The unusual visual effect I mentioned is to do with the house's design. The map is currently situated on the floor, at the top level of the house. The wooden flooring directly beneath the map is only one block thick, so replacing it with glowstone would hence make the ceiling of the lower level glowstone. While I could use trapdoors / slabs to cover it, I'd need to change some of the designs of the rooms below, and I'd rather not as the map will be moved elsewhere in the future (likely to a basement where glowstone flooring could be used without having this ceiling effect).
That's what I was wondering. I wasn't sure if you meant your build layout didn't accommodate it or if it was lighting issue, since "unusual effect" sort of implied the latter to me.
I was wondering since the game used to have a ton of examples of that, but it's gotten a lot better over the years so I was wondering which ones it might still have. I was outright prevented from building how I wanted to solely because of that in 1.6 (and to a lesser extent, 1.8). I can certainly think of at least one or two awkward lighting issues I still see these days, but they're relatively minor and never ruin how something looks so bad that it makes me build another way to work around it.
Whenever I want lighting in a floor (usually glowstone or lit pumpkins under carpet), if there's another floor below it, then I always ensure the ceiling is high enough and then use an additional half slabs underneath it. In your case, the glow item frame would indeed your best workaround. If you get serious about maps, the best option is usually having a room (or area of a much larger room) dedicated to it that properly accommodates it.
Well, it was time to continue with my prolonged village expansion project. The "large-scale" build I mentioned earlier (which, to be honest, probably won't turn out half as large as I might be making it sound) would be a task saved for towards the end; for now, my main tasks were to construct more houses for the growing population, extend the paths outside the village and renovate the green spaces in between them. Quite a lot happened before that, though ...
Unfortunately, this first bit doesn't come with any decent pictures, so I'll briefly describe it here.
As I was making one of my regular "inspections" of the village, I had a sudden desire to experiment with the new pale oak wood and find out how well it would go with my typical block palette of spruce, oak and stone bricks. But then I remembered: when I found the wandering trader with the pale oak saplings, I had only purchased two of them (and like dark oak, you need four to grow one tree). Pale gardens themselves are apparently one of the least common biomes, and I don't plan on doing any more above-ground exploration in the meantime, so goodness knows when I'll find one.
The only option left? I flew back to where I had encountered that wandering trader (it was on the map immediately south of the far northwestern one, but the journey there only cost two fireworks — perhaps thanks to the altitude advantage that Sunflower Valley provides when it comes to Elytra takeoffs). And thank goodness he hadn't despawned yet. I wasn't expecting him to anyway since that chunk had been unloaded.
After trading for four more saplings, I put my Elytra back on, ready to take off ... but unexpectedly came across one of my tamed parrots which was sat on top of a jungle tree. Of course, there was no way I was leaving it there, and as I was about to head off again, I found and tamed a wild blue one as well. Having companions meant I wasn't able to travel back by Elytra, but I didn't mind that at all.
Anyways, back at base ... I settled the parrots in their treehouse before planting down and impatiently bonemealing the newly acquired saplings.
My first task was to accumulate more saplings, as well as several stacks of logs, so I spent the rest of the day repeatedly growing and chopping down pale oak trees. I didn't keep any of the trees themselves as they wouldn't fit in with the vibrant cherry grove surrounding the valley, but (minor spoiler warning) that didn't mean I would keep away from the actual wood.
This was my pale oak supply at the end of the day:
Early the next morning, something else unexpectedly crossed my mind. I needed to enchant my shield and decorate it with a banner pattern! How had I not done that yet ...
Now I wasn't sure if I particularly liked the look, but it wasn't bad enough that I removed it either.
With that out of the way, I decided to go on a small adventure before moving on to building. At the time, the pond outside the inn was only home to two axolotls (one brown and one yellow), and in order to make it more lively and delightful ... yeah, I think you can infer what I was about to do next.
To the jungles I went!
Since this wasn't a mapping trip and I didn't have any pets with me (for once!), I decided this was the perfect opportunity to loot the nearby jungle temple before delving into the lush caves below. Conveniently, the whole structure was void of monsters.
This may sound odd, but the dispenser traps certainly did boost my string and redstone supplies.
The pictured chest contained a pair of diamonds, which I didn't expect to see. The saddle and bones were also welcome.
The second chest was behind a lever puzzle, but I simply mined through that and gratefully took all the redstone components, including the sticky pistons as I didn't have access to slimes yet.
I then left the temple and continued on. My plan was to head north until I reached a conveniently low altitude to start mining down from in the hopes of revealing a lush cave.
The presence of this zombie, however, highlighted a shortcut ...
... for it was the gatekeeper to this promising-looking ravine-cave. Seemed like we were in for some mountainside spelunking!
This would be one of my first attempts at caving "in the natural way," and I needed to be on the lookout particularly for dropping creepers.
After eliminating the skeleton that had been peacefully dwelling on the dark ledge directly across from me (notice the glint of its enchanted bow in the previous picture), I cautiously bridged over the enormous gap.
It was a long way down ...
Having sniped all the monsters I could see below, I suddenly noticed the unmistakable splashing of a group (or harem — new vocabulary as always!) of axolotls. Better catch them before they despawn!
I pillared up to fend off a horde of newly spawned zombies. Thankfully, there was no nearby skeleton to knock me off (not that it would have been particularly threatening anyway, though).
This cyan axolotl was the first one I found. I did catch a few others in the vicinity but they were all yellow or brown, the colors which I already had.
I then began lighting up and securing the cavern itself. For reference, I was this close to the surface:
Turning around, I could see this rather modest cavern giving way to a much larger one deeper down. I probably wouldn't explore that, though, since this was supposed to be more of a "light caving" trip.
With my cavern now fully explored, I began exploring the small, narrow branches leading away from it. Narrow lush cave passages are generally safe(r) to explore as most parts will already have been well lit by the glow berries.
One of the passages led me down to another medium-sized cavern, but I then started hearing axolotls above me ...
... so I headed back up, of course. And sure enough, I found a pair bobbing and frantically splashing about in a tiny pool of water in the cavern I had just explored ... which was interesting, because shouldn't they only spawn in full darkness? I suppose they must have spawned in the dark area behind and wandered up here.
As you may have noticed, those were pink (leucistic) axolotls. This meant that I now had all the naturally spawning variants! And in case you're wondering, no, I won't try breeding them for a blue axolotl given the time, effort and materials required for that.
Well, to conclude this trip, here's everything I acquired. Remember, the redstone and diamonds were from the jungle temple; the cave I explored was nowhere near the level needed to find those ores.
Anyways ... welcome to your new home, axolotls!
Well, time to move on to building. My tasks were to construct a medium-sized house at the eastern end of the village as well as to extend the path leading away from that area.
This stray cat showed up one morning, as I was gathering my materials, but for the first time ever ... I didn't tame it.
Several days later, I finished said house. It was a one-story, L-shaped house using mostly spruce wood with calcite and pale oak wood serving as accents. I had initially considered a stone brick frame but soon scrapped the idea; I was struggling to not make it appear like a prison or stronghold.
The purpose of the house was merely to accommodate the newly born villagers, not to offer more profession sites.
Continuing work in that area, I then constructed the aforementioned bamboo mosaic path, which led up all the way to the snowy mountain opposite the nether temple. It was my highest-reaching path yet, ending at y:145, but was also a considerable struggle to build thanks to the steep slope and occasional 2-block-high step. The floating lanterns are due to the decorated pots containing them not rendering.
Here's some nice views of Sunflower Valley, which I got while working at the top.
The cherry tree was manually grown and taller than its typical counterpart (I grew the sapling on a dirt block five blocks off the ground due to terrain obstructions and then replaced the empty space beneath with cherry logs), so I could easily add the hanging sign welcome message.
The next update will focus on building another path leading out from the north of the village (right of the picture), as well as even more housing. I may plan on extending the row of houses to the south (far left).
I've never put patterns on shields. I might have to consider that (as well as banners themselves) for when I make my castle, but I don't know what I'll do for that. It will probably be a while before I finalize the design.
Having paths extend a long distance from a village, especially one down in a small valley, makes it feel more naturally accessible. I do have signs at each of my entrances, so a hanging sign would fit right in there since the tree is so tall.
You're definitely building in a far more cramped area than I would have ever considered. That's one of the (many) limitations to my building; I prefer larger and more spread out areas with wider things, even if it means having to do a lot more running back and forth. Certain minor things would bother me too, such as the pots not rendering in when further away, and I never knew that. I guess they are entities. Something like that would have me choose an alternative when building.
