Well would you believe it I actually did it this time...
sort of. As you may have read before, some years ago I started a separate post
label called “Minecraft
Adventures of JD” that was to focus on my starting a new singleplayer world
and just playing and surviving and possibly getting to the end and finishing
the game. However in planning my house I unfortunately got carried away (as
usual) and ended up making a grandiose plan for a massive house which I did
make mind you though I lost my original items in the process and forgot what I
had done so far. Because of this I decided I had lost my original intention
entirely so I changed the name of the label to Minecraft
Creations: The Brick Mansion and instead of being a subset to my Minecraft
Adventures label it became a subset to my Minecraft creations label as it took
about 5 posts to get to completion though it will take even more as new things
are added to the game. So check that out if you haven’t seen it, the house is
amazing don’t get me wrong but that wasn’t the whole point of the exercise, it
was to basically get a solid living going made entirely in survival, then maybe
get to the end and finish the game. So basically that’s what I set out to do
again, and I almost did, I did it right this time, I went out there I didn’t
use cheats, I farmed, I mined a built a modest house and when my homestead was
pretty much built, I tried to go to the end, and almost did without cheating.
My homestead as it currently sits.
But firstly I do need to tell you about the mods used, you
see I’ve always used mods inside the game from as far back as I can remember
but I had never successfully been able to use Forge. For those of you who don’t
know, Forge is a program that makes it easier for you to manage your mods as
you can simply just add them to the Forge folder once you have done the fairly
simple install
process. Now funnily enough I was never able to do this process in the past
for some reason and ended up always installing my mods manually, which as
you’ve probably heard me talk about in other Minecraft posts, has gotten a bit
more unpleasant since the update to the Minecraft launcher. But this time, I
just followed the instructions and got it working, first time, I couldn’t
believe it really though technically I had to then add mods to the game, which
I thought would have been difficult, but it was basically a case of dropping
them into the correct Forge mods folder then starting the game and watching the
mod loading screen load them all up, it even had an in-game mod menu telling
you which ones you had active.
So it was pretty awesome, and it worked well, I searched
around heaps for which mods I was going to use but because some mods were only
compatible with patch 1.7.2
I had to make two separate Forge installations, one for patch 1.8 and one for 1.7.2 though
eventually I decided I should go 1.8 even if some mods for 1.8 didn’t work I
would rather have all of the extra content 1.8. So with that in mind I’ll go
through both the mods I used and the mods I wanted to use but couldn’t because
of various reasons.
I tried many a time to get this working and failed, though
maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough as I got it working this time, maybe I was
more determined I guess in any case it makes installing and managing mods much
easier and allows access to mods that require it of course.
This one was an interesting choice as it’s far more suited
to creative mode as it allows you to spawn any block in the game and also do
things like change the time of day, the current difficulty or even the gamemode
from creative to survival. No it was because it had this one new feature that
allowed you to keep your items after death, not some may call this cheating,
but I admit I had a lot more fun than I would have without worrying about dying
and losing everything.
Some shots of the TooManyItemsmod with it's many options
For the longest time I was searching for a minimap mod since
the beloved Xan’s minimap which then became Rei’s Minimap died out an because I
couldn’t use Forge, my options were limited, but then when I finally got Forge
working I found one and it was awesome and just what I needed. It had a minimap
that could be enlarged with waypoints that you could see on the map itself,
worked like a charm.
Built on the same principle as the famous SingleplayerCommands,
Morecommands basically gives you the ability to edit quite a bit of things in
the world, another mod that I didn’t use specifically in my playthrough but
gives important tools most prominently the ability to change the speed at which
you fly which came in handy when I was trying to take screenshots of all of the
places I had been too in the adventure. I found with this mod that apart from
the speed one, most of the commands I used to use i.e. changing the mode from
survival to creative, changing the day/night time and changing the difficulty
could all be done from either the main options or the Toomanyitems options.
This is a texture pack I’ve used for quite a while, as you
can see it’s visually stunning even without the shaders mod (speaking of which
I’ll get to that in a second) I’ve pretty much always used realism texture
packs as they make things look pretty darn cool.
I did really want to use this one, the movie showcase of it
looked freakin amazing though the problem was the many many new items added to
the game were not covered by my resource pack so it didn’t look right when you
had normal 16x16bit textures mixed in with 256x256. I will definitely make a
world to explore with this mod on though as it’s pretty damn cool. I ahve actually just found out that there is a 64x and 256x128x so I'll have to try them out.
