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For a while, I have been very narrowly focused on modular development within Starlight HQ. And don’t get me wrong – this is a very essential part of the base, and probably its binding element at this point. However, it should go without saying that modular features are already auxiliary by nature. Starlight HQ has become a giant experiment – one that is going very successfully.

But we need to take a step back and look at the base as a whole. In doing so, we see an incomplete canvas! Indeed, we have been shaping the base up to prepare for its third unveiling, and we’re so close to having it at a stage ready for beta testing! But aesthetic features are just as important as the functional stuff. That’s what we’re going to look at today.

First, we need to complete the iron farm! Functionally, the farm is complete. But aesthetically, we still need to cap it off. And I’ve been holding off because of how exactly I want to do it.

Basically, I’m building a giant ball of iron. And no, it is not hollow.

Cool, right? But there is more incoming.

Even cooler! This is always what I wanted here, and now I have taken the time to design the rings exactly as necessary to fit them atop the iron farm. Now, I know the next photo that you’re waiting for…

Starlight HQ might as well be a space explorer’s fantasyland. Haha, the base is starting to look so much more complete. Indeed, we are closer than you may think to the completion of v3.0.

Today’s main project is, in fact, a brand-new build that will be placed in front of the iron farm. Why, you ask?

Well, this entire area has left Starlight very exposed at night, and this is the number one area where mobs infiltrate the base. I figure we can have a new build right here as a natural wall that actually accomplishes another goal: having an area in the base devoid of redstone.

With the entirety of Starlight HQ now a fully operational redstone computer, that means there is nowhere to hide from the system. It’s infiltrated everything! Sometimes, you may want a space to get away from all the busy activity that is constantly happening within the base.

Introducing the Starlight Solace Center (SSC), which will be the equivalent of our zen garden within HQ. A place to relax. A place to do nothing at all.

Believe it or not, the SSC was one of the first build ideas I had conceptualized many years ago when initially planning v3.0 and the outback faction. The reason it has not been constructed sooner is because we really needed the entire modular system in place before having a zen garden would be necessary.

A key element in the construction of this build is that I am using materials from all Starlight HQ’s constructions. Purpur from Starlight Castle. Iron/quartz from the Power Museum, black clay from the SRF, dark oak logs and wood from the treehouse and outback, and then I have a whole plan for the floor.

In this way, the build will be a full representation of every build, which is kind of the point.

In terms of entrances, I am giving the SSC two.

First, you’ll be able to enter directly from outside through a large opening. That part is fairly simplistic.

The second entrance will also provide another means of access to the Power Museum and outback faction.

It means I need to tear down the Sunset Balcony. Old piece of **** anyway.

From here, I’ll build a very long corridor crossing over top the Farmlands. Those are still obsolete, by the way.

^ It will connect to the SSC here, at this checkerboard pattern of carpets I have yet to discern.

Today, I do not plan to work on the large floor of the SSC, mostly because we actually don’t yet have the resources for it. I know – that’s hard to believe at this point. We’re 5,600 days into this world and still we are missing some significant resources.

That’s okay, because pretty soon we will have them all. Before the end of the season, anyway.

In the meantime, we can still enjoy a new sunset from the SSC interior.

Hmm, I also think gold doesn’t work in here.

Much better, and this follows suit with Starlight Castle’s theme colors of light blue and purple.

Although we cannot yet complete the SSC, we can construct an important build next to it that I’ve wanted to do for a long time.

Is it a parkour course? A game? A piece of pixel art?

Nope, it’s just a labyrinth. It’s not even a maze.

Back in January, I visited a labyrinth in Wilmington, DE, which was effectively just a long winding path that you were intended to follow as you contemplate whatever thoughts you so desire. It is this guiding principle which makes the labyrinth a perfect addition to the SSC, and why we will be building it here.

That being said, it is not a small build by any means – it requires stacks on stacks of red concrete, black concrete, and… coal blocks.

I am using coal blocks for the walls and roof to give the labyrinth a very secluded feel, even though it is an exterior build on the surface. This is the first time that I have used coal blocks in a build.

And with some red glass panes, the labyrinth is done! To be honest, I find it quite mesmerizing to look at, let alone play.

A true zen garden indeed. Perfect for us to use as we contemplate the massive new project that comes next.

Our potion brewing system works beautifully, and I am quite satisfied with how it fits into the base so far. But its ability to brew any type of potion is just the first of its many potential functions. Today, we are going to transform this brewer into one of the most versatile modular components of Starlight HQ. Its potential is unrivaled because of how many different options it has.

We could, for instance, set up a situation in which every entrance/exit from the Nether brews a batch of only fire resistance potions. Or speed potions. Or both! Or, I can have a batch of healing potions brew every time an iron golem is killed in our iron farm. Or, I can have both slow falling and regeneration potions brew every time the villagers harvest crops in our modular farms. Perhaps I decide to also switch things around and have the SRF farms harvest their crops every time I brew a batch of night vision potions.

See what I mean? The possibilities are endless with this machine. And we’re going to fully explore that today, with three major components.

The first component is a multiplex modifier that will be the liaison between the MISC and the potion brewer. This is what we will use to direct the MISC towards a specific set of potions to brew. The second is an automatic dispensing system for potion ingredients, identical to the manual one we built in the previous session. We have to use a separate set of droppers with their own potion ingredients in order to automate the process. Finally, we’ll construct two-way redstone lines between the potion brewer and MISC as the third component, such that we can use it as both an output from other operations and an input for others.

First and foremost, though – let’s build a storage room!

