I head downstairs and - my clock is malfunctioning. It's firing every few seconds. The problem is that two of the component clocks have gone to always on and only one clock is still ticking.
A digression on clock mechanics: Factorial clocks fire when all of their component clocks are on. To be useful, the component clocks need to be mostly off, obviously. The "standard" clock design of 1 torch and one or more repeaters is on half the time, so you have to use something different, or filter the output to be on less.
I had used all-repeater clocks. You can start an all-repeater clock with a brief redstone jolt and the jolt will cycle around the clock. This can be a short jolt, so a factorial design works. The problem is that additional jolts can alter the cycle. Worse, if the clock bridges a chunk boundary and only part of the clock is loaded you can have the pulse totally disrupted. "Standard" clocks can have similar problems, but the internal torch power will restore normal behavior under most circumstances.
So, to make things more robust, I switch to standard torch-and-repeater clocks and add edge detectors to the output so I'll get an on signal only when the clock switches to on, not for the entire on part of the cycle.
The clock room looks different after this. For one, it's bigger; the clocks got bigger from fitting in the torch and I also had to make room for more logic to detect the pulse changes in the component clocks. Here I'm standing on one of the clocks, with the pulse detector logic ahead of me and another clock to my right.
Here's a picture of the edge detector logic (taken later when I realized I'd forgotten to take pics). I figure out more of how the timing is working. The torches seem to take 1 redstone tick off the pulses, so I have to make the pulses longer to make it all work. This is why I was getting much longer cycles than I calculated before - the effective pulses were shorter than I'd though. Armed with this knowledge, I set the pulse lengths to fix the irregular cycle problem I'd had before.
I also redesign the clock combination slightly. Before I had all three clocks feed into one gate. Now I have two clocks feed into one gate, and the output for that feeds into a gate with the third. This means I can bleed off a high-frequency clock (from any component), a medium-frequency clock (about 30 seconds) from the 2-clock combo, and a long-frequency clock (about 5 minutes) from the 3-clock combo.
Since I can't find a village, I have to collect a potato from a zombie. I go to the spawner room and take out some torches to let me turn the spawner on and off by removing one torch. Some zombies spawn and annoy me during this operation.
I rebuild for a standard "swat their feet" design. Spawning is really slow, however. It takes about 8 minutes to get a half-stack of rotten flesh. Finally,
I have my potato! (along with 2 shovels and a gold helmet).
I plant it on some dirt and wait for it to grow.
I'm also going to use the clock to control an Infernal Furnace. This is a Thaumcraft furnace that provides its own fuel (magically) although it processes things rather slowly. I'm running short of coal and I really need it.
The Infernal Furnace needs 12 obsidian, 12 Nether Brick, and 1 lava bucket, so I head out to the ravine to get the obsidian and lava. While I'm there, I go ahead an extend a mining tunnel I have beyond it. I break into a cave system and secure one tunnel in it.
It's chock full of many different kinds of ore, for some reason. I also find my first Perdito shard! After collecting them all, my inventory is jammed and I head back.
I need to fill up my wand to make the Infernal Furnace so I take a quick jaunt outside, using my map markers to guide me to the nodes.
When I get home, a quick wave of the wand (using 100 Vis) and I have my furnace.
I chuck in almost an entire stack of Iron Dust and several stacks of assorted cobblestone. I have a dispenser above it, pointing down, to dump the items into the furnace, and I'm driving it with a feed from one of my clocks. As soon as it starts, I realize the noise annoys me and will drive me nuts if it never stops. So I need to put in a little redstone logic so in only dispenses when there's something to dispense. The redstone is simple, but I'm really squeezed for space and it takes me several tries to get it working. Finally it's on, and I have an automatic on, automatic off, self-fueled furnace.
It doesn't matter how many times I re-read what you just wrote about clocks and factorial clocks and component clocks and edge detectors and infernal clocks feeding redstone logic into a demonic furnace ..argh!
lol I'd love to understand it all but instead I just get flashbacks of my frustration trying to get double iron doors working with pressure plates. It sure looks pretty though
Now I want to set up some Thaumcraft Essentia processing and make some golems to harvest for me. Originally I'd been thinking about building some more on top of the hill for this but I'm spending a lot of time going up and down in my base. So I decide I'll dig a basement for the tower, which will be on the ladder route from the tower to the original hideyhole (and then the mine).
The room for the essentia purification needs to be 6 high to have room for the alchemical furnace and 5 alembics on top. I continue the spiral motif, and continue with different materials for each level. The walls I leave unchanged for now. Many of these walls are also exterior walls so I'm going to rebuild the outside for outside looks first then decide what to do with the rest. The patterned grey stone is Greywackle, a good decorative sedimentary stone; I hadn't know I had some in my base but it will be useful.
I also do some more Thaumcraft research. Azanor's research mini game really hits my sweet spot.
I have to make another outside trip to fill up my wand, and then I have enough vis to make the Alchemical Furnace and Alembics. The recipes are characteristically complex (for Thaumcraft), but that's part of the charm of Thaumcraft. IMO it's a good match for Survival, which is fundamentally about gathering resources. I've already gathered the Iron, Silverwood, glass, etc. I need so it's relatively straightforward at this point. I set it up in the Essentia room:
Looks good.
Next I want to build an Alchemical Centrifuge room right beneath it. The centrifuge can separate certain Essentia into components and is very valuable for getting certain types of essential that are hard to get by themselves. In particular, for golems, I need Spiritus, where the best direct source is Soul Sand - not so easy to get. However, Cogitio can be split into Spiritus and Terra, and *that* you can get out of paper.
I carve out a room for it underneath the Essentia room. I want the floor on the same level as the hideyhole, which only allows a height of 3. Not imposing, but that's actually the height actually needed for a working centrifuge setup, so I'm OK.
Another trip outside to refill my wand and some more complex recipes later:
Eventually I'll work on some automated piping but for now I'll just run it manually.
Next I make a Crucible - a Thaumcraft Cauldron - for actually making the golems.
I toss in one vial each of Humanus, Spiritus, and Motus essentia, plus 2 Greatwood blocks for the material, and poof! I've got 2 Golems.
I need to make controllers before they're usable. First, I want to take a break from Thaumcrafting and spruce up the look of the tower a bit. I replace all the exposed basement tower wall with smooth Soapstone.
After looking at the Essentia room from the inside, I decide I need to make the rest of the walls into smooth Soapstone as well.
I also put in a door towards the south (the ocean). This also provides a direct route from the tower to the outside - before I had to go through the old hideyhole entrance, which is a bit of a detour.
The tower does indeed look much better from the outside.
Now I go back to finish my golems. Let's see - a golem controller needs Nitor (magical flame), which I can make from glowstone dust - uhoh -
I got a little spoiled in my first Thaumcraft game. In that game I found a village with a wizard fairly early on and was able to buy a lot of materials from him - including Nitor. Well, no village in this game yet, so I've got to make my *own* supplies - in this case including glowstone dust, which means another trip to the Nether.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Now I want to set up some Thaumcraft Essentia processing and make some golems to harvest for me. Originally I'd been thinking about building some more on top of the hill for this but I'm spending a lot of time going up and down in my base. So I decide I'll dig a basement for the tower, which will be on the ladder route from the tower to the original hideyhole (and then the mine).
The room for the essentia purification needs to be 6 high to have room for the alchemical furnace and 5 alembics on top. I continue the spiral motif, and continue with different materials for each level. The walls I leave unchanged for now. Many of these walls are also exterior walls so I'm going to rebuild the outside for outside looks first then decide what to do with the rest. The patterned grey stone is Greywackle, a good decorative sedimentary stone; I hadn't know I had some in my base but it will be useful.
