A Minecraft Quickie

Minecraft.  Nearly one year ago my niece and nephews introduced me to this game, and I can't force myself to put it down.  I opened my first survival world just before 1.6, and I began the way most new players begin: I dug a hole.  After filling several chests with dirt, cobble, stone tools, apples, zombie flesh, and coal, I ran out of room.  So I dug the hole even deeper.

Well, instead of creating new worlds when I grew bored of my hole, I decided to expand my land holdings.  As I mentioned, a year has passed, and my current base is about 6000 blocks away from my spawn chunks, my hole, my creeper-explosion marked front yard.

Here are some screen shots of my current base, and environs.  If you want to see the pictures in all their mediocre glory, feel free to click on them.  Otherwise, get used to squinting.

The first two pictures show my nether hub.  Without going into too much detail, this hub connects my original Minecraft base to my current base, and several bases made in between.  Those bases not pictured here include a Mushroom Island base, a Stronghold base, a dual-spawner blaze farm and enchanting room, a couple of old villages that have probably become a major food source for the local zombie population, and more.

I was going for a 70's theme. 

When traveling through the central nether hub portal, I arrive at my current base.  Quartz, brick, giant mushrooms and water make up the entry point.  We (and by we, I mean me) are just a short jump above bedrock, by the way.  And the whole thing is constructed below a very large ocean.  More on that in a moment,





Through that 2x2 brick opening we head over to my fishing hole and oak tree farm.  It's also the center around which I did my local branch mining.  Not pictured, unfortunately, include a colorful sheep farm, and my horse stables.  Bringing horses this far was quite a chore.  Considering all the effort I put into herding my horse team to my current Minecraft base, I certainly should have posted some pictures here.  Well, maybe next post.  Now, on to the tree farm:

 



 Here's a little entrance to a horse path I made to bring horses to the ocean's surface (you can just make out my beacon and ladder shortcut through the me-made waterfall:

Nearing the top:

Here we are, finally.  That path leading down, right in front of us, is the one we just climbed to get to the top.  I wanted to see how much I could squeeze into a single screens shot.  I think I managed to get the birch tree farm, the mob dropper, a completely automatic cactus farm, a completely automatic sugar cane farm, a villager trade center, the beacon, a cobblestone generator, and a little sky highway so my villagers can travel in comfort from the infinite breeder, to the two-story villager market, to the golem farm (not pictured, but it's DocM's design, four pods, lava, whatnot).

Villagers making happy fun time, mobs dropping, and me drinking coffee (not pictured):

It was hard to get a good picture of the two story villager trading hall and market.  It's on the right side of the next two pictures.  On my left is a pathetic screenshot of the mechanics of my automatic item sorter, that sorts out mob droppings from . . . yeah, the mob dropper.  Straight ahead you'll see my sugar farm.  It does quite well for itself, and me.  We (and by we, I still mean me) currently have two relatively perfect librarian villagers filling two of the available 24 villager slots in the market.  Neither of the two librarians have gold as the first trade, but they haven't quit on me yet.

Birch trees.  Slightly uglier, but considerably easier to farm than those pesky oaks:

Well, that's all I have time for now.  Thanks for your time.