Getting an Upgrade

Entry 16 (January 28, 2023)

The plan from last time was to return to Intersylva and stop neglecting it, and that’s exactly what I did. But, uh, I didn’t have much oak, so first I needed to spend some time tree farming. But then I returned to Intersylva.

I decided to put my new elytra to good use and fly out there this time instead of taking a cart. It was alright, I guess – I had to turn my render distance down, and even then my computer seemed to be struggling on the first trip out. It was better after that, so I suspect the main culprit was it having to generate everything below Y=0 on the fly (literally). Good thing I prefer rail travel anyway. (That said, just calmly cruising above the landscape to Lena Raine’s “Labyrinthine” is pretty awesome.)

I got to work polishing the place up, finishing the job I’d started, uh… back in June. Made all the paths actually navigable, blocked off fall hazards, added a couple lightning rods, that sort of thing. Also finally expanded the hastily‐built library. Currently my Mending guy is still sharing it with my glowstone guy, but building a separate temple for them is a “maybe.” Idk; it seems like the two fields are pretty related, what with both being magical in nature and all.

(−2,222 W / +1,499 S), looking southwest.

Speaking of those guys, they’ve got names now! While this is still gonna be a pretty vanilla experience, I did give in and add the Villager Names mod. Yama Del Rosso deals in enchantments and enchantment accessories while Andromache Gagel handles the potion side of things. (While the names are randomly picked from a shared list, they can amusingly fit the villagers’ professions (or lack thereof). The nitwit is Tadita Greenman and one of the farmers is Fielding Bumpass.)

Also needed to check on the extra villager. As I went from building to building I tallied up the beds and the total came to 13. Counting the villagers was less straightforward, but I found a command (/execute if entity @e[type=minecraft:villager,distance=..100]) to do the dirty work, courtesy of mynameisperl on reddit. I expanded the radius to 300 m to make sure not to miss anyone, and came up with… 13 again. Hmm. I had just miscounted before; that’s fine.

Next up was making a list of everyone and their trades, because that’s the kind of thing I do. While wandering around to get everyone’s name, I met Jamesina Guligev, a novice farmer. I didn’t remember any of the five farmers being novices, but hey, I hadn’t played in awhile. The problem was who I couldn’t find – the unemployed villager. And I had only 12 names on my list. Hmmmm.

Research gave me another command to try (/execute as @e[type=villager,distance=0..40] run data get entity @s Pos, this one thanks to pppery on Stack Exchange), which when I again bumped up the radius gave me the full list of 13 names and locations, including six farmers. Hmmmmmm.

That list included one “Taline Horvath” who I had not yet met that day, along with their location. Turns out they got stuck on a ledge above a little ravine northwest of town, farther than I’d thought would be troublesome. (Why didn’t I screenshot this?) I was able to build them a little path out, but had to make a new composter to lead them back to town. Now they’re back at work and Jamesina is back unemployed.

And I think Jamesina is going to become a cartographer instead, now that the initial challenge of finding/recruiting one in a second village is over. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want any one village to become a one‐stop shop – but I do think every village should have at least one cartographer (particularly because of how explorer map trades work), librarian (libraries are very important!), cleric (…mostly to complete the list of white‐collar professions), and farmer (they are the backbone of society, after all!). That’s the plan going forward for any villages I take under my protection: If there isn’t already at least one of each, I can recruit to fill that need. (But no rerolling. Especially not for librarians. It is way too easy just throwing Mending on everything.)

Names were the name of the game that day, as when I returned home I finally dug out a couple name tags for my two newest kitties: Orange and Rocky.

Then I went out to the second village and named it, too: Layabout, in tribute to it not having bothered generating any job sites of its own and leaving me to assign work for its 11 residents – actually, 13 residents now that they’ve filled the two empty beds. (The cartographer, by the way, is Winnie Tix.)

Layabout also got a bit of polish, though it needed far less work than Intersylva, being on much flatter and safer land.

