Felling a Titan

I have yet to fell a Titan Willow, but one looming over my Shadowheart was about to become the test subject.  Sunlight was my main ally in taming the spawners below, so this giant was about to be shrunk.  No small task.

 

The first step was just getting to the top.  This is one ladder you definitely don't want to fall off of.

 

 Goooooing Up!

Big. Green. Leafy.  Not much to recommend the place, actually.

I poke a few leaves and the game starts to get choppy.  The reason is soon apparent - not enough logs supporting all those leaves.  I chill out on my precarious catwalk while the willow defoliates.

I'm left with a bounty of saplings...

And something more akin to a popsicle stick than a tree.

The rest was not very interesting, so I'll spare you the 101 images of chopping wood.  Suffice to say that many minecraft days were spent reducing this enormous tree down to platform level.  In the end though, there was no more avoiding the spawners.  A germ of an idea had been growing in the back of my mind - four spawners would make a very respectable mob farm, if only I could come up with a design that would funnel them down into a trap....

Breaching the Core

With great trepidation I returned to the Shadowheart, visions of the mob army still fresh in my memory.   What did I know about spawners... well, they don't spawn mobs on lit blocks.  So my best defense would be the sun - lighting up the dark heart of this tree to tame the beasts within.

Carefully removing one block at a time, glass replaced wood, to light the spawner pit when the sun would rise. That'd take care of the skeletons, but not the creepers... hopefully my shelf pine base was far enough away that they'd despawn.

Could my plan have worked?  The core was empty of mobs, nothing but fallen wood blocks from yesterday's roof making.  Slowly inching my way down, I poked at the shiny silver blocks.  Iron!  Well that's a welcome addition to my supplies.  Hastily grabbing the fallen logs, I spot two large holes at the bottom of the trunk.

That won't do, but it explains how the mobs were getting out of the spawner area earlier.  A few wooden planks quickly block off any potential visitors.  With one final look inside a spawner, I hightail it back up a ladder and block off the core.  This place gives me the creeps, literally.

Spawners or Farming?

No two thoughts about it.  Farming > spawners.  I decided to make a tactical retreat from the Shadowheart and work on setting up a full mushroom farm from the stock I had picked in the Skyvine.  Okay, maybe it was less of a tactical retreat and more of a "Holy crap I am NOT GOING DOWN THERE."

Nothing fancy, but it works.  Might not be big enough though.  I think a bigger farm would indeed be better.  So that's what I did.

Hm... better.  Maybe still bigger yet?  I had spare mushrooms to make a supply of stew with now, which was excellent.  It seemed pretty certain I was going to need them.

ACK.  Okay, maybe this is the perfect size after all. My poor mushrooms... all flooded and soggy!

After plugging the hole and mopping up the basement, it was time to go back to the Shadowheart.  I'd put it off long enough.  The flock of creepers (flock? gaggle? mess? pride? What do you call a group of exploding green things...) was not a good omen, but I couldn't put it off any longer.  Behold my wondrous ability to fall off anything - missed the top of the ladder heading up.  Maybe some stew before I go....

Taming Shadowheart

There was only one way to defeat this obstacle of course.
Chop down everything.

I've tackled bigger trees than this already, though not quite so dense.  In addition to being almost all bark and no leaf, Shadowheart boasted some lovely iron ore. Of course there is no reward without risk on this map, and the heights I was about to start at, rather daunting.

Not falling to my death was going to be the overall goal.  On the plus side, there was a pretty good chance I'd land on the lower platform rather than the ground.  On the downside, I'd still be just as dead.

I could hear skeletons rattling inside the core of the tree.  It was most disconcerting, and I felt a lot safer working from the top down.  Lots of time to contemplate how to deal with those spawners while I chop wood.

The dock or road looked even more appealing in daylight, I wonder what I'd find, if anything, if I followed it?  That would have to wait.  After many days of chopping, there was little left of the branches.  I was going to have to breach the core again and deal with the spawners.

On second thought, maybe now is NOT a good time to deal with the spawners.

