Minecraft is so crazy at times, it's flat-out unbelievable, but I think in all my time playing, this one takes the cake.
I'm flying around looking for adventure, just anything that catches my eye, usually a cave or ravine, and that's exactly what I found about 2.5 km (2,500 blocks) from Castle Midgard, my main base since I started this vanilla, hard-mode, large biome survival single player world on July 2, 2014.
I've flown over these ravines countless times—just never investigated. Don't know why; it's an interesting formation with the crater and the double-ravine. There's always been a copious amount of lighting glitches down there, I've often noticed.
I land in the larger of the two and immediately, I'm reminded that the lighting glitches above and all around me do count as having lighting 0, so I'm quickly attacked from all directions, including by kamikaze creepers dropping like bombs. I'm in full Protection IV diamond armor, minus the breastplate (which is still elytra), so I'm fine, but the ambush did take me by surprise. No pictures because it all happened so fast, but suffice it to say, I already found what I was seeking: excitement.
Once things settled down, I took a look around. Right beside me in the ravine's wall is a door-like cave leading to yet a third ravine, but this one is far deeper and completely below ground.
I step inside and look around . . .
Then, I look down . . .
. . . and see a horse.
Mentally, I note that this horse is roughly the same color as old Speedy, my first 12+ m/s horse. I have very detailed records of the horses I have tamed. Speedy was part of the second herd I ever found, and that was on Oct. 8, 2014. He was one of two horses from that herd I captured that day. In fact, he was found not too far from this location; I have recorded that his herd was discovered at X/Z=-1800/365 and the ravine is at X/Z=-1900/150. So, about 230 meters away.
Anyway, as far as I know, I'm 2.5 km from his current location back at the castle and there aren't a whole lot of color combinations for horses, so I don't for a second think that this is actually Speedy! First of all, he'd have to have beaten me here and despite his name, he's no where close to as fast as elytra (not to mention land bound) at 32 m/s.
What I do think is strange is that a horse would or could make it all the way down there alive. The first ravine is an open-air trench, so it's possible he could have fallen into it and survived, but he would have lost a whole lot of health . . . But why? While rabbits will cheerfully hop off a mountain to its death, most other mobs, including horses, aren't so quick to do so. After the first drop, it would have then had to wander into the cave and fall yet again, even farther this time.
Must be one tough yet suicidal horse!
Well, this is what I'm here for: adventure! I'm going to rescue this strange horse down at the bottom and put him out to pasture back at the castle. So, I jump down, place an ender chest, get a saddle out and empty my hand thinking I'm going to tame this horse in the dark with monsters all around. I mean, due to a glitch that's been reported since February, 2015, and yet still remains unresolved and unassigned, it's not going to go anywhere as I tame it. I approach and find . . .
. . . A creeper. About ready to blow. While it won't hurt me, it will kill the horse, so I have to make a split-second decision, shoot it, narrowly missing the horse, or try to run away. I took the shot and the flaming creeper went flying back, destroyed with a single point-blank arrow from my Power V bow, "Ember Reach."
So, I step forward to finally take hold of this horse and . . .
. . . It's Speedy! What the Hell?!
I'm blown away. I can't believe this is Speedy, deep underground (Y=16), who should be in a double-walled pasture more than 2,500 blocks away, where he has been for years now.
Okay, a keen eye might notice the order of the screen shots is a bit off. Normally, I make a temporary backup of my five-gigabyte world every day before play and delete it the next day when I make a new one. This is solely to prevent loss due to chunk corruption, glitches, etc.—but not to avoid the penalty of death, as evidence with these screenshots from two days ago:
A few minutes before that death two days ago, I was "recharging" my Mending equipment at the skeleton XP farm deep below the castle. I thought to myself, "It would be funny if I forgot to don my armor before I jump off the wall." I was wrong. It wasn't funny. I'm not worried about the 45 levels, though. I really don't enchant much anymore. And, I don't pretend play faux hardcore; the death toll doesn't matter to me, especially since I learned how to play Minecraft on this world. I play real hardcore about half the time, and I constantly take risks in this world that I would never, ever take in hardcore. I've had to replace god-tier Mending items a number of times before, and I've written about doing so in the past.
