It's the Forsaken Desert, and the living ain't easy

 

Well, it's possible, though - as long as you bring your own dirt and seeds, a fishing rod, and some tree saplings.  I was bouncing through this Forsaken Desert area when I found a hamper (wayfarer chest) that had a kiwi bush and a beetroot seed in it.  So I thought, let's see if this stuff grows here.  It does.  I fished for a few meals, and grew and replanted that kiwi bush a few times.  Kiwis are hard:  eventually, it always seems you get less and less in return from the sapling over time, and then end up with none.  

 

I brought some apple tree saplings, some cotton seed, watermelon, papyrus, and happened upon another hamper with pumpkin seed and corn and grapes in it.  I used my inventory with red granite in it to make a little base house, and the furnace was on the shore as I had been cooking the fish in it.  I've had the trees grow in the little dirt squares that I made for them - vs. 'dry ocean dirt' which is there naturally, and forsaken desert sand, which is the pink stuff.  

 

I knew I'd need the cotton later for making the string for more fishing rods.  The fishing is odd, too, here in this biome.  I am getting all the regular fish, but there is also an 'other' category, usually broken swords, bottles, bits of building materials etc etc. and tnt sticks, among other things.  The percentage of 'other' seems to be a bit higher here than I've had elsewhere.

 

And I'll include a picture of the desert gate not too far from this base - it is a cool design.   I have not gotten up the courage yet to go worldgating - although with the coordinate system I think I'd do okay now in finding my way back?  Maybe.  I have over 200 locations now networked and mapped - so I really don't want to lose that and end up so far away I never get back.  Maybe make another little world at some time, and test it... maybe just be happy with my map.

 

I had also made a 'road to nowhere' that I stumbled across while making some north / south journeys.  I began cutting down the lemon trees to complete that road (and replanting all the saplings) and ended up with a huge lemon tree grove - and finding other things there, watermelons, coffee, etc etc... so I brought some of the papyrus there and started making lemonade.  That place has now become a huge base surrounded by useful trees, and roads up and down to ruins and places to mine out interesting rocks - all started from intersecting it again and again - until it made sense to build a real outpost there. 

In real life:  I've got a dentist appointment tomorrow morning.  Somehow, because I wanted to 'turn back on' the part of my brain, I'm back to studying Greek for the past few days, with bits of  Japanese thrown in.  My Greek level is pretty low - maybe 13? compared to 20 in Japanese, and I'm doing it on my phone atm, which is actually even lower than that and most likely counts as simple review.

Luanti Minetest Asuna brushland biome ranch house and garden

 

Brushlands - very liveable area - which have hazelnut trees (hazelnuts) and blackberry bushes (edible blackberries) and rose bushes (that have edible rosehips)  - and I imported some of the Mediterranean pine saplings from the next island over (with the pueblo).  The house is made of the pine wood and some yellow cobbled travertine for the roof.   I also found the mese trees with the mese fruit for the very first time, way up on the top of the mountains - they glow, until you pick the fruit.  That is pretty cool - the wood is a bright golden color, even more yellow than the stone I ended up using for this roof. 

Around this area I found : cotton, hemp, onion, grapes, sunflowers, parsley, strawberry and spinach.  In chest hampers and a dungeon chest I found planting carrots, pumpkin seeds, garlic, bell pepper and pineapple.   The grapes were way up on top of one of the  mountain hills here, and the cotton was near that.  The strawberries, onions, spinach and parsley were growing down in the valleys.   There is a savannah a long way back behind those hills, covered in sunflowers.  Usually the pumpkins are on the savannah as well, but I had never gotten seeds from one so far.   There are chickens and eggs, sheep and pigs, and of course as there is cotton growing naturally it would have been easy to make the fishing rod and live off of fish.  The spinach was a nice surprise - I only found that in one other place in the world and I lost that first house - so I hadn't seen it since then.  It doesn't look like much growing wild, but I broke it anyway as I didn't remember what it was, and it was spinach!

It  seems in order to make any use out of the pumpkin I will really have to go back and get my barley plants from the alder swamp and hope I can propagate them further out -- I still haven't done that as I almost lost them twice from bad propagation there.  But, that was before I had my bucket of water and could plant more.  It's also a long way back along the road - halfway around the circle, maybe.  I've been hoping to find barley naturally again since that first bit was from a hamper chest - but I haven't yet.

