The last time I played Minecraft was is 1.12 (and my last journal is from 1.10). There have been a lot of changes since then, to put it mildly, including a complete overhaul of world generation, my main modding interest, in 1.18. So what does Minecraft generation look like these days? Time to find out!
It had been so long I'd even forgotten the keybindings and basic recipes. So, since I was primarily playing just to get some maps and look at the generation, I decided to play on Peaceful. An overreaction, but oh well.
I started in a Birch Forest in a hilly area. My screenshotting choice skills are as gone as my playing skills so I completely forgot the establishing shot, so you'll have to settle for this much later pic while returning from an exploration:
I had started in the hilly area on the right shoulder of that big mountain. And when I started, I didn't even realize I was next to a big mountain, because I couldn't see it. I chopped some trees, and then looked for a starting base area. I *did* remember you want your first base as low as possible so there is less to mine through to get to the low areas where the good ores are, so I went downslope until I came to a "river" although it was actually just a mix of land and water you couldn't boat through. There I set up my standard starter base: a small house, 3 blocks wide on the interior with 2 high wall, basic starter stuff built *into* the wall, a door with a hole in front of the door, and a "roof" of just a 1x1 rafter in the middle.
Again, no contemporary pic, so here's one from much later:
I find this a super-practical starter house; you can build it from dirt, saving valuable starter wood; no mob can get in; zombies can't break in the door due to the drop; if a spider goes up on the roof you can kill it from below; you can pillar up in the middle and kill creepers at the wall in the morning by swatting their heads; crafting table, furnace, etc., can be accessed from inside or outside the house, and if you put a dropshaft under the open parts of the roof skylight goes down so you can mine (not too far because you only suppress spawns in a 24 block radius) even without torches.
Then I did all the routine starter stuff: get the farms going; ranch some animals; mine down to Y11 for resources (I only later found it's not so simple anymore); and in my case grow a lot of cane because I want mega maps. I'll skip the details because it's not relevant - plus it's often embarrassing what I had forgotten to do.
Once I had a maxed out map, I did a circuit of it as best as I could, then grew some more cane, made another map, and did a circuit of *that*.
To establish what I'm looking for, I have 4 main complaints with the old vanilla minecraft generation from 1.7 to 1.17:
1) Search distances are absurd. Obscenely absurd. If you are searching honestly, (no AMIDST cheats, etc.) it normally takes TENS of THOUSANDS of blocks searched to find both hot and cold terrain. Almost nobody does that much searching. Even I don't, because on pre-1.18 vanilla generation the shortage of water and flat plains makes it hard to travel long distances. For rare biomes it's even crazier; in my first 1.7 world I later ran AMIDST and found the nearest Ice Spikes was 9,000 blocks from start, which would have taken two hundred and fifty THOUSAND blocks of an efficient but honest square spiral search. Ab-surd.
2) No large scale structure. Big maps are just a big mess. The "oceans" are just large lakes, the mountains don't come in ranges, and the hot and cold biomes are rare in land areas.
3) You can't see much. Most terrain is closed forest, and there aren't many clearings or water areas to provide relief. Plus the trees are mostly short and shrubby which puts the foliage in your line of sight.
4) There isn't much *to* see. Most terrain is fairly flat. Hills mostly occur as sub-biomes restricted to the interior of the mostly-forested biomes so you can't see them (Forest Hills in plains are sometimes a delightful exception). Trees are mostly smallish and bland. In the terrains with relief like Extreme Hills there is often seriously crazified terrain which I know some people like but which I find ridiculous.
So, how does the newer system do on these? Well, here's the resulting map:
1) Search distances:
Basically fixed! The first map I did (on the right) had *both* hot and cold terrain on it. Sample size of 1, etc., but on this map a typical player *would* find both kinds of terrain. This would be virtually impossible on the old system. Plus, even in this search I found several of the new biomes, including Cold Ocean, Sparse Jungle, Badlands, and Mangrove Swamp. This is about as good a result as I got with Geographicraft/Climate Control.
2) Large Scale structure:
Not great, but substantially better. There's a hot to cold transition on this area - hot on the left, and cold on the right. Plus, although you can't see it on the map, the ocean wraps around on the right so the entire right map is of a penisula. So there's a north cold penisula, a south cold peninsula, an ice bay inbetween, the hot desert to the right; different regions are actually *different* in a meaningful way and traveling around can feel like you're going somewhere and not just "another forest, another forest, another forest".
I also spotted ocean on all 3 outside sides of the left map so there's probably some sea/land structure there as well, although you'd need more maps to see it.
3) You can't see anything:
Better, but still needs some work in the temperate zone. Hot zone is mostly open terrain (desert/badlands/sparse jungle) so you can see pretty well there and I got a number of great vistas. The temperate zones have these "old growth" areas with bigger and (sparser?) trees and I found it somewhat easier to get views there. And the new wider rivers really help too:
but, not as much as I'd like. I still spent a lot of time in the temperate zone and other forests looking at trees and unable to see anything much. Some of this is good, because contrast is good; when you spend *some* time struggling through a tree maze it makes a grand vista even sweeter when you get it; but at least in the temperate zone it's too much. The fact that I didn't notice that grand mountain when I started just proves the point.
4) Not much to see:
Also much better:
The new terrain system generates a good number of nice attractive hills and mountains *without* the impossible overhangs and floating dirt that used to be common in rugged terrain. The trees are a bit better too, with the larger trees in old growth, although still no match for trees from the mods like BoP, Highlands, and RTG.
There is one newish issue: excessive small-scale ruggedness. I found it surprisingly difficult to get around in my river base because of 2-high jumps; this became particularly noticeable when I was struggling to lead animals into my pens. This is even worse in mountains, which sometimes I found nearly impossible to cross quickly (without digging passes, etc.); that might be a design intention to make mountains more of a barrier, while ruggedness in flatish areas is just a pain.
So, overall, I'd say a B+ result. Not everything is fixed to my taste but everything is substantially improved. I get a sense of a professionalism that was lacking in the 1.7 revisions; they looked at complaints, devised way to address them, and then made sure they actually worked without creating (big) new problems. I also get a sense they've been looking at mods: I see stuff that smells like Alternate Terrain Generation, Realistic Terrain Generation, Geographicraft, and Biomes O Plenty - not in the sense of stealing stuff, but looking at possibilities, design options, etc.
The current professionalism contrasts to the amateur hour of the 1.7 changes. My (un)favorite example was the land-sea code. The #1 land-sea complaint for pre-1.7 was ridiculously long ocean trips; it was not unusual that if you just set off in a random direction from a continent you would spend hours of real time travelling before you saw land. So they repeated a step that doubled the size of the continents. But said step also DOUBLED THE SIZE OF THE OCEANS! Yargh! Look at the code, fellas! So then, apparently in desperation, they filled the ocean with large islands, so thickly they all join together and form a universal continent. This would have worked pretty well, actually, if they'd just had about half as many islands, but that would have taken a few hours of thought and a couple days of testing and I guess that was too much? I get the impression they were horribly understaffed and the changes were super-rushed. It would all be rather funny if it hadn't become the standard generation system for 8 years.
If I were just a player, I'd probably carry on in 1.19. It's not to my taste in everything, but it's pretty good. But, I'm not just a player, I'm a player/modder, and I miss the extreme customizability I had designed into my worldgen mods. I'm also on something of a nostalgia kick too, so I want to experience the playstyle I had designed. So, I decided to put this world aside and start up a modded 1.12 world.
You should see my own journals; maybe not so much the text, of which there is still plenty, but the images (I posted over 1,600 in my journal for TMCWv5 alone, though most of them are in spoilers).
Also, you shouldn't quote entire posts, especially long ones, as it just clutters up the thread and many people are put off by it (I've told others not to do this yet they continue doing it; like why is this even necessary, the post they (the same person I pointed out before) replied to is right above it! Compare to the following post from Princess_Garnet, who removed all but a single line from the same post).
I'm starting to exhaust some of my stored recipes, so I spend the night whipping up some more, including various burgers and peanut butter sandwiches.
As a fan of both peaches and peanut butter, the Peach Jelly Sandwich makes me want to take a snack break. This is also a very practical recipe in the Harvestcraft - Spice of Life combo since every different flavor of jam used qualifies as a different recipe.
Is it spring yet?
Sigh. Almost, but no. I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas. Well, as long as I'm waiting, I'll work on the rear facade.
I write up a spell to break a block and replace it with a different one. This relies on the delay (aka Trick: Sleep) effect because, as I found out earlier, Psi can't (or won't) replace a block exactly when it breaks it. The replacement has to be delayed a bit.
I want this for my plans for the rear facade, which involve swapping most of the wall blocks.
And boy is this useful. What would have been a significant job with a lot of scaffolding and running around is basically just pew-pew-pew. Aiming gets a bit difficult when it gets high, but I can just pop up with my Blink Footed spell.
And this is the new interior view. I added some Redwood leaves to add some depth and improve the illusion of looking through trees, and I like it!
I decide to try some framing on the interior doors. I figure some Komantite would work, but it's not so great.
I try a couple of other choices, but end up deciding to use the same Eclogite Bricks already in the wall. I figured the door frames would need to contrast, but they don't.
Another night of sniping and sleeping. Is it Spring yet?
Oh so close but no.
And here's the finished rear elevation. Way more interesting than the huge mass of Redwood.
I got those leaves from the tree I'd planted in the yard, but I had liked the way it looked. So I decide to replant a pair of Redwoods as decoration.
Ooh, it grew fast. Let's go see what it looks - wait hey, it's Spring! Wahoo!
Well, not entirely wahoo. I have some chores.
Planting my Spring veggies for starters.
But come evening it's to to address the next Astral Sorcery gateway: Starmetal.
Starmetal has a complicated way to get started. Initially it can only be made by "linking" iron ore blocks to a Star crystal in an Ancient Shrine which has been exposed to starlight. So you have to make a Linking wand for the linking. rip the roof off an Ancient Shrine and finally hang out there overnight.
I climb up to the roof to make the wand.
Here's the recipe. Note Astral Sorcery has a bigger crafting grid and uses it for more complex recipes.
I was a little worried I might not have enough Starlight, but there are no problems. The recipe does take a while, though.
After it's done, though, this little ball of energy appears. It just sits there for a while, and then flies off. It seems like an entity of some sort but I'm not aware of any mobs added by Astral Sorcery. So, for now, it's a mystery.
It starts raining so no more Astral Sorcery tonight. I go to bed.
A little sniping in the morning before I grab a half-stack of iron ore blocks and head out to the Ancient Shrine.
I use Blink Footed to travel and going 7 blocks each time I click I go FAST. I'm at the bunny pen on the other side of the biome in seconds.
But darn it, I forgot the carrots. So that's one bit of cuteness I don't get to enjoy.
I draw my Psionic Energy down to almost zero and have to just walk for a bit. Then back to Blink Footed to finish the trip. I do get a failure towards the end where the block doesn't stop me so evidently I still have a bug, possibly setting the foot block too high.
Soon I'm at the shrine and I Blinkfoot up to start taking it down. I leave the Sea Lanterns (apart from one) to pick up later with a Silk Touch when (and if?) I get it.
It turns out there's a lot more material in the shrine than I thought. I had been planning to go on an expedition after getting some Starmetal to get the Marble I need for an Infusion Altar. But, although I haven't counted, I think I already have enough after tearing down the upper part of this shrine. I have several stacks of base Marble and quite a bit of the various products (Chiseled, Columns, etc.)
A possible issue with the security fence is that the mobs might be able to use the snow layers outside to jump over. RTG places multiple layers of snow in Ice Plains, which is a neat visual, but creates partial snow blocks of a range of heights so a fence might not be enough. Testing reveals I jump over myself. I try to dig up all the snow layers but just in case I also make it a 2 block jump up to get into what remains of the shrine, which is the basement and part of the floor. Probably not necessary, but Hardcore habits.
Then I put down an ore block, link the Crystal, and link the block. It takes about 20 seconds to convert.
Then I try a bunch of blocks at once. But this takes much longer, about three minutes. So something in the neighborhood of 20 seconds per block.
While I'm here I pull out the Fosic Resonator, which can let me see concentrations of starlight, and Blinkfoot up to look. But I don't see any, just a lot of mobs standing around.
I finish 16 blocks of ore and decide that's enough for now. But I forgot a bed and it's too risky to Blinkfoot back to the hotel, so to pass time I snipe.
Dawn takes forever to arrive, even though it's really less than 10 minutes.
Just forever!
But, finally, I am rewarded with the sight of flaming zombies and can go home.
Heading home I try a new trick. The Minecraft move forward mechanism has an interesting control system. Holding the W key speeds you up, but the process of walking slows you so you reach an equilibrium forward speed. However, when you are bouncing, like from bouncy boots, you're not getting slowed and so you can pick up a lot of speed. So I alternate between Blinkfooting to gain altitude and then high speed bouncing when I run out of Psionic gas. This REALLY gets me home in a hurry. I may try to figure a spell scheme to use this more consistently.
I'm farming Oaks to get apples to cure Zombie Villagers (I only have the one), but so far I'm not getting them.
I check the decorative tree plantings on the back grounds and although it's a nice effect they sprouted different sizes. I chop the one on the right and replant. Hopefully I won't have to do this too many times.
Mmm, Spring colors!
Then it's downstairs to smelt the Starmetal Ore. I try using the Smeltery, hoping for the doubling, but the intermod connection wasn't written (perhaps intentionally) and the Smeltery ignores the ore. So I just smelt it in a conventional Furnace.
While I'm waiting I smelt some Sand into Molten Glass, which the Smeltery can cast into Clear Glass. I may use this for the big sunset view window later, although for the moment it's too useful for sniping.
As I head back up, I see the rain falling all the way down the ladder shaft from the hotel. This seems rather unprofessional for a luxury resort, so at the roof I try to figure a scheme to cover the top.
It's tricky, though, because the ladder is against the outside wall, and I can't find a good solution. I guess I can just use a trapdoor.
I had been planning to start using my Starmetal, but it's raining so no starlight and no Astral Sorcery, so it's bedtime to make the rain stop.
But they're entries describing what a player may have done. Often in depth. It's expected they may be long at times.
(I don't always reply to these, but even when I don't I like reading them, even if my unfamiliarity with some mods may add a layer of difficulty in following it.)
Episode 28: Systematically Setting Sorcerous Systems
Season: Spring
My Block Footed spell had some misfires on my last outing, so I alter the spell to move the foot block down a fraction of a block, suspecting a placement error. But it starts raining, and right after I finish I hear the "Shwmoomph" of an Enderman porting in - right next to the Psi Spell Programmer (hmmm). I don my war armor, march over while resolutely looking at my feet and
Go for it.
Once again it basically climbs on top of me and I have to spin around and around to fight it.
But even so it goes down fast and only deals 3 1/2 hearts before I kill it.
Now I have a plan for using Liquid Starlight to improve my Astral Sorcery Rock Crystals and Crystal Sword. If you let a Rock Crystal or Crystal tool float in Liquid Starlight for a while, the Crystal will absorb the Liquid Starlight and get bigger. Rock Crystals at max size will occasionally split into two crystals, one a bit purer. So a nice way to improve Crystals.
BUT - leaving items just bobbing around carries a really obvious risk, despawning. And the absorption process isn't quick, taking a minute or two. So this would be a good use for redstone; have the whole procedure take place over a hopper which is suppressed while there is liquid above it, but then picks up the item once the liquid is gone.
Unfortunately there's no suitable Minecraft block to detect the presence of liquid, so I guess I'll have to use an Observer block, which detects a change (like liquid appearing or disappearing) and connect that to some kind of T flip flop (a memory switch which changes state when hit with a redstone pulse).
I try setting up a partial version (less the flip flop) in the "magic room", upstairs in the north (early) wing. But I can't even get the Redstone to power (and suppress) the hoppers? Great, I've forgotten my Redstone mechanics too, in the years I haven't played.
