When Notch called for suggestions to rename "hell," it brought to mind something he has mentioned awhile back. It was about his goal of using the classical "four elements" (Earth, Air, Water, and Fire) in the design of the game's features at some point in the future.
The new "hell" dimension has many close links to the element of fire, so it's a natural candidate for an elemental fire realm. Later on he could add other elemental dimensions, each with its own unique elemental properties, yet all sharing the common quality of enabling fast travel in the "normal world." The main reason I have not written about this suggestion before was that I had not come up with a good catchy name for these elemental dimensions.
"The Slip" is perfect for this. In the Halloween update, we gain access to the FireSlip - by building an obsidian frame and setting the bottom blocks on fire:
[] []
[] []
Later, perhaps we will build another obsidian frame, and place water blocks on its lower blocks, to create a new portal to the WaterSlip:
[] []
[] []
Placing soil blocks could create a portal to the EarthSlip:
[] []
[] []
I'm not sure of the best way to activate a portal to the AirSlip - perhaps by placing two other blocks in those spaces, then removing them so they get replaced with newly created air blocks. Or maybe this way:
[] []
[] []
(Seems sort of logical, since making glass requires a lot of air.)
After seeing the creativity evident in this upcoming Slip realm, I'd love to see what new ideas Notch would create in new Slip dimensions based on the other elements.
I think this is a perfect name aswell, but i'd think the materials used to make other portals in the future should be more rare of a material... somthing like the glowing minerals in hell..?
Interesting idea, Ionz. Still, obsidian seems a logical choice for the portal frame, simply because of its durability. Best to have portals that are NOT too easily destroyed by FireGhasts and other powerful elemental monsters.
All 4 "slips" would be based off of various underworlds, each with a different emotion, in my opinion.
The Fire slip, which we already have, is very obviously based off of classical Hell. The emotion here is sadness.
Water slip could be a grimdark leaky cave, very similar to the rivers of Styx and the Plains of Hades. The emotion here is loneliness.
Air Slip is a harder one, but Valhalla comes to mind, the one difference being that that one is acctually a HEAVEN, not a hell, but the whole idea of endless war does help. The emotion here is rage.
Earth Slip is probably the hardest one. Maybe a craggy land with a bottomless abyss? Not neccessarily part of any mythology, but it's familiar enough. The emotion here is agony.
Maybe there could be unique mobs for each, but Ghasts with different facial expressions and elemental attacks should appear in all four. (e.g, Air Slip Ghast would prevent you from fleeing with a wall of solid air, and rip you apart at close range. It's face would be contorted in rage)
But yeah, keep the obsidian frame, but make the elements rarer. Either that, or use different tools on it instead of placing different blocks on it. Even just using a bucket/ bucket of water on it would be more interesting than just needing water on it. I'm not sure what we could use for earth and air... We probably don't have the tools yet.
Maybe each "slip" could have a different use, too. Fire slip for fast travel, and the other ones for... some other use?
Maybe one could even be used as a link between saved worlds!? (Maybe just a copy of them? Maybe link to an entirely different world?) A safe travel dimension might work, but on the other hand, that might get, well, boring. Maybe one could be used for random transportation. You could show up several kilometers from where you started, you could show up just quarter of a kilometer. Distance traveled (and direction, as well) in the slip would be irrelevant.
I'm imagining the slip-n-slide water slip as a mix between an underwater cave, a deep abyss / trench, and all of the creepy deep - water plants and creatures. So, instead of classical / Biblical hell, make it Lovecraftian? I'm also imagining that there would be random lighting, like how water refracts light. Or like aurora. Maybe even randomly changing light. (It would have to change every once in a while, though, not constantly)
The air ship air slip could be very foggy, filled with a bunch of floating islands. (Hmm... maybe that could be the "go between worlds" one.)
The earth slip one... hmm. Maybe gigantic caverns? Something like Deepholme in Wow? Huge crystals everywhere? Random faults and cliffs and pillars? You could probably put it together with a "life" element, so, a gigantic bio-cave? Fungus and tangled roots and huge, stable vines strung across the place?
Well, i like the idea, but for the earth slip, i think you should be IN the abyss. Your in the abyss. A dark desolate ground where the only thing different instead of looking at the bleak canyon walls would be the impossibly high top of the canyoun. This would be to represent helplessness, or instead hopelessness. The Ghasts here would be those that wouldnt give a crap aout you, till they are attacked, or lash out randomly. Benefit: havent thought of it yet.....