Situated on the SRF control floor adjacent to the modular crop farms (above Redstone Room), I have a large array of chests – three for each potion type, with each of the three representing the regular, splash, and lingering variants.

Currently, I do not have a way to sort them automatically, but I am determined to find a way to do this as it’s the only part we will not be able to automate as of today. Once we can automate the sorting and storing of potions, then we will have a truly lossless system.

For now, let’s begin the wiring components for the automated version of this farm. We effectively need to build a second set of droppers/hoppers like the ones above. We cannot use those because they are too ingrained within the wiring of the brewer.

The MISC will also need to power this redstone line running underneath the brewer, as this is how the potions will be brewed.

^ I am using the only available hopper in the line to connect the second set of droppers. All twelve of these need to be activated by separate redstone lines. That means yes – we need to construct twelve individual redstone lines up here.

Where will they originate? Well, next to the potion storage cellar, I will build the Starlight Generator Brew Selector. This selector (and potion storage) is located directly beneath the potion brewer, which will make it easy to connect both.

I am building a staircase to connect the two, which also means we now have another means of accessing the control floor from the tangent floor.

Alright, so this selector will utilize an item frame’s ability to produce a different output signal depending on its position. On the right side, we have the primary eight potions. The left side will be OFF by default, but once you change its position, the right side will become inactive and you can select among the seven potions over there.

How we create the individual lines is by juggling a torch/repeater setup based on the item frame’s comparator output (from one to eight).

^ The lit redstone torch indicates which potion is selected. The key challenge now is how to get all fifteen lines up to the brewer, while still keeping them separated.

This piston above is how we will disable the right side once we move the left side away from the OFF position. Any comparator output larger than one will retract that piston, keeping the comparator on the right side from transmitting power.

I am duplicating the setup on the left side; however, things will be slightly different since we are also using this side to brew negative potions (slowness, harming, invisibility, weakness). This will require a different type of setup.

The best way to keep these redstone lines separated is by not using redstone dust. This will induce more lag when the system becomes active, but it is also the most compact way of achieving what we want.

The pistons up top will retract when active, allowing power to enter through them.

^ The MISC will send power to all the repeaters above, but as you can see, only one will get through (the retracted piston), which means only one type of potion will brew.

Here are some photos of the redstone torch towers that inevitably need to be constructed for the next part:

It is a whole mess! But, I think I am keeping it well organized for the most part. Every line is so far separate, and I am successfully getting power up to the individual droppers.

In extending the dropper lines, I notice that I am quite close to the surface! Just how close, you ask?

****! That’s how close.

Here, you can see the other side of the selector, which will brew any among the last seven potions. Four of these are negative potions, which will require me to connect their respective lines to existing lines (i.e. slowness will just activate the speed + fermented spider eye droppers).

^ This torch tower is dedicated to the fermented spider eye dropper. Currently, I have both the slowness and weakness potions sending power into it. Slowness is also powering the speed torch tower, as you can see above.

Things are getting cramped very quickly, forcing me to find creative ways to move redstone around. As expected, I need to use more repeaters/torches than I would like. More of these always induces more lag, but we have no choice here.

Above, I have setup the invisibility potion selector, which simply lets power through both the night vision and weakness droppers.

Having setup all the potion selectors, we now must initiate some tests. This means heading into the MISC and establishing link options!

To start, we are going to build four link options:

1B – Crop farms > Potion brewer

2B – Furnace room > Potion brewer

3B – Nether Temple > Potion brewer

4B – Iron farm > Potion brewer

Links 1B and 4B will make the potion brewer into a very efficient potion farm because the crop and iron farms are almost always active. This means that for every output signal from these farms, a batch of potions will brew (potions will always be brewing). Links 2B and 3B rely on manual input. Once we use the furnace room or access the Nether Temple, only then will a batch of potions brew. This way, we have some options for how we want to automate the system.

Creating new links is actually quite easy to do at this point – the main problem we always run into is limited space. All we must do is build an AND gate that requires our link settings in order to become active. So, for instance, above you see two torches active on the MISC output side. This indicates Link 1B – the input from button 1 and the output from button B.

Once both are active, we’ll send that output to another AND gate which will produce output only when the crop farms become active. In the above photo, the line in the back is coming from Link 1B in the MISC. The line on the left is coming from the crop farms. The resulting output line will head back to the potion brewer.

Very important: grounding the redstone lines with stone brick or another building material. Just placing them on stone or dirt is a recipe for disaster, as I will accidentally break it later. I can’t tell you how many times this has already occurred.

Above is another important function for the MISC. Because we are brewing negative potions separately, we need to disable the fermented spider eye modifier from the manual brewer. This is just in case we happen to have it selected on the manual brewer. We don’t want two spider eyes jumping into the system and clogging it.

Alright, before we plug in the brewer to the MISC, we need to do some test runs. I’ll be using a button inside the brewer where the MISC input line will be coming in to perform these tests.

The good news is that part works… but the rest does not. Why? So begins the bugfixing phase.

BUGFIXING PHASE:

FINAL PHASE / NOTES

I cannot believe that I have gone this long now without a proper automated potion brewing system. For a while, it was in the back of my mind – after all, we have already automated almost everything else. Potions seem a no-brainer, except that I hardly use them. But then I started thinking about why I hardly use them: because they take so much time! I noticed this most expressively back in Session 255 when I crafted bountiful amounts of lingering potions to make tipped arrows. I am amazed at how long that process takes! Well, it will happen no longer.

