Hey there! Welcome to my first (and probably only) hardcore world journal. I will post updates on my first long-term hardcore world. I have played hardcore before, but I'm hoping that posting on here and engaging with people will give me the energy and motivation to continue the world, even if I stop for a while. I think committing to documenting the entire process of a world will help me reign in my focus on the game and allow me to be emotionally attached to it; ironic considering the volatile conditions of the playthrough.
I'm going to try to keep my explanation and thoughts about this world and why I'm doing this (a preamble, if you will) as succinct as possible, but I will go in depth on some things if I feel it's necessary or just fun.
1. Obviously, I am playing on Hardcore only. The intention here is to force me to engage not only with this individual world, but with the game itself on a deeper level than I ever have.
1a. For how much I love talking and learning about this game, I don't spend enough time actually engaging with it beyond a few weeks of playtime I will have sporadically with friends every year or so.
2. I am playing on Fabric 1.21.4 with only performance enhancing mods installed (Sodium, Lithium, FerriteCore, etc.. basically anything at the top of the Modrinth mod page), along with AppleSkin, which is a QOL food GUI mod.
2apple. If you don't know, Appleskin shows you more info about food on your health and hunger meters, including how many hearts, hunger, and saturation an item in your hand will restore, how much saturation you currently have, and how long until you lose your next saturation point. This may sound a little cheaty, but I don't have an issue with being able to see stuff that I already know that the game hides from you by default.
2b. All of this is to say I intend for this to be as vanilla of an experience as possible. I may consider applying shaders or messing around with resource packs here and there (with the exception of two, I'll talk about that in the screenshots), but for all intents and purposes, this is supposed to just be regular Minecraft.
3. Like I said before, I really want to get emotionally invested in a Minecraft world. Trying to be more active on the forums made me realize that there is much more of a community that is present and active than I initially perceived- one that is dedicated to exploring and breathing life into this 15 year old game. This has motivated me to try and sink my teeth back into this game, and become invested in it like I was when I was younger.
4. I can't guarantee any consistency for journal updates, this is more or less just a personal experiment that I felt would be fun to share with a bunch of strangers. I may go days or weeks without posting, but as I stated, this will hopefully guide me to a place where I feel comfortable committing to the same world over a long period of time (so long as I don't face an untimely death).
5. That's really about it! I'm not imposing any restrictions or extra rules, I just want to explore this game for everything that it can offer.
If you feel inclined to be a part of this journey, please don't hesitate to be active on this thread. I am really enjoying my time on this forum and I would like to interact with as many people as possible.
Here are a few screenshots to get started! It's currently super late when I'm making this so my first few moments aren't going to be anything too amazing, but I wanted to share a few things either way.
DISCLAIMER: I have no idea what's going wrong with my Imgur direct image links, but they get screwed up every time I try to fix or edit them back in. I'll consolidate what screenshots are missing from this initial post into another once I figure out what I'm doing wrong. If anyone can help please let me know. thx!
I love Hardcore and I'm really excited to read your journal! But you need to fix your tags. The post editing software is a mess. Somehow your img tags got wrapped in url tags or quotes. You want something like (testing here)
That's from (img)h11ps://i.imgur.com/WVXhBjz.png(/img) but with parentheses replaced with braces and http spelled correctly.
You can't use the imgur landing page. I got the address by clicking on the image in the imgur page and selecting "copy link" and using that as the image source. I find the edit software here really bad and eventually ended up learning the necessary markup language (basically just img and url tags) editing my posts in a text editor, and pasting them in.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
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.
You can't use the imgur landing page. I got the address by clicking on the image in the imgur page and selecting "copy link" and using that as the image source. I find the edit software here really bad and eventually ended up learning the necessary markup language (basically just img and url tags) editing my posts in a text editor, and pasting them in.
holy hell dude, the edit software is crazy broken on here. my webpage has crashed every time I've tried to make an edit. I have something up there now, but it's really frustrating to have to work like this to make it work the way i want. ill try again on a different thread post soon. thanks for your help
And one more thing: If *just one* img tags is messed up (spelled ing, or with an extra space) then NONE of the images will post correctly. So just to make sure you've got it right you might want to start with a one image post.
Sorry the editing here is so messed up! Both for me and for you.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
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.
It's fine to journal a world without adopting a strict update schedule, so long as you are enjoying the process of gameplay and write-up. It may not appeal as much if you are in a rush to get everything done quickly.
You can't control your commitment, so even if you start something and later don't decide to continue, that's fine. I recently took a break from my world for over half a year (didn't feel that long...), and I started threads for worlds that ultimately got put on indefinite hold. That's how it goes.
Nothing is cheating if that's how you decide to play. Hardcore is nothing but the game locked to hard difficulty and no respawning, but it's otherwise just Minecraft. Some people play with restrictions, like myself, as I found that to inject some excitement into the game, but others play with mods or things that grant advantages for quality of life reasons, and that's fine.
As for the image difficulty... yeah, forum software largely went backwards in the early to mid-2010s in my opinion, and this forum switched software around that time and is probably one of the worst examples of that. I ran into page freezes like you, and as Zeno pointed out, it ended up being because I used an incorrect closing tag...
...Which resulted in the software having an occurrence of runaway memory consumption and never finishing the process. Of course, the incorrect single tag was on me, but at worst that should result in a singular image not working, not all of them, and not issues with the forums software causing critical issues like that.
I really recommend switching away from the WYSIWYG (or the "rich editor") for better control, but you'll need to familiarize yourself with some tags for that. Since I started using forums before "rich editors" were a thing, I already knew them/preferred that anyway. I really wish there was a way to set the software to default to one editor because I have to manually change it every time and it's an minor but constant annoyance.
