Purple Reign
Part 39 ~ 20 June 2025
Posted: 3 March 2026
Day 500 is in the books – and in the spreadsheet, and on the map – and it's time to start into our new era. And what better way to mark a new era than with a coronation? Yes, I've picked up yet another secret skill today, one that I like to call "forbidden forging". Here's how it works: Take a helmet, plonk it on an anvil, and rename it by changing the word Helmet to Crown.
Et voilà – one shiny golden crown, encrusted with brilliant purple amethyst gems! Truly majestic. This may look like a downgrade in practical material terms, but trust me, it still has all the protective qualities of a netherite helmet. And with the right ordering of resource packs, the crown is visibly – well, visible! – while the rest of my protective gear remains hidden under my royal garb. Yes, a pride hoodie and ripped skinny jeans is now ROYAL GARB. Deal with it :P I took a little "Royal Tour" of the village, finishing out the front of Elaville House for a portrait.
Bask in my regal glory! This magnificence is made possible thanks to the Helmets Become Crowns resource pack by MisoraUni :D The pack also adds some lesser crowns, should I decide to adopt a mob (or guest player?) into the royal family someday.
My first royal appointment as Sovereign is to... go to Minecraft Hell and revisit the Crimson Forest. I spotted a discrepancy in my stats and I need to investigate it. The Monsters Hunted checklist says I've killed a hoglin – heck, I swear I remember shooting one when I first went there and got the Hot Tourist Destinations advancement – yet it hasn't shown up on the mob stats page. Have my recordkeepers betrayed me? I must get to the bottom of this.
One totally fair fight later, I believe I have my answer. The hoglin now shows up on the mobs page, while the Monsters Hunted count remains at 28. I think what happened is, the first one died to lingering fire damage from my Flame bow, whereas I made sure the second one died from the arrow. So if I defeat a monster with fire, it counts as "hunted" but not "killed". Those scribes must have been on the crimson fungus when they came up with that... Anyway, I got what I REALLY came here for which is a bunch of crimson wood, then zipped back home.
Those crimson stems promptly became crimson fence posts, as I unveiled my new lighting plan for Elaville: froggy streetlights! I wasn't kidding about that purple light thing. Torches are for peasants. This island shall not bear such primitive devices any more! Well, not on the surface anyway. Ain't no way I'm redoing the caves. I punched out every torch in sight, and in their place put up some 180 lamp posts – plus more standalone froglights on the shorelines, cave entrances, and farm borders. Even the nonbinary umbrella was de-torched, receiving a seamless layer of spawnproofing carpet.
Now that the land is lit up (again), it's time to see to the sea! If you'll recall, I had an issue with water zombies popping up at night. That's because the sea is in 3D, and my sea pickle light could only filter up so far from the sea floor. Froglights, being full blocks, can happily float on the surface, or indeed anywhere in the water column. This array of glowing buoys should keep the zombies at bay – or rather, out of the bay!
