Abandon Mine found!

Morlock Mines has been discovered. I'll be strip-mining the hell out of it. And I may be premature in suggesting this but there is a waterfall in there that rivals Sandaria Falls. There are a ton of minerals and SEVERAL monster spawn rooms in here and I've only just touched the tip of the caverns. I just got kicked so I think I'm done for the night since it won't reconnect. But the second I get back I'm taking down that first Cave Spider spawner. Bucky-yaw!

Are the spawners in a spot where we could build traps beneath them to farm their drops?

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

I'm so happy, I thought we were going to have to start a new world to get the benefits of the updates.

Scott and I went exploring last night. We found upwards of 400 string. We spent HOURS in there and seriously we didn't get much of it explored. I'm going to start mapping it out in a similar way as Scott has done in Sandaria. And I'll be doing some work in the rooms with monster spawners, like Geoff suggested, to farm the string from them. Also in the process of making a Railway to Skull Mountain from there now.

In addition, the Abandon Mine MAY have been spawned on top/in a Ravine. One of the other biomes they introduced. It opens up and there are chunks of wood strewn about the middle of the chasm. Later tonight I'll be on doing some more exploring and mapping.

1. I had no idea the Ravine was a new biome until you mentioned it and I looked it up! Haha, there's one two minutes walk east of Sandarian Falls, massive sucker, big narrow curvy trench. I've known about it for awhile but I never mentioned it to anybody because I thought it was just a cool accident!! Apparently we have two of them now!

2. The abandoned mineshaft is glorious. Steve and I whomped between 6 and 8 cave spider spawn points in about 40 minutes time. We went through two full suits of armor and multiple swords. Those things... let me tell you... they are amazing to fight. You can't use arrows because they surround themselves in webbing. You literally have to just hack your way through the webbing with your swords as they fall on you and pounce on you from all sides and you just hack and hack until you can reach the spawn spot and neutralize it. It's so amazing! It's truly epic grinding.

I'm not kidding: we had so much string we spun it into wool and made the floor of our offices with it. We took the remains of the corpses of our enemies and turned them into RUGS for our FEET. Glory!

When Alex and I finish the rail conection from Skull mountain to Sandaria, let's plan on connecting the rail northward to the abandoned mineshaft. If we stockpile all the iron and gold from the mineshaft, we should probably have enough to make it!

Steve,

I can confirm that the chasm we discovered intersecting the abandoned mine shaft is indeed a ravine biome, making it not only the first abandoned mine find but also the second ravine biome find and also just plain effin cool.

Go to the surface and walk to 1803, 626 for official confirmation. Watch your step.

I'm not ENTIRELY sure it's a NEW mine... but I was fairly far away from the Morlock Mines entrance when I found another set of Mines. (In relation to how much we've explored, it's close to the mines, but distance-wise it's still fairly far away.) Eventually I'll be exploring these a little more too. I have them marked with signs at the entrances I found to it. If this isn't the same Mines, I would like to connect them. It's a slow process mapping these out. I'm getting used to where things are but since there are like 300 hallways it's getting hard to make signs for it.

The mines seem to be arranged in layers. I suggest numbering the layers to simplify things.

L1, L2, L3, and so on and so forth. "Where are you?" "The sign says "L2." "Ahh, I'm 2 layers below you, coming up to meet you."

Additionally, I think that abandoned mines might just be truly massive complexes. Funnysmell was commenting earlier that he thought he might have found another set of abandoned mines near/far from the first set he found in Sandaria. Either that or maybe they come in pairs

I was thinking of doing a different color of wool per level. Seeing if that might work such as a parking structure does. Currently the mines are connected via (to the best of my knowledge, though i'm sure there are many points since they're not too far apart) a hallway I dug out. It's huge. Huge. Huge. Did I mention Huge?

I think I could use some more clarification. Are these mines rather large?

Have we established an official server policy regarding resources taken from locations like this mine? Do the resources belong to the person who discovered the mine? The person who collected them? or should they go into a collective pool?

I'm pretty relaxed about this.