The air slip could be the interserver ways, but theres a danger in crossing them.. the walk ways can crumble after a small amount of time.. Could represent that your not confident in your self, or dont trust your self... And maybe here could be a rare stone: Marble, shiny, nice, and and les hard than obsidian, but can be used, if broken to tiny shards, to make mosaics?
Water slip could actually be like water. Theres an aurora, but you can never just reach the top.. it seems so close, yet sooo very far.... obviously im guessing there would be "air bubbles" in the water, and you portal would create one. The benefit of this one slip could be fushing> but with things like Giant sharks or Giant squid. Then normal fish.. Fish farms anyone?
And fire. which is done and done... Yep. thats what i have
I really like this idea. The air-slip has to be floating islands, I really miss that indev mode, with portals connecting the islands. It would be a lot closer to WoT Ways that notch was talking about when he announced hell.(portals in this case are the portal mod type, no loading screens.)
Notch did say that travel between servers would be possible, if not for a really long time. Airslip seems ideally suited for that. I'm not so sure about the other ones, they are great ideas, but other than maybe traveling between worlds,(Earthslip maybe?) I cant think of any other uses.
And there definitely needs to be something better than dirt to activate the Earthslip portal. It just doesn't seem at all suited for portaling to me.
Maybe the portals could be designed to be acquired sequentially? As in, the material for the Fireslip is just fire, available on the standard world, but to activate portals to Earthslip you need to get a block from Fireslip. Waterslip would need a block from Earthslip, and Airslip would need a block from Waterslip.
I like this sequence, because it puts the different levels of impressiveness of the portal effects in order. Fast travel is useful, and really cool, but going between your worlds is even more impressive than that. Whatever Waterslip does would be one level up from that, but still less amazing than traveling to another server entirely(equivalent to changing universes.)
Anyway, all the ideas in this thread are awesome.
Also, my spell-check now accepts the words earth/fire/water/air-slip. Hopefully there will be more causes to use them.
The air dimension should *definitely* be floating islands. They surely have to come back at some point.
Earth could be a lot like "Hell", only without the lava. Or if you go with the "life" connection, it could be like the old Paradise map.
Water could be, quite literally, filled with water. With maybe freestanding bubbles of air here and there, to prevent it from getting too mean. Or else a craftable diving helmet. The edges of the map would be blocked with unbreakable ice or something.
Personally, I'd like to be able to take a gate to the moon, as well. Bleak lunar landscape, maybe weird alien tree-equivalents, a huge "Earth" at night instead of the moon, and low gravity. Personally, my vote would be that the moon is where creepers come from - so the place would be crawling with them. (You'd need the diving helmet for the moon as well.)
Maybe the air slip could involve my long lost love, Floating biomes from InDev
Just the idea of 4 different kinds or worlds accessible is nice. My only question is would they all affect fast travel in the same way? or perhaps could they act diffidently in terms of porting, in and out?
Also the idea of each one having unique hazards.
The fire slip has lava everywhere and ghasts, and the idea of the water slip i like.
Thumbs up OP, you have made a very decent thread today.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"No one shall be able to drive us from the wonderland that ZUN created for us."
-ChaosAngel092
. . . there definitely needs to be something better than dirt to activate the Earthslip portal. It just doesn't seem at all suited for portaling to me.
Dragonbyte, thanks for the positive feedback, and for some really solid points to help flesh out the idea. I've quoted only a small portion of your post because I heartily agree with nearly everything you wrote, and have little else to add, except on this small point.
I suggested soil blocks to create an EarthSlip portal because I have a job linked to agriculture, where soil is more highly valued than in most other walks of life. Still, I can agree that plain dirt might not the best choice. Much better if an Earth-SlipGate does NOT become active until it looks like this:
[] []
[] []
This would require some patience, but it would work especially well along with the suggestion from zhauth, that the EarthSlip dimension's design ought to include strong themes evoking the concept of life, or life-force.
See if you can get a mod to make a stickied topic of this, or of a new one around the idea of the four elemental "Slip" worlds. WOULD BE FREAKING AWSOME!!!
Given that Hell/The Slip/The Deep/The Core is metaphorically "below" the Minecraft map (yes, I know it isn't really, it's another dimension, so please don't tell me that), the others might fit in a similar way.
