Day 825: a picture of my angry pig men

Day 825:

I’m back at home base because I ran out of tools to the east and I’m not finding diamonds fast enough at night to keep the tools in good condition. (I have a small store of them back home.) It was also a good chance to make sure that all my animals were safe and healthy, and that my crops are still growing.

And to pack up some chicken jerky to take with me because the potatoes I took last time are getting kind of old and I don’t just mean boring.

Here’s a picture of the top part of my ranch bit.

View of a pond with a glass floor. inside, zombie pig men stand on the glass in the pond.

You might notice that there are strange pig-like men with half their face missing in the bottom of my pond. One night we had a horrible thunderstorm and the next morning I found them living in my pond. They don’t seem to need air? They just stand down there? They do seem to know what they’re doing with the swords, though, so I’m just at a live-and-let-live stage  with them.

Day 824: Sunset over the easternmost entrance

Day 824:

So I think I mentioned that there were at least two more skeleton horses roaming the woods at the base of the mountain.

I managed to catch one of them today. I thought of using it as a mount, it seems like a nice enough horse, but there are so many murderers around right now that I don’t want to lose this one again as fast as I lost the last one. (That loss still stings a bit.)

Instead, I’ve put the horse in my ranch area paddock meadow field thing. It has the creepiest neigh.

Once I figure out what (if anything) I can do about these murderers, I’ll start using my horse more. The horse is definitely easier (especially overground) to use for travel than the mine carts underground are.  For one thing, it’s hard to steer a mine cart around a zombie if there’s no track available.

It was a beautiful sunset tonight, so I took a picture of it.

The sun setting over the granite roof of the easternmost outpost.

Day 823: Surprise! another pond!

Day 823:

Back up at the northern end of the mountains today. It’s not as cold here because there’s no snow, but there are apparently still mountain springs.

That’s right, I found another half-underground pond.

I will never have dry socks again I swear.

A small pond half covered over with dirt and gravel.

Day 822: mining again, and coal

Day 822:

Spent the day down in the southern end mining to bring the mountain down. Most of the time it’s all stone, which I turn into rubble and haul away to use as fill. (I’ve discovered that it makes great fill when I hit bedrock because I can’t dig up bedrock and this way I’m not trying to walk around on a wildly uneven surface.)

(Hauling rock underground instead of out of the ground is a bit odd, I’ll say that much.)

Anyway, most of the time it’s stone but every once in a while I hit a coal seam and get to take something out of the ground that’s actually useful. I’ve been veery careful to try to keep my coal-burning activities limited to places with great ventilation (even if they’re underground) because I know ultimately the smoke from this stuff will kill me. Ultimately, not having a source of fire right now will kill me faster.

A two-block-wide cliff with six blocks of coal visible in the floor. Beyond the zigzagging cliff's edge, a view of the far-below river valley.

Day 821: killed the murderers

Day 821:

I had to go up to the northern end of the area I’m in to get some gravel that I’d stored up that way.

The murderers wouldn’t leave me alone.

They aren’t bothering anyone anymore, just like the last set, but this is definitely getting old.

The view down a hill to a tree line. Murderers armed with loaded crossbows approach from halfway up the hill, bows drawn and aimed at the viewer. A chicken lingers in the left of the scene.