Just before I played out this episode I was at a bookstore and saw this steampunk Tarot deck with art I really liked and was hit with the idea of using Tarot deck draws to guide a Minecraft game. I haven't played with Tarot cards for ages, but when I got home I opened and pulled them out and got an almost hilariously appropriate reading for going to the Nether. Maybe I'll post it if people want to see it.
Anyway, in I go (as the reading actually recommended, not that I would have changed that). I come out at a relatively high plateau next to a stream of lava. I dashed over to a hill and dug in as I hate the property damage Ghast fireballs can cause.
I quickly find some Midasium, one of the Metallurgy ores. This one isn't particularly useful; it has very low durability. An effect of the Metallurgy "economy" I hadn't expected is that the alloys of common metals are good enough that the fantasy and nether metals are generally not much of an improvement. Since the crusher effectively doubles ore and with alloys the extra metals are added to your supply, you have a lot of alloy to use. I was expecting to be really excited with most of the special metal finds, because of the high-powered goodies I could make with them; but actually I'm thinking "oh that's nice, throw it in the collectibles chest for a display someday"
My first mine passage hits a cliff so I put in a window, go back to where I dug into the hill, and head off at a right angle.
I quickly find some Nether Quartz, so i have what I came for. I forgot to bring coal for extra torches, so I decide to go back home and get them. I could dash out to the portal and jump in but I can hear the Ghasts about and as I said, I hate Ghast property damage. So I dig down into the ground and head toward where I estimate the portal to be (I didn't record the coordinates).
Pretty good guess. I'm under bombardment by multiple ghasts so I use the portal to anchor a small shelter. In spite of my efforts the ghasts extinguish the portal but I relight it and go through.
Seems I'm not the only one! I need to get rid of them; they're not mean but accidents do happen and I really wouldn't want 4 zombie piggies jumping me. I consider pillaring up and feathering them but I'm short of arrows. I run downstairs to make some more arrows and come back and - they're all gone.
Well, that works too.
I don't really need to go back but I want to try to get rid of the Ghasts so I go back through. There are 3 of them, though, and I'm having a really hard time taking aim with my bow. At times I feel like a target at a shooting competition. While I'm trying to get them I get attacked by a Firebat, a Thaumcraft Nether mob. They're not all that dangerous, but they light you and are very distracting if you're fighting something else.
They're also really evasive and even Damage Screenshots doesn't get a good pic.
Eventually I decide the Ghasts aren't worth the trouble (especially since I don't think I'll get tears for them) so I just close up my area and head for another hill nearby with the lava flow because I see some exposed Nether Quartz.
I collect the quartz and build a shielded staircase up into that hill.
I mine a passageway through. I run into some lava blocks but I'm using my "Hakuna Matata" system of always having a one block hole in front of me for lava to flow into. So hitting lava just means fuel to smelt a stack of Netherrack. After a bit more nether quartz, but no more Metallurgy ores, I come to a void, put in a window, and turn to head home. I'm up into the ceiling so I'll be able to build a nether connection to anywhere.
Taking a turn in the messy area right around the portal I somehow glitch into a wall and start taking suffocation damage. But I only take four hits before I get out.
I head back to the Overworld and do some more Thaumcraft research to use my nifty Nether quartz.
I'm getting the hang of the new research system and it's pretty fun. It's the level of difficulty of one of the puzzle games on my smartphone - thinking required, but you'll solve it soon enough. But, as it turns out, I don't have the materials yet. I don't have Ordo or Perdito shards for an Equal Exchange Focus, a potato for a Shock Focus, or Silverwood to make Alembics to collect Essentia for the golem enhancements. Well, foo. I'm going to have to go exploring. But first there are some things I want to do around the base.
Next episode: some Redstone work and a new Metallurgy metal.
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
The triple post was strange. I posted last night, then when I checked the thread a little later the post wasn't there, and the thread was "no updates for a day". So I posted *again*. This morning, the thread *still* showed as not updated, so I posted a third time, and it was fine. Now I log on and see a triplicate and the complaints. So I edited them down.
I'll upload a pic of the Tarot reading tomorrow - I have to xfer from my phone.
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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.
This turned out to be harder to photograph than I'd expected. The pic looked fine on my camera but when I uploaded it had significant camera motion blur. It took several tries to get a usable pic. I'm providing a linky as it's a big pic and I don't want to jam up loading the page:
The deck I used was the Victorian Steampunk Tarot (not the Steampunk Tarot, which is completely different). As you can see, the Major Arcana are detailed, beautiful, and steampunky. The minor arcana are somewhat disappointing as they're basically just x images of the suit marker against a standard background. The four suit symbols have been changed to insects but they still have the standard suit symbols on the cards so somebody used to a traditional deck will know the cards right away.
So, on to the reading:
1st card, The Past - Sun reversedObstacles, but not major or serious ones
This is kind of the story for almost any Minecraft game, isn't it?
2nd Card, The Present - The Tower
Um - with my character standing at the top of a tower I just built - that's pretty obvious -
3rd Card, What is Hidden - 9 of Dragonflies Now is the time to strive for wishes
Well, I *do* want some Nether Quartz!
4th card, Attitudes of Others - 9 of Bees reversedStress, despair, and guilt.
This is the only card which isn't spot on. Unless it's referring to me getting embarrassed about that dang triple post, in which case - Ding!
