I decided to use Prismarine to build the Silverfish XP farm. Just about any block would have done, but I thought Prismarine would look good as the backdrop for the End Portal. I've split the End Portal and the Spawner into two different rooms. I still need to build the access to the End Portal and redesign that room, but that's a task for another day.
It took some experimenting to find a decent farm build. But first I had to find out how to keep the fish from spawning on me:
Once it was safe to work, I dug out underneath it and built 3 or 4 different designs, trying things out. I finally wound up with a floor with flowing water in the two back corners, pushing to a central drop. The drop pushed to a single water channel, which pushed them down to a fence gate. The fence gate is hooked to a button. Pushing the button opens the gate briefly, whereupon a batch of them spew out into a killing chamber. You stand at the top of the chamber and shoot them with a bow, then climb down a ladder to collect the XP.
I've spent about 80xp enchanting 4 sets of iron armor and weapons in preparation for going through the End Portal. It's designed to be expendable - nobody's going to be upset if it's lost in the void. I'm not sure yet when we're going to go thru the Portal. The only two non-family members of Eranil not only have been playing other games, but they live in Houston, so they're just a weeeee bit preoccupied with other matters right now. Yes, they are safe.
Besides the enchanting and the farming necessary to do it, I've been cleaning out one of the lava pools from under Oshewani and converting it to obsidian. I've played around with rebuilding my lava workshop design, but rather than look up the design, I'm rebuilding the design from scratch. I might come up with something better this way.
And finally, I've cleaned out the witches from the iron farm. I need to boot some villagers back up there to replace them. I'm trying to come up with a water elevator design that fits in with the current aesthetic, and can be left there permanently. The issue will be in routing it around or through the farm without disrupting operations. It's also tempting to do a few other modifications to it, and I just haven't had the push to start any of these changes yet.
Well, I have a working version of my lava workshop, but I'm not entirely happy with it. There are too many open gaps around the Mining Block, and it's not uncommon for the mined off pieces of obsidian to shoot off into corners where it's hard to pick them up. I might need to see if I can rewire it to use an Observer instead, and reroute the redstone so it circles around wide.
Lava Workshop complete, unless I find problems later.
The front door. I think I like this design. It's a little fancy for a remote mountain monastery, so I might make it more in-sync later.
Here is the workshop itself, with a wide FOV:
This is a complete redesign of my original lava workshop. Instead of the water flowing downward, it flows from the back. An observer on the left watches the space. When you mine the obsidian block, it sends a signal through a pulse extender (to stop it from sending multiple pulses) to the dispenser. The dispenser is fed lava buckets from above, and just pours the lava into the water stream for the player to mine. Empty buckets are pulled out of the dispenser through a hopper/filter system underneath and returned to the player. The button visible in that last picture is for manually forcing a dispense.
TWO POSTS, BACK TO BACK!!!!! O_o Beware, lest your monitor explode from the sheer awesomeness!!!
My son and I have jumped through the End Portal. We're not exactly a precision combat team, and his interest didn't last too long. He's back over to Roblox now.
We did not have the problems I was afraid of, like a silverfish waiting on the other side to knock us into the Void, or a very difficult and dangerous trek to the Ender Dragon. We appeared in an underground hollow, dug up to the surface, and are almost right there.
Since it's just me, going on the gung-ho attack isn't exactly going to be successful. So I'm going for the boring but practical method: I'm digging a 5-wide,2-tall tunnel that goes to each of the obsidian pillars, and building pillar shields so I can pillar up in *relative* safety. The dragon can still attack through the rock, but it won't knock me flying at least.
Been a busy weekend, got quite a bit of Minecrafting done, but surprisingly little that makes good screenshots.
First is my latest tactic in the End. This allows me to get closer without having to worry about Endermen. Mind you, the Dragon is still stomping me into the ground. I've gotten it down to about 33% health twice before dying or being forced to run away.
And the other thing I've accomplished is moving the Nether Portal underneath the Oshewani Sanctuary down to the floor, where it's more accessible.
