User:MentalMouse42/August 2012 Game

This is a discussion of my current game.

Heavy development
As of Aug-9-2012, my new world has been coming along nicely... Having learned from experience, I've been staying within the confines of my first map, while accumulating resources locally. I spawned in plains, but with forests, jungle, and deserts, all within easy reach. I also found a village and picked up a few emeralds before the village got depopulated (I posted that bit as a bug...). I've accumulated all the animals except wolves (and apparently those are now incompatible with cats), and having found some melon seeds, I've now completed my set of farms. (Including the new cocoa plants... yay, cookies!)

The quarry under my original base produced a fair bit of ore including diamonds, with much more from the nearby ravine I've been looting. It opens onto an abandoned mineshaft at lava level, that's been... interesting. Especially the cave spider spawner that was embedded in the middle of a large room's high ceiling! Flint-and-steel let me burn enough webs to slap a torch on the spawner, but that didn't actually stop it. :-( I had to find (and dig) a way around to get at it from the top and take a pick-axe to it.

At this point, my next order of business is to find a Nether Fortress... I never did find one in my last game, and in this one, I've only poked my nose into the Nether long enough to throw up some cobblestone walls. The Nether:Talk page indicates the nearest Fortress may be quite far away, half the map or worse. On the other hand, The Altitude page suggests it's likely to be between levels 50 and 85 (though that graph might well represent a single game :-. (August 9, 2012)

My Nether explorations have gotten out to about a 250-block radius from my original gate, with no sign of a fortress... and it's getting a good deal harder to get anywhere new -- my last exploratory staircase filled in a chunk of the map to the south, but I still ended up peering over cliffs down to the lava sea. :-( I did throw up a second gate back to the Overworld, but haven't explored much there -- I was mostly desperate for cobble and arrows.  --Mental Mouse 21:23, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I've been filling out that new base with various farms, and have been exploring the area. Lots of ravines in the area, though the ones under my "home away from home" and the portal have hard-to reach lava in the way. (A creeper blew open an entry to a shaft right next to the portal!) I also spotted a desert village near the edge of the map, so now I'm stocking up on fences and such before I go over there. There's extreme hills just beyond it, so I might go mining for emeralds too. I got a wolf, too -- actually twice, but a creeper blew up the first one. I'm trying to keep the new one sitting in a safe place, but he keeps teleporting to me. :-( --Mental Mouse 22:07, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

OK, got the town secured (dang, that took a lot of fences). The trading system really is totally unbalanced... I've got farmers trying to sell me 8 cookies or 3 bread for an emerald (with 4 wheat farms handy!), while the blacksmith is asking 7 emeralds for an iron pick. The librarian is buying paper, but I'm not that interested in going industrial on sugar-cane to milk him.... but maybe I should, just to be able to get more trades. Haven't seen a zombie siege yet. I ransacked the nearby desert temple, but all I got was a bit of iron (I'd brought a few blocks with me), a dozen gold, and a big pile of bones. --Mental Mouse 22:48, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
 * ETA: Oh wait.. the librarian already gave up on paper, now he wants to sell me bookcases at 3 emeralds a pop.  And now the only guy who wants anything but MOAR EMERALDS is asking 14 chicken, and my suspended-water chicken farm (back at my spawn base) wasn't working too well last time I looked.  Bugger this for a lark.... (On the other hand, my new Looting II sword works a treat on Endermen... I could do without the Knockback II though.)  --Mental Mouse 23:37, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Nether Fortress!
After fooling around with the villages (the chicken guy switched to wanting to sell something, but I found another village where someone's buying wheat), mining for emeralds (there's an AMS down there too), and generally futzing around with the new base, I've reterned to the nether... and finally, caught my first sight of a Nether Fortress, with Blazes brazenly hanging out on the walkways! Unfortunately, it's standing in the lava ocean, many blocks away from and below the ledge from which I spotted it. Now, how to get there? --Mental Mouse 17:42, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * 1)  Bridge across Ghast-infested void.  :-(, and from the ledge I'd need to build a pillar down at the end, with vulnerable ladders.
 * 2)  Cast around north and south of this one for another, more accessible one.  Getting long distances in the nether is already pretty challenging....
 * 3)  "long-cut" through overworld:  It's right near sea level, so if I get out to the overworld from a gate at least 128 Nether blocks away, I should be able to move ~1024 blocks to the equivalent location, and throw a gate right onto the Fortress....  Problem: accessibility, through a kilometer of mostly-unexplored and unmapped territory.  I might be able to build a better bridge back up from fortress to ledge....

