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^ CURRENT LOCATION: Ice Realms of Stonewall

I’ve never liked the idea that one city holds all the power in the world. That sets the stage for a dystopian society that breeds civil catastrophe. It is not the goal that Starlight City will be built to control the known world. No, my city will be built to sustain the known world. There is a difference that I think the villagers are afraid of – change scares them.

It scares me, too! But that’s a good thing – it means that things are happening which expands the way in which we view the world, be them good or bad. It’s true that not all change is good – however, it remains equally true that all change begets acknowledgement of ignorance. It forces us to face what we know, and more importantly what we do not. This belief in the necessity for change is the fundamental difference between how the villagers view the world and how I do. They want to remain engulfed in the comfort of their primitive lens, living in fear of gods who they have never seen. I want to improve their quality of life entirely using the tools the gods provided – gods who I have seen and fought.

Mayor Sensha brought up some good points in the church, though… He seems to have every knowledge about my showdown with Enderquin, but I am somewhat befuddled how he could have this knowledge. The only villager who witnessed the opening of Enderquin’s portal, and who has seen Enderquin HQ at all, was Violet… and she’s dead.

Clearly, I am missing some pieces of the puzzle. This I know all too well already, and I am here to learn. The story of Stonewall’s true history was heartbreaking to say the least, and I’ll admit to seeing things from the villagers’ perspective with this newfound knowledge. I realize that despite my intentions, my actions so far remind them of a horrific past, which automatically makes me the villain. Going forward, I need to be a little more cautious in how I approach my negotiations with them. Clearly the Inner Circle façade was just a game they were playing with me.

I am glad that Mayor Sensha and I engaged in such discourse – it was quite helpful. Now that I understand exactly how I come across, I can take better steps to improve my reckless behavior (which I now stubbornly admit to). See? I can change, too… albeit still holding true to my goals.

Departing the church in silence, I am going to invite the entire village into Starlight HQ – but I will not force them to visit. They will not be coerced to do anything they don’t want to do – this is not my way! Not anymore.

Starting here at Starlight Central, today’s work will mostly be grind work as I construct several new highways, while also planning new routes for future highways I do not yet have the materials or patience to construct.

Here is a diagram of the current expressway structure, centering on Starlight HQ:

We already have Q0 setup which links Stonewall, the Ice Realms (also within Stonewall borders), and Candyland. We also have Q1 in progress to Utopia, but it’s not fully built. Enderquin HQ is only about 100 blocks north on Q5, and Starlight Central is directly west, a couple hundred blocks off Q3. I know based on location that Loveland will be the first stop on Q4, but I haven’t even begun to figure that out yet. The remaining highways, Q2, Q4, Q6, and Q7, have not been started.

Let’s talk about nomenclature:

To recap, each of the eight major highways corresponds to the eight cardinal and ordinal directions. They are denoted from Q0 to Q7. Any “spurs” that branch out from these are denoted with additional numerals. For example, right now Q0 has three stops – one at Stonewall/Aftermath, the second at the Ice Realms, and the third at Candyland. If we decide to branch a new highway out from the Ice Realms in the eastern or northeastern direction, this spur would be denoted as Q10. The second such spur would be called Q20, and so on. Beyond Q90, we would simply add digits, to become Q100 (this realistically won’t happen anytime soon).

For Q1, the first spur would be called Q11. Make sense? Spurs names are ordered not based on distance from Starlight HQ (because proximity is relative, so if you were based in Candyland, it would be out of order anyway), but on when they are built. For the most part, they will probably be built based on proximity from Starlight anyway.

In addition to spurs, I may add interchanges, or loops, that completely circle major destinations like Starlight City (I foresee several hubs for this city in particular). These would be denoted as Q2(x)5, with the (x) corresponding to the main highway (so the Q3 interchange would be Q235, and a Q11 interchange would be Q2115 if it did not connect to Q1 directly, otherwise it would be Q215).

A highway which connects the major highways would simply be a compound name ending with ‘1’. For example, if we create a triangle, connecting Utopia to Stonewall, this would be done with a new highway labeled Q101. A highway connecting Q7 and Q6 would be denoted Q761. If we do the same highway further out, we just increase the suffix (so the same connector further out in the world would be called Q762, but to avoid duplicate names, Q765 would be skipped if we ever even got that far).

I think that’s about it for nomenclature! This will keep things very organized as we begin to significantly expand the connectiveness of the world, as I’m really looking to design the expressway much like a traditional highway system.

I’m completely finishing the first leg of Q3, securing a full connection to Starlight Central and the mayor’s district in Starlight City. It is this hub which will transform into the central terminal for all Starlight City lines – so, in the future, it will become quite large, probably on the same scale as the Nether Hub in Starlight HQ.

^ CURRENT LOCATION: Q1 to Starlight Central

I also want to completely finish the first leg of Q1 to Utopia. We originally started this on discovery of the land in Session 240, but it’s remained unfinished due to the significant resources required to build it. These highways are not cheap at all to build, requiring significant resources. Q1 is especially tedious because it is almost 1,000 blocks long, with lots of curves in the highway.

Nonetheless, I am dedicating this session to completing the highway, so I’m doing all the grinding necessary to do so. I want Utopia and Starlight City fully secured, as these will become major hubs within Quintropolis.

The Utopia terminal in particular will be somewhat developed into a major hub as well, as I am considering a potential interchange to connect it directly to Stonewall.

^ Don’t mind the outdated nomenclature above, but ideally the Utopia-Stonewall interchange (this would actually be called Q101). would directly connect the two cities without requiring a stop at Starlight HQ. Based on the discussion with Mayor Sensha in the previous session, I know that there is a city called Delta somewhere south. However, I’ve not yet located it, but it will likely be connected to Q1 once I do so.

After lots of hard work, the Starlight HQ-Utopia leg of Q1 is completed!

I’m adding additional signs to help improve direction throughout the expressway. This way, you’ll know exactly where you are navigating to regardless of where you are in the world.

I have decided not to include Candyland as part of the Starlight District simply due to the fact that its resources are no longer required to develop the current conglomerate of cities (since our primary mesa quarries have moved to Utopia). As such, Candyland will be the first city as part of a new district, which will be called the Expo District. This is currently the only city in this district, so for now it governs itself exclusive from the relations among Quintropolis’s other cities.

Finally, I’m completing the very easy Q5 leg that connects Starlight HQ to Enderquin HQ, which is maybe 100 blocks long. This highway will continue north to connect our new business center in Megapolis, where the proposed capitol will be located.

Now, for my final task, I will locate the portal to Loveland, which was made so long ago (2015) that I don’t remember anything about its specific location or how to get there.

After following torch paths and flying around aimlessly in the general direction of the mushroom island, I have finally located the portal – and its distance is a hefty one, over 800 blocks, almost perfectly northwest from Starlight HQ (the distance is technically less if you calculate with the Pythagorean Theorem, but considering the blocks required to build a perfectly diagonal railway, it’s around 800 long, multiplied by all the individual blocks required for construction).

I’ll dig out and build the andesite foundations for the railway, but that’s about as far as I will go today. Loveland currently is not a priority, but having at least some direction for how to get there will be very helpful once I do actually build the full expressway.

^ And there it is, branching out northwest next to Q5 at Starlight HQ.

Phew, I’m exhausted, and I think the villagers need some time to think through what we have discussed. Let’s get back to Starlight HQ.

The Redstone Room’s caution tape is about to be torn down, because we’re ready to expand Starlight HQ underground in a brand-new direction towards the outback faction.

With Haste II, it is no problem at all tearing through this mass of stone – this will be very important later. Remember this hallway as being the humble beginnings of a new construction in this base – one which will only be started this season and ideally completed in the next.

Welcome to the Starlight City Planning Center, a place dedicated to everything we need to sustain the development of a full city. This will include all the industrial-scale farms which we have yet to construct. Think on the scale of TNT-based wood farms, concrete generators, huge bamboo farms, and the like. Again, we’re only going to scrape the surface of these ideas in Season 3 – we’re cutting most of this project and moving it into next season. However, I want the groundwork laid so that I can move right into this development after v3.0 is done.

The entire construction will have a grid-like layout, like the downtown of a city, but underground. And yes – it will be surrounded by iron blocks because I have way too many.

First and foremost, the SCPC will feature a storage space for all job site blocks – this includes useful utility blocks like barrels, smokers, blast furnaces, brewing stands, etc.

This is the extent of my work here today – we’ll be working on this area much more constructively across the next several sessions.

Today, our main project is to install two very useful new plugins into Starlight HQ’s modular system. Let’s go over them:

• Starlight Limiter – a modifier that will limit the rate of output by three. So, as an example, for every three times the iron farm generates input, a batch of potions will brew (if this is the link we choose to set up). This is extremely important for regulating base activity. One of the main reasons I choose not to leave the potion brewer plugged in is because my chests fill up way too quickly, especially when I forget that it’s plugged in. With Starlight Limiter, the goal is to balance the rate of production.
• Starlight Corkscrew – a modifier with a more targeted function, Starlight Corkscrew will kill any outstanding mobs sitting at the bottom of the mob drop chamber (these exclusively include mobs with armor and/or Feather Falling boots). Designing this contraption as a modifier allows the process to happen seamlessly throughout base operations, so that I never have to think about it.

Starting with Starlight Limiter, the UI is not unlike the other technical plugins (with just an ‘AUX in’ and ON/OFF lever). Essentially, the modifier itself is just a pulse divider. Let’s dive into how this divider works:

The dropper on the top-left contains three items, while the hopper on the left contains one non-stackable item (in this case, a potion). The number of items in the dropper corresponds to the number of input pulses required to produce one output pulse. In my case, I’m choosing to do three (this is a division factor of three, so the ratio of input to output is 3:1), but I could add any amount to the divider and change the factor if I want.

The green wool represents the input. In the previous example, that would be input from one of the MISC links (so the iron farm > potion brewer, for instance). Each time the dropper is toggled, regardless of pulse length, it moves one item to the dropper on the right. After three of these, the comparator on the left powers off, moving the non-stackable item from the left hopper to the right hopper. Because the comparator on the right side (facing the yellow block) would simultaneously power itself from the side (since it is in subtraction mode), it will produce several output ticks at twice the number of items in the dropper (so six in this case), which I then compress into a single output pulse using a repeater set to two ticks. This concurrently moves the three items from the right dropper back into the left dropper, and the potion from the right hopper back into the left hopper.

Okay, now all we need to do is install this into the MISC links!

The trickiest part is understanding exactly where to add Starlight Limiter in the modifier chain, keeping in mind that we can choose whether to have the output bypass it directly (by having it OFF) or alternatively funnel through it (turning it ON). But how does this impact other modifiers such as Starlight Compressor, Echo, Balancer, etc.? Well, it all depends on the target output.

I am starting with the potion brewer output wire, which is where all output MISC links converge to if their target is the potion brewer. I currently have the following modifier chain attached to this wire:

Spectrometer > Starlight Echo > Starlight Compressor

First, if Spectrometer is active and it’s nighttime (or daytime if ‘Invert’ is ON), there will be no modular activity anyway – so that’s the first condition. If it passes this condition, the output moves to Starlight Echo for the delay. Once this happens, it finishes through Starlight Compressor, which limits the length of the output pulse. Of course, this is only if all three modifiers are active – we can turn any of them on/off as we wish.

The order of these last two does not matter, because Starlight Echo can process a delay regardless of the output pulse length. However, I think that where we add Starlight Limiter does matter, because it takes effect every time a pulse is received. If it is at the end of the chain, then it makes all the prior work meaningless, because it will not preserve the output length that Starlight Compressor regulates. That’s why it needs to go at the beginning of the chain. This way, it immediately takes the inputs required by the MISC, but will only send an output to the rest of the chain after three are received.

Okay, as with the other modifiers, we are using a piston to redirect the redstone either into or away from the modifier depending on the ON/OFF state. And you can see the Limiter as we have just installed it on the left.

Of course, I need to run a wire all the way down here to toggle the piston, but that’s a standard practice now with all universal switches.

The next tricky bit is getting all the modular mixer wires done. Several are not complete, which is bugging me. Wiring them up mostly just requires me to navigate the claustrophobic mess of redstone taking place behind and underneath the mixer and finding some way to split all the wires to their respective AND gates which toggle them.

^ Here is the Dropbox mixer channel, for example, which is inconveniently located directly above STAS. That makes the job much harder, because I cannot simply create downward staircases as I can with the MISC channel.

I now need to install Starlight Limiters into all the other MISC targets (SRF crop farms, mushroom farm) as well as the Dropbox targets.

It’s just a process of repetition at this point, but a definite plugin party all the same. As I go through each individual modular target, I am realizing that several plugins are missing! For instance, I miscalculated when I originally built the Dropbox and didn’t install the Inverter correctly (this inverts the behavior of the Dropbox, so that modular automation only takes place when unsorted items are processed – items that are not stone, cobblestone, dirt, slabs, etc.). I also did not build Starlight Compressor into the Dropbox at all – however, there’s a good reason for this, which will actually require an entire session later to describe.

In short, I worked everything out, but it took a while. Every modular connection from the mixer now works as it should, with all modifiers installed into the two generators (MISC and Dropbox) except for Starlight Overdrive (because, well, that plugin really doesn’t exist yet) and Starlight Compressor for the Dropbox. We’ll be dealing with the latter situation later… because it’s a whole situation we need to talk about.

Who’s there??

GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!! No endermen are permitted within the Starlight borders.

With Starlight Limiter complete and everything wired up nicely, I’ll be moving straight onto the next modifier on the list, which is much simpler and has a more targeted purpose in the base.

^ Right behind this wall is the collection chamber for mobs falling to their death from the mob farm in the Power Museum. However, not all of them die, if they are wearing armor and any type of Feather Falling boots. It has annoyed me that I couldn’t manually deal with that, as over time they do collect and negatively impact the rates within the base.

At the bottom of the chamber, I’m going to install a quick lava kill switch with the same functionality as the one up top – a monostable circuit that quickly dispenses then collects the lava so that the mobs will burn (witches are not a problem – they die by the fall height always).

Starlight Corkscrew’s UI will be carved right into the wall here since everything we need is right behind it anyway. I’m tired of long redstone wires.

The redstone for this plugin is quite simple. The input pulse will create two output pulses, the length between which is customizable by the user (so you can keep the lava active for longer).

^ The finished UI of the plugin, which additionally has an option for a built-in limiter. This is exactly the same as the other limiters we have been building in the base – for every three inputs that are directed into Starlight Corkscrew, one will toggle the modifier.

And, yeah – there it is. I’ve created links to the plugin from both the MISC targets and the Dropbox, and it’s at the end of the modifier chain (since it actually does not modify the output wire, but rather a different base operation, it doesn’t matter where it exists on the chain).

