Eyes on some new transport
With my goal finding a village complete, it was time to re-focus my attention of transport, often my transportation of these villagers would involve:
- Boats
- Nether portals
- Buckets of water
- A lot of patience.
However, as I mentioned in my last post I had recently updated to minecraft version 1.21.6, which among other things contained the happy ghast, and one awesome feature of these friendly flying creatures is the ability to attach a boat to them using leads, this feels like the perfect early game method for transporting villagers!
I started with a trek back to my base, I was very happy to once again see my lookout tower serving as an excellent landmark to guide me back to home.
On my way back I stumbled on a ruined portal, and amongst other items found a lodestone
When I got home I threw together a quick farm using some carrots and potatoes I had “borrowed” from the village, I then used some of my diamonds from my last post to craft a diamond pick, headed down to the mines, acquired some obsidian (which was painfully slow with an un-enchanted pick) and got a portal setup! For now this portal would live just below my house to the side of the staircase that leads down to my mine, however I would soon construct a building for it.
To the nether!
I gathered some food and went in to the nether to explore, the portal spawn I got is not the worst I have seen by any means, but it is certainly a bit crowded and hard to explore, I think a nether hub will be in order later down the line. I mined away and built bridges and found a few cool items including a snazzy pair of golden leggings with mending, this will help keep the piglins away!
My goal was to find a soul sand biome as I had been told that the dried ghasts- a required component for spawning a happy ghast, could be found there, however I was only able to find some small ones in my initial search, with no dried ghasts in sight. I found out later I could also craft them, but didn’t end up needing to.
I found a fortress!
And…. had my first significant death
Should have seen it coming, every new world I forget just show squishy you actually are without a set of high tier armour.
Home improvement!
I will be back here to reclaim my gear eventually, however after this defeat I decided to slow down a little and recoup some resources and expand my base a bit before taking another trip into the nether.
I did some mining, found an abandoned mine shaft, got reequipped, and was visited by my first raiding party!
How exciting! I will collect their banners here for now:
I searched the nearby hills for some cows to farm, bought those over with some wheat I had been growing, quadrupled the size of my crop farm, added a section for cows, and visited a nearby clearing and collected some flowers to decorate the outside of my house- now this is minecraft!
I got up on the nearby hill which housed my lookout, and got myself a nice birds eye view of my base, it gave me a good idea of where I would like to place future buildings. I have decided that for this play though- at least in the early game, I would like to have a few separate buildings for things, rather than just 1 large base that contains everything, this takes a bit more work but feels more satisfying at least to me.
Important side note! I found peonies, which are my favourite minecraft flower!
Looking around the room in my house that had essentially become my bedroom, I felt I found it a bit simple and empty, at this time my partner (who I was on the phone with while playing) suggested adding an aquarium, I really liked this idea but due to how I had constructed the room was not sure which wall to put it on- so I decided to dig one into the floor!
Trust the process! it’s gonna look great. This new project led me to wanting some kelp to help with decoration and creating full water sources quickly, so I grabbed a boat and went exploring, this was not the quickest search but it did lead me towards an awesome looking ice spikes biome and a cold ocean where I was able to scoop up some kelp, at some point I hope to find a warm ocean for coral and such, but I will need a silk touch pick before then anyway.
back home I added this to the tank, covered it in glass, filled it up, and added a couple salmon to fill the place of tropical fish that I will eventually add.
In another search for a warm ocean I did stumble on some tropical areas, and this is where I witnessed biome mob variations for the first time, I kept my cool and definitely did not have a 2 minute freak out over how adorable this cow was.
I also found a few tropical fish here but did not get a screenshot of them, they are in my tank though.
I went home and decided it was time to create a stair case leading up to my lookout.
I then got to work on a building to contain my nether portal and other magic stuff, this was my second attempt (no screenshots of the first one but it was just a box) this second attempt was a box- with offset sides!
I’m really enjoying this style of building where it is almost a square but with a 1 block offset along the walls, it adds a lot and in the case of the magic building allowed me to create a nice groove that would perfectly fit a portal and enchanting table, you will see this a bit later.
As I was taking the above screenshots I noticed I had been visited by another raiding party! the last one must have left a good review
All this time I had been gradually increasing the amount of cows in my farm, which I would soon need for the bookshelves for my enchanting setup.
To the nether! - again
I was quite happy with all the improvements I had made, and with the new and improved nether portal housing, I was feeling ready to give the nether another go!
I went in, exploring in a different direction to last time, and after some searching, I spotted fossils sticking out of the ground! I rushed over and sure enough, I found my first ever dried ghast!
A new friend
1 quick YouTube tutorial later, I had my happy ghast rehydrating at home!
I went to a nearby(ish) snow biome and got some snowballs to feed to this beautiful creature once he was done hydrating, I then did a few odd jobs (mostly chest sorting) as I waited the 20 minutes for my new friend to rehydrate.
There he is!! don’t be fooled- he is not far away, just very small, this would not last long however as I had many snowballs to give him!
I was very excited to say the least, I named him Gregory, this is important information. I made Gregory a harness and found him a place to live!
I was very happy to finally have a happy ghast, and I must say after flying around a bit, Mojang have found a fantastic way to provide flight to the player in the early game, without disrupting the pacing of the game, or remove the desire for an elytra. This is about where I finished this set of sessions, only other thing I did was get some some more of the magic house interior done.
Other than that, that’s about it for this post! I have played a little bit more since the end of this recap, however I feel that content would be better served being rolled into the next blog post. so until next time, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next post where I get to work transporting villagers and setting up trading!
You can read the whole Tales from Alumantia series here