Minecraft Forums

Do not like. Time to start looking at texture packs, I guess...

Quote from Hexalobular»

If they dug at diamond levels they might as well mine in a straight line as back and forth.

That's essentially what I do: once my world really gets going - i have some (enchanted) diamond gear, and have a good start on resources, and have started working on my main house/base - as I explore, and secure and develop villages and build outposts at points of interest, I connect everything by rail (digging tunnels at y=12), and mostly stop just-plain-mining. The main world I've been playing on for the last few years is very oceany; nearly every stretch of track crosses under the ocean at least once along its route, and every single time I've encountered an abandoned mineshaft; so even if I start out without quite enough gold/iron for rails I nearly always end up with stacks of extra plain rails, and plenty of leftover gold.

(haven't done the math (or updated my rail map) in a while, but I've got tens of kilometers of track, (almost - i still have aboue 3/4 of a map left to go) connecting two main bases at opposite ends of the world (my original house and the woodland mansion i've been playing from for the last couple of years) and about a dozen or so villages, with additional stops at the stronghold I stumbled on while digging the tunnel between my original base and my first village and an ocean monument i tunneled under while connecting the woodland-side rail network back to the spawn-side one... takes over an hour to get from one end to the other, it's not a journey i make often...)

Quote from DirtyBaker1331»

I like that bench Pykaxe! A lot of cool designs can be done with trap doors and open fence gates. Definitely need to terraform with some Coral but looks great.

Thanks!

Open fence gates, huh... Don't think I've ever used a fence gate decoratively, will definitely have to experiment.

Do you have other active villages, and are any of them connected back to your base by rail?

I generally populate my artificially-built villages by importing villagers from naturally generated ones... I run a temporary line from the (underground) train station up into the village, and push 2-3 villagers into minecarts; at the other end (in the empty village I built), i again have a temporary line running from the train station into the village. Once the colonists are on their way, I pull up the extra rail (and close the village gates!), and follow along behind them (usually also with a minecart chest or two filled with building materials and trade goods); when I get to the new village, I again pull up the extra tracks and close the gates, and carefully extract the villagers from their minecarts (or you can place an activator rail at the end of the line to automagically pop them out). Depending on how much of a headstart the villagers had (and how big the new village is), there will probably already be a few mini-villagers running around by the time you get there...

(the one time I used cured zombie villagers was the village I built next to a remote icy outpost - I'd built a small house there as an exploration basecamp, then found an igloo nearby with a cleric/zombie in the basement. Built a small village in the area between my house and the igloo and moved the clerics in as an easy source of Mending exp. )

What about making (one of?) the clock faces white glass, so you can see out? Then put in some chairs/benches, and make it an observation-type room?

Looking good!

Spent some more time exploring the oceans around the new village. The map west of the village map is almost entirely ocean, and almost half of that is lukewarm; lots of shipwrecks, ruins, and ravines around. With no potions - I'd already used up my supply before finding the village, and hadn't yet been back to either Turtle Beach or my main house to pick up some brewing stands and supplies - I decided it was time to play with conduits. Set one up between a cluster of ruins and some caves, and spent a few days exploring, clearing out all the shiny loot, bucket-fishing, and hunting Drowned.

Didn't get any tridents at that stop, but I *did* finally score two(!!) later in my explorations, while destroying a little island in search of buried treasure (which i never did find - the second time that's happened)...

After a brief stop at the village to re-juggle inventory I sailed west again, filling in the rest of the map between the new village (namd TBD) and Turtle Beach before hopping in a minecart and heading home.

As I sailed westward, the waters started getting cooler until I was back in cold ocean territory again; just at the edge of the map I saw what looked like a massive sprawling ice village floating on the sea: an entire fleet of icebergs. I was running with full inventory, so I'll have to go back to start a new map and harvest some blue ice, but I did hop out and explore a bit. Then a bit later, back on land, I spotted a city of crystal-tower ice spikes, just a bit south of Turtle Beach.

