The starter, main, and so far only base, located at Spawn and permanently incomplete. All rails will lead to Roam, from where you can roam around the world if you want to.
Old Roam
The classic first‐night shelter was dug about 100 m south of Spawn, hastily cut into the rock where a wide bowl carves into the foot of the nearby peak.
This wooden door was the shelter’s original entrance and sees virtually no use nowadays. For convenience getting to and from the surface, a small head house was added above with a simple ladder linking the two. (−258 W / −82 N), looking southwest.
The shelter now holds only minimal amenities – a bed, crafting table, and furnace, all now gathering dust – as basically all workspace and storage has moved north. A staircase leads down to a branch mine we’ll look at later.
The stairs and ladder make it less annoying, but without wings or wheels it’s still a long walk between home and the mines.
Topside, many of the trees here were mined for early crafting, not to mention for better visibility of hostile mobs. The first nether portal was built here as well, a safe distance from the main base, and originally led to a quick death in the basalt deltas; I had to establish a second portal (out at (+213 E / +925 S), in the plains to the southeast) and dig back to this one’s target coordinates to link up a new, less hazardous portal instead. After an… incident… with Doggo, it was gated to discourage further inadvertant dimension‐hopping. (This is an old screenshot; the portal has now been moved north into the future Roam Station.)
Once the house was finished, I really only came over here to use the portal and, if returning at night, to duck into the shelter and get some sleep. Now that the portal’s been moved, I plan to abandon the area and replant the forest. (−292 W / −87 N), looking northeast.
I put off building a proper house for awhile, with the first establishments closer to Spawn being cow and wheat farms. While still sheltering here to the south and storing everything down in the mine, I eventually tired of climbing over the hill there and back all the time and just cut through it. For a long time, this path ended just on the other side of the tunnel – in part because lazy, and in part because I put off properly building anything I’d consider permanent and didn’t want to spend time on more paths only to redo them later. Because lazy. (−277 W / −96 N), looking north.
North of the tunnel, the forest begins to clear and we see more signs of life. (−274 W / −138 N), looking north.
Just up the path is our first junction. (−260 W / −165 N), looking northeast.
Let’s head downstairs first.
Roam Station (construction paused)
Long‐term plans call for an Overworld rail network with trunk lines meeting here. While the Nether’s Deltas & Valley railway is useful for fast, semi‐automated trips, and rocketing through the wilderness with a pair of elytra will eventually be the choice for often faster (but attention‐demanding) travel, it’s an accepted fact that the entire point of Minecraft – the end goal of every world – is to build out a massive scenic rail system for leisurely enjoying the fruits of players’ exploration, mining, and crafting. But I don’t have iron or gold farms yet, and haven’t even made it out to (let alone beyond) the Halo, and the whole thing would be kind of an endgame flex, so, y’know. Back burner for now. Still, someday, you’ll be able to walk down these stairs, select “2011 Minecraft,” and be whisked away on a sightseeing journey to Beta‐land.
In the meantime, the entrance and concourse – a large world map room, plus the area’s nether portal – are open, albeit unfinished.
The map room is built just a tad deep so as to keep the ponds above intact and natural. The station itself will be down another story. (−254 W / −170 N), looking north.
It’s probably no surprise that, even in its incomplete state, this has already become the staging and breakdown area for long mapping expeditions, with a cartography table and related supplies readily available. It’s even decorated with the “master copies” of all marker banners.
Though not obvious from this shot, the map room is still under construction (so… many… bookshelves…) with some design details to be finalized, but it’s off to a nice start, I think. The ceiling in particular could still use a little jazzing up.
(Old screenshot.) An underground floor map (versus a map wall) means there’s plenty of room for it to grow, and no need to climb around just to see the whole thing.
All maps are archived in the library here for safekeeping until they need to be updated. Thankfully Papyri’s “maps” layer makes it easy to look up the map IDs for an area, so I’ve just taken the easy route here and sorted them sequentially, only separating by dimension and zoom level.
Oh, and don’t tell anyone, but there’s also a seecret passage in the back…
Heading back out the main entrance and up to the surface…
The farms
At the top of the stairs is a fairly standard fully‐automated pumpkin (and melon) farm, producing approx. 58 pumpkins and 38 melon slices per hour. An alarm pioneered at the nearby sugar cane farm sounds a bell and flashes a lamp when the output chest fills and the hoppers start to back up.
