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I haven't figured out exactly why the golems occasionally decided to smush me, but my best guess is that a villager died, and they took out their rage on me each time. So I've blockaded all the villagers off in one corner of the map behind walls and fences so they can't get in my way for the next bit of construction.

I've been experimenting in creative mode in throwaway worlds, trying to design an iron farm and still have my villagers farm for me too. So far I haven't had any luck, so I decided to skip that. I'll stack an iron farm at the top of my house and have a few villagers running the farm down at ground level, without any houses.

After a couple of false starts, I decided the best way to start my house was to build the mob farm and roof. It's the farthest up, to hopefully provide the distance needed for mobs to spawn. Just under that will be the iron farm. To do that, I stacked sand in the central column where all the drops will happen. The mobs will ride to the center and then swim up a drowning chamber, then drop their gubs down the shaft. The Iron Golems will get swept to the central shaft and into a furnace, and then their gubs will follow the shaft to the collection room.

Once I've got the levels built, it will be easy to mark the corners on the ground and then collapse that entire sand shaft (you can see it's resting on torches, so the whole thing will instantly disintegrate).

And, if you didn't happen to already know, skyscraper building is a pain in Survival mode. No flying allowed, trying to get to the angle you need to work on the edges is obnoxious.

Edit: Added the 4th pic: a shot of the mob floor before it was roofed in, so the crenellations can be seen sort of clearly.

Here it is with the water elevators to move villagers up to the iron farm apartments. I had a whole bunch of wood planks left over from tearing down the village, and I'd run out of cobblestone several times in building even this much of the building. I'll go back later and decorate the building so it's not a massive slab of cobblestone, but function first, form later.

The iron farm portion seems to be working. It's created 17 iron so far. The mob farm doesn't seem to be yet, though. Not sure if I built it high enough above the ground, or if there's something else wrong with it. I'll have to investigate and find out. And I'll need to do a lot of resource gathering to continue expanding on the Castle.

Been working on the village some more. I'm working on a more natural mob catcher on the field outside the walls.

Update: I've since replaced the stone covers with dirt so it can grass over and be even more low-key. And I can flower and grass over them to turn them into a neat little garden.

Hmph. I'm trying to build an item sorter, and I've copied it accurately (I think). But it just refuses to work right. Mah, it's not that important at this time. It'd be nice, but not required.

Here's the thread on the sorter issue: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-pocket-edition/mcpe-discussion/2657381-mcpe-hopper-sorter-problem#c5

I think I've got a workaround for it, but it does look like it's a bug, so the problem should only be temporary. And if I get around to building this, I've got a probable fix for it anyways.

However, the announcement that Realms should be coming this year does mean that Rhageos' lifespan is limited. I plan on getting a Realms server for me and my kids to share. Once that happens, I'll shut down Rhageos and this thread, and probably start a new one for the new world. I have some ideas for what to set up, but it will still be awhile before that happens. I do see people are still watching this thread, so I'm guessing that there is still an interested audience.

And I'm not going to stop working on Rhageos until then, so there will be plenty of content still.

What I'm working on right now isn't visually interesting - I'm just digging under the future castle all the way to bedrock. I'm doing this for a couple of reasons: 1) to gather a bunch of resources. Even just the 2 floors of the building I did exhausted my cobblestone stores here a few times. And 2) to clear building space and try to find any undiscovered caverns down there that are taking all the mob spawns from my trap at the top of the building. I probably need to learn more about biomes to figure out which one is less likely to have caverns. While working on the mob-trapping canals outside I found a couple of caverns I hadn't seen before. I lit those up, but who knows how many more of them are out there, sucking away my mobs and locking them into deep dark spots where I can't grab their shiny shiny loot?

Here's a few more pictures for you:

The basement excavation continues:

And here's the working item sorter. I put a redstone lamp next to it that flashes every time the dropper fires, so I can see if it's active or not. The dropper does slow it down so much though, that I'm mining far faster than it's sorting. I might wind up having to stack a second feeder chest on top to hold everything.

Found 6 diamonds at the bottom of the basement:

Excavating a lava lake I ran into, decided to stack it vertically:

And a current view of the basement excavation, about 75% done:

Ugh. I've run into another lava lake in excavating the basement, and this one is huge. I'm converting it to obsidian as I bucket it out, and I've got 4 stacks of it so far, and I haven't even found the other end of the lake yet. I've got 18 buckets to drain the lake with - I really need to look and see if there's a more efficient way of mining obsidian than the one I've got.