5th card, Action to Take 10 of Bees reversedDramatic Endings, a time to move on
Go to the Nether? Definitely moving on! And considering the less polite term for the Nether, "Go to H***" would certainly count as a dramatic ending!
6th card, Obstacles: The World reversedYou have an excessive need to stay safe. Time to put an end to procrastination and move to new fields.
Yep, that's me! And good advice.
7th card, Outcome: Strength reversed Hesitancy, avoidable danger, and moving forward in small steps
And that is indeed how I'll continue to play.
So - pretty clear reading, which is to go ahead and do it. Pretty good for a couple of playing cards. And honestly, that's the nicest way I've ever been told to "Go to H***"
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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.
The triple post was strange. I posted last night, then when I checked the thread a little later the post wasn't there, and the thread was "no updates for a day". So I posted *again*. This morning, the thread *still* showed as not updated, so I posted a third time, and it was fine. Now I log on and see a triplicate and the complaints. So I edited them down.
I'll upload a pic of the Tarot reading tomorrow - I have to xfer from my phone.
Has this been going on all over the forum? I posted in the What Have You Done Recently thread earlier today, even edited it after posted, but when I got back online a short while later it was not showing up and still isn't showing up for me.
I spotted a new research in Thaumcraft: the Bone Bow. I researched it, only to find that I needed a perdito shard, which I don't have, to make it. But that uncovered another research, Primal Arrows, that seemed promising. I researched that, and it turned out to be the most complicated research I'd done to date. But, I managed it, and discovered it allows one kind of magic arrow for each primal aspect. Earth (extra damage) seemed most useful.
I have extra Terra shards, so I made 3 sets. I test fired one, to make sure it worked and didn't need a Bone Bow or some such, but didn't get a pic of it.
Next I wanted to automate my sugar cane farm.
I made a set of pistons for a test run using a button. There's a Hungry Chest, kind of a magical Thaumcraft hopper, in the center to collect the drops. Turned out I needed a row of blocks opposite the piston to keep them from knocking the sugarcane across the water. So, not so compatible with my original layout.
Next I wanted to make a clock to control it. I didn't want to hear the pistons constantly, so I wanted a long period clock. I hadn't made one, and decided to try multiple out-of-phase clocks with the circuit set up to only fire when all of them were on. I set up two clocks, one with 4 maxed repeaters and the other with 3 maxed repeaters and one at 3. This worked better than I expected, firing 6 times in a row every 15 second or so. That was still too often, so I started another clock to add in. But digging the space for the next clock:
A new Metallurgy ore. This one turns out to be Mithril, one of the fantasy metals. Now in the last episode I talked about how the fantasy metals often aren't worth the trouble, but this is a major exception. Mithril allows with Silver to form Quicksilver, which *is* substantially better than the common alloys, and I already have Silver.
I tossed the Mithril in the crusher and tried to alloy it, but it didn't work. After some research I guess I needed an Alloyer, another Metallurgy item. It was a little difficult to find the recipe:
That's Angmallen alloy on the top and Damascus Steel on the sides, and a Machine Frame in the middle.
My guess was correct, and I can now alloy Mithril and Silver. The alloyer also doubles the output. The net effect of multiple doubling is kind of excessive IMO. I found only two Mithril, which the Crusher doubled to four, which become eight after alloying, which got doubled by the Alloyer to 16 - which is rather a lot.
Coincidentally, I was close to level 30, so I could use my nifty new Quicksilver. I decided to make a pick, and got:
Useful with all the ice about although hardly earthshaking.
When I finished the third clock, I got a mildly unusual effect. The pistons stroke twice, then pause 30 seconds, then stroke twice more, then pause about two minutes. That's an acceptable frequency, so I'll just let it be. I was motivated to try to estimate how often it should activate, and it seems it should activate much more often than that. So there's something I don't understand about redstone cycles.
It's hard to take pictures of the clock room because of all the blocks that get in the way, but here's a best effort:
One of the clocks is below my feet. In front of me is the line controlling the piston set. To the right a feeder from my clock wraps around to control a redstone torch feeding the main line. When all three clocks are off all the control torches are off and the pistons are allowed to fire.
Even with the extra row of blocks, a lot of drops don't fall into the channel. So, not too efficient. It should improve once I have slime to make sticky pistons. But, it's useful to have both short- and long-period clocks for the workroom, so hardly wasted.
Has this been going on all over the forum? I posted in the What Have You Done Recently thread earlier today, even edited it after posted, but when I got back online a short while later it was not showing up and still isn't showing up for me.
Haven't heard anybody else complain, but if it happened to *both* of us, it's gotta be the forum.
-Snip- (sorry)
Haven't heard anybody else complain, but if it happened to *both* of us, it's gotta be the forum.
yeah a similar thing happened to me just recently as well. It's the forums.
Interesting effort with the redstone there, Zeno. I think I've been spoiled by all the great mod added functionality with redstone clocks, blocks and cables so I've got a lot of respect for those who have a go at "real" redstone contraptions.
Now, on to that Tarot reading When I saw you write this:
"4th card, Attitudes of Others - 9 of Bees reversedStress, despair, and guilt.",
I immediately thought of the Nether. That's the embodiment of the Ghast! It sort of makes perfect sense when you read it again with that in mind (as well as moving on from your last dramatic, lava-ry ending).