…really, not much to report there.

I did finally make pages for both villages, though! Check out the new articles for both Intersylva and Layabout in the Points of Interest section – they’re less wordy than my usual, but there’s more of Intersylva’s new look there, plus a full census of each. (Layabout’s page is really just a stub for now, but I honestly don’t find it that interesting visually.)

Once this was done, I took a break from the villages to check out the villages. I mended up the elytra and returned to Intersylva to fly southwest, roughly retracing the path of the Halo‐breaking expedition. At that time I was short on maps and inventory space, but now I’d made another half‐stack of the former and had shulker boxes to deal with the latter. There were a few structures I couldn’t loot before, and I wanted to get the villages onto proper 1:1 maps instead of just marking them on the larger 1:8s. I even found two witch huts I’d missed in the swamp where I met the frogs!

There was some more neat stuff on the trip back…

…like this ruined portal I found buried in the sand, just inside the Halo! Apparently this is intentional when they generate in deserts? Reminds me of how we used to find dungeons back in Beta. (−6,008 W / +5,257 S), looking southwest.

I’d also missed a village not even half a kilometer south of the woodland mansion. (−3,629 W / +3,304 S), looking east.

Returning home, I added an anvil to my cartography box (for naming banners) and set out again for the long journey. With the witch huts properly labeled, I made sure to do one more thing while I was out there…

…see just how high up that amplified terrain was. It already looked crazy tall from Y=+132. Turns out the very tippy‐top is at an impressive Y=+241. Great view from up here! (−7,625 W / +5,505 S), Quake Pro, looking southeast.

Even zoomed in they look like ants. (−7,625 W / +5,505 S), looking south.

This all left me with an exploration itch to scratch, so I grabbed the partially‐filled map of Layabout’s area and set about seeing what else was out there. (On foot, mostly, though being able to rocket up mountains is sure a lot more convenient.)

Not having found any snowy biomes in this world, I was excited to see this icy‐looking spike over the horizon… (+2,900 E / +864 S), looking south.

…but it turned out to be some more frozen ocean. Which, neat I guess, but I’ve already found a couple of those. (+2,884 E / +999 S), looking south.

Next, I came across an interestingly‐generated village, not far southwest of Layabout.

I kind of wanna take this one under my protection too, but I also kinda don’t wanna deal with turning those cliffs into villager‐friendly paths. (+2,305 E / +471 S), looking southwest.

Passing back south, I found a better view of that frozen ocean, seemingly in its entirety.

(+2,189 E / +1,048 S), looking southwest.

Almost finished and heading north through the jungle, I came across a temple. I circled it looking for the entrance, but quickly stopped after hearing a click and a hiss.

I… actually don’t think I’ve ever run into any mobs inside one of these? And I’d like to keep it that way; I really don’t want to deal with creepers in tight spaces and around blind corners. I know I’m plenty safe with the shield and armor, but it still feels like failure to have one explode. I mean, unless it’s on purpose. (+2,047 E / +643 S), looking northeast.

I moved on… only to find another temple.

With the same issue.

Nope. (+2,101 E / +295 S), looking east.

The itch remained unscratched, so I grabbed another partial map – the first of the Halo‐breaking expedition – and headed south from Intersylva to fill it.

First up was a pretty cool ruined portal.

I love that Minecraft leaves so much lore up to interpretation, but every so often I wish I had more talent for world‐building and creative writing to fill that void, instead of just word‐vomiting about a computer game to make the autism creature happy. Like, generated structures show up in the stupidest places (like that mountain village earlier, or almost any other village), but every so often you get something so perfectly framed like this and just wonder… what civilization left these ruins across the lands? Were they ancestors of the piglins? The testificates? The endermen? The creepers, the undead? What great cataclysm could possibly have shattered every single nether portal in both dimensions and tainted the Overworld with the Nether’s influence? That story may never be told – but whoever they were, I’ll bet they regarded this place as a site of great power. (−2,327 W / +2,612 S), looking east.