Well, I found another viewpoint which was more distant, but from below the walkway level. I've just remarked and fixed up the route there (which is slightly insane in its own right, at least finding it was). And I'm building a bridge over ~70 meters of lava sea.... 3-wide cobblestone, with iron bars for railings. My Ghast strategy is, run back to the start of the bridge, where I have a shelter. --Mental Mouse 20:30, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

The bridge is perhaps half-built. It quickly became obvious that single-height bars were not sufficient to protect me from explosive knockback -- I didn't quite get dumped into the lava sea, but I did find myself standing on the outside of my fence. Yikes.... So, double-height bars. Then when I'd almost run out of iron bars, I decided to go back ... and promptly ran out of arrows. Naturally, there were two ghasts with a crossfire at the entrance to the cave/staircase to the ledge.... (And again later on the trip back, but one of those turned out to be stuck within sword reach.)  Amazingly, I did get back home, and stocked up on iron bars, arrows, cobble, and suchlike. Back to the bridge next session....


 * Try adding a roof to your bridge; that should keep you safe from ghasts. On my server, I built an enclosed cobblestone tube from the portal to the nearest fortress, some 300 blocks away. (A few players have a habit of falling off ledges.) Not much of a view, but it works. -- Orthotope 20:19, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I might do that after I finish the bridge. Right now, I'm at my most vulnerable when extending the end, so I'm trying to do the work when they're absent anyway, and the open ceiling sometimes lets me shoot back. --Mental Mouse 22:08, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

So.. what kills me? On my way back to the site (not as well marked as I'd hoped), a zombie pigman stumbles around a corner and into my pick. Trying to dodge him and his buddies, I panic, and fall down a hole (but not into the chasm or lava sea). And forget to hit F3 for coords before I respawn. :-( It would be a tough bet to reclaim the items anyway though, given I'll be coming back from well outside the chunk radius....  We'll see how that goes -- it would be really nice to get them back, I had a ton of supplies and about a dozen diamond's worth of equipment.   I'm almost resupplied, but I want to grind some enchantments for sword and pick first. --Mental Mouse 16:58, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

OK, made the rounds of my spawners, and mined a few cave spider nests, even found a new section of deep cave to mine. Going back to the Nether, I actually did find my items waiting for me, right at the entrance to the bridge area! And the ZPMs had all calmed down to boot! (Almost a pity, I was prepped to build an iron golem on the spot for them. ;-) )  After reinforcing the area and path to the bridge, I've roofed over the first section of the bridge, and will soon resume extending it.  It's occured to me that yeah, I do want it roofed, especially when I start playing with Blazes.  I finally built a gate by the bridge too - after beating my way through a fall-through-the-world bug, that ended up in an Ocean biome, but I do have a few islands nearby to build up.  I haven't slept in that bed yet, but will ASAP now that the island has a spare set of armour and weapons.  :-) --Mental Mouse 16:15, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, I got knocked into the lava. :-( Happily, I'd already stashed a bunch of stuff, but I still lost my tools and newly-enchanted (but now somewhat beat-up) armor.  The ghasts had been really hanging around near the far end of the bridge, and I dared a little too much.  I'm almost to the last stretch, a right turn that will bring me up to a walkway -- maybe 20 blocks at most.  Unfortunately, those ghasts keep hanging around low in the lava sea (where I can't shoot them from even mediocre safety), and one has been dodging behind the fortress itself.  --Mental Mouse 20:32, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Bah, I'm back in the Nether, (and Ocean Base is restocked) but those ghasts are still guarding the open end of the bridge. I took down one, but the other is hanging out down by the lava sea, ready to shoot at me when I stick my one over the edge. I'm increasingly tempted to resort to peaceful mode. --Mental Mouse 16:13, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I broke down and went to peaceful mode to finish the bridge... then was confronted with a slippery slope: Almost as soon as I went back to normal mode, Ghasts reappeared, and now threaten to knock me off the walkways. Unfortunately, my bridge is to the outer ends of a couple of "broken bridges" -- and I have a lot of walkway before I can get "indoors". Not to mention the first thing I run across is a stair to a remarkably exposed Blaze spawner... I think it's far enough back that I should be able to get past without trouble. I did do a bit of exploring in peaceful mode, and found at least one other spawner, and a Netherwort patch. Now I just have to kill some blazes, gather some ripe netherwort, and get it all home. Just.... --Mental Mouse 21:51, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Back in the Overworld
It was actually fairly easy to pick up a half-dozen blaze rods and some nether wart. Another trip with a couple of potions of fire resist (and an Iron Golem) got me up to a dozen-odd. (Next time I'll also bring a fishing rod, but the Iron Golem wasn't worth it.) Unfortunately I lost my diamond Silk Touch pickaxe to a couple of dumbass mistakes (nice thing about this game, it generally takes at least two mistakes in sucession to really screw things up), but I've still got an iron STP to move my nether Chests around. I'm working on replenishing my stock of enchanted armour and tools, and hoping for a Fortune pickaxe -- indeed, I've been collecting diamond, emerald, and sometimes redstone with ST, waiting for it. Note: The Nether wort grows way faster than I expected, especially since you don't actually use that much.
 * I think it's worth discussing a bit my decision to break into Peaceful mode (the first time I've done so this game). On the one hand, I could eventually have finished the bridge, probably after a few more deaths.  On the other... I don't like the Nether in the first place, with ghasts firing at you from out of reach and chewing up the landscape.  Finding the Nether Fortress in the first place was a PITA, and so had been building the bridge so far.  In short, this was getting to be Not Fun Anymore, and it ultimately is a game, something meant for fun.  --Mental Mouse 21:23, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