Also, you can edit a post only once per page load. On subsequent edit attempts, it gets stuck loading the editor. So if you need to edit it again, go back to the forum listing (or otherwise just navigate away from the thread), then enter the thread again, and it works.
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"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
Alright! Time to take another crack at this. I spent a few days away from this text editor to clear my mind. I think I'm ready to try this whole "posting links" thing again...
Before I get into it, I wanted to thank all of you guys for the help with the images. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who is experiencing this. When I was trying to figure it out on my own when I made that first post, it felt like I jumped into a pool without knowing how to swim. Now that I have a little more guidance, this whole thing should be a lot easier to make consistently.
Here's a nice photo of me waiting out the first night on top of a tree. I've never thought to try this until now, but it was highly effective for keeping danger away.
One thing I wanted to point out before I rage quit last post was the fact that I am using a resource pack called Programmer Art Fix. Despite it's criticisms, I actually like the "ugly" old art style, and this pack aims to replace every texture in the game with this old style, going beyond what the default Programmer Art resource pack does in the game, which is just replace textures for items that had old ones. It's a work in progress and a commendable effort, and I'm very curious to see what a lot of these new blocks and items will look like.
For the record, I don't dislike the new art style direction or anything, I just wanted to feel a little nostalgic and this was a cool pack I saw when I was on Modrinth downloading the mods for this new playthrough.
Here's a comparison between the default Programmer Art pack (top) and the Fixed version (bottom).
Just to give credence to the idea that I think this old art can be unappealing and is in no way completely better than the new textures, here's a picture of this ruined nether portal.
Now, I know crying obsidian was removed very early on, but this does not match the obsidian texture AT ALL. However, I think I find more value in viewing this for what it is rather than what it's not. And what it is... is completely ridiculous and silly looking.
Here's a nice photo of this bamboo forest I found.
I don't like taming wolves right away especially when I don't have a house setup, I don't want them to die out in the wilderness. But I decided to settle down right around where I found them, so no big. I'm not sure what to call it yet. Any suggestions?
I have officially decided where my first house is going to be. I don't usually build multiple houses, but I'm open to the idea of it because I intend for this to be a lasting world. We'll see what happens!
One cool thing about being in a place bordering a bunch of biomes is that stuff like this happens. Sheep, pigs, cows, and armadillos all in the same place.
Have you guys ever chopped trees from the top down? I like doing it in the dark oak forest because of how easily it is to walk around on top of the trees.
I also found a really tall mushroom.
I wanna give some credit to this pack I'm using, the fact that all of the ores have a different look and are not all the same old uniform texture is super cool and goes to show that the person who made this is thinking about what benefits a new look for the game brings.
That's all for now!
I want to thank Zeno specifically for helping me understand the formatting with the images. As far as I can tell, the issue I was having was that I was using the "insert/edit link" feature rather than just pasting in the links as plaintext. As per your guys' recommendations, I wrote and formatted this whole post in plaintext using Notepad, then copied and pasted Imgur's BBCode links into that plaintext doc, then pasted the entire thing into a single post. I'm definitely not afraid to get my hands dirty when it comes to learning about how stuff like this works in more detail, but doing everything in Notepad seems to work well enough. Thanks again and see you guys soon!
Oh! Oh! I know the answer to this one! For the dog name... it's Vivi...
(That's just what I always say though.)
I would have been too terrified to stay in a tree over night. I always seek sheep out right away, and if that fails, I dig into the side of the terrain and block it off (usually with a door) for the first night.
And what's up with the really tall mushrooms? I was just exploring a dark oak forest last night in my world and saw a couple really tall ones like that and I had to stop and go "wait... was that always possible and I never noticed it?" and now that you mention it, I am wondering if it's a more recent change. I didn't see any in my 1.8 world, and I recently updated my latest world from 1.20.1 to 1.21.3 and I don't even think I saw any tall ones before that update either. So... is this that recent of a change... or am I just that bad on noticing some things before?
I usually mine jungle trees from the top town. I would for the large spruce trees too. Basically, any of the tall trees, which is those two. Most other trees, I do from the bottom, but dark oak and mangrove (this one almost requires hoes or shears for leaf clearing) are two that I sometimes do both ways.
Even if you prefer the older textures, you don't need to justify it if you feel it's the unpopular preference. Everyone has their "sticking points" on what they prefer, and sometimes it isn't the most popular opinion. That's still fine. It's all subjective. Maybe it's old combat. Maybe it's old textures. Maybe it's old versions entirely. Or maybe it's "minor" things to others that are hard to get over for you, like for me, with how the lack of antialiasing is almost a deal breaker (and it becomes harder to get working satisfactorily in older versions). It seems ironic since Minecraft is blocky, but if anything, I feel like it needs anti-aliasing more than most games. The "clarity-yet-smoothness" and lack of "noise" in Bedrock screenshots (or in Java ones with anti-aliasing) are night and day to me compared to the default Java game. In a world where change exists, we will always have pain points we have to deal with, but at least Minecraft is a popular game with a rich history of updates and a large community, so... finding solutions (even if partial) is usually more likely. Although it becomes more difficult finding solutions for things with older versions, unfortunately.
As for the image thing (despite doing it so often, it's so second nature that I sometimes forget the details...), I think Imgur gives you a handful of links, and one will be the "direct" one, and one will be the "for forums" one with the "img" tags. If you use the rich editor, even just the direct link without the tags will automatically be converted to an image (I think... it's been a while since I used that editor for anything more than short replies and it probably shows). For the alternative editor though, you'll want to link with the tags.
And you'll need to ensure you get the direct link for the particular image. A lot of people upload a single image at the time and then take the "album" link, which doesn't work as an image (it will work as a link but then it will just show as a link which needs clicked).
