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Meet "Taz", a new member of the Starlight herd! You'll see he's in Orion's old spot, because Orion died like an idiot trying to not drown.

Back in my old world before Techtropolis, from 2012, I found two blaze spawners in such close proximity that I built a farm utilizing them both. So naturally, with Techtropolis being a step up from that world (or a few steps up, rather), I was hoping to get the same kind of luck. In a sense, I did, as you'll note on the Mesa Mission from sessions 158-159. But that was so far out from the Nether Hub, especially considering that there was a blaze spawner just less than 50 blocks from the hub. So I finally decided to let my guard down and build a farm around that spawner instead. Although it wasn't utilizing two spawners, at the very least it was close enough to actually be part of the Nether Hub, which in and of itself is quite nice.

I built a funnel similar in design to Etho's cone, although it was more simplistic and didn't include as many pistons. I also built the collection chamber for the blaze to collect - I did so out of clay because not only did I now have a practically unlimited supply, but I wanted a sleek-looking design overall.

The collection center itself is worth looking at. Because the nature of the farm has it so that the blaze end up much lower than the spawner itself, the farm ends up looking like this:

I didn't work on any redstone today, mostly because I wanted to do all of that together. But I did get everything set up so that all I'd have to do next session is the redstone. However, in other news, I added a nether brick border to the lava moat surrounding the hub:

Today was redstone day for the blaze farm, which I've now beautifully titled the "Blaze Blaster". I started by building the lighting system:

The lever to activate the lava lights is in a unique spot - a hanging pillar far enough from the spawner to keep blaze from spawning:

Afterwards was the crusher. While I used the same redstone design for all crushers in the past (including those built in the Mob Processing Hub), this time I did something quite a bit different: a comparator clock (credits to Mumbo Jumbo for the design).

Additionally, I added a blockage system to prevent other blaze from entering the chamber while the first ones are being crushed and destroyed (activated via the lever):

Now that the wiring was all complete, theoretically the system should work! So I cleared it out and tested it, and it did work well indeed!

Unfortunately though, maybe I should've used a more automated funnel design, because now we had a new problem:

Regardless, I still got a lot of XP from this farm, and overall I was quite satisfied with the result. To celebrate its completion, I added a sign for it in the Lapis Hall of Fame:

But now it was time to work on some of the aesthetics, notably in the collection chamber. I started today with a second viewing, and some proper sandstone stair work.

And in regards to how far this farm actually is from the hub, well...

For so long, I wanted to redo the mob drop storage system in the Power Museum (you know, the one automated via minecart). Well, today was the fantastic day in which we did just that! And the best part was that this new system is fully expandable for the future! After building a number of item sorters in recent months, I became fairly acquainted with how to build them, and thus I could do so rather quickly. So I figured, why not also sort the drops? I mean, that alone would be the real upgrade, right? Well, that and extra storage space! But let's take a look:

So where is this at? Well, take a look at the schematic for the Starlight Resources Facility posted in session 151. It's located down here! You know what that means? It means that this sorting unit is located over 40 blocks beneath the old one, meaning I had to craft a hell of a lot of hoppers. But it also means I can expand this storage for up to 40 layers in the event that it all fills up! And, if that wasn't enough, its location couldn't be more convenient, since it's almost exactly where I planned it would be on the initial schematic. So, I think this is a win-win-win situation!

I then removed the old system, tearing out all the redstone and the minecart track. I even opened up the land a bit to expose it, so that I could initiate ideas on how to further develop this area. The reality was that there was no way this system could have stayed; I'm just glad I got it out now before I started a development around here that required it. Additionally, having the minecart constantly moving 24/7 can cause some lag, and so we've now eliminated that.

I didn't move the drops; I just left them in the old chests until I decided to turn that room into something else. And, while I already have something planned for it, that won't be disclosed until another day.

Overall, this was an incredibly successful session. We're continually moving forward in more ways than one, transforming Starlight HQ into an ever expanding house of resources!

Little cliffhanger for the next update... Remember this picture from session 118?

You'll see it again (and then some)!

I added item frames at the witch farm to identify the drops. This was in part thanks to the mob drop item sorter I built last session:

Now that we got that out of the way, do you recall the following picture?

If not, this was a staircase that I built back in session 118. Originally, I planned for it to be an "under-the-plaza" access chamber to a mass Nether storage room. But that was too...lousy? I mean, if I'm going to build a storage room, there needs to be certain criteria, at least at this point in the world:

- It needs to be incorporated with another main build

- It needs to be uniquely decorated

- It has to fit with its surroundings / be easily accessible

This is why the Starlight Resources Facility is a perfect model of a storage room. Because it's more than that. The storage cellars comprise just a small part of it, but it's still the core and center of the operation. This means they are equally accessible from every part of the facility, and they fit appropriately because much of the resources originate down in that facility. But this staircase underneath the plaza? It was out of the way, clunky, and overall just did not fit the bill to be anything resourceful.

So I decided to make it into something non-resourceful. Let's look at some development pictures:

That railway, by the way, is actually the railway that connects from the Power Museum to the Mob Processing Hub. I specifically designed it so that I would be able to make a viewing to it from here. Props for thinking ahead?

But I still haven't told you what this is. Have you figured it out yet?

A gold nugget dispenser!

The above-pictured system works in that you throw one gold nugget into the hopper. That gold nugget traverses into another hopper, in which a comparator detects it and moves up a signal strength (since the appropriate amount of gold nuggets are pre-inserted). This then triggers a piston that detracts the sea lantern only for a few seconds thanks to an RS (NOR) latch attached to a short clock.

