Minecraft 1.8 Map!

Eighteen months. That's how long I've been playing my 1.5 map. The one on which I've begun countless projects, but only completed a very few. I don't even know how long I was on my 1.0.0 map. A while, that's for sure.

Now, a map change has happened again! With Minecraft 1.8 promising a lot of new blocks, features, and terrain generation, I've decided it is time to start fresh. Today, I begin a new map, a new seed, and a new goal.

A New Map
Past worlds had random seeds and no clear goal. This new world, which I'll call my Main 1.8 map, has the seed "Youssarian", my in-game name. The spawn is a thick jungle.

This map has new objectives, an attempt at a new way of playing Minecraft. Past worlds have largely been oriented toward redstone and functional builds. Over the last year my aesthetic skills have improved greatly. I've also found my natural build style - small buildings with thick detail. I want to put this into practice. Therefore, this map will be building-oriented. I will have redstone, yes, but it will be limited toward practical things, and hopefully not as expansive and daunting as things I've tried in the past. You can expect me to make villages and simple mansions, and really whatever looks nice in my head.

Right now I'm playing using snapshot 14w30c. I'll update on occasion, when I feel the need for it.

New Blocks and Items
What's drawn me to 1.8 are the new blocks. Andesite, diorite, and granite allow more possibilities for stony builds. Banners are excellent ways to visually identify owners, factions, and the like. Slime blocks have really cool functions. Updated enchanting mechanics allow for powerful tools at a lesser cost. Underwater content adds another light block. And more.

Teleportation Hub
To add some freshness to the game, I'm going to start allowing myself to use command blocks for teleportation. I might end up using this instead of a Nether hub. The teleportation hub will be filled with command blocks that send me to locations I designate. This hub may also include a map room, where I chart the world. This hub is needed because I don't know when 1.8 will actually be released, so mods like VoxelMap won't be around for a while.

Other Challenges and Factors

• Establish some kind of spawn town. Could be very difficult with spawn being a jungle. May instead do it in a nearby plains.
• Before I can set up a teleportation pad for a place, I need to personally travel to it. So no teleporting to a mushroom biome and not generating the path from spawn to it first.
• I want to try and find a stronghold, and fight the Enderdragon.
• I am challenging myself to make a minimum of one post each week. The post will be published Mondays at 9 AM EST (8 AM CST).
• I will be using a program called AMIDST. It gives me an accurate preview of the biomes of my world, before I go to them. It also shows generated structures. I will use it to seek out biomes, villages, and whatnot. I will not use it to find strongholds.

Setting Up

Alright so that's enough talk, let's get to building! I spawned in a messy jungle, and there was a small lake nearby. My first instinct was to get to safety... and what's safer than a house elevated over water?

I found a small cave with exposed stone and diorite, and began mining that out.

Sparing you an hour's worth of work, I shall now show you my starter house. It incorporates cobble stairs, diorite, oak stairs, and a medley of oak and jungle wood.

A little thinking later, I realized the legs of the house seemed a tad bare. Supports fill out the space nicely.

The roof seemed kind of boring to me. Some stairs and a wall gave a little more detail.

Oh yeah, then I added a porch. I tried a couple different designs for the porch's supports, but I can't quite get anything I'm pleased with. Ah well, I'm sure it still looks better than just a dangling porch.

Mine It Out
The first thing you do in Minecraft? Mine, of course. For this map I'm doing 500-block-long branch mines. I began with stone pickaxes, which are amazingly slow. It was nice to see all the diorite, granite, and andesite.

I passed by a couple caves which I'll probably spelunk through later. I also found diamonds, and an impressive number of iron ores. At this point I can safely upgrade everything to iron, and start exploring my map.

Banner
I haven't yet made any banners in Survival mode, but the day I heard about banners, I knew what I wanted. My personal banner is a relatively simple one. I want it to be similar to my Minecraft skin, but with a more minimalistic feel. I expect to be using this in my single player world, and also multiplayer should I ever find myself on it.

Another Portal Room

The portal room for my underground, redstone-powered base is now done! I used the same general shape as my last underground base's portal room. The path to it is long not just to be dramatic. I also need it to be far enough from other rooms that I won't hear the whining of the portal.

