After installing the Acacia farm seen in Post #184 I suffered a case of builder's block. From then until several days ago I did no significant building whatsoever and in fact rarely logged into the game. I have now resumed operations in a small way. I addressed the Lower Terrace entrance passage, which remained in a primitive state since the fortress walls were originally established well over three years ago. My work there is tentative at best, and might be completely jettisoned. I replaced spammy torches with more sophisticated lighting on portions of the Plateau and again tentatively along part of the Terrace defense wall. A small potato patch has been established on the Plateau that will eventually be converted to Beetroot.
Here's an up-to-date overview of the Hill fort seen from the east:
<The capture embedded here has been replaced by a more up-to-date image in my initial post (#1)>
The chief differences between this view and its earlier twin seen in post #1 are the Lower Terrace acacia farm, work at the Terrace east entrance, and hopefully improved lighting on both Terrace and Plateau. On the road between Terrace and Plateau entrance passages can be seen my first MC horse, acquired just this afternoon.
Upper Plateau ersatz Beetroot patch:
<The capture embedded here has been replaced by a more up-to-date image in my initial post (#1)>
This small crop field was established only this afternoon, in a cubbyhole not previously utilized. This is an area I converted from torches to more sophisticated lighting. Notice the tree plaque, designating it a surviver from day-one. There is a second day-one spruce just out of frame screen right. My initial spawn point is between those two trees.
My next building project will be relatively simple . . . convert a redundant chicken coup into a rabbit pen. I have not yet acquired rabbits, but saw some in the same Plains biome I found my horse. Boy is that gonna be an adventure!
I might install a small horse / mule stable on the Lower Terrance. (A full horse/mule ranch will eventually by built outside the fort . . . maybe.)
I still can't drum up the courage to start in on the Keep roof.
Since my previous posting I added a small two-animal stable atop the Lower Terrace, near the Upper Plateau entrance passage. On the Plateau itself a structure was added to house elaborate oven banks tied to hoppers and chests. That facility also contains a snow-golem farm. In the general vicinity an old-style primitive secondary chicken pen was converted into a rabbit habitat that better matches its surroundings.
The rabbit habitat:
<The capture embedded here has been replaced by a more up-to-date image in my initial post (#1)>
Not much to it, but it gets the job done. This image will not appeal in my initial post due to the area to its immediate rear (south) undergoing considerable change. (The oven facility is there.)
Speaking of post #1, it has again been revised, to include several new pictures as well as updates to older images, showing off several shader mods, SEUS v10.2 preview 1 and Sildur's Vibrant Shaders to be exact.
I must sadly report that the initial post's Road to the West section is now a mess. Somehow most of it escaped its spoiler tag and is taking up too much post space. Attempting to fix that messed up text line-breaks within the spoil tag. That's bad enough, but to my horror I find that just opening the thread for edits automatically removes that same spoiler tag again, while not not correcting breaks. I have absolutely no idea what's up with that so will have to put up with bad breaks and/or lack of spoiler. (I suspect I can permanently fix the line breaks so long as I don't replace the spoiler, and will do so at some point.)
Holy mooshroom!!! Brilliant. I can only imagine the time it took to build all of that. Good job!!
Thanks for the compliment. Oddly or not, I don't see myself as an overly prolific builder, considering that my world is now over three and a half years old. Then again, as a survivalist I go long stretches with little to no 'cosmetic' building at all. When the mood hits me I do creditable work. Sooner or later inspiration vanishes and I'm back to exploring and/or resource gathering.
Speaking of 'brilliant,' yours timing is brilliant in that I initially visited the thread to announce . . .
Updates to my Initial Post (#1):
On this date I modified my initial post, adding several new images reflecting recently installed rabbit pen, oven-bank facility, and one-stall mule/donkey stable with attached corral. The image of my Upper Plateau cocoa farm was updated to reflect improved lighting experiments. As with all recent images, these utilize either SEUS or Sildur shaders. My world download has been updated to 2015-10-20, It now contains all Hill Fort construction up to and including the Mule Stable.
