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I see a zombie out my window. I'm collecting zombie meat (slowly) for something in Tinker's (details to come when it happens) so I smash my window and Shocking Fling it. It survives the fling, but shortly dies to being on fire. I snooze and run out in the morning to collect.



I convert my upstairs window to view balconies with my usual fences-in-front-of-and-below feet trick. If the opening is 2 blocks high, you would have to go up 1/2 block to get over the fences, and a player is too big for that. I was hoping to have a little variety this time, but it's just too useful for sniping.

So, last episode we found Psi allows us to place blocks in mid-air. This opens up a lot of possibilities! For starters, you can place a block under your feet to stop you when you're falling;



Explaination: Lower left, me; above that my position; right side a vector constructed to be down 2; middle top add those vectors together; bottom middle place a block there.

BTW the block placed is the one to the right of the CAD in your hotbar. Don't forget to have one there; I did a couple times in the episode, to substantial pain.

Jump off the roof. WHAM! All the way to the ground. OOOWWW!



There's the block, why didn't it stop me? Maybe I was falling through it?

Change it to 3 down, try it with F5 for a rear view to see what's happening.

I accidentally don't actually jump off the roof when activating;



? 3 below is just below my feet? I decide to make it 4. (I now think I actually forgot to update the spell in my gun, I mean CAD.)

So 4 down it is and:



Haha! it works! You'd probably need to be prepped to use it; it takes a little time to swap spells. But could be very useful!

Now something even more impressive; last episode I mentioned a spell effect that teleports entities, possibly the caster, along their line of vision. What if you also place a block under your feet so you an look up, teleport in the air, and end up standing there?



First I do a test spell to just place the block.

In the production version, I later put the Blink (teleport in line of sight) effect in the lower right. Explaination: Me, lower left, look direction to the right, multiply that by 6 (later the teleport distance), and add it to my position above me and a down 2 vector at the top to get the position 2 below where I'll be after the teleport, and then place a block there.

That works, but I need a break for farm chores and:



Oh no, Creeper in the sheep pen. I had put the fence up against the hill to the left to make it easy to get the sheep in but never bothered to chop it out. I don't want to throw a lighting bolt into my sheep pen, I don't have a ranged weapon because of a feather shortage, and whack-and-jump-back is too risky when it's in the sheep pen.



I move and organize my Harvestcraft stuff while I consider options. To the left you can see my Harvestcraft tools nicely placed on Bibliocraft shelving; I have accumulators on the bottom and ready to cook ingredients above; finished recipes are to my left out of the FOV. Seeds to plant I left in the original shelter which will now be a kind of gardener's shack.

I put those glazed cyan blocks as a whimsical decoration; kind meh because terracotta really wants to be 2x2. Am I being punished for hubris?

Well, not too much, because I figure a solution. I rename my Fling spell "Shocking Fling" and make a second version that just flings, no lightning bolt.



Satisfying. It takes two flings to kill it without the extra damage from the lightning and fire. And I have my first gunpowder.

That done, I can test the production version of "Blink Footed"; teleport into the air and end up safely standing on a block in midair!

And I fall through. Maybe too high? Let's try 3 down.



And it works!



But on repeated blinks that should be on the level, I'm descending. So let's try 2.5 and hope for rounding. Remember although I'm in an exact block my view target isn't.

And that still works and allows me to teleport on the level. But when I blink downwards I fall off.



I can't figure out why.



If I stay on the level I can travel VERY fast, at the cost of a bunch of blocks to clean up later. I moved that distance in about 2 seconds, clickclickclick.

I use the F5 rear view to watch what's happening and find that even when I look down, I still only blink straight ahead. Apparently Vazki put in a "safety system" to keep people from blinking themselves into the ground and suffocating. I think it would be way better to check for block intersection and just fail the spell then, but maybe that's hard programmatically?

So I adjust my direction vector to remove the down component. This isn't hard mathematically but is a little tricky on the 2D grid. But I'm still falling off, to the front. Apparently when Vazki eliminates the down component he *doesn't* adjust to still go the set distance, so the distance is shorter.



So I adjust for that. I'll explain this if people want but it's a bit involved so I won't unless asked.

But now, once I get up, I don't have a way to get down.



I modify my Block Below Feet spell to also destroy the block I'm standing on, and rename it Descend. No effect which falling (there's nothing there) so it still works for its original purpose.



And it works! So Blink Footed to go up, Descend to come down, and I can travel through the air!

Next episode: Magical farming, and Crossbows!

I've exhausted my winter grain stores, but I still want to breed cows and sheep, especially cows, as I'm way behind on books and enchanting.



So I magick up some grain to feed them with Psi Overgrowth. I try using a Loopcast version, which is supposedly more efficient for multiple casts (sorry no pics) but - it actually seems *less* efficient. I do seem to be able to cast longer, but I get *less* grain. Maybe there's some downtime after overgrowth/bonemeal and so casting every tick cast is a waste.

I'm also growing Harvestcraft Amaranth instead of wheat. It's out of season, but the Overgrowth spell doesn't care. Amaranth has a big advantage over vanilla wheat in a crowded pen:



It works for breeding but animals aren't attracted to it. This is a big QOL benefit in a crowded cow pen, but essentially essential when trying to breed particular sheep colors (all I care about now) in a crowded sheep pen.

I noticed the colors here are greening but I was still getting snow, not rain. So I figured it was still winter but spring was close. Now I suspect it was already Spring, but the temp increase was gradual and so Grasslands was still frozen.

I have had enough Psi debugging for a while, and I suspect you have too. Having done some Tinker's, and some Psi, it would be logical to do some Astral Sorcery. But Astral Sorcery is a mod that makes you travel, and I don't want to travel while water frozen by Serene Seasons destroys the sugarcane everywhere I go. So it's down to the mines to work on some Tinker's crossbows.



My picks are regenerated, so first a round of branch mining. I'm going to need a good deal of Soapstone for the roof, so I go to the part of my branch mine where I thought I'd encountered it, and I was right. The new UBC team that took over from me has drastically changed the stone layout, along with stone-typing gravel. Soapstone is evidently a full "biome" now; it used to just be occasional layers in other stones. Stones are more mixed now as well. I'm not sure what I think of the changes; certainly the new layouts feel more "natural" but when you encounter multiple stone types AND multiple gravel types on even shortish minings your inventory fills up fast. My picks are too wimpy for this to make a big difference for now but in the future things may be different.

I try to make a Tinker's version of a Silk Touch pick but find it needs 32 string (I only have half that) and an Emerald. I have yet to see either Extreme Hills or a village, so that's not happening soon. Now that I have a little leather, I do make an Enchantment Table, but I still can't make bookcases for it to do anything.

So now it's time to try crossbows. I remembered I liked Tinker's crossbows. First is the limb materials



The book recommends something wood-like for the draw time, but I just can't resist the seven extra damage points with an iron limb.



So iron it is. Four and a half seconds to prep for a shot, but the shots should be death. Note the book said seven points but it's doing TEN point five extra. I think there's an additional half benefit from the other iron parts.


Upstairs to test it on zombies at the fence, but I'm having trouble figuring out the controls. I manage to kill one zombie, but I'm not sure exactly what I did? But the 4.5 second draw time is WAY too long, so I go back down to speed it up with Redstone on the Tinker's tool forge. Almost 3 stacks of Redstone gets it to 3.5 seconds which is - somewhat better? I also diamond tip my bolts and now:



66 shots (!) in one bolt item. That's 4 minutes of continuous fire (well, more continuously pressing right-click and occasional firing), so one item is enough and I never needed all those chickens. I suppose I can use the eggs. Plus it now does 6 base damage, so my iron crossbow is doing 16.5 damage, which will kill almost anything in vanilla (although not a Better Animals Moose, sigh).

I go back upstairs and figure out the controls



When you hold right-click on an unready crossbow, you see these three sight lines. As you hold down right-click, they come together, eventually meeting (after 3.5 seconds in this case).



And now it's ready. The next time you right-click with it equipped, it goes off. But you can unequip it, take it off your hotbar, whatever, and it stays ready.

A pain to set up, but this thing is LETHAL. It one-shots all the standard vanilla mobs - zombies, skeletons, and creepers. Ka-chunk, ka-done. No pics (I forgot) but even more effective than the Shocking Fling spell I cooked up, which does not reliably one-shot. I didn't actually time the recharge for Psi power after that spell, but it's comparable.



I try a Wooden Crossbow, but although it draws twice as fast, it does less than half the damage, so it's a net loss, plus there's less "stored" in that first shot with a pre-readied crossbow. So Iron it is.

In the morning I head out to collect some loot:



Hey! Things look different! I think it's Spring!



Oh, Spring has DEFINITELY sprung.

I'll Blinkfoot up to take a cool aerial shot! WHOOMP!

I fall off. Evidently I've still got a bug. But I'm not going to work on it now. and



Aah! Spring! Satisfaction at surviving the winter! New hopes and possibilities! And one possibility in particular, now that I can travel:

Next week: Starting Astral Sorcery.

It's Spring, everywhere I think, but not all places are thawed. The Shield (as in Canadian) biome next to my grasslands is still snowed in. Colder base temperature than the Grasslands, no doubt.

Since Spring is here, I rip up all my autumn crops and plant the spring seeds I'd been saving.



It's a cool effect watching the snow get sparser and sparser in my own biome. Oh, hey, I never knocked off those two scaffolding blocks on the upper window! Well, easy now with a Break Blocks spell.



A disadvantage of Spring is that it rains a lot. But, a good time to read up on Astral Sorcery.



You open the Astral Sorcery book and then use the scroll wheel to get to this display. Pretty effects on the way, like you're zooming toward a star cluster. The immediately relevant sections are the two on the left and the one in the top middle.



The one in the upper left discusses making modded paper, but the relevant part is that you need Aquamarine, a mod resource that is found in outdoor, underwater sand. The texture is sand with some blue dots added so you have to look for it; it's easy to miss. Aquamarine is essential to getting started in general, so that's the first priority.

The lower left page discusses Ancient Shrines. You have to find one of those to progress in the mod because two early essential mod tools can only be crafted there. There are also smaller shrines which aren't useful in themselves, but which can be torn down for materials and, sometimes, hidden goodie chests.



And the one in the middle discusses Marble, another essential material for the mod's multiblock structures (which become very large after a while). It's supposed to be placed underground in worldgen, but in practice I find the best source is looting the lesser shrines you find.

I'll hunt for Aquamarine along the ocean shore, and take the opportunity to fill out another maxed map, to the south of me.



I head south, east of the Dead Swamp (with Moose) southish of me, past this scenic RTG lake and into the Land of Lakes biome beyond. Land of Lakes is nice to look at, but a bit annoying to travel through because it's full of shrub trees and tiny ponds. The Blue Slimes start POURING down from the islands above as I approach. I just avoid them as a waste of time as I have all the Blue Slime I'll likely ever use.



Soon I'm on my boat on the map to the south.



I had some trouble finding Aquamarine in creative flyarounds, but I find some almost immediately once I pass Land of Lakes, which has a gravel beach and so no sand and no Aquamarine.

I continue quickly finding aquamarine; although I see a couple of dangerous-looking sealife I don't get bothered by them. Except the time I hit a jellyfish and get briefly blinded and poisoned. But it's brief, and no buggy lingering poison effect this time.



Then I see this jellyfish in the water and get out to test Shocking Fling on it. First zap, it just rises to the top of the water. Second zap, it bounces a little. What is with these superpowered Better Animals creatures? Third zap,



Oh,that is *embarassing*. This isn't my usual Hardcore, so it's recoverable, but maybe Psi wouldn't be a good choice for a Hardcore world. Not the best of ideas to play when an accidental right double-click can kill you by doublecasting a strong spell. This wasn't an accident, just me not paying attention.

I restart back near home, run in, grab a bed and some wood, and head back, dodging moose and Blue Slime. I have to sleep in the Land of Lakes. Next morning I reach the ocean, plop down a boat, and soon:



My stuff is all over the place. I was on land, but some are four deep in the water. I'm not sure when the last time I did this was, because I normally play hardcore. Maybe in Dulciphi's world, eight years ago?

Once I have everything, I build a chest to hold the dreck I've picked up like various sized lily pads so I'll have some inventory space, and continue.

