Return of ToK [Tale of Kingdoms Post 2]

A long time ago I downloaded and installed Tale of Kingdoms into a separate Minecraft jar. Having recently gotten bored and de-energized by my ravine project I decided to get back into ToK.

Up until now I've mainly been grinding in front of the castle that you spawn in at the start. Nothing very interesting. Was planning to perhaps start a farm. I've also been considering building a house some distance away. In addition, I am copying an idea from one of my preferred TV shows where each life of my character has a different appearance and perhaps personality as well.

The First Shawntc is the one I've been using for the longest time, haven gotten probably the majority of play time and experience. Not very courageous or crafty, mostly sticking around the castle and rarely venturing deep underground. Used the default Steve skin.

 Things were going smoothly and quietly until today. When I was about halfway toward having enough experience to begin building my own kingdom, there was an attack on the castle: the Siege of Youssaria! The enemies in this mod, which seem to be dark versions of Knights and skeletons, suddenly appeared in the castle and war broke out! Naturally, I tried to help but it was horrible how outnumbered I was. Given my lack of strong equipment I couldn't hold them down very well.

I was obliterated and respawned as the Second Shawntc. My skin (and by the way, the skins for my 2nd to 4th respawns were decided after the fact) was kurtmac's Tenth Doctor.

However this was a brief life. Things happened so quickly... there was no chance to fight back... within seconds I was killed again. I returned once more, this time as the Third Shawntc with the skin of Skylord Lysander from "Shadow of Israphel."

By this point the castle was suffering intense damage and combat. The structure was burning to pieces.

My third version also suffered a quick demise and respawned once more into a fourth form. This was intended to be the typical dwarf skin of Honeydew from Yogscast, but it appears they have been filming, because I got this:

This time I ran to hopefully live. Then I crafted my iron sword and tried to fight. Still no good! My fourth avatar was slain and I came to as the Fifth Shawntc. This time I decided to go with Etho's skin, Kakashi Hatake.

At first, I ran. Content to let the castle burn to the ground I sought to get as far away from the evil NPCs as I could. But the Guild Master would keep teleporting to where I was, saying how we were too far from the castle to fight. So I found some courage and went back into the battle. With the help of the Master and the archers I began to fight off the bad guys! Emboldened by victories I went to the front of the battle lines - going out of my way to grab experience orbs - and once the inner area was cleared, I went up to the largely destroyed upper level of the castle. There weren't any monsters up there.

 Victory at last! I scrounged up a few logs to get the needed stack and the castle was promptly repaired.

 Unfortunately, my bed, workbench, furnace, and chest were destroyed in the repairing. Meaning that the Fifth Shawntc is starting over basically from scratch.

But I'm nearly able to begin my kingdom!

Quick Report [Ravine Project Post 6]

I haven't done very much this past week. Got a couple more rooms taken care of and I also worked on the pool.

This room features my first usage of brick. Probably could have been done better...

I really like how this next room came out. It primarily features stone slabs and stone brick. The room is unique in that it has an upper and lower level, with cobblestone stairs. The patterned floors came out really well.

The door for the bottom half really should be shifted one block so that it aligns with the center of the pattern.

For the pool, I smoothed out the walls and ceiling, and also put stone brick at the entrance to make it an actual room. There's a small tunnel opposite the door, I don't know what to do with it yet. Perhaps make a locker room (full of chests) and a place where people can sit and relax.

My mind has been wandering in the realm of starships again. I encountered an interesting craft called The Luminous on Planet Minecraft and it has inspired me to perhaps built my own craft. The first thing that came to my mind was what I've dubbed the Imperator. It's a starship, but has all the necessities of a good Minecraft base in it. So it has all sorts of farms, XP farm/mob trap, TNT cannons, flaming arrow dispensers, and so on. Then I started thinking of the Elohim, a project I abandoned a long time ago. For some reason, Minecraft Classic can't load files anymore. I thought maybe I could examine what I had built thus far (something like 3-4 decks) and put it into a Survival world. Maybe I will restart that project in the future.

Nether Trip [Ravine Project Post 5]

There have been several suggestions for me to use Nether brick for building stuff. And Nether brick does look pretty awesome. So it was off to the Nether for me!

It didn't take too long for me to encounter my first Ghast. I took it down no problem. But when I wanted to return home so I could resupply, I had a road block...

Here's a cool view of my portal from an elevated position:

When I returned to the Nether, I started hearing what sounded like a wet slapping noise. That's what a Slime makes. But there are no Slimes in the Nether... but there are these guys (I thought they were rare...):

I sliced him up and got plenty of XP from him.

