First, I was wrong about desert and heat. The hottest category is almost always desert, regardless of humidity. Dunno why I remembered wrong; probably because I'd planned for humidity to influence desert placement in my own system.
OK, here's my analysis or your pics.
Raw numbers in first screenshot:
Temperature 0.441
Vegetation 0.081.
Continental 0.42.
Erosion 0.163.
Weirdness 0.212
PV (Peaks and Valleys) - 0.365
Continental + Erosion + PV get used to pick a "biome grouping" - Deep Ocean, Ocean, Beach, Middle (common biomes), Plateau, Shattered, or Badlands. Inland (Continental group 3 or more) with moderate Erosion (3 or 4) generally becomes Middle, with some exceptions for coastal (sometimes beach) or max temperature (sometimes plateau badlands) or extreme PV (many possibilities). This area isn't in any of the exceptions, so the biome is picked from the Middle Biomes chart.
This temperature (warm) and humidity (moderate) produce Forest with negative weirdness and Plains with positive weirdness. This is positive, so Plains. The nearby Jungle I don't understand. Presumably it comes from the humidity going up to category 3, which would then be Jungle or Sparse Jungle, depending on weirdness, but with positive weirdness it should be Sparse Jungle. Maybe the weirdness drops a lot too. I notice on the map that rivers are frequently separating Jungle and Sparse Jungle so maybe they indicate where weirdness crosses 0, and there *is* a river there.
The second pic is similar.
The third pic has a noticeably lower humidity value. The Savanna you see would show up for the next lower humidity category, which starts at -0.1
So the pics are in an area of warm temperature (hottest would be desert) but in a steep humidity gradient (from moderately wet = jungle to moderately dry = savanna). So I'd say more like your second analysis map, except that the boundary is further to the right - the Sparse Jungle is definitely warm, and probably at least some of the Forest, certainly at least the part between Savanna and Jungle.
It is roughly similar to an old "hot plains", but not exactly because desert is now in a different temperature category.
I will say, looking at the map, that the complicated generation produces some more naturalistic outcomes. For example, since Forest can be in both warm and medium temps, that forest "covers up" a warm to medium boundary. So "this is warm zone, this is medium zone" isn't so obvious on the map.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
All three of those were from rather similar spots, sorry if that wasn't apparent (the Black X on the map was supposed to represent "approximate area" of all three).
The nearby Jungle I don't understand. Presumably it comes from the humidity going up to category 3, which would then be Jungle or Sparse Jungle, depending on weirdness, but with positive weirdness it should be Sparse Jungle. Maybe the weirdness drops a lot too. I notice on the map that rivers are frequently separating Jungle and Sparse Jungle so maybe they indicate where weirdness crosses 0, and there *is* a river there.
This actually explains a lot based on what I've noticed.
Yes, there always seems to be rivers separating jungles and plains. That plains to the South also has a jungle near it... but it's also separated by a river. I personally like seeing this, but now I'm also somewhat sad knowing it can't (?) happen without a river as the boundary.
I've noticed plains next to sparse jungles (that's happening in that area), but I don't even think I've seen sparse jungle next to jungle, and I'd have expected those two should be allowed next to one another. But looking at the map and thinking of other places I've seen them in this world, even those two always seem separated by a river.
There is a sparse jungle next to a bamboo jungle though, but then I'm guessing has its own rules or something (or just a rare occurrence, or I'm wrong about sparse jungle never bordering jungle without a river between them).
So I'd say more like your second analysis map, except that the boundary is further to the right - the Sparse Jungle is definitely warm, and probably at least some of the Forest, certainly at least the part between Savanna and Jungle.
Oh, I made a mistake in the second picture and this made me notice it.
If you're referring to the sparse jungle in the upper right, I included that in the warm region in the first image. No idea why I missed it in that one.
Or maybe instead you're referring to the entire boundary and guessing the plains to the east are also warm (at least right there)?
But from what I'm getting from this is that there's a lot more to this than I thought. I mean, I sort of knew that, but I had no idea how much. I sort of figured there might be five temperate regions now but I guess it's just four still, and other layers sort of fill in the gaps. On the surface, there did seem to be five main groupings in my mind.
I will say, looking at the map, that the complicated generation produces some more naturalistic outcomes. For example, since Forest can be in both warm and medium temps, that forest "covers up" a warm to medium boundary. So "this is warm zone, this is medium zone" isn't so obvious on the map.
Wait, so even those forests are hot!?
I'm starting to see why I was confused about the plains. I figured some biomes could be in numerous zones, but I sort of figured warm was pretty much just the actual warm ones (jungle, bamboo jungle, mangrove swamp, savannas, etc.). The "hot plains" thing still amazes me since I figured it would be "if hot, and if not vegetated, then savannas instead of plains" but you listing out like a handful of layers tells me there's far more to it. I guess this explains some of the variety I've been seeing.
First I head west with my level 3 base area map, getting more on it so I can use it to describe activity around my base. The scattered brown dots below and behind are the Seljuk village, still not so visible in spite of a lot of buildings. The gray areas in front of me are the Savanna M rock formations. When I reach the west edge, also the west edge fo my level 4 map, I continue on and make a new level 4 map.
I forget, and I mean every time, that you're working with level four maps (I'm constantly exploring with level three maps so it's just what comes to mind by default). What's the purpose of the level three map then if you're still doing all this level 4 charting? If it's as a singular map for your local area, isn't that a bit... big?
Heading south along the new map's east edge I spot this little combination of M biomes: Sunflower Plains and Birch Forest M. I'm starting to feel Birch Forest M needs something distinctive on the ground. Maybe some more flowers?
I already forgot, but what were all the old "M" biomes about? I suppose I might need to know to answer.
When it comes to birch forests in general though, I don't often think of flowers. Not to say they can't or shoul;dn't have any, but when i think of what makes a birch forest unique in its floor and ground level properties is "a floor more covered by grass, sometimes tall, and sometimes smaller vegetation and plants". Emphasis on the sometimes as the non-grass vegetation shouldn't be thick like a jungle. I usually imagine them as "sometimes sparse but possibly quite dense, but even when they're dense, the very thin and tall trees make even dense ones more visible than typical forests".
Pretty much what these images show is what I typically think of. In vanilla, the old growth variety is the closest, so yours with better trees but probably lend will with a ton of grass. I'm not sure if you have bushes or other vegetation it creates but you'd want to be careful to not overdo it.
Basically, where other forests are harder to see through due to thicker trunks and have more exposed dirt on the floor, I imagine them as thinner, easier to see through, and with a lot of grass for the floor.
That Pink stone looks pretty, and offers good contrast to the Grey stone without clashing with it too harshly. I think granite looks alright, but this looks nice too. The way it forms here reminds me of how calcite forms along mountains.
Then a transition to Swamp in late-autumn foliage. I don't know if Serene Seasons can do biome-specific color changes (these are just oak leaves) but the bright maple leaf-y color is odd in a swamp. I'd think a dingy orange or yellow would be better.
This looks gorgeous, but yes, a bit out of place for a swamp.
Before I updated to 1.7, back in the short time i was using OptiFine for 1.6, I was using Forge and a client side mod that changed swamps to be Purple-ish. I thought they looked nice. I even somewhat customized one and named it the "Great Purple Swamp"... even though it hasn't been Purple since 1.6, haha.
I forget, and I mean every time, that you're working with level four maps (I'm constantly exploring with level three maps so it's just what comes to mind by default). What's the purpose of the level three map then if you're still doing all this level 4 charting? If it's as a singular map for your local area, isn't that a bit... big?
Yes, it is big. This came up in Episode 4 when I made the map - Level 0 was too small, and Level 1 and 2 had my base near the edge of the map. So, because of Minecraft map placement rules, I had to go all the way to Level 3 for a map to show my base area.
I already forgot, but what were all the old "M" biomes about? I suppose I might need to know to answer.
It stands for Mutated. One in 29 sub-biome sized areas (I have no idea where they got that number) is a mutated form of the biome. In a number of cases the mutation includes making it more mountainous. This was introduced with the 1.7 changes to try to address the "another forest" problem. It helps, but only marginally.
Pretty much what these images show is what I typically think of [for birch forests]. In vanilla, the old growth variety is the closest, so yours with better trees but probably lend will with a ton of grass. I'm not sure if you have bushes or other vegetation it creates but you'd want to be careful to not overdo it.
OK, I won't go in for a change to the Birch Forest M for now.
That Pink stone looks pretty, and offers good contrast to the Grey stone without clashing with it too harshly. I think granite looks alright, but this looks nice too. The way it forms here reminds me of how calcite forms along mountains.
Underground Biomes does try to make the stone placement at least kind of logical. The original author was fairly knowledgeable about geology.
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Do the mutated biomes still exist? Interesting that I don't think I ever knew that about them. i knew "M" variants were a thing but not what they were. I think I actually used to think they were "mountain" forms due to, as you said, often seeing them with higher terrain, so I thought with 1.18's terrain they might be gone. Now I'm wondered if that radical terrain at spawn in my world, and across the same ocean next to the shore, is part of that, or if that is just exclusive to the "shattered savanna".
OK, I won't go in for a change to the Birch Forest M for now.
I think a heavy grass covering on the ground would give them some variety, since most other forests don't tend to have much if any. It it's possible to have some with it and some without (without making them separate biomes, or maybe that doesn't matter and that's how its accomplished normally?), then you could retain the normal ones if you don't want all birch forests to be heavily covered on the floor. I'm speaking in general of the biome as a whole and not exclusively of the "M" form.
The view from where I get out of the boat is spectacular:
The Jungle has several things I want, on the edge so I don't have to risk going in:
Melon
Pineapple from a Harvestcraft garden
And chocolate (lip smacking noises).
OK, now my inventory is STUFFED. I'm starting to throw away stuff I can manage to do without. It is really time to go home. The direct route, though, is through those Extreme Hills. I do find a lowish pass, fortunately.
Coming to this magnificent vista of a broad mountain valley surrounding by ridges. Maybe even better than the spot in Episode 04? And this is very close to a Jungle, bringing gameplay benefits (some things I can grow better in the Jungle, and it doesn't have winter). Plus the continent extends mostly to the west, and this is west of my starter base, while the other spot is to the east.
I'm on mapping duty now, so I move along the south side of the valley, as far up the hillside as I can go without being inconvenienced by the up and down. Lots of llama here.
On the other side, I find another pass to get out.
And at the bottom of the pass, this pretty little scenic lake.
There's a Roofed Forest in the way of getting home, but there's a river going through, so I decide to boat through on it. This doesn't work as well as I wanted because the river is fairly narrow and I keep bumping the shores. Fortunately nothing takes advantage of the pauses to attack me.
That building is a Millenaire ruin, and often those buildings have some useful loot. But my inventory is already jammed, plus, well, RTG Roofed Forest. So it will wait for later.
