DAMIDOOP XYZ
Author: Maple
Posted: January 15, 2025
The castle I built in Beta 1.7.3
Screenshot was taken February 2nd, 2024.
It certainly hasn’t felt like a year, and to some it may not look like a year’s worth of progress, but oh man.
For context, last year in the week of January 7th, I started a Minecraft server for myself and a few friends if they wanted to see what was going on. I started playing on Beta 1.7.3, as I liked the gameplay loop and how simple. I had the idea to periodically update my server to the next major release whenever I was done with all the content with the update I was on.
I didn’t update from Beta 1.7.3 for a while, as I was enjoying the simplicity. I built a house, started making a replica Village (as they were added in Beta 1.8), and built the obligatory castle.
For the first while, it felt like my world was empty. It was a totally valid feeling because I spent the first month of playing exploring caves, mining for resources, and only building close by. At spawn, it felt okay, but if you went towards the castle, it was an empty plot of land.
As part of the first month of starting, I had to come up with a transportation solution for my lacking ability to sprint, because at walking speeds, even 40 blocks felt like a long distance trip. My solution was, naturally, a rail network. It was underground, beneath my pathways and the (one) bridge I had at the time, and connected my areas that, in newer versions of the game, would not have been far at all. It certainly wasn’t pretty at the start, and sure took a long time to get to its current state, but it was incredibly handy.
After that month, maybe a little more, I updated to Beta 1.8. I had already constructed myself a house, castle, and replica Village. Being able to sprint was quite the breath of fresh air, though hindered by the fact you had to double-tap the ‘W’ key (Which was not how I normally sprinted). My plan of updating went exactly according to plan, as my primary goal was to keep things fresh to keep me playing. Using my newfound ability, I started building a town next to my castle. I wanted to truly build a world.
One would think that after I unlocked the ability to sprint that my itty bitty rail system would quickly become obsolete. I thought so too, but it had become one of the driving factors of growth in my world. Now, in the form it was in when I updated, it would not have been nearly as useful as it had been in Beta 1.7.3. It was set up for fairly short trips between my replica village, house, and castle, which were no longer chores to get to. The rail became useful once I shifted around some stops to make it quicker to get to others. I remodelled the original tunnels to be nicer to the eye from the inside.
As I started to go further and further away from the safety of my town, I wanted to build things that would be easiest to get to with rails. This need for expansion drove me to completely remodel the castle’s rail station to make room for enough lines to get to each cardinal direction.
The view of my town a weird and tall landmass
Screenshot was taken October 12th, 2024.
I just realised that I rambled on for two long paragraphs about my Minecraft rail system, so I’ll talk about my castle town for at least a little bit.
The castle town construction started just before I updated to Beta 1.8, so the first two houses (plus the castle) were built with all the challenges that come with not having the Adventure Update. I’ve slowly worked on it over the past year, of course. Slowly but surely, the town grew and spread fairly far north of the castle, and still has more room to grow (aka i haven’t finished building inside houses lol).
There are other things I’ve built over the past year, such as a sorta wizard’s tower build made out of nether brick, netherrack, and stone bricks, and it houses my brewing stand and enchanting table. It is connected via rail, though isn’t too far away should walking be necessary. The tower is slightly north of town, and there is a desert only a little further north than that, which I’ve been stripping of sand. It is also the current place for my Iron Farm, which while isn’t as efficient as 1.14+ iron farms, is still enough for me.
Before I continue listing things I’ve built, I should clarify how you get to these places. It won’t come as a surprise that the aforementioned rail system is how. It spans well over a thousand blocks total, and even just taking one half of it is enough to get the “On a Rail!” achievement.
With that out of the way, I am (kinda in the process of) building a town in a village in the desert very far north from my castle. My rail goes all the way out the stronghold out in the far west, while an incredibly long branch heads west to the ocean.
Currently, I’m on version 1.7.10, and I’m waiting until I have the resources I want to have, so I can start the biggest project I’ve ever taken on in Minecraft when I update to version 1.8.9. That project is a guardian farm, similar to the one that Mumbo Jumbo builds in Hermitcraft Season 6, with all the fancy shapes and prismarine it will take. So far, I’ve amassed a lot of sand, though I feel like I would underestimate how much I need. I have a bunch of quartz if I need it, though I may use the iron I’ve been getting.
That about wraps my long ass rambling blog post, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it, and man, I love having a website where I can just write as much of whatever I could think of.
The town from the south, where spawn is.
Screenshot was taken May 14th, 2024.
Screenshot from a chunk error lol
Screenshot was taken May 23rd, 2024.
My upgraded AUTOMATED storage system!