Powered Rails are Overcosted

[EpicAaron]

I defeated the Ender Dragon on my single player survival world back in June! Better Than Wolves provided a wonderful escape from those first few months of sickness. I intend to give you a personal write up of my stories and observations eventually FC, but I have been busy with other life matters lately. In the meantime, I have one pressing observation about physically moving around the Minecraft world.

Thanks to your loot changes, gold is no longer a serious pain to acquire for my machines. The prospect of exploring the world, while still a chore at times, is seriously improved by finding golden artifacts to convert into machine parts back at my base. Exploration feeds future build projects, which is awesome.

Unfortunately, this increased exploration also means a lot more moving around, both in the overworld and in the nether. This was especially painful during villager trading, because my villagers were across two continents and an ocean. I feel like I wasted an accumulation of hours running between my main base and my villager base to haul goods and trade. Even after eventually taking the time to build a mega-bridge and bring my villagers back to Spawn, I still had to do tons of walking to get to my further villagers (the priest and librarian were at an even further distance) and my nether networks were becoming unwieldy to expand because the distances between portals was getting massive.

Basically, by the full throng of the midgame I was really eager to get some rail systems going, but even after spending over 64 accumulated golden ingots on powered rails, it just wasn't enough. The attempt left me a beggar and stunted my other build projects. I finally feel comfortable working on a nether fort farm, but even that is a hassle because walking between my base and the spot for the farm is a considerable distance.

Walking aside, however, BTW is better than it has ever been. I seriously enjoyed my playthrough (first time beating an SSP run ever, actually), and I am still happily chugging along in the endgame as I improve my steel output, make my base look awesome, and work on automating various materials. This experience is true survival Minecraft.

[FlowerChild]

Curious as to whether you were attempting to build rails in the overworld or nether? My last play through I was having no trouble building rails in the nether to cut down my travel time substantially.

[EpicAaron]

Ah, I meant in the nether. I have a large system of tunnels in the nether ceiling that connect to various bases, my nether fort, and the frontier. A stack of gold (acquired by looting temples) got me a little closer to my fortress, but there is still a ton of stuff I want to connect with rails.

I feel like I spend a lot of time walking down long corridors in the nether. To keep my soul bottling machine fed, I am constantly dipping into the nether to quarry netherrack. It's a lot of back and forth.

I'm hoping that the eventual output of the nether trap makes the gold cost of extensive railroads negligible, but that project is proving to be lengthy and I have a lot of walking to do in the meantime. I've tried some more exploring for loot, but there is honestly so much I want to work on back at base that I don't find wandering the wilderness all that engaging anymore. Anyway, most of my time away from base is dedicated to sweeping swamps for clay to feed the endless production of soul urns.

By the way, there is something truly BTW about scouring the wilderness for native structures, plundering them for golden burial treasures of presumably high cultural significance, and melting them down to be crafted into even more machines to dominate and deform the landscape with. As an ecological statement, I don't think many games match BTW in ability to represent the decline of one's surroundings (miles of stumps, blast craters and cobwebs, burnt jungles). Playing this game in 2020 feels pretty on point.

[FlowerChild]

By the way, there is something truly BTW about scouring the wilderness for native structures, plundering them for golden burial treasures of presumably high cultural significance, and melting them down to be crafted into even more machines to dominate and deform the landscape with. As an ecological statement, I don't think many games match BTW in ability to represent the decline of one's surroundings (miles of stumps, blast craters and cobwebs, burnt jungles). Playing this game in 2020 feels pretty on point.

Hehe... thanks man. Glad it resonates :)