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Indigo Empire

 

Obligatory Underwater Level

Part 15 ~ 2 August 2025

Played: 28 March 2025

Let's take that new trident for a spin! And what better place to do that than the ocean monument. No, seriously, that's the only place where it's useful. The Impaling bonus only works against guardians and a few passive creatures. But OH BOY does it work on the guardians. You know what DOESN'T work against guardians? Shields. I only learned this after I got in, but the laser attack is considered "magic" and bypasses my wooden barricade. (In multiplayer I've usually tossed the shield in favour of totems by this stage, so it never occurred to me lol.) Here's my full packing list – it's not much beyond my core set, but each piece serves a purpose :)

A player inventory, featuring a trident, conduit, milk buckets, TNT, and redstone blocks.

The monument is just a short ways from Oak Coast; I had to actively avoid it during my early-game treasure hunt. We go in through the front, weaving up and down through the arches to break line of sight with the guardians, thereby preventing their attacks. Around the corner is a boxy room with no obstructions – exactly what I'm looking for. Just pop a slime block here and attach the conduit, then break the slime (your mining fatigue can't stop me, this stuff breaks instantly!) and... bam! Conduit power!

A conduit, activated by the naturally generated blocks in the ocean monument, with a guardian nearby.

Now I don't need to worry about my air supply down here. But suppose I don't feel like navigating this 3D maze either... Conventional wisdom would suggest that TNT doesn't work underwater, but if I were to encase the explosive in blocks, then technically it's not touching the water, right?

A TNT block placed on top of an ocean monument and partially surrounded by dirt.
A TNT explosion opens up one of the wings of the ocean monument.

KABOOM! Just like that, we're in to the elder guardian room. It goes down with just four stabs of my superpowered pitchfork, and with that, I collect my very first sponge! Over to the opposite wing to repeat the dose on elder number two. This monument happened to have a simple path straight to the upper chamber, meaning I didn't need to blast my way into the top – always a fun time with the masses of guardians patrolling the area. With the last elder down, I sculled a bucket of milk and regained my ability to mine. Ahh, this game makes so much sense XD

An elder guardian dies to a strike from a thrown trident.

All right, time to clean this place out! I saw at least one sponge room as I was clearing out the elders, and... wait, there's FOUR? Hot damn! That's a cool 120 sponges, and 100+ sea lanterns to boot. But you know what? I still want more lol. There's another monument near Elaville, in the direction of the badlands with the Shrieking Hole. So, round two! I'll spare the details, but this one had a mere single sponge room. Though I was mainly here for the sea lanterns – these will help me spawnproof the local rivers.

Looking up into a sponge room in the ocean monument.

With the oceans tamed, I turned my attention to the wettest of the land biomes – the swamp. The nearest swamp biome from here is [checks Chunkbase] 2600 northwest. Welp, good thing I can fly now! I took the nether tunnel to horsey village, then flew (in small hops as my potato laptop loaded the terrain) to the place that would be my base of operations for the next couple of nights – a ruined portal near a huge swampland. As with my trident hunt, I popped down some torches, then set out at nightfall. Fittingly for this biome, a rainstorm rolled in, and then my target came into view – a slime!

A ruined portal in a plains biome, with a swamp in the background.
A swamp biome on a rainy night, with a large slime in the centre of view.

One damp night later, I had 226 slime balls in my posession – close to 90% of my cumulative total. But that was only the night before full moon! I spent the day clear-cutting the area of its oak trees, then braced for maximum slime density. In a night that was far too chaotic to stop for screenshots, I more than doubled my tally of slimes. This'll keep me going until I get into SERIOUS redstone work.

A player inventory, including 518 slimeballs and other assorted mob loot.

But slime isn't the only thing I want from the swamp. This biome is also home to the rare black cat! I... uhh... convinced this guy to choose me over its original owner through sheer awesomeness :D To bring my new friend home, I took a series of short flights towards horsey village, keeping the cat within render distance so it teleported to me each time, then led it through the nether. And that's how I completed my ascension to crazy cat-person-hood :3

Taming a black cat to complete the "A Complete Catalogue" advancement.
A Minecraft player and a black cat stand on the porch of a witch hut.
A Minecraft player with eleven cats, one of each type.

Previous entry: Part 14: Why Didn't They Just Fly The Amethyst Wings To The End?

Next entry: Part 16: Will The Real Better Than Sniffers Please Stand Up?