Believe it or not, I corrected numerous text errors within the Hill Fort section. I'm sure I overlooked as many as I caught, and likely created new errors in the process.
Speaking of the Hill Fort, I experienced an alarming shock the other day harvesting my minuscule mushroom farm. While on its upper levels I heard what could only be a skeleton. Assuming the sound originated outside the fortress I descended the ladder to the farm's bottom floor. BAM! Hit by an arrow. What the . . . ???? The skelly was easily enough disposed of. But what was it doing there? During construction I had gone over the farm, block by block, multiple times, F3 on display. All lighting measured well. Nothing dropped below '8'. Yet I missed something. There could be no other explanation. F3 again at the ready, I reexamined to farm. The result? Three blocks on the bottom floor hit '7', as did two on each the upper floors. I was at a loss as to how I could have missed those, then recalled that during a recent major update the way light was read had been slightly altered. I had gone over the fortress back then and corrected a few too dark spots, but forgot to reevaluate the shroom farm. I of course immediately adjusted room lighting to correct the situation, and thanked my lucky stars the mob had been a skel rather than a creeper.
Activity wise, I have lately devoted most of my time to mining andesite, diorite, and granite. Those are major excursions, my world having been created in MC1.1. The nearest area containing those resources is far from my base of operations. I suspect I'll return to those branch mines once I harvest my fortress tree farms a few more times.
The Hill Fort upper plateau Keep Tower is at long last roofed!
After much procrastination the Autarch, may his rule forever prosper, got off his duff and installed a proper roof for the Keep Tower. It is seen in the image below, which also appears in my initial post:
< The image originally seen here has been moved to my original post (#1) >
It, and two new Keep floors, were built 15-16 Jan 2016 and are still being tweaked. The roof's creation somehow triggered a lighting bug that had never plagued me before. It is vaguely seen above. Notice the stones surrounding the right-most large exterior opening on the brick & stone floor just below the roof. Rather than being merely 'dark' due to shadowing, it is actually solid black! Odd that, in that there is only minuscule differences between the floor's four exterior openings. Yet none of the others caught the bug. The Autarch spent the bulk of 17 Jan trying to correct it, and only succeeded doing so the morning of the 18th. His solution, while not ideal, does no real visual harm. The cupola at roof top is accessible via ladder.
Here's the new seventh floor, dedicated to Nether Wart farming:
Truth to tell, this is an unanticipated floor. I had not realized there would be enough unused vertical space between the sixth the topmost floors to house an additional floor. Yet such is obviously the case. Being unplanned, the Autarch had no idea what to do with it. We ultimately decided to create a Nether Wart farm, our thought being that it is only two floors removed from the Portion Room, making practical sense of a sort. It does not replace the long existent Nether Wart farm next to the chicken pen on the Upper Plateau. The room has been tweaked since this image was captured.
Here's the Keep's topmost floor, the so-called 'guest room':
< The image original seen here has been moved to my initial post (#1) >
Being a single-player world, this floor is purely cosmetic. It consists of four more or less identical cubicles, their only difference being choice of wall hangings. The floor is still being accessorized. I find myself not happy with its ceiling as seen above. It will be tweaked during my next extended play session.
Due to the not-quite-finalized nature of these floors it is doubtful that either image will appear in my initial post.
Once tweaking is complete, the Autarch must devote himself to replenishing resources consumed during the builds, chiefly clay, birch wood, spruce wood, lime green wool, and to a lesser extent netherrack.
After a months-long absence I have returned with a minor update. A VERY minor update. Most of my recent Minecraft adventures have occurred on a secondary 'putz-around' world, a world in which I do no 'fancy' building whatsoever. However, within the past week or so I returned to the Autocracy for a bit of resource gathering, as well as to perform cosmetically insignificant tweaks at the Hill Fort. The most time consuming alteration was the addition of six new chests to the Underground Wool Storage Facility. This seemingly no-brain project took far longer than expected, as I ended up needing to dismantle six already in-place chests full of wool to get the angles right for the new chests overhead ceiling blocks. The irony is that I later realized I could prolly have accomplished what I wanted without having to dismantle those chests, saving a few hours work. As part of the project, I switched from wall torches to overhead glowstone lighting. The Facility rear wall now has a hopefully less cluttered look, though I am not yet wholly convinced I'm happy with it.
