Yeah, they may have been a mountain there. There probably was. Now that i think about it, I do recall a bare spot at some point, but the two pictures didn't confirm it.
The shaders themselves wouldn't prevent me from spotting ocean monuments. The water can be more transparent than this (and is by default). I prefer to have the water more opaque because I think it looks better this way. I can still spot the lights (mostly at night), or I can simply see and/or hear the elder guardians themselves. Sometimes I do, but sometimes I'll come across the ocean monument before that happens. And then half those times, I don't even end up with the debuff.
Either way, it's usually not a big deal. It happens so infrequently that it's not worth losing an inventory spot to a bucket, and if there's an ocean monument then there's deep ocean, and thus there's usually enough ocean in the area to explore while waiting for the debuff to end.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
So... I said the remainder would be split across two updates, but I condensed into one. So this is the finale to season three!
The last outing of this region would begin in the map East of the last one I finished.
The Northwest was the remainder of the old growth taiga forest. I unfortunately found no second wolf there.
I had noticed this ruined portal in the Southwest many updates ago, but only now have I gotten to it. It had a gold block and golden carrots.
To the North was forest, swamp, and windswept hills.
There was a promising looking cave opening, but it turns out it was "just a hole". There might be a ravine in it sort of, I'm not sure.
Further North on the next map was another cave opening, first spotted from afar as it extended up into a cliff side, and this one was more exciting. It also had a ravine cutting through it.
A ruined portal was found to the South. it had a gold lock like the first one, but no notable chest contents.
I then found a Pink sheep...
...And then another.
They were far enough apart that I don't think this was a bug, and I didn't find any more, so I figured two being noticed in close proximity was uncommon.
Eventually, a welcome discovery was made. The presence of a jungle and mangrove swamp meant I had found a hot region!
Might I finally find my desired desert and badlands in this area? Unfortunately, it would likely extend mostly beyond this region if I do, but that'd still be better news than not finding one.
To the Southeast was ocean, and on the shores was a pillager outpost. It had no horn, so I have to settle for making my own sad noises instead of natural ones for victory, but it did have a pair of armor trims.
By time I had gotten to the Northeast, where I found another ruined portal (this one with a gold block and a golden apple)...
...A disappointing discovery had become apparent. The hot region was rather small, so the chances of finding a hot dry region just greatly diminished.
In the ocean, many of which in the area had dolphins, a shipwreck was found, and it had a diamond (among other things).
With three maps finished, there was three that remained.
After doing two passes along the Western edge, which were ocean, I decided to sail East along the Northern edge and see what the very Northeast of this region had in store. I already knew the Western portions of this map was ocean.
Beyond the Northern edge of the map, a shattered savanna was spotted. These biomes seem aseptically common bordering, or at least near, oceans.
The Northeast had land with a ruined portal, and after sleeping to pass the night, I headed to it. The reward wasn't great.
Worse, the "reward" was a shocking discovery...
There is yet... another... snowy region! Should I rename this world Esto Gaza!? It's thankfully beyond the map, and I'm unlikely to need to do any of it, but I was really hoping I'd find a clue of a hot region in this corner. I mean, I did... but it was small and had no connected dry portion to allow for a desert/badlands area. Oh well. This search goes on.
As I headed South, the ocean started yielding to land extending West. In a small bay, a shipwreck was found, and it had a golden apple.
On the shore was a ruined portal, with a golden block, another golden apple, and golden carrots!
I guess that somewhat makes me happier.
Nearby, another ruined portal was found in a forest, but it had nothing rewarding.
The beginning of the next map had another cave opening in a cliff.
Plateaus and forests were the emerging terrain trend here. I knew there were mountains further South, so this made sense.
A taiga village was spotted from atop one of them.
Beginning the final map, the forests started changing to open plains.
Another village was spotted here.
Across the ocean to the West, another pillager outpost was found on the shore, just like the one not too far North was.
It had nothing good besides a Sharpness IV book, but I can't remember if those are allowed or not (which is probably a bad sign, haha). I did change the rule to later allow myself enchantments, but that might only be through the enchanting table. I didn't need it anyway, so I didn't take it.
Another promising-cave-that's-actually-a-hole was found here, but something else was also found here. In the distance is another abandoned village. That's the third of this world, and the second in this region.
It's also rather close to the first one found on this map.
I searched the abandoned village, and found a pair of residents. It ended up being worth it because I also found a pair of diamonds, and the villagers were helplessly trapped anyway.
A pair of potions of weakness (not allowed) would be able to restore this village, if I was willing to put the work into fixing it.
I said my farewell, and finished the map.
The majority of the rest was ocean (Southwest), but I forgot to check on that large cave found at the end of a prior update. There will be more opportunities to do so, but it will be in the far future.
So, I returned to my home for this region one last time...
"I'm back! I'm back!"
I took a couple of last looks around.
It was a sad and strange feeling. It feels like I had just finished building this home, and now I'd be done using it, at least insofar as being a place to regularly stage adventures from. If I do see it later, it won't be continually and will just be while passing through.
I added the final six maps, finishing this region.
This meant it was time to head back to Rubyville and update the world map itself by adding this new region to it!
So here's the world map prior to the region I've been working on for season three...
...And here it is with the addition of that.
Here's another showing the three regions I've done so far.
The Red portion is my initial region. My main village, Rubyville, and spawn is in this region.
The Orange portion was the second region, where I built that home on the small island hill.
The Pink region is the one I just added.
The Yellow circles mark my home in each region.
The remaining uncolored area doesn't really have a "region" it belongs to, meaning there is no home within that area that has a smaller map of just that local area (technically, nor does my spawn/primary village region since the separate map for that region is... this world map itself). I originally did that unmarked area to make the Southern region line up with my spawn region better, and I was considering doing the Northwest after, but I never did.
Here's a third picture showing the climate regions (not completely).
The border is marked with what I believe the climate is along the edge (or just beyond it).
The emphasis here is any Orange regions are hot regions. You can see that I have only two hot, dry regions, and the second one in the region I just added is so tiny it might as well not exist. Hot regions are aplenty... but hot dry regions (desert and badlands) aren't. Many are jungles, mangrove swamps, and savannas. A larger hot, dry region with both desert and badlands is what I'm looking for most.
Based on what I know at the borders of the map (and within it), I'm thinking the Red question marks are my best chance at finding one nearby. I doubt I'll push further East right away, so I'll rule that one out for now. I'll probably head South or West before that, and since the Southern area is near an "end of the world" border (there's just three maps worth of space to the South), I'm thinking of doing that next and have it be a region without a home too. That will allow me to do some exploration without having to build another home beforehand. If you're wondering why I don't want to do that... it will become clear after the next update...
I still have a long way to go...
I can always expand this if I want to, but my plans are to do at least this much, and all on foot.
Now that I'm done with the latest region, that basically ends season three!
I said I had a lot of thoughts and plans to talk about for what's coming up, and I do. That will come soon in a separate post of it's own though. (I will also restructure the thread and add a table of contents once I make the post disclosing those things.)
I said I had a big announcement for the world going forward. Here it is.
For the last few weeks, as I played and finished up the remainder of the region I just finished showing, I began thinking on and off about some things. I typically pushed them to the back of my mind, but they were recurring and growing thoughts.
After I finished the region, I placed the new maps alongside my existing world map, and then I stood there overlooking it. I took in all of the mapped space, which has accumulated up to over 7 GB of space (and is nearing 8 GB with where I'm at now).
"This is... quite a lot."
...I thought to myself.
I also thought about the vast sea of empty space that yet remains.
"There's a lot left to do..."
And yet, I'm entirely willing to do it. The biggest thing slowing me down isn't even my passion to play. That's burning stronger than it ever has. Updating progress on it here is what's slowing me down. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely willing to continue doing that. I'm only saying that to emphasize that there is no lack of passion, and to emphasize the following realization I had in that very moment. Which was this...
"This... this is my forever world. Isn't it?" (As people are calling it these days).
My mind had already been made up. I just hadn't admitted it to myself. But I couldn't keep denying it to myself.
So here's the important "change" to this world. I'm am going to eventually retire it from being a hardcore world and turn it into a regular survival world... if I don't lose it before that point.
You probably have a few questions. I definitely have answers.
When does this take effect?
I don't know, but it's not immediate, and likely not any time too soon. The way it works is something like this. I will continue to play it as a hardcore world until I have finished exploring the space on my map floor. I'm not even a quarter of the way done exploring, so I am probably looking at a time some years out! Once (and if) I have achieved that, I will consider it having been "earned" so to speak.
If you're not to keep it as a hardcore world, then isn't it already pointless having it that way now?
No, it's not pointless being that way in the meantime, because until I have achieved the above, it will remain in hardcore, and it's not in hardcore for the sole sake of it. If I die while it's in hardcore, I lose it!
Life is full of change, and it can strike unpredictably. As I've grown, I've learned that being adaptable to changing circumstances is stronger than sticking to a decision you made in the past. That's lying to your present self because your past self thought otherwise under different circumstances. That's... silly. The purpose of this world has already changed once before, and now it's changing again. The purpose of a game is to serve our personal desires, not the other way around, so I'm willing to adapt my game (this world) in the necessary ways to best do that. But I do want to earn it, so to speak, hence the obligation to "travel the world" before retiring. That's my "beat the game" criteria.
Besides... Garnet actually traveled the whole darned world (and another one!) before settling down. This feels absolutely fitting! I'll do the same! I'll travel Gaia, and then settle down. Maybe I'll even build a separate kingdom and name it Lindblum, hire a theater group to show a play, and wait for a Zidane to kidnap me!
But hardcore is supposed to be one and done! You can't change it!
If I die while it is hardcore (note the key words), I will retire the world. But that stipulation applies while it's in hardcore mode. If I take it out of that mode, that criteria ceases to exist.
As I said above, I value adaptability to changing circumstances a lot more than I value continuing to do or think something just because you decided upon it under different circumstances once upon a time. If that's a disappointment to someone, I won't try and convince you otherwise, but I don't need to. There's my reasoning, and it's good enough for me. If a world has failed while still in hardcore mode, I am against continuing it (but even then, people are free to do with their own data as they wish). But taking it out of hardcore mode before then is different.
