With the additions they've made to MCPE with version 0.9, I thought I might record my game experiences here. Some of you might find it interesting reading. I'm not adding pics just yet, but I figure I will eventually.
A bit about me first: I have never played the full PC version of Minecraft, only MCPE. So I'm seeing all this stuff for the first time. I don't enjoy Creative mode, so I only use it if i want to test a specific idea for a build first. I enjoy the challenge of Survival Mode, but I'm kinda glad they haven't added Hardcore mode yet. I still die, although not too often, fortunately.
I've only got one world going right now in v0.9. The seed is 'Arkel', which is also what I named the world. The starting biome is steep hills with rivers cutting all through it (sorry, not up on biome names yet).
Arkel locations:
I intend to connect all places with road as I explore. Road is laid two-wide of birch and oak half-slabs, with birch on one side and oak on the other. If I follow the road with birch on the right, it will lead me to Rackpoint (light on the right leads home).
Rackpoint:
My original spawn point, where the compass always points to. At the moment there isn't any surface construction, but the mines extend all the way to bedrock. Rackpoint is named for the Netherack workshop, and the tower I intend to build there eventually. In the place of the tower, there are two large spires so that wanderers can spot them from far away and use it for navigation. The Mansion: One of the fanciest house builds I've done (which isn't saying much, as I typically don't go in for fancy builds) Now with an attached Greenhouse. The Spire: An obsidian tower reaching up to the ceiling cap, with a dropshaft in the center of it going down almost to bedrock. Currently empty. Netherack workshop: I dug a hole at bedrock level big enough to hold an entire Netherack Fortress, with ledges all around it at different levels so it's easy to chop apart without risking climbing on the dangerous walls of the fortress. I intend to fashion the Tower out of netherbrick from this workshop. Netherack Workshop, v2: After a minor mistake in summoning a Netherack Fortress one block off-center wiped out one wall of ledges, I stripped the whole thing down and rebuilt it tighter, safer, and much prettier. The ledges are all a uniform 2 blocks in height, and recessed lava streams provide a nice even 360 degree lighting to the whole chamber. Marble slab catwalks provide access to the top of the Fortress while limiting the ability of mobs to try and swarm at me from the inside of the Fortress. They also catch fewer dropping blocks, so more of them fall into the water for collection. The ceiling has been capped in polished granite and well lit with a dozen Glowstones. Tearing down a Fortress shouldn't involve as many mobs now. Gravel pit: An area of collapsed gravel that I dug out that wound up extending all the way to bedrock. So far I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with the place, although animal pens or farms is a good possibility. I decided to play around and light the lower areas with flowing lava. Chirous Dam: A small dam blocking off a pond where sugarcane is grown.
Zediron(formerly Ironpit):
The first feature I found laying the road north. A steep pit at the top of a hill, it leads down into a winding cavern. It contains a fair amount of iron and coal. I may rename it though, since at the bottom of the caves I found a Zombie Spawner. Zombie Spawner: I'd never seen one of these before, and I died a couple of times clearing it out and figuring out how to keep it from flooding me in zombies. I'm just glad it wasn't Skeletons or Creepers. *shudder* I was lucky in that it was placed without a way for the zombies to leave the chamber, so I was able to get close enough to try smothering it in gravel. When that didn't work, I managed to place enough torches around the room to keep them from spawning. I'm playing around with ideas to farm the zombies for drops. Unfortunately, during my experiments I destroyed the spawner. Skeleton Spawner: I haven't proved it yet, but I'm pretty sure the Skeleton Spawner is in the same cave system as Zediron. It's a quick and easy source of bones and arrows.
Riverbed:
Just around the corner from Zediron, but not connected to it, I built the underwater town of Riverbed. I was inspired by a trip in one of my son's worlds where he drowned in a deep sea, and I had to go deep sea diving to retrieve all his stuff. That reminded me of some old underwater buildings I'd made, and I decided to build another one here in Arkel. Because I don't have any deep seas, I took the natural bottom of a river bend and replaced it with glass. The town follows that natural river path with narrow and wide spots for a more organic feel.
