Minecraft Citybuilder: Stage Two and Beyond

I'm still progressing on my Minecraft Citybuilder Challenge. Looking over what I've built and written about to date, I've realized I never posted about completing stage two. Guess what? Stage two is done!

City Hall at Night

I outlined the requirements for this phase in my last post, but here they are again if you've forgotten.

Stage Two

The requirements for the next stage of the classic builder challenge aren't too bad.

"Let us build upon what we have begun"

Restrictions:

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

Requirements to advance:

All requirements from previous stages. (except item requirements marked (i))

• At least 1 stone (or cobble) structure must be constructed.
• A town hall must be constructed, which must contain:
• A front door
• A meeting room
• A town treasury
• At least 1 other room (can be empty)
• Paths must be created linking the town hall to each house

Treasury must contain:

• (i) 1 stack of cobble/stone per player
• (i) 10 items of edible food per person
• At least 1 of each:
• (i) Stone Sword
• (i) Stone Pickaxe
• (i) Stone Shovel
• (i) Stone Axe
• (i) Stone Hoe
• (i) Stack of 64 torches
• (i) Leather helmet

So the easy part first: inventory.

Stocked Up

This was easy to finish off, since my food farm is going full tilt, and I have plenty of cows for hide. And yes, there are some iron tools in my hands. I just took this shot this morning, but I've been finished with stage two for a few days, so I made some better gear.

To finish the structure portion of the challenge, I decided to build a workshop in addition to the city hall. I also built a couple more houses, which is extra effort, but hey, what's a city without houses, right?

A Couple Furnaces

Shop Exterior

I got tired of waiting for furnaces. Of course, once I'm in the next stage, I can set up hoppers to feed fuel and materials and automatically empty furnaces, so I'll probably be switching back to a smaller setup. Here's the city hall.

Main Meeting Room from the Observer's Balcony

Entry Hall

Mayor's Office

Back / Side View

With that... stage two complete! As I mentioned, I felt like I needed more housing in this stage, so I built a pair of small houses (a duplex, actually), next to my original house.

Duplex Housing

Hmm. Looking at that image, I may need to add some decor and glass to these.

The next stage adds some more building requirements. Here's the listing.

Stage Three

"We have learnt to survive, now let us learn to thrive"

Restrictions:

• No gold/diamond tools
• You cannot use any gold/diamond for any reason.
• No redstone or redstone items may be placed, yet.
• You may only create/use items which ingredients can be gathered with the allowed tools or your hands (but no redstone, gold or diamond items, as stated before).

Requirements to advance:

• All requirements from previous stages (except item requirements marked (i)).
• A wall must surround all houses in use, the town hall and any other community building. It must be safe from monsters at any point within the walls (except mob farms etc.).
• At least 1 gate to get in/out of the town.
• A well (infinite water source).
• A controlled tree farm within the town walls.
• At least 1 more community structures must be built excluding the town hall (e.g. library, inn, baths/pool house etc.).
• A mine shaft, at least 20 blocks deep.
• Paths must be created linking the town hall to each community building and a gate.
• Treasury must contain:
• (i) 1 stack of cobble/stone per player
• (i) 10 items of edible food per person
• (i) A bucket
• (i) Steel Sword
• (i) Steel Pickaxe
• (i) Steel Shovel
• (i) Steel Axe
• (i) Steel Hoe
• (i) Stack of 64 torches
• (i) Steel Helmet
• (i) Leather/steel Chest Plate
• (i) Leather/steel Leggings
• (i) Leather/steel Boots

Pretty straightforward, so far as inventory items. A full set of metal tools, a full set of armor, plus the stone/food requirements from last stage, and a bucket. The rest:

• Wall - I've been working on this since the start. The core city is walled, but I'll have to expand it to make room for some of the new features.
• Gate - I have several fence gates leading out of the city, but I'll build something a little fancier for this stage.
• Well - a piece of cake, and I know exactly where it's going.
• Controlled Tree Farm - I have one, but I'll be moving it out to the new section of the city to make room for more core buildings.
• Community Structure - I started an open pit mine outside the walls. It's turned into something else, so it'll be my community structure for this stage.
• My Chaotic Mine - I found a huge network of caverns beneath my city. It's already down to "lakes of lava" depth, so this is pretty much done. 
• Paths - are mostly done. I might need to tweak a few to deal with the new structures.

As a personal challenge, I'm adding two more houses to the requirements for this stage too.

You may have noticed a shift in appearance in these screenshots. That's because I've switched texture packs again. I really like Ovo's Rustic Pack, but it doesn't support banners, and I want banners. I've switched to a custom version of the Painterly Pack. It looks great and I can tweak it to give me exactly the look I want. That's still a work in progress.

So that's a wrap for this stage, and bit of the next. It'll probably take me a week to polish off the rest of stage three. I need to do some fairly major landscaping to open up and wall off the area for the tree farm and put up walls around my new community structure. Speaking of that, here's a work in progress look at that project.

I'll Bet You Know What This Is

Check out the next report!