Now we're moving into the fine-tuning phase as we focus on one of the core aspects that characterizes Starlight HQ: its fun and games! Today, we're introducing updates to Starlight Arcade, a new parkour course, a new powerful plugin, and some big new secret projects... which of course will not be introduced!
Session 272 - "Fun and Games"
Starlight Plaza is known for Starlight Arcade, let’s be honest. As such, I don’t see the harm in turning the entire faction into an arcade. I mean, we already have a damn trampoline and a scavenger hunt out here. Why stop there?
Starlight Arcade does need some updating. First, I’ll start by expanding the “light snake” that plays along the roof
whenever you enter the arcade.
This is a simple process, and I am designing it ever so slightly differently to break up the monotony of the arcade.
The Sandbox has become a project that I work on in bits and pieces, which is how it will continue throughout the rest of the season. This is because building the puzzle requires a lot of brain work, and it would be foolish to limit my progression of this world’s projects simply to force my brain to work. Still, I won’t allow this season to end (and for the
world download to be released) until it’s done (check out Session 239 for an overview of this project).
What you see above is actually a failed attempt to integrate “The Floor is Lava” into Starlight Arcade. I botched this project due to lack of space, instead considering that I could build a separate parkour course based around this concept. That would be quite fun! Indeed, “Landing Pad” already features some elements like this.
So, basically, I didn’t do much work on Starlight Arcade, except improve the token dispenser.
BUZZ BLAST
As if Starlight Arcade was not enough, I see an amazing opportunity here to utilize the Starlight Bay.
We are going to implement a new parkour course! It will be located right here on the water of Starlight Plaza, nicely bright and colorful.
A unique element about this course is that you need to figure out how to access it… legitimately, that is.
Yay! What a fun course. It honestly deserves to be on the Parkour Wall of Fame.
And, it adds such a colorful element to the Starlight skyline! Just looking at it brings me satisfaction, which is the whole point. But what’s inside the pink flower? Well, you’ll need to play it and see.
I can provide replay value, too, by adding some challenges/patterns to how you complete the course. These will be available in the Starlight Castle library, above the second floor.
Cleaned up the plaza beach, too. Eventually, I'll need to find a way to remove all the torches! One step at a time.
“Buzz Blast” has been on the agenda for a while – much longer than “The Floor is Lava.” However, I do plan to continue my trend of game-building to implement the latter at a later date! For now, this will do.
STARLIGHT OVERDRIVE
I can’t help but look at a serious plugin opportunity that’s missing in the base and choose today to build it. Up until now, production in Starlight HQ has followed along a linear and predictable pattern. I know approximately how long it will take to get a stack of iron ingots from the iron farm. I know how long it will take for the crop farm chests to fill up (not very long). I have a generally well-rounded idea for the level of efficiency that exists in the base’s principal production farms.
I see the potential to add some variance to this level of production.
Introducing Starlight Overdrive, a modifier that will allow the unique ability of overdriving the production targets of the generator plugin it is modifying. In essence, this plugin will give the modular plugins an ability that you cannot replicate outside of using them – they will be able to overdrive the production of resources in the base.
How is this possible? Well, it isn’t a linear process that we can complete today. There are two main parts of installing this plugin: (1) building the pulse multipliers at certain outputs to multiply the number of output pulses, and (2) multiplying the physical size of all farms in the base to allow higher production output.
Here’s the plugin’s UI:
The key is the “Multiply by” item selector, which will be the single parameter responsible for controlling exactly how much production output is multiplied. In order to implement this correctly, I would need to, for instance, build a total of eight additional melon/pumpkin farms, with this parameter controlling how many of those eight additional farms are enabled within the base operations. These additional “overdrive” farms will only be toggled by modular activity and would otherwise be inaccessible.
For instance, say we build a link in the MISC for the iron farm to toggle SRF farms. As you already know, this means that for every iron ingot that is detected from the farm, a pulse will be sent to all farms in the SRF (that’s melon, pumpkin, cactus, sugar cane, nether wart, flower farms) that will harvest them automatically. If we plug Starlight Overdrive into the MISC and set the “Multiply by” selector to 5, this will mean that all SRF farms will be multiplied five-fold. So, I need to build eight additional flower farms, eight melon/pumpkin farms, eight nether wart farms, etc.
Obviously, I can’t do all this work today, and indeed installing these farms will need to be done off-site, as they won’t all physically fit within this space. I would need to build a separate hub for all these farms, then funnel them back into the SRF with long hopper chains. This process is going to be a major addition that I don’t plan to construct today. My goal today is to get the UI and principal wiring installed for Starlight Overdrive. We’ll work on the “overdrive” part later.
We can, however, build the pulse multipliers that will be useful for certain other functions in the base, mostly the potion brewer. For this, I’ll use Starlight Overdrive to multiply the number of cycles that potions will brew. So, “Multiply by” set to 3 will set the potion brewer to run three times per single input. So, you will get nine potions total.
To install this functionality, we need a variable pulse multiplier in addition to some very specific pulse extenders. I’m using this hopper/dropper design that will let me make fine adjustments to the pulses and the length of multiplication.
Ideally, yes, we would build eight additional potion brewers as the ideal behavior is for multiple sets of potions to brew simultaneously (otherwise, it isn’t much different from the potion brewer being triggered three times in a row). But doing this would be far too complex and large for the space with which we are working. So, I’m installing it this way, and I can always build upon it later on if I so choose. With the potion brewer already working around the clock due to receiving inputs from everything else, this addition may eventually be the logical next step.
For now, though, I’m happy with this, and that I’ve wired up the “AUX in” gates for Starlight Overdrive to both the MISC and Dropbox generators.
The other features will be implemented after we build the new farms, but essentially we will get the following:
Color – will add randomization and give some variance to the production levels (i.e. if “Multiply by” is set to 5, enabling “color” will render the outputs sometimes at 4, sometimes at 6, etc.
Lowpass filter – this feature will require a certain pulse length in order to enable multiplication. Having this filter will keep the base from lagging too badly every single time an iron ingot is detected, for example (since those pulses are very quick, it would cause an overload). Whereas, if this feature is enabled, you would need a decent stream of iron ingots to keep the pulse alive long enough to trigger multiplication.
MAX OUT – Yup, this is going to do exactly what it says. If you enable this, it will maximize everything. I am actually thinking of turning this into a button that, when pressed, will harvest all nine of all farms that are hooked up to it. In this way, it will be a one-stop way to get a huge influx of resources in an instant. Still undecided on that, as I still want to keep the features of this plugin as a modifier exclusive to generator inputs. Having this feature as a button would turn it into a hybrid generator/modifier (nothing wrong with that, but it would detract from the plugin’s purpose as being exclusive to the modular processes of the MISC and Dropbox).
And that’s how easy it will be to overdrive the production of EVERYTHING in this base. I need a new storage system, badly.
But what’s the deal with the Secret Switch?
Just you wait and see… this entire base will be chock full of fun and games by the time you get to play in it.
With "Buzz Blast" complete and some new secret developments underway, I'll be continuing the trend of colorful projects as we look at implementing a slew of blocks that have been missing from Starlight HQ for too long!
I was also among the players who started playing Minecraft without having any knowledge of the game from the Wiki or other means, mostly because I didn't even know such a thing existed. And I would say that a lot of the mistakes I made early on would have been avoided had I read the Wiki in that case! However, that's part of the fun for me. As leangreen and others have noted, part of the enjoyment is figuring out how the game is played (much like any other game really). That's one of the things I miss, in fact. At this point, I know everything I need to know about how to play this game, and that has shifted my focus as to what I'm trying to achieve in it. But I miss the "training wheels phase," so to speak, in which I spent a lot of time discovering all the many aspects of the game that exist for us to enjoy. This is partly why I do not update to the newest version right away - I still want to keep this feeling as much as I can without sacrificing the projects I am already doing.
For example, I didn't even know fishing was a thing for at least the first four months I played. Oh, how that would have helped me earlier.
I mean, if you're going for the novelty of a new project, then sure - a cactus XP farm could be something fun and different to build. But, unless your farm is of a significant size, then I wouldn't vouch for it being an effective source of XP. Even in the Overworld, you're better off taking the time to build a guardian farm - even a spawner-based mob farm (ideally skeletons as the drops are more useful) is better.
Additionally, you can use leather armor to make yourself a nice wardrobe. That's what I've done here:
For gold armor, keep in mind that with 1.16 gold armor has some usefulness against piglins. So it would be worth combining drops to get a few sets of gold armor - if you keep using the drops for this purpose, then you may not need to craft any at all.
Here, I have collected a few sets, which I could then use to put Soul Speed and other enchantments on for Nether travel (except that I'm not playing in 1.16, but if you are, then this is what you might do). None of these were crafted:
Aaaaaaaand we're back! After a few months gathering my thoughts, now that we've entered beta phase for Starlight HQ 3.0, I've created the roadmap to how we'll get the world ready for the end of the season... hopefully this year!
So, let's dive in!
Session 271 - "Concatenation"
I’ve been fixing a lot of bugs that showed up throughout my testing of the many different setups we can build with the MISC. Fun fact: we can now use Starlight HQ in more than 15,345 different ways! That’s absolutely insane. The same base can be customized at its core level in that many ways, which is why we need to do testing! I am expected to test all these combinations to make sure there are no bugs. And I’ve got a long way to go! Bugs will show up even after 3.0 is released.
Also, that number only reflects the current plugins, which consist of one generator (MISC) and four modifiers (Starlight Balancer, Starlight Inverter, Starlight Compressor, and Spectrometer). Once we start adding more plugins, and more options for those plugins, we will see this number increase exponentially. That’s the plan going forward, since the framework we have built will make it much easier to install new plugins.
Today, we will be constructing the base’s second generator, which will also be the first proper generator. See, the MISC is already somewhat unique because it only bridges the gap between input and output. It relies on core features of the base to function.