It probably sounds complicated being described... but it should become really simple once you understand it little by little.
And what's up with the really tall mushrooms? I was just exploring a dark oak forest last night in my world and saw a couple really tall ones like that and I had to stop and go "wait... was that always possible and I never noticed it?" and now that you mention it, I am wondering if it's a more recent change. I didn't see any in my 1.8 world, and I recently updated my latest world from 1.20.1 to 1.21.3 and I don't even think I saw any tall ones before that update either. So... is this that recent of a change... or am I just that bad on noticing some things before?
It's funny, I had pretty much the same exact experience. The only reason I thought to point it out was because I genuinely don't think I've ever seen a mushroom that tall. In the last world I played with my friends, we lived on and around a few mushroom islands (really weird, I know) and in all of my years of playing I could never recall seeing something like that.
You'd think it wouldn't jump out at you if you've seen it before, but it did catch my eye, and I thought to myself "Have they always been able to grow this large???" Based on my wiki findings, it looks like it may or may not have been added in 1.10. The history table just says, "1.10 - Huge mushrooms can now generate or grow much taller, matching the height from Pocket Edition." This doesn't specifically refer to their ability to grow twice as large as they normally are, which is a documented feature on the wiki, but that's probably it.
Even if you prefer the older textures, you don't need to justify it if you feel it's the unpopular preference.
Yeah... I think the internet has warped my expectations of how people act online. I went into a lot of detail on my justification for the textures because I think I've kind of been conditioned to assume everyone on the internet is always looking to be angry or pick a fight, so I just go on the defensive immediately. I should probably let my guard down, lol. You guys are supportive and just genuinely positive, it feels a little odd honestly- in a good way.
I know what you mean about the anti-aliasing, I'll occasionally boot up bedrock to play with some friends sometimes and bedrock always looks and feels noticeably... smoother(?) than Java. It never made a difference to me, but I could see why it might be a deal breaker for some. It's not hurting anyone, just a matter of personal preference.
As for the image thing (despite doing it so often, it's so second nature that I sometimes forget the details...), I think Imgur gives you a handful of links, and one will be the "direct" one, and one will be the "for forums" one with the "img" tags. If you use the rich editor, even just the direct link without the tags will automatically be converted to an image (I think... it's been a while since I used that editor for anything more than short replies and it probably shows). For the alternative editor though, you'll want to link with the tags.
And you'll need to ensure you get the direct link for the particular image. A lot of people upload a single image at the time and then take the "album" link, which doesn't work as an image (it will work as a link but then it will just show as a link which needs clicked).
It probably sounds complicated being described... but it should become really simple once you understand it little by little.
If I remember, the direct copy link from imgur pasted into the rich editor seemed to not work for me, and honestly pasting the forum link directly into the rich editor didn't work either. The only way I managed to make the images appear as I was creating the post was by pasting the BBCode (forum link) for each photo into the notepad doc and then directly into the rich editor. Based on what you guys have told me, it seems like that might be an extra unnecessary step, but again I was messing around with it and nothing else seemed to work except that. I'll give it a whirl when I make another post.
So, I can confirm that I don't pay attention to small details very well all the time.
I set up and started a world in 1.10, and found that large mushrooms can indeed grow very large in that version. I found a large Red one with a stem that was 9 blocks tall (plus whatever was the canopy, so two or three more), and this is about the same height of the one that originally caught my attention in recent versions.
So... I don't know why I didn't notice it before? I didn't exactly play new worlds created in 1.10+ often, but still. There was one in 1.16, and a few in 1.18+, so I have encountered the biome enough to where I should have noticed it). Perhaps my recent experience in 1.8 was fresh on my mind, where they couldn't yet grow that large.
When I saw it the other night, I was about to think nothing about it and figured maybe it was just another case of where I didn't notice something until well after the fact, but when you mentioned the same thing, I thought there had to be something to it. Well.. it seems that something is nothing more than the Mandela effect.
And unfortunately, many people feel like they are justified in their ways if they argue them with others who disagree. In other words, by arguing their point, it validates it to themselves. They're arguing to convince themselves, not anyone else. Arguments aren't inherently bad (and can sometimes be good), but if they change from mere exchanges of information to arguing for the sole sake of being right (or with personal slants mixed in), that's when they lose any good merit. Many people might just be intending to explain their reasoning for their stance (since most discussions are supposed to be exchanges of information, after all), so it's not always for the purpose of picking a fight. That being said, that definitely exists too. That's always been part of the internet insofar as I remember it, probably because anonymity lends to making it less personal and thus easier to be more detached and careless.
Ha, that might explain my interest in these sorts of threads (or the gameplay updates in the general "what have you done" thread). I can't always reply to everything I read but it's interesting reading what others do and hearing the stories on why.
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"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
Ha, that might explain my interest in these sorts of threads
With one notable exception ("all you do is post statistics", which only shows you've never even read them, I even put in extra effort to show more than just caving, delaying updates until I had an interesting biome, terrain, structures, mob, etc to report, and even seeing gigantic caves lit up has to be interesting given nobody else has even ever explored a similar cave in 1.18, or in such a thorough way, I bet (well, because nobody cares about them, to them the game is just "Buildcraft"). I also wonder, did you ever notice that somebody else tried playing on TMCW, or did you (and all the others here, Zeno410 being the only exception and they took a break) just blank out when seeing "TheMasterCaver's World" in the title? Fact is, I'm on the very verge of simply abandoning this place, as I already have at any further attempts at Survival journals, the fact nobody has noticed the cessation of updates is even more telling; meanwhile, on Reddit I've found whole communities of like-minded individuals, none of this arguing over "1.8 is so good because the one single metric that matters is chunk rendering speed", while everybody else says older versions perform better; example1, example2 (they do note that 1.6 has its own issues, e.g. zombie lag, but not as bad overall as modern versions), example3, example4 (language warning, yes, they hate it that much), etc.
