Minecraft Forums

Am I the only one who thought that the vertical mob drop atop the darkroom mob spawner looked incomplete? Of course I mean this:

For those of you not entirely caught up, this drop tower was added in session 103 as the end to a Starlight parkour course built around the Starlight Castle. Yet, the more I looked at it from afar, the more I felt that it needed something on top of it - like a dome, maybe. Well, I made no hesitation to add just that!

A beautiful blue dome was added to the top of this tower, fully completing the look of it. I've filled the dome with water, and you'll notice that I utilized the sea lanterns I found in the recent Prismarine Voyage to light it up.

Sea lanterns would become more prominent in other parts of the Starlight as well. I started with the Pillar of Life:

...on every floor!

All the way up to the glass dome! It was basically the same throughout the three observatories and Great Balcony.

The Archery Alley received some lighting upgrades as well. That's right - a project I haven't touched since its completion back in session 59 was now devoid of torches!

Well, almost devoid of torches - the stairway leading up to the Spectator Lounge still had torches, but that was an easy fix. I didn't actually remove them, though, lol.

Additionally, I removed the doors in the storage rooms (finally) and added red carpeting to the mass storage unit as well.

All in all, between upgrading some minor details throughout the Starlight and going on multiple enchanting runs at the Mob Processing Hub, this was a relaxed session. And that's nice too, because next session we start on the darkroom mob farm!

The darkroom mob farm that would be at the Mob Processing Hub was going to be very similarly designed to the one at Starlight HQ. It would have three layers, and it would prevent spiders and endermen from spawning. However, where this farm varies is in its fall chamber. While at Starlight HQ the drop was only 24 blocks so as to enable the option to function as an XP farm, here the drop was well over 32 blocks - a drop that would kill witches and most mobs with armor (the only reason it wasn't much higher was because of interference with the surface). I have few pictures of this construction, but I'll show you what I can with what I have.

Some new things to note here that you may not have noticed right away. First, I dug down the 3x3 hole to the right (was originally 4x3), as this would become a spiral staircase to a lower level where the mob drop storage would be. Second thing is a hole in the ceiling just to the left of the pillar in the middle. This hole would become a water elevator which would ascend to a viewing - where you could view the dark house! When we build that, you will then see how exactly the dark room was built. But let's look at the fall chamber:

This was the original location I wanted the chamber to be, given its clever placement within the architecture of this design. However, the problem was that the drop interfered greatly with the skeleton storage room. Ideally, this could have been clever, if the drop incidentally ended up going through the center of the room. Unfortunately this was not the case. It is true that I could have reinvented the storage unit, but I instead opted to reinvent the fall chamber:

The panes were temporary of course, since they'd allow mobs the chance of not falling all the way down. But this was where I would put the chamber - in the corner of what would be the center platform of the Mob Processing Hub. You'll see what I mean by this later on when we decorate.

This did still cause some interference with the skeleton storage unit, but was further out of the way:

At the time, I didn't think about the repercussions here - that this hole would need to be surrounded by blocks. I think it's safe to say that either of the two locations would have caused this problem, and thus the only real way to circumvent it would be to redo the skeleton storage unit. However, while I didn't realize it at the time, the skeleton storage unit allowed a beautiful aesthetic to be possible, and you'll see that later when we decorate.

I also got an iron Looting III sword for the hub, which was exactly what I wanted. For those of you who don't know, if you throw a potion and then quickly switch to a looting sword before the potion attacks the mobs, Looting will apply to the kill and thus yield you significantly more drops (not to mention higher chances for rare drops). Thus, durability was never a factor and even a wooden/gold looting sword would have been acceptable.

The only other picture I can provide of the dark house itself is one with lighting of course. I dug into it to take this picture:

Since spiders require a 3x3x2 area to spawn, I've added slabs in the configuration you see to prevent them from clogging the streams. And because I already had a cave spider XP farm, adding spiders to this farm was not entirely necessary. Each layer is also only two blocks high, preventing endermen from spawning (creating an Overworld enderman farm, however, does sound like an interesting project). The mobs walk on their own and fall into the water streams, which lead them to their death. But where was that exactly? You'll find out in the next session!

Up until this point, I had never built an item sorter. But I was feeling adventurous with this build, having built two XP farms and another mob farm over the course of a week and a half (that's how long it took to get from session 129-137, which was surprisingly much faster than my normal pace!). Today, we're still not yet to the aesthetics of this build, but we complete the last feature needed before the makeover: the mob drop item sorter!

What you're seeing here is the item sorter, and I am standing right at the bottom of the 3x3 hole I dug out last session. I can't recall exactly, but I do believe I used TNT to remove much of this stone, so that I could build the sorter. The mobs fall to their death right above the hopper you see at the top, which transports items into the double chest just below it, before moving them into the sorting system.