The generator we are building today will have a specific function in the base and will be customizable based on that. It won’t be a universal system like the MISC, because its function will be more specific. Hopefully, you will be able to see how we can get more creative with our modular options.
Called the Dropbox, this plugin will be an automatic item drop-off point for shulker boxes, which will sort out heavy items like cobblestone, stone, stone brick, dirt, etc. All the rest will go in a holding array of chests down in the SRF to be sorted manually.
Here’s why we need the Dropbox:
Among all the disorganized chests I have in the Essentials Room, many of them are full of heavy-set items like cobblestone, stone, and other materials I tend to accumulate large quantities of. The purpose of the Dropbox is not only to create a new storage area for these items, but to eliminate the work of dealing with them. I can deal with sorting all the other stuff. I hate dealing with large quantities of items.
Now, why is this a plugin for the modular system? Well, the Dropbox will simultaneously be able to modulate all the farms in the Starlight Resources Facility depending on which items it is receiving. In this way, we can use the Dropbox to effectively toggle/harvest all our main crop farms, without doing any work at all. And it will be sorting all our items, too. Sounds great to me.
Take note that this is a separate plugin from the MISC. It will not be connected to the MISC in any way – all its functions will be independent of what is happening within the MISC. This is a core characteristic of our generator plugins – they run independent of one another.
The Dropbox will also have a separate channel in the modular mixer, with all our modifiers being capable of modifying it separately from the MISC. This is why we have a mixer.
Its location will be quite conveniently near the Essentials Room – over here adjacent to the powerhouse chamber where the old zombie tower used to exist.
The functionality here is quite simple and automatic – you can place a shulker box full of items (ideally the aforementioned types) above any of the four hoppers (or, all of them if you have multiple shulker boxes), and all items will be pulled down a hopper chain to a storage room.
^ Here, I have constructed the storage room for these mass items in the SRF control floor, right next to the tree farm as you can see from the viewing window.
This is a very long hopper chain, yes.
Okay, the item sorters are not unlike any other, but there are some key characteristics of the Dropbox that make it unique as a plugin. What you can see above is that I am using comparators to detect specific items from the sorting system. These side outputs will go on to perform specific automations in the base.
Each item gets its own side output, so that they can be separated later if desired.
The principal architecture of the Dropbox is done, but now I am clearing some space so we can construct its modular capabilities.
One of these will be its ability to force activate all the farms in the SRF – this includes the sugar cane farm which previously did not have an option to force activate. I needed to construct a new line of redstone for this to occur.
Behind here in the control area, I’m taking advantage of our new redstone line by adding the option to keep the sugar cane farm powered on or off. Our supply has overflowed, as with most other resources in this base – so, having a way to toggle the farms on/off is becoming more essential. In this way, we can effectively reverse the behavior of the Dropbox (so, if the sugar cane farm is off by default, it will toggle it ON, and vice versa).
The Dropbox’s functions are effectively wired, so now we can get a little more creative by applying its modifiers:
^ What you’re seeing above is the Starlight Inverter at work, now plugged into the Dropbox. It’s a XOR gate, which in this case will have a more targeted function. If the Inverter is plugged in, then the Dropbox will only automate farms if un-sorted items are detected (i.e. any item that isn’t in the sorter, such as stone, cobblestone, dirt, stone slabs, or stone brick).
Next is Starlight Balancer. If this is plugged in, then the Dropbox separates all the item outputs to control different farms. Normally, the Dropbox will toggle all farms at once if any of the sortable items are detected. But, as the point of the Balancer is to reduce activity, we can choose to have only the melon farm harvest if stone is detected, for instance. Useful!
The Starlight Compressor will do the same as it does in the MISC – limit the length of the incoming pulse so that the farms do not remain in an OFF position. Recall that the goal of the Compressor is to maximize efficiency. Well, if there is a large quantity of stone being processed at once, then the side outputs will remain active until there is no more stone to sort. This means that all farms connected to that output will remain in a “harvested” position (pistons extended, for instance), reducing their ability to grow more crops.
^ Here is an example of what would happen if Starlight Compressor was not plugged in. Because stone is consistently being funneled through the Dropbox, these pistons will remain extended, causing a decrease in the efficiency of these farms. The Compressor will reduce the pulse, so that it resets until a new pulse is detected.
The Spectrometer does as you would expect – prevents the Dropbox from working when it’s night, or vice versa if the ‘Invert’ option is selected.
Finally, I’m adding options behind the Dropbox interface to enable/disable hoppers. This is important if you want your shulker boxes back.
The Dropbox’s final UI:
You have the option to enable/disable links, so that you can either use it as a modular generator or as just an item sorter. The choices are all up to you! Or, me, rather.
WEAKNESS POTION SELECTOR
Okay, so I keep putting off a very important addition that should have been added for Starlight HQ’s beta test – however, better late than never! We are missing the integral potion of weakness brewer that needs to be built separately from the primary brewer.
Why? Well, potions of weakness do not require nether wart to brew, and our primary brewer cannot bypass that principal ingredient. So, we just need to install a separate brewer, which we will then be able to toggle from within the MISC.
First, I’ll make sure to reset all links currently connected to the potion brewer, as I do not want any activity taking place there while I work on it.
We will want the option to brew these manually, of course, so I will put this brewer right here next to the mushroom storage. Perfectly suited, I think.
Credits to OceanPhoenix for this stellar design! It is a wonderful brewer specifically for splash weakness potions, which is exactly what we would be brewing.
Now, you are wondering: how do we get the selector hooked up to this?
Easy. We build another one.
When ‘weakness’ is selected, the regular potion brewer will be blocked from activation by the MISC. Note that you can still use it manually. The system then works normally, brewing a batch of weakness potions in the dedicated weakness potion brewer.
Perfect! With that all done, there’s really only one efficiency issue left to tackle:
What a silly oversight!
Well, that’s all fixed up.
The Dropbox might not have been the most obvious choice for our next project, but it is such a blessing to have in our base! With lots of technical improvements this round, now it's time to hop into a project a bit more colorful.
And it's here! A demonstration of the "modular" capabilities of my main survival base - though, it's become much more than just a base. Now, it's a redstone-run machine!
Here is a demonstration video of the modular system and one of its plugins, the Modular Interface Specifications Center (MISC).
Welcome to Starlight HQ 3.0 beta. Today, I'm going to show you what all our technical work this season has led up to - a modular demonstration video providing an overview of the MISC and the overall central nervous system that runs through Starlight. Enjoy!
Starlight HQ Modular Demonstration Video
Hopefully, this video gives you a much more clear idea of what you can do with Starlight's new way of operating. It's going to be grounds for some very cool builds later on! Speaking of which... let's make some more links!
Many long hours, lots of trial and error, and several reconstructions later, we are finally completing the principal architecture of Starlight HQ's new modular system, fully upgrading this survival base into a modular base. What does that mean? It means you can customize how the base behaves! Join me as we finish installing the final few features of the MISC and bring Starlight HQ 3.0 into beta testing!
Session 270 - "Beta"
For a while, I kept my scope fairly narrow regarding exactly what features that the MISC would be in charge of controlling. From the beginning, I was very clear on key farms/features: iron farm, mob farm, Night Lights, crop farms, and now the potion brewer. All of these (excluding the mob farm) were built this season with modular functionality in mind. I had been operating under the assumption that I needed to build new farms and builds specifically for the MISC (like the villager-powered crop farms). But thinking this way really narrowed how I was looking at the base, and as a result left me unable to conceptualize more creative ways of linking it together.
As I step back and look at Starlight HQ as a whole, I am realizing that we have way more that we can do with the farms and features we already have. Everything we built in Season 2, and even in Season 1, can be hooked up to the MISC. I didn’t even think about using the slime farm as an input! What about the chicken farm? And the sugar cane farm? All of these are automatic farms and work just as well as the iron farm.
Let’s not forget about other player-controlled farms like our nether wart farm, which we can use to automate the potion brewer.
How about using the giant mushroom farm?
…and the colored wool farm? ALL of these are fantastic options for MISC inputs, yet before now I hadn’t even considered using them.
Our primary objective today is to link everything together and complete the MISC’s final few features, which are very important for the base to reach its fullest potential. Once this is done, we can then enter beta phase and test all our modular links and features! Exciting times!
MISC FEATURES
Let us go through the features together, starting with the big two:
Save / reset links – currently, the MISC only lets you compose one link at a time. Every time you start the linking process, any links you made previously will be reset and overridden. This is not the behavior I want. For the MISC, I want two modes – one to save links, and one to reset them. If you draw link 1A, you should be able to save it and draw another link – say, 3B. This way, we can theoretically link everything together.
Multi-link operations – in concordance with the above, you can also only select one input and one output button. That means you’re restricted to links like 1A, 3C, 8D, and so forth. In this way, there are so many numbers that we aren’t even tapping into! What about 12B? Or 48A? Or 17C? Or 2478A? I want to be able to select multiple numbers, which will allow more complex links to be made.
Once we get these major two features figured out, the MISC is going to become a lot more powerful. We’ll be able to achieve some creative base behavior.
A few more features will be added, too:
Reset links – a button that doesn’t start the linking process, but that resets all links allowing for a blank canvas. Useful if you create several links and then forget what you created and would like to reset the canvas.
Enable tangent output – this lever will enable the MISC’s “side” output, if you will, which is a redstone line that becomes active whenever activity from the MISC is detected. This output line can be used to trigger other base activities, or (as we’re going to use it) other generators. We’ve already installed the redstone line itself – we just want a way to toggle it.
Now then, how do we install these features? To do this, we need to completely change the way that links are constructed. I knew this was coming, too. Here is what we need to do:
Every link needs to be rewritten as an AND gate between the actual link combination (say, 5B) and the target source (say, iron farm). In order to install save/reset mode, these link outputs need to enter an RS (NOR) latch. Then, I need to disable the registers (“clear the cache”) so that you can distinguish links from one another. Pistons will need to be installed at every latch to “block” its ability to reset if I have SAVE mode enabled.