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
It's off to explore. My plan is to circumnavigate my continent, if possible. I'm looking for a Silverwood tree, hopefully in a Magical Forest, and a village, hopefully containing a potato. I'm also planning to mark some nodes and generally take a look at the world
I've already mapped my immediate coast to my south and partly to the east. I haven't mapped to the northeast and to what i suspect is a coast near to my north. So I strike off to the northeast to where my coast map ends.
I reach the coast uneventfully and board a boat.
As I proceed north the snowy zone yields to a Roofed Forest. The coast doesn't bend to the west, so the ocean I found on my last expedition is apparently just a lake.
I spot a number of nodes out on the water but I don't stop to mark them, which is a little tedious. I try to take F3 pics as I fly by to help find them later, if I want.
I travel north onto the next map, and the Atlas dutifully pops out a tiled map for me with the 16x16 blank maps I've stocked it with. I spot two nodes on land and stop to mark them.
Soon I come to a Rock Mountains biome. These are quite spectacular rounded mountains created with an algorithm very different from Minecraft's normal terrain algorithm. They come out quite smooth, unlike large Minecraft mountains, which can get messy and fantastical. It's a nice change of pace. You can see there are a lot of exposed ores. That's one of the big reasons I cut back on the frequency of the Metallurgy ores, as exposed rock surfaces can get downright cluttered at default frequencies.
The coast does turn west here.
Next I come to a Highlands Redwood Forest, next to a Plains. I come ashore to hunt a village but it's a very small plains, and there isn't one. There are some horses, mostly black.
As I continue the Redwood Forest mixes with an Autumn Forest, which is a possible sub-biome of Redwood Forest.
Near the next nightfall I come ashore next to a Woodland Mountains. This is one of the more popular Highlands biomes, although it's hard to use in hardcore because it's both extremely rugged and subject to daytime spawns. Always a great backdrop, of course.
I cross to the next map to the west, and come across a Bog biome.
I come ashore to adjust my inventory and take some close-up picks but a creeper comes floating up. I'm not sure what spawned him, so I leave instead.
The Bog goes well out into the water and is mostly water itself, so I end up sailing on the Bog itself.
From the Bog I spot some plains and come ashore to look for a village.
The plains is small, and village-less. But it's next to a desert, also a good spot for villages. The desert is quite large and I search it extensively - with no luck. At this point I'm starting to get a little bit worried something is wrong. I've seen villages on flyarounds but now I've looked at a fair amount of territory and not found one. Highlands adds villages to many of its biomes too, so it's more of an issue.
Eventually, however, I come across an Eerie biome
This was the result of an experiment gone right. Thaumcraft adds three biomes: Magical Forest, Eerie, and Tainted. The last two aren't formed in worldgen but occur as a result of game events. When I was adding Thaumcraft biome options to Climate Control, I was curious what those biomes would like like if created in worldgen. They came out as Magical Forests but with the Eerie and Tainted aspects, respectively. I thought the effect was really nice and put them in as the default (users can take them back out with changing settings).
Even the regular Magical Forest occasionally spawns monsters in day, and Eerie will spawn some souped-up zombies. But - Magical Forests have Silverwood, and that's what I'm here for, so I head in and look for one.
And there one is! The cobble you see is part of another Thaumcraft structure, a barrow, which contains a Sinister Node and multiple spawners. I go past *that* in a big hurry.
The Silverwood tree has apparently spawned *2* nodes and they have converted a tiny bit of the biome into Magical forest. I chop down the silverwood except for the nodes; if you chop the nodes' blocks you also destroy the nodes and I don't want to do that. I also collect 3 silverwood saplings, which is great - I'm used to not getting even one from chopping down a silverwood.
So - one goal down, one to go.
Next episode: more exploration
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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.
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
It's interesting to see what you've done with making the eerie and tainted biomes spawn as magical forests. And it doesn't seem that it makes the silverwood trees too easy to find, either. So what about taint? I've tried a few different world generators myself, including vanilla, BoP and alternate terrain generation and, honestly, I haven't been happy with the rates of taint and magical forests in any of them.
Time for me to download the latest version of climate control, I think.
It's interesting to see what you've done with making the eerie and tainted biomes spawn as magical forests. And it doesn't seem that it makes the silverwood trees too easy to find, either. So what about taint? I've tried a few different world generators myself, including vanilla, BoP and alternate terrain generation and, honestly, I haven't been happy with the rates of taint and magical forests in any of them.
Time for me to download the latest version of climate control, I think.
Well, I didn't really do it. Azanor did it, I just let the biomes spawn.
Taint spawns in full Tainted Forest biomes; they look disturbing (you can tell it's a special biome under the taint) and I think they'd be really frightening in a survival game, because of their size. The one glitch that just occured to me is that you might not be able to get rid of them with the Ethereal Blooms. You could contain them, but not get rid of them.
I set the magical biomes to an incidence of 3 each (the "rare" biome frequency), so about 1/3 as common as Swamps and Roofed Forests. Since I'm running Highlands, they are sort of crowded out by the large numbers of possible biomes and it's not uncommon to fly around a small continent and find none. Silverwood trees do spawn on their own in normal biomes, although very rarely.That's fine with me, as I like exploring, and I *want* Magical Forests to be rare and special. I thought it worked out cool that I had to make do with an Eerie biome - and somewhat increased risk - because I hadn't found a Magical Forest and couldn't count on finding one
I didn't find one in the next episode completing the circuit of the continent either
.
