The Old Fort Becomes Old Tower
Brinemire Swamp and Grotto
Ranch 34
Skullgorge
Shadowspire, The Twilight Watchtower (March 18, 2019)
The Tower of Midgard
The Castle Keep
The Approach and Main Entrance
The Barbican and East Courtyard
The Small Garden Courtyard and Colonnade
Map Viewing Area and Elytra Hub
Skeletons in my Closet
Spiders in the Basement
(Above) Though I have save files that are older, this is actually the earliest picture I have of the "castle"—taken Aug. 28, 2014, the Day of Dragon's Death—back when it was still a fort on a precipice between an extreme hills biome and birch forest hills. The Olympian Mountains and Bleach Bone Forest, they're called. This is my first (and only) "large biome" world and back then, I didn't really know how big the biomes would be. It was a time when Minecraft was still mysterious and exciting for me. I didn't read the wiki or forums very much. I didn't know what was out there. I didn't know what was beyond the mountains to the east or the massive plains to the west. I didn't know what was on the other side of the 10 km-wide Dead Sea to the north or the shadows of the Dark Forest's roofed canopy to the south.
I had sheep, cows and pigs all on one side, chickens (too far away to render) on the other. I kept a lot of chickens because in addition to being a good food source, I needed feathers for arrows to slay the Ender Dragon, which I accomplished the day the above picture was taken.
(Above x3) All three of the above pictures were taken on another historic day for the Kingdom of Midgard, October 13, 2014—the first Witherfall. It was the day I first summoned and slew the Wither. It was the day I placed my first-ever beacon. Before that day, I had never done either of those things in any world.
It was also really the first time I used diamond equipment other than picks—I think I slew the dragon clad in iron. At that time, way back then, it felt like, "Oh, boy! Wearing diamond armor! How powerful!" Of course, over the years since, I've become more accustomed to playing with max-enchant diamond armor than anything else. I don't still have all of my original suit, but it wasn't anything special. The helmet was Protection III and Respiration III only, and pants were Projectile Protection III and Unbreaking III, for example.
In the Stone Age, I thought I was conserving iron by using stone tools. I was, but I had also not discovered branch mining techniques, nor did I have any idea how long a diamond pick would last. Hard to believe, but iron was still semi precious, while diamonds were invaluable to me—diamonds were to be cherished in treasure chests, not sullied by use! What if I were to die and lose them? The horror! Of course, I know better now, plus there's Mending, which seriously debased diamonds. "Saving" iron to fully power my first beacon greatly prolonged my transition from Stone Age to Iron Age. Again, I didn't watch YouTube videos, read the Wiki or even talk to others about Minecraft, so I didn't realize just how terribly inefficient it was to use stone (and even iron) picks and equipment.
Now, when I make a new (hardcore) world, I get full diamond equipment as soon as I can, as any experienced, goal-oriented player will do.
By the way, the wheat by the pool of water in the first of the three pictures was my first "farm." I used wheat to breed cows and seeds to breed chickens. The horses came from a far-off plain about 3 km to the west, the first plains I encountered in that direction. My first horse, a black destrider named Kitt, is around there somewhere in gold armor, but I don't think he's visible.
Work in progress about the Diamond Age.
Work in progress about the New Castle Era.
Work in progress about the Age of Flight.
Work in progress about the Rocket Age.
In the spoiler below are some pictures taken from the roughly same spot using copies of backup save files. I put these in order to show the rise of Castle Midgard throughout the years. These are screenshots of years past, but all taken July 2, 2018, in 1.12.2, the current version. I'm going to try to keep commentary very brief.
Again, captions are below the images. Render distance 32, 1920x1080.
July 12, 2014, ten days after the world's creation. My first backup save file. In these early days, I spent most of my time about 1 km to the north at Brinemire Grotto, a base inside an underground ravine intersected by an abandoned mineshaft far below Brinemire Swamp.
Oct. 13, 2014, the first Witherfall. It marked the end of the Stone Age and rise of the Iron Age. I always wore iron armor and carried an iron sword, of course, but most of my picks, shovels, and axes up to this point were stone.