Banners will definitely help with larger castles. If you're going for a medium to large size castle and cannot find a desirable banner design (although you probably will), you may also want to build enlarged banners or flags using wool.
In addition to the increased accessibility, which is my primary reason for building paths in the first place, they also assist me in planning out the locations of future houses or other structures for the village. At the endpoint (which is usually at the snowline of a mountain), I like having a tall, manually grown cherry tree with a hanging sign — that's the sort of style I'm going for for most of my paths.
When it comes to choosing a location to build my first base, I generally don't give terrain as much thought as I imagine most players would. Of course, I will almost never consider a location right on a steep hillside or cliff, but if the terrain is sufficiently flat to make building some kind of a base or settlement viable, it's a pass for me. I'll of course have a lot more terraforming to do, among other inconveniences, but I don't mind having to adapt to the landscape as I expand my base. This might mean having to build houses on stilts, although I'm not certain at this point.
I do look forward to extending the village beyond the cherry grove hill and over across the flat plains beyond, though. That'll offer an opportunity to build in a slightly more spread out fashion, which I haven't been able to do so far in this world and am hoping to do at some point.
Perhaps the potted lanterns serve best as indoor decorations. It's only recently that I became actively aware of their invisibility when far away, so I'm unlikely to remove them at this point, although I'll try to remember to use fence posts or other methods of lighting in the future.
I've never done anything with banners despite how long ago they were added, so I'm not even sure what I'll do for that.
If you want the pots to remain showing, you could consider increasing the entity distance, but this may lower performance if you're ever in any area with a lot of them (read as, custom made villages with farms nearby), and not using entity culling performance mods. You'd have to test it in that particular area to see how high you can go, and then if it ever causes performance issues, either reduce the setting or limit the amount of entities you're adding.
I keep wondering if my map will cause me issues as it grows. So far, it hasn't. I don't know the exact map count right now, but it was around 160 when I was starting the region I'm doing now, and I finished that region so it might be closer to 180 or 190 now.
I really like your village house design. I'll have to up my game the next time I tackle a world.
I think banners are quite useful. They add substantial personality to a build, and they're decorative to boot. I also enjoyed figuring banners in my past two world that were "thematic" for what I was doing.
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Yeah, I like the concept of designing banners to match the style of villages or individual builds, and it's something I've been loosely considering recently. Banners are only something I've just got into (and I didn't know you could layer the patterns, which changes everything!), so I'll need to play around with some prototype designs first.
This will be one of the first (or even the first?) episode(s) fully dedicated to building. My aims were to build a bamboo mosaic path leading out of the village's northern side and several more houses to fill the space between the inner paths. I also ended up building something that didn't quite cross my mind until much later ...
I decided that tulips would be a neat addition to the path, so I shoved a batch of carrots into a composter and headed for the neighboring flower forest valley with my newly acquired bone meal. (I simply despised the idea of clearing away all of the native flora, so whenever I harvested a patch of flowers, I bonemealed the exact spot on the ground to "revive" it. Talk about easy renewability!)
Several days passed, and ... here's the completed path. It would likely be the last bamboo mosaic one I build for Sunflower Valley. You may have noticed that I extended the section to the right so it ended at the azalea garden near the village center — that simply felt more natural.
Now, I would like to finish the row of houses at the southern side of the village (located near the top of the above picture). As expected, however, my supply of stone was dwindling and I was hence subjected to a day and a half in the mines.
Here's what I acquired from that trip.
With the building materials sorted, it was time for some tricky terraforming business ...
When you see stone, you know it's serious!
Here's the finished house. Shape-wise, it was a clone of all the other houses in that row, with the only design difference being the block palette: I went for spruce, oak and andesite. I must say that polished andesite would have been no match for the new tuff bricks, but I simply couldn't be asked to spend time in the diamond-level mines.
Well, with that done, it was time to construct the final house in the row. This one would be a bit different though ...
(Yes, it may be two stories high, but it wouldn't nearly be as large as Pondside Inn.)
After working on the exterior for a while, I decided to use alliums as one of my "thematic flowers" for the house (the others being peonies, lilies of the valley and white tulips). I only had two — yes, two! — alliums, so I put on my Elytra for the first time in a while, flew all the way over to the allium-covered plateau I had discovered towards the beginning of the mapping expedition, and gathered a stack.
With the exterior finished, the entire house was complete.
The block palette I used comprised of spruce, oak (lower floor), birch (upper floor) and stone bricks, and it turned out somewhat better than I expected — I definitely didn't expect spruce logs to go that well with birch planks. Well, that's something to remember for the future.
I also built several flower beds along the upper floor, wedged between stone brick supports.
Like Pondside Inn, the house had a small patio with a roof composed of leaves and extinguished campfires. There wasn't a balcony though.
Here's the interior, which was less exciting.
I now wanted to renovate the greenery outside the house by mossifying the immediate terrain, growing two more "tall" cherry trees and sprinkling in an assortment of flowers. In other words, I was creating another moss garden!
I also extended the moss garden near the village's main path, where I grew a third cherry tree. This would officially mark the northeastern boundary of the village and create some "natural" space between the hill and said village.
Speaking of the main path, I built another house along it, this time limiting myself to spruce and birch wood. It would be the last structure along that path; there was no way I was building anything on the slope directly behind (if you're wondering, no, I don't think houses on stilts is a good idea anymore; the hill is way too steep for even that).
Like the pale oak house directly opposite, its purpose was only to accomodate more villagers.
Come morning, the "unexpected idea" I mentioned earlier finally came to me: I had the sudden desire to build a wandering trader camp! I did it in my survival island world, and there was absolutely no reason why I shouldn't do it here as well.
Just as I was erecting the yellow-and-blue tent, a wandering trader showed up, right on cue ... but sorry, it's not quite done yet.
The trades were decent. I purchased as much green dye as possible (I still don't have access to a desert and / or cactus yet, and even if I'm unlikely to use it, I'd rather be overprepared than regretful). The pale moss blocks and dripleaves were also welcome. I haven't tried using the former, but I presume it works in a similar way to regular moss.
By the next evening, the camp was finally done.
There's even hay for the llamas!
That wraps up this episode.
Once again, I think it’s time to break things up a bit and take a quick break from building. The Spring Drop is expected by most to release in late March (around the 25th?), and I may plan on going on a small (non-Elytra, but not mapping) adventure to find my first hot dry zone. What I plan to do is head north to one of the savanna villages I found during the previous mapping expedition, and trade with cartographers for desert village maps. Discovering a hot dry zone may also allow me to find one of the three wolf variants I'm missing, the wooded badlands variant (the other two variants are the old growth taiga ones). Beyond that, I'm also hoping to collect some of the new 1.21.5 blocks, such as the new bushes and wildflowers, to decorate the village.
As for the village itself ... it's pretty close to being done! My only major plans for it at the moment are to build a mapping (undecided) and museum room in a potential basement, and of course, the "final build" to top everything off.
Vanilla tweaks has a change to make the unlit campfire not have ash on the bottom. If you ever use campfires in the way you did there, it works better.
I've made houses on supports (stilts), but I agree that I'd never do it unless the rest of the location was all like that. Otherwise, I feel there might be too much of a clash.
I can understand your delays. When you're constantly exploring, there's a lot more to discuss over a shorter span of gameplay. We all experience periods when we're less enthusiastic, or simply don't have the time, for writing updates.
Now that I've shifted back to building and the like in my world, it's quite the opposite situation for me: I need to spend a lot more time on gameplay to generate enough content for a full-size update. I must admit, I often find myself procrastinating building, especially when it's something repetitive like the rows of houses in my village. Mostly, though, it still comes down to time constraints.
Vanilla tweaks has a change to make the unlit campfire not have ash on the bottom. If you ever use campfires in the way you did there, it works better.
Vanilla Tweaks sure offers a lot! Well, thank you for the suggestion. This definitely sounds like a resource pack I'll add, especially considering that my only current use of extinguished campfires is for patio roofs ...
I haven't been playing the game much since I finished the region I'm still updating, and what little I have been playing hasn't been in that world, so I'm afraid I can't blame it on being overwhelmed by a growing backlog of exploration content. What little I am playing is mostly trying build ideas for the castle, and I've run into some creative blocks on that...
