Road to the West

Entry 25 ()

After a little break, it was time to do some more work around Roam. I was going to expand the farming area – much bigger crop fields, plenty of room for the animals to graze (and sploot, once I hatch those eggs from last time) – but quickly realized that’ll be a bigger project than I thought. The plains biome at the north end isn’t actually all that big (and is a bit hilly besides), so I’d have to trim back some forest and/or bridge across the river, and I don’t quite have a plan for all that yet. So instead I started by making some of those fancy new hanging signs.

Stairwell down to Roam Station, along the path toward my house in the background. A lamppost at the top of the stairs now extends over the entrance with two signs hanging below, reading “Roam Station” and “The Grand World Atlas”.
The map room now has not only equal billing with the station itself, but also a proper name: The Grand World Atlas. (−259 W / −165 N), looking north.
Looking back down the path from the opposite end of the stairwell. The signs’ text is duplicated on this side.
I love that signs are finally double‐sided now, too. (−259 W / −179 N), looking south.
Just inside the entrance of the World Atlas, the titular map visible recessed into the center of the floor. One sign hanging from the ceiling reads “To Nether / Deltas & Valley Ry. →”; another at the center of the room reads “You Are Here ↓”, the arrow along the right edge. Most of the walls consist of bookshelves, a few of which are now chiseled bookshelves about half‐full.
The other new 1.20 stuff amounts to a few chiseled bookshelves, though I’m basically out of books to fill them – as well as leather to make said books. Might need to set up a new trigger for the seecret passage once I’ve got more… (−256 W / −179 N), looking north.

I also did more overdue torchspam cleanup, specifically down in Old Roam, and more specifically in the cave‐bowl‐thing where I first sheltered and mined.

Looking down into a stony pit that extends into the mountain ahead and down beneath the surface at right. Two streams of lava run down the back wall, flowing over the floor and down underground to the right. Only two torches are visible, one where the back wall curves, and other just inside a smaller tunnel leading farther into the mountain.
Really, the lighting takes care of itself here. (−273 W / −82 N), looking east.

And I do have a project in mind for this area – the “industrial district.” Not so much in the usual Minecraft base sense of “where all the automated farms are,” but specifically for heavy industry – the copper aging facility, the super‐smelter, and, yes, the iron farm. Because I’ve decided I do want an iron farm after all.

Specifically, I want a combined super‐smelter and iron farm. Villager enslavement has never sat right with me, so I’d like to at least pretend they’ve got normal lives, even if that’s in a tiny‐isolated‐company‐town‐buried‐inside‐a‐mountain kind of sense. I’ve played with the idea in Creative mode, and it seems viable enough to give the staff some living space while still limiting golem spawning to the, well, grinder.

So the plan is to set up the villagers’ workstations (blast furnaces, grindstones, and smithing tables, to keep to the theme) in the same room as the super‐smelter’s furnaces (and maybe its input/output chests; I’m still playing with the layout). That way I’ll see them regularly and can even trade with them instead of just locking them in a box and throwing away the key. I’ll have to restrain and cure some zombie villagers to get things started (no kidnapping!), and I’ll need five of ’em, so it’s a long‐term plan – but a plan nonetheless.

And sure, it won’t be as efficient as the traditional 24/7 panic boxes people build – but who cares? As I’ve opined before, we can Fortune iron now, and giant veins are a thing too (even if I haven’t found one yet). I would like to convince a pillager to break their crossbow and hire on as supervisor, with trapdoors or a piston wall opening on a timer to… encourage… the production team a few times during the workday, but that’s an even longer‐term improvement considering the only watchtower I’ve found is over 11 km away. (Remember, there aren’t patrols in this world, and the closest I could possibly find another tower would still be over 2 km from home.)

But why finally give in on this? Rails, chains, and bars. I want to bring the railway out to the Halo so I have a better jumping‐off point for further (and farther) adventures – and (even if I’ll rarely see it) I want to suspend some sections of tube from the nether ceiling, but in many places that’s gonna be dozens of blocks above. I’d love to get started on the overworld system sometime, too. And all of that gets expensive.

Besides, I’m me. I like zenning out and mining. I’m not gonna stop doing that just because I have a source of infinite iron. I’m gonna keep doing that and have a source of infinite iron. (That’s how things are going on my friend’s server – he set up a rather productive (and shared) iron farm basically first thing when he moved out of our group commune, but that hasn’t deterred me in the slightest from mining out the giant iron vein I later found under my own base.) Plus I’ll probably have to do that anyway if I ever want to hunt down an ancient city (and I do want to hunt down an ancient city).

As to the railway, extending the west line out to the Halo feels like the obvious choice: It’s already the closest to getting there, and even if it weren’t, it’d be the shortest from Roam. Plus, the parts I’ve already explored are around the southwest corner, relatively close by… ish.

Anyway, I decided to head directly west from home base and see what’s on the way – scout for potential stations and all.

In the canopy of a dark oak forest looking over a raging, widespread fire apparently started by a lava pool.
Oh no. My favorite biome is on fire. Somebody should do something. Alas. (−3,663 W / −667 N), looking east.

Fire probably would’ve been a continuing theme if not for some well‐timed weather.

A shipwreck on its side in the rain, embedded in stone and mostly above the waterline. A lava spring pours down next to it and may already have burned away some of the wreck.
Maybe whatever calamity ruined all those nether portals all over the world also wrecked all these ships. And phased some of them into rock. (−4,768 W / −500 N), looking west.

I filled up two maps to start – there wasn’t much else to report, just a couple more villages and a few more coast armor trim templates.