There's not a lot you can do to directly decorate a Nether Portal, but I don't think this looks too bad. I wound up having to download a Map Coordinates Addon to coordinate my portal linkages, because I also have a portal on top of the Sanctuary so I can reach the villagers if I need to. Matching the portals together isn't that hard once you know the coords on each end. WAY harder without that little bit of knowledge.
Not sure if I'll get any responses for this, but since the upgrade was for the viewers, and I haven't settled on an answer yet, I thought I'd give you all a chance to give me your input.
I'm getting ready to do some more work on the Oshewani Sanctuary iron farm.
Do you think it would look best with the building settled on the top of the mountain (the way it used to be), raised up on a central pillar (the way it currently is), raised up on multiple pillars, or floating unsupported in the sky?
I appreciate the folks who've taken time to vote and let me know what you wanted to see with the Oshewani Sanctuary. I'll start working on it soon, I think. I'm going over plans in my head, trying to fit the upgrades into a coherent design. There's still time to vote if you're inclined and interested.
I haven't accomplished much lately - I've made a few more stabs at the dragon, trying different things out, seeing what might work, and what doesn't. I've gotten him down to about 25% health once, but not quite managed to kill him yet. He's knocked me off into the Void once, but fortunately I wasn't loaded up with my diamond gear, so I didn't lose much of value. It really doesn't seem to like all the water I've spread across the place though, and keeps trying to destroy it. But it's water, and it just flows right back into place.
After watching Mumbo's video about the Observer last night (), I did a little experimenting with Observer-based dropper circuits. The Observer doesn't behave for us like it does in Java edition. It doesn't detect the change in a dropper when it's powered. The best circuit I could come up with in a short time period (about 30 minutes) is not very good:
Fairly compact, fairly expensive, and requires a button push to start.
A little more playing around, without an Observer and I wound up with this variant on the standard. The only difference is the powering circuit going over vertically rather than horizontally. Effectively no change from the standard, but might fit into a smaller space if you're trying to fit it in a narrow area.
Yyyyeahhhh... This is the circuit I wound up actually using:
I could put a chest on top of the hopper, but I don't typically have that much stuff to throw away, and I think I like the way it looks with the hopper drain in the floor. And I can throw stuff from my inventory onto it.
I played around with the Observer a bit more, and it does not detect a block getting powered. It does detect a comparator turning on and off though.
Mostly just doing some maintenance the last few days. Clearing lava from the bottom of the base, getting some glass ready for 1.2 so I can make colored glass, enchanting multiple iron swords, etc. My plan for the iron swords is to try and kill the Ender Dragon by just rushing back in after death without necessarily having to worry about picking up dropped gear.
1.2 has dropped, and I got to play around for a couple hours last night. A lot of mobs spawned in previously unspawnable locations, but that's died off some, so it may have just been a first load in glitch. I'd had plans for the floor of my base, but it turns out what I had in my head looked terrible. So I'm playing around with other layouts, see if any of them look any good.
I also had to fix my iron farm - it's high enough up that my water pits froze up. So that took just covering the interior in torches. That also caused a few flowing water blocks to turn into water sources that messed up the currents a bit.
The new crafting system seems to make things pretty simple, but I haven't used it much yet. I'll post some pictures once I've settled on a flooring.
Views like this are one of the reasons I love this base.
Here are some views of my current floor design. Not sure if it's permanent yet. There's also an alternate version with trap doors on it - they block the direct view of the floor beneath, but it's still visible through the gaps. It was the only spawn-proof covering I could think of that was still visible through (unless I want to use redstone dust... hmmm....)
Let me know what you think. Are either of them Not-Terrible? Is there one you prefer over the other? Something else you can think of that will look better?
Due to a lag glitch, my entire inventory disappeared last night, including ALL of my Mending Diamond armor and tools, with the exception of my Silk Touch shovel. *sigh*
On the plus side...
Accomplished with enchanted iron armor and a really strong bow. My son was standing behind me, but I don't know that he shot the dragon or not.
PS - I just checked with him, and he did hit the dragon once, on the killing shot we both hit at the same time. I suspect his presence also made the dragon act more predictably. It kept charging in a straight line rather than circling around the healing crystals and spellbombing.
