Hi gang!

Editorial

This review is a bit of a mixture between a review and a let's play. I won't be making a habit of writing these because I've re-read the PMC rules several times and I'm a little bit mixed about where to draw the line between an advertisement and a review / let's play. I'm convinced that I got it right with this, but I also want to be a little careful.

The main reason I'm writing this is because I have PMC and luigicraft23 to thank for the fun we had and this is my way of saying thank you! I got a little bored (sort off) and decided to give the Projects area a look. There I found this map, downloaded it, looked around, invited a friend over and we had a great time. So now I'd like to try and share some of the fun we had.

The rules we play by

There are some rules in effect here:

• I'm in creative, my friend is in survival mode. This allows me to sort a few things out if something goes wrong (F3-n is such a nice keyboard combination) while my friend can comment on the actual survival. But both of us have full access to all the commands we want.
  
• With these reviews I live by: "If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all!". This should be fun for all of us and seeing someone talk down on your work is simply no fun. I'm not going there.
  
• Spoiler alert! Although I'm doing my utmost best to keep spoilers out some can slip in. However, if we do stumble upon a secret then I won't be sharing how we discovered it (this could create a challenge of its own: you know there's a secret somewhere but how to get there?).
  
• In the end only one thing is important: am I having fun?
  

The Underwater secret redstone base

Have you ever fantasized about living under water in the ocean or sea? Several movies have used this concept such as James Bond's 'Thunderball' and 'The spy who loved me'. And one of my favorite Belgian comics from my teens: 'Robbedoes & Kwabbernoot' also used this concept in "De Bobbelmannen". And well, you got to admit that the ocean in Minecraft is a bit empty.

So when I came across this project called "Under water redstone base" my curiosity was immediately triggered. An underwater base and with redstone? Win win! :-) The map was made for Minecraft 1.10 but I figured it should also be playable on 1.12. And I was right!

But the map isn't perfect. As you can see in the screenshot above you spawn into the world in creative mode with a full inventory as well as the night vision effect applied. But that is easily fixed: /effect @p clear to get rid of the status effect and optionally: /clear to... guess ;) If you answered: clearing out your inventory then pat yourself on the back!

More seriously though: you shouldn't approach this as an adventure map or anything but as a Minecraft map. Just like with Minecraft itself this is all about how you want to play and enjoy this. And I can only respect that.

Down we go!

You start on a small pier and there are two ways into the underwater base: by railway or by using a boat. I like that attention for details, this allowed my friend to get to the base after I stole the only minecart. Which... I have to be honest, is another small caveat: it would have helped if there was a chest (or maybe an automated collection system) so that we had access to more than one minecart. Nothing negative! I can really understand that the original builder didn't expect his map getting used by multiple players at the same time. But.. it would have been nice.

Fortunately there was also a door (I kid you not, I thought it was funny) so my friend could also easily get in.

And well, as I said, we had fun exploring this. I really enjoyed the attention for detail which the builder put into this. For example, if you live under water then you really need to have some kind of food resource. After all, you don't want to risk starving to death or having to constantly get to the surface in order to get hold of new supplies. No problem! This is a completely self-sufficient dome which includes all you might need. Including a garden section.



Aya wondered if there would be enough light here to actually grow stuff but ... No spoilers just yet :) The food you get from these fields is more than enough for a single player and it would even have been enough for the both of us. We got (after replanting):

• 62 wheat and 43 seeds.
  
• 16 melons.
  
• 86 (1 stack + 22) melon slices.
  
• 1 stack of sugar cane.
  

That's decent, don't you think?

Next the dome also contained a "do it yourself" animal farm, and we really enjoyed the thought that was put into this:

[img='Do it yourself' animal farm]i.imgur.com/Jb7AjVn.png[/img]

Aya pushed but no animals appeared. Maybe she didn't push quickly enough? I hopped into spectator more and quickly discovered what the problem was:



It's a small mistake, and I can even understand how one can overlook this. See: the repeater powers the block behind it, which means that any redstone dust next to that block will get powered. But as you can see there's only another dirt block next to it, so this obviously won't work. Not to worry though: you can still build, even in spectator mode.

I checked the right coordinates and then replaced the dirt block with redstone dust ("minecraft:redstone_wire") and the result.. well:



So why did we need to push the button twice you wonder? Simple: because the several dispensers contained 2 spawn eggs for every animal type. So after pressing the button twice we got:

• 2 chickens
  
• 2 cows
  
• 2 sheep
  
• 2 pigs
  

... but no more! I really enjoyed that. This is how a survival map should be I think: it gives you just enough to get started but the rest is then left up to you. So all of sudden we now had to share our food with the animals too ;)

[img="oops" :-)]i.imgur.com/1dSPWEl.png[/img]

But seriously... I like this. A map doesn't have to be picture perfect, it needs to be enjoyable. And this is enjoyable because although it is an "out of the box" under water base it still leaves you with chores to do.

While writing this I decided not to include the house / library, elevator and hidden room because... well, spoilers. So now you know that there's also a house which you can visit which has a library, a hidden room (which hasn't been visited for a long time considering all the vines!) and it even has an elevator.

Still, this is a Minecraft map and I think there's a clear hint at mining and crafting in there. And guess what? The author even thought about that:

Underwater mining!

This is another example why I really grew a liking for this map. After all: what is Minecraft without mining?

Now, I don't know if the following was intentional or left like this on accident but either way I thought it was very well done. Because seriously, wouldn't you agree that this mine just cries out to get dug out:


What is a mine without spoils?

And another reason why I enjoyed this is because I wouldn't be surprised at all if some players totally glossed over this detail. Especially because if you look at the other side of the corridor then there's something which will probably draw much more direct attention to it:


Plenty of diamonds and emeralds at the end: ready for the taking. That is, if you can reach it :)

Summing up

The underwater secret redstone base is a project shared by Luigicraft23 and made by junior Luigikid aka JL. It took JL 5.75 hours to build the map and if you're wondering how I know this then I urge you to download and explore for yourself because... no spoilers! :)

This is really a fun map but just like with Minecraft itself it is important that you can entertain yourself and basically make your own adventure out of it. As said: it is not an adventure map but if you have a little bit of imagination then I'm convinced that you can have plenty of fun exploring and looking around. There are even secrets to be found, like hidden rooms with hidden treasure.

Which also brings me to one of the reasons why I got persuaded to do this writeup....

Pro's

• Cool map which pays good attention to details. The mine contains loot ready to be dug out, the farms are ready for you to use.
  
• It really gives out a survival feel. There are enough resources to help you get started but if you want the most out of this then you'll have to start working for yourself. You only get 2 of several animal types and a limited amount of vegetables.
  
• There are secrets to be found and hidden rooms to discover. You're most likely going to totally overlook some of the semi-hidden entrances even though they're more or less in plain sight!
  
• There's a full survival map surrounding this build so you could also consider using this as a starting point for a regular survival play.
  
  

Con's

• There's only 1 minecart to get to the underwater base. So if you're together with more players they'll have to use the boat (or hope that the minecart will make it back to the start).
  
• The animal farm has a small bug and you need to tweak it before you can get any animals automatically (or spawn them manually).
  
  
• The piston elevator glitches if you use it in multiplayer and sometimes also in singleplayer. I'm not sure if this is because the map was intended for 1.10 or because I ran this on a server.
  

We give this project an 8.5 out of 10. If you set your mind to it then it can be a lot of fun and as I mentioned a few times: the builder really kept an eye out for details.

Thanks to Luigicraft23 for sharing, thanks to JL for building and thank you (random reader!) for reading!

(I like doing write-ups and this is honestly my way of saying thank you!).