tips for Animania Mod and HarvestCraft on Minecraft

Esme found a new mod for Minecraft called Animania.  This is the best page I've found for the overview and instructions for it : Animania Mod Project on CurseForge

But, it still doesn't have all the info.  So I've made this huge text file about stuff we have learned and use all of the time in Minecraft.  So much is now in 'only video form' that it gets hard to find what you really want to know without watching someone's video all of the way through....

Plant every bit of cotton and grain crops you can in a fenced location as early as possible.  You can make multiple fenced gardens or expand the one you have in the future, but getting production running quickly is important (you'll see we play full survival, monsters on, hunger overhaul mod!)  I've included tips below all of this on how to cook to survive in HarvestCraft, as well.

Go Mine some Iron and make yourself a bucket and shears quickly (5 iron) or plant your crops down by the waterfront and hope something doesn't eat it before it grows.... tough choices!

General Safety tip : attacking animals isn't like vanilla Minecraft.  Some of them fight back!  Also, the frogs in the swamps and forests can be poisonous to the touch, like Wither.. but milk doesn't cure it.  

CROPS

It would be wise to get a good and large farm going with useful crops before you have rapidly multiplying animals to feed every day.  The crops most useful for raising animals are Barley, Corn, Oats, Rye, Wheat, Carrots, Potatoes, (Beets I hope) and Apple Trees.  Oats, Cotton and Beets are found in Alpine (frost) gardens.  Corn, Potatoes, Cotton, Wheat, Barley and Carrots are found in Windy (plains) gardens,  Forest Gardens can provide some carrots, cotton and wheat.  Sweet Potatoes, Turnips, Beans and Tomatoes are also in forest gardens and can be important for keeping you, the player, alive until you find animals.  Blackberries are good producers for player food.
 
Cows and sheep like barley, corn, oats, rye and wheat.  Oats and Barley seem to produce the most per field space, sometimes 3 to 4 quantity at a time.  Corn seems to be the most 'expensive', often producing only 2 quantity per field square.  Wheat has the added benefit of producing seeds for feeding chickens.



 ANIMALS and FENCING

All the animals except chickens require double gates to lead them through.. including sheep for some reason. At least double high fences are required.  When I had a goat pen I used doors instead of gates because the goats kept leaping over the gate area of the fence.  (double fence-stone-door-door-stone-double fence) combination.  It is best not to place the troughs next to the fences but instead in the middle - as the animals use the troughs to jump up on and then bounce over the fence.

Even with the best fences there are reasons for animals to 'pop' through the fence sometimes.. baby cows growing up to adults are one reason.. also when animals get 'unhappy' they crowd together at a point on the outside fence trying to get away..and then one or two can 'pop' through sometimes.  When animals are happy and fed they wander the entire area, when they are unhappy they stick to one area and stack nearly on top of each other.

Most of your animals will lay down at sunset and sleep in odd positions (pigs just plain fall over!)  Sometimes the babies are even caught in midair with their feet off the ground.  A few animals, especially unhappy ones, will continue to press the fences and not go to sleep.  It is very hard (and nearly useless) to try to find an animal in the woods after sunset and lead them back home as an asleep animal does not move on the leash (ha!)

FEEDING and WATERING

Troughs can be filled with one bucket of water and always look 'mostly dry'.. I've found it best to just make a three by two pond and fill it with water so it becomes an everlasting source (one bucket in each corner so the center parts are regenerating water source).  Then put food in the troughs, which can take up to three units of food each.  Some animals just don't seem to like to eat out of the troughs or get too far away from them to notice them, and have to be fed by hand or they get unhappy.  That little 'black cloud' mark that comes up over the head of some of the animals mean they are unhappy and need something. 

It's really hard to tell if an animal is thirsty, but they can sometimes take water from a bucket but sometimes the bucket just sprays a water source all over instead of being refused.  Esme said that if a cow refuses to drink water from a bucket but the water source doesn't explode its a good sign that she is going to have a calf soon...   The calves sometimes grow to 'double size' but still look like babies with huge heads.  Usually those calves are going to turn into bulls.  Bulls are double the size and can sometimes escape fencing if they are too close to the fence when they 'pop' to adult size.  Having a lead available to take them back in through the gates is important.