I really like that Greywackle. In fact I'm starting to really look forward to your journals. It's a great way to showcase your mods. Next stop: your Underground Biomes Constructs topic
It doesn't matter how many times I re-read what you just wrote about clocks and factorial clocks and component clocks and edge detectors and infernal clocks feeding redstone logic into a demonic furnace ..argh!
lol I'd love to understand it all but instead I just get flashbacks of my frustration trying to get double iron doors working with pressure plates. It sure looks pretty though
Redstone for doors is a real pain because the redstone requires an open space to even exist and you obviously don't want a open space next to your door! I spent way too long trying to make a redstone-controlled double door for my stable back when 1.7 was first released and I haven't bothered with redstone-controlled entrances since. Making it look nice or hiding it is really hard to so my solution is usually to stuff the logic in redstone rooms controlling the item in the wall. That's what I did for the clock room - it's on a shelf two blocks up and you don't see it going down the corridor - although in this case I was able to make it have reflectional symmetry with the multiple component clocks so it actually looks decent.
Also pressure plate doors give me the willies because I have visions of leaning over to check out the creeper stalking outside the door and - click -
Keep your great work!, I think this can be a long journal (or even never end)
Well - it's a Hardcore journal, so someday it *will* end. But, now that I'm getting pretty geared up, it may last a while. In my last Thaumcraft world I played almost 3 months and died only to Grimoire of Gaia mobs and Hungry Nodes, which aren't in this world. (I turned down Hungry Nodes because they're just too arbitrary and hard to spot.) I'm coming to really enjoy journaling - I love having records of what's happened and what I've done - so I expect to continue it for a while. And although I'll continue without comments, I do enjoy getting comments - plus they fill up the page so I don't have to worry as much about spoiler tags to keep the page size down.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Episode 21: Getting Glowstone around Groaning Ghasts
As long as I'm going to the Nether, I'd like to improve my armament. So, now that I have some Perdito shards, I can make a Bone Bow.
I want a little more Vis for some more Earth Arrows, so I head out and
There's an obelisk practically in my backyard, which I haven't seen before.
I'm close to level 30, so I head over to the zombie spawner to swat a few zombies. I realize the slow spawning is because there's too much light on the spawner and adjust the nearby torches to decrease it somewhat. It does help although I may do more later. I hope to pick up a carrot from the zombies but I make it to level 30 without getting one.
I head back and enchant the Bone Bow, getting Punch 1/Unbreaking III. Punch might actually be a disadvantage since it seems to scatter drops. Unbreaking is good of course. I also make a few more arrows. I've switched from using dirt for pillaring and temporary blocks to using gravel and that's gotten me some more flint to work with.
I throw some sand into the Infernal Furnace to get some more glass for the Nether. While it's roasting, I go to the complex mineshaft intersection I blocked off before, block off all but one passage, and break in.
After a moderate distance I find it staircases up through some ice. Not wanting to deal with the ice as I didn't bring the Silk Touch pickaxe, I just block it up at that point. I head back and mine out the ores and clean out a minecart chest I passed. It has some diamonds and some interesting but not too useful items like a thaumium hoe and 2 unenchanted amulets. It does have melon seeds, so that could be very useful.
I head into the Nether and continue a tunnel to the north. I tunnel just below the surface for a while, building a cobble roof above me as I go.
I encounter a Magma Cube and kill it from below, getting one Magma Cream.
After a while the ground drops down a bit. I don't see any Ghasts, so I dash out to look.
I find some Lemurite and a descent into some kind of chamber.
While descending into the chamber I get attacked by a wisp. I build a roof over me and it goes away.
The chamber is a vast field of Soul Sand - a great find. I mine up nearly two stacks. I also find some Shadow Iron. This alloys with Lemurite (great luck there) to make Shadow Steel, an improved version of Steel. However, it's only mildly superior to Damascus Steel (50% more durability and 1 higher enchantability) so only moderately useful.
I head back to drop off the new ores and the Soul Sand.
On the way I get harassed by a Firebat. Only I find Firebats are not just harassment.
Firebats explode. I've fought at least a dozen Firebats before and this is the first time it happened. As you can see, if I'd been a little less well equipped it might well have killed me.
After I drop off my goodies in a chest and recover my health, I head back to the open area to tunnel into the next hill.
I get attacked by a pack of - zombies? I didn't know the Nether had regular zombies? Quite a few of them too.
After I dispatch the zombies I tunnel into the next hill, closing it behind me so zombies or firebats don't sneak in. I tunnel some distance through the hill and come out to an overhang. I put in a view gallery.
Aha! One low-hanging Glowstone chandelier coming up! But, as you can see, there's an obstacle.
I switchback to staircase down to the plateau level. I build a fairly wide exit to shoot down the ghast. Unfortunately it scores a hit on me before I'm done *and* a Firebat flies in at the same time. I retreat back down the corridor to deal with the Firebat - only to discover I'd killed it early, and just couldn't tell in all the confusion of Ghast screeches and explosions and me on fire and blocks on fire.
I come back and take aim at the Ghast with the Bone bow. It fires like a machine gun - you can't draw and hold. I kill the Ghast quickly enough but it doesn't drop anything. Damage Screenshots doesn't get a pic either, so I guess the Bone Bow isn't considered player damage. Foo, would have been a nice pic.
With the Ghast gone, I dash over to collect my reward. I don't take all the chandelier; I save some for later when I'll hopefully have a Fortune pick. Mission accomplished.
On the way I get harassed by a Firebat. Only I find Firebats are not just harassment.
Firebats explode. I've fought at least a dozen Firebats before and this is the first time it happened. As you can see, if I'd been a little less well equipped it might well have killed me.
After I drop off my goodies in a chest and recover my health, I head back to the open area to tunnel into the next hill.
I get attacked by a pack of - zombies? I didn't know the Nether had regular zombies? Quite a few of them too.
this is making me want to play. I've never seen zombies like that in the Nether before - or exploding firebats. You did well to survive.
Is that some kind of thaumcraft sorcery coming off the zombie in that pic?
The firebats are a Thaumcraft mob, and they do explode - I just never had it happen to me before. The zombies I *suspect* are some sort of bug - Thaumcraft is the only mod I've got that might piddle with Nether spawns, and I can't find a reference to it doing that.
The magic effect is some sort of sorcery, and I think it's my Ring of Protection.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
To make the Nitor for the golem controllers, I'll need Ignis, Potentia, and Lux essentia. These are all easy to get - I process some coal for Ignis and Potentia and torches for Lux.
Here's some jars holding essentia - Potentia, Ignis, Lux, and Corpus (I get a lot of extra while extracting Humanus from rotten flesh). There are about 50 different kinds of Essentia and eventually I'll have to have this room carefully organized. It's probably too small to have golems operating the Essentia. I can reach higher shelves so for manual processing it will be fine.
I've been forgetting to scan my Thaumcraft constructs for research aspects. They have a lot!
Downstairs I make an Arcane Bellows to speed up the Furnace. I do a little research and discover Thaumcraft has a number of item duplication recipes, including for Clay and Glowstone. I don't remember those from my last playthrough. At least I won't have to go back to the Nether to keep getting Glowstone. One nice thing, though, is that these recipes create a use for a lot of the "extra" essential that tends to pile up in the course of getting ones you need.
Back upstairs, I get ready to make the Nitor. To make things in a Thaumcraft Crucible, first you throw in things that provide the Essentia for the recipe, then the mundane items for a base, and the Crucible spits out the product. I'm very careful to remove everything from my hot bar except the items I want to use for the crucible recipe. (the bucket is to refill the Crucible in case it runs dry). You can probably guess why I do this. Hint: the Crucible destroys anything thrown in. That wasn't fun.
After making the Nitor, I realize I need a water pool nearby to refill the Cauldron easily. I head out to the farm to get water and find (and kill) a helmeted zombie at the old front door.
