It's been a year since my last journal post, and all this time I've had a great idea for a new journal just begging to exist. But, one thing after another has come up. First it was Realistic Terrain Generation, which is something I've wanted to do for a long time, and kudos to the rest of the team and especially WhichOnesPink for putting it all together. I'm very happy with that mod - but it *did* take six months.
Then I've had to update 2 mods to 1.8 and then 1.9/1.10. LouisDB has done a lot of work on the Underground Biomes Constructs upgrade - more than me, I think, but there's still been a lot left. And, finally, real life has put a lot more demands on me lately than the previous two years or so. I could have done some on the side, but the truth is I don't want to play much without my core mods, so I didn't.
But, RTG and Geographicraft are released for 1.10, and UBC is a playable beta, plus I have a little more free time right now, so I'm ready to give it a go!
Modlist:
AppleCore - needed for Spice of LIfe
Backpack - I'm going to need some extra portable storage
Baubles - Required for Botania
Biomes o Plenty - I love exploring, and vanilla just doesn't have enough biomes
Botania - I wanted a tech path + goodies mod, and I wanted to try something new to me
DavincisVessels - I love sea exploration, and it has great ships.
Geographicraft - So I can make a world worth exploring
GuideBook - an ingame recipe reference
Movingworlds - Davinci's requirement
Pam's Harvestcraft - makes food a lot more interesting, and gives another development path
RTG - I just can't stand crazified terrain any more. I could look at RTG mountains all day.
SpiceOfLife - So there's a reason not to ignore the huge variety of available food
UndergroundBiomesConstructs - Great for building, and great for mountain views
Waystones - I'm anticipating a lot of exploration, and I want a quick way to switch between distant bases.
It's a very short modlist, compared to most modpack and most modded players I correspond with, but I like it that way. I like staying as close to vanilla as is reasonable for what I want to do.
And, finally, the goal of the journal is:
A SECRET! mwahahaha!
It's interesting, ambitious, and it's never been done, but I'm still going to make you wait a while to find out what it is. I'm guesstimating a month or so, but we'll see. (Yes, I may seem nice most of the time, but I do have an evil streak!)
So, New World, Realistic World type, press the buttons, w a i t a t t h e l o a d i n g s c r e e n and:
The majority of my worlds start with a pretty nice view. All three of my journal worlds did. This is a scenic spot, but I'm not facing in the right direction. The biome is BoP Mountain Peaks - a very scenic biome, but as you can see I'm next to the ocean, so it will be a little while before I'll be able to appreciate it.
Although scenic, mountainside starts are fairly rough, as it takes a lot of shanks to climb up and down the hillside, food is harder to come by, and it's considerably more difficult to secure a house or a yard.
This is complicated by the trees. On the first day, time is of the essence, but I HATE those treetops floating in air and waste precious time trying to chop all the way to the top. But after a few trees I see something which completely changes the nature of this start.
A village! Suddenly food goes from a pretty big problem to absolutely no problem at all. House security is less of an issue as long as the villagers are alive, too, as the zombies will ignore me. It's less of an advantage long-term as it's very difficult to secure a hillside village, and ugly as well if done with standard methods like fencing. So over I head.
And almost have yet another sudden shift in the tenor of the game. That would have been a nasty fall if there's a mob down there. But I see it in time and continue.
I get to the village and start in on securing it. Fencing is out of the question, but most villages become very zombie-resistant from just two things: properly lighting the interiors, and knocking out the steps in front of the door (or digging out the block in front if it's on a level. At that point the zombies can't spawn inside houses and even doorbreakers can't break the doors.
I need a furnace to convert some wood to coal for the torches. I haven't gotten any cobble for it yet yet but -
Plenty of cobble in these wonky villages!
I set up a starter base in a 3x3 out on the water and start roasting some wood. I make some doors and am pleasantly surprised to see BoP has custom doors for its custom woods. I start up the path (much better than the old gravel) and immediately find a blacksmith's, so I didn't actually need to build my own furnace. In the chest I find:
Wow what a haul for early in the game! Almost a complete set of armor, and some extra iron to boot. I'm actually hearing some zombie groans, which concerns me, so I slap on the armor. I'm sure the owner won't mind, because they aren't going to be able to use it and they're going to need some help.
By now I figure I've got some charcoal so I could be lighting the improperly lit houses, so I head back to my now-unneeded quayside hut.
There are some farms there and I feel compelled to harvest some food from them. I still have full shanks and I'm not going to go hungry in the middle of a village like this, but in my previous journal I had a really tough time getting food, to the point that I eventually had to stand unmoving next to my starter farm for more than a game day to keep from starving. People who've starved in real life often develop compulsive food-hoarding and somehow this seems to have happened for my avatars. It seems odd that in-game starvation - obviously nothing like real-world starvation! - would affect me like that but it seems it has. In real life I don't hoard food - I'm more of the "can we use up some of this junk in the pantry" type.
I'm ready to start work on the village but - my compulsions with treetops and food, along with the changes of plan, have run out the day. So the villagers will have to survive one night without my assistance as I don't want to risk nighttime construction work effectively in the open.
I quickly put a door and a temporary block to secure the blacksmith's and enjoy a soothing sunset from the seaside window. A nice aspect to this town is that the ocean is to the west and the mountain slope is steep, so most buildings are going to have a nice sunset view. Yay!
Next episode: In the village.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
The only thing missing from that list would have been climate control and custom ore gen, but that's minor. So, lets follow along, and good luck finding a snow zone for completeness :-).
Now, please tell me that you got torches placed and the doors secured before the first night. I've seen villages completely wiped out except for the villagers in the same room as me before.
If you are talking about the doors being broken, you are on hard. So be very careful about creepers.
Also: you're on 1.10, so you have the auto-farming villagers. The "vanilla" farm style of two rows of the same crop is a bad system. Initially, you should have each side of the farm have two different crops; as soon as you get a bucket, make it a single 4-wide, instead of a pair of 2-wides.
COG would have made finding ores significant. With vanilla, they're everywhere, and you'll drown in supplies very quickly.
(And if you had waited another week or so, Reasonable Realism would be ready for release -- just a little bit of tuning left, I think. Limonite and flowers got fixed this last weekend, yesterday was some mod ore distributions ...)
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
1. You posted a picture from spawn, of the view at spawn. How about a picture turned a bit so we can see more of the view?
2. Did you light up the sea floor for that third pic? HAX!
1. I had to re-create the world for this. I moved just a little to the left because I was right up against a tree and it blocked the view.
2. No, there are BoP corals down there and they luminesce - rather brightly, actually, although seawater absorbs it quickly when you're in the water (but not if you're out, which creates some strange interactions.)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
It's night, and I haven't even seen or heard a sheep, so I have 10 minutes to burn.
First, of course, I use the extra iron in the chest to make a sword.
Then I figure I should bake some of the potatos I picked. Into the furnace they go - wait, the furnaces are outside. Oops!
Fortunately I can chop a wall block out just below the ceiling to access one without anything being able to get in. A skeleton could pot-shot me through this but there's not one out there right now, fortunately.
I was starting to feel more confident about the villagers surviving as I'd been hearing their "hrm" noises through all this. But literally five seconds after I thought that I heard the "Hangh!" of a villager getting injured. I jinxed myself, it seems.
Well, nothing to be done for that until morning. I decided I'd start a dropshaft, made some ladders and started down. Quickly I find I'm facing my old nemesis -
Black Granite.
It's great for ominous or dramatic builds, but it's a real pain to mine in. First it's so dark you can't see it unless it's brightly lit and even then you have to look carefully. Second, it's a pretty hard stone, so it mines notably slower that vanilla stone does. It's supposed to be one underground biome in 12, but I seem to hit it more often than that. This is my second journal starting on it.
I should have know what I was in for, as there are blocks of it noticeable here and there in the pics. I just wasn't paying attention. Ubified village cobble would have tipped me off too, but there have been changes in Forge that make a number of buildings look odd since not all stones can be converted anymore. So I had it off.