ANIMAL CARE and ANIMAL PRODUCTION



Number One Rule : Animals multiply, and you will need to cull your herd.  But be prepared, armor and a sword!  If you need to 'harvest' an animal, move them with a lead to a separate pen first or away from the other animals outside the pen.  Many of the animals fight back like monsters once they are attacked.  Careful sometimes you can 'accidentally' hit a cow or sheep when you are trying to milk them and then all of the nearby animals and/or just that one might start attacking you.  That's hard to get away from!  They calm down after a day or so but it can ruin a production run.  Roosters and Bulls will attack if a female near them is attacked.

Sheep don't eat apples, corn or carrots. 
--- Jacob sheep are supposed to have four horns or six depending on gender.. but I really can't tell the difference at all.  The other sheep breeds are easy to tell the difference.  Breeding a Jacob to a Friesen I've gotten what looks like a white Dorset ram but gives off only white wool without a title to it.
Jacob wool becomes white wool if you put it on the Minecraft table or crafting slots.  However, two Jacob sheep wool beside each other become light gray carpet.

Goats eat apples, carrots, string and sticks, as advertised, as well as some grains.

Cows don't eat apples or carrots, but love corn, rye, wheat and barley.  Cows when killed will produce beef or 'prime beef'... and sometimes leather.  Bulls fight back aggressively, so have some armor on and a sharp sword! 

Pigs eat potatoes (it says also carrots and beets.. the ones I have don't seem to like apples, but I thought I had another breed earlier in the game that did like apples?)  They don't eat rye or wheat.

Rabbits like carrots (of course) but also apples.  They can eat from the troughs even though they are so small.  They will breed with other varieties to produce crosses that are unlike the parents.

I'm going to try to find some beets and see if they are well accepted.  They are HarvestCraft beets I think - but the overview doesn't actually say.

Chickens like corn and seeds, but don't like wheat, barley or rye.  Some of the chickens lay brown eggs.  Eggs can be burned in a furnace to make Animania omelettes.  Regular white eggs are still good for other HarvestCraft things.

Peacocks and Peahens are in the swamps.  They are supposed to work much like chickens.  I don't know what to do with the Peacock Feather - but it is pretty.

BREEDING and MILKING

I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out exactly how to get the animals to breed, and even more time figuring out how to find out when to milk them.  You can milk a sheep directly after birth of a baby (and they breed fast), and a cow soon after they have a calf.  Cows get upset pretty quickly after they give birth, so it is best to have some food on hand before you attempt to milk them.

Also, sometimes when you have more than one bucket there is a 'glitch'.. so try not to store the cheese molds too far away from where you are milking, so you can take multiple trips.  Or, have a cabinet above the cheese molds to put the other full buckets in as you are pouring the full one into a mold - or all the buckets might become empty and stack.  That doesn't happen all of the time, but often enough that I'm tired of losing an entire milking round and have begun putting them in the cabinet first and then taking one at a time into the molds.  It happens the least often if one bucket is sheep or goat milk and the other is cow milk.  But, I've lost different kinds of cow milk (Jersey, Holstein, Friesen) when trying to pour multiple buckets in inventory.

 If you leave eggs in a nest and there are roosters nearby you will get more chickens.  If you take all the eggs away diligently, then you will keep your flock about the same size.  Roosters and Hens are very easy to tell apart.. so culling the hens means less eggs.. and culling all of the roosters might (or might not) make the eggs not hatch.  You will get TONS of eggs if the size of your flock is not maintained (and lots of unhappy little black-cloud head chickens walking around).

CHEESE

Make Cbeese molds with the recipe down below.  Pour milk from a filled Animania style milk bucket (Holstein, Friesen, Jersey , Sheep, Goat) .. and wait until the milk turns color - several days in some circumstances.  Take the cheese from the mold by right clicking on it.  The cheese mold can be placed in the world and taken bites off of it by right clicking, kind of like a cake.  If you accidentally place a cheese in the world and want to pick it up, you will have to hit it with a sword.  Cheese stack in storage by type.