I put it in the wall to be less disruptive aesthetically. I may put in a matching pool on the other side just for looks
Next I make some golem controllers. These have to be altered in the Crucible to get the specific type you want. Typically for Thaumcraft, the recipes are complex and it's quite difficult to get the proper balance of Essentia to make them. Extra Essentia is bad because it spills out of the Crucible eventually and creates Flux, which is basically magic gone bad and can have a number of nasty effects.
I have a complicated recipe for this. I need 10 Terra and 10 Lucrum. I have 2 silver ingots for 2 Lucrum, 5 dirt for 10 Terra, and then a vial of Lucrum Essentia for 8 more. Then the two golem cores, which will become Gather cores. Finally, the ingots leave 6 extra Metallum, and I'll use the metal transmutation to convert that into 6 iron nuggets.
plop plop,plopplopplopplopplop,plop,plop plop,plopplopplop, and I'm done without ploplems, I mean problems. On occasion I've missed throwing something in and that can turn into a mess.
I place a wood golem on my hungry chest and put in a gather core. Immediately he starts running around gathering stray sugarcane. Very convenient. They're pretty cute too.
With all the Shadow Steel I have now (56 ingots) and with my sword getting low, I make and enchant for level one, a Shadow Steel sword. I get Sharpness I, plus Shadow Steel automatically gets Weakness II.
Next I want a harvest golem so I can automate my farm. You need a harvest golem to harvest the crops and a gather golem to pick up what gets harvested. The harvest golem controller needs Messis and Meto essence (crop and farm). Messis is easy, but Meto is not and I end up processing a bunch of stone hoes to get it. I try to work out a recipe to get 2 controllers but it's just too complicated. Eventually I decide to use 2 vials each to make 3 controllers. That'll leave 1 excess of each essential but a little spillage is not the end of the world. (Extensive or ongoing spillage actually can be).
I stick a hopper on my Alchemical furnace to make it easier to process non stackable items (like hoes).
Finally, I make an Order upgrade (for the Harvest golem) so it replants after harvesting.
Upstairs at the farm, I place a chest for gathering and then the two golems. Unfortunately the gather golem keeps getting stuck on the chest (golems have terrible pathfinding), plus both golems have a very short range and a lot of the farm isn't being worked. I pick everything up and replace the chest one block below ground near the center of the farm.
Now they're working. They still don't get the entire farm, but I should get plenty of wheat and pumpkins just with this setup. Until and unless I find a village, I don't need vast quantities of wheat anyway.
The firebats are a Thaumcraft mob, and they do explode - I just never had it happen to me before. The zombies I *suspect* are some sort of bug - Thaumcraft is the only mod I've got that might piddle with Nether spawns, and I can't find a reference to it doing that.
The magic effect is some sort of sorcery, and I think it's my Ring of Protection.
Zombies in the Nether are a vanilla bug, if they appeared after you hit some zombie pigmen, since they share the same code, which means hitting zombie pigmen will spawn reinforcements like normal zombies, except they aren't zombie pigmen. A related oddity is chickens in the Nether due to chicken jockeys, although that is intended.
One more crop I need is carrots. Carrots provide Sensus, which is otherwise a little hard to get (the best source is probably bonemealed flowers). So I head over to whack some zombies and hope for the right drops.
I'm hearing a lot of moaning and groaning even when there's no zombies in the dungeon. I didn't think they could spawn outside the dungeon but maybe they're spawning in the cave behind.
I break in and there are indeed a couple of zombies back there.
I head in, round a corner and
Oops.
Nowhere near fatal, though, so I block off and light up the cave right next to the dungeon, and mine over a stack of coal from three different veins. Then a quick snooze next to the dungeon (which I'd deactivated with a torch).
When I wake up:
Where the heck did he come from? That's a magic sword he's holding, BTW.
I retreat down a corridor, pull out my own magic sword and defeat the zombie with a dazzling display of swashbuckling swordsmanship (OK, OK, actually just spam clicking…)
I even luck out and get his sword. The sword is Sharpness II Unbreaking II Knockback I and only about half damage - quite a sword for a zombie to drop.
I modify my foot-smashing setup so I can dash in to grab drops. A few dozen zombies later, I'm at level 30 - but still carrotless - so I head back to make an enchantment.
I enchant a Shadow Steel leggings. I get - Projectile Protection IV, Unbreaking III. Actually pretty decent but I've already got PP IV on my chest plate. I wear it anyway for looks.
The moaning and groaning continue so I decide to try to clear a few more mineshafts. Unfortunately I'd shut off damage screenshots on dealt damage because I didn't need hundreds of shots of me chopping zombies and I forgot to turn it back on. So, I don't have the bajillion great action shots I *should* have had for this next section.
I head to a block I'd put in down the corridor I cleared past the multiple corridor junction and cut a hole for viewing. Through it I see - furious zombies. There are souped-up zombies produced by drained (unhappy) nodes and by Sinister nodes and maybe by Flux. They drop Zombie Brains, a Thaumcraft item good for a couple of advanced infusions. I set up a bash-their-feet setup, kill a few, and then dash out in a lull.
The zombies are spawning in this huge open room. To my left is a still blocked-off mineshaft.
After getting a couple zombie brains I decide to try to break into the mineshaft.
There was a guard waiting. The magic runes effect is my Ring of Protection defending me, I think.
I kill him and another guard in an archery duel through the opening. Afterwards I have to deal with a flood of water from some ice block I melted or broke earlier. I try to snap it up with my bucket, but I just can't get it and finally block it off with cobblestone. I also have to off a creeper during this operation.
I want to clear this out, so I swap out the (non protective) goggles I usually wear for a steel helmet and prepare for battle.
It's a mess. Guards, zombies, and two levels of mineshaft, intersecting so top level mobs drop down any time. I don't see any spiders, thankfully.
I block off access from above and head over to the large room (which is connected to this mess) to secure it. It has a connection to *another* mineshaft in its upper reaches. I pillar up to block it off but on the way down
Where'd he come from? Oh, and ouch.
I had missed a block sealing off the upper mineshaft in the mess area and he must have fallen through.
Once it's secured -
Impressive room. I have no idea how it formed.
But Mr. Creeper's explosion did expose something I'd not have seen otherwise:
Order shards! Now I can make my shock focus and I'll have a lighting wand. Zap!
What you found is the starting room of an abandoned mineshaft complex from which all the corridors branch off from; every mineshaft will have one, similar to villages and wells, which are their respective starting points. Often, you'll find more than one because two (or more!) mineshafts generated in adjacent chunks and overlapped (one thing that bugs me is why they just generate randomly without any orderly spacing like other structures, which is easy to implement; this is worse in pre-1.7 versions because mineshafts are 2.5 times more common; in my own mods I changed the "can structure generate here" method so they generate to a grid with a random chance of generating at a point so they never overlap).
Also, another thing to know is that mineshaft corridors can generate up to 80 blocks away from the starting point, so a mineshaft complex can span up to 160 blocks from end to end, although they are usually less because branches are included in the total length. You can get a general idea of the size (and size variability, not all are so big) here, the whole area is about 1200 blocks on a side and mineshafts are generated at the 1.7+ frequency with the spacing method I mentioned:
Also, they are less common near the origin of the world with a zero chance of generating in chunk (0,0) and the maximum chance after 80 chunks in a square around the origin (0.4% in 1.7+, meaning one per 250 chunks, 1.6.4 has a 1% chance for one per 100 chunks).