After some slow dropshafting, I figure it's dawn and head back up to find it is indeed morning, so I can start cleaning up the village. I decide to name the village "Innwich" because I can get some jokes out of it, starting with the title of this chapter. I'm certain a witch pun will present itself soon enough.
I spot a zombie trapped under a tree. Hoping he's the source of the annoying groans, I chop him (and the tree too) - but the groans continue. Groan.
The village is pretty big. It's pretty messed up, although not quite as badly as I'd expected. In many cases I'm putting blocks beneath doors rather than chopping stairs, as the doors are 2-4 blocks in the air.
Now that's pretty messed up - and quite possibly the source of the zombie groans, since the L-houses are improperly lit.
This fellow is completely blocked in, and this house *is* lit, so the village won't be completely wiped out by zombies no matter what I do.
The village extends up to the top of a kind of ridgeline, with some farms up at the top. I stop to gather some more munchies (this is the first time I've seen beets, actually). There's also a tiny cave up here I light up.
I knock some cobble off the well so villagers can get out if they fall in and -
Dusk already? Where does the time go?
I race back to the blacksmithy to block in the porch with cobble and dirt, so I can use that section through the night. The interior is a bit cramped, as well, and I'd like a little more space. But I get it done in time, so I can remove the walls between the original interior and the porch to get that little more space.
Then it's back to dropshafting - slowly.
I hit a layer of Chalk and Greywacke and find
A nice deposit of iron. 15 total, so probably a double deposit. It's a bit odd I found iron before coal, but then I realized ubified Black Granite is black splotches - on black stone. Great. Can't believe I didn't remember that particular annoyance.
I hear the tinkle of music, and guessing it's morning, head back up - to morning. I resume searching the village.
I find another shut-in, also a priest, so this village is actually relatively safe. They're both priests, so maybe they're some order of monks? Hope they're not from a celibate order.
I run around fixing more building until dusk comes again and then head back to the smithy.
Yaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy!! Welcome back. So good to see you journalling again. And I get to see version... um... you are on 1.10, right? I've still not even seen or played 1.8 lol. I'm very keen to see what's changed and how it affects everything. Lovely little village, too ^.^
P.S. If you want longer days, both Sedridor's and Hea3ven's mods are updated for 1.10.
Double day length makes such a wonderful difference - especially if you're exploring.
**Beware with Hea3ven's Hardmode Tweaks, though. It has an option to thwart bed-ploppers! It's configurable, of course, but I use it, of course It lets you set the amount of time a bed must have been placed before you can sleep in it.
Yes, this is 1.10, and I've already installed Sedridor's B3M mod - literally a few hours after he fixed a crash bug in 10.2. I might use that bed-plopper mode, actually. I was plopping in what will be Chapter 5, but, yeah, it's kinda cheaty.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Chapter 3: Telling of Promising Sights from a Promising Site.
Nightime means back to the mines, but I'm out of torches so first I have to make some coal. After that, I resume deepening the shaft until:
I hit some gold ore! Excellent, just what I need for a clock (redstone is easy once I'm deep enough). My stone pick won't mine it so i just pull out my iron pick - wait, I haven't made one yet? In spite of having about a dozen spare ingots? Geez, I'm rusty. (although my pick isn't, because it's made out of stone.) So I head back upstairs.
Where it's moonset, so I'm not going to head back now. I hear another villager cry out as they get smacked, but I can't do anything right now. Dawn comes shortly, and once I hear the sounds of crisping undead, I head south of town to chop some wood as having to use roasted logs to replace coal is putting a serious dent in my wood supply.
After chopping a few, I head down to the shore, where there are a couple of sugarcane. I'd already spread them about some, and now I plant some more. Because the slope is so steep, I'm bouncing up and down on the hill as I walk along the shore, so I dig out some of the sand blocks to have at least a small flat area to walk on. I'll roast the sand into glass shortly.
I resume house cleaning. This house has the door facing into the hill (not clearly visible here), and is unlit and uninhabited. Most likely the original inhabitant got smoked by a zombie and they both despawned. I light the interior and relocate the door to go outside.
But what's that sound I hear? Baaaaaah?
Not Baaaaad! I dash back to the smithy to make a shears and run back to collect some wool. It' s steep enough right here that I have trouble climbing, even - these are obviously mountain sheep. I get my wool soon enough, but it's obvious I'm approaching the top of a hill. I wonder if I can see the mountain from up here?
That certainly looks promising! I climb up to the top and:
Oh My. Now THAT is a mountain! I had been thinking I wouldn't want to build my base right here because of the difficulties of securing a steep hillside but that view wipes away all question. That's worth quite a bit of hassle to be able to look at as I sleep or work. This is really great luck. RTG provides lots of great views but this is especially good even for RTG and to have it basically from a village at the spawn point - doesn't get much better than this!
The ocean view is pretty good too (this is actually from down the hill some).
As you can see, it's getting dark but since I have wool, that now means - Bedtime!
zzzzzzz
When i wake up, I tackle that buried L-house.
Sure enough there's a zombie inside. I set up a small opening to attack him and after some fiddling around to actually hit do him in. I then go inside, but bizarrely there's a wall of dirt blocking this section (the riser of the L) from the rest of the house. I cut through expecting zombies but find
Resourceful little villagers! I guess they must have built that wall to cut off the unlit part of the house, since they couldn't get out (this door also goes into the hill). In keeping with the monk theme, one of them is a priest. I place an extra torch since I'm not sure even this section is properly lit, and then seal them back up temporarily for safety.
(Seriously, I have no idea how that wall got there. It was one block thick and perfectly flat.)
After that I think I'm done with the buildings in town. I follow the path east from the town (over the ridge) to see if there are any more hidden over the ridge.
There aren't, but there is this magnificent view. This will also be visible from my future hilltop base, and I'm feeling pretty stoked about building it, although it will be a while before I have enough materials.
After that I spend the rest of the day cleaning up the village. I knock some blocks off the well which were blocking the path, and chop down some trees that some skeletons had been hiding under. I also place some planks to connect my cane from to the docks so it's easier to get here - the placement of one of the houses blocks what would be the natural route.
That also affords me this sunset shot which seems a nice ending to my first chapter with a lot of pretty pictures.
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
The "pink" ore is iron. The ore flecks look a different color on a different background (a common optical illusion). It does look strange, even if you know what's going on.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I've been feeling annoyed by the "dusk already" that keeps coming up, so I decide to install B3M, Sedridor's day cycle extension mod. This now adds a clock as well which is convenient for play but sometimes inconvenient for journaling as I sometimes present screenshots out of order to simplify the narrative or to fill in a shot I neglected to take. Well, it'll just give the eagle-eyed continuity freaks something to look at. It's somewhat embarrassing to see how slowly I'm progressing but I do like wandering around and looking at things so I'll just have to deal with that.
At this point I notice Spice of Life has activated, because the Baked Potatos I've been eating are providing only 3.6% of their hunger benefit. So, it's time to Harvestcraft!
I make a Juicer first to get some more mileage out of my carrots. My go-to for early Harvestcraft, however, has been soups, as they are very loose in their ingredient requirements, and have simple preparation, requiring only a Pot. Pot + any veggie makes stock, from which you can always make several more soups, depending on what you have. In my case potato soup (Pot + stock + salt + potato) is pretty obvious. I do have to make some salt, which is a bit tedious but not that big a deal.
While I'm making salt quayside I spot this grotto. I'm still hearing those annoying zombie groans in spite of clearing zombies in and around the town, so I'm starting to suspect a cave beneath me. That would be annoying to search for in black granite. I hoped this would connect, but it seems just to bme one of the underground pools which are so goofy at the surface.
My food supplies are taken care of for a while, so back to the mines. I - finally! - reach y11 and can start branch mining.
This pic - with brightness on max! - gives an idea how much of a pain it is to mine in black granite. All the same, I find a lot rather quickly - 3 stacks redstone, a half stack iron, and 7 diamonds, in just a few minutes. No coal, because *black* granite. This is enough for now and I'm itching to get exploring so I head back upstairs to make some maps.
