My world, and welcome to it

I started playing Minecraft in September of 2010. The first world I generated was a snow world (back then, there weren’t biomes — but randomly you’d get a world covered in snow and with snow falling constantly), and that turned out not to be much fun. So I generated another world — good old “World2” — and have been exploring and playing in it ever since. Right now — July 2011 — it clocks in at 149MB, and the map of it looks like this (click for full size):

Important places are labeled on the map: the origin (the map’s original spawn point, not so relevant now that we have beds), and the major bases.

Let’s take a look around...

The origin

The original spawn point of the world was on the shore of a bay in fairly large body of water. At first I didn’t do much with it and threw up my first couple of buildings inland, but eventually built a handy little fortress in the bay, with its bottom floors underwater (one of the earliest tricks I learned in Minecraft). I think it looks best at night:

There’s a dock out back for boats (and another on the shore), and a portal. A couple of lighthouses, built during my early explorations by sea, are also visible in the distance:

Early construction

The first real “base” I ever built (I did have a complex of buildings linked up by tunnels earlier, but don’t really count them) began with a huge cave which I hollowed out, eventually taking over most of the mountain it was in. It’s abandoned now, and isn’t even safe these days — the walls are not spider-proof now that they can climb. But for sake of posterity, here’s what it looked like:

Partway up was a nice little courtyard where I could stand and look down over the valley, or get across to the building on the adjacent mountain:

Alpha

After biomes were introduced, I went exploring in search of different-looking terrain. What I found instead was a coast with a massive chunk error — land cut off almost perfectly square. I put together a base there, originally named “Fort Chunk” in honor of the circumstances, but now known as Alpha (I’ve switched over to using Greek letters to identify major outposts). Originally Alpha was reachable only by boat. Then I tried portals, and ran into the issue where two portals in the regular world connect to the same portal in the Nether. I never did get that fixed, so I just built a bridge out to where Alpha is (and a small fort to make the bridge entrance safe):

Alpha itself is carved from that weird chunk error, and has been kept up to date, including spider-proofed walls (the rear and far walls also have an outer ring of cactus to protect them). It also has an underwater entrance (using reeds) and a little lavafall for decoration.

From the front, showing the end of the bridge and Alpha’s farm (the reeds visible here lead down into a cave beneath the base):

Beta

Beta is built into a huge cleft in a mountain in a snowier biome, and also quite a bit larger than Alpha (it’s second-largest of all the things we’ll see here):

Beta’s ground floor is a courtyard, offering access to the main building, and the primary mine shaft:

The rest of the main building divides up as follows: second floor is battlements, third floor is a bed, fourth floor is storage and crafting utilities, fifth floor is a wheat and cactus farm.

Up on top of the mountain and to the rear is a lookout tower. It has a good view of a bridge running across the valley (to a spot where I’d intended to keep building; I haven’t put anything there yet, though, but probably will someday):

There’s also a random floating turret visible there; I built it one night when I could get inside quickly enough, and never got around to tearing it down.

Gamma

This was originally built to be approached from the sea (from Beta), and I like to think it looks fairly imposing as you come up on it at night (the lavafall on the right is natural):

Here’s an older shot of the same angle by day, for comparison:

Gamma is the largest group of buildings in this world. Inside its fortifications is a courtyard with buildings on two sides and a set of lava and waterfalls, and a large mountain, on the other two:

The main hall is carved out of the mountain itself, and like Beta has different floors devoted to different uses:

Up on top of the mountain visible in the first shot, there’s a lookout tower (only one story, though, since it’s at the height limit). It’s accessible by stairs inside Gamma, and by other stairs built up the side of the mountain. Here’s a look down from the top of the outdoor stairs, showing a peek into the fortified courtyard and also the rear of the main hall poking out the other side of the mountain:

Beyond the main complex there’s a bit of desert, and a lava lake. I tossed up a sandstone fort there, with a glass-roofed storage room and a mine shaft under the lake itself.

Here’s an older shot of the room under the lava:

Delta

Delta is the largest complex, geographically, consisting of three buildings situated far enough from each other that they’re linked by an underground railway. Stepping out of its portal, we see the first building:

This building’s only purpose is to be close to the portal. Inside, we hop right on the railway:

The main building of Delta overlooks a bay, and isn’t fortifed at all since the only way in is via the sea (and there’s a pack of wolves inside on the dock, along with some other precautions):

There’s also a lighthouse in the bay to make it easier to reach by sea:

The third building, at the other end of the railway, is another small fort (this is a standard design I started using before everything was linked by portals — there are forts like this strewn around the world to serve as safe houses and resupply points):

A shaft leads from this fort down to Delta’s primary mining operation, which has so far been the most productive anywhere in this world. At the bottom of the shaft is a storage room with furnaces and an incinerator, and access to three different branch mines running in various directions:

Epsilon

Epsilon is in the newest part of the world, and is built mostly underwater, with only a small fortified lookout tower poking above sea level:

It also has a small dock, connected via tunnels:

So far I haven’t done much here other than the initial build and exploring a few caves in the area. Mostly this is because I’m not at all happy with how Epsilon looks from above ground — that stubby little tower is awkward — and I haven’t decided whether to abandon or rebuild it.