Today I decided to see how much experience I could get at one time by mining Nether quartz until either my pickaxe was about to break (a diamond pickaxe with Efficiency III and Unbreaking III, fully repaired beforehand) or I ran out of inventory space; I didn't actually need that much XP, only enough to enchant a few items on an anvil (I previously mined until I reached level 30 so I could enchant books).
But anyway, here is the result; I ended up pretty much both wearing out my pickaxe and running out of room (I threw my arrows away to make room as I was making my way back to the portal, and would have done the same to my potion of fire resistance, I also got a bit of loot from a fortress):
(yes, you are reading the coordinates on the mini-map correctly, I really am standing at y=196 thanks to my triple-height terrain mod, which I've posted about in other threads)
That's even more XP than you get from killing the Ender Dragon; I started out from less than 1 level and 82 levels requires 13,331 XP based on the formula given on the Wiki. For comparison, the Ender Dragon gives you 12,000 XP. Also, based on the amount of quartz I mined, 3,774 pieces (plus some that were lost when they fell through the ground/into lava), you get about 3.5 XP per ore mined (the Wiki says 2-5, which is 3.5 if that is a uniform distribution).
Also, here is how much Nether quartz and glowstone I mined overall and how long it took me to mine all of that, not that long at all, even faster than my rate of mining coal and iron combined during normal caving - over 1,000 ore per hour (the time shown is my total time playing, not just mining quartz), compared to about 500 coal ore and 200 iron ore per hour (based on my previous world):
9,080 Nether quartz ore will give you 31,780 XP - enough to go from nothing to level 30 38 times (825 XP each time, or 233 ore; this also means that with Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe you can reach level 30 26 times between repairs if you only mined Nether quartz, making the cost to repair the pickaxe itself negligible). Also, based on my rate of mining, this means I can reach level 30 in 10-15 minutes, give or take.
Also, if I had used a Fortune III (120% / 2.2x increase) pickaxe to mine all of that quartz, I would have gotten about 20,000 pieces of quartz, enough to make 5,000 blocks.
Of note, the Wiki states "Due to its high XP orb drop rate it is commonly farmed for quick leveling. Currently it is faster than small mob experience farms at gaining quick levels".
So you can see why I don't bother with mob farms, among other reasons (from now on all of the XP I need will come from normal mining and mob kills). Of course, for long-term XP farming Nether quartz isn't renewable (as the Wiki notes). NB: I have nothing against mob farms, for items or XP, just that they don't suit my playstyle; to me the Nether is just a gigantic cave (well, it is a cave, just one where you have to respect lava more (and zombie pigmen; I was killed twice in a row the last time I played, albeit because I hit one while getting the Return to Sender achievement) so that perfectly fits in with how I spend most of my time playing.
Also, here is a view of the Nether (if you look closely you can see the cobblestone shelter I built around the portal in the center):
No, because I used my Fortune III book on my amethyst pickaxe, especially considering how hard it is to get Fortune on a book (enchanting the pickaxe directly is not an option, considering how rare amethyst is, much rarer than diamond, and less enchantable, same as a book actually, and more expensive to repair; I only mined 5 ore for the pickaxe and sword until I got Fortune, and only enchanted one diamond pickaxe which I used for general mining (I still got a stack of diamonds from my branch mine, more than enough to cover my needs until I got my amethyst tools and armor enchanted).
Not like I'll use most of the quartz anyway, like the three double chests of iron blocks I mined in my first main world...
Also, Fortune has no effect on XP drop rates, and makes it more expensive to repair, especially by combining with another pickaxe, which allows a 100% repair at minimal XP cost (it costs 35 levels to repair an Efficiency III, Fortune III, Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe - one unit or 25% at a time).
Yeah even in 1.7, there are more than enough XP lying around. Let's say you have a really big cow farm : 420 cows.
210 breeding = average 840 XPs.
Killing 210 old cows to make room for the babies = avg 420 XPs.
Smelting an avg of 420 Steaks (about 6.5 stacks) = another 147 XPs, on average.
Plus on top of food for a good while you get about 210 Leather too.