The potion brewing system we are building today is going to be a slight modification of Mumbo’s design, and it is also only the first part of what we will fully realize with it. This is because the potion brewer will be the last major component of the modular system that we have spent the last couple years building within Starlight HQ. It will also be the first modular component to utilize the two-way redstone lines we made full use of in the previous session. Essentially, with this functionality, brewing potions will subsequently trigger other events in the base, and vice versa, based on the settings we prescribe in the MISC and other plugins.

This is therefore a two-step construction. Today, we will be focused on the first step: the potion brewer itself.

Its location will be in the tangent floor east wing – a new segment of the Power Museum we are about to dig out.

The system utilizes some very compact redstone, but it is not too complicated. Wooden buttons will select the potion you want to brew on the pink panel, and you can use the levers on the blue panel to select modifiers. The ingredients will filter into the brewing stand in the correct order to produce the potion of your choice.

The glowstone lamps here are indicator lamps to tell us when there are no more potion ingredients of that type in the dropper we’ll use to store them. This will help us avoid problems down the road.

^ The pulse extender here is used to dictate when to unlock the hopper underneath the brewing stand and remove the completed potions. As long as there are ingredients left in the hopper above the brewing stand (say, gunpowder to turn it into a splash potion, or dragon’s breath to turn it into a lingering potion), the pulse extender will not activate, and the potions will stay lodged until brewing is complete.

^ Here are the modifier options. When a potion is selected, its modifiers are also simultaneously dispensed. The levers out front simply use a piston/block system to select which modifiers we want.

For instance, above I have selected redstone and the fermented spider eye. The pistons are extended to allow power to reach those droppers once a potion is selected to brew.

Say goodbye to this old clunky storage room!

The order of modifiers is important, because we cannot negate a potion after turning it into a splash, for example. And we first need a splash before we can brew a lingering.

You will notice that one ingredient is missing an item frame – that would be the turtle shell. I only just obtained turtle eggs in this world, and I have yet to hatch them. So, for now, we have no turtle heads.

^ This chest will be used to store additional gunpowder because we have so much of it.

Here is the location of the chest that will contain the water bottles. But, how will we get water bottles into here? Surely, I do not plan to go through the troublesome process of manually filling and emptying bottles into this chest repeatedly. The goal of this entire project is to eliminate the tediousness associated with potion brewing.

My creative solution requires the destruction of the old mob drop storage room adjacent to the multi-purpose mob farm – a relic that has been collecting dust for at least five years!

The reason why I have not yet removed it is because every single chest is full of mob drops. So, I first need a place to move them.

On the SRF control floor, I’m thinking that I can just dig out an extra storage cellar for all these excess drops. After all, it is primely placed next to the mob drop item sorter.

Using some shulker boxes, I can quickly and efficiently move all the drops downstairs. And you would be right to conclude that I filled up every single one of those chests. Ugh, I never thought I would dread the day of having too many resources. But I am struggling to keep up at this point. Even the principal mod drop storage is about to fill up completely.

In place of the old storage room, I will be building a station specifically for refilling water bottles.

A simple setup, it will be grounds for a new generator later. Empty glass bottles will be stored in the four double chests. Using the pool of water above, you can quickly fill as many bottles as you want and let them pour out of your inventory into the hoppers! See below:

A perfect system, a considerable line of hoppers will take these bottles all the way down to the water bottle storage in the brewer.

Later, we will come up with ways to have this refilling station automatically initiate the brewing process and other events within the base. For now, however, this is perfectly fine.

Looks like it works! Now, we should test the brewer.

A success! We now have some night vision potions.

I am finishing the aesthetics of this hall but note that the empty wall is being prepared for further development. Indeed, there is a reason I have a total of five 3x3 spaces marked!

The next stage is to remove the old potion storage room that has ruled a plagued existence since its conception more than five years ago. It does look pretty, but it is terribly misplaced now.

I am temporarily moving all the current potions down to the SRF control floor until I expand a proper storage room for them, the location of which will be right here next to the modular farms and excess mob drop storage (which, conveniently, is also right beneath the new brewing system).

This prime real estate is now going to be used for something far more integral.

So, we are nearing beta phase for Starlight HQ 3.0, which means that the modular system is getting close to being completed in some form. As we conclude construction of the brewer’s modular functions and tie up some other loose ends, the modular base will be ready for testing (that means I will need people willing to test it, but more on that later).

In preparation for this, we need a central power source for the entire base – a source of power that can effectively act as a master switch for the entire modular computer we have buried within Starlight HQ.

This is the inception of the tesseract – the sixth and final stage of the Tetraquin Project.

Upon returning to Starlight HQ, there was one glaring issue that I took notice of almost immediately.

STAS is broken in some form, and after some considering I think I have identified exactly where that fault is coming from.

This issue only occurs after returning from the Nether – i.e. when I leave the loaded chunks. What happens is that I’ll take STAS to Starlight Station, disembark, then jump straight into the Nether before the minecarts have finished making their rounds. This is most likely causing them not to update when I return from the Nether, which in turn causes a backlog of carts on the track.

The solution? We need to connect all the STAS stations together, such that when you leave one station, every other station leaves as well. This will create a synchronized loop.

In order to connect all the stations together, we will need to implement two-way redstone lines. This requires a specific redstone repeater setup, as you can see here:

Using this two-way setup, we will be able to have the STAS stations all connect to one another. It won’t matter what station you start at – all will activate at once (well, with a slight delay). Below, you’ll see that I’ve toggled the lever on the left side. All sides still activate.

Likewise, if I toggle the right-most side, all sides will still activate.

The blue line will follow a similar suit, except that we have six stations to connect rather than four. Its setup will look like this:

No matter which station will use as the input, all six will activate at once. This is exactly the intended behavior for STAS that we need to implement, such that it functions as a true subway. It will be a complete re-engineering of how it works that will effectively be bug-free.

