A few bits of news. A friend and his wife have joined the Realm and are actually playing. They're quite industrious. One is building a large and practical base to start with. The other appears to be planning towers and a castle overlooking a harbor. He has also found 5 Sea Temples in the ocean out there. O_O
So I went and looked for a Temple of my own near Spire Base, and found one. Here is my method of clearing it:
Been a few days. It's slow work draining a sea temple using gravel. Especially with Mining Fatigue curses working on you all the time. I finally wound up digging through the roof and killing the top Elder Guardian. After I used up 2.5 double chests full of gravel (some lost to flint, some just not dug back up again, and another half-inventory lost to falling into lava in the Nether), and multiple diamond shovels used up, I switched to using sand and sugar cane. I also did more research and found out the other two Elder Guardians were in the wings of the Temple, not in the central portion. So I dug a hole in the sides of them and went in and killed the other two Elder Guardians. Between the new draining method and no fatigue, it's going much faster. It still takes a long time though, as I'm sure you know.
My tiny automated sugar cane farm off the side of the excavation:
SO ANNOYED! Working on a ledge in Spire Base, and placing a block while crouching pushed me off the edge... somehow. Fell to my death, and the ONLY item I was carrying that scattered into lava and got destroyed was my Efficiency 5 Unbreaking 3 Diamond shovel! Why couldn't something useless get trashed instead? Arggggg....
I've apparently found one of the serious bugs in v1.0.0. If you get killed by a Blaze, it crashes your client (and maybe your computer also), and you can't rejoin that world. The latest word someone's received is you have to reset the world. I'd *really* rather not do that to this Realms world if I don't have to. That's a lot of work down the drain if I do. I'll give it a bit of time, see if they release a patch version for it.
Sorry for the long gap in reporting. I've been playing, just not posting anything. AFAIK, the Blaze-bug is still in place. There hasn't been an update posted since the last time I tried to log in under my own account. I'm playing under my daughter's, since she rarely logs in.
So, some updates.
I went up to the nearest swamp and tried to build a slime farm, but something about it isn't right yet. Nothing's generating inside the building. I haven't gone back yet to try and figure it out. It must be something I do wrong, because none of the mob farms I build seem to work right. One of these days I'll figure out how to do it right, I'm sure.
Then I went back to the village I turned into an Iron Farm, but messed up by accidentally hitting a villager. I built another farm and moved the villagers, but it doesn't seem to have helped.
So I decided to give that one up as a bad job and went back to my home base to build a custom village/iron farm from scratch. I'm getting the villagers by trapping zombie villagers and healing them. They haven't started breeding yet, but I can always just convert more zombies instead. In the process of doing this, I built and used a brewing stand for the first time. These are the first potions I've ever made.
Yesterday was a Redstone day. I've moved my storage system down to the bottom of my base behind a wall, rather than hanging in the air. Right now it is 2 layers of 24 chests, and I'm trying to collect enough iron to finish the third layer. Thus the iron farm attempt. My villagers still aren't breeding, so I wonder if that's something that's turned off in MCPE right now? I don't know, but I guess I'll try to convert more zombie villagers in lieu of breeding. Just have to figure out a safe way to get them into their cells.
Back to the Redstone. When I moved my storage system, I put it at bedrock. Items feed from the top down to the bottom. The last chest is an overflow that catches the items that don't have a chest to go to, or the storage cell is full. I wanted to put on a switch that would automatically feed those items back into the sorter. That way I could use the overflow to craft new items, then put it back and let the system sort it for me. The problem was, that I put the whole storage system at bedrock level. There's no room *under* this overflow chest to put a compact redstone & hopper system. So I had to wind it in and around the bedrock blocks. It was an interesting challenge.
This was my first hopper & lever combo. The problem was that the lever shut down 2 hoppers, the one under the chest, and the one halfway to the item elevator. A bunch of items got stuck in that second hopper and it took me forever to find them.
So I figured out that a lever on a block over a redstone circuit would soft power the bedrock block under the chest, which would then turn off the hopper under the chest, while a slab would prevent the second hopper from being powered.
Here is the initial bit of the clock for powering the dropper item elevator (I wish glass item elevators worked in MCPE).