Instead, it's mostly just lack of time/interest. I'm wondering if it's burnout. I had two high points insofar interest with the game goes; one was the honeymoon phase when I first started playing (the 1.7 to 1.16 terrain generation era really dulled the game for me), and the other was when 1.18 released. I fell in love with the game again so much that I devoted most of my game time to it, so maybe burnout from that is catching up to me. The better part of the last year has had me gravitating back towards playing other games. It's not that I'm completely disinterested in Minecraft (I've kept coming here and talking about it, although this place is continually dying too which serves as a "positive feedback loop" in dulling my interest, so I have other communities for discussion of my other gaming interests), but updating an exploration world in particular drains you. Add in creative block and it leads to where I am now. So basically, a lot of stuff added together is killing motivation here. That's all part of why I mixed in so many new but temporary hardcore worlds for older versions. And that worked, so I wanted to continue doing that for another couple of older versions, but the problem is the versions that remain on my list of interest are sort of in "no go land" because they're all such old versions that they are in poorer states insofar as quality of life, behavior, or performance. I wanted to play them, but can't. In place of that, I've been toying with the idea in the opposite direction; newer versions. While playing recent vanilla versions in such a fashion wouldn't have a purpose... playing recent modded versions might, as I've never done that. But I don't know if I will.
So yeah, basically lack of interest.
And yes, vanilla tweaks has a lot of nice stuff.
The anti-enderman griefing datapack is the most important one for me. It "fixes" what I consider a "flaw" of gameplay design. Yes, I know, the enderman ability to pick up and hold blocks is iconic, but it goes against my ideal that the world should really not be impacted much without player intervention. That's obviously not a Black or White thing as lightning strikes can happen, and creeper/ghast explosions are fine since they (mostly) only occur with player interaction. Enderman though? No, they do it just because they exist and you can't stop it. As someone who plays to build and spends lots of time in the same areas, this is a big no-no for me.
The item stitching fix is another one, although a mod also exists for this.
The cloud fog rendering fix is probably the second most important to me (although it only matters if I'm not playing with shaders). Without that fix, I find it so bad that I disable clouds instead of using them. Seeing them suddenly appear/disappear one chunk worth instead of blending in and out breaks the immersion for me. In case it's not apparent, certain immersion factors are important for me. It's why terrain generation, and it keeping up with me as I move around, are important behavioral/performance metrics for me. They break the experience for me if they are falling behind. Unfortunately, this one stopped working with 1.21.2 (probably because performance/rendering changes happened with this update). The day this one gets updated to be compatible with those changes is a day I'll be happy.
But yeah, I'm sort of carrying on now so basically just look and see what you like. Just be careful with the datapack additions and create backups of the world before adding any. Texture additions can freely be added and removed without impacting the world itself, but datapack additions might have negative effects when doing that. Since your world is already far enough along, I'd probably shy away from those.
The Spring to Life drop has been released, which means ... it'll soon be time to set out on the "big expedition" I mentioned earlier! This short update will exhaust the remaining gameplay content up to this point; most of it is dedicated to (as the title indicates) constructing a basement beneath my starter house. Its purposes are to accommodate the world map and to contain a small biome exhibition.
This was my first attempt ever at building any sort of basement, and I hadn't done any prior testing on Creative Mode, so I needed to take care.
After staircasing down several blocks, turning left halfway through, I began to dig out a room directly beneath my house with the same horizontal dimensions (7x13, if I remember correctly).
There was no way that would be large enough to accommodate both the map and the exhibition, however, so I extended it by four blocks in all directions and increased the height of the ceiling by two blocks.
Since glowstone would be required for the map floor, I decided to get a new cleric villager. (The first one seemed to have either disappeared or somehow lost their profession, despite having been traded with.)
After a while of searching, I finally found an unemployed villager inside one of the houses. They wouldn't budge from the doorway, however, so I had to break down part of the front of the house before luring them into a boat (using a different profession block), which I then lead to the brewing stand at the other side of the village.
Notice that I had to temporarily remove the stone brick edge of one of the crop farms, as boats cannot fit through one-block-wide spaces. I couldn't complain, though. Without this new ability to attach boats to leads, goodness knew when I would get the villager to where I wanted them.
Before I could began trading, however, I needed to fix this mess.
Thankfully, having built this sort of house multiple times, I had the correct pattern memorized and was done within a minute.
Moving on to trading ... after spending 18 emeralds on lapis lazuli and redstone to level up the cleric, the desired trade showed up.
Here's the Expert and Master level trades, which I unintentionally unlocked while purchasing glowstone. None of these, except for (maybe?) the ender pearl trade, would be particularly useful.
Back in the basement, I spent the next day or two replacing the stone-and-dirt floor, walls and ceiling with stone bricks — which alone made the whole place look so much cleaner and more polished! I also finally moved in the world map but would soon reposition it to make room for the exhibition.
For alignment purposes, the map grid was 5x5 instead of 4x4, which meant there would be more mapping to do — eventually.
This stray cat showed up out of nowhere while I was in the basement. I didn't know they could spawn underground.
For once, though, I couldn't resist the urge to tame it. Basement building felt dull to me (particularly the bit where I had to replace everything with stone bricks), and I needed company.
I haven't mentioned this earlier, but in between periods of working on the basement, I occasionally went outside and did some "routine renovation" around the outskirts of the village by growing more cherry trees and extending the moss gardens.
My spruce wood supply was plummeting and I would need more of it for building the exhibition, so for the first time in a while, I dedicated half a day to tree farming.
While planting down the saplings, I noticed that any mushrooms that had spread to the stone bricks would instantly break. Something to do with block updates, I'm presuming? It wasn't an issue, though, so I ignored it.
After collecting four or five stacks of wood and smelting a stack and a half of sand, I was finally ready to build the exterior of the exhibition. There would be three biomes / "settings" on display, located in a row behind the staircase.
For lighting, I hung lanterns on end rods, the latter of which I seldom use in building.
I felt it would be ideal to wait until after the Spring to Life release to build the two surface biome displays as I would like them to include the new "natural blocks" like firefly bushes and leaf litter, but the third display I had in mind, the lush caves biome, did not require any of the said blocks. So I started with that.
I wanted the display to contain some tropical fish as well (axolotls wouldn't fit in the tiny ponds), so I transferred the fish from the village's main pond and replaced them with three of the axolotls from the other pond, which I thought was too crowded anyway.
And finally, here's the completed lush cave display.
I simply had to put the pair of stone diamond ores on display as well! Those are very difficult to find.
Well, that completed the first of the three displays. I'm not entirely certain at this point, but the two other "settings" I'm currently considering are mountains (jagged or frozen peaks, plus spruce grove) and a custom flower forest with a tiny pond.
All that'll have to wait, of course, because like I said, I would like to gather the new materials first. In other words, it was finally time for the expedition to commence.
Haha, that's so like me. "Oh, I need more room. I'll just dig into the ground instead of expanding the house." Which is funny, because part of the motive with my eventual castle is to make a more elaborate structure instead of just digging into the ground or a mountain, and... now I have builder/creative block.
Even though I use glow stone for it a lot, lit pumpkins work if you need a cheaper resource.
The ability to use leads on boats was one of those "as soon as they added it, I took immediate use of it" and now I can't imagine how we lived without it. It's one of those "it's a minor change I could easily overlook, yet going back to a version that lacks the feature would feel lacking". It would be a cutoff point, for sure.
Yes, expanding buildings often requires putting a lot of thought into exterior aesthetics. Perhaps even more than simply building a new structure, as you'd now have to consider stuff like whether or not you want to keep the block palette you're using without making the extension or new floors seem too monotonous or out-of-place with the rest of the building. I don't really fancy it if I'm only doing it to accommodate something like a map.
The primary reason I chose to build a basement for the map, though, was because it would offer a lot more flexibility, such as allowing me to easily expand it should I need to in the future. Placing the map on a new floor in my house will be quite restricting, and I won't be able to expand the house horizontally either because there are other structures in the way.
I might consider lit pumpkins. It's funny how I suggested the same thing a while back on a different thread, and have now forgotten about that myself.
And yeah, that's how I felt about the new boat leading mechanic. It also seems that updates adding physical features (structures, mobs, blocks, etc.) usually receive far more attention than those that introduce a new quality of life feature.
I really like the way you build your base and the way you describe it. It's interesting to see the progress of your village.
It's funny that I started reading your journal the same day I decided to try the Large Biomes world in the new version. My spawn was in the snowy plains, with snowy peaks nearby, a cherry grove, and a little further - a savannah. Some of your starting photos looked like they were taken in my world.
