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I'm thinking of building an underwater city but have never taken on a project the size or scope of the one I have in mind. I'm new to the game and am still figuring out the water physics. The city will have an octagon main hall (20 squares at its widest point) and hallways leading off of three sides that will open into various rooms. The city should sit on the ocean floor or very close to it. (I'm thinking the height of the main hall will be 6 blocks high, taper in three to five for the roof before the rest being encased in glass. Standard room will be four blocks high before tapering and being capped in glass.

My question is, what is the most efficient and effective way to build without having to fight the water the entire time?

To date (and I've only had the game two weeks) my team and I have concentrated on construction on the land and mountains. We just finished a ship but that isn't quite the same thing and we are discussing here.

Thank you in advance.

Is your underwater city going to be covered up by like a dome or what?

My advice is to make air bubbles in the water and building it from the outside.

http://www.minecraft...Underwater_Home

EDIT: Some good advice, from the wiki. *Sugar cane blocks water, but not movement. You can use them as air to water doors.

Try building a solid structure all the way to the sea floor ie a huge cube or something. Need's to be solid and not hollow. Then chip away at the cube to take the shape of the building you want. As long as your outer walls are up the water wont rush back in.

Quote from AR3

Is your underwater city going to be covered up by like a dome or what?

Yes, there will be glass domes on all of the structures.

Quote from itsjdmyotony

Try building a solid structure all the way to the sea floor ie a huge cube or something. Need's to be solid and not hollow. Then chip away at the cube to take the shape of the building you want. As long as your outer walls are up the water wont rush back in.

When the building is constructed, and we're 4-5 blocks under the surface of the water, when we take down the enclosure will the water rush into the empty spots and look undisturbed?

Quote from Crazy4DA

Yes, there will be glass domes on all of the structures.



When the building is constructed, and we're 4-5 blocks under the surface of the water, when we take down the enclosure will the water rush into the empty spots and look undisturbed?

Not sure.... I would try experimenting in shallow water with a smaller cube. The water physics are kind of weird in minecraft.if it doesnt it would be cool to replicate moses and the parting of the red sea lol

Quote from Crazy4DA

Yes, there will be glass domes on all of the structures.

Alright, thats good. So you would have to basically make a sort of mold of all the domes but put it on the surface of the water. Like one block on top of it so that its not touching the water. On the first layer put dirt or cobblestone .Then fill the mold of the second layer with sand or gravel. Once you finished, break the dirt or cobblestone you put on the first layer and all the sand/gravel should fall straight down to the bottom of the ocean. Cover up the mold with glass and break in so you could break all the sand/gravel. You should be good to go after that. I don't know if that made any sense but its very easy if you get it

Quote from AR3

Alright, thats good. So you would have to basically make a sort of mold of all the domes but put it on the surface of the water. Like one block on top of it so that its not touching the water. On the first layer put dirt or cobblestone .Then fill the mold of the second layer with sand or gravel. Once you finished, break the dirt or cobblestone you put on the first layer and all the sand/gravel should fall straight down to the bottom of the ocean. Cover up the mold with glass and break in so you could break all the sand/gravel. You should be good to go after that. I don't know if that made any sense but its very easy if you get it

I think I get what you are saying because sand and gravel obey the laws of minecraft gravity where dirt and stone do not.

Here is a video explaning how to make underwater domes

Quote from AR3

Here is a video explaning how to make underwater domes

Yep, that is about what I thought you were talking about. I will have to give it a try on a small scale before committing. Thanks so much for the advice.

I just wanted to give you some short pointers since your new to the game (Ive played for around 18 months, but im not an expert):

1. Build a "blueprint" on land first, so you have a good idea of the size of your project and how it should look when finished. This may sound stupid, but its really easy to have an idea of building something, but then ending up with a completely different structure becaue you took some turns in the middle of the project. A "blueprint" will guarantee that you end up with what you wanted to begin with.

2. Start out with a model in small scale. Its no shame in trying out a smaller version first. As in your "blueprint" does not have to be completely up to scale, you only need it to guide you on your way.