New Recipes for Animania Mod (to be added to)

Any wool put on the minecraft table turns into vanilla Minecraft wools for use in recipes.

Leads and leashes can now be made with two leather on top of two string.  This makes one lead.  Yay!  No more fishing for jellyfish (which, on a minecraft table, become slime balls, and String-String-X// String-Sime Ball-X // X- X - String can also be used to make two leads at a time)

Wagon Wheels are made with X-S-X // S-IN-S // X-S-X in nine-square formation with the X being 'nothing', 'S' being 'stick' and IN being an Iron Nugget.

Saddles are made with L-L-L // I-W-I // X-X-X in nine-square formation with the L being Leather, I being an Iron Ingot and W being a square of wool.  (finally, a craftable saddle for Minecraft!)

Chicken Nest - LEAVES-STICK-X// Wool - X-X // X-X-X   You will need shears to get the Leaves from any tree.

Trough - Plank-X-Plank // Plank - Iron Ingot - Plank // Stick - X- Stick //

Cheese Mold - // X - X -X // Plank - Iron Ingot - Plank // X - Plank - X

Name Tag (because all of these cows and sheep look alike and you don't remember which one came first etc..) - String-X-X // X-Gold Nugget - X  ( a craftable name tag for Minecraft!)



HARVESTCRAFT COOKING and SURVIVAL

A Full Kitchen is Important
// Gather clay as soon as you find it and burn it in a furnace into bricks.
// mud bricks will not work for these
// 8 important items for making food in your HarvestCraft kitchen
// we keep a cabinet in the kitchen above the crafting table that always has these eight things in it for easy reach.

--- Pot is a stick placed beside four bricks (regular clay variety)
--- Skillet is two bricks diagonally with a stick
-- Saucepan is one brick diagonally with a stick
-- Baking Dish is eight bricks like a chest on the 9 square with the center empty
-- Mixing Bowl is three planks in a v-formation at the bottom like an iron bucket, with a stick in the center
--- Mortar and Pestle is three stone (burned cobblestone in a furnace) in v-formation with a stick in the center
--- Cutting Board is brick, stick, plank in diagonal formation with the stick in the middle.

-- Juicer  requires three stone ( burned cobblestone from furnace).  Put two side by side to make a stone pressure plate, then place the plate over one more stone to make the Juicer

Cooking to Survive on Hunger Overhaul

We play on survival normal mode with Hunger Overhaul mod on, so it is pretty important to eat!
Just a note for survival foods you can make depending on 'where you land' in the world.

Three cotton on a minecraft table give you two string.  X-X-Stick // X-Stick-String //Stick-X-String makes a fishing rod.  Fish a lot when you don't have anything else to do. You can catch cool stuff, and lots of fish as well, which well.. you need to eat and sometimes there isn't anything else to eat.  Plant all the extra cotton you get after making a fishing rod - or if the world is an island..well, good luck...make your decision which is more likely to feed you planting it and waiting (and maybe killing skeletons for bone meal to grow your garden fast) or fishing with it)...

Sometimes all you live on is Grilled Mushroom, Cooked calamari (from killing squids), Cooked Fish, Caramel from sugar canes and fried eggs.  This of couse, if you can find a few squares of clay to make a skillet and a saucepan.

Plant your garden as early as possible!  Fence your garden immediately as animals from Animania will come eat it before it produces and also drink the water dry!  Don't count on bread as now it is complicated to make and requires lots of clay to make the kitchen equipment.  Turnips, artichokes and parsnips produce the quickest but plant every bit of cotton and every grain you can get as early as you find it.

Eggs can be made into boiled eggs with just a pot, or into Fried Eggs with a skillet.  Sugar cane can be made into sugar on a minecraft table then into caramel with a saucepan.  A Tuna Potato (excellent for hunger regen) can be made with any cooked fish, corn, a buttered baked potato (how to make butter below) and a Cutting Board.

