Roamwork

Entry 22 ()

After wrapping up the wood farming I’d started last month, I was feeling the itch to get back to exploring. Since the map around the ocean monument was still pretty bare, I decided to head back out there and fill it in. Not too much to report from there – though one corner of the ocean was particularly rich in ruins.

For the most part I just marked them for later – I wasn’t exactly loaded up on Water Breathing potions, and there were at least three clusters of ruins to dive for (on top of some scattered singles), and… honestly, I just wasn’t in the mood that night for all the gravel‐digging and drowned‐fighting and such. Besides, there were shipwrecks too, and those I’m definitely leaving for 1.20. Gotta get a head start on that smithing template collection!

Speaking of the coming update: Next on the menu was some trading. I’m going to need maps for all that exploring, and I also wanted to make the switch to the golden carrot diet. Lowering the unemployment rate will have to wait for another day, but over in Layabout I did get a few more villagers leveled up. (That led me down a rabbit hole working on a little trade tracking app for a couple days, but I found myself trying to reinvent the front‐end framework wheel, so I’ve shelved it ’til I make some time to play with React.)

Back at Roam, I’ve been wanting to expand the map room ever since I ran it into a corner, but one big reason I’d put it off was the thought of moving all those bookshelves without Silk Touch on my axe. After the trading, I thought I’d continue the zen Minecraft with some fishing in hopes of catching a Silk Touch book – but that reminded me that I’ve also been wanting a little fishing pier up on the river. So I built one!

The path still needs a little work (and lighting), and the pier itself isn’t anything fancy, but I like it.

A somewhat wide view of Roam over the river and pier, framed by a dark oak forest on the camera’s side of the river. The pier is a simple affair, three meters wide and 12 long, made of unlit campfires just above the water. Spaced along either side are three oak log pilings; the two at the shore are topped by torches, while one at the edge has a barrel in place of the topmost log. A narrow dirt path, with spruce slabs where the elevation changes, winds away from the camera and past a small pond up toward the house in the background. A steep birch‐covered hill forms a backdrop for the house and barn.
Yeah. This place is coming along, I think. At a glacial pace, but coming along nonetheless. (−303 W / −317 N), looking southeast.

A few days of fishing didn’t yield any Silk Touch, though I did catch two Mending books within a few minutes of each other – and while I certainly won’t complain about that, it just isn’t as exciting when I can always just trade for them (and already have it on all my current gear anyway). So I did some enchanting, too.

It took cycling through about a dozen books, but eventually the enchanting table was showing a level 30 enchant for Silk Touch on an iron pick. I crossed my fingers, made a diamond axe, and gave that a try – and, yup, still Silk Touch! One anvil combine later, I was holding a nearly perfect axe (it does still need netherite), newly dubbed Wit’s End for the struggle of finding that last enchantment. (I suppose it’s also an oblique Amphibia reference, but not exactly a good one.)

So, Silk Touch acquired, the time came to work on the map room. It’s mostly done! I still think the floor and ceiling need a little something, but I’m much happier with it.

View of the map room from its entrance. The room is squareish, roughly two dozen meters on each side, with floor and ceiling mainly of stripped birch logs running front to back and walls lined with bookshelves. Inset into the floor, rimmed in spruce slabs, is a world map, mostly in the very center of the room but with a long narrow branch out of view into the southwest corner. More stripped birch logs act as pillars in the corners, with redstone lamps at their feet, and the walls are further divided by four oak log pillars each, with the outer pillars holding banners while lanterns hang in front of the inner pillars. A smaller map hangs on the back wall. The ceiling is trimmed with spruce slabs around the outside, while a ring of lanterns hangs closer to the center.
Granted, the map itself feels much smaller now, but doesn’t that just encourage filling it out? (−255 W / −179 N), looking north.

Now, next time the room needs to grow, the whole entrance stairwell may need pushing back, but this time only the little vestibule had to be sacrificed. The portal room got pushed back into the southeast corner, and I figure the southwest corner can open onto a stairwell down to the overworld rail station once that’s established.

Detail of the room’s front wall. Instead of bookshelves, the left, center, and right quadrants are made of stone brick, with the oak double‐door entrance in the center and a single dark oak door on the left signed “To Nether and D&VRy.”
(−246 W / −189 N), looking southwest.

This room is gonna be one of the first things to revisit once we’ve got access to Trails & Tales stuff – hanging signs will be good to lead our hypothetical visitors from the entrance to the stations, and I think some chiseled bookshelves will help break up the repetition on the walls. Looking forward to it.

Detail of the room’s northwest corner. A local map of Roam hangs on the wall, and a couple bookshelves are replaced with barrels labeled for maps of the End. Two more bookshelves are missing near the corner with a passage behind.
Don’t mind the hole in the back wall; it’s just the construction entrance for the future station. (So maybe the real entrance will be a double stairwell thing from both of the western corners? Idk; we’ll figure it out) (−259 W / −198 N), looking north.

