The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
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Having accidentally deleted my 'Preparing for the Apocalypse' world (another world had a similar name and I deleted the wrong one), that I was really enjoying, I decided to set myself a new challenge, and keep track of my progress here.
I've previously done the 'underground' challenge successfully where you grab what you can and head underground to live, and decided to make a scenario based on that.
There's a vague storyline in my head, that these are troubled times with civilistation at risk of total collapse, (or having collapsed) so it's safer to stay underground, 'off-grid', and borders between biomes operate like those between countries, with (invisible) border patrol, so that if I cross them above ground alarms will be triggered. Possibly my character is delusional and actually everything's fine. It doesn't have to be any more detailed than that, just enought so my rules make sense to me. Maybe I'll add some ruins and stuff above ground at some later date.
I need to acknowledge TheMasterCaver, as it was a comment of his that inspired this idea - something like 'I do most of my exploring underground', which made me think about how you could explore above ground from underground. Though I think they meant exploring caves etc.
RULES
Rules are flexible and I'll add more if I want to - I just seem to prefer playing with rules.
General Rules
1. Mark where I spawn, collect what I want and head underground at nightfall, at the spawn point
2. All homes, farms, etc must be underground - no building to be done above ground and minimal impact on terrain
3. I'm only allowed to surface during daylight and must be back undergound at nightfall
4. Exploration and travel mainly underground - not allowed to cross biome boundaries above ground (can use F3 to check biome)
5. Allowed one shaft to surface in each discovered biome, but must be inconspicuous
New rules added as I go along
6. I can explore by boat, but cannot go ashore other than where I started. I can stay in the boat overnight if need be
7. Building, homes etc can also be underwater, if far enough away from land not to be easily detected
8. I can infiltrate villages but must kill any villager that sees me
9. I can use naturally occurring cave entrances on the surface to make routes underground, for example to bring animals underground, as long as I don't leave anything to show I've been there
A purer version wouldn't allow use of F3, so that I'd have to surface say every 500 blocks to see what was there. But that would be so much harder, and I can justify it within my storyline by saying I have some sort of radar detector technology...or something. It detects the soil composition, and presence of large amounts of water, and...stuff like that.
Oh, and I play completely Vanilla, on Normal mode.
Starting out
So, I created a new world and this is where I spawned:
It's Forest Hills, not very exciting, so I don't waste any time exploring. I spend the day chopping down the nearest trees (the image above was taken after I'd already cleared some), and collecting some seeds and a little bit of dirt. I get a few apples which will have to do for food for now, as there are no animals in sight. I make plenty of ladders and a
trapdoor and start down just before night fallsl:
(I forgot to take screenshots at the time, so this is the next day, after the shaft is complete).
I come across a cave halfway down and almost get killed by a skeleton, but manage to build a wall and kill it by hitting its legs - lucky all these monsters have their vital organs in their legs.
Get a decent start with coal and iron ore, and make a furnace to smelt enough for a bucket so I can collect some water.
I go right down to bedrock and test out how it would be to live there, which would have been my first choice, but with lava pouring out every time I try to expand, I decide it wasn't worth it - the cobblestone on the wall in this picture is where I've blocked off lava:
So I go back up a little way and test it out until I'm sure I'm at least on the same level as the lava, ending up on layer 11, and build my first basic base:
It's an 11x11 square with the shaft in the centre, going up to the surface and down to bedrock. I start a tunnel in the centre of each side, which will be used to explore and travel.
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
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Starting to explore:
I start by going South, and after mining some coal to the right I hit a lava lake. I make a cobblestone path across it, but decide to leave most of it as protection for now, as I can see a dark cave ahead and hear zombies moaning:
There isn't an open way through as yet, so I decide to leave it for now and see what's in the other three directions. I have a habit of filling in any holes when I mine out ores and gems by the way, so if my screenshots have random patches of cobblestone it'll probably be from that.
Heading North, I've only gone about 20 blocks when the tunnel starts to flood with lava:
I decide to leave it and retreat for now. Looks like I'll have to tunnel up a little in that direction to make any progress.
Heading West is more successful. I hit a few small lava caves, and collect some water, leaving behind some obsidian I can dig out later:
A close encounter with a creeper when I'm digging out some dirt to use later and dig through to a second cave, but I'm able to kill it without triggering an explosion:
I find lots of coal, iron and redstone, but best of all....
and...
and finally...
Between caving I'm continuing to tunnel straight West and keep an eye on the biome. Only a few blocks from base it turns to Plains, which goes on for about 200 or so blocks, then I get beach, and beach and more beach. I want to see what's beyond the beach, but I must be travelling parallel to a coastline.
FINALLY it changes to Ocean and within only a few step,s Deep Ocean. I keep this in mind for future reference - I may decide to try finding an Ocean Monument from below, which is something I haven't done before. Oooh yes, sounds like a fun thing to do.
I head back to base with a stack of 20 diamonds. Nearly enough for a full set of armour. Only one direction left to tunnel in - East is next.
Before heading East, I realise I'm down to 3 apples, when I have to eat one, so I decide to start a basic wheat farm with the 9 seeds I managed to collect.
I decide to dig out a little area to the South, where I hadn't gone very far because I could see dark caves, but I had left a lava safety buffer area in case of invading monsters. As I'm digging it out I have a surprise:
Right there next to me is a huge ravine. I decide my farm is going to be even smaller than I had thought, wall it back up and plant my seeds:
I'm smelting cobblestone to make stone, and tidying up my walls, floors and ceilings as I go - don't know why since I'll probably change it all, but I like it to look neat. Just behind that back wall is the ravine.
I made a little pool in my main room, so I'd have an infinite source of water. I'll make something better later but this will do for now:
Then I start tunnelling from the main room, to the East, though I know what I'm going to find:
Yes it's that ravine. And I'm no sooner through than the zombies start dropping on my head, and a skeleton attacks:
The bat just happened to fly past as I took the screenshot, though I know it looks like it got hit by the arrow. So I deal with the immediate threat, stick a door at the end of my very short tunnel and decide to come back later:
So, I have lava pouring into my tunnel to the North, Plains and Deep Ocean to the West, a farm to the South and a huge ravine to the East.
Next I'm going to build a shaft up to the Plains biome and see what I find, as well as continuing tunnelling to the South as I should be able to tunnel parallel to the ravine if I'm careful.
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Next Chapter
I now have full iron armour and an iron sword so I feel a lot more confident. I go to about halfway through the Plains and start my shaft to the surface. I decide to to risk just pillaring straight up, hoping that I'll hear any dangers like lava or water, though I'm not sure how much damage falling gravel or sand will do. I'm lucky and make it to the surface, but it's night so I place a trapdoor over the top and go back to base to make a clock, leaving my lovely new surface shaft:
When I emerge there are a lot of sheep and I can hear a chicken. I do lots of shearing and find I've sheared a lot of grass too - I was going for seeds and didn't know you could collect grass that way:
I decide to plant a birch tree to mark my trapdoor, which won't attract attention but since there aren't any other single trees growing on the plain hopefully I'll be able to find my way home:
I find the chickens and collect some eggs and now it's already late so I head home. I make a bed and sleep in it, then since I'm really low on food I enlarge my farm area and make a small fenced area for chickens. Only one of my eggs hatches, but it's a start:
I have a little more space for wheat now and a walkway round the outside so I won't step on the crops:
Not pretty, but serviceable. While enlarging the area I break through into the ravine again, causing a small flood which I decide to leave in the corner. I also decide it would be pretty nice to make that whole wall into windows so I can see the ravine. I need sand on my next trip.
Since my clock says it's nearly daybreak I head on up again. I find some sand and decide to try to catch some chickens. What would happen if I pushed one down my shaft?
Turns out chickens can fly down ladders, and I end up with a little flock of chickens that I lead back to the chicken enclosure:
Oh, I also decided no-one will notice if a kill a few sheep, so I now have some food as well. I go back up and manage to find some sugar cane - the first lot I saw was over the border in the neighbouring forest, so I can't get it. But I decide that the beach at the edge of a biome counts as part of that biome (it's right in the distance in this shot):
I find some cave entrances and do a bit of exploring - not very exciting at first, but another one goes quite deep and I manage to collect an ender pearl and a few arrows and bones, and a spider eye (was hoping for string):
I get lost a bit - I always get lost in caves, but use dead-end blocking and following my torches (I mostly put them on the right) to get back to the entrance:
I mark the cave entrances with torches - they'll be handy if I want to get some sheep underground later.
When I get back it's nightfall again, but I decide to wait rather than risk getting lost again. When it's light I head home, and realise I now have enough diamonds to make a full set of armour and a sword, but I decide to save them until I can enchant them.
I use the sand I collected to make glass and make a - not very successful - start on my glass wall:
I plant my very pathetic amount of sugar cane next to my water hole:
It's a start anyway. I'll need plenty of sugar cane to make paper for books, and that reminds me I haven't found cows yet. Or maybe there were some in my original biome - I'll check that soon as I didn't look around all that much before tunnelling down, too occupied with getting wood.
I decide to continue my tunnel to the South, past my farm area, and quite soon find Forest - a continuation of the Forest Hills I've started in, and doesn't really count as a separate biome. A short while later it turns into Plains, which is probably the same Plains I found to the West. I need to do a bit more scouting about above ground, mapping out the size of my biomes. Or I could do that below ground, making a grid of tunnels. That's probably the safer option, though time-consuming and tedious. I'll start making some rail tracks soon I think, along my main tunnels.
I'm hoping to find Taiga, Jungle, and Desert. If I find any villages I think I need to stay away from them, unfortunately, but Jungle or Desert temples are fair game. Best of all I want to find a Stronghold, but that will probably be a long way from now. I also need to make a diamond pickaxe to mine some obsidian, so I can make a Nether Portal and get some blaze rods etc. Not absolutely urgent, but something to keep in mind. I have plenty of obsidian around anyway.
I decide that for my next session I'll try to tunnel out a lot more in all four directions, and put in my main trainlines, so that I get a better idea of what's around me and can prioritise where to go. Maybe to around 1000 blocks in each direction for a start.
FINALLY it changes to Ocean and within only a few step,s Deep Ocean. I keep this in mind for future reference - I may decide to try finding an Ocean Monument from below, which is something I haven't done before. Oooh yes, sounds like a fun thing to do.
...
I conquered both of my Ocean monuments from below (although I did spot them from the surface first). I tunnelled under the ocean to the monument and dug up through the rear center support leg, which puts you in a small hall at the back of the monument that is easy to section off and empty. I used slime blocks for temporary walls because they insta-break, even with Mining Fatigue III.
The first one I gutted but kept the outside intact.
The second one I turned into a guardian farm.