^ Case in point, I am getting better at labeling my wires so that I know what the hell everything is down here.

How do you celebrate a successful plugin party?? By finishing the roof of the Starlight Solace Center – that’s how.

I am not in a position to complete the entire construction, but I can certainly add some life to the roof in a unique manner different from the others in this base.

TADA! Emerald domes, with a unique assortment of blocks that build them up (including iron). Overall, I like them, although I may update some of these colors after I sleep on it.

^ Here is the final not-so-ideal skyline shot of Starlight HQ with the emerald domes adding some necessary green to the rainbow of colors. I say not-so-ideal, because it’s pouring down rain, and you cannot see the Starlight Treehouse, or the Night Lights, the Ender Tower, or your future. Or mine.

Partied a bit hard – now it’s time to rest.

Welcome to the Starlight City Planning Center. We have significant work to do if we want any chance of getting Starlight HQ 3.0 finished soon. This is the last major development of the season (of course, we have many projects to finish, such as Starlight Treehouse and Starlight Compressor – but, in terms of major new additions, this is it right here).

First, I’m going to do a few aesthetic updates to the main hub of the Starlight Resources Facility. These colors are annoying me, and I do not feel they fit with the theme of the build any longer.

Iron bars? Absolutely ugly.

Light gray glass? Much better – now, I’ll complete some changes on the roof, changing it to black concrete, and we’re good to go!

Wondrous! In hindsight, I personally would have wanted this dome to have a much larger diameter. It’s much too late for that now, but you’ll no doubt realize that the proportions between the slime farm and the remaining hub area are quite, well, disproportionate. It’s okay, though – the Starlight City Planning Center will amend these issues.

This is because the planning center is being built as a completely new segment of underground Starlight HQ – not just as an extension of the SRF. Its farms, modular activity, and aesthetic styles will be completely different than the SRF. While the SRF has been great at sustaining resource production for Starlight HQ’s development, it falls short of being industrial scale. This is the purpose of the SCPC – to provide farms and resources on a much larger scale as we prepare to construct a city far beyond the boundaries of Starlight HQ.

As noted in the previous session, we will only be scratching the surface of the SCPC this season, with most of the build’s work being pushed to Season 4 due to simply having too much going on this season. Regardless, I need the groundwork setup for the build – that’s what we will be doing today.

The underground construction will sit beneath the entirety of Starlight Outback. What you see above is the thankfulness of having Haste II, which I will need to eventually expand to encompass the entire headquarters. The SCPC will be divided into nine “city blocks,” with each cubicle being 35x35 blocks. Accounting for the 7-wide paths through the center (which will follow this aesthetic style), this gives an estimated size of 132x132 blocks – some variation is expected of course.

This is absolutely massive for an underground build, because we first need to mine out the entire square area of these blocks. However, this is why the work is being pushed to next season. It is simply too big of a project to undergo this late into the season. However, I can begin work on one of the nine planned cubicles.

This cubicle will house the large bamboo farm, which we desperately need to make scaffolding if we’re going to be building skyscrapers and such. Scaffolding is incredibly useful, but the closest bamboo jungle is about 2,500 blocks north (which is still not too bad all things considered)

Getting the numbers right is very important here – the farm is based on a design by Shulkercraft which uses a flying machine to harvest the bamboo field.

Hopper minecarts will move along the bottom and collect the bamboo that is harvested.

Again, my goal is to build the farm on the edges of the 35x35 cubicle, so that when I add pathways throughout next season, we have nice glass viewing from all sides of the farm.

It’s far too dark in here, so I’ll need to setup some lighting.

The only way to do this such that all spaces are fully lit to prevent mobs is to build the ceiling five blocks above the floor. This does limit bamboo growth – but I’m not too concerned about that given the scale of the farm as a whole.

We have some storage underneath the farm, but I foresee this needing to be massively expanded. I’ll work on this area in segments as the need arises.

^ Here, you can see some aesthetic progress on the SCPC hallway! As we continue the build next season, all halls will be neatly decorated in this same aesthetic style – yes, I have more iron blocks than I know what to do with at this point. Thank you, iron farm.

Bamboo grows extremely fast, and because this farm is quite large, it will take no time at all to collect massive amounts of it. The current setup uses observers to harvest automatically when bamboo growth is detected at that level.

However, we do not want this automated behavior, because of two reasons: (1) it would cause us to receive too much bamboo too fast, overflowing our storage in no time at all, and (2) if I log out while the flying machine is working, it can bug out and break when I log back in.

I’ll be installing a piston gate here to block observers from starting the farm, then I will add a mode to toggle between automatic and manual mode.

^ Here, you can see a panel with two options. The first lets us choose whether to keep the farm on automatically. If it’s on manual mode, I can just press the button on the glowstone to start the farm. The second option enables modular activity. That’s right! We can now use the bamboo farm as both an input and target for the MISC link options. I haven’t yet decided which links I want to setup, but basically this option will unlock the bamboo farm to be used for modulating other activity in the base.

Nice! With the bamboo farm installed, I’m going to move towards another important addition to the base – one which I was originally going to build in the outback. I then decided to build it in the SCPC. But after even further consideration, I realized that it is best suited for the SRF storage cellars itself. What is the addition??

^ Welcome to the Rasterizer – a banner workshop specifically for building banners and waypoints that we can add to maps across Quintropolis. This is going to be incredibly useful as I begin preparing the world for download, and for navigating the various areas of Quintropolis.

The Rasterizer’s twelve chests on the walls all contain full stacks of every banner color – this way, you can pick any chest you want, and subsequently any color you want, and get to work.

Using a loom, you can attach various styles and colors to the banners. Using an anvil, I can name the banner with however I want it to appear on a map.

Voila – here is the banner I am adding for Starlight HQ, resting here at the castle’s glass dome.

I’ll slowly be continuing this process throughout all of Quintropolis. But now maybe you’re wondering – why is this not in the SCPC??

Well, banners are built using wool and sticks. While we now get sticks from the bamboo farm, it’s much easier to transport these than to transport lots of 16 wool colors and dyes. Since our wool farm is directly next door, I wanted the Rasterizer to be more of an extension to this farm. It would be inconvenient to collect wool of every color from here, only to transport it to a distant other part of the base which otherwise has no resources for the Rasterizer. Indeed, the dye room is also on the other side, allowing me to quickly stock the Rasterizer with a stack of each dye color.

With all this done… I’m taking a break!! It’s time to do something I have not done in over a year, maybe longer… CAVING!!

It seems simple enough, but when you haven’t done something so simple in such a long time, it’s pretty exciting. I’m looking forward to it.

My choice of caving location will be right here at Starlight City’s coastal village across the chunk wall border – where we discussed the Story of Stonewall with Mayor Sensha. I figure that if I will eventually be civilizing this area, I should work on lighting it up below the ground, extracting some good resources along the way.

I chose not to take too many screenshots, but I definitely explored for a while, bringing several shulker boxes now to do so. In fact, this is the first caving adventure that I have done using shulker boxes, which have allowed me to keep caving for far longer than I would have been able to do otherwise.

One of the mineshafts underneath the village contains this beautiful array of three cave spider spawners! This is very similar to the arrangement underneath Starlight HQ. You may recall there are more than nine spawners directly underneath Starlight HQ, none of which we have properly developed yet. Indeed, I have plans for those, but again they are technically in undeveloped parts of the base (south of Starlight Plaza), so my plans for those (as well as with these three spawners here) will need to wait for Season 4.

^ Here is my haul of resources from the adventure, many of which will now be processed through Starlight Compressor to smelt. It was so fun! I’ve enjoyed caving a lot and will continue to do more in other areas around the world. Utopia, Megapolis, Candyland, Stonewall, and even other parts of Starlight City will need to be explored more fully. In fact…

Why not start right now?? Let’s Riptide our way across Starlight City’s land and see what we find.

Paradox. Triangle. Thirteen. Rainbow. Pagoda.

Huh?? The thunder and lightning must be causing some hallucinations…

WHAT THE HELL!!

Okay, I’m getting down from the sky… I don’t know what is going on, but I am scared…

Wait… is this a village?

What the hell is happening??!! This village is covered with cobwebs! There is nobody here!!

Am I cursed if I sleep here tonight? I probably am, but something eerie and ominous is in the air. No sign of life. Maybe this was a mistake.

Time to sleep...

“Hello Joey. Come and play with me.”

“There are many games which await you in the gauntlet.”

“You’re dreaming now, don’t worry. This is a dream. Or is it a vision?”

“That’s what you spoke of Violet’s hallucinations. Ironic, no?”

“You cannot escape the prison of your mind. This is the blue screen of death which cannot be so easily reset.”

“Remember - the gauntlet thrives with infinite lives.

No soul becomes one with me.”

“And God said… let there be… LIGHT.”

STOP!!!

My heavy breathing slowly calms down as I attempt to recover from what I can only describe as the worst nightmare of my life. I am shaking. I need to get out of here.

Is this what happened to Violet before she went absolutely insane?

Something unnerving is going on. I can’t get his voice out of my head.

HELP ME.

WHO’S THERE??

It’s nothing. Everything is okay… Though I cannot help but feel that the air is blowing differently. The sounds on the island echo with different variations than before. Everything is just so eerily quiet. In fact, these changes became apparent not very long after my initial visit to Enderquin. I think I was just so enamored with new ideas to notice them.

Could it be true? That Enderquin is not dead?? Have I made some mistakes??

No… It’s all just a hallucination. My mind is just playing tricks on me, probably as a coping mechanism. Or maybe I am afraid deep down, and simply unable to admit that I fear his presence still looms. Perhaps my discussions with Mayor Sensha and the villagers have begun to resonate such that I am now paying close attention to the changes in our natural ecosystem. And those changes are becoming clearer every passing day.

Enderquin is conquered. There is no gauntlet. There are no infinite lives.

Welcome to Quintropolis Island – my precious home I vowed to protect all those years ago.

World spawn has remained unprotected since the world’s beginnings (or at least my beginnings). If there is a threat looming underneath the surface, then it would be wise for us to protect the spawn chunks as much as possible. There is no reason I should still be respawning in the middle of the jungle in the dead of night, with no resources and no easy way back to Starlight HQ (which is across the entire island, easily around 1,000 blocks). Of course, we have the Tropic Fortress pictured above, but that is really just a starting hub for the Totem Run parkour course, featuring little to no resources.

First, I am heading to Utopia to protect the Nether portal and collect some materials.

I’ve also done some caving in this area to begin exploring some of the underground facets of the terrain.

Before we do anything, I need to determine the world spawn point. The iron platform above is generally where I expect to respawn, but in order to safely secure the spawn exactly – I need to narrow things down.

Throwing some items into the End portal – I will know exactly where the world spawn is. A compass would also provide this information.

I am clearing the area, but I see no items!! Where did they go?

Up there! See them on the tree??

Fascinating! The one tree I chose not to remove is in fact blocking the world spawn point. That’s very inconvenient.

I will be securing the world spawn point so that I can collect items from Enderquin. After all, who knows what we might do in the future?

The Quintropolis Welcome Center will be designed as a hub, with all sorts of information about Quintropolis (specifically the island), a full world map, and most notably “prep halls” wherein you will have access to armor, tools, weapons, food, and utilities like torches that you may need upon initially spawning in the world (or respawning without a bed).

Here, I’ll add a viewing window to the Totem Run parkour course. Indeed, we’re actually right next door to the Tropic Fortress and Totem Run! This gives you something to do right on entering the world (a very fun course and still one of my favorites to this day, despite being built in 2014).

^ On the wall above, I will replicate and add the full Quintropolis world map as space allows. This will be done over time as I fully intend to get the entire 5x3 space filled.

The world spawn point will be protected by glass, and I’ll be adding hoppers to automatically collect items that are sent through the End portal. This will only happen if the block is less than a full block (so the “path” block will work – also, grass would cause us to spawn in there, which we don’t want).

^ Here, you get a view of the chunk wall border just off the coast of the island.

I’m finding some uses of the regular “wood” block, which is a variation of the logs that essentially covers all six sides.

Coming along nicely!!

The entrance to the Welcome Center is fully covered by jungle trees. I want to maintain as much of the natural scenery as possible. The island’s ecosystem is very small, and I have no intention of completely urbanizing it (besides the Inner Circle and Starlight HQ). The entire island is only just over a mile across (the furthest points are 1,640 blocks apart, and a mile in Minecraft is 1,609 blocks since a block is equal to a meter).

I am adding a post in the center of the hub, which will contain signs of information about the island as I think of useful things to add.

Now, I am working on the outside, specifically the coast. Although I don’t want to urbanize the entire island, I do want to have a road running across it. We will start that process here at the Welcome Center, using lanterns as our principal lighting source.

I am having such fun hanging lanterns in trees as well! This keeps many of the foliage areas nicely lit, too.

This is the entrance into the Welcome Center. You can see that it’s literally right on the coast.

Signs will be used to help you navigate the island, so that you know where everything is! This will make the world much more approachable, as I am definitely thinking ahead for the world download. As of the current world download, well, it’s not very guest-friendly (not to mention a terribly outdated representation of Quintropolis as it is today).

Here’s a little view of the Welcome Center from outside:

I have chosen to keep it hidden underneath foliage, much of which I have added back.

Inside, you can see the completed hedge roof, and the welcome post which has some more information on it. The four grass blocks are your spawning spaces (the game checks for grass blocks when determining where to spawn you, and if none are present within a 21x21 radius around the world spawn point, then you spawn at the world spawn point).

Okay, one more thing left to do… Test it out!!

Here comes sudden death. But hey – a nice view of the Welcome Center and Tropic Fortress from up here.

Indeed, it works! I’m happy with that – now, let’s move to the Prep Halls.

These halls are being constructed underground right outside. I have signs directing you all over the place now – it’s going to be such a lovely experience.

As we don’t yet have a beacon here (there will be soon), I have gotten spoiled by Haste II at Starlight. So, digging out the halls took some time, but alas – they turned out great.

Having any block I want at my disposal within Starlight has the particular benefit which is that I feel I am in Creative Mode. In any prior season, building the Welcome Center, the Prep Halls, and the rest of the coast outside would easily have been a several-session affair due to the time required to harvest all the materials. But now that part is child’s play, and this took no time at all.

Four rooms – armor, tools/weaponry, food, and utilities – full of everything you would need to survive and thrive on the island.

Finally, let’s complete the Starlight HQ railway into Starlight Station. Yes, at the moment there is a railway that does run across the island into Starlight HQ. However, it’s currently in the Tropic Fortress, which is not really a base. Moving it will be easy, but first we need to build a proper building for it.

A little bit down the road, not exactly inside the Welcome Center, I am erecting the railway terminal.

And here we are!! Eventually, the road will split at an intersection and take you over to the Inner Circle. But we will complete that another day.

