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I’ve completed Aftermath with just a few final features, the first of which was the walking track that surrounds the perimeter. I removed all stone brick blocks protruding from the wall and used a layer of packed ice to create the track.

The fact that I can now make this many sea lanterns, to me, is awesome.

I made this look a bit better too.

To complete the storage unit, I needed to make more hoppers and more chests. I also labeled the chests.

Building the rest of the framework was easy to do; I decided on constructing something like a balcony atop the storage level – something to give you a view inside the farm.

Fencing was added to prevent me from accidentally falling into the chamber of the button.

With Aftermath officially completed, it is now time to shift my focus to the presentation I’m going to put together for the council of Techtown. This presentation will be an elaborate display here at Stonewall that showcases my desire for unity.

We’ll need lots of ice to build it.

It isn’t exactly an ice sculpture; rather, it is a specific aesthetic unlike anything else I’ve built, designed to function as a safe haven in the midst of what is otherwise dangerous territory. It will be completely safe from mobs.

I essentially covered the entire mountainside with ice – as much ice as I was able to acquire from the Ice Realms. I used regular ice instead of packed ice because mobs do not spawn on regular ice, whereas they do spawn on packed ice.

Next I had to protect this ice rink – I did so with a combination of two main elements: cobblestone fences and ice spikes.

The ice spikes were designed to give the rink some degree of lighting as well as a bit more character in its appearance. I wanted the rink to feel more inclusive, and the ice spikes will help to reinforce that.

These spikes took care to develop, because I made them in such a way that would prevent Capricorn from getting out. That’s right: this ice rink is actually going to be Capricorn’s home. After all he’s been here for me throughout my journey here at Stonewall, he deserves a proper home. This courtyard is it.

In deciding where to build each spike, I basically just took whatever space was open and not flat.

These corners are a good example, as I’ve used two spikes to enclose them.

This edge here was more difficult because it is an entire edge.

With some trial and error, I figured out a design.

Behind the portal were a few more spikes. I had to tweak these though, as Capricorn was able to hop outside of these walls.

Through testing and tweaking, I think I’ve made the ice rink completely enclosed and protected from the outside. I have elected to title this Crystalline Courtyard.

The second part of the presentation would be the actual entrance to Stonewall from the Nether. There needs to be some sort of shrine that illustrates what Stonewall is – a landmark, if you will.

I want the entrance to be off the back of the courtyard here, overlooking the bayside.

It will follow in the archaic, stone-based aesthetic that I built Aftermath’s canopy around.

This is exactly one thing I want to make sure and prevent with the entrance; I cannot fear Capricorn accidentally walking into the portal and suffocating, as tends to happen often. Thankfully, it did not happen this time.

I’ve conjured up a theory as to why this portal suffocation happens. It always happens when I take Capricorn to the Ice Realms. The portal I take from the Nether into the Ice Realms is 3-wide, but the portal from the Ice Realms to the Nether is only 2-wide. Could this disparity in portal sizes contribute to the suffocation damage that ensues? I’m thinking it may be the case – so far, Capricorn has not suffocated when traversing this portal.

Speaking of this portal, it will be very tall.

And it will be surrounded by three tentacle arms on each side.

The arms will reach upward in a steep curve, but then they will curve back towards the portal just slightly, arching over the top.

I like this design for the sides, which will only extend up to where the arm turns vertical.

With each segment, I’ve made the design slightly different to give the arms a very old and natural feel. What you can see here is that as I neared the top, I decreased the width of the arm. It went from 5-wide to 3-wide to 1-wide.

Oh that looks fantastic. Very menacing.

Now we’ll do the same thing on the two sides, except these will be thinner. They also will not extend out as far.

Their height is the same, however.

That is exactly how I pictured it would look in my head! A fitting monument – it just needs a few finishing touches.

Welcome to Stonewall Territory.

I’ve made my mark on the legend of Quintropolis. Through all the hell I’ve been through over the past few months living in desolation, I have learned the keys to survival and have proven to myself that I have what it takes to find the answers I’m looking for. But I’m tired of doing it alone. I want a team by my side. And now that my presentation here at Crystalline Courtyard is complete, I can take satisfaction in knowing that I am doing everything I can to prove my good intentions to the council of Techtown. I want to make our lives better and learn about those who provided them. I fulfilled the Secret of Stonewall, but that is only the first step. My purpose for living out here was to prove my readiness to myself and learn a few things. I’ve done that; my purpose here is fulfilled. Now it is time to continue my work on the project I sought out to complete from the very beginning, and I’m going to use the lessons I’ve learned here at Stonewall to ensure I act in the most appropriate manner going forward, taking care to accommodate the interests of those around me without compromising my goals. The legend of Quintropolis has only just begun; Starlight HQ is the next chapter.

It’s a beautiful new day out in the Ice Realms. But I don’t know that I can say the same about Starlight HQ. After all, the council of Techtown has had more than eight months now to tear it apart – hopefully they haven’t done anything to that extreme, however!

Now that I’ve considered my return to Starlight HQ, I have to consider the manner in which I will do so. When I go back, the villagers will probably be ready to tear my head off. So I need to have a damn good reason as to why they shouldn’t.

Remember this? This was in my project vault before the councilman found it in Session 200. I’ve been carrying it ever since; perhaps now would be a good time to bring it back with me as a way to surrender my secrets.

Assuming I can get the attention of the council, I still need a way to bring them into Stonewall Territory. After all, that’s the whole reason we built Crystalline Courtyard in the previous session. Therefore, there’s still one project to complete here at Stonewall… oh how I would do anything to prolong my return! I have to complete the railway, essentially connecting Stonewall Territory to Starlight HQ (nothing symbolic about that now, is there?).

Oh but first… the railway to Candyland.

The aesthetic design was not different from the railway we built to the Ice Realms in Session 205. It’s just that the distance from the Ice Realms to Candyland is considerably further. This meant many sessions of mining stone, mining ice, harvesting sand, and smelting sand, just to gather enough materials for this railway. It’s like I was building the guardian farm all over again! Except, well, it wasn’t…

I couldn’t even begin telling you how many ghasts I encountered during the construction of this railway (though the montage in the video version of this session will give you a good idea). In fact, I had to rebuild parts of the railway several times due to ghasts setting it on fire. I never died from them though; I’ve spent so much time dealing with ghasts that they are no longer difficult to handle. Still, they do cause problems to my railway…

Candyland’s portal is roughly 800 blocks south and 200 blocks east of the Ice Realms portal, and crosses a rather large lava ocean (pictured above). That is why I did not finish it back in Session 205, which therefore is why it took up the majority of this session.

Here is yet another fire caused by a ghast. Also take note of the broken blocks; I admit to falling through some of those holes.

Above, you can see the basic build-up of the railway’s elements. First I build the track using andesite, followed by the packed ice blocks on both sides. These are covered with slabs which retain the slippery properties of the ice blocks. Stone brick and glass panes build up the walls (glass blocks used on the diagonal sections), while slabs are used for roofing. This is so that I can freely ride horses through the railway – slabs prevent me from suffocating in the roof.

With Candyland’s shuttle complete, there is one more section to add onto our railway: Starlight HQ.

The station was situated across from Stonewall Territory’s portal, perpendicular to Aftermath’s portal. It was a humble setup.

While I had to utilize coordinates to find the Nether Hub of Starlight HQ, I admit to knowing it wasn’t very far out. If you remember, Stonewall itself is only 4,000 or so blocks away from Starlight HQ (x and y coordinates together). Divided by eight, that places the Nether Hub around 500 blocks away (diagonally in the northwestern direction).

Since these portals are planted at high vertical coordinates, that means I won’t be creating a railway over top of any familiar territory, which in this case is a good thing. Subtlety is kind of what I want.

I should note that this lava fall started with just one block. In many ways I still suck at this game.

The railway from Stonewall to Starlight HQ’s Nether Hub is the first to feature elevation changes.

To work with this, I’ve divided the slope of the pathways by two to account for stone slab implementation.

This works as long as I account for the roof as well.

The rest of the railway beyond this slope is inside Netherrack except for the very end, which is when I saw this:

Oh I can feel the blood flowing through my virtual veins! What if the villagers are already in the Nether? Snap out of it Joey… you didn’t come this far to fail.

Having completed the railway at Starlight HQ, I had to commemorate the build as it represents an important milestone in this world. I have now connected four different destinations to Starlight HQ:

Additionally, I did all of it under the most primitive circumstances all for something I believe strongly in: the unity of our kind. We are all people, and despite our difference we need to come together in times of turmoil, if for no other reason than to learn from each other. There is something unique about every perspective out there - something to be gained, something that might be applicable somewhere. I now understand the consequences of my actions, and while I will persist with what I plan to make out of this world, I will do so more mindfully in a manner that brings peace to Quintropolis. I've titled this railway "Terminal Zero" - zero because this railway technically doesn't exist in commercial terms. As a personal project with a deep meaning, this terminal will remain a hidden line as I develop more Nether railways in the future, because its purpose is not to bring destinations together despite having done this. No, I built this railway as part of my presentation to the villagers, so they would remain safe as I show them my other homes.

It has been too long since I’ve seen Starlight HQ. And now I’ve completed the final part of my presentation to the villagers – a safe escape from this godforsaken place. In many ways, I’m happy I got a chance to explore new opportunities outside of this place, because Starlight HQ represented a box I enclosed myself in. I’ve developed a lot over the past eight months both physically and virtually, and I think that reflects itself through the challenges I’ve created for myself over the first arc of this season. It took a lot of discipline to build Aftermath over the course of eight months, but I couldn’t be happier with how this whole thing has ended.

Now, to face my final challenge – my confrontation with the villages of Quintropolis. Hello Starlight HQ; it is nice to be home.

The Nether Temple… hello again. It’s been a while!

I don’t hear anything outside, except wind and some birds. Interestingly, the door is still broken from how I left it when I escaped this place. That indicates to me that they never made it past the door.

Hello? Anyone out there?

Where are the horses? Where are all the villagers?!

Hello?! Where are my powers?

Wha-… Where is the beacon?? Did they leave? Hello? Anyone??!!