I've opened up another couple of caves that I'd located way back when but never really explored. Fairly tricky, with a lot of those half-open-space caverns with ledges and drops all over, and lots of lava down around 10 (and even above that). Not many diamonds so far (all that lava, often with open space above), but quite a bit of gold, and enough experience available to do a whole series of enchantments. Most of those have been restocking Nether equipment, but I did get that Fortune pickaxe (iron)... and just now, I utterly hit the jackpot when I did a 30-point bow enchantment: Power IV and Infinity. That one is getting tucked away for when I go to the End! Which means I still need a newer enchanted bow, but I found a massive lava-floored ravine that should still have a fair bit of loot to gather, and I can get by with a plain or weakly enchanted bow for a little while (heck, I just got 15 levels, mostly from smelting several stacks of iron). Speaking of loot, I just completed my first stack of gold blocks! (I've got several stacks of iron blocks already -- one in the Ender Chest, almost 3 more locally, and probably most of another stack in my other big base. A couple of stacks of lapis blocks too (I've been thinking of what to do with those)... and most of a double-chest full of redstone dust.  (Compact storage, please!)  Also I brought spruce saplings back to my main base, so now I've got stacks of all four wood types, along with a complete set of farm animals (the wolves are still over at the other base).  I'm still waiting on version 1.4 so I can get potatoes and carrots, and maybe bring some wolves over here just on principle.  I think I'll go fence off that dead village, for when it becomes... undead. --Mental Mouse 01:41, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

And now I remember why I hadn't fenced it before... this village actually butts against (Extreme?) hills, and its border is a horrific mess of hills, cliffs, and water. But I've gotten more determined since then.... --Mental Mouse 13:00, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I've got it lit and more-or-less fenced -- a lot of house walls are part of the perimeter, but the night monsters seem to be stymied. I only had to fix up one creeper blast.... My cow and chicken pens are well outside the perimeter, though. The holdout in the watchtower seems happy enough, he's currently buying raw chicken (even after I sold him a stack I had lying around) and offering the usual things I don't need much (arrows, cooked chicken, shears). I stocked my house with zombie cures, too, so that area's just waiting for 1.4. I think I'll go back to that ravine for a bit of gemhunting. --Mental Mouse 18:33, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

An amusing experience: I was mining a deep-underground ravine (not the lava one, another), and looked up... to unexpectedly see a bit of leaves and sky. After going up for a look-round, I now have a waterfall from the surface at Y=63, down to the ravine floor at Y=18. --Mental Mouse 19:19, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Restoring a Village
So, I went back to that village... I put a lot of work and wood into setting up little pens around the perimeter... well, all that lighting I did means not much is spawning right next to the village. Unfortunately, the lines of sight from the outer fence are mostly either lousy, or across water, so I'm not getting too many monsters coming by, indeed I have to run out and find them in the surrounding area. Also, most zombies are still the regular sort. (There is one pass by a cliff where I've repeatedly been dive-bombed by creepers from over the hill. :-  The first villager zombie I found was sneaking in over a mountain, and died in the sun before his cure was complete.  The second, I found banging on a door.  I led him into a house for the cure, and just shut him in there.  I'm on normal mode, and zombies are no longer breaking through wood doors... but of course, the cured villager could just open it.  He promptly went looking for the holdout in the watchtower, but he flatly refused to go down the ladder from his front door.  Just kept opening and closing the door... but I don't completely blame him.  I noted that the village generated on hills (actually still in Plains biome, but pretty fair hills anyway), and the watchtower base is atop a high one.  I had to put that ladder in, and it's tall.  To get them together, I had to knock another doorway into the side of his hut, and to get them back down, I had to fence a path for them from there (and fence out further intrusions). Once they got down, the first thing they did was to check out my house....  I'm still waiting for them to make kids. (PS: Contrary to some reports, the golden apple is consumed when you cure a VZ.)