Comparator system:

Latch and clock system:

The piston then extends once more, waiting for the next gold nugget to be inserted.

So what is this build?

Lol. It's an arcade!

I was already in Starlight Plaza, so I figured: Why not work some more in it? I built a small entry port for the first arcade game to be constructed, even though today would not be the day for that. This game would be titled "Aim High!", and would be an aim-and-shoot dynamic mini-game.

I was bothered by other things today, though, and so this game was not a priority for the moment. But the plaza bank was. One thing that disturbed me about it was its lack of... finesse. So I added some designs to it:

This also fixed a lingering question, which was in regards to how I would light it up. Overall, while I could always change things down the line, I was contently satisfied with the plaza bank's current aesthetics.

Up until this point, the fourth floor of the Starlight did not have proper installed lighting. And so it was that I removed all torches from not only the fourth floor, but also many exterior spots on top of and on the side of the Starlight, where such atrocities were not required. Let's look at the new lighting!

Additionally, one thing you'll note is that I've slowly been changing much of the glass into colored glass throughout everywhere. Hence, the mob farm fall chamber in the Alchemy Dome was next. And this decision looked sleek, if I do say so myself.

There have been certain sessions in which I've made some subtle hints about certain future developments within Starlight HQ. Today I decided to add to that. The following changes were made to the current storage rooms:

Have fun.

You may find it odd that I have a session titled "Glass Room" - that the title of an entire chapter of developments seems to be constrained to a single room. You may also know that the content of the chapter is rarely exclusive to the session's title. But today, that's only partially true. You see, for a long time there was one specific storage room I wanted: all 16 clay colors, and all 16 glass colors. So I spent the better portion of this session constructing this room down in the Starlight Resources Facility, in an unconventional fashion might I add.

I used lava to enhance the lighting, and a variety of blocks like diorite and chiseled stone brick to enhance some other elements, before adding any chests. Clay was on top; glass and glass panes rested on the bottom:

In terms of colors: for clay, seven on the left and seven on the right, with two on the front walls. For glass (bottom layer) and glass panes (top layer), six on the left, six on the right, and four on the back walls. I really couldn't determine the best way to arrange the colors given the eccentric proportions of the room, but that's fairly subjective since either way, all 16 colors are separated and are arranged according to the rainbow of Minecraft.

Overall, this room took a few hours to construct, but I was quite satisfied with the result. I knew that building a storage room for this purpose would take considerably more time than other conventional storage rooms. On top of that, because there were so many different items to be considered here, I wanted to take some time and think of a unique design that would incorporate them all efficiently. I think that has been achieved.

In other news, it is true that I did have a side project today. But it was miniscule in comparison. I dug out a rough storage room for blaze rods in the Blaze Blaster:

Nothing special here - I didn't even focus on aesthetics. But the arsenal chambers for potions, I did decorate just slightly:

Overall, the Blaze Blaster still needed some significant work yet, but that's for another day.

A cactus farm really has one distinct purpose - green dye. But that doesn't take away from the simple fact that it can be useful for other types of projects as well. And part of the goal with the Starlight Resources Facility is to provide as many resources as possible in the most efficient way possible. Having said that, I knew I wanted to create an automatic cactus farm. The question then was what exactly that entailed. Would the cacti harvest itself? Would it then automatically smelt into green dye and before being dispersed into a chest? I worked the better of two worlds in this project, crafting a completely original design (i.e. one I designed in my own head) that only smelted half the cacti. In this way, you would still have equal amounts of both green dye and cacti. Let's take a look at the design!

Let's start with the obvious - the harvesting chamber consisting of two layers of cacti. The design is simple, but those of you who don't yet know, cacti break when a block is placed adjacent to them. So, you can utilize this behavior to automate a cactus farm, insisting that once the cactus grows, it will break. All of the cacti then travel to a central hopper where it then splits and has two possible outputs - the furnace and the chest:

I first built the system in a creative world, as there was a lot of trial and error with this one; I originally designed a T Flip Flop that would switch each time a cactus item went through the system, smelting 50% of them. However, this did not work because an item travels through a hopper too quickly to be detected by a comparator. Well, that is unless you have the hopper powered by default.

Utilizing this behavior, I created a system in which, once a certain quota of items was received by the hopper, a comparator would activate a timer that would allow sixteen eight items to pass through - the amount needed to justify one piece of coal since eight of them would travel into the furnace.

^ The comparator detracts a piston which activates a second timer via the redstone line on the left. This second timer is what allows every other item to switch hopper destinations. And this timer is only active for the amount of time specified on the repeater clock - in this case, for sixteen items. Below, you can see the timer and how the piston cuts the signal (which is essentially what activates and de-activates it).

The determining hopper has two possible outputs, and the timer's purpose is to allow the hopper to alternate between the two by powering/un-powering it every other tick or so.

The completed storage room:

Overall, this system invited much trial and error, but overall it ended up being a project I was immensely satisfied with, mostly because I used what I knew to create something from my own head. That's not to say a design similar to this (or probably more efficient, perhaps with hopper timers) doesn't exist; it's just to say that I don't know whether or not that's true. So in whole, I'm very proud of this miniature project, and I think it's a great addition to the Starlight Resources Facility!

Additionally, I did add a third layer to the sugar cane farm in this session:

Starlight Plaza received an addition - a more comprehensive 4-piece map of Starlight HQ, which I think turned out to be a much better representation of the base than whatever garbage map I was using in the meantime.