I kept calling, but nobody answered. “Hello?!” I asked again, though this time I had already accepted that nobody would answer.

Indeed, no one did.

So I thought it best to take a look around. I was back home, I think. Is this still home? Home is a place where you are supposed to feel safe. I don’t feel safe. I felt safer at Stonewall after I mucked it up.

Archery Alley, Alchemy Dome, Starlight Plaza, all balconies, Starlight Resources Facility, Aqua Lounge… I checked everywhere.

Not a single sign of life. What the hell?

Did they pack up and leave? Were they taken up in some supernatural storm that swept the base following the Starlight Beacon’s conception? I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t here. Oh wait, that reminds me…

The beacon is not visible! Let’s see what is up with that…

Did I do that? No, I don’t think I did. So you see there is something fishy going on here.

…No pun intended.

I guess I should go ahead and fix that door since I don't really have much else to do at the moment.

If the villagers did pack up and leave, where would they have gone? Are they still on the island? Well, I’m reminded back to Session 200, when I noticed a bountiful quantity of boats packed in the bay. These boats came from across the bay – a land I refer to as Stanland. Does the name ring a bell? If not, I’ll direct you back to Session 168 when I first mentioned it, but the land itself is much older. It’s one of the oldest lands I discovered, in fact, home to my pet horse Luna. Some of the first villages I found were on this mainland; now I shall revisit them to see what’s going on.

However, I used this opportunity to build a new pocket faction out of Stanland. After all, the more I can expand Starlight HQ, the better, right?

This is not Stanland, but it is familiar territory.

This is also not Stanland.

Am I beneath Stanland?

Aha, this is Stanland. Hello, Luna! It’s been a few years.

After some trial and error, I found the portal’s sweet spot, nudged up in a pocket atop the lava fall. I really wanted to build a bridge across this gap.

So I did.

Since this portal leads to Stanland, I felt it appropriate to decorate it in such a way that resembles the main elements of the land. While Stanland is not birch-oriented, it is home to a birch forest – the main source of birch I had in this world before I built the tree farm.

Of course, this was a problem. Do ghasts not give a damn about flammables? I have delicates in here!

With a route to Stanland now properly established, I had to turn my attention towards terminal zero. The Nether hub is supposed to be something of a terminus for all railway lines. Therefore, I needed a proper hub to house terminal zero and all subsequent railways.

Underneath the inner hub, I built a small room with eight entrances (two from each side). This would be where our terminals would be seated.

I utilized the lava moat to create this decorative aesthetic.

Welcome to the NET – that is, the Nether Expressway Terminus. This will be the rendezvous point for every railway line throughout the Nether. The above picture shows you how it will be laid out; there will be a total of eight terminals – four in each cardinal direction and four in each intermediate direction. Every location in Quintropolis will eventually be connected to one of these eight terminals, depending on its location relative to Starlight HQ. In a way, this makes Starlight HQ the center of the world. Cool, isn’t it?

Since terminal zero became the first terminal in the world, all subsequent terminals will be ordered clockwise in direction. Terminal zero is the railway that traverses the southeast direction, so terminal one will traverse south. Terminal seven will traverse east, and so on.

I did some fishing so that I could obtain one of these:

And I wanted one of those so I could make one of these:

Oh yeah, I suppose now is a good time to admit that I chose not to impulsively update to 1.11.1 due simply because it would have made my most recent achievement unachievable. Now that I have the most powerful bow in the entire game, I’m going to frame it and probably never touch it.

Hello Minecraft 1.11.2, though I’m still catching up on 1.9 to be honest.

I went to the Nether to get some Nether brick from the fortress. Here are the things I’m greeted with!

Hello, Wither slaves. You sound different, almost crippled. Not very ironic now, is it?

Oops, made a little error in judgment. Something tells me that the villagers are no longer my biggest problem.

Well, this is quite the welcome back to Starlight HQ. Can’t wait to see how this goes…

I peeked out in hopes that the zombie pigmen had forgiven me, or better yet that they were unaware of the catastrophe that recently occurred inside the neighboring Nether fortress.

Everything seemed okay… but that’s when I ought to be the most cautious!

…It seems the zombie pigmen were even friendlier than usual… That’s not strange at all.

Hello Nether Hub – or as I shall now call you, the Nether Expressway Terminus, because that is what you are.

We should continue then on the NET, yes? Terminal zero needs to be connected back to this station. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done since there were a few obstacles on the way.

The moat had to be temporarily disrupted so I could build the railway. I couldn’t exactly break through the stone slab pathway so east was the only direction to take this terminal.

Thankfully, the job from here was simple, especially when compared to the work required for the rest of terminal zero.

My new zombie pigmen frenemies got in my way a bit, which caused a delay in the testing of our railway. Perhaps I can give the Stonewall presentation to them instead of the villagers. Evidently they really want it.

Alas, terminal zero has been completed… for real this time!

You know, I just now noticed how the water’s behavior with glass has changed. It makes the bay much nicer to look at through the Aqua Lounge.

I want to welcome you to my project vault. This is where I keep all my old relics and ideas, along with several things for today’s project.

You know what I hate? I hate having to run around eighteen thousand different hallways just to get from the transport centre to the Starlight Room. It’s unnecessary. Yes, the addition of Starlight Beacon meant that any entrance to Starlight Room was blocked off. That’s why I added that extraneous hallway off the Adventure Arsenal in Session 198. Yet, it’s still a pain bumping my head everywhere. The lower levels are a mess - a mess I no longer like looking at. So today, we’re going to do something about that because I don’t like being unhappy with this base. I spoke a bit about this in Session 189.

All tools from the armory, after a long process, were moved down to my project vault. Of course I won’t tell you where it is.

All those gold, chain, and leather armor drops were moved to the Aqua Lounge entrance hall because those chests were vacant.

Once I got everything moved out of the armory, I tore the whole damn place down.

I know I’m not the only one who saw this as a smart renovation. The original storage rooms were great for what they were supposed to be. But things are different now. Starlight HQ needs to evolve.

The idea here is to connect this room to Starlight Room, and to do that I have to move the boat entrance back.

This was a simple process because the redstone contraption is simple. A hopper detects that a full stack is in the system (a boat, in this case), which lets the object through and activates the powered rail that sends the minecart up the deploy tower. For those of you who need a refresher, this is how the boats are transported from the boat entrance back up to the escape hatch on the fourth floor.

Also, the Starlight Beacon had to be completely exposed. That’s really the only way to do this, because after all I have limited options with the space I’ve been provided. We’ll make it work!

I figured I’d use this opportunity to also change the way this door behaves. If you’ve watched any videos of it in action or have used it yourself in the world download, then you know that there is a delay between when the left and right sides open. I fixed that today, along with turning the single lever into two buttons on both sides that open the door temporarily instead of toggling it on or off.

The reason for this is because I had to move the lever to open up the room. Doing this meant that the lever became inaccessible from the Power Museum side of the door. Thus, I had to change it.

The redstone had to be altered but it’s simple – both buttons deactivate the torch which has two different outputs.

^ Using the above photo as reference, the first output signals the piston on the top left, while the second output signals the other three pistons. This is so that the top-left piston has a delay set on it to allow the other three to catch up, eliminating the delay associated with the door’s coherent movement.

Wow, I can’t even remember certain things. Tells you how disconnected I still am from this place. Only remedy for that is time, my friends.

^ This happened by accident. But I like it so I’ll keep it.

When renovating the walls, I broke a bunch of redstone. One such wire was that of the back door. I had to rewire it such that the pressure plates only control their respective sides, i.e. the right pressure plate can only activate the two right pistons.

Now, you’re probably wondering at this point what exactly I’m planning to do with this room.

Originally, I had this idea to move the Hall of Armor here, so that this would really be an armory, given that it was right next to the Adventure Arsenal and just about everything else of value. However, I figured this would be a significant waste, because 1) I like the Hall of Armor, and 2) I have nowhere near enough enchanted sets of diamond armor to fill this room up.

Therefore, I came up with a much more brilliant idea.

Say hello to my royal wardrobe. Outfitted with several shades of each color, this wardrobe was perhaps the smartest way to use up all those armor drops from the Mob Processing Hub and elsewhere. In fact, I spent a lot of time just combining the pieces together to fix them all.

Remembering all the specific color combinations was admittedly a challenge, but not one I didn’t enjoy. Trying to match things up by eye was like a fun game in and of itself.

Now that’s a classy dress, if I do say so myself.

What do you think? Every single piece of armor in this wardrobe is at full durability, minus a few pairs of boots. I think that’s a huge success given that it was done using only the armor drops – no additional leather!

Now to figure out what to do with all those gold armor drops…

I now have outfits to wear around Starlight HQ. For today, I think I’ll wear this purple one as it suits my royal ego.

Huge changes to Starlight HQ today, and I don’t think there is any better way to reintroduce myself to a base I’d been away from for so long. But then, that begs the imminent question… Where did all the villagers go? Wouldn’t they have shown up by now?

The world is just as dark and lonely as before. But why?! What did I do wrong? There is literally NOTHING that suggests they were ever even here!

So… maybe they weren’t? No Joey, that’s silly! Of course they were here! Right? I saw the bay flooded with boats! They were all over the plaza! You guys saw them too, right?

I’m drifting.

I can’t think.

I may cry.

Could it also be true… that their invasion was entirely in my head? Perhaps I wanted human interaction so much that I imagined this invasion that never really happened? I can’t even face that possibility… But, what if?

That’s all I can ask at this point, for there is nothing else for me except a return right back to where I left off. I’ll have to continue developing Starlight HQ without them.

So get this; if you use a Looting sword to deflect a ghast fireball, and that fireball kills the ghast, then you reap the benefits of the Looting!

With the villager mystery circumvented, at least to some extent for now, I will now be turning my attention to finally moving forward with my plans to expand Starlight HQ. I can’t stress how long I’ve waited for what we’ll be doing today.