I was debating what to tackle next: look for a village? Map more of the world? Work on my Wizardry? Build some vacation houses in/near some of the sights I've found? Clean out more catacombs? Build an Ice Palace? There are always so many fun things to do in a game of Minecraft…
Well, the idea of a Tarot guided game was still in my mind - and the cards are just so pretty - so:
1st card, The Past - Sun reversed. Obstacles, but not major or serious ones
I did shuffle! Thoroughly! Still correct, of course.
2nd card, The Present - Ace of Bees - Triumph, earned by brilliance
Not so sure about this one. Sure, things are going well, and I'm playing well enough. But I sure don't feel brilliant when I climb up to the Essentia room only to realize I've left my Greatwood blocks next to the research table, or when I get creeperbombed *twice* in one episode.
3rd card, What is Hidden - Six of Dragonflies - Nostalgia, Affection, Friends, or Visitors
True enough. This game is going somewhat like my first Thaumcraft game, and I'm certainly enjoying going through it all again. And I hadn't been thinking about that, so - hidden.
4th card, Attitudes of others - Seven of Bees - Fear of theft, loss, or insincerity
Not sure what this means. Do you readers think I'm faking it? Maybe it represent the mobs fear of me - which would be well-founded.
5th card, Action to take - The Tower
Again - I did shuffle! Thoroughly! Again, although this has a metaphorical meaning of disaster, here again a more literal meaning of "work on my tower" seems more appropriate.
6th card, Obstacles: Ten of Dragonflies: Peace, Abundance, and Happiness.
This is an obstacle? Well, the Crowley Thoth deck name is Satiety, so maybe if things are to easy I'll get bored - or maybe the journal will get boring.
7th card, Outcome: Hanged Man: Waiting, Sacrifice, and Wisdom
That fits best with working on magic stuff and research.
So, I think this reading suggests staying home and working on Thaumcraft research and gear - but with occasional digressions so it doesn't get stale. That seems like a good plan, so I'll try it.
In addition, the reading has lots of Bees=Swords=Intellectual stuff and Dragonflies=Cups=Comfort and leisure, so that suggests staying at home and doing research too.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
is there any way your 3rd card could refer to hidden villages? The 4th card has to be the attitude of the mobs to you, though, right? Especially with the fear of theft & loss. Anyway, I look forward to seeing what you do with your Thaumcraft research.
I make my shock focus and attach it to my old iron wand.
Next I want to start working on Infusion crafting. Infusions crafting is a kind of elaborate enchantment process Thaumcraft provides which is necessary for most advanced or powerful Thaumcraft items.
I run the Infusion research to get started. The first thing to build is the Runic Matrix which is the core of the Infusion Altar. It requires an Ender Pearl which, I don't have have - largely because I haven't yet even seen an Enderman (I *have* heard their sound effects on numerous occasions.) So this means some overnight watches for them to show up. I switch my Angmallen Haste/Fire Resistance boots for my Prot 1 steel boots as the Angmallen boots have relatively low durability and I don't want to waste them on Overworld fights.
One fringe benefit of hanging out all night is that I can spot some nodes. Nodes glow in Thaumcraft; it's not visible in the day but it is at night. I spot two nearby nodes I'd not found yet: this one right next to the frozen river I take to the ocean, and another up in the Tundra hills on the other side, also past a frozen river.
I see no Endermen all night. In the morning I head out the side door and
There's a creeper waiting for me. Sigh. I am really having a lot of trouble with creepers.
I fill in the dent. Next I start cleaning up the area he was hiding in, which is one of those chaotic terrain areas generated by a combination of the terrain algorithm and ponds.
This is what it looks like after I rip down the hill it was hiding behind. You can see there's a lot more areas for hiding and I plan to clean them all up.
Infusion crafting requires a big area because you need a lot a magical stabilizers in order for it to work. In practice this means a lot of candles, arranged in radial symmetry. You almost have to make it look good, so I'm going to put it outside as a showpiece, right in front of my tower. This may end my long-term plan to build an ice palace, because the tower wasn't supposed to be at the center of that. I consider placing the infusion area in front of my original hideyhole (which I was thinking about putting in the center of the palace) but that would require moving my farm and ranch and I just don't feel like doing that right now.
A beautiful large oak in front of my tower has to come down to make room. Break eggs to make an omelette, blah blah blah.
Another night passes and bupkis, apart from a zombie at the hideyhole door I have to dispatch in the morning and a couple of stray drops and spiders.
I spend the next day cleaning up that messy area (mostly just removing overhangs).
The next night I finally spot an Enderman. I lure him in with a stare but he has a really hard time getting into the tower and keeps ending up stuck, so I have to wander around the tower trying to find him. Plus, every time he hits me, he teleports and I have to find him again. I spend most of the night hunting him down.
Finally he dies for no obvious reason in the Essentia room. I have my Ender Pearl. A few minutes later I realize what was happening - I was wearing my Thorns armor, so every time he hit me he got damaged - and teleported. Well, next time I hunt Endermen I'll wear different armor.
The Runic Matrix also needs a lot of Ordo so I head out to get some.
I hunt out the two nodes I'd seen from the tower at night and mark them. The one in the other pic was easy to find but this one in the Tundra hills took a lot of hunting. As you can see, it's hard to see that glow against snow.
The Ordo is easy to get and soon I have my Runic Matrix. But I'll need even *more* Vis to emplace it in an Infusion Altar, and some of what I need is Ignis which I don't have in my backyard. So it's another trip into the snowy hinterland to collect Vis.
I aim for the triple node area but get off course in all the hills and end up at the coast. I hit up a node with some Ignis there, but it doesn't have enough and I have to go to the triple node area anyway.
I head home from there and now I've got the material for my Infusion Altar
Here's my home map, with all the nodes I know of marked. You can see there are quite a few nearby my base (the slimmer black cross and where my spinner marker is). Most of them are white, the color I'm using to mark nodes with Ordo as the highest Vis. This is normal, as Thaumcraft changes the node weighting based on biome, and snowy biomes get Ordo. The two grayish crosses are obelisks; there's a wisp spawner at the triple node spot but it's mostly obscured by the red cross.
Incidentally, it's *very* uncharacteristic of me to have so much of my spawn map unexplored at this point. But it's not, and I'm not heading out in the immediate future.
Next Episode: Building the Infusion Altar.
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is there any way your 3rd card could refer to hidden villages? The 4th card has to be the attitude of the mobs to you, though, right? Especially with the fear of theft & loss. Anyway, I look forward to seeing what you do with your Thaumcraft research.
I'd love it if the 3rd card referred to hidden villages, but there's not much room for them.
A bit of a spoiler on what I do with the research: Bah, resource limitations.
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I wanted a platform under my infusion area. For the stabilizers in a Infusion altar to work, they have to be radially symmetric - and it just so happens the spiral motif I've been using is radially symmetric.
I make the spiral of Greywackle (see, I said it would be useful) and the rest of the base of Migmatite smoothstone.
Infusions generate flux; sometimes a lot, so I'd like to get rid of it. My plan is to plant 4 Silverwood trees in the corners of the infusion area and have the Pure nodes in the Silverwood help clean up taint (if I got a Silverwood without a node, I'd chop it down). I'm only planting 2 for now, since I don't have enough saplings. I'd actually planted the saplings prior to the last episode as I wanted them to sprout before I built so I'd know what they looked like for planning. But, they'd just been sitting there. I was trying to decide what to do with them now that I was actually building and
Finally!
The altar requires the Runic Matrix, an Arcane Pedestal, 4 Arcane Stone, and 4 Arcane Bricks in a particular pattern (with the Matrix floating in air, actually). I assemble it, wave my wand (using a lot of Vis) and
There's the altar.
Meanwhile, Silverwood #2 has sprouted. I head up to the tower to take a look.
