Village People

Entry 3 (February 21, 2022)

Well, I haven’t done much building since last time. I made some minor changes to the wheat/pumpkin farm (same size plot, but it’s got the whole variety pack now – beetroot, carrots, melons, potatoes, and pumpkins along with the wheat) and… not much else.

I’ve been able to do quite a bit more enchanting and combining, and with this, a lot of fishing for treasure and more levels. I pulled up several enchanted fishing rods, one with Mending, and now have an almost perfect one – just needs Unbreaking and another tier of Luck of the Sea. My regular bow is upgraded, and I’ve got another with Flame which should be a nice safety measure when I go TNT mining for ancient debris. Besides those, I have two more bows in the bank with Mending… but still no Infinity in sight. My armor’s all got Protection III, too. Details here if you want them.

What I did do a lot more of is exploring, because after well over a year (in game days) I still hadn’t lucked into sighting a village nearby to the edge of the Core. Thankfully, that particular quest has come to an end! – but we’ll get to that. I was working with my bees (still haven’t made those candles tho) and trying to tick off the related advancements, getting frustrated with Total Beelocation “not working,” when I realized that its description is literal: Moving a crafted bee hive, like the one outside my house, won’t meet its requirements; it has to be a naturally spawned bee nest. So I set out in search of another…

Just… what is going on here? I thought bees only spawn with nests – but there’s a whole swarm headed into the mega taiga, where there aren’t any nests. And that mega taiga’s big, too. (−691 W / −681 N), looking southwest.

Seriously, this is nuts. (−798 W / −805 N), zoomed, looking south.

Alright, onwards to new territory.

I decided first to head west and fill in another gap of the Core relatively close to home.

I think I really play Minecraft more for the exploration than anything else. I can’t wait to make it out to some proper Caves & Cliffs‐era mountains, but the former ones ain’t so bad either. (−1,543 W / −170 N), looking west.

(−1,504 W / −724 N), looking northwest.

I was excited to find what I thought was a small, sparse flower forest – nope. Just a plain ol’ plains, albeit one with a bouquet of flower patches in close proximity to each other. (−1,198 W / +9 S), looking northwest.

Finally, a decent sized sunflower plains! The others I’d come across were just little patches. (−1,376 W / +40 S), looking southwest.

…and then I found this one that just spreads out wide, even crossing the river and up the mountainside. (−1,547 W / +422 S), looking west.

(−1,919 W / +49 S), looking northwest.

On the way back home, I found a ruined portal I’d missed on a previous trip. And I’d been in the very same canyon – turning around and going around the bend, there’s a cave entrance I’d already stuck a torch in! (−1,055 W / +776 S), looking southwest.

Another day, I went off in another direction. I hadn’t explored directly south of my second portal (+213 E / +925 S), so that seemed like a good place to start. I left Bedrock at home for this one and took the shortcut through the Nether, quickly reaching the jungle I explored last time (which actually extends a good deal east on the mainland, and still south of where this mission covered). But I found some surprises there…

…like a whole flower forest hidden in the middle of the jungle! (I thought it was my first – but my progress on Adventuring Time sits firmly at 30/42 biomes visited.)^{note 1} (+717 E / +1,783 S), looking northwest.

Oh, and this little friend. (+628 E / +1,775 S), camera looking north.

There wasn’t much else of note on that map, but that night, I went out again. Back through the Nether, Doggo and I headed west across the plains and sea with the goal of filling another map and, hopefully, spotting a village off its edge.

We found this “saltwater” lake, cut off from the ocean in the background. (−1,183 W / +1,580 S), looking southwest.

Oh, this… this is beautiful. (−1,532 W / +1,951 S), looking northwest.

It’s actually more impressive from the other side, showing just how far those sunflowers go… (−1,791 W / +1,958 S), looking northeast.

I went to bed IRL and continued the next morning…

Another near‐miss – I didn’t notice this ruined portal under the snowfall until I was right on top of it. (I took a lot of the snow home with me to make it clear on the map.) (−1,264 W / +1,538 S), looking southeast.

After coming down the mountain and continuing west, I found a shipwreck (−1,352 W / +1,656 S). No treasure or map chests, but among its supplies were my first potatoes! I thought this would be the highlight of the day.

