I'm quite behind in my journal, but that's become a trend, and rather a testament of how much fun I have been having in the game as of late!
...Developing the Inner Circle, which is now a full self-sustaining ecosystem. The neighborhood is fully protected from the outside with a hedge wall, and we have a downtown with shops for different villager trades, farms to support those trades (crop farms, sugar cane, leather, etc.), a Wellness Center featuring a cleric, cleric trade storage items, and ingredients to heal zombie villagers (purified villagers of which comprise about half the residents now), a Council Clubhouse for our librarians, and a honey house for bees (this is the first honey farm setup that I have in my world). This village was built entirely from the ground up from nothing - it is now the biggest and most thriving village in this world.
This project is basically my capstone for Quintropolis's third season, the Age of Ender. I'm developing the hell out of it - next, I'm moving into the auxiliary stuff: parkour courses, a hedge maze, a museum, a Welcome House, and probably some more shops for different villager trades. I've also created an underground ice path to the Mob Processing Hub which hosts mob farms to support the cleric trades (zombie flesh now has a use). The final piece will be a large golden monument that I've prepared a space for in the center of the circle, surrounded by eight beacons.
I've always thought of sweet berries as relatively arbitrary items. Sure, you can use them as a food source and for trading. But pretty much everything else in the game is a better option. The only unique use for the berries is to breed foxes, but for that purpose you wouldn't really need a berry farm.
It's much more economical to find some cows and make a cow farm, and/or find a taiga village and get potatoes. A baked potato farm is my personal recommendation, especially in the early game, because it's a pretty good food source and very easy to farm. As far as when to make the farm - up to you! Having a farm is a great resource as the goal is to provide yourself with a supply of the item which you are farming. So, if that item is in significant need, then that's a good sign it is time to build the farm (for example, I recently realized that I needed practically endless supplies of scaffolding for builds - so I built a large bamboo farm that now provides this). Personally, I don't choose to rush build every farm as fast as possible. Rather, I focus on what I need at the time, then build accordingly (sometimes there are exceptions, because after all - I am a completionist). In fact, I spent weeks playing in my main world before building even my very first farm (which was a wheat farm). It's all up to whatever you want to do!
Haunted by PTSD and hallucinations of Enderquin, tension is rising as the season's endgame begins to suggest that imminent terror is upon Quintropolis. We don't know exactly what that means just yet... But we know something is coming. So, let's turn our attention to an overdue development on Quintropolis Island - the world spawn point!!
Session 280 - "Spawn Chunk"
WHO’S THERE??
It’s nothing. Everything is okay… Though I cannot help but feel that the air is blowing differently. The sounds on the island echo with different variations than before. Everything is just so eerily quiet. In fact, these changes became apparent not very long after my initial visit to Enderquin. I think I was just so enamored with new ideas to notice them.
Could it be true? That Enderquin is not dead?? Have I made some mistakes??
No… It’s all just a hallucination. My mind is just playing tricks on me, probably as a coping mechanism. Or maybe I am afraid deep down, and simply unable to admit that I fear his presence still looms. Perhaps my discussions with Mayor Sensha and the villagers have begun to resonate such that I am now paying close attention to the changes in our natural ecosystem. And those changes are becoming clearer every passing day.
Enderquin is conquered. There is no gauntlet. There are no infinite lives.
Welcome to Quintropolis Island – my precious home I vowed to protect all those years ago.
World spawn has remained unprotected since the world’s beginnings (or at least my beginnings). If there is a threat looming underneath the surface, then it would be wise for us to protect the spawn chunks as much as possible. There is no reason I should still be respawning in the middle of the jungle in the dead of night, with no resources and no easy way back to Starlight HQ (which is across the entire island, easily around 1,000 blocks). Of course, we have the Tropic Fortress pictured above, but that is really just a starting hub for the Totem Run parkour course, featuring little to no resources.
First, I am heading to Utopia to protect the Nether portal and collect some materials.
I’ve also done some caving in this area to begin exploring some of the underground facets of the terrain.
Before we do anything, I need to determine the world spawn point. The iron platform above is generally where I expect to respawn, but in order to safely secure the spawn exactly – I need to narrow things down.
Throwing some items into the End portal – I will know exactly where the world spawn is. A compass would also provide this information.
I am clearing the area, but I see no items!! Where did they go?
Up there! See them on the tree??
Fascinating! The one tree I chose not to remove is in fact blocking the world spawn point. That’s very inconvenient.
I will be securing the world spawn point so that I can collect items from Enderquin. After all, who knows what we might do in the future?
The Quintropolis Welcome Center will be designed as a hub, with all sorts of information about Quintropolis (specifically the island), a full world map, and most notably “prep halls” wherein you will have access to armor, tools, weapons, food, and utilities like torches that you may need upon initially spawning in the world (or respawning without a bed).
Here, I’ll add a viewing window to the Totem Run parkour course. Indeed, we’re actually right next door to the Tropic Fortress and Totem Run! This gives you something to do right on entering the world (a very fun course and still one of my favorites to this day, despite being built in 2014).
^ On the wall above, I will replicate and add the full Quintropolis world map as space allows. This will be done over time as I fully intend to get the entire 5x3 space filled.
The world spawn point will be protected by glass, and I’ll be adding hoppers to automatically collect items that are sent through the End portal. This will only happen if the block is less than a full block (so the “path” block will work – also, grass would cause us to spawn in there, which we don’t want).
^ Here, you get a view of the chunk wall border just off the coast of the island.
I’m finding some uses of the regular “wood” block, which is a variation of the logs that essentially covers all six sides.
Coming along nicely!!
The entrance to the Welcome Center is fully covered by jungle trees. I want to maintain as much of the natural scenery as possible. The island’s ecosystem is very small, and I have no intention of completely urbanizing it (besides the Inner Circle and Starlight HQ). The entire island is only just over a mile across (the furthest points are 1,640 blocks apart, and a mile in Minecraft is 1,609 blocks since a block is equal to a meter).
I am adding a post in the center of the hub, which will contain signs of information about the island as I think of useful things to add.
Now, I am working on the outside, specifically the coast. Although I don’t want to urbanize the entire island, I do want to have a road running across it. We will start that process here at the Welcome Center, using lanterns as our principal lighting source.
I am having such fun hanging lanterns in trees as well! This keeps many of the foliage areas nicely lit, too.
This is the entrance into the Welcome Center. You can see that it’s literally right on the coast.
Signs will be used to help you navigate the island, so that you know where everything is! This will make the world much more approachable, as I am definitely thinking ahead for the world download. As of the current world download, well, it’s not very guest-friendly (not to mention a terribly outdated representation of Quintropolis as it is today).
Here’s a little view of the Welcome Center from outside:
I have chosen to keep it hidden underneath foliage, much of which I have added back.
Inside, you can see the completed hedge roof, and the welcome post which has some more information on it. The four grass blocks are your spawning spaces (the game checks for grass blocks when determining where to spawn you, and if none are present within a 21x21 radius around the world spawn point, then you spawn at the world spawn point).
Okay, one more thing left to do… Test it out!!
Here comes sudden death. But hey – a nice view of the Welcome Center and Tropic Fortress from up here.
Indeed, it works! I’m happy with that – now, let’s move to the Prep Halls.
These halls are being constructed underground right outside. I have signs directing you all over the place now – it’s going to be such a lovely experience.
As we don’t yet have a beacon here (there will be soon), I have gotten spoiled by Haste II at Starlight. So, digging out the halls took some time, but alas – they turned out great.
Having any block I want at my disposal within Starlight has the particular benefit which is that I feel I am in Creative Mode. In any prior season, building the Welcome Center, the Prep Halls, and the rest of the coast outside would easily have been a several-session affair due to the time required to harvest all the materials. But now that part is child’s play, and this took no time at all.
Four rooms – armor, tools/weaponry, food, and utilities – full of everything you would need to survive and thrive on the island.
Finally, let’s complete the Starlight HQ railway into Starlight Station. Yes, at the moment there is a railway that does run across the island into Starlight HQ. However, it’s currently in the Tropic Fortress, which is not really a base. Moving it will be easy, but first we need to build a proper building for it.
A little bit down the road, not exactly inside the Welcome Center, I am erecting the railway terminal.
And here we are!! Eventually, the road will split at an intersection and take you over to the Inner Circle. But we will complete that another day.
For now, I am just satisfied with finally developing the spawn chunks. Now I feel a bit safer despite the omens that are upon us. I’ll take a ride back to HQ as I prepare for whatever comes my way next.
With the Quintropolis Welcome Center now fully setup, that's going to make things much easier if I die and have no respawn point set. No longer do I need to traverse more than 1,000 blocks just to get back to Starlight HQ! Additionally, this will become an important resource as I prepare the world for download following the season finale, which seems as though it will come sooner rather than later.
Well I don't really think this block is necessary, because it does not provide anything you cannot already do with redstone. Yes, I hear the arguments suggesting that it makes redstone more approachable, but in my opinion Mojang should not aim to make redstone more approachable. Redstone follows rules of logic similar to electrical wiring. Learning the rules of this logic so that you can use them creatively is the whole point, and if you don't then it isn't so hard to follow a block-by-block tutorial. If you want to design a machine that automates farms at specific times of day, then spend some time to learn how the rules allow you to do so. A block like this does not fit natively within the sandbox appeal of redstone, because every redstone block has a logic function - as opposed to the proposed Scheduler block, which is really not based on redstone at all. Besides, did you know that the daylight sensor detects specific times of day? Just plug a comparator up to one, and notice that the output power level (1-15) depends on the exact sky light level. So you can already use one daylight sensor to automate 15 different things separately depending on the time of day.
For what it's worth, I have already built a machine that automates farms at specific times of day using the above mechanics, and it's not that difficult. You don't need timers at all - just a daylight sensor, comparator, and a contraption that isolates each of the 15 signal strength states - this is the most complicated bit, but you can find a tutorial easy. If you want something to activate every three days, then put a pulse divider at the end of your output and set it to three. So adding a block like this actually has no real benefit - you can do exactly what you want to do with daylight sensors. It seems like you just want it to be easier and remove the redstone part entirely, which IMO is not a good reason to introduce a new redstone block. If we get new redstone blocks, then they need to introduce new logic components (like comparators, which introduced new redstone mechanics based on item input levels), not be entire contraptions.