Not bad. I had been thinking of turning the Silverwood trees into Christmas trees as a decorative way to place the candles. However, they're not identical, and the candles have to be at *exactly* the right position, so I don't think that approach will work. The view would be a little better if it were closer to the tower but I didn't want the Magical Forest biome the Silverwoods create to intrude into the Tundra. I think it'll look fine in the Cold Taiga but a little out of place in the Tundra.
Next I want some candles as stabilizers. I go downstairs and do the research. Candles are made from rotten flesh and Praecantio (magic) Essentia. Yuck! I have enough for 24 at present.
While I'm down there I notice my gather golem for the sugarcane has gone missing. From previous experience, I know this probably means he got stuck somewhere. He'd actually gotten stuck in the clock room trying to snitch items out of the Infernal Furnace (and sometimes succeeding, to my surprise.) But he's not in the clock room. Eventually, I find him in a mining hole:
This is too much hassle and I set him to only pick up sugarcane.
I don't want the candles on the floor as they may get washed away by flux goo, and I haven't figured out a way to aesthetically suspend them. So I dig a chamber underneath, put in my trusty spiral pattern, and put them on that.
They'll still help, as long as they're close enough. The next batch of candles will probably go on the wall of this chamber.
I'll also need pedestals to hold items used for the infusions. For the simple enchantments, you only need four in addition to the one in the altar itself. I place them on the spiral arms, of course. Later I may need as many as 12, and my spiral is planned to accommodate.
For my first infusion, I want to make an Axe of the Stream. This is a Thaumcraft-specific axe which chops a tree from the top down even when you're just chopping at the bottom. I need it because I'll be needing a lot of Praecantio and since I haven't yet found a Nether Fortress for Nether Wort my only source is Greatwood trees. They're huge, and more spread out and irregular than jungle trees, so they're a huge pain to chop down the standard way. I already have a Thaumium Axe I'd gotten as a goodie in a treasure chest.
I gather my items and Essentia, set them up, and tap the altar with my wand.
After a lot of cool special effects, I have my Axe of the Stream. I'm an enchanter!
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artist, writer, content producer.
A digression on clock mechanics: Factorial clocks fire when all of their component clocks are on. To be useful, the component clocks need to be mostly off, obviously. The "standard" clock design of 1 torch and one or more repeaters is on half the time, so you have to use something different, or filter the output to be on less.
I had used all-repeater clocks. You can start an all-repeater clock with a brief redstone jolt and the jolt will cycle around the clock. This can be a short jolt, so a factorial design works. The problem is that additional jolts can alter the cycle. Worse, if the clock bridges a chunk boundary and only part of the clock is loaded you can have the pulse totally disrupted. "Standard" clocks can have similar problems, but the internal torch power will restore normal behavior under most circumstances.
So, to make things more robust, I switch to standard torch-and-repeater clocks and add edge detectors to the output so I'll get an on signal only when the clock switches to on, not for the entire on part of the cycle.
The clock room looks different after this. For one, it's bigger; the clocks got bigger from fitting in the torch and I also had to make room for more logic to detect the pulse changes in the component clocks. Here I'm standing on one of the clocks, with the pulse detector logic ahead of me and another clock to my right.
Here's a picture of the edge detector logic (taken later when I realized I'd forgotten to take pics). I figure out more of how the timing is working. The torches seem to take 1 redstone tick off the pulses, so I have to make the pulses longer to make it all work. This is why I was getting much longer cycles than I calculated before - the effective pulses were shorter than I'd though. Armed with this knowledge, I set the pulse lengths to fix the irregular cycle problem I'd had before.
I also redesign the clock combination slightly. Before I had all three clocks feed into one gate. Now I have two clocks feed into one gate, and the output for that feeds into a gate with the third. This means I can bleed off a high-frequency clock (from any component), a medium-frequency clock (about 30 seconds) from the 2-clock combo, and a long-frequency clock (about 5 minutes) from the 3-clock combo.
Since I can't find a village, I have to collect a potato from a zombie. I go to the spawner room and take out some torches to let me turn the spawner on and off by removing one torch. Some zombies spawn and annoy me during this operation.
I rebuild for a standard "swat their feet" design. Spawning is really slow, however. It takes about 8 minutes to get a half-stack of rotten flesh. Finally,
I have my potato! (along with 2 shovels and a gold helmet).
I plant it on some dirt and wait for it to grow.
I'm also going to use the clock to control an Infernal Furnace. This is a Thaumcraft furnace that provides its own fuel (magically) although it processes things rather slowly. I'm running short of coal and I really need it.
The Infernal Furnace needs 12 obsidian, 12 Nether Brick, and 1 lava bucket, so I head out to the ravine to get the obsidian and lava. While I'm there, I go ahead an extend a mining tunnel I have beyond it. I break into a cave system and secure one tunnel in it.
It's chock full of many different kinds of ore, for some reason. I also find my first Perdito shard! After collecting them all, my inventory is jammed and I head back.
I need to fill up my wand to make the Infernal Furnace so I take a quick jaunt outside, using my map markers to guide me to the nodes.
When I get home, a quick wave of the wand (using 100 Vis) and I have my furnace.
I chuck in almost an entire stack of Iron Dust and several stacks of assorted cobblestone. I have a dispenser above it, pointing down, to dump the items into the furnace, and I'm driving it with a feed from one of my clocks. As soon as it starts, I realize the noise annoys me and will drive me nuts if it never stops. So I need to put in a little redstone logic so in only dispenses when there's something to dispense. The redstone is simple, but I'm really squeezed for space and it takes me several tries to get it working. Finally it's on, and I have an automatic on, automatic off, self-fueled furnace.
Next episode: Essentia and Golems.
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lol I'd love to understand it all but instead I just get flashbacks of my frustration trying to get double iron doors working with pressure plates. It sure looks pretty though
The room for the essentia purification needs to be 6 high to have room for the alchemical furnace and 5 alembics on top. I continue the spiral motif, and continue with different materials for each level. The walls I leave unchanged for now. Many of these walls are also exterior walls so I'm going to rebuild the outside for outside looks first then decide what to do with the rest. The patterned grey stone is Greywackle, a good decorative sedimentary stone; I hadn't know I had some in my base but it will be useful.
I also do some more Thaumcraft research. Azanor's research mini game really hits my sweet spot.
I have to make another outside trip to fill up my wand, and then I have enough vis to make the Alchemical Furnace and Alembics. The recipes are characteristically complex (for Thaumcraft), but that's part of the charm of Thaumcraft. IMO it's a good match for Survival, which is fundamentally about gathering resources. I've already gathered the Iron, Silverwood, glass, etc. I need so it's relatively straightforward at this point. I set it up in the Essentia room:
Looks good.
Next I want to build an Alchemical Centrifuge room right beneath it. The centrifuge can separate certain Essentia into components and is very valuable for getting certain types of essential that are hard to get by themselves. In particular, for golems, I need Spiritus, where the best direct source is Soul Sand - not so easy to get. However, Cogitio can be split into Spiritus and Terra, and *that* you can get out of paper.
I carve out a room for it underneath the Essentia room. I want the floor on the same level as the hideyhole, which only allows a height of 3. Not imposing, but that's actually the height actually needed for a working centrifuge setup, so I'm OK.
Another trip outside to refill my wand and some more complex recipes later:
Eventually I'll work on some automated piping but for now I'll just run it manually.
Next I make a Crucible - a Thaumcraft Cauldron - for actually making the golems.
I toss in one vial each of Humanus, Spiritus, and Motus essentia, plus 2 Greatwood blocks for the material, and poof! I've got 2 Golems.
I need to make controllers before they're usable. First, I want to take a break from Thaumcrafting and spruce up the look of the tower a bit. I replace all the exposed basement tower wall with smooth Soapstone.
After looking at the Essentia room from the inside, I decide I need to make the rest of the walls into smooth Soapstone as well.
