Minecraft: The New Era (Day One)

I haven't played Minecraft in quite a while. I went through a period of messing with mods, including some huge mod-packs full of technology and such, but got tired of keeping them up to date with core changes. Since things have changed a lot since the last time I really delved into the game, I decided to start from scratch with a vanilla world and check out what's new. Day one begins...

The Minecraft Hexcrawl

Presented without comment. Usage should be self-explanatory.

Minecraft - Daylight!

I've finally gotten around to snapping a day time screen shot of this arch so you can actually see it. Without further ado...

Minecraft - The Arch

A quick screenshot of the next phase of construction. I really need to stop taking night pictures, but usually I snap these after completing a day's work. This is the arch framework and part of a tower build out that's going to be the structure surrounding the giant tower in the center of this build.

Click to embiggen

Minecraft - New Construction

Been a quiet stretch here, but I'm not dead yet. Here's a new screenshot of my mega-tower Minecraft. I had to clip the top off to get everything in view, but that's OK, the top hasn't changed much. I've been focused on clearing around the base and starting the new, smaller towers that are going up around the main spire. Here you go!

I still have quite a bit of clearing to do -- there's also a cave to explore and clear that's been exposed by this excavation. One of the problems with clearing ground like this is... it just isn't all that interesting to post about. This progress has taken a few days of off and on play to accomplish, and I've filled about 4 chests with stacks of dirt from the destroyed hills. Yawn.

Ah well, so goes the mining.

Minecraft - Towering Tower

I've been putting work into my mega tower off and on over the last week or so. I now have the bottom level of the top of the spire complete. It's a glass bowl-shaped room, sort of an observation level.

Minecraft - Work in Progress

Lest you think I've forgotten about my Minecraft let's play build, here's an update. There's not a ton of visible progress, because my giant tower project has been consuming huge piles of blocks. Since I've decided to emphasize glass on the top floors, this means digging sand, then cutting wood, and then melting sand to glass.  Did I mention it was a lot of blocks?

Minecraft - Jungle Tree Farm

Done.

Minecraft - Jungle Trees

How big a room does it take to grow full-sized jungle trees in Minecraft? A pretty big one actually.

This is the partially completed rebuild of the jungle tree farm from the bottom looking up toward the main entrance tunnel. It's big enough that I needed to stretch multiple levels of walkways across it to light the space, and it still probably has a few dark spots I'll need to fix. On the good side, hollowing this out has produced quite a bit of stone for the giant tower I'm building...

Minecraft - Minor Problem

I've discovered a problem in my current build. In doing some research on sapling growth I've discovered that jungle trees have half the chance of producing saplings per leaf block as other trees (1 in 40 vs. 1 in 20). This means my mundane jungle tree farm isn't going to produce a viable number of saplings to maintain growth.

Minecraft - Build the Things!

I've made some progress on my new Minecraft build, I thought I'd share a few tidbits and images showing current progress.

Minecraft - The Tower

Just a short one today. I've set up the core of the ground to sky tower I set as a goal for my current let's play Minecraft. Standing atop this thing really gives you a new sense of the phrase 'reach for the sky'.

The Tower

• The next post in the series.

Minecraft - Infrastructure

Digging a lot of holes in the ground, that's what it's been. I've been working on getting Minecraft infrastructure in place to support building operations, and things are proceeding nicely. If you recall I set some rules for building and goals to achieve when I started this build. I've made some progress on this and refined rule three, here are the results.

Minecraft: Build Again!

So it begins, my second Minecraft let's play build. I've done a bit of work on this in the background, and have a few pictures to show off where things are headed:

Minecraft: A New Beginning

I've been figuring out what to do with my next Minecraft project. My last build started pretty solid, but I lost steam before I was really done, and ended up walking away from the project before it was really complete. For the next project, I'm putting together some rules and goals, both to provide an increased challenge, and to give me a bit more focus. I'm also going to go for a more modern build, something I haven't really done before.

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.

Minecraft - Then and Now

I played Minecraft off and on over the weekend, and fell into my usual trap of poking around on various projects with no specific goal. I tend to get distracted when I play this game, and this leads to me starting too many projects and not finishing them. Sunday I decided to clean up some loose ends.

Minecraft: Walls

This is a short one. I've been working on a wall design for the perimeter of my base of operations. These are the two best efforts (so far). What do you think? Both these images are huge, so click to enbiggen.

Stone topped

Wood topped

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• Next post.

Minecraft: Dig It

I've been playing a bit of Minecraft off and on over the last couple days, mostly working in and around home base, finishing off the greenhouse (really!), and doing some other construction. I've decided on a pretty organic building strategy. Using the hill as a base and expanding from there. There have been a few changes.

Minecraft: Build Mode

• Greenhouse: Check
• Wolf named Sarge: Check
• Giant torch beacon: Check
• Base blown up by a creeper: Check