I built myself an Enchanting Table too - first time for that. I haven't set it up anywhere yet though. I need to read up some more on those first. I'm looking at trying for a Fortune enchantment to put on an Iron Pickaxe for the drops.

Okay, I'm now officially stoked! I designed and built a redstone contraption of my own design, not copied off the internet anywhere. A Lava Bucket/Obsidian machine. Not horribly complex, but apparently functional. A hopper pulls lava buckets from a chest and feeds them into a dispenser. Under the dispenser is a sorter that pulls out empty buckets. The dispenser feeds into a downward water stream. Across from the stream is a comparator/repeater circuit that feeds back around to a redstone torch next to the dispenser. When there's an Obsidian block, the comparator sends a pulse that turns off the torch. Once the block has been mined, the comparator turns off, which activates the redstone torch which cycles the dispenser to pour out another lava bucket, which promptly turns into obsidian. Repeat mining until the dispenser is empty, and leave the last obsidian block in place for the next cycle.

Quote from Master_TMO»

Okay, I'm now officially stoked! I designed and built a redstone contraption of my own design, not copied off the internet anywhere. A Lava Bucket/Obsidian machine. Not horribly complex, but apparently functional. A hopper pulls lava buckets from a chest and feeds them into a dispenser. Under the dispenser is a sorter that pulls out empty buckets. The dispenser feeds into a downward water stream. Across from the stream is a comparator/repeater circuit that feeds back around to a redstone torch next to the dispenser. When there's an Obsidian block, the comparator sends a pulse that turns off the torch. Once the block has been mined, the comparator turns off, which activates the redstone torch which cycles the dispenser to pour out another lava bucket, which promptly turns into obsidian. Repeat mining until the dispenser is empty, and leave the last obsidian block in place for the next cycle.

Nice, maybe share the design and put up a tutorial on how to build it? Could be very useful for those making portals, or someone playing with Tinker's Construct in 1.7.10 that needs molten obsidian to make unbreakable tools.

Quote from The_Last_Dovahkiin»

Nice, maybe share the design and put up a tutorial on how to build it? Could be very useful for those making portals, or someone playing with Tinker's Construct in 1.7.10 that needs molten obsidian to make unbreakable tools.

Yah, I'd figured I probably would, just haven't had the chance to yet. I don't have the ability (that I know of) to record a YouTube tutorial, so it'll just be a series of still shots. And it's not likely that no one has ever built this before. I just didn't find one on a quick search, then just made my own. And it sometimes ejects the mined obsidian blocks out a back corner onto the redstone circuit instead of nicely into your hands or a catcher hopper.

Meh, it works though. That's good enough for me.

Ugh. So tired of draining lava lakes. My diamond pickaxe is at about 25% health now, and I think I *might* have found the headwaters of each lake (yes, there's two of them that joined together downstream), but I did that by giving up and digging around the perimeters just to see how big they were. The lava bucket machine has made converting it to obsidian MUCH faster, but it's still not very exciting. My double chest is about 2/3rds full of obsidian now, and I'm guessing will overflow before I run out of lava. I'm definitely going to be set for life on obsidian stores from now on.

On the plus side, I did spot a bit of diamond ore off to one side of one of the lava lake headwaters. And I've spotted a bit of gold too. I'll try enchanting that iron pickaxe before I mine those though.

The other lava headwaters, as I was digging around it, I punctured the bottom of a water lake, which promptly converted the top of the lava to obsidian. Which is nice for walking on, but not so nice for actually recovering the obsidian without losing it in the lava below. However, as I was writing this, I wondered if it would work to have a flow of water on top, dig the obsidian down, and if the water would convert the lava beneath before it burned up the obsidian drop? I'll have to give that a try. Of course, I've got enough obsidian now that I shouldn't really need to worry about collecting every single drop, but I typically operate in a 'waste not, want not' mindset in Survival Mode.

Here's the tutorial for the Lava Bucket/Obsidian Miner: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-pocket-edition/mcpe-show-your-creation/2666075-mcpe-redstone-lava-bucket-obsidian-miner

Took a brief break from lava draining to set up and play around with my enchanting table. I've only got enough leather for 4 bookshelves, I'll have to improve that eventually. I could have put Efficiency I on my iron pickaxe, but I was holding out for Fortune, so I put it into a book instead, and I'll save it for later. If I'm going to get into enchanting and such, I probably need to modify one of my mob drop areas into an experience drop too.

