bits of notes

 Just bits of notes (to be updated later)

 

I found a very large savannah today, on the edge of jungle, mesa, desert and dominion biomes.  So I've found a lot of new things, as I've had bits of these biomes show up here and there but not a savannah as large as this.

Rye seed comes from the savannah grass, where there are also pumpkins, sunflowers, corn, cotton (and probably more) naturally spawning.  I found that out the other day.  I broke a lot of grass though and only ever got rye seed there.  In the plains and sakura environments, the grass breaks to wheat and oat seed, randomly.  In the jungle environments, the jungle grass specifically breaks to rice or cotton seed, randomly.  AND I finally did find the barley growing wild in the Savannah, much like a corn plant.  In the savannah, the dirt can be tilled with a hoe without needing to be replaced (which you must do in dominion and marsh environments before the hoe will work).  The tree saplings that would grow in regular jungle and grasslands do grow here.  A single piece of coal, in a furnace, will toast 4 quantity of sunflower seeds, and there are 5 seeds from every head.

 

 You know how long I've looked for that?  But this is only the third time I've been through a savannah, and this one is a bit larger than the others.  So, it must not be a high spawn rate in them.

I did finally find some cocoa beans in a wayfarer chest (the hampers) and am trying to grow that on a jungle tree.  I keep looking for the new biomes, I know by the achievement list that I haven't found them all.  I haven't even seen a tundra biome yet, or seen the Giant's Causeway basalt flats that I've seen pictures of.

 

 

 

An interesting 'dungeon' brick formation in the Savannah, and some pinkish-red stone called 'Sconia' that I was impelled to go mine

 

 

On Slimes : I'm gonna tell you, in the Savannah environment the slimes are VERY hard to see, compared to the grass ones the color of the slimes here are almost exactly the same as the grass - and in the dark, it's almost impossible to see them.  That could be because my color vision sees more greens and blues - but I've noticed it again and again.  You CAN eat the savannah slime, as you can the grass slime - but not the purple ones.  Also, while I'm on the subject, the purple slimes can climb trees, which in a jungle environment, is pretty far up - I've been way up in a tree not even thinking about that - the noise in other biomes is usually that they are near, but down on the ground and can't get you.  Nope - purple slime come right behind me through the leaves and start attacking.  Purple slimes leave a purple poison trail as well - and if you touch it before it dries it also gives you a hit.  There are also Dark slimes, which I'm not sure if you can eat that - but they aren't much worse than the others.  Mineral slimes are red, and deep underground.  They aren't aggressive (that I've seen, Dark slimes are, they are gray and also tough to see where they live), which is good, because they are TOUGH compared to the others.  You can eat mineral slime.  Anything that was that tough to kill I took that to a house with some food and tried it out in case it was poison.

 

The Sconia rock apparently produces red dye, as well.  I mined all of it.  I went into the brick cave and saw this.  The dunegon was a bust, as the only chest in it had dirt and a stick.  However, the whole dungeon is made of travertine brick - which I may come back and get some if I can remember that.

 

Magenta dye comes from thistles, lilacs and a 'Chiana' purple celosia-looking flower that is actually purple.  Irises give blue dye.  Plantago gives brown dye.  There is a 'Savannah Flowergrass' that also gives a brown dye.  Some of the other magenta-colored flowers come out to pink dye.  Magenta glazed / fired clay is interesting looking, but not so much that I will want a lot of it.  I prefer the orange, white and blue clays.  I am wondering if I should go back and find the dark gray dye (basalt, and slate, I think?) and see if that makes a glazed clay. 

Mesa and Savannah biomes meeting up, Eucalyptus trees and something I haven't yet experienced there on the left.

and yet another one - Eudalite?  It is very pretty.

The colored granites have been hard to find - just a smatter of blue and red so far in the entire world - but I found a whole hoard of green granite today.  I really like the 'lots of rocks' mod that is included with this Luanti Minetest package 'Asuna'.  There are so many things I'm poking around and say 'oo, what's that' and then go dig out the entire vein.  Amber, Amethyst, Vivianite, Covelite (blue), Lapis Lazuli, Sygilite (purple) and much more...  There is a bright pink stone that is scattered in ones and threes where I have found it - but I can't remember the name of it.  Then there are other just interesting things like the blue limestone, slate, shale, amazonite (bright blue-green), chysophase (bright green-blue), travertines and calcites.  I found some orange calcite the other day and although it wasn't enough to make anything big out of - it made a pretty and unique spire for the place. 

 

 Did I find Calcifer, or what?  I think it must be some sort of burning bush.  It went away when I hit it with a pickaxe.  The black block to the right of it is coal dust.  I hadn't found that before, either.  This was in a desert cavern.

 

My spire mapping technique is working exceptionally well.  And I've settled another large quadrant of the world.  I'm using the term 'vast' for when I have an area that is all homogeneous and no good reason to call the cross-point anything else - but I really don't want to build a lot there.  It isn't wasted space, but it is a vast open area that I just have a road through, where four or five cities could have been built, but I don't see any reason to.  

 

update : Oh my, I just found out that F5 brings up a debug window that shows you your coordinates - so now I'm going back to each spire and recording the coordinates there in a notebook.  It was a different key in the original Minecraft.  When I noted this to my daughter she said 'you didn't know about debug?'  Well, apparently not.  It will not replace getting around on the road network, but it will be interesting to see the actual distances.  The first seven coordinate locations that were all supposed to be on the same z were all within 30 paces of the same line - most of them within 10, but apparently that one had a big cliff-face I had to avoid and didn't get quite back to the same z.  I'll also have to go back to the place I called 'Kappa High Point' and record the y.

I've wondered if the fish are specific to the biomes or if they are just entirely luck.  I haven't found anything to suggest they are not just random.  I'd like to find out where the jellyfish are, or if it just a very very random lucky guess.  I got a stick of TNT fishing today - which was unexpected.