Additionally, this was tacked on to the Starlight's wall:

This session, we're taking a step away from the Starlight Resources Facility to embark on an adventure. But I don't mean just any adventure; you see, the adventure map on the fourth floor of the Starlight has remained uncompleted since its installation. So today, I figured we would take a little trip around Techtropolis Island and beyond to fill in all the blanks. And that's what we did!

What you're seeing isn't just land and brackets. At this point you should be familiar with Techtropolis Island - at least, enough to know that it's the green island to the left with the green arrow on it (Starlight HQ). I finished exploring it, naming the hills I found in session 9 to "Emerald Hills" (since it's an extreme hills biome, hence emeralds). It's that small branched section comprised of three mountains, on the southern tip of the island.

But let's talk about something far more intriguing.

What you're looking at is a map, but with borders. These borders are what will compose the very dawn of a country - a state with territories based both on context and necessity. And I've already named them and designated them:

Yellow outline is "Techtropolis Island" - my home!

Green outline is "Stanland" - a haven by which I am greeted every time I cross the waters. This will develop into an agricultural-based facility that will mass produce food, animals, and a number of other resources that will be needed to sustain a city.

Red outline is "Rainbow Cliffs" - the first savannah I discovered back in Season 1 along with a desert. The name, however, comes from the discovery of a savannah plateau that exceeds y:200, which is the signature piece of this territory.

Cyan outline is "Rogusta" - a scenic paradise that will develop into an expansive city. It will be my primary workplace for building such structures as houses, malls, and various other suburban buildings that wouldn't be built anywhere else. This is also where the ocean monument we explored in the Prismarine Voyage is located.

Oh, and a fun little fact: Stonewall Territory - the territory we discovered in session 108 - is that small patch of land in the very bottom-right corner of the map! If you've forgotten that name since it was first mentioned, I'm reminding you once more for when it pops up again.

Do you remember when we added the new mob drop item sorter in session 162? Well, that room we opened up was about to be furnished today! See, originally when I planned the Starlight Resources Facility, I decided that this division would house all the animals. But I was essentially going to remake the barn - just underground. I soon realized that I didn't want that. I wanted an upgrade - that was the entire point of completely redoing them, right? Thus, I compacted my original plans into something like this:

All four animals (pig, cow, sheep, mooshroom) tightly fitted into this room. Each cooker design is identical, and the design was acquired from Mumbo Jumbo.

The next stage then was to move all the animals from the barn down here to the new stations! It was definitely not easy; in fact it was a pain in the ass trying to get all these guys to squeeze into the tiny spaces. The reality was that I needed at least 16 in each pod to produce a decent product - 8 of each animal would be good each round, especially considering that 48 animals is quite a lot for such a small space.

But, for those of you unfamiliar with how the cooker mechanism works, it's actually quite simple.

The top button dispenses water, allowing the animals to jump out of the water, high enough so that I can hold right-click and breed them. The offspring are then funneled into the bottom chamber. When they grow up, I hit the bottom button, which dispenses lava for about 3 ticks - enough to cook them off. Though I should note - while mature cows and sheep won't fit into a 1x1 block space, pigs do, which is why I had to add a half slab to its chamber.

The staircase leads to the breeding cockpit where the animals are actually bred.

At last, the barn was obsolete!

The day has arrived in which we would say goodbye to the old storage rooms and hello to the new! Now, before we get into this, I should note that not everything from the old storage rooms currently has a space in the SRF. Today was mostly focused around block storage, meaning that the materials storage (items and such) is mostly still the same. However, because of the new animal farms, pretty much the entire old food storage has been vacated. All blocks have been moved to new storage chamber added to the storage cellars (amongst both the top and bottom levels). And then some.

Let's look at the new storage spots, starting with the animal farm storage added just beneath the new animal cookers!

The mooshroom farm doesn't exist yet since we don't have mooshrooms, but once we do, both them and the cow cooker with connect. Thus, the storage pictured above sorts the two different mushrooms, leather, and steak. In the back we have both the wool/mutton and pork from the other two cookers:

New storage spots, along with four new stairwells on each corner, that lead from the top layer to the bottom layer of the storage cellars.

Also, day 2600 in Techtropolis!

An exciting process of moving today! All old chests would be designated for literally whatever I wanted. Everyone needs chests they can just dump stuff into - that's what the old blocks room would become. I do have future plans for the old mass storage rooms, and we'll get into those quite soon! But for now they were mostly a vacant part of the Starlight. All the wood is still there, however, since we don't yet have a tree farm...

Back in the Fire Journey (sessions 125-127), we discovered a mushroom island. The only way that was possible was thanks to the Nether. So I knew that was the only feasible way we would get two mooshrooms back to the Starlight. But even that has its obvious complications. Let's start at the beginning shall we? The rendezvous point was the same portal we started with in the Fire Journey:

This is where Tigris stayed. I traversed north-west because I knew that was the direction of the mushroom island. Let's call it Mooshroom Island. I didn't take a screenshot of Mooshroom Island originally with the coordinates, because I don't think ahead. Granted, that allowed for memory games and exploratory challenge, but it made this journey much more time-consuming, to say the least. Regardless, after finding a new fortress, I died.

So I didn't actually put any armor on. Lol? Not to worry, I recovered everything except my Fortune III pickaxe, and my dignity. But it was a long ass walk. I did get a fifth Wither skeleton skull, however!

