It led to this one of the three Iron Age Nether forts:
Now, I'm really wondering if I should have a "Return to the Jungle" issue for the journal in my sig . . .
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I assume you have a dedicated portal in the castle that takes you to that Iron Age Nether fort? As long as you have just an auto farm, then no pigmen will get aggroed, and there will be no issues. But if you had a farm where you aggroed the pigmen by manually killing them, it would be possible for angry pigmen to go thru the farm portals and end up at that Nether Fort portal, waiting for the next time you arrive there. Thats why mine has an on/off circuit so I kill the pigmen after I've turned the portals off...
I like your underground areas, do look like the kind of thing you'd find under a castle. I've never bothered with a farm using dungeon spawners, I always thought they were quite slow. Especially as I have Gold/Blaze/Guardian farms which can provide me plenty of XP in quick bursts. But I have located three Cave spider spawners in a straight line recently, 16 blocks between the 1st and the 3rd, but they don't make good farms for XP apparently as Cave Spiders are able to get thru 1 block gaps. Wondering if I had a one block gap with a trapdoor on it to reduce the gap, but allow me to kill them thru it ...
As Herb said you could widen the kill spot in the Skeleton farm of yours. I had to do this in the recent MumboJumbo blaze spawner I built, so I could afk for more than 5 mins!
As if to herald how frustrating this play session was going to be, a fully-armored skeleton with a flame bow leaped from the exposed caves to attack me:
Anyways . . . Somehow, I managed to miscalculate how tall the space was. The ceiling needs to be another 4 or even 5 blocks higher. That's a real issue because I can't build any higher. At all. Turns out, I can't move even 1 block in any but one direction due to existing structure.
That means going lower, if that's even possible, and I'm worried it isn't—not if I'm going to have a 25-block drop to kill the pigmen so I can leave this run all night as I'd like.
Even if I can lower it, now I need stairs and such to go from the gold farm room to the hallway I should not have built, which means moving the room (thankfully) the one direction it can, to the west.
This could be quite a bind.
Of course, I could vacate this location entirely, losing all progress and leaving this massive room to stand empty, a wasted space. I may be forced to do so.
Just posting because I'm rather bummed out at the moment.
Regarding horrible NPC AI... well, isn't that why there's a mod that's literally called "Better than Wolves"? LOL. The vanilla companion animals are such a waste of a concept...
Agreed. Much like the Woodland Mansions—very cool in concept and design, except that all the new monsters can't see past their nose and thus, a player needs only a mundane bow and a stack of arrows to clear one with ease.
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Anyways . . . Somehow, I managed to miscalculate how tall the space was. The ceiling needs to be another 4 or even 5 blocks higher. That's a real issue because I can't build any higher. At all. Turns out, I can't move even 1 block in any but one direction due to existing structure.
That means going lower, if that's even possible, and I'm worried it isn't—not if I'm going to have a 25-block drop to kill the pigmen so I can leave this run all night as I'd like.
So you've miscounted the overall height from under Castle Midgard to bedrock? Ahh, bummer! I thought in our original discourse you had more height than I did! Anyway, all is not lost; dont forget you could make the portals slightly shallower (at a smallish cost of around 5% of drop rates per block height lost I reckon). Should still average near 3 blocks of gold an hour if you lost 4 blocks from the portal height ... I'm also pretty sure my pigmen are dying from a 24 block drop height, so another block height gained there if you are basing it on 25...
I know your build uses staircases a lot in keeping with the design of the build I guess, but I actually access my farm thru a 1 block ladder shaft with a 1 block water drop shaft a block away from it to reach the farm quick. You might consider that if its possible, if space is a premium ...
So you've miscounted the overall height from under Castle Midgard to bedrock? Ahh, bummer!
No, thank the gods! Not quite that bad. Very nearly so, though. I can raise the new gold farm's ceiling, just not in this exact spot. Much of my work will go to "waste," but not all.
In the last big update when I cleared the cube of space, I thought it was of a high enough dimension. I thought I was done. But, the ceiling of the new room wasn't high enough. I miscounted its height. I had plenty of room to go higher . . . except the very corner of the new room contained an old redstone XOR switch to the main front entry's piston double-doors. Gah!
So, I had to move the whole room to the west. A bummer, but not a total catastrophe.
Here's the first part of the work, probably all I'll get to do today:
(Above) On the right side of the screenshot will be a grand antechamber to the new gold farm. The left side has a higher ceiling and needs cleared for the gold farm. Shown is the platform I built to stand on as I raised the ceiling.
(Above) The floor I laid to stand on while I raise the gold farm's ceiling.
If it's hard to determine what I'm doing, it will become apparent when I finish with the expansion. However, I don't think I'll get to play Minecraft more tonight.
Anyways, I'll only be able use about one-third of the work I did for the gold farm; I have to excavate the other two-thirds to the west anew.
Looking on the bright side, that leaves a fantastic space to create a grand antechamber to the gold farm!
I'm imaginging a vaulted ceiling with waterfalls and ceilings and a bridge over a moat to gold-block piston doors. I have plenty of room!
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Haven't played too much since last update. Cleared out the expansion (and turned brightness to "bright" for screenshots):
A small amount of the cobble in the ceiling in the last picture contains redstone I'm unwilling to move.
So, as one can see, I did get to use some of my work. Again, on the bright side, the antechamber will be quite large, giving me plenty of room to decorate.
I then placed 23 blocks of stone in my hotbar so I didn't have to count and started to mock up the obsidian. I pillared up. The last block touches the dirt ceiling, so there's enough room.
(Above) A two-block gap between the dual sets of nine 23x23 portals on each side
(Above) The top of the portals are two blocks separated from air, one of the blocks being the lawn
(Above) This time, it's a zombie, but creepers have also tried to sabotage the effort
While procrastinating, I installed a pre-1.12 green carpet texture (just the green carpet) and while I was at it, a no-streak glass texture. Also, since the little AFK fishing farm—that little house that was by the vegetable and melon crops—quit working during my long hiatus, I tore it down.
So nice to have my lawn back and to be able to look out windows without those super-annoying streaks blocking the view.
Next update, I imagine I'll have dug downwards about 30 blocks, hopefully without hitting anything and with plenty of room to build all the mechanics. We'll see!
I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
Thanks for reading!
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I'd love to have terracotta, but the chances of me finding a mesa aren't great and I'm not digging up all the clay it would take to obtain a meaningful amount (i.e. a half-dozen double chests or so).
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Isn't it amazing all that one can accomplish while procrastinating against doing something else?
While the gold farm project hasn't budged, I've managed to finish a few other minor little tasks around the castle including building a small horse stable in the east courtyard. Been meaning to do that for quite some time. I mean, I don't even ride horses any more and haven't for a long, long time.
(Above) The new little horse stable is on the left (south) side of the pic. This is the "back door" to the castle. The spawn atop the Mount Olympus is behind me to the east. Shader is SEUS 11 Extreme.
(Above) Looking at the eastern barbican. When I finally decide on a banner, there will be a number of them hanging here.
(Above) A look at the barbican and new stables.
(Above) Looking east at the sun rise.
(Above) The inside. Two stalls. Nothing fancy at all. Door leads to a battlement.
(Above) A view from the other direction with the keep and tower in the background.
Before I built the stable, I allowed myself to go on a long adventure as a reward for clearing all that stone for the gold farm chamber. Since I had a cartographer, I decided to purchase a Woodland Mansion map from him. As I didn't have that gray Illager banner yet, I hoped the second Mansion would have one for me.
In preparation for the quest, I descend into the recesses of the castle. Sweeping Edge is a new enchantment this version and Witherbane is without it. However, I have bigger plans—a new sword. Witherbane was forged for one singular purpose, to kill withers and wither skeletons. As such, it is a Smite V sword. It served its duty well.