I would support Mojang to focus on dealing with the redstone bugs regarding chunks that unload, though. It's annoying.
The Starlight City Planning Center receives a healthy start on development today with our massive bamboo farm taking shape! But, as the title suggests, this is just one of several interesting elements of this busy session...
Session 279 - "BSOD"
Welcome to the Starlight City Planning Center. We have significant work to do if we want any chance of getting Starlight HQ 3.0 finished soon. This is the last major development of the season (of course, we have many projects to finish, such as Starlight Treehouse and Starlight Compressor – but, in terms of major new additions, this is it right here).
First, I’m going to do a few aesthetic updates to the main hub of the Starlight Resources Facility. These colors are annoying me, and I do not feel they fit with the theme of the build any longer.
Iron bars? Absolutely ugly.
Light gray glass? Much better – now, I’ll complete some changes on the roof, changing it to black concrete, and we’re good to go!
Wondrous! In hindsight, I personally would have wanted this dome to have a much larger diameter. It’s much too late for that now, but you’ll no doubt realize that the proportions between the slime farm and the remaining hub area are quite, well, disproportionate. It’s okay, though – the Starlight City Planning Center will amend these issues.
This is because the planning center is being built as a completely new segment of underground Starlight HQ – not just as an extension of the SRF. Its farms, modular activity, and aesthetic styles will be completely different than the SRF. While the SRF has been great at sustaining resource production for Starlight HQ’s development, it falls short of being industrial scale. This is the purpose of the SCPC – to provide farms and resources on a much larger scale as we prepare to construct a city far beyond the boundaries of Starlight HQ.
As noted in the previous session, we will only be scratching the surface of the SCPC this season, with most of the build’s work being pushed to Season 4 due to simply having too much going on this season. Regardless, I need the groundwork setup for the build – that’s what we will be doing today.
The underground construction will sit beneath the entirety of Starlight Outback. What you see above is the thankfulness of having Haste II, which I will need to eventually expand to encompass the entire headquarters. The SCPC will be divided into nine “city blocks,” with each cubicle being 35x35 blocks. Accounting for the 7-wide paths through the center (which will follow this aesthetic style), this gives an estimated size of 132x132 blocks – some variation is expected of course.
This is absolutely massive for an underground build, because we first need to mine out the entire square area of these blocks. However, this is why the work is being pushed to next season. It is simply too big of a project to undergo this late into the season. However, I can begin work on one of the nine planned cubicles.
This cubicle will house the large bamboo farm, which we desperately need to make scaffolding if we’re going to be building skyscrapers and such. Scaffolding is incredibly useful, but the closest bamboo jungle is about 2,500 blocks north (which is still not too bad all things considered)
Getting the numbers right is very important here – the farm is based on a design by Shulkercraft which uses a flying machine to harvest the bamboo field.
Hopper minecarts will move along the bottom and collect the bamboo that is harvested.
Again, my goal is to build the farm on the edges of the 35x35 cubicle, so that when I add pathways throughout next season, we have nice glass viewing from all sides of the farm.
It’s far too dark in here, so I’ll need to setup some lighting.
The only way to do this such that all spaces are fully lit to prevent mobs is to build the ceiling five blocks above the floor. This does limit bamboo growth – but I’m not too concerned about that given the scale of the farm as a whole.
We have some storage underneath the farm, but I foresee this needing to be massively expanded. I’ll work on this area in segments as the need arises.
^ Here, you can see some aesthetic progress on the SCPC hallway! As we continue the build next season, all halls will be neatly decorated in this same aesthetic style – yes, I have more iron blocks than I know what to do with at this point. Thank you, iron farm.
Bamboo grows extremely fast, and because this farm is quite large, it will take no time at all to collect massive amounts of it. The current setup uses observers to harvest automatically when bamboo growth is detected at that level.
However, we do not want this automated behavior, because of two reasons: (1) it would cause us to receive too much bamboo too fast, overflowing our storage in no time at all, and (2) if I log out while the flying machine is working, it can bug out and break when I log back in.
I’ll be installing a piston gate here to block observers from starting the farm, then I will add a mode to toggle between automatic and manual mode.
^ Here, you can see a panel with two options. The first lets us choose whether to keep the farm on automatically. If it’s on manual mode, I can just press the button on the glowstone to start the farm. The second option enables modular activity. That’s right! We can now use the bamboo farm as both an input and target for the MISC link options. I haven’t yet decided which links I want to setup, but basically this option will unlock the bamboo farm to be used for modulating other activity in the base.
Nice! With the bamboo farm installed, I’m going to move towards another important addition to the base – one which I was originally going to build in the outback. I then decided to build it in the SCPC. But after even further consideration, I realized that it is best suited for the SRF storage cellars itself. What is the addition??
^ Welcome to the Rasterizer – a banner workshop specifically for building banners and waypoints that we can add to maps across Quintropolis. This is going to be incredibly useful as I begin preparing the world for download, and for navigating the various areas of Quintropolis.
The Rasterizer’s twelve chests on the walls all contain full stacks of every banner color – this way, you can pick any chest you want, and subsequently any color you want, and get to work.
Using a loom, you can attach various styles and colors to the banners. Using an anvil, I can name the banner with however I want it to appear on a map.
Voila – here is the banner I am adding for Starlight HQ, resting here at the castle’s glass dome.
I’ll slowly be continuing this process throughout all of Quintropolis. But now maybe you’re wondering – why is this not in the SCPC??
Well, banners are built using wool and sticks. While we now get sticks from the bamboo farm, it’s much easier to transport these than to transport lots of 16 wool colors and dyes. Since our wool farm is directly next door, I wanted the Rasterizer to be more of an extension to this farm. It would be inconvenient to collect wool of every color from here, only to transport it to a distant other part of the base which otherwise has no resources for the Rasterizer. Indeed, the dye room is also on the other side, allowing me to quickly stock the Rasterizer with a stack of each dye color.
With all this done… I’m taking a break!! It’s time to do something I have not done in over a year, maybe longer… CAVING!!
It seems simple enough, but when you haven’t done something so simple in such a long time, it’s pretty exciting. I’m looking forward to it.
My choice of caving location will be right here at Starlight City’s coastal village across the chunk wall border – where we discussed the Story of Stonewall with Mayor Sensha. I figure that if I will eventually be civilizing this area, I should work on lighting it up below the ground, extracting some good resources along the way.
I chose not to take too many screenshots, but I definitely explored for a while, bringing several shulker boxes now to do so. In fact, this is the first caving adventure that I have done using shulker boxes, which have allowed me to keep caving for far longer than I would have been able to do otherwise.
One of the mineshafts underneath the village contains this beautiful array of three cave spider spawners! This is very similar to the arrangement underneath Starlight HQ. You may recall there are more than nine spawners directly underneath Starlight HQ, none of which we have properly developed yet. Indeed, I have plans for those, but again they are technically in undeveloped parts of the base (south of Starlight Plaza), so my plans for those (as well as with these three spawners here) will need to wait for Season 4.
^ Here is my haul of resources from the adventure, many of which will now be processed through Starlight Compressor to smelt. It was so fun! I’ve enjoyed caving a lot and will continue to do more in other areas around the world. Utopia, Megapolis, Candyland, Stonewall, and even other parts of Starlight City will need to be explored more fully. In fact…
Why not start right now?? Let’s Riptide our way across Starlight City’s land and see what we find.
Paradox. Triangle. Thirteen. Rainbow. Pagoda.
Huh?? The thunder and lightning must be causing some hallucinations…
WHAT THE HELL!!
Okay, I’m getting down from the sky… I don’t know what is going on, but I am scared…
Wait… is this a village?
What the hell is happening??!! This village is covered with cobwebs! There is nobody here!!
Am I cursed if I sleep here tonight? I probably am, but something eerie and ominous is in the air. No sign of life. Maybe this was a mistake.
Time to sleep...
“Hello Joey. Come and play with me.”
“There are many games which await you in the gauntlet.”
“You’re dreaming now, don’t worry. This is a dream. Or is it a vision?”
“That’s what you spoke of Violet’s hallucinations. Ironic, no?”
“You cannot escape the prison of your mind. This is the blue screen of death which cannot be so easily reset.”
“Remember - the gauntlet thrives with infinite lives.
No soul becomes one with me.”
“And God said… let there be… LIGHT.”
STOP!!!
My heavy breathing slowly calms down as I attempt to recover from what I can only describe as the worst nightmare of my life. I am shaking. I need to get out of here.
Is this what happened to Violet before she went absolutely insane?
Something unnerving is going on. I can’t get his voice out of my head.
HELP ME.
The warning signs are there. Do I choose to heed them? The answer is yes, because I'm smart enough to know that my power in this world remains limited no matter how advanced Starlight HQ will become. I can defeat physical threats just fine, but mental torture is something from which nobody can easily evade. As such, we need to hurry up and get the spawn chunks developed. Whatever is coming... I sense time is running out.
Interestingly, my current SSP of over 8.5 years had a jungle temple right at spawn!
Here it is:
I built a parkour course around it now. But it was my very first discovery in the world, and so far the only jungle temple I have found. Note that this world's seed will produce a completely different world now, because it was first made in Minecraft 1.5 (so you would need to play it in a version prior to 1.7 in order to find it).
Congrats on 8.5 years! That's almost nine years which a step even closer to ten years!
Thank you leangreen! In fact I missed the eight-year anniversary entirely (actually, I've missed most of them now...), but hey - at least I got this one. Here's to another 6,000 days.
I have only named one tool, which is a bow enchanted with both Mending and Infinity (and the very highest Power, Punch, and Flame enchantments of course) - this is a combination you can no longer get in vanilla Minecraft, making it one of the most prestigious and rarest weapons in my arsenal.