For now, I am just satisfied with finally developing the spawn chunks. Now I feel a bit safer despite the omens that are upon us. I’ll take a ride back to HQ as I prepare for whatever comes my way next.

It amazes me how much stuff I still want to add to Starlight HQ. Seriously – for those of you who may be new and unfamiliar to this base, I basically have everything I could want at my fingertips… except that I don’t. And the truth is that I never will, because the more the base expands, the greedier I get. It’s the very simple innate human behavior that is the reason people say “money is the root of all evil.” Perhaps this is what Mayor Sensha was referring to when he said that I would be responsible for Quintropolis’s impending doom.

Regardless, I’ve put in a lot of work to get to this point, and I’ll be putting in even more work, especially today. The project we’re about to undergo is one of Starlight HQ’s biggest overhauls, not because of its physical size (even though it will be quite large), but because of how quickly it will upgrade the base’s resource production. Starlight Overdrive, a plugin we began mapping out back in Session 272, is the single modular plugin that will be responsible for overdriving the base’s resource production up to nine-fold. The only way to integrate this possibility is to physically build every modular farm eight more times, and then attach eight separate wires to each individual farm, such that a single item frame determines whether production is multiplied by two, three, four – all the way up to nine.

This is an incredibly laborious task that usually is split across several sessions, which I would never attempt to construct altogether. But this development has been waiting to become part of HQ for such a long time (it’s one of the last plugins v3.0 is waiting for), and I have been planning to knock out the entire project in a single play session. Now that we have Haste II in the base, and practically unlimited resources, let’s see how quickly we can get it done…

Before tackling this, we’re going to start with some optimization projects which are significant in their own right. First, the bamboo farm – the minecarts are always running, and that causes lag. Since the farm itself is not always running, I’m going to construct a clock system that only keeps the minecarts active when the farm is active.

The redstone here is quite simple. When the farm is toggled, either manually or via observers, then a second redstone output is sent to an RS (NOR) latch that activates a hopper clock. The clock is timed so that it resets the latch (and therefore stopping the minecarts) after the flying machine has returned to the station. This ensures that the minecarts have ample time to collect all the bamboo drops from the farm.

That’s great – now we need to move onto this problem:

Ever since these crop farms were first built, all the way back in Session 259 now, storage was an issue. Time and time again, I have had to completely empty the chests just to reset them after they overload the storage and flood the sorters.

The solution to this has a few parts. Let’s take a look at the new OPTIONS menu:

From left to right, here are the new features we will be adding to the crop farms:

• Activate bonemeal farm – Using composters, we can actually turn all the crop drops into bonemeal. I’ll be installing a new bonemeal farm that lets us do this, which is ideal for when the crop storage is full.
• Activate potato smelter – Yes, I also want a way to automatically bake the potatoes, should we have crop collection enabled. This is a long overdue part of the farm that we’ll be adding today, too.
• Enable modular buffers – Right now, any and all activity from the crop farms toggles the MISC. But, with these new additions, we can break down each of the modes as being separate MISC triggers. The next two options, which only take effect if this lever is turned on, describe how:
• Modulate bonemeal farm – This will only toggle modular activity if the bonemeal farm is active.
• Modulate crop collection – This will only toggle modular activity if crop collection mode is active (which is the current behavior).
• Modulate potato smelter only – This option only takes effect if ‘Modulate crop collection’ is toggled, further breaking it down such that only baked potatoes activate the MISC links.

These new features give us many new options not only for how to use the farm, but how we can use the farm’s modular capabilities. It slows down the rates significantly if we only want the crop farm links to toggle in bonemeal mode, for instance. I don’t necessarily like how all the SRF farms go off every single time a crop is received by the storage. This fixes that problem.

First, here is our bonemeal storage, right inside the SCPC:

This is a fully automated system – bonemeal will eventually fill all the chests if we leave it long enough.

But, only one composter is doing the work here – so even that would take a while.

The potatoes in bonemeal collection mode will automatically smelt anyway, because this increases production of bonemeal more than regular potatoes would.

To change modes, we need to keep hopper lines on different y-coordinates, with the “corner” hopper being the intersection that we can power or de-power to choose where items are sent.

One thing I learned this session is that comparators, for some reason, no longer detect single items moving through hoppers unless the mode of transmission is horizontal. So, items apparently move too fast through vertical hopper chains for them to detect – this is very annoying and raises some issues with certain other farms that I’ll need to fix later.

^ Here, you can see the sorter that pulls out potatoes and moves them into a smoker. Smokers cook food more quickly than a traditional furnace.

I have needed to change the orientation of this system several times, because both smokers and composters only accept items through the top and remove items from the bottom. I cannot hook up hoppers to the sides (only for fuel for the smoker). As such, this smelter needs to be high enough such that I can feed it back into the storage area with the rest of the crops.

Here is the resulting network:

From here, I can use comparators to detect output from the composter on the horizontal hoppers, which I’ll run towards the MISC crop farm lines to use as modular input.

The final chest in the storage area will be changed to baked potatoes – next we’ll install the regular smoker for those when the farm is in ‘crop collection’ mode.

It’s pretty much the same setup, again keeping in mind that I want the option to enable/disable this path. To do this, I need to move the chain for baked potatoes to be vertically lower than the rest.

This forces me to move the entire hopper chain for the crops lower, so that the two can meet up perfectly.

Finally, we have some chests up top here to insert fuel for the smelters. If I have the bonemeal farm running all the time, which is the plan now, then it’s going to burn through fuel. I’ll just use coal for now since I have ridiculous amounts of it.

The modular options are just a network of gates here at the crop farm input line towards the MISC. If the ‘Enable modular buffers’ option is selected, then the line which separates the buffers is enabled (so not blocked by a piston).

Then, I am just using pistons to decide whether the bonemeal or crop collection modes allow modular input – pretty simple, and thankfully this is not far from the options panel.

^ In this configuration, the bonemeal farm is toggled, but I have set the modular buffers such that only crop collection will toggle the MISC. This means that if I set any links that utilize the crop farms (for example, using the crop farms to brew potions), then these will only toggle if crop collection mode is enabled. Since I am using the bonemeal farm instead, that effectively means this link is inactive right now.

^ Here, I further specify that the input link is toggled only when the potato smelter is working. This is another way I can turn off the link temporarily, if I switch it to crop collection mode and then don’t turn on the potato smelter. (Of course, I could also just reset the link in the MISC itself).

Wondrous – there are certainly some complex wires at play here, but it’s all done and clean. I don’t know why I waited so long to install this panel of features; we needed it a long time ago the moment my carrot/potato chests filled up (again and again, requiring me to break the chests and empty them).

Ugh, this is a new problem… all the mob drop storage is flooded! The item sorters all broke as a result.

Until I find a fix for this, I’ll just be doing things the same way I “fixed” the flooding crop storage problem.

Regardless, we have fixed one problem, and I can marvel at the increased customization I’ve now given the MISC in terms of modular options. Speaking of which…

Ever since Session 278 when I installed Starlight Limiter, I’ve had it plugged into the MISC while using the crop farms as a modular input for the potion brewer. The above screenshot shows the haul from then until now – a much more balanced rate of production! Now that I can choose to limit the crop farms’ modular abilities even further, I could slow it down even more should I wish to do so. Prior to Starlight Limiter, these chests would fill up way too quickly. While that’s a good problem to have, it’s certainly a problem, but the Limiter has enabled me to have so much more control over the base’s modular automation. It feels so much more balanced, so much more efficient, and so much more complete.

This is exactly the benefit of having a modular base now – I have full control over literally everything, including rate of resource production to suit whatever playstyle I am currently exercising. While I am playing passively, developing technical features as I am now, there is no need for ridiculous rates of production. If I plan to build some huge skyscraper project (in Starlight City), maybe I’ll start multiplying the production of slow falling potions. Should I intend to engage in more Nether highway construction, I can also choose to increase the rate of fire resistance potion production using only the bamboo farm as a catalyst (for example). This type of limitless, customizable freedom does not exist in any other type of base, making it a unique Starlight experience – one you will be able to experience very soon.

Starlight Overdrive is going to add even more flexibility to production rates, and it will do exactly the opposite of Starlight Limiter… sort of. You could still, for instance, apply both Overdrive and Limiter to the MISC. By doing so, you’ll still only activate the modular outputs every three pulses (rather than every pulse); however once activated, the production output will be multiplied by whatever amount you specify with Overdrive. The goal of this plugin is to enable industrial-scale production rates. By default, what I have is currently fine. But when we begin building Starlight City, the current rates will not sustain the construction scale. Overdrive will allow me to “unlock” these higher rates which will truly make Starlight’s resources practically infinite.

The first challenge is actually deciding where to construct Starlight Overdrive. The initial spot I chose here in the SRF control floor is absolutely not going to work.

Not only do I need an incredible amount of space to build all the overdrive farms, but I need the item frame to have a clear path from which I can branch off the eight individual wires. Additionally, the location of the overdrive farms must allow the MISC’s modular outputs to reach them and allow them to channel through Starlight Overdrive itself. Finally, the overdrive farms must be designed in such a way that they need never be accessed (i.e. they will be hidden), yet their storage systems will fully be able to contact their “parent” farms. The whole idea is that Starlight Overdrive’s very small and simple UI is the only interaction you will need to unlock the overdrive farms.

In case you were wondering, figuring out this part of the puzzle was a session in and of itself, and was the extent of my first continuous play session!! But thanks to spectator mode in a backup, I managed to find a location for everything we need to build, albeit barely.

Starlight Overdrive’s UI will be constructed in the Starlight City Planning Center, and all the overdrive farms will be grouped together in this square area bordering STAS to the north and the potion brewer to the west. This is close enough to the modular mixer such that all current MISC links will be able to get here quite easily, but far enough away that there are no builds beyond here. Finally, the storage systems for the overdrive farms will not be linked to their respective storage cellars in the SRF – this is completely arbitrary. I’m just going to build a huge new storage room right here in the SCPC – I mean, the point of this expansion is to foster industrial-scale farms, right? Why not start with Starlight Overdrive? It just makes the most sense to keep the plugin out of the way from primary base operations, instead placing it in a new area that is already going to be massively expanded later anyway. I am effectively just building industrial-scale versions of the farms I already have.

The first part of the project will be to organize the design of the farms. Note that I will not be recreating every farm in the base – that is not realistic or even possible given space limitations. I’m recreating the basic modular farms that are part of the MISC’s modular outputs. This includes the following farms:

• Sugar cane
• Cactus
• Carrot/potato/beetroot
• Mushroom
• Pumpkin/melon
• Kelp

Note that several useful farms, such as the iron farm, are not being added to this list. There are two reasons for this: (1) I cannot realistically build eight additional iron farms in Starlight HQ (the entity count and subsequent lag would be far too great anyway), and (2) the iron farm already produces more iron than I can keep up with, even though I now use it as a principal building block. Having eight more farms would be too much for me to handle, even with an expanded storage system (this is already the case with my bamboo farm, which is also why it’s not being added). These two farms in particular are also just too large – any industrial-scale versions I choose to build of them can be done somewhere other than Starlight (we have an entire world to work with – I’ll most likely build an industrial iron farm within Enderquin HQ at some point anyway, but not this season).

Okay, so I’m going to start with the easy stuff: sugar cane and cactus. These are simple designs, and they just need to be stacked, effectively, eight times. Here is the design for both:

Before building anything, I’m outlining all the farms just so I can be sure there will be no conflicting builds that would otherwise halt the project. Sugar cane and cactus down – let’s move to mushroom – a slightly more complex situation than I initially planned:

It’s based on the same design as my very first mushroom farm in Season 1 – one which has yet to be fully linked to the MISC so that I can automate it using other farms.

The tricky bit is moving the mushrooms with water – I need separate redstone lines to keep the pistons extended, holding the water back. Then, to maintain the height, I’ll use signs + packed ice, which will push the mushrooms forward to the next water stream.

Next, the kelp farm, which is also relatively small, but again I am matching its size and style to the version already in the Aqua Lounge:

The pumpkin and melon farms will be a bit larger because these will be incredibly useful resources for trading. Here they are:

Perfect, now for the harder stuff: carrot, beetroot, and potato, which are based on their villager-run counterparts. This means I need to find 32 new villagers and add them to the base…

Yeah, I’m not doing those farms today, haha. Maybe I’ll get to them before the season ends – but likely not. The ones we have are good for now, and when they’re not – I’ll probably already have these done.

Outlines complete – let’s BUILD!!

The sugar cane and cactus farms specifically are getting designs similar to their original counterparts – this is because we are not interested in keeping the farms active all the time. This means we cannot use observers, which of course means we need to use slightly more piston movement than I would like…

^ Above, you can see first the AND gate, which requires two inputs: one from Starlight Overdrive, and one from any MISC crop farm links. There will be a total of eight such AND gates – one for each layer of the farms. Starlight Overdrive’s comparator output increases with each item frame rotation, allowing us to activate each layer separately.

Aesthetics are not important, which is a blessing as that would add so much unnecessary time to the builds. You will never see these farms, so there is no need to decorate them. This makes constructing them a much faster process.

I’m trying to keep everything as simple as possible, which means that all the items will be funneled into one water stream.

The items will ascend through a bubble column, so that I can keep the storage area in line with the others in the SCPC.

^ Here is the crop storage room, with everything sorted nicely and plenty of storage space (for now…).

I am starting on the second layer of the sugar cane and cactus farms, realizing very quickly just how laborious this task really is, and how it could potentially beget another world hiatus.

In an effort to not get burned out, I’ll be taking a gradual approach, and do something like adding one layer of farms with each session or something. There’s no rush to add them all today – if I try to do that before moving onto the next project, I will get burned out, which means you would be waiting months for the next session. Big projects like this are always the bane of my otherwise decent pace throughout Quintropolis. It happened with the guardian farm, then with the iron farm (not the gold farm surprisingly), then with STAS, then again with the Nether highways which were probably the biggest ‘grindy’ project to date. This is exactly how my hiatuses from the world usually start, so it’s a mistake I won’t be making again.

There’s a lot to do here, but we’ll leave the remaining layers for another day. I probably won’t mention them again beyond this.

Utopia is becoming an essential resource outpost for Quintropolis, and I’m realizing that if I decide to erect another major base in this world, then this is exactly where it needs to be. Sand, terracotta, plus reasonable proximity to the coral reefs that line the coastal desert village which has been designated as “downtown” – these are important resources for our bigger projects, especially today.

I’m visiting the Inner Circle to develop the neighborhood into a full ecosystem. This is what we need to sustain the production of resources here, not to mention provide a good security system for our council.

“Joey, welcome!” Drexel greets me on my arrival. “What brings you by today? Aren’t you busy as always?” A slight sarcasm is always welcome.

“It’s time to bring more life to the Circle,” I reply. We’ve got a lot of work to do.

