MAIN MENU     FRONT PAGE MISSION STATEMENT SINCLAIR'S FOUNDRY MINECRAFT IN THE ARCTIC REJECTLAND THE FUNGUSLANDS & OTHER WORLDS RESOURCE PACKS & WORLD DOWNLOADS OTHER LINKS       ASSOCIATED WEB PAGES     THE HAMMER OF RETRIBUTION OGG-CAST HAMMER OF RETRIBUTION PRODUCTIONS PERSONAL PAGES FROM DAYS OF YORE ZX SPECTRUM SECTION: PROGRAMS & VIDEOS COMP.SYS.SINCLAIR CRAP GAMES COMPETITION 2021 RICK DANGEROUS RESURRECTED PROJECT 52: 1.12 TWEAKS AND ADVANCEMENTS     Project coordinates: n/a Screenshots: 50 Date completed: 16 December 2017 Version: 1.12.2 Minecraft day completed: 7140 The parrots provided the first streak of lurid colour to be seen in this world that 1.12 brought; these are not, by any means, the last, and there's more to be added straight away in this bits-and pieces update. 1.12 other feature upgrade replaced Achievements, of which I had a full set, with Advancements, which I don't, and some of them are considerably harder to get. But, like Pokémon, gotta catch 'em all, and I will. BORDER 0: PAPER 2: INK 7: BRIGHT 1 1.12 didn't just bring in coloured concrete, it changed all the colours of wool, carpet, banners, maps and (this last one was unnecessary, if you ask me) shulker boxes. The pictures at the top of the stairs have, fortunately, not changed noticeably so I don't have to alter them, and the colours on the screenshots in the bedroom may have also altered slightly, but they've moved in the opposite direction from the potential horror of the Commodore 64's drab colour palette so I'll not complain too much. The Sinclair ZX80 logo in the warehouse, though, had to change. I'd previously used orange wool as it was closer to the logo on the original ZX80 with the yellow wool a dull straw colour. The new yellow is a much better reflection of the original logo now that orange, so that's what's gone in. And you can jut see it where the sword handle is, what used to be yellow in lieu of there being few better choices has been replaced with light grey. The yellow was, of course, recycled in making the new logo. Concrete found its first use in the Nether hub, a change I'd had my eye on since the first new features in the 1.12 snapshots... if only I'd just got on with it! Anyway, north doesn't look much different; I'd previously used red for all four directions, because I had to use stained clay and red was the only colour that matched the colour of the letter banners, and the Nether brick. West, though, is where it gets different, with a vibrant yellow to match the colour position in the Sinclair's Foundry banner. There's also black concrete dividing the colours in the roof, though that's harder to see because the Nether is so dark and the Nether brick is a dark red in the first place. East is green and... hang on, that's not the light green on the original banner! I tried using the original banner colours, and the light grey lettering didn't stand out enough against the light colours, so I've used the darker cactus green instead. And likewise, south uses the dark blue of lapis lazuli, rather than the light blue of the swamp orchid. I've made an alternative version of the Sinclair's Foundry banner with the dark colours for use in the Nether, and you can see it hanging by all four sides of the hub. Wurzel Dizzy's Fast Food Silo was upgraded and expanded in project 22, but only now have I been able to replace the coloured wool on the outside, not exactly a fitting building substance. Dizzy now has a hard shell, just like an egg should. And if Dizzy can be upgraded to concrete, so can Seymour. There was a lot more to replace than I'd banked on, mind! The three animal farms also needed a concrete upgrade - not that they're used much these days, but it was worth updating the face that they present. Only the pig farm is noticeably different with the shocking pink colour of the concrete. ADVANCEMENT GET! On starting this world for the first time in 1.12 I was granted at least half the Advancements free of charge, including some that had prerequisites that I wasn't given. For instance, I was given Sky's The Limit straight away by virtue of wearing the Wings of Wrath, but not The City At The End Of The Game, which was a prerequisite - I had to physically move myself to an End City to get that one, and did so by flying there with rockets, just to rub it into the game. Others such as Sniper Duel and Return To Sender are direct copies of previous Achievements and it wasn't too hard to get them again. This section shows those Advancements that are a bit trickier to get hold of than the others. Free The End? I've done it before. Twice. The second time was harder than the first, and I wasn't relishing a third match, but so it had to be, and it still wasn't easy. But, as ever, I have prevailed. Great View From Up Here is considerably harder to get than it looks. Never mind needing some Feather Falling IV boots to ensure a survivable landing, you'll also need some tough armour to