Next is the Highlands where I got off the boat in Episode 02. There I find:



A Harvestcraft Tropical Garden? Something is off here. Could be BoP biome coding (RTG's problem with the gravel beach is that Grassland is mysteriously marked as a mountain biome) or maybe Harvestcraft's response. I knock it over but only get a fiber producing plant, none of the interesting tropical foods.

I continue finding a lot of Aquamarine, collecting almost two stacks, which should be plenty for now. After a while, I come to a river going into a regular forest and turn in, since it roughly heads toward home. Unlike vanilla rivers, RTG rivers are usually boatable - that was one of my contributions to the mod.



I spot this Better Animals duck, which fortunately is not yet another supercritter out to kill me.



I say regular Forest, but this ain't vanilla. I spend a lot of love on the RTG terrain, and WhichOnesPink spent a lot of love on the trees. He wanted to make them beautiful, and I think he succeeded. But even better, RTG Forests aren't all the same. The tree types vary from place to place; sometimes these big beauties, sometimes their smaller siblings, sometimes the vanilla shrubs, and sometimes assorted mixtures, like here. We thought it would keep things interesting.



I go through this BoP Rainforest, normally nearly impenetrable, but boatable on a river. Here I start taking damage for some reason. I stop the boat and get out. It turns out to be a Better Animals Eel. It takes a lot of sword whacks to kills it, even though it's only supposed to have 5 hearts. According to the Wiki, they're supposed to be neutral mobs that only attack when you are holding food or provoke them. I wasn't doing either. Guess this one didn't get the memo.



Next is the biome I thought was dayspawning and raced through in Episode 02. I should have recognized it; it's RTG's (basically Pink's) version of Roofed Forest. Pink wanted less cartoony trees, although it's still pretty dark and indeed mildly dayspawning.



Then it's the Dead Swamp next to home. Almost there, but it's getting dark - and I see a moose. I pillar up to Shocking Fling it like the last two, but it's out of range. So I just bed down on my pillar.

Next morning I pull out my loaded crossbow and skewer it. The vanilla mobs would be dead, but Mr. 26-hearts Moose is still there. Crankcrankcrank, chwoomph!, and it's dead. But I spy ANOTHER moose and have to off it too. Then I pillar down and head home.

I spend the rest of the day sorting what I've collected, doing farm chores, and reading the Astral Sorcery tome.



I sleep to this calming sunset. Nice to be home.

Next episode: Marble, and looking for an ancient shrine.

Now I'm looking for marble and for an Ancient Shrine. There are two small shrines on the Grasslands I can strip for materials and a large shrine I think is an Ancient Shrine in the Ice Plains just to the northeast. In addition, there are rabbits in that Ice Plains and I need rabbit hides for a backpack I can make with Tinker's.

Before I go, I check the recipe for the Resonating Wand, the next thing I'm planning to make (at the Ancient Shrine; it has to be made there).



Uh-oh. Because I haven't even *seen* an enderman yet. Or a village, where I might be able to buy a pearl. But I'll just forge ahead and deal with that problem when I get it.



One small shrine is up on Prairie Hill. Shame to tear down this pretty little ruin, but I need the supplies.



Cows are escaping their pen: I'm not sure why. It's not really a problem as I need to start butchering them now. You can see the other small Grassland shrine in the background. I tear this down for materials, too, but it has a hidden chest with - an Ender Pearl! So that particular problem solved itself before it ever came up.

Next I grab some carrots for the rabbits and head over to the Ice Plains shrine.



It looks right, but where's the crystal? Well, at least I can get the rabbits. Although, they're much harder to find than the first time I came here, when I saw them immediately.



Ooh, there's a Harvestcraft Frost Garden. I knock it over and it has peas. I don't really *need* it but it could still add some variety to my recipes.



Eventually i find a rabbit. So cute! I start luring it towards home but it's SO slow. This is the slowest luring I've ever done. Eventually I get to the Grasslands, but I pass though a group of pigs. And *they* are much more interested in the carrot than the bunny. Soon I have six pigs following me - and the bunny I really want wanders off.

Ok, then. I lure the pigs back to base and into the large fenced area where the crops are. Four go in, but two get stuck at the gate. I give up, close the gate, and off the 2 outside - I don't need a large pig farm; I have plenty of food.

Then I grab a half stack of fences and build a little enclosure where the bunny wandered off. I'm thinking about the fact that I've got to do ANOTHER lure round to get this bunny a mate and I don't want to have to lure all the way back home from there twice on top of that. If I can't bring Mohammed to the mountain, I'll bring the mountain to Mohammed.

Soon I get the one rabbit into the enclosure and head back to get more.



And now I find FOUR. Feast or famine. I lure them all into the enclosure - S L O W L Y - and breed 2 pairs.

But the baby rabbits promptly jump out of the pen! So back to the base, get some more fencing.



I double the height and get the baby bunnies inside. Phew!

Back home to magick up some carrots and get a stack of Eclogite fences to secure the Ancient Shrine, because I've found some relevant info on-line. I do some chores while at home.



My Blinkfooted spell also has a use if I don't have a block to the right of it in my hotbar. Then it just teleports me without placing a block. This turns out to be very handy for getting through a 2 high fence with jumpy bunnies.

I get to the Shrine and start securing it. First I make sure it's a 2 block jump up to get into the Shrine, everywhere, and I light the Shrine thoroughly. Then I start a security fence around it. I probably don't need a double layer of security but that's my Hardcore instincts kicking in.

I don't get it all done before nightfall is close, and I didn't think to bring a bed. But, not a problem:



Plenty of wild sheep in the nearby Grassland, still.

Come morning, I have a demonstration of why it's a good idea to journal worlds. I've done this before, in a non-journaled world, but I had forgotten where the Crystals were in these Ancient Shrines:



The crystals are INSIDE, in a hidden room.



There are chests inside, with another Ender Pearl, assorted minor goodies, and some Constellation Paper. This gives me some information about 2 of the "constellations" in the mod. Learning about the Constellations is essential to the higher-end abilities in the mod. It's a long road though, and I'll talk about it later.

I've found Ender Pearls in 2 of the 3 Shrines so far so I'm not sure why they use it as a gateway item if the mod essentially provides it for free.



I build a dropshaft entrance to the roof so I don't have to come in the side, and close off the hole I put in the side.

It turns out I didn't bring enough fencing. Rusty! So I run back home, get some more, and run back. I try to breed the bunnies on the way, but it hasn't been long enough yet.

Fencing completed, I wait until dusk to make my wand, because supposedly the crafting only works under starlight.

I place a crafting table beneath the Crystal. And now, on a crafting table empowered by a Crystal and under starlight:



I make my resonating wand.



And now I'm ready for the next step in Astral Sorcery: finding Rock Crystal.

Next episode: Mod Problems.

All excited, I snooze the night there and race home to start finding Rock Crystal. It spawns below y=7, so not something you run across, but the Resonating Wand makes them glow so you can dig down to them. I head down to the branch mines and hunt around for the glow, but I find nothing. Odd, it was pretty easy in my nonjournaled game years ago. Well, the manual says it needs starlight, so maybe I have to wait for night (I don't remember having to do that, though).

It's supposed to create sparks visible at the surface at night, so I figure I'll do that. Farm chores in the meantime; Magick up Amaranth, breed cows. Come nightfall I climb up the roof and:



Nada.

I wait for a while, look all around, but nothing.

I'm *supposed* to see something like this pic I took in Creative:



This is a problem. My first suspicion is that the ore doesn't generate with Underground Biomes changing the base stone. This was a big problem when I was running the mod many years ago, but I mostly fixed it by altering timing and providing APIs for other modders to use. And it *wasn't* a problem when I ran these two mods together before.

So I spend several hours (yuck) doing experiments in Creative (sigh) and eventually find out the problem. My initial concern wasn't the problem. The ore *does* generate, but the new UBC team prettifies it by "UBifying" the ore - replacing the ore with an ore that produces the same drops, but has the appropriate UBC background instead of vanilla stone. Which looks great, and normally is no issue at all, but the Resonating Wand does NOT recognize them as Rock Crystal so no glows and no sparks. Well. This isn't good. This wouldn't be easy to mod out, and I'm not even set up to write mods at the moment.

After a while I decide to put in CraftTweaker and add a recipe to make Rock Crystal from Diamond and Aquamarine:



Too easy, perhaps, but I didn't find Rock Crystal supplies particularly limiting in my prior run-through. Maybe I'll change it to require more Diamonds.

During a rainstorm I spot an Enderman inside my hotel wing and go for him. It doesn't try porting during the fight, which seems a bit odd.



I win, but down to 2 1/2 hearts? With full iron armor and a sped-up sword (although no enchantments)? What did I do wrong?

My picks are fully repaired (have been for a while) so I do a round of branch mining. I hit a cave and finally dare some caving.



There are several pools of lava, though, so only 2 zombies. There's a dark branch going up but I just seal it off.

When finished, I use Tinker's to put some Redstone hasting on my Mattock (axe/hammer hybrid) and head to the surface for farm chores. As I'm walking over to the farm I see a blocky greed thing out of the corner of my eye THAT'SACREEPER!DIVEDIVEDIVE!



That's what I get for procrastinating on lighting up my farm enclosure. No serious damage, although I don't know what crops got knocked off there becuase of my higgledy-piggledy farm layout.

The next thing I need is a Luminous Crafting Table:



A luminous Crafting Table collects starlight and is able to do the Astral Sorcery recipes that require starlight to work. Once I have this I won't have to keep going back to the Ancient Shrine. Now that I look at it, I realize I could have made it at the same time as my Resonating Wand and saved a trip.



I zip over using repeated casts of my Blockfooting spell, not placing blocks but just teleporting along the surface. This is FAST. I stop at the bunny enclosure on the way to breed them. You can see several have escaped even the 2 fence high enclosure. I do a round of breeding, then butcher two of the escapees, using my crossbow because the sword doesn't one-shot them and they're a real pain to catch once they start jumping around.

I feel bad about this because IRL I have a bunny for a pet and he's just the sweetest thing ever. But no good options at the momement if I want a backpack.

Then to the Ancient Shrine to craft the Luminous Crafting Table and then blinkblinkblink back home. Except, ouch, I run out of juice midway. Still, this is FAST.

The Luminous Crafting Table needs to be at a high elevation and would be good to use at night (although it can store starlight for day use) so:



On the roof it goes.



Placing the LCT opens the next area to look at in the Astral Sorcery Manual. This contains quite a few useful items. First is the Lightwell:



This consumes Aquamarine or Rock Crystal to collect Liquid Starlight, a resource that can be used for crafting or repairing Rock Crystal tools. I make one and start feeding it Aquamarine.

There are a couple other things I'm not going to make right now, but one that's pretty interesting is the Cave Illuminator:



This can be placed on the surface and lights up caves *underneath*, which is a strong effect if you want to cave for resources. However, as Master Caver points out, this makes more mobs spawn on the surface, which I don't want at present. A real convenience for a high-output mob farm, though.

Next, you can use Rock Crystal to make tools, like a the Crystal Sword which does



Holy HECK! FOURTEEN points of damage! So I immediately make one and:



It "only" does 8.24. That's because rock crystal tools are affected by the purity and cutting of their component crystals. You can improve purity and cutting on a Grindstone (Astral Sorcery mod block) but at the cost of the size. Don't overgrind; if the size gets to 0 the tool is destroyed.



I proceed to make one and put it with the Astral Sorcery stuff on the second floor of the hotel wing. I grind the sword bit by bit, a total of six spins on the grinder, eventually getting it to an impressive 11.69 damage. But that came at the cost of reducing size from 569 to 200, so I think I'd better stop.

You probably noticed my armor is now enchanted. I finally had enough cows for a round of butchering, allowing a couple more bookcases for a total of 6; enough to do some decent enchantments. I end up with Projectile Protection II and Respiration on my Helment; Projectile Protection again on my leggings. and Protection II + Unbreaking II on my boots. Nothing great, but maybe I'll have 3 and a half hearts left vs. the next Enderman.



Interestingly, the Crystal Sword can be enchanted. (Tinker's items can't be, and can only get Tinker's enhancements). I'm going to hold off for a full power enchatment.

The next item I make is the Fosic Resonator.