All that to say that I only use backups to defend against Minecraft's glitch-infested nature or for very specific reasons. I decide to check out the ravine in a copy of a backup. Despite usually creating a temporary one every day, I've been very bad about doing so recently. My temporary backup is five days old.
I loaded it up, switched to LAN, and flew back to the same location. There old Speedy was, deep down in the ravine. So, he didn't beat me there, but I have no idea how he glitched through two fences, then made it all the way 2.5 km from home to the west, jumped down into two ravines, and waited on me to arrive.
It's just . . . It's unthinkable. It's so far beyond anything I would ever think possible, that I would never believe it had it not happened to me. I have been "adventuring" for about two weeks all around within 1-10 km of the castle, so, I mean, the chunks must have just barely been loaded all the way out to there just long enough? I just . . . I just can't hardly believe it. And then, there's the fact that I randomly decided to drop into that very ravine. What are the chances that today of all days I would just decide to randomly fly down into a ravine that I've known about for more than three years?
Before loading my backup, I carved a staircase out of the side of the ravine, saddled Speedy and rode him back home. Now he has a story to tell the other horses.
I'm going to return to Lost Horse Canyon and explore it further, but not tonight. Time for bed.
Thanks for reading!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
This reminds me of how I found that googly-eyed horse in West of Loathing. In a canyon, filled with danger. Only difference is, he always chose a thematic location, one with locoweed.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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I forgot to ask Sharpe I assume Speedy wasn't in his pen as well as being in the ravine I.E some kind of duplication glitch? You did check the paddock first?
It makes me wonder when I lost my fast horse Thunderbolt (who disappeared out of a fenced enclosure one day) some months back whether he has somehow been glitched to somewhere else on my map; I can't believe your horse could have walked to where he was over time ...
To very be clear, here's precisely what happened last night: after saddling Speedy, I chiseled stairs out of the side of the ravine and rode him, not actually to Castle Midgard, but to my oldest outpost, Ranch 34*, about 1 km west of the castle. I decided to leave him there because I was getting sleepy and was ready just to rocket the rest of the way home, which I did.
Upon my return to the castle, there was no Speedy in the pasture. Why would he be? I had just found him in what's now Lost Horse Canyon and rode him to Ranch 34, where he remained.
That's when I wrote almost all of the OP.
However, obviously, the whole story was just too much to swallow.
Before clicking submit, I went to my five-day-old temporary backup file, made a copy of it, played it, opened it to LAN with cheats, and changed my mode to creative.
I was very sleepy and in a big hurry, so I didn't glance over and see if ol' Speedy was in the pasture; I just flew to the canyon where I found him again and took a couple screenshots for this thread to complement those I had already taken live.
That was double confirmation, enough to make the post. He wasn't at the castle when I returned (very important) and a creative copy showed he really was at the canyon . . . so I made the post and went to bed.
Not having anything to do today (it's cold and rainy here, no work outside), I got up and investigated further.
I loaded another copy of that same temporary backup from five days ago, but this time I looked in the pasture. Speedy was there. Uh-oh. Would a clone of him be at the ravine, too? Yes. Yes, he had a duplicate in the canyon.
Drat.
The strange story doesn't end there, though.
I delved deeper into the problem.
But first, some ranting and semi-off topic stuff in the spoiler:
[Rant]
In version 1.8.9, I had a whole lot of problems with mobs duplicating and vanishing. It burns my blood to this day that Mojang so callously ignores MC-2025, the profoundly-negative five-year-old bug with multiple fixes offered by the community. No doubt, much of my problems stem from it. Further compounding the horse disappearing problem (did I mention Minecraft is a glitch-infested mess?), is the still-persistent glitch MC-101247 where a horse disappears upon dismounting, which is unrelated, to my knowledge.
However, MC-65040 is at play as well; I have a whole lot of problems with mobs becoming invisible, and I see many others do as well. The trouble is, one doesn't notice if three or four cows or sheep go invisible in a livestock pen filled with dozens, but the way my castle is set up, I see mobs go invisible every play session. Speedy was't at the castle when I returned . . . because he was invisible.
