Minecraft Forums

Due to the upload limit I cannot upload anymore images to this website, however I can share a cloud link to more of them. I've now made a staircase maze, which will tie in with another project later on, the upside down version of the castle. I've not given up with the project, despite my silence on this forum sometimes, sometimes I take breaks because too much dedication can be burdensome. Mental health is important and all, anyhow take a look in your own time, I've also added some wallpapers in the ballroom of the castle.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19qCfQ_F8mqpwf0FE5vY0Br2jFYkDhggW?usp=sharing

Quote from allyourbasesaregone»

Approximating things to reality for the sake of time and convenience is not false information, when you're discussing things in the broad numbers TheMasterCaver's using, these details are just hindrances to the point of conversation and not something to strive for religiously because this is a video game and not a science experiment. If the base average is 1 (and it's a uniform function with an infinite mode of 1), and the fortune-3 average is 2.2, then multiplying the average multiplies the amount by that same factor.

But averages do not apply to every situation, it is speaking in general terms, but sometimes with Unbreaking enchantment you get bad rolls, and the amount of times it refuses to nullify damage can stack, leading to tools needing to be repaired sooner than usual. By definition is probability based, in most cases I take issue with RNG based mechanics that penalize players by dumb luck, but since there is no better way to implement unbreaking, and it is by design, I accept it as is, and I find there are bigger issues with the game that are worth complaining about.

ActuallyS8N is not wrong however, as higher averages is not and should not be treated as synonymous with a multiple,

a multiple is a fixed sum, it is either 2x, 3x or 4x, but 4x and 2x cannot be true for the same instance, it's mathematically incoherent.

It's actually more accurate to say Unbreaking III increases durability by average of 4 times, rather than a fixed 4x.

Sometimes it will ignore damage, and sometimes it will not.

Quote from ActuallyS8N»

In terms of getting stone, I'd say mining naturally generated stone is probably faster on average. With cobblestone generators, you have to wait for the water and lava to meet and make it, whereas naturally generated is already there. But again, it's all about preference and what's easier for the individual to do.

I guess some players don't mind being constantly on the move for more resources, regardless of which is better, but if I were mining underground I would not do it just for a common resource like stone, if I get stone from underground, I normally get it while I am looking for other things, and one of these days I am going to end up with too much stone, but I'd rather have too much than not enough, as long as it isn't clogging up my inventory.

Granite, diorite and andesite, depending on build preferences, they can be aesthetically useful as well, and these are common materials as well as durable and fire proof, making them ideal to use even in the Nether. I'd love to share images of my recently built Nether hub, but unfortunately I've reached the 100MB limit, suppose I need a Curse premium account or something, I don't know.

The ore distribution system could be better though, TMC likes to show off how much resources he has but also freely admits his own playstyle revolves around caving and not building or exploring, and he seems to think what he can do, other players could do if they put in more effort no matter which play style they undertake, which is false, because if you build anything beyond just the basics, it is going to be a lot more time consuming. It took two weeks for me and a friend to get the deepslate for the castle build, never mind the time it took to gather the other materials needed for both construction and decoration. Some people with even less time than us to play Minecraft would've had a much worse time with it, it's not as simple as TMC makes it sound sometimes. I do commend him for his dedication for resource gathering in his own version of the game, but he needs to understand not everybody has the time or the ability to play the way he does.

I've even pointed out the problem that if mending enchantment were to require resources for each repair, that creates problems for people who want to keep their netherite gear in good condition, items that cannot be obtained by trades. More grind for the sake of grind does not make the game better or more balanced, all it does is it penalizes players for not having the time for certain things, while giving an unfair advantage to those who do and desire it.

Quote from ActuallyS8N»

So in this thread:

https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/discussion/3202579-more-iron

I posted a screenshot of all the resources I obtained from caving for roughly 1 1/2 hours of gameplay.

Below is a screenshot of all the resources I got from branch mining at Y -54 over the course of an hour.

"Best mining method" is entirely subjective to the individual. It all depends on what you want to find. If you need stone blocks as well as Diamonds, then Branch Mining at Y -54 might be your best bet. If you're looking for mob drops as well as every other resource, and not stone blocks, general caving might be best for you.