So, we'd be getting a bit off topic and I definitely don't want to detract from the purpose of this thread itself (I don't mind random discussion going on in threads for my worlds but I don't know whether others mind), but this sounds like something I should address. I sometimes take things to private with you when they're off topic, because that's what should be done, but you ignore me when I do (which is a bit ironic considering your main complaint here), so...
First off, if you would be more happy spending your time doing one thing rather than doing another thing, then do the one that makes you happier. I would be very sad to see less of you around (you can't even say I haven't gone out of my way on multiple occasions to express this...) but I understand that we all have a finite amount of time and we should do with it what makes us the most happy. So if being in a place where more like-minded people interact makes you happier, then go there. That prospect is usually appealing to all of us because we want to interact more with things that interests us the most, but I think being in places with a larger variety of opinions and content is overall more rewarding than ones where echo chambers end up reinforcing confirmation bias, and sometimes rejecting alternative views. That tends to be the case on Reddit, especially the less broad and more niche communities. The only problem with the forums here, which is a major one mind you, is the overall lack of activity (and the moderation's stance on closing threads due to age even if nothing is otherwise wrong which just drives engagement further away, and I've raised my own concerns with that one), so I wouldn't blame you if you left over that.
And yes, I thought I've noticed you spending less time around. The fact that nobody has announced it (why would someone, and where?) doesn't mean they haven't noticed it. Nor does it mean they are happy with it.
When I said "these sorts of threads interest me", that was referring to survival worlds that are more focused on typical survival aspects (like progression, building, exploring, and so on). Ones that I can catch from the start, ones that are more commonly updated, and ones that are hardcore (though this one in particular is not at all a requirement) tend to interest me a bit more on top of that.
After all, do you not think your own gameplay style is incredibly unique? I would say it is.
Do you not think it is especially focused on caving and stats? I would say it is.
There's other long term or survival world threads, and ones that more match what I'm describing, that I don't read and/or reply to as often either. This and this are two other good examples; do you see me replying to them regularly? Not really. These types of threads can take a lot of time and attention to genuinely follow; even the few survival threads I follow, along with maintaining my own (I'm already finished with the region I'm still updating!), is a lot. I understand that, and it's why I wouldn't take it personal if my own threads had fewer or even no replies. As it is, my threads often only get a few people replying, and often the same ones. You need an innate willingness to show your progress regardless of the amount of feedback, even if others responding makes it more encouraging. If it hinges on that, then you probably won't find it worthwhile. A lack of replies, especially on this forum in 2025, and especially to your threads/worlds which often (always?) have a very unique play style, shouldn't be taken as anything personal. This forum is more of an "archive" so the threads may still get people reading it beyond what the up front replies suggest. Not a lot though, no. The forums more active days are simply passed.
Now yes, its true that I would be more interested in your worlds/threads it if it were done in a more "typical" survival fare. I've expressed things like wanting to see you play a world in a more typical way (even if it was still caving focused, but also did more of other things), and I've even extended that interest to seeing you play newer versions. At the same time, I know your interests differ from most players and that either of those things was very unlikely, so I never pushed you to do things you wouldn't want to do... but you can't claim I exclusively avoid you because I don't like you or something when I've explicitly been begging and teasing that I'd look forward to seeing those from you. I also expressed wanting to try it myself for that reason (because I figured nobody else would and you seemed interested in seeing it). There's simply been a lot of barriers that have prevented me from doing so, unfortunately, and most of them seem to come down to TMCW being based on an old version that has a number of issues for me. Those alone are one thing, but even ignoring that, doing my own world is already heavy on time, so there's that angle too. Otherwise, if you or someone else played your world in a more "traditional" matter and made a thread on it, and one that I could follow from the start and was somewhat commonly updated, then I'd probably be following along all the same as I do most others. So no, it's not like I have a dislike for either you or TMCW. I can't claim I'd like everything about TMCW, and in fact, there's many things I know I wouldn't... but I'd willing to either try it in a limited capacity or at least follow a world covering it in survival all the same as any other thread.
none of this arguing over "1.8 is so good because the one single metric that matters is chunk rendering speed", while everybody else says older versions perform better
You sometimes have this tendency to take things I say and spin them another way.
"This particular thing matters pretty greatly to me" does not mean "this is all that objectively matters".
"You gameplay/threads focus a lot on caving and statistics" does not mean "all you do is post statistics".
"I don't have issues finding resources in caves" does not mean "this is the most resources have ever been". (How did you mistake that one!?)
You'll often argue a point I'm not even making, but you don't seen to understand that. So some of these "arguments" are of your own creation.
As for the performance part, I have stated that performance is not a monolith but that it is a variety of things. It's not lost on me why everyone has different experiences here. I will simply state that that one of those things matters a lot to me, and I will state that the other aspects, even if they may be lower/worse (like world creation time or overall frame rates in specific circumstances), remain at good enough levels, resulting in an overall better experience for me. What is there to even argue about that? I'm not saying that everyone is better, or for everyone. I'm doing nothing more than making statements of my findings and experiences (and even demonstrating them, and you've seen this).
Out of curiosity though, did you address this in any way with TMCW? Like, does it have some sort of multi-threaded chunk rendering functionality to improve that performance aspect (or otherwise any other changes that speed chunk rendering compared to vanilla 1.6)? Because if so, why are you even raising objections to me highlighting its importance?