In most of the worlds I have played I built my bases underground, but I've never enforced strict rules to stay there. Sounds like an interesting project. Good luck with it.
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Next installment
I now have a fully set of iron armour which makes me feel a little more secure. I build my first shaft to the surface from the bottom up, about halfway through the Plains. It's risky but I decide to just pillar up with dirt, placing ladders alongside as I go. I'm lucky and it goes smoothly. I can hear cows but it's nighttime when I break through, so I place a trap door and head home to make a clock. When I surface I can see loads of sheep and I can hear chickens:
I shear a load of wool, find the chickens and collect a few eggs. I didn't realise you could shear grass and I collect a stack just because. It's getting dark so I head home with 49 wool, 14 seeds and 6 eggs. I don't want to kill any sheep until I've scouted out the area a bit better, in case there's a village near by.
Once home I make a bed and sleep, but now I really need food as I only have 1 apple left. I enlarge my farming area and plant more seeds. I also fence a small area and manage to hatch a chicken:
While expanding I break through to the Eastern ravine, and get flooded, and I decide that it would be rather a nice idea to have that wall made of glass, so I make a mental note to collect sand next outing. I leave a gap for the water to flood as it might be useful later:
My clock says it's daybreak so I go back up to the Plains for sand, more eggs and to have a better look around. I need a landmark for my trapdoor that won't be too obvious, so I decide to plant a birch tree, as there aren't any single tress growing:
The torches were my temporary markers, so I need to remember to remove them. I head to the beach for some sand - I've decided beaches belong to the biome they're adjacent to. I spot some sugar cane but it's over the border in the forest, so frustrating to have to follow my own rules. But then I see some more along the beach and collect it. You can just see it in this picture:
I find some surface entrances to caves, explore a bit, get lost, kill some monsters and finally find my way out following my torches, which I try to always place on the right. I'm hoping for a dungeon but no luck yet.
I find a load of chickens and decide to lead them to my shaft so I can collect eggs more easily. I wonder...what would happen if I pushed one down through my trapdoor: Let's find out!
Turns out, chickens can fly down ladders, so I push the rest down one by one. Then I lead them back down the tunnel to my farm:
I have chickens! I mostly use them for making arrows, until I get the Infinity enchantment.
Meanwhile I've been smelting some glass, and I make a start on my glass wall:
The ravine is inconveniently not straight so it ends up somewhat messy, but I'll worry about that later. I plant my pathetic amount of sugar cane - it's a start anyway:
It grows pretty quickly and once I've sorted out my food, collected eggs etc, I have some more to plant. I want to get going so I'm very lazy about finding space for it:
There'll be plenty of time later to make my base pretty.
Next I'm going to do some more exploring - I need to find Taiga (for wolves, though they usually end up being more of a hindrance than a help), jungle and desert - for jungle and desert temples mainly, plus cacti, cocoa and maybe some ocelots. In my last map I had brought two polar bears all the way back to my underground base on leads, as I was preparing for the apocalypse, but I'm not sure if I'll go that far this time. Depends what biomes I find I suppose.
Here's one of my polar bears when I was leading it:
Took me ages, making bridges so I didn't lose them in the water, they kept getting stuck and the lead kept snapping. I had donkey I'd ridden absolutely miles home as well - took me forever to find one. Can't believe I accidentally deleted it.
Anyway, moving swiftly on.....I decide to explore to the South, past my farm.. I think I'll go 1000 blocks in each direction to see what's around me, and maybe start on some rails. I find Plains, River, Taiga (yay!), then Taiga Hills, Taiga again (which still counts as the same biome), River, Plains, Forest, Plains, Beach, River, Deep Ocean, Ocean and then I hit a zombie dungeon and one of them drops a potato! I head home to plant it, and when I get near my base I can hear the unmistakeable sound of a bouncing slime - another piece of good luck. I kill it and get a slimeball.
I do some calculations and decide I've got enough iron to make 1000 rails, so I set it all smelting and then spend a while organising my chests. I put a chest for food, seeds and general food-related supplies in the farm room, make a chest for building supplies, one for gems, metals and suchlike, one for mob drops and crafting supplies, and one for extra adventuring supplies - I made a set of diamond armour earlier but I decide to save it until I can enchant it, as I don't have that many extra diamonds.
I head up to my original biome, forest hills, as I didn't check it out that much when I was there, more concerned with getting wood. I
find a couple of cows, though the rest of the herd are across the border in the Plain. I slaughter them and get a couple of pieces of leather.
I linger a little too long and jump down my trapdoor with arrows flying after me.
I make my rails and after research I decide to place one powered rail every 30 blocks. I have enough gold and redstone so I set off. I make a small lobby at the start of the Western tunnel and start laying track. I'm fixing the floor as I go, so it's all plain stone - I'll do the walls later - and I
have to go back for more stone, and I have another slime! Seems I picked a good spot for my base. I also harvest four potatoes so I
replant them. Baked potatoes are my favourite food, much quicker and easier than making bread or killing animals for meat.
I'm just making a 1x2 tunnel and I take out a block to place the redstone torch out of the way.
I have to go back and forth a few times for supplies and it makes such a difference being able to just jump in a cart.And then, when I'm doing a quick explore of a small cave system I come across I see...
I climb up and strip the rails and wood I find, but it's a dead end and doesn't link to anything. I can hear some zombies though so I dig around and find more mine. It turns out to be very disjointed with lots of dead ends and I have to do a lot of listening and digging through blocked ways. I only find one chest and it doesn't have anything very exciting, apart from a name tag:
No seeds unfortunately. I destroy three spider spawners and end up with stacks of string, wood and fences. The mine is under Deep Ocean and a couple of times I realise too late that the wood block I just broke was holding up gravel at the ocean's floor:
I'm really annoyed with myself when I get overconfident and take on three skeletons plus a witch, that are attacking each other but then turn on me, and I have my first death. I head back easily enough and collect my gear, but I've lost 37 levels. And I really wanted to not die this run through. Oh well.
I finish clearing out the mine and leave a couple of chests of loot to collect later. I carry on with my tunnel and finally the Ocean gives way to beach and then Forest, River, Forest, Beach, River....and Deep Ocean again. No!!!!!
I decide to make a surface tunnel in the Forest, and head back to the middle, where I had hit a ravine. I mine out steps up the side of the ravine to the top, and then tunnel the short distance from there to the surface. I do indeed seem to be on a large island, so I decide that it would be safe to use a boat to explore a bit further from here. I still head directly South, but before I reach land I see...
Yes!! It's really close to my direct line South, about 1600 from my base, not too difficult to tunnel. I row over and take a note of the approximate co-ordinates, getting attacked by a guardian in the process:
I decide to keep going till I reach land and after a few false alarms that turn out to be islands, I'm really happy to see what looks like desert ahead, - I get a bit too close and a zombie starts swimming out to me, but I can see some cacti through the gloom:
I sail around the coast a bit to make sure it isn't just a tiny island, and I spot...
Yes, it's a desert temple! I take note of the x co-ordinate, which is around 2300. Well worth the effort of the extra tunneling though. I head back to the Forest where I can get back into the ravine, and as I land I see a deep cave next to the short, almose like a ravine itself and I wonder if it joins up with the ravine I climbed out of. I got hit with Mining Fatigue on my way back so I have to wait for that to wear off first.
I make my way down, but it's just a small cleft not a full ravine. At one end there are a load of zombies though, and I wonder if it's another dungeon:
I destroy all the zombies and work my way further into the cave system. There is a dungeon, but it's a skeleton one. There's not much in the chest, but I decide to leave the spawner and wall it up for now - it will be easy to reach it from my tunnel, and a good supply of bones and arrows is always worth having.
I head back up to the surface, then down to my tunnel, and extend it till about where I think the Ocean Monument is. Then I work out what direction I think it's in and start a staircase going up . I can hear the guardians so I know I'm in the right area. After a little while I break through gravel and my staircase is flooded. I let myself get swept down and then bounce my way back to the top. I can see through into the ocean, but I can't place a door from here (to stop the water and still be able to get out into the ocean). I need to break another gravel block, but I've been hit with Mining Fatigue. I don't want to have to go all the way back home for milk (which removes the Fatigue) so I spend over 6 minutes mining the block of gravel, then place my door:
There's a whole ocean, and an ocean monument, on the other side of that door. Must be very strong.
I'm beginning to think thoughts like, 'I wonder if cows can get down a one block wide tunnel?'. When I drained an Ocean Monument before I brought a cow along, and it made it so much easier because of the ready supply of milk:
For now though, I need to head home again. I'll be laying my rails as I go, so my next trip out should be much quicker..
This is a very nice idea! I've wanted to try an underground survival world, but can't seem to keep myself from... cheating... so I'll try this out.
Good luck, and may you find some good biomes!
Thanks! I know, it's always frustrating knowing you might be just missing the good stuff, but so far I've had some good luck. I suppose using F3 could be called cheating, but the only other way would be to tunnel up to the surface at set distances and that would be just too tedious to sustain. I doubt it I'll ever find a jungle though, they always seem to be miles away from spawn.
My 'Preparing for the Apocalypse' is one you could try as well - sometimes it's nice to only have vague guidelines rather than strict rules that you end up breaking. The only 'rule' was that I was trying to save as much as possible by taking it all underground. I even tried to sink a village - I trapped all the villagers in a pit and then covered them over and dug underneath. I was trying to get at least two of each animal (though I hadn't worked out rabbits yet), plus all crops and as many different types of block as I could, for posterity - I planned on using Silk Touch later on for this. Then when I was ready I was going to do something to signal the end of the world (maybe set loads of stuff on fire) and go underground for good. I like playing with some sort of storyline in mind, but I get bored with rules just for the sake of it, and with things being too rigid. I'll probably redo that one at some point and NOT delete it accidentally this time.
I conquered both of my Ocean monuments from below (although I did spot them from the surface first). I tunnelled under the ocean to the monument and dug up through the rear center support leg, which puts you in a small hall at the back of the monument that is easy to section off and empty. I used slime blocks for temporary walls because they insta-break, even with Mining Fatigue III.
The first one I gutted but kept the outside intact.
The second one I turned into a guardian farm.
In most of the worlds I have played I built my bases underground, but I've never enforced strict rules to stay there. Sounds like an interesting project. Good luck with it.
Thanks for the tip - I didn't see I had replies before I posted my next installment, but you might see I did find an Ocean Monument. I'll root around and see if I can find one of the supports, but I'm not too good at underwater stuff so who knows how it will go? I've drained a couple of Ocean Monuments, using plenty of sand and milk, but I forgot about the slime thing - with my base apparently being a slime magnet maybe I'll focus on collecting more slime to take with me. And thanks for the luck!