And here's the other half of the clock. I had to extend it quite a bit further out than normal until I found a spot where I could turn the circuit around without risking powering any of the hoppers overhead.
Nothing huge to report. I've still been busy, mostly just on expanding the bedrock level of my base. The rule is, no floor spaces anywhere except inside a machine or farm, or at bedrock. So anywhere there's a nook or cranny, I excavate it down to bedrock. All these caves and tunnels will be dug down to bedrock. I'm using a dangerous method of pillaring upward though, to reach these areas. I'm sure it's going to bite me one of these days. I'm using carpet. It breaks quickly, or if I reach bedrock by another method, I just have to break the bottom piece and everything else comes falling down and I just have to pick it up. But I know that if I hit a water stream or too close to lava, they could break it and bring me crashing down.
Along the way of slabbing all the bedrock area, I found this little number I'd apparently overlooked before:
I've installed a super-fast slime/fence gate elevator that mostly works very well. Occasionally I'll hit a block on the side and get stopped, and drop back to the bottom.
Here's a pic of it in unfinished form. I've since covered it up with a layer of obsidian (and found that that huge water stream in my base is an excellent place to make obsidian).
And, lastly, I still really enjoy the view inside my base during thunderstorms:
I finally got enough iron to finish the third layer of my storage system. I think I calculated it up once as something like 160 hoppers per layer? And at 5 iron per hopper.... eugh.....
At any rate, this layer is the less common building blocks. Bottom layer is stone. Second layer is wood. Third layer is uncommon stones. Quartz, sand, netherrack, prismarine, that kind of stuff.
I haven't gotten any red sandstone yet, but there's no room for it on this floor. Although I may always rearrange stuff later. And now that I have a place to store it, I've finally gone back to my first undersea temple to continue clearing it out.
I'm replacing the gravel with sugarcane, because it's WAY easier to work with. It's a large project though, laying that much sugarcane on and around the temple. I may want to move the portal and sugarcane farm down from the surface though. A fall is a bit risky from that height.
First off, according to the Minecraft Wiki here, Baby Zombies can ride all kinds of critters, not just chickens. I did not know that.
I've built myself an AFK Fish Farm, but apparently there are some glitchy errors still with MCPE/Realms and fishing, so I also fixed myself up a little nook to do manual fishing.
You can see the glass roof of the fish farm in that last picture, so that the farm was still visible to the sky (I hope).
I put the platforms over a hopper so it auto-grabs everything for me.
This fishing pole was actually one of the first non-fish I pulled out of the water. I've repaired it once already now.
Some of my loot. I went long enough to get 5 saddles and gave one out to all the players.
I've also gone back and done some more work at my undersea temple, clearing some space so I can set up a Guardian farm. I'll have to find a design that works with MCPE/Realms though. The one I saw in a Hermitcraft video has them falling through lava, and every time I've used lava for a kill the critter floated or swam in it and all drops were destroyed. I'll probably just go for a simple gravity kill on them.
No new builds to post pics of, just a general update. Mostly I've been fishing and trying to collect enough wood to fill the 2nd floor. And I've started laying out the 4th floor of my storage center, for foodstuffs. It'll be a *looong* time before I have enough iron to hopper the whole thing though, unless I can get that iron farm I built functional. And to do that I'll need to transport enough villagers up there to make a suitable village. And to do that, I'll need to build a water elevator from my base, and a mob trapper so that any zombie villagers I encounter can be cured and shipped out.
Still no word on any development on the Blaze killer bug that's keeping me from using my regular account. At least I have the option of using my daughter's account to still play. Several folks apparently haven't been able to play their Realms world for a couple months now.
OOOO!!! New version rolled out, with Villager Trading! This oughtta be interesting to explore! My Realms hasn't updated yet though, so I can't connect just yet. But I will definitely have to get my Villager curing line all set up and running ASAP.
Been awhile since the last update, sorry about that. RL has been busy, with Spring Break and a business conference. I've extended the villager uploading chute down to bedrock (so the villagers have to travel by water from bedrock all the way to the top of a spire, so about 100 yards vertically). I've built a supposed mob-spawning chamber that then traps them in doors, so I can kill the non-villager mobs, and cure and release the villagers. But, of course, not a single mob has been spawned in there. I've cured and shipped 3 villagers just by luring spawns from the supposedly unspawnable slabs that cover the entire floor over to a trap and cure them there.