Nice that you found a similar location on your world too. As a relatively new player at the time, I remember the excitement of seeing the snowy mountains, followed by the satisfaction of discovering the enormous cherry grove. Some pretty sights!
It seems like your spawn area is climatically diverse too. Snowy mountains also often help create smooth transitions from snowy to temperate or warmer regions.
After resupplying on golden carrots and fireworks, I put my Elytra on and took off into the early morning rain. Sigh. The weather certainly didn't match the excitement and anticipation of embarking on a new journey ...
And no, this wouldn't be an Elytra-based trip. The plan was only to fly two or three thousand blocks northwest, where I knew of multiple savanna villages with cartographers. I would purchase a desert explorer map and make the journey to the indicated desert on foot, gathering as many of the new decorative blocks as possible along the way.
Once at the hot dry zone, my primary goal would be to tame a striped wolf, found in the wooded badlands biome. I wasn't sure how well I would do in this department, given the wolves' low spawning rates, but I suppose we're about to find out.
The woodland mansion soon faded into view, indicating that I was near my first destination.
Unwilling to spend a third firework (remember, no mob farms), I landed in the vast expanse of jungle behind the mansion. The landing was stressful, thanks to the thick foliage and somewhat hilly terrain, but I thankfully survived unscathed.
With that, I began trudging northwest through the jungle, until it eventually gave way to open plains and savanna. The enormous savanna plateau I had crossed while filling in the far northwestern map came into view. I was fairly certain that there had been a village on the other side, so I headed towards it.
While descending the plateau, I found myself in this rather awkward situation:
Surely I wouldn't miss the water, right?
I jumped.
I then swam back up to the surface, turned around and ... oh my goodness.
Better move quickly! I already had to consider myself lucky for not being stabbed by a trident; dripstone aquifers are a haven for drowned zombies.
Here's a view of the opening in the morning; notice the smaller ones nearby as well (most of them likely led to the same cavern).
After crossing a complex river system, the expected village came into sight. Time to do some business!
It was here that I realized I had made a mistake: I hadn't brought sufficient emeralds for the trading process. In order to level up a cartographer to Apprentice level, I needed just over a stack of emeralds (70, if I remember correctly) to purchase the required ten empty maps. Unfortunately, I only had exactly a stack of emeralds in my ender chest.
I rechecked it, still disbelieving that I had made this mistake ... and found something else. A stack of paper to sell! (I always keep paper in my ender chest for crafting extra fireworks.)
Well, eventually, the cartographer leveled up and offered the desired trade. I had two compasses in my ender chest, so finding my way back home without reference to coordinates still shouldn't be a problem.
And now, time to set out for real.
My marker on the map was tiny, which signified that I was thousands of blocks away from the hot dry zone. I couldn't be certain if it was the nearest one, though, since explorer maps don't always lead to the nearest structure in question (in this case, a desert village). Or there may have been a desert nearby that simply lacked a village, who knows.
Heading northeast, I soon came to a river, where the flat, open plains gave way to forested hills. While that would generally annoy me in a typical exploration, the opposite was true today. Even better, I should (?) be past the boundary of previously loaded chunks by now.
Seeing this confirmed my speculations.
I spent the rest of the afternoon gathering as much leaf litter as possible, and by the next morning, I had three stacks of the stuff.
I then climbed the hill, entering an old growth birch forest, where I collected three stacks of this:
Three stacks of everything! Yeah, we'll be spending quite a bit of time in this area.
Here's a rather large but unremarkable ravine I noticed while collecting the wildflowers.
Something else I found here was my first fallen tree, which I'd often wondered why hadn't been a feature in Java Edition. But better late than never, I suppose? Now all we need is a revampment for the living trees!
Continuing on, I soon came to a river canyon, on the other side of which was a small area of dark forest. A temperate and humid climate ... I don't think we'll be finding a desert anytime soon ... but that was okay, since it would enable me to find more of the new blocks like the much-coveted firefly bush.
The woodland itself soon gave way to meadow, and a small spruce grove was nearby too. While it technically wasn't a mountain in itself, it did hint at a mountainous region.
While crossing the river canyon, I found the aforementioned firefly bush.
As well as something not so great. They didn't seem to notice me though, since I was far out of range.
Upon reaching the top of the plateau, I was treated to a lovely view of the wildflower-dotted meadow and the spruce grove behind it.
I think (?) I checked the latter for snowy wolves, but didn't find any (as expected). I already had one at home, though, so that was fine.
To the east was this lonely pair of cherry trees backed up by oak forest ...
... but turning north revealed magnificent scenery. This place very much resembled the landscape to the immediate southwest of Sunflower Valley, with a river and oak forest on one side, a cherry grove on the other and a snowy mountain in the background.
As if that wasn't enough ... there were sunflower plains to the south of the cherry grove too!
But not everything is as pleasant as it seems at first glance. Within the heart of the cherry grove hid a chasm of horror.
There was a similar-shaped cave opening several dozen blocks away from Pondside Inn, but it was nowhere near as wide or deep.
I proceeded to ascend the frozen mountain, which allowed me to capture some nice shots of the cherry grove and surrounding expanse of oak and birch forest below. The mountain itself wasn't all that remarkable, only peaking at approximately y:150.
Further on, I was extremely shocked to see this:
A taiga?! I seriously had to double-check my debug screen to confirm I was travelling in the right direction. I had been expecting the desert to be far away, but not far enough that I would have to travel along the climate spectrum towards the opposite end and then back again. Regardless, I should still be nearing a desert, I supposed. Even if it didn't look like it.
While I was here, I decided to gather a stack of ferns for future decorative needs. The long, winding rivers also offered a great opportunity to supply myself with firefly bushes. Though they're duplicable by bonemealing, I wanted to have a good number to start with.
I also came across a very small area of old growth spruce taiga, but it was unfortunately void of wolves.
I must admit to being rather annoyed when I spotted a pack of pale wolves right on the other side of the river, in the normal taiga forest.
Continuing on, I could see the taiga already transitioning back to temperate forests to the northeast, a sign that I was approaching a warm zone. Well, a mountainous region too, indicated by the spruce groves in the far distance. The relatively flat and easy terrain was already ending.
There were quite a few interesting cave openings scattered about here, the last of which was truly impressive.
(That poor birch tree ...)
Heading up towards the jagged mountains, I was soon subjected to crossing another steep river canyon. Beyond it was a pillager outpost, but I was unwilling to spend the time on it. Perhaps I should have, as the chests occasionally contain a goat horn.
Gorgeous allium meadow though!
To the east were more mountain groves, surrounded by temperate oak forest and plains.
Turning north, I was treated to a nice little surprise.
Not only had I finally reached a warm zone, I'd now also found my first pale garden in this world. Here's another biome to count towards the Adventuring Time advancement!
I briefly explored it for any exposed creaking hearts but didn't find any. Since I already had the pale oak saplings, wood and moss at home, and wasn't particularly interested in resin anyway, I didn't spend too long here.
No harm in gathering these eyeblossoms first ...
(Well, as long as I don't plant them at my base; open eyeblossoms are apparently poisonous to bees.)
To the northwest was a sprawling plateau topped with birch and pale forest, with a small stretch of dark forest below it.
Continuing on through the jungle, an enormous area of exposed stone caught my attention. Upon a closer look, it turned out to be a dripstone "cave". I've noticed that this particular phenomena of "exposed cave biome" (which also happens with lush caves) seems to occur exclusively in jungle biomes, but it's probably a simple coincidence.
I got a cyan parrot around here but failed to take the taming screenshot. Although I did get some of other inhabitants of the jungle:
... including a second cyan parrot which I tamed. Neither of them had been particularly greedy.
After crossing through alternating strips of bamboo and sparse jungle, I came to the edge of a river and ...
We did it. After over a thousand days in this world, I'd finally found the first hot dry zone. Not particularly impressive time-wise (especially considering that this wasn't even a mapping expedition, and I knew where I was going), but it was still a fairly exciting day for me.
Now I just needed to gather some of the badlands / desert-unique 1.21.5 blocks (namely cactus flower and dry grass) and find a striped wolf.
I've noticed "open to the air caves" like that before with dripstone or lush caves. Maybe not as large as that one though. I'm fairly sure I've seen them in a number of biomes, like savanna and plains but I never kept track. I always figured them to be some peculiarity that can just happen.
