The pillagers (I missed an update so I'm one behind and referring to the one two back) aren't worth taking on unless you want them gone. I don't consider the crossbow or banner too valuable but maybe others do.
I'd say you handled you well, even though it started bad. I wouldn't have even stayed to fight. I would have ran and tried to eat to regenerate somewhere.
I wouldn't have ever gotten so close and tried to sneak hits in with five of them. That's too risky because it leads to exactly what happened.
I would have tried to get them to give chase to separate them a bit and tried to pick off one or two at a time.
Full unecnahnted iron isn't much, as you found out. I recall that a pair (or maybe three) skeletons giving me similar damage risk in my the beginning of my current hardcore world, and it's what made me fear early that my no enchantment rule may be too much and lead to me losing the world, so I just... avoided risk since. I think I was entirely in iron at that point (I may have been missing the helmet still though) but I had a shield and still needed tree cover.
Even full diamond isn't enough to be careless. Really, you shouldn't be careless at all in hardcore, ever, but enchanted diamond is where I start to feel comfortable. Enchanted netherite (including blast protection) made me feel almost comfortable even surrounded my creepers. I recall taking two or three back to back and almost tanking it in that armor. But with creepers, a lot has to do with distance. They often never truly hug you, which is where they truly do damage, unless you move into them after they start charging. Even in my current world where I just have unenchanted diamond, I took two creeper scenarios back to back, one knocking me nearly into the other behind me, and thinking it was nothing... because it did almost nothing. My lack of panic make Zeno panic at how risky it actually was, haha.
My own world is so far in and I'm still only in unechanted diamond (I only "recently" dropped the restriction that I can't enchant). I'd say that's not enough if I was playing more normally (taking risks), but all I do is explore and never approach danger. It's enough to take on a pillager patrol or outpost though. It's a fair step up on what iron offers.
What is the purpose to the wooden slab on top of the composter? Decorative? or is there some function?
How did I not know hay bales reduced fall damage?Seriously? That's like a 1.6 addition, right? How did I not know of this!?
As for the sculk stuff, and I'll spoiler this in case you don't want to know mechanics and want to natural discover things. If you don't know the mechanics and don't fully want to, this may ruin things for you.
The zombies wouldn't have set off sculk shriekers.
The warnings are applied per player, not to the sculk shrieker itself. The sculk sensor will indeed light up when detecting nearby noises even from mobs (bats do this constantly), but they won't pass that to a sculk shrieker.
So unless you make a sound near a sculk sensor which is then passed to a sculk shrieker (and this will result in the obvious noise of the sculk shrieker as well as the darkness effect), and unless you do it four times within ten minutes, you have nothing to worry about.
You get three warning levels allowed, and the forth summons it. You lose one warning level every ten minutes.
Though you're in no real danger to just mine despite knowing they are there, even if you hear a sculk sensor activate. Personally, I think they sound too cute when activating anyway (this is going to result in me summoning a warden one day...) and you have a generous amount of obvious warnings a shrieker goes off, so if it goes off once, wait ten minutes and then try and remove it. Unless you're near an ancient city (which is potentially good in its own ways), it just shouldn't be a big enough concern.
This post will address both replies, although I'm not sure how to quote multiple replies across two different pages.
I don't think cherry wood itself looks particularly appealing when overused, e.g. if you build a pure cherry house with cherry fences and cherry trapdoors and everything. It seems ideal to pair it with other wood types or materials, like stone bricks, as color contrast is definitely something I enjoy keeping in my builds. I definitely like having the cherry trees on their own serving as a background, though.
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As for the pillager patrols, I'm thankful that I now have a balcony where I could snipe each of the pillagers individually, causing each of them in turn to leave the group and come over to my house, making killing them much easier and safer. When they spawn at a safe distance from my base, however, I leave them alone. I only strike when they appear at a threateningly close location.
Acquiring diamond armor is already one of my goals. I had attempted to enchant my diamond pickaxe with Fortune III to minimize my time underground, but failed to do so, so I might just as well go mining soon. I didn't know that you were given warnings before the Warden actually spawned though. That's good to keep in mind.
A question about the sculk: if a sensor triggers multiple nearby shriekers (in case I'm unknowingly directly below an ancient city), does that count as one warning or multiple warnings (depending on the number of shriekers triggered)?
I placed a slab on top of the composter to prevent me from walking on top of the composter while farming. If I do, getting back down will often break the crops, and I usually don't carry a hoe with me to conserve inventory space.
I believe multiple sculk shriekers don't stack because I've gone through ancient cities where two, three, or even four were clustered and it only seemed to count as one when it goes off. Only one of the sculk shriekers shows the visual effect of going off, and I should have summoned a warden in multiple instances where I didn't. I think once one activates, it prevents any others from concurrently activating for a set amount of time.
I made a video which might serve as a good example to showing how they want, if you are interested. If not and you changed your mind and don't want it spoiled, don't watch it.
You can see how only one of the tree sculk shriekers activates at a time. Normally a darkness effect comes with this activation, but I'm in creative so it doesn't.
That should be six warning levels added if they stacked, but it wasn't, so clearly they don't stack.
You can also notice how the middle of the three times a sculk sensor hears me, it doesn't pass an activation to any of the sculk shriekers. That's because it was still probably going through the first activation and hadn't finished yet (again, there's usually a darkness effect added for many seconds after).
The sculk sensors are harmless on their own. If you ask me, beneficial even, because they sound cute. The other noise is the one to be terrified of...
Now with a well-established base, I figured we were in a good position to set out and explore the vast world beyond our mountain range. Not only would this grant us access to biome-specific resources, it was also the perfect opportunity to begin our mapping adventures. While the primary focus of this world is not set on mapping, but rather on building and developing a base into a potential thriving village and seeing how much we can achieve before we inevitably lose the world, I would still like to to get some exploration done.
I still had several base enhancement ideas in mind, however. First and foremost, I was looking for a horse to bring to our animal barn. Although I was unlikely to actually ride a horse, they would serve as good companions in our rather lonely valley.
I didn't find one though. I did, however, come across a lone donkey sauntering in the alpine meadows who was willing to "move" to our base.
I also found this narrow but deep dripstone ravine along the way:
Better not fall into that.
Luckily, we made it safely back to base, where the donkey gladly entered his new home.
Out of nowhere, I suddenly realized that I was over 100 days into the world and still didn't possess a Book and Quill! I hurriedly harvested some leather and sugar cane, rushed into my house to grab an ink sac from the utility chest, and immediately crafted the item of knowledge.
For me, a Book and Quill is a must-have item for exploring, particularly for recording coordinates, although as of now, I'm refraining myself from doing so as I would like to familiarize myself with the local area in a more authentic manner. But other than that, I still like the idea of having one on me just in case there are other things to be recorded, although I don't know what they would be.
And speaking of books, I moved the enchanting station onto the second floor of my house, just like on my survival world.
With that done, I decided to establish a small tree farm, as wood supplies were diminishing. It's not the sort of tree farm you'd expect, but rather several small square areas of stone bricks casually placed here and there, with a dirt block in the middle where the sapling would be planted.
The sugar cane growing site also had to be removed, but it would be transformed into something far better by the end of this update!
I then stocked up on my food and wood supplies and organized my inventory, for it was time to begin the mapping trip! I also crafted a new banner, named it "Sunflower Valley" via the new anvil and placed it in the living room. This would show our base's location on the map, just in case we get lost.
Here is the local area surrounding our base at zoom level 0:
Notice two medium-sized cave openings nearby.
I was going for zoom level 3, my preferred zoom level for general exploration of the Overworld as it shouldn't take too long to fill in on foot but still covers a fairly large area, I believe 1024x1024 blocks? I had previously been considering zoom level 4, but I still would like to have some detail on the map, like tree density.
But then, I made a rather significant mistake by recording the whole mapping trip on video and not taking any screenshots. It's the first time I've done any mapping without an Elytra, so I didn't really have a clue as to how long it would actually take (it turned out to be just under an hour, not counting the "inventory organization break" at my base halfway through).
Here's the video. It's 57 minutes long, so there's not really any point in watching it in full; I would describe the journey below with the aid of timestamps. (There'll be a picture series instead of a video next time. The video itself took over four hours to upload due to my somewhat poor connection.)
Starting south, I headed up Sunflower Valley and through the cherry grove before trekking across the plains towards the village (the "normal" one, that is, not the messed up cliffside village). I continued past the village, put on my snow boots and headed up the snowy mountain massif (2:50). Looking back, I found a new village, partially situated in the cherry grove adjacent to the previous village. Exploration of the new village would be saved for later in this update, but spoiler alert, its location is magnificent.
At this point, I turned east. The plan was that I would map the terrain in a spiral pattern, which meant that by the time I finished filling in the edge of the map, I would be able to organize and restock on supplies at my base before continuing. It was also slightly confusing that my base was on the western edge of the map rather than at the center like I thought it would, since I started the map right at my base, but oh well, that just meant I should start a new western map soon to "balance things out." Mapping in a spiral pattern also didn't turn out to be very efficient, so I might have to attempt a different technique in the future.
I headed along the side of the mountain in an easterly direction along the southern edge of the map. Below were mostly plains with a flower forest just behind (4:30). Continuing on was a small cherry grove (6:00), where I slept through the night.
Come morning, I reached the end of the mountain massif, where I continued east over a savanna plateau. Not long after, I entered a temperate climate zone, indicated by the plains and forests ahead. I headed down a steep slope towards a large lake with a wooded island in the center (9:45).
On the map itself, however, I noticed it was difficult to differentiate between most grassy biomes, e.g. plains and savannas, since the color on the map is exactly the same. It would've been far better if the color of the savanna on the map was perhaps a dry, olive-green color like in the actual game.
At the southeastern corner of the map, the plains transitioned to savanna again, with beaches and an ocean just beyond (11:00). But it was now time to head up north, which for a while was mostly plains with a tiny forest (12:18). Halfway through, however, was a small sparse jungle with lukewarm ocean beyond. As I'm seeing so far, our local area is situated in a mainly warm climate region, given that to the north of our base (we are currently mapping the east), there is more savanna beyond the frozen peaks (which we explored on Days 1 and 2).
I got into my boat and started rowing across the ocean. This definitely feels like I'm playing on my survival island world, especially when I came across a small island similar to our own (14:15). Just off the coast of the island was a shipwreck which I would explore later in this update.
To the northwest were stony shores and a formal jungle! The ocean did continue to the east and the north, but that was off the map. I turned west and landed at another sparse jungle hill which I headed up. Turning around, I found a ruined portal in the dense jungle, but that was also off the map, although again, I would explore that later in this update.
The sparse jungle then transitioned to forest (16:20). The hill became very steep here, requiring a bit of mining and pillaring, before I made it to the top and slept through the night.
I continued through the forest but noticed gray starting to appear on my map. It only meant one thing: I was entering familiar terrain, namely the stony mountain massif northeast of Sunflower Valley (18:24). I took the opportunity for a quick restock on my coal and iron supplies before heading back down to the forest valley below. It was all a relatively easy and relaxed stroll through the woods, although I soon had to head back up the frozen mountain massif through the spruce grove (21:40). I crossed over the icy summit and headed back down again, still exploring in a westerly direction towards the round snowy mountain from Episode 4. It was here that I encountered another pillager patrol (23:34), but I refrained from fighting them as I didn't have shelter this time.
I went up a small slope and discovered I was in a pretty spectacular mountain pass. The snowy mountain is in fact part of a jagged mountain massif that extends to the northwest and is therefore off the map. To the south was sunflower plains, a cherry grove and beyond that, my base. To the west, I found a small flower forest and more alpine meadows. In short, there were flowers everywhere.
This was also the place where I would turn south and head back to my base to organize our nearly full inventory and restock on supplies, but first, I harvested some lilies of the valley and alliums to decorate our base.
I enjoyed the night at my base before heading out again to fill in the center of the map (30:12). The plan was to head east up and over our local frozen mountain massif, turn south, then west, then north, and continue doing so until the whole map was completed.
I headed down through the two-tree cherry grove and east towards a savanna, where there was also a small snowy hilltop (35:00). The stony mountain massif and sparse jungle was now to my north, and to the east was the expected ocean. After heading down the stony cliff and attempting (but failing) a boat clutch, I once again started rowing across the ocean, finding another small island and coming across the same shipwreck from before (36:45). I turned south at the island and rowed parallel to the stony cliffs before making landfall at the savanna near the other frozen mountain massif. I was pretty sure I saw some wild llamas here as well.
I slept through the night atop the savanna plateau and made my way west through the mountains the next day. Nothing particularly interesting to mention here besides an interestingly large overhang as well as a ruined portal (41:29) without a gold block (that part really annoyed me). Apparently, only one ruined portal variant spawned without a gold block. (Spoiler warning: The ruined portal from the jungle also turned out to lack a gold block, and the loot was even worse. At least I managed to obtain a fire charge and some extra iron nuggets here.)
You may recognize the area as we descended the mountain range (48:15). Apparently, this was the mountain range which we had traversed on Days 1 and 2! We had probably ascended it from the west, which is not shown on the map, went right through the middle and then reached the northern end with the cherry grove.
Here, we turned east again to fill out the remainder of the map. And that meant I had to climb back up again, but not really that much, and I also slept through the night.
The next day, I continued east down the mountain, where there was another flower forest hill topped with snow (52:00). I harvested some tulips and oxeye daisies and walked around, seeing the last little bits and bobs of brown on the map turning green.
As I was heading back to base with my completed map, I noticed that the pillager patrol from earlier still had not despawned. I suppose it was because I had been travelling for most of the time and their chunk got unloaded. But they were far away and non-threatening, so I resumed, eventually arriving at my base (57:20) where I enjoyed a good night's rest.
The completed map:
And the path we roughly took:
For my next building project, I was going to need a considerable amount of stone bricks. The good thing about having a Silk Touch pickaxe was that I could just mine as much stone as I wanted without having to worry about the cost of smelting it. I could also mine freely under mountain biomes without having to worry about releasing silverfish from hidden infested blocks. I was mining at y:15, just so I would also be able to restock on my iron supplies, and hopefully I would come across some gold or lapis lazuli too.
As I was mining an iron vein, I revealed this:
Wow, stone diamond ore! There were two of them as well. Right around y:15, the highest level where they could spawn. I decided to mine the ores with Silk Touch since you don't come across stone diamond every day, unlike its deepslate variant. Maybe I'll put them in an ore museum or something someday.
I also exposed some lapis lazuli as well, but unfortunately no gold.
And here's two new caves, one of them being a large flooded cavern while the other was a narrow, mineshaft-like tunnel.
Back on the surface, here's the outline of the pond I was planning to build:
I would replace some of the stone bricks with more natural blocks like grass and sand to enable sugar cane growing, but that would be for later. Now, I needed to head to the river to the southwest to gather some more sand for the bottom of the pond. A little sprinkle of gravel should do as well.