So I move into the lobby, where I have more room, to test. I figure out the powering issues - I need a redstone connection leading into the hopper with nothing on either side. But now I encounter a new problem - when there's water above the hopper, powering the hopper activates the Observer again - I'm not sure whether it's because the Observer gets powered directly or it's observing a power change happening in the water. So the flip flip approach won't work and I'll have to figure something else out.
So I'm toying around with circuits, trying to figure out a) what is going on the the Observer and b ) what could make this work, when:
WHOMP!
A Zombie? How did that get in here?
I LEFT A DOOR OPEN !?!? Oh geez, I am losing it.
Luckily I was still in my war armor so even surprised I have no trouble.
Then it's back to trying one thing after another.
I spend a lot of time on this. I've probably wasted any gains I'll ever get from *not* having to stand around while my Crystals absorb water, but after a while it's the principle of the thing.
Eventually I get a three-repeater circuit to lock the hopper. But then I try to rearrange and it doesn't work anymore.
And *finally* I get this delayed latch arrangment to work.
So now let's use it with actual Liquid Starlight and an item. Aaaaaannnd:
It doesn't work. Whatever the heck was going on with water on top of a powered hopper does NOT happen with Liquid Starlight. The Observer just puts out one pulse when it's placed and one when it's removed. So all this experimenting has been irrelevant. AAARRRGGHHH!
At this point I finished the testing in a Creative World (no pics). I'd already gotten the hopper figured out and I only had to figure out a T flip flop. The standard, simple T flip flop is a sticky piston moving a Redstone block, which works because of something that was probably a bug when originally written - sticky pistons let go of their blocks with a short pulse, but then pick them up again next time they operate - but got used so much Mojang left it in. I had been thinking of using a pistonless flip flip because I hate piston noise, but I'd forgotten how much space it takes up. As soon as I start sketching it I remember and so I just go with the standard sticky piston design.
It doesn't take too long to get a design built in Creative. Now to build it in my real world.
I put it in the top floor of the new wing because it's noisy *and* ugly. There's the space for the Starlight and the item.
When Starlight is placed in the hole, the Observer activates, triggers the piston
which pushes the Redstone block one to the right and leaves it there, when it connects with a Redstone "wire" which connects to the hopper and prevents it from picking up the item left to soak. Then when the item absorbs the Starlight the Observer sends another pulse, the piston retrieves the Redstone, and the hopper picks up the item so it won't despawn.
I don't have room to move it to a chest or anything so I have to retrieve it manually. But it works, and I can do other things safely while growing Crystals in Liquid Starlight.
So now let's improve the Looking Glass into a Telescope. This is supposed to make it easier to spot Constellations.
Oooh. I am seriously short of juice to do this. Well, maybe I can put in some Starlight Relays to collect some more starlight power.
Here's the recipe. It then has to be put on a 3x3 platform of assorted Marble near the Altar. But that means up on the roof, which would look pretty ugly just sitting there.
I come up with the idea of placing them at the roof corners, kind of like the upturned corners of a traditional Chinese roof. I build a mockup from just Marble.
On the right it's fully out and - ick. On the left it's one block in, and still not great, but tolerable. So I proceed to build functional versions.
To my surprise, starlight crafting is possible even during the day and a rainstorm. I had assumed it would be impossible, but I was wrong. It just has less power. But these Astral Sorcery lenses I need for the collectors don't need much.
So many of those times I ditched Astral Sorcery because of weather or daytime were unnecessary (depending on how much juice the action needed.) Well, good to know.
So I build my relays but - they don't relay? (It's supposed to send sparks to the Altar). Maybe it needs line of sight? I build another relay higher up but that doesn't work either.
Eventually I notice the guidebook says it needs a lens placed inside and *that* get it to work.
Daytime, so a break to collect some crops and grow some Crystals.
Then it's night. How does my enhanced Altar work now?
Success! Can't do better than that!
Next episode: Stargazing and chaining some goals.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
I'd been ignoring my spring crops, so I took a brief break to harvest some crops, Then, time to try out the new telescope!
The Telescope is supposed to be better than the Looking Glass, but I find it the reverse. First, the (buggy?) behavior where the constellation stars move in the reverse direction is not there, so they no longer jump out. Second, there is now a another tier of dimmer stars - I presume those for the dim constellations - so there's a lot more to sort out. Being able to see the dim Constellations will be useful later, but it does make things harder.
I spend a couple of minutes, identifying nothing, and then dawn breaks.
A bit of sniping some local mobs.
And then it's time to try out the current Blink Footing spell for a quick trip up to the floating Slime island.
Works like a charm! VERY fast, too.
Now there are Slimes spawning up here again. I see a couple jump off while I'm on the way up. No idea why sometimes they spawn and sometimes they don't. One medium Slime stays on the island and I dispatch it on arrival.
I have another reason to be up here. I'm thinking about where I want to put the Infusion Altar, which is my next big Astral Sorcery advance. It's a BIG item - 19x19, as large as the outside of the lobby of the hotel, and it's a bit of a problem figuring a good place to put it. One possibility is either in front or in back of the hotel. That would be nicely symmetrical,
but the altar is basically a big black floor so not too attractive. Another would be up on the hill in the grasslands, where the big black floor isn't an issue, but that doesn't align with the hotel.
But another possibility is up on a slime island. It's far enough away that the relationship to the hotel doesn't matter, and the higher elevation means more starlight and better function. But I'm not sure if it's large enough, so I'm also up here to measure. Turns out a 19x19 square will just barely fit, so it's an option.
And now it's time to get back. I have something to test for this, too. I'm wearing my bouncy boots, so I just jump off to see how far I go.
In just a few seconds I'm on the porch roof. So very practical - as long as I don't accidentally wear the wrong boots!
The Oak saplings I'm farming for apples have grown up so I chop them down looking for apples. I replant with the new sapling as I chop. But as I'm polishing off the stray leaves:
Suddenly I'm suffocating in the dark. I try moving, but nothing happens. I remember having into-the-wall glitches in my Zeno's Explorations journal, which I solved by - by - what DID I end up doing? I try save-reload but that doesn't help (it was actually opening my inventory, but I don't remember until after it's too late). I start trying to break things, but initially I forget to switch to a suitable item.
This looks grim. Strangely in the pics Damage Screenshots took there is *one* showing:
Me escaping into a gap of leaves. The sapling had grown up around me and it was one of these stupid shrub "trees" with leaves just one block off the ground. A total fluke for it to grow *exactly* when I was on top *and* to be a shrub, thus trapping me with the leaves.
But this pic is like an artifact from another dimension, because I *swear* I never saw this, not even in a flash, and if I *had*, I should have stayed out (right? I'm not entirely sure of the mechanics here).
But in the real world (real unreal world? It *is* a sim - ) I'm still in the tree.
I remember to switch to my Mattock, which can chop wood *and* dirt (I didn't know I was in the tree because I hadn't seen that one mysterious escape shot - I thought maybe I'd glitched into the ground.) This breaks plenty of blocks, but I don't get out. Maybe I could have moved forward? I figured I'd have to break the block I was in first and I don't think I tried to move.
And another highly ignominious death. I can beat a Nether Fortress, but get killed by a tree. Good thing I wasn't playing Hardcore. Again.
But I'm not, and ironically my spawn point is currently the bed inside the gardener's shack, all of 5 blocks from this.
And here's the scene afterwards. Fortunately all my stuff is floating in the trench. I was afraid I'd lose it, and I have some nice gear at this point. But at this rate I'll never do any more enchantments. I hadn't even recovered my levels from accidentally zapping my soul away filling in a goofy pool, and here I am back at level 7 again.
In the future, though, I'm going to replant saplings only *after* I finish chopping.
Well, back to work.
I'd found that Bibliocraft provides an Atlas, which means I don't need to worry about Explorercraft. I'm grinding through the recipe sequence and I need an ink sac and - I don't have one? I guess I haven't yet offed a squid.
So I blinkfoot over to the Ocean. Normally they're just crawling with squid, but I only find *one*. And it's next to a Jellyfish. I drop in the water and try to come from the other side but the squid sinks into the depths, so no ink today. I also find out I can't Blinkfoot out of the water - the foot block ends up placed too low. Something to try to fix later.
Then night falls and it's time to try stargazing.
The largish grey stars are the ones from the bright constellations I'm looking for now. This one I think I know! I consult the Constellation pages I've put in my Astral Sorcery guide, and then start tracing stars
And bingo! Now I've got Discidia. This is kind of the counterpart to Armara - where Armara is defensive and protects you from damage, Discidia increases the damage you do. When I get an Infusion Altar built and working, I'll have to pick one or the other, and that will be an interesting choice.
Here's another bright Constellation, but it doesn't match any of the four I know about, so it's probably Aevitas, the one bright Constellation I don't know about. So I will want to do an expedition soon to find a Constellation paper for it, as well as all the many dim constellations I haven't found yet either.
Another round of tree chopping - I'm traumatized, and still having flashbacks - but I now have the requisite three apples to craft a Harvestcraft Apple tree. This will allow me to just harvest apples; no more chopping down hostile Oak trees!
And planted, next to the Paperbark Trees.
Phew.
Next episode: working on an Infusion Altar
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
Minecraft can give pretty and scenic views, but especially so in the combination of mods I've collected - and written. My whole time playing Minecraft I've been obsessed with great views and pretty places, like this view out the window of the new (south) hotel wing. I love to pause and just take it in. I do note, though, that Serene Seasons isn't melting the snow in the outer range of my view distance, and I may eventually have to take a stroll over there to fix it.
I've neglected to put in the safety railings, though. Something for my to-do list.
But for now it's time to get cracking on building an Attunement Altar. It's a ) essential to progress to the next big stage in Astral Sorcery b ) allows access to the powerful but slowly developing perk system, and c ) turns out to be necessary to find Constellation papers for the dim Constellations. So I've got to it, very soon. And it's a pretty big project.
First is having enough blocks to build the large structure. It needs 225 Sooty Marble, 80 Marble Arches, 12 Marble Pillars, 4 each Runed and Chiseled Marble. I organize the necessary quantities in a seperate chest, and find I have enough of everything except I'm short 50 Marble Arches. I can get enough Marble to make the from what's left of the Ancient Shrine just to the north, so not a big deal, just a day trip.
I have all the necessary ingredients to make the central key block of the Altar.
My souped-up Starlight Altar has plenty of power too. So a tap of my Resonating Wand and:
I get an extra flashy light show - the glowing purple sparks haven't shown up for crafting before - and after a while my Altar block pops out.
I'm trying to get my Rock Crystal to 100% purity and I think I'm going to need even more Liquid Starlight for some other crafting coming up soon, so I put a second Lightwell up on the roof of the new wing. I don't put it next to the old one because apparently things using Liquid Starlight can interfere with each other.
Come morning I Blinkfoot over to the Ancient Shrine and rip up what's left of the floor, leaving only the basement. This gives me 3 stacks of Marble, which is plenty (it can be crafted into the Marble Arches I need.) I check the nearby ocean before heading home and spot two squid. One I succesfully catch, netting 3 ink sacs (yay Looting) but the other escapes into the depths.
On my previous trip I couldn't blinkfoot out of the water, but now I find I *can* if I go straight up. Good to know.
I check some rivers (creeks, really; they're pretty small for RTG rivers) for more squid on the way home but don't find any.
When I get home I use one of the ink sacs to craft a Book and Quill, which I use to craft a Bibliocraft Slotted Book, which I use for an Atlas.
If there's nothing in the Atlas it shows the location where it's made. Here you see the hotel, with my farm and fences to the north. The larger area on the east is the porch and the brown blob to the south is where I filled a pool in with wood.
ExplorerCraft could mix different map sizes at once but Bibliocraft can't; you have to pick one map size and that's all Bibliocraft can show. You can store other sizes but not see them (until you change the view size).
So now I'm set up for a nice big expedition - once I get my Altar built and get attuned.
Night falls and I start on Astral Sorcery work. But I hear a witch cackling outside and start checking the windows to find her. I see a number of other mobs and snipe a number of them before I see her and hit her once; but then she moves and I can't find here again. I snooze and give up on night operations so I can get my exp and loot.
In the morning I spot her and finish her off, then grab my goodies.
I'm trying to decide where to put the Infusion Altar and consider another possibility, just plopping it next to the farm. There's a big pool there so I test my fill pool spell, now that the ice has melted. It works, although not perfectly, and is certainly easier than manually filling, because the conjured blocks disappear after about a minute.
But as I'm doing this I'm struck by an epiphany. It's a hassle to convert an Infusion Altar from one Constellation to another - so, since they provide different benefits for attuned items, I probably will want several eventually. And that means I don't want just one spot, but a sequence of spots, preferably with interesting orientations. And *that* knocks out the back yard (next to forest) and the floating islands. Out on the grassland is still possible, but a grand sequence in the front of the hotel seems the obvious choice. So in front of the hotel it is.
A quick glance on the ground convinces me that part of the hill has to go. The grand boulevard will need to be flat.
And that means this part of the hill has to go. A lot of digging, but what has to be done has to be done. I spend the rest of the day digging, then the night crafting Spectral Relays for the Altar's stars, collecting Liquid Starlight, and sniping.
In the morning, I can *hear* a baby zombie but I can't see him. I look around but it doesn't come after me so I figure it's stuck somewhere and resume digging.
And *then* it comes up and backstabs me. Once again I end up spinning around trying to find it.
But soon enough my crossbow defeats another villain. Begone, treacherous fiend!
I wear out my shovel to almost nothing (about 12 stacks of dirt), go down to the Tinker's room in the mine, repair it with a Sharpening Kit, head back up, and dig for the reast of the day. Still not done; it's a big hill.
I enjoy the sunset view from the lobby. Oh, look, the second Redwood has finally grown as the big version! Looks nice now that they're the same. I have achieved symme-tree!
(zeno ducks)
Another night crafting and managing Liquid Starlight.
Hey, there's Discidia, my planned attunement! I'll take that as a very good omen.
How am I doing on ground clearance?
Ughh. I may have been overambtious.
I have some ideas for decoration which will require several more stacks of Black Granite, so I head down to the mines for a round of mining with the hammer.
Ooh, nice, Diamonds. I'd been unlucky with those for a while.
While I'm down here I soup my shovel up with 1 level of Haste and 1 of Reinforced (equivalent to 1 level of Efficiency and 1 of Unbreaking). At this point enchanted vanilla Minecraft tools would be better than this one (well, if I could hang on to my levels) but it is very easy to repair (2 iron for a Sharpening kit and no levels) so I'll just stick with it.
Another day digging in a miserable rainstorm and I get one trench through the side of the hill to a pool. At this rate it will take several days to shave off the side of the hill.
Well, tomorrow is another day. I assuage myself with yet another sunset. And it will be worth it in the end. I remember when this view was just a fantasy. And here we are!
Next episode: Finishing preps and starting construction.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
As I've been digging out the front of the hotel during the day, I've been continuing to collect Starlight at night and using it to multiply and purify my crystals. I've gotten from 70 to 88% purity in my best crystal so far with 4 spare crystals generated. 100% isn't far off.
I put another level of Reinforced on my shovel.
Then it's dawn and time for more ground prep.
This pool is relevant because the chicken coop is in the way of the Altar and I need to move it. The easiest move is just into this corner of my farm area, right next to it and currently unused. But this pool is in the way. It's kind of been an annoyance for getting around so I'm totes ready to fill it in.
Once again I'm using my Fill Pool spell and it's getting easier as I get more used to it. After I empty it I take the sand at the bottom. Then I fill with dirt (because I have a LOT of dirt now).
Oh, hey, the Harvestcraft apple tree has some ripe apples! WAY easier than chopping down a half dozen oaks. More logical, too.
I make the new expanded chicken pen and a number move over. Many don't, but that's fine; I just butcher them.
Night falls, so back inside.
Without really thinking about it, I'd been using my Crystal Sword, with Looting 3, so I have a LOT of chicken products. I make a bunch of Harvestcraft recipes - Fried Eggs, Scrambled Eggs, Pancakes, Chicken Pot Pie, Chicken Sandwiches, and Lemon Chicken. Yum! Into the deep freeze they go (actually just my finished recipe chest.)
