Unlimited Chicken

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Good Morning Folks! Friends… I am swimming in cooked chicken. For years when I have played Minecraft the first thing that I have done is wrangle a bunch of cows… stuff them in a hole and then feed them wheat until they pass the entity cramming limits and start dying off giving me a stable supply of leather and beef. The thing is… I don’t really need much leather… and my chicken operation has been way more productive than I thought it would be. As such I am contemplating tearing down the cow station… and sending them all to that big farm upstate… to free up room for more shenanigans. I just do not need the beef in quite the way that I thought I would and chicken appears to be a perfectly cromulent option.

Chicken solves a lot of other problems like the ability to get a quick safe experience boost to repair items. In theory, if I cared more about it I would relocate the chickens to a place where I could reasonably use them to feed the egg-throwing machine directly. I could do some nonsense with minecart hoppers and bubble elevators, but that seems like “a lot”. Also, minecarts are super noisy, and I am already dealing with the din of a thousand clucks at all hours of the day. There is something primal that I enjoy about loading up a pitching machine and watching it birth chickens into my pen. I’ve created so many lanterns for the nether tunnels that I am going to need to find a more stable source of iron. I’ve gotten most of it from hollowing out areas under my base, but I might be trying to build a Villager breeder soon… and from there an Iron Golem farm since I have Pillagers nearby.

I am still playing quite a bit of Last Epoch and one of the things about Cycle 2.5 that I have to say… is that I don’t think dungeons are quite as much of a waste of time. This is in large part because mapping content that appears in Monoliths, can now appear and does so frequently in dungeons. Better than that, each floor of the dungeon seems to count as a new map meaning that you can find a Nemesis, Treasure Chest, and Exiled Mage on each floor giving you a way to burn through Nemesis so much faster than monoliths. I’ve only really spent much time doing Temporal Sanctum trying to create legendary gear, but then again that tends to be the only dungeon that I do consistently.

I had a dry streak of eggs that I complained about on the blog, and then grouped with Ace and immediately following that have gotten an egg for almost every single Nemesis. This is allowing me to start burning through my stockpile of non-LP copies of Palarus and Firestarter. This actually makes the whole Circle of Fortune thing making it super common to get 1LP uniques a bad thing. I wish you could throw LP uniques in the Eggs and then either get it turned into a completely random legendary or upgrade to higher LP levels. As it stands right now 1LP uniques… feel sorta awful to loot. I upgraded my Palarus this morning significantly keeping the 15 Health on Hit and adding 109% Melee Damage. I will keep trying for a 3 or 4 LP version, but for the time being, I am pretty happy with it.

I have to admit though, I feel like I am starting to wind down a bit on Last Epoch. This is the phase of the game where it always loses me. I am just not motivated by completing all of the bosses, and the worst thing about Last Epoch… is that it isn’t Path of Exile. What I mean by that is POE has quite possibly the most interesting endgame with a lot of player choice in what you want to focus on mechanic-wise. If I could take the player builds from Last Epoch and copy-paste in the Atlas of Worlds and all of the other endgame systems like Heist and Delve over top of the existing endgame… it would be my ultimate experience. The worst thing about Last Epoch is that it just doesn’t have a rich and varied endgame yet. I know over time they will get there, based on what we have seen so far, but it also means for the time being… every cycle has a shelf life.

Anyways Minecraft is giving me plenty of alternative shenanigans to enjoy, and at some point, I want to dive into Final Fantasy XVI now it is on PC, and Space Marine 2. I might try both of those out either today or this weekend.

Failure to Slime

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Good Morning folks! A while back I said that I thought my Minecraft Adventures would be over for a bit when the Last Epoch cycle reset happened… but that has not turned out to be the case. It turns out that the Last Epoch Empowered Monoliths are just not “brain off” enough time for me, and I still need something that I can zone out while playing. Brain fog has been a real problem post-Covid and as a result I am climbing back into Minecraft for some comfortable tedium. One of the big things that I have done is venture forth into mod management land and beautify my experience.

Since CurseForge has turned out to be a bit problematic over the years, a number of mod authors are actively boycotting that site, which meant that I needed to find a new mod management tool. I present to you Modrinth which appears to be the community-supported alternative, with the ability to manage multiple different mod setups at the same time and freely switch back and forth between them at will. So if you wanted to create a hyper-specific loadout just for works utilizing a specific mod like Aether you can do that, and then have a different loadout of more vanilla-friendly mod packs as well. For the most part, I am not doing this and instead am only running a single map. If you are interested here is the totality of the mods that I am running.