It is called Enderquin's Bow, as it is the bow I used to defeat the ender dragon.
A new milestone has been reached in Quintropolis - my SSP world which is now 8.5 years old...
I have reached Day 6000!!
Certainly, for a world this old, this milestone could have been reached far sooner. But I do not play nearly as often as I used to, sometimes taking months off at a time. Alas, Quintropolis is far more advanced than you may think for only 6,000 days - but, then there are also areas in which it is a bit behind, such as world expansion. Having spent most of the first 5,000 days developing a single mega-base (Starlight HQ), I've spent much of the previous 1,000 days expanding the world significantly. From fully developing the world spawn point on Quintropolis Island, to transforming an entire badlands biome more than 10,000 blocks southeast into a massive parkour course - the world is much bigger now than it ever was.
That's why we are celebrating the milestone at one of the most up-and-coming parts of the world, the Inner Circle, which is being developed as the world's first major city expansion (housing, shops, parkour courses, road networks, and... trash cans). It is nestled in the center of Quintropolis Island (Starlight HQ sits on the east coast of the island, with the spawn chunks on the west side), which itself is just one "borough" of Starlight City - the city borders extending thousands of blocks west. I will be focusing my attention on this development very soon, but for now... celebrate the milestone, and in turn the impending civilization of the entire island, with two of the council residents: Drexel and Staz.
In addition to what Jancrash mentioned, farm designs range significantly - so your farms can be as simple or as complicated as you need them to be (the more complex ones tend to produce better rates, though - however, I'll note that often it's not the farm itself that is complicated, but rather proofing the areas around it).
I am also a fan of Rays Works, especially his raid farm that he has a video on (it's pretty easy to make, and a great example of an easy farm that happens to produce exceptional results). Thanks to the Hero of the Village effect that happens after beating a raid, this farm can give you over 70+ different items. It's an amazing survival resource.
And then of course there is a guardian farm - there's no easy way to go about this one. It will be tedious any way you go about it, but absolutely worth it.
EDIT: Wow I did not realize this was a year-old thread bumped by a spam post...
Stonewall may be a reminder of what was lost, but Starlight exists to beget hope for what is to come.
That's why it remains imperative that we complete v3.0 of the base, which we are so close to doing! Most of the work to do so focuses on tweaking the modular transformation of Starlight HQ - and there's quite a lot we get done today in a bountiful party of modular upgrades!
Session 278 - "Plugin Party"
The Redstone Room’s caution tape is about to be torn down, because we’re ready to expand Starlight HQ underground in a brand-new direction towards the outback faction.
With Haste II, it is no problem at all tearing through this mass of stone – this will be very important later. Remember this hallway as being the humble beginnings of a new construction in this base – one which will only be started this season and ideally completed in the next.
Welcome to the Starlight City Planning Center, a place dedicated to everything we need to sustain the development of a full city. This will include all the industrial-scale farms which we have yet to construct. Think on the scale of TNT-based wood farms, concrete generators, huge bamboo farms, and the like. Again, we’re only going to scrape the surface of these ideas in Season 3 – we’re cutting most of this project and moving it into next season. However, I want the groundwork laid so that I can move right into this development after v3.0 is done.
The entire construction will have a grid-like layout, like the downtown of a city, but underground. And yes – it will be surrounded by iron blocks because I have way too many.
First and foremost, the SCPC will feature a storage space for all job site blocks – this includes useful utility blocks like barrels, smokers, blast furnaces, brewing stands, etc.
This is the extent of my work here today – we’ll be working on this area much more constructively across the next several sessions.
Today, our main project is to install two very useful new plugins into Starlight HQ’s modular system. Let’s go over them:
Starlight Limiter – a modifier that will limit the rate of output by three. So, as an example, for every three times the iron farm generates input, a batch of potions will brew (if this is the link we choose to set up). This is extremely important for regulating base activity. One of the main reasons I choose not to leave the potion brewer plugged in is because my chests fill up way too quickly, especially when I forget that it’s plugged in. With Starlight Limiter, the goal is to balance the rate of production.
Starlight Corkscrew – a modifier with a more targeted function, Starlight Corkscrew will kill any outstanding mobs sitting at the bottom of the mob drop chamber (these exclusively include mobs with armor and/or Feather Falling boots). Designing this contraption as a modifier allows the process to happen seamlessly throughout base operations, so that I never have to think about it.
Starting with Starlight Limiter, the UI is not unlike the other technical plugins (with just an ‘AUX in’ and ON/OFF lever). Essentially, the modifier itself is just a pulse divider. Let’s dive into how this divider works:
The dropper on the top-left contains three items, while the hopper on the left contains one non-stackable item (in this case, a potion). The number of items in the dropper corresponds to the number of input pulses required to produce one output pulse. In my case, I’m choosing to do three (this is a division factor of three, so the ratio of input to output is 3:1), but I could add any amount to the divider and change the factor if I want.
The green wool represents the input. In the previous example, that would be input from one of the MISC links (so the iron farm > potion brewer, for instance). Each time the dropper is toggled, regardless of pulse length, it moves one item to the dropper on the right. After three of these, the comparator on the left powers off, moving the non-stackable item from the left hopper to the right hopper. Because the comparator on the right side (facing the yellow block) would simultaneously power itself from the side (since it is in subtraction mode), it will produce several output ticks at twice the number of items in the dropper (so six in this case), which I then compress into a single output pulse using a repeater set to two ticks. This concurrently moves the three items from the right dropper back into the left dropper, and the potion from the right hopper back into the left hopper.
Okay, now all we need to do is install this into the MISC links!
The trickiest part is understanding exactly where to add Starlight Limiter in the modifier chain, keeping in mind that we can choose whether to have the output bypass it directly (by having it OFF) or alternatively funnel through it (turning it ON). But how does this impact other modifiers such as Starlight Compressor, Echo, Balancer, etc.? Well, it all depends on the target output.
I am starting with the potion brewer output wire, which is where all output MISC links converge to if their target is the potion brewer. I currently have the following modifier chain attached to this wire:
First, if Spectrometer is active and it’s nighttime (or daytime if ‘Invert’ is ON), there will be no modular activity anyway – so that’s the first condition. If it passes this condition, the output moves to Starlight Echo for the delay. Once this happens, it finishes through Starlight Compressor, which limits the length of the output pulse. Of course, this is only if all three modifiers are active – we can turn any of them on/off as we wish.
The order of these last two does not matter, because Starlight Echo can process a delay regardless of the output pulse length. However, I think that where we add Starlight Limiter does matter, because it takes effect every time a pulse is received. If it is at the end of the chain, then it makes all the prior work meaningless, because it will not preserve the output length that Starlight Compressor regulates. That’s why it needs to go at the beginning of the chain. This way, it immediately takes the inputs required by the MISC, but will only send an output to the rest of the chain after three are received.
Okay, as with the other modifiers, we are using a piston to redirect the redstone either into or away from the modifier depending on the ON/OFF state. And you can see the Limiter as we have just installed it on the left.
Of course, I need to run a wire all the way down here to toggle the piston, but that’s a standard practice now with all universal switches.
The next tricky bit is getting all the modular mixer wires done. Several are not complete, which is bugging me. Wiring them up mostly just requires me to navigate the claustrophobic mess of redstone taking place behind and underneath the mixer and finding some way to split all the wires to their respective AND gates which toggle them.
^ Here is the Dropbox mixer channel, for example, which is inconveniently located directly above STAS. That makes the job much harder, because I cannot simply create downward staircases as I can with the MISC channel.
I now need to install Starlight Limiters into all the other MISC targets (SRF crop farms, mushroom farm) as well as the Dropbox targets.
It’s just a process of repetition at this point, but a definite plugin party all the same. As I go through each individual modular target, I am realizing that several plugins are missing! For instance, I miscalculated when I originally built the Dropbox and didn’t install the Inverter correctly (this inverts the behavior of the Dropbox, so that modular automation only takes place when unsorted items are processed – items that are not stone, cobblestone, dirt, slabs, etc.). I also did not build Starlight Compressor into the Dropbox at all – however, there’s a good reason for this, which will actually require an entire session later to describe.
In short, I worked everything out, but it took a while. Every modular connection from the mixer now works as it should, with all modifiers installed into the two generators (MISC and Dropbox) except for Starlight Overdrive (because, well, that plugin really doesn’t exist yet) and Starlight Compressor for the Dropbox. We’ll be dealing with the latter situation later… because it’s a whole situation we need to talk about.
Who’s there??
GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!! No endermen are permitted within the Starlight borders.
With Starlight Limiter complete and everything wired up nicely, I’ll be moving straight onto the next modifier on the list, which is much simpler and has a more targeted purpose in the base.
^ Right behind this wall is the collection chamber for mobs falling to their death from the mob farm in the Power Museum. However, not all of them die, if they are wearing armor and any type of Feather Falling boots. It has annoyed me that I couldn’t manually deal with that, as over time they do collect and negatively impact the rates within the base.
At the bottom of the chamber, I’m going to install a quick lava kill switch with the same functionality as the one up top – a monostable circuit that quickly dispenses then collects the lava so that the mobs will burn (witches are not a problem – they die by the fall height always).
Starlight Corkscrew’s UI will be carved right into the wall here since everything we need is right behind it anyway. I’m tired of long redstone wires.
The redstone for this plugin is quite simple. The input pulse will create two output pulses, the length between which is customizable by the user (so you can keep the lava active for longer).
^ The finished UI of the plugin, which additionally has an option for a built-in limiter. This is exactly the same as the other limiters we have been building in the base – for every three inputs that are directed into Starlight Corkscrew, one will toggle the modifier.
And, yeah – there it is. I’ve created links to the plugin from both the MISC targets and the Dropbox, and it’s at the end of the modifier chain (since it actually does not modify the output wire, but rather a different base operation, it doesn’t matter where it exists on the chain).
^ Case in point, I am getting better at labeling my wires so that I know what the hell everything is down here.
How do you celebrate a successful plugin party?? By finishing the roof of the Starlight Solace Center – that’s how.