The unusual visual effect I mentioned is to do with the house's design. The map is currently situated on the floor, at the top level of the house. The wooden flooring directly beneath the map is only one block thick, so replacing it with glowstone would hence make the ceiling of the lower level glowstone. While I could use trapdoors / slabs to cover it, I'd need to change some of the designs of the rooms below, and I'd rather not as the map will be moved elsewhere in the future (likely to a basement where glowstone flooring could be used without having this ceiling effect).
That's what I was wondering. I wasn't sure if you meant your build layout didn't accommodate it or if it was lighting issue, since "unusual effect" sort of implied the latter to me.
I was wondering since the game used to have a ton of examples of that, but it's gotten a lot better over the years so I was wondering which ones it might still have. I was outright prevented from building how I wanted to solely because of that in 1.6 (and to a lesser extent, 1.8). I can certainly think of at least one or two awkward lighting issues I still see these days, but they're relatively minor and never ruin how something looks so bad that it makes me build another way to work around it.
Whenever I want lighting in a floor (usually glowstone or lit pumpkins under carpet), if there's another floor below it, then I always ensure the ceiling is high enough and then use an additional half slabs underneath it. In your case, the glow item frame would indeed your best workaround. If you get serious about maps, the best option is usually having a room (or area of a much larger room) dedicated to it that properly accommodates it.
This is awesome, love the creativity. Very impressive!
Episode 52: Developments Resume
Well, it was time to continue with my prolonged village expansion project. The "large-scale" build I mentioned earlier (which, to be honest, probably won't turn out half as large as I might be making it sound) would be a task saved for towards the end; for now, my main tasks were to construct more houses for the growing population, extend the paths outside the village and renovate the green spaces in between them. Quite a lot happened before that, though ...
Unfortunately, this first bit doesn't come with any decent pictures, so I'll briefly describe it here.
As I was making one of my regular "inspections" of the village, I had a sudden desire to experiment with the new pale oak wood and find out how well it would go with my typical block palette of spruce, oak and stone bricks. But then I remembered: when I found the wandering trader with the pale oak saplings, I had only purchased two of them (and like dark oak, you need four to grow one tree). Pale gardens themselves are apparently one of the least common biomes, and I don't plan on doing any more above-ground exploration in the meantime, so goodness knows when I'll find one.
The only option left? I flew back to where I had encountered that wandering trader (it was on the map immediately south of the far northwestern one, but the journey there only cost two fireworks — perhaps thanks to the altitude advantage that Sunflower Valley provides when it comes to Elytra takeoffs). And thank goodness he hadn't despawned yet. I wasn't expecting him to anyway since that chunk had been unloaded.
After trading for four more saplings, I put my Elytra back on, ready to take off ... but unexpectedly came across one of my tamed parrots which was sat on top of a jungle tree. Of course, there was no way I was leaving it there, and as I was about to head off again, I found and tamed a wild blue one as well. Having companions meant I wasn't able to travel back by Elytra, but I didn't mind that at all.
Anyways, back at base ... I settled the parrots in their treehouse before planting down and impatiently bonemealing the newly acquired saplings.
My first task was to accumulate more saplings, as well as several stacks of logs, so I spent the rest of the day repeatedly growing and chopping down pale oak trees. I didn't keep any of the trees themselves as they wouldn't fit in with the vibrant cherry grove surrounding the valley, but (minor spoiler warning) that didn't mean I would keep away from the actual wood.
This was my pale oak supply at the end of the day:
Early the next morning, something else unexpectedly crossed my mind. I needed to enchant my shield and decorate it with a banner pattern! How had I not done that yet ...
Now I wasn't sure if I particularly liked the look, but it wasn't bad enough that I removed it either.
With that out of the way, I decided to go on a small adventure before moving on to building. At the time, the pond outside the inn was only home to two axolotls (one brown and one yellow), and in order to make it more lively and delightful ... yeah, I think you can infer what I was about to do next.
To the jungles I went!
Since this wasn't a mapping trip and I didn't have any pets with me (for once!), I decided this was the perfect opportunity to loot the nearby jungle temple before delving into the lush caves below. Conveniently, the whole structure was void of monsters.
This may sound odd, but the dispenser traps certainly did boost my string and redstone supplies.
The pictured chest contained a pair of diamonds, which I didn't expect to see. The saddle and bones were also welcome.
The second chest was behind a lever puzzle, but I simply mined through that and gratefully took all the redstone components, including the sticky pistons as I didn't have access to slimes yet.
I then left the temple and continued on. My plan was to head north until I reached a conveniently low altitude to start mining down from in the hopes of revealing a lush cave.
The presence of this zombie, however, highlighted a shortcut ...
... for it was the gatekeeper to this promising-looking ravine-cave. Seemed like we were in for some mountainside spelunking!
This would be one of my first attempts at caving "in the natural way," and I needed to be on the lookout particularly for dropping creepers.
After eliminating the skeleton that had been peacefully dwelling on the dark ledge directly across from me (notice the glint of its enchanted bow in the previous picture), I cautiously bridged over the enormous gap.
It was a long way down ...
Having sniped all the monsters I could see below, I suddenly noticed the unmistakable splashing of a group (or harem — new vocabulary as always!) of axolotls. Better catch them before they despawn!
I pillared up to fend off a horde of newly spawned zombies. Thankfully, there was no nearby skeleton to knock me off (not that it would have been particularly threatening anyway, though).
This cyan axolotl was the first one I found. I did catch a few others in the vicinity but they were all yellow or brown, the colors which I already had.
I then began lighting up and securing the cavern itself. For reference, I was this close to the surface:
Turning around, I could see this rather modest cavern giving way to a much larger one deeper down. I probably wouldn't explore that, though, since this was supposed to be more of a "light caving" trip.
With my cavern now fully explored, I began exploring the small, narrow branches leading away from it. Narrow lush cave passages are generally safe(r) to explore as most parts will already have been well lit by the glow berries.
One of the passages led me down to another medium-sized cavern, but I then started hearing axolotls above me ...
... so I headed back up, of course. And sure enough, I found a pair bobbing and frantically splashing about in a tiny pool of water in the cavern I had just explored ... which was interesting, because shouldn't they only spawn in full darkness? I suppose they must have spawned in the dark area behind and wandered up here.
As you may have noticed, those were pink (leucistic) axolotls. This meant that I now had all the naturally spawning variants! And in case you're wondering, no, I won't try breeding them for a blue axolotl given the time, effort and materials required for that.
Well, to conclude this trip, here's everything I acquired. Remember, the redstone and diamonds were from the jungle temple; the cave I explored was nowhere near the level needed to find those ores.
Anyways ... welcome to your new home, axolotls!
Well, time to move on to building. My tasks were to construct a medium-sized house at the eastern end of the village as well as to extend the path leading away from that area.
This stray cat showed up one morning, as I was gathering my materials, but for the first time ever ... I didn't tame it.
Several days later, I finished said house. It was a one-story, L-shaped house using mostly spruce wood with calcite and pale oak wood serving as accents. I had initially considered a stone brick frame but soon scrapped the idea; I was struggling to not make it appear like a prison or stronghold.
The purpose of the house was merely to accommodate the newly born villagers, not to offer more profession sites.
Continuing work in that area, I then constructed the aforementioned bamboo mosaic path, which led up all the way to the snowy mountain opposite the nether temple. It was my highest-reaching path yet, ending at y:145, but was also a considerable struggle to build thanks to the steep slope and occasional 2-block-high step. The floating lanterns are due to the decorated pots containing them not rendering.
Here's some nice views of Sunflower Valley, which I got while working at the top.
The cherry tree was manually grown and taller than its typical counterpart (I grew the sapling on a dirt block five blocks off the ground due to terrain obstructions and then replaced the empty space beneath with cherry logs), so I could easily add the hanging sign welcome message.
The next update will focus on building another path leading out from the north of the village (right of the picture), as well as even more housing. I may plan on extending the row of houses to the south (far left).
I've never put patterns on shields. I might have to consider that (as well as banners themselves) for when I make my castle, but I don't know what I'll do for that. It will probably be a while before I finalize the design.
Having paths extend a long distance from a village, especially one down in a small valley, makes it feel more naturally accessible. I do have signs at each of my entrances, so a hanging sign would fit right in there since the tree is so tall.
You're definitely building in a far more cramped area than I would have ever considered. That's one of the (many) limitations to my building; I prefer larger and more spread out areas with wider things, even if it means having to do a lot more running back and forth. Certain minor things would bother me too, such as the pots not rendering in when further away, and I never knew that. I guess they are entities. Something like that would have me choose an alternative when building.