While I was at the river, I took a closer shot of the dripstone cave openings on the side of the cliff:
I then planted down the sugar cane and experimented with bonemealing moss on the edge of the pond. The latter is one of my favorite things to do in the game for some reason.
Yes, flowering azalea spawned!
The pond wasn't finished though. I made another trip along the edge of the map to harvest some bamboo from the northeastern jungle as well as acquire a bell from the southwestern village. This would also provide a good opportunity to explore the other village we discovered earlier.
I decided to head south first.
The new village was large and situated just outside the cherry grove in a spectacular meadow. The villagers definitely found an excellent place to settle at!
In terms of loot, it didn't have too much to offer apart from some spare emeralds, four golden nuggets as well as the desired bell. The village actually had two bells, so I'm sure the villagers wouldn't mind sharing one of them. I also found this interesting barnhouse:
I slept through the night at the village before heading northeast towards the jungle. I forgot to mention that I had left the original map on an item frame in my house and brought out a copy instead just in case I lost my world.
I arrived at the jungle late on a rainy afternoon. I did punch some grass for a few wheat seeds should there be any nearby parrots to tame, but I didn't find any. My inventory was very nearly full at this point so I could only afford to chop down one bamboo stalk.
I was thankful that the ruined portal had nothing desirable to offer, not even a gold block, although it did try to destroy my world not only by containing a Curse of Binding helmet in the loot chest but also setting the jungle on fire.
Edit: Is that sliver of yellow beneath the stone brick stairs the gold block? How did I miss it?!
To make matters worse, as I was stumbling out of the jungle, a zombie escaped from a cave and started towards me. I pulled out my bow and shot at it just as it burned to death, wasting a precious arrow.
I then headed up the sparse jungle hill and crossed the mountain massif before arriving home, where I bonemealed more moss as well as spawned a flower azalea tree!
For the finishing touches to the pond, I headed back east to the flower forest, where I harvested some rose bushes, peony, tulips and lilies of of the valley.
Here's yet another dripstone ravine I encountered along the way:
I've shown so many of these that it was probably pointless to continue doing so.
Back at base, I decided to decorate the exterior of the mining hut with lilies of the valley as well as plant down the bamboo from the jungle. The more bamboo we obtain, the more scaffolding we could craft! For me, scaffolding is a must-have in your inventory, whether you're working on massive building projects or raiding an End city.
As I was placing down the flowers, an enderman suddenly just teleported into my base and removed a grass block. Really? I nearly looked him in the eye, and that would have been fatal. It probably spawned near a cave opening, wandered out and teleported around due to being exposed to the sunlight. Please don't let this happen again.
But anyways, here is the completed pond:
Should I survive to the stage of starting a villager community, this would serve as the village center.
I spent the rest of the evening watching over our base. It seemed less impressive from a distance as the cherry trees got in the way, but that just made me feel safer somehow. Those natural looks are reallycutting it.
The next episode will primarily focus on making some small renovations here and there around our base. I may also work towards acquiring full diamond armor or even tools, as I would definitely like to get myself fully protected as soon as possible and explore the Overworld in relative safety. The Nether, on the other hand, is still a long way ahead. I've only been to the Nether once before, on my survival world, and died uncountable times while I was there.
Your base looks nice on the map. Pity the map can't show it all because of map placement issues. I really wish Mojang would ditch the system of locking larger maps to particular coordinate locations and adopt the system of being able to craft adjacent maps on the cartographer block. It's not hard and it could make some things oh so much nicer!
It's odd how the Cherry trees make things feel safer. I felt this too, way back in Episode 2 of my Return to Minecraft journal, on arriving at a BoP Cherry Blossom Grove (a close relative of the current vanilla ones). The weird thing is that that was actually *less* safe because that's a duskspawning biome (and I knew that). But it still felt safer!
Nice pond, too.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I sometimes become so captivated by the dazzling colors of the seemingly safe and peaceful cherry grove that I forget mobs can spawn there in the dark (and yes, I did find quite a few shaded areas while exploring around). Really, it is technically just a forest of pink rather than green, although in my opinion, it makes more sense for monsters not to spawn in cherry groves rather than mushroom islands.
I'm still an update behind so this is in response to two updates back...
I'll have to try a checkerboard pattern when an opportunity arises. I've done it before, but I don't do it often.
I like the outside windows. They give me some ideas for, again, when I have an opportunity to use it.
If you think your progress is slow, I don't know what mine is.
The pillager patrols are... strange. When I explore, I almost never see them. Stationary at a settlement/base? All the time. I think they might only spawn behind you? At least, I've never seen any just pop into existence in front of me. And if you're moving, they either spawn less, or you just walk away and are oblivious to them having spawned. As for despawning? I think maybe they won't unless you move far enough away. I had my own time where I had a handful of patrols active at once. They don't seem to (?) have a timer to despawn like wandering traders (which only seems to count down while they're loaded).
As for despawning? I think maybe they won't unless you move far enough away. I had my own time where I had a handful of patrols active at once. They don't seem to (?) have a timer to despawn like wandering traders (which only seems to count down while they're loaded).
Well that explains why the long-term pillager patrol took so long to despawn, although that is not my experience for every single one of them. Sometimes, they just wander off and disappear into the forest, and I usually assume they despawned. The patrol in question neither wandered off nor despawned for about 15 in-game days before suddenly disappearing into the forest, so I thought there was something strange about it.
If we were to survive and conquer the challenges of the hostile world, it was about time we acquire a full set of diamond gear. So in this update, we head into the Deep Dark and smash our way through tough deepslate in hopes of unveiling the shiny, blue gems. We also continue to expand our base by establishing more farms and building a cozy little hut for a new friend!
I spent most of Day 166 fishing at my newly constructed pond, hoping to reel in a lily pad for some extra decoration or, even better, an enchanted book for our soon to be crafted diamond gear.
Apart from piles of raw fish (unsurprising, since we were fishing), I obtained a bone, two pieces of leather and a tripwire hook. I was particularly enthusiastic about the bone as that would allow us to tame wolves, should we come across any while exploring, and the 1.20.5 update (?) would introduce eight new wolf variants. I wonder when that update would release, since I'm keen to get some more mapping done soon but would like the new wolves to spawn in before I explore any new biomes.
But now, back to the present.
Since we managed to acquire bamboo in the last update, it's time to put it to use! I harvested several stalks and crafted some scaffolding and trapdoors. Here's the new bamboo table in the living room:
The bamboo chair went on the balcony. It just felt ... right.
As I headed to the barn to harvest some more steak, as food supplies were rapidly dropping, I found another enderman that had somehow teleported to my base. Is there really a massivecave below us? I didn't feel like finding out.
Unlike last time, however, I took advantage of the enderman's presence by trapping him in a boat and slashing for an ender pearl. He dropped one!
Unfortunately, it seemed like he managed to summon a pillager patrol before his death:
I couldn't be bothered to deal with them. I had a bamboo farm to build!
I had moved all the bamboo from near the pond to the giant tree farm as I consider the pond as the "center" of our base and would like to keep the area around it open and free of obstructions. I also used potted lanterns for the corners of the farm as you may have expected. I adopted this technique while building the mangrove enclosure and lighthouse island on my survival world, and I'm bringing it to this world as well.
With that done, it's mining time. I grabbed some more loot from the dungeon and, as I mined, decided to extract all the ores with Silk Touch so we could Fortune them later (hopefully).
Some gold, nice!
What really is the best layer to mine gold at? On my survival world, mining at Y:-16 (the layer at which gold generates most frequently, according to the Wiki) yielded barely anything, yet I find them so often around diamond level.
Speaking of ores, I mined the rest of the cluster of diamond ore from Episode 5 before revealing another one shortly after.
After that, luck was poor. I branch-mined around (each branch tunnel spaced out by three blocks), trying to avoid a large lava lake, and found nothing but iron, lapis lazuli and tons of redstone. (That part was good, I suppose.) I then finally came across a vein of two diamonds before encountering another one with five or six. I spent four days in the mines and left with 19 diamond ores. Not very much, but if I'm lucky I might just have enough for a full set of gear upon mining them with Fortune III. Spoiler warning, it was coming soon!
Since I now had 30 levels, I decided to enchant my second diamond pickaxe (so we now only have 16 ores left) and pray for Fortune III. Efficiency IV as a guaranteed enchantment? Nice, but I'm hoping for more...
Nope. Efficiency only. In the grindstone goes the pickaxe. Although I now only had 27 levels, I decided to check out what's coming up next.
Yes!
Without a mob farm, however, even three more levels would be difficult to obtain, so I decided to pass the time with a bit of farming. That was when the rabbit appeared.
With that, I grew and chopped down some acacia trees, terraformed the land and began building my new friend a nice little hut adjacent to the bamboo farm with his favorite foods: carrots and dandelions! The idea came out of nowhere, but I think it was a pretty good addition to the base.
I also designed a rather bland-looking path leading from the giant tree farm to the bamboo farm and rabbit hut. That would be fixed later, but it should do for now.
After that, I replaced two rows of carrots at the crop farm with beetroots. The beetroots aren't farmed for food, mind you, but rather as an easy source of red dye.
+1 pillager patrol to the count:
I decided to leave them alone again, and that was the mistake. While I was over at the bamboo farm about a day after they spawned, a pillager just suddenly ... appeared in front of me. (I didn't get a screenshot though.) That was a total jumpscare! Thankfully, it was only one, although in my moment of panic I kept on accidentally placing blocks instead of using my shield like I intended to, and lost four hearts during the fight.
I needed diamond armor.
I went to bed quite late that night and spotted a spider chilling around outside the next morning. I tried to take a shot at it in hopes of obtaining a spider eye (an ingredient in potions of weakness, which are required to cure zombie villagers), but it despawned right in front of my eyes. Well, unlucky I guess?
Over the next two days, I went fishing, bred cows, bred chickens, killed cows and did everything else I could to acquire the final two levels of XP. And at last, on Day 188...
I wasn't expecting Efficiency IV or Unbreaking III, but we now have two pretty much maxed out pickaxes (apart from the missing levels of Efficiency as well as Mending, but you can't get those from an enchanting table anyways). This will save us the trouble of maxing out enchantments much later in the game, and for that I am extremely grateful.
Now to answer the long-awaited question: how many diamonds did we get from the 16 ores?
33! That's just enough for a full set of diamond gear (excepting the pickaxe, which we already have two of) plus a jukebox.
I then mined all the ores from the trip with my Fortune pickaxe. Here are the results:
4 iron ores -> 7 raw iron
15 gold ores -> 38 raw gold
9 lapis lazuli ores -> 105 lapis lazuli
60 redstone ores -> ~330 redstone dust
After mining all that redstone and putting all the lovely, shiny gold in the furnace, I was able to reach Level 30 again, so I took the opportunity to enchant my brand new chestplate.
Protection III and Unbreaking III? Not bad!
To finish off this update, I established a small pumpkin and melon farm outside the mining hut. Again, I used bamboo fences and potted lanterns on the corners as I was out of ideas at the time, but the colors went nicely together.
Well that explains why the long-term pillager patrol took so long to despawn, although that is not my experience for every single one of them. Sometimes, they just wander off and disappear into the forest, and I usually assume they despawned. The patrol in question neither wandered off nor despawned for about 15 in-game days before suddenly disappearing into the forest, so I thought there was something strange about it.
As you observed, it all has to do with if they remain close enough. If they reach a point far enough from you, they may (and eventually will) despawn.
The format of this thread's landing page has been reorganized and now includes a table of contents in order to better suit the increasing number of updates. Although it is unnecessary at this stage, it may prove useful later.
Now equipped with full diamond gear and a more organized inventory, we were in a far better position to begin a slightly longer mapping session. Since Sunflower Valley is situated on the western edge of the local map, we're heading west this time to map out the nearby meadow and explore the vast plains, forests and mountains beyond. On the evening of Day 190, I went over to our starting point and zoomed out the new map before heading back home and enjoying a good night's rest.
Come morning, the expedition commenced.
The plan was simple: I would head north until reaching the northeastern corner of the map, then head west until reaching the northwestern corner, go south a bit, head east until reaching the eastern edge, go south a bit more, head west until reaching the western edge, and so forth. I have no idea what this technique is called, but apparently it's one of the most popular ones used for mapping.
Without further ado, here we go.
I entered the local meadow, where I would turn north and head up a frozen summit. The path is similar to the one we took to the cliffside village in Episode 4, if not slightly easier.
Upon reaching the summit, I found a donkey just standing there, enjoying the scenic views of the cherry groves and meadows below.
Speaking of views, here is a lovely one of our entire base, only a small cluster of buildings and farms amongst the great wilderness. (I know the giant spruce trees don't really match the theme, but they're only part of the tree farm and not as actual decoration.) I'm still surprised we've made it this far in Hardcore though.
I also found this high-altitude dripstone cave opening:
Here's a panorama of the jagged peaks we're about to explore. They didn't seem to go as high as I'd expected, but we could only see so far with our somewhat low render distance.
Upon descending, I discovered a mountain pass which would serve as an easy route to the cliffside village should we make any trips there in the future for whatever reason. It was a longer route as multiple mountains (including the jagged ones) would require traversing, but it was far safer as the river cliffs were even steeper.
Not only that, I also realized that the round snowy mountain discussed in Episodes 4 and 7 is part of this jagged mountain massif based on its location at the northwestern corner of the previous map.
By late afternoon, I had made it up to the peaks, where I found another high-altitude dripstone cave with the silhouette of a zombie visible at an opening.
Here's a funny-looking cave that the snow had failed to hide well:
I looked back and found our lone frozen mountain in the distance. Better give it a name sometime, but as of now I'm out of ideas.
I turned around and:
Wow. A pinnacle majestically rising into the sky, likely topping at Y:256, surrounded by a ring of smaller peaks with a lone spruce tree isn't something you find everyday. One moment I was climbing above the clouds, thinking I've reached the highest summit, and the next, there's something even higher right before your eyes. It's the first time I've been to the jagged peaks biome, and I loved it.
I watched the sunset from one of the summits, placed down my bed and slept through the night in the mountains, marking the end of Day 191.
Morning arrived, and I observed my surroundings. Didn't want to get rammed off a cliff or blown up by a creeper after all that!
Although the massif continued to the north, I had reached the northeastern corner of the map and unfortunately had to turn west here. I began my descent through the spruce grove and northern half of the cliffside village into the oak forest below. Some final looks at the mountains:
To the west was a rather large river with more plains beyond it.
I placed down my boat and rowed it off the cliffside and into the river. I did realize that was rather risky, as if we had landed on the ground from a certain height, namely 49 blocks or 51 blocks, the boat would've broken upon impact and I would've died.
Here's a final look at our familiar territory:
The next stage of the journey was a relaxed trek through some relatively flat plains, and there's not much to show here. About two-thirds of the way to the western edge, however, the uninteresting plains transitioned to sunflower hills, which spiced things up a little.
