PixlBit

Got caught up in Minecraft again when I saw Mark in there working on something or other. We both worked on trading for the Woodland Exploration Map and then finding the Woodland Mansion. We got so close, but no cigar. 

We spent most of the time securing villagers in houses so they wouldn't get killed by zombie mobs. I thought of a few new methods, one with water and another with pressure plate controlled doors. Basically I was trying to create a mantrap. They could get in but not out again. The water one worked pretty well and I had a house full of villagers. The one with the pressure plate worked at first, but then a zombie managed to get in too and converted them all. Also, just for fun, I made tiny train sets in each house and watched as villagers got in a carts and were carried around in circles for eternity. Somehow a zombie was able to convert a villager in a moving minecart. That surprised me. 

Well, we got the important villager, the cartographer, trapped in a house, and then I got all the emeralds needed by the cartographer from the other trapped villagers by trade. Then, with the Woodland Exploration Map in hand, I went about finding the Mansion marked on it. I made, and crossed, five fully zoomed out maps and still didn't find it. It took me several hours to cross all that distance before I gave up. Then I looked online to see how far these mansions are supposed to be. On one forum it was suggested that the Mansion could be as far as 30,000 blocks. I think a normal starter map (level 3) is about 2000 blocks on a side. I was using level 4 maps which might be 3000 blocks a side. So that Mansion could be ten maps worth from where you start. That is crazy far. Doing 5 maps that size was effort enough. But at least I know it's out there and not a glitch or something. 

But then we decided to kind of cheat it. You can create a seed world in the previous version of the game on Xbox, where the Mansions are much closer to your spawn point, and then convert it to the new version. We'll try that out tomorrow, and I hope it works. 

Oh yea, and we watched this 1978 B scifi flick, Deathsport with David Carradine. It was very bad, but hilariously so. Roger Corman produced it.