Under the Sea

Entry 17 ()

I’ve needed to do some head‐clearing as of late, and exploring the world to fill more maps has been a good way to unwind. (This entry will be a little light on screenshots as I’ve been… spacey.)

I started with a little housekeeping, heading to the ocean up north with a few potions in tow to finish looting some ruins I’d left alone some time ago. One set of ruins generated into a cave system, which was interesting but unrewarding – I wasn’t able to unearth any chests, but at least there was some easy iron and gold around. It’s probably just as well; I’m sure any treasure maps would have been duplicates anyway.

I’d also left a map mostly blank up there, only having marked a ruined portal at (−446 W / −3,193 N). Got that one filled in and found another village too. There was a thunderstorm while I was wandering around (why do they never happen when you want them?), but not much else of note.

Next I figured I’d go back to making my way around the outside of the Core, starting southeast of Intersylva. This area was enriching at least, as I found a couple buried treasures and a desert temple.

Returning home, I decided to start growing some chorus plants – I still wanna make some end rods to see how those look in the storage room.

I headed out again, this time to the spider farm, and flew north a tad until I was off the map. Up here I found another village (number ten!), and an interesting one at that. This one has the opposite problem as Layabout – it’s got a bit of a housing shortage.

Overview of a plains village. It’s only got four buildings.
If you’re keeping score, that’s two farms (one large), a weaponsmith’s, a fletcher’s, and a mason’s… and a single tiny home that only sleeps one. Maybe they take turns? (−3,035 W / −2,511 N), looking northeast.

There was a ruined portal farther north, and I decided that going forward I’d start scavenging the crying obsidian from these things for respawn anchors. I try to mostly leave things as they are (I don’t have any sea lanterns yet, for example, despite having looted a number of ruins lit by them), but I mean… I’m already taking the gold blocks when I find those. Well. In some small way, we’re all hypocrites.

Continuing east over the mountains and onto another map, I found myself back in the heat belt that seems to run most of this coastline. Not far into the desert, I spotted (I think) my first desert well! I know they’re supposed to be a fairly common feature, but I don’t remember coming across any in this world before.

A desert well halfway up a small sand dune with a savanna plateau in the background.
I just think they’re neat. (−1,834 W / −2,528 N), looking northeast.
Desert at sunset. The tops of two desert temples poke over the sand in the distance.
Probably the closest I’ve ever seen two temples generate to each other… (−1,494 W / −2,402 N), looking southwest.
A half‐buried desert temple with a desert well not far from its façade.
Hmm. Maybe these are more common than I thought? Was I just not very observant before? (−1,543 W / −2,285 N), looking southeast.
Looking across the desert to a third well, in the distance across a river.
…oh, come on. (−1,325 W / −2,379 N), looking northeast.

While back at home getting reorganized and deciding what to do next, a few loud thunderclaps interrupted. I ran for the portal and hopped a cart to Layabout…

Rainy village under a dark sky, looking at a two‐story building with a lightning rod on its roof. A toast notifies “Advancement Made! Surge Protector” as fading captions include “Lightning strikes” and “Thunder roars”.
I didn’t stick around for long, but it was long enough to make sure the lightning rods were working as intended. (+2,586 E / +321 S), looking south.

Those buried treasures reminded me: Papyri has an option, off by default, to include explorer mapsnote 1 when stitching everything together. I wanted to see what that looked like – maybe add a little more detail to these coastlines.

Partially filled map. Most of the area is quite pixelated, except for around a woodland mansion which is mapped in full detail.
This was the existing map of the woodland mansion at (−3,458 W / +2,847 S)…
Map covering the same area. Some parts are now much less pixelated (though not fully detailed); however, much of the map is also now obscured by shading in brown lines.
…but with --includeunlimitedtracking set, it came out like this.

I had two choices: Continue leaving the explorer maps out of the picture, or use cheats to regain all the buried treasure maps I’d thrown out but then go back and map them legitimately. Of course I went with the latter. (I did do some out‐of‐game cleanup deleting duplicates, as Minecraft will happily give you multiple maps that point to the same location whilst internally having different IDs. I also took the opportunity to delete the Nether’s initial 1:1 maps, so the D&V map looks a lot less ugly around Roam now.)

There was another dilemma, though – when I’d picked up that woodland explorer map to find the mansion, I also bought an ocean explorer map that I hadn’t explored yet. This was now showing up in Papyri. Dang spoilers. Welp, you know what that means…

Looking at a small shack next to a nether portal, rockets and ocean explorer map in hand. Hotbar includes a boat and an assortment of potions.
Off to adventure! (+2,565 E / +283 S), looking northwest.
Flying over the ocean with no land in sight except for a tiny island. An ocean monument has come into view, its entryway lighting the dark seabed.
Target in sight. (+2,211 E / −1,293 N), looking northwest.

I made a temporary camp on the little island nearby and got ready. The Strength potions were probably overkill, but eh.

In a boat near the monument entryway with guardians swimming around. Sword and shield are in hand and the hotbar is full of various potions.
Ready to dive. (+2,163 E / −1,363 N), looking northwest.
Inside the monument looking up into a sponge room.
Just inside the entrance there was already treasure to score!
Inside the monument with a few cod and a sponge floating near the ceiling. Captions include “Elder Guardian dies”.
This was actually a fairly convenient monument, all considered. Besides the sponges, all three elders were where I expected them to be, with little of the usual maze trouble.
Penthouse of the monument, directly facing off with an elder guardian charging its laser.
The penthouse was a pretty straight shot from the front doors, too.

The battle didn’t last long at all.

Inventory view, still inside the penthouse, including three wet sponges. All three potion effects still have at least four minutes and 38 seconds on their countdowns.
Seriously, the potions weren’t even halfway to wearing off, and I’d only taken the first doses.

Now I can’t say I thoroughly explored the place – I wasn’t exactly being super methodical or marking off rooms I’d already cleared. But I’m more than satisfied with what I got.

Inventory view, now on land, including 99 wet sponges and eight blocks of gold.
This sucker had at least three sponge rooms! Looted the treasure box, too.

I’ll have to come back sometime to check it out a little more thoroughly – maybe there’s a fourth sponge room? 99 is plenty for now, though. I dried ’em out in the station before returning home.

Haven’t decided yet what to do with the monument. At some point I’d like to dry one out for the cool factor (not sure I’m a fan of the traditional “drain a whole giant cylinder of ocean” thing, though), and I definitely want a guardian farm – preferably one that keeps the monument itself intact. That’s long‐term, though; no rush. Once I’ve seen more of the world there should be more monuments to choose from, anyway.