Shadowheart

It may not be a large tree by Carnage standards, but a Shadowheart is certainly imposing.   Twisted helix branches curve up towards the sky like claws, with little foliage and the odd iron deposits.  Lower down on the trunk blocks of obsidian adorn it.

My glass skywalk abuts directly onto the Shadowheart's lower platform, and I waste no time in bedecking it with a plentiful stockpile of cheery torches. Night is falling by the time I've lit the lower area to my satisfaction, and I can hear the rattle of skeletons below, along with the occasional zombie groan.

I've run out of torches, but off in the distance I can see something glowing - glowstone, to be precise, and what looks like some kind of construction or road leading to the water.  There's no time to look, it'll have to wait for morning - I flee back to my shelf pine bolthole before anything scary comes calling.

My safe home turns out to be not so safe, for there's a two block high hole in my wall... that I don't remember putting in. Some glass blocks seal the breach for now, but they don't explain how it got there in the first place.... with trepidation I explore the rest of my tree, but nothing scary seems to have taken up residence in my absence. 

The next morning, and I'm already hard at work mining the easily reached surface iron ore on the Shadowheart.  A few blocks are sadly lost overboard, but most of them are ending up in my pack, so there's little motivation to face the potential dangers of the forest floor for so little gain.

I've got a nice little stockpile of iron bars accumulating, but I'm not sure what to make of them.  The second chest nearby had yielded a nice set of iron armor already, and armor in general was not actually of much use to me.  I fall off things far too often, alas.  I've chopped and mined two of the upper branches so far, whittling down the Shadowheart from the top block by block.  Thus far, it hasn't proved to be nearly as sinister as its name implies... that is, until I find this.

The Shadowheart does indeed have a dark core, one, possibly more spawners.  I wasn't inclined to poke about but quickly sealed up the hole.  My sneaking suspicion would be these are skeleton spawners.  How to deal with this will require some thought.

Skylogging

I was determined to not let the Skyvine get the better of me.
Stripping down my pack to the bare essentials and making a new clock, it was time for round two.  The weather of course declined to cooperate, pouring down on my head.

The nights are so dark up here that it's almost impossible to work unless you've lit up a branch before the sun goes down.  There's too great a danger of accidentally stepping into a hole.  To safeguard my hard won resources this time, I put up a temporary chest near the ladder to periodically dump supplies in.

The nature of Skyvine is such that its branches run in long parallel strips.  The top few are easy enough to remove, once you clear some leaves, as there's the lower branches to catch you if they start to defoliate too quickly.  The lowest branch of course... doesn't leave anything at all. I snapped a quick picture behind me as I madly chopped towards the main trunk.

It took days and days to clear the top canopy of this small Skyvine, but it did offer a superb view of the Aurum Birch's top.

You can see the wooden bridge I built earlier to investigate its canopy.

I thought perhaps something about Canopy Carnage had broken Minecraft for a while when my dirt turned black, and I was unable to place any blocks to mark the main trunk's top.  I think it's simply because I'm at the very top of the map though, for putting a block one space down worked just fine.

I thought perhaps it would be necessary to remove the trailing vines as well to light the forest below, but the nature of their growth proved to be... extremely perilous to one's health, to say the least.

After a week in the sky, I had gathered a respectable quantity of logs and saplings, along with some precious mushrooms.  These ones at least, I would not allow to splatter on the forest floor.  Treasures in hand, I took one last look out at the Skyvine before retreating to the comparative safety of a hollow Shelf Pine.

Mission accomplished; it was time to go fishing.  Tomorrow, the Shadowheart would be next to go under the axe.

The Long Fall

Some people would call my love of lighting torch spam.  I call it justified illumination against nasty things that go boom in the night.  Like this guy.

Somehow a Creeper managed to spawn on one of the six available solid blocks on this level of a shelf pine.  I could hear it walking around outside, the unnatural crunching of leaves without any other sound. I think I'm actually getting accustomed to the zombie and skeleton noises - at least it means there probably aren't as many scary exploding green things outside.