In this diagram, the iron blocks represent the MISC, the emerald blocks represent the source input (i.e. iron farm), and the diamond blocks represent the target output (i.e. SRF farms). The lever above represents the “save/reset” feature, which will effectively “block” the redstone wire from resetting the RS (NOR) latch if it’s in save mode and allow the latch to reset if it’s in reset mode. All links need to be constructed this way, ending with an AND gate.
This means that I need to move the iron farm, mob farm, and furnace room input wires away from the binary adders. That causes unwanted bugs by creating links we do not want to create. Instead, these wires will go directly into AND gates as demonstrated above.
I am also labeling all the wires because it is getting quite a bit messy back here. Doing this will allow me to keep track of the wires, since we must build a new wire per link.
^ Here, you can see the rewiring of the iron farm links. Everything funnels into AND gates now – this is the only way to keep all links totally separate. You need one input from the MISC (the link) and one input from the source (iron farm). That’s what toggles the output (Night Lights in this case).
It is getting messy up here, but that is why we have signs! With everything being labeled, I should be able to keep track of all the wires.
^ Here is another completed link gate, featuring the piston on the left that toggles save/reset mode.
Very important: we need a way to “clear the cache,” so to speak, upon creation of the links. This means that instead of using registers to save the redstone state as pictured above (keeping the link wires powered), we need to reset them so that their actions can take effect. Since we are using RS (NOR) latches now, that means we do not need to save the input state. Resetting it lets us use that wire for a different link.
This latch will briefly open the registers to clear the data after the linking process has concluded:
We cannot complete “multi-link” today because we do not yet have a way for the MISC cache to hold and save all the inputs we place before deleting them. For multi-link to allow the creation of links independent of those made with only two buttons, we need to have all three (or more) inputs toggle the adders simultaneously to prevent activation of unwanted links. This is not yet a system we have the capacity to set up yet.
I can still lay the groundwork though, in which I am using some repeaters to prevent the system from locking after one input is selected (this is normally what happens). Only upon pressing an output button will the machine lock.
^ Resetting all links will require us to send a pulse to every line while it’s in reset mode – this way, it can reset all the RS (NOR) latches and clear the canvas.
Thankfully, we don’t yet need this, because we don’t have enough things to link up. We will likely need it before the season ends, though.
Now then, here is the current link map I am planning:
1A - Iron farm > Night Lights
2A - Multi-purpose mob farm > Night Lights
3A - Nether Temple > SRF farms
4A - STAS Red > SRF farms
5A - Furnace room > SRF farms
6A - Furnace room > Iron farm
7A - Crop farms > SRF farms
8A - Crop farms > Night Lights
1B - Crop farms > Potion brewer
2B - Furnace room > Potion brewer
3B - Nether Temple > Potion brewer
4B - Iron farm > Potion brewer
5B - Multi-purpose mob farm > Potion brewer
6B - STAS Red > Potion brewer
7B - STAS Blue > Potion brewer
8B - Nether wart farm > Potion brewer
1C - STAS Blue > SRF farms
2C - Sugar cane farm > Potion brewer
3C - Sugar cane farm > Mushroom farm
4C - Giant mushroom > SRF farms
5C - Giant mushroom > Potion brewer
6C - Furnace room > Mushroom farm
7C - Giant mushroom > Mushroom farm
8C - Wool farm > SRF farms
1D - Wool farm > Potion brewer
2D - Wool farm > Mushroom farm
3D - Crop farms > Mushroom farm
4D - Slime farm > SRF farms
5D - Slime farm > Potion brewer
Now that I’ve built the framework for the system, every link will be composed the same way. So, it’s time for the grunt work!
INSTALLING THE FARMS
First, we’ll need several new input wires from sources I have not yet plugged into the MISC. Namely, this includes STAS (both the red and blue lines get separate links), the nether wart farm, slime farm, wool farm, and the mushroom farms.
That’s right! Remember the old mushroom farm from Season 1? The one I build in the farmlands that has almost never been used?
Well, believe it or not, I am about to upgrade that same farm into a fully modular farm – we can use it only through the MISC.
Mushrooms are quite useful for making fermented spider eyes. So, I will funnel all the mushroom drops down by the potion brewer. The farm is right above this anyway.
Then, all we have to do is send an output wire from the MISC link gates to the pistons that harvest the mushrooms. It’s that simple.
We also need to upgrade the melon/pumpkin farms. They currently cannot automatically collect the drops. This makes modular capacity useless.
Quite easy, we just need to invert the pistons so that they push the drops down into the ground, which the hoppers will be able to collect.
Note that restructuring the farm this way now prevents us from being able to use it manually. That means the pressure plate has no effect – this farm is also now fully modular.
Continuing this trend, we are going to use the sugar cane farm for input as well. This is a fully automatic farm, but it’s really six farms stacked. So, I can just a comparator to detect input from the hoppers that collect the sugar cane.
Links, links, and more links. We are almost there!
One important ability that we are utilizing here is being able to use the MISC to toggle farms on/off, like the cactus farm pictured above. However, some farms like the mob farm, sugar cane farm, and iron farm stay on indefinitely. This limits our ability to use them as targets, while also providing the possibility of storage overflow (we already have that happening).
So, today we’re adding the ability to turn off the iron farm!
To do this, we need a large wall of pistons to block the zombie from being in sight of the villagers.
It’s a tedious process, but not very difficult.
Ugh, these guys also get very annoying! Get out of there!
There we go! Now, you can toggle the iron farm on/off. This now lets us use other farms to toggle the iron farm on/off (i.e., link 6A, which turns the iron farm on/off when it detects input). I use a XOR gate on the on/off gate, which means that the furnace room would do the opposite of the iron farm’s regular state. If the iron farm is off, the furnace room will turn it on for the duration of smelting. If the iron farm is on, the furnace room turns it off.
The other farms will take some trial/error to install on/off capacity, so we will hold onto that for now.
As I finish installing all the links for Starlight HQ, I am reminded of an important function that I need Starlight Compressor to do. Here is the problem:
^ Notice that sometimes farms like this one will stay active. This is due to some inputs being held for a large number of pulses (if the crop farms have a long stream of items to sort, then their respective MISC link input stays active). However, this lowers efficiency since the melons and pumpkins cannot grow during this period.
Additionally, if we have multiple sources targeting this farm (say, we have both the crop farms and iron farms targeting it), this can also cause an exceedingly long pulse. We do not always want this.
So, the solution is simpler: adding a pulse limiter to every output wire, which will only allow a short pulse to enter the farms and prevent overflow inputs from other farms. Starlight Compressor will effectively “compress” multiple input sources into one source, and that one source will only output a short pulse to allow the farms to start growing again. This will help maximize efficiency.
This functionality will be automatically activated upon enabling Starlight Compressor in the modular mixer – you do not need to meet a certain item threshold for it to work.
And that, my friends, is the completed MISC. Starlight HQ 3.0 is officially in beta phase. Time for testing!!
Starlight HQ 3.0 is moving into its final phase of development as we head into the final stretch for Season 3 and secure the Tetraquin Project's completion. Commemorating this, I think it's appropriate to share all of our work up to this point with you in video form.
Next up... Starlight HQ modular demonstration video
I've spent some time constructing ways to turn off all automatic farms within Starlight. For example, farms like the iron and sugar cane farms tend to run all the time without player intervention, but eventually I may want to turn them off.
Now I have that option:
Why is this useful, you may wonder? Well, being able to toggle the farms on/off allows me to more effectively use them as targets in Starlight's modular system - wherein I can use one farm to control another. So now, I can keep the sugar cane farm disabled until input from the iron farm is received, for example. Or, I can use the potion brewer to harvest the sugar cane. So many possibilities now.
This survival base is moving into beta phase, with most of these modular capabilities complete! I'll share a video soon of this in practical application.
my tip is if you have a main base you work from, only explore in one or two compass point directions; leave other areas close by unexplored so you have a chance of new stuff generating (such as ores) in any future updates by visiting these areas then ...
A great tip indeed! My main world is as old as 1.5 (created in 2013), yet I have seldom explored in the westward directions any more than 1,000 blocks. This way, when I update to 1.17 (or likely 1.18) from 1.15, it won't take long to find some of that new cave generation!
I've been asked why I don't update to 1.16. And my answer may help you on your quest to find some inspiration... New features are cool and definitely can help give you a boost of creativity when you're in a rut, but they are also a curse if your ideas become too attached to them. None of my current world plans (for the next several years in fact) are based in 1.16 features. All the things I want to do right now could probably be done in 1.12 (I played in 1.12 up until April this year, when I jumped to 1.15). I still have not even explored the full range of features added back from 1.11-1.15, because I am not interested in them right now. Wireless redstone may change that coming in 1.17, but still - I need to get through the current list first, which could take several years yet.
I think taking a break is always a good thing. My main world would not have lasted 7+ years without several month-long breaks to revitalize my creative juices. Actually, this is where most of my ideas come from! I have several Word documents of me just jotting down some ideas for projects I want to build, which eventually get organized into a "bucket list" for the world that I am constantly adding to. Once I feel motivated enough to pursue those projects, I end the break and get back to work.
So what kinds of ideas would those be? Well, I am a very redstone-oriented player, and a lot of projects I currently work on focus on using computations to modulate other projects (i.e. use certain farms/machines to automate or alter the behavior of others). Part of the fun for me is brainstorming new ways to do this that haven't already been done. Every now and then, I also like to build survival-friendly parkour courses - that's a fun project you may consider! You can make some thematic courses, like a jungle course, and a desert run, or an ice climb, etc. I have six currently.
