After ending my last journal world by dying (Hardcore mode) I'm ready to go at another world. I considered doing a vanilla start, then installing Climate Control + Highlands to test and demonstrate chunk wall prevention, but after a zillion vanilla starts I'm ready for something different.
I flew around a couple of creative CC+Highlands+UBC worlds to test things out and take a look. After a while I tried some Survival starts. The first two I started in vanilla biomes and they did seem a bit bland. On the third try I started in an Autumn Grove vale mostly surrounded by Alps. It actually looked really nice.
After a while, though, curiosity got the better of me and I switched to Creative to look around. I decided to move on and try another.
The next start I tried was in a Highlands Birch Hills - which actually have Poplar trees
I took screenshots for this, so I could use it for a journal world if I wanted. One of the effects of Highlands is that the terrain is complex enough to create outdoor areas with skylight<8, so you get mobs spawning outside in the day. This is OK with me as I have enough experience now to deal with a not-completely-safe daytime.
It was a pretty fun play, but I was stewing on the effects of rivers in these hilly and high-altitude biomes. Climate Control rearranges biomes, and for technical reasons it's hard to move the rivers along with them, and so they can get "left behind" in hilly regions, creating lots of deep canyons. A few are fine, but it was just too many. Highlands, in its own generator, mostly removes rivers to address this problem.
I had written some code to move the rivers too but the performance was so bad it could cause crashes. So I went back to speed it up and after a few days had a version that was much faster, didn't crash, and did keep the rivers along biome borders. However, it still wasn't fast enough so I put it back on the shelf for the next iteration.
When I was writing up the post-mortem for my old journal world, I was reminded I wanted to play with Thaumcraft. So, back to testing in Creative worlds. I wanted to be sure the Thaumcraft special features and biomes would generate. They do, although it can take a while to find them. IMO this is a good thing: when I found 3 Magical Forests on my spawn map in my 1.6.4 Thaumcraft world it made them seem, well, not so magical.
However, all those river canyons were still bugging me. I needed to write a GenRiver routine anyway since the vanilla routine only recognizes Ice Plains as cold and I needed it to rewrite it to stop warm rivers in my Tundras and such. So I also included a check to suppress rivers in higher terrain. I was kind of worried this would create strange intermittent rivers but that didn't seem to be a problem. Performance was not an issue; I don't get quite as many rivers but Minecraft probably has too many rivers anyway.
What I did get was some nice Highlands terrain that showed me why Highlands shuts off rivers, like this Woodland Mountains hanging valley:
Unrelatedly, I ran into this:
That's a Sinister node (Thaumcraft) in a village made of Black Granite. A pure coincidence, but isn't it perfect? There was a church too, which looked pretty good, and there was even a wizard villager.
Lots more really nice terrain has me just aching to play:
That's a Desert Mountain with a giant arch on top of blue schist stone. Sigh…
I think I'll drop Archimedes' airships from this version as it does make things really easy. Thaumcraft provides flight, and it's hard to get, and that sits better with me. I'm also inclined to play Hardcore again - it means the world is going to end, but it does make things exciting! So my mod list is the same as before, except with Archimedes removed and Thaumcraft added.
I'm about 90% sure I want to start another world. Playing one of the ones I've been testing provides an unfair advantage - although that Sinister Black Granite village is just so perfect I'm tempted to play that world anyway. It'll be a while before I see something like that generate naturally again. But I'm putting this out to see if I get any suggestions before I actually start.
That's gorgeous! And I've found that Minecraft does have too many rivers anyway - along with ravines. If this is your setup for the next journal, I'm very keen to see how it plays. ..it's making me want to play it.
I made one more change to my mod set, adding Metallurgy to enjoy the new textured ores. I did cut back the frequencies of Metallurgy ores to a half or 1/4, because with so many different ores the large number of ore blocks tends to mess up the appearance of mountains.
I actually tried two starts before settling on this one. The first start was in a Highlands Birch hills. But the ravine I started in reminded me I wanted to cut back on the ravines induced by rivers, especially in Highlands terrain. After a few days working on that I tried another start. This one was in a desert next to Desert Hills, Savanna, and Outback and was coming out a pretty good story including a hair-raising running battle with a Creeper that got between me and my cave home at sunset (I won). But when I got in a boat to look for reeds and cows I found the changes I'd made to stop excessive river canyons had also brought back the tangled vanilla coastlines. After a few more days working on that and tweaking parameters with flyarounds I was finally ready to have a go at another start.
I spawn in a Cold Taiga, next to what I initially thought was a Highlands Glacier but which is actually a Highlands Tundra. Well, that's going to be different for me - I've had a lot of hot starts for a while. I hack a spruce tree, get an axe and a pickaxe, and chop a few more trees for wood. Then I look around a bit, collecting seeds as I do.
Nearby is a disturbingly dark passage. I was worried this would spawn daytime monsters, but as it turns out that doesn't seem to have been a problem. There are sheep about, which is very convenient. I kill three so I'll have a bed. I carve a hideyhole into the the bottom of the valley visible in the opening shot, slap a door on it, and get some sleep.
Food is looking to be a big issue. I didn't realize how much harder it is to get seeds in a 1.7 Cold Taiga, compared to a 1.6 Taiga. The sheep are nice for the bed, but they're not edible and I have no other animals. So I decide to look around for something to eat. I'd glimpsed a frozen river just to my north, and head over to follow it. With food a likely issue, the flat ice road will be much better than the rather hilly terrain of the Cold Taiga. One direction goes into the Tundra and I don't think there'll be any food resources there. I take the other route.
This rather quickly reaches the ocean. I consider making a boat and just getting in and in retrospect that probably would have been a easier choice. But I decided to stick with the current start rather than effectively picking an new, and probably routine, one. I explore around a little on the shore but the Cold Taiga continues a ways in one direction and the other goes into Tundra. I do find another type of animal - wolves. Great, can't eat that either.
I'd gone a ways so I head back to be home by nightfall.
As I'm heading home I spot some Ice Spikes over a hill. There is definitely some nice scenery around to enjoy if I can survive. So far I've found 7 seeds and that's it for food. Pretty grim.
I start a dropshaft for mining. I quickly discover the Tundra has an obstacle for mining. There are Ice blocks in the ground. This is a problem because it will be very easy to accidentally melt a block with a torch and the resulting flood could cause a lot of trouble. So I have to mine them into water and replace them. I do find some Iron Ore under some Ice and after some moderately complicated maneuvers to get it mined and the Ice replaced I take it upstairs to smelt.
The iron lets me make a bucket so I can water my farm. All the jumping around has used up my satiety and so I place ladders to get back up the hill:
I should have been using ladders all along so I didn't use up my starting satiety. I'm down to 7 haunches, and hungry, and none of my crops are close to being ripe.
I continue mining down without major problems until just before the bottom I break into a cave. Because of the angles I can't block off the cave from up on the ladder. I don't want to chance dropping down - in the Birch Hills start I got feathered for that trick, and I certainly couldn't afford that now. Eventually I fill the last few block of the shaft back up and put the last bit of the shaft one block over to avoid the cave.
I head back upstairs at this point. I want to be sure I sleep every night as it could be catastrophic to get a creeper or a spider hanging out at the farm. I'm now down to five haunches and still only one wheat is even close to ripe.
Downstairs I keep breaking into a mineshaft. Each time I stick in a torch, and close it off. I find some Promethium, a lower-grade Metallurgy ore:
I smelt this and use it for boots. I'm finding Iron, so I have picks and a sword, but no gold and no diamonds.
At this point I'm down to 3 1/2 haunches and *still* no wheat. I'm forced to basically sit at the farm and go AFK, coming back every couple of minutes to sleep if necessary. I've only had one tougher food start, and that was in an Amplified world (where I ended up starving to death jumping up and down hills before my crops matured.) After two Minecraft days I finally get some wheat - 2 of them.
At least it's pretty up here.
Another day passes and FINALLY I get my third wheat.
At this point what I really need is a clock. With this start - a bed, not much food, and no clock - I have to sleep so I don't get mobs hanging around my farm, and I have to go upstairs to see when it's dark, so I'm switching back and forth between mining and farming/exploring. I'm wasting a lot of time going up and down the dropshaft, and time waiting for night if I come up too early. I have redstone, of course, but no gold as yet.
I start doing some branch mining, looking for gold. I want to stay close to home to keep my farm going.
Soon I transition into a Soapstone region. Soapstone is a very soft stone and mines very easily, although it's not good for construction as it takes a lot of damage from explosions.
Shortly, I break into yet another mineshaft. I decide to start lighting it to plan a clean out operation but my next break-in shows something different.
A staircase of some sort going up. I don't remember this as part of mineshafts and it's definitely going to make cleaning it out more complicated.
Continuing my branch mining, I find a copper deposit. Copper in Metallurgy 4 permits the construction of the Crusher, a machine that doubles ore output at a mild cost in coal. I don't quite get enough copper from this vein though, so I save it for later.
I start putting viewports into the various mineshafts I keep breaking into it.
As this is going on, my farm is finally producing enough bread. Feeling a little better now that I'm not starving, I explore around the neighborhood. The taiga is too hilly to get around conveniently and I don't see any other areas but I do spot an oak tree and chop it hoping for an apple. I luck out and get one, and take some saplings home and make a mini apple orchard.
I modify the entrance to my hideyhole to look a little better and more symmetrical.
I start thinking about how to make the area around the house secure. Building into a hill is convenient for the start, but it's hard to fence steep terrain. I figure I've certainly got to secure the top of the hill I'm in or monsters are going to drop in uninvited - literally. I put a ladder up to the top of the hill and take a look around.
Wow. I could sure live with this view. Ice Spikes are pretty rare, and to have some in view distance of spawn is a stroke of luck. To have it combine into a nice vista - well, I got lucky.
I stew on making the top secure and form a rough plan of leveling the snow on top and then putting soapstone fences around the edge so I won't fall off. Soapstone is a light white and will go fine with snow, although I'll have to roast it to smooth stone - cobble has a different texture and won't do.
Back down in front of the house I lure in 2 sheep and breed them with bread. I dig out the yard so there are 2 block walls everywhere. Initially I leave the stepped ladder but both sheep immediately pathfind out with it. Once I modify it to be sheer as in the picture, they can't path find up the ladder and they're stuck.
My mining finally starts paying off. I find diamond - 5; enough for an enchantment table, and then - gold!
Finally, no more ladder climbing to tell time! Now I can carry a bed while I mine and plop it down when I need it.
Next episode: out in the world for some sugar cane.
That's a hardcore start, alright. I really like that you're using Metallurgy this time around. And Thaumcraft too. I'm keen to see how their ores and materials look with underground biomes stone. Should make for a very cool journal.
With a food supply, a bed, and a clock, my next big goal is paper for a map. For that, I need reeds. There's no reeds in Cold Taiga, so I'll have to travel. Since i don't have maps, it's easy to get lost on land, so that means a coastal boat exploration, where I can use the coast to navigate.
I head back out to the coast and plop down a boat. If i go right I know I'm at one end of the Cold Taiga so I'll have to navigate past the entire biome before I see anything new. The Tundra, however, seems to go past the Taiga some, so I probably won't have to cross the whole thing. In the real world, the Tundra is less likely to be near useful terrain, but Minecraft doesn't work that way - they're both just snowy terrain, and equally likely to be next to any given biome.
Shortly after starting out, I crash my boat on some ice due to the location bug. But I have a spare, so I barge on.
Boating east along the Tundra, I do indeed soon find another biome -
Highland Tall Pines. Pretty, but still snowy, and I don't think they have reeds.
The Tall Pines are in a small area so they're probably a sub-biome in the Tundra. Highlands biomes have fairly complicated cross-subbiome arrangements. I found that in Climate Control is was getting too many and I had to cut back the rates of the sub-biomes. I didn't have that problem in pure Highlands worlds, probably because Highlands uses a very different biome placement system based on temperature and rainfall gradients.
I continue east. Just past the Tall Pines is vanilla Ice Plains. Now they're still snowy, but they *do* have reeds (for game balance, I guess).
