In 1.10 those kindly folk at Mojang inserted a great many cool bits and bobs into the game. Most notably was cool stuff in The End. Not just blocks to build with but wings to fly on and other treats. While I've been pottering about and building here and there and working on THE SECRET PROJECT, I've not really had an adventure in a long time (Horse House might have been the last one). So, off to The End to kill the dragon it is!
A tiny bit of Prep
I tried this before with Felix in an amplified world with little joy. You take an Ender Pearl, cross it with some Blaze Dust and get an Eye of Ender. You then chuck it and it zooms off in the direction of the End Portal. It then either explodes or drops to the ground (at random). After heading that direction for a while, you do it again until the Eye of Ender just sort of hovers. So I grabbed all the Ender Pearls we had (only 7 as I'd been making Ender Chests a bit recently) and made them into Eyes of Enders with Blaze Powder collected from the Blaze Farm in the Nether.
Starting at Nordcastle
The End Portal would have only been created in more modern parts of our map in an underground Stronghold maze so I decided to start at Nordcastle (which is 0,0 on our map co-ordinates). Armed with my usual adventuring gear, I climbed to the top of Chicken Tower in Nordcastle and chucked the first Eye of Ender. Unsurprisingly, it shot straight toward the Evil Mountain.
I hit the Eye again just north of Evil Mountain and it went due West through the swamp. I had to end for that evening so I put a wooden marker in the ground.
Out of the swamp and into some fields. Two Eyes of Ender shattered as I used them, which was quite annoying! Much of the map had been filled in around here as this was the overland route to the Northern Mesa Tower.
Sandy delights
It's easy to keep tunnel vision when you're adventuring but I caught a glimpse of this odd shaped hill. I descended carefully and found gold horse armour and a few other nick-nacks of little consequence. Bit of a shame, really. You can get some good things from a temple.
Snapped en route, I rather thought this natural formation looked like a lion. I think that might have to give the are its name.
I overshot Lion Mountain and found that the Eye turned back on me. I created a little hovel at first and dug straight down. The Stronghold is built from stone brick with mossy and cracked variants. I discovered a big library (which I will ransack for books) and finally the end portal. This snap is after I cleared up a bunch of lava and inserted the Eyes of Ender that I had left over. There are still a few more needed before it will turn on.
Safety
I ran stairs up to the surface straight from the portal and built a safe (not from spiders) tower at the top.
What's next
First, we need a bunch more Ender Pearls. They can be tricky to get hold of but I have a plan for that. Secondly, we need to make the squat tower a bit safer (give it a roof and maybe an actual tower so it can be seen from afar). Once the portal is running, I need to get a plan for killing the Ender Dragon. If anyone fancies joining in, it's going to be manic!
Comments
It now has a train line! It's a bit manky and narrow and you leave from the bend at the base of the Nord Castle station but there is a section where it runs passed the Evil Mountain that is superb.
Moving to and from got a lot easier!
Now I need a funky station at Nordcastle so that when you arrive you can choose to go on to Lion Mountain and vice versa when coming back from Lion Mountain.
And just in time for the 1.11 update to come out!
So, I set out to find me some Ender ass, to pop caps into like the proper MC Gangsta that I am. I decided that the best way to was build a tower not too far from Ringwall that looked out over an open area. I could then wait on the top of the tower during the night, away from the shots of Skeletons and the moans on Zombies, EYEBALL THAT SPINDLY BASTARD and dispatch him at ground level. Here's my diminutive tower, located high on the side of a hill.
Not every Enderman will give you a pearl, it's about 60% of them that do but I didn't mind, I could eyeball and dispatch one a night on average. Six Minecraft nights later and I proudly stepped out with my pearls and with the utmost suspicion, headed out across the sandy wastes to Nordcastle to Blaze Powder and headed along the fledgeling railway line to the End Portal.
To Armour Up
The next job is to get armoured up, enchant the shit out of diamond goodness, prepare some buckets of water and mud and go into The End!
After much faff, we were off!
We build a quick base from under which we take pot shots at the Ender Dragon. EMW turned out to be a crack shot!
An arrow from EMW caught in flight just before it finds its target. HAVE AT YOU!
And through the next portal to investigate an End Fortress with flying ship and Shulker boxes.
And then...Elytra
EMW has wings and stands bravely at the top of the Uberstore like an unlikely Birdman of Lack-Of.
ROCKET MAN! BURNING THROUGH THE SKY!
Elytra is a LOT of FUN. A LOT. LOADS. Gliding and soaring around our world was brilliant.
heres some more shots of us flying around with the elytra thing I need to put in some landing and takeoff stages around the map :D
leap of faith there
and wings open
Away you fly
Some night shots flying round the map
Difficult to fly from this angle
WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?
It's a great library! Pics to follow.
Hehehe :D
based somewhat on this building inside and out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Parliament although the inside is not yet finished
Also found in creative mode with the Elytra you can just boost continually with the rockets since they don't get consumed on use
Felix also discovered infinite rocket Elytra. It's a creative win. Will not post pics of the Library until you're complete. You might have noticed that I've tidied up a lot round there. There's a staircase down near Big R's tower that's going to have a ground level station building put on it. Sorting out the village line first.