This post was longer than I planned, but, I am very passionate about finding the sources that fuel inspiration from within. So I want to encourage you to explore what you enjoy doing the most in Minecraft (PvE, redstone, caving, building, exploring?) and capitalize on that. Build a story around your world. Start a Word document and make a list of projects (maybe some farms, maybe some cool contraptions like a moving maze). Try "branching" from one idea to the next (what you can you from a wither skeleton farm? Maybe then a beacon farm? Maybe then a netherite beacon project? Or a rainbow beacon). You'll be amazed at how much you can come up with.
It's been a while since we last talked with the council of Techtown - the same group of villagers that thwarted the development of Starlight back in the Season 2 finale. As we have been planning to integrate them within our plans for Starlight City, it's crucial that my next meeting with them is a productive one. So, let's give them a call.
Session 269 - "Calling the Council"
The Inner Circle is going to be more than just the first neighborhood of Starlight City – it needs to be a haven for immunity from the dangers of the surrounding island. I do not plan on bringing the council over just to kill them.
The moat will be properly lit, as will the monument in the center once we get to erecting that.
For right now, I’m going to keep my plans for the neighborhood quite simple, so as to not get too far over my head. I do want a fully developed village, but first I need a place for the council members to safely reside. This will be our focus today.
The neighborhood’s first home will be situated on the southern coast, in-between the jungle and Emerald Hills.
I would like to keep some of the original terrain to avoid the area being so flat. However, some leveling will be necessary to ensure a stable foundation for the house.
I’ve been in a toss-up regarding the materials I would like to use. But in general, I am planning on clay, wood, some stone, and quartz. We are not looking to build mansions here – just nice houses with some degree of modernity.
Ha, poor zombies can’t touch this!
Lanterns will be a principal light source, while I am using stripped logs for a change.
What do we have here in the distance?
An army of PILLAGERS? I have never caught those in Quintropolis before. They speak a broken language that I cannot decipher. I wonder if they used to be villagers.
But they are not friendly! So, they must be removed from the island!
Milk does a good job removing the Bad Omen I received – I wouldn’t want to linger on what possibilities that holds for Quintropolis’s future. Arguably, we already have plenty of bad omens.
This house will consist of two rooms – one living space and one “dining” (but really trading) space. I am trying to maintain a rather diverse palette of building blocks for the modern theme.
^ I’ll place a sunroof overhead.
^ Here, you can see a view of the first home on the coast. The exterior needs some work yet, but we can always touch it up here and there.
A porch on the back provides a beautiful view of the jungle on one side and Emerald Hills on the other.
Where are you going, ugly phantoms? To hell, that’s where.
I am acutely focused on the outside even more so than the interior. I’d like to develop the yard and road so that the construction feels much more complete.
^ Eventually, we will construct a large array of hedges surrounding the circle so that zombie sieges like this will not happen.
What’s this? Another army of pillagers? They nearly killed me!! How is that possible? I have no clue where these guys are coming from, or how they invaded Quintropolis Island so easily. I guess I just don’t get out much.
A nice fountain, some lanterns, and hedges should complete the road quite nicely. I want to keep this area open for the villagers to roam, but to do that I need to ensure the area is safe enough.
Haha, the fireplace caught the tree on fire. It was in the way anyway.
Okay, I think the home is secure. I’ll take down my temporary beacon and return it to Starlight HQ. Then it is time to visit Techtown.
Damn, it has been a long time since I traveled on the Great Northern Railway. But this is how I am getting the villagers to their new home.
Welcome back to Techtown, the oldest organized civilization in the world. It may as well be a ghost town now!
“Hello!” I exclaim upon actually seeing some sign of human life!
“Halt! Who are you??” inquires a curious librarian. Actually, they are all librarians.
“Why, my name is Joey. I come from –“
“Joey San? The antichrist?” the council members step back.
“Huh?? I am no such thing!” They clearly have no clue what’s going on.
“The secretary of Techtown was seen dead during our last visit to your home. The wretched civilization called Starlight.” Now, they seem upset. I don’t blame them.
“I… I had nothing to do with that! I wasn’t even there.”
“But… you had given him a full tour. We remember. Drexel here documented everything.”
Ah, so they do have names.
“Yeah, ya’ll were together and then… poof! You’re gone and he’s dead. Coincidence? Likely not.” Drexel acts like he has everything figured out.
“So what, are you here to murder us, too?” the nameless one responds.
“What? No! I am not a murderer! Look, I know tensions have been high since that day. I am here to offer amends.”
The council laughs.
“Amends? Boshtok, what do you think of that?” Drexel asks the nameless one, who I suppose does have a name.
“I think it’s moot! Haha! Get out of town.”
“You call this a town?” I consider taking a different approach. “What quality of life do you have?”
“We have protection from-“
“Protection from what? Mobs? Who do you think built you this wall?”
Boshtok and Drexel remain silent. I figure this is as good a time as ever to make my point before they chime in.
“I have spent the last several years building a civilization to foster that protection. And I am here to offer you that protection. To live at Starlight.
“You think we trust you?” Boshtok quickly asks. “Look at what happened the last time we were there!”
Actually, that’s the part I never found out…
“So, something did happen. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Ask Violet, she never wanted to leave that cursed island anyway—”
“Violet’s dead.”
There was a suspicious silence. I know they probably insist that I killed her, too.
“She died protecting whatever secret she couldn’t tell me. A secret that maybe I could help prevent. A secret that Starlight is designed to fight against.”
“Where exactly did she die?” asks Drexel, who is all too keen now to know.
“She died… by Enderquin’s hand.” A gasp is shared among the villagers who now whisper to one another. I postulated that it was likely best not to disclose the location of Enderquin’s portal. Clearly, they don’t know it exists. I think I will keep it that way until I understand the gravity of the situation.
“Okay,” the third nameless council member chimes in. “Boshtok and Drexel will go with you to Quintropolis Island. They will see your argument through. However, you are always to remain in their sight.”
“If what you say is true, that you want to protect us, and Quintropolis, then you will not have a problem with these conditions,” adds Drexel. He is becoming a pain in my ass, although he offers a charming Efficiency V book.
“Fair enough,” I add with a sigh. “I built you a nice house anyway.”
And so, I once again received no answers to my questions, instead beckoning more questions. I know that something is going on, and ironically, I am the only one out of the loop. That is a problem that must be remedied, though I remain confident that reintroducing my presence into Techtown was the smart move.
It seems like the council wants to work with me, though they remain highly suspicious of my work. I will do everything I can to win them over, to prove that Starlight HQ is the protection that Quintropolis needs. That I am their protector. Their god. And they will worship me as such.
Boshtok and Drexel, the first council members to join Quintropolis Island, have finally approved of the Starlight City project with some conditions. With that, it's time to move Starlight HQ 3.0 into beta testing as we embrace the Trials of Techtown!
With Starlight HQ 3.0 so close to beta phase, there is an important task that it's finally time we address. One that should have been addressed the day I found Violet. But she's dead now. That begs the question... who isn't??
Session 268 - "401(k)"
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about one glaring oversight I made several years ago when contemplating exactly what happened the day Techtropolis fell. The council of Techtown was somehow able to tamper with ancient redstone lines inside the jungle temple and embed a recorded message for me to hear. I never even stopped to deliberate on this facet of the event.
They recorded this message… but when? It could have been months, even years, before I ended up finding it. I need an answer to that question. I need an answer to all my questions.
After much deliberation, I have decided that I will extend a formal invitation to the council of Techtown. The last time we met, in Session 200, they threatened to shut down Starlight HQ. Clearly, that hasn’t gone well for them. But even Violet could not help me understand exactly what happened after I left (she was a bit insane). If any council members are still alive, then I am willing to bet they have some more insight. Violet cannot be the only one who was left.
Before I extend this invitation, however, I need to prepare a place for them to reside. Indeed, I need the council to see that I have everyone’s best interests in mind. I do not want to destroy civilization – quite the opposite. Perhaps the best way to prove that is to build a civilization. Above, you can see the entirety of Quintropolis Island, with Starlight HQ on the right and Totem Run barely in the top-left.
I will propose a new home for the council, the Inner Circle, right here on Quintropolis Island, just a few hundred blocks from Starlight HQ. This will become the first neighborhood of Starlight City, which will be the next proposition to the council once I showcase Starlight HQ in its proper form.
See, the council’s beliefs operate under the idea that I have no self-control. They think that I am going to eventually cause the destruction of everything. Even Violet, who claimed to be full of prophetic visions of the future, told me that I would beckon the destruction of everything. I do hold that information with a grain of salt, but I cannot see a version of this story which ends this way. After all, I have already defeated Enderquin.
For the Inner Circle, I plan to construct a large monument in the center, with six to eight homes surrounding it. The circle will be one large village.
I did not initially realize just how varied the terrain was in this area. It is initially reminiscent of the leveling process I had to do in Vax Valley.
This time, though, I am going to be smarter and set up a Haste II beacon. This is a beacon I stole from Starlight Outback to borrow temporarily. I’ll give it back once we are done.
Surrounding the monument, which will be made entirely out of gold blocks, I’ll build a two-wide and two-deep moat. This will keep anyone from being able to access the monument, including mobs.
A view from above:
About the gold part – I never said the monument would be completed today! I do not have nearly enough gold for this. I have already designed the monument in a testing world, and I can tell you that building it entirely out of gold would require a well-stocked 401(k), which I do not yet have.
Just this flat platform here is somewhere around 3-4 stacks of gold blocks. And… the monument will be much more than a platform in case you were wondering.
Here is a view of the Inner Circle from Emerald Hills:
As I am leveling out the mountain adjacent to the circle, I am thinking about turning this area into the main shopping area of the village. I’ll set up some shops into the mountain, similarly to how Leangreen has built his Chunk Plaza. It’s either that, or I have to terraform the entire thing, which will get quite cumbersome and unnecessary.
First, we will establish a direct railway link to the Inner Circle from Starlight Station. This is not really for us – we already have elytra and can get here in seconds. It is for the villagers.
This railway will have an official station set up later, once I figure out how I want to design the shops. For now, just having the railway is important.