And right there on the coast are some reeds! A total of 14, actually. Lucky!
I don't have enough time to get home and pillar up on the coast to sleep.
Back home I set up a cane farm. I build it inside so I don't have to worry about freezing water, and in the mine so I may get some useful stuff as I mine out the space for it. And I do, finding another diamond vein!
Although I don't have the materials to automate it now, I build it with an eye to future automation, with rows of cane next to flowing water. I haven't yet built an automated cane farm -maybe this will be the time. Or maybe not, as I don't seem to have a village nearby and that's the only use for truly huge quantities of cane.
That's a hardcore start, alright. I really like that you're using Metallurgy this time around. And Thaumcraft too. I'm keen to see how their ores and materials look with underground biomes stone. Should make for a very cool journal.
There's a shot of Promethium in Episode 2, and there will be more Metallurgy ores soon. Thaumcraft, unfortunately, is closed-source, so I don't even have an option for retexturing the ores safely. That'll have to wait for Azanor to use the API. I've actually seen a bunch of ores - cinnabar, amber, and several shards. The shard ores really wouldn't need to be retextured; they're complex enough to stand alone. The cinnabar and amber would be nice retextured.
I haven't been taking pics of the Thaumcraft stuff as it will probably be a while before I get started on Thaumcraft - I don't even have hides for a bookcase yet, and no spare gold either. I've found Thaumcraft isn't really useful until I'm going to the Nether anyway.
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.
Ya I saw the prometheum there. It looks perfect underground and Metallurgy takes care of almost all ores in the game. Thaumcraft's infused stone would definitely look great on the blue schist for example but fair enough. Azanor will do it if/when he's ready. Still plenty to look forward to.
Mining out a mirror image of my cane farm, so I can have one hopper handle two rows, I break into yet another mineshaft
This time, though, I'm at foot level and there's a post shielding me, so I take the opportunity to whack some monsters.
Hmm. That could be bad.
I actually hear the hiss, but I get back in time. It turns out there are *2* creepers but I manage to ice both of them. The spider refuses to come after me, so I mine around to where it's sitting, cut in, and ice it too. The string is out of reach, but I want it badly enough I mine out a floor block to get it. (risking monsters coming after me) I get away with it, though.
I then find I didn't really have to do that because the skelly dropped a bow. Still of limited use, because I don't have chicken for feathers.
I install a viewing port to look down the mineshaft.
Oh for crying out loud. Two more? Have they added a creeper spawner to the game?
After I dispose of them with foot blows, I mine along the mineshaft. I break into a cross-shaft and
Oooh nice. Thaumcraft aqua shards.
I'm not yet ready to break in, though, so I switch back to mining on the other side of the mineshaft. I hit another copper deposit, and I now have enough to make a crusher.
I crush my current Promethium supply, doubling it to 14. While that's smelting, I head back and resume mining. I hit a mineshaft with ice in it and turn right to find a better way in. But as I'm mining along
I cut into a mineshaft above me and an uninvited guest drops in. Yes, you heard that right folks; while turning to avoid a mineshaft I ran into going around a mineshaft I went underneath a third and cut a hole in the floor. And you wonder why generation gets so slow sometimes!
He knockbacks me into a hole I'd mined some coal from. I kill him with my diamond pickaxe as I need to dig out of the hole fast.
By now my Promethium has smelted and I go back to make a partial armor set from it.
It's pretty unimpressive functionally although it does look spiffy. Still, better than nothing.
I head back to where I got dropped in on. It turns out the mineshaft above was a staircase up from a cross-shaft in the mineshaft I was dealing with first. OK, a little less crazy. But still pretty crazy.
After cutting some openings and killing a couple of zombies that were harassing me I manage to get an angle that will let me seal up the staircase.
I kill a couple monsters through openings, including a skeleton that drops the least-damaged bow I've ever seen a skeleton drop (about 2/3rds damaged). But, as all this has been going on, my sugarcane has been growing, and I've got enough for a full-size map now. Getting leather for an enchantment table is a top priority now, so I'm going to leave off monster-hunting for some exploration.
Episode 5: Catching Cows, Chopping Chickens, and Containing Conflagrations.
At this point I really want an enchantment table. I have diamonds and paper, and need leather (for a book) and obsidian. I'm going to have to go out looking for cows; there's a reasonable chance of finding a surface lava pool in the process. I'd also like to have some feathers so I can use my bow. I now have enough paper for a maxed-size map, so I can search around without getting lost, and record my explorations for later.
I decide to start on the ocean as it's an easy way to get around. Before I went east, and it seems the snowy region goes on a ways, since after the Tundra biome I found the start of an Ice Plains biome. So I'll go west.
The Cold Taiga goes on for a while, as expected. It then yields to:
A Stone beach for an Extreme Hills biome. Lots of exposed coal here; I'll come mine some if I need it.
The Extreme Hills biome doesn't follow the coast long, as very quickly I come across a Highlands Tropics zone:
With my mods, I've been working on rivers in combination with the Highlands biomes. With the steeper and more complex biomes rivers cutting through them can be rather a mess. My current solution is to suppress rivers in more rugged terrain. Tropics are kind of on the boundary. Here I think the river chasm produces a nice effect although other time I've seen rivers in tropics produce messy jumbled terrain.
I sleep on the beach, and next morning get back in the boat. The Tropics also has a smallish beachfront and a I next encounter a Temperate Rainforest. And here I find:
Cows! OK, 1 goal down. It would be a lot of work to guide these cows home - water is slow and there's Extreme Hills inland - so I'll put it off until I know they're the least bad option. I only find 2. I breed them, and then kill one (I have something of an ecological bent).
Continuing on the Rainforest turns out to be a sort of peninsula from the Tropics. After I round it there's a river that takes me somewhat inland. I decide to get off the boat and go inland, since I'm near the edge of the map anyway. Inland I find a Steppe with some more cows. I butcher and breed some more. A little further inland -
Chickens, goal 2. I breed a few and kill a few of them as well, and sleep in a valley near the exposed cave.
Beyond the Steppe is an Autumn Forest. Which has a lava pool, goal 3! A very productive trip.
And a forest fire. But, I'm equipped to handle it, and after I put it out there's only about 5 trees burned down to stumps. I mine up 4 obsidian for my enchantment table.
I head home inland. It's kind of rough at first, because there's a fairly rugged Steppe-Extreme Hills-Autumn hills junction. I end up having to bed down again on the side of an almost-cliff. But I make it over, and discover my Cold Taiga is actually next to an ordinary Forest. I must have *almost* gotten there when I got the oak tree with the apple. So I'm less isolated than I thought I was,
Soon, I'm back home. Here's the map with me standing next to my farm.
Next episode: getting some enchantments, and some (metaphorical) monster scalps.
I have all the materials for a enchantment table, but I don't really have a place to put it. I don't yet have a plan for my base, so I don't have a plan for an enchantment room either. I'm considering putting an Ice Palace on the top of the hill, but I would probably want some Thaumcraft magic to build that, so I'd have to have a temporary enchantment room for now.
Eventually I just plop it down at the mine landing. I'll move it to a more permanent temporary location later when I have bookcases. I toss level 1 enchantments on all my items and get routine stuff like Sharpness 1 on the sword except:
Ooh, blast protection. I've been a big fan of having a little ever since I lost my first hardcore world to a point-blank Creeper blast. Normally this needs at least a level 5 enchantment according to the Wiki so maybe the Promethium (which has high enchantability) was a meaningful benefit.
I also make Iron leggings to complete my armor set.
Now I'm ready to crack the mineshaft I've been mine around for some time now. I break in at one end and head in, dropping torches as I go. I hit a section of ice but head on through. The mineshaft forks and I head left. Shortly after that I encounter a pack of zombies and pull back so I don't get caught between two groups of mobs. Good thing too, because there is indeed a skeleton headed towards the intersection.
He literally sends me flying with the knockback.
But he still doesn't last long.
Unfortunately, as you can see, when I was dashing down the mineshaft I wasn't thinking about where I was putting the torches and the ice section is melting. I'd say oops, but it's probably the reason I wasn't fighting half a dozen zombies along with the skelly. While I'm trying to figure out what to do, another ice block melts and the mineshaft becomes an impassable torrent.
So, I mine out the goodies in the small section I liberated and go back to branch mining next to the shaft.
Almost predictably, I break into *another mineshaft*. I'm hearing a lot of spider sounds so initially I'm extra cautious. Nothing comes through, though so I mine out some ores next to me. That breaks into a mineshaft *above* me - wouldn't you know it? and I see:
Spider legs hanging over the edge. Barely visible in this still but they were noticeable enough in motion. Well, I know where the noises are coming from, at least. Since they're not coming after me, I suspect they're regular spiders but I don't want to break into a nest of spiders from below. So I dirt up the hole for now.
I like having "safety railings" so it's impossible to accidentally fall into dangerous situations, even if I know they're there. I've died more than once to fat fingers on the move keys.
So I close off the entrance to the melted area so I won't accidentally fall in.
Next episode: Time to start planning for a bookcase collection, so back into the world to look for cows to bring home for leather.
I was ready to start using Thaumcraft, and that required a number of items, including leather, which required cows. I also needed to start building up leather for my future enchantment room.
First I built a basic pen to hold the cows. I don't know if there's been a change with 1.7 or if it's always been this way, but it seems like the animals wander off really fast and I have to have a holding pen waiting for them.
I headed off to the northwest. I remembered a passageway between two hills that way that brought me close to a frozen river so I could avoid most of the up-and-down. I smoothed out the passageway, which had a dip right in front of it, and widened it a bit too.
Here's my map location as I head off, right before reaching the frozen river.
The river takes me to a plains area. I see a Greatwood tree off in the distance, which provides an important wood for Thaumcraft. But when I get closer:
I see it's infested by Cave Spiders. So I give it a respectable berth - I'll get my wood from another tree. I've seen plenty of Greatwood trees - they're a nice addition to the landscape, actually, especially in treeless regions like plains.
I sleep on a pillar. Next morning I crest the hill the tree is on:
Lots of info in this pic. First, Horsies! I didn't bring any sugar (don't have a saddle anyway) but it's nice to see them. Second, the next biome on is a Highlands Woodlands. They're quite pretty and look rather bucolic but they're actually somewhat dangerous. The large trees create a lot of shade for monsters to spawn. IME it's noticeably more dangerous than Roofed Forest. So - not my first choice for exploration at this stage.
When I get close to the horses though...
Evidently a cow fell off this hill (cows are dumb that way.) So there are probably other cows around.
I climb up to the top of the hill but there's no cows up there - or at least not any more.
Next I climb up to the top of the hill in the first pic with the horses, mining a coal deposit on the way. No cows visible up there either although I do see some pigs on the next hill. So I decide to scout the edge of the Woodlands
It's a very attractive biome, primarily from having a complex mix of trees and sizes, which makes it look more like a real forest. Vanilla forests generally have only one kind of tree, sometimes with a small range of appearances as well, and sometimes they look more like recently planted tree farms than real forests.
I plunge in, dropping torches so I don't have to worry about monsters behind me at least. Fairly quickly:
Bingo. I pull out my wheat and start luring them out of the forest. I start breeding them as well.
I lure them into the lake, feeling a little like a Heidi of the Swiss Alps with the mountain in the background.
Unfortunately the calves I bred drown in the lake. I sleep for the night on the lakeshore and then resume herding through the Plains with the infested Greatwood tree.
Annoyingly a bunch of resident sheep start following me. I don't need the sheep but the crowding interferes with herding the cows and I have to backtrack more to pick up stragglers.
Soon I reach the Frozen River and the travelling gets easier, although I can't shake the sheep. I guesstimate where to get off the river to use the passageway I'd prepared - and get it right!
After a few more minutes the cows - and sheep - are ensconced in the corral.
Sunset at the OK Corral.
Next morning I push out the sheep and lure in one cow who'd straggled just outside my farm area.
I head down to mine a little iron for a wand - I'm just a little bit short. I head out to the soapstone area as I'd like to get some for a possible future ice palace.