I make another tool forge and put it in the hotel with a bunch of Sharpening Kits so I can repair my iron tools in the hotel and not have to go down to the mine to do it.
Then some sniping.
Oh yeah, I need to fill that in.
Day breaks and I head outside to work.
But there's a Creeper hiding under the window overhang. No prob, skewer with my crossbow and - it doesn't die? That's the first I didn't one-shot. I turn and run a considerable distance so I can safely reload. But when I come back I can't find it. I spend some time looking for it - because Creepers are sneaky but eventually just start work.
I've uncovered a cave and I decide to head in and light it up. It turns out to be small and I encounter no mobs.
There's a huge deposit of sand here, extending to where I've been leveling the ground. I have no idea how. I've long been short of sand (because most of the nearby beaches are gravel) so I dig a lot out. I get over four stacks, and then decide that's plenty, and put a double layer of dirt on top.
At this point I've levelled enough land for the Altar plus a wide space between it and the Starlight Hotel. But I'm not going to just plop it down on the ground. I'm going to put it on top of a big decorative pedestal. This is the base I put down to make sure I've got enough land cleared and to check the placement.
Come nighttime, I'd been meaning to do some constellation searches but hadn't gotten around to it. So while I'm climbing around on the roof collecting Liquid Starlight to enhance my crystals, I take a peek in the Telescope. I see some bright stars, but I'm not sure what they are, and have to fetch my Constellation Papers (stored in the Astral Sorcery guide) to trace it.
It's Evorsio (Mining). Very useful for fast development, because you get experience from mining, but I'll stick with Discidia because I have some Plans.
And then I do Vicio (Travel) entirely from memory! I feel very competent.
Dawn breaks; I do some sniping and then resurface this pool area at the south entrance. But something horrible happens.
No, worse than that.
After I'm done I head to the hill to get back to the work area and I accidentally right click.
With my CAD equipped.
With my Blink spell.
Facing into the hill.
And now I'm six or seven blocks in and several blocks down. If I die here I'll lose everything. I can only think of one chance.
I point my CAD upwards, fire my Blink spell, and hope.
Still buried. Again.
Still buried. Again.
Still buried. It's looking grim. Again.
Again.
Almost out of Psi.
Again.
GASP!
I'm out.
Hunh huh huh.
Well, *that's* an experience I don't want to re-experience. Again.
And what does an American do after a near-death experience?
Eat. Eat a hamburger, to be precise.
And then, like a late stage capitalism worker drone, back to work.
My idea for decoration is to do pixel art of the constellations. I want to do a test before I build it because I want enough room. It would really stink to have to move the Altar after I build it. So I do one for Discidia. I'll do the final in smoothstone, but I'll do this draft in cobble since I'll probably have to change things.
Oops. That's not right.
There we go! I think this is gonna work - for Discidia, at least. Some of the others may be more problematic because the lines will be harder to coerce into a grid. But I'll deal with that when and it I get there.
Sunset on a VERY eventful, and nearly very disastrous day. But all's well that ends well, and this episode ends here.
Next episode: building the Altar.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
I'm planning to repeat the motif all around the pedestal. That needs a lot of Black Granite, so I head down to hammer out some more from the mines.
Unfortunately mining Black Granite makes for lousy pictures
I do get another Diamond deposit, so ++good!
Somehow I'd never gotten around to the third level of Luck (the Tinker's equivalent to Fortune) on my ore pick so I put it on now.
Back upstairs, it's raining again, a common Spring weather feature. I harvest a round in the farm as Summer is approaching and soon my Spring crops will be done for the year.
I build Eclogite brick columns for the corners of the pedestal to hold up the Altar. It's still the only "stone" material I've got in any quantity. I'm used to more choices, but it is a good stone and I'm being pleasantly surprised at how well it works for basically everything.
Night falls but I've fenced and lighted the area so I can keep working. Here I'm using my Psi Place Block spell, from the ground to place the Marble Arch border of the Altar. I tried using some speed bridging techniques, but I kept falling off and I don't want to take the time to learn them right now when I've got the taste of a big advance in my mouth.
After I have two sides, I just go up and build the rest conventionally.
I finish just after dawn, which I thought was bad timing since I couldn't use it during the day. (I hadn't done the corner pillars yet but those were just a jiff.)
The Altar Block itself goes in the exact center - but it turns out you can't count blocks on that super-black Sooty Marble because the black outline of each block is *totally* invisible, so I have to build crossing diagonal lines in dirt to determine where it went.
Once finished I get these sparkly effects to tell me I've done it right. Surprisingly it works before I pull up the torches, unlike the Starlight Altar, which wanted absolutely *no* blocks whatever above it. Or maybe it just shows that it's built correctly and wouldn't actually *work* until I pulled up the torches. I dunno, didn't test it.
Next you have to place a Stellar Relay in the right place for each star in the Constellation - 8 in the case of Discidia. To place them you hold a piece of Constellation paper for the Constellation and you see these clusters of purple sparks where the relays go. The Relay is supposed to go exactly in the middle, but that's hard to see. After I place them, I check each one from both the N-S and E-W directions and they all seemed right in the middle. But nothing happens, which is reasonable as it's not supposed to work in the day. Supposedly it needs the Constellation in the sky during the night, so I'll have to wait to be sure it's right.
While I'm waiting, I work on the pedestal, now using smoothstone. I spotted a Constellation in the sky but it was Vicio, not Discidia.
The pedestal itself looks pretty good, although I think I'll add an Eclogite column in the middle of each side. I mirror imaged the Constellation for looks; that's not how Constellations work either in real life or in Astral Sorcery but it does look a lot better (I tried the other way). It's too close to the hotel for looks, though. This is, unbelievably, the first time I've built multiple large structures outside of a village context, where they're *supposed* to be adjacent to other structures. Partly I didn't do enough planning and partly I was just sick of digging. Well, I'm not going to move it now just for looks. Next world I'll build mockups first, and start earlier.
I continue working on the pedestal and as I'm working on the fourth wall:
BAWOOM! Thunderstorm! Meaning Summer is here. I try to get a lightning pic but don't succeed so you'll have to settle for this.
I go inside and sleep because I figure the Altar won't work in a thunderstorm.
In the morning I check the window before going out and it's a good thing I did because there's a Creeper there! Which I can handle, but it means either my lighting missed a spot, I left a way in, or the No Base Spawning mod I created to copy current Minecraft's block to mob spawning with block light above zero isn't working. All of these are bad. But before I fix any of them I have to fix the Creeper. So upstairs to an open window for sniping and:
Wait, what's going on on top of the Altar?! Oh nuts, there must have been damage from a lightning strike. I go up to survey the damage.
But there's no damage. The Infusion Altar has activated in spite of daylight. I suspect that my manual adjustments to Astral Sorcery day length aren't correct. I may need to fix that.
But in the meantime, dare I expose myself to the light and the power?
LOL Just kidding, I've read ahead in the book (metaphorically). On stepping onto the Altar, the game switches to a cutscene where the camera lifts up and rotates around me twice.
If you ever do this I strongly suggest you build your Altar in a scenic place because the scene looks really cool if you have. I did, and appreciate it.
Just a nice place to live.
As the scene continues, the light around me grows more and more intense, eventually almost obscuring me. Pretty cool graphics.
And Zeno has seen the light!
An Astral Sorcery Flare shows up to congratulate me. This is a neutral/friendly mob added by Astral Sorcery, mostly for looks. One had shown up in Episode 27 to congratulate me for making a Linking Wand, but I didn't know what it was at the time. You can get one as a permanent companion by contributing to their Patreon.
It glitters at me for a while and then ascends joyously out of sight. A very good day!
Next episode: It's reward time!
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
I open my Astral Tome to find a new tab, Perks. Once you've attuned to a Constellation, you gain a perk, as well as a way to earn Perk experience which you can use to gain more perks.
When you start you gain a "root" in the constellation you're attuned to. This gives a benefit - increased critical chance for Discidia, along with the method for gaining experience, which is by dealing damage here.
As you gain experience you eventually gain additional perk picks, which you can use by selecting the "stars" in this picture - but only stars that are connected by lines to your current picks. At the start, as you see, there's no choice. As you develop out you get more choices. Some of the areas can drastically change gameplay; for example, there's one cluster of options where you gain a tremendous amount of hit points but armor no longer works for you. In general the brighter stars are stronger powers, and ones isolated at the end of a chain are the strongest. You are limited to a maximum of 40 picks and there's quite a bit more possible; so the set you chose is a serious commitment; it's really a whole game in itself and since different areas have different effects and some are quite drastic you could play several games just exploring different combinations of perks.
Those of you have have been following me might be wondering why a player who so resolutely avoids combat would pick Discidia, which rewards you for fighting and, as you'd guess, is in an area with mostly combat benefits. Well, the main goal is to overprep me for boss fights, most especially the Ender Dragon, which I have never actually fought. Armara gives you experience by preventing damage to you, and I avoid taking damage even more intensely than I avoid fighting. Vicio (travel) would normally be a good fit for me; but I've decided I'll pass on conveniences now for a big boost against the Dragon.
I take my perk and go out to harvest some Cactus, which is growing now that it's Summer, and discover it's a bad idea to put Cactus so close together because I'm getting poked.I'd actually put Cactus this close in another farm long ago put importantly the sand was on *top* of the floor and the sand kept me away from the thorns. Here I have no such protection. I'll have to rearrange it, probably after the summer.
I spend the night sniping - although I don't see a lot of mobs from my window. In the morning I check to see how much experience I've picked up.
I've gained maybe 1/10th of the way to the next perk? (The experience bar is on the far left.) Uggh. This won't do. But I had planned another option.
I blinkfoot up to the slime islands to take on some slimes. Conventional mob farms don't work so well for Discidia as it counts *damage* done; but Slimes are great for combining a lot of potential damage with a low hazard.
Clearing off the first island gives me somewhat more experience than sniping all night, so it's a much better use of my time. I go to the other (purple) island
but there are only a few slimes. Then back to the green,
Where there are two big slimes trapped in my pit. Off them, then back to the purple.
Where now it's absolutely hopping! - in several senses of the word.
Then back to the green, kill a few, then back to the purple, where once again it's really slow. I know slimes like to jump off the purple island, and I know a 2 high wall keeps them in, so I figure I'll build a wall around the edge of the purple island so I won't lose them that way. But I only have a stack and a half of cobble, which gets about 1/4 of the edge. So back home.
At home I try lowering my foot block on my blockfoot spell a bit.
Even though it's just gotten dark, my Infusion Altar is active. So it's not that I have the cycle too long and so every day it starts and ends late. I now realize, though, that this won't be as useful for pinning down what's wrong, because whether it's working will conflate whether Discidia is in the sky and whether Astral Sorcery thinks it's night.
I spend the night gathering Liquid Starlight and using it to enlarge my best Rock Crystal and my Crystal Sword, which got a bit worn down by all that slime slicing. Astral Sorcery tools degrade as they get used, and have to be resharpened, which reduces their size. I get my sword to its max 1700 before I grind it to do a satisfying 16 points of damage.
One minor flaw in at least this (1.12) version of Astral Sorcery is that the Astral Tome doesn't respond properly to window resizes. Sometimes you can't see the tabs. It's fixable by resizing, although you have to do it "blind".
Come day I head down to the mine to grab a couple stacks of cobble for walls around the purple slime island and then back up to the island.
But my blinkfoot spell keeps misfiring. It seems sometimes it just doesn't place the block, accompanied by a change to the Psi spell sound that sounds failure-ish. I go back home and alter the block to be even lower, but it's still happening.
On the third try I make it up, to this view including two slimes suiciding off the far side of the island. OK, the color scheme is a bit garish, but I think that's a bit of an over-reaction.
Another day of slime slicing, including a really long stint at the entrance to the purple island, which is just covered in slimes. After I clear it I build a wall around it to stop the suicides on that island, at least.
I score another perk, claiming the +5% projectile damage. The next perk is this, and as a bright star it's more valuable than the first two combined (which were +5% melee, and +5% projectile).
But now I'm encountering a problem for my Plan. The central star of the whole complex is Singularity, which grants access to all five of the roots and (I'm assuming) all their different ways to gain perk points. But I can't see it. Some internet research reveals the problem is that I don't have the Constellation Aevitas, one of the five roots. This is a problem because I don't have the Constellation paper for it and I think Astral Sorcery will only give you each once. I vaguely recall seeing it in a chest somewhere and leaving it because my storage was full, but I don't remember where - or if it's even in this world, rather than one of the Creative worlds I've set up for testing. I've checked the chests near my base multiple times, so it's not there. If I can't figure out a solution I'll have to alter my plans and give up on Singularity.
Then it's another night of Starlight gathering and another day of slime slicing. No pics, because it's just more of the same, except this:
I didn't notice it in-game, because it always happens in a heated battle, but when you level up and gain a perk point Astral Sorcery briefly flashes the experience bar on the screen. I only noticed because of Damage Screenshots.
(In the background you can see the new wall.)
I use that point to get that +5%/+5% perk. But now I have to fix (or give up on) getting Aevitas, because now I have choices, and which way I go from there depends on whether I can use that Singularity. That night I search all my chests again for a misplaced Aevitas, but don't find it. Some research indicates you can make it with a recipe:
But the recipe requires the end-stage Irisdescent Altar, which is *two* stages past where I am, so not a solution (I need it soon to use the multiple experience systems as I progress through the mod.)
Come morning I search Prairie Hill, where I ripped up a Ruined Altar long ago, and check the chest for the small Altar that was in the Grasslands. Nada.
Well, *if* I found it, it's not here. So time for some expeditions. But it's a little late in the day to start, so I putter around my base for a while.
I take out the fence separating the farm now that I've enclosed that to. It's just in the way now. The pigs have been in the farm area, so I move put then into a pen a little further from the hotel.
I resurface a pond I filled with wood, and fill in another with my Fill Water spell.
Barely finishing in time for night.
You'll notice it's raining and as I go inside to start prep I hear the Enderman teleport noise. I search all over the hotel for it, but can't find it. But I keep hearing those weird Enderman gronks. Eventually I find it - standing on top of the 2 high platform I built to fight Endermen from! How insouciant.
So I go under the platform and knock the blocks out from under it so it falls to my level. Then I kill it, now in *three* blows because of my freshly sharpened Crystal Sword, plus a little bonus damage from my Astral Sorcery perk. It can't even hit me because of the platform (which, fortunately, I had built larger than necessary.)
A few more preps, and then bedtime, since it's raining and I can't stargaze.
Next episode: Out into the big wide world!
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
I had an account here once but it was caught up and deleted in the GDPR related wipe of European accounts. Upsetting, but I'll skip the rant on how so much valuable information about Minecraft history (especially mod documentation) was lost that day.
Zeno410, you'll have to take this on trust because my posts are gone but I was one of the people who followed your old journals (please never delete them) and I recall the post about the value of keeping a journal; it made such an impression on me that I started keeping detailed notes and documentation for all my Minecraft worlds. Your post has been a far greater influence than you know!
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:
That's a vibe all right. I find myself referring to my own records the same way. "how did I pull off x thing/y redstone contraption again? oh yeah..." Extra valuable when revisiting old/obscure mods whose online documentation has been lost.
---
Reading through your Psi experience with the block placing shenanigans is taking me back to Tekkit, trying to write little scripts to get Computercraft turtles to cut down jungle giants or build sections of wall and suchlike. I'm no programmer and I was terrible at it but I gave it a darn good try back in the day.
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Agreed on slime islands being hideous, and I always get mad at them and turn them way down when building personal packs. On the other hand though, I've been searching for one in my GTNH world for ages now and I just can't find one anywhere. I've been thousands of blocks in every direction from spawn! Argh, there's never a balance.
I wanted some kind of "stars" in the sky but it's hard to find something small enough in Minecraft.
Could add Chisels and Bits or whatever the cool kids are using these days, cut up some sea lanterns into tiny pieces. Probably could even do constellations that way.
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That huge framed aperture you've constructed makes the view look like a painting. I did a double-take at the first screenshot posted of it thinking it actually was some massive modded painting in a frame. Never experienced that effect in Minecraft before, it's absolutely fascinating.
