Unleash chaos with epic add-ons on The Spawn Chunks // Minecraft Podcast

Welcome to the spawn chunks episode number 286 for Monday February 26 2024 the spawn chunks is a podcast all about Minecraft available across all major podcast platforms including YouTube if you’re enjoying the show consider subscribing wherever you’re listening to this my name is Joel Dugen and joining me as always is the readily

Packaged pixel rips hello sir hello yes we’ve been talking about receiving packages and getting older and enjoying Fine Wines um in the render distance that’s the extended version of the podcast you can find that at patreon.com thees spawn chunks pledging to support the show at any tier gets you an invite

To our Discord and access to an extended pre and post show chat every week so if you’re interested in that head over to patreon and check it out you will also get access to things like our monthly Minecraft Hangouts the most recent one was recorded on Saturday that was our

February Hangout that should be live in the patron RSS feed already and you’ll also find a quarterly hangout there from a couple of weeks ago where Joel and I went over the behind the scenes facts and figures of how the podcast is performing so if all of that interests

You head over to patreon.com thees spawn chunks what is new in your Minecraft world this week a whole lot I have a second Minecraft world in fact a server um which I can finally talk about even though we’ve been playing on it for a couple of weeks and I’ve already

Mentioned some of the stuff that I was working on for it on previous episodes uh this is Minecraft SOS which is a hardcore server with a Revival mechanic uh it’s a lot of the same folks that I’ve collaborated with in the past on Empires with a few new friends added

Into the mix and each of us starts with a fate coin which is an item we’ve modded in which can be spent to revive a server mate if they die so it’s hardcore but with a Twist in the sense that we become a gravestone when we die all of

The stuff gets packaged into there in the same way that a gravestones mod might and and the only thing that can revive us is somebody else arriving with a fate coin and choosing to spend it on us and if the person doesn’t get revived within 24 hours they are gone for good

And that’s the the server over for them um so right now the supply of fake coins is limited and we’re still in early games so there is potential for a few people to die unfortunate deaths myself included I’ll talk a little bit more about that later um but there are going

To be server-wide event which will allow us to earn more fake coins for completing tasks and challenges and that kind of stuff so it’s really fun we’ve got a cast of about 14 or 15 of us I think total and this is where I’ve been preparing to build my uh terrain

Extractor inspired by the solstice 5 short film that I’ve talked about in previous episodes and so far I’ve dug down about 20 layers of a uh sparse jungle biome that I found relatively close to spawn but it is fairly tall terrain and I’m trying to dig this all

The way down to the Bedrock and then reproduce it in the sky as though a giant uh you know Starship grabbing mechanism has come down and taken a core sample of the Minecraft world and so that’s going to take a very long time especially since right now so that

People don’t make too much progress we don’t have access to the nether people haven’t been able to go in and get you know anything to progress Past Overworld kind of early game gearing up uh which also means I don’t have access to beacons yet uh so having dug out the

Entire area I’ve been doing all of that with just the most efficient diamond tools I can I’m also challenging myself to play without mending on those tools uh although I can put mending on other equipment just not the stuff that I’m using for the Dig and I’m repairing

Everything as I go so I’m having to earn a lot of XP levels and then dump them all into repairing a diamond pickaxe that costs an increasing amount of levels to repair uh which has been aun fun challenge so far but I am starting to feel the pinch at this stage now that

This circle which is 128 blocks in diameter is getting to the point where the entire thing is just solid Stone and it takes more than the full durability of a pickaxe to clear out one layer so I could really do with a a better system than the one I’m currently employing but

It’s been a lot of fun so far do you have access to bone meal yet are you going to do your classic Moss mining technique or do you still want to keep the stone for for the use of the the chunk being elevated in the sky I’m

Probably going to switch to Moss mining once I reach deep slate level and it had occurred to me already that by using moss from the beginning I could maybe have saved myself a few diamonds because of you know a hoe only taking two diamonds versus three for a pickaxe

Right but ultimately getting diamonds is not going to be a huge issue and I did want to keep as many of these resources as possible not the least because I can also give them out to other people who might want to do some building with stone or terraforming on the server and

I’m now getting down to the part where I’m getting Decorative Stone types as well so we’ll see how that goes but for for now I just I haven’t envisioned exactly in my head how much Stone I’m going to need to rebuild the exterior of this thing I am of course not going to

Fill it in with a full set of terrain because that’s just going to take forever but I’m going to do the the outline of everything and the kind of the the walls of everything light up the interior and possibly even build a base inside of it if I have time so yeah

Right now I’m just collecting the raw material and I’ll probably switch to Moss once I’ve got a decent amount of deep slate and then after that who knows because I’m not entirely certain what is underneath this chunk of terrain and it’s it’s much bigger than a chunk

Obviously in in Minecraft terms but this large area that I’ve dug out is uh yeah it’s it’s it’s getting getting a little intimidating but I’m pressing on I was about to say that’s a cool space in the air once you start to recreate the the core sample as you were

Saying to have kind of like cart blanch on where you want to put Little Farms you know Tree Farm or you know Stone generator like what whatever it is that you might need to facilitate more of what you’re doing bamboo for scaffolding like that kind of thing you could hide

Them all and not have the the surrounding Countryside need to be littered with stuff you know that you need to complete the build you could hide it all inside of the the thing kind of like how Lego does where they they kind of hide stuff inside the builds

That you don’t need to see that kind of thing that could be very very cool so with with regards to the the server restrictions that’s just like a a community decision or is it there’s actually a mod in place that just does not allow the lther to be accessible oh

It’s it’s definitely a community decision uh we sort of came together at the beginning when we were we had basically two weeks on the server to prepare our first episodes before we all launched this weekend and the the idea was that we didn’t want anybody to go

Ahead and Rush progression and make tons of progress before anybody else did because everyone has different projects different people are able to commit different amounts of time to what they can do and we didn’t want to open up the Nether and have somebody go out to the

End beat the dragon get a light tra ready and be flying around before people had built their starter houses like I’ve spent a lot of time on this server so far purely because I knew I was going to be digging out this large area and if

IID had the choice by this point I probably would have cracked and got myself a beacon but simply can’t do that and it it means that I’m spending a little bit more time just kind of hanging around I’m fishing in the river for experience instead of going to mine

For quartz or whatever and yeah we’re taking things a little slower which is nice but the nether is going to be opening up this week along with the first event that’s going to allow us to earn some fate coins and I think it’s going to feel like a different server at

That point because these restrictions are slowly going to lift it it obviously means that I think the end is going to be opened up at the same time but this is all stuff you can configure from just the server properties in the the console where you set up all your server

Settings so like lighting a nether portal does nothing at this point it’s not necessarily even a modded thing it’s a vanilla property that we can just toggle at will what mod are you guys using for the Fate coins is it similar to the mod that they use on hermitcraft for the stamps

And the hermit permits and stuff cuz I I see a lot of custom models and custom things happening and just I’m curious as to what mod people are using for that that’s a question you would have to ask flip because he works with a team of mod

Creators now and has done since the second season of Empires when we were having um you know custom models for different stuff um when we were able to imbue our essence of our Empires into like horses for example to transform them into like the Doos that I had and

That kind of thing um that’s sort of a mod that was coded for us by some some talented folks folks in the community and the same has been done with this gravestone mod the model was made custom the unlocking mechanic with the fake coins was a custom thing as well I don’t

Know if this exists in a form that anybody else can download right now and I’m not certain if there’s a plan to distribute it after the events of this server but um yeah it’s it’s a custom made thing which is amazing because it means we get something to our

Specifications and we don’t have to compromise based on just whatever’s out there and Cobble together something that feels more like a a mod pack this still feels like a very vanilla server aside from the Revival mechanics and stuff there are no content mods affecting gameplay yet uh and I don’t think there

Are any plans to do that besides just you know performance stuff and that’s beneficial where you’re relying on the server to function from a Content creation standpoint and if something is not working with the mod or something is needed uh adjustments made on the fly to

Better suit what you wanted to do where your you know flip FIP is working with a mod creator that can happen whereas I’m experiencing the opposite problems on theal where I’ve got this tables and chairs data pack that hasn’t been updated and I’ve got the uh a couple of