Hardcore mode, like any other decision I make, was always something I did for a purpose, not for the sake of it. It's served a purpose, but that purpose is changing. It was very fun for me to dive into hardcore as a rather unskilled player. It taught me a lot of things; namely, it confirmed a thought of mine that I can indeed be a better player at not dying if I simply... try not to die. Since non-hardcore has almost no penalty for dying, I never tried too hard not to die since there was often no major setback if I did, so I'd pretty regularly die. Since trying hardcore, I've only died/failed once... and it was complete my fault. I dove into a hole! Who even does something like that!? Haha. On the other hand, since it's led me to play more carefully, that's also resulted in me avoiding certain things... which is smart for staying alive, but effectively makes those things inaccessible and may limit the fun, and it's those things I may want to open myself up to in the future. So it's becoming more of a barrier now. It originally instilled passion and drive into me at a time when survival mode alone was losing its attraction. And ironically, it's come full circle and I want to make this hardcore world into my primary long-term survival world; into my... home. Into Gaia! Into Alexandria! So basically, I feel like it's served it's purpose and I am outgrowing it.
"So yeah... that's what I'll do."
With that being said, I'll talk about the other major thing I was thinking of.
With the possibility of this becoming a long term world, I've been thinking about some larger scale projects, and some that I've always wanted to do but yet never had in over twelve years. Specifically... a girl isn't a Princess without a castle, right!?
So yeah... I'm going to build that castle after all, and right in this very world. I'm going to build a castle to earn my title, and then I'm going to travel the entire land to earn my world.
I thought about where to put it. A castle isn't a quick or easy thing to build, and it needs quite a bit of space. I ultimately decided that instead of building a completely new location for it, I will most likely just add it into Rubyville... sort of. Rubyville itself will be no more. The village itself isn't going anywhere, but it will grow, change, and become Alexandria.
Likewise, the nearby village called Garnet Village will probably be renamed to Dali. It's a very small, separate village nearby what will be Alexandria, so... it fits.
Originally, I wanted names that reflected the Red theme I had going on, hence "Ruby" and "Garnet". I also wanted to stick with names once I had initially named them, but given the circumstances, I feel changing them will be fitting.
Now that I've announced my plans and names, I will be able to make changes to the opening post which will reference them. I hope to have that done over the coming days. Better late than never!?
Here's my village right now.
I am thinking of adding the castle atop the hill behind it. I will have to clear and level the land a bit, but that's okay. I hope there's enough room and that it isn't too restricting.
Here's another picture showing some of the terrain lines with my infamous crayon scribbles, as well as rough plans (the castle is just an example and the exact design and scale will very likely differ).
Here's a closer look at the actual approximate spot where the castle is planned to be.
Here's another angle of the same spot.
And here's available land "behind" the hill that is behind the village. I could, you know... "cross those hills" and then add a second half to Alexandria here. That sounds like a plan.
The portals may need to be moved. The one in the village right now could be left there, although it is where the main path to the front of the castle will likely need to go. The return portal (Shown two pictures above) may be where part of the castle goes, so I could probably just move it slightly inside the castle and forgo the original one entirely.
Also, no, I won't be building "the" Alexandria castle. While I'd love to have that, that would be far, far too big. I'm looking to do more of a medium size castle here so that it doesn't take forever to build in survival. I also want to take some liberties and design my own anyway, but I will be adopting the name because why not!? There is one thing I might adopt from the actual castle, and that's the large sword blade-like crystal, but I'm not sure on that part yet. Time will tell.
I've been spending time in creative mode worlds to experiment with layouts and here's one of the few I've done.
In this one, the castle itself is the larger area, and the outer portion would be a courtyard surrounding by outer walls. The Yellow spots are entrances to the castle, and the checkered spots or either entrances to the castle from outside it, or otherwise walkways suspended above ground with accessibility to travel below them. the courtyard would extend further right (I stopped there since this serves the needed purpose) and may have other things that aren't strictly planned for. A lot of it depends on the terrain in my actual world.
Keep in mind that the only thing I'm certain of is that a castle is being built; the exact size, dimensions, and layout are not finalized, so this may not be representative of what you see me build. The only thing I'm somewhat decided on is the core building materials.
This will take a long time before it's finished, and even some time before you see me begin it. I've already began exploring another half a region, and I may as well finish it, so that will be the upcoming season and I'll probably only start this in the one after that. I have a lot of preparations and resource gathering that I need to do, and some of them make some time to get the necessary amount. Expect this to be a slow burn... but I'm telling myself it will be worth it... I hope it is!
My internal monologue went something like this...
"A castle is too overwhelming! It will take forever! Settle on expanding your village and live modestly."
"Yes, but... consider the alternative. You could reenact this..."
"Okay, okay! I'm building it, I'm building it!"
This has been one of the things I've been wanting to build, especially lately. Passion is probably about as high as it ever will be, so better now than never?
So, yeah... There it is. That's what I'll be doing!
It's also nice to see pictures of taiga villages from higher ground / further away. They're the only type that generate in a woodland biome, so you don't often notice them until you're already physically in one.
Discovering your first snow zone in a world is usually exciting, but yeah, once you begin taking on large-scale world exploration and continuously find one after another, it does become less desirable. The lack of a hot dry zone was a shame, but that's something to look forward to for your next region. Speaking of which, I like the story this "region-by-region exploration" playstyle creates.
The biggest thing slowing me down isn't even my passion to play. That's burning stronger than it ever has. Updating progress on it here is what's slowing me down. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely willing to continue doing that. I'm only saying that to emphasize that there is no lack of passion, and to emphasize the following realization I had in that very moment.
Can totally get that; that's also pretty much the reason why the mapping trip on my world took so long. I'm not sure if this applies to you, but when it comes to exploration, I find that it often takes more time to write updates on a map or region than to actually complete that map or region in the game itself. If you get too far ahead with gameplay, the updates become more difficult to write since you'll have to spend more time recalling the minor details and your initial thoughts when you encountered a particular object or location of interest. And we all have a limited amount of time every day.
There's nothing wrong with changing a Hardcore world to a normal survival one after you have achieved the specific goal(s) or purpose(s) that you had for it in its Hardcore "phase." If you started a world in Hardcore solely for the experience, and then decide you have had enough of it and want to try a new playstyle or experience on the same world, I would do whatever appeals to yourself more. If your primary goal is to fill in the entire map floor, it sounds reasonable to want to change the gamemode after you have accomplished that, particularly if your next purpose for the world is to build and expand upon your world, as it sounds like to me.
Will you still maintain the other restrictions that you've enacted from the beginning?
Looking forward to seeing your castle, although from the size you seem to be going for, I understand that it's going to require impressive time and dedication to complete.
I'll try and keep that in mind about lush caves if you like them. I've been trying to show more caves in general, which is a bit easier in this world given how much more common they are.
Taiga villages in particular are ones that are hard to get a good single picture of, and that's part of why I took the opportunity to use that as the picture showing it.
Yes, I feel like sometimes I spend more time and effort on writing updates. That's probably not actually true too often, but the ratio on writing (and all the other effort that goes into updates, like taking pictures, uploading them, etc.) is definitely higher than I want it to be. It wouldn't be a big deal for a shorter world, or a mixed world like yours, but an exploration focused world with as much terrain as I'm planning to do is definitely a slog. Since your world isn't solely exploration, you shouldn't run into this as much as me. That's also part of what weighed into my decision on wanting to spend time building a castle and transforming the village, as I could dedicate a season or so to that (depending on how spread my efforts on that side of things are, so it's likely season 5 will be devoted to the getting the castle in an initial state, but further changes to it and the village may continually occur beyond that point).
Something else I'm considering is showing less structures. I've basically been showing every single one that I find since the start, and then also showing the loot (if I take any). That made sense earlier on, but as I get further into the world, that's becoming too repetitive to show. Especially for structures like shipwrecks and ruined portals, which are so common. So after the region I'm doing now, I might drop to partially showing those instead of fully showing them.
Restrictions will definitely change once I move the world out of hardcore, because some of those would otherwise be barriers to things I want to do once the purpose of the world changes. In the meantime, they are remaining as-is. I really want to do a very large amount of terrain exploration and mapping on foot and with no shulker boxes as the main purpose of this world before it shifts into a non-hardcore state. Eventually, I'll probably drop the restrictions of no elytra, no mending, no shulker boxes, and no villager trading (I could probably drop this one now since I updated to a version where doing the zombification and curing process multiple times no longer brings the trades so low that they are basically broken in the players' favor, and that was a big part of why it was set as a restriction). I might even do more exploration with elytra beyond that point. One of the things I'll need to do is consider if I want to move the map into the castle, or leave it where it is. Initially, I'll probably leave it where it is, but after that point I may move it.
At this point you've long since "won"; beaten all the significant challenges for surviving in the game. I don't remember if you've offed the dragon, but it's not like you need to. (I never have; if I publish another journal I'll try to make it a running gag. Not even in the Astral Sorcery world, geez.) Given the purpose of the game (analyzing and demonstrating the terrain gen on an unprecedented scale) this is a pretty reasonable shift.
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!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I haven't defeated the dragon in this world yet, no. Since that's something I'd eventually do if I wanted to make this a permanent world, then I'll probably make that something I'll do before I shift it out of hardcore.
I finally restructured the thread by updating and simplifying the original post, and I have finally gotten around to adding a table of contents to the first post. I also added the season and episode number to some past updates. I'm not completely done with this part because one of the seasons (and it's probably the longest one of course...) doesn't have links for each episode yet, but it has a link to the start/first episode, and the rest of the seasons are fully done. This was/is a lot of work so I'll finish adding the missing ones later.
It should at least be easier to jump into the thread for new people wanting to catch up, or for those who stopped following and fell behind to catch back up.
Season 3 (the one I just finished) has now become season 4. This is because it was the first one I was updating in the season format, and I anticipated the prior two regions being made the first two seasons, but I split the first region into two seasons instead. The first season covers the start of the world, and the second season starts when I started building my first home. So that makes season 3 the second region I did to the South, and season 4 is the most recent region I did to the East. Therefore, the upcoming season (which I've delayed on making updates for until I did this) will be season 5, and that will cover the small region to the very South. I'm already way behind on that.
The first update for season 5 will come soon, now that I've mostly finished updating the thread itself.
(Seriously, editing a ton of existing posts spread across so many pages is an exhausting amount of work, especially when you need to navigate away from the page and back between each edit...)
New season time! This season will be rather short in episode count compared to the last few seasons as it will be covering a smaller region. Due to that, unlike all prior regions, I will not be making a home for this region with its own local map (I'll still be showing map updates after each outing, but they will simply be added to the overall world map). A nether portal will be used to make travel to and from it much quicker though.
The region will be a 10 x 3 area to the South of the Southern region I did in season 3. The final picture of this update will show where it is. To begin the region, I'll travel to the home of my Southern region, and then from there I'll head South until I'm near the center of the new region. I'll map a column (1 x 3) of maps North to South, build the nether portal somewhere in the center map, and then work on connecting my way in the nether back to Rubyvi... I mean, Alexandria!
Here's the home of my second (Southern) region I was last at in season 3!