I did finally find the island:





The original portal was in an inconvenient spot for our mooshrooms, however, because not only was it down under, but it was more open to ghast fire. I actually did much of my traveling close to the ceiling of the Nether, and thus it was a lot safer for mooshrooms. But that didn't stop the following from happening:

I suppose I learned the hard way. I had to build this too, and I'll let you guess why:

Well, ****.



But just when all hope was lost... another one few bite the dust!

Can we just take another moment to marvel at this beauty?

When you love something you set it free... unless you want to use it.











YAY!! Looks like losing that Fortune pick was worth it

|| -- MISSION ACCOMPLISHED -- ||

Now that we had mooshrooms, the Mob Resources Division was almost finished! Today we focused on aesthetically improving the area, in addition to introducing some new farms and features to the MRD to finish it up. Throughout this session, I spent some time breeding our new mooshrooms Bucky and Sally to create Rorschach and Bungalow Bob. And then came Dottie.



Before the aesthetics became a thing, I had to work on the centerpiece of this room - the mushroom farm.

Wait, what? Mushroom farm in the center of the room? What does that entail, you ask? Have a look!

The farm operates automatically via a BUD switch. When a mushroom is placed in the center block, the BUD will activate, dispensing bonemeal a number of times until the mushroom becomes a giant mushroom, creating either of the following scenarios:





This farm took a few hours to construct, but overall it was a compact beauty that has some fun properties! Additionally, it allows a farm to actually function as a form of scenery also, as I'll often leave the giant mushroom sit in the middle of the room until I need to chop it down.

Added was an item sorter to the sheep storage, separating the wool from the mutton. Because I mean, why not? I did also finished the sorting unit for the mushrooms, leather, and steak, now incorporating the newfound mooshrooms. I didn't yet have a convenient way to shear them as well to take advantage of their mushroom properties, because as previously noted: I don't think ahead evidently. But we'll figure that out soon enough!



Lights added to the sugar cane farm...



...because of this:



In terms of functionality, almost everything was complete here in the Mob Resources Division. There's still one more major farm to be constructed...

Now we had improved animal farms. But how would we breed them when all of our wheat supply diminishes? Well, of course we would need an improved wheat farm! Originally, we had been working with the automatic design in the farm hub of the Power Museum (just beside the mob farm collection chamber). This design is akin to Etho's. However, this farm was slow when I needed larger quantities. So, it was time for an upgrade, and there was no better place to build it than in the Starlight Resources Facility!

It's actually quite simple in design, but it works so fast because you get eight wheat in the same time it would take you to get one from the old design. The way it works is that you sit in the minecart, which travels back and forth on the track. The tripwires on each end activate the pistons and dispensers in a timely manner:

Enough bonemeal will cause all crops to grow before they are uprooted. All I have to do is hold right-click the whole time! Let me show it to you in action:

As you can see, it also works with potato/carrot, and will function in a semi-automatic manner with cocoa beans. But since the pistons can't obstruct those, it isn't super efficient. Perhaps later I can rework the design, or create a new one altogether.

And then the storage for these items, aesthetically arranged of course!

Credits to the original design of this farm go to NimsTV.

I added four slime farm viewings within the storage cellars as well. Proper borders would be constructed later.

There was still one more small farm to build though, before I moved on to some of the bigger farm projects left for the season. And that of course was a nether wart farm! Interestingly, I don't really use potions all that much, mostly because I don't need them. And I hardly use things I don't need when, for example, I just want to go collect 16 stacks of dark oak logs from across the river. Naturally, grabbing potions isn't my first thought. But still, an automatic nether wart farm was a necessary addition to further complete the collection of farms we have so far done. And pleasantly enough, I very much enjoyed working on the nether wart farm! Let's take a look:

So with nether wart, there are certain limitations to how far you can actually automate it since bonemeal does not work. Thus, the only real way I could achieve a semi-automatic result was by creating a system where the nether wart could be automatically harvested, at the very least since it couldn't be automatically farmed.

The advantage to this design, much like that of the sugar cane farm, is that I could add layers indefinitely (for practical intent, anyway). I knew I wouldn't use this farm that often, and so creating a lot of layers wasn't exactly a requirement. But in order to really justify the farm's design, I had to make at least two layers, and so I did.

The pistons are actually extended by default. The following button retracts all of them:

All nether wart is filtered through hoppers to their storage, right next to the meat storage from the animal shelters.

And the location of this farm relative to the others? Well, there aren't too many available spots left in the hub!

Credits to the nether wart farm design go to Xisuma.

After a lengthy session, the last two minor farms on the current slate of developments were finished! Now it was time for some more ambitious moves towards completing the rest of the Starlight Resources Facility.

Before we started cracking down on some larger projects within the Starlight Resources Facility, I wanted to take a break and recall that the SRF isn't the only thing left on the slate for Season 2. There are actually a lot of things left to do before the season ends. And while many of those things involve the SRF, there are some major details that don't. If you watched the whole world tour, you may remember that I mentioned one detail in particular: a trampoline! The Lounge Floor of the Starlight was a fun and unique development, but it needed some more purpose. Thus, I planned to build a trampoline just off of it in Starlight Plaza. Did you know that my reason for building the slime farm so soon was to gather enough slime blocks for this project? At last, the SRF being put to good use!

As it turns out, I didn't need near as many blocks as I thought I would.

That's okay though. The real challenge here was trying to fit the trampoline around the pathways. But I think this looks nice!