Anyway... if you ever want to talk, and for anything, I'm available. You know that because I've tried; you were the one who didn't. Most of what you're mentioning here seems to come down to "I don't have fun here because there's less people who share my interest than elsewhere". If that's the case, and you've found somewhere where you have more fun, I'd recommend doing that instead... but that's because it would be something that is better for you. Don't think for a moment it's because I don't particular care about seeing you around. I can't speak for anyone else, of course (but this was raised towards me, so I'm responding).
I don't want to be rude in this particular thread so I'll leave it at that.
MasterCaver, I'd hate to see you go, although I understand the loss of interest with low reply activity. As I've said, I journal primarily for myself, and I'd keep blogging here to an empty room, but that's me.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
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.
Glad you got your issues straightened out! So glad to have been of service.
I have had trouble first nighting on tree tops. I have had problems with both skeletons and zombies, although a lot of the time there's no trouble at all.
I'm pretty impressed you have the bones to tame wolves so early. Dogs are useful early because they'll fight for you when fighting is still pretty risky. It can be heartbreaking to lose them, yes, but better them than you (something that has happened to many in real life as well).
I have giant trees in my mods and there's almost no choice but to chop them from the top. I'd do it with vanilla Dark Oaks because of the improved security (nothing walking up behind you).
I think getting the right texture pack can be a huge boon. I haven't lately, because I use mods, and they aren't usually textured. But a good texture pack does so much for the feel of the game. I used to be a big fan of the John Smith family.
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.
Hey there! Welcome to my first (and probably only) hardcore world journal. I will post updates on my first long-term hardcore world. I have played hardcore before, but I'm hoping that posting on here and engaging with people will give me the energy and motivation to continue the world, even if I stop for a while. I think committing to documenting the entire process of a world will help me reign in my focus on the game and allow me to be emotionally attached to it; ironic considering the volatile conditions of the playthrough.
I'm going to try to keep my explanation and thoughts about this world and why I'm doing this (a preamble, if you will) as succinct as possible, but I will go in depth on some things if I feel it's necessary or just fun.
1. Obviously, I am playing on Hardcore only. The intention here is to force me to engage not only with this individual world, but with the game itself on a deeper level than I ever have.
2. I am playing on Fabric 1.21.4 with only performance enhancing mods installed (Sodium, Lithium, FerriteCore, etc.. basically anything at the top of the Modrinth mod page), along with AppleSkin, which is a QOL food GUI mod.
3. Like I said before, I really want to get emotionally invested in a Minecraft world. Trying to be more active on the forums made me realize that there is much more of a community that is present and active than I initially perceived- one that is dedicated to exploring and breathing life into this 15 year old game. This has motivated me to try and sink my teeth back into this game, and become invested in it like I was when I was younger.
4. I can't guarantee any consistency for journal updates, this is more or less just a personal experiment that I felt would be fun to share with a bunch of strangers. I may go days or weeks without posting, but as I stated, this will hopefully guide me to a place where I feel comfortable committing to the same world over a long period of time (so long as I don't face an untimely death).
5. That's really about it! I'm not imposing any restrictions or extra rules, I just want to explore this game for everything that it can offer.
If you feel inclined to be a part of this journey, please don't hesitate to be active on this thread. I am really enjoying my time on this forum and I would like to interact with as many people as possible.
Here are a few screenshots to get started! It's currently super late when I'm making this so my first few moments aren't going to be anything too amazing, but I wanted to share a few things either way.
DISCLAIMER: I have no idea what's going wrong with my Imgur direct image links, but they get screwed up every time I try to fix or edit them back in. I'll consolidate what screenshots are missing from this initial post into another once I figure out what I'm doing wrong. If anyone can help please let me know. thx!
https:/i.imgur.com/bE6KRZo.png
Here's the initial spawn area! A snowy plains spawn surrounded by ice and forests.
https:/i.imgur.com/WVXhBjz.png
A tiny bit of progress in the form of getting stone tools, iron, and making a campfire.
https://imgur.com/rgV79Hb
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Curse PremiumI love Hardcore and I'm really excited to read your journal! But you need to fix your tags. The post editing software is a mess. Somehow your img tags got wrapped in url tags or quotes. You want something like (testing here)
That's from (img)h11ps://i.imgur.com/WVXhBjz.png(/img) but with parentheses replaced with braces and http spelled correctly.
You can't use the imgur landing page. I got the address by clicking on the image in the imgur page and selecting "copy link" and using that as the image source. I find the edit software here really bad and eventually ended up learning the necessary markup language (basically just img and url tags) editing my posts in a text editor, and pasting them in.
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.
holy hell dude, the edit software is crazy broken on here. my webpage has crashed every time I've tried to make an edit. I have something up there now, but it's really frustrating to have to work like this to make it work the way i want. ill try again on a different thread post soon. thanks for your help
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Curse PremiumAnd one more thing: If *just one* img tags is messed up (spelled ing, or with an extra space) then NONE of the images will post correctly. So just to make sure you've got it right you might want to start with a one image post.
Sorry the editing here is so messed up! Both for me and for you.
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.
This regularly happens to me too. I find it useful to clear cache and then reload the page whenever I'm about to make an edit.
Yay, another world! I'm looking forward to this!
You can't control your commitment, so even if you start something and later don't decide to continue, that's fine. I recently took a break from my world for over half a year (didn't feel that long...), and I started threads for worlds that ultimately got put on indefinite hold. That's how it goes.
Nothing is cheating if that's how you decide to play. Hardcore is nothing but the game locked to hard difficulty and no respawning, but it's otherwise just Minecraft. Some people play with restrictions, like myself, as I found that to inject some excitement into the game, but others play with mods or things that grant advantages for quality of life reasons, and that's fine.
