Minecraft: The End

Between the Torchlight 2 beta and Island Forge, I haven't had much time to play Minecraft lately. I went back in to take a look at the build so far, and I've found myself not very inspired to continue for two main reasons. The area I'm in is absolutely riddled with caves, including two huge ravines that criss-cross beneath my build site. Digging has become more a chore than fun, as everywhere I go there are vast empty spaces leading to gravity induced death. The other problem is I decided to change up how / what I was doing about half-way through the process, and it's taking more rebuilding than I anticipated to get something interesting going. At this point I've decided to shutter this build and start on a new project with a little more planning. I thought I'd share a few images from what I ended up with, as it doesn't totally suck.

This is the mine. It's right below the aqueduct, and as you can see, it's surrounded by open caves. Left is a huge ravine, ahead and right are caves, including a massive set of tunnels that I've walled off with cobble on the upper right. It's a pretty good example of why I got frustrated. Sometimes the Minecraft tunnel generator seems a bit nuts.

The Mines

Next up is the aqueduct, as seen from the middle level. Ahead are the doors leading toward the source of the water near the wheat greenhouse on the surface. The whole right wall? That's rebuilt to hide the same ravine you see in the mine picture above. If you go up the stairs, there's a ramp above the water flow that leads to the upper level, eventually leading to the workshop tower in the basement of my original structure.

The Aqueduct

The biggest change since the last post is the outer walls. I wasn't happy with what I had so I pretty much leveled them and started over, building larger scale walls with interior corridors and larger towers anchoring them. You can see the main gate, which is situated above the aqueduct, here, along with the big water tower over the original structure and a new style tower off to the right.

Exterior walls and main gate

The final view is of the entire area from the ocean side. It shows the new walls and towers pretty well.

Ocean side exterior

So there you have it, the final image of this build. I'm a bit sad to let it go, but in the end it proved to be more frustrating than fun, so it's better to pack it up and move on. If you're interested in taking a look at it I've uploaded the save file archive here.

I definitely plan on doing another build here, so never fear, Minecraft will be back. Next time I'll try to have a plan before I start any major building...

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