The Water dimension would be metaphorically in the very deepest ocean, the Air dimension would be metaphorically above the clouds (with, as mentioned, floating islands).
Where would Earth 'go', metaphorically speaking? I wonder if the existing Minecraft world *is* the Earth dimension? Think about it - we already spend a lot of our time deep underground. And the 'life' component is taken by the surface. Then again, an Earth dimension probably shouldn't have so much water and lava in it. I guess the Earth dimension is "parallel" to us, rather than being "above" or "below".
Now, thinking about how travel might work in the various dimensions...
It makes sense for Hell to do fast-travel, because it's "underneath" us. The Air dimension would be "above" us, so it would presumably do *slower* travel, if there were any change at all. (And since it probably isn't practical to make a *larger* map than the regular one, there probably won't be any change.) Why would one want to go there? Well, something's making the floating islands float, right? I'll bet you can mine something there to make things float in the real world. (In honor of Rocky and Bullwinkle, I suggest naming it Upsidaisium.
Water can perhaps be portaled to only in freestanding water. (This would be in place of activating the portal with water.) Since Water portals can only appear in water, a portal might take you MUCH further than 16:1 - if you play your cards right. I imagine you can find things there to help you breathe water - perhaps even a food that lets you breathe water for a day or something.
Earth... The thing that immediately leaps to mind is a huge cavern. But Hell/The Slip/etc. basically is that already, with lava - Earth might come off as an inferior copy. So given that it's "parallel" to us, why not play up the life part of it and make it a classic land of Faerie? It's perpetual twilight, the surface mobs are pretty tough but vulnerable to iron (or maybe new "cold iron" weapons made with iron ore rather than ingots), the underground is rich in ore - but not in iron. The portal might even be a ring of mushrooms, and occur naturally.
Since Hell warps space relative to us, it makes sense for at least one of the dimensions to also warp time - I would suggest the Faerie version of Earth, and/or Air. Basically for each day you spend there, X days pass in the real world - your crops grow, trees grow, and so on. Not sure how practical that is to code, though. Or perhaps time passes more slowly - that'd be easy.
EDIT: Oooh, another idea. The Earth map might have a surface that is mostly pure desert. With sandworms.
]" title="-<->" /> SkySlip
Portal Up
Surface | Portal inside Ocean* AquaSlip** | Portal Inside Dirt***/Cave ****
Portal Down
MoltenSlip
*When you make a portal inside a body of water
**Within it's own plane, meaning teleporting in and out is the same portal between the two world
***When you make a portal with dirt blocks or mossy cobblestone blocks in it.
**** Same as Aqua
Possible unique enemies:
MoltenSlip(FireSlip) = Zombie Pigs, Ghasts
AquaSlip = Electric Eels, Piranhas
SkySlip = Birds Of Prey (Winged beasts)
TerraSlip = StoneGolem (stationary mob, same ai as Zombie pigs, until attacked/disturbed, it whacks you)
TerraSlip is more like a Giant Stone Altar, a giant room with many mini temples inside it. Bottomless death pits is a possibility... You disturb golems with mining and noisy activities (TNTs).
Golems are blind, and can only sense you within a radius if you so disturb them, but they can be a bit slow so you only have to escape the vicinity... They also do not leave their areas since they can't jump across pits.
( . . . definitions of "slip" and "element" removed for brevity . . . )
they don't seem related
I'm not bashing the idea, but how are they perfect for each other?
It's more the word "slip" itself that is perfect, being a short word that easily lends itself to catchy combinations with the names of all the elements. Portals allow the player to "slip" between dimensions, too, as a person might slip through the narrow space of an opening that is partly blocked, or a door only partly open.
. . . there definitely needs to be something better than dirt to activate the Earthslip portal. It just doesn't seem at all suited for portaling to me.
Dragonbyte, thanks for the positive feedback, and for some really solid points to help flesh out the idea. I've quoted only a small portion of your post because I heartily agree with nearly everything you wrote, and have little else to add, except on this small point.