Heh. I haven't been through the Nether Gate from the village in a long time. I thought I'd head over to where I've got the mob spawners hooked up to a drowning chamber and work at converting that into a spot where I could also get experience, so I could use it for enchanting. My Nether Gate chamber on the Nether side is just a 2x2 room with a couple of redstone-powered iron doors operated by a button. I went thru the gate and into a small horde of Zombie Pigmen crammed into that chamber. I'm not entirely sure *why* they were all in there, but I managed to free a few of them by opening the doors, and knocked a bunch of them back into the overworld. So now I have Zombie Pigmen lurking in the caves underneath my village, fun fun. I've killed off some of them, but the rest have simply disappeared. I hope they've despawned, but I'm not holding my breath.

I'm working on adding a farm level to my castle, just under the iron farm level. The villagers powering the iron farm can work in the fields. There's nothing much to show yet, just laying out the bottom-most layer of floor. It will hold hopper minecarts running on tracks to pick up dropped or harvested crops and depositing them into a delivery system (that I haven't designed yet).

And in trying to gather more xp for enchanting, I found *another* massive cave system outside my village. I've lit up part of it, but need to go back and finish it. I've got an Iron Pickaxe with Unbreaking III on it, and Fortune III waiting on the enchanting table for when I get together 30 xp. Going to use an anvil to combine 2 iron pickaxes to make a single one with both those enchantments on it.

Okay, the mob spawner under my Ocean Villa has been modified to be swappable from being a drowning chamber to an experience grinder and back again.

Originally it was 2 spawners, 1 zombie, 1 skeleton, and I used water streams to bring both spawns together, and up into a watertight chamber. They'd drown there, drop their loots into another stream which would flow to a hopper-fed chest. That is all still there.

I replaced the top of the drowning chamber with 4 redstone-operated wooden trapdoors, and layered a water elevator above it to take the mobs as high up as I could. It would have been nice to drop them 20 spaces so that they'd die with one hit, but I reached the bottom of the ocean and stopped there. As it turns out, sometimes they take a bit of drowning damage on the way up by getting stuck on the trapdoors, so some of them die on impact anyways. They get to the top of the elevator, are swept sideways into a single column drop where I can break their shins with relative impunity.

And, wonder of wonders, when I got back and spent my 30xp to buy the Fortune III enchantment on an Iron Pickaxe, it came with Efficiency IV. *squeal of joy* So now I just need 6 xp to combine the Unbreaking Iron Pickaxe with the Efficient Luck for the Infinite Iron Luck Pickaxe. I'll have to look into making a diamond pickaxe the same way some day. I've not got many diamonds though. Hopefully the Infinite Iron Luck will help with that.

Yyuppp... Now that I've experienced firsthand what enchanting can do for you, I'll definitely be working toward it much sooner in future worlds. 3 diamond ores = 5 diamonds. 5 more diamond ores found later = 11 more diamonds, for 16 diamond total. 12 or so redstone ore blocks equals about 110 redstone dusts.

With the Unbreaking on it, I won't need to worry about it for a very long time, but I'll have to make sure I can repair it later. Whether I need an enchanted pickaxe, or can just use a plain jane version, I don't know yet.

Update: Using a random name generator, I have picked the name Felienth for the magical iron pickaxe. And yes, it can be repaired by combining it with a non-magical iron pickaxe on an anvil. I have built a diamond pickaxe and set it aside to be enchanted at a later date.

I've had this vision in my head for a few weeks now, of a massive storeroom, all auto-sorting of course, that I don't have to ever enter unless it's to expand. I would put one of the item I want into a chest, and a minecart would be dispatched to me with a full load of that item. I'd then take what I wanted and send the rest back into the sorter to be put back. Yeah, I'm new to the whole redstone thing, but I don't start with the simple projects. I haven't gotten it solved yet, but I'm making progress. It may turn out to be impossible to do without pistons, but we'll see. I've been a computer programmer for a long time now, so at least I have a headstart there.

On other notes, I've finished digging out the basement, and have gone back to trying to drain the lava lake. It's not actually two different lakes, but rather one *very* large one. It just keeps going, and going, and going. I guess technically I could stop now - I'm not going to drop down into it while digging the basement any more. I've also been grinding experience to build up my tool shed with magical tools.

I may have solved the Smart Storeroom design problem last night. I still have to build a full working version of it to test it out and see, but it looks promising. And it's only 1 block wide, so it's easy to stack the slices together into a single large entity. It won't be cheap though. Something like 12-15 hoppers *per slice*. I don't even know what a full storeroom with that many hoppers will do to tablet performance.