I harvest some cane but it's been growing slowly so I don't yet have enough. Rather than let it sit, I plant most of it on the north side of the village to increase my production rate. In the meantime I fill out my armor set with some iron boots. I chop some more of the trees near town to cut down on mob hiding space, and increase my wood supply, since I'm going to need a lot for charcoal.
Ask dusk approaches one night, I take this shot of Spawn Mountain high over the village. I love how the colors affect the distant mountain. Minecraft in pretty areas is fun. As I'm looking at this, I realize I can de-goof the cobble pillar under the smithy by converting it to a two-story building. The dropshaft will already connect the floors. I start in and it works pretty well.
Aside from one minor mishap from misestimating the level of the existing floor. Because of that the door is one level lower and not a jump up from the dock. I could knock a hole in the dock, but I think that'll look weird, so I decide to leave the door at level and take my chances with the doorbusters. They'll probably be distracted by the villagers.
It works fairly well so I decide to apply the same approach elsewhere in the village. Surprisingly, there are few candidates. There's only one where I can make a 3-block height lower story, which is the lower library (the village actually has *two* libraries). Not an architectural masterpiece, but a distinct improvement.
The buried L-house is a different situation, but here I stick on a front facade on the ocean-facing side, so it's a pretty functional house now. The inhabitant have chosen to remain confined - dedicated to monastic practice, I guess.
By now the cane has grown so I harvest the cane south of the village. It starts raining as I do and I get this shot of Spawn Mountain wreathed in storm clouds.
Now it's map time. I haven't yet updated Explorercraft - it's less essential now that vanilla can do tiled maps without ridiculous contortions, so this is just vanilla maps.
The zoom 0 map turns out to be rather useful. That's one of the two big advantage Explorercraft still provides - you can choose the center of a map. Often the vanilla map is in the wrong place for a given feature, but here's it's fine and I make a copy.
Unfortunately the level 4 map is poorly placed. You guys probably don't know this, but I know I'm on the west side of a hill with ocean on three sides. The coast heads off to the east from there, and most likely I'm on the north end of this landmass. So this map is probably going to be mostly water.
I don't have enough paper for another level 4 map, but I haven't harvested the cane on the north side of town. So i do that and now I do have enough paper for a second map. I can't make it yet, but if I do end up off this map I can. So I'm ready to go.
As usual, I'm going to start with ocean exploration as it's faster and safer.
A little boat construction and the ocean is beckoning!
Chapter 5: In Which a Small Part of an Implicit Promise of the Journal is Fulfilled
As I set out, I immediately have trouble with the new controls. The boat turns on a hairtrigger, plus it continues to turn a bit after the control is released. I'm having a hard time controlling and practically spin out on several occasions.
As I suspected, the coast heads southeast after wrapping around my peninsula. I can't see Spawn Mountain from here, at least not with my view distance, but after a bit I see a bay and move in to see if I can get a shot.
And there it is. Very nice!
I'm already off the map so I head in to map the next map and scout around a bit for resources. This looks like a promising spot; there's some flat land to the left and then what looks like (and is) BoP Orchard at the bottom of the hill.
I land next to a white horse mother and foal, so there's one resource. I make my map and look for resources. I quickly find pigs and cows, which is good, although getting them back to the base will be a hassle. I briefly consider building a secondary base, but long term that's not going to be efficient.
I head over to the plains-ish area and am immediately rewarded:
The area is a mixture of Plains and Flower Forest (Geographicraft mixes the biome somewhat more than vanilla does.)
Seduced by that inviting vista, I head into the plains area to see what else I can see.
To the south is this imposing outcrop. From my knowledge I recognize it as BoP Chapparal.
A lazy river runs across the Plains. A slight rise in the middle is either Forest Hills or Flower Forest - I didn't check.
A forest-ier section of Flower Forest protrudes into the ocean as a peninsula.
I spot some rabbits and decide to hunt them, as the backpack mod I picked needs skins to make backpacks. I quickly discover that for once Mojang has programmed an animal with survival instincts and they run away from me. Later.
I spot a Harvestcraft Garden and pop it - lucking out with some Cotton. As a source of String, Cotton is very handy early in the game, especially for a semi-pacifist like me.
Night falls with me still on the Plains and I'm treated to this superb sunset vista. On the left is that Chapparal outcropping (probably in UBC Andesite, although I'm not sure) and on the right is BoP Conifer Forest.
This whole experience is especially satisfying to me, as I'm one of the players in the team that makes all this great stuff possible. Things like those UBC stone outcroppings are things I fantasized about for years and to have them pop up in my own game feels like a real accomplishment.
I'm also really spoilt for choice about where to build my base. The majestic view of Spawn Mountain from above the village is compelling; but so is this idyllic plain with view of rock outcroppings, forests, and flowers absolutely everywhere. I've barely even started exploring, too - I'm half thrilled and half dreading I'll find yet more inviting places in the next few episodes.
I bed-plop for the night (yeah, kinda cheaty). In the morning I head into the Coniferous Forest, which also also towards the boat and back home.
Especially after those beautiful sweeping views, the forest has a claustrophic and slightly ominous feel which doesn't come through in the screenshot. You have to be there. It's justified, because it's dark enough for a few day spawns - I have to smack a zombie at one point. But this is exactly how I like my worlds - worlds should be a mix of beautiful, plain, and even a little ugly; inviting and ominous, smooth and rugged. The variety makes everything more vivid - if it's all beautiful flowers, they get kind of boring. When it comes to Minecraft, I'm a Mahlerian "It must embrace everything", not a Sibelian "I admire profound logic creating an inner connection".
Speaking of rugged, I try to find a relatively easy land route through the Mountain Peaks back to Innwich. And fail, at least this time. The land gets more and more rugged as I go in (due to the profound logic of RTG's smoothing algorithms) and although there's a valley to follow, it's actually bending to the southwest here where I need to be going NNW. I abandon the project, for now.
Although I don't have a good way to get the cows home, I do collect a lot of Fresh Milk, which is very handy for a long list of Harvestcraft recipes.
I didn't clear my inventory for a goodie hunt when I started so I'm full and I need to go back. I reboard the boat and head back. But on the way disaster strikes! I had stopped the boat because I'd gotten off course from the touchy controls and was about to run aground. When restarting I fatfinger "Q" instead of "W" - and throw my map into the water! I leap from my boat and punge into the dark depths, hoping for the best. By the bottom, I can't see anything, but fortunately right after I hit bottom
there's a "pop" as my map leaps back into my inventory. Phew!
Normally I keep my drop key mapped to "P", for exactly this reason - long ago when I was just starting I lost my boffo enchanted sword this way - while moving in deeper water. I neglected to remap it in 1.10. Fixed now!
A short time later I'm back home. I clear my inventory carefully, plant the three seeds I know I'll want (cotton, peanut, and corn) and storage the ones I many not need (asparagus and winter melon).
Chapter 6: In Which Circumstances Circumvent a Circumnavigation to Innwich
First time to the east, second to the west.
Spawn Mountain is nearer the ocean on the west side than the east and so I get a great shot of it flanked by its foothills. However, I've subjected you folks to a lot of Spawn Mountain shots so I'll hold it back for a while.
(Except you almost got it anyway because initially I pasted in the wrong pic!)
I do get a shot at a rockier foothill. Most of the foothills in pics (including the one the village is on) have been at the edge of the biome and so smoothed down by the smoothing rules RTG uses to stitch biomes together. Those rules got a lot of tweaking during development to make transitions smooth but not too bland and we've gotten them to a good level. You don't really even notice those smoothed foothills because it seems so natural, but there was a lot of work getting them to look not-worked-on.
This foothill is on the inside tip of a bay and so is getting very little smoothing from the Ocean and so the rocky roughness I put into the biome is on almost full display.
I quickly move south onto the other map.