Sesame Snaps can be made with a skillet, sesame seeds and sugar.
Stock can be made with a pot and a vegetable.
Garden Soup can be made with stock and two more vegetables.
Mochi can be made with mortar and pestle, sugar (or honey), fresh water and rice.
Rice Cakes can be made with a skillet and rice on a minecraft table (not in a furnace as said elsewhere).
Grilled Mushroom is made with a skillet, not in a furnace, out of any normal mushroom.
Veggie Strips are any three vegetables, baking dish, salt and a 'spice', which can be spice leaf, curry powder from ground curry leaf or mustard seeds.
Apples and a pot make applesauce.

GETTING FANCY RECIPES

Once you're set up you might be getting so much food you wonder what to do with it all, or if you can make bigger meals to take with you exploring and not have to carry so many things.  The bigger the meal, the more hunger shanks it fills.

You can make baked beans with a Pot, Beans, Cooked pork chop and (Harvestcraft) honey or sugar.  Good for when you have Pigs on your farm! Likewise, you can make chili with a cooked steak, onion (or bell pepper or cayenne pepper), beans and a pot.

 To make the bread you need a mortar and pestle (see below) to grind the flour.  Then, a bucket of water and a pot to make salt.  Then, a mixing bowl to put the flour and (another bucket of ) water and salt together with.  Then a baking dish to put the dough in to make it into bread!

Sugar (or honey) and any two berries (blackberry, blueberry and strawberry) make jam which is a bit more energy than the fruit or sugar alone.  Peanuts with a Juicer make peanut butter.  Peanut butter, any jam and bread with a Cutting Board make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Some jellies and bread and cutting board make a Jelly Sandwich, but not all of them.

Pies can be made with (many) HarvestCraft fruits, dough (like making bread) and sugar or honey.  Pies give lots of regen back.

Oats, a mixing bowl and maple syrup give you Maple Oatmeal which can be a good use of Maple Syrup besides drinking it straight from the bottle!  Spruce Forests have maple trees that can be harvested every few days.  Oats are found in Alpine (cold) gardens.

I've found that Angus cows in Animania still give regular HarvestCraft milk.  You can take this out of the bucket on the crafting table and make 4 milk from it.  Then use a pot to make it into yogurt, or a mixing bowl to make it into Heavy Cream.  Heavy Cream and Salt in a Saucepan make butter.  Milk and a Pot and Salt make Cheese.

A Presser is important, too - for processing HarvestCraft honey and extra fruit from trees to make fruit bait for Ground Traps.  A presser is made with two pistons (P-P-P // C-I-C // C-R-C (plank, cobblestone, iron ingot, redstone)) placed with six ingots of iron.  I-PS-I // I - X - I // I-PS-I (iron ingot, piston, with X being nothing))  It can be hard to get redstone on pure survival monsters on.. but once you do it makes life so much easier!  You can carry the fruit juices with you and they will help you walk faster without taking extra hunger points for 'running'.  Important for getting home before sunset!

A Presser can make all sorts of things out of Soybeans if you are lucky enough to find Tropical Gardens.  Grapes in a presser make grape juice, and grape juice in a pot makes Vinegar.  Vinegar, salt and cucumbers can make pickles.  Vinegar, salt and beets makes pickled beets.  Beets in a Presser makes sugar.

Ground Traps are important to getting leather and bones without fighting constant monsters or harvesting creatures.  Ground Traps are made by getting a Trap Door, four sticks, three pieces of string (from cotton placed three across on minecraft table) and a chest.  The trap door is six planks placed on the table all together.  The Ground Trap is Sk-TD-Sk // Stg - Chest - Stg //  Sk-Stg-Sk (sk stick, td trap door, stg string).  You can make bait without the presser by using three string and a food item (veggies, fruit or grain).  That is an expensive use of string though and in the early game you are watching every piece of string for fishing rods and armor.  Two string makes one 'woven cloth' which can be used like leather to make armors to protect you until you find enough iron to make iron armor.

A Water Trap is Stick-Fishing Rod- Stick // String-Chest-String // Stick-String-Stick.  They must be placed in shallow water on a nine-square of submerged land.  Fish Bait can be made with three string and any raw fish.  Water Traps are expensive in the early game but nice later on when you're well settled and ready to expand out to exotic recipes.

