I Survived 5000 Days in Hardcore Minecraft

This video tells the story of the biggest project yet in this entire series. We call it the Nether Hub. By the end of the video we will have built up a giant fortress on top of the Nether roof, but our story starts a little before 4000 days as we were

Finishing up the project in the End. It was around day 3750 when we completed the toughest project yet in this Hardcore series. After removing the End Island we had built up the End Statue, a giant build inspired on my Minecraft skin.

That meant that we had done projects in all dimensions now to mark them as our own. After our first house we built up the Heart of the Sea in the overworld that functions as our main base, storage facility and industrial area with the collection of farms hidden under the build.

The Fortress Farm in the Nether provides us with all the fuel we need as well as wither skulls for beacons and bones for white dye and bone meal. We made a start to Loonyville, the city that spells out the name of the hardcore series. Located very close to the Heart of the Sea.

And after we transformed the Stronghold portal room we had completed the End Statue. But all of that is history. Let’s get into the actual story because there is a reason why we did the Stronghold portal room before the big end project. We came through this one specific room all the time while we

Traveled back and forth between The Heart of the Sea to pick up materials and the location formerly known as the End Island to work on the project there. I hated going through that room that didn’t have a story to tell, so we built the portal

Into a giant end stone and chorus fruit tree in a large room supported by four pillars filled with endermen. That transformation was such an upgrade. For the entire time that we worked on the End Statue I really enjoyed going through that portal room.

The plan had always been to complete the End Statue and then head back to Loonyville to continue building up the city. After the end project was completed, I realized that there was another place like the Stronghold portal room in the world. A place we travelled through on almost every single stream.

And to be honest this one was way worse than the portal room had been before we gave it a makeover. I’m talking about the Nether roof of course. Scattered on the bedrock that divides the lower Nether and

The open space above it, I had built Nether portals to take us to different parts of the world. Flying from one portal to another with my elytra was a very effective way to travel around and it had been enjoyable for a while too, but now something felt off.

As the world had started to mature I had all these cool places to visit in my world, but they all felt so disconnected. After the last block of the End Statue had been placed I decided to put Loonyville on hold for a couple hundred days so we could lift our Nether portals

Off the bedrock and up into the air as we built a Nether hub to connect all the separate projects around the world together into one. That was easier said than done, because we had a lot of preparation to get out of the way.

Across my world you will find very few farms out in the open. The only one that is not covered up at this point is the squid farm, but some farms take up a ton of space, making it hard to cover them up. As I was getting ready to start construction on the

Nether Hub I realized that this build gave me the opportunity to create a large bamboo fueled super-smelter under the fortress that we were going to build. In combination with the netherwart fields, that would set me up to produce a large quantity of red

Netherbricks, an awesome block that would be defining for the project up ahead. To produce the red netherbricks we needed to put a ton of netherrack through the super-smelter. Which would be processed while we built up the foundation of the fortress. On the streams during this period I got bombarded with questions about

Why we were gathering the netherrack right underneath the roof and not down on ancient debris level. The build is actually located in old 1.15 chunks so there were no ancient debris to be found here, but the reason I didn’t go further out into 1.16

Chunks is that I don’t want to afk at farms and waste my game days. So I spent my time gathering materials I needed anyway while the bamboo farm right above us stocked up the super-smelter. By the time we got to 4000 days we had done a surprising amount of work on the framework

For the build. All of this progress happened in under a week of stream, but to be fair, the last of those streams lasted for 16 hours. Some of my viewers managed to convince me to “Just grind it out” to day 4000 with a little over 14 hours left to go.

That stream was awesome and by the end of it I was stoked how much of the Nether Hub was already completed. I was also still under the impression that we would finish up the foundation of this build and then move over to Loonyville around day 4300.

That would soon turn out to be wrong, but the reason I was wrong would turn out to be awesome. As we built up the basic structure of the fortress two things started to become clear. First of all travelling through this place when going somewhere rather than just going

Over the bedrock ceiling felt so much better. It really was tying the world together into a single project. The second thing that became clear had a bit more to it. I’ve been making creative projects for years outside of Minecraft and whenever I start

A project I always have a vision of where it should go and an idea of what it should feel like once we get there. After you’ve worked on the first phase of a project reality tends to catch up with the vision that you started out with.

