To very be clear, here's precisely what happened last night: after saddling Speedy, I chiseled stairs out of the side of the ravine and rode him, not actually to Castle Midgard, but to my oldest outpost, Ranch 34*, about 1 km west of the castle. I decided to leave him there because I was getting sleepy and was ready just to rocket the rest of the way home, which I did.
Upon my return to the castle, there was no Speedy in the pasture. Why would he be? I had just found him in what's now Lost Horse Canyon and rode him to Ranch 34, where he remained.
That's when I wrote almost all of the OP.
However, obviously, the whole story was just too much to swallow.
Before clicking submit, I went to my five-day-old temporary backup file, made a copy of it, played it, opened it to LAN with cheats, and changed my mode to creative.
I was very sleepy and in a big hurry, so I didn't glance over and see if ol' Speedy was in the pasture; I just flew to the canyon where I found him again and took a couple screenshots for this thread to complement those I had already taken live.
That was double confirmation, enough to make the post. He wasn't at the castle when I returned (very important) and a creative copy showed he really was at the canyon . . . so I made the post and went to bed.
Not having anything to do today (it's cold and rainy here, no work outside), I got up and investigated further.
I loaded another copy of that same temporary backup from five days ago, but this time I looked in the pasture. Speedy was there. Uh-oh. Would a clone of him be at the ravine, too? Yes. Yes, he had a duplicate in the canyon.
Drat.
The strange story doesn't end there, though.
I delved deeper into the problem.
But first, some ranting and semi-off topic stuff in the spoiler:
[Rant]
In version 1.8.9, I had a whole lot of problems with mobs duplicating and vanishing. It burns my blood to this day that Mojang so callously ignores MC-2025, the profoundly-negative five-year-old bug with multiple fixes offered by the community. No doubt, much of my problems stem from it. Further compounding the horse disappearing problem (did I mention Minecraft is a glitch-infested mess?), is the still-persistent glitch MC-101247 where a horse disappears upon dismounting, which is unrelated, to my knowledge.
However, MC-65040 is at play as well; I have a whole lot of problems with mobs becoming invisible, and I see many others do as well. The trouble is, one doesn't notice if three or four cows or sheep go invisible in a livestock pen filled with dozens, but the way my castle is set up, I see mobs go invisible every play session. Speedy was't at the castle when I returned . . . because he was invisible.
But, somehow, with all these horse-related bugs, Mojang still found time to make the horses look more blocky in the next update!
Remembering my problems from 1.8.9, I read my post from Feb. 13, 2016: [1.8.9] Mobs Keep Copying. It's really a sore spot with me, if that wasn't obvious.
I like the updates a lot. Despite being laughably far from Skyrim's combat, I think the new combat from 1.9 was an overall net positive—but mainly because of the off hand slot. Rocket boosting with elytra is my favorite thing ever. The only time I really strongly disagreed with Mojang's direction was with the Max Entity Cramming rule default for single player despite being a supposed lag fix for multi-player, and that's a pretty minor disagreement.
However, their method of handling bugs is deplorable. I've never seen a video game development company do so bad of a job. They're just the worst in the industry when it comes to fixing bugs—and for multiple reasons, least of all the fact that they just don't fix them!
Okay, no more complaining.
[/Rant]
[Off Topic]
I keep a whole lot of backups. Once my world passed 3 GB, I slowed way down, and now that it's very nearly 5 GB, I try not to do so more than once every few days, once a week even. I have 171 backups totally 338 GB. It hurts me to say this, but I lost almost all of my backups and screen shots from 2015 (as well as some from 2014, like the Ender Dragon kill shot). My backups jump from Jan. 30 (MC Day 1,424) to Dec. 10, 2015 (1,838). That's 414 missing MC days, but I also take very long breaks, so some of that missing real-time dates might be because I just didn't play. I only play about six months a year. Still that's 138 hours of missing game play, which is probably about six months for me.
[/Off Topic]
* Ranch 34 is named after a now-closed real-life horse ranch I frequent, and it's also on the Z=34 axis. In Minecraft, Ranch 34 serves as an outpost at the mid point between the vast plains to the west and the castle 1 km to the east. I would bring captured horses from the plains to the ranch where they would be tested (later, I learned to just test horses on the spot).