3. Practice building domes on land because its really easy to mess it up by placing 1-2 blocks wrong and seeing the domino-effect if you keep on building with the error done. AR3 mentioned a cool idea using gravel/sand to help you make a solid mold and i think you should look into that, but still, you will have to be able to build the mold structure first.

Practice makes perfect. Good luck on your project and i hope you share a photo when its complete

Quote from Crazy4DA

Yes, there will be glass domes on all of the structures.



When the building is constructed, and we're 4-5 blocks under the surface of the water, when we take down the enclosure will the water rush into the empty spots and look undisturbed?

the water will be disturbed if you start form the suface use a door and start from the bottom use it as a air bubble build and go back to the door for air each time you can find the deepest part of the sea this way and never disturb the sea.

botom up is best.

it is real hard to fix the sea after you mess it up, and real easy if you never do mess it up

We have a huge dome with another dome coming from it on our server that's in the ocean part of the map I will try and get a picture of it and also at some point get a vid up of how it was done it took many hours but well worth it as it looks stunningActually ... 5:25 of this video it has them in it for a few minutes while I'm walking around on our map and I roughly show you how to do it.

Quote from SuperJonM

I just wanted to give you some short pointers since your new to the game (Ive played for around 18 months, but im not an expert):

1. Build a "blueprint" on land first, so you have a good idea of the size of your project and how it should look when finished. This may sound stupid, but its really easy to have an idea of building something, but then ending up with a completely different structure becaue you took some turns in the middle of the project. A "blueprint" will guarantee that you end up with what you wanted to begin with.

2. Start out with a model in small scale. Its no shame in trying out a smaller version first. As in your "blueprint" does not have to be completely up to scale, you only need it to guide you on your way.

3. Practice building domes on land because its really easy to mess it up by placing 1-2 blocks wrong and seeing the domino-effect if you keep on building with the error done. AR3 mentioned a cool idea using gravel/sand to help you make a solid mold and i think you should look into that, but still, you will have to be able to build the mold structure first.

Practice makes perfect. Good luck on your project and i hope you share a photo when its complete

I'm glad that you brought up building something on land first. I was really thinking about doing this first so that I could see what it should look like and mess around with the design if need me. I drew it out on graph paper to have a guideline but I've run into issues mid-build because I was on the roof and just couldn't see what was going on with the outside portion. We solved some of that by having one person standing in certain places to give a better viewpoint of the work but it's not always easy when you're working alone.

I'm, also, going to try a few small scale "huts" with the sand idea. I will want to recover the sand anyway as I want to use it to build this city but cobblestone is very easy to come by. You are so right about practice!

Quote from EvilDogBoy

the water will be disturbed if you start form the suface use a door and start from the bottom use it as a air bubble build and go back to the door for air each time you can find the deepest part of the sea this way and never disturb the sea.

botom up is best.

it is real hard to fix the sea after you mess it up, and real easy if you never do mess it up

I messed up the ocean when building our boat. I haven't decided if it's worth trying to fix yet.

Quote from FayzedNZ

heres a link that monkeyfarm also pointed out in one of his vids to go along with his other vid posted here by ar3

http://www.plotz.co.uk/plotz.php

Using that tool makes things alot easier domes/spheres etc

I saw that video online when I did a google search for how to build under the water. I'm on xbox so don't think I can use the same program. I will see if I can upload a photo of another building we built that is similar in design to what we want to use for our city structures.

Quote from FayzedNZ

Its not a program to import anything it shows you the amount of blocks each layer has etc etc, you build it from the reference given from the dimensions you enter..

Ahhh, Okay. I misunderstood what its function was. I will have to go and have another look at it.

So we started construction on the underwater city. We built a lighthouse as an entry point with a tunnel leading out to sea that opens into the "entry" chamber. Using the sand as a mould was freaking brilliant! We were able to hammer out the actual structure pretty easily with this method. The only issue we're coming up against is trying to level out the sea floor to accommodate the structures. I don't know what is going on but it sometimes seems like we're caught in a current or something and can't swim up quickly enough. <-Not sure if that is actually what it is but it has prompted us to save and save often.

I would like to thank everyone for the information and videos and stuff. It all helped a lot. We opted out of domes to save on material and to keep the buildings under the water but (I think) it still looks good. Will have to see about uploading a photo of the progress so far.