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More Shenanigans
I remember I haven't explored North yet - that lava spillage. I block it, tunnel up a bit, block in a lava lake and then remake my original tunnel. Then I tunnel onwards. Plains...river....forest....plains...river...plains...forest....plains...forest...river....forest...plains...forest....right up to 1000 blocks. I place rails on the way back, though I'm short by 200 or so that I'll fill in later.
Back home, no slimes this time. I'm frequently hatching eggs, replenishing my arrows, and harvesting crops. Sugar cane is slow as I only have my small areas still - don't feel like working on my farm yet though, until I'm sure this will be my permanent base. If I find more exciting biomes I may want to move nearer.
I head East, making a tunnel through the ravine and leaving doors both sides for later exploration. It's just as exciting as North was at first, but then I hit Ocean about 400 blocks from home. I go back a little way and make a shaft up at a point that should be the middle of a forest, but when I surface I find I'm just on the edge of water - must have been running along the edge of the forest, parallel to the ocean:
I make a new rule, based on the exploration I did earlier by boat and what I feel fits in with my storyline, while allowing some fun:
- I am allowed to explore by boat, but can only come ashore in the same biome where I began.
I'll add that to my list. Also I'm allowed to spend the night in a boat if I have to (inevitable sometimes). I head as directly East as I can - my main aim is to get some motivation for all the tunnelling under ocean I'll have to do if I continue East. I pass some small islands and then I spot:
My original idea was that I'd have to stay away from villages, but this is too tempting. I don't see any villages so I decide to creep in for a closer look. Once ashort I spot a farm plot that's a distance away from any buildings so I raid it - it's full of potatoes:
I creep around a bit more, and have to kill two villagers who spot me:
I've never killed villagers before and I feel awful about it, but you've got to do what you've got to do. I find some bookshelves and steal the books, then head off in my boat as it's getting dark:
Being in the village in stealth made a nice change - I always wondered why they don't object at you stealing all their stuff from right under their noses.
I have 68 potatoes, a decent haul, and around 20 books. The ocean seems to go on forever, until at around 2000 from home I find an Extreme Hills island. Better than nothing. I boat home again.
I've decided I'm going to make my tunnels into a grid - around 2000 blocks N, S, E, W and then tunneling to join the ends of those tunnels up, and making halfway tunnels, so I'll end up with a 4000 block grid with 8 squares, each line 1000 blocks apart. Hopefully this will get me a good selection of biomes. It doesn't matter what order I make the tunnels in, so I'll probably go wherever seems more interesting, and I'll set rails as I go. I haven't tried Nether travel yet, but that might be a possibility too. I have done some Nether exploration, and it's something I want to do more of, so maybe later, once I've finished exploring my grid.
I have 96 diamonds and 21 books, and 2 leather, so once back home I decide to make a start doing some enchanting, particularly some pickaxes would be good:
I'm getting a little tired of being surrounded by plain stone, but it's in keeping with my living style at the moment - later I can make a fancy base, once I have some fancy stuff.
I don't do too badly with my enchanting:
I have 2 diamond pickaxes with Efficiency II, Silk Touch, a couple of Aqua Affinity helmets, and some enchanted diamond armour.
I head off to the Western Plains where I know there are cows lurking somewhere. I find 3 cows and manage to snag a couple of sheep too in passing. I lead them to one of the surface caves, and block them in with a few dirt blocks. With them secured, I build a staircase down to meet my tunnel, and entice them down there:
With a lot of pushing and pulling I get two of the cows and both sheep into a new animal pen and before they've even had time to settle in I have them breeding:
One of the cows didn't want to come, but that's fine as I have other plans for her. I check I have all the supplies I need - Aqua Affinity helmets, plenty of buckets, stack of baked potatoes, sand and dirt....and head off to where I left the cow. This one seems to be glitched, as it won't step into any of the tunnels where there are rails. I can push it onto the rails though, and then I dig around to get in front of it and lead it with wheat. Weird.
We get to the end of the tunnel, where I found the Ocean Monument, and I set up a temporary fenced area for my cow. I go up to scope out where exactly I am, and find I'm exactly in front of the Monument:
I go out into the ocean for a better view - I want to see how far away the pillars are as I'm thinking I'll take the tip I got from Courageous Marinade and try to tunnel up through one - but I'm a bit over-confident, and I've forgotten how lethal the guardians can be, and when I'm attacked by two at once I panic, can't find my doorway, and end up getting dead. I respawn back at base, leg it (or minecart it at any rate) back, and manage to pick up all my equipment after a few tries, but this time I forget to check my air meter and drown! Head back again, luckily now everything's right next to the door so I sweep it up and reorganise my inventory. To think I'd planned not to die - I've died 3 times now.
I redirect my tunnel, popping up every now and then to see where I am. I can see one of the support straight ahead, overshoot it, backtrack and finally instead of falling gravel and water I find:
Such a feeling of success! I tentatively dig up through it, and pillar up till I hit water again - inside the monument. I test the sides of my shaft, and find a safe side to widen it to two blocks, so I can have a ladder and a torch in the shaft. I make a small room at the bottom of the ladder and bring my cow up to be a ready milk supply. I have to head back to the Plains as I haven't brought enough sand, but then I'm all set to start infiltrating the inside of the Monument:
I get glimpses of guardians as I work, but I'm no longer a sitting duck and I look forward to wiping them out. I have 16 buckets to fill with milk and can work for a reasonably long time before having to go down for more - this will be more tedious as I get further into the monument, but at some point I'll be able to find and kill the Elder Guardians, which will make my work so much easier. I consider trying to get enough slime to use slime blocks, but it would take ages to get enough, and this method isn't too bad.
When I drained my ocean monuments before I kept one intact and gutted the other, just to see what the inside space looked like. I prefer keeping things as they were whenever I can, but I'm having ideas of gradually replacing the prismarine with green glass blocks so the structure and layout is preserved but all visible, and I'll be able to see easily if I've missed any secret rooms. And see out at the sea. Yes. I think so...would make a lovely base....and a safe place to work out of for my off-grid living thing, no risk of being found by....whoever.
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And next...
I think I've been playing too much MC. I usually try to ration myself and not spend too much at once, but I was having so much fun I just played more or less non-stop yesterday and today. Oops.
So, what did I get done in my 2-day MC marathon? Let's see if you can guess?
Yes, I've been draining my Ocean Monument and it's all done now. I think it's my favourite thing to do on MC, finding all the secret rooms, gradually seeing the monument emerge. That last shot is looking out the front entrance. I plan on making it a bit grander once I'm settled, maybe have a porch. I know, Ocean Momument as base is probably old hat to most players, but I haven't done it before and it's definitely in keeping with my 'off-grid' theme. The only ways in being past a load of guardians and deep water, or through my secret tunnel.
I found two, yes two, sponge rooms. Just look at this haul:
The diamonds are only in my inventory because I had already killed most of the guardians and was close to needing more armour but couldn't be bothered to make some yet.
I found the first two Elder Guardians relatively early on and then I couldn't understand why I was still getting zapped with Mining Fatigue - for some reason I forgot about the third one. Found it eventually and so much easier after that. Every time I thought I'd finished I'd find another suite of rooms through a hard-to spot gap somewhere.
Next...I want to gradually swap all the pris-what's-it-called for stained glass. Again, I'm sure I'm not the first person to ever have this idea or to do it, but it's my first time doing it and it's going to be magnificent. I think. Or a mess. I'm thinking it might be an idea to leave entrances in their original blocks so I can find them, and just change all walls to glass. But that might look awful. Basically I'm going to have to smelt an absolute ton of glass and play around to see what works. Swapping out the base will probably be hardest as I don't want my prismarine (that was it) blocks to fall down and be lost.
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Next Installment...
Having cleared the Ocean Monument, I need sand, and cacti for dye, which ties in nicely with my next phase of exploration - which is continuing the tunnel on to the desert that I discovered by boat. It's only about 500 blocks further along the same tunnel as the Ocean Monument. I head back to base to offload stuff I don't need, catch a train back and then start digging.
I hit a cave system straight away, and because I'm a little blurry and slow to react (it's early), I let a witch get the better of me and lose 27 or so levels. Damn! That's about 3 or 4 deaths so far, I'm so rubbish at this. Oh well, I head back and my equipment is all fine, despite a lava lake right there. I need lots of iron for rails so I explore thoroughly and find a spider dungeon, with pumpkin seeds, just what I need!
I decide to take all the mossy stone to use in ruins later.
After lots of Deep Ocean I hit the desert and keep going to see how far it goes. Right as I reach ocean again I find another mine, so I make a safe entrance with a door and then head back to around the middle of the desert to make my shaft up. I have to go a bit more carefully to avoid sand falling on my head, but it goes smoothly and I surface. Looking around, the desert temple I had spotted from my boat is nearby:
It's all above ground, and I quickly place torches in the interior, remove one of the blocks next to the treasure chamber and mine straight down. The loot isn't that great - Gold Horse Armour and a nametag, plus lots of bones and zombie flesh. When I exit it's getting dark so I head back down my shaft.
There is savannah just to the North and I decide to go and take a look. I make a side tunnel and at daybreak I mine straight up. I don't bother with a ladder as I don't intend to return. Right in front of me is another village:
I creep around and steal as many potatoes and wheat as I can find, plus some carrots. This time there is a forge, and manage to slip inside without being spotted. Some gold and a couple of pieces of armour, not much. I only have to kill one villager who's in the wrong place at the wrong time. I find two libraries and steal all the books, and then head back to my shaft. Once it's day again I go back to the desert and fill as many stacks of sand as I have room for, plus half a stack of cacti.
Back in my tunnel I take a minecart back to the Ocean Monument stop and dump off all my extra loot in chests. I want to explore the abandoned mine I found, so I need plenty of inventory space. I can never resist taking all the fences, all the wooden blocks, all the rails, all the string from the cobwebs, as well as any ores and minerals and loot from chests. I'll probably never need all these wooden fenceposts or string, but it's free stuff.
I move quickly placing torches, trying not to give monsters time to spawn, shooting creepers and cutting down zombies and skeletons. Avoiding spiders if possible - so many of my deaths are by poison. Once I've lit a section and explored all branches I retrace my steps, taking everything and placing 2-high cobble pillars to show that a section is finished with. This mine is huge, and in several places it intersects with cave systems.
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More happenings...
I finally finish clearing the mine - I have more stacks of fences and wood than I can possibly count, but the higher value loot is thin on the ground. Melon and pumpkin seeds which I'm very happy about, though I probably won't get round to planting them till I'm more settled, another name tag. This whole process takes me a couple of days (real time), as I'm a bit obsessive about exploring very thoroughly in case I miss any chests. I die again at some point - 40 levels lost - can't even remember what from. Oh yes, stupidity and over-confidence.