The levers indicate where the I/O of STAS stations need to be placed. Effectively, we need our two-way line to run laterally to the station redstone lines themselves. We have to be careful and make sure that both the input and output can stretch the 15 blocks to reach each two-way repeater.

For some stations, like the tangent station, we must power specific blocks because the wiring is already very tight (denoted with the glowstone and concrete blocks). This makes the job a bit challenging, especially since we have only an economy of space with which to work.

The red line is certainly simpler to tie together, because I have a single central web to which we can connect all four stations, like in the diagram at the top of the post.

Interestingly, redstone wires will not transmit power downward if they are on top of upside-down stair blocks. I’d like to think this will be changed.

And just so we are all on the same page, yes I did have to run a two-way wire all the way up to Starlight Treehouse station, which ate up roughly a whole stack of repeaters (since each two-way repeater takes four repeaters).

However, I am executing a bundling tactic when running wires to the outback, trying to keep all the wires close together so that I have more room to efficiently expand underground. This lessens the chance of us running into wires down the road.

All the wires are run the exact same way, so it is not necessary for me to show you every single repeater setup. However, some notable bugs came up during the testing process that do warrant some exposition. First, observe the following:

Even after the initial takeoff, the stations actually run on a perpetual loop for several cycles until eventually coming to a standstill. I watched every station for a while in order to determine why this behavior was occurring. At first, I thought that perhaps a bogey signal was repeating itself throughout the two-way redstone line.

In fact, the culprit is this:

The old way STAS ran was by having two sets of detector rails spaced apart preceding each station. The first detector rail would activate the station to send the next minecart outbound, while the second detector rail would halt the inbound train. With this setup, STAS would only move one cart at a time, like a domino effect. This takes forever to loop, and it is why the system would lockup upon leaving chunks.

What is happening here is that the first set of detector rails is causing an additional input on the two-way redstone line, creating a perpetual loop. The solution is to remove all these detector rails. We still need the second set to stop the inbound trains. But since we are now activating all the stations together, we no longer need the first set as all trains will be moving in succession.

Removing these detector rails will also help me to test each station and verify that all minecarts are leaving their station. In testing this, I am happy to see that the red line runs perfectly from all four stations! As you can see above, the inbound train to Starlight Treehouse is visible from the outbound train.

In testing the blue line, however, I ran into problems. Notably, the southbound Tetraquin Station was not activating from any station except its own, causing a buildup of carts. Why? The answer is because I was negligent in noticing that the incoming redstone line was longer than 15 blocks. As such, I had to install another two-way repeater.

From Starlight Station, another interesting property is observed. Since a redstone wire runs directly into the block which serves as the output (from the two-way repeater), this takes precedence and locks the input repeater. The system should actually look more like this:

…in which the redstone can receive output but not generate input to the block.

^ The same behavior is observable on two other stations, which is why they were not behaving properly.

Alas, in testing all six blue stations, I can verify that they now work as intended! All six stations toggle all six stations. Perfect! We have just created a subway system, and I cannot help but wonder how we might be able to utilize two-way redstone lines in the MISC later.

Some attention now needs to be drawn to the Starlight Station, which has remained incomplete in terms of its aesthetics. When I first built the station, it effectively took over the old horse stables. I never bothered to fix that.

I am also installing an entrance to STAS from the Nether Temple. It is annoying having to exit the Nether and travel all the way through the plaza just to get to STAS.

This will no longer be an issue, for I am putting an underground tunnel right inside the temple, taking over the original location for the transport pod.

The transport pod will be moved to the wall, of course, so that it remains accessible. But now I have a shortcut to STAS which will save on time exponentially.

I might as well finish the aesthetics of the station while I am here.

Much better, and it remains a mystery why I never bothered to finish it sooner. I suppose my priorities have been tossed around quite a bit.

With STAS effectively complete, I am itching to finish another very important feature for its transport pods. If you forgot, Starlight HQ currently features four transport pods that serve the purpose of transporting items around different parts of the base. The central rendezvous point for all pods is in the Starlight Resources Facility.

However, what happens if you spend so much time gathering items from the SRF to send to the Nether Temple (to bring into the Nether) and find that the cart is not even here? It’s a disappointment, because that means you need to make two trips to the Nether to get all your stuff transported. Transport pods are supposed to eliminate that hassle.

The solution is to utilize the two-way redstone system to make both ends of the transport pods activate each other. In practice, this means you will be able to call the cart from the other end if it is not on this one.

Oh, and it also means I need to redo the Starlight Room pod, because the cart needs to rest against a solid block.

Again, the exact same redstone is being installed here, so there is not much to show. Getting redstone underneath the powered rails in the SRF is a bit tricky and requires some tricks, but it is possible.

I installed this two-way call system to both the Nether Temple and Starlight Room transport pods. I have not yet done the Starlight Treehouse pod because I am almost out of repeaters, and I will probably need a stack or two for it. And I do not need to elaborate on why I am not doing the Mob Processing Hub pod today.

In reviewing my work today on STAS, I have decided that I will not be installing express lines, at least right now. Doing this will require additional redstone lines running throughout the base, and it will complicate the current system we have just bug fixed. For now, the current system will work fine, and I may revisit the possibility of implementing express lines later. I simply don’t think the work for that minor feature justifies its benefits.

So, that is STAS all completed! The only thing left for us to do is to connect it to the MISC so that I can use the subway to complete tasks throughout the base. The best place to do this will be at the four-way or six-way junctions, I think, but that work will be reserved for another day. I am very STAS-fatigued at this point!