There even was a flower forest beyond. Now that was what made things exciting.
I leapt across the river and headed deeper into the flower forest, through great fields of tulips and roses, and made my first southern turn.
I then turned east again, where the flower forest ended with a large patch of lilies of the valley, which I gladly harvested as these would serve as decoration for my base in the future.
I spent the evening near the sunflower hills, where there was some small-scaled wacky terrain, and slept through the night.
The next morning, I carefully observed my surroundings and started making my way down the hill, but I suddenly heard a creeper hiss behind me before exploding. Luckily, neither I nor my armor took any damage. It's now the second time I've had a creeper being ... creepy. And apparently, diamond armor wouldn't even save you from a creeper explosion, so I'm definitely looking for Protection IV soon.
Netherite gear, on the other hand, apparently requires an Upgrade Template which is only found rarely in bastion remnants. (I managed to find a "treasure room" type bastion on my survival world, and the chest that generates at the center of the pool of lava is guaranteed to contain a template.) Still, I really wished I had started playing this game sooner.
At least I managed to find a nice little waterfall by this tiny beach:
At around the same location, I also found a somewhat large ravine with numerous cave openings:
The rest of the sweep was uneventful until I finally found our lone mountain in the distance, towering over the cherry groves and meadows. As I was taking this picture, it started raining, which ... isn't really desirable when you're out exploring.
Luckily, it was time to turn south, which meant I didn't have to head down the steep river cliff, and made my way into the forest.
Upon turning west, I found a poor lone wolf trying to find shelter from the rain (apparently, trees don't exist...). Unfortunately, I didn't bring any bones. Better remember next time.
A faint, yellow glow on the horizon ahead signalled sunset, so I hurriedly made my way up a tree before sleeping through the night. Come morning, I checked my surroundings - it was especially easy to get ambushed by a creeper here in the forest - and continued my western sweep. About halfway through, the forest gave way to the expected plains, but what was unexpected was the fact that I found my first ever proper ruined portal on this world. I say proper because it actually has a gold block.
No, not one, but two! I carefully drained out the lava with dirt blocks before mining them.
The loot was splendid as well. I took the golden apple, gold ingots as well as the boots, which were enchanted with Thorns III. I have to say that this is one of the best ruined portals I've found in the game yet!
It was all a relaxing stroll through the plains with a few small brooks to jump over and the occasional river crossing. Not many caves to fall into, not a single pillager patrol jumpscare. (Spoiler warning: no pillager patrols were found in this update, probably to make up for those that did spawn in the past few updates.)
I was soon approaching the crazy terrain we found earlier, which meant we were coming to the western edge of the map. This marks the halfway point of the expedition.
Upon turning south, I found a snowy plains biome. That wasn't unexpected, since we were quite far away from the warm zone (covered on the previous map) and we've been mapping temperate plains for a while now. The change was welcome.
On my way back east through the forest, I found another deep dripstone ravine with exposed gold, although I obviously didn't go for it. I had sufficient gold supplies anyway.
I also discovered the tiniest river biome yet: three mere thin strips of water.
This was where the going started becoming difficult. I was entering an area with numerous steep hills and plateaus, and it was all forested, making it difficult to navigate in a straight line. The best I could do was sprinting on treetops, but there obviously was the occasional fall.
Somewhere in the distance was a forest fire, but we all know whose fault that was.
From a vantage point on top of the plateau two pictures ago, I gazed over at the expanse of forest I'll be traversing on my final sweep west, likely in a day's time.
Not really interesting-looking, is it?
On the plus side, I found a heart-shaped dripstone lake at the base of the plateau.
Looking north was some more crazy terrain generation.
The forest eventually gave way to a meadow, which was desirable, and offered a nice panorama of the hills ahead. The pictured village is the one we explored towards the end of Episode 7.
I made my way down the plateau and found myself standing on an overhang. Coincidentally, I unintentionally captured a teleporting enderman, although things did get a bit dangerous as my crosshairs were set so close to his face.
Here's what the overhang looks like from below:
I made my way up to the village, where I took one last shot of the plateau we were on as the sun set behind it.
I slept in one of the village houses (wow, finally some proper accommodation) before making one last sweep west, spotting a random hill along the way.
I then entered the forest, as expected, and crossed it by treetop jumping, which was so much more efficient. The trek was relatively easy, although uneventful, and the only thing that was really worth showing was a modest cave entrance about halfway through.
Eventually, the forest gave way to a narrow strip of plains, and then here I was, at the formal cold zone. The funny thing about third-person view is that you can't even see the details of any maps you're holding in your offhand; only the map item is shown.
I skated around the frozen lake and waited here until sunset as I preferred to stay out in the open until morning, when I would make my journey home.
The next day, I headed northeast, taking a path around the edge of the forest to avoid the area with the steep cliffs and plateaus.
I found some neat dripstone cave openings and ravines along the way as well.
On the evening of Day 197, I finally made it back to Sunflower Valley, where I placed the map in a new item frame. I'm surprised that a single map would take nearly a whole in-game week to complete. Maybe the spiral technique is still more efficient, although it would be more difficult to describe here.
After observing the maps, I noticed that the western edge of the new map still had a few pixels left to fill. How did I not see before?! Well, it's going to take a long time to head back there, so I'll bring the map with me when I start a new expedition in the far west. But that'll be in a long while, as I've pretty much done all the mapping that I wanted to for now, and even if I did continue, I would probably fill in a northeastern map instead so our base is more centralized.
With the mapping done, I'm a bit lost as to what to do next. If I was more skilled, the Nether was obviously up next, since I've acquired diamond equipment and plenty of gold for piglin bartering. The problem was that I've only been to the Nether once on Survival and died over a dozen times while there (specifically in the Nether fortress), although that was only with iron armor. (I didn't bring any diamond gear because it wasn't Hardcore and I was worried I would lose it all. That turned out to be the right decision, since some of the deaths were lava deaths. Slightly unrelated, but the Nether fortress deaths were also my first deaths on that world, which made it feel tainted.)
I think the best option is to wait until I have full Protection IV diamond armor before entering the Nether, but only to mine for Ancient Debris, since Netherite armor includes bonus fire protection. The problem with the latter is that I would need to search for a bastion remnant, and not all of them have the desired upgrade template.
A third option, although less desirable, is to create a new Survival (Hard difficulty, but not Hardcore) world and try to take on the Nether there and "practice" searching for and raiding fortresses and bastions. If I do take that path, I won't be documenting anything here unless necessary.
Well, it was time. If any further progress was to be made, we're left with no choice but to leave behind the scenic landscapes of the Overworld and step into the fiery depths of the Nether. This update is relatively short and mainly serves as a "taster session" to help us get accustomed to this hellish dimension before we begin the search for a fortress, as it was only our third time stepping through a portal on a Survival (or Hardcore) world.
For all we know, it could all end here.
I spent the evening of Day 200 packing up for the visit to the Nether, shoving into my inventory a stack of gold ingots, two stacks of building blocks and lots of food in addition to the tools and weapons that never leave the hotbar. I already had ten blocks of obsidian for one portal but decided to mine ten more from the local lava pool just in case a ghast somehow shot me off a ledge and I landed in a horde of magma cubes at the shore of a giant lava sea. It might be an overstatement, but stuff like that does happen.
I also took the opportunity to fill a bucket with lava for a future dripstone lava farm, although that's not on my priority list.
Although I hadn't reached Level 30, I decided to enchant my diamond leggings anyway for bonus protection.
Fire Protection III? That'll do for now. We're visiting the Nether after all.
I then ensured that I had a Flint and Steel in my inventory before constructing a temporary portal. It would soon be relocated, but I was both excited and anxious about what the spawn region had to offer.
Maybe there would be a fortress or bastion remnant visible from Spawn?
Or perhaps we would spawn on a single block high above a basalt delta? (I seriously hoped this wasn't it ...)
3, 2, 1 ... and I stepped through the portal.
Alright, this is an actually normal spawn, and for that I'm grateful, although I couldn't find any fortress nearby. My objectives for now were to construct a secure shelter, barter with piglins and mine some quartz for XP.
Objective 1 completed. This looks worse than a ruined portal structure.
I was building it in a panic because some distant ghast was shooting at me. It's obviously not a permanent shelter; I'll turn it into a nicer looking Nether house sometime in the future.
From the safety of the stone brick monstrosity, I observed my surroundings, occasionally going outside to mine some quartz or throwing gold at a passing piglin, although I received nothing but soul sand and fire charges in return.
In the distance was a Basalt Deltas biome. The fact that I spawned near but not in one is desirable as this will provide ready access to basalt and blackstone for building purposes and magma cream for fire resistance potions without making our temporary base more dangerous than it already is.
That'll do for a first visit. I headed back through the portal to the Overworld, where I relocated the portal to an area near the bamboo farm and decorated it with bamboo mosaic and quartz pillars. The design was unofficial and I had other plans with it soon, so it won't be shown for now.
I then reentered the Nether via the new portal to mine some more quartz and confirm that there was no nearby structure by raising the render distance to 20 chunks. It wasn't very useful because the Nether fog got in the way, which was annoying. On the plus side, that meant I could continue playing at my normal render distance of 12 chunks. I used to play with a render distance of something like 24 chunks but it caused considerable lag as the computer I am using is not designated for gaming.
Here, I sniped my first ghast as well.
I headed out to check its drops. No ghast tear? Oh well, at least I obtained two piles of gunpowder.
When I walked back through the portal, I found myself in a dripstone cave. I entered and left the Nether via the same portal, so why didn't I spawn back at said portal in the Overworld? I looked that up and apparently it had something to do with the game selecting a spawn area in the Nether far away from the corresponding coordinates in the Overworld due to the presence of lava seas, but I'm still somewhat confused.
Luckily, the cave was located at an altitude of around y:90 under our local mountain, which I found out upon mining and pillaring up until reaching the surface. Since this will be our Nether exit from now on, I decided to build a little bamboo shelter around it as well as a long ladder leading straight up from the portal for easy access.
And it seemed like I forgot to deactivate the portal (which I often try to do), for there was a zombie piglin waiting down below. I took it out but somehow lost nearly half my health doing so. I didn't know they dealt that much damage. Better keep that in mind next time.
During my next visit to the Nether, I extended the shelter a bit to include a piglin who would serve as our primary barterer.
Oh, I forgot to put on my gold helmet.
At first, I received nothing of interest, just more soul sand, blackstone and Nether bricks. But I was then given a Soul Speed III enchanted book:
What a rare drop? I'm pretty sure the drop rate is only 0.36%.
I then acquired a pair of iron boots enchanted with Soul Speed (which are useless considering that I'm at the diamond stage now) before receiving the greatest gift ever: a splash potion of fire resistance! Now I can explore the Nether and raid a fortress in relative safety, although I'll still barter for a few more just in case.
I then left the Nether and:
Not again! This time though, I understood the reason. It was because I had deactivated the other exit portal a few blocks away after killing that zombie piglin, so it didn't count as a portal anymore and created a new one.
Well, that's a lot of Nether troubles in one update. In the next one, I might just begin the search for a fortress but only after I've acquired fully enchanted diamond armor and a bow with Power V and Infinity. I may also enhance the looks of the Nether huts as they're more of an eyesore at the moment, but nevertheless I'm quite determined to finish this stage of the game.
Wow. A pinnacle majestically rising into the sky, likely topping at Y:256, surrounded by a ring of smaller peaks with a lone spruce tree isn't something you find everyday. One moment I was climbing above the clouds, thinking I've reached the highest summit, and the next, there's something even higher right before your eyes. It's the first time I've been to the jagged peaks biome, and I loved it.
That lone tree is probably a really tiny grove biome. They happen around the "mid" mountain elevations, below/surrounding the peaks, and have spruce trees.
That mountain might not be as high as you think, so you haven't seen anything yet. Going off of the clouds in your pictures, those tend to be around just below the 200 elevation level, and most of the peaks you show seem to be just above that.
What's going to floor you is when you find a high altitude landmass that is so wide that the 256 cutoff will makes it looks like it took almost half of the tops off! I've found at least one area like that (not yet in my survival world, although I found a pretty impressive one there too) and it's unbelievable to see. So apparently even the 256 limit is too "low" for some of the things the game attempts.
Netherite gear, on the other hand, apparently requires an Upgrade Template which is only found rarely in bastion remnants. (I managed to find a "treasure room" type bastion on my survival world, and the chest that generates at the center of the pool of lava is guaranteed to contain a template.) Still, I really wished I had started playing this game sooner.
I'm at this point in my world.
I had enchantments off the table until recently, and potions are off the table, so it's going to be... interesting.
My plan is to find the bastion remnant with the guaranteed template, and if it's the one I think it is, descend from the top by dropping sand,gravel, or some other gravity affected block for walls, and then descending down to the chest.
Otherwise, the first trip in is riskiest, but once you have fire resistance potions (off limits to me) the nether is largely neutralized outside of maybe piglin brutes.
Always keep a gold hemlet on and always have fire resistance potions, and then with good enough armor (and preferable elytra), you're pretty safe in there.
It was all a relaxing stroll through the plains with a few small brooks to jump over and the occasional river crossing. Not many caves to fall into, not a single pillager patrol jumpscare. (Spoiler warning: no pillager patrols were found in this update, probably to make up for those that did spawn in the past few updates.)
That matches my experience.
While out and exploring, I almost never see them. Even in the amount of area I've mapped in my world, I can probably count the number of times on one hand that I've seen them while exploring.
While stationary in the same spot, they show up endlessly.
On the evening of Day 197, I finally made it back to Sunflower Valley, where I placed the map in a new item frame. I'm surprised that a single map would take nearly a whole in-game week to complete. Maybe the spiral technique is still more efficient, although it would be more difficult to describe here.
It's hard to see what zoom level you're using for maps; it doesn't look like the maximum but I'm guessing if it's taking that long it has to be one less if anything.
Depending on pacing and obstacles, that sounds about right. It's a lot of area to cover.
Your home region looks nice so far, and yeah I'd probably be doing the two maps to the North if it were me, and then deciding on where to go next based on what I saw that interested me most on the current borders. But that's because my world is largely exploration driven whereas yours isn't.
What's going to floor you is when you find a high altitude landmass that is so wide that the 256 cutoff will makes it looks like it took almost half of the tops off! I've found at least one area like that (not yet in my survival world, although I found a pretty impressive one there too) and it's unbelievable to see.
Yeah, the mountain peaks are certainly less impressive than the ones you found on your own Hardcore world earlier this year. It does seem like there are several major mountain ranges near my base though, not all of which I have fully explored due to map border limitations. I'm definitely looking to continue exploring the jagged snowy mountains as these seem to reach y:256 quite often compared to stony and frozen peaks, at least from my observations from previous Creative worlds.
My plan is to find the bastion remnant with the guaranteed template, and if it's the one I think it is, descend from the top by dropping sand,gravel, or some other gravity affected block for walls, and then descending down to the chest.