The item sorter sorted a total of ten items. And these would be the following: rotten flesh (zombies), bones (skeletons), arrows (skeletons), gunpowder (creepers/witches), redstone (witches), glowstone (witches), sugar (witches), sticks (witches), spider eyes (witches), and glass bottles (again, witches). I won't explain how the item sorter works, mostly because you can easily find an actual tutorial on how to make one on YouTube (the design is quite simple and universally accepted as the standard, as far as I'm aware). I did somewhat overdue it here - being this is my first item sorter, I didn't really know what I was doing and thus added way more to it than was needed. Regardless, it still worked properly.

Here you get a closer glimpse at some of the redstone. I didn't add overflow protection with this system because it would never overflow. Basically, this meant adding a redstone wire 3-long instead of 2-long before powering the repeater. What this means is that you could theoretically have an entire stack of items in the hopper and the signal strength from the comparator would not overflow into the lane of another hopper. But, given that only one item at a time on average would be traversing the system, I didn't find this addition to be necessary.

Speaking of rates, I did light some of the ground up outside to help spawn rates, since remember we are around 200 blocks away from Starlight HQ (which translates to around 12.5 chunks; most of HQ btw is more than 200 blocks away). Recall that the hub is inside the ravine/cave system I explored through sessions 4-7 and beyond. Thus, many of the caves had already been lit.

In the above picture, take a look to the left. That pathway bends around and connects to the skeleton storage unit, bringing all the sections together. The lack of pictures in this session may prematurely suggest that this wasn't a busy session, but this was actually the most intensive session so far among these last three. I mean, all the stone on the second level was removed, the entire item sorter/storage unit was built, and a pathway was built connecting it to the skeleton storage. I'd say this was an exciting session!

And now for my favorite part: a beauty makeover.

And so it begins!

Sandstone, flowers, wood, leaves, prismarine, grass, podzol, mycelium, glass, and much more galore! I don't think I've ever used such a wide range of materials in a build, even including the Starlight Castle! Actually, that's debatable given that structure is indefinitely developing, but this was without a doubt the most unique assortment of materials I'd ever decided to use on a build. And this wasn't even all of them - I had to make two trips to get everything I wanted to use!

Let's dive right in!

Oh yeah, that "beautiful aesthetic" I was referring to in session 137:

It may not seem like much, but it was a cool view of the bottom floor if you ask me! Speaking of which:

Based on the low number of witch spawns, I decided not to waste resources and just build one chest for all witch drops (this of course excludes gunpowder).

You'll notice a lever in the top-left corner. Well, when I hauled that chest of building resources over here to the hub, I noticed that they immediately started getting dispensed into the hoppers and the minecart below! To combat this issue, I installed a feature which would trigger the hoppers on/off. This mean that I could control when they would suck in items and when they would not.

A few more:

Also, see here how I spent my meantime:

Every single bow you see in that chest is a level 30 enchanted bow. And that was just during the construction of this build. My oh my how some things have changed!

You want to hear a story? Upon finishing this makeover, I went on a small mining trip in the Diamond Mine back at the Starlight. Nothing special; it was just another casual session of mining, which I tend to do at the start of every session if feasible. But, I mined into a mineshaft somewhere underneath the plaza faction. In that mineshaft were three cave spider spawners, in such a configuration where I could spawn all three at once standing in a certain spot. Further exploring yielded me a discovery of more than five additional dungeons within 70 blocks, and an additional cave spider spawner (making four total). So, the story is basically that while I was celebrating the fact that I found a cave spider spawner and skeleton dungeon next to each other and then turned it into an elaborate project I spent two weeks on, there were more than nine spawners right underneath Starlight HQ within 100 blocks of each other.

Damn!

I was not at all discouraged - in fact just the opposite! Nine spawners? Wow, the things I could do with that! This discovery actually prompted me to finish the Mob Processing Hub quite quickly! Wait, didn't we just finish it? I'll answer that by reminding you of the water elevator I mentioned in session 137, and the same one you can actually see in session 139. I went overboard with this build! The water elevator leads to the dark house viewing:

It's true that the lighting may affect the spawn rates, but I've made sure that the edge spots closest to the light were still below 7. And, you get a more authentic view of the place! But I didn't stop there.

A second water elevator brings you all the way up to the surface hub, visible from the outside:

Because I emerged in a jungle, I wanted to create a design that felt more grounded and ancient - something that looked less artificial than Starlight HQ. And I think it turned out alright!

You can catch a glimpse of the Nether Temple to the left there. Additionally, I've added a junk armory for all bow/armor drops attained from the skeleton farm:

And with that, the Mob Processing Hub was complete!

And for the grand opening, I present to you a video tour of the hub, made and uploaded specifically for this journal! In it, I've made sure to demonstrate all the features!

