Yeah, I realized that after the fact. I also checked, and sandstone stairs don't seem to work, so thats a relief. Since I forgot I already had sandstone half blocks, thats a load of my back!
After reading about the biome going to likely change again in 1.9 and possibly again in the final release (I don't have the links) I decided to use mcedit to delete many thousands of chunks around my world and just updated it to 1.8. The borders are messed up but I can live with that for now. When the full version comes out hopefully there won't be many biome changes after that. That's when I will generate a new world and move my main base.
These endermen are really tearing up my mob grinder. It's a good thing I built an above ground pit-type grinder, it seems a bit more resistant to random blocks being moved around than I'm hearing from some people with more compact designs. No passive mobs spawning at all is going to make it difficult to get the new meats though. I have to run around and corral some sheep/pigs/cows and somehow move them to my fortress and set up a breeding area for when that's implemented.
I'm not ready to post pictures yet, but I have constructed a 1.8 compatible, "Storage Facility 2.0". It is 1 floor, 3 sides (leaving a 4th side available for expansion), 52 double chests per side, capable of holding every item in the game, save for a select few I removed (some of the "too hard" blocks, dyes and wool, tool/weapon/armor types) with a few chests to spare. It is nearly as brightly lit as my old version, although it requires a substantial glowstone investment for full brightness. Its not quite as pretty, but honestly, with the new "smaller" chests, I don't think anything can be as aesthetically sound again in such a compact manner.
Interestingly enough . . . the stairs method still works! The lid clips through the block, but does not stop it. However, rather than have to redesign my facility too soon if Notch decides to fix it, I did it "legit". Either way, I'm quite proud of it.
The room has gotten so large I have begun to believe the most efficient use of space would to have chest racks placed in the middle of the room as well. It might interfere somewhat with visibility and ease of motion, not to mention organization, but there is a LOT of open space in the room (its 26x26 open air within the chest square, leaving 676 squares unused). The good thing about the extra space is it will allow ALL SORTS of customized addons, like crafting/furnace stations, decorations, even some small farms! Its actually large enough that you could live out of the room with plenty of room to spare.
These endermen are really tearing up my mob grinder. It's a good thing I built an above ground pit-type grinder, it seems a bit more resistant to random blocks being moved around than I'm hearing from some people with more compact designs. No passive mobs spawning at all is going to make it difficult to get the new meats though. I have to run around and corral some sheep/pigs/cows and somehow move them to my fortress and set up a breeding area for when that's implemented.
I didn't even think of the mob grinder issue! I'm glad I finished up all the hostile mobs before 1.8, though zombies will just require a dungeon grinder for their new meat. Passives . . . I've been anticipating that. There isn't much that can be done about it until breeding is implemented.
You have to design it BIG from the start :smile.gif: I think my storage area has enough room for all of the 1.8 stuff, but if they add much more I'll have to split between two floors. Another possibility I was considering was to make it 3x3 sections of my base instead of 2x2, with crafting/furnaces/overflow storage in the middle. Since chests still work with the stairs, I don't have to make a drastic change like that fortunately!
Quote from Kastrel »
I didn't even think of the mob grinder issue! I'm glad I finished up all the hostile mobs before 1.8, though zombies will just require a dungeon grinder for their new meat. Passives . . . I've been anticipating that. There isn't much that can be done about it until breeding is implemented.
Don't forget the ender pearls! Fortunately my mob grinder is low maintenance even with the enderman issue. I just run around once in a while replacing missing pieces of dirt. If I let it go for a while, I'm sure I'll have problems but it seems to be holding a good output so far.
Some recent (since 1.8) changes:
I buried the lower 2 layers of my slime farm in dirt because slime spawning was killing my mob spawns. This way, I can let it go longer without having to go fight the slimes.
I put a chicken farm/grinder so that it drops eggs and meat into my mob trap channel. Chickens are spawned via dispenser and when I get enough eggs to re-fill it, I hit a lever and the lava blade comes out and makes chicken meat!
I also read that melons take forever to grow, it's not true. I built a 4 melon mini-farm under the fences holding up the water in my mob trap killer. I now have 4 melons to harvest every few minutes- they don't take very long to grow. I don't know if it's possible to build an auto-harvester, I'll prob try it some day.
The other change I made was I dug out a 2 deep 6x6 pit and filled it with water near the collection point for my mob trap. Now I can fish while waiting for eggs. It's annoying, but needs to be done if I'm ever going to finish my collection so I might as well do what I can while collecting other things.