XP total: about 1407 XPs on average
Leveling up all the way from level 0 to level 30 costs 1395 XPs.
Sure, 420 cows is a big farm. But you did ONLY ONE round of breeding there !
But it isn't hard at all to have say 20 cows per cow pen say 8x8 sizes, and have a 3 x 7 of those cows pens right next to each other.
A couple hours of "work" and that's it, from zero to finish ! And farm breeding isn't even the "best" way to gain XP !
In 1.8, what with the XP cost reduced by a factor of 10 per enchant AND the enchanting preview, I can't imagine even needing to do anything special to have more than enough XP for my enchants even with the "can't repair forever" items. Just playing normally will be MORE than enough and by a WIDE margin.
EVEN if XP was tougher like in say version 1.1 (you needed 50 levels for a max enchant and each level cost a LOT more, more than twice the XP in fact !), I'd still be against having an XP being storable.
Is that purple armor and sword a mod or a texture pack?
That was a mod adding amethyst armor and tools, a more durable form of diamond, although I haven't used it since I stopped using Fortune on my pickaxe (allowing more time between repairs despite diamond having 1/3 the durability due to being able to repair it 100% instead fo 25%; I mainly stopped using it because there wasn't really any point in having it plus the inventory space, for which I'd used a backpack mod to get around), plus I've gone back to my first main world, for which the only modded block/item I'm using is a double chest size Ender chest variant for transporting items between bases (separate from a regular Ender chest, which I use as a "backpack").
Basically, you might say that my modded worlds were tests of different ideas; for example, the one mentioned here (TripleHeightTerrain*) was based on an idea to make the ground deeper, raising sea/ground level by 128 blocks with terrain otherwise unaltered (i.e. 128 blocks of stone added under the normal 64 or so blocks), to accommodate more/bigger caves and ravines, although I decided that was a bit too much, mainly because I tried scaling up the size of cave systems and ravines with the ground depth (the overall percentage of caves over solid ground wasn't actually much different from vanilla pre-1.7 but they were roughly cubed in volume to keep the same width/height ratio; this also meant that you could spent hours finding nothing but coal and iron until you finally made it down to deeper layers, even with the height ranges/number of ores also tripled).
*Of note, I've since found that there is/was a Bukkit plugin that did basically the same thing as my triple height terrain mod (I've also experiemented with simply stacking 2-3 layers of normal underground on top of each other (no bedrock between, normal cave and ore distribution in each layer), keeping cave systems the same size as vanilla but with distinct layers; by restricting caves to 60 or so of each layer I can have cave systems higher up generate lava, etc in their lower layers without colliding with caves below, with special caves added to connect the layers vertically; the main advantage of this is that I'd have 2-3 times the space to explore in the same area of a world).
A couple quick questions: from your maps it looks like this quartz haul was from caving in the nether and not any type of structured mining, correct? If so, were the size/distribution of the nether caves modified in any way? Which world or version is this?
I've found myself in need of a large amount of quartz for a build and am pondering mining strategies in the nether...
Buggy the nether is like swiss cheese so it's fairly easy to find a lot of exposed quartz just running around. However, if you're playing vanilla getting lost is very easy so be sure to note the coordinates of your portal if you want to do that. Just mining around a small area from my portal with a fortune III pick I got enough quarzt for about 4 stacks of quartz blocks.
Yep, I'm playing pure vanilla 1.8. I haven't been to the nether in probably 6 months IRL- I don't find it a very pleasant place. I usually play with headphones on at night and the constant ghast jibbering drives me up a wall (yes, I can turn them down or off, but then I won't know I'm in danger until the nether erupts in flames around me!).
I have portal access tunnels running in the cardinal directions within a few blocks of the ceiling. Obviously I don't use them much, but I'll likely just branch mine along them while extending them for possible future use. The occasional pigman pops up, but it keeps the rest of the riff-raff out of my way.
I should probably man-up and get some practice fighting ghasts one of these days, but I've never even gotten around to finding netherwart yet, so no fire resist potions. It's on my list...