While mining, I hit a dungeon with a zombie spawner. I try to mine around it but…
The zombies I would have tried to handle, but there was a creeper there too. So I closed it up. I tried to crack into the dungeon directly to light up the spawner but the creeper came up so I closed that up too for now.
I found a big deposit of iron, coal, *and* gold right next to the dungeon so I headed back - only to discover I needn't have gone right then as I had left a pile of iron dust in the crusher. Well, it was hardly a wasted mining expedition.
I make a basic Thaumcraft wand. Now I need a bookcase to make a Thaumonomicon, the book to guide research in Thaumcraft. I head upstairs to off two cows for leather for the bookcase. This will slow me down some on getting the 15 bookcases for a top enchant, but it's worth it to get started on Thaumcraft. Thaumcraft has a very complex research path, and I'd like to get started.
I make the bookcase, and after a quick wave of the wand -
i have a Thaumonomicon! I'm ready to start becoming a wizard.
Episode 8: Material Management for Magical Mastery
Thaumcraft requires a lot of different materials. I assume this is deliberate; the main difficulty in "survival" Minecraft is actually collecting materials, not dying, because you can't really die in "survival" Minecraft.
First I need glass. Well, I'd passed through a sand layer digging down so I just go back up my dropshaft and dig up a stack for smelting.
With the glass and some magic shards and extra gold I'd already dug up I can make a Thaumometer. This lets you discover and collect magical "aspects" you need for research. I scan a bunch of things downstairs, but find rather little. Thaumcraft has a complex ladder of aspects and you have to discover some before you discover others and it's hard to get started even though I've played before.
Another thing I'll need for research is scribing tools; basically ink and quill. For this, I'll need feathers, ink sacs, and clay, none of which I have (the feathers I got on my first big expedition went into arrows). Time for another expedition.
I've been trying to grow an autumn sapling for looks but it's come out too small. I chop it down and replant.
My plan is to try to find an inland route to where the chickens were. If I'm lucky, I may hit some on the way. I'll likely find a river or lake with clay and squid.
Shortly after I set out, I find red mushrooms. So, now that food is no longer an issue, I can make mushroom stew. Whatever.
Heading west, I encounter an autumn forest - possibly associated with the one near the coast, although there's biomes in the way. Biomes do occasionally get "split up" by processing. It's next to
My first Birch Forest M in survival. It's a good biome in vanilla, with the taller birches, but in the context of all the Highlands biomes and fancy trees it's a little disappointing.
I reach the Steppe where the chickens were and find a relatively easy way through, avoiding any high hills.
The Autumn Forest in the distance is where I found the lava pool and fought the forest fire. These steppe formations are rather extreme and unrealistic for my taste. I liked the Steppe mountains better in the 1.6.4 version - the 1.7 "amping up" of terrain variation seems to have affected them.
Shortly I find a few chickens and start breeding and collecting eggs. My plan is to gather eggs and bring them home that way rather than with the tedium of long-distance herding.
The Steppe is littered with cave entrances, some rather dangerous. I also find an exposed lava pool three blocks down - that would be a nasty fall! I assume this is associated with the large exposed cave near where I found the chickens.
I find chickens and start breeding them and collecting eggs. I thought it would be really fast and easy but it turns out to be rather slow. Much as with my leaky chicken ranch in my last journal it looks like a lot of chickens but chasing them down is very time-consuming.
I get some uninvited visitors wandering up from the cave complex too.
The Autumn Forest looks nice from the overlook. Maybe I'll set up a bunch of season-themed bases - winter at spawn, autumn here, spring and summer where inspiration strikes me. For future fulminations.
Eventually i have a stack of eggs and head back. I go a little further inland hoping for a suitable river.
And find one. Very attractive, although climbing down is a slight hassle.
It does indeed have both clay and squid, so I collect plenty of both.
I see a faint glow in the air and investigate with my Thaumometer -
Finding my first Aura node! With Tempestas, which is rare in nodes (I've never seen it). It's not particular useful to have it in a node, but it's still neat.
With all my expedition goals completed, I head home. I arrive just before dark and snooze before making a round in the farm. But in the morning when I head out -
A baby zombie ambushes me as I head out the door. I also hear some adult zombies, but don't see any. I scout around for a place he might have come from but can't find one. I guess it just managed to spawn before I got to sleep.
After some farming, I get ready to set up a chicken coop. After my last journal I'm not going to use fences, which seem only a slight impediment to chickens (they're tolerable for bigger animals). So it's going indoors. I consider building it down on the mining level but I don't want to listen to the clucking. So I decide to dig it out partway down the shaft.
I build it in the chalk layer so I'll have a white material for a future winter-themed build.
I dump in the eggs and get about 6 chicks, which is really lucky. I'm not going to bother with a more elaborate ranch for vast quantities of chickens as I don't know I'll have a use for them.
Downstairs I make my scribing tools with vials, quill, and ink:
One more item towards starting research.
Next episode - collecting the aspects, and starting research.
In Thaumcraft, object have magical "aspects". Most aspects in Thaumcraft can be discovered by scanning object that have them. However, some can't, and there's no way to know which ones without googling up a cheat sheet.
I knew from previous experience that Victus, or Life, was one aspect you can't scan for and which has to be made. So, the first thing I do with my shiny new research table is to make it:
With Victus I can now discover a number of other aspects, which I proceed to do:
Thaumcraft research pretty much requires you have all aspect discovered, so I run around on a mad scanning spree. I scan vials, mushrooms, ores, animals, dyes, tools - you name it. But I'm still getting stuck, apparently on Humanus (man). Well, I remember that zombie flesh has that so I head back to the zombie spawner I'd found before and crack it open.
Killing zombies through the porthole is easy but I can't get the rotten flesh. Should have cut in one level lower, I guess. But, I'm not seeing the creeper so during a pause in zombies I mine out another block to make an opening and go in to collect. I light up the inside so there will be no more spawns until I want to use it. There's also an opening to an outside cave (presumably how the creeper got in before and I block that up too. Then I loot the chests.
The chests are actually a great find. Thaumcraft stuff generates in the chest, and in the first I find some Thaumium (essentially enchanted Iron that can be eventually used for specially magicked items) and a Thaumium Axe (which I'm going to save for just that.)
But in the second chest is a whopper of an item:
Vis is the magical energy in thaumcraft you use for making items and wand effects. It normally has to be gotten from magical nodes, and that's quite a chore early in the game. There are six different kinds of Vis used for magic and each node generally only has one or two. So you have to find a whole bunch of nodes and then travel back and forth to them to recharge them before you can do much of anything. Eventually you can move nodes around, but that comes much later.
At present I've only even found one node, with two usable types of Vis, so I would normally have to discover several more nodes and make many outdoor trips. But this this will recharge all my wands for me up to a low level, effectively many hours of work. In particular, I'll be able to make things to help find nodes before I have to go looking for them. (or so I think - it comes out to be less useful than I'd thought.)
Feeling a little confident, I decide to break into the mineshaft that had gotten in the way of my initial dropshaft.
That goes easily and I secure and block off a segment right next to my base.
However, it turns out the zombie flesh doesn't let me scan more aspects after all. It turns out I need Mortuus, or Death, and after not getting it from things like skeleton bones I eventually make that at the research table too. I get a few things, but I'm still stuck on Spiritus, or spirit, so I make that as well. That finally gets me past the bottleneck and after a frenzy of scanning almost everything in my base I finally have most of the aspects.
And I *mean* almost everything.
At that point I can start research. Thaumcraft has had a number of different research systems over several different versions. In the current system each "research note" is essentially a puzzle where you have to connect a number of aspects on a hexagonal board with chains of related aspects.
IMO it's a big improvement over the previous research system - more thought and less tedium. It's kind of hard at first, although I imagine it will get easier as I get the hang of it.
I work up a number of researches, focusing on getting better wands, and also Goggles of Revealing, which make it *much* easier to find the nodes I'm going to need. It's a cute little system and I'm having fun with it, taking periodic breaks to go farm and ranch (especially for the leather I need for bookcases).
After a while I decide to make some Goggles. But it turns out Goggles need all six aspects and my wand has very little of two of them:
So I farm and research a while longer - but I don't get anything more in the wand. So apparently rather than charging *all* aspects to 10, my amulet stops charging when any *one* aspect gets to 10 - a lot less useful, given that I don't have a way to drain out particular aspects yet. I consider making a bunch of wands and charging one after another until one get the right set but that seems tedious and a little silly. So I'm going to have to go on a early node-hunting expedition, without the Goggles that make it much easier, after all.
Next episode - exploring the world for magical nodes.
It's kind of annoying to look for nodes before having goggles because you have to look using a Thaumometer. It has to be in your hand to look, so it interferes with mapping, and occasionally with having a weapon ready. But, it seems there's nothing to be done for it, so out I go.
I head out towards where I found the cows and find my first node in the lake next to where I found the cows. It's Aqua and Terra, so not either of the ones I need (Ignis and Perdito). From there, I head east, planning to search the areas near my base (to minimize travel time for recharging).
I cross the entire land area just north of my base without finding another node. This doesn't entirely shock me, as I've found nodes are hard to find in snowy areas - the glow is distinctly harder to see against snow, even with a Thaumometer. I do pass through the Ice Spikes area, and they're pretty cool, but I forgot to take pics.
It turns out I'm actually near the end of my continent. Apparently in my search for sugar cane I partially rounded the cape at the end without realizing it.
I find another node here:
This one has Ignis, one of the things I'm looking for. I had actually found Perdito, the other, on my previous expedition, but mis-remembered Aqua/Perdito/Tempestas (a really cool combo) as Aqua/Aer/Tempestas (an even more cool combo). So I kept searching.
At this point, in addition, I'm starting to worry as a modder. I've found three nodes so far, and all have been on water - even though my searching has been on land. So I'm concerned that there's some interaction between Thaumcraft and one of my mods which is preventing nodes from spawning on land. From a game point, that would be no big deal, but from a mod point of view, it would be a major bug.
So I keep going.
I take the sea route along the coast back to the Steppe where the chickens were. Flattish areas with little vegetation and no snow are the best places to look for nodes. On the way I find one more node on the water, which doesn't improve my mood.
Walking next to the Extreme Hills towards the Steppe, however:
Phew. A node on land. I've just been having some weird luck.
I also find an Aer/Terra node in the Autumn Forest near the lava pool location, and Aer/Aqua/Ignis on the Steppe near the cave area.
I still think I need to find a Perdito node, so I keep going. I want to head north, but i have to go further west because there's some rugged terrain directly to the north.
To the west is a Highland Dunes biome:
It's quite rugged and barren. The good thing is that Climate Control has worked for the second journal in a row: I have all the climates within 1000 blocks of spawn. That was the original motivation for Climate Control: shrinking the climate zones so you could find non-temperate climates without (usually) having to cross multiple maxed-out maps. It's since morphed into a broader world generation mod with controls for land sizes and ocean percentages, biome frequency controls, and systems for preventing chunk walls. Some of the other stuff will get tested later in this journal, if I survive long enough.
I do find an Oasis sub-biome:
Would make for an interesting survival start.
At one point climbing up the massive dunes I get stranded near the top and have a hard time digging down. I find no nodes, however, until I'm almost to the north edge of the dunes.
There I find an Obsidian Totem, which contains a Sinister node. These nodes convert their surroundings to Eerie nodes, which have a number of moderately unpleasant effects like souped-up zombie spawns. That's the cause of the darkened sky in the pic.
The totem node turns out not useful for Vis, but it does have Alienis, one of the last Aspects, and one of the hardest to get.
At this point I transition into a swamp. This is a good thing, as several of the base biomes are associated with particular Aspects (Terra in woods, Aqua at sea, and Ignis in Desert) and Swampland tends to have Perdito, which I'm looking for. I find another sinister node, and then finally:
I find a Perdito node. OK, expedition goals complete.
From here I turn back east, towards home. First I cross a desert, with a few more nodes, including yet another Sinister node. This neighborhood is going to go seriously bad if I hang out here because the Sinister nodes grow their Eerie zones over time.
I reach an inland lake (or possibly very deep inlet) which lets me speed my trip home.