Homes in previous regions may be returned to at times... but never for regular use, and instead as a shortcut to new regions.
One of the times I came through here, I had a confusing panic. I was inside on the first floor, and a creeper started walking towards me from my kitchen! I came through the portal in the basement at night, ran up to the second floor to sleep, and witnessed it in the morning. I don't think there's anywhere inside it can spawn. Instead, I think a zombified piglin walked outside via the pressure plate activated doors (I did hear this occur, and there was one outside and a second one inside) and let one inside. What are the chances?
Due to a landmark I knew of, I went blind without any previous map. I had no reason properly starting in the correct map.
Savanna was the starting area, but it quickly shifted to jungle, and in that I found a jungle temple. I didn't explore it.
Back near the Northeast corner was my landmark; a pillager outpost. It was on the map East of here though, so I'll leave it for then.
Outside of the jungle in an oak forest was a cave.
Along the Western edge, and to the South of the map, was a mangrove swamp.
I knew these hot and humid biomes lined the Southern edge of the region to the North, but what lays further South is a mystery. My ultimate desire is for the hot region to go from humid to dry so that I find a desert and badlands region. With cold biomes Northeast and Northwest (though very far), I'm thinking that if that is going to occur, I should see the maps I'm about to do remain hot, as opposed to shifting back to temperate.
To the Southeast was a savanna village.
To the very Southeast of the map itself, was a second village.
The following picture was mostly to show the terrain. The savanna extends South and then turns to reach West here. Looking North from the village shows a look towards the jungle, with an oak forest between them. I used to be indifferent about the biome shapes, but after seeing stuff like this in action, I have come to prefer the current shapes over the fractal shapes used in the past. You get more natural biome line transitions like this in-game, even if the shapes on map may look less exciting to some people.
To the Southwest was more mangrove swamp... much more! Another savanna was beyond it to the Southwest.
This was, so far, a good sign for the hot region continuing. I wasn't looking forward to that much treetopping though...
In the mangrove swamp was a ruined portal. It had two gold blocks, and more gold ingots in its chest.
Beginning the next map revealed more ocean, which would be a nice break from a dense mangrove swamp, and another jungle to the South, which is another good sign of the hot region continuing.
More ocean was found beyond the jungle to the Southeast, and another ruined portal was found on the shore here. It contained a golden apple.
Fittingly, it is right next to this portal that I will construct mine. This is near the center, and it's also near ocean. This will be very beneficial.
As I moved towards finishing the Southwest remainder of the map, I found another village. The two oceans didn't meet as I hoped, but they were still connected via river, and the land to cross was a very thin strip, so any outings to the East or West from the portal should have easy ocean access. The land appeared to shifting back towards temperate climate though...
Before completing the final map, I built the portal (and a lot of unpictured work took place here establishing a path in the nether to the rest of my nether network). After returning to Alexandria, I got this...
...Which I wasn't too familiar with but figured it had to do with nether travel somehow. I looked it up and it was for traveling 7 thousand blocks in the overworld via the nether. I would have thought my second region home achieved me that, but I guess not.
Here's the new finished portal.
I then began the final map.
There's acacia trees shown here, but they are not of a hot region. That's a shattered savanna, and windswept hills and swamps are also here.
Beyond the windswept hills was old growth taiga!?
Well, the hot region has ended to the South. There's still a chance of a connected (or even separate) hot and dry region West or East, but I felt like my chances of finding such a climate region in this area were now lower after seeing this.
I found no second wolf of the variety that spawns here.
There was taiga to the East of that, further confirming a climate shift towards temperate or even cool, and it had a village.
the final thing found on this map was a shipwreck on the shore of a small, almost isolated bay. It had mostly iron, which is never unwelcome, but also a few emeralds.
It was now time to head to Alexandria and update the map, but I ran into a small occurrence in the nether...
If the picture is too dark, a group of zombified piglins is running at me!
I did not attack any of them, however. I was fighting a ghast (the Yellow/Green orbs in the distance are below where it was), and it was firing at me (the two fire spots ahead are where they hit). Right after the ghast died, after half a second to a second later, I heard the noise a zombified piglin makes when taking damage. Right after that, I heard the cry they make when becoming aggressive at something. I didn't even look; I just ran until I was far away and turned around and saw the above picture.
So... what happened!? I figure something went awry with the ghast fire damage hitting one, and the ghast being dead, and them instead becoming aggressive towards me? If not, I'm confused, but this should not be a thing. I presume, or at least hope, it's not intended and is a bug?
Anyway, I simply ran, and I lucked out because by time I returned, they were passive. That might be because I went close enough to load the chunks, but not close enough that they would chase, so they seemed to lose attention of me due to that.
Here's the new maps, and this shows where they are in relation to my overall world map.
For the next outing, I'll do a single row consisting of four maps (4 x 1) along the Northern edge to the East. I figure I'll do the slightly smaller Eastern half first.
It was time to set out on the second outing of this small region... and the one where things would start go get more exciting.
I would begin at the pillager outpost that served as my original landmark for the new region. I had a welcome llama, which I promptly pet.
Unlike the last outing, the hot region in this spot consists savanna, which is much easier to traverse than jungle and especially mangrove swamp.
The pillager outpost itself has a couple of trims, but no horn. I'm still not sure if I'm even missing any. I should reference what ones exist and what ones I have some day to know.
I heat East first, and the savanna quickly shifts to a shattered savanna bordering ocean. Once I looked beyond the shattered savanna, I was reminded of prior knowledge I had; ocean, mangrove swamp, and jungles lay beyond.
At least I don't have to that yet, and at least the ocean breaks it up.
Unpictured, but just to the right in the above picture was oak forest. I was wondering if this hot region would flirt back and forest between seemingly temperate and hot biomes before permanently shifting to temperate again (that is, I took this as a potential sign the hot region may be ending here).
As I was making my way back West, I took a look South and the sight answered my question...
"Is that... is that a... desert!?"
My reaction was like someone already in a desert seeing an oasis.
The amount of sand was suggestive, but it was the desert temple in the distance that confirmed I was, in fact, seeing a desert. I got seriously happy at seeing this, and it coincided with some music playing.
As I continued West, a savanna village was encountered, and these villagers had chosen to build over a cave. maybe they are miners?
In the Southwest corner, another savanna village was found...
...And just beyond it was the desert spotted earlier.
"Warmth!"
I also spotted a shipwreck and what appeared to be a ruined portal just beyond it.
I headed North, and then East, and it became apparent this was a corner of the desert. I hope it's not small...
From there, I spotted two additional villages, but these ones were desert villages.
And looking West (right) from there, was a pillager outpost, and the desert temple I originally spotted.
Speaking of the latter, I decided to enter it. I think I've done one of these before in this world, but typically I skip anything that isn't a shipwreck and ruined portal.
It was completely empty of mobs. I broke Minecraft's first unspoken rule and dug straight down through the wall of the trap to reach the bottom, instead of falling down like I usually do. I immediately broke the pressure plate and since my efficiency pickaxe was so fast, I uncovered the TNT as well, and at that point, I decided to just take the TNT too.
Here's what the four chests had. Worth mentioning was a diamond, two iron horse armors, and a saddle. The bones were also collected.
After that, I reached the small bay ocean with the shipwreck and ruined portal, and checked those too. The latter had nothing worth showing or taking in the chest, but it did have a gold block.
To finish the structure looting, I reached the pillager outpost. This one did have a horn, but I would later find out it was one I already had.
I then reached the two desert villages. I didn't take anything from either, but I spotted a camel was enjoying the evening sun in one of them (the other would have had a camel too since they always spawn with one, but I didn't get close enough to go through the village and see it).
Just East of the village, to begin the second map, was another ruined portal, and like the first, it had no notable chests contents, but it had a gold block.
The Northern half of this map was the jungle and ocean I spotted earlier. Another ruined portal was found here, and like many of these in jungles, a fire started. Despite the rain, the tree canopy allowed it to spread to the tall tree itself.
While this one wasn't great on chest contents, it at least had something worth taking.
I finish the map and begin the third of four maps. Still heading East, it was a lot of ocean.
At the edge of this map was something that was familiar from a previous "end of the map" exploration. This area was plains and plateaus, and just beyond that is a snowy region... so the hot and dry region not far West and South was a surprise.
More surprising was a savanna over on this side of the ocean as I headed South.
This suggested the hot region extended across the ocean here, which I was hoping for since I was hoping to find a large one this time as opposed to the last tiny one. Ideally, I'd find a larger desert and badlands region, and so far this is hinting it could be a larger area.
Most of this mp itself was ocean, so I explored at night. Near a small island, a ruined portal was found. It had a gold block, and the chest had a gold apple and a handful of gold carrots. That makes up for the first two or three being underwhelming.
As day broke, it started raining right after the sun rose. Worse, it turned into a thunderstorm moments later, and I was finishing the map and needed a spot to land.
And yet... I didn't have a single concern in the world. Why? This was why...
This was confirmation that this was indeed a proper, sizable hot and dry region. I land and begin the fourth map to the east of the prior map. Even a skeleton was admiring the view.
North was this small mountain peak spotted in the savanna. I originally spotted this during the prior map when it was raining, but I cut that picture and saved this one since it's better shown here than it was in the rain picture.
Unless the badlands pushes North here, I won't be doing it just yet... but knowing it is there has me all sorts of excited.
I'll conclude this update here. The next update will cover a single map and the final one of this outing.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
I may have a possible hypothesis for the zombified piglin incident. When you deflect ghast fireballs, either by melee-hitting or shooting them with a ranged weapon such as a bow (the latter of which you may have unintentionally done), and one of them hits a zombified piglin, that counts as player-induced damage. You may have shot and deflected one of the ghast's fireballs right after it died, and that fireball then hit a zombified piglin. If that was what happened, it doesn't sound like a bug to me.
It's not uncommon to find oak forest within a hot region; I notice that it often intertwines with or is completely surrounded by jungle and savanna.
Falling down into the temple isn't always a safe idea as you can easily fall onto the pressure plate by accident, or fail to notice a mob that has spawned around the trap and proceeds to set it off.
I was shooting the ghast with a bow. If I'm remembering correctly, shortly before an arrow I fired would have reached it, it did attempt to fire something which was immediately deflected right back at it, killing it. It was moments later (a second or two?) that I heard the sound a zombified piglin makes when harmed (sounded like burning, but I'm not positive?) with no explosion sound accompanying it that I recall, and that was when it gave the rallying cry sound that told me they were probably upset with me.
Here's a demonstration of what I remember.
The Pink line was the route I was originally running.
Imagine the zombified piglins being randomly spread and a bit further back from where they are pictured.