Yep, I'm playing pure vanilla 1.8. I haven't been to the nether in probably 6 months IRL- I don't find it a very pleasant place. I usually play with headphones on at night and the constant ghast jibbering drives me up a wall (yes, I can turn them down or off, but then I won't know I'm in danger until the nether erupts in flames around me!).
I have portal access tunnels running in the cardinal directions within a few blocks of the ceiling. Obviously I don't use them much, but I'll likely just branch mine along them while extending them for possible future use. The occasional pigman pops up, but it keeps the rest of the riff-raff out of my way.
I should probably man-up and get some practice fighting ghasts one of these days, but I've never even gotten around to finding netherwart yet, so no fire resist potions. It's on my list...
cheers,
tbg
A few tips:
A power 4 bow can one shot them at full draw. (Ghast spawning seems less prevalent to me lately, perhaps that's just me though)
Pack a couple stacks of cobblestone and when you see a ghast while out in the open just stack a couple cobblestone to use as a shelter to block sight lines or duck behind to avoid fireballs.
Don't panic and remember that you can just shoot a fireball with an arrow once it gets close to avoid having to move around so much.
Biggest thing is watch out for nearby pigmen so you don't hit them on accident.
Avoid fighting ghasts on netherrack formations you know are thin without first putting down some cobblestone to stand on.
I tend to make paths with cobblestone slabs. Just as effective for stopping ghast fireballs, easier to just run up onto, and your cobblestone goes farther.
I died! For the first time in over 26 *days* of playing! And the galling thing? It was a totally avoidable noob mistake.
Actually, the quartz mining went quite well- it took me about an hour and a half to accumulate 2.5 stacks of quartz blocks (what I estimated to be the "first installment" of what I'll need for my build). Much of it was done by your typical branch mining at y=109, though towards the end I started off in another area and was mining around y=75 or so. I found many more caves and nooks and crannies down lower and I have to admit, "caving" is significantly faster at generating quartz ore than branch mining is (while still avoiding wide open ghast-prone areas). Given quartz's even distribution in the nether, the amount of exposed surface in caves as well as the increased mobility for dodging the odd lava makes it preferable to branch mining.
Anyhoo, I sent my quartz back home and, since I was doing pretty well, I went back for a little more. And a little more. I probably had another two stacks of quartz blocks when I happened upon a fortress. I actually found the flat roof of the fortress (it was partially buried in netherwrack) and had to dig down into the hallway to have a look around. I didn't get very far, but set up some markers for a return trip, then went back up to the roof. Standing on the roof, I decided to poke my head through the netherwrack and have a quick look around only to find a couple of blazes aways off. I popped one, but the other fired, I mis-dodged and you can guess what happened next- yep- it blew me clean off the roof and down down down into the lava of no return.
I'm bummed about losing a bunch of good gear (and my hard-won quartz blocks!), but I was able to re-quip myself as well or better than before with spares I had back at the base (I did have to spend some down time breeding animals and whatnot to get the XP necessary to add a book enchantment here and there).
I can think of two take-home messages from this:
one, never ever fight on the flat roof of a nether fortress- if you absolutely must, add "guard rail" blocks prior to combat. What was I thinking?
two, keep a duplicate set of armor and tools specifically enchanted for the nether. I was able to re-quip pretty easily, but losing that amount of good gear kinda stung. I'd rather bring my back-up gear next time.
and, uh, three, it's going to take a while for me to get all the quartz that I want!
Sounds like you had a great adventure. I'm not sure what happened to you because blaze shots do not throw you around, they just set you on fire. Sure a ghast didn't sneak up on you and blast you?
Thanks for making me feel even worse! There were no ghasts- I must've simply run off the edge while trying to dodge the blaze attack. What a numnut I am!
Thanks for making me feel even worse! There were no ghasts- I must've simply run off the edge while trying to dodge the blaze attack. What a numnut I am!
cheers,
tbg
That kind of thing happens all the time, so don't beat yourself up! Eventually the seasoned Nether traveller acquires a habit of being aware what kind of thing they are standing on, where the edge is, how fragile the thing is, what kind of critters are near you on the thing, and how close you and they are to the edge.