It’s a bit boring, but the look has grown on me. (−260 W / −165 N), looking northeast.
Action shot. I’m proud of the trapdoor roof!
The sugar cane farm (also fully automated, producing approx. 53 sugar cane per hour) is just downhill and has a more cobbled‐together look, courtesy of my indecisiveness while building the house. (I had a variety of leftover slabs.) I stole the redstone from Pixlriffs, who’s demonstrated it in multiple videos over the years, most recently in S2 Ep.22 of the Minecraft Survival Guide. But I did add some tricks of my own – besides the aforementioned alarm, a silent dropper pipe raises the output chest to floor level so the interior doesn’t need to be so tall.
The door to the left is probably unnecessary, but allows for access to the buried redstone in case something manages to mess with the hopper carts. (−260 W / −179 N), looking west.
The interior could benefit from a trapdoor roof like the one in the pumpkin farm.
The path winds a ways away from most everything else at the ranch to a small shack at the edge of the forest, actually the entrance to a mediocre mob farm.
A small plot of nylium with ample space for scaffolding is used to farm huge warped fungi, the stems of which are used extensively for the D&VRy, particularly where the lines are tunneled and unexposed. (−281 W / −206 N), looking northwest.
The head house is but a shelter for the water elevators, though it still feels nice and airy for its size, I think.
I had wanted to put the farm underground because I didn’t want to stare at a big ugly tower around home (and wasn’t confident I could build a big pretty tower to house it). I know this isn’t optimal because it puts unexplored caves (and, at night, the surface) within spawning range to compete with it, but efficiency isn’t everything, and we have a similarly “suboptimal” tower on my friends’ SMP server that manages to fill up just fine while we’re farming around the base or whatever.
Turns out either my friends and I have done way more local caving than I thought, or here in this world there’re just a lot more caves around that I haven’t found yet – because so far, this farm is pretty disappointing. Not totally, but pretty.
This was the yield after scaffolding up high and AFKing for about five minutes: About three creepers and two skeletons. It’s not much use as an experience farm like I had originally hoped, but at least leaving the fires lit provides a slow trickle of common drops while I do other stuff in the area.
One positive (and a benefit of building underground) is that this is a slime chunk!
Li’l squishies~
Actually, “a slime chunk”? What I meant is it’s built in the middle of a line of three adjacent slime chunks. Some redesign and expansion is in order… eventually. If you’re interested in the behind‐the‐scenes, see this post, but I mostly consider this a failed experiment for now and don’t want to fill this page with it.
Returning back to the main path and continuing north, we pass a crop field (here only growing wheat because I’d run out, but usually mixed with carrots, potatoes, and beetroot) and come to the ceremonial gold block marking Spawn itself, (−256 W / −192 N).
(Slightly old screenshot.) A few animal enclosures and a small planting of bamboo lay beyond the wheat, with a composter turning all those extra seeds into a chest full of bone meal. (−246 W / −201 N), looking southeast.
This is an animal cruelty‐free world, so I still rely on shearing by hand for all of my wooly needs. Sure, you could automate the process with dispensers and observers, like so, with a hopper cart circling underneath to collect everything:
This is uh… from a creative test world, for demonstration purposes only. Definitely not (−218 W / −183 N), looking northwest.
But who would do such a thing? Confinement is no way to live.
Pay no attention to the overgrown tree out back. (−215 W / −188 N), looking southwest.
Just across the river is a desert temple that provided some helpful early loot. That river now hosts some kelp brought home from an ocean to the northeast, mostly for its use in building water elevators.
The temple was (and still is) partially buried, though I’ve cleared some sand here and there over time.
The northernmost build at Roam is this stable for my horses, Bedrock and Muffins.
Slightly old screenshot; the lamp posts have been removed now that they’re no longer needed for spawnproofing. (−255 W / −235 N), looking northeast.
Whew! That’s about it for the ranch… there’s just one spot left to see.
I’m proud of my little house. Build elements I don’t normally do well include non‐rectangular layouts, sloped roofs, mixed materials, and literally anything built with form ahead of function, so this is a victory for me. (Credit to Everchange for the only Survival‐friendly 1×1 chimney smoke trick I could find.) And one more farm: Sweet berry bushes under the window, doubling as ornamentals. That’s agrifuture! The bees seem to enjoy it. (−243 W / −203 N), looking northwest.
The house (and the mine)
Welcome!
Come on in; make yourself at home. (−251 W / −218 N), looking north.
