Minecraft Updates: We found the Stronghold!

Upgrading our tools and armour to Netherite proved to be a tiring task. After an hour of blasting the nether with TNT, we found only enough ancient debris for a couple of items. It was proving a tough task, especially with the amount of lava we encountered.

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Sometimes we would get lucky and find two pieces together and at other times we would not find even one after blasting a lot of TNTs. At least, we had a creeper farm which gave us a good supply of gunpowder.

We got a couple more ingots and went home to upgrade our swords and pickaxes. I upgraded both of our swords to netherite first.

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We would get bored looking for ancient debris and come back to the overworld to tend to our crops or livestock just to distract us. Beril kept catching more cats and soon we had an army of them.

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Look, how she keeps feeding these cats fish and breeding them. How many cats does one person need anyway? lol

We were running out of coal for smelting ores and making smooth stones etc. So we went to the nether to find a big lava pool. It wasn't tough as our portal was in this stupid biome with a lot of lava around. (I might have pushed her in the lava pool xD).

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I played with the cartography table to make some empty maps and later filled them. I still don't know how exactly these maps work. I know the cartographer sells maps to structures too. But we have to upgrade them first.

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We decided it was time to fight the dragon or at least find the end portal. We already had the eyes of Ender and were just waiting to upgrade our gear. But since this upgrade was taking much more than we expected and it got boring looking for the ancient debris, we had to do something more interesting. What's more interesting to find a portal to another dimension?

I took 17 eyes of Ender thinking they would be more than enough. These eyes tell us the direction of the portal and sometimes they break but we just need almost 12 to fill the portal and activate it. I thought it would be enough.

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The portal was up north from us. We crossed the savana plains killing all the enderman we found. After the Savana plains, there was a vast ocean biome. And we kept looking for that portal.

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It took us some time to pinpoint the exact location of the portal. It was under the ocean floor and deep underground. I was expecting it to be much closer to the ocean bed. I even spent a couple of extra eyes underground and lost them. That was a bad idea and I was left with just 10 eyes of Ender.

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But thankfully, we found the Stronghold. I thought it would be easy to find the portal room but it proved to be difficult. This was a massive structure having two libraries, multiple floors and a lot of rooms and trapped mobs.

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We found some nice enchanted books here. I put the Power IV on my bow that already had flame and infinity. That would be perfect for killing the Ender Dragon...right?

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After looking for a long time, we found the portal room and it had only one eye filled already. This was so unlucky as we wanted a portal with at least two eyes filled already. It meant we were short of just one eye! That's really unlucky.

We had no options but to go back to our base, get the blaze powder to make the eye of ender and come back here to fill the last slot. This gave us time to prepare well for the Ender Dragon fight too. We would go back and make some potions like Strength and Slow Falling to assist us in this fight. Also, taking some empty glass bottles for the Dragon's breath will be a great idea too.

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Also, making some golden carrots and golden apples would come in handy during this fight. This Stronghold wasn't too far from our base either. Most of the distance is covered in the boat so it doesn't take too much time.

We did all the preparations, packed our inventory with food, potions, empty bottles, water and lava buckets and other things. And of course the eyes of ender. Imagine forgetting them twice in a row lol.

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This time we made a pillar on top of the portal room that goes directly into the room using a long ladder system. It was tough to miss. And we went in and filled the last slot which lit the portal.

I will talk about the End dimension and the fight with the Ender Dragon in the next post. This would be my second fight ever with the Ender dragon and Beril's first ever! We were both excited and a bit nervous.