You have to design it BIG from the start :smile.gif:
Heh, when I made my first one, it was more than adequate! 7 updates later, and its not the case anymore. This one has about 10 spare chests, and an entire 4th wall with which I can do whatever with. I'm thinking I will use it for my bulk storage for stone, which I had an entire second floor for before, but I may leave some of it available for expansion.
Don't forget the ender pearls! Fortunately my mob grinder is low maintenance even with the enderman issue. I just run around once in a while replacing missing pieces of dirt. If I let it go for a while, I'm sure I'll have problems but it seems to be holding a good output so far.
I'm already seeing the destructive nature of the endermen, and I haven't been out of my underground fortress nearly at all. I went to run to my pork storage, and found 4 holes torn out of my wall. Two of the cobblestones were only a few blocks away, but the other two were nowhere to be seen. Aside from potentially making holes in my wall (fortunately, its 3 thick), they are spiriting away my blocks! I will have to build a moat around my next base in the new world. Given this, I am curious if a endermen grinder is even possible, without regular maintenance.
The other change I made was I dug out a 2 deep 6x6 pit and filled it with water near the collection point for my mob trap. Now I can fish while waiting for eggs. It's annoying, but needs to be done if I'm ever going to finish my collection so I might as well do what I can while collecting other things.
I don't even want to think about fishing. I actually am short on one thing, string. I grinded for it a long time ago, and forgot about dispensers, so I ended up needing 3 extra chests full. I'm ALMOST done dispensers now, but I will need some spare after that for fishing, and I don't have it.
Make sure you fish when it rains! It increases catch rate.
Make sure you fish when it rains! It increases catch rate.
I didn't know that, should help a bit.
I'm now thinking I may just run out of room when I have to add:
Red apples (found 3 in a stronghold!)
Iron bars
Fence Gates
3 versions of stone bricks (regular, cracked and mossy)
Stone brick slabs and stairs (not sure if 3 versions of each of these)
glass panes
vines
grass (possibly 3 versions)
pumpkin seeds
Everything else I already made chests for. I had 8 left and thought I was OK :sad.gif:
I'll probably continue to the third floor of my storage area for now. LOTS of free chests down there now that my pork is stacked :biggrin.gif: Eventually I'll expand my storage area and re-organize everything. That will be a large, time-consuming project. I have some cool ideas on things I want to try if I do it though, like an automated storage cart processing area in the center.
The dead shrubs cannot be collected with shears but I haven't tried the ferns nor have I seen any. The good news of this update is that clay can now be considered common, which is good news for me and my plans of a manor.
Thank god about the clay. I was looking forward to gathering (thinks for a moment) another 4 double chests of clay blocks, at least, thats the math I think it would take to make a chest of bricks, brick ingots, clay balls, brick stairs, and brick halfblocks. Yeesh.
I HOPE the ferns are not. They are almost impossible to find. I once wanted to see one with a new texture pack, and had to make 4 or 5 new worlds before I found a forest with one near spawn.
Are ferns rare!? Are you talking about the long grass? I've seen plains in 1.8 with enough long grass for a double chest!
Also I wish you soooo much luck in finishing this goal, I took a break of survival, but I never stopped following this awesome thread.
Ferns are a subtype of long grass, that I only seem to find in certain preloaded forest biomes. It looks like a very small pine tree, or a sapling with no brown in it.
Why is colored wool not included? That's the first thing I look for when trying to stockpile resources for building :tongue.gif:
I didn't feel that collecting 17 chests of wool was reasonable. Furthermore, the massive lapis lazuli investment, doubled for making chests for each color AND for each dye, was extreme. Compounded by cocoa beans being exceedingly rare as well, I felt as if there were too many holes in the concept as it was. I may revise this at a later date, especially if brown sheep regrow brown wool. The lapis issue is still significant, however. It takes 2.75 chests, if I am correct, to make a chest for each of the lapis-required dyes, and then somewhere between half to one quarter (probably a third) of that amount to make that much wool. So we are talking 3.5 chests of lapis lazuli. Pretty hefty investment. If I can streamline the process with respawning wool, I may consider. This decision was made before the shears update, so wool is slightly more common, so if I can have a wool farm, maybe this will become feasible again.
