Dig up all the soul sand you can and take it back to your base in the overworld, and set up a farm there. You can have as much nether wart as you want then.
The reason people say to explore east-west is that Nether Fortresses aren’t symmetrical. They tend to be much more spread out north-south, and narrow east-west. This means if you explore in a straight line you’re much more likely to miss a nearby fortress if you’re going north-south.
If you want blaze rods you should set up a covered pathway from your portal to the fortress. For extra fun set up a railway for faster travel. But remember that nether mobs can spawn at any light level, the only way to keep mobs from spawning in your causeway is half slabs. As was said before, if you can set a torch on it, a mob can spawn on it.
Will have to consider setting up a covered pathway to the fortress. That will take a lot of time and cobble (although I have quite a bit from my mining) since it was a very long way away…
I don’t mind most of the mobs in the Nether (except when we get to the fortress) since the zombie pigmen just ignore us. It’s only those flying baby things you gotta watch out for…
Dig up. The top of the nether is mostly netherrack without large gaps that ghasts will hang out in. I put all of my portals for traveling about 15 blocks below bedrock and carve out my paths up there with a few stairwells leading down to nether fortresses and the like.
Last night’s assignment for my son and I was to create the covered passageway from our portal to the nether fortress. When that went quicker than we anticipated, we decided to build a railway to speed travel. That’s completed also now.
I’m still trying to find a jungle in my survival world. I just decided to build a railroad west, no matter how long it took. Well, over the weeks I’ve found two villages, flower forests, two abandoned mineshafts (thanks for the extra rails), endless plains, endless forests, but no jungle.
Almost makes we want to give up and search for the stronghold instead.
I’ve never found a jungle in my main world, either - I think they must be the rarest biome. Like you describe, I travelled 1000s of blocks (on a horse) to try and turn one up, but no luck.
Strongholds are apparently much more numerous after the 1.9 update, if you’re playing on a PC. Don’t know what that means for a world generated before the update.
Chunks you’ve loaded at some point before the update will follow pre-update terrain generation rules. Chunks you load for the first time after the update will follow updated generation rules.
The rarest biome is the mushroom island. I’ve never found one in any of my worlds.
The terrain generator likes to place biomes of similar types next to each other; therefore “hot” biomes (jungle, desert, savanna) will tend to cluster together, as opposed to “cold” biomes (extreme hills, forest, taiga.) Sometimes this can create a situation where you get nothing but forest, hills, taiga, forest, hills, etc. – the only reliable way to break that cycle is to cross an ocean.
Yes, the village I found after upgrading to 1.10 is in the new style, with dirt paths instead of gravel. The new dark oak forest has a few extra-tall giant mushrooms. But the old village and old dark oak forests are still the same as ever. Old chunks are the same as always, it’s only new chunks that follow the new schemes.
This thread is reminding me why I stopped playing Minecraft. Every major update changes the fundamental mechanics of the game, so that that huge contraption you spent all that time building suddenly no longer works.
Thankfully, the launcher allows you to play older versions of the game. Which is why, unless there’s a pressing reason to upgrade, I’m sticking with 1.8.9 for the foreseeable future.
Hopefully, you have found a jungle by now. I played for months before I found one.
There is a resource that you can use if you absolutely can’t find something and really want to. Go to http://mineatlas.com/ and load in your map seed. It will show you a rendering of the entire map you are on with the spawn point in the center and the location of most villages, jungles, temples, witch huts, etc on your map. They may not be very close, but at least you’ll know definitively which way to travel.
I should add that they aren’t 100% accurate all of the time, but usually very close and some times exact. Hope that helps!
I go through periods where I pick this game up for a few months and then set it down for a few months. I enjoy survival mode the most and find the most satisfying aspects of the game being base building and exploration. Find a new biome, construct farms, houses, animal enclosures, and mines, map out and mark explored areas (with torches). Rinse and repeat.
For me Minecraft is a game you play for a while, then you walk away for a bit, then suddenly you get an idea for something new and you play with it again, rinse and repeat.
Myself, i pick a version that has mods for what i want, and i do not upgrade out of that version unless the mods i am using progress as well.
I use a Minecraft 1.7.10 installation with
Railcraft
Buildcraft
Galacticraft
Ender IO
IC2 with nuclear control
MoCreatures
SimpleOres
NBTedit
NotEnoughItems
OptiFine
I dont generally use 1.10 or 1.11 because not all of the mods have updates for those versions
The game launcher lets you pick to run old versions.
I wont go into servers and cauldron or buckit or sponge etc
better to just learn to have fun with the game first.
I look at it like a big set of legos or an erector set, with stuff occasionally trying to kill you, when you aren’t blowing yourself up that is