Banners will definitely help with larger castles. If you're going for a medium to large size castle and cannot find a desirable banner design (although you probably will), you may also want to build enlarged banners or flags using wool.
In addition to the increased accessibility, which is my primary reason for building paths in the first place, they also assist me in planning out the locations of future houses or other structures for the village. At the endpoint (which is usually at the snowline of a mountain), I like having a tall, manually grown cherry tree with a hanging sign — that's the sort of style I'm going for for most of my paths.
When it comes to choosing a location to build my first base, I generally don't give terrain as much thought as I imagine most players would. Of course, I will almost never consider a location right on a steep hillside or cliff, but if the terrain is sufficiently flat to make building some kind of a base or settlement viable, it's a pass for me. I'll of course have a lot more terraforming to do, among other inconveniences, but I don't mind having to adapt to the landscape as I expand my base. This might mean having to build houses on stilts, although I'm not certain at this point.
I do look forward to extending the village beyond the cherry grove hill and over across the flat plains beyond, though. That'll offer an opportunity to build in a slightly more spread out fashion, which I haven't been able to do so far in this world and am hoping to do at some point.
Perhaps the potted lanterns serve best as indoor decorations. It's only recently that I became actively aware of their invisibility when far away, so I'm unlikely to remove them at this point, although I'll try to remember to use fence posts or other methods of lighting in the future.
I've never done anything with banners despite how long ago they were added, so I'm not even sure what I'll do for that.
If you want the pots to remain showing, you could consider increasing the entity distance, but this may lower performance if you're ever in any area with a lot of them (read as, custom made villages with farms nearby), and not using entity culling performance mods. You'd have to test it in that particular area to see how high you can go, and then if it ever causes performance issues, either reduce the setting or limit the amount of entities you're adding.
I keep wondering if my map will cause me issues as it grows. So far, it hasn't. I don't know the exact map count right now, but it was around 160 when I was starting the region I'm doing now, and I finished that region so it might be closer to 180 or 190 now.
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Curse PremiumI really like your village house design. I'll have to up my game the next time I tackle a world.
I think banners are quite useful. They add substantial personality to a build, and they're decorative to boot. I also enjoyed figuring banners in my past two world that were "thematic" for what I was doing.
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Yeah, I like the concept of designing banners to match the style of villages or individual builds, and it's something I've been loosely considering recently. Banners are only something I've just got into (and I didn't know you could layer the patterns, which changes everything!), so I'll need to play around with some prototype designs first.
Episode 53: Renovating the Outskirts
Apologies for the rather long delay.
This will be one of the first (or even the first?) episode(s) fully dedicated to building. My aims were to build a bamboo mosaic path leading out of the village's northern side and several more houses to fill the space between the inner paths. I also ended up building something that didn't quite cross my mind until much later ...
I decided that tulips would be a neat addition to the path, so I shoved a batch of carrots into a composter and headed for the neighboring flower forest valley with my newly acquired bone meal. (I simply despised the idea of clearing away all of the native flora, so whenever I harvested a patch of flowers, I bonemealed the exact spot on the ground to "revive" it. Talk about easy renewability!)
Several days passed, and ... here's the completed path. It would likely be the last bamboo mosaic one I build for Sunflower Valley. You may have noticed that I extended the section to the right so it ended at the azalea garden near the village center — that simply felt more natural.
Now, I would like to finish the row of houses at the southern side of the village (located near the top of the above picture). As expected, however, my supply of stone was dwindling and I was hence subjected to a day and a half in the mines.
Here's what I acquired from that trip.
With the building materials sorted, it was time for some tricky terraforming business ...
When you see stone, you know it's serious!
Here's the finished house. Shape-wise, it was a clone of all the other houses in that row, with the only design difference being the block palette: I went for spruce, oak and andesite. I must say that polished andesite would have been no match for the new tuff bricks, but I simply couldn't be asked to spend time in the diamond-level mines.
Well, with that done, it was time to construct the final house in the row. This one would be a bit different though ...
(Yes, it may be two stories high, but it wouldn't nearly be as large as Pondside Inn.)
After working on the exterior for a while, I decided to use alliums as one of my "thematic flowers" for the house (the others being peonies, lilies of the valley and white tulips). I only had two — yes, two! — alliums, so I put on my Elytra for the first time in a while, flew all the way over to the allium-covered plateau I had discovered towards the beginning of the mapping expedition, and gathered a stack.
With the exterior finished, the entire house was complete.
The block palette I used comprised of spruce, oak (lower floor), birch (upper floor) and stone bricks, and it turned out somewhat better than I expected — I definitely didn't expect spruce logs to go that well with birch planks. Well, that's something to remember for the future.
I also built several flower beds along the upper floor, wedged between stone brick supports.
Like Pondside Inn, the house had a small patio with a roof composed of leaves and extinguished campfires. There wasn't a balcony though.
Here's the interior, which was less exciting.
I now wanted to renovate the greenery outside the house by mossifying the immediate terrain, growing two more "tall" cherry trees and sprinkling in an assortment of flowers. In other words, I was creating another moss garden!
I also extended the moss garden near the village's main path, where I grew a third cherry tree. This would officially mark the northeastern boundary of the village and create some "natural" space between the hill and said village.
Speaking of the main path, I built another house along it, this time limiting myself to spruce and birch wood. It would be the last structure along that path; there was no way I was building anything on the slope directly behind (if you're wondering, no, I don't think houses on stilts is a good idea anymore; the hill is way too steep for even that).
Like the pale oak house directly opposite, its purpose was only to accomodate more villagers.
Come morning, the "unexpected idea" I mentioned earlier finally came to me: I had the sudden desire to build a wandering trader camp! I did it in my survival island world, and there was absolutely no reason why I shouldn't do it here as well.
Just as I was erecting the yellow-and-blue tent, a wandering trader showed up, right on cue ... but sorry, it's not quite done yet.
The trades were decent. I purchased as much green dye as possible (I still don't have access to a desert and / or cactus yet, and even if I'm unlikely to use it, I'd rather be overprepared than regretful). The pale moss blocks and dripleaves were also welcome. I haven't tried using the former, but I presume it works in a similar way to regular moss.
By the next evening, the camp was finally done.
There's even hay for the llamas!
That wraps up this episode.
Once again, I think it’s time to break things up a bit and take a quick break from building. The Spring Drop is expected by most to release in late March (around the 25th?), and I may plan on going on a small (non-Elytra, but not mapping) adventure to find my first hot dry zone. What I plan to do is head north to one of the savanna villages I found during the previous mapping expedition, and trade with cartographers for desert village maps. Discovering a hot dry zone may also allow me to find one of the three wolf variants I'm missing, the wooded badlands variant (the other two variants are the old growth taiga ones). Beyond that, I'm also hoping to collect some of the new 1.21.5 blocks, such as the new bushes and wildflowers, to decorate the village.
As for the village itself ... it's pretty close to being done! My only major plans for it at the moment are to build a mapping (undecided) and museum room in a potential basement, and of course, the "final build" to top everything off.
Your delays remind me mine are getting worse.
Vanilla tweaks has a change to make the unlit campfire not have ash on the bottom. If you ever use campfires in the way you did there, it works better.
I've made houses on supports (stilts), but I agree that I'd never do it unless the rest of the location was all like that. Otherwise, I feel there might be too much of a clash.
I can understand your delays. When you're constantly exploring, there's a lot more to discuss over a shorter span of gameplay. We all experience periods when we're less enthusiastic, or simply don't have the time, for writing updates.
Now that I've shifted back to building and the like in my world, it's quite the opposite situation for me: I need to spend a lot more time on gameplay to generate enough content for a full-size update. I must admit, I often find myself procrastinating building, especially when it's something repetitive like the rows of houses in my village. Mostly, though, it still comes down to time constraints.
Vanilla Tweaks sure offers a lot! Well, thank you for the suggestion. This definitely sounds like a resource pack I'll add, especially considering that my only current use of extinguished campfires is for patio roofs ...
I haven't been playing the game much since I finished the region I'm still updating, and what little I have been playing hasn't been in that world, so I'm afraid I can't blame it on being overwhelmed by a growing backlog of exploration content. What little I am playing is mostly trying build ideas for the castle, and I've run into some creative blocks on that...
