Reporting in

I took a little break from playing Minecraft, and I'm back to playing a lot. I think I'm getting better at this. I'm generally happier with my buildings. And I can make simple redstone constructions. I like ranching. I like mining. I like building.

About enchanting, I've decided the best way to go about it is to do lots of level 1 enchants for the armor, and level 20 enchants for tools and swords. I have also decided to wear diamond armor full time. It's more convenient.

I'm playing at a small server. I like playing on a small server. I get to know people better.

Mushroom stew

Mushroom stew is delicious, vegetarian, and cheap. But it takes too much space to carry around. But spaces are only limited if you go on a long expedition. Stew is good food to have when you are doing things around your base. Save that steak for a long mining trips or exploration runs.

Minecraft Piston Quirks

Does your Piston stay up when it shouldn't? Do you have trouble getting fine control over your pistons? Pistons are a bit weird, but once you understand it, it makes more sense. At least you know why it happens.

2 articles helped me understand.


First, a video from Ethos: http://www.youtube.com/user/EthosLab#p/u/9/hUcK6LaBUS4  This episode of ethoslab reviews piston properties nicely.


Second, a picture: http://i.imgur.com/AHCbc.jpg

source::http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/jrrh2/a_short_list_of_often_mentioned_piston_bugs_and/

Mushroom farm

With the restriction of mushroom growth to 5 within a 9x9 area in 1.8, it is impractical to have a large scale mushroom farm. Instead, you can build many small mushroom farms spread out your land.

I saw a nice convenient and compact design from Ethoslab: episode 112. 13 minutes in.

http://www.youtube.com/user/EthosLab#p/u/2/PcVABZIQCLA

[edit] on second thought, just littering mushrooms everywhere would accomplish the same thing. Or, growing mushroom with bone meal is fantastic.

Water Elevator

I now understand water elevator better and I made one myself. I will post a picture later.

One insight I had recently was this. There is water source block. And water flow block. If you have a 2x2x1 water pool, infinite water, and dig down one layer. The layer below the top layer contains water flow blocks.

The key to a good water elevator is to have water source blocks instead of water flow blocks. Water flow blocks have downward velocity associated with them.

I just saw a very elegant elevator design from Etho. I love his videos.

http://www.youtube.com/user/EthosLab

XP Farm For Enchanting in Minecraft

I have been struggling with getting enough experience points to get good enchantments. At the same time I have seen more and more designs for experience farms posted on reddit and youtube. It usually requires a dungeon, and the way it works is to have a large number weakened mobs delivered to your doorstep.

Most useful is a skeleton XP farm, because the arrows and bones that they drop are also quite useful.

I found this youtube video to be most useful guide.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QSXWlPvGAo

The producer's name is KaspersMC. He is Danish and he is very funny as well. He also has very insightful tutorials on the proporties of Minecraft water.

http://www.youtube.com/user/KaspersMC

[Update] I found a zombie spawn and built an XP grinder myself! It was fun and not too hard and I learned a lot when building one by myself. I got lots of cool enchantments now.

Update

I'm still playing a lot. I made a piston water flush farm. Quite mundane design. I liked making it. My first practical redstone structure. I tried playing on public servers. I tried odielag.com and a reddit server. I don't like the lag on the servers, but I'm getting used to it more.

I died on odielag server and I respawned with everything. I didn't lose anything. I didn't want to play there any more. Too well protected. The reddit server lag is horrible so I don't want to play there either. And people build beautiful things there.

Right now I'm playing on a small server. 1.9pre4. I like it. Only a few people on at the same time.

Another Impressive Build

http://i.imgur.com/VmQxz.jpg
http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/l7ezn/after_weeks_of_work_i_crawl_out_of_my_hole_to/

Mining For Diamonds

For diamonds, I have been doing branch mining on level 10. (Y = 12.62) Each branch 3 apart. I bring 2 diamond pickaxes and start digging one long corridor, and turn back when I use up the first pickaxe. Each run takes about 50 minutes. I usually dig out everything I see except redstones, since I have not been using much redstone lately.

