First, a quick site update. Every good Web 1.0 site needs a background image instead of a plain one, so I’ve added a little texture in the form of some coal blocks. (Or snow if your browser requests a light theme, but dark is the default.) Tweaked a few other minor things, but that’s the most obvious one.
I wised up and shrunk all the screenshots. Sorry if you were on 56k mobile data. (You can of course still click through for full‐size glory.)
…annnnnnnd I spent a few days searching Stack Exchange for ways to whip Leaflet (the code behind Papyri, which is the code behind my world map) more into the shape I want it. I think I understand JavaScript even less now than when I started, which is kind of impressive since I didn’t know any JavaScript when I started. I’m happy with where it’s sitting now, though. I’ve added a “custom” layer for things that aren’t quite suited for being marked by banners, the key is now available on the map itself even when it’s opened in its own tab, and if it’s opened up anywhere other than Spawn it’ll automatically drop a pin instead of leaving you to guess where I was trying to point. Pretty snazzy.
The entrance is a short walk west of the house, just downhill and across a pond. (Yes, I still need to make paths.)
It only houses the water elevators, but still feels nice and airy for its size, I think. (See that torch through the window, just inside the forest? Remember it for later.)
“Elevator” is actually a bit of a misnomer for going down – it’s just a drop shaft, since that’s faster and safer than a magma water elevator. (Yes, safer – Minecraft logic says half a meter of water is enough to break any fall (60 m in this case), but no amount of water can stop magma from burning you.)
The drop shaft exits onto a short hallway to the kill area. With the fires put out, the standard trio of hostile mobs should land here with just a half‐heart of health remaining, for one‐hit farming of experience and loot. Only… things didn’t quite work out as planned.
I 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 the farm, 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. So 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. Right now it’s not much use as an experience farm like I 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, and I finally have a few slimeballs!
Li’l squishies~
I used the slime to craft a pair of leads and finally get friendly with a couple of the local horses, who I’ve named Bedrock and Muffins. (I’ll need to build a stable for them.) And did I say “slime chunk”? I meant it’s built in the middle of a line of three adjacent slime chunks. Some redesign and expansion is in order… eventually. (Hence the lack of path to the head house.)
Detour: Muffins (left) and Bedrock (right).
Back underground, let’s take a look at the workings…
A door in the hallway provides maintenance access.
Up another water elevator, we find ourselves in a small tunnel behind the east wall of the spawning floor. Once I have some amethyst, I plan to install tinted glass to peek inside, but for now the wall has to remain opaque to keep the room dark.
Taking the ladder down, this lever controls lamps in the spawning floor, allowing the room to be lit safely and prevent spawning (slimes excepted).
Here I’ve cut a hole in the wall for our tour. This style of mob farm is about as old as the game itself (though I modified a design from Voltrox and copied the kill area from friends): Hostile mobs spawn in the dark and are funneled to a not‐quite‐deadly fall.
The wool in the ceiling is for a redstone circuit above, where an Etho hopper clock toggles water dispensers in the ceiling every ten seconds or so.
The water flushes any mobs (or at least some of them) into the central channels leading to the drop. The trapdoors were to trick mobs into walking off the edge on their own (before the water dispensers were added), but that was even less productive. I’ll need to address both issues when I eventually redo this thing.
Finally, a look down onto the kill area from above.
Construction, at least, yielded a lot of goodies, including the discovery of a massive, multilayered labyrinth of mineshafts intersecting a ravine and various caves. Fortune mining helped with a few more levels to spend, and I’ve now got some magic pants and shoes (both with Protection and Unbreaking, and the latter with Depth Strider too, all at tier III). After almost managing to use it up, I also repaired my Silk Touch pick and upgraded its Efficiency from IV to V – and it now bears the proud name Slick Pick.
Construction also yielded a thunderstorm, which I quickly slept away. Thankfully I went up to the surface to make sure my house hadn’t been struck by the thunder I’d heard – because while my roof was fine, the lightning had sparked a forest fire instead!
I was able to extinguish it before it spread too far, but it did manage to claim several trees. (Remember that torch I mentioned earlier, through the window? It’s on one of the stumps that remained after the fire, not far from the new building!)
The smoke cloud at least had a silver lining in that it led to me finding a couple more nearby cave entrances I hadn’t noticed yet. I’m looking forward to caving for more goodies (and speeding up the farm bit by bit as I light my way).
The adventure I went on instead of caving, though, was mounting up Bedrock and riding them south towards the Z=+2,048 border in hope of spotting a village just outside the Core. Spoiler: I still haven’t found one. But! I did find a jungle and quite a few goodies!
