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These are charts of ores mined since the start of a new world; the first few days were from branch-mining, followed by a week of mining quartz in the Nether for the XP needed to make my caving gear, the rate at which I mined quartz was comparable to coal in the Overworld despite being about half as abundant on a given layer:



A zoomed-in view of rarer ores; the amount of gold I collected during the first period stands out, the spike near the middle was when I returned to make a new pickaxe with a new modded enchantment (I didn't make it earlier since the only way to find it is in structures, this also shows how much I might do to make even one item, without any XP farms, trading halls, etc, except to get "Mending" in place of just slapping a name on an item as one can do in vanilla 1.6.4):

Day 232 was entirely spent on packing up for the long journey ahead. In addition to the travel essentials, I also brought some emergency ender pearls, scaffolding as well as a copy of the local map and my leather boots for the return journey. There was no way I'd be making the return journey back through the Nether unless the fortress was close to our portal, but it's already obvious that won't be the case.

I wasn't too concerned on inventory space limitations either as I was planning on crafting an ender chest right away upon obtaining my first blaze rods. That's also where the aforementioned ender pearls and surplus obsidian would come in handy.

As I set out from Sunflower Valley the next morning, I looked back at our base one last time. I'm happy with what we've managed to achieve so far. I had so many more plans, though, and sincerely hoped they could be fulfilled in the future. In other words, I knew well the next few days would be the most difficult on this world thus far.

I entered the mountainside bamboo hut and climbed down the dreaded ladder before stepping through the portal. My piglin friend wished me well, and I thanked him with a gold ingot. I looked out the windows, ensured the coast was clear and hesitantly stepped outside.

The first part of the journey was a nice, short trek east through the wastelands that we'd come to know so well. I then walked past the final torch, where the wastelands transitioned to crimson forest.

I had no intention of navigating a crimson forest just yet, so I instead tunnelled through the netherrack hills. I tried my best to refrain myself from mining any ores as inventory management would be essential until I've acquired my first blaze rod, and in turn, an Ender chest.

The crimson forest then transitioned back to wastelands as I continued. Eventually, I mined through the wall and found a soul sand valley biome up ahead. There was no way I was traversing that, given the skeletons and ghasts that inhabit them and the reduced speed when walking on soul sand.

I decided to head south for a while, keeping to the relative safety of the wastelands and avoiding the soul sand valley.

There was a basalt deltas biome to the north, but luckily that wouldn't interfere with my route.

I continued heading south, occasionally coming across a basalt pillar or witnessing the dark turquoise fog of the soul sand valley. Luckily, I didn't have to deal with any skeletons along the way. I also occasionally raised my render distance to improve visibility but that didn't help much.

At one point, I was mining right above a lava sea, which was a rather unsettling experience.

It also turned out that the soul sand valley ended with the pictured lava sea, which meant I could soon turn back east again. I haven't mentioned this earlier, but fortresses apparently generate more frequently on the positive side of the x-axis, which made heading east slightly better than west. On the other hand, if you headed north or south, you could go on for a long time without finding a fortress. I'm not too familiar with fortress generation but that seems to be the case.

A small ravine to bridge across:

Well, we still couldn't turn east because this lava sea was vast! At least there wasn't any more soul sand valley.

More crimson forest up ahead? Oh well, I could cope with that.

I bridged across the pictured ravine...

...and arrived at the crimson forest. There were some hoglins but the piglins dealt with them.

There was also a warped mushroom here which I harvested for future use.

I mined through another hill before coming to this scenic area.

A hoglin was waiting for me below.

From my vantage point, however, I shot it with ease. I have just defeated my first hoglin in the game!

The lava sea ended here, so I could turn east as I had intended for a while. I was sick of mining and decided to navigate the crimson forest by jumping around its treetops and marking my route with netherrack and torches (I was unfortunately out of cobblestone). This would also grant us easy access to shroomlights, which I loved, all while easily avoiding the hoglins.

Some parkour skills were required here, but seeing the hoglins burn to death from my flame arrows definitely made it worth it.