resist the hail of shulker bullets you'll have to be hit by to levitate 50 blocks and complete the challenge. For the most part, you'll float about 30 blocks then the levitation effect will run out as you'll be out of range of the shulker's aggression and it won't fire any more bullets. I had a further problem in that all my armour is equipped with Thorns III and most of the time, being hit by a shulker bullet would damage the shulker so it might die before I wanted it to! Still, that meant another of the 22 hostile monsters ticked off the list that I had to kill to take the Monsters Hunted challenge. That's one tab of Advancements complete: The End. A Furious Cocktail isn't really a challenge, if you have all your brewing ingredients sorted out. It required having all 11 of the available potion effects active at the same time. This can be partially done with a beacon, but I preferred to drink 11 potions in succession. I had them all prepared in the lab. There, that was easy. How Did We Get Here?, on the other hand, is not. It requires the 11 potion effects, plus Resistance and Haste (which means I'll need one beacon at least), Hunger and Nausea (eat a pufferfish to get both in one go), Absorption (eat a golden apple), Glowing (get hit with a spectral arrow)... and most troubling of all, Mining Fatigue, Wither and Levitation, which means I'll have to transport an elder guardian, wither skeleton and shulker all into the same place! I look forward to this one... Just in case anyone was curious what it looks like having 11 potion effects active at the same time... this is it. Meanwhile, we rejoin the action in the Ice Plains, about 3.5 km to the east of the base. The portal is on the east side of this vast tundra near the Spikes biome so I can harvest compressed ice when I need to - and I haven't really explored it much, which meant I'd be generating new frosty territory that polar bears might spawn in. What I've run into first, though, is an igloo - haven't seen one of those in the wild in this world until now... ...it's empty, though. Still, it might be useful to return to if night falls in the middle of the hunt. See? Can't escape from me for long. It took a 1.2 km trek across the snow and ice to find this one (see what I meant about generating new territory), and as this one has a cub and will attack if I approach, I will have to slay them both. Don't watch if you're a member of the WWF or some other hippy organisation. And remember, polar bears are not cute, they are merciless killing machines. Where they live, they have to be. Zombie Doctor is really easy if you know what you're doing, and I've cured many, many zombie villagers of their ailment in the past... ...but I showed it anyway because it was the last Advancement I needed to make under the Minecraft tab. As a wise old man once said, "never waste your diamonds on a hoe". Serious Dedication isn't difficult in any way, but it forces us to do exactly that. It would have been useful to have had a diamond hoe for the initial build of Xarq: The Vegetable Trenches due to the enormous amount of farmland to till... but with 4,240 land squares I'd have had to put an Unbreaking enchantment on it as well or I'd have needed three of them to complete the job! So I used a ton of disposable iron hoes instead. This time, though, I'm just tilling the ground and watching it un-till itself for the Advancement. And without the loud CLUNK that other tools make when they break, the diamond hoe gives up the ghost (or, maybe, gives up the ghast?), and Minecraft tells me I should re-evaluate my life choices. In this game, at least, I have made no mistakes. A Balanced Diet requires eating every food available in the game, all 35 types. Essentially this replaces the old Achievement called Overpowered, where you have to eat a Notch apple. I am beginning to wish I'd used just a little bit of my gold stash at the end of the 1.8 cycle making a few of those while that was still possible, so I wouldn't have to trek out to a village 8 km or so away, just to look for one. Still, at least it's one of those new-style savanna villages made entirely of wood, that I haven't had in this world yet. Dungeons, abandoned mineshafts, Nether fortresses, End cities, they all have a very small chance of containing a Notch apple in the chest, and I'm further hindered on this front by some of the chests not generating so their loot spills on the floor and despawns before I can even find it. Who knows how many of them I've lost so far? Anyway, this chest is still intact... ...IT'S GOT A NOTCH APPLE IN IT! And I know where this will come in useful. To get Monsters Hunted, I have to kill every hostile mob in the game - except, strangely, the endermite; throw a ton of ender pearls and one will appear soon enough. But never mind that tiny purple thing, the real hindrance to this Advancement is having to kill the two illagers - the vindicator and evoker - that are