Remembering my problems from 1.8.9, I read my post from Feb. 13, 2016: [1.8.9] Mobs Keep Copying. It's really a sore spot with me, if that wasn't obvious.
I like the updates a lot. Despite being laughably far from Skyrim's combat, I think the new combat from 1.9 was an overall net positive—but mainly because of the off hand slot. Rocket boosting with elytra is my favorite thing ever. The only time I really strongly disagreed with Mojang's direction was with the Max Entity Cramming rule default for single player despite being a supposed lag fix for multi-player, and that's a pretty minor disagreement.
However, their method of handling bugs is deplorable. I've never seen a video game development company do so bad of a job. They're just the worst in the industry when it comes to fixing bugs—and for multiple reasons, least of all the fact that they just don't fix them!
Okay, no more complaining.
[/Rant]
[Off Topic]
I keep a whole lot of backups. Once my world passed 3 GB, I slowed way down, and now that it's very nearly 5 GB, I try not to do so more than once every few days, once a week even. I have 171 backups totally 338 GB. It hurts me to say this, but I lost almost all of my backups and screen shots from 2015 (as well as some from 2014, like the Ender Dragon kill shot). My backups jump from Jan. 30 (MC Day 1,424) to Dec. 10, 2015 (1,838). That's 414 missing MC days, but I also take very long breaks, so some of that missing real-time dates might be because I just didn't play. I only play about six months a year. Still that's 138 hours of missing game play, which is probably about six months for me.
[/Off Topic]
* Ranch 34 is named after a now-closed real-life horse ranch I frequent, and it's also on the Z=34 axis. In Minecraft, Ranch 34 serves as an outpost at the mid point between the vast plains to the west and the castle 1 km to the east. I would bring captured horses from the plains to the ranch where they would be tested (later, I learned to just test horses on the spot).
Knowing that I had a lot of issues with mobs duplicating, vanishing and turning invisible in version 1.8.9, I started to look through my backup files. First, I started with my latest permanent backup where I found his duplicate in the canyon. So, I went all the way back to the first save file of 2016, January 4. Not there. Okay, I had my two reference points. Only about 160 saves to go.
That's when I read my post from Feb. 13, 2016: [1.8.9] Mobs Keep Copying. So, after I narrowed it down, indeed, Speedy appears to have duplicated the night of Jan. 13, 2016. I have save files from Jan 12 and 14, so it was definitive. Speedy's clone has been down in that ravine for more than a year of real time, or eight MC years—since MC day 2,222 and it's currently MC day 5,389 in Midgard.
However, according to my old forum post on the matter, all the 1.8.9 duplicates vanished when I converted to 1.9 on March 16, 2016.
So, I jumped into Minecraft and loaded my real current save game. There was Speedy in the pasture. But wait . . . He wasn't there before when I ended my session last night. He was at Ranch 34.
Turns out, he was at the castle but was invisible, probably thanks to MC-65040. That's why he wasn't at the castle last night when I returned home.
So, we're dealing with three bugs here, one that lets mobs glitch through walls to the other side (or suffocate), one that makes mobs invisible (but still audible, and able to be shot with arrows), and the remnants of a duplication glitch that apparently was fixed in 1.9. Again, none of this has to do with MC-101247 where a horse disappears upon dismounting.
(Above) He's there in the upper-middle of the screenshot. Not shown: multiple invisible horses, pigs, chickens, and sheep. By the way, this is where I took a flying leap when I died in the screenshots from the OP. With my armor (minus breastplate) = one or two hearts damage. With none = death.
I wondered if his clone would still be at Ranch 34 if what I considered to be "the real" Speedy was in the pasture at Midgard. I flew to Ranch 34 and found him there . . .
(Above) There he is, right where I left him.
Back at the castle, I hopped on ol' Speedy and rode toward Ranch 34 wondering what would happen if I brought the two into the same chunk.
Bonus, before we get to that, here are some pictures of Midgard taken in survival mode at a very-playable render distance 48 using the new OptiFine pre-release that allows the slider to go to render distance 64(!):
All images are 1920x1080, open in new tab to view.