The crimson forest was actually a pretty nice place. There's no ghasts and the hoglins are nothing if you stay on the treetops. This makes it look like ... some sort of Nether haven. I could even go as far as to say that the crimson forest might be safer than the warped one, since a look in the wrong direction will lead to an angry, teleporting enderman. Or two if you're unlucky.

You're welcome, piglins.

I took a moment to observe my surroundings. I was still heading in an easterly direction, but the terrain ahead proved difficult, which meant some more mining would be required soon.

I did the mining. Now it's time for the bridging.

And hoglin sniping, of course. My Power IV and Flame enchanted bow was proving invaluable.

The terrain was becoming increasingly challenging here, however, which called for some ceiling tunneling.

And yes, there was the occasional fall trap. That didn't matter too much, though, as I could just bridge across. I also decided to refrain myself from unnecessary hoglin shooting from now on to save arrows and bow durability. I didn't have Unbreaking on my bow, after all.

I made one final bridge over the crimson forest, which transitioned to wastelands here.

I looked ahead and ... warped forest!

I'm not excited because of the prospect of easy ender pearls, but rather because this would allow me to make the following advancement:

It's the first time I've done so on any non-Creative world. However, I forgot that I was no longer in the safety of the crimson forest when a ghast began shooting at me from the barren wastelands behind. It somehow broke the netherrack I was standing on and caused me to fall into another area of warped forest below. I lost about three hearts in the process. Imagine there had been a lava sea below instead!

After this incident, I climbed back up and started exploring the local area. There were a few cracks and crevasses scattered here and there and I peered into one with curiosity.

I think we all know what that means.

After a whole in-game week of searching, I have finally found a Nether fortress. Yay!

Since I was unlikely to head back up here after finishing with the fortress, I decided to stock up on ender pearls first. The terrain made this slightly difficult, so I mined out a two block high shelter where I would look at some endermen in their eyes and take them out.

As I headed back up, an angered endermen somehow teleported in front of me, which meant I had to fight it out in the open. Oh well, it was already weakened from my attacks earlier. By the end, I had a stack and five ender pearls in total. (That makes it 21, since a stack of ender pearls is only 16.)

I found a small valley where I began to mine down towards the fortress.

Nearly there!

After swerving around and staircasing down, I finally made it to the "terrible" fortress. Time to face what I've been dreading for so long.

On the plus side, the bridges (open sections) of the fortress were encased in netherrack! This would make blazes and ghasts far less dangerous. Oh, and some crimson trees have somehow generated inside. There was no avoiding this biome, not that I disliked it or anything.

On the other side, the bridge abruptly ended. How convenient.

I was hearing a lot of blazes, though, which indicated a spawner was nearby. I decided to head back up my netherrack staircase and mine around, trying to locate the source of all the commotion.

Oh, OK. I see we've just found one of the spawners.

I one-shotted one of the blazes with my bow. I would love to get that blaze rod before it despawned.

I carefully constructed a small shelter at the same level as the blaze spawner and started dealing with them, one by one, trying to take as little damage as possible. The shelter made things so easy that I didn't even need to use a potion of Fire Resistance. Just to make this update a bit more exciting, I recorded a small part of the "fight" to show what it was like. The recording is actually six minutes long but I only posted about a minute or so as a six minute long video typically takes two or three hours to upload due to my rather poor connection.

After a while of fighting, I crafted a new Ender chest where I stored the less important stuff, like the shroomlights and mushrooms from the crimson forest. Inventory issues solved. Perfect. I could finally allow myself to mine that shiny glowstone from above the spawner.

With that done, it was time to explore the fortress, loot the chests and look for the nether wart plantation. We'd have to search for the lava well room which generates as a transition between the corridors and bridges of the fortress.

I headed down the pathway leading from the blaze spawner. A lava flow interrupted one end of it, so I blocked that up.

On the other end was what seemed like a tower.

I continued exploring the bridges, one by one, uncovering the second blaze spawner. I already had around fifteen blaze rods so I won't need that for now.

I always remembered to place down torches and build two block high "doorways" (to counter wither skeletons) as I went.