Other mods that just aren’t updated for 1.20.1 even uh I’ve got a a crash that happens and I mean I could also just stop using the mod it’s not essential it’s a UI animation thing but it’s one of those things where like I don’t have

Control to update it and if I did I would just update it and move on but I don’t I’m relying on other people to either do it maybe they’ve lost you know maybe the mod isn’t supported anymore by the person that created it or there’s no

One to pick up the mantle so um I found that that has been a point of frustration on the sedle it’s it’s one of those things where uh I can understand when servers that are heavily modded like something like herocraft reset every year or two because well one

They they do that for a number of reasons but one of the things would be there might be better Solutions out there there might be more up-to-date Solutions out there and you’re not stuck whereas we on this on the SLE are coming up on seven years and you know we don’t

Want to reset the server but it as we move forward and we start to bring in data packs and mods here and there it means that we are like what happens if if a mod is no longer available and like for example if I was to give up the

Armor stand data pack and use a mod for the armor stands like do I still have to have the old armor stand data pack loaded are they all going to disappear like I don’t know know what that means if I have to get rid of it and it’s not

Just me like I have to have that discussion with four or five other people to say like hey how how often have you used this data pack or how often have you used this mod because it’s now no longer working so you might have to figure out a solution for part

Of your build that might not be working usually with mods we we try to stick to UI and and performance mods so that gameplay is really not affected that much it’s more data packs that I I find affect their gameplay yeah but after a while it starts to feel like you’re

Working on an outdated car and like you’ve just got to replace all of these parts with like third party pieces and bits and bits and pieces because they don’t make your car anymore and before long you’re like should I just buy a new car like should it it just becomes like

Something that you have to start either tinkering with yourself or finding solutions that could be abandoning this entire project or converting it back into a vanilla server from a modded one and going from there but yeah there’s there’s there’s so many little things so uh Minecraft SOS is

Designed to be a relatively short-term project by virtue of the fact that people are going to start dying at certain points and we are going to need more coins than it is possible to collect in order to revive everybody so I expect that this server will be concluded by the time Minecraft 1.21

Comes out anyway simply because yeah moving the server forward into a newer version isn’t necessarily going to be practical but I I am looking forward to seeing what we do in the meantime because there’s a bunch of very talented folks on there all with very different

Approach es most of them have built a house at this point I have dug a hole and I I mean to continue it um but it does mean that I can move on to more technical stuff in the survival guide as well so I’ve been doing recent episodes

On organizing my ender chest and setting up Flower Farms and just kind of working on smaller bite-size projects when I’ve got this massive sort of build thing in motion on Minecraft SOS and I can do a bunch of multiplayer stuff and hang out and hopefully get some people to help me

Dig this giant hole but then it’s it’s moving me away from doing large scale projects in survival guide for now just so that I have the stamina to keep up with what I’m doing on the server the other thing that I’m glad to have to dip into every so often is Minecraft Bingo

Because I introduced a few people to it recently and a couple of them are still playing it like on stream every so often and I still dip in I dipped in on Thursday just because SOS was in the process of like getting all of our episodes ready and I didn’t want to

Start anything big and new in in Survival Guide so I I played a few rounds of Minecraft Bingo immediately beat my personal best solo time and uh now I have to beat a time of 22 minutes and 18 seconds to gather 25 items so that’s going to take some beating I

Think but uh for the moment I’m still maybe like 50 seconds behind Bruno Dan’s time so I’m I’m I’m maybe going to dip back in there here and there but that’s that’s been my week at least uh how’s your week been Joel well speaking of of tinkering I have been spending some time

On the western Cliffs which is actually the namesake for West Hill this big mountain on the Western Front is how I named the town and I’ve been wanting to make some changes to it for a while and as we’ve been going around the valley and changing the rivers and just

Tweaking the landscape on the other side of the river to have it look like a Scenic landscape as opposed to kind of default Minecraft a lot of the time I I’ve moved on to tackle this mountain now the good news is that it’s actually pretty straightforward I’m basically

Just replacing some of the dirt blocks all of the diorite and granite that kind of shows up I’m leaving some of the andesite because sometimes that looks kind of cool like a different kind of mineral deposit or whatever and I’m just replacing the dirt blocks with stone and

Then those that have snow on them I’m just replacing them with a snow layer and the idea is to keep this overall shape of the mountain which is pretty cool it’s it’s as it stands from a early Minecraft gen you know pre caves and cliffs update it’s it’s pretty cool

Looking uh I just don’t like the dirt block there and I started a little bit I’ll share some screenshots and you can kind of see like the the right hand side of the mountain on the lower part has been changed a bit and then the left

Hand side has got the dirt and you can see the proof of concept is like I think it’s going to look a lot nicer once the stone goes all the way up to the crest of the of the mountain and I’ll leave some dirt and snow at the very top

Because there’s also some trees up there and it’s going to make more sense for them to have some dirt and grass around but uh that’s what I’ve been focusing on and it’s not difficult it’s it’s just a little timec consuming and a little bit um awkward I guess just because you have

To kind of fly up and SC Scuttle along a Cliff’s Edge and then make some changes and then drop down four blocks and do the same and so I’ve fallen off a number of times and you know the elytra is getting a workout I went through a

Couple stacks of rockets the other day just on a two-hour stream going back and forth um but it’s it’s easy and fun and I’m I’m enjoying the quick progression of it all compared to the step-by-step process of like slowly sculpting a river being underwater and floating around all the time and it just

It’s it’s also nice that this is something that you see prominently in most screenshots when you face that direction it shows up so it’s going to be nice to have that looking the way that I want and it goes down to the spruce river which actually borders

Right on the west part of westle so in a way most of this River escaping section has been done already cu the the town side is done it has like little Wars and docks and secret entrances and staircases and all that kind of stuff is all there I’m just going along and doing

The cliff side of things which is again very straightforward there’s a couple of spots uh underneath the mansion that need some Landscaping that kind of thing and I’ll get to those when I have a chance but right now I’m trying to not make a ton more work for myself because

I am trying to wrap up West Hill and so the idea here is to keep the landscaping and the cliff scaping as simple as possible possible with the exception of any spot that feels special so if you get down to the bottom of a grand staircase and there’s like a little

Secret dock there I’m probably going to take some time with whatever River plants are there whatever Cliff decoration maybe I’ll working a little bit of tough you know maybe a little extra andesite or gravel or just something to make it look like okay a player might stand here and look at this

Cliff I don’t want it to be 1,400 blocks of just Stone uh and so that’s that’s what I’m doing right now is I’m working along that that side and uh I tried to use snow blocks across the top of it to replace the uh the nice texture that you

Get when you put Snow on top of a grass block you get that side snow texture that’s that’s um pixelated whereas Stone you just get a like a cake you just get like a layer of of snow icing and it doesn’t go into the stone at all and I

Think I might download a texture pack from vanilla tweaks that actually gives you snow texture on the side of whatever block you put it on yeah uh and and I’m going to try and do that cuz I think I like that better cuz snow blocks don’t

Look good they it looks really cubic and and disjointed and for now I’m just putting the snow layer and that looks much better so I’ll I’ll let that go and as I said I’ll leave the grass at the top and of course that will be covered

With snow and have those snowy sides so that will be something that will be in in the end result as well yeah that uh texture blending kind of approach I think is something that I sort of wish Minecraft did more by default I I sort of understand why they

Don’t but like the snowy grass thing does really add to Snowy Mountains like that and naturally the mountains that generate with snow on them typically like the Frozen Peaks and that kind of thing they look good just by virtue of how the snow sort of generates in larger

Drifts and everything but you you sort of can’t emulate that on a smaller scale and if you’re just putting one snow block on top of everything instead of doing more sculpting work with the snow naturally it’s going to look a little bit off so yeah I can can see where

You’re coming from with that and there are going to be a couple sections that will require some finesse and some work I uh finished one of them earlier in the week uh and that was um with the stone curtain wall of West Hill meeting the Stone Cliff in the west

They’re essentially made of the same material so I had to do something to try and separate the stone wall from the Stone Cliff and so there’s a little bit of grass on the top of it and I kind of pulled that down I added in some Mangrove some Mangrove Roots I did a