Nov. 5, 2014, after deforestation of the dangerous and obstructing Bleach Bone Forest immediately surrounding the fort. This was the heart of what I consider my Iron Age. All my regular tools were iron, though I had a few special-purpose enchanted diamond tools including the Efficiency IV, Unbreaking III axe that I used to clear the trees. That same axe—my first diamond axe in any world ever—still hangs on the wall in Old Tower today. With it, I cleared a wide path from the Old Fort to Skullgorge about 1 km to the west, and Brinemire Grotto about 1 km to the north. I call that path King's Road.
Jan 30, 2015, having terraformed the environs. More importantly, though, this was the groundbreaking day I began the westbound branch mine, thus marking the beginning of the year-long Diamond Age. It was a time of great subterranean adventure punctuated by heavy mining in search of diamonds. The world's third base, Skullgorge, about 1 km to the west, was fully operational. It had more resources than the Old Fort at the time, but more importantly, it was the location of my first skeleton XP farm. All my enchanting, even through the next era, was done at Skullgorge. Previously, what little enchanting I did happened in the End dimension. I even classify equipment by enchantment location: the very eldest are "End-forged" but most are "Skull-forged." Modern equipment is "castle-forged" because the castle is now the site of multiple XP farms. Just a funny little thing: notice the red flower and lilac above the creeper: they're in basically every screenshot (though the red flower gets moved).
Dec. 10, 2015, three days after the construction of the "new" castle began and thus, three days into the fourth age, the New Castle Era. As I've explained previously, I classify the ages because they represent a significant shift in my play style as well as my knowledge of Minecraft. Naturally, I set the dates of the ages long after they began. I wouldn't know at the time that an event would later become a historical milestone, of course. The New Castle Era, despite being named after the castle, was a time of distant exploration and expansion. Despite not yet having the off-hand slot introduced in the later version 1.9, I did a lot of mapping on horseback.
Jan. 4, 2016; Kitt is beside his mate, Frostwind (the white horse), but is just a bit too far to render. This is before I began a long and arduous construction of the keep. Glitches and crashes and mistakes would plague that soon-to-come process.
March 16, 2016, the first version 1.9 save. Construction of the keep began at the end of January but was not finished until mid-Febuary.
March 29, 2016 began construction of Midgard Tower, which was to be a dual-purpose addition: dark-room mob farm and elytra launch platform. Neither came to fruition, but the tower still marks the castle's location from any outside spot within render distance. I still might make a gunpowder farm out of it.
May 18, 2016. The tree, Yggdrasil, was planted May 4, 2016. I made a post about it back then to the "What Have You Done Recently" thread: https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/survival-mode/297957-what-have-you-done-recently?page=244#c5025
Also May 18, 2016. The small house is an AFK fish farm. I only used it perhaps a half dozen nights of 4-6 hours each. Of course, I was searching for Mending, but one pulls all sorts of stuff out of the water each night. I averaged one Mending book a night.
Oct. 24, 2016. No more torch spam. The green carpet covers blocks of glowstone and is considered transparent to light.
Also Oct. 24, 2016. View at night.
July 12, 2017. Right after the third anniversary. Doesn't look like much has changed, but a closer inspection will show a major expansion to the back of the castle. I'll cover the barbican in a later post.
July 2, 2018, the fourth anniversary of Midgard.
July 2, 2019, the fifth anniversary of Midgard.
Original post from July 2, 2018:
For at least two years, I've threatened to make a thread on these forums about my world's first and main base, Castle Midgard. Midgard is my vanilla, large-biome, survival single player world and today, July 2, 2018, is its fourth anniversary. It began in version 1.7.10 and I've continued to update it to the current version, 1.12.2.
I wasn't able to put the time and effort into making a big thread with lots of pictures and a video (or three), but I want to do something. So, I thought I would finally start a thread about the castle, and slowly update it with pictures of the past and present of my world.
I'm so sleepy, but I don't want to fail at my objective to start a thread tonight. So, I opened Minecraft, flew down to the base of the castle, and snapped a really quick picture, which I uploaded. It's not much, but it's a start!