The bridge led to another abrupt end, but what I saw in the distance looked promising.

I wasn't sure if my bridge and the corridor would intersect, which meant we had a little bit of netherrack mining to do. But first, I needed to kill this wither skeleton which had fallen for my "doorway trap".

What is dropped was magnificent.

Coal (no, not a wither skull sadly)! I had been running low on coal for torches while exploring the fortress and more is always welcomed.

After a little bit of mining, I finally came to the corridor section of the fortress.

I only had one primary goal here: to acquire my first nether wart. I would gladly loot any chests though, since fortress loot can be quite good (although it usually isn't).

I carefully made my way down from the roof, ensuring there were no wither skeletons, and automatically found my first chest.

I was hoping that the chests would contain nether wart so I wouldn't have to spend time looking for the plantation, but this wasn't the case for any of them. On my survival world, however, the fortress somehow generated without a plantation but the only chest it had contained some. It was as if the plantation had been moved inside the chest.

But, as previously said, there wasn't much to the loot.

I carefully made my way along the corridor, where I found an intersection with another chest waiting for me.

When coming to four-way intersections, I would always build a two block high doorway on each side. This would make being ambushed by wither skeletons much less of a concern.

But what's in the chest?

Gold? Nice.

One of the corridors ended here. Time to head back to the intersection.

I chose a different corridor and found another chest. Not much to it, but I took the saddle anyways.

And another wither skeleton had fallen for the trap. Wither skull?

Nope.

After some time of searching, I finally found the lava well room. This meant that the nether wart was nearby!

Another chest to loot first, however. I took the iron and the saddle. With an Ender chest, my inventory size is pretty much doubled.

Time to collect the nether wart. I headed down a staircase, and there it was!

There were two wither skeletons, so I provoked them, headed back up through my doorway and defeated both of them from behind it. I then blocked up the staircase and began my harvest of the nether wart.

After that, I headed back out and looked for any nearby chests for one last time. Oh, there's one.

Again, I took everything. I guess we're not going to find the exclusive Rib armor trim after all, but that didn't really matter. On the evening of Day 244, I was finally ready to leave the Nether with a new portal I had built near the plantation.

I had finally finished my first bit of work in this dimension. Goodbye, Nether!

Now, the question is: where would be spawn in the Overworld? Another cave? What I did know was that I would be thousands of blocks away from my base. Ten seconds after I stepped through the portal, I was faced with:

A thunderstorm. "Welcome back to the Overworld."

I quickly placed down my bed and slept through it before many hostile mobs could spawn. The next morning, I covered the portal with netherrack to avoid any mobs entering through it and then brought out my map, ready to make the return journey.

Except the dot showing where I was didn't appear on the map. I should've brought a compass like on my survival world. Because now I'm lost in some forest thousands of blocks away from home. Nevertheless, I'll find a way and make the return journey in the next update.

It basically depends on the file size. If you're uploading the raw footage to Youtube, it's definitely going to take a while. When I recorded using Afterburner (raw footage), ten minutes of video was resulting in file sizes many hundreds of GB in size (raw). If I went a Minecraft day and a half, it was approaching 1 TB and before that point, it was enough that it would cause Minecraft to crash as soon as I stopped recording. Even encoding these raw footage files to bring the size down, I would often end up with something some double digit GB in size after encoded.

Needless to say, uploading would take a while.

With my current video card (different brand from before), I'm now using the AV1 hardware encoding through their drivers, and I can record for over half an hour, and get a video file size that is only 6 GB. The kicker is I lose less performance recording; almost none (it's done on the graphics card using dedicated encoding hardware instead of the CPU) and it's still higher quality than the size reduced ten minute one. It's quite literally all around better. Older video cards might not have AV1 but they'll still have hardware encoding like AVC or HEVC or whatever and that's still likely to be good on quality and small on file size too.

So what I'm saying is perhaps look at how you're recording and how you're encoding. Consider shrinking the file sizes before uploading and it will be much less painful to upload. My upload speed is pretty average or even below average (~10 Mb/s) and uploading is no longer a big process for me. Before it might take some hours.