I was wrong.

Reaching the western edge of the Core and moving north a bit to prepare for another sweep back east, I scaffolded up above the forest to have a peek further west, just on the off chance that there might be…

…oh yes.

Finally, on day 486, off in the distance just outside my self‐imposed core of lonesomeness… I spotted my first village. (−2,081 W / +1,600 S), looking northwest.

I was excited to run in and meet my first new villager friends – but it would have to wait until morning. (−2,102 W / +1,514 S), looking west.

And then I realized just how hazardous this village was to its citizens (though, let’s be honest, Minecraft is capable of far worse) and, instead of taking screenshots, spent the next few game days and several trips back and forth to Spawn making it less likely any would die to, say, untimely zombification.

Classic Minecraft village planning. Let’s build a town right next to an open pit crossed by abandoned mineshafts, sure. Thankfully there’s only paths around here and no actual homes or worksites, so the resident nitwit here is the only one I’ve seen wander close. (−2,225 W / +1,576 S), looking southwest.

One of the three cave openings in the village. (−2,310 W / +1,521 S), looking northeast.

Besides the caves, two and a half sides are right on the edge of a roofed forest, which admittedly makes for a pretty setting… just, you know. Zombie issues for them, creeper issues for me… not a good time. I spammed a lotta torches and will probably end up trimming the forest back eventually.

This place is mostly a farming town (making my earlier potato find retroactively underwhelming), but there’s also a couple of fishermen, a fletcher, and a mason, along with the nitwit and an unemployed villager. I decided the latter could become my Mending guy, because everybody needs a Mending guy. It only took a few rerolls for them to offer that book and I spent basically all my looted emeralds on a few :)☺︎

My Mending guy in their newly‐built (if small and still bare) library. (−2,280 W / +1,5246 S), looking west.

On my last visit, bringing glass for the library but managing to forget the bookshelves, I noticed another unemployed villager – I’m not sure if I just missed them before or if they’re young and grew up while I was building, but I think a career as a cleric is in their future… or maybe… IDK. I’ll have to think on it. Armorer would be good, too, for backup gear (I don’t exactly have the best record in the End) and that surprisingly XP‐rich iron ingot trade.

That last visit also led to my first cat sighting! I was hoping there’d be some on the outskirts of town, and eventually bribed one with a few salmon to come home with me. Whoever coined the phrase “herding cats” had the right idea – I didn’t think to bring a lead, so getting them through two portals and not back out the way they came in was a chore. But we made it!

Meet Ghost. Immediately after coming inside for the first time, they pushed Doggo off the couch. Such a realistic game.

Oh! I forgot to mention – I got overambitious in trying to build a Nether tunnel network. When I first made the portal near the village and went through, I landed in a soul sand valley (just need to find a warped forest now!) and, as the world was still loading around me, heard a ghast shoot and my brand‐new portal shatter. Not the greatest welcome I’ve had. So I decided to dig a safe tunnel between there and the Spawn portal – down at Y=13 to hopefully find some ancient debris along the way. (And that part was a good idea – I got five and upgraded Slick Pick to netherite! Adding Mending to it made it my very first piece of perfect gear~)

I had to zig and zag multiple times to avoid large lava pockets, though, and my initial staircase even went right into the lava ocean – I tried getting through with gravel, but eventually gave up and just bridged over to land. It wasn’t worth the time it was taking. When I rebuild a proper one, I’m just going to do it around Y=64 or so and wall it in. Then once the old tunnel is disused I can just pepper it with TNT to mine more debris >:D😈

That does leave the question of what to do next, though. Choices, choices…

One last thing: Mojang released the first experimental snapshot for Minecraft 1.19 this week, finally giving the playtesting public a chance to visit the deep dark, find ancient cities, and encounter the warden. If you don’t mind spoilers, check out this reaction video from Pixlriffs (whose Minecraft Survival Guide series, by the way, ought be considered essential viewing for all players – especially those who are new or returning, but even veterans can pick up a new trick or two – and I say this as someone who almost never watches Let’s Plays). Things clearly aren’t finished (i.e. the warden can be “cheesed” for now), but I’m even more excited for the Wild Update now, and less upset about the delays finishing what was promised for Caves & Cliffs.