Now, that can be a good or a bad thing. In this case it was both. The reality was that the foundation of the fortress at this point was looking incredibly grey. But looking at that grey monstrosity I could see what it could become once we started adding light contrasts to the build.

I was looking at something that was potentially cooler than what I first imagined. Still there was one issue with the final result that I could see now. Even if we made the fortress look awesome it would still feel like someone just slapped it on top of the bedrock.

There was a way to fix that though. To take this build to its full potential we would have to turn the most barren location in any Minecraft world into a collection of custom biomes. At this point my mind was made up, we were in for a serious grind all the way to day

5000. First order of business? We would be adding lava lakes around the fortress. Contrary to popular belief infinite lava source are not a thing. So If I wanted to build lakes around the hub but also keep lag to a minimum I had to fill every single block with a lava bucket.

I knew that would be a very grindy job, but we had tackled several of those earlier in the world and I wasn’t afraid to take on another one. For five days straight I hauled up lava buckets from the lower Nether up to the roof.

To this day when I go into the lower Nether I’m on high alert. It is easy to forget after having a world for so long, but I only have one life so I have to come prepared or I might get into a spot I can’t get myself out of.

Dealing with ghasts is mostly just annoying. Magma cubes are way scarier, they are probably the most deadly thing in the Nether aside from piglin brutes. And for the second time in this series I got into a tricky spot with a magma cube. In this moment I was actually remarkably calm.

For any given situation I try to have multiple solutions in place so when I do accidentally forget a fail-safe there is always another option. In this crazy situation I had no chestplate and no food in my inventory. That is the most underprepared I had been in a very long time.

My first priority was getting out of range of the magma cubes to prevent more damage and then I analyzed my situation. The options here were very limited. The only thing I had was a sword and some blocks, so the best option was to stay out their reach and slowly, one at a time,

Pick apart this horde of magma cubes. Because of the fire resistance potion I had 8 minutes to solve my problem and taking my time was everything I needed to get out of here safely. Set aside that one incident, the lava lake grind was a super smooth and super fun operation

If you ask me. But by the end of the fifth lava stream chat tried to make me promise to not do any more lava buckets ever again, because they had seen enough. I had a bit of foresight so I said we would only do a

Few details but no more full lakes, and that was a promise I kept. The fortress already looked a lot better because of the lava surrounding it and it was time to move on to other biomes. Like with any other project this next stage of the build would start with outlining.

I made a giant lap around the fortress while placing a single line of netherrack. This reference line allowed me to eyeball the size of the biomes. Generally you can visualize a lot easier if there is a bit of context to go by. Once that outline looked good we were ready to

Start designing the place. I had just decided to add the biomes around the Nether Hub and I was very aware how much bigger that would make the full project, so I tried to be smart with these biomes. To make this place looks as cool as possible with the least amount of work we

Would have to keep the design of the area as flat as I could possibly make it, while also making sure that it felt like there was actual terrain. That is where the fortress farm came in clutch! With a little bit of bone meal… I’m, I’m kidding, it took literal shulkers of bone blocks.

Cough, cough… with a little bit of bone meal we would turn a giant, flat area of netherrack into a forest made up of trees with varied heights. It was still several hours of work to make a single forest area, but the idea that we

Could make an entire forest on a single stream – that was actually pretty nuts! Once the first forest was done I used the outside frame as a reference to plan the rest of the biomes around the fortress. We would actually use the forest trick on several areas around the Nether Hub to

Create an illusion of diverse terrain, but in between those forests we would need several other biomes to fill it out. The first one of those would be a Soul Sand Valley. When designing these projects with every step forward I take a step back, so as we got started on the

Soul Sand Valley we had to get back to frame working. Given the character of the biome I really couldn’t get away with making it flat so I made an actual valley surrounded by small hills on all sides. That valley turned out to be the perfect spot for the

First inhabitant of the Nether Hub, or former inhabitant we should say, as we constructed an ancient basilisk skeleton. A creature connected to a story that is now long forgotten. Soon we would also have a large living creature here, but first we shifted our attention to one of my favourite biomes.