Sounds like a very safe technique. Just have to be careful about the ghasts.
On my survival world, I mined through the wall of the bastion and slowly made my way to the lava pool containing the "main" treasure chest with the template, blocking off any staircase or passageway. I only got hit once by a piglin brute, but the technique (if you can call it one) still poses its own risks and works only for that chest. It's a shame I didn't have the skill to raid the rest of the bastion, although besides some music discs, armor trims and Netherite ingots there isn't anything too valuable / unique.
It's hard to see what zoom level you're using for maps; it doesn't look like the maximum but I'm guessing if it's taking that long it has to be one less if anything.
I use zoom level 3/4, so yes, one level below the maximum. Although the terrain was quite steep and hilly in some places (like in the forest), I also have a habit of randomly stopping and checking my surroundings; that may be causing the slowness.
Yeah, the mountain peaks are certainly less impressive than the ones you found on your own Hardcore world earlier this year.
Oh, sorry, I wasn't trying to make yours sound unimpressive or compare them to ones I found.
Those are pretty impressive, but routine as far as mountains go. 1.18 is great though because even the routine ones are pretty stellar. Based on the map you showed, you could be in a larger region that's hiding more. I was just saying that they didn't look like they went as high as they can go (I was guessing based on the clouds), so maybe you have greater ones you can find still.
The one I found in my hardcore world is one of my favorites, pretty much because I found it naturally, but I've found one that is more impressive. It was found in a creative world though. But knowing there's even greater ones that the game can do is sort of keeping me motivated to continue exploring eventually. I'd like to find a really grand warm climate region of them some time.
Sounds like a very safe technique. Just have to be careful about the ghasts.
Ghasts themselves I'm not too worried about. I mean they cost me arrows and I don't have an endless supply of them in that world, but it's being knocked into lava that concerns me.
I'm wondering if I should wait to enchant until I have the netherite armor. If so, that would mean I'd have to attempt this with the armor I have now... which is a nearly broken diamond set minus the helmet (I'd use a gold one anyway) and isn't enchanted at all. My thinking I was could afford waiting since if I do it properly, I shouldn't take a lot of hits and waste a lot of durability (mending is off limits so all the durability I can save is better). On the other hand... armor is always replaceable even if it's so much effort it's not worth it. My life is not. Maybe I should enchant it first after all.
Edit:
Okay, so I'm finally caught up on the last update.
When I walked back through the portal, I found myself in a dripstone cave. I entered and left the Nether via the same portal, so why didn't I spawn back at said portal in the Overworld? I looked that up and apparently it had something to do with the game selecting a spawn area in the Nether far away from the corresponding coordinates in the Overworld due to the presence of lava seas, but I'm still somewhat confused.
Yes, that's exactly what happened. It also happened to me too.
Here's an example if you don't get it.
Let's say you make a portal in the overworld at 0, 0 and go into the nether through it. Let's say it attempts to makes a portal at 0, 0 in the nether and succeeds. All will be normal with these two portals.
Now let's make another example with another world where you do the same, but in this world's seed, the nether is lava at 0,0 for some distance in all directions. So when going into the nether, the game can not place a portal there. Let's say the game finds the closest place at 200, 200 and puts a portal there. This does not properly match, but since there is no valid spot that matches, every time you go to go into the nether from the overworld, it will find this is as the closest match and use it.
The problem is that when you go to go back through it to the overworld, the overworld portal at 0, 0 does not fall within valid range of the adjusted 200, 200 nether portal coordinate. So it simply creates a new one.
There is a way around this if you want to put the effort in. You need to find out where the coordinates of the nether portal should have been placed, make a portal there, and activate it.
In my world, I tolerate that my trip back to the overworld will be to a separate portal (and thankfully I was not put into a cave; I've heard of people who were put into ancient cities!). The nether is too risky for me without being allowed to use potions and not having enchantments yet, so I just tolerate it. It's just over a ridge behind my village anyway.
And it seemed like I forgot to deactivate the portal (which I often try to do)...
I then left the Nether and:
Not again!
Mhm, once you mentioned deactivating the portal, I thought "oh no, don't do that!" because I knew what would happen, and then you did it and found out why.
I died on my survival world when a ghast fireball knocked me into a lava sea while I was bridging over to a Nether fortress. The explosion itself dealt minimal damage; as you said, it's getting knocked into lava that's usually lethal.
It's a different story for bastion remnants since you're pretty much safe from ghasts while inside the building, but in case one does see you through the numerous holes and openings (hence the name remnant), do you allow the Fire Resistance effect given from Enchanted Golden Apples?
I'm wondering if I should wait to enchant until I have the netherite armor. If so, that would mean I'd have to attempt this with the armor I have now... which is a nearly broken diamond set minus the helmet (I'd use a gold one anyway) and isn't enchanted at all. My thinking I was could afford waiting since if I do it properly, I shouldn't take a lot of hits and waste a lot of durability (mending is off limits so all the durability I can save is better). On the other hand... armor is always replaceable even if it's so much effort it's not worth it. My life is not. Maybe I should enchant it first after all.
I think the best option here would be to go mining with a Fortune III pickaxe for a brand new set of diamond armor and fully enchant it with Protection III or IV and preferably Unbreaking III. The enchantments on your diamond armor / tools stay even once you've upgraded them to Netherite, but Netherite gear itself is more expensive to enchant in terms of XP (if you use enchanted books and anvils, that is).
If you're not planning on raiding the rest of the bastion and have several more slots in your inventory to spare, you may even want to bring a smithing table, four Netherite ingots, 28 excess diamonds plus some blocks of Netherrack with you to duplicate the template and upgrade your gear right at the bastion (Netherite armor includes bonus fire protection and you may find that useful on the return journey), but only when you're fully sheltered as magma cube spawners do exist in this part of the structure.
In my world, I tolerate that my trip back to the overworld will be to a separate portal (and thankfully I was not put into a cave; I've heard of people who were put into ancient cities!). The nether is too risky for me without being allowed to use potions and not having enchantments yet, so I just tolerate it. It's just over a ridge behind my village anyway.
Thank you for the information on the Nether portals. I'm just glad that the lava sea wasn't too big and the cave I spawned in was located at a pretty high altitude and close to my base.
Luckily, the third Nether portal that spawned was located only a few blocks away from the second and in the same cave.
It's a different story for bastion remnants since you're pretty much safe from ghasts while inside the building, but in case one does see you through the numerous holes and openings (hence the name remnant), do you allow the Fire Resistance effect given from Enchanted Golden Apples?
If you're asking me if I would allow myself to use golden apples under my restrictions in my world, then yes, I may. I've already used them.
Positive effects are not what is off limits. I just can't craft nor use potions (the exception is experience bottles found as loot). Likewise, I can't trade with villagers, but wandering traders are an exception.
The bastion remnant that I think had the guaranteed template is the one where ghasts really shouldn't be a concern anyway. But with enchantments being allowed now, my nether helmet will have no reason not to have fire protection. That, golden apples, good diamond armor with other enchantments, and the regeneration of full saturation should be more than enough if I do end up in a small lava area in a bastion remnant. I'm way more worried about piglin brutes.
I think the best option here would be to go mining with a Fortune III pickaxe for a brand new set of diamond armor and fully enchant it with Protection III or IV and preferably Unbreaking III. The enchantments on your diamond armor / tools stay even once you've upgraded them to Netherite, but Netherite gear itself is more expensive to enchant in terms of XP (if you use enchanted books and anvils, that is).
Yeah, that sounds like what I might want to do.
I definitely need more diamonds.
And I'm wanting to make a customized set of armor to get what I want, which would mean books, and I didn't think of the higher experience. That will also be an issue (my cow farm helps here I guess).
The only reason I'm going to all the effort of netherite despite it being disposable is because I can make it last so long because I'll be avoiding combat. So I shouldn't lose much durability on it before I upgrade it, so I guess I'm doing nothing but taking unnecessary risk to prolong it after all.
If you're not planning on raiding the rest of the bastion and have several more slots in your inventory to spare, you may even want to bring a smithing table, four Netherite ingots, 28 excess diamonds plus some blocks of Netherrack with you to duplicate the template and upgrade your gear right at the bastion (Netherite armor includes bonus fire protection and you may find that useful on the return journey), but only when you're fully sheltered as magma cube spawners do exist in this part of the structure.
Oh, I absolutely plan to duplicate the upgrade template! No way am I doing this any more than necessary! Not because the extra effort. I don't mind that part at all. But because of the extra risk. Not in a hardcore world. In a normal survival world I'd be seeking out more bastion remnants.
And I didn't think of bringing the stuff with me to upgrade it before leaving. I knew that I could, but for whatever reason I just tend to default to seeking stuff out, getting it, and then return home to do stuff with it. It's probably safer to do it as soon as I can though. It's not like I risk losing extra stuff if I die since if that happens, the world is lost anyway.
In this update, I prepare for the long expedition to a Nether fortress. My main goals are to obtain a second Fire Resistance potion as well as to fully enchant my Nether armor set (full diamond minus the helmet, which is gold) and my weapons. Without a mob farm, the process of enchanting takes much longer unless you head into the Nether to mine Quartz. So that's exactly what I'll be doing for a while.
Edit: The format of the third-party image hosting site I use no longer accommodates full screen images so I started using a different site. When I first posted this update, many of the images were not working so I re-inserted them with the post editor, and now they do work. I'm wondering if others can see the images as well?
To begin with, however, I added windows to the piglin bartering section of our Nether base. Although they certainly look nicer, any incoming ghast fireballs will easily destroy them, so I'll have to be careful about that.
I spent the rest of this visit exploring the terrain around our base, mining any Quartz that I came across and even taking the opportunity to acquire some basalt for a future Nether-themed build.
All was going well until this ghast showed up:
It started shooting at me and I decided that this was a good opportunity to make the "Return to Sender" advancement like on my survival world. This happened instead:
I'm pretty sure I clicked on most of the fireballs? Do I specifically have to click on the bottom half to deflect it? There would be no more ghast accidents in this update regardless. Being brought down to three hearts by one mob is a step too far in the wrong direction.
Just as I was about to leave, I found four endermen standing around. So they aren't exclusive to the Warped Forest biome after all?
Unfortunately, I couldn't go after them as the ghast was still there.
I entered the Overworld via the second underground portal I had accidentally created at the end of the last update. I quickly deactivated that portal to prevent any mobs from entering and activated the other underground portal. This would serve as both our Nether entrance and exit from now on. When I arrived at my base, I deactivated the first portal as it would be useless now and allow zombie pigmen to spawn right at our home, which is unacceptable.
After restocking on supplies and organizing my inventory, it was time for a second visit to the Nether to mine some more Quartz as well as Nether Gold ore for piglin bartering.
Here's a picture of a neat lava lake I found with a strider. I know these are common but decided to show one anyway.
Once I had reached Level 30 again, I returned to the Overworld and shoved the Nether Gold ore in the blast furnace.
My chestplate and legging enchantments were already satisfactory, so I decided to enchant my boots. I was mainly looking for Protection IV and Feather Falling III or IV here. I got Fire Protection III instead. I already had Fire Protection, so nope, into the grindstone they go.
What's up next?
I'm not feeling hopeful.
Back into the Nether we go for more Quartz and piglin bartering. Wow! I would love to experiment with a Respawn Anchor in Hardcore.
While I wasn't given another Fire Resistance potion, I did receive another stash of ender pearls, which was desirable. We're having good ender pearl luck so far, and spoiler warning, it was to get better soon.
Here's a picture of our slightly revamped Nether base. More progress will be made after we've finished with the Nether Fortress. If I survive.
After that, I descended onto the barren wastes below and explore in an easterly direction.
I read somewhere that Nether fortresses generate more frequently on the positive side of the X-axis, so this may help, but what I was really looking for was more Quartz for XP and Gold for bartering.
I constructed a small shelter at the bottom with a tower of scaffolding leading back up to our main base. Then came a ghast.
It started shooting and the windows of this smaller base all blew up. Welp. At least I barely took any damage this time.
Here's a view of our Nether base now:
After ensuring that the ghast had gone, I cautiously made my way out and started in an easterly direction, mining any Quartz I stumbled upon and making as many signposts (stone bricks with a torch on top) along the way as possible.
In the distance was a large lava river with an enderman on the shore.
To the north was a Crimson Forest which I won't be heading into because of the Hoglins that inhabit them.
A slightly closer look at the Crimson Forest:
Heading back, I discovered that our main base was actually situated on a platform above a large lava river. It's useful and unsettling to know at the same time.
After I was back at Level 30 again, I left the Nether and enchanted my diamond boots. Protection IV and Unbreaking III? I'll take that! I suppose the best way to acquire Feather Falling is through books or villager trading.
My gold helmet was nearly broken, so I crafted a new one and enchanted it.
Aqua Affinity was literally useless as I would only be wearing my gold helmet in the Nether and it's a bit unfortunate that I didn't acquire Unbreaking III as gold helmets have the lowest durability of any armor piece in the game. The only reason I kept it like that was because this would reduce ghast explosion damage.
On my next visit to the Nether, I committed to some more gold mining as I didn't want to make a potentially long journey in the Nether without having two Fire Resistance potions in case of emergency. I always made sure to check if there were any piglins around though.
I headed east, where I found yet another small lava lake.
I don't have a picture of this, but at some point, the Nether fog was black. Is this a bug? I've had this once on my survival world while I was in a Nether fortress, and now it's happened again.
After a while of exploring, I entered a small valley with a cluster of glowstone, which I gladly mined.
And of course, there were the usual ores.
Back home, I dumped all that shiny gold ore in the blast furnace.
With all that gold, we were definitely going to receive some good loot! Twenty ender pearls and three Fire Resistance potions?
I was shocked. Not a single potion or ender pearl was obtained. All that mining for nothing. How sad.
I decided to take out my frustration on some Endermen.
I explored around a bit, mining some more ores, but there really wasn't much apart from steep cliffs and more lava.
There was some quartz that generated on a gravel beach. Care should be taken when mining around gravel beaches as they can collapse and plunge into into deep lava. One thing I always like to do is placing solid blocks on the gravel as you go. It doesn't prevent the beach itself from collapsing, but it prevents you from falling into the lava should a collapse occur.
I headed back to the Overworld with 30 levels and enchanted my bow.
Setting fire mobs on fire? Please be something better...
Power IV! Yay! Although Unbreaking would also have been appreciated, Power IV should be enough for now.
My two final goals were to acquire a second Fire Resistance potion and enchant my sword with Looting III, both of which would require considerable luck. But no matter which of these we chose to accomplish first, it was time for another ore mining trip in the Nether.
I decided to head south this time along a very narrow ridge which I slightly widened with stone bricks.
There was a small cave filled with ores on the inside.
I returned to the Overworld on a snowy morning. Snowy cherry groves, anyone?
(It was snowing because I was actually in a snowy slopes biome, but I think the effect with the cherry trees definitely looks nice.)
