The 2nd Monthly State of the Kingdom Address

As you might imagine, one month is a long time in the Minecraft world and as such much progress has been made to improve my character’s plight in it.

Living Arrangements

A good deal has been done to the home I’ve dug out for myself. The most notable change has been the segregation and organization of everything into individual rooms for convenience. I now have a kitchen, dining room, workshop, bedroom, enchanting room, and several storage rooms, as well as a potions room in the works. As you can imagine this has made the floor plan a little more cramped, but not unlivable. The bedroom has been upgraded to be all obsidian (roof, floor, and walls) with an iron door operated by a level inside the room. Should anything manage to get into the house I can seal myself inside and be completely safe. However should I somehow become overrun I’ve included a set of diamond armor, a diamond sword, a fresh bow, an entire stack of arrows, and a stack of bread to use in fighting my way back out or outlasting the horde. Security has been stepped up as well due to a couple unwelcome creeper infiltrations into the base. The entire structure is now made of cobblestone so that it can’t be moved by endermen and to increase its blast resistance in the case of a random creeper explosion (if it was accidentally shot by a skeleton for instance.

Resources

The resource situation is better than ever as we finally expanded the mining infrastructure all the way down to bedrock. Shortly thereafter we gained access to diamonds, redstone, and gold all of which have played a vital role in upgrading current buildings and constructing new ones. The mineshaft now extends down 20 levels, though not much mining can be done on level 20 as its floor is at layer 5 so there’s bedrock jutting up all over preventing much progress from taking place. Level 19 however is free from most obstructions (lava being the notable exception) and has provided much in the way of diamonds, gold, and redstone. The tree farm has been diversified to include all four types of tree so I have every type of wood to choose from when building. This isn’t terribly important yet as I don’t do much building with wood, but will likely become more important in the future as I strive to accomplish larger, more complex projects. The farm has also been diversified and now includes carrots, potatoes, and pumpkins which have been invaluable to other projects. A fully automated cactus farm has also been added allowing more options for traps and a broader range of dies for wool and fireworks. This increase in resources has allowed me to start a full scale breeding project and I now have several pigs, sheep, and cows, as well as a constantly replenishing supply of chickens thanks to a fully automatic chicken breeding system I came up with. It’s a little loud, but effective. The issue I’m running into at present is that because my world was generated without structures, it lacks some resources that would otherwise be readily available. Most notably I’m now aware of the disadvantages that go with not having a village. As such my major goal at this point is to create one 128 blocks away from the island so as to avoid the unfortunate consequences of zombie sieges. Building the structures won’t be terribly difficult, however getting the first two villagers is going to take the most effort. I’ll need to construct the village, trap two zombie villagers, hit both with splash potions of weakness and then give each a golden apple. I’ll then need to keep them safe until they become villagers and I’ve had a chance to clear out the rest of the mobs that will no doubt spawn while I’m trying to catch the two zombie villagers. I’ve got the apples and gold I need to make golden apples, so not a big deal there. The challenge is getting my potions project going, which will require at least one blaze rod for a brewing stand, meaning a trip to the Nether is going to be necessary. While there I’ll also need to pick up nether wart and soul sand enough for a modest farm in the overworld and as much quartz as I can get my hands on for use in comparators; necessary for a couple mining complex upgrade projects I’ll like to conduct.

Security

With the exception of the house upgrades security is about where it was previously, though several cavern lighting projects have been completed making the underground areas quite a bit safer. There are still many more caverns that need exploring however and as such I can never truly stop watching my back whilst playing Minecraft. I also recently discovered that despite generating the world without structures, old school dungeons still generate, meaning that somewhere in my world there are several mob spawners buried, waiting to be discovered. If I could find even one of these, I could set up a very effective experience farm. So far I’ve not found any, but as I continue to mine I’m sure I’ll come across one or more, especially now that I’m committed to lighting up caverns whenever I find them.

Vanity/Convenience Projects

The most progress made has been in this particular area. The Skyway Tram has been upgraded with a powered rail system in order to remove and

repurpose the loud and often glitch ridden booster system from before. The system now uses a simple button that launches the minecarts down the track at 8 blocks/sec (the fastest possible minecart speed in Minecraft).

I’ve also constructed two different varieties of experience and item farms. The first was a large spawner area with a bunker in the middle and a redstone operated light system. This proved to be a very difficult design to streamline and make effective, though grinding it for a while did yield my first carrot from which the rest have been grown. As the system was less than effective I built a new system using the same base design from my item farm spawner, but with significant enhancements. The spawner includes ten levels each two blocks high (to prevent endermen from spawning inside) and each platform runs along the edge and is 3 blocks wide. Because many of the levels are outside the “hot zone” where mobs that spawn are most active, I added open trap doors to the edges of each platform which mobs see as blocks in their pathing AI. As such they’ll meander onto these blocks and then plummet into my trap. Because of some unfortunate creeper explosions inside the trap’s collection point, I had to place water at the bottom to protect the hoppers and line the walls with obsidian. This has proven mostly effective, though a sword is now required to kill them as the water prevents them from taking fall damage. I intend to eventually tear down the first experience farm and repurpose the resources for other things.

An obsidian generator has also been constructed to make the conversion of lava into obsidian a less time consuming and painful process. It consists of a storage floor for lava divided into sixteen four block sections. The pull of a lever releases water from above that spreads over all the lava converting it to obsidian. The water is then turned off and the obsidian harvested. A full lava run will produce an entire stack of obsidian.

Vertical Item Elevator Collection Point

The construction of a redstone operated vertical item transporter to take items from level 19 all the way to the surface has also been completed and is a major component in my planned mining system upgrades which will eventually include an automatic unloading and cart return and an automatic item sorter connected to automatic smelters and a surface to bedrock expanding resource storage system. As you can imagine, such projects are much farther down the line.

The enchanting room has been completed and includes an enchanting table in the center with sixteen bookshelves surrounding it for the maximum effect. So far the enchanting project has gone smoothly if not slowly and I’ve been enchanting books as often as I have the experience to and combining them for better enchants using the anvil. So far I have one smite V, one efficiency V, one efficiency IV, one unbreakable III, and one protection III as well as a bow currently enchanted with power III and push I that a skeleton dropped and I’m slowly upgrading.

The mushroom farm has been moved out of my main base (mostly to prevent mobs from spawning inside) and is now housed in a moderately sized tower that empties out into a chest on level one. The tower is completely sealed with no lights inside and is designed to prevent the need to replant the mushrooms when harvested. Though the tower is not very large, each harvest has yielded between ten and twenty of each type of mushroom which is more than sufficient for my needs.

The greatest accomplishment so far though is definitely the high yield slime chunck farm constructed near my base and extending from level eight all the way down to level nineteen. It consists of three slime chunks located together in a straight line completely dug out from layer 40 down to layer 10. The dug out sections then had floors added ever three blocks with jack’o lanterns lighting up the area placed in each of the floors to prevent anything besides slimes from spawning. Each corner of the floor has been dug out to allow slimes to fall from any of the floors into a four deep pit of water where they drown and drop their slime balls which then fall into hoppers and are conveyed down a hopper pipeline to a waiting area 24 squares away. Within a Minecraft day of the project’s completion the entire double chest at the collection point was full of slime balls and at this point, the over 100 hoppers used for the conveyance system are likely full as well providing a nearly endless supply of slime balls for use in potions and sticky pistons.

Conclusion

Though much has been achieved since the last update, many more things have yet to be done. Still the kingdom of one will hopefully soon be much larger as I intend to focus all my efforts on moving toward getting a village set up in my N3rd C0rn3r.