It actually took me a while to figure out the right surface block for this one. I tried red sand at first but that really didn’t work at all. Then I came up with a surprising idea. A little while ago I had been playing with the idea of using dead coral in a build.

That might just be the perfect solution for this biome. Dead coral of different types creates a fascinating gray pattern that is much more varied than for example cobblestone. By randomizing the block placements it made the biome feel like a giant ash-covered wasteland. I loved that feel but we needed some detailing as well.

That’s where the crystals and the trees came in. With this crystal biome done we got to the biome that would be the biggest surprise out of all of them. I had considered using grey mushrooms in the same fashion as the forests to add more height variation to the biome with less work.

That didn’t quite cut it though, we needed something more. Now I need to make a little confession here – stream chat had been advising me to make a volcano ever since I started work on the biomes.

But, I have the tendency to be stubborn to a fault so I said that a volcano would be too big and too bulky, so it would never work. Until it did. It turned out that you guys were right all along and it was exactly what this biome needed.

The volcano actually got a redstone system on the inside that would make it erupt every five minutes. While I was trying to make this volcano shoot fire charges, someone gave the most unexpected suggestion. We should make the volcano shoot snowballs. Because snow clearly burns in Minecraft. Logic, guys!!

That one snowy suggestion took the stream in a completely unexpected direction. We went from building a volcano to building an ice castle in a matter of minutes. Enter the saga of Chadderson… To fuel the volcano we built up a snowball farm, I put the farm a little bit off the

Ground so I could come back and build a house around our snowy friend. In a rain of suggestions for his name, Chadderson stood out to me. So we named the guy, took his snowballs and went back to the volcano for a test fire.

Meanwhile I thought about making a small, cozy, spruce cabin to conceal our farm, but before I could even suggest it people started calling for an ice castle. I loved that idea so we tore down an iceberg and started building, meanwhile cheering our new buddy Chadderson on while he fought off phantoms.

Everything was amazing, until, in a moment reminiscent of when we lost Danny earlier on in the world my carelessness now got Chadderson killed. While I tried building his house in complete darkness he got sniped by a skeleton.

That was bad enough in and of itself, but the Chadderson saga doesn’t end here – it gets worse. I tried to just play it off and kept on building the ice castle. We built this thing in a single stream and it

Was actually really fun to be out of the dark fiery Nether for a little bit. Honestly good times all around. So once everything was under control we got a new nametag and made a fresh snow golem whom we called the Royal Lord Chadderson II.

He would keep our dispensers stocked up with snowballs in exchange for his royal house. Sweet deal for both of us. Everything was amazing, until, I went back the next morning to complete the ice castle interior. As I did that I redesigned Chadderson’s room, unfortunately bright lights can melt ice blocks.

So as I wanted to switch my first ceiling design for a new one, I single-handedly murdered Chadderson II. Once more we had an ice castle without a king. Before I started streaming that day I had a quick secret coronation of The Royal Lord Chadderson III.

Given the fact that his name was so long the III actually disappeared in the wall to his right, so chat didn’t know and as far as they were concerned Chadderson II was looking happy as ever. I couldn’t face the disappointment over yet another unfortunate snowman’s demise and my plan appeared to have worked.

So we continued working on the Nether Hub, chat none the wiser. And everything was amazing! Until, one stream we made it back to get snowballs from the ice castle and the only snowballs that we found were the sad melted corpse of the third noble ruler in the Chadderson bloodline.

This madness had to stop. Finally I ended up building an iron door in the castle on top of Mount Chaddermore. The first house was the last time I ever used an iron door, but this mighty fine snowman wasn’t going to get ambushed by a mob sneaking in ever again.

There were enough bloody snowflakes on my hands. And, with this new reinforced iron door, we finally saw the end to this tale of woe. Chadderson IV would hopefully be forever safe, because for us it was time to head out and get back to work on the Nether Hub.

After the great snowman demise of 2021 there were only 400 days left before 5000 days in my world and that wasn’t the only milestone that was coming up. We were almost a year into the world and I had something very special in mind for the stream where we would hit that milestone.