For my update, I'm again in the position of working on things that are time-consuming but not very photogenic. Replacing all of my mending gear has taken some slogging through the trading system to scrounge up enough emeralds to buy multiple Mending books. And to do that I've had to do some farming, and so on.
I'm working on terraforming the End Dragon's Isle to make soloing it a bit easier. I'm hoping most of it will survive the rebuilding process the island goes through when the dragon respawns. I *think* it just replaces the obsidian pillars and the crystals at the top if they're missing, and I so far haven't touched any of those.
I'm still not 100% sure I like this flooring for the Oshewani Sanctuary, but it's the best I've got so far. I'll probably get about halfway through and come up with something I like better and wind up ripping all this out again.
Been very busy with another project of mine; I'm working on a different family tree display, that's been taking a fair amount of time. However, I have gotten a few things done.
I needed some coal:
And I came up with a nice build style for the bottom of the Oshewani Sanctuary:
Reached a point on the End terraforming that it's worth showing you what I'm doing. I have not yet done this in a complete 360 all around, but I'm *almost* there...
My plan is to have the entire upper layer covered in water. No Endermen to worry about, the dragon magic bombs sometimes don't go off, and if I get knocked high into the air, I always land safely. My plan is to extend the iron railings as high up as I can, so that the dragon can't knock me off the island, but I haven't quite finished flooding the entire top level yet. I'm almost there though. As soon as I'm finished with that I'll start on extending the safety rails.
I finally finished Endscaping, fencing and flooding the whole place.
Sadly, it still wasn't good enough. I did manage to take it down to about a third health once, but it managed to regen and eventually killed me. Part of the issue is that I can't run fast enough in the water to rush it when it sits on the pillar so I can whack it with the sword. My diamond armor would let me do it I think, but I put it away and was wearing inferior iron gear, so I wouldn't mind losing it.
So I'll have to XP farm and get me some good water boots, I think.
I decided to use Prismarine to build the Silverfish XP farm. Just about any block would have done, but I thought Prismarine would look good as the backdrop for the End Portal. I've split the End Portal and the Spawner into two different rooms. I still need to build the access to the End Portal and redesign that room, but that's a task for another day.
It took some experimenting to find a decent farm build. But first I had to find out how to keep the fish from spawning on me:
Once it was safe to work, I dug out underneath it and built 3 or 4 different designs, trying things out. I finally wound up with a floor with flowing water in the two back corners, pushing to a central drop. The drop pushed to a single water channel, which pushed them down to a fence gate. The fence gate is hooked to a button. Pushing the button opens the gate briefly, whereupon a batch of them spew out into a killing chamber. You stand at the top of the chamber and shoot them with a bow, then climb down a ladder to collect the XP.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Hey.... what's this thing?
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I've spent about 80xp enchanting 4 sets of iron armor and weapons in preparation for going through the End Portal. It's designed to be expendable - nobody's going to be upset if it's lost in the void. I'm not sure yet when we're going to go thru the Portal. The only two non-family members of Eranil not only have been playing other games, but they live in Houston, so they're just a weeeee bit preoccupied with other matters right now. Yes, they are safe.
Besides the enchanting and the farming necessary to do it, I've been cleaning out one of the lava pools from under Oshewani and converting it to obsidian. I've played around with rebuilding my lava workshop design, but rather than look up the design, I'm rebuilding the design from scratch. I might come up with something better this way.
And finally, I've cleaned out the witches from the iron farm. I need to boot some villagers back up there to replace them. I'm trying to come up with a water elevator design that fits in with the current aesthetic, and can be left there permanently. The issue will be in routing it around or through the farm without disrupting operations. It's also tempting to do a few other modifications to it, and I just haven't had the push to start any of these changes yet.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Well, I have a working version of my lava workshop, but I'm not entirely happy with it. There are too many open gaps around the Mining Block, and it's not uncommon for the mined off pieces of obsidian to shoot off into corners where it's hard to pick them up. I might need to see if I can rewire it to use an Observer instead, and reroute the redstone so it circles around wide.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Lava Workshop complete, unless I find problems later.
