Chapter 22: Flight, falling and building

Excerpt from the book “Basic building” By Strig

You think building is easy? you would be right… at first. Yeah, any tom dick and harry can place blocks in a square. But can you build big, can you build decoratively. Go on try and build a second floor, and while you're at it try not to fall off and hurt your self. Building without precautions in place, amateur, building without any decorations, style, depth and thought – failure.

People grow complacent thinking building involves placing a few blocks. You need to think about durability, location, risks and a million other factors. Which is why this book exists because at least someone dies every year trying to build a house without a safety rope.

Waking from a restful slumber, sunbeams streaming through the balconies and windows; breaking up the room into a dizzying array of light and dark. “perfect” falling into my bed like I am waking up on a cloud I rejoice in realizing this is the first time I am truly in a home, a true home. Not a shamble of a structure or a hole in the ground.

Leaning out of bed and cracking my back 10 years too early I get up with a restful yawn. Walking to go get water “ahh, crap!”. Nearly walked right off the balcony, mental note add water to the room. Well, that’s one way to wake up I suppose. Rhythmically tapping my feet as I walk down the stairs I walk into the main room; positively beaming in positivity.

Today is my day, eating a tasty breakfast of potatoes, finished with sweetened red berries; you make do. And a warm meal truly prepares you for the day. Whistling all the way to my ship I start moving all my belongings into the main room. Creating a cacophony of noise as I install lots of diamond chests, neatly organized. Spending the morning hauling crates and ass; I managed to get covered and dust, dirt, and sweat. Walking to the improvised hill and, improving it into an improvised waterfall I take a cold shower, shaking the dirt off my body.

Making some quick cotton cloths and equipping them. Cotton is so versatile. I get on with my day, not rushing though, it's my home after all, and jobs are dictated by yours truly so why rush.

Spurred on by a desire for flight; may or may not be inspired by my childhood I skip over to the farm, harvesting minicio and taking my watering can and donating my time to hurrying the process along to produce more minicio.

Heading back to the main building 8 Imperio heavier I craft my alloy smelter; immediately attached to my poor copper pipes. With that done I go to make pulsating iron, realizing too late I need ender pearls, “annoying”. With my mood only ever slightly soured, I get to work on a sag mill first. Producing the simple variety, for simplicity. It took one infinity dust above the relatively small quantity of other stuff. With the pulverizer having worked during the night I have a lot of ore dust.

I lightly ponder why the pulverizer and sag mill produce similar effects but different products. Probably something like the method and grain size of the end result. Otherwise, I haven’t the foggiest.

With the basic machines for ender io complete, I use some of those good old resonating crystals to produce a hand crank and a resonator. 4 stone brick together make 4 polished stone, which upon being added to the resonator and being powered by a hand crank, produce a fundamentally important resource for grid power generation. Sunburnt stone. Clearly not actually sunburnt but let us not question it I suppose.

Producing a large amount of sunburnt stone I produce 4 water mills, the most efficient grid power source outside of a dragon egg generator.

I place the 4 in a square with a plus sign of space between them. Smartly placing 5 water sources they all peak at max efficiency. This all together produces 64 grid power. The resonator for example takes 15 and the highest quality flying ring 32. I won't need any more power for a while. If I produce another of the same type of generator it is still awesome but the efficiency goes down.

That should suffice, for now, being unlikely to need grid power for much. Heading to my iron seeds; I collect 8 iron essence. Combing it with my strong infusion stone it makes an extreme infusion stone.

I need 6 Zivicio to make armour, 4 for any seed. I think working on armour is more effective. I have enough Imperio for 3 Zivicio. Biting the bullet I pop out the time in a bottle and watering can, spending the next 6 hours farming enough minicio to produce the required Zivicio. Combined with gold nuggets and iron I produce 24 ingots.

Knowing full well this is an advanced recipe I stick an auto crafter down and get it to make my armour. Draining power rapidly I watch mesmerized as a helmet is slowly produced over an hour, slow but at least I won't KO. Prepping the next 2 armour to be crafted I get on with the rest of my evening. Days really fly by now. I should go fishing sometime soon – Nah maybe later.

Okay, what mod to work on while I wait? Now that I think about it why do I just assume I have to work on a mod? That is not what life is all about. To be fair I am hard blocked from many things life has to offer without people to visit.

I choose to spend some time, bonemeal, and shovel durability to improve my top-half of the island, for now, creating a slight ridge around the edge of the island. Tried to make it look like a natural barrier, I also grew grass using the bonemeal, which also produced a couple botania flowers; cool stuff. Botania can be done another day but I appreciate the fact bonemeal is suddenly magically producing magic flowers.