Just turn your attention to that entity count! Lag is one thing that will be atop my priority list in building the next iteration of Starlight HQ. Specifically, finding some way to reduce the entity count is going to be crucial in order to keep the base running at all, because with the addition of a third faction, there is no way any computer will be able to handle Starlight HQ at its current state by the time we’ve concluded development.

For now though, I’m just going to focus on the layout.

Least I could do is remove these. This egg generator has admittedly never been used outside a few times following its creation in Session 103. There is literally no point to have it add to the entity count.

Right, you need to know where the outback will be. Well, think of it as the faction on the other side of Starlight Castle. Whereas the plaza faction allowed expansion in the southern direction, the outback will focus on the northern direction (or, the left side, relative to the picture above).

I don't think I've ever taken a screenshot of Starlight HQ from this particular side, either. Alas, this faction will allow new perspectives to be shown!

Initially, I thought that tearing down the foliage would be the best move. And from a resource perspective it would be… except that the tree farm gives me infinite amounts of wood.

This, however, was much more fun despite its risks, and admittedly closer to my savage human nature.

Burn everything!!

There was a small gathering at the base of this pillar here.

A few more trees and the alleged area is cleared.

This section on the coast of the island just north of HQ will probably become part of the outback, but I’ve elected to refrain from burning it down until I know for sure what I want to do with it. At the moment, I do not.

This brings us to the next part, which is where I tell you what we will be doing with the land. Specifically, I want to share with you some (not all) of the plans I have for the outback. Right now, it’s a basic outline since we’re in early stages, but the outback’s planning is years old. There was a lot to consider.

First, and I know you knew this was inevitable, it’s time to say adios to the barn.

Adios, barn! You haven’t been useful in nearly half a season!

That was fun. With this patch of land cleared, we’ll have more room to open up the “entrance” to the outback faction. And by that, I’m mostly just referring to a pathway.

This hill that I’m standing on is going to be the location of the centerpiece of the outback – a giant treehouse. The treehouse will be roughly the size of Starlight Castle, but that will depend mostly on how well I can integrate it with the mountain’s architecture. The idea here is to build with the land.

Down here will be the main plaza of the outback. It will feature mostly aesthetic amenities as its purpose will be a rendezvous point for other parts of the outback.

^ Here is an aerial view of its location relative to the rest of HQ. The plaza will be the valley to the left of the hill.

The third major feature of the outback will be the outback trail, which will encompass the hillside upon which the treehouse will sit, forming a natural boundary for Starlight HQ.

I've taken this shot from the back side of the hillside I’m referring to – where the outback trail will be.

This here is another pillar of the northernmost spot of the trail. You can see Starlight HQ along with the other pillar to the left.

From the Enchantment Tower, you can see all three pillars I’ve marked out of black clay that outline the rough boundaries of the outback trail. It will start between the two mountains at the left pillar, and make its way around the hillside in the center to the right side, where the outback plaza will be located.

With a trail, a plaza, and a giant treehouse, I think there’s more than enough on the plate for development of this faction. As you can see, this faction will be much more spread out than the other two, and this is good for two reasons: 1) I can make larger builds which provide more room, and 2) There will be less lag as not everything will be condensed into one spot. Though the outback will house a number of additional builds, these three builds are currently going to be the focus as they will set the foundation for fulfilling the outback’s purpose.

Hello, skeleton.

I forgot about this.

A final view of the soon-to-be outback faction of Starlight HQ.

So now you’re likely wondering: What is the purpose of the outback faction? Why double the size of HQ? Well, I’ll allude back to my concerns noted at the beginning of this session. Starlight HQ is currently trying to do too much in too little space. So in short, the outback’s purpose is to allow some of that weight to spread out. Because the faction is so large, some entities don’t load while in the outback (meaning reduced lag throughout the base). Henceforth, the outback faction will hopefully address the lag issue while also providing a very different experience from the rest of HQ.

Adding onto that, it would not be smart to double the size of HQ without first improving the current slate. I admit that some parts of HQ were not thought out all the way through, which has had even more adverse effects upon leaving Minecraft 1.8. I think I’ll sort that stuff out first before we start on the outback.

It’s been a while since I was last here in Quintropolis. It was a much-needed break though, as I’d been burned out a bit by the many long months I spent at Stonewall and my subsequent attempts to ease back into Starlight HQ. That whole process was admittedly rough, but I’m thankful to have had some time away to recoup my thoughts and devise a more thought out plan. Because I am about to begin constructing an entire new faction, I wanted to be careful not to rush my creative thinking. As such, the next few sessions will be dedicated to fixing up specific parts of the existing Starlight HQ that have either been broken or consist of deadweight. Those of you familiar with this base know that there is a lot of deadweight hidden within its parts. And while much of that is contained in its history, there are still ways to update the base without completing removing its artifacts. There are a few things in particular that need to be addressed, and those few things will be my specific focus over the next few sessions. Let’s start with the redstone problem.

What is the redstone problem, you ask? Put simply, I have redstone stuffed everywhere. There is no longer a dedicated storage unit for redstone, and I have no organization when it comes to redstone. I put stuff in the closest chests because it is convenient for me, not always thinking about when I might need that stuff again later. There are a couple reasons why I’d been considering a dedicated redstone storage room: 1) Having a hub for redstone storage means that there will be less clutter around the base, which means that 2) I will have an accurate idea of my redstone supply as it will all be together (i.e. if I am running low on hoppers, I will know that I need to make more). Location, however, will always be an issue because the base is growing at an exponential rate. Considering the new faction I am about to start building, accessing this single redstone room might still be cumbersome. Still, I think I’d rather have the room than the clutter, so I’ve opted to make the redstone room my first priority in tidying up this base.

I decided long ago that if such a room would exist, it would be in the Starlight Resources Facility. That makes the most sense to me because almost every other critical resource is located down there. What better way to get back into the redstone groove (as I’d been out of it for quite a while) than by designing a shortcut to the facility? After all, it is going to become the integral part of the base throughout the duration of this season and beyond, so transportation is one of the most important factors in keeping it updated and convenient (being located underground makes this even more so).

If you recall, I utilized the old Diamond Mine entrance as the new SRF entrance. This entrance happened to feature a moon roof.

What if we redesigned this roof such that it would open upon dropping into it? This would allow me to skip the cumbersome process of walking inside the castle, instead dropping right down to the SRF from outside.

A clever little idea I think, I worked around the scenery and reworked the spiral staircase a bit to hide the redstone.

And it works! Having a shortcut into the SRF is one thing, but what about getting out? I think that is a matter for a different day. For now, I’m happy to access the SRF directly from Starlight Plaza.

…which brings us to another unfinished project in the SRF. Some of the developments that will ensue over the next several months will require a lot of sugar cane. And if you consider what I’ve done with the library, the pros of increased sugar cane production far outweigh the cons (only con I can think of would be increase lag spikes every now and then). When I first built these sugar cane farms back in session 156, I did so with the intention of making three more on the other side. I wanted a total of six farms, but at the time I did not need them. Now, however, things have changed.

Clearing out the area, I was immediately stumped because I didn’t know where any of my redstone stuff was. Pistons, glowstone lamps, hoppers, repeaters – I needed lots of items, yet I had a hard time tracking them all down! This was as good a time as ever to construct the Redstone Room.

After much deliberation, I decided to carve the room near both entrances to the SRF (though most noticeably the lobby entrance).

I didn’t know those were a thing.

From the breeding cockpit of the animal farms, I’ve connected a second hallway entrance to the Redstone Room. Now it will be accessible from both sectors, serving as another form of transportation within the SRF.

I am going for a circular shape with the room, though I do not want this room to be a dome because I feel that would be inappropriate for what I’m going for.

And surprise! It’s a slime chunk!

You can now see the layout and entrances more distinctly to and from the room.

Yes, I realize that the symmetry is noticeably off here. But don’t worry; this will be fixed when we get rid of the animal farms (oops, spoiler alert).

All the storage in this room will be tucked in the corners. Each of the four corners will house a different type of redstone storage.

I’ve done my best to label the chests in creative ways; item frames were used as a last resort.

In the center of the room is an array of droppers. These hold all my redstone and redstone blocks, replacing the redstone chest in the Starlight Room as the new primary storage unit for redstone.

What the hell is this? An "observer"? I guess I should head over to the wiki and figure out where this might be useful…

The completed Redstone Room features four primary storage sectors:

• Power and transmission components – Levers, buttons, pressure plates, and other blocks that create a signal are stored here alongside integral redstone transmission components like torches, repeaters, and comparators. Observers fall into both categories, so they are included here as well.

• Mechanisms – Hoppers, droppers, dispensers, furnaces, pistons, and the full array of railway components are all stored in this section.

• Building blocks – What would a completed redstone room be without the ability to make more of the stuff that needs to be stored here? This sector stores all blocks and items needed to craft anything stored in this room (couple exceptions).

• Miscellaneous – In other words, this is stuff that isn’t exclusively redstone-oriented, but is still useful in many redstone applications. Slime blocks, trapped chests, iron doors (includes trapdoors and fence gates), TNT – these can be used in redstone machines but are not exclusive to that purpose.

I’ve blocked off the remaining two sides of the Redstone Room with caution tape and iron fencing to signify that there will be future developments beyond these two walls. For now though, I have to work on filling this room up!

I give you the completed Redstone Room! And if you guessed that I’ve come up with a mental puzzle within the room that activates all the lights, you would be correct. Hmm, in a couple years when Season 3 concludes, you’ll get to figure it out yourself!

The completion of this room brought me immediately to my next task up here in the Starlight Room. You know, there’s a reason I never bothered to fix this wall in session 212.

I knew that two sessions later I’d be tearing it down.

I am certain that many of you can relate to having chests full of random junk scattered abroad your base. I know I have many! I am introducing the Essentials Room – a quaint storage unit with the purpose of providing an organized approach to unorganized storage. One of the reasons I don’t bother organizing my junk chests is because I know they are full of items I’ll just use in the next project. Therefore, why would I waste time putting it all away? With the Essentials Room, I can keep the essential blocks and items I use often in one place without the hassle of trying to keep my storage organized. Additionally, anything that currently does not have a designated storage spot can easily go in this room.

In completing this session, I’ve returned to my original project in the sugar cane farm.

