So what did YOU do today?

Another trip down to extend the rail tunnel, another distraction into spelunking. Every time I go in to clear out a narrow band of mineshaft either side of the tunnel, I get sucked into exploring dark caves. This area may be one of the biggest cave systems I've ever dealt with. This time I came out via the old zombie grinder stairs with 5 diamonds (found four ore, but fortune III rolled snake-eyes on me 3 out of four times, dammit), 18 gold, a dozen or so each of silk-touched lapis and redstone ores, nearly a stack of iron, and almost 3 stacks of silk-touched coal ore. Plus 37 planks and a bit over a stack of fences. As usual, I threw around a dozen or so stacks of torches, but given the paucity of actual mobs I've been seeing, there must be a LOT more dark areas still unexplored and unlit. Or else mob spawning is broken. Come to think of it, I haven't seen a single slime since the server was restarted, even in the throne room that used to be slime spawning central. I have seen a few mobs, but darn few. And of course the grinders work, albeit a bit slower than I seem to remember.

Well, finally making progress on the tunnel itself again. I also laid out the spot where the cave-to-city line will drop onto the dome-line return track. Ripping out a few planks and fences from the mineshaft tunnels either side of the tracks, I came across something that makes me quite annoyed. Remember that original zombie grinder that someone smashed the spawner block of? Well, I found a second lit-and-looted zombie dungeon which according to my calculations, is possibly close enough to make a useful double grinder out of, if that old grinder spawner block hadn't been smashed. Ah well. We could probably make a grinder out of this one, but not sure what the point would be, other than possibly to get some carrots and potatoes for farming purposes. Anyone have any of either?

Dug the tunnel a bit further, broke into a semi-explored cave system. Explored it a bit more, ended up finding the underground edge of the stronghold and coming up to the surface in the desert next to the spawn village. I put a few more floor blocks down on the new building I'd built there while waiting for Bane to log in for the first time, the villagers have moved in nicely and seem to prefer it to the other structures. I also collected and chested a crapload of eggs and slaughtered 32 chickens, putting the meat on to cook in the furnace in the village for future newbies to eat. While I was up there, I visited the farm cave site briefly to measure the coords for the terminal of the rail line I've been working on from the other end. I found that someone has been digging the start of the line from that end as well:


Whoever it was, they're doing it a bit steeper than last time. Looks like they're already down to floor-level 28, so I'm now planning to level off at floor level of 25 or so where I've been ramping up a nice gradual 1/16 slope. Hopefully we won't get too many slimes in the tunnel from making so much of it that low, but still get plenty of gold while digging it. A steep worksite-end of the tunnel will make it easier to have a final turn to the boat dock at the entrance cave to the farm cave, once we do finally get the cave dug and the lake installed.

Finally, I returned to the city. Between the coal mining on my spelunking trips and a bit of smelting of ore and stone, plus killing a few chickens, I had made it back up to level 30. I enchanted another diamond sword I'd made earlier, got Smite IV/Knockback II. Still not great, but at least will be useful against the Wither. I put it in the weapons chest in main storage for anyone to use.

Speaking of storage, what happened to that "bulk storage room" with all the chests in the ceiling and such? Did it get removed to build the forge, or what?

spectrumwars wrote:

Speaking of storage, what happened to that "bulk storage room" with all the chests in the ceiling and such?  Did it get removed to build the forge, or what?  

Yes, it is now the entrance of the forge tunnel. I can't quite remember the plan for the extra storage we might need, but I think it was to create another level in the hall of stone to make a huge storage for cobble.

sret wrote:
Yes, it is now the entrance of the forge tunnel. I can't quite remember the plan for the extra storage we might need, but I think it was to create another level in the hall of stone to make a huge storage for cobble.

Ah.  I'll have to get some pics of the storage rooms I've built in my last two bases on the other server, inspired by the warehouse at Mons Domus.  Five halls, each hall has 12 columns of four double chests each side of the hall.  Hall of Magic for potions and potion ingredients, Hall of Tech for tools and devices, Hall of Stone for rocks and minerals, Hall of Life for crops and plants, and Hall of Death for mob drops you kill the mob to get.  To handle the amount of cobble at Mons Domus, we'd still need a separate deep-storage chamber for cobble, and maybe for a few chests each of dirt, gravel, and grinder drops.  The way that dungeon-spawner XP grinders pump out armor these days, we'd need an entire other room to store leather and gold armor pieces.  But the revised design does look a bit better, I think.

Edit to add: Okay, got a test-bore tunnel dug for the route from the main farm cave line to where the return line to the city will drop onto the dome-line tracks. Half tempted to try and route over to there before turning out to the farm cave again for the whole line, but probably best to not try to run the tunnel more or less directly under the main entrance tunnel into the city, lest it get in the way of future projects.

