The Time Machine Post

Entry 19 ()

Today’s entry is a little different. I’ve been sharing these updates here for over a year now, but I’d started playing on this world a few months before that. This site actually exists as much to stop cluttering my girlfriend’s DMs with screenshots as it does for me to keep my notes organized, run a map, and practice coding.

I’ve been meaning to post some of those early shots here for awhile. I’d forgotten about using F1 to hide the HUD, and I certainly hadn’t thought to play around with the FOV, so they’re nothing special – but I thought it might be interesting to see some early adventuring sights, how the house and Roam evolved, and so on.

Along with the screenshots, I’ve taken our chat logs and adapted them into something somewhere between casual notes and the more typical and overly wordy journal entries you’ll usually find around here. Hopefully it’s an interesting read (or at least as interesting as anything else here, which is a lower bar to clear).

  • Starting to play on that custom world even though the Halo isn’t in place yet (it’s not like I’m gonna explore anywhere near that far for awhile anyway)
  • I didn’t even notice when I originally created it that there’s a desert temple within sight of Spawn! Also a savanna plateau right across that desert
  • Haven’t done much besides get a branch mine going and gear up… next time I play I’ll probably raid the temple and then start a cow farm

Looking over a forest that disappears into the distance. Partially obscured by fog are a savanna plateau at left and snowy mountains at right. Hotbar is mostly a mix of stone and iron tools.
Finally climbed the hill(/mountain I guess? Y=113) that I built my first crappy shelter at the base of. Approx. (−180 W / −105 N), looking east.

  • Just found diamonds right on the edge of what looks like a big cave system… gonna leave the caving for later I think though
  • Finally got a bow and a whole 20 arrows!
Map of the Spawn area, only filled in about halfway. Most of it is pixelated, but details visible include a desert temple, two pens, and a stone structure. These features are clearly square and artificial, but the area is otherwise natural.
This is about all I’ve explored so far…
  • Big gray blob near the bottom is the big kinda half‐cave/overhang area I found and dug into the wall for shelter(/first mine)
  • Small gray square next to it is the above‐ground entrance I built later
  • That whole area is forest, but I cleared a bunch of trees around the cave and left stumps with torches to discourage spawns
  • The two squares a bit above the forest (which are actually over a little hill and into a plains biome) are my wheat and cow farms… need to make a proper path over there (and eventually build a base there probably)
  • Just across the river into the desert you can see the pyramid
The same map with colored overlays. The southeast quarter is outlined in blue; the blue square’s quarters are outlined in red. The southwest red square includes the cave and shelter roughly centered at its south end, with the wheat farm at its north end; the northwest red square includes the cow pen at its south end about a quarter of the way from its eastern edge; the northeast square has a river winding up its western edge, with the desert temple just across it and about a third of the way up from its southern edge.
For context of how little I’ve explored, the red squares are the smallest size (128×128) maps. The rest is on a 1024×1024 map, but I’ve cropped it here to a 512×512 quarter and haven’t even filled that. Definitely still in the “get equipped” stage of the game.

A larger map, about twice as wide as it is high, with the Spawn area near its southern edge a little west of center. Highlights include a mega taiga in the southwest corner and ocean in the northeast.
Did some more mapping – out to about 1 km NW/NE of Spawn, so only halfway to the possibility of finding any villages.
  • Two of my favorite biomes aren’t far – that big brown‐spotted forest in the southwest corner is a mega taiga, and the other brown‐spotted part north of the desert is a shattered savanna!
Mapping in the flat plains, looking at the tall and narrow cliffs of the shattered savanna dotted with acacia trees.
Approx. (−215 W / −1,000 N), looking east.
Mapping in the shattered savanna overlooking a cascading waterfall, looking at a distant cliff with a hole through it and a large overhang.
Approx. (+110 E / −975 N), looking northeast.
  • Found a couple ruined portals, a couple more desert temples (the one by the ocean to the northeast I need to go back and raid – it’s almost completely buried in the sand; I would have missed it if not for a few blocks of that orange ankh being exposed), some pumpkin patches which I jack‐o’‐lantern‐ified… and a pink sheep!
A pink sheep in the savanna with a plateau in the background.
(−352 W / −776 N), looking southwest.
Mapping in the desert, looking up at a rather wide patch of sand floating in midair and looking vaguely bird‐shaped.
I know a lot of players find it satisfying to smack down the floating sand, but it’s a rarity I don’t like to disturb. I just let the endermen do it. Approx. (+510 E / −900 N), looking northeast.
Mapping in the desert, looking at an iceberg just offshore.
Approx. (+460 E / −975 N), looking north.
  • Haven’t done much more around the base except start a path (and tunnel through a hill) from the mine entrance to the farms… need to add more farms and a proper home and storage building
  • Probably have enough iron now to justify investing in an anvil, so I could make some banners for actual markers… don’t have a sheep farm for all the wool yet, though

