Episode 7: Improvements (1)

Three weeks have passed since I got injured by a zombie.

I was bedridden for one week and only go out of the house to use the restroom. I also got a fever for a couple of days but I managed to recover and survived.

The wound left a huge scar but I didn't care about my appearance since I already look like a walking popsicle with my cuboid body.

I got quite a lot of food in my inventory so I managed to stay in bed until I fully recovered.

All of my hearts are now full.

For two weeks after I recovered, I did a lot of improvements in my territory. I was excited to travel and find other people but I don't know how long the journey is what direction I'm going so I decided to thoroughly prepare.

I greatly expanded my farm. It is 3 times bigger than it was before. It was easier to tilt the dirt now that I have an enchanted stone hoe. I also reshape the pond so that it can hydrate the farm lands more efficiently.

My first harvest yielded 15 pieces of wheat and 40 seeds which is fantastic. I didn't consume the wheat though but I turned them all into hay bales and feed them to the sheep and cows.

The water level of the pond though became a problem after a few days since I planted the new crops. It is starting to get low but luckily it started raining for a couple of days so if filled up again. Probably because there are a lot of crops now to hydrate that it needed a lot more water. I need to find another water source or else the crops are going to die and I'm going to die by dehydration.

The animal farms are also upgraded. I keep finding new animals every day like chickens, sheep, cows and I even found some pigs.

The chicken coop is a lot larger now to accommodate more chickens. I found out that you need to build some sort of hen house for the chicken to tend their eggs for it to hatch. It takes one week for the eggs to hatch into chicks. I have around 20 chickens now. Feeding them is hard since almost all the grass in vicinity is gone but I gained a lot of seeds since the first harvest so I can still feed them for a little while.

Some of the eggs that I gathered in the coop are stored in the inventory and are used for consumption. Thankfully, inventory keep the state of the item when you stored it so no food will expire if all of them are kept there. I tried this with storing pot full of hot water in the inventory and see if it cooled down but even after a few days it is still hot. The outside storage though like chest doesn't have the same property like the inventory when you put something in there. So, I put all of my food in my inventory. I don't know the properties of the ender chests and shulker boxes since I don't have them but I have hope they have the same cheat like my inventory.

The barn was also greatly enlarged. The space inside the barn was equally divided into four for the sheep, cows, pigs and the other one is reserved in case I find other animals.

There 6 sheep and 2 of them are pregnant. I don't know how long to wait for them to give birth but at least I'm can shear them once a week so I got about 12 wools per week.

Most of my wools in my inventory is already crafted into clothes. I learned the crafting recipe of clothes are similar with crafting an armor. I now have plenty of clothes to change into. I also dyed some of them using flower dyes to have a variety. I don't want them to be all white. My original clothes were also washed and repair.

There are five cows on the other quarter of the barn and only one of them is pregnant. To tell you honestly, I'm having trouble determining the gender of the animals at first but now I'm getting the hang of it. I can gather a bottle of milk per female cow every day. Sadly, I don't have any more containers I can put the milk on and I don't see any sand to smelt into glass to craft into bottles. I also don't want to craft lots of buckets because I don't have a lot of iron and I been saving them for a set of armor.

The pigs on the other side only have 3. I didn't see plenty of them for the last couples of weeks and there are really troublesome to handle. Unlike sheep and cows when you approach them, they are cautious but they don't immediately attack you but pigs on the other hand will brutally tackle you the moment you make eye contact on them. Thankfully, I have carrots on me that time when I found them and managed to calm them down and lure them into the barn.

Pigs in this world really love carrots and they consume a lot of carrots and I mean A LOT. They keep making noises when they still hungry and I keep feeding them to keep them quiet. I was planning on butchering all of them since there not really worth it since they consume quite a bit of carrot but I decided to keep them. They might be useful in the future.

All of the animals are well fed and healthy except for the roosters. I cooked every rooster I can find. I was quite nervous when I butchered the first rooster. They don't just magically skin themselves and ready to cook when you kill them. You have to do it manually. One chicken can give you lots of meat and feathers.