Hopefully any questions you had about the different things have been answered, but if not, feel free to ask! There were still some things I wanted to do with this build yet, and that mostly included completing the lighting. But alas, that could be done another day. Overall I was immensely satisfied with the result of this project, and was excited to put it to good use!

The next project I wanted to work on was the Nether Hub! I had a number of different ideas for how it would look, but ultimately I think I landed a design that worked. Here are some pictures of the inner hub design:

You can see there are eight chests lining the inner square. These chests would just hold random things, mostly stuff found in the Nether of course. Then the inner hub extends in four directions. Each direction would lead to a different sector of the hub. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the Nether Hub was planned to incorporate the entire cave opening, not just this small structure! But that's a slow process if done right.

I then started working on the walls:

There would be blue glass lining the rest of the walls up, but I ran out quickly and thus did not get to finishing them today.

Additionally, a ghast fireball struck a zombie pigman nearby, thus awakening the Nether! Swarms began to flood in, and soon almost all pigmen within sight were making their way towards me. At one point, I thought I calmed everything down when only one pigmen was left following me, but it didn't take long for the others to catch up. I thought maybe I could hide in a hole somewhere, but that didn't work either! This was an intense half hour, and it did allow this to be possible:

I also got a lot of gold. After I did eventually silence the Nether, I was greeted to a nasty surprise on the other side of the portal! That was where I died - all the pigmen that had apparently gone through the portal were sitting inside the Nether Temple, angry at me! I killed all of them, but some had once again made it across the portal. This cycle was not fun to handle, and thus I caved and temporarily reverted to Peaceful so that I could move on. I changed back to Hard, and while I was not happy about copping out, I also wanted to move forward with the world. I didn't know how to do that with swarms of pigmen running around wanting to kill me.

Here you can see where I trapped a large number of them in the side of a mountain:

On another note, when I got down to having just one pigman after me, instead of killing him I built an apparatus to trap him:

Overall, this was an eventful session in which I could have gotten more done. But the zombie apocalypse prevented that and instead took over most of the session. Regardless, I did get most of the inner Nether Hub finished, so that was a start!

So I did finish the blue glass walls of the hub today.

And I added a lava moat surrounding it!

I was happy to have finally finished that after the nonsense that comprised the previous session.

Today I had a change of plans. I was originally planning to start working on a blaze farm in the first fortress I found just over 100 blocks north. However, I became really attached to the idea of putting a giant hammock in the plaza faction of Starlight HQ. And, being as though that would be a relatively small project, I made a day out of it! Presenting the Treetop Hammock:

You'll also notice I snuck a bed in there. This would serve as another "bedroom" of sorts, to save time instead of having to climb all the way up to my bedroom in the Starlight. But wait, what's that to the right you ask? Is that quartz?

It was time for the Starlight Observatory to receive a much-needed aesthetic overhaul! And today it received just that.

Overall, this session incorporated a few different projects, all of which were fun and contributed to the overall development of Starlight HQ 2.0.

I did some trading in a village in the southeast. This was mostly to start stockpiling emeralds for a beacon to be built in the future. You may notice that we're slowly building up to that, what with our first two wither skeleton skulls being obtained in the Fire Journey, and now the process of trading for emeralds. I'll leave you to speculate where the beacon will go, but for now just anticipate that it's on the agenda.

When I completed the dark room mob spawner in the Mob Processing Hub and built the item sorter for witch drops, I thought to myself: Well, why not just build a farm dedicated to witch drops? Why not build a witch farm? I had never built one before! Based on what I had read and watched, building a decent one takes time - not because of the farm itself, but because of what it takes to actually get rates. So, I figured that today we would start by just building the farm itself, and periodically in the future we would return to isolate it.

But where was this witch hut? It was located just over the southern tip of Techtropolis Island, in a new 1.7-generated chunk.

Here is the farm I built. Because it was generated prior to 1.8.1, it was only two layers instead of three. But that's alright:

Basically, the witches would just walk off and the water streams would carry them to the drop, which is over 32 blocks but I can't recall the exact height. They fall to here:

To the left is a staircase that leads to the surface. And to the right is a pathway that curls around and ends up above me - an AFK spot that's closer than 32 blocks to the witches. Behind me is the nether portal:

The drops traverse through the item sorter, tightly fitted underneath the pathway towards the AFK spot:

Conversely, I've built a portal in the Nether Hub that takes us to the witch farm:

The entire floor would be replaced with obsidian once I obtained enough. But as far as where exactly this portal is - well, it's just south of the inner hub, right on the edge of the mountain overlooking the lava lake:

You'll see more of it later when we work on the rest of the Nether Hub. Otherwise, that was it for today! Yet another farm completed in such a relatively short time span!

"Drown it! Drown it!" is what I kept saying to myself. So I did:

A 128x128 radius was not completely cleared (see the mountain to the left in the above picture), but it was a work in progress that was coming along quite nicely!

