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Bihlbo

Arctic Expedition

52 posts in this topic

Recently I decided to make a trip for the arctic, to see what that would be like. I wanted to do my best to simulate an arctic nomad just starting out, so I collected very few supplies. Here's what I had on me:

a bed and a crafting table

2 stacks of sticks and rocks

3 types of trees, 3 saplings each

a fishing pole and some potatoes and cabbage

32 logs

Some things I learned:

1. F3 gives you temperature data and that is pretty interesting. Sure enough, once the temp dropped to about 0.22 there was a hard line in the environment where snow covered everything.

2. Snow in TFC accumulates strangely. It has 8 levels of thickness, up to the snow layer being an entire block thick (but you can't stand on it like you can a placed snow block). Thicker snow slows you down, and if it's on ice you are very, very slow. I couldn't find a recipe for snow shoes, but I really wanted some. Also, if you cheat to enter the nether, the temp doesn't change and the roof gets covered in snow.

3. Past a certain point it's all ocean. I went over 20km without seeing any variation in biome at all, so I just stopped at a few oceanic islands to set up my base. It could be unique to the seed I was playing, or it could be a predictable feature of the arctic, I don't know. At any rate, that presents more than a little challenge.

4. At latitude -45000 or so the temperature is colder than at McMurdo Station (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Station).

Here's what I did!

I had on hand enough materials to get by and build a shelter, though a poor one. I spent the first night huddled under my logs like a chump. Then I started looking around for building materials. There are no trees that far north, and later I found out why. So what I brought would have to suffice. That means no burning my logs, no building with planks, etc.

The first real shelter I made was done by digging under the ice. I picked a shallow location and dug the sand and dirt out from under the ice, which provided me with a roof. A ladder led to the surface. My precious torches never had any effect on ice or snow at these temperatures, so I didn't have to worry about it melting on me.

That got me thinking. I made a bucket. I built up dirt and sand forms that held water, which then froze pretty quickly. Building from the ground up I could make an ice house with that. But in the process I learned that even though using your hand or a shovel to break snow doesn't give you a snowball, using water does! (And that's more fun than building with ice.) Soon I had me a snow dome with an ice skylight, planted on the ice right next to the island.

Food is an issue. Potato and cabbage seeds could not be planted under the ice in my first shelter, and it was pointless to plant them above ground where they'd just freeze and die. So no crops. The island had some wildlife, which I killed (no point in saving them, as I can't breed them). The chickens were herded into a coop for their eggs, so I got that.

I tried fishing. Maddening. Every cast required quite a few ice blocks to be broken. Once the snow igloo was complete, I broke out a 2x6 strip right in the floor so I could have a dedicated pool of water for fishing, and this has been successful. I can eat eggs and fish, even if they won't make a meal.

But I need to cook them. Luckily there is peat in one of the small islands nearby, so that is my sole fuel source right now. My sticks cannot yet be replaced, so if I haven't killed any skeletons I don't get a new shovel for peat collecting (such was my attempt to ration sticks).

No surface rocks are left within a kilometer of my igloo. I found lots of copper deposits, but only one sphalerite, and therefore not enough small ore to yet make a pick.

You're probably wondering why getting more sticks and wood seems so hard when I came with saplings to grow. It seems that snowfall, when it accumulates, replaces both torches and saplings. After one night digging out my first shelter, I emerged at dawn to see all my saplings destroyed, except one douglas fir. My hope is that if I find a large enough cavern I can grow it in a sheltered place. So far I haven't found any cave entrances in the islands nearby, and without a pick I cannot dig to find a closed cave.

I have food for now. Eventually my fishing pole will break and I'll need to use string and sticks to make another one. Eventually I'll run out of resources to make weapons to kill spiders for string, and I'll run out of sticks. So fish is not a long-term solution. Eggs are, but the peat will eventually run out and you can't eat raw eggs.

If I don't find enough ore to make a pick and a cavern to shelter my tree, I'm going to starve to death.

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Very cool. You should post pics of your igloo.

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I posted this mainly to share some things I learned. My story should help others plan their trip to the arctic. I'm actually thinking of starting over since the location I picked is clearly lacking. Given the terrain, the only thing you need at all is access to a tier 0 ore. The place where I settled doesn't have any, and therefore I have to find it somewhere else. I've killed all the critters and I can't smelt copper with what I have, so I have no reason to stay there. Might as well pick up and move on.

At any rate, I'll see about doing a better job documenting the efforts. I'd want to see these things too.

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bump for pic request! Sounds pretty fun.

Could you make an ice shelter for your saplings? not fully enclosed, but an overhang to prevent snowfall?