After a year of wielding it, I have decided to go back to Sharpness and also to discard the flaming enchantment. More often than anything, the fire was a nuisance rather than an aide.
At my skeleton spawner, it doesn't take long before Sweeping Edge III is mine and a new sword is born, the first native to Castle Midgard rather than Skullgorge.
(Above) I imagine steam rising from the newborn Frost Fate's chill blade.
With my new sword in hand, I spread my wings and dive from Tower Midgard's Y=256 height. The wind roars as I scream off toward the horizon, propelled by dead creeper dust.
I rocketed west about 14.5 km first, then banked 90 degrees and soared north, buzzing low to the ground, just over the treetops and mountain peaks. After I began my northbound flight, I spotted a somewhat-unusual mountain, so I flew down for a closer look. It's hard to tell, but its peak is just about to touch the clouds at Y=127, so it's pretty tall. Other than its conical shape, what I found unusual is that it was so set apart from any other mountains. It really stood out:
I had to investigate it. Not that I expected to find anything particularly interesting . . .
(Above) Wha—? What the hell is that?! What the hell are those?! Are those alpacas? In Minecraft?!
I try not to use the wiki too much. Mystery is a welcome yet fleeting element and the wiki chases it away with ruthless vigor. Llamas. Okay. Very cool. Not that I need a land-bound pack animal. Murphy the mule never gets ridden as it is, and hasn't since long before shulkers, let alone elytra. Still, it's a rare experience in Minecraft nowadays: a true surprise.
(Above) Ah. I see they are commonplace in a young Minecraft world.
I've explored such a tremendous area around Midgard that the minimum distance I can be from the castle is about 15 km to generate new chunks. Without resulting to mass slaughter, new mobs like these will only spawn on the distant frontier. I'm aware of the polar bears, but as Midgard is a large biome world, I've never discovered a region in which they will spawn. Some day, I'll search them out.
I streak across the sky, high above an expansive desert on my journey toward the target. I see several temples, but I grit my teeth and stifle the urge to land. I don't want to be gone for more than one real-time day. There is a much, much closer desert that I've barely explored. I'm no Lawrence of Arabia. I'll stick to the snow-capped mountains, aspen forests and brackish swamps of Midgard.
After a 14.5 km flight to the west and then another 11 km north, I arrive at the Woodland Mansion. It took perhaps twenty minutes. I wish I had remembered to time the journey. At least the return trip will only be 18.5 km or so. That shouldn't take long at all. It's became quite clear to me that the jungle south of the castle is now a "short" distance.
(Above) Fire in one hand, ice in the other: Ember Reach and the newly-forged Frost Fate.
This time, I bring nine eight-minute night vision potions expecting to use less than six. I think I used four.
(Above) I let him get close as I've never been attacked—let alone hit—by one of these guys. I took one on the chin. I think he did damage, but not much. Two hearts, maybe.
(Above) Ah-ha! My prize!
It doesn't take long to find my ugly treasure: a plain gray banner. Meh, whatever. I tear it down.
There was no excitement had in the Mansion. Again, the myopic enemies can't defend against an attacker at range. A mundane bow and a stack of arrows is all one needs to liberate a Mansion. It's a serious design flaw.
At the same time, there's little reason to enter one. The Totem of the Undying was just as poorly implemented as the monsters—great concept, poor execution. The off hand is better suited for a shield in the early stages of the game, a bow in the later. A fire resistance potion is a far better choice when braving oceans of lava, and the potion won't occupy the off hand. I'm sure it has uses, but for me, one hangs on the wall and the rest collect dust in the junk chest. The Totem is no more valuable to me then that gray banner. It's a trophy, nothing more.
All that aside, I'm happy I got my banner!
Here it is, hanging in its spot:
Upon returning to the castle, I found yet another treasure, but first, a little background: in a hardcore world last year, I found a music disc that wasn't "13" or "Cat," but I didn't want to waste my precious diamonds on making a jukebox. I died before I heard it. That's the only time I've ever found a different music disc. I'm sure I can listen to them on the Internet, but that would spoil all the fun for me.
Well, while creeper hunting at night, I found another music disc, "Blocks" . . .
I took it down into the treasury and played it. Meh. Not my style.
Only recently did I discover that creepers drop them when killed by skeletons, as this one was.
While fighting around that same time, I encountered yet another rarity, a zombie in diamond armor:
He dropped his pants with 65 durability and Projectile Protection III.
Later, while still procrastinating, I surveyed the front lawn. I've wanted to build two fountains on either side of the approach for a long time. Since I have something more important to do, now's the time.
(Above) This is the spot where the first fountain will be built. I really need to overhaul the fountain in front of Old Tower.
And, here's a look at the finished project from the window of Old Tower:
I'll make another just like it on the other side of the road.
I'm not finished procrastinating yet, though. No, not by a long shot! I shoot off back toward the Woodland Mansion with the map in hand; I forgot to fill it. Oops! Well, now's the time. Can't delay that, now can we?
My jaw drops when I first notice the great discovery I have made on the way there . . .
(Above) A mushroom island!
In this large biome world, discovering small, rare biomes is truly fantastic. I've covered a 4x4 area of fully zoomed out maps and explored a great deal more than that without ever finding one, so I can't imagine they are too common.
(Above) I build an obelisk to commemorate the day.
While I would like to capture a mooshroom, it will have to wait for another day. I used my Silk Touch pick to take a stack of mycelium, though I doubt I'll ever use it. After that, I returned to Midgard and contemplated what small tasks absolutely can't wait before continuing work on the gold farm.
Thanks for reading!
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My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
Nice size Woodland Mansion you found there. The only one I've found is about the same size. As you say, the residents don't have much defence against a good bow. I however wanted to keep some of the Vindicators and Evokers alive, so I lured a couple of the Evokers into glass rooms I sealed up. Having found a prison in the mansion, I thought it would be poetic justice to lock up some of those Vindicators in it, which I did by again luring them in, however I misjudged a couple of times and got hacked to death.
Are those banners you were after unique to the Mansion then, or can they be crafted?
Nice size Woodland Mansion you found there. The only one I've found is about the same size. As you say, the residents don't have much defence against a good bow. I however wanted to keep some of the Vindicators and Evokers alive, so I lured a couple of the Evokers into glass rooms I sealed up. Having found a prison in the mansion, I thought it would be poetic justice to lock up some of those Vindicators in it, which I did by again luring them in, however I misjudged a couple of times and got hacked to death.
Are those banners you were after unique to the Mansion then, or can they be crafted?
Poetic justice indeed! Ha ha!
I really think they're all the roughly same size, though. I've found four and they all seemed nearly the same.
The banners are easily craftable; it's just light gray with a white daisy. Unfortunately, it's plain, ugly, and contains no rare materials (like a creeper head, notch apple, or even a wither skull).
However, each of the decorations on display in Old Tower is a piece of memorabilia or a trophy of some sort. The banner would be of no value at all to me had it not been taken from a Woodland Mansion—that is the entirety of its worth. Now, when I look at it, I can say, "I found a mushroom island between here and the Woodland Mansion that banner came from."
As further example, the equipment hanging on the walls (except the sword and bow) is all the first of its kind to run out of durability and hit the level limit for repair (and thus, other than the pick, likely the first diamond tools I ever made on any world). Of course, that was before Mending. They all would have been retired in 1.8.x, I believe, as I don't think I had any diamond tools in 1.7.10, the version in which the world was created. The bow is a Mending and Infinity "blank" and it replaced what I believe was my first "good bow." Of course, its value is that one cannot place Mending and Infinity together on a bow any longer, after the 1.12 update. The diamond sword is now the oft-mentioned Witherbane and it replaced what might have been my first. The jungle sapling in the pot atop the furnaces is from the first and only jungle found in this large-biome world. The dragon head is from the first End Ship I raided and the End City Banner is from the main tower of the first End City I conquered. The Totem is the first I ever collected. So on and so forth.