As for the image difficulty... yeah, forum software largely went backwards in the early to mid-2010s in my opinion, and this forum switched software around that time and is probably one of the worst examples of that. I ran into page freezes like you, and as Zeno pointed out, it ended up being because I used an incorrect closing tag...
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/forums/forum-discussion-info/3197203-pictures-arent-consistently-showing-conditional
...Which resulted in the software having an occurrence of runaway memory consumption and never finishing the process. Of course, the incorrect single tag was on me, but at worst that should result in a singular image not working, not all of them, and not issues with the forums software causing critical issues like that.
I really recommend switching away from the WYSIWYG (or the "rich editor") for better control, but you'll need to familiarize yourself with some tags for that. Since I started using forums before "rich editors" were a thing, I already knew them/preferred that anyway. I really wish there was a way to set the software to default to one editor because I have to manually change it every time and it's an minor but constant annoyance.
Also, you can edit a post only once per page load. On subsequent edit attempts, it gets stuck loading the editor. So if you need to edit it again, go back to the forum listing (or otherwise just navigate away from the thread), then enter the thread again, and it works.
"'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).
Alright! Time to take another crack at this. I spent a few days away from this text editor to clear my mind. I think I'm ready to try this whole "posting links" thing again...
Before I get into it, I wanted to thank all of you guys for the help with the images. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who is experiencing this. When I was trying to figure it out on my own when I made that first post, it felt like I jumped into a pool without knowing how to swim. Now that I have a little more guidance, this whole thing should be a lot easier to make consistently.
One thing I wanted to point out before I rage quit last post was the fact that I am using a resource pack called Programmer Art Fix. Despite it's criticisms, I actually like the "ugly" old art style, and this pack aims to replace every texture in the game with this old style, going beyond what the default Programmer Art resource pack does in the game, which is just replace textures for items that had old ones. It's a work in progress and a commendable effort, and I'm very curious to see what a lot of these new blocks and items will look like.
For the record, I don't dislike the new art style direction or anything, I just wanted to feel a little nostalgic and this was a cool pack I saw when I was on Modrinth downloading the mods for this new playthrough.
Here's a comparison between the default Programmer Art pack (top) and the Fixed version (bottom).
Just to give credence to the idea that I think this old art can be unappealing and is in no way completely better than the new textures, here's a picture of this ruined nether portal.
Now, I know crying obsidian was removed very early on, but this does not match the obsidian texture AT ALL. However, I think I find more value in viewing this for what it is rather than what it's not. And what it is... is completely ridiculous and silly looking.
Here's a nice photo of this bamboo forest I found.
I don't like taming wolves right away especially when I don't have a house setup, I don't want them to die out in the wilderness. But I decided to settle down right around where I found them, so no big. I'm not sure what to call it yet. Any suggestions?
I have officially decided where my first house is going to be. I don't usually build multiple houses, but I'm open to the idea of it because I intend for this to be a lasting world. We'll see what happens!
One cool thing about being in a place bordering a bunch of biomes is that stuff like this happens. Sheep, pigs, cows, and armadillos all in the same place.
Have you guys ever chopped trees from the top down? I like doing it in the dark oak forest because of how easily it is to walk around on top of the trees.
I also found a really tall mushroom.
I wanna give some credit to this pack I'm using, the fact that all of the ores have a different look and are not all the same old uniform texture is super cool and goes to show that the person who made this is thinking about what benefits a new look for the game brings.
That's all for now!
I want to thank Zeno specifically for helping me understand the formatting with the images. As far as I can tell, the issue I was having was that I was using the "insert/edit link" feature rather than just pasting in the links as plaintext. As per your guys' recommendations, I wrote and formatted this whole post in plaintext using Notepad, then copied and pasted Imgur's BBCode links into that plaintext doc, then pasted the entire thing into a single post. I'm definitely not afraid to get my hands dirty when it comes to learning about how stuff like this works in more detail, but doing everything in Notepad seems to work well enough. Thanks again and see you guys soon!
Oh! Oh! I know the answer to this one! For the dog name... it's Vivi...
(That's just what I always say though.)
I would have been too terrified to stay in a tree over night. I always seek sheep out right away, and if that fails, I dig into the side of the terrain and block it off (usually with a door) for the first night.
And what's up with the really tall mushrooms? I was just exploring a dark oak forest last night in my world and saw a couple really tall ones like that and I had to stop and go "wait... was that always possible and I never noticed it?" and now that you mention it, I am wondering if it's a more recent change. I didn't see any in my 1.8 world, and I recently updated my latest world from 1.20.1 to 1.21.3 and I don't even think I saw any tall ones before that update either. So... is this that recent of a change... or am I just that bad on noticing some things before?
I usually mine jungle trees from the top town. I would for the large spruce trees too. Basically, any of the tall trees, which is those two. Most other trees, I do from the bottom, but dark oak and mangrove (this one almost requires hoes or shears for leaf clearing) are two that I sometimes do both ways.
Even if you prefer the older textures, you don't need to justify it if you feel it's the unpopular preference. Everyone has their "sticking points" on what they prefer, and sometimes it isn't the most popular opinion. That's still fine. It's all subjective. Maybe it's old combat. Maybe it's old textures. Maybe it's old versions entirely. Or maybe it's "minor" things to others that are hard to get over for you, like for me, with how the lack of antialiasing is almost a deal breaker (and it becomes harder to get working satisfactorily in older versions). It seems ironic since Minecraft is blocky, but if anything, I feel like it needs anti-aliasing more than most games. The "clarity-yet-smoothness" and lack of "noise" in Bedrock screenshots (or in Java ones with anti-aliasing) are night and day to me compared to the default Java game. In a world where change exists, we will always have pain points we have to deal with, but at least Minecraft is a popular game with a rich history of updates and a large community, so... finding solutions (even if partial) is usually more likely. Although it becomes more difficult finding solutions for things with older versions, unfortunately.