The White box represents where a ghast suddenly spawned, and it began firing. The two fire spots ahead of me were created by this, as that is where I was running while it fired. I went to use my bow on it to get rid of it because it would have created a lot of terrain damage if I just ignored it and continued running by. The Blue line is the trajectory of my arrow, and the Green line is the approximate distance at which it went to fire a third fireball and had it immediately deflected right back into itself by my arrow. The ghast then died to this.
I then went to put out the fires and fill in the two spots it created, and it was about a second or two from when the ghast had died that I heard the zombified piglin harm sound, followed by the zombified piglin rallying cry. I then ran, turned around, and captured the picture you see there.
I still don't know what exactly happened but I've had this happen rarely before, and it always involves a ghast.
Season 5: Episode 3
I begin the final map of this outing by heading East along the Southern edge of the map.
The Southwest portion of the map is savanna. There's a village there (to be better shown a couple pictures later). The Southeast is temperate with forests, and the altitude becomes higher.
Heading back West, there's a North and South running mountain ridge to cross.
On the other side of that is the savanna, and beyond that is the smaller, warmer mountain shown at the end of the previous update. From atop that, I get a better picture of the village.
The badlands are further South.
A bit North is a flower forest.
I, uh... sort of get distracted and spend a few days here gather a lot of tulips and a few other flowers, haha. I recently expanded my storage space at home so i have room to gather more now.
I then make another crossing of the central mountain range through the core part of it.
Heading North along the Eastern edge brings cooler taiga forests, and a taiga village.
In the very Northeast was the edge of a snowy region, something I was aware of. This is quite the contrast to not only a hot region, but a desert/badlands one, in the opposite corner of the same map.
The Northern portion of the map has plateaus and cherry groves. This is an area I ventured a bit into when doing the map North of this a long, long time ago.
Crossing the rivers is effort, but the area is nice enough to make it worthwhile.
The central Northern portions have quite a bit of caves (the same area that had more to the North on a map finished long ago).
With the map finished, I head back home and update the world map.
The start of a second (well, third counting the really small one found before) desert region is now on the map!
Next, I'll head to the remainder of the area in the Southeast and do the eight maps there in one outing.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
I was shooting the ghast with a bow. If I'm remembering correctly, shortly before an arrow I fired would have reached it, it did attempt to fire something which was immediately deflected right back at it, killing it. It was moments later (a second or two?) that I heard the sound a zombified piglin makes when harmed (sounded like burning, but I'm not positive?) with no explosion sound accompanying it that I recall, and that was when it gave the rallying cry sound that told me they were probably upset with me.
Okay, after a quick experiment, I may have found an explanation for that too.
When you deflect a fireball with an arrow, the arrow loses momentum and gets knocked back a little before going straight down, as demonstrated in the video below. (The fireball I used was summoned by me, but I'm presuming it's the exact same entity as a ghast's fireball.)
It was the fireball that physically killed the ghast. Your arrow, which deflected that fireball, went straight down and hit a zombified piglin. The burning sound may be because your arrow knocked the zombified piglin into a fire spot beneath the ghast (so not one created by a ghast's fireball).
Wow, that snowy ridge (along with the the cherry grove, and the jagged mountains in the background) really resembles an area near my own village. Pretty interesting how you can find such similar views when you explore enough.
Oh, maybe that explains it. I didn't know the arrow was deflected down when that happens.
Come to think of it, I may have seen or heard a zombified piglin seem to be attacked beneath the ghast when this happened, but I didn't think much of it since it was relatively far away. That may explain the couple of seconds delay for the ones closer to me to become aggressive as it would have taken a moment for the one that was further away to get closer and for any rallying cry it gave off to be picked up by the ones near me.
At least, that's my guess.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
It was completely empty of mobs. I broke Minecraft's first unspoken rule and dug straight down through the wall of the trap to reach the bottom, instead of falling down like I usually do. I immediately broke the pressure plate and since my efficiency pickaxe was so fast, I uncovered the TNT as well, and at that point, I decided to just take the TNT too.
Umm. That is vastly bolder than I'd ever be.
That is - so close to good. I love the hill range, but the little coastal cliffs just look wrong with that slope.
One of the nice things about the new generation is that Flower Forest is rare enough to feel special again. When I first saw it, it was really cool, but as a sub-biome, it showed up a LOT in my big exploration games, and after a while, I was at "another Flower Forest?", which is a strange place to be.
That's a treetop view, right? I find newgen annoying in that it's hard to get good views in a forested location, although they are very much there. I suppose it's a reward for builds, because a build with any height gets a very rewarding view.
Congrats on developing a climate zone collection.
It was the fireball that physically killed the ghast. Your arrow, which deflected that fireball, went straight down and hit a zombified piglin. The burning sound may be because your arrow knocked the zombified piglin into a fire spot beneath the ghast (so not one created by a ghast's fireball).
CSI Minecraft!
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!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I'm going to try shorter updates again (at least for some updates). I think the larger updates are making me procrastinate on doing them. Some updates will still be large though, including an upcoming one or few due to things I'm about to see.
Season 5: Episode 4
For the first map of this (minor spoiler) long outing, I begin with the map directly East of the map the portal is one. The portal is right on the shore and near the center of the map. Not far into the map, I see a shift from the jungle to savanna, and then to the expected desert. Surprisingly, there's badlands all the way over here too.
To this was just by the portal the whole time.
The badlands is a small area of eroded badlands though, so the rest of the East is desert. I find a pretty large hold, but it's not as large as the massive one I found in the first desert region of this world.
It's also pretty much just a hole rather than a large cave, but some smaller ones are connecting to it.
Further East, there's more small spots of eroded badlands. I spot both a village and a desert temple here.
Not much further South, is another village.
East of that on the second map is yet another village.
Just outside of that is a ruined portal
Its chest was buried, so I almost skipped on it, but I decided to dig a bit. I'm glad I did, because while the chest itself wasn't rewarding, another gold block was hidden under the sand.
And very near that, was not one but two desert temples. These four structures (and really the few on the previous map) were all rather close here.
I soon saw higher altitude land to the East, including what appeared to be a more substantial shift to badlands biomes and not just a small spot of eroded ones.
In the Northeast was ocean, and on the shore was a pillager outpost. It had nothing rewarding.
The higher altitude badland biomes meant wooded badlands. Hopefully I might new dogs here. I'm only missing two types, and one of them is found there.
I came across some easily accessible Red sand, and while I had no plans that called for any, I gathered a handful of stacks here to have just in case, since the biome is rather uncommon and not quite close to home.
I started the third map and the ocean to the Northeast of the previous map covered the Northern half of this map. This was expected, since the map to the North was entirely ocean.
I also saw a cliff with a large cavern opening in it, but there wasn't anything substantially impressive inside so I didn't get any further pictures of it.
I'll end this update with a picture showing the same part of the badlands that I first spotted of it at the end of two updates ago.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
Is it typical of eroded badlands to generate in small patches separate and far away from normal badlands biomes? I've always expected most non-highland biome variants to be found near or adjacent to their "standard" variant (like how if there's ice spikes, you always find snowy plains around).
And it's fun to see the hoodoos; it's a biome I've never been to before.
I don't know if it's common because I don't know what determines whether a particular spot is going to be desert or badlands, just that the two both generate when the hot and dry conditions line up. If I had to guess, I would say yes though because I've found micro spots of badlands/eroded badlands within larger deserts regions. Usually a larger badlands region is nearby if this happens. In a way, it comes off like slight dithering between the two, although these small spots can occur far from the "border area" between the two.
There's a relatively small ice spikes biome in this world that is right in the middle of a larger temperate region with no other snowy biomes around. The surrounding biomes are plains, meadows, and cherry groves. It's very near Alexandria.
I don't know what hoodoos mean.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
I came across some easily accessible Red sand, and while I had no plans that called for any, I gathered a handful of stacks here to have just in case, since the biome is rather uncommon and not quite close to home.
Planning ahead! Yay planning ahead! I do it - too much probably, as I often end up with chests full of potential construction supplies I never use.
I'm honestly surprised there's not more whining about the sometimes large terrain zones. Usually they are somewhat mixed, although it can be hard to find snowy and desert zones. But back in the old days people would have a fit about entire maps being desert or ocean. I'm sure the increased view distance is part of this, but there seems to have been a cultural shift where traveling about is more expected.
I don't know if it's common because I don't know what determines whether a particular spot is going to be desert or badlands, just that the two both generate when the hot and dry conditions line up.
Roughly speaking, the two together occupy almost all of the hottest climate, with the less eroded areas being badlands and the more eroded desert. The exact boundary depends on the "continentalness" which is kinda-sorta how far it is from ocean, and the hill-valley distinction, in ways that are complicated and I'm not sure if I could explain them. Basically, hot climate means desert or badlands, and which one depends on the valley and erosion noises.
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!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I'm honestly surprised there's not more whining about the sometimes large terrain zones. Usually they are somewhat mixed, although it can be hard to find snowy and desert zones. But back in the old days people would have a fit about entire maps being desert or ocean. I'm sure the increased view distance is part of this, but there seems to have been a cultural shift where traveling about is more expected.
In my experience, desert regions are a bit harder to find, yes, but snowy regions aren't. It seems to me that hot and cold regions seem pretty equal, but the reason desert/badlands are less common than their snowy counterpart is due to how the hot and cold regions are broken down. More of the cold region seems snowy whereas hot regions have a lot more of non-desert/badlands (such as savannas, jungles, and mangrove swamps, among others). I think I remember you stating that the "extreme" for what determines a hot region is suitable (dry enough?) to be desert/badlands is "higher" than it for cold regions to be snowy? That would explain this. I'm only just now finding my second desert/badlands region, but I've found like six snowy regions.
But yes, there's a lot that has changed insofar as why more players may seem to accept larger scale worlds now compared to back when 1.7 landed, and it's why I say you can't just look at a map of 1.7 style terrain generation and then at 1.18 style terrain generation and conclude "the latter is worse because it looks even bigger and the". The problem with 1.7 was never solely "it's large scale". It was how it did that along with surrounding factors.
Accessibility to higher render distances is better than before. Faster hardware and better performance mods exist now and these enable that.
Faster rate of travel (read as, elytra and easier access to mending) exists.
Nobody wanted to explore before 1.7 because there was next to no reason to. The biome count was much lower and the tiny biome size and completely random placement meant worlds started feeling repetitive so fast. So when people say 1.7 felt repetitive, it's not that the problem started here, but its more that very few people played in a way to see it before.
Part of it is also that we spent like a decade with 1.7+ terrain generation already. The increase in scale from 1.6 to 1.7 was probably more of a shock than that of 1.16/1.17 to 1.18.
