Tracks finished!

I finished laying the tracks for my railway. I started building a railway station at my "respawn point" and devised an automated cart delivery system. In an ideal world, every time I respawn there will be a train waiting to take me back to my floating castle. However, this world isn't ideal.

I knew I'd have to do something about all the animals at some point. They seem to be abnormally attracted to the train tracks. Rather than being crushed if they're hit by my train, they just stop progress. This was my biggest worry as I took my very first train trip from beach to castle.

The sun was setting as I left, and by the time I reached the waterfall tunnel it was dark.

What comes out of the dark? Oh yeah, monsters. Skeletal archers, actually... about five of them.

I wasn't too worried at first. It seemed like they were having trouble hitting a moving target, but as I emerged from one of my many tunnels, an archer somewhere above me hit me with several arrows and killed me.

As soon as it was light, I ran out to where I had died. All my gear was gone, and so was the train engine - only the passenger car remained. I searched all along the track and didn't find it. I think I'm going to have to elevate my tracks and provide some sort of protection for myself.

Another day, another new cave system

My railway now reaches all the way back to the first house I built in Minecraft. I was over there building a railway station and filling in holes in the beach (holes I had created acquiring sand for windows). While I was doing that I bassed by a piece of sand underneath my front steps that had been bothering me for a while. I took it out and was extremely surprised to discover a new cave right in front of my house!

Obviously I went down to explore. I was running low on rail tracks so I was going to need more iron ore anyway. I was in the cave system for a very short while before I came across a bunch of monsters. I couldn't quite get at them so I started digging a narrow path to come at them from the side. It seemed like the reasonable thing to do... but no. Cave-in!

Unlike the previous cave-in, this one was serious. I was completely buried and couldn't escape. I died and when I re-spawned my first thought was for all the equipment my corpse had left behind. I quickly ran back to see what could be salvaged and saw a complete mess of sand and ocean. After several minutes I managed to stop the flow of ocean water and had recovered my gear:

While I was excavating, I heard monster noises. A lot of them.

Because of the recent cave-in I was very careful about where I was going to dig and I eventually managed to find a room filled with monsters of every kind. After dying a few times I managed to clear them out and discovered the most expansive cave system I've found so far. There are several enormous caverns:

And they're sometimes separated by very narrow openings. I barely explored down here at all because I was carrying a lot of stuff that I didn't want to lose. I tried finding my way back to the entrance but that proved extremely difficult. A few times I thought of just digging straight up and out, but I was worried I was still under the ocean somewhere. Eventually I found my way out and went to finish my railway.

Ore Collection

This post has too much text. I thought about taking screenshot of my spelunking adventures, but I'm pretty sure most caves look the same and won't give you a good sense of just how quickly I lose sense of direction. Instead, I'll randomly insert fun pictures.

Here's lunch!

I'm running out of iron. Time to head back down into my massive mines to see what unexplored caverns I can find.

Nothing much showed up in the first couple of branches. Maybe 9 bars total? I did find a dungeon that was spawning lots of zombies. I tried to get close, but I just ended up dying a lot.

Eventually I gave up and went back in search of more iron. I figured I still had lots of lava fields I hadn't explored so I went deep deep deep into my mine to see what I could find. What did I find? Paydirt! It seemed like every cavern I found led to tons of iron and at least two more caverns! I even found lots of gold and diamonds!!! Not that those are much use to me.

Here's a small army of goddamn monstahs waiting outside one of my homes.

At one point I was holding about 40 chunks of iron ore on my person when I found another patch of lava. I filled in the lava and walked past when suddenly I caught fire! I guess my filler had melted. I started to panic and ran back toward the closest water but knew I wouldn't make it. When I respawned, I panicked a little. If I had died standing in lava all my precious iron would be gone! Fortunately, I eventually found all my gear and resolved that now was as good a time as any to head back to the surface and build some train tracks:

I stood on my roof and waited for sunrise which is potentially my favourite time of day:

Amazing Feats of Engineering

So it turns out a powered mine cart can't haul my fat ass up the mountain side. I guess I really should have checked on that before I started all this work.

