Cows and Enchants

Finding and breeding mobs is one of the more tedious parts of Minecraft, if you ask me. But I needed some cows in order to get enchanted books, so it was time to get breeding.

I knew there were a couple of them near the villager tower. Before setting off for home with them I bred them to get the first baby.

The journey lasted a good few hundred meters. Along the way I picked up another cow, got another baby, and lost a cow as it took a swim into a ravine. I made a pen for them and thus began my herd.

It's not terribly far from my house. Then I figured, why stop with an unprotected pen? Why not build a house? So, using my increasingly developed aesthetic skills, I did just that.

I debated with myself how I wanted the top part of the building to look. Did I want the walls to all be the same color plank? Or should it be something different, for variety? The end result was a line of birch plank at the top. The pattern of the roof is akin to the style used by Mhykol on the Mindcrack server.

Cow Outpost 1 was ready to run.

And my goodness does it work well.

From my first round of harvesting cows (to put it nicely) I got about sixteen books, which I proceeded to enchant. Oh, and I also did some style work on the enchantery.

So much XP!

Some of those books were efficiency and unbreaking enchants, which I applied to my main pickaxe. I ended up repairing all my tools and getting ready to resume work on the village. I want the upper levels to be used by villagers, but I don't think that's going to happen unless I force them up there. I can't find any ways of including stairs. Maybe I'll just build up the population first and use minecarts to get them up there.

Coming Together

Today's activity update starts with some home improvement. I've wanted to put some flower pots in the bedroom, but only now got to it. I may have to use these more often, because they are rather nice looking.

Getting in and out of the spawner complex was a rather tricky trot through a cave complex. I crafted up a bunch of ladders and made a simpler entrance/exit. I still need to design the aboveground part of it. It is on the border of a swamp and a rather hilly snow biome.

Then it was time for the enchantery. It's so much more convenient to have it in the spawner complex than at home. I disassembled the stuff from the roof and established a small room for it.

It's a relatively simple design, but I don't see many other ways to augment it. Perhaps put a couple chests in there to store enchanted books and tools. The dirt is a placeholder until I get more bookshelves. I might just raid Polis Youssarianis and get the books from there. Either that or I need to start a cow farm. The leather will do me good, and I'll probably need it anyway to enchant books.

At this point I arrive at a bit of a choke point. Comparators need to be crafted with Nether quartz. And it'd also be nice to have glowstone for lighting the room instead of jack o'lanterns. Oh, and part of my Minecraft Experience project is visiting the Nether. I'm actually rather concerned about going to the Nether. The game gets rather slow and laggy when I hop in the Nether. Nonetheless all the goodies are in there. This portal awaits my entrance...

And when I get there, this pickaxe will let me get a good haul.

Friend's Private Server

I have been rather inactive on the server lately. Just not much motivation to keep working on the roundhouse. I may just pack my things and go elsewhere. I want to make a skybase. The idea of a server Nether hub has been discarded. I still want to make something that is easy accessible to all and that people can go to for supplies (akin to Pakratt0013's house on the Mindcrack server).

Miscellany

You can now see an overview of my map on my personal website by visiting this link: http://shawntc.x10host.com/mcmap