As for the image thing (despite doing it so often, it's so second nature that I sometimes forget the details...), I think Imgur gives you a handful of links, and one will be the "direct" one, and one will be the "for forums" one with the "img" tags. If you use the rich editor, even just the direct link without the tags will automatically be converted to an image (I think... it's been a while since I used that editor for anything more than short replies and it probably shows). For the alternative editor though, you'll want to link with the tags.
And you'll need to ensure you get the direct link for the particular image. A lot of people upload a single image at the time and then take the "album" link, which doesn't work as an image (it will work as a link but then it will just show as a link which needs clicked).
It probably sounds complicated being described... but it should become really simple once you understand it little by little.
"'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 actually really like this name, I'll make it official when I find a name tag!
It's funny, I had pretty much the same exact experience. The only reason I thought to point it out was because I genuinely don't think I've ever seen a mushroom that tall. In the last world I played with my friends, we lived on and around a few mushroom islands (really weird, I know) and in all of my years of playing I could never recall seeing something like that.
You'd think it wouldn't jump out at you if you've seen it before, but it did catch my eye, and I thought to myself "Have they always been able to grow this large???" Based on my wiki findings, it looks like it may or may not have been added in 1.10. The history table just says, "1.10 - Huge mushrooms can now generate or grow much taller, matching the height from Pocket Edition." This doesn't specifically refer to their ability to grow twice as large as they normally are, which is a documented feature on the wiki, but that's probably it.
Yeah... I think the internet has warped my expectations of how people act online. I went into a lot of detail on my justification for the textures because I think I've kind of been conditioned to assume everyone on the internet is always looking to be angry or pick a fight, so I just go on the defensive immediately. I should probably let my guard down, lol. You guys are supportive and just genuinely positive, it feels a little odd honestly- in a good way.
I know what you mean about the anti-aliasing, I'll occasionally boot up bedrock to play with some friends sometimes and bedrock always looks and feels noticeably... smoother(?) than Java. It never made a difference to me, but I could see why it might be a deal breaker for some. It's not hurting anyone, just a matter of personal preference.
If I remember, the direct copy link from imgur pasted into the rich editor seemed to not work for me, and honestly pasting the forum link directly into the rich editor didn't work either. The only way I managed to make the images appear as I was creating the post was by pasting the BBCode (forum link) for each photo into the notepad doc and then directly into the rich editor. Based on what you guys have told me, it seems like that might be an extra unnecessary step, but again I was messing around with it and nothing else seemed to work except that. I'll give it a whirl when I make another post.
So, I can confirm that I don't pay attention to small details very well all the time.
I set up and started a world in 1.10, and found that large mushrooms can indeed grow very large in that version. I found a large Red one with a stem that was 9 blocks tall (plus whatever was the canopy, so two or three more), and this is about the same height of the one that originally caught my attention in recent versions.
So... I don't know why I didn't notice it before? I didn't exactly play new worlds created in 1.10+ often, but still. There was one in 1.16, and a few in 1.18+, so I have encountered the biome enough to where I should have noticed it). Perhaps my recent experience in 1.8 was fresh on my mind, where they couldn't yet grow that large.
When I saw it the other night, I was about to think nothing about it and figured maybe it was just another case of where I didn't notice something until well after the fact, but when you mentioned the same thing, I thought there had to be something to it. Well.. it seems that something is nothing more than the Mandela effect.
And unfortunately, many people feel like they are justified in their ways if they argue them with others who disagree. In other words, by arguing their point, it validates it to themselves. They're arguing to convince themselves, not anyone else. Arguments aren't inherently bad (and can sometimes be good), but if they change from mere exchanges of information to arguing for the sole sake of being right (or with personal slants mixed in), that's when they lose any good merit. Many people might just be intending to explain their reasoning for their stance (since most discussions are supposed to be exchanges of information, after all), so it's not always for the purpose of picking a fight. That being said, that definitely exists too. That's always been part of the internet insofar as I remember it, probably because anonymity lends to making it less personal and thus easier to be more detached and careless.
Ha, that might explain my interest in these sorts of threads (or the gameplay updates in the general "what have you done" thread). I can't always reply to everything I read but it's interesting reading what others do and hearing the stories on why.
"'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).
With one notable exception ("all you do is post statistics", which only shows you've never even read them, I even put in extra effort to show more than just caving, delaying updates until I had an interesting biome, terrain, structures, mob, etc to report, and even seeing gigantic caves lit up has to be interesting given nobody else has even ever explored a similar cave in 1.18, or in such a thorough way, I bet (well, because nobody cares about them, to them the game is just "Buildcraft"). I also wonder, did you ever notice that somebody else tried playing on TMCW, or did you (and all the others here, Zeno410 being the only exception and they took a break) just blank out when seeing "TheMasterCaver's World" in the title? Fact is, I'm on the very verge of simply abandoning this place, as I already have at any further attempts at Survival journals, the fact nobody has noticed the cessation of updates is even more telling; meanwhile, on Reddit I've found whole communities of like-minded individuals, none of this arguing over "1.8 is so good because the one single metric that matters is chunk rendering speed", while everybody else says older versions perform better; example1, example2 (they do note that 1.6 has its own issues, e.g. zombie lag, but not as bad overall as modern versions), example3, example4 (language warning, yes, they hate it that much), etc.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
*sigh*...
So, we'd be getting a bit off topic and I definitely don't want to detract from the purpose of this thread itself (I don't mind random discussion going on in threads for my worlds but I don't know whether others mind), but this sounds like something I should address. I sometimes take things to private with you when they're off topic, because that's what should be done, but you ignore me when I do (which is a bit ironic considering your main complaint here), so...
