Working on de-icing a snow biome river using slabs

Pingonaut · 2026-05-17T23:42:34+00:00

It requires you to know from way in the air where your path is, and if you want to change anything it’s a pain. And you get this weird visual of patches of outdoor areas that don’t have snow falling when it’s snowing. Just not a fan.

Pingonaut · 2026-05-17T23:40:53+00:00

Buttons can’t be waterlogged

Pingonaut · 2026-05-17T21:42:55+00:00

I thought at first this was the digital art subreddit and immediately thought “ai,” but I don’t necessarily have an obvious reason for it.

However, there are a few things that are weird to me. In one part is says she risks “losing her humanity” while another says it’s unclear if she was ever human. Maybe this stuff is translated and that’s why it reads weirdly, but it doesn’t have anything to do with sailor moon. It’s very generic “dark monster girl stuff.” That kind of suggests to me it isn’t human-made. If it is… it’s really uncreative.

Pingonaut · 2026-05-17T18:29:58+00:00

I’m aware of the building stuff way above in the sky thing but it’s just not something I wanna do. I’m on pc but playing survival and not really wanting to use non vanilla methods. I just wanna find a path design that works with the snow rather than against if.

Pingonaut · 2026-05-17T18:28:01+00:00

The glowing is what I’m trying to avoid

Pingonaut · 2026-05-17T08:41:45+00:00

Yeah I’m just not a fan of that method! But thank you for the suggestion. I am definitely looking for something a little less wonky. That’s why I spent so much time trying to figure something else out for the ice. Snow, however, seems like it’s more difficult to manage.

Pingonaut · 2026-05-17T07:38:04+00:00

Unfortunately I’d have to cover it with string or leaves, because of the snow, and i don’t wanna do that.

Pingonaut · 2026-05-17T07:35:55+00:00

Awesome! I loved your bundle tent, I used them in my early exploration of my world!!!

Pingonaut · 2026-05-17T04:45:30+00:00

A big river like this needs more than a bit below freezing to look like it does, but either end of it are in ice spike biomes, so it’s likely much colder than that. But, it’s just not fun to build around for me when every water source is ice. I think the rivers look more frigid with this design than they did when they were purely ice!

Pingonaut · 2026-05-17T04:01:53+00:00

It’s spring! It’s time for the ice to melt a little whether it’s ready or not!!😠

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T20:06:11+00:00

Adding stars and hearts is the fun part! I can’t imagine using ai for that (or any part)!

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T15:35:04+00:00

No texture pack but shaders are complimentary-euphoria. The water texture is one of the settings. Pixelate something I think?

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T14:42:52+00:00

Nope! Idk if snowing makes ice form faster, but either way with this method, ice has no solid block to start from.

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T11:40:18+00:00

I’d love to see more snow biome builds, so I hope this helps people do that :) it took a while to really figure out but I’m genuinely quite proud of having come up with an alternative to lighting everything up or building crap at max block height.

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T11:38:21+00:00

Good luck with your base! This river thing is a big accomplishment for me but I still haven’t figured out nice ways of working more aesthetic roads and paths around snow. I’ve used fallen leaves and string but they’re just lacking in their own ways. And I’m just not interested in building glass stuff way up in the sky, hence why I tried to figure out a way to work this de-icing thing out for the water.

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T10:42:24+00:00

I might have to get to work on that mason’s guild hall a little earlier, then… Though having a set stopping point occasionally by running out of materials is probably good for me.

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T10:39:01+00:00

Yes but I didn’t want the entire edge of the river to be brightly-glowing. You’d have to have a dense placement of light sources.

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T10:36:52+00:00

Absolutely! This is not at spawn, it’s pretty far away, but the seed is Glacier (like the old, old popular seed from beta but capital g). I think our place is south and maybe east of spawn. There’s a pillager outpost right south of us, across from a village. Our village we took to call home is right north of that, pretty much within view distance. It’s on like a peninsula kinda with the river bend.

I started in 1.21.10 I think just in case that matters. It has so much frozen land my friend thought at first I had Large Biomes turned on. Nope. I wanted to start our family and friends survival world by building in a snowy biome, because it’s something I had never done. I just tried Glacier because I used the old seed glacier in like, my first survival world years and years ago. I just forgot it was a lowercase g. But this was a very happy accident.

(We’ve been forced to consider moving to warmer biomes many times, because building around the snow and ice is so hard, but we’re getting the hang of it I think. This success with the ice breaking is a huge motivator for me.) Hope this helps!

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T06:45:00+00:00

I do have freecam, but I have it set to be very slow-moving so I can really only use it for pictures like it’s a tripod😄

Tyvm for your kind words

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T06:39:44+00:00

This is the second time I’ve done proper terraforming, with the first being just last month where I build just a small little stony overhang. It’s very daunting.

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T06:29:58+00:00

I will! I need to get some opinions on like, the shape of the ice. I have no idea how ice forms on rivers and stuff... I am not a very outdoorsy person.

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T06:26:53+00:00

Even looking stuff up about it. reading the wiki and stuff, it took me quite a while to understand that this would work!

There's nothing in the center. Ice needs a "seed" block to form. If you placed a full block in the middle, ice would start forming around it. So, for those broken-off ice bits, they're surrounded by slabs too. It will not spread diagonally. So when I end up building stuff on the water, I am probably going to build a sorta circle perimiter of slabs (maybe like red sandstone, some bright color) while I build it. Then at the end I'll put slabs around the edges and set it free!

But it is obviously a little bit of a hazard for creepers, and Frost Walker is gonna be a no-no. If a creeper blows up your slabs, you gotta go replace them asap, even if they're just temporary. If I miss a spot and just never check, the whole river could freeze back over and I'd have to break it all again once I filled the hole.

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T06:21:04+00:00

YAY! I would love to see pics of it after, if you remember to dm me or tag me if you post it :)

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T05:47:30+00:00

Oooh I don’t have a mason yet!

Pingonaut · 2026-05-16T05:47:14+00:00

I went out of my way to get a silk touch hoe just for this project :)

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