I suggested soil blocks to create an EarthSlip portal because I have a job linked to agriculture, where soil is more highly valued than in most other walks of life. Still, I can agree that plain dirt might not the best choice. Much better if an Earth-SlipGate does NOT become active until it looks like this:
[] []
[] []
This would require some patience, but it would work especially well along with the suggestion from zhauth, that the EarthSlip dimension's design ought to include strong themes evoking the concept of life, or life-force.
you could have it so that to activate the earth slip you place the dirt and then you use a hoe to plow the dirt in the portal, instead of waiting for grass to appear.
In fact, i don't think grass would appear unless the dirt in the portal was directly linked to other grass tile.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"No one shall be able to drive us from the wonderland that ZUN created for us."
-ChaosAngel092
you could have it so that to activate the earth slip you place the dirt and then you use a hoe to plow the dirt in the portal, instead of waiting for grass to appear.
In fact, i don't think grass would appear unless the dirt in the portal was directly linked to other grass tile.
Grass can spawn at least one vertical level above or below existing grass blocks, and possibly two at a time. Otherwise I never would have been able to get a nice lawn growing amongst the adminium blocks in one of my worlds.
A clever and/or impatient person could build an Earth gate quickly by digging carefully to create the necessary shape, then placing the obsidian blocks around a pair of already existing grass blocks. The concept of needing a living component to activate the gate would still be there.
The new "hell" dimension has many close links to the element of fire, so it's a natural candidate for an elemental fire realm. Later on he could add other elemental dimensions, each with its own unique elemental properties, yet all sharing the common quality of enabling fast travel in the "normal world." The main reason I have not written about this suggestion before was that I had not come up with a good catchy name for these elemental dimensions.
"The Slip" is perfect for this. In the Halloween update, we gain access to the FireSlip - by building an obsidian frame and setting the bottom blocks on fire:
[] []
[] []
Later, perhaps we will build another obsidian frame, and place water blocks on its lower blocks, to create a new portal to the WaterSlip:
[] []
[] []
Placing soil blocks could create a portal to the EarthSlip:
[] []
[] []
I'm not sure of the best way to activate a portal to the AirSlip - perhaps by placing two other blocks in those spaces, then removing them so they get replaced with newly created air blocks. Or maybe this way:
[] []
[] []
(Seems sort of logical, since making glass requires a lot of air.)
After seeing the creativity evident in this upcoming Slip realm, I'd love to see what new ideas Notch would create in new Slip dimensions based on the other elements.
Guide to finding updated video drivers
Guide to finding updated video drivers
The Fire slip, which we already have, is very obviously based off of classical Hell. The emotion here is sadness.
Water slip could be a grimdark leaky cave, very similar to the rivers of Styx and the Plains of Hades. The emotion here is loneliness.
Air Slip is a harder one, but Valhalla comes to mind, the one difference being that that one is acctually a HEAVEN, not a hell, but the whole idea of endless war does help. The emotion here is rage.
Earth Slip is probably the hardest one. Maybe a craggy land with a bottomless abyss? Not neccessarily part of any mythology, but it's familiar enough. The emotion here is agony.
Maybe there could be unique mobs for each, but Ghasts with different facial expressions and elemental attacks should appear in all four. (e.g, Air Slip Ghast would prevent you from fleeing with a wall of solid air, and rip you apart at close range. It's face would be contorted in rage)
But yeah, keep the obsidian frame, but make the elements rarer. Either that, or use different tools on it instead of placing different blocks on it. Even just using a bucket/ bucket of water on it would be more interesting than just needing water on it. I'm not sure what we could use for earth and air... We probably don't have the tools yet.
Maybe each "slip" could have a different use, too. Fire slip for fast travel, and the other ones for... some other use?
Maybe one could even be used as a link between saved worlds!? (Maybe just a copy of them? Maybe link to an entirely different world?) A safe travel dimension might work, but on the other hand, that might get, well, boring. Maybe one could be used for random transportation. You could show up several kilometers from where you started, you could show up just quarter of a kilometer. Distance traveled (and direction, as well) in the slip would be irrelevant.
I'm imagining the
slip-n-slidewater slip as a mix between an underwater cave, a deep abyss / trench, and all of the creepy deep - water plants and creatures. So, instead of classical / Biblical hell, make it Lovecraftian? I'm also imagining that there would be random lighting, like how water refracts light. Or like aurora. Maybe even randomly changing light. (It would have to change every once in a while, though, not constantly)The
air shipair slip could be very foggy, filled with a bunch of floating islands. (Hmm... maybe that could be the "go between worlds" one.)The earth slip one... hmm. Maybe gigantic caverns? Something like Deepholme in Wow? Huge crystals everywhere? Random faults and cliffs and pillars? You could probably put it together with a "life" element, so, a gigantic bio-cave? Fungus and tangled roots and huge, stable vines strung across the place?
