Instances of bad capitalization/punctuation/etc. are intentional. Typos aren't.
Day 36
Having to build so late into the night, I really didn't get to sleep too much – or well. I hope it doesn't get me killed today. Gods, the one time I could have coffee.
So I just found that small lava lake from before after stumbling through the mineshaft for some time, took the water bucket I have on me at all times now and poured it out on the ground. pretty sleepy and not thinking that well, so it shouldnt have worked as well as it did. But no, the relatively small streams just ran towards lava, then there was an ear-splitting shwish sound and bam! suddenly in the place of lava is a pitch black mass of something, and water's just casually running over to lava behind it to do the same. Funny thing is, lava is really hot, right? like, burns you from a dozen meters away hot or something; and the water in the bucket isnt even that cold. And yet it just cools lava to this obsidian rock thing instantly. And now half the lake has turned into it – in a span of few seconds, no less!
I keep telling myself to stop being surprised at the weird stuff but it just never works
This shit SUCKS!
i tried breaking this obsidian rock block with my iron pick. It didnt budge. I hit harder and the fucking pick just broke, and it wasnt in that bad of condition either. Now I have to go back up and think of something else to break this cursed rock. Just PERFECT!
i really should have just slept in today. WHY bother getting up so early. Dumb me.
at least the caves were lit well enough for me to encounter no monsters. Small mercies.
Looking at my options, the only thing left to try is a diamond pickaxe, because if iron didn't cut it, stone or wood definitely wont even scratch.
Too bad I dont even have a diamond pickaxe, and remembering the last time I made something out of diamonds…
Well, this is shaping up to be a very sucky day.
Finished the pickaxe. Definitely as much of a headache as the first time around except even moreso time because it was hard to focus and I ended up ruining one of the diamonds instead of cutting it right; thankfully, it was the last one needed for the completion, so I just used another. That diamond is still presentable…kinda, just not to be used for anything anymore.
Im not even mad, just disappointed.
Dunked my head into a stream of cold water on my way down the ravine after quickly testing the diamond pick against some rocks; seems to have helped me wake a little and clear my head.
(Using a rudimentary stone staircase instead of a waterfall elevator unless absolutely necessary, because wet = suck)
I hope the diamonds are strong enough to crack this. I hope the pickaxe itself is solid enough, despite my "efforts".
(Also, I have to say that even if I did not make the pickaxe correctly, it was still an absolute joy to use, with how easy and smooth breaking rock.)
Good news: the diamonds are indeed strong enough to crack obsidian. Bad news: it takes an obscene amount of effort and time to break off an entire block of it.
At least it looks to be a really cool material – kind of very very dark purple, almost black, with a surface that is similar to glass but has all these cool bumps and twists and spins that I am guessing came from lava swirling around while being cooled.
Since I really do not want to come back down there for more, if I ever need to do so, I dug out a couple of more blocks before making my way back up. Turns out it was a good thing I woke up so early – it was only just past noon; had I gone later, I might have been climbing out to a sunset. Time for a nap, then I'll see how to go about creating the enchantment table.
And, after much trouble, the enchantment table is officially done! It was not, by any means, an easy thing to build. First, according to schematics, I had to shave off about a fifth of the block with my pick to make it of proper height; then, smash out a book-sized hole in the top. With how difficult it is to crack obsidian it was really hard trying to control how much of it I break off, but that went smoothly enough. Next, create three more holes around the book-hole to place diamonds into in a triangular fashion: two near the corners on one side and one near the middle of the other. This part really sucked, because diamonds needed to be firmly stuck in those holes, so the holes themselves had to be really carefully chipped out, so I used another block of obsidian as a practice dummy to do it before getting it right on the original one. Afterwards, all I had to do was fit the diamonds and the book in, and, as a final touch, grind piece of lapis lazuli and drag it across the surface to create three little lapis trails – from each diamond to the book.
As soon as I'd done that, the entire thing came alive. Almost literally. The diamonds lit up in a light-blue shine, the lapis trails seemed to blend in with the surface, impossible to wipe off, and the book…well it suddenly opened up and scared me pretty bad – enough for me to jump back, trip and hit my head on some planks.
Smooth as usual. At least I didn't break anything inside the shack.
The book had closed itself while I was getting my bearings, and had opened by itself again once I got up and close enough.
