Minecraft - Ick's Death Fortress

After a lot of trial and error, here is the working death tower. I did a little peeking online at the way people had made them, but choose not to go with the 1:1 copy, instead I set up the floors in the tower to create a cross where the mobs drop through to the bottom, rather than holes around the perimeter. The biggest issue was that I set the collection point 24 blocks away, which where I was initially going wrong. But now I have my crafting and chests all set up 24 blocks away so that while I'm working the tower is processing, which I in turn make into TNT, 25 so far and a lot more on the way.

The tower itself took more blocks than I care to remember, I wore out two diamond shovels and a diamond pick building it and the tower itself is 21 x 21 and about 20 high, one big cube of death. =) The way it works is that on each floor there is a waterway that is 3 wide and 8 long that leads to a drop point to the floor below. Eventually they all lead to the cactus room where the mobs drop in and are either killed by the cactus where the water carries their loot down the shoot or...

They get to sit in the phone booth of death (I'm saying death a lot). In this little room any mob that hasn't been killed by the cactus (usually the case) falls in and drowns, it can look kind of funny when you have 4 in there at a time. I'm a little worried that a glitch might allow a mob to get out, but so far so good.

After they die, the loot flows down a little stream to the collection point.

After running around out in the world for a little bit, it's always a good idea to come check the spot for any loot that may have collected. The key is that as soon as the chunk with the mobs spawns, the machine goes into action so if you're walking up to the castle, it probably already has some loot waiting at the bottom.

And speaking of loot, I decided that it was time to put a vault in considering that this was going to be my new home for awhile.

I thought that it looked pretty clean.

So after all of my building I needed to cut loose a little and go out exploring and do some cave diving. I found a small cave near the pumpkin patch by the tower and went down there looking for supplies, and I really needed supplies because I was actually running out of coal, not to mention all of the diamonds that I had gone through to make the tower.

As I dove down I realized that the cave I was in linked up to a cave that had previously been explored by I'm guessing Druss. Thankfully there were still a lot of dark areas to take a look in, including a passageway that took me to a huge room down at the lava level. The best part it held 6 diamonds, well 7 but one fell in the lava as I was digging them out. So that was awesome, I was running low on diamonds so now I'm back in business.

Finally before going to bed I decided to go out exploring the countryside looking for more surface coal. I never found any coal, but I did find the mountaintop that Crash had to hide out on one night while he was exploring. I'm amazed that he made it through the night on that unsecured hill with a bunch of torches. Anyway I'm not one for roughing it, so I build a little lookout up there to keep me safe, I also added some supplies in case anyone gets lost out in the woods. If Crash wants to break it back down that's cool, but I did leave up all of the torches on the peaks so it's not really that changed up there.

Minecraft - I missed thee

Back from Christmas and back to digging around in the virtual dirt. Got to go a little nuts the last two nights playing, and I've really decided to throw a little more caution into the wind and mix it up with the baddies, finally.

On night one I really didn't know what to do, but I knew that I needed to do something a little more exciting after a found a couple diamonds. Problem with the diamonds that I found was that I only found two of them, so I really didn't know what to do with them, I ended up making a sword on day two, because I was going to kick some ass, but more on that later.

So night one, I decided that I was going to go check out what I'll call Four Points mountain. It's a collection of four mountain peaks with a giant space in the middle of it, where I decided to set up base camp, because there are a lot of natural caves around it, so for exploration it's a good location. But more on that later as that was also a night two adventure.

Avoiding anymore tangents... I set to make a tunnel from the Ick Palace towards 4 Points so that I wouldn't have to run around the side of my fort, saving me a little time. This worked out great so it led to me making another tunnel towards the West and eventually a third tunnel to the North. The whole process worked out pretty neat as I set up a whole underground passage system that would save me time and be much safer for getting to where I wanted to go. The third tunnel did connect to a natural cave that I'll need to go back and check out because it goes basically straight down, but it was getting late on night one so I let it be. I'll come back to it, but I can almost see my old buildings so I'm a little reluctant to go there, I'm looking for a newer area.

So on night two I decided to go to 4 Points and build up a little house in the middle of the mountains, really should rename the house here the Nexus because of it's proximity to so many natural caves. There is one major problem with the house though, I didn't make it far enough in the center of the clearing so I've had to deal with a couple creepers dropping in from about 1000 feet up. I think the house is safe now as I've closed off the top of it, but who knows. Anyway with my new digs I decided to go exploring and the pictures that I've attached are of a volcano type of structure that I found, it was pretty amazing looking and with a natural cave that goes down quick, so that is on the list of places to go check out.

I also did a little adventuring into a cave right next to the Nexus, it's pretty straight forward, nothing crazy in it, and tons upon tons of coal, which is a good thing. I sealed off the deeper portions so that I could mine out the coal and some iron before I went venturing deeper. When I finally did I was met with a panic attack... As soon as I cleared out a walkway into the unexplored areas I was greeted with the hsssssss of a creeper right next to me about to explode. After losing control of my mouse for a second (I always do that, that in itself will make a great let's play series) I was able to get back through the walkway quick enough that he didn't explore (thank goodness that my left hand knew where the "s" button was. Thankfully he was stuck behind a single block of dirt and couldn't get to me, a couple sword whacks later and he was dead. I went deeper to be greeted with an arrow pegging me in the head from a level below, I took more damage killing off that one skeleton that it cost me basically all of my leather armor. And it was pointless as well because where the skeleton was, there was a 3 block drop off that went in multiple directions that I wasn't prepared to go venturing through at that point. But it was the principle of killing that guy at that point.

So at the end of the night I went and armed up, because we're going back next time I get on to explore how deep that cave goes. I made a set of iron armor and a diamond sword, I'm not fucking around now. And I welcome death if it should find me, just means that we'll be building new stuff in an unexplored part of the world. Honestly I'm surprised that I've been able to last as long as I have without dieing, I think that I've been playing it too safe, so I need to bring the excitement and go find me some diamonds.

And the last picture of the ocean, who says that there aren't oceans, looks pretty far and empty to me. =)