Custom spruce tree um which I I mean I don’t say I cheated I really like the technique of growing a basic spruce tree and then like bending the bottom and the top of it and that’s your custom tree it saves you a lot of time and it still

Looks very much like every other tree in the area it doesn’t look like a standalone weird offshoot and so this was a lot of fun it took a lot of time to sculpt everything and get it to work right but uh I really like how it separates the the town from the cliff

And what I’m trying to do is blend the town into the area so from right to left in the screenshots there’s obviously the Western Bridge Towers then there’s the custom tree custom landscape stuff and then there there’s the Gray Cliffs but there’s deep slate and some

Tough and I’ve got some stone slabs in there with the stone to try and smooth it out a little bit make it look a little bit more uh unique but then on the left side as you start to get up towards this Giant mountain it goes back to default Minecraft just blocks yeah

And so it’s this nice transition of not having a hard line between where your custom building starts and your world generation starts and so I’m going to be using that in a couple different places around because I think it’s going to be quite useful to again keep the work that

I’m doing to a minimal if I can at all possible because the more stuff I try to tweak the more time it’s going to take to finish this area and I’m I’m pushing on three and a half years now and I’d like to wrap it up but something that

Someone said in twitch uh this weekend really stuck with me and the idea of what I’m doing they said was akin to Old School matte painting for movies like Star Wars and and other fantasy films before all the CG stuff yeah someone like a matte painter would create this

Giant Vista that through the lens of a camera if positioned in the right way and lit the right way would just look like this imaginary mountainscape that would go into the distance or you know a castle in the background whatever it was and they’re right that’s essentially

What I’m doing is that I I want the experience of being in West Hill even when you look at the kind of like render distance um of the mountain or things that are fading in the distance I want it to feel like it’s all part of one experience and

These subtle tweaks where I’m not redoing the countryside but I’m just kind of tweaking it so it doesn’t look too default and it doesn’t look like it’s got weird patches of brown that don’t make any sense like that kind of stuff that I hide with trees or whatever

I really feel like has that matte painting vibe to it and I thought it was a great analogy that people might be able to apply to their build so if you’re looking at your build and you’re seeing like that there’s I like what I’ve done but it just doesn’t feel right

Then look behind it like look Beyond it and see like oh well maybe it’s this weird floating dirt pillar that I should probably get rid of that’s taking my eye away from what I really want to look at so it’s a fun way to look at things yeah

Definitely I I advocate for taking an approach from other media like I’ve been talking about using video game environment design in some of the stuff that I do but yeah looking at techniques from film and using that to guide the Viewpoint of some exploring say a town

Like West Hill I think is a a really smart thing to to do so yeah definitely worth investigating a little bit in in your own time I think well we have a light Newsweek but there are a few things to share there is no snapshot this week slic slme

Confirmed on Twitter on February 21st that there was no snapshot this week quote due to some technical issues earlier this week we are not releasing a snapshot for Minecraft Java Edition today the issues have since been resolved resolved and you can expect snapshots for 1. 120.5 to resume next week barring any unforeseen

Circumstances that would be this week coming so we can hopefully expect a new snapshot this Wednesday in the meantime in Bedrock Edition news add-ons have arrived in the Minecraft Marketplace this was published on minecraft.net on February 20th 2024 concurrent with the Minecraft Marketplace add-ons being launched add-ons allow Bedrock Edition

Players to add new blocks mobs items recipes and other content to both your existing worlds and new ones including new designs adventures and game mechanics the article on minecraft.net goes on to highlight a bunch of free add-ons that are being made available to players as part of the launch with free

And premium content available alongside them these include things like Furniture packs additional pets and one add-on that adds over 100 additional wool blocks add-ons have been available to bedrock Edition players for a while but for players not based on PC they were only available in specific World download loads from the Minecraft

Marketplace and with this release it’s possible to bring add-ons into any world you like effectively making them bedrocks equivalent of mods so once again that’s at minecraft.net we’ll have a link in our show notes if you want to investigate further but if you’re a Bedrock Edition player you will also

Find add-ons now available in the Minecraft Marketplace I think more customization for Bedrock players is a great thing yeah yeah absolutely like the diversity of the modded Community is one of the things that was acknowledged as being crucial to Minecraft early development and the fact that the game didn’t have a

Whole lot of features but people were already modding them in and the game sort of grew to match the enthusiasm for certain types of content and of course we can point to a variety of examples of how player created mods ended up as features in the game like pistons and

Horses and that kind of stuff so I think there is definitely a very positive impact that stuff like this can have on player creativity and then developer creativity springboarding off of that um I obviously wanted to correct a little bit of an assumption that players outside of the Bedrock Community have

Made is that add-ons are somehow a new thing they aren’t they’ve been around for over four years now and if you go back and watch previous say like Minecraft live presentations when they’re talking about developing a mob using blockbench or you know adding in stuff like that a lot of the time

They’re talking about Bedrock Creator tools and the people who create for the Minecraft Marketplace have been using those tools and adding add on into preset Maps but that was the only way you could get hold of them before this especially if you were a console player so effectively yeah this is the first

Time that a casual Bedrock Edition player on any platform you know you’re playing on Xbox you’re playing on Playstation you can assemble what is effectively your own mod pack and honestly in in the under the hood sense this must be quite a technical feat because if you consider that the way

Bedrock Edition is set up your Xbox account friends can just join you if your playing online and your world is open to your friends so on a pretty casual basis players can be hopping in and out of Worlds that are going to look very different to vanilla they’re going

To have all of these extra Furniture packs added in and like other monsters to fight and and that kind of stuff and presumably they don’t have to have purchased and own the same add-ons to do that so you can really broaden The Experience if you just have friends

Who’ve downloaded one or two add-ons here and there and have put them into their own worlds that you can join um so yeah really excited for this means for the Bedrock player community definitely and I mean the creativity here is just going to go through the roof because rather than having to

Dedicate you know a world to an entire map or mod pack or add-on pack if you just saw one add-on like you know you wanted to add a little bit of wool or you wanted to add a new thing a new block or a different way of light maybe

Maybe there’s an add-on for lanterns that hang on walls instead of just ceilings like like just little things like that could be something that you could slowly start to add to your world and kind of unlock your creativity or in we’ve mentioned this before that a lot of content creators on YouTube are

Playing on Java not all but there’s a good chunk and a lot of times when they’re using cool custom data packs or mods that is something that’s not accessible for Bedrock players or wasn’t uh so now you might see some Bedrock add-on authors creating things that they

See in Java and allowing Bedrock players to then emulate their favorite creators be creative in their own worlds and try to do new things uh with these add-ons I think I think it’s a great great change I’m hoping that they’ll have more descriptive and inventive names than

Better insert block name here or Game feature plus so descriptive unique names are your friend I think if you want your add-on to get attention and and be valued and and maybe even become like you said anous with a potential new game feature like if something gets added and

It’s just it’s quippy it’s well thought out it I think the thing that most people glaze over with with add-ons or mods and something that I find that I have to Wade through when I’m looking for a new mod or a new data pack is that

I don’t want a make easy button you know it’s one thing to add a new block to the game or add new texture but if it’s a if it’s changing an existing Game feature to quote unquote make it better which is I think why a lot of

These like mods and add-ons get that name uh is is that the ones that I find appealing are the ones that have taken the time to think about like what’s the Minecraft experience like what kind of development would make this fun and work well within the existing kind of

Gameplay rules air quotes that Minecraft has and the ones that play the best in that space are the most fun mods to use because they don’t feel like just a make- win button right at some point some mods you’re just like well I could just this is just creative mode like why

Would I if I don’t if I going to install this mod that gives me all these blocks for next to no cost next to No Time investment then I’ll just play Creative like I don’t need this in survival and I think there’s a balance there that that

Has to be struck um but that said um one of the things that we have on the Citadel which I find very very helpful is just like small crafting recipe tweaks things like being able add wood to the stone Cotter which is not a vanilla thing it’s not how it’s intended

To be used at all but it allows us to craft wood and get trap doors and increase a little bit of a yield here and there very easily on the server and for a bunch of busy adults that’s that’s important and for Bedrock which is probably mostly younger players again