Here is the workshop itself, with a wide FOV:
This is a complete redesign of my original lava workshop. Instead of the water flowing downward, it flows from the back. An observer on the left watches the space. When you mine the obsidian block, it sends a signal through a pulse extender (to stop it from sending multiple pulses) to the dispenser. The dispenser is fed lava buckets from above, and just pours the lava into the water stream for the player to mine. Empty buckets are pulled out of the dispenser through a hopper/filter system underneath and returned to the player. The button visible in that last picture is for manually forcing a dispense.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
TWO POSTS, BACK TO BACK!!!!! O_o Beware, lest your monitor explode from the sheer awesomeness!!!
My son and I have jumped through the End Portal. We're not exactly a precision combat team, and his interest didn't last too long. He's back over to Roblox now.
We did not have the problems I was afraid of, like a silverfish waiting on the other side to knock us into the Void, or a very difficult and dangerous trek to the Ender Dragon. We appeared in an underground hollow, dug up to the surface, and are almost right there.
Since it's just me, going on the gung-ho attack isn't exactly going to be successful. So I'm going for the boring but practical method: I'm digging a 5-wide,2-tall tunnel that goes to each of the obsidian pillars, and building pillar shields so I can pillar up in *relative* safety. The dragon can still attack through the rock, but it won't knock me flying at least.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Been a busy weekend, got quite a bit of Minecrafting done, but surprisingly little that makes good screenshots.
First is my latest tactic in the End. This allows me to get closer without having to worry about Endermen. Mind you, the Dragon is still stomping me into the ground. I've gotten it down to about 33% health twice before dying or being forced to run away.
And the other thing I've accomplished is moving the Nether Portal underneath the Oshewani Sanctuary down to the floor, where it's more accessible.
There's not a lot you can do to directly decorate a Nether Portal, but I don't think this looks too bad. I wound up having to download a Map Coordinates Addon to coordinate my portal linkages, because I also have a portal on top of the Sanctuary so I can reach the villagers if I need to. Matching the portals together isn't that hard once you know the coords on each end. WAY harder without that little bit of knowledge.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Not sure if I'll get any responses for this, but since the upgrade was for the viewers, and I haven't settled on an answer yet, I thought I'd give you all a chance to give me your input.
I'm getting ready to do some more work on the Oshewani Sanctuary iron farm.
Do you think it would look best with the building settled on the top of the mountain (the way it used to be), raised up on a central pillar (the way it currently is), raised up on multiple pillars, or floating unsupported in the sky?
Poll is here: http://www.strawpoll.me/13880989
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I appreciate the folks who've taken time to vote and let me know what you wanted to see with the Oshewani Sanctuary. I'll start working on it soon, I think. I'm going over plans in my head, trying to fit the upgrades into a coherent design. There's still time to vote if you're inclined and interested.
I haven't accomplished much lately - I've made a few more stabs at the dragon, trying different things out, seeing what might work, and what doesn't. I've gotten him down to about 25% health once, but not quite managed to kill him yet. He's knocked me off into the Void once, but fortunately I wasn't loaded up with my diamond gear, so I didn't lose much of value. It really doesn't seem to like all the water I've spread across the place though, and keeps trying to destroy it. But it's water, and it just flows right back into place.
After watching Mumbo's video about the Observer last night (), I did a little experimenting with Observer-based dropper circuits. The Observer doesn't behave for us like it does in Java edition. It doesn't detect the change in a dropper when it's powered. The best circuit I could come up with in a short time period (about 30 minutes) is not very good:
Fairly compact, fairly expensive, and requires a button push to start.
A little more playing around, without an Observer and I wound up with this variant on the standard. The only difference is the powering circuit going over vertically rather than horizontally. Effectively no change from the standard, but might fit into a smaller space if you're trying to fit it in a narrow area.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Yyyyeahhhh... This is the circuit I wound up actually using:
I could put a chest on top of the hopper, but I don't typically have that much stuff to throw away, and I think I like the way it looks with the hopper drain in the floor. And I can throw stuff from my inventory onto it.