I had an account here once but it was caught up and deleted in the GDPR related wipe of European accounts. Upsetting, but I'll skip the rant on how so much valuable information about Minecraft history (especially mod documentation) was lost that day.
Yeah, it's sad to see replies of mine to accounts that have vanished. I always wonder what happened to all those cool people.
Zeno410, you'll have to take this on trust because my posts are gone but I was one of the people who followed your old journals (please never delete them) and I recall the post about the value of keeping a journal; it made such an impression on me that I started keeping detailed notes and documentation for all my Minecraft worlds.
It's easy to believe you'd followed me before because it's - kind of hard to imagine a villainous reason to lie about it? "Ha! I've convinced a minor nostalgia gaming blogger that I followed him in the past. An essential part of my plan for WORLD DOMINATION! mwahaHAHAHA!" Um, no.
I'm really delighted you've enjoyed and been inspired by my posts. That's a big part of why I do this.
Reading through your Psi experience with the block placing shenanigans is taking me back to Tekkit, trying to write little scripts to get Computercraft turtles to cut down jungle giants or build sections of wall and suchlike. I'm no programmer and I was terrible at it but I gave it a darn good try back in the day.
All part of the fun!
Agreed on slime islands being hideous, and I always get mad at them and turn them way down when building personal packs. On the other hand though, I've been searching for one in my GTNH world for ages now and I just can't find one anywhere. I've been thousands of blocks in every direction from spawn! Argh, there's never a balance.
Hmm, that's an idea, cut down on the rate. Although, now that I've found several, including two at my spawn base, I never need another. I am getting SO MUCH blue slime from farming them for Astral Sorcery perk advancement.
Could add Chisels and Bits or whatever the cool kids are using these days, cut up some sea lanterns into tiny pieces. Probably could even do constellations that way.
Whoa, another good idea. I'm going to test that in Creative or maybe a clone of this world (because pulling mods in and out gives me the willies.)
That huge framed aperture you've constructed makes the view look like a painting. I did a double-take at the first screenshot posted of it thinking it actually was some massive modded painting in a frame. Never experienced that effect in Minecraft before, it's absolutely fascinating.
Yeah, I love how the trickery in that wall came out. The fake part looks kinda real and the real part looks kinda fake and it's just awesome. Now I need some interior decor to go with it. No ideas yet. Maybe it'll be my project for next winter, when I don't want to travel.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
I head off bright and early in the morning. The primary goal is to find paper for the dim constellations I can now find after Attuning myself to a Constellation, and to find out what the heck happened with the Aevitas paper. The secondary goals are to pretty up my maps, and to get some Mossy Cobblestone to make Tinker's Construct Mending Moss to keep my fancy armors repaired.
Hey! What are you guys doing in my orchard! And ouch! Diediedie!
(I should have probably just ignored them, since they'd despawn once I left. But, habits.)
First outing: going to go north on the west coast of this penisula. I'm going to risk going by sea to improve my map a bit.
But somehow I keep getting turned around and end up on the *east* side of the penisula. Whatever. I'll come back on the west.
I scrupulously avoid anything even vaguely dangerous, like these two big things to the right. I think they're harmless whales, but just .. in .. case ...
Soon I arrive at the Desert where I got my Cactus long ago. Hey, that looks like a shrine! And indeed it is. Although it doesn't have the fancy above-surface decorations, it actually has a basement with a Collector Crystal.
But - no Constellation Paper. Not one piece.
A quick boat trip to the next biome, which is a brown Steppe in spite of the inviting green color on the map. I wish map colors were a bit more informative.
Oh and what are those animals? They look like boars. And they are (thanks to Better Creatures)! And they're hostile. Cripes, more hostiles?
So I spend the rest of the day pincushioning Boars. And there are a LOT, as you see. How fun! (not!).
Come evening I pillar way up, pull out my bed and ...
I left my bed at home ?! Oh come on, I'm supposed to be past amateur hour.
So I construct a little platform, put walls around, and go AFK for the night. Well, I needed to do my knee rehab exercises IRL.
Come morning I snipe the mobs waiting at the base and explore what's left of the Steppe on my map, finding another Shrine.
And this one has a Constellation paper. Only one, sadly. Confusingly, when you first see a Constellation paper, the game informs you "There is nothing here.". But that's a lie! Because when you pick it up:
It magically morphs into one for a Constellation whose paper you've never found, if there is one. So it shouldn't say "there is nothing here" initially, but something like "you have not looked at this yet".
I've reached the limit of the map, so time to cross to the other side and head down the west coast. I have to snipe several more boars, and snag two sheep for three wool (looting) just in case I can't get home by tonight.
I cross a BoP Swampland and soon am boating on the other side.
This time I don't avoid trouble, and suffer a jellyfish strike. The Blindness is very brief, but the poisoning keeps on a while, and it's not just a bug because I'm taking damage. After a while I steer to shore in case this is really serious. I can just walk from here.
The poisoning ends, but now it's wolves. Just one after another. After another. After another. 8 in total.
I get so hair-trigger I kill a bear too, which is actually a neutral mob and so which didn't need feathering. These psycho animals are turning *me* into a monster!
After that I get home without further incident, just shortly before nightfall. I spent a lot of time killing all those psycho boars and wolves.
The map of the peninsula looks way better.
Then, it's time to stargaze for Constellations. Can I find Octans?
Yes I can! And very quickly.
For a control, I trace Mineralis, a Constellation I *don't* have the paper for (using the Better than Wolves wiki for the pattern.) I *don't* get it, so I have to have the Constellation paper to discover a Constellation.
So, I need to keep looking for the Aevitas paper. That means back out again. It's night, so I hunt through the Astral Tome looking for something I could make, but not really finding anything to do overnight.
Next morning I head out. I'm heading south to the next map south, which has an unexplored area, and some kind of snowy forest which is likely to have mossy cobble. There's a stretch of Dead Swamp I can use to get past the Roofed Forest; it has Moose, but with high visibility I won't be surprised and I have the gear to deal with them. The Dead Swamp would normally be difficult to get through because of all the mud, but I can use Blinkfoot to zip over them.
That snowy forest is vanilla Cold Taiga, albeit enhanced by some RTG trees. I find some violet flowers here (for dye) as well as some Pumpkins (which I have, but are barely growing because they don't like plains and only grow in one season).
I haven't been taking many scenery pics in this journal, unlike all my previous ones, but I just had to stop for this view of the Cold Taiga over an RTG scenic lakes. The lakes were just such a win; they look pretty nice in and of themselves but even better they often offer these great vistas of other pretty terrains that can be hard to get a proper view of otherwise.
Oh, and look, lakeside Mossy Cobble! Progress on a goal, too.
From there it's on to the Highlands where I disembarked back in Episode 2.
Shrine #3. And this one has the max decorations.
I'm feeling like I have enough Marble for now, so I don't rip it down but just knock a hole in the side to check out the basement. This shrine has not 2, not 3, but *4* Constellation papers, which turn into Fornax (furnace), Lucerna (banishment), Pelotrio (regeneration), and Mineralis (ores). So that's 5 of 7 dim constellations but still no Aevitas. I was kind of expecting the mod would prioritize bright constellations over dim, in which case I must have found (and lost) Aevitas, but I'm not sure yet, so I'll keep going until I find all the dims. Gotta catch em all!
Then back out to look at the rest of the Highlands. I did BoP Highlands (the RTG version) as hills and ridges on an elevated plain and sometimes you get nice views on the edge. Here we're seeing an RTG version of Roofed Forest on the right and BoP Rainforest on the left. The little copse of Roofed Forest is from Geographicraft, which makes biome boundaries more irregular than vanilla does. (I know I promised not so many scenery pics, but I couldn't resist.)
And then a thunderstorm starts (it is Serene Seasons summer). Bed plopping is kind of an exploit, but I just don't feel like dealing with an extended thunderstorm fight while I build a shelter, so I yield to temptation, pillar up, and throw down a bed.
To finish off this section of my map I need to go into this RTG version Birch Forest Hills. Which is normally safe enough but..
Continued next episode!
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
It's certainly a nice looking world that you have. I was checking my various instances to see if any use RTG for terraingen. I'm sure I recognize that name and I thought I'd played with it at least at some point but it's not in anything I currently have set up. My personal TC4/Immersive Engineering pack has one you might have heard of though, "Climate Control"... hehehe.
I hope you'll be able to find the Aevitas constellation paper. I don't know much about Astral Sorcery at all, I only got as far as tracing a couple of the constellations when I last had it in a pack so I'm interested to see what it can do at the higher end.
RTG didn't have a wide version release. The only really solid release version was for 1.10. There was a version for 1.7.10 but it didn't have much of the terrain techniques I put in and an almost finished version for 1.12. And that was it.
I can tell you already that Astral Sorcery allows a LOT of stuff, some quite powerful. I think the journal will focus on Astral Sorcery going forward just because I'm largely finished with Tinker's and Psi, and I've done the RTG terrain analysis before in my previous journal.
Episode 35: A Venture Vis-a-Vis Avoidant Aevitas, pt. 2
Season: Summer
When I go in the Birch Forest Hills I hear growls. And soon enough:
I get attacked by two Better Creatures Timber Wolves in succession.
(Damage Screenshots *really* earned its bits with that pic!)
I dispatch them and then go back to the Highlands because they usually spawn in large packs.
And with that I've really had it with these Timber Wolves, and all the psycho Better Animals in general. There's kind of an implicit contract in Minecraft where it's safe and happy in the day and dangerous and scary in the night. A *little* bit of daytime danger is fine but right now I can't walk in any forested biome, plus some others, without being harassed by these things, and I'm sick of it. So I go into the configs to knock them down. In the configs they are in a LOT of biomes - something like 30. I take them out of everything except a few spooky biomes like Roofed Forest, (BOP) Ominous Woods, and (BOP) Dead Forest. While I'm there I knock down the Moose spawning rate by 75% - they are not in all that many biomes; I can live with them, but not constantly. I'll probably make more changes in the future.
I head back to the ocean and get in a boat. Then I head inland on a river, the one I used to get most of the way back home in Episode 12.
But with a different plan. Where my arrow is the river splits, with one route heading towards home (but not getting there). I'm going to try the branch going north, taking advantage of the high boatability of RTG rivers.
And soon I am rewarded with the distinctive sight of an RTG Extreme Hills. But, as you notice, I'm being attacked by (I assume) an eel. Again.
I can't even see it under the boat, or wherever it is, so I steer to shallow water and get out to kill it. But the messaging says squid? It's eel meat in my inventory, so I'm going to guess Better Animals has the wrong name attached to eels.
After I kill it, I get as close as possible to the mountain, then exit the boat and dash up the hill, as I'm next to some dayspawning Rainforest and I'm concerned about creeperbombing.
I am rewarded with this great vista of a rocky passage. Here Better Animals is a big plus, as the big bird (I think a Lammergeier) is great atmosphere.
The RTG version of Extreme Hills is another biome that is great both to look at and look from. That is the RTG version of Ice Mountains (upgraded to a full biome for Geographicraft's mountain chains feature) to its north.
I go through the Ice Mountains to help fill out my map. I'm planning to head home to clear my inventory and use the Mossy Cobblestone.
I pass right on the edge of the big forested zone (for mapping).
And get home just in time for supper.
Looking at this pic, I think I will eventually have to do some reconstruction for looks. The hotel wings need to be extended, to look more hotel-like, and the Altar will have to be moved back. No time soon, though, I'll probably wait until I need more space.
Nighttime, so stargazing!
I discover Mineralis (shown here), the one I couldn't without the Constellation paper, and Lucerna. Productive.
Then to use the Mossy Cobble. In Tinker's Construct, 9 mossy cobble form a recipe for a Ball of Moss. That, in turn, can be right-clicked on a Bookcase (?), at the cost of 10 levels, to give Mending Moss, which can craft Mending Moss onto Tinker's equipment, the Tinker's equivalent to vanilla Mending.
I'm so excited I don't notice I'm putting it on the wrong item. I meant to put it on my helmet, which is hard to repair (needing a Manyullyn sharpening kits, thus 2 ingots of hard-to-get Manyullyn). I don't even notice until much later in the episode.
I also put it on my Manyullyn boots.
For the next part of the venture, I'm going to try to reach that Extreme Hills by boat from my Grasslands. You can see where I stopped exploring the north river fork because I got off to look at the Extreme Hills. That river almost certainly continues to the Bog (the mixed water and land to my north.) So I'll go there, get on a boat, and head back out.
I get sidetracked a bit by the complicated water-land mix in the bog, but soon enough I'm on the river heading through the Redwood Forest.
I reach the Extreme Hills without trouble. This time I go south of that big mountains, with views of the Rainforest to my south (it's pretty big).
There's mountain goats (Better Animals) up here as well.
I at least try for variety in my terrains. Here you see a more broken and complicated grouping of rugged hills, still in Extreme Hills.
The sharp-eyed among you might have noticed the shrine-ish pillars on the left and it is indeed a Ruined Shrine, but without any Constellation paper.
Continuing on, I reach a BoP Badlands, the sandy biome to the right.
This has, I'm pretty sure, one of the traps BoP puts in it's "bad" biomes: a deep pit with some kind of nasty substance at the bottom. I'm guessing quicksand, but I don't investigate.
Then I reach the Cherry Blossom Grove, still well-supplied with bears (I saw three). This is one; oddly though it was plain as day in the game it's hard to identify here.
Then Ice Plains, a likely biome for Shrines, and sure enough I find the Ancient Shrine in the distance right away.
There are Reindeer here. Thankfully not homicidal.
It's almost night, so I go into the shrine basement and then block the entrance to sleep honestly inside. Inside I find 4 Constellation papers, becoming Bootes (animals), Horologium (time), and:
Aevitas! So I'd never found it, and I must have seen it in one of my Creative testbed worlds.
The last Constellation paper remains blank, so I've found all the dim and bright constellations. The last four will have to wait until I contruct an Observatory.
I sleep the night, and then come morning head out and around the far side of the Cherry Blossom Grove to extend my map.
I find and use a river going in roughly the right direction. Unfortunately it passed under this:
Resulting in this:
But I blow through it so fast the skelly there barely gets off an arrow, and misses anyway.
Then a BoP Moor, which *would* be a really cool biome, except
It's ruined by the awful vanilla "surface" pools. Even worse, I've seen the results of Moor villages trying to generate around these pools, and it's a mess.
Then I reach the ocean, and get in a boat to take the river back home.
Then, once again I get attacked by something in the river. I get out to fight it and - I can't seen anything? Even though I'm still getting hit. After a while I spot some things in the water some distance from me, so apparently it doesn't have to be next to me to attack?
Well who knows how far this thing can attack, so I dive in to kill it.
Maybe it is a squid? Although they're only supposed to spawn in Deep Ocean, so I dunno. This eel business is another thing I'm done with. I'll block freshwater Eel spawning and see if this nonsense stops. (That future sure arrived in a hurry.)
And soon I'm back home, once again near suppertime.
Hey, what season is it now?
Hunh, only halfway through summer. Well, it's a good season and I'm enjoying it.
Next episode: settling into a bit of a routine.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
Then a BoP Moor, which *would* be a really cool biome, except
It's ruined by the awful vanilla "surface" pools.
I've personally always felt it would be better if they weren't a thing.
I guess the idea is to add some sources of water below what oceans and rivers offer, but they are just far too common and small and just make the landscape worse in my opinion.
I've personally always felt it would be better if they weren't a thing.
I guess the idea is to add some sources of water below what oceans and rivers offer, but they are just far too common and small and just make the landscape worse in my opinion.