I am not in a position to complete the entire construction, but I can certainly add some life to the roof in a unique manner different from the others in this base.
TADA! Emerald domes, with a unique assortment of blocks that build them up (including iron). Overall, I like them, although I may update some of these colors after I sleep on it.
^ Here is the final not-so-ideal skyline shot of Starlight HQ with the emerald domes adding some necessary green to the rainbow of colors. I say not-so-ideal, because it’s pouring down rain, and you cannot see the Starlight Treehouse, or the Night Lights, the Ender Tower, or your future. Or mine.
Partied a bit hard – now it’s time to rest.
Starlight Limiter and Starlight Corkscrew have proven necessary regulators to keep the base's resources production at an efficient, though very manageable, level. But there's still more large-scale projects to complete now, as we turn our attention to the new Starlight City Planning Center...
We now have full development of the SSP world's spawn chunks, which I have not yet written a full session to describe...
But here is the new Quintropolis Welcome Center, which will be where you spawn in the world upon the imminent world download on my 300th chapter. Includes full armor/weapons/tools/food preparation halls, safe spawning grounds (if you die and misplace your spawn point, you will spawn inside the hub), the world spawn point item collection area, a world map, information about Quintropolis Island, and a direct railway line to Starlight HQ on the other side of the island.
Session 276 was one of the most important in Quintropolis history - if you haven't read through it, do so before diving into today's, which is effectively PART III of our mini-saga establishing the nation of Quintropolis and Starlight City. And there's a lot we accomplish to that end.
Session 277 - "Road Trips"
^ CURRENT LOCATION: Ice Realms of Stonewall
I’ve never liked the idea that one city holds all the power in the world. That sets the stage for a dystopian society that breeds civil catastrophe. It is not the goal that Starlight City will be built to control the known world. No, my city will be built to sustain the known world. There is a difference that I think the villagers are afraid of – change scares them.
It scares me, too! But that’s a good thing – it means that things are happening which expands the way in which we view the world, be them good or bad. It’s true that not all change is good – however, it remains equally true that all change begets acknowledgement of ignorance. It forces us to face what we know, and more importantly what we do not. This belief in the necessity for change is the fundamental difference between how the villagers view the world and how I do. They want to remain engulfed in the comfort of their primitive lens, living in fear of gods who they have never seen. I want to improve their quality of life entirely using the tools the gods provided – gods who I have seen and fought.
Mayor Sensha brought up some good points in the church, though… He seems to have every knowledge about my showdown with Enderquin, but I am somewhat befuddled how he could have this knowledge. The only villager who witnessed the opening of Enderquin’s portal, and who has seen Enderquin HQ at all, was Violet… and she’s dead.
Clearly, I am missing some pieces of the puzzle. This I know all too well already, and I am here to learn. The story of Stonewall’s true history was heartbreaking to say the least, and I’ll admit to seeing things from the villagers’ perspective with this newfound knowledge. I realize that despite my intentions, my actions so far remind them of a horrific past, which automatically makes me the villain. Going forward, I need to be a little more cautious in how I approach my negotiations with them. Clearly the Inner Circle façade was just a game they were playing with me.
I am glad that Mayor Sensha and I engaged in such discourse – it was quite helpful. Now that I understand exactly how I come across, I can take better steps to improve my reckless behavior (which I now stubbornly admit to). See? I can change, too… albeit still holding true to my goals.
Departing the church in silence, I am going to invite the entire village into Starlight HQ – but I will not force them to visit. They will not be coerced to do anything they don’t want to do – this is not my way! Not anymore.
Starting here at Starlight Central, today’s work will mostly be grind work as I construct several new highways, while also planning new routes for future highways I do not yet have the materials or patience to construct.
Here is a diagram of the current expressway structure, centering on Starlight HQ:
We already have Q0 setup which links Stonewall, the Ice Realms (also within Stonewall borders), and Candyland. We also have Q1 in progress to Utopia, but it’s not fully built. Enderquin HQ is only about 100 blocks north on Q5, and Starlight Central is directly west, a couple hundred blocks off Q3. I know based on location that Loveland will be the first stop on Q4, but I haven’t even begun to figure that out yet. The remaining highways, Q2, Q4, Q6, and Q7, have not been started.
Let’s talk about nomenclature:
To recap, each of the eight major highways corresponds to the eight cardinal and ordinal directions. They are denoted from Q0 to Q7. Any “spurs” that branch out from these are denoted with additional numerals. For example, right now Q0 has three stops – one at Stonewall/Aftermath, the second at the Ice Realms, and the third at Candyland. If we decide to branch a new highway out from the Ice Realms in the eastern or northeastern direction, this spur would be denoted as Q10. The second such spur would be called Q20, and so on. Beyond Q90, we would simply add digits, to become Q100 (this realistically won’t happen anytime soon).
For Q1, the first spur would be called Q11. Make sense? Spurs names are ordered not based on distance from Starlight HQ (because proximity is relative, so if you were based in Candyland, it would be out of order anyway), but on when they are built. For the most part, they will probably be built based on proximity from Starlight anyway.
In addition to spurs, I may add interchanges, or loops, that completely circle major destinations like Starlight City (I foresee several hubs for this city in particular). These would be denoted as Q2(x)5, with the (x) corresponding to the main highway (so the Q3 interchange would be Q235, and a Q11 interchange would be Q2115 if it did not connect to Q1 directly, otherwise it would be Q215).
A highway which connects the major highways would simply be a compound name ending with ‘1’. For example, if we create a triangle, connecting Utopia to Stonewall, this would be done with a new highway labeled Q101. A highway connecting Q7 and Q6 would be denoted Q761. If we do the same highway further out, we just increase the suffix (so the same connector further out in the world would be called Q762, but to avoid duplicate names, Q765 would be skipped if we ever even got that far).
I think that’s about it for nomenclature! This will keep things very organized as we begin to significantly expand the connectiveness of the world, as I’m really looking to design the expressway much like a traditional highway system.
I’m completely finishing the first leg of Q3, securing a full connection to Starlight Central and the mayor’s district in Starlight City. It is this hub which will transform into the central terminal for all Starlight City lines – so, in the future, it will become quite large, probably on the same scale as the Nether Hub in Starlight HQ.
^ CURRENT LOCATION: Q1 to Starlight Central
I also want to completely finish the first leg of Q1 to Utopia. We originally started this on discovery of the land in Session 240, but it’s remained unfinished due to the significant resources required to build it. These highways are not cheap at all to build, requiring significant resources. Q1 is especially tedious because it is almost 1,000 blocks long, with lots of curves in the highway.
Nonetheless, I am dedicating this session to completing the highway, so I’m doing all the grinding necessary to do so. I want Utopia and Starlight City fully secured, as these will become major hubs within Quintropolis.
The Utopia terminal in particular will be somewhat developed into a major hub as well, as I am considering a potential interchange to connect it directly to Stonewall.
^ Don’t mind the outdated nomenclature above, but ideally the Utopia-Stonewall interchange (this would actually be called Q101). would directly connect the two cities without requiring a stop at Starlight HQ. Based on the discussion with Mayor Sensha in the previous session, I know that there is a city called Delta somewhere south. However, I’ve not yet located it, but it will likely be connected to Q1 once I do so.
After lots of hard work, the Starlight HQ-Utopia leg of Q1 is completed!
I’m adding additional signs to help improve direction throughout the expressway. This way, you’ll know exactly where you are navigating to regardless of where you are in the world.
I have decided not to include Candyland as part of the Starlight District simply due to the fact that its resources are no longer required to develop the current conglomerate of cities (since our primary mesa quarries have moved to Utopia). As such, Candyland will be the first city as part of a new district, which will be called the Expo District. This is currently the only city in this district, so for now it governs itself exclusive from the relations among Quintropolis’s other cities.
Finally, I’m completing the very easy Q5 leg that connects Starlight HQ to Enderquin HQ, which is maybe 100 blocks long. This highway will continue north to connect our new business center in Megapolis, where the proposed capitol will be located.
Now, for my final task, I will locate the portal to Loveland, which was made so long ago (2015) that I don’t remember anything about its specific location or how to get there.
After following torch paths and flying around aimlessly in the general direction of the mushroom island, I have finally located the portal – and its distance is a hefty one, over 800 blocks, almost perfectly northwest from Starlight HQ (the distance is technically less if you calculate with the Pythagorean Theorem, but considering the blocks required to build a perfectly diagonal railway, it’s around 800 long, multiplied by all the individual blocks required for construction).
I’ll dig out and build the andesite foundations for the railway, but that’s about as far as I will go today. Loveland currently is not a priority, but having at least some direction for how to get there will be very helpful once I do actually build the full expressway.
^ And there it is, branching out northwest next to Q5 at Starlight HQ.
Phew, I’m exhausted, and I think the villagers need some time to think through what we have discussed. Let’s get back to Starlight HQ.
Having secured several important hubs through the Nether expressway, the world is starting to feel so much more connected. That's a really great thing, because it's time to return to Starlight HQ to finish our work on the modular transformation. We're almost done!
It may not sound like much, however - I have not done any caving at all for at least a year, probably longer. But the hunger for exploration has finally attacked, so here we are - and we have a nice discovery in the wake (yes, that's a third spawner in the back):
Shulker boxes full of iron, coal, redstone, and other materials collected on this conquest - oh, I have definitely missed the thrill of underground exploration, even if it's all too familiar.
My playstyle has significantly evolved over the years, to the point where I now actually prefer living nomadically, as I enjoy exploration far more than anything else. However, I have three mega-bases, two of which started in the side of a mountain (one of which has now completely replaced the mountain). The third base was built out of an ocean monument, which became a guardian farm (and so the base was built around this, inside the ocean).
Nowadays, if I build a new base, I tend to maintain a few conditions even for more nomadic bases. I rarely build structures from the ground-up unless they are part of one of the three main bases, so for smaller bases I usually utilize villages. Interestingly, villages have never been part of my three major bases, but they do make up the basis for most of my nomadic bases. This is because I often prefer not to spend too much time building up new bases when I am on the move - so villages naturally offer a convenient shortcut there.