I reach the Birch Woods north of the steppe. Here's my map, showing the coast I discovered on the east and the Dunes/Desert on the west. The blank areas on the coast to the east were places I was busy with my Thaumometer or tricky terrain and forgot to switch back to my map for a while. I did have to go off the west edge of the map but since I don't have an Explorercraft Atlas yet I didn't generate a map for that area.
Heading home I encounter yet *another* Sinister node. I get a bit turned-around in some hills but no big deal.
Back, home, *finally*:
I have my goggles.
Next episode: some home improvements, my first level 30 enchant, and using some Explorercraft mapping features.
One of the ladders you climb in Thaumcraft is the wand ladder. There's a sequence of wand materials and caps, each generally better than the one before, and generally requiring the previous wand to make. I can take one step up from my iron-capped wood wand to a gold-capped Greatwood wand, and I do so. I couldn't have done this earlier, as I need a fair amount of all six Vis to do it. This also gives me two wands to store mana in. So I want to go out again to fill my new wand.
But first, now that I've cleared the mineshaft that blocked my original dropshaft, I can move the bottom section that I had to displace to avoid the mineshaft.
Not a big deal but that was an annoyance to have to shift my position going up or down.
Now that I've got Goggles of Revealing, it's going to be much easier to find nodes. But, once I've found them, how do I find them again. For this, I'm going to use a new feature of Explorercraft -map markers.
Map markers are made with a dye and a piece of paper, which produces 8 markers. They're metaphorically like sticky notes. If you right-click with a stack of markers, it will place that marker at that spot on every map in your hot bar, and every map in every Atlas in your hot bar.
Of course all those different marker colors chew up a lot of inventory space, but you can keep unused markers in an Atlas.
So I make an Atlas
And fill it with a variety of colored markers.
It also holds my map, and a blank 16x16 map (from ExplorerCraft). If I move off my current map now, Explorercraft will automatically convert my blank map into a new map that tiles with my current one.
While I've been doing this, I've gotten enough leather to make 15 bookcases so I can finally to a level 30 enchant. I enchant a diamond pick and get Efficiency IV/Unbreaking III. Not exciting, but a great workhorse pick. It'll do.
I learned in my last game to have a plan for using the colors before I start using them. In this game I primarily intend to use them to mark nodes. There are far too many possible aspect colors so I'm just going to use a color for the most powerful aspect. That''l leave 10 colors for other things.
I start out dropping a black marker at my front door. So from now on, you can use the black cross on the map to know exactly where my base is.
I head east, primarily working to fill in the blank areas on my map near my base. Very quickly I spot a glow off to the side and find an aqua/aer/perdito node near the frozen river I take to the coast. So I travelled thousands of blocks to find an aspect right next to my base. But of course I couldn't know that and the limited FOV of the thermometer is the reason I missed it before.
I consider using a grey for Perdito - the most significant aspect for game play, but eventually decide to just mark for the largest aspect, which is aqua.
I enjoy the views as I travel, of course. I've planned my mod and world setting to produce striking landscapes, pretty maps, and reasons to travel to look at it. I'm getting what I wanted, and it's nice.
On my third Minecraft day exploring, I find 3 nodes close together - the third of which is a wisp spawner.
This is a Thaumcraft structure made mostly of obsidian, and containing a treasure chest, a Sinister node and which, unsurprisingly, spawns wisps, moderately dangerous flying Thaumcraft mobs. I head up to loot but hear the dreaded SSSS.
I spin around and try a swat-and jump-back tactic on the creeper but I don't jump fast enough and get a hole in the hill.
The white glow is one of the other 2 nodes, a largish pure Ordo node.
The chest contains some minor stuff plus a ring with Runic Shield I. Google unfortunately doesn't tell be what the thing does but I figure it's very useful and use it anyway.
I travel to the coast to find the Ignis node I'd found on the previous trip and have a hard time finding which of several bays it's in. This mapping is going to be a big benefit. I find yet another Obsidian Totem with a Sinister node while looking. Man, these things are everywhere!
I eventually find the earlier node and head west, discovering two more nodes as I travel.
I mark the aqua/terra node I'd found in the lake and then:
Yet *another* sinister node. Looks good with the Greatwood tree, though.
From there I head west to mark the aqua/perdito/tempestas node. I have a really hard time finding it. I am really looking forward to having nodes marked on my map.
When I do finally find it, I find an ignis node very nearby.
After this, I head home. Here's the resulting map:
You can see the aqua/aer/perdito node I marked first as blue cross just below my base. The trio of nodes is three overlapping crosses above and to the right of my base, with the red one on top. The node with ignis I found on the coast in my earlier trip is a blue cross (because it has more aqua) further northeast of that. South of it is a grey marker for the totem I found looking for it. The aqua/terra node in the lake next to the cows in the green cross near the center. The aqua/perdito/tempestas node is a blue cross in the west partly obscured for a orange cross for the ignis node next to it.
I've been dreaming of a map with Thaumcraft nodes marked on it for months. And now I have it. A very good day!
Next episode: mining for resources and (finally) some building.
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Usually I start some moderately ambitious building project early on in a world and normally I have more space that I can use. This is the first world I've ever gotten so far in without starting some kind of base or house. Partly it's because I have been musing on the idea of building some kind of ice palace up on the hill and for that I'd need either a silk touch pick or a Thaumcraft Wand of Equal Exchange. In any case, I'm digging rooms in the hill kind of higgledy piggledy and I want to start on something organized before it turns into a total mess. I'm already noticing that it's hard to remember where something is in the sprawl. Having to build around all those dang mineshafts isn't helping, of course.
I don't have the tools to manipulate ice and I don't have the patience to freeze ice in moulds, so I'll have to settle for using light-colored materials and hope that works. I do have two of the lightest UB stones to work with, soapstone and chalk. I don't have enough for a build yet, so I head down to mine up some soapstone. I go to where I'd found some before well away from the mineshaft mess, towards the outside of my mining area.
I run into some Metallurgy Oureclase. Oureclase is one of the many "fantasy metals" Metallurgy adds. Some of them are fairly high-powered but Oureclase isn't really any better than some alloys for common metals Metallurgy also adds. Since it's much rarer, especially with my settings, it's mostly a collector's item for me.
I also find some Manganese. This combines with Iron to make steel, essentially Iron with much higher durability. I've found some of this before and really should already have been using it but didn't get around to it before. Steel is one of the souped-up alloys that makes Oureclase not really worth the trouble.
I break into a lava-filled ravine and use my water bucket to convert a large section to obsidian. I leave some lava on both side so I don't have to worry about mobs at present.
I continue on past the ravine but soon my inventory jams from a combination of the numerous Metallurgy ores and my own tendency to carry stuff I don't need right now but which I'm prone to forget. I do have enough soapstone to at least start building, so I head back to my processing area.
I toss some Soapstone in the furnace and some Manganese in the crusher and start making some Steel. Seeing that Manganese reminded me I wanted to make some and start using it.
My processing area is really cramped so while things are processing I knock out part of the wall separating it from the mineshaft area I'd secured right next to it. I feel like I can breathe now.
I head upstairs to start building. My idea is to build a tower on the hill on the right side of my hideyhole. After some counting, I discover the largest tower I can comfortably fit on it is a 13 block radius circle - the same size and shape as my first build in my previous journal world. Falling into a rut grates on me but I don't want smaller and it would be really hard to build bigger so..
I want some kind of pattern in the floor so it's not boring, ideally something kind of runic or magical. I come up with the idea of a spiral and build a test with dirt.
I'm going to build the walls mostly from soapstone, as chalk is too soft. I decide on snow for the spiral material and soapstone for the rest of the floor. I decide to use soapstone brick for the floor as I find it's a good rule of thumb to have your walls, floors, and ceilings all of different materials.
The floor comes out pretty well.
I build a little bit of the wall and a test balcony. I enjoy looking around at the world but I've found large windows, at least on lower floors, make builds look bad from the outside because they expose the interiors. One of my favorite solutions to this problem is viewing balconies with doors. I can step outside to look, but you can't see in.
I use chalk for the railings and concealed soapstone for the balcony floor.
Looks fine, but doesn't have the wintry feel I was going for. I'm running low on soapstone, so time for some more mining.
Next episode: Fun with Mineshafts!
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Episode 13: Magnificent Metals for a Minecraft Mineshaft Maze
I run out of soapstone and head down to get some more. I decide to mine some soapstone I spotted in the mineshaft I'd cleared but almost immediately:
Sigh. Well, I set up a couple of view portals and after a while block off the rest. With my back secure, I break in. I quickly find a mine cart and then
A very complex junction. I think there are four mineshafts here! So I close it off. A skeleton wanders up while I'm blocking it off and I off him. I loot the chest (finding a Thaumium pick and a very nice enchanted book) and mine a number of exposed ores.
I decide to continue along the mineshaft as that will connect to the ravine area. So I open up my block and very quickly come to a five-way intersection. Wait, you might say. How do you get a five way intersection with right angles? Simple: there's a vertical mineshaft too.
I block off the intersection and turn right, putting in view points to see if I can break into that shaft. And shortly:
Oh looky! I break into a mineshaft turning to avoid a mineshaft intersection I hit going along a mineshaft to avoid four other mineshafts. Grand Central Station, eat your heart out!
Quite a collection of ores there, though.
With all these mineshafts, it's time to get some gear.
I manage to make level 30 at this point and I want to test some of the higher-powered metallurgy alloys made from base metals.
I decide to try to enchant a Damascus Steel Chestplate. Damascus Steel is made from Iron and Bronze, and is comparable to Diamond (which I'm a bit short of). I smelt it, craft it, enchant it, and:
Not bad! Looks spiffy too.
I run upstairs to get a little experience for level one enchants on some more gear. I don't have enough Damascus Steel for a full set but I have plenty of Steel. I make a Steel helmet and boots and:
Zeno looks a little more warlike.
I should mention I've changed my skin. I ran across a really nice Greek Philosopher skin, Parmenides of Elea, by MolochBaal. Parmenides wasn't Zeno, but he *was* Zeno's mentor (and perhaps more, Plato hinted). And, it's a really nice skin, so I switched.
I mine out some of the floor to make the whole area more one level.
Better armed, I break into this next mineshaft. It turns out the fancy armor wasn't necessary (although I couldn't have known that). I do hear a slime above me but it can't get down the vertical shaft (which I block off.) I secure an L-shaped area which includes the cross-shaft I was looking at and the continuation of the shaft I'd been following, up to where it dead ends.
The dead end is right where the dungeon with the zombie spawner is, so I have good access to that. My previous route had to jog around a mineshaft.
I try mining to the side.
Sigh.
I mine some more soapstone and some more Metallurgy minerals. and head back upstairs for more building.
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I'm going to use soapstone as the main tower wall material but I'd like to mix something in for variety. I'd like to try snow for "hill in winter" look. It's far too weak for an exterior, but I think it's acceptable over the balconies as there it's not what keeps the outside out and the inside in.
I build the same spiral pattern into the first floor. Initially I try for a height of 4 blocks but it just looks too low. After stewing about the extra work/looks tradeoff, I decide to rip off the first floor, add a block around the walls and rebuild the first floor.
Much better. The walls are rather plain- it would be a good look for a modern build but not more-historical style I strive for. I'll try to gussy them up later. Thaumcraft workrooms can get kind of cluttered and it might work for that, or for a complex display room.
For the next floor, I don't want to stack balconies because I think it'll look awkward. But I still want to look out, so I decide to try windows in the curves.
The window works. The tower is coming out too plain but I don't have a plan to improve it. I'll finish it for now and stew on exterior decorations later.
A view of my farm through the window.
It's getting to be time to go to the Nether. Thaumcraft needs Nether Quartz for a number of essential functions, including golem control and wand foci. There are also some nice Metallurgy ores in the Nether.
I'm planning to build a Nether Portal on the third floor. I like a high portal entrance, to keep the noise away, and to maximize my chance of the matching portal being high, because it's easier to get around in the roof of the Nether.
I head back to the ravine to mine some obsidian.
I have water next to the blocks I'm mining so if I expose lava it will be instantly converted to obsidian.