In addition to the above, 1.18+ does the whole climate region approach and the biome arrangement approach much better than 1.7+ ever did. 1.7+ really just felt like "random biome litter" and while that worked a bit better with the versions before 1.7, it didn't work as well with the climate system it introduced. This actually made it worse because the biome size was still small like before but the climate regions were larger, which made those climate regions feel more back and forth repetitive. I've said it before, but 1.7+ feels like a hybrid terrain generation system that didn't know what it wanted to be. It changed some things that should have necessitated further changes... but it didn't do those further things. 1.18+ did.
Having done on foot exploration in all three of the various world styles, the differences between the two (1.7+ and 1.18+) is vast, and "they both look large scale on a biome map" is very misleading. 1.6 and before feel harmonious with itself. 1.18 and after also do. 1.7 through 1.16 feels terrible, and if was ever try and play a world in version of the game, any version within that window would be out. I'd rather play 1.6 with its limited biome count than 1.7 with its vast biome additions, and that should be telling. I see 1.18 as the better "update that changed the world". 1.7 did that too... but in a bad way. So 1.18 is sort of the decade later correction to it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
Yeah, they may have been a mountain there. There probably was. Now that i think about it, I do recall a bare spot at some point, but the two pictures didn't confirm it.
The shaders themselves wouldn't prevent me from spotting ocean monuments. The water can be more transparent than this (and is by default). I prefer to have the water more opaque because I think it looks better this way. I can still spot the lights (mostly at night), or I can simply see and/or hear the elder guardians themselves. Sometimes I do, but sometimes I'll come across the ocean monument before that happens. And then half those times, I don't even end up with the debuff.
Either way, it's usually not a big deal. It happens so infrequently that it's not worth losing an inventory spot to a bucket, and if there's an ocean monument then there's deep ocean, and thus there's usually enough ocean in the area to explore while waiting for the debuff to end.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
Season 4: Episode 29
So... I said the remainder would be split across two updates, but I condensed into one. So this is the finale to season three!
The last outing of this region would begin in the map East of the last one I finished.
The Northwest was the remainder of the old growth taiga forest. I unfortunately found no second wolf there.
I had noticed this ruined portal in the Southwest many updates ago, but only now have I gotten to it. It had a gold block and golden carrots.
There was a promising looking cave opening, but it turns out it was "just a hole". There might be a ravine in it sort of, I'm not sure.
Further North on the next map was another cave opening, first spotted from afar as it extended up into a cliff side, and this one was more exciting. It also had a ravine cutting through it.
A ruined portal was found to the South. it had a gold lock like the first one, but no notable chest contents.
I then found a Pink sheep...
...And then another.
They were far enough apart that I don't think this was a bug, and I didn't find any more, so I figured two being noticed in close proximity was uncommon.
Eventually, a welcome discovery was made. The presence of a jungle and mangrove swamp meant I had found a hot region!
Might I finally find my desired desert and badlands in this area? Unfortunately, it would likely extend mostly beyond this region if I do, but that'd still be better news than not finding one.
To the Southeast was ocean, and on the shores was a pillager outpost. It had no horn, so I have to settle for making my own sad noises instead of natural ones for victory, but it did have a pair of armor trims.
By time I had gotten to the Northeast, where I found another ruined portal (this one with a gold block and a golden apple)...
...A disappointing discovery had become apparent. The hot region was rather small, so the chances of finding a hot dry region just greatly diminished.
In the ocean, many of which in the area had dolphins, a shipwreck was found, and it had a diamond (among other things).
With three maps finished, there was three that remained.
After doing two passes along the Western edge, which were ocean, I decided to sail East along the Northern edge and see what the very Northeast of this region had in store. I already knew the Western portions of this map was ocean.
Beyond the Northern edge of the map, a shattered savanna was spotted. These biomes seem aseptically common bordering, or at least near, oceans.
The Northeast had land with a ruined portal, and after sleeping to pass the night, I headed to it. The reward wasn't great.
Worse, the "reward" was a shocking discovery...
There is yet... another... snowy region! Should I rename this world Esto Gaza!? It's thankfully beyond the map, and I'm unlikely to need to do any of it, but I was really hoping I'd find a clue of a hot region in this corner. I mean, I did... but it was small and had no connected dry portion to allow for a desert/badlands area. Oh well. This search goes on.
As I headed South, the ocean started yielding to land extending West. In a small bay, a shipwreck was found, and it had a golden apple.
On the shore was a ruined portal, with a golden block, another golden apple, and golden carrots!
I guess that somewhat makes me happier.
Nearby, another ruined portal was found in a forest, but it had nothing rewarding.
The beginning of the next map had another cave opening in a cliff.
Plateaus and forests were the emerging terrain trend here. I knew there were mountains further South, so this made sense.
A taiga village was spotted from atop one of them.
Beginning the final map, the forests started changing to open plains.
Another village was spotted here.
Across the ocean to the West, another pillager outpost was found on the shore, just like the one not too far North was.
It had nothing good besides a Sharpness IV book, but I can't remember if those are allowed or not (which is probably a bad sign, haha). I did change the rule to later allow myself enchantments, but that might only be through the enchanting table. I didn't need it anyway, so I didn't take it.
Another promising-cave-that's-actually-a-hole was found here, but something else was also found here. In the distance is another abandoned village. That's the third of this world, and the second in this region.
It's also rather close to the first one found on this map.
I searched the abandoned village, and found a pair of residents. It ended up being worth it because I also found a pair of diamonds, and the villagers were helplessly trapped anyway.
A pair of potions of weakness (not allowed) would be able to restore this village, if I was willing to put the work into fixing it.
I said my farewell, and finished the map.
The majority of the rest was ocean (Southwest), but I forgot to check on that large cave found at the end of a prior update. There will be more opportunities to do so, but it will be in the far future.
So, I returned to my home for this region one last time...
"I'm back! I'm back!"
I took a couple of last looks around.
It was a sad and strange feeling. It feels like I had just finished building this home, and now I'd be done using it, at least insofar as being a place to regularly stage adventures from. If I do see it later, it won't be continually and will just be while passing through.
I added the final six maps, finishing this region.
This meant it was time to head back to Rubyville and update the world map itself by adding this new region to it!
So here's the world map prior to the region I've been working on for season three...
...And here it is with the addition of that.
Here's another showing the three regions I've done so far.
The Red portion is my initial region. My main village, Rubyville, and spawn is in this region.
The Orange portion was the second region, where I built that home on the small island hill.
The Pink region is the one I just added.
The Yellow circles mark my home in each region.
The remaining uncolored area doesn't really have a "region" it belongs to, meaning there is no home within that area that has a smaller map of just that local area (technically, nor does my spawn/primary village region since the separate map for that region is... this world map itself). I originally did that unmarked area to make the Southern region line up with my spawn region better, and I was considering doing the Northwest after, but I never did.
Here's a third picture showing the climate regions (not completely).
The border is marked with what I believe the climate is along the edge (or just beyond it).
The emphasis here is any Orange regions are hot regions. You can see that I have only two hot, dry regions, and the second one in the region I just added is so tiny it might as well not exist. Hot regions are aplenty... but hot dry regions (desert and badlands) aren't. Many are jungles, mangrove swamps, and savannas. A larger hot, dry region with both desert and badlands is what I'm looking for most.
Based on what I know at the borders of the map (and within it), I'm thinking the Red question marks are my best chance at finding one nearby. I doubt I'll push further East right away, so I'll rule that one out for now. I'll probably head South or West before that, and since the Southern area is near an "end of the world" border (there's just three maps worth of space to the South), I'm thinking of doing that next and have it be a region without a home too. That will allow me to do some exploration without having to build another home beforehand. If you're wondering why I don't want to do that... it will become clear after the next update...
I still have a long way to go...
I can always expand this if I want to, but my plans are to do at least this much, and all on foot.
Now that I'm done with the latest region, that basically ends season three!
I said I had a lot of thoughts and plans to talk about for what's coming up, and I do. That will come soon in a separate post of it's own though. (I will also restructure the thread and add a table of contents once I make the post disclosing those things.)
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
"So... yeah. I think that's what I'll do."
I said I had a big announcement for the world going forward. Here it is.
For the last few weeks, as I played and finished up the remainder of the region I just finished showing, I began thinking on and off about some things. I typically pushed them to the back of my mind, but they were recurring and growing thoughts.
After I finished the region, I placed the new maps alongside my existing world map, and then I stood there overlooking it. I took in all of the mapped space, which has accumulated up to over 7 GB of space (and is nearing 8 GB with where I'm at now).
"This is... quite a lot."
...I thought to myself.
I also thought about the vast sea of empty space that yet remains.
"There's a lot left to do..."
And yet, I'm entirely willing to do it. The biggest thing slowing me down isn't even my passion to play. That's burning stronger than it ever has. Updating progress on it here is what's slowing me down. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely willing to continue doing that. I'm only saying that to emphasize that there is no lack of passion, and to emphasize the following realization I had in that very moment. Which was this...
"This... this is my forever world. Isn't it?" (As people are calling it these days).
My mind had already been made up. I just hadn't admitted it to myself. But I couldn't keep denying it to myself.
So here's the important "change" to this world. I'm am going to eventually retire it from being a hardcore world and turn it into a regular survival world... if I don't lose it before that point.
You probably have a few questions. I definitely have answers.
When does this take effect?
I don't know, but it's not immediate, and likely not any time too soon. The way it works is something like this. I will continue to play it as a hardcore world until I have finished exploring the space on my map floor. I'm not even a quarter of the way done exploring, so I am probably looking at a time some years out! Once (and if) I have achieved that, I will consider it having been "earned" so to speak.
If you're not to keep it as a hardcore world, then isn't it already pointless having it that way now?
No, it's not pointless being that way in the meantime, because until I have achieved the above, it will remain in hardcore, and it's not in hardcore for the sole sake of it. If I die while it's in hardcore, I lose it!
Life is full of change, and it can strike unpredictably. As I've grown, I've learned that being adaptable to changing circumstances is stronger than sticking to a decision you made in the past. That's lying to your present self because your past self thought otherwise under different circumstances. That's... silly. The purpose of this world has already changed once before, and now it's changing again. The purpose of a game is to serve our personal desires, not the other way around, so I'm willing to adapt my game (this world) in the necessary ways to best do that. But I do want to earn it, so to speak, hence the obligation to "travel the world" before retiring. That's my "beat the game" criteria.
Besides... Garnet actually traveled the whole darned world (and another one!) before settling down. This feels absolutely fitting! I'll do the same! I'll travel Gaia, and then settle down. Maybe I'll even build a separate kingdom and name it Lindblum, hire a theater group to show a play, and wait for a Zidane to kidnap me!
But hardcore is supposed to be one and done! You can't change it!
