Reconnecting

Entry 18 ()

It’s been awhile since I’ve done some good old‐fashioned railing, and I wanted to finally connect those last two orphaned nether portals that don’t really lead anywhere useful to the D&VRy. Unfortunately, my last such contruction project used up basically all of my nether bricks and netherrack. Being something of a conservationist, I didn’t want to just tear down a fortress for more bricks, and decided to go blasting for netherrack (oh and ancient debris, I guess) instead. 1.20’s upcoming changes that will make netherite more expensive (not to mention make me finally seek out a bastion) are just a coincidence, but the timing sure is convenient.

This mining trip was a rich one; just half a stack of TNT led to nine ancient debris! Apparently mining right on a chunk border (which I swear wasn’t intentional) really does make a difference. With two fresh netherite ingots, I upgraded the other half of my armor and even named the newly‐perfect pieces, now proudly donning a Ranger’s Helm and a pair of Hyper Boots. Renamed the chestplate to Dragon Scales while I was at it, too. (Like Nintendo, I recently remembered that Golden Sun exists, and have spent some time rediscovering Weyard. I know the direct reference would be “Warrior’s Helm,” but I’m still rocking the Marcy skin, so…) That just leaves the leggings, but those aren’t perfect yet anyway as I still need to hunt down an ancient city for Swift Sneak. It does give me a full set, though…

Dragon Scales in hand while a toast notifies “Challenge Complete! Cover Me in Debris”.
Fumbled and missed my shot at getting a selfie while the toast was still up.
Third‐person shot, standing in front of the house wearing full netherite armor while holding a netherite pick and a shield, all enchanted. The shield is decorated, divided vertically in thirds; from left to right they are stripes of pink, lime, and light blue.
I don’t play on big servers (and with my friends I don’t think any of us actually have full netherite…), and the only SMP I even sort of follow is Empires, so the recent buzz around 1.20’s new armor trimming feature is the first I’ve heard the “clone army” comparison. Can’t say it’s not a spiffing look, though. (−244 W / −195 N), camera looking northwest.

The naming and upgrading spree continued: My piglin‐repellant gold helmet gained both the Respiration III enchantment (…sometimes I forget to swap it out when I leave the Nether okay) and the name Oh Shiny, while Fortune Red achieved perfection with its Efficiency upgraded from IV to V. Aside from the aforementioned Swift Sneak, that mostly left me in need of Unbreaking and Silk Touch books. I went fishing to kill some time and regain some levels, and luckily caught an Unbreaking III book, which went to perfect Oh Shiny as well.

The sword is by far the most needy piece I’ve got left, lacking Sweeping Edge and Unbreaking (and needing an upgrade from Looting I) on top of still being diamond. I do have a couple Sweeping Edge III books, but they’re both combined with unrelated enchantments and would cost a whopping 27 levels to add, so I’m holding off for now – if I’m going to run up against the dreaded “too expensive!” limit, I’d rather make Looting III the priority, leaving Unbreaking for last.

With plenty of nether bricks freshly smelted, I got busy tunneling, first directly south from Spawn, then east to my old second first portal. Well, actually to underneath it; the Overworld side is right at Y=+64 but the one in the Nether was up at Y=70.

It was actually pretty uneventful. Almost the entirety of the extension turned out to be underground, and I didn’t even hit any hidden lava sources.

Close‐up of a single block of iron bars in the rail tunnel. Netherrack and magma are visible beyond, along with some basalt and lava.
The lone “window” on the extension, just after branching to the east. Blink and you’ll miss it. (−16 W / +115 S), looking southwest.
New station with the portal on the far end, polished blackstone walls to the sides, nether brick floor and blackstone brick ceiling. On the left wall are a banner depicting the portal and a sign reading “Plains, +213 E, +925 S”; on the right is a “got gold?” sign next to a stone button and iron door.
Being underground, there’s not much of a view or anything. There’s an exit up into the cavern, though, something I still need to retrofit into most of the other stations. (+23 E / +114 S), looking southeast.

It felt good finally removing the “Opening Soon!” sign back at Roam.

Boarding area at Roam’s station. The right wall holds a system map; the left has a banner featuring the globe pattern and a sign reading “Roam, −246 W, −180 N”. A cart rests at the end of the track which exits through the left wall. Behind this is a wall of buttons, each labeled with a sign under an indicator lamp. From left to right they read “East for: Village”, “North for: Stronghold”, “West for: Intersylva, Spider Farm”, and “South for: Plains”. The lamp for the South track is lit.
Feels complete now, even though I still need to connect the desert temple up north and then expand farther afield. (−25 W / −19 N), looking east.