Luckily for you, they removed them in 1.18, though I disagree with that - I even added an entire biome which is completely covered with those lakes, but they are also not the same as vanilla, generating level with the surface, and even normal lakes usually have a more gradual drop down to the liquid (I added a processing step which removes blocks adjacent to and above the liquid). They also fill in the trunks of tree and remove plants that were above them (same for the patches of sand that generate underwater when they appear on the surface net to them. I actually added this in response to a complaint about plants "generating" on the incorrect blocks and dropping (after some version this no longer occurred in vanilla, they just stayed there, I never noticed it when playing because they had long since despawned by the time I reached the area):
Otherwise, they are generally less common (compared to vanilla 1.6.4) due to the much greater variation in terrain, since the liquid level must be at or below the surrounding ground level, and I made surface lakes less likely to generate in "flat" biomes. Lakes in Superflat worlds are also adjusted so the frequency of surface lakes is independent of the depth (in vanilla they become more common as the surface is lowered since any attempts of placing lakes above the surface will end up on the surface and the range is fixed at 0-127, or 0-255 since 1.7 (which made them more common on the surface but rarer underground).
Another interesting change I made is that they can generate as low as y=2, with a single layer of liquid above a single layer of bedrock; in my last world I actually found such a lake with a dungeon connected to it, the deepest dungeon I'd ever found and the deepest possible due to y=2 being the deepest any air can generate at; vanilla limits their altitude to y=5 or above to avoid making holes in bedrock (this was possible in older vanilla versions due to lava lakes replacing blocks around them with stone):
Interestingly, the only thing outside of initial chunk generation that can replace bedrock in TMCW is a player in Creative mode as I coded in a special exception to patch any possible "bedrock breaking" exploits (I have no idea why Mojang hasn't thought of this, they can even have debug code that dumps a stacktrace if an attempt is made to replace bedrock so they can see how it happened; having such code, even if only enabled during development, can help a lot in solving issues, this is how I've ensured that TMCW is free of "worldgen runaway" issues, the bane of many worldgen mods (vanilla actually has a check which crashes the game, but only if it happens in the biome decorator; I've seen mods that "patch" this out but that is only covering up the root issue).
Also, since 1.13 the code that prevented lakes from generating inside of villages was broken by the multithreaded chunk generation (which did nothing to improve generation speed, as noted here 1.13 was over twice as slow as 1.6.4 - which is in turn twice as slow as TMCW despite its exceedingly complex world generation, thanks to how much I've optimized it). This and the aforementioned issues may have prompted Mojang to remove them (I even added code to prevent them from overwriting other structures, including strongholds, dungeons, and (partially) mineshafts), they also previously removed water lakes from deserts, which I partially restored by allowing them to generate underground, where I also added a much larger variant (up to 30 blocks wide, limited by the maximum size of decorations), as well as lakes of magma blocks.
I've personally always felt it would be better if [surface pools] weren't a thing.
I guess the idea is to add some sources of water below what oceans and rivers offer, but they are just far too common and small and just make the landscape worse in my opinion.
Agreed. From a gameplay perspective you do want them as a source of water, but it's not too hard to improve them (see below). They are particularly nasty in Moor on RTG because Moor is supposed to be this bleak sweeping landscape but it ends up looking like it's been attacked by a psychotic steam shovel. Bleah.
Luckily for you, they removed them in 1.18, though I disagree with that - I even added an entire biome which is completely covered with those lakes, but they are also not the same as vanilla, generating level with the surface, and even normal lakes usually have a more gradual drop down to the liquid (I added a processing step which removes blocks adjacent to and above the liquid). They also fill in the trunks of tree and remove plants that were above them (same for the patches of sand that generate underwater when they appear on the surface net to them.
That's the thing about these pools. The real world analogue is vernal pools which are ordinarily flush with the landscape, *not* normally attached to vertical drops and *especially* not under deep overhangs. And it's not that hard to fix them! You did it and I did it - and it's not that hard - the RTG version was less than a day of work (though a little less thorough than yours). It's almost insulting that everybody playing Minecraft has had to live with them for 12 years when a few days of work tops would fix them.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
Better Animals Plus... that's the one with the Hirschgeist boss thingy. I looked at it a long time ago and liked the look of it but never ended up adding it to a modpack. I don't think I'd enjoy being jumped by wolves in the daytime either.
The subtitle saying "squid dies" is just that the modder has used the squid's sound effects for their eel. Saves the trouble of recording and implementing new sounds I guess! I got a bit confused in one 1.16 pack of mine because I saw "zoglin" subtitles and I'd not even opened a Nether portal so there is no way there could have been a zoglin anywhere near me. As it turned out it was a Fish's Undead Rising mob that uses zoglin sound effects.
Episode 35: A Venture Vis-a-Vis Avoidant Aevitas, pt. 2
This has, I'm pretty sure, one of the traps BoP puts in it's "bad" biomes: a deep pit with some kind of nasty substance at the bottom. I'm guessing quicksand, but I don't investigate.
Yes indeed that is quicksand. Instant PTSD from seeing that picture. If you recall the 1.7.10 BoP quicksand was a diggable block, the 1.12 is a liquid. Much harder to extricate oneself from.
You got the Aevitas! Awesome! Now what does it do? haha.
Another vote here for hating murky pools. They're horrible and I delight in filling them in.
thats... really long...
Piece of cake
You should see my own journals; maybe not so much the text, of which there is still plenty, but the images (I posted over 1,600 in my journal for TMCWv5 alone, though most of them are in spoilers).
Also, you shouldn't quote entire posts, especially long ones, as it just clutters up the thread and many people are put off by it (I've told others not to do this yet they continue doing it; like why is this even necessary, the post they (the same person I pointed out before) replied to is right above it! Compare to the following post from Princess_Garnet, who removed all but a single line from the same post).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
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Curse PremiumEpisode 27: Spring Starlight
Season:
I'm starting to exhaust some of my stored recipes, so I spend the night whipping up some more, including various burgers and peanut butter sandwiches.
As a fan of both peaches and peanut butter, the Peach Jelly Sandwich makes me want to take a snack break. This is also a very practical recipe in the Harvestcraft - Spice of Life combo since every different flavor of jam used qualifies as a different recipe.
Is it spring yet?
Sigh. Almost, but no. I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas. Well, as long as I'm waiting, I'll work on the rear facade.
I write up a spell to break a block and replace it with a different one. This relies on the delay (aka Trick: Sleep) effect because, as I found out earlier, Psi can't (or won't) replace a block exactly when it breaks it. The replacement has to be delayed a bit.
I want this for my plans for the rear facade, which involve swapping most of the wall blocks.
And boy is this useful. What would have been a significant job with a lot of scaffolding and running around is basically just pew-pew-pew. Aiming gets a bit difficult when it gets high, but I can just pop up with my Blink Footed spell.
And this is the new interior view. I added some Redwood leaves to add some depth and improve the illusion of looking through trees, and I like it!
I try a couple of other choices, but end up deciding to use the same Eclogite Bricks already in the wall. I figured the door frames would need to contrast, but they don't.
Another night of sniping and sleeping. Is it Spring yet?
Oh so close but no.
And here's the finished rear elevation. Way more interesting than the huge mass of Redwood.
I got those leaves from the tree I'd planted in the yard, but I had liked the way it looked. So I decide to replant a pair of Redwoods as decoration.
Ooh, it grew fast. Let's go see what it looks - wait hey, it's Spring! Wahoo!
Well, not entirely wahoo. I have some chores.
Planting my Spring veggies for starters.
But come evening it's to to address the next Astral Sorcery gateway: Starmetal.
Starmetal has a complicated way to get started. Initially it can only be made by "linking" iron ore blocks to a Star crystal in an Ancient Shrine which has been exposed to starlight. So you have to make a Linking wand for the linking. rip the roof off an Ancient Shrine and finally hang out there overnight.
I climb up to the roof to make the wand.
Here's the recipe. Note Astral Sorcery has a bigger crafting grid and uses it for more complex recipes.
I was a little worried I might not have enough Starlight, but there are no problems. The recipe does take a while, though.
After it's done, though, this little ball of energy appears. It just sits there for a while, and then flies off. It seems like an entity of some sort but I'm not aware of any mobs added by Astral Sorcery. So, for now, it's a mystery.
It starts raining so no more Astral Sorcery tonight. I go to bed.
A little sniping in the morning before I grab a half-stack of iron ore blocks and head out to the Ancient Shrine.
I use Blink Footed to travel and going 7 blocks each time I click I go FAST. I'm at the bunny pen on the other side of the biome in seconds.
But darn it, I forgot the carrots. So that's one bit of cuteness I don't get to enjoy.
I draw my Psionic Energy down to almost zero and have to just walk for a bit. Then back to Blink Footed to finish the trip. I do get a failure towards the end where the block doesn't stop me so evidently I still have a bug, possibly setting the foot block too high.
Soon I'm at the shrine and I Blinkfoot up to start taking it down. I leave the Sea Lanterns (apart from one) to pick up later with a Silk Touch when (and if?) I get it.
It turns out there's a lot more material in the shrine than I thought. I had been planning to go on an expedition after getting some Starmetal to get the Marble I need for an Infusion Altar. But, although I haven't counted, I think I already have enough after tearing down the upper part of this shrine. I have several stacks of base Marble and quite a bit of the various products (Chiseled, Columns, etc.)
A possible issue with the security fence is that the mobs might be able to use the snow layers outside to jump over. RTG places multiple layers of snow in Ice Plains, which is a neat visual, but creates partial snow blocks of a range of heights so a fence might not be enough. Testing reveals I jump over myself. I try to dig up all the snow layers but just in case I also make it a 2 block jump up to get into what remains of the shrine, which is the basement and part of the floor. Probably not necessary, but Hardcore habits.
Then I put down an ore block, link the Crystal, and link the block. It takes about 20 seconds to convert.
Then I try a bunch of blocks at once. But this takes much longer, about three minutes. So something in the neighborhood of 20 seconds per block.
While I'm here I pull out the Fosic Resonator, which can let me see concentrations of starlight, and Blinkfoot up to look. But I don't see any, just a lot of mobs standing around.
I finish 16 blocks of ore and decide that's enough for now. But I forgot a bed and it's too risky to Blinkfoot back to the hotel, so to pass time I snipe.
Dawn takes forever to arrive, even though it's really less than 10 minutes.
Just forever!
But, finally, I am rewarded with the sight of flaming zombies and can go home.
Heading home I try a new trick. The Minecraft move forward mechanism has an interesting control system. Holding the W key speeds you up, but the process of walking slows you so you reach an equilibrium forward speed. However, when you are bouncing, like from bouncy boots, you're not getting slowed and so you can pick up a lot of speed. So I alternate between Blinkfooting to gain altitude and then high speed bouncing when I run out of Psionic gas. This REALLY gets me home in a hurry. I may try to figure a spell scheme to use this more consistently.
I'm farming Oaks to get apples to cure Zombie Villagers (I only have the one), but so far I'm not getting them.
I check the decorative tree plantings on the back grounds and although it's a nice effect they sprouted different sizes. I chop the one on the right and replant. Hopefully I won't have to do this too many times.
Mmm, Spring colors!
Then it's downstairs to smelt the Starmetal Ore. I try using the Smeltery, hoping for the doubling, but the intermod connection wasn't written (perhaps intentionally) and the Smeltery ignores the ore. So I just smelt it in a conventional Furnace.
While I'm waiting I smelt some Sand into Molten Glass, which the Smeltery can cast into Clear Glass. I may use this for the big sunset view window later, although for the moment it's too useful for sniping.
As I head back up, I see the rain falling all the way down the ladder shaft from the hotel. This seems rather unprofessional for a luxury resort, so at the roof I try to figure a scheme to cover the top.
It's tricky, though, because the ladder is against the outside wall, and I can't find a good solution. I guess I can just use a trapdoor.
I had been planning to start using my Starmetal, but it's raining so no starlight and no Astral Sorcery, so it's bedtime to make the rain stop.
Next episode: Advancement time.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
It's not long enough! We need more!
But they're entries describing what a player may have done. Often in depth. It's expected they may be long at times.
(I don't always reply to these, but even when I don't I like reading them, even if my unfamiliarity with some mods may add a layer of difficulty in following it.)
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Curse PremiumEpisode 28: Systematically Setting Sorcerous Systems
Season: Spring
My Block Footed spell had some misfires on my last outing, so I alter the spell to move the foot block down a fraction of a block, suspecting a placement error. But it starts raining, and right after I finish I hear the "Shwmoomph" of an Enderman porting in - right next to the Psi Spell Programmer (hmmm). I don my war armor, march over while resolutely looking at my feet and
Go for it.
But even so it goes down fast and only deals 3 1/2 hearts before I kill it.
Now I have a plan for using Liquid Starlight to improve my Astral Sorcery Rock Crystals and Crystal Sword. If you let a Rock Crystal or Crystal tool float in Liquid Starlight for a while, the Crystal will absorb the Liquid Starlight and get bigger. Rock Crystals at max size will occasionally split into two crystals, one a bit purer. So a nice way to improve Crystals.
BUT - leaving items just bobbing around carries a really obvious risk, despawning. And the absorption process isn't quick, taking a minute or two. So this would be a good use for redstone; have the whole procedure take place over a hopper which is suppressed while there is liquid above it, but then picks up the item once the liquid is gone.
Unfortunately there's no suitable Minecraft block to detect the presence of liquid, so I guess I'll have to use an Observer block, which detects a change (like liquid appearing or disappearing) and connect that to some kind of T flip flop (a memory switch which changes state when hit with a redstone pulse).
I try setting up a partial version (less the flip flop) in the "magic room", upstairs in the north (early) wing. But I can't even get the Redstone to power (and suppress) the hoppers? Great, I've forgotten my Redstone mechanics too, in the years I haven't played.
So I move into the lobby, where I have more room, to test. I figure out the powering issues - I need a redstone connection leading into the hopper with nothing on either side. But now I encounter a new problem - when there's water above the hopper, powering the hopper activates the Observer again - I'm not sure whether it's because the Observer gets powered directly or it's observing a power change happening in the water. So the flip flip approach won't work and I'll have to figure something else out.
So I'm toying around with circuits, trying to figure out a) what is going on the the Observer and b ) what could make this work, when:
WHOMP!
A Zombie? How did that get in here?
I LEFT A DOOR OPEN !?!? Oh geez, I am losing it.
Luckily I was still in my war armor so even surprised I have no trouble.
Then it's back to trying one thing after another.
I spend a lot of time on this. I've probably wasted any gains I'll ever get from *not* having to stand around while my Crystals absorb water, but after a while it's the principle of the thing.
Eventually I get a three-repeater circuit to lock the hopper. But then I try to rearrange and it doesn't work anymore.
And *finally* I get this delayed latch arrangment to work.
So now let's use it with actual Liquid Starlight and an item. Aaaaaannnd:
It doesn't work. Whatever the heck was going on with water on top of a powered hopper does NOT happen with Liquid Starlight. The Observer just puts out one pulse when it's placed and one when it's removed. So all this experimenting has been irrelevant. AAARRRGGHHH!
At this point I finished the testing in a Creative World (no pics). I'd already gotten the hopper figured out and I only had to figure out a T flip flop. The standard, simple T flip flop is a sticky piston moving a Redstone block, which works because of something that was probably a bug when originally written - sticky pistons let go of their blocks with a short pulse, but then pick them up again next time they operate - but got used so much Mojang left it in. I had been thinking of using a pistonless flip flip because I hate piston noise, but I'd forgotten how much space it takes up. As soon as I start sketching it I remember and so I just go with the standard sticky piston design.
It doesn't take too long to get a design built in Creative. Now to build it in my real world.
I put it in the top floor of the new wing because it's noisy *and* ugly. There's the space for the Starlight and the item.
When Starlight is placed in the hole, the Observer activates, triggers the piston
which pushes the Redstone block one to the right and leaves it there, when it connects with a Redstone "wire" which connects to the hopper and prevents it from picking up the item left to soak. Then when the item absorbs the Starlight the Observer sends another pulse, the piston retrieves the Redstone, and the hopper picks up the item so it won't despawn.
I don't have room to move it to a chest or anything so I have to retrieve it manually. But it works, and I can do other things safely while growing Crystals in Liquid Starlight.
So now let's improve the Looking Glass into a Telescope. This is supposed to make it easier to spot Constellations.
Oooh. I am seriously short of juice to do this. Well, maybe I can put in some Starlight Relays to collect some more starlight power.
Here's the recipe. It then has to be put on a 3x3 platform of assorted Marble near the Altar. But that means up on the roof, which would look pretty ugly just sitting there.
