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I bustle around putting away (most) of what I have in my inventory and backpack (what's in the airship chest will have to wait until it stops snowing). I quickly realize I made a mistake - I left my traveling food in the Pantheon. I really should have left some here rather than taking it all with me - I haven't needed nearly as much as I thought. I have food here, but it's food providing fewer shanks, so I have to eat more often. Not a problem in the chateau, but I was planning to do at least some exploration to the north in the spring and it could be a problem then.

I could make some more, but I'm disinclined to, because I don't anticipate playing all that much longer in this world. I want to try playing with the Better Forests mod in modern Minecraft, and so I expect I'll probably be finished this world once I'm done with this continent. I have plenty of food already for that; it's just at the Pantheon.

For now I head down to mine the Iron I'll need for more maps.



I'd forgotten these stairs are LONG! Building on a mountain gets nice views, but there's a price to pay in the commute to mining level.

I'd been thinking about hiking off to the north part of the mines to activate the Norman village there but - as I mentioned, this world is on a timer, and I probably won't do anything with the stained glass I might have gotten there. So, instead, I just branch mine next to the smeltery area.



Initially I'm in the Blue Schist of the area, with the usual minor annoyances like this Silverfish. One even manages to hit me once. Embarassing, given the state of my gear.



I hit one cave, and my new more daring self chooses to explore, but it's a tiny little thing.



Then another, and this one's a bit odd - just these two conjoined large chambers. My valor is meaningless; there's no mobs here. Not a lot of exposed ore either.

I realize it's midnight and sleep to speed the end of winter. Should have done that earlier.



Then into a marble zone, also with the standard annoyances. I have a little PTSD from this particular situation, having lost a journal world to accidentally falling in a hole like this and being unable to get out.

Then a Soapstone zone and then:



Ooh, Rhyolite! This is an interesting stone - but I guess it doesn't matter, as I'm unlikely to use it.



As my inventory approaches being full, even with combining coal, redstone, etc. into blocks, I hit this mineshaft. Which new, braver Zeno might take, but I don't have the inventory space. So I head back.

I figure I'm under the jungle and glace at my Atlas, curious how far I've gone.



MUCH farther than I'd thought. I've actually gone past the entire hot zone and, darn it, got snow on the map. I'll have to clean that up sometime next year.

Back in the smeltery area, I put away my haul, including about 90 Iron Ore blocks. That is more than plenty for a couple more maps; I should be done with mining at this point as I don't expect to make any more gear.

I grab another snooze. Almost done with the first month of winter by my estimate.

Now for the hard part - thinking of something to do with the chateau interior decor. I'd been thinking about it for a while, and I'd tossed around ideas like trying to fit in a living room or putting a dining table near the kitchen. But I finally picked another - Bibliocraft custom paintings. Bibliocraft has the ability to make Minecraft paintings out of *any* PNG file, provided it's properly placed in a texture pack.

So, when I found a pac of Van Gogh paintings in Bibliocraft - is that not perfect for the chateau? - I was horrified to discover the paintings loaded as the "missing" texture. So I tried several other downloadable packs - with the same result. The problem is that Minecraft changed the texture pack format between when Bibliocraft introduced the feature and 1.12. So it can't read these old 1.7 version packs. Great.

After some research, I found Biblocraft includes a folder with the correct new format, zipped up within the Bibliocraft mod file (an odd distribution choice, if you ask me). So I unzipped a copy of the mod, pulled it out, put in the pics I wanted, put the folder into the Minecraft Resource folder - and now it didn't see ANYTHING.

Well, maybe it needs to be a zip file? So I zipped up the folder - and still nothing. This, folks, is why people burn out on modding, because so much of it is like this these days - you try one thing after another, and nothing works, and you don't know why, because so much of Minecraft modding these days is getting resource paths exactly right or fiddling with arcane grammar in JSON files. You don't even get an error to fix, just - nothing.

Finally, I found a comment that the problem is that the zip has to contain the *contents* of the resource pack folder - but not the folder itself. And with that, finally, it worked!

So back to the game to use it.

As it turns out, the Painting Press needs a lot of iron, so I will have a use for the 11 doubled to 22 blocks of Iron I got from this mining trip, after all.