Finally I'm satisfied and all my loot is stored in chests in my original tunnel. I transport some of it back as far as the Ocean Monument stop and into my chests there, and decide not to move it any further towards my base, as I'm still contemplating making the Ocean Monument into my permanent base. I could hollow out the space underneath to make farms etc. I want to finish my tunnel grid first though and find the other biomes I'm missing.
I head back to base to enchant a couple more pickaxes since I'm over level 30 again now and will appreciate the faster mining while I make my tunnel.
I work out what co-ordinates I need to reach to make a grid 2000 blocks in each direction from my spawn point - I spawned at -188, 256. So I head along my West tunnel, past the Ocean Monument stop but not as far as the mine, to -2188, and start a tunnel South, that will take me to a corner of my grid, from where I will head East and connect with my South tunnel. That will give me the bottom left square of my grid.
I haven't gone far when I hit a cave system, and I'm mining some coal when I uncover this:
Yes, it's a Stronghold!! I rush around the caves trying to see if there's a natural way in, but any blocks I spot are above my head, so eventually I tunnel up and around and find a way in:
I explore and find a library and the end portal, which unfortunately has no eyes of ender already in place.
Lots of monster encounters later, I manage to find my way back to my original entry point. I haven't explored all of it, and I've left the library intact - I need books for my enchanting room, but I don't want to wreck my stronghold just yet. In my last world, I was making a base in a stronghold and I was excavating all the surrounding area, so that I had an enormous cavern with this half-floating weird fortress - I was repairing all the broken bits as I went too and eventually I was going to have just one entrance into it. I say half-floating because the levels are irregular, as the building spawns underground, so as I excavated it there were some rooms that had nothing underneath. Unfortunately I didn't make any screenshots because I didn't expect to accidentally delete the whole world.
I'm not sure if I'll go that far this time, but I want to have the option, so I'm careful to replace any iron bars or doors I have to remove so I can light up the cells. I make a more direct set of stairs back to my tunnel, then carry on tunneling South.
Once again luck is with me, and I spot signs of another abandoned mine.
At the far right of this picture you can see where I emerged from my tunnel and on the far right the mine entrance. Yes, there were skeletons lying in wait for me.
I seal up my tunnel and make a doorway into the mine, and a small storage and stopping area, and then leave it for later exploration as my priority is getting my exploration grid completed. I'm placing rails as I go, mining 30 blocks and then railing that section before moving on. It's fairly slow going, with lots of lava lakes to get over. I'm not sure if I explained my decision to work at such a low level (layer 11) - usually I work at level 13 which still gives me a good chance of diamonds but isn't quite so lava infested. I decided my character would welcome the more hostile environment as it makes detection less likely. It makes things a bit more challenging too, which is fine by me. And I'm pretty sure I'm finding more diamonds at this level.
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And next...
It's getting longer between posts because mostly I've been tunnelling and laying rails, and it would all be a bit repetitive to write about. I finished digging my South West corner tunnels, and have laid most of the tracks, discovering a Sunflower Plains which I made a shaft up to:
As you can see, there's a Flower Forest right next door, so I file that information away for later exploration. I give in to the whim to make the 'station' a bit prettier:
Well I'm not sure if it actually counts as prettier, but I do like the effect of Diorite, and I'm vaguely toying with the idea of eventually lining my railway system with it, if I can be bothered. I also discover Cold Taiga, and eventually I find:
Ice Plains! So exciting when I come across something other than Plains and Forest. And not far from my shaft is an igloo. I used the facilities and cure the zombie villager:
Then I build a tunnel with steps from here to my rail tunnel, so that at a later point I'll maybe find a way to move the pair to a place where I can make a secure village. Maybe deep in the Extreme Hills. I'll have to research this as I've never made a village before, but I seem to remember reading about having a certain number of doors and stuff, so I'm sure I can work it out.
While making my tunnel, I've discovered about another 6 abandoned mines, which I wall up, with an access door, and leave for later exploration. I can never leave a mine unexplored.
That's 8,000 blocks of tunnels, since it's 2,000 to the South, 2,000 to the West, then another 2,000 parallel to each of the original tunnels to join them up at the SW corner. It takes a looong time to travel anywhere, and I'm planning to do this a further 3 times for the other 3 quadrants, so I decide it's time to enter the Nether. I've never used Nether travel before, but I'm willing to give it a go. I make a small chamber just off my main base, before the start of my Northern tunnel, and build my first Nether portal. When I cross over, I remember I'm still at layer 11, so it's pretty quiet, in some Netherwrack caves. There are plenty of Zombie Pigmen around, but nothing else except some creepy noises. I explore around a bit and find some Glowstone to mine:
This is a first for me too - I've explored in the Nether a bit before, including a Nether Fortress, but only quick trips to get blaze rods mostly. I've never used Glowstone for lighting, but I'm looking forward to playing around with it. I consider using my Fortune III pickaxe, but I'm not sure if it works on Glowstone so I use my Silk Touch instead.
I find a route out of the caves, but there's nothing much to see besides a huge lava lake:
I mine some Soul Sand, just because and head back. I seem to have brought some hitchhikers back with me:
There's a third one behind the portal, that I hadn't spotted yet. I leave them where they are - they can't get out of this room and they can't do any damage.
I consider my next step - where do I want to make my next portal? It probably makes sense to link directly to my main locations - the Ocean Monument, the Stronghold, Ice Plains, Desert... I'm pretty sure they're far enough away from each other to create new portals in the Nether. I have plenty of obsidian to experiment with anyway. And hopefully I'll spot a Nether Fortress near one of my access points.
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Next Installment
It's been a while again, because I've been doing routine repetitive stuff...again. I've expanded my tunnels and my nether network, though still nowhere near finished. I'm maybe 2/3 finished with my overworld/underground rail network, but it's soooo tedious that I can only do so much before having to take a long break and do something else. I now have a Nether portal underneath my cleared Ocean Monument, and it's linked to my original base through the Nether by rail, so I've been doing a lot of travelling between the two, gradually transferring to the Ocean Monument. My enchanting area is now at the Ocean Monument too. I had some trouble with my Nether portal, as it would not bring me back to the portal I had made, rather making a new portal in the overworld every time, including one that was suspended over the ocean:
For the others I just had to tunnel back to my starting point, but for this one I had to destroy it, then jump into the sea, head to that small sandbank you can see behind the portal (I decided I would be able to land there as it didn't really consitute a proper biome or land mass), and make a shaft down, then tunnel to my starting point.
I asked for help on the forums, and found that I needed to move my portal in the Nether, as it had been created a distance away from the 'proper' co-ordinates, probably because there wasn't a near enough cave in the Nether, so when it looked for a portal to link to, my one was too far away. Once I had disabled the extra portals, tunnelled to the correct co-ordinates in the Nether and created a portal there, I was able to travel back and forth with no hitches.
So this was my second portal room, below the Ocean Monument:
and here are some Magma Cubes I encountered in the Nether:
Next I decided to expand the area under the Ocean Monument. I want to make a Guardian farm somewhere in the Ocean Monument, and I it'll work best if I minimise monster spawning in the vicinity, so I have this idea to just dig everything out, maybe creating 2 or 3 floors, to make a huge area for storage, farming, etc, including a variety of underground forests.
I started by digging out the whole of the area directly beneath the Ocean Monument, at my base level of layer 11:
As you can see, there was a dungeon right at the bottom of my ladder when I first dug down from the Ocean Monument (that ladder is the one that goes right up through one of the OM supports), but I decided I didn't need it, and it was rather in the way. It's all pretty messy still at the moment, as my priority is getting it all cleared, then I'll decide how I want to arrange it.
I started clearing just above here, but then decided to move up to the layers directly below the Ocean Monument and work down from there. I decided to create a glass ceiling as I went, partly to be sure of exactly where I was, but mainly for aesthetics - I'm not sure the extent to which I will use glass, but there's a chance that everything, from the Ocean Monument down to the bedrock, will be glass, if it doesn't end up just too confusing.
I appear to have hit on another slime chunk, which is fabulous:
While I'm working just under the Ocean Monument I hear slime jumpy noises from time to time, slide down my ladder and gather more slimeballs. There's another Ocean Monument I passed under on my far East tunnel (had to head home as I couldn't mine further due to Mining Fatigue), which I'll revisit once I have enough Slime Blocks.
Anyway, here are some images of the glass ceiling/ocean floor I'm working on:
And remember my doorway, looking out from the main entrance of the Ocean Monument?
You can just make it out when looking up through my glass ceiling:
It's that small lighter-coloured rectangle roughly in the centre of the picture, distorted by the perspective.
So, yes, that's what I'm working on, and it'll take some time to complete it. I'll need to head back to the desert for more sand, which hopefully won't be noticed as there's no desert villages around. I'll most likely create another Nether portal there, as I think it's far enough away from the Ocean Monument one (where was my desert anyway?). Another task is mapping the area - I have made a start but I need to step up my bamboo procuction and learn more about maps, but well worth doing as I keep forgetting which direction has which biome, and my signs are all at my original, central base.
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And the rather underwhelming next installment...
So...I finally finished making my totally glass ocean-floor-under-the ocean-monument thing....and it's really underwhelming. You can't see that much through the glass blocks because of the stupid white marks they have on them. I'd planned to spend time lighting up the outside of the monument - working from the inside and placing sea lanterns at intervals in the walls - but I really don't know if I want to put a lot more effort into it. It's all something of a sidetrack as it is, and there's plenty of other things I could be doing. But on the other hand, what if it's fabulous once it's done? Or maybe it's better than I think but I'm jaded because I've spent so many hours staring up at it while I place the glass blocks one at a time.
One thing that was interesting was that the supports aren't all even at the bottom - must depend on the terrain, so some end higher up where the terrain was higher. Well, not that interesting really, more like obvious when you think about it.
Time to do something else for a while and then come back to it and see how I feel. The sensible next step is to make my base, particularly a large farm, which is going directly underneath the ocean monument, though not on this top level. I need to mine out the space in sections, including an area with very high ceiling for a tree farm. So yes, that next.
Having accidentally deleted my 'Preparing for the Apocalypse' world (another world had a similar name and I deleted the wrong one), that I was really enjoying, I decided to set myself a new challenge, and keep track of my progress here.
I've previously done the 'underground' challenge successfully where you grab what you can and head underground to live, and decided to make a scenario based on that.
There's a vague storyline in my head, that these are troubled times with civilistation at risk of total collapse, (or having collapsed) so it's safer to stay underground, 'off-grid', and borders between biomes operate like those between countries, with (invisible) border patrol, so that if I cross them above ground alarms will be triggered. Possibly my character is delusional and actually everything's fine. It doesn't have to be any more detailed than that, just enought so my rules make sense to me. Maybe I'll add some ruins and stuff above ground at some later date.