The air slip could be the interserver ways, but theres a danger in crossing them.. the walk ways can crumble after a small amount of time.. Could represent that your not confident in your self, or dont trust your self... And maybe here could be a rare stone: Marble, shiny, nice, and and les hard than obsidian, but can be used, if broken to tiny shards, to make mosaics?
Water slip could actually be like water. Theres an aurora, but you can never just reach the top.. it seems so close, yet sooo very far.... obviously im guessing there would be "air bubbles" in the water, and you portal would create one. The benefit of this one slip could be fushing> but with things like Giant sharks or Giant squid. Then normal fish.. Fish farms anyone?
And fire. which is done and done... Yep. thats what i have
Notch did say that travel between servers would be possible, if not for a really long time. Airslip seems ideally suited for that. I'm not so sure about the other ones, they are great ideas, but other than maybe traveling between worlds,(Earthslip maybe?) I cant think of any other uses.
And there definitely needs to be something better than dirt to activate the Earthslip portal. It just doesn't seem at all suited for portaling to me.
Maybe the portals could be designed to be acquired sequentially? As in, the material for the Fireslip is just fire, available on the standard world, but to activate portals to Earthslip you need to get a block from Fireslip. Waterslip would need a block from Earthslip, and Airslip would need a block from Waterslip.
I like this sequence, because it puts the different levels of impressiveness of the portal effects in order. Fast travel is useful, and really cool, but going between your worlds is even more impressive than that. Whatever Waterslip does would be one level up from that, but still less amazing than traveling to another server entirely(equivalent to changing universes.)
Anyway, all the ideas in this thread are awesome.
Also, my spell-check now accepts the words earth/fire/water/air-slip. Hopefully there will be more causes to use them.
Earth could be a lot like "Hell", only without the lava. Or if you go with the "life" connection, it could be like the old Paradise map.
Water could be, quite literally, filled with water. With maybe freestanding bubbles of air here and there, to prevent it from getting too mean. Or else a craftable diving helmet. The edges of the map would be blocked with unbreakable ice or something.
Personally, I'd like to be able to take a gate to the moon, as well. Bleak lunar landscape, maybe weird alien tree-equivalents, a huge "Earth" at night instead of the moon, and low gravity. Personally, my vote would be that the moon is where creepers come from - so the place would be crawling with them. (You'd need the diving helmet for the moon as well.)
Maybe the air slip could involve my long lost love, Floating biomes from InDev
Just the idea of 4 different kinds or worlds accessible is nice. My only question is would they all affect fast travel in the same way? or perhaps could they act diffidently in terms of porting, in and out?
Also the idea of each one having unique hazards.
The fire slip has lava everywhere and ghasts, and the idea of the water slip i like.
Thumbs up OP, you have made a very decent thread today.
-ChaosAngel092
Dragonbyte, thanks for the positive feedback, and for some really solid points to help flesh out the idea. I've quoted only a small portion of your post because I heartily agree with nearly everything you wrote, and have little else to add, except on this small point.
I suggested soil blocks to create an EarthSlip portal because I have a job linked to agriculture, where soil is more highly valued than in most other walks of life. Still, I can agree that plain dirt might not the best choice. Much better if an Earth-SlipGate does NOT become active until it looks like this:
[] []
[] []
This would require some patience, but it would work especially well along with the suggestion from zhauth, that the EarthSlip dimension's design ought to include strong themes evoking the concept of life, or life-force.
Guide to finding updated video drivers
they don't seem related
I'm not bashing the idea, but how are they perfect for each other?
I support this idea with all my being.
Laterz.
CDR's PTC HD Infinity [128x Texture Pack]
How to find the minecraft.jar file
Modifying the minecraft.jar file
One Stop Mod Shop
Given that Hell/The Slip/The Deep/The Core is metaphorically "below" the Minecraft map (yes, I know it isn't really, it's another dimension, so please don't tell me that), the others might fit in a similar way.
The Water dimension would be metaphorically in the very deepest ocean, the Air dimension would be metaphorically above the clouds (with, as mentioned, floating islands).