As you can see, using the Cyberghost 256x256 texture pack with this mod really didn't work.
This mod adds LOTS of new creatures to the game which would
have been great to experience, unfortunately I could not get the 1.8 version
working, maybe I’ll get the new version and try again sometime.
This is one I though was pretty damn cool to watch but
unfortunately ithas been discontinued
since 1.6.2 and also I probably wouldn’t want my house destroyed by a tornado
though it looks pretty awesome.
I would love to get this one working though I’ve tried and
failed a couple of times now. Makes the game look absolutely stunning but
requires a bit of know-how (and pc grunt) to get working. You may have alos seen this one
So that’s enough about the mods, here we go, the full story…
From what I can remember I spawned in what looked to be a
normal forest biome, I had a quick look around and felt like setting up shop
but it was a bit too open and had a large mountain near it and I had to find
some coal.
Possibly my first view of the world
Found the coal in a nearby cave and after killing some animals set
up camp inside the cave for the night Illuminating it with torches.
The scary cave where I spent the first night
In the
morning I found an area where cows spawned on a hill and then found an area
behind the mountain which I think was an Extreme hills+ M biome as it was
mostly barren and compromised of mostly stone and gravel with patches of other
rock types including Granite, Diorite and Andesite looking something like a
quarry.
The "Quarry" which was my base for a while
There was however a large number of Pigs and Rabbits around which of
some I slaughtered for food others I left to breed and also several entrances
to what looked like a large underground cave. Being a bit full with items I
then found a relatively short cave along the edge of a mountain and blocked off
the entrances with cobblestone and doors, I also carved windows and a balcony,
I even made a bedroom with a bed out of the wool I had and it was quite homely
despite it just being a stone cave.
I unfortunately didn't get a shot of that cave when I was using it so I've only got a photo of it once I had cleared it out.
So now I had a home base set up and as I explored
around the area and did some fishing for food then decided it was time to go mining and get more
coal and iron, so I went into the nearby cave entrance and got to work, there
was quite a lot of coal and a bit of iron too, I found that the cave went even
deeper as I found many lava spigots and as I went in I eventually found an
underground chasm. Though I was excited to find it I had found enough for the
time and went back up to the surface, and started smelting my ore and made
myself iron tools, weapons and a full armor set.
The cave entrance which was near my stone cave base.
Ahhh fishing by sunset
The underground chasm
There still seemed to be heaps
of rabbits around but despite my ample store of pork, steak and rabbit meat I
decided to create some sustainable food for myself. I found a flat grassy area
a near one of the cave entrances and set up two wheat farming patches and I
also laid out some sugar cane on the rivers edge. I did some travelling around
finding a flower biome and two different Savannah biomes one with sheep the
other with cows and pigs and after doing quite a bit of travelling finally
found a village but unfortunately they did not have a priest of which to trade
for ender pearls :(.
My initial farm outside the mine entrance.
The village I found in a plains biome
I felt it appropriate at that stage to find a place to build
my (quite modest this time) house, though I didn’t want to build near that
stone quarry mountain thing I called home, I decided I wanted to find an area
of forest and basically clear it out and make a house, and that I did. I picked
polished andesite and birch wood for my house as they both looked good with the
resource pack I was using and spent a bit of time mining andesite as well as
other rock types that were around the area as well as chopping down (and
replacing of course) lots of birch trees.
I am Frederick Chopin
I found this neat little gully while woodchoppin'
I found a small hill near the south bank of the river and cleared out the
trees then as per my usual method constructed the surrounding wall of the house
using the lay of the land making an interesting sort of curved shape. I then
dug out the bottom and lined the floor with birch wood planks, for the upper
level I made a double-layered level of birch wood planks then created a smaller
structure at the top to serve as my bedroom. With that done I put in an iron
back and front door and cut windows into the bottom level and barred them of
with er well iron bars, on my bedroom level I used glass, I made two ladders from
the lower floor one went directly to my room the other to the balcony and one
extra up to the very top. I put polished andesite blocks along the middle and
highest level edges battlement-style making it look sort of like a castle thenmade some birch fences to fill in the gaps.
Diggin' out the floor
The house almost finished
After adding battlements
Inside of the house was quite big so it looked fairly sparse
with the few things I had in there, I made two different dirt paths across the
river making transporting my items from my old base to my new one much easier.