The way Thaumcraft puts in 2 or 3 Magical Forests on every maxed out map - bleah, way too common. Probably more common than plains in 1.7 vanilla - that's just silly.
Of course with CC you can adjust the frequencies to whatever you want.
BoP has even more biomes than Highlands, so they would be even rarer, unless you changed the frequencies.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Well, I didn't really do it. Azanor did it, I just let the biomes spawn.
Taint spawns in full Tainted Forest biomes; they look disturbing (you can tell it's a special biome under the taint) and I think they'd be really frightening in a survival game, because of their size. The one glitch that just occured to me is that you might not be able to get rid of them with the Ethereal Blooms. You could contain them, but not get rid of them.
I'd like Magical Forests to be rare and special too. The thing is, I'd like taint biomes to be just as rare. There's no getting rid of an established taint biome any more, I'm afraid. Absolutely no practical, survival method, at least. Especially with Taint biomes set to spread. That together with Taint set to spread from Flux just makes it impossible, really. The only remaining method is to plant Silverwood trees that have a pure node inside them. Ie. you need to create your own Magical Forest that will be surrounded by taint. With the rate that Silverwood trees drop saplings, that's a hard ask. Especially since Flux spreads much faster than one's ability to collect Silverwood saplings. Personally, I came to the conclusion that making taint very rare from the get-go is the only solution. I also turned off Taint biome spreading completely after testing with reducing the speed at which it spreads. If you can destroy the tainted node early enough, that's supposed to work but the tainted biomes I've had to deal with have all be well established before I was even able to find the node - let alone be able to get to it to destroy it. Then you still have to clean the stuff up anyway..
..one more thing. With Taint set to spread from Flux (a byproduct of using the crucible), the only sensible thing to do is to set up your Thaumcraft operations inside a Magical Forest biome. That might be an issue if you can't find any at all. You still have the option of making your own mini Magical Forest biome from collected Silverwood saplings but not every Silverwood you grow will contain a node. From my efforts, it seems like a lot less than half of them will. And, unfortunately, the area around each one that does become Magical Forest is quite disappointingly small. ...heh. Makes it interesting, that's for sure.
From the Silverwood I continue west. I pass into a Meadow biome with a lot of cotton plants (Highlands) which I harvest for string. The biome also has several nodes with lots of Aer.
Soon I reach the coast with a small Plains biome - but still no village. South of me is a Tall Pines biome which isn't going to have a village, so I board my boat and head south.
The coast turns here and head east south-east. The Tall Pines biome doesn't go far. Next is a vanilla Forest biome. I come ashore to sleep and spot two nodes in the process.
South of that is a Glacier biome. I change my exploration tactic here - rather than boating, I walk on the ice, taking advantage of my Haste 3 boots. I don't go quite as fast, but I don't have to land at night and I can mark nodes.
Past the Glacier I have to take to my boat again. I soon reach an Estuary. This looks like it might connect to the east coast and home but I choose to stay on the west coast.
The coast turns west again and I pass a small Redwood Forest, a Tundra, and an Autumn Woods.
In the Tundra coast I get attacked by a skeleton when I wake up in the morning. However, he jumps in the water so I'd have a hard time getting drops and I just avoid him.
Next to the Autumn Woods I spot a Stone Beach. In vanilla they happen only next to Extreme Hills but Climate Control will also place them next to very hilly biomes to reduce the ugly steep sand beaches. But Autumn Woods isn't one of those, so I come ashore to investigate whether something's wrong in my beach assignment. The cause turns out to be a very narrow strip of Extreme Hills that ended up right between the Autumn Woods and the ocean. Well, that's fine.
I cross to the next map south. Continuing south I pass some Badlands and then a vanilla Forest. About half way down the map, I'm getting tired of exploration and starting to get a little lazy after exploring something like 10,000 blocks of coastline plus some inland regions. So I decide to end the exploration and head for home. I land and head west, towards home.
I soon come to a Badlands biome. These look really good with the Underground Biomes stone.
The continent is fairly narrow and in less than a thousand blocks I'm on the east side. I have to dig down a bit to get down the side of a cliff. On the coast is another Estuary.
North of that is a small Flying Mountains. Flying Mountains is an extreme fantasy biome. It's even more rugged than Extreme Hills, but it has riverlike areas, lots of waterfalls, and saturated vegetation colors creating a "mountain gorge paradise effect". Like Woodland Mountains, very impractical for hardcore survival, but an unmatched backdrop.
One of the great features of Underground Biomes is that biomes with lots of exposed stone look very different depending on which stones comprise the local underground. Here you can see a shift from the rich yellow Komantite to a light gray stone (I didn't check which one). So instead of *one* type of Flying Mountains biome, I have effectively more like a dozen. Likewise for Extreme Hills and a number of Highlands biomes like Rock Mountains, Badlands, and Poplar HIlls.
Continuing north, towards home, I pass some more snowy zones, and eventually I come to an Estuary again. This looks like it connects to the Estuary on the west coast, and a little exploration confirms it does indeed cross the continent. So in a sense I am going to circumnavigate my home continent because the Estuary effectively splits it into two continents. However, I haven't found any villages, anywhere, so I only got one of my goals.
