Encephalartos woodii

 

There has been a considerable hiatus since my last post. Heres a post about trees to keep you occupied.

E. Woodii has become one of my favorite plants. Being one of the rarest cycads on Earth (actually, the rarest), the population of E Woodii was once prosperous. In the times of Pangea, E. Woodii was more than 20% of the flora at the time! 

"...and I speak for the trees!"

The cycad can grow up to 6 meters in height, and the top layer of leaves make it look pretty damn awesome and prehistoric looking. Which is to say, a dumb observation since E. woodii has been around since the time of the dinosaurs. Also, the trunk looks similar to what one would expect a dinosaur's skin to look like: Scaly and rough, tough and dry. The story of the E. woodii goes:

It is 1895, and John Medley Wood (I would trade my name in a heartbeat for his) is wandering through dense bush. He parts some branches and sees a lone tree growing in a flat area, and approaches it. He likes it immensely, and when his ship arrives, he take a small portion of the tree to grow back at London in the Kew Gardens. Little does he know he just mutilated the last wild member of Encephalartos woodii. However, in the decades to come, Wood (oh my god, I love his name) sparked quite a good bit of conservation efforts. But despite multiple failed attempts to find a female E. woodii, people failed. E. woodii is dioecious, meaning it needs a male and a female in order to make a new tree. Sure, there are clones of the E. woodii, but they are all male. Sure, there are more cycads that resemble E. woodii, but they can't really mate. 

It's the loneliest tree on Earth. I hope not.

The only other members of the woodii family are a different species of cycad found in Africa. There are only two wild ones:

Poor things.

What a sad story of a plant. Lemme go water my bush.

Realms Gameplay

 Realms update: I went with Hank to the upper bedrock region of the nether to kill a Wither for a star so he could make a beacon. I stupidly decided to bring only 19 arrows, (And a Power I bow) no potions, not much food of good saturation (Bread) and nothing to heal me quickly like a golden apple.

 

Needless to say, I died and lost all my stuff. But the Wither kept on targeting me, even when Hank was dealing almost twice as much damage as me, the three-headed monstrosity kept with me like white on rice. Worst still, the boneheaded freak's skulls blew up the contents of my inventory. Damn. It's not like I had some really good stuff in there, but I will have to enchant my armor and tools again. Not much stuff was lost. 

In other news, a blaze farm has been set up in the nether! I spent some time farming levels and rods there before heading back up to the bedrock region of the nether, which I'll be calling, "The Icelands," because water freezes there.

The blaze farm

Hidey-hole for going AFK

I'm planning on building a house on the Icelands complete with a tree farm, wheat farm, and maybe some other farms. It'll be a pain to grow without water but it should be fine and pretty cool too. 

Oho

I screwed up, and almost died.

Let me tell you something, witches have far too much range. I was exploring a ravine intersecting with a few other ravines. Sensing a chance to get a load of ores, I decided to go in and risk it. Taking the left ravine, I was walking when all of a sudden the FOV turned weird and I was walking a lot slower than usual. A witch had popped out from a cave under the ravine wall and poisoned me. Not the biggest problem given I have some decent armor, but I still nearly died.

It all comes down to me brain farting. I quickly ran to the parallel wall and dug myself into it and blocked the passage. I knew the witch couldn't get me because she was stuck in the other cave, but what I forgot was that they throw far and the potions can penetrate through walls.

I thought I was safe and proceeded to eat some mutton to regenerate and counter the poison. Then she threw a potion harming at me.That brought me down to three or so hearts, and the poison kept it at half until I regenerated. I kept on digging through the wall and eventually made my way back to the house. 

Floating Trees and Rotten Realms

 I would like to apologize for the cheesy title. I was filling out my map in my hardcore world when I happened upon this:

What the...

Yeah. I also made a quarry in the desert which I plan on using as a central mining hub and strip-mining from there at level 11, 12, or bedrock. Here are the pictures of the quarry, and of the renovated farms I forgot to include last post.

