Minecraft and Grief

I've been playing a lot of Minecraft after-hours lately, on a Realms server that has served as my forever-world for about 6 years now. It's pretty neat, and in the past I've had family members play including my brother, sister, brother-in-law, and nephews. Together they've built a fair chunk of the spawn town which I named Illa Villa, after the pillager tower its founded near. Aside that, though, it's fair to say I'm the primary builder on the server. I return to it roughly every year for a month or two for a big build-off, then it lays fallow until the urge strikes again to play: I usually try to cajole some people to play, and they will hop on for a few days. This year, I wanted to spend more time with them, because we all lost my mother to a heart attack, and so I invited them for another spin on the server. I didn't get much action: lives are busy, and I know full well how fickle the desire to play a particular game is - my brother hopped on and explored the End a bit.

I thought this blog post might detail the two months of builds I did, often thinking of my Mom.

Builds around Illa Villa

A bit listless, I tackled several projects around Illa Villa itself.

Downtown Zombie Spawner

I learned, to my dismay, that zombie spawners don't spawn zombie villagers anymore, making my zombie farm pretty useless. I got some ways trying to rework it into a drowned farm, but the headache wasn't worth the loot. I removed the zombie emerald shop (whose emerald rate was very meager anyways) and expanded my sister's Wharf into the extra space alongside the river.

Parks & Recreation Tasks

I then rearranged some of the empty roads in Illa Villa to plan for new builds, added a joke 'geyser' to the town fountain to represent a busted pipe, and planted street trees all across the emptier western town. The general idea was to make the parts of Illa Villa that aren't crammed with builds feel more enticing to build near, while still leaving it open. I filled in some unpopular areas, that I doubt people will build in, with some wheat farms, a well, and sited a new Map Hall. I also claimed one of the bank vaults at my brother's bank, which features combination locks using arrows in item frames. I refined some of the redstone in my base builds, cleaned up, and adjusted several of my smaller farms, including a new cactus farm that, well, looks like a cactus, with a little flower on it. The last build I did for Illa Villa's public works was create a large soccer field, complete with armor stand fans and sulfur cube soccer ball, near the Riverside Farm in town. It's quite charming, being made of colored concrete blocks.

Council of Sages

My appetite whetted, I built another bridge into the dark forest of North Illa Villa and started construction of a stonewalled castle featuring a large reading room. In the reading room, I spend a considerable amount of time breeding and then tutoring villagers to accumulate a set of Scholars possessing the best enchantments in Minecraft for sale. From Mending to Unbreaking IV to Sharpness V and more, I sat them at their desks and persuaded them to offer them at a steep discount. Guarded by golems in a beautiful stain-glass building, I think they live a pretty good life compared to most villagers in Minecraft worlds.

Outward Bound

I know a motivating factor for many Minecraft players is the promise of new vistas and fresh starts: I understand that the prospect of just adding to an existing spawn town isn't always enough to get people online. Therefore, I resolved to make more of the world easily accessible, so that new projects and builds can be taken on without having to 'travel 1000 blocks away' and having no solid way back. To facilitate that, I created three roads radiating out from Illa Villa.

Southern Road

The southern road was my first road, and leads to the first End Stronghold we found on the server. A path set with diorite markers had served as the only navigation to there before, and it was an annoying tree-strewn path across several rivers: my new path burnt a corridor through the birch forests and mountains, and took a smarter route that only needed only one bridge to get to the same location, and is specifically designed for a fast horse to travel safely at night and reach the destination in 5 minutes.

At the site of the End Stronghold, I replaced the dirt pillar encampment with a beautiful build along similar lines to the Council of Sages, featuring a monastary (with beds to set your spawn for the End) and a church sanctuary with a drop-hole to the end portal behind the altar. This makes it possible to get from Illa Villa to the End Islands within 6 minutes: much faster than before.

I went into the End, as well, and took on the task of getting Elytra for myself and my brother in the most pigheaded fashion possible: I bridged on bamboo 'south' directly from our outer-island portal until I had come across two end cities with flying ships. This was surprisingly simple to do, but came at the cost of a cramped pinky finger: I was shift-placing blocks for about 45 minutes straight. So far as the surface, I left space in the environs (including nearby towns) that might serve as the locus of a new town or base, if anyone feels interested, and there are several spots along the road. It's my hope that all of these roads pass near to interesting build sites, that might entice some inspiration to build.

Western Road

The western road was next, and chiefly motivated to encourage my brother in his development of his secret hidden Jungle Base. It passes by our Wither battleground, wends its way to the jungle, curves a respectful distance from the general site of my brother's base, and terminates in a villager town I call Jungleton. To my surprise, there is an End Stronghold beneath Jungleton, which I lit up, leaving the portal unactivated. I think Jungleton would be a fine candidate for several player builds, being situated in a flat plains valley surrounded by mountains and jungle. I intend to extend the western road to the southern sea, which isn't too far, so I can have a land route to my Mushroom Island build, but I'm leaving that for another day.

Northern Road

My most ambitious road I left for last: the North has a great sea with much un-generated chunks beyond it which are fruitful zones to feel like you're starting in a brand new minecraft world. I decided to make a 3000+ block long road heading north from Illa Villa through the dark and pine forest to make it easier to reach, since otherwise that direction is very difficult to traverse: there are extensive mountain ranges and dense forests rivalled only by the mountains that fill the east of Illa Villa all the way to the eastern sea (the reason I didn't tackle an Eastern Road, but instead curved the Southern road southeast). Twice the length of the other roads, through worse terrain, the Northern Road snakes its way through the cold terrain until it reaches a marshland near the northern sea. At this coastal plain, there are twin villages quite close to each other, that I was inspired by to adopt.

San Tamara

On the anniversary of my mother's death, I decided that such a long road needed a destination, and so I started retrofitting a villager town dedicated to her, called San Tamara. My main rule for the town was that the villagers would live unencumbered, be properly taken care of with nice warm beds, and get to choose how they live their lives: values I think my Mom'd've appreciated.

I built bunkhouses for them, a bakery, several workshops for the masons and smiths, a sushi stand, a paper mill, a town hall, a barn and cattle farm, and the piece de resistance: an enormous field of flowers between the two villages. The town has a consistent theme, and turned out quite nice, although it is certainly unfinished: it needs more to it to justify a visit, but its cow farm is probably the best on the server. More importantly though, I spent a lot of time while building it reminisicing about my Mom, and so it has a bittersweet kind of impression for me. I miss her, and look forward to seeing her again when it's my turn. I hope that I can see more of my siblings in the near future, and maybe all these projects can be just a little nudge to getting some of that to happen.