As I explored around more, playing badminton with Ghast fireballs, I noticed a silly glitch:

After exploring for a little while, I didn't find any Nether fortresses. I returned to the overworld and exited the game. Curious to see if any fortresses had appeared anywhere, I went on Minutor (slightly violating my desire to play this map completely legit). As it turns out there was one about a hundred blocks from me, but the part closest to me was encased in Netherrack. After breaking a pickaxe and going to the wrong coordinate pair, I broke into the fortress:

I heard plenty of Blazes around me. According to Minutor I had at least two not very far from me. I didn't really want to battle them so I went on Peaceful mode and snapped this pic.

I could probably make this into an XP farm in the future, as well as a good source of Blaze rods with which I could power my furnaces.

I explored the fortress for some time and decided to start mining it. Once I gathered a large enough amount I returned to the overworld.

I then built a room with Nether brick, glowstone, and sandstone. I also completed the room with light gray wool in the ceiling, and also made a more natural room using cobblestone, dirt, and jack o' lanterns.

Final amusing point: I was doing some mining to gather more coal and stuff (as if I really needed more) and came across a huge coal deposit. It was at least 5 blocks tall and I actually ran into bedrock.

Setting Up the Rooms [Ravine Project Part 4]

I've finished up with laying the stone bricks on the walls of the corridor. I've left the upper dirt layers in place to give the ravine more varied of a look. Both the office and the closet now have stone walls with stone brick along the bottom and the corners.

The first room I went with was adjacent to the closet. As you can see, I may have gone a little crazy with using a mix of materials. I thought it would look nice but it seems a little too... diverse to me. However I could just use that as the theme of the room.

All the way in the corner of the ravine, on the other side of the hall of the underground lake, I had a small squarish room and I decided to make it a Nether room.

Then one of the larger rooms, I decided to use a plank and wool combination. I want the ceiling to have light gray wool. There's a story connected to that: I needed more ink sacs so I went searching for squid. Every time before now I remember seeing tons of squid in the water my house faces. But they weren't there. I found them after some searching and collected their sacs. Then while crafting the light gray dye my game crashed! I loaded it back up and, because the items were in the transition state between inventory and crafting menu, they were gone when I reloaded. All that work for nothing. Need to find more squid.

Another problem I was facing is that I couldn't come up with good combinations of blocks, so I asked on this thread of the Minecraft forum. Here's some things I may consider trying:

• Iron blocks and lapiz lazuli blocks.
• Sandstone and Nether brick (need to find a Nether fortress first).
• Cobblestone and pine logs.
• Stone slabs with something.
• Sandstone with stone bricks.
• Sandstone with pine logs.
• Wool with wood or planks.
• Sandstone with red or blue wool.
• Iron blocks with obsidian
• Bricks with planks and wood.

If you have suggestions, please let me know!

I <3 Stone Brick [Ravine Project Part 3]

I have finished making the rooms for the ravine! There are 21 in total, including an underground lake that appeared right next to it. It took a lot of self-discipline to keep myself from skipping past the room-making stage. At first they were basically the same but when I reached areas that had bends in them I started getting more variety in their shapes. Also for a large percentage of them, they share the same layer of rock as walls. That's going to cause some issues when I try to design each room uniquely.

Most of the lower level's outer walls converted to stone brick, which for its basic appearance looks very nice to me.

Here's the inside of the office. It's not completed yet. It has the dark log rim around its door.

At one point, Enderbro decided one of the rooms needed more decoration. I made sure not to look at him though; he might think I'm insulting him. Yeah, because a difference of one dirt block makes it amazing.

 I cleared the area around the freakish tree that I bonmeal'd into existence. I think I'm going to prune some trees from my tree farm and help it out a bit.

The ravine as a whole now looks a whole heck of a lot better than when I first found it.

And ladies and gentlemen, we're not even close to being done with it. When I finish bricking the walls, I want to add signs outside each door with a room number and description of what is in it. Then I want to use either glowstone or jack-o-lanterns as lighting. Then comes the fun of designing each room to look unlike the others. Along the floor of the corridor I would like to add a strip of some material, and perhaps also a long the wall. It would break up the rather monotone appearance of the place.

The stone lip that constitutes the second level is going to be extended outward two blocks, and a fence added to prevent falling.