I mine out 12 blocks for a 3x3 portal for symmetry. As long as I'm here, I branch mine a little to collect ores and soapstone (I still need more). But then I notice something odd.
That soapstone looks a little odd. I mine it - and it's Metallurgy tin. The tin texture is almost invisible blended into the soapstone.
Armed with this realization, I spot some more invisiTin and mine it too. Tin isn't actually that useful - it's a poor metal itself, and the copper to alloy it into bronze is less available since it has other uses. But it's nice for collecting anyway.
I also pillar up to mine some exposed ores from the ravine walls.
Back home i decide to try another of the Metallurgy alloys. Angmallen is an iron/gold alloy with moderate durability and very high enchantability. I have level 30 to use the enchantability, so I mix up four ingots and make a pair of boots.
I enchant, hoping for Feather Falling so I can be a bit more daring in my build. Instead, I get Fire Resistance IV, Haste 3, and Thorns 2. Not Feather Falling, but a really good pair of boots, especially for going to the Nether.
I build a dropshaft and corridor connecting the tower with the lower entrance and the mining area. Now I can get around without going outside. The Haste is really noticeable and nice, except for some reason it makes it harder to steer on a free ladder where there's not an adjacent wall.
The second floor, using the same spiral pattern but in a darker palette to go with the nether portal which will go on top. I considered obsidian for the spiral but too much trouble to mine at present.
I consider building the Nether Portal in the center but decide the space will be more functiona; if it's in the wall replacing a balcony entrance. Initially I put in a balcony outside, for when I go the wrong direction after porting, but the realize that's silly and block the outside exit with a stone plate. I want to decorate the plate on the outside with a spiral pattern too but my first idea seems a little close to a swastika. So I use to a different design, but when I build the negative space is *exactly* a swastika. Oops. I alter the pattern and the problem goes away.
I put balconies on the top floor essentially identical to the first and five high walls elsewhere.
I'm going to enjoy these views.
The tower looks very austere. The curve of the tower did come out very close to the curve of the hill. I think I'll replace the snow beneath the tower with soapstone.
I'm thinking of a classic conical roof but I don't need it to use the top floor and it would be difficult to build at present.
Time to go deeper.
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I flew around a couple of creative CC+Highlands+UBC worlds to test things out and take a look. After a while I tried some Survival starts. The first two I started in vanilla biomes and they did seem a bit bland. On the third try I started in an Autumn Grove vale mostly surrounded by Alps. It actually looked really nice.
After a while, though, curiosity got the better of me and I switched to Creative to look around. I decided to move on and try another.
The next start I tried was in a Highlands Birch Hills - which actually have Poplar trees
I took screenshots for this, so I could use it for a journal world if I wanted. One of the effects of Highlands is that the terrain is complex enough to create outdoor areas with skylight<8, so you get mobs spawning outside in the day. This is OK with me as I have enough experience now to deal with a not-completely-safe daytime.
It was a pretty fun play, but I was stewing on the effects of rivers in these hilly and high-altitude biomes. Climate Control rearranges biomes, and for technical reasons it's hard to move the rivers along with them, and so they can get "left behind" in hilly regions, creating lots of deep canyons. A few are fine, but it was just too many. Highlands, in its own generator, mostly removes rivers to address this problem.
I had written some code to move the rivers too but the performance was so bad it could cause crashes. So I went back to speed it up and after a few days had a version that was much faster, didn't crash, and did keep the rivers along biome borders. However, it still wasn't fast enough so I put it back on the shelf for the next iteration.
When I was writing up the post-mortem for my old journal world, I was reminded I wanted to play with Thaumcraft. So, back to testing in Creative worlds. I wanted to be sure the Thaumcraft special features and biomes would generate. They do, although it can take a while to find them. IMO this is a good thing: when I found 3 Magical Forests on my spawn map in my 1.6.4 Thaumcraft world it made them seem, well, not so magical.
However, all those river canyons were still bugging me. I needed to write a GenRiver routine anyway since the vanilla routine only recognizes Ice Plains as cold and I needed it to rewrite it to stop warm rivers in my Tundras and such. So I also included a check to suppress rivers in higher terrain. I was kind of worried this would create strange intermittent rivers but that didn't seem to be a problem. Performance was not an issue; I don't get quite as many rivers but Minecraft probably has too many rivers anyway.
What I did get was some nice Highlands terrain that showed me why Highlands shuts off rivers, like this Woodland Mountains hanging valley:
Unrelatedly, I ran into this:
That's a Sinister node (Thaumcraft) in a village made of Black Granite. A pure coincidence, but isn't it perfect? There was a church too, which looked pretty good, and there was even a wizard villager.
Lots more really nice terrain has me just aching to play:
That's a Desert Mountain with a giant arch on top of blue schist stone. Sigh…
I think I'll drop Archimedes' airships from this version as it does make things really easy. Thaumcraft provides flight, and it's hard to get, and that sits better with me. I'm also inclined to play Hardcore again - it means the world is going to end, but it does make things exciting! So my mod list is the same as before, except with Archimedes removed and Thaumcraft added.
I'm about 90% sure I want to start another world. Playing one of the ones I've been testing provides an unfair advantage - although that Sinister Black Granite village is just so perfect I'm tempted to play that world anyway. It'll be a while before I see something like that generate naturally again. But I'm putting this out to see if I get any suggestions before I actually start.
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I actually tried two starts before settling on this one. The first start was in a Highlands Birch hills. But the ravine I started in reminded me I wanted to cut back on the ravines induced by rivers, especially in Highlands terrain. After a few days working on that I tried another start. This one was in a desert next to Desert Hills, Savanna, and Outback and was coming out a pretty good story including a hair-raising running battle with a Creeper that got between me and my cave home at sunset (I won). But when I got in a boat to look for reeds and cows I found the changes I'd made to stop excessive river canyons had also brought back the tangled vanilla coastlines. After a few more days working on that and tweaking parameters with flyarounds I was finally ready to have a go at another start.
I spawn in a Cold Taiga, next to what I initially thought was a Highlands Glacier but which is actually a Highlands Tundra. Well, that's going to be different for me - I've had a lot of hot starts for a while. I hack a spruce tree, get an axe and a pickaxe, and chop a few more trees for wood. Then I look around a bit, collecting seeds as I do.
Nearby is a disturbingly dark passage. I was worried this would spawn daytime monsters, but as it turns out that doesn't seem to have been a problem. There are sheep about, which is very convenient. I kill three so I'll have a bed. I carve a hideyhole into the the bottom of the valley visible in the opening shot, slap a door on it, and get some sleep.
Food is looking to be a big issue. I didn't realize how much harder it is to get seeds in a 1.7 Cold Taiga, compared to a 1.6 Taiga. The sheep are nice for the bed, but they're not edible and I have no other animals. So I decide to look around for something to eat. I'd glimpsed a frozen river just to my north, and head over to follow it. With food a likely issue, the flat ice road will be much better than the rather hilly terrain of the Cold Taiga. One direction goes into the Tundra and I don't think there'll be any food resources there. I take the other route.
This rather quickly reaches the ocean. I consider making a boat and just getting in and in retrospect that probably would have been a easier choice. But I decided to stick with the current start rather than effectively picking an new, and probably routine, one. I explore around a little on the shore but the Cold Taiga continues a ways in one direction and the other goes into Tundra. I do find another type of animal - wolves. Great, can't eat that either.
I'd gone a ways so I head back to be home by nightfall.
As I'm heading home I spot some Ice Spikes over a hill. There is definitely some nice scenery around to enjoy if I can survive. So far I've found 7 seeds and that's it for food. Pretty grim.
I start a dropshaft for mining. I quickly discover the Tundra has an obstacle for mining. There are Ice blocks in the ground. This is a problem because it will be very easy to accidentally melt a block with a torch and the resulting flood could cause a lot of trouble. So I have to mine them into water and replace them. I do find some Iron Ore under some Ice and after some moderately complicated maneuvers to get it mined and the Ice replaced I take it upstairs to smelt.
The iron lets me make a bucket so I can water my farm. All the jumping around has used up my satiety and so I place ladders to get back up the hill:
I should have been using ladders all along so I didn't use up my starting satiety. I'm down to 7 haunches, and hungry, and none of my crops are close to being ripe.
I continue mining down without major problems until just before the bottom I break into a cave. Because of the angles I can't block off the cave from up on the ladder. I don't want to chance dropping down - in the Birch Hills start I got feathered for that trick, and I certainly couldn't afford that now. Eventually I fill the last few block of the shaft back up and put the last bit of the shaft one block over to avoid the cave.
I head back upstairs at this point. I want to be sure I sleep every night as it could be catastrophic to get a creeper or a spider hanging out at the farm. I'm now down to five haunches and still only one wheat is even close to ripe.
Downstairs I keep breaking into a mineshaft. Each time I stick in a torch, and close it off. I find some Promethium, a lower-grade Metallurgy ore:
I smelt this and use it for boots. I'm finding Iron, so I have picks and a sword, but no gold and no diamonds.
At this point I'm down to 3 1/2 haunches and *still* no wheat. I'm forced to basically sit at the farm and go AFK, coming back every couple of minutes to sleep if necessary. I've only had one tougher food start, and that was in an Amplified world (where I ended up starving to death jumping up and down hills before my crops matured.) After two Minecraft days I finally get some wheat - 2 of them.
At least it's pretty up here.
Another day passes and FINALLY I get my third wheat.
Yum! Now I can work again.
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I start doing some branch mining, looking for gold. I want to stay close to home to keep my farm going.
Soon I transition into a Soapstone region. Soapstone is a very soft stone and mines very easily, although it's not good for construction as it takes a lot of damage from explosions.
Shortly, I break into yet another mineshaft. I decide to start lighting it to plan a clean out operation but my next break-in shows something different.
A staircase of some sort going up. I don't remember this as part of mineshafts and it's definitely going to make cleaning it out more complicated.
Continuing my branch mining, I find a copper deposit. Copper in Metallurgy 4 permits the construction of the Crusher, a machine that doubles ore output at a mild cost in coal. I don't quite get enough copper from this vein though, so I save it for later.
I start putting viewports into the various mineshafts I keep breaking into it.
As this is going on, my farm is finally producing enough bread. Feeling a little better now that I'm not starving, I explore around the neighborhood. The taiga is too hilly to get around conveniently and I don't see any other areas but I do spot an oak tree and chop it hoping for an apple. I luck out and get one, and take some saplings home and make a mini apple orchard.
I modify the entrance to my hideyhole to look a little better and more symmetrical.
I start thinking about how to make the area around the house secure. Building into a hill is convenient for the start, but it's hard to fence steep terrain. I figure I've certainly got to secure the top of the hill I'm in or monsters are going to drop in uninvited - literally. I put a ladder up to the top of the hill and take a look around.
Wow. I could sure live with this view. Ice Spikes are pretty rare, and to have some in view distance of spawn is a stroke of luck. To have it combine into a nice vista - well, I got lucky.
I stew on making the top secure and form a rough plan of leveling the snow on top and then putting soapstone fences around the edge so I won't fall off. Soapstone is a light white and will go fine with snow, although I'll have to roast it to smooth stone - cobble has a different texture and won't do.
Back down in front of the house I lure in 2 sheep and breed them with bread. I dig out the yard so there are 2 block walls everywhere. Initially I leave the stepped ladder but both sheep immediately pathfind out with it. Once I modify it to be sheer as in the picture, they can't path find up the ladder and they're stuck.
My mining finally starts paying off. I find diamond - 5; enough for an enchantment table, and then - gold!
Finally, no more ladder climbing to tell time! Now I can carry a bed while I mine and plop it down when I need it.
Next episode: out in the world for some sugar cane.
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With a food supply, a bed, and a clock, my next big goal is paper for a map. For that, I need reeds. There's no reeds in Cold Taiga, so I'll have to travel. Since i don't have maps, it's easy to get lost on land, so that means a coastal boat exploration, where I can use the coast to navigate.