The suits of enchanted iron armor are made of mob drops, but I keep it available for use as I do wear it from time to time. Worth noting perhaps, one of the boots and one of the pants are Protection IV, Mending, Unbreaking III! The boots also have Depth Strider III. Missing Feather Falling IV, but otherwise god-tier iron.
The green orc banner in the northwest corner by the ladder is new. I just crafted it. I went looking for inspiration for Castle Midgard's banner when I found it. It was perfect for my shield, considering my skin is of an orc.
After looking at my pictures of the east barbican, I decided it needed its corners shaved. The difference is subtle, but I think it's an improvement.
I furnished and lit the new stable and made a quaint little 2x2 well across the road from it, as well as adding some lighting around the courtyard. I don't like the piston-lights, but hostile mobs could spawn within the walls here. While making the improvements, I watched it for two or three full nights and no mobs spawned, so good enough, I suppose. I don't mind that they can walk through the front protcullis; this area is not considered safe as evidenced by the iron doors. I'm in the process of major terraforming beyond the barbican and when finished, very few if any mobs will spawn to the east of the castle. Eventually, this area will become safe as I watch it more over time. I'm just not going to roof the whole courtyard to check the exact light levels of every block.
Here are some updated pics:
(Above) I shaved the corners off the top of the barbican. Subtle, but certainly an improvement. I'll probably remove the torches on the new well's roof.
In other news, yesterday, while working on the improvements (i.e., procrastinating against working on the gold farm), I got a visitor: a zombie villager in a white coat. Any time I see one, I just have to try to turn him. Else, I'll forever wonder if that was the one with the 14 emerald Mending book for sale.
(Above) Make yourself at home.
I let him pursue me all the way through the castle to Old Tower where I had the supplies to cure him. If I would have tried to capture him in the new stable, he would have de-spawned long before I made it to Old Tower.
He brought friends, but I kindly asked them to leave one by one. As we made our way through the castle, he took a frightening amount of damage from my Thorns III breastplate and leggings. Zombie villagers really seem to hate going through doors! I had to take the iron entry door off its hinges. As the world is locked in hard mode, all doors to the outside are iron lest zombies kick them open.
I managed to get him trapped in a dirt cocoon the instant the sun rose.
Once cured, I found he was a cartographer, so I instantly lost all interest in him.
(Above) Living on the edge. It's about a 21-block fall. Certainly a fatal distance if the damage from Thorns carried over.
I just left him alone to his own devices. Knowing Minecraft, he'll either suffocate in a wall or floor, commit suicide, or simply vanish eventually.
However, it's crazy how much of the castle he's explored. I've seen him in places I'd never think he would go. Unless he phases through a wall (which is common in Minecraft), he can't get out because all exits are iron.
I've started calling him Castellan, which means "governor or captain of a castellany and its castle."
It really feels like there's someone else living in the castle now, which makes me want to have a bunch of villagers. We'll see.
Thanks for reading!
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My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
He's selling Depth Strider II for 25 or so emeralds.
As far as I know, I need to trade with him to open up two more book sales. I think the way it goes is, I trade new trades to get him to "level up," trying to sell but also buying if needed. He'll keep leveling up until he's selling two more books than the original. That right?
Thanks for reading!
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My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
Nothing is more annoying these days than to use one of my valuable golden apples and a potion on a white coated zombie villager to find out he's a cartographer. That's when I introduce him to my friend, Mr Bucket-of-red-hot-lava!
Trading wise, you will need to get him to "level" up three times from base for the second book trade, then the next level is the third book trade, then finally a nametag trade. That's why I have a load of paper and a sugar cane farm. I usually end up doing the glass trade as well, as its quite cheap. Sometimes trading with him wont unlock the next level. Seems to be random.
Nothing is more annoying these days than to use one of my valuable golden apples and a potion on a white coated zombie villager to find out he's a cartographer. That's when I introduce him to my friend, Mr Bucket-of-red-hot-lava!
Trading wise, you will need to get him to "level" up three times from base for the second book trade, then the next level is the third book trade, then finally a nametag trade. That's why I have a load of paper and a sugar cane farm. I usually end up doing the glass trade as well, as its quite cheap. Sometimes trading with him wont unlock the next level. Seems to be random.
Mr. Bucket-Of-Red-Hot-Lava doesn't sound very friendly!
Of course, I've seen your house of horrors, so it's no surprise to me!
I'm using this guide to make an infinite breeder atop one of the castle's towers. Any issues with it?
I don't want a mega farm. I can make this in minutes. It's small and simple.
There are a lot of doors in the castle, but . . . I'm not making an iron golem farm so I figured that was okay. Is it?
How many potatoes should I feed the villagers before placing doors?
EDIT: It's working very well. I tossed the first cute couple like a half-stack of potatoes and they got with it pretty quick. The fact that it's below Castle Midgard with all its doors doesn't seem to have any impact. At first, it seemed to go slowly, but as I moved the other villagers into the chamber, they've picked up the pace.
My screenshots folder if full of villager porn now.
I think the infinite villager breeder works just fine . . .
When I went to bed:
Eight hours and 45 minutes later:
They're surrounded on all four sides by two-blocks-thick glass walls with a glass ceiling as well. It's obviously needed; I see at least three that would have suffocated.
I have a clear glass texture pack. If Mojang would just make the streaks translucent as it is with stained glass! Arg!
I have no idea what I'm even going to do with all those villagers! Getting them sorted might be a pain.
It's very near the gold farm chamber and on the same 'Y' axis. That hall in the upper corner leads past the gold farm chamber's entrance.
Of course, the room is rough and unfinished. It will be expanded and furnished soon.
F3 tells me E: 81/281, so I think that means I'm not pinging off the entity limit. If so, I'm glad, but I'm going to thin the herd considerably.
I'll have to invite Mr. Derman and his friend Mr. RHL Bucket over for dinner.
I'm going to use the same series' transport method to drive them to another area where the valuable ones will find dorms. Others will be invited to leave after being provided a hot bath. A very hot bath.
Unfortunately, the castle was besieged while I stood guard in below. I ran into a zombie within the castle—something that has never happened before.
The cobble stone is an older area of the castle, but it's secure. I've been over every square meter and checked the light level. There are no accessable places for zombies to spawn within the castle. At all.
So, I went looking for the two recently-cured librarian villagers. Playing hide-and-seek in a castle seemingly designed around such a sport would have made that a Herculean task if it weren't for their constant murmuring.
Well, I only found one, Castellanthe cartographer, and he was in the garden looking wistfully at the iron exit . . .
Oh boy. Not good.
Well, I didn't find him. Instead, I found something that's only happened perhaps twice before . . . a broken door. As zombies can break down doors in hard mode, it seems clear that this is a murder scene.
Hopefully, I at least avenged Flynn when I killed the zombie intruder. Otherwise, I'd say he's gone.
It seems keeping a village within my walls will put the castle's defenses to the test. I'm ready for the challenge!
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My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
Ugh, in that second pic down, looks like three of the villagers on the right are squatting down, offering "extra" services! What node of depravity have you opened up in Castle Midgard Sharpe!?
Ugh, in that second pic down, looks like three of the villagers on the right are squatting down, offering "extra" services! What node of depravity have you opened up in Castle Midgard Sharpe!?
Haha!
After telling my (completely-uninterested, non-gamer) girlfriend a little about this villager breeding stuff, she was standing behind me looking over my shoulder as I first turned the monitor on in the morning. She exclaimed while pointing: "What are they doing?!"
As she's not a gamer at all, and right after telling her that I was excited to see if the "Minecraft people" in my "breeder" had "multiplied like bunnies" or not, I really, honestly had to convince her that's not what was going on.