I come up with the idea of placing them at the roof corners, kind of like the upturned corners of a traditional Chinese roof. I build a mockup from just Marble.
On the right it's fully out and - ick. On the left it's one block in, and still not great, but tolerable. So I proceed to build functional versions.
To my surprise, starlight crafting is possible even during the day and a rainstorm. I had assumed it would be impossible, but I was wrong. It just has less power. But these Astral Sorcery lenses I need for the collectors don't need much.
So many of those times I ditched Astral Sorcery because of weather or daytime were unnecessary (depending on how much juice the action needed.) Well, good to know.
So I build my relays but - they don't relay? (It's supposed to send sparks to the Altar). Maybe it needs line of sight? I build another relay higher up but that doesn't work either.
Eventually I notice the guidebook says it needs a lens placed inside and *that* get it to work.
Daytime, so a break to collect some crops and grow some Crystals.
Then it's night. How does my enhanced Altar work now?
Success! Can't do better than that!
Next episode: Stargazing and chaining some goals.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 29: Good Dark and Bad Dark.
Season: Spring
I'd been ignoring my spring crops, so I took a brief break to harvest some crops, Then, time to try out the new telescope!
The Telescope is supposed to be better than the Looking Glass, but I find it the reverse. First, the (buggy?) behavior where the constellation stars move in the reverse direction is not there, so they no longer jump out. Second, there is now a another tier of dimmer stars - I presume those for the dim constellations - so there's a lot more to sort out. Being able to see the dim Constellations will be useful later, but it does make things harder.
I spend a couple of minutes, identifying nothing, and then dawn breaks.
A bit of sniping some local mobs.
And then it's time to try out the current Blink Footing spell for a quick trip up to the floating Slime island.
Works like a charm! VERY fast, too.
Now there are Slimes spawning up here again. I see a couple jump off while I'm on the way up. No idea why sometimes they spawn and sometimes they don't. One medium Slime stays on the island and I dispatch it on arrival.
I have another reason to be up here. I'm thinking about where I want to put the Infusion Altar, which is my next big Astral Sorcery advance. It's a BIG item - 19x19, as large as the outside of the lobby of the hotel, and it's a bit of a problem figuring a good place to put it. One possibility is either in front or in back of the hotel. That would be nicely symmetrical,
but the altar is basically a big black floor so not too attractive. Another would be up on the hill in the grasslands, where the big black floor isn't an issue, but that doesn't align with the hotel.
But another possibility is up on a slime island. It's far enough away that the relationship to the hotel doesn't matter, and the higher elevation means more starlight and better function. But I'm not sure if it's large enough, so I'm also up here to measure. Turns out a 19x19 square will just barely fit, so it's an option.
And now it's time to get back. I have something to test for this, too. I'm wearing my bouncy boots, so I just jump off to see how far I go.
In just a few seconds I'm on the porch roof. So very practical - as long as I don't accidentally wear the wrong boots!
The Oak saplings I'm farming for apples have grown up so I chop them down looking for apples. I replant with the new sapling as I chop. But as I'm polishing off the stray leaves:
Suddenly I'm suffocating in the dark. I try moving, but nothing happens. I remember having into-the-wall glitches in my Zeno's Explorations journal, which I solved by - by - what DID I end up doing? I try save-reload but that doesn't help (it was actually opening my inventory, but I don't remember until after it's too late). I start trying to break things, but initially I forget to switch to a suitable item.
This looks grim. Strangely in the pics Damage Screenshots took there is *one* showing:
Me escaping into a gap of leaves. The sapling had grown up around me and it was one of these stupid shrub "trees" with leaves just one block off the ground. A total fluke for it to grow *exactly* when I was on top *and* to be a shrub, thus trapping me with the leaves.
But this pic is like an artifact from another dimension, because I *swear* I never saw this, not even in a flash, and if I *had*, I should have stayed out (right? I'm not entirely sure of the mechanics here).
But in the real world (real unreal world? It *is* a sim - ) I'm still in the tree.
I remember to switch to my Mattock, which can chop wood *and* dirt (I didn't know I was in the tree because I hadn't seen that one mysterious escape shot - I thought maybe I'd glitched into the ground.) This breaks plenty of blocks, but I don't get out. Maybe I could have moved forward? I figured I'd have to break the block I was in first and I don't think I tried to move.
And another highly ignominious death. I can beat a Nether Fortress, but get killed by a tree. Good thing I wasn't playing Hardcore. Again.
But I'm not, and ironically my spawn point is currently the bed inside the gardener's shack, all of 5 blocks from this.
And here's the scene afterwards. Fortunately all my stuff is floating in the trench. I was afraid I'd lose it, and I have some nice gear at this point. But at this rate I'll never do any more enchantments. I hadn't even recovered my levels from accidentally zapping my soul away filling in a goofy pool, and here I am back at level 7 again.
In the future, though, I'm going to replant saplings only *after* I finish chopping.
Well, back to work.
I'd found that Bibliocraft provides an Atlas, which means I don't need to worry about Explorercraft. I'm grinding through the recipe sequence and I need an ink sac and - I don't have one? I guess I haven't yet offed a squid.
So I blinkfoot over to the Ocean. Normally they're just crawling with squid, but I only find *one*. And it's next to a Jellyfish. I drop in the water and try to come from the other side but the squid sinks into the depths, so no ink today. I also find out I can't Blinkfoot out of the water - the foot block ends up placed too low. Something to try to fix later.
Then night falls and it's time to try stargazing.
The largish grey stars are the ones from the bright constellations I'm looking for now. This one I think I know! I consult the Constellation pages I've put in my Astral Sorcery guide, and then start tracing stars
And bingo! Now I've got Discidia. This is kind of the counterpart to Armara - where Armara is defensive and protects you from damage, Discidia increases the damage you do. When I get an Infusion Altar built and working, I'll have to pick one or the other, and that will be an interesting choice.
Here's another bright Constellation, but it doesn't match any of the four I know about, so it's probably Aevitas, the one bright Constellation I don't know about. So I will want to do an expedition soon to find a Constellation paper for it, as well as all the many dim constellations I haven't found yet either.
Another round of tree chopping - I'm traumatized, and still having flashbacks - but I now have the requisite three apples to craft a Harvestcraft Apple tree. This will allow me to just harvest apples; no more chopping down hostile Oak trees!
And planted, next to the Paperbark Trees.
Phew.
Next episode: working on an Infusion Altar
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Curse PremiumEpisode 30: Tuning for Attuning.
Season: Spring
Minecraft can give pretty and scenic views, but especially so in the combination of mods I've collected - and written. My whole time playing Minecraft I've been obsessed with great views and pretty places, like this view out the window of the new (south) hotel wing. I love to pause and just take it in. I do note, though, that Serene Seasons isn't melting the snow in the outer range of my view distance, and I may eventually have to take a stroll over there to fix it.
I've neglected to put in the safety railings, though. Something for my to-do list.
But for now it's time to get cracking on building an Attunement Altar. It's a ) essential to progress to the next big stage in Astral Sorcery b ) allows access to the powerful but slowly developing perk system, and c ) turns out to be necessary to find Constellation papers for the dim Constellations. So I've got to it, very soon. And it's a pretty big project.
First is having enough blocks to build the large structure. It needs 225 Sooty Marble, 80 Marble Arches, 12 Marble Pillars, 4 each Runed and Chiseled Marble. I organize the necessary quantities in a seperate chest, and find I have enough of everything except I'm short 50 Marble Arches. I can get enough Marble to make the from what's left of the Ancient Shrine just to the north, so not a big deal, just a day trip.
I have all the necessary ingredients to make the central key block of the Altar.
My souped-up Starlight Altar has plenty of power too. So a tap of my Resonating Wand and:
I get an extra flashy light show - the glowing purple sparks haven't shown up for crafting before - and after a while my Altar block pops out.
I'm trying to get my Rock Crystal to 100% purity and I think I'm going to need even more Liquid Starlight for some other crafting coming up soon, so I put a second Lightwell up on the roof of the new wing. I don't put it next to the old one because apparently things using Liquid Starlight can interfere with each other.
Come morning I Blinkfoot over to the Ancient Shrine and rip up what's left of the floor, leaving only the basement. This gives me 3 stacks of Marble, which is plenty (it can be crafted into the Marble Arches I need.) I check the nearby ocean before heading home and spot two squid. One I succesfully catch, netting 3 ink sacs (yay Looting) but the other escapes into the depths.
On my previous trip I couldn't blinkfoot out of the water, but now I find I *can* if I go straight up. Good to know.
I check some rivers (creeks, really; they're pretty small for RTG rivers) for more squid on the way home but don't find any.
When I get home I use one of the ink sacs to craft a Book and Quill, which I use to craft a Bibliocraft Slotted Book, which I use for an Atlas.
If there's nothing in the Atlas it shows the location where it's made. Here you see the hotel, with my farm and fences to the north. The larger area on the east is the porch and the brown blob to the south is where I filled a pool in with wood.
ExplorerCraft could mix different map sizes at once but Bibliocraft can't; you have to pick one map size and that's all Bibliocraft can show. You can store other sizes but not see them (until you change the view size).
So now I'm set up for a nice big expedition - once I get my Altar built and get attuned.
Night falls and I start on Astral Sorcery work. But I hear a witch cackling outside and start checking the windows to find her. I see a number of other mobs and snipe a number of them before I see her and hit her once; but then she moves and I can't find here again. I snooze and give up on night operations so I can get my exp and loot.
In the morning I spot her and finish her off, then grab my goodies.
I'm trying to decide where to put the Infusion Altar and consider another possibility, just plopping it next to the farm. There's a big pool there so I test my fill pool spell, now that the ice has melted. It works, although not perfectly, and is certainly easier than manually filling, because the conjured blocks disappear after about a minute.
But as I'm doing this I'm struck by an epiphany. It's a hassle to convert an Infusion Altar from one Constellation to another - so, since they provide different benefits for attuned items, I probably will want several eventually. And that means I don't want just one spot, but a sequence of spots, preferably with interesting orientations. And *that* knocks out the back yard (next to forest) and the floating islands. Out on the grassland is still possible, but a grand sequence in the front of the hotel seems the obvious choice. So in front of the hotel it is.
A quick glance on the ground convinces me that part of the hill has to go. The grand boulevard will need to be flat.
And that means this part of the hill has to go. A lot of digging, but what has to be done has to be done. I spend the rest of the day digging, then the night crafting Spectral Relays for the Altar's stars, collecting Liquid Starlight, and sniping.
In the morning, I can *hear* a baby zombie but I can't see him. I look around but it doesn't come after me so I figure it's stuck somewhere and resume digging.
And *then* it comes up and backstabs me. Once again I end up spinning around trying to find it.
But soon enough my crossbow defeats another villain. Begone, treacherous fiend!
I wear out my shovel to almost nothing (about 12 stacks of dirt), go down to the Tinker's room in the mine, repair it with a Sharpening Kit, head back up, and dig for the reast of the day. Still not done; it's a big hill.
I enjoy the sunset view from the lobby. Oh, look, the second Redwood has finally grown as the big version! Looks nice now that they're the same. I have achieved symme-tree!
(zeno ducks)
Another night crafting and managing Liquid Starlight.
Hey, there's Discidia, my planned attunement! I'll take that as a very good omen.
How am I doing on ground clearance?
Ughh. I may have been overambtious.
I have some ideas for decoration which will require several more stacks of Black Granite, so I head down to the mines for a round of mining with the hammer.
Ooh, nice, Diamonds. I'd been unlucky with those for a while.
While I'm down here I soup my shovel up with 1 level of Haste and 1 of Reinforced (equivalent to 1 level of Efficiency and 1 of Unbreaking). At this point enchanted vanilla Minecraft tools would be better than this one (well, if I could hang on to my levels) but it is very easy to repair (2 iron for a Sharpening kit and no levels) so I'll just stick with it.
Another day digging in a miserable rainstorm and I get one trench through the side of the hill to a pool. At this rate it will take several days to shave off the side of the hill.
Well, tomorrow is another day. I assuage myself with yet another sunset. And it will be worth it in the end. I remember when this view was just a fantasy. And here we are!
Next episode: Finishing preps and starting construction.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 31: Flattened by Flattening
As I've been digging out the front of the hotel during the day, I've been continuing to collect Starlight at night and using it to multiply and purify my crystals. I've gotten from 70 to 88% purity in my best crystal so far with 4 spare crystals generated. 100% isn't far off.
I put another level of Reinforced on my shovel.
Then it's dawn and time for more ground prep.
Once again I'm using my Fill Pool spell and it's getting easier as I get more used to it. After I empty it I take the sand at the bottom. Then I fill with dirt (because I have a LOT of dirt now).
Oh, hey, the Harvestcraft apple tree has some ripe apples! WAY easier than chopping down a half dozen oaks. More logical, too.
I make the new expanded chicken pen and a number move over. Many don't, but that's fine; I just butcher them.
Night falls, so back inside.
Without really thinking about it, I'd been using my Crystal Sword, with Looting 3, so I have a LOT of chicken products. I make a bunch of Harvestcraft recipes - Fried Eggs, Scrambled Eggs, Pancakes, Chicken Pot Pie, Chicken Sandwiches, and Lemon Chicken. Yum! Into the deep freeze they go (actually just my finished recipe chest.)
I make another tool forge and put it in the hotel with a bunch of Sharpening Kits so I can repair my iron tools in the hotel and not have to go down to the mine to do it.
Then some sniping.
Oh yeah, I need to fill that in.
Day breaks and I head outside to work.
But there's a Creeper hiding under the window overhang. No prob, skewer with my crossbow and - it doesn't die? That's the first I didn't one-shot. I turn and run a considerable distance so I can safely reload. But when I come back I can't find it. I spend some time looking for it - because Creepers are sneaky but eventually just start work.
I've uncovered a cave and I decide to head in and light it up. It turns out to be small and I encounter no mobs.
There's a huge deposit of sand here, extending to where I've been leveling the ground. I have no idea how. I've long been short of sand (because most of the nearby beaches are gravel) so I dig a lot out. I get over four stacks, and then decide that's plenty, and put a double layer of dirt on top.
At this point I've levelled enough land for the Altar plus a wide space between it and the Starlight Hotel. But I'm not going to just plop it down on the ground. I'm going to put it on top of a big decorative pedestal. This is the base I put down to make sure I've got enough land cleared and to check the placement.
Come nighttime, I'd been meaning to do some constellation searches but hadn't gotten around to it. So while I'm climbing around on the roof collecting Liquid Starlight to enhance my crystals, I take a peek in the Telescope. I see some bright stars, but I'm not sure what they are, and have to fetch my Constellation Papers (stored in the Astral Sorcery guide) to trace it.
It's Evorsio (Mining). Very useful for fast development, because you get experience from mining, but I'll stick with Discidia because I have some Plans.
And then I do Vicio (Travel) entirely from memory! I feel very competent.
Dawn breaks; I do some sniping and then resurface this pool area at the south entrance. But something horrible happens.
No, worse than that.
After I'm done I head to the hill to get back to the work area and I accidentally right click.
With my CAD equipped.
With my Blink spell.
Facing into the hill.
And now I'm six or seven blocks in and several blocks down. If I die here I'll lose everything. I can only think of one chance.
I point my CAD upwards, fire my Blink spell, and hope.
Still buried. Again.
Still buried. Again.
Still buried. It's looking grim. Again.
Again.
Almost out of Psi.
Again.
GASP!
I'm out.
Hunh huh huh.
Well, *that's* an experience I don't want to re-experience. Again.
And what does an American do after a near-death experience?
Eat. Eat a hamburger, to be precise.
And then, like a late stage capitalism worker drone, back to work.
My idea for decoration is to do pixel art of the constellations. I want to do a test before I build it because I want enough room. It would really stink to have to move the Altar after I build it. So I do one for Discidia. I'll do the final in smoothstone, but I'll do this draft in cobble since I'll probably have to change things.
Oops. That's not right.
There we go! I think this is gonna work - for Discidia, at least. Some of the others may be more problematic because the lines will be harder to coerce into a grid. But I'll deal with that when and it I get there.