On the way, Minecraft provided scenery, as Minecraft tends to do.
A neat confluence of generation: A tiny sunflower plains, a pumpkin patch spread across a cave opening, and a monolith looking over it all. (−155 W / +1,056 S), looking southeast.
I always love finding big overhangs and such with water and lava falling down from the sky. It’s just so… Minecraft. (−179 W / +1,147 S), looking west.
Making our way into the jungle. (−156 W / +1,733 S), looking south. (The one I’d found before was mostly “off the edge of the map” starting around (−2,110 W / −2,100 N), so this one’s a much more convenient trip, especially with a portal already established relatively close by.)
Jungles are quite a lush biome, with a variety of flora and fauna not found anywhere else.
I wasn’t able to get close enough to befriend them, but I spotted an ocelot!
This particular jungle seems to be an archipelago. I headed a bit south onto the ocean and sailed west to continue mapping. The beached shipwreck at (−671 W / +1,839 S) had a couple special treasures inside: Carrots and moss! Night Vision potions will be handy for all those deep ruins and shipwrecks I need to go back and explore in the northeast…
A normal day in Minecraft: A player and their wolf in a rowboat, towing a surprisingly buoyant and hydrodynamic horse on a surprisingly strong lead across the ocean, as one does. (Didn’t note the coordinates of this one, but I think the river mouth in the background is the one around (−280 W / +1,845 S).)
Returning to the jungle, I spied some overgrown cobblestone on the river – my first jungle temple! (And when I mapped it, I noticed a splotch of maroon about 70 m to the northwest – a ruined portal that I would have totally missed amid the foliage, but that was obvious from above!)
No novel loot, but more iron and gold is always good, and free sticky pistons are free sticky pistons. (−353 W / +1,689 S), looking northeast.
This little bastard happily ate about three dozen pumpkin seeds and still just flew off on their merry way after instead of coming home on my shoulder. (−344 W / +1,589 S), looking southwest.
I was able to take some melons and cocoa beans home for planting, not to mention jungle saplings and nearly a stack of wood to match. More farms to put on the to‐do list, I guess…
Heading for home with a full inventory (and ender chest – finally made a few of those), I came across this little one out fishing.
When I got back, I noticed a little more progress on some advancements: I’m up to 13/24 on Monsters Hunted (up from 12 thanks to those slimes) and 30/42 on Adventuring Time (from 28). More importantly, I finally started paying some proper attention to decorating my home.
From outside, the most visible improvement is the chimney puffing away.
Credit to Everchange for the only Survival‐friendly 1×1 chimney smoke trick I could find. (Old view here.)
Stepping inside, the difference is night and day. Paintings and a “sofa” add some much needed color and variety to the place, and the staircase is more safely fenced in.
The entryway benefits from a couple paintings as well. (Old view here.)
Recessed lanterns in the ceiling have been replaced with glowstone, which does double duty lighting the next floor. The fireplace 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 preserving most of the windows too. Just needs a plant pot on the mantel, I think… (Old view here.)
Sitting cozy by the fire.
“Paradisträd” shades some glowstone that would otherwise shine right in your face coming upstairs.
The room feels much less cramped thanks to the bookshelves nearest the stairs being moved up onto a second tier, and to the floor no longer being dotted with slabs. A barrel “cabinet” among the shelves holds some lapis lazuli and spare books for enchanting, replacing the awkward chest from before.
I had wanted to farm shroomlights to use here because I always thought of glowstone as clashing with a lot of other textures – but it’s grown on me, and actually matches quite well with the spruce planks. I do really like the look of shroomlights as floor lighting here as well, but I’m not a fan of how it looks from below as ceiling lighting, so I’ll be replacing this one. (Old view here.)
My bed is tucked in this cozy space behind the bookshelves, and I’ve added some tiny east‐facing windows to catch the morning sun. That moss I found in the shipwreck was put to use for these windowboxes.
Downstairs, things are mostly the same.
In the basement, I’ve filled in part of the hole in the wall since filling bottles just needs a single water source and not an infinite one, and there’s a clock to remind me to sleep when I take too long sorting inventory. (Old view here.)
The little nether wart farm in the subbasement is even littler since I needed a couple of the soul sand blocks for those water elevators. There’s another clock here and a permanent ender chest, and of course the map wall is updated too. (Old view here.)
Time to head back upstairs and check out the sunset.
The glass safety wall around the staircase preserves the view. (Old view here.)
The second floor might not have any west‐facing windows, but it still offers its own sunset experience.
One last thing… bees! I’ve come across a few nests in the nearby woods and finally harvested some honeycomb to start a new hive around my farms. Maybe I’ll put some candles upstairs.