Pumpkins can be split on the table for seeds and grown in the garden with lots of space around them to 'pop' a pumpkin vine.  Pumpkin seeds put in the Presser make grain bait and cooking oil.  Pumpkins put in the presser make Veggie Bait and cooking oil.  Walnuts will also make grain bait and cooking oil.  Cooking Oil can be used to make donuts (pot, cooking oil and dough (see bread above)), or Sesame Balls (sesame seeds, flour, pot, cooking oil, beans and honey/sugar) or Fried Onions (onions, pot, cooking oil) or many of the 'tofu' meats (won't get into those, but they are on the HarvestCraft wiki).

HarvestCraft Bees and Honey
When playing both mods you get both types of honey!  HarvestCraft honey is the same as sugar in most recipes, while Animania honey is a whole different ball of wax (joke).

To make a HarvestCraft Apiary (bee hive), you will need three item frames and six planks.  The item frames need one leather each (hope you got your ground trap or lots of animals!)  surrounded by eight sticks each.  Then place the three item frames down the center line of the minecraft table and put planks of any one wood down both sides.  The 'color' of your beehive when you are viewing the honey will be affected by the color of the wood you use, but not the outside of the hive.  Placing a hive in a spot near flowers is supposed to make it produce quicker.  You will need to find a hive up in a tree somewhere to harvest the Queen Bee from (no stings with these), and place it in the Apiary slot before honey is made.  Honeycombs, Waxcombs and Bee Grubs will be produced.  You must leave a few grubs in the hive for a new Queen to regenerate - and get back to her in time that she doesn't die.  The old Queen will die, and the new Queen only lasts so long.. so get back to her and put her in the slot to keep getting honey.  Extra bee Grubs can be cooked in a furnace and eaten.  Waxcombs and Honeycombs can be only made into useful items using the Presser.  Wax can be used with strings to make candles (like torches) or pressed into 9 squares to make blocks for building, or combined as Pressed Wax with Leather (not woven cloth) to make Hardened Leather which makes special armor.

Animania Bees and Honey

Animania has its own Bee Nest that attacks you with minor (but increasing) damage when you are near it.  The nests can be cut down with swords.  I've heard rumor of a beekeeping outfit that was supposed to keep you protected but have not found a recipe for one.  My daughter has played with the bees and says you can use a glass bottle (made like a flowerpot but with glass blocks in a 'bucket' v formation) to collect the honey from the hives when they have reached a certain quantity.  The honey has wonderful restorative qualities.  My daughter also says there is a recipe she has found to make a hive from scratch - but I'll have to record that here after she tells me.

bits

I've designed a few more things for our 3D printer, some deer and llamas that have dishes on their backs for rings and such.. and a cow from the same pattern.  Also, playing with a new vice and my very old carving tools from college - I bought them from some little mail order catalog back in 2001 or so at the (then) very dear price of 65.00.  I barely ate that month to scrimp for them.. but they are still good all of these years later.  I split a little piece of honeysuckle wood Mark had cut off the gate the week before we found Rex (I remember, because it was odd he cut that gate open and then the puppy showed up outside that side of the fence and we used the gate for the first time in years).  There is a bigger piece of wood, too - just playing with this one to see what I can do with old tools.

 Mark had the 3dprinters set up this way for a little bit, and now he has them down and is trying to repair something again.

 deer and llama 3dprinted from my pattern

 honeysuckle wood

3d printed cows from my pattern (sCAD code)

bits

Esme has started putting her own hair back in a ponytail, which is progress we've tried for years.  She said the new smaller string-like hair ties with her brush set for Christmas was easier for her hands.  I've never bought those for us before because they look so weak.  But, good!

She has also made progress initiating cooking her own meals, and not jut microwave stuff.  She made rice out of a package the other day and has made eggs and peppers and onions etc etc. 

She is really enjoying the art box we got for Christmas, took it into her room and up into her 'nest' in the loft bed.  I've kind of lost all those supplies now maybe for a while - but she promised to let me borrow them when I want to *heh* and she is following instructions out of her drawing books.