“Good thing we were able to secure some build permits for you,” says Drexel to my surprise. “Mayor Sensha seemed adamant on providing these.”

“Interesting, did he say why?” He seemed very against that during our last meeting in Session 276.

“All he said was that these would keep the other villages off your tail…”

Well, he isn’t wrong about that. But for him to change his mindset so soon after telling me that I broke a bunch of laws… it’s out of the ordinary, like most things nowadays. We’ll address that later. Right now, we have work to do.

First, gray concrete to complete the road surrounding the central moat. I have mentioned previously that I plan to construct a large golden monument in the center – this will be the last thing we do when I acquire enough gold to do so.

Additionally, I’ve built the base for our gold center out of polished diorite.

Next, I am completing the road to the Council Clubhouse, lighting everything up as much as possible because zombies are a real danger here.

^ This ugly wall that digs into the mountain will become the setting for our downtown shops here in the Inner Circle.

Off the main road, I’ll build a stone brick pathway which will connect all the different shops. This is where many of our resources and farms will be located.

First, we will start with the building that connects Starlight Station to the Inner Circle.

Concrete and stone materials will be the basis for our constructions here. I’ll also try to incorporate bricks where they make sense.

Moving on down, the next focus is on agriculture. Crops and cows are arguably the most important resources in early development, so that’s our first order of business.

Thinking about what will go inside, I’m going with a basic wheat farm and cow farm. This will be a source of leather, which we can use for books to trade for Mending with Boshtok.

Guys… stop being so curious about the outside. It’s not safe out there!

…Or up top for that matter! I’m lighting up the roof of the clubhouse to prevent any unwanted visitors.

Let’s also provide some golems to the clubhouse to protect the council.

A nice sunset view of the Council Clubhouse, with Emerald Hills emerging in the background:

A lot of attention to detail and lighting is a big focus in the development of the Circle – I’m adding little touches like mossy/cracked stone brick nuances to the walls and floor.

…and a little welcome sign for the clubhouse!

You’ll also notice that I’ve begun surrounding the circle… with a BIGGER circle of hedges. This will fully protect and isolate the circle from the rest of the island.

Part of the challenge in this is dealing with trees – I need to remove most of the trees around the borders of the circle to prevent mobs from being able to climb up and invade the circle.

Aww, look at the golems playing games with the council!

I didn’t think any cows were left on Quintropolis Island, but I am mistaken! This is a huge relief.

Completing the agricultural shop, I managed to purify a zombie villager and give him the shop.

Welcome to Jacque’s Agricultural Shop! I’ve unlocked all his trades, posting them on the wall so you can get an idea what you want to trade.

Next on down the line is going to be the circle’s sugar cane farm – an important resource for paper and books to trade with the council!

I am doing a simple piston/observer-based design, but I plan to stack a few of these.

Get out of here, wanderer! No, we don’t want your childish trades.

The top of the sugar cane emerges from the mountain top, but I think this is a good opportunity to introduce a cool roof and give some depth to the Circle’s skyline. We’ll approach that later.

Nice – we’ve got some good resources going here! Leather, wheat, beef, sugar, and paper so far. Let’s see what else we can do! I’m having a lot of fun with this.

Get those phantoms!! Get them!!

How about a crop farm in front of the clubhouse??

Welcome Shadrack, our primary crop farmer – a child from two of our council members rather than a purified villager.

Boshtok tends to spend a lot of time trading out here during the day. It makes sense since he is practically the leader of the council.

Shadrack and his new friend now tend to the farms, and I have built a little house for them to sleep at night.

Unlocking all Shadrack’s trades, I note that he is now the only source of Blindness stew so far. He also trades Weakness stew, but I’m not sure why we would want that.

Another purified villager has been brought into the circle – welcome Michelle, who will be our librarian governing the sugar cane shop!

And just in time… we’ve reached Day 6,000 in Quintropolis!! The celebration is perfectly suited to our work at the Inner Circle, and I’m happy to be spending it with our new friends.

Unfortunately, the celebration immediately came to a sudden end on this day…

“Joey, Joey! Come quick!”

Huh?

“What’s wrong, Staz?” I ask the worried villager.

“It’s Drexel. He’s DEAD!”

“What? How is that possible??” Drexel being dead? That’s not possible! The house is secured with the very best protection. There is no way any mobs could have gotten to him! Especially not with me RIGHT HERE – did he die while I was working??

“Boshtok! Ibram! What’s going on?? What happened to Drexel??!” I ask in a raging fury. Drexel was the first member of the new council – a member with whom I had developed good relations, even if we disagreed on some things.

“Oh Joey, it was terrible. I wish we could have saved him… But there was nothing we could do but watch in utter dismay,” Boshtok is in shambles. I have never seen a villager so scared. They have dealt with zombies before, but I don’t think that is what killed him.

“What do you mean? Could the golems not defend or something?” I mean, they were built specifically to protect them.

“Joey, Drexel lost his mind. We woke up this morning, and he was speaking in riddles outside on the porch. We didn’t understand them,” Staz noted.

“We could not reason with him. It’s as if we were talking to a wall. The man we knew was completely gone. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ibram followed.

“We came back inside to prepare a weakness potion so that we could calm him down, but things got tense by the time we went back outside…” Boshtok continued.

Then the villagers were silent. Staz tried to hold back tears, but he failed miserably.

“I’m so sorry… Drexel had become a dear friend… I’ll be sure to prepare a proper gravestone for him. Can you tell me exactly what led to his… demise?” I’m trying to be considerate and not outlandish regarding the word “death.” But I need to know what happened.

“Joey, he lost his freaking mind. He was standing outside on the porch, with a sword drawn to his chest…” Staz started but couldn’t finish.

“It’s okay, Staz. He can extrapolate the rest…” Ibram tried to comfort Staz the best he could, but it was pointless. These people who had become my friends (with some boundaries) were completely destroyed. I had never seen this before, and it worried me greatly.

“What did he say? What was the last thing Drexel said?” I asked Boshtok.

“I couldn’t put it together exactly. Something about a gauntlet.”

“Yes,” Ibram knew. “He said that the gauntlet thrives with infinite lives. No soul becomes one with me… whatever that means.”

Oh my God.

“And so, on this day, we commemorate Drexel’s influence on Starlight, the Inner Circle, and Quintropolis as a whole. He fell victim to unfortunate circumstances which cannot be explained, but he will always be a hero in perpetuating the development of our sacred island.”

Staz rushes outside, with Ibram chasing him close behind. “Joey, is it going to happen to me, too? Please don’t let it happen to me!”

Staz’s fear is something I did not expect. One could say that it’s a wrinkle in my plans. But it’s a wrinkle I should probably start acknowledging, because otherwise the entire world will collapse to Enderquin’s control. Something very cryptic is happening.

“Staz, I am here to protect you. You’re safe here – don’t worry,” I try to reassure him.

“Drexel wasn’t!” he quickly retorted. “What is the GAUNTLET?? You owe us an answer!!” he starts yelling.

“Staz, you’re panicking – here, let me brew you a potion.”

“No, you’re dodging the question. Tell US why Drexel went insane.”

Staz has me in a box, and neither Ibram nor Boshtok are fighting his request. They stand alongside him, waiting for me to speak on what they think I know… what I do know.

“You all know that Quintropolis was created by gods. Celestial beings without a corporeal form. Yes?” I first need to know if they will even be able to conceive the concepts about which I consider sharing.

“Of course – you never stop talking about how much you plan to destroy them, and now look at what has happened!” Staz responds.

“Yes… We’ve all been trying to warn you, Joey,” Boshtok joins in. “Please tell us what is going on here. We know that you have an idea.”

I wait for a moment to decide how to best approach this delicate situation.

“Enderquin is here,” I answer. “I thought I defeated him… I did defeat him, a long time ago, in a sky dimension which he claims home. I slayed him with my own hand. Violet helped me get there, and then she died. Ever since my visit, I’ve been experiencing hauntings of my own. They’re the same hauntings that eventually drove Violet to her death.”

They all pause in disbelief, then hurry inside the clubhouse without another word. I knew this was not going to end well. What I did not realize was the extent to which Enderquin’s power has grown. Why did I think the dragon was his physical form? Perhaps it was my pride.

There is not much I can do now to reason with the council. They’ve already decided long ago that I am a villain. Perhaps it is best I accept that no matter how much I try to help them, I will forever be the bane of their existence, and my own.

I’ll continue my work on the Inner Circle, and maybe they will come around to rejoin this discussion.

Today, we need to complete Maker’s Wellness Center. This will be home to Maker – our recently acquired cleric. It will house all the materials which he trades, and a brewing stand to brew potions. I also intend to have potions of weakness and golden apples stored in here. After all, it’s clear that we need them on standby all the time.

The challenge here is making sure that Maker doesn’t attach himself to one of the barrels instead. Needless to say, this part took a bit of trial and error.

Boats are actually an easy way to transport villagers around – so long as you don’t have any elevation changes.

Look at that! Michelle offers Feather Falling books! Not that we need those, since we have a double chest full of them already, but still.

Thinking about the best way to integrate trades with Maker (a cleric), I’m reminded that the Mob Processing Hub, which we built way back in early Season 2 (this was in 2015), is not more than 200 blocks east from here. What if we were to install an underground connector to this build, such that we could easily transport mob drops?

Obviously, it’s the zombie flesh that comes to mind. Actually, trading that with clerics is probably its only use at this point in the game.

Still, bonemeal is also good to have here, and since this hub is home to our original skeleton XP farm, we have ridiculous amounts of bone drops here.

Please also welcome Moosa, a fisherman who just appeared out of nowhere… In any case, coal is a useful trade as well, if not slightly wasteful. I’ll keep Moosa’s things here in Jacque’s Agricultural Center.

Now then, although I’ve no interest in fully completing the connector today, I am interested in getting started with the trades. As such I will be moving a significant amount of zombie flesh from the MPH over to the Inner Circle. This is a great way to revive the utility of the MPH, which has gone largely unused throughout Season 3.

Welcome Maker to the shop!

Moving on down, there is one more major shop I want to install: the Inner Circle Produce Market. This will be a useful source of pumpkins, melons, beetroot, potatoes, and more carrots to increase trading volume with our farmers.

The market is largely carved into the mountain here, which is great as it keeps things nicely hidden from the outside.

Maintaining stone themes with the overall look, but I’m also adding bricks and clay where appropriate.

Here we have the new beetroot and potato farms – however, some of the new farmers have gone over to Shadrack’s plot and have since acquired carrots in their inventory spaces. This is evident as I notice carrots and things popping up in here!

Finally, I am adding the pumpkin and melon farms here. I was going to make an automatic farm for each, but I think this will be fine for now (an automatic farm requires much more space here, which I am not prepared to dig out or house above ground).

And here is the completed produce market! With our new farmers.

Having done more work on the roof for Michelle’s Paper Shop (though it’s still not done), overall the Inner Circle’s downtown strip is coming along quite nicely.

There is still one more important addition I’d like to make before concluding my work here today.

Bees have been in Quintropolis for a while, but I’ve not bothered to utilize them and make a farm that brings honey, honey blocks, honeycomb, and honeycomb blocks into the world. That’s about to change.

Next to the underground connector that takes us to the MPH, I’ll be building the small but cozy new Honey House, which will house several bees to begin our resource production of honey. This will be a manual farm for now – I’ll look into some automated options later.

I don’t like the look of the crafted beehives, so I’m going exploring out west to find a total of seven additional bee nests to add to the house.

That took less time than I expected, but elytra make everything fast nowadays.

A small storage area underneath the hill here, and I think that’s pretty good for now.

WHAT? How did you get in here??

Aha – sneaky little *******. I’ll be patching that up nicely.

Suddenly, I notice everyone in the Circle trying to leave…

STAZ!! OH NO!! What happened??

Ibram?? Where’s your librarian outfit?

Nobody is responding to me. This is very strange – I need the mayor’s help.

“Mayor Sensha! We need to hurry. Something strange is happening on the island…”

“Joey, thank goodness you’re here. I’m afraid I don’t understand what’s going on!” he speaks in sheer terror.

“Wait, where is everyone??” I ask… because nobody else is here.

“They’re gathering at the chunk border. Everyone is at the chunk border. From everywhere.”

“The chunk border? What are they doing there??”

“Come, let me show you.”

Mayor Sensha walks me to the chunk border, and I feel my heart begin racing at an uncanny pace as I hear what I can only describe as a chanting of sorts.

…The kind of chanting that echoes for hours in the air miles and miles away, carrying from community to community, until everyone has received the message.

We inch closer, but Mayor Sensha cannot believe what he is seeing. He stops for a moment. He is having a panic attack.

“I’m here, Mayor.” I grab him and lay him against the cliff wall. “How can I help??”

“Joey… I… I- AHHH!!” he startles and jumps back from me. “GET AWAY!!”

“Mayor, it’s me!! It’s Joey!”

The mayor does not appear to recognize me at all. He shakes in agonizing terror as he backs into a corner but has nowhere else to go. He starts clawing away at the rock wall with such passion to escape whatever he sees in place of me. I try to inch closer and comfort him, but it is of no use.

“STOP!! Please, please just kill me,” he screams.

“What? No! Can you hear me??” I ask. “Mayor Sensha – do you hear me??”

“Yes,” he responds, eyes wide and breath heavy. “But that’s not you anymore.”

Oh no. He is hallucinating. The only way to save him is to leave. I am not losing two friends today.

“I’m leaving, Mayor. Just turn away – don’t look at whatever it is you see. Close your eyes, and breathe. It’s not real. Please, just… just breathe and keep breathing.”

In the background, I hear the chants. They’re louder. I leave the shriveling mayor to rest in hopes that he will be able to overcome this mental game Enderquin is playing. In the distance, I see everyone that the mayor was talking about. They’re standing in a line – a straight line, completely unwavering, not more than a block from the chunk wall border which separates them from the deep waters below. Not a single movement.

As I get closer, the thunderstorm worsens. I’m close enough to make out the words they are saying, and to say that I have been shaken with such fear would be an understatement.

“All hail Enderquin.”

“All hail Enderquin.”

“All hail Enderquin.”

“All hail Enderquin.”

Mayor Sensha!! Where are you??!!

“All hail Enderquin.”

“Mayor Sensha! Snap out of it!!”

The mayor is no longer responsive to anything I say or do. He might as well be a puppet just like the rest of them. Enderquin has taken everyone – every single villager that I have met and made relations with – and brought them here to the border of Quintropolis Island. But why??

Mayor Sensha begins walking to the border with everyone. I push him away, but he pushes me back with a force that could only be described as… supernatural.

“All hail Enderquin.”

“All hail Enderquin.”

“All hail Enderquin.”

I have no power here. All I can do now is watch as these people’s minds and bodies have become entirely violated, many of them now zombified.