You’ve got homework and soccer practice and other things that you need to do and if you’ve got a couple of small tweaks that you can add with add-ons that make your playing experience either more efficient I or more fun or allows you to do more without really changing the

Spirit of the game and what you’re trying to do I think it’s a great thing yeah yeah and I expect add-on creators are going to have to tread fairly lightly to begin with on account of like compatibility issues between mods making some worlds unplayable for Java Edition

Players in the past and having to sort of curate the mods that you’re using in a way that makes it possible to run the world in the first place I assume add-ons are going to be much more tightly regulated before they’re available on the Minecraft Marketplace

Just to make sure that they don’t like you know effectively crash a world with how much memory they take up or something like that but you know aside from a couple of players who will inevitably just add in everything that they possibly can just to see you know

What stuff they they can play around with I I do think that the people who’ve been doing this have been doing this for a while and there’s an art to it at this point so hopefully it won’t cause too many issues and we’ll be a uh ready fun

Way for Bedrock players to have a new experience moving on into emails this week if you’d like to email the show the email address is spawn chunk [email protected] we’ve got a couple of emails here from our listeners the first one comes in from tugie Fox with the

Subject of a floating islands biome dear Joel and pix Minecraft used to be known for its crazy terrain generation floating islands sand archers Etc but in recent years it feels like the game has become less and less exciting in that respect as Minecraft terrain is trying

To become more real I feel like this is a shame exploring new worlds in older updates was exciting when you came across weird and wonderful terrain and something about it triggers the imagination I’ve always felt generated floating islands are an inherent and instantly recognizable part of the game what about introducing a floating

Islands biome hovering above Plains or off the tips of mountain peaks floating islands could be a really cool way to help Inspire more Fantastical builds and bring the endgame progression back into the Overworld floating islands could be a wealth of new building materials I also also Envision generated structures

That help explain the floating Island’s story as well as a new flying or gliding mob like a flying squirrel these resources would be difficult to access without having the ability to fly so you can lock amassing large quantities of new building materials behind a tech tree that requires going to the end

Curious to know your thoughts on Minecraft’s floating island Legacy and your opinions on whether or not it’s worth preserving Tuki Fox fell to his death after trying to ride an archaeopteris so I picked this out because I’ve never liked the way that Minecraft terrain generates floating blocks or chunks of landscape we even

Had some chunk errors on the SEL very early on that had like 16 by6 chunks of like skycrapers like pulled out of the ground sort of like what you’re doing on purpose on uh on SOS sure and uh I it always just feels like a game error to

Me it doesn’t feel like it’s part of of Minecraft I think part of it is cuz like I didn’t click the exploded landscape button in the in the terrain generation right and I think that floating islands designed as a biome could be very very cool especially because we know now

Vertical biome separation is a thing since caves and cliffs you know you’ve got dripstone caves you’ve got Lush caves and having some sort of floating island biome would be really really cool it takes the kind of RNG you know Minecraft distribution for terrain generation and allows something

Unique to be built in the sky whereas previously that would have to be built by hand by a player if they wanted something and it could be really cool if you had different biomes maybe mismatched or juxtaposed over one another so imagine like a flower Forest floating island biome over a desert sort

Of like a floating Oasis you know or uh a Cherry Grove or a jungle floating island biome over an ocean like you’d have some really cool contrast that blue and pink with an ocean and a Cherry Grove would be very very cool and that kind of stuff I find very appealing about this

Idea I feel like you’d be able to get to it regardless of whether you had wings or not I don’t think it would deter anybody from just Gathering a bunch of dirt or some scaffolding and just like oh I want that and go straight up to it

So I don’t think there’s going to be anything gated as far as resources go uh people that want to get to them are just going to be able to to get to them and to me I think the biggest debate or conversation about this is like does this encroach on the idea of

Inspiring players to make your own floating and Islands as a project versus well I’m not going to do that anymore because I know that they exist in Minecraft I’ll just go find them instead of building them and I don’t know like I I feel like the floating island project

Is never something that’s been appealing to me because of the just sheer amount of work that has to go into creating them at the side that you’d want them to have them placed in the air seemingly random in a way that you want them to be

And I feel like we all get excited when we find a really cool eroded bad lands or an ice spikes biome that’s a cool size or in a fun shape and I feel like having floating islands like this in Minecraft would Inspire more than Inspire less I feel like seeing them I’d

Think immediately oh what kind of cool things could I build to connect them or build on them or create some sort of like blimp INF structure to make it look like we could get to them on our own like that kind of stuff to me is inspiring I don’t think that the islands

Would necessarily take that away how do you feel about a biome that was a floating island biome yeah I I kind of fall on the other side of this I’m closer to Tuki Fox’s opinion in that I have a tremendous affection for when Minecraft does something quirky because

It allows Minecraft to feel different from other games that have a sculpted landscape and naturally there are going to be artifacts of the procedural generation the sort of you know algorithmically created terrain and when some of that looks weird I find it more interesting than the stuff that’s all

Going to look the same because you know I can’t go and see a floating island in the real world and so that allows Minecraft to feel like a more Fantastical experience I don’t necessarily agree that Minecraft terrain is trying to become less wonderful um

Less real is or more real is is like a an interesting debate because if you look at the caverns that we have now with the addition of layers below zero you end up with a Minecraft world that is still very exciting to explore without having to add in stuff that

Feels like somehow a mistake in the terrain to begin with and doesn’t defy the laws of physics as we know them strictly speaking but still has something of that Minecraft flare to it floating islands are I think something that is fun as a play player Le project

And when I’ve seen them implemented in mods in the past every so often they feel very deliberate and sculpted and it feels more like a structure than it does a biome in itself than it feels like terrain that has like a unique you know set of properties to it and feels like

It could have couldn’t have generated you know more uniquely I I think there’s a lot to be said for the Minecraft team embracing that idea and bringing their existing approach to terrain to something like a floating island for it to really feel like part of the game and

I don’t see many mods handling that stuff super well these days um having built a floating island I think it’s fun and I don’t think that having floating islands in the game would necessarily put me off building my own in the same sense that having you know Hills in the

Game previously didn’t put me off building a mountain and having really cool Landscapes as of Minecraft 1.18 doesn’t necessarily put people off terraforming so I think there is still license for more creative players to do what they want while the players who just want excitement in their exploration could really enjoy finding a

Floating island biome the aspect of which I absolutely agree with you is that you can’t gate progression behind something just being in the sky because like if you think about ancient cities most players probably wouldn’t raid an ancient city without gearing up first you know it’s meant to be like closer to

A an end game sort of structure but theoretically it’s possible to just find one and loot the entire structure without any equipment you can get there by just using the shift key and and being lucky um so I I think there’s there’s something to be said for like

Yes people will go anywhere in the Overworld if they have the tools to dig or the blocks to bridge or pillar up or whatever it happens to be so I don’t think necessarily you can put progression there you could put unique materials though you could put unique resources and something that doesn’t

Have to be part of the tech progression but could be some sort of Sky stone that you’re only going to find I like the idea of unique materials I think that that could be a fun way to make them more valuable rather than just a cool feature like they would have I

Mean and and that new feature if you add the right kind of blocks or the right kind of thing from a game design perspective and that’s it’s usable with other things from other locations in the game maybe the floating islands provides some new mineral that’s useful in a

Redstone block or something it is it becomes a appealing for everybody at that point it’s not just like a fancy Flo floating island um but I like the theme that tuie fox was was hinting at with um some of the minerals being Sky related or air related or or something

To that nature where maybe they help something float or they create some sort of um cloud or anything that you could do to have that theme and have it be Sky related it just sort of reminded me of um I think it’s called it’s not Sky Fox

Sky I can’t remember the name of it it’s a comic book by Jake Parker and uh it it has like Zeppelins and everything’s in the air the all of the culture for this world that he built is all in the air above the clouds you know whales with

Saddles on them like all kinds of crazy stuff right skyart uh thank you jumbo sale in our live chat appreciate that uh yeah great novel I encourage people to check it out and uh yeah it’s just one of those things that I I just like that