More polar bears!

Back home, after enchanting my new toys (impaling III/loyalty III/unbr III/mending - need to find more impaling books before i take it on a monument raid, but it'll do for now) I got to work turning the last of the empty big rooms into an aquarium. I do plan to build a larger, stand-alone aquarium eventually - especially once i find some coral - but it's nice to have a giant fish tank at home, too...

The best view really is from the inside looking out; you need to be right up against the glass to really see the fish from the outside. The ladder off to the right leads up to a hatch in the roof - originally i had a ladder on the other side of the wall, but i didn't really like the way it looked all visible out there in the hallway; the other side of the prismarine wall is the Big Wall Of Maps, and the other two walls are outside, so there really weren't many options...



This may be my new favorite bench design. Need to play with trapdoor-furniture more, I'm seeing lots of possibilities...

Have a bunch of housekeeping-type things to do - repairing tools, cleaning up the mess i made with all the construction, tending the garden and animals, etc - but then it's back out to sea. I have a bunch of buried treasure maps (after sifting for duplicates - i've been finding four or five copies of the same map, all with different numbers of course so they don't stack), and I left behind all sorts of loot on shipwrecks and in ruins; and I need more fish for my tank, and I still haven't found any warm oceans. And I want to see how a conduit and trident change monument raids...

So far, very much liking all the new oceany content in 1.13.

Quote from KirinFrost»

So i read the update patch notes for 1.13 and realised that a lot of things will be changed

for a start my canals will be wrecked because of new mobs called the drowned and i dont have an easy cheap way to light them up underwater lol

Jack o' lanterns. Or even glowstone, for that matter...

next i heard that it changes biome generation?

Well, there are new ocean types; any oceans you've already discovered will just be "ocean" and won't have any of the new content - ruins, shipwrecks, ocean ravines, coral reefs - but it won't break anything, you'll just need to explore a bit to find the new ocean types.

So what are the pros and cons of updating my minecaft from 1.12? XD

Pros: there's lots of Cool New Stuff, which means new things to explore, new options for building/decorating, new mobs to fight, and all that good stuff. Cons: change always requires some adjustment. There are new dangers, which while exciting and fun can still be scary. You may need to tweak/rebuild things, especially if water's involved.

For me, the "con" list is actually also really on the "pro" list - even in cases where I still prefer the "old" way (grumblestupidclericsnolongersellingeyesofender), I like change; I nearly always update my game early in the snapshot cycle.

In the end, I only stuck around at Turtle Beach long enough to brew up a bunch of nightvision and waterbreathng potions before packing up some maps and hopping back in my boat (after kicking out yet another turtle)...

Found a largish patch of lukewarm ocean, explored several ocean ravines and raided a bunch of shipwrecks and ruins; found three maps to the same buried treasure. Spotted a pack of horses at sunrise one morning; tamed one and rode around filling in some of the landmasses on that map before setting sail again. Was just about to head back to the house to drop off loot and restock potions when i spotted an almost intact ship, still above water, anchored off the coast of a large Mesa - er, Badlands - island.

Spent the night in the hold smelting ores and freeing up inventory, then went off for a quick run around the island to fill in the map and scout it for next time - still thinking I was about to head back to the Turtle Beach house. Spent the next night, and then the next several days, raiding some of the above-ground mineshaft tunnels; I was starting to plan another Mesa - er, Badlands - village, and even marked a couple of possible locations (large, mostly-flat, at least partly foresty mesa-tops with nice scenic views and easy access to the coast). And then, I followed a tunnel out the side of a mountain, and spotted the end of a sandstone road running through the red sand.

The village - most of which is actually in the swamp - was reasonably level and easy to secure, with the exception of the three houses (big house and two small fenced-roof boxes) and farm patches on the desert/badlands border; all those hills are hollow, and there were cave openings all under those houses facing the lower village. I closed it all off, and eventually tore down those houses/farm, took down most of the hill, and extended the village fence.