This item identifies areas of high starlight potential - so faster collection for crafting. But it turns out to be a disappointment. It only works at night, and I can't see any regions from my base. I test in a separate Creative world and see all of 2 spots in 15 or so minutes of flying around. So these spots are rare, and given that I can only look at night, it's going to be unlikely I'll find any.

And finally, one last tool:



The Looking Glass, a telescope for looking for constellations.

At night, you can look at the sky and see things like this:



The stars with diffraction spikes are special: they are part of the magical astral sorcery constellations. They move backwards as you scan with the scope so in-game they really jump out at you.



Then you need to figure out which of the constellations you're looking at and then trace the lines in the sky to "discover" the constellation. It's not so obvious in screenshots, but in-game it was clearly Armara.

I trace it once and - nothing happens. But being stubborn, I trace it again and:



So the mod is demanding on placing the lines. So if you try one and don't get it, don't fritz out.

Once discovered, the power of a constellation can be used to attune items or players, to provide a wide variety of benefits. Armara (armor) provides a lot of defense and damage protection, which certainly suits my style. It's a long road, though; first I have to improve my Luminous Crafting Altar (an involved process) and then build an Infusion Altar, which requires a 19x19 structure (!) For interest's sake I'm *not* going to just barrel along; I'll mix in some other activities.

Next week: Hotel meets crafting altar!

While I'm moving forward on Astral Sorcery I'm working on a couple of things for the base. A lot of this episode actually overlaps with the previous one but I think it's easier to follow when it's split like this and not strictly chronological.



First is getting a full Enchantment setting going. That means lots of leather, so lots of cow breeding. Very easy now that I can zap up a half-stack of grain with Psi in a minute or too. My farm is producing very slowly - I only get a few items every time I drop by. Right now, in Spring, wheat and Amaranth don't grow naturally, so I'm getting only a very little grain from some Barley I have planted. If I didn't have Psi, I'd need a pretty large Barley farm.

As I'm getting leather, I'm also getting Beef. And I'd like to use it. Harvestcraft has a "Burger Series" of various burgers and cheeseburgers, all with high food values. (Yes, the mod author is American. How did you guess?) All count as different foods for Spice of Life - so very valuable to me. First, I want a little extra meat, so I use the Harvestcraft meat Grinder:



This produces two ground beef for each raw meat, so lots for burgers.

The process for making burgers is fairly complicated. First, you need a lot of Salt, which you process from water in a pot.

Then, you need a lot of Fresh Milk, which you process to Heavy Cream in a Mixing Bowl and then to Butter, using a Saucepan and Salt.

Then you need a lot of some grain, which you grind to Flour using the Mortar, and then mix to Dough by adding water and Salt in a Mixing Bowl. That you bake in Bakeware to Bread.



Then you combine the Bread and Butter in Bakeware to make Toast, and then you can finally fry up the Burger in a Skillet with the Ground Beef and the Toast.

This is all about the same amount of work making one or 32, so there's a BIG advantage to making these recipes in large batches, like here.

But I'm not stopping there. I make up a bunch of Cheese (Heavy Cream + Salt in a Mixing Bowl) and combine that with my Hamburgers to get Cheeseburgers (are you getting hungry yet? I am.) Now I go to my ingredients chest to pull out Lettuce and Tomato to make DELUXE Cheeseburgers and -

No Tomatoes? NOOO!

Well, if I didn't have Psi this would be a minor disaster as Tomatoes won't grow until summer. But I've got my magic gun, I mean CAD, and head out to the farm to find -

An armored zombie on the farm. I'd lit it up but obviously missed a spot (sorry, no pic). Well, no Zombie is keeping me from my Deluxe Cheeseburger! So I pull out my trusty Iron Crossbow and CHOONK - oh wow, he lived? Well, crankcrankcrank CHOONK and now he's dead.





And now I can make my Deluxe Cheeseburgers and Bacon Cheeseburgers (with cooked Pork), leaving some as Cheeseburgers for variety and stuff them all in my recipes chest. A fair amount of work, but entertaining, and this stash is enough to feed me for weeks of game time, although I'll still have to mix in some more foods for variety.



The Iron Choonker claims its first chicken jockey.

Food out of the way, I have an idea for combining my hotel build and Astral sorcery. Astral Sorcery requires a series of crafting Altars, each requiring a larger support structure of surrounding Marble blocks, eventually up to 11x11. It needs to be at high elevation and to be used at night. So, put it on the roof of the main building!

This does require some changes to my plans. Symmetry is important in most buildings, but the math of Minecraft creates a strong distinction, and often conflict, between even-length symmetry and odd-length symmetry. The Astral Sorcery Altars have odd symmetry but my hotel plans were even symmetry. So I have to expand by a block to a 17x17 main building. This will leave the wings slightly off, but not enough to make me rebuild it.



Meanwhile I try a mostly-iron pick, mostly as an experiment. I skip brach mining and try mining a path to the Rainforest Mountain, hoping it counts as a Mountain biome and so I might find an Emerald for the Tinker's version of Silk Touch. It doesn't have that much durability and I don't get all that far, though, and I don't even get to the Rainforest.



Afterwards I head up, intending to magick up so grain for the cows but I get distracted by a zombie at the gate. Off him, head over to pick up the Rotten Flesh, spot this Creeper and run back to crossbow him, off that zombie you see coming, back off to ANOTHER Creeper that tries to sneak up.



Then it starts raining AND this spider comes over the fence at me. So after I finish him, I run over to the hotel wing to sleep the night and pick up my drops in peace.

Y'all may have wondered "hey, how is a combat-incompetent like Zeno getting all these great death shots". Well, yes, I got my modding setup running, sort of, and updated Damage Screenshots to 1.12. Even better, Damage Screenshots seems to cause much less performance trouble, possibly because I have an SSD now instead of a hard drive. I did adjust the shots to take place a little earlier after this because they seem to be coming a bit late in the death sequence. I was trying to avoid sword strike animations but it's not worth it.

Unfortunately recipe registries and map animation have been drastically altered so I don't know when or even if I can update Explorercraft for a Map Atlas.



Now I try another Psi QOL of life spell for building, "Blocks Out". This places 3 blocks, starting at my feet, going out in the direction I'm looking. Explaination: Top row; Me, the axis I'm looking along, multiplied by 5 to be five blocks long. Middle row: my location, 2 down added to that from the vector below, and the Place Blocks trick, starting at that location and continuing for 3 (from below) blocks along the direction from above (where I'm looking). I was limiting it tightly because I wasn't sure how whether it could replace blocks, and I didn't want that happening accidentally (it can't).



And hey, it works! MUCH easier than shift-walking out. But the block beneath me counts so I'll increase the number some.



And now I start testing my idea for putting the Astral Sorcery crafting altars on top of the hotel lobby roof. I'm using smoothstone Soapstone slabs, to test that as well, and I'm surprised it's not too different from the brick slabs I used on the north wing. But I do think it's a little better. I was hoping the altar on top would be a decorative element but now I realize I'll have to be well away to see it with the low roof pitch so only from a distance.



Now I start securing the floor of the lobby. For now I'll just make it 2 blocks up to get in. I haven't got any interior plans, so, also for now, I'll just put in a spruce plank floor like in the wing. I build an "X" in spruce first to double-check my counts.



While putting in flooring, I have my first decorative idea. I love nice sunset view windows, as anybody who's read me over the years knows, and I always intended a big view window in the lobby. I have the idea of framing with fake "trees" of wood placed in the plank walls.

I build a partial and decide to move the "branches" up because they're too low.



Psi is a real help here because I can use Descent to get down and skimp on scaffolding.



When I finish I like the effect, but the "branches" are *still* too low so I'm going to bump them up 2 more blocks. It also needs some relief - maybe I can add another layer of wood or maybe some leaves. Later. (The ladders are temporary.)



As with most good Minecraft roofs, there's an artistic effect from beneath and I think this will look pretty good once I take out the scaffold blocks and fill in the access holes.

Top is at 88 blocks; hopefully that will be high enough for Astral Sorcery (crosses fingers).



Outside view is promising although, again, branches need to be higher and it needs some relief. This is going to be the "back" of the hotel, FWIW.



As this has been going along I've been continuing to breed and butcher cows, and I've finally finished the Enchantment Area! Here you see again the clash between the even symmetry of the window and the odd symmetry of the Enchantment Table.



And now that I've got some Leather to spare, I can make something I've been lusting after for ages: the Tinker's Armory Traveller's Knapsack. This can be attached to a Tinker's Armory chestplate to double your storage, which is VERY desirable in this world with 16 types each of stone, gravel, and sand, and dozens of Harvestcraft crops and fruits.

Note this is not part of the Tinker's base mod but from the Tinker's Armory addon mod.

I can make this at a regular crafting table, but I can't attach it to my armor there. I head down to the Smeltery area to use the armor table and find it needs an armor *FORGE*, which just like the tool forge needs 4 blocks of iron to craft. But I have lots of iron now; a dozen blocks in storage and enough ore for 12 more in the output doubling Smeltery, so:



Callooh! Callay! I can do some serious expeditions now.

As long as I'm down here I'll do some mining. I had already added the Diamond modifier (diamond dust edge) to my iron pick and it nearly tripled the durability. Now I try to add Haste to it but:



I can only add 2 levels (to Haster, not Hastest). Tinker's puts a cap by limiting the number of modifiers you can add to the tool. Sometimes multiple levels count as multiple modifiers, and sometimes they don't, this is a "do" situation. There are ways to modify it, and I'll play with them later, but not today.

I trying continuing to mine towards the Rainforest, hoping it will have emeralds. I have one cave breakthrough but seal it without trouble. This time I do reach the Rainforest. I move into a Gneiss zone, and then:



Blueshist! This is excellent because it's a great decorative stone - especially for faux skies, which might go pretty well with fake trees on the walls of the hotel. It's also fairly soft, so fast mining.

Unfortunately after a while I come across a Tanzanite Ore. So I think BoP is using that for the Gem in the biome and I'm not going to get Emeralds here. Well, I can get Silk Touch from my Enchantment table now, although it might be a wait for the RNG to smile on me.



I get a long way but eventually I get a breakout into a cave crossways, from beneath. I'm real touchy about going into caves from underneath ever since a Hardcore game long ago where a Creeper fell on me, and the lava isn't helping. I think about using my Psi gun, I mean CAD, to set up a barrier BUT - I forgot to load my Place Block spell. Well, I've done a lot of mining (I'd have had to turn back already from inventory jam if not for the knapsack) so I turn around and go back.

I put my gains away and start roasting the Blueschist back to smoothstone for later use, and then head to the surface. On the surface I notice some summer crops I've left in have started growing, so it's summertime and I rip up my Spring crops and replant. I put about 20 Spring crops into the gardener's shed (my original base) for next year.




While I'm at that I decide to use some of the ingredients that have been piling up for recipes like Bubble Tea, Sausage (which then goes into Sausage Rolls), Meaty Stew, and Pot Roast - trying to use the Beef that piled up getting an Enchantment table. I now estimate I have food for about 60 Minecraft days. I'll probably slack off soon on food prep, but for now I'm still enjoying figuring out what recipes to use.

It occurs to me I can now use my Enchantment Table to enchant the Crystal Sword. So:



Foo. Not so useful for what would be a top melee weapon. So I'll have to wait a while until I can shift that.

Now time for another Psi QOL building spell: Place a block. Initially I botch the spell layout and have to spend some time debugging, which detracts from the benefit, but that's all part of the game. Eventually



Explanation: Me in the two top left boxes. In the middle, my location, and top right and bottom left my look direction (duped because of the limitations programming on a 2D grid). Middle right those are combined to get the block I'm looking at; middle bottom combined to get the side of that block I'm looking at; more precisely a length one vector pointing in that direction. Those two are added to get the position one towards the side I'm looking (which is where you'd place a block normally), and then far right Place (one) Block.

So a lot of work to do what you'd do with right-click EXCEPT it can work out to Psi's max range of 32. So I can fix blocks that otherwise would have taken a lot of pillaring or scaffolding to reach.

Now to test:



Oops, forgot to switch from my Break Blocks spell. Hehhehheh.



There we go.



And it proves very useful moving those decorative faux tree limbs up. I can shoot out the blocks with Break Blocks, and then put in replacements from the ground, with no scaffolding. It's a bit slow because at that distance aiming is a bit tricky, but still a big plus. And, now I think the placement is pretty good although I'll still need a bit more relief or decoration.