The quarry's workshop

The quarry from the top

The quarry hasn't produced much in terms of ores and other valuables, the only being a few dozen iron ores and about a stack of gravel for arrows. 

The chicken and wheat farm

Cow and sheep farm.

I didn't do the carrot/potato farm and the backyard tree farm because I think that that's unnecessary; I won't be doing any carrot collecting in the middle of the night and I can always sleep off the night and gather wood in the morning. My full set of diamond tools will be named Zievouu.

Realms: Someone decided to blow up half of what everyone's built in the server. Great. Hank restored it quickly, but it still startled me when I first saw everything full of holes and craters. Then, later, I fell into an underground lava lake. Dang. I lost my enchanted tools, armor, and worst of all, my bow, which had Infinity, Flame, and Power IV on it. I decided on a new course of action: I'll work on a set of really nice, enchanted tool and armor, and everything else will be plain, unenchanted things. I'll use iron tools for now and save my diamond ones for the final set, which i'm going to be calling Blaskaes.




Most advanced world: I got some more XP and added a few more enchantments to the chestplate and armor. This world is going slow. It's just at that point were everything is so mundane you start making extra-mundane potions and drinking them. But I'll surge through and get to the point where I have a full set of enchanted, diamond things (I'm calling this set Fraegaes.) and all I have to do is fight a few things.

House Renovations

 This isn't really a house renovation. Because I'm renovating my farms and not really my immediate house. 

I decided to add some glass around my farms so I can harvest and breed throughout the night. The glass should present a partial problem to get, but I have a desert next to me, so that should be fine. I'm planning on encasing a whole area of flat land behind my house for a tree farm so I can gather raw lumber at all times. I try not to go mining because it's dangerous in hardcore, so a steady supply of wood for charcoal would be good to have. Having wood for building is good. 

In other news, I found a survival Realms world in which other people are on as well. It's a delight to meet others and look at what they've built over time. 

His storage area

The guy that invited me to join is "sniperhank84." The world is a cool place, and it's quite technologically advanced in my opinion. I've never been one for redstone. Theres also another guy, "Cruspriki" or something like that. But his internet is bad and it's a pain for him to get on.

Villager trading place

It's always fun to see what other people have built in their own worlds (or Realms). Maybe I should start one.

Alpaca My Inventory

 I made some changes to my hardcore world. I finally found some diamonds, and braved real caving for it, not strip mining. I came back from exploring my world with a map and met some truly strange things. There was a mountain village that intersected with a plain, and right next to the village was a ravine. That led to a deeper ravine. That led to a mineshaft. I forgot to take a screenshot, but I may return someday to gather resources. And fight off poisonous 8-legged bits of code. Every time I happen upon a pack of wolves, I make a cobblestone beacon but I've found so many that I forget how many packs there are just in one map! This is a short post, so I'll post more tomorrow and get on with building some new things. 

Update on my advanced world: Endermen seem to be exceedingly rare, I only have 2 ender pearls after several nights of hunting. I also need to gather XP from my mob farm and enchant all my stuff. Then I'll be ready to go! I plan on taking on the wither first. Because I think it's a lot easier than traveling to a whole new dimension and battling something there.

Rest In Peace

 I took Kepler caving. Two creeper explosions, a skeleton and a zombie were not enough to stop my faithful companion. My iron sword however, was. Because of the new 1.9 combat mechanisms, swords can now do area damage. Guess what? Kepler was attacking a zombie and a skeleton while I was fending off two zombies in close quarters when I swung at the skeleton, and did area damage to the zombie, and Kepler. Ouch. I made a gravestone for him, but I plan on adding netherrack and light it on fire in the gravestone. Rest in piece, Kepler. I now have six wolves, Osiris, Teplowf, Audun, Ammon, Carson, and Hadohan. I've decided to strip mine for now and leave my wolves be, as I don't need another fallen friend. Once I have enough iron, I'll return to the surface and farm until I have sufficient food and resources to start exploring. But for now, I want charcoal. Lots of it. I'll chop down wood until I have about two stacks. Then I'll go exploring.