Workin’ on the Railroad

Entry 4 (March 19, 2022)

Been a little while thanks to real life, but I’ve done some more work around…

To start, I’ve been busy enchanting again. Still no other “perfect” items besides Slick Pick, but just about everything’s been improved in some way or another. My Mending guy has been a big help with that, as has all the fishing I’ve been doing to mend my gear. I also did a little TNT mining, which yielded enough debris for another netherite ingot, and my other pick – now Fortune Red – got the upgrade. Well, if my next piece of netherite gear is yet another pick, it will only be because something went terribly wrong…

That deep tunnel out to the village – which I’ve decided to call Intersylva for its location tucked between those two roofed forests – is already due for future blasting, because I went ahead and replaced it with a separate and fully polished up rail tunnel as the first branch of my Nether hub. Much of my playtime since the last post has been spent working on that important link.

Even up at Y=64, there’s ancient debris to be found. Railway construction pays off.

My quest to decorate this new line involved a subquest of finally getting my hands on some warped “wood.” I decided to head north from home to the desert temple at (−470 W / −1,814 N) – it’s a good distance in the opposite direction from where I’ve been in the Nether so far, the temple makes for a low‐effort shelter, and it’s close to the ocean where I left quite a number of ruins and shipwrecks unexplored. I built a portal and headed in… only to find yet more basalt deltas. Sigh.

I wasn’t about to give up, though, and began tunneling and bridging my way farther north. After some distance, I broke through a wall and found myself looking over the lava sea in the “grand cavern” of the Nether. Determined, I dug a staircase up through the landmass until I was topside, right as the deltas give way to the wastes.

Looking around, I immediately saw the bridges of a fortress not far in the distance, which I’ll have to explore later. (−47 W / −289 N), looking east.

I pressed further, but there wasn’t much of interest, and no forest in sight as I came to what looked like another dead end. Thankfully, I decided to try mining past that one too, planning to just head home if there was nothing beyond – but I didn’t have to. As I approached, I noticed a narrow tunnel on the left, with something cyanish out the other end! A quick jog in confirmed that it wasn’t the haze of a soul sand valley, but the huge warped fungus I’d been looking for. Yes!

Hot Tourist Destinations: ✓ Tick. (−115 W / −422 N), looking west.

Nylium in hand and challenge complete, it was time to grow some of my own. I’m really looking forward to building out this network. Minecraft is, after all, a transport sim at its core.

Huge warped fungi seem to not only provide way more shroomlights than their crimson cousins, but grow far taller, too. Note the damage from the forest fire mentioned last time and how close it was to home. (−279 W / −221 N), looking west.

Signing the railway also called for some of that new glow ink, something I didn’t have much of. Fortunately, since I’m still on 1.17.1, this farm design from TimBnice worked nicely and it didn’t take much more than digging a big hole behind my house. (Insta‐mining all that dirt with Efficiency IV is very satisfying.)

It’s fine. I’ll just cover it back up later. (−276 W / −274 N), looking southeast.

I quite like the palette I went with for the Nether railway. Kind of wish I’d gone for a 3×3 interior over 1×2, but that’s more resource‐intensive than I wanted to deal with. It’s the Nether; this is fancy enough as it is.

Even with the low ceiling, there are still some pretty cool hot views through the safety bars.

No, all that warped “wood” wasn’t just for the signs. Long underground sections use plenty of the stems and fences.

The line starts at the Nether’s counterpart to the world spawn coordinates, just around the corner from the current portal.

I haven’t furnished this area quite yet since I’ll be expanding it for a hub station, with other branches heading north, south, and eventually east. The portal here will likely be moved in the process, probably closer to home.

It’s just a short trip to the other end where we have easy access to the village.

The tube climbs to serve the portal, elevated since its Overworld counterpart is on a hill. Link your portals properly, people! The Y‐axis counts, too!

Intersylva itself hasn’t changed much. I did finish the library (for now – I’ll probably rebuild larger), which my Mending guy now shares with a cleric who’s already supplied me with plenty of glowstone for the railway. Speaking of – at some point, a villager went missing, and it wasn’t the nitwit. I’m not sure what happened, but when I returned with the brewing stand I couldn’t find anyone looking for work, and soon there was a kiddo running around.

Either the Villager Death Messages data pack isn’t working or one of them got very, very lost. Everyone else seems safe, at least…

Oh! And in a wild stroke of luck, I mentioned my Mending guy? Well, turns out they’re also my Infinity guy now. Trueshot has joined the named magic gear stash.

No names for any of the villagers yet, of course.

My Mending (and Infinity) guy is also my glass guy, and I needed a bunch for the sugar cane farm I finally built so I can sell them more books. I had a lot of extra slabs left over from indecisiveness building my house, so I went with a thrown‐together look here.

With all the reeds out of the way, you can actually see the pond again. I also rediscovered the “slab trick” for growing these large oaks I love, and will be taking more advantage of it around Spawn. (−262 W / −181 N), looking west.

I stole the farm design 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: A silent dropper pipe allows the output chest to sit at floor level so the building doesn’t need to be so tall, and when the chest is full and the works start backing up, a light flashes outside in time with a warning bell.

I like to start off small for these things, so this only puts out about 53 sugar cane per hour, but that’s already a good base for my bookbinding and mapmaking needs.

I always include maintenance access for these complicated redstone contraptions.

One of these days I should start looking for a stronghold.

In site‐related news, besides some cleanup behind the scenes, I’ve tweaked the map a little more – mostly because I’m mapping the Nether hub and it was misbehaving when switching dimensions. You can also click the dropped pin to clear it now, if you’d like.