I grab some things that don't belong in the smeltery (I'd put them here before I built the chateau, or left them by accident) and haul them upstairs to the chateau.

One of the thing is some eggs, but when I try to put them away I find my cooking ingredients chest is full, and in particular has a lot of eggs.



I fry one stack to Fried Eggs with a Harvestcraft recipe. Guess I'll be doing some cooking this winter after all, just to use up my food ingredients.

Another one of the things was a few vanilla eggs - I should just toss those in the bird pen and hope. I should have done that on the way back up, but I take the opportunity to grab some leftovers in the kitchen and haul them back to the farm. I have developed an organizational system where I leave partial stacks in the farm storage, and only haul them up to the kitchen in groups of 16, because the kitchen storage is pretty full, and I have enough that I only cook recipes in large batches.



Hope is betrayed. No chickens.

I chop down some spruce trees I was farming - I'll need the wood for picture frames. While I'm putting the leftover ingredient bits into the farm storage I notice a peppercorn. Oh, right, pepper! I'd forgotten about that. So I check the trees.



One is fully ripe but this other one - right next to it - has barely started. Weird. All I can think of is that maybe the distance is *just* right so that one was loaded but this one wasn't while I was mining that branch.

Then back up to the roof of the chateau to get what's in the airship chest. I raise it off the ground, dissassemble, pull out the chest contents (mostly sugarcane and paper) attempt to reassemble for parking (so it won't get snow on it) and - f i z z l e -



I guess it was trying to assemble the whole chateau because of a torch underneath (already removed in this pic). But I should have gotten an error message? But that was apparently the problem, because once it's gone, I can indeed reassemble the airship. Done.



Ah, Minecraft sunsets.



I head to the other side of the roof to watch the moonrise. I built this chateau for the views, and by gum I'm going to enjoy them!



Next morning it's time to get started, by making a Bibliocraft Painting Press. Three and a half blocks of Iron! Expensive - but not for me, at this point. I put it against the wall but - hey, I should try to make a nice workstation out of this. I always like functional areas.



Hmm but that doesn't look so good. Well, I'll use it for now until I think of improvements.

Paintings need painting canvases which in the Biblio recipe need white Wool which - of which I don't seem to have any?



I run down to the sheep pen, hurting myself in my haste, thinking I'll need to start emergency white wool collection - but I needn't have worried. I have almost 2 whole stacks in the ranch storage. I just hadn't bothered to bring them up.



So now it's time to start picking pics. An embarrassment of riches, right, with all these multimillion dollar Van Goghs? WAY better than the vanilla pic options (which are, TBF, 15 years old, for computers with notably inferior graphics). But there's also some pictures that don't look like Van Gogh, such as the ones in the upper left and right corners. They almost look like some kind of Minecraft landscape -

Because they are. I loaded the texture pack, along with the Van Goghs, and a few other downloaded pac pics, with the best 50 landscape pics from the first few months of playing this world (I'd pulled them out to choose gallery pics for the RTG mod pages). And although I really want to use some of those Van Goghs, it's those pictures I'm going to start with.

So I make a bunch of painting canvases, and a painting frame, pick one of the sunset pics and



Slap it on the wall.

And that is pretty darn satisfying. It's fancy enough for the chateau, but more to the point, it's really satisfying to have a landscape picture FROM MY OWN MINECRAFT WORLD on the walls of my fancy base.

But - I can do better. This was a test to make sure it worked. Now to get going on framing and sizing.

Next episode - some frustrations, but *even better* wall pictures!

I knew it Bibliocraft *could* do pictures in aspect ratios other than 1:1, although I figured after the first pic came out 1:1 the others would too. I actually prefer it this way, and Bibliocraft has a way to make a 1x2 frame - although that's going to take some work.



I take the 1x1 picture and a 1x1 frame to make a simple bedroom set for my bed upstairs. Then I head back down to start assembling the equipment for a 1x2 frame.

Grahrr.

Oh *^&*, I've got another zombie spawn. I thought I fixed this back in Episode 57.

ee hee hee hee hee

A witch too! Arghh!!



I head down to check the gaps under the floor where I last had the noisy zombie problem. But this time nothing is there.

Hmm, maybe spawning in the attic? I thought I'd fixed that, but maybe???



I check the attic cautiously, crossbow at the ready. But, no, that's clear too.