Sunset on a VERY eventful, and nearly very disastrous day. But all's well that ends well, and this episode ends here.
Next episode: building the Altar.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 32: Going Into the Light
Season: Summer
I'm planning to repeat the motif all around the pedestal. That needs a lot of Black Granite, so I head down to hammer out some more from the mines.
Unfortunately mining Black Granite makes for lousy pictures
I do get another Diamond deposit, so ++good!
Somehow I'd never gotten around to the third level of Luck (the Tinker's equivalent to Fortune) on my ore pick so I put it on now.
Back upstairs, it's raining again, a common Spring weather feature. I harvest a round in the farm as Summer is approaching and soon my Spring crops will be done for the year.
I build Eclogite brick columns for the corners of the pedestal to hold up the Altar. It's still the only "stone" material I've got in any quantity. I'm used to more choices, but it is a good stone and I'm being pleasantly surprised at how well it works for basically everything.
Night falls but I've fenced and lighted the area so I can keep working. Here I'm using my Psi Place Block spell, from the ground to place the Marble Arch border of the Altar. I tried using some speed bridging techniques, but I kept falling off and I don't want to take the time to learn them right now when I've got the taste of a big advance in my mouth.
After I have two sides, I just go up and build the rest conventionally.
I finish just after dawn, which I thought was bad timing since I couldn't use it during the day. (I hadn't done the corner pillars yet but those were just a jiff.)
The Altar Block itself goes in the exact center - but it turns out you can't count blocks on that super-black Sooty Marble because the black outline of each block is *totally* invisible, so I have to build crossing diagonal lines in dirt to determine where it went.
Once finished I get these sparkly effects to tell me I've done it right. Surprisingly it works before I pull up the torches, unlike the Starlight Altar, which wanted absolutely *no* blocks whatever above it. Or maybe it just shows that it's built correctly and wouldn't actually *work* until I pulled up the torches. I dunno, didn't test it.
Next you have to place a Stellar Relay in the right place for each star in the Constellation - 8 in the case of Discidia. To place them you hold a piece of Constellation paper for the Constellation and you see these clusters of purple sparks where the relays go. The Relay is supposed to go exactly in the middle, but that's hard to see. After I place them, I check each one from both the N-S and E-W directions and they all seemed right in the middle. But nothing happens, which is reasonable as it's not supposed to work in the day. Supposedly it needs the Constellation in the sky during the night, so I'll have to wait to be sure it's right.
While I'm waiting, I work on the pedestal, now using smoothstone. I spotted a Constellation in the sky but it was Vicio, not Discidia.
The pedestal itself looks pretty good, although I think I'll add an Eclogite column in the middle of each side. I mirror imaged the Constellation for looks; that's not how Constellations work either in real life or in Astral Sorcery but it does look a lot better (I tried the other way). It's too close to the hotel for looks, though. This is, unbelievably, the first time I've built multiple large structures outside of a village context, where they're *supposed* to be adjacent to other structures. Partly I didn't do enough planning and partly I was just sick of digging. Well, I'm not going to move it now just for looks. Next world I'll build mockups first, and start earlier.
I continue working on the pedestal and as I'm working on the fourth wall:
BAWOOM! Thunderstorm! Meaning Summer is here. I try to get a lightning pic but don't succeed so you'll have to settle for this.
I go inside and sleep because I figure the Altar won't work in a thunderstorm.
In the morning I check the window before going out and it's a good thing I did because there's a Creeper there! Which I can handle, but it means either my lighting missed a spot, I left a way in, or the No Base Spawning mod I created to copy current Minecraft's block to mob spawning with block light above zero isn't working. All of these are bad. But before I fix any of them I have to fix the Creeper. So upstairs to an open window for sniping and:
Wait, what's going on on top of the Altar?! Oh nuts, there must have been damage from a lightning strike. I go up to survey the damage.
But there's no damage. The Infusion Altar has activated in spite of daylight. I suspect that my manual adjustments to Astral Sorcery day length aren't correct. I may need to fix that.
But in the meantime, dare I expose myself to the light and the power?
LOL Just kidding, I've read ahead in the book (metaphorically). On stepping onto the Altar, the game switches to a cutscene where the camera lifts up and rotates around me twice.
If you ever do this I strongly suggest you build your Altar in a scenic place because the scene looks really cool if you have. I did, and appreciate it.
Just a nice place to live.
As the scene continues, the light around me grows more and more intense, eventually almost obscuring me. Pretty cool graphics.
And Zeno has seen the light!
An Astral Sorcery Flare shows up to congratulate me. This is a neutral/friendly mob added by Astral Sorcery, mostly for looks. One had shown up in Episode 27 to congratulate me for making a Linking Wand, but I didn't know what it was at the time. You can get one as a permanent companion by contributing to their Patreon.
It glitters at me for a while and then ascends joyously out of sight. A very good day!
Next episode: It's reward time!
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Curse PremiumEpisode 33: Slime Slicing for Stellar Sequencing
Season: Summer
I open my Astral Tome to find a new tab, Perks. Once you've attuned to a Constellation, you gain a perk, as well as a way to earn Perk experience which you can use to gain more perks.
When you start you gain a "root" in the constellation you're attuned to. This gives a benefit - increased critical chance for Discidia, along with the method for gaining experience, which is by dealing damage here.
As you gain experience you eventually gain additional perk picks, which you can use by selecting the "stars" in this picture - but only stars that are connected by lines to your current picks. At the start, as you see, there's no choice. As you develop out you get more choices. Some of the areas can drastically change gameplay; for example, there's one cluster of options where you gain a tremendous amount of hit points but armor no longer works for you. In general the brighter stars are stronger powers, and ones isolated at the end of a chain are the strongest. You are limited to a maximum of 40 picks and there's quite a bit more possible; so the set you chose is a serious commitment; it's really a whole game in itself and since different areas have different effects and some are quite drastic you could play several games just exploring different combinations of perks.
Those of you have have been following me might be wondering why a player who so resolutely avoids combat would pick Discidia, which rewards you for fighting and, as you'd guess, is in an area with mostly combat benefits. Well, the main goal is to overprep me for boss fights, most especially the Ender Dragon, which I have never actually fought. Armara gives you experience by preventing damage to you, and I avoid taking damage even more intensely than I avoid fighting. Vicio (travel) would normally be a good fit for me; but I've decided I'll pass on conveniences now for a big boost against the Dragon.
I take my perk and go out to harvest some Cactus, which is growing now that it's Summer, and discover it's a bad idea to put Cactus so close together because I'm getting poked.I'd actually put Cactus this close in another farm long ago put importantly the sand was on *top* of the floor and the sand kept me away from the thorns. Here I have no such protection. I'll have to rearrange it, probably after the summer.
I spend the night sniping - although I don't see a lot of mobs from my window. In the morning I check to see how much experience I've picked up.
I've gained maybe 1/10th of the way to the next perk? (The experience bar is on the far left.) Uggh. This won't do. But I had planned another option.
I blinkfoot up to the slime islands to take on some slimes. Conventional mob farms don't work so well for Discidia as it counts *damage* done; but Slimes are great for combining a lot of potential damage with a low hazard.
Clearing off the first island gives me somewhat more experience than sniping all night, so it's a much better use of my time. I go to the other (purple) island
but there are only a few slimes. Then back to the green,
Where there are two big slimes trapped in my pit. Off them, then back to the purple.
Where now it's absolutely hopping! - in several senses of the word.
Then back to the green, kill a few, then back to the purple, where once again it's really slow. I know slimes like to jump off the purple island, and I know a 2 high wall keeps them in, so I figure I'll build a wall around the edge of the purple island so I won't lose them that way. But I only have a stack and a half of cobble, which gets about 1/4 of the edge. So back home.
At home I try lowering my foot block on my blockfoot spell a bit.
Even though it's just gotten dark, my Infusion Altar is active. So it's not that I have the cycle too long and so every day it starts and ends late. I now realize, though, that this won't be as useful for pinning down what's wrong, because whether it's working will conflate whether Discidia is in the sky and whether Astral Sorcery thinks it's night.
I spend the night gathering Liquid Starlight and using it to enlarge my best Rock Crystal and my Crystal Sword, which got a bit worn down by all that slime slicing. Astral Sorcery tools degrade as they get used, and have to be resharpened, which reduces their size. I get my sword to its max 1700 before I grind it to do a satisfying 16 points of damage.
One minor flaw in at least this (1.12) version of Astral Sorcery is that the Astral Tome doesn't respond properly to window resizes. Sometimes you can't see the tabs. It's fixable by resizing, although you have to do it "blind".
Come day I head down to the mine to grab a couple stacks of cobble for walls around the purple slime island and then back up to the island.
But my blinkfoot spell keeps misfiring. It seems sometimes it just doesn't place the block, accompanied by a change to the Psi spell sound that sounds failure-ish. I go back home and alter the block to be even lower, but it's still happening.
On the third try I make it up, to this view including two slimes suiciding off the far side of the island. OK, the color scheme is a bit garish, but I think that's a bit of an over-reaction.
Another day of slime slicing, including a really long stint at the entrance to the purple island, which is just covered in slimes. After I clear it I build a wall around it to stop the suicides on that island, at least.
I score another perk, claiming the +5% projectile damage. The next perk is this, and as a bright star it's more valuable than the first two combined (which were +5% melee, and +5% projectile).
But now I'm encountering a problem for my Plan. The central star of the whole complex is Singularity, which grants access to all five of the roots and (I'm assuming) all their different ways to gain perk points. But I can't see it. Some internet research reveals the problem is that I don't have the Constellation Aevitas, one of the five roots. This is a problem because I don't have the Constellation paper for it and I think Astral Sorcery will only give you each once. I vaguely recall seeing it in a chest somewhere and leaving it because my storage was full, but I don't remember where - or if it's even in this world, rather than one of the Creative worlds I've set up for testing. I've checked the chests near my base multiple times, so it's not there. If I can't figure out a solution I'll have to alter my plans and give up on Singularity.
Then it's another night of Starlight gathering and another day of slime slicing. No pics, because it's just more of the same, except this:
I didn't notice it in-game, because it always happens in a heated battle, but when you level up and gain a perk point Astral Sorcery briefly flashes the experience bar on the screen. I only noticed because of Damage Screenshots.
(In the background you can see the new wall.)
I use that point to get that +5%/+5% perk. But now I have to fix (or give up on) getting Aevitas, because now I have choices, and which way I go from there depends on whether I can use that Singularity. That night I search all my chests again for a misplaced Aevitas, but don't find it. Some research indicates you can make it with a recipe:
But the recipe requires the end-stage Irisdescent Altar, which is *two* stages past where I am, so not a solution (I need it soon to use the multiple experience systems as I progress through the mod.)
Come morning I search Prairie Hill, where I ripped up a Ruined Altar long ago, and check the chest for the small Altar that was in the Grasslands. Nada.
Well, *if* I found it, it's not here. So time for some expeditions. But it's a little late in the day to start, so I putter around my base for a while.
I take out the fence separating the farm now that I've enclosed that to. It's just in the way now. The pigs have been in the farm area, so I move put then into a pen a little further from the hotel.
I resurface a pond I filled with wood, and fill in another with my Fill Water spell.
Barely finishing in time for night.
You'll notice it's raining and as I go inside to start prep I hear the Enderman teleport noise. I search all over the hotel for it, but can't find it. But I keep hearing those weird Enderman gronks. Eventually I find it - standing on top of the 2 high platform I built to fight Endermen from! How insouciant.
So I go under the platform and knock the blocks out from under it so it falls to my level. Then I kill it, now in *three* blows because of my freshly sharpened Crystal Sword, plus a little bonus damage from my Astral Sorcery perk. It can't even hit me because of the platform (which, fortunately, I had built larger than necessary.)
A few more preps, and then bedtime, since it's raining and I can't stargaze.
Next episode: Out into the big wide world!
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
I had an account here once but it was caught up and deleted in the GDPR related wipe of European accounts. Upsetting, but I'll skip the rant on how so much valuable information about Minecraft history (especially mod documentation) was lost that day.
Zeno410, you'll have to take this on trust because my posts are gone but I was one of the people who followed your old journals (please never delete them) and I recall the post about the value of keeping a journal; it made such an impression on me that I started keeping detailed notes and documentation for all my Minecraft worlds. Your post has been a far greater influence than you know!
OK that's the fanmail taken care of.
That's a vibe all right. I find myself referring to my own records the same way. "how did I pull off x thing/y redstone contraption again? oh yeah..." Extra valuable when revisiting old/obscure mods whose online documentation has been lost.
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Reading through your Psi experience with the block placing shenanigans is taking me back to Tekkit, trying to write little scripts to get Computercraft turtles to cut down jungle giants or build sections of wall and suchlike. I'm no programmer and I was terrible at it but I gave it a darn good try back in the day.
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Agreed on slime islands being hideous, and I always get mad at them and turn them way down when building personal packs. On the other hand though, I've been searching for one in my GTNH world for ages now and I just can't find one anywhere. I've been thousands of blocks in every direction from spawn! Argh, there's never a balance.
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Could add Chisels and Bits or whatever the cool kids are using these days, cut up some sea lanterns into tiny pieces. Probably could even do constellations that way.
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That huge framed aperture you've constructed makes the view look like a painting. I did a double-take at the first screenshot posted of it thinking it actually was some massive modded painting in a frame. Never experienced that effect in Minecraft before, it's absolutely fascinating.
Journals - Gregtech New Horizons | Tree Spirit Challenge [current]
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Curse PremiumYeah, it's sad to see replies of mine to accounts that have vanished. I always wonder what happened to all those cool people.
It's easy to believe you'd followed me before because it's - kind of hard to imagine a villainous reason to lie about it? "Ha! I've convinced a minor nostalgia gaming blogger that I followed him in the past. An essential part of my plan for WORLD DOMINATION! mwahaHAHAHA!" Um, no.
I'm really delighted you've enjoyed and been inspired by my posts. That's a big part of why I do this.
All part of the fun!
Hmm, that's an idea, cut down on the rate. Although, now that I've found several, including two at my spawn base, I never need another. I am getting SO MUCH blue slime from farming them for Astral Sorcery perk advancement.
Whoa, another good idea. I'm going to test that in Creative or maybe a clone of this world (because pulling mods in and out gives me the willies.)
Yeah, I love how the trickery in that wall came out. The fake part looks kinda real and the real part looks kinda fake and it's just awesome. Now I need some interior decor to go with it. No ideas yet. Maybe it'll be my project for next winter, when I don't want to travel.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
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Curse PremiumEpisode 34: A Venture Vis-a-Vis Avoidant Aevitas
Season: Summer
I head off bright and early in the morning. The primary goal is to find paper for the dim constellations I can now find after Attuning myself to a Constellation, and to find out what the heck happened with the Aevitas paper. The secondary goals are to pretty up my maps, and to get some Mossy Cobblestone to make Tinker's Construct Mending Moss to keep my fancy armors repaired.
Hey! What are you guys doing in my orchard! And ouch! Diediedie!
(I should have probably just ignored them, since they'd despawn once I left. But, habits.)
First outing: going to go north on the west coast of this penisula. I'm going to risk going by sea to improve my map a bit.
But somehow I keep getting turned around and end up on the *east* side of the penisula. Whatever. I'll come back on the west.
I scrupulously avoid anything even vaguely dangerous, like these two big things to the right. I think they're harmless whales, but just .. in .. case ...
Soon I arrive at the Desert where I got my Cactus long ago. Hey, that looks like a shrine! And indeed it is. Although it doesn't have the fancy above-surface decorations, it actually has a basement with a Collector Crystal.
But - no Constellation Paper. Not one piece.
A quick boat trip to the next biome, which is a brown Steppe in spite of the inviting green color on the map. I wish map colors were a bit more informative.
Oh and what are those animals? They look like boars. And they are (thanks to Better Creatures)! And they're hostile. Cripes, more hostiles?
So I spend the rest of the day pincushioning Boars. And there are a LOT, as you see. How fun! (not!).
Come evening I pillar way up, pull out my bed and ...
