Hmmm.... something is wrong with my skeleton spawner. It is producing skeletons, but not nearly as quickly as I'd expected. I wonder if the floor is too low? I don't know, I'll have to play with it. I have the spawner room lit up, and the skeletons are still appearing at the same rate as before, which means it's likely spawning them somewhere in the water passage somehow.
On the plus side, I did eventually get up to 30xp and enchanted a diamond pickaxe with Fortune II. One exploratory trip later, and I've picked up about 80 redstone and 11 diamonds, so I think we're just about set on that front now. I'm not sure if it's just coincidence, but I haven't seen the enchanting table offer me Silk Touch yet, and I'd kind of like to have one of those.
I'm thinking I might set up an exploration kit for each of the boys and let them strike out on their own now. I can give them plenty of food, armor, iron tools, possibly even a horse. I'll have to see if they're interested in doing that now.
I saw this design in a YouTube video (probably Mumbo Jumbo's) and liked it, so I recreated it down here. I don't *need* that much smelting power yet, but if I do...
Good, I don't need to worry about the temptation any more with 0.15.3: "Fixed item duplication on fences bug"
I'm building up the walls of the house out of raw cobblestone, then I'll go back and try to make it prettier after the structure is there. May not be the best way of building, but will give it a try.
Nothing much to show from my work for the moment. But I did build a cobblestone generator in the sub-basement, and decided to make it a bit on the pretty side of things.
I'm now also on Win10 Minecraft, so I'm not limited to gaming on the tablet. The controls are different enough though, that I'll need to learn them all.
I understand this is a family realm but is there anyway to apply or to show my architect skill so I can join and have a committed realm build some awesome projects on? Oh and I've built a cool camper if ur into that kinda thing.
Not a whole lot to add from this last week. It's been fairly busy, not much time to Minecraft, but I've gotten a little bit done. I'm working on the second floor of the house, smelting some cobblestone to make regular stone (until I can get a Silk Touch diamond pickaxe), trying to convert the small melon/pumpkin farm into an automatic using pistons (not having much luck yet, but I'm still trying things), and I remade the hidden chest into something a lot more hidden.
I think part of my problem is that I don't have a project right now that is holding my interest. I've made a large-scale map and have started exploring by boat, just to see what's out there. I've got a rough idea of a tower/fortress to build, but I'd need to find the right area for it first.
I haven't found any place that looks like where I want to build a base in yet, but I've got a LOT of map left to look in.
Here's a few more screenshots:
First, until I get the second floor of the building finished, it's just a communal bedroom in the basement/workshop.
Second, I finally got the melon/pumpkin smasher working. Although it has yet to grow a single pumpkin. I'm beginning to wonder if they only grow to the north of the stalk.
The redstone for the smasher isn't too complicated. It feeds out of the observer block and into the half slabs you can see in this image:
I've been doing a bit of exploring, and I've *finally* found some biomes other than basic hills. Still nothing TOO exciting, but at least it's something different.
And it might be fun to set up some sort of outpost here, for the scenery if nothing else. I don't think this is where I want my main base though. But I've always liked this type of place.
You can sorta see how much of the map I've managed to explore so far. I've found a couple of spots with Spruce trees, and maybe one of the extreme hills areas that might be rich in emerald. I'm not sure about that though. I'm not an expert at identifying biomes. But I haven't found anything different, like frozen, mushroom, swamp, desert or anything like that. So far Spruce trees are the limit of the differentness I've found.
I was a very good boy. I didn't swear, scream, yell, or cry last night.
This is how far I had mapped:
Actually, I had mapped more. The unknown area in the bottom right was done and I was working on the large blank area. And then a creeper managed to sneak up on me and kill me. The map is gone. I'm going to have to start all over again. *sigh*
At least I have this screenshot, and I remember where a few points of interest are.
I never did find desert or snow biomes. Both of those are things I want eventually. I'm going to need sand, snow and ice for my building. I found where I'm going to put my starter base, I think. It's a nice mountain spire, with a nice view, and fairly close access to an ocean. And on the other side of the ocean is the only unique biome I found, a mushroom biome. And there were a ton of mooshrooms there. Probably because I came at it across the ocean and so no mobs had spawned in some time, and it had a lot of space before it hit the mob spawn cap.
Okay, I've discovered one of the reasons why I might not be playing as much lately - my son damaged his tablet, so we changed the login on my tablet to be his, and I've been using the Win10 PC. But I finally recognized the other day that playing on the big screen is making me slightly motion-sick. It's an old problem, and why I don't play any FPS games. I might be able to tweak the settings a bit to fix it, or swap so that I'm using the tablet and he's using the PC. Or perhaps just not playing fullscreen will do it.