  • Shader – Nostalgia v 3.0
  • Textures – Faithful Venom 32x
  • Mods
    • Fabric Api
    • Iris for Fabric
    • Lithium for Fabric
    • Sodium for Fabric
    • Better F3 for Fabric
    • Indium
    • Modmenu
    • Cloth Config
    • Xaeros Minimap
    • Falling Leaves
    • Make Bubbles Pop
    • Bobby
    • Reeses Sodium Options for Fabric

For most of these, I have not included a specific version number so this list can be a bit more evergreen going forward. In large part, I will just keep updating the mods as new versions are released.

One of the biggest projects that I have undertaken is making the Nether a bit more save to roam around in. I’ve created these long 3×3 Cobblestone tunnels leading from my spawner to various locations. Though honestly right now… the only real destination that matters is a specific spawner farm that I will talk about in a bit. My goal is to expand this into multiple different biomes because at some point I want to create a pigmen farm which will then fuel a barter farm. I’ve roamed quite a bit from my Nether spawn location and still have yet to encounter any of the warpwood biomes, which are super useful since warpwood can’t burn. I seem to be largely surrounded by Soulsand and Basalt biomes, but my hope is if I keep tunneling in one direction long enough I will hit warpwood.

The entire reason why I started tunneling in the first place was to create a safe approach for building a Blaze rod farm because there was a spawner down here in the nether fortress area surrounding my base. I would also like to potentially set up a Wither Skeleton farm, but everything I have looked into makes it seem like it is way more resource-intensive. The blaze rod farm is fine, but I might shift it into something that is afkable because for the moment it is really only useful if I need to repair my sword or axe via mending. Though I will be honest…. for repairing tools my stupid chicken farm is far more effective. Essentially I take one swipe with the sword and then quickly switch to the tool that needs repairing and soak in massive amounts of experience orbs.

From my time roaming around the Nether Fortress area, I have managed to pick up two Wither Skeleton Skulls, and need one more in order to summon in and fight the Wither itself. Whenever I do this I will absolutely use one of the cheese methods for killing it easily. I’ve also killed two raiding parties, and could have killed way more if I had gone out of my way to do so. Largely I only bother with them when I am doing something and they are actively annoying me. However, since I was showing off trophies that are hanging around my base I figured I might as well include those Ominous Banners. Regardless they kind of look cool to have hanging up. It is weird how close I am to a pillager outpost and how much it does not factor into my day-to-day gameplay at all unless I go over there and kick the hornet’s nest.

One of the things that I have used Xaero’s Minimap to do is be able to point out slime chunks. I have a lot of ideas for things that I want to build and several of them are going to need sticky pistons. To the best of my knowledge, there are no swamp biomes near me, and as a result that means I have to rely entirely on the fickle nature of cave slime spawns. So doing what I had done before I started hollowing out an entire chunk. While it does not show it currently…. this is the above-ground appearance of the area that I began mining down into. The plan is at some point to probably plan a crop above ground just so I can utilize the space. I was waiting for the grass to finish filling in and it seems to have done so finally.

The idea was simple enough… get down to below 40 where the slimes can start spawning… build several platforms and then … ???? Profit? The problem is… as much as I have fucked around with the formula for this farm I cannot seem to produce a reasonable amount of slimes. I’ve tried it lit, unlit, 3 blocks tall, 2 blocks tall… and in all of the variations the only thing that I can seemingly produce a lot of is spiders, zombies, and skeletons. I already have a farm for that however so it does not really help me. I am wondering if I either need to keep making it deeper or mine out the rest of the chunk to make sure nothing is spawning beneath me.

What I have instead created is a very pretty but resource-intensive and generally useless bauble for my world. I used the magma blocks only because I thought they would look cool, and I farmed up a ton of them hollowing out the nether to make my tunnels. There are times when spawns have spawned, because I have about two dozen slime balls in my collection chests, but I have made so many changes to this farm that I have no clue which configuration seemed to produce them. Most recently I have lit up the area in an attempt to stop normal spawns given that slimes can supposedly spawn from zero to seven light levels… and the entire interior of the platforms is 5-6 light levels currently. I am sort of at my wits end with this stupid waste of time, and it has me contemplating the dumber option which is to build several nether portals from the nether side in an attempt to leap frog across the map looking for swamp biomes. I could also really use a jungle biome so that I could get me a bamboo farm going.

Basically mindlessly hollowing out the world seems to be one of those things that my brain can do when it is struggling. As a result, I find myself crawling back into the comfortable numb that is Minecraft. Comfort gaming is definitely a thing that is needed occasionally and lately, I have needed it quite a bit.