Now, one of the theories I heard in the last week is that non-oak doors might not count as doors when villages are counting. If so, that might explain why I've had so many problems building iron farms this time around. If the villagers I'm shipping up to the farm start de-spawning, we'll know that's the case, and I'll swap out all of the current doors for oak. It won't look as nice, but who cares if it works. Now, the Iron Farm I built pre-Realms worked fine with the orange savannah wood doors (sorry, it's late, my brain is shutting down). But in Realms, I've built 3 Iron Farms, none of them successful in breeding villagers. It could be lots of things - unhappy villagers, bad wood choices, unoptimal feng shui....
Whatever, I'm getting to a place where I can experiment and see if I can figure it out.
Future plans, I have a horse now, so building roads might be a worthwhile task. I will need to determine the style first though. And I'm pretty sure I'll keep some version of my 'light on the right' rule from previous worlds, so that you'll always know which way to go if you come on the road from the wilderness. Random idea for forests or mountains is some sort of floating light system, so they can be seen over obstacles if you're in range.
I built a pretty standard iron farm and first put dark oak doors on it and it works fine. I also just put acacia doors and that worked too (looks terrible though). I also noticed slabs don't stop mobs or iron golems from spawning on surfaces, so I had to cover the villager pens. The villagers wouldn't breed until I gave them bread, then they went crazy.
I built a pretty standard iron farm and first put dark oak doors on it and it works fine. I also just put acacia doors and that worked too (looks terrible though). I also noticed slabs don't stop mobs or iron golems from spawning on surfaces, so I had to cover the villager pens. The villagers wouldn't breed until I gave them bread, then they went crazy.
I hope you find that helpful!
Bread, huh? I have not tried that. I've used carrots and potatoes, but not bread. I'll give that a shot, thanks!
Glad you're enjoying the blog! I know I'm getting read counts each time I post, but without the occasional comment I sometimes wonder if they're all just bots or scripts.
Also, I'm going to go ahead and make this public: I'm semi-inspired to try and build this manor:
The amount of planning it would take is enormous, but it might be good for me to give it a shot. I've built my first Ender Chests, so transporting materials from Spire to the site wouldn't be too difficult. And I'd have to find a good location for it. But there are some extreme hills biomes between Spawn and Spire, so I might be able to find a good matching pair of rocks to place it on. No promises that you'll see anything from this any time soon, but hopefully one day I will start work on it, or something else equally pretty.
P.S. - Just read back a few posts and realized that I haven't posted *any* pics in a while. I'll go around tonight and take some screenshots of the villager upchute and 4th level of the storage center, and the attempted zombie villager spawner.
I built a pretty standard iron farm and first put dark oak doors on it and it works fine. I also just put acacia doors and that worked too (looks terrible though). I also noticed slabs don't stop mobs or iron golems from spawning on surfaces, so I had to cover the villager pens. The villagers wouldn't breed until I gave them bread, then they went crazy.
I hope you find that helpful!
Logged in real quick over lunch on my tablet and tossed some bread to the pair of villagers in one of the chambers, and they promptly produced two baby villagers back to back! Woo! My iron farm might just be in business now, between curing zombies and bread breeding!
I'm thinking I might just attach a dropper filled with bread to each of the chambers and a daylight sensor, so that it dispenses a loaf each day, just to keep happiness up.
Thank you very much for your advice! I don't know if an upvote is worth anything, but here's one regardless.
You're welcome! I'm happy to help! I'm glad your farm is up and running. I like the dropper idea, I'm totally going to use that.
I attached one of these to each cell, and put 3.5 stacks of bread in each (all of my hay reserves at the moment). The daylight sensor dispenses 1 bread each morning. Some of them will go to waste in one of the cells for the moment, as it has no villagers in it. But that hopefully won't last long.
And here is the supposed mob-spawner/trapper. Each doorway is flanked by iron doors and a pressure plate on the floor that closes them when someone stands on it. Above it is a wooden trap door that I can use to drop cures or weapons on the mob inside.