That means we are moving onto a new base project. I mean, I was not going to leave this wall untouched forever! In thinking about how I want to tie up modular functions in this base for v3.0, I have realized that one major feature is missing from this base.

It should be pretty obvious at this point.

It has been a hot minute since we have explored brand new territory here in Quintropolis. In fact, I believe the last time was back in Session 241 when we discovered Utopia south of Quintropolis Island. However, we did not do much exploring beyond that region. And those are 1.12 chunks.

Today, we are preparing to take a deep dive south of Utopia into brand new 1.15.2 chunks in a quest to explore some new oceanic biomes! The goal for today’s adventure is to find and collect every new type of block/item that exists in these new chunks. Can we do it? I think so!

Coming from one mesa to another, here is the exit portal to Utopia. This will be grounds for a new base at some point in the future because it sits on a fruitful corner bordering a mesa, desert, and savannah. Oh, and not too far away is the new ocean.

I am starting a map for Utopia, but it looks like we will need a few. As we explored much of the desert area south of the mesa back in Session 241-242, we did not head too far north. This is where the new territory lies.

Do you see it? I do!

We’re diving in the deep end as we greet our aquatic friends and the kelp forests of this new ocean system.

Check it out! It’s my first shipwreck discovery. What ancient treasures could lie within? Let’s find out.

A buried treasure map!

Hmm, it looks to be not so far away after all.

Wow! There is so much life under these waters. I will have to come back here once we find the treasure.

So, it appears that the treasure is buried underneath this sand dune. I wonder how long it will take me to find.

Don’t mind me; I’m just going to collect some kelp while I am out here. Seagrass too.

And hey! We have some turtles! It’s a good thing I brought shears, because I’m about to get some turtle eggs.

Indeed so! And I found the treasure underneath. What did we get inside?

A heart of the sea! Perfect – I can already speculate how we will be using this in Starlight HQ.

Hey, a Utopian village! Let’s check it out and see what we can harvest. This is, in fact, the very first 1.14+ village in Quintropolis, which makes it currently the only working village.

“Welcome to the village of Utopia,” he says.

“Thank you, kind sir. Now I am on a quest to find some new aquatic gems. Where do I have to go?”

“Head off the coast into Witherquin Waters!” he states emphatically. Witherquin Waters? Of course, it would be ominously titled.

Right off the village is a HUGE coral reef! Forget what I found earlier – I’m about to get all up in here.

It’s so colorful! I will plan on taking all types of corals. This stuff is going to look great in the Aqua Lounge.

Another shipwreck! Is this the equivalent of Bermuda? I hope not, but at the same time it wouldn’t be the worst thing.

^ An overview of the desert village and Witherquin Waters as we search for more treasure. This entire area is beautiful – I hope the village welcomes the opportunity for expansion.

What’s this? An underwater chasm? That is new.

Diamonds underwater? Since when did underwater caves descend this deep? I must have missed a lot.

An underwater ravine – also new!

I have found the best hiding spot at the bottom of the ocean, tucked underneath this rock. I am certain that I would win at hide and seek.

Check it out! A cave spider spawner here in the ocean.

Sorry buddy, I have already won this battle.

Sea pickles – underwater torches!

Organizing the corals I have collected, I can see that each type of coral has three variants – a regular coral, a coral fan, and a coral block. My goal is to collect a stack of each.

I caught myself a triggerfish!

Clues to an underwater voyage gone wrong… I am starting to get mildly suspicious of these waters.

This one has bamboo inside! With just a few pieces, I believe I can start a bamboo farm back at HQ without having to locate a bamboo jungle. This would be fantastic news.

A hoard of drowned approach me from the underwater ruins!

From that hoard, I have collected yet another trident.

I have also located a Mending fishing rod.

An ocean monument greets me – I might as well explore it. I need to stock up on prismarine blocks anyway.

This particular monument features TWO sponge rooms! I’ll be taking all of them once I take down the elder guardians.

One thing I am learning about turtles: they do not stop making eggs! Usually there is a cooldown, but not today. I already have half a stack of turtle eggs.

I think we have collected every block out here, so let’s make our way back to HQ. We now have to come up with an area to store them!

I have three shulker boxes full of aquatic blocks and items. So, I am planning to build an aquatic arsenal right here in Mushroom Cove to replace the old storage area for meats (since we no longer have animals here). This also means I am getting all those hoppers back.

Using prismarine and coral to decorate the space, I’ll have three sections for storage: one for prismarine blocks, one for corals, and one for everything else.

For the floor, all I need to do is fill the area underneath with water. I am learning that coral needs to be attached to a water block, whether still or flowing, in order to stay alive.

I am using kelp blocks for the first time, as they accent the back wall nicely.

There you have it! All coral blocks will be stored on the bottom layer of chests, while all coral and coral fans will be stored on the top layer. I have organized prismarine storage (which includes all slabs, stairs, etc.), as well as using the remaining chests to store kelp, seagrass, dried kelp (and blocks), nautilus shells, turtle eggs, and sea pickles.

The last two unlabeled chests will be for sponges (top) and other rarities like our buried treasure maps and hearts of the sea (bottom).

Next, I am switching out dark oak signs for oak signs on the Parkour Wall of Fame. It is easier to read from afar.

Keeping an aquatic theme, remember when we captured these two skeleton horses back during our Starlight Castle reconstruction? Well, as I’d like to keep them in the Aqua Lounge since you can ride them underwater, I need to build for them a proper home.

^ Here, we are at the exit gate into Starlight Bay. The area for the horses will be small but spacious enough.

Now, to get them there, I’ll need to temporarily break down the corridor to prepare a 2-wide space.

