Dungeons and Colonies 8

BIG BIG CHANGES!!!

Ok.  So I cleared a bunch of land, now what?  Let's put that land to use.

This is Jim's old house, and for some reason I made it face the town hall at a weird turn.  I thought the Town Hall would be the center of town, but this little area by the beach is not not large enough to focus the town on.  So I took down the house chest and replaced it, put the sign facing the other homes and had Jim just redo the thing.  It was pretty simple.  Now, about that Town Hall.

I moved the Town Hall chest to the new cleared out area.  I thought a very long time, and even did some test building, to see what I wanted to do with the cleared out area.  Finally I decided that my Town Hall being the center would work good here.  Eventually it might just be the coastal area's focus, but that works too.  The second picture is me dismantling the old Town Hall.  I had thought about making it my new personal home(I'm still living on the Gullwing currently).

With the space I cleared, I thought about making a commerce area.  That problem is, I only had 4 citizens, and their jobs were based on survival, not profit yet.  So in this space I built a few more houses.  This gave me a few more workers.

Now the residential area has a sort of uniform look to it.  I added flower pots and street lights.  Oh, you have not seen the town from this angle in a while.  There's the beach and some storage bins, but it is too foggy to see the Gullwing, but it is there.  There's also someone weird in this shot, who is that?

That's Robert Smith.  Jame's own son has come to join our colony.  Unlike his lazy brother-in-law, Robert is putting his youth to use as our Hunter.  The first "for profit" job in the colony, Robert sleeps during the day time, and hunts creatures during the night.  He gathers the rare items used in goods.

For my second new citizen, whom you can not see much here, I had Jim construct a querry office.  Mr. Miller is a Miner we had join us.  He delves into the ground, collecting ores and stone for us to use in Jim's building projects.  He does not really do much right now...

Our final new building project was a collaboration between Jim and Robert Smith.  Robert wanted a base of operations for his hunting at night, away from the town so that he would not disturb those hard workers that were sleeping.  So Jim made him a camouflaged base, complete with bed for rest, out in the forest.

More big changes coming as I work on the colony and try to improve on its design.

S.

(secret notes:  Changing people's homes is not as easy as changing their jobs.  You have to remove the Town Hall chest so that no new "vagrants" spawn, and then you have to... get rid of all the vagrants to make sure your two happy townspeople get back to their correct home together w/o swapping husbands or wives.  Don't ask me what exactly you do, its not pleasant to talk about.  Jobs relocating on the other hand are easy to switch as long as you have all possible citizens with jobs.  Just switch one job at a time)

Dungeons and Colonies 7 Progress

Lots of boring stuff.  This post probably more for me than for you so I can remember all the time I lost doing it.  Lots of before and afters here.  I have not yet decided what to build, I'm actually thinking of tearing down the homes to better "zone" the town.  Its the SimCity fan in me

Dungeons and Colonies 6

Revisit to the Rails

A while back I went looking for threats to my Colony.  Today I decided to try and eliminate one of those threats.  Remember the railway I found in Chapter 3?  Well I returned there, looking to pick a fight.  The first thing I saw was a zombie, and I sucker punched that bastid.

I jumped down onto the rails, but I met no further resistance.  I was a little let down... but then realized I would have to continue down the rails in the dark.  It suddenly looked like I might have taken out the lookout, and was left with a trap.  I looked down the long tunnel, trying to see what was in the dark.  It certainly looked like there was some type of road block.

I found the floor strewn with glass, and water gushing in everywhere.  Trying to clear the way only made it worse, as sand started filling in and letting even more water in.  I grabbed some stone and started plugging up the holes.  With that crisis over with, I started placing torches and looking around, and was in awe of what I was observing.

It was amazing!  I was encased in glass at the bottom of the sea!  It was some sort of underground/underseas railway that stretched off into the distance.  And just like that a prior mystery was solved!  For a small detour I ran up top and found some of it near the coast to snap a picture.  Remember the stuff I saw underwater way back in Chapter 1?