If it's just stone, I generally build stone generators. For one thing, stone generators have the advantage of getting infinite amounts of stone, and in the End dimension where there is no regular stone naturally, stone generators are clearly the best way to get it there.

But even in the Overworld, some people debate over whether mining stone from underground or getting it from a generator is faster.

But from my perspective it depends, not all stone generator designs are the same, some are simple and involve only a lava and water source converging into each other at a small stationary structure in the middle, and other's like mine, involve not only more than one stone generator core in it, they use pistons which push out more stone every second, and a rail system for a semi automated regeneration of the stone on an obsidian platform.

But no one except the few people I play with seems to believe me that the use of stone generators are faster. Some even claim mining for it underground gets the stone quicker, but what they tend to ignore is the fact that, in mining for it underground, if they're not playing on peaceful difficulty, they have to deal with monsters, and use lighting to prevent their spawn as well as to be able to see more clearly where they are going, they have to avoid or bridge across ravines sometimes depending on the Y coordinate, you need to worry about both lava and water, you have to also deal with removing or avoiding dirt and gravel, and in modern versions of the game, you have to clear away other material such as diorite, granite, andesite, all of which takes up more time.

Quote from TheMasterCaver»

I highly doubt that, the majority of players don't want to mine, no matter what the game is called, just look at all the responses to any of my posts when I say how easy it is to collect absurd amounts of resources by caving (3,000 ores per play session, per day, including 800 iron, which is probably the single most-farmed resource other than food and wood).

Just check out this thread (the replies, many also use the "you use mods" argument despite using my first world, which was really pure vanilla back then, as the main example (and funnily enough, I use more of the resources and XP I collect in modded worlds, where I spend more XP per use and use mined resources to repair my items; I did back then in my first world but have since been trading to get items to repair my gear, and as for Mending, it is way cheaper for the majority of items, just 780 XP to fully repair a diamond tool vs 1406 XP to repair the maxed-out Fortune pickaxe I once used when caving - by only 25% at a time, or 5624 XP for a full repair; I only stopped using Fortune because I don't need the additional resources and can go much longer before running out of space):

https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/survival-mode/296529-am-i-the-only-one

Nobody has any legitimate use for this many resources (multiple redstone by 4.5 and lapis by 6, and add a decent amount of loot from thousands of dungeon and mineshaft chests, which were more common and had more resources in older versions), I myself use barely any of it, mostly coal for torches and fuel, and for the rare cases like actually building with blocks of iron, etc you need reasonable expectations for what can be done in Survival mode:



Also, even with Fortune they say the chance is 35% (5% base chance + 10% per level) of dropping nitre and 4 are required to craft gunpowder (I assume a single item) so that's an average of 11.43 blocks mined, and I assume only the original block, not the cobbled variant, drops it so you'd need to smelt it back into its original form (this is also preferred as otherwise you need Silk Touch to avoid loss when mining the cobbled variant, not unlike how I treat the 1.8 stone variants in my own mod; they simply drop cobblestone (same as stone) unless you use Silk Touch (thus they are permanently lost), but they always drop themselves once crafted into a polished form), no idea how much gunpowder is used for an average trip with elytra but I've seen it being referred to as a limiting resource without a creeper farm.

For comparison, I might kill 50 creepers in an average session, perhaps 80 in modded worlds which have far more mobs than in modern versions, even my first world (mostly vanilla) what with the doubled ground depth and more caves thinning out a mob cap which hasn't changed in a decade (it was higher, 79, prior to 1.8 due to an error in the mob cap calculation, but technically still 70, e.g. an article from 2011. It seems that the mob cap was higher, 75 or effectively 84, prior to the full release, so it really started even earlier, aggravated by a significant increase in the underground in Beta 1.8, from about 3.6% (caves only, which were pretty much the same overall) to 6% air. 1.20 is about 6.66% air, an increase of about 11% but over more than double the depth (sea level to lava level) for about 2.5 times the volume. The best way to fix this would be to not increase the mob cap but make mobs spawn closer to the player, and separate cave and surface mobs into separate caps, as I did; I actually reduced the cave cap to 60 but despite more than double the cave volume I encounter way more mobs since the spawn range was reduced from 24-128 to 16-96).

