At the end of the April Minecraft session, I had a few ideas about where to improve the cave next; for May I decided to dig up and out through the cave on the left.

So I started by wandering around, seeing where I thought it would come out, repeating the survey from April. There’s a pretty high snowy hill that I think goes pretty much straight back from the cave; I think if I went up at a 45 degree angle, I’d come out in the middle of that, but I’m not completely sure.

That seemed non-ideal but workable, and maybe something interesting would come out of the shape of the hill, so I decided to go forward with my plan and start building stairs up and out of the back of the cave. But I ran into a surprise when I did that: not only was there a passage right behind the back wall of that cave, but it was lit by torches. So I’d been there before, I just didn’t realize it.

I wandered around; I found some areas of cave that were new (there are a lot of caves and passages here), some that I’d been to before and some that were new, and eventually I managed to make it back to the furnished area of the cave by following through the passages. I still don’t have a complete view of things, but basically there seems to more or less be a ring of cave passages around the large central cave, though it’s twisty enough that it’s hard to put together a mental picture.

At any rate, I kept on going back, and ran into a second set of caves; there was a passage that was going up and to the left, so I followed it for a while, but eventually it turned too much so I decided to just build my stairs out in the appropriate direction, and I didn’t run into any more surprises.

It turns out that, because of the jog to the left from following the existing passage, I came out just barely to the side of the hill that I thought I would be up: the exit is in a really nice position, actually. Nice not only in terms of coming out right at the edge of the hill, but also nice because there was a lava and a pool right there, so I decided to treat the pool as a hot spring.

That’s the inside; looking at it from the outside, there were some safety problems, so I added railings.

I also tidied up the route from the cave to the hot springs, adding signs and proper stairs.

The next place I decided to work on was the upper room in the back. First I tried a podium, but that didn’t look so great, so I decided to use a couch and bookshelves, similar to the room beneath it.

Once that was done, I decided to work on the stairs up from that room, to the back exit. And there, too, I ran into a surprise: when I replaced blocks with stairs, I again ran into the cave passage ring. I ended up splitting the steps into two: one up to the back exit, and one back down into the cave passage ring.

I’m not sure what to do next. Maybe I’ll work on that flat area above the upper room? Maybe I’ll investigate that ring passage? Maybe I’ll start connecting this cave to Pinetown? Pretty sure I’ll continue in that area, at any rate.

 

Miranda was also there for some of the time, she was working on a desert castle.