“Tell me, is this a dream? Or is it a vision?” The voice of Enderquin emerges, as does the chilling hallucination of multiple dragons encircling the edge of Quintropolis Island. I call it a hallucination, because I refuse to believe this is real.

“Enderquin! You’re alive! But how??”

“You did not listen. You never listen. And now, you will need to answer for your sins.”

One by one, the villagers jump off the chunk wall border, drowning to their certain demise as their last words echo across the entire world, much to Enderquin’s sadistic pleasure.

“NOOOOO!!!”

I sprint to save them, but I can’t. They’re already dead. The chanting ceases, as does the rain, the sun rising and the birds chirping as if nothing had happened at all. Because maybe it didn’t, and maybe this was just a dream. And I am still asleep.

So, it’s okay.

I wake up and wonder what is going on.

“Staz! Staz, where is everyone?? Is Mayor Sensha okay??”

“Joey, what’s this troubling you? Did you have a nightmare again?” he asks.

“Is Drexel still alive??” I ask, unable to differentiate what’s real and what’s not.

“Joey, are you okay? Come inside – let’s make you some tea,” Staz’s comforting words always help me in times of trouble.

“Böshtok, Joey is having a manic episode again…” he says as he brings me inside the Council Clubhouse – as though I have these episodes often. But I’ve no knowledge of that.

Böshtok already has tea and milk waiting for me. Ibram closes the doors and alerts Shadrack and the golems outside. Staz brings me to the bed. This is all some kind of ritual that I’ve never seen before, even though it has everything to do with me. They’ve done all this before – many times before. Which means so have I.

“Joey, what’s the last thing you remember?” Böshtok asks as I drink the tea.

“Everyone. Dead,” is all I can conjure at the moment, my heart still racing with the vivid picture of everyone drowning to Enderquin’s terrorizing chant still fresh in my mind.

“Okay…” Böshtok heads outside while Staz stays to watch. I don’t see Drexel, so that must have actually happened. But where did I fall asleep? The fact that I cannot tell where my life ended and where my dreams began is the part that terrorizes me.

Böshtok returns with some potions and a golden apple from Maker’s Wellness Center.

“Here, take these and sleep here for the night.” He gives me a potion of weakness and a golden apple – the same tools that I use to cure villagers who have been zombified (a trauma I do not wish to experience). Böshtok is a genius – of course, it could have the same restorative effects on me.

I take the medicine and rest, letting the chemicals do their work to fight against the raging voices in my head, which have been completely thwarted by “All hail Enderquin.”

The next day, I feel refreshed – almost a little too much. The council has been incredibly hospitable for me. Although we disagree on a lot, when they see I am in a state of turmoil, all of them are quick to help. This is what friends are for, superseding any political and spiritual conflicts that exist. And it didn’t end there…

“Joey, maybe you should go back to Starlight HQ today. I know that building the base calms your mind. Take a break from us – we’ll be okay,” Böshtok reassures me. He has notoriously been against the creation of Starlight HQ, yet here is, telling me to do exactly what calms my mind and brings me peace.

“That’s a good idea. Thanks, Böshtok.”

I take the railway back to Starlight HQ, which is very quiet. Only after building the Inner Circle do I realize just how quiet the base is – Tetraquin will fix this, however we need to complete the Tetraquin Project first before we introduce that. But for now – we have work to do.

All this comes at a weird time, because while we’re very close to completing Starlight HQ 3.0, there is still a lot of work to do – most of it technical stuff. Today, we’re going to focus on the biggest part of that technical work: Starlight Compressor.

This plugin has been a pain in my ass for a long time because its functions are very broad, with the contraption being quite complex. If I leave it for long periods of time, as I’ve done now, then I tend to forget what everything does and have to spend time relearning the mechanics. That’s exactly what I’ve just spent a great deal of time doing. Thankfully, reading back over Session 259 was helpful (this was the last time we really did work on the project).

To recap, the entire purpose of this plugin’s existence is rooted in two main necessities for Starlight HQ:

• The need for an automated storage/smelting system to control large quantities of items
• The modular functionality’s desperate need to have regulation when it comes to consistently changing modular states

The former functionality has already been achieved – it’s the latter stuff that we need to work on, which requires a deep dive into some rather complex redstone.

First, while going through the plugin’s mechanisms, I realized that somewhere between updating from 1.12 to 1.15, comparator detection was broken such that single items moving vertically through hoppers move too quickly to be detected – however, they can be detected if moving horizontally. What the hell is that about?

It’s a huge issue here, because there is literally no space to move things around, and the entire basis for this plugin is hopper comparator detection.

OKAY, thankfully I was able to adjust that – otherwise this entire machine would need to be reworked, and this bit was frustrating enough (it took me a long time to realize it was broken, because it worked perfectly fine in 1.12).

We’re moving into the Dropbox now. I mentioned in a previous session that hooking up Starlight Compressor to Dropbox was going to be a little more involved. That’s because I intend to use Dropbox as an input for Starlight Compressor should it be plugged in.

Basically, Dropbox is supposed to be a drop-off point for such high-volume items as stone, cobblestone, etc. What if you want to smelt those? Well, you would need to use Starlight Compressor. By plugging in Dropbox, Starlight Compressor will unlock a separate hopper chain for the items to funnel through. They will funnel directly into Starlight Compressor from Dropbox, and from there will be processed according to the settings of Starlight Compressor.

From here, all items will make their way down to the furnace room to smelt as normal. Note that there isn’t a way for me to send these items back to the Dropbox storage room – this would require a very complicated setup which is not necessary right now. I do plan to eventually install the Dropbox’s own version of a smelter – but again, this is not necessary right now.

Recall that Starlight Compressor also activates pulse limiters at the end of each output. This has not yet been hooked up to Dropbox, but we’re about to do that now. To reiterate, this means that regardless of the length of the incoming pulse, Compressor will reset the output after seven or so ticks. This is useful especially for Dropbox because a constant stream of items flowing through would cause pistons in our farms to remain extended, not allowing new pumpkins and melons to grow (as an example).

^ Above, I am installing a new redstone line that locks all incoming inputs from the MISC. This makes Starlight Compressor the most invasive modifier because it directly locks the machine from use during active compression. ‘Active compression’ refers to the state that the Compressor goes into after reaching a certain threshold of items (this is decided through the threshold and amplitude levers), causing the pistons in the plugin to extend (a visual indicator that active compression is taking place), see here:

I am retesting all the Compressor’s modes, and there have definitely been some bugs which I have done some work fixing, mostly related to switching consistently between ‘amplitude’ and ‘hold’ mode. In general, the machine is still fragile in the sense that you shouldn’t switch any levers too quickly, or all the time (especially during compression). I think I’ll put this note on the handbook.

Aha, the destination swapper was broken, too. And due to the comparator detection bug I noted earlier, I had to add another hopper at the end of the line just so that it would work:

Maybe you’re wondering: what’s the point of locking the plugins from being used during active compression? Isn’t that just confusing?

It’s necessary to ensure that the modular state is preserved, which is especially important when I choose to log out of the world. See, one major issue (and also a source of some bugs) has to do with leaving chunks, logging out while some contraption is busy, and other things like that. Starlight Compressor’s ‘active compression’ mode does the job of keeping everything stable, such that it becomes safe for me to log out without worry of anything breaking, because anything still working will complete its cycle, and nothing new will start during compression.

Unfortunately, this is a side effect of having an extremely advanced redstone base. Starlight Compressor has only become necessary as a result of this, and for right now it’s the best way to ensure that Starlight HQ remains as bug-free as possible. But I imagine that I’ll be fixing bugs underneath the hood all the way up until the world download.

^ One other such function that active compression will have is preventing overlap among multiple modular functions. This means that, for example, if the potion brewer is activated by the MISC, then all other modular outputs for the MISC (like the SRF farms) will be blocked – and vice versa. This is another method regulating and reducing lag in the base.

On another note, I found a zombified villager which I actually have some plans for; I’ll be keeping him in the SCPC until we expand on this at a later date.

I’m starting the process of over-stocking Starlight HQ as I prepare for the season’s end and imminent completion of Starlight HQ. Even the small stuff like the flower farms is important because flowers make dye, which is extremely versatile (from terracotta to concrete among other things).

Additionally, I’m adding bamboo shoots as decorations around HQ.

Turning my attention back to functionality, the sugar cane farm has long been in dire need of an improvement. Recall that the farm was built back in 2015 before the advent of observers, which meant that it used this messy and ugly BUD-switch based design:

It’s such a mess! I’ve been able to update it for a while and have not done so (in fact, I’ve already made new sugar cane farms in the Inner Circle utilizing the popular observer-based design).

Say goodbye to all that old garbage. We’re saving a lot of pistons, too.

The new design is not only much better, but it saves a ton of space. Real estate is a major issue now, with little to no room left within the Starlight Faction to build new farms/machines. I’ve had to start using spectator mode in a backup copy of the order every time I plan to build a new redstone contraption.

Of course, I needed to hook back up the on/off switch, which is also automated by Dropbox.

I am also getting better at labeling all the various AND gates underneath HQ so that I am not completely lost when running new redstone lines. Yes, it has become an event trying to sneak new wires throughout this area. Tear down literally any wall, and you’ll see a web of wires infesting as much block space as possible.

I’m building up supplies here at the SRF food hub, which is going to be updated in the coming sessions as well. An old farm built way back in Season 2, it’s actually still very powerful, producing crops faster than the villager-run crop farms. The only downside is that it requires a lot of bonemeal – it also requires player input, which the modular farms do not.

I’m making a mental note that our cocoa bean farm no longer works, so I’ll need to build a new one later.

One way I have been dealing with the overflow of bone drops from our mob farm is by turning it into bonemeal and stocking every farm to hell. It’s a bit of grind work, but it’s necessary.

Today’s final task will be completing an old piece of the MISC that I started a while ago but never finished: hooking up the mushroom farm! The old automatic farm from Season 1 is now the oldest farm that I still use in this world, and we’re upgrading it to be used automatically through the MISC. Why build a new one when it still works just fine? Besides, I already have new ones through Starlight Overdrive. I can then plug in Starlight Overdrive if I want to activate them.

What you’re seeing is the installation of the farm’s MISC output wire, with all associated modifiers built into it (Limiter, Echo, and Compressor being the main ones required here). This is a process, because I then need to run redstone lines from each of those modifiers down to toggle whether they’re used, and the mushroom farm’s location in-between the Power Museum and SRF isn’t exactly the easiest to get new wires into.

…and I’m doing the exact same thing for the bamboo farm!

Thankfully, its location is much easier, being mostly out of the way. The SCPC is basically the outer limits of underground HQ at the moment, meaning it’s unlikely that I will run into anything other than STAS and a couple wires running to the Night Lights and iron farm.

With that, I can now finish adding the remaining MISC links for these farms (and other targets I’ve just been neglecting). I won’t bother writing on these here because this process is grind work at this point. Check out Session 270 if you want to see the whole process of adding a new link. Each and every link is a process with multiple components, and then with each one introduces the possibility of new bugs I need to iron out.

It’s as I said, I’ll be fine tuning the MISC until the end of the season and even beyond most likely.

But for now, I’ve made major progress, finally completing all of Starlight Compressor’s functions and improving many core components of Starlight HQ. Now that the principal technical features of the base are effectively done, save for finishing some MISC links, I’m ready to get the rest of the base done, too.

What in the world is this??

Lily of the Valley? Never heard of it in Minecraft before – that means it must be a new plant, or new enough that I wouldn’t have encountered it previously.

We’re in western unincorporated territory of Starlight City today. Why?

Because I need a lot of wood – much more than the tree farm can provide without using tons of bonemeal. Today, we’re finishing Starlight Treehouse. Finally, once and for all.

Two masons in this village? That’s amazing! I’ll be adding this village to our trade network – it’s within render distance of our primary Starlight City village across the chunk border if it is high enough.

Sweet berries? And FOXES – welcome. Can we bring one home??

It’s a tough challenge, as these guys are not adamant on getting anywhere near me.

However, I have very persuasive methods. By breeding two together, the bred fox becomes trusting of me, and thus will not dart from me. But I need to name her in order to make sure I know who she is (as she will follow the parents, who will dart from me).

STOP attacking all the animals!!

Admittedly, it’s quite entertaining to see Garma pounce on the sheep.

A couple rides later, and she has been successfully brought back to Starlight HQ!

For now, she will rest here by Outback Station, while we work on the treehouse.

Ah, so this project is now the longest-running incomplete project of the season, having been started several years ago now. The reason I haven’t completed it is because my plans for it have evolved over the years. See, back when it started, I was still playing in Minecraft 1.12. Such things as bamboo, sweet berries, composting, and bees were not even in the game. But when I learned they had, I conjured plans to include all of these things within the treehouse. And from there my plans just expanded. How would we do this? Well, it’s a pretty big update.

First: composters and a cartography table are being added to the map room.

An anvil is also being added to the enchanting room.

^ This is where the unfinished part of the treehouse starts. As you noticed from the outside, a huge chunk is missing from the right side. That’s what we need to finish today.

…But first, I’ll enjoy a beautiful sunset from the bedroom, and we’ll start in the morning.

This will be the first room in the treehouse’s new addition: The Ecosystem. In this expansion, we’ll be including all the following farms to Starlight Treehouse: bamboo, sugar cane, sweet berries, wheat, carrot, potato, cocoa bean, mushroom stew, flowers (every type), bees, bonemeal, melons, and of course a variety of items from our librarian (mainly emeralds).

I’m very grateful that lanterns exist. They’re an amazing addition, and while most of the treehouse’s lighting has been hidden – I’m very open to utilizing lanterns in the design as well.

Another block I am absolutely loving is the regular wood which covers all six sides with the log texture. This adds a much more natural feel to the outer “branch” parts of the treehouse.

This entire area is a tricky aesthetic challenge, and easily one of the more difficult that I’ve had to face because while working on it, I have to pay equal attention to both the interior design and exterior. In a build with so little symmetry, every block is important, and requires careful attention to detail.

^ I’ve installed the first of our micro farms – the sweet berry farm! It’s a simple observer clock-based design. These berries are neat because to harvest a single plant, you just need to right-click it (and so the plant itself is akin to tilled soil for berries).

Bamboo is being added in the corners of this hub – this is our bamboo farm as well! You’ll notice these are all micro-level farms. That’s the idea. Starlight Treehouse is very much a Skyblock-inspired build, with all survival essentials being packed up into here.

^ Here’s another great use of the wood block. Hopper chains will be used to automatically transport items from the farms above down into the storage room. Using wood, I can cover these hopper chains so they look like branches!

Only a few lighting sources are needed on the outside, as glowstone does the job in most places, hidden in the leaves.

From here, you just need to drop all sweet berries and bamboo into the hoppers, and they’ll automatically go down into storage.