Knowing that I had a lot of issues with mobs duplicating, vanishing and turning invisible in version 1.8.9, I started to look through my backup files. First, I started with my latest permanent backup where I found his duplicate in the canyon. So, I went all the way back to the first save file of 2016, January 4. Not there. Okay, I had my two reference points. Only about 160 saves to go.
That's when I read my post from Feb. 13, 2016: [1.8.9] Mobs Keep Copying. So, after I narrowed it down, indeed, Speedy appears to have duplicated the night of Jan. 13, 2016. I have save files from Jan 12 and 14, so it was definitive. Speedy's clone has been down in that ravine for more than a year of real time, or eight MC years—since MC day 2,222 and it's currently MC day 5,389 in Midgard.
However, according to my old forum post on the matter, all the 1.8.9 duplicates vanished when I converted to 1.9 on March 16, 2016.
So, I jumped into Minecraft and loaded my real current save game. There was Speedy in the pasture. But wait . . . He wasn't there before when I ended my session last night. He was at Ranch 34.
Turns out, he was at the castle but was invisible, probably thanks to MC-65040. That's why he wasn't at the castle last night when I returned home.
So, we're dealing with three bugs here, one that lets mobs glitch through walls to the other side (or suffocate), one that makes mobs invisible (but still audible, and able to be shot with arrows), and the remnants of a duplication glitch that apparently was fixed in 1.9. Again, none of this has to do with MC-101247 where a horse disappears upon dismounting.
(Above) He's there in the upper-middle of the screenshot. Not shown: multiple invisible horses, pigs, chickens, and sheep. By the way, this is where I took a flying leap when I died in the screenshots from the OP. With my armor (minus breastplate) = one or two hearts damage. With none = death.
I wondered if his clone would still be at Ranch 34 if what I considered to be "the real" Speedy was in the pasture at Midgard. I flew to Ranch 34 and found him there . . .
(Above) There he is, right where I left him.
Back at the castle, I hopped on ol' Speedy and rode toward Ranch 34 wondering what would happen if I brought the two into the same chunk.
Bonus, before we get to that, here are some pictures of Midgard taken in survival mode at a very-playable render distance 48 using the new OptiFine pre-release that allows the slider to go to render distance 64(!):
All images are 1920x1080, open in new tab to view.
(Above) Looking west toward Ranch 34, Bleach Bone Forest extends more than 1 km past the 48-chunk render distance. This is why I want an increased render distance: the Twilight Watchtower just isn't quite visible from inside Castle Midgard at 32 chunks. Clouds are turned off in the options for the screen shots, but they would look small from up here atop Midgard Tower at Y=256. The last structure barely visible on the far horizon is Rose Hill Bridge, erected in December of 2015.
(Above) A fell moon rises over Mt. Olympus, the world spawn. The sunken Brinemire Swamp is visible to the northeast.
(Above) Looking north toward the frozen Witherfell and the great ocean border. King's Road, which is just a clearing of the trees through Bleach Bone Forest, is plainly visible. I may cobble and gravel it someday, but I doubt it. Bleach Bone Forest is an immense birch forest. Remember, Midgard is a large-biome world, making its biomes 16 times bigger than standard, so when I say it's massive, it truly is.
(Above) The Olympian Mountains stretch south halting Bleach Bone Forest's spread to the west. In the upper-center of the screenshot is a small, square fort that encloses a staircase down to the stronghold and End portal. The three-block-wide path that runs south cuts to the east where it goes to another stronghold base perhaps 1.5 km or so from the castle. I wrote a two-part short story about building one of the bridges on that road in the "What Have You Done Recently" megathread here and here.
(Above) Looking up at Midgard Tower. I started to add some embellishments to the tower recently, but I'll probably remove them soon.
(Above) Looking up at the tower from the garden courtyard. No decorative arching masonry on this side, and I think I like it better plain.
I spurred Speedy to his 12+ m/s sprint, a slow crawl compared to the elytra's 32 m/s, but I remember when I once considered it a thundering gallop!
First, we crossed the short Black Sheep Bridge:
Then, Longbridge:
Then Rose Hill Bridge:
And last, we arrived at Ranch 34 where the two duplicates met face-to-face . . .
I hopped the fence to the center pen to keep the two separated as I considered my options. I saved and quit Minecraft, stopped writing this post and went out to feed my real horses, then eat dinner.