(Above) Looking west toward Ranch 34, Bleach Bone Forest extends more than 1 km past the 48-chunk render distance. This is why I want an increased render distance: the Twilight Watchtower just isn't quite visible from inside Castle Midgard at 32 chunks. Clouds are turned off in the options for the screen shots, but they would look small from up here atop Midgard Tower at Y=256. The last structure barely visible on the far horizon is Rose Hill Bridge, erected in December of 2015.
(Above) A fell moon rises over Mt. Olympus, the world spawn. The sunken Brinemire Swamp is visible to the northeast.
(Above) Looking north toward the frozen Witherfell and the great ocean border. King's Road, which is just a clearing of the trees through Bleach Bone Forest, is plainly visible. I may cobble and gravel it someday, but I doubt it. Bleach Bone Forest is an immense birch forest. Remember, Midgard is a large-biome world, making its biomes 16 times bigger than standard, so when I say it's massive, it truly is.
(Above) The Olympian Mountains stretch south halting Bleach Bone Forest's spread to the west. In the upper-center of the screenshot is a small, square fort that encloses a staircase down to the stronghold and End portal. The three-block-wide path that runs south cuts to the east where it goes to another stronghold base perhaps 1.5 km or so from the castle. I wrote a two-part short story about building one of the bridges on that road in the "What Have You Done Recently" megathread here and here.
(Above) Looking up at Midgard Tower. I started to add some embellishments to the tower recently, but I'll probably remove them soon.
(Above) Looking up at the tower from the garden courtyard. No decorative arching masonry on this side, and I think I like it better plain.
I spurred Speedy to his 12+ m/s sprint, a slow crawl compared to the elytra's 32 m/s, but I remember when I once considered it a thundering gallop!
First, we crossed the short Black Sheep Bridge:
Then, Longbridge:
Then Rose Hill Bridge:
And last, we arrived at Ranch 34 where the two duplicates met face-to-face . . .
I hopped the fence to the center pen to keep the two separated as I considered my options. I saved and quit Minecraft, stopped writing this post and went out to feed my real horses, then eat dinner.
A couple hours pass.
When I returned moments ago, I opened Minecraft and . . . dropped to the ground. The Speedy from the castle that I was riding disappeared right out from under me. I literally watched myself fall from mounted height.
As I wondered around the ranch, I noticed Lightning and some other named horses were gone, but there's only one fence in Ranch 34, so it's possible they glitched through it and wandered off. So, I flew back to Midgard to take a look.
Back at the castle, the older skeleton horses were all invisible, so I took a pic, saved and quit, then opened the world again, expecting to see maybe one or two horses that had been previously invisible. What I saw was far more perplexing.
(Above) No skeleton horses in the pen as they are invisible. The ones on the outer pen, I don't care if they wander away. Mojang killed any chance of them ever being worthwhile mounts by making them all have the same stats. The invisible skeleton horses are from 1.10.2 and all have different stats.
(Above) After a save and quit. No new skeleton horses, but what's that horse in the middle?
(Above) Speedy?!?!?!
It makes no sense, but there's now a (third?) Speedy back at the castle.
To be continued . . .
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
No, it's not the end of Midgard, and thanks for your interest.
However, a different glitch—no doubt caused by turning Minecraft on and off repeatedly while I was trying to figure out what was going on with this damn horse—really put me in a sour mood.
I'm currently playing two hardcore worlds at the same time. I'm sure I'll return to Midgard someday, but my presence on these forums is rapidly fading, as is this year's interest in the game for me. I haven't played in eight days and don't plan to play soon. I may go into Minecraft hibernation for six months, just as I have every year, which is why Midgard is 5,000 Minecraft days old and not 10,000 (like Mr N Derman's, above).
Minecraft is so crazy at times, it's flat-out unbelievable, but I think in all my time playing, this one takes the cake.
I'm flying around looking for adventure, just anything that catches my eye, usually a cave or ravine, and that's exactly what I found about 2.5 km (2,500 blocks) from Castle Midgard, my main base since I started this vanilla, hard-mode, large biome survival single player world on July 2, 2014.
I've flown over these ravines countless times—just never investigated. Don't know why; it's an interesting formation with the crater and the double-ravine. There's always been a copious amount of lighting glitches down there, I've often noticed.