Remind me again why we decided to dig the farm caves under the desert (with constant risk of cave-in when digging just under the surface) AND under a river (where the surface-level sand gets very deep indeed)?

That tunnel was me. The gradual slope that i did last time gave me a headache to get perfect so I was making it easier on myself by just focusing on the main directions one at a time instead of all at once. feel free to modify as you wish. Sorry I haven't been on lately but school has been hitting hard and I haven't had much time.

Supacreator wrote:That tunnel was me. The gradual slope that i did last time gave me a headache to get perfect so I was making it easier on myself by just focusing on the main directions one at a time instead of all at once. feel free to modify as you wish. Sorry I haven't been on lately but school has been hitting hard and I haven't had much time.

Looked pretty good the little I saw of it while at the farm caves. I've finished the spur line from the city-farmcave rail tunnel to the dome-line return line. I may have to shorten or lengthen it a bit, the current state drops you onto the tracks just past a booster rail, and the loss of momentum means you may not have the oomph to keep going to the next booster rail.

spectrumwars wrote:

Remind me again why we decided to dig the farm caves under the desert (with constant risk of cave-in when digging just under the surface) AND under a river (where the surface-level sand gets very deep indeed)?  

Bren and somebody else went out and picked a location that didn't interfere with other city parts, and marked the corners, and I suppose the desert just happened to be part of it. I'm not sure why we started the dig at it but it could've been so we could deal with most of the sand on the way down.

Sigh. It was going so well.

I got the return spur finished as well as the remaining levels of the slow ramp up to level 25 of the farm-cave rail line, and was going along nicely in extending the tunnel, started to get within loud shouting distance of the turning point. Then I broke into a ravine and decided to explore it. I cleared and lit one half of the ravine from the entry point, got some coal and iron, and was pillaring up to block off some lavafalls and get some iron near the ceiling. When I fell into the still-not-stopped-flowing lava at the base of the lava fall. I immediately started chugging the fire resistance potion I had in my hotbar for such eventualities, but between the fall damage and the lava, I just barely managed to die before finishing. And saw my inventory spray out and promptly get incinerated in the lava. My brand-newly-repaired fortune 3/unbreaking 3 diamond pick. A silk touch/unbreaking 3/eff 4 diamond pick. An unbreaking 3/eff4 pick I'd brought along to mine the frequent gold veins I'd been running into digging the rail line. My enchanted Power III/Flame I bow. All gone.

Back to the grinder, I guess.

After another two weeks of being really busy, I found some time to get on the server and tinker around. It's really disappointing to see all the progress we've lost, but at least we have the world file. I spent most of my time looking around the city and noting losses, but I have started doing what was mentioned in a previous post. I am going to focus on making small/medium aesthetical changes throughout the main part of the city starting with the throne room. For the bigger changes I'll probably check in here first, but otherwise if you see anything that I changed that looks ugly/stupid I'll change it back/fix it.

As I said before, I am starting in the Throne Room which has been mostly neglected since its construction. The largest changes I want to make are in the flooring, which has literally tons of iron that could be saved using quartz. As for which quartz block to use I am still unsure, so if anyone has particularly strong feelings towards a certain pattern I will go with that.

Arrowave wrote:As I said before, I am starting in the Throne Room which has been mostly neglected since its construction. The largest changes I want to make are in the flooring, which has literally tons of iron that could be saved using quartz. As for which quartz block to use I am still unsure, so if anyone has particularly strong feelings towards a certain pattern I will go with that.

Either the top (not the side) of pillar blocks, or the chiseled-quartz block made from two stacked slabs, would be fine.

Another good project would be to finish decorating or at least sealing off the various subway tunnels. A lot of them have wide openings to abandoned mineshaft tunnels or caves, these need to be explored, looted, and sealed off. Exposed dirt or gravel in the walls/floors/ceilings should be replaced by smoothstone or at least cobble to prevent it from being carried off by endermen, lighting evened out or increased, and any caves/etc. we want to maintain access or emergency exits from given doors instead of just wide openings. I got shot at by two skeletons on the dome line yesterday even though I did some work improving the lighting etc there. I've been making sure the farm cave line has no such problems as I go. We don't necessarily need the tunnels as elaborately decorated as the atrium line is, but at least seal off the cave entrances.

Again I disappeared off the face of the minecraft earth.

First up is the matter of storage. The original idea was to replace the bulk storage area with the forge storage, which from my memory had over 2 stacks of chests for cobblestone alone, plus the same amount again for smooth stone. That was half the storage area there, the other half for raw/smelted ores plus sand/bricks.

Great job with everything else. SW, you've been doing amazing work with the city, keep it up!