I head back out to the coast and plop down a boat. If i go right I know I'm at one end of the Cold Taiga so I'll have to navigate past the entire biome before I see anything new. The Tundra, however, seems to go past the Taiga some, so I probably won't have to cross the whole thing. In the real world, the Tundra is less likely to be near useful terrain, but Minecraft doesn't work that way - they're both just snowy terrain, and equally likely to be next to any given biome.
Shortly after starting out, I crash my boat on some ice due to the location bug. But I have a spare, so I barge on.
Boating east along the Tundra, I do indeed soon find another biome -
Highland Tall Pines. Pretty, but still snowy, and I don't think they have reeds.
The Tall Pines are in a small area so they're probably a sub-biome in the Tundra. Highlands biomes have fairly complicated cross-subbiome arrangements. I found that in Climate Control is was getting too many and I had to cut back the rates of the sub-biomes. I didn't have that problem in pure Highlands worlds, probably because Highlands uses a very different biome placement system based on temperature and rainfall gradients.
I continue east. Just past the Tall Pines is vanilla Ice Plains. Now they're still snowy, but they *do* have reeds (for game balance, I guess).
And right there on the coast are some reeds! A total of 14, actually. Lucky!
I don't have enough time to get home and pillar up on the coast to sleep.
Back home I set up a cane farm. I build it inside so I don't have to worry about freezing water, and in the mine so I may get some useful stuff as I mine out the space for it. And I do, finding another diamond vein!
Although I don't have the materials to automate it now, I build it with an eye to future automation, with rows of cane next to flowing water. I haven't yet built an automated cane farm -maybe this will be the time. Or maybe not, as I don't seem to have a village nearby and that's the only use for truly huge quantities of cane.
Next Episode - back to mining and monsters.
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
There's a shot of Promethium in Episode 2, and there will be more Metallurgy ores soon. Thaumcraft, unfortunately, is closed-source, so I don't even have an option for retexturing the ores safely. That'll have to wait for Azanor to use the API. I've actually seen a bunch of ores - cinnabar, amber, and several shards. The shard ores really wouldn't need to be retextured; they're complex enough to stand alone. The cinnabar and amber would be nice retextured.
I haven't been taking pics of the Thaumcraft stuff as it will probably be a while before I get started on Thaumcraft - I don't even have hides for a bookcase yet, and no spare gold either. I've found Thaumcraft isn't really useful until I'm going to the Nether anyway.
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 time, though, I'm at foot level and there's a post shielding me, so I take the opportunity to whack some monsters.
Hmm. That could be bad.
I actually hear the hiss, but I get back in time. It turns out there are *2* creepers but I manage to ice both of them. The spider refuses to come after me, so I mine around to where it's sitting, cut in, and ice it too. The string is out of reach, but I want it badly enough I mine out a floor block to get it. (risking monsters coming after me) I get away with it, though.
I then find I didn't really have to do that because the skelly dropped a bow. Still of limited use, because I don't have chicken for feathers.
I install a viewing port to look down the mineshaft.
Oh for crying out loud. Two more? Have they added a creeper spawner to the game?
After I dispose of them with foot blows, I mine along the mineshaft. I break into a cross-shaft and
Oooh nice. Thaumcraft aqua shards.
I'm not yet ready to break in, though, so I switch back to mining on the other side of the mineshaft. I hit another copper deposit, and I now have enough to make a crusher.
I crush my current Promethium supply, doubling it to 14. While that's smelting, I head back and resume mining. I hit a mineshaft with ice in it and turn right to find a better way in. But as I'm mining along
I cut into a mineshaft above me and an uninvited guest drops in. Yes, you heard that right folks; while turning to avoid a mineshaft I ran into going around a mineshaft I went underneath a third and cut a hole in the floor. And you wonder why generation gets so slow sometimes!
He knockbacks me into a hole I'd mined some coal from. I kill him with my diamond pickaxe as I need to dig out of the hole fast.
By now my Promethium has smelted and I go back to make a partial armor set from it.
It's pretty unimpressive functionally although it does look spiffy. Still, better than nothing.
I head back to where I got dropped in on. It turns out the mineshaft above was a staircase up from a cross-shaft in the mineshaft I was dealing with first. OK, a little less crazy. But still pretty crazy.
After cutting some openings and killing a couple of zombies that were harassing me I manage to get an angle that will let me seal up the staircase.
I kill a couple monsters through openings, including a skeleton that drops the least-damaged bow I've ever seen a skeleton drop (about 2/3rds damaged). But, as all this has been going on, my sugarcane has been growing, and I've got enough for a full-size map now. Getting leather for an enchantment table is a top priority now, so I'm going to leave off monster-hunting for some exploration.
Next episode: Out into the World.
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 decide to start on the ocean as it's an easy way to get around. Before I went east, and it seems the snowy region goes on a ways, since after the Tundra biome I found the start of an Ice Plains biome. So I'll go west.
The Cold Taiga goes on for a while, as expected. It then yields to:
A Stone beach for an Extreme Hills biome. Lots of exposed coal here; I'll come mine some if I need it.
The Extreme Hills biome doesn't follow the coast long, as very quickly I come across a Highlands Tropics zone:
With my mods, I've been working on rivers in combination with the Highlands biomes. With the steeper and more complex biomes rivers cutting through them can be rather a mess. My current solution is to suppress rivers in more rugged terrain. Tropics are kind of on the boundary. Here I think the river chasm produces a nice effect although other time I've seen rivers in tropics produce messy jumbled terrain.
I sleep on the beach, and next morning get back in the boat. The Tropics also has a smallish beachfront and a I next encounter a Temperate Rainforest. And here I find:
Cows! OK, 1 goal down. It would be a lot of work to guide these cows home - water is slow and there's Extreme Hills inland - so I'll put it off until I know they're the least bad option. I only find 2. I breed them, and then kill one (I have something of an ecological bent).
Continuing on the Rainforest turns out to be a sort of peninsula from the Tropics. After I round it there's a river that takes me somewhat inland. I decide to get off the boat and go inland, since I'm near the edge of the map anyway. Inland I find a Steppe with some more cows. I butcher and breed some more. A little further inland -
Chickens, goal 2. I breed a few and kill a few of them as well, and sleep in a valley near the exposed cave.
Beyond the Steppe is an Autumn Forest. Which has a lava pool, goal 3! A very productive trip.
And a forest fire. But, I'm equipped to handle it, and after I put it out there's only about 5 trees burned down to stumps. I mine up 4 obsidian for my enchantment table.
I head home inland. It's kind of rough at first, because there's a fairly rugged Steppe-Extreme Hills-Autumn hills junction. I end up having to bed down again on the side of an almost-cliff. But I make it over, and discover my Cold Taiga is actually next to an ordinary Forest. I must have *almost* gotten there when I got the oak tree with the apple. So I'm less isolated than I thought I was,
Soon, I'm back home. Here's the map with me standing next to my farm.
Next episode: getting some enchantments, and some (metaphorical) monster scalps.
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.
Eventually I just plop it down at the mine landing. I'll move it to a more permanent temporary location later when I have bookcases. I toss level 1 enchantments on all my items and get routine stuff like Sharpness 1 on the sword except:
Ooh, blast protection. I've been a big fan of having a little ever since I lost my first hardcore world to a point-blank Creeper blast. Normally this needs at least a level 5 enchantment according to the Wiki so maybe the Promethium (which has high enchantability) was a meaningful benefit.
I also make Iron leggings to complete my armor set.
Now I'm ready to crack the mineshaft I've been mine around for some time now. I break in at one end and head in, dropping torches as I go. I hit a section of ice but head on through. The mineshaft forks and I head left. Shortly after that I encounter a pack of zombies and pull back so I don't get caught between two groups of mobs. Good thing too, because there is indeed a skeleton headed towards the intersection.
He literally sends me flying with the knockback.
But he still doesn't last long.
Unfortunately, as you can see, when I was dashing down the mineshaft I wasn't thinking about where I was putting the torches and the ice section is melting. I'd say oops, but it's probably the reason I wasn't fighting half a dozen zombies along with the skelly. While I'm trying to figure out what to do, another ice block melts and the mineshaft becomes an impassable torrent.
So, I mine out the goodies in the small section I liberated and go back to branch mining next to the shaft.
Almost predictably, I break into *another mineshaft*. I'm hearing a lot of spider sounds so initially I'm extra cautious. Nothing comes through, though so I mine out some ores next to me. That breaks into a mineshaft *above* me - wouldn't you know it? and I see:
Spider legs hanging over the edge. Barely visible in this still but they were noticeable enough in motion. Well, I know where the noises are coming from, at least. Since they're not coming after me, I suspect they're regular spiders but I don't want to break into a nest of spiders from below. So I dirt up the hole for now.
I like having "safety railings" so it's impossible to accidentally fall into dangerous situations, even if I know they're there. I've died more than once to fat fingers on the move keys.
So I close off the entrance to the melted area so I won't accidentally fall in.
Next episode: Time to start planning for a bookcase collection, so back into the world to look for cows to bring home for leather.
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First I built a basic pen to hold the cows. I don't know if there's been a change with 1.7 or if it's always been this way, but it seems like the animals wander off really fast and I have to have a holding pen waiting for them.
I headed off to the northwest. I remembered a passageway between two hills that way that brought me close to a frozen river so I could avoid most of the up-and-down. I smoothed out the passageway, which had a dip right in front of it, and widened it a bit too.
Here's my map location as I head off, right before reaching the frozen river.
The river takes me to a plains area. I see a Greatwood tree off in the distance, which provides an important wood for Thaumcraft. But when I get closer:
I see it's infested by Cave Spiders. So I give it a respectable berth - I'll get my wood from another tree. I've seen plenty of Greatwood trees - they're a nice addition to the landscape, actually, especially in treeless regions like plains.
I sleep on a pillar. Next morning I crest the hill the tree is on:
Lots of info in this pic. First, Horsies! I didn't bring any sugar (don't have a saddle anyway) but it's nice to see them. Second, the next biome on is a Highlands Woodlands. They're quite pretty and look rather bucolic but they're actually somewhat dangerous. The large trees create a lot of shade for monsters to spawn. IME it's noticeably more dangerous than Roofed Forest. So - not my first choice for exploration at this stage.
When I get close to the horses though...
Evidently a cow fell off this hill (cows are dumb that way.) So there are probably other cows around.
I climb up to the top of the hill but there's no cows up there - or at least not any more.
Next I climb up to the top of the hill in the first pic with the horses, mining a coal deposit on the way. No cows visible up there either although I do see some pigs on the next hill. So I decide to scout the edge of the Woodlands
It's a very attractive biome, primarily from having a complex mix of trees and sizes, which makes it look more like a real forest. Vanilla forests generally have only one kind of tree, sometimes with a small range of appearances as well, and sometimes they look more like recently planted tree farms than real forests.
I plunge in, dropping torches so I don't have to worry about monsters behind me at least. Fairly quickly:
Bingo. I pull out my wheat and start luring them out of the forest. I start breeding them as well.
I lure them into the lake, feeling a little like a Heidi of the Swiss Alps with the mountain in the background.
Unfortunately the calves I bred drown in the lake. I sleep for the night on the lakeshore and then resume herding through the Plains with the infested Greatwood tree.
Annoyingly a bunch of resident sheep start following me. I don't need the sheep but the crowding interferes with herding the cows and I have to backtrack more to pick up stragglers.
Soon I reach the Frozen River and the travelling gets easier, although I can't shake the sheep. I guesstimate where to get off the river to use the passageway I'd prepared - and get it right!
After a few more minutes the cows - and sheep - are ensconced in the corral.
Sunset at the OK Corral.
Next morning I push out the sheep and lure in one cow who'd straggled just outside my farm area.
I head down to mine a little iron for a wand - I'm just a little bit short. I head out to the soapstone area as I'd like to get some for a possible future ice palace.
While mining, I hit a dungeon with a zombie spawner. I try to mine around it but…
The zombies I would have tried to handle, but there was a creeper there too. So I closed it up. I tried to crack into the dungeon directly to light up the spawner but the creeper came up so I closed that up too for now.
I found a big deposit of iron, coal, *and* gold right next to the dungeon so I headed back - only to discover I needn't have gone right then as I had left a pile of iron dust in the crusher. Well, it was hardly a wasted mining expedition.