Additionally, I built an AFK spot in the sky, although I used it primarily to see where I needed to continue flooding:

The prismarine block, by the way, was used to view the witches, since it's level with the bottom layer, thus allowing me to see both layers (I took the first picture you see in this session from that block).

Some more pathway improvements were added elsewhere. A portal to the Mob Processing Hub was finally added. In the MPH it was in that empty prismarine hallway overtop the skeleton kill chamber:

And from the Nether Hub, well, let's just say this was convenience at its best.

The final addition was something that was long overdue - a railway to the Tropic Fortress! Upon completing the fortress in session 93, I didn't have any way of getting to it other than by horse. And this becomes inconvenient for a number of reasons: night, terrain (because jungle/forest is not great for horse traveling), and waste of time. It's also inconvenient the other way around - when I die and my bed is obstructed (thus respawning me back at spawn, which is where the fortress is), I have to walk almost 800 blocks just to get back to the Starlight. Now I don't have to - I can just take a railway to it. I could have built a portal to the fortress just as easily as I did for the MPH. But, because I wanted to keep a sense of authenticity and primitiveness to the design, I opted for a railway instead. This makes the Tropic Fortress the second railway line from Starlight Station.

Something to note is that Starlight Station was never designed to be the most convenient method of transportation. It was designed primarily for accessing other parts of Techtropolis Island. Since there aren't many other parts yet, there aren't many railways. An exception would be, well, the only railway that was there since the beginning, which was the railway to the North (far beyond Techtropolis Island). But for example, if I were to build say a neighborhood on Techtropolis Island, there would be a railway to it from here. One idea I did have was to build a miniature mushroom island just off Techtropolis Island, or even as part of it. A railway would be prime for this as well.

The Nether Hub was designed with areas outside Techtropolis in mind, such as the witch farm. The MPH is an exception as that is a place I would visit frequently (thus I wanted the fastest possible transportation). The Tropic Fortress, on the other hand, I don't visit very frequently.

Additionally, we reached day 2300:

Some really nice improvements this session in a few different areas!

Speaking of the North, today I took the Great Northern Railway up to the desert temple in the North. Oh, I forgot that you guys have never seen the North! I didn't actually visit it in the world tour. But I'll briefly explain: there isn't actually anything built up there. It was just a convenient location in a desert biome that had a desert temple and village in close proximity. Thus, I built a railway to it. This is also where I attain most of my sand for glass, making it useful as a resource outpost.

Today, however, I wasn't just going up there to harvest some sand. I was going to harvest an entire chunk. Why? Two reasons: Zen and a project idea. I did want a break from some of the intense projects recently completed. So I thought it would be great to just mine out a chunk. I also used TNT to help. Here is a timeline of this process:

And then I did this shortly after:

And after that:

Why did I waste my time building this? You'll know that in the next update.

In the previous session, I stripped an entire chunk of its resources. Why did I do that? Well, it does provide a healthy amount of stone, despite a relatively small amount of ores (though there was a ravine nearby that I got to explore, which made up for that). Specifically however, I was preparing the land for my second parkour course! The first parkour course in this world (not including the playground) was Totem Run, built at the very end of Season 1, through sessions 93-96.

This parkour course would be a vertical drop, but you'd have to dodge the various obstacles in the air on the way down - like a free fall of sorts. The title of the course is Fall Damage. Here are some pictures of the construction:

After the chunk harvest was complete, putting together the different parts of the course didn't take too much time (since all the planning for them was already done). I did spend some time outlining some barrier designs in MS Paint (since a 16x16 canvas is the equivalent of a chunk, where the pixels are equivalent to blocks), but otherwise the entire thing went together in 1-2 days! This was a fun project and a very much-needed break from some of the work we had been doing at Starlight HQ. Here is a video of the course, including the fails!

Don't mind the audio glitch at 00:56. I re-rendered it a few times but couldn't figure out how to get rid of it. The challenge is falling through the red rings, which you'll notice took me a few tries. You could also innovate your own challenges with it - staying within the corners for example, although I've yet to attempt that. There is also an easter egg in the course, but I'll let you try to find it (shouldn't be too difficult to spot). Fall Damage has not been added to the poll because I plan on using it in another poll, which probably won't come to fruition until Season 3 (so it's still a number of months off).

Apparently, Mojang fixed the bug where dark oak saplings could break bedrock way back in 1.8.2. I didn't even know that lol. It's a good thing I looked it up before landing myself atop the Nether! I knew that I wanted to build a gold farm in the future, and I knew I wanted to utilize the top of the Nether for this (among other things). So today was a pretty relaxed session, dedicated to breaking a hole in the bedrock roof of the Nether. But wait - they fixed that! This of course is why I did something that I would never suggest anyone ever do - ran my world in a downgraded version. I downgraded to 1.8.1 while already in the Nether, just in case something went wrong in Starlight HQ (though I'm not sure if that would help circumvent possible complications).