I'm not entirely certain she's convinced that Minecraft isn't some sort of match making simulation game now.
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My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
Why are my villagers stampeding and how do I get them to stop?
I can't get them sorted or push them in this frenzied state. It's like they're all trying to push their way out of the same corner. It's to the place where I'm afraid they're going to suicide themselves on Max Cramming if they're not already. And, I know I have at least one Mending vendor, though his price is steep (38).
I tried sleeping so it would be daylight and restarting Minecraft. Neither worked.
In addition to not sprinting everywhere, this is how they look normally:
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My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
For having an end-game world, I don't have much "liquid wealth"—loose emeralds, diamonds, gold, ghast tears and the like. Compared with other legit vanilla worlds about mine's age, worlds like Mr_N_Derman's and Courageous_Marinade's, I'm a pauper.
I do my share of branch mining, but it's certainly not one of my favorite aspects of game play. The part of it I like is discovering deep subterranean adventuring locations like caves, ravines and abandoned mineshafts. While branch mining, I've collected enough diamonds that, considering Mending, I'll likely never want for any ever again. I've also unearthed a fair amount of gold.
This gold farm is not meant to collect gold for the sake of having it sit around in chests in my treasury. Gold is a useful resource and some large-scale projects demand vast sums of the glittering metal. Plus, like I say, I really burned through it with all those apples. Not that I don't still have plenty of surplus, looking at my "bank account:"
Of course, I have a bit of gold scattered around at various brewing locations. I keep about a half dozen fairly well stocked, not to mention a "mobile lab" in a shulker box. But, the above pictures are a fairly close representation of my precious metals and stones, other than lapis, which I've always kept at the two enchanting locations, both of which are directly beside skeleton XP farms, one at Skull Gorge and the other beneath Castle Midgard. I also stopped keeping redstone. Whereas I try my best to avoid mining iron, coal, redstone and lapis to keep it from clogging my inventory, I'll actually throw away redstone and coal if I accidentally strike it. I'm sure I'm not the only one!
But, man, would I love to have all the gunpowder, zombie flesh and string I've tossed! I once told myself to stop hording all the stuff because I'd never find a use for it. Well, now that I burn through gunpowder to fuel my rockets and have villagers that will trade both zombie flesh and string for emeralds, I'm cursing myself for breaking six double chests full of the stuff and letting it fade away. Oh well!
***
After sharing private discourse with Mr_N_Derman, I've decided to use a design if not identical, then at least very similar to his. Regardless of the exact design, the first order of business is hollowing out a very large cube under the castle and in order to do that, I built a fully-powered beacon and engaged Haste II. For small projects, the time spent constructing and deconstructing a beacon can be counter intuitive, but for large-scale excavations—along with an Efficiency V, Mending, Unbreaking III diamond pick—it's a must!
If you've never used an Efficiency V diamond pick with Haste II against stone, it's like a laser beam. To say it's "instant" doesn't describe how fast it tears though stone. In fact, if you don't have a strong computer, it's so fast that Minecraft can sometimes glitch causing the block to enter an invisible half-solid state. It's annoying. It's like an invisible, indestructible spider web that also causes suffocation. It's why I don't hold left click with an Efficiency V diamond shovel while removing dirt scaffolding below me; dropping into such a glitched block invites suffocation. It's scary. Restarting Minecraft takes care of it, but I wish F3+A to reload all chunks sufficed.
Another concern when using Efficiency V diamond picks with Haste II is accidentally breaking the pick! One can rip through stone so fast that even with Unbreaking III and an already-amazing durability, it's not hard to buzz through a double-digit durability score in an instant. It's easy to forget to keep a close eye on your durability bar while mindlessly shredding stone. My jaw dropped when I saw how close I'd come to doing just that:
Last time I checked, I told myself it still had pleeennnty of red left on the meter. Yikes, that was close.
Another important precaution to remember is lighting the floor in such massive excavation projects, especailly against the danger of falling creepers. No amount of enchanted diamond armor will reliably protect a player against a kamikaze creeper. Ever since 1.4.2, creepers detonate when they drop on top of the player, which they actively seek to do.
No pictures for obvious reasons, but right after I engaged my beacon, I turned to see a creeper already fully charged and ready to blow. I was listening to music in my headphones and didn't hear the hiss of his fuse. BOOM! He exploded right in my face on the side of the iron pyramid, vaporizing four iron blocks and knocking loose another few. Took me to half hearts or so.
Didn't scare me nearly as much as when a spider dropped on me!
Before that, I was taking a progress picture:
See it on the edge of the very corner, there? Yeah, well, I didn't at the time. When it dropped on me I was so shocked that it physically hurt. I killed it with the pick, not because I didn't want to scroll to my sword, but because I wanted it to hurt more. It's lucky I didn't switch to my shovel.
(Above) About done with the first half
Notice the beacon is on the second "floor." I like to look straight up and walk forward as I mine. That keeps the ceiling level and I don't have to worry about "scratching" it (or walls), which is very easy to do!
(Above) The first half excavated
Take a look at that 1.7.10 terrain generation! No 1.8+ materials to clog up my inventory. Though I do like andesite, if I want it, I'll go mine it specifically. Granite is too de-saturated, too pink for my liking and diorite looks like rocky road ice cream; not something I'd use to build.
As Castle Midgard is built atop a cliff on the edge of the Olympian Mountain Range, I'm not too far below sea level here. The ceiling is Y=61, if I remember correctly. It's an important consideration as the pigmen must fall 25 blocks and the portal frames are 23. To get the hoppers under there, and to account for variation in bedrock level, one might conservatively estimate the killing floor needs to be no lower than Y=7-9 or so; that doesn't leave a whole lot of room!
***
The "spiral staircase" toward the left of the last two screenshots is from the end of the Stone Age. It was chiseled out by a stone pick. It leads from beside Old Tower down to a small ravine. It was dug going upwards from the cave connecting to the ravine and I recall being surprised when I exited the side of the cliff upon which the old fort was constructed. I didn't realize I was right below my base.
To
procrastinatetake a screenshot of the top of the staircase—which was sealed off long ago—I dug into the deepest recesses of my backup archive, all the way back to the Stone Age: August 26, 2014, when I have only just over a month of game play, real time. It was my third backup file, actually. I opened it in this version (actually 1.12 since I've not bothered to upgrade to 1.12.1 yet). It was a trip back in time.I materialized in the Brinemire Swamp to the north of what would become Castle Midgard. No need for pictures, but it's a subterranean base and I spent a lot of time there. It's built into a ravine that intersects an abandoned mineshaft. Anyway, I was wearing iron armor, had all stone tools and was holding an iron sword with trivial enchantments that was dropped by a zombie. Reminiscing, I still remember how and where I lost this sword.
I changed to spectator mode and flew south toward the old fort. My first indication that I was approaching "home" was the same thing it was long ago when the meager 12- or 16-chunk render distance was half the 32 maximum I now use. I've never given the small rock formation a proper name, but internally I call it "The Point," though I've recently considered "Odin's Spear." It's shaped a bit like an arrow-pointing-up. I never bothered with a tall obelisk ("newbie tower") near the fort because The Point was always the first thing to load and it was always so highly visible.
(Above) "Where's the sky-scraping Tower Midgard? Where's Yggdrasil the World Tree? Oh, this is nearly three years past, August 26, 2014."