I make a basic Thaumcraft wand. Now I need a bookcase to make a Thaumonomicon, the book to guide research in Thaumcraft. I head upstairs to off two cows for leather for the bookcase. This will slow me down some on getting the 15 bookcases for a top enchant, but it's worth it to get started on Thaumcraft. Thaumcraft has a very complex research path, and I'd like to get started.
I make the bookcase, and after a quick wave of the wand -
i have a Thaumonomicon! I'm ready to start becoming a wizard.
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.
First I need glass. Well, I'd passed through a sand layer digging down so I just go back up my dropshaft and dig up a stack for smelting.
With the glass and some magic shards and extra gold I'd already dug up I can make a Thaumometer. This lets you discover and collect magical "aspects" you need for research. I scan a bunch of things downstairs, but find rather little. Thaumcraft has a complex ladder of aspects and you have to discover some before you discover others and it's hard to get started even though I've played before.
Another thing I'll need for research is scribing tools; basically ink and quill. For this, I'll need feathers, ink sacs, and clay, none of which I have (the feathers I got on my first big expedition went into arrows). Time for another expedition.
I've been trying to grow an autumn sapling for looks but it's come out too small. I chop it down and replant.
My plan is to try to find an inland route to where the chickens were. If I'm lucky, I may hit some on the way. I'll likely find a river or lake with clay and squid.
Shortly after I set out, I find red mushrooms. So, now that food is no longer an issue, I can make mushroom stew. Whatever.
Heading west, I encounter an autumn forest - possibly associated with the one near the coast, although there's biomes in the way. Biomes do occasionally get "split up" by processing. It's next to
My first Birch Forest M in survival. It's a good biome in vanilla, with the taller birches, but in the context of all the Highlands biomes and fancy trees it's a little disappointing.
I reach the Steppe where the chickens were and find a relatively easy way through, avoiding any high hills.
The Autumn Forest in the distance is where I found the lava pool and fought the forest fire. These steppe formations are rather extreme and unrealistic for my taste. I liked the Steppe mountains better in the 1.6.4 version - the 1.7 "amping up" of terrain variation seems to have affected them.
Shortly I find a few chickens and start breeding and collecting eggs. My plan is to gather eggs and bring them home that way rather than with the tedium of long-distance herding.
The Steppe is littered with cave entrances, some rather dangerous. I also find an exposed lava pool three blocks down - that would be a nasty fall! I assume this is associated with the large exposed cave near where I found the chickens.
I find chickens and start breeding them and collecting eggs. I thought it would be really fast and easy but it turns out to be rather slow. Much as with my leaky chicken ranch in my last journal it looks like a lot of chickens but chasing them down is very time-consuming.
I get some uninvited visitors wandering up from the cave complex too.
The Autumn Forest looks nice from the overlook. Maybe I'll set up a bunch of season-themed bases - winter at spawn, autumn here, spring and summer where inspiration strikes me. For future fulminations.
Eventually i have a stack of eggs and head back. I go a little further inland hoping for a suitable river.
And find one. Very attractive, although climbing down is a slight hassle.
It does indeed have both clay and squid, so I collect plenty of both.
I see a faint glow in the air and investigate with my Thaumometer -
Finding my first Aura node! With Tempestas, which is rare in nodes (I've never seen it). It's not particular useful to have it in a node, but it's still neat.
With all my expedition goals completed, I head home. I arrive just before dark and snooze before making a round in the farm. But in the morning when I head out -
A baby zombie ambushes me as I head out the door. I also hear some adult zombies, but don't see any. I scout around for a place he might have come from but can't find one. I guess it just managed to spawn before I got to sleep.
After some farming, I get ready to set up a chicken coop. After my last journal I'm not going to use fences, which seem only a slight impediment to chickens (they're tolerable for bigger animals). So it's going indoors. I consider building it down on the mining level but I don't want to listen to the clucking. So I decide to dig it out partway down the shaft.
I build it in the chalk layer so I'll have a white material for a future winter-themed build.
I dump in the eggs and get about 6 chicks, which is really lucky. I'm not going to bother with a more elaborate ranch for vast quantities of chickens as I don't know I'll have a use for them.
Downstairs I make my scribing tools with vials, quill, and ink:
One more item towards starting research.
Next episode - collecting the aspects, and starting research.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
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I knew from previous experience that Victus, or Life, was one aspect you can't scan for and which has to be made. So, the first thing I do with my shiny new research table is to make it:
With Victus I can now discover a number of other aspects, which I proceed to do:
Thaumcraft research pretty much requires you have all aspect discovered, so I run around on a mad scanning spree. I scan vials, mushrooms, ores, animals, dyes, tools - you name it. But I'm still getting stuck, apparently on Humanus (man). Well, I remember that zombie flesh has that so I head back to the zombie spawner I'd found before and crack it open.
Killing zombies through the porthole is easy but I can't get the rotten flesh. Should have cut in one level lower, I guess. But, I'm not seeing the creeper so during a pause in zombies I mine out another block to make an opening and go in to collect. I light up the inside so there will be no more spawns until I want to use it. There's also an opening to an outside cave (presumably how the creeper got in before and I block that up too. Then I loot the chests.
The chests are actually a great find. Thaumcraft stuff generates in the chest, and in the first I find some Thaumium (essentially enchanted Iron that can be eventually used for specially magicked items) and a Thaumium Axe (which I'm going to save for just that.)
But in the second chest is a whopper of an item:
Vis is the magical energy in thaumcraft you use for making items and wand effects. It normally has to be gotten from magical nodes, and that's quite a chore early in the game. There are six different kinds of Vis used for magic and each node generally only has one or two. So you have to find a whole bunch of nodes and then travel back and forth to them to recharge them before you can do much of anything. Eventually you can move nodes around, but that comes much later.
At present I've only even found one node, with two usable types of Vis, so I would normally have to discover several more nodes and make many outdoor trips. But this this will recharge all my wands for me up to a low level, effectively many hours of work. In particular, I'll be able to make things to help find nodes before I have to go looking for them. (or so I think - it comes out to be less useful than I'd thought.)
Feeling a little confident, I decide to break into the mineshaft that had gotten in the way of my initial dropshaft.
That goes easily and I secure and block off a segment right next to my base.
However, it turns out the zombie flesh doesn't let me scan more aspects after all. It turns out I need Mortuus, or Death, and after not getting it from things like skeleton bones I eventually make that at the research table too. I get a few things, but I'm still stuck on Spiritus, or spirit, so I make that as well. That finally gets me past the bottleneck and after a frenzy of scanning almost everything in my base I finally have most of the aspects.
And I *mean* almost everything.
At that point I can start research. Thaumcraft has had a number of different research systems over several different versions. In the current system each "research note" is essentially a puzzle where you have to connect a number of aspects on a hexagonal board with chains of related aspects.
IMO it's a big improvement over the previous research system - more thought and less tedium. It's kind of hard at first, although I imagine it will get easier as I get the hang of it.
I work up a number of researches, focusing on getting better wands, and also Goggles of Revealing, which make it *much* easier to find the nodes I'm going to need. It's a cute little system and I'm having fun with it, taking periodic breaks to go farm and ranch (especially for the leather I need for bookcases).
After a while I decide to make some Goggles. But it turns out Goggles need all six aspects and my wand has very little of two of them:
So I farm and research a while longer - but I don't get anything more in the wand. So apparently rather than charging *all* aspects to 10, my amulet stops charging when any *one* aspect gets to 10 - a lot less useful, given that I don't have a way to drain out particular aspects yet. I consider making a bunch of wands and charging one after another until one get the right set but that seems tedious and a little silly. So I'm going to have to go on a early node-hunting expedition, without the Goggles that make it much easier, after all.
Next episode - exploring the world for magical nodes.
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 head out towards where I found the cows and find my first node in the lake next to where I found the cows. It's Aqua and Terra, so not either of the ones I need (Ignis and Perdito). From there, I head east, planning to search the areas near my base (to minimize travel time for recharging).
I cross the entire land area just north of my base without finding another node. This doesn't entirely shock me, as I've found nodes are hard to find in snowy areas - the glow is distinctly harder to see against snow, even with a Thaumometer. I do pass through the Ice Spikes area, and they're pretty cool, but I forgot to take pics.
It turns out I'm actually near the end of my continent. Apparently in my search for sugar cane I partially rounded the cape at the end without realizing it.
I find another node here:
This one has Ignis, one of the things I'm looking for. I had actually found Perdito, the other, on my previous expedition, but mis-remembered Aqua/Perdito/Tempestas (a really cool combo) as Aqua/Aer/Tempestas (an even more cool combo). So I kept searching.
At this point, in addition, I'm starting to worry as a modder. I've found three nodes so far, and all have been on water - even though my searching has been on land. So I'm concerned that there's some interaction between Thaumcraft and one of my mods which is preventing nodes from spawning on land. From a game point, that would be no big deal, but from a mod point of view, it would be a major bug.
So I keep going.
I take the sea route along the coast back to the Steppe where the chickens were. Flattish areas with little vegetation and no snow are the best places to look for nodes. On the way I find one more node on the water, which doesn't improve my mood.
Walking next to the Extreme Hills towards the Steppe, however:
Phew. A node on land. I've just been having some weird luck.
I also find an Aer/Terra node in the Autumn Forest near the lava pool location, and Aer/Aqua/Ignis on the Steppe near the cave area.
I still think I need to find a Perdito node, so I keep going. I want to head north, but i have to go further west because there's some rugged terrain directly to the north.
To the west is a Highland Dunes biome:
It's quite rugged and barren. The good thing is that Climate Control has worked for the second journal in a row: I have all the climates within 1000 blocks of spawn. That was the original motivation for Climate Control: shrinking the climate zones so you could find non-temperate climates without (usually) having to cross multiple maxed-out maps. It's since morphed into a broader world generation mod with controls for land sizes and ocean percentages, biome frequency controls, and systems for preventing chunk walls. Some of the other stuff will get tested later in this journal, if I survive long enough.
I do find an Oasis sub-biome:
Would make for an interesting survival start.
At one point climbing up the massive dunes I get stranded near the top and have a hard time digging down. I find no nodes, however, until I'm almost to the north edge of the dunes.
There I find an Obsidian Totem, which contains a Sinister node. These nodes convert their surroundings to Eerie nodes, which have a number of moderately unpleasant effects like souped-up zombie spawns. That's the cause of the darkened sky in the pic.
The totem node turns out not useful for Vis, but it does have Alienis, one of the last Aspects, and one of the hardest to get.
At this point I transition into a swamp. This is a good thing, as several of the base biomes are associated with particular Aspects (Terra in woods, Aqua at sea, and Ignis in Desert) and Swampland tends to have Perdito, which I'm looking for. I find another sinister node, and then finally:
I find a Perdito node. OK, expedition goals complete.
From here I turn back east, towards home. First I cross a desert, with a few more nodes, including yet another Sinister node. This neighborhood is going to go seriously bad if I hang out here because the Sinister nodes grow their Eerie zones over time.
I reach an inland lake (or possibly very deep inlet) which lets me speed my trip home.
I reach the Birch Woods north of the steppe. Here's my map, showing the coast I discovered on the east and the Dunes/Desert on the west. The blank areas on the coast to the east were places I was busy with my Thaumometer or tricky terrain and forgot to switch back to my map for a while. I did have to go off the west edge of the map but since I don't have an Explorercraft Atlas yet I didn't generate a map for that area.
Heading home I encounter yet *another* Sinister node. I get a bit turned-around in some hills but no big deal.
Back, home, *finally*:
I have my goggles.
Next episode: some home improvements, my first level 30 enchant, and using some Explorercraft mapping features.
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.
But first, now that I've cleared the mineshaft that blocked my original dropshaft, I can move the bottom section that I had to displace to avoid the mineshaft.
Not a big deal but that was an annoyance to have to shift my position going up or down.
Now that I've got Goggles of Revealing, it's going to be much easier to find nodes. But, once I've found them, how do I find them again. For this, I'm going to use a new feature of Explorercraft -map markers.