I emerge to a view of my Savanna M rock formation. Experiencing this is teaching me the play value of striking and unusual landmarks, and the next time I revise RTG I'll think on ways to get more of them.
On the way home I add some of the terrain north of my base to my level 3 base area map. This is another view of the Birch Forest M + Flower Forest to its northeast.
And here's the current version of the base area map, which now shows all my routine areas. That pic I just showed is of the NE tip of the clearing above and to the right of me. The Chestnut trees and the birds are on the north side of the river I'm on, my crops are around me, the paperbark orchard is the little line of green coming south of my icon, and the lemon and plum trees are in the forested area south of me but this side of the river below.
Here's my explorations from this trip on the max map to my east.
With this last expedition I'm really feeling the need for more travelling storage. I can make a Traveller's Knapsack with the Tinker's mod, so I'm going to aim for that. That has to attach to a Tinker's chestplate, so I'll make one of those. I'm a little ticked at myself for making the Diamond chestplate early, since I'll have to switch to a Tinker's chestplate now. I should have made a Diamond leggings instead, and I can't believe I didn't think of that.
What to make the armor from? The best defense material I can spare is Obsidian (I'm still a bit limited on Diamond), so I decide to use that for the core. Trim will be wood for the autorepair. That leaves the plating, and after checking through the book I pick Bone for a little extra Toughness.
I head over to a lava pool I'd found on one of my branches and start mining. Annoyingly, after I get about 6 blocks, my water just disappears when I try to obsidianize a block of lava I'd uncovered. I grab some Iron I'd uncovered and go back to get more water.
By now dawn is approaching so I go topside just before dawn and sleep to daybreak to look for spiders. I need one more string to make my Traveller's Knapsack.
Not getting it today.
I do some farm chores, and then decide to tackle chopping down the 4-sapling RTG tree I've grown in the yard. I dirtpillar up, chop down from the top, and then
Dang it, missed a spot. So I pillar up again and finish that off.
I end up getting 14 saplings, so totally farmable, and 46 wood. With experience, I wouldn't have to pillar up twice, but even so it's a bit more work than just farming vanilla saplings, although it's tolerable.
Then I fence in part of my yard (finally!) so I can hunt for spiders at night. The fisherman's shack looks cute, but it's inconvenient since I can't fence on the water side. I'm not going to do that start again.
For testing purposes, I plant a 6 oak sapling bunch to see what it's like to chop a larger RTG tree.
Dusk is approaching, so I wait in the yard to hunt spiders.
I get a bunch of zombies, which isn't bad, since I can use Zombie flesh to make Tinker's Pigiron, a slightly improved Iron. But that witch in the background could be trouble.
I Shuriken her with a LOT of shuriken. But she just won't die. Then I realize she's healing herself with potions, and the Shuriken probably doesn't deal damage fast enough to overcome that.
All those Shuriken did knock her back, so I feel safe enough to get a few more zombies, including this Zombie Villager with an enchanted shovel. Only a trophy, since it's Efficiency 2, and I can do better with Tinker's.
Dawn comes and still no spider.
I go back to mining level and get a little more Obsidian and make my new armor. I want to use the Diamond modifier to increase the defense, but this can't be done with the base Tinker's Construct Armor Station. *That* needs some more seared Brick, and I don't have enough, nor do I have any sand to make more Tinker's grout to make the Seared Brick.
So back topside.
Next episode: Change of plans
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I'm surprised that with longer nights, you didn't find any spiders. But I've noticed you seem to get better spawn chances if you run around to various spots, so I often do that if I need a particular something. But you need to increase your risk or make a larger area safe for that approach.
I'm on mapping duty now, so I move along the south side of the valley, as far up the hillside as I can go without being inconvenienced by the up and down. Lots of llama here.
I guess it shows my priorities that this is the first thing I noticed? Llamas are relatively rare with the 1.18+ terrain changes.
Also, seeing that White (and Blue) cobblestone just has me wishing for White stone equivalents of the regular stone and deep slate even more.
Definitely some of them. The "tongue" between the jungle and plains certainly is. Some of the rest might be medium temperature (category 2 of 0 to 4); there's a transition somewhere because Cherry Groves need cool (category 1). It's hard to tell without an F3 because the other conditions for Forest in category 2 are similar to those in category 3.
I'm starting to see why I was confused about the plains. I figured some biomes could be in numerous zones, but I sort of figured warm was pretty much just the actual warm ones (jungle, bamboo jungle, mangrove swamp, savannas, etc.). The "hot plains" thing still amazes me since I figured it would be "if hot, and if not vegetated, then savannas instead of plains" but you listing out like a handful of layers tells me there's far more to it. I guess this explains some of the variety I've been seeing
Forest and Plains can show up in any temperate zone (categories 1,2, and 3). In Warm (category 3) they only show up in Humidity 2; but I'll bet that's the most common humidity category so they are reasonably common there.
But from what I'm getting from this is that there's a lot more to this than I thought. I mean, I sort of knew that, but I had no idea how much. I sort of figured there might be five temperate regions now but I guess it's just four still, and other layers sort of fill in the gaps. On the surface, there did seem to be five main groupings in my mind.
Five is correct; probably the best way to think of them is: Snowy, Cool, Moderate, Warm, Hot. But there are some exceptions, even so; more unusual terrains can override climates, and humidity 4 Snowy is regular (not snowy) Taiga.
Daunting to chop, especially in Hardcore. But it looks cool, and you could use trees like that for a breathtaking avenue. I'm pretty happy with my decision to make the RTG trees growable in any biome, and player-controllable.
I collect some sand out of the river, mix it into Tinker's Grout, bake that to Seared Bricks, and upgrade my Armor station to an Armor Forge.
Then I Diamondize my Obsidian-Bone armor. It actually looks pretty cool, and the stats are nice; a tiny bit more armor than regular Diamond (8.08 rather than 8) and 3.5 toughness rather than 2.0.
Then I extract blood from the Rotten Flesh in the Smeltery and combine it with clay and Iron for PigIron. This will do a half-point more damage than Iron.
Initially I was going to make a Tinker's Rapier, which has a backpedal function, useful vs. Creepers. But it does less damage, with the compensation of ignoring armor. This is useful for PvP but not against most mobs. So I go with a LongSword instead. I got another 1.5 damage from a bone handle. The modifiers I use for Haste, a Tinker's mod that lets it strike faster.
And then back topside for some testing. The new sword does feel nice.
But, again, no spiders.
Well, let's see how bad it is to chop that big tree. I pillar up - only 20 blocks because I don't want to die in a fall.
Which is good, because I *do* fall trying to jump up diagonally. I should know better.
So I do a second pillar to finish the job. It's pretty tedious up there - the larger tree has longer limbs, so I have to clamber out a bit to get the tips.
I didn't count the exact amount of wood I got, but it was about a stack and a half. Definitely not worth the hassle, although a tree like than is still be useful for looks.
We seem to be progressing towards winter, with snow now visible on the birches (but not on the ground). I'm not sure if it's not yet winter, or whether there's never snow on the ground in Plains. If it's still autumn, it's starting to feel long - although I do love the colors. Autumn is my favorite season in real life.
Two nights now hunting spiders and none found. I guess it's time to take a different approach. I'm now inclining to build a base in the mountain valley I found last episode. On reviewing pics, I think the ocean view area of Episode 4 is prettier; but this new one is in the direction I will want to explore - the other is on the east coast, and I know this is the east end of the continent because it's west of 0,0, and Geographicraft looks for start spots starting there and moving out.
I often like to construct multiple bases, and to connect them via long tunnels so I can move between them at night. In my Return to Minecraft journal, I had teleportation from mods, but not here, so I think I'll fall back on that system.
So I'm just going to drill a tunnel at mining level the 1500 blocks or so to where I'd like to put the mountain base.
And it's sunset anyway.
Down we go.
I head over to the Smeltery to make some Tinker's sharpening kits. My idea is to bring a stack of logs to make chests when my inventory clogs up and some sharpening kits to repair my picks when they run out. That way I can just keep going and going.
But then, before I set out, I decide I want to bring a map to track where I am. So I go back topside to get one. While there, I make a spider check.
A spider! A spider! But far off. And with problematic hostiles in the way.
I jump in my bed for a quick snooze so I can tackle this in the day.
In the morning I have to shuriken some local hostiles before I can tackle the spider.
And by the time I get to where I saw it, it's gone. Sniff.
So I go back to mine level and head east.
The mining is uneventful, other than I get enough Lapis to crank my Lucky pick to level 2 for some extra drops. In addition to the Soapstone and Eclogite I've been mining in, I eventually move into the boundary between a Basalt (dark grey with a hint of blue-green) and Red Granite. So now I've got 4 stones to work with.
Rather to my surprise, shortly after making my first chest drop, I've reached the edge of my Level 4 base map. I haven't had to use a sharpening kit even once. I hadn't brought the next map to the east, because I'd expected this would take longer. After a bit of thought, I decide to head back to swap maps. I may be able to do some mapping from beneath.
In my base I hear some eating sounds. That's weird, what mob makes eating sounds? And in my base, even!
It's me! I'm eating my sword! The Tasty trait, from Pigiron, lets you eat part of a tool or armor if you're hungry (becase *pig*iron means BACON Hahahaha ha ha ha well it was funny 10 years ago during the bacon craze). I figured it required some active work, but apparently it's just having the tool in hand. And any amount of hunger will do; even down a half shank, HROWF!
But it's night so may as well do a spider check.
Bingo! Two actually, although you can't see the other in the pic.
I shuriken one to death. But it's a bit far for a nighttime dash, so it's bedtime for Bonzo.
Except I can't sleep. Monsters are nearby. Zombies in the river, by the sound of it.
So I grab my bed, head into the yard, throw it down - and I can sleep! Bizarre, but whatever.
Come morning I have to shuriken a guard to get that oh-so-special string. And then, success! I have the 2 for my Knapsack.
While I'm at it, I get the other spider, and another string.
Evidently it's still Autumn, because my Pumpkins are still growing.
Soon I've got my knapsack, and attach it to my chestplate.
I figure I may as well use this Pigiron I've been making.
So I make some Leggings. After applying some Diamond, they are also slightly better than Iron; overall I'm up to slightly over 18 points of armor.
And once I've got them on, I start hearing occasional munching sounds as I'm apparently compelled to take bites out of my armor. Tasty indeed; it's like having Oreos in the house; no self-control. Each bite seems to consume 5 durability and my armor has almost 500; that's 50 shanks of food even before the autorepair kicks in.
This makes all my carefully planned high-power Harvestcraft food almost - irrelevant. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'll play this way for a while and see what I think.
By now it's night. So I go up to the surface, wait a bit for mobs to spawn, then sleep.
In the morning I check for spiders - nope. So I set off to the west.
I plan to fill in the map area enclosed by current exploration, towards the south of the map.
I go through the Seljuk village on the way. They've continued building, including this fishing shack outside of the original city wall.