This is now the third railway from Starlight Station that exists, but I already have all eight planned out. Whether we get to them all this season just depends on how much we get done.
Okay, I leave Starlight for a minute, come back, and the entire crop farm storage has completely overflown. This has been an issue since we first built them because it produces too quickly. I have yet to find a suitable solution.
But for now, trading the hell out of them will do.
Yet another reason we are bringing the council over to Quintropolis Island is to improve our trade network. Currently, I only have the few villagers downstairs that are operating the modular farms. They are also artificial villagers made from zombies.
A few chorus fruits here and there will decorate the circle nicely.
Here is the Inner Circle as it exists right now. Before we visit Techtown to get the attention of the council, we need to have a plan already set up. I would like to bring the members of Techtown over to the island the day I visit if they will be willing. If they are even there.
It is a bit strange, isn’t it? Quintropolis has been way too quiet since the day Techtropolis fell. That is strange.
Mysteries are starting to stack, and soon we will get the answers we seek. A little anxiety goes a long way... is that a saying? I think that's a saying.
1
Now we're moving into the fine-tuning phase as we focus on one of the core aspects that characterizes Starlight HQ: its fun and games! Today, we're introducing updates to Starlight Arcade, a new parkour course, a new powerful plugin, and some big new secret projects... which of course will not be introduced!
Starlight Plaza is known for Starlight Arcade, let’s be honest. As such, I don’t see the harm in turning the entire faction into an arcade. I mean, we already have a damn trampoline and a scavenger hunt out here. Why stop there?
Starlight Arcade does need some updating. First, I’ll start by expanding the “light snake” that plays along the roof
whenever you enter the arcade.
This is a simple process, and I am designing it ever so slightly differently to break up the monotony of the arcade.
The Sandbox has become a project that I work on in bits and pieces, which is how it will continue throughout the rest of the season. This is because building the puzzle requires a lot of brain work, and it would be foolish to limit my progression of this world’s projects simply to force my brain to work. Still, I won’t allow this season to end (and for the
world download to be released) until it’s done (check out Session 239 for an overview of this project).
What you see above is actually a failed attempt to integrate “The Floor is Lava” into Starlight Arcade. I botched this project due to lack of space, instead considering that I could build a separate parkour course based around this concept. That would be quite fun! Indeed, “Landing Pad” already features some elements like this.
So, basically, I didn’t do much work on Starlight Arcade, except improve the token dispenser.
BUZZ BLAST
As if Starlight Arcade was not enough, I see an amazing opportunity here to utilize the Starlight Bay.
We are going to implement a new parkour course! It will be located right here on the water of Starlight Plaza, nicely bright and colorful.
A unique element about this course is that you need to figure out how to access it… legitimately, that is.
Yay! What a fun course. It honestly deserves to be on the Parkour Wall of Fame.
And, it adds such a colorful element to the Starlight skyline! Just looking at it brings me satisfaction, which is the whole point. But what’s inside the pink flower? Well, you’ll need to play it and see.
I can provide replay value, too, by adding some challenges/patterns to how you complete the course. These will be available in the Starlight Castle library, above the second floor.
Cleaned up the plaza beach, too. Eventually, I'll need to find a way to remove all the torches! One step at a time.
“Buzz Blast” has been on the agenda for a while – much longer than “The Floor is Lava.” However, I do plan to continue my trend of game-building to implement the latter at a later date! For now, this will do.
STARLIGHT OVERDRIVE
I can’t help but look at a serious plugin opportunity that’s missing in the base and choose today to build it. Up until now, production in Starlight HQ has followed along a linear and predictable pattern. I know approximately how long it will take to get a stack of iron ingots from the iron farm. I know how long it will take for the crop farm chests to fill up (not very long). I have a generally well-rounded idea for the level of efficiency that exists in the base’s principal production farms.
I see the potential to add some variance to this level of production.
Introducing Starlight Overdrive, a modifier that will allow the unique ability of overdriving the production targets of the generator plugin it is modifying. In essence, this plugin will give the modular plugins an ability that you cannot replicate outside of using them – they will be able to overdrive the production of resources in the base.
How is this possible? Well, it isn’t a linear process that we can complete today. There are two main parts of installing this plugin: (1) building the pulse multipliers at certain outputs to multiply the number of output pulses, and (2) multiplying the physical size of all farms in the base to allow higher production output.
Here’s the plugin’s UI:
The key is the “Multiply by” item selector, which will be the single parameter responsible for controlling exactly how much production output is multiplied. In order to implement this correctly, I would need to, for instance, build a total of eight additional melon/pumpkin farms, with this parameter controlling how many of those eight additional farms are enabled within the base operations. These additional “overdrive” farms will only be toggled by modular activity and would otherwise be inaccessible.
For instance, say we build a link in the MISC for the iron farm to toggle SRF farms. As you already know, this means that for every iron ingot that is detected from the farm, a pulse will be sent to all farms in the SRF (that’s melon, pumpkin, cactus, sugar cane, nether wart, flower farms) that will harvest them automatically. If we plug Starlight Overdrive into the MISC and set the “Multiply by” selector to 5, this will mean that all SRF farms will be multiplied five-fold. So, I need to build eight additional flower farms, eight melon/pumpkin farms, eight nether wart farms, etc.
Obviously, I can’t do all this work today, and indeed installing these farms will need to be done off-site, as they won’t all physically fit within this space. I would need to build a separate hub for all these farms, then funnel them back into the SRF with long hopper chains. This process is going to be a major addition that I don’t plan to construct today. My goal today is to get the UI and principal wiring installed for Starlight Overdrive. We’ll work on the “overdrive” part later.
We can, however, build the pulse multipliers that will be useful for certain other functions in the base, mostly the potion brewer. For this, I’ll use Starlight Overdrive to multiply the number of cycles that potions will brew. So, “Multiply by” set to 3 will set the potion brewer to run three times per single input. So, you will get nine potions total.
To install this functionality, we need a variable pulse multiplier in addition to some very specific pulse extenders. I’m using this hopper/dropper design that will let me make fine adjustments to the pulses and the length of multiplication.
Ideally, yes, we would build eight additional potion brewers as the ideal behavior is for multiple sets of potions to brew simultaneously (otherwise, it isn’t much different from the potion brewer being triggered three times in a row). But doing this would be far too complex and large for the space with which we are working. So, I’m installing it this way, and I can always build upon it later on if I so choose. With the potion brewer already working around the clock due to receiving inputs from everything else, this addition may eventually be the logical next step.
For now, though, I’m happy with this, and that I’ve wired up the “AUX in” gates for Starlight Overdrive to both the MISC and Dropbox generators.
The other features will be implemented after we build the new farms, but essentially we will get the following:
And that’s how easy it will be to overdrive the production of EVERYTHING in this base. I need a new storage system, badly.
But what’s the deal with the Secret Switch?
Just you wait and see… this entire base will be chock full of fun and games by the time you get to play in it.
With "Buzz Blast" complete and some new secret developments underway, I'll be continuing the trend of colorful projects as we look at implementing a slew of blocks that have been missing from Starlight HQ for too long!
Next up... Session 273 - "Block Party"
1
I was also among the players who started playing Minecraft without having any knowledge of the game from the Wiki or other means, mostly because I didn't even know such a thing existed. And I would say that a lot of the mistakes I made early on would have been avoided had I read the Wiki in that case! However, that's part of the fun for me. As leangreen and others have noted, part of the enjoyment is figuring out how the game is played (much like any other game really). That's one of the things I miss, in fact. At this point, I know everything I need to know about how to play this game, and that has shifted my focus as to what I'm trying to achieve in it. But I miss the "training wheels phase," so to speak, in which I spent a lot of time discovering all the many aspects of the game that exist for us to enjoy. This is partly why I do not update to the newest version right away - I still want to keep this feeling as much as I can without sacrificing the projects I am already doing.
For example, I didn't even know fishing was a thing for at least the first four months I played. Oh, how that would have helped me earlier.
1
I mean, if you're going for the novelty of a new project, then sure - a cactus XP farm could be something fun and different to build. But, unless your farm is of a significant size, then I wouldn't vouch for it being an effective source of XP. Even in the Overworld, you're better off taking the time to build a guardian farm - even a spawner-based mob farm (ideally skeletons as the drops are more useful) is better.
0
Golden carrots for me.
I have enough gold and enough carrots to last a lifetime.
2
Additionally, you can use leather armor to make yourself a nice wardrobe. That's what I've done here:
For gold armor, keep in mind that with 1.16 gold armor has some usefulness against piglins. So it would be worth combining drops to get a few sets of gold armor - if you keep using the drops for this purpose, then you may not need to craft any at all.
Here, I have collected a few sets, which I could then use to put Soul Speed and other enchantments on for Nether travel (except that I'm not playing in 1.16, but if you are, then this is what you might do). None of these were crafted:
0
195, which I have remained at for more than a year now... Hopefully it stays that way! No more deaths for now.
1
Aaaaaaaand we're back! After a few months gathering my thoughts, now that we've entered beta phase for Starlight HQ 3.0, I've created the roadmap to how we'll get the world ready for the end of the season... hopefully this year!
So, let's dive in!
I’ve been fixing a lot of bugs that showed up throughout my testing of the many different setups we can build with the MISC. Fun fact: we can now use Starlight HQ in more than 15,345 different ways! That’s absolutely insane. The same base can be customized at its core level in that many ways, which is why we need to do testing! I am expected to test all these combinations to make sure there are no bugs. And I’ve got a long way to go! Bugs will show up even after 3.0 is released.
Also, that number only reflects the current plugins, which consist of one generator (MISC) and four modifiers (Starlight Balancer, Starlight Inverter, Starlight Compressor, and Spectrometer). Once we start adding more plugins, and more options for those plugins, we will see this number increase exponentially. That’s the plan going forward, since the framework we have built will make it much easier to install new plugins.