But as it has been explained to you it comes down to play-style, do you seriously think people are going to have the generous amount of time you do to do caving or mining, when if they're building, they are focusing the majority of their play-time building up a town with complex infrastructure, with rail networks, and even redstone contraptions?

I seriously don't get the obsession of some people who harp on about people using farms, when harvesting which also counts as farming as been a part of survival mode for as long as I can remember, and I've been playing this game since it came out on the Xbox 360 about a decade ago.

Crop fields and the items you get from them to breed animals, which is another way for players to earn XP, eventually players end up with a surplus of those items as well that they cannot realistically use if they didn't have trades available, trades is a good way to dispose of the surplus wheat, carrots, potatoes, melons, pumpkins, beetroot and netherwart that would otherwise be sitting in chests wasting space or be wastefully thrown away by some players in lava or a cactus or dropped on the ground then left to despawn. At most I only carry 3 stacks of food at any given time as I need inventory space for other things, as do people who play on my server.

Define by what you mean "reasonable expectations when playing survival mode" what suggestion do you have that would allow for builds like my castle in survival mode, or something on the scale of it, and what should be done to get the materials to earn them. It has to be in the context of what other players can realistically achieve during general gameplay, not just something you do in your own modded version of the game. Are you saying trades should be used to compensate for the scarcity of certain items underground or insufficient time to mine them for tool repairs? we need more information.

I'm not saying people should not mine for some materials, but the posts you keep making come off as if you think people who play the game should be expected to invest in the majority of their time caving or mining just to do the things you do. There comes a point where there are too many resources, but how much resources a person needs for a play-style clearly isn't going to be the same as yours, as you hardly use anything you acquire to build except for the bare necessities. People shouldn't have to play creative mode just to do builds like my one either.

Quote from Staricle»

I normally cross oceans using boats. It's not particularly fast, especially not compared to Elytra, but it's a very safe, convenient, and reliable mode of transportation. Regarding transporting horse(s) across oceans, I believe the 1.21 update introduced the ability to attach boats to leads, so you can bring as many animals as you want without having to invest the time and resources into building bridges and minecart systems.

As for land travel, I think having Frost Walker horse armour will be preferable for crossing large rivers, lakes, etc which occur frequently.

The problem with boats however is Drowned Zombies can destroy them with a trident, making them a somewhat unreliable way to travel across water as if the boat is lost then your mode of travel is slow as you have to swim. Frostwalker enchanted armour is in fact much better for this.

Quote from Staricle»

I don't mind the change; it can be annoying to have to get off and lead your horse every time a river gets in your way. For those who may find this feature too OP, perhaps you should still be slowed down by at least 50% and the resulting ice will melt after a given time, e.g. 30 seconds.

It may be OP, but what is the alternative? building bridges over an ocean or tunnels under them spanning thousands of blocks sometimes, so horses can be ridden across? I suppose the alternative is using minecarts, but it doesn't help that powered rails are expensive, forcing players to calculate how much gold they wish to allocate to Piglin bartering vs building projects and such.

Elytra is a good way to travel across continent, but takes some mastery of it to avoid oblivion as one mistake can mean instant death, even if you're not very far off the ground, collision damage is also counted, making the Elytra and Riptide using tridents during rain dangerous ways to travel. Minecarts and horses are safer, but they require infrastructure to get good use out of them, and that is a time consuming task.

Quote from Thagomixer»

I wasn't disagreeing with you, I'd just prefer to have a better enchant system. I don't like villagers, but I see how they can be usefull for others.

In fact, I'm probably in the demographic mojang is trying to benefit by nerfing villagers, and they have not solved my issue with them, only inconvenienced you. So the best solution is to just leave villagers alone and buff enchanting tables.

I think enchantment tables could do with some kind of a buff, but I'm not sure exactly how this can be done to motivate players to be less dependent on trades to get their enchantments, as the enchantment table is reliant on RNG which very often gives people a useless enchant for what they're setting out to do, are players really going to benefit from Fire Protection in End dimension? I'm not complaining about Fire Protection here as it does have its uses, but the problem with the table is you get no choice in which enchantments you get with this. The grindstone does give you the option to reroll the enchantments, but the grindstone is a symptom of the problem, not the solution. On top of this, there are treasure exclusive enchantments that cannot be obtained from the table, further limiting the scope of what the table does for players.

