Minecraft - City Builder Challenge

I haven't played Minecraft in a while, since patch 1.8.0 or so, and I feel like building something, so I've decided to take on a City Builder Challenge. The basic idea of this challenge is to build a complete city using guidelines and limits outlined on the linked page. There are five phases, plus a bonus phase. Hopefully using this as a structure for my play will get me past the usual "build a few buildings, get bored and start over" ennui I usually encounter in Minecraft.


Here's the basic requirements of the challenge from the main challenge page:

General Guidelines

• You must be wearing a helmet of some kind before going underground to protect your head, any kind of helmet is acceptable. You must leave the mine if your helmet breaks and you do not have a spare to equip.
• Mine shafts must be at least 3x3 areas (except in naturally generated caves) and have support beams at least every 10 blocks (wooden pillars or otherwise)
• If you find a bucket, you may use it regardless of the stage you are in.
• Any NPC constructs do not count towards requirements, but you may use anything you find (e.g. If you find a smelter, you can use it... however if you are still in stage 1 you cannot craft more smelters)
• Use at least 'Easy' difficulty
• Don't cheat, it will ruin the fun of it
• Keep posting your progress, please :)

Not all of these are necessarily rules, you can bend them however you like to manipulate the challenge into something more suitable for yourself. For example, if you want to use redstone circuits in Stage 3, go ahead. This is meant to be fun for you, so if you don't like something - change it.

And here are the requirements for phase one of the challenge:

"I hear them in the night"

Restrictions:

• You may only use wooden tools
• You cannot use any stone (including sandstone) collected for any reason (building, creating items etc.)
• You may only create/use items which ingredients can be gathered with the allowed tools or your hands (but no stone items, as stated before).

Requirements to advance:

• You must own at least one dwelling to live in, made from any material allowed
• It must be safe to sleep in.
• It must have a front door
• It must have a living area
• It must have a bedroom with one bed per person participating
• The bedroom must be a separate room with a door or on a separate floor.
• (i) 1 stack of 64 planks (or 16 wood) per person participating
• (i) 5 items of edible food per person (e.g. 5 porkchops, 5 bread, 4 bread and 1 porkchop etc.)
• A fenced off (or otherwise protected), working wheat farm that must have at least 5 wheat per person participating (1 person needs 5 wheat growing, 2 need 10 wheat etc.)

You may construct multiple houses, but each must contain at least: a front door, living area and a bedroom.

Well, that's not too bad, but there are a couple things that bear a little thought. No mining without a helmet means I really need to find cows quickly so I can make leather armor. Wooden tools and no building with stone means a lot of time just hacking trees in stage one. Finally, the wheat farm requirement means I need a natural water source so I can irrigate my fields. Time to twiddle through a few game world seeds and see what shows up...

<working please wait>
<working please wait>

Home Sweet Home?

Ah ha! This looks promising. A nice open plain on the border of a savannah/grasslands biome. There are a few nice hills around, and a desert off to the north. Two kinds of trees in sight, oak and acacia, give me some wood variety, and a couple of water holes will provide me with garden space.

<dig dig dig, build build build>

Temporary Dirt House Complete!

And now for some exterior work.

Orange Fences Work Better - Right?

So, base complete, and primitive wheat farm up and running. Time to poke around a bit and see what else is nearby. I've already spotted plenty of wildlife: rabbits, horses, cows and sheep. There's also a big ravine nearby that'll come in handy after I make a mining helmet and progress to stone tools (I'm not going to do a lot of mining with wood).

This house doesn't qualify for stage one complete, since it only has one room, but that's OK, I'll be building something a little more upscale for my real house. I'm also going to start work on a bigger palisade-style fence for the city.

Oh, I should mention that I'm running vanilla 1.8.8 Minecraft. The only mod I'm using is a texture pack, Arcility HD 64x. I may or may not stick with that. I'm following the Classic version of the city builder challenge.

And here's the next stage!