I also put in a door towards the south (the ocean). This also provides a direct route from the tower to the outside - before I had to go through the old hideyhole entrance, which is a bit of a detour.
The tower does indeed look much better from the outside.
Now I go back to finish my golems. Let's see - a golem controller needs Nitor (magical flame), which I can make from glowstone dust - uhoh -
I got a little spoiled in my first Thaumcraft game. In that game I found a village with a wizard fairly early on and was able to buy a lot of materials from him - including Nitor. Well, no village in this game yet, so I've got to make my *own* supplies - in this case including glowstone dust, which means another trip to the Nether.
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See All The Collections Of Minecraft Journals!
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I really like that Greywackle. In fact I'm starting to really look forward to your journals. It's a great way to showcase your mods. Next stop: your Underground Biomes Constructs topic
Redstone for doors is a real pain because the redstone requires an open space to even exist and you obviously don't want a open space next to your door! I spent way too long trying to make a redstone-controlled double door for my stable back when 1.7 was first released and I haven't bothered with redstone-controlled entrances since. Making it look nice or hiding it is really hard to so my solution is usually to stuff the logic in redstone rooms controlling the item in the wall. That's what I did for the clock room - it's on a shelf two blocks up and you don't see it going down the corridor - although in this case I was able to make it have reflectional symmetry with the multiple component clocks so it actually looks decent.
Also pressure plate doors give me the willies because I have visions of leaning over to check out the creeper stalking outside the door and - click -
Well - it's a Hardcore journal, so someday it *will* end. But, now that I'm getting pretty geared up, it may last a while. In my last Thaumcraft world I played almost 3 months and died only to Grimoire of Gaia mobs and Hungry Nodes, which aren't in this world. (I turned down Hungry Nodes because they're just too arbitrary and hard to spot.) I'm coming to really enjoy journaling - I love having records of what's happened and what I've done - so I expect to continue it for a while. And although I'll continue without comments, I do enjoy getting comments - plus they fill up the page so I don't have to worry as much about spoiler tags to keep the page size down.
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I want a little more Vis for some more Earth Arrows, so I head out and
There's an obelisk practically in my backyard, which I haven't seen before.
I'm close to level 30, so I head over to the zombie spawner to swat a few zombies. I realize the slow spawning is because there's too much light on the spawner and adjust the nearby torches to decrease it somewhat. It does help although I may do more later. I hope to pick up a carrot from the zombies but I make it to level 30 without getting one.
I head back and enchant the Bone Bow, getting Punch 1/Unbreaking III. Punch might actually be a disadvantage since it seems to scatter drops. Unbreaking is good of course. I also make a few more arrows. I've switched from using dirt for pillaring and temporary blocks to using gravel and that's gotten me some more flint to work with.
I throw some sand into the Infernal Furnace to get some more glass for the Nether. While it's roasting, I go to the complex mineshaft intersection I blocked off before, block off all but one passage, and break in.
After a moderate distance I find it staircases up through some ice. Not wanting to deal with the ice as I didn't bring the Silk Touch pickaxe, I just block it up at that point. I head back and mine out the ores and clean out a minecart chest I passed. It has some diamonds and some interesting but not too useful items like a thaumium hoe and 2 unenchanted amulets. It does have melon seeds, so that could be very useful.
I head into the Nether and continue a tunnel to the north. I tunnel just below the surface for a while, building a cobble roof above me as I go.
I encounter a Magma Cube and kill it from below, getting one Magma Cream.
After a while the ground drops down a bit. I don't see any Ghasts, so I dash out to look.
I find some Lemurite and a descent into some kind of chamber.
While descending into the chamber I get attacked by a wisp. I build a roof over me and it goes away.
The chamber is a vast field of Soul Sand - a great find. I mine up nearly two stacks. I also find some Shadow Iron. This alloys with Lemurite (great luck there) to make Shadow Steel, an improved version of Steel. However, it's only mildly superior to Damascus Steel (50% more durability and 1 higher enchantability) so only moderately useful.
I head back to drop off the new ores and the Soul Sand.
On the way I get harassed by a Firebat. Only I find Firebats are not just harassment.
Firebats explode. I've fought at least a dozen Firebats before and this is the first time it happened. As you can see, if I'd been a little less well equipped it might well have killed me.
After I drop off my goodies in a chest and recover my health, I head back to the open area to tunnel into the next hill.
I get attacked by a pack of - zombies? I didn't know the Nether had regular zombies? Quite a few of them too.
After I dispatch the zombies I tunnel into the next hill, closing it behind me so zombies or firebats don't sneak in. I tunnel some distance through the hill and come out to an overhang. I put in a view gallery.
Aha! One low-hanging Glowstone chandelier coming up! But, as you can see, there's an obstacle.
I switchback to staircase down to the plateau level. I build a fairly wide exit to shoot down the ghast. Unfortunately it scores a hit on me before I'm done *and* a Firebat flies in at the same time. I retreat back down the corridor to deal with the Firebat - only to discover I'd killed it early, and just couldn't tell in all the confusion of Ghast screeches and explosions and me on fire and blocks on fire.
I come back and take aim at the Ghast with the Bone bow. It fires like a machine gun - you can't draw and hold. I kill the Ghast quickly enough but it doesn't drop anything. Damage Screenshots doesn't get a pic either, so I guess the Bone Bow isn't considered player damage. Foo, would have been a nice pic.
With the Ghast gone, I dash over to collect my reward. I don't take all the chandelier; I save some for later when I'll hopefully have a Fortune pick. Mission accomplished.
Next episode: Finally using some golems.
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this is making me want to play. I've never seen zombies like that in the Nether before - or exploding firebats. You did well to survive.
Is that some kind of thaumcraft sorcery coming off the zombie in that pic?
The magic effect is some sort of sorcery, and I think it's my Ring of Protection.
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Here's some jars holding essentia - Potentia, Ignis, Lux, and Corpus (I get a lot of extra while extracting Humanus from rotten flesh). There are about 50 different kinds of Essentia and eventually I'll have to have this room carefully organized. It's probably too small to have golems operating the Essentia. I can reach higher shelves so for manual processing it will be fine.
I've been forgetting to scan my Thaumcraft constructs for research aspects. They have a lot!
Downstairs I make an Arcane Bellows to speed up the Furnace. I do a little research and discover Thaumcraft has a number of item duplication recipes, including for Clay and Glowstone. I don't remember those from my last playthrough. At least I won't have to go back to the Nether to keep getting Glowstone. One nice thing, though, is that these recipes create a use for a lot of the "extra" essential that tends to pile up in the course of getting ones you need.
Back upstairs, I get ready to make the Nitor. To make things in a Thaumcraft Crucible, first you throw in things that provide the Essentia for the recipe, then the mundane items for a base, and the Crucible spits out the product. I'm very careful to remove everything from my hot bar except the items I want to use for the crucible recipe. (the bucket is to refill the Crucible in case it runs dry). You can probably guess why I do this. Hint: the Crucible destroys anything thrown in. That wasn't fun.
After making the Nitor, I realize I need a water pool nearby to refill the Cauldron easily. I head out to the farm to get water and find (and kill) a helmeted zombie at the old front door.
I put it in the wall to be less disruptive aesthetically. I may put in a matching pool on the other side just for looks
Next I make some golem controllers. These have to be altered in the Crucible to get the specific type you want. Typically for Thaumcraft, the recipes are complex and it's quite difficult to get the proper balance of Essentia to make them. Extra Essentia is bad because it spills out of the Crucible eventually and creates Flux, which is basically magic gone bad and can have a number of nasty effects.