Also, interestingly, is that all three major bases are in forest biomes (the ocean base has extensions in the coastal forest). I would eventually like to construct major bases in every major biome, with thematic building styles to match the biome - but this is not really a priority, more of a niche challenge.
2
I'm quite behind in my journal, but that's become a trend, and rather a testament of how much fun I have been having in the game as of late!
...Developing the Inner Circle, which is now a full self-sustaining ecosystem. The neighborhood is fully protected from the outside with a hedge wall, and we have a downtown with shops for different villager trades, farms to support those trades (crop farms, sugar cane, leather, etc.), a Wellness Center featuring a cleric, cleric trade storage items, and ingredients to heal zombie villagers (purified villagers of which comprise about half the residents now), a Council Clubhouse for our librarians, and a honey house for bees (this is the first honey farm setup that I have in my world). This village was built entirely from the ground up from nothing - it is now the biggest and most thriving village in this world.
This project is basically my capstone for Quintropolis's third season, the Age of Ender. I'm developing the hell out of it - next, I'm moving into the auxiliary stuff: parkour courses, a hedge maze, a museum, a Welcome House, and probably some more shops for different villager trades. I've also created an underground ice path to the Mob Processing Hub which hosts mob farms to support the cleric trades (zombie flesh now has a use). The final piece will be a large golden monument that I've prepared a space for in the center of the circle, surrounded by eight beacons.
1
I've always thought of sweet berries as relatively arbitrary items. Sure, you can use them as a food source and for trading. But pretty much everything else in the game is a better option. The only unique use for the berries is to breed foxes, but for that purpose you wouldn't really need a berry farm.
It's much more economical to find some cows and make a cow farm, and/or find a taiga village and get potatoes. A baked potato farm is my personal recommendation, especially in the early game, because it's a pretty good food source and very easy to farm. As far as when to make the farm - up to you! Having a farm is a great resource as the goal is to provide yourself with a supply of the item which you are farming. So, if that item is in significant need, then that's a good sign it is time to build the farm (for example, I recently realized that I needed practically endless supplies of scaffolding for builds - so I built a large bamboo farm that now provides this). Personally, I don't choose to rush build every farm as fast as possible. Rather, I focus on what I need at the time, then build accordingly (sometimes there are exceptions, because after all - I am a completionist). In fact, I spent weeks playing in my main world before building even my very first farm (which was a wheat farm). It's all up to whatever you want to do!
Hope this helps!
0
Haunted by PTSD and hallucinations of Enderquin, tension is rising as the season's endgame begins to suggest that imminent terror is upon Quintropolis. We don't know exactly what that means just yet... But we know something is coming. So, let's turn our attention to an overdue development on Quintropolis Island - the world spawn point!!
WHO’S THERE??
It’s nothing. Everything is okay… Though I cannot help but feel that the air is blowing differently. The sounds on the island echo with different variations than before. Everything is just so eerily quiet. In fact, these changes became apparent not very long after my initial visit to Enderquin. I think I was just so enamored with new ideas to notice them.
Could it be true? That Enderquin is not dead?? Have I made some mistakes??
No… It’s all just a hallucination. My mind is just playing tricks on me, probably as a coping mechanism. Or maybe I am afraid deep down, and simply unable to admit that I fear his presence still looms. Perhaps my discussions with Mayor Sensha and the villagers have begun to resonate such that I am now paying close attention to the changes in our natural ecosystem. And those changes are becoming clearer every passing day.
Enderquin is conquered. There is no gauntlet. There are no infinite lives.
Welcome to Quintropolis Island – my precious home I vowed to protect all those years ago.
World spawn has remained unprotected since the world’s beginnings (or at least my beginnings). If there is a threat looming underneath the surface, then it would be wise for us to protect the spawn chunks as much as possible. There is no reason I should still be respawning in the middle of the jungle in the dead of night, with no resources and no easy way back to Starlight HQ (which is across the entire island, easily around 1,000 blocks). Of course, we have the Tropic Fortress pictured above, but that is really just a starting hub for the Totem Run parkour course, featuring little to no resources.
First, I am heading to Utopia to protect the Nether portal and collect some materials.
I’ve also done some caving in this area to begin exploring some of the underground facets of the terrain.
Before we do anything, I need to determine the world spawn point. The iron platform above is generally where I expect to respawn, but in order to safely secure the spawn exactly – I need to narrow things down.
Throwing some items into the End portal – I will know exactly where the world spawn is. A compass would also provide this information.
I am clearing the area, but I see no items!! Where did they go?
Up there! See them on the tree??
Fascinating! The one tree I chose not to remove is in fact blocking the world spawn point. That’s very inconvenient.
I will be securing the world spawn point so that I can collect items from Enderquin. After all, who knows what we might do in the future?
The Quintropolis Welcome Center will be designed as a hub, with all sorts of information about Quintropolis (specifically the island), a full world map, and most notably “prep halls” wherein you will have access to armor, tools, weapons, food, and utilities like torches that you may need upon initially spawning in the world (or respawning without a bed).
Here, I’ll add a viewing window to the Totem Run parkour course. Indeed, we’re actually right next door to the Tropic Fortress and Totem Run! This gives you something to do right on entering the world (a very fun course and still one of my favorites to this day, despite being built in 2014).
^ On the wall above, I will replicate and add the full Quintropolis world map as space allows. This will be done over time as I fully intend to get the entire 5x3 space filled.
The world spawn point will be protected by glass, and I’ll be adding hoppers to automatically collect items that are sent through the End portal. This will only happen if the block is less than a full block (so the “path” block will work – also, grass would cause us to spawn in there, which we don’t want).
^ Here, you get a view of the chunk wall border just off the coast of the island.
I’m finding some uses of the regular “wood” block, which is a variation of the logs that essentially covers all six sides.
Coming along nicely!!
The entrance to the Welcome Center is fully covered by jungle trees. I want to maintain as much of the natural scenery as possible. The island’s ecosystem is very small, and I have no intention of completely urbanizing it (besides the Inner Circle and Starlight HQ). The entire island is only just over a mile across (the furthest points are 1,640 blocks apart, and a mile in Minecraft is 1,609 blocks since a block is equal to a meter).
I am adding a post in the center of the hub, which will contain signs of information about the island as I think of useful things to add.
Now, I am working on the outside, specifically the coast. Although I don’t want to urbanize the entire island, I do want to have a road running across it. We will start that process here at the Welcome Center, using lanterns as our principal lighting source.
I am having such fun hanging lanterns in trees as well! This keeps many of the foliage areas nicely lit, too.
This is the entrance into the Welcome Center. You can see that it’s literally right on the coast.
Signs will be used to help you navigate the island, so that you know where everything is! This will make the world much more approachable, as I am definitely thinking ahead for the world download. As of the current world download, well, it’s not very guest-friendly (not to mention a terribly outdated representation of Quintropolis as it is today).
Here’s a little view of the Welcome Center from outside:
I have chosen to keep it hidden underneath foliage, much of which I have added back.
Inside, you can see the completed hedge roof, and the welcome post which has some more information on it. The four grass blocks are your spawning spaces (the game checks for grass blocks when determining where to spawn you, and if none are present within a 21x21 radius around the world spawn point, then you spawn at the world spawn point).
Okay, one more thing left to do… Test it out!!
Here comes sudden death. But hey – a nice view of the Welcome Center and Tropic Fortress from up here.
Indeed, it works! I’m happy with that – now, let’s move to the Prep Halls.
These halls are being constructed underground right outside. I have signs directing you all over the place now – it’s going to be such a lovely experience.
As we don’t yet have a beacon here (there will be soon), I have gotten spoiled by Haste II at Starlight. So, digging out the halls took some time, but alas – they turned out great.
Having any block I want at my disposal within Starlight has the particular benefit which is that I feel I am in Creative Mode. In any prior season, building the Welcome Center, the Prep Halls, and the rest of the coast outside would easily have been a several-session affair due to the time required to harvest all the materials. But now that part is child’s play, and this took no time at all.
Four rooms – armor, tools/weaponry, food, and utilities – full of everything you would need to survive and thrive on the island.
Finally, let’s complete the Starlight HQ railway into Starlight Station. Yes, at the moment there is a railway that does run across the island into Starlight HQ. However, it’s currently in the Tropic Fortress, which is not really a base. Moving it will be easy, but first we need to build a proper building for it.
A little bit down the road, not exactly inside the Welcome Center, I am erecting the railway terminal.
And here we are!! Eventually, the road will split at an intersection and take you over to the Inner Circle. But we will complete that another day.
For now, I am just satisfied with finally developing the spawn chunks. Now I feel a bit safer despite the omens that are upon us. I’ll take a ride back to HQ as I prepare for whatever comes my way next.
With the Quintropolis Welcome Center now fully setup, that's going to make things much easier if I die and have no respawn point set. No longer do I need to traverse more than 1,000 blocks just to get back to Starlight HQ! Additionally, this will become an important resource as I prepare the world for download following the season finale, which seems as though it will come sooner rather than later.
Next up... Session 281 - "The Labors of Luxury"
1
Well I don't really think this block is necessary, because it does not provide anything you cannot already do with redstone. Yes, I hear the arguments suggesting that it makes redstone more approachable, but in my opinion Mojang should not aim to make redstone more approachable. Redstone follows rules of logic similar to electrical wiring. Learning the rules of this logic so that you can use them creatively is the whole point, and if you don't then it isn't so hard to follow a block-by-block tutorial. If you want to design a machine that automates farms at specific times of day, then spend some time to learn how the rules allow you to do so. A block like this does not fit natively within the sandbox appeal of redstone, because every redstone block has a logic function - as opposed to the proposed Scheduler block, which is really not based on redstone at all. Besides, did you know that the daylight sensor detects specific times of day? Just plug a comparator up to one, and notice that the output power level (1-15) depends on the exact sky light level. So you can already use one daylight sensor to automate 15 different things separately depending on the time of day.