The grinding has been going fairly well. Got two Fortune 3/Unbreaking 3/Efficiency 4 uberpicks, both of which are gonna go into general use in the warehouse, a fortune 3/unbreaking 3 pick I'm gonna use myself to replace the one I just lost, and a couple of general digging/mining picks. But no replacement yet for the Silk Touch pick I lost. I'd still be grinding but my game has been crashing when I try to log in this afternoon. Once I get a silk touch pick (so I can carry along an enderchest as extra storage and have some hope of picking it up again when used) I will be returning to tunnel construction.

Okay, finally got a nice silk touch pick. I went out to finish lighting up that ravine to find it opened out at the other end past more lava into another enormous cave system. I wandered out onto the surface a few hours later with 42 mossy cobble, over 2.5 stacks of iron, and over four stacks of coal ore. And aside from some zombies in a dungeon, I hadn't seen a single mob, hostile or other wise, since leaving our own grinder with some spiders still stuck at the top of the drop tube. Is there something wrong with mob spawning?

Rail tunnel construction has resumed, less than 100m to go to the turning point. I also did some food harvesting in the farms and chopped down some trees at my old surface tree farm near the atrium. Actually saw a creeper up on the surface, so mob spawning may not be entirely gone, but that's still literally the only non-dungeon-spawned mob I've seen in days, despite doing a lot of cave crawling in unexplored cave systems.

Well, the rail tunnel is less than 50m from the turning point now, but the current end of the tracks is smack dab in the middle of one of those dirt-floored rooms at the center of an apparently-unexplored abandoned mineshaft structure. And the next segment goes through a mineshaft tunnel. I'd have to stop building for a day or two to clear out the nearby sections of the mineshaft, but the other server I play on just had an involuntary map reset (old map got hit by mysterious corruption and became unusable), so I gotta start my base over from scratch all over again. So I may not be able to play on Dwarf City more than a brief session every few days for the next week or two. I've put my enchanted picks and such away in chests in the warehouse for others to use while I'm gone. I'll be back before long.

New map isn't ready yet on Golemland, so I got that rail line all the way to the turning point, and built a small work/crafting/smelting area at the turning point to serve as a base for further construction as well as the exploration and looting of the surrounding caves and mineshafts. I also did a few more light-n-looting runs in said caves and mineshafts, usually emerging through the lakebed near the sugarcane farm not far from the city's grand entrance, although once I came up through the stronghold.

I got on, looked around, failed to find anything at all.

Anyone care to give me some instructions of how to find the city? :s

heracles44 wrote:I got on, looked around, failed to find anything at all.

Anyone care to give me some instructions of how to find the city? :s

If you're still in the NPC village at spawn, look for the sugarcane farm on the horizon. Head diagonally to the right of that, away from the village, out of the desert and across a low ridge with some trees and a lava lake on it. Over the ridge you should be able to see the grand entrance to the city, with the lapis blocks in the gate visible from far away. When entering the gate, make sure to sprint-jump over the tripwires of the Unwelcome Mat and just keep run-jumping until well inside, in case you nicked the wires and the lava moat opens under you. I think the dispensers of the unwelcome mat are empty of arrows, but the lava moat does still work. There's also a cutoff switch to the right of the entrance, but I don't remember if it works well or not.

Hope this helps.

Haha wow that is something. I'll check when I get online later.

Came on for a little bit, finally fixed the fault in the wiring in one of the chambers of the item grinder, that had resisted all my attempts to fix it before. I turned on the item grinder and also installed a hopper to catch all the drops and stick em in a chest. I figure we may want to use some TNT in the farm caves to speed things up due to the revert, so this should provide us with the gunpowder. Hopefully this time we can avoid blowing a hole in the ceiling. One of the few good things about the reset is that I think this is before that particular debacle happened.

I got on, looked around......awesome memories kept flooding back :')

..I also got killed in that Skelly spawner .-.

Had some reading to do, so I came online and plopped myself down in the grinder for a while I was reading. Killed enough spiders to top off my pre-existing 23 XP levels up to 30, and enough skeletons to go all the way back to 30 once more. Enchanted a bow (Power IV, Flame I) and a book (Power IV). I might combine the two later.

GolemLand is down for maintenance this morning, so I came on and extended the farm cave rail line another 64 blocks, including going right through the wall of the library room of the Stronghold.  I made that wall of the tunnel out of glass blocks so the library is visible as you ride past, it looks pretty darn cool.

EDIT TO ADD: Make that 96 blocks. Also, I dug a 1x2 test-bore the rest of the way to linking up with the farm caves. Along the way, I fully lit-n-looted one cave system I came across, partially lit but didn't much loot another, and barely lit and didn't loot several abandoned mineshaft tunnels.

Anyone ever kinda schedule when they're on the server? Because I'd like to do some work, but quite honestly, I dunno if I can solo XD