I have a complicated recipe for this. I need 10 Terra and 10 Lucrum. I have 2 silver ingots for 2 Lucrum, 5 dirt for 10 Terra, and then a vial of Lucrum Essentia for 8 more. Then the two golem cores, which will become Gather cores. Finally, the ingots leave 6 extra Metallum, and I'll use the metal transmutation to convert that into 6 iron nuggets.
plop plop,plopplopplopplopplop,plop,plop plop,plopplopplop, and I'm done without ploplems, I mean problems. On occasion I've missed throwing something in and that can turn into a mess.
I place a wood golem on my hungry chest and put in a gather core. Immediately he starts running around gathering stray sugarcane. Very convenient. They're pretty cute too.
With all the Shadow Steel I have now (56 ingots) and with my sword getting low, I make and enchant for level one, a Shadow Steel sword. I get Sharpness I, plus Shadow Steel automatically gets Weakness II.
Next I want a harvest golem so I can automate my farm. You need a harvest golem to harvest the crops and a gather golem to pick up what gets harvested. The harvest golem controller needs Messis and Meto essence (crop and farm). Messis is easy, but Meto is not and I end up processing a bunch of stone hoes to get it. I try to work out a recipe to get 2 controllers but it's just too complicated. Eventually I decide to use 2 vials each to make 3 controllers. That'll leave 1 excess of each essential but a little spillage is not the end of the world. (Extensive or ongoing spillage actually can be).
I stick a hopper on my Alchemical furnace to make it easier to process non stackable items (like hoes).
Finally, I make an Order upgrade (for the Harvest golem) so it replants after harvesting.
Upstairs at the farm, I place a chest for gathering and then the two golems. Unfortunately the gather golem keeps getting stuck on the chest (golems have terrible pathfinding), plus both golems have a very short range and a lot of the farm isn't being worked. I pick everything up and replace the chest one block below ground near the center of the farm.
Now they're working. They still don't get the entire farm, but I should get plenty of wheat and pumpkins just with this setup. Until and unless I find a village, I don't need vast quantities of wheat anyway.
Next episode: into the Catacombs!
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Zombies in the Nether are a vanilla bug, if they appeared after you hit some zombie pigmen, since they share the same code, which means hitting zombie pigmen will spawn reinforcements like normal zombies, except they aren't zombie pigmen. A related oddity is chickens in the Nether due to chicken jockeys, although that is intended.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I'm hearing a lot of moaning and groaning even when there's no zombies in the dungeon. I didn't think they could spawn outside the dungeon but maybe they're spawning in the cave behind.
I break in and there are indeed a couple of zombies back there.
I head in, round a corner and
Oops.
Nowhere near fatal, though, so I block off and light up the cave right next to the dungeon, and mine over a stack of coal from three different veins. Then a quick snooze next to the dungeon (which I'd deactivated with a torch).
When I wake up:
Where the heck did he come from? That's a magic sword he's holding, BTW.
I retreat down a corridor, pull out my own magic sword and defeat the zombie with a dazzling display of swashbuckling swordsmanship (OK, OK, actually just spam clicking…)
I even luck out and get his sword. The sword is Sharpness II Unbreaking II Knockback I and only about half damage - quite a sword for a zombie to drop.
I modify my foot-smashing setup so I can dash in to grab drops. A few dozen zombies later, I'm at level 30 - but still carrotless - so I head back to make an enchantment.
I enchant a Shadow Steel leggings. I get - Projectile Protection IV, Unbreaking III. Actually pretty decent but I've already got PP IV on my chest plate. I wear it anyway for looks.
The moaning and groaning continue so I decide to try to clear a few more mineshafts. Unfortunately I'd shut off damage screenshots on dealt damage because I didn't need hundreds of shots of me chopping zombies and I forgot to turn it back on. So, I don't have the bajillion great action shots I *should* have had for this next section.
I head to a block I'd put in down the corridor I cleared past the multiple corridor junction and cut a hole for viewing. Through it I see - furious zombies. There are souped-up zombies produced by drained (unhappy) nodes and by Sinister nodes and maybe by Flux. They drop Zombie Brains, a Thaumcraft item good for a couple of advanced infusions. I set up a bash-their-feet setup, kill a few, and then dash out in a lull.
The zombies are spawning in this huge open room. To my left is a still blocked-off mineshaft.
After getting a couple zombie brains I decide to try to break into the mineshaft.
There was a guard waiting. The magic runes effect is my Ring of Protection defending me, I think.
I kill him and another guard in an archery duel through the opening. Afterwards I have to deal with a flood of water from some ice block I melted or broke earlier. I try to snap it up with my bucket, but I just can't get it and finally block it off with cobblestone. I also have to off a creeper during this operation.
I want to clear this out, so I swap out the (non protective) goggles I usually wear for a steel helmet and prepare for battle.
It's a mess. Guards, zombies, and two levels of mineshaft, intersecting so top level mobs drop down any time. I don't see any spiders, thankfully.
I block off access from above and head over to the large room (which is connected to this mess) to secure it. It has a connection to *another* mineshaft in its upper reaches. I pillar up to block it off but on the way down
Where'd he come from? Oh, and ouch.
I had missed a block sealing off the upper mineshaft in the mess area and he must have fallen through.
Once it's secured -
Impressive room. I have no idea how it formed.
But Mr. Creeper's explosion did expose something I'd not have seen otherwise:
Order shards! Now I can make my shock focus and I'll have a lighting wand. Zap!
Next episode: another Tarot interlude
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.
What you found is the starting room of an abandoned mineshaft complex from which all the corridors branch off from; every mineshaft will have one, similar to villages and wells, which are their respective starting points. Often, you'll find more than one because two (or more!) mineshafts generated in adjacent chunks and overlapped (one thing that bugs me is why they just generate randomly without any orderly spacing like other structures, which is easy to implement; this is worse in pre-1.7 versions because mineshafts are 2.5 times more common; in my own mods I changed the "can structure generate here" method so they generate to a grid with a random chance of generating at a point so they never overlap).
Also, another thing to know is that mineshaft corridors can generate up to 80 blocks away from the starting point, so a mineshaft complex can span up to 160 blocks from end to end, although they are usually less because branches are included in the total length. You can get a general idea of the size (and size variability, not all are so big) here, the whole area is about 1200 blocks on a side and mineshafts are generated at the 1.7+ frequency with the spacing method I mentioned:
Also, they are less common near the origin of the world with a zero chance of generating in chunk (0,0) and the maximum chance after 80 chunks in a square around the origin (0.4% in 1.7+, meaning one per 250 chunks, 1.6.4 has a 1% chance for one per 100 chunks).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Well, the idea of a Tarot guided game was still in my mind - and the cards are just so pretty - so:
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1st card, The Past - Sun reversed. Obstacles, but not major or serious ones
I did shuffle! Thoroughly! Still correct, of course.
2nd card, The Present - Ace of Bees - Triumph, earned by brilliance
Not so sure about this one. Sure, things are going well, and I'm playing well enough. But I sure don't feel brilliant when I climb up to the Essentia room only to realize I've left my Greatwood blocks next to the research table, or when I get creeperbombed *twice* in one episode.
3rd card, What is Hidden - Six of Dragonflies - Nostalgia, Affection, Friends, or Visitors
True enough. This game is going somewhat like my first Thaumcraft game, and I'm certainly enjoying going through it all again. And I hadn't been thinking about that, so - hidden.
4th card, Attitudes of others - Seven of Bees - Fear of theft, loss, or insincerity
Not sure what this means. Do you readers think I'm faking it? Maybe it represent the mobs fear of me - which would be well-founded.
5th card, Action to take - The Tower
Again - I did shuffle! Thoroughly! Again, although this has a metaphorical meaning of disaster, here again a more literal meaning of "work on my tower" seems more appropriate.
6th card, Obstacles: Ten of Dragonflies: Peace, Abundance, and Happiness.