Without knowing what video hardware you have, if you have AMD, I'd recommend to just use the drivers (Adrenalin). If you have nVidia, then GeForce Experience is the old alternative, but that was pretty mediocre since a lot of stuff with it required an account. Good news is they are discounting their control panel and GeForce Experience and unifying it in the upcoming nVidia App which is basically going to be like Adrenalin and finally get nVidia's drivers out of the Windows XP era. It's already out though (it beta) so you can use it now. Alternatively OBS is supposed to be good but I never used it myself. It's software that's more for recording/streaming.

If it's Intel, I'm unfamiliar with their drivers/offerings. Probably go with OBS again.

Basically, if you can, you want to record it with hardware encoding or if you can't, then encode it after the fact to get the file size down but without sacrificing quality too much. Encoding it will take a lot of time too (CPU speed dependent) but it's probably faster if your upload is that slow or if your raw file size is that large.

If you're already aware of/doing all this and it's just your upload speed is that low, then... forget what I said haha. But if not, this is some stuff I learned and it helped me get better videos. I certainly get not wanting to make them if the process results in lost performance or long upload times.

I sniped the pictured spider and creeper from my vantage point, hoping for the former to drop a spider eye, which is required to brew the weakness potions used for curing zombie villagers. It didn't drop, but oh well. After ensuring the coast was clear (both figuratively and literally), I descended from my pillar and encased the lit portal in netherrack to prevent Overworld mobs from accessing the fortress.

I spotted some sweet berry bushes, which I harvested for potential decoration for my base. Sorry, foxes.

To the south was birch and dark forest, while the east revealed an old growth spruce taiga, one of my favorite biomes in the game.

I headed uphill into the old growth spruce taiga. There was an azalea tree, which indicated a lush cave below. I would definitely like to have easy access to a lush cave sometime as I'll be needing lots of clay for my potted lantern decorations.

The old growth spruce taiga was vast. I'm wondering what's beyond those distant hills. Snowy plains? Frozen mountains?

Sadly, Sunflower Valley was located to the west (since I had been heading east on my journey to the fortress), which meant we won't find out for some time. I'm definitely looking forward to continuing the mapping trips soon.

As I was organizing my inventory, I accidentally broke my ender chest with my fortune pickaxe. Oh no! Not only did we lose a precious eye of ender, but all of my blaze rods were in that ender chest (not the ender pearls, thankfully)! In short, we've just lost pretty much all of our nether loot, and the only solution was to head back through the portal and into the fortress for one blaze rod.

Who knew this would happen?

I tracked down a lone blaze in one of the corridors, killed it and headed back into the Overworld, where I recrafted the ender chest.

With that done, I began boating west. Some final looks at the coastline:

It looked lovely from a distance. The blending of the different forest types and the giant spruce trees in the background really spiced things up.

I decided to boat north for a while to maximize travel efficiency by spending more time on the water. To the west was a shipwreck which I didn't loot due to inventory limitations. It would be pretty risky without a respiration helmet anyway.

I soon found another shipwreck situated just off the coast. Notice the small ocean ruin right in front of me.

It may not look like it, but oceans seem to be the biomes with the highest structure frequency and diversity. There's shipwrecks, ocean ruins, ocean monuments, ruined portals as well as the usual underground structures.

I found one chest in the pictured shipwreck. Unfortunately, it was a food and armor supply chest. There was absolutely nothing worth taking. Three of the armor pieces were even enchanted with Curse of Binding.

I slept through the night on the shipwreck.

Come morning, I headed south through the forest, occasionally taking out my map to see if my marker would start showing. I believe they don't unless you're within 1024 blocks of the edge of the map, which meant I still had some travelling to do.

Continuing on, the forest transitioned to plains, where I found a village and a cherry grove biome with only three trees.

The village was fairly large and situated on a peninsula.

Funnily enough, I found a beach and a small area of stony shore. I always thought they would only generate adjacent to ocean biomes. Perhaps I've got a small "landlocked ocean" here?

There was also an area of the river that generated without seagrass. It was actually part of the plains biome though. Floodplains? How peculiar.

