Postcards from Minecraft Lackofia

Having a holiday and paternity leave has been good for bits and bobs projects. It's all about making life a little easier when moving around inside the wall. I've taken to keeping an in-game log of what needs to be moved where using a book and quill. For each location I write what it needs and before I travel there, I check the book. If I see something that needs fixing then I add it to the book. To be honest, writing it down in the first place has helped me remember.

Let's start with the map

This is the crafted-in-game map that is kept up to date by holding a specific map while walking about. In recent times they added the off-hand that you can put a map in that makes life much better. It's quite a lot of effort updating the maps so I've started duplicating them and putting the duplicates in their own area (shown by the green markers on the map). If you update the duplicate, all its siblings update too. So when I'm working say, by Big R's tower, I can grab the map locally and update it without running back and forth to the Village Town Hall where this main map is held.

This is sort of up-to-date ish. It's post EMW's Great Library (inside Ringwall North East) but it doesn't have some tidying I show below.

Yellow Line

As the Lack Of Rail post reports, the Circle Line has been slowly coming along. You can now ride from the Creeper Hotel to Byrn's Bunker with only pauses at stations! The dotted line shows that it will continue onto the Vertislum and perhaps the Uberstore. I am tempted to have it return to St. Spawncras to make it a sort-of-circle. What do you think?

The Village station needed updating from a single platform to a double platform. This was my 3rd attempt as the tight space made it tricky to run the track.

I had a stroke of luck when surveying the tunnels between the village and Byrn's Bunker. I perform surveying first by going into the tunnels themselves and digging up to see where I come out. Then I do some counting, drawing and thinking. I could start digging at that point but I worry that I'll cock up and then have a massive tunnel no-one needs. So before that step, I hit F3 and check that the real co-ordinates match my counting. If it's too good to be true or I think there's a mistake I might go into Spectator mode (/gamemode 3) and clip through the terrain to check.

I did that this time because it was too good to be true! The Purple line tunnel that runs from the Village to Eastgate passed onto 20 blocks from the end of the old Hamster Line tunnel that went from under the Golden Hamster to Byrn's Bunker. I dug through and voila! A 6x3 tunnel all the way to Byrn's. It needed cleaning up but was in a good state to start. I cleared and burned the old track (which was Creative mode'd) and tidied with the considerable amount of stone from the Uberstore.

All the Yellow Line tunnels look like this, even though this is the one under the Cathedral, looking South.

Big Rob's Tower was originally just going to be an underground station but with the creation of The Great Library, it felt fitting to run some stairs to the surface (outside the compound so as not to change it) and build a mini station there. Unlike other stations, there's no track there, just steps down to the underground. It works rather well. I know it's not mob proof right now but I had no problems while building as the torches extend way back.

Paths and Tidy at Big Rob's Tower

While building at Big R's I noticed that EMW hadn't really bothered with the paths outside so I completed those. To that, I removed the curtain wall protection that ran from the edge of Big R's compound to the stub tower on the edge of Glasslake. The sheep farm has reduced in size and the whole thing looks quite neat. It is, as you can see, lit.

Another tidy project (that didn't take long) was to tidy and light the land between the Tower Of Evil by the East of Ringwall and the Great Library. Having the Great Library there made the lighting process have an end point. It's nice to have a defined area to sort out and this was no exception. I'm tempted to build something cool around there but not sure what just yet.

Lights, Nether, Action!

Glowstone is a rare resource in Lackofia. We've cleared so much of it from our Nether that you have to go a way to find any or try and get it from the roof. Pathways need lights as do the train tunnels, so I need a lot of it. But our Nether base makes me sad:

It's a rag tag of stuff here and there where mobs spawn and even bloody Ghasts too. I've done some reading and now know that you need to put down half-slabs wherever you can and where you can't, put make the space less than 5x4. I've also found that there is a way to link portals more successfully by building them in the Nether first and then building the Overworld one before lighting. I've started a new Nether Base but it won't be too epic, just a cool looking station. The Portal shown is the new one to St. Spawncras and that is already linked. With linking (building manually) we can add portals nearby so I might look at having ones at each side of the Ringwall. I'll definitely be making one at Nordcastle, even if the Nether location of it is a pain!

Next big thing?

Killing a Wither. For that we need some Wither Skeleton Skulls and a few of us. And to be tooled up. I might also make myself a house in the Village, which I realised I didn't have.