For the February Minecraft session, I knew I wanted to continue the improvements I’d made in December. I’d built some rooms in the back of my cave; the question, then, was how to extend those into a complex.

Looking at the room in the back

While wandering around, I noticed what looked like the sky poking through over on one side; I didn’t believe that that was really the sky, I thought it was probably a glitch, but when looking at that, I realized that there was not only a cave passage there in the wall that I hadn’t realized, but that passage connected to the outside.

Is this a glitch or an actual hole?

So that got me thinking about expanding laterally from the room in the back; I decided that I would build a balcony around three sides of the central cavern. The question then was exactly how that would work; I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use the existing railing and cut into the walls a bit, or if I wanted to extend out into the center. The former would cause questions about my stairs, the latter might make the balcony cast too much of a shadow beneath it.

Planning how the balcony will extend from the back room

What am I going to do with these stairs?

I think this lava is from the cave passage that I discovered, but I could be wrong; actually, thinking about it more, maybe I discovered another cave passage behind that back room, when I dug into the walls?

I eventually decided that cutting away the wall, moving the stair back, and having the stair mostly exit into the balcony instead of the back room was the right approach. And, if I’m remembering correctly, when I was moving the stair, I dug into another cave behind that room, maybe that’s where the above picture is from? At any rate, once I did that, I got the balcony working nicely on the three non-water sides of the cave.

The completed balcony on all three sides

Here’s a view from the water towards the back

That glitch is still there: it’s a persistent rendering glitch rather than a loading glitch

And the stairs ended up working okay going out into the balcony, with the help of cutting out one corner.

The reworked stair exit

The reworking caused some steps to be visible in the ceiling

Another view of the back, where you can see the stairs a little better

I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do next; I might add a fourth side to the balcony, but I’m not convinced I can find a way to do that that will work well with the water. Maybe I’ll explore the newly discovered passage more and turn it into another official entrance into the cave, maybe I’ll build more rooms.

Pat, meanwhile, was finishing off a lighthouse he’d built, and he added a ship:

Ship and lighthouse

Steps to the lighthouse

An entrance gateway

A better view of the ship

And then he started building something more abstract in an ice forest, it’s a rather beautiful tunnel going down into a big space that he excavated with the help of some TNT. I don’t think he’s done with it, but here’s the current status:

A view from the top

The upper half of the tunnel down

The transition in the middle

The chamber at the bottom, going down to bedrock

The glass tunnel from the outside