Idea of taking a Minecraft theme I could yeah I could see an entire Minecraft update themed around like the sky update you know like or the the the sky island update or something like that I feel like maybe does Zelda have Sky Islands I feel like I’ve seen it in other video

Games too yeah there’s some in um the more recent one in tears of the Kingdom there’s also Skyward Sword which kind of has a similar like the Zelda timeline and and the different versions of the game are sort of convoluted at that point so the different games will have different approaches but definitely

Something that it EXP explores um I think the other the flip side to this the the sort of Dark World version of this if you like is um to go back to the original Sky Island Dimension idea and do something like this but with the floating islands in the end because the

End was originally envisioned as a Sky Dimension and then became the sort of desolate moonlike uh situation that we have now but that still has the floating island concept and proves that Minecraft can do it with their natural terrain generation it just does it in a very specific biome and a very specific

Presentation and so I wonder if there is room to expand the biomes and the Flora and FAA of the end into something that satisfies the urge to find something like these more Lush floating islands that people are envisioning for the Overworld but in the end dimension in

Ways that are going to be new and fresh for the player and not a dimension that players are typically encouraged to build a whole lot of stuff I’ve certainly seen people do it but often they’re building things that would look good in the void of space and

Having a more natural landscape in the end could lead to some really interesting creative player decisions at that stage our next email comes from Jude B creating the bogged I’ve been listening to your latest episode about the bogged and I was thinking of the relationship to the Stray a lesser known feature of

The game is that if a skeleton sits in powdered snow long enough it will change into a stray what if the bogg were created when the skeleton sinks in a swamp similar to how zombie changes into a drown May me limit bogged to only be created in Mangrove and regular swamp

Biomes I’m curious as to what you think Jude be drowned trying to see if he could have moss growing out of his bones I was curious to see if we’d get a conversion mechanic with the bogged and now they’ve been introduced I would not be surprised if that’s either in this

Week’s snapshot or or at least up for consideration with the developers because I think it would be yeah very consistent with the mechanics we have you can also turn husks into regular Zombies by putting them in a river um and then they can go from there to the

Drown so I’m I’m would not be surprised I’m not sure if it’s something they would consider limiting by biome but maybe if there were Moss blocks or mud blocks around or something like that then maybe that’s something that they could be like a proximity thing in that

Way but yeah if we can already turn skeletons into Strays I see no reason why logically we couldn’t convert the bogged from skeletons to I feel like it makes sense to me I don’t know why you’d want more of them I I do you need to farm poison dipped

Arrows I guess I still don’t know why anyone bothers converting Strays when slowness arrows aren’t especially useful and um as far as I know I unless I’m missing something they don’t drop more XP than regular skeletons either so even though they’re a slightly different challenge to fight they aren’t

Necessarily going to give you any more resources unless you just want a lot of tipped arrows for free but then yeah poison tipped arrows might be more useful in like a PVP context or something but I don’t ever see slowness arrows being that effective and I don’t

Use tipped arrows much myself anyway I mean the mechanic for the zombies turning into drown facilitated all kinds of cool copper Farms right to be created and that that was a cool kind of like Fallout of that but I don’t see the the benefit from the skeletons also

Skeletons sink and correct me if I’m wrong they don’t swim so zombies once they turn into drown they can swim back up to the surface and try to get you uh skeletons once they turn into a bog if this was the case once they drowned then

They would just stand at the bottom and be of no danger to you unless you went down to the bottom to get them because arrows in the water don’t do heck of a lot right you just have a bunch of skeletons shooting at you from the

Bottom of a river and that’s kind of all that happens but yeah I think from a player standpoint you could probably Farm them in a swamp biome and just do that through natural spawning if you wanted to so if a player is trying to

Get hold of a lot of them I don’t see the conversion mechanic being too useful it’s really just to farm drops I think and so yeah like I don’t necessarily see much utility in doing it but I think for the sake of consistency of mechanics I

Feel like it should be a thing person yeah would it be good if they dropped Moss at all like moss carpet or something I don’t know I mean I guess Moss is so easy to get that you don’t so so abundant so so easy to farm

Already I feel like if there was another item that they had then it would make more sense because again like it would just spawn more gameplay if they had something unique that they dropped then one it would be a more interesting variant than what what it is and and

Having this kind of mechanic added the game would then facilitate you know Farms or different ideas or even just say like I’m actually not going to sleep tonight in in the swamp I want to see if I can get some of these guys and get some of these drops whereas like for me

Right now I I don’t intend to engage with them because they have no real value for me yeah honestly if you just gave them a different type of bow it wouldn’t even have to work differently just an aesthetically different bow I think that would be kind of cool like if

They had a bow that was more ornate and maybe made of Mangrove wood or something and maybe then the Strays could have like a frozen bow or something like that and it could be the the Sprite could be just different and and then the the bow

Mechanic could be identical uh as far as I’m concerned but I think it would just be a reason to interact with those mobs more than we get already if they had a unique drop like you mentioned the the drowned copper thing and you know there’s a reason that we interact with

Zombies and drowned but not really husks and it’s because husks don’t drop anything unique the way that drowned do so I think it’s it’s really worth considering that if if you want a player to interact with these mobs more a unique drop makes sense and I don’t

Think the tipped arrows are it I don’t think people are going to care about it that much except for the purposes of collecting for the sake of collecting moving on to the main discussion this week it is the last episode of February so it’s going to be

Our February Round Table what did you bring to the table this week well I’ve been thinking a lot about a life without various things because of the first couple of weeks on Minecraft SOS we agreed on some restrictions beforehand uh some of them are self-imposed on my

Part um and it’s highlighted a few things I didn’t really appreciate about the game before like have you ever played a a a game of Minecraft where you haven’t been able to access the nether or have you ever done sort of like a survival challenge of sorts where you

Try not to go to the nether for as long as possible or have you always seen the nether as just an inevitable part of the game and something that’s like a means to an end I’ve never cut myself off on purpose the closest that I’ve had has

Been playing Sky Block where I had limited resources limited blocks the nether was something that was far away because you had to kind of work yourself up to getting getting there uh I think in the version I played I had to get myself over to the various islands

Around the Sky Block World and then gradually unlock access to other things um mob drops like all that kind of stuff was was slow going I didn’t mind it uh I I found that building in all the same material was a little bit boring for me creatively but I I liked the techical

Challenge of like wait a minute like I don’t have anything here like I can’t just go get iron like I have to wait for stuff to drop from mobs and things like that so that’s the closest I’ve had to I think gating that kind of thing the only

Thing that I can say on the Citadel that’s similar is that we don’t play on the nether roof yeah so we we know it’s possible we’re in an older seed like the seed is Circa 1.12 so like there’s lots of spaces on the roof to get up there to to find like

A hole to work your way through once you break the B Bedrock but we just decided not to do it because it just felt well I’ll say too easy to get super high rate Farms that are there’s no gas spawning you don’t have to worry about anything like that as long as you’re

Building in the right area above the nether then you’re fine and so I I feel like like that’s the one restriction that we have on this little yeah yeah well on Minecraft SOS we have effectively Switched Off The Nether and so progression has been limited and it’s

Surprising the amount of stuff that it is still possible to do even without access to the nether Dimension so like it’s still possible for example for us to find the stronghold which is something that you consider part of gameplay progression right but we could stum um upon it while caving we couldn’t

Do anything about it once we were there but it’s also a matter of the world seed having generated them in specific places so if we had the the map on chunk base or whatever we could go specifically to the stronghold and I think that’s an interesting facet of this is that you

Know while some resources and and other bits and pieces are locked behind the nether like nobody can build with Crimson or warped wood yet until we’ve we’ve been to the Nether and been able to acquire some of that um it’s still very possible to play a substantial

Chunk of the game without it and that led to a couple of decisions that I made quite early that I then sort of walked back on a little bit because of the nature of This Server Like I thought right I want to cure zombie villagers immediately so that I can get access to

Diamond tools that I can buy from a toolsmith so that I can do this dig and not have to worry as much about finding fresh diamonds every time and then I realized that the only way it was possible for me to cure a zombie villager without access to my own potion

Brewing was either to explore to the extent that I could find an igloo with a villager trapped underneath it and find that that Igloo basement room that has the brewing stand and a couple of ingredients for zombie curing there already or I could try to trap a witch