I lined my chests up with polished diorite as the dividers and put in my
furnaces with polished granite as the floor for the furnaces. I had collected a
large amount of wool and red and yellow flowers so I made apatchwork floor carpet for my house to make
it look more homely though the only other things I had in the room apart from
my bed was a chest and a jukebox. I moved my farms and sugar cane to my new
location and got started on my cow and chicken farms getting them breeding for
more glorious food.
A bit of farming and house refurbishing.
After that I thought it was about time Iwent back down the cave into the underground
chasm marking points as I went which were very useful in working out which way
to go, not that making some extra marking would have helped better but meh I
made it back to there fine and what I found next while exploring the bottom was
groundbreaking (literally hah!) As I found not one, not two but 10 diamond
blocks and that wasn’t all, I found diamonds in monster spawner room chests as
well. So I came back up with my magnificent haul, and decked out my house with
an alchemy stand with renewable water source, an enchanting table and also an
anvil, I managed to enchant my pick and my sword which you can actually do with
Lapis Lzuli now.
Diamonds! many Diamonds
Bottom floor of the house as it currently stands
The top floor of the house, my bedroom
Having decked myself out with a new diamond sword and
pickaxe I decided it was time to get serious and head for the end. I of course
didn’t have enough ender pearls yet but I did need blaze powder to create the
eyes of ender when I did. So to the Nether I went, getting some resources inc
Nether Wart, quartz and glowstone getting some pretty spectactular screenshots
too and not once was I bothered by a Ghast. It took a while to find a Nether
Fortress but I found one and promptly looted the entire place taking on Wither
skeletons and capping Blazes like a boss, I got heaps of loot inc diamonds from
chests around the fortress and quickly got the hell out of there. Another thing
I did try was making a Nether portal near the Nether fortress so I wouldn’t
have to walk so damn far to it but unfortunately as moving 1 block horizontally
in the Nether, you have moved the equivalent of 8 blocks on the Overworld so
when I walked through this new portal I was miles and miles away from my house.
So I just headed back with my haul and quite a haul it was, I had enough for a
full set of diamond armour though it wasn’t really that necessary iron armour
is fine.
GOt some pretty good shots of the nether here
The Nether Fortress
Sometime after I got back from the nether I went in again
and back to the fortress, I think looted everything else I could and made a
pathway of torches in a direct line to my Nether portal with my diamond pickaxe
cutting through the netherrack like it wasn’t even there, I also had to make
some bridges to made the path fine. I also decided that I would need a horse
which I remembered were in the meadow near the village, so I ran all the way
there again and tamed a horse, and man are they fast, I rode like the wind
through the night fighting off monsters as I went and made a fenced in area for
my horse which I enthusiastically named “Yorse”. Unfortunately at this point my
quest wasn’t looking too good, I had my Blaze Rods but only had about 5 or 6
Ender Pearls and needed at least 12. The trouble is you can’t really find
Endermen in abundance apart from the End itself so unless by the time you are
ready you have gotten all the pearls you have to somehow “hunt” for Endermen, in
which there really isn’t an easy way.
Here's my horse, he may be hiding behind the tree and have lost his armor and name but that's him indeed.
Though technically I didn’t really want to do this and I
wanted to finally finish this thing, so I was forced to give myself some more Ender
Pearls and go off in search of a Stronghold which was
pretty easy as you had the Ender pearls to throw to guide me to it. So I
eventually found the stronghold location which as I had researched is
relatively close to your spawn point which is why I didn’t stray far from the
spawn. I tunnelled downwards and broke through the roof of the stronghold which
had spawned near an underground chasm, I fought off some Silverfish then found
the End Portal and with nothing to lose jumped in to face the Ender Dragon. I
spawned in an alcove underneath the main island so had to tunnel my way up
though I still got attacked by the Ender Dragon even though I was underground
and to be honest I do need some training on finishing the end as I got whacked
off the island in a matter of minutes though because I had the option of keep
items after death from the toomanyitems mod turned on, so I went back to try
again and unfortunately with about 3 attempts I never even got one tower
destroyed. So basically I said screw it I got this far that’ll do, and that was
it.
Ender Portal!
I spawned in the ground, I spawned in the ground, mmm end stone.
That dragon be a tricky bastard, that icon is my last death site.