If I die while it is hardcore (note the key words), I will retire the world. But that stipulation applies while it's in hardcore mode. If I take it out of that mode, that criteria ceases to exist.
As I said above, I value adaptability to changing circumstances a lot more than I value continuing to do or think something just because you decided upon it under different circumstances once upon a time. If that's a disappointment to someone, I won't try and convince you otherwise, but I don't need to. There's my reasoning, and it's good enough for me. If a world has failed while still in hardcore mode, I am against continuing it (but even then, people are free to do with their own data as they wish). But taking it out of hardcore mode before then is different.
Hardcore mode, like any other decision I make, was always something I did for a purpose, not for the sake of it. It's served a purpose, but that purpose is changing. It was very fun for me to dive into hardcore as a rather unskilled player. It taught me a lot of things; namely, it confirmed a thought of mine that I can indeed be a better player at not dying if I simply... try not to die. Since non-hardcore has almost no penalty for dying, I never tried too hard not to die since there was often no major setback if I did, so I'd pretty regularly die. Since trying hardcore, I've only died/failed once... and it was complete my fault. I dove into a hole! Who even does something like that!? Haha. On the other hand, since it's led me to play more carefully, that's also resulted in me avoiding certain things... which is smart for staying alive, but effectively makes those things inaccessible and may limit the fun, and it's those things I may want to open myself up to in the future. So it's becoming more of a barrier now. It originally instilled passion and drive into me at a time when survival mode alone was losing its attraction. And ironically, it's come full circle and I want to make this hardcore world into my primary long-term survival world; into my... home. Into Gaia! Into Alexandria! So basically, I feel like it's served it's purpose and I am outgrowing it.
"So yeah... that's what I'll do."
With that being said, I'll talk about the other major thing I was thinking of.
With the possibility of this becoming a long term world, I've been thinking about some larger scale projects, and some that I've always wanted to do but yet never had in over twelve years. Specifically... a girl isn't a Princess without a castle, right!?
So yeah... I'm going to build that castle after all, and right in this very world. I'm going to build a castle to earn my title, and then I'm going to travel the entire land to earn my world.
I thought about where to put it. A castle isn't a quick or easy thing to build, and it needs quite a bit of space. I ultimately decided that instead of building a completely new location for it, I will most likely just add it into Rubyville... sort of. Rubyville itself will be no more. The village itself isn't going anywhere, but it will grow, change, and become Alexandria.
Likewise, the nearby village called Garnet Village will probably be renamed to Dali. It's a very small, separate village nearby what will be Alexandria, so... it fits.
Originally, I wanted names that reflected the Red theme I had going on, hence "Ruby" and "Garnet". I also wanted to stick with names once I had initially named them, but given the circumstances, I feel changing them will be fitting.
Now that I've announced my plans and names, I will be able to make changes to the opening post which will reference them. I hope to have that done over the coming days. Better late than never!?
Here's my village right now.
I am thinking of adding the castle atop the hill behind it. I will have to clear and level the land a bit, but that's okay. I hope there's enough room and that it isn't too restricting.
Here's another picture showing some of the terrain lines with my infamous crayon scribbles, as well as rough plans (the castle is just an example and the exact design and scale will very likely differ).
Here's a closer look at the actual approximate spot where the castle is planned to be.
Here's another angle of the same spot.
And here's available land "behind" the hill that is behind the village. I could, you know... "cross those hills" and then add a second half to Alexandria here. That sounds like a plan.
The portals may need to be moved. The one in the village right now could be left there, although it is where the main path to the front of the castle will likely need to go. The return portal (Shown two pictures above) may be where part of the castle goes, so I could probably just move it slightly inside the castle and forgo the original one entirely.
Also, no, I won't be building "the" Alexandria castle. While I'd love to have that, that would be far, far too big. I'm looking to do more of a medium size castle here so that it doesn't take forever to build in survival. I also want to take some liberties and design my own anyway, but I will be adopting the name because why not!? There is one thing I might adopt from the actual castle, and that's the large sword blade-like crystal, but I'm not sure on that part yet. Time will tell.
I've been spending time in creative mode worlds to experiment with layouts and here's one of the few I've done.
In this one, the castle itself is the larger area, and the outer portion would be a courtyard surrounding by outer walls. The Yellow spots are entrances to the castle, and the checkered spots or either entrances to the castle from outside it, or otherwise walkways suspended above ground with accessibility to travel below them. the courtyard would extend further right (I stopped there since this serves the needed purpose) and may have other things that aren't strictly planned for. A lot of it depends on the terrain in my actual world.
Keep in mind that the only thing I'm certain of is that a castle is being built; the exact size, dimensions, and layout are not finalized, so this may not be representative of what you see me build. The only thing I'm somewhat decided on is the core building materials.
This will take a long time before it's finished, and even some time before you see me begin it. I've already began exploring another half a region, and I may as well finish it, so that will be the upcoming season and I'll probably only start this in the one after that. I have a lot of preparations and resource gathering that I need to do, and some of them make some time to get the necessary amount. Expect this to be a slow burn... but I'm telling myself it will be worth it... I hope it is!
My internal monologue went something like this...
"A castle is too overwhelming! It will take forever! Settle on expanding your village and live modestly."
"Yes, but... consider the alternative. You could reenact this..."
"Okay, okay! I'm building it, I'm building it!"
This has been one of the things I've been wanting to build, especially lately. Passion is probably about as high as it ever will be, so better now than never?
So, yeah... There it is. That's what I'll be doing!
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
As always, I like seeing the lush cave openings.
It's also nice to see pictures of taiga villages from higher ground / further away. They're the only type that generate in a woodland biome, so you don't often notice them until you're already physically in one.
Discovering your first snow zone in a world is usually exciting, but yeah, once you begin taking on large-scale world exploration and continuously find one after another, it does become less desirable. The lack of a hot dry zone was a shame, but that's something to look forward to for your next region. Speaking of which, I like the story this "region-by-region exploration" playstyle creates.
Can totally get that; that's also pretty much the reason why the mapping trip on my world took so long. I'm not sure if this applies to you, but when it comes to exploration, I find that it often takes more time to write updates on a map or region than to actually complete that map or region in the game itself. If you get too far ahead with gameplay, the updates become more difficult to write since you'll have to spend more time recalling the minor details and your initial thoughts when you encountered a particular object or location of interest. And we all have a limited amount of time every day.
There's nothing wrong with changing a Hardcore world to a normal survival one after you have achieved the specific goal(s) or purpose(s) that you had for it in its Hardcore "phase." If you started a world in Hardcore solely for the experience, and then decide you have had enough of it and want to try a new playstyle or experience on the same world, I would do whatever appeals to yourself more. If your primary goal is to fill in the entire map floor, it sounds reasonable to want to change the gamemode after you have accomplished that, particularly if your next purpose for the world is to build and expand upon your world, as it sounds like to me.
Will you still maintain the other restrictions that you've enacted from the beginning?
Looking forward to seeing your castle, although from the size you seem to be going for, I understand that it's going to require impressive time and dedication to complete.
I'll try and keep that in mind about lush caves if you like them. I've been trying to show more caves in general, which is a bit easier in this world given how much more common they are.
Taiga villages in particular are ones that are hard to get a good single picture of, and that's part of why I took the opportunity to use that as the picture showing it.
Yes, I feel like sometimes I spend more time and effort on writing updates. That's probably not actually true too often, but the ratio on writing (and all the other effort that goes into updates, like taking pictures, uploading them, etc.) is definitely higher than I want it to be. It wouldn't be a big deal for a shorter world, or a mixed world like yours, but an exploration focused world with as much terrain as I'm planning to do is definitely a slog. Since your world isn't solely exploration, you shouldn't run into this as much as me. That's also part of what weighed into my decision on wanting to spend time building a castle and transforming the village, as I could dedicate a season or so to that (depending on how spread my efforts on that side of things are, so it's likely season 5 will be devoted to the getting the castle in an initial state, but further changes to it and the village may continually occur beyond that point).
Something else I'm considering is showing less structures. I've basically been showing every single one that I find since the start, and then also showing the loot (if I take any). That made sense earlier on, but as I get further into the world, that's becoming too repetitive to show. Especially for structures like shipwrecks and ruined portals, which are so common. So after the region I'm doing now, I might drop to partially showing those instead of fully showing them.
Restrictions will definitely change once I move the world out of hardcore, because some of those would otherwise be barriers to things I want to do once the purpose of the world changes. In the meantime, they are remaining as-is. I really want to do a very large amount of terrain exploration and mapping on foot and with no shulker boxes as the main purpose of this world before it shifts into a non-hardcore state. Eventually, I'll probably drop the restrictions of no elytra, no mending, no shulker boxes, and no villager trading (I could probably drop this one now since I updated to a version where doing the zombification and curing process multiple times no longer brings the trades so low that they are basically broken in the players' favor, and that was a big part of why it was set as a restriction). I might even do more exploration with elytra beyond that point. One of the things I'll need to do is consider if I want to move the map into the castle, or leave it where it is. Initially, I'll probably leave it where it is, but after that point I may move it.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
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Curse PremiumAt this point you've long since "won"; beaten all the significant challenges for surviving in the game. I don't remember if you've offed the dragon, but it's not like you need to. (I never have; if I publish another journal I'll try to make it a running gag. Not even in the Astral Sorcery world, geez.) Given the purpose of the game (analyzing and demonstrating the terrain gen on an unprecedented scale) this is a pretty reasonable shift.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I haven't defeated the dragon in this world yet, no. Since that's something I'd eventually do if I wanted to make this a permanent world, then I'll probably make that something I'll do before I shift it out of hardcore.
Have you never defeated the dragon at all?
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
I finally restructured the thread by updating and simplifying the original post, and I have finally gotten around to adding a table of contents to the first post. I also added the season and episode number to some past updates. I'm not completely done with this part because one of the seasons (and it's probably the longest one of course...) doesn't have links for each episode yet, but it has a link to the start/first episode, and the rest of the seasons are fully done. This was/is a lot of work so I'll finish adding the missing ones later.
It should at least be easier to jump into the thread for new people wanting to catch up, or for those who stopped following and fell behind to catch back up.
Season 3 (the one I just finished) has now become season 4. This is because it was the first one I was updating in the season format, and I anticipated the prior two regions being made the first two seasons, but I split the first region into two seasons instead. The first season covers the start of the world, and the second season starts when I started building my first home. So that makes season 3 the second region I did to the South, and season 4 is the most recent region I did to the East. Therefore, the upcoming season (which I've delayed on making updates for until I did this) will be season 5, and that will cover the small region to the very South. I'm already way behind on that.
The first update for season 5 will come soon, now that I've mostly finished updating the thread itself.