For those of you unfamiliar with how it works, it is quite simple. A BUD switch toggled by the left-most sugar cane (when it grows) sends a pulse to the entire wall of pistons, which extend to break all sugar cane. They fall into the hoppers which send them to the storage unit. It is a fully automatic system requiring no manual intervention.

Goodbye, random chest! I moved all of its contents to the Essentials Room.

Finally, things are starting to feel more like I envisioned them.

Look at this:

Now look at this:

Ugly, isn’t it? It’s also outdated, unused, broken, and ugly. Did I say that already?

Let’s fix that.

Looking at it from the outside, I can see that the Power Museum would benefit from a plethora of enhancements, not least of which is ridding it entirely of sandstone. Aesthetics aside, it does not even fit the theme of the build. How about we redo the cathedral floor to match the aesthetics of the powerhouse floor? Now that sounds more appropriate for this build.

In reworking the visual appearance of the Power Museum, I think you’ll agree that of equal importance is updating the features of it to match my current demand. Specifically, I want to address the giant stone brick tower lingering right in front of the Power Museum – a remnant of the oldest mob farm in this world that has not been used in years.

Why do I still have it here? Well, before Stonewall, I was quite hesitant towards change. To be honest, I adopted the idea that improving something meant adding more to it, as opposed to perhaps subtracting unnecessary elements. That is why I’ve now dedicated time to removing things or changing things rather than adding. I am trying to fix the base.

That ugly tower absolutely needed to go! For those of you unaware, this zombie XP farm (originally built in session 66) was a gravity-based farm. That alone should tell you how old it is – I didn’t even incorporate redstone back then! How is Starlight HQ supposed to thrive as an evolving system with old hags like this still crowding its limited space?

Removing that tower, and ergo the mob farm as a whole, was the best way to remedy this situation. Besides, we can always repurpose the farm down the road, or even turn it into a redstone-based farm. It’s not like I’m destroying the spawner; I’m simply improving the system inside which the spawner functions.

Remember my quartz quest back in session 208? Yeah, I did that because I knew this session was on its way (albeit, I was several months off).

In renovating the Power Museum, I took this opportunity to scratch off even more ugly visual impediments that turned me off, such as that big ass chandelier that had no functional purpose whatsoever. It didn’t even look like a chandelier.

The Power Museum is starting to look a little more mature!

Accents on the walls help give the structure a bit more depth. As this build is going to include some major additions to Starlight HQ down the road, I want the visual representation of its importance in the base to shine eloquently.

It gets worse before it gets better - that's what they say when you clean things.

Of course, the torches have finally been removed! You have no idea (well, you might) how long I’ve been awaiting this.

Wait, what the hell?

Oh ****.

It took 3,900 MC days for a lightning storm to do this?! I’ve got to be honest, that’s a bit of a shock. But if we’re on a relevant topic, the timing for it couldn’t have been more appropriate.

Fixing up the mob spawner, I’m going to enclose the structure with other materials that won’t ignite the night sky in environmentally unfriendly ways.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

The possibilities for what could ultimately be atop this roof are endless; but for now I’ll opt for the abstract approach.

The contrast in colors here helps the build to stand out much more in photos.

With this little inconvenience done, I’m actually quite grateful that the Quintropolis gods let loose a bit. It’s as though they were pointing me in the right direction towards fixing up Starlight HQ.

What unique block is present in the above picture? Hint: It’s unique because there are only a few of them elsewhere in the base.

I guess we can make this wall more consistent? Even prior to the remodel, I don’t understand what I was thinking when I kept this wall so aesthetically displeasing for the last four years.

Hello, zombie spawner, old friend from session 3.

Remember earlier when I said we need to update the features to match my current demands? And then later when I said we might turn this zombie spawner into something more useful? Put two and two together.

I’m removing this clumpy lower level entrance to the Starlight Room because it’s in the way. We’ll instead put a new entrance right here to the Hall of Armor.

We don’t need this room full of water anymore. Not with what we’re going to do with it…

Some of this redstone, which is connected to the locks, had to be moved around because of the renovations taking place here at the Hall of Armor. That was unnecessarily wordy.

This is where the old lower level entrance was located. Past tense.

I’m designing this entrance to be sleek, while also easy to view from the outside. That is why the conventional door approach is not going to work here. We’ll try it out, and if it doesn’t work we’ll change it later. That’s the beauty of freewill.

Someone is trying to steal the armor!

The exterior needs much better blending, but as far as the interior I am quite satisfied with how I’ve diminished my quartz supply. Now I can look forward to venturing on another quartz quest… oh the joy of finding more unexplained relics.

This next part is the whole point of this entire project.

Oh yes; you know where this is headed.

Introducing the inception of the Tetraquin Project…

…and the removal of its visibility.

There was once a myth that loomed abroad Quintropolis, telling of an ancient process used by some mystical artists which allowed them to create life from death. Though the details of these experiments were unrevealed, the tools with which the experiments were performed have been drifting Quintropolis’s crust for millennia. Supposedly, the experiments failed, but I believe they might tie in to our current mystery regarding the disappearance of the villagers.

The enigma that is the zombie villager has intrigued me since I first saw one. For a zombie villager to exist, a live villager must first exist, right? Well, what if we could reverse the process? For a live villager to exist, we must first spawn a zombie villager. This was the basis of the experiments, to my own knowledge. The undead cursed upon this world by the gods were experimented on with what I believe were potions of some sort and golden apples. Somehow, a miraculous combination cured the zombie villagers, and they resumed life as regular people.

Certainly I could deduce that the entire village of Techtown and in fact every village in Quintropolis is a result of these experiments, and if that’s true then I am certainly very special. But that’s quite unlikely, because the artificial villagers were not cognitively developed like the rest of the villagers. After all, they couldn’t create souls – only bodies.

With that in mind, I believe the gods have led me right into the next part of this puzzle: recreating those experiments. This, my friends, is the first step in the Tetraquin Project – a multi-step chain of events that will culminate with the inception of a blueprint that you’ve seen several times now… you know, the same blueprint that the council of Techtown found in my project vault. It’s the same blueprint that got me mixed up in this mess.

Let’s turn our attention to the mechanics of our villager purifier.

Each pod is connected to a piston, which when retracted will drop the zombies and any associated zombie villagers to a collecting room.

Here you can see that I’m installing two different inputs to every piston. This is so that we can lock one or some of the pods if we get a zombie villager.

The collecting room has two features. The first is a lava kill chamber that kills any zombies that are not zombie villagers. As you may have figured, there is another layer of pistons at the bottom of this chamber that can be toggled to close the kill chamber. This is to provide safe passage for any potential zombie villagers we spawn. This will be done by…

…a water cycle! Yet another layer of pistons was added to enclose water, which had took some trial and error because I had to shift the lava kill chamber (and subsequently the layer of pistons associated with it) down one block.

In this way, I can add signs which prevent the water from nearing the lava.

…Then I realized that the zombie villagers would get stuck in the pods, so I had to shift the lava kill chamber again and reorder the signs.

That’s better. And in fact, the water cycle works well.

Alas, we’ve already got some potential keepers… not!

The two functions of the purifier are pictured above. The switch on the left toggles the farm on and off. When it’s on, the pistons remain extended and the zombies (along with other mobs) can spawn. When it’s off, the pistons retract and the pods are opened, meaning that nothing can spawn. Also, each pods can be toggled individually by their respective levers, which are simultaneously used to lock the pods. So for example, if we get a zombie villager in one pod, we can lock that pod while we drop all the other zombies into the kill chamber. This brings us to…

The second function toggles between the lava kill chamber and the water cycle. When the kill chamber is selected, the pods on the bottom layer remain opened and anything that falls through will burn. When the water cycle is selected, the lava kill chamber closes and subsequently the water is released. This will allow all villagers to funnel into a single water collecting chamber.

Yes, I’m repurposing the same water chamber I had before for the original zombie XP farm. This time, however, it will cap here at the base of the Power Museum. The next step is to build a railway here that will take our newly spawned villagers to their new home.

…But haha! Can’t tell you what that’s all about yet. That’s for another day. Let’s go do something else that’s pertinent.

Please welcome beetroots to Starlight HQ.

Oh, I forgot that in Minecraft 1.9, water behaved differently with glass. That makes the Aqua Lounge look so much better!

Speaking of the Aqua Lounge, it's been a while since we've been here! As such, there is a small list of things we need to do today.

First, the potion brewer no longer works because the gods decided to require blaze powder to brew potions. So we’ll need to integrate that in.

This fix was easy enough.

In order for us to begin working on the Starlight Outback (Starlight HQ’s third major faction), we need to move this ugly rabbit hole. Does anyone remember this? I don’t either! It hasn’t been touched since I first dug it out, way back in session 90 when rabbits first came to Starlight HQ. In fact, if you paid attention, you’ll notice I’ve not even acknowledged this hole in either the world tour or my Starlight HQ Reference Guide. That’s because I don’t consider it part of Starlight HQ. And that’s even truer today when we get rid of it. But what the hell are we going to do with the rabbits?

I’m glad you asked.

It just so happens that I want to move them down into the Aqua Lounge. Hey, I guess that means rabbits will now officially be part of Starlight HQ. What a day this is.

This small farm operates by utilizing the small hitbox of baby rabbits. They’ll fall through the fence post while the adult rabbits stay up top. This means I can kill the newly grown rabbits with a lava kill dispenser here at the bottom, and continue to breed the ones up top. This will also keep the entity count in check, which has been an increasing problem as of late.

This rabbit farm is located in the beautiful guest bedroom, because the first thing I want to be greeted to when I wake up is the sight of innocent rabbits being locked up in a torture chamber.

This is what I call home.

Well, this is going to be a nightmare.

Actually, it wasn’t so bad… until I removed the carrots from my hand and the rabbits went batshit crazy. Thankfully, I funneled them all into the chamber.

I’d like to show you what I’ve done at Candyland. It’s truly remarkable.

The astute among you may have noticed that I’ve built a stairwell to the right of the rabbit farm. This leads up to the top layer where you can access the rabbits and breed them.