Indeed, I got them in with few problems, and now I can ride these guys out into the bay!

Finally, I am adding four turtle eggs to the Gold Grinder in order to attract zombie reinforcements. This should significantly improve our rates in the farm as no longer will zombies simply linger on the platforms.

Ah, it feels good to be back in Starlight HQ after our recent adventures! We have lots of work to do.

Candyland is starting to look a little more like, well, Candyland! Some of the colorful aesthetics that constitute Gravity Gorge’s construction are going to make their way throughout all of Candyland. Eventually.

We still have two major parts of the course to complete before we get to the additional features. Oh yeah! There are going to be additional features.

First is the completion of the rainbow cliffs here in the gaping valley, connecting the ice hopping challenge to the rainbow road.

Second is the large valley section directly following the rainbow road which connects to the end of the course.

Take a look here – I’m hiding from the phantoms! Hmm, this could have been a neat mechanic to utilize in the course. But maybe for a different one.

^ I’m going to erect a few “bryce” canyons if you will, following suit on the color palette we have chosen for the course.

I will reiterate that Gravity Gorge is not going to be a difficult course. In fact, it will be one of the easiest courses in this world, because it is designed as a speedrunning course. That means you should try to complete it as fast as you can!

As such, in designing each segment, I am leaving room open for shortcuts if you are brave enough. The fall damage should not kill you if you miss.

Following the cliffs, you will follow the ice path through the mountain, finally connecting to the rainbow road we built in the last session.

^ Here is an overview of this segment of the course, from the ice hopping challenge to the rainbow road. We still need to connect the first half of the course to the ice hopping challenge.

A bridge here and there should do it.

And the force of gravity is put to the test as I fight a swarm of phantoms tonight! I’ll be giving them a taste of their own medicine.

I am jumping to the end of the course to design the finish line. You can see that I am going for something a bit grandiose. A big course deserves a big finish, right?

A view of the finish line from afar:

The last segment we need to build is the section connecting the rainbow road to the final ice run! And I’ve been saving the best for last…

This will be the exploration village of the course. A key element, as you can see above, is that the entire segment will be elevated two blocks, such that while you cannot enter the course from outside, you can accidentally fall outside the bounds of the course. So, explore at your own risk, but don’t fall off!

I LOVE these big arrows! They will point you in the right direction.

^ I may have gone a bit crazy with the arrows. I just love how they look here. But now we need to make the village!

From the village, you will hop across towers up to the final ice race.

…but now it hides the beautiful arrow I just spent a lot of time building. Let’s move it!

Ah, that is much better!

The village will feature the signature ice roads that comprise the rest of the course to help you along.

A couple small buildings here and there, and then I’ll use lanterns to give it a more complete feel.

What is behind the door, you ask? You will have to explore the village and find out!

I am cleaning up the look of the village, adding some spruce trees, and a definitive landing pad, so that you can see exactly where to go.

Next, we need to fix the final ice race.

The construction of the course is finished! Oh wait, you may have forgotten that I mentioned “additional features.” Yes, those features are actually integral to completing this course. Let’s take a look.

Certain segments of the course, specifically the rainbow cliffs and exploration village, will include these tipped arrow dispensers. When you cross them, you will get shot with either an arrow of slow falling or of jump boost, or both! These will help you complete these sections of the course.

^ For the end of the rainbow road, you will simply jump off and be stung with slow falling on your descent! It’s very fun, trust me. Just follow the big arrows.

The final ice race is going to be spruced up, no pun intended (because there are spruce trees).

First, you will get a dose of Speed II as you enter the final race.

Then, you will cross a tripwire that will activate two dispensers at the end of the ice path. These will shoot out a lingering potion of slow falling and a lingering potion of jump boost. You’ll need to hop through both in order to make the final jump…

…to the finish line!

Upon completing the course, you’ll be celebrated with fireworks!

Now, once you complete the course, you will be asked a very important question: Did you find all eight bonus coins? “Huh?” I hear you asking. I never mentioned those! Well, that’s because they are hidden throughout the course.

Because this is an easy course, I wanted the option of an additional challenge. Scattered throughout the course are eight bonus coins in the form of emeralds. Finding them will require you to explore the course. Speedrun, explore, and then speedrun for all the coins. Running the course with the coins is a very different experience than doing it without them, and it will give you a nice challenge indeed.

And that, my friends, is Gravity Gorge. One of my favorite builds so far this season, and possibly in this world. When the next world download releases, you will get the chance to play this course yourself. In the meantime, let’s take a moment to celebrate by putting the course on the Parkour Wall of Fame.

Candyland is more than just a haven for clay collecting. In fact, over the course of the past several months, this purpose has been re-delegated to the new Utopia we found a while back, about 6,000 blocks directly south of Quintropolis Island. What does this mean for Candyland?

It’s time to repurpose the soon-to-be city. And I know just how to do that.

One of my favorite ways to designate a location in this world is with... you guessed it: a parkour course! For Candyland, I have had a very particular thematic course in mind.

This entire peninsula is actually not the Candyland you know, but rather a small sub-section of the same mesa biome, just a short flight north across the bay which separates the two sides. With this biome segment being separated like this, we have the advantage of transforming the entire peninsula into a course. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.

It is more than just a course, though. This peninsula hosts a beautiful river gorge running straight through it. We’re going to utilize this scenery to construct a playful course that incorporates the entire landscape. It’s going to be very fun.

For this course, therefore, I’ll be using a hefty stockpile of materials, including most clay colors. That’s because this course will also serve as a fitting monument for LGBT pride. Hey, Quintropolis can celebrate, too!