A Wither skeleton can give you a pretty good swat (not to mention Ghast blasts!) so yeah if I'm on a flat Fortress roof I am very nervously looking around. On the walkways I make sure I have guardrails and even then try to stand in the middle of the walkway to fight Wither skeletons.
Likewise any cobblestone bridge over lava must really have guardrails. If they do, they make great places to fight Ghasts from, though - since you know your footing won't disappear and throw you into the lava! It's pretty safe but if a Ghast got the perfect shot it could probably bump you over the guardrail so don't abuse this too much.
And yes - as Rodabon said - cobblestone slabs! They look better for bridges and let your few stacks of cobble imported into the Nether last longer. You should even consider making stairs from slabs, although this is not practical on a steep pitch.
A couple quick questions: from your maps it looks like this quartz haul was from caving in the nether and not any type of structured mining, correct? If so, were the size/distribution of the nether caves modified in any way? Which world or version is this?
I've found myself in need of a large amount of quartz for a build and am pondering mining strategies in the nether...
cheers,
tbg
I've never thought of modifying the Nether in any way; this was from my triple height terrain world, back when I also pretty much only modified caves and used a few mods like the minimap (at that time the amethyst armor and tools were actually somebody else's mod, not my own). I pretty much mined it in the same way I can mine so many ores from Overworld caves, and in some ways it is easier due to the exposed area and not having to worry that much about mobs; a Fire Resistance potion will take care of any accidents with lava (note that since 1.8 zombie pigmen are far more dangerous; ghast fireballs will anger them and they have the AI of regular zombies; in older versions they only chase you from a mere 16 blocks away, even when aggroed, and the aggro range is only 32 blocks though they stay aggroed until they despawn due to a bug, but you usually only have to deal with a few if you do aggro one).
Of note, the Nether actually has two types of caves, one formed by terrain noise (like hollow mountains and overhangs in the Overworld) and "real" caves like those underground in the Overworld, but spread out much more uniformly (smaller number of caves per cave system, higher chance per chunk and a uniform vertical distribution).
Also, a map can be useful for getting around even though it won't show the terrain, since if you create it at the location of your portal it will be near the center after you zoom it out (since I build near spawn my portal is close to 0, 0 so a new map will be centered at 0, 0 and when fully zoomed it will still be centered at 0, 0; note however that this no longer works in 1.8).
... (note that since 1.8 zombie pigmen are far more dangerous; ghast fireballs will anger them and they have the AI of regular zombies; in older versions they only chase you from a mere 16 blocks away, even when aggroed, and the aggro range is only 32 blocks though they stay aggroed until they despawn due to a bug, but you usually only have to deal with a few if you do aggro one).
There used to be a bug in 1.8 where the piggies would get angry if you killed something that had hurt one of them (typically a Ghast) - weird logic right? -but they fixed that.
There used to be a bug in 1.8 where a PGZ's would get angry if you killed something that had hurt one of them (typically a Ghast) but they fixed that.
There used to be a bug in 1.8 where the piggies would get angry if you killed something that had hurt one of them (typically a Ghast) - weird logic right? -but they fixed that.
According to the issue tracker it hasn't been fixed yet, even in the 1.9 snapshots (15w32c is listed as the latest affected version):
But anyway, here is the result; I ended up pretty much both wearing out my pickaxe and running out of room (I threw my arrows away to make room as I was making my way back to the portal, and would have done the same to my potion of fire resistance, I also got a bit of loot from a fortress):
(yes, you are reading the coordinates on the mini-map correctly, I really am standing at y=196 thanks to my triple-height terrain mod, which I've posted about in other threads)
That's even more XP than you get from killing the Ender Dragon; I started out from less than 1 level and 82 levels requires 13,331 XP based on the formula given on the Wiki. For comparison, the Ender Dragon gives you 12,000 XP. Also, based on the amount of quartz I mined, 3,774 pieces (plus some that were lost when they fell through the ground/into lava), you get about 3.5 XP per ore mined (the Wiki says 2-5, which is 3.5 if that is a uniform distribution).