I figured since the portal in the Overworld is repaired and back in use, it doesn’t make sense for it to still be such a scar on the landscape. I’d like to come back and improve the area a bit more, but for now I’ve dug out all the remaining taint and filled it back in so nature can heal. Made a little path to the shelter, too – I thought about moving it closer to the portal itself, but decided to preserve it in place as a bit of a monument to the early game and its ugliness.

Nether portal with mountains and taiga in the background. The top of the portal is decorated with stone bricks, and a cobblestone wall surrounds it. A boxy shack of stone bricks and cobblestone is about ten meters away from the gate in the wall, and a bed and crafting table are visible through the window.
(+204 E / +907 S), looking south.

(As an aside, I kind of wish nether travel weren’t as easy as it is. I mean, I know you’ve gotta put work in to get an effective and safe hub going – but being able to just build portals wherever you want feels a little too powerful. I intend Broken Halo to be the “forever world” I never had, but if I ever do start another long‐term playthrough, I think I’m only going to repair ruined portals, not put my own up wherever it’s convenient. They’re common enough that it shouldn’t be too painful, but it’d incentivize building transport in the Overworld as something other than a vanity project.)

With a few harvests of chorus plants, it was time to add some better lighting to the storage room. After some experimentation, I ended up just recessing it into the ceiling:

A wall of chests, nine wide, labeled by item frames. The ceiling immediately in front of them is made up of various blocks also serving as labels, with the next row of ceiling blocks removed; horizontal end rods run the length of this gap, except for a half slab in the center.
If the lighting still looks a little moody, it’s because I’m stubborn and still play on moody. At the now‐default 50% brightness it looks pretty uniform.

I also raised a little platform in front of the chests so it’s not as awkward to reach the top row.

View from farther back, angled to see most of the room. Three blocks back from the six‐high wall of chests on the left, the floor is one block higher and surrounded by slabs on all sides for a smooth step up. This leaves an awkwardly narrow two‐block‐wide section of floor along the right wall.
Granted, it looks a little funny for now, but eventually the room will expand to the right so I can add another unit or two on the far wall, and I’ll widen it then.

The surface was long overdue for some better lighting as well – the torchspam was pretty bad, especially since most of it was from before 1.18’s hostile mob spawning changes. (Seriously, scroll back up to those full netherite shots and try counting them.)

View from atop the house, looking over the main farming area and desert temple as the moon rises. There are no longer any torches on the ground, except across the river in the desert, and some have been removed from atop the fences around the field and pens. The area is still lit patchily: Lanterns hang from new posts along the path, and while the outskirts still rely on scattered torches, there are fewer of them and all are atop stumps or stone pillars.
It still needs some work (doesn’t everything?) – I really need to track down some glow lichen to farm – but it’s a hell of a lot cleaner than before. (−244 W / −225 N), looking southeast.
Similar view turned about 90° to the right, looking over the sugarcane farm and entrance to the mob grinder.
I do still plan to build more around here, so if nothing else I’ll revisit the lighting next time I extend the paths. (−255 W / −225 N), looking southwest.

While patchy, the lit area is fully lit; there aren’t any “islands” where hostile mobs can spawn at night. I gave in and added the MiniHUD mod to watch for dark spots because I would have gone insane doing it via the debug screen alone.

On the ground, looking toward a torchpost with MiniHUD enabled. There are a selection of debug lines (FPS, timestamp, in‐game time and date, coordinates and relative Nether coordinates, compass facing, block light level, yaw, and biome) in the corner. Many of the grass blocks have an overlay on their top surface: A large red zero boxed by a thin yellow border. Blocks within the area of light sources have no such overlay.
While I don’t keep it up most of the time, the, well, mini‐HUD is also far easier on the brain than the vanilla debug screen when I’m looking for coordinates and angles to add to these captions. (−275 W / −274 N), looking southeast.

Along with the mod addition, I finally bothered updating to 1.19.3. (With no allays to duplicate, it wasn’t exactly a priority, but I finally got tired of how long it was taking to (re)load resource packs.) Fabulously Optimized is still in beta for this version, but the only trouble I had with it is that it doesn’t include the Continuity mod because that’s still in beta for 1.19.3 as well. So I added that, too, and still: No trouble. Granted, I don’t run shaders or anything too crazy, but it’s working for me, and now I don’t have to keep a separate instance for my friend’s server until 1.19.4 comes out in probably the next few days.

Better Biome Blend seems to work fine as well despite not having been updated since 1.19. Really, the only problem I ran into was Faithful’s Variated Cobblestone add-on breaking, but that’s due to vanilla’s changes to resource pack loading. I’ve disabled it for now, and took the opportunity to update and refresh my pack selection. (Visualized Enchanted Books, another Faithful add-on, is a new favorite.)