I used to feel uncomfortable taking anything from a mine or cave I hadn't personally discovered. Then I noticed that all the resources are, in the end, going back into community projects (the railroad in particular) that we all use. My mentality now is: if I see iron or coal while helping somebody explore their cave, I might as well grab it real quick. It's all going to end up in the same place. Gold is on a case-by-case basis. I usually ask, but reality is that every single bar of gold I've ever harvested has ended up in a railroad booster. The same is true of iron, with the small exception of the iron I fashioned to make a set of iron armor when Steve and I were spider-stomping in his mines. I currently have 30 iron and 5 gold I think, which I got from funnysmell's abandoned mineshaft yesterday, in the hopes of connecting the lodge to his mineshaft eventually. Diamonds I've never used for anything and the same goes for redstone. If I see them in somebody's cave, I'll harvest them (if I have an iron pick which I usually don't) and just drop them in the player's box or hand them to them.

I think asking or explaining what you are doing is the important part.

I like the community feel of it. I basically leave all my gold and iron in the Sandarian c o c k block at this point. I love when people come into the lodge and grab buttloads of food and iron to work on the rails, just as I love going to the skull mountain c o c k block and finding ten million of seth's building materials or when Steve comes in and drops off 100 wool in exactly the color I need right when I need it!

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter.

I agree with the community approach. I have donated all but 8 gold I've ever found to rail projects. I do like to keep some iron to myself for tools and armor, but usually no more than a stack. Redstone is perhaps the thing I am most covetous about, because I love tinkering with contraptions like the gate on Crystal Keep (which I still need to rebuild post crash) and rail stations... still, those contraptions tend to be for community betterment.

I'm glad we're putting this conversation out in the open, as it definitely affects the tone of our server.

Oh, BTW... If anyone wants to build sticky pistons for various contraptions, feel free to hang out at the harbor station. If you check the nearby slime dispenser on a regular basis, you will quickly wind up with more slime balls than you can reasonably use. I got over a full stack in just a couple days on site. That's enough to build 16 two-way train stations.

Anything found in my Mines is up for grabs. You mine it, you keep it. If we're doing a joint-venture I would suggest splitting down the middle, but it's not a requirement. Nearly all of my Gold will be donated to the holy golden shaft fund. Basically everything I don't use for Powered Tracks.

Goeff, if you need more Redstone I will happily donate to your creations. I hardly use it any more so it's just starting to stack up. I don't have a ton. Maybe 4-5 stacks but that's partly because I've been leaving it in the mines due to space issues.

My next project that's going to require some amount of resources will be connecting Max's Village to Morlock Mines. I should be ok on materials so if anyone NEEDS something for a project let me know and I'll see what I can do to help.

Sidenote! The travels from the Morlock Mines Outskirts Annex to the Morlock Mines Prime has yielded many more Ravines. I think I came across 2-3 new ones. Some of which had a 2 to 4 space opening to the top that we just hadn't happened across yet.

Speaking of resources,

The Sandarian nation wishes to issue a global request for donations of black wool. Our citizenry have grown restless for its splendorous decadence and we believe an abundance of black wool (around 350 or so) is necessary to maintain the peace, order, and stability of our nation. White wool and ink sacs are just as appreciated of course!

From the looks of the new map we have, it seems that all large cave systems are now replaced with abandoned mineshafts. They should be very easy to find - any large cave system on land generated since 1.8 should contain a mineshaft.

To understand the difference, find the big lodge on the map and switch to cave mode. Beneath it you see a classic cave system. Compare that to the mineshafts we've found (to any of them). You'll notice that mineshaft systems are characterized by long straight sections which appear to be "ribbed." This ribbed effect is created by the spaced out plank beams "decreasing the size of the cave." If you look at all newly explored map, you'll find that all classic caves are now replaced by abandoned mineshafts. It looks like we'll never run low on iron ever again. It also looks as if fully exploring them is going to not be possible in most situations. Steve's abandoned mineshaft, for example, intercepts several other abandoned mineshafts covering nearly a sixth of all explored landmass on the entire map.

It looks as though, if you dig straight down in a random place on the map, you should run into a mineshaft about 50% of the time (assuming you are not right in the middle of Sandaria or right in the middle of the skull mountain region).

Mr. Morlock. Your presence is requested in Dirttown. I've cleared out 6 more mob spawners in Morlock Mines and have been documenting the regions i've explored with signs. Tons of iron and coal, at least a few hundred of each. Also, there are several surface entrances to the caving system that feeds into the mines which are located right outside the wall of riverside including what I'm affectionately calling "elevator shaft" which is a chasm that drops nearly straight down to the bottom and which I've built stairs down so that an individual can go right from the surface to the bowels in seconds.