only found in the very rare Woodland Mansions. I've found one already, as you can tell from the Woodland Explorer map. Looking at the wiki, which implied one cartographer can supply several different versions of these maps, I spent 25 emeralds on a second map only to find it was identical to the first. Help came in the form of Chunkbase's Woodland Mansion finder, which reveals there are 47 of them, within a radius of... 100 km. For comparison, there should be around 2,800 villages in the same area. This was the nearest unexplored mansion, approximately 8 km north of the base and 30 km west! I even considered flying through the Nether to reach it but abandoned that idea on a practice run when I found the scenery couldn't generate fast enough to see where I was going and I'd soon end up fried in a lake of lava. So I had to dig all that way, which took a while even at only ⅛ the distance required. And, strangely, I've ended up on the roof... ...where I figured the best thing to do would be to break through the window, hit the required illagers and get out again. And if I eat this Notch apple, not only do I get AWESOME POWER but I complete A Balanced Diet as well! There were two vindicators and an evoker in this room, which neatly explains why I'm down to only half an extra heart already (I get eight from the Notch apple and only two from a regular golden apple). Still, the vindicator pays with his life, and the two vexes aren't going to last long either. Down goes the evoker, who was busy casting that nasty spell at me and summoning more vexes. Only two to go now, and there's a very, very long walk back through the Nether tunnel to get back to the hub and take on the rest. I did actually test how long it takes to get from the end of the railway line (about 1 km west of the Nether hub) to the portal for this Woodland Mansion. It's 8½ minutes with a constant Speed II effect supplied and the sprint key held down, or 15½ minutes at walking pace... I know, I've used the horse speedometer on myself as well as the horses. Having tried very hard to not die during the brief assault on the mansion (where there are plenty of illagers left to kill), I've found myself with a Totem of Undying courtesy of the evoker that I need to use. The best way, I figured, was to have a particularly careless attempt to take some heads at the Nether Earth skull fields. It worked and I gained Postmortal, but unfortunately no Wither skulls this time. A Balanced Diet was the last challenge I needed to complete the Husbandry section. It was safer to show this after returning to the base. Adventuring Time was next on the list, and I'd already visited most of the biomes required. The route was carefully planned so that I'd visit the mushroom island last, the hardest biome to find by accident, so I'd know when the Advancement would appear. Monsters Hunted was also planned to be completed in a controlled environment - this time, in another stronghold that's not the one I'd usually use to go to The End. Here, we've got a reliable source of silverfish, the last hostile mob I need to kill. And, as ever, they don't put up much resistance! The Adventure tab is now complete - even though it doesn't all quite fit into the screen, all the icons are at least partially visible at the same time. All that remains is the hardest two Advancements, both on the Nether tab... To get Uneasy Alliance, I've built this Patented Ghast Catcher™, which appears to be little more than a maximum-size portal to the surface... ...though it's a bit more advanced on the other side, where the ghast's appearance in the Overworld will trigger a tripwire (that hasn't been built yet because I'm still using this portal, but it's visible two screenshots down...), fire the dispenser and a bucket of water will break the portal, trapping the ghast here until I'm ready to come and slay it with my sword. Trying to induce a ghast into the portal, walking around with the invisibility effect on, wasn't very useful as I had to have no armour on and couldn't hold anything in my hand either; trying to catch the ghast with a fishing rod was hard, and pulling it close to me started it blasting fireballs. Eventually I thought the best idea would be to brick myself into a hole in the Nether, and wait... ...give it an hour or so, and the Patented Ghast Catcher™ has worked! I didn't even need the cobwebs at the top of the glass cage. The ghast put up a hint of resistance with a couple of pointblank fireballs, but it won't stop me. There is now just one Advancement to go, and it will be the headache to end all headaches. Here comes the big one, such a massive undertaking that it isn't even shown on the Nether tab until it's done. I will have to get a shulker, wither skeleton and elder guardian all in the same place, alongside a lot of potions, five beacons, a golden apple, a pufferfish, and something to launch spectral arrows at me. I'll start with the most