Grassland Grottos:
Further north from Zediron is a grassland biome containing a lot of cave systems that reach the surface, resulting in a lot of shallow cave systems. Most of them aren't very deep, but there are a couple that go deeper underground, and several remain unexplored. I plan on running a spruce path to the entrance of each cavern so they're easier to find. Konoso: Lying underneath the Grassland Grottos, this massive series of caverns is still not completely explored, and almost certainly extends all the way down to bedrock in places.
I'm working on collecting enough wool to use carpets to lay down guide markers throughout the caverns so that I'll be able to find my way out no matter how deep I go. Walking with white carpet on the right leads me back to the Spider Spawner. Black carpet on the right leads me to a dead end cavern that has been explored.
In this picture, you can see the two passages on the side lead toward the camera, while the center passage down leads away, toward the Spider Spawner. Cotton Mill: Although not apparently near the Grassland Grottos, this building is built directly over the Spider Spawner within Konoso, and is primarily concerned with milling the spiders for their string and sheep for their wool in order to make carpets of different colors in order to map out the labyrinthine caverns of Konoso.
Selvoscur:
A Taiga biome lying to the west of the Grassland Grottos, it seemed at first to be mostly empty other than spruce trees and mushrooms, but further exploration has revealed a few wolves and a couple of caverns that still need to be explored.
Belhatom:
The first village found in the world of Arkel, Belhatom is home to about a dozen villagers, 4 fields, 9 houses, a forge, and a castle.
Kivisi:
Another large cave system, discovered while exploring to the west-southwest from Rackpoint. So far only a portion of the upper reaches has been explored. Who knows what riches might lie inside?
Southern Plains:
South Fort: Far, far to the south from Rackpoint lies the creatively named South Fort. Originally a village, I attempted to wall it up so that the villagers couldn't escape. But they're slippery little rascals and soon almost all of them had jumped the wall and scampered off. So I labored a long time to create a series of one-way ditches around the whole place so that if they crossed the line they couldn't get back out. I eventually got most of them back, but there's been some attrition along the way, like when I forgot to turn off mobs and zombies started roaming throughout village. Right now I have all the surviving villagers locked inside a single well-lit building. I'm currently working on converting the cobblestone walls to smooth stone and will prettify it when I'm done. Yggdrasil: Constructed in an open plain off the walkway to South Fort, Yggdrasil is a massive tree made up of many different trees all growing together to reach the sky.
ArkRail: The ArkRail was constructed to speed up travel from RackPoint to South Fort. I expect some day I'll expand the ArkRail to go to different locations, but for now, those are the only two end stations.
I may rename Ironpit to Zed Caverns, or something combining the two, like IronZed. *shrug* (update: Zediron)
A comment on mobs and animals. So far, the only new mob I've seen is Endermen. They seem to be a nuisance, but not really dangerous. I think I've only ever been killed by one once. Of course, most encounters have been in caves with limited space for them to teleport in, so that may have affected it.
The normal mobs don't seem hugely more dangerous than in 0.8. It takes 5 hits from a stone sword to kill a zombie vs 3 in 0.8 (and it seems to take them longer to drown than before too). Skeletons might be more accurate than before, but that's hard to judge. I've been hurt by spiders more than normal, but that might be all the trees in the area giving them cover and jumping points than I'm used to. I haven't found any dogs, silverfish, slimes or anything else new.
Well, I found out that Spawners can be destroyed. They might be minable, but not with an Iron Pickaxe. Probably should have read the wiki to find the answer rather than by experimentation.
Man. I could have saved some effort digging the chamber for the Nether Fortress workshop if I'd done it in a different location. One of the natural caves leading to the surface under Rackpoint had been under suspended gravel, and I'd intentionally collapsed it so I wouldn't do it by accident some day and smother myself. Over this last weekend I finally started clearing that gravel out, and I reached the bedrock before I ran out of gravel. What's left is a mishmash of other rock hanging in random midair spots, and a LOT of good monster-spawning dark spots. I figure I'll work my way up from the bottom and dig all those out, but I'm not sure what I'll do with the hole that will result. Maybe put in some animal herds or something. I've already got a chicken pond that will collect the eggs for me once the water flow bug is fixed, but I sure wouldn't mind moving them away from where I normally work so I don't have to hear the constant swimming noises.
