Welcome to part 2. I’ll start by showing off how Grand Central works.

Firstly, press the button, like the sign says.

Tada! Wild minecart appears!

Next, choose your destination. Light on = switch on.

Essentially, follow the signs and you’ll be fine.

And off we go!

Into the wilderness.

Soon, you reach Bloxxor Desert. Darkness has descended.

Something looms in the darkness over there…

There we go! That’s AbortedSlunk’s Ghast-Sphinx he’s working on. Pretty cool!

To the east of the station is the mines of Bloxor. It is a highly resource-rich mine, but to this day, nobody who has mined within it has managed to come back out through the entrance. The insides are so confounding that you always have to dig back to the surface.

The view from the top of Mt. Bloxor.

AbortedSlunk’s Sphinx closer up.

It is quite large…

It has a secret *shudder* back entrance that leads to a safe room. Yes, you’re entering through its butt.

The safe room is very handy though.

Back at the station, ready to go to our next destination. To work these stations, you place your cart on the downward-sloping piece of powered rail next to the button. Then you hop in, and press said button. Away you go!

I made that epic tree in the distance just for funsies. It extends above cloud height!

Welcome to the Burning Foothills. Before the 1.3 update, this entire area was continuously ablaze. Since Notch removed eternal fire, Owenza went and placed torches on top of almost all the trees, as a spooky memorial to the once epic fire that scorched these lands.

The Burning Foothills’ other purpose is as a major rail hub. Most lines either pass through, begin or terminate at this station.

As you can see, it is a hub for the Central Loop, Northern Loop, Grand Central Express and the ending point for the Marica Cuba Line.

At every station, Minecraft player “teh_lynx” has added a “Porkchop Goodwill Program” chest. It is full of cooked pork chops. These stations serve as a good temporary base in otherwise hostile lands, and these chests further add to the safety provided within their walls. Generally the rule is, use as many as you want, but try to replenish them if there are pigs around.

I’m also trying to build safe-houses either next to or under each station so that you can rest up if you don’t want to fight the monsters at night.

As you can see, the railway network around here is quite confusing. Best to stay off the tracks, or I get rather annoyed.

The station was built next to this surface-pool of lava. This was the original cause of the entire Burning Foothills - a tree grew too close to it, and it set the entire forest ablaze.

Nearby Burning Foothills Train Station lives Owenza, in Wenza’s Boat House.

It is, as the name suggests, a dock for housing boats within. It’s pretty cool.

The roof has some nice chairs for fishing, and a lovely view of the bay. Note the Glass House from the previous post in the top right corner.

On the other side of The Burning Foothills, is this single flower. Interesting stuff, huh?

Oh, but what’s this?

Ahaa! This is where my real house is! Screw the little shed AbortedSlunk built around me in the water, this is where my true abode lies.

DRAMATIC SURROUNDINGS!

Comfy and cosy inside!

Time to head west, and back on the railway.

The landscape becomes icier the further west you travel in this map. Frostforth Sound was the first major snowy area to be discovered on this map.

Taffy85 created this snowman. His name is Duncan. He’s awesome.

In the middle of a frozen lake lies Frostforth Sound Station. Picturesque views surround it.

While there is very little here except for the station, one day soon, a Zelda-esque Ice Temple may lie within these far off mountains. It depends if I ever get around to finishing my grand ideas for these things.

This will probably be the entrance, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Back on the railway now, and through the tropics once more.

AbortedSlunk used to have a “low ceiling” block here that would smack you in the head as you rode through it, taking off a good heart’s worth of damage. It has since been removed due to angry protests by disgruntled rail commuters (mainly me :P)

MOAR SCENERY Oh wait, I know that tower!

Aaand back at Grand Central.

Finally, I’ll explain how the depositing system of minecarts work. Essentially, you get out, and stand on one of the buttons there and…

Tada! It packs itself away, ready to be dispensed again.

Now, to summarise, here is an isometric view of the places I showed you today:

Bloxxor Desert

The Burning Foothills

Frostforth Sound

Next up: Northern Loop Part 1: Hobby Hole Hut, Honeycomb Fields and Crystal Peak.

Welcome to Doyvid’s Minecraft Shenanigans.