  • Finally started building a house! Still very much WIP but I’m happy with how it’s coming along, especially since I usually never try things like sloped roofs or mixed materials.
Angled look at the house showing the front and right sides. It’s roughly L‐shaped, with a narrower entryway leading into a larger room that opens out to the right. The roof begins low at the door and gently slopes up over the entryway, then becomes steeper and peaks halfway across the main room, with gables on either side. The exterior is mostly lit by hanging lanterns, but there are a number of torches on the roof over the entryway.
Not happy with having to light that part of the roof, but I’m gonna punch some windows through from the second floor and hopefully that’ll be enough… at least once I update to 1.19 it should be fine. Approx. (−231 W / −193 N), looking northwest.
Another look at the house from the opposite side to show its back and left faces.
Approx. (−275 W / −260 N), looking southeast.
Interior view from the back toward the front doors. There are now skylights above the entryway. This close, it’s clear how unfinished the build is, as half of the windows have no glass.
My girlfriend suggested skylights, and wouldn’t you know it, just this little pair of ’em let me get rid of the torches! Means I can put off adding a loft, too. Approx. (−255 W / −227 N), looking south.
Interior view from the back right corner at sunset. The room is almost empty, only including a bed, furnace, chest, and crafting table. All of the windows now have glass panes.
Here we go – unfurnished, but finished! I’ll probably add some carpet and maybe hidden lighting (it’s lit enough not to spawn anything, but still feels a bit darker than I like). Approx. (−245 W / −227 N), looking southwest.
Similar view from the back left corner as the moon rises.
I tend to fall back on big windows cause they’re pretty and don’t take a lot of thought 😅 Approx. (−255 W / −227 N), looking southeast.
  • Took a break from building to go mark up the maps with banners. (I did go back and dig into that buried temple, too – the only entrance that wasn’t totally buried under sandstone was the same tower I saw, and that was still mostly buried under sand!)
Same map as the previous day’s, covering about two square kilometers with the Spawn area a little west of center near its southern edge. There are now six yellow banners in various locations, one of which is labeled “Spawn”.
Going to stick mostly to unlabeled markers, at least for common stuff like temples and ruined portals and other goodie chests – I figure the biome usually gives enough context, and I can always make labeled ones if I need to. Yellow for looted, red for unlooted. Labels of course supersede the color code; obviously there’s nothing at Spawn that needed looting (though now there is a nice shiny gold block as a monument).
Detail map of Spawn area.
The base so far. Not much has changed except the additions of the house and a sheep pen.
  • Turned my attention to decorating/expanding before bed…
Entryway of the house. The floor is mostly stone bricks (some cracked) bordering a red carpet. A stripped log separates the area from the main room’s spruce plank floor.
House is still mostly unfurnished, but I added a nice red rug here, and added synchronized pressure plates for the doors (on the inside only; it’s still manual on the outside). Approx. (−250 W / −222 N), looking southwest.
Interior view from the front door. At left just inside the main room, spruce planks spiral clockwise up a log pillar to a second floor.
Also fit in a spiral staircase! It took a few rebuilds due to the tight spaces and also trying to block the sunset view out that west window as little as possible… Approx. (−252 W / −216 N), looking north.
Looking across the loft from the top of the stairs. Much of the floorspace is taken up by bookshelves surrounding an enchanting table; only a narrow walkway surrounds them, and this is uneven due to a few slabs around the edges of the room.
Upstairs needs some work (especially to deal with those bumps where the lanterns are hanging below – I don’t want to put them lower and have them in front of the windows), but I (barely) fit in an enchanting library. More bookshelves are probably due here for decor. Also windows, I think.
Looking across the basement from the far end toward the spiral staircase. The walls are uniform stone brick; the floor and ceiling are spruce planks. A row of chests lines the wall under the entryway.
Downstairs is the start of a storage room. Might be repurposed later, because…
A larger but still L‐shaped room underground. The walls and floor are of natural stone and its variants, aside from a few wood planks in a corner. A spiral staircase leads upstairs, but down here it’s made of stone brick slabs around a polished andesite pillar, and the ceiling is stone brick as well.
Downstairs downstairs is going to be a bigger, deeper, more secure (or at least more fire/blast resistant due to lack of wood) storage room, with room to grow. Also going to put a rail connection here to my mine, because it’s an annoying walk. I could just start a new mine, but that’s no fun, and besides, the old one’s hit a few cave systems I haven’t fully explored (and I have a few diamond veins to come back to once I have Fortune).
Also that bit of wood in the corner is yet another cave system! There’s a couple entrances nearby that it probably connects to – I’ve been meaning to light them up and clear them out, but one is really branchy and suffers from drop creepers… so I wanna gear up more first. An Infinity/Punch bow would be nice for keeping those guys back…