Also, here is how much Nether quartz and glowstone I mined overall and how long it took me to mine all of that, not that long at all, even faster than my rate of mining coal and iron combined during normal caving - over 1,000 ore per hour (the time shown is my total time playing, not just mining quartz), compared to about 500 coal ore and 200 iron ore per hour (based on my previous world):
9,080 Nether quartz ore will give you 31,780 XP - enough to go from nothing to level 30 38 times (825 XP each time, or 233 ore; this also means that with Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe you can reach level 30 26 times between repairs if you only mined Nether quartz, making the cost to repair the pickaxe itself negligible). Also, based on my rate of mining, this means I can reach level 30 in 10-15 minutes, give or take.
Also, if I had used a Fortune III (120% / 2.2x increase) pickaxe to mine all of that quartz, I would have gotten about 20,000 pieces of quartz, enough to make 5,000 blocks.
Of note, the Wiki states "Due to its high XP orb drop rate it is commonly farmed for quick leveling. Currently it is faster than small mob experience farms at gaining quick levels".
So you can see why I don't bother with mob farms, among other reasons (from now on all of the XP I need will come from normal mining and mob kills). Of course, for long-term XP farming Nether quartz isn't renewable (as the Wiki notes). NB: I have nothing against mob farms, for items or XP, just that they don't suit my playstyle; to me the Nether is just a gigantic cave (well, it is a cave, just one where you have to respect lava more (and zombie pigmen; I was killed twice in a row the last time I played, albeit because I hit one while getting the Return to Sender achievement) so that perfectly fits in with how I spend most of my time playing.
Also, here is a view of the Nether (if you look closely you can see the cobblestone shelter I built around the portal in the center):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
You weren't using Fortune?
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.
That makes this post even more terrifying....
Stay fluffy~
No, because I used my Fortune III book on my amethyst pickaxe, especially considering how hard it is to get Fortune on a book (enchanting the pickaxe directly is not an option, considering how rare amethyst is, much rarer than diamond, and less enchantable, same as a book actually, and more expensive to repair; I only mined 5 ore for the pickaxe and sword until I got Fortune, and only enchanted one diamond pickaxe which I used for general mining (I still got a stack of diamonds from my branch mine, more than enough to cover my needs until I got my amethyst tools and armor enchanted).
Not like I'll use most of the quartz anyway, like the three double chests of iron blocks I mined in my first main world...
Also, Fortune has no effect on XP drop rates, and makes it more expensive to repair, especially by combining with another pickaxe, which allows a 100% repair at minimal XP cost (it costs 35 levels to repair an Efficiency III, Fortune III, Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe - one unit or 25% at a time).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
210 breeding = average 840 XPs.
Killing 210 old cows to make room for the babies = avg 420 XPs.
Smelting an avg of 420 Steaks (about 6.5 stacks) = another 147 XPs, on average.
Plus on top of food for a good while you get about 210 Leather too.
XP total: about 1407 XPs on average
Leveling up all the way from level 0 to level 30 costs 1395 XPs.
Sure, 420 cows is a big farm. But you did ONLY ONE round of breeding there !
But it isn't hard at all to have say 20 cows per cow pen say 8x8 sizes, and have a 3 x 7 of those cows pens right next to each other.
A couple hours of "work" and that's it, from zero to finish ! And farm breeding isn't even the "best" way to gain XP !
In 1.8, what with the XP cost reduced by a factor of 10 per enchant AND the enchanting preview, I can't imagine even needing to do anything special to have more than enough XP for my enchants even with the "can't repair forever" items. Just playing normally will be MORE than enough and by a WIDE margin.
EVEN if XP was tougher like in say version 1.1 (you needed 50 levels for a max enchant and each level cost a LOT more, more than twice the XP in fact !), I'd still be against having an XP being storable.
PC specs: Intel Core 2 Duo e8500 @ 3.16ghz / XFX Radeon HD 6670 2GB DDR3 / 6GB 1666MHz DDR3 RAM / Windows 7 Professional
That was a mod adding amethyst armor and tools, a more durable form of diamond, although I haven't used it since I stopped using Fortune on my pickaxe (allowing more time between repairs despite diamond having 1/3 the durability due to being able to repair it 100% instead fo 25%; I mainly stopped using it because there wasn't really any point in having it plus the inventory space, for which I'd used a backpack mod to get around), plus I've gone back to my first main world, for which the only modded block/item I'm using is a double chest size Ender chest variant for transporting items between bases (separate from a regular Ender chest, which I use as a "backpack").