You'll notice on the SW corner of my level 4 base map, there's a decent sized scenic lake I plan to boat to get there a little quicker. But evidently I have memory limitations, because while I remembered my bed, I forgot to bring one of my boats - my 3 boats, since this has happened twice before. So, rather annoyed with myself, I make a crafting table and a boat and set out.
But it's fast once I get going, and I'm enjoying the views. Soon I reach the end of the lake, and the east map, and get out to start exploring.
Next episode: new vistas!
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Once on the west map, I'm rewarded with a great vista:
I think I've seen this before, but not from this angle.
I'm going along the south edge of the unexplored territory. Ahead is a small desert I saw but didn't enter the first time on this map. I climb up a hill for a view.
To the north lies the great mountain range where I'm thinking of a base. These mountains are well to the south of my target; I have the mountain range option on in Geographicraft so ranges can stretch well over a thousand blocks.
That pointy mountain isn't a loading artifact; it really looks like that.
Ahead is a small Mesa; so small it doesn't actually have a Mesa.
I can go a little north for the mapping, so I skirt the edge of the mountains.
In the Mesa I find an exposed mineshaft and explore the lit areas. In it I find a cobweb - more string! - and a minecart chest with:
A LOT of fancy food. I don't need it for now, with my edible armor, so I just take the Lapis and Detector Rails.
From the end of the hills I can see a river, which from its placement probably connects up to the river system on this map. It's north of what's optimum for mapping, but boating is fun and fast, so I head over.
The river is really wide, and, as expected, connects up with the rivers I knew about further west.
Once I reach those I have to double back to get the area I missed to the south of the river. I have to go through one of the Roofed Forest M biomes I spotted on my last trip, but I get through without incident.
I sleep under the stars in a forest.
Once done with the southern part, I head north to make a pass along the north side.
That green area northeast of me is the Jungle. I map it as well as I can without going into any dangerously dense parts. I do pretty well, getting everything but two dots.
Once again I spot a hill and climb it for the views.
South of the hill is the river I was boating on earlier, and a large Flower Forest next to it.
North is the Jungle, and a small desert next to it (not the Desert from earlier; this is north of that several hundred blocks.)
These views are possible because Geographicraft's increase sub-biome variety put an Extreme Hills sub-biome here.
Continuing east I descend into a pleasant forest, in Autumnal colors.
Then it become a hillside forest as I climb into the great mountain range.
Where it starts to snow.
That's pretty much the end of me mapping for the year. Maps made now will show snow rather than underlying terrain, and to erase it I'd have to go back - so why go in the first place.
So, now I'm going to look at the area I'm considering building in, and try to pick a good location. As in my Return to Minecraft journal, I'm going to use the winter season for building.
I have to cross a high mountain pass to get to the valley to the north, and take some ouchies on the way down.
But I'm still not in the valley I wanted, so I have to cross another, less problematic pass to get there.
At first i don't recognize it, although this has to be it because I can see the jungle in the distance to the west. But I was going the other way on my first trip and I didn't look back.
But soon I recognize the mountains, even in the deepening snow.
I start hunting around for a location. I figured the valley floor would be good but - not quite right. Plus not close to the Jungle.
From the pass between the Jungle and the mountain valley the mountains are still - not as good as I want. I was rather surprised to find that the RTG Extreme Hills look best from something of an altitude. Because of the short view distances in Minecraft (compared to real life) you have to be close to a mountain to see it and then you are often looking along the more-realistic slope line, reducing the visual impact.
So I climb onto a ridgeline to the north of the pass.
From a shoulder where, with some flattening, I could fit a decent-sized building I can get a view with the full impact of the mountain to the east.
And I'm still fairly close to Jungle. So I think this is where I'll build.
Next Episode: initial plans
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
My updates slow down, and yours speed up. Or maybe yours are the same but they seem more frequent lately. I notice a new chapter but don't immediately read it, and go to the following day or two and now I'm two chapters behind again.
Which is good, because I *do* fall trying to jump up diagonally. I should know better.
Similar fall early in my hardcore world scared me. Brought me down to a heart and a half or maybe two and a half. It's imposingly at a spot where I ended up later deciding to settle. I should build more bridges in my immediately local area, that being one.
I didn't count the exact amount of wood I got, but it was about a stack and a half. Definitely not worth the hassle, although a tree like than is still be useful for looks.
I would have to experience cutting some down to know, but a stack and a half does not sound "not worth it" to me. Maybe it's not as fast as tiny vanilla ones long term but I'd rather have it be more fun. Getting that much in one tree would be plenty and makes it feel far less monotonous, even if it might also be somewhat more tedious.
Again, I would have to try to see. Vanilla large oaks can be mildly annoying (especially older ones which could be larger) but I still didn't mind them too much. I see the world as having way more trees than you'd ever go out and farm, so they might as well look better even if that comes at some cost of efficiency for farming, as long as they were still less monotonous to do, and getting much more from fewer trees would make up for it to an extent.
The most devoted players who want a lot with low effort would likely find a way to trivialize auto farms for them anyway.
But then, before I set out, I decide I want to bring a map to track where I am. So I go back topside to get one. While there, I make a spider check.
A spider! A spider! But far off. And with problematic hostiles in the way.
I jump in my bed for a quick snooze so I can tackle this in the day.
Maybe I'm speaking from being longer in and more comfortable (because I remember how fragile I felt early, where a pair of skeletons almost killed me and made me feel like my world was surely going to end eventually), but I would have just run over there and killed it at my current state where I have full diamond (unenchanted) armor. Especially if I was playing with a higher brightness (maybe it's darker for you than it is for me though; I don't know).
But I'm sort of making this judgment based on your armor, which seems high, but I don't know how high it actually is since you seem to be using a mod system for that, and later pictures don't show you too armored. So maybe you're more at risk than it appears. Or you're just being super cautious, which is never a bad thing in hardcore.
This makes all my carefully planned high-power Harvestcraft food almost - irrelevant. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'll play this way for a while and see what I think.
I'll admit, this part piqued my curiosity. Such a mod or system seems... strange, haha.
This is one reason for some of the additional restrictions my second hardcore world had; specifically, no allowance of villager trading. A few things in particular were trivialized once I got access to a certain few trades and reduced them, and the two most important were arrows and the entire food system. I love having to conserve arrows (I'm down to like nine in my world at the moment) and having to farm for food. Even my cow farm is enough to where I'm not having to farm too often, and my wheat farms plus village hay bails means I'm barely farming that either.
Of course, 1.20.2 changed villager trades but that wasn't yet out when I started (and my world is still in 1.20.1, which means I'm also still dealing with rarer diamonds).
Some might find it annoying but wanting to do something and needing to do other things along the way does keep the game spiced up and from becoming boring. But I admit I treat my hardcore worlds a bit differently my older, longer running non-hardcore worlds, where I'll dig into enchantments, villager trading, and flight for the quality of life benefits they offer.
I have a rough idea of a chateau-style mansion on top of this mountain shoulder. But doing my usual varied build tests would be difficult on this rugged terrain, and I'm being a bit ambitious so it would be especially painful if I put up a roof and don't like it. So I try some facades in a creative copy of the world to make sure I can build something I like and that it can fit on the hill. Then I switch back to my "real" world to lay down the outline on the ground for a guideline.
I put dirt where the windows and doors will be to protect against miscounting. The view is indeed going to be tremendous. This is the view to the south, out of what will be the front.
It turns out my Pig Iron leggings and sword don't provide quite enough food to keep me going indefinitely. If I just rely on them, their durabilities continue to drop, at least if I'm active. So I switch back to my old iron leggings from time to time to let them recover. Harvestcraft will continue to be useful.
On the rear of the chateau I hadn't planned what to do with the windows in my creative build. So I struggle with different layouts, because my plan for the front is for some protruding bays, but the back is a flat wall and the same windows wouldn't work. Eventually I work out a spacing here. This also give the view to the east (from the side) and a sense of the site I'm using.
After I have the outline of the walls, I level the top to get a sense of how much interior space I'll have. On many occasions I've built a nice looking building but it's ended up not quite large enough.
It looks large enough, although maybe not with interior walls. I'd like a bit bigger so I could subdivide the interior, but my creative testing indicates I can't get much bigger without a lot more work. So I'll have to settle for open plan.
Even as it is parts of the ground floor, especially the southwest corner here, are well up in the air from the ground. I check how it would look with vertical supporting walls. Tolerable, although perhaps I'll fill in the hill eventually. That will not be a priority though; it's not bad, just suboptimal.
Now I want to make a staircase down to mining level to prepare to connect up with the Seljuk base. I'm going with a staircase rather than my usual ladder shaft as I know this is north of my other base and I want to combine going down with going south. I start from near the front but quickly break into open air because of the steep hill. That won't do!
I muse for a bit on where to put it. I have a vague idea of a grand staircase in the middle, so I figure I'll place it roughly where that might be, maybe a little back so I can hide it if I can't connect. I'd like to use stone for the stairs but I don't have enough so I resort to wood stairs instead.
Down I go. I'm very rusty mining staircases and it takes a while to get up to speed. I hit a HUGE sand layer, about 5 thick, with Sandstone at the bottom. I don't recall vanilla doing this, is this something Underground Biomes adds now? Or have I forgotten?
Night falls and I'm not quite far enough down to be confident I'm safe from surface mobs, so I chop a tiny alcove and sleep there.
Heading down, I start spawning Silverfish. Good to know this is a Stronghold area, although taking out the Ender Dragon is a super-low priority in this exploration game. At first I'm so surprised I forgot to switch to my sword but after a while I remember. I end up finding about six, which is a pain.
Then I break into a mineshaft. Hoping for string, I dare to explore a bit.
That was a mistake.
I remember to reach for my sword this time, but manage to fatfinger my torch anyway. I try the hit-and-jump-back technique and get in three hits. If I'd actually gotten my sword out I think I'd have killed it.
But after a bit I fail to back up (I'd hit a fencepost support pillar; I don't have eyes in the back of my head.) Fortunately, it's not lethal.
So I block up the mineshaft and continue.
Once at the bottom, I head back up, putting in the stairs. But I hadn't made enough, so I have to make more to finish the job.
Then I start my tunnel to the south. My plan is to make a tunnel south until I've reached the level of the Seljuk base, then go there and tunnel west to hook up.
This is relatively uneventful for a while.
I do hit one cave I try, but it's small and quickly lit up.
Then another round of annoying Silverfish.
Then some lava pools, which I obsidianize as necessary. This one is unusually large.
My inventory does overflow once (I'm carrying a lot of assorted Harvestcraft things I picked up exploring) and I stop to build a double-chest to store the overflow.
Then I transition into Gneiss and - still with the Silverfish? Arrgh.
Right when I get to where I should turn:
A cave. Great. Not a tiny one either, so I end up blocking it off.
Then back to the surface - which is rather a long slog.
Then through the pass I took when I found this place in Episode 12, towards the Seljuk Village.