I land in the larger of the two and immediately, I'm reminded that the lighting glitches above and all around me do count as having lighting 0, so I'm quickly attacked from all directions, including by kamikaze creepers dropping like bombs. I'm in full Protection IV diamond armor, minus the breastplate (which is still elytra), so I'm fine, but the ambush did take me by surprise. No pictures because it all happened so fast, but suffice it to say, I already found what I was seeking: excitement.
Once things settled down, I took a look around. Right beside me in the ravine's wall is a door-like cave leading to yet a third ravine, but this one is far deeper and completely below ground.
I step inside and look around . . .
Then, I look down . . .
. . . and see a horse.
Mentally, I note that this horse is roughly the same color as old Speedy, my first 12+ m/s horse. I have very detailed records of the horses I have tamed. Speedy was part of the second herd I ever found, and that was on Oct. 8, 2014. He was one of two horses from that herd I captured that day. In fact, he was found not too far from this location; I have recorded that his herd was discovered at X/Z=-1800/365 and the ravine is at X/Z=-1900/150. So, about 230 meters away.
Anyway, as far as I know, I'm 2.5 km from his current location back at the castle and there aren't a whole lot of color combinations for horses, so I don't for a second think that this is actually Speedy! First of all, he'd have to have beaten me here and despite his name, he's no where close to as fast as elytra (not to mention land bound) at 32 m/s.
What I do think is strange is that a horse would or could make it all the way down there alive. The first ravine is an open-air trench, so it's possible he could have fallen into it and survived, but he would have lost a whole lot of health . . . But why? While rabbits will cheerfully hop off a mountain to its death, most other mobs, including horses, aren't so quick to do so. After the first drop, it would have then had to wander into the cave and fall yet again, even farther this time.
Must be one tough yet suicidal horse!
Well, this is what I'm here for: adventure! I'm going to rescue this strange horse down at the bottom and put him out to pasture back at the castle. So, I jump down, place an ender chest, get a saddle out and empty my hand thinking I'm going to tame this horse in the dark with monsters all around. I mean, due to a glitch that's been reported since February, 2015, and yet still remains unresolved and unassigned, it's not going to go anywhere as I tame it. I approach and find . . .
. . . A creeper. About ready to blow. While it won't hurt me, it will kill the horse, so I have to make a split-second decision, shoot it, narrowly missing the horse, or try to run away. I took the shot and the flaming creeper went flying back, destroyed with a single point-blank arrow from my Power V bow, "Ember Reach."
So, I step forward to finally take hold of this horse and . . .
. . . It's Speedy! What the Hell?!
I'm blown away. I can't believe this is Speedy, deep underground (Y=16), who should be in a double-walled pasture more than 2,500 blocks away, where he has been for years now.
Okay, a keen eye might notice the order of the screen shots is a bit off. Normally, I make a temporary backup of my five-gigabyte world every day before play and delete it the next day when I make a new one. This is solely to prevent loss due to chunk corruption, glitches, etc.—but not to avoid the penalty of death, as evidence with these screenshots from two days ago:
A few minutes before that death two days ago, I was "recharging" my Mending equipment at the skeleton XP farm deep below the castle. I thought to myself, "It would be funny if I forgot to don my armor before I jump off the wall." I was wrong. It wasn't funny. I'm not worried about the 45 levels, though. I really don't enchant much anymore. And, I don't pretend play faux hardcore; the death toll doesn't matter to me, especially since I learned how to play Minecraft on this world. I play real hardcore about half the time, and I constantly take risks in this world that I would never, ever take in hardcore. I've had to replace god-tier Mending items a number of times before, and I've written about doing so in the past.
All that to say that I only use backups to defend against Minecraft's glitch-infested nature or for very specific reasons. I decide to check out the ravine in a copy of a backup. Despite usually creating a temporary one every day, I've been very bad about doing so recently. My temporary backup is five days old.
I loaded it up, switched to LAN, and flew back to the same location. There old Speedy was, deep down in the ravine. So, he didn't beat me there, but I have no idea how he glitched through two fences, then made it all the way 2.5 km from home to the west, jumped down into two ravines, and waited on me to arrive.