And witches will sometimes throw splash potions of weakness instead of the harming potions and poison and and slowness that they typically throw so that’s how often people in Sky Block will kind of skip the progression of going to the nether in order to cure villagers and get that stuff going but I

Realized that I was trying to imagine doing this on a hardcore server when I would need to be revived if I got killed and there was every chance that a witch was just going to you know double Splash me with poison and then harming and kill

Me so I decided not to go for that right away coward that I am and wait for the nether to open up this week but even that thought process led me to a surprise at how many mechanics you can still find loopholes for the other side of it though was how many redstone

Contraptions are still possible but it highlighted how much I rely on observers in modern gameplay because observers have to be crafted with quartz and comparators the same you need raw quartz in order to do that so it’s not something I can just buy from a stonemason villager from a from a

Regular Village and so without the nether it’s been a really interesting Challenge and not one that I would consider like a challenge format that you could really impose on people in the same way that you could do nether survival challenges after 1.16 or Sky Block or super flat or something like

That but or or peaceful mode challenges even but living without the nether is such a strange state of being because I consider it such a fundamental part of Minecraft now I even started my base initially around a ruined nether portal that I found in this jungle biome and

This nether portal has just been a monolith it’s been an artifact it’s not been something that I can turn into a functional Gateway until much later uh so that was one of those things the other thing being we have uh eliminated totems of undying from the evoca loot table because it makes Hardcore

Minecraft feel trivial instead of keeping the player feeling vulnerable and with raid Farms especially in the state that they are it’s easy to be kind of complacent in a hardcore World once you’ve just got a a permanent and easy access to totems of undying so instead we decided in the early discussions

About this server that we should eliminate totems entirely and have Hardcore Minecraft be a constant concern you can’t get sloppy and my first death on the server has already happened in my first episode I died in lava purely down to my concentration being elsewhere I was digging out a layer of stone I’d

Heard the lava a couple of times when I walked over it but I knocked down a block in front of me me which led to a hole that was already there and I just dropped into a one block hole and fell into a one block deep lava lake and died

And so somebody had to come and revive me and that experience really highlighted how important it is to be aware of your surroundings and the fact that I’m digging out this enormous area where at this point the walls of the Dig have got to the point where if I drop

From the highest point of them I’m probably going to be dead if not then probably on half a heart of health or something like that and so it really highlights the need for concentration and to not get sloppy in in gameplay um the only minor thing I’ve added on to

That myself is the notion of digging out this area without mending and that for me recontextualizes XP levels because it feels like they are in constant use once you’ve got past the early game and got your Enchanted tools set up up you you sort of reach the mid game I feel like

When you get hold of something like mending and once you have mending applied to all of your tools those are your tools for Life unless something happens like you fall in lava and lose your stuff or you know fall in the void in the end or anything like that and the

Level system really feels unimportant for anything other than renaming stuff like in in Survival Guide I recently renamed my shulker boxes for use in the ender chest and that was the first time in a while that I spent 16 levels on anything and maybe name tags might do it

Or maybe renaming items for item filters might do it but I feel like XP levels after a certain stage once you’ve got mending on all of your tools and equipment really doesn’t XP levels affect the game barely at all to the extent where you can get people afking

At farms just so they reach a milestone amount of levels but it doesn’t lead to any kind of reward at that stage other than a sense of satisfaction that you’ve done it and so I I sort of leave this conversation maybe putting this out to you or to the audience what else could

XP levels ultimately be used for once mending effectively renders them obsolete because that’s something that I’m now finding a more interesting plate to spin in in my current survival progression on Minecraft SOS I’m finding it necessary to manage my XP levels in a way that I haven’t had to think about since 1.9

Introduced mending as an enchantment that’s something that I remember being concerned about when I was playing Sky Block was the number of levels I had wanting to use them for I don’t think I even had enchanting in that playthrough but knowing that I was going to need

Them for other things uh and uh even if it was just repairing items on an anvil that kind of stuff and it’s interesting how playing with those kind of restrictions makes you hyper aware of some of the modern conveniences that are in in the game and it makes you think

About the changes that were made and why they were made like the looking at something like mending and going back to A World Before mending was in the game um I imagine there was just some I guess consensus at Mojang to say like look there’s something about this

Process of having to retire tools or repairing tools or eventually they just get too expensive that is just it doesn’t feel good like it doesn’t feel good as a player and so we want to change that and in that process it just becomes this immediate default for so

Many players in the game to think well like the first thing I want to do on this tool now that I have my fortune 3 or my Unbreaking 3 like whatever the stats are that are your favorite pickaxe the next thing that you want is mending

So that you never lose that if at all possible or you don’t have to try and recreate it another time because sometimes getting those enchantments the oldfashioned way are difficult in terms of the what you roll you know on an enchanting table to try and get them I

Remember those days before having a villager trading Hall and and just having to use the enchanting table and I don’t miss them you know I I will more than happily collect a ton of emeralds and go to my um villager trading Hall that doesn’t have like zombie cured

Trades like sometimes The Mending book is 36 emeralds I don’t care I want one like it’s worth Emerald grind to have one on a tool that you don’t want uh to lose especially now that we’ve got like netherite tools that are lava proof like there’s all that stuff that I think I

Don’t want to say makes the game too easy but there are certain modern conveniences in present day Minecraft that I certainly Miss and I I think it’s one of the reasons why I don’t like starting over um a lot of it has to do with creatively I like having access to

All the blocks having spent so much time on the the server and been in every biome like if I need something it’s either in my inventory in a storage room somewhere or I have a short trip I know right where to go to get it you know I

Had to get a shulker box full of snow blocks yesterday it took me 20 minutes like it just it was easy and that kind of access I think is is the other thing that I miss but I also would miss things like the tool progression and um observers and stuff that’s an

Interesting observation if you pardon the the double um the double word there but like it’s I I was thinking about that as you’re talking about it I’m like man like your sugar can Farms your pumpkin and melon farms your flying machines like there’s so many things and you can still do some

Of that stuff you can still have Pistons that are on a timer and and break your sugar cane on a specific timer you like Etho Hopper clock that kind of stuff though though those might use comparators I don’t they do use comparators yeah so that’s another consideration I could try and raid an

Ancient city to get comparators from underneath the central portal but I don’t know if I want an Etho hop a clock that badly that yeah there’s there’s a lot to think about there and yeah the the uh you know sugar cane kelp uh Farm idea like

Somebody in my stream chat the other day asked why don’t I build a kelp Farm to get XP instead of you know fishing and smelting stuff and I said well how am I going to detect when the kelp is grown because I won’t have observers and so yeah there’s there’s so many little

Things that have a knock-on effect and we take for granted having you know easy access to the nether for the rest of the time that just doesn’t really occur to You Until You Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone kind of kind of thing um and with mending with with the Villager

Um rejig the the sort of uh trading rebalance being a still a hot button topic now and people are still wondering is it coming to the game is it not have they decided against it I have got the impression now that Mojang has decided the Villager rebalance is worth keeping

In in mind but we do need to do something about rebalancing enchanting and repairing mechanics to like that’s the the main point of feedback I think people have had about the Villager rebalance is either that people don’t want to explore or they think we should be able to keep tools and repair tools

For longer and not be left with this penalty or this complete like wall against repairing stuff and and combining the stuff that we already have and that enchanting should be made more accessible if villager trading is going to be less accessible and so I think that’s an interesting thing to

Contrast with the way we did things before mending because if people are going to be relying Less on mending they have to rely more on enchanting table mechanics and repair mechanics but if they remove the cap on you know being able to repair tools with certain

Amounts of levels or if they they change the amount of levels that you need to use if it doesn’t increase or whatever it happens to be then projects like what I’m doing right now are going to take on a new meaning in that they’re not going to be possible anymore because what I’m

Doing when my tools get too expensive to repair is I go and bury them I create a like a grave marker around the outside of the circle that I’m digging out and I lay that tool to rest like we used to do back on the decidedly vanilla server in

Season 1 back in Minecraft 1.8 before mending was introduced and it felt like each tool took on a significant and it felt like a loss when you could no longer use it when the durability was completely depleted and I want to recapture that feeling especially considering this is a hardcore server so