Today, we will be constructing the base’s second generator, which will also be the first proper generator. See, the MISC is already somewhat unique because it only bridges the gap between input and output. It relies on core features of the base to function.
The generator we are building today will have a specific function in the base and will be customizable based on that. It won’t be a universal system like the MISC, because its function will be more specific. Hopefully, you will be able to see how we can get more creative with our modular options.
Called the Dropbox, this plugin will be an automatic item drop-off point for shulker boxes, which will sort out heavy items like cobblestone, stone, stone brick, dirt, etc. All the rest will go in a holding array of chests down in the SRF to be sorted manually.
Here’s why we need the Dropbox:
Among all the disorganized chests I have in the Essentials Room, many of them are full of heavy-set items like cobblestone, stone, and other materials I tend to accumulate large quantities of. The purpose of the Dropbox is not only to create a new storage area for these items, but to eliminate the work of dealing with them. I can deal with sorting all the other stuff. I hate dealing with large quantities of items.
Now, why is this a plugin for the modular system? Well, the Dropbox will simultaneously be able to modulate all the farms in the Starlight Resources Facility depending on which items it is receiving. In this way, we can use the Dropbox to effectively toggle/harvest all our main crop farms, without doing any work at all. And it will be sorting all our items, too. Sounds great to me.
Take note that this is a separate plugin from the MISC. It will not be connected to the MISC in any way – all its functions will be independent of what is happening within the MISC. This is a core characteristic of our generator plugins – they run independent of one another.
The Dropbox will also have a separate channel in the modular mixer, with all our modifiers being capable of modifying it separately from the MISC. This is why we have a mixer.
Its location will be quite conveniently near the Essentials Room – over here adjacent to the powerhouse chamber where the old zombie tower used to exist.
The functionality here is quite simple and automatic – you can place a shulker box full of items (ideally the aforementioned types) above any of the four hoppers (or, all of them if you have multiple shulker boxes), and all items will be pulled down a hopper chain to a storage room.
^ Here, I have constructed the storage room for these mass items in the SRF control floor, right next to the tree farm as you can see from the viewing window.
This is a very long hopper chain, yes.
Okay, the item sorters are not unlike any other, but there are some key characteristics of the Dropbox that make it unique as a plugin. What you can see above is that I am using comparators to detect specific items from the sorting system. These side outputs will go on to perform specific automations in the base.
Each item gets its own side output, so that they can be separated later if desired.
The principal architecture of the Dropbox is done, but now I am clearing some space so we can construct its modular capabilities.
One of these will be its ability to force activate all the farms in the SRF – this includes the sugar cane farm which previously did not have an option to force activate. I needed to construct a new line of redstone for this to occur.
Behind here in the control area, I’m taking advantage of our new redstone line by adding the option to keep the sugar cane farm powered on or off. Our supply has overflowed, as with most other resources in this base – so, having a way to toggle the farms on/off is becoming more essential. In this way, we can effectively reverse the behavior of the Dropbox (so, if the sugar cane farm is off by default, it will toggle it ON, and vice versa).
The Dropbox’s functions are effectively wired, so now we can get a little more creative by applying its modifiers:
^ What you’re seeing above is the Starlight Inverter at work, now plugged into the Dropbox. It’s a XOR gate, which in this case will have a more targeted function. If the Inverter is plugged in, then the Dropbox will only automate farms if un-sorted items are detected (i.e. any item that isn’t in the sorter, such as stone, cobblestone, dirt, stone slabs, or stone brick).
Next is Starlight Balancer. If this is plugged in, then the Dropbox separates all the item outputs to control different farms. Normally, the Dropbox will toggle all farms at once if any of the sortable items are detected. But, as the point of the Balancer is to reduce activity, we can choose to have only the melon farm harvest if stone is detected, for instance. Useful!
The Starlight Compressor will do the same as it does in the MISC – limit the length of the incoming pulse so that the farms do not remain in an OFF position. Recall that the goal of the Compressor is to maximize efficiency. Well, if there is a large quantity of stone being processed at once, then the side outputs will remain active until there is no more stone to sort. This means that all farms connected to that output will remain in a “harvested” position (pistons extended, for instance), reducing their ability to grow more crops.
^ Here is an example of what would happen if Starlight Compressor was not plugged in. Because stone is consistently being funneled through the Dropbox, these pistons will remain extended, causing a decrease in the efficiency of these farms. The Compressor will reduce the pulse, so that it resets until a new pulse is detected.
The Spectrometer does as you would expect – prevents the Dropbox from working when it’s night, or vice versa if the ‘Invert’ option is selected.
Finally, I’m adding options behind the Dropbox interface to enable/disable hoppers. This is important if you want your shulker boxes back.
The Dropbox’s final UI:
You have the option to enable/disable links, so that you can either use it as a modular generator or as just an item sorter. The choices are all up to you! Or, me, rather.
WEAKNESS POTION SELECTOR
Okay, so I keep putting off a very important addition that should have been added for Starlight HQ’s beta test – however, better late than never! We are missing the integral potion of weakness brewer that needs to be built separately from the primary brewer.
Why? Well, potions of weakness do not require nether wart to brew, and our primary brewer cannot bypass that principal ingredient. So, we just need to install a separate brewer, which we will then be able to toggle from within the MISC.
First, I’ll make sure to reset all links currently connected to the potion brewer, as I do not want any activity taking place there while I work on it.
We will want the option to brew these manually, of course, so I will put this brewer right here next to the mushroom storage. Perfectly suited, I think.
Credits to OceanPhoenix for this stellar design! It is a wonderful brewer specifically for splash weakness potions, which is exactly what we would be brewing.
Now, you are wondering: how do we get the selector hooked up to this?
Easy. We build another one.
When ‘weakness’ is selected, the regular potion brewer will be blocked from activation by the MISC. Note that you can still use it manually. The system then works normally, brewing a batch of weakness potions in the dedicated weakness potion brewer.
Perfect! With that all done, there’s really only one efficiency issue left to tackle:
What a silly oversight!
Well, that’s all fixed up.
The Dropbox might not have been the most obvious choice for our next project, but it is such a blessing to have in our base! With lots of technical improvements this round, now it's time to hop into a project a bit more colorful.
Next up... Session 272 - "Fun and Games"
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Build an underwater village! You'll need to protect it, of course.
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And it's here! A demonstration of the "modular" capabilities of my main survival base - though, it's become much more than just a base. Now, it's a redstone-run machine!
Here is a demonstration video of the modular system and one of its plugins, the Modular Interface Specifications Center (MISC).
Lots of potential in what we can do from here!
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Welcome to Starlight HQ 3.0 beta. Today, I'm going to show you what all our technical work this season has led up to - a modular demonstration video providing an overview of the MISC and the overall central nervous system that runs through Starlight. Enjoy!
Hopefully, this video gives you a much more clear idea of what you can do with Starlight's new way of operating. It's going to be grounds for some very cool builds later on! Speaking of which... let's make some more links!
Next up... Session 271 - "Concatenation"
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Many long hours, lots of trial and error, and several reconstructions later, we are finally completing the principal architecture of Starlight HQ's new modular system, fully upgrading this survival base into a modular base. What does that mean? It means you can customize how the base behaves! Join me as we finish installing the final few features of the MISC and bring Starlight HQ 3.0 into beta testing!
For a while, I kept my scope fairly narrow regarding exactly what features that the MISC would be in charge of controlling. From the beginning, I was very clear on key farms/features: iron farm, mob farm, Night Lights, crop farms, and now the potion brewer. All of these (excluding the mob farm) were built this season with modular functionality in mind. I had been operating under the assumption that I needed to build new farms and builds specifically for the MISC (like the villager-powered crop farms). But thinking this way really narrowed how I was looking at the base, and as a result left me unable to conceptualize more creative ways of linking it together.
As I step back and look at Starlight HQ as a whole, I am realizing that we have way more that we can do with the farms and features we already have. Everything we built in Season 2, and even in Season 1, can be hooked up to the MISC. I didn’t even think about using the slime farm as an input! What about the chicken farm? And the sugar cane farm? All of these are automatic farms and work just as well as the iron farm.
Let’s not forget about other player-controlled farms like our nether wart farm, which we can use to automate the potion brewer.
How about using the giant mushroom farm?
…and the colored wool farm? ALL of these are fantastic options for MISC inputs, yet before now I hadn’t even considered using them.
Our primary objective today is to link everything together and complete the MISC’s final few features, which are very important for the base to reach its fullest potential. Once this is done, we can then enter beta phase and test all our modular links and features! Exciting times!
MISC FEATURES
Let us go through the features together, starting with the big two:
Save / reset links – currently, the MISC only lets you compose one link at a time. Every time you start the linking process, any links you made previously will be reset and overridden. This is not the behavior I want. For the MISC, I want two modes – one to save links, and one to reset them. If you draw link 1A, you should be able to save it and draw another link – say, 3B. This way, we can theoretically link everything together.
Multi-link operations – in concordance with the above, you can also only select one input and one output button. That means you’re restricted to links like 1A, 3C, 8D, and so forth. In this way, there are so many numbers that we aren’t even tapping into! What about 12B? Or 48A? Or 17C? Or 2478A? I want to be able to select multiple numbers, which will allow more complex links to be made.
Once we get these major two features figured out, the MISC is going to become a lot more powerful. We’ll be able to achieve some creative base behavior.
A few more features will be added, too:
Reset links – a button that doesn’t start the linking process, but that resets all links allowing for a blank canvas. Useful if you create several links and then forget what you created and would like to reset the canvas.
Enable tangent output – this lever will enable the MISC’s “side” output, if you will, which is a redstone line that becomes active whenever activity from the MISC is detected. This output line can be used to trigger other base activities, or (as we’re going to use it) other generators. We’ve already installed the redstone line itself – we just want a way to toggle it.