Don't worry, the dirt will turn to grass eventually.

In front of the portal, over the stairs, I managed a decent design for the ceiling.

Here's what it looks like as you ascend the stairs.

The smooth stone is a bit of a deviation from my general pattern, but it adds depth to the build. I bet a lot of time will be spent going through the base looking for ways to make it look even nicer. I recently found a mesa biome, so I could perhaps color code portions of the base.

Finally, a view from the portal itself.

[Design Idea] Acacia and Red Clay Wall Segments

These are wall segments using acacia logs and stairs, red clay, and white stained glass panes. The stairs give a nice pattern and a bit of depth. I feel like I could do something neat with this.

Grinders and Goals

Underground Base

Between my previous post and now I sat down and thought about what I wanted to do in Minecraft. My main goal was to build the underground redstone-powered base. I'm happy to report that I have two rooms done now: the XP grinder/enchantery/repair room, and the toolkit room.

The ladder in the second picture is temporary. There are enough chests for each type of enchanted book. 

Once or twice I've mentioned wanting an ideal toolkit, and I've made a room devoted to the desired set. Here's a rundown of their enchants.

• Work Pickaxe: Efficiency V, Unbreaking III
• Fortune Pickaxe: Fortune III, Unbreaking III
• Silk Touch Pickaxe: Silk Touch I, Unbreaking III
• Work Shovel: Efficiency V, Unbreaking III
• Fortune Shovel: Fortune III, Unbreaking III
• Silk Touch Shovel: Silk Touch I, Unbreaking III
• Work Axe: Efficiency V, Unbreaking III
• War Sword: Sharpness V, Fire Aspect II
• Looter's Sword: Sharpness V, Looting III
• War Bow: Power V, Flame I, Infinity I
• Sea Helmet: Respiration III, Aqua Affinity IV
• War Armor: Protection IV on each piece.

Recently I've been trying to build up this using enchanted books. But I'm starting to think I might be better off just enchanting tools, then working up what I don't have from that point on. It runs the risk of wasting diamonds on tools and getting stuff I don't want. I guess it's more time efficient, if anything else. If I plan on mining, I can make up for any lost diamonds on stuff.

I have been supporting this system with a few small underground farms.

New Terrain

I've wanted to generate new 1.7.2 land for a while. The thing that's been holding me back is how soon 1.8 will likely be out. Last night I said "to heck with it" and built a portal far from my current land. So that's now two slots of my Nether hub being used, yay!

Part of me wanted to find a mesa biome, even though I don't use clay for anything really. I also noticed that my Nether has crazy amounts of soul sand everywhere. I popped out of the portal expecting terra firma. I did not get that.

Middle of the freaking ocean!

*rage*

After getting myself situated I discovered a landmass wasn't too far away. A really big savannah biome.

Savannah biomes are my favorite biome in the game. They are fairly flat which makes for easy building area. The trees are cool looking. Acacia logs are probably my second-favorite block in the game (behind birch planks). Plus it doesn't rain.

The landmass is both savannah and desert. While I passed it initially, I later found there's a desert village here as well.

My plan for the savannah biome area is probably to use it as a build-only place. I'm curious to try using clay more often. There's a flower forest biome in this new terrain, which means I now have a decent supply of dyes. I will use this area as sort of a "start over" land. I won't bring established tools or blocks to this new place.

Social Media

I'm expanding out a little bit in the Internet. In addiction to my Facebook page I now have a Twitter and Instagram account. Check them out.

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/youssarian91

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/youssarian91

How Not To Redstone

So... did anyone know that as of 1.7.2, baby zombies could get through one-block-high spaces? It'd been so long since I used my zombie grinder that didn't realize that was possible. So imagine my surprise when I started idling at the grinder and found myself being repeatedly attacked by the little monsters? I even died to one. Today I tried doing a quick little update project. It simply involved adding a piston that pushes up a block when I had the spawner running.

First remove the block to be pushed...

Now let's dig into the redstone a little. For those who haven't been around my blog very long, the lever on the left side of the screen is used to control redstone lamps inside the spawning chamber. When it's up, it's emitting a redstone signal, which gets inverted to turn off the lamps and allow spawns. I can take advantage of this. I dig to where the torch is, and show it in "off" mode.