Basically, you might say that my modded worlds were tests of different ideas; for example, the one mentioned here (TripleHeightTerrain*) was based on an idea to make the ground deeper, raising sea/ground level by 128 blocks with terrain otherwise unaltered (i.e. 128 blocks of stone added under the normal 64 or so blocks), to accommodate more/bigger caves and ravines, although I decided that was a bit too much, mainly because I tried scaling up the size of cave systems and ravines with the ground depth (the overall percentage of caves over solid ground wasn't actually much different from vanilla pre-1.7 but they were roughly cubed in volume to keep the same width/height ratio; this also meant that you could spent hours finding nothing but coal and iron until you finally made it down to deeper layers, even with the height ranges/number of ores also tripled).
*Of note, I've since found that there is/was a Bukkit plugin that did basically the same thing as my triple height terrain mod (I've also experiemented with simply stacking 2-3 layers of normal underground on top of each other (no bedrock between, normal cave and ore distribution in each layer), keeping cave systems the same size as vanilla but with distinct layers; by restricting caves to 60 or so of each layer I can have cave systems higher up generate lava, etc in their lower layers without colliding with caves below, with special caves added to connect the layers vertically; the main advantage of this is that I'd have 2-3 times the space to explore in the same area of a world).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
TMC-
A couple quick questions: from your maps it looks like this quartz haul was from caving in the nether and not any type of structured mining, correct? If so, were the size/distribution of the nether caves modified in any way? Which world or version is this?
I've found myself in need of a large amount of quartz for a build and am pondering mining strategies in the nether...
cheers,
tbg
Buggy the nether is like swiss cheese so it's fairly easy to find a lot of exposed quartz just running around. However, if you're playing vanilla getting lost is very easy so be sure to note the coordinates of your portal if you want to do that. Just mining around a small area from my portal with a fortune III pick I got enough quarzt for about 4 stacks of quartz blocks.
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
rodabon-
Yep, I'm playing pure vanilla 1.8. I haven't been to the nether in probably 6 months IRL- I don't find it a very pleasant place. I usually play with headphones on at night and the constant ghast jibbering drives me up a wall (yes, I can turn them down or off, but then I won't know I'm in danger until the nether erupts in flames around me!).
I have portal access tunnels running in the cardinal directions within a few blocks of the ceiling. Obviously I don't use them much, but I'll likely just branch mine along them while extending them for possible future use. The occasional pigman pops up, but it keeps the rest of the riff-raff out of my way.
I should probably man-up and get some practice fighting ghasts one of these days, but I've never even gotten around to finding netherwart yet, so no fire resist potions. It's on my list...
cheers,
tbg
A few tips:
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
A quick update re: gathering netherquartz...
I died! For the first time in over 26 *days* of playing! And the galling thing? It was a totally avoidable noob mistake.
Actually, the quartz mining went quite well- it took me about an hour and a half to accumulate 2.5 stacks of quartz blocks (what I estimated to be the "first installment" of what I'll need for my build). Much of it was done by your typical branch mining at y=109, though towards the end I started off in another area and was mining around y=75 or so. I found many more caves and nooks and crannies down lower and I have to admit, "caving" is significantly faster at generating quartz ore than branch mining is (while still avoiding wide open ghast-prone areas). Given quartz's even distribution in the nether, the amount of exposed surface in caves as well as the increased mobility for dodging the odd lava makes it preferable to branch mining.
Anyhoo, I sent my quartz back home and, since I was doing pretty well, I went back for a little more. And a little more. I probably had another two stacks of quartz blocks when I happened upon a fortress. I actually found the flat roof of the fortress (it was partially buried in netherwrack) and had to dig down into the hallway to have a look around. I didn't get very far, but set up some markers for a return trip, then went back up to the roof. Standing on the roof, I decided to poke my head through the netherwrack and have a quick look around only to find a couple of blazes aways off. I popped one, but the other fired, I mis-dodged and you can guess what happened next- yep- it blew me clean off the roof and down down down into the lava of no return.