Then I check the tunnels I dug underneath the chateau the last time I went hunting zombie noises.



Ope, there's the zombie! Goodbye, zombie! How did it spawn, though? Everything seems properly lit.

But there's no witch.

ee hee hee hee hee

Make that no *visible* witch.



I check around in the tunnels, but I can't locate the witch.

ee hee hee hee hee



I start digging new rooms to hunt. The earlier tunnels ended up a maze, so I'm trying to be a bit more systematic. I dig a room roughly where the noise is, then staircase down four blocks, then dig another room, etc. But I'm not finding her and I keep hearing that cursed cackling.

ee hee hee hee hee

I'm so anxious I break my pick from overuse.



Fortunately, for once, the repair kits I ALWAYS carry with me come in useful.

ee hee hee hee hee

But, as I dig down, the noise is actually getting fainter. I'm pretty sure I'm in the right x-z coordinates, because I'm using subtitles, and they show directions. Could she be above me?



I decide to try digging in under the front again. There's a creeper waiting outside, but it's easily crossbowed.



But there was a *second* creeper. And you can see by my misplaced target, I missed it, even at this close range (how embarassing). I back up, but I bump into the wall behind me.

BOOM.

I am actually *completely* unharmed, although there's an impressive dent in the hill. I don't have enough dirt on me to fill it in, so I get more from inside. Sorry, forgot to take pics.

ee hee hee hee hee

Then finally, I start digging right under the chateau, using the directional subtitles to guide me.



I found her! KILL THE WITCH!!!

So how did she spawn?



In a failed stairway to the smeltery, which I gave up on because it came out of the hillside. But I didn't completely fill it in. The problem is a lot like the last one, where I'd left a few blocks unfilled.

Lesson learned: Fill in ALL the blocks underheath a base. Don't be lazy!

And FINALLY I can get back to hanging pictures.

To join picture frames, I need the Bibliocraft screw gun. Which needs Orange Terracotta. Which needs Hardened Clay.



I start the furnace.

It also needs a block of Redstone. Which - I seem not to have in the chateau?



Plenty down in the smeltery - after that long hike, unfortunately. Then I make the Screw Gun. Put two frames on the wall next to each other, screw gun right click the first frame, screw gun right click the second frame, put the landscape back up.



Nice.

The landscapes are working, but now let's start on those Van Goghs! I try one in an undecorated space between two upstairs windows.



1x1 is too small. But Biblio lets you scale pictures. 2x2 would be asymmetric so



3x3 is probably too big. But I'll leave it for now - it *is* a nice pic.

grark grark

Now I hear grunting noises. Sigh.



A zombie pigman in the attic, of course. Spawned by the Nether Portal. Is peace within my own base too much to ask? Evidently, yes.



I put a different Van Gogh on the other side. They are a bit large, but the place does look better.



All these frames are really chewing up my wood supply, so I plant some more Spruce trees. Annoyingly, there's no Spruce forest nearby and I've got to farm for this. I could probably mix in some other woods, but I like the look of the spruce frames.



2x2 frames fit nicely on the west wall.



The east wall has some stuff in some spaces, so I use some 2x1 landscapes there, with the justly famous Starry Night as a centerpiece.

Alright, That's some meaningful progress on upstairs decor. Let's try something different now for variety.

Next episode: maybe I *will* do a dining table.

Initially I try a 3x2 table, but it's far too small for this space, so I upsize to a 6x2.

I decide on a relatively tame color palette for the upholstery. The colors have to be the Minecraft wool colors (they're actually carpets), so I go with grey and green to match the floor.



There are three different things Biblio can do with a carpet and a table - underneath, on top, and as a display item. This is controlled by various combinations of use-clicking and shift-use-clicking on various parts of the table, and I keep getting them wrong.



Even after finally getting it correct I couldn't tell you which is which.



I'm planning a lot of pictures on the walls so I need a lot of Spruce wood.



I'm going to put Bibliocraft Dinner Plates on top of the table, both for looks and for usage - you can eat off them - but they need a fair amount of Nether Quartz to make. For the third time this winter, I have to stomp down to the smeltery because I don't have enough of something upstairs at the chateau.

There certainly is plenty.