I left my bed at home ?! Oh come on, I'm supposed to be past amateur hour.
So I construct a little platform, put walls around, and go AFK for the night. Well, I needed to do my knee rehab exercises IRL.
Come morning I snipe the mobs waiting at the base and explore what's left of the Steppe on my map, finding another Shrine.
And this one has a Constellation paper. Only one, sadly. Confusingly, when you first see a Constellation paper, the game informs you "There is nothing here.". But that's a lie! Because when you pick it up:
It magically morphs into one for a Constellation whose paper you've never found, if there is one. So it shouldn't say "there is nothing here" initially, but something like "you have not looked at this yet".
I've reached the limit of the map, so time to cross to the other side and head down the west coast. I have to snipe several more boars, and snag two sheep for three wool (looting) just in case I can't get home by tonight.
I cross a BoP Swampland and soon am boating on the other side.
This time I don't avoid trouble, and suffer a jellyfish strike. The Blindness is very brief, but the poisoning keeps on a while, and it's not just a bug because I'm taking damage. After a while I steer to shore in case this is really serious. I can just walk from here.
The poisoning ends, but now it's wolves. Just one after another. After another. After another. 8 in total.
I get so hair-trigger I kill a bear too, which is actually a neutral mob and so which didn't need feathering. These psycho animals are turning *me* into a monster!
After that I get home without further incident, just shortly before nightfall. I spent a lot of time killing all those psycho boars and wolves.
The map of the peninsula looks way better.
Then, it's time to stargaze for Constellations. Can I find Octans?
Yes I can! And very quickly.
For a control, I trace Mineralis, a Constellation I *don't* have the paper for (using the Better than Wolves wiki for the pattern.) I *don't* get it, so I have to have the Constellation paper to discover a Constellation.
So, I need to keep looking for the Aevitas paper. That means back out again. It's night, so I hunt through the Astral Tome looking for something I could make, but not really finding anything to do overnight.
Next morning I head out. I'm heading south to the next map south, which has an unexplored area, and some kind of snowy forest which is likely to have mossy cobble. There's a stretch of Dead Swamp I can use to get past the Roofed Forest; it has Moose, but with high visibility I won't be surprised and I have the gear to deal with them. The Dead Swamp would normally be difficult to get through because of all the mud, but I can use Blinkfoot to zip over them.
That snowy forest is vanilla Cold Taiga, albeit enhanced by some RTG trees. I find some violet flowers here (for dye) as well as some Pumpkins (which I have, but are barely growing because they don't like plains and only grow in one season).
I haven't been taking many scenery pics in this journal, unlike all my previous ones, but I just had to stop for this view of the Cold Taiga over an RTG scenic lakes. The lakes were just such a win; they look pretty nice in and of themselves but even better they often offer these great vistas of other pretty terrains that can be hard to get a proper view of otherwise.
Oh, and look, lakeside Mossy Cobble! Progress on a goal, too.
From there it's on to the Highlands where I disembarked back in Episode 2.
Shrine #3. And this one has the max decorations.
I'm feeling like I have enough Marble for now, so I don't rip it down but just knock a hole in the side to check out the basement. This shrine has not 2, not 3, but *4* Constellation papers, which turn into Fornax (furnace), Lucerna (banishment), Pelotrio (regeneration), and Mineralis (ores). So that's 5 of 7 dim constellations but still no Aevitas. I was kind of expecting the mod would prioritize bright constellations over dim, in which case I must have found (and lost) Aevitas, but I'm not sure yet, so I'll keep going until I find all the dims. Gotta catch em all!
Then back out to look at the rest of the Highlands. I did BoP Highlands (the RTG version) as hills and ridges on an elevated plain and sometimes you get nice views on the edge. Here we're seeing an RTG version of Roofed Forest on the right and BoP Rainforest on the left. The little copse of Roofed Forest is from Geographicraft, which makes biome boundaries more irregular than vanilla does. (I know I promised not so many scenery pics, but I couldn't resist.)
And then a thunderstorm starts (it is Serene Seasons summer). Bed plopping is kind of an exploit, but I just don't feel like dealing with an extended thunderstorm fight while I build a shelter, so I yield to temptation, pillar up, and throw down a bed.
To finish off this section of my map I need to go into this RTG version Birch Forest Hills. Which is normally safe enough but..
Continued next episode!
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
It's certainly a nice looking world that you have. I was checking my various instances to see if any use RTG for terraingen. I'm sure I recognize that name and I thought I'd played with it at least at some point but it's not in anything I currently have set up. My personal TC4/Immersive Engineering pack has one you might have heard of though, "Climate Control"... hehehe.
I hope you'll be able to find the Aevitas constellation paper. I don't know much about Astral Sorcery at all, I only got as far as tracing a couple of the constellations when I last had it in a pack so I'm interested to see what it can do at the higher end.
Journals - Gregtech New Horizons | Tree Spirit Challenge [current]
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Curse PremiumRTG didn't have a wide version release. The only really solid release version was for 1.10. There was a version for 1.7.10 but it didn't have much of the terrain techniques I put in and an almost finished version for 1.12. And that was it.
I can tell you already that Astral Sorcery allows a LOT of stuff, some quite powerful. I think the journal will focus on Astral Sorcery going forward just because I'm largely finished with Tinker's and Psi, and I've done the RTG terrain analysis before in my previous journal.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 35: A Venture Vis-a-Vis Avoidant Aevitas, pt. 2
Season: Summer
When I go in the Birch Forest Hills I hear growls. And soon enough:
I get attacked by two Better Creatures Timber Wolves in succession.
(Damage Screenshots *really* earned its bits with that pic!)
I dispatch them and then go back to the Highlands because they usually spawn in large packs.
And with that I've really had it with these Timber Wolves, and all the psycho Better Animals in general. There's kind of an implicit contract in Minecraft where it's safe and happy in the day and dangerous and scary in the night. A *little* bit of daytime danger is fine but right now I can't walk in any forested biome, plus some others, without being harassed by these things, and I'm sick of it. So I go into the configs to knock them down. In the configs they are in a LOT of biomes - something like 30. I take them out of everything except a few spooky biomes like Roofed Forest, (BOP) Ominous Woods, and (BOP) Dead Forest. While I'm there I knock down the Moose spawning rate by 75% - they are not in all that many biomes; I can live with them, but not constantly. I'll probably make more changes in the future.
I head back to the ocean and get in a boat. Then I head inland on a river, the one I used to get most of the way back home in Episode 12.
But with a different plan. Where my arrow is the river splits, with one route heading towards home (but not getting there). I'm going to try the branch going north, taking advantage of the high boatability of RTG rivers.
And soon I am rewarded with the distinctive sight of an RTG Extreme Hills. But, as you notice, I'm being attacked by (I assume) an eel. Again.
I can't even see it under the boat, or wherever it is, so I steer to shallow water and get out to kill it. But the messaging says squid? It's eel meat in my inventory, so I'm going to guess Better Animals has the wrong name attached to eels.
After I kill it, I get as close as possible to the mountain, then exit the boat and dash up the hill, as I'm next to some dayspawning Rainforest and I'm concerned about creeperbombing.
I am rewarded with this great vista of a rocky passage. Here Better Animals is a big plus, as the big bird (I think a Lammergeier) is great atmosphere.
The RTG version of Extreme Hills is another biome that is great both to look at and look from. That is the RTG version of Ice Mountains (upgraded to a full biome for Geographicraft's mountain chains feature) to its north.
I go through the Ice Mountains to help fill out my map. I'm planning to head home to clear my inventory and use the Mossy Cobblestone.
I pass right on the edge of the big forested zone (for mapping).
And get home just in time for supper.
Looking at this pic, I think I will eventually have to do some reconstruction for looks. The hotel wings need to be extended, to look more hotel-like, and the Altar will have to be moved back. No time soon, though, I'll probably wait until I need more space.
Nighttime, so stargazing!
I discover Mineralis (shown here), the one I couldn't without the Constellation paper, and Lucerna. Productive.
Then to use the Mossy Cobble. In Tinker's Construct, 9 mossy cobble form a recipe for a Ball of Moss. That, in turn, can be right-clicked on a Bookcase (?), at the cost of 10 levels, to give Mending Moss, which can craft Mending Moss onto Tinker's equipment, the Tinker's equivalent to vanilla Mending.
I'm so excited I don't notice I'm putting it on the wrong item. I meant to put it on my helmet, which is hard to repair (needing a Manyullyn sharpening kits, thus 2 ingots of hard-to-get Manyullyn). I don't even notice until much later in the episode.
I also put it on my Manyullyn boots.
For the next part of the venture, I'm going to try to reach that Extreme Hills by boat from my Grasslands. You can see where I stopped exploring the north river fork because I got off to look at the Extreme Hills. That river almost certainly continues to the Bog (the mixed water and land to my north.) So I'll go there, get on a boat, and head back out.
I get sidetracked a bit by the complicated water-land mix in the bog, but soon enough I'm on the river heading through the Redwood Forest.
I reach the Extreme Hills without trouble. This time I go south of that big mountains, with views of the Rainforest to my south (it's pretty big).
There's mountain goats (Better Animals) up here as well.
I at least try for variety in my terrains. Here you see a more broken and complicated grouping of rugged hills, still in Extreme Hills.
The sharp-eyed among you might have noticed the shrine-ish pillars on the left and it is indeed a Ruined Shrine, but without any Constellation paper.
Continuing on, I reach a BoP Badlands, the sandy biome to the right.
This has, I'm pretty sure, one of the traps BoP puts in it's "bad" biomes: a deep pit with some kind of nasty substance at the bottom. I'm guessing quicksand, but I don't investigate.
Then I reach the Cherry Blossom Grove, still well-supplied with bears (I saw three). This is one; oddly though it was plain as day in the game it's hard to identify here.
Then Ice Plains, a likely biome for Shrines, and sure enough I find the Ancient Shrine in the distance right away.
There are Reindeer here. Thankfully not homicidal.
It's almost night, so I go into the shrine basement and then block the entrance to sleep honestly inside. Inside I find 4 Constellation papers, becoming Bootes (animals), Horologium (time), and:
Aevitas! So I'd never found it, and I must have seen it in one of my Creative testbed worlds.
The last Constellation paper remains blank, so I've found all the dim and bright constellations. The last four will have to wait until I contruct an Observatory.
I sleep the night, and then come morning head out and around the far side of the Cherry Blossom Grove to extend my map.
I find and use a river going in roughly the right direction. Unfortunately it passed under this:
Resulting in this:
But I blow through it so fast the skelly there barely gets off an arrow, and misses anyway.
Then a BoP Moor, which *would* be a really cool biome, except
It's ruined by the awful vanilla "surface" pools. Even worse, I've seen the results of Moor villages trying to generate around these pools, and it's a mess.
Then I reach the ocean, and get in a boat to take the river back home.
Then, once again I get attacked by something in the river. I get out to fight it and - I can't seen anything? Even though I'm still getting hit. After a while I spot some things in the water some distance from me, so apparently it doesn't have to be next to me to attack?
Well who knows how far this thing can attack, so I dive in to kill it.
Maybe it is a squid? Although they're only supposed to spawn in Deep Ocean, so I dunno. This eel business is another thing I'm done with. I'll block freshwater Eel spawning and see if this nonsense stops. (That future sure arrived in a hurry.)
And soon I'm back home, once again near suppertime.
Hey, what season is it now?
Hunh, only halfway through summer. Well, it's a good season and I'm enjoying it.
Next episode: settling into a bit of a routine.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
I've personally always felt it would be better if they weren't a thing.
I guess the idea is to add some sources of water below what oceans and rivers offer, but they are just far too common and small and just make the landscape worse in my opinion.
Luckily for you, they removed them in 1.18, though I disagree with that - I even added an entire biome which is completely covered with those lakes, but they are also not the same as vanilla, generating level with the surface, and even normal lakes usually have a more gradual drop down to the liquid (I added a processing step which removes blocks adjacent to and above the liquid). They also fill in the trunks of tree and remove plants that were above them (same for the patches of sand that generate underwater when they appear on the surface net to them. I actually added this in response to a complaint about plants "generating" on the incorrect blocks and dropping (after some version this no longer occurred in vanilla, they just stayed there, I never noticed it when playing because they had long since despawned by the time I reached the area):
Otherwise, they are generally less common (compared to vanilla 1.6.4) due to the much greater variation in terrain, since the liquid level must be at or below the surrounding ground level, and I made surface lakes less likely to generate in "flat" biomes. Lakes in Superflat worlds are also adjusted so the frequency of surface lakes is independent of the depth (in vanilla they become more common as the surface is lowered since any attempts of placing lakes above the surface will end up on the surface and the range is fixed at 0-127, or 0-255 since 1.7 (which made them more common on the surface but rarer underground).
Another interesting change I made is that they can generate as low as y=2, with a single layer of liquid above a single layer of bedrock; in my last world I actually found such a lake with a dungeon connected to it, the deepest dungeon I'd ever found and the deepest possible due to y=2 being the deepest any air can generate at; vanilla limits their altitude to y=5 or above to avoid making holes in bedrock (this was possible in older vanilla versions due to lava lakes replacing blocks around them with stone):
Interestingly, the only thing outside of initial chunk generation that can replace bedrock in TMCW is a player in Creative mode as I coded in a special exception to patch any possible "bedrock breaking" exploits (I have no idea why Mojang hasn't thought of this, they can even have debug code that dumps a stacktrace if an attempt is made to replace bedrock so they can see how it happened; having such code, even if only enabled during development, can help a lot in solving issues, this is how I've ensured that TMCW is free of "worldgen runaway" issues, the bane of many worldgen mods (vanilla actually has a check which crashes the game, but only if it happens in the biome decorator; I've seen mods that "patch" this out but that is only covering up the root issue).
Also, since 1.13 the code that prevented lakes from generating inside of villages was broken by the multithreaded chunk generation (which did nothing to improve generation speed, as noted here 1.13 was over twice as slow as 1.6.4 - which is in turn twice as slow as TMCW despite its exceedingly complex world generation, thanks to how much I've optimized it). This and the aforementioned issues may have prompted Mojang to remove them (I even added code to prevent them from overwriting other structures, including strongholds, dungeons, and (partially) mineshafts), they also previously removed water lakes from deserts, which I partially restored by allowing them to generate underground, where I also added a much larger variant (up to 30 blocks wide, limited by the maximum size of decorations), as well as lakes of magma blocks.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
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Curse PremiumAgreed. From a gameplay perspective you do want them as a source of water, but it's not too hard to improve them (see below). They are particularly nasty in Moor on RTG because Moor is supposed to be this bleak sweeping landscape but it ends up looking like it's been attacked by a psychotic steam shovel. Bleah.
That's the thing about these pools. The real world analogue is vernal pools which are ordinarily flush with the landscape, *not* normally attached to vertical drops and *especially* not under deep overhangs. And it's not that hard to fix them! You did it and I did it - and it's not that hard - the RTG version was less than a day of work (though a little less thorough than yours). It's almost insulting that everybody playing Minecraft has had to live with them for 12 years when a few days of work tops would fix them.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
Better Animals Plus... that's the one with the Hirschgeist boss thingy. I looked at it a long time ago and liked the look of it but never ended up adding it to a modpack. I don't think I'd enjoy being jumped by wolves in the daytime either.
The subtitle saying "squid dies" is just that the modder has used the squid's sound effects for their eel. Saves the trouble of recording and implementing new sounds I guess! I got a bit confused in one 1.16 pack of mine because I saw "zoglin" subtitles and I'd not even opened a Nether portal so there is no way there could have been a zoglin anywhere near me. As it turned out it was a Fish's Undead Rising mob that uses zoglin sound effects.
Yes indeed that is quicksand. Instant PTSD from seeing that picture. If you recall the 1.7.10 BoP quicksand was a diggable block, the 1.12 is a liquid. Much harder to extricate oneself from.
You got the Aevitas! Awesome! Now what does it do? haha.
Another vote here for hating murky pools. They're horrible and I delight in filling them in.
Journals - Gregtech New Horizons | Tree Spirit Challenge [current]