Interior of the ground floor. Much of the main room is now occupied by white carpet. The workstations and chest have been removed, though there’s still a bed.
The main floor’s been cleaned up, but it’s still pretty empty. Approx. (−255 W / −217 N), looking northeast.
Top floor looking across the room from the top of the stairs. There are now two windows extending out from the roof on the right (front of house) and one on the left (rear of house) which is partially domed over the enchanting area.
Added some windows for the second floor… it still needs some more decor (and those floor bumps dealt with), but it’s better than it was! Approx. (−255 W / −225 N), looking east.
The subbasement now has stone bricks for its walls and floor, except for a few columns of polished andesite and patches of that and polished granite. A few chests are against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, with the labels “Ores” and “Redstone” visible. Along with a cartography table and unlabeled chest, there are two backlit maps on the far wall.
  • Started the all‐important map wall in the bottom level, and finished the walls/floor… I decided to go with something different, and leave the natural stone variant patches in place except replaced with their polished versions. I think it looks pretty good! Adds a little variety on the inside (and kinda gives the feel that the room was carved straight outta the natural rock in the area), and if I mine toward it from the outside I’ll be able to see it’s a build and not accidentally punch through, which is always a concern.
  • I was gonna use “smooth stone” (which apparently is a full‐block version of the classic “stone slab” texture – not a fan of the name considering everyone has called plain ol’ stone “smoothstone” since forever, to differentiate it from cobblestone… like, could they not have gone with “polished stone” to be consistent with the variants?) but it actually looks kinda crap. Doesn’t succeed in having that “chiseled” outline imo (though maybe that’s just this texture pack?) – it just looks like the regular stone texture except with a solid white square around it one pixel in. So… more stone bricks.
  • At some point I wanna replace some stone bricks on the upper basement level with random cracked/mossy ones for a little variety… I was thinking not to do that down here, though, to reflect that it’s more solidly built.
  • I went exploring to the south!
Roughly square map, a little taller than wide, with the Spawn area in its northeast corner. It extends west to the mega taiga. The middle third of the map heading south is mostly swamp; south of this is more varied with a number of mountain peaks and forests.
Found lots of mountains (with llamas!), a big ol’ swamp (which sadly did not spawn any slimes when I hung out overnight… I do have a slime chunk somewhere under my base, though; I’ve heard one sloshing around), and three more ruined portals…
Looking down into a pond. There’s a ruined nether portal below the surface.
…the thing is… Approx. (−390 W / +830 S), looking southwest.
Mapping at the edge of a swamp. There’s a ruined portal in the middle of the water, sunken except for a single gold block above the surface.
…these things apparently like generating underwater today. Approx. (−550 W / +400 S), looking north.
  • The third one spawned partially in a hillside. I had to dig out the chest!
Peeking out through some spruce trees looking at a chunk of floating mountain over a valley.
Neat little floating island… Approx. (−820 W / +795 S), looking north.
Looking over a river valley at three jack‐o’‐lanterns halfway up a mountain cliff.
I sometimes regret my oath to jack‐o’‐lantern‐ify any and all pumpkin patches I stumble across. Approx. (−695 W / +735 S), looking southwest.

Mapping on a small island, mostly beach with some grass. In the center are a few birch trees above a pond, with a few pumpkins on one side. Several wolves are running around.
I shall call it “Three Wolf Island.” Approx. (+575 E / −1,265 N), looking northeast.