It actually went smoothly and quicker than I initially anticipated.

There was an elevated platform in the Nether Hub upon which I build a vertical tower up to the roof.

I also built a diamond-like staircase as you can see. It wasn't a great look, but it would do for now. At the moment I just needed a convenient way up - the rest I could take care of later. You'll also notice a pink window, to keep in accordance with the other colors of the Nether Hub. The portal to the witch farm that you saw in session 143 is located behind this staircase, to give you an idea of where it is.

I don't usually have two relaxed sessions in a row (haven't had that since Season 1), but this was another smaller session, focused around completing what was already in progress at the Nether Hub. This basically meant the roof. Now, there were a lot of directions I could have gone with the roof. I originally wanted to do some steeply bowed cones, but I decided on something that I think looked a lot better:

I spent a lot of time designing these, and you'll notice that the middle roof is more accentuated than the surrounding roofs. Overall I'm thrilled with the design!

Additionally, I added a suitable pathway from the inner hub to the stairway sector (which isn't really an official name, more of just an interim title).

Honestly, this could have been combined with the previous session, but because of the fact that the two sessions were planned as separate projects (since I always plan the sessions before I engage in them), they remain separated (this was mostly because I overestimated the difficulty of creating a hole to the top of the Nether, which ended up taking like five minutes). This could be considered a waste of a useful session, but trust me when I say that planning for the latter half of the season was far more involved.

With that, the Nether Hub was officially labeled as complete. Of course it would continue to be developed over time, especially with the inclusion of some major farms, but for now I used it primarily for transportation purposes. I thus added a sign for it to the Lapis Hall of Fame, and it has been included in the poll! Keep in mind that anything we do to the Nether Hub in the future will count as part of the same build noted here, similarly to how the Starlight Castle's continuing developments are still considered the same structure, for the purposes of the poll anyway (the Lapis Hall only shows the month/year in which version 1.0 of each build was completed, without considering any further developments of that build).

This was a busier session, and rightly so as we approach the halfway mark of Season 2. I thought that our last project in the first half should return to our roots - good ol' Starlight renovations! My favorite!

Today we finally get to installing proper lighting on the third floor, removing all torches! And it looks so much better!

Similarly to the first two floors, I made some notable renovations along the way. Probably the biggest is that the disintegrator room has been stripped of its oak wood, instead transforming into a more suitable shade to more smoothly transition into the newly renovated Starlight Observatory. The dark oak/quartz combination looks quite nice if you ask me!

Additionally, I've added carpet to the range room, and removed the pointless fence gate doors (yeah, because mobs were going to spawn in that small balcony that was lit up).

A feature commonly forgotten about when you look at the Starlight is the Grand Observatory. That may not ring a bell even after watching the world tour, since I only mention it once. But it's basically just the small observatory right underneath the lookout room on the third floor (the big green clay room). Well, I figured that since I'm coloring all the other glass throughout the Starlight, I may as well do the same here. So I did:

And yes, the library too!

Aside from these aesthetic changes, I added a lock to the donkey pen. This meant that I would be able to add more than one donkey (since having two would introduce the possibility of one standing on the pressure plates while the other left the pen, which is what happened). The lock disables all pistons from being activated from the inside, which is the opposite to how most locks work. I suppose you could consider it a safety lock of sorts. However, I have enabled three pistons to activate from the outside, so that way I can visibly check whether or not the lock is active (could have done a light, but where's the fun in that?).

So that was this session! Overall this was a nice way to end the first half of the season I think, but let me know what you think!

Over a period of nine months (though technically six since I took a holiday break from December 2014 - March 2015), I embarked on 50 sessions, trying everything from massive exploration missions to massive build projects! These of course include the buoyantly vivacious Starlight Plaza, the blazingly beautiful Nether Temple, the exhaustively decorated Mob Processing Hub, and a plethora of other fun changes and additions along the way! So where are we now? In today's video update, I want to answer that question in a few different ways. So sit back, relax, and feel free to even play in your world while you listen!

I am happy to say that working on this journal over the past three weeks has been fun for me, even if I wish I had started it sooner (thought better now than never, right?). This is one of the many topics I cover in today's update. I won't transcribe the whole video because that's why it's a video, but basically I wanted to outline my goals with this journal, some context on it and the world, as well as what the goals are for the future. One of my big goals with the journal in particular is to gradually start to make each session feel more like an episode, enriching each with considerably more content.

Hope you enjoy the mid-season finale (I know, that's a comical title for something like this, but by definition, that's what this is!) as we embark on an exciting new direction for Techtropolis!