The trees help enhance the scenery too, I think:

But you'll notice that the trampoline wasn't the only thing I did today. I mean, if it was, then this would have truly been a waste of a session! But no, I did some other aesthetic work on Starlight Plaza, since it was time to start bringing it to a stage of completion. I started by trying cyan carpet:

But that was too explicit. I was aiming for something more subtle, and so green was my next choice:

That was much better! I added some other elements too, like the tree in front there and leaves/glowstone border around the fountain. Glowstone is also hidden underneath the carpet as a source of lighting the plaza (one reason I wanted to add the carpet to begin with).

Speaking of lighting, some other parts of the plaza received some updates:

A hop, skip, and jump... and then a hip hip hurray for improvements!

I remember the days when things like this were exciting to me:

Why were they exciting? They were new ideas to me - innovations upon a traditional idea. The above three pictures were taken in 2013, from Season 1 of Techtropolis. At the time, those things were the types of projects that made Techtropolis special, because each one was a little different, and with each one I tried to take an idea and make it interesting. That's always been the goal here. But looking at how far I've come, not necessarily in my building skills, but rather in my imaginative maturity, I realize that without my foundations, I wouldn't have been able to get this far. There's a reason that learning a creative art takes time. It's not because you learn at the same pace throughout, but it's because you keep learning at an exponential rate. At first, it may take you ten lessons to learn a concept, but after a while, you become able to learn those ten lessons in one.

In the case of Minecraft, I spent a lot of time learning. But I wasn't learning about how the game works - that took maybe a month or two. It was developing a creative side - or rather, exploiting it - that this game helped to bring out. Looking back, I probably could've condensed all of Season 1 into half a season. But sessions were never based around the amount of content in them. It was always about how much time and effort went into them. And back then, I spent a lot of time doing things that I wouldn't even think twice about today. But now, I've reached a point where I can take exactly what's in my head and build it, rather than taking 20 sessions to figure out what that is. That's an ability that takes time to develop, and it applies to anything. While we will explore this history in more detail in session 175, I felt it best to include this short narrative as an opening to this session as we begin a bigger project for Techtropolis.

I purposefully included a picture of the old Sheep Processing Facility, and that's because we're building a new one (hence my use of the adjective 'old'). This time though, it will be completely automated. Let's dive in!

So this time, there would be 4 sheep of each color, resulting in 64 additional entities. Thus, I knew lag was on its way! Each of these would be placed in their respective pods - eight colors on each side - where they couldn't get out:

I installed sixteen dispensers, which would dispense water upon pressing one button. After you run through and shear all 64 sheep, you would press this button. The water would send the wool down the streams and into a central hopper (this would be achievable by using slabs on the bottom block, to allow the wool to sneak under while preventing the sheep from having a means to escape or 'glitch' out).

The aesthetics weren't yet complete, because there were still some things to do. For one, I had to get all the sheep down here. And two, I needed to construct a sorting system for storage. And three, I needed to have a shear system, since I'd need to stock a lot of shears for this one!

As we step into session 175, there is an underlying lesson in this journal, and one that I think many journals teach quite well in fact. And the lesson is that it doesn't matter how ambitious you are with your work. What matters is that you're expressing what ambitions you do have in your own way, to create a world that makes you happy.

On November 6, 2012, I purchased the PC version of Minecraft. I had previously been playing the Xbox version, since October 4, 2012. Would you like to know how this came to be? Well, on the night of October 3rd, I had a dream. And in the dream, I was in a landscape that I created. This landscape resembled a story that I had written many months prior, and thus I became really attached to the visualization my dream gave to it. But I wondered, "How could I see this again?" I remembered that my brother used to play MC all the time, but he was more of the Multiplayer/PVP type. I literally created an Xbox account specifically for the purpose of playing this game - this game that I used to think was not cool and annoying. I actually remember the first vein of diamonds I found! I named that cave the Diamond Mine, and actually designed it as though it were a tourist site, with signs designating the different paths of the caves. Like I noted in the previous session, I've always been aiming to take something mundane and turn it into something interesting. The Diamond Mine was my first major project, before I got the PC version of MC a month later.

We won't spend too much time talking about my first world, which lasted from November 6, 2012 - June 12, 2013, because what I did wasn't important. What is important, though, is how working in that world added to my imaginative side. It opened that part of myself up, to new ideas and new perspectives that I would have never thought about otherwise! It's why I always had an appreciation for the old world - it helped prepare for the new. Did I build cool things in the old world? Sure! A dual-spawner blaze farm, aqua lounge, and complete fireworks setup are all distinguishable things in that world. But these were all learning experiences for me - ones that I very much enjoyed! But I was still young back then. In Techtropolis, I've had a lot of time to grow up. I've developed mentally to understand that old Techtropolis was not anything avant-garde. But everyone has to start somewhere, and thus that world remains part of my history.

I'll show you some pictures from the old world before we jump into today's project.

Look familiar? This was the first complete version of the Starlight! Does it look good? Hell no! But can you see how it shaped the foundations for today's Starlight? I hope so!

The Power Museum, train station (didn't have a name back then), and even the Mob Processing Hub were all original projects from my old world. And even though every single one has been exponentially expanded this time around, the core ideas are as authentic as my time in Minecraft itself.

The Mob Processing Hub was very simply a spider XP farm.

This was an old idea from the old Power Museum, called the Nuclear Fusion Trap. Its purpose is akin to that of the control room in today's Power Museum - a collection of random functions. I installed just two here - one that would turn on every single light on and around the Starlight, and the other that would activate the fireworks display.