In the above screenshot, toward the left side on the skyline, the three trees barely visible through the mist at the edge of the render distance are called "The Three Kings" and grow near the summit of Mt. Olympus, the cloud-level (Y=127) world spawn. In current time, Yggdrasil grows atop the tallest crest of hills just to the right of The Point there in the center of the above screenshot. In the foreground, notice the brown sheep beside the torch. That's now part of King's Road (actually called King's Hill), a clearing through Bleach Bone Forest both to the west of the castle and to the north, stopping at the Brinemire Swamp. Brinemire is called that because it is bisected by an ocean ("brine" means salt water). So, actually, there would be both an East and West Brinemire, but I never, ever go to the east half. I did, however, map the whole region in a fully-zoomed out map by boat in 1.8, which is before we got the "off hand." Twice, as I lost the originals.
(Above) Closer, still facing south
My first ever laid cobblestone, and thus naturally the first standing stone as well, is barely visible to the left third of the screenshot. It sticks up like a tiny little finger. It's actually way past those mountains, but it looks like it's on the slope.
(Above) Closer still
That cobblestone decent at the base of the cliff in the above screenshot is still there and it leads directly to the Treasury Vault at Y=12 below the castle. Back then, it led to what I called the "Underdark" after the Dungeons & Dragons module of the same name. More and more caves beneath the fort.
Finally, there it is, just below the fort, the former location of the exit to the head of that staircase that now runs into the gold farm:
My trip to nostalgia wasn't quite satiated and I loaded up an Oct. 11, 2014 save, this one well into the Iron Age yet before the time of the First Nether Crusade, a grandiloquent, over-the-top name for the couple days or so I spent running around in the Nether killing wither skeletons for their skulls to summon the first Wither.
(Above) The old fort Oct. 11, 2014. Horses! Kitt in gold armor, his mate Kat, their colt Bandit, Cloud Jumper, Speedy and two without names
Here's a screenshot from today of a somewhat-similar angle as the above two pictures, though not exact as that would have just been a face full of stone bricks:
In the above screenshot, notice that the cobble standing stone on the right side of the Oct. 11, 2014 image is still there today. It marks the north-south axis of something far off to the west. I've forgotten what. Might have just been a proto-Longbridge, but I believe it's a western obelisk on the edge between the seemingly-endless Bleach Bone Forest and the expansive plains that stretch past the horizon. Remember, this is a large biome world, so that's not altogether hyperbole.
***
Having returned back to the future-present, I cleared the second, lower half of the gold farm room:
After that, I wiped away the floor separating the two halves:
After vacuuming:
Here's the haul:
Of those 7 double chests about 3 are of stone, 1.5 of cobble, and one-half of dirt. I also mined about 1.5 stacks of iron ore, 2.5 stacks of coal ore and a whole lot of loose coal, and 3 stacks of gravel.
That unfinished stair case leads down to the Treasury Vault, so carting it all down there didn't take too long.
Before that, I must "recharge" Everbite, my Silk Touch pick down at the skeleton spawner XP farm . . .
(Above) The stairs leading down to the skeleton XP farm; all floors are slabbed
(Above) A four-way intersection, looking east; again, all floors are slabs—lighting is for visibility or decoration
(Above) Looking north (left from the intersection in the last screenshot), the door leads to what was once "The Underdark," but the darkness has long since been illuminated
(Above) Looking south (right from the intersection) at the AFK area and enchantment table (Not pictured: a brewing station to the right of the enchantment area)
(Above) Continuing south up the short stairs from the intersection
I looked for a skeleton spawner for more than a year and finally found one about 1km from the castle (at Skull Gorge, one of three "bases"), only to much later find one right directly below the castle! Ahead and to the left is a small but well-furnished outpost:
The iron doors to the left and right lead to now-lit caves (and a ravine) and the four double chests contain a bit of supplies but are otherwise full of drops and materials from caving. Of course, now that all the caves have been explored, I never use this area any longer, but it saved me from having to climb the 1,000 stairs all the way to Old Tower each time my inventory needed emptied. Outposts built before Mending each at least got a "ceremonial" anvil. While I doubt actually used this one, I've went through several at outposts.
Yes, Castle Midgard is so expansive it has outposts in its basement.
(Above) Rounding the corner of the skeleton spawner, looking to the left at the enchanting and brewing station
Gah! Just noticed there's a slab instead of a stair in that corner. Gotta fix that.
I didn't take a pic, but to the left is a hallway to a (temporary) cactus farm and a balcony overlooking a ravine in a large room. The cacti came from a desert that I found during my return trip from my six real-time-day journey to the south to find a jungle in this large-biome world. It's the only desert I've found and I don't want to ever have to travel 25km (25,000 blocks) to return!
(Above) The brewing and enchanting station beside the AFK area
The bookshelves slide away after the press of a button (to a T-flip-flop) to storage for enchanted items and a passage through a glass-walled lava pit that eventually leads back to a hallway close to the gold farm room.
The button near the glass between the Nether wart pours water from the ceiling. The wart than filters through the soul sand and is pushed up into the chest on the left. One can open the chest and watch it quickly fill up with wart.
Most of my other brewing stations, other than the one in Old Tower, have a health potion in an item frame as a decoration. This one, however, has a night vision potion. This brewing station was needed because I was swigging down night vision potions while building the skeleton XP farm. Otherwise, I would have been blind most of the time. No, I won't up my brightness from the default, "moody." That's cheating as everyone will agree (just kidding!).
And finally, the AFK station:
That little chest contains Flame/Infinity/Mending bow drops (not that I don't have a double chest full of them) and gold stuff for smelting. On the other side is a water-filled "trashcan" for bones, arrows, and other junk. It doubles as a water basin for the nearby brewing station.
I'd say I "charged" my Silk Touch pick twice and my Fortune III pick once (then topped them both off after finishing). Though I hated the new max-cramming rule forced upon SSP by default, all it actually did was make me check the game a little more often. In the process, I found that I was AFK'ing for way, way too long before the rule, so it was actually beneficial to me!
I don't know how long it takes to get 25 skeletons built up. Not long enough for me to notice while I'm surfing. Usually, I let it go longer than necessary because I'm not done surfing the Web or writing a post like this or whatever. So, it's as "optimized" as it needs to be for me.
This post is approaching 3,000 words long, so we're going to have to save pictures of the Treasury Vault for another time.
Thanks for reading!
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
Well, cats are all the way back at the jungle, though getting there by rocket-powered elytra might not take too long, I'd say I'd need more than the two pair (both Mending, Unbreaking III) I have to make the round trip. It would be roughly 50,000 blocks round trip. Of course, I could shorten the distance (but not the time getting there), by a fair amount through the Nether, but that would still be more than 6,000-block trip. However, I'm just not that motivated to undertake such a huge journey. I wouldn't mind having cats, but I honestly don't like "pets" in this game. I had one dog, Fang, in another SSP world before this one. His AI was so woefully stupid he was way more trouble than he was worth.
In real life, I have four horses and two dog companions that accompanies me on most my rides and hikes. They aren't so stupid that they would, say, walk off a cliff or through glowing-hot lava.
The AI in Minecraft is so poor that villagers and animals don't seem like living things to me. I mean, everyone has to have a little bit of a suspension of disbelief when playing video games—we know characters, animals, monsters and such aren't really alive—but in Minecraft, they just don't behave close enough to life for me to have any desire to interact with them as such.
Add to that the fact that they like to suffocate in nearby walls and randomly teleport by your side no matter where you are though they are supposed to be sitting back at home and I just don't want the hassle.
I could widen the drop area, you're very right, and I might do so. That's so simple I can't believe I hadn't considered it. Thanks!
I checked all the light levels long ago before adding the water.
Yeah, those "wall sconces" have been around for a long time and when I first built the castle I gave them a go. However, I felt the holders drew the eye too much. I may go back to using them in certain places, though. We'll see.
Thanks for the advice!
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
Apparently, Unbreaking III elytra have a range of about 48,000 blocks. So, my two pairs would certainly make it there and back. And, it would only take about 15 minutes one-way or so.
Hmmm . . .
