Building a new Happy Place: The Joy of base building video games during quarantine

My favorite movie theater, the one with the ratty leather sofas and the really good cheeseburgers and jalapeno fries is closed. Disneyland, where I cry every time I walk through the front gate and collect pins and autographs from characters I know for a fact are just people in costumes is closed. The game store that sells board games a little cheaper than anyone else and would let me sit there whenever I had a bad day at work and unwind before getting home to do homework isn't letting people into the store. Even my apartment, which was decorated with all my wife and I's souvenirs, pictures of loved ones and the art I made is currently in a pile of boxes due to a recent move.

My happy places are gone. 

It's depressing to have all the familiar and warm places no longer be operating. It's hard to know what to do or what to plan. Luckily, I have a few places to go that aren't subject to quarantine, though I may have to deal with the occasional creeper or feral ghoul. 

Base Building Games

This concept isn't new. Minecraft pioneered the idea though prototypes can be found in The Sims and a select few other games before it. The idea is that a player's goal among others is to build their own safe spot, their own base to heal, resupply and generally have control over between fighting monsters with the occasional defense needed to keep the more pesky jerks away. These games are highly addicting and sought after, since there's something to the game play of scavenging for resources to build that new terrarium to your doom fortress, but in times like now it takes on an even bigger appeal: building a virtual stability when reality can't offer the same. 

The Other Obvious One

Of course if you follow video game news at all you know that besides Minecraft right now the hottest base building game on the market is Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Released near the beginning of the pandemic, Animal Crossing has become the social video game experience we needed beyond all others. You can customize your little island with whatever decorations you want and invite adorable little animal villagers to live with you and make your own cute community. Even the hardest of the hardcore gamers can't deny the appeal of trying to collect all the fish and fossils to please the plaid wearing owl in the museum. 

Updates and Upvotes 

For the more hardcore gamer looking for some combat in their new happy place, Fallout 76 offers a unique perspective to the concept. While it was almost universally panned when it first released, Fallout 76 has since been patched and updated due to the vocalization of its fans on sites like Reddit, where people saw the potential of the game and begged Bethesda not to abandon it. Now we can roam the wastelands in search of treasure with actual NPCs, There is something appealing to not only building a base where you can rest and craft but that can also defend you while you're working, plus earn you some extra caps from traveling players. 

The OG

They're are hundreds more examples of great base building games (Dragon Quest: Builders, Terraria, Trove...) but none compare to the daddy of them all Minecraft. People have built some mind blowing structures since the game first released, and coupled with the fact that it can be a co-op couch experience the appeal of this one isn't going to go away anytime soon. It's a good way to bond with the kids while we wait for this horror show to pass. 

Self Care

There's a loss of normalcy in the world right now, and while we wait for everything to return to somewhat the way it was we need to make our own normal for the time being. Games like Animal Crossing and Fallout 76 offer a reason to add to the routine with daily quests and updates, making them worlds that can easily become a habit. That habit can be just the escape you need in these times to help give a sense of stability and fun, plus you get your pick between exploding bush monsters, radioactive zombies and penguins in adorable sweaters. 

-JOE

Minecraft Temples

Minecraft users have created some incredibly cool builds, from Minas Tirith to a scale replica of Westeros. For the Mormon crowd though, an innovative fan has built several temples for geeks and the faithful to enjoy. I could say more, but honestly, the artist Justin Tate is far better at explaining it than I am.
Take it away, Justin!

Well ever since Elder Bednar challenged us to share the Gospel on Social media I have felt that is important since that is the direction the world is headed.  I have wanted to think of a creative untraditional way to share the gospel.  Since I have many hobbies such as BMX, flute music, and gaming, I wanted to somehow reach people who are interested in the same hobbies as me.  I only recently thought of this as a way to do that while playing Minecraft with my kids.  It's a game we enjoy playing together because it is very family friendly compared to many of the games out there.  Since we play together creating our own digital world, I decided to build a temple so that we could always have a beautiful temple in view while we are playing.   The first one was the Bountiful Temple, where my wife and I were married.  That was when we only played on The mobile version, Minecraft Pocket Edition.  Then after we started playing the Xbox One edition I needed to build a new temple in that world so we could still always have a temple in sight while we play.  This time I made the Washington DC temple since that is our home temple in real life.
After this, I thought why keep this hidden for only my family to see, when other people could enjoy it too?  The scripture that came to mind was..........

Matthew 5:14-16 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your father which is in heaven.

So I decided to make a Facebook page where I could collect all my LDS themed Minecraft creations together in one place and hope that some other people may enjoy seeing it.  I also hope that other people will contribute their own LDS themed Minecraft creations so they can be shared with other people too.  I have always thought that if my efforts can at least uplift one person than it is worth it because "Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God;" (D&C 18:10).
So anyway, it may not change the world, but I'm just happy to see that several people have enjoyed my work so far, and a couple people have said how it has uplifted them already and that makes me happy to know.  Hopefully I will be able to reach some people within the gaming community who may have not otherwise heard of the church.

(When I asked what mode he used...)

As for what mode, definitely creative mode haha.  As impressive as it would be to gather all the materials in Survival mode, I simply don't have the time for that.

It's hard to say how long it takes because so far they have been very different.  To be honest, the DC temple was actually very easy to make and only took me about a week of working whenever I had a little spare time here and there.  So it only took a few hours.  The Preston and Mesa Temples on the other hand proved to be much more technical and time consuming.  As I practice, I am naturally learning little techniques to speed up he process.  With my next two temples, I have done a lot more planning and measuring before hand, which I think will help to speed up the process even more.  We shall see how that goes. But as of now, I think it's safe to say that they take roughly a month or so to complete.  My life schedule is very busy so I spread these projects out over an extended period of time.


Since Temples come in several general styles, I want to do one from each style, so they don't blend together and look the same.  I also want to feature some lesser known temples.  You know the big ones like Salt Lake, DC, and Hawaii for example get a lot of attention so I want to surprise people by featuring their temple that maybe wouldn't be the first to come to mind when thinking about temples.  Because they are all beautiful to me.  The first three were significant to me because of my marriage(Bountiful),where we live now(DC/Maryland), and where my full time mission was(England), but after that, I'm wanting to do them for other people.

What do you think?
-JOE

Random Minecraft Pictures

So, I forgot that I needed to write up a blog post today.  So, I'm posting some pictures from the Minecraft world I was playing on last night.  Hope you enjoy! Come back next week for more Mix Up Your Minecraft.

-Andrew

Silk worms working (from the Ex Nihilo mod)

My first shack and now it's my mine shaft. (drying racks on the right are from Tinker's Construct)

A small house for my Tinker's Construct work.  You can see the Smeltery on the right.

Mix Up Your Minecraft: Mo' Creatures and Biomes O' Plenty

Are you tired of fighting the same zombies, skeletons, and creepers?  Are you tired of the same old vanilla Minecraft biomes?  Are you tired of feeling like your Minecraft world is desolate and empty?  Well, this post might have some mods for you!

I'm going to go over two mods in this post (I have to make up for last week, right?).  The first one is Biomes O' Plenty.  Biomes O' Plenty adds approximately 80 new biomes and 12 new sub-biomes.  You heard me correctly: 80 new biomes!  Redwood forests, wastelands, and wetlands just to name a few.  And it doesn't just add them to the 'overworld'.  New biomes show up in the Nether as well!  Also, the mod adds in a whole new dimension called the Promised Land.  The Promised Land represents the sky lands that Mojang almost released instead of the End.

The other mod is Mo' Creatures.  Mo' Creatures breathes new life into the Minecraft world.  All sorts of beautiful, crazy, and dangerous creatures are added into the world.  There are bugs, birds, and snakes.  There is the fast and deadly silver skeleton.  There are the incredible dangerous werewolves.  There are also the peaceful ents.  In all, Mo' Creatures adds in 30+ more mobs.  I would personally recommend reading up on the mod before trying to play with it.  The number of new creatures can be very overwhelming!

Here's a brief video of a world a friend and I generated.  A number of different Biomes O' Plenty biomes and Mo' Creatures creatures are shown.  In the end, we ended up junking the world for the other, but it might be fun to watch me freak out when a snake attacks me.

Enjoy!

Mix Up Your Minecraft: Thaumic Tinkerer

This week's post is going to be a short one.  Work just changed things up on me, and I'm still trying to get used to it.

The mod of the day is called 'Thaumic Tinkerer'.  Remember the mod called Thaumcraft that I reviewed two weeks ago? (If you don't, read it here).  Thaumic Tinkerer is a mod for Thaumcraft.  Essentially a mod for a mod or modception (Inception jokes are a little old, sorry!).  Thaumic Tinkerer integrates really well with the Thaumcraft research mechanic.  It doesn't add in any new mechanics, just loads of new discoveries and items to build.  Some of the ones that I particularly like are gaseous light which lights up an area with an easily discernable light source, ethereal platforms which players can fall through by sneaking and can be disguised to look like nearly any other block in the game, as well as powerful end game items including unbreakable armor and wands that store an incredible amount of energy.  It also includes much much more!

It is interesting to note that Thaumic Tinkerer isn't the only mod that modifies Thaumcraft.  In fact, there are whole lists of mods that add more to the experience!  Personally, I haven't played with anything besides Thaumic Tinkerer so I can't speak of what the other mods are like.  If you are interested, here is a list of them on Reddit and another on the Thaumcraft 4 wiki site.

As always, have fun mixing up your Minecraft and make sure to mix responsibly.

P.S. Mormon Geeks is going to Fantasy Con this week!  Be sure to keep your eyes peeled.  There may be an Andrew sighting. ;)

Mix Up Your Minecraft - Not Enough Items

Today's post will be a short one.  Work has been really crazy.

Not Enough Items (NEI) is a mod that will help you keep track of crafting recipes.  In 'vanilla' Minecraft, it's purpose might not be nearly that apparent (unless you can't remember how to make an enchanting table or a beacon).  It even will show various brewing recipes for that tricky brewing stand.  In mods, being able to look up how to make a thingamajiger steam component thingy will save you hours and hours of time of pouring through forum posts trying to look up the crafting recipes.  NEI gives you a search feature accessible from your inventory.  By typing in the name (or partial name) of an item, it will pull up a catalog of all the items with that name (or descriptive text) on the right.  From there, you can click on the item to see a recipe for it.  The search also supports things like REGEX (a language that lets you use more fuzzy pattern matching) and can let you search for items by mod (useful for answering the question of 'What items does Thaumcraft 4 add?')

It doesn't stop there though.  By right clicking on an item, NEI will pull up every recipe that uses that item.  This is extremely useful for mods that add in all sorts of strange ores or items.  If a mod has added a special form of crafting (and the mod author has implemented it a certain way), NEI can even show information on how to use that.  Also, a little question mark on the crafting recipes will superimpose a picture of it on the crafting grid so you don't even have to remember what the recipe looks like! (There's also other features around how the recipes are displayed).

It also features a creative mode where it can give you items as if you were in creative mode.  This is useful if a survival world has glitched and you lost your 64 diamond blocks.  There is an enchantment selector to enchant items.  Also NEI provides various buttons while in 'cheat' mode to toggle the weather, change the time, and activate a magnet mode that pulls in all nearby items.  It even has a special mode that will show you were hostile monsters are able to spawn in your world (represented by yellow and red X's).

Overall, NEI is a really useful mod that really shines when extra mods are added to your game.  Even in 'vanilla' Minecraft, it can help out by showing where mobs can spawn or showing what you can craft with that lapis lazuli you just mined.

Mix Up Your Minecraft: Thaumcraft 4

Hello everyone! Welcome to the next post in my series 'Mix Up Your Minecraft'. Today I'm going to talk about a mod called Thaumcraft 4. Thaumcraft 4 adds a magic system to Minecraft. Yes, you heard me correctly: MAGIC! :D

It all begins simply. First, you make a magic wand. Second, you right click on a bookshelf to receive the Thauminomicon (basically a guide to the mod). Next, you build a research table and a thaumometer. The thaumometer lets you scan blocks and items in the world. That will give you 'research points' which you use to conduct research and discover various magical creations that you can make.

In order to actually do any magic, you will need to find various aura nodes that are scattered throughout the world. Normally, the are very faint spots of light that are difficult to see. However, if you are looking through your thaumometer, they will be reveal as small glowing stars. You can use your wand to drain energy from them (called vis) which you can then harness to do various magical things.

Aura node as seen with the naked eye

Aura node seen through a thaumometer

In the beginning, there are small things that you can do. You can create foci (focus plural) for your wand which will let you channel the energy in your wand to do other things. For example the flame focus lets you take ignis vis (fire) and actually shoot flames at your enemies. Eventually you have the ability to create various magical pieces of armor, and even small golems that can carry out various tasks for you.

Aren't golems cute?

For me, the most visually impressive part of the game is the infusion enchanting. It requires a special magical construct with pillars, a strange looking cube object, and a number of pedestals arranged just so. It also requires you to break down objects into pure bits of magical energy that represent different aspects of the Minecraft universe. Finally when everything is gathered, you can start the process and watch as the cube/matrix thing absorbs all of the ingredients and creates a brand new magical item. The process is not without risk. Each item has a certain degree of instability that comes with it. When the cube is working, strange purple liquid can appear, the player can be struck by lightning, or explosions can go off. If care isn't taken to quickly correct any problems, the cube will quickly go out of control and cause even more problems.

 Overall, it's a really fun mod. It can be difficult to troubleshoot why things aren't working, but the end results make me feel like I've accomplished something. Personally, my favorite part of the mod is creating farming golems and a wand focus that lets me shoot lightning like I was a Sith from Star Wars.

 I've done a short video sort of highlighting a mod. Hope you enjoy!



If you're interested, more information on the mod can be found here.

Mix Up Your Minecraft: Wynncraft

Minecraft is like ice cream.  The basic version of Minecraft is often called 'Vanilla'.  It is the version most people are familiar with.  It's the version that Mojang maintains and posts.  I wanted to write a series of blog posts on ways to mix it up, add in some new flavors, and probably create whole new experience with the same basic game.

Honestly, I don't think I've ever played a game where I've seen some many mods, mini games, servers, and variants.  Minecraft is like ice cream. There's so many flavors, and mixing it up makes me enjoy it a whole lot more.

Wynncraft

Ok, so Wynncraft isn't a mod for Minecraft.  It's an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game).

A friend of mine first invited me to play, and I was immediately thrown into a very different way of playing Minecraft.  First, I had to select one of four classes to play as.  Naturally, I chose mage.  Next thing I knew, I was on a pathway and being told to go see the king.  I had to battle my way through hordes of zombies in order to get to him.  That was when I was sent on a quest to go help the world.

Monsters spawning in the game is interesting.  I think it could use some tweaking.  For example, right in the starter area, about 5 zombies would spawn in at a time, and it would get pretty overwhelming.  I think I eventually had to just flee.  I've been wondering through the game world when the game literally drops a group of monsters around me to fight.  Needless to say, this makes for an exciting experience!

One of my favorite aspects of the games are the spells.  Granted, as a wizard my first spell was a little unimpressive at first.  I had a healing spell.  Soon I discovered that it was a way to keep myself, and everyone around me, alive and fighting for longer.  The game really picked up when I unlocked the second mage spell, teleport.  Suddenly, I was teleporting across the landscape, getting lost, and having all sorts of fun getting into and out of pickles.  My favorite part is being able to teleport out of monsters reach.  Of course, the third spell is probably my favorite.  It calls down a meteor to damage people in a wide area.  I think it's impressive how Wynncraft uses the basic Minecraft engine to do these spells and effects.

Here's a brief video of me playing the game with a friend. I'm playing a mage and he is an assassin.



Overall, I've enjoyed the game. The other players can get a little on the annoying side. I've learned to just switch servers if someone was bothering me (progress is saved across servers).

The game is free to play.  There are options to pay to become a VIP to receive double experience, access to a VIP town, and access to the Assassin class.  For more information about the game, see their website at www.wynncraft.com.

Hope you enjoy mixing up your Minecraft.

-Andrew

Even more Minecraft variants: Dwarves vs. Zombies! and Terra Firma Craft

Minecraft is a really cool game.  I mean, even in it's unaltered form, it can provides hours of entertainment, exploration, zombie fighting, and building.  When the game is modded, it can add a whole new level of experience to the game.  In fact, there are even whole servers devoted to providing various interesting Minecraft based games.  Want to play hide and seek? There is a server that plays that!  Plays get disguised as various blocks in the world.  Want to play the hunger games? Yes, there is a server for that too!  I'm going to cover two different modifications that I have actually played.

Dwarves Vs Zombies!

At it's hard, Dwarves vs. Zombies (or DvZ) is a roleplaying game at heart.  The players all take the role of dwarves and spawn into an area.  They are required to gather resources, craft armor, cook cakes, and build up a fortress to withstand the upcoming onslaught of monsters.  As the night comes, a horrific event will occur that will kill off some of the dwarves.  Sometimes, it is a mighty fire breathing dragon.  Other times, it is a horrific plague.  I've also seen rat swarms, tornadoes, and a black cloud of pure death.  Once a dwarf dies, they come back as a monster.  They can choose to be a zombie, skeleton, or creeper.  Each of them functions pretty similar to regular Minecraft mobs, except they are controlled by players. Zombies get a powerful regeneration effect.  Skeletons can cause a wither effect if they shoot someone.  Creepers well...explode.  There are even special monsters that will randomly spawn in like the wolverine, super creepers, spider kings, squirds, kraken, and the iron golem.  The game can be played, for free, at www.brucesgym.com. (Note that the server IP for Minecraft and for a web browser is the same).

Every week, the creator of Bruce's Gym gets on and does a streaming even of Dwarves vs. Zombies.  When the creator is involved, all sorts of new and exciting things can happen.  No game is the same.  Be warned they do use strong language in the stream.  The stream can be found here.

Terra Firma Craft

Terra Firma Craft is a mod for vanilla Minecraft.  According to it's website, it is 'survival as it should have been'.  It definitely does live up to its name.  Terra Firma Craft completely changes how Minecraft is played. For instance, a player can't start a new game, and immediately start punching down a tree.  First, they have to break the leaves of a tree to collect sticks.  Then they collect rocks from the ground and knap them to create an ax head.  Combining the ax head with a stick creates an ax.  The player can then chop down the tree, causing the entire tree to break, dropping it's logs on the ground.  It gets far more complicate and intricate from there.

As the player breaks the stones on the ground, they may find small bits of metal.  Using clay and a crafting bench, they can create a clay mold.  When cooked in a fire pit (yes, there are fire pits!) it becomes a ceramic mold.  The player then heats up the metal till its melting point and the melted metal is stored in a ceramic mold.  When enough metal is melted, the resulting liquid must be cooled, then shaped into an ingot using an anvil (or a piece of rock at the beginning of the game).  Then the ingot can be shaped into a tool head.  Also, the ingot must be at the right workable temperature in order to be shaped. (See the Metals article for temperature details).

Also, animals can't be instantly bred!  There are male and female animals.  When 'bred' there is a gestational period and after that, a baby animal is created.  There are even fruit trees in the game that can be planted and pruned.  Agriculture has a lot more crops than vanilla Minecraft, each of which uses a different nutrient from the soil.

All in all, it is a very detailed and complicated mod.  As a single player, it was a lot of work to keep myself alive and well fed for the first few portions of the games.  Monsters like zombies and skeletons are a lot more dangerous than in vanilla Minecraft (especially with only a knife to protect myself).  It is a very fun Minecraft mod if you are looking for something different to try or something more challenging.

That's all for today.  Happy gaming.

Minecraft - Feed the Beast - Mad Scientist style

To start off today's post: a humorous story.  My nieces and nephews love it when I come over.  Not simply because they like to see me either.  Within moments of me walking into the door at my parent's house Sunday, one of my nephews approached me and asked "Did you bring your laptop?!" in a very excited voice.

That's right.  I somehow have my nieces and nephews addicted to Minecraft, despite the fact that they have never actually played it.  It ended up with all of them (except the little guy learning to crawl) crowded around my small laptop screen to watch me play.  Then comes the barrage of things to do, and sadly, I can't do all of them.  After nearly dying twice, it was time to head upstairs for dessert.  When they were all leaving, my nephew (the same one who approached me before) asked my mom for some paper and a pen.  Moments later, he was asking me how to spell my name.  He left me a cute little folded note entitled 'open these'.  I opened it up to read 'Bring your laptop, Andrew.'  Well, so much for the 'cute' part.

That aside, Minecraft has been keeping me very busy.  Feed the Beast has officially launched some of there mod packs.  One of them is called the 'Mindcrack' mod pack.  I've been really enjoying playing this one.  Here are some screenshots:

I changed my minecraft skin to look a little bit more like me!

This is a world anchor.  It was supposed to keep my base loaded when I wasn't there (so the machines would run).  I found out later that it required Ender pearls to run (been super hard for me to find those!).  I got angry, so I flew up and put it up on the ceiling where it has stayed ever since.  I just learned that I could turn off that requirement.

These are the barrels that I use to sort things that I have a lot of.  It may be hard to notice, but the rightmost barrel one up from the bottom contains leaves.  I discovered that the electric chainsaw tears through trees rather quickly.  In about 15-20 seconds, I can make an entire small tree disappear.

I have a skylight in my base for solar panels.  A few times, spiders have dropped in to visit.  This one spun in place for about 30 seconds while I stared at it in confusion.

These sorting machines hook up to the barrel as well as other chests.  I love sorting machines.

These chest allow me to send items to different machines in my secret lab without having to walk over and put the items in myself.  I even have it hooked up so that all the results get sent to the chest on the far left.

My 'older' machines.  In the back, you can see my geothermal generators.  I found a massive pool of lava underneath my base that I am pumping up to my base to use for energy.

The bigger, newer machines.  The one on the right is a blast furnace.  The one on the left is a grinder, for grinding up ore.  You can also kind of see my sorting system working.  The little items in the purple boxes are flagged to go to my 'machine output' chest.

Better look at my geothermal generators.

View of my base from the stairs.

Another look at the industrial grinder and an electrolyzer

My solar panel array.

My fully automatic tree farm!  Doesn't require me to babysit it at all.

This whole area used to be a giant lava lake.

This is the level it is at right now.  The obsidian is the old 'surface' level.

My magic room!  The enchanting table from vanilla minecraft, and some items from a mod called Thaumcraft which allows you to do 'magic'.

Another shot of the magic room

My old farm, with two of the Thaumcraft golems hanging out.

Merry Christmas!

By the way, isn't this a cool present?

Minecraft - Feed the Beast - a little bit of everything

Disclaimer: this post is very long and may cause explosions or raving about pipes and wires.  You have been warned! Also, the screenshots tend to 'bleed' into the side bar...actually it's more like a hostile takeover.  For science!

Awhile back, I did a post on Minecraft on here, showing off a house that I had built.  After that, I sort of lost interest in Minecraft for awhile.  A few weeks ago, I saw a YouTube video about a modpack called 'Feed the Beast'.  Basically, a mod is something that adds something new to the game of Minecraft.  A modpack is a whole set of mods to modify the game.

Feed the Beast adds a LOT of stuff into the game (yes, that does deserve capital letters!).  I've been playing for about a week, and I've only played with a small number of the mods on the game.

One of the mods adds new biomes to the game.  Minecraft already has things like deserts, forests, taiga, etc.  The modpack adds in things like redwood forests, mountainous deserets, autumn forests (forests with autumn colored trees), and wastelands.

Redwood forest, from the top

A wasteland (the text is from a waypoint system in the mod pack)

Snowy Rainforest biome

A mod called ForestryCraft adds in things like automatic tree farms, wheat farms, cactus farms, etc.  It also adds in bees and beekeeping.  Kind of interesting step back from the usual build/explore of Minecraft.  You can have pet bees!

For me, the biggest add was from the mods IndustrialCraft, BuildCraft, and GregTech.  These mods add in machines, engines, generators, and all sorts of pipes.  Currently, I have a number of solar panels, water mills, generators that burn wood (and other things) as fuel.  There's also a machine that doubles how much metal I can get from ores.  The pipes can be used to pull items out of machines or sort them.  It even adds something called a 'Mining Laser' which speeds up mining, automated mining, new armors that are powered by electricity, and jetpacks.  Yes, jetpacks.  I can now fly around Minecraft instead of walking everywhere.

Standard farm, but with new crop stakes.  Allows me to harvest without having to replant

Me in my nano suit with my nano sword

A mod called 'MystCraft' adds in linking books as well as the ability to create new 'ages' in the game.  I haven't experimented with that much.  I mostly use linking books to travel between the 'Overworld', the Nether, and the Twilight Forest.

A shot (from left to right), blast furnace (for making steel), coal coke oven, enchanting table, and a linking book stand

Closer view of the linking stand

Purpose of this part of my laboratory is to create lava out of netherrack

Lava generator at work

Speaking of the Twilight Forest, that is another new mod.  It adds in a whole new area to explore.  It contains large trees, areas called 'dark forests' where the sun doesn't shine, hedge mazes, underground mazes, hills full of treasure and monsters, and a few new bosses.  I've only encountered a bit of the content that the forest has.  I just recently found the first boss and it was a tough fight (even with my super new armor and weapons).

Portal to the Twilight Forest, as well as a bug from it.

Welcome to the Twili- what the crap is this big whole doing here?

Wow.  Looks like someone was doing some strip mining here.

Sure is a thick canopy...what is that big orange thing?

It's my quarry, going to work at strip mining another part of the twilight forest.

So dark, I'm being attacked by a naga? Thing was so fast, that was the best screenshot I got of it.

More screenshots of my base

A shot of my underground base, full of machines, pipes, wires, etc.

Another shot of pipes and machines.  These ones provide power to the automatic tree farm

I like watching items spin around this square...

Barrels! They hold 64 full stacks of one item.  Above them is part of my sorting system

My super large power storage unit, and a bunch of strange blocks.  Shall we take a closer look?

What is all this heavy duty stone and this door for?

Oh, it's a nuclear reactor.  And it's active!

Complicated set-up, but somehow it didn't explode

Storage chest, my crafting table, and a bed. As well as an alchemy stand.

The main entrance to my base.  Can't get out of it you say?

Jet packs make it easier.

Solar panels

An automatic tree planter/harvester

My bee hives!

Water mills

I sure hope PETA doesn't find out about this...

The mining laser?  You're curious about that?  I definitely was!  I decided to put the thing to use to help my quarry cut through the leaves of the forest faster (leaves are about 8-10 layers thick).  I decided to play around with the 'explosive setting'...

This quarry is moving far too slow!

Trying not to aim to close to myself

I'm firin' ma laser!

A large crater is left