As for the village itself, I gladly took the apples from the house chests, but the notables were the blacksmith and three librarians. I took a look at what each of the librarians had to offer. The first one only sold bookshelves, no enchanted books. I didn't get a screenshot of that.

The second librarian had an even less desirable trade.

Wow! Who would ever buy these on Singleplayer?

The third librarian offered Protection IV books, but I couldn't afford a single one.

I'm really looking forward to starting a villager community at my base soon. The only things I needed now were a spider eye and two zombie villagers. I've got the blaze rods, and I've got the sugar and brown mushroom required to ferment the spider eye. I just needed the eye itself.

The blacksmith chest didn't offer much, although I did take the apples and extra iron ingots.

With the village explored, I sailed west and captured this picture with two ocean ruins. They're just so common.

I watched the sunset and slept through the night in a sunflower meadow.

Here's a final look at the village. There was a small ocean biome after all.

I continued west through another forest and found some small-scale wacky beach terrain. Talk about floating sand! There was also a river running parallel to the ocean, forming a neat spit.

After sailing across another stretch of ocean, it was time for a stroll through an old growth birch forest. I find birch forests and their old growth variants fairly easy to navigate around. It's the oak forest that I have a problem with.

I crossed another river and:

Our marker finally appeared on the map (and yes, an oak forest right after I said that)! So we had been heading in the right direction after all.

Continuing west, there was another strip of ocean to sail across.

Here, I found my first ocean monument on this world. I took great care in navigating around it to avoid being given the Mining Fatigue effect.

After a while of sailing, I came across a large bamboo jungle island with, you guessed it, yet another shipwreck.

This one was partially buried in sand, funnily enough, but that didn't stop me from shovelling it all up and searching for the glistening treasure of the ship.

I took all the iron ingots and emeralds. I would have taken the lapis lazuli and iron nuggets as well if it weren't for inventory limitations.

There was also a map chest (?) which allowed me to restock on my coal supplies. It's a shame I haven't found the coast armor trim template yet.

With a nice, large beach, a shipwreck and several jungle trees, you may think this would be the perfect place to set up a survival island camp.

Well, not necessarily.

Even taking the picture itself posed some risk.

It was now time for more sailing! Seeing the small island and shipwreck from Episode 7, I could tell this was the biggest stretch of ocean I would have to cross. We were finally entering familiar territory!

The welcoming silhouettes of the distant mountains reminded me of how close I was.

I climbed up the savanna plateau and headed along the mountain pass.

And here we are.

On the evening of Day 249, I have finally made it back to Sunflower Valley. I placed down my ender chest at the enchanting station, sorted out my untidy inventory and enjoyed the night in the comfort of my house.

The end of this journey also marked the end of the early-game stage of the world. I had considered extending this update with some small renovations around our base but I think this is a better place to finish. I'm now wondering what is the preferred update length in terms of number of images.

In the next update, I'll show the aforementioned renovations and possibly start work on capturing and curing a zombie villager. It's probably going to be hard work without a mob farm, but the challenge is welcome, and we can only see what happens next.

I had seven spare levels from raiding the nether fortress, so to start things off, I decided to enchant my gear. First up was the axe.

Unbreaking III only, so I placed it in the grindstone. I took a look at what was being offered next, and it was Efficiency III, which was undesirable. I didn't want to spend too much XP trying to max out my tools.

Next up was my helmet. I was mainly looking for Protection IV, Unbreaking III and Respiration III here, although Aqua Affinity would also be welcome.

That would've been such a wonderful helmet if it weren't for the Fire Protection, so I shoved that in the grindstone as well. I decided to give it another go.

It's not really perfect, but oh well. What disappointed me was that all our spare levels had been demolished and only one result could be considered "satisfactory". Take this as foreshadowing for later.

After that, I went outside and started making renovations around the base. First off, I dismantled this monstrosity of a nether portal:

I then replaced the dirt path with bamboo mosaic stairs, which I love.

I was still close to achieving Level 30, so I had a quick round of cow farming and then reenchanted my axe, expecting better results, specifically Efficiency IV and Unbreaking III.