I need to acknowledge TheMasterCaver, as it was a comment of his that inspired this idea - something like 'I do most of my exploring underground', which made me think about how you could explore above ground from underground. Though I think they meant exploring caves etc.
RULES
Rules are flexible and I'll add more if I want to - I just seem to prefer playing with rules.
General Rules
1. Mark where I spawn, collect what I want and head underground at nightfall, at the spawn point
2. All homes, farms, etc must be underground - no building to be done above ground and minimal impact on terrain
3. I'm only allowed to surface during daylight and must be back undergound at nightfall
4. Exploration and travel mainly underground - not allowed to cross biome boundaries above ground (can use F3 to check biome)
5. Allowed one shaft to surface in each discovered biome, but must be inconspicuous
New rules added as I go along
6. I can explore by boat, but cannot go ashore other than where I started. I can stay in the boat overnight if need be
7. Building, homes etc can also be underwater, if far enough away from land not to be easily detected
8. I can infiltrate villages but must kill any villager that sees me
9. I can use naturally occurring cave entrances on the surface to make routes underground, for example to bring animals underground, as long as I don't leave anything to show I've been there
A purer version wouldn't allow use of F3, so that I'd have to surface say every 500 blocks to see what was there. But that would be so much harder, and I can justify it within my storyline by saying I have some sort of radar detector technology...or something. It detects the soil composition, and presence of large amounts of water, and...stuff like that.
Oh, and I play completely Vanilla, on Normal mode.
Starting out
So, I created a new world and this is where I spawned:
It's Forest Hills, not very exciting, so I don't waste any time exploring. I spend the day chopping down the nearest trees (the image above was taken after I'd already cleared some), and collecting some seeds and a little bit of dirt. I get a few apples which will have to do for food for now, as there are no animals in sight. I make plenty of ladders and a
trapdoor and start down just before night fallsl:
(I forgot to take screenshots at the time, so this is the next day, after the shaft is complete).
I come across a cave halfway down and almost get killed by a skeleton, but manage to build a wall and kill it by hitting its legs - lucky all these monsters have their vital organs in their legs.
Get a decent start with coal and iron ore, and make a furnace to smelt enough for a bucket so I can collect some water.
I go right down to bedrock and test out how it would be to live there, which would have been my first choice, but with lava pouring out every time I try to expand, I decide it wasn't worth it - the cobblestone on the wall in this picture is where I've blocked off lava:
So I go back up a little way and test it out until I'm sure I'm at least on the same level as the lava, ending up on layer 11, and build my first basic base:
It's an 11x11 square with the shaft in the centre, going up to the surface and down to bedrock. I start a tunnel in the centre of each side, which will be used to explore and travel.
Starting to explore:
I start by going South, and after mining some coal to the right I hit a lava lake. I make a cobblestone path across it, but decide to leave most of it as protection for now, as I can see a dark cave ahead and hear zombies moaning:
There isn't an open way through as yet, so I decide to leave it for now and see what's in the other three directions. I have a habit of filling in any holes when I mine out ores and gems by the way, so if my screenshots have random patches of cobblestone it'll probably be from that.
Heading North, I've only gone about 20 blocks when the tunnel starts to flood with lava:
I decide to leave it and retreat for now. Looks like I'll have to tunnel up a little in that direction to make any progress.
Heading West is more successful. I hit a few small lava caves, and collect some water, leaving behind some obsidian I can dig out later:
A close encounter with a creeper when I'm digging out some dirt to use later and dig through to a second cave, but I'm able to kill it without triggering an explosion:
I find lots of coal, iron and redstone, but best of all....
and...
and finally...
Between caving I'm continuing to tunnel straight West and keep an eye on the biome. Only a few blocks from base it turns to Plains, which goes on for about 200 or so blocks, then I get beach, and beach and more beach. I want to see what's beyond the beach, but I must be travelling parallel to a coastline.
FINALLY it changes to Ocean and within only a few step,s Deep Ocean. I keep this in mind for future reference - I may decide to try finding an Ocean Monument from below, which is something I haven't done before. Oooh yes, sounds like a fun thing to do.
I head back to base with a stack of 20 diamonds. Nearly enough for a full set of armour. Only one direction left to tunnel in - East is next.
Before heading East, I realise I'm down to 3 apples, when I have to eat one, so I decide to start a basic wheat farm with the 9 seeds I managed to collect.
I decide to dig out a little area to the South, where I hadn't gone very far because I could see dark caves, but I had left a lava safety buffer area in case of invading monsters. As I'm digging it out I have a surprise:
Right there next to me is a huge ravine. I decide my farm is going to be even smaller than I had thought, wall it back up and plant my seeds:
I'm smelting cobblestone to make stone, and tidying up my walls, floors and ceilings as I go - don't know why since I'll probably change it all, but I like it to look neat. Just behind that back wall is the ravine.
I made a little pool in my main room, so I'd have an infinite source of water. I'll make something better later but this will do for now:
Then I start tunnelling from the main room, to the East, though I know what I'm going to find:
Yes it's that ravine. And I'm no sooner through than the zombies start dropping on my head, and a skeleton attacks:
The bat just happened to fly past as I took the screenshot, though I know it looks like it got hit by the arrow. So I deal with the immediate threat, stick a door at the end of my very short tunnel and decide to come back later:
So, I have lava pouring into my tunnel to the North, Plains and Deep Ocean to the West, a farm to the South and a huge ravine to the East.
Next I'm going to build a shaft up to the Plains biome and see what I find, as well as continuing tunnelling to the South as I should be able to tunnel parallel to the ravine if I'm careful.
Next Chapter
I now have full iron armour and an iron sword so I feel a lot more confident. I go to about halfway through the Plains and start my shaft to the surface. I decide to to risk just pillaring straight up, hoping that I'll hear any dangers like lava or water, though I'm not sure how much damage falling gravel or sand will do. I'm lucky and make it to the surface, but it's night so I place a trapdoor over the top and go back to base to make a clock, leaving my lovely new surface shaft:
When I emerge there are a lot of sheep and I can hear a chicken. I do lots of shearing and find I've sheared a lot of grass too - I was going for seeds and didn't know you could collect grass that way:
I decide to plant a birch tree to mark my trapdoor, which won't attract attention but since there aren't any other single trees growing on the plain hopefully I'll be able to find my way home:
I find the chickens and collect some eggs and now it's already late so I head home. I make a bed and sleep in it, then since I'm really low on food I enlarge my farm area and make a small fenced area for chickens. Only one of my eggs hatches, but it's a start:
I have a little more space for wheat now and a walkway round the outside so I won't step on the crops:
Not pretty, but serviceable. While enlarging the area I break through into the ravine again, causing a small flood which I decide to leave in the corner. I also decide it would be pretty nice to make that whole wall into windows so I can see the ravine. I need sand on my next trip.
Since my clock says it's nearly daybreak I head on up again. I find some sand and decide to try to catch some chickens. What would happen if I pushed one down my shaft?
Turns out chickens can fly down ladders, and I end up with a little flock of chickens that I lead back to the chicken enclosure:
Oh, I also decided no-one will notice if a kill a few sheep, so I now have some food as well. I go back up and manage to find some sugar cane - the first lot I saw was over the border in the neighbouring forest, so I can't get it. But I decide that the beach at the edge of a biome counts as part of that biome (it's right in the distance in this shot):
I find some cave entrances and do a bit of exploring - not very exciting at first, but another one goes quite deep and I manage to collect an ender pearl and a few arrows and bones, and a spider eye (was hoping for string):
I get lost a bit - I always get lost in caves, but use dead-end blocking and following my torches (I mostly put them on the right) to get back to the entrance:
I mark the cave entrances with torches - they'll be handy if I want to get some sheep underground later.
When I get back it's nightfall again, but I decide to wait rather than risk getting lost again. When it's light I head home, and realise I now have enough diamonds to make a full set of armour and a sword, but I decide to save them until I can enchant them.
I use the sand I collected to make glass and make a - not very successful - start on my glass wall:
I plant my very pathetic amount of sugar cane next to my water hole:
It's a start anyway. I'll need plenty of sugar cane to make paper for books, and that reminds me I haven't found cows yet. Or maybe there were some in my original biome - I'll check that soon as I didn't look around all that much before tunnelling down, too occupied with getting wood.
I decide to continue my tunnel to the South, past my farm area, and quite soon find Forest - a continuation of the Forest Hills I've started in, and doesn't really count as a separate biome. A short while later it turns into Plains, which is probably the same Plains I found to the West. I need to do a bit more scouting about above ground, mapping out the size of my biomes. Or I could do that below ground, making a grid of tunnels. That's probably the safer option, though time-consuming and tedious. I'll start making some rail tracks soon I think, along my main tunnels.
I'm hoping to find Taiga, Jungle, and Desert. If I find any villages I think I need to stay away from them, unfortunately, but Jungle or Desert temples are fair game. Best of all I want to find a Stronghold, but that will probably be a long way from now. I also need to make a diamond pickaxe to mine some obsidian, so I can make a Nether Portal and get some blaze rods etc. Not absolutely urgent, but something to keep in mind. I have plenty of obsidian around anyway.
I decide that for my next session I'll try to tunnel out a lot more in all four directions, and put in my main trainlines, so that I get a better idea of what's around me and can prioritise where to go. Maybe to around 1000 blocks in each direction for a start.
This is a very nice idea! I've wanted to try an underground survival world, but can't seem to keep myself from... cheating... so I'll try this out.
Good luck, and may you find some good biomes!
Watch out for the crabocalypse. Some say the day will never come. But it will.
Feel free to drop by for a chat whenever.
If you'd like to talk with me about other games, here are a few I play.
Team Fortress 2
Borderlands series (Borderlands 2 is my favorite game, ever. TPS combat is a lot of fun and makes up for the lower-quality story, in my opinion)
Elder Scrolls series
Warframe (IGN is something like That_One_Flesh_Atronach)
Pokémon series (HGSS forever)
Rocket League
Fallout series
Left 4 Dead 2 (Boomer files always corrupt though)
SUPERHOT (SUPERHOT is the most innovative shooter I've played in years!)
Dead Rising series (Dead Rising 2 is one of my favorite games, and the 3rd was a lot of fun. 1st has poor survivor AI and the 4th is bad)
Just Cause series
Come to think of it, I mainly play fighting-based games.
I conquered both of my Ocean monuments from below (although I did spot them from the surface first). I tunnelled under the ocean to the monument and dug up through the rear center support leg, which puts you in a small hall at the back of the monument that is easy to section off and empty. I used slime blocks for temporary walls because they insta-break, even with Mining Fatigue III.