Adjacent to this breeding chamber is what you will need to breed them: a carrot farm.

This carrot farm is still different enough from the others in this world because it utilizes the darkroom mechanic – when placed, the carrots will immediately break, but not before being hastily zapped by chemical fertilizers for mass production.

I’d say that’s a creative way to remove that ugly rabbit hole. Wouldn’t you?

I really hate trying to guess what’s in my chests.

…But I got to thinking: why do I have a rabbit farm in the first place? What do I need from them? Let’s see… they provide rabbit hides, food, and rabbit feet. That’s quite the variety of items! But my interest was on the latter, for I can use rabbit feet to produce potions of leaping. But the question is: would I?

I started to dissect the potion brewer on the Aqua Lounge’s bar to see if I can upgrade it to incorporate potions of leaping as well. That would be an appropriate addition seeing as it would make the rabbit farm useful.

To make this work, we first would need to install a third hopper connecting to the system we have in place. This hopper holds the rabbit feet.

Next, we’ll need to install a lever that toggles between potions of water breathing and potions of leaping. To do this, I’ll have our potion brewer connected to all three hoppers. The lever will simply lock whichever redstone repeater it’s toggled on.

Above is an illustration of how it works. When the lever is toggled on, it will lock the repeater for the pufferfish hopper. This means that the potion brewer will brew potions of leaping by pulling from both the nether wart and rabbit’s foot hoppers.

I’ve labeled the chests so you can clearly see which hopper is which.

Above you can see the pufferfish repeater on the left, with the rabbit’s foot repeater on the far right. If I were to toggle the lever off, then the rabbit’s foot repeater would lock and the brewer would brew potions of water breathing.

There was quite a bit of trial and error involved with this setup as I had a mess of wires going on in the control room. Thankfully though, I reordered the wires and got everything working appropriately. Everything except a bug that I found…

The brewing stand will not accept any water bottles following the completion of the first batch. I have to log out and log back in for it to accept more water bottles. I’m still in Minecraft 1.11.2 as of this session, so perhaps this has been remedied in 1.12. But as of now, that is what’s keeping the brewer from working.

A second spur-of-the-moment auxiliary feature was added to the brewer. What if I could visibly see that the brewer was on? Sure, I could just look at the brewing stand. But that’s not visible enough. If I accidentally toggle the brewer a second time when it’s already active, I’ll break the system. So perhaps I can install a glowstone lamp that will explicitly tell me when the brewer is on. Impossible to fit in, you say? Challenge accepted.

I’ve placed the circuit for our glowstone lamp on blue blocks to make it visibly separate from the other circuits. This is tight as hell, my friends. But it works.

We had to get this torch tower down to the bottom level where the hopper timer is. This hopper timer is what controls the timing of the brewer system to match the time it takes for the potions to brew. The lamp needs to stay active for that entire length of time.

I took advantage of two main circuits here, in concordance with two behaviors of those circuits.

Pictured above are the two circuits, which are connected to an RS (NOR) latch that sets and resets the brewer’s activity. When the brewer is off, the top circuit is on like in the picture. The brewer then goes through two cycles (one on each side of the hoppers). In the first cycle, both circuits are off, and in the second cycle, both circuits are on.

The puzzle: How do we utilize this behavior to keep the glowstone lamp active for both cycles?

The solution: The top circuit sends an inverted input to the glowstone lamp via the torch tower, which keeps it off while the brewer is off. When the first cycle begins, the lamp will stay active since neither of the two circuits are active. When the second cycle begins, the bottom circuit will beat the top circuit to the input, locking the redstone repeater for the duration of the second cycle. This prevents the top circuit from activating the input signal to the lamp until after the second cycle has finished and the bottom circuit is inactive again.

I hope that nonsense made sense. But if not, here’s a simplified version: The lamp turns on when the brewer is on, and stays off when the brewer is off.

And the result is this new and improved Aqua Lounge bar that can now brew two types of potions: water breathing and leaping. Wow, before you know it, I’ll have every potion brewing in here! Okay, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves…

I was thinking about the small carrot farm I built last session, and considered that perhaps I haven’t given cocoa beans enough love.

Truly, they’re only workable in our multi-crop farm, but even that is slow because it doesn’t actually break the cocoa beans. Hence, I thought it best to dive in and build a new farm, specifically for our precious imported cocoa.

Outside this miniature project, my focus today was on troubleshooting one of Starlight HQ’s last major impediments that has effectively rendered all of its XP farms useless. The Quintropolis gods have presumably gotten back at me for what I did at Stonewall, so now they have placed a new rule on my world that prevents me from clustering more than 24 mobs together in a single space! This means that while my farms still work, I cannot really farm them in the same manner as I did before. So we have two options.

I know that I can technically break the rules, but doing so means that I will sacrifice all that I’ve worked hard to achieve in this world – a journey of discovery through the constructs put about me by the gods. They’ve designed Quintropolis such that I can break the rules of nature only that it comes with the consequence of being unable to go back. In other words, if I break the mob cramming rule by way of commands, then I prove that I am incapable of surviving in a world that doesn’t align with my convenient standards. You see, if I break the rules, then how am I truly achieving anything at all? Rules are put in place to challenge us, I think, and so I’d thank the gods for attempting to slow my momentum in Starlight HQ by breaking all of my farms.

That leaves only one other option, which is to work around the laws of nature as have been bestowed upon us to fix our farms and make the most of this situation. That’s the kind of challenge that I admire, and in truth I find these challenges help us understand more about ourselves and the world in general. After all, without challenges, then we do not develop. Since my goal is ultimately to reach the gods, then I must do so humbly and with honor. To do so means to challenge myself – to subject myself to a world in which I am not the one in control, doing whatever I have to do within the constructs of that world to take control of it. That’s the true spirit of the challenge. What exactly would I gain by breaking the rules? Sure, I might gander at the convenience it would bring about Quintropolis’ mob farms, but that’s no different than altering the AI of the mobs with other commands such that they would never hurt me. It changes the laws of nature.

In real life, if I can’t change the speed of sound and I know that, then why waste time pondering over what it would be like if I could? Why dream of not having to eat or drink when that is not the world we live in? These questions are equally applicable to the current predicament in front of us. In this world, we can no longer cram more than 24 mobs into one space. The difference between this world and the real world is that we do have the ability to change the speed of sound or perhaps make it so that we don’t have to eat and drink. The problem is that by choosing to enact these changes, we break the authenticity of the world. And we can no longer call it a survival world either. It’s especially when we don’t like the rules that we are challenged to step up and confront them. When we choose instead to break them, we express weak desires. We show that we are unwilling to accept the challenge because it conflicts with what we’ve adapted to. We pretend that the rules threaten our style of play when what they really do is challenge it. It all comes down to change – a basic natural rule that still scares so many. You cannot alter the essence of change. Because you know you can’t, you have two options. Hide from it, or embrace it. If you hide, then you’ve accepted your weaknesses more than your strengths. But if you embrace it, you use your strengths to battle the change and make it your own.

So, let’s play by the rules.

I’ll divide this process into three segments, because each was a unique session in and of itself:

Skeleton farm

Cave spider farm

Blaze Blaster

On another note, we reached (and far exceeded) day 4,000 in Quintropolis in this session!

The Starlight Outback is the first foundational piece of an evolving puzzle I’ve created that has so far been dubbed as the Tetraquin Project. More specifically, the outback is going to be composed of features that contribute to the development of this project as we progress further throughout this season.

As you can see from this handy book, the Tetraquin Project is a conglomeration of six distinct projects, but each project can only exist after the previous. Ergo, you could say that this project functions as a chain reaction, with each subsequent build being the next step towards the project's ultimate conclusion. With the villager purifier now built, we can move onto the second build in the Tetraquin Project. And that build will be based in the Starlight Outback.

First I need to make a note here. I updated to Minecraft 1.12 with this session, and in the process noticed that my little vine trick I spent hours slaving over in the previous session no longer functioned. I was initially a bit frustrated by this (since, you know, I had just gone through hoops to redo all my farms one session ago), but then I thought I might try ladders. Sure enough, those worked.

My first focus with the outback is the landscaping. After all, I can’t build anything without a proper foundation, so today I made it my goal to get the land looking close to what I envisioned in my head. I’ve brought a variety of items to aid me in this and decorating.

This little pig is probably one of the only pigs left on Quintropolis Island. He’ll stay.

Believe it or not, this hole descends to what I think was my third major caving adventure, back in sessions 20-22. I’ll make shrine out of it at some point.

What you’re seeing above is a photo taken from the furthest boundary north of the outback faction. You can see just how far we are from the Starlight Castle, yet in the near future this entire landmass will be part of one connected base. Isn’t that somewhat crazy?

I’ve altered some tree bases like this one to better match the scenery. I’m trying my best to keep the existing scenery as much as possible, as my goal is to work around the land and simply refine it. Yet, sometimes the trees still get in the way.

I’ve used a variety of different trees in decorating the borders of the outback trail. If you recall from session 213, I noted that the trail would be the walkable perimeter of the outback. That’s why I’m paving that first; the foundation is the first step.

My one annoyance here: birch trees! Those do not signify outback – no, those scream suburbs. Any and all birch trees will be ridden from Starlight HQ’s outback faction!

Here is a big ass ravine that I fell into, hiding just underneath a piece of land at one corner of the outback. Merry Christmas to me.

Pictured above is the hill that will house the outback’s main central build (which I’ve not yet revealed).

The outback plaza will connect the back side of the trail to the mountainside. But I need to flatten the land a bit so I can form the base.

I’ve started to clear this mountain a bit because it’s too steep. I’ll need to make its climb much more gradual.

That’s a bit better, though I may refine it more yet.

I’ve opted to leave the bonemeal and flowers to the edges of the outback trail boundaries, to further distinguish the actual trail from the rest of the outback. That will make it much easier to follow.

The pathway from the Farmlands to the outback has been better landscaped.

I hopped into a creative backup to give you a complete aerial view of the outback faction. This should help clarify exactly where it is and its layout. You can clearly the trail I’ve dug out, and how it wraps around the mountainside in the center of the outback. Also take note of its size – it nearly doubles the size of HQ!