So, why did I abandon the old world? Why did I start a new world? Is it because I realized that I could never make this better? Actually no. If you watch any of the first 26 sessions of Techtropolis (which you can do here), you'll notice that I'm almost repeating what I did the first time. But when did all that change? I grew inspired actually. Clay came out, then stained glass - I also never liked cobblestone. At that point it was just a commitment - just one move towards revolutionizing the look - and the rest would become history. The real reason the old world was abandoned was not due to disinterest, but instead because of this:

While I still don't know what exactly went wrong here, I think I'm right in assuming I opened the old world in an old version after doing so with a new, thus causing a regeneration of the chunk. Regardless, this was why Techtropolis was born. Nothing you see in this thread would have existed had it not been for this world corruption. And because of that, I do still wonder how things would have gone if I were still in the old world.

And that all leads to our current project in Techtropolis - the new Sheep Processing Facility. Even this project has old history - I first thought of it just before going to the Nether in my old world, which was in January 2013. I have quite the habit of being able to successfully recycle my own ideas, mostly because I pick the ones with value and attempt to make them better. Even the damn Starlight Resources Facility was the result of an original idea I had in the old world, where I'd have an "underground fantasyland that was basically a better version of everything." That was actually the description of that project. The way I see it, Techtropolis as it is today is the better version of everything I wanted the old world to be - everything that I envisioned my world to be back in 2012. It may have taken over three years to make that, but I think that's what makes it most intuitively worthwhile in the end.

So let's finish this project with a bang. Last session, we built the structure of the facility and the water flow/dispenser system. So now we have to bring all the sheep down from the old facility and breed more. That was step one:

This alone took some time simply because I had to sort them individually, and breed them all until there were four of each. The next step after this was to create the new wool storage room. But I wasn't about to half-ass this project, which is why I went further to create an entire sorting system which sorted all 16 colors out automatically! Thus, this system was completely automated and made gathering wool so much more efficient.

And then 16 chests on the right-hand side for carpet!

With the aesthetics and functions all finished, I went for a test run. And my oh my was it lucrative! The Sheep Processing Facility, and therefore the Mob Resources Division, was complete!

Having completed an entire division of the SRF, there was just one things left to complete - the aesthetics! Anyone following knows that such a process of renovation will not be quick. But it will look beautiful if it all goes as planned!

Starting now, each update will only contain one session, because now these updates are in real-time. I finished sessions 176-177 in December, and 178 just three days ago. My goal is that by the time we get to 179, I will have finished it. But after that, I will only ever update this journal once these sessions actually get completed, because there’s no more behind-the-scenes stuff to add as filler. There are no more completed sessions. From now on, it’s whenever the next session gets done. It could be a day, or it could be a week. Hell, it could be a month. 178 took that long – I started it in the middle of January. The truth is that it could have been done in a few days. But there’s more to my life than simply this journal. Ever since December of last year – when I started this journal in fact – I’ve been so occupied with my time that there would be periods where I wouldn’t even open Minecraft for a week. I figured that the journal would compensate for that. But now it’s dependent on that.

So can I do it? Up until this point, everything that the Techtropolis Journal has showcased was already done, over the past 1.5 years in fact. But can I actually keep to a somewhat reliable schedule as we progress forward? I can't say I know! But maybe that’s the fun in all this – seeing how far we actually can go. Truthfully, I’ve taken a number of hiatuses, and I’ll list them:

January 2014 – May 2014: Just as I was starting the Power Museum

November 2014 – March 2015: Just as I was starting Starlight Plaza

August 2015 – October 2015: Just following session 150

December 2015 – February 2016: Not really a hiatus, but I spent most of what would have been my MC time on this journal instead

These hiatuses largely came from the fact that I got bummed out by certain projects, mostly because they were larger projects that I just didn’t feel like doing at the time. That’s why I took a break – to become reinvigorated, so to speak. And I know I’ll have more hiatuses; it’s just the nature of things. But does that mean, at some point, that Techtropolis will end? It’s a sandbox game after all – that’s entirely up to me (unless it gets deleted, of course). The plans I have for this world are beyond anything you would expect it to become. And the great part about that is I’m able to plan years ahead and at least remain within the constructs of that plan (in terms of MC anyway, haha). For example, when I started this world in 2013, I always planned to build an aqua lounge. If you watched the world tour, you know that’s still something hot on the agenda. But plans indefinitely expand.

As we bring 175 to a close, I want to encourage you to not only let your imagination carry your world, but also your work outside of Minecraft. Everything we do builds who we are, and how we do everything distinguishes us from each other. I know that for me, Minecraft has helped to expand my creative energy. I very much like to think of this game as another creative outlet - another way to showcase my own art. And that art doesn't have to be in the form of builds, because not everyone plays to build. What you play for isn't important. But the reason for which you play is something worth exploring, and it's something that we'll explore together as we progress through this journal.

While today is not the day I spill the beans on the future plans after the SRF is finished, it is the day I offer another cliffhanger of sorts - one that is sure to keep you thinking. Starlight HQ was formed entirely under the idea that a base could anticipate the needs of those inside it - that I would not only be protected within its borders, but that I would be cared for. Voila, the unfinished sector of the Power Museum:

I don’t have to work on the world every day. I just have to have enough inhibitory control to say “Hey, I really want to do this one thing, but I know I won’t for another 1.5 years,” and then stick to that construct. When I say 1.5 years, I wholly take into account the fact that I don’t play this game as much as I don’t have the ample time to do so. The great thing about extensive plans is that not only is it fun to creatively bend them, but I always have something to do. Thus, even if I don’t play every day, at least I know what I’m doing next, the next time I do play the game. Starting this journal and keeping up with it will be a challenge, and I like challenges because they do make mundane things more interesting after all.