This time I deal with the Roofed Forest by going around it to the north. This adds a bit to my maps as well.
And soon my Savanna M landmark is guiding me home. I don't quite make it before dark, and bed-plop out in the Plains.
Back home it is definitely winter. I do a last round of harvesting for the season.
I make a couple of meals as my meals chest is getting low on variety. One is Blackberry Cobbler, which I think is delicious RW, but which I realize is a mistake once I start since it cuts too far into my slow-growing sugarcane supply. While I'm doing this it starts snowing.
I take a glance at my home area map.
Argh. I wasn't thinking. It updates to show all the snow on the ground. I can fix it in Spring because I'll be here, but for now I put my maps into storage as I don't want to do this accidentally somewhere I'll have to travel to.
Then I prep for a long tunnelling mission - extra sharpening kits, a full food Lunchbox, and a stack of logs for building storage chests when my inventory overflows.
And I'm off. I estimate I'll have to sharpen my pick twice - it has a durability of over 700, but I've got about 800 blocks to go.
I hit a Greenschist zone - not as useful with the less saturated green UBC has changed to, but still good, and then Dacite, a medium grey stone. I've got a pretty good palette now, with 3 1/2 colored stones - white Marble, Red Granite (more orange-pink but still) and Blueschist, plus the "sort of green" Greenschist. Plus greys in light (Soapstone), medium (Dacite), and dark (Basalt). I have a lot of flexibility now.
I tunnel under a pool, which I can't fill from below, so I have to cut up to pool level and fill it in there. Then continuing I find a "hidden" pool water block and have to climb back up to fill *it*.
With my double-size inventory I actually have to build only one double-chest "drop station". Eventually (this process takes over a full Minecraft day) I reach a Blueschist zone, which is good, because that's what's in the tunnel from the mountain base area. Oooh, diamonds!
And right around where I should reach the other tunnel I break into a big messy cave. I figure this is the one I hit at the end of tunneling from the mountain base and I'm right - I find my block. With part of the cave already blocked off I manage to light up the rest. And I'm ready to connect!
Next episode: Exploitation
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
In my first hardcore world, I was digging in the cavern opening right behind my house that goes down into mountain, and I started getting swarmed by them. That reminded how many there can be in normal encounters.
I thought the stronghold ones were only in the cobblestone or bricks but maybe I'm wrong? If there is a stronghold there, I would have expected you have noticed it?
I've always seen people think there was a stronghold nearby because they encountered silverfish but there is no connection between the infested stone that generates as ores and strongholds, at least in vanilla (checks Wiki to make sure this didn't change recently, nope. It is important to note that strongholds only have infested blocks in place of stone bricks in their walls, not generated in the ground nearby).
One thing that did change in newer versions is that there is twice as much as there used to be, 14 instead of 7 deposits per chunk, and while the range was doubled they can cluster within a smaller part of that range (this reminds me of how the amount of coal I collect, relative to iron, varies quite a bit from session to session, likely because on average only half the deposits will be placed in the lower 64 layers, which at the extremes can have twice the average or nothing (1 in 1 million chance of each as there are 20 deposits per chunk). Of course, there may also be regional variations due to RNG seeding resulting in correlation from chunk to chunk, as there is only a small change in the chunk coordinates and the RNG algorithm is just a simple manipulation of bits, From 1.13-1.17 it was so bad you could even quite reliably dig down from a clay patch and hit diamond ore (this is because 1.13 gives each feature its own "chunk seed" and they are very similar, e.g. 1, 2, 3, or some "hash" of that number).
To give an idea of what I'm thinking about for this base, here's the facade of my creative test build:
As you can see, I'm trying lots of different ideas for colors and window designs. What I'm currently leaning to isn't on this: I'm thinking of a light grey (Soapstone) structural element with white (Marble) walls (like in the lower right) but with a stair-topped window (like in the lower left) but in Eclogite (like in the top left). Got it?
Originally I'd planned a light grey base in general (as in most of the build) because I already have a lot of Soapstone. But I considered Marble (white) when I saw how much marble I was digging up in the tunnels. I'm not sure whether I prefer all-white (like in the upper left) or mixed (like in the lower right) but I decided don't like the all-white enough to waste my existing Soapstone.
Now I continue on to the mountain base, collecting resources I hadn't been mining because I was in a hurry and inventory-jammed earlier. There is a LOT of coal. By the time I'm done, including what I'd mined tunneling over from the Seljuk base, I have an entire stack of Coal *blocks*, plus several more stacks of regular Coal.
I'm leaving Redstone, though. I have enough, and my level is high - I'll save it to recover my level if I need to.
I want to build a smeltery here. I look at the various lava pools and end up picking the one closest to the base. It's not the largest, but from my experience in my last journal, it's large enough. The area to my left is where it will go.
I consider moving my old Smeltery but decide I might want one there at times. So I need supplies - gravel, sand, and clay.
Gravel I get from a deposit on the way from the future Smeltery to the future Chateau. It looked small, but turned out to be huge; two overlapping ones from the looks of it.
You'll note it's day; I should have been outside getting clay because I can get gravel and sand inside at night. It's noon by the time I'm done so I quickly start up the furnaces to roast cobblestone and dash outside to get some clay.
Fortunately this river (from where I first saw this mountain) is right there so I dash down and start hunting clay, with an eye out for that dangerously close Jungle.
For a while I don't find much. But as I continue down the river, I start finding more.
I end up going down to a lake a ways down the river and spot a huge collection of lamprey. I kill some from shore, but just can't get them all, and don't feel like getting in with so many. More keep swimming up, too!
Then it starts raining/snowing, depending on the biome, and I decide to pack it in. It's getting a bit late anyway.
And then finally sand from that massive deposit on the staircase. I'm not entirely sure it's safe, so I'm watching the stairs as I do this. No troubles, though.
With all the materials collected, I mix up my Grout and throw it into my bank of furnace to roast to Seared Bricks.
Impatiently I grab bricks as they come out of the furnace to start building the Smeltery. But I quickly realize this is a waste of time.
So I run a mine branch into a Marble area to get more marble for my chateau. Ooh, diamonds!
Come morning I head out to get some more clay. I'm not sure I need more, but I always seem to run short of Seared Brick, and it's nice to have anyway.
Quite a few sheep in the Jungle, so I'll be able to farm wool for carpeting and such.
I spend most of the day collecting clay from deeper waters I'd been ignoring earlier.
I find a Harvestcraft garden with Rice, which is a useful ingredient for a long list of recipes.
Also a nasty vanilla lighting bug. I figured out how the vanilla lighting bug works; if you have an opaque block it "notices" that the block immediately underneath can get lighting from the side but not the ones further down. So they are lit only by that first block underneath the opaque black and get darker and darker going down. It can't possibly be that difficult to fix.
I also find some Ginger, also a useful ingredient.
When I get back my bricks are done, so I build my Smeltery. But after two rounds of not making enough brick, this time I made extra. So I put on a third layer, which will increase capacity. In the process some of the Blue Schist I have to mine out to make room fall into the Smeltery, and to my surprise it melts them. Each turns into an *ingot* (not block) of Seared Stone, which can be used much like Seared Brick. I could use this to build an absolutely massive smeltery, and I probably will.
And with all this done, I start using the Smeltery for Iron processing, and for making extra Sharpening Kits.
Then I walk through the tunnel back to the Seljuk base to get my Soapstone and Eclogite for construction. It takes a long time, about 5 minutes. Maybe I'll just use airships instead. But right now airships have a problem; I'm always one keypress away from an accidental dismount and fall, easily fatal at present. Not a good idea to play with a key labeled "DEATH!" on my keyboard. If I can find some slimes, I can make bouncy boots and have a solution.
I make some extra meals to bring along so I won't have to walk all the way back every time I need to refill my lunchbox.
A dash out to breed cows before dusk and:
Hey, what are YOU doing here? (Whack, whack) Duskspawning or rainspawning (or maybe duskrainspawning; haven't seen anything with either alone) in the RTG forest I guess. It's pretty safe but evidently not *totally* safe.
I'm planning a farm in the Jungle area so I check through my various Harvestcraft seeds to see which grow best in Swamp/Jungle rather than Forest/Plains. Disappointingly, almost none. And I expect Quinoa to prefer Extreme Hills (it's a high altitude plant) but it's Forest/Plains too. I *do* find that I'd put almost a stack of sugarcane in the seed chest so actually I *can* afford the sugar for the Blackberry Cobbler.
I have a seed chest outside and a couple of zombies come up while I'm looking through it. I was hoping for spiders, but I don't get any.
And then back though the connection to my Smeltery area in the mountain soon-to-be-base. This is a long walk! I suppose Ice Boats are a possibilty, but that would be a lot of work. I think I'll figure out a way to use airships.
Embarassingly, when I get there I realize I hadn't brought a nice hoe. And then I realize it's because I hadn't *made* a nice hoe. But I don't really need one; it's possible to make a combined axe/hoe in Tinker's but it's kind of complicated so I just make a crude stone hoe.
Next episode: A simple farming plan goes very awry.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I like what you chose for the colors of the house, but I think using the light Brown/tan stone somehow would be nice too. Since it seems to be a temperate/cold area, the base colors work well, but some sort of contrasting trim would give it some variety too. I think being entirely neutral/cold colors would blend in a little too well.
How far into Winter is it? Something I noticed is that besides one image, very few appear to look like they have much snow. I always wonder how seasons in Minecraft would truly work. Due to stuff not updating outside active chunks, I can only imagine how winter might be bare at times and how the middle of summer might have you encountering bits of snow. I wonder if this is a reason seasons haven't happened yet and they just stick to temperature zones; it might simply work better that way. Getting seasons working gracefully seems like it might have too many challenges?
If by "light tan" you mean the window treatment in the lower right, it's actually an orange-pink and I think would be too loud for a base. I think the light grey Soapstone I'm using for the frame contrasts well enough with the white marble. I agree a tan would be a good color, but I don't have one right now. One does exist (Quarzite) but I actually enjoy the challenge of working with the stone types I have.
The creative build is in Summer since I restarted the world for that rather than cheated/copied, so no snow. In Extreme Hills, snow starts falling in early or mid fall, not sure which, although it doesn't actually fall until there's precipitation, which is why it's not been snowy earlier - I just hadn't been there when it was precipitating.
Yes, Serene Seasons does create problems with out-of-season chunks and maps, which is why I like to stay home in winter - not spreading snow around. You could fix the summer snow problem by recording the season a chunk was unloaded in and updating snow if it gets re-loaded in a snow-free season. The reverse for creating snow would work, although it would create chunked boundaries if there were adjacent areas that had aged into a snow season and just not gotten rained on. Maps are more of a headache: I can't think of a really good solution (ignoring snow doesn't work for mountains). Maybe ignore snow if it would melt in summer, or maybe late spring? But yeah, it creates some unprofessional-looking problems as a cost for play interest and pretty pictures (especially in fall) and that's the kind of tradeoff which is OK for a mod but not for the base game. Honestly, I thought about a season mod long ago (because a lot of people thought Climate Control would do that, one of the reasons I changed the name) and thought even what Serene Seasons does would be too hard.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Yeah, things like that seem like they would create real concerns if seasons were added to the base game, but it's not something I see people mention much when the subject comes up.