This is a awesome world! I like the names you give the places as you said they are highly original and are great for a person not experienced with the biome names you have added a realistic touch with those names! This is the first "Survival Diary" I have read based on MCPE I have read quite a few on PC edition this is by far a highlight I was wondering if I could do the same type of thing? also just a suggestion you should edit your already made original post and put all the pictures and further writing in the one post! Good Luck, CampbellPM
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Welcome to my signature here are the forums rules! Quote my posts and I will see them!
Thanks for the feedback, I just might rewrite it in that fashion. I haven't read any survival blogs for the PC edition, so I was making up my own format as I went.
I've extended the road north from Zediron and into some grasslands, where there are a lot of sinkhole caverns scattered about. I haven't come up with a good name for the area it yet. I took my son exploring westward from there and found a Taiga (I think) biome - evergreen trees, mushrooms, etc. So that's the next direction I'm going to send the road. I'm going to see if that wood is a different color, and maybe use it to do little offshoot paths from the main one to the entrances to all these sinkhole caverns.
For your amusement, here is a cow stuck under a road:
In it, you can also see my road style. Walking the road with the light wood on the right leads back to Rackpoint. Walking with it on the left heads away.
A few accomplishments today. I've laid road into the Taiga biome, which I will tentatively name Selvoscur (a spin off what might mean 'shaded forest' in Spanish, which I think is 'selva oscura'. Sorry, Spanish isn't my second language. ) Also, I managed to find a few wolves in there, and tamed two of them. Taming is difficult. Target and hold on them, and you're as likely to knock them over the head with the bone as you are to tame them. Try to get the Tame button to appear, and by the time you've moved your finger onto it, they've scampered deeper into the woods away from you.
Although I do have to admit that the wolf puppies are terminally cute to watch running.
Shown: the first two members of my pack:
You can also see a spruce road offshoot leading to one of the sinkhole caverns in the background there. I laid two of those roads as well. Nothing spectacular, just making sure everything is findable.
I'm not sure what to do with my pack when I go into Rackpoint- there are a lot of places they could fall from and lava they could take a swim in if they're not careful. I'll have to experiment and see how smart they are.
A couple of updates, nothing too significant. I've updated the format of the first post to contain all current Locations descriptions and pictures, spoilered to keep them out of the way.
I have had some trouble keeping my dog pack alive. I'm getting better at feeding them without hitting them (nothing upsets a dog more than to be hit in the face with a steak). I finally got to the point last night where I dug out a room next to my storeroom and sat all the dogs down in there, and will use that as a breeding room to build a larger pack, and I can just get a dog or two at a time if I want to. Right now there are two adults and a pup. When I dug the room I had two adults and a pup, but I think the pup fell in some lava while I was digging it. Alas, poor puppy. In my son's Creative mode world, sitting dogs would sometimes still teleport to be next to you, but so far I haven't seen that in my survival world.
I've started bringing down animals into Rackpoint to make herds to supply wool, meat and milk. Right now they're in a single room of the gravel pit, but I'll start spreading them out as I get time and energy. I've also got to work some dirt magic to bring grass down for the sheep to eat and regrow their wool.
I've had to patch the road several times from Creeper and Enderman damage. Or perhaps the Endermen aren't responsible and it's just forgetting a couple of blocks sometimes. I've had that happen before, where a save won't catch a couple of my latest actions and I'll have to do them again. Creepers are so common in one area that I've named the road between Rackpoint and Zediron 'Creeper Way'.
Nothing else major to report. I've explored a few more of the grottos, and I plan to put up signs at each entrance, just to mark them. Next I'll probably extend the road further into Selvoscur to reach the caves I found in there easier without having to trek cross-country and risk getting lost. I need to harvest some more birch trees for road supplies. I've got plenty of oak, but am running low on birch. That may be something my son would enjoy doing. Or maybe not.
We're having a few glitches sharing worlds, where he can't see some of the mobs or animals. He could see the dogs on my screen, but not on his own. And getting shot by a skeleton he couldn't see wasn't much fun either.
So, all in all, a fairly mundane update for you this morning. Hopefully I'll have a more exciting one for you next time. Maybe I'll find a spawner in one of these caverns, or a village hidden in a valley somewhere. Or maybe I'll start laying out the floorplan for the Tower at Rackpoint and start construction. Who knows? Thanks for taking time from your day to read all this!