The pressure plates are linked by hidden redstone to both doors – so they open in sync and then close behind you on your way out. (−251 W / −222 N), looking south.
This is the place to relax after a long day’s adventuring. Do wish I had more than the one music disc in the barrel, though…
The fireplace, a later addition, took a few tries to get right (and still feels a little… chunky, to me), but the andesite walls (as opposed to full blocks) helped save it while also preserving most of the windows. The critters (From left: Doggo, Ghost, Meowth, and Domino; not pictured due to old screenshot: Calico and two unnamed kitties) all seem to enjoy gathering around it, too. (−250 W / −227 N), looking southeast.
The west windows are a bit smaller than the big picture windows in the rest of the room, but still make sunset a lovely sight each evening. The spiral staircase was rebuilt several times to make the most of the view. (−250 W / −226 N), looking west.
Next we’ll see the enchanting loft. It’s where I loft. And sleep.
“Paradisträd” shades some glowstone that would otherwise shine right in your face coming upstairs.
There may be no west‐facing windows up here, but it’s still got its own sunset experience. (−251 W / −224 N), looking southwest.
The loft was, admittedly, an afterthought, added on after the roof was already in place. It’s a bit of a cozy space, but I love how it turned out, and it’s my favorite part of the house now (not that there’s much to choose from). (−255 W / −224 N), looking east.
My bed is tucked in this little space behind the bookshelves, with east‐facing windows to catch the morning sun. A poppy and white tulip grow in the mossy windowboxes; the bees are frequent visitors. (−247 W / −222 N), looking northeast.
Good morning!
I’m a fan of the view out these south windows. (−253 W / −222 N), looking south.
The one from the dome over the enchanting table ain’t bad either. (−250 W / −225 N), looking north.
Spiraling back down to the basement… we find that it’s rather a mess, actually.
Building a proper (and automated) storage system is overdue.
There’s a variety of workstations and even a few more chests, plus a well set into the wall for brewing purposes.
The real goodies, though, are in the subbasement vault, hewn from the surrounding rock with veins of decorative stone still visible and polished up. An extra layer of stone bricks separates it from the building above (fire insurance from long before I’d scrounged up any copper for a lightning rod), and there’s room for expansion in most directions.
Coming down from the basement, the first sight is a rail station, a shuttle to the mine beneath Old Roam. (Old screenshot: The tunnel on the right is now sealed up and definitely not turned into a seecret passage to the map room.) (−254 W / −221 N), looking south.
There are only a few chests, but the most valuable items are safely stowed down here. Besides mine access, it’s also convenient to the blast furnaces…
…and to one janky furnace setup for smelting oddball items. Speaking of oddballs, there are two more exotic farms down here: Nether wart and glow berries. The far wall held maps until it was outgrown and the need arose for a real map room.
The rail shuttle was built with enough power to keep any type of cart at top speed – an important detail as it allowed a chest cart to follow you if desired. It was also an early project, built while all my storage was still down in the mine (so it could be put to work for the move over here!), but the stations have since been redesigned with inspiration from this wonderfully overengineered system by CR3WProductionz, as my original version took up more space and required manually breaking and replacing the carts at each end.
The line is short, just 0.20 km according to the Statistics screen, but it sure beats going back up to the surface and back down again at the other end. As in the vault, natural veins of the more exotic stone types have been left in place and polished up. (−251 W / −183 N), looking south.
From the bottom of the ramp, the tunnel turns right, heading southwest to the mine. (−251 W / −161 N), Quake Pro, looking west.
The hub at the bottom of the staircase was my “base” until the house was built. This end of the line may look utilitarian compared to the polish of the vault and tunnel, but it’s no less functional.
The hidden redstone is pretty straightforward. There are only two circuits: All the button does is activate the passenger track’s powered rail, then after a three‐second delay, the chest’s; and either detector rail simply switches the line from the passenger track to the chest track, with a slight delay before deactivating and switching back. On departure, this briefly sends the passenger cart onto the opposite track, where it rebounds off the chest cart and out onto the line to be followed. On arrival, it goes directly onto its own track, setting the switch for the chest cart behind it to arrive on the other track. (−321 W / −90 N), looking south.
The same staircase we saw near the start of the tour, dug down from the original shelter in Old Roam.
Following the update to 1.19, the staircase now continues all the way down to Y=−54 (for diamonds and, hopefully, the deep dark), with additional hubs at −17 for gold and −3 for copper and lapis.