Looking back now I’m still not disappointed I didn’t get the
Ender Dragon down, after all I tried my best, well I triedat least and that’s the main thing. The
important thing was actually playing the game in Survival mode with no cheating
up to that point, as I finally got a proper farm going and was eventually self-sustainable.
So basically in my view it’s a job well done and anyone who says I didn’t
really finish the damn game can go hump a creeper.
JD
My Survival World! at the time of my (almost) completion of the game, you can see me mucking around the waypoints and flight speed too.
I’ve come to a realization that apart from the select most
popular few Minecraft servers don’t last for very long, Australian servers
anyway. I’ve been on quite a few now and it seems like an endless cycle of them
being started then closed down after a while then either the community moving
to another or someone else starts a new server then they find that managing a
Minecraft server is hard work then they stop and give it to someone else or
just stop. It’s the reason I wouldn’t bother starting one as it’s a hell of a
lot of work, especially dealing with random people who aren’t your friends.
I’ve noticed this happening more as Minecraft gets older and it’s the same with
me really, I really just can’t keep myself that interested anymore, as I’ve
done the same survival thing a lot, and it’s getting a bit old, but I think
it’s because I end up doing the same thing all of the time and I need to branch
out and trying different things, achievements, alchemy, weapons enchants
exploring more, getting to the end, if only I could get motivated. What
motivates me most now is LAN competitions, as it gives me that drive to create
and show off what I’ve done and be recognised and applauded but don’t we all
want that I spose?
But I digress, I have nonetheless managed to participate in
and create things under several different circumstances inc just casually
hopping on servers, LAN competitions and just experimentation of my own so I
will detail what has happened in the interim of my last Minecraft Adventures
which was quite a while ago, back in 2013!
Man I have some catching up to do.
Lanslide V9 Minecraft
Comp
So we’ll start with the Lanslide V9 Minecraft Comp which had
been changed to an obstacle course
comp. As you could probably guess I was pretty peeved about this as the
Minecraft Build Comp was my forte and was pretty much the only thing at the LAN
that I had a chance at winning so to take that away I really had nothing left.
But I learned to deal with it as it was out of my hands and it was kind of true
that it was usually between just two of us who were really competitive and the
same people winning all the time and TBH it gives me time to relax a little as
building in Minecraft from 11am till 5pm (sometimes more) got me pretty sweaty.
So anyway with the Lanslide V9 Comp I only got a few shots of the
pre-challenge, I unfortunately didn’t get any of the main course inside the castle
which was a shame cause it was pretty damn epic with huge caverns and mazes and
even an interactive tunnel questionnaire at the end. Needless to say I didn’t
come first in this comp but it was fun nonetheless (and a lot less stressful).
The Castle where the main course was held.
Oceanic Craft
So awhile after having left Vancraft
I was searching for another Australian server to join and came across
Oceanic-Craft, which surprise-surprise is now defunct though it was an ok server
while it lasted despite some of the admins being uptight pricks. I made a good
friend in a guy named Silent_Puppy (now Shiny_Puppy, reminds me a bit of Snoop
Dogg and Lion haha) and I soon joined his Megacity though I lived in the nearby
forest, which you may have seen in my Minecraft Creations post on my Spruce
Forest Tower which I created while I was there.
An earlier spawn point, I had pretty much chopped down every tree around it lol
Silent_Puppy's Megacity
Megacity in all it's glory
A view of my hole from the top of the sign
My forest hole, you can see the world border in the background.
I liked this place, it was one of my better underground holes.
Nightchoppin'
Bunny!
Megacity at Sunset
I made a house for another
player who needed one as I was good at making basic houses and they liked it
very much. I also participated in a few server games including a Maze (Which I
won :D) and an obstacle course (Which I didn’t L)
Oceanic craft supports gay marriage lol
I won the maze comp!
But not the obstacle course
A house I made for another player.
After I had finished my tower I needed a break and when I
got back Megacity had unfortunately been griefed and the tenants had moved
away, Thankfully my tower was still standing as it was in a separate claim, ha
HA! After that I decided to grab some resources from the ruined Megacity
(especially the sign) in order to use for my new home, I did some more
exploring on the server looking at various other people’s creations that had
been abandoned (i.e no claim) and grabbed some materials for that too.
The new spawn (they replaced the trees haha)
Inside the spawn
Getting resources from the sign
The now griefed Megacity :(
And they expanded it too.
