Since my last post there has been some major developments in my current Minecraft world. It is now getting to the point where I feel like I can start on some major projects that I have been putting off due to the lack of certain resources.
I am also starting to feel like I am not muddling through as much in this game and have a better grasp of it.
Before we begin though let me add a small disclaimer…
Disclaimer: I am playing a modded Minecraft. If you play with vanilla your experiences may differ. For a full list of my current mods check this page.
Oh, and I spruced up the mod’s page a little adding descriptions for each one.
And speaking of mods, there some new ones I decided to add. The first one is Waila Harvestability. I wanted to add it before but couldn’t find it.
It is an add-on for Waila/Hwyla that basically tells what kind of tool is necessary to harvest a certain block. It will also tell if it is possible to do it with the current tool in your hand.
The second new mod is Nature’s Compass. It is a special compass you can build then it will give the coordinates and distance to a chosen biome.
I installed it because I wanted to find a jungle biome to get some bamboo to make scaffolds. It worked so well that I am not sure if I can play without it anymore.
Lastly (for now), it is Craftable Saddles. Not only it does what the name says, it also allows you to craft horse armors and name tags.
I find it silly that vanilla Minecraft doesn’t have recipes for those but I am grateful there are modders out there to correct this mistake.
With that out of the way, let’s get to the actual gameplay. The first thing I decided to build this time was a XP farm.
I decided to build one because I thought enchantments took a lot of XP (more about that in a bit). Since I wanted to enchant some items before venturing into the Nether again, having an easy source of XP would be ideal.
For a relatively simple build this one was kind of annoying to build. I made mine based on this design by Plinge.
It works flawlessly, giving me some good XP and drops!
The next project was to build a slime farm. If I thought a XP farm was annoying the slime farm has made that one look easy by comparison. For this one I based it on this design by ilmango.
The first challenge was on how to build a quarry. To solve that problem I experimented building a digging machine in Creative Mode by using some items from Create.
Since the area to dig was large (16 x 16), I thought about making it mobile so I didn’t have to build as many drills. To that end I tried to build a mobile platform that would use rails and a cart to move it around. The end result though was a horrible, complex monstrosity that was hard to use.
To add insult to the injury my energy source was going to be a Furnace Engine and a Flywheel. My reasoning was that as I cooked some polished stone for the future spawn platforms it would generate the energy to power the machine.
The problem is that both the Furnace Engine and Flywheel require brass to make which I just didn’t have access to at the time. So not only it would be a stupidly, flawed, complex machine but it would be one I couldn’t build in the first place!
Fortunately the internet is full of people smarter than me and I end up going with this quarry machine design by Monkeyfarm.
His design is a lot more simple and elegant than what I was trying to do. The only difference is that mine uses a Hand Crank instead of a Sequence Gearshift since the latter requires brass to make.
I also made its size to be 8 x 4 which I figured would allow me to cover as much area of the quarry as possible without going broke making drills. Specially since I already had the majority of drills and cases already done from a previous project so it was only a question of making a few more.
Not only it did its work well but it also brought back a bunch of iron ore stacks, some gold ores and a few emerald and diamonds. All of that ore went on to the construction to the slime farm later one.
Create also came to rescue when creating the platforms for the farm. I only build the first one then used the Schematicannon to copy it and build the other ones.
Overkill for something so simple to build? Maybe. But I wanted to test the Schematicannon and this looked like a good opportunity. Plus it lowered the chances of me making mistakes.
Unfortunately I had to halt my work due to not having enough iron to make the iron golems.
At this point I knew I had to stop postponing the creation of my iron factory which I have been putting off because of the brass ingots. And to make brass ingots I needed to go to the Nether to capture a blaze.
Before I did any of that I wanted to enchant my gear a bit. I built a temporary enchanting spot while I plan how to build the basement for my house and off I went to enchant.
For some reason I thought it took 30 levels for each enchantment. When that didn’t turn out to be true I was very surprised and confused. Oh, well, I am not complaining!
I didn’t enchant everything yet. Just got some protection, fire resistance and some other enchantments done. Just what I felt was enough to be able to capture a blaze without dying in one shot.
This time though I decided to do my exploration of the Nether through a different portal, a broken one I found at the entrance of a jungle biome. I fixed it and went in.
My hope was that it would end up closer to a fortress, a plan that much to my surprised worked! Well, it was still painful to get to that place but at least it was a smaller trek and easier to find than if I did that from my first portal.
Side note: the more I explore the Nether the more I understand why Jeromai said in a previous comment that he would never explore it again without a jetpack mod. Going anywhere in that dimension is just a pain.
I am almost tempted to install a jetpack mod too just to avoid further pain. But for now I am resisting. :p
Back to my misadventures… To cut a long story short I eventually was able to capture a blaze. Now I can finally start making some brass which should unlock almost, if not all, the rest of the machinery from Create.
This also means I can finally build a factory to produce iron and gold ingots. I already have an idea on how to do it thanks to RagePlaysGames older video series about Create. I will still need to think how and where to build all of it but I am not too worried about it. For now the only limitation is my imagination! 🙂