Mixed-biome villages are fun; the streets along the border were a patchwork of sandstone and grass path, with lilypads on the sandstone bits.

Since then, I've been playing in the village - building, trading, planting crops and rounding up animals, getting the villagers breeding (the third mini-villager running around was a brown-robe; with someone around to keep everyone fed, I put the village expansion on hold and got to work on other projects). It's in a great location - a tiny patch of desert in a corner where badlands, swamp, and dark forest meet, with a big ocean/deep ocean just beyond the swamp. And while I took the long way 'round to get there, it's actually just over the hill from the ship.

Village is at the map marker; ship is at the yellow circle; and the top of that hill is where i grow the oaks for harvesting wood (so i don't have to cut down my nice atmospheric vine-draped lit up swamp trees). Putting in a road (with stairs up and down the mesa) is near the top of my to-do list.

I hadn't really spent a lot of time in villages since phantoms came in, and hunting/dodging phantoms in (or just outside of) a village - where I don't want a stray arrow to hit a golem, or a wandering villager, or even the village livestock - is very different than hunting them in the open (where you're also fighting the usual assortment of mobs on the ground), or at a stand-alone house/base/outpost. Most annoying was the time I was out feeding the pigs when the sun started going down, and several phantoms spawned at the first possible opportunity. But, with (probably over-) enchanted diamond armor and a full hunger bar, they don't actually hit all that hard: one night, when I was putting in the farm, I just let them fly at me while I continued hoeing and planting, and I think I actually took one out just from running up against the Thorns III chest and pants...

But I think the most fun was hanging out at the top of the church tower knocking them around with my sword, after I-don't-even-know-how-many-days of not sleeping (i slept the second or third night in the village, after chasing down a couple of the swamp sheep and crafting a bed, and then again a night or two later after dyeing it; since then, I've been either working, hunting, or trading through the night, and just before my tower-top combat-"photography" (screenshot-ography?) experiment I'd spent I-don't-even-know-how-long deep underground, so they kept coming - waiting around all night for the one or two phantoms who *finally* decide to spawn just in time to burn up in the rising sun is about as much fun as spending the night perched on a dirt pillar watching the clock.

(I did actually fall off the tower twice - both times taking advantage of a lull to check out the nighttime view from the highest point and getting hit from the wrong direction - but my armor absorbed all the damage; and after the third time i found myself swinging a sword while sliding down the ladder I covered the opening with a trapdoor )

Still a lot of work to do in the village - have a couple of big empty spaces just waiting for new construction, and functionally - besides needing more doors for breeding - i still haven't built the food/general stores yet. And there's the *massive* network of caves and ravines (which I'm pretty sure eventually connect either to the lower levels of the mesa mineshafts or the ocean ravine just past the edge of the swamp on the other side (which i haven't explored yet - ran out of potions before i got here, and the igloo i found when I dolphin-bounced to a nearby snowy island didn't have a basement), if not both) to explore, and the mesa mineshafts, and just plain mining the mesas for gold (and quarrying for terracotta)... And more ocean; the village-side ocean leads back to more snowy islands with patches of cold ocean, but i'm hoping the lukewarm ocean on the ship-side will finally lead me to some coral-filled warm oceans.

(the three long brown clay buildings are my standard village-building-materials-storage build - six doors each, chests in the floor; they're practical and go up quick, and usually get the breeding started. )

Always interesting to see how other people play!

I start by digging down to y=12 and starting a mine; I nearly always have a full set of iron gear (including armor and a bucket or two) by the time I reach the bottom. And then, once I start clearing out the space at the bottom that will become the workroom/mine storage (and, if I decide to stay and build a "real" house at my starting location, possibly a minecart station) it doesn't usually take too long to find my first dieamonds... Pickaxe, sword, enchanting table (once i find lava for obsidian). I don't really start playing until I have at least some diamond gear, and once I upgrade to diamond I pretty much never look back.

