Overgrown 2026: polar bears & road network

260131 Overgrown 2026

We had about an hour and a half to play on saturday.  It was a fun time flying out over that frozen waste north of Albertville.  First I made a bunch of large pens next to the town with hedges, then we went out and found brown and white wolves, foxes, and a few kinds of pigs and cows.  We did not find a polar bear, though I definitely sighted one in that area ... but it turns out there was a chest in the snow golem main igloo with, of all things, a soul vial (Ender IO mod) with a polar bear in it.

We did later find a polar bear and a baby, and boy, when you're near their baby, they rear up and try to tear your face off.  That's fine.  We can admire them from a distance.

We did a lot of exploring, and it was a good time.

260201 Overgrown 2026

This morning I had less than an hour to visit.  I started at the new animal sanctuary in Albertville and wondered what the nearest other major settlement was.  I thought the map showed Brixton just over the mountain range, so I started building a cobblestone slab road up and over ... only to run into a road coming the other way that almost made it.  Funny how my brain saw the map maybe two years apart and chose the same exact valley to build the road in.  Anyway, I connected and improved that road, and it came out at MineColony, NOT Brixton.  Though technically, since I finished the road between those two, all my settlements from Albertville to Aden ARE connected by roads now.  From the Welcome Center in Brixton, the map shows 1535m to Albertville and 1164m to Aden in the other direction.  Goals after that would be to reach Colfax (993m) and Crater (905m) then Rustic (2525m) and Eastwick (2445m).

Yes, I can fly or teleport, and do just about whatever I want.  But sometimes, I just like to follow roads off into the distance.

I hollowed out the mini-mesa behind the Welcome Center and put enough storage drawers to hold all the different colors of terracotta.  A fun mini project.

2107: Just finished a fun 45-minute project.  I brought a vacuum chest out to a new space by the Welcome Center and put it on a pillar 5 blocks high.  Turned on the "view area" feature and saw that it can grab items from 6 blocks up and down as well as left to right.  So, with that sitting 5 blocks off the ground, I was able to build a 12x13 pen for all the animals I need to collect auto-drops from, three levels high, four blocks of space per level, and with the vacuum chest just off the ground in the dead center of the second level, it should be able to grab everything from the whole tower of animals.  I moved all my pink sheep to level one, other sheep to level two, and cows, mooshroms and pigs to level three.  The driver motive is that I need a lot more pinkly poo from the pink guys.  Time to breed em up a bit.  Now I have about 16 of them.  I need 81 poo to make one bucket of rainbow slurry for a future build.

That was a fun build.  Some other things that were on my mind: I need to get fortune III onto my second pick.  So I wanted to craft an Ender IO enchanter, where you can craft exactly the book you need.  It needed dark steel, and looking at recipes, it looks like there are a lot of new tiers of machines and gears and parts in EnderIO.  I would like to get past these few basic machines someday.  Anyway, I got the enchanter and put it next to the experience obelisk where I have 90 levels saved up.  I got the book I needed...

I did a quick fly past the pumpkin houses and cow and sheep pens.  I expanded the cow pens by three because the bulls look bigger than we remembered, and the old 5x7 pens were too small.  Well, now they're 6x10 interior, not a big deal, just a thing that was on my mental TO DO list.  I also switched the sheep pens to pig pens, since they're empty and easy to change plans for.  We forgot the sheep have multiple colors for some breeds, so we don't know how many pens to build for those yet.  I stopped at Mammoth Woods to name the mammoths: the big one is Marge, the little one is Midge, even though it will grow up and look exactly the same.

Looking at possible roads again ... Colfax is west of Brixton over hills and a desert with yet another academy.  Crater is due north across a river and through some mesas, it could loop west to MineColony.  Rustic is about 1200m to the ESE over lakes and through deep woods.  Some of my map sectors show out-of-date data from past versions of the pack, so I am flying around to update those areas.   There is a massive plateau with snowcapped spruce trees centered around -626 132 -760 that will block any attempt at roadbuilding.  Turn left and it's 350m to chocolate house, in the woods outside Rustic.

The river valley out here is gorgeous, winding between steep cliffs and mesas.  I discovered a Patchwork stone brick ruin tumbling down the hillside at -131 92 -893, set a waypoint (mtn ruin) for future exploration.  That's across the river from a red sand desert with a nether brick fort with "blaze castle" waypoint.  Another dungeon at -116 75 -1087, one of those with spawners all down along a spiral stairway, zombies waiting.  Looks like the only viable surface route from Aden to Rustic is through this desert and the big sakura forest to the northwest.

Looking for any kind of landmark in that huge sakura forest, I found "witch town" at -388 79 -1348.   A perfect space to a stop along a future silk road.  Wow, it turns out the witch town is only 200m from the dungeon house next to Aden that I built a road to a few nights ago.

2225: The road from Aden to Witch Town is done.  There are a lot of lyrebirds along the way making weird squeaky sounds.  I hope I can find another landmark further into the sakura woods and have a few more things to see on this scenic route.

Done for the night.

#