#first minecraft build

Given that shaders are now useable for vanilla 1.19.2, I added lanterns to my first minecraft build that I completed a week ago, a little japanese pagoda, sakura tree, and cliffside onsen:

And I’m now about halfway into my new project across the bridge, a cascading series of natural springs and onsens with a well on top of a hill, a (still in progress) wisteria tree, and a greenhouse with a water-wheel!

This is the whole area as of this moment:

I spent a little while today adding a last few details to my first minecraft build! I added a little onsen at the cliff edge, with campfires under the water to make the water steam. Another angle, up close:

As this was my first build, there weren’t any roads or infrastructure already built in the area, so I had the idea of making my nether portal a Torii gate. The set of steps to the left leads up to a pool of tropical fish (what passes as koi fish in the Minecraft world)

Another Torii gate, leading up to the pagoda itself:

I also added a rope bridge to bridge the gorge under the onsen (I have later plans for the opposite cliff that will involve wisteria trees). Figuring out the diagonal descending-ascending nature of the bridge took a little while, but I’m pretty proud of it! Especially the fencework under the spruce slabs themselves, and the banners and dark oak pillars to keep with the colour scheme of the pagoda. The bridge leads into a small cave and a set of dirt steps up to the onsen itself.

A final look at the whole build:

I’m about 80% done with the Waterfall hot springs build! Today was mainly detailing the hot springs themselves and etching out the cliffs, which I plan to detail later.

I decided to go with frog lights as lanterns with trapdoors and moss carpets, and coral on trapdoors for water lilies:

I decided to loop the path from the bridge around the yet-unfinished wisteria tree, with lamp-posts with trailing purple banners to match the wisteria. The winding wooden boardwalk across the springs themselves was a delight to build - I managed after some experimentation to find the right amount of curve in the path to follow the natural drop of the falls.

The well at the top of the hill was actually almost the first thing I built on this side of the bridge, but it’s been in the far background of most of my update pictures so far, so I thought I’d show a closer shot:

The view down the path beside the wisteria tree across to the first thing I ever built on minecraft (about two weeks ago, lol) the sakura tree over the Japanese pagoda and onsen:

As for the cliffs themselves, I’ve done their basic outline but I’ll need to layer them with moss and variegated stone. For variety, I decided to cut into the cliff at the front of the build near the house to make another small onsen in a little lush cave, with a private pier:

This is what the build looks like so far from a distance (with unfortunate pop-in issues with the most distant banners, but what can one do). there’s still the wisteria tree and the cliffs/rightmost edge of the onsen to finish terraforming, and a few more floating lanterns, and then I’ll be mostly done!