Now then, how do we install these features? To do this, we need to completely change the way that links are constructed. I knew this was coming, too. Here is what we need to do:
Every link needs to be rewritten as an AND gate between the actual link combination (say, 5B) and the target source (say, iron farm). In order to install save/reset mode, these link outputs need to enter an RS (NOR) latch. Then, I need to disable the registers (“clear the cache”) so that you can distinguish links from one another. Pistons will need to be installed at every latch to “block” its ability to reset if I have SAVE mode enabled.
In this diagram, the iron blocks represent the MISC, the emerald blocks represent the source input (i.e. iron farm), and the diamond blocks represent the target output (i.e. SRF farms). The lever above represents the “save/reset” feature, which will effectively “block” the redstone wire from resetting the RS (NOR) latch if it’s in save mode and allow the latch to reset if it’s in reset mode. All links need to be constructed this way, ending with an AND gate.
This means that I need to move the iron farm, mob farm, and furnace room input wires away from the binary adders. That causes unwanted bugs by creating links we do not want to create. Instead, these wires will go directly into AND gates as demonstrated above.
I am also labeling all the wires because it is getting quite a bit messy back here. Doing this will allow me to keep track of the wires, since we must build a new wire per link.
^ Here, you can see the rewiring of the iron farm links. Everything funnels into AND gates now – this is the only way to keep all links totally separate. You need one input from the MISC (the link) and one input from the source (iron farm). That’s what toggles the output (Night Lights in this case).
It is getting messy up here, but that is why we have signs! With everything being labeled, I should be able to keep track of all the wires.
^ Here is another completed link gate, featuring the piston on the left that toggles save/reset mode.
Very important: we need a way to “clear the cache,” so to speak, upon creation of the links. This means that instead of using registers to save the redstone state as pictured above (keeping the link wires powered), we need to reset them so that their actions can take effect. Since we are using RS (NOR) latches now, that means we do not need to save the input state. Resetting it lets us use that wire for a different link.
This latch will briefly open the registers to clear the data after the linking process has concluded:
We cannot complete “multi-link” today because we do not yet have a way for the MISC cache to hold and save all the inputs we place before deleting them. For multi-link to allow the creation of links independent of those made with only two buttons, we need to have all three (or more) inputs toggle the adders simultaneously to prevent activation of unwanted links. This is not yet a system we have the capacity to set up yet.
I can still lay the groundwork though, in which I am using some repeaters to prevent the system from locking after one input is selected (this is normally what happens). Only upon pressing an output button will the machine lock.
^ Resetting all links will require us to send a pulse to every line while it’s in reset mode – this way, it can reset all the RS (NOR) latches and clear the canvas.
Thankfully, we don’t yet need this, because we don’t have enough things to link up. We will likely need it before the season ends, though.
Now then, here is the current link map I am planning:
Now that I’ve built the framework for the system, every link will be composed the same way. So, it’s time for the grunt work!
INSTALLING THE FARMS
First, we’ll need several new input wires from sources I have not yet plugged into the MISC. Namely, this includes STAS (both the red and blue lines get separate links), the nether wart farm, slime farm, wool farm, and the mushroom farms.
That’s right! Remember the old mushroom farm from Season 1? The one I build in the farmlands that has almost never been used?
Well, believe it or not, I am about to upgrade that same farm into a fully modular farm – we can use it only through the MISC.
Mushrooms are quite useful for making fermented spider eyes. So, I will funnel all the mushroom drops down by the potion brewer. The farm is right above this anyway.
Then, all we have to do is send an output wire from the MISC link gates to the pistons that harvest the mushrooms. It’s that simple.
We also need to upgrade the melon/pumpkin farms. They currently cannot automatically collect the drops. This makes modular capacity useless.
Quite easy, we just need to invert the pistons so that they push the drops down into the ground, which the hoppers will be able to collect.
Note that restructuring the farm this way now prevents us from being able to use it manually. That means the pressure plate has no effect – this farm is also now fully modular.
Continuing this trend, we are going to use the sugar cane farm for input as well. This is a fully automatic farm, but it’s really six farms stacked. So, I can just a comparator to detect input from the hoppers that collect the sugar cane.
Links, links, and more links. We are almost there!
One important ability that we are utilizing here is being able to use the MISC to toggle farms on/off, like the cactus farm pictured above. However, some farms like the mob farm, sugar cane farm, and iron farm stay on indefinitely. This limits our ability to use them as targets, while also providing the possibility of storage overflow (we already have that happening).
So, today we’re adding the ability to turn off the iron farm!
To do this, we need a large wall of pistons to block the zombie from being in sight of the villagers.
It’s a tedious process, but not very difficult.
Ugh, these guys also get very annoying! Get out of there!
There we go! Now, you can toggle the iron farm on/off. This now lets us use other farms to toggle the iron farm on/off (i.e., link 6A, which turns the iron farm on/off when it detects input). I use a XOR gate on the on/off gate, which means that the furnace room would do the opposite of the iron farm’s regular state. If the iron farm is off, the furnace room will turn it on for the duration of smelting. If the iron farm is on, the furnace room turns it off.
The other farms will take some trial/error to install on/off capacity, so we will hold onto that for now.
As I finish installing all the links for Starlight HQ, I am reminded of an important function that I need Starlight Compressor to do. Here is the problem:
^ Notice that sometimes farms like this one will stay active. This is due to some inputs being held for a large number of pulses (if the crop farms have a long stream of items to sort, then their respective MISC link input stays active). However, this lowers efficiency since the melons and pumpkins cannot grow during this period.
Additionally, if we have multiple sources targeting this farm (say, we have both the crop farms and iron farms targeting it), this can also cause an exceedingly long pulse. We do not always want this.
So, the solution is simpler: adding a pulse limiter to every output wire, which will only allow a short pulse to enter the farms and prevent overflow inputs from other farms. Starlight Compressor will effectively “compress” multiple input sources into one source, and that one source will only output a short pulse to allow the farms to start growing again. This will help maximize efficiency.
This functionality will be automatically activated upon enabling Starlight Compressor in the modular mixer – you do not need to meet a certain item threshold for it to work.
And that, my friends, is the completed MISC. Starlight HQ 3.0 is officially in beta phase. Time for testing!!
Starlight HQ 3.0 is moving into its final phase of development as we head into the final stretch for Season 3 and secure the Tetraquin Project's completion. Commemorating this, I think it's appropriate to share all of our work up to this point with you in video form.
Next up... Starlight HQ modular demonstration video
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I've spent some time constructing ways to turn off all automatic farms within Starlight. For example, farms like the iron and sugar cane farms tend to run all the time without player intervention, but eventually I may want to turn them off.
Now I have that option:
Why is this useful, you may wonder? Well, being able to toggle the farms on/off allows me to more effectively use them as targets in Starlight's modular system - wherein I can use one farm to control another. So now, I can keep the sugar cane farm disabled until input from the iron farm is received, for example. Or, I can use the potion brewer to harvest the sugar cane. So many possibilities now.
This survival base is moving into beta phase, with most of these modular capabilities complete! I'll share a video soon of this in practical application.
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A great tip indeed! My main world is as old as 1.5 (created in 2013), yet I have seldom explored in the westward directions any more than 1,000 blocks. This way, when I update to 1.17 (or likely 1.18) from 1.15, it won't take long to find some of that new cave generation!
I've been asked why I don't update to 1.16. And my answer may help you on your quest to find some inspiration... New features are cool and definitely can help give you a boost of creativity when you're in a rut, but they are also a curse if your ideas become too attached to them. None of my current world plans (for the next several years in fact) are based in 1.16 features. All the things I want to do right now could probably be done in 1.12 (I played in 1.12 up until April this year, when I jumped to 1.15). I still have not even explored the full range of features added back from 1.11-1.15, because I am not interested in them right now. Wireless redstone may change that coming in 1.17, but still - I need to get through the current list first, which could take several years yet.
I think taking a break is always a good thing. My main world would not have lasted 7+ years without several month-long breaks to revitalize my creative juices. Actually, this is where most of my ideas come from! I have several Word documents of me just jotting down some ideas for projects I want to build, which eventually get organized into a "bucket list" for the world that I am constantly adding to. Once I feel motivated enough to pursue those projects, I end the break and get back to work.
So what kinds of ideas would those be? Well, I am a very redstone-oriented player, and a lot of projects I currently work on focus on using computations to modulate other projects (i.e. use certain farms/machines to automate or alter the behavior of others). Part of the fun for me is brainstorming new ways to do this that haven't already been done. Every now and then, I also like to build survival-friendly parkour courses - that's a fun project you may consider! You can make some thematic courses, like a jungle course, and a desert run, or an ice climb, etc. I have six currently.
This post was longer than I planned, but, I am very passionate about finding the sources that fuel inspiration from within. So I want to encourage you to explore what you enjoy doing the most in Minecraft (PvE, redstone, caving, building, exploring?) and capitalize on that. Build a story around your world. Start a Word document and make a list of projects (maybe some farms, maybe some cool contraptions like a moving maze). Try "branching" from one idea to the next (what you can you from a wither skeleton farm? Maybe then a beacon farm? Maybe then a netherite beacon project? Or a rainbow beacon). You'll be amazed at how much you can come up with.
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It's been a while since we last talked with the council of Techtown - the same group of villagers that thwarted the development of Starlight back in the Season 2 finale. As we have been planning to integrate them within our plans for Starlight City, it's crucial that my next meeting with them is a productive one. So, let's give them a call.
The Inner Circle is going to be more than just the first neighborhood of Starlight City – it needs to be a haven for immunity from the dangers of the surrounding island. I do not plan on bringing the council over just to kill them.
The moat will be properly lit, as will the monument in the center once we get to erecting that.
For right now, I’m going to keep my plans for the neighborhood quite simple, so as to not get too far over my head. I do want a fully developed village, but first I need a place for the council members to safely reside. This will be our focus today.
The neighborhood’s first home will be situated on the southern coast, in-between the jungle and Emerald Hills.
