Work on the long road south continues. For those needing a reminder, this is the overland route I am building from the Forest Mansion I found back to the nearest connection to our main settlement.
This means clearing a road 3 blocks wide and at least 3 high in tunnels for about 20km. I’ve been working on this for almost three months now, off and on.
And, just to be a stickler, I decided that the road would be marked by a strip of cobblestone running its whole length. Since the blocks are 1m cubes, that means 20,000 cobblestone blocks… or more, really, since I haven’t been able to take a straight path and I do need to build bridges now and again.
Anyway, since the setbacks of last post, I have pushed ahead.
Progress so far
After improving my way point village… and then another village along the way, because I just can’t help myself… I had a good straight and mostly level into a mesa biome. This was one of three mesa biomes I have discovered on the way to and from the mansion, and this one was generated since the 1.10 update, so is full of abandoned mining tunnels. They are visible all over as you travel through the biome.
Visible are rails and the tell tale spider webs that mark mines
One interesting item is that in that bundle of webs there is a cave spider spawner. I have not run into one in a place that gets direct sunlight before. (They don’t spawn when list and are usually in deep, dark places.)
Spawner visible, as are wooden tunnel supports
There are some exploration opportunities here for anybody who wants to settle down in the area.
Mesa biomes themselves are a bit of a pain when it comes to building a road. There is no straight path through unless you want to build up one side and down the other of every mesa in your way. To keep the effort under control I had to zig-zag a bit and build some bridges between mesas. But it wasn’t a huge biome, so I hit the other side eventually.
Scouting ahead I chose to exit into a swamp, which offered a decent stretch of flat going for road building. There was also a pack of wolves near by, so I ran back to grab some bones I had stored away and managed to tame a pair of them. They are good to have around as they will defend you from zombies and skeletons if you work past sundown.
Two new pals
Unfortunately, like the AI for most NPCs in the Minecraft, the tamed wolf AI isn’t very good at keeping itself safe. I had the pair of them with me when I was out ahead and burning down a path through a canopy forest to clear the way, only to get the message that one of them had died. I turned around to see the other one standing in a fire and die as well.
Dogs will be dogs I guess
And it was night time and I had to fight my way back to my nearest camp. I tamed a couple more, but left one at my camp and took the other one with me as I started building my road through the swamp only to get another death message.
Seriously?
I do not know what happened there. One moment he was running around, the next moment he was dead.
Still, I have one more in reserve.
All happy back at the camp
The road ran past a witches hut at the start of the swamp, so I converted it to camp, complete with a corral for the horse. I haven’t lost the horse yet, despite his propensity to run off the moment I am looking the other way, and I aim to keep it that way.
And so the road south carries on.
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