The first one I gutted but kept the outside intact.
The second one I turned into a guardian farm.
In most of the worlds I have played I built my bases underground, but I've never enforced strict rules to stay there. Sounds like an interesting project. Good luck with it.
Next installment
I now have a fully set of iron armour which makes me feel a little more secure. I build my first shaft to the surface from the bottom up, about halfway through the Plains. It's risky but I decide to just pillar up with dirt, placing ladders alongside as I go. I'm lucky and it goes smoothly. I can hear cows but it's nighttime when I break through, so I place a trap door and head home to make a clock. When I surface I can see loads of sheep and I can hear chickens:
I shear a load of wool, find the chickens and collect a few eggs. I didn't realise you could shear grass and I collect a stack just because. It's getting dark so I head home with 49 wool, 14 seeds and 6 eggs. I don't want to kill any sheep until I've scouted out the area a bit better, in case there's a village near by.
Once home I make a bed and sleep, but now I really need food as I only have 1 apple left. I enlarge my farming area and plant more seeds. I also fence a small area and manage to hatch a chicken:
While expanding I break through to the Eastern ravine, and get flooded, and I decide that it would be rather a nice idea to have that wall made of glass, so I make a mental note to collect sand next outing. I leave a gap for the water to flood as it might be useful later:
My clock says it's daybreak so I go back up to the Plains for sand, more eggs and to have a better look around. I need a landmark for my trapdoor that won't be too obvious, so I decide to plant a birch tree, as there aren't any single tress growing:
The torches were my temporary markers, so I need to remember to remove them. I head to the beach for some sand - I've decided beaches belong to the biome they're adjacent to. I spot some sugar cane but it's over the border in the forest, so frustrating to have to follow my own rules. But then I see some more along the beach and collect it. You can just see it in this picture:
I find some surface entrances to caves, explore a bit, get lost, kill some monsters and finally find my way out following my torches, which I try to always place on the right. I'm hoping for a dungeon but no luck yet.
I find a load of chickens and decide to lead them to my shaft so I can collect eggs more easily. I wonder...what would happen if I pushed one down through my trapdoor: Let's find out!
Turns out, chickens can fly down ladders, so I push the rest down one by one. Then I lead them back down the tunnel to my farm:
I have chickens! I mostly use them for making arrows, until I get the Infinity enchantment.
Meanwhile I've been smelting some glass, and I make a start on my glass wall:
The ravine is inconveniently not straight so it ends up somewhat messy, but I'll worry about that later. I plant my pathetic amount of sugar cane - it's a start anyway:
It grows pretty quickly and once I've sorted out my food, collected eggs etc, I have some more to plant. I want to get going so I'm very lazy about finding space for it:
There'll be plenty of time later to make my base pretty.
Next I'm going to do some more exploring - I need to find Taiga (for wolves, though they usually end up being more of a hindrance than a help), jungle and desert - for jungle and desert temples mainly, plus cacti, cocoa and maybe some ocelots. In my last map I had brought two polar bears all the way back to my underground base on leads, as I was preparing for the apocalypse, but I'm not sure if I'll go that far this time. Depends what biomes I find I suppose.
Here's one of my polar bears when I was leading it:
Took me ages, making bridges so I didn't lose them in the water, they kept getting stuck and the lead kept snapping. I had donkey I'd ridden absolutely miles home as well - took me forever to find one. Can't believe I accidentally deleted it.
Anyway, moving swiftly on.....I decide to explore to the South, past my farm.. I think I'll go 1000 blocks in each direction to see what's around me, and maybe start on some rails. I find Plains, River, Taiga (yay!), then Taiga Hills, Taiga again (which still counts as the same biome), River, Plains, Forest, Plains, Beach, River, Deep Ocean, Ocean and then I hit a zombie dungeon and one of them drops a potato! I head home to plant it, and when I get near my base I can hear the unmistakeable sound of a bouncing slime - another piece of good luck. I kill it and get a slimeball.
I do some calculations and decide I've got enough iron to make 1000 rails, so I set it all smelting and then spend a while organising my chests. I put a chest for food, seeds and general food-related supplies in the farm room, make a chest for building supplies, one for gems, metals and suchlike, one for mob drops and crafting supplies, and one for extra adventuring supplies - I made a set of diamond armour earlier but I decide to save it until I can enchant it, as I don't have that many extra diamonds.
I head up to my original biome, forest hills, as I didn't check it out that much when I was there, more concerned with getting wood. I
find a couple of cows, though the rest of the herd are across the border in the Plain. I slaughter them and get a couple of pieces of leather.
I linger a little too long and jump down my trapdoor with arrows flying after me.
I make my rails and after research I decide to place one powered rail every 30 blocks. I have enough gold and redstone so I set off. I make a small lobby at the start of the Western tunnel and start laying track. I'm fixing the floor as I go, so it's all plain stone - I'll do the walls later - and I
have to go back for more stone, and I have another slime! Seems I picked a good spot for my base. I also harvest four potatoes so I
replant them. Baked potatoes are my favourite food, much quicker and easier than making bread or killing animals for meat.
I'm just making a 1x2 tunnel and I take out a block to place the redstone torch out of the way.
I have to go back and forth a few times for supplies and it makes such a difference being able to just jump in a cart.And then, when I'm doing a quick explore of a small cave system I come across I see...
I climb up and strip the rails and wood I find, but it's a dead end and doesn't link to anything. I can hear some zombies though so I dig around and find more mine. It turns out to be very disjointed with lots of dead ends and I have to do a lot of listening and digging through blocked ways. I only find one chest and it doesn't have anything very exciting, apart from a name tag:
No seeds unfortunately. I destroy three spider spawners and end up with stacks of string, wood and fences. The mine is under Deep Ocean and a couple of times I realise too late that the wood block I just broke was holding up gravel at the ocean's floor:
I'm really annoyed with myself when I get overconfident and take on three skeletons plus a witch, that are attacking each other but then turn on me, and I have my first death. I head back easily enough and collect my gear, but I've lost 37 levels. And I really wanted to not die this run through. Oh well.
I finish clearing out the mine and leave a couple of chests of loot to collect later. I carry on with my tunnel and finally the Ocean gives way to beach and then Forest, River, Forest, Beach, River....and Deep Ocean again. No!!!!!
I decide to make a surface tunnel in the Forest, and head back to the middle, where I had hit a ravine. I mine out steps up the side of the ravine to the top, and then tunnel the short distance from there to the surface. I do indeed seem to be on a large island, so I decide that it would be safe to use a boat to explore a bit further from here. I still head directly South, but before I reach land I see...
Yes!! It's really close to my direct line South, about 1600 from my base, not too difficult to tunnel. I row over and take a note of the approximate co-ordinates, getting attacked by a guardian in the process:
I decide to keep going till I reach land and after a few false alarms that turn out to be islands, I'm really happy to see what looks like desert ahead, - I get a bit too close and a zombie starts swimming out to me, but I can see some cacti through the gloom:
I sail around the coast a bit to make sure it isn't just a tiny island, and I spot...
Yes, it's a desert temple! I take note of the x co-ordinate, which is around 2300. Well worth the effort of the extra tunneling though. I head back to the Forest where I can get back into the ravine, and as I land I see a deep cave next to the short, almose like a ravine itself and I wonder if it joins up with the ravine I climbed out of. I got hit with Mining Fatigue on my way back so I have to wait for that to wear off first.
I make my way down, but it's just a small cleft not a full ravine. At one end there are a load of zombies though, and I wonder if it's another dungeon:
I destroy all the zombies and work my way further into the cave system. There is a dungeon, but it's a skeleton one. There's not much in the chest, but I decide to leave the spawner and wall it up for now - it will be easy to reach it from my tunnel, and a good supply of bones and arrows is always worth having.
I head back up to the surface, then down to my tunnel, and extend it till about where I think the Ocean Monument is. Then I work out what direction I think it's in and start a staircase going up . I can hear the guardians so I know I'm in the right area. After a little while I break through gravel and my staircase is flooded. I let myself get swept down and then bounce my way back to the top. I can see through into the ocean, but I can't place a door from here (to stop the water and still be able to get out into the ocean). I need to break another gravel block, but I've been hit with Mining Fatigue. I don't want to have to go all the way back home for milk (which removes the Fatigue) so I spend over 6 minutes mining the block of gravel, then place my door:
There's a whole ocean, and an ocean monument, on the other side of that door. Must be very strong.
I'm beginning to think thoughts like, 'I wonder if cows can get down a one block wide tunnel?'. When I drained an Ocean Monument before I brought a cow along, and it made it so much easier because of the ready supply of milk:
For now though, I need to head home again. I'll be laying my rails as I go, so my next trip out should be much quicker..
Thanks! I know, it's always frustrating knowing you might be just missing the good stuff, but so far I've had some good luck. I suppose using F3 could be called cheating, but the only other way would be to tunnel up to the surface at set distances and that would be just too tedious to sustain. I doubt it I'll ever find a jungle though, they always seem to be miles away from spawn.
My 'Preparing for the Apocalypse' is one you could try as well - sometimes it's nice to only have vague guidelines rather than strict rules that you end up breaking. The only 'rule' was that I was trying to save as much as possible by taking it all underground. I even tried to sink a village - I trapped all the villagers in a pit and then covered them over and dug underneath. I was trying to get at least two of each animal (though I hadn't worked out rabbits yet), plus all crops and as many different types of block as I could, for posterity - I planned on using Silk Touch later on for this. Then when I was ready I was going to do something to signal the end of the world (maybe set loads of stuff on fire) and go underground for good. I like playing with some sort of storyline in mind, but I get bored with rules just for the sake of it, and with things being too rigid. I'll probably redo that one at some point and NOT delete it accidentally this time.
Thanks for the tip - I didn't see I had replies before I posted my next installment, but you might see I did find an Ocean Monument. I'll root around and see if I can find one of the supports, but I'm not too good at underwater stuff so who knows how it will go? I've drained a couple of Ocean Monuments, using plenty of sand and milk, but I forgot about the slime thing - with my base apparently being a slime magnet maybe I'll focus on collecting more slime to take with me. And thanks for the luck!
More Shenanigans
I remember I haven't explored North yet - that lava spillage. I block it, tunnel up a bit, block in a lava lake and then remake my original tunnel. Then I tunnel onwards. Plains...river....forest....plains...river...plains...forest....plains...forest...river....forest...plains...forest....right up to 1000 blocks. I place rails on the way back, though I'm short by 200 or so that I'll fill in later.
Back home, no slimes this time. I'm frequently hatching eggs, replenishing my arrows, and harvesting crops. Sugar cane is slow as I only have my small areas still - don't feel like working on my farm yet though, until I'm sure this will be my permanent base. If I find more exciting biomes I may want to move nearer.