Okay, so I am aware that pumpkin seeds now exist. However, at this time, they don't seem to be able to be grown indefinitely, like watermelons. If this is so, then they may infact be rarer than pumpkins themselves. If this is the case, then pumpkin seeds are likely the first item from the new update I will be placing on the "excluded" list, since they are the rarity equivalent of cocoa beans or maybe even rarer. If ferns are also harvestable, I hesitate to say, but am pretty sure these would also be on this list. They may come in clusters, but even finding them at all is difficult.
I read somewhere that the desert long grass isn't the dead bush found randomly. Something about having to plant seeds in sand, then use bonemeal, then use shears to collect. Sounds like a pain.
I still haven't found any pumpkin seeds yet, though I've found dozens of chests with a few melon seeds each.
Unfortunately, my world only seems to have only one stronghold. I checked the other 2 areas, but there was only a large abandoned mineshaft at one and deep ocean at the other. I'm going to set up a mining operation at the stronghold to strip mine the three types of stone bricks. Seems like a good use for all the rails I've been collecting!
How do pumpkin seeds even work? I have a couple pumpkins, but they didn't give seeds when harvested, how am I supposed to get pumpkin seeds any other way? :ohmy.gif:
This is the problem I realized. Pumpkins are not, that I am aware, a renewable crop. Pumpkin seeds are found, seemingly, only in chests found in the new mineshaft or stronghold structures. They are, basically, an alternative source for pumpkins, but not a renewable one, either for more seeds or getting any more than 1 pumpkin per seed.
This, in my mind, is not nearly enough to remove pumpkins or jackolanterns from the exempt list, and is quite enough to add pumpkin seeds to it. Unless someone knows how to make it renewable . . . otherwise, they are almost as hard as ever.
Also, how do cracked stone bricks work? I heard they were insanely hard to make too? Something with stairs facing west? I didn't understand it at all :tongue.gif: .
I did read something similar; the stairs are bugged or something, so that you get a different drop from each direction you mine from. Of course, you take a 33% loss in the process, if you are making then reharvesting stairs, but its probably worth it. On the other hand, strongholds are pretty big . . . I can't see them being that rare.
I did read something similar; the stairs are bugged or something, so that you get a different drop from each direction you mine from. Of course, you take a 33% loss in the process, if you are making then reharvesting stairs, but its probably worth it. On the other hand, strongholds are pretty big . . . I can't see them being that rare.
About tall grass (from the wiki):
Tall grass has three variants (defined by its data value).
Tall Grass (the most common)
A triangular-looking fern (also known as "living shrub")
A dead bush-looking plant that does not occur naturally, but can be obtained by placing grass in a desert biome and using bone meal on it. (not to be confused with the Dead Bush appearing in desert biomes)
All three variants will occasionally drop Seeds when broken; a hoe is not required to produce seeds from this block. Tall Grass is collectible if shears are used on it.
About the stone bricks (from the wiki also):
Mossy Stone Brick is a new block type that was implemented in the 1.8 Beta update. Mossy Stone Brick is one of the main components that make up Strongholds, which were also added in the 1.8 update. It can also be crafted (in an unconventional manner) by creating stone brick stairs, placing them facing South and mining them. It seems to not matter what what type of block they are on or if they are near water. If the stairs are facing East when mined they will give Cracked Stone Bricks, when facing North or West they will give only Stone Bricks.
Personally, I'm just going to mine out the stronghold in my world. There should be more than enough materials for a few chests!
Found one of them. Journeyed to the areas for the other two and couldn't find anything. Today I was playing around with cartograph and found the other two :biggrin.gif: They were in the same direction indicated by the program, but WAY off the coordinates. Stronghold 2 was about 150 blocks away and stronghold 3 was over 400 blocks closer to my spawn than where I was looking.
This is the problem I realized. Pumpkins are not, that I am aware, a renewable crop. Pumpkin seeds are found, seemingly, only in chests found in the new mineshaft or stronghold structures. They are, basically, an alternative source for pumpkins, but not a renewable one, either for more seeds or getting any more than 1 pumpkin per seed.
This, in my mind, is not nearly enough to remove pumpkins or jackolanterns from the exempt list, and is quite enough to add pumpkin seeds to it. Unless someone knows how to make it renewable . . . otherwise, they are almost as hard as ever.
I assume pumpkins work just like melons, except that you cannot attain more pumpkin seeds from farming. This means that once you get any pumpkin seeds you will have an infinite source of pumpkins because one stem will continuously grow more pumpkins.
I think I misread.
Sandstone half blocks are already in the game.
Yeah, I realized that after the fact. I also checked, and sandstone stairs don't seem to work, so thats a relief. Since I forgot I already had sandstone half blocks, thats a load of my back!