A couple hours pass.
When I returned moments ago, I opened Minecraft and . . . dropped to the ground. The Speedy from the castle that I was riding disappeared right out from under me. I literally watched myself fall from mounted height.
As I wondered around the ranch, I noticed Lightning and some other named horses were gone, but there's only one fence in Ranch 34, so it's possible they glitched through it and wandered off. So, I flew back to Midgard to take a look.
Back at the castle, the older skeleton horses were all invisible, so I took a pic, saved and quit, then opened the world again, expecting to see maybe one or two horses that had been previously invisible. What I saw was far more perplexing.
(Above) No skeleton horses in the pen as they are invisible. The ones on the outer pen, I don't care if they wander away. Mojang killed any chance of them ever being worthwhile mounts by making them all have the same stats. The invisible skeleton horses are from 1.10.2 and all have different stats.
(Above) After a save and quit. No new skeleton horses, but what's that horse in the middle?
(Above) Speedy?!?!?!
It makes no sense, but there's now a (third?) Speedy back at the castle.
To be continued . . .
1
More info for that in Let's Talk Server Monetization (Mojang). Though it did sound like Martin gives the same items to anyone, which is fine.
I second your notion that wrecking a desert is vastly preferable to getting glass via villager trades. With Elytras, rockets, and fast travel via the nether (raw nether is real fun to fly around in, by the way), going out 10-20k+ in the overworld to find a biome to wreck just takes a few minutes. And yeah, Martin, I'd just set up an auto smelter in your blaze farm that accepts shulker boxes for input, and just feed in all the sand and you'll have your 28x28 chunk (~200,000 glass blocks) in relatively short order. That's only about three trips to the desert with an inventory and ender chest full of shulker boxes. It's still a big project, for sure, but if you don't want to just dupe the sand, this is definitely the way to go.
1
No need to get fancy with BUDs or observer-based designs that break the plants immediately. A good old row of pistons on an Etho clock (or any clock with a period of a couple minutes or so) is just as good, better for lag, and easier/cheaper to build.
Case in point: I have farm that uses 24 sugarcane plants that is more than enough to supply me and all my friends with all the rockets we could ever burn. (And books, though I don't use that many anymore.) I have a surplus measured in double chests of shulkers at this point. If you need any more sugarcane than that, first, WHY, and second, NO PROBLEM! The design is trivially scalable.
I do like gnembon's flying machine farm, though! I might build one of those for fun.
1
If this wasn't singleplayer, I'd lay 10:1 odds that someone pranked you. I'd probably still give 2:1 odds that you somehow pranked yourself.
This is bizarre. When is the last time you saw Speedy in his pen, before finding him in the ravine?
1
As DuhDerp said, you can't automate jukeboxes in vanilla. However you *can* automate the music playback, although it requires commands. You said "survival only," but a lot of people (myself included) wouldn't consider such a thing to be cheaty at all, since you get no benefit from it (besides the possible calming effect, of course), and there's no other way to do it.
Anyway, if you want to do this, you would just need to build a relatively simple redstone clock circuit that fires one of several command blocks (one song per command block) with `/playsound` for example:
To use command blocks, you need to be in Creative and have OP permission if you're on a server (and command blocks have to be enabled by the server owner). Once you place the command blocks, though, you can of course go back to Survival.
This wouldn't rely on a jukebox at all, but you could allow the player to start the sequence by running a comparator out of a jukebox to detect when they insert a disc.
So, maybe this isn't ideal, but at least you have a not-too-cheaty vanilla option if you want to do it.
1
Sure? Any spot could be ideal depending on what you want to build. It's nice enough, not all that unique, but that doesn't matter; what matters is how unique it'll be when you're done building.
I've built bases in every biome (including hell and the void), and while some locations lend themselves to certain building types, there really are no rules. It's what you make it. My best bases are usually the ones where I get started quickly. My least productive builds are the ones where I agonize for hours on finding the "perfect" location. There is either no such thing, or every location is perfect, depending on your philosophy.
1
Crafted maps at the default (initial) zoom level cover a 128x128 block area. By zooming the map out, this can be increased to (up to) 2048x2048.
More info on the wiki page.
