Day 38
Finally a good night's rest. Woke up, did some menial work around the place, killed a few chickens for breakfast – the usual. The good kind of usual I really needed after so many adventures and trouble.
Went ahead with enchanting my iron chest piece, since it didn't hold up so well to the barrage of overpowered arrows last night. The results surprised me – "Protection II" AND something called "Thorns I". First time I get more than one enchantment in a single attempt. Protection should be self-explanatory but I am curious as to what this "'Thorns" thing does; hurts somebody attempting to grab me? (Like actual rose thorns).
Either way, I haven't been to the Northside village (the one with the angry green dwellers), so that's where I'm heading today.
Also, honestly, I'm just going to call them Northside, Westside (the first one I found) and Eastside (the one with the librarian)
yeah okay, screw the Northside, it can wait, theres a fox down there. I want to meet a fox
So I ended up following the fox (as sneakily as I could) and it guided me way off track into the taiga – towards the Westside, actually, nibbling on some berries all the while. Then both of us ran into a pack of wolves, and they started chasing it, and yeah, I don't think a fox would be a good friend for Wolfy.
Going in the same direction (since I was so far out anyways and hadn't been here), I came across an interesting-looking structure: it looks like a tall vertical rectangle with a few pieces missing and a solid gold block on top. Seems to be made of both normal obsidian and some weird-looking purple-ish one that also seems to be constantly leaking some sort of same color liquid. Basically, something like this:
G
O L = O
O === O
L === O
O = O O
Where O – normal obsidian, L – leaking obsidian, = is empty space where I suspect obsidian should be, and G being the golden block. It's hard to draw with a quill.
All of this structure was also surrounded by stone bricks, lava and some weird glowing lava rock that still was hot enough to hurt me (magma as I later found out). I quickly towered up this thing, grabbed the gold block (I could feel some weight in my hand, which is kind of unusual), then spotted a small chest on the other side. There was mostly nothing of value – some gold nuggets and flint, but what caught my eye was a pickaxe.
An enchanted, golden pickaxe. I remember expressing my doubt that anyone in their right mind would ever bother wasting gold on tools; guess I was wrong. The enchantment on it is called "Mending", whatever that means.
I don't think there's anything else in here. I have no idea what this thing is supposed to be: some kind of totem? Maybe an offering altar? I know my hometown had a really ancient supposed offering site to the Brothers (nobody ever really went there), but it looked nothing like this.
Weird.
Moved in the same direction (spotted what looks like another ridgeline in the distance), found a rock formation, decided to take this gold pickaxe for a test drive.
My conclusion? It does its' job, but it's not good.
It digs fast, and I mean it. I don't know if it's the property of gold, or just something else special, but it left both the Efficiency iron pick and my diamond pickaxe in the dust, it was so easy to crack stone. That was one good thing about it, I suppose.
The downside? Crappy durability; the thing had started breaking down about as quickly as it broke things. I saw the cracks forming on the golden head after the first dozen or so broken blocks! Only ten blocks and the durability bar was down almost by half.
So, yeah. It certainly shines in the speed department, but simply doesn't have the staying power to make it useful besides maybe in some imaginary situation I have trouble coming up with.
I also have no idea what this "Mending" enchantment is supposed to be. Judging by the name, it's something to do with fixing stuff/repair. Maybe I was supposed to use it to "mend" something? Like that weird broken structure back there, or maybe my own tools. No clue.
Either way, even if none of that works out, I can still keep it as a nice decoration.
Finally made it to the top of the ridgeline. First, its quite chilly up here; oh, and there's snow. Honest to Gods snow. I love snow.
(Too bad the snow layer is a bit too thin to try and make snowballs; didn't stop me from dunking my face straight into it. Freaking amazing feeling)
Second, there's a huge valley at the bottom. I don't have any words – this is the kind of view that goes onto stuff like paintings/tourist photos and makes them extremely popular or expensive.
Wow.
Too bad I don't get to enjoy it for very long, because of course the sun is setting soon.
So much for going to the village. Too bad!
Back at the base, and I noticed that my golden pickaxe is in pristine condition once again – no cracks, not a scratch, nothing; the durability bar is filled out as well. I need to test this. Now.
Ok, so this is mind-blowing. I started breaking some cobble with the golden pickaxe, literally just a few blocks – right up until the first signs of wear started to show; then I stopped and just observed. Didn't take too long before they disappeared, slowly, but surely. Then I tried using it harder, trying to bring it almost to the point of breaking. After a short delay, the pickaxe just started to fix itself: cracks on the head disappeared seamlessly, the handle that was almost loose magically tightened itself back, it even got its pristine golden shine again – all within like a minute, all of it by itself, and all before my very eyes.
I am fairly confident in saying that this is what "Mending" enchantment is all about, and, needless to say, this is incredible. I'm reconsidering my earlier decision to keep this pickaxe as just decoration.
Seriously.
I couldn't find a good way to introduce XP and levels into the story, so I just dropped that stuff altogether.
I hope this was worth the wait, and I hope it will be again in the future, after I decide whether to reset Nether or not, and how to do it just in case, because - surprise - I had generated the boring 1.15 Nether in this world way back before 1.16 came out. Too bad!