For fun and giggles, I'm messing around with recording screenshot video on my tablet. So I might be able to link a few guided tours of some of the more interesting bits some day. My first attempt came in at 70MB in size though, for just a short trip. So I'm going to have to play with the settings somewhat, I imagine. I'll check with a friend of mine who does video editing for any hints or tips.
Alright, two updates of interest to report on this morning...
I had an idea for a new (to me) type of secret door. I'm sure it's been thought of somewhere else, but not that I could remember seeing. The lava flows I'm using to light the Gravel Pit made me wonder, "What if I hollowed out a passage behind one of them?" Could it work? Could I set it up so that I could run through the lava flow and into water on the other side to immediately put out the fire? As it turns out, the answer is "Yes". But there are problems. First of all, you can't *run* through lava. You kind of push your way through it. So I took 7.5 hearts of damage before getting into the water on the other side. Well, alright, I can survive that, and I had food to heal myself back up to full again. But then, trying to run back out again, I hadn't cut a step in the floor in the main room, and got trapped and burnt to death in the lava flow before I could get back out. I lost a nearly full inventory due to suicidal overconfidence. Fortunately there wasn't anything really valuable, but I did lose a lot of wood.
The second update of interest is that while most of the caverns in the Grassland Grottos are shallow and don't contain much, I've found one that is quite extensive. Big enough that I haven't managed to explore it all yet, after a couple of forays into it. And I've found a good amount of gold so far. I have to re-find some of the deposits I saw the first time through, but I should net at least one full block of gold out of it, maybe even two if I find more in the still-unexplored areas. I'd have mined them out when I first saw them, except that due to my secret door misadventure, I didn't have an iron pickaxe on me. *sigh* Had to run all the way back to Rackpoint to build one of those.
I'm thinking that after I finish this cavern and the one in Selvoscur, I'll go back to Rackpoint and start a road leading out in a different direction. Creeper Way heads north, and it's a pretty long trip from Rackpoint to the Grassland Grottos. When I was first exploring, I just followed the rivers. Far to the west there was a swamp, and an area with some giant mushrooms. Maybe I'll head back in that direction, or to the south or east for something new.
Well, I did say maybe I'd have something more exciting to report on, right?
How about:
Spider Spawner (luckily again it was arranged so the spiders couldn't escape the room)
Skeleton Spawner (*not* arranged so they couldn't escape. I ran away for my life. )
16 Gold Ore
86 Iron Ore
Gigatons of Coal (12 blocks remaining *after* using enough coal to create at least 3 complete stacks of torches)
1 Diamond (eh, can't all be super exciting. )
A Village, with 3 Emeralds in a chest. (and only a third of it burned down when the forge caught fire)
And I *still* haven't completely explored that cavern system! I had to dig straight up from the Spider Spawner to the surface to get out (trying to find where I was to get home was how I found the Village). I'll need to come up with a name for the Giga-cavern and the village. And build a road to both.
I went back and found the Skeleton Spawner so I could pacify it and get an unending supply of bones and arrows. I managed to do so, taking a few arrow hits before getting enough torches out to shut it down. Then I worked on it for about 30 minutes trying to get a working mill. Just as the skeletons started dying off in droves, an explosion rocked the room, destroyed the spawner, knocked me down to half health, and gashed a hole in the mill wall that promptly started spewing pissed-off skeletons in my face. Needless to say, I died. I was able to get my stuff back, but with the spawner gone, the mill is pretty much worthless now. It's just an empty room with mossy stone floors now.
So, lesson learned: make sure to put doors up over these rooms to protect my back from back-stabbing creepers.
Think I'll name Gigacave "Konoso", after Knossos, legendary location of the Labyrinth. And the village is "Belhatom", from a random name generator.
I've ventured back into Konoso and done some more exploring and mining, pulling out another 18 gold ore and 40-something iron ore. And I've turned the Spider Spawner into a Silk Mill. I've taken down part of the wall to show how it works.Spiders spawn in the open area on the right, and move left toward the only exit. They hit the water and immediately begin swimming upward. It extends up for 4 blocks or so, giving them plenty of room to stack up and drown, and the silk drops to the bottom. If water flow carried items, most of it should flow to the exit at the front, but right now I have to step in and pick it up. It's mostly safe, I've only taken a couple of bites doing that.
