I'm quite happy with how the base is progressing. The central hub, before and after:
As you can see, the temporary farm has been removed in favor of a more permanent one to the right. There's also a temp infinite water pool.
This is the path that the grass came down from it seriously took several IRL days to get it from the surface, which was rather high due to the biome, to the deep cave.
The incompleted wheat farm is straightforward enough. I intend on making it auto-harvesting using water. Also shown is the path toward the farm.
The left path goes to the secondary hub. Since it's more than just a couple blocks lower, I went ahead and made it a full-fledged staircase similar in style to what Etho does, minus the fences.
As you could possibly tell, I seem to be wanting to get the structure of the place laid out before I start making specific rooms. Its' quite enjoyable plotting out the potential structure. One of my goals is to make a ring-shaped hall around the central hub which connects the various paths emanating from it. The secondary hub will be part of the ring.
Topside, I have a tree farm.
The terrain is nothing short of wonderful, at least in the hills. As it turns out, the cave is situated across River and Jungle biomes. With the way I have Optifine's graphics set up, I can see the biome borders by grass color.
Here we have a natural sort of corridor in the mountains. It reminds me of the wonder 1.7.3 terrain generation. Ah.
Part of the valley that lies over the cave.
I am following a special Minecraft rule I call "conservative crafting." When exploring, I seek to minimize how much of the naturally placed blocks I destroy. In other words, if there's a wall I need to get over, instead of digging through it or building stairs out of it, I'll place dirt or gravel blocks to get over it. When I want to shut off a natural stream of water or lava, I will simply seal off the source block. I'm also waiting until the surrounding caves are well lit before going off Peaceful mode, so I can feel secure while I build.
I would also like to give a shout-out to StarshadesJack on the Minecraft forum, who is likewise doing an Etho-inspired base. Our particular styles and techniques are differing greatly, as StarshadesJack has a lot more structures on the surface. Check out his thread StarshadeJack's Ethotarian Base.
At some point in the not too distant future, I will likely be moving this and most of my other blogs. My personal website is in great need of usage and since this is pretty active, why not move it there? The future URL will be http://shawntc.x10hosting.com/blogs/minecraft.