For tidying up, I’ve done my best to remove all instances of trees floating atop single dirt blocks and massive dirt walls. These are physics fails that do not look natural! All other inconsistent terrain was remedied to the best of my ability.

This small mountain by the coast could use a lot of work.

That’s a lot better, wouldn’t you say? Alternatively, I may consider obliterating it completely… What do you think of that idea?

Alas, the final step of the trail is to pave it with podzol. Did you see that one coming? Neither did I actually; this was a last minute decision. Yet, I think it’s fitting and makes sense. Only obvious challenge was going back and forth to Stonewall several times to acquire enough podzol.

Along the way, I acquired a few of these:

A visit to Stonewall isn’t complete with a death message.

Hey, this is a new fortress I haven’t yet discovered… and it yields to me a message from Stonewall it seems.

This circular arena will be the basis for the outback plaza.

Perhaps, I considered, the first course of action should be to complete the bridge between the outback faction and the Starlight Castle’s boardwalk. I have hated the way that this back area is designed since forever. That’s a long time!

I kept things simple: a boardwalk across the top with an appropriate staircase down to the ground. And it’s lit up with sea lanterns.

The outback plaza is made up of different clay colors and sea lanterns. I started with this design:

But I didn’t like how incomplete it felt. So I refined the design to this:

Provided are some aerial shots of the completed landscaping of the outback trail and outback faction up to this point:

With most of the landscaping complete, we’re ready to commence development on the first major build of the outback. And this build alludes to a growing mystery within the world of Quintropolis – one that I’ve been trying to solve for years. Stay tuned…

How do you determine mystery? Does it relate to your lack of preconceived cognition about a particular topic or understanding? Is it relative to your belief in the power of faith? Perhaps it is an evolutionary response to existence and survival – the dos and don’ts of how to live and why we make the decisions we do.

In today’s session, I need to exhort a puzzle that has eluded me since the conception of this world. Prior to Stonewall, I had no reason to believe that such a puzzle necessitated context beyond the physical observation. However, Stonewall opened my mind, which is why I think it’s time to confront the realities of Quintropolis instead of run from them.

When I sought out to construct Starlight Outback, my goal was quite simple; I needed a larger haven. But the space itself was not erected in vain, for I could only do so much with the limitations I imposed upon myself. Very simply, I needed a sector for study.

On the back side of the mountain that sits in the center of the outback faction, I carve out a cave that descends to a chamber.

My goal today is to construct a puzzle that mirrors the very puzzle I intend to solve in Quintropolis. By recreating the puzzle in a tangible sense, I’ll be able to tackle the mystery more sensibly. What is this mystery, you ask?

Long ago, back in Emerald Hills (2013), I laid eyes upon a slender shadowy figure of unequal proportions. From afar, this figure dashed towards me with rage, furious that I would even conjure the consideration of peeking at its features! I tried to escape this figure, but it was much faster than I. It chased me into a cave and I fought for my life as the figure intensified. I did not kill this figure; it fell into an underground spring of water and disappeared forever.

Upon returning to Starlight Castle, I met another figure of exactly the same species. I was more prepared this time when the beckoning of its voice greeted me from afar. I killed the shadowy figure inside Starlight Castle, feeling as though my nightmare had ended.

Little did I know, this figure was just one of an entire species of creatures. They are called endermen.

Endermen are not like the other creatures. They’re curious. They have intelligence. They carry purpose. But what are they all about? What is the purpose that they carry? I find it difficult to accept that these shadowy creatures are just figments of a coincidental creation. There is a deeper story behind them.

Every time I kill an enderman, I collect a set of pearls that give my superhuman abilities of teleportation. I never thought much of it before, but only now do I acknowledge that this behavior is inhuman. Thus, I conjured a brilliant theory about the existence of these creatures – that they are not of this world.

But if endermen are not of this world, then how could I go about determining where they came from? That’s the puzzle I am currently trying to solve. It’s one of those dire curiosities that have set in the back of my mind for years while I had other things going on. Only now do I acknowledge the significance of this mystery, what with the Secret of Stonewall having been fulfilled. There is something deeper going on.

To illustrate my theory about the endermen, I’ll craft a puzzle designed as a parkour course to illuminate what I know so far.

The puzzle represents a type of maze. Each button performs some different function, but the goal is to find your way through the maze of doors to escape the chambers. In this metaphorical game, the buttons represent theories, while the maze represents the unknown. More specifically, some theories are accurate and some are not; the accurate theories unlock new knowledge about the universe, while the inaccurate theories limit progressive progress.

Such is the case in this maze. I’ve designed some buttons to act as bogus buttons, while others inflect curious changes in the maze’s architecture. Think of this course as a mirror maze, without the mirrors.

What better way to show off my nearly-depleted iron supply by using it for the doors? In either case, it’s fitting for the theme of this build.

For the technically inclined, this course is nothing new as far as redstone concepts are concerned, compared to other projects I’ve engaged throughout this journal. The course runs entirely on RS (NOR) latches, which open/close doors throughout different sections of the maze.

Above you can see interaction among two buttons and one gate. One button opens the gate, whilst the other closes the gate.

Some parts of the underground wiring get very complicated very fast. In the future, I could likely benefit from color-coding the redstone lines that I compose.

Speaking of which, I’d only just realized at the end that I have to make a reset button – that is, a button that resets all of the latches for the next game.

You can imagine the frustration involved in trying to locate every RS (NOR) latch I’d set up. Not to mention, I have to run a separate redstone line to each one.

Thankfully, I managed to find all the latches, but certainly this is a learning experience for the future. I need to organize my redstone!

You see the game and I’m hopeful you understand its simplicity. But maybe you don’t know how it connects to the mythological puzzle I am currently studying.

Since the dawn of Quintropolis, there existed a small fraction of the human population who carried a dormant gene given by the gods. When unlocked, this gene causes a transformation that elevates one’s humanity to something much more divine. Sounds awesome, right? But it’s not that simple. The gods played with us, testing out the gene on huge proportions of the population to see who was evolutionarily fit to receive this “gift.” Of course, the days of civilization have long passed, but that’s not to say that the “gift” ceases to exist.

The Secret of Stonewall revealed the first clue that signals the active existence of this gift. When I transcended the limitations of this world and unlocked the four supernatural demons, my mind was opened to the possibility that this gene is far from fantasy. The fact that Starlight HQ now operates with supernatural auras provided by the beacons supports its unequivocally progressive purpose in bending the laws of nature.

However, the events at Stonewall ignited a second clue. Somehow, the tiny village of Techtown knew about my battle several thousand blocks away. The last time I connected with that measly village was near the beginning of 2014 – four distant years ago. Why all of a sudden are they interested? I have a theory: the endermen.

I have always been skeptical of their seemingly dormant perpetuations on this world. Perhaps they are not as dormant as I initially expected. What do they want? My theory is illustrated in the maze of chambers.

I believe that the endermen operate as a sort of hive mind. With each new pair of eyes that connects to the hive, a new door of knowledge is opened. When the full world is within their scope of vision (the world represented by the maze), then they have already conquered the peace that has disguised my lonely existence.

But, there is a catch. Some of the buttons in the maze close other doors. This is because of how I think the hive mind works. If the hive theory is accurate, then it is not absolute. In other words, the intelligence must be concentrated in a dynamic radius – when one door opens, another door closes. This would explain why it took several years for the village of Techtown to find me.

Still, so many gaps exist in my theory. For example, if the hive mind were accurate, then why didn’t the gods interfere with my fulfilling of the Secret of Stonewall? On the other hand, only after my Wither battle did endermen begin appearing in the Nether. Certainly those appearances were not random.

The second part of this puzzle course will illustrate a different aspect of my theory: a setting.

Can you guess the inspiration after which I am styling this course? I think it may be the final clue of this ancient mythical puzzle.

Busting open this giant hole, this area will comprise the second section of the “Chambers” parkour course. To reiterate, the first puzzle consisted of a grid of locks and doors, representative of my theory about the endermen existing as a hive mind. When one door opens, another door closes. Such is the same with the endermen. Their intelligence moves from place to place; they are not everywhere at once. But, before I continue with the course, I need to confront this theory head-on. Otherwise, this project serves no purpose.

Locking up Starlight HQ, I’m curious what I will find as I head out towards an old relic I discovered years ago. Do you recall what I found on my North Shore Adventure back in session 182?

Welcome back to Megapolis Canals.

Chronos, my trusted horse whom I’d lost for the better part of season two, will be staying here at the Quinone base as I descend into anguish.

Now if I can just remember how to get back to that relic…

Does this ring a bell? This is where my North Shore Adventure concluded.

Today, we’re going to finish that adventure and find out just what secrets lay inside this ancient structure. What can it tell us about the mystery of the endermen?

Whoa. I knew mineshafts were a common remnant of history but this? This is something much more prehistoric.

It’s like… pieces of an ancient city, rotting away as the earth around them erodes and reforms.

What’s this? A chest!

A myriad of unique rooms compose this stronghold, but I’m still left wondering what used to exist here! Does this relic feature anything worthwhile? So far, the answer is no.

An ancient library… now this is a bit more interesting!

And oh look – what are the conveniences that an enderman happens to show up? Back off, buddy!

I’ve blocked the enderman in. If my theory is true, and he knew that I was here… well, let’s just back off on those theories for now. Things are starting to get tense.

Strange… a door left wide open. But to what? I have more questions than answers.

What seems to be the final sector of this stronghold is upon me.

The hell is in my scope of vision??

Holy sh--. There is some truth to my theory!

What is this?! An eye of the endermen?! And those pesky gray bugs? The world has never greeted me with those before! Does death await me? Is that why the endermen have arrived??

I killed those endermen, left Chronos behind at Megapolis, and ran from this godforsaken ancient hell.

That was a gate! Is this not what I’ve been searching for this whole time? I have so many questions…

So, if that was a gate, which it looked very much to be, then there must be some way to unlock it. Now, I saw that an eye was wedged into one of the pockets. Is that from an enderman? I must presume so! Multiple endermen showed up as I approached it. The tension far exceeded another ordinary night on the surface… no, this was different. This was more akin to otherworldly danger. It was scary.