Duck Duck Blue

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Good Morning Friends. This morning’s post is going to be a bit meandering, but stick with me and I promise I will wrap things up into a point. One of the things that I have long lamented was the closing of Toys R Us. Sure it generally offered the highest possible price point you could pay for an item, but what I miss is the foundational memory that it provided for me growing up. Getting to go to Toys R Us was a big deal because it was this magical place that had every toy that you knew about and a lot more than you had likely ever seen before. It was an even bigger deal for me because I grew up in a tiny town with Walmart as the only retailer, which meant that I had to make a special trip to the “Big City” in order to go there. This also meant that generally speaking I was on my best behavior in the vague hopes that maybe just maybe my parents would let me go to the magical oasis of toys.

Another piece of this puzzle is that my wife and I have had this weird pipe dream for years. We always wanted to create a store that had a jumble of all of our interests. So there would be a section for used books, teacher stuff, video games, vintage toys, and tabletop games all rolled into a single store. The closest thing to this that really exists is Gardner’s Used Books here in the Tulsa area and I feel like it probably only really exists because it was run at a loss for decades as a bit of a tax dodge for a successful accountant. Now that it has been taken over by his daughter though, the place has even got better and probably actually properly is a successful business. There are tales of warehouses full of stock that he bought throughout the years that have never seen the light of day. Going to Gardner’s at least in some part harkens back to some of that magic of a Toys R Us trip because there are just so many interesting and unexpected things to see.

Because of these combined interests, one of the things that I really enjoy is what I collectively refer to as “Shop Tube”. There is a wide array of channels devoted to running a brick-and-mortar store, specifically in collectible spaces. They generally offer a behind-the-scenes day in the life of a store experience as folks bring in items to sell and they figure out how best to price them. Since my wife and I have never really prioritized our daydream of running that penultimate combo store idea we have… this gives me a bit of a way to live vicariously through the eyes of folks who did go down that road. I’ve talked before about Toy Federation which has become a Sunday morning ritual of watching their new video each week. I’ve also talked a bit about Retro Rick’s Game Point channel which is actually close enough to me to reasonably go there, and at some point, I probably will.

So all of this said… when the YouTube algorithm started suggesting to me this new channel with a weird name, I was primed to click through and see what it was about. Essentially it is a Toy, Video Game, and Children’s Clothing store located in Jasper Indiana, and the channel is devoted to the process of standing up this store and then annexing the other part of the building to expand the business and the assorted growing pains that come with that. What is so cool about the store is that it is purposefully built to be a spectacle giving kids that magical experience of roaming through a place with seemingly endless possibilities. The name is explained… but also does not really matter because it is extremely memorable.

The channel is most often presented through the narration of Dallas the owner and his co-owner girlfriend, and the cast of characters that work at the store. What is so cool about this experience is that it is targeted specifically towards trying some interesting things out. For example, there is a giant bin of Mr/Mrs Potato dolls and parts and kids can effectively build their own custom-made ultimate version to buy. There is a Lego table with cups letting you fill up whatever parts you want to then purchase. There is a free make-your-own bracelet table with tons of assorted beds dumped into a big bin with pipe cleaners letting kids have a little arts and crafts activity for free as part of the total experience. Everything is bright and colorful and specifically designed in a way to be at the eye level for the target demographic… kids… or adults who are kids at heart.

The thing is this channel and store go much further than just a YouTube thing, but are attempting to be a force of interesting activities in their small community. On September 13th they held a Mario Kart Tournament and gave away store credit to the winners. The channel showed off the behind-the-scenes process of getting ready for the event and trying to figure out how to make a very cool and memorable trophy for the winners. It was just generally fun to watch a bunch of kids and a few adults having a blast playing Mario Kart. There are future plans to do something totally different and hold a Hot Wheel race throughout the store as their next big event. It feels like they are genuinely trying to create interesting memories for the kids who frequent the shop, and I am here for it. Like I said before… that is the big thing that the death of Toys R Us robbed us of, is those deep foundational memories from childhood.

Right now the channel is honestly sort of criminally underrated. It only has around 2200 subscribers but is doing some really interesting things. They recently started a live Saturday show from the store and Dallas has wired up a few cameras so that they can swap between the podcasting area in the Video Game store and behind the counter in the Clothing/Toy side of the store. What is sort of infectious is the generally chaotic energy of the store owner which has deep “big kid” vibes to it. More important than that though is that the employees seem genuinely happy there. There are often asides in the videos where one of them has been roaming around with a go-pro and just yammering unscripted about whatever is on their mind. A good number of retail store channels are very clearly staged and at least loosely scripted, and this just has more of a “giving a toddler your camera” vibe.