Behind me is a ladder extending to the surface, where I've put a house and a road connecting back to Creeper Way. I plan on using the silk to make wool into carpets, and use the carpets to mark paths of Konoso that have been completely explored. As paths get marked, I'll be able to tell which ones still need exploring. And if I get really industrious, I can use different colored carpets to mark paths back to the surface or Silk Mill, using the same trick I do for the surface roads. "White on the right leads to the light".
Konoso and Belhatom have been added to the starter post.
No thanks. When PocketMine gets up to a working 0.9 version, I have a server I'll use for my son and nephew, and that's all the public Minecraft I need. Thanks for the invite though.
The cow was just trapped, I think. And before PETEA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Electronic Animals) comes after me, I did not put the cow there, and I did not lay the road over the cow. It found its own way into that space.
I've finished building roads between all of the places on my list now, and posted direction markers at all intersections (although a sneak creeper attack took the glowstone light off the top of one that I still need to replace). Other than that, I've mostly been working on the Cotton Mill: Milling Spiders for string and converting it into wool, and building a sheep pen onto the surface building. And fighting off dozens of creepers while doing it. I'm wondering if there's a creeper spawner somewhere nearby, just within range so that it's operating, but still hidden enough that I haven't found it. The road through the forest south of the mill is called Creeper Way for the number of creepers I've had to fight there, and after sleeping through a night in the building, there's usually about 3 creepers in the fields near that I have to go slay.
Here's a shot of an early version of the Cotton Mill from the top of a nearby mountain. You can see the Long Bridge on the left leading to the Grassland Grottos and Selvoscur, and the Mill Road on the right that goes by the Cotton Mill (shown) and toward the village of Belhatom. A sheep pen has since been added to the right of the Mill. I'm thinking to upgrade the Mill to brick, just for aesthetics. The chimney on top of the Mill, btw, is the marker I put up over the shaft I dug up from the Spider Spawner so I could find my way back to it later. I'll definitely redo it in brick and replace the torch with glowstone.
Looking at that pic reminds me, on other bridges I put in 'supports' and railings, just to make the bridge look more right. I still need to do that to the newer bridges I've put in. The Long Bridge will be especially expensive. When building it, instead of following the ground like I normally do, I just shot straight through the canyon through the air and out the other side. Hmm, or maybe, instead of bridging it, I should just disassemble it and lay it along the ground instead? I don't know... I'll have to think about that. I don't have a pic of the start of the bridge, but it's somewhere to the left and behind the photographer in the picture above.
Ooohhhh... I just had an evil thought for the Cotton Mill. If I surround all the walls with water traps, I can get free drops from all the beasties that like to assault the walls.
One wall of the Mob Grinder is built. There aren't actually as many mobs as I'd been thinking right by the Cotton Mill. It's when I leave the Mill that I start running into mobs roaming the countryside. But not as many as I'd expected come close enough to see me when I'm inside. I'll probably go ahead and do 2 more walls around the sheep pens just to be complete and see how the concept works.
The wandering mobs see me and walk into the water and start swimming upwards, get trapped against the ceiling and drown. I do have to watch out for creepers who try to explode if I walk under them picking up stuff while they're still swimming. And skeletons are likely the most dangerous here - water doesn't slow or stop their arrows at all.
I did walk around, and couldn't find any sign of a creeper spawn anywhere, for what it's worth.
A bit about me first: I have never played the full PC version of Minecraft, only MCPE. So I'm seeing all this stuff for the first time. I don't enjoy Creative mode, so I only use it if i want to test a specific idea for a build first. I enjoy the challenge of Survival Mode, but I'm kinda glad they haven't added Hardcore mode yet. I still die, although not too often, fortunately.
I've only got one world going right now in v0.9. The seed is 'Arkel', which is also what I named the world. The starting biome is steep hills with rivers cutting all through it (sorry, not up on biome names yet).
Arkel locations:
Rackpoint:
The Mansion: One of the fanciest house builds I've done (which isn't saying much, as I typically don't go in for fancy builds) Now with an attached Greenhouse.
The Spire: An obsidian tower reaching up to the ceiling cap, with a dropshaft in the center of it going down almost to bedrock. Currently empty.