Thanks for reading!
make sure you don't lose track of your orientation and end up unknowingly spiraling down into the void. Also try to avoid looking at any endermen as you come in for a landing.
1
Pretty sure Infinity is not a treasure enchant, since it's obtainable from the Enchanting Table.
Treasure
Some enchantments are "treasure" enchantments (shown in the table below), meaning they can never be created by an enchantment table... https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Mechanics/Enchanting#Treasure
1
Why do people still build that type of mob farm?
Those never worked well. The problem is they rely on mobs to randomly wander into the water streams, and for that to happen, the spawn pads have to be more than 24 blocks from the player (hostile mobs won't spawn closer to the player than that), but less than 32 blocks away (the range at which mobs stop wandering and just stand around until they despawn). So yea, building over deep ocean will help, but you're still not going to get a ton of drops.
Flushing farms that actively move mobs out of the spawn area and into the kill area are much more effective. Somewhere on the forums I have a build thread on my old MobFall flushing farm, which is a small design with eight 19x19 floors all flushed by a single water source block. It produces 14 different kinds of drops and is pretty effective if the area around the farm is well prepared (works better if built at lower Y level than I did).
I have a newer design I call the Mob Star that produces a ridiculous amount of drops, but I haven't done a tutorial (sorry).
Been meaning to do a build thread on this one, but I haven't found the time...
2
I agree with Hex.
If you use it to circumvent a failure by you when playing, then, yes, it's cheating. For recovering from a game glitch or crash, then no, that's what backups are for (to recover from software or hardware failures).
1
Zombie pigmen get aggravated when they hear another one scream (up to a certain distance). So those in the overworld will not be affected by the ones in the nether. However, to get the ones in the nether to leave you alone, you'll either need to kill all the angry ones (difficult, since more will likely get angered) or get far enough away for a long enough time.
See the wiki for details: https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Zombie_Pigman#Hostility
In one of my worlds I have a long minecart rail underground that was built for another purpose (part of my nether hub), but it works great for calming those little piggies down (just ride it to the other end and hang out there for a moment).
2
Well, you have a lava bucket, and that can be used as a weapon if you're careful (dump it in a way that flows towards the mobs and not you)..
3
If you can find you way back to the mineshaft it will have lots of wood planks. I'm guessing you found one since you have minecarts and rails.
1
When I imported my older world into 1.9+ I was reluctant to resummon the dragon because I had built things on the end island that I didn't want destroyed, so I built a rail track across the void to the outer end islands.
It takes roughly 2 minutes to cross the void by minecart. I've been meaning to build some floating sculptures in the void to make the ride more interesting (space ships, mythical creatures, etc.) but I've just been too busy (translation, busy=lazy).
1
How about, stop deleting your world and just keep playing.
Since you didn't explain why you delete your worlds, it's not really possible to offer any sound advice. We'd need to know what the problem is to help you find a solution. So what is the reason you can't keep playing the same world? What makes you want to delete it and start over?
1
You can find the ingredients to craft a Fire Charge in the nether, and that can be used to relight the portal. Or you could find iron ingots in Nether Fortress loot chests and get flint from gravel (to craft a flint and steel). You may even be able to find a flint and steel in a loot chest.
So you're not stuck there (not permanently, anyway). The portal can be relit.
1
Undead mobs like zombies and skeletons burn up in sunlight. Creepers and spiders do not. So you are far more likely to find Creepers and Spiders in daylight, but they still only spawn in the dark. Any you see in daylight are left-overs from the night before, or they wandered out of caves or dark forested areas.
And hostile mobs more than 128 blocks away instantly despawn, so traveling far is not going to help you find them (not in daylight, anyway).
Yes, that's normal. If you want to find hostile mobs in daytime you need to hunt in caves (or early in the morning, after not sleeping). There are exceptions, like guardians who spawn in or above ocean monuments any time of the day or night. There are some other exceptions, but you get the idea (most hostile mobs only spawn in the dark).
Or you could make a hostile mob farm (basically a dark room or platforms with a kill and collection system).
This is my Mob Star hostile mob farm (Zombies, Skeletons, Spiders, Creepers, Witches, Endermen and 14 kinds of drops).