Adding to the problem is the anvil, which not only breaks after a set number of uses, but you cannot repair items indefinitely on it no matter how much XP you have earned. The anvil has been broken for so long, and this is why so many people rely on mending to keep their equipment. Mending as it is now, would still be more convenient than manually repairing enchanted items even if you could do it forever, but you still need books to do that, if you don't have a fish farm or trading system setup, you're going to have a difficult time getting enchantments until you have either of these setup.

Mojang is aware of people using trading halls to conveniently obtain every item they need from Villagers, and some people, not you, have alleged that the existence of trading halls is some kind of an exploit, which is false, all players are doing is keeping their Villager allies safe from hostile mobs and hazards that would kill their Villagers and end the convenience of trading over night, (if Villagers weren't so dense and didn't run into hazards all of the time instead of returning to their houses every sundown or whenever there was a thunderstorm, we wouldn't have to cage them up so often) are you cheating for using your head and doing the only logical thing with your environment? no. Those people clearly have no clue what they're talking about, and I find it cringeworthy that certain Youtubers out there put out factoids hoping their viewers are gullible enough to believe their unfounded arguments, those are the people who are causing most of the problems we are seeing with updates. It's one thing to have an opinion, but when people make up conspiracy theories, then that does need to be called out on.

Quote from Thagomixer»

Never really used villagers for building blocks, just enchants.

And? trades for blocks save resources, some which are uncommon or harder to find than basic ones like stone, sand and gravel. And they give players another option. Mining for everything does get boring, that's why attempts to remove or nerf material trades is an issue for some people. It's not difficult to grasp the reason why that is.

Quote from Thagomixer»

I don't really build auto farms, I might build a house or two and a couple more builds for fun, but generally I only build big stuff in creative. As for the rest of my time, I like caving, exploring and raiding structures. Something that annoys me a lot is having to travel ridiculous distances to find stuff, especially through the end to get elytra. I prefer not to use elytra though, because I like building roads and railways.

Then Mojang should replace them with something that is both fun and rewarding in terms of resources and how interesting it is for the player to get involved. Mojang fail to do that and each time they nerf something it's not just the auto farms that are affected, they also do it to manual ones like trades, further limiting the freedoms of people who wish to do those big city builds in survival. I like building roads and railways as well, but how am I supposed to get the work done when people keep looking for more reasons to reduce the item per trade count? or put more obstacles in the way of earning higher tier material tools? considering all of the nerfs that have happened already I'm surprised I got as far as I did with my castle build, but it's not like anyone outside of this forum is going to care about that or any other player who plays SMP for the same reasons I do, now Mojang are pandering to the PVP community and individuals who only care about being more competitive than other's. For a sandbox game which if people didn't pirate the game, and I certainly did not, we all chipped in for this, this is hardly democratic, as we don't get ways to customize the game outside of modding or loading older versions. I would love to have pottery, blossom trees and bamboo rafts on my server, so would other people I play with, but due to the restrictions Mojang put in the more recent version, we have agreed the bad outweighs the good so we have chosen not to update our server beyond 1.19.1.

Quote from chaptmc»

My concern as well is how the Trial Chambers can be abused to rob other players of gear, which I recently experienced myself. On a friend's server I was in one with his 15 year old cousin (Who is a Combat Purist, all he does is fight stuff) and his cousin managed to get two Potion of Bad Omen from one of the last Trial Spawners we finished. I asked him kindly not to drink it since I was nearby, just finishing another trial spawner (deactivating it), and the Server Owner himself told his cousin not to drink the potion due to me being down there with him.

The 15 year old says okay that he won't, then does it anyways saying "Whoops...." reactiving the Spawner I just deactivated in Omnious Mode, having me get sideswiped and lose all my gear, having it despawn by the time his cousin took care of the spawners. The Server Owner, seeing as how his 15 year old cousin didn't listen to him reverted the Server back 15 minutes so I would have my gear back. Then his cousin admitted to doing that to 'attempt me into 1 vs. 1 ing him'. Yeah... That's a great way to do that, have a person lose all their gear due to your blatent carelessness, I'm sure they're gonna want to 1 vs. 1 you then with having nothing, sure, that makes total sense, if anything it degraded their gameplay experience on the server which will cause them to want to play elsewhere.