It's just . . . It's unthinkable. It's so far beyond anything I would ever think possible, that I would never believe it had it not happened to me. I have been "adventuring" for about two weeks all around within 1-10 km of the castle, so, I mean, the chunks must have just barely been loaded all the way out to there just long enough? I just . . . I just can't hardly believe it. And then, there's the fact that I randomly decided to drop into that very ravine. What are the chances that today of all days I would just decide to randomly fly down into a ravine that I've known about for more than three years?
Before loading my backup, I carved a staircase out of the side of the ravine, saddled Speedy and rode him back home. Now he has a story to tell the other horses.
I'm going to return to Lost Horse Canyon and explore it further, but not tonight. Time for bed.
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
He was on a "SAY NO TO ELYTRA" protest march, guess he took a wrong turn 😁
Mintutor now works in 1.13!
MrKite & Mc_Etlam ... I salute you!
If this wasn't singleplayer, I'd lay 10:1 odds that someone pranked you. I'd probably still give 2:1 odds that you somehow pranked yourself.
This is bizarre. When is the last time you saw Speedy in his pen, before finding him in the ravine?
This reminds me of how I found that googly-eyed horse in West of Loathing. In a canyon, filled with danger. Only difference is, he always chose a thematic location, one with locoweed.
I just took the Minecraft Noob test! Check out what I scored. Think you can beat me?!
To take the test, check out
https://minecraftnoobtest.com/test.php
Don't click this link, HE is haunting it...
I forgot to ask Sharpe I assume Speedy wasn't in his pen as well as being in the ravine I.E some kind of duplication glitch? You did check the paddock first?
It makes me wonder when I lost my fast horse Thunderbolt (who disappeared out of a fenced enclosure one day) some months back whether he has somehow been glitched to somewhere else on my map; I can't believe your horse could have walked to where he was over time ...
Mintutor now works in 1.13!
MrKite & Mc_Etlam ... I salute you!
To very be clear, here's precisely what happened last night: after saddling Speedy, I chiseled stairs out of the side of the ravine and rode him, not actually to Castle Midgard, but to my oldest outpost, Ranch 34*, about 1 km west of the castle. I decided to leave him there because I was getting sleepy and was ready just to rocket the rest of the way home, which I did.
Upon my return to the castle, there was no Speedy in the pasture. Why would he be? I had just found him in what's now Lost Horse Canyon and rode him to Ranch 34, where he remained.
That's when I wrote almost all of the OP.
However, obviously, the whole story was just too much to swallow.
Before clicking submit, I went to my five-day-old temporary backup file, made a copy of it, played it, opened it to LAN with cheats, and changed my mode to creative.
I was very sleepy and in a big hurry, so I didn't glance over and see if ol' Speedy was in the pasture; I just flew to the canyon where I found him again and took a couple screenshots for this thread to complement those I had already taken live.
That was double confirmation, enough to make the post. He wasn't at the castle when I returned (very important) and a creative copy showed he really was at the canyon . . . so I made the post and went to bed.
Not having anything to do today (it's cold and rainy here, no work outside), I got up and investigated further.
I loaded another copy of that same temporary backup from five days ago, but this time I looked in the pasture. Speedy was there. Uh-oh. Would a clone of him be at the ravine, too? Yes. Yes, he had a duplicate in the canyon.
Drat.
The strange story doesn't end there, though.
I delved deeper into the problem.
But first, some ranting and semi-off topic stuff in the spoiler:
[Rant]
In version 1.8.9, I had a whole lot of problems with mobs duplicating and vanishing. It burns my blood to this day that Mojang so callously ignores MC-2025, the profoundly-negative five-year-old bug with multiple fixes offered by the community. No doubt, much of my problems stem from it. Further compounding the horse disappearing problem (did I mention Minecraft is a glitch-infested mess?), is the still-persistent glitch MC-101247 where a horse disappears upon dismounting, which is unrelated, to my knowledge.
However, MC-65040 is at play as well; I have a whole lot of problems with mobs becoming invisible, and I see many others do as well. The trouble is, one doesn't notice if three or four cows or sheep go invisible in a livestock pen filled with dozens, but the way my castle is set up, I see mobs go invisible every play session. Speedy was't at the castle when I returned . . . because he was invisible.