Place Block also is handy working on the walls. I can use it to build a walkway to get started at altitude, or use it to fill in spots I have to leave open to get out.



Now I start laying out the Starlight Altar support structure on top of the roof. It's this area of Sooty Marble, surrounded by rows of Marble Brick, surrounded by rows of Marble Arch, with columns of Chiseled Marble and Marble Columns on the four corners. These torches will have to go to use it (it will have to be completely open to the sky) but I'm leaving them in for now because I don't want any untimely spawning.

I'm short about half the Marble I need so I can't finish right now.

Next day I go to the Small Shrine right next to my base, which I hadn't completely looted, and rip up the floor for supplies. This gives me plenty to finish the Starlight Altar collection structure.



I put in the materials for crafting the uprade but - not enough starlight. Why? Not really sure other than I'm running my Starlight Collector to get liquid Starlight for various uses and sometimes Starlight collecting machines interfere with one another.



New moon, maybe that's it?

While up there I look for another constellation but all I can see is Armara, which I've already found. As the night wears on my starlight DECREASES so this is going the wrong way.



I spend the night sniping monsters but never get enough starlight.

Next evening, though:



Enough Starlight! It's still new moon, so not that. The Liquid Starlight collector has used up the Aquamarine I put in it and is currently quiescent, so it was probably the competition.



A LONG animation later:



And I do mean long!



And I'm on to the next level of Astral Sorcery.

Next episode: hunting for payoff.

I've been looking for a payoff from Astral Sorcery, but haven't found a good one yet. The Crystal Tools *would* be, except I'm better off with my regenerating Tinker's tools. Attunement is a possibility, but requires an Attunement Altar which is 19x19, and I don't have *nearly* that much marble yet.

If I could get a better enchantment on the Crystal Sword, that would be pretty good, so I enchant a Bow to change my seed:



I get Power IV, Unbreaking III. A pretty good bow. But - it doesn't change the enchantment for the Crystal Sword?? Weird.

Then I try making the Crystal Sword bigger by immersing it in Liquid Starlight. If it's bigger I can grind it down more to get closer to its max damage.



After about 2 minutes it soaks up the Starlight and:



Size 205 to 461, but the purity and cut have gone backwards. I guess I should have maxed out the size before I ground it.

I could go out adventuring to get the marble I need, but I actually have some mod changes I'd like to make first, so I want to try to put that off a bit. So I'm going to change gears and take a different goal.

I do test the Bow for a comparison with the Iron Crossbow. At least I have a use for all those chickens.



Up close it's better (after that first shot) because faster fire makes up for the lower damage.



At a distance, though, the Crossbow is way better because it's much easier to aim. Shots go EXACTLY where the aim point is, even at this distance. By contrast you can see several arrows that fell short.

So, I'm going to switch goals to a combination of Tinker's and Psi. Basically I'm going to make some Psi spells to construct aerial bridges and towers, and use those to get some endstage Tinker's materials - specifically Purple Slime, from the floating Islands, and Manyullyn, an alloy made from ores Tinker's adds to the Nether.

First, picks are mostly regenerated, so it's time for a round of branch mining. Maybe I'll find some Marble there and solve my Astral Sorcery problems. I head north, into the Black Granite I'd been avoiding, as I feel tough enough to risk it and I'm hoping to find some new stones to use.



This is caving in Black Granite. This is why I've been avoiding it. I considered lightening the texture back when I ran the mod, but while it's a pain in the you know what to work with, it can be spectacular in the right build. So I left it, and my successors did the same.

After a long while I move to a Red Granite zone - also nice for builds, and then after a while:



This messy ravine is at the transition to a Komantite zone. Komantite is a useful decorative stone because it's the only yellow stone in the Underground Biomes suite. So I pull out my water bucket to work my way across and ...

I forgot to fill it before I left. Grrr. I try to snap up that water draining from above but the source is way out of reach and maybe even out of sight. Well, my inventory is pretty full and my picks are pretty worn, so I just decide to head back and come here for the next mining round.

Back at base, I'm at level 30, so I make another try at getting a better enchantment for my Crystal Sword. I make a pair of Diamond Leggings and enchant those. I don't (yet) have access to the top tier Tinker's materials like Manyullyn (an alloy made from ores it place in the Nether) so vanilla Diamond could be quite useful. I get:



No too great in general, although handy for the Nether. But it does change my sword enchantment! - to Knockback II. Foo. Well, I can do this again once I have a bit more experience.


On testing, though, it's still placing at head level. So I'll have to move it down one.

AFter the change:



AHH! SUFFOCATING! MOVE! PAUSE GAME! AGHH! NOTHINGS WORKING!!!



Phew. Evidently I need some safety precautions with this spell.

I try again, making sure I'm EXACTLY in the center of the block, and I can successfully create a shaft going up. No pic, because 5 blocks reached to the ceiling so it was just dark. So it works, although now I'm thinking I should alter it to build above my head for safety, and just assume I can build *around* me the old fashioned way.



I test it outside and it works, but I do decide to change it to start above my head. I need to use it while still inside so starting at current level is "wasting" a lot of placements.



I spend a night swatting wandering monsters for EXP and drops.



Next day I realize: I'd forgotten to plant my cactus for summer! I suspect it's late in summer, so I may have wasted my season, but oh well. I do have some Greenhouse Glass I could use to make them grow all year if needed. After I plant this I realize I'd ALSO forgotten to plant cane, but I think I can do without for a year as the Paperbark trees generate plenty of paper and I have a fair amount of sugar. The most filling recipes are generally savory anyway.

Now for the second part of my aerial construction toolkit, I want a causeway spell. My initial idea is to expand on my "Blocks Out" spell to build some blocks out at my feet plus a row of rails at each side.



I can get some rails, but I just can't squeeze in both a set of rails and the footbridge on my current 6x6 grid limit. The problem is that I need a lot of vectors to move the positions from my head and each vector takes up at least 2 spaces - one for a constant and then one for a vector construct operation. Worse, to go sideways I need even more complicated operations. Add in the complications from a 2D grid and I just can't make it fit.



I spend another evening swatting monsters (that witch took two hits) while I muse. Then I decide to upgrade my gun, I mean CAD, to the almost-top level.



I got some Prismarine from a Sea Lantern in a Astral Sorcery shrine I knocked over and I can use this for a rainbow colored gun, I mean CAD, which I expect will be pretty.



And here's the result. Up to 32 operations (complexity), 6 simultaneous tricks (projection), on a 9x9 grid (bandwidth) with 10 different spells stored in the CAD (sockets). There are some choices at the top end: there's an alternative with more projection but less complexity, and one with more spells for less bandwidth. But my plans involve very complicated spells, so I decide to maximize complexity and bandwidth.



A summer thunderstorm starts up, so I do some more sniping for EXP.

And on through the night because I'm aiming for 30 to do another enchantment. But I'm still not there, so I head over to the floating Slime Islands to tussle with the Blue Slimes that fall off there:



And FINALLY to 30 again. So back home for more enchanted Diamond Armor:



Depth Strider, but it comes out with Fire Resistance as well. So good in the nether and the water, although not an ideal general purpose boot.

So now what can I get for my Crystal Sword?



Mwahahaha!

Next episode: cashing in.

With my new souped-up Psi gun, I mean CAD, I now want to try an ambitious spell to build a solid corridor in front of me - a block above and below, plus two on the sides for walls. Then I'm going to loopcast it so that each cast is one block further away. Hey presto, 10 block long closed corridor anywhere! Use in the Nether should be obvious.

I'm finding designing big spells in the game consumes a lot of time and is a bit slow due to the interface so I've taken to writing them out on scratch paper in rough grids in an idiosyncratic shorthand. This spell takes some thinking, but eventually I have a draft. It's big and uses most of the 9x9 grid I now have available.



I start by testing just part, because even inputting it is a fair amount of work. This part does the right wall. Explanation: Loopcast index at the bottom, plus 1 so it starts one in front of me and not around (suffocation boo!). Following the lines from there, that multiplies my axial view direction, so that many blocks in the direction I'm looking. Right above the axial look is a crossproduct with a vector from the right which is 1 down. This produces a vector perpendicular to both to my front and to down, which is to say to my side. On the far right is me and my position; this is added to the vector going forwards, and then to the side. This is used for Place Block (where the red box is; I took the screenshot before I was done). This is at the level of my head. Then 1 down is added above that, and that get used for another Place Block, now at leg level.



And it works! (This is me shooting it down afterwards.)

While I'm at it, I notice some floating bits from a Redwood tree and decide to blink up and shoot *that* down to. But:



Once again Blinkfooted malfunctions when I'm going up. So the problem isn't just occasional. But I don't feel like debugging it now.

I shift gears to go ahead and get the Crystal Sword enchanted. I need three levels and decide to get them mining.



My picks are not yet fully regenerated - the beefy diamond-enhanced iron one take a LONG time - so I make a sharpening kit to fix it. A sharpening kit in the same material as the item's head can fix it. Make the pattern, make a stone version, use it in the Smeltery casting table for a cast, use the cast for an iron sharpening kit, and I'm good to go.

I head to the start of the Komantite area, where I'd had to stop before.



The blockage turns out to be a ravine. But I remember my bucket of water this time, so I just obsidinize the lava and collect the exposed ores.

After a bit of that, I plow north through the Komantite, which switches to Gneiss after a while. Those who played in Dulciphi's world with me might remember I like making LONG mining tunnels as safe anytime travel routes in dangerous places. Nowhere I'm particularly planning to go ATM, but I'm planning ahead.

Even with my Traveller's Knapsack, I fill up with multiple types of gravel and cobblestone, plus BoP gemstones, sooner than expected. Fortunately I do get to level 30 first.



I enchant my sword - mmm, those stats - and head out to test it on a skeleton lurking in the shadow of the eaves.



To my surprise, it survives the first hit. He'd sidestepped my first swing, maybe I'm swinging too fast.



But at least it was almost dead, as the sun makes short work of it.



Now I add on the right side for my passage spell. Mostly a mirror of the left side earlier, with the order of the cross product reversed so it goes to the other side, and some rearranging to get around the loopcase index.



And that works too. The gap is from when I stepped forward in the new corridor - the positions are relative to my, so when I moved 1 forward the next round of passage moved 2 - 1 for me, 1 for the advancing loopcast. Maybe I could use this to install a viewing gallery.

But there's a problem. I'm at 26 of my maximum 32 operations, and that's not enough left for top and bottom.



I use connections - the dotted lines - to reuse some of my ops (like a down vector for both crossproduct and position) and get it to 22. That should be enough for the rest...



Arggh, 1 short. This is like programming in assembler, long, long ago.



I manage to squeeze it down to 32 and it's testing time!



Wait, that's not right! Head back in, look at that spell. Oh, I used entity *look* when I should have used entity *place* (sheepish grin - I do have a lot of sheep to imitate)



Success! Pretty cool!

I was wondering if it was Autumn yet but, nope, I get another thunderstorm.

I figure I can use a similar loopcast trick for the ascending dropshaft.



Actually, it's pretty easy because I can just go x+1, x-1, z+1, z-1, and not worry about facing and extracting sideways with cross products. Explanation; middle left me, and then my position. Middle right 1 plus the loopcast index (so the number of blocks up for that cast). Those get added together in the center to get the centerpoint of each cast's blocks. Those then get added for a vector for x+1, x-1, etc., in each corner and each then used for a block place. So four blocks around a spot above me.



Works first time.



I take a break to use my expanding meat supply for a couple of recipes - Suadero, Spaghetti with Meatballs, and Chicken Noodle Soup



And to castigate a thief at the chicken coop. Cops, never there when you need them.

And then it's down to the mines for a field test. Now I try a long straight corridor to the east. Before I'd stopped because I hit a cave with lava. But now...



Zap! whoomwhoomwhoom And no problem.



But I keep hitting these lava pools. I can just Blocks Out across these - since the roof is low there will be no mobs so I don't need walls - but it is kind of annoying.



Eventually I come to a cave connecting to a large lava pool. I head up the cave a bit until I encounter this messy bit and just block it off, collecting ores from the area I've lit.



Then I obsidianize the lava and collect ores from *there*.