And yes, I think the two primary colors chosen (Grey and White) work well, but I was thinking something other then yet another dark and cold looking color would be good as a tertiary trim/accent color. The Tan was an example merely because you provided it as one of your test considerations, but something else could work. I think it would work though since it's a warm and earth tone color, so I felt like it would contrast without conflicting, so that's why I suggested it.
To use an example of my own, I used mud stone and mud bricks in a plains village. I felt this worked because the bricks are an earth tone, and with the Pink trees nearby, the Red gives a matching accent that contrasts a bit, but not enough to conflict with the overall scene. And then the Black deep slate stones tend to fit better with both than the Grey stones I think.
I tend to try and put thought into color palettes more when i decide on builds, especially with more blocks and colors being available, but we're still pretty limited (which might be why you see me using similar ones repeatedly at times). More White stone variety (and maybe wood?) is a big one we're still lacking, and as a neutral color it would go a long way to be added. You seem like you have more to work with because of the modded content, though.
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Curse PremiumFirst, I was wrong about desert and heat. The hottest category is almost always desert, regardless of humidity. Dunno why I remembered wrong; probably because I'd planned for humidity to influence desert placement in my own system.
OK, here's my analysis or your pics.
Raw numbers in first screenshot:
Temperature 0.441
Vegetation 0.081.
Continental 0.42.
Erosion 0.163.
Weirdness 0.212
PV (Peaks and Valleys) - 0.365
These are used to pick categories:
Temperature 3 (of 0-4) "warm"
Vegetation 2, almost 3 (of 0-4) "moderate"
Continental 6 (of 0-6) "deep inland"
Erosion 4 (of 0-6)
Weirdness above 0
PV 2 (of 0-4) ("mid slice")
Continental + Erosion + PV get used to pick a "biome grouping" - Deep Ocean, Ocean, Beach, Middle (common biomes), Plateau, Shattered, or Badlands. Inland (Continental group 3 or more) with moderate Erosion (3 or 4) generally becomes Middle, with some exceptions for coastal (sometimes beach) or max temperature (sometimes plateau badlands) or extreme PV (many possibilities). This area isn't in any of the exceptions, so the biome is picked from the Middle Biomes chart.
This temperature (warm) and humidity (moderate) produce Forest with negative weirdness and Plains with positive weirdness. This is positive, so Plains. The nearby Jungle I don't understand. Presumably it comes from the humidity going up to category 3, which would then be Jungle or Sparse Jungle, depending on weirdness, but with positive weirdness it should be Sparse Jungle. Maybe the weirdness drops a lot too. I notice on the map that rivers are frequently separating Jungle and Sparse Jungle so maybe they indicate where weirdness crosses 0, and there *is* a river there.
The second pic is similar.
The third pic has a noticeably lower humidity value. The Savanna you see would show up for the next lower humidity category, which starts at -0.1
So the pics are in an area of warm temperature (hottest would be desert) but in a steep humidity gradient (from moderately wet = jungle to moderately dry = savanna). So I'd say more like your second analysis map, except that the boundary is further to the right - the Sparse Jungle is definitely warm, and probably at least some of the Forest, certainly at least the part between Savanna and Jungle.
It is roughly similar to an old "hot plains", but not exactly because desert is now in a different temperature category.
I will say, looking at the map, that the complicated generation produces some more naturalistic outcomes. For example, since Forest can be in both warm and medium temps, that forest "covers up" a warm to medium boundary. So "this is warm zone, this is medium zone" isn't so obvious on the map.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
All three of those were from rather similar spots, sorry if that wasn't apparent (the Black X on the map was supposed to represent "approximate area" of all three).
This actually explains a lot based on what I've noticed.
Yes, there always seems to be rivers separating jungles and plains. That plains to the South also has a jungle near it... but it's also separated by a river. I personally like seeing this, but now I'm also somewhat sad knowing it can't (?) happen without a river as the boundary.
I've noticed plains next to sparse jungles (that's happening in that area), but I don't even think I've seen sparse jungle next to jungle, and I'd have expected those two should be allowed next to one another. But looking at the map and thinking of other places I've seen them in this world, even those two always seem separated by a river.
There is a sparse jungle next to a bamboo jungle though, but then I'm guessing has its own rules or something (or just a rare occurrence, or I'm wrong about sparse jungle never bordering jungle without a river between them).
Oh, I made a mistake in the second picture and this made me notice it.
If you're referring to the sparse jungle in the upper right, I included that in the warm region in the first image. No idea why I missed it in that one.
Or maybe instead you're referring to the entire boundary and guessing the plains to the east are also warm (at least right there)?
But from what I'm getting from this is that there's a lot more to this than I thought. I mean, I sort of knew that, but I had no idea how much. I sort of figured there might be five temperate regions now but I guess it's just four still, and other layers sort of fill in the gaps. On the surface, there did seem to be five main groupings in my mind.
Wait, so even those forests are hot!?
I'm starting to see why I was confused about the plains. I figured some biomes could be in numerous zones, but I sort of figured warm was pretty much just the actual warm ones (jungle, bamboo jungle, mangrove swamp, savannas, etc.). The "hot plains" thing still amazes me since I figured it would be "if hot, and if not vegetated, then savannas instead of plains" but you listing out like a handful of layers tells me there's far more to it. I guess this explains some of the variety I've been seeing.
I forget, and I mean every time, that you're working with level four maps (I'm constantly exploring with level three maps so it's just what comes to mind by default). What's the purpose of the level three map then if you're still doing all this level 4 charting? If it's as a singular map for your local area, isn't that a bit... big?
I already forgot, but what were all the old "M" biomes about? I suppose I might need to know to answer.
When it comes to birch forests in general though, I don't often think of flowers. Not to say they can't or shoul;dn't have any, but when i think of what makes a birch forest unique in its floor and ground level properties is "a floor more covered by grass, sometimes tall, and sometimes smaller vegetation and plants". Emphasis on the sometimes as the non-grass vegetation shouldn't be thick like a jungle. I usually imagine them as "sometimes sparse but possibly quite dense, but even when they're dense, the very thin and tall trees make even dense ones more visible than typical forests".
Pretty much what these images show is what I typically think of. In vanilla, the old growth variety is the closest, so yours with better trees but probably lend will with a ton of grass. I'm not sure if you have bushes or other vegetation it creates but you'd want to be careful to not overdo it.
https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/spring-in-the-birch-grove-gm1235367947-362349429
Basically, where other forests are harder to see through due to thicker trunks and have more exposed dirt on the floor, I imagine them as thinner, easier to see through, and with a lot of grass for the floor.
That Pink stone looks pretty, and offers good contrast to the Grey stone without clashing with it too harshly. I think granite looks alright, but this looks nice too. The way it forms here reminds me of how calcite forms along mountains.
This has actually come to a boiling point with me and influenced something I'm going to do shortly in my world.
This looks gorgeous, but yes, a bit out of place for a swamp.
Before I updated to 1.7, back in the short time i was using OptiFine for 1.6, I was using Forge and a client side mod that changed swamps to be Purple-ish. I thought they looked nice. I even somewhat customized one and named it the "Great Purple Swamp"... even though it hasn't been Purple since 1.6, haha.
I want to say something, but can't. But know that I want to.
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Curse PremiumYes, it is big. This came up in Episode 4 when I made the map - Level 0 was too small, and Level 1 and 2 had my base near the edge of the map. So, because of Minecraft map placement rules, I had to go all the way to Level 3 for a map to show my base area.
It stands for Mutated. One in 29 sub-biome sized areas (I have no idea where they got that number) is a mutated form of the biome. In a number of cases the mutation includes making it more mountainous. This was introduced with the 1.7 changes to try to address the "another forest" problem. It helps, but only marginally.
OK, I won't go in for a change to the Birch Forest M for now.
Underground Biomes does try to make the stone placement at least kind of logical. The original author was fairly knowledgeable about geology.
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Do the mutated biomes still exist? Interesting that I don't think I ever knew that about them. i knew "M" variants were a thing but not what they were. I think I actually used to think they were "mountain" forms due to, as you said, often seeing them with higher terrain, so I thought with 1.18's terrain they might be gone. Now I'm wondered if that radical terrain at spawn in my world, and across the same ocean next to the shore, is part of that, or if that is just exclusive to the "shattered savanna".
I think a heavy grass covering on the ground would give them some variety, since most other forests don't tend to have much if any. It it's possible to have some with it and some without (without making them separate biomes, or maybe that doesn't matter and that's how its accomplished normally?), then you could retain the normal ones if you don't want all birch forests to be heavily covered on the floor. I'm speaking in general of the biome as a whole and not exclusively of the "M" form.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 12: Monumental Mountain Meaning
The view from where I get out of the boat is spectacular:
The Jungle has several things I want, on the edge so I don't have to risk going in:
Melon
Pineapple from a Harvestcraft garden
And chocolate (lip smacking noises).
OK, now my inventory is STUFFED. I'm starting to throw away stuff I can manage to do without. It is really time to go home. The direct route, though, is through those Extreme Hills. I do find a lowish pass, fortunately.
Coming to this magnificent vista of a broad mountain valley surrounding by ridges. Maybe even better than the spot in Episode 04? And this is very close to a Jungle, bringing gameplay benefits (some things I can grow better in the Jungle, and it doesn't have winter). Plus the continent extends mostly to the west, and this is west of my starter base, while the other spot is to the east.
I'm on mapping duty now, so I move along the south side of the valley, as far up the hillside as I can go without being inconvenienced by the up and down. Lots of llama here.
On the other side, I find another pass to get out.
And at the bottom of the pass, this pretty little scenic lake.
There's a Roofed Forest in the way of getting home, but there's a river going through, so I decide to boat through on it. This doesn't work as well as I wanted because the river is fairly narrow and I keep bumping the shores. Fortunately nothing takes advantage of the pauses to attack me.
That building is a Millenaire ruin, and often those buildings have some useful loot. But my inventory is already jammed, plus, well, RTG Roofed Forest. So it will wait for later.
I emerge to a view of my Savanna M rock formation. Experiencing this is teaching me the play value of striking and unusual landmarks, and the next time I revise RTG I'll think on ways to get more of them.
On the way home I add some of the terrain north of my base to my level 3 base area map. This is another view of the Birch Forest M + Flower Forest to its northeast.
And here's the current version of the base area map, which now shows all my routine areas. That pic I just showed is of the NE tip of the clearing above and to the right of me. The Chestnut trees and the birds are on the north side of the river I'm on, my crops are around me, the paperbark orchard is the little line of green coming south of my icon, and the lemon and plum trees are in the forested area south of me but this side of the river below.