The next biome to the south along the coast is Forest. Or maybe not! The trees on the coast on the right are definitely from an RTG Forest. But to my RTG-experienced eye, the vanilla-sized trees right in front of me don't look like an RTG Forest area. RTG Forest has a lot of variety, including sections with vanilla-sized trees, but those sections tend to be more open than this. It might be some BoP forest sub-biome.
In the back you can see some Conifers from the Coniferous Forest. You can see on the map the landmass is pretty narrow here and I'm actually close to the Coniferous Forest area I was exploring in the last episode.
Next is a BoP Prairie. This is actually a very flat biome but because of the smoothing rules on the edge you get slopes towards the adjacent biomes - either up or down.
South from there is a Desert biome. I go ashore to collect some Cactus (because I like green!) and while there I spot some more Rabbits. I figured you could lure them with carrots earlier but since then I realized with the two-handed rules I could lure them with one hand and kill them with another. (and yes, I'm sure this is old stuff to people already playing 1.10).
It works like a charm, if a bit slowly. Rabbits have this charming hesitancy to them and approach more slowly than the old animals did. This, the second I killed, is just a baby though and after I kill it I feel very guilty and stop. I should have bred them first anyway.
At this point the coast has curved back to the east and it's looking like I'm on a very small Small Continent - possibly the smallest I've ever seen. I like my journals to showcase my mods and this is disappointing because while it would still be a very playable starting continent, when people set a "force start continent" flag they expect to, well, start on a continent. I still hope it's a peninsula or that it will be an island split off the larger mass (which actually happens quite a lot.)
Continuing on I come back to the Prairie. I stop and get off to get a "flat Prairie" shot and encounter some pigs and rabbits. I breed the rabbits and breed and collect the pigs.
I also collect my "flat prarie" shot. In itself it would be boring but it becomes interesting in the context of the world. Also, if you want a flat area to build… (The credit for this design decision goes to BoP; with most BoP biomes I mostly just tried to mimic their outcomes.)
I get back on the boat and continue east and then north, quickly confirming that's all there is to this landmass.
I stop off in the chaparral to collect some more seeds and pics. I did add something to the RTG version of BoP chaparral; these rockpile formations are loosely based on the cool rockpile formations you can find in inland Southern California.
As long as I'm here, I decide to test river boating in RTG in 1.10. It works pretty well in 1.7.10 although squid and lilypad strikes are a problem. In 1.10, the controls are certainly touchy even for the wide RTG rivers but nonetheless I get all the way through to the ocean on the north (near where I beached my boat last episode) without any trouble. Compared to RTG in 1.7.10, the controls are harder but this is more than compensated for by the fact the squid strikes don't wreck your boat.
Here you can see almost all the coastline of my starting landmass. I'm shocked, to be honest. I don't think I've ever seen a Small Continent in RTG which was this small. I'd even done 8 starts with these settings and had gotten a wide range of continent sizes, one sprawling over 7 maps, but while some were rather small they were at at least twice this size. It's actually the size of a (large-ish) Large Island.
At this point I was planning to just head home originally, but sometimes the vagaries of terrain generation will cut a section of a landmass off as island. It's still early in the (B3M-extended) day so I have time to go back around the outside of the island the long way to see if this landmass is right next to another. I head off, using the map to navigate. Navigating "by instruments" in the sense of using a map is lot harder than it was in 1.7.10 because when you're moving forward (rowing) you don't see the map. I used to spend time "lawnmowering around" in open ocean areas to fill in ugly spots on my maps but I don't think I will in 1.10, unless I can figure out a way to do a "view map in boat" option in Explorercraft.
At one point I find a lone sheep just bobbing around in the ocean. It's well off from the spawn landmass, so I figure there has to be something nearby that it came from. But - there's not, not even a sandbar. Must be some kind of bug.
In the end I go all the way back around without seeing any more land. That doesn't completely rule out this being part of a complex, but it's fairly unlikely. In the end it won't make much difference. With a Geographicraft default setup, there's always plenty of land nearby, and I can go out and look later. The village certainly has a different feel, though, when it's almost certainly the only one here.
Home again. Time for some mining and building. Starting with my house interior! Ick!
Since this is using Geographicraft, you'd need the configs as well as the seed. Unfortunately I'm holding them back for now as they would effectively reveal things I'm keeping secret for now. I'll make it available when I get far enough along. Sorry to have to hold it back - it is a spectacular start even by RTG/BoP/GC standards, and I've seen literally hundreds of worlds in various tests.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Well, first I should plant the important seeds I got.
These crops are growing pretty fast. Cotton and Corn are already to Harvest.
I'm effectively converting the two seaside farms to my Harvestcraft garden, because they're right next to my house and easy to check on. There's five more on the top which I'll probably use for bulk produce (wheat and carrots for breeding).
There's a mild mismatch between the Pine that's most of my wood inventory and the Oak that composes the village wood. There's a few Oaks around, but not many, so I plant a couple around town to provide the matched wood. I plant some berry bushes I'd collected next to the south cane farm to provide a fruit supply (I have yet to see either vanilla Apples or any Harvestcraft fruit, which is a bit odd.) Then I head south of town to clear more of the trees near the village.
Up there I spot a Harvestcraft Garden. I've been running all over the island looking for Harvestcraft seeds and there were some gardens right here? I pop it and get two very useful seeds - Blackberry - my first fruit! - and Spice Leaf, which allows a lot of recipes, in particular salad dressing.
I chop a couple of trees, enjoying the view.
After I've cleared most of the trees I wanted to, I head up to the hill to think about how and where I want to build up there. My rough idea is a hilltop castle, with walls around the top. Inside I'll have some open space for Botania and some buildings, although perhaps those would best be part of the walls. This is not a particularly innovative design, but I think it will be pretty striking in black granite if I can get the accenting right.
Here's a shot of the valley between the hill and Spawn Mountain. The way I did this "mountain" code leaves these valleys between the mountains forming a network, so you can get through without climbing the heights. I kind of envisioned players using these valleys for railroads. However, the jitter I put in to make the hills irregular affected the valleys, so they're a bit hard to bet through - this more than most.
IME Minecraft animals tend to drift down slopes but the sheep seem to be congregating at the top. There are some oaks up here which I chop and
My first apple!
I wander around trying to plan but the hill is a little too large and complicated to do it in my head. For starters, I want to pick an area on the hill to secure. I'll make a two-block drop all around it so non-climbing mobs can't get up. Once I've got an area set, I'll be better able to plan for using it (or perhaps to decide it's the wrong size).
I find two different spots where y=109 would be easier to make the two-block drop and start digging/carving/placing it. I've only done a little, though, when it gets dark and I head back to the village.
I start in fixing the smithy. I'm not trying to make it look great, just get it up to "village standards". I swap all the floors to cobble, and the walls to cobble or oak wood (which I now have enough of). I extend the log "support pillars" to the actual ground, and I add a few windows.
Hardly a masterpiece, but at least it doesn't stick out anymore.
I also work on an idea to deal with the difficulties of securing this steep complex hill - connect the houses underground. The house east of the smithy is the lower library, so I just extend my main room to the east until it's under the library, and then extend the library's internal ladder down to connect.
In the process I encounter some coal in a Dolomite layer and collect it. The coal vein extends into the black granite, allowing me to confirm that coal does indeed get placed into the black granite, it's just that it's virtually impossible to see.
After that I head out to collect my crops. In the process spot a creeper in the "grotto", making me wonder if it's really a cave. I finish harvesting before I investigate.
Some of what I've harvested are the Berries, which I figure will allow the Harvestcraft PB&J type sandwiches, which rather like in real life are filling and easy to make. Unfortunately:
"Berry" is actually not in the harvestcraft dictionary and I don't seem able to use it for Harvestcraft recipes. So they're actually very low value (snack food only). I'll be able to use the Blackberries I found the day before soon, but they haven't grown enough yet.
Now I carve in to the "grotto" to check in it out and light it up.
It sure looks like a grotto, but I'm not completely sure. You can see the annoyances from black granite - with almost any other stone I'd know whether there a passages back there. I've seen that creeper lurking in here, so I don't want to swim across. I light this side and fence off the entrance I carved.