My ore pick (with one level of Fortune) is almost worn out but I haven't gotten any diamond yet. So I press on until I finally get *one* diamond ore depost.



Wow, just in time.

It takes a long time to put my mining gains away. I have more than a stack of iron ore. I head up shortly before dawn.



Indulge in a bit of dawn sniping.



And use the levels for an enchantment. This one comes out Unbreaking III, Blast Protection IV - useful, but no Protection enchants yet, I'd forgotten about this annoying aspect of vanilla enchantment - having to do multiple enchants to get something you want. My last two journals were using Thaumcraft and Botania, respectively, and in both of those there are mod enchantments you can just pick (although they are more work than vanilla enchantments). I must have had this problem in my unjournaled Astral Sorcery game (I never reach the stage where *that* has a variety of enchantment options) but - not journaled, so forgotten. Well, I've got a good Nether set with Blast Protection and Fire Resistance, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

But the Psi construction spells are doing their job, so now it's time for something a bit more ambitious:

Next episode: Aerial testing!

Spells are tested, so I load up with 6 stacks of cobblestone and 80 ladders to make an assault on slime island!



Whoa. That's up there.

Build two blocks to start my ladder, activate the spell, whoomwhoomwhoomwhoomwhoomwhoom...



I had expected a lot of inventory swapping, because Psi placement spells draw from the hotbar stack to the right of the CAD. But, it draws evenly from *all* stacks of that item in your inventory. So in this case it places 4x32 blocks = 2 stacks of cobble, before reaching its 32 block limit and throwing an error (this is saying the operation in position 4x4 of the spell is throwing the error).

Place ladders, climb, repeat. Or try to because it's tricky to pick the right spot and not move any on the ladders. I eventually find the best solution is to stop placing ladders 2 below the top of the shaft, and then stand atop the ladder for the next section.



I use all my cobble and - still not there? How high IS this thing?

Back to base, 3 more stacks of cobble, whoomwhoomwhoomwhoomwhoomwhoom...



And I didn't bring enough ladders either. Back to base, craft another stack of ladders, back again, whoomwhoomwhoomwhoomwhoomwhoom...

I reach the island's level. Now switch to Passage Out and to the island! Click whoomwhoomwhoomwhoomwhoomwhoom...

*STILL* not quite enough cobble. I've exhausted all the Eclogite cobble I brought to the surface, about 8 stacks. So back to base, but it's getting late, so I plan to go back tomorrow.



While in the mine getting more cobble I start roasting some Black Granite to Smoothstone because I have an Idea! But you'll have to wait a while on this one.

Sleep the rest of the night, get up in the morning.



There's a skeleton lurking in the surface pool next to the future hotel lobby. Pull out crossbow, dispatch. Head out to collect goodies..



Wait, there's another one? Duck out of sight, crankcrankcrank, CHOONK!
Ok, *now* I can get the goodies.



Oh good grief. Pull out sword, whackwhackwhack. IS THAT IT?

(silence)

Phew. OK, back to plans.



Now, finally, I reach the island. y = 166. No wonder I kept running out of cobble. Just the ladder shaft needed over 6 stacks. Just whacking these purple slime leaves here gives me a Purple Slime Sapling I could farm to produce Purple Slime, which is what I want, but I want to shut down the Blue Slime spawning or at least convert it to a farm.

I break in, but the Blue Slimes have either despawned or fallen off



I collect another sapling, and some Slimy Dirt to grow my saplings on and build a 2 high barrier around the pool of blue slimy water that spawns the Blue Slimes (or so I thought).



At the bottom I take the opportunity to snipe a spider hiding in the shadow, and place some torches underneath the island to prevent spawns there.



And I realize Slimes are EVERYWHERE. I kill and kill and kill and still they come. They're still falling off the island!



Back to the island, and evidently they're still either escaping or spawning on the plain slimy dirt.

I have to sleep the night up on the island.

Maybe they're using the (bouncy) slime blocks to escape the enclosure? So I dig all those up and then go back to the suface.



Nope. Still coming and coming and coming.



And I mean it.



I head home and make a pair of Tinker's Slime Boots. I should have made these earlier; although I didn't take a pic to show it it's TERRIFYING up there one misclick from a 100 block drop. These allow you to drop any height without damage, and bounce halfway back instead. I could have made them earlier, but didn't notice I could make the slime blocks I need by just combining 4 slime balls, of which I have plenty.

The Slime Saplings have grown, so I harvest the leaves, earning 2 Purple Slime Balls for my trouble. In the meantime, since by now it's night, I'm swatting Zombies at the fence.



One is a Zombie Villager and I wish I had the set up to cure him, as I've seen no villages and they tend to be rare in BoP RTG worlds because we block villages in most biomes where they tend to come out goofy - which is a lot. This can be altered in configs, but I'd rather not.



That's all fun and goodies, but after a while 2 spiders come over at once, immediately followed by another, and things get a *bit* hairy for a while. So, bedtime after I'm done with that.



For testing purposes I make the Tinker's Slime Slingshot. You can use this to slingshot *yourself* through the air. But you face *away* from where you're going and so it's very hard to aim. Although I can go from the base to the shaft in one hop, in practice it's not much help because I often end up still a long way away. Fun, though.

So now I decide to just destroy the spawning pool. I bring 9 buckets to pick up some slimy water and a lot of cobble to fill it in.



Goodby pool. Oddly, slimy water keeps flowing even if the source block is removed. I have to fill in every last spot.

Then I start building a passage to the other slime island, to get the purple slimy dirt I can see. Farming those saplings would work but it's just too much trouble. I'm only getting about 1 slime ball per tree. But, still not enough cobble - it's further than it looks. So go back to the first island to go home and get more and...



They're still spawning?! Not one drop of the blue slimy water that spawns them (according to Tinker's wiki) but still they come. It's like the evil energizer bunny.

Well, at least I have exp for enchantment. I want more choices, so I make an entire set of diamond armor and see what enchantments I'm offered. My options are:

Helmet: Unbreaking III
Chestplace: Unbreaking III
Leggings: Unbreaking III
Boots: Unbreaking III.

Well. Isn't that nice. My existing leggings have the weakest enchant, so I do leggings and get - Unbreaking III, Protection IV.

Oh. That did work out!



Another night of zombie swatting.

Back to the island in the morning.



Another round of slime squishing. They're sort of confined in the pen, but only sort of. I guess I'll have to half-slab?



Goal is in sight. Ready gun, click, whoomwhoomwhoomwhoom



Man, still not enough cobble? I finish with some wood. I'm not going back just for looks.



Some slimes to kill here too.



Eventually I can collect some purple slime blocks, which I can use for crafting Knightslime. Knightslime is a mid-tier Tinker's material, somewhat better than Iron, which would have been broadly useful if I'd gotten it earlier. As it is, I plan to go to the Nether soon and get ores to make Tinker's endstage material Manyullyn, so it's not worth making tools with Knightslime now, but it does have an endstage use to increase your hearts in the Tinker's addon Construct's Armory. I do want that.



Then yet one more round of slime squishing on the first island. This is getting really tedious.

And then back home. Phew, done.

For all the annoyances from not bringing enough materials for my Psi spells and Blue Slime spawning not working the way I expected, the Psi spells did their job. So:

Next episode: on to the Nether!

Before I go I move a fence which is right up against my crop irrigation furrows and gets in the way when I'm trying to harvest.



For a Nether Gate you need Obsidian, but Tinker's provides a (slightly) easier way to get it: you can combine a bucket of lava and a bucket of water in the Smeltery and pour it into a Casting Basin. At least, I *thought* it would be easier, but I'm not actually sure given how long it took. I actually make 20 Obsidian, which takes most of the night.

Due to my Hardcore habits, I go *very* prepared. About eight stacks of cobble, an extra set of Obsidian so I can make a gate back if I get lost, a stack of glass for viewing areas, a stack of wood, some spare iron, lots of food, a bed for the Overworld side of the portal (for night arrivals) and my bouncy boots.



I thought my access shafts and passages would look hideous, but I guess they're fine.

"Why are you going there to get to the Nether?" I hear you ask. Well, as I mentioned in Humbe76's hardcore journal, the Nether is easiest to travel near the top. The bottom has lava; the middle has lots of large voids, but the top is almost solid blocks with only the occasional cave. So once you're up there you can tunnel around to your heart's content and almost never encounter a hostile mob.

In addition, I'm going to get the Tinker's ores for Manyullyn, and Ardite is supposed to be at high elevations. With Cobalt I found some disagreement online; one source said high and one said mid; but I'll start high.

When Minecraft does a search for a counterpart portal in the Nether for one in the Overworld, it starts at the Overworld portal's height. So a higher Overworld portal means a better chance of a high Nether Portal and an easy climb to the roof. So I want to build my portal high, and the shafts I built in the last episode are the highest thing right near my base.



Lots of slimes show up to try to stop me, but they are pretty ineffectual.



I go up to about 110, chop a hole in the shaft, get out *very carefully*, and then use my Blocks out spell to construct a small cobble platform. Then I start constructing a rectangular room manually.

The small rectangular construction on the ground is the result of an embarrassing construction accident last episode. I activated my Passage Out spell with gravel next to my CAD. The spell dutifully placed all the gravel, which promptly fell to the ground 100 blocks below. Whoops. I haven't bothered to pick it up.



But Slimes start raining down on me! I guess they bounce along the top of the passage and then jump down on me. An unanticipated problem. The fight goes back and forth for a while with me retreating to the shaft to kill each wave and then dashing back to add a few blocks.



Eventually I get a small room built and then place the obsidian for the gate into the walls.

Place my bed, light the portal and ...

For some reason I am REALLY nervous. I'm super prepared, I should be fine, but I haven't done this for YEARS and my heart is still racing.



I arrive in a BoP Phantasmagoric Inferno Nether biome, and immediately start constructing a cobble shelter. The biome really surprised me, as I've played with BoP in several earlier worlds, and never noticed any of the BoP Nether biomes. This time they're all over the place. Why? No idea.

It turns out I'm at y=77, not all that high, so that high Overworld portal didn't do much good. But some, because y=77 is better than y=45. Most likely, it's just hard to find the 5 high spaces Minecraft is looking to place a portal any higher than this.

I head to a corner, active my Shaft Up spell and start laddering up. I hit the roof in only a few blocks. Now I realize there's a small fault in my plans - if I break into lava now, it'll fall on my head. But after thinking for a bit, I decide to just take that small risk.



And I encounter no lava, and start staircasing up. As always, I'm using my unpatented "Hakuna Matata" (no worries) system of always having an open block in front of me so a lava breakout flows into that and doesn't bother me. This takes some extra mining for a staircase up, but it's worth it to never have lava pour down on me.

I get all the way up to y = 117, and then start tunneling forward, with no incidents.



After a while I hit a deposit of Soul Sand, and continue on. I should have turned, because it wasn't one of the small vanilla placements but a BoP Corrupted Sands biome, so I went through well over 100 blocks of Soul Sand I have no use for, with no chance of any useful ores.



After that I encounter a passage in a BoP Undergarden biome, and step in to look at it and for ores. It *is* nice to have some variety in the Nether. No ores, though.



Continuing along, eventually my basic tunneling hangs up on a block it can't mine. Is that?



My obsidian ore-pick reveals it is! Cobalt! One of the two ores I'm looking for.

I continue on for a total of 300 blocks from where I started. In that whole time I didn't encounter *one* hostile Nether mob (the slime binding on my pick created one small slime), and I had *one* lava breakout, contained by my Hakuna Matata system. And *that's* why I like the top of the Nether - mining and travel is pretty easy up here.

The one disadvantage is none of the cool Nether pictures. So not so exciting to look at. But it works.

I still haven't found any Ardite. My picks are almost exhausted, but I try a branch mine. After a while, just before I place my next standing block, I notice something I'm about to cover up:



Is that Ardite? And, again, my ore pick confirms it is. So I've gotten the two ores I came for, although not in *nearly* the quantity I want. I was hoping to make a full armor set, which will take something like 30 blocks (Tinker's Construct armor uses more material than vanilla). But, it's a start, and I know I can come look for more in the future without serious trouble.



Back at the shelter I was planning to snap some pics of the Phantasmagoric Inferno but there are a bunch of Nether Piggies so I'll wait.

My inventory is full, even with the Knapsack, so I head back to the Overworld to process and try to make use of the Tinker's Ores.