Netherack workshop: I dug a hole at bedrock level big enough to hold an entire Netherack Fortress, with ledges all around it at different levels so it's easy to chop apart without risking climbing on the dangerous walls of the fortress. I intend to fashion the Tower out of netherbrick from this workshop.
Netherack Workshop, v2: After a minor mistake in summoning a Netherack Fortress one block off-center wiped out one wall of ledges, I stripped the whole thing down and rebuilt it tighter, safer, and much prettier. The ledges are all a uniform 2 blocks in height, and recessed lava streams provide a nice even 360 degree lighting to the whole chamber. Marble slab catwalks provide access to the top of the Fortress while limiting the ability of mobs to try and swarm at me from the inside of the Fortress. They also catch fewer dropping blocks, so more of them fall into the water for collection. The ceiling has been capped in polished granite and well lit with a dozen Glowstones. Tearing down a Fortress shouldn't involve as many mobs now.
Gravel pit: An area of collapsed gravel that I dug out that wound up extending all the way to bedrock. So far I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with the place, although animal pens or farms is a good possibility. I decided to play around and light the lower areas with flowing lava.
Chirous Dam: A small dam blocking off a pond where sugarcane is grown.
Zediron (formerly Ironpit):
Zombie Spawner: I'd never seen one of these before, and I died a couple of times clearing it out and figuring out how to keep it from flooding me in zombies. I'm just glad it wasn't Skeletons or Creepers. *shudder* I was lucky in that it was placed without a way for the zombies to leave the chamber, so I was able to get close enough to try smothering it in gravel. When that didn't work, I managed to place enough torches around the room to keep them from spawning. I'm playing around with ideas to farm the zombies for drops. Unfortunately, during my experiments I destroyed the spawner.
Skeleton Spawner: I haven't proved it yet, but I'm pretty sure the Skeleton Spawner is in the same cave system as Zediron. It's a quick and easy source of bones and arrows.
Riverbed:
Grassland Grottos:
Konoso: Lying underneath the Grassland Grottos, this massive series of caverns is still not completely explored, and almost certainly extends all the way down to bedrock in places.
I'm working on collecting enough wool to use carpets to lay down guide markers throughout the caverns so that I'll be able to find my way out no matter how deep I go. Walking with white carpet on the right leads me back to the Spider Spawner. Black carpet on the right leads me to a dead end cavern that has been explored.
In this picture, you can see the two passages on the side lead toward the camera, while the center passage down leads away, toward the Spider Spawner.
Cotton Mill: Although not apparently near the Grassland Grottos, this building is built directly over the Spider Spawner within Konoso, and is primarily concerned with milling the spiders for their string and sheep for their wool in order to make carpets of different colors in order to map out the labyrinthine caverns of Konoso.
Selvoscur:
Belhatom:
Kivisi:
Southern Plains:
Yggdrasil: Constructed in an open plain off the walkway to South Fort, Yggdrasil is a massive tree made up of many different trees all growing together to reach the sky.
ArkRail: The ArkRail was constructed to speed up travel from RackPoint to South Fort. I expect some day I'll expand the ArkRail to go to different locations, but for now, those are the only two end stations.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
A comment on mobs and animals. So far, the only new mob I've seen is Endermen. They seem to be a nuisance, but not really dangerous. I think I've only ever been killed by one once. Of course, most encounters have been in caves with limited space for them to teleport in, so that may have affected it.
The normal mobs don't seem hugely more dangerous than in 0.8. It takes 5 hits from a stone sword to kill a zombie vs 3 in 0.8 (and it seems to take them longer to drown than before too). Skeletons might be more accurate than before, but that's hard to judge. I've been hurt by spiders more than normal, but that might be all the trees in the area giving them cover and jumping points than I'm used to. I haven't found any dogs, silverfish, slimes or anything else new.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I've extended the road north from Zediron and into some grasslands, where there are a lot of sinkhole caverns scattered about. I haven't come up with a good name for the area it yet. I took my son exploring westward from there and found a Taiga (I think) biome - evergreen trees, mushrooms, etc. So that's the next direction I'm going to send the road. I'm going to see if that wood is a different color, and maybe use it to do little offshoot paths from the main one to the entrances to all these sinkhole caverns.