These endermen are really tearing up my mob grinder. It's a good thing I built an above ground pit-type grinder, it seems a bit more resistant to random blocks being moved around than I'm hearing from some people with more compact designs. No passive mobs spawning at all is going to make it difficult to get the new meats though. I have to run around and corral some sheep/pigs/cows and somehow move them to my fortress and set up a breeding area for when that's implemented.
Interestingly enough . . . the stairs method still works! The lid clips through the block, but does not stop it. However, rather than have to redesign my facility too soon if Notch decides to fix it, I did it "legit". Either way, I'm quite proud of it.
The room has gotten so large I have begun to believe the most efficient use of space would to have chest racks placed in the middle of the room as well. It might interfere somewhat with visibility and ease of motion, not to mention organization, but there is a LOT of open space in the room (its 26x26 open air within the chest square, leaving 676 squares unused). The good thing about the extra space is it will allow ALL SORTS of customized addons, like crafting/furnace stations, decorations, even some small farms! Its actually large enough that you could live out of the room with plenty of room to spare.
I didn't even think of the mob grinder issue! I'm glad I finished up all the hostile mobs before 1.8, though zombies will just require a dungeon grinder for their new meat. Passives . . . I've been anticipating that. There isn't much that can be done about it until breeding is implemented.
I beg to differ!
You have to design it BIG from the start :smile.gif: I think my storage area has enough room for all of the 1.8 stuff, but if they add much more I'll have to split between two floors. Another possibility I was considering was to make it 3x3 sections of my base instead of 2x2, with crafting/furnaces/overflow storage in the middle. Since chests still work with the stairs, I don't have to make a drastic change like that fortunately!
Don't forget the ender pearls! Fortunately my mob grinder is low maintenance even with the enderman issue. I just run around once in a while replacing missing pieces of dirt. If I let it go for a while, I'm sure I'll have problems but it seems to be holding a good output so far.
Some recent (since 1.8) changes:
I buried the lower 2 layers of my slime farm in dirt because slime spawning was killing my mob spawns. This way, I can let it go longer without having to go fight the slimes.
I put a chicken farm/grinder so that it drops eggs and meat into my mob trap channel. Chickens are spawned via dispenser and when I get enough eggs to re-fill it, I hit a lever and the lava blade comes out and makes chicken meat!
I also read that melons take forever to grow, it's not true. I built a 4 melon mini-farm under the fences holding up the water in my mob trap killer. I now have 4 melons to harvest every few minutes- they don't take very long to grow. I don't know if it's possible to build an auto-harvester, I'll prob try it some day.
The other change I made was I dug out a 2 deep 6x6 pit and filled it with water near the collection point for my mob trap. Now I can fish while waiting for eggs. It's annoying, but needs to be done if I'm ever going to finish my collection so I might as well do what I can while collecting other things.
Heh, when I made my first one, it was more than adequate! 7 updates later, and its not the case anymore. This one has about 10 spare chests, and an entire 4th wall with which I can do whatever with. I'm thinking I will use it for my bulk storage for stone, which I had an entire second floor for before, but I may leave some of it available for expansion.
I'm already seeing the destructive nature of the endermen, and I haven't been out of my underground fortress nearly at all. I went to run to my pork storage, and found 4 holes torn out of my wall. Two of the cobblestones were only a few blocks away, but the other two were nowhere to be seen. Aside from potentially making holes in my wall (fortunately, its 3 thick), they are spiriting away my blocks! I will have to build a moat around my next base in the new world. Given this, I am curious if a endermen grinder is even possible, without regular maintenance.
I don't even want to think about fishing. I actually am short on one thing, string. I grinded for it a long time ago, and forgot about dispensers, so I ended up needing 3 extra chests full. I'm ALMOST done dispensers now, but I will need some spare after that for fishing, and I don't have it.
Make sure you fish when it rains! It increases catch rate.
I didn't know that, should help a bit.
I'm now thinking I may just run out of room when I have to add:
Red apples (found 3 in a stronghold!)
Iron bars
Fence Gates
3 versions of stone bricks (regular, cracked and mossy)
Stone brick slabs and stairs (not sure if 3 versions of each of these)
glass panes
vines
grass (possibly 3 versions)
pumpkin seeds
Everything else I already made chests for. I had 8 left and thought I was OK :sad.gif:
I'll probably continue to the third floor of my storage area for now. LOTS of free chests down there now that my pork is stacked :biggrin.gif: Eventually I'll expand my storage area and re-organize everything. That will be a large, time-consuming project. I have some cool ideas on things I want to try if I do it though, like an automated storage cart processing area in the center.