From here we go ahead and run some redstone to the piston. It's near another piston, but luckily no BUD switch effects take place. Not that it would be dangerous or anything.

I put the blocks back in their places and everything seemed to be working right.

Until after the first run. When I turned off the grinder so I could crush the collected zombies, I realized the error of my ways. The block which I had just installed was pulled down and four or five baby zombies went after me.

Sigh.

So instead I went ahead and installed a lever. The wire I had previously made was removed so at not to have a repeat of my mistake. As it turned out the piston was too low for me to just place the lever on the ground, so underneath it I laid down a piece of redstone dust. It was right next to the piston and works as intended.

Sometimes I get too clever for my own good.

So why is this significant? Well, I'm itching to get back into Minecraft Survival. But one of the things that's been keeping me away is my gravely under-powered toolkit. This is where this zombie grinder complex comes in handy. I can mass-enchant books and build up a powerful tool set. I'm not in the 1.8 snapshots so I'm using the old enchanting system.

I know for sure I want an Efficiency III, Unbreaking V work pickaxe, and an Unbreaking/Fortune one as well. The Efficiency/Unbreaking and Unbreaking/Fortune shovel would be nice as well. I don't have a full plan in place yet. But once I got a good supply of enchanted diamond tools I would be able to do things so much easier. Mining would be way more fun - and safer. Large projects like the underground redstone network would go much quicker.

Because of my incoming need for tons of books and levels, I'm thinking of expanding my grinder complex. There would be a reed farm on a clock, a wheat farm on a clock, a cow farm, and dispensers that shoot resources to make books. I would need to expand my enchantery to hold more chests and more types of enchants. As always my mind is bristling with ideas.

Minecraft Earth Redux

A long time ago I found a scale model map of the Earth in Minecraft. I posted about it here. For some reason I got bored of it really quick. Might have to do with the fact I was playing in Survival mode, and that my ideas were way too big for my mind.

Not too long ago, an updated version of the Earth map was released on Planet Minecraft. This version is a beautiful update, because it implements current biomes and other things. In my first play through of the map, I was doing a sort of fantasy history where humanity first started in the Turkey-Israel area, as opposed to Ethiopia. I had begun making things around the Nile River when I gave up. The game, and the mods I was using at the time, just weren't up to par.

Well, I have begun the map again. It's just one thing among many I'm doing in my free time. Due to personal decisions I have opted to play only in Creative mode this time. My design skills have come a long way since my first attempt, so the things I make now should be better.

The first human settlement on this version of the map is a four-house village called Tubal, after the Biblical figure. The real-life city in the approximate location is a Turkish town called Sarımazı. The rest of this post will be images of the settlement. The designs seem simplistic, but they're meant to be. It's the first settlement in humanity, of course it's going to be relatively bland looking. The next build is going to have cobblestone technology, woo hoo!

Designs [Redstone Network Post 1]

Neither my laptop nor my schedule allow much time for making a video series, so I'm going to post about the project here. I've mentioned what I've done up to now to get things figured out. I have figured out how much of the redstone is going to work, and I think I'm ready to start with the base itself.

One of my biggest concerns was how the base would be visually designed. The halls at least have been figured out. Here are pictures of the doorways, halls, and ceilings. Looks pretty nice to me, has a lot of detail.

Included in the plans for this base is an XP farm using a skeleton spawner. This is, in my opinion, the most useful of spawners because it drops bones and arrows. Arrows will be used for fighting. The bones can be used for bone meal. What I might do is this: when I use the grinder, a hopper will store up bones. When I'm done - or if the farms need it - I'll convert the bones to bone meal and store those in a special chest. A cart will then grab some and ferry it to places like the flower farm, ranches, and wherever else it might be needed.

This spawner happens to be located in a mineshaft. This is really good. My project is going to be heavy on rails, and the mineshaft is full of them. Fences don't do me much good, but the wooden planks do. Since much of the area is already going to be carved out for me, tools won't get used as fast, and hopefully building things will go quicker.