JD's Gaming Blog: January 2016

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.

Mods I used for this story:

Forge Mod Loader

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.

Optifine

The go-to mod for better looks, performance and HD textures, a pretty much essential item when using resource packs.

TooManyItems

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

Xaero’s Minimap

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.

The Minimap in normal mode

And in enlarged mode.

More Commands

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.

Cyberghostde’s 256x256 HD Realism Resource Pack

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.

Mods I wanted to use:

Biomes O’Plenty

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.

Dr Zhark’s Mo’Creatures Mod

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.

Natural Disasters

This is one I though was pretty damn cool to watch but unfortunately it has been discontinued since 1.6.2 and also I probably wouldn’t want my house destroyed by a tornado though it looks pretty awesome.

Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders

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 then made 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 a patchwork 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 I went 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 tried at 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.