Well these things apparently run all around my colony as I found some off the coast here too.  So there must be some kind of ancient society that could tunnel under the sea and create rails for transportation?  Or maybe they were so advanced they needed mines even in the sea to get resources.  I return underground to explore some more.

The glass along the side, near where the hole in the ceiling was, turned out to be a DOUBLE SPAWNER dungeon!  On the left was a Enderman spawner, something I do not think can happen in normal Minecraft.  I suddenly get the fear of a potential Creeper spawner... but as I was thinking this, arrows come flying at me.  The right side is a skeleton spawner and it was spewing two skeletons at a time.  Now, I could take a room full of Skeletons, this is not my first rodeo.  But accidently hitting a room full of Enderman, or accidentally looking one in the eye?  Bad news.  But then I remember my survival lessons from back home... and I remember I have something special in my chests back at the colony.  I need to hurry because the day is getting late, I was at this time cursing my lack of gold because I wanted a watch badly.

 

Yes, I pumpkin!  I put it on my head, and Jim sort of looked at me like I was crazy.  No time to explain now Jim, its time to save the colony!  I head back down to the dungeon once again, and I clear the room of skeletons, mowing them down as James B. Smith clears a field of wheat.  Sure enough, not a single Enderman comes after me.

I start excavating around the spawner, making sure I can get behind and beside the parts facing the wall, and soon have both spawners covered in torches.  With the area safe, I start taking out the mossy cobblestone and replacing it with regular.  In the olden days of Minecraft, the mossy stone was a grand trophy.  This was before we had the ability to cut leaves and use them as bushes for our homes, so one of the only ways to get green in our homes was to use mossy cobble that is only found in Dungeons.  This practice is still one I cling to, considering Mossy cobble a trophy.  

Inside the chest was my real trophy though, an ancient watch that still worked!  I was just thinking I needed a watch, and here now I have one!  This one is very awesome.  No doubt whatever civilization had their rails down here, they had to keep a schedule.  The watch is immaculate and time has not worn it down a bit.  It is beautiful, gold and lustrous, I could not think of a better reward for my time(except perhaps making my colonists safer).

With my triumph in mind, I kept exploring down the long tunnels.  I went as far as I dared with the amount of food I had on me.  Most of it is just a long tunnel with no turn offs or additional dungeons, but I have not explored all of it.  I get myself a mine cart and some torches to explore a bit faster.  Not much happened that day before I went back to the colony, but I did meet an old friend on the rails.

I raised my sword, he raised his, and we charged one another in our carts much like the knights of old on their war horses!

S.

Dungeons and Colonies 5

My Peoples

As I'm playing, I'm seeing that my first four workers have pretty much stayed constant.  I have not had any crazy deaths nor have I had a total re-naming of the colonists, which I hear can happen from time to time.  Anyways, I'm starting to enjoy passing my workers and kind of saying(or thinking) "hi Jim" or "hi James" as I go off doing my work on the Colony.  I don't say "where's my builder?"  I say "OK, where's Jim?"  I guess my first "friend" would be Jim Robinson, he's the first one I think about by name instead of job.

Jim has built almost all of the structures in the town.  He's got the yellow helm, but what is weird is I often see him where grey and have a blue hat.  Sometimes he's got a mustache, sometimes he's shaven.  I guess there are a ton of builder styles that switch around when you get into the game.  His partner is Lisa Wilson.  There are 2 Wilson sisters in the town.  My colonists come from a land where the last name is not taken by the Wife, and I am not sure how the children get named.  While looking through my pictures, it turns out that Jim was not my first builder.

James B. Smith was my first builder, he built my Town Hall.  The jobs must have gotten switched around when I was re-arranging my citizen chests and such.  Old James is now my farmer.  I call him Old James because he is apparently old enough to master several skills, but also the Baker(and former fellow Farmer) has a partner with his last name.  I took this to mean he taught his son-in-law to farm, and that his daughter is married to him.  Old James is married to Jennifer Taylor, who has yet to have any relatives outside the immediate family.