World download notes: You actually spawn at the mob farm collecting chamber, contrary to what I said in the video (atop the mob farm). It is still within session 103 (egg generator exists, but mob drop tower does not). There will also be a lot of lag for systems not as great. This is largely due to the barn (over 300 entities total). Feel free to kill all animals! Also, to get to the Tropic Fortress (since the only way to get there in this version is via horse or walking), you simply need to traverse in the western direction straight across Techtropolis Island (there's a map of it in the second floor transport center of the Starlight to help you; the green arrow is Starlight HQ). The far western coast is spawn. The Tropic Fortress (and Totem Run) is in the northwestern corner.

There are probably some other notes, but just ask me if you have any questions! Have fun!

One world. One goal. But a means to that goal? Well, there was a variety of options, and there still are. You can take many paths to arrive at the same destination. Sometimes the fork leads to the shorter road - sometimes the longer. But you still get there. I, for example, took the longer road. I spent 150 sessions (two years) building Techtropolis from such a primitive perspective. I was thinking so small scale! "Oh, today we're going to make a pumpkin farm!" "Oh, today let's build a small observatory!" "How about we change some lights?"

I wasted so much time! But starting today, things in Techtropolis will take a much more diverse direction at an extremely fast pace. Today we begin on what will become one of Techtropolis's largest projects to date: the Starlight Resources Facility. What was the idea? An underground hub which included every single farm in the game, fully automated, in addition to mass storage cellars and resource outlets. This facility would completely replace the Farmlands, the storage rooms, and many other utilities throughout Starlight HQ. As I am currently on session 176 in the world as of writing this post, I can tell you with actual certainty that this project will see the light of day, and that light shines bright!

But that's all just basic information. Let's take a look at where it is to be located!

As you'll note in the coordinates (you can follow along in the world), we're located directly beneath Starlight Castle. I've outlined with stone brick a slime chunk, which will be our first major project of this major project! I used lots of TNT to destroy all of the stone you see missing. Obviously there is still much work to do, but right my focus was just one getting the hub dug out. Speaking of which, the hub would consist of a dome, lined with various small farms. The larger farms would extend beyond the dome in all four directions, while the storage cellars would be comprised of multiple layers circling underneath the dome. The slime chunk you see in the picture is the centerpiece of this build, meaning that everything will be built around it.

This is why the slime farm is our first main project. But not for today! Ha, today we had to plan the schematics! While I did extensive planning for months prior to this build regarding its content, I did not actually plan the schematics until this session back in September (when this session took place). Let's look at the bombing aftermath (you may have to turn up your volume):

Now let's take a deeper look at the schematic I drew out on paper:

You can't quite pick everything out, as this was taken from my phone, but at least you can see the design plan.

In the center we have the central hub. The slime farm resides as the centerpiece, while the four rectangle chambers will be staircases that descend to the storage cellars. Lining the hub are various farms - as many as will fit, actually. To the left side we have the new animal farms as well as the massive Sheep Processing Facility that will be a much improved version over the original. And to the right we have what I've labeled as an "automatic tree farm." Coming from the bottom is the entrance from the Powerhouse room in the Power Museum. You can see the hallway in the video as well. And don't worry - you'll see more of that later on.

NOTE: None of what you see in the schematic is complete, nor is everything guaranteed to make the final cut. For example, the section up top I've crossed out because it doesn't make the final cut. But this was the very original schematic!

With that, I think it's time to end the session! Feel free to study the schematic and try to pick it apart - there are a lot of detailed builds involved with this project, and I'm excited to show you them! But first we needed a foundation. Today's session was tasked with blowing up the foundation for the foundation. And as you saw in the video, that has been completed.

There were a few different slime chunks within Starlight HQ. But the goal was to have the Starlight Resources Facility directly underneath Starlight Castle - or at least, as close as would work in concordance with the slime farm. Today, we work on the slime farm intensely! Let's take a look at how it was constructed:

As you can see, there are a total of six layers for slimes to jump off and be directed to the kill chamber where they are drowned. However, you'll notice that they are only 10x10 platforms, using the other six blocks in the radius of the chunk as the 3x3 airway for slimes to jump off. While this meant considerably less spawning space, I had to think about the entire facility at large (i.e. if this was the only thing here, I would have made it bigger). Problem was that the bigger the farm was, the larger the central dome would have to be (since larger radius means higher dome). This would conflict with the railway to the MPH from the Power Museum, since it's directly above where the tip of the dome would be (assuming I did my math correctly). Speaking of which, I outlined some of the central dome:

Easter Egg:

This took a long time to complete, but we weren't quite finished yet! In order to finish the farm, we needed to create a storage unit for our slimeballs! This meant we had to start the storage cellars...