Where would Earth 'go', metaphorically speaking? I wonder if the existing Minecraft world *is* the Earth dimension? Think about it - we already spend a lot of our time deep underground. And the 'life' component is taken by the surface. Then again, an Earth dimension probably shouldn't have so much water and lava in it. I guess the Earth dimension is "parallel" to us, rather than being "above" or "below".
Now, thinking about how travel might work in the various dimensions...
It makes sense for Hell to do fast-travel, because it's "underneath" us. The Air dimension would be "above" us, so it would presumably do *slower* travel, if there were any change at all. (And since it probably isn't practical to make a *larger* map than the regular one, there probably won't be any change.) Why would one want to go there? Well, something's making the floating islands float, right? I'll bet you can mine something there to make things float in the real world. (In honor of Rocky and Bullwinkle, I suggest naming it Upsidaisium.
Water can perhaps be portaled to only in freestanding water. (This would be in place of activating the portal with water.) Since Water portals can only appear in water, a portal might take you MUCH further than 16:1 - if you play your cards right. I imagine you can find things there to help you breathe water - perhaps even a food that lets you breathe water for a day or something.
Earth... The thing that immediately leaps to mind is a huge cavern. But Hell/The Slip/etc. basically is that already, with lava - Earth might come off as an inferior copy. So given that it's "parallel" to us, why not play up the life part of it and make it a classic land of Faerie? It's perpetual twilight, the surface mobs are pretty tough but vulnerable to iron (or maybe new "cold iron" weapons made with iron ore rather than ingots), the underground is rich in ore - but not in iron. The portal might even be a ring of mushrooms, and occur naturally.
Since Hell warps space relative to us, it makes sense for at least one of the dimensions to also warp time - I would suggest the Faerie version of Earth, and/or Air. Basically for each day you spend there, X days pass in the real world - your crops grow, trees grow, and so on. Not sure how practical that is to code, though. Or perhaps time passes more slowly - that'd be easy.
EDIT: Oooh, another idea. The Earth map might have a surface that is mostly pure desert. With sandworms.
AquaSlip
]" title="-<->" /> SkySlip
TerraSlip
The order to link the world is as follow:
]" title="-<->" /> SkySlip
Portal Up
Surface | Portal inside Ocean* AquaSlip** | Portal Inside Dirt***/Cave ****
Portal Down
MoltenSlip
*When you make a portal inside a body of water
**Within it's own plane, meaning teleporting in and out is the same portal between the two world
***When you make a portal with dirt blocks or mossy cobblestone blocks in it.
**** Same as Aqua
Possible unique enemies:
MoltenSlip(FireSlip) = Zombie Pigs, Ghasts
AquaSlip = Electric Eels, Piranhas
SkySlip = Birds Of Prey (Winged beasts)
TerraSlip = StoneGolem (stationary mob, same ai as Zombie pigs, until attacked/disturbed, it whacks you)
TerraSlip is more like a Giant Stone Altar, a giant room with many mini temples inside it. Bottomless death pits is a possibility... You disturb golems with mining and noisy activities (TNTs).
Golems are blind, and can only sense you within a radius if you so disturb them, but they can be a bit slow so you only have to escape the vicinity... They also do not leave their areas since they can't jump across pits.
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[] [] []
[] [] []
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[] [] [] [] [] [] []
It's more the word "slip" itself that is perfect, being a short word that easily lends itself to catchy combinations with the names of all the elements. Portals allow the player to "slip" between dimensions, too, as a person might slip through the narrow space of an opening that is partly blocked, or a door only partly open.
Guide to finding updated video drivers
you could have it so that to activate the earth slip you place the dirt and then you use a hoe to plow the dirt in the portal, instead of waiting for grass to appear.
In fact, i don't think grass would appear unless the dirt in the portal was directly linked to other grass tile.
-ChaosAngel092
Grass can spawn at least one vertical level above or below existing grass blocks, and possibly two at a time. Otherwise I never would have been able to get a nice lawn growing amongst the adminium blocks in one of my worlds.
A clever and/or impatient person could build an Earth gate quickly by digging carefully to create the necessary shape, then placing the obsidian blocks around a pair of already existing grass blocks. The concept of needing a living component to activate the gate would still be there.
Instant Earth-SlipGate:
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Guide to finding updated video drivers