Adding the sugar cane farm is tricky only because I need to make sure not to block the beacon beam.

With some maneuvering, this is done, and now we have a small micro sugar cane farm that automatically collects the sugar cane. It’s not going to nearly sustain efficient production of emeralds, but it will be another passive source of sugar cane in this area which will build up over time.

Dealing with the beacon beams has proven a challenge, but it’s one we have successfully faced!

Coming along beautifully! And, you get a nice view of Starlight Castle out to the right side. I’m loving the design of this room, and this approach will continue throughout the rest of the Ecosystem.

We’re moving to the second hub next door, which is the first you’ll enter. This hub will simply collect storage from the farms that will go above this room.

Also, I’m adding an automatic micro melon farm, with its own automatic storage collection. It does not need to be visible, so it will be hidden from sight:

^ All our current farm items will cycle to the bottom-most room in our storage.

I’m adding more bamboo around the treehouse too, because I think it looks nice.

^ Here you can clearly see the challenge that comes with this type of build. All this needs to be enclosed, and it needs to be done right.

So, I’m starting at the beginning, working my way outwards, to connect everything down below. Leaves, slabs, stairs, fences, lanterns, and other wood items are used in mostly coherent combinations to make this look right.

From this area, the final hub will be located above the two I just built.

Utilizing a similar aesthetic approach, I have also decided to add a tree farm up here. It feels appropriate since I’m in a treehouse after all.

The first farm to be located up here is the cocoa bean farm – a fast micro farm which will be replicated downstairs in the SRF at some point.

Before I add any campfires to the treehouse, I just needed to verify that they cannot catch fire on anything. I’ve had several nightmares about the treehouse burning down – that is not a day I want to ever see.

Thankfully, nothing happened, so we’re safe to move forward with the addition of bees.

I planted a small tree just to see the size we’re dealing with – I have decided to enclose this area with a leaf dome. I think that will look cool.

Yeah, it does look cool.

The campfires make this area feel so cozy! That’s a great feature in itself.

^ Here, you can see me decorating the outside of the cocoa bean farm’s redstone. I am using spruce leaves to give some contrast to the lush greens of the oak leaves.

This fenced dark oak area will be reserved for a very unique addition to Starlight Treehouse, and to Starlight HQ as a whole: brown mooshrooms. To get these, you need to strike a regular mooshroom with lightning. Only then can you use them to get suspicious stews! Of course, we can also use them to farm mushroom stew, which is far more efficient than crafting it. It thus provides an endless food source while up in the treehouse.

That’s a waiting game for now, so I’ll be moving on to the final farm area: the wheat/carrot/potato farm.

This is another classic micro farm design, but using observers, and I have to be cautious about how I cover it up because there are pistons involved.

Nice, and I’m using barrels to store these particular items. The same goes for cocoa beans, which you can see neatly tucked on the right side.

From this room, a few specific “hopper branches” will be added: honey items, which will all be included in one chest, and bonemeal.

An automated composter will be added here, and the idea is to use cookies as the composting ingredient of choice. Cookies have an 85% chance of increasing the compost layer, and because you get eight cookies per two wheat and one cocoa bean, this makes it highly efficient compared to using the sum of its parts. The bonemeal created here can then be recycled right back into the farms themselves. That’s why this is an ecosystem!

Finally, I am adding the bee nests, which I had been putting off because bees could very easily exit the treehouse and become lost forever. This area has now been secured.

^ Well, almost secured. It seems the bees have done a great job at exposing security flaws in my treehouse.

Oh yeah, here is the final storage room beneath the top layer, with the bonemeal and honey chests automatically receiving their respective items from above. The barrel of emeralds does not have such a hopper chain, but this is also not an automated item that needs to be sorted as such.

In the tree farm, I’m adding all two-high flowers, poppies, and dandelions. These flowers can be duplicated using bonemeal, meaning we could technically also farm them.

Okay Garma! Time to go to your new home!

Welcome to Starlight Treehouse! I don’t want you jumping out of the treehouse, so I’ll be keeping you up here in this area for now (it is the most secure part now).

Looking good… except that I need to deal with all the exposed glowstone! If you couldn’t tell, I really do not like the look of regular glowstone. That’s why I always use glowstone lamps instead.

Also, I need to deal with this whole top section. The best way to do so?

A leaf dome, obviously. In fact, I think I’ll do that everywhere.

Oh yes, that really does a great job covering up all the robust redstone. Let’s dome the rest.

As part of this process, I need to cover up all the glowstone from underneath.

Leave it to me to not use scaffolding at all on this build until right now. Hey – better late than never!

Finally, I need to slab the entire treehouse with Nether brick slabs. Have you guessed why?

In the event that lightning ever struck the treehouse in the wrong spot, it would rapidly burn the entire thing down, even during the rain. 95% of this build is highly flammable, and I do not even want to risk this happening. Nether slabs look the closest to dark oak wood from afar, which is why I am using them.

To be fair, this is still not foolproof, but it protects the treehouse far better than leaving it with no covering. The domes all look good, and overall, I am happy to say that this monstrous build is finally complete!!

At long last, the Lapis Hall of Fame gets a new addition, as we celebrate one of the season’s biggest projects finally meeting its completion.

The Ecosystem is working wonderfully, and I’ve been spending quite a lot of time just hanging out inside the treehouse, enjoying what I have accomplished here. I am quite proud of this build, so much so that I would say it is probably my best build to date. A full ecosystem, a complex redstone house, the full control center for the Night Lights outside, a home for all my pets, our map room – and let’s not forget this is the Overworld hub for the Gold Grinder, which also makes this the best place to craft golden carrots now that we have a carrot farm up here – this build is just an amazing addition to Starlight. I can’t wait to see its use grow throughout the rest of this season and the seasons to come.

There’s a lot of work to do to finish shaping the landscape of Starlight Outback. Although the trail itself has been properly lit, we still need to complete Vax Valley, the hill that Starlight Treehouse sits on top of, the outback plaza, and the landscape that connects the outback to Starlight Castle.

I’m starting here at Vax Valley, which was initially going to be a much more involved build. I had plans to introduce certain vertical developments to the valley a while back, but like most other things this season, my plans have expanded quite a bit. For now, I’ll hold off on this expansion until next season.

This means I’ll complete what lives of the valley now, and that starts with the chorus fruit farm.

The first problem is that sometimes chorus fruits get stuck on top of the walls. Well, these walls were never finished anyway. I am going to cap this entire farm off.

Going up we are, but I want to make sure I am not inhibiting the growth of the chorus plants.

Oh, I really like this, and notice that the roof slowly caves inward to ensure no chorus fruits can get stuck on any blocks up top. Landing on top of the glass panes is okay – I can just jump to get those, and the panes are necessary to ensure we always have enough chorus flowers to replant.

LIGHT BLUE CONCRETE POWDER!! The best color combo for a cozy-themed valley!

While working on this, I made an error in my geometry yet again with the valley’s rounded-corner square shape… but you didn’t notice!! I fixed it anyway.

^ Now this has got to be the most annoying thing in Minecraft, ever. The actual sequence of which stairs you place where matters to ensure they do not automatically link up to stairs on the other side. Because this is what I want to achieve:

And so, with all the lighting complete inside the valley, we have the finished farm area:

I love the blue-green colors that make the area feel very comfortable and cozy, and this specific color palette expands to make up most of the outback itself. As I continue detailing the rest of the landscape, I want to keep these themes, as the area is intended to feel like paradise.

Now, we still have to deal with all this:

That’s not a huge problem – I can just cover it with logs and wood.

My work on the outback is just starting, as I’ll now be turning attention the outback plaza and the hill leading up to Starlight Treehouse.

First, a dome to cover the plaza, because phantoms are the most annoying thing ever. And because I love domes.

I am not sure how I feel about the grey colors of the beams, but it isn’t terrible.

Next, I will be connecting the outback STAS station into the dome. This area will be airlocked! Safety first.

Very nice – now, we can work on the hill.

The path needs to be properly lit, and unfortunately hiding lights in the trees will only do so much. I will need to put lighting in the ground somehow.

Here, you can see that I am continuing with the light blue and green colors. It’s just so lovely, and the hedge walls work to establish a proper entrance to the horse stables and outback tunnel that travels through the mountain.

Now, back to the lighting for the hill – I have an idea that should work.

A classic use of leaves again to hide glowstone, I think the pattern of path, wood, and leaves works here. This, in addition to the acacia lanterns hanging from the trees (an aesthetic I have been using to light up the spawn chunks), definitely makes the landscape feel much more alive.

Of course, more flowers and a waterfall help to achieve that, too.

Well, it turns out that my iron ingot supply had overflown, so I’ve installed a separate area for iron blocks underneath the iron farm. I realized this because my Night Lights stayed on – an indication that ingots were not leaving the hoppers.

It is just lovely – I haven’t done landscaping in a while, so this is a really fun project for me.

Now, to finish up the area connecting the outback to Starlight Castle!

Extending the path, I’m adding more water aesthetics up here because it looks nice.

Indeed, the outback is huge, and I won’t get to establish the entire landscape right now. This is totally fine, because I have many other build projects in mind for this area. I want to let the land live free so that I have the canvas to start these projects later on. As such, this will be the extent of the outback’s landscaping for the season.

And it’s a great place to end because the whole area is much prettier.

^ Lastly, we need to get rid of this sad turtle pen and make an actual turtle scute farm.

Originally a design by Shulkercraft, I’ll be adding it to Vax Valley as one of the valley’s “natural borders.” This also means that the farm will only be working if we’re in this area, as Vax Valley is not loaded anywhere within the Starlight faction.

It will be HUGE, because we need lots of scutes to make turtle heads. This will help me stock the potion brewer to make potions of the turtle master.

Of course, I need the area to be protected at night, which means the minecart must be fully enclosed at all times.

Turtles are drawn to water, but contrary to what you may believe, you do not need to breed them in a beach biome at all (in fact, this is a forest biome with an artificial “shore”). This means new baby turtles will travel to the water, falling into the area with hoppers.

But, I’m keeping the trapdoors closed first, so that I can build an initial population of turtles. They populate extremely fast, so I fully expect the area to get completely covered in turtle eggs.

I wasn’t wrong about that, but it looks like I will need to wait a bit before we see the full extent of the farm’s population.

Behind the farm, a small pond works well for a seagrass farm for the current time.

How many turtles exactly will end up in here? That’s a question to be answered on another day.

But on an unrelated note… why are pillagers continuing to show up?? It seems their appearances on Quintropolis Island have become more frequent… Hopefully that isn’t a bad omen… see what I did there?

I’ve gotten a few turtle heads now, which means I have finally been able to update the potion brewer to complete the full set of potions!

Welcome the Potions of the Turtle Master – I have yet to find a viable use for these. Like many other niche features (such as tipped arrows), minigames or parkour courses could make these very valuable.

In other news, this connector from the potion brewer down to the storage hall has remained incomplete aesthetically.

Not anymore!

The same can be said of the bamboo farm storage area.

Not anymore!! Here, I am using smooth quartz for the first time – a beautiful block that may be used in many other builds, because of how smooth it is.

Finally, a thunderstorm showed up, so I headed over to the SANA to get two of the mooshrooms.

From here, and with some healing potions on hand, I struck them with my Channeling trident, turning them into the brown mooshrooms we need for Starlight Treehouse’s suspicious stew farm.

And now they are home! Using poppies on a brown mooshroom provides night vision stew; using dandelions provides saturation effect (basically making this a superfood). This farm also hosts regular mushroom stew, making this a perfect quick resource for food. Since we grow poppies and dandelions in the treehouse, it’s suitable that we would ideally store both of these stews.

You can see that I’ve prepared a full barrel for each.

Oh yes – I just know you’re looking forward to seeing all those turtles. But we’ve still got some waiting to do yet.

GET OUT!! You are not welcome here.

The village in Starlight City which had two masons now has like ten clerics, because I’ve been working on expanding its trade network. I have way too much zombie flesh that I need to get rid of – more than Maker in the Inner Circle can handle.

This cocoa bean farm in the SRF food hub no longer works.

So, I’m replacing it with the same farm that’s inside Starlight Treehouse. Very fast, and efficient, but not lag friendly.

Space is an issue since there’s stuff all around the food hub. So, I don’t have much room to work with up here.

Right next door, you may recall that when I updated the pumpkin/melon farms to be modular, they could no longer be manually harvested. Well, I’m finally re-adding a way to harvest them manually. How to do this?

Just add a button.

Downstairs, I’m adding a significant addition to the food hub – a composter! Since I’ve been adding them to other parts of HQ (Starlight Treehouse, modular crop farms), I figured this would be a great spot to add another, because cookie production is fast here. As I noted in Session 285, cookies are the best composting item because you get eight for every two wheat and one cocoa bean. And now, you can farm both extremely fast here.

Concisely, you’ll just fill the right-most chest with whatever you want to compost. A small hopper column carries the items down into a composter, which will have eight double chests to store bonemeal.

I’m getting started right away!

Additionally, I’m sneaking in some additional barrels to store rabbit stews and beetroot stews. This is because you have everything you need to make both right here (except for rabbit, which is all the way in the Aqua Lounge, but I can easily make another rabbit farm here in the future).

These are admittedly arbitrary food items which have so much potential to be upgraded, but they are not convenient for most purposes right now. Nonetheless, I am a completionist, which is why I am adding them.

More food hub updates: a potato smelter! Just like what we have going on in the automated modular crop farms, I’ve been lacking a way to get all the potatoes in this hub smelted.

Since I want everything to be automated (meaning that I want the baked potatoes to automatically store in their respective chest), this addition requires a slight reordering of the chests, placing the potatoes on the far-left wall. This is because there is no space behind the chests to fit more hoppers, so they must enter from the side.

And nice, I have another means by which I can acquire baked potatoes. The only thing now is to make sure the furnace is constantly stocked – a full chest of potatoes may be better suited for blaze rods as a furnace fuel, but it just depends. Ideally, I’d build another bamboo farm specifically to keep the fuel stocked, but it’s obvious why we can’t do that here (there’s no room for anything).

These are all great updates to the food hub, keeping it relevant even considering how old it is (2015).

Next, I’m labeling these old chests in the Mushroom Cove, which before now had no designated items (except the two mushroom types, which are automatically sorted from the big mushroom farm above).

I’m putting that heart of the sea to use now, as I install the world’s first conduit for the Aqua Lounge!

Beautiful, and now the entire Starlight Bay is much easier to navigate and work within, because of Conduit Power (which gives us Night Vision and Water Breathing).

What’s this? I never finished this stairwell in Starlight Station!

Not anymore!

^ Above, you can see the crop storage for our modular farms. But notably, one crop has been missing, and it seems to me that there is a perfect spot for it on the left side.