Map markers are made with a dye and a piece of paper, which produces 8 markers. They're metaphorically like sticky notes. If you right-click with a stack of markers, it will place that marker at that spot on every map in your hot bar, and every map in every Atlas in your hot bar.
Of course all those different marker colors chew up a lot of inventory space, but you can keep unused markers in an Atlas.
So I make an Atlas
And fill it with a variety of colored markers.
It also holds my map, and a blank 16x16 map (from ExplorerCraft). If I move off my current map now, Explorercraft will automatically convert my blank map into a new map that tiles with my current one.
While I've been doing this, I've gotten enough leather to make 15 bookcases so I can finally to a level 30 enchant. I enchant a diamond pick and get Efficiency IV/Unbreaking III. Not exciting, but a great workhorse pick. It'll do.
I learned in my last game to have a plan for using the colors before I start using them. In this game I primarily intend to use them to mark nodes. There are far too many possible aspect colors so I'm just going to use a color for the most powerful aspect. That''l leave 10 colors for other things.
I start out dropping a black marker at my front door. So from now on, you can use the black cross on the map to know exactly where my base is.
I head east, primarily working to fill in the blank areas on my map near my base. Very quickly I spot a glow off to the side and find an aqua/aer/perdito node near the frozen river I take to the coast. So I travelled thousands of blocks to find an aspect right next to my base. But of course I couldn't know that and the limited FOV of the thermometer is the reason I missed it before.
I consider using a grey for Perdito - the most significant aspect for game play, but eventually decide to just mark for the largest aspect, which is aqua.
I enjoy the views as I travel, of course. I've planned my mod and world setting to produce striking landscapes, pretty maps, and reasons to travel to look at it. I'm getting what I wanted, and it's nice.
On my third Minecraft day exploring, I find 3 nodes close together - the third of which is a wisp spawner.
This is a Thaumcraft structure made mostly of obsidian, and containing a treasure chest, a Sinister node and which, unsurprisingly, spawns wisps, moderately dangerous flying Thaumcraft mobs. I head up to loot but hear the dreaded SSSS.
I spin around and try a swat-and jump-back tactic on the creeper but I don't jump fast enough and get a hole in the hill.
The white glow is one of the other 2 nodes, a largish pure Ordo node.
The chest contains some minor stuff plus a ring with Runic Shield I. Google unfortunately doesn't tell be what the thing does but I figure it's very useful and use it anyway.
I travel to the coast to find the Ignis node I'd found on the previous trip and have a hard time finding which of several bays it's in. This mapping is going to be a big benefit. I find yet another Obsidian Totem with a Sinister node while looking. Man, these things are everywhere!
I eventually find the earlier node and head west, discovering two more nodes as I travel.
I mark the aqua/terra node I'd found in the lake and then:
Yet *another* sinister node. Looks good with the Greatwood tree, though.
From there I head west to mark the aqua/perdito/tempestas node. I have a really hard time finding it. I am really looking forward to having nodes marked on my map.
When I do finally find it, I find an ignis node very nearby.
After this, I head home. Here's the resulting map:
You can see the aqua/aer/perdito node I marked first as blue cross just below my base. The trio of nodes is three overlapping crosses above and to the right of my base, with the red one on top. The node with ignis I found on the coast in my earlier trip is a blue cross (because it has more aqua) further northeast of that. South of it is a grey marker for the totem I found looking for it. The aqua/terra node in the lake next to the cows in the green cross near the center. The aqua/perdito/tempestas node is a blue cross in the west partly obscured for a orange cross for the ignis node next to it.
I've been dreaming of a map with Thaumcraft nodes marked on it for months. And now I have it. A very good day!
Next episode: mining for resources and (finally) some building.
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 don't have the tools to manipulate ice and I don't have the patience to freeze ice in moulds, so I'll have to settle for using light-colored materials and hope that works. I do have two of the lightest UB stones to work with, soapstone and chalk. I don't have enough for a build yet, so I head down to mine up some soapstone. I go to where I'd found some before well away from the mineshaft mess, towards the outside of my mining area.
I run into some Metallurgy Oureclase. Oureclase is one of the many "fantasy metals" Metallurgy adds. Some of them are fairly high-powered but Oureclase isn't really any better than some alloys for common metals Metallurgy also adds. Since it's much rarer, especially with my settings, it's mostly a collector's item for me.
I also find some Manganese. This combines with Iron to make steel, essentially Iron with much higher durability. I've found some of this before and really should already have been using it but didn't get around to it before. Steel is one of the souped-up alloys that makes Oureclase not really worth the trouble.
I break into a lava-filled ravine and use my water bucket to convert a large section to obsidian. I leave some lava on both side so I don't have to worry about mobs at present.
I continue on past the ravine but soon my inventory jams from a combination of the numerous Metallurgy ores and my own tendency to carry stuff I don't need right now but which I'm prone to forget. I do have enough soapstone to at least start building, so I head back to my processing area.
I toss some Soapstone in the furnace and some Manganese in the crusher and start making some Steel. Seeing that Manganese reminded me I wanted to make some and start using it.
My processing area is really cramped so while things are processing I knock out part of the wall separating it from the mineshaft area I'd secured right next to it. I feel like I can breathe now.
I head upstairs to start building. My idea is to build a tower on the hill on the right side of my hideyhole. After some counting, I discover the largest tower I can comfortably fit on it is a 13 block radius circle - the same size and shape as my first build in my previous journal world. Falling into a rut grates on me but I don't want smaller and it would be really hard to build bigger so..
I want some kind of pattern in the floor so it's not boring, ideally something kind of runic or magical. I come up with the idea of a spiral and build a test with dirt.
I'm going to build the walls mostly from soapstone, as chalk is too soft. I decide on snow for the spiral material and soapstone for the rest of the floor. I decide to use soapstone brick for the floor as I find it's a good rule of thumb to have your walls, floors, and ceilings all of different materials.
The floor comes out pretty well.
I build a little bit of the wall and a test balcony. I enjoy looking around at the world but I've found large windows, at least on lower floors, make builds look bad from the outside because they expose the interiors. One of my favorite solutions to this problem is viewing balconies with doors. I can step outside to look, but you can't see in.
I use chalk for the railings and concealed soapstone for the balcony floor.
Looks fine, but doesn't have the wintry feel I was going for. I'm running low on soapstone, so time for some more mining.
Next episode: Fun with Mineshafts!
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 run out of soapstone and head down to get some more. I decide to mine some soapstone I spotted in the mineshaft I'd cleared but almost immediately:
Sigh. Well, I set up a couple of view portals and after a while block off the rest. With my back secure, I break in. I quickly find a mine cart and then
A very complex junction. I think there are four mineshafts here! So I close it off. A skeleton wanders up while I'm blocking it off and I off him. I loot the chest (finding a Thaumium pick and a very nice enchanted book) and mine a number of exposed ores.
I decide to continue along the mineshaft as that will connect to the ravine area. So I open up my block and very quickly come to a five-way intersection. Wait, you might say. How do you get a five way intersection with right angles? Simple: there's a vertical mineshaft too.
I block off the intersection and turn right, putting in view points to see if I can break into that shaft. And shortly:
Oh looky! I break into a mineshaft turning to avoid a mineshaft intersection I hit going along a mineshaft to avoid four other mineshafts. Grand Central Station, eat your heart out!
Quite a collection of ores there, though.
With all these mineshafts, it's time to get some gear.
I manage to make level 30 at this point and I want to test some of the higher-powered metallurgy alloys made from base metals.
I decide to try to enchant a Damascus Steel Chestplate. Damascus Steel is made from Iron and Bronze, and is comparable to Diamond (which I'm a bit short of). I smelt it, craft it, enchant it, and:
Not bad! Looks spiffy too.
I run upstairs to get a little experience for level one enchants on some more gear. I don't have enough Damascus Steel for a full set but I have plenty of Steel. I make a Steel helmet and boots and:
Zeno looks a little more warlike.
I should mention I've changed my skin. I ran across a really nice Greek Philosopher skin, Parmenides of Elea, by MolochBaal. Parmenides wasn't Zeno, but he *was* Zeno's mentor (and perhaps more, Plato hinted). And, it's a really nice skin, so I switched.
I mine out some of the floor to make the whole area more one level.
Better armed, I break into this next mineshaft. It turns out the fancy armor wasn't necessary (although I couldn't have known that). I do hear a slime above me but it can't get down the vertical shaft (which I block off.) I secure an L-shaped area which includes the cross-shaft I was looking at and the continuation of the shaft I'd been following, up to where it dead ends.
The dead end is right where the dungeon with the zombie spawner is, so I have good access to that. My previous route had to jog around a mineshaft.
I try mining to the side.
Sigh.
I mine some more soapstone and some more Metallurgy minerals. and head back upstairs for more building.
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 build the same spiral pattern into the first floor. Initially I try for a height of 4 blocks but it just looks too low. After stewing about the extra work/looks tradeoff, I decide to rip off the first floor, add a block around the walls and rebuild the first floor.
Much better. The walls are rather plain- it would be a good look for a modern build but not more-historical style I strive for. I'll try to gussy them up later. Thaumcraft workrooms can get kind of cluttered and it might work for that, or for a complex display room.
For the next floor, I don't want to stack balconies because I think it'll look awkward. But I still want to look out, so I decide to try windows in the curves.
The window works. The tower is coming out too plain but I don't have a plan to improve it. I'll finish it for now and stew on exterior decorations later.
A view of my farm through the window.
It's getting to be time to go to the Nether. Thaumcraft needs Nether Quartz for a number of essential functions, including golem control and wand foci. There are also some nice Metallurgy ores in the Nether.
I'm planning to build a Nether Portal on the third floor. I like a high portal entrance, to keep the noise away, and to maximize my chance of the matching portal being high, because it's easier to get around in the roof of the Nether.
I head back to the ravine to mine some obsidian.
I have water next to the blocks I'm mining so if I expose lava it will be instantly converted to obsidian.
I mine out 12 blocks for a 3x3 portal for symmetry. As long as I'm here, I branch mine a little to collect ores and soapstone (I still need more). But then I notice something odd.
That soapstone looks a little odd. I mine it - and it's Metallurgy tin. The tin texture is almost invisible blended into the soapstone.
Armed with this realization, I spot some more invisiTin and mine it too. Tin isn't actually that useful - it's a poor metal itself, and the copper to alloy it into bronze is less available since it has other uses. But it's nice for collecting anyway.
I also pillar up to mine some exposed ores from the ravine walls.
Back home i decide to try another of the Metallurgy alloys. Angmallen is an iron/gold alloy with moderate durability and very high enchantability. I have level 30 to use the enchantability, so I mix up four ingots and make a pair of boots.
I enchant, hoping for Feather Falling so I can be a bit more daring in my build. Instead, I get Fire Resistance IV, Haste 3, and Thorns 2. Not Feather Falling, but a really good pair of boots, especially for going to the Nether.
I build a dropshaft and corridor connecting the tower with the lower entrance and the mining area. Now I can get around without going outside. The Haste is really noticeable and nice, except for some reason it makes it harder to steer on a free ladder where there's not an adjacent wall.
The second floor, using the same spiral pattern but in a darker palette to go with the nether portal which will go on top. I considered obsidian for the spiral but too much trouble to mine at present.
I consider building the Nether Portal in the center but decide the space will be more functiona; if it's in the wall replacing a balcony entrance. Initially I put in a balcony outside, for when I go the wrong direction after porting, but the realize that's silly and block the outside exit with a stone plate. I want to decorate the plate on the outside with a spiral pattern too but my first idea seems a little close to a swastika. So I use to a different design, but when I build the negative space is *exactly* a swastika. Oops. I alter the pattern and the problem goes away.
I put balconies on the top floor essentially identical to the first and five high walls elsewhere.
I'm going to enjoy these views.
The tower looks very austere. The curve of the tower did come out very close to the curve of the hill. I think I'll replace the snow beneath the tower with soapstone.
I'm thinking of a classic conical roof but I don't need it to use the top floor and it would be difficult to build at present.
Time to go deeper.
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.