I would like to keep some of the original terrain to avoid the area being so flat. However, some leveling will be necessary to ensure a stable foundation for the house.
I’ve been in a toss-up regarding the materials I would like to use. But in general, I am planning on clay, wood, some stone, and quartz. We are not looking to build mansions here – just nice houses with some degree of modernity.
Ha, poor zombies can’t touch this!
Lanterns will be a principal light source, while I am using stripped logs for a change.
What do we have here in the distance?
An army of PILLAGERS? I have never caught those in Quintropolis before. They speak a broken language that I cannot decipher. I wonder if they used to be villagers.
But they are not friendly! So, they must be removed from the island!
Milk does a good job removing the Bad Omen I received – I wouldn’t want to linger on what possibilities that holds for Quintropolis’s future. Arguably, we already have plenty of bad omens.
This house will consist of two rooms – one living space and one “dining” (but really trading) space. I am trying to maintain a rather diverse palette of building blocks for the modern theme.
^ I’ll place a sunroof overhead.
^ Here, you can see a view of the first home on the coast. The exterior needs some work yet, but we can always touch it up here and there.
A porch on the back provides a beautiful view of the jungle on one side and Emerald Hills on the other.
Where are you going, ugly phantoms? To hell, that’s where.
I am acutely focused on the outside even more so than the interior. I’d like to develop the yard and road so that the construction feels much more complete.
^ Eventually, we will construct a large array of hedges surrounding the circle so that zombie sieges like this will not happen.
What’s this? Another army of pillagers? They nearly killed me!! How is that possible? I have no clue where these guys are coming from, or how they invaded Quintropolis Island so easily. I guess I just don’t get out much.
A nice fountain, some lanterns, and hedges should complete the road quite nicely. I want to keep this area open for the villagers to roam, but to do that I need to ensure the area is safe enough.
Haha, the fireplace caught the tree on fire. It was in the way anyway.
Okay, I think the home is secure. I’ll take down my temporary beacon and return it to Starlight HQ. Then it is time to visit Techtown.
Damn, it has been a long time since I traveled on the Great Northern Railway. But this is how I am getting the villagers to their new home.
Welcome back to Techtown, the oldest organized civilization in the world. It may as well be a ghost town now!
“Hello!” I exclaim upon actually seeing some sign of human life!
“Halt! Who are you??” inquires a curious librarian. Actually, they are all librarians.
“Why, my name is Joey. I come from –“
“Joey San? The antichrist?” the council members step back.
“Huh?? I am no such thing!” They clearly have no clue what’s going on.
“The secretary of Techtown was seen dead during our last visit to your home. The wretched civilization called Starlight.” Now, they seem upset. I don’t blame them.
“I… I had nothing to do with that! I wasn’t even there.”
“But… you had given him a full tour. We remember. Drexel here documented everything.”
Ah, so they do have names.
“Yeah, ya’ll were together and then… poof! You’re gone and he’s dead. Coincidence? Likely not.” Drexel acts like he has everything figured out.
“So what, are you here to murder us, too?” the nameless one responds.
“What? No! I am not a murderer! Look, I know tensions have been high since that day. I am here to offer amends.”
The council laughs.
“Amends? Boshtok, what do you think of that?” Drexel asks the nameless one, who I suppose does have a name.
“I think it’s moot! Haha! Get out of town.”
“You call this a town?” I consider taking a different approach. “What quality of life do you have?”
“We have protection from-“
“Protection from what? Mobs? Who do you think built you this wall?”
Boshtok and Drexel remain silent. I figure this is as good a time as ever to make my point before they chime in.
“I have spent the last several years building a civilization to foster that protection. And I am here to offer you that protection. To live at Starlight.
“You think we trust you?” Boshtok quickly asks. “Look at what happened the last time we were there!”
Actually, that’s the part I never found out…
“So, something did happen. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Ask Violet, she never wanted to leave that cursed island anyway—”
“Violet’s dead.”
There was a suspicious silence. I know they probably insist that I killed her, too.
“She died protecting whatever secret she couldn’t tell me. A secret that maybe I could help prevent. A secret that Starlight is designed to fight against.”
“Where exactly did she die?” asks Drexel, who is all too keen now to know.
“She died… by Enderquin’s hand.” A gasp is shared among the villagers who now whisper to one another. I postulated that it was likely best not to disclose the location of Enderquin’s portal. Clearly, they don’t know it exists. I think I will keep it that way until I understand the gravity of the situation.
“Okay,” the third nameless council member chimes in. “Boshtok and Drexel will go with you to Quintropolis Island. They will see your argument through. However, you are always to remain in their sight.”
“If what you say is true, that you want to protect us, and Quintropolis, then you will not have a problem with these conditions,” adds Drexel. He is becoming a pain in my ass, although he offers a charming Efficiency V book.
“Fair enough,” I add with a sigh. “I built you a nice house anyway.”
And so, I once again received no answers to my questions, instead beckoning more questions. I know that something is going on, and ironically, I am the only one out of the loop. That is a problem that must be remedied, though I remain confident that reintroducing my presence into Techtown was the smart move.
It seems like the council wants to work with me, though they remain highly suspicious of my work. I will do everything I can to win them over, to prove that Starlight HQ is the protection that Quintropolis needs. That I am their protector. Their god. And they will worship me as such.
Boshtok and Drexel, the first council members to join Quintropolis Island, have finally approved of the Starlight City project with some conditions. With that, it's time to move Starlight HQ 3.0 into beta testing as we embrace the Trials of Techtown!
Next up... Session 270 - "Beta"
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With Starlight HQ 3.0 so close to beta phase, there is an important task that it's finally time we address. One that should have been addressed the day I found Violet. But she's dead now. That begs the question... who isn't??
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about one glaring oversight I made several years ago when contemplating exactly what happened the day Techtropolis fell. The council of Techtown was somehow able to tamper with ancient redstone lines inside the jungle temple and embed a recorded message for me to hear. I never even stopped to deliberate on this facet of the event.
They recorded this message… but when? It could have been months, even years, before I ended up finding it. I need an answer to that question. I need an answer to all my questions.
After much deliberation, I have decided that I will extend a formal invitation to the council of Techtown. The last time we met, in Session 200, they threatened to shut down Starlight HQ. Clearly, that hasn’t gone well for them. But even Violet could not help me understand exactly what happened after I left (she was a bit insane). If any council members are still alive, then I am willing to bet they have some more insight. Violet cannot be the only one who was left.
Before I extend this invitation, however, I need to prepare a place for them to reside. Indeed, I need the council to see that I have everyone’s best interests in mind. I do not want to destroy civilization – quite the opposite. Perhaps the best way to prove that is to build a civilization. Above, you can see the entirety of Quintropolis Island, with Starlight HQ on the right and Totem Run barely in the top-left.
I will propose a new home for the council, the Inner Circle, right here on Quintropolis Island, just a few hundred blocks from Starlight HQ. This will become the first neighborhood of Starlight City, which will be the next proposition to the council once I showcase Starlight HQ in its proper form.
See, the council’s beliefs operate under the idea that I have no self-control. They think that I am going to eventually cause the destruction of everything. Even Violet, who claimed to be full of prophetic visions of the future, told me that I would beckon the destruction of everything. I do hold that information with a grain of salt, but I cannot see a version of this story which ends this way. After all, I have already defeated Enderquin.
For the Inner Circle, I plan to construct a large monument in the center, with six to eight homes surrounding it. The circle will be one large village.
I did not initially realize just how varied the terrain was in this area. It is initially reminiscent of the leveling process I had to do in Vax Valley.
This time, though, I am going to be smarter and set up a Haste II beacon. This is a beacon I stole from Starlight Outback to borrow temporarily. I’ll give it back once we are done.
Surrounding the monument, which will be made entirely out of gold blocks, I’ll build a two-wide and two-deep moat. This will keep anyone from being able to access the monument, including mobs.
A view from above:
About the gold part – I never said the monument would be completed today! I do not have nearly enough gold for this. I have already designed the monument in a testing world, and I can tell you that building it entirely out of gold would require a well-stocked 401(k), which I do not yet have.
Just this flat platform here is somewhere around 3-4 stacks of gold blocks. And… the monument will be much more than a platform in case you were wondering.
Here is a view of the Inner Circle from Emerald Hills:
As I am leveling out the mountain adjacent to the circle, I am thinking about turning this area into the main shopping area of the village. I’ll set up some shops into the mountain, similarly to how Leangreen has built his Chunk Plaza. It’s either that, or I have to terraform the entire thing, which will get quite cumbersome and unnecessary.
First, we will establish a direct railway link to the Inner Circle from Starlight Station. This is not really for us – we already have elytra and can get here in seconds. It is for the villagers.
This railway will have an official station set up later, once I figure out how I want to design the shops. For now, just having the railway is important.
This is now the third railway from Starlight Station that exists, but I already have all eight planned out. Whether we get to them all this season just depends on how much we get done.
Okay, I leave Starlight for a minute, come back, and the entire crop farm storage has completely overflown. This has been an issue since we first built them because it produces too quickly. I have yet to find a suitable solution.
But for now, trading the hell out of them will do.
Yet another reason we are bringing the council over to Quintropolis Island is to improve our trade network. Currently, I only have the few villagers downstairs that are operating the modular farms. They are also artificial villagers made from zombies.
A few chorus fruits here and there will decorate the circle nicely.
Here is the Inner Circle as it exists right now. Before we visit Techtown to get the attention of the council, we need to have a plan already set up. I would like to bring the members of Techtown over to the island the day I visit if they will be willing. If they are even there.
It is a bit strange, isn’t it? Quintropolis has been way too quiet since the day Techtropolis fell. That is strange.
Mysteries are starting to stack, and soon we will get the answers we seek. A little anxiety goes a long way... is that a saying? I think that's a saying.
Next up... Session 269 - "Calling the Council"