Proud to announce I died to a drowned who emerged from the lake I've set up beside.
On the other hand, I've also been entirely excavating out an iron vein which is very exciting, and I've found several enormous caves, which seems fitting in the caves & cliffs update.
Bad news: the spawn village has a hill in the center that is moaning with zombies, so I guess I better clear that out and torch it up so they can farm without the hill next to them asking for freedom and brains.
I have so far put up 2 signs to myself: "Dead End" (on a wall behind which I can hear zombies) and "To the Lava Bridge" (which I'm sure you can imagine is mildly terrifying but also I intend to make a cool build over eventually)
Drowned are the worst! Them and Phantoms. in the overworld
When you dig into the hill, I'd fence off your work area to make sure no zombies come in contact with your villagers.
yep, that's the plan. Preferably to dig into that from underneath via a door into the ground somewhere.
Finally entirely mined out this iron vein, slowly building up a strange burrow of deepslate halls and rooms. 1,392 iron ore blocks and 26 blocks of raw iron, and 36 diamonds. I've also managed to corral some chickens, a few pigs, and have started a sheep breeding program with various dyes for all kinds of colored wools.
What I'm actually aiming for is a lush cave, though, which I have come up against the border of in my vein chasing, so I think next is seeing if I can find some cows and a horse and see if I can get some leather for books and get an enchanting table going. Then build out some of the vein caves toward the lush cave.
Do I know what my ultimate goal is? No. Do I have a solid build plan for any of this? Absolutely not. Am I having fun? Sure am.

This sounds great!
Slowly working on an enchanting room... Undoubtedly going to adjust things as I go — there're at least 2 more bookshelves and a loom needed, and some refining of the plants, but I'm enjoying shoving as many plants in places as I can >.>

eeee! That looks so cool!
librariansheart Please tell Rusty that the stonecutter is Not a safe place to be!
(loving your glazed terracotta use!)
Thank you! I've only used it in this home/storage area
plus a little bit on the nether-side of my portal
Most of the rest of the place uses polished basalt and chiseled stone for its accents, so it's a little out of place? But shrug
Slow progress, and none of them perfect spaces yet, but I find I like to have a couple of projects going that I can bounce between as I have interest.

ohhh... wow! Dark palace aesthetic is super effective!
idk if you've discovered this yet, but if you use bone meal on a segment of glow berry vine, it will instantly have berries at that segment.
Yes! That's the plan, just... >.> haven't. I also need to do some plant pruning on some of the vines themselves to have them stop where I want them to, plus some added detailing to the back wall of alcoves.
There's also a 14-block diamond blob just off-screen in that hall, but I want to see if I can roll up a decent fortune enchant before I break them....
Oh, and texturing. There's a lot of brick going on in all this, but my hope is to actually add some variation to it, too. Again, just haven't started working on that yet.
hey, long term projects are long term! You're not working in creative, here.
You know the string trick to stoppa de vines?
Oh yeah! I'd forgotten - thanks for the reminder! I do now actually have string, having cleared out an entire mineshaft a few weeks ago (and, y'know, its requisite bajillion spider spawners which are now torched)
oh god the mine spiders are SO ALARMING
I was pretty lucky with 4 of the 5 - the spawners didn't really seem to go too hogwild with spiders while I was making my way to them and I really only had to deal with 1 at a time and usually got a torch out before another spawned. 1 of the spawners was a dungeon though, which was hairy for a bit trying to clear it out.
"You can't just build arches everywhere just because you want to build your storage all the way up to the ceiling and you need a fancy catwalk."
"Why not?"
"It clutters the space! Look how full it is now! It's messy!"
"Yeah, but... Arches."
but arches is totally valid!! I love themmm
I need to do more of those in my own building.
I have very few plans overall for anything I'm doing, just exploring shapes more so than trying to make any specific build, and it's been fun. I do love me some arches.
Portal room is right through the front doors with a design echoing all my portal rooms in the nether itself
Little bedroom just on the other side of the portal room
Little storage room at the base of the windcatcher
I love it omg. You have such patience.

Windcatcher for reference.
Thank you! It was a lot of fun! I do everything in survival so it took quite a while - both to think about how I wanted thatched roofs to look + rafter beams, playing with the idea of not having to enclose everything completely and wanting "circulation" (in a game with no wind, shhh), messing with imperfectly measured spaces + not square shapes
Again, very much meant to be a little funky and to play with terracotta, jungle wood, and hay bales.
(I do see some details in places I forgot, tho, so I guess it's good I logged out there so I can go fix those)
oh those are cool... are they meant as a cooling device, breaking up the wind and allowing it to flow down the inside of the tower and push air out of the enclosed spaces at the bottom?
Yep! You've got it! I learned about them about 2 years ago and they just live rent-free in my head now.
I knew the silhouette, but not what they were for/how they work

Been working on some structures in the End. So far I just have the hall and stairs leading from the initial spawn platform in the void to the nearest island, and a stair that leads up to the transport egg up above the platform.
Always thought the light of the End made end stone look so bad, but if it were lit with warm yellow, it wouldn't be so bad. Using a palate of end stone bricks, acacia and warped woods, ochre froglights, orange glazed terracotta, orange and cyan glass here and there.
Still need to work on the side walls of the hall so they're not just straight brick. Also planning on a structure on the second floor around the egg; a hall leading out to the return pool further inland on the island; some better halls/structures on the other end of the transport egg where I went out to an End city.

Worked on this End structure a bit more, added some detailing to the walls of the downstairs,