Of course a blue slime greeting party is waiting for me. Sigh.



On coming home, I find my bouncy boots ..



Allow me to jump right over my two high walls. But it's a bit tricky and I can't do it consistently. Yet.

I start roasting the Netherrack to brick and store all that Soul Sand, and head down to the Smeltery. I throw in the Ardite and Cobalt ores and the Smeltery alloys them to:

Manyullyn! I am in business.

Next episode: Or maybe not.

But I can make a convenience item - the Serene Seasons seasonal clock. I couldn't make it before, because it needs Nether Quartz, but I found a little out there, and so now I get to make it. The color scheme is a bit unclear - I wasn't sure at first either - but the red-on-teal pattern is for Autumn. I had suspected I was already to Autumn, but evidently I'm well into it. Now I will get to see exactly when winter starts and ends and can tell you how it relates to snowfall.

Outside, you can see autumn is intensifying. Really loving these seasons.



So now my plan is to make a Nether-functional pick from Knightslime, a Tinker's material. Knightslime is made by alloying molten purple slime, Seared Brick, and iron in the Smeltery. I have gobs of iron already, you see the purple slime here, but I *will* have to make some more Seared Brick from Grout.

Knightslime is good because it has a high durability, so I can get a lot of usage out of one sharpening repair. The tinker's Ecological autorepair is just going to be too slow with the fast mining rate of Netherrack.

Going up and down my ladder shaft, I notice a white area. I've passed it a zillion times, but never checked whether it's Underground Biomes marble (of minimal use) or Astral Sorcery marble (which I need for an Infusion Altar). I'd actually long forgotten it was even there. I stop and check, and it's Astral Sorcery marble. I mine it out, and it's 33 blocks - useful, but not yet enough for an infusion altar.

Since I've done a LOT of mining at diamond level, I'm pretty confident Astral Sorcery marble spawns only at middle levels. It's not really worth mining at those level just to pick some up, so this doesn't change my plan to eventually knock over some more Astral Sorcery shrines, although now I won't need quite so much.



I'm throwing the Seared Brick into the Smeltery as it's roasting, and I now have a respectable amount of Knightslime. I'd already thrown in some purple slime, which you can see as the darker purple layer, and there was lots of iron already (the red layer).



My Smeltery is filling up, and for convenience I'd rather just keep the Knightslime in there since I'd have to remelt it for almost any use. So I finish my original plan for three levels in the Smeltery by adding a few more Seared Brick blocks. This increases the volume inside the smeltery (because there's more volume surrounded by the Seared Brick structure) so I have the space to just leave it there.



So now I pour two of those ingots to form a Knightslime pickaxe head. I combine this with a plain wooden handle (Ecological won't be particularly useful, but it's still a good handle material for the stats) and a paper binding, which has crummy stats, but which will allow another modifier to make the pickaxe fancier. As you see, it has pretty good stats to start with.



And some diamond dust makes it even better.

Now I want to add a "Higher" modifier which will make it break more than one block at a time. Very handy for the Nether, or really anywhere. That needs a slimeball, and I decide to go upstairs to get a regular slimeball and conserve my purples.



It's almost dawn, but not quite, so I indulge in some sniping. But at one point I'm at the fence collecting things and a Creeper starts towards me. I pull the crossbow, but I can't get it done and try to jump back. But apparently when a partially drawn crossbow is in your active hand, it slows your movement and I don't get far enough back ...



"Player hurts" notwithstanding, I'd gotten far enough back that I didn't lose any hearts. But there's an annoying hole in the ground where the fence was. I'm lucky that it's dawn, and nothing comes through, so I can repair it, using cobble for the ground so the next mishap won't cause as much trouble.



Since it's autumn, I rip up my summer crops to plant autumn crops. Except I don't have much I want to plant. I planted a lot of winter squash last year, but that turned out to be needed only for stock and now I can make gobs of stock from all the meat I have from leather ranching. Elderberries and Blackberries go into lighter dishes and desserts, and right now I'm leaning on hearty savory dishes for the practical reason that they provide more shanks and saturation. That leaves carrots, which grow in spring and autumn, so I plant a couple of those, and a row of Blackberries here, just in case.

There *are* other fall crops, I just don't have them.

In general with the huge amounts of food I get from ranching, I don't need farm crops like I used to, so in the future I may just plant some staples, skip seasonal replanting, and take what I get.

Oh, right, I was planning to improve my new pick -



Turns out the vertical expander to break more blocks needs purple slime specifically, so no point in getting regular slime balls. So I was partially wrong in my earlier criticism of Tinker's for putting in the slime islands - they *do* provide a valuable and limiting resource. I still think the floating islands are hideous, though. Maybe if they were a lot rarer.



While I'm at it I Diamondize my Lumber Axe, which as you may recall from Episode 05, was more than half broken from taking down one monster Redwood. More durability means more trees at once. It also doesn't autorepair just sitting in a chest, and I just can't carry all these tools around, so this will also get more oomph from a sharpening repair, which I *think* completely repairs a tool for the cost of two ingots (but will test later).

Now it's testing time.



The new Knightslime pick only takes out two blocks. I was hoping for three. I try adding another height increase, but I can't. I think I can still work with this, but three high and one wide would have been *perfect* in the Nether. This would be better in the Overworld, where I don't need to mine out the fragile floor for Hakuna Matata and then upgrade it. Perhaps I'll just use it as my main pick everywhere.



Now 16 more obsidian for 2 Reinforced modifiers for the pick. This is equivalent to Unbreaking 2, tripling the pick's lifespan, so it should be good for 4,000 blocks between repairs. Should be just fine.



I also test the Lumber Axe, chopping one giant and two smaller Redwoods. I only end up with 5 stacks of Redwood Logs though - maybe I lost some in the ground there, which has a lot of small bushes? My repair test works, though - 1 sharpening kit using 2 iron ingots completely repairs it. So the goal is to have really high durability Tinker's tools to stretch the effect of constant-cost sharpening repairs.



I get my food, supplies, and heavy armor so I'm ready to head back to the Nether to try to collect more ores for Manyullyn. But the day's almost over, so I'll do some homebody stuff for the night.



How about another Psi lesson? This is about Psi tools - they can have spells in them which get cast when they are used. I can't offhand think of any great effects on a tool, but some of the effects like "entity hit" can be used in projectile spells. So, let's try a bigger explosive bullet:



So here's one to do 3 1-strength explosions on the entity it hits. I figure spreading the energy among multiple smaller explosions will limit the property damage, which is usually undesirable.

Nighttime, so testing is easy. I spot a spider outside and:



Blowed up good, but still too much property damage to defend the homestead. Maybe for Ghasts, or underground on rock.

Damage Screenshots seems not to recognize the damage, because I also nailed a creeper but no shots.

Unfortunately no lesson completion message so I guess I'll have to do something with a tool specifically.

I snipe a zombie with the crossbow and then snooze to pick up my rewards and inspect the damage in the morning. But, in the morning I spot an Enderman. I've already put on my diamond armor for the Nether, so I decide to try to bag it. I build a platform at two height I can stand under where it can't attack, and then glare at it. But it sideslips past me and stands next to the outside wall where I can't see it. I wait a bit, then try to move out from under the platform hoping that will lure it. Initially it doesn't work, but then it shows up, now carrying a dirt block - and apparently no longer hostile.



I whack it, but still it doesn't attack me. Even with the crystal sword it takes 4 hits to kill it. At first I'm disappointed, because 13 damage seems like a lot, but by damage Endermen have 40 hits, so 4 blows is right. Now I'm not sure how the crossbow one-shots most basic mobs, since it should be doing about 16. Maybe it's 16 hearts?.

I get 2 pearls, thx Looting.



Unfortunately this has all taken too long so the drops and exp (if any) from the bombing is all gone. (But worth it, for 2 pearls). This hole is *entirely* too big to use those explosions around the base.

Still ready to go to the Nether, so I just continue on to the ladder shaft to the islands and my Nether gate.

Next episode: Back to the Nether.

The BoP Ash blocks are flammable and low resistance, so not safe for flooring.



I forgot to use stairs for my, well, stairs, so I fix that, at least most of the way up

In my main original tunnel, I ran north around y=117, and then a small branch west at y=117. Now I'm going to try a somewhat lower level, y = 102, in hopes of encountering some larger caves for quick ore searches. My idea is to find something larger, but not large enough for Ghasts, which rarely kill *me* but tend to cause, well, Ghastly damage to the flimsy Nether environment. (Also hoping for somewhat more interesting pictures.)



Did't see much Nether Quartz in my first exploration - 8 pieces in the entire episode - but I almost immediately find a deposit here, and several more later, eventually getting nearly three stacks of quartz. Is quartz less common at the very top?



Soon I find and step out into a smallish cavern, but don't spot any ores other than some Nether Quartz.



It continues into BoP Undergarden, but that's a bit large for me to want to explore ATM.

I've switched to flooring with Nether Brick *slabs* because I'm knocking out a passage three high and a full Nether Brick block needs four Netherrack. By using slabs I don't have to keep importing cobble from the Overworld, plus no Nether Piggie spawns. I plan to use full blocks in areas where I'm concerned about Ghast fire.

Even so, I run out of the slabs I brought and make a trip back to the portal to pick up some more I've been roasting (with imported coal). While I'm there, I build some more furnaces to increase my processing rate.

I spot some Cobalt Ore, so the trip is already a success because I'll be able to make *something*



Shortly after I have a mild failure with my Hakuna Matata system, because I get two lava breaks in quick succession. I have only one bucket. I go back to use the lava for smelting Netherrack, and make an extra bucket to give me a little more slack for this.

And then:



Ooh. Mind the step! That's 70 blocks down!

Per my usual protocol I install a viewing gallery with glass blocks. They usually get good pictures, and good info too. This is no exception:



Oho! A Nether Fortress! I have had some *agonizing* searches for them in the past, so it's nice to find one early and easy. Now if I didn't have Psi, that would be somewhat hard to get to, due to the unusually large void. At over 70 blocks high, this might be the largest I've ever seen; I'm used to a more layered structure. It's very wide too, so a lot of work to go around.

But with Psi I have more options. I originally envisioned using the Passage Out spell to just brute force cross gaps like that, but the Slime Island episode showed how much of a cobble hog that approach is. So now my plan is to locate the Fortress, tunnel through the roof to directly above it, and then use a spell to pillar down. We will all see how it works when I get there!

I turn left (now heading north) intending to find the z level of the fortress, and shortly am rewarded with an Ardite deposit. Just better and better. But soon:



Uhoh, Soul Sand. And as I feared it's a BoP Corrupted Sands Biome (probably the same one I slogged through in Episode 20). I have negative interest in another 100+ blocks of tunneling through something with absolutely *nothing* I want, not even Netherrack to make the flooring. I suppose that's why BoP later took the biome out.

So back east again, but very soon:



I break into that vast void again. I install a viewing gallery, and guesstimate I've gone about half the Z distance. So I've got a decent idea of my goal for that.

I back up and stair up just a little bit, just 6 blocks, and continue east.



I soon come to a small cave, which predictably opens to the big void, in both directions. These thin ledges are a bad place to be under Ghast fire, so I just put up some blocks and continue.



After a while I have yet another breakout - even at this altitude. You can see, though, that I'm near the roof of this very big cavern, so just a little higher should do it. Also the body of the Fortress looks a bit south of the causeway I was aiming for so I may not need to go much more left (north).

Incidentally, since the Fortress appears to be embedded in the far wall of the giant cavern, it wouldn't have been *that* hard to get to without Psi after all. Just grind through the roof to roughly where it is, and then stair or shaft down to Fortress level. Kinda long, because we'll need to get 60 blocks down, but fairly routine. Another victory for rooftop Nethering.

So I stair up a bit more and then turn back towards the Fortress. Soon, though I run out of Nether Brick slabs for flooring and turn back.

I use my Psi Speed spell to get there a bit faster and it's a noticeable improvement.



Back at the portal, I've been here hours of real time and I've collected enough Ardite and Cobalt ore for 14 more Manyullyn ingots, by my estimate, so I figure that's enough for two armor pieces. So I'm ready to head back.

In the Overworld, it's just past dusk, so I sleep at my portal bed and go home in the morning.