I slightly renovated the Enchantment Station, reducing total bookshelf count from the once required 30 to the now standard 15. This was done to make as-needed torching of bookshelves simpler.
A small wheat farm has been added on the Lower Terrace between the Acacia Tree Farm and Horse Stables. Its official purpose is to supply food to horses and (not yet acquired) mules. In reality it is purely cosmetic, as I have adequate wheat farms scattered throughout the Fortress.
A few other minor cosmetic changes were made. None warrant singling out.
This thread's initial post (#1) has been updated with new images to reflect these changes. Additionally, I added a few images forgotten during my previous update.
On this date I modified my initial post, adding two new images and updating a third. They reflect the establishment a beetroot field and dedicated open-air storage facility atop the same upper-plateau hill that houses our oven-bank facility. Beetroot seeds were acquired during a grand exploratory expedition conducted almost immediately after updating from Minecraft 189 to 194 late May 2016. Also found during the expedition, two donkeys.
With the establishment of the beetroot field, little remains of the fortress in its pristine day-one state, though I continue to retain its general sculpting when practical and retain day-one spruce trees within the fort when possible. Alas, all spruce atop the hill now housing the beetroot field had to be removed. Such is life.
ADDENDUM: I neglected to mention that I updated to MC194 on 27 May 2016, this thread's four year anniversary.
The below image shows the Upper Plateau southwest quadrant as it appeared just prior to renovations that occurred between late May and early Jun 2016. Until that time the area remained more or less as it appeared soon after day-one, Feb 2012; a gentle spruce covered slope, spammed with random torches to prevent mob spawn. The west-side ascension ramp's protected entranceway is seen at extreme right. A bit of the much later added oven-bank facility is seen screen left.
With the creation of Beetroot Hill, almost all evidence of slope vanished, as did original-growth spruce trees. We were for some days at a loss about what to do with the now empty open space between Beetroot Hill and Ramp entrance. Then, as the Autarch attempted to create a better decorative pattern for his shield, it came to us that no ready means of acquiring vines existed within the fortress. We eventually settled on simplicity, a single spruce from which vines can be grown and harvested, as seen below:
On display are the west-side ascension ramp protected entrance, a gravel path, the vine-tree, the last remains of the original hill slope, a trapdoor concealing a storage chest dedicated to vines, and a portion of Beetroot Hill retaining wall. The Hill's open-air beetroot storage shed is glimpsed atop the wall. I like to think that the area's lighting is markedly improved.
With the establishment of the vine farm there remain no decent size unutilized land atop the Plateau. That said, the Plateau contains several redundant crop fields that can be converted to other uses at need. Additionally, several smallish underutilized spaces remain on the lower terrace. A few mid- and buffer- terraces remain all but barren. In other words we are not yet worried over lack of room, at least not for small-scale projects.
1) The download save-file for my survival world has been updated to reflect changes at the Hill Fort up to the end of Aug 2016. The link can be found here and also in my initial post (#1).
2) Several initial-post outdated Hill Fort screen captures have been replaced with similar images showing the Keep roof in place.
3) Gotta admit my initial post is becoming somewhat unwieldy. Something is wrong with it that can not be detected via normal editing. Attempting to put more of its screenshot subsections in spoilers to cut down on clutter, for instance, leads to text errors that take a good bit of time to correct and eventually reappear unless those spoilers are removed. I sometimes think to redo the entire thread from scratch, but at this stage of the game it's simply too much work.