While I was waiting for some turtle eggs to hatch back at my woodland mansion, I put a roof over the fishing deck to phantom-proof it and make it safe once again for night fishing.

First attempt - acacia trapdoors - was an epic fail; I discovered the hard way that trapdoors are completely transparent. And I was playing with the sound down, wearing minimally-enchanted leather while I repaired my tools... Good thing they fly back up after attacking, I had time to heal and change into my good armor before he swooped in for another attack.



I replaced most of the trapdoors with slabs... It still feels open, but there's enough phantom-safe area for night fishing; and I think I kind of like this one better, anyway.

As always, the last turtle egg (in the pen on the small island in the middle of the lake in the above pics) took *forever* to hatch. Once my tools were all Mended, I spent the next few nights phantom hunting: running around the gardens, swimming in the lake, hanging out at the fountain... Ultimately, I think the best phantom-hunting spot at my woodland base is that nice, flat, mostly-open roof.

I tried luring one into the firepit, but I think *i'm* more likely to fall in than a low-flying phantom... After a couple of close calls I moved up to the more-open-but-less-interesting upper roof, aimed my bow at the skies, and watched the exp and phantom membranes rain down.

Once the last of the turtles was all grown up and my new turtle-shell fishing hat was crafted and enchanted I went to work on my next rail segment, extending the western line down to Turtle Beach. This was my first time tunneling under "new" oceans, which made for some interesting new challenges... Every ocean i've tunneled under (in this world, at least) has been one massive tangle of mineshafts/caves/ravines; occaisionally, i'd follow some flowing water up to a one or two block "hole" in the dirt ocean floor, or more rarely a sand/gravel cave-in would flood a tunnel, but it was mostly dry. Now, the dry mineshafts/caves/ravines all intersected with open-and-watery-to-the-surface ocean ravines; entire sections of mineshaft were washed out, and I ended up tunneling across several sections of open water. Never big enough to play-test my newly-crafted-and-still-never-used Conduit, but I think I'll be packing some waterbreathing and nightvision potions into my supply cart on future rail-expansion expeditions...

And glass blocks. I didn't have quite enough sand in inventory for a full glass-block tunnel across the obsidian/magma block lake (i'll be going back to fix that next), there's just the window for now.

Near the end of the line, a vein of ores led to a pocket of dirt which opened to a network of caves which led to a ravine which ultimately connected up to a mineshaft I'd previously found but not fully explored. Always nice when that happens.

Finally, made it back to the Turtle Beach house; it was a rainy day, and the turtles were mostly hanging out on the dock and in the garden. For aquatic creatures, they don't seem to spend all that much time in the water...

Next up, some work around the house - unpacking the minecarts full of resources sent over and loot collected along the way, expanding and re-sorting the storage/workroom, fixing up and decorating the house - and then settting off to explore more new ocean.

Quote from Sharpe103»

Boy, isn't that the truth!

Great post, Pykaxe! I didn't think I'd ever noticed your posts before, but I looked back through you history and see we've conversed briefly in the past. You must take extended breaks like I do. I play Minecraft for about six months, then take a six-month break every year since I started playing sometime before the Horse Update.

When did you start this world?

Thanks! I do take breaks now and again - never planned, just RL getting in the way - but I also don't post as much as I think I do.

I started this world july 2015 - it was originally a test world for the 1.9 snapshots (and looking back through my posts, it looks like i was still calling a test world almost until 1.9 was released, even as I stopped playing my previous worlds), but it very quickly became my "real" world. And after all the time I've spent exploring, building, and digging my rail network, I don't think I'll ever "retire" it... At least not before I've completely filled up that map wall, and built everything on the never-ending "someday" project list, and maybe even visit the end...

Why are you running around in leather armor? O.o Enchanted diamond takes most of the sting out of the occaisional stray hit; even when one got me while i was wearing my minimally-enchanted leather fishing gear (pro tip: trap-door roofs do *not* keep phantoms from spawning) I was never in mortal danger, and had plenty of time to heal and change back into my "real" armor before he swooped down for another attack.