For your amusement, here is a cow stuck under a road:
In it, you can also see my road style. Walking the road with the light wood on the right leads back to Rackpoint. Walking with it on the left heads away.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Although I do have to admit that the wolf puppies are terminally cute to watch running.
Shown: the first two members of my pack:
You can also see a spruce road offshoot leading to one of the sinkhole caverns in the background there. I laid two of those roads as well. Nothing spectacular, just making sure everything is findable.
I'm not sure what to do with my pack when I go into Rackpoint- there are a lot of places they could fall from and lava they could take a swim in if they're not careful. I'll have to experiment and see how smart they are.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I have had some trouble keeping my dog pack alive. I'm getting better at feeding them without hitting them (nothing upsets a dog more than to be hit in the face with a steak). I finally got to the point last night where I dug out a room next to my storeroom and sat all the dogs down in there, and will use that as a breeding room to build a larger pack, and I can just get a dog or two at a time if I want to. Right now there are two adults and a pup. When I dug the room I had two adults and a pup, but I think the pup fell in some lava while I was digging it. Alas, poor puppy. In my son's Creative mode world, sitting dogs would sometimes still teleport to be next to you, but so far I haven't seen that in my survival world.
I've started bringing down animals into Rackpoint to make herds to supply wool, meat and milk. Right now they're in a single room of the gravel pit, but I'll start spreading them out as I get time and energy. I've also got to work some dirt magic to bring grass down for the sheep to eat and regrow their wool.
I've had to patch the road several times from Creeper and Enderman damage. Or perhaps the Endermen aren't responsible and it's just forgetting a couple of blocks sometimes. I've had that happen before, where a save won't catch a couple of my latest actions and I'll have to do them again. Creepers are so common in one area that I've named the road between Rackpoint and Zediron 'Creeper Way'.
Nothing else major to report. I've explored a few more of the grottos, and I plan to put up signs at each entrance, just to mark them. Next I'll probably extend the road further into Selvoscur to reach the caves I found in there easier without having to trek cross-country and risk getting lost. I need to harvest some more birch trees for road supplies. I've got plenty of oak, but am running low on birch. That may be something my son would enjoy doing. Or maybe not.
We're having a few glitches sharing worlds, where he can't see some of the mobs or animals. He could see the dogs on my screen, but not on his own. And getting shot by a skeleton he couldn't see wasn't much fun either.
So, all in all, a fairly mundane update for you this morning. Hopefully I'll have a more exciting one for you next time. Maybe I'll find a spawner in one of these caverns, or a village hidden in a valley somewhere. Or maybe I'll start laying out the floorplan for the Tower at Rackpoint and start construction. Who knows? Thanks for taking time from your day to read all this!
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I had an idea for a new (to me) type of secret door. I'm sure it's been thought of somewhere else, but not that I could remember seeing. The lava flows I'm using to light the Gravel Pit made me wonder, "What if I hollowed out a passage behind one of them?" Could it work? Could I set it up so that I could run through the lava flow and into water on the other side to immediately put out the fire? As it turns out, the answer is "Yes". But there are problems. First of all, you can't *run* through lava. You kind of push your way through it. So I took 7.5 hearts of damage before getting into the water on the other side. Well, alright, I can survive that, and I had food to heal myself back up to full again. But then, trying to run back out again, I hadn't cut a step in the floor in the main room, and got trapped and burnt to death in the lava flow before I could get back out. I lost a nearly full inventory due to suicidal overconfidence. Fortunately there wasn't anything really valuable, but I did lose a lot of wood.
The second update of interest is that while most of the caverns in the Grassland Grottos are shallow and don't contain much, I've found one that is quite extensive. Big enough that I haven't managed to explore it all yet, after a couple of forays into it. And I've found a good amount of gold so far. I have to re-find some of the deposits I saw the first time through, but I should net at least one full block of gold out of it, maybe even two if I find more in the still-unexplored areas. I'd have mined them out when I first saw them, except that due to my secret door misadventure, I didn't have an iron pickaxe on me. *sigh* Had to run all the way back to Rackpoint to build one of those.
