Note: Most of these screenshots I didn’t take with the intent of making a post about them, so I didn’t bother hiding the UI. So you get to see the sad state of my tools and inventory.
With larger plans on hold until 1.21 is released, I’ve been spending my time on smaller builds to fill out the world. Although I suppose smaller is a relative term. My goal is to come out of each playing session with at least one build (new or old) completed.
Build #1: A small waterfall
First off, our spawn area is up high on a hill in the jungle, overseeing a lake on one side and a mesa on the other (the mall is built into the side of a hill in the mesa). The hills surrounding spawn are a bit too steep to do any real building on, so I spent some time terraforming the area. First up, a small stream, flowing into a dripstone chasm that leads into the lake.
Build #2: A bigger waterfall and a small lake
That chasm goes all the way up to a few of the starter houses at spawn, including some pathways and bridges that cross it. So let’s add some water there too.
That then flows down into the chasm as well, joining the other stream.
Altogether it provides a nice thing to look at when riding the rail bridge out of spawn.
Build #3: Cleaning up the rail bridge
Speaking of the rail bridge, there were some small parts left unfinished previously, and not all the concrete was hardened. That’s easy enough to fix. I later discovered one of the vertical trusses near the other end of the bridge was missing, and I still haven’t gone back to fix it.
Build #4: A wheat field
I moved onto adding some small builds around the “estates” area between my base and spawn. No one lives in this region, and aside from the skeleton farm there isn’t much functional around here either, but I fly/ride through it on my way to spawn when I don’t take the nether, so I want to get it filled in. Previously I had divided the area into plots with lines of trees, and built a few small houses in some of them.
The entire region has a general “farming” theme, so a large wheat field seemed appropriate. One plot was sitting behind a chasm, and the terrain was a bit too uneven to build a house on, so this seemed like a good place to put it. The first step was terraforming.
This took five shulkers full of grass blocks. I’m an idiot that insists on filling in terraforming and not leaving big empty spaces underneath. Next up was adding some pathways, lighting, and water sources (hidden under the slabs the lanterns are on). I also put in a railing around the chasm, entirely for decorative purposes (I absolutely did not fall into the chasm at least twice while placing lanterns).
One…interesting…quirk about farmland is it will only be hydrated by water sources on the same level. So despite having a water source every 8 blocks, a lot of the field was not hydrated. Crops will stay planted if you get them in while the farmland is still farmland, hydrated or not, and hopefully the dry land won’t be too noticeable once the wheat is grown.
At this point I had run out of seeds, so it’s time to move on.
Build #5: Decorating a yard and making a small cactus farm
Next I set my sights upon a plot that was barely developed, with only a small house and a fence. All I did here was add the flowers (and a few torches), but it really helped fill in what was otherwise empty space.
Across the road was my general farming area, where I mostly grow crops for villager trades, so I figured a cactus farm would be nice to have while I AFK in the area.
Trying something different here: The minecart just rides alongside the cactus, rather than collecting it with a water stream. There are a few places where cactus can drop and not get picked up, but the pickup area of a hopper minecart is a bit wider than the rail so there isn’t a significant amount of loss. I suppose I could have covered the entire area by running the minecart underneath the platform, but this looks neat, uses fewer rails, and was easier to set up. The cart never stops; at the drop-off end it just runs over 5 hoppers in succession which is more than enough to drop off any cactus it might have picked up along the way.
I did both the cactus farm and the flower fields in the same session.
It turns out I had a lot more small builds than I thought I did, so these will be continued in another post!