Tunneling out the remainder of the tree seemed like a far better idea than going toe-to-toe with a Creeper 100m up in the air, standing on nothing but leaf blocks, and as it turns out, gravity took care of the problem for me. 

I wasn't getting low on wood, but some patches of the forest floor were far darker than I would like.  One area, near the the Shadowheart was being shaded by this (relatively) small patch of Skyvine.  I was going to chop it down!

First I had to get over there.  A simple wooden bridge did the trick, spammed with torches for nocturnal safety.  Once inside the Skyvine, it was pretty dark - but I found some more mushrooms, both red and brown.  This was excellent, I could make an endless supply of stew once a farm was set up.

Unfortunately... I was not as careful as I should have been.  I thought I was logging the trunk back down to a safe altitude.  It turned out to only be a branch, and I had a second or two to stare stupidly at the upwards rushing ground before splattering my inventory on the forest floor. 

Worse, I have no idea where that was.  Well... looks like it's back to resource farming.

Baby Slime

So I've heard that some players keep the tiny slimes as pets - and today, had the opportunity to try it out myself. While installing skylights on my way to the sunny chest spotted yesterday, this little guy fell on my head.

I'd imagine he was bigger before, since falling tiny slimes seem to kill themselves more often than not.

Perhaps this squishy little green guy would make a good pet? I've yet to see a wolf, or any other normal animal for that matter, and it's pretty lonely out here by myself.  Unfortunately a problem with slimes quickly presented itself.  They push.  A lot.

Either he's really happy to see me, or trying to shove me into a pit.  I couldn't tell.  Pushy pets is something I'm well acquainted with, my dog pack tried to shove me off a cliff last time we went outside, but slimes are *persistent* shovers, not just accidental pushes like tamed wolves.

I tried luring him up a ladder, but it seems they can't climb without an enclosed tube - just sorta bounce off and keep leaping at the ladder again.  It's rather comical to watch, but not helping my progress in the slightest.  With the ever-present heights in Canopy Carnage, this would not do.

I suppose I could have just smacked the little guy with my sword and be done with it, but I ended up building a slime-pen instead.

Sorry little guy, but I fall off enough without extra help!

Unexpected Explosion

Posts have been less frequent recently because most of my activities have been resource gathering.  Stockpiles of most essentials were getting dangerously low, and at the rate I go through glass a major effort was required.

That accomplished, I set out to extend the main glass highway along the coast.  Some flailing squids were chilling out in the shallows.

Stacks of glass in hand and pinky finger clamped down on the Shift key, I continued on.  Two plum chests ripe for the picking presented themselves, one hard to spot...   And one not so hard. 

I think I'll go after the shady chest first, it'll be easier to reach of the two, simply by tunneling my way down inside the shelf pine and mining it out from below the ground.  More exciting than the chests was the sight ahead - a strange twisted helix tree with some very desirable iron ore embedded in the trunk! First though I was going to need... you guessed it, yet more glass, so back to the mines I went.

I was happily mining my way along when I heard the distinctive "shlop-shlop" of a slime.  Taking a quick peek up top, it was quite a large slime too.  With some iron I'd be able to make sticky pistons... no clue if that will be helpful in my quest, but it couldn't hurt, right?  Carefully poking a single hole into my fragile dirt roof, I smacked the slime with a torch until it split into tiny slimes.  The falling tiny slimes explode most satisfactorily.  I was about to close up the hole when everything around me suddenly exploded with a fierce BOOM.

First thought: Crap, a Creeper!
Second thought: Why am I not dead?
Third thought: AAAAH GIANT HOLE IN MY ROOF.
Fourth thought: No really, why am I not dead?

While pondering my miraculous, nearly unscathed survival, I grabbed a stack of glass and quickly filled in the destroyed roof.  My only guess is that the Creeper might have ... somehow exploded in the water? But that should have protected the surrounding blocks, and not me.  I have the feeling this will remain a mystery.

The glass covered hole