After installing the Acacia farm seen in Post #184 I suffered a case of builder's block. From then until several days ago I did no significant building whatsoever and in fact rarely logged into the game. I have now resumed operations in a small way. I addressed the Lower Terrace entrance passage, which remained in a primitive state since the fortress walls were originally established well over three years ago. My work there is tentative at best, and might be completely jettisoned. I replaced spammy torches with more sophisticated lighting on portions of the Plateau and again tentatively along part of the Terrace defense wall. A small potato patch has been established on the Plateau that will eventually be converted to Beetroot.
Here's an up-to-date overview of the Hill fort seen from the east:
<The capture embedded here has been replaced by a more up-to-date image in my initial post (#1)>
The chief differences between this view and its earlier twin seen in post #1 are the Lower Terrace acacia farm, work at the Terrace east entrance, and hopefully improved lighting on both Terrace and Plateau. On the road between Terrace and Plateau entrance passages can be seen my first MC horse, acquired just this afternoon.
Upper Plateau ersatz Beetroot patch:
<The capture embedded here has been replaced by a more up-to-date image in my initial post (#1)>
This small crop field was established only this afternoon, in a cubbyhole not previously utilized. This is an area I converted from torches to more sophisticated lighting. Notice the tree plaque, designating it a surviver from day-one. There is a second day-one spruce just out of frame screen right. My initial spawn point is between those two trees.
My next building project will be relatively simple . . . convert a redundant chicken coup into a rabbit pen. I have not yet acquired rabbits, but saw some in the same Plains biome I found my horse. Boy is that gonna be an adventure!
I might install a small horse / mule stable on the Lower Terrance. (A full horse/mule ranch will eventually by built outside the fort . . . maybe.)
I still can't drum up the courage to start in on the Keep roof.
Revisions, additions, and thread SNAFU:
Since my previous posting I added a small two-animal stable atop the Lower Terrace, near the Upper Plateau entrance passage. On the Plateau itself a structure was added to house elaborate oven banks tied to hoppers and chests. That facility also contains a snow-golem farm. In the general vicinity an old-style primitive secondary chicken pen was converted into a rabbit habitat that better matches its surroundings.
The rabbit habitat:
<The capture embedded here has been replaced by a more up-to-date image in my initial post (#1)>
Not much to it, but it gets the job done. This image will not appeal in my initial post due to the area to its immediate rear (south) undergoing considerable change. (The oven facility is there.)
Speaking of post #1, it has again been revised, to include several new pictures as well as updates to older images, showing off several shader mods, SEUS v10.2 preview 1 and Sildur's Vibrant Shaders to be exact.
I must sadly report that the initial post's Road to the West section is now a mess. Somehow most of it escaped its spoiler tag and is taking up too much post space. Attempting to fix that messed up text line-breaks within the spoil tag. That's bad enough, but to my horror I find that just opening the thread for edits automatically removes that same spoiler tag again, while not not correcting breaks. I have absolutely no idea what's up with that so will have to put up with bad breaks and/or lack of spoiler. (I suspect I can permanently fix the line breaks so long as I don't replace the spoiler, and will do so at some point.)
Holy mooshroom!!! Brilliant. I can only imagine the time it took to build all of that. Good job!!
If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. -SuckerPunch
Laura Maybe
Thanks for the compliment. Oddly or not, I don't see myself as an overly prolific builder, considering that my world is now over three and a half years old. Then again, as a survivalist I go long stretches with little to no 'cosmetic' building at all. When the mood hits me I do creditable work. Sooner or later inspiration vanishes and I'm back to exploring and/or resource gathering.
Speaking of 'brilliant,' yours timing is brilliant in that I initially visited the thread to announce . . .
Updates to my Initial Post (#1):
On this date I modified my initial post, adding several new images reflecting recently installed rabbit pen, oven-bank facility, and one-stall mule/donkey stable with attached corral. The image of my Upper Plateau cocoa farm was updated to reflect improved lighting experiments. As with all recent images, these utilize either SEUS or Sildur shaders. My world download has been updated to 2015-10-20, It now contains all Hill Fort construction up to and including the Mule Stable.
