Stained Glass

After "the update that changed the world" (1.7.2) I began exploring in a newer saved game and quickly decided I needed to play with stained glass windows. I sketched out a few options for my guest dining room and I chose to go with this flower design, with hint of sky, sun, dirt, and water.

I was able to find most of the colors pretty easily, even brown since I'm near some jungle, but I could not get green. The only source of green dye is cactus, which is almost exclusively found in deserts. That's fine, usually a desert is easy to come across.

But with the new world generation algorithm, temperature is a big deal. I happen to live in a winter zone. Everywhere I traveled tended to be moist, winter, or high altitude. I finally set out on a mega-journey walking half a map away and setting out on sea. After a while my boat broke near the north-east of the map and I decided to walk inland a ways. That took me a couple days beyond the edge of my map on foot, then I set sail with my backup boat on a new ocean.

I went north across this second ocean a long ways, then got out to check some land and just continued walking north with the idea that in a semi-infinite world I should eventually get any biome, especially a common one, by walking in a straight line. I went through extremely tall mountains (above cloud level) and built a way-house. From there I ran a day and a night through the worst storm I've ever seen, with many lightning strikes starting fires that soon got extinguished. Mobs appearing all around me. Terrain, after the mountains ended, was occasional forested patches with rolling plains between them. Those plains have rifts in them that I had to dodge while running quickly to stay ahead of mobs and with minimum visibility.

Eventually I saw ahead of me through the storm an odd, light-colored mountain. Since it was in my path and also the only interesting point of reference I continued for it. I had to down my last regeneration potion after a witch caught me crossing a stream, but finally I broke out of the storm, crossing a small stream to the foot of a sandstone mountain. Desert!

It's so far from home that I built a new home here. Sandstone, stained glass, and a cactus wall for defense: all products of the desert itself.

Here's a view down that tower. So many colors! This includes a ring of lava and a ring of water below it, held in place by glass blocks. Redstone and glowstone rings periodically too.

Here's the inside of the palace, with a wall showing all 16 colors of stained glass.

As you may have guessed, I did eventually get home with green dye to finish the window shown in the first picture. I went through the Nether and have since constructed a 800+ long railroad through the Nether roof (altitude 118) to make the journey more convenient.