Now I'd like to start getting some livestock here. I want a route through the mountains, so - to the mines!
(that will make sense next episode).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumChapter 1: In Which the Beginning Begins.
Then I've had to update 2 mods to 1.8 and then 1.9/1.10. LouisDB has done a lot of work on the Underground Biomes Constructs upgrade - more than me, I think, but there's still been a lot left. And, finally, real life has put a lot more demands on me lately than the previous two years or so. I could have done some on the side, but the truth is I don't want to play much without my core mods, so I didn't.
But, RTG and Geographicraft are released for 1.10, and UBC is a playable beta, plus I have a little more free time right now, so I'm ready to give it a go!
Modlist:
AppleCore - needed for Spice of LIfe
Backpack - I'm going to need some extra portable storage
Baubles - Required for Botania
Biomes o Plenty - I love exploring, and vanilla just doesn't have enough biomes
Botania - I wanted a tech path + goodies mod, and I wanted to try something new to me
DavincisVessels - I love sea exploration, and it has great ships.
Geographicraft - So I can make a world worth exploring
GuideBook - an ingame recipe reference
Movingworlds - Davinci's requirement
Pam's Harvestcraft - makes food a lot more interesting, and gives another development path
RTG - I just can't stand crazified terrain any more. I could look at RTG mountains all day.
SpiceOfLife - So there's a reason not to ignore the huge variety of available food
UndergroundBiomesConstructs - Great for building, and great for mountain views
Waystones - I'm anticipating a lot of exploration, and I want a quick way to switch between distant bases.
It's a very short modlist, compared to most modpack and most modded players I correspond with, but I like it that way. I like staying as close to vanilla as is reasonable for what I want to do.
And, finally, the goal of the journal is:
A SECRET! mwahahaha!
It's interesting, ambitious, and it's never been done, but I'm still going to make you wait a while to find out what it is. I'm guesstimating a month or so, but we'll see. (Yes, I may seem nice most of the time, but I do have an evil streak!)
So, New World, Realistic World type, press the buttons, w a i t a t t h e l o a d i n g s c r e e n and:
The majority of my worlds start with a pretty nice view. All three of my journal worlds did. This is a scenic spot, but I'm not facing in the right direction. The biome is BoP Mountain Peaks - a very scenic biome, but as you can see I'm next to the ocean, so it will be a little while before I'll be able to appreciate it.
Although scenic, mountainside starts are fairly rough, as it takes a lot of shanks to climb up and down the hillside, food is harder to come by, and it's considerably more difficult to secure a house or a yard.
This is complicated by the trees. On the first day, time is of the essence, but I HATE those treetops floating in air and waste precious time trying to chop all the way to the top. But after a few trees I see something which completely changes the nature of this start.
A village! Suddenly food goes from a pretty big problem to absolutely no problem at all. House security is less of an issue as long as the villagers are alive, too, as the zombies will ignore me. It's less of an advantage long-term as it's very difficult to secure a hillside village, and ugly as well if done with standard methods like fencing. So over I head.
And almost have yet another sudden shift in the tenor of the game. That would have been a nasty fall if there's a mob down there. But I see it in time and continue.
I get to the village and start in on securing it. Fencing is out of the question, but most villages become very zombie-resistant from just two things: properly lighting the interiors, and knocking out the steps in front of the door (or digging out the block in front if it's on a level. At that point the zombies can't spawn inside houses and even doorbreakers can't break the doors.
I need a furnace to convert some wood to coal for the torches. I haven't gotten any cobble for it yet yet but -
Plenty of cobble in these wonky villages!
I set up a starter base in a 3x3 out on the water and start roasting some wood. I make some doors and am pleasantly surprised to see BoP has custom doors for its custom woods. I start up the path (much better than the old gravel) and immediately find a blacksmith's, so I didn't actually need to build my own furnace. In the chest I find:
Wow what a haul for early in the game! Almost a complete set of armor, and some extra iron to boot. I'm actually hearing some zombie groans, which concerns me, so I slap on the armor. I'm sure the owner won't mind, because they aren't going to be able to use it and they're going to need some help.
By now I figure I've got some charcoal so I could be lighting the improperly lit houses, so I head back to my now-unneeded quayside hut.
There are some farms there and I feel compelled to harvest some food from them. I still have full shanks and I'm not going to go hungry in the middle of a village like this, but in my previous journal I had a really tough time getting food, to the point that I eventually had to stand unmoving next to my starter farm for more than a game day to keep from starving. People who've starved in real life often develop compulsive food-hoarding and somehow this seems to have happened for my avatars. It seems odd that in-game starvation - obviously nothing like real-world starvation! - would affect me like that but it seems it has. In real life I don't hoard food - I'm more of the "can we use up some of this junk in the pantry" type.
I'm ready to start work on the village but - my compulsions with treetops and food, along with the changes of plan, have run out the day. So the villagers will have to survive one night without my assistance as I don't want to risk nighttime construction work effectively in the open.
I quickly put a door and a temporary block to secure the blacksmith's and enjoy a soothing sunset from the seaside window. A nice aspect to this town is that the ocean is to the west and the mountain slope is steep, so most buildings are going to have a nice sunset view. Yay!
Next episode: In the village.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Yay! A new journal! Been looking forward to a new one.
Began playing during Alpha 1.2.6.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumWoot!
The only thing missing from that list would have been climate control and custom ore gen, but that's minor. So, lets follow along, and good luck finding a snow zone for completeness :-).
Now, please tell me that you got torches placed and the doors secured before the first night. I've seen villages completely wiped out except for the villagers in the same room as me before.
If you are talking about the doors being broken, you are on hard. So be very careful about creepers.
Also: you're on 1.10, so you have the auto-farming villagers. The "vanilla" farm style of two rows of the same crop is a bad system. Initially, you should have each side of the farm have two different crops; as soon as you get a bucket, make it a single 4-wide, instead of a pair of 2-wides.
COG would have made finding ores significant. With vanilla, they're everywhere, and you'll drown in supplies very quickly.
(And if you had waited another week or so, Reasonable Realism would be ready for release -- just a little bit of tuning left, I think. Limonite and flowers got fixed this last weekend, yesterday was some mod ore distributions ...)
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumMeanwhile, two requests:
1. You posted a picture from spawn, of the view at spawn. How about a picture turned a bit so we can see more of the view?
2. Did you light up the sea floor for that third pic? HAX!
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumI do have Climate Control as the 1.10 version. There's always more mods to consider, but I was ready to roll.
1. I had to re-create the world for this. I moved just a little to the left because I was right up against a tree and it blocked the view.
2. No, there are BoP corals down there and they luminesce - rather brightly, actually, although seawater absorbs it quickly when you're in the water (but not if you're out, which creates some strange interactions.)
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Looks like the coral reefs have glowy plants.
Glad to hear you have your mods close to updated Zeno.
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumChapter 2: In Which I Wrench Innwich
First, of course, I use the extra iron in the chest to make a sword.
Then I figure I should bake some of the potatos I picked. Into the furnace they go - wait, the furnaces are outside. Oops!
Fortunately I can chop a wall block out just below the ceiling to access one without anything being able to get in. A skeleton could pot-shot me through this but there's not one out there right now, fortunately.
I was starting to feel more confident about the villagers surviving as I'd been hearing their "hrm" noises through all this. But literally five seconds after I thought that I heard the "Hangh!" of a villager getting injured. I jinxed myself, it seems.
Well, nothing to be done for that until morning. I decided I'd start a dropshaft, made some ladders and started down. Quickly I find I'm facing my old nemesis -
Black Granite.
It's great for ominous or dramatic builds, but it's a real pain to mine in. First it's so dark you can't see it unless it's brightly lit and even then you have to look carefully. Second, it's a pretty hard stone, so it mines notably slower that vanilla stone does. It's supposed to be one underground biome in 12, but I seem to hit it more often than that. This is my second journal starting on it.