difficult and tedious aspect of this challenge - transporting the shulker back from the End city, and sending it through the Overworld to where I want it to be. Xisumavoid's tutorial on this helps avoid any mishaps. The bridge that snakes off into the distance will terminate high up on an End city, near where a shulker will be lurking. I might be able to cross the gaping void with rocket-propelled flight these days, but getting the shulker back to the End portal is a slow, slow, slow process - one block per second or maybe less. Still, boats are easier to use than minecarts when it comes to these infuriating creatures. After some time hunting for the shulker, I eventually found it hanging onto the side of the railway I'd already built to take it over land to its final destination. It was very near the original mob farm (that might be repurposed some day...?) with what should have been, in retrospect, unsurprising coordinates of x = 0, z = 0. It's a right and royal pain to scoop it into a cart, it requires split-second timing to drop a rail underneath it as it makes contact with the cart. And it can't be pushed on its own, it has to be hit by another cart. I had the idea to use the old-school propulsion method of this furnace cart, but it would not accept the lava bucket that I was hoping to fuel it with. I had to push it over land for 3 km. Just like this. When Minecraft doesn't seem to know what the Pauli Exclusoin Principle is, and I keep on walking through the furnace cart and pushing it backwards. And now the sun's going down. What fun this phase is. But here we are, on a slabbed island that ensures the shulker will teleport where I want it to when the cart breaks. One quick construction with glass later and the nasty, nasty adversary that is only here to give us the Levitation effect is right where I want it and we are safe from its projectiles. I chose the island above because it's very near an ocean monument that I can obtain Mining Fatigue from, and because its Nether coordinates are very near a fortress. Looking through the gloom with Night Vision (these potions are very useful, aren't they?) I will induce this wither skeleton to chase me into the portal that will take us both back to the island. It's all done. I have a shulker in place, and breaking a couple of glass blocks will let me be hit by its projectiles. Because of the beacons already in place, I had Jump Boost so I could jump over the cobblestone wall but the wither skeleton couldn't, thus trapping it in the Overworld once I'd given it a name tag and broken the portal. The dispensers have spectral arrows in them, one I can access from the ground, the other is for if I have Levitation already applied. There's a chest with the six potions I will need, a golden apple and a pufferfish, but that's out of sight. I also need two and a half hunger bars empty so I can eat the golden apple first and the pufferfish last. So here's the order of events: the beacons give me six effects (Speed, Haste, Resistance, Jump Boost, Strength & Regeneration). I drink four potions (Fire Resistance, Invisibility, Night Vision, Water Breathing) that all last for 8 minutes. Then I get in a boat, row over to the ocean monument that still has all three elder guardians in it, so I get Mining Fatigue for 4 minutes. When I arrive back at the island and the beacons kick in again, I have 11 effects applied. Back on the island, I drink the other two potions (Weakness and Slowness) and eat the golden apple for Absorption, and now have 14 effects applied. The best order to get the last six is: run over to the dispenser, get hit with a spectral arrow, and that gives me Glowing (which lasts only 10 seconds so I will have to be quick). Jump into the wither skeleton booth, get Wither (again for only 10 seconds), jump out again (Jump Boost from the Beacon ensures I can do it), stand in front of the shulker and hope that Glowing and Wither don't run out before I'm hit by a bullet. If the shulker is reticent, I get hit by another arrow and get withered again. Finally, once I get Levitation from the shulker, which makes 17 effects... ...as soon as I'm floating I eat the pufferfish to get Hunger, Poison and Nausea and that's all 20 effects and I've done it! I've got the hardest Advancement in the game! And, if you look, I was lucky - the Wither square has gone black as it's about to run out! That was hard work. Clearing up the mess will be easy in comparison. So, there's a long and very ugly temporary railway that needs to be demolished. Finally, I've found a use for Abbath's Snow & Sky Boots - the Frost Walker enchantment means I can recover the rails and the scaffolding while walking over the water. The ice doesn't last long in the daytime, but stays firmly in place at night, and nasties don't spawn on it for good measure. It is all done - the Nether tab is complete, including all the very hard challenges. I would have to say... Achievement Get!