Challenge accepted.

A few questions related to the journal side of things, for my sake so I know what works and what doesn't!

1) Aside from this session which could likely be a strong contender, among which session entries did you most enjoy reading, and why? Is it presentation/content, or a combination of the two?

2) Do you think a world tour every 50 sessions is better than every 100, especially now that sessions are exponentially increasing in size?

3) As videos are becoming more of an incorporative element of the journal, there's a lot more to be recorded yet. What types of things do you more want videos of? Adventures? Parkour? Something akin to a LP video, even just once in a while? Or are you content with videos being more of a supporting element by only specifically demonstrating the content of the session?

4) The Season 2 document will not be as detailed as the sessions in these documents themselves, instead being akin to that of the Season 1 document. Do you think the document should encourage people to read through the journal by only summarizing the sessions, rather than replacing it? Or do you think people should have the equivalent of a downloadable version of the journal?

As I continued to mine underneath the Starlight, I realized a few things. For one, I was attaining a large number of resources, and I had to empty my inventory back at the Starlight before I could continue mining every time it filled up. And even once that was accomplished, what was I emptying? Raw iron ore? So that meant an extra trip up to the furnace room on top of that. But what about the 5+ stacks of coal ore blocks I mined just to preserve space in my inventory? Well that had to be broken down! But that's time-consuming - not something I can do all the time. So this ends up happening:

What was the next step? Well, that would be to install some new storage options in the Diamond Mine itself. Back when I built that 2x2 piston door entrance in session 154, I always had a plan to further expand this into a lobby of sorts for the Diamond Mine. Well, today we expand on that plan!

Finally, I've installed an automatic smelting system for iron/gold, with a large supply of coal stocked into the back. For other ores, they are crafted into blocks and then placed into their appropriate chest, where they are automatically shuffled down to their respective new storage cellars. But there's a catch to this new storage system: It's only for ores found in the Diamond Mine (with the exception of diamonds, given their rarity). This helps to bring about some sort of organization, because the more storage rooms there are for the same thing, the more difficult it becomes to balance them out. But this way, I know what I'm using this specific storage setup for. And I must say it works great. Being able to smelt 5 stacks of iron ore by doing practically nothing and continue mining has greatly improved the efficiency of my mining sessions down here.

Oh yeah, it's also another slime chunk.

But in other news, today was also a caving session! I took today to explore the northern border of where the 1.6 chunks meet the 1.7 chunks. Now as you may know, this border is a few hundred blocks north of Starlight HQ between two deserts (refer to the map in session 168, or the map in-game if you're following along). So I first had to mine a very narrow passage. But when I got there, I was quite enticed with my discoveries! Let's start with what I found on my way there:

A dungeon and a hole to the surface? Two nice finds!

Though not exactly the right spot, this was the general direction relative to the Starlight in which that hole was positioned:

A different discovery down under:

Which led to this:

Everything going on so far:

Looks like it will be time to drop our loot off at the Diamond Mine soon! But I was close to the border, and so I had to keep going!

At long last! I reach what now felt like the wall of gold!

Overall, my caving conquest up north was a lot of fun and it warranted the addition of the new storage system!

Prior to this adventure, however, I prepared to develop the SRF lobby, which meant the blowing up of sections:

For those of you not sure of this location, this is what you're greeted with at the bottom of the Power Museum entrance into the SRF. The hallway to the main hub, relative to the above picture, is to my right.

Behold, the new blue Diamond Mine lobby!

Ever since I built the mob farm in Starlight HQ back around sessions 81-82, it has only ever been updated aesthetically (aside from the storage system, of course, but here I mean in terms of the farm itself). It was updated to fit the new quartz look in session 117, and then again just recently in session 164 to fit with the Alchemy Dome. But shouldn't these improved looks warrant some improved functions? Don't get me wrong, the mob farm is one of the best parts of the Starlight, in my humble opinion. But nothing is perfect. For one, this particular mob farm - with the way it's intended to work - will never be able to fight against witches. Having recognized that, however, it could still be more helpful in its killing methods and security features. So today, I decided to open the floor back up and make some significant changes!

There were two main things I wanted to focus on today: 1) Making it safer (specifically referring to the water system - when it's activated, mobs can simply fall into the water and be at full health), and 2) Re-purposing the lava kill feature. The challenge was not in installing the features - I knew what I wanted and how to incorporate that. The real challenge was in trying to fit these new changes amongst all the other wires without intertwining any of them.

I started with something simple: adding a piston gate higher up when the water system was active. This meant that when you opened the water flow, a gate would prevent mobs from falling all the way down, thus ensuring they still take a bulk of the damage as opposed to none at all:

With all the gates independently active:

The gate I just installed is connected to the water flow gate. You'll also notice that I removed four blocks in the collection chamber. That was done so I could install these:

Prior to now, the lava kill feature had little purpose. It took too long for the lava to flow out, and when it did it just destroyed any potential drops that there could have been. So I decided to squeeze into here and turn it into a completely different feature - a mono-stable circuit that would quickly dispense and collect the lava, giving it just enough time to set the mobs on fire and burn but not sacrificing the potential drops. Additionally, this feature would also beautifully go with the new security gate installed. Since the gate prevents mobs from losing all their hearts, the lava switch can take care of those last few!

