More Minecraft

[schneefink]

I decided to explore the mountain near spawn and ventured down into the caves. Eventually I found a Deep Dark section, always exciting. I only saw one shrieker so I decided to just jump down and destroy it, buut I was carried away by a water stream next to it and then a warden spawned and I died almost immediately, because I could not see and I was in a hole and did not even know which direction the way out was. Technically my first time directly encountering a warden, even though it was so dark I did not see a thing. Fortunately I'd been smart enough to set spawn nearby and put all important things into chests. I decided to wait for the warden to despawn and try again, but I didn't realize how far away I had to be for the warden to stop detecting me so the first time I waited a long time for it to burrow down again. (I kept reading "Warden's heart beats" as "Warden's heart breaks.") Of course all my items had disappeared in the meantime and I hadn't realized that I'd gotten attached to the clock I had almost since the very beginning :(

The next few times – because yes I died two more times while trying – it was dark down there! – the warden despawned a lot faster, fortunately. Finally I managed to destroy the shrieker, and I was feeling good about continuing to explore the Deep Dark, except it turned out the Deep Dark down there was only a tiny section barely worth exploring. Boo. Maybe on the other side of the mountain? But I'd need to return to the surface soon-ish because I was almost out of wood, oops.

So at first I thought the warden deaths had just been a giant waste, except then I decided to check out the area anyway and discovered a huuuge iron ore vein. I'd heard of it but never seen something like it before, whoa. I mined five stacks of iron ore, including some raw iron blocks, before I even decided to just mine around the iron so I could take a look at the vein. So cool! (Also very useful because you can never have enough iron, especially if like me you do not use iron golem farms.) I'm collecting the tuff too because I like the look of the new tuff blocks coming in 1.21 so I might want them then.

Eventually I decided that I needed a break from mining – and repair my pickaxe (having a netherite pickaxe with much higher durability would sure be convenient…) – and fortunately instead of having to tunnel out I found a nearby waterfall that went almost all the way up to the surface, and I also still had night vision potion. After a brief visit at my base I did another relaxed mining session until my pickaxe needed repairs again. And then the same thing again; with a brief detour into other caves because I got lost, so on the way out I left myself some signs. Glowing signs, even, which to my surprise was the first time I ever used glow ink in my world.

This time I decided to take an actual break from mining the iron ore vein. I built a nether portal near spawn and planned to make a path in the nether from there to the nether portal near my base, buut I landed in a warped forest and, well. It's so spooky! I'm still very afraid of endermen. Much more so than reasonable I'm sure, but still.

Instead I did some cave exploration near spawn, and among other things I found a huge abandoned mineshaft, which was so distracting that I didn't even get to the relevant depths to look for an Ancient City like I had planned. So instead next I mined down to about -40 and did some branch mining under the mountain from there. No luck there, so I wanted to try under the next mountain, only to remember that I hadn't actually found that many mountain terrains yet. So clearly I needed to do some more exploration. I found a naturally pink sheep! Very cool. I also found a ring of mountains, with one peak so high it was up in the clouds. I strip-mined along the mountain ring at -40 with no luck, I wanted to check the middle too but there was a shrieker nearby and I got to three strikes and I was a little sick of mining at that point anyway so I stopped. (I went back and mined across not too long after, no luck there either.)

I thought that since I knew where I was, not very far, getting home would be easy even without checking coordinates, but, uh, I promptly got lost. I did find my way back with a compass but my confidence in my navigation skills took another hit. At least on the way I found another cat I must have tamed waaay back when and then left behind. And the strip mining (plus some opportunity mining along the way) was productive: I got ten diamond blocks (and some spare change), eighteen blocks of iron, thirteen gold blocks, 39 lapis blocks, 24 coal blocks, 82 redstone blocks, and 76 copper blocks. I have more than four stacks of iron blocks now and that is without the giant iron ore. And 36 diamond blocks. (Sidenote, I pretty much always use my silk touch pickaxe for mining because I need that one for my ender chest and I usually don't want to carry two, so then after going home I get to make a massive ore tower and mine it with Fortune, fun.)

I then decided to do a bit of clean-up in the flower forest near my base, including re-forestation in the hopes of more bee nests spawning. (I saw Cub make a cool elevator with honey blocks on Hermitcraft and found out I had never even gotten a honey bottle in my own world, only honey comb.) I was surprised not to see or hear any bees near some of the nests I had discovered earlier. Later that day I learned from the wiki that if you just put a campfire below a bee nest it's not unlikely that they'll eventually fly into it and die, so that might be what happened. Either way I decided I have enough bee nests and to make my own small bee enclosure in the cliff next to my base, with a glass wall so I can look at it and a barrel with bottles and of course flowers. It looks nice! Though, I deliberately got natural bee nests but then when they were all next to each other like that I wasn't sure if crafted bee hives wouldn't look nicer after all. So I actually went and tried it out in creative (which took longer than I thought because there's no honey-filled nests or hives in the creative menu so I just had to place a few dozen flowers and spawn a few dozen bees and wait) and then I decided to stick with the natural bee nests after all. Getting a useful amount of honey blocks is going to take a while though.

I did even more "chores" and finally put some item frames on my chests in the basement so I can find things faster. I had a good system at the beginning but it became harder when I had to add overflow chests etc. At least now I am confident I will be fine for a while longer until I decide to actually start a new main base.


April Fools Poisonous Potato update:
I briefly watched some people play the "Poisonous Potato" April Fools update, and then checked it out myself but not for very long. I loved the terrain generation in the potato dimension, and that all the new blocks make a different sound when you walk on them (Minecraft's sound design is consistently fantastic.) The ancient debris mounds with the green water look great, the green water in general. The zombies that constantly groan "potato" are wonderfully creepy. I found a potato village and it had a black cat, perfect. I even got an achievement! "Around the potato" or something like that, I forgot.
Of the things I didn't try myself, making whole end cities and islands fly with the floatato is very cool, and I love that they even had a potato version of the End poem. "You are one with the tubers now. You are the potato. Time to sprout." xD
(Sidenote, people who hold up the April Fools updates as "proof" that the normal update pace is slow have no idea what they are talking about. Yeah of course programming new things is easier if you don't have to care about bugs.)

Other Minecraft things: The Minecraft boat-drop mystery, a mathematical examination by Stand-Up Maths. So basically if I always put a slab down first I should be fine I think, potentially convenient.