But, somehow, with all these horse-related bugs, Mojang still found time to make the horses look more blocky in the next update!
Remembering my problems from 1.8.9, I read my post from Feb. 13, 2016: [1.8.9] Mobs Keep Copying. It's really a sore spot with me, if that wasn't obvious.
I like the updates a lot. Despite being laughably far from Skyrim's combat, I think the new combat from 1.9 was an overall net positive—but mainly because of the off hand slot. Rocket boosting with elytra is my favorite thing ever. The only time I really strongly disagreed with Mojang's direction was with the Max Entity Cramming rule default for single player despite being a supposed lag fix for multi-player, and that's a pretty minor disagreement.
However, their method of handling bugs is deplorable. I've never seen a video game development company do so bad of a job. They're just the worst in the industry when it comes to fixing bugs—and for multiple reasons, least of all the fact that they just don't fix them!
Okay, no more complaining.
[/Rant]
[Off Topic]
I keep a whole lot of backups. Once my world passed 3 GB, I slowed way down, and now that it's very nearly 5 GB, I try not to do so more than once every few days, once a week even. I have 171 backups totally 338 GB. It hurts me to say this, but I lost almost all of my backups and screen shots from 2015 (as well as some from 2014, like the Ender Dragon kill shot). My backups jump from Jan. 30 (MC Day 1,424) to Dec. 10, 2015 (1,838). That's 414 missing MC days, but I also take very long breaks, so some of that missing real-time dates might be because I just didn't play. I only play about six months a year. Still that's 138 hours of missing game play, which is probably about six months for me.
[/Off Topic]
* Ranch 34 is named after a now-closed real-life horse ranch I frequent, and it's also on the Z=34 axis. In Minecraft, Ranch 34 serves as an outpost at the mid point between the vast plains to the west and the castle 1 km to the east. I would bring captured horses from the plains to the ranch where they would be tested (later, I learned to just test horses on the spot).
Knowing that I had a lot of issues with mobs duplicating, vanishing and turning invisible in version 1.8.9, I started to look through my backup files. First, I started with my latest permanent backup where I found his duplicate in the canyon. So, I went all the way back to the first save file of 2016, January 4. Not there. Okay, I had my two reference points. Only about 160 saves to go.
That's when I read my post from Feb. 13, 2016: [1.8.9] Mobs Keep Copying. So, after I narrowed it down, indeed, Speedy appears to have duplicated the night of Jan. 13, 2016. I have save files from Jan 12 and 14, so it was definitive. Speedy's clone has been down in that ravine for more than a year of real time, or eight MC years—since MC day 2,222 and it's currently MC day 5,389 in Midgard.
However, according to my old forum post on the matter, all the 1.8.9 duplicates vanished when I converted to 1.9 on March 16, 2016.
So, I jumped into Minecraft and loaded my real current save game. There was Speedy in the pasture. But wait . . . He wasn't there before when I ended my session last night. He was at Ranch 34.
Turns out, he was at the castle but was invisible, probably thanks to MC-65040. That's why he wasn't at the castle last night when I returned home.
So, we're dealing with three bugs here, one that lets mobs glitch through walls to the other side (or suffocate), one that makes mobs invisible (but still audible, and able to be shot with arrows), and the remnants of a duplication glitch that apparently was fixed in 1.9. Again, none of this has to do with MC-101247 where a horse disappears upon dismounting.
(Above) He's there in the upper-middle of the screenshot. Not shown: multiple invisible horses, pigs, chickens, and sheep. By the way, this is where I took a flying leap when I died in the screenshots from the OP. With my armor (minus breastplate) = one or two hearts damage. With none = death.
I wondered if his clone would still be at Ranch 34 if what I considered to be "the real" Speedy was in the pasture at Midgard. I flew to Ranch 34 and found him there . . .
(Above) There he is, right where I left him.
Back at the castle, I hopped on ol' Speedy and rode toward Ranch 34 wondering what would happen if I brought the two into the same chunk.