I had to do a little restructuring of the SRF entrance to add another sorter, but it worked out nicely, and now I will be installing the final modular crop farm: wheat.

Villager-powered wheat farms work a little differently from the other three, and this is because villagers do not trade wheat with one another (the mechanic which the other three farms utilize). Instead, they trade bread, but that’s far less valuable.

The solution is to build a full layer of hoppers underneath the farmland. This means that whenever our farmer harvests wheat crops, they will be automatically picked up. Ensuring the maximum efficiency here will require that farmer’s inventory also to be full.

Otherwise, the wheat farm maintains the same shape, completing the full “diamond” shape of the four farms (fun fact: I purposefully kept this area free of any redstone/development as I always knew I wanted this final wheat farm here – there is stuff built all around this area now).

Since it is located right above the Starlight City Planning Center, I can now introduce our new farmer quite easily – the one I captured and purified a couple sessions back!

And, he trades bread! This is a nice bonus, since none of our other farmers trade bread. Is bread the most useful food item? Absolutely not. But is it good to have the option to trade it instead of crafting it with wheat (which has so many other, better, uses)? Absolutely.

I’m first giving this guy several stacks of wheat seeds to fill up his inventory. It appears I needed at least six stacks, but I’ve also read that villagers have eight inventory slots. Regardless, he stopped picking up seeds, so it must be full. This means that he will not pick up any wheat.

With the new modular wheat farm working nicely, it’s time to revisit an idea I had: adding lecterns within all of Starlight HQ’s modular plugins to provide an overview on how to use it. I realized that as I prepare to upload the world for download, many players may not have read this journal, so they will be entirely confused on what the hell these plugins do (and they will have no idea about Starlight HQ’s unique modular abilities).

My goal is to fix that, essentially moving my “Starlight HQ Reference Guide” into Starlight itself.

In each plugin – even the small ones – I am adding a lectern post that tells you what the plugin does, and how to use it. Some plugins, like the MISC and Starlight Compressor, have additional books to outline their various parameters.

For Dropbox, I am adding another book that showcases how to use the plugin combined with modifiers in the mixer to create some useful behaviors. I think this is also a great way to showcase practical uses of everything I’ve spent the last few years developing within this base.

But what the hell is this? My friends, this is what a lightning strike can do. It’s exactly why I slabbed Starlight Treehouse.

It took out the entire roof, and several trees! Wow. I’ve done my best to replace it, but wow.

That being said, detailing is coming to a close. There are still a few things left to do, but it’s minor work. Starlight HQ 3.0 is just about done, so here I am providing an initial skyline shot from the back side (I’m excited about the full final skyline photo, but we have some things to change for it yet). It’s so colorful; I love what this place has become. Imagine a giant rainbow emerging across the entire base – oh, I better stop now before I get ahead of myself. But for what it’s worth: I am definitely building a giant rainbow here at some point.

As I continue bugfixing and finishing up the overdrive farms underground for Starlight Overdrive (which I’ve been doing behind the scenes throughout each of these sessions), one thing remains to be checked…

THE TURTLES!!!

That was a bad death. It was caused by this death trap:

I spent a good deal of time further exploring the caves underneath Quintropolis Island, even after losing everything in that lava hole. By everything, I do mean all my Mending tools, and even a pair of elytra wings (which I shouldn’t have been wearing anyway). This was a good learning experience, but thankfully with where I am in this world, replacing everything was no issue – including my levels.

From there, it brings me great satisfaction to share that the overdrive farms are now fully complete. But the process was quite an event over the last several sessions…

Oh yes, TNT was my best friend, as otherwise it would have taken way too long to remove the huge chunk of stone – even with Haste II.

Due to the low amount of spawning spaces available in this area, that immediately turned this chunk into ground zero for a mob infestation. Needless to say, this was the first order of business.

Once I removed all that nonsense, installing the farms was a simple process of repetition. But simple does not equal cheap. No, this was a rather expensive build process.

There is far more stone brick being used here than you may think, in addition to pistons and observers. Yes, I opted to backtrack to the observer-based design, and instead will use Starlight Overdrive to enable/disable the farms by layer. For example, if you have Overdrive set to ‘Multiply by 3,’ then it will only enable the bottom two layers of the farms.

Does this mean it’s now technically a generator? No. It modifies base activity, even if it’s no longer based on modular generators specifically. I just think this is a much better utilization of the plugin, considering that its former functionality would cause way too much lag.

These overdrive farms have been incredible so far, and I’ll say that with all eight layers enabled – it causes the chests to fill up way too quickly. This is a good thing, though! It means we now have industrial-scale levels for some resource production in Starlight HQ. We are going to need this soon.

Now, onto today’s main project: we must complete Starlight Castle. If you recall, we originally completed the castle’s complete reconstruction way back in Session 258. However, several parts were left unfinished, notably: the Aqua Lounge entrance hall, the fireworks hall, the Great Balcony, and the front entrance. Today, we’re finishing all those up.

First, we still need a way to exit Starlight Castle’s back entrance! The reason this was never installed before is because of this issue:

Adding a pressure plate is simply not possible if I want to preserve the look of the outside, which I do. As such, we need another solution.

Although buttons were not my preferred choice, it looks like they are the only option for now, unless I want to run tripwires across here (which I don’t).

Hey, at least now I can stop tearing down the door every time I need to leave!

The Aqua Lounge entrance hall, which is just an extension from Starlight Room, is the easiest part of this renovation, so we’ll just knock that out.

Easy, and because it also includes a ladder up to the fireworks hall, we’ll just continue up to that.

Okay, so I created plenty of design options in my head for this area, which is just badly designed to begin with. But it exists because of history: this hall used to be the original location for my sheep/wool farm. Rather than destroy it, I just reused it to be my fireworks hub. I now have an opportunity to renovate it such that it actually can work here (as it technically is not attached to Starlight Castle).

With this hall, I’m bringing out Starlight Castle’s principal colors in a new way, using light blue concrete to splash some new vibes with the walls.

Prismarine, end rods, and obsidian will finish off the look.

The back area is now revamped as well and connects nicely to the dark oak bridge that links Starlight Plaza to the castle’s back entrance! I’m quite satisfied with this segment.

Of course, the areas atop the hall are walkable, so I need to make those pretty, too.

Wait, why is that still oak wood? Sheesh, I glossed over so many details!

Next up: the main entrance!

I’ll maintain the exact same style here, because I still like it. I’m just going to replace all the stone brick.

^ Additionally, I really like this collaboration between purpur pillars and pink concrete on the sides. It simultaneously fixes the issue of the redstone underneath the entrance being exposed.

See here:

It’s just an ugly mess under here! There is no reason it needs to be visible at all.

I am also dealing with the ugly garbage that still sticks out from the mountain that used to live here. Linking together the Lapis Hall of Fame, the front of Starlight Castle, and the entrance into the Hall of Armor below – I’m using light blue clay to give some contrast to the almost overwhelming purples:

Amazing! Now, onto the next issue:

The Great Balcony has long been a problem I have been unable to fix because I could not decide on a material with which to replace it. Currently, it’s built out of spruce wood. Rebuilding it out of purpur, quartz, or prismarine would not look right at all. And that’s when I realized: maybe it does not need to be rebuilt. Maybe the spruce wood still works fine here, and I’m just biased at having looked at the same build for over eight years.

Acknowledging this, I decided to keep the spruce, and just update it. Even after eight years, it still hasn’t been updated once.

First, working my way up, I’m adding some updates to the three main observatories. Lighting adjustments, concrete, etc. I decided to keep them built out of clay because I like the more muted colors.

Then, I went ahead and built a fourth observatory out of gold and yellow concrete. This is just to complete the series.

Doing so allows me to start the Great Balcony’s updates here on the supports, which have never been properly lit to prevent mob spawning.

Nice! Lanterns have proven a godsend. Let’s keep going with those…

Torches still invade the entire balcony, which is now the only place within HQ’s builds that contain them (other than undeveloped/natural areas). Let’s fix that.

First, the lava lighting I had been using which could be viewed from the Glass Dome has an adverse side effect: it burns the vines inside the tower, preventing you from reaching the dome. I am replacing them with lamps.

Next, I’m giving some variety to the fence work on the balcony. The center ring will be birch, followed by oak in the middle, then dark oak on the outer ring.

Finally, lanterns dot the area, replacing all torches. The balcony is still subject to destruction by lightning (in fact, I did notice a section where two blocks were missing). But this seems to be relatively rare, as the glass dome tends to protect large parts of it.

There is the new balcony… which really doesn’t look much different from afar.

Starlight Castle might now be fully completed, but one build in HQ remains far from it: the Starlight Solace Center. To be fair, this build was never the center of attention. In fact, with every session it has appeared in, the build was always a supplementary project – never a main one.

As a result, it hasn’t received nearly the attention required to get it done, and my plans for it have expanded. It will no longer be feasible to complete the build this season, as I now want to turn it into a “second” Starlight Arcade. The advantage here is that the SSC is relatively isolated from the rest of HQ, meaning that there is more room for building more intricate arcade games. The problem with Starlight Arcade is that it’s located in an already dense area, making the construction of any further games impossible.

In fact, the Sandbox in Starlight Arcade will also not be completed this season.

For the SSC, I’ll go ahead and complete this entrance from the Power Museum and tidy up what already exists of it.

Nice – there is a lot of potential here, as this build already looks like a potential arcade center (it was never originally intended for this purpose). I already have plans for several new arcade games I would love to build which never would have fit in Starlight Arcade due solely to space constraints. This makes the Starlight Solace Center a perfect candidate for expansion on this front and will allow the build to take center stage next season for principal development.

For now, as I continue tidying up what we have done, I notice that all this redstone remains exposed underneath the Alchemy Dome. What the hell? How do such oversights continue to happen? I guess Starlight HQ’s size does make it easy to overlook such details, especially when I’m actively focused on other projects.

It’s an easy fix in either case.

My friends, Starlight HQ 3.0 is just about complete. We’ve done all the work that’s feasible to fit into this season, and I’ve clearly marked (both here and in the world itself) the work that will be held off until the next. We can see that the base remains a canvas of huge opportunities, as there is so much still to do! I can’t wait to move forward with these projects that will take us into Starlight 4.0, but for now – let’s appreciate what we have done, and what it has taken to get to this point.

Starlight HQ 3.0 represents the culmination of more than eight years of progressing through this world. I mean, we already went through 1.0 and 2.0. The main difference with v3.0 is that I have completely changed the infrastructure of the base, both functionally and aesthetically. It doesn’t look the same, it doesn’t act the same, and it doesn’t even feel the same as it once did. So, the question inevitably arises: is this still the same base? Before we move onto the season’s endgame, this is a question I’d like to address.

Starlight HQ has a long history – so long, in fact, that it stretches nearly a decade across multiple worlds. Fun fact: Starlight was also the name of my very first base in Minecraft, ever, when I first began playing the game in 2012. Back then, things were much simpler – that includes goals. The idea of a highly advanced redstone-operated complex was not even conceived in my head back when I first began building Starlight HQ in this world. In fact, Starlight HQ was never originally intended to stretch far beyond Starlight Castle at all. That means even the entire outback faction was a new development added only as the demand for it arose throughout time – this was also true of the Starlight Resources Facility in Season 2 (however the SRF was always a planned construction from the beginning). Not only has the original base been completely replaced functionally, but we’ve now just taken the last bits of “old Starlight” out of the picture regarding the build’s aesthetics.

That begs the question: is this still the same Starlight?

I am reminded of the Ship of Theseus thought experiment which we will explore today. For those of you unaware, this experiment asks a provoking question as it relates to change. It goes as follows:

Suppose you have a ship, and over time some of the planks rot – so, you replace them with new planks. Eventually, the entire ship’s planks have been replaced, and maybe some things have been added onto the ship as well. Is this still the same, true ship, if none of its original material is left?

There is no correct answer to this question as it’s relative. The fact is that I could rename Starlight to anything, and if I were to do so, someone who saw the original Starlight next to this new iteration would not be able to tell that the latter was once the former – at least at first glance. Would you like that comparison? Of course, you would.

Starlight HQ 1.0, finished December 1, 2013 (Session 50):

^ As you can see, the build was very humble – albeit still quite grandiose – though the base was lacking a lot of functionality, with the castle itself featuring no farms other than a stone and cobblestone generator on the fourth floor (I never used them because they were tiny and inconveniently located). The entire castle was constructed while still mostly in the iron age, no mesa resource (it was built in 1.6 mostly, but was finished shortly after 1.7 released), barely had started enchanting tools, and had just a few humble resource farms within the Farmlands (none of which were automated). This was also the entire world right here, with nothing outside Starlight Castle built.

I never talked a lot about my way of life during Season 1. Some of it is still on YouTube actually – you can view the playlist containing the very first 26 sessions HERE, as I originally planned to do a Let’s Play which fell through due to my poor laptop at the time. What you will notice is that throughout those videos, I really fall victim to the ‘survival’ aspect of this game. Indeed, the first season lives up to its name: Survival of the Fittest. What took an entire season there would take maybe 15 sessions today, probably even less – this is a result of my exponential growth in the world, and what I’ve been able to achieve with Starlight’s resource production over time. I guess this is true for all players.

Starlight HQ 1.5 (Session 100) is really what I consider the first true complete version of the base, as it adds the Power Museum, mob farm, and Starlight Station:

That is exactly where this journal started back in 2015 – at the very beginning of Season 2, with all of Season 1’s documentation being tied up in a PDF (which you can download in the first post). Even Season 2 was a slow journey progressing into the diamond age, finally reaching endgame as the season concluded with a quad-Wither battle. I know, it’s controversial to suggest that I had reached endgame before going to the End; however, notice that my progress in this world (other than my use of purpur blocks to redo Starlight Castle) has never been defined by the End. This did change with elytra, and quite significantly so, however you must also realize that the definition of endgame used to be different, as Season 2 concluded while I still played in Minecraft 1.8 (which means that neither elytra nor purpur even existed; so, given those facts, I had definitely reached endgame).

My progress has always been slow, because I tended to focus on building things more so than farming. This approach has evolved throughout Season 3, as I continue to aim for a healthy balance that keeps this world, and Starlight, interesting even after eight years. This is another reason for my urge to consistently change things – I get bored of seeing the same stuff for such a long time. And rather than move on to build new things, I much prefer to improve what already exists first.

Every now and then, I do hop back in a backup from one of the world’s old checkpoints – Session 100, for example. And when I do, I always garner a new appreciation for the history that is so closely linked with that version of the world. What’s far more interesting, however, is that I always remember exactly where I was in real life through these old versions. Indeed, Minecraft for me used to be my outlet. Personally, 2014-2015 was a tough time, and this was also the time frame that Season 1 concluded (fun fact: it is also why I decided to start this journal, despite knowing about this forum since early 2014). Revisiting the old copies of this world brings back that history – not in a negative way, but in a way that lets me realize how much Starlight has changed, and therefore how my life has changed with it. I can no longer look at Starlight today and see that history.