I check my seasonal clock - about 60% through winter, although probably about half through my time at the chateau since the first few days were spent coming back from the far southeast corner of the continent.



I use Cactus Green for the chair seats.



When I put the chair backs on they come out a mess of orientations, and I can't figure out how to control it. I know the screw gun can rotate them, but it can also remove the seat color or the chair back. So again, the controls are overloaded, and it takes a while to figure out exactly *how* shift-use-clicking can rotate them (it's clicking on the chair *legs*.)



I head outside near dusk to collect some more spruce for all the painting frames I plan to place in the dining room, and decide I want to use the pepper I spent so much effort looking for, so past sunset I'm harvesting peppercorns and pulling it out of the farm storage. But, I manage to get it done and get back to the chateau before I see any mobs spawn.



The reason: it wasn't actually past sunset, it just *looked* like it was because the sun was behind the giant jungle trees. I'm struck, though at how much nicer this area looks just from adding those two pictures. Probably you folks, who haven't run up here to sleep a hundred times, won't even notice, but for me the impact is visceral - it suddenly feels much more "homey".

I make a row of chairs on the other side of the table, adjust the backs again, and then decide to cook recipes to fill all the plates. I'll want some milk for cooking (it also makes cream, butter, and cheese) but - I've somehow misplaced my spare buckets. Rather than hunt through all the chests to see where I've accidentally put them, I just make 4 more - I have plenty of iron.



Then I start cranking out recipes - starting with Pancakes, which use some of the large supply of eggs I've built up.

Ironically, the pork I was collecting this past game year goes unused - because I left it at the Pantheon. The Pepper - which I'd been planning for a pork dish - ends up in some Coleslaw.

Ironically, after making an effort to use up all those eggs, including egg salad, which uses two eggs per serving, what stops me is a shortage of - eggs. And I end up scrounging in the bird pen and the farm storage to get enough for the Mayo the Cole Slaw needs.



It does look appetizing! It also fits my desire to combine looks and usability, since I can eat off the plates, or use them to refill my lunchbox.



Winter is almost done - I'm in to the last month, with only a few days left. Yes, I'm clockwatching.



Then I put framed Van Goghs in the dining room - resized to 2x2 - between the doors, and 1x2 landscapes above - although one landscape comes out in a 1x1 ratio and ends up in a 2x2 frame.



And some chandeliers - but the map intrudes into the view, and doesn't look right. I can't move it - there's no room.

Maybe I can put in a wall?



Turns out I can just squeeze in a wall without hitting the map. So I start.



But I step into the kitchen and get distracted by a renovation I'm planning *there* - to put all the storage as "cabinets" above the work area.

I also realize I'll want a few more painting canvases, and I've used up all my string (part of the Biblio recipe). So I head down to the farm area, because some of the (many) crops I'm growing are Harvestcraft fiber crops.

I go ahead and harvest everything apart from the wheat, of which I have too much already. I probably don't really need any more food, but what the heck, I've got some time to burn before Winter ends.

I'll also need a little more White Wool, and I do a sheep shearing round as well, since I'm using a lot of cactus green wool, and I'm running low. Doubt I'll need any of the other colors but, again, it's something to do.



Now I go back to finish and decorate the new wall for the dining room. MUCH better, although I could maybe use another painting or two, even though strict symmetry with the other wall is impossible since the interior door (just out of sight on the right) isn't symmetric to the next exterior door.



One sheep has gotten lost and, somehow, stuck at the chateau gate. I free it and lure it back to the pen. Would make more sense just to butcher it and dye another, but I'm feeling softhearted (as usual).



Then I finish the kitchen reno. Not perfect, since chests are too big to pass as cabinets, but I need a lot of storage for all my food supplies and nothing else will do. Still, better than before.

And - still not *quite* spring. What else to tackle? Oh yeah!

Next episode: some landscaping! (finally)

I should have taken a "before" pic. This after most of the leveling, although there's some still left on the right.



Gonna need a lot of spruce leaves for bushes, so I go after the disorganized Spruce tree farm with my Silk Touch pick.



Then I put up some lilacs in bordered beds.

Hmm, could use a little more something.



I put in some bushes, so on each side there is a subordinate symmetry around the lilacs. I also have to knock the hill on the right a bit further back. This is another of those 3D situations - it looks like it wouldn't be *that* much work to clear off the rest of that hill - but it would.