This is an obstacle? Well, the Crowley Thoth deck name is Satiety, so maybe if things are to easy I'll get bored - or maybe the journal will get boring.
7th card, Outcome: Hanged Man: Waiting, Sacrifice, and Wisdom
That fits best with working on magic stuff and research.
So, I think this reading suggests staying home and working on Thaumcraft research and gear - but with occasional digressions so it doesn't get stale. That seems like a good plan, so I'll try it.
In addition, the reading has lots of Bees=Swords=Intellectual stuff and Dragonflies=Cups=Comfort and leisure, so that suggests staying at home and doing research too.
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 make my shock focus and attach it to my old iron wand.
Next I want to start working on Infusion crafting. Infusions crafting is a kind of elaborate enchantment process Thaumcraft provides which is necessary for most advanced or powerful Thaumcraft items.
I run the Infusion research to get started. The first thing to build is the Runic Matrix which is the core of the Infusion Altar. It requires an Ender Pearl which, I don't have have - largely because I haven't yet even seen an Enderman (I *have* heard their sound effects on numerous occasions.) So this means some overnight watches for them to show up. I switch my Angmallen Haste/Fire Resistance boots for my Prot 1 steel boots as the Angmallen boots have relatively low durability and I don't want to waste them on Overworld fights.
One fringe benefit of hanging out all night is that I can spot some nodes. Nodes glow in Thaumcraft; it's not visible in the day but it is at night. I spot two nearby nodes I'd not found yet: this one right next to the frozen river I take to the ocean, and another up in the Tundra hills on the other side, also past a frozen river.
I see no Endermen all night. In the morning I head out the side door and
There's a creeper waiting for me. Sigh. I am really having a lot of trouble with creepers.
I fill in the dent. Next I start cleaning up the area he was hiding in, which is one of those chaotic terrain areas generated by a combination of the terrain algorithm and ponds.
This is what it looks like after I rip down the hill it was hiding behind. You can see there's a lot more areas for hiding and I plan to clean them all up.
Infusion crafting requires a big area because you need a lot a magical stabilizers in order for it to work. In practice this means a lot of candles, arranged in radial symmetry. You almost have to make it look good, so I'm going to put it outside as a showpiece, right in front of my tower. This may end my long-term plan to build an ice palace, because the tower wasn't supposed to be at the center of that. I consider placing the infusion area in front of my original hideyhole (which I was thinking about putting in the center of the palace) but that would require moving my farm and ranch and I just don't feel like doing that right now.
A beautiful large oak in front of my tower has to come down to make room. Break eggs to make an omelette, blah blah blah.
Another night passes and bupkis, apart from a zombie at the hideyhole door I have to dispatch in the morning and a couple of stray drops and spiders.
I spend the next day cleaning up that messy area (mostly just removing overhangs).
The next night I finally spot an Enderman. I lure him in with a stare but he has a really hard time getting into the tower and keeps ending up stuck, so I have to wander around the tower trying to find him. Plus, every time he hits me, he teleports and I have to find him again. I spend most of the night hunting him down.
Finally he dies for no obvious reason in the Essentia room. I have my Ender Pearl. A few minutes later I realize what was happening - I was wearing my Thorns armor, so every time he hit me he got damaged - and teleported. Well, next time I hunt Endermen I'll wear different armor.
The Runic Matrix also needs a lot of Ordo so I head out to get some.
I hunt out the two nodes I'd seen from the tower at night and mark them. The one in the other pic was easy to find but this one in the Tundra hills took a lot of hunting. As you can see, it's hard to see that glow against snow.
The Ordo is easy to get and soon I have my Runic Matrix. But I'll need even *more* Vis to emplace it in an Infusion Altar, and some of what I need is Ignis which I don't have in my backyard. So it's another trip into the snowy hinterland to collect Vis.
I aim for the triple node area but get off course in all the hills and end up at the coast. I hit up a node with some Ignis there, but it doesn't have enough and I have to go to the triple node area anyway.
I head home from there and now I've got the material for my Infusion Altar
Here's my home map, with all the nodes I know of marked. You can see there are quite a few nearby my base (the slimmer black cross and where my spinner marker is). Most of them are white, the color I'm using to mark nodes with Ordo as the highest Vis. This is normal, as Thaumcraft changes the node weighting based on biome, and snowy biomes get Ordo. The two grayish crosses are obelisks; there's a wisp spawner at the triple node spot but it's mostly obscured by the red cross.
Incidentally, it's *very* uncharacteristic of me to have so much of my spawn map unexplored at this point. But it's not, and I'm not heading out in the immediate future.
Next Episode: Building the Infusion Altar.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I'd love it if the 3rd card referred to hidden villages, but there's not much room for them.
A bit of a spoiler on what I do with the research: Bah, resource limitations.
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 make the spiral of Greywackle (see, I said it would be useful) and the rest of the base of Migmatite smoothstone.
Infusions generate flux; sometimes a lot, so I'd like to get rid of it. My plan is to plant 4 Silverwood trees in the corners of the infusion area and have the Pure nodes in the Silverwood help clean up taint (if I got a Silverwood without a node, I'd chop it down). I'm only planting 2 for now, since I don't have enough saplings. I'd actually planted the saplings prior to the last episode as I wanted them to sprout before I built so I'd know what they looked like for planning. But, they'd just been sitting there. I was trying to decide what to do with them now that I was actually building and
Finally!
The altar requires the Runic Matrix, an Arcane Pedestal, 4 Arcane Stone, and 4 Arcane Bricks in a particular pattern (with the Matrix floating in air, actually). I assemble it, wave my wand (using a lot of Vis) and
There's the altar.
Meanwhile, Silverwood #2 has sprouted. I head up to the tower to take a look.
Not bad. I had been thinking of turning the Silverwood trees into Christmas trees as a decorative way to place the candles. However, they're not identical, and the candles have to be at *exactly* the right position, so I don't think that approach will work. The view would be a little better if it were closer to the tower but I didn't want the Magical Forest biome the Silverwoods create to intrude into the Tundra. I think it'll look fine in the Cold Taiga but a little out of place in the Tundra.
Next I want some candles as stabilizers. I go downstairs and do the research. Candles are made from rotten flesh and Praecantio (magic) Essentia. Yuck! I have enough for 24 at present.
While I'm down there I notice my gather golem for the sugarcane has gone missing. From previous experience, I know this probably means he got stuck somewhere. He'd actually gotten stuck in the clock room trying to snitch items out of the Infernal Furnace (and sometimes succeeding, to my surprise.) But he's not in the clock room. Eventually, I find him in a mining hole:
This is too much hassle and I set him to only pick up sugarcane.
I don't want the candles on the floor as they may get washed away by flux goo, and I haven't figured out a way to aesthetically suspend them. So I dig a chamber underneath, put in my trusty spiral pattern, and put them on that.
They'll still help, as long as they're close enough. The next batch of candles will probably go on the wall of this chamber.
I'll also need pedestals to hold items used for the infusions. For the simple enchantments, you only need four in addition to the one in the altar itself. I place them on the spiral arms, of course. Later I may need as many as 12, and my spiral is planned to accommodate.
For my first infusion, I want to make an Axe of the Stream. This is a Thaumcraft-specific axe which chops a tree from the top down even when you're just chopping at the bottom. I need it because I'll be needing a lot of Praecantio and since I haven't yet found a Nether Fortress for Nether Wort my only source is Greatwood trees. They're huge, and more spread out and irregular than jungle trees, so they're a huge pain to chop down the standard way. I already have a Thaumium Axe I'd gotten as a goodie in a treasure chest.
I gather my items and Essentia, set them up, and tap the altar with my wand.
After a lot of cool special effects, I have my Axe of the Stream. I'm an enchanter!
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.