Starlight HQ 2.0:

When Starlight HQ 2.0 was finished in late 2016, I was admittedly dissatisfied. I would never have told you that at the time because the build was still a milestone. But I rarely like to discuss v2.0 anymore, reason being that I always felt it was just an incomplete check box I arbitrarily marked so that I could tie up Season 2 with a bow. Don’t get me wrong – this version was a huge update from 1.5, and it did a decent job moving the base into a slightly more modern age. But it was nowhere near the type of transformation that I desired – the very transformation that has now defined v3.0. Comparing 1.0 to 2.0 is like comparing an unfinished living room to its furnished counterpart. But comparing 2.0 to 3.0 is effectively comparing the furnished living room to what replaced it after it was demolished and rebuilt with a budget ten times the original and the ambition of an entitled entrepreneur.

I accepted that I would never be happy with 2.0, because it was in early 2016 that my ideas for Starlight 3.0 really took shape. The modular system, massive scale farms, the outback faction, the subway, the treehouse, and the reconstruction of Starlight Castle with purpur – I realized that I had just built a foundation for something that could be truly amazing. But v2.0 was just that: a foundation. By the time all this came to me, Season 2 was almost over. As such, I decided to exercise delayed gratification and finish what I was doing first – something I have proven to be very good at.

Tetraquin is another story. Astute followers of the journal so far know that “Tetraquin” as a title has loomed across the entire season (even is the name of one of the subway stations), but you still have no idea what the hell that means. I had started a project this season called the “Tetraquin Project” which was simply a six-step process towards moving us into the industrial/modular revolution. Currently, four stages are complete. But what is Tetraquin? In fact, I originally wanted to build it in Season 2. To summarize, Tetraquin describes the endgame of Starlight HQ – it will be a high-tech village and laboratory with such advanced infrastructure that the entire faction is intended to be its own separate ecosystem controlled by its own modular system (“tetra” because it would technically be the base’s fourth faction). Designing it the way I want could not be possible with v2.0 as such. But now with 3.0? The foundation is far more readily prepared for Tetraquin to be built.

All that being said, let’s see that colorful final skyline photo of the now-completed Starlight HQ 3.0:

I know – normal progression in this game does mean that eventually we move up in certain areas. Like enchanted diamond tools. And using higher quality build materials (sometimes, and if we want to). And automated farms. Recently we ascended to elytra and Mending, too (about 1.5 years ago, which is still modern for this world). However, why did I decide to completely destroy the historical base that otherwise preserved a lot of my early game memories?

Some people leave old bases to build new ones. Others improve upon their base but maintain its original style. The truth is that I always realized Starlight’s layout had potential to be developed into something greater, and somewhere around the end of Season 2 is when I began conceptualizing its transformation which we’ve just completed.

Thinking about the base as a modular base started with a proof of concept: I imagined the possibility of having a base that could be customized to fit my playstyle at any given time. At the time, I didn’t have the redstone knowledge to even know how to build something like this, because I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. In fact, I only figured that out through trial and error, with Session 270 marking the culmination of my efforts to reach a system that actually works to achieve this customizability. Of course, this would be much easier to do in a completely new base designed specifically for modular customizability. So why didn’t I just do that?

There are two primary reasons I chose to do this to Starlight:

• Starlight HQ 2.0 had an incredible foundation upon which the modular system could be built, but its archaic appearance needed to be updated in order to fit the high-tech themes that newer builds within Starlight HQ had begun adopting. As I developed the outback and tangent floor alongside the MISC, I realized that my aesthetic style was shifting, and it didn’t fit the original Starlight HQ. I began using more expensive building materials as resources started to become more abundant, and my palette geared towards more industrial, modern aesthetics. This is to say that you would easily be able to tell where the old Starlight ended and where the new Starlight began. I didn’t like this, which is why I ultimately decided to tear down all the original builds and adapt them to the new modular style. This leads to…
• I have all the old copies of Quintropolis, plain and simple. If I really want to revisit the days of old Starlight, I can just load up one of the old worlds. These downloads are also available on the first post, so that you can also do these comparisons should you wish to do so (even the most recent download is four years old technically, but the new one will be released with Session 300 so you can check out v3.0).

Relics of old Starlight do still exist (only of v1.5, as nothing from v1.0 is still here outside the original mushroom farm), and I intend to keep some of them that way. Here are some examples:

Archery Alley:

This build has not been touched since Season 1, and it will stay that way.

Starlight Playground:

Also hasn’t been touched since it was first built in Season 1 – however, I do eventually plan to update it.

Starlight Station:

Yes, we updated it this season quite drastically, but the original architecture is the same as when it was first built in Season 1. Again, though, this build will be completely redone in a future version of Starlight to match the rest of the base’s modern look.

Trying to find and maintain a balance between preserving history and keeping the base up to date is a challenge that only exists with such old worlds, and it’s one that I have had to face throughout the entire construction of Starlight 3.0. My final justification for why I’ve “replaced” the base is because from here on out, making changes and additions will be much easier than if I were to continue holding onto the old and archaic stuff. Starlight HQ 3.0 does the hard work of updating everything that already exists, so now it can be further updated with new features and functions going forward. Indeed, this base has a large list of updates that will make their way into future versions like 3.5 and 4.0, such as:

• A whole new purpose for Starlight Castle (which we won’t discuss yet) that simply wouldn’t be possible with the old construction.
• The expansion and completion of the Starlight City Planning Center (including TNT-based wood farms, concrete farms, and other industrial farming).
• A full rework of the modular mixer, and other modular improvements that 3.0 prepared the foundation for.
• More modular plugins that do some cool things!
• The development of Tetraquin.

As you can see, Starlight is far from being completed. And this is just the start of the list – the base needed to be transformed, so that a better foundation for updates can exist. This is also why Minecraft in general seems to rewrite certain things over time like world generation. Since the Archery Alley is an auxiliary build, it doesn’t need a revision. But Starlight Castle? Absolutely. By holding onto all the old relics from the old world, I would ultimately be keeping Starlight from reaching the full potential that I have envisioned for years.

So then, the question remains: is this still the original Starlight? Absolutely. One could say that Starlight HQ 1.0 was just part of the process towards getting the base where it is today. I would have never been able to build Starlight 3.0 the way it is from scratch without having its original foundations and history erected first. This new Starlight is what I always wanted out of a survival base because it’s no longer a survival base. It’s a canvas of unlimited creative potential.

Now then, we do have one more small feature to complete for 3.0, which I have purposefully been saving for the very end.

^ These are all the dispensers that hold potion ingredients for the modular potion brewer. Currently, the only way to access them in order to restock is by breaking into the wiring area. This is messy – so, we’re going to build a nice little system that stores all the items and channels them into here.

This is really the last thing we need, and I’ll be building it in the most convenient location – right above the brewer outside. I’m exhausted with all the intense base-wide wiring, so we’re keeping it simple.

There is no way around it: we need a ton of hoppers. Ideally, you’ll drop all potion ingredients into a single barrel, which will then be sorted and automatically stored in their respective dispensers for brewing. To accomplish this, every hopper chain must be separated from the sorter entirely.

This means we need to do some fancy linking to get everything tidy. The water bottle chain is also in the way – I just need to move it.

The sorter takes place up top and out of the way, so that there is no disruption sending the ingredients into the correct dispenser.

And it’s done! It causes a mess outside though – let’s fix that.

In the event that I were to accidentally drop items on this staircase, I don’t want to risk them getting picked up by any hoppers. As such, I’ll be enlarging this staircase so I can add a protective stone brick layer covering the hoppers.

Some spruce wood, lanterns, and fencing finally help make the area feel more complete.

Now for the hub itself, let me just say this up front: I will be turning this into a generator next season. As such, I’m designing the interface for it now. Basically, I had an idea that would allow potions to automatically brew based on the ingredient you add. For example, if you were to add phantom membranes into the storage, the brewer would automatically brew a batch of slow falling potions.

This is an idea I would love to see that would provide even greater flexibility to how the potion brewer works. However, the wiring for it is much too complex to do in one session. And to be honest… I’m exhausted. We’re at the end of the season, and I’m done doing new major redstone work. We have a full new season ahead that is better suited for this project.

For now – just add your potion ingredients to the barrel, and they will be automatically sorted and stocked! This is great to finally have, as it now means restocking those dispensers is no longer the annoying hassle it once was.

I’ve also tidied up the look of this area, which again will continue development next season. For now, this is the extent of my work. And other than some bugfixing I still have to tweak with the MISC (which will be done in my own time as it isn’t worth documenting here), the base is completely done.

…oh yeah, I never built the hopper collection point for the Starlight Treehouse item drop-off either...

Tada!

Welcome to Starlight HQ 3.0.

Starlight HQ 3.0, arguably the main attraction on Quintropolis Island, is far from the island’s only landmark. Thanks to our work throughout the last several years, the island has blossomed from coast to coast – spanning a full mile in length. Other than Starlight, we now have the full Inner Circle neighborhood, the Quintropolis Welcome Center, the Tropic Fortress, and the Totem Run parkour course (technically, the latter two have existed since 2014, but now they are all connected to the main rail network). Oh yeah – the Mob Processing Hub is here, too, but you’ll forgive me for neglecting it.

Today, we’re going to tie everything together with a nice bow – as much as possible for a single session, anyway.

The Quintropolis Welcome Center, which is your spawning location, lacks the best passive defense that already serves Starlight: a beacon! Especially considering this is the place you spawn when all else fails, it needs to be most fortified.

I’m adding the beacon in a location wherein it cannot be easily seen, but also where it will not interfere with the Totem Run course.

Next, it’s time for the Quintropolis Discovery Shack – here, you will have access to all copies of maps from the various lands that have so far been mapped throughout Quintropolis.

Speaking of mapping, I’m integrating waypoints within the world to help you better navigate it. Now, you will clearly be able to discern where everything is in relation to everything else.

This has motivated me to finish the mapping process for some of the lesser-developed areas of our world, such as Utopia, Stonewall, and the far north Megapolis peninsula.

^ Above, you can now see the full mapping of Gravity Gorge. I wasn’t kidding when I said the parkour course spans the entire mesa biome. The southeast section of the biome houses the rest of Candyland.

Finishing the main areas around Quintropolis Island, I’ve added Techtown, the SANA, Alchemy Farm, the Welcome Center, and Totem Run all to the map (it gets a little crowded, but in-game you can see them).

^ The full adventure map also features a waypoint for the “Fall Damage” parkour course in the small desert region north of Techtown. All the way at the top, you can see the northern Megapolis peninsula (for reference, this is where the capitol location will be later, originally founded at the village seen in Session 275).

Moving forward, then, I am mapping Utopia’s land, placing a waypoint at the location of the portal connected to the Nether expressway.

It took a lot of work, but now you can see Utopia’s map mostly mapped, and the vast diversity of its landscapes. I’m not sure how far its limits will extend – but for right now, it’s the most southern explored area of the map.

The adventure map expands east, where you can see Aftermath in the southeast corner. Stonewall Territory, the Ice Realms, and Candyland all live even further southeast, so they cannot be added to the adventure map in its current state.

Although you need to head to Starlight Treehouse to view the adventure map, you can now acquire copies of select maps right here at spawn at the Discovery Shack. This will at least help you navigate within the areas you are exploring. Stanland and Rainbow Cliffs have been on the adventure map for some time, but I will add their zoomed-in maps here later.

Now, it is time to connect the Quintropolis Welcome Center to the Inner Circle. This requires the construction of a long road through the jungle – a build I have been admittedly dreading due to the resources required, but one that will immensely improve quality of life on the island. Such is the case for all roads in real life, I guess.

The road’s construction marks the first of its kind in Quintropolis. Although Starlight HQ features a makeshift “road,” there have not yet been any road networks to connect the various points of interest together in any way. The Nether Expressway has so far served that purpose.

A chunk error here in the jungle will serve as one of the island’s road junctions.

Clearing the way through the jungle is a challenge because I also want to preserve the island’s scenery as much as possible. The island is extremely small by real measurement standards (barely a mile across), so preserving its nature is essential especially as the entire island is now a production hub.

This road junction will not be completed this season, because the secondary destination it will connect won’t be built until next season. Emerald Hills, which is the small section of mountains on the south of the island, will eventually be built into a small hub of its own. This road will take you to it.

Finally, the Inner Circle is in sight! I’ve used more than twenty stacks of concrete so far, and I know this is just the beginning.

Heading to the other end, we also want to connect our road to the Tropic Fortress properly. The poor structure is still sitting in the bushes.

Not anymore.

I am also updating the lighting – removing all the torches in lieu of lights.

This bridge was a significant aesthetic challenge, but I think it turned out quite alright. It really gives you the feeling that you’re heading into the lush jungle… which is true, for about a minute.

Lighting the entire road is the next task, which required these beams to be installed in multiple areas. Of course, the lighting changes in Minecraft 1.18 will make road lighting much easier – however, I am still playing in 1.15, and will remain doing so for the foreseeable future.

Having made it to the Inner Circle, I now need to install a proper entrance into the neighborhood – one which keeps the area safe from outside threats.

Fence gates always seem like the reliable option here.

Wondrous, and now I can finish the roof of the ugly sugar cane farm.

That’s a lot better than those end rods, in my opinion. This road will eventually continue all the way to Starlight HQ – but that will be 20-30 stacks of concrete for another day.

The last thing I want to do today is a small amenity I have been meaning to establish for a while: a new parkour course!

I always felt that the Inner Circle was a perfect introductory hub for anyone new to Quintropolis. And as it now holds its own ecosystem independent of Starlight, you could easily spend a lot of your time here. This makes it a great setting for a small new parkour course – one I want to design as a tutorial course.

Learning how to do specific parkour techniques will be essential to mastering some of the harder courses in this world, like Totem Run and Landing Pad. How can you expect to beat them if you’re not familiar with these techniques?? That’s why I am presenting the newest course: Jump Tutorials.

Jump Tutorials is a small course nestled within the boundaries of the Inner Circle, designed to help you practice specific parkour skills needed for the intermediate and advanced courses.

Hey, even Boshtok wants to learn some moves! I don’t think this is a villager’s game, however.

The course is designed to be a playground from which you can practice easily whenever you like. Its central location on the island means that it’s accessible from anywhere – the new road helps this greatly.

^ A full view of Jump Tutorials, all finished and ready to play! This is the last amenity I intend to add for today’s session. The course, now fully protected with fencing and proper landscaping to prevent infiltration by mobs, can be safely played at night as well.

Outside some small improvements that I’ll make off-book, this concludes my work on Quintropolis Island for the season. So, what else is left then?? That’s what you’ll need to stay tuned to find out.