Believe it or not, I corrected numerous text errors within the Hill Fort section. I'm sure I overlooked as many as I caught, and likely created new errors in the process.
Speaking of the Hill Fort, I experienced an alarming shock the other day harvesting my minuscule mushroom farm. While on its upper levels I heard what could only be a skeleton. Assuming the sound originated outside the fortress I descended the ladder to the farm's bottom floor. BAM! Hit by an arrow. What the . . . ???? The skelly was easily enough disposed of. But what was it doing there? During construction I had gone over the farm, block by block, multiple times, F3 on display. All lighting measured well. Nothing dropped below '8'. Yet I missed something. There could be no other explanation. F3 again at the ready, I reexamined to farm. The result? Three blocks on the bottom floor hit '7', as did two on each the upper floors. I was at a loss as to how I could have missed those, then recalled that during a recent major update the way light was read had been slightly altered. I had gone over the fortress back then and corrected a few too dark spots, but forgot to reevaluate the shroom farm. I of course immediately adjusted room lighting to correct the situation, and thanked my lucky stars the mob had been a skel rather than a creeper.
Activity wise, I have lately devoted most of my time to mining andesite, diorite, and granite. Those are major excursions, my world having been created in MC1.1. The nearest area containing those resources is far from my base of operations. I suspect I'll return to those branch mines once I harvest my fortress tree farms a few more times.
The Hill Fort upper plateau Keep Tower is at long last roofed!
After much procrastination the Autarch, may his rule forever prosper, got off his duff and installed a proper roof for the Keep Tower. It is seen in the image below, which also appears in my initial post:
It, and two new Keep floors, were built 15-16 Jan 2016 and are still being tweaked. The roof's creation somehow triggered a lighting bug that had never plagued me before. It is vaguely seen above. Notice the stones surrounding the right-most large exterior opening on the brick & stone floor just below the roof. Rather than being merely 'dark' due to shadowing, it is actually solid black! Odd that, in that there is only minuscule differences between the floor's four exterior openings. Yet none of the others caught the bug. The Autarch spent the bulk of 17 Jan trying to correct it, and only succeeded doing so the morning of the 18th. His solution, while not ideal, does no real visual harm. The cupola at roof top is accessible via ladder.
Here's the new seventh floor, dedicated to Nether Wart farming:
Truth to tell, this is an unanticipated floor. I had not realized there would be enough unused vertical space between the sixth the topmost floors to house an additional floor. Yet such is obviously the case. Being unplanned, the Autarch had no idea what to do with it. We ultimately decided to create a Nether Wart farm, our thought being that it is only two floors removed from the Portion Room, making practical sense of a sort. It does not replace the long existent Nether Wart farm next to the chicken pen on the Upper Plateau. The room has been tweaked since this image was captured.
Here's the Keep's topmost floor, the so-called 'guest room':
< The image original seen here has been moved to my initial post (#1) >
Being a single-player world, this floor is purely cosmetic. It consists of four more or less identical cubicles, their only difference being choice of wall hangings. The floor is still being accessorized. I find myself not happy with its ceiling as seen above. It will be tweaked during my next extended play session.
Due to the not-quite-finalized nature of these floors it is doubtful that either image will appear in my initial post.
Once tweaking is complete, the Autarch must devote himself to replenishing resources consumed during the builds, chiefly clay, birch wood, spruce wood, lime green wool, and to a lesser extent netherrack.
Is that a Creeper bedspread? Not conducive to a good night's rest!
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
After a months-long absence I have returned with a minor update. A VERY minor update. Most of my recent Minecraft adventures have occurred on a secondary 'putz-around' world, a world in which I do no 'fancy' building whatsoever. However, within the past week or so I returned to the Autocracy for a bit of resource gathering, as well as to perform cosmetically insignificant tweaks at the Hill Fort. The most time consuming alteration was the addition of six new chests to the Underground Wool Storage Facility. This seemingly no-brain project took far longer than expected, as I ended up needing to dismantle six already in-place chests full of wool to get the angles right for the new chests overhead ceiling blocks. The irony is that I later realized I could prolly have accomplished what I wanted without having to dismantle those chests, saving a few hours work. As part of the project, I switched from wall torches to overhead glowstone lighting. The Facility rear wall now has a hopefully less cluttered look, though I am not yet wholly convinced I'm happy with it.