Unfortunately because a few of the admins as I mentioned before were very
particular about this I ended up being banned for ‘griefing’ much to my protest
as the land wasn’t even claimed. Silent_Puppy had left by this time but it
didn’t matter anyway as the server soon got shut down, probably cause there was
no-one playing cause some of the admins were cocks, just sayin’ hah
Aquaglow
Luckily for me my buddy Shiny_Puppy from the Oceanic Craft server had made a
server of his own and I quickly joined and then quickly became a member of the
new “Soul City” which was maintained by Kanga if I remember correctly. The city
was pretty damn impressive with Giant trees and many layered parks, a church
and a manner of many layered houses. After much though I decided on an
interesting take on a past idea of mine. The idea was is that I’d name my claim
“JD’s Funny Farm” or something like thatand have a normal looking farm with animals and crops on the top but on
the bottom I’d have an underground house with glass skylights similar to my previous
one except that there will be water above the skylights so it looks like a
perfectly normal farm. I would then create a well in the middle so I could
disappear into it down to my house. So I went on my merry way of creating the
farm but unfortunately before I could finish the map needed to be reset so I
lost basically all that I had done though this was usually the way with
Mutliplayer and I don’t really thinkI’m
going to other making anything significant on one anymore. I ended up remaking
the house in creative mode though I will have a post up about that later.
I think this was the obstacle course arena, could be seen from the ground lol
Some custom blocks here
Soul City from the Zeppelin
The first attempt at my Overfarm, was a bit smaller then the real one heh
When I came back after the reset I did a bit of exploring on
the server then decided to settle on a Mushroom island for a change with the
idea of making some sort of “Magic Mushroom Palace” I struggled a bit with
farming as bamboo for example doesn’t grow on mycelium so you have to make
it separate. The other problem was I would have wanted to make the main body of
the house out of Mushrooms with the interior being normal wood and carpet, but
you can’t cut down mushrooms and collect the resources like you do for trees
they just break apart.I won this "Hunting Rifle" that was a modded weapon on the server, it was basically a piece of iron horse armor that could "shoot" and was ridiculously powerful and to top it off it also had night vision and unlimited "ammo" crazy lol
To the seas!
A lovely sunset on my Mushroom island
One of the new Ocean Monuments was near my island, I jumped in quickly to have a look then was scared off by the guardians lol
The "Hunting Rifle with Night Vision on
And Night vision off, this was my home base btw
So I spent a while working out what resource I should
use for the house and decided on Acacia Wood. I had been sheltering from the
rain underneath a mushroom so I decided to make my house on top of the
mushroom. Wasn’t exactly as good as I wanted it to be it was kind of just a
plain loft house really but it was enough I guess.
My finished house.
Building a farm free of mycelium
Wheat farm.
Shortly after I had stopped
playing for a bit I saw that Shiny_Puppy had stepped down as server owner and
the guy who was admin of Oceanic-craft took over. Then most recently I saw the
server had shut down completely, dang well shit happens I’d just like to thank
Silent/Shiny for making my time there enjoyable. I actually did try to create a world in Singleplayer that was entirely Mushroom biome but unfortunately it didn't have red mushrooms just white so I'd like have to make a normal map and zoom around to try and find a mushroom biome though I suppose it's doable.
Baby Mooshrooms!
After that I left to play some more Star Wars the Old
Republic but did manage to mess around with some Amplified word which was fun,
damn they are amazing but would be a nightmare to play on.
The amplified world, awesome to look at, crazy to play on it
So that was basically a quick sum up of what happened in that
period, I will create a post regarding my Overfarm soon. I’m currently making
an entry for theDigital Blasphemy
Sandbox Challenge 2015 where I’m creating Desert Snow
which is a lot of fun to do. I’m thinking of doing another singleplayer
adventure (not making some huge thing this time) with lots of mods like Mo’creatures
and Biomes
O’Plenty and maybe even a shaders mod to make it
more interesting. I’m also determined to get Forge working this time as I’ve
never been able to do it but I want to in order to get a MapMod working as the old
Rei’s Minimap is no longer working. I think what I’ll have to do is just pick
an update or version level (preferably 1.8) and get everything I can for that
to make the whole adventure super awesome. Meanwhile I’ve got Star Wars Dark
Forces, GTA5 and Mercenaries to get through.