I played around with the Observer a bit more, and it does not detect a block getting powered. It does detect a comparator turning on and off though.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Mostly just doing some maintenance the last few days. Clearing lava from the bottom of the base, getting some glass ready for 1.2 so I can make colored glass, enchanting multiple iron swords, etc. My plan for the iron swords is to try and kill the Ender Dragon by just rushing back in after death without necessarily having to worry about picking up dropped gear.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
1.2 has dropped, and I got to play around for a couple hours last night. A lot of mobs spawned in previously unspawnable locations, but that's died off some, so it may have just been a first load in glitch. I'd had plans for the floor of my base, but it turns out what I had in my head looked terrible. So I'm playing around with other layouts, see if any of them look any good.
I also had to fix my iron farm - it's high enough up that my water pits froze up. So that took just covering the interior in torches. That also caused a few flowing water blocks to turn into water sources that messed up the currents a bit.
The new crafting system seems to make things pretty simple, but I haven't used it much yet. I'll post some pictures once I've settled on a flooring.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
A random pic of my base during sunset/sunrise:
Views like this are one of the reasons I love this base.
Here are some views of my current floor design. Not sure if it's permanent yet. There's also an alternate version with trap doors on it - they block the direct view of the floor beneath, but it's still visible through the gaps. It was the only spawn-proof covering I could think of that was still visible through (unless I want to use redstone dust... hmmm....)
Let me know what you think. Are either of them Not-Terrible? Is there one you prefer over the other? Something else you can think of that will look better?
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Due to a lag glitch, my entire inventory disappeared last night, including ALL of my Mending Diamond armor and tools, with the exception of my Silk Touch shovel. *sigh*
On the plus side...
Accomplished with enchanted iron armor and a really strong bow. My son was standing behind me, but I don't know that he shot the dragon or not.
PS - I just checked with him, and he did hit the dragon once, on the killing shot we both hit at the same time. I suspect his presence also made the dragon act more predictably. It kept charging in a straight line rather than circling around the healing crystals and spellbombing.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
So we went through the End Portal to our new End "City"...
Yep. That's the whole City right there. 1 building. I did manage to collect the parts for two Shulker Boxes though, one for me, and one for my son.
And I ripped the whole thing down for spare parts.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
10/10
Thank you, I appreciate that!
For my update, I'm again in the position of working on things that are time-consuming but not very photogenic. Replacing all of my mending gear has taken some slogging through the trading system to scrounge up enough emeralds to buy multiple Mending books. And to do that I've had to do some farming, and so on.
I'm working on terraforming the End Dragon's Isle to make soloing it a bit easier. I'm hoping most of it will survive the rebuilding process the island goes through when the dragon respawns. I *think* it just replaces the obsidian pillars and the crystals at the top if they're missing, and I so far haven't touched any of those.
I'm still not 100% sure I like this flooring for the Oshewani Sanctuary, but it's the best I've got so far. I'll probably get about halfway through and come up with something I like better and wind up ripping all this out again.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Been very busy with another project of mine; I'm working on a different family tree display, that's been taking a fair amount of time. However, I have gotten a few things done.
I needed some coal:
And I came up with a nice build style for the bottom of the Oshewani Sanctuary:
Converting this:
To this:
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Reached a point on the End terraforming that it's worth showing you what I'm doing. I have not yet done this in a complete 360 all around, but I'm *almost* there...
My plan is to have the entire upper layer covered in water. No Endermen to worry about, the dragon magic bombs sometimes don't go off, and if I get knocked high into the air, I always land safely. My plan is to extend the iron railings as high up as I can, so that the dragon can't knock me off the island, but I haven't quite finished flooding the entire top level yet. I'm almost there though. As soon as I'm finished with that I'll start on extending the safety rails.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I finally finished Endscaping, fencing and flooding the whole place.
Sadly, it still wasn't good enough. I did manage to take it down to about a third health once, but it managed to regen and eventually killed me. Part of the issue is that I can't run fast enough in the water to rush it when it sits on the pillar so I can whack it with the sword. My diamond armor would let me do it I think, but I put it away and was wearing inferior iron gear, so I wouldn't mind losing it.
So I'll have to XP farm and get me some good water boots, I think.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)