Kinda bad that Trial Chambers can be exploited this way, not gonna lie, as I'm sure some server owners would not have done the revert and given favor to the wrongdoer instead on the basis of 'Gameplay Mechanics'. Imagine a player has a rare item and another player wants it, they can just abuse the Trial Chamber this way to basically steal it from them.

This is kind of why I specifically don't play with Combat Purists on the game, as my experience with them has been awfully negative each time. Them telling me I'm playing the game wrong because I build myself safe shelters, them not wanting to sleep at night because they just want to slay hostile mobs, them having zero concern for me being around them, them telling me to 'git gud', and them trying to get me to 1 vs. 1 them (especially when they have more powerful gear than I do because that's fair). I don't like bashing on other playertype's styles, but when this type of player has always had detriment to me come as a result of their careless bravado, I just avoid that type of player.

Those combat purists are the reason why we end up sinking stack after stack of our iron supply from mining sessions into making new anvils for enchanting, which without an iron farm means we have no way to supplement the obnoxious low amount of iron we get from iron ore underground. I don't care how people try to word play this one, 31 ingots per anvil is expensive when you consider the fact they don't last forever like the enchantment table does. TMC may have a different point of view but by his own admission he doesn't use his resources to build anything fancy, and he plays on a modded version, not vanilla, he isn't playing the game the way we are.

Not even the amount of enchanted armour sets I stashed away in the ender chest from the End expedition is enough to fill up my armoury hall in the castle, which I had spent a full week in there earning, for that I am going to need to use the anvil to enchant new sets from armour either crafted or from trades.

Backup files may work, but I will be honest, I have had experiences with this sort of thing happening in Bedrock edition, I wasn't aware that this happened on Java also, I never assumed it was impossible, but until now I don't recall any instance of it happening, as claimed here.

I knew loading older worlds on Minecraft Java after installing and loading them in a newer version corrupts them though, but to what extent I wasn't sure of, it's not something I would generally attempt, when it comes to file corruption all sorts of unexpected behaviour may happen, from chunk errors, to the game crashing or just outright not loading the world.

As TMC said though you shouldn't load world saves in older versions if created on a new version.

Bedrock edition is a different case altogether as in multiplayer, people are forced to install the most recent version if they want to play online, but for some weird reason, player inventory can still be wiped, I've had this occur when attempting to load server files in single player, I did this to check the integrity of an older world save, turns out bedrock edition isn't even good at recognizing player ID, as you get assigned a new one if the game fails to find your old ID even if you're using the exact same Xbox Gamertag. Just another reason why I won't be playing on that version anymore, and I regret all the lampooning I did against Java I did in old times, Minecraft Java doesn't seem to have nearly as many (serious or game breaking) glitches as Bedrock edition currently does.

Quote from Noob6000»

I have very little skill with red stone contraptions.

And I built my own head today, on top of my base.

I'm not the best with redstone either, there are people who have created far better redstone contraptions than even me. All I've managed to do with them so far including past SMP worlds I've used other than a piston assisted stone and basalt generators, is a sorting system that collects iron from Iron Golem kills on an older world using hoppers and flowing water after suffocating them, not complicated by the standards of people who are masters of redstone.

I can do automated street lighting, and have done on older worlds, will be doing again on my 1.19.1 SMP Java world when I've got the time, but all that's needed for that is a daylight detector set to night and redstone lamp. Here's a street lighting setup I used on my previous Minecraft world.

Will I get better at redstone as I progress on my current world as I build my castle and have it completed? yes, as I intend on building a forge which will use a renewable bamboo furnace design a couple of friends use for their builds, Chaptmc made and uploaded a simple tutorial on Youtube but you'd need to ask him if you want to know how it works. I'm going to integrate his renewable bamboo furnace into two of my castle towers, for mass smelting and if I got the iron left, I will also link it to some smokers in the two kitchens. I may even come up with some variations of my own, if I do, I'd love to share some ideas, but I don't believe I could design one more compact than his one. As a matter of fact when it comes to compact builds, the best I've come up with them is a greenhouse on an older world and even that isn't the best looking one I've seen, it's not made for looks though, it's made for function and as a manual crop farm it works well enough.