1
I'm assuming you're quite new to Minecraft, and that's okay! It's really a game that asks you to be creative. You've built all of the essentials already. For my survival worlds, I'd call that "day one" (keep in mind I've been at this for several years now...). What happens from "day two" onward really depends on what I feel like doing, so if you ask ten different people, you'll get ten different answers, so I'll try to give you a general answer, with some specific examples.
Sometimes, I start with a big plan in mind, like, "build a super secret underwater base with redstone traps everywhere, that I can get my friends to play to see if they can make it through". But sometimes I just fire up a new survival world and say, "hey, that island looks nice. Maybe I'll build a beach house." Or I'll be staircasing down to a new mine, and uncover a huge cave network, and think, "no, I'm Batman." Or I'll be futilely trying to organize four double chests worth of enchanting books and think, "dang it, I should really build a library to put these in." Or I bump into one of my two double doors and finally getting around to wiring up the redstone properly so they both open at once when I step on either pressure plate.
You can have small ideas or big ideas, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you keep trying new things (and keep making the old things better! I made my first mob farm many years ago. I've lost count how many more I've designed since then.)
Sometimes you'll have too many ideas. In that case, write them down! Then, at times like this, when you are a little low on inspiration (it happens to us all, believe me), go back to your list and pick something.
Or just, you know, blow some stuff up with TNT. Always a good pastime.
1
The "green" look you have is good... why don't you take it further? Make a tree farm (yep, they'll grow), gardens, crops, flowers, running water, etc. Depending on the creative/story direction you want to go, you could carry on making it a full-on apocalypse bunker; a complete underground ecosystem capable of sustaining you in a post-Wither world.
Or, you know, you could use lots of Stone Brick, because everything looks good with Stone Bricks.
1
Sure, digging a 1x2 tunnel is good, but at some point you have to truck your ores back to base. You could kill yourself, but unless you have keepInventory on, you're limited by your Ender Chest. But you're right in that a 1x2 tunnel exposes the most ores per block mined out of any method.
However, the granddaddy of them all is beacon mining. Set up a Haste II beacon at Y=11, take your Eff V pick and go! Some people still try to branch mine with beacons, but that's like getting a Formula I car but still (trying) to drive it on city streets.
The fastest method (in terms of diamonds per minute) is to just "spray" your pick left and right to mine out large 2-block-high swaths which will expose a ton of ore (including diamonds) in a very short timeframe. It is less efficient than branch mining (or 1x2 tunnels), as it exposes fewer new blocks per block mined, but I've never seen a convincing argument to suggest that actually mattered, since you will uncover far more diamonds than any additional durability hit on your pickaxe from mining the additional blocks. Yes, you will need to move the beacon periodically, but only after more than 20,000 blocks mined, and it's still absolutely worth it.
1
Normally I respect the OPs wishes, so forgive me for being a teeny bit presumptuous, but I can't help but question the above quoted premise. What exactly are you worried about? Falling off of your bridge?
I've never tried to light up the End, but I have lit up 256x256 surface areas for slime farm spawn rates, and trust me, it's a hefty project! Took me several hours and many, many stacks of torches. Lighting up the End island I think would be similar. Building a simple bridge 128+ blocks away from the main island is surely a lot less work, even if you do fall a few times. (Unless of course you're in hardcore!)
First, kill the dragon, if you haven't already done so.
If you're worried about "losing it all" (do you mean your inventory?), and you're not very practiced in bridging over long spans [see note], then just put all of your stuff in a chest (or better yet, an Ender Chest) at the start of the bridge, and just take a few stacks of common blocks with you. If you fall, you'll just lose a little cobblestone. As long as you don't look at the Endermen, they won't attack you, so you can even take your armor and weapons and put them in the chest to keep them safe.
[Note: If you don't already know, you can easily build out from an island (or other structure) by holding down your crouch key (default is Shift), which will allow you to walk out far enough to place blocks on the side of the block you're standing on, without falling. The only way you will fall is if you release Shift and walk off the edge, or if you get hit. (You can also fall if you walk off of certain block types like stairs, but as long as you're using full blocks, you're fine.) There are many tutorials on this technique, but it's very very easy to pick up.]
Once you have a "safe" bridge you are comfortable with (and maybe the start of your platform for the Enderman farm), retrieve your stuff, and get to work on the next phase!