I should have know what I was in for, as there are blocks of it noticeable here and there in the pics. I just wasn't paying attention. Ubified village cobble would have tipped me off too, but there have been changes in Forge that make a number of buildings look odd since not all stones can be converted anymore. So I had it off.
After some slow dropshafting, I figure it's dawn and head back up to find it is indeed morning, so I can start cleaning up the village. I decide to name the village "Innwich" because I can get some jokes out of it, starting with the title of this chapter. I'm certain a witch pun will present itself soon enough.
I spot a zombie trapped under a tree. Hoping he's the source of the annoying groans, I chop him (and the tree too) - but the groans continue. Groan.
The village is pretty big. It's pretty messed up, although not quite as badly as I'd expected. In many cases I'm putting blocks beneath doors rather than chopping stairs, as the doors are 2-4 blocks in the air.
Now that's pretty messed up - and quite possibly the source of the zombie groans, since the L-houses are improperly lit.
This fellow is completely blocked in, and this house *is* lit, so the village won't be completely wiped out by zombies no matter what I do.
The village extends up to the top of a kind of ridgeline, with some farms up at the top. I stop to gather some more munchies (this is the first time I've seen beets, actually). There's also a tiny cave up here I light up.
I knock some cobble off the well so villagers can get out if they fall in and -
Dusk already? Where does the time go?
I race back to the blacksmithy to block in the porch with cobble and dirt, so I can use that section through the night. The interior is a bit cramped, as well, and I'd like a little more space. But I get it done in time, so I can remove the walls between the original interior and the porch to get that little more space.
Then it's back to dropshafting - slowly.
I hit a layer of Chalk and Greywacke and find
A nice deposit of iron. 15 total, so probably a double deposit. It's a bit odd I found iron before coal, but then I realized ubified Black Granite is black splotches - on black stone. Great. Can't believe I didn't remember that particular annoyance.
I hear the tinkle of music, and guessing it's morning, head back up - to morning. I resume searching the village.
I find another shut-in, also a priest, so this village is actually relatively safe. They're both priests, so maybe they're some order of monks? Hope they're not from a celibate order.
I run around fixing more building until dusk comes again and then head back to the smithy.
Starting to feel a little homey now. I like it.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumYaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy!!
Welcome back. So good to see you journalling again. And I get to see version... um... you are on 1.10, right? I've still not even seen or played 1.8 lol. I'm very keen to see what's changed and how it affects everything. Lovely little village, too ^.^
P.S. If you want longer days, both Sedridor's and Hea3ven's mods are updated for 1.10.
It lets you set the amount of time a bed must have been placed before you can sleep in it.
Double day length makes such a wonderful difference - especially if you're exploring.
**Beware with Hea3ven's Hardmode Tweaks, though. It has an option to thwart bed-ploppers! It's configurable, of course, but I use it, of course
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumYes, this is 1.10, and I've already installed Sedridor's B3M mod - literally a few hours after he fixed a crash bug in 10.2. I might use that bed-plopper mode, actually. I was plopping in what will be Chapter 5, but, yeah, it's kinda cheaty.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Oh, yes! Zeno is back! I love reading journals, and I have to say yours is one of the best. Excellent job with the writing, and please continue!
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumChapter 3: Telling of Promising Sights from a Promising Site.
I hit some gold ore! Excellent, just what I need for a clock (redstone is easy once I'm deep enough). My stone pick won't mine it so i just pull out my iron pick - wait, I haven't made one yet? In spite of having about a dozen spare ingots? Geez, I'm rusty. (although my pick isn't, because it's made out of stone.) So I head back upstairs.
Where it's moonset, so I'm not going to head back now. I hear another villager cry out as they get smacked, but I can't do anything right now. Dawn comes shortly, and once I hear the sounds of crisping undead, I head south of town to chop some wood as having to use roasted logs to replace coal is putting a serious dent in my wood supply.
After chopping a few, I head down to the shore, where there are a couple of sugarcane. I'd already spread them about some, and now I plant some more. Because the slope is so steep, I'm bouncing up and down on the hill as I walk along the shore, so I dig out some of the sand blocks to have at least a small flat area to walk on. I'll roast the sand into glass shortly.
I resume house cleaning. This house has the door facing into the hill (not clearly visible here), and is unlit and uninhabited. Most likely the original inhabitant got smoked by a zombie and they both despawned. I light the interior and relocate the door to go outside.
But what's that sound I hear? Baaaaaah?
Not Baaaaad! I dash back to the smithy to make a shears and run back to collect some wool. It' s steep enough right here that I have trouble climbing, even - these are obviously mountain sheep. I get my wool soon enough, but it's obvious I'm approaching the top of a hill. I wonder if I can see the mountain from up here?
That certainly looks promising! I climb up to the top and:
Oh My. Now THAT is a mountain! I had been thinking I wouldn't want to build my base right here because of the difficulties of securing a steep hillside but that view wipes away all question. That's worth quite a bit of hassle to be able to look at as I sleep or work. This is really great luck. RTG provides lots of great views but this is especially good even for RTG and to have it basically from a village at the spawn point - doesn't get much better than this!
The ocean view is pretty good too (this is actually from down the hill some).
As you can see, it's getting dark but since I have wool, that now means - Bedtime!
zzzzzzz
When i wake up, I tackle that buried L-house.
Sure enough there's a zombie inside. I set up a small opening to attack him and after some fiddling around to actually hit do him in. I then go inside, but bizarrely there's a wall of dirt blocking this section (the riser of the L) from the rest of the house. I cut through expecting zombies but find
Resourceful little villagers! I guess they must have built that wall to cut off the unlit part of the house, since they couldn't get out (this door also goes into the hill). In keeping with the monk theme, one of them is a priest. I place an extra torch since I'm not sure even this section is properly lit, and then seal them back up temporarily for safety.
(Seriously, I have no idea how that wall got there. It was one block thick and perfectly flat.)
After that I think I'm done with the buildings in town. I follow the path east from the town (over the ridge) to see if there are any more hidden over the ridge.
There aren't, but there is this magnificent view. This will also be visible from my future hilltop base, and I'm feeling pretty stoked about building it, although it will be a while before I have enough materials.
After that I spend the rest of the day cleaning up the village. I knock some blocks off the well which were blocking the path, and chop down some trees that some skeletons had been hiding under. I also place some planks to connect my cane from to the docks so it's easier to get here - the placement of one of the houses blocks what would be the natural route.
That also affords me this sunset shot which seems a nice ending to my first chapter with a lot of pretty pictures.
Next episode: getting ready for some exploration.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumSo what is the pink ore next to the gold?
(And I don't like the black granite either. :-)
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumThe "pink" ore is iron. The ore flecks look a different color on a different background (a common optical illusion). It does look strange, even if you know what's going on.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumChapter 4: In Which Repairing Delays Preparing
At this point I notice Spice of Life has activated, because the Baked Potatos I've been eating are providing only 3.6% of their hunger benefit. So, it's time to Harvestcraft!
I make a Juicer first to get some more mileage out of my carrots. My go-to for early Harvestcraft, however, has been soups, as they are very loose in their ingredient requirements, and have simple preparation, requiring only a Pot. Pot + any veggie makes stock, from which you can always make several more soups, depending on what you have. In my case potato soup (Pot + stock + salt + potato) is pretty obvious. I do have to make some salt, which is a bit tedious but not that big a deal.
While I'm making salt quayside I spot this grotto. I'm still hearing those annoying zombie groans in spite of clearing zombies in and around the town, so I'm starting to suspect a cave beneath me. That would be annoying to search for in black granite. I hoped this would connect, but it seems just to bme one of the underground pools which are so goofy at the surface.
My food supplies are taken care of for a while, so back to the mines. I - finally! - reach y11 and can start branch mining.
This pic - with brightness on max! - gives an idea how much of a pain it is to mine in black granite. All the same, I find a lot rather quickly - 3 stacks redstone, a half stack iron, and 7 diamonds, in just a few minutes. No coal, because *black* granite. This is enough for now and I'm itching to get exploring so I head back upstairs to make some maps.
