Following on from Monday’s post about the entire Caaaaaaves! build (read it here if you missed it), today I’ll take you through the caves in the lower half of the build.
The Warden Spawns is the first cave I built, and consequently has first pick of all my dark grey bricks. I ran out in later modules.
The poor bat was just trying to have a snooze. What do you mean, I can’t stretch my wings?
I have a macro lens that attaches to my phone camera. I used it to take some of these shots. I like the way the Warden is clearly visible but only at second glance.
Cave of Slime was honestly just to fill space. Aside from the diamonds I didn’t do much here.
The Fishing Trip is one of my favourite sections of the build. I think it captures a number of simple pleasures—fishing, cooking, swimming, spending time with your people. Never mind the fact that the Overworld’s atmosphere turns piglins into zombies—this family of three is having a great time.
Lava fish do not exist in Minecraft (yet).
Through the Nether portal, there’s another piglin peering through into the Overworld. A lonely life or a fun-filled undeath? Not a choice I’d be keen to make either.
Some people said The Dripstone Hideout was their favourite cave. The majority of the dark beige bricks are from a bulk lot of 2×2 slopes, which made for some interesting techniques as I tried to make them look like stalactites and stalagmites from the dripstone caverns in Minecraft. The axolotl in the middle is the blue variant, which is so rare in the game you have to breed an average of 1200 axolotls to get one (0.083% chance according to the wiki).
The Healing Power of Friendship is the first appearance of a player character. He’s doing well against a zombie rush—two gold axolotls are defending the river from below.
I love the way the over-water/underwater build has turned out. In this module I’ve begun the transition from dark grey to light grey bricks, partly because I was running out of dark grey, but mostly to reflect the change in Minecraft chunks from stone to deepslate as you dig deeper into the world.
A closer shot of The Healing Power of Friendship. This was quite a fragile part of the build, with only three small pillars to hold up the upper levels.
This module is a reference to two aspects of game logic. First is using axolotls as allies against hostile underwater mobs, from which you get the achievement The Healing Power of Friendship. The second is zombie conversion.
Pay attention to that zombie in the water. Now look at the next photo.
I added the rest of the zombie’s body underwater! I’m not sure if anyone at the show was able to pick up on this, as it’s quite far back and didn’t have internal lighting, but I really enjoyed making sure the details above and below were consistent.
For those unfamiliar with Minecraft, zombies transform into Drowned, a swimming zombie variant, after 30 seconds of being submerged beneath the water. That pale green zombie has already converted, and the others will be similarly trapped … if the ferocious axolotls don’t get them first 🙂
Diamonds! is another filler piece, built mainly to support the middle section.
Everything’s right next to the lava. I can imagine any number of ways mining that diamond ore could go wrong.
The brown blocks in the background are granite. It’s the only place I did another type of Overworld stone aside from basic stone or deepslate.
The Notch Apple is a module I enjoyed building, using inspiration from abandoned mineshafts and the possible loot you can find in those spider-infested halls. The player will need to be quick on the draw if he hopes to get an arrow off at Shelob.
Another shot with the macro lens. The sharp focus on the golden apple is magnificent!