Remember the old minecart storage system? Well, now I was using that same space for redstone wires!

I'll try my best to make sense of this mess; just focus on the context of the wires. The monostable circuit that activates the lava for a split second comes from right here:

The repeater on the right going into the block is simultaneously activating a piston beneath that block. This is what creates the swift "activate/de-activate" action that times the dispensing appropriately. Since the repeater on the left is set to three, the wire will remain activated for just three ticks as opposed to remaining activated indefinitely. The output wires all go to the individual dispensers; the wire I'm standing on traverses to the wire you see two pictures above.

The input wire must make its way around this mess:

But alas, no other wires were affected!

The final feature installed was an extension to the security gate. When you close the water flow gate, the security gate opens simultaneously, meaning that the mobs will fall through as normal. But, there is a delay in that the water still takes some time to completely dissipate. This means that there's a small fraction of time where mobs can still fall and take no damage. This is why I've attached a one-tick pulse clock to the four blocks just underneath the dispensers (the ones that activate to turn the farm into an XP farm). Upon turning off the water flow gate, these four blocks will almost immediately extend and retract to remove the water, and that's because of one of these:

When activated, it looks like this:

Did you know repeaters could do that? Because until now, I did not! But the function is simple - the repeater in the back "locks" the output repeater, preventing it from sending a signal. The way it creates a pulse is magnificent - by the deactivation of the signal! Once you turn the lever off (i.e. close the gate), the repeater in the back will deactivate, "unlocking" the output repeater. But so will the input repeater. However, the output repeater will manage to get a one-tick pulse out just before the input signal is deactivated! This is how I achieved this specific feature.

So in one switch, the water gate closes, the security gate opens, and the triggered blocks kill the water faster than it will dissipate on its own. Collectively, this entire process happens in less time than it takes a mob to fall from just the middle of the mob farm fall chamber, which means that it was worth the effort.

Since today was largely a Power Museum-centric session, I wanted to continue that theme by considering some new possible features elsewhere throughout the Power Museum. And so I came up with this:

Just how many things can you spot??

The mob farm storage system can actually be seen now:

What you're seeing is not a bug (I don't think) nor a hack of any kind. I am standing inside of a leaf block surrounding by solid blocks, which is what causes this phenomenon. The Internet calls this an "x-ray scanner" of sorts; I've installed a few of them throughout the Power Museum:

Additionally, I finally completed the aesthetics within the other side of the Powerhouse floor (including the removal of the useless piston door):

Let's see all these features in action!

With most of the technical work completed, it was time to make the Starlight Resources Facility look as good as it works. In this session, I basically focused on everything except the main dome, because that's a project in and of itself. This meant: the entrance from the Starlight, the entrance from the Power Museum, the SRF lobby, and the storage cellars. That's a lot to get through! So let's see some results!

I started with the Starlight entrance, tearing out the birch stairs and instead creating a more antiquated stairwell:

The lighting adjusted to suit the mood:

The top of the staircase, which is a small hallway extending from the drop chamber/exit lift:

The relationship that andesite has with stone brick is one that I take advantage of quite extensively throughout this project. It's even more evident here, as I work on designing the various stairways in the storage cellars:

Speaking of the storage cellars, some leaves were added as ceiling:

^ You'll also notice the intuitive border added around the stairways to help soften the transition between the blocks.

Behold, the beautiful wooden slime viewing borders:

The Diamond Mine entrance, while not aesthetically cohesive, is representative of what mining actually entails: an ambiguous discovery of things that don't always go well together:

Pictured above (from left to right): Power Museum entrance (far left, barely visible), the pumpkin/melon farm, nether wart farm, Starlight entrance, Mob Resources Division, flower farms.

Recall the storage area for all the animal farms? I've stylistically turned that area into the "Mushroom Cove":

2x2 watering hole added per insurance policies!

SRF entrance from the powerhouse room in the Power Museum, pictured above. And below, the other way around:

But remember what's at the bottom of this stairwell from session 176?

...apparently this is a slime chunk as well! Regardless, it was time to design this room into the SRF lobby!

Some coherent colors and a Starlight-esque feel combined with a favorite of mine... slime blocks!

Behold, the Parkour Wall of Fame:

...And a competed lobby!

The vine farm/entry way into the SRF main hub:

Throughout all of the aesthetic renovations done today, I think the most notorious feature here is the Parkour Wall of Fame, which is essentially the SRF equivalent of Techtropolis' Lapis Hall of Fame. The main difference of course is that while the Lapis Hall of Fame documents the major builds added to Starlight HQ, the Parkour Wall of Fame will document the major parkour courses added to the world. Yes, you can consider this a foreshadowing of sorts.

It's hard to see, but so far we have "Totem Run" from October 2014 and "Fall Damage" from August 2015! These have now been removed from the Lapis Hall of Fame because redundancy.

I'd love to hear any feedback you have towards today's big changes! Bear in mind that this is only part 1, as there's still a lot to do. The to-do list is concisely defined as follows:

- Lighting!!

- Main SRF hub/dome

- Did I mention proper lighting?

- The dye storage room! How did I never finish that?

- Slime farm walls

- Two shearing systems in the Sheep Processing Facility and mooshroom farm, respectively

- Auto-sorting chicken farm storage! Overdue, much?

- Oh yeah, no torches anywhere!