Kingdom of Aelfheim Terraforming | Page 3 | Cities & Towns | Forum

Mini-Update!  Since there have been replies, I won't edit my last post, but this is the next step from the June 17th post.

My insanity is progressing at a steady pace, and although it is taking a LONNNGG time, the further I get the less insane it seems.  I no longer get a massive panic attack from looking at this entire project, which is nice, although I know it's still a VERY long time that I'll need to be working on it.

Anyways, 4th Area complete!  The Yggdrasil Cavern, linked below, has been sculpted.  It looks like swiss cheese, but that's by design.  It will be one of the peaks of this thing, so there's a lot more to do above.  However for the sake of this sculpting, I don't want to go much higher than the level of the Height Walls, which is y100.  Still, if you drop into one of those black holes on the map, you have a 100-height cavern to fall into.  Watch your step.  There is a lot of water, but it's not everywhere.

I can say without ego that the combined Yggdrasil and Greatdeeps (6th) caverns (they're linked by a number of wide caves) will be the largest and most detailed caverns on VC, and it is highly unlikely there are many Vanilla-made caverns like them anywhere on any server.

This sculpting is taking a while, but each area is finished relatively quickly.  2-3 weeks is pretty good for me.

Up next is Lamplight, which is much larger and has 10 pillars to work with.  As always, there is no telling how long it will take.  My loose goal is to have this step done before my wedding/honeymoon this fall, and be through the "Gap Fill" and on to "Mountain Capping" before the end of this year.

Anyways, as before, here's the overall progress of the sculpting.  If there are no replies I'll edit as I go, otherwise they'll be in mini-edit posts like this.

EDIT: 8/18 Lamplight was finished last night!  Moving on to Lower Greatdeeps! 

EDIT: 8/27 Lower Greatdeeps complete!  One giant cavern makes things quicker.

EDIT: 9/1 Upper Greatdeeps complete!  Having many hours and large pillars to take up the space makes things quicker still!  The next update will be a new post when the Rift sculpting is complete! 

• 1st - Rustwick Grotto (Castle Utilityworks) - COMPLETE! 6/17 
• 2nd - Nightmarket Cavern (Lower Verenna) - COMPLETE! 6/28
• 3rd - Underhill Cavern (Manors) - COMPLETE! 7/20
• 4th - Yggdrasil Cavern (Roots and Temple) - COMPLETE! 8/1
• 5th - Lamplight Cavern (City) - COMPLETE! 8/17
• 6th - Lower Greatdeeps (Temple and Hunting Zone) - COMPLETE! 8/27
• 7th - Upper Greatdeeps (Town) - COMPLETE! 8/31
• 8th - The Rift (Sheer Divide in the Terrain) - In Progress!  Last one!  Wooo!

And remember....if you happen to wander into these massive unlit caverns, I'm NOT responsible for your inevitable death. 

Update!

So this bulk filling took nearly 5 months!  Nothing but vomiting cobble.  I don't know exactly how much I've used...at some point during this step alone MC crashed any my stats got reset, but right now the game is saying I've placed 1.7 million cobble.  All the gaps between the pillars are filled, and there are now places where my carefully crafted caverns are covered in 30+ layers of cobble.

Here's the status pic:

Compare with the top pic from my September 4th post.  You can see I've been busy.  The outer filled areas vary between 80-100, with the large flat area at 100. The tiered area has levels at 100, 110, 120, and 130, and will be the large mountain on which will sit the Castle.

Now comes the fun-yet-tricky part.  All that flat area, it's not staying flat.  I have to cap these tops with the same contouring as the lower slopes.  This will create the shape of the mountain top that I've been working on since June of 2014.  I'm extremely excited!  The extra filling I did on the tiers gives me a head start, so I'm hoping that this step won't take extremely long, but time will tell. 

Well, the length of time I spent vomiting the additional cobble in the previous step really helped speed the terrain cap!  It only took a little more than a month!  The cobble is DONE!!!

Here's the finished cobbled mountain!  The crowning point is actually a ridge with a natural arch built into it.  It worked well for the spot.  It's a little thin right now, but it will thicken in the cladding step.  I'm sure I'll be able to work it into the castle somehow.

So....next is cladding.  The first part of this is placing sand where I'll have streams running, just to mark the spots.  Then it's a layer of smooth stone covering ALL visible cobble surfaces.  After that, I'll place dirt and grass to suit, probably 2 blocks deep.  Once again, I have NO idea how long this step will take, but seriously, I'm getting so close I can taste it!  I can't wait to break ground on the build itself.

After cladding is re-vegetation, and then I have whole-area stuff to do.  Additional tree placement (spruces and birch mostly), river clarifying, and Aelfen Ruin placement.  

Dirt and Grass Cladding is complete!

http://maps.veterancraft.net/a.....038;z=-700

I'll have a more permanent pic on Monday.

On to replanting vegetation!  This will be a little tricky, as I want to insert some variation like spruce and birch, but I also want to have it look as natural with the rest of the peninsula as possible.

We shall see!

Vegetation took about three weeks!  Yay!

http://maps.veterancraft.net/a.....038;z=-642

I've got a more permanent image, but can't get it into the Photoshop project I have for the whole thing.  It'll all be a part of the eventual GIF and album chronicling the project.

However, on to business.  The Bluff is COMPLETE!!!  I now turn my attention to the rest of Aelfheim for a bit.  The steps are few and should be fairly quick.

• River clarifying. http://www.veterancraft.net/fo.....rs/#p23990
• Aelfen Ruins
• Yggdrasil Sapling
• Cleanup around the Claim
• Salvage/Sell the Gold I've acquired over the last two years from killing innumerable mobs to help with my Claim.

Annnnddddd.....I have this week off from work.  So I'm hoping I will be through with this and on to ACTUAL BUILDING very soon!

Thanks, Hon!  That means a lot!  I'm really interested myself.  With the size and scope of this project, there is just too much to instantly recall to mind.  Your project might be big enough to understand.....ever find a spot and go "Did I really make this?"  Overall, some of this doesn't seem real.  I also wish I had documented better.  I have a lot of pics, but I should have taken more, especially "before" shots.  But at the time, I thought I'd be through and done with this by the end of 2014.  Ah well.

ONLY on VeteranCraft can we take literal years to terraform and build at an easy pace, and not have to worry that the server will fold or the map be reset.

The river clarifying is going very well.  I am hoping to be done with it today, if I can get in enough play time.  Cleanup will be a pain, but necessary.  I'm most looking forward to the Aelfen Ruins and Yggdrasil Sappling, as they are going to be actual building, but lore-wise prior to the Groundbreaking.

Then I need to find a good way to be sharing all this.  Definitely a new post.....but I am thinking about how to revive the Lore Wiki, too.

On June 30th, 2014, I began this thread.  

It was sometime in July 2014 that I really began to work on the true plan for the terraforming.

In August 2014, I began to comprehend the scale of the project and accepted my fate.

Now, here we are, nearly two YEARS after the opening of Arda.  And I can say, finally, that I am DONE with the "Primary Terraforming!"  I say "Primary" because there will naturally be more, but it'll be done as a part of the builds.  

I will be posting a compilation video or gif of the terraforming as soon as I can, and I may even post it to /r/minecraft.  After that I'll be closing this thread and starting the actual Aefheim thread.

In the meantime, I'll be sorting through and salvaging my gold items I've built up over the last two years. Yay, shillings!

Wow....I'm DONE!!!