Public World Download - October 20th, 2012

We are now 7 months on from the time that I've started this world. It hasn't felt like 7 months, but that's what the post dates have been telling me. I've finally gotten back from my hiatus caused by the release of Guild Wars 2, and I've spent a fairly large amount of time doing things in my world. There is a new iron golem farm, so iron is not a problem anymore. The lighting of my base has taken a further step in the final direction with the addition of the lamp posts on the top tier of the base. My base has a new room, which is dedicated to the iron golems. I have finally started on my Nether hub, which currently has two destinations (with working rail systems): one to the still-in-progress zombie pigmen farm and the other to the wither skeleton spawning pad. Speaking of wither monsters, I finally killed my first wither and collected its star (and I left three more heads so you can fight one yourself). also, I've worked on even more terra-forming in preparation for the final touches of my base. Overall, quite a lot for three weeks of work.

Remember, I have been using the snapshots to play on my world. You must use up to at LEAST w40b in order for the world to not corrupt, though I have been on the pre-release for the past few days. With that said, the download is below.

Download iMaelstrom's Survival World here.


Enjoy!

October 20th, 2012

So I originally intended on releasing my world on the 14th, but timing worked against me, so I had an additional week to play around with a few things before the world release that will happen after I post this.

First of all, I wanted to finish filling out maps of my world. I already had a map completed, and I have no idea what size that map would be considered as in the 1.4 update, so I'm basically going to have to start over once I finish filling out this one. I finished exploring the top half of the map (which took quite awhile), and generated quite a lot of new terrain. The good news is that there is more than one desert in my world after all. The bad news is that most of them are surrounded by mass amounts of jungle biomes.

This blacksmith is the biggest hermit I have ever seen in Minecraft. I don't know who he sells his goods to, but it isn't the other village that's about 200 blocks away, as they already have a blacksmith. I guess competition is still fierce, even in this abandoned world. This fellow was nice enough to give me some potatoes though, so I won't speculate too much into his reasoning.

I finally gathered the one remaining wither skeleton skull I needed and fought the Wither. Quite frankly, the fight was a cake walk. As you can see, he never even got the Wither effect on me. I had planned on leaving that first Wither fight for you guys who download my world, but I had the time to farm three more wither skeleton skulls, so you guys can still fight him in a battleground of your choosing. Feel free to use the battleground that I used, my old slime farm. The damage that you see in the first picture is literally the worst part of it, and was caused by him exploding after he spawned. You can find the slime farm in a tunnel underneath the mountain with the single, glowing tree on top of it. It isn't a very far walk from my base.

I've added the third last room that I have planned for this base. This one is dedicated to being the official collection point for my iron golem farm. The other spot at the surface had a slight problem with the golems escaping their cells, and they would try and kill you when you tried to kill them. They were all one-shots with a sword though, so I believe that they just glitched through the old collection cell. This new area does not have that problem. You can kill them all with a lava blade by standing on the pressure plate you see in the picture. The iron golems are standing on one as well, but it doesn't do anything except make sure the lava doesn't spread too far.

I've finally had the motivation to add a second archway into my base. As these are the two entrances I use the most, I decided to get them out of the way first. The other two will be coming soon as well, as soon as I collect more wood (these things are not fun to build with how you have to place each of the wood logs sideways).

I've also done a bit of terra-forming work, starting with the river. The river isn't done yet, but I have plans to include it in another project of mine, so I have to do this some time.

The second part of the terra-forming happend on the west end of my base. Originally, there was a big crater here leading to a large cave system. I have covered up the cave with about five layers of dirt and stone. There also was a small forest here, which I plan to bring back with glowing trees to make sure mobs don't spawn in there.

You may notice on the hill on the central left part of the picture, there are randon glowing spots. Those were caused by me burning down some of the trees. The fires apparently turned invisible, and caused random glowing patches that never go out. There are more like it if you head more south, but I thought I'd just point that out.

My goal is to be finished with this base within the next two months, and begin on other projects. I have quite a few farms to do, as well as some landscaping work and decorating around my base. Also, I need to replace the lighting system on the bottom tier, as it is very bugged in 1.4, and will often flicker at night, allowing mobs to potentially spawn (which we don't want for sure). I have not done anything for this world release, so be aware of that. You may even want to go and stick a redstone torch in the beginning of the lighting system so it will perpetually stay on.

That's all I've got. Signing out!

October 13th, 2012

I'm back! Guild Wars 2 is finally tiring me (along with ArenaNet's tyrannical approach to the "no farming" rule). So what's changed? Well, I'm running the game on snapshots now, the most recently updated being week 40b. So I have many more things to think about and update. Also, no texture pack. It isn't updated for the snapshots, and frankly, I've gotten used to using the default textures once more. It's kind of nostalgic in its own way.

First of all, trading is essentially extinguished from the game. The pitifully small amounts of items that you can trade before the offer becomes blocked now make trading practically worthless. Sure, I could trade away my emeralds for diamond equipment from the blacksmith, but emeralds are now insanely hard to obtain (especially in a world that does not have a lot of local extreme hills generated in the 1.3 version of the game). So I've decided to keep my emerald blocks that I did obtain, and I will use them for decoration, like I did with the lapis blocks.

Second of all, beacons are fun. They are, however, the most difficult thing to obtain in this game. The Wither fight is incredibly gear dependent (though I have that part down already), wither skeletons are not fun to farm, and each maxed beacon requires 164 blocks of iron, emerald, gold, diamond, or a mix of those. Diamond blocks are out of the question as much as emerald blocks now are, so that leaves gold and iron. Of those, iron is by far the easier material to obtain and/or make a farm for. So my world now has an iron golem farm.

It's unwieldy, sure, but I can easily improve the looks of it later. For now, function is all that matters. Thanks to JL2579's server for this design.

In my ever-continuing quest to remove all the torches from my base, I have added even more redstone lamps to my base. These ones are a bit unique, as they are powered visibly, while not being powered by any redstone source. This is done by powering the lamp with a redstone torch or repeater, and then breaking the torch or repeater with a piston while the chunk is not loaded. Redstone signals can still be transported through unloaded chunks with the use of instant wire (which uses sticky pistons to extend a powered block and continue the redstone line). I am having a slight problem with a few of the lamps, however, as they will not remain powered no matter what I do (so for now, you can see a lever on those ones).

The Nether hub is now finally being worked on, and it currently leads to two locations. The zombie pigman farm will be one of them, though for now it is just a work in progress. This area is perfectly safe for now (and in tomorrow's world release), but in future world releases, I will almost assuredly have made more progress in this area, meaning that the island will be very straining on your computer, and I would advise you to stay away from the area if you struggle to run the game. I can't even work on this area during the week, as my laptop will drop to about two frames per second while I am looking at the Nether portals. I need to wait until the weekends to get access to my desktop PC.

The second track at my Nether hub leads to a Nether fortress I found while exploring. This fortress is wonderful because it has a large section of it entirely over lava. I turned it into a giant spawning pad for wither skeletons, though I see a lot of blazes, pigmen, and regular skeletons as well (even the occasional magma cube). This is where I have been farming for wither skulls, so I can hopefully get lots of beacons in the future (I am going to need at least four for my base).

That's all I've got for now. Signing out!