I'm near the Tropics I explored a while back and on the way home take the opportunity to fill it in. I'm going to disallow rivers in Tropics as this one just came out so messy. However, changing how individual biomes are defined creates what I call "lesser chunk walls": mostly the junction is fine but every now and then you get a wall in a limited area. Climate Control doesn't protect from this kind of chunk wall so I need to finish exploring the biome or I'll get (in this case) rivers terminating in flat walls.
The Tropics creates a great atmosphere. It can get really dark under the canopy, though, and I drop quite a few torches. For some reason I don't have to deal with any spawns, though.
One of the nice aspects of a substantive build is that it makes it easier to find my base. On several occasions I've gotten disoriented approaching my base but not anymore, at least from the sea.
Once home I decide to make a map wall on the second floor of the tower. While taking the maps out, I accidentally leave my last blank map in the Atlas along with another map, and the Atlas wastes my blank map making another. Gotta remember to take the blank maps out first.
And here's the result. I'm experimenting with this world by completely eliminating the largest continents. My last world I started on a massive continent I never completely circumnavigated and in flyaround test worlds I frequently come across continents sprawling over dozens of maxed maps. Here it seems better.
Next episode: brewing Essentia and smacking some zombies.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Anyway, in I go (as the reading actually recommended, not that I would have changed that). I come out at a relatively high plateau next to a stream of lava. I dashed over to a hill and dug in as I hate the property damage Ghast fireballs can cause.
I quickly find some Midasium, one of the Metallurgy ores. This one isn't particularly useful; it has very low durability. An effect of the Metallurgy "economy" I hadn't expected is that the alloys of common metals are good enough that the fantasy and nether metals are generally not much of an improvement. Since the crusher effectively doubles ore and with alloys the extra metals are added to your supply, you have a lot of alloy to use. I was expecting to be really excited with most of the special metal finds, because of the high-powered goodies I could make with them; but actually I'm thinking "oh that's nice, throw it in the collectibles chest for a display someday"
My first mine passage hits a cliff so I put in a window, go back to where I dug into the hill, and head off at a right angle.
I quickly find some Nether Quartz, so i have what I came for. I forgot to bring coal for extra torches, so I decide to go back home and get them. I could dash out to the portal and jump in but I can hear the Ghasts about and as I said, I hate Ghast property damage. So I dig down into the ground and head toward where I estimate the portal to be (I didn't record the coordinates).
Pretty good guess. I'm under bombardment by multiple ghasts so I use the portal to anchor a small shelter. In spite of my efforts the ghasts extinguish the portal but I relight it and go through.
Seems I'm not the only one! I need to get rid of them; they're not mean but accidents do happen and I really wouldn't want 4 zombie piggies jumping me. I consider pillaring up and feathering them but I'm short of arrows. I run downstairs to make some more arrows and come back and - they're all gone.
Well, that works too.
I don't really need to go back but I want to try to get rid of the Ghasts so I go back through. There are 3 of them, though, and I'm having a really hard time taking aim with my bow. At times I feel like a target at a shooting competition. While I'm trying to get them I get attacked by a Firebat, a Thaumcraft Nether mob. They're not all that dangerous, but they light you and are very distracting if you're fighting something else.
They're also really evasive and even Damage Screenshots doesn't get a good pic.
Eventually I decide the Ghasts aren't worth the trouble (especially since I don't think I'll get tears for them) so I just close up my area and head for another hill nearby with the lava flow because I see some exposed Nether Quartz.
I collect the quartz and build a shielded staircase up into that hill.
I mine a passageway through. I run into some lava blocks but I'm using my "Hakuna Matata" system of always having a one block hole in front of me for lava to flow into. So hitting lava just means fuel to smelt a stack of Netherrack. After a bit more nether quartz, but no more Metallurgy ores, I come to a void, put in a window, and turn to head home. I'm up into the ceiling so I'll be able to build a nether connection to anywhere.
Taking a turn in the messy area right around the portal I somehow glitch into a wall and start taking suffocation damage. But I only take four hits before I get out.
I head back to the Overworld and do some more Thaumcraft research to use my nifty Nether quartz.
I'm getting the hang of the new research system and it's pretty fun. It's the level of difficulty of one of the puzzle games on my smartphone - thinking required, but you'll solve it soon enough. But, as it turns out, I don't have the materials yet. I don't have Ordo or Perdito shards for an Equal Exchange Focus, a potato for a Shock Focus, or Silverwood to make Alembics to collect Essentia for the golem enhancements. Well, foo. I'm going to have to go exploring. But first there are some things I want to do around the base.
Next episode: some Redstone work and a new Metallurgy metal.
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.
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.
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.
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
I'll upload a pic of the Tarot reading tomorrow - I have to xfer from my phone.
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.
This turned out to be harder to photograph than I'd expected. The pic looked fine on my camera but when I uploaded it had significant camera motion blur. It took several tries to get a usable pic. I'm providing a linky as it's a big pic and I don't want to jam up loading the page:
Nether Tarot Reading Pic
The deck I used was the Victorian Steampunk Tarot (not the Steampunk Tarot, which is completely different). As you can see, the Major Arcana are detailed, beautiful, and steampunky. The minor arcana are somewhat disappointing as they're basically just x images of the suit marker against a standard background. The four suit symbols have been changed to insects but they still have the standard suit symbols on the cards so somebody used to a traditional deck will know the cards right away.