I also have done lots and lots of mining and improvements in the mine shaft.

The mine shaft has now a door in the entrance. This is to make sure that no monsters will get inside like what happened last time. There still a problem of lighting up the tunnel but at least it's safe from being a monster house. I still have candles to use for the lantern so I still can see while I'm mining. I don't often use torches because they really wasteful. It only takes 2 hours for a torch to burnt out. I don't want my wood supply to be waste on torches.

Candles seems to be the most useful source of light here in this world though I don't know how to craft one. I still have all the melted wax from all the used candles but I don't know how repurpose this. Maybe I need some strings to be able to craft candles but the only way I know to gather strings is by hunting spiders. I still have nightmares about the zombie incident so monster hunting right now is not yet an option.

All of my tools are now made of iron. For two weeks of slowly digging down in the mine shaft, I finally have enough iron to craft all the iron tools. I still don't have enough to craft an entire armor but I'm getting there. I have to be ready the next time I encounter another monster.

I don't have any way to know how deep am I in the ground so I just labeled the walls with signs. Every time I go down a block, I just put a sign saying B-1 then the number increases every block I went down. I'm in B-30 right now. I still don't see any diamonds or any ores except iron. It is nice to be have diamonds at this time but in the game, diamonds are usually found below B-60 so it is probably the same here. I found lots of coal though. I use some of them for torches but I save most of them for fuel.

Coal and charcoal are really efficient fuel. It only takes one piece of coal or charcoal to smelt a single ore. They also burn hotter than other fuel you use in the furnace. You can smelt 2 iron ingots an hour if you use coal or charcoal as fuel. They are the most efficient fuel so far that I used.

And lastly, the improvement of my house or shall I say castle.

I mined quite a lot of cobblestones and I have no idea what I'm going to do with all of them so I decided to smelt them into stone to craft them into stone bricks to build a castle. Stone bricks are a lot harder and stronger than regular stones or cobblestones. I knew this when I tried mining stone bricks with a pickaxe to compare them with stones and cobblestone.

I have problem of building the castle though. The higher I build the harder it is to keep it stable. I dug a really deep foundation for the castle just to keep it steady. It really easy to build things in the game where physics is not well established but it is really hard here. You have to be really careful placing blocks so you don't get crushed when it starts to fall down. Maybe I can try using adhesive like slime balls between the blocks to strengthen it but I don't have any smile balls with me so maybe in the future I can try this when I slay some slimes.

I know I can just build a small home since I'm going to travel anyway but I have lots of time since I don't have lots of food and just waiting for the crops to grow. I also don't have enough materials to craft an entire armor. I learned the hard way that armor is really needed in this world. I know that I can just use my time mining in the mine shaft but I'm getting sick and tired of mining. I needed to do something else.

The castle design is a little bit square. I want to build complex designs for this castle but I'm having the trouble of building its foundation so I just build it square to keep it simple. I added some decorations on the outside and inside though so it is not ugly to look at. I don't really care what people think of my build but I just want it to be as beautiful as possible.

The castle I build is really big and has a lot of space inside of it. The roof is kind of flat. I was worried that water might pass through the roof since it is built with stone bricks but when it rained for two days, none of the water seems to get through. I just need to make sure that water don't fill up the roof and build a proper rain diverter. The entrance for now is oak doors but in the future, I might try using iron doors for increase protection.

The castle has three floors. I build a master bedroom on the top floor of the castle. Most of my torch consumptions were spent on this floor since I kind of want to keep it bright. I want also to rest with ease knowing that I can see the surroundings. The second floor is only used for storage for the things I mined and gathered. I don't have lots of resources to store so I only used a small amount of space in the second floor. The first floor doesn't have anything in it. Just a large space with stones pillars and giant staircases leading to the second floor and basement. I built the restroom of this castle in the basement so I can store the waste in a really big hole I made in the ground.

I realized that I overdid building my home but I kind of like it having a really big house to sleep in.

I spend most of the time mining looking for ores and possibly diamonds.

Once I have enough materials to craft armor, I'm going to do something crazy. Something I will never think of doing since I got here in this world.