Geode, Dude!
Part 19 ~ 18 August 2025
Played: 4 April 2025
Had a couple busy days IRL. It happens! But you know what they say: Absence makes the yearning for the mines grow stronger!
More material gathering today for an upcoming build, and it's a particularly pretty one – precious, purple, amethyst! Way back on my first mining trip, I found a healthy sized geode that was near world spawn and not too far down (by which I mean still in the regular stone layer). So to kick off this mission, I located it again and dug a shaft connecting it to the surface. Then I settled in for a fun little game of "Don't break the budding amethyst". I've come to know this block as "suspicious amethyst" for its conceptual likeness to the sand and gravel variants – an idea I got from Vanilla Tweaks, which retextures this trio with borders so I can spot these impostors among the real blocks. Though, of course, I've given 1.20's brushy blocks the boot for this playthrough!
Systematically working from top to bottom, I managed to break down the entire geode without ruining any of the precious purple buds. And then... I managed to get lost. Wait, what? Yeah, so I got annoyed by seeing monsters in the cave and went to light it up, then went down a side tunnel, then another side tunnel... and wound up in a mess of half-lit corridors. I stumbled back on the giant cavern from an earlier expedition, but didn't remember how I'd gotten out before. I even hit the same obsidian floor that I'd mined from that time, but likewise, both memory and navigational skills failed me. I'd resigned myself to digging a tunnel out to the surface when, miraculously, I caught a glimpse of the sky. Was this for real, or a mirage caused by rendering errors? (It's more likely than you'd think with all the graphics and optimisation mods I'm running!) Only one way to know for sure... Zoooom!
Aaand we're outta here! It turns out there's a cave opening straight down to deepslate just 150 blocks from spawn! But I never noticed it until now because it's hidden in the forest. This is why I prefer plains biomes; I cant see a darn thing in the woods XD. Anyway, with that misadventure behind me, I went ahead and linked the crystal cluster to the surface with – guess what – a bubble column. Et voilà – one freshly prepared geode! I've picked up 450 amethyst blocks, more than enough for my immediate plans, and the buds will produce a steady supply of pieces or decorative crystals whenever I need more.
Oh, and to address the purple elephant in the room: no, these amethysts do not interact with the amethyst wings. But, my cats have picked up a few purple crystals that CAN be used to repair them in the anvil (not that I'd ever do that since I have Mending). These pieces bear the name "phantom membrane". Umm, WHAT? PHANTOMS? Have my cats been out hunting ghosts while I'm asleep? IS THIS WORLD HAUNTED?!
