Chapter 24: Ender pearl drought

Basking in the light of victory, I ponder what I can do to celebrate. A feast would be nice but I have few I can share it with. Also lacking the food variety you would expect. I will put it off, for now, nothing to be done I suppose.

While I have completed the island I will definitely continue to improve it, right now it looks natural but a little blocky so I will make a chisel and cut away at some corners for all my builds. Although for now, it's fine. Taking the time I have now I find all my previous errors on the castle; fixing them and enhancing a few funny looking bits.

I also create a spiral staircase leading into the internal cavity of the island. Also made holes smartly placed everywhere so I can fly freely without using the now awfully decorative stairs.

Finding the internal cavity is pitch black and terrifying, I make a short trip gathering my remaining Glowstone. Producing a small artificial sun and placing Glowstone around to lighten the whole artificial cavern. With that done I create a grid of stone at the bottom for my power system and its expansion. I also erect a nether portal, aether portal, and twilight portal in a small stone room inside the cavity. The latter two portals are for another day. Going into the nether with a ton of buckets I make a few trips gathering lava to fill out the stone grid which will soon be a massive power system.

Noting my armor resists the heat well for the nether. In fact, I can touch lava with my boot before I feel any heat. Not pleasantly cool like the heatproof vest but it's sufficient. I place massive grids of lava and water, then create a second layer. Lava, air, water. Next line water, air, lava. The air which is filled with stone will be changed out for thermoelectric generators.

Before I move my power system I need better energy conduits. Ender io ideally. Creating a conduit binder, which is needed for wires; simply gravel sand and clay. Getting that smelted I work on what the conduit will be made out of. My lack of ender pearls is annoying but not impossible to deal with. Placing Redstone and iron in the alloy smelter produces conductive iron. If I had silver I could go down a different direction but alas here we are. Making basic energy conduits I produce about 4 stacks [64 per stack].

Switching out my machines for the new conduits I begin the process of producing more thermoelectric generators. I make 20 more, on top of the 9 I move them all underground. Hooked up with the wires and fed along the wall directly into my main room. Powering all my machines and future machines.

I notice Chic has been exploring the cavern, guess il just keep calling it that. Webs dotted over the ceiling and a suspicious bundle of the web in one corner. I guess it would love to live down here. Closer to home.

I doubt the slime would, it prefers swamps. Which a cavern is not. With my basic power system fully set up, I head up. Taking a seat by a comfortable fire. The weather has been getting colder recently. I assume winter is coming soon. I guess it's time to look for some kind of civilization. Being my only hope to find ender pearls outside of an enderlily. But given the sheer rarity of dungeon chests. Wait… nether fortresses exist and they have dungeon chests. I would have to get lucky I suppose. Another option is dimensional doors. High likelihood but I also could get ejected thousands of blocks away from home.

Not terrible given I have a compass home, also lots of good loot are inside dimensional doors. I found a dimensional door near my home so I can only assume they are not ungodly rare so I might just be able to find one.

If I am going dimension diving it will be important I have a lot of non-perishable food. It would be my first long journey away from home. With armor equipped I gather about half a stack of every ore and material, I own just in case, wood included. I also take many bottles of water. I create a couple massive cauldrons of vegetable broth, before cooking it down until it becomes a thick sludge. Then allowing it to air dry it becomes dry soup “just add water”. I also take bread and vegetables as an immediate food source. I also have my golden lassos in case I spot any animals I need. Making a couple more just to make sure.

Before I just hurriedly head in a direction I just start exploring my immediate area. Getting the lay of the land.

While I do this I build a large map of the area, including the ocean. It's just paper and I planted some sugarcane around my waterfall. Thankfully my home is in the middle of the map so I can build from that core. I ended up using 25 maps, producing an absolutely massive map of the immediate area, stuck to a wooden wall in the main room with nails. Don’t get item frames. When I have ender pearls I'm sure I can create a holographic map I suppose. But for now, that’s cool enough for me.

While exploring I spotted some suspiciously dense wooded areas and a few odd dips over the plains but other than that; nothing to note.

With my gear in hand, I say hello to Chic and Sling and tell them I will be back in a few days. Making sure they have food. I begin my short journey.

Realizing I might be away a few days I struggle to take that step off my island but I must… at least I have a bed in my golden bag. In hindsight when I found the original dimensional doors I should have intentionally gotten lost so I could have teleported thousands of blocks away saving me the long ass journey. “apparently I am stupid!”.

You cant technically die inside the dimensional doors but I also have no intention of testing that. With tools in hand I start flying over the grasslands, it gives me the best chance of spotting a dimensional door.

Makes you sleepy flying over rolling hills. The helmet blocks out the wind since it’s a whole face cover. Even the eye slit doesn’t let air pass. It's both good for usability but disappointing because the rushing wind is awesome.

After flying for a little while I spot some slightly rockier hills, not mountains but interesting geological formations. Spotting shards of volcanic glass I get my hopes up. While gathering the shards. They don’t count as items for some reason I continue towards the direction they must have come from. As I get closer the density of the volcanic glass increases as I reach a relatively steep incline; cresting the hill, what do I see? A meteorite or at least the remains of it.

