Minecraftage | A Minecraft Blog By Pookage Hayes

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So I’m pretty sure when I last posted some stuff about minecraft, my place looked like this:

Well, we’ve moved on a bit. I’ve finished the outer-wall, making an enormous impossible-to-scale safe-zone (complete with ramparts!) which looks suspiciously like a fort lol. I’ve set up some irrigation and planted some crops, so I’ve got my hunger-bar sorted without having to venture beyond the safety of the walls unless I have to:

View looking down from the ramparts:

To build this, obviously I needed a hell of a lot of cobblestone. So I dug 5 squares below the surface and kept going wide and directly ahead until I hit water coming through the roof. Wherever there was water coming down, I put cobblestone from there to the ground. Eventually it was coming in from all sides and I couldn’t go any further…so naturally I put down some wooden floorboards, cleaned up the ceiling and turned it into an enormous dining-hall-thing:

It’s not too far outside the castle-walls, so I guess this will be my first annex once I’ve walled this off (albeit with MUCH lower walls).  I’ve seriously deforested the local woodland though, so I’m going to have to build a tree-farm…which is going to need a LOT of glass. Looks like I’m going to be digging-up a beach in the near future. WATCH THIS SPACE…

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i think it would be safe to say that i'm in a forest biome. 

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the tower begins, and the mines get deeper.

SO, 1.8 begins in earnest as I start the new map, also entitled 'El Manana' and the seed is the chorus of said song. One hut, well, crop-farm and several mini-mines later, the base of the first great-tower begins.

okay, so it's not that 'great' yet...in-fact, it's a grey square. well, it shall be the first of many! This one is just to get up-high. Once I'm up there, there shall be an entire city built in the sky!

obviously, there's not an awful lot of stone to mine up in the sky, so I've been digging deeper underground and filling up my inventory with cobblestone to do the job.

It didn't take me long to hit a sodding massive ravine:

and had to come up with an inventive way of getting down:

...now to get back above ground before I get stuck down here...

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from the ground up...now with stairs! 

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...meet my 'safe as houses' elevator. this definitely wouldn't pass any health 'n' safety tests here in britain...

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...meanwhile, in the massive mine, I come across another ravine...but how to get down?

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construction begins on my tower to the sky- basically one of the core-towers to what will be my sky-city.

OTHER THINGS YOU CAN SEE: * My lever/piston-powered well * My 1st-night hut 

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so, i thought "fuck it"

well, after _jeb said that we've got to wait 'til monday to get the 1.8 update, I thought I'd have one more bash at a map before the update. This time I thought I'd try a different approach. Instead of building a massive WALL to keep out the creepers & such, I'd just dig a massive hole around my base that the little gits would fall down.

So, here's where I started out:

nice, sandy beach. fancy water effect. i got to digging, but didn't get deep enough before nightfall to be safe- so I stood in the center of my pit and quietly waited; the last thing I wanted was a creeper falling on my head:  

second day was much more productive- it was deep enough to kill anything that landed in; so I started bulking-up the center-tower and hollowing it out:  

with a nice prezzie of diamond just before i hit bedrock:

view from the surface:

okay, so it's pretty boring to look at- FINE. But the plan is- once I've finished the deep, deep pit- to build up to the sky and build a city up there! ...at least, I will do on the 1.8 map. I'm kindof just getting used to the schematics of building a tower like this at the moment, so watch this space. There shall be beautiful things! BEAUTIFUL I SAY!

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re: my inactivity

don't worry- my minecraft world is expanding like crazy...the only problem is that it's been confirmed that the new world-gen in 1.8 isn't going to work on the old worlds...I want ravines, rivers, better biomes! So I'm holding off this project until it's released.

...SHOULDN'T BE TOO LONG NOW...

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some people do the coolest shit on minecraft.

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woo!

guess who finally got the ask box working? that's right. me. that was the last thing on custom tumblr themes that I couldn't seem to do. sorted. done. chuffed.

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oh my god. yes. I'm totally building an arena for this...

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the start of the cactus-farm. this will be my base #2. I'm going to see if enough cactus will allow for an undefended base at the centre. Each base will have a dock- you can see this one at the edge, and the home-base/farm in the distance with all of the fencing.

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SO! long-time, no post! New world called 'Navidad' with the seed of 'Ocean'. Same rules as last time, but this time I've given myself a sort of homestead which I can improve on as time goes by. Here I am- about to set off to build the second home.

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each time I upload a wee talk-through of the tri-day progress I'll choose the coolest looking shot and upload it to the screenshots section. true- not much going on in this, but I just love the wood texture of this texture pack. You can pick it up from here:

http://www.planetminecraft.com/texture_pack/lb-photo-realism-pack-256x256/

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days 1-3

So the adventures in the brave new world commence! No real dramatic things going on the outside yet (apart from some deforestation), but in this first bunker (built into the hillside) I've got myself all the essentials- furnace room, storage room, and secure sleeping area.

For the storage room (below) I've got two chests- with only one face visible, and a cavity above them to make sure they actually open. Once I have enough wood to signpost them all it'll be one chest per material.

This will be my base of operations; the bunker that will turn into a castle, then a city, then interconnected towns with canals, airports and railways. But, in keeping with one of the rules I've set myself, it's time to move onto somewhere else in the morning and build another house. No single location for more than 3 days- them's the rules!

Pookage, signing off.