We’re going to be trying to limit player deaths and they’re going to take on a different significance I thought why not have tools take on that level of significance as well and at this stage I think it’s really interesting to look at the tool repair mechanic is something

That maybe is no longer going to operate the same way it does in future and I’m sort of making the most of that while I can and giving it meaning and significance while I have the option to do so I really like the way that Minecraft

SOS is set up and I mean tip of the hat to you creating this huge project on a hardcore server because that’s that not something I would do um but again like I bet you’re really glad that it’s not a regular hardcore server cuz you would be

Done you I would have dug out maybe layers of this thing and then people would have to deal with the fact there was a big hole in the ground right there and that would be it there would be no no further significance to it so uh yeah

I’m I’m hoping that my project is interesting enough that people will want to see it completed badly enough that they feel like it’s worth Reviving me later when these coins get more Scar and I love the fact that it’s not you using the coin to revive yourself you have to

Get somebody else to do it so it’s their coin that they’re spending to save your life and then you kind of owe them a a res you know like the next time that they die they’re like hey pix remember when I saved your bacon an hour and a

Half into the server or or 20 minutes into your first episode like let’s let’s let’s uh balance that out because like I’m currently un alive at the moment yeah and uh yeah I think that would be that would be a much more pleasant way still with Peril like I would still be

Watching you know walking around with my butt puckered uh on a hardcore server even with these rules in place because I wouldn’t want to die all the time yeah um but but I I think it it removes some of the immediate disappointment that would happen with an accident like it’s one

Thing if you’re pushing your luck and you know exploring the deep dark right now is probably not a good idea but you do it anyway well that’s your fault but like tripping into a lava hole like that’s just that’s bad luck or or like you said like falling off of a cliff

That’s just one block too high and that’s the end like that could be really devastating for the kind of creative work or just even just looking forward to playing on a server with your friends for a couple months like that would be really hard to take so I think it’s a

Really cool mechanic yeah and uh I’m very very happy that I just managed to fish up a feather falling three book that I can apply to my boots which now have protection for as well so I I I did a bit of enchanting earlier and I’m very

Happy to finally be getting my armor into a position where it could save my life if something similar like that happens again um but that’s really what’s been on my mind and I’m curious to hear what the community thinks but uh let’s move on to your topic and what

You’ve brought to the round table this week so something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately has been moving on uh as I’m wrapping up some of the final tasks around West Hill and not necessarily putting off finishing it but certainly looking forward to moving on

And I’ve noticed just like as I’ve been watching other creators as I’ve been watching different films or media reading different books um my Minecraft inspirational imagination has been drifting off and I’m not thinking about medieval builds like I’m I’m thinking about new stuff I’ve mentioned before

The Sci-Fi um area that I want to work on on the server I’m definitely thinking about automated farms and utilizing the crafter I’m even considering putting a data pack on the server that brings the crafter in early ahead of 1.21 I really want to break off and do

Some more colorful builds it’s not like West Hill has got no color there’s certainly some some unique pieces in there but by and large it’s gray and brown from the outside uh and seeing the kind of things that Etho is doing on herocraft or some of the colors that I

See in other creators work and I’m just like man I really need to start exploring some of these new blocks that have been added into the game over the last little while uh I’ve used a little bit of cherry blossom stuff but like not

Much and so it would be nice to kind to Branch out and really get into some some color and I’m actually concerned that this new Sci-Fi area will gravitate towards neutral colors like gray and white and various textures that have the subblocks that lend themselves to the kind of

Shapes that you would see in a Sci-Fi area curves circles cones Wing shapes like all that kind of stuff so I like I want to try and figure out a way to get past that and so I’m racking my brain thinking about well it would be a fun

Challenge to bring some very bright into a Sci-Fi area thinking like Marvin the Martian and like Duck Dodgers and and those old 50s kind of sci-fi things like the Jetson and how Wild and colorful they were but all of those ideas also come with a lot of Curves and a lot of

Subtle shapes that are difficult to do because we don’t have those subblocks in things like concrete terracotta stained glass wool whatnot and so I’m just trying to think about what is going to be the best approach approach and because that’s been on my mind what I

Wanted to bring forward was I don’t know how often it’s talked about how long people that play Minecraft might let ideas percolate specifically maybe people that uh our listeners might look up to like people from herocraft people from Minecraft SOS yourself just these big Ideas these big plans for a server

These big plans for a build and I think that they end up sitting in people’s brains a lot longer than they may talk about on a regular basis because I’ve been thinking about the Sci-Fi area off and on for over a year not seriously because I’m not in it I’m not working on

It I’m not brainstorming specific builds but I’m just kind of like shapes and colors and how is that going to be feasible where do I want to put it in the world how you know what kind of biome do I want it to be in that kind of a thing and I

Think letting those ideas percolate is a really good way to not get burnt out on something so if you jump into something too soon there’s a good chance of maybe you’ve made a mistake maybe you put it in a desert biome and you think oh man I really

Should have put this in a in a bad lands or something like that and you don’t you get um discouraged because you don’t want to start over you don’t want to move something nothing is more gross in Minecraft than having to tear something down and move it you know to a different

Biome because it might work better and I I feel like that kind of thought process of letting these ideas percolate and form and bounce around in the back of your brain as you’re watching a cool Show on Netflix or as you’re uh reading a graphic novel or as you uh I think you

Have a new architecture book like just those kind of things having an idea for a build in the back of your mind and not building it right away in Minecraft like resisting the urge to jump right into something I think can really benefit um one of the things that I’ve seen a fair

Amount of is a lot of uh we’ll say kind of South Asian inspired building in Minecraft as well as steampunk and I think a lot of that has to do with recent additions in Block pallet to the game so you’ve got Mangrove you’ve got Cherrywood you’ve got

Um the uh the copper and all the different shapes you get with copper now again came with a lot of subblocks so a lot of the more intricate details that want in something like um those build styles are now available whereas they weren’t available as readily before or

You’d have to do a little bit more of a suspension of disbelief to make that look like it’s a a metal Cog on the side of a of a build uh lightning rods and a bunch of other things create a lot of details that just weren’t there before and sometimes letting that idea

Percolate when you’re either listening to a podcast about Minecraft where you know there’s updates coming and you think okay well I’ve got this idea but it’s going to be beneficial for me to wait because like the crafter’s coming in 1.21 so maybe it’s good for me to sit

On this idea for now and I think that letting those ideas percolate can provide some opportunities later for it to go smoother uh for it to be a a more thought out idea where you’ve kind of thought about the the pros and the cons like you’re you’ve got that list of like

Well if I put my sci-fi area in a mushroom box biome then that’s good I won’t have to worry about spawns I can make some dark areas but if I want the Sci-Fi area to have Automatic Farms then I can’t do mob Farms there I’d have to

Do it adjacent so I’d have to make sure that the Sci-Fi area spawns or spans a couple of biomes right so there’s things like that that I think um I’ve been considering it’s worth uh I think bringing up and then lastly because I tend to think big and I

Don’t necessarily want to lock myself into another three and a half year project immediately after West Hill uh the last thing that kind of came into my mind this week was about a pallet cleanse you know about um quite literally if I can’t figure out a way to

Bring the color shift that I’m feeling I want right now into the Sci-Fi area then I think the best thing for me to do would be to not jump into the Sci-Fi area and do something else that would be super colorful maybe that’s you know fixing up some of our nether tunnels and

Adding some color designs in there that just don’t really have any Rhyme or Reason other than just fun uh whether it’s doing some new area or going back to the modern city and creating some different things that have color um or maybe it’s not building at all maybe I

Need to do things like repeat killing the dragon and and creating a new uh permanent end Island area where we don’t have to worry about the dragon destroying anything anymore and we can just be done with that and and move on and I think that having that pallet cleanse between projects whether it’s

Literally a color shift in Minecraft or just a a different style of gameplay you know a different style of building um maybe that’s not even something on on the server like you play Bingo a lot and I and I think that that’s maybe a way to continue to play Minecraft but not burn

Yourself off on mining and building you know like you can still get your Minecraft fixed but it’s a completely different mindset and a different way to kind of exercise uh your your skills in the game and that kind of stuff I think is is really important because it