The slime storage unit would take quite a staircase to access! So, I figured there was no better time than now to create the storage cellars! These cellars would be accessed primarily by four staircases adjacent to the slime farm on all four sides:

They would then connect in a similar fashion:

There were going to be two layers of these, although I wasn't going to make the second layer today. However, I did build a stairway from what would be an entrance to a theoretical third layer, as shown here:

That of course leads to here:

Slimes spawn in the storage room too!

Wow!

I can't say these results surprise me though. The reality is that most of the caves and the surface are lit up, surrounding the 128x128 radius around the farm. Plus, since the mob farm in the Power Museum doesn't function when we're down here, the slime farm is the only farm actively producing mobs.

With that, we've completed our first farm of the facility! Hold tight, because we're one down from almost twenty! Let's do this.

The first thing I wanted to do was get rid of all those chickens in the barn! So, I created a completely automatic new chicken farm as the second farm of our new facility:

It works very similarly to a design I believe was invented by Mumbo Jumbo. The idea is that an egg would be automatically dispensed each time a chicken laid one. Over time this would create a collection of chickens. See here the original collection of chickens (these are solely in charge of laying the eggs):

If we look a little closer, you'll notice two dispensers. Each time a chicken from above lays an egg, two things happen:

First, an egg is shot out via the bottom dispenser, gradually creating the chickens to be killed. Secondly, lava is quickly created via the top dispenser to kill any chickens that have grown up (baby chicks aren't burned!). This means that the system is fully automatic, eliminating the need to constantly stock up on food storage.

And speaking of storage:

The chest in the middle picks up all things dropped from the chickens (this includes eggs that stockpile randomly from the chickens sitting too long). You may wonder why I didn't automatically sort the drops. Well, I considered this farm a big enough upgrade on its own that I was satisfied with it (but as we approach where I am now, at 175, well; let's just say I need to redo this storage unit). Feathers go on that wall.

...While chicken goes on that wall. And, I'd say the farm's results are great!

If you're wondering, this storage room is built off of the storage cellars we dug out in session 153. Go check out the schematics of them to understand how all the storage will connect. What you'll ultimately realize is that every storage unit is located directly beneath the corresponding farm, accessed by the storage cellars.

One more thing for today: The Diamond Mine! Well, I changed the purpose of the Diamond Mine room in the Starlight Castle. You know, this one:

Now, instead of going straight to the Diamond Mine, it connects as an entrance to the Starlight Resources Facility! It's currently just a temporary staircase that runs right into the dome, but that's to be renovated later on. Let's look at the new Diamond Mine entrance:

And, you guessed it (maybe), it's connected via the storage cellars. Until next time...

Today, we start to see some serious aesthetic progressions of the Starlight Resources Facility. Let's not waste any time, but instead jump right in!

A few different things to see here. First are the obvious aesthetic changes! A beautiful mycelium floor to start us off - a material I've wanted to use for a while! With what I had planned regarding the rest of the dome, this was going to work quite nicely. Top that off with a dark oak border (both for the dome and the four storage cellar stairwells), and a quartz wall, I think we have some nice color contrasts going on here. I think the immediately next thing you'll notice is the array of flowers in front there. Those are four automatic flower farms! They use designs similarly to that of Mumbo Jumbo's, and they produce big results! But I thought... If I'm going to build some flower farms, then I need some storage! So I built a storage room right underneath:

What you're seeing is in fact the new dye storage room, to be completed later. It holds flowers in the six chests you see in front, while each dye gets its own chest on the sides and back.

Additionally, I planned on a cobblestone/stone storage unit to be expanded later. But it starts with this addendum:

Next thing you'll see in the first picture is the stairway that connects to the old Diamond Mine room in the Starlight Castle. But here's a closer look:

Also, say hello to the [finally] finished witch farm hub, complete with obsidian:

Today boasted some nice progressions on our new project. Hopefully these progressions were enough to get you engaged, but if not, the next update most certainly has some novelties...

When we last left off, we had just completed a few farms in the new Starlight Resources Facility that we had been constructing (notably, a slime farm and a chicken/egg farm). Additionally, we built the storage cellars, decorated the interior slightly, and overall prepared for further developments. Well, those developments continue today, with a few new farms!

Back in session 130, when I built the pumpkin patch, I did so with the intention of making a more efficient way to grind pumpkins. I thought, "If I plant enough seeds, one pumpkin will grow as I harvest another." With this, I assumed that I could harvest pumpkins indefinitely. However, I was quickly proven wrong, and thus the pumpkin patch was only really useful as a novelty. So today, I started with two foundational farms: a melon farm and pumpkin farm - both inspired by Etho's design!

SRF main entrance to the left:

The way it works is actually quite simple. You step on the pressure plate, and then the pistons harvest all the blocks. It certainly is not the most efficient of systems, but let's be honest - melons and pumpkins aren't exactly at the top of my list in terms of necessary resources. In fact, I have so much of both, that they are near the bottom! Regardless, all I was aiming for was something automatic; and while this isn't really a more efficient substitute for the pumpkin patch, at the very least it's part of a more organized design, making it much more practical in use.