I head East, making a tunnel through the ravine and leaving doors both sides for later exploration. It's just as exciting as North was at first, but then I hit Ocean about 400 blocks from home. I go back a little way and make a shaft up at a point that should be the middle of a forest, but when I surface I find I'm just on the edge of water - must have been running along the edge of the forest, parallel to the ocean:
I make a new rule, based on the exploration I did earlier by boat and what I feel fits in with my storyline, while allowing some fun:
- I am allowed to explore by boat, but can only come ashore in the same biome where I began.
I'll add that to my list. Also I'm allowed to spend the night in a boat if I have to (inevitable sometimes). I head as directly East as I can - my main aim is to get some motivation for all the tunnelling under ocean I'll have to do if I continue East. I pass some small islands and then I spot:
My original idea was that I'd have to stay away from villages, but this is too tempting. I don't see any villages so I decide to creep in for a closer look. Once ashort I spot a farm plot that's a distance away from any buildings so I raid it - it's full of potatoes:
I creep around a bit more, and have to kill two villagers who spot me:
I've never killed villagers before and I feel awful about it, but you've got to do what you've got to do. I find some bookshelves and steal the books, then head off in my boat as it's getting dark:
Being in the village in stealth made a nice change - I always wondered why they don't object at you stealing all their stuff from right under their noses.
I have 68 potatoes, a decent haul, and around 20 books. The ocean seems to go on forever, until at around 2000 from home I find an Extreme Hills island. Better than nothing. I boat home again.
I've decided I'm going to make my tunnels into a grid - around 2000 blocks N, S, E, W and then tunneling to join the ends of those tunnels up, and making halfway tunnels, so I'll end up with a 4000 block grid with 8 squares, each line 1000 blocks apart. Hopefully this will get me a good selection of biomes. It doesn't matter what order I make the tunnels in, so I'll probably go wherever seems more interesting, and I'll set rails as I go. I haven't tried Nether travel yet, but that might be a possibility too. I have done some Nether exploration, and it's something I want to do more of, so maybe later, once I've finished exploring my grid.
I have 96 diamonds and 21 books, and 2 leather, so once back home I decide to make a start doing some enchanting, particularly some pickaxes would be good:
I'm getting a little tired of being surrounded by plain stone, but it's in keeping with my living style at the moment - later I can make a fancy base, once I have some fancy stuff.
I don't do too badly with my enchanting:
I have 2 diamond pickaxes with Efficiency II, Silk Touch, a couple of Aqua Affinity helmets, and some enchanted diamond armour.
I head off to the Western Plains where I know there are cows lurking somewhere. I find 3 cows and manage to snag a couple of sheep too in passing. I lead them to one of the surface caves, and block them in with a few dirt blocks. With them secured, I build a staircase down to meet my tunnel, and entice them down there:
With a lot of pushing and pulling I get two of the cows and both sheep into a new animal pen and before they've even had time to settle in I have them breeding:
One of the cows didn't want to come, but that's fine as I have other plans for her. I check I have all the supplies I need - Aqua Affinity helmets, plenty of buckets, stack of baked potatoes, sand and dirt....and head off to where I left the cow. This one seems to be glitched, as it won't step into any of the tunnels where there are rails. I can push it onto the rails though, and then I dig around to get in front of it and lead it with wheat. Weird.
We get to the end of the tunnel, where I found the Ocean Monument, and I set up a temporary fenced area for my cow. I go up to scope out where exactly I am, and find I'm exactly in front of the Monument:
I go out into the ocean for a better view - I want to see how far away the pillars are as I'm thinking I'll take the tip I got from Courageous Marinade and try to tunnel up through one - but I'm a bit over-confident, and I've forgotten how lethal the guardians can be, and when I'm attacked by two at once I panic, can't find my doorway, and end up getting dead. I respawn back at base, leg it (or minecart it at any rate) back, and manage to pick up all my equipment after a few tries, but this time I forget to check my air meter and drown! Head back again, luckily now everything's right next to the door so I sweep it up and reorganise my inventory. To think I'd planned not to die - I've died 3 times now.
I redirect my tunnel, popping up every now and then to see where I am. I can see one of the support straight ahead, overshoot it, backtrack and finally instead of falling gravel and water I find:
Such a feeling of success! I tentatively dig up through it, and pillar up till I hit water again - inside the monument. I test the sides of my shaft, and find a safe side to widen it to two blocks, so I can have a ladder and a torch in the shaft. I make a small room at the bottom of the ladder and bring my cow up to be a ready milk supply. I have to head back to the Plains as I haven't brought enough sand, but then I'm all set to start infiltrating the inside of the Monument:
I get glimpses of guardians as I work, but I'm no longer a sitting duck and I look forward to wiping them out. I have 16 buckets to fill with milk and can work for a reasonably long time before having to go down for more - this will be more tedious as I get further into the monument, but at some point I'll be able to find and kill the Elder Guardians, which will make my work so much easier. I consider trying to get enough slime to use slime blocks, but it would take ages to get enough, and this method isn't too bad.
When I drained my ocean monuments before I kept one intact and gutted the other, just to see what the inside space looked like. I prefer keeping things as they were whenever I can, but I'm having ideas of gradually replacing the prismarine with green glass blocks so the structure and layout is preserved but all visible, and I'll be able to see easily if I've missed any secret rooms. And see out at the sea. Yes. I think so...would make a lovely base....and a safe place to work out of for my off-grid living thing, no risk of being found by....whoever.
And next...
I think I've been playing too much MC. I usually try to ration myself and not spend too much at once, but I was having so much fun I just played more or less non-stop yesterday and today. Oops.
So, what did I get done in my 2-day MC marathon? Let's see if you can guess?
Yes, I've been draining my Ocean Monument and it's all done now. I think it's my favourite thing to do on MC, finding all the secret rooms, gradually seeing the monument emerge. That last shot is looking out the front entrance. I plan on making it a bit grander once I'm settled, maybe have a porch. I know, Ocean Momument as base is probably old hat to most players, but I haven't done it before and it's definitely in keeping with my 'off-grid' theme. The only ways in being past a load of guardians and deep water, or through my secret tunnel.
I found two, yes two, sponge rooms. Just look at this haul:
The diamonds are only in my inventory because I had already killed most of the guardians and was close to needing more armour but couldn't be bothered to make some yet.
I found the first two Elder Guardians relatively early on and then I couldn't understand why I was still getting zapped with Mining Fatigue - for some reason I forgot about the third one. Found it eventually and so much easier after that. Every time I thought I'd finished I'd find another suite of rooms through a hard-to spot gap somewhere.
Next...I want to gradually swap all the pris-what's-it-called for stained glass. Again, I'm sure I'm not the first person to ever have this idea or to do it, but it's my first time doing it and it's going to be magnificent. I think. Or a mess. I'm thinking it might be an idea to leave entrances in their original blocks so I can find them, and just change all walls to glass. But that might look awful. Basically I'm going to have to smelt an absolute ton of glass and play around to see what works. Swapping out the base will probably be hardest as I don't want my prismarine (that was it) blocks to fall down and be lost.
Nice! I love to see people with role-playing rules in place.
Thanks.
Next Installment...
Having cleared the Ocean Monument, I need sand, and cacti for dye, which ties in nicely with my next phase of exploration - which is continuing the tunnel on to the desert that I discovered by boat. It's only about 500 blocks further along the same tunnel as the Ocean Monument. I head back to base to offload stuff I don't need, catch a train back and then start digging.
I hit a cave system straight away, and because I'm a little blurry and slow to react (it's early), I let a witch get the better of me and lose 27 or so levels. Damn! That's about 3 or 4 deaths so far, I'm so rubbish at this. Oh well, I head back and my equipment is all fine, despite a lava lake right there. I need lots of iron for rails so I explore thoroughly and find a spider dungeon, with pumpkin seeds, just what I need!
I decide to take all the mossy stone to use in ruins later.
After lots of Deep Ocean I hit the desert and keep going to see how far it goes. Right as I reach ocean again I find another mine, so I make a safe entrance with a door and then head back to around the middle of the desert to make my shaft up. I have to go a bit more carefully to avoid sand falling on my head, but it goes smoothly and I surface. Looking around, the desert temple I had spotted from my boat is nearby:
It's all above ground, and I quickly place torches in the interior, remove one of the blocks next to the treasure chamber and mine straight down. The loot isn't that great - Gold Horse Armour and a nametag, plus lots of bones and zombie flesh. When I exit it's getting dark so I head back down my shaft.
There is savannah just to the North and I decide to go and take a look. I make a side tunnel and at daybreak I mine straight up. I don't bother with a ladder as I don't intend to return. Right in front of me is another village:
I creep around and steal as many potatoes and wheat as I can find, plus some carrots. This time there is a forge, and manage to slip inside without being spotted. Some gold and a couple of pieces of armour, not much. I only have to kill one villager who's in the wrong place at the wrong time. I find two libraries and steal all the books, and then head back to my shaft. Once it's day again I go back to the desert and fill as many stacks of sand as I have room for, plus half a stack of cacti.
Back in my tunnel I take a minecart back to the Ocean Monument stop and dump off all my extra loot in chests. I want to explore the abandoned mine I found, so I need plenty of inventory space. I can never resist taking all the fences, all the wooden blocks, all the rails, all the string from the cobwebs, as well as any ores and minerals and loot from chests. I'll probably never need all these wooden fenceposts or string, but it's free stuff.
I move quickly placing torches, trying not to give monsters time to spawn, shooting creepers and cutting down zombies and skeletons. Avoiding spiders if possible - so many of my deaths are by poison. Once I've lit a section and explored all branches I retrace my steps, taking everything and placing 2-high cobble pillars to show that a section is finished with. This mine is huge, and in several places it intersects with cave systems.
More happenings...
I finally finish clearing the mine - I have more stacks of fences and wood than I can possibly count, but the higher value loot is thin on the ground. Melon and pumpkin seeds which I'm very happy about, though I probably won't get round to planting them till I'm more settled, another name tag. This whole process takes me a couple of days (real time), as I'm a bit obsessive about exploring very thoroughly in case I miss any chests. I die again at some point - 40 levels lost - can't even remember what from. Oh yes, stupidity and over-confidence.
Finally I'm satisfied and all my loot is stored in chests in my original tunnel. I transport some of it back as far as the Ocean Monument stop and into my chests there, and decide not to move it any further towards my base, as I'm still contemplating making the Ocean Monument into my permanent base. I could hollow out the space underneath to make farms etc. I want to finish my tunnel grid first though and find the other biomes I'm missing.