Before we could get to that though we first had to make a meatba… a uh, a meteor in the Nether. The meteor would cover a Nether portal to a mountain biome close to spawn. Next up we quickly built another crystal biome as well as a magma biome with red sand.

For the magma biome we spent about half a stream just making holes in the bedrock so we could place campfires under the biome to generate smoke. Definitely worth the effort! With all of this biome grinding out of the way

We reached May 13, 2021, which was the day the day where my Minecraft world turned exactly one year old. That day we flew around the entire world to check out all the progress I had been able to grind out over the course of 12 months.

During our trip around the world we collected all the shulker boxes that I had left behind at the different building projects. We put all of those in the main storage room in the Heart of the Sea and marveled at the colorful mess in front of us.

Then I put all the materials in a temporary chest wall that I would sort out the next day and took the shulkers themselves down to the museum area, to make one of the most fun builds I have made to this day.

Located under the Heart of the Sea is a place that we call the Mob-head Museum. There is so much stuff here. Among other things there are around 1400 mob-heads from thunderstorms, 69 god apples, a full music disc collection, the dragon egg, a combined 30 shulkers full of horse armour from exploring

And a collection of rare mobs. When I started this world I didn’t really think 5000 days ahead, so by now we’ve run out of museum space. So when I needed stone for the Nether Hub I started clearing out an area right behind the main mobhead room.

It is meant to be a new museum hall as well as a giant tunnel to Loonyville. Part of this room had been underwater recently and I just placed a glass wall here to prepare for the first art piece that we would build.

After draining the room I didn’t think to light up the part that had been underwater. So when we arrived here with plans to make an art installation, we found the most mobs I have ever seen in one place. Most of the area around is spawn-proof, so EVERYTHING spawned in this room.

Let’s just say things got hectic quick. Once we cleared the room, we did what we came here to do. I called this one of the most fun builds right? Here’s why – I love designing with restrictions and in this instance I gave myself a bit of a challenge.

While collecting the shulkers spread out around the world, I found 207 of them in all sorts of different colors. So I made an art installation using exactly all the shulkers that we found, without changing any of the colors.

This is what it turned into and I’m honestly really excited to see it again once the room around it is decorated too! To celebrate the birthday of the world we had a big fireworks show that day, but this show would be nothing compared to the one on day 5000.

Tension started to build up because that milestone was approaching quickly and there was one really scary thing that I had promised to do on the 5k days stream. I still had to get the How Did We Get Here? advancement.

I tried getting it on 2000 days but I failed because I hadn’t done my research properly. So the next day I started looking into it. This time around failing it wasn’t an option, but there was a little bit of time left before we actually had to get it done.

So I went back to the Nether Hub and started looking for things that I still wanted to finish up before the final stream. There was this one thing I had actually been looking forward to ever since we started flying all those lava buckets up from the lower Nether.

This lake around the back of the fortress was just asking for a giant lava squid! Every now and again a build comes along that goes a lot smoother than I expect it to. This lava squid, who’s named Brutus, was one of those builds.

I had assumed that we’d work on this design for at least two streams. But in a single stream it looked perfect. The last 150 days that I had all revolved around one single thing. On day 5000 I wanted to have a crazy fireworks show while the hub looked as good

As it possibly could. We would come back later to polish the biomes, build interiors and finish off things that still needed work, but there was a huge difference to be made as far as the overall look goes with just a little bit of detailing.

So we focused our attention on the front of the fortress and started detailing the plaza behind the main gate. As the towers, walls and fortifications all around the fortress started to come together we got to the last week of this thousand day arc.

That is always a special moment but last time with the 16-hour marathon to 4000 days it became even more special. That 4000 day marathon stream was a surprise even for me, but this time we planned it out so the final stream would be a 10-hour race to 5000 days.

Grab your popcorn and fasten your seatbelts, because the last 10 hours were a rollercoaster ride. That last stream started with me making good on a promise. It was time to get the last advancement in the game by having all 26 status effects applied

At the same time, and to get that done you need to have a shulker and a dolphin in the same place. Because my world spawn is quite far away from the ocean, I had chosen to bring a dolphin to the end using a tunnel to an end gateway.