Here's my explorations from this trip on the max map to my east.
With this last expedition I'm really feeling the need for more travelling storage. I can make a Traveller's Knapsack with the Tinker's mod, so I'm going to aim for that. That has to attach to a Tinker's chestplate, so I'll make one of those. I'm a little ticked at myself for making the Diamond chestplate early, since I'll have to switch to a Tinker's chestplate now. I should have made a Diamond leggings instead, and I can't believe I didn't think of that.
What to make the armor from? The best defense material I can spare is Obsidian (I'm still a bit limited on Diamond), so I decide to use that for the core. Trim will be wood for the autorepair. That leaves the plating, and after checking through the book I pick Bone for a little extra Toughness.
I head over to a lava pool I'd found on one of my branches and start mining. Annoyingly, after I get about 6 blocks, my water just disappears when I try to obsidianize a block of lava I'd uncovered. I grab some Iron I'd uncovered and go back to get more water.
By now dawn is approaching so I go topside just before dawn and sleep to daybreak to look for spiders. I need one more string to make my Traveller's Knapsack.
Not getting it today.
I do some farm chores, and then decide to tackle chopping down the 4-sapling RTG tree I've grown in the yard. I dirtpillar up, chop down from the top, and then
Dang it, missed a spot. So I pillar up again and finish that off.
I end up getting 14 saplings, so totally farmable, and 46 wood. With experience, I wouldn't have to pillar up twice, but even so it's a bit more work than just farming vanilla saplings, although it's tolerable.
Then I fence in part of my yard (finally!) so I can hunt for spiders at night. The fisherman's shack looks cute, but it's inconvenient since I can't fence on the water side. I'm not going to do that start again.
For testing purposes, I plant a 6 oak sapling bunch to see what it's like to chop a larger RTG tree.
Dusk is approaching, so I wait in the yard to hunt spiders.
I get a bunch of zombies, which isn't bad, since I can use Zombie flesh to make Tinker's Pigiron, a slightly improved Iron. But that witch in the background could be trouble.
I Shuriken her with a LOT of shuriken. But she just won't die. Then I realize she's healing herself with potions, and the Shuriken probably doesn't deal damage fast enough to overcome that.
All those Shuriken did knock her back, so I feel safe enough to get a few more zombies, including this Zombie Villager with an enchanted shovel. Only a trophy, since it's Efficiency 2, and I can do better with Tinker's.
Dawn comes and still no spider.
I go back to mining level and get a little more Obsidian and make my new armor. I want to use the Diamond modifier to increase the defense, but this can't be done with the base Tinker's Construct Armor Station. *That* needs some more seared Brick, and I don't have enough, nor do I have any sand to make more Tinker's grout to make the Seared Brick.
So back topside.
Next episode: Change of plans
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I'm surprised that with longer nights, you didn't find any spiders. But I've noticed you seem to get better spawn chances if you run around to various spots, so I often do that if I need a particular something. But you need to increase your risk or make a larger area safe for that approach.
I guess it shows my priorities that this is the first thing I noticed? Llamas are relatively rare with the 1.18+ terrain changes.
Also, seeing that White (and Blue) cobblestone just has me wishing for White stone equivalents of the regular stone and deep slate even more.
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Curse PremiumDefinitely some of them. The "tongue" between the jungle and plains certainly is. Some of the rest might be medium temperature (category 2 of 0 to 4); there's a transition somewhere because Cherry Groves need cool (category 1). It's hard to tell without an F3 because the other conditions for Forest in category 2 are similar to those in category 3.
Forest and Plains can show up in any temperate zone (categories 1,2, and 3). In Warm (category 3) they only show up in Humidity 2; but I'll bet that's the most common humidity category so they are reasonably common there.
Five is correct; probably the best way to think of them is: Snowy, Cool, Moderate, Warm, Hot. But there are some exceptions, even so; more unusual terrains can override climates, and humidity 4 Snowy is regular (not snowy) Taiga.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 13: Chopping, Chipping, and Chewing
Topside I find my 6-sapling RTG tree has grown:
Daunting to chop, especially in Hardcore. But it looks cool, and you could use trees like that for a breathtaking avenue. I'm pretty happy with my decision to make the RTG trees growable in any biome, and player-controllable.
I collect some sand out of the river, mix it into Tinker's Grout, bake that to Seared Bricks, and upgrade my Armor station to an Armor Forge.
Then I Diamondize my Obsidian-Bone armor. It actually looks pretty cool, and the stats are nice; a tiny bit more armor than regular Diamond (8.08 rather than 8) and 3.5 toughness rather than 2.0.
Then I extract blood from the Rotten Flesh in the Smeltery and combine it with clay and Iron for PigIron. This will do a half-point more damage than Iron.
Initially I was going to make a Tinker's Rapier, which has a backpedal function, useful vs. Creepers. But it does less damage, with the compensation of ignoring armor. This is useful for PvP but not against most mobs. So I go with a LongSword instead. I got another 1.5 damage from a bone handle. The modifiers I use for Haste, a Tinker's mod that lets it strike faster.
And then back topside for some testing. The new sword does feel nice.
But, again, no spiders.
Well, let's see how bad it is to chop that big tree. I pillar up - only 20 blocks because I don't want to die in a fall.
Which is good, because I *do* fall trying to jump up diagonally. I should know better.
So I do a second pillar to finish the job. It's pretty tedious up there - the larger tree has longer limbs, so I have to clamber out a bit to get the tips.
I didn't count the exact amount of wood I got, but it was about a stack and a half. Definitely not worth the hassle, although a tree like than is still be useful for looks.
We seem to be progressing towards winter, with snow now visible on the birches (but not on the ground). I'm not sure if it's not yet winter, or whether there's never snow on the ground in Plains. If it's still autumn, it's starting to feel long - although I do love the colors. Autumn is my favorite season in real life.
Two nights now hunting spiders and none found. I guess it's time to take a different approach. I'm now inclining to build a base in the mountain valley I found last episode. On reviewing pics, I think the ocean view area of Episode 4 is prettier; but this new one is in the direction I will want to explore - the other is on the east coast, and I know this is the east end of the continent because it's west of 0,0, and Geographicraft looks for start spots starting there and moving out.
I often like to construct multiple bases, and to connect them via long tunnels so I can move between them at night. In my Return to Minecraft journal, I had teleportation from mods, but not here, so I think I'll fall back on that system.
So I'm just going to drill a tunnel at mining level the 1500 blocks or so to where I'd like to put the mountain base.
And it's sunset anyway.
Down we go.
I head over to the Smeltery to make some Tinker's sharpening kits. My idea is to bring a stack of logs to make chests when my inventory clogs up and some sharpening kits to repair my picks when they run out. That way I can just keep going and going.
But then, before I set out, I decide I want to bring a map to track where I am. So I go back topside to get one. While there, I make a spider check.
A spider! A spider! But far off. And with problematic hostiles in the way.
I jump in my bed for a quick snooze so I can tackle this in the day.
In the morning I have to shuriken some local hostiles before I can tackle the spider.
And by the time I get to where I saw it, it's gone. Sniff.
So I go back to mine level and head east.
The mining is uneventful, other than I get enough Lapis to crank my Lucky pick to level 2 for some extra drops. In addition to the Soapstone and Eclogite I've been mining in, I eventually move into the boundary between a Basalt (dark grey with a hint of blue-green) and Red Granite. So now I've got 4 stones to work with.
Rather to my surprise, shortly after making my first chest drop, I've reached the edge of my Level 4 base map. I haven't had to use a sharpening kit even once. I hadn't brought the next map to the east, because I'd expected this would take longer. After a bit of thought, I decide to head back to swap maps. I may be able to do some mapping from beneath.
In my base I hear some eating sounds. That's weird, what mob makes eating sounds? And in my base, even!
It's me! I'm eating my sword! The Tasty trait, from Pigiron, lets you eat part of a tool or armor if you're hungry (becase *pig*iron means BACON Hahahaha ha ha ha well it was funny 10 years ago during the bacon craze). I figured it required some active work, but apparently it's just having the tool in hand. And any amount of hunger will do; even down a half shank, HROWF!
But it's night so may as well do a spider check.
Bingo! Two actually, although you can't see the other in the pic.
I shuriken one to death. But it's a bit far for a nighttime dash, so it's bedtime for Bonzo.
Except I can't sleep. Monsters are nearby. Zombies in the river, by the sound of it.
So I grab my bed, head into the yard, throw it down - and I can sleep! Bizarre, but whatever.
Come morning I have to shuriken a guard to get that oh-so-special string. And then, success! I have the 2 for my Knapsack.
While I'm at it, I get the other spider, and another string.
Evidently it's still Autumn, because my Pumpkins are still growing.
Soon I've got my knapsack, and attach it to my chestplate.
I figure I may as well use this Pigiron I've been making.
So I make some Leggings. After applying some Diamond, they are also slightly better than Iron; overall I'm up to slightly over 18 points of armor.
And once I've got them on, I start hearing occasional munching sounds as I'm apparently compelled to take bites out of my armor. Tasty indeed; it's like having Oreos in the house; no self-control. Each bite seems to consume 5 durability and my armor has almost 500; that's 50 shanks of food even before the autorepair kicks in.
This makes all my carefully planned high-power Harvestcraft food almost - irrelevant. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'll play this way for a while and see what I think.
By now it's night. So I go up to the surface, wait a bit for mobs to spawn, then sleep.
In the morning I check for spiders - nope. So I set off to the west.
I plan to fill in the map area enclosed by current exploration, towards the south of the map.
I go through the Seljuk village on the way. They've continued building, including this fishing shack outside of the original city wall.
You'll notice on the SW corner of my level 4 base map, there's a decent sized scenic lake I plan to boat to get there a little quicker. But evidently I have memory limitations, because while I remembered my bed, I forgot to bring one of my boats - my 3 boats, since this has happened twice before. So, rather annoyed with myself, I make a crafting table and a boat and set out.
But it's fast once I get going, and I'm enjoying the views. Soon I reach the end of the lake, and the east map, and get out to start exploring.
Next episode: new vistas!
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 14: Wonders, Wandering, and Winter
Once on the west map, I'm rewarded with a great vista:
I think I've seen this before, but not from this angle.
To the north lies the great mountain range where I'm thinking of a base. These mountains are well to the south of my target; I have the mountain range option on in Geographicraft so ranges can stretch well over a thousand blocks.
That pointy mountain isn't a loading artifact; it really looks like that.
Ahead is a small Mesa; so small it doesn't actually have a Mesa.
I can go a little north for the mapping, so I skirt the edge of the mountains.
In the Mesa I find an exposed mineshaft and explore the lit areas. In it I find a cobweb - more string! - and a minecart chest with:
A LOT of fancy food. I don't need it for now, with my edible armor, so I just take the Lapis and Detector Rails.