And here's the chosen style for Level 4 of the storage center (which is going to be plants):
So... looks like the next update is coming out. Nothing in it for me, it looks like, except the general bug fixes (I don't think I've run into any of those bugs myself, but it's hard to tell for sure). There's new commands, and the CommandBlock, but the block isn't available in Survival (except by using commands, of course).
You'd think that as a programmer by trade and inclination that the CommandBlock would excite me more. I'm not certain why it doesn't. Perhaps because I haven't really mastered all of the basic available tools, especially advanced redstoning. Jumping ahead to CommandBlocks without mastering the inbetween steps would mean I'd never get around to learning the inbetweens. I'd just always jump straight to the tool I knew - the CommandBlock.
Also, even though I'm a programmer, unless I have a specific goal in mind I can't do without modifying or otherwise changing the working environment, I prefer to work within the strictures provided. As such, you haven't seen me gung-ho'edly creating my own mobs or biomes. I have given a little bit of thought to it, but mostly with the idea towards seeing if my dad would play if there weren't spiders in the game (*very* arachnophobic), but the answer is that he probably wouldn't.
My programmerness does come out in that I like to build things to do repetitive tasks for me. Farms? I would rather build a small redstone creation to do as much work as possible of it. My food farm is harvested by water, into a hopper, and thus into a chest. All I have to do is push a button, then plant seeds. The only reason I don't have an automatic tree harvester is because I haven't figured out a reasonable machine to do it with yet. There are hideously complex machine designs that are actually probably more work than they relieve you of, especially in Survival. So I just plant the saplings and let them grow in their own time, then chop 'em down.
Not entirely sure why this release prompted me to pontificate on random stuff. Enjoy it if you like, or just skip over it if you don't.
How do you get the zombies into the holes? I ended up making a room I could run into (being chased by a zombie) that had a gate that closed behind me with a pressure plate, so I could trap them using myself as bait. Also, why give them weapons? Mob arena fights? Or did you mean for hitting them?
I've been very interested in your storage system (I have no system and it's a pain). An auto system sounds great, but most of your pics are of the nice looking outside, nothing hinting at what's under the hood besides a hopper auto sorter. Is there anywhere I can look up more info on how it works?
A few bits of news. A friend and his wife have joined the Realm and are actually playing. They're quite industrious. One is building a large and practical base to start with. The other appears to be planning towers and a castle overlooking a harbor. He has also found 5 Sea Temples in the ocean out there. O_O
So I went and looked for a Temple of my own near Spire Base, and found one. Here is my method of clearing it:
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)
Been a few days. It's slow work draining a sea temple using gravel. Especially with Mining Fatigue curses working on you all the time. I finally wound up digging through the roof and killing the top Elder Guardian. After I used up 2.5 double chests full of gravel (some lost to flint, some just not dug back up again, and another half-inventory lost to falling into lava in the Nether), and multiple diamond shovels used up, I switched to using sand and sugar cane. I also did more research and found out the other two Elder Guardians were in the wings of the Temple, not in the central portion. So I dug a hole in the sides of them and went in and killed the other two Elder Guardians. Between the new draining method and no fatigue, it's going much faster. It still takes a long time though, as I'm sure you know.
My tiny automated sugar cane farm off the side of the excavation:
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 ANNOYED! Working on a ledge in Spire Base, and placing a block while crouching pushed me off the edge... somehow. Fell to my death, and the ONLY item I was carrying that scattered into lava and got destroyed was my Efficiency 5 Unbreaking 3 Diamond shovel! Why couldn't something useless get trashed instead? Arggggg....
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 apparently found one of the serious bugs in v1.0.0. If you get killed by a Blaze, it crashes your client (and maybe your computer also), and you can't rejoin that world. The latest word someone's received is you have to reset the world. I'd *really* rather not do that to this Realms world if I don't have to. That's a lot of work down the drain if I do. I'll give it a bit of time, see if they release a patch version for it.
Until then, stay away from Blazes!
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)
Sorry for the long gap in reporting. I've been playing, just not posting anything. AFAIK, the Blaze-bug is still in place. There hasn't been an update posted since the last time I tried to log in under my own account. I'm playing under my daughter's, since she rarely logs in.
So, some updates.