Would also be curious if you could use Ice to effectively kill critters around your shelter. Dig a hole at your entrace, once the critter is standing in that, pour in a bucket of water and see if it freezes. If so and the system treats it as a solid block similar to cave in, you might be able to kill them without using up valuable supplies.

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Sapling shelter of ice. Hmm...

I'd have to pillar up and make a base to cast the ice, but if I can do that I don't need to use ice. I could use peat or clay blocks (which defy gravity) to pillar up and for the shelter, which only needs to be 1 block. It has to be quite high considering the height of a douglas fir. But then I have a floating block in the air and I feel like a cheater. Ambivalent about that.

Your trap idea needs some work and testing, but it might be possible. I'm not very motivated to kill monsters however, since the sun gets me the bones way better than I can on my own, and I don't care if the others live or die, except spiders. As rarely as I'll need string, the sedate suntime spiders are easy enough to kill with javelins or with the old "I'm in a space you can't fit in now how do you like my fist" trick. The real hard part about the fishing pole is the pole.

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Agreed on a single block feeling like cheating, plus it's just ugly. Always bugs me when a tree falls and leaves that one leaf block floating. Or Sequioas a few builds back leaving their entire leaf structure.

I was thinking more of an ice greenhouse. Gather dirt, stack it high enough on an existing hill, cover it in a layer of ice, hollow that out down to stone level. Place enough dirt and plant trees.

Wouldn't work for crops since temp would still be too low, but might keep snow off the saplings long enough for them to root.

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The "arctic" starts at +-30k, after that, the temperature is essentially constant. It gets to about -50 C in the winter.

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It's fun to have stories like that. Most of the time I end up going south and exploring jungles, but now I can to go to the arctic.

In build 77 it might get harder to set in the arctic as sapling will need clear sky so grow (no block over them)

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Glass wouldn't count as a block though, so you could make an ice house and cap it off with glass made in a fire pit.

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It's fun to have stories like that. Most of the time I end up going south and exploring jungles, but now I can to go to the arctic. In build 77 it might get harder to set in the arctic as sapling will need clear sky so grow (no block over them)

Well, you need a clear sky in B76 to plant saplings. A tree growing near your farm plot is a killer ,-)
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The "arctic" starts at +-30k, after that, the temperature is essentially constant. It gets to about -50 C in the winter.

Speaking of which, if you ever make changes to world gen, I wouldn't mind it if the world between the polar regions were a bit broader north to south than Lake Ontario.
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The reason that it's only about 60Km from North to South polar arctics is because Bioxx wanted it to be possible for players to travel and explore the whole world. Considering it takes about 2 Minecraft days to travel 4Km by just outright running, a month to go from one end to the other without traveling east/west seems more than long enough.

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Yeah, but you don't start at the south and travel all the way to the north. You start somewhere (guessing from my starting locations anyway) between -5k and -15k. So actually making the trip from where you start to either the tropics or the arctic is darn fast. I was shocked that it didn't take a couple of months. It is not more than enough.

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Well, you need a clear sky in B76 to plant saplings. A tree growing near your farm plot is a killer ,-)

My mistake, tree sapling will only spawn under a clear sky and only over 20 degree celcius.

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My mistake, tree sapling will only spawn under a clear sky and only over 20 degree celcius.

Where'd you get that?
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Where'd you get that?

Bioxx said this in IRC, this will be true for build 77
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Conifers saplings should be able to survive some snowfall.

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Well that means arctic living is not a long-term possibility by any stretch.

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Trees won't spawn doesn't mean that they won't grow. You'd just have to harvest your own trees.

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so what about the tree's in alaska and russia? obviously they should be more accessible closer to the colder regions (not the artic itself, nothing really GROWS there ;)

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Trees won't spawn doesn't mean that they won't grow. You'd just have to harvest your own trees.

You're right, I misread that as "grow" instead of what he actually wrote. Thanks.

But if it requires a clear shot to the sky, tree growth is difficult and requires vigilance. So far I haven't had the gumption to sit there and wait, ready to grab it if snow begins to fall.

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PanRouge is right, they will likely survive and grow, but not spawn. Same for grass, so you won't have to cut grass, as it will not grow under 20 celcius. Now everybody will move north!

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hell no, havent you heard? winter is coming, im going east, towards the summer isles, after all, they have a fertility goddess with 16 teats!

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If it were up to me, the world would be a lot bigger north to south than it currently is, and there would be a lot more variety in the landscape based on the temperature. I know that conifers do grow in warmer climates, but without a clear way to tell you what the temperature is, since we don't have a sense of touch, having vegetation spawn according to temperature (more than it currently does, anyway) would make for more varried landscapes. Exploring the world shouldn't be something you can do on foot in a month, but the decision is joint between Bioxx and I, so it's not going to change.

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