The past few weeks I've been working on an ice farm based on a simple design that I made on our previous server, but I've also been trying to make it look nicer on the outside. Unfortunately no pics because I forgot to take screenshots but maybe next time?

It works on the simple principle of "put in a whole bunch of pistons". Pistons are activated with activator rails and a minecart - historically I found the minecart setup quite noisy and clunky so I tried to use redstone this time, but the problem with using redstone activation is that it takes a lot of space, and I want the pistons to activate in short bursts so that there's time for the water to re-form and freeze. Minecarts seem kind of low-tech but they do exactly what I need here and scale less badly.

The setup is better explained with screenshots than words so I won't try, but it's a simple infinite water source generation with pistons pushing the ice blocks up and forwards at regular intervals (no ice block detection). The sheet of ice generated is then pushed upwards by beds of pistons. I've opted to have these beds measure 5 x 10 blocks each due to having to power the minecart rails underneath at regular intervals, though it COULD be bigger. Each vertical is then around...12 to 13 blocks when full? So 1 bed can produce about 600 blocks, and I've set up 6 of these beds, so at full capacity the farm will produce 3600 blocks. Of course, all of it has to be mined manually with silk touch. 

As of this week, it's all in working condition, though I need to build up the outside walls and do some lighting to prevent mob spawns. The main issue is that mobs can spawn on ice...I've been thinking about how to deal with this because too much light also melts ice, so there are limitations to spawnproofing. I'm testing out soul torches as their light level is low enough that they won't cause ice to melt, but they do need to be placed significantly closer together than regular torches (pretty though). A smaller issue is that our pickaxes are...um...too efficient? And make it pretty easy to accidentally mine the structures surrounding the ice (access platforms to the higher parts of the columns) but this can be solved if we can reliably obtain Efficiency III on the diamond pickaxes instead of Efficiency V...Twin's interested in setting up a bazaar here for buying tools so I suppose we can work that out.

Next week I'll be putting together the exterior and roof hopefully. 

Built myself a small automated bamboo farm in my house basement - it's not terribly productive (took a couple of days' AFKing to get 2 double chests filled) and collection rate isn't 100% because bamboo is solid. A more effective farm would use a flying machine I think, but for all the time I spend puttering around base, this build is good enough for my purposes. I MIGHT eventually build a higher volume farm if we need it I suppose...

Anyway, it uses a simple mechanism that's also used with sugar cane farms - observers up top that break all the bamboo plants when one of them hits a certain height. It wasn't really my intention at first but I ended up making it look like an aesthetic installation in the wall - when the update's out I'll fix up the back wall to look nicer. 

Not very important but I've also added some other things to my house and basement - mainly home decorations for the first floor interior, a not very efficient but convenient stone generator, a small pool of water, and a test build for an automated train station. 

The automated train station is a recent experiment with redstone - the idea is that when you come into the station, you automatically stop, and after a short timer you get launched in the direction you were going if you didn't get off and remove the cart. This also should not interfere with using the station as a starting point. In the build, I use 5 note blocks for an aural indicator. It works as intended, but unfortunately isn't very horizontally compact, so that's an exercise for later me to work on. BUT it works, and so I've implemented it on the Nether roof for my train stations. (Speaking of which - I finally went and connected Mountain Station's portal with the Nether roof so it's easily accessible now, and the portal happens to be very close to the froglight farm.)

I'll update the server map soon probably, though I had some issues with map generation last time that also seem to have broken the overworld underground map...

Server map updated again - these couple of weeks I've been working on building out the rail platform. At the time of typing, I've actually finished lining the existing part of the platform and attaching lamps, though I haven't updated the server map for the completed part yet. Thinking about what to do next...I do kind of want to line the sides with some sort of fence for protection (a few more torches are needed here and there too), but I don't want to restrict the ability to just jump off the road and explore either.

I'm excited for the next update; very looking forward to adding cherry blossom wood/leaves to my builds...but the border of "new things" is steadily getting pushed further out, so I'm thinking about setting up a secondary town somewhere further out with facilities comparable to base. It so happens that a friend ran about 10k blocks in the direction of  the far end of the rail, so it won't help to expand that end of the rail either, so this time I might go in the opposite direction from base instead (north instead of south). It also passes by a jungle so I guess that will be...useful? I don't recall where the most convenient jungle is. 

Also, something I found lacking while making 5000 fences was a good supply of bamboo...we have a couple of bamboo spots, but bamboo recipes use a lot of bamboo at once, and the coming update adds even more recipes. I think maybe it's time to make an automated bamboo farm...hmmm. I think maybe I'd do this next to an automated ice farm for an efficient AFK spot...and try some ice boat roads in the Nether...