And yes, I thought I've noticed you spending less time around. The fact that nobody has announced it (why would someone, and where?) doesn't mean they haven't noticed it. Nor does it mean they are happy with it.
When I said "these sorts of threads interest me", that was referring to survival worlds that are more focused on typical survival aspects (like progression, building, exploring, and so on). Ones that I can catch from the start, ones that are more commonly updated, and ones that are hardcore (though this one in particular is not at all a requirement) tend to interest me a bit more on top of that.
After all, do you not think your own gameplay style is incredibly unique? I would say it is.
Do you not think it is especially focused on caving and stats? I would say it is.
There's other long term or survival world threads, and ones that more match what I'm describing, that I don't read and/or reply to as often either. This and this are two other good examples; do you see me replying to them regularly? Not really. These types of threads can take a lot of time and attention to genuinely follow; even the few survival threads I follow, along with maintaining my own (I'm already finished with the region I'm still updating!), is a lot. I understand that, and it's why I wouldn't take it personal if my own threads had fewer or even no replies. As it is, my threads often only get a few people replying, and often the same ones. You need an innate willingness to show your progress regardless of the amount of feedback, even if others responding makes it more encouraging. If it hinges on that, then you probably won't find it worthwhile. A lack of replies, especially on this forum in 2025, and especially to your threads/worlds which often (always?) have a very unique play style, shouldn't be taken as anything personal. This forum is more of an "archive" so the threads may still get people reading it beyond what the up front replies suggest. Not a lot though, no. The forums more active days are simply passed.
Now yes, its true that I would be more interested in your worlds/threads it if it were done in a more "typical" survival fare. I've expressed things like wanting to see you play a world in a more typical way (even if it was still caving focused, but also did more of other things), and I've even extended that interest to seeing you play newer versions. At the same time, I know your interests differ from most players and that either of those things was very unlikely, so I never pushed you to do things you wouldn't want to do... but you can't claim I exclusively avoid you because I don't like you or something when I've explicitly been begging and teasing that I'd look forward to seeing those from you. I also expressed wanting to try it myself for that reason (because I figured nobody else would and you seemed interested in seeing it). There's simply been a lot of barriers that have prevented me from doing so, unfortunately, and most of them seem to come down to TMCW being based on an old version that has a number of issues for me. Those alone are one thing, but even ignoring that, doing my own world is already heavy on time, so there's that angle too. Otherwise, if you or someone else played your world in a more "traditional" matter and made a thread on it, and one that I could follow from the start and was somewhat commonly updated, then I'd probably be following along all the same as I do most others. So no, it's not like I have a dislike for either you or TMCW. I can't claim I'd like everything about TMCW, and in fact, there's many things I know I wouldn't... but I'd willing to either try it in a limited capacity or at least follow a world covering it in survival all the same as any other thread.
You sometimes have this tendency to take things I say and spin them another way.
"This particular thing matters pretty greatly to me" does not mean "this is all that objectively matters".
"You gameplay/threads focus a lot on caving and statistics" does not mean "all you do is post statistics".
"I don't have issues finding resources in caves" does not mean "this is the most resources have ever been". (How did you mistake that one!?)
You'll often argue a point I'm not even making, but you don't seen to understand that. So some of these "arguments" are of your own creation.
As for the performance part, I have stated that performance is not a monolith but that it is a variety of things. It's not lost on me why everyone has different experiences here. I will simply state that that one of those things matters a lot to me, and I will state that the other aspects, even if they may be lower/worse (like world creation time or overall frame rates in specific circumstances), remain at good enough levels, resulting in an overall better experience for me. What is there to even argue about that? I'm not saying that everyone is better, or for everyone. I'm doing nothing more than making statements of my findings and experiences (and even demonstrating them, and you've seen this).
Out of curiosity though, did you address this in any way with TMCW? Like, does it have some sort of multi-threaded chunk rendering functionality to improve that performance aspect (or otherwise any other changes that speed chunk rendering compared to vanilla 1.6)? Because if so, why are you even raising objections to me highlighting its importance?
Anyway... if you ever want to talk, and for anything, I'm available. You know that because I've tried; you were the one who didn't. Most of what you're mentioning here seems to come down to "I don't have fun here because there's less people who share my interest than elsewhere". If that's the case, and you've found somewhere where you have more fun, I'd recommend doing that instead... but that's because it would be something that is better for you. Don't think for a moment it's because I don't particular care about seeing you around. I can't speak for anyone else, of course (but this was raised towards me, so I'm responding).
I don't want to be rude in this particular thread so I'll leave it at that.
"'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 PremiumMasterCaver, I'd hate to see you go, although I understand the loss of interest with low reply activity. As I've said, I journal primarily for myself, and I'd keep blogging here to an empty room, but that's me.
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.
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Curse PremiumGlad you got your issues straightened out! So glad to have been of service.
I have had trouble first nighting on tree tops. I have had problems with both skeletons and zombies, although a lot of the time there's no trouble at all.
I'm pretty impressed you have the bones to tame wolves so early. Dogs are useful early because they'll fight for you when fighting is still pretty risky. It can be heartbreaking to lose them, yes, but better them than you (something that has happened to many in real life as well).
I have giant trees in my mods and there's almost no choice but to chop them from the top. I'd do it with vanilla Dark Oaks because of the improved security (nothing walking up behind you).
I think getting the right texture pack can be a huge boon. I haven't lately, because I use mods, and they aren't usually textured. But a good texture pack does so much for the feel of the game. I used to be a big fan of the John Smith family.
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.