It's easier to take them out with a bow than a sword - easiest to target when they're flying at you, although i have managed to hit them when they were circling overhead... Phantom hunting (especially after many days of not sleeping - nothing as disappointing as waiting around all night for that one stray pre-dawn phantom to spawn) can be fun: find a nice reasonably clear and well-lit (so you're not also being mobbed by zombies and creepers) hunting ground, aim your bow at the skies, and just wait for all that exp to rain down...

Also, reasonably easy to keep them from spawning without having to sleep: stay indoors, underground, or under some sort of shelter. If you're out exploring or travelling or whatever, caves and villages are always good places to pass the night; if you toss up a temporary shelter, just put a roof on it.

Why would you ever kill your librarians? O.o

I'll admit to occaisionally encouraging a green-robe to wander out the village gate into a cactus wall, but generally I try to keep my villagers alive and happy... And a librarian might have two crap books and an awesome third book, or three crap books, or three really-overpriced-but-it'll-do-in-an-emergency books. If none of the librarians in your village have books you're interested in, build more houses (or check the next village in your trade network)...

I use villager trades a lot to Mend my tools, and a smith with good coal/iron prices can be an almost endless supply of both emeralds and exp... Farmers are great sources of emeralds too if you have one, you can usually keep going without having to buy too much.

Explored the new oceans around my Turtle Beach house, and found several shipwrecks, two buried treasures, a large deep oceany ravine (which led to a dry cave system and a mineshaft - my inventory was already pretty full, so i just grabbed a quick stack of rails and marked the location for later), and an entire village of ocean ruins. Fought several more trident-wielding drowned, still no drops...

Made my way back home, where I got completely distracted from the ocean exploration project - when i walked into the map room to place the new maps on the map wall and file the backup copies, I took one look at the bright carpet abstract fake-map on the big table and decided that it was time to fix it. Played around a bit, decided on a level-2 map of the region around the house; crafted a stack of maps, packed a boat and a saddle and a crap-ton of paper, and set off to fill a 5x5 grid. It was actually kind of interesting re-exploring - following two-year-old trails of torches up and down steep mountains, spending the night in lit-up-but-undeveloped villages, finding lost boats (including one carrying a pair of sheep) and saddled horses...

The map table looks much better now. (i also added banner-labels to the house and village; they don't show up at all on a fully zoomed-out map, but you can read them on a level-2 one, although it's hard to see in the pics here)

As always, the first view of home after a long 'splore is always a welcome sight; usually I approach the house by water, but this time I decided to just run up and over the mountain instead of rowing around.


(it was a laggy night, the trees and mountains behind the barn were still rendering; impatient to get home, I grabbed a pic and then cannon-balled off the top of the dark oak i was standing on into the lake and started to swim across, before coming to my senses and getting back in the boat... )

Next up: hatching some turtles on the beach behind the house, maybe some work on the garden, and then once again off in search of warm(er) oceans...

Quote from Mr_N_Derman»

I deleted the lighting and the eggs started to crack shortly afterwards, but as i found out later they take a long time to hatch anyway, I wasn't sure whether deleting the light had made a difference. I also didn't consider what the baby turtles would do once hatched; when the first (and only so far) one hatched, it squeaked then proceeded to swim off at breakneck speed; I lost it within a few seconds! So now the rest are enclosed in an outer wall, at some point, i will have to design & build (or copy from YT) a small hatchery.

Pretty sure the timing is just random - my first cluster of eggs cycled rapidly through the growth stages, but the last of the single eggs was stuck in the first stage *forever*. I think I'm going to stick with the temporary fencing - i'm not planning on starting a scute factory, will probably just be hatching a handful of eggs here and there. Over at Turtle Beach I'll mostly be harvesting the eggs to transport elsewhere, so definitely want to keep those beaches clear...