It will take some time to process everything that I saw today.

Let’s breathe and illustrate what I’ve just learned by completing “Chambers,” back at the safety of my home in Starlight HQ.

The idea of this range chamber echoes what I am currently theorizing about the gate. There must be a series of things that must be done in order to open the gate, similar to the Tetraquin Project. Here, you’ll have to use bow and arrow skills to linearly open the gate to the exit chamber.

First button, on the opposite wall of the cave, opens the gate to this chamber. This nifty puzzle requires you to hold down every single button/pressure plate at the same time. You can do this with a smart approach, taking into account how long arrows take to despawn.

Wiring this puzzle, considering the small space, is a challenge.

I start on the roof, wherein all buttons deactivate torches that lock/unlock repeaters. One torch acts as the master input which must push through all the other locks.

This concept, with some tweaking, required multiple inputs to work. Some of the buttons act as redstone inputs, while others act as redstone locks.

Tight redstone fitting is easier done here because all buttons are essentially connected to the same circuit. The goal is to deactivate that circuit, which means you have to activate all the buttons. Simple!

Here, you can see a bug. Sometimes, depending on the pattern in which the buttons are triggered, the lock inputs will retrigger before the master power input does, leaving some buttons like the ones pictured above to be irrelevant to the system.

To fix this, I install a power line above the center circle of torches. This will ensure that the power lines activate before the locks do. In this way, all buttons now become master input switches. Such a system is now foolproof.

^ This RS (NOR) latch ensures that the gray buttons are the last buttons to deactivate the signal.

Challenging? Certainly, but a fun challenge nonetheless. It is also an important metaphor about the current predicament that we’re in. Sometimes, you have to exercise all options before the right answer reveals itself. That seems to be exactly how this puzzle is playing out.

The chamber just behind here is a vertical chamber. This challenge requires accuracy and precision, as you must shoot an arrow up and at a slight angle to project it down into the 1x1 chamber in the room’s center.

The top of this vertical chamber ascends above the surface.

A pretty nod to the course’s existence, isn’t it?

With some handy aesthetics, shooting the button on the surface hub unlocks the next gate, which is out in the cave.

I think that part of the importance of illustrating the mystery of the endermen is the variety of puzzles I’ve had to encounter to date regarding how to solve it. Such is what I showcase here, using water as a natural obstacle to your success.

Next puzzle of the chamber is a timing challenge, similar but simpler than the all-in-one puzzle we built earlier.

You have to toggle all five buttons at once, but you’re obstructed by a row of pistons operating on a clock. You not only have to beat them, but you have to toggle all five buttons before they close permanently. Otherwise, you’re back shooting underwater.

Final gate is a very tight precision shot. That’s how I predict this mythological conundrum will conclude.

There are some details about “Chambers” that I spared because I don’t want to spoil some parts of the course that require the element of surprise. You’ll notice that the locations of the puzzles built in this course are not obviously defined. That’s because finding them is part of the challenge – again, metaphorical of the larger puzzle at play.

After testing the course, and ensuring especially that it resets itself fully (reset buttons are always a pain in the ass; nothing compares to “Landing Pad’s” reset wire), I can assure that this is one of the most fun substantial additions to the base in recent years! Have you forgotten that this is located within Starlight HQ? Yeah, so did I. Starlight Outback still hasn’t settled naturally with me, yet.

Please welcome our new puzzle parkour, “Chambers,” as the fourth parkour course in Quintropolis.

Now, back to how we’re going to tackle this stronghold situation…

I had some time to think about this, and I believe we’ve exercised all our options. The right answer has become clear.

Megapolis is such a beautiful terrain. It’s a shame that I have to tear a hole right through it.

You know I wouldn’t do this if I had any other choice. I don’t.

So, remember all those long, hard hours that I put into the Blaze Blaster back in Session 217? You know, to fix the new mob cramming rule set in stone by the Quintropolis gods? Well guess what… it’s broken again.

This time, due to (I presume) some change in how that activator rails behave, the blaze do not eject from the system when coming from the east side. However, they do eject when being dropped off from the west direction (as in, the minecart traveling eastward).

While somewhat disappointing, this gives us a chance to reinvent some features of the Blaze Blaster that I didn’t get the opportunity to fix before. For example, we have yet to figure a new lighting system for turning the farm on and off (as lava would no longer work with the minecart setup). Having said that, this project is always a pain in the ass to work on, but let’s begin!

At first, I presumed that the problem was here in the trapdoor, which is connected to a circuit that opens the door immediately after the blaze are ejected. Problem is that sometimes, when the two minecarts arrive asynchronously, the trapdoor might still be open when the other minecart ejects a blaze, which leads to blaze clogging the track.

I fix this issue by removing all this unnecessary redstone. Turns out, the issue is a simple fix. I’ll just invert the behavior of the trapdoor. It will remain open until toggled to close by either of the minecarts. In this way, when timed correctly, the trapdoor will close by detector rail and subsequently open just after the blaze are ejected. It doesn’t matter how the minecarts from each side are synced now, because it will always close when triggered by either minecart.

However, I quickly notice a new issue; the minecart on the west track does not eject onto the trapdoor. As it turns out, something in the world’s physics recently changed in that these mobs will only eject from one direction and in one direction. I recognize this astutely as I test both sides, which up to this point were equal in design.

The solution for this is simple, albeit not ideal. I simply rework the track such that it’s now just one minecart track connecting to both sides of the blaze drop-off. Though this will make it somewhat slower, I’d rather have “it works” right now than “it’s fast.” Catch my drift?

With some trial and error, I successfully time the gate such that blaze will have no time to escape the trapdoor.

If not timed right, as you can see here, the blaze will pop out of the trapdoor before it opens, even if the time before it opens is infinitesimally small.

This setup is perfect, and ensures that blaze fall down every single time. Hurrah, right?!

Not quite. We’ll use this chance to amend some of the farm’s unfinished features, starting with the lights. As we reworked everything back in Session 217, the original lava lighting will not work because otherwise it will kill the tracks. The only solution I can conjure is placing lamps everywhere. So let’s try it.

Removing all evidence of the lava dispensers, I covered the roof in glowstone. A simple circuit lit them all up. I added lamps on the walls, too.

Unfortunately, this issue is more complex. Blaze can only spawn at light levels 11 and below.

Pictured above, you can see that they do not spawn. All spots are brighter than level 12.

^ But here, that block below and in fact every block below the level I enclosed is light level 11 or 10, even with every glowstone lamp exercised. How the hell am I supposed to handle this?

Stuck, I move on to the next issue while contemplating how to fix this one. Keeping these rails on 24/7 probably isn’t good for lag. So, let’s connect every rail to the on/off lever – the same lever connected to the lights we still haven’t fixed.

You can see here how I’ve extended a circuit to disable every rail (including the new rail we made, which takes the blaze up to the trapdoor). Now, when we turn the farm off (turn the lights on), it will literally be off as no carts will be active.

Moving on to more cosmetic changes, I’ve noticed every now and then that I have to reconfigure the animated lights in the entranceway because they stop animating and hold a constant signal.

This is an easy fix, but I want to do it right.

This simple circuit briefly blocks the signal so that the lights can reanimate. The redstone repeater ensures the best timing for the most vivid animation (i.e. about half the lights go out as the signal starts moving).

I also wanted to add an inverse feature too. This button simply shoots a signal to the dynamic circuit, so that it will fully de-animate. Or, in some cases, turn the lights on if they happen to go out. Either way, we now have both features readily accessible if the lights decide to name their own terms.

Reanimate? De-animate? Your choice! And they both work. At least something isn’t broken.

Moving on from the Blaze Blaster’s updates, the beef of this session is on aesthetics. I think that there is a misconception about the Nether Hub in that it is only thought to be this plus-sign-shaped structure. But this is not the case.

The Nether Hub is this entire chunk of land that encompasses the portals to all other pocket factions of Starlight HQ.

Now, how can we make that clear? It’s time to build the Nether Hub outside the Nether Expressway Terminus (NET).

Sandstone is my material of choice for two reasons: it’s bright, and it contrasts the other colors nicely. Its seamless texturing makes it easy to look at as well, which is great considering that it will literally cover the hub’s floor.

Terraforming each slab of land one at a time, I cleaned the area up significantly so that this process would be much easier. Taking into account the borders of the Nether Hub, which at this point are the edges of the cliff, I’ve left some parts undone so that I’ll remember to work further on them later.

Does this not look much better?

I am now blocking off this lava moat with fencing to completely contrast the NET from the rest of the hub. Nether brick is used sparingly to separate the sections of the hub.

Going through all this work to make the whole hub look better, it will be worth the effort of ghast-proofing the place. But that will involve a lot of logistical work that I am not prepared for today, so we’ll save that for a later date. It’s definitely part of my plan, though – a giant ass glass wall of some shape to protect the hub from ghast fireballs.

For now, though, I’m just happy to get this makeover done. This has long been on my to-do, but the timing is impeccable now since we’re about to get started on the Starlight Outback. Without getting too detailed prematurely, development of the outback will involve a lot of back and forth among other pocket factions in HQ (including the newly added Stanland portal). I figure it will be nice to have a complete, clean hub to start us out.

Ghasts must have broken those a while ago…

Here, I am installing the source of lighting for the Nether Hub.

Looks ugly, right? Well, the lighting is not actually going to be these lava tubes.

Rather, the lava tubes provide the base lighting for the magma blocks that will cover them. For those of you unfamiliar with these magma blocks, they “hold” light – not create light. By covering these tubes with magma blocks, the blocks will emit the same level of light coming from the lava at those levels.

With this architecture, I am composing a number of magma stalactites around the hub. These will light the area, at least to some degree.

What a breathtaking view!

Finished? Not in the least, but we’re off to a fantastic start. This is about as much as I want to get done today, though, because the foundation is all we need at the moment. The remaining pieces of the puzzle will come into play later on.

