Breaking the Halo
Entry 13 ()
Hello, folks! The update’s been delayed due to real life and my brain being weird again, but I set out for adventure a couple weeks ago as promised and made it safely back home with what I’d come for. Let’s have a look!
When I checked on our explorer map last time, I was concerned that it was apparently sending me to an underwater mansion rather than the typical woodland variety. I’m happy to report that the map was, in fact, only half wrong: It had the mansion in the right place, just not any of the terrain around it. Getting there was kind of anticlimactic, actually; it’s only about 1 km from Intersylva, pretty much directly southwest with mostly ocean on the way.
I’ll be honest here: For as much as exploration and adventure is my favorite part of this game, I’ve never actually raided a woodland mansion before. I was a bit intimidated, and ended up running back out the front door several times thinking I was being chased. Thankfully the roof of the forest gave an opportunity to scout ahead. (I could have gone the easy route and taken some of these guys out from the outside, but where’s the fun in that? We’re going in and doing this the way it was intended.)
I was able to clear the first floor without much incident, and proceeded upstairs where I knew the more dangerous illagers lurked: The evokers. Indeed, one of them was waiting just around the corner from the landing – and those vexes they summon are flighty little buggers. No problem with my trusty Trueshot, though. One arrow, one kill – snap! Headshot!
One evoker down, one totem in the bag. Yes! This ain’t bad at all.
I made my way around the second floor, then up to the smaller third, taking out illager after illager. At the end of it all, I’d collected four more totems, and began revisiting the rooms I’d cleared earlier. There weren’t many chests, but I did find something special up in a loft…
With a bit more hunting, I even found a few secret rooms – unfortunately losing one of the attic chests to a creeper explosion. (I misjudged how close I was to the peephole I’d mined into the wall. I thought I got a screenshot of the damage, but apparently not. Oops.) But hey! Five totems of undying and an enchanted golden apple!
The mansion secured, I left a chest under the stairs so I could return for the loot later. This was no time to haul it home: I had a mission. This was the day. No more delays. To the Halo!
The trek was fairly unremarkable; more of the usual for the most part, though there was another plains village at (−5,482 W / +4,213 S) that I diverted to check out. Not much going on there, though, so I continued farther southwest. Until finally I saw it…
Game day 1,379, three years and ten months into the life of the world, 2011 Minecraft was finally in sight.
I took my time exploring. Until recently, most of my playtime had been way back in the Beta days, so this was a real trip down memory lane.
I only had two maps left on me when the Halo came into view, so I decided to fill one up with as much Beta as I could and leave the other for all the shiny new 2022 Minecraft on the other side. That meant heading south along the border, then north a little farther out, slowly making my way to the west. On the way, I spotted something just back inside: Our first desert village!
You’ve probably heard of the “four corners of the world.” This world has 16 of ’em: Eight per dimension.
Working west, I enjoyed some of the weird little things that have been more or less absent from the game for so long.
Six days after first sighting the Halo, I made it across to the final border, catching my first sight of the brave new world of 2022 Minecraft that lay beyond.
I wasn’t quite finished filling that map, though, so I followed the border south before turning west once more to really get exploring. The sun was setting as I crossed the ocean to properly make landfall. Straight ahead was a fairly large ruined portal, which I briefly considered restoring – but I decided to hold off on adding any more portals for now. I’d only explored a very narrow strip to get out here, after all, and there might be better sites around.
Being in brand new terrain, this swamp had some frogs wandering around!
Nearby was a rather large pumpkin patch, which I set about jack‐o’‐lantern‐ifying, as is my custom.
North of the swamp was another village, just on the edge of another biome I could check off my list, a windswept savanna. (The village itself was just another garden variety plains village.)
Picking my way through the mountains to fill in the map, I spotted some emerald ore for the first time in this world!
It also became apparent that either there was something in the water in this part of the world or pumpkin patches are just bigger and more plentiful now than they used to be. Just filling in this one map I came across a second large patch, with 14 pumpkins…
There was one last neat thing before starting on the long journey home – a lush cave!
The expedition was almost everything I was hoping for – though, especially after spotting mountains, I was kind of holding out for a big ol’ cave opening, maybe even down to the deep dark. But there’s plenty of world to explore, and we’ll get there.
I made the long trek back to Intersylva, glad to hop aboard the D&V (Oh yeah, I finally gave the Nether hub a name other than “the Nether hub”: It’s now the Deltas & Valley Railway) for a quick ride the rest of the way home. There, I set to work in the map room making space for another nine frames in the corner.
But expanding the map room can wait. It’s time to finally take the big step and go all in.
Next time: We free the End.