From the end of the hills I can see a river, which from its placement probably connects up to the river system on this map. It's north of what's optimum for mapping, but boating is fun and fast, so I head over.
The river is really wide, and, as expected, connects up with the rivers I knew about further west.
Once I reach those I have to double back to get the area I missed to the south of the river. I have to go through one of the Roofed Forest M biomes I spotted on my last trip, but I get through without incident.
I sleep under the stars in a forest.
Once done with the southern part, I head north to make a pass along the north side.
That green area northeast of me is the Jungle. I map it as well as I can without going into any dangerously dense parts. I do pretty well, getting everything but two dots.
Once again I spot a hill and climb it for the views.
South of the hill is the river I was boating on earlier, and a large Flower Forest next to it.
North is the Jungle, and a small desert next to it (not the Desert from earlier; this is north of that several hundred blocks.)
These views are possible because Geographicraft's increase sub-biome variety put an Extreme Hills sub-biome here.
Continuing east I descend into a pleasant forest, in Autumnal colors.
Then it become a hillside forest as I climb into the great mountain range.
Where it starts to snow.
That's pretty much the end of me mapping for the year. Maps made now will show snow rather than underlying terrain, and to erase it I'd have to go back - so why go in the first place.
So, now I'm going to look at the area I'm considering building in, and try to pick a good location. As in my Return to Minecraft journal, I'm going to use the winter season for building.
I have to cross a high mountain pass to get to the valley to the north, and take some ouchies on the way down.
But I'm still not in the valley I wanted, so I have to cross another, less problematic pass to get there.
At first i don't recognize it, although this has to be it because I can see the jungle in the distance to the west. But I was going the other way on my first trip and I didn't look back.
But soon I recognize the mountains, even in the deepening snow.
I start hunting around for a location. I figured the valley floor would be good but - not quite right. Plus not close to the Jungle.
From the pass between the Jungle and the mountain valley the mountains are still - not as good as I want. I was rather surprised to find that the RTG Extreme Hills look best from something of an altitude. Because of the short view distances in Minecraft (compared to real life) you have to be close to a mountain to see it and then you are often looking along the more-realistic slope line, reducing the visual impact.
So I climb onto a ridgeline to the north of the pass.
From a shoulder where, with some flattening, I could fit a decent-sized building I can get a view with the full impact of the mountain to the east.
And I'm still fairly close to Jungle. So I think this is where I'll build.
Next Episode: initial plans
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
My updates slow down, and yours speed up. Or maybe yours are the same but they seem more frequent lately. I notice a new chapter but don't immediately read it, and go to the following day or two and now I'm two chapters behind again.
Similar fall early in my hardcore world scared me. Brought me down to a heart and a half or maybe two and a half. It's imposingly at a spot where I ended up later deciding to settle. I should build more bridges in my immediately local area, that being one.
I would have to experience cutting some down to know, but a stack and a half does not sound "not worth it" to me. Maybe it's not as fast as tiny vanilla ones long term but I'd rather have it be more fun. Getting that much in one tree would be plenty and makes it feel far less monotonous, even if it might also be somewhat more tedious.
Again, I would have to try to see. Vanilla large oaks can be mildly annoying (especially older ones which could be larger) but I still didn't mind them too much. I see the world as having way more trees than you'd ever go out and farm, so they might as well look better even if that comes at some cost of efficiency for farming, as long as they were still less monotonous to do, and getting much more from fewer trees would make up for it to an extent.
The most devoted players who want a lot with low effort would likely find a way to trivialize auto farms for them anyway.
Maybe I'm speaking from being longer in and more comfortable (because I remember how fragile I felt early, where a pair of skeletons almost killed me and made me feel like my world was surely going to end eventually), but I would have just run over there and killed it at my current state where I have full diamond (unenchanted) armor. Especially if I was playing with a higher brightness (maybe it's darker for you than it is for me though; I don't know).
But I'm sort of making this judgment based on your armor, which seems high, but I don't know how high it actually is since you seem to be using a mod system for that, and later pictures don't show you too armored. So maybe you're more at risk than it appears. Or you're just being super cautious, which is never a bad thing in hardcore.
I'll admit, this part piqued my curiosity. Such a mod or system seems... strange, haha.
This is one reason for some of the additional restrictions my second hardcore world had; specifically, no allowance of villager trading. A few things in particular were trivialized once I got access to a certain few trades and reduced them, and the two most important were arrows and the entire food system. I love having to conserve arrows (I'm down to like nine in my world at the moment) and having to farm for food. Even my cow farm is enough to where I'm not having to farm too often, and my wheat farms plus village hay bails means I'm barely farming that either.
Of course, 1.20.2 changed villager trades but that wasn't yet out when I started (and my world is still in 1.20.1, which means I'm also still dealing with rarer diamonds).
Some might find it annoying but wanting to do something and needing to do other things along the way does keep the game spiced up and from becoming boring. But I admit I treat my hardcore worlds a bit differently my older, longer running non-hardcore worlds, where I'll dig into enchantments, villager trading, and flight for the quality of life benefits they offer.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 15: Carving Cavernous Connections
I have a rough idea of a chateau-style mansion on top of this mountain shoulder. But doing my usual varied build tests would be difficult on this rugged terrain, and I'm being a bit ambitious so it would be especially painful if I put up a roof and don't like it. So I try some facades in a creative copy of the world to make sure I can build something I like and that it can fit on the hill. Then I switch back to my "real" world to lay down the outline on the ground for a guideline.
I put dirt where the windows and doors will be to protect against miscounting. The view is indeed going to be tremendous. This is the view to the south, out of what will be the front.
It turns out my Pig Iron leggings and sword don't provide quite enough food to keep me going indefinitely. If I just rely on them, their durabilities continue to drop, at least if I'm active. So I switch back to my old iron leggings from time to time to let them recover. Harvestcraft will continue to be useful.
On the rear of the chateau I hadn't planned what to do with the windows in my creative build. So I struggle with different layouts, because my plan for the front is for some protruding bays, but the back is a flat wall and the same windows wouldn't work. Eventually I work out a spacing here. This also give the view to the east (from the side) and a sense of the site I'm using.
After I have the outline of the walls, I level the top to get a sense of how much interior space I'll have. On many occasions I've built a nice looking building but it's ended up not quite large enough.
It looks large enough, although maybe not with interior walls. I'd like a bit bigger so I could subdivide the interior, but my creative testing indicates I can't get much bigger without a lot more work. So I'll have to settle for open plan.
Even as it is parts of the ground floor, especially the southwest corner here, are well up in the air from the ground. I check how it would look with vertical supporting walls. Tolerable, although perhaps I'll fill in the hill eventually. That will not be a priority though; it's not bad, just suboptimal.
Now I want to make a staircase down to mining level to prepare to connect up with the Seljuk base. I'm going with a staircase rather than my usual ladder shaft as I know this is north of my other base and I want to combine going down with going south. I start from near the front but quickly break into open air because of the steep hill. That won't do!
I muse for a bit on where to put it. I have a vague idea of a grand staircase in the middle, so I figure I'll place it roughly where that might be, maybe a little back so I can hide it if I can't connect. I'd like to use stone for the stairs but I don't have enough so I resort to wood stairs instead.
Down I go. I'm very rusty mining staircases and it takes a while to get up to speed. I hit a HUGE sand layer, about 5 thick, with Sandstone at the bottom. I don't recall vanilla doing this, is this something Underground Biomes adds now? Or have I forgotten?
Night falls and I'm not quite far enough down to be confident I'm safe from surface mobs, so I chop a tiny alcove and sleep there.
Heading down, I start spawning Silverfish. Good to know this is a Stronghold area, although taking out the Ender Dragon is a super-low priority in this exploration game. At first I'm so surprised I forgot to switch to my sword but after a while I remember. I end up finding about six, which is a pain.
Then I break into a mineshaft. Hoping for string, I dare to explore a bit.
That was a mistake.
I remember to reach for my sword this time, but manage to fatfinger my torch anyway. I try the hit-and-jump-back technique and get in three hits. If I'd actually gotten my sword out I think I'd have killed it.
But after a bit I fail to back up (I'd hit a fencepost support pillar; I don't have eyes in the back of my head.) Fortunately, it's not lethal.
So I block up the mineshaft and continue.
Once at the bottom, I head back up, putting in the stairs. But I hadn't made enough, so I have to make more to finish the job.
Then I start my tunnel to the south. My plan is to make a tunnel south until I've reached the level of the Seljuk base, then go there and tunnel west to hook up.
This is relatively uneventful for a while.
I do hit one cave I try, but it's small and quickly lit up.
Then another round of annoying Silverfish.
Then some lava pools, which I obsidianize as necessary. This one is unusually large.
My inventory does overflow once (I'm carrying a lot of assorted Harvestcraft things I picked up exploring) and I stop to build a double-chest to store the overflow.
Then I transition into Gneiss and - still with the Silverfish? Arrgh.
Right when I get to where I should turn:
A cave. Great. Not a tiny one either, so I end up blocking it off.
Then back to the surface - which is rather a long slog.
Then through the pass I took when I found this place in Episode 12, towards the Seljuk Village.
This time I deal with the Roofed Forest by going around it to the north. This adds a bit to my maps as well.
And soon my Savanna M landmark is guiding me home. I don't quite make it before dark, and bed-plop out in the Plains.
Back home it is definitely winter. I do a last round of harvesting for the season.
I make a couple of meals as my meals chest is getting low on variety. One is Blackberry Cobbler, which I think is delicious RW, but which I realize is a mistake once I start since it cuts too far into my slow-growing sugarcane supply. While I'm doing this it starts snowing.
I take a glance at my home area map.
Argh. I wasn't thinking. It updates to show all the snow on the ground. I can fix it in Spring because I'll be here, but for now I put my maps into storage as I don't want to do this accidentally somewhere I'll have to travel to.
Then I prep for a long tunnelling mission - extra sharpening kits, a full food Lunchbox, and a stack of logs for building storage chests when my inventory overflows.
And I'm off. I estimate I'll have to sharpen my pick twice - it has a durability of over 700, but I've got about 800 blocks to go.
I hit a Greenschist zone - not as useful with the less saturated green UBC has changed to, but still good, and then Dacite, a medium grey stone. I've got a pretty good palette now, with 3 1/2 colored stones - white Marble, Red Granite (more orange-pink but still) and Blueschist, plus the "sort of green" Greenschist. Plus greys in light (Soapstone), medium (Dacite), and dark (Basalt). I have a lot of flexibility now.
I tunnel under a pool, which I can't fill from below, so I have to cut up to pool level and fill it in there. Then continuing I find a "hidden" pool water block and have to climb back up to fill *it*.
With my double-size inventory I actually have to build only one double-chest "drop station". Eventually (this process takes over a full Minecraft day) I reach a Blueschist zone, which is good, because that's what's in the tunnel from the mountain base area. Oooh, diamonds!