We went to the library last night and she completely found her own books and I just hung out in the adult fiction section keeping an eye on her.  I found a new Paul Auster book, 'Timbuktu'.. which is about a homeless man trying to find a new home for his dog and someone to give all of his writing to before he dies.  I read 'In the Country of Last Things' more than twenty years ago, which apparently, is not his 'usual work', and it stuck like a dart through my psyche ever since.  I bought a new copy a few years ago and have slowly worked my way through reading it (if you have ever read it, you know how it can be a whirlpool of dreamlike quicksand sucking at your temples) and have not brought myself to read the end of it again, yet. 

I'm hoping this book will be happier.. but it already has a bit of the same 'I'm running through a life with shards of glass at many corners but we don't look at the cuts because our eyes are on the future because that is all we can do, keep going on'... the poor character...  The story is told from the viewpoint of the dog, though... I'm about a quarter of the way in.

Christmas 2018

 a soft blue blanket she loved at the store

 Kif and Tansy and Hazel (in the chair) are with Grandma and Esme mugging for attention and ear scratches

 The art easel box that we bought from Grandma this year, Esme loves it!  It was empty but I filled it up with all of my art supplies that she can't usually find but it allowed to use.

 A spitting Minecraft llama

 Minecraft Lego and a keeper case (also from Grandma), we also bought her some Minecraft pajamas and a t-shirt from us this year.. so it was a very Minecraft Christmas as well as a Dinosaur one.

 

Rex is growing!

 A  very Dino Christmas!

 refrigerator art

 Mark and Esme looking over the art box.  I braided her hair last night wet and took it out this morning and it really looked pretty, as well.

 A few weeks ago we sent the letter to 'Sion Corn', the Welsh Santa Claus, since I am learning the Welsh language.  I jokingly asked Esme what she wanted to ask Sion Corn for Christmas, and she jokingly returned (while in the produce department at the grocery store), a watermelon.  So, the night before Christmas Eve I bought a watermelon and wrapped it up in the middle of the table from 'Sion Corn'.  She was surprised - thought it was a bowling ball!,.. but also she really liked it and the chickens loved the scraps, too.

These are the 'Tea Rex' and 'Tea-ceratops' tea caddies I designed on SCAD and Mark helped me print on our 3D printer.  I really wanted a little caddy that would hold a few of each flavor out to see on the counter.  Esme said to put the silhouettes facing each other, so they could say 'RAR' at each other all day long.

Spice and Pastel

 This is the pastel chalk drawing done by a local Paris, TN artist, Patsy Parks.  Esme bought it with her allowance at the art fair earlier this month, and I put it up on the wall today.  She chose a place she will see it every day :)

The spice holder on the left has a fork and column to hold onto the pepper grinder to keep it from falling onto our glass stovetop at every little tremor and movement.  The red holder was going to be the same thing, but with four slots for other spices next to it -- that is still a good plan, but the big printer was down so I printed the redesign on the little printer in three pieces (it has only half the space of the other one).

I go back to work tomorrow, closing shift.  Esme is still off until after Christmas.

Vacation Bits

I've accomplished some of the things I had set out to do this vacation... not big things, but I've been putting some of it off for a week or more.

 I dyed my hair and started a book, sewed two projects, and designed a 3D printer item that we will try to print out tomorrow.  I did the laundry, and took Esme Christmas shopping, decorated the mailbox with decorations I had bought but had been procrastinating putting on.. and then took Miss Irene for her monthly shopping trip.  The girls have been on a sleepover here and they have fought tooth and nail twice... but hopefully they will go to sleep now (sigh) and we can start again tomorrow.  I might have to bake something tomorrow.. and that would be the last thing I had really thought of doing.. cinnamon donuts again?

Here is the pepper grinder holder spice rack thing I've spent a few days designing.
The base is separate from the spire in the print queue and will be glued in.

This is not our grinder - but it is very similar.  The handle sticks out like this one and causes big problems with keeping it upright.  It is always clattering to the stovetop or the floor and sometimes takes other things with it.  The base should fit in the bottom of one of the depressions and the fork will hold the handle - if I get the height just right...