Is it Spring yet? Is it Spring yet?



Evidently not. Pretty sure those distant grasses would turn blazing green if it were. How close, anyway?



Oh Come OOONNNN!

I bustle around readying for the next exploration - making torches, getting map supplies, and filling my lunchboxes. I'm going to take the in-chateau lunchbox as well as the traveling lunchbox - my foods are generally not as filling as the ones I made for travelling, but a double supply should be enough.

I made a couple cheesecakes during the winter and I bring those to enjoy vicariously, as my real-world waistline dictates heavy desserts like that are a *very* exceptional treat.



It's *still* not Spring (I head down to a Plains area next to the river source to check). Looking for something to do, I carve away at the hill to the right of my landscaping. As predicted it's a lot of work since the hill is getting higher in that direction. I spend the rest of the day digging and get about 2 more blocks out.



Next morning I modify some of the first floor door/windows to allow ingress and egress. Initially this was important security, to keep mobs out, but now that the hilltop is secure it's not necessary, and occasionally inconvenient.



And then, finally, the snow starts melting down in the Plains grass down by the river. It's Spring!



So here's the plan for the start of the expedition. I'm going to go west, just north of my current mapping to add a bit, to the coast I reached back in Episode 58 (yowza, 50 Episodes ago!) From there I'll follow the coast north - I'm not sketching that as obviously I have no idea what it will do.



I wait until I'm away from the snow around the chateau to pull out my maps. I notice a few unmapped dots in the upper left corner of the map so I head there first to get them.



A lot of the scenery I pass brings back memories, like this hillside Roofed Forest I struggled with in episode 25.

I map those missing dots in the corner,then cross to the map to the NW to start mapping the outbound leg.



It's mountain here, unsuprising since mountains are the most common reason I stop exploring.



I wiggle back and forth between that map and the one to the south, as I have stuff to map on both sides. I've finally mastered this technique in the poorly maneuverable airship.



It's mountains almost the whole way, and at sunset I'm still over them when I stop the airship to sleep the night.



The next day I finally finish with the mountain and even head out over forest, and then this little Ice Spikes hill I spotted, also in Episode 58.



And then, finally the ocean, and I start to descend for boating.

And that's when the game crashes.

Crashes are a problem with any Minecraft, but it's worse with mods. But it is PARTICULARLY awful when you are an author of one of the mods, and you have to worry about whether you've inflicted the crashes on other people. And even WORSE when you're a worldgen modder and have to worry about your crashes inflicting possibly irreparable damage on somebody else's world.

And I, sadly, fit all these categories.

The crash was from Geographicraft trying to determine the beach for a biome number that doesn't exist in this world. There are a lot of possibilities here. I do a lot of testing and debugging, so I've used many versions of Geo, along with a variety of other mods, and configs for them. It could be the current version that has a bug, or it could be an earlier version, or it could be that I accidentally opened this world with the wrong configs at some point.

So - to the debugmobile!

After several hours, I determine the current version of Geo with the current configs will not generate that bogus biome number. So the bug was in an earlier version and is apparently already fixed. I'm running into it because Geo saves the generated biomes as part of the chunk wall prevention system. To continue, I have to make a mild change so that Geo will use a patch biome rather than crashing on a bogus biome for this operation. Then (after making a backup) I go back to the world.



And promptly plummet into the ocean, leaving the airship far above. This is a problem with Da Vinci ships: sometimes when you load a game in which you're riding a ship, the game doesn't load you as "riding" the vessel properly, and down you go. Sometimes in a boat you end up so low there's no light by the time loading is done. As a matter of protocol, I always stop and disassemble a Da Vinci ship (or airship) if I have to close the world - but I couldn't do that with a crash, obviously.

Fortunately, Da Vinci has a config option where abandoned airships slowly sink to the ground, and I've set it. This is particularly important for airships since you can't see them if they are not close so with a high altitude airship you couldn't even see it to determine where to pillar up.

So I tread water and wait.



And wait. It's a S L O W process.



And wait. It takes two minutes of treading water for the airship to come low enough I can climb back in.

And after that painful misadventure, I'm finally ready to start exploring this coast.

Next episode: The Last Coast