And right around where I should reach the other tunnel I break into a big messy cave. I figure this is the one I hit at the end of tunneling from the mountain base and I'm right - I find my block. With part of the cave already blocked off I manage to light up the rest. And I'm ready to connect!
Next episode: Exploitation
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Llamas!
Also, couldn't the silverfish just be from being in a high terrain area? What makes you say it signifies a stronghold there?
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Curse PremiumI NEVER saw anything like this many silverfish in Extreme Hills, including some other parts of the connection. Something else is up.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
In my first hardcore world, I was digging in the cavern opening right behind my house that goes down into mountain, and I started getting swarmed by them. That reminded how many there can be in normal encounters.
I thought the stronghold ones were only in the cobblestone or bricks but maybe I'm wrong? If there is a stronghold there, I would have expected you have noticed it?
I've always seen people think there was a stronghold nearby because they encountered silverfish but there is no connection between the infested stone that generates as ores and strongholds, at least in vanilla (checks Wiki to make sure this didn't change recently, nope. It is important to note that strongholds only have infested blocks in place of stone bricks in their walls, not generated in the ground nearby).
One thing that did change in newer versions is that there is twice as much as there used to be, 14 instead of 7 deposits per chunk, and while the range was doubled they can cluster within a smaller part of that range (this reminds me of how the amount of coal I collect, relative to iron, varies quite a bit from session to session, likely because on average only half the deposits will be placed in the lower 64 layers, which at the extremes can have twice the average or nothing (1 in 1 million chance of each as there are 20 deposits per chunk). Of course, there may also be regional variations due to RNG seeding resulting in correlation from chunk to chunk, as there is only a small change in the chunk coordinates and the RNG algorithm is just a simple manipulation of bits, From 1.13-1.17 it was so bad you could even quite reliably dig down from a clay patch and hit diamond ore (this is because 1.13 gives each feature its own "chunk seed" and they are very similar, e.g. 1, 2, 3, or some "hash" of that number).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
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Curse PremiumEpisode 16:
To give an idea of what I'm thinking about for this base, here's the facade of my creative test build:
As you can see, I'm trying lots of different ideas for colors and window designs. What I'm currently leaning to isn't on this: I'm thinking of a light grey (Soapstone) structural element with white (Marble) walls (like in the lower right) but with a stair-topped window (like in the lower left) but in Eclogite (like in the top left). Got it?
Originally I'd planned a light grey base in general (as in most of the build) because I already have a lot of Soapstone. But I considered Marble (white) when I saw how much marble I was digging up in the tunnels. I'm not sure whether I prefer all-white (like in the upper left) or mixed (like in the lower right) but I decided don't like the all-white enough to waste my existing Soapstone.
Now I continue on to the mountain base, collecting resources I hadn't been mining because I was in a hurry and inventory-jammed earlier. There is a LOT of coal. By the time I'm done, including what I'd mined tunneling over from the Seljuk base, I have an entire stack of Coal *blocks*, plus several more stacks of regular Coal.
I'm leaving Redstone, though. I have enough, and my level is high - I'll save it to recover my level if I need to.
I want to build a smeltery here. I look at the various lava pools and end up picking the one closest to the base. It's not the largest, but from my experience in my last journal, it's large enough. The area to my left is where it will go.
I consider moving my old Smeltery but decide I might want one there at times. So I need supplies - gravel, sand, and clay.
Gravel I get from a deposit on the way from the future Smeltery to the future Chateau. It looked small, but turned out to be huge; two overlapping ones from the looks of it.
You'll note it's day; I should have been outside getting clay because I can get gravel and sand inside at night. It's noon by the time I'm done so I quickly start up the furnaces to roast cobblestone and dash outside to get some clay.
Fortunately this river (from where I first saw this mountain) is right there so I dash down and start hunting clay, with an eye out for that dangerously close Jungle.
For a while I don't find much. But as I continue down the river, I start finding more.
I end up going down to a lake a ways down the river and spot a huge collection of lamprey. I kill some from shore, but just can't get them all, and don't feel like getting in with so many. More keep swimming up, too!
Then it starts raining/snowing, depending on the biome, and I decide to pack it in. It's getting a bit late anyway.
And then finally sand from that massive deposit on the staircase. I'm not entirely sure it's safe, so I'm watching the stairs as I do this. No troubles, though.
With all the materials collected, I mix up my Grout and throw it into my bank of furnace to roast to Seared Bricks.
Impatiently I grab bricks as they come out of the furnace to start building the Smeltery. But I quickly realize this is a waste of time.
So I run a mine branch into a Marble area to get more marble for my chateau. Ooh, diamonds!
Come morning I head out to get some more clay. I'm not sure I need more, but I always seem to run short of Seared Brick, and it's nice to have anyway.
Quite a few sheep in the Jungle, so I'll be able to farm wool for carpeting and such.
I spend most of the day collecting clay from deeper waters I'd been ignoring earlier.
I find a Harvestcraft garden with Rice, which is a useful ingredient for a long list of recipes.
Also a nasty vanilla lighting bug. I figured out how the vanilla lighting bug works; if you have an opaque block it "notices" that the block immediately underneath can get lighting from the side but not the ones further down. So they are lit only by that first block underneath the opaque black and get darker and darker going down. It can't possibly be that difficult to fix.
I also find some Ginger, also a useful ingredient.
When I get back my bricks are done, so I build my Smeltery. But after two rounds of not making enough brick, this time I made extra. So I put on a third layer, which will increase capacity. In the process some of the Blue Schist I have to mine out to make room fall into the Smeltery, and to my surprise it melts them. Each turns into an *ingot* (not block) of Seared Stone, which can be used much like Seared Brick. I could use this to build an absolutely massive smeltery, and I probably will.
And with all this done, I start using the Smeltery for Iron processing, and for making extra Sharpening Kits.
Then I walk through the tunnel back to the Seljuk base to get my Soapstone and Eclogite for construction. It takes a long time, about 5 minutes. Maybe I'll just use airships instead. But right now airships have a problem; I'm always one keypress away from an accidental dismount and fall, easily fatal at present. Not a good idea to play with a key labeled "DEATH!" on my keyboard. If I can find some slimes, I can make bouncy boots and have a solution.
I make some extra meals to bring along so I won't have to walk all the way back every time I need to refill my lunchbox.
A dash out to breed cows before dusk and:
Hey, what are YOU doing here? (Whack, whack) Duskspawning or rainspawning (or maybe duskrainspawning; haven't seen anything with either alone) in the RTG forest I guess. It's pretty safe but evidently not *totally* safe.
I'm planning a farm in the Jungle area so I check through my various Harvestcraft seeds to see which grow best in Swamp/Jungle rather than Forest/Plains. Disappointingly, almost none. And I expect Quinoa to prefer Extreme Hills (it's a high altitude plant) but it's Forest/Plains too. I *do* find that I'd put almost a stack of sugarcane in the seed chest so actually I *can* afford the sugar for the Blackberry Cobbler.
I have a seed chest outside and a couple of zombies come up while I'm looking through it. I was hoping for spiders, but I don't get any.
And then back though the connection to my Smeltery area in the mountain soon-to-be-base. This is a long walk! I suppose Ice Boats are a possibilty, but that would be a lot of work. I think I'll figure out a way to use airships.
Embarassingly, when I get there I realize I hadn't brought a nice hoe. And then I realize it's because I hadn't *made* a nice hoe. But I don't really need one; it's possible to make a combined axe/hoe in Tinker's but it's kind of complicated so I just make a crude stone hoe.
Next episode: A simple farming plan goes very awry.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I like what you chose for the colors of the house, but I think using the light Brown/tan stone somehow would be nice too. Since it seems to be a temperate/cold area, the base colors work well, but some sort of contrasting trim would give it some variety too. I think being entirely neutral/cold colors would blend in a little too well.
How far into Winter is it? Something I noticed is that besides one image, very few appear to look like they have much snow. I always wonder how seasons in Minecraft would truly work. Due to stuff not updating outside active chunks, I can only imagine how winter might be bare at times and how the middle of summer might have you encountering bits of snow. I wonder if this is a reason seasons haven't happened yet and they just stick to temperature zones; it might simply work better that way. Getting seasons working gracefully seems like it might have too many challenges?
I felt that. I'm sometimes waiting on a handful items from furnaces at times and frantically running them bit by bit to where I'll use them, haha.
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Curse PremiumIf by "light tan" you mean the window treatment in the lower right, it's actually an orange-pink and I think would be too loud for a base. I think the light grey Soapstone I'm using for the frame contrasts well enough with the white marble. I agree a tan would be a good color, but I don't have one right now. One does exist (Quarzite) but I actually enjoy the challenge of working with the stone types I have.
The creative build is in Summer since I restarted the world for that rather than cheated/copied, so no snow. In Extreme Hills, snow starts falling in early or mid fall, not sure which, although it doesn't actually fall until there's precipitation, which is why it's not been snowy earlier - I just hadn't been there when it was precipitating.
Yes, Serene Seasons does create problems with out-of-season chunks and maps, which is why I like to stay home in winter - not spreading snow around. You could fix the summer snow problem by recording the season a chunk was unloaded in and updating snow if it gets re-loaded in a snow-free season. The reverse for creating snow would work, although it would create chunked boundaries if there were adjacent areas that had aged into a snow season and just not gotten rained on. Maps are more of a headache: I can't think of a really good solution (ignoring snow doesn't work for mountains). Maybe ignore snow if it would melt in summer, or maybe late spring? But yeah, it creates some unprofessional-looking problems as a cost for play interest and pretty pictures (especially in fall) and that's the kind of tradeoff which is OK for a mod but not for the base game. Honestly, I thought about a season mod long ago (because a lot of people thought Climate Control would do that, one of the reasons I changed the name) and thought even what Serene Seasons does would be too hard.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Yeah, things like that seem like they would create real concerns if seasons were added to the base game, but it's not something I see people mention much when the subject comes up.
And yes, I think the two primary colors chosen (Grey and White) work well, but I was thinking something other then yet another dark and cold looking color would be good as a tertiary trim/accent color. The Tan was an example merely because you provided it as one of your test considerations, but something else could work. I think it would work though since it's a warm and earth tone color, so I felt like it would contrast without conflicting, so that's why I suggested it.
To use an example of my own, I used mud stone and mud bricks in a plains village. I felt this worked because the bricks are an earth tone, and with the Pink trees nearby, the Red gives a matching accent that contrasts a bit, but not enough to conflict with the overall scene. And then the Black deep slate stones tend to fit better with both than the Grey stones I think.
I tend to try and put thought into color palettes more when i decide on builds, especially with more blocks and colors being available, but we're still pretty limited (which might be why you see me using similar ones repeatedly at times). More White stone variety (and maybe wood?) is a big one we're still lacking, and as a neutral color it would go a long way to be added. You seem like you have more to work with because of the modded content, though.