Then, an… interesting… sunflower plains.

Minecraft’s weird generation can be a blessing or a curse. It gave Beta its charm, and I still love coming across little floating archipelagos. But seeing tall grass or even entire trees just floating unsupported, clearly having been replaced by air when the pond generated below, screams “lazy” (and I try to fix these when I come across them) – it’s obviously a bug, and it’s been like this for years, and yes I know procedural generation is complex and this isn’t game‐breaking or any form of high‐priority but come on.
And then I see this, exactly the same bug but novel because it’s half a sunflower instead of all a tall grass, and suddenly it’s charming and quirky and Minecraft again and I love it. (−2,245 W / +2,782 S), looking east.

There was also a lovely little taiga village (our first), laid out pretty much all on one main path and well‐hidden amid the forest. I didn’t spot it until I was right on top of it.

Cozy… (−3,057 W / +2,859 S), looking southeast.

I was kind of excited at the pumpkin patch generating so cleanly with the farm, but apparently taiga farms just come with them. (−3,020 W / +2,915 S), looking southwest.

Returning home yet again, I decided it was time to grab all the overflow from the end of the storage system and make proper places for everything. Trouble is, there was some “overflow” that had apparently skipped past slots that already had room for it. Huh, weird… I’d have to sort that out later (pun fully intended), but I had something I wanted to do first.

Checking my handy‐dandy new list of villager trades, I grabbed everything I could sell in Intersylva and headed back over. Over the course of a few days, I earned as many emeralds as I could, got everyone except Jamesina still leveled up to master, and bought some supplies. I even tried everyone’s suspicious stews! (Jump Boost and Poison are popular options with three trades each; there are also two Saturations and one Blindness for sale. No Night Vision or Weakness in this town.) I was really here for ender pearls, though, and bought three stacks.

See, I think it’d be neat to find all 128 strongholds (and link them all to the portal/rail networks, of course). The closest to Spawn is to the northeast (to be more precise, at −168.7° from Origin), which means the others in the first ring should be to the southeast and southwest. I calculated rough positions for both, added blaze powder to a stack of pearls, and took off.

I wasn’t in the mood yet for actually digging down and defeating the things, but I did at least want to figure out where they were (and more accurately plot them on the rail diagram). I went first to the southeast and threw a couple eyes. To spare me the effort of more maths, I put some numbers into EnderVision and came up with (+1,296 E / +1,042 S).

The one to the southwest, though, was troublesome. Quite a few eyes were wasted in the search, always pointing to one of the other two. Well, I suspected I’d have issues like this with how the world was made…

I went back to 1.16.5 to check out the seed in a Creative world and give it a try there. This time, the eyes behaved more predictively, and EnderVision spat out the coordinates (−2,197 W / +794 S) – just outside the Core of Solitude. Teleporting there and flying above to look around, I didn’t see any villages (etc.) close enough that I would have deleted them to make the Core… so I’m pretty sure it should still be there in Broken Halo.

There was this other cool ruined portal I’d missed, though, kind of sunk into a crater. (−2,245 W / +799 S), looking south.

Home once again, I took another look at the storage system and became more concerned. I’d deposited seven blocks of emerald when I’d come back from trading, but the sorter wasn’t running and there were only two blocks that made it through. Turns out they (and a handful of other things) were stuck in the dropper elevators at the back. I’m not sure what exactly caused this, but manually cycling the elevators a few times got everything unstuck. I suspect it’s just the usual redstone issue where unloading chunks can break things that rely on precise timing.

I’ve added a warning light by the water elevator to remind me not to go too far while it’s running, complete with AFK audio cues (a tone every 10 seconds while it’s on, and a nice little chord when it switches off). Doesn’t have enough range to be heard from up in the vault, let alone on the surface, but it’s something for now. Once I’ve got a beacon I might rig something up with colored glass, though…