Finally updated the server map - new additions:

• State of the world has been updated; this includes the new rail station far south. I believe Twin has also been working on new things as well, but at the moment I have no idea where they are and can't point them out. (As far as I'm aware, he's been working on a Nether village...)
• Made an overlay for the Nether roof. This shows the structures on the roof for clarity. 
• Added an overworld mode for the base underground. It's not very visible, actually, because there are a lot of other natural tunnels in the area - I've already removed the ones that aren't lit. As you might be able to tell...there is A Lot going on in the basement and it's not laid out very coherently...but it's very convenient for someone who's used to it.
• Finally went and collected coordinates for points of interest - these are toggleable on the map and are not exhaustive. The POIs are just the ones that I'm aware of that are not strictly private property. Farms and portals in the Nether are divided between ones in the main part of the Nether and ones on the roof.

Thinking of potentially separating roof portals and general Nether portals on the overworld as well.

Some future ideas:

• I might try to connect the Mountain Station portal to the Nether roof instead, since it currently doesn't lead anywhere safe and convenient.
• Train stations probably should be reworked - even though they MOSTLY function as intended, sometimes they send me going backwards. I wouldn't mind fiddling with redstone for this, but I'm not too sure how to do this in a bidirectional manner. Ideally, when a player rides a minecart into a station, it will wait a few seconds, and if the player is still in the cart, it will send a pulse to make the player continue forwards. More ideally, the station will be sheltered from mobs outside - but this is less of an issue than keeping the rails entirely hands-off.
• Rails on the Nether roof would be good. That and/or more horses and stables.
• This is really just indulgence but on an older server, our Nether tunnels were made in glass and featured some extremely scenic walkways over huge canyons with lava seas - I'd like to have these again.
• I had a turtle breeding pond on the older server as well and I'd like to build another one.
• Same older server - I dug out many underground tunnels connecting major facilities on the overworld for travelling safely. Honestly we don't really need this on this server because of the abundance of portals and also because most resources are concentrated in a small area around base, but I found it a pain to walk back and forth between the axolotl house and base...
• We have most woods at home in the tree farm, but we haven't got mangrove trees yet, so I'll need to go look for some.
• I'd like to build out the rail platform - most of it still needs to be lined with stone, and then have lights attached...
• Would like to work on some personal builds as well. I dug out a large basement in my house but haven't done much with it, aside from a small lava farm. I also need to furnish the main part of it too...and build out my aesthetic pond...Endermen have been stealing my alignment blocks...

Recently had the desire to spend a long time just digging/making straight roads, so finally got down to extending the southward rail (which had hit the foot of a mountain when I stopped). Had the very interesting experience of watching Everything Everywhere All at Once (greatly enjoyed it) while digging, though I did still need more videos to get me through the rest of the dig...I punched through at least 1000 blocks' distance with a 3 x 4 tunnel and it's way faster to travel via the Nether, so this is mostly just for aesthetic or something like that. There are single stall stables in the middle of the tunnel because I kept having to travel back and forth between the chests I put down to hold all the cobble and other blocks, and some glass where it cut into larger caverns. These might be worth exploring sometime...

On the other end of the tunnel (a birch forest) I built a bunch of stables and a little rest house. Given how easy it is to obtain almost any material we might want on this server I think it would be nice to do more aesthetic builds. There's a portal in the house that goes to the Nether roof, so the main method of travel between the southernmost known building that has a dedicated rail to base...is actually running directions in hell, which is pretty funny (and this is completely safe at night, even). Think I might look into making a rail in the Nether so I can travel hands-off when I want...

In other server news, I've decided to turn on keepInventory - we're well-off enough that losing items on death is more annoyance than true setback (diamond tools and max level enchants are pretty much free, it's just a waste of time to re-earn the exp, remember what else was in inventory, etc.), and since we're doing more building than exploring, there isn't really that much of a need for that sort of danger. (We might turn it back off later if we do actual exploration, though.)

Checked in over the week on the farm's output - it's working great, though the farm's efficiency had some flaws that Twin fiddled with. The primary issues were:

• In order to prevent cubes from crossing the gap, I'd blocked off their path with a full row of blocks. This was pretty much 100% effective at preventing them from crossing (I did not see cubes of any size cross, at least), but the cubes had very limited visibility of the iron golem and so they didn't move towards the gap efficiently.
• Medium cubes would sometimes fall through the gap, especially if the large cubes were positioned over the gap when they split. They would despawn on the lower tier after a while.
• Not enough golems to attract cubes on the edges.
• The hopper cart track on the top tier was wrong (missing one row) so sometimes magma creams near the gap wouldn't be collected.

Twin made some modifications:

• Reconfigured the opposite edge of the gap to improve visibility (and hence efficiency/reducing loss through despawning).
• Added more golems across the gap.
• Added the third frog type.
• Added another golem on the lower tier to deal with the medium cubes that fall through.

But some new problems occurred:

• If large cubes broke up over the gap, the medium cubes would occasionally cross over to the golem side. The golems would kill them and the resulting small cubes. 
• Similarly, if a medium cube broke up close to the gap, the small cubes would sometimes land on the opposite side as well.