The entire setup was already in place so we could start our attempt by getting the Hero of the Village effect. That meant we had to defeat a raid. After going to a pillager tower and defeating a Raid Captain we made our way to this village.

There are a few villagers safely locked inside their homes here so the raiders can’t get to them and that gives us all the time we need to carefully pick apart the waves. The early attacks are relatively harmless but given the fact that there is a lot to lose, I decided to trust my

Bow over my sword. Once evokers come into play and they start spawning vexes it becomes really important to have good aim. Taking out incoming vexes quickly is key to not being overwhelmed by them and being able to pick off an evoker as soon as it stands still is essential to winning these waves.

The raid actually went over smoothly until the very last wave, when I lost two raiders and spent almost 20 minutes looking for them. Once we found the dummies that got themselves trapped in this water, uh wait, scratch that – once THIS dummy found those two dummies it was time for step two.

Hero of the Village was applied, but we needed to go back to the Pillager Outpost to acquire Bad Omen again. At this point there is no time pressure on getting the achievement yet. That would start once we got Mining Fatigue from the Elder Guardian.

After getting Mining Fatigue applied I would have 5 minutes to make my way to the end and get all the other effects as well. To have the most room for error I lost my saturation on the Mooshroom Island which was next to the ocean monument.

This little wooden box that I built on top of the monument would allow me to be protected from Guardian attacks but well in range of the Elder Guardian until I got the effect. And with Mining Fatigue too, it was time to go!

With all three of the effects that I couldn’t get in the End already applied I made my way back to the Mooshroom Island and flew over the Nether Hub to the stronghold portal room. We made our way through the end gateway. Flew over to the setup to get the beacon effects.

Hit the lever to apply the potion effects. Went underwater for Dolphin’s Grace. Swam to the shulker for levitation and hit the dispenser for glowing. Ate the remaining items, hit the wither rose and WE GOT IT!!! This moment on stream, I was honestly so hyped, it is hard to explain.

The fact that a videogame can do that is crazy, but I wasn’t happy because I got that advancement, to me the journey is always more important than the destination. I was happy because I made good on a promise to you guys and I knew

That we had all the remaining time on the stream to set up the fireworks system for when we hit day 5000. It was time to make our way back to the Nether Hub once more and get ready for the biggest milestone this world has seen so far.

And I promise you guys that the fireworks matched the occasion. We were in for a very special moment. At the Nether Hub we had installed a redstone timer that could trigger 8 different outputs. The rest of that stream was spent installing dispenser circuits and wiring them up to different delays.

The entire stream was honestly a race against the clock, but I knew that we had it under control. One element at a time we introduced new parts to the firework setup until it was time to make the actual firework rockets and fill the entire thing up.

I had been stockpiling gunpowder for this occasion for a long time. But still it’s a crazy idea that we used up 3 shulkers of gunpowder for a single fireworks show. Once all the dispensers were filled up we took one last tour around the world to take

A look at how far we had gotten in the first 5000 days of this adventure. As the remaining hours turned into minutes, we flew back to the Nether Hub because there were just two things left to do now. The first one started with the flick of this lever

As the redstone engine kicked into action and sent signals to all the dispensers we set up, it was time to take a look around and enjoy what we had been setting up all day. That moment it really settled in. We had come so far on this journey.

The fireworks were honestly amazing and I loved them, but stream chat was way more special. My moderators tried to pick out some of the many fantastic comments in chat and read them to me and the thing that got me most was how much positivity people had taken away from spending time on

The streams over the past few months. And that is such a special feeling. The 5000 day arc had come to an end, but there was one thing left to do before we put the world on hold for a few weeks as I focused on editing all of this together.

This one armour set had carried me through everything from making me survive on half a heart when Danny died, through the Nether, to the End and now to day 5000. It was time to retire it forever and put it in the Heart of the Sea to

Preserve all the memories that we made with this one. This place is where we will set the first steps of the rest of the journey, in brand new armour, as we set out to make brand new memories beyond 5000 days.

Thank you guys very much for watching this video and if this was your first time here – welcome, to The Loony Adventure.