Joseph Jones was at one time my 2nd Farmer before I understood the Farming mechanics of the Colony.  He is apparently married to James B. Smith's daughter, Elizabeth Smith.  He is now our Baker, chosen because he was the 2nd Farmer, and so I hadn't grown attached to him being a Farmer yet.  Bakers look kind of silly in MineColony, so I get this sort of "not too bright" and "wishy washy with responsibility" kind of character.  Plus I just like imagining Old James smacking him on the head when he says something stupid.

Christopher Jackson is my Lumberjack.  I did not have this in mind before looking at the photos I took, but I thought he was kind of "apart" from the rest of the group.  Now that I look at the narrative I wove around things that he is Jim Robinson's brother-in-law.  He is married to Patricia Wilson, the sister of Lisa.  So that kind of establishes 2 close families in my Colony, and I quite like that.  Jim and Chris are also tied together in their work like James and Joseph.  Jim needs Chris' lumber to be able to do his job, just as Joseph needs the wheat from James to bake his bread.

Sometimes little stories just work themselves out like that.

I will not be doing this for every worker I get in the Colony.  MineColony is a harsh mod, and with Better Dungeons, a random "boss" creature can come in and totally kill everyone in the village without blinking.  People will die and be replaced, people will acquire and change jobs.  These are my 4, unless another sticks out due to heroic actions or something later.  If something happens to these 4, I will keep it posted.


S.

Dungeons and Colonies 04

Something Worth Fighting For.

My colonists and I are trying to make a new life in a new land.  The revelation that mysterious ships are sailing near us made me realize that we could possibly die to raiders, monsters, or any number of maladies.  We were just a cluster of hovels not too long ago, so if I expect my people to protect what we have, then we should make it something we are proud of.  Right now, I can personally get enough food that my people are satisfied.  The problem is that if I were to go, would my people be able to survive?  No.  They would not even have enough food stocked to get back on The Gullwing and sail home.

My next projects are separated into two sections.  The Seaside area and the Forest Development.  I started rudimentary clearing toward the forest area where our lumberjack is situated.  The hill is being cut back, and my plan is to have a terraced rise in ground level, where new homes and businesses will be built.  That is secondary for now.  Right now it seems right to expand our seaside cliff for a new purpose.

I built a sheer stone wall, almost eliminating our beach on that side.  This actually serves as defense to the town.  A sheer wall will be an obstacle to invasion, and the lack of landing area makes it harder to amass raiders in a vulnerable spot.  This also creates more land for us to use for cultivation of crops.  Speaking of crops, we need something to do with them.  One of our farmers volunteered to be our new baker.  With a new baker, we now need a bakery.

Situated away from trees and on the coast to maximize airflow, our new bakery is also part mill.  I also built it a little higher than the land near it so that it could reach the higher winds.  Joseph Jones is our baker, and he will take the wheat from the farmer and turn it into loaves of bread.  I will have to dispense this to homes until we set up a warehouse.

A little look at the game mechanics.  Before a colonist can get a job, they must get a citizen chest.  So if you have a particular fondness for a named colonist being a certain job, be sure to only move job chests one at a time.  This is what I did when I destroyed the farmer chest and moved it into a new location, closer to the bakery.

After moving him over, I proceeded to tear down the original farm structures.  I'm going to make an more efficient use of the land in this area by creating a long rectangular farm, with fences to protect it from random animals.  I will have to tend this part of the land, as Farmer Smith will only tend to his own area near the bakery.  It will also look very nice to have more of a "lake" of wheat than some old wood.

Our seaside area is starting to look much more pretty, and actually gaining much more use as well.  I need to create some pasture land for the raising of animals.  While being able to have pork and beef would be great, the primary usage will be for sheep.  The wool is needed for clothing, repairing any windmill sails, and also several other buildings we will want to make will use wool as well.

I am also finding myself bonding with my colonists.  With each 4 of the workers having separate jobs now, I can easily identify who I am seeing while doing work.  On the way back to the ship, I pass and greet them.  I may do a blog post to feature each of them.

S.

Dungeons and Colonies Chapter 3

Threats.