So, on to the reading:
1st card, The Past - Sun reversed Obstacles, but not major or serious ones
This is kind of the story for almost any Minecraft game, isn't it?
2nd Card, The Present - The Tower
Um - with my character standing at the top of a tower I just built - that's pretty obvious -
3rd Card, What is Hidden - 9 of Dragonflies Now is the time to strive for wishes
Well, I *do* want some Nether Quartz!
4th card, Attitudes of Others - 9 of Bees reversed Stress, despair, and guilt.
This is the only card which isn't spot on. Unless it's referring to me getting embarrassed about that dang triple post, in which case - Ding!
5th card, Action to Take 10 of Bees reversed Dramatic Endings, a time to move on
Go to the Nether? Definitely moving on! And considering the less polite term for the Nether, "Go to H***" would certainly count as a dramatic ending!
6th card, Obstacles: The World reversed You have an excessive need to stay safe. Time to put an end to procrastination and move to new fields.
Yep, that's me! And good advice.
7th card, Outcome: Strength reversed Hesitancy, avoidable danger, and moving forward in small steps
And that is indeed how I'll continue to play.
So - pretty clear reading, which is to go ahead and do it. Pretty good for a couple of playing cards. And honestly, that's the nicest way I've ever been told to "Go to H***"
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.
Has this been going on all over the forum? I posted in the What Have You Done Recently thread earlier today, even edited it after posted, but when I got back online a short while later it was not showing up and still isn't showing up for me.
Formerly known as ORabbit around these parts.
I have extra Terra shards, so I made 3 sets. I test fired one, to make sure it worked and didn't need a Bone Bow or some such, but didn't get a pic of it.
Next I wanted to automate my sugar cane farm.
I made a set of pistons for a test run using a button. There's a Hungry Chest, kind of a magical Thaumcraft hopper, in the center to collect the drops. Turned out I needed a row of blocks opposite the piston to keep them from knocking the sugarcane across the water. So, not so compatible with my original layout.
Next I wanted to make a clock to control it. I didn't want to hear the pistons constantly, so I wanted a long period clock. I hadn't made one, and decided to try multiple out-of-phase clocks with the circuit set up to only fire when all of them were on. I set up two clocks, one with 4 maxed repeaters and the other with 3 maxed repeaters and one at 3. This worked better than I expected, firing 6 times in a row every 15 second or so. That was still too often, so I started another clock to add in. But digging the space for the next clock:
A new Metallurgy ore. This one turns out to be Mithril, one of the fantasy metals. Now in the last episode I talked about how the fantasy metals often aren't worth the trouble, but this is a major exception. Mithril allows with Silver to form Quicksilver, which *is* substantially better than the common alloys, and I already have Silver.
I tossed the Mithril in the crusher and tried to alloy it, but it didn't work. After some research I guess I needed an Alloyer, another Metallurgy item. It was a little difficult to find the recipe:
That's Angmallen alloy on the top and Damascus Steel on the sides, and a Machine Frame in the middle.
My guess was correct, and I can now alloy Mithril and Silver. The alloyer also doubles the output. The net effect of multiple doubling is kind of excessive IMO. I found only two Mithril, which the Crusher doubled to four, which become eight after alloying, which got doubled by the Alloyer to 16 - which is rather a lot.
Coincidentally, I was close to level 30, so I could use my nifty new Quicksilver. I decided to make a pick, and got:
Useful with all the ice about although hardly earthshaking.
When I finished the third clock, I got a mildly unusual effect. The pistons stroke twice, then pause 30 seconds, then stroke twice more, then pause about two minutes. That's an acceptable frequency, so I'll just let it be. I was motivated to try to estimate how often it should activate, and it seems it should activate much more often than that. So there's something I don't understand about redstone cycles.
It's hard to take pictures of the clock room because of all the blocks that get in the way, but here's a best effort:
One of the clocks is below my feet. In front of me is the line controlling the piston set. To the right a feeder from my clock wraps around to control a redstone torch feeding the main line. When all three clocks are off all the control torches are off and the pistons are allowed to fire.
Even with the extra row of blocks, a lot of drops don't fall into the channel. So, not too efficient. It should improve once I have slime to make sticky pistons. But, it's useful to have both short- and long-period clocks for the workroom, so hardly wasted.
Next episode: Big Exploration time!
Haven't heard anybody else complain, but if it happened to *both* of us, it's gotta be the forum.
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.
yeah a similar thing happened to me just recently as well. It's the forums.
Interesting effort with the redstone there, Zeno. I think I've been spoiled by all the great mod added functionality with redstone clocks, blocks and cables so I've got a lot of respect for those who have a go at "real" redstone contraptions.
Now, on to that Tarot reading When I saw you write this:
"4th card, Attitudes of Others - 9 of Bees reversed Stress, despair, and guilt.",
I immediately thought of the Nether. That's the embodiment of the Ghast! It sort of makes perfect sense when you read it again with that in mind (as well as moving on from your last dramatic, lava-ry ending).
..note to self: I want an ingame Tarot mod.
(and if this triplicates ...)