At any rate, I've fixed up the pumpkin/melon farm so that pumpkins generate now (apparently they'll only grow in a north/south direction. east/west and the pumpkins never grew). We're also trying to get enough paper together to make enough copies of the maps for everyone. I'm planning on going to one of the rock spires I found and building a base there. Not my ultimate base, but a good front-line base. Perhaps it will contain the only access to my final base, or perhaps not. My son wants to build his base in the mushroom biome, which is past the area I'm going to be working in.
Finally played some more MCPE this weekend with the boys. They're having fun building their own mine at the moment, while I'm off exploring.
I'm new to the whole multi-player thing, so this is a trick most of you probably already know. When you make a map, clone it and post one on your wall. Any exploration you do is reflected on both maps equally. If you happen to die while out exploring, you have a surviving copy of the map back at your base, which you can just clone again.
As part of my expansion plans, I made myself nearly a complete set of enchanted diamond tools. The only one I didn't make was a hoe. Not sure why I'd need an enchanted diamond hoe. That seems like overkill.
PS - oh yes, and apparently playing the game windowed instead of full screen fixes the motion sickness problem.
So I've just started on the new base. I didn't carry a whole lot over here. Ender chests would be *SO* nice to have...
This is the pillar where I'm building it:
I've started digging downward from inside, looking for raw materials. I got overconfident at one point though - looking out one of my windows I saw a witch on the neighboring pillar. I thought "No Problem!" I have this overpowered enchanted diamond sword, should be easy! It wasn't. The overpowered enchanted diamond sword and half of my armor got lost on the bottom of the ocean. *sigh* Fortunately I recovered the other diamond tools I had on me at the time. So far I've just found some coal and iron, and water pockets, but I only got started this morning. There's still a lot of digging to do.
Woo! Apparently I'm in Emerald territory. I found two ores practically right next to each other. That does mean I'll need to watch out for silverfish, I bet.
Here's a pic of my base. I've (hopefully) spawn-proofed the main room.
Lots of Minecrafting done today. Building a new base almost from scratch has got me a bit invigorated I guess.
I've installed a little wheat farm underneath the top set of stairs inside an old coal seam. It's harvested by water from a dispenser and washed into a hopper. No pics of it, it's not very visually inspiring. Just a little 4x4 dirt cavity stuck under the stairs.
I've continued the central mineshaft downward. I haven't hit bedrock yet, but I'm getting close - I'm hitting lava pools. The funny thing is that hitting bedrock wasn't my main goal. I wanted to collect some redstone so I could start putting in some machines. Even exploring all the natural caverns I intersected, it wasn't until just above the lava that I started seeing redstone.
I've built what I think is a mob-proof walkway across to my entrance, and put up some coal blocks to hide the entrance (I know, contradiction - build a highly obvious walkway and then make the entrance look innocent. I have plans for resolving that.)
Okay, half of the replacement bridge is complete. I laid in a cobblestone generator with a clockwork piston, so it will extend the bridge across the gap when I flip the lever. Pics at the bottom of the post. Next I need to build an identical version from the mainland to the island, with a hidden lever so that casual intruders can't find it. I had a thought this morning that one of the self-propelled platforms would be an ideal way to cross the gap, but I'll need a lot of slime for that. My first idea for a bridge was an 8-unit extendable sticky piston + slime blocks, but it turns out the timing needed to properly extend and retract many pistons is pretty complicated.
Amusingly, in order to build this, I *had* to build a nether gate to go fetch some quartz. Remembering the troubles I had with the first nether gate (spawned with two ghasts stuck in firing range, and it took a good dozen tries before we finally got a gate that wasn't destroyed immediately), I went through armed with enough cobblestone to mummify the whole gate. It turned out the only danger was an angry Enderman (who killed me once).
I'm getting enough stuff that I'm going to have to build myself a proper storage system soon.
Arglblibble! (and I mean that. ) My central mining shaft has hit the lava lake level, and I'm trying to figure out what to do with it all. I don't have the scads of iron needed to make an infinite supply of bukkits to hold it all in chests, nor do I have the diamonds to burn on multiple pickaxes to convert it all to obsidian and mine it.
My first thought was to mine out little niches besides the staircase and insert a bit of lava into each one as a light source for the stairs. Turns out this barely dented the lake. So then I thought to build a holding tower down the center of my mine shaft. The shaft itself is 6x6, with the outer ring devoted to a spiral staircase. That leaves enough room in the center for a 4x4 area. Ring it with half slabs so I can reach through the gaps, and now I have a 2x2 column of molten lava running down the center of my mining shaft. I still don't know if it will be enough to drain the lake, but I may not have to do that. Just pull the edges of the lake back so it doesn't flow into my dig should be all I need to do.
Ohhhhh, how would gapples and notch apples be any use?