Quote from Staricle»

That hallway is vast. It'll be the perfect place to display all the armor pieces you acquired from the end cities. I'm actually interested in seeing the exterior of the castle as well.

I find that polished tuff and tuff bricks blend in well with polished andesite and stone bricks and often mix them together to create custom rocky hillsides.

That's a good idea, but it's not just going to be used for me, other players on my world are welcome to use sections of that armoury hall as well.

Noob6000 is a misleading username for somebody who managed to build something so good in their own right though. He or she may be nooby at other aspects of the game, nobody is good at everything, but as a builder that individual is gifted I'd say, as putting armour trims on pedestals with item frames showing the armour trim item that was used in customizing the armour set is awesome, and the lighting is a nice touch as it allows people to see what items or blocks are placed clearly, the tuff bricks also work well for that build in my opinion.

As for my castle, sure, more works needs to be done on it first, but I will be showing the exterior when all the decoration is done, the expected time frame is about 3 months, but that's my estimation, possible delays may extend that as far as December, as in life there are no guarantees, excepts limits to our abilities and death.

Quote from ActuallyS8N»

Honestly, I think that has more to do with Microsoft than it does with Mojang. From what I understand, and I very well could be completely wrong, but Bedrock and Java use 2 different coding languages to get things done, despite both versions being owned and operated by the same Parent company. This is why redstone mechanics differ between versions in some cases. If I am wrong, and someone can explain it without being excessively wordy, that'd be good.

Beyond that, Minecraft will always be a sandbox game whether they add RPG elements to it or not. There is no conclusive story elements that lock things away until completed. The nether can be entered without the need for Diamonds by finding Obsidian in certain Blacksmith chests in villages, or by using water and lava buckets to make a portal the harder way. The End Islands are also accessible, although slightly difficult to get to with the Ender Dragon existing. Outside of those two examples, things are all easily obtained in one way or another with material progression and needs being met.

Most people tend not to have a problem with modern versions of the game after they've played around with the new stuff. Sure, people enjoy older versions and that's well within their rights to do so.

What I mean is sandbox games are supposed to have multiple different paths to progression in the game, not just a rigid and grindy one that forces you to play a certain way in order to get tasks done, I can forgive that in the case of RPG games as they often have story modes with a final boss where that style of gameplay makes a lot more sense, but not in a sandbox survival game like Minecraft that is supposed to appeal to casual players, and there is technically no story in the game as you the player are meant to make your own adventure. Even defeating the Ender Dragon doesn't end the game entirely, nor does beating the Wither, as you can continue playing even in single player and create more objectives for yourself, whether it be exploring the world which for all intents and purposes, is endless, there is a limit to the world size, but in survival mode you're never going to explore all of it, and even if you tried to, that would jack up the world file sizes, that aside, building on the entire world is impossible to do by yourself.

the game already has XP and enchanting, which is a way of boosting stats, some of which have incompatibilities with each other for balancing reasons, what more RPG elements do they wish to throw at it? telling you what material of armour plates can be used in battle or not? the mandate for upgrade templates in 1.20 is kind of like the banning of legendary items or characters in certain other games I know. What's the point in adding a feature, which can sometimes take a player months or even years of gameplay to earn if they remove it? just because one gatekeeping fringe (usually PVPers) of a community complained? it's absurd.

Nerfing trades as Mojang wanted to do in 1.21 has the unfortunate side effect of punishing builder style players who set up manual resource farms to free up time they would otherwise not have if they were forced to mine for everything they needed, it wasn't enough for Mojang to go out of their way to nerf or even nullify some automation in the game, which by the way reduces the utility of redstone as hoppers are often used with farms, Mojang insists on increasing the grindiness of the game and it comes off as them failing to look at alternatives or come up with ideas of their own.

If they want a feature that appeals to more competitive players, I've said this and so have some other people, this is the case to be made to add in a different tier of survival mode altogether, where they can have the increased challenge if they feel the base game or even hardcore isn't difficult enough for them.