Upon entering my house, I had a thought. Couldn't I extend the duration of the Fire Resistance potion with redstone dust? I tried it out, and nope. You need blaze powder first, and I still haven't found a fortress. I somehow made this advancement despite not brewing anything.
But with 30 levels, I could at least now enchant my sword. Sharpness III as a guaranteed enchantment? Well, I'm really hoping for Looting III and Unbreaking III as well. Particularly Looting III as this would increase the blaze rod and Wither skull drop rate. (I'm not planning on collecting Wither skulls, but I'm pretty sure I would have to fight a few Wither skeletons on my first visit to the fortress anyway.)
The enchanting table said no. The grindstone said yes. That's about all I could say.
I grabbed the remaining gold ingots from the smeltery and put on my gold helmet, for it was time for yet another trip to the Nether! More piglin bartering, more Quartz mining! How exciting.
The piglin must have seen my disappointment, because I was finally given a Fire Resistance potion. Finally, after so long. Thank you.
This time, I took out my happiness on some nearby endermen.
I was now up to 11 pearls! I'm surprised we're having a lead so early.
But nothing beats the old Quartz mining and hearing the lovely twinkling of the XP orbs as they trickle towards you.
To finish off, I enchanted my sword with Sharpness IV and Looting III, which is excellent.
With that done, I now have everything I need to raid a Nether fortress, our first challenging structure on this world. It was already Day 231 and I would like to have finished with this by Day 250, about twenty days quicker than on my survival world, although that might be a challenge given the time it takes finding a blaze spawner. It's not the time that's actually worrying, though, but rather the danger. The mobs I will not look forward to seeing are Wither skeletons and ghasts, maybe more so the former. And the worst scenario? Falling from the bridge onto solid ground. That's where Fire Resistance will not come in handy, so the ideal case is that the outside bit of the fortress is embedded in netherrack.
In the next update, I'll make the journey to the fortress, and I can tell it's going to be a long one. But we can only wait and see.
Great story, but the images aren't appearing. I think the "previews.dropbox.com/p/thumb/" files might be for your account only - I can't view them in a browser, or in img tags here.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
The pillagers (I missed an update so I'm one behind and referring to the one two back) aren't worth taking on unless you want them gone. I don't consider the crossbow or banner too valuable but maybe others do.
I'd say you handled you well, even though it started bad. I wouldn't have even stayed to fight. I would have ran and tried to eat to regenerate somewhere.
I wouldn't have ever gotten so close and tried to sneak hits in with five of them. That's too risky because it leads to exactly what happened.
I would have tried to get them to give chase to separate them a bit and tried to pick off one or two at a time.
Full unecnahnted iron isn't much, as you found out. I recall that a pair (or maybe three) skeletons giving me similar damage risk in my the beginning of my current hardcore world, and it's what made me fear early that my no enchantment rule may be too much and lead to me losing the world, so I just... avoided risk since. I think I was entirely in iron at that point (I may have been missing the helmet still though) but I had a shield and still needed tree cover.
Even full diamond isn't enough to be careless. Really, you shouldn't be careless at all in hardcore, ever, but enchanted diamond is where I start to feel comfortable. Enchanted netherite (including blast protection) made me feel almost comfortable even surrounded my creepers. I recall taking two or three back to back and almost tanking it in that armor. But with creepers, a lot has to do with distance. They often never truly hug you, which is where they truly do damage, unless you move into them after they start charging. Even in my current world where I just have unenchanted diamond, I took two creeper scenarios back to back, one knocking me nearly into the other behind me, and thinking it was nothing... because it did almost nothing. My lack of panic make Zeno panic at how risky it actually was, haha.
My own world is so far in and I'm still only in unechanted diamond (I only "recently" dropped the restriction that I can't enchant). I'd say that's not enough if I was playing more normally (taking risks), but all I do is explore and never approach danger. It's enough to take on a pillager patrol or outpost though. It's a fair step up on what iron offers.
What is the purpose to the wooden slab on top of the composter? Decorative? or is there some function?
How did I not know hay bales reduced fall damage?Seriously? That's like a 1.6 addition, right? How did I not know of this!?
As for the sculk stuff, and I'll spoiler this in case you don't want to know mechanics and want to natural discover things. If you don't know the mechanics and don't fully want to, this may ruin things for you.
The warnings are applied per player, not to the sculk shrieker itself. The sculk sensor will indeed light up when detecting nearby noises even from mobs (bats do this constantly), but they won't pass that to a sculk shrieker.
So unless you make a sound near a sculk sensor which is then passed to a sculk shrieker (and this will result in the obvious noise of the sculk shrieker as well as the darkness effect), and unless you do it four times within ten minutes, you have nothing to worry about.
You get three warning levels allowed, and the forth summons it. You lose one warning level every ten minutes.
Though you're in no real danger to just mine despite knowing they are there, even if you hear a sculk sensor activate. Personally, I think they sound too cute when activating anyway (this is going to result in me summoning a warden one day...) and you have a generous amount of obvious warnings a shrieker goes off, so if it goes off once, wait ten minutes and then try and remove it. Unless you're near an ancient city (which is potentially good in its own ways), it just shouldn't be a big enough concern.
This post will address both replies, although I'm not sure how to quote multiple replies across two different pages.
I don't think cherry wood itself looks particularly appealing when overused, e.g. if you build a pure cherry house with cherry fences and cherry trapdoors and everything. It seems ideal to pair it with other wood types or materials, like stone bricks, as color contrast is definitely something I enjoy keeping in my builds. I definitely like having the cherry trees on their own serving as a background, though.
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As for the pillager patrols, I'm thankful that I now have a balcony where I could snipe each of the pillagers individually, causing each of them in turn to leave the group and come over to my house, making killing them much easier and safer. When they spawn at a safe distance from my base, however, I leave them alone. I only strike when they appear at a threateningly close location.
Acquiring diamond armor is already one of my goals. I had attempted to enchant my diamond pickaxe with Fortune III to minimize my time underground, but failed to do so, so I might just as well go mining soon. I didn't know that you were given warnings before the Warden actually spawned though. That's good to keep in mind.
A question about the sculk: if a sensor triggers multiple nearby shriekers (in case I'm unknowingly directly below an ancient city), does that count as one warning or multiple warnings (depending on the number of shriekers triggered)?
I placed a slab on top of the composter to prevent me from walking on top of the composter while farming. If I do, getting back down will often break the crops, and I usually don't carry a hoe with me to conserve inventory space.
I believe multiple sculk shriekers don't stack because I've gone through ancient cities where two, three, or even four were clustered and it only seemed to count as one when it goes off. Only one of the sculk shriekers shows the visual effect of going off, and I should have summoned a warden in multiple instances where I didn't. I think once one activates, it prevents any others from concurrently activating for a set amount of time.
I made a video which might serve as a good example to showing how they want, if you are interested. If not and you changed your mind and don't want it spoiled, don't watch it.
You can see how only one of the tree sculk shriekers activates at a time. Normally a darkness effect comes with this activation, but I'm in creative so it doesn't.
That should be six warning levels added if they stacked, but it wasn't, so clearly they don't stack.
You can also notice how the middle of the three times a sculk sensor hears me, it doesn't pass an activation to any of the sculk shriekers. That's because it was still probably going through the first activation and hadn't finished yet (again, there's usually a darkness effect added for many seconds after).
The sculk sensors are harmless on their own. If you ask me, beneficial even, because they sound cute. The other noise is the one to be terrified of...
Episode 7: Farming, Mapping and Pondscaping
Now with a well-established base, I figured we were in a good position to set out and explore the vast world beyond our mountain range. Not only would this grant us access to biome-specific resources, it was also the perfect opportunity to begin our mapping adventures. While the primary focus of this world is not set on mapping, but rather on building and developing a base into a potential thriving village and seeing how much we can achieve before we inevitably lose the world, I would still like to to get some exploration done.
I still had several base enhancement ideas in mind, however. First and foremost, I was looking for a horse to bring to our animal barn. Although I was unlikely to actually ride a horse, they would serve as good companions in our rather lonely valley.
I didn't find one though. I did, however, come across a lone donkey sauntering in the alpine meadows who was willing to "move" to our base.
I also found this narrow but deep dripstone ravine along the way:
Better not fall into that.
Luckily, we made it safely back to base, where the donkey gladly entered his new home.
Out of nowhere, I suddenly realized that I was over 100 days into the world and still didn't possess a Book and Quill! I hurriedly harvested some leather and sugar cane, rushed into my house to grab an ink sac from the utility chest, and immediately crafted the item of knowledge.
For me, a Book and Quill is a must-have item for exploring, particularly for recording coordinates, although as of now, I'm refraining myself from doing so as I would like to familiarize myself with the local area in a more authentic manner. But other than that, I still like the idea of having one on me just in case there are other things to be recorded, although I don't know what they would be.
And speaking of books, I moved the enchanting station onto the second floor of my house, just like on my survival world.
With that done, I decided to establish a small tree farm, as wood supplies were diminishing. It's not the sort of tree farm you'd expect, but rather several small square areas of stone bricks casually placed here and there, with a dirt block in the middle where the sapling would be planted.
The sugar cane growing site also had to be removed, but it would be transformed into something far better by the end of this update!
I then stocked up on my food and wood supplies and organized my inventory, for it was time to begin the mapping trip! I also crafted a new banner, named it "Sunflower Valley" via the new anvil and placed it in the living room. This would show our base's location on the map, just in case we get lost.
Here is the local area surrounding our base at zoom level 0:
Notice two medium-sized cave openings nearby.
I was going for zoom level 3, my preferred zoom level for general exploration of the Overworld as it shouldn't take too long to fill in on foot but still covers a fairly large area, I believe 1024x1024 blocks? I had previously been considering zoom level 4, but I still would like to have some detail on the map, like tree density.
But then, I made a rather significant mistake by recording the whole mapping trip on video and not taking any screenshots. It's the first time I've done any mapping without an Elytra, so I didn't really have a clue as to how long it would actually take (it turned out to be just under an hour, not counting the "inventory organization break" at my base halfway through).
Here's the video. It's 57 minutes long, so there's not really any point in watching it in full; I would describe the journey below with the aid of timestamps. (There'll be a picture series instead of a video next time. The video itself took over four hours to upload due to my somewhat poor connection.)
Starting south, I headed up Sunflower Valley and through the cherry grove before trekking across the plains towards the village (the "normal" one, that is, not the messed up cliffside village). I continued past the village, put on my snow boots and headed up the snowy mountain massif (2:50). Looking back, I found a new village, partially situated in the cherry grove adjacent to the previous village. Exploration of the new village would be saved for later in this update, but spoiler alert, its location is magnificent.
At this point, I turned east. The plan was that I would map the terrain in a spiral pattern, which meant that by the time I finished filling in the edge of the map, I would be able to organize and restock on supplies at my base before continuing. It was also slightly confusing that my base was on the western edge of the map rather than at the center like I thought it would, since I started the map right at my base, but oh well, that just meant I should start a new western map soon to "balance things out." Mapping in a spiral pattern also didn't turn out to be very efficient, so I might have to attempt a different technique in the future.
I headed along the side of the mountain in an easterly direction along the southern edge of the map. Below were mostly plains with a flower forest just behind (4:30). Continuing on was a small cherry grove (6:00), where I slept through the night.
Come morning, I reached the end of the mountain massif, where I continued east over a savanna plateau. Not long after, I entered a temperate climate zone, indicated by the plains and forests ahead. I headed down a steep slope towards a large lake with a wooded island in the center (9:45).
On the map itself, however, I noticed it was difficult to differentiate between most grassy biomes, e.g. plains and savannas, since the color on the map is exactly the same. It would've been far better if the color of the savanna on the map was perhaps a dry, olive-green color like in the actual game.
At the southeastern corner of the map, the plains transitioned to savanna again, with beaches and an ocean just beyond (11:00). But it was now time to head up north, which for a while was mostly plains with a tiny forest (12:18). Halfway through, however, was a small sparse jungle with lukewarm ocean beyond. As I'm seeing so far, our local area is situated in a mainly warm climate region, given that to the north of our base (we are currently mapping the east), there is more savanna beyond the frozen peaks (which we explored on Days 1 and 2).
I got into my boat and started rowing across the ocean. This definitely feels like I'm playing on my survival island world, especially when I came across a small island similar to our own (14:15). Just off the coast of the island was a shipwreck which I would explore later in this update.
To the northwest were stony shores and a formal jungle! The ocean did continue to the east and the north, but that was off the map. I turned west and landed at another sparse jungle hill which I headed up. Turning around, I found a ruined portal in the dense jungle, but that was also off the map, although again, I would explore that later in this update.
The sparse jungle then transitioned to forest (16:20). The hill became very steep here, requiring a bit of mining and pillaring, before I made it to the top and slept through the night.
I continued through the forest but noticed gray starting to appear on my map. It only meant one thing: I was entering familiar terrain, namely the stony mountain massif northeast of Sunflower Valley (18:24). I took the opportunity for a quick restock on my coal and iron supplies before heading back down to the forest valley below. It was all a relatively easy and relaxed stroll through the woods, although I soon had to head back up the frozen mountain massif through the spruce grove (21:40). I crossed over the icy summit and headed back down again, still exploring in a westerly direction towards the round snowy mountain from Episode 4. It was here that I encountered another pillager patrol (23:34), but I refrained from fighting them as I didn't have shelter this time.
I went up a small slope and discovered I was in a pretty spectacular mountain pass. The snowy mountain is in fact part of a jagged mountain massif that extends to the northwest and is therefore off the map. To the south was sunflower plains, a cherry grove and beyond that, my base. To the west, I found a small flower forest and more alpine meadows. In short, there were flowers everywhere.
This was also the place where I would turn south and head back to my base to organize our nearly full inventory and restock on supplies, but first, I harvested some lilies of the valley and alliums to decorate our base.
I enjoyed the night at my base before heading out again to fill in the center of the map (30:12). The plan was to head east up and over our local frozen mountain massif, turn south, then west, then north, and continue doing so until the whole map was completed.
I headed down through the two-tree cherry grove and east towards a savanna, where there was also a small snowy hilltop (35:00). The stony mountain massif and sparse jungle was now to my north, and to the east was the expected ocean. After heading down the stony cliff and attempting (but failing) a boat clutch, I once again started rowing across the ocean, finding another small island and coming across the same shipwreck from before (36:45). I turned south at the island and rowed parallel to the stony cliffs before making landfall at the savanna near the other frozen mountain massif. I was pretty sure I saw some wild llamas here as well.
I slept through the night atop the savanna plateau and made my way west through the mountains the next day. Nothing particularly interesting to mention here besides an interestingly large overhang as well as a ruined portal (41:29) without a gold block (that part really annoyed me). Apparently, only one ruined portal variant spawned without a gold block. (Spoiler warning: The ruined portal from the jungle also turned out to lack a gold block, and the loot was even worse. At least I managed to obtain a fire charge and some extra iron nuggets here.)