Indeed, I've been there a while. Autumn is mostly over already.

Down to the Smeltery, throw in the Cobalt and Ardite, and start making a (mostly) Manyullyn helmet.



Manyullyn helmet core for Vengeful - 15% chance of a random negative effect on anything that hurts me, at the cost of 3 durability.
Manyullyn armor plates for Prideful - every time I'm hit, 10% increase in armor effectiveness for 2 seconds, at the cost of 3 durability.
Knightslime trim for Invigorating - 2 extra hit points.



Can't show the first two here; the last shows in the orange color of my first two hearts.



Then I add a Diamond modifier to increase armor, durability, and toughness. If armor weren't capped in effectiveness, this would stop as much damage as full diamond + Protection 4, but armor *is* capped since 1.9, so not as good; although still better than unenchanted diamond.

No matter how good armor is, it can only stop 80% of damage, so I add 2 levels of Resistance, which is the Tinker's analogue to Protection, although the numbers say it's less effective. Only 2 because it's very expensive - 4 blocks iron, 4 Obsidian, and two gold ingots for each level.

That leaves one modifier I'll probably use for autorepair in the future because the Manyullyn special powers chew up durability. Honestly, I'd rather not have the Prideful because once I have a full war set I'll usually be past the armor cap and so will have no benefit from a bit more armor, but the Manyullyn stats are unmatched. There *is* an (expensive) way to replace the special abilities of an armor part, but it requires material I don't have yet.

I had been planning to do a set of Leggings next because I'm using the slime boots so much but it looks like I'll visit a Nether Fortress soon so I want a full-one fighting armor outfit now. I have a pair of diamond leggings with Prot 4 but not a pair of boots. So I'll do boots instead.



Same scheme for the boots.

To complete my "War Armor" I make and enchant a Diamond Chestplace, since my iron Tinker's chestplate is not war quality. I am offered, once again, Unbreaking III, but I need it so I make it, and it comes with Protection III, so not too bad. In total my armor set has 21 armor and 14 toughness - so better than even Netherite armor by stats, plus Protection VII (totaled) and (Tinker's) Resistance II. The Tinker's Resistance is either half as good as Protection or twice as good; I'm not sure how to interpret the text. I'm leaning to "half as good" as Tinker's was originally written when armor was uncapped and so a set of full Diamond-encrusted Manyullyn armor would have 24 armor points and absorb 96% of damage, so they probably wanted it to be a little extra work to get to 100% damage absorption. So probably effectively a total of Protection VIII. Should be fine for a Nether Fortress.

When I estimate the value of the toughness, this set looks even better. Diamond Armor loses 1 armor point for every 3 points of damage inflicted due to penetration. Mine has an extra armor point, and loses 1 for 5 since it has more toughness. So an Enderman doing 10.5 would take 3.5 points off Diamond armor for 14% more penetration, while mine would effectively be down 2 from start so only 1 from cap for 4% extra penetration. So, compared to diamond, I'm gaining 10%+ resistance to high damage mobs, which actually more than makes up for the 8% I could have from a perfect set of four Protection IV enchants. And then I have those 4 extra hearts. Should be *very* fine for a Nether Fortress.



Looks spiffy, too!

Next episode: Preparing for the fortress assault.

So I want a bunch of stacks of cobble quickly, and it takes a while one block at a time. Fortunatly Tinker's has an upgrade version of the pick, the Hammer, which can break up to 3x3 at a time (and 5x5 with the right upgrades)



I make it of iron because it needs a LOT of material. The two large plates and hammer head all consume 8 ingots each, so this is nearly 3 blocks of material. Iron is the only decent material I can spare in such quantity.

I won't use it much, because unless I need lots of cobble, it mines a lot for the ores it finds. Galileo's law; the surface area where I see ores to mine goes up more slowly than the volume.



It does leave an attractive corridor in this Underground Biomes Eclogite.

I get a full load of cobble, but it does wear out really fast and so I decide to put some Reinforced on it, the Tinker's equivalent to Unbreaking. This needs 8 Obsidian per level, so it's more hauling from the lava pool. I'm exhausting it slowly, and have to go a few more blocks now to pull lava. I'm curious how much longer it will last and step to the shore, lowered on my side from all my extractions, to see.



Quite some time, it appears.

Cobble supply out of the way, next I want some more Psi spells. I like viewing galleries, but there is a risk of Ghast attack as I knock out the blocks to replace with glass and even one Ghast blast is goodbye to the whole gallery. So I try a spell that will both finish my current tutorial and solve the problem; a spell that places a block where the broken block was.

No spell picture, it's just 2 operations.

Outside to test, and:



Nothing happens. But I get my completion message anyway!

Well, maybe there's a rounding issue and it was trying to place the block into the ground? A slight revision makes it place one higher.



Now it places, but actually one above the broken block. So I guess it can't place where it breaks and my idea won't work. Sniff.

But I have a different idea to make use of my Psi pick. I can have it break the blocks above and below the target, and also place a block one behind the lowest block broken. This will automagically make my floored nether tunnel with a one-block Hakuna Matata opening at the front.



A surprisingly simple spell.



And it works! Nice.

Now for a spell to pillar down. I use my Shaft Upwards spell, altered to go down, but also place blocks going down directly beneath me. Then I can just mine the center block out, protected by blocks on all sides. Can't go too far, because if I mine on the last block I could fall, but I can manage.

I test it by making a dropshaft directly from the hotel wing into the branch mine. This will make getting back and forth between surface and mining bases just a little bit easier.



It starts a block high, so I adjust it to start one lower.



I step outside to skewer a spider that has been driving me NUTS with its screeching. In real like I like spiders - but real life spiders are quiet.



And then I pillar down to mining level with no problems. It fills in all the holes so no problems with lava, etc.

A little puttering around in the smeltery area, then back to the hotel....

I forgot to mark the branch I arrived in. Well, one last use of the old shaft.

So now I try the next Psi lesson. Negative effects. These effects allow casting spells like Weakness, Slow and Wither on entities. Hey, I could cure zombie villagers now!

I make a Weakness spell and use it on a Spider. Nothing. No complete eassage.

OK, I'll try a Wither effect.



And now I get the completion message. But it takes four rounds of Withering to take out a Zombie, so not so useful in the field.

Still dark, so now I try the next Psi lesson. It's Psi armor, called "exosuits". But unlike most lessons, it's complex with crafting recipes and component interactions. Not something to just complete in a jiff, so I put it aside.

A little puttering to collect my nether brick, refill on food, and otherwise finish prep, and it's back to the portal.

I had noticed in one of the screenshots from Episode 19 that I'd left a block in the middle of the pool. Maybe the slimes are using that to jump out?



But I go and they've stopped spawning on the near island. I did install No Base Spawning, a mod I wrote to copy the current 1.19 game rule of no spawning with *any* non zero block light, although currently only in the Overworld. The island is not completely lit, but maybe it's close enough?

Slimes are stil spawning on the second, purpler island. I try to get a pic of them leaping off, but fail.

Then it's through the portal to the Nether. I go to where I stopped tunnelling, and pull out my new Psi Pick.



It's got the wrong spell? I must have accidentally clcked the Spell Programmer with it. Sigh. Well back to my previous not-so-old fashioned approach.

I grind on for a while with my Knightslime pick,



But get stopped by a double lava outbreak. I'd forgotten to pic up my second bucket. Grrr. Back to base, dump off a bucket, get the second bucket, back again, wasted time.



Ooh, Cobalt and Ardite ore together! How convenient!

I keep chugging along, falling into a routine. After a while I realize I'd gone further than I'd really intended to. I go just a few blocks to the north, so I won't have a shaft right in my tunnel, and activate the Pillar Down spell.

Whoomwhoomwhoomwhoom. I don't see any changes because it only places blocks in open space and liquids; I'm surrounded by Netherrack. But I trust to my spell and start digging straight down. This is very unnerving in the Nether, you're not supposed to just dig straight down anywhere and *especially* not in the Nether roof! No problems at first. But after a while I break into the open area, start seeing placed cobble blocks, and:



Oh no. There's a bug. It's not placing the blocks to my east. I didn't see this problem in my test because there weren't any open blocks to my east there. A lesson in thorough testing! I consider various ways to manage, like going down further and placing blocks manually, or using Place Blocks to build up from the Nether ground, but decide these carry Ghastly risk and - sigh - go back to the Overworld to fix the spell.



So the problem was with the -2 in the upper corner. Originally, trying to be clever, I was using it *both* as the increment up for each loop *and* the move for the east block. So when I adjusted the spell to go down, that column moved from 1 east to 2 west. Well, easily fixed; just have a separate constant for the move down and the distance east. A quick test confirms it works, and then - all the way back to the Nether.



I risk knocking out some blocks to see where I am. This view is to the west, where I was coming from, and yes, I overshot substantially. But still further down to go.



I reach that floor I'd seen when the spell failed, tunnelling into a giant mushroom. I once again risk a peek, to the north this time and:



Here you see a more typical layered Nether Structure. Unaccountably, I decide to keep going down even though I could obviously just Passage Forward right here. It was past my bedtime and evidently I wasn't thinking clearly.



I pillar further down, stop to take a view, and realize I've overshot down after having overshot east. Well, aren't I being efficient today!

So back up to that floor level and I start tunneling north to where I'd seen that passage. While I'd been in the Overworld I'd also fixed the spell on my magic pick to auto-tunnel *and* refloor as it goes and it is *nice*.

Tunnel forward a while, breakout to below. Stair up a bit, tunnel forward, breakout to the top. Go down one block, tunnel forward a while:



Breakout down. But the Fortress is pretty close now, so I just use my Passage Out spell to cross.

Just a side comment here: I have tunneled nearly 1000 blocks of distance in the Nether, collected over three stacks of Nether Quartz, and found and reached a Nether Fortress. And in that entire time, I haven't encountered ONE hostile Nether mob, nor had to deal with more than two blocks of lava nearby each other. *That's* how easy it is up in the Nether roof.



And there's the fortress.

Next episode: I'm done with breakouts. Now I'm breaking in!

Success! I'm in, and no mobs in sight.

Per my usual policy of "keep my back safe", I throw up a quick cobble wall in one direction, and then go in the other.



I quickly hit the end of the fortress, Awesome view; have to figure out a way to enjoy it safely sometime. I drop torches so I won't have to worry about anything but Blazes, which are very hard to stop in Fortresses. Then back to my wall.

Now I have security for a bit of crafting so I make and install a door. I head in and soon spot a chest. A quick check inside:



Nice.

Then I come to a split where I can continue on this level or take a stair down. I block up the passage on this level, and head down the stairs, because where I'm at feels kind of roofy (it's at 71, which is pretty high for a Nether Fortress IME).



And bingo. The Wart Room. And I STILL haven't had to deal with one hostile Nether mob. I wall and door the exit so I won't be attacked, and pick up a couple of Nether Wart.

I've got the Wart, now I just need a Blaze Rod.

And, as it happens, my wall didn't go to the ceiling and a Blaze tries to shoot me over it! My crossbow is ready, so I open the door.



One shot kill. But no Blaze Rod, darn it.



As I'm searching for a rod, a Magma cube comes up from one direction and a Blaze from the other. I retreat to the door, pull out my sword and off the Magma Cube. No drops.

Close the door, ready the crossbow, open the door, off the Blaze. Still no rod.

Then a baby magma cube bounces up and I have to sword that.

Area clear, I start heading down the corrider. In the distance I spot a Blaze next to a Nether Piggie. I aim very carefully and



Bingo. And even at this distance I can see the Blaze Rod bobbing.



'Scuse me, Mr. Piggie, I need that!

I could leave now but so far this has been incredibly easy so I feel like poking around a a bit more. I cover a fair amount of corridors and place a lot of torches, but this Fortress is pretty quiet.



Ooh, dress horse armor.



Eventually I spot a Wither Skeleton around a corner. Not obvious in the pic, but clear enough in the game. Out comes the crossbow and - one shot kill. No interesting drops.

I continue exploring the Fortress. I don't map exactly, but it's clear that it goes some way back towards my portal and so I could build a much more direct route here. Eventually I run out of torches - I only brought one stack. So I head for home.

But I make a wrong turn and run into a Wither Skeleton (no pic, was busy). My crossbow isn't ready (whoops, amateurish mistake!) so I dash back and then try to draw it. But I didn't go far enough and it's on me by the time I have it ready.



