VeeTech 1.5.2 (5/1 to 5/4)

5/1

I logged in to do a few builds around the Field of Ruins, which a few nights ago I renamed in my head to Ferrovia.  So the addresses can still be FR-1 etc.

Leaving the town in the direction away from Jerome, the thin road crosses over to a small island which for some reason I picture being totally covered in wheat, with the smart-ass name "Wil's Wheaten Isle".  I got the first stack of wheat planted and got distracted by a pit which I dug stairs down to, and of course it was "Wil's Wheaten Isle Mine."  From there I completed the road to the broken up snowy redwood willage with no name, which I dubbed "Sophos".  It went past one deep chasm that needed stairs down and a brief exploration, and I posted a sign with a name, but forgot what the name was already.

I only had an hour and a half, and updated the gazeteer for a few streets in Ferrovia and Jerome.  Oddly, those little village guidebooks that I write are one of my favorite in-game pasttimes.

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5/3

Last night was an uneventful romp through VeeTech 1.5.2.  I added buildings to "Lower" Jerome including a new NPC to do Aquaculture stuff, and I fished out a few things from the river.  After that, I ran around on the plains behind the sheep farm.  Dug stairs down into a pit that was unlit, but it went nowhere, so the new sign said "Nowhere Mine".  

From there, the big Blue Monastery was looming in the distance, so I went over to explore it.  I took the ladders down to the bottom basement level, and was surprised to see a powered pair of pulverizer/furnaces by the official mine entrance.  I always had ideas for expanding this base, but it was such a big job just to repair the sandstone floors after that epic battle years ago, I never came back.  One level should be built out as a marketplace -- it currently has 3 lost miners.  Those guys are fun to rescue, and get the emeralds from, and days later they might feel like giving another emerald.  They are a bit better than villagers for adding a "population" to my settlements: they have no trades (then again, villager trades are usually junk), but at least they're quiet.  So, this was always meant to be a base full of actual operations, but never went anywhere.

From the Blue Monastery, I went back to Jerome (fixed some roads along the way), then followed my lonely road across the desert and snow fields and came out at ... the quarried stone mine just below Hillfall.  Hillfall is one of my bigger settlements, about 25 buildings and farms spread out between Downtown, Midtown and Uptown, plus the box dungeon directly below the town (now a well laid-out mining operation) and the less developed box dungeon buried around 18y just down the hill.  There are about 20 traders spread out around town, and I had a stack of emeralds, so I went around doing the dud trades with a bunch of guys to unlock possibly better ones.  A few worked out well,but most were a waste.  I suppose if I'm ever in one of my towns and get bored I can just go see what the testificates are asking for, and go find it for them for a bribe of an emerald or two.  I updated my notes files, played wisp hunter for a while, poked my head in every building, sorted chests.  Somehow, a lost miner kept appearing up by the well, and I safari netted him and put him on the roof of the building by the cranberry farm, only to have him back by the well next time I passed by.

I keep meaning to add a project board (bunch of signs on a wall) to each town to jot down my ideas.  And put down a few blocks specific to each town to be included in every building, to give each town its own slightly different look.  It's silly when each new building is a completely different style, and since I occupy mostly pc-generated structures, the stone brick walls and old-style village buildings are pretty bland.  Somewhere in between, I should be able to put down a few wood blocks and stone blocks near town hall as the "design template" for that town.  Maybe a little shack as the "model house".  Maybe Uptown would use more of their local plum wood, while downtown can keep their oak since there are oak trees planted right there ... I don't know, just some scattered design ideas.  Peaked roofs vs flat roofs, support beams, window shutters, plenty of room to make a series of buildings look distinct and fit together as a group.

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5/4

I had about 60 minutes and a nasty headache, so I just hung around Hillfall and tinkered with things.  I renumbered the Uptown addresses and continued one downhill road directly into the next hill and connected it to the stairs going down to the box dungeon over there.  So, no more looking down and wondering how to get there, and I know there is a tunnel deep below that heads that direction, but it's a lot of walking.

A main feature of Uptown is the huge pit about 20x40 and 40 blocks deep with villager houses that spawned at the edge of it on huge cobble pillars.  I took the ladder down and saw a lot of unused space inside those pillars, so one got 3 levels of 5x5 storerooms and one got 4 basement levels, and I added two entrances to caves/mines, so I can spend time just up and down the ladder gathering things.  

Uptown is at the top of a sheer cliff, and I saw some holes in that rock face with an old derelict set of stairs inside.  I replaced that with a ladder years ago, so now I went up the ladder and carved out three levels of 3x9 open space with nicely aligned windows and patched up some old cobble that was showing.  I realized there are almost no beds in the town, so I can put them here and move some NPC villagers into those spaces for local color.

That's about it.  Not flashy but it took some brain power to get the spaces to line up and connect in a useful way, and now there are more corners to come back and rediscover in future visits.

I looked at the text file I included in that old modpack which lets you pick a playing card from a deck to generate a random mod or specific part of a mod.  It was meant for creating NPCs, but would also work for creating projects in general, but half the time I roll up something I just don't feel like doing, like tonight when I got "Reliquary elixirs".  Sure, it's a build, and some resource gathering and crafting new stuff, but I don't use potions or elixirs or most magical things.  Still, a room full of shelves of elixirs would be a change of pace.  It just doesn't motivate me much.