You may recognize the area as we descended the mountain range (48:15). Apparently, this was the mountain range which we had traversed on Days 1 and 2! We had probably ascended it from the west, which is not shown on the map, went right through the middle and then reached the northern end with the cherry grove.
Here, we turned east again to fill out the remainder of the map. And that meant I had to climb back up again, but not really that much, and I also slept through the night.
The next day, I continued east down the mountain, where there was another flower forest hill topped with snow (52:00). I harvested some tulips and oxeye daisies and walked around, seeing the last little bits and bobs of brown on the map turning green.
As I was heading back to base with my completed map, I noticed that the pillager patrol from earlier still had not despawned. I suppose it was because I had been travelling for most of the time and their chunk got unloaded. But they were far away and non-threatening, so I resumed, eventually arriving at my base (57:20) where I enjoyed a good night's rest.
The completed map:
And the path we roughly took:
For my next building project, I was going to need a considerable amount of stone bricks. The good thing about having a Silk Touch pickaxe was that I could just mine as much stone as I wanted without having to worry about the cost of smelting it. I could also mine freely under mountain biomes without having to worry about releasing silverfish from hidden infested blocks. I was mining at y:15, just so I would also be able to restock on my iron supplies, and hopefully I would come across some gold or lapis lazuli too.
As I was mining an iron vein, I revealed this:
Wow, stone diamond ore! There were two of them as well. Right around y:15, the highest level where they could spawn. I decided to mine the ores with Silk Touch since you don't come across stone diamond every day, unlike its deepslate variant. Maybe I'll put them in an ore museum or something someday.
I also exposed some lapis lazuli as well, but unfortunately no gold.
And here's two new caves, one of them being a large flooded cavern while the other was a narrow, mineshaft-like tunnel.
Back on the surface, here's the outline of the pond I was planning to build:
I would replace some of the stone bricks with more natural blocks like grass and sand to enable sugar cane growing, but that would be for later. Now, I needed to head to the river to the southwest to gather some more sand for the bottom of the pond. A little sprinkle of gravel should do as well.
While I was at the river, I took a closer shot of the dripstone cave openings on the side of the cliff:
I then planted down the sugar cane and experimented with bonemealing moss on the edge of the pond. The latter is one of my favorite things to do in the game for some reason.
Yes, flowering azalea spawned!
The pond wasn't finished though. I made another trip along the edge of the map to harvest some bamboo from the northeastern jungle as well as acquire a bell from the southwestern village. This would also provide a good opportunity to explore the other village we discovered earlier.
I decided to head south first.
The new village was large and situated just outside the cherry grove in a spectacular meadow. The villagers definitely found an excellent place to settle at!
In terms of loot, it didn't have too much to offer apart from some spare emeralds, four golden nuggets as well as the desired bell. The village actually had two bells, so I'm sure the villagers wouldn't mind sharing one of them. I also found this interesting barnhouse:
I slept through the night at the village before heading northeast towards the jungle. I forgot to mention that I had left the original map on an item frame in my house and brought out a copy instead just in case I lost my world.
I arrived at the jungle late on a rainy afternoon. I did punch some grass for a few wheat seeds should there be any nearby parrots to tame, but I didn't find any. My inventory was very nearly full at this point so I could only afford to chop down one bamboo stalk.
I was thankful that the ruined portal had nothing desirable to offer, not even a gold block, although it did try to destroy my world not only by containing a Curse of Binding helmet in the loot chest but also setting the jungle on fire.
Edit: Is that sliver of yellow beneath the stone brick stairs the gold block? How did I miss it?!
To make matters worse, as I was stumbling out of the jungle, a zombie escaped from a cave and started towards me. I pulled out my bow and shot at it just as it burned to death, wasting a precious arrow.
I then headed up the sparse jungle hill and crossed the mountain massif before arriving home, where I bonemealed more moss as well as spawned a flower azalea tree!
For the finishing touches to the pond, I headed back east to the flower forest, where I harvested some rose bushes, peony, tulips and lilies of of the valley.
Here's yet another dripstone ravine I encountered along the way:
I've shown so many of these that it was probably pointless to continue doing so.
Back at base, I decided to decorate the exterior of the mining hut with lilies of the valley as well as plant down the bamboo from the jungle. The more bamboo we obtain, the more scaffolding we could craft! For me, scaffolding is a must-have in your inventory, whether you're working on massive building projects or raiding an End city.
As I was placing down the flowers, an enderman suddenly just teleported into my base and removed a grass block. Really? I nearly looked him in the eye, and that would have been fatal. It probably spawned near a cave opening, wandered out and teleported around due to being exposed to the sunlight. Please don't let this happen again.
But anyways, here is the completed pond:
Should I survive to the stage of starting a villager community, this would serve as the village center.
I spent the rest of the evening watching over our base. It seemed less impressive from a distance as the cherry trees got in the way, but that just made me feel safer somehow. Those natural looks are really cutting it.
The next episode will primarily focus on making some small renovations here and there around our base. I may also work towards acquiring full diamond armor or even tools, as I would definitely like to get myself fully protected as soon as possible and explore the Overworld in relative safety. The Nether, on the other hand, is still a long way ahead. I've only been to the Nether once before, on my survival world, and died uncountable times while I was there.
Your base looks nice on the map. Pity the map can't show it all because of map placement issues. I really wish Mojang would ditch the system of locking larger maps to particular coordinate locations and adopt the system of being able to craft adjacent maps on the cartographer block. It's not hard and it could make some things oh so much nicer!
It's odd how the Cherry trees make things feel safer. I felt this too, way back in Episode 2 of my Return to Minecraft journal, on arriving at a BoP Cherry Blossom Grove (a close relative of the current vanilla ones). The weird thing is that that was actually *less* safe because that's a duskspawning biome (and I knew that). But it still felt safer!
Nice pond, too.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I sometimes become so captivated by the dazzling colors of the seemingly safe and peaceful cherry grove that I forget mobs can spawn there in the dark (and yes, I did find quite a few shaded areas while exploring around). Really, it is technically just a forest of pink rather than green, although in my opinion, it makes more sense for monsters not to spawn in cherry groves rather than mushroom islands.
I'm still an update behind so this is in response to two updates back...
I'll have to try a checkerboard pattern when an opportunity arises. I've done it before, but I don't do it often.
I like the outside windows. They give me some ideas for, again, when I have an opportunity to use it.
If you think your progress is slow, I don't know what mine is.
The pillager patrols are... strange. When I explore, I almost never see them. Stationary at a settlement/base? All the time. I think they might only spawn behind you? At least, I've never seen any just pop into existence in front of me. And if you're moving, they either spawn less, or you just walk away and are oblivious to them having spawned. As for despawning? I think maybe they won't unless you move far enough away. I had my own time where I had a handful of patrols active at once. They don't seem to (?) have a timer to despawn like wandering traders (which only seems to count down while they're loaded).
Well that explains why the long-term pillager patrol took so long to despawn, although that is not my experience for every single one of them. Sometimes, they just wander off and disappear into the forest, and I usually assume they despawned. The patrol in question neither wandered off nor despawned for about 15 in-game days before suddenly disappearing into the forest, so I thought there was something strange about it.
Episode 8: Leveling Up
If we were to survive and conquer the challenges of the hostile world, it was about time we acquire a full set of diamond gear. So in this update, we head into the Deep Dark and smash our way through tough deepslate in hopes of unveiling the shiny, blue gems. We also continue to expand our base by establishing more farms and building a cozy little hut for a new friend!
I spent most of Day 166 fishing at my newly constructed pond, hoping to reel in a lily pad for some extra decoration or, even better, an enchanted book for our soon to be crafted diamond gear.
Apart from piles of raw fish (unsurprising, since we were fishing), I obtained a bone, two pieces of leather and a tripwire hook. I was particularly enthusiastic about the bone as that would allow us to tame wolves, should we come across any while exploring, and the 1.20.5 update (?) would introduce eight new wolf variants. I wonder when that update would release, since I'm keen to get some more mapping done soon but would like the new wolves to spawn in before I explore any new biomes.
But now, back to the present.
Since we managed to acquire bamboo in the last update, it's time to put it to use! I harvested several stalks and crafted some scaffolding and trapdoors. Here's the new bamboo table in the living room:
The bamboo chair went on the balcony. It just felt ... right.
As I headed to the barn to harvest some more steak, as food supplies were rapidly dropping, I found another enderman that had somehow teleported to my base. Is there really a massive cave below us? I didn't feel like finding out.
Unlike last time, however, I took advantage of the enderman's presence by trapping him in a boat and slashing for an ender pearl. He dropped one!
Unfortunately, it seemed like he managed to summon a pillager patrol before his death:
I couldn't be bothered to deal with them. I had a bamboo farm to build!
I had moved all the bamboo from near the pond to the giant tree farm as I consider the pond as the "center" of our base and would like to keep the area around it open and free of obstructions. I also used potted lanterns for the corners of the farm as you may have expected. I adopted this technique while building the mangrove enclosure and lighthouse island on my survival world, and I'm bringing it to this world as well.
With that done, it's mining time. I grabbed some more loot from the dungeon and, as I mined, decided to extract all the ores with Silk Touch so we could Fortune them later (hopefully).
Some gold, nice!
What really is the best layer to mine gold at? On my survival world, mining at Y:-16 (the layer at which gold generates most frequently, according to the Wiki) yielded barely anything, yet I find them so often around diamond level.
Speaking of ores, I mined the rest of the cluster of diamond ore from Episode 5 before revealing another one shortly after.
After that, luck was poor. I branch-mined around (each branch tunnel spaced out by three blocks), trying to avoid a large lava lake, and found nothing but iron, lapis lazuli and tons of redstone. (That part was good, I suppose.) I then finally came across a vein of two diamonds before encountering another one with five or six. I spent four days in the mines and left with 19 diamond ores. Not very much, but if I'm lucky I might just have enough for a full set of gear upon mining them with Fortune III. Spoiler warning, it was coming soon!
Since I now had 30 levels, I decided to enchant my second diamond pickaxe (so we now only have 16 ores left) and pray for Fortune III. Efficiency IV as a guaranteed enchantment? Nice, but I'm hoping for more...
Nope. Efficiency only. In the grindstone goes the pickaxe. Although I now only had 27 levels, I decided to check out what's coming up next.
Yes!
Without a mob farm, however, even three more levels would be difficult to obtain, so I decided to pass the time with a bit of farming. That was when the rabbit appeared.
With that, I grew and chopped down some acacia trees, terraformed the land and began building my new friend a nice little hut adjacent to the bamboo farm with his favorite foods: carrots and dandelions! The idea came out of nowhere, but I think it was a pretty good addition to the base.
I also designed a rather bland-looking path leading from the giant tree farm to the bamboo farm and rabbit hut. That would be fixed later, but it should do for now.
After that, I replaced two rows of carrots at the crop farm with beetroots. The beetroots aren't farmed for food, mind you, but rather as an easy source of red dye.
+1 pillager patrol to the count:
I decided to leave them alone again, and that was the mistake. While I was over at the bamboo farm about a day after they spawned, a pillager just suddenly ... appeared in front of me. (I didn't get a screenshot though.) That was a total jumpscare! Thankfully, it was only one, although in my moment of panic I kept on accidentally placing blocks instead of using my shield like I intended to, and lost four hearts during the fight.
I needed diamond armor.
I went to bed quite late that night and spotted a spider chilling around outside the next morning. I tried to take a shot at it in hopes of obtaining a spider eye (an ingredient in potions of weakness, which are required to cure zombie villagers), but it despawned right in front of my eyes. Well, unlucky I guess?
Over the next two days, I went fishing, bred cows, bred chickens, killed cows and did everything else I could to acquire the final two levels of XP. And at last, on Day 188...
I wasn't expecting Efficiency IV or Unbreaking III, but we now have two pretty much maxed out pickaxes (apart from the missing levels of Efficiency as well as Mending, but you can't get those from an enchanting table anyways). This will save us the trouble of maxing out enchantments much later in the game, and for that I am extremely grateful.
Now to answer the long-awaited question: how many diamonds did we get from the 16 ores?
33! That's just enough for a full set of diamond gear (excepting the pickaxe, which we already have two of) plus a jukebox.
I then mined all the ores from the trip with my Fortune pickaxe. Here are the results:
4 iron ores -> 7 raw iron
15 gold ores -> 38 raw gold
9 lapis lazuli ores -> 105 lapis lazuli
60 redstone ores -> ~330 redstone dust
After mining all that redstone and putting all the lovely, shiny gold in the furnace, I was able to reach Level 30 again, so I took the opportunity to enchant my brand new chestplate.
Protection III and Unbreaking III? Not bad!
To finish off this update, I established a small pumpkin and melon farm outside the mining hut. Again, I used bamboo fences and potted lanterns on the corners as I was out of ideas at the time, but the colors went nicely together.
As you observed, it all has to do with if they remain close enough. If they reach a point far enough from you, they may (and eventually will) despawn.
Episode 9: Wandering West
The format of this thread's landing page has been reorganized and now includes a table of contents in order to better suit the increasing number of updates. Although it is unnecessary at this stage, it may prove useful later.
Now equipped with full diamond gear and a more organized inventory, we were in a far better position to begin a slightly longer mapping session. Since Sunflower Valley is situated on the western edge of the local map, we're heading west this time to map out the nearby meadow and explore the vast plains, forests and mountains beyond. On the evening of Day 190, I went over to our starting point and zoomed out the new map before heading back home and enjoying a good night's rest.
Come morning, the expedition commenced.
The plan was simple: I would head north until reaching the northeastern corner of the map, then head west until reaching the northwestern corner, go south a bit, head east until reaching the eastern edge, go south a bit more, head west until reaching the western edge, and so forth. I have no idea what this technique is called, but apparently it's one of the most popular ones used for mapping.
Without further ado, here we go.
I entered the local meadow, where I would turn north and head up a frozen summit. The path is similar to the one we took to the cliffside village in Episode 4, if not slightly easier.
Upon reaching the summit, I found a donkey just standing there, enjoying the scenic views of the cherry groves and meadows below.
Speaking of views, here is a lovely one of our entire base, only a small cluster of buildings and farms amongst the great wilderness. (I know the giant spruce trees don't really match the theme, but they're only part of the tree farm and not as actual decoration.) I'm still surprised we've made it this far in Hardcore though.
I also found this high-altitude dripstone cave opening:
Here's a panorama of the jagged peaks we're about to explore. They didn't seem to go as high as I'd expected, but we could only see so far with our somewhat low render distance.
Upon descending, I discovered a mountain pass which would serve as an easy route to the cliffside village should we make any trips there in the future for whatever reason. It was a longer route as multiple mountains (including the jagged ones) would require traversing, but it was far safer as the river cliffs were even steeper.