Here's a pic of the room that does all the crafting and cooking of materials:

Before I get back to work, I have a couple things I'd like to make known. I have added a poll to the upper right part of the blog. I'm considering making a Twitter account for this site so that you can keep in touch with me and get more live updates of what I'm doing. Second, I'm already planning what I might do for my next big project. It's pretty cool that ever since I began with the ravine, it's been something I could stick to. Normally I would impulsively hop from idea to idea, without it ever coming to fruition (like way back in the early days of this blog, I could not stick to one thing). This project has been taking a long time for me but it's pretty fun to do it and blog about it.

Now, onto this new idea I have. There's a server out there called the University of Autumn. I've mentioned it in the past. They are currently reconstructing themselves but their premise is to teach people how to play Minecraft. I support it as I'm an avid proponent of education. Having gone through the college experience, I've developed an alternate system of classes and also introduced majors. So I've thought, "Why not build the university anyway?" And that's what I'm considering. The University of Minecraft, Youssarian style. Several buildings on a large campus. This would be quite different from the ravine project, or any other. I would do it in Creative mode, fully utilizing WorldEdit. Ever wondered what I do in Creative mode? I'll leave you with this pic.

Ravine Update [Ravine Project Part 2]

Been slowly working on the ravine. For right now I'm going to focus on getting the rooms dug out. I have about six of them, all various in shape and size. I don't know how many there are going to end up being. My plan is to complete the structure of the rooms then begin with the walls of the ravine. I want to use stone brick since Etho is quite fond of it however I've yet to use it for anything. But I will leave the dirt layers at the top.

As I have said before, the rooms will all have a different theme to them. I don't know if I will have anything inside them or just leave them as unused lots. Probably should put stuff in them. For the duration of posts dealing with what has been dubbed the Ravine Project I will normally do the oh-so-clever post name then "[Ravine Project Part x]" where x is the post number. "Ravines are More Fun than Cities" is technically Ravine Project Part 1 but the numbering system wasn't around at the time.

Unrelated, I'm thinking about the future. Specifically, money and donations. I don't know how many visitors I get to my site but I know there are probably some of you out there that would be interested in donating as a way of providing me incentive to keep playing. I have a lot I still want to do so I don't think I'll be quitting just yet. Actually, I have no plans on quitting. Perhaps in a few months I will set up a PayPal account and put a Donate button on this site. If you donate you will also have the opportunity to suggest a build or map for me to try. Also, people like free stuff. People like Minecraft. Therefore, people like free Minecraft. Something I would also consider doing if sufficient funds existed would be to have occasional gift code giveaways. It would possibly be a monthly thing. I think people would like that.

As always feel free to drop a comment with suggestions of things for me to try. 'Til next time, happy digging!

Ravines are More Fun than Cities!

The City Construction Challenge burnt me out pretty quickly. Probably because one, I had to devote a ton of time to collecting resources. The first stage, where you're limited to wooden tools, was ridiculously prolongated. The second stage was much easier for resource collection yet the requirements were rather high. Maybe Insane mode wasn't such a good idea. Doesn't help that I had like 2 hamlets spawn nearby, introducing tons of lag. And the biome itself does not lend much in the way of terrain flat enough for a settlement. At least, not where I was.

So I left that stuff there and returned to the ravine next to my base. I had glassed the top of it and now began smoothing out the bottom and the walls. It turned out to be trickier than expected. I also noticed that ravines seem to have a single-block wide lip about halfway up their walls. That makes for a perfect second floor. I went ahead and completed that. I also added half-slabs where the floor rises or dips. That makes it so I can run without being stopped. Stair blocks slow you down for whatever reason.

Now the question that faced me was, what would I do with it? I knew I wanted to make a bunch of little rooms in the sides, but what for? Then I had this idea: renting rooms in a ravine! I'd design a bunch of rectangular rooms along the two floors with different sizes and compositions. Some would have, say, sandstone floors, others stone brick, still others wool, and so on.

Each corner of the ravine is roughly high enough that the lip intersects them. This means the stair system can intersect nicely with it, and the slabs allow you to easily get on the second floor. The two corners also have something special about them. One side has a natural underground lake that will become a room, possibly with some kind of lounge in the small tunnel behind it. The other side has a really tall, cramped tree.

Now, the first thing I wanted to build was the office. It'd be simple: the main room would have a front desk with a simple bookshelf behind it, representing the paperwork for renting the rooms. Connected would be a smaller room as an office.

I've been watching a ton of Etho lately. He's become my new #1 favorite Let's Play. His inventions are ridiculously awesome. He has, for instance, make a Slime farm that uses water currents, signs, stairs, and AI pathing in a way the Slimes are automatically sorted by size. It's amazing and I derive a lot of my aspirations from him.