Welcome, friends, to Gravity Gorge.

Our lobby will consist of two features that we’ll build later. The first will be a book/quill denoting some information about the course. This will be hoisted upon a lectern for visitors. The second feature will be a shop wherein you will be able to purchase goods from the bonus coins you’ll obtain throughout the course (in the form of emeralds). Oh yeah, there are going to be collectibles. Ever played Ty the Tasmanian Tiger?

The course will feature various genres, but a signature component will be its wavy ice-rink paths designed for speedrunning. I am not looking to build a difficult course. In fact, this will be one of the easiest courses in Quintropolis, if we are referring strictly to difficulty. It’s undoubtedly going to be the largest, though.

I am keeping a zombie villager trapped here, because I’d also like to eventually turn the lobby area into a small village. As of yet, we have no way to access Gravity Gorge aside from flying over the bay.

Jack-o-lanterns will be a fine light source, mostly because I do not have enough glowstone or sea lanterns to support the stacks of sources we will need!

^ You can see the first ice path finished, situated on the tip of the peninsula. Ideally, I’ll have you climb up the initial mountain, at which point you will race and hop around the gorge to the other side of the peninsula. It will very much be setup as a speedrunning course.

The climb portion takes up just a small portion of the course, and is not particularly difficult.

^ I wish I could clean this up a bit, and what I may do is swap the packed ice for regular ice to prevent mob spawns (in this way, I won’t even have to light it up). But alas, you can begin to capture an idea of how this course will be designed.

I am using torches to lay-out the rest of the course, which will be linear in nature rather than exploratory. Though, because I will be featuring collectibles throughout the course, that means there are going to be certain... tangents, if you will, from the straightforward path.

^ Above is the largest valley on the peninsula, and I have some ways I’d like to utilize this.

Bouncing is one of the ways in which you’ll hop across the gorge. You won’t get a lot of height from it, but I can work around that.

I’ll clean up the borders later (because that will be a whole task), but for now, I’m going to focus on just building the principal elements of the course. Dialing on the minute details this early will just make the whole process a headache.

After bouncing across, you’ll take another ice race around the slope towards the other end, where you will make another bounce.

I went ahead and began using regular ice to prevent having to light up certain parts of the course, such as this tunnel, which will take you through the next mountain and out towards the big valley we looked at earlier.

^ Above, I’ve skipped to the other side of the big valley to construct the next part of the ice race, which is also the most iconic aesthetic section of the course, being bordered with rainbow roads.

I’d say the curves are looking good, if not completely symmetrical. That’s okay because we are mostly interested in keeping with the shape of the mountain.

Skipping to what the end of the course will look like, I’m building a large ice road which will be a sort of “victory lap” once you complete the rest of the course. I’ll decorate later.

Leading up to the final ice ramp is something of a wall-bumping challenge. Since this is a speedrunning course, I thought it might be fitting to feature a winding road that will make it challenging for you not to hit any walls (which will slow you down).

Here we have some more segments of the “perfect run” idea, wherein the goal is not necessarily just to beat the course, but to beat it in the shortest amount of time.

Leading up to the large valley which itself precedes the rainbow road, we’ll do an ice-hopping challenge.

We’ll be working on the big valley in the next session, because it is going to feature some particularly unique elements. Starting off, I’ll begin building some of the platforms that it will feature.

And now to finish the colorful curve.

Interesting factoid that had been completely absent from my mind for years: the villager purifier has not worked since Minecraft 1.11.

I realized this in the last session when I needed to capture several zombie villagers. This means that we can close off the exit point for zombie villagers and eventually turn this back into a regular zombie farm. It still exists as stage one of the Tetraquin Project, because it did work for a hot minute three years ago.

The other two stages (iron and gold farms) are working well, but there is an overdue fix we need for the Gold Grinder that has been a nuisance for a while. I don’t know why I haven’t fixed it yet.

Feathers from jockeys end up clogging the system after long AFK sessions, resulting in the chests backing up with swords and drops ultimately being lost because they just sit atop the hoppers. This prevents me from doing true AFK sessions (overnight, for example). The solve for this is easy:

I just need to sort out feathers, too. I am also not going to replace the furnaces with blast furnaces because otherwise it would not be able to process the chicken we get from the jockeys. Regular furnaces keep up just fine, you know, when feathers are not clogging it.

With these tweaks amended, it’s time to focus our energy on the next step of the Tetraquin Project – and it’s a big one.

A witch farm is one of the most important and most useful resource farms that I think exists, right up there with iron and gold (and in some ways superseding them). It provides a wide-range of resources: sticks, bottles, sugar, glowstone, spider eyes, gunpowder, and most importantly, redstone. These drops are incredibly useful for potions, but they all have wider uses as well. Considering that we have been churning through our redstone supply as of late, it is time that we erect this farm properly.

I know what you might be thinking: “You already have a witch farm!” This is really only half true. Let’s take a look at the current “witch farm”:

We have the prerequisite groundwork for a witch farm. The spawning spaces are enclosed, the item sorter is built, the swamp is drowned, and most of the caves underneath are lit up.

The issue is that we don’t have a way to automatically move the witches. Currently I rely on them to walk off the sides, which does not work effectively if you’re more than 32 blocks away. Since building this farm back in Session 143 (this was almost five years ago), it has not been touched. I now have the resources and knowledge to turn this into the proper, maximum-efficiency farm it should have always been. Welcome to stage four.

For this farm, I’ll be using a somewhat expensive design by ilmango, which automatically causes the witches to glitch through the floor immediately upon spawning. Then, I can utilize the entity cramming rule to kill them almost instantly, opening room for more to spawn.