Not only that, I also realized that the round snowy mountain discussed in Episodes 4 and 7 is part of this jagged mountain massif based on its location at the northwestern corner of the previous map.
By late afternoon, I had made it up to the peaks, where I found another high-altitude dripstone cave with the silhouette of a zombie visible at an opening.
Here's a funny-looking cave that the snow had failed to hide well:
I looked back and found our lone frozen mountain in the distance. Better give it a name sometime, but as of now I'm out of ideas.
I turned around and:
Wow. A pinnacle majestically rising into the sky, likely topping at Y:256, surrounded by a ring of smaller peaks with a lone spruce tree isn't something you find everyday. One moment I was climbing above the clouds, thinking I've reached the highest summit, and the next, there's something even higher right before your eyes. It's the first time I've been to the jagged peaks biome, and I loved it.
I watched the sunset from one of the summits, placed down my bed and slept through the night in the mountains, marking the end of Day 191.
Morning arrived, and I observed my surroundings. Didn't want to get rammed off a cliff or blown up by a creeper after all that!
Although the massif continued to the north, I had reached the northeastern corner of the map and unfortunately had to turn west here. I began my descent through the spruce grove and northern half of the cliffside village into the oak forest below. Some final looks at the mountains:
To the west was a rather large river with more plains beyond it.
I placed down my boat and rowed it off the cliffside and into the river. I did realize that was rather risky, as if we had landed on the ground from a certain height, namely 49 blocks or 51 blocks, the boat would've broken upon impact and I would've died.
Here's a final look at our familiar territory:
The next stage of the journey was a relaxed trek through some relatively flat plains, and there's not much to show here. About two-thirds of the way to the western edge, however, the uninteresting plains transitioned to sunflower hills, which spiced things up a little.
There even was a flower forest beyond. Now that was what made things exciting.
I leapt across the river and headed deeper into the flower forest, through great fields of tulips and roses, and made my first southern turn.
I then turned east again, where the flower forest ended with a large patch of lilies of the valley, which I gladly harvested as these would serve as decoration for my base in the future.
I spent the evening near the sunflower hills, where there was some small-scaled wacky terrain, and slept through the night.
The next morning, I carefully observed my surroundings and started making my way down the hill, but I suddenly heard a creeper hiss behind me before exploding. Luckily, neither I nor my armor took any damage. It's now the second time I've had a creeper being ... creepy. And apparently, diamond armor wouldn't even save you from a creeper explosion, so I'm definitely looking for Protection IV soon.
Netherite gear, on the other hand, apparently requires an Upgrade Template which is only found rarely in bastion remnants. (I managed to find a "treasure room" type bastion on my survival world, and the chest that generates at the center of the pool of lava is guaranteed to contain a template.) Still, I really wished I had started playing this game sooner.
At least I managed to find a nice little waterfall by this tiny beach:
At around the same location, I also found a somewhat large ravine with numerous cave openings:
The rest of the sweep was uneventful until I finally found our lone mountain in the distance, towering over the cherry groves and meadows. As I was taking this picture, it started raining, which ... isn't really desirable when you're out exploring.
Luckily, it was time to turn south, which meant I didn't have to head down the steep river cliff, and made my way into the forest.
Upon turning west, I found a poor lone wolf trying to find shelter from the rain (apparently, trees don't exist...). Unfortunately, I didn't bring any bones. Better remember next time.
A faint, yellow glow on the horizon ahead signalled sunset, so I hurriedly made my way up a tree before sleeping through the night. Come morning, I checked my surroundings - it was especially easy to get ambushed by a creeper here in the forest - and continued my western sweep. About halfway through, the forest gave way to the expected plains, but what was unexpected was the fact that I found my first ever proper ruined portal on this world. I say proper because it actually has a gold block.
No, not one, but two! I carefully drained out the lava with dirt blocks before mining them.
The loot was splendid as well. I took the golden apple, gold ingots as well as the boots, which were enchanted with Thorns III. I have to say that this is one of the best ruined portals I've found in the game yet!
It was all a relaxing stroll through the plains with a few small brooks to jump over and the occasional river crossing. Not many caves to fall into, not a single pillager patrol jumpscare. (Spoiler warning: no pillager patrols were found in this update, probably to make up for those that did spawn in the past few updates.)
I was soon approaching the crazy terrain we found earlier, which meant we were coming to the western edge of the map. This marks the halfway point of the expedition.
Upon turning south, I found a snowy plains biome. That wasn't unexpected, since we were quite far away from the warm zone (covered on the previous map) and we've been mapping temperate plains for a while now. The change was welcome.
On my way back east through the forest, I found another deep dripstone ravine with exposed gold, although I obviously didn't go for it. I had sufficient gold supplies anyway.
I also discovered the tiniest river biome yet: three mere thin strips of water.
This was where the going started becoming difficult. I was entering an area with numerous steep hills and plateaus, and it was all forested, making it difficult to navigate in a straight line. The best I could do was sprinting on treetops, but there obviously was the occasional fall.
Somewhere in the distance was a forest fire, but we all know whose fault that was.
From a vantage point on top of the plateau two pictures ago, I gazed over at the expanse of forest I'll be traversing on my final sweep west, likely in a day's time.
Not really interesting-looking, is it?
On the plus side, I found a heart-shaped dripstone lake at the base of the plateau.
Looking north was some more crazy terrain generation.
The forest eventually gave way to a meadow, which was desirable, and offered a nice panorama of the hills ahead. The pictured village is the one we explored towards the end of Episode 7.
I made my way down the plateau and found myself standing on an overhang. Coincidentally, I unintentionally captured a teleporting enderman, although things did get a bit dangerous as my crosshairs were set so close to his face.
Here's what the overhang looks like from below:
I made my way up to the village, where I took one last shot of the plateau we were on as the sun set behind it.
I slept in one of the village houses (wow, finally some proper accommodation) before making one last sweep west, spotting a random hill along the way.
I then entered the forest, as expected, and crossed it by treetop jumping, which was so much more efficient. The trek was relatively easy, although uneventful, and the only thing that was really worth showing was a modest cave entrance about halfway through.
Eventually, the forest gave way to a narrow strip of plains, and then here I was, at the formal cold zone. The funny thing about third-person view is that you can't even see the details of any maps you're holding in your offhand; only the map item is shown.
I skated around the frozen lake and waited here until sunset as I preferred to stay out in the open until morning, when I would make my journey home.
The next day, I headed northeast, taking a path around the edge of the forest to avoid the area with the steep cliffs and plateaus.
I found some neat dripstone cave openings and ravines along the way as well.
On the evening of Day 197, I finally made it back to Sunflower Valley, where I placed the map in a new item frame. I'm surprised that a single map would take nearly a whole in-game week to complete. Maybe the spiral technique is still more efficient, although it would be more difficult to describe here.
After observing the maps, I noticed that the western edge of the new map still had a few pixels left to fill. How did I not see before?! Well, it's going to take a long time to head back there, so I'll bring the map with me when I start a new expedition in the far west. But that'll be in a long while, as I've pretty much done all the mapping that I wanted to for now, and even if I did continue, I would probably fill in a northeastern map instead so our base is more centralized.
With the mapping done, I'm a bit lost as to what to do next. If I was more skilled, the Nether was obviously up next, since I've acquired diamond equipment and plenty of gold for piglin bartering. The problem was that I've only been to the Nether once on Survival and died over a dozen times while there (specifically in the Nether fortress), although that was only with iron armor. (I didn't bring any diamond gear because it wasn't Hardcore and I was worried I would lose it all. That turned out to be the right decision, since some of the deaths were lava deaths. Slightly unrelated, but the Nether fortress deaths were also my first deaths on that world, which made it feel tainted.)
I think the best option is to wait until I have full Protection IV diamond armor before entering the Nether, but only to mine for Ancient Debris, since Netherite armor includes bonus fire protection. The problem with the latter is that I would need to search for a bastion remnant, and not all of them have the desired upgrade template.
A third option, although less desirable, is to create a new Survival (Hard difficulty, but not Hardcore) world and try to take on the Nether there and "practice" searching for and raiding fortresses and bastions. If I do take that path, I won't be documenting anything here unless necessary.
Episode 10: Bamboo Cutting and Ghast Sniping
Well, it was time. If any further progress was to be made, we're left with no choice but to leave behind the scenic landscapes of the Overworld and step into the fiery depths of the Nether. This update is relatively short and mainly serves as a "taster session" to help us get accustomed to this hellish dimension before we begin the search for a fortress, as it was only our third time stepping through a portal on a Survival (or Hardcore) world.
For all we know, it could all end here.
I spent the evening of Day 200 packing up for the visit to the Nether, shoving into my inventory a stack of gold ingots, two stacks of building blocks and lots of food in addition to the tools and weapons that never leave the hotbar. I already had ten blocks of obsidian for one portal but decided to mine ten more from the local lava pool just in case a ghast somehow shot me off a ledge and I landed in a horde of magma cubes at the shore of a giant lava sea. It might be an overstatement, but stuff like that does happen.
I also took the opportunity to fill a bucket with lava for a future dripstone lava farm, although that's not on my priority list.
Although I hadn't reached Level 30, I decided to enchant my diamond leggings anyway for bonus protection.
Fire Protection III? That'll do for now. We're visiting the Nether after all.
I then ensured that I had a Flint and Steel in my inventory before constructing a temporary portal. It would soon be relocated, but I was both excited and anxious about what the spawn region had to offer.
Maybe there would be a fortress or bastion remnant visible from Spawn?
Or perhaps we would spawn on a single block high above a basalt delta? (I seriously hoped this wasn't it ...)
3, 2, 1 ... and I stepped through the portal.
Alright, this is an actually normal spawn, and for that I'm grateful, although I couldn't find any fortress nearby. My objectives for now were to construct a secure shelter, barter with piglins and mine some quartz for XP.
Objective 1 completed. This looks worse than a ruined portal structure.
I was building it in a panic because some distant ghast was shooting at me. It's obviously not a permanent shelter; I'll turn it into a nicer looking Nether house sometime in the future.
From the safety of the stone brick monstrosity, I observed my surroundings, occasionally going outside to mine some quartz or throwing gold at a passing piglin, although I received nothing but soul sand and fire charges in return.
In the distance was a Basalt Deltas biome. The fact that I spawned near but not in one is desirable as this will provide ready access to basalt and blackstone for building purposes and magma cream for fire resistance potions without making our temporary base more dangerous than it already is.
That'll do for a first visit. I headed back through the portal to the Overworld, where I relocated the portal to an area near the bamboo farm and decorated it with bamboo mosaic and quartz pillars. The design was unofficial and I had other plans with it soon, so it won't be shown for now.
I then reentered the Nether via the new portal to mine some more quartz and confirm that there was no nearby structure by raising the render distance to 20 chunks. It wasn't very useful because the Nether fog got in the way, which was annoying. On the plus side, that meant I could continue playing at my normal render distance of 12 chunks. I used to play with a render distance of something like 24 chunks but it caused considerable lag as the computer I am using is not designated for gaming.
Here, I sniped my first ghast as well.
I headed out to check its drops. No ghast tear? Oh well, at least I obtained two piles of gunpowder.
When I walked back through the portal, I found myself in a dripstone cave. I entered and left the Nether via the same portal, so why didn't I spawn back at said portal in the Overworld? I looked that up and apparently it had something to do with the game selecting a spawn area in the Nether far away from the corresponding coordinates in the Overworld due to the presence of lava seas, but I'm still somewhat confused.
Luckily, the cave was located at an altitude of around y:90 under our local mountain, which I found out upon mining and pillaring up until reaching the surface. Since this will be our Nether exit from now on, I decided to build a little bamboo shelter around it as well as a long ladder leading straight up from the portal for easy access.
And it seemed like I forgot to deactivate the portal (which I often try to do), for there was a zombie piglin waiting down below. I took it out but somehow lost nearly half my health doing so. I didn't know they dealt that much damage. Better keep that in mind next time.
During my next visit to the Nether, I extended the shelter a bit to include a piglin who would serve as our primary barterer.
Oh, I forgot to put on my gold helmet.
At first, I received nothing of interest, just more soul sand, blackstone and Nether bricks. But I was then given a Soul Speed III enchanted book:
What a rare drop? I'm pretty sure the drop rate is only 0.36%.
I then acquired a pair of iron boots enchanted with Soul Speed (which are useless considering that I'm at the diamond stage now) before receiving the greatest gift ever: a splash potion of fire resistance! Now I can explore the Nether and raid a fortress in relative safety, although I'll still barter for a few more just in case.
I then left the Nether and:
Not again! This time though, I understood the reason. It was because I had deactivated the other exit portal a few blocks away after killing that zombie piglin, so it didn't count as a portal anymore and created a new one.
Well, that's a lot of Nether troubles in one update. In the next one, I might just begin the search for a fortress but only after I've acquired fully enchanted diamond armor and a bow with Power V and Infinity. I may also enhance the looks of the Nether huts as they're more of an eyesore at the moment, but nevertheless I'm quite determined to finish this stage of the game.
That lone tree is probably a really tiny grove biome. They happen around the "mid" mountain elevations, below/surrounding the peaks, and have spruce trees.
That mountain might not be as high as you think, so you haven't seen anything yet. Going off of the clouds in your pictures, those tend to be around just below the 200 elevation level, and most of the peaks you show seem to be just above that.
What's going to floor you is when you find a high altitude landmass that is so wide that the 256 cutoff will makes it looks like it took almost half of the tops off! I've found at least one area like that (not yet in my survival world, although I found a pretty impressive one there too) and it's unbelievable to see. So apparently even the 256 limit is too "low" for some of the things the game attempts.
I'm at this point in my world.
I had enchantments off the table until recently, and potions are off the table, so it's going to be... interesting.
My plan is to find the bastion remnant with the guaranteed template, and if it's the one I think it is, descend from the top by dropping sand,gravel, or some other gravity affected block for walls, and then descending down to the chest.
Otherwise, the first trip in is riskiest, but once you have fire resistance potions (off limits to me) the nether is largely neutralized outside of maybe piglin brutes.
Always keep a gold hemlet on and always have fire resistance potions, and then with good enough armor (and preferable elytra), you're pretty safe in there.
That matches my experience.
While out and exploring, I almost never see them. Even in the amount of area I've mapped in my world, I can probably count the number of times on one hand that I've seen them while exploring.
While stationary in the same spot, they show up endlessly.
It's hard to see what zoom level you're using for maps; it doesn't look like the maximum but I'm guessing if it's taking that long it has to be one less if anything.
Depending on pacing and obstacles, that sounds about right. It's a lot of area to cover.
Your home region looks nice so far, and yeah I'd probably be doing the two maps to the North if it were me, and then deciding on where to go next based on what I saw that interested me most on the current borders. But that's because my world is largely exploration driven whereas yours isn't.