Hmmm.... something is wrong with my skeleton spawner. It is producing skeletons, but not nearly as quickly as I'd expected. I wonder if the floor is too low? I don't know, I'll have to play with it. I have the spawner room lit up, and the skeletons are still appearing at the same rate as before, which means it's likely spawning them somewhere in the water passage somehow.
On the plus side, I did eventually get up to 30xp and enchanted a diamond pickaxe with Fortune II. One exploratory trip later, and I've picked up about 80 redstone and 11 diamonds, so I think we're just about set on that front now. I'm not sure if it's just coincidence, but I haven't seen the enchanting table offer me Silk Touch yet, and I'd kind of like to have one of those.
I'm thinking I might set up an exploration kit for each of the boys and let them strike out on their own now. I can give them plenty of food, armor, iron tools, possibly even a horse. I'll have to see if they're interested in doing that now.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
We're doing well enough now that I've created each of the boys an Explorer's Kit.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I saw this design in a YouTube video (probably Mumbo Jumbo's) and liked it, so I recreated it down here. I don't *need* that much smelting power yet, but if I do...
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Good, I don't need to worry about the temptation any more with 0.15.3: "Fixed item duplication on fences bug"
I'm building up the walls of the house out of raw cobblestone, then I'll go back and try to make it prettier after the structure is there. May not be the best way of building, but will give it a try.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Nothing much to show from my work for the moment. But I did build a cobblestone generator in the sub-basement, and decided to make it a bit on the pretty side of things.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I'm now also on Win10 Minecraft, so I'm not limited to gaming on the tablet. The controls are different enough though, that I'll need to learn them all.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I understand this is a family realm but is there anyway to apply or to show my architect skill so I can join and have a committed realm build some awesome projects on? Oh and I've built a cool camper if ur into that kinda thing.
Not a whole lot to add from this last week. It's been fairly busy, not much time to Minecraft, but I've gotten a little bit done. I'm working on the second floor of the house, smelting some cobblestone to make regular stone (until I can get a Silk Touch diamond pickaxe), trying to convert the small melon/pumpkin farm into an automatic using pistons (not having much luck yet, but I'm still trying things), and I remade the hidden chest into something a lot more hidden.
Before:
Add a lever to the right block and...
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I think part of my problem is that I don't have a project right now that is holding my interest. I've made a large-scale map and have started exploring by boat, just to see what's out there. I've got a rough idea of a tower/fortress to build, but I'd need to find the right area for it first.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I haven't found any place that looks like where I want to build a base in yet, but I've got a LOT of map left to look in.
Here's a few more screenshots:
First, until I get the second floor of the building finished, it's just a communal bedroom in the basement/workshop.
Second, I finally got the melon/pumpkin smasher working. Although it has yet to grow a single pumpkin. I'm beginning to wonder if they only grow to the north of the stalk.
The redstone for the smasher isn't too complicated. It feeds out of the observer block and into the half slabs you can see in this image:
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I've been doing a bit of exploring, and I've *finally* found some biomes other than basic hills. Still nothing TOO exciting, but at least it's something different.
And it might be fun to set up some sort of outpost here, for the scenery if nothing else. I don't think this is where I want my main base though. But I've always liked this type of place.
You can sorta see how much of the map I've managed to explore so far. I've found a couple of spots with Spruce trees, and maybe one of the extreme hills areas that might be rich in emerald. I'm not sure about that though. I'm not an expert at identifying biomes. But I haven't found anything different, like frozen, mushroom, swamp, desert or anything like that. So far Spruce trees are the limit of the differentness I've found.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
I was a very good boy. I didn't swear, scream, yell, or cry last night.
This is how far I had mapped:
Actually, I had mapped more. The unknown area in the bottom right was done and I was working on the large blank area. And then a creeper managed to sneak up on me and kill me. The map is gone. I'm going to have to start all over again. *sigh*
At least I have this screenshot, and I remember where a few points of interest are.
I never did find desert or snow biomes. Both of those are things I want eventually. I'm going to need sand, snow and ice for my building. I found where I'm going to put my starter base, I think. It's a nice mountain spire, with a nice view, and fairly close access to an ocean. And on the other side of the ocean is the only unique biome I found, a mushroom biome. And there were a ton of mooshrooms there. Probably because I came at it across the ocean and so no mobs had spawned in some time, and it had a lot of space before it hit the mob spawn cap.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Okay, I've discovered one of the reasons why I might not be playing as much lately - my son damaged his tablet, so we changed the login on my tablet to be his, and I've been using the Win10 PC. But I finally recognized the other day that playing on the big screen is making me slightly motion-sick. It's an old problem, and why I don't play any FPS games. I might be able to tweak the settings a bit to fix it, or swap so that I'm using the tablet and he's using the PC. Or perhaps just not playing fullscreen will do it.