I'm thinking that after I finish this cavern and the one in Selvoscur, I'll go back to Rackpoint and start a road leading out in a different direction. Creeper Way heads north, and it's a pretty long trip from Rackpoint to the Grassland Grottos. When I was first exploring, I just followed the rivers. Far to the west there was a swamp, and an area with some giant mushrooms. Maybe I'll head back in that direction, or to the south or east for something new.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
How about:
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I went back and found the Skeleton Spawner so I could pacify it and get an unending supply of bones and arrows. I managed to do so, taking a few arrow hits before getting enough torches out to shut it down. Then I worked on it for about 30 minutes trying to get a working mill. Just as the skeletons started dying off in droves, an explosion rocked the room, destroyed the spawner, knocked me down to half health, and gashed a hole in the mill wall that promptly started spewing pissed-off skeletons in my face. Needless to say, I died. I was able to get my stuff back, but with the spawner gone, the mill is pretty much worthless now. It's just an empty room with mossy stone floors now.
So, lesson learned: make sure to put doors up over these rooms to protect my back from back-stabbing creepers.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I've ventured back into Konoso and done some more exploring and mining, pulling out another 18 gold ore and 40-something iron ore. And I've turned the Spider Spawner into a Silk Mill. I've taken down part of the wall to show how it works.Spiders spawn in the open area on the right, and move left toward the only exit. They hit the water and immediately begin swimming upward. It extends up for 4 blocks or so, giving them plenty of room to stack up and drown, and the silk drops to the bottom. If water flow carried items, most of it should flow to the exit at the front, but right now I have to step in and pick it up. It's mostly safe, I've only taken a couple of bites doing that.
Behind me is a ladder extending to the surface, where I've put a house and a road connecting back to Creeper Way. I plan on using the silk to make wool into carpets, and use the carpets to mark paths of Konoso that have been completely explored. As paths get marked, I'll be able to tell which ones still need exploring. And if I get really industrious, I can use different colored carpets to mark paths back to the surface or Silk Mill, using the same trick I do for the surface roads. "White on the right leads to the light".
Konoso and Belhatom have been added to the starter post.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
No thanks. When PocketMine gets up to a working 0.9 version, I have a server I'll use for my son and nephew, and that's all the public Minecraft I need. Thanks for the invite though.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I've finished building roads between all of the places on my list now, and posted direction markers at all intersections (although a sneak creeper attack took the glowstone light off the top of one that I still need to replace). Other than that, I've mostly been working on the Cotton Mill: Milling Spiders for string and converting it into wool, and building a sheep pen onto the surface building. And fighting off dozens of creepers while doing it. I'm wondering if there's a creeper spawner somewhere nearby, just within range so that it's operating, but still hidden enough that I haven't found it. The road through the forest south of the mill is called Creeper Way for the number of creepers I've had to fight there, and after sleeping through a night in the building, there's usually about 3 creepers in the fields near that I have to go slay.
Here's a shot of an early version of the Cotton Mill from the top of a nearby mountain. You can see the Long Bridge on the left leading to the Grassland Grottos and Selvoscur, and the Mill Road on the right that goes by the Cotton Mill (shown) and toward the village of Belhatom. A sheep pen has since been added to the right of the Mill. I'm thinking to upgrade the Mill to brick, just for aesthetics. The chimney on top of the Mill, btw, is the marker I put up over the shaft I dug up from the Spider Spawner so I could find my way back to it later. I'll definitely redo it in brick and replace the torch with glowstone.
Looking at that pic reminds me, on other bridges I put in 'supports' and railings, just to make the bridge look more right. I still need to do that to the newer bridges I've put in. The Long Bridge will be especially expensive. When building it, instead of following the ground like I normally do, I just shot straight through the canyon through the air and out the other side. Hmm, or maybe, instead of bridging it, I should just disassemble it and lay it along the ground instead? I don't know... I'll have to think about that. I don't have a pic of the start of the bridge, but it's somewhere to the left and behind the photographer in the picture above.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
The wandering mobs see me and walk into the water and start swimming upwards, get trapped against the ceiling and drown. I do have to watch out for creepers who try to explode if I walk under them picking up stuff while they're still swimming. And skeletons are likely the most dangerous here - water doesn't slow or stop their arrows at all.
I did walk around, and couldn't find any sign of a creeper spawn anywhere, for what it's worth.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)