I slightly renovated the Enchantment Station, reducing total bookshelf count from the once required 30 to the now standard 15. This was done to make as-needed torching of bookshelves simpler.
A small wheat farm has been added on the Lower Terrace between the Acacia Tree Farm and Horse Stables. Its official purpose is to supply food to horses and (not yet acquired) mules. In reality it is purely cosmetic, as I have adequate wheat farms scattered throughout the Fortress.
A few other minor cosmetic changes were made. None warrant singling out.
This thread's initial post (#1) has been updated with new images to reflect these changes. Additionally, I added a few images forgotten during my previous update.
UPDATE to my initial post (#1):
On this date I modified my initial post, adding two new images and updating a third. They reflect the establishment a beetroot field and dedicated open-air storage facility atop the same upper-plateau hill that houses our oven-bank facility. Beetroot seeds were acquired during a grand exploratory expedition conducted almost immediately after updating from Minecraft 189 to 194 late May 2016. Also found during the expedition, two donkeys.
With the establishment of the beetroot field, little remains of the fortress in its pristine day-one state, though I continue to retain its general sculpting when practical and retain day-one spruce trees within the fort when possible. Alas, all spruce atop the hill now housing the beetroot field had to be removed. Such is life.
ADDENDUM: I neglected to mention that I updated to MC194 on 27 May 2016, this thread's four year anniversary.
Hill Fort renovation project: Vine Farm
The below image shows the Upper Plateau southwest quadrant as it appeared just prior to renovations that occurred between late May and early Jun 2016. Until that time the area remained more or less as it appeared soon after day-one, Feb 2012; a gentle spruce covered slope, spammed with random torches to prevent mob spawn. The west-side ascension ramp's protected entranceway is seen at extreme right. A bit of the much later added oven-bank facility is seen screen left.
With the creation of Beetroot Hill, almost all evidence of slope vanished, as did original-growth spruce trees. We were for some days at a loss about what to do with the now empty open space between Beetroot Hill and Ramp entrance. Then, as the Autarch attempted to create a better decorative pattern for his shield, it came to us that no ready means of acquiring vines existed within the fortress. We eventually settled on simplicity, a single spruce from which vines can be grown and harvested, as seen below:
On display are the west-side ascension ramp protected entrance, a gravel path, the vine-tree, the last remains of the original hill slope, a trapdoor concealing a storage chest dedicated to vines, and a portion of Beetroot Hill retaining wall. The Hill's open-air beetroot storage shed is glimpsed atop the wall. I like to think that the area's lighting is markedly improved.
With the establishment of the vine farm there remain no decent size unutilized land atop the Plateau. That said, the Plateau contains several redundant crop fields that can be converted to other uses at need. Additionally, several smallish underutilized spaces remain on the lower terrace. A few mid- and buffer- terraces remain all but barren. In other words we are not yet worried over lack of room, at least not for small-scale projects.
UPDATES:
1) The download save-file for my survival world has been updated to reflect changes at the Hill Fort up to the end of Aug 2016. The link can be found here and also in my initial post (#1).
2) Several initial-post outdated Hill Fort screen captures have been replaced with similar images showing the Keep roof in place.
3) Gotta admit my initial post is becoming somewhat unwieldy. Something is wrong with it that can not be detected via normal editing. Attempting to put more of its screenshot subsections in spoilers to cut down on clutter, for instance, leads to text errors that take a good bit of time to correct and eventually reappear unless those spoilers are removed. I sometimes think to redo the entire thread from scratch, but at this stage of the game it's simply too much work.