Medium-sized, must have hit hard it's buried pretty deep. Signs of overgrowth and debris ontop it was not recently Cracks throughout, clearly made out of the item sky stone, pretty tough material. Collecting about a stack I burrow down until I reach what I am looking for. At the heart of the meteorite, I find a weird shapes core which upon further inspection is as expected, a chest. Well, kind of it's more like an openable protective cover. Cracking the seal I find some gold, sky stone, and a pattern for Applied Energistics, lovely. Engineering press I found - Not bad.

After gathering the supplies I continue on my trip, keeping an eagle eye out for dimensional doors.

It took some time, spotting a few oddities I may investigate in the future. But after a while, I spotted an oddly out of place iron door. A dimensional door… I hope at least because it would be weird otherwise seeing an iron door in the middle of nowhere.

Taking careful stock of my surroundings, I place a small wooden house over it; better safe than sorry.

Unknowingly holding my breath I go to enter the door, ready to dart out at a moment's notice. Stepping through was quick but disorientating. Finding myself in a stone brick corridor, holes around from decay, vines along what little walls were not falling down. Freezing in place, I didn’t hear a click thankfully.

Keeping a razor-sharp eye out for anything, these places are death traps. Walking slowly and carefully I spot it, a well-hidden tripwire. I could climb under it but that’s the stupid way of doing it. If I do this wrong I could potentially be sent to limbo; monoliths don’t like you leaving the dungeon after all. With an ear out I make sure to listen out for monoliths.

Slowly and carefully breaking the stone around both sides of the tripwire I find my way into the wiring, breaking the restone connecting both. If I broke the tripwire it would activate. Now that it's safely deactivated I remove the tripwire completely. Look out into the pocket dimension I see no monoliths, free reign – sweet.

Tunneling down the Redstone I strip it bare and a rather scary quantity of TNT, happening upon a loot chest I find something great, a single ender pearl and several unraveled fabric, not bad. Just 3 more then I can dip. I also find gold, a little bit of bread and some Redstone, nothing too good.

Continuing on with care for further traps I enter deeper into the pocket dimensions through another iron door. This time I don’t see any obviously dangerous traps, just 3 paths 1 up 1 down, and 1 straight ahead. I hear monoliths but they are distant for now. This is great because if I find an unwinnable room I can dip and go down a different dimensional branch so to speak.

Choosing the center path, I walk slowly down the path, spotted a single pressure plate well camouflaged, no trouble though it was a small pitfall trap into limbo. Heading past after disarming the trap, always break the Redstone and not the trigger. After reaching the end of the path I enter a large room surrounded by black, no walls just ruins and a large oak tree in the middle. I cheated a bit here I know where the secret chest is. Right under the tree and on top of one of the recks. Collecting 2 ender pearls and something I felt rather blessed to have found, a rift blade. And if it works as I believe it should have before the function was removed. To preserve servers. It should be able to open random rifts with a slice, allowing me to enter the dungeon network at will.

For now, one more ender pearl and I will be happy. Going through the warp door at the end of a straight path, through the tree on the opposite wall. I take a second to admire the scenery before pressing on.

Immediately “Sizzle” ‘nope I’m out!’. Turning around and running back through the door I don’t even hear the bang I know came after I left; called it. “Hate unwinnable rooms, and I know full well that tunnel was full of chests, just exploding. Drawing my face into a thin line I backtrack towards the other paths, very nearly falling through a hole in the floor. Got to concentrate.

Taking the low path this time, knowing full well I will be able to see… that tripwire that’s inches from face, bloody things. This one will be tougher to disarm given I hear a nearby monolith. Breaking it using my spectral tool for the additional range, being careful to get both lines of Redstone. I catch a glimpse of the monolith and its closed eye. Once the eye full opens you get sent to limbo. Realizing this is my cue to press on before this ends badly I continue on. The tunnel levels out onto a straight path. It is a long normal looking tunnel, yeah I don’t buy that. And what do I see? Pressure plates. Bet you this tunnel is full of pistons ready to crush me. Avoiding the dozen pressure plates, spurred on by the continued noise of monoliths, I make my way to another dimensional door, taking little time to run through.

Entering a new room with a chest right nearby, ah yes the good old trapped chest. Love it and its little red indicator. I am glad I was aware of how thoroughly trapped this place is. Pressed by even more monoliths I quickly break the Redstone wire before opening the chest grabbing the first ender pearl I see and the unraveled fabric before running out as fast as I can. Dodging the pressure plates like a veteran ninja I make my way out of this massive trap and escape the last few levels of the dimension.

I didn’t quite realize it at the time but I am very mentally exhausted, after leaving the dungeon I hardly had the mind to place a bed before falling down. Exhaustion catches you quickly when you get out of danger, night had fallen without me noticing and I slept soundly; ignoring the zombie groans… after I blocked up the door to feel better.