Luck was finally coming back to me!

I then slightly terraformed the land to the north of our house and constructed the brewing stand, which is nearly identical to the one on my survival island world, with the only differences being that I used polished blackstone brick instead of basalt for the railing and arranged the chests differently. And of course, I connected it to the main base with a bamboo mosaic path.

Next up for renovation was the nether access hut on the local mountain slope. Before:

After:

It's certainly not as spacious or impressive as the one on my survival world due to terrain limitations and material scarcity, but it's still a considerable step up from what the old hideout offered.

Now it was time to connect the hut to the main base with, you guessed it, another bamboo mosaic path. This project would require a good couple stacks of bamboo and stone bricks and even several decorated pots and lanterns to light it up. As I headed down, I spotted a pillager patrol in the distance (I hadn't seen one in days!) but forgot to take the screenshot.

But anyways, into the mines we go for some stone mining. I revealed a large cavern as I was doing so.

The silhouettes of the dripstone against the soft pink twilight background (the skyview glitch) made it look beautiful somehow.

After a few days of hillside terraforming and pink petal picking, I finally completed the path, which began at the small pumpkin and melon farm.

The final thing on my renovation list was the nether base. For now, all that meant was fixing up the shapes of the buildings, replacing the indoor torches with lanterns as well as adding a nether brick floor.

Unfortunately, as I was working on the nether brick floor, everything went wrong.

While I was mining the netherrack, I accidentally broke the boat the piglin was sitting in. The piglin disappeared into the Overworld. I immediately followed it through and pushed it back into the nether. But it was too late.

I was rather sad, but things move on, I guess.

I headed out and climbed down to the lower base, which was a complete mess. Before fixing it, however, I lured two nearby piglins into a boat, but unlike the last time, it was impossible to get them inside due to the terrain. But oh well, we're close enough (literally).

I then got to work fixing the lower base, including enlarging the windows.

That'll do for now.

I returned to the Overworld on a gloomy evening and decided to spend some time sorting out my upstairs double chests, particularly the nether chest as I'm unlikely to head back in there for some time.

With the renovations completed, my next three goals were to obtain a spider eye for weakness potions, a phantom membrane for slowing falling potions (I might use these during the ender dragon fight) and cure two zombie villagers, which means there'll be a lot of nighttime grinding for the rest of this update. This would, however, provide a good opportunity to practice bow accuracy from the relative safety of the balcony.

It was only Night 1, and I couldn't believe my luck. If you zoom in at the skeleton near the top-center of the image, you can see a zombie villager standing nearby to the left.

Thinking about it now, I have no idea why, just why, I had hesitated at this golden moment. I should've ran outside and trapped the zombie villager in my boat, ignoring the single skeleton which barely posed any threat. But for some reason, I had felt I needed to snipe the skeleton from my balcony before heading out, and by the time the door shut behind me, the zombie villager had despawned! I had never been so frustrated. Such a good opportunity, missed just like that, and my luck would prove to be dreadful for the whole rest of the update.

I did, however, shoot a spider which dropped an eye for once. The next morning, I crafted a fermented spider eye and brewed three weakness potions, expecting the next two or three nights to be the same as the first. And spoiler warning (again), it wasn't.

As I was scouting around my base for any still-present monsters, I obtained another spider eye.

Seriously? No, it was probably trying to remind me of my zombie villager failure from last night.

I spent the rest of the afternoon breeding cows and chickens, trying to make some more levels for enchanting, when an enderman suddenly teleported in front of me, having stolen a block of gravel from somewhere.

Well, not only did I get my gravel back, I also obtained two more ender pearls.

Night 2 was just more mob sniping, nothing interesting. My Power IV and Flame enchanted bow was enough to two-shot most mobs. Barely any monsters spawned, though, which surprised me since I expected nighttime in hard difficulty to bring in whole seas of them. It's probably because of the caves.

Come dawn, I was greeted by a wandering trader party, which like the pillager patrols, I haven't had in a while.