At any rate, I've fixed up the pumpkin/melon farm so that pumpkins generate now (apparently they'll only grow in a north/south direction. east/west and the pumpkins never grew). We're also trying to get enough paper together to make enough copies of the maps for everyone. I'm planning on going to one of the rock spires I found and building a base there. Not my ultimate base, but a good front-line base. Perhaps it will contain the only access to my final base, or perhaps not. My son wants to build his base in the mushroom biome, which is past the area I'm going to be working in.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Finally played some more MCPE this weekend with the boys. They're having fun building their own mine at the moment, while I'm off exploring.
I'm new to the whole multi-player thing, so this is a trick most of you probably already know. When you make a map, clone it and post one on your wall. Any exploration you do is reflected on both maps equally. If you happen to die while out exploring, you have a surviving copy of the map back at your base, which you can just clone again.
As part of my expansion plans, I made myself nearly a complete set of enchanted diamond tools. The only one I didn't make was a hoe. Not sure why I'd need an enchanted diamond hoe. That seems like overkill.
PS - oh yes, and apparently playing the game windowed instead of full screen fixes the motion sickness problem.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
So I've just started on the new base. I didn't carry a whole lot over here. Ender chests would be *SO* nice to have...
This is the pillar where I'm building it:
I've started digging downward from inside, looking for raw materials. I got overconfident at one point though - looking out one of my windows I saw a witch on the neighboring pillar. I thought "No Problem!" I have this overpowered enchanted diamond sword, should be easy! It wasn't. The overpowered enchanted diamond sword and half of my armor got lost on the bottom of the ocean. *sigh* Fortunately I recovered the other diamond tools I had on me at the time. So far I've just found some coal and iron, and water pockets, but I only got started this morning. There's still a lot of digging to do.
Also, this is right next door:
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Woo! Apparently I'm in Emerald territory. I found two ores practically right next to each other. That does mean I'll need to watch out for silverfish, I bet.
Here's a pic of my base. I've (hopefully) spawn-proofed the main room.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Lots of Minecrafting done today. Building a new base almost from scratch has got me a bit invigorated I guess.
I've installed a little wheat farm underneath the top set of stairs inside an old coal seam. It's harvested by water from a dispenser and washed into a hopper. No pics of it, it's not very visually inspiring. Just a little 4x4 dirt cavity stuck under the stairs.
I've continued the central mineshaft downward. I haven't hit bedrock yet, but I'm getting close - I'm hitting lava pools. The funny thing is that hitting bedrock wasn't my main goal. I wanted to collect some redstone so I could start putting in some machines. Even exploring all the natural caverns I intersected, it wasn't until just above the lava that I started seeing redstone.
I've built what I think is a mob-proof walkway across to my entrance, and put up some coal blocks to hide the entrance (I know, contradiction - build a highly obvious walkway and then make the entrance look innocent. I have plans for resolving that.)
Here's some screens of today's builds:
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Okay, half of the replacement bridge is complete. I laid in a cobblestone generator with a clockwork piston, so it will extend the bridge across the gap when I flip the lever. Pics at the bottom of the post. Next I need to build an identical version from the mainland to the island, with a hidden lever so that casual intruders can't find it. I had a thought this morning that one of the self-propelled platforms would be an ideal way to cross the gap, but I'll need a lot of slime for that. My first idea for a bridge was an 8-unit extendable sticky piston + slime blocks, but it turns out the timing needed to properly extend and retract many pistons is pretty complicated.
Amusingly, in order to build this, I *had* to build a nether gate to go fetch some quartz. Remembering the troubles I had with the first nether gate (spawned with two ghasts stuck in firing range, and it took a good dozen tries before we finally got a gate that wasn't destroyed immediately), I went through armed with enough cobblestone to mummify the whole gate. It turned out the only danger was an angry Enderman (who killed me once).
I'm getting enough stuff that I'm going to have to build myself a proper storage system soon.
Here are pics of the bridge, before and after:
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)
Arglblibble! (and I mean that. ) My central mining shaft has hit the lava lake level, and I'm trying to figure out what to do with it all. I don't have the scads of iron needed to make an infinite supply of bukkits to hold it all in chests, nor do I have the diamonds to burn on multiple pickaxes to convert it all to obsidian and mine it.
My first thought was to mine out little niches besides the staircase and insert a bit of lava into each one as a light source for the stairs. Turns out this barely dented the lake. So then I thought to build a holding tower down the center of my mine shaft. The shaft itself is 6x6, with the outer ring devoted to a spiral staircase. That leaves enough room in the center for a 4x4 area. Ring it with half slabs so I can reach through the gaps, and now I have a 2x2 column of molten lava running down the center of my mining shaft. I still don't know if it will be enough to drain the lake, but I may not have to do that. Just pull the edges of the lake back so it doesn't flow into my dig should be all I need to do.
TMO's Realms Blog (v0.15+)
MCPE Survival Blog #2 - Rhageos (v0.11-0.12)
My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)