The way the farm will work is based on tripwires. String covers the entire top block of the 7x9 spawning space for the witches. This is multiplied by two because there are two total layers (since this witch hut was generated prior to 1.8, there can only be two spawning floors).

Once the witches spawn, the tripwires will cause a sticky piston to move an observer which triggers the bottom layer of pistons to move the floor back and forth, allowing the witch to glitch through.

^ Here, the repeaters are set to three ticks only on one side – this is how the floor will be pushed back to the correct position after being moved by the other side.

In order to correct the floor whenever glitches occur (witches may not glitch through immediately), we will need to install a hopper timer to automate this movement whenever a witch is present.

Above, you can see the hopper timer. It will always be running, as it isn’t necessary to turn it off. The witch farm is the only build in this area.

The killing area is quite simple, identical to that in the Gold Grinder to be exact. The witches will fall below and be funneled into a single block which will contain 24 minecarts. Since this is the maximum number of entities that can be crammed in a single space, the witches will die very quickly. Using cobblestone walls allows two to fall at once.

Next, I need to cover it up properly. This means destroying the ugly spruce slab roof that currently mocks the farm underneath.

I find that burning is an appropriate approach for a roof this large.

I am using purpur slabs to denote the 7x9 spawning area for the witches. This will also help me find the center of the farm and keep the roof symmetrical.

Yeah, it never needed to be nearly as big as the version I previously built. Blocks only need to extend fourteen blocks from the spawning platform to keep a light level of zero. This design is much prettier, too.

The ideal AFK spot is right up here, and it actually means that the lighting of the caves underneath is almost pointless. From up here, there is not a single spot other than the witch farm that mobs can spawn. This makes it ideal for an overnight AFK.

Time for a test run!

I spent an hour testing the farm’s rates, and here is what we got:

Not too bad! For the next test, I am going to run the farm overnight for seven hours.

I won’t go through all the chests, because the yield is roughly the same (doubled for sticks). What is that yield? Magnificent, that’s what:

Damn, I may not even need another AFK run for a while. What am I going to do with all those spider eyes?

This farm is, without a doubt, one of the most important developments so far this season. We now have renewable (and fast) ways to get sticks (which we use for lots of different things), redstone (which we use for everything), glowstone (no more needing to find it in the Nether, which is honestly a pain), sugar (speed?), and gunpowder (I mean, mass amounts of TNT anyone?).

As such, it deserves an official name of its own: the Alchemy Farm. Starlight HQ is going to love this addition.

With the Alchemy Farm complete (with relative ease, might I add – this farm was quite easy to build compared to some of the other major builds like the Gold Grinder and guardian farm), I’ve decided to touch on an overdue update needed for Starlight HQ’s multi-purpose mob farm: killing witches.

Currently, the drop tower is only 24 blocks – it kills all regular mobs sans armor. Extending the tower lower has always been a challenge because a lot of redstone for the farm’s features is directly underneath. I always decided it just wasn’t worth it. Now, however, I think it’s possible.

I’m making this hatch a feature that you can toggle, so that you still have the option to use the farm’s old functionality (plus, if you do the Starlight Parkour, then you don’t want to fall all the way down to the bottom).

Fence gates are the only option here because you cannot move hoppers with pistons (in fact, they wouldn’t even fit here).

^ Indeed, I’ll need to move this redstone so that it goes around the 2x2 space. This will require important considerations as I don’t want to mess up the timing (a crucial part of some of the features).

You can already see some of the challenges associated with this renovation. This farm has eight different features – all of them are wedged into this small space.

The main challenge, ergo, is trying to wire another four redstone lines throughout here to activate the fence gates, which themselves are right beneath four pistons that toggle the farm’s XP mode.

I have to move some of the torch towers so that we can fit the repeaters underneath these pistons. That is the only way to power the fence gates without powering the pistons above.

^ Here is one of the gates being powered – I have to use more repeaters to keep the redstone lines separated. I have a headache.

Above, you can see two more of the gates being successfully powered. Getting wires there wasn’t easy though – I had to move most of the redstone. The area is quite cramped now:

^ The last gate to power is in a weird position, and again it requires me to use more repeater/torch combinations than I would like.

Unfortunately, it looks like I broke something. The ‘XP farm’ trigger has just activated a timer that pushed both sides back and forth continuously. I have no idea why that happened.

I have also caused the lava kill switch to break, the water sweeper to stop working, and the bottom gates not to power. That’s a lot of bugs. Lol.

Thankfully, I managed to follow the wires one by one and amend these bugs. The timing is a little off from its old design, but every feature still manages to work as intended. Now we’ve got one more.

With the ‘kill hatch’ feature, we can choose whether we want the mobs to fall the 35 blocks or 24. Advantages of the former are obviously that it will kill witches (we already sort their drops, but of course those chests are mostly empty since they have had to be killed manually until now). However, we may still want to keep the 24-block floor, not just for Starlight Parkour but also to kill mobs manually (say, if we want to get potions from witches or certain armor pieces from mobs that fall and do not die, without the worry of creepers).

That is a lot of accumulated mobs that I’m about to drop.

Such is another advantage of the new kill hatch – I can safely drop mobs that are held above without worry of blowing up the entire farm (again).

Voila, our new kill hatch feature is complete! This feature is a big deal, because for years I had claimed it wasn’t possible to implement due to space restrictions. Once again, I have upgraded the multi-purpose mob farm in a big way, making it even better than before. The next upgrade will be some sort of timer that periodically opens the fence gates, because if you have them closed, drops can still rest on top of them. That will be for another day when I can figure out where it will go.

This took long enough.