Dallas aka the face of the Duck Duck Blue channel had/has another channel with nine years worth of content called Tendo’s Trash. Once I started watching the Duck Duck Blue videos, the algorithm of course started recommending various videos from that channel. It was way more focused on Thrift Shopping, Garage Sales, and hitting up the Goodwill Bins to find deals to ultimately then flip on eBay or stock an Antique Mall Booth. It has the same chaos goblin vibes that Duck Duck Blue has but is a bit less focused. However, it also gives a bit of a behind-the-behind-the-scenes view of all of the events that led up to the grand opening of the store. There are over nine hundred videos on that channel dating back nine years, so I doubt I will be getting through all of them, but it has been interesting seeing the process that they went through to stock the store almost entirely through aggressively seeking out garage and estate sales.

If you are a child of the 80s/90s and have deep foundational memories centered around visits to the toy store… then you might legitimately dig all of this. I am legitimately hoping that five years from now we don’t find out that Tendo was a milkshake duck, but so far he seems like a genuinely good dude with a good heart.

Detonate Dead is UnFun

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Good Morning Folks. I am still spending the majority of my time in Last Epoch currently, as I am trying to push up to level 100. I also did not make it super far in Cycle 2 before the reset, so that means I have only done a handful of the Harbingers that start showing up at the end of empowered monoliths. That is honestly one of my complaints is that they really should have gone for a system like Guardians that appear in Path of Exile maps. As it stands the Harbinger spawns in right after you kill the boss and you effectively have to survive two fights in a row in order to get your loot. This feels REALLY bad when you have a prophecy dump a ton of stuff on the ground and you don’t have time to loot it before ultimately getting attacked again… and feels even worse if you fail the Harbinger and are effectively locked out of any of your rewards. Harbingers should spawn a portal to go into their fight area rather than this whole surprise attack bullshit.

The other thing that has sucked is that the Imperial Undead packs feel way harder than the rest of the map content. I’ve adjusted my playstyle and am way more cautious… but this feels bad. I should in theory be able to continue face-rolling low corruption levels for a while before I have to start playing tense and on edge all the time. However several of the undead appear to have a version of Detonate Dead from Path of Exile, called Necrotic Self Destruct. This is awful and it is messaged so much worse than Detonate Dead is currently, which means you basically have to stay away from looting corpses for a period of time after finishing combat. It just sort of fucks with the flow of things, and feels like it punishes melee play way more than it punishes ranged play. Melee already has to deal with more inherent risk… so stacking additional effects as a “gotcha” always feels a bit miserable. I am dealing with it, but I am also grumpy about it.

At this point, I have dinged level 88 and am working on filling out the last bits of my tree. I had skipped an attack speed talent in the general sentinel tree so I am largely going back and snagging that for the time being. Since I have leech and on-hit effects, more attack speed weirdly means more survival. I’ve swapped out a bunch of gear over the last few days and feel like I am in a much better place than I was previously. The biggest slots that I probably need to find upgrades for are my helm and my belt, which are not really doing much for me. I swapped out one of my rings for a reasonably well-rolled Sunwreath with 2 LP and then failed to land any of the stats I actually wanted on it. I’ve still not seen any eggs from the Nemesis system because I really need to start getting some LP on my weapon cache that I have been stockpiling for that purpose.

I will be honest… I am not sure how much longer I will keep plugging away at Last Epoch. I just don’t enjoy its endgame anywhere near as much as I enjoy the Endgame in Path of Exile. Right now it feels very focused on grinding out Harbingers so that you can fight Aberroth and while I am glad something like that exists… I am just not a bossing-focused person. In Path of Exile tend to kill every boss once and then sell my tokens when I get them to fund more of the nonsense that I actually do enjoy doing. There is no equivalent grind to Delve in Last Epoch, and baseline mapping does not feel anywhere near as fun or rewarding as it does in Path of Exile. That is not to say that I have not enjoyed myself quite a bit during Cycle 2.5, but more just that there is a cap to how much of it I want to do.

Right now my goal is to hit 100 and then potentially finish grinding the Circle of Fortune rep to tier 12. Things have definitely slowed down reputationally, however, because I am just not making that much progress. It could be simply that I am not progressing through maps as fast as I was before, but I think maybe they backloaded the grind so that the first bit was super easy to get and the later levels would be stretch goals. I would also like to make it through all of the Harbingers even though I doubt I will actually kill Aberroth. I got a wild item drop last night, but I am just not sure if I have an alt in me in order to take advantage of it. It was essentially an insanely rolled version of what looked to be Cloud’s Buster Sword.

All of this said… Minecraft has been calling my name again. I’m still building a bit on the side and at some point, I will give you all an update on the progress of my world. The biggest change is that I have dabbled with mods again and installed a shader pack that completely changes the experience. Anyways… I hope your week is going excellently and if you made it this far into the post you are definitely one of those dedicated folks.