For what it's worth, I have already built a machine that automates farms at specific times of day using the above mechanics, and it's not that difficult. You don't need timers at all - just a daylight sensor, comparator, and a contraption that isolates each of the 15 signal strength states - this is the most complicated bit, but you can find a tutorial easy. If you want something to activate every three days, then put a pulse divider at the end of your output and set it to three. So adding a block like this actually has no real benefit - you can do exactly what you want to do with daylight sensors. It seems like you just want it to be easier and remove the redstone part entirely, which IMO is not a good reason to introduce a new redstone block. If we get new redstone blocks, then they need to introduce new logic components (like comparators, which introduced new redstone mechanics based on item input levels), not be entire contraptions.
I would support Mojang to focus on dealing with the redstone bugs regarding chunks that unload, though. It's annoying.
1
The Starlight City Planning Center receives a healthy start on development today with our massive bamboo farm taking shape! But, as the title suggests, this is just one of several interesting elements of this busy session...
Welcome to the Starlight City Planning Center. We have significant work to do if we want any chance of getting Starlight HQ 3.0 finished soon. This is the last major development of the season (of course, we have many projects to finish, such as Starlight Treehouse and Starlight Compressor – but, in terms of major new additions, this is it right here).
First, I’m going to do a few aesthetic updates to the main hub of the Starlight Resources Facility. These colors are annoying me, and I do not feel they fit with the theme of the build any longer.
Iron bars? Absolutely ugly.
Light gray glass? Much better – now, I’ll complete some changes on the roof, changing it to black concrete, and we’re good to go!
Wondrous! In hindsight, I personally would have wanted this dome to have a much larger diameter. It’s much too late for that now, but you’ll no doubt realize that the proportions between the slime farm and the remaining hub area are quite, well, disproportionate. It’s okay, though – the Starlight City Planning Center will amend these issues.
This is because the planning center is being built as a completely new segment of underground Starlight HQ – not just as an extension of the SRF. Its farms, modular activity, and aesthetic styles will be completely different than the SRF. While the SRF has been great at sustaining resource production for Starlight HQ’s development, it falls short of being industrial scale. This is the purpose of the SCPC – to provide farms and resources on a much larger scale as we prepare to construct a city far beyond the boundaries of Starlight HQ.
As noted in the previous session, we will only be scratching the surface of the SCPC this season, with most of the build’s work being pushed to Season 4 due to simply having too much going on this season. Regardless, I need the groundwork setup for the build – that’s what we will be doing today.
The underground construction will sit beneath the entirety of Starlight Outback. What you see above is the thankfulness of having Haste II, which I will need to eventually expand to encompass the entire headquarters. The SCPC will be divided into nine “city blocks,” with each cubicle being 35x35 blocks. Accounting for the 7-wide paths through the center (which will follow this aesthetic style), this gives an estimated size of 132x132 blocks – some variation is expected of course.
This is absolutely massive for an underground build, because we first need to mine out the entire square area of these blocks. However, this is why the work is being pushed to next season. It is simply too big of a project to undergo this late into the season. However, I can begin work on one of the nine planned cubicles.
This cubicle will house the large bamboo farm, which we desperately need to make scaffolding if we’re going to be building skyscrapers and such. Scaffolding is incredibly useful, but the closest bamboo jungle is about 2,500 blocks north (which is still not too bad all things considered)
Getting the numbers right is very important here – the farm is based on a design by Shulkercraft which uses a flying machine to harvest the bamboo field.
Hopper minecarts will move along the bottom and collect the bamboo that is harvested.
Again, my goal is to build the farm on the edges of the 35x35 cubicle, so that when I add pathways throughout next season, we have nice glass viewing from all sides of the farm.
It’s far too dark in here, so I’ll need to setup some lighting.
The only way to do this such that all spaces are fully lit to prevent mobs is to build the ceiling five blocks above the floor. This does limit bamboo growth – but I’m not too concerned about that given the scale of the farm as a whole.
We have some storage underneath the farm, but I foresee this needing to be massively expanded. I’ll work on this area in segments as the need arises.
^ Here, you can see some aesthetic progress on the SCPC hallway! As we continue the build next season, all halls will be neatly decorated in this same aesthetic style – yes, I have more iron blocks than I know what to do with at this point. Thank you, iron farm.
Bamboo grows extremely fast, and because this farm is quite large, it will take no time at all to collect massive amounts of it. The current setup uses observers to harvest automatically when bamboo growth is detected at that level.
However, we do not want this automated behavior, because of two reasons: (1) it would cause us to receive too much bamboo too fast, overflowing our storage in no time at all, and (2) if I log out while the flying machine is working, it can bug out and break when I log back in.
I’ll be installing a piston gate here to block observers from starting the farm, then I will add a mode to toggle between automatic and manual mode.
^ Here, you can see a panel with two options. The first lets us choose whether to keep the farm on automatically. If it’s on manual mode, I can just press the button on the glowstone to start the farm. The second option enables modular activity. That’s right! We can now use the bamboo farm as both an input and target for the MISC link options. I haven’t yet decided which links I want to setup, but basically this option will unlock the bamboo farm to be used for modulating other activity in the base.
Nice! With the bamboo farm installed, I’m going to move towards another important addition to the base – one which I was originally going to build in the outback. I then decided to build it in the SCPC. But after even further consideration, I realized that it is best suited for the SRF storage cellars itself. What is the addition??
^ Welcome to the Rasterizer – a banner workshop specifically for building banners and waypoints that we can add to maps across Quintropolis. This is going to be incredibly useful as I begin preparing the world for download, and for navigating the various areas of Quintropolis.
The Rasterizer’s twelve chests on the walls all contain full stacks of every banner color – this way, you can pick any chest you want, and subsequently any color you want, and get to work.
Using a loom, you can attach various styles and colors to the banners. Using an anvil, I can name the banner with however I want it to appear on a map.
Voila – here is the banner I am adding for Starlight HQ, resting here at the castle’s glass dome.
I’ll slowly be continuing this process throughout all of Quintropolis. But now maybe you’re wondering – why is this not in the SCPC??
Well, banners are built using wool and sticks. While we now get sticks from the bamboo farm, it’s much easier to transport these than to transport lots of 16 wool colors and dyes. Since our wool farm is directly next door, I wanted the Rasterizer to be more of an extension to this farm. It would be inconvenient to collect wool of every color from here, only to transport it to a distant other part of the base which otherwise has no resources for the Rasterizer. Indeed, the dye room is also on the other side, allowing me to quickly stock the Rasterizer with a stack of each dye color.
With all this done… I’m taking a break!! It’s time to do something I have not done in over a year, maybe longer… CAVING!!
It seems simple enough, but when you haven’t done something so simple in such a long time, it’s pretty exciting. I’m looking forward to it.
My choice of caving location will be right here at Starlight City’s coastal village across the chunk wall border – where we discussed the Story of Stonewall with Mayor Sensha. I figure that if I will eventually be civilizing this area, I should work on lighting it up below the ground, extracting some good resources along the way.
I chose not to take too many screenshots, but I definitely explored for a while, bringing several shulker boxes now to do so. In fact, this is the first caving adventure that I have done using shulker boxes, which have allowed me to keep caving for far longer than I would have been able to do otherwise.
One of the mineshafts underneath the village contains this beautiful array of three cave spider spawners! This is very similar to the arrangement underneath Starlight HQ. You may recall there are more than nine spawners directly underneath Starlight HQ, none of which we have properly developed yet. Indeed, I have plans for those, but again they are technically in undeveloped parts of the base (south of Starlight Plaza), so my plans for those (as well as with these three spawners here) will need to wait for Season 4.
^ Here is my haul of resources from the adventure, many of which will now be processed through Starlight Compressor to smelt. It was so fun! I’ve enjoyed caving a lot and will continue to do more in other areas around the world. Utopia, Megapolis, Candyland, Stonewall, and even other parts of Starlight City will need to be explored more fully. In fact…
Why not start right now?? Let’s Riptide our way across Starlight City’s land and see what we find.
Paradox. Triangle. Thirteen. Rainbow. Pagoda.
Huh?? The thunder and lightning must be causing some hallucinations…
WHAT THE HELL!!
Okay, I’m getting down from the sky… I don’t know what is going on, but I am scared…
Wait… is this a village?
What the hell is happening??!! This village is covered with cobwebs! There is nobody here!!
Am I cursed if I sleep here tonight? I probably am, but something eerie and ominous is in the air. No sign of life. Maybe this was a mistake.
Time to sleep...
“Hello Joey. Come and play with me.”
“There are many games which await you in the gauntlet.”
“You’re dreaming now, don’t worry. This is a dream. Or is it a vision?”
“That’s what you spoke of Violet’s hallucinations. Ironic, no?”
“You cannot escape the prison of your mind. This is the blue screen of death which cannot be so easily reset.”
“Remember - the gauntlet thrives with infinite lives.
No soul becomes one with me.”
“And God said… let there be… LIGHT.”
STOP!!!
My heavy breathing slowly calms down as I attempt to recover from what I can only describe as the worst nightmare of my life. I am shaking. I need to get out of here.
Is this what happened to Violet before she went absolutely insane?
Something unnerving is going on. I can’t get his voice out of my head.
HELP ME.
The warning signs are there. Do I choose to heed them? The answer is yes, because I'm smart enough to know that my power in this world remains limited no matter how advanced Starlight HQ will become. I can defeat physical threats just fine, but mental torture is something from which nobody can easily evade. As such, we need to hurry up and get the spawn chunks developed. Whatever is coming... I sense time is running out.
Next up... Session 280 - "Spawn Chunk"
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Interestingly, my current SSP of over 8.5 years had a jungle temple right at spawn!
Here it is:
I built a parkour course around it now. But it was my very first discovery in the world, and so far the only jungle temple I have found. Note that this world's seed will produce a completely different world now, because it was first made in Minecraft 1.5 (so you would need to play it in a version prior to 1.7 in order to find it).
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Thank you leangreen! In fact I missed the eight-year anniversary entirely (actually, I've missed most of them now...), but hey - at least I got this one. Here's to another 6,000 days.