I harvest some cane but it's been growing slowly so I don't yet have enough. Rather than let it sit, I plant most of it on the north side of the village to increase my production rate. In the meantime I fill out my armor set with some iron boots. I chop some more of the trees near town to cut down on mob hiding space, and increase my wood supply, since I'm going to need a lot for charcoal.
Ask dusk approaches one night, I take this shot of Spawn Mountain high over the village. I love how the colors affect the distant mountain. Minecraft in pretty areas is fun. As I'm looking at this, I realize I can de-goof the cobble pillar under the smithy by converting it to a two-story building. The dropshaft will already connect the floors. I start in and it works pretty well.
Aside from one minor mishap from misestimating the level of the existing floor. Because of that the door is one level lower and not a jump up from the dock. I could knock a hole in the dock, but I think that'll look weird, so I decide to leave the door at level and take my chances with the doorbusters. They'll probably be distracted by the villagers.
It works fairly well so I decide to apply the same approach elsewhere in the village. Surprisingly, there are few candidates. There's only one where I can make a 3-block height lower story, which is the lower library (the village actually has *two* libraries). Not an architectural masterpiece, but a distinct improvement.
The buried L-house is a different situation, but here I stick on a front facade on the ocean-facing side, so it's a pretty functional house now. The inhabitant have chosen to remain confined - dedicated to monastic practice, I guess.
By now the cane has grown so I harvest the cane south of the village. It starts raining as I do and I get this shot of Spawn Mountain wreathed in storm clouds.
Now it's map time. I haven't yet updated Explorercraft - it's less essential now that vanilla can do tiled maps without ridiculous contortions, so this is just vanilla maps.
The zoom 0 map turns out to be rather useful. That's one of the two big advantage Explorercraft still provides - you can choose the center of a map. Often the vanilla map is in the wrong place for a given feature, but here's it's fine and I make a copy.
Unfortunately the level 4 map is poorly placed. You guys probably don't know this, but I know I'm on the west side of a hill with ocean on three sides. The coast heads off to the east from there, and most likely I'm on the north end of this landmass. So this map is probably going to be mostly water.
I don't have enough paper for another level 4 map, but I haven't harvested the cane on the north side of town. So i do that and now I do have enough paper for a second map. I can't make it yet, but if I do end up off this map I can. So I'm ready to go.
As usual, I'm going to start with ocean exploration as it's faster and safer.
A little boat construction and the ocean is beckoning!
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumChapter 5: In Which a Small Part of an Implicit Promise of the Journal is Fulfilled
As I suspected, the coast heads southeast after wrapping around my peninsula. I can't see Spawn Mountain from here, at least not with my view distance, but after a bit I see a bay and move in to see if I can get a shot.
And there it is. Very nice!
I'm already off the map so I head in to map the next map and scout around a bit for resources. This looks like a promising spot; there's some flat land to the left and then what looks like (and is) BoP Orchard at the bottom of the hill.
I land next to a white horse mother and foal, so there's one resource. I make my map and look for resources. I quickly find pigs and cows, which is good, although getting them back to the base will be a hassle. I briefly consider building a secondary base, but long term that's not going to be efficient.
I head over to the plains-ish area and am immediately rewarded:
The area is a mixture of Plains and Flower Forest (Geographicraft mixes the biome somewhat more than vanilla does.)
Seduced by that inviting vista, I head into the plains area to see what else I can see.
To the south is this imposing outcrop. From my knowledge I recognize it as BoP Chapparal.
A lazy river runs across the Plains. A slight rise in the middle is either Forest Hills or Flower Forest - I didn't check.
A forest-ier section of Flower Forest protrudes into the ocean as a peninsula.
I spot some rabbits and decide to hunt them, as the backpack mod I picked needs skins to make backpacks. I quickly discover that for once Mojang has programmed an animal with survival instincts and they run away from me. Later.
I spot a Harvestcraft Garden and pop it - lucking out with some Cotton. As a source of String, Cotton is very handy early in the game, especially for a semi-pacifist like me.
Night falls with me still on the Plains and I'm treated to this superb sunset vista. On the left is that Chapparal outcropping (probably in UBC Andesite, although I'm not sure) and on the right is BoP Conifer Forest.
This whole experience is especially satisfying to me, as I'm one of the players in the team that makes all this great stuff possible. Things like those UBC stone outcroppings are things I fantasized about for years and to have them pop up in my own game feels like a real accomplishment.
I'm also really spoilt for choice about where to build my base. The majestic view of Spawn Mountain from above the village is compelling; but so is this idyllic plain with view of rock outcroppings, forests, and flowers absolutely everywhere. I've barely even started exploring, too - I'm half thrilled and half dreading I'll find yet more inviting places in the next few episodes.
I bed-plop for the night (yeah, kinda cheaty). In the morning I head into the Coniferous Forest, which also also towards the boat and back home.
Especially after those beautiful sweeping views, the forest has a claustrophic and slightly ominous feel which doesn't come through in the screenshot. You have to be there. It's justified, because it's dark enough for a few day spawns - I have to smack a zombie at one point. But this is exactly how I like my worlds - worlds should be a mix of beautiful, plain, and even a little ugly; inviting and ominous, smooth and rugged. The variety makes everything more vivid - if it's all beautiful flowers, they get kind of boring. When it comes to Minecraft, I'm a Mahlerian "It must embrace everything", not a Sibelian "I admire profound logic creating an inner connection".
Speaking of rugged, I try to find a relatively easy land route through the Mountain Peaks back to Innwich. And fail, at least this time. The land gets more and more rugged as I go in (due to the profound logic of RTG's smoothing algorithms) and although there's a valley to follow, it's actually bending to the southwest here where I need to be going NNW. I abandon the project, for now.
Although I don't have a good way to get the cows home, I do collect a lot of Fresh Milk, which is very handy for a long list of Harvestcraft recipes.
I didn't clear my inventory for a goodie hunt when I started so I'm full and I need to go back. I reboard the boat and head back. But on the way disaster strikes! I had stopped the boat because I'd gotten off course from the touchy controls and was about to run aground. When restarting I fatfinger "Q" instead of "W" - and throw my map into the water! I leap from my boat and punge into the dark depths, hoping for the best. By the bottom, I can't see anything, but fortunately right after I hit bottom
there's a "pop" as my map leaps back into my inventory. Phew!
Normally I keep my drop key mapped to "P", for exactly this reason - long ago when I was just starting I lost my boffo enchanted sword this way - while moving in deeper water. I neglected to remap it in 1.10. Fixed now!
A short time later I'm back home. I clear my inventory carefully, plant the three seeds I know I'll want (cotton, peanut, and corn) and storage the ones I many not need (asparagus and winter melon).
Next episode: on the other hand...
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumChapter 6: In Which Circumstances Circumvent a Circumnavigation to Innwich
Spawn Mountain is nearer the ocean on the west side than the east and so I get a great shot of it flanked by its foothills. However, I've subjected you folks to a lot of Spawn Mountain shots so I'll hold it back for a while.
(Except you almost got it anyway because initially I pasted in the wrong pic!)
I do get a shot at a rockier foothill. Most of the foothills in pics (including the one the village is on) have been at the edge of the biome and so smoothed down by the smoothing rules RTG uses to stitch biomes together. Those rules got a lot of tweaking during development to make transitions smooth but not too bland and we've gotten them to a good level. You don't really even notice those smoothed foothills because it seems so natural, but there was a lot of work getting them to look not-worked-on.
This foothill is on the inside tip of a bay and so is getting very little smoothing from the Ocean and so the rocky roughness I put into the biome is on almost full display.
I quickly move south onto the other map.
The next biome to the south along the coast is Forest. Or maybe not! The trees on the coast on the right are definitely from an RTG Forest. But to my RTG-experienced eye, the vanilla-sized trees right in front of me don't look like an RTG Forest area. RTG Forest has a lot of variety, including sections with vanilla-sized trees, but those sections tend to be more open than this. It might be some BoP forest sub-biome.