Bonus, before we get to that, here are some pictures of Midgard taken in survival mode at a very-playable render distance 48 using the new OptiFine pre-release that allows the slider to go to render distance 64(!):
All images are 1920x1080, open in new tab to view.
(Above) Looking west toward Ranch 34, Bleach Bone Forest extends more than 1 km past the 48-chunk render distance. This is why I want an increased render distance: the Twilight Watchtower just isn't quite visible from inside Castle Midgard at 32 chunks. Clouds are turned off in the options for the screen shots, but they would look small from up here atop Midgard Tower at Y=256. The last structure barely visible on the far horizon is Rose Hill Bridge, erected in December of 2015.
(Above) A fell moon rises over Mt. Olympus, the world spawn. The sunken Brinemire Swamp is visible to the northeast.
(Above) Looking north toward the frozen Witherfell and the great ocean border. King's Road, which is just a clearing of the trees through Bleach Bone Forest, is plainly visible. I may cobble and gravel it someday, but I doubt it. Bleach Bone Forest is an immense birch forest. Remember, Midgard is a large-biome world, making its biomes 16 times bigger than standard, so when I say it's massive, it truly is.
(Above) The Olympian Mountains stretch south halting Bleach Bone Forest's spread to the west. In the upper-center of the screenshot is a small, square fort that encloses a staircase down to the stronghold and End portal. The three-block-wide path that runs south cuts to the east where it goes to another stronghold base perhaps 1.5 km or so from the castle. I wrote a two-part short story about building one of the bridges on that road in the "What Have You Done Recently" megathread here and here.
(Above) Looking up at Midgard Tower. I started to add some embellishments to the tower recently, but I'll probably remove them soon.
(Above) Looking up at the tower from the garden courtyard. No decorative arching masonry on this side, and I think I like it better plain.
I spurred Speedy to his 12+ m/s sprint, a slow crawl compared to the elytra's 32 m/s, but I remember when I once considered it a thundering gallop!
First, we crossed the short Black Sheep Bridge:
Then, Longbridge:
Then Rose Hill Bridge:
And last, we arrived at Ranch 34 where the two duplicates met face-to-face . . .
I hopped the fence to the center pen to keep the two separated as I considered my options. I saved and quit Minecraft, stopped writing this post and went out to feed my real horses, then eat dinner.
A couple hours pass.
When I returned moments ago, I opened Minecraft and . . . dropped to the ground. The Speedy from the castle that I was riding disappeared right out from under me. I literally watched myself fall from mounted height.
As I wondered around the ranch, I noticed Lightning and some other named horses were gone, but there's only one fence in Ranch 34, so it's possible they glitched through it and wandered off. So, I flew back to Midgard to take a look.
Back at the castle, the older skeleton horses were all invisible, so I took a pic, saved and quit, then opened the world again, expecting to see maybe one or two horses that had been previously invisible. What I saw was far more perplexing.
(Above) No skeleton horses in the pen as they are invisible. The ones on the outer pen, I don't care if they wander away. Mojang killed any chance of them ever being worthwhile mounts by making them all have the same stats. The invisible skeleton horses are from 1.10.2 and all have different stats.
(Above) After a save and quit. No new skeleton horses, but what's that horse in the middle?
(Above) Speedy?!?!?!
It makes no sense, but there's now a (third?) Speedy back at the castle.
To be continued . . .
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
Continued. Minecraft Java Edition is a mass of glitches.
The End.
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
The end of the World?
I had to sigh and exhale loudly before answering.
No, it's not the end of Midgard, and thanks for your interest.
However, a different glitch—no doubt caused by turning Minecraft on and off repeatedly while I was trying to figure out what was going on with this damn horse—really put me in a sour mood.
I'm currently playing two hardcore worlds at the same time. I'm sure I'll return to Midgard someday, but my presence on these forums is rapidly fading, as is this year's interest in the game for me. I haven't played in eight days and don't plan to play soon. I may go into Minecraft hibernation for six months, just as I have every year, which is why Midgard is 5,000 Minecraft days old and not 10,000 (like Mr N Derman's, above).
My most recent post: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/survival-mode/297957-what-have-you-done-recently?page=299#c6107
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