With lush grass and a natural barrier, I feel it looks much better, I also mess around with the hill with the infinite water source, increasing its height and creating a stone ledge for the water to drip over, making the waterfall taller and look like water erosion has eaten into the small hill. I also dig under the hill and move my water mill 2 blocks under it, out of sight out of mind. It is wireless after all.

Heading home for a short while I lock in the last auto craft – boots. Finding a really soft and lush bit of grass; near the hill. I rest, looking up at the shadow of the night quickly approaching. The sky is really beautiful here. Without as much light pollution the stars are like diamonds in the sky, with rivers of nebulas and galaxies flowing overhead. Dull compared to the aurora borealis but it's enough. And like that, I fall asleep watching the stars.

Waking shortly into the night, “what happened? Must have fallen asleep” it was a quick sleep that came and passed like a wave. Still night. Checking my armour… finished, “I have flight… I have flight!” Quickly throwing on my new armour, as I click the final boot into place. Nothing happens, trying to jump – nothing. “What am I doing wrong?” This time I try double jumping so to speak, jumping then kicking off the air “whoh, this is quick, this is really hard to control” Managing to get a semblance of balance; stopping in the air “all in the feet”. The flight is centered in the feet, going to walk and I fly, going to run and I fall quite rapidly. “Wait that’s the edge, wait, ow no!”. And with that, I fell off my island.

Thankfully you don’t take fall damage in this suit, but ow boy that hurt landing with a loud bang, took at least a minute for my ears to stop ring.

Noticing zombies on the way I hold my breath and steady myself, shakily flying back onto my island. Man, that’s scary. But it was one hell of a thrill that’s for sure.

Cresting over the edge of my island I belly flop onto the grass; likely looking very comedic in doing so, the armour is pink after all. I will also strive for other means of flight as well since this armour becomes obsolete later on and I would feel safer in case one suddenly fails.

Putting skydiving on hold until Learn to work the suit better, I keep it on for the security at least. I would like to learn to fly right now but that near heart attack has put me off for a little bit, at least until dawn.

Even with flight on hold I still gather up all my stone and builders wand. All placed in my 2 golden bags, with the excess stored in a diamond chest, Mining generates a lot and the destruction wand for some reason drops stone when you break it. Thankfully the builder's wand can draw from the golden bag, the immediate one not golden bags inside golden bags. That’s just silly.

With a golden clock, I stuck on the side I seen dawn in about 3 hours away. I should build some kind of method to get on the island that doesn’t involve flight. Let's save that for after I make the bottom of the island. While I wait I make a medium-sized house, practising my flight a little, but mostly just because I am bored.

Grabbing mostly oak, birch, glass and a pinch of brick, I start working. I create a simple structure a T shape with one side nearly reaching the bottom of the T. Oak logs in the corners. Filling it out with birch and glass pains. Double doors divided by logs. Simple short grass floor. I open a back door into a fenced area with a small pond, ground mixed with stone bricks. Few bits of sugar cane to keep it looking fresh.

Going outside I clean up the walls with well-placed stairs and an overhanging roof; 2 roofs crisscrossed over each other, stairs with blocks placed sparingly for depth. I create 2 small skylights to let more light in and finish the whole thing off with a normal brick fireplace. Taking a step outside I feel the entrance is a little bare so I place an overhanging wooden canopy supported by fence beams. Creating decorative paths of stone brick weaving through the front circling to the side where I make a large artificial tree. Quickly shearing some leaves I finish it off. I think this turned out really well.

Dawn has broken the horizon, orange light bleeding into the sky. Watching the sunrise is almost therapeutic.

Well, nothing to be done I start practising my flight again. Being able to see the floor definitely helps incentivised me not to fall. It took almost an hour to finally get a stable flight going; sadly it still feels super unnatural to fly but at least I can – practise only now.

Now before I do anything involving building, I move over to the edge of my island, looking down I shiver, well only one way to do it. with those last words, I throw my self off the island. Heart beating like a draw I fly around. It is not a very fast flight speed, faster than my ship. I would say 30-40 miles per hour. It is okay though really all I need and by Felix this is fun.

Flying over and under my quant floating disc, I make a good few laps, circling my castle; spotted a few mistakes that will need correcting soon. All good fun for sure.

Having had my adrenaline rush for the day I equip my builders wand look upon my wonderful island and mentally prepare my self, time to get to work.