There's just a little problem: I don't actually know how to use this thing, the book has the usual incomprehensible stuff for language and something tells me blindly doing trial-and-error with magic is bound to end bad. I, for one, don't fancy being accidentally turned into a crow for the rest of my days.
I hope my good friend librarian has some ideas.
Okay, the librarian helped me once again, went through all the steps of enchanting. Apparently it goes this way:
You need to have whatever it is you're enchanting (obviously), and a few pieces of lapis lazuli (it's a magical conduit, so no surprise)
Put the item by the book, preferably in such a way to be able to read the book later. The item must more or less fit on the table; for this reason, obviously huge things cannot be enchanted this way - another downside, but not a very relevant one (for now).
Put the lapis lazuli pieces on the diamonds around the book (it should start glowing like the diamond underneath it if done correctly). At least a single piece is required to enchant an item, but I was told that up to three can be used: more lapis = more magic power = higher chance for "good" enchantments.
Check the book – in the place of usual ever-changing gibberish it should have up to three "options" highlighted. Simply touch one of the options and done! The item should be enchanted.
A few notes after that:
-The librarian then told me that after each successful enchanting attempt, the table will enter a sort of "cooldown" state, and be inactive for a period from 1 to 3 hours, depending on how many lapis pieces were used (as an indication, diamonds will stop glowing for the period of this cooldown and start doing so once again after it's over)
-Surrounding the table with lots of books allows it to use them and should broaden the range and strength of available enchantments. Can't be just empty books though – got to be filled with words, the more the merrier. I can kind of understand this, actually, since enchantments, at their base, are simple words and phrases given magical properties, so more words / phrases = more power and possible enchantments.
Finally, the librarian said that without knowledge of the language, I would be unable to understsnd the enchantments the table could be offering me; to fix this, he set out writing a rough alphabet using English as the base (I don't know how similar Valean and English are in terms of writing and grammar, but they can't be too different. I hope). I think he should be finishing up in a few minutes. As an added bonus, with that knowledge I'll be able to create enough books to really empower the enchanting power.
Back home, with a freshly-crafted iron pick to replace the other one. Let's see how this enchanting works!
Worked like a charm. Lying right next to me – my own (one HUNDRED percent! Literally) iron pickaxe with an "Efficiency I" enchantment. It was certainly rather tough, trying to decipher the book's language for the first time, after having both the pick and a single piece of lapis ready, but I managed, evdn though everything after the first part of the Enchantmentspeak was impossible to understand. The lapis piece used in the enchanting was "consumed" with a weird "WHONG" sound - I was fast enough to see it rapidly lose its ocean blue hue (the lapis trail had lit up with it instead for a few moments), turn into a colorless husk and them just dissolve into particles. Cool.
Since the table is now on "cooldown" – the diamonds embedded in it arent shining, and even the book itself doesn't open automatically -, I am going to give this pick a go, see how it performs. Running low on cobblestone, after all.
Man, I don't think I can go back to using normal picks after this. If the efficiency shovel felt good to use, the efficiency pick felt great. With the shovel, the things you use to dig it with (stuff like gravel, sand, dirt) – digging them is not that difficult to begin with, easily done even with bare hands.
Pickaxe, on the other hand? It's used to smash things, or chip away at them. Stuff like rocks, ores, even particular deposits of Dust from back home (what I remember from the SDC mine documentaries at least) – they are solid, you really need to put in a lot of effort to crack any of them.
Which really just highlights the difference between your average pickaxe and my enchanted one. When I was out there, just a few minutes ago, chipping and smashing away at stone, it did not feel like it was stone. It really felt more like hard clay, maybe? The stone was still stone, undoubtedly, but this tool made it feel like anything but.
And that was just Efficiency I. The cheapest option, the very first level out of potentially very many.
This is simply Awesome!
I must get everything enchanted asap. With mining suddenly being so much easier, I hadn't really noticed that my one hour had long since passed and it was nighttime. With my desire to get every single thing I have on me "enhanced", I imagine I'm going to start hating the cooldown very quickly.
But that's enough excitement for today. It's not like I am in that much of a hurry.
Technically it hasn't been a month yet, right? Since I'm on lockdown now, it gave me much needed opportunity to writewritewrite.