Allows the thinking ahead allows those ideas that you have in the back burner to still be there like you’re still thinking about a floating island and your ship build while you’re playing Minecraft Bingo not necessarily at the Forefront of your mind but if something happens in Minecraft Bingo that then

Inspires something that you could apply in the Minecraft Survival Guide then it’s harder to do that if you’re not having some slow thoughts some long burning thoughts in the back of your mind creatively and I think that it’s important to have both like sometimes it’s great to have an idea to jump into

Minecraft and just like fire something in there and get it you know in block form and and enjoy that inspirational uh boost of energy but then also sometimes for these bigger ideas or ideas that you can’t quite figure out it’s nice to kind of have them bounce around a bit because

You just never know where a solution to something is going to come from yeah absolutely I mean on the subject of the pallet cleanse stuff you were talking earlier about the potential for adding in 1.21 content to the Citadel early so looking at the crafter and copper blocks

And tough blocks and stuff so if you want to combine that with revisiting Redstone stuff and adding those into your previous farms and and whatnot you could very easily do that or yeah take another look at what you need take inventory of all of the stuff that you

Have on the server already and I find technical projects are really good pallet cleansers for build projects because so often build projects aren’t just about the materials and the build style they’re also about project management you’re also toting around all of the shelers with different blocks and

You know going back and forth to different locations and if you want a break from that and not just a break from the same colors that I have to look at every day or you know the same architectural Styles if you’re getting burnt out more on the organization than

You are on just the building then I think that’s an important thing to acknowledge and something to step back and look at doing something of a different discipline than building can really be a a good reason to do that plus once you’ve built a farm you often

Want to make it look pretty and so that’s where you can maybe throw in the splash of color that you’re looking for and then allow those sci-fi ideas to speak for themselves a bit later so that if it needs colors that feel a bit more neutral Neal then you’ve you’ve had that

Pallet cleanser in between I think that’s probably a a healthy way to approach that problem I can’t remember what it’s called I think it’s called solar Punk it’s kind of an anime art style and that’s kind of what Dartmouth Meadows the original spawn town on the Citadel

Is like where you’ve got these like wooden barns and there’s like a Red Barn for our our sheep farm and all that stuff but then the actual Redstone Farms are bright colorful very glass and concrete kind of looking things but then they’ve got log flumes for the for the

Material collection like our sugarcane farm has got lime concrete across the front of it the Warped or the um uh wart Farm has got red concrete and red glass everywhere and they were really fun pops of color pumpkin farm of course bright orange and I I feel like that kind of

Stuff would be a good way to to get some color in there cuz our any farm that I’ve done it that’s kind of how I go about it it’s just immediately it’s like oh good good I get to do red stone and then I get to use colored glass and

Concrete and just make something really bright and kind of garish but it’s going to work because it’s a it’s a farm like it’s meant to be this functional machine it’s not meant to look like part of the natural world at all right mhm yeah but I like the idea about making stuff look

Sustainable in the real world sense which is kind of the the ethos of solar Punk is having like renewable energy at the core of everything and allowing Green Space to creep into things which can just feel architectural and I think that’s a really interesting philosophy to bring into Minecraft where a lot of

The resource stuff is sustainable like a lot of the renewability of things allows for you to live in this sort of post scarcity State once you’ve amassed enough resource farms and everything so there is there is room for that philosophy to intersect with Minecraft in quite a harmonious way so I I like

That as a as a concept um looping back around to the the the idea of letting thoughts percolate I have done this for years and I I feel like it’s something that I don’t verbally acknowledge a whole lot but the museum idea that I got in Survival Guide season 1 for you know

Gathering every block and item in Minecraft and you know displaying them all in some fashion I have been doing that for a while and it goes back to my Xbox days where I was just kind of curious about what was in the game that stage and I was reading the Minecraft

Wiki and I was I I had a world where I just had this sort of almost like a cross-section of a museum I didn’t build much of the exterior structure because I was planning out the different rooms and I ended up uh just laying out all of the

Blocks and labeling them with signs and saying this is you know hay bales and these are bookshelves and this is andesite and that kind of thing so I reuse ideas like that but after they’ve had time to sit and percolate and I’ve been able to scale them up up to what I

Think is an appropriate size and experience along the way really helps you adjust your expectations for what is required for huge projects like that right and so I think one of the vital components of letting thoughts sit in the back of your mind and saving them for the future is gaining experience in

The meantime and recalibrating your understanding of how much time something is going to take how many resources something is going to take to the point where now with the project I have on SOS with this large uh you know structure in the sky and it being part of the terrain

I’m now at the point where having gotten used to using light MAA I feel like I can take on something on this scale and I know what the limitations are and I know that copy pasting the schematic into the sky is going to be difficult to

Look at for a while because of you know the amount that it’s having to render in ghostly block form um but then I know how to mitigate some of those factors and make it easier on myself so I think there are levels to which your experience in the interim matters to

Those ideas that are percolating in the background but it’s something that I’ve done and I’m sure lots of people end up doing uh without necessarily realizing it at the time there’s also that resource collection hurdle I mean for you you’re kind of doing it as you go so you’re

Going to end up with like a lot of your tool problems are going to be solved by the amount of diamonds that you’re going to find as you’re mining through this giant like 128 block diameter chunk and I think that for me you know when I think about that future build whether

It’s a Sci-Fi build or whatever that happens to be I I feel like I now have enough experience where like all right well the first thing that I’m going to do if I don’t have it already is going to be a way to get more of the blocks

That I’m going to need a lot of you know whether that’s moss and something like a solar Punk build whether that’s concrete so gravel and sand you know you immedately think all right well I can give myself a pallet cleanse and set up a pigin bartering farm so I can have

Gravel you know uh that that kind of thing I think is that comes with Minecraft experience like you said but it can also provide a way for you to ease yourself into and set yourself up for Success because there’s nothing more frustrating than having some spark of inspiration and really ready to get

Going on something and then going crap I have a half a Sher box full of concrete and I’m going to need a lot more than that so you have to then put on the brakes and like go you know grind concrete for hours on end uh especially

For really large projects when you need a lot of the same block or for that effect for that immersion that you might want sometimes it can be a little bit tedious so having any kind of thing like that to set up in the background and set

Up in an area it’s like it’s honestly worth it to rebuild a farm kind of in the chunks that you’re going to be loading constantly to have that be constantly ticking in the background and just provide you with instant refills whenever you need it just blocks away

Right mhm yeah definitely yeah it’s it’s it’s something that I think about all the time when I’m resource Gathering like providing enough wood for the future of my projects and getting Stone even though I don’t need it right now I know I’ll need it in the future at some

Stage so you’ve just got to plan ahead for some of those things and make your life a little easier that’s where we’re going to leave this episode of the spawn chunks though folks you can find more information about the show and links to some of the stuff that we’ve talked

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Show at spawn chunk [email protected] the RSS feed is linked on the spawn chunks. comom and the patron only RSS feed is on the patreon page that’s where we can listen to the render distance the extended version of the podcast my name is Johnny but Ono by pixel Rifts you can

Find most of what I do at youtube.com/ pixel Rifts where the APPL mentioned Minecraft SOS Series has just started and the Minecraft Survival Guide continues a pace I stream 3 days a week on Twitch where already behind the scenes work for all my YouTube series

Going to be a lot of digging over there in the foreseeable future and I’m the voice of The Unofficial hermitcraft recap which you can find through a quick YouTube search aside from that I’m pixus on both Twitter and Instagram Joel where can people find you online everything

That I am doing online can be found at join.com including the Citadel Cafe my other podcast about sci-fi and fantasy entertainment join Johnny and I this week where we’re going to be talking about Avatar The Last Airbender the liveaction show that’s on Netflix we’ll be talking about season one I’m Joel

Dugen on social media and Joel Dugen on Twitch where I stream Thursday through Sunday mostly building West Hill on the SLE Minecraft server but the Friday Lego let’s chat is back and I am currently building the Polaroid onstep sx70 camera it’s a long name but it’s a fun little

Lego build check it out thanks for visiting this spawn chunks the world outside is infinite but we can add on to That