I'm bummed about losing a bunch of good gear (and my hard-won quartz blocks!), but I was able to re-quip myself as well or better than before with spares I had back at the base (I did have to spend some down time breeding animals and whatnot to get the XP necessary to add a book enchantment here and there).
I can think of two take-home messages from this:
one, never ever fight on the flat roof of a nether fortress- if you absolutely must, add "guard rail" blocks prior to combat. What was I thinking?
two, keep a duplicate set of armor and tools specifically enchanted for the nether. I was able to re-quip pretty easily, but losing that amount of good gear kinda stung. I'd rather bring my back-up gear next time.
and, uh, three, it's going to take a while for me to get all the quartz that I want!
cheers,
tbg
Sounds like you had a great adventure. I'm not sure what happened to you because blaze shots do not throw you around, they just set you on fire. Sure a ghast didn't sneak up on you and blast you?
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
Thanks for making me feel even worse! There were no ghasts- I must've simply run off the edge while trying to dodge the blaze attack. What a numnut I am!
cheers,
tbg
Gnarly. I've sometimes mined Nether Quartz when I needed XP.
That kind of thing happens all the time, so don't beat yourself up! Eventually the seasoned Nether traveller acquires a habit of being aware what kind of thing they are standing on, where the edge is, how fragile the thing is, what kind of critters are near you on the thing, and how close you and they are to the edge.
A Wither skeleton can give you a pretty good swat (not to mention Ghast blasts!) so yeah if I'm on a flat Fortress roof I am very nervously looking around. On the walkways I make sure I have guardrails and even then try to stand in the middle of the walkway to fight Wither skeletons.
Likewise any cobblestone bridge over lava must really have guardrails. If they do, they make great places to fight Ghasts from, though - since you know your footing won't disappear and throw you into the lava! It's pretty safe but if a Ghast got the perfect shot it could probably bump you over the guardrail so don't abuse this too much.
And yes - as Rodabon said - cobblestone slabs! They look better for bridges and let your few stacks of cobble imported into the Nether last longer. You should even consider making stairs from slabs, although this is not practical on a steep pitch.
I've never thought of modifying the Nether in any way; this was from my triple height terrain world, back when I also pretty much only modified caves and used a few mods like the minimap (at that time the amethyst armor and tools were actually somebody else's mod, not my own). I pretty much mined it in the same way I can mine so many ores from Overworld caves, and in some ways it is easier due to the exposed area and not having to worry that much about mobs; a Fire Resistance potion will take care of any accidents with lava (note that since 1.8 zombie pigmen are far more dangerous; ghast fireballs will anger them and they have the AI of regular zombies; in older versions they only chase you from a mere 16 blocks away, even when aggroed, and the aggro range is only 32 blocks though they stay aggroed until they despawn due to a bug, but you usually only have to deal with a few if you do aggro one).
Of note, the Nether actually has two types of caves, one formed by terrain noise (like hollow mountains and overhangs in the Overworld) and "real" caves like those underground in the Overworld, but spread out much more uniformly (smaller number of caves per cave system, higher chance per chunk and a uniform vertical distribution).
Also, a map can be useful for getting around even though it won't show the terrain, since if you create it at the location of your portal it will be near the center after you zoom it out (since I build near spawn my portal is close to 0, 0 so a new map will be centered at 0, 0 and when fully zoomed it will still be centered at 0, 0; note however that this no longer works in 1.8).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
There used to be a bug in 1.8 where the piggies would get angry if you killed something that had hurt one of them (typically a Ghast) - weird logic right? -but they fixed that.
According to the issue tracker it hasn't been fixed yet, even in the 1.9 snapshots (15w32c is listed as the latest affected version):
MC-69032 When a mob hits a pigman, and you kill that mob, the pigmen attack you
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Sorry, I assumed it was resolved because my last extensive Nether adventures haven't run into it (in 1.8.8). Perhaps I was just lucky.