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I have only named one tool, which is a bow enchanted with both Mending and Infinity (and the very highest Power, Punch, and Flame enchantments of course) - this is a combination you can no longer get in vanilla Minecraft, making it one of the most prestigious and rarest weapons in my arsenal.
It is called Enderquin's Bow, as it is the bow I used to defeat the ender dragon.
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A new milestone has been reached in Quintropolis - my SSP world which is now 8.5 years old...
I have reached Day 6000!!
Certainly, for a world this old, this milestone could have been reached far sooner. But I do not play nearly as often as I used to, sometimes taking months off at a time. Alas, Quintropolis is far more advanced than you may think for only 6,000 days - but, then there are also areas in which it is a bit behind, such as world expansion. Having spent most of the first 5,000 days developing a single mega-base (Starlight HQ), I've spent much of the previous 1,000 days expanding the world significantly. From fully developing the world spawn point on Quintropolis Island, to transforming an entire badlands biome more than 10,000 blocks southeast into a massive parkour course - the world is much bigger now than it ever was.
That's why we are celebrating the milestone at one of the most up-and-coming parts of the world, the Inner Circle, which is being developed as the world's first major city expansion (housing, shops, parkour courses, road networks, and... trash cans). It is nestled in the center of Quintropolis Island (Starlight HQ sits on the east coast of the island, with the spawn chunks on the west side), which itself is just one "borough" of Starlight City - the city borders extending thousands of blocks west. I will be focusing my attention on this development very soon, but for now... celebrate the milestone, and in turn the impending civilization of the entire island, with two of the council residents: Drexel and Staz.
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In addition to what Jancrash mentioned, farm designs range significantly - so your farms can be as simple or as complicated as you need them to be (the more complex ones tend to produce better rates, though - however, I'll note that often it's not the farm itself that is complicated, but rather proofing the areas around it).
I am also a fan of Rays Works, especially his raid farm that he has a video on (it's pretty easy to make, and a great example of an easy farm that happens to produce exceptional results). Thanks to the Hero of the Village effect that happens after beating a raid, this farm can give you over 70+ different items. It's an amazing survival resource.
And then of course there is a guardian farm - there's no easy way to go about this one. It will be tedious any way you go about it, but absolutely worth it.
EDIT: Wow I did not realize this was a year-old thread bumped by a spam post...
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Stonewall may be a reminder of what was lost, but Starlight exists to beget hope for what is to come.
That's why it remains imperative that we complete v3.0 of the base, which we are so close to doing! Most of the work to do so focuses on tweaking the modular transformation of Starlight HQ - and there's quite a lot we get done today in a bountiful party of modular upgrades!
The Redstone Room’s caution tape is about to be torn down, because we’re ready to expand Starlight HQ underground in a brand-new direction towards the outback faction.
With Haste II, it is no problem at all tearing through this mass of stone – this will be very important later. Remember this hallway as being the humble beginnings of a new construction in this base – one which will only be started this season and ideally completed in the next.
Welcome to the Starlight City Planning Center, a place dedicated to everything we need to sustain the development of a full city. This will include all the industrial-scale farms which we have yet to construct. Think on the scale of TNT-based wood farms, concrete generators, huge bamboo farms, and the like. Again, we’re only going to scrape the surface of these ideas in Season 3 – we’re cutting most of this project and moving it into next season. However, I want the groundwork laid so that I can move right into this development after v3.0 is done.
The entire construction will have a grid-like layout, like the downtown of a city, but underground. And yes – it will be surrounded by iron blocks because I have way too many.
First and foremost, the SCPC will feature a storage space for all job site blocks – this includes useful utility blocks like barrels, smokers, blast furnaces, brewing stands, etc.
This is the extent of my work here today – we’ll be working on this area much more constructively across the next several sessions.
Today, our main project is to install two very useful new plugins into Starlight HQ’s modular system. Let’s go over them:
Starting with Starlight Limiter, the UI is not unlike the other technical plugins (with just an ‘AUX in’ and ON/OFF lever). Essentially, the modifier itself is just a pulse divider. Let’s dive into how this divider works:
The dropper on the top-left contains three items, while the hopper on the left contains one non-stackable item (in this case, a potion). The number of items in the dropper corresponds to the number of input pulses required to produce one output pulse. In my case, I’m choosing to do three (this is a division factor of three, so the ratio of input to output is 3:1), but I could add any amount to the divider and change the factor if I want.
The green wool represents the input. In the previous example, that would be input from one of the MISC links (so the iron farm > potion brewer, for instance). Each time the dropper is toggled, regardless of pulse length, it moves one item to the dropper on the right. After three of these, the comparator on the left powers off, moving the non-stackable item from the left hopper to the right hopper. Because the comparator on the right side (facing the yellow block) would simultaneously power itself from the side (since it is in subtraction mode), it will produce several output ticks at twice the number of items in the dropper (so six in this case), which I then compress into a single output pulse using a repeater set to two ticks. This concurrently moves the three items from the right dropper back into the left dropper, and the potion from the right hopper back into the left hopper.
Okay, now all we need to do is install this into the MISC links!
The trickiest part is understanding exactly where to add Starlight Limiter in the modifier chain, keeping in mind that we can choose whether to have the output bypass it directly (by having it OFF) or alternatively funnel through it (turning it ON). But how does this impact other modifiers such as Starlight Compressor, Echo, Balancer, etc.? Well, it all depends on the target output.
I am starting with the potion brewer output wire, which is where all output MISC links converge to if their target is the potion brewer. I currently have the following modifier chain attached to this wire:
Spectrometer > Starlight Echo > Starlight Compressor
First, if Spectrometer is active and it’s nighttime (or daytime if ‘Invert’ is ON), there will be no modular activity anyway – so that’s the first condition. If it passes this condition, the output moves to Starlight Echo for the delay. Once this happens, it finishes through Starlight Compressor, which limits the length of the output pulse. Of course, this is only if all three modifiers are active – we can turn any of them on/off as we wish.
The order of these last two does not matter, because Starlight Echo can process a delay regardless of the output pulse length. However, I think that where we add Starlight Limiter does matter, because it takes effect every time a pulse is received. If it is at the end of the chain, then it makes all the prior work meaningless, because it will not preserve the output length that Starlight Compressor regulates. That’s why it needs to go at the beginning of the chain. This way, it immediately takes the inputs required by the MISC, but will only send an output to the rest of the chain after three are received.
Okay, as with the other modifiers, we are using a piston to redirect the redstone either into or away from the modifier depending on the ON/OFF state. And you can see the Limiter as we have just installed it on the left.
Of course, I need to run a wire all the way down here to toggle the piston, but that’s a standard practice now with all universal switches.
The next tricky bit is getting all the modular mixer wires done. Several are not complete, which is bugging me. Wiring them up mostly just requires me to navigate the claustrophobic mess of redstone taking place behind and underneath the mixer and finding some way to split all the wires to their respective AND gates which toggle them.
^ Here is the Dropbox mixer channel, for example, which is inconveniently located directly above STAS. That makes the job much harder, because I cannot simply create downward staircases as I can with the MISC channel.
I now need to install Starlight Limiters into all the other MISC targets (SRF crop farms, mushroom farm) as well as the Dropbox targets.
It’s just a process of repetition at this point, but a definite plugin party all the same. As I go through each individual modular target, I am realizing that several plugins are missing! For instance, I miscalculated when I originally built the Dropbox and didn’t install the Inverter correctly (this inverts the behavior of the Dropbox, so that modular automation only takes place when unsorted items are processed – items that are not stone, cobblestone, dirt, slabs, etc.). I also did not build Starlight Compressor into the Dropbox at all – however, there’s a good reason for this, which will actually require an entire session later to describe.
In short, I worked everything out, but it took a while. Every modular connection from the mixer now works as it should, with all modifiers installed into the two generators (MISC and Dropbox) except for Starlight Overdrive (because, well, that plugin really doesn’t exist yet) and Starlight Compressor for the Dropbox. We’ll be dealing with the latter situation later… because it’s a whole situation we need to talk about.
Who’s there??
GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!! No endermen are permitted within the Starlight borders.
With Starlight Limiter complete and everything wired up nicely, I’ll be moving straight onto the next modifier on the list, which is much simpler and has a more targeted purpose in the base.
^ Right behind this wall is the collection chamber for mobs falling to their death from the mob farm in the Power Museum. However, not all of them die, if they are wearing armor and any type of Feather Falling boots. It has annoyed me that I couldn’t manually deal with that, as over time they do collect and negatively impact the rates within the base.
At the bottom of the chamber, I’m going to install a quick lava kill switch with the same functionality as the one up top – a monostable circuit that quickly dispenses then collects the lava so that the mobs will burn (witches are not a problem – they die by the fall height always).
Starlight Corkscrew’s UI will be carved right into the wall here since everything we need is right behind it anyway. I’m tired of long redstone wires.
The redstone for this plugin is quite simple. The input pulse will create two output pulses, the length between which is customizable by the user (so you can keep the lava active for longer).
^ The finished UI of the plugin, which additionally has an option for a built-in limiter. This is exactly the same as the other limiters we have been building in the base – for every three inputs that are directed into Starlight Corkscrew, one will toggle the modifier.
And, yeah – there it is. I’ve created links to the plugin from both the MISC targets and the Dropbox, and it’s at the end of the modifier chain (since it actually does not modify the output wire, but rather a different base operation, it doesn’t matter where it exists on the chain).
^ Case in point, I am getting better at labeling my wires so that I know what the hell everything is down here.
How do you celebrate a successful plugin party?? By finishing the roof of the Starlight Solace Center – that’s how.
I am not in a position to complete the entire construction, but I can certainly add some life to the roof in a unique manner different from the others in this base.
TADA! Emerald domes, with a unique assortment of blocks that build them up (including iron). Overall, I like them, although I may update some of these colors after I sleep on it.
^ Here is the final not-so-ideal skyline shot of Starlight HQ with the emerald domes adding some necessary green to the rainbow of colors. I say not-so-ideal, because it’s pouring down rain, and you cannot see the Starlight Treehouse, or the Night Lights, the Ender Tower, or your future. Or mine.