I head back to base to enchant a couple more pickaxes since I'm over level 30 again now and will appreciate the faster mining while I make my tunnel.
I work out what co-ordinates I need to reach to make a grid 2000 blocks in each direction from my spawn point - I spawned at -188, 256. So I head along my West tunnel, past the Ocean Monument stop but not as far as the mine, to -2188, and start a tunnel South, that will take me to a corner of my grid, from where I will head East and connect with my South tunnel. That will give me the bottom left square of my grid.
I haven't gone far when I hit a cave system, and I'm mining some coal when I uncover this:
Yes, it's a Stronghold!! I rush around the caves trying to see if there's a natural way in, but any blocks I spot are above my head, so eventually I tunnel up and around and find a way in:
I explore and find a library and the end portal, which unfortunately has no eyes of ender already in place.
Lots of monster encounters later, I manage to find my way back to my original entry point. I haven't explored all of it, and I've left the library intact - I need books for my enchanting room, but I don't want to wreck my stronghold just yet. In my last world, I was making a base in a stronghold and I was excavating all the surrounding area, so that I had an enormous cavern with this half-floating weird fortress - I was repairing all the broken bits as I went too and eventually I was going to have just one entrance into it. I say half-floating because the levels are irregular, as the building spawns underground, so as I excavated it there were some rooms that had nothing underneath. Unfortunately I didn't make any screenshots because I didn't expect to accidentally delete the whole world.
I'm not sure if I'll go that far this time, but I want to have the option, so I'm careful to replace any iron bars or doors I have to remove so I can light up the cells. I make a more direct set of stairs back to my tunnel, then carry on tunneling South.
Once again luck is with me, and I spot signs of another abandoned mine.
At the far right of this picture you can see where I emerged from my tunnel and on the far right the mine entrance. Yes, there were skeletons lying in wait for me.
I seal up my tunnel and make a doorway into the mine, and a small storage and stopping area, and then leave it for later exploration as my priority is getting my exploration grid completed. I'm placing rails as I go, mining 30 blocks and then railing that section before moving on. It's fairly slow going, with lots of lava lakes to get over. I'm not sure if I explained my decision to work at such a low level (layer 11) - usually I work at level 13 which still gives me a good chance of diamonds but isn't quite so lava infested. I decided my character would welcome the more hostile environment as it makes detection less likely. It makes things a bit more challenging too, which is fine by me. And I'm pretty sure I'm finding more diamonds at this level.
I'm glad you liked my idea.
And next...
It's getting longer between posts because mostly I've been tunnelling and laying rails, and it would all be a bit repetitive to write about. I finished digging my South West corner tunnels, and have laid most of the tracks, discovering a Sunflower Plains which I made a shaft up to:
As you can see, there's a Flower Forest right next door, so I file that information away for later exploration. I give in to the whim to make the 'station' a bit prettier:
Well I'm not sure if it actually counts as prettier, but I do like the effect of Diorite, and I'm vaguely toying with the idea of eventually lining my railway system with it, if I can be bothered. I also discover Cold Taiga, and eventually I find:
Ice Plains! So exciting when I come across something other than Plains and Forest. And not far from my shaft is an igloo. I used the facilities and cure the zombie villager:
Then I build a tunnel with steps from here to my rail tunnel, so that at a later point I'll maybe find a way to move the pair to a place where I can make a secure village. Maybe deep in the Extreme Hills. I'll have to research this as I've never made a village before, but I seem to remember reading about having a certain number of doors and stuff, so I'm sure I can work it out.
While making my tunnel, I've discovered about another 6 abandoned mines, which I wall up, with an access door, and leave for later exploration. I can never leave a mine unexplored.
That's 8,000 blocks of tunnels, since it's 2,000 to the South, 2,000 to the West, then another 2,000 parallel to each of the original tunnels to join them up at the SW corner. It takes a looong time to travel anywhere, and I'm planning to do this a further 3 times for the other 3 quadrants, so I decide it's time to enter the Nether. I've never used Nether travel before, but I'm willing to give it a go. I make a small chamber just off my main base, before the start of my Northern tunnel, and build my first Nether portal. When I cross over, I remember I'm still at layer 11, so it's pretty quiet, in some Netherwrack caves. There are plenty of Zombie Pigmen around, but nothing else except some creepy noises. I explore around a bit and find some Glowstone to mine:
This is a first for me too - I've explored in the Nether a bit before, including a Nether Fortress, but only quick trips to get blaze rods mostly. I've never used Glowstone for lighting, but I'm looking forward to playing around with it. I consider using my Fortune III pickaxe, but I'm not sure if it works on Glowstone so I use my Silk Touch instead.
I find a route out of the caves, but there's nothing much to see besides a huge lava lake:
I mine some Soul Sand, just because and head back. I seem to have brought some hitchhikers back with me:
There's a third one behind the portal, that I hadn't spotted yet. I leave them where they are - they can't get out of this room and they can't do any damage.
I consider my next step - where do I want to make my next portal? It probably makes sense to link directly to my main locations - the Ocean Monument, the Stronghold, Ice Plains, Desert... I'm pretty sure they're far enough away from each other to create new portals in the Nether. I have plenty of obsidian to experiment with anyway. And hopefully I'll spot a Nether Fortress near one of my access points.
Fortune does work with glowstone. Fortune 3 guarantees 3-4 dust but Silk Touch is recommended as you get the whole block.
Watch out for the crabocalypse. Some say the day will never come. But it will.
Feel free to drop by for a chat whenever.
If you'd like to talk with me about other games, here are a few I play.
Team Fortress 2
Borderlands series (Borderlands 2 is my favorite game, ever. TPS combat is a lot of fun and makes up for the lower-quality story, in my opinion)
Elder Scrolls series
Warframe (IGN is something like That_One_Flesh_Atronach)
Pokémon series (HGSS forever)
Rocket League
Fallout series
Left 4 Dead 2 (Boomer files always corrupt though)
SUPERHOT (SUPERHOT is the most innovative shooter I've played in years!)
Dead Rising series (Dead Rising 2 is one of my favorite games, and the 3rd was a lot of fun. 1st has poor survivor AI and the 4th is bad)
Just Cause series
Come to think of it, I mainly play fighting-based games.
Ah, thanks for that info.
Next Installment
It's been a while again, because I've been doing routine repetitive stuff...again. I've expanded my tunnels and my nether network, though still nowhere near finished. I'm maybe 2/3 finished with my overworld/underground rail network, but it's soooo tedious that I can only do so much before having to take a long break and do something else. I now have a Nether portal underneath my cleared Ocean Monument, and it's linked to my original base through the Nether by rail, so I've been doing a lot of travelling between the two, gradually transferring to the Ocean Monument. My enchanting area is now at the Ocean Monument too. I had some trouble with my Nether portal, as it would not bring me back to the portal I had made, rather making a new portal in the overworld every time, including one that was suspended over the ocean:
For the others I just had to tunnel back to my starting point, but for this one I had to destroy it, then jump into the sea, head to that small sandbank you can see behind the portal (I decided I would be able to land there as it didn't really consitute a proper biome or land mass), and make a shaft down, then tunnel to my starting point.
I asked for help on the forums, and found that I needed to move my portal in the Nether, as it had been created a distance away from the 'proper' co-ordinates, probably because there wasn't a near enough cave in the Nether, so when it looked for a portal to link to, my one was too far away. Once I had disabled the extra portals, tunnelled to the correct co-ordinates in the Nether and created a portal there, I was able to travel back and forth with no hitches.
So this was my second portal room, below the Ocean Monument:
and here are some Magma Cubes I encountered in the Nether:
Next I decided to expand the area under the Ocean Monument. I want to make a Guardian farm somewhere in the Ocean Monument, and I it'll work best if I minimise monster spawning in the vicinity, so I have this idea to just dig everything out, maybe creating 2 or 3 floors, to make a huge area for storage, farming, etc, including a variety of underground forests.
I started by digging out the whole of the area directly beneath the Ocean Monument, at my base level of layer 11:
As you can see, there was a dungeon right at the bottom of my ladder when I first dug down from the Ocean Monument (that ladder is the one that goes right up through one of the OM supports), but I decided I didn't need it, and it was rather in the way. It's all pretty messy still at the moment, as my priority is getting it all cleared, then I'll decide how I want to arrange it.
I started clearing just above here, but then decided to move up to the layers directly below the Ocean Monument and work down from there. I decided to create a glass ceiling as I went, partly to be sure of exactly where I was, but mainly for aesthetics - I'm not sure the extent to which I will use glass, but there's a chance that everything, from the Ocean Monument down to the bedrock, will be glass, if it doesn't end up just too confusing.
I appear to have hit on another slime chunk, which is fabulous:
While I'm working just under the Ocean Monument I hear slime jumpy noises from time to time, slide down my ladder and gather more slimeballs. There's another Ocean Monument I passed under on my far East tunnel (had to head home as I couldn't mine further due to Mining Fatigue), which I'll revisit once I have enough Slime Blocks.
Anyway, here are some images of the glass ceiling/ocean floor I'm working on:
And remember my doorway, looking out from the main entrance of the Ocean Monument?
You can just make it out when looking up through my glass ceiling:
It's that small lighter-coloured rectangle roughly in the centre of the picture, distorted by the perspective.
So, yes, that's what I'm working on, and it'll take some time to complete it. I'll need to head back to the desert for more sand, which hopefully won't be noticed as there's no desert villages around. I'll most likely create another Nether portal there, as I think it's far enough away from the Ocean Monument one (where was my desert anyway?). Another task is mapping the area - I have made a start but I need to step up my bamboo procuction and learn more about maps, but well worth doing as I keep forgetting which direction has which biome, and my signs are all at my original, central base.
And the rather underwhelming next installment...
So...I finally finished making my totally glass ocean-floor-under-the ocean-monument thing....and it's really underwhelming. You can't see that much through the glass blocks because of the stupid white marks they have on them. I'd planned to spend time lighting up the outside of the monument - working from the inside and placing sea lanterns at intervals in the walls - but I really don't know if I want to put a lot more effort into it. It's all something of a sidetrack as it is, and there's plenty of other things I could be doing. But on the other hand, what if it's fabulous once it's done? Or maybe it's better than I think but I'm jaded because I've spent so many hours staring up at it while I place the glass blocks one at a time.
One thing that was interesting was that the supports aren't all even at the bottom - must depend on the terrain, so some end higher up where the terrain was higher. Well, not that interesting really, more like obvious when you think about it.
Time to do something else for a while and then come back to it and see how I feel. The sensible next step is to make my base, particularly a large farm, which is going directly underneath the ocean monument, though not on this top level. I need to mine out the space in sections, including an area with very high ceiling for a tree farm. So yes, that next.