My colony, which is still as yet unnamed, is growing.  I am starting to bond with the workers in my town, and look at ways to improve their quality of life.  Unfortunately I still have the memory of whatever that giant rainbow faced ape-thing out there in the forests.  There are threats to my community, and I am the one expected to protect my colonists from them.  I set out, not to eliminate threats just yet, but to find out and record where these threats are.  In the future I'll make sure to neutralize them, but right now I just want to make sure my colony does not get built closer and closer to any big ones.

See that?  That looks like a threat to me.  This hole goes way down into the earth and it is way too close to my colony, all sorts of things could come out of that and hurt my people.  So I go exploring.  At the bottom I find lots of little caves and tunnels and most of them end in dead ends, but then:

An abandoned Mineshaft!  I typically like these.  They are good sources for free rail track, and usually contain many minerals along the walls that I can harvest and bring back to my colony.  They have been asking for some Lapis jewelry lately, and I could always use some more iron pickaxes.  As I get closer, this one seems a little different than the ones I've seen before.  Looking down the railway it looks bigger and wider.  Then suddenly a cart comes racing down the track.  This was not the usual abandoned mine, this was a "Better Dungeons" abandoned mine.  As the cart gets closer a puff of smoke comes forth from the cart.

A freakin' armored and armed skeleton that rides mine carts!  There were more carts coming down the way from both directions.  I decided to run like hell.  One shot me in the back with an arrow and poisoned me.  I stumbled in the dark and lost my way.  I heard water and moved towards it.  A crack in the ceiling was letting lots of water come in.  I explored it, and through the water I thought I saw sunlight.  I jumped into the water and swam to the top and was very surprised at where I came out.

The shores of my colony.  I put up a warning sign and constructed some wood over the hole so that none of my colonists fell in(and hopefully none of the super skeletons get out).  So my colony has some sort of abandoned mine full of super skeletons that ride carts and use poison arrows directly below it.  It couldn't get worse right?  I explore the outskirts of my colony and find very little in the forests, but on my way back I follow the coastline. 

That's not my boat.

In fact that is at least 3x the size of my boat.  That is a BIG ass boat.  I have no idea who is on it, I have no idea if they want to eat me.  Better Dungeons has just thrown me 2 curve balls in one evening...  My colony is not ready for this.  I need to build it better, and hope whatever is on that boat can not reach the shore just yet.

S.

Dungeons and Colonies Chapter 2

I continued the next day to prepare for her arrival.  A majestic ship with a few supplies from the homeland, and a cargo hold full of people ready to start a new life with me.  I set up a little platform out in the bay, and awaited the ship to weigh anchor in the deeper parts away from the bay and cliffs of Dover.  Finally, I saw her, sailing into view.  She is the magnificent "Gullwing".  Her name having nothing to do with a sudden obsession with a Mercedes Benz super expensive 200,000 dollar sports car the night before.  The ship is rather well made when it comes to ship designs I've seen in Minecraft.  Usually things are a bit too large so that they can accommodate detail, but I call oversized things in Minecraft "pixel art" instead of in game, usable things.  The Gullwing is an in game usable thing that looks beautiful. 

After a few hours, my first citizens show up.  They are, at first, beleaguered and shabby from the voyage from the mainland.  Eventually though they say hell and pick out their citizen chests where I have given them supplies and certificates pertaining to the success of the colony.  In no time I find my builder, a man from back home that is learned in the ways of engineering and carpentry.  The first thing he starts on is the Town Hall.  The gathering and governing property of the new colony, the Town Hall takes many resources and must be completed first.

I have yet to name my colony.  I have thought of naming it after the Cliffs I had lived in while preparing for their arrival, but I am not completely happy with it.  I like to name my places after something descriptive around it.  While I was pondering this, I realized that the cliff beside the bay, the dominating and interestingly shaped cliff looked like the horse head of a chess set!

So now I need to think of an Equestrian based name for my colony.  Meanwhile, my builder is hard at work.  After consulting me on their locations, the first 8 citizens now have their homes.  I gather resources and decorate the colony, trying to make it feel more like a town.  While he is building things, I am creating walkways, paths, and lighting for our citizens to use.

With roads, farms, and a lumberjack operation in the works, the colony looks to be getting off to a great start.

S.