Really tiny update, but first a tad more nostalgia:
Also, while I don't have much time to play, I did open a portal to hell in the gold farm room, just to make sure nothing would go haywire. The first portal I ever opened was in the old fort's basement and I kept the 10 obsidian in a chest after tearing it down. So, I used it to test the spot.
It led to this one of the three Iron Age Nether forts:
Now, I'm really wondering if I should have a "Return to the Jungle" issue for the journal in my sig . . .
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
I assume you have a dedicated portal in the castle that takes you to that Iron Age Nether fort? As long as you have just an auto farm, then no pigmen will get aggroed, and there will be no issues. But if you had a farm where you aggroed the pigmen by manually killing them, it would be possible for angry pigmen to go thru the farm portals and end up at that Nether Fort portal, waiting for the next time you arrive there. Thats why mine has an on/off circuit so I kill the pigmen after I've turned the portals off...
I like your underground areas, do look like the kind of thing you'd find under a castle. I've never bothered with a farm using dungeon spawners, I always thought they were quite slow. Especially as I have Gold/Blaze/Guardian farms which can provide me plenty of XP in quick bursts. But I have located three Cave spider spawners in a straight line recently, 16 blocks between the 1st and the 3rd, but they don't make good farms for XP apparently as Cave Spiders are able to get thru 1 block gaps. Wondering if I had a one block gap with a trapdoor on it to reduce the gap, but allow me to kill them thru it ...
As Herb said you could widen the kill spot in the Skeleton farm of yours. I had to do this in the recent MumboJumbo blaze spawner I built, so I could afk for more than 5 mins!
Mintutor now works in 1.13!
MrKite & Mc_Etlam ... I salute you!
Starting mocking up the first portal.
As if to herald how frustrating this play session was going to be, a fully-armored skeleton with a flame bow leaped from the exposed caves to attack me:
Anyways . . . Somehow, I managed to miscalculate how tall the space was. The ceiling needs to be another 4 or even 5 blocks higher. That's a real issue because I can't build any higher. At all. Turns out, I can't move even 1 block in any but one direction due to existing structure.
That means going lower, if that's even possible, and I'm worried it isn't—not if I'm going to have a 25-block drop to kill the pigmen so I can leave this run all night as I'd like.
Even if I can lower it, now I need stairs and such to go from the gold farm room to the hallway I should not have built, which means moving the room (thankfully) the one direction it can, to the west.
This could be quite a bind.
Of course, I could vacate this location entirely, losing all progress and leaving this massive room to stand empty, a wasted space. I may be forced to do so.
Just posting because I'm rather bummed out at the moment.
Agreed. Much like the Woodland Mansions—very cool in concept and design, except that all the new monsters can't see past their nose and thus, a player needs only a mundane bow and a stack of arrows to clear one with ease.
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
So you've miscounted the overall height from under Castle Midgard to bedrock? Ahh, bummer! I thought in our original discourse you had more height than I did! Anyway, all is not lost; dont forget you could make the portals slightly shallower (at a smallish cost of around 5% of drop rates per block height lost I reckon). Should still average near 3 blocks of gold an hour if you lost 4 blocks from the portal height ... I'm also pretty sure my pigmen are dying from a 24 block drop height, so another block height gained there if you are basing it on 25...
I know your build uses staircases a lot in keeping with the design of the build I guess, but I actually access my farm thru a 1 block ladder shaft with a 1 block water drop shaft a block away from it to reach the farm quick. You might consider that if its possible, if space is a premium ...
Mintutor now works in 1.13!
MrKite & Mc_Etlam ... I salute you!
No, thank the gods! Not quite that bad. Very nearly so, though. I can raise the new gold farm's ceiling, just not in this exact spot. Much of my work will go to "waste," but not all.
In the last big update when I cleared the cube of space, I thought it was of a high enough dimension. I thought I was done. But, the ceiling of the new room wasn't high enough. I miscounted its height. I had plenty of room to go higher . . . except the very corner of the new room contained an old redstone XOR switch to the main front entry's piston double-doors. Gah!
So, I had to move the whole room to the west. A bummer, but not a total catastrophe.
Here's the first part of the work, probably all I'll get to do today:
(Above) On the right side of the screenshot will be a grand antechamber to the new gold farm. The left side has a higher ceiling and needs cleared for the gold farm. Shown is the platform I built to stand on as I raised the ceiling.
(Above) The floor I laid to stand on while I raise the gold farm's ceiling.
If it's hard to determine what I'm doing, it will become apparent when I finish with the expansion. However, I don't think I'll get to play Minecraft more tonight.
Anyways, I'll only be able use about one-third of the work I did for the gold farm; I have to excavate the other two-thirds to the west anew.
Looking on the bright side, that leaves a fantastic space to create a grand antechamber to the gold farm!
I'm imaginging a vaulted ceiling with waterfalls and ceilings and a bridge over a moat to gold-block piston doors. I have plenty of room!
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
Haven't played too much since last update. Cleared out the expansion (and turned brightness to "bright" for screenshots):
A small amount of the cobble in the ceiling in the last picture contains redstone I'm unwilling to move.
So, as one can see, I did get to use some of my work. Again, on the bright side, the antechamber will be quite large, giving me plenty of room to decorate.
I then placed 23 blocks of stone in my hotbar so I didn't have to count and started to mock up the obsidian. I pillared up. The last block touches the dirt ceiling, so there's enough room.
While procrastinating, I installed a pre-1.12 green carpet texture (just the green carpet) and while I was at it, a no-streak glass texture. Also, since the little AFK fishing farm—that little house that was by the vegetable and melon crops—quit working during my long hiatus, I tore it down.
So nice to have my lawn back and to be able to look out windows without those super-annoying streaks blocking the view.
Next update, I imagine I'll have dug downwards about 30 blocks, hopefully without hitting anything and with plenty of room to build all the mechanics. We'll see!
I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
Thanks for reading!
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
In regards to that lawn effect,there is an area at one of my bases with that kind of effect ...
I did use green/lime green clay tho ... cant tell the difference from distance!
Mintutor now works in 1.13!
MrKite & Mc_Etlam ... I salute you!
Looks great! Very cool.
I'd love to have terracotta, but the chances of me finding a mesa aren't great and I'm not digging up all the clay it would take to obtain a meaningful amount (i.e. a half-dozen double chests or so).
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
Isn't it amazing all that one can accomplish while procrastinating against doing something else?
While the gold farm project hasn't budged, I've managed to finish a few other minor little tasks around the castle including building a small horse stable in the east courtyard. Been meaning to do that for quite some time. I mean, I don't even ride horses any more and haven't for a long, long time.
(Above) The new little horse stable is on the left (south) side of the pic. This is the "back door" to the castle. The spawn atop the Mount Olympus is behind me to the east. Shader is SEUS 11 Extreme.
(Above) Looking at the eastern barbican. When I finally decide on a banner, there will be a number of them hanging here.
(Above) A look at the barbican and new stables.
(Above) Looking east at the sun rise.
(Above) The inside. Two stalls. Nothing fancy at all. Door leads to a battlement.
(Above) A view from the other direction with the keep and tower in the background.
Before I built the stable, I allowed myself to go on a long adventure as a reward for clearing all that stone for the gold farm chamber. Since I had a cartographer, I decided to purchase a Woodland Mansion map from him. As I didn't have that gray Illager banner yet, I hoped the second Mansion would have one for me.
In preparation for the quest, I descend into the recesses of the castle. Sweeping Edge is a new enchantment this version and Witherbane is without it. However, I have bigger plans—a new sword. Witherbane was forged for one singular purpose, to kill withers and wither skeletons. As such, it is a Smite V sword. It served its duty well.
After a year of wielding it, I have decided to go back to Sharpness and also to discard the flaming enchantment. More often than anything, the fire was a nuisance rather than an aide.