I find monsters harder to fight than back in the old days before 1.9. They are NOTICEABLY more evasive. This guy gets right in my face, to the point that it's not in one direction but moving around me. I'm trying to get the crossbow sight pointed at it but it keeps skittering around and I just can't get *quite* on it.



There we go. But it just drops a bone and a coal. Meh.

Well, I've gotten what I came for and I'm out of torches, so it's back to the Overworld. It's a fairly long hike, but otherwise I have no further challenges.



Back home it's looking kind of wintery, but no snow. A check of the Seasonal Clock confirms it is fully winter. So in this biome, snow doesn't seem to fall until it's actually winter.

I make my brewing stand but I don't have any clever design plans and just stick it against the wall. I'll probably build an "espresso bar" in the hotel somewhere and put it in there, but I need to build the hotel up more.

The Nether Wort could be a cool bit of garden decor, but, again, I don't have plans ready, so I go to my fallback when I don't know where to put something:



Stuff it in a basement. Way back in my second 1.7 journal, I just kept adding sub-basement after sub-basement to the Winter Tower, my first and main base, eventually having (I think) four stacked basements on the ladder shaft between surface and mining level. This time I hope to work things more into the hotel.



And there's the first snow of the season. Kinda like the real world, the first snow looks cool. Then it gets to be kind of a pain.



But that first snow does look cool. This is something that's nearly impossible to see in vanilla minecraft - every place is either snowy all the time or never snowy. And it's nice.



I take the new shaft down to mining level to drop off the Nether ores. This time I remember to mark which branch goes to the hotel!

I had been planning to go exploring, to get the Marble for more Astral Sorcery. But I don't want to travel when Serene Seasons breaks sugarcane, and maybe some other things, by freezing surface water. So I think I'll stay home for a while and work on the hotel.

Next episode: Trying some wild design ideas. Wish me luck!

So my idea is to have the main facade be a representation of liquid starlight pouring from a night sky. Black Granite from the UBC mod would be good for the night sky and I can just have liquid starlight falling down vertical gaps in the wall. Of course then I need pillars or something next to the liquid starlight waterfalls or mobs can just walk through.



First pass looks promising, but I decide to remove the wood at the bottom and make the sky go all the way down.



Now maybe it's too severe? Well, leave for now.

I build the columns to the top and plop some liquid starlight next to them.



Wait, I thought liquids just went straight down if there was nothing beneath them? So I have to build a ring of blocks around it, which I was planning to do anyway.



Ok, that works. Maybe a bit of a Deco feel, which totally suits both my taste and the design target (a grand early 20th century California hotel).

I wanted some kind of "stars" in the sky but it's hard to find something small enough in Minecraft. The smooth Black Granite has little flecks but they're too small on this scale. For example, I try a Biblocraft Fancy Lantern:



and it's WAY too big. So I guess I'll have to let that idea slide.

Night falls and I swat a few mobs for relaxation before bedtime.



In the morning I spot some of those derpy floating tree bits through the sunset window and am suddenly obsessed with cleaning them up. I decide to try doing it using my Blink Footed spell to get there so I can test it at the same time.

I fall repeatedly while approaching at an angle but I'm wearing my bouncy boots so I don't care.



Directly underneath, though, I can get close enough to take them out with Break Blocks. So testing shows I can go near level or nearly straight up, but I have problems occur when ascending at an angle. So the fix will probably be calculating the foot location precisely. I would think this needs an integer floor function, but I haven't seen one. Maybe there's another solution.



I need to fill in some of these awful surface pools to finish the hotel floor. Wrong time of year, though, with the ice needing to be broken.



Geez, sunset already?

Nighttime, so back to Psi. The next tutorial is Block Conjuration, which allows you to create these transparent "force field" blocks. They can even be temporary if wished. There's also a conjured light block.



I conjure a light outside. Pretty, but no completion message.



Then I try conjuring a block inside but fail because I'm being sloppy with my placement calculations. But get a completion reward anyway? Great mod but these tutorials...



Next day I almost finish the facade (a few glitches still to fix) and take a look from outside. Too severe and too vertical. I decide to do other stuff for a bit while I muse on fixes. And yes, this is a sunset pic and I'd spent all day on this.

The conjured Psi lights are prettier than torches, by a long shot, so maybe I can use them for lighting. My main CAD has a rainbow coloring and that affects its lights, which makes them too gaudy for general use, but my Greater Infusion CAD is default Psi coloration and maybe that will work. If not, maybe I'll make a color-specific CAD for lights.



That's pretty nice. You can't see it in the still but the color changes to very light blue and purple (the Psi coloration). It's actually kind of pretty, so I go with that.

Next in the Psi tutorials is flow control. This adds a trick to delay other tricks in the spell - those physically afterwards in reading direction (top to bottom, left to right, like reading an European language book).

Hey, maybe I can use this to make my block replacement spell work.



Yes!



It's morning, so I try swapping the torches on one wing with conjured Psi light. They definitely make the place look more imposing and more special.



Now I have an idea for using the temporary conjure blocks to fill in pools. I cook up a spell to conjure four temporary blocks under my feet. The idea is I could just walk around and this would fill up the pool. It works inside. So I try it outside on the pool right in front of the facade, which has been getting in the way of construction.

Well, it's still the wrong season. Conjured blocks won't replace ice so I'm having to smash the ice as I'm moving around.



It gets really chaotic. But then I accidently right click instead of left click on a block and



YOU ARE KIDDING ME. This is a low power spell, literally about 1/30 of the moose flinging spell I accidentally killed myself with before. Apparently Psi has a real hair trigger for killing you if you go over your psionic limit. Fun as this mod is, I don't think I could use it in my usual Hardcore game, or if so only for very limited utility functions.

But I'm not playing hardcore, so this is just an annoyance. I pick up my stuff and fill in the pool the old fashioned way, using wood blocks (since they're easily renewable). I lost my levels, but I don't have any urgent enchants planned.

Night falls, and I tackle the next two Psi tutorials. These are smeltery (smelting blocks and items) and trigonometry. Both very straightfoward, so I just look up solutions and blow through. Smeltery will have a good use, though, because I can use it to smelt cobble to smoothstone while it's in place, which is good for handling stray UBC cobble from accidentally breaking a smoothstone block.



Since I lost all those levels I indulge in some sniping, and in the morning butcher some stray animals, which I've been ignoring for a while as I have plenty of supplies and food.

While I've been doing all these things, I've been thinking of ways to improve the facade. I have three ideas: Put in a roof for a porch to break up the vertical sweep, change the lower part back to wood, and add some decorative medallions (made with yellow Komantite stairs). I said that Komatite would be decoratively useful!



So: yes on the medallions, although I think they need to go up a block, definitely yes on the porch roof although maybe another material would be good, and yes on the wood at the bottom although now the doors are too plain.

Were I designing this from scratch I'd make it bigger: I'd like more room around the doors for a frame and I'd like the two outer areas large enough for the decorations. But I'm not going to rebuild the whole thing for that!

It does have a bit of an Orwellian Ministry of Information feel to it and that's not what I was hoping for AT ALL. But let's just finish it out and maybe I'll have more ideas later.

Nighttime, so back to Psi lessons. The next two are slot management (choosing a hotbar slot to affect) and memory management (saving a vector in one part of a spell to re-use). These are totally trivial, click-done.

Next is secondary operators - some more sophisticated math operators like power, root, and log. Trivial to do *but* it provides the floor operator I suspect I need to make my Blink Footed spell consistent. So now with *two* things to improve my blink footed spell (conjured blocks and the floor operator) I go for it.



I load a version of my Blink Footed spell and modify it to use these two new features. The 10000 means the conjured block last 10000 ticks, about 8 minutes. So now I don't have to clean up the blocks afterwards. I use the future hotel lobby for testing.



But I'm still falling off on ascending angle. I try lowering the foot block, but it doesn't help.



Daytime I play around with it some. It's fun, but still not consistent and even with F5 I can't figure out the problem.



So back to working on the hotel. Here I'm moving up those yellow Komantite decorations.



And with the changes, the hotel is definitely getting there.

Next episode: Triumphs!

Using the floor operator in my Blink Footed spell didn't give me a completion. So I go online to find which operator I need. Turns out to be squaring. So whip up a 3 element spell, fire it, get the completion.



Next is Eidos Manipulation. This allows you to reverse time! Well, not really. It just reverses your motions over the period. I put it aside for now to try to think of a use.



For some reason the area has been low-mob lately. Nothing in sight at dawn.



I finish filling a pool underneath the second wing.



And then a second one. Two pools for a 18x10 wing. Very annoying.

With the pools filled, I lay out the foundations for the second wing. Then the sun sets and it's back to Psi.

And now I realize what's wrong with my Blink Footed spell. I modified the wrong version - the version that didn't project motion back on to the level plane. I pull out the correct version and redo the modifications. I also add an adjustment to the distance based on whether I'm sneaking - 7 blocks if not, 3 if so. This will allow me to finetune my position for construction - no more pillaring up.



And FINALLY it's working. I'm not falling off, and the distance control works!



But, oops, I seem to have left a route in with my construction. Emergency sleep time! (It is very weird that going to sleep makes an unsafe base safe.)

Next morning I head out to tend a Redwood Sapling. I had planted it earlier because I want some leaves, but it hasn't sprouted. I figure it's probably being blocked by snow and clear the snow around it.



While out I enjoy the views. Then I head over to the mountain (part of a Rainforest biome) to see if it snows there. The Grasslands I'm in is COOL climate while Rainforest is WARM so I'm guessing not.



And I'm right.

As an aside, this is definitely one spot where I wish the Minecraft biome transitions were a little less abrupt.



Yep, it was the snow holding it back.



Looking to replace my levels, I do a round of mining. I'm hoping for some more diamonds, which I don't have many of. I get an entire stack of iron (which will be doubled in the Smeltery) - but no diamonds :-(



Finally getting some Nether Wart growth. I remember it growing faster? Probably won't matter a lot since I can do most potions with Psi effects.



One morning I come out to find a Zombie Villager under the eaves. I have some drops waiting, but now I can do Weakness (with the Psi spell) and although I don't have a Golden Apple I have *one* apple and can make one. All excited, I dash upstairs to do so. But when I come back he's gone. I guess the eaves aren't dark enough past earlly morning. Well, good thing I didn't waste the apple on him.



The new wing is coming along but I don't remember it being this much work. Lots of counting and manouvering to place the log framing. I have some help from my Psi spells - breaking and placing blocks at distance, Blink Footed to get up places, Conjure Light instead of torches - but it still seems like so much work! Normally things seem easier the second time.



On two occasions I Blinkfoot into a wall. I take one suffocation hit and pop out. So I'm not sure why the spell prohibits Blinking downwards.



The one thing that seems easier is the roof. Having the interior wall built helps. Well, I'm thankful for that.



And the Starlight Hotel came out pretty decent. Looking at it now, it would have more of a hotel feel if it were wider (more wing for the lobby) and a more traditional facade. But it works as it is. I may try swapping some of the window frames for UBC stones now that I have more - that would make for better contrast and a more polished look.

My stone set is still pretty limited - the new generation system feels more natural, but doesn't have the intrusive layers you could either ignore or mine - and to some extent I think I've been a bit unlucky. I only have one "traditional" stone (Eclogite) and none of the decorative stones like Greywacke and Rhyolite. I do have four of the "color" stones (Black Granite, Soapstone (white), Komantite (yellow) and Blue Schist. Those are good for accents and roofs (and that's what I did) but not for a base.



The interior view is really nice, and I'm not even done yet. I have plans for the rear facade and I need some decor.



Shockingly, the hotel has chewed up the entirety of my huge Redwood supply - I don't quite have enough - so I go out to chop some more. The big Redwoods are not replaceable in current BoP - saplings only grow with the 1 wide trunk I showed earlier - and I'm starting to worry about damaging the view. So I go to the north side of the forest to chop these with the Lumber Axe. 8 stacks of Redwood. Hopefully *this* will last.



Rear elevation isn't done, but I have Plans. I think eventually it will come out better than the front.



Maybe it's wishful thinking, but it's feeling a little - spring-y, somehow?



Not quite yet. But soon!

Next episode: Winter lifts, and I head out.