Minecraft: Scouting Trip

I’ve been meandering around the last month or two trying to figure out what my next Minecraft project should be, but now I think I have a pretty clear plan. I want to turn the back of my home mountain into a railroad station; I’ll build tracks out of that leading to another settlement, and I’ll use that settlement as an opportunity to build an outdoor house or houses, in a way that teaches me more about Christopher Alexander.

So, this weekend, off I went! But first, a gratuitous sheep picture:

Hello, sheep

After saying hello to the sheep, I went south from the back of my home mountain. Here’s where the entrance to the train station will be, and where the tracks would most naturally go:

Trains will come out of here ...

... and head in this direction

My memory was that, if I go south a bit, I’ll run into terrain that is more interesting than desert but not super fascinating. Which is actually perfect for me: I want the terrain to give me something to try to harmonize with, but also to have enough problems that the presence of my buildings will have a chance at helping it instead of hurting it. And, after not too far, this is what I came across: that area to the right looks at least somewhat promising.

The first interesting terrain past the desert

So I tentatively thought I might build over there. But, assuming the train tracks didn’t turn, I would end up going to the left of that land hill instead of the right: maybe that’s where the train station will go? I decided to explore that way a little more.

A little further on on the left side

Two caves in the side of the sand cliff

The upper cave is moderately deep

The lower water cave is small but pretty

And I liked what I saw. There are two caves, one of which is small and pretty and the other of which is rather deep. So I can imagine connecting the buildings I build on the other side of that hill to one or both of those caves, and having some interesting mining as a result. I decided to press on still further south, just to remind myself what was there:

Several sheep splashing in some ponds

Lots of trees further back

Whoa, that's a long way down

There was some nice stuff, but nothing crying out to have me build a settlement there. I did chop down a bunch of trees for building material, though. So then I turned back and looked at the other side of that sand hill, to see if it looked like a suitable building location.

A circular area providing a weak center

A slightly wider view of the surroundings

I didn’t take great pictures, unfortunately: in particular, I didn’t take any pictures looking south at that time, though I’ll put some up in that post. But, basically, there’s a cute pond (not in any of these pictures), a circular depression that is somewhat interesting but could use some strengthening, some sand leading to a sand mountain, and some trees off to the side. So there were features that I could work off of, but also features that I could see improving.

So: it’s a plan! Build a train station, run tracks south, have a second train station to the left of the hill, and build a few houses on the right side of the hill. I’ll start with the houses, though, the train tracks can wait. But, first, a stake in the ground:

The future location of my second train station