I look online and I see that in order to push you up a hill, it has to be a very gradual incline. In order to accommodate this, I'm going to have to start a bridge from (at least) the small foothill on the far side of the lake. So, I start to build.

This bridge takes a long time, and during the night I find refuge in caves to keep myself safe from the zombies and creepers. On one evening I hear the sound of running water and realize that with a small diversion I can send my railway right through a waterfall. I've got to do it!

While I'm doing this, I realize that water can be diverted and transplanted in interesting ways. I think it's a shame that my floating island doesn't have a clichéd impossible waterfall, so I add one:

On the right, you can see my massive rail bridge in progress.

Laying the tracks

I took a look at my iron supply and I've got enough to start work on my railway. My first step is to smooth the hill down the side of my mountain. I've seen other people's mine carts and it appears that tracks can only go up one block at a time. Here's my ramp:

After that it was pretty easy to lay down the first tracks and build a powered mine cart. I sent it up by itself just to make sure everything was good.

After that first set of tracks I realized I was going to need a lot more iron so I went investigating.

I eventually found a sandy pond where the water appeared to be flowing somewhere. I plugged up the source of the water and found a good-sized cave. I explored a little bit and eventually found some iron ore in the ceiling. Score!

I started digging it away paying no mind to the sand above my head. As it turns out, that was a very bad idea. Somehow the iron was holding the sand in place and when I took it out I was buried in a cave-in. Turns out that's not a very exciting screenshot:

Well. I survived that. Time to take my newly acquired ore home and build some train tracks. Oh... except it's night time and there's an army of skeletal archers outside! I'd have a screenshot of that but I didn't want to get killed.

I killed about 4 during the night, but by then my health was so low that I decided to let the sun burn the rest. In the morning I killed a pig for its bacon and walked home.

Castle (mostly) finished

It's done! ... sort of.

It's done to the point where I want to work on something else!

Sure, it's got problems... most notably the fact that animals keep showing up inside. I think this is because my floor is covered in grass:

I'll correct that as I have time, but now it's time for a new project. I'm thinking railway...

Building a floating castle...

I couldn't really decide what to build on my floating island so I looked around the internet for inspiration. Mostly I looked here:

http://minecraftmuseum.net/gallery.php

Finally I decided to build a castle with an extra room sticking out to the side, hovering hundreds of feet above the lake... because I like to make things difficult I guess. The first part of the castle was super easy but building floors while standing on them continues to be difficult.

Here's the work in progress from the front:

And here it is from the back as I once again walk back after falling to my death:

First Post!

For the past little while I’ve been meaning to get away from my sea-side mountain house and go exploring inland. I know that the worlds can be 4x the surface of the earth so I wasn’t planning to go far… I just wanted to see what I could see nearby.

Going exploring seems like a slight hassle in Minecraft. You can’t really take your house with you, and you can only go so far before the sun sets so you’ve pretty much got to carry sufficient supplies with you to build a new house.

So anyway… I went walking and I started seeing a couple of “dirt clouds”. I don’t really know what else to call them. They were big flat chunks of dirt hanging in the sky. I walked up a nearby mountain and had a look. Nothing really interesting… aside from the fact that the dirt was just hanging in the sky. So I continued East.

Pretty soon afterward I saw this!

I was like Wow! An island floating above a lake… with a big ugly pole ruining the view.

… and then the sun started to set so I dug my way into a mountain and sealed myself in before the zombies starting crawling around.

The next morning I figured I’d remove that eyesore since I was planning to build a cottage up on top of the island:

Much better. It’s fortunate that tearing stuff down is super easy. Adding new stuff though is kind of challenging and scary. Especially when you’re building something like a bridge to a floating island… for example.

Turns out I was right to be afraid…

This is the view from the lake shore after I’d fallen off my unfinished bridge. Fortunately I landed in water that was deep enough to break my fall… the first time.

But, I eventually finished the bridge! Now I need to start building a house of some sort… and then I need to devise a method of getting to and from my new home. I’m thinking a powered minecart, but that will require a ton of iron which is pretty hard to come by.

Background

Found the background here:

http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=19724&start=330

Made by Frohman:

http://www.minecraftforum.net/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=35486

Taken from someone's screenshot...