Today I added some modifications:

• Reduced the size of the gap with a hybrid of solid blocks and fences - medium cubes are now unable to fall through and cross the gap.
  • Small cubes are still able to cross the gap, but this happens somewhat uncommonly and small cubes still have a chance of falling through the gap again even if they make it across initially. Crossing the gap generally happens if many small cubes happen to be present and bump into each other, but this is preferable to losing a medium cube at roughly the same rate.
• Fixed the collection track on the top tier so it properly covers the entire tier.
• More of a QoL thing, but made the AFK platform a little less of a death trap. Wish we could use water elevators here...

There are still some more modifications we have planned:

• Add more spawning platforms to increase spawns.
• Add more powder snow to break larger cubes up faster before they reach the gap, which should in theory reduce the chances of cubes crossing the gap (since small cubes can't jump as far as bigger ones).

It occurred to me that a central golem in a spawning platform would've been a more efficient setup, but oh well.............there is POSSIBLY the option of setting up another row of golems on the opposite end because cubes spawned on the far end tend to just hang out and possibly despawn before reaching the gap.

Besides froglight farm stuff, I got distracted by Twin's iron farm at base, which was kind of clogged up.

The collection chests were partially occupied by red dyes and sometimes glow ink sacs, and a bunch of iron blocks for compressed storage. The hoppers were backed up with mostly poppies that had nowhere to go. Basically: it had good output but no output management (apart from manually crafting iron blocks), and this kind of bothered me every time I went to fetch some iron, so I sat down and built a sorter for it (and as a bonus, reorganised the area to be a little more spacious/tidy). Since Twin said the poppies weren't that necessary, I had them feed into a composter and put down collection chests for iron, glow ink sacs and bonemeal. The backed up poppies took a while to filter through the updated system but produced about 4 full stacks of bonemeal. I think this should be able to keep running for quite a while before requiring manual intervention to retrieve and compress the output.

Not that we need THAT much iron (after reorganisation I ended up with a full double chest of iron blocks) but!! It's always nice to be neat. Also, our main villager trading resource is iron, so for buying glass, collecting exp etc. in bulk we tend to burn through stacks of iron blocks, so it's good to have lots of stored iron.

It's fun upgrading builds like this!! I'd love to do similar fixes for other existing farms...

Built a basalt delta-based froglight farm! It's not at all efficient, and I initially built it so far out that the spawn platform went into a different biome so I had to rebuild the layer, etc. etc. but it is finished and it works. I've also built in an item sorter, so it splits the outputs nicely.

Waiting is no problem and we don't currently have a dire need for all these items (maybe except Twin who needs a ton of magma cream?) so this is fine...but I think I might put in some more spawn platforms to increase output. Might also need a little debugging because the medium slimes do sometimes manage to drop down to the frog chamber...but they despawn eventually so it's not a big deal either. My only actual gripe with this farm is that it takes ages to get here and also get up to the spawn platform because there's no water in the nether...

Currently there are only 2 types of frogs in the frog room so we'll need to put in the third type as well...

This isn't a major update but finally got elytra! (I have never had elytra) Twin helped with exploring the End Cities. We've also trapped a few shulkers that should be helpful when we're building that shulker farm (which I am still trying to work the location and building logistics out for).

We finally beat the Ender Dragon - with about 4 people at once it was actually fairly quick. That was the first time I'd ever defeated it, actually...

Post-battle, I did a little remodelling on the central island (torched the entire place), built a ramp up to the portal, and did some exploring...but then lost all my equipment out there :( Going to need to work for those again.

Twin and I are currently planning to set up a shulker farm when we next play together. I'm contemplating setting up an enderman farm at the central island so that we don't have to ferry pearls over.

The tree farm is done! It's...probably not as efficient as just cutting trees (since we have the Timber datapack installed) but it's AFKable. It just needs a ton of bonemeal, so I checked our skeleton farm.

...And so I ended up inspecting the item collection setup. It was pretty simple (a bunch of hoppers into chests) so it was collecting a lot of arrows alongside the bones. Tried shuffling the items around but found that it can't not collect the arrows by just ignoring them (it chokes up the hoppers). After checking in with Twin I swapped out the item collection section for a dispenser clock + water stream, which sorts the items by firing them at a wall - arrows get spent, while the bones go into the stream and get shunted into chests.

At some point I do want to implement a proper item sorter for a farm, but I thought this was a pretty cool solution to the problem! It seems to be a fair bit more efficient now and the physical space/farm chests are a bit neater. Between this and the tree farm I think I've learnt how to use water streams for moving items, but haven't got enough ice to do anything big with the knowledge yet. Maybe I should do an ice farm?

Started building an automated tree farm - using this tutorial. I wanted to place it somewhere relatively near base, but the general area has a lot of buildings already. Also, I thought the explosions might be annoying and not very scenic, so I decided to dig out the inside of a hill as required...which wasn't really a great idea because I have so much to dig and had to guess at the amount of required space by counting blocks in the video lol. I THINK it will fit, though.

The core part has been built, and I've cleared out a decent amount of space in the area. Next session I should be able to finish the TNT dispenser/duper part. And then I'll need to see if I can fit the moss bonemeal farm inside...I think there might be enough space to install it above the tree farm. Building it in the air will be a pain, though...