I went up to the nearest swamp and tried to build a slime farm, but something about it isn't right yet. Nothing's generating inside the building. I haven't gone back yet to try and figure it out. It must be something I do wrong, because none of the mob farms I build seem to work right. One of these days I'll figure out how to do it right, I'm sure.
Then I went back to the village I turned into an Iron Farm, but messed up by accidentally hitting a villager. I built another farm and moved the villagers, but it doesn't seem to have helped.
So I decided to give that one up as a bad job and went back to my home base to build a custom village/iron farm from scratch. I'm getting the villagers by trapping zombie villagers and healing them. They haven't started breeding yet, but I can always just convert more zombies instead. In the process of doing this, I built and used a brewing stand for the first time. These are the first potions I've ever made.
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)
Yesterday was a Redstone day. I've moved my storage system down to the bottom of my base behind a wall, rather than hanging in the air. Right now it is 2 layers of 24 chests, and I'm trying to collect enough iron to finish the third layer. Thus the iron farm attempt. My villagers still aren't breeding, so I wonder if that's something that's turned off in MCPE right now? I don't know, but I guess I'll try to convert more zombie villagers in lieu of breeding. Just have to figure out a safe way to get them into their cells.
Back to the Redstone. When I moved my storage system, I put it at bedrock. Items feed from the top down to the bottom. The last chest is an overflow that catches the items that don't have a chest to go to, or the storage cell is full. I wanted to put on a switch that would automatically feed those items back into the sorter. That way I could use the overflow to craft new items, then put it back and let the system sort it for me. The problem was, that I put the whole storage system at bedrock level. There's no room *under* this overflow chest to put a compact redstone & hopper system. So I had to wind it in and around the bedrock blocks. It was an interesting challenge.
This was my first hopper & lever combo. The problem was that the lever shut down 2 hoppers, the one under the chest, and the one halfway to the item elevator. A bunch of items got stuck in that second hopper and it took me forever to find them.
So I figured out that a lever on a block over a redstone circuit would soft power the bedrock block under the chest, which would then turn off the hopper under the chest, while a slab would prevent the second hopper from being powered.
Here is the initial bit of the clock for powering the dropper item elevator (I wish glass item elevators worked in MCPE).
And here's the other half of the clock. I had to extend it quite a bit further out than normal until I found a spot where I could turn the circuit around without risking powering any of the hoppers overhead.
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 huge to report. I've still been busy, mostly just on expanding the bedrock level of my base. The rule is, no floor spaces anywhere except inside a machine or farm, or at bedrock. So anywhere there's a nook or cranny, I excavate it down to bedrock. All these caves and tunnels will be dug down to bedrock. I'm using a dangerous method of pillaring upward though, to reach these areas. I'm sure it's going to bite me one of these days. I'm using carpet. It breaks quickly, or if I reach bedrock by another method, I just have to break the bottom piece and everything else comes falling down and I just have to pick it up. But I know that if I hit a water stream or too close to lava, they could break it and bring me crashing down.
Along the way of slabbing all the bedrock area, I found this little number I'd apparently overlooked before:
I've installed a super-fast slime/fence gate elevator that mostly works very well. Occasionally I'll hit a block on the side and get stopped, and drop back to the bottom.
Here's a pic of it in unfinished form. I've since covered it up with a layer of obsidian (and found that that huge water stream in my base is an excellent place to make obsidian).
And, lastly, I still really enjoy the view inside my base during thunderstorms:
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 finally got enough iron to finish the third layer of my storage system. I think I calculated it up once as something like 160 hoppers per layer? And at 5 iron per hopper.... eugh.....
At any rate, this layer is the less common building blocks. Bottom layer is stone. Second layer is wood. Third layer is uncommon stones. Quartz, sand, netherrack, prismarine, that kind of stuff.
I haven't gotten any red sandstone yet, but there's no room for it on this floor. Although I may always rearrange stuff later. And now that I have a place to store it, I've finally gone back to my first undersea temple to continue clearing it out.
I'm replacing the gravel with sugarcane, because it's WAY easier to work with. It's a large project though, laying that much sugarcane on and around the temple. I may want to move the portal and sugarcane farm down from the surface though. A fall is a bit risky from that height.