At my skeleton spawner, it doesn't take long before Sweeping Edge III is mine and a new sword is born, the first native to Castle Midgard rather than Skullgorge.
(Above) I imagine steam rising from the newborn Frost Fate's chill blade.
With my new sword in hand, I spread my wings and dive from Tower Midgard's Y=256 height. The wind roars as I scream off toward the horizon, propelled by dead creeper dust.
I rocketed west about 14.5 km first, then banked 90 degrees and soared north, buzzing low to the ground, just over the treetops and mountain peaks. After I began my northbound flight, I spotted a somewhat-unusual mountain, so I flew down for a closer look. It's hard to tell, but its peak is just about to touch the clouds at Y=127, so it's pretty tall. Other than its conical shape, what I found unusual is that it was so set apart from any other mountains. It really stood out:
I had to investigate it. Not that I expected to find anything particularly interesting . . .
(Above) Wha—? What the hell is that?! What the hell are those?! Are those alpacas? In Minecraft?!
I try not to use the wiki too much. Mystery is a welcome yet fleeting element and the wiki chases it away with ruthless vigor. Llamas. Okay. Very cool. Not that I need a land-bound pack animal. Murphy the mule never gets ridden as it is, and hasn't since long before shulkers, let alone elytra. Still, it's a rare experience in Minecraft nowadays: a true surprise.
(Above) Ah. I see they are commonplace in a young Minecraft world.
I've explored such a tremendous area around Midgard that the minimum distance I can be from the castle is about 15 km to generate new chunks. Without resulting to mass slaughter, new mobs like these will only spawn on the distant frontier. I'm aware of the polar bears, but as Midgard is a large biome world, I've never discovered a region in which they will spawn. Some day, I'll search them out.
I streak across the sky, high above an expansive desert on my journey toward the target. I see several temples, but I grit my teeth and stifle the urge to land. I don't want to be gone for more than one real-time day. There is a much, much closer desert that I've barely explored. I'm no Lawrence of Arabia. I'll stick to the snow-capped mountains, aspen forests and brackish swamps of Midgard.
After a 14.5 km flight to the west and then another 11 km north, I arrive at the Woodland Mansion. It took perhaps twenty minutes. I wish I had remembered to time the journey. At least the return trip will only be 18.5 km or so. That shouldn't take long at all. It's became quite clear to me that the jungle south of the castle is now a "short" distance.
(Above) Fire in one hand, ice in the other: Ember Reach and the newly-forged Frost Fate.
This time, I bring nine eight-minute night vision potions expecting to use less than six. I think I used four.
(Above) I let him get close as I've never been attacked—let alone hit—by one of these guys. I took one on the chin. I think he did damage, but not much. Two hearts, maybe.
(Above) Ah-ha! My prize!
It doesn't take long to find my ugly treasure: a plain gray banner. Meh, whatever. I tear it down.
There was no excitement had in the Mansion. Again, the myopic enemies can't defend against an attacker at range. A mundane bow and a stack of arrows is all one needs to liberate a Mansion. It's a serious design flaw.
At the same time, there's little reason to enter one. The Totem of the Undying was just as poorly implemented as the monsters—great concept, poor execution. The off hand is better suited for a shield in the early stages of the game, a bow in the later. A fire resistance potion is a far better choice when braving oceans of lava, and the potion won't occupy the off hand. I'm sure it has uses, but for me, one hangs on the wall and the rest collect dust in the junk chest. The Totem is no more valuable to me then that gray banner. It's a trophy, nothing more.
All that aside, I'm happy I got my banner!
Here it is, hanging in its spot:
Upon returning to the castle, I found yet another treasure, but first, a little background: in a hardcore world last year, I found a music disc that wasn't "13" or "Cat," but I didn't want to waste my precious diamonds on making a jukebox. I died before I heard it. That's the only time I've ever found a different music disc. I'm sure I can listen to them on the Internet, but that would spoil all the fun for me.
Well, while creeper hunting at night, I found another music disc, "Blocks" . . .
I took it down into the treasury and played it. Meh. Not my style.
Only recently did I discover that creepers drop them when killed by skeletons, as this one was.
While fighting around that same time, I encountered yet another rarity, a zombie in diamond armor:
He dropped his pants with 65 durability and Projectile Protection III.
Later, while still procrastinating, I surveyed the front lawn. I've wanted to build two fountains on either side of the approach for a long time. Since I have something more important to do, now's the time.
(Above) This is the spot where the first fountain will be built. I really need to overhaul the fountain in front of Old Tower.
And, here's a look at the finished project from the window of Old Tower:
I'll make another just like it on the other side of the road.
I'm not finished procrastinating yet, though. No, not by a long shot! I shoot off back toward the Woodland Mansion with the map in hand; I forgot to fill it. Oops! Well, now's the time. Can't delay that, now can we?
My jaw drops when I first notice the great discovery I have made on the way there . . .
(Above) A mushroom island!
In this large biome world, discovering small, rare biomes is truly fantastic. I've covered a 4x4 area of fully zoomed out maps and explored a great deal more than that without ever finding one, so I can't imagine they are too common.
(Above) I build an obelisk to commemorate the day.
While I would like to capture a mooshroom, it will have to wait for another day. I used my Silk Touch pick to take a stack of mycelium, though I doubt I'll ever use it. After that, I returned to Midgard and contemplated what small tasks absolutely can't wait before continuing work on the gold farm.
Thanks for reading!
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
Nice size Woodland Mansion you found there. The only one I've found is about the same size. As you say, the residents don't have much defence against a good bow. I however wanted to keep some of the Vindicators and Evokers alive, so I lured a couple of the Evokers into glass rooms I sealed up. Having found a prison in the mansion, I thought it would be poetic justice to lock up some of those Vindicators in it, which I did by again luring them in, however I misjudged a couple of times and got hacked to death.
Are those banners you were after unique to the Mansion then, or can they be crafted?
Mintutor now works in 1.13!
MrKite & Mc_Etlam ... I salute you!
Poetic justice indeed! Ha ha!
I really think they're all the roughly same size, though. I've found four and they all seemed nearly the same.
The banners are easily craftable; it's just light gray with a white daisy. Unfortunately, it's plain, ugly, and contains no rare materials (like a creeper head, notch apple, or even a wither skull).
However, each of the decorations on display in Old Tower is a piece of memorabilia or a trophy of some sort. The banner would be of no value at all to me had it not been taken from a Woodland Mansion—that is the entirety of its worth. Now, when I look at it, I can say, "I found a mushroom island between here and the Woodland Mansion that banner came from."
As further example, the equipment hanging on the walls (except the sword and bow) is all the first of its kind to run out of durability and hit the level limit for repair (and thus, other than the pick, likely the first diamond tools I ever made on any world). Of course, that was before Mending. They all would have been retired in 1.8.x, I believe, as I don't think I had any diamond tools in 1.7.10, the version in which the world was created. The bow is a Mending and Infinity "blank" and it replaced what I believe was my first "good bow." Of course, its value is that one cannot place Mending and Infinity together on a bow any longer, after the 1.12 update. The diamond sword is now the oft-mentioned Witherbane and it replaced what might have been my first. The jungle sapling in the pot atop the furnaces is from the first and only jungle found in this large-biome world. The dragon head is from the first End Ship I raided and the End City Banner is from the main tower of the first End City I conquered. The Totem is the first I ever collected. So on and so forth.
The suits of enchanted iron armor are made of mob drops, but I keep it available for use as I do wear it from time to time. Worth noting perhaps, one of the boots and one of the pants are Protection IV, Mending, Unbreaking III! The boots also have Depth Strider III. Missing Feather Falling IV, but otherwise god-tier iron.
The green orc banner in the northwest corner by the ladder is new. I just crafted it. I went looking for inspiration for Castle Midgard's banner when I found it. It was perfect for my shield, considering my skin is of an orc.