In the back you can see some Conifers from the Coniferous Forest. You can see on the map the landmass is pretty narrow here and I'm actually close to the Coniferous Forest area I was exploring in the last episode.
Next is a BoP Prairie. This is actually a very flat biome but because of the smoothing rules on the edge you get slopes towards the adjacent biomes - either up or down.
South from there is a Desert biome. I go ashore to collect some Cactus (because I like green!) and while there I spot some more Rabbits. I figured you could lure them with carrots earlier but since then I realized with the two-handed rules I could lure them with one hand and kill them with another. (and yes, I'm sure this is old stuff to people already playing 1.10).
It works like a charm, if a bit slowly. Rabbits have this charming hesitancy to them and approach more slowly than the old animals did. This, the second I killed, is just a baby though and after I kill it I feel very guilty and stop. I should have bred them first anyway.
At this point the coast has curved back to the east and it's looking like I'm on a very small Small Continent - possibly the smallest I've ever seen. I like my journals to showcase my mods and this is disappointing because while it would still be a very playable starting continent, when people set a "force start continent" flag they expect to, well, start on a continent. I still hope it's a peninsula or that it will be an island split off the larger mass (which actually happens quite a lot.)
Continuing on I come back to the Prairie. I stop and get off to get a "flat Prairie" shot and encounter some pigs and rabbits. I breed the rabbits and breed and collect the pigs.
I also collect my "flat prarie" shot. In itself it would be boring but it becomes interesting in the context of the world. Also, if you want a flat area to build… (The credit for this design decision goes to BoP; with most BoP biomes I mostly just tried to mimic their outcomes.)
I get back on the boat and continue east and then north, quickly confirming that's all there is to this landmass.
I stop off in the chaparral to collect some more seeds and pics. I did add something to the RTG version of BoP chaparral; these rockpile formations are loosely based on the cool rockpile formations you can find in inland Southern California.
As long as I'm here, I decide to test river boating in RTG in 1.10. It works pretty well in 1.7.10 although squid and lilypad strikes are a problem. In 1.10, the controls are certainly touchy even for the wide RTG rivers but nonetheless I get all the way through to the ocean on the north (near where I beached my boat last episode) without any trouble. Compared to RTG in 1.7.10, the controls are harder but this is more than compensated for by the fact the squid strikes don't wreck your boat.
Here you can see almost all the coastline of my starting landmass. I'm shocked, to be honest. I don't think I've ever seen a Small Continent in RTG which was this small. I'd even done 8 starts with these settings and had gotten a wide range of continent sizes, one sprawling over 7 maps, but while some were rather small they were at at least twice this size. It's actually the size of a (large-ish) Large Island.
At this point I was planning to just head home originally, but sometimes the vagaries of terrain generation will cut a section of a landmass off as island. It's still early in the (B3M-extended) day so I have time to go back around the outside of the island the long way to see if this landmass is right next to another. I head off, using the map to navigate. Navigating "by instruments" in the sense of using a map is lot harder than it was in 1.7.10 because when you're moving forward (rowing) you don't see the map. I used to spend time "lawnmowering around" in open ocean areas to fill in ugly spots on my maps but I don't think I will in 1.10, unless I can figure out a way to do a "view map in boat" option in Explorercraft.
At one point I find a lone sheep just bobbing around in the ocean. It's well off from the spawn landmass, so I figure there has to be something nearby that it came from. But - there's not, not even a sandbar. Must be some kind of bug.
In the end I go all the way back around without seeing any more land. That doesn't completely rule out this being part of a complex, but it's fairly unlikely. In the end it won't make much difference. With a Geographicraft default setup, there's always plenty of land nearby, and I can go out and look later. The village certainly has a different feel, though, when it's almost certainly the only one here.
Home again. Time for some mining and building. Starting with my house interior! Ick!
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Can you post the seed..
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumSince this is using Geographicraft, you'd need the configs as well as the seed. Unfortunately I'm holding them back for now as they would effectively reveal things I'm keeping secret for now. I'll make it available when I get far enough along. Sorry to have to hold it back - it is a spectacular start even by RTG/BoP/GC standards, and I've seen literally hundreds of worlds in various tests.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Alright, thanks.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumChapter 7: Upon Which I Opine Up On the Hill











Well, first I should plant the important seeds I got.
These crops are growing pretty fast. Cotton and Corn are already to Harvest.
I'm effectively converting the two seaside farms to my Harvestcraft garden, because they're right next to my house and easy to check on. There's five more on the top which I'll probably use for bulk produce (wheat and carrots for breeding).
There's a mild mismatch between the Pine that's most of my wood inventory and the Oak that composes the village wood. There's a few Oaks around, but not many, so I plant a couple around town to provide the matched wood. I plant some berry bushes I'd collected next to the south cane farm to provide a fruit supply (I have yet to see either vanilla Apples or any Harvestcraft fruit, which is a bit odd.) Then I head south of town to clear more of the trees near the village.
Up there I spot a Harvestcraft Garden. I've been running all over the island looking for Harvestcraft seeds and there were some gardens right here? I pop it and get two very useful seeds - Blackberry - my first fruit! - and Spice Leaf, which allows a lot of recipes, in particular salad dressing.
I chop a couple of trees, enjoying the view.
After I've cleared most of the trees I wanted to, I head up to the hill to think about how and where I want to build up there. My rough idea is a hilltop castle, with walls around the top. Inside I'll have some open space for Botania and some buildings, although perhaps those would best be part of the walls. This is not a particularly innovative design, but I think it will be pretty striking in black granite if I can get the accenting right.
Here's a shot of the valley between the hill and Spawn Mountain. The way I did this "mountain" code leaves these valleys between the mountains forming a network, so you can get through without climbing the heights. I kind of envisioned players using these valleys for railroads. However, the jitter I put in to make the hills irregular affected the valleys, so they're a bit hard to bet through - this more than most.
IME Minecraft animals tend to drift down slopes but the sheep seem to be congregating at the top. There are some oaks up here which I chop and
My first apple!
I wander around trying to plan but the hill is a little too large and complicated to do it in my head. For starters, I want to pick an area on the hill to secure. I'll make a two-block drop all around it so non-climbing mobs can't get up. Once I've got an area set, I'll be better able to plan for using it (or perhaps to decide it's the wrong size).
I find two different spots where y=109 would be easier to make the two-block drop and start digging/carving/placing it. I've only done a little, though, when it gets dark and I head back to the village.
I start in fixing the smithy. I'm not trying to make it look great, just get it up to "village standards". I swap all the floors to cobble, and the walls to cobble or oak wood (which I now have enough of). I extend the log "support pillars" to the actual ground, and I add a few windows.
Hardly a masterpiece, but at least it doesn't stick out anymore.
I also work on an idea to deal with the difficulties of securing this steep complex hill - connect the houses underground. The house east of the smithy is the lower library, so I just extend my main room to the east until it's under the library, and then extend the library's internal ladder down to connect.
In the process I encounter some coal in a Dolomite layer and collect it. The coal vein extends into the black granite, allowing me to confirm that coal does indeed get placed into the black granite, it's just that it's virtually impossible to see.
After that I head out to collect my crops. In the process spot a creeper in the "grotto", making me wonder if it's really a cave. I finish harvesting before I investigate.
Some of what I've harvested are the Berries, which I figure will allow the Harvestcraft PB&J type sandwiches, which rather like in real life are filling and easy to make. Unfortunately:
"Berry" is actually not in the harvestcraft dictionary and I don't seem able to use it for Harvestcraft recipes. So they're actually very low value (snack food only). I'll be able to use the Blackberries I found the day before soon, but they haven't grown enough yet.
Now I carve in to the "grotto" to check in it out and light it up.
It sure looks like a grotto, but I'm not completely sure. You can see the annoyances from black granite - with almost any other stone I'd know whether there a passages back there. I've seen that creeper lurking in here, so I don't want to swim across. I light this side and fence off the entrance I carved.
Now I'd like to start getting some livestock here. I want a route through the mountains, so - to the mines!
(that will make sense next episode).
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.