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
I've already mapped my immediate coast to my south and partly to the east. I haven't mapped to the northeast and to what i suspect is a coast near to my north. So I strike off to the northeast to where my coast map ends.
I reach the coast uneventfully and board a boat.
As I proceed north the snowy zone yields to a Roofed Forest. The coast doesn't bend to the west, so the ocean I found on my last expedition is apparently just a lake.
I spot a number of nodes out on the water but I don't stop to mark them, which is a little tedious. I try to take F3 pics as I fly by to help find them later, if I want.
I travel north onto the next map, and the Atlas dutifully pops out a tiled map for me with the 16x16 blank maps I've stocked it with. I spot two nodes on land and stop to mark them.
Soon I come to a Rock Mountains biome. These are quite spectacular rounded mountains created with an algorithm very different from Minecraft's normal terrain algorithm. They come out quite smooth, unlike large Minecraft mountains, which can get messy and fantastical. It's a nice change of pace. You can see there are a lot of exposed ores. That's one of the big reasons I cut back on the frequency of the Metallurgy ores, as exposed rock surfaces can get downright cluttered at default frequencies.
The coast does turn west here.
Next I come to a Highlands Redwood Forest, next to a Plains. I come ashore to hunt a village but it's a very small plains, and there isn't one. There are some horses, mostly black.
As I continue the Redwood Forest mixes with an Autumn Forest, which is a possible sub-biome of Redwood Forest.
Near the next nightfall I come ashore next to a Woodland Mountains. This is one of the more popular Highlands biomes, although it's hard to use in hardcore because it's both extremely rugged and subject to daytime spawns. Always a great backdrop, of course.
I cross to the next map to the west, and come across a Bog biome.
I come ashore to adjust my inventory and take some close-up picks but a creeper comes floating up. I'm not sure what spawned him, so I leave instead.
The Bog goes well out into the water and is mostly water itself, so I end up sailing on the Bog itself.
From the Bog I spot some plains and come ashore to look for a village.
The plains is small, and village-less. But it's next to a desert, also a good spot for villages. The desert is quite large and I search it extensively - with no luck. At this point I'm starting to get a little bit worried something is wrong. I've seen villages on flyarounds but now I've looked at a fair amount of territory and not found one. Highlands adds villages to many of its biomes too, so it's more of an issue.
Eventually, however, I come across an Eerie biome
This was the result of an experiment gone right. Thaumcraft adds three biomes: Magical Forest, Eerie, and Tainted. The last two aren't formed in worldgen but occur as a result of game events. When I was adding Thaumcraft biome options to Climate Control, I was curious what those biomes would like like if created in worldgen. They came out as Magical Forests but with the Eerie and Tainted aspects, respectively. I thought the effect was really nice and put them in as the default (users can take them back out with changing settings).
Even the regular Magical Forest occasionally spawns monsters in day, and Eerie will spawn some souped-up zombies. But - Magical Forests have Silverwood, and that's what I'm here for, so I head in and look for one.
And there one is! The cobble you see is part of another Thaumcraft structure, a barrow, which contains a Sinister Node and multiple spawners. I go past *that* in a big hurry.
The Silverwood tree has apparently spawned *2* nodes and they have converted a tiny bit of the biome into Magical forest. I chop down the silverwood except for the nodes; if you chop the nodes' blocks you also destroy the nodes and I don't want to do that. I also collect 3 silverwood saplings, which is great - I'm used to not getting even one from chopping down a silverwood.
So - one goal down, one to go.
Next episode: more exploration
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.
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Time for me to download the latest version of climate control, I think.
NinjaduffTV on youtube !
Well, I didn't really do it. Azanor did it, I just let the biomes spawn.
Taint spawns in full Tainted Forest biomes; they look disturbing (you can tell it's a special biome under the taint) and I think they'd be really frightening in a survival game, because of their size. The one glitch that just occured to me is that you might not be able to get rid of them with the Ethereal Blooms. You could contain them, but not get rid of them.
I set the magical biomes to an incidence of 3 each (the "rare" biome frequency), so about 1/3 as common as Swamps and Roofed Forests. Since I'm running Highlands, they are sort of crowded out by the large numbers of possible biomes and it's not uncommon to fly around a small continent and find none. Silverwood trees do spawn on their own in normal biomes, although very rarely.That's fine with me, as I like exploring, and I *want* Magical Forests to be rare and special. I thought it worked out cool that I had to make do with an Eerie biome - and somewhat increased risk - because I hadn't found a Magical Forest and couldn't count on finding one
The way Thaumcraft puts in 2 or 3 Magical Forests on every maxed out map - bleah, way too common. Probably more common than plains in 1.7 vanilla - that's just silly.
Of course with CC you can adjust the frequencies to whatever you want.
BoP has even more biomes than Highlands, so they would be even rarer, unless you changed the frequencies.
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.
I'd like Magical Forests to be rare and special too. The thing is, I'd like taint biomes to be just as rare. There's no getting rid of an established taint biome any more, I'm afraid. Absolutely no practical, survival method, at least. Especially with Taint biomes set to spread. That together with Taint set to spread from Flux just makes it impossible, really. The only remaining method is to plant Silverwood trees that have a pure node inside them. Ie. you need to create your own Magical Forest that will be surrounded by taint. With the rate that Silverwood trees drop saplings, that's a hard ask. Especially since Flux spreads much faster than one's ability to collect Silverwood saplings. Personally, I came to the conclusion that making taint very rare from the get-go is the only solution. I also turned off Taint biome spreading completely after testing with reducing the speed at which it spreads. If you can destroy the tainted node early enough, that's supposed to work but the tainted biomes I've had to deal with have all be well established before I was even able to find the node - let alone be able to get to it to destroy it. Then you still have to clean the stuff up anyway..