Here are the numbers for the last mining trip I took. I'll update with more data when

Duration 50 minutes:
10 Diamond
27 Gold
73 Iron
122 Redstone
54 Coal
0 Lapis Lazuli
Rate = 12 diamonds / hour

10/17/2011
Duration: 58 minutes
18 Diamond
0 Gold
83 Iron
112 Redstone
136 Coal
0 Lapis Lazuli
Rate = 18 diamonds / hour

Started another 1.9pre2 world. A Minecraft weekend.

After my unsuccessful experiment with the mods and texture packs I deleted my Minecraft folder and reinstalled it. I started a new world. I worked on trapping animals and getting ranches started. I got a collection of sheep, pigs and cows. I haven't started chicken coop yet. They are missing in action. I'll go look for them sooner or later.

I made a cool shaft for freefall with water break for jumping down to the bedrock level. I was pretty happy with it. I kept jumping again adn again after I made it. I feel that my understanding of water physics is getting better. I have used water for jumping down from high places. I sort of know how to create a water wall, but not completely. I uploaded a short clip of me jumping: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2MACqegRzk

I recorded the video using Xsplit. I tinkered for hours because the video quality was terrible. I kept uploading and deleting the video. It turns out that I set the Xsplit video quality to very low setting. I thought I was just making the viewport small. I was also mystified why I was only getting 360 low resolution even though I uploaded the video in 720p. I was pretty unhappy about it but when I checked the video this morning, it had HD 720 video! I guess it takes some extra time to get the HD video to come out in youtube. Anyway I'm pretty happy now.

I tried using Fraps and it looked nice but it's not free. I wonder if I can do some sort of video editing before uploading it. Or maybe I need to look at annotations.

I was mining diamonds last night and got distracted by cave system. I found a spider dungeon. After finding this and that, you lose track of where you are after a while. I decided to track back by knocking out torches. I did that partly because I didn't have any more sticks or wood, and I was down to 20 torches.

I watched a video by Ethos last night. Let's Play Minecraft Episode 106. It was pretty cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYUnhWOyCLA

Found a nice blog about Minecraft

http://porkchopsandpickaxes.tumblr.com/

The author's pictures have a nice distinct style. Looks familiar somewhat but I don't know where from. Some resemblance to Coraline.

Started Playing 1.9 pre 2

This is the first time I'm playing a pre-release version. I heard that I could herd and grow my own animals.

I was spawned in an area between desert and swamp, and got to see half-rain half-sunny weather. I like deserts because I use a lot of glass in my buildings. I saw a cow, a sheep a chicken in the area. I went down to mine and the Cow disappeared. Maybe it died in one of the water pits. The sheep I sheared for wool and I don't know where it either. The chicken is still alive. I got 2 eggs from it. Food was a bit short for a while. But I had enough bones to make enough wheat to feed myself.

I dug down all the way to the bottom the slow way. I've been digging diagonally down making a 3x3 tunnel. It's slow but it's quite pleasing to the eyes. Here is an old version I made: http://imgur.com/a/iMMbW. 

I got a few spider's eyes but I don't know what to do with them yet.

I'm thinking of building a dome soon. I'v been seeing many interesting circular and spherical buildings posted on reddit lately I was especially impressed with this one. 

So someone posted link to this article on how to make a sphere in minecraft and it was quite interesting and useful: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/26469-perfect-spheres-blueprints-inside/ Maybe I'll make one soon.

I play Minecraft

I play Minecraft. It's a pretty cool game.

I like mining for diamonds. I do a relatively disorganized and rough branch mining. My thinking is. It's all good as long as I expose new rocks. It doesn't have to be perfect. I like to have 3 blocks between my branches. I mark corridors with torches on the left side as I go away from the home base.

I used to do branch mining on level 6 mostly, but the lava is a bit of pain, and I don't like the new smoky darkness effects. So I'm mining on level 11 now. I just mine enough to keep myself supplied with diamond tools. I feel that the diamond armor is a bit wasteful for me at the moment.

I get lost a lot in the caves if I'm not careful. It's getting better now, though. Spelunking is okay but it's not one of my favorite activities.

I built a chicken coop last night. http://imgur.com/a/q2ekq