Hello, friend! Get out, please!

The multi-layer sugar cane farm that I built next is much more intriguing. It's a design that I believe was originally acquired from NimsTuts, in which a bud switch is used to determine when to harvest the sugar cane, automatically of course. Let me show you what it looks like!

The bud switch is powered when the far right sugar cane grows one block higher. This triggers a wall of pistons that harvest all sugar cane pieces on the top two layers you see. All items are then dropped into the hoppers, in which they are dispensed into storage:

And if you're unfamiliar with how that works:

Once the piston to the left is powered via the sugar cane, it will quickly push and retract the redstone block. This will create a pulse which will activate two redstone torches: the one you see to the right below the right-most piston, and the one on the other side of that same block, the latter of which powers the wall of pistons above.

I built two layers of this farm today, although I did plan to add more later on. Besides, I can add as many as I want, which is the glory of this design! The biggest advantage though, is of course the fact that I don't have to do anything ever - sugar cane is automatically harvested as long as the chunks are loaded! Sugar cane is indeed a vital resource, what with books (for enchanting) and sugar (for potions); so this farm was a step in the right direction for sure.

I also added the second layer of the storage cellars today, which was equivalent to the first layer we built in 153 (it was just directly beneath it).

In other news, while I was out harvesting leaves once more, you won't even believe who I found...

Chronos! It was a dream come true! If you recall, I lost Chronos way back in session 115, though I believed him to be dead since I had no other reason to believe he was still alive. But as it turns out, a glitch in the system simply caused him to escape the stables, rather than suffocate in a wall like I initially presumed. Nonetheless, he was back with the pack!

All of those pesky chickens still in the barn were finally removed from existence today. One animal down - three to go (in terms of making the barn obsolete)! But today was not the day in which we expanded on the possibilities for new animal farms. Today, in fact, we furnished the second entrance to the Starlight Resources Facility - the old entrance to the Diamond Mine from the Starlight Castle. You can see this entrance in its most primitive state in a picture within session 155. But let's look at its fuller form:

Obviously it is still far from complete, aesthetically speaking. But it at least has been opened up. Besides, at least the Starlight end of it is complete:

What you'll notice is that now, the old Diamond Mine entrance has been transformed into a vertical drop, while a vertical lift has been added. Both can be used as entrances to the SRF, but the latter is used as an exit from it.

I enchanted some new armor to prepare for a mission to find a mesa once and for all. This would be the first documented major adventure since the Fire Journey, and only the fourth one so far this season!

Our two-part mission, and the centerpiece of this update, began on the 29th of October 2015, and ended on the 30th.

This time I ventured south - far south - as opposed to north like on the Fire Journey. I passed the Nether fortress I used to travel on the Fire Journey, instead venturing further past two new fortresses before settling behind a dual-blaze spawner. And by that, of course I mean this:

You know, I was waiting to find two spawners this close to each other before building a blaze farm. But, due to how far away these were from the Nether Hub, I decided it might be best to just settle with one spawner. This conflict came from the fact that, in my old world prior to Techtropolis, I actually did build a blaze farm out of two spawners. So, I assumed I would have the same luck here. But from a practical sense (given the distance this discovery was), I didn't, and that's okay.

I built a portal, and ended up here:

I knew I would not find a mesa anywhere near here! But I didn't walk far until I saw something particularly promising:

"Could it be?" I asked myself. And it was!

The glimmer of the ice spikes was sparkling with beauty! I couldn't believe what I had found! Though, after finding this rare biome, I realized that I wouldn't find a mesa if I stayed. And so I bookmarked the location, set up a proper portal to it, and continued to head south through the Nether. After another portal, I landed in a particularly interesting location:

My options were limited, and so I took off... by boat!

It only took another trip through the Nether to end up here:

My oh my, could it be?

At last! The biome I had been searching for since it came out over two years ago finally made its way to Techtropolis! I can't tell you guys how excited I was to finally locate this biome. This journey was based entirely on the off-chance I'd find a mesa biome, and it paid off in multiple ways.

I named the mesa "Candyland", since to me that's what it felt like! I transported multiple full inventories of hardened clay back to the Starlight (took a while), not to mention a beautiful cave adventure I had just underneath Candyland:

Even found a few horses:

And... oh look, day 2500:

And finally, last but far from least, the ore pyramid for this adventure:

Lucrative indeed!

What an epic adventure, and a slew of amazing new discoveries! Even that ocean monument might be worth exploring later on. This was the first adventure I took extensive screenshots of, as you can see, because by this point I finally did have this journal in mind (even though this took place about a month before making it). With this, it was time to move into a new age of Starlight developments!