..one more thing. With Taint set to spread from Flux (a byproduct of using the crucible), the only sensible thing to do is to set up your Thaumcraft operations inside a Magical Forest biome. That might be an issue if you can't find any at all. You still have the option of making your own mini Magical Forest biome from collected Silverwood saplings but not every Silverwood you grow will contain a node. From my efforts, it seems like a lot less than half of them will. And, unfortunately, the area around each one that does become Magical Forest is quite disappointingly small. ...heh. Makes it interesting, that's for sure.
EDIT- I just found this. It might help
From the Silverwood I continue west. I pass into a Meadow biome with a lot of cotton plants (Highlands) which I harvest for string. The biome also has several nodes with lots of Aer.
Soon I reach the coast with a small Plains biome - but still no village. South of me is a Tall Pines biome which isn't going to have a village, so I board my boat and head south.
The coast turns here and head east south-east. The Tall Pines biome doesn't go far. Next is a vanilla Forest biome. I come ashore to sleep and spot two nodes in the process.
South of that is a Glacier biome. I change my exploration tactic here - rather than boating, I walk on the ice, taking advantage of my Haste 3 boots. I don't go quite as fast, but I don't have to land at night and I can mark nodes.
Past the Glacier I have to take to my boat again. I soon reach an Estuary. This looks like it might connect to the east coast and home but I choose to stay on the west coast.
The coast turns west again and I pass a small Redwood Forest, a Tundra, and an Autumn Woods.
In the Tundra coast I get attacked by a skeleton when I wake up in the morning. However, he jumps in the water so I'd have a hard time getting drops and I just avoid him.
Next to the Autumn Woods I spot a Stone Beach. In vanilla they happen only next to Extreme Hills but Climate Control will also place them next to very hilly biomes to reduce the ugly steep sand beaches. But Autumn Woods isn't one of those, so I come ashore to investigate whether something's wrong in my beach assignment. The cause turns out to be a very narrow strip of Extreme Hills that ended up right between the Autumn Woods and the ocean. Well, that's fine.
I cross to the next map south. Continuing south I pass some Badlands and then a vanilla Forest. About half way down the map, I'm getting tired of exploration and starting to get a little lazy after exploring something like 10,000 blocks of coastline plus some inland regions. So I decide to end the exploration and head for home. I land and head west, towards home.
I soon come to a Badlands biome. These look really good with the Underground Biomes stone.
The continent is fairly narrow and in less than a thousand blocks I'm on the east side. I have to dig down a bit to get down the side of a cliff. On the coast is another Estuary.
North of that is a small Flying Mountains. Flying Mountains is an extreme fantasy biome. It's even more rugged than Extreme Hills, but it has riverlike areas, lots of waterfalls, and saturated vegetation colors creating a "mountain gorge paradise effect". Like Woodland Mountains, very impractical for hardcore survival, but an unmatched backdrop.
One of the great features of Underground Biomes is that biomes with lots of exposed stone look very different depending on which stones comprise the local underground. Here you can see a shift from the rich yellow Komantite to a light gray stone (I didn't check which one). So instead of *one* type of Flying Mountains biome, I have effectively more like a dozen. Likewise for Extreme Hills and a number of Highlands biomes like Rock Mountains, Badlands, and Poplar HIlls.
Continuing north, towards home, I pass some more snowy zones, and eventually I come to an Estuary again. This looks like it connects to the Estuary on the west coast, and a little exploration confirms it does indeed cross the continent. So in a sense I am going to circumnavigate my home continent because the Estuary effectively splits it into two continents. However, I haven't found any villages, anywhere, so I only got one of my goals.
I'm near the Tropics I explored a while back and on the way home take the opportunity to fill it in. I'm going to disallow rivers in Tropics as this one just came out so messy. However, changing how individual biomes are defined creates what I call "lesser chunk walls": mostly the junction is fine but every now and then you get a wall in a limited area. Climate Control doesn't protect from this kind of chunk wall so I need to finish exploring the biome or I'll get (in this case) rivers terminating in flat walls.
The Tropics creates a great atmosphere. It can get really dark under the canopy, though, and I drop quite a few torches. For some reason I don't have to deal with any spawns, though.
One of the nice aspects of a substantive build is that it makes it easier to find my base. On several occasions I've gotten disoriented approaching my base but not anymore, at least from the sea.
Once home I decide to make a map wall on the second floor of the tower. While taking the maps out, I accidentally leave my last blank map in the Atlas along with another map, and the Atlas wastes my blank map making another. Gotta remember to take the blank maps out first.
And here's the result. I'm experimenting with this world by completely eliminating the largest continents. My last world I started on a massive continent I never completely circumnavigated and in flyaround test worlds I frequently come across continents sprawling over dozens of maxed maps. Here it seems better.
Next episode: brewing Essentia and smacking some zombies.
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.
NinjaduffTV on youtube !