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 completely cleared the gravel surrounding the temple and replaced it with sugarcane. Much easier to work with.
And, working in my base a bit, I have to admit, I've never seen a baby zombie riding on an adult zombie before....
It's not just a glitch of them standing in the same spot. They move around linked together like that. It's tempting to nametag them.
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)
First off, according to the Minecraft Wiki here, Baby Zombies can ride all kinds of critters, not just chickens. I did not know that.
I've built myself an AFK Fish Farm, but apparently there are some glitchy errors still with MCPE/Realms and fishing, so I also fixed myself up a little nook to do manual fishing.
You can see the glass roof of the fish farm in that last picture, so that the farm was still visible to the sky (I hope).
I put the platforms over a hopper so it auto-grabs everything for me.
This fishing pole was actually one of the first non-fish I pulled out of the water. I've repaired it once already now.
Some of my loot. I went long enough to get 5 saddles and gave one out to all the players.
I've also gone back and done some more work at my undersea temple, clearing some space so I can set up a Guardian farm. I'll have to find a design that works with MCPE/Realms though. The one I saw in a Hermitcraft video has them falling through lava, and every time I've used lava for a kill the critter floated or swam in it and all drops were destroyed. I'll probably just go for a simple gravity kill on them.
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)
No new builds to post pics of, just a general update. Mostly I've been fishing and trying to collect enough wood to fill the 2nd floor. And I've started laying out the 4th floor of my storage center, for foodstuffs. It'll be a *looong* time before I have enough iron to hopper the whole thing though, unless I can get that iron farm I built functional. And to do that I'll need to transport enough villagers up there to make a suitable village. And to do that, I'll need to build a water elevator from my base, and a mob trapper so that any zombie villagers I encounter can be cured and shipped out.
Still no word on any development on the Blaze killer bug that's keeping me from using my regular account. At least I have the option of using my daughter's account to still play. Several folks apparently haven't been able to play their Realms world for a couple months 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)
OOOO!!! New version rolled out, with Villager Trading! This oughtta be interesting to explore! My Realms hasn't updated yet though, so I can't connect just yet. But I will definitely have to get my Villager curing line all set up and running ASAP.
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)
Been awhile since the last update, sorry about that. RL has been busy, with Spring Break and a business conference. I've extended the villager uploading chute down to bedrock (so the villagers have to travel by water from bedrock all the way to the top of a spire, so about 100 yards vertically). I've built a supposed mob-spawning chamber that then traps them in doors, so I can kill the non-villager mobs, and cure and release the villagers. But, of course, not a single mob has been spawned in there. I've cured and shipped 3 villagers just by luring spawns from the supposedly unspawnable slabs that cover the entire floor over to a trap and cure them there.
Now, one of the theories I heard in the last week is that non-oak doors might not count as doors when villages are counting. If so, that might explain why I've had so many problems building iron farms this time around. If the villagers I'm shipping up to the farm start de-spawning, we'll know that's the case, and I'll swap out all of the current doors for oak. It won't look as nice, but who cares if it works. Now, the Iron Farm I built pre-Realms worked fine with the orange savannah wood doors (sorry, it's late, my brain is shutting down). But in Realms, I've built 3 Iron Farms, none of them successful in breeding villagers. It could be lots of things - unhappy villagers, bad wood choices, unoptimal feng shui....
Whatever, I'm getting to a place where I can experiment and see if I can figure it out.
Future plans, I have a horse now, so building roads might be a worthwhile task. I will need to determine the style first though. And I'm pretty sure I'll keep some version of my 'light on the right' rule from previous worlds, so that you'll always know which way to go if you come on the road from the wilderness. Random idea for forests or mountains is some sort of floating light system, so they can be seen over obstacles if you're in range.
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)
TMO, really enjoy reading your blog.
I built a pretty standard iron farm and first put dark oak doors on it and it works fine. I also just put acacia doors and that worked too (looks terrible though). I also noticed slabs don't stop mobs or iron golems from spawning on surfaces, so I had to cover the villager pens. The villagers wouldn't breed until I gave them bread, then they went crazy.
I hope you find that helpful!
Bread, huh? I have not tried that. I've used carrots and potatoes, but not bread. I'll give that a shot, thanks!