While I was at it, i've taken over some of the wheat farms for carrots, potatos, melons, and pumpkins, and stashed a half-dozen nether wart plants in one of the houses. Also, I sank a mineshaft from a corner, because I realized I hadn't put redstone in my Ender Chest, and I didn't have a speck to extend my potions. Naturally, my shaft led down to an Abandoned Mineshaft... right next to a cave spider spawner. Oy gevalt, but I eventually got that cleared, tossed a waterfall down a ravine, and got my redstone. (Also a handful of gold, and most of two stacks of iron.) I might do some mining there while I'm waiting for villagers to respawn. --Mental Mouse 02:29, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Well now... turns out that just because a Zombie (Villager) and a live Villager are staring at each other across a fence, doesn't mean the zombie actually can't reach the villager. Lost my most-cultured villager, but cured the zombie villager, and they'd already had a couple of kids (both butchers). --Mental Mouse 12:31, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Seeking an End
Well, after some poking around between my bases, I decided to go looking for a Stronghold. The Eyes of Ender worked just like they're supposed to, and led me to the area. When the results started getting confusing, I resorted to a drawing program (because my graph paper isn't big enough)... and my last two throws had in fact nailed it from different directions. The area was swamp, not too far from one of the villages I'd found... and I think most of the way to my second big Overworld base (the one I settled through a Nether Portal). So, I tidied up a handy underwater cave, and started a staircase down from the nearby shield. Hey, it's an Abandoned Mine Shaft... but from some areas, I can hear zombies knocking on doors. No doors in the AMS.... Well, after poking around a bit and mining some handy diamonds, I went headed for those coordinates. Dead-end? Well, let's try this piston... yep, open space back there. Dug a stair upwards (figuring I was already at lava-lake level), and hey, I see open space and stone brick! I haven't reached the portal room yet, but first impressions are that the Stronghold is much more interesting than the Nether Fortress.

ETA: In fact, I think I'll hold off long enough to build a railway.... now that I have endpoints (and way stations) worthy of the railway achievement! --Mental Mouse 00:12, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Training Camp
Well, I got "On A Rail!" I've now got all achievements except "when pigs fly" (I think I need a higher cliff) and the two End achievements. First hitch was, dang, that's lot of rails, and more than twice as many fences. I've now got jungle giants at several waypoints....  Also, I had to disable most of my branches and holding loops to get a straight ride through the various "stations" I built along the way. And right at the end, I discovered it had to be 1000m in one coordinate, so I had to build some extensions at the ends of the route to get over the line.

But, I now have a rail line running between my two biggest bases, stopping off along the way at the town nearest my stronghold (a branch goes closer), and passing by a couple of openings to yet more caves, some with verified diamonds. Thoughts: --Mental Mouse 16:12, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) the big problem with minecarts is that there's no way to control the route of un-ridden minecarts without already being at the station -- I think a ridden one can turn onto a side branch with player movement, but that doesn't help much if your storage cart and engine go merrily on their own way, and switching a track requires hitting a lever or button on the fly.  The lever then stays set until you change it again, not so good if you're coming back the other way.  A button is even harder to hit, and takes lots of redstone to extend the pulse long enough for several carts to go through.    This may be partly fixed with the upcoming "trains" with attached carts....
 * 2) creepers are really good at exposing caves in the desert.  :-)
 * 3) Night riding is iffy -- protecting a track against skeleton arrows costs even more resources, and the powered minecart occasionally gets left behind by other carts on the downhill, which can leave you way too close to creepers on the other side of the fence.
 * 4) The Nether really is faster and easier, especially once I dug a couple of shortcut tunnels.  I've now got gates to two villages and three bases (not counting the minimal ocean base from the Nether Fortress).  And this is from someone who hates the Nether!  The big thing with rails is being able to load up and send storage carts, but see #1....

Future
I do hope to finish the End in this world, but after all my Nether exploration, I think I'll need to abandon this world for the next game version, in order to get the new Nether Quartz and maybe other features.