Instead, it's mostly just lack of time/interest. I'm wondering if it's burnout. I had two high points insofar interest with the game goes; one was the honeymoon phase when I first started playing (the 1.7 to 1.16 terrain generation era really dulled the game for me), and the other was when 1.18 released. I fell in love with the game again so much that I devoted most of my game time to it, so maybe burnout from that is catching up to me. The better part of the last year has had me gravitating back towards playing other games. It's not that I'm completely disinterested in Minecraft (I've kept coming here and talking about it, although this place is continually dying too which serves as a "positive feedback loop" in dulling my interest, so I have other communities for discussion of my other gaming interests), but updating an exploration world in particular drains you. Add in creative block and it leads to where I am now. So basically, a lot of stuff added together is killing motivation here. That's all part of why I mixed in so many new but temporary hardcore worlds for older versions. And that worked, so I wanted to continue doing that for another couple of older versions, but the problem is the versions that remain on my list of interest are sort of in "no go land" because they're all such old versions that they are in poorer states insofar as quality of life, behavior, or performance. I wanted to play them, but can't. In place of that, I've been toying with the idea in the opposite direction; newer versions. While playing recent vanilla versions in such a fashion wouldn't have a purpose... playing recent modded versions might, as I've never done that. But I don't know if I will.
So yeah, basically lack of interest.
And yes, vanilla tweaks has a lot of nice stuff.
The anti-enderman griefing datapack is the most important one for me. It "fixes" what I consider a "flaw" of gameplay design. Yes, I know, the enderman ability to pick up and hold blocks is iconic, but it goes against my ideal that the world should really not be impacted much without player intervention. That's obviously not a Black or White thing as lightning strikes can happen, and creeper/ghast explosions are fine since they (mostly) only occur with player interaction. Enderman though? No, they do it just because they exist and you can't stop it. As someone who plays to build and spends lots of time in the same areas, this is a big no-no for me.
The item stitching fix is another one, although a mod also exists for this.
The cloud fog rendering fix is probably the second most important to me (although it only matters if I'm not playing with shaders). Without that fix, I find it so bad that I disable clouds instead of using them. Seeing them suddenly appear/disappear one chunk worth instead of blending in and out breaks the immersion for me. In case it's not apparent, certain immersion factors are important for me. It's why terrain generation, and it keeping up with me as I move around, are important behavioral/performance metrics for me. They break the experience for me if they are falling behind. Unfortunately, this one stopped working with 1.21.2 (probably because performance/rendering changes happened with this update). The day this one gets updated to be compatible with those changes is a day I'll be happy.
But yeah, I'm sort of carrying on now so basically just look and see what you like. Just be careful with the datapack additions and create backups of the world before adding any. Texture additions can freely be added and removed without impacting the world itself, but datapack additions might have negative effects when doing that. Since your world is already far enough along, I'd probably shy away from those.
Episode 54: Basement Building
The Spring to Life drop has been released, which means ... it'll soon be time to set out on the "big expedition" I mentioned earlier! This short update will exhaust the remaining gameplay content up to this point; most of it is dedicated to (as the title indicates) constructing a basement beneath my starter house. Its purposes are to accommodate the world map and to contain a small biome exhibition.
This was my first attempt ever at building any sort of basement, and I hadn't done any prior testing on Creative Mode, so I needed to take care.
After staircasing down several blocks, turning left halfway through, I began to dig out a room directly beneath my house with the same horizontal dimensions (7x13, if I remember correctly).
There was no way that would be large enough to accommodate both the map and the exhibition, however, so I extended it by four blocks in all directions and increased the height of the ceiling by two blocks.
Since glowstone would be required for the map floor, I decided to get a new cleric villager. (The first one seemed to have either disappeared or somehow lost their profession, despite having been traded with.)
After a while of searching, I finally found an unemployed villager inside one of the houses. They wouldn't budge from the doorway, however, so I had to break down part of the front of the house before luring them into a boat (using a different profession block), which I then lead to the brewing stand at the other side of the village.
Notice that I had to temporarily remove the stone brick edge of one of the crop farms, as boats cannot fit through one-block-wide spaces. I couldn't complain, though. Without this new ability to attach boats to leads, goodness knew when I would get the villager to where I wanted them.
Before I could began trading, however, I needed to fix this mess.
Thankfully, having built this sort of house multiple times, I had the correct pattern memorized and was done within a minute.
Moving on to trading ... after spending 18 emeralds on lapis lazuli and redstone to level up the cleric, the desired trade showed up.
Here's the Expert and Master level trades, which I unintentionally unlocked while purchasing glowstone. None of these, except for (maybe?) the ender pearl trade, would be particularly useful.
Back in the basement, I spent the next day or two replacing the stone-and-dirt floor, walls and ceiling with stone bricks — which alone made the whole place look so much cleaner and more polished! I also finally moved in the world map but would soon reposition it to make room for the exhibition.
For alignment purposes, the map grid was 5x5 instead of 4x4, which meant there would be more mapping to do — eventually.
This stray cat showed up out of nowhere while I was in the basement. I didn't know they could spawn underground.
For once, though, I couldn't resist the urge to tame it. Basement building felt dull to me (particularly the bit where I had to replace everything with stone bricks), and I needed company.
I haven't mentioned this earlier, but in between periods of working on the basement, I occasionally went outside and did some "routine renovation" around the outskirts of the village by growing more cherry trees and extending the moss gardens.
My spruce wood supply was plummeting and I would need more of it for building the exhibition, so for the first time in a while, I dedicated half a day to tree farming.
While planting down the saplings, I noticed that any mushrooms that had spread to the stone bricks would instantly break. Something to do with block updates, I'm presuming? It wasn't an issue, though, so I ignored it.
After collecting four or five stacks of wood and smelting a stack and a half of sand, I was finally ready to build the exterior of the exhibition. There would be three biomes / "settings" on display, located in a row behind the staircase.
For lighting, I hung lanterns on end rods, the latter of which I seldom use in building.
I felt it would be ideal to wait until after the Spring to Life release to build the two surface biome displays as I would like them to include the new "natural blocks" like firefly bushes and leaf litter, but the third display I had in mind, the lush caves biome, did not require any of the said blocks. So I started with that.
I wanted the display to contain some tropical fish as well (axolotls wouldn't fit in the tiny ponds), so I transferred the fish from the village's main pond and replaced them with three of the axolotls from the other pond, which I thought was too crowded anyway.
And finally, here's the completed lush cave display.
I simply had to put the pair of stone diamond ores on display as well! Those are very difficult to find.
Well, that completed the first of the three displays. I'm not entirely certain at this point, but the two other "settings" I'm currently considering are mountains (jagged or frozen peaks, plus spruce grove) and a custom flower forest with a tiny pond.
All that'll have to wait, of course, because like I said, I would like to gather the new materials first. In other words, it was finally time for the expedition to commence.
Haha, that's so like me. "Oh, I need more room. I'll just dig into the ground instead of expanding the house." Which is funny, because part of the motive with my eventual castle is to make a more elaborate structure instead of just digging into the ground or a mountain, and... now I have builder/creative block.
Even though I use glow stone for it a lot, lit pumpkins work if you need a cheaper resource.
The ability to use leads on boats was one of those "as soon as they added it, I took immediate use of it" and now I can't imagine how we lived without it. It's one of those "it's a minor change I could easily overlook, yet going back to a version that lacks the feature would feel lacking". It would be a cutoff point, for sure.
Yes, expanding buildings often requires putting a lot of thought into exterior aesthetics. Perhaps even more than simply building a new structure, as you'd now have to consider stuff like whether or not you want to keep the block palette you're using without making the extension or new floors seem too monotonous or out-of-place with the rest of the building. I don't really fancy it if I'm only doing it to accommodate something like a map.
The primary reason I chose to build a basement for the map, though, was because it would offer a lot more flexibility, such as allowing me to easily expand it should I need to in the future. Placing the map on a new floor in my house will be quite restricting, and I won't be able to expand the house horizontally either because there are other structures in the way.
I might consider lit pumpkins. It's funny how I suggested the same thing a while back on a different thread, and have now forgotten about that myself.
And yeah, that's how I felt about the new boat leading mechanic. It also seems that updates adding physical features (structures, mobs, blocks, etc.) usually receive far more attention than those that introduce a new quality of life feature.
I really like the way you build your base and the way you describe it. It's interesting to see the progress of your village.
It's funny that I started reading your journal the same day I decided to try the Large Biomes world in the new version. My spawn was in the snowy plains, with snowy peaks nearby, a cherry grove, and a little further - a savannah. Some of your starting photos looked like they were taken in my world.