Pink sheep in a savanna.
Found another pink sheep! (−581 W / −2,076 N), looking southwest.
Close‐up of a jack‐o’‐lantern.
The smallest pumpkin patch I’ve ever seen.
…I know the screenshot doesn’t really make it clear ’cause I was dumb and stood close, but it’s just the one pumpkin. (−579 W / −1,755 N), looking east.
A mostly‐flat forest. There’s a small pit in the ground with a birch tree growing inside such that most of its leaves fill the gap.
Also amused by this tree in a hole that almost perfectly made for level walking. Approx. (−1,230 W / −1,275 N), looking east.
Mapping at the edge of a jungle.
Found a jungle! (−2,091 W / −2,056 N), looking west.
Looking across a warm ocean at the stony shores of some mountains. The tallest, barely snow‐capped, is shaped vaguely like the “OK” hand gesture.
It’s a good‐a peak. Approx. (−1,955 W / −1,920 N), zoomed, looking southeast.
Mapping in a warm ocean. A vast coral reef stretches out ahead and the shores of a jungle are in the distance at right.
First a jungle, then a coral reef! (−1,963 W / −1,749 N), looking south.

Well that could have gone better.

I finally went to the Nether, first trying a portal near Spawn. It dropped me into some basalt deltas and quickly got me dead trying to swim in lava. Not only that, but Doggo vanished into the portal…

So I journeyed back out to the farthest ruined portal I’ve found (a little over 1 km to the south), made a little shelter there, and rebuilt the portal… ending up in some more basalt deltas, but at least in a much safer position and right near the edge of the biome. I could hear Doggo barking, so I knew they were safe, but I couldn’t find them.

Overlooking a nether portal and some lava pools in the basalt deltas. Two striders are in the lava.
Strider buddies! Maybe I can take one down to the lava ocean to fortress‐hunt… Approx. (+25 E / +114 S), looking south.
Overlooking basalt pillers which give way to the more open nether wastes.
It’s a short escape to the less dangerous old‐school nether wastes. Not far past that fog is a crimson forest, and then about the same distance through the forest is the fortress. Approx. (+25 E / +114 S), looking east.

I got the immediate area fairly safe to walk in, and just across the small nether wastes area there’s a crimson forest where some piglins were hunting. I left (and found Doggo in the Overworld! I guess they warped to me and then wandered back out this new portal), came back with some gold, and bartered for a Fire Resistance splash potion, which made me feel a little more comfortable in hell. Unfortunately, then I got killed by a couple hoglins…

I came back and started grabbing my stuff, only to get attacked by a piglin because I didn’t have any gold armor to wear! (And why didn’t I have my shiny gold helm? Because they’d taken it. Along with my iron pants.) Came back yet again in fresh gold boots, picked up my things… then killed the piglin while their friends’ backs were turned so I could get the rest of my armor back.)

Ventured a bit further into the forest – and there’s a nether fortress right there! It’s maybe a couple hundred blocks from this portal in pretty much a straight line. This one’s mostly out in the open the way they’re designed to be, but before I’ve always seen them mostly buried in netherrack, so this feels… weird, not to mention more dangerous.

Right past the first junction is a blaze spawner – which I failed to notice (though I think the game glitched on me?). I didn’t see or hear anything, just suddenly found myself on fire and falling from the parapet to the ground about 20 blocks below. Threw the potion on myself and pillared back up, then saw the damn things. Managed to claim two blaze rods and beat a hasty retreat back to the shelter in the Overworld. I’ll need to go back for nether wart, but I can make a brewing stand next time I play at least… and an ender chest!

Pink sheep in a birch forest.
Oh, and found one more pink sheep on the way. (−26 W / +558 S), looking southwest.

  • Quieter day today, but went back to the fortress for more blaze rods and made it inside for some nether wart too
Large map. The central and eastern thirds are fully explored, but only the northern third of the western third has been mapped.
Current state of the map – the north and far west borders are at the 2 km mark, so I was hoping to spot a village a little farther afield, but alas, none yet…
Detail of the northeast corner of the map. There are ten red markers scattered around the ocean.
This ocean is loaded with shipwrecks and clusters of ruins! I’ll have to go back when I’ve got Night Vision and Water Breathing potions…

In a forest looking up at a pair of large, tall oaks that have formed an arch.
Neat. (−271 W / +41 S), looking north.

  • Enchanted a new pick and finally got Silk Touch
  • Completed a nether tunnel between my two portals (actually made a new portal for Spawn at the “ideal” coordinates… I’ll need to find and destroy the old one at some point)
  • Finally got some glowstone and crimson nylium; set up a tiny test fungi farm outside the house

  • Wanted to start building some more permanent (i.e. automated) farms now that I have the quartz for observers/comparators
  • Instead, started with a mob grinder since I also have glowstone for lamps
  • Wanted to build underground even though it’s less efficient because I don’t like the huge ugly towers these things become and I don’t trust myself to be able to disguise it well
  • Found a huge network of abandoned mineshafts; probably sunk more time into exploring those than doing the actual construction work