On December 31st, 2010, I established a Minecraft Server. Ever since then, most nights it has been on for me and my friends to play on. This is what we’ve come up with so far. Yes, to start off with the stuff which I’ll show you will be “meh” and “pixellated, blocky tits or gtfo”, but eventually we’ll get to some cool stuff.

Just a note: We don’t play with flying or teleportation or anything like that. We occasionally hack items for massive projects, but only if mining the sheer amount of resources required by hand would be plain stupid.

So, where to start? How about with the spawn point:

Yes, like most other spawn points, being greeted with this view leads to inevitable frustration, as your corpse is either currently burning in a pit of lava (along with all of your valuable loot), being raped by a spider, or splattered across the crater of a recent creeper explosion. Either that or you fell from a great height and were just plain fucking dumb.

That big castle to the right?

It’s Sing’s Asian Megafortress. Don’t ask about the name. Constructed by Taffy85 and AbortedSlunk, this was one of the first “Big Structure” projects.

Inside, there’s your typical castle affair - big open spaces, hidden rooms behind the stairwell, and the always-necessary Nether Portal.

On a hill near spawn, there is this:

This shed, or “The Toolshed” as it is affectionately known between Owenza, AbortedSlunk and I, was the first hastily-constructed structure on the server. Created just before sunset, we spent the night crammed inside this tiny shed, creepers peering in through the windows.

After a few terrifying nights of resource gathering, we made this:

This is The Lodge. Much like the apartment in “Friends”, it has been home to the three founding members at one stage or another over the lifetime of the server. Currently, I am the only one who still uses it as a “Main Base” - AbortedSlunk and Owenza have moved on to their own, crappier dwellings.

Ground Level

Upper Level

Kitchen, complete with obligatory Portal reference.

AbortedSlunk’s room, which I generally use for refuge from Creepers for the night.

On top of a mountain right next to The Lodge is our storehouse.

Inside is all the raw materials a Minecrafter could ever want. All mined/harvested legitimately, too.

Overview of The Lodge area.

One day, AbortedSlunk decided to make a chessboard. To this day, nobody has dared challenge him to a game of chess. Mainly because most of us struggle with the basics of chess, let alone the substitues for the pieces.

Seems legit.

This is apparently my house. AbortedSlunk built this around me one day when I was idling. Pro tip: Don’t idle on the server, or else you’ll be housed. Lately our “housing” pranks have become ever more elaborate, such as digging the player down 50-odd blocks  and then sealing them in with obsidian.

This was our first “mega structure” - it is called the Great Tower, and it extends all the way to the highest level, right down to bedrock. If you can see it from where you are, you know you aren’t lost!

What it looks like at the top.

View from the top. What’s the big glass structure? We’ll get to that in a little while.

This is the Glass House (but it isn’t the big glass structure in the previous picture). It is near The Lodge, and it was designed as a “safe haven” from monsters for collecting wood at all hours. For some reason, the idea never really caught on, so it has sat here, unused pretty much from the day it was constructed.

Inside the Glass House.

A nice view back to Spawn Area, Sing’s Asian Megafortress and The Great Tower.

I refer to this place as “dickaround fields”. If I’m ever trying to figure out the intricacies of redstone to create some form of horribly evil device, rest assured that the prototype can be found (or was initially researched, crafted and then destroyed due to it being too horrific for mankind) here. My favourite is the rapid fire arrow cannon, but I recently broke it… somehow…

Finally, my pride and joy: Grand Central Station. To carry us between the different populace areas on this server, I have created a large railway network. This station is the only “fully functional” station - you can call up a cart, and when you disembark from your cart back at this station, it gets packed away automatically. I recently added a “NethEx” portion to the station, too, which is a Nether rail express to some very long distance areas such as Marica Cuba and Crystal Peaks.

If it is your first visit to The Lodge, and you aren’t a resident, you need to go through this door for… “immigration procedures”. Yes. Let’s call it that.

…Those immigration procedures may take place in a rape dungeon… You can thank AbortedSlunk for this policy.

This is how the automatic station works. Don’t ask me to explain it. Even I’m not sure…

Finally, here’s a rail map, and an isometric view of the places that I showed you in this part:

Where to next? I’ll probably show you the Central Loop. Stay tuned!