Go to page 22 of this thread and look at post# 432.
Yeah, I saw that. God, the fern and dead bush are going to be a nightmare to collect. Especially the fern.
Thank god about the clay. I was looking forward to gathering (thinks for a moment) another 4 double chests of clay blocks, at least, thats the math I think it would take to make a chest of bricks, brick ingots, clay balls, brick stairs, and brick halfblocks. Yeesh.
I HOPE the ferns are not. They are almost impossible to find. I once wanted to see one with a new texture pack, and had to make 4 or 5 new worlds before I found a forest with one near spawn.
Ferns are a subtype of long grass, that I only seem to find in certain preloaded forest biomes. It looks like a very small pine tree, or a sapling with no brown in it.
I didn't feel that collecting 17 chests of wool was reasonable. Furthermore, the massive lapis lazuli investment, doubled for making chests for each color AND for each dye, was extreme. Compounded by cocoa beans being exceedingly rare as well, I felt as if there were too many holes in the concept as it was. I may revise this at a later date, especially if brown sheep regrow brown wool. The lapis issue is still significant, however. It takes 2.75 chests, if I am correct, to make a chest for each of the lapis-required dyes, and then somewhere between half to one quarter (probably a third) of that amount to make that much wool. So we are talking 3.5 chests of lapis lazuli. Pretty hefty investment. If I can streamline the process with respawning wool, I may consider. This decision was made before the shears update, so wool is slightly more common, so if I can have a wool farm, maybe this will become feasible again.
I still haven't found any pumpkin seeds yet, though I've found dozens of chests with a few melon seeds each.
Unfortunately, my world only seems to have only one stronghold. I checked the other 2 areas, but there was only a large abandoned mineshaft at one and deep ocean at the other. I'm going to set up a mining operation at the stronghold to strip mine the three types of stone bricks. Seems like a good use for all the rails I've been collecting!
This is the problem I realized. Pumpkins are not, that I am aware, a renewable crop. Pumpkin seeds are found, seemingly, only in chests found in the new mineshaft or stronghold structures. They are, basically, an alternative source for pumpkins, but not a renewable one, either for more seeds or getting any more than 1 pumpkin per seed.
This, in my mind, is not nearly enough to remove pumpkins or jackolanterns from the exempt list, and is quite enough to add pumpkin seeds to it. Unless someone knows how to make it renewable . . . otherwise, they are almost as hard as ever.
I did read something similar; the stairs are bugged or something, so that you get a different drop from each direction you mine from. Of course, you take a 33% loss in the process, if you are making then reharvesting stairs, but its probably worth it. On the other hand, strongholds are pretty big . . . I can't see them being that rare.
About tall grass (from the wiki):
Tall grass has three variants (defined by its data value).
Tall Grass (the most common)
A triangular-looking fern (also known as "living shrub")
A dead bush-looking plant that does not occur naturally, but can be obtained by placing grass in a desert biome and using bone meal on it. (not to be confused with the Dead Bush appearing in desert biomes)
All three variants will occasionally drop Seeds when broken; a hoe is not required to produce seeds from this block. Tall Grass is collectible if shears are used on it.
About the stone bricks (from the wiki also):
Mossy Stone Brick is a new block type that was implemented in the 1.8 Beta update. Mossy Stone Brick is one of the main components that make up Strongholds, which were also added in the 1.8 update. It can also be crafted (in an unconventional manner) by creating stone brick stairs, placing them facing South and mining them. It seems to not matter what what type of block they are on or if they are near water. If the stairs are facing East when mined they will give Cracked Stone Bricks, when facing North or West they will give only Stone Bricks.
Personally, I'm just going to mine out the stronghold in my world. There should be more than enough materials for a few chests!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/626786-v02-stronghold-finder/
Found one of them. Journeyed to the areas for the other two and couldn't find anything. Today I was playing around with cartograph and found the other two :biggrin.gif: They were in the same direction indicated by the program, but WAY off the coordinates. Stronghold 2 was about 150 blocks away and stronghold 3 was over 400 blocks closer to my spawn than where I was looking.
I assume pumpkins work just like melons, except that you cannot attain more pumpkin seeds from farming. This means that once you get any pumpkin seeds you will have an infinite source of pumpkins because one stem will continuously grow more pumpkins.
It will just take a while to find some seeds.