Glad you're enjoying the blog! I know I'm getting read counts each time I post, but without the occasional comment I sometimes wonder if they're all just bots or scripts.
Also, I'm going to go ahead and make this public: I'm semi-inspired to try and build this manor:
The amount of planning it would take is enormous, but it might be good for me to give it a shot. I've built my first Ender Chests, so transporting materials from Spire to the site wouldn't be too difficult. And I'd have to find a good location for it. But there are some extreme hills biomes between Spawn and Spire, so I might be able to find a good matching pair of rocks to place it on. No promises that you'll see anything from this any time soon, but hopefully one day I will start work on it, or something else equally pretty.
P.S. - Just read back a few posts and realized that I haven't posted *any* pics in a while. I'll go around tonight and take some screenshots of the villager upchute and 4th level of the storage center, and the attempted zombie villager spawner.
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)
Logged in real quick over lunch on my tablet and tossed some bread to the pair of villagers in one of the chambers, and they promptly produced two baby villagers back to back! Woo! My iron farm might just be in business now, between curing zombies and bread breeding!
I'm thinking I might just attach a dropper filled with bread to each of the chambers and a daylight sensor, so that it dispenses a loaf each day, just to keep happiness up.
Thank you very much for your advice! I don't know if an upvote is worth anything, but here's one regardless.
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)
You're welcome! I'm happy to help! I'm glad your farm is up and running. I like the dropper idea, I'm totally going to use that.
I attached one of these to each cell, and put 3.5 stacks of bread in each (all of my hay reserves at the moment). The daylight sensor dispenses 1 bread each morning. Some of them will go to waste in one of the cells for the moment, as it has no villagers in it. But that hopefully won't last long.
And here is the supposed mob-spawner/trapper. Each doorway is flanked by iron doors and a pressure plate on the floor that closes them when someone stands on it. Above it is a wooden trap door that I can use to drop cures or weapons on the mob inside.
And here's the chosen style for Level 4 of the storage center (which is going to be plants):
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... looks like the next update is coming out. Nothing in it for me, it looks like, except the general bug fixes (I don't think I've run into any of those bugs myself, but it's hard to tell for sure). There's new commands, and the CommandBlock, but the block isn't available in Survival (except by using commands, of course).
You'd think that as a programmer by trade and inclination that the CommandBlock would excite me more. I'm not certain why it doesn't. Perhaps because I haven't really mastered all of the basic available tools, especially advanced redstoning. Jumping ahead to CommandBlocks without mastering the inbetween steps would mean I'd never get around to learning the inbetweens. I'd just always jump straight to the tool I knew - the CommandBlock.
Also, even though I'm a programmer, unless I have a specific goal in mind I can't do without modifying or otherwise changing the working environment, I prefer to work within the strictures provided. As such, you haven't seen me gung-ho'edly creating my own mobs or biomes. I have given a little bit of thought to it, but mostly with the idea towards seeing if my dad would play if there weren't spiders in the game (*very* arachnophobic), but the answer is that he probably wouldn't.
My programmerness does come out in that I like to build things to do repetitive tasks for me. Farms? I would rather build a small redstone creation to do as much work as possible of it. My food farm is harvested by water, into a hopper, and thus into a chest. All I have to do is push a button, then plant seeds. The only reason I don't have an automatic tree harvester is because I haven't figured out a reasonable machine to do it with yet. There are hideously complex machine designs that are actually probably more work than they relieve you of, especially in Survival. So I just plant the saplings and let them grow in their own time, then chop 'em down.
Not entirely sure why this release prompted me to pontificate on random stuff. Enjoy it if you like, or just skip over it if you don't.
;tldr: don't bother reading this.
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)
Master TMO,
How do you get the zombies into the holes? I ended up making a room I could run into (being chased by a zombie) that had a gate that closed behind me with a pressure plate, so I could trap them using myself as bait. Also, why give them weapons? Mob arena fights? Or did you mean for hitting them?
I've been very interested in your storage system (I have no system and it's a pain). An auto system sounds great, but most of your pics are of the nice looking outside, nothing hinting at what's under the hood besides a hopper auto sorter. Is there anywhere I can look up more info on how it works?