 

// In real life: Rolling along, getting the work done and the bills paid.  Ordered some spices I had once before, because Mark wanted a computer part as well.  I made fried rice with water chestnuts, red pepper, onion, zucchini and green peas last night for Esme and I, using the last bit of the beef with rice from this last Monday's dinner.  Studying Japanese and Finnish.  

We bought a big butternut squash at the store and I showed Esme how to peel it and chop it into small pieces to freeze for use in meals.  I am thinking about making something like pasta carbonara on Sunday, but with a different cheese.  

I have to kick myself to put more coolant in the car when it is not hot - as at idle it has been going a bit over the center again and it started doing that a bit before it really needed coolant last time.  I've got it in there, but I need to do it.  The Haynes manual for that car came and lo and behold, it has a picture of the undercarriage in it - with the transmission items labelled in the picture - I couldn't find that anywhere when I was trying to figure out what to call a certain part talking to the mechanic.  

The weather is finally nice, I should repair that hose in the yard and plant my kale and other seeds that I ordered a few weeks ago.  It's going to rain quite a bit this week.  Four years ago I had edible big leaves already from planting kale early.

AlphaAgriculture Minecraft Mod

We've finally posted it for download and playtest! Esme (who is eleven) has been working on this with me since the beginning of the year, at least.  We're proud to put it out there now for others to look over and have fun with!

 Download it at MCreator's website!

This mod is designed to be used with Vanilla Minecraft, not requiring any other mods to make it work.  It adds lots of new plants (which are farmable), biomes and resources.  Everything in the game is makeable in Survival Mode and on Peaceful.  Although, of course, you can use other mods, creative and monsters-on with all of it.

You can survive and build a big farm of food.  You can collect honeycombs from the wild and build yourself a thriving honey system.  You can milk cows and make cheese and cream.

All of the 'classic' southern farming crops are here - cotton, corn, peanuts, soybeans and rice.  Esme got to use her knowledge of the 'cotton gin' and threshers for the plant processing.

And because Esme suggested it, you can recycle the plant and tree fibers to make more cloth, mats, ropes and clothing!  There are new dyes and foods including marshmallows.

There is also a new chemistry system for making fertilizers (bone meal) and gunpowder from newly mined ores, instead of having to kill skeletons and creepers.  Leads can be made with cotton or jute grown and then processed. 

And we wanted the world to be interesting.  We loved 'Plenty of Biomes', but didn't want to have to include any other mod in ours to make the world fun to explore.  We added a lot of extra biomes, wood types, things to harvest and discover.  I made it a goal to make any of the woods biomes 'liveable', meaning you can make tools, minecraft tables and chests out of them.

We added fifteen new biomes in all.
Here are just that you might find:

Magic forest highland, where no monsters ever spawn

Merania ocean glass biome and Highland pines

Cherrywoods, Maple forest and Greywood swamp biomes

Come play :) and enjoy

Note : Yes, there are a few bugs, especially with the seeds.. but it seems to be par for the course with the editor we are using... but overall, this is a lot of fun!

Door to Night Minecraft world (Drws i'r Nos) huge cave, mesa biome, mineshaft

'Door to Night' (Drws i'r Nos in Welsh) huge cave in Minecraft, savannah biome
mod : PlentyofBiomes and Harvestcraft
 World seed -3782039027719029110 at coordinates x,y,z  59,199, 68, 210.769

This 'door to night' cave is huge and actually is a network of caves.  This is not exactly at the spawn point but visible from a very cursory look-around.  I was ripping through a set of new worlds to hide a world I was actually playing in from a visitor (who loves to blow stuff up but doesn't look at the bottom of the list) who was playing on my computer... and then when I saw this world I knew I had to keep it.  

Although, I have to admit, I was scared to approach the cave with monsters on for fear of the sheer quantity of monsters that might be coming out of those depths of dark!  Hence, the name 'Door to Night'. 

And there was a lot more as I explored - notable of publishing the world seed and some coordinates for you, if you are finding this.
 
There are ebony trees and jungle trees with cocoa plants not far off, as well as nearby sheep, a village, and most uniquely, a mesa biome with an exposed mineshaft.  

The village coordinates are : 95.68, 67, 7.247 (it is pretty ordinary, didn't photo it)

But - the mineshaft in the mesa biome.. that is something I had not seen before!
The coordinates for the bottom pic are -142.97, 67, -496.333
It is quite a large mineshaft with chests and a spawner and more.

 

I hope you enjoy it!