(Seriously, editing a ton of existing posts spread across so many pages is an exhausting amount of work, especially when you need to navigate away from the page and back between each edit...)
Edit: Updating is finally done!
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
Season 5: Episode 1
New season time! This season will be rather short in episode count compared to the last few seasons as it will be covering a smaller region. Due to that, unlike all prior regions, I will not be making a home for this region with its own local map (I'll still be showing map updates after each outing, but they will simply be added to the overall world map). A nether portal will be used to make travel to and from it much quicker though.
The region will be a 10 x 3 area to the South of the Southern region I did in season 3. The final picture of this update will show where it is. To begin the region, I'll travel to the home of my Southern region, and then from there I'll head South until I'm near the center of the new region. I'll map a column (1 x 3) of maps North to South, build the nether portal somewhere in the center map, and then work on connecting my way in the nether back to Rubyvi... I mean, Alexandria!
Here's the home of my second (Southern) region I was last at in season 3!
Homes in previous regions may be returned to at times... but never for regular use, and instead as a shortcut to new regions.
One of the times I came through here, I had a confusing panic. I was inside on the first floor, and a creeper started walking towards me from my kitchen! I came through the portal in the basement at night, ran up to the second floor to sleep, and witnessed it in the morning. I don't think there's anywhere inside it can spawn. Instead, I think a zombified piglin walked outside via the pressure plate activated doors (I did hear this occur, and there was one outside and a second one inside) and let one inside. What are the chances?
Savanna was the starting area, but it quickly shifted to jungle, and in that I found a jungle temple. I didn't explore it.
Back near the Northeast corner was my landmark; a pillager outpost. It was on the map East of here though, so I'll leave it for then.
Outside of the jungle in an oak forest was a cave.
Along the Western edge, and to the South of the map, was a mangrove swamp.
I knew these hot and humid biomes lined the Southern edge of the region to the North, but what lays further South is a mystery. My ultimate desire is for the hot region to go from humid to dry so that I find a desert and badlands region. With cold biomes Northeast and Northwest (though very far), I'm thinking that if that is going to occur, I should see the maps I'm about to do remain hot, as opposed to shifting back to temperate.
To the Southeast was a savanna village.
To the very Southeast of the map itself, was a second village.
The following picture was mostly to show the terrain. The savanna extends South and then turns to reach West here. Looking North from the village shows a look towards the jungle, with an oak forest between them. I used to be indifferent about the biome shapes, but after seeing stuff like this in action, I have come to prefer the current shapes over the fractal shapes used in the past. You get more natural biome line transitions like this in-game, even if the shapes on map may look less exciting to some people.
To the Southwest was more mangrove swamp... much more! Another savanna was beyond it to the Southwest.
This was, so far, a good sign for the hot region continuing. I wasn't looking forward to that much treetopping though...
In the mangrove swamp was a ruined portal. It had two gold blocks, and more gold ingots in its chest.
Beginning the next map revealed more ocean, which would be a nice break from a dense mangrove swamp, and another jungle to the South, which is another good sign of the hot region continuing.
More ocean was found beyond the jungle to the Southeast, and another ruined portal was found on the shore here. It contained a golden apple.
Fittingly, it is right next to this portal that I will construct mine. This is near the center, and it's also near ocean. This will be very beneficial.
As I moved towards finishing the Southwest remainder of the map, I found another village. The two oceans didn't meet as I hoped, but they were still connected via river, and the land to cross was a very thin strip, so any outings to the East or West from the portal should have easy ocean access. The land appeared to shifting back towards temperate climate though...
Before completing the final map, I built the portal (and a lot of unpictured work took place here establishing a path in the nether to the rest of my nether network). After returning to Alexandria, I got this...
...Which I wasn't too familiar with but figured it had to do with nether travel somehow. I looked it up and it was for traveling 7 thousand blocks in the overworld via the nether. I would have thought my second region home achieved me that, but I guess not.
Here's the new finished portal.
I then began the final map.
There's acacia trees shown here, but they are not of a hot region. That's a shattered savanna, and windswept hills and swamps are also here.
Beyond the windswept hills was old growth taiga!?
Well, the hot region has ended to the South. There's still a chance of a connected (or even separate) hot and dry region West or East, but I felt like my chances of finding such a climate region in this area were now lower after seeing this.
I found no second wolf of the variety that spawns here.
There was taiga to the East of that, further confirming a climate shift towards temperate or even cool, and it had a village.
the final thing found on this map was a shipwreck on the shore of a small, almost isolated bay. It had mostly iron, which is never unwelcome, but also a few emeralds.
It was now time to head to Alexandria and update the map, but I ran into a small occurrence in the nether...
If the picture is too dark, a group of zombified piglins is running at me!
I did not attack any of them, however. I was fighting a ghast (the Yellow/Green orbs in the distance are below where it was), and it was firing at me (the two fire spots ahead are where they hit). Right after the ghast died, after half a second to a second later, I heard the noise a zombified piglin makes when taking damage. Right after that, I heard the cry they make when becoming aggressive at something. I didn't even look; I just ran until I was far away and turned around and saw the above picture.
So... what happened!? I figure something went awry with the ghast fire damage hitting one, and the ghast being dead, and them instead becoming aggressive towards me? If not, I'm confused, but this should not be a thing. I presume, or at least hope, it's not intended and is a bug?
Anyway, I simply ran, and I lucked out because by time I returned, they were passive. That might be because I went close enough to load the chunks, but not close enough that they would chase, so they seemed to lose attention of me due to that.
Here's the new maps, and this shows where they are in relation to my overall world map.
For the next outing, I'll do a single row consisting of four maps (4 x 1) along the Northern edge to the East. I figure I'll do the slightly smaller Eastern half first.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
Season 5: Episode 2
It was time to set out on the second outing of this small region... and the one where things would start go get more exciting.
I would begin at the pillager outpost that served as my original landmark for the new region. I had a welcome llama, which I promptly pet.
Unlike the last outing, the hot region in this spot consists savanna, which is much easier to traverse than jungle and especially mangrove swamp.
I heat East first, and the savanna quickly shifts to a shattered savanna bordering ocean. Once I looked beyond the shattered savanna, I was reminded of prior knowledge I had; ocean, mangrove swamp, and jungles lay beyond.
At least I don't have to that yet, and at least the ocean breaks it up.
Unpictured, but just to the right in the above picture was oak forest. I was wondering if this hot region would flirt back and forest between seemingly temperate and hot biomes before permanently shifting to temperate again (that is, I took this as a potential sign the hot region may be ending here).
As I was making my way back West, I took a look South and the sight answered my question...
"Is that... is that a... desert!?"
My reaction was like someone already in a desert seeing an oasis.
The amount of sand was suggestive, but it was the desert temple in the distance that confirmed I was, in fact, seeing a desert. I got seriously happy at seeing this, and it coincided with some music playing.
As I continued West, a savanna village was encountered, and these villagers had chosen to build over a cave. maybe they are miners?
In the Southwest corner, another savanna village was found...
...And just beyond it was the desert spotted earlier.
"Warmth!"
I also spotted a shipwreck and what appeared to be a ruined portal just beyond it.
I headed North, and then East, and it became apparent this was a corner of the desert. I hope it's not small...
From there, I spotted two additional villages, but these ones were desert villages.
And looking West (right) from there, was a pillager outpost, and the desert temple I originally spotted.
Speaking of the latter, I decided to enter it. I think I've done one of these before in this world, but typically I skip anything that isn't a shipwreck and ruined portal.
It was completely empty of mobs. I broke Minecraft's first unspoken rule and dug straight down through the wall of the trap to reach the bottom, instead of falling down like I usually do. I immediately broke the pressure plate and since my efficiency pickaxe was so fast, I uncovered the TNT as well, and at that point, I decided to just take the TNT too.
Here's what the four chests had. Worth mentioning was a diamond, two iron horse armors, and a saddle. The bones were also collected.
After that, I reached the small bay ocean with the shipwreck and ruined portal, and checked those too. The latter had nothing worth showing or taking in the chest, but it did have a gold block.
To finish the structure looting, I reached the pillager outpost. This one did have a horn, but I would later find out it was one I already had.
I then reached the two desert villages. I didn't take anything from either, but I spotted a camel was enjoying the evening sun in one of them (the other would have had a camel too since they always spawn with one, but I didn't get close enough to go through the village and see it).
Just East of the village, to begin the second map, was another ruined portal, and like the first, it had no notable chests contents, but it had a gold block.
The Northern half of this map was the jungle and ocean I spotted earlier. Another ruined portal was found here, and like many of these in jungles, a fire started. Despite the rain, the tree canopy allowed it to spread to the tall tree itself.
While this one wasn't great on chest contents, it at least had something worth taking.
I finish the map and begin the third of four maps. Still heading East, it was a lot of ocean.
At the edge of this map was something that was familiar from a previous "end of the map" exploration. This area was plains and plateaus, and just beyond that is a snowy region... so the hot and dry region not far West and South was a surprise.
More surprising was a savanna over on this side of the ocean as I headed South.
This suggested the hot region extended across the ocean here, which I was hoping for since I was hoping to find a large one this time as opposed to the last tiny one. Ideally, I'd find a larger desert and badlands region, and so far this is hinting it could be a larger area.
Most of this mp itself was ocean, so I explored at night. Near a small island, a ruined portal was found. It had a gold block, and the chest had a gold apple and a handful of gold carrots. That makes up for the first two or three being underwhelming.
As day broke, it started raining right after the sun rose. Worse, it turned into a thunderstorm moments later, and I was finishing the map and needed a spot to land.
And yet... I didn't have a single concern in the world. Why? This was why...
This was confirmation that this was indeed a proper, sizable hot and dry region. I land and begin the fourth map to the east of the prior map. Even a skeleton was admiring the view.
North was this small mountain peak spotted in the savanna. I originally spotted this during the prior map when it was raining, but I cut that picture and saved this one since it's better shown here than it was in the rain picture.
Unless the badlands pushes North here, I won't be doing it just yet... but knowing it is there has me all sorts of excited.
I'll conclude this update here. The next update will cover a single map and the final one of this outing.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
I may have a possible hypothesis for the zombified piglin incident. When you deflect ghast fireballs, either by melee-hitting or shooting them with a ranged weapon such as a bow (the latter of which you may have unintentionally done), and one of them hits a zombified piglin, that counts as player-induced damage. You may have shot and deflected one of the ghast's fireballs right after it died, and that fireball then hit a zombified piglin. If that was what happened, it doesn't sound like a bug to me.
It's not uncommon to find oak forest within a hot region; I notice that it often intertwines with or is completely surrounded by jungle and savanna.