Yeah, the mountain peaks are certainly less impressive than the ones you found on your own Hardcore world earlier this year. It does seem like there are several major mountain ranges near my base though, not all of which I have fully explored due to map border limitations. I'm definitely looking to continue exploring the jagged snowy mountains as these seem to reach y:256 quite often compared to stony and frozen peaks, at least from my observations from previous Creative worlds.
Sounds like a very safe technique. Just have to be careful about the ghasts.
On my survival world, I mined through the wall of the bastion and slowly made my way to the lava pool containing the "main" treasure chest with the template, blocking off any staircase or passageway. I only got hit once by a piglin brute, but the technique (if you can call it one) still poses its own risks and works only for that chest. It's a shame I didn't have the skill to raid the rest of the bastion, although besides some music discs, armor trims and Netherite ingots there isn't anything too valuable / unique.
I use zoom level 3/4, so yes, one level below the maximum. Although the terrain was quite steep and hilly in some places (like in the forest), I also have a habit of randomly stopping and checking my surroundings; that may be causing the slowness.
Oh, sorry, I wasn't trying to make yours sound unimpressive or compare them to ones I found.
Those are pretty impressive, but routine as far as mountains go. 1.18 is great though because even the routine ones are pretty stellar. Based on the map you showed, you could be in a larger region that's hiding more. I was just saying that they didn't look like they went as high as they can go (I was guessing based on the clouds), so maybe you have greater ones you can find still.
The one I found in my hardcore world is one of my favorites, pretty much because I found it naturally, but I've found one that is more impressive. It was found in a creative world though. But knowing there's even greater ones that the game can do is sort of keeping me motivated to continue exploring eventually. I'd like to find a really grand warm climate region of them some time.
Ghasts themselves I'm not too worried about. I mean they cost me arrows and I don't have an endless supply of them in that world, but it's being knocked into lava that concerns me.
I'm wondering if I should wait to enchant until I have the netherite armor. If so, that would mean I'd have to attempt this with the armor I have now... which is a nearly broken diamond set minus the helmet (I'd use a gold one anyway) and isn't enchanted at all. My thinking I was could afford waiting since if I do it properly, I shouldn't take a lot of hits and waste a lot of durability (mending is off limits so all the durability I can save is better). On the other hand... armor is always replaceable even if it's so much effort it's not worth it. My life is not. Maybe I should enchant it first after all.
Edit:
Okay, so I'm finally caught up on the last update.
Yes, that's exactly what happened. It also happened to me too.
Here's an example if you don't get it.
Let's say you make a portal in the overworld at 0, 0 and go into the nether through it. Let's say it attempts to makes a portal at 0, 0 in the nether and succeeds. All will be normal with these two portals.
Now let's make another example with another world where you do the same, but in this world's seed, the nether is lava at 0,0 for some distance in all directions. So when going into the nether, the game can not place a portal there. Let's say the game finds the closest place at 200, 200 and puts a portal there. This does not properly match, but since there is no valid spot that matches, every time you go to go into the nether from the overworld, it will find this is as the closest match and use it.
The problem is that when you go to go back through it to the overworld, the overworld portal at 0, 0 does not fall within valid range of the adjusted 200, 200 nether portal coordinate. So it simply creates a new one.
There is a way around this if you want to put the effort in. You need to find out where the coordinates of the nether portal should have been placed, make a portal there, and activate it.
Here's a nether portal calculator.
https://maximumfx.nl/portal/en/
In my world, I tolerate that my trip back to the overworld will be to a separate portal (and thankfully I was not put into a cave; I've heard of people who were put into ancient cities!). The nether is too risky for me without being allowed to use potions and not having enchantments yet, so I just tolerate it. It's just over a ridge behind my village anyway.
Mhm, once you mentioned deactivating the portal, I thought "oh no, don't do that!" because I knew what would happen, and then you did it and found out why.
I died on my survival world when a ghast fireball knocked me into a lava sea while I was bridging over to a Nether fortress. The explosion itself dealt minimal damage; as you said, it's getting knocked into lava that's usually lethal.
It's a different story for bastion remnants since you're pretty much safe from ghasts while inside the building, but in case one does see you through the numerous holes and openings (hence the name remnant), do you allow the Fire Resistance effect given from Enchanted Golden Apples?
I think the best option here would be to go mining with a Fortune III pickaxe for a brand new set of diamond armor and fully enchant it with Protection III or IV and preferably Unbreaking III. The enchantments on your diamond armor / tools stay even once you've upgraded them to Netherite, but Netherite gear itself is more expensive to enchant in terms of XP (if you use enchanted books and anvils, that is).
If you're not planning on raiding the rest of the bastion and have several more slots in your inventory to spare, you may even want to bring a smithing table, four Netherite ingots, 28 excess diamonds plus some blocks of Netherrack with you to duplicate the template and upgrade your gear right at the bastion (Netherite armor includes bonus fire protection and you may find that useful on the return journey), but only when you're fully sheltered as magma cube spawners do exist in this part of the structure.
Thank you for the information on the Nether portals. I'm just glad that the lava sea wasn't too big and the cave I spawned in was located at a pretty high altitude and close to my base.
Luckily, the third Nether portal that spawned was located only a few blocks away from the second and in the same cave.
If you're asking me if I would allow myself to use golden apples under my restrictions in my world, then yes, I may. I've already used them.
Positive effects are not what is off limits. I just can't craft nor use potions (the exception is experience bottles found as loot). Likewise, I can't trade with villagers, but wandering traders are an exception.
The bastion remnant that I think had the guaranteed template is the one where ghasts really shouldn't be a concern anyway. But with enchantments being allowed now, my nether helmet will have no reason not to have fire protection. That, golden apples, good diamond armor with other enchantments, and the regeneration of full saturation should be more than enough if I do end up in a small lava area in a bastion remnant. I'm way more worried about piglin brutes.
Yeah, that sounds like what I might want to do.
I definitely need more diamonds.
And I'm wanting to make a customized set of armor to get what I want, which would mean books, and I didn't think of the higher experience. That will also be an issue (my cow farm helps here I guess).
The only reason I'm going to all the effort of netherite despite it being disposable is because I can make it last so long because I'll be avoiding combat. So I shouldn't lose much durability on it before I upgrade it, so I guess I'm doing nothing but taking unnecessary risk to prolong it after all.
Oh, I absolutely plan to duplicate the upgrade template! No way am I doing this any more than necessary! Not because the extra effort. I don't mind that part at all. But because of the extra risk. Not in a hardcore world. In a normal survival world I'd be seeking out more bastion remnants.
And I didn't think of bringing the stuff with me to upgrade it before leaving. I knew that I could, but for whatever reason I just tend to default to seeking stuff out, getting it, and then return home to do stuff with it. It's probably safer to do it as soon as I can though. It's not like I risk losing extra stuff if I die since if that happens, the world is lost anyway.
Episode 11: Getting Ready for the Great Journey
In this update, I prepare for the long expedition to a Nether fortress. My main goals are to obtain a second Fire Resistance potion as well as to fully enchant my Nether armor set (full diamond minus the helmet, which is gold) and my weapons. Without a mob farm, the process of enchanting takes much longer unless you head into the Nether to mine Quartz. So that's exactly what I'll be doing for a while.
Edit: The format of the third-party image hosting site I use no longer accommodates full screen images so I started using a different site. When I first posted this update, many of the images were not working so I re-inserted them with the post editor, and now they do work. I'm wondering if others can see the images as well?
To begin with, however, I added windows to the piglin bartering section of our Nether base. Although they certainly look nicer, any incoming ghast fireballs will easily destroy them, so I'll have to be careful about that.
I spent the rest of this visit exploring the terrain around our base, mining any Quartz that I came across and even taking the opportunity to acquire some basalt for a future Nether-themed build.
All was going well until this ghast showed up:
It started shooting at me and I decided that this was a good opportunity to make the "Return to Sender" advancement like on my survival world. This happened instead:
I'm pretty sure I clicked on most of the fireballs? Do I specifically have to click on the bottom half to deflect it? There would be no more ghast accidents in this update regardless. Being brought down to three hearts by one mob is a step too far in the wrong direction.
Just as I was about to leave, I found four endermen standing around. So they aren't exclusive to the Warped Forest biome after all?
Unfortunately, I couldn't go after them as the ghast was still there.
I entered the Overworld via the second underground portal I had accidentally created at the end of the last update. I quickly deactivated that portal to prevent any mobs from entering and activated the other underground portal. This would serve as both our Nether entrance and exit from now on. When I arrived at my base, I deactivated the first portal as it would be useless now and allow zombie pigmen to spawn right at our home, which is unacceptable.
After restocking on supplies and organizing my inventory, it was time for a second visit to the Nether to mine some more Quartz as well as Nether Gold ore for piglin bartering.
Here's a picture of a neat lava lake I found with a strider. I know these are common but decided to show one anyway.
Once I had reached Level 30 again, I returned to the Overworld and shoved the Nether Gold ore in the blast furnace.
My chestplate and legging enchantments were already satisfactory, so I decided to enchant my boots. I was mainly looking for Protection IV and Feather Falling III or IV here. I got Fire Protection III instead. I already had Fire Protection, so nope, into the grindstone they go.
What's up next?
I'm not feeling hopeful.
Back into the Nether we go for more Quartz and piglin bartering. Wow! I would love to experiment with a Respawn Anchor in Hardcore.
While I wasn't given another Fire Resistance potion, I did receive another stash of ender pearls, which was desirable. We're having good ender pearl luck so far, and spoiler warning, it was to get better soon.
Here's a picture of our slightly revamped Nether base. More progress will be made after we've finished with the Nether Fortress. If I survive.
After that, I descended onto the barren wastes below and explore in an easterly direction.
I read somewhere that Nether fortresses generate more frequently on the positive side of the X-axis, so this may help, but what I was really looking for was more Quartz for XP and Gold for bartering.
I constructed a small shelter at the bottom with a tower of scaffolding leading back up to our main base. Then came a ghast.
It started shooting and the windows of this smaller base all blew up. Welp. At least I barely took any damage this time.
Here's a view of our Nether base now:
After ensuring that the ghast had gone, I cautiously made my way out and started in an easterly direction, mining any Quartz I stumbled upon and making as many signposts (stone bricks with a torch on top) along the way as possible.
In the distance was a large lava river with an enderman on the shore.
To the north was a Crimson Forest which I won't be heading into because of the Hoglins that inhabit them.
A slightly closer look at the Crimson Forest:
Heading back, I discovered that our main base was actually situated on a platform above a large lava river. It's useful and unsettling to know at the same time.
After I was back at Level 30 again, I left the Nether and enchanted my diamond boots. Protection IV and Unbreaking III? I'll take that! I suppose the best way to acquire Feather Falling is through books or villager trading.
My gold helmet was nearly broken, so I crafted a new one and enchanted it.
Aqua Affinity was literally useless as I would only be wearing my gold helmet in the Nether and it's a bit unfortunate that I didn't acquire Unbreaking III as gold helmets have the lowest durability of any armor piece in the game. The only reason I kept it like that was because this would reduce ghast explosion damage.
On my next visit to the Nether, I committed to some more gold mining as I didn't want to make a potentially long journey in the Nether without having two Fire Resistance potions in case of emergency. I always made sure to check if there were any piglins around though.
I headed east, where I found yet another small lava lake.
I don't have a picture of this, but at some point, the Nether fog was black. Is this a bug? I've had this once on my survival world while I was in a Nether fortress, and now it's happened again.
After a while of exploring, I entered a small valley with a cluster of glowstone, which I gladly mined.
And of course, there were the usual ores.
Back home, I dumped all that shiny gold ore in the blast furnace.
With all that gold, we were definitely going to receive some good loot! Twenty ender pearls and three Fire Resistance potions?
I was shocked. Not a single potion or ender pearl was obtained. All that mining for nothing. How sad.
I decided to take out my frustration on some Endermen.
I explored around a bit, mining some more ores, but there really wasn't much apart from steep cliffs and more lava.
There was some quartz that generated on a gravel beach. Care should be taken when mining around gravel beaches as they can collapse and plunge into into deep lava. One thing I always like to do is placing solid blocks on the gravel as you go. It doesn't prevent the beach itself from collapsing, but it prevents you from falling into the lava should a collapse occur.
I headed back to the Overworld with 30 levels and enchanted my bow.
Setting fire mobs on fire? Please be something better...
Power IV! Yay! Although Unbreaking would also have been appreciated, Power IV should be enough for now.
My two final goals were to acquire a second Fire Resistance potion and enchant my sword with Looting III, both of which would require considerable luck. But no matter which of these we chose to accomplish first, it was time for another ore mining trip in the Nether.
I decided to head south this time along a very narrow ridge which I slightly widened with stone bricks.
There was a small cave filled with ores on the inside.
I returned to the Overworld on a snowy morning. Snowy cherry groves, anyone?
(It was snowing because I was actually in a snowy slopes biome, but I think the effect with the cherry trees definitely looks nice.)
Upon entering my house, I had a thought. Couldn't I extend the duration of the Fire Resistance potion with redstone dust? I tried it out, and nope. You need blaze powder first, and I still haven't found a fortress. I somehow made this advancement despite not brewing anything.
But with 30 levels, I could at least now enchant my sword. Sharpness III as a guaranteed enchantment? Well, I'm really hoping for Looting III and Unbreaking III as well. Particularly Looting III as this would increase the blaze rod and Wither skull drop rate. (I'm not planning on collecting Wither skulls, but I'm pretty sure I would have to fight a few Wither skeletons on my first visit to the fortress anyway.)
The enchanting table said no. The grindstone said yes. That's about all I could say.
I grabbed the remaining gold ingots from the smeltery and put on my gold helmet, for it was time for yet another trip to the Nether! More piglin bartering, more Quartz mining! How exciting.
The piglin must have seen my disappointment, because I was finally given a Fire Resistance potion. Finally, after so long. Thank you.
This time, I took out my happiness on some nearby endermen.
I was now up to 11 pearls! I'm surprised we're having a lead so early.
But nothing beats the old Quartz mining and hearing the lovely twinkling of the XP orbs as they trickle towards you.
To finish off, I enchanted my sword with Sharpness IV and Looting III, which is excellent.
With that done, I now have everything I need to raid a Nether fortress, our first challenging structure on this world. It was already Day 231 and I would like to have finished with this by Day 250, about twenty days quicker than on my survival world, although that might be a challenge given the time it takes finding a blaze spawner. It's not the time that's actually worrying, though, but rather the danger. The mobs I will not look forward to seeing are Wither skeletons and ghasts, maybe more so the former. And the worst scenario? Falling from the bridge onto solid ground. That's where Fire Resistance will not come in handy, so the ideal case is that the outside bit of the fortress is embedded in netherrack.
In the next update, I'll make the journey to the fortress, and I can tell it's going to be a long one. But we can only wait and see.
Here we go!
Great story, but the images aren't appearing. I think the "previews.dropbox.com/p/thumb/" files might be for your account only - I can't view them in a browser, or in img tags here.
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