But then I filled a couple more, and that’s where the good stuff came in.

Looking over a stretch of ocean with a few small, snow‐covered islands and patches of ice between them.
Day 2,102: Finally, some snowy biomes! (−5,487 W / −161 N), looking west.

Those little bits of beach might not be so impressive, but oh, I promise there’s more…

Looking across some shallow, warm ocean to a snowy shoreline. The beach sharply rises into tall cones of sand, with towering ice spikes climbing out of them to the sky.
Love me a good ice spikes biome, even when said ice spikes are buried in sand dunes like this. (Of course they’re bordered by (luke)warm ocean, because Minecraft.) (−5,728 W / −106 N), looking southwest.
A less steep section of the ice spikes beach. Trees are visible behind, and at the edge of the frame the ocean abruptly ends at a wall of dirt and stone.
To the west, though, the ice spikes are quickly interrupted by the Halo – the cold stuff does continue off to the south, but for once I decided to actually show some restraint and stick to the mission of “westward ho.” Mostly. I did follow a buried treasure map that went down that way, but that’s it. Another day, though! (−5,979 W / −151 N), looking southwest.

Continuing north along the Halo, I spotted something even rarer: Some mushroom fields!

Looking up the Halo, a Beta‐era forest at left. On the right, cut off by the boundary, is the purplish‐gray mycelium – and mushrooms large and small – of a mushroom fields biome. It’s only a few dozen meters wide, though, and transitions into a taiga to the right, with giant spruce trees forming a backdrop.
Day 2,110. Finally I can grab a single block of mycelium, squirrel it away in the storage system, and never actually do anything with it. (−6,144 W / −763 N), looking north.
On a mycelium ridge looking down over the mushroom fields and taiga. There is some overlap, with some spruce trees growing on the mycelium and apparently some giant mushrooms growing in the taiga – though on closer inspection, the latter are growing on a narrow strip of mushroom fields cutting through the forest. A couple of mooshrooms are visible on the edge of a hill in the distance.
I’ll still always think of this biome as a “mushroom island” – but this one is in fact not an island for once, so… (−6,140 W / −1,062 N), looking northeast.
A mooshroom in the mushroom fields at the edge of the taiga. A second mooshroom, downhill, is wandering back out of the forest.
I did have to wander off the edge of the map a little more to say hello to these cuties. (−6,083 W / −1,150 N), looking northeast.

Turns out the Halo also had some snow to offer up today.

Looking over a shallow, barren ocean with patches of ice. There’s a small island with a few snow‐covered trees, and a forest at right, again with snow on the treetops but not on the ground. There are snowy plains just beyond the opposite shore, with small patches of snowy taiga as well.
(−6,222 W / −925 N), looking west.
A wide, gently rolling grass plain, devoid of tall grass, flowers, animals, etc. There’s a patch of sand near the center, with distant trees forming a couple backdrops.
I’ve never played golf, but this feels like it’s begging to be turned into a course. (−6,708 W / −919 N), looking southeast.

When I reached the far edge, I was pleased to discover exactly the kind of thing I wanted out of this world…

A desert shore and forested hill dwarfed by a wall of stones, ores, and soils dozens of meters high. It’s topped by a birch forest and, at the peak, a meadow, and a couple of decently‐sized dripstone caves are visible along with several smaller holes.
…big ol’ mountain slices. Man, I totally missed the triple emerald ore up there… (−7,051 W / −88 N), looking southwest.
Another tall wall of terrain, topped by forest, against a shallow, barren ocean dotted with tiny islands. There’s a steep canyon cutting down from the surface, and a large cave just below another part of the surface, both extending below the waterline and out of sight.
(−7,071 W / −217 N), looking northwest.
Another tall wall of forest‐topped terrain, this one against a Beta forest. One wide cave cuts through, gently climbing up to the surface on the far side. A snow‐and‐ice‐topped peak is visible in the distance.
Woohoo, new mountain biomes! Gotta get me some nice leather boots for when I come back here… (−7,098 W / −1,039 N), looking west.
Looking up a river valley towards more mountain peaks.
Who knows – maybe there’s an ancient city under one of these? (−7,208 W / −515 N), looking north.
Tight view of an icy mountain peak with a couple of goats on the grass just below.
If nothing else, there are goats to befriend! (−7,181 W / −1,025 N), zoomed, looking north.
Standing in a shallow Beta ocean with a steep forested rise at the opposite shore. A nether portal with cobblestone corners has been built floating at the water’s surface.
The future site of 2011 Minecraft West station. I think it’d be funny to just leave it floating in the water with no bridge or anything, even though the shore’s basically right behind me here. Also considering restricting builds in the Halo to blocks – or at least materials – that were available back in Beta, as a sort of historic park. (−6,649 W / −202 N), looking southwest.

All told, I got to check a whopping eight new biomes off the list on these trips, with fewer than that remaining for the Adventuring Time challenge – and some of those are in sight in those mountains just beyond the Halo. Soon!

Next time: We’ll see how I feel, idk.

I’d like to get back to railing my way west, but the line currently ends midair above the lava sea, with nothing but fog in sight ahead… and if I stick to the current palette, that means smelting a lot of nether bricks to make any progress; can’t just tunnel first to feel accomplished and then come back to decorate later. That palette does date to before Caves & Cliffs, though – and I think now that I have more deepslate than I know what to do with, I might just switch to that instead for future extensions.

I also still haven’t planted any mangrove or cherry trees, or played with the new bamboo set, so those are still options. Could also decide what to do about expanding into the plains/forest, but that requires brainpower I may not have available.