Partied a bit hard – now it’s time to rest.
Starlight Limiter and Starlight Corkscrew have proven necessary regulators to keep the base's resources production at an efficient, though very manageable, level. But there's still more large-scale projects to complete now, as we turn our attention to the new Starlight City Planning Center...
Next up... Session 279 - "BSOD"
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Quintropolis is getting bigger.
We now have full development of the SSP world's spawn chunks, which I have not yet written a full session to describe...
But here is the new Quintropolis Welcome Center, which will be where you spawn in the world upon the imminent world download on my 300th chapter. Includes full armor/weapons/tools/food preparation halls, safe spawning grounds (if you die and misplace your spawn point, you will spawn inside the hub), the world spawn point item collection area, a world map, information about Quintropolis Island, and a direct railway line to Starlight HQ on the other side of the island.
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Session 276 was one of the most important in Quintropolis history - if you haven't read through it, do so before diving into today's, which is effectively PART III of our mini-saga establishing the nation of Quintropolis and Starlight City. And there's a lot we accomplish to that end.
^ CURRENT LOCATION: Ice Realms of Stonewall
I’ve never liked the idea that one city holds all the power in the world. That sets the stage for a dystopian society that breeds civil catastrophe. It is not the goal that Starlight City will be built to control the known world. No, my city will be built to sustain the known world. There is a difference that I think the villagers are afraid of – change scares them.
It scares me, too! But that’s a good thing – it means that things are happening which expands the way in which we view the world, be them good or bad. It’s true that not all change is good – however, it remains equally true that all change begets acknowledgement of ignorance. It forces us to face what we know, and more importantly what we do not. This belief in the necessity for change is the fundamental difference between how the villagers view the world and how I do. They want to remain engulfed in the comfort of their primitive lens, living in fear of gods who they have never seen. I want to improve their quality of life entirely using the tools the gods provided – gods who I have seen and fought.
Mayor Sensha brought up some good points in the church, though… He seems to have every knowledge about my showdown with Enderquin, but I am somewhat befuddled how he could have this knowledge. The only villager who witnessed the opening of Enderquin’s portal, and who has seen Enderquin HQ at all, was Violet… and she’s dead.
Clearly, I am missing some pieces of the puzzle. This I know all too well already, and I am here to learn. The story of Stonewall’s true history was heartbreaking to say the least, and I’ll admit to seeing things from the villagers’ perspective with this newfound knowledge. I realize that despite my intentions, my actions so far remind them of a horrific past, which automatically makes me the villain. Going forward, I need to be a little more cautious in how I approach my negotiations with them. Clearly the Inner Circle façade was just a game they were playing with me.
I am glad that Mayor Sensha and I engaged in such discourse – it was quite helpful. Now that I understand exactly how I come across, I can take better steps to improve my reckless behavior (which I now stubbornly admit to). See? I can change, too… albeit still holding true to my goals.
Departing the church in silence, I am going to invite the entire village into Starlight HQ – but I will not force them to visit. They will not be coerced to do anything they don’t want to do – this is not my way! Not anymore.
Starting here at Starlight Central, today’s work will mostly be grind work as I construct several new highways, while also planning new routes for future highways I do not yet have the materials or patience to construct.
Here is a diagram of the current expressway structure, centering on Starlight HQ:
We already have Q0 setup which links Stonewall, the Ice Realms (also within Stonewall borders), and Candyland. We also have Q1 in progress to Utopia, but it’s not fully built. Enderquin HQ is only about 100 blocks north on Q5, and Starlight Central is directly west, a couple hundred blocks off Q3. I know based on location that Loveland will be the first stop on Q4, but I haven’t even begun to figure that out yet. The remaining highways, Q2, Q4, Q6, and Q7, have not been started.
Let’s talk about nomenclature:
To recap, each of the eight major highways corresponds to the eight cardinal and ordinal directions. They are denoted from Q0 to Q7. Any “spurs” that branch out from these are denoted with additional numerals. For example, right now Q0 has three stops – one at Stonewall/Aftermath, the second at the Ice Realms, and the third at Candyland. If we decide to branch a new highway out from the Ice Realms in the eastern or northeastern direction, this spur would be denoted as Q10. The second such spur would be called Q20, and so on. Beyond Q90, we would simply add digits, to become Q100 (this realistically won’t happen anytime soon).
For Q1, the first spur would be called Q11. Make sense? Spurs names are ordered not based on distance from Starlight HQ (because proximity is relative, so if you were based in Candyland, it would be out of order anyway), but on when they are built. For the most part, they will probably be built based on proximity from Starlight anyway.
In addition to spurs, I may add interchanges, or loops, that completely circle major destinations like Starlight City (I foresee several hubs for this city in particular). These would be denoted as Q2(x)5, with the (x) corresponding to the main highway (so the Q3 interchange would be Q235, and a Q11 interchange would be Q2115 if it did not connect to Q1 directly, otherwise it would be Q215).
A highway which connects the major highways would simply be a compound name ending with ‘1’. For example, if we create a triangle, connecting Utopia to Stonewall, this would be done with a new highway labeled Q101. A highway connecting Q7 and Q6 would be denoted Q761. If we do the same highway further out, we just increase the suffix (so the same connector further out in the world would be called Q762, but to avoid duplicate names, Q765 would be skipped if we ever even got that far).
I think that’s about it for nomenclature! This will keep things very organized as we begin to significantly expand the connectiveness of the world, as I’m really looking to design the expressway much like a traditional highway system.
I’m completely finishing the first leg of Q3, securing a full connection to Starlight Central and the mayor’s district in Starlight City. It is this hub which will transform into the central terminal for all Starlight City lines – so, in the future, it will become quite large, probably on the same scale as the Nether Hub in Starlight HQ.
^ CURRENT LOCATION: Q1 to Starlight Central
I also want to completely finish the first leg of Q1 to Utopia. We originally started this on discovery of the land in Session 240, but it’s remained unfinished due to the significant resources required to build it. These highways are not cheap at all to build, requiring significant resources. Q1 is especially tedious because it is almost 1,000 blocks long, with lots of curves in the highway.
Nonetheless, I am dedicating this session to completing the highway, so I’m doing all the grinding necessary to do so. I want Utopia and Starlight City fully secured, as these will become major hubs within Quintropolis.
The Utopia terminal in particular will be somewhat developed into a major hub as well, as I am considering a potential interchange to connect it directly to Stonewall.
^ Don’t mind the outdated nomenclature above, but ideally the Utopia-Stonewall interchange (this would actually be called Q101). would directly connect the two cities without requiring a stop at Starlight HQ. Based on the discussion with Mayor Sensha in the previous session, I know that there is a city called Delta somewhere south. However, I’ve not yet located it, but it will likely be connected to Q1 once I do so.
After lots of hard work, the Starlight HQ-Utopia leg of Q1 is completed!
I’m adding additional signs to help improve direction throughout the expressway. This way, you’ll know exactly where you are navigating to regardless of where you are in the world.
I have decided not to include Candyland as part of the Starlight District simply due to the fact that its resources are no longer required to develop the current conglomerate of cities (since our primary mesa quarries have moved to Utopia). As such, Candyland will be the first city as part of a new district, which will be called the Expo District. This is currently the only city in this district, so for now it governs itself exclusive from the relations among Quintropolis’s other cities.
Finally, I’m completing the very easy Q5 leg that connects Starlight HQ to Enderquin HQ, which is maybe 100 blocks long. This highway will continue north to connect our new business center in Megapolis, where the proposed capitol will be located.
Now, for my final task, I will locate the portal to Loveland, which was made so long ago (2015) that I don’t remember anything about its specific location or how to get there.
After following torch paths and flying around aimlessly in the general direction of the mushroom island, I have finally located the portal – and its distance is a hefty one, over 800 blocks, almost perfectly northwest from Starlight HQ (the distance is technically less if you calculate with the Pythagorean Theorem, but considering the blocks required to build a perfectly diagonal railway, it’s around 800 long, multiplied by all the individual blocks required for construction).
I’ll dig out and build the andesite foundations for the railway, but that’s about as far as I will go today. Loveland currently is not a priority, but having at least some direction for how to get there will be very helpful once I do actually build the full expressway.
^ And there it is, branching out northwest next to Q5 at Starlight HQ.
Phew, I’m exhausted, and I think the villagers need some time to think through what we have discussed. Let’s get back to Starlight HQ.
Having secured several important hubs through the Nether expressway, the world is starting to feel so much more connected. That's a really great thing, because it's time to return to Starlight HQ to finish our work on the modular transformation. We're almost done!
Next up... Session 278 - "Plugin Party"
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Okay, here is what I've done recently...
...wait for it...
Caving!!
It may not sound like much, however - I have not done any caving at all for at least a year, probably longer. But the hunger for exploration has finally attacked, so here we are - and we have a nice discovery in the wake (yes, that's a third spawner in the back):
Shulker boxes full of iron, coal, redstone, and other materials collected on this conquest - oh, I have definitely missed the thrill of underground exploration, even if it's all too familiar.
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My playstyle has significantly evolved over the years, to the point where I now actually prefer living nomadically, as I enjoy exploration far more than anything else. However, I have three mega-bases, two of which started in the side of a mountain (one of which has now completely replaced the mountain). The third base was built out of an ocean monument, which became a guardian farm (and so the base was built around this, inside the ocean).
Nowadays, if I build a new base, I tend to maintain a few conditions even for more nomadic bases. I rarely build structures from the ground-up unless they are part of one of the three main bases, so for smaller bases I usually utilize villages. Interestingly, villages have never been part of my three major bases, but they do make up the basis for most of my nomadic bases. This is because I often prefer not to spend too much time building up new bases when I am on the move - so villages naturally offer a convenient shortcut there.
Also, interestingly, is that all three major bases are in forest biomes (the ocean base has extensions in the coastal forest). I would eventually like to construct major bases in every major biome, with thematic building styles to match the biome - but this is not really a priority, more of a niche challenge.