After looking at my pictures of the east barbican, I decided it needed its corners shaved. The difference is subtle, but I think it's an improvement.
I furnished and lit the new stable and made a quaint little 2x2 well across the road from it, as well as adding some lighting around the courtyard. I don't like the piston-lights, but hostile mobs could spawn within the walls here. While making the improvements, I watched it for two or three full nights and no mobs spawned, so good enough, I suppose. I don't mind that they can walk through the front protcullis; this area is not considered safe as evidenced by the iron doors. I'm in the process of major terraforming beyond the barbican and when finished, very few if any mobs will spawn to the east of the castle. Eventually, this area will become safe as I watch it more over time. I'm just not going to roof the whole courtyard to check the exact light levels of every block.
Here are some updated pics:
In other news, yesterday, while working on the improvements (i.e., procrastinating against working on the gold farm), I got a visitor: a zombie villager in a white coat. Any time I see one, I just have to try to turn him. Else, I'll forever wonder if that was the one with the 14 emerald Mending book for sale.
(Above) Make yourself at home.
I let him pursue me all the way through the castle to Old Tower where I had the supplies to cure him. If I would have tried to capture him in the new stable, he would have de-spawned long before I made it to Old Tower.
He brought friends, but I kindly asked them to leave one by one. As we made our way through the castle, he took a frightening amount of damage from my Thorns III breastplate and leggings. Zombie villagers really seem to hate going through doors! I had to take the iron entry door off its hinges. As the world is locked in hard mode, all doors to the outside are iron lest zombies kick them open.
I managed to get him trapped in a dirt cocoon the instant the sun rose.
Once cured, I found he was a cartographer, so I instantly lost all interest in him.
(Above) Living on the edge. It's about a 21-block fall. Certainly a fatal distance if the damage from Thorns carried over.
I just left him alone to his own devices. Knowing Minecraft, he'll either suffocate in a wall or floor, commit suicide, or simply vanish eventually.
However, it's crazy how much of the castle he's explored. I've seen him in places I'd never think he would go. Unless he phases through a wall (which is common in Minecraft), he can't get out because all exits are iron.
I've started calling him Castellan, which means "governor or captain of a castellany and its castle."
It really feels like there's someone else living in the castle now, which makes me want to have a bunch of villagers. We'll see.
Thanks for reading!
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
Small update. Today, I cured my first librarian!
He's selling Depth Strider II for 25 or so emeralds.
As far as I know, I need to trade with him to open up two more book sales. I think the way it goes is, I trade new trades to get him to "level up," trying to sell but also buying if needed. He'll keep leveling up until he's selling two more books than the original. That right?
Thanks for reading!
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
Nothing is more annoying these days than to use one of my valuable golden apples and a potion on a white coated zombie villager to find out he's a cartographer. That's when I introduce him to my friend, Mr Bucket-of-red-hot-lava!
Trading wise, you will need to get him to "level" up three times from base for the second book trade, then the next level is the third book trade, then finally a nametag trade. That's why I have a load of paper and a sugar cane farm. I usually end up doing the glass trade as well, as its quite cheap. Sometimes trading with him wont unlock the next level. Seems to be random.
Mintutor now works in 1.13!
MrKite & Mc_Etlam ... I salute you!
Quote from Mr_N_Derman >>
Nothing is more annoying these days than to use one of my valuable golden apples and a potion on a white coated zombie villager to find out he's a cartographer. That's when I introduce him to my friend, Mr Bucket-of-red-hot-lava!
Trading wise, you will need to get him to "level" up three times from base for the second book trade, then the next level is the third book trade, then finally a nametag trade. That's why I have a load of paper and a sugar cane farm. I usually end up doing the glass trade as well, as its quite cheap. Sometimes trading with him wont unlock the next level. Seems to be random.
Mr. Bucket-Of-Red-Hot-Lava doesn't sound very friendly!
Of course, I've seen your house of horrors, so it's no surprise to me!
I'm using this guide to make an infinite breeder atop one of the castle's towers. Any issues with it?
I don't want a mega farm. I can make this in minutes. It's small and simple.
There are a lot of doors in the castle, but . . . I'm not making an iron golem farm so I figured that was okay. Is it?
How many potatoes should I feed the villagers before placing doors?
EDIT: It's working very well. I tossed the first cute couple like a half-stack of potatoes and they got with it pretty quick. The fact that it's below Castle Midgard with all its doors doesn't seem to have any impact. At first, it seemed to go slowly, but as I moved the other villagers into the chamber, they've picked up the pace.
My screenshots folder if full of villager porn now.
NSFW 18+ (HAWT!!!):
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
I think the infinite villager breeder works just fine . . .
When I went to bed:
Eight hours and 45 minutes later:
They're surrounded on all four sides by two-blocks-thick glass walls with a glass ceiling as well. It's obviously needed; I see at least three that would have suffocated.
I have a clear glass texture pack. If Mojang would just make the streaks translucent as it is with stained glass! Arg!
I have no idea what I'm even going to do with all those villagers! Getting them sorted might be a pain.
It's very near the gold farm chamber and on the same 'Y' axis. That hall in the upper corner leads past the gold farm chamber's entrance.
Of course, the room is rough and unfinished. It will be expanded and furnished soon.
F3 tells me E: 81/281, so I think that means I'm not pinging off the entity limit. If so, I'm glad, but I'm going to thin the herd considerably.
I'll have to invite Mr. Derman and his friend Mr. RHL Bucket over for dinner.
I'm going to use the same series' transport method to drive them to another area where the valuable ones will find dorms. Others will be invited to leave after being provided a hot bath. A very hot bath.
Unfortunately, the castle was besieged while I stood guard in below. I ran into a zombie within the castle—something that has never happened before.
The cobble stone is an older area of the castle, but it's secure. I've been over every square meter and checked the light level. There are no accessable places for zombies to spawn within the castle. At all.
So, I went looking for the two recently-cured librarian villagers. Playing hide-and-seek in a castle seemingly designed around such a sport would have made that a Herculean task if it weren't for their constant murmuring.
Well, I only found one, Castellan the cartographer, and he was in the garden looking wistfully at the iron exit . . .
Oh boy. Not good.
Well, I didn't find him. Instead, I found something that's only happened perhaps twice before . . . a broken door. As zombies can break down doors in hard mode, it seems clear that this is a murder scene.
Hopefully, I at least avenged Flynn when I killed the zombie intruder. Otherwise, I'd say he's gone.
It seems keeping a village within my walls will put the castle's defenses to the test. I'm ready for the challenge!
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
Ugh, in that second pic down, looks like three of the villagers on the right are squatting down, offering "extra" services! What node of depravity have you opened up in Castle Midgard Sharpe!?
Mintutor now works in 1.13!
MrKite & Mc_Etlam ... I salute you!
Haha!
After telling my (completely-uninterested, non-gamer) girlfriend a little about this villager breeding stuff, she was standing behind me looking over my shoulder as I first turned the monitor on in the morning. She exclaimed while pointing: "What are they doing?!"
As she's not a gamer at all, and right after telling her that I was excited to see if the "Minecraft people" in my "breeder" had "multiplied like bunnies" or not, I really, honestly had to convince her that's not what was going on.
I'm not entirely certain she's convinced that Minecraft isn't some sort of match making simulation game now.
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
Why are my villagers stampeding and how do I get them to stop?
I can't get them sorted or push them in this frenzied state. It's like they're all trying to push their way out of the same corner. It's to the place where I'm afraid they're going to suicide themselves on Max Cramming if they're not already. And, I know I have at least one Mending vendor, though his price is steep (38).
I tried sleeping so it would be daylight and restarting Minecraft. Neither worked.
In addition to not sprinting everywhere, this is how they look normally:
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures