Working as Intended

This is going to be a more unorthodox entry, as I spent most of my time playing today exploring the mother of all cavern systems,  building stations and mining down there. There's less of the funny and more of me explaining just what the darn was happening. Unless you wanted to see a hundred screenshots of my cutting down trees, I think it's for the best that I skip the non-exposition moments.

Oh, you did want to see that?



Well, too bad, mister!

I spent more of the morning just exploring the area around Bopple Base. Not exactly the most thrilling scenario, I know, but it really helps to get your bearings in this game. Also, I wanted to see if I was plonked down on an island, or if I was just running around a tiny part of an incredibly huge continent or whatever.



As far as I could tell, it was an island. This becomes important, believe it or not.

Just fucking believe it!



Right. Time to explain what happened today. Just underneath Gubelbig Base I founded MSoDaS Base, which was originally going to be (and could still very well be) a hub for a minecart system that'd take me to and from various underground mines, wherever they popped up.

This didn't exactly go as planned, however.



MSoDaS Base is just a little camp where I can bring back materials I find from my various trips down to what a friend of mine dubbed The Motherlode.

I think it looks pretty swank, myself. Except for the waterfall outside, which nearly flooded the damn base when I was building it. Whoopsie-doodle.



The Motherlode was found entirely by accident as I was digging around trying to find some Iron Ore for building the track between Gubelbig and Bopple. I'd like to say that if I didn't dig right here that I would have missed it completely, but I honestly think the only way I could've avoided it is if I didn't dig underground at all.

Anyway, enough not-at-all dramatic postponing of it. Here's The Motherlode.










The Motherlode, as far as I can tell, essentially honeycombs the entire island I'm on, as well as parts beyond. It took me about 3 hours just to light up the area underneath my bases, let alone the tunnels and other currently inaccessible paths (I'll need to build bridges everywhere).

Iron, Gold, Diamond, Obsidian, everything was here by the truckload. I know a few friends of mine got insanely jealous by the Diamond deposits all over the place when I showed them it via some live streaming action. Which, of course, made what follows all the more depressing for me and hilarious for them. Bastards!



But before that, here's a quick little idea of what's going on. I found that two major stems of the Motherlode catacomb goes directly underneath Gubelbig (So building over that pit of death turned out to be a good idea after all). This is Camp #1, which basically served as a way for me to easily find my way out (Wood tends to stand out underground, no?) and store some stuff for the day before I take it back up to MSoDaS.



This is Camp #2, which serves the same basic function as #1, except that it's on the other Stem that passes by Gubelbig. I'm not sure if a stem comes close to Bopple, but considering how goddamn gigantic this thing must be, it wouldn't surprise me.



Needless to say, I had enough material to fill up my inventory was Coal/Iron/Glass/ect and turn almost everything I had into Diamond (except my armour and sword). Things looked like they were going well!

Until..



I was trying to see just how damn far the Catacomb paths went beyond Camp #1 (pictured waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay in the background). Aside from coming across a couple of dozen Creepers and Skeletons for what seemed like a few Day/Night cycles (I hate Creepers ;;) I decided to try and create my own little stem in The Motherlode.

Big mistake.



I must've been digging upwards a touch too much, because it didn't take long before I stupidly flooded the chamber.

My brilliance just astounds me sometimes.


I figured it must've just been a single water tile somewhere that was causing the problem, so I swam up the newly-created waterfall (Yes, you can do that~) to try and plug it up with something.



It didn't take long to realize I was going much, much further up then I originally planned. If I plugged it now, then I'd plummet to my death, and the catacombs are so damn large that I'd never find my awesome Diamond equipment and materials in time, before they vanished.

But if the water was left as-is, then all the good materials are pretty much going to be flooded, and I couldn't reach them without risking death there, either. "So, fuck it!" I figured, "Let's just see where it goes."

Second big mistake.



Yeah, I wasn't kidding when I said the system went a very long way.

But, hey, it can't be that far away from either Gubelbig or Bopple, right?



... Right?