Falling down into the temple isn't always a safe idea as you can easily fall onto the pressure plate by accident, or fail to notice a mob that has spawned around the trap and proceeds to set it off.
I was shooting the ghast with a bow. If I'm remembering correctly, shortly before an arrow I fired would have reached it, it did attempt to fire something which was immediately deflected right back at it, killing it. It was moments later (a second or two?) that I heard the sound a zombified piglin makes when harmed (sounded like burning, but I'm not positive?) with no explosion sound accompanying it that I recall, and that was when it gave the rallying cry sound that told me they were probably upset with me.
Here's a demonstration of what I remember.
The Pink line was the route I was originally running.
Imagine the zombified piglins being randomly spread and a bit further back from where they are pictured.
The White box represents where a ghast suddenly spawned, and it began firing. The two fire spots ahead of me were created by this, as that is where I was running while it fired. I went to use my bow on it to get rid of it because it would have created a lot of terrain damage if I just ignored it and continued running by. The Blue line is the trajectory of my arrow, and the Green line is the approximate distance at which it went to fire a third fireball and had it immediately deflected right back into itself by my arrow. The ghast then died to this.
I then went to put out the fires and fill in the two spots it created, and it was about a second or two from when the ghast had died that I heard the zombified piglin harm sound, followed by the zombified piglin rallying cry. I then ran, turned around, and captured the picture you see there.
I still don't know what exactly happened but I've had this happen rarely before, and it always involves a ghast.
Season 5: Episode 3
I begin the final map of this outing by heading East along the Southern edge of the map.
The Southwest portion of the map is savanna. There's a village there (to be better shown a couple pictures later). The Southeast is temperate with forests, and the altitude becomes higher.
Heading back West, there's a North and South running mountain ridge to cross.
The badlands are further South.
A bit North is a flower forest.
I, uh... sort of get distracted and spend a few days here gather a lot of tulips and a few other flowers, haha. I recently expanded my storage space at home so i have room to gather more now.
I then make another crossing of the central mountain range through the core part of it.
Heading North along the Eastern edge brings cooler taiga forests, and a taiga village.
In the very Northeast was the edge of a snowy region, something I was aware of. This is quite the contrast to not only a hot region, but a desert/badlands one, in the opposite corner of the same map.
The Northern portion of the map has plateaus and cherry groves. This is an area I ventured a bit into when doing the map North of this a long, long time ago.
Crossing the rivers is effort, but the area is nice enough to make it worthwhile.
The central Northern portions have quite a bit of caves (the same area that had more to the North on a map finished long ago).
With the map finished, I head back home and update the world map.
The start of a second (well, third counting the really small one found before) desert region is now on the map!
Next, I'll head to the remainder of the area in the Southeast and do the eight maps there in one outing.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
Okay, after a quick experiment, I may have found an explanation for that too.
When you deflect a fireball with an arrow, the arrow loses momentum and gets knocked back a little before going straight down, as demonstrated in the video below. (The fireball I used was summoned by me, but I'm presuming it's the exact same entity as a ghast's fireball.)
It was the fireball that physically killed the ghast. Your arrow, which deflected that fireball, went straight down and hit a zombified piglin. The burning sound may be because your arrow knocked the zombified piglin into a fire spot beneath the ghast (so not one created by a ghast's fireball).
Wow, that snowy ridge (along with the the cherry grove, and the jagged mountains in the background) really resembles an area near my own village. Pretty interesting how you can find such similar views when you explore enough.
Oh, maybe that explains it. I didn't know the arrow was deflected down when that happens.
Come to think of it, I may have seen or heard a zombified piglin seem to be attacked beneath the ghast when this happened, but I didn't think much of it since it was relatively far away. That may explain the couple of seconds delay for the ones closer to me to become aggressive as it would have taken a moment for the one that was further away to get closer and for any rallying cry it gave off to be picked up by the ones near me.
At least, that's my guess.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
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Curse PremiumUmm. That is vastly bolder than I'd ever be.
That is - so close to good. I love the hill range, but the little coastal cliffs just look wrong with that slope.
One of the nice things about the new generation is that Flower Forest is rare enough to feel special again. When I first saw it, it was really cool, but as a sub-biome, it showed up a LOT in my big exploration games, and after a while, I was at "another Flower Forest?", which is a strange place to be.
That's a treetop view, right? I find newgen annoying in that it's hard to get good views in a forested location, although they are very much there. I suppose it's a reward for builds, because a build with any height gets a very rewarding view.
Congrats on developing a climate zone collection.
CSI Minecraft!
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I'm going to try shorter updates again (at least for some updates). I think the larger updates are making me procrastinate on doing them. Some updates will still be large though, including an upcoming one or few due to things I'm about to see.
Season 5: Episode 4
For the first map of this (minor spoiler) long outing, I begin with the map directly East of the map the portal is one. The portal is right on the shore and near the center of the map. Not far into the map, I see a shift from the jungle to savanna, and then to the expected desert. Surprisingly, there's badlands all the way over here too.
To this was just by the portal the whole time.
It's also pretty much just a hole rather than a large cave, but some smaller ones are connecting to it.
Further East, there's more small spots of eroded badlands. I spot both a village and a desert temple here.
Not much further South, is another village.
East of that on the second map is yet another village.
Just outside of that is a ruined portal
Its chest was buried, so I almost skipped on it, but I decided to dig a bit. I'm glad I did, because while the chest itself wasn't rewarding, another gold block was hidden under the sand.
And very near that, was not one but two desert temples. These four structures (and really the few on the previous map) were all rather close here.
I soon saw higher altitude land to the East, including what appeared to be a more substantial shift to badlands biomes and not just a small spot of eroded ones.
In the Northeast was ocean, and on the shore was a pillager outpost. It had nothing rewarding.
The higher altitude badland biomes meant wooded badlands. Hopefully I might new dogs here. I'm only missing two types, and one of them is found there.
I came across some easily accessible Red sand, and while I had no plans that called for any, I gathered a handful of stacks here to have just in case, since the biome is rather uncommon and not quite close to home.
I started the third map and the ocean to the Northeast of the previous map covered the Northern half of this map. This was expected, since the map to the North was entirely ocean.
I also saw a cliff with a large cavern opening in it, but there wasn't anything substantially impressive inside so I didn't get any further pictures of it.
I'll end this update with a picture showing the same part of the badlands that I first spotted of it at the end of two updates ago.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
Is it typical of eroded badlands to generate in small patches separate and far away from normal badlands biomes? I've always expected most non-highland biome variants to be found near or adjacent to their "standard" variant (like how if there's ice spikes, you always find snowy plains around).
And it's fun to see the hoodoos; it's a biome I've never been to before.
I don't know if it's common because I don't know what determines whether a particular spot is going to be desert or badlands, just that the two both generate when the hot and dry conditions line up. If I had to guess, I would say yes though because I've found micro spots of badlands/eroded badlands within larger deserts regions. Usually a larger badlands region is nearby if this happens. In a way, it comes off like slight dithering between the two, although these small spots can occur far from the "border area" between the two.
There's a relatively small ice spikes biome in this world that is right in the middle of a larger temperate region with no other snowy biomes around. The surrounding biomes are plains, meadows, and cherry groves. It's very near Alexandria.
I don't know what hoodoos mean.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
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Curse PremiumPlanning ahead! Yay planning ahead! I do it - too much probably, as I often end up with chests full of potential construction supplies I never use.
I'm honestly surprised there's not more whining about the sometimes large terrain zones. Usually they are somewhat mixed, although it can be hard to find snowy and desert zones. But back in the old days people would have a fit about entire maps being desert or ocean. I'm sure the increased view distance is part of this, but there seems to have been a cultural shift where traveling about is more expected.
Roughly speaking, the two together occupy almost all of the hottest climate, with the less eroded areas being badlands and the more eroded desert. The exact boundary depends on the "continentalness" which is kinda-sorta how far it is from ocean, and the hill-valley distinction, in ways that are complicated and I'm not sure if I could explain them. Basically, hot climate means desert or badlands, and which one depends on the valley and erosion noises.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
In my experience, desert regions are a bit harder to find, yes, but snowy regions aren't. It seems to me that hot and cold regions seem pretty equal, but the reason desert/badlands are less common than their snowy counterpart is due to how the hot and cold regions are broken down. More of the cold region seems snowy whereas hot regions have a lot more of non-desert/badlands (such as savannas, jungles, and mangrove swamps, among others). I think I remember you stating that the "extreme" for what determines a hot region is suitable (dry enough?) to be desert/badlands is "higher" than it for cold regions to be snowy? That would explain this. I'm only just now finding my second desert/badlands region, but I've found like six snowy regions.
But yes, there's a lot that has changed insofar as why more players may seem to accept larger scale worlds now compared to back when 1.7 landed, and it's why I say you can't just look at a map of 1.7 style terrain generation and then at 1.18 style terrain generation and conclude "the latter is worse because it looks even bigger and the". The problem with 1.7 was never solely "it's large scale". It was how it did that along with surrounding factors.
Accessibility to higher render distances is better than before. Faster hardware and better performance mods exist now and these enable that.
Faster rate of travel (read as, elytra and easier access to mending) exists.
Nobody wanted to explore before 1.7 because there was next to no reason to. The biome count was much lower and the tiny biome size and completely random placement meant worlds started feeling repetitive so fast. So when people say 1.7 felt repetitive, it's not that the problem started here, but its more that very few people played in a way to see it before.
Part of it is also that we spent like a decade with 1.7+ terrain generation already. The increase in scale from 1.6 to 1.7 was probably more of a shock than that of 1.16/1.17 to 1.18.
In addition to the above, 1.18+ does the whole climate region approach and the biome arrangement approach much better than 1.7+ ever did. 1.7+ really just felt like "random biome litter" and while that worked a bit better with the versions before 1.7, it didn't work as well with the climate system it introduced. This actually made it worse because the biome size was still small like before but the climate regions were larger, which made those climate regions feel more back and forth repetitive. I've said it before, but 1.7+ feels like a hybrid terrain generation system that didn't know what it wanted to be. It changed some things that should have necessitated further changes... but it didn't do those further things. 1.18+ did.
Having done on foot exploration in all three of the various world styles, the differences between the two (1.7+ and 1.18+) is vast, and "they both look large scale on a biome map" is very misleading. 1.6 and before feel harmonious with itself. 1.18 and after also do. 1.7 through 1.16 feels terrible, and if was ever try and play a world in version of the game, any version within that window would be out. I'd rather play 1.6 with its limited biome count than 1.7 with its vast biome additions, and that should be telling. I see 1.18 as the better "update that changed the world". 1.7 did that too... but in a bad way. So 1.18 is sort of the decade later correction to it.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).