Finishing up, I’ll swap orange glass for the standard glass that’s dated the Nether Temple.

And, let’s remove this pillar of lava. It’s unnecessary – nothing more than a danger to myself and to the creatures I bring through the portal to and fro (i.e. my horses).

In concluding this session, the Blaze Blaster had been significantly updated. Unfortunately, I’ve yet been unable to fix the issue of turning it completely off (lighting the full spawning area bright enough). Because of this, I’ll keep my netherrack platform in place and prohibit usage of the Blaze Blaster until further notice.

OUT OF ORDER (temporarily)

It seems that an element of the rabbit farm has long been overlooked… Did you realize that the lava kills any drops that might appear? Well, you’d only know that if you knew the wiring, which by the way is inefficient. Let’s fix that.

I’ve redone the rabbit farm to exude behavior akin to a pulse generator. This will ensure that the lava is only dispensed for a tick or two before disappearing. By also installing a collection chest, no drops will be left behind!

It’s been far too long in the waiting game for the Starlight Outback to come to life. Having been in planning since late 2015, this project will be the representation of delayed satisfaction as I slowly see it unravel session by session. Today, we begin the base’s first major construction as the centerpiece of Starlight Outback.

Recall the design of the outback. A trail acts as the faction’s natural perimeter, stretching around a mountain in the center and connecting back at the outback plaza. Well, this mountain will be home to the Starlight Treehouse – a massive treehouse that I expect will be just as large as Starlight Castle upon completion.

There’s a catch to this build, however. From a construction perspective, the Starlight Treehouse will be designed as a redstone house, meaning that it will be wired like hell within a seemingly primitive architecture. And that’s the idea. I can’t wait to get started and show you some of its features!

To start the build, we first need a way to ascend the treehouse. We already need to build a massive trunk, so why not take advantage of that space?

Wedged into the top of the mountain, I’ll start the trunk with oak wood logs to give it some depth.

The first feature of this build is a redstone slime block elevator. This will ideally take me to the top and back. Also, this will make the build’s security completely foolproof.

Observer blocks were first utilized in Session 217 during the reconstruction of every mob farm, but here they serve a different purpose. These blocks work like BUD switch – any block update will send a redstone signal to the output. This behavior is exactly how the elevator functions.

You can see here a few things. The two observers sticking outward are the “plugs,” so to speak. This is where the elevator is connected to the input wires. These wires send signals to the observers which activate the pistons. From there, the elevator is completely self-sufficient unless stopped.

In order to stop the piston elevator, we have a few options. We could slash a piece of obsidian onto the top and stop the elevator that way, but this is not appropriate for the build and rather lazy. Let’s look at another alternative.

If we keep the topmost piston extended, then the elevator will cease to be self-sufficient and will stop in its tracks. This is a more feasible approach. To think about how we might do this, we have to realize that the only way to communicate with the machine is via observers. Therefore, all wires to and from the machine must be connected in the form of block updates.

The pictured contraption works as follows: the observer at the very bottom of the elevator will update the sticky piston on the bottom of the slime block stack in the above photo, which will move the redstone block upwards and send a signal through the obsidian block and towards the location where the topmost piston will be. Did you follow that?

If not, take a look here:

Notice how the redstone block is powering the repeater whereas in the previous photo it was not. That’s because the elevator is at the top; the observers on the slime block elevator interacted with these slime blocks here, causing a rift that sent a signal to the topmost piston. With the topmost piston extended (and left extended), the elevator will cease to move.

When pressed, the button will send the elevator back down. There is no need for such a contraption at the bottom since an obsidian block is already placed to secure that.

Fun fact: glazed terracotta blocks do not get moved by slime blocks. What are the odds?

You had to see this coming…

I’ve never gotten the chance to appreciate this view. Though, I imagine it’s not quite so fun looking down.

Some troubleshooting had to occur because leaf blocks are not solid blocks, and so the observers could not interact with my contraption on the outside keeping the elevator stabilized.

An odd array of glitch blocks are showing up here. They are not real, they drop nothing because they are duplicates, yet I can stand and jump onto them. Perhaps they are manifestations from the dark world.

Yes! It works!

Now I have to build the giant trunk.

A quick trip to Stanland and back yields a decent supply of oak to start the build. But I anticipate that more than one trip will be required.

Surrounding the full elevator with oak wood is certainly feasible, and in fact the extra redstone contraption on the outside allows me to construct a more realistic trunk, as no trunk is linear in design. After all, we’re trying to blend with nature. For all our visitors know, this tree has always been here!

What do you think of this entrance?

Turning our attention to the top, I’d like to decorate much of the interior flooring with carpet.

I would like to vary the types of woods that I use up here. I’m thinking that dark oak will be used for the deep roots and accent pieces.

This second contraption is a redstone lever lock system. I won’t show you the redstone, but what you’re looking at is a piston door that will only open if the correct arrangement of levers is executed. The door will lead into the treehouse’s main room.

Having fallen off the treehouse a number of times, I quickly realize that I need a way to call the elevator back down. Using observers, this is very easy to do.

Iron doors and observers combine to create a fast redstone circuit that not only works quickly, but it presents a new possibility for downward redstone travel, which is always a pain to work with compactly.

Additionally, the sound of the iron doors gives the elevator a rustic feel, as though chains are pulling it upward.

Keeping in mind those observers must receive an update from the receiving end, I design the horizontal sections like so:

Doesn’t this look like a cozy afternoon spot?

The final part of this session involves the conception of the main room itself. Fitted with dark oak, cyan carpet, and a giant glass window, this main room is the centerpiece of the treehouse and offers an extraordinary view of Quintropolis Island, and the sunset.

Goodnight, Starlight HQ.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted the outback to be visibly distinguished from the outside boundaries of Starlight HQ. How will it be seen from afar? Is there a way to even segregate the outback as a separate entity within HQ? While Starlight Treehouse is certainly going to be a powerful piece of eye candy upon its completion, it represents only a fraction of Starlight Outback. I don’t want the outback to be bombastic like the rest of HQ, but I do want it to look and feel more like a complete unit rather than being visibly defined by a single structure (treehouse).

That’s when I came up with a redstone-rich idea.

What if we installed several pillars of glowstone lights following the outback trail around the treehouse? This would not only emit visible beacons at night, but it would also connect Starlight Treehouse to the rest of the outback.

In a creative test world, I came up with some options about how the wiring for such lights would look.

In designing the lights, I have to craft the wiring in such a way that would allow for customizable modes for how the lights operate. In other words, I would like to allow the lights to alternate, as in the above photo, and I might also want the lights to flicker in a snake-like fashion.

Using both torches and repeaters is the solution. Though I’ll be limited in what I can do based on space alone, I will have some options for how the lights are triggered.

You can see how that I’ll integrate some of the modes – clocks are my friend here. Some clocks will control the flickering of individual lights, while other clocks will control the flicker sequence of every light in the outback (of which there will be six).

Back in Starlight HQ, here is what the light bases will look like. Additionally, every light will be built at the same height (y-coordinate), to preserve synchronization in both aesthetics and redstone.

A collage of torches and redstone repeaters will certainly provide a heaping pile of lag spikes. I’ll have to consider this fact when constructing the animated modes of the lights; after all, the primary purpose of the outback was to disperse the weight of HQ to reduce lag. I can’t allow the lights to kill the world.

With each subsequent light, I’ll alternate which side of the outback trail on which I build.

Pictured above are the frameworks for two of the lights. Keeping them all at y-coordinate 70 will require building supports for several lights in the valley.

^ An animated lightwork in action.

Here are the supports I was talking about, as this light is built on the edge of the hill:

This fourth light occupies a tree, which means that it will involve a much large redstone torch tower (since it will have to come from the underground):

The same is true for the fifth light.

The final light sits directly above a vertical cave entrance, giving me a reason to cover the cave.

You can see how the lights will operate as significant supporting elements to the treehouse and, in turn, the outback.

Next, we’ll have to wire the lights. The goal is to connect all lights to a central clock system which will have customizable modes. These will be fully triggered from Starlight Treehouse. Two systems ergo have to be built: a circuit box built as a separate room in the treehouse, leading vertically downward to a master clock system underground.

I’m covering up the piston door I built last session, as a second floor will be adjoining its roof. The roof of the main hub will be the floor of the canopy that will rest above.

The treehouse staircase is a “switcheroo” style that alternates between linear stairs and curved slab pathways. The sides will eventually be fully enclosed with leaves.

From a distance, the treehouse still looks flimsy. That’s because we haven’t yet covered it with the leaves.

The circuit box for the night lights will be wedged underneath this room, constructed off the back side of the vertical elevator entrance. The glass construction will allow me to view the night lights as I customize their behavior. I cannot see every light at once from anywhere, but I’ll always be able to see three at once.

Enclosed with natural expansions to the tree branches, I plan to have the night lights feature six different patterns and two modes (normal and inverted). An additional modifier will allow me to speed up or slow down the clocks by multipliers, while a master level will trigger the system on or off. Again, this is currently just a plan, because I have yet to determine how lag will affect the world with these kinds of complex animations. While the redstone for all this is very simple, it may be overboard given how purely aesthetic this feature remains. Time will tell if any or all these features make it to the final build, but that’s the current plan.

For the circuit box, all I must do is install three primary components: the individual pattern devices (mostly clocks), the modifiers (also simple), and the master lever. The final output wire will be the only wire that descends underground to all the lights. This essentially means that I’ll have a giant visible leaf bubble full of redstone. And that’s exactly the plan.

The circuit box construction is for another day; right now, I’m focused on connecting the lights together and fusing the master output wire.

Because all lights were constructed at the same height, wiring their redstone towers will be easy since any variations can be corrected with repeaters.

Tracking all x and z coordinates, I brought all six wires to a master room directly underneath Starlight Treehouse. This is where the master clock will be located.

The final output wire will descend from the circuit box down the back side of the main trunk.

Check out the accentuations the night lights provide!

With the lights fully functioning as suitable compliments to Starlight Treehouse, I’ve fulfilled my goal of bringing the Starlight Outback together as a single unit. The next project will be to build the circuit box and setup the modes.