Sorry for my English, I use Google Translate.
Thanks, glad you enjoy reading it.
Nice that you found a similar location on your world too. As a relatively new player at the time, I remember the excitement of seeing the snowy mountains, followed by the satisfaction of discovering the enormous cherry grove. Some pretty sights!
It seems like your spawn area is climatically diverse too. Snowy mountains also often help create smooth transitions from snowy to temperate or warmer regions.
Episode 55: An Adventure Unfolds
After resupplying on golden carrots and fireworks, I put my Elytra on and took off into the early morning rain. Sigh. The weather certainly didn't match the excitement and anticipation of embarking on a new journey ...
And no, this wouldn't be an Elytra-based trip. The plan was only to fly two or three thousand blocks northwest, where I knew of multiple savanna villages with cartographers. I would purchase a desert explorer map and make the journey to the indicated desert on foot, gathering as many of the new decorative blocks as possible along the way.
Once at the hot dry zone, my primary goal would be to tame a striped wolf, found in the wooded badlands biome. I wasn't sure how well I would do in this department, given the wolves' low spawning rates, but I suppose we're about to find out.
The woodland mansion soon faded into view, indicating that I was near my first destination.
Unwilling to spend a third firework (remember, no mob farms), I landed in the vast expanse of jungle behind the mansion. The landing was stressful, thanks to the thick foliage and somewhat hilly terrain, but I thankfully survived unscathed.
With that, I began trudging northwest through the jungle, until it eventually gave way to open plains and savanna. The enormous savanna plateau I had crossed while filling in the far northwestern map came into view. I was fairly certain that there had been a village on the other side, so I headed towards it.
While descending the plateau, I found myself in this rather awkward situation:
Surely I wouldn't miss the water, right?
I jumped.
I then swam back up to the surface, turned around and ... oh my goodness.
Better move quickly! I already had to consider myself lucky for not being stabbed by a trident; dripstone aquifers are a haven for drowned zombies.
Here's a view of the opening in the morning; notice the smaller ones nearby as well (most of them likely led to the same cavern).
After crossing a complex river system, the expected village came into sight. Time to do some business!
It was here that I realized I had made a mistake: I hadn't brought sufficient emeralds for the trading process. In order to level up a cartographer to Apprentice level, I needed just over a stack of emeralds (70, if I remember correctly) to purchase the required ten empty maps. Unfortunately, I only had exactly a stack of emeralds in my ender chest.
I rechecked it, still disbelieving that I had made this mistake ... and found something else. A stack of paper to sell! (I always keep paper in my ender chest for crafting extra fireworks.)
Well, eventually, the cartographer leveled up and offered the desired trade. I had two compasses in my ender chest, so finding my way back home without reference to coordinates still shouldn't be a problem.
And now, time to set out for real.
My marker on the map was tiny, which signified that I was thousands of blocks away from the hot dry zone. I couldn't be certain if it was the nearest one, though, since explorer maps don't always lead to the nearest structure in question (in this case, a desert village). Or there may have been a desert nearby that simply lacked a village, who knows.
Heading northeast, I soon came to a river, where the flat, open plains gave way to forested hills. While that would generally annoy me in a typical exploration, the opposite was true today. Even better, I should (?) be past the boundary of previously loaded chunks by now.
Seeing this confirmed my speculations.
I spent the rest of the afternoon gathering as much leaf litter as possible, and by the next morning, I had three stacks of the stuff.
I then climbed the hill, entering an old growth birch forest, where I collected three stacks of this:
Three stacks of everything! Yeah, we'll be spending quite a bit of time in this area.
Here's a rather large but unremarkable ravine I noticed while collecting the wildflowers.
Something else I found here was my first fallen tree, which I'd often wondered why hadn't been a feature in Java Edition. But better late than never, I suppose? Now all we need is a revampment for the living trees!
Continuing on, I soon came to a river canyon, on the other side of which was a small area of dark forest. A temperate and humid climate ... I don't think we'll be finding a desert anytime soon ... but that was okay, since it would enable me to find more of the new blocks like the much-coveted firefly bush.
The woodland itself soon gave way to meadow, and a small spruce grove was nearby too. While it technically wasn't a mountain in itself, it did hint at a mountainous region.
While crossing the river canyon, I found the aforementioned firefly bush.
As well as something not so great. They didn't seem to notice me though, since I was far out of range.
Upon reaching the top of the plateau, I was treated to a lovely view of the wildflower-dotted meadow and the spruce grove behind it.
I think (?) I checked the latter for snowy wolves, but didn't find any (as expected). I already had one at home, though, so that was fine.
To the east was this lonely pair of cherry trees backed up by oak forest ...
... but turning north revealed magnificent scenery. This place very much resembled the landscape to the immediate southwest of Sunflower Valley, with a river and oak forest on one side, a cherry grove on the other and a snowy mountain in the background.
As if that wasn't enough ... there were sunflower plains to the south of the cherry grove too!
But not everything is as pleasant as it seems at first glance. Within the heart of the cherry grove hid a chasm of horror.
There was a similar-shaped cave opening several dozen blocks away from Pondside Inn, but it was nowhere near as wide or deep.
I proceeded to ascend the frozen mountain, which allowed me to capture some nice shots of the cherry grove and surrounding expanse of oak and birch forest below. The mountain itself wasn't all that remarkable, only peaking at approximately y:150.
Further on, I was extremely shocked to see this:
A taiga?! I seriously had to double-check my debug screen to confirm I was travelling in the right direction. I had been expecting the desert to be far away, but not far enough that I would have to travel along the climate spectrum towards the opposite end and then back again. Regardless, I should still be nearing a desert, I supposed. Even if it didn't look like it.
While I was here, I decided to gather a stack of ferns for future decorative needs. The long, winding rivers also offered a great opportunity to supply myself with firefly bushes. Though they're duplicable by bonemealing, I wanted to have a good number to start with.
I also came across a very small area of old growth spruce taiga, but it was unfortunately void of wolves.
I must admit to being rather annoyed when I spotted a pack of pale wolves right on the other side of the river, in the normal taiga forest.
Continuing on, I could see the taiga already transitioning back to temperate forests to the northeast, a sign that I was approaching a warm zone. Well, a mountainous region too, indicated by the spruce groves in the far distance. The relatively flat and easy terrain was already ending.
There were quite a few interesting cave openings scattered about here, the last of which was truly impressive.
(That poor birch tree ...)
Heading up towards the jagged mountains, I was soon subjected to crossing another steep river canyon. Beyond it was a pillager outpost, but I was unwilling to spend the time on it. Perhaps I should have, as the chests occasionally contain a goat horn.
Gorgeous allium meadow though!
To the east were more mountain groves, surrounded by temperate oak forest and plains.
Turning north, I was treated to a nice little surprise.
Not only had I finally reached a warm zone, I'd now also found my first pale garden in this world. Here's another biome to count towards the Adventuring Time advancement!
I briefly explored it for any exposed creaking hearts but didn't find any. Since I already had the pale oak saplings, wood and moss at home, and wasn't particularly interested in resin anyway, I didn't spend too long here.
No harm in gathering these eyeblossoms first ...
(Well, as long as I don't plant them at my base; open eyeblossoms are apparently poisonous to bees.)
To the northwest was a sprawling plateau topped with birch and pale forest, with a small stretch of dark forest below it.
Continuing on through the jungle, an enormous area of exposed stone caught my attention. Upon a closer look, it turned out to be a dripstone "cave". I've noticed that this particular phenomena of "exposed cave biome" (which also happens with lush caves) seems to occur exclusively in jungle biomes, but it's probably a simple coincidence.
I got a cyan parrot around here but failed to take the taming screenshot. Although I did get some of other inhabitants of the jungle:
... including a second cyan parrot which I tamed. Neither of them had been particularly greedy.
After crossing through alternating strips of bamboo and sparse jungle, I came to the edge of a river and ...
We did it. After over a thousand days in this world, I'd finally found the first hot dry zone. Not particularly impressive time-wise (especially considering that this wasn't even a mapping expedition, and I knew where I was going), but it was still a fairly exciting day for me.
Now I just needed to gather some of the badlands / desert-unique 1.21.5 blocks (namely cactus flower and dry grass) and find a striped wolf.
I've noticed "open to the air caves" like that before with dripstone or lush caves. Maybe not as large as that one though. I'm fairly sure I've seen them in a number of biomes, like savanna and plains but I never kept track. I always figured them to be some peculiarity that can just happen.