Now, I did run into a little problem during construction…

I had a lot of leather, so I was just making my own bookshelves to fill out the room instead of heading all the way out to Intersylva to trade for them. At one point, I went outside to grab some more sugarcane for paper, and was greeted by a couple of my colorful sheep roaming free.

Turns out an enderman left a block inside their pen while I was working underground, and every last one of them used it to hop the fence and go on an adventure.

The empty sheep pen, fully grown back over with grass. There’s a single grass block against the back fence.
Just one of those days, huh? (−238 W / −185 N), looking southeast.
An orange sheep running around the edge of the forest while a green sheep grazes behind.
No no, you’re not meant to be out here… (−254 W / −136 N), looking northeast.

Thankfully, none of them ran afoul of the one wild wolf still in the area, and over a couple of days I was able to track them all down and return them home. But it’s got me thinking: Maybe it’s time to add the Anti Enderman Grief data pack.

I always thought their behavior was a neat little bit of Minecraft weirdness, and it hasn’t bothered me ever since that early change limiting it to a handful of (mostly natural) blocks. And sure, maybe this was a freak occurrence… but what happens when one teleports into the storage system’s redstone room and decides to block off one of the floor lights? I don’t want to have a surprise creeper blow up any of that delicate machinery next time I go to expand it…

Oh, and speaking of the storage room, that did get an expansion – just not an increase in capacity. I’ve long had a shuttle rail between the house and the mine to heigh‐ho me and my chest cart full of spoils back from a long digging session, but it’s been less useful ever since I stopped keeping my goodies right next to where it drops me off. That’s fixed!

View of the storage room from its entrance. It’s now about twice as long as it is wide, with two banks of chests on the left wall, each nine wide by six high. Near the right wall, a line of powered rails ascends into the ceiling, supported near the middle of the room by one pillar (with an attached ladder also climbing into the ceiling). The room is made of various stone materials, as if the natural veins have been refined in‐place into their brick or polished variants, and lit by shroomlights in the floor.
This space is a lot less awkward now that it’s opened out. (−247 W / −215 N), looking south.

Yup, the new and improved mining shuttle now connects directly into the storage room – and into the storage system. There’s no longer any need to manually unload the chest cart; it takes its own branch onto a hopper that pipes everything in on its own. (The station is integrated as well; it only allows departure back to the mine if the system has finished running.)

Detail of the cart station. At the bottom of the ramp, there are a few meters of flat track before one piece of unpowered rail climbs to meet the wall. A cart rests on this piece, next to a button on the wall.
I know the track is a bit close to the side wall, but this is only half of the final storage room (hence the concerns about future expansion). Once I have the iron (and need) for more modules, the track will be dead center. (−244 W / −204 N), looking northwest.

That does leave the question of what to do with the abandoned tunnel branch up to the house. The portal at the old station is simply blocked off with some caution wool, but the other end is clearly visible as you pass under it. I’ll probably reclaim the rails and lanterns and such, then just make sure it’s spawn‐proof – maybe throw in some cobwebs.

Midway through the rail tunnel. Directly ahead, new track continues toward the storage room; the ceiling is open to the old tunnel climbing up to the house, its track still in place (though the bottom couple powered rails are no longer powered).
I’ve decided to go a step farther with Roam’s “polished‐up natural stone” look and turn it into a flex by replacing exposed ore with the appropriate resource block (you may have noticed a few redstone blocks in the storage room’s wall). I’ve thought of “retconning” previous work to add more of these patches (and mud bricks in place of dirt now that we have those), but to satisfy my brain gremlins it’d have to be 100% accurate to the original world generation, and that means learning Litematica which kinda feels like more trouble than it’s worth at the moment. (−252 W / −163 N), looking north.

Perhaps a bigger question is what to do with the house’s basement and vault. They feel… maybe not empty, but definitely underutilized, without all the chests. My first thought is a better (definitely more aesthetic, maybe automated) brewing setup, but I’m not sure if I want to make that its own building instead…

Old rail tunnel portal in the house’s vault. Access into the tunnel is blocked by a piece of yellow wool. A stone button is on the wall just inside, camouflaged by the wall being made of stone bricks.
Another sticking point with the vault is if I fully close off the old tunnel portal, I’ll have to find another hiding spot for the button that opens the seecret passage to the map room. (−255 W / −218 N), looking southeast.

Next time: Who knows? As I write this, 1.20 has just been handed an official release date a week and a half away, so given my playing/posting frequency it’s likely some tales from the trails are coming. On the other hand, we’ll see how long it takes for the various mods to update (and whether any last‐minute game‐breaking bugs snuck in), so maybe just some more work around Roam.