What's the theme here? Underwater?
Part 27 ~ 13 January 2026
Played: 26 April 2025
After partying it up at Movie Mansion, all I felt like doing today was to go around collecting random stuff. First up, it's off to the Drowning Pool to pick up more nautilus shells. I put down my last (for the moment) conduit near Rivermount, swapped to my Smite sword, and paddled out in search of some teal hydro-zombies. Time to LET THE BODIES HIT THE (river) FLOOR!
At this point you might be wondering, "Ela, why are you referencing a campy nu-metal song from 2001?" Well, dear reader, this song actually has a connection to Minecraft history! Back in early 2011, Minecraft won an Indie Game award, and the game's original creator (who shall not be named) posted a video displaying the trophy. And the audio for this video was... Bodies by Drowning Pool! The video – and indeed the whole channel – are gone, but thankfully the event was documented by PC Gamer to reassure me that I actually remember this and I'm not making things up!
As it happened, I picked up a trident before I spotted a single nautilus shell! It's only my second in this world. After a couple of days and nights in the river (mostly at the far end away from my conduit... I need MOAR!) I had a THIRD trident and a set of shells. The last shell was something of a rarity, being in the hands of a drowned chicken jockey! These things are so daft – the zombie hops off immediately after spawning to go swimming, leaving the chicken bobbing on the surface... Like, why is this a thing? Mojang, how about adding ducks and drowned duck jockeys? Or, hear me out, if you want amphibious jockeys but don't wanna add new mobs: FROG JOCKEYS. Pls hire me :3 (Editor's note: At the time of publishing, they've recently announced the zombie nautilus jockey!)
So anyway I went straight back to base and threw Riptide on my new trident. Wheeeee! Now I can fly straight out of the water instead of awkwardly pillaring up from the seafloor or swimming to shore first. Plus I get rocket-free flight in the rain. But most importantly, it's FUN! Look at me spin! And the WHOOSH sound gets me every time :D
For my next maritime mission, I took to the skies again, this time to search the local beaches. It took a moment, but I found what I was looking for in the northeast corner of the Shipwrecked Sea, due east of Elaville. This place has a curious geography: both ends of the beach peek above water, while the rest is submerged, forming a sandbar. Behind the sand is a wide pool of water that cuts into the forest beyond. And chilling on each end of the beach, we have... TURTLES! I'm gonna call this place Turtle Lagoon.
I got to work spamming torches, shearing seagrass, and feeding the turtles. And then watching them swim aimlessly around the submerged sandbar looking for a spot to lay their eggs. Oh dear, it looks like this beach has suffered some storm damage! I levelled out the higher dunes on the southern end to collect sand, then used it to extend the northern end towards the centre. This worked a treat as my new green friends scrabbled around on this repaired section before plopping their eggs there! Hooray for environmental restoration! :D And then of course I betrayed them by making off with the entire clutch.
For my own turtle beach, I designated the sandy peninsula at the southern end of Elaville. I set up a little enclosure, planted a bunch of eggs, and waited. Aaand got hella bored of waiting and went out to collect a crapton of kelp. Turtle pro tip: almost all hatching happens in a less-than-1 minute window in the early morning. You may as well go do something else from sunrise to midnight. I'm gonna be real here: this was SLOW. I picked thousands of kelp pieces, to the point where it's my second-most gathered item at over 12,000. There were TWO thunderstorms while I waited... well, not quite all of two, becuase this adorable little guy hatched during the second storm!
After 20 minutes, I had my first full-grown turtle – and my first scute! (Not ambiguous; there's no armadillo scutes in this version!) And then in a moment of boredom-induced madness, I thought I'd let it out to make room in the enclosure. This turned disastrous as a baby turtle escaped immediately, and by the time I'd cleaned up the mess another three turtles had hatched and escaped. Whoops. Thankfully with a combination of my minimap, boats, and seagrass (not leads, these don't work on turtles), I wrangled up the escapees and picked up their scutes as they dropped. And with five scutes in hand, I got to craft up a cute new accessory!
The turtle shell helmet gives 10 seconds of water breathing when you enter the water. I thought this was useless, considering Respiration 3 gives you 60 seconds, until I watched a video where someone played on a flooded world and got one of these early. The trick here is that the 10 second timer resets EVERY TIME YOU TOUCH AIR – so for example, you can place a torch, get an air pocket for the moment before the torch breaks, and get a fresh 10 seconds of air independent of your bubble meter. So with a little bit of micromanagement, you can cave dive for far longer than the advertised 60 + 10 seconds. As far as raw stats, this guy has the same protection as iron but with significantly more durability, so perfectly fine for the game's limited underwater combat.
And finally for today, I used my newly gained set of nautilus shells to place a conduit in the sea right outside Elaville. I still have four Hearts of the Sea spare, so look forward to more Drowning Pool action in the future! :D