To help them out on their business, I bought two nautilus shells. These would be useful if I ever decided to craft a conduit in the future.

The next few days were fairly routine. I spent the mornings scouting for monsters, particularly creepers, and the afternoons harvesting crops and farming animals for levels. The chicken farm in particular is much more effective than I thought, often allowing me to gain three levels in one day. My bow was nearly broken, so I crafted a new one and enchanted it.

That'll suffice for now. Power III is still a strong enchantment.

As for nighttime? Observing and shooting monsters!

On Night 4, the phantoms finally appeared. About time.

Since phantoms were more difficult to shoot down, I used my Flame bow, watching them burn to crisps in the night sky after every successful shot. I somehow was never attacked once. They did swoop down at me but never actually made any contact. Perhaps it was because of my hissing cat? By dawn, I managed to obtain three phantom membranes, which was more than enough.

I was met by another pillager patrol shortly after that, but I easily shot them down.

I managed to obtain another ominous banner and crossbow.

Another round of chicken farming allowed me to enchant my leggings. What would luck bring us today?

Fire Protection? Unsatisfactory. Into the grindstone they went.

I looked at what was up next, and ... Fire Protection again?! I can't even get the most basic armor protection anymore? I guess I should just enchant my shovel instead, but first:

The following nights were relatively uneventful. Just a couple of creepers and skeletons in the distance. Hardly even any zombies, never mind zombie villagers. I was greeted by multiple daytime endermen though, which made things slightly better.

Now, it's shovel enchanting time:

Disappointing, but as I had said earlier, things move on.

I'm actually speechless now. What's going on?

No good enchantments, no zombie villagers. Things were going really badly, but I couldn't give up now after all this, so I spent the next few nights practicing my aiming accuracy, shooting anything within range. It really paid off, because I even got an advancement for it (i.e. shooting a skeleton from 50 blocks away). I suppose this made up for my failure with Return to Sender?

But even after that, I continued duelling with skeletons, including armored ones.

The next day, it was enchanting time once again. The leggings were coming up with Fire Protection and the shovel didn't look promising either with just Efficiency III, so I had a go at reenchanting my Power III bow, hoping for Infinity to come up as I was going through lots of arrows pretty quickly.

Well, that was a big mistake. I even lost my Unbreaking enchantment.

At least I had now reset the leggings enchantment, so I looked at what's next on offer.

Yes! I can finally have normal Protection on my armor. (It's half-excitement, half-sarcasm.)

I headed out to the barn for another round of chicken farming. This is its current state:

At one point, I heard the chickens taking damage, which meant that we've got some entity cramming going on here. My suspicions were unfortunately confirmed when I found raw chicken in my inventory.

Funnily enough, an enderman teleported here and I obtained another two ender pearls. They always seem to show up when I'm near the barn for some reason, it's almost irritating.

But finally, after a final dose of XP:

Wait, Unbreaking III came with it as well? That's the best it could ever be! Our luck was finally with us again. But that's not all. As I looked at the enchanted books on offer, I saw this:

To end this update with a bit of positivity, I bought the Feather Falling IV book (obviously) and applied it to my boots. That's two pieces of armor now fully enchanted. The only enchantments I lacked now were a missing level of Protection on my helmet and chestplate as well as Unbreaking III and Aqua Affinity on my helmet.

Once this is achieved, I'll top everything off with Mending. Before that, however, I still need to find and cure two zombie villagers for the villager settlement, and I'm not doing too well on that part, so this will be my priority in the next update.

A critical arrow shot from an unenchanted bow deals between 6 to 11 points of damage. Power increases the damage by 25% x (level + 1), rounded up to the nearest half-heart, so each critical arrow deals:

• Power I: 9 - 16 points of damage
• Power II: 11 - 19 points of damage
• Power III: 12 - 20 points of damage
• Power IV: 14 - 23 points of damage
• Power V: 15 - 25 points of damage

So yes, even a critical arrow from a Power I bow can be stronger than one from a Power V one, but the average is much higher for the latter. Bows with any level of Power are usually enough to two-shot common hostile mobs like zombies, creepers and skeletons.