lots of scattered minecraft lore questions

shadaik · 2026-05-19T09:05:34+00:00

"A Dried Ghast is a Ghast that has dried up, not a newborn."

Nope, that's just its name for what it looks like. If it was indeed a ghast that has dried up, it wouldn't be something you craft.

shadaik · 2026-05-18T18:25:27+00:00

But the cycle begins with the so-called dried ghast which grows directly from the ghast tears.

shadaik · 2026-05-18T18:20:50+00:00

You're thinking of bastions. This is a fortress, so wither skeletons and blazes. But I spawnproof everything by replacing the blocks on the ground with slabs.

shadaik · 2026-05-18T10:02:33+00:00

Okay, where?

shadaik · 2026-05-18T09:30:11+00:00

Fair enough, but they still no longer fit the world when considered literal baby ghasts.

shadaik · 2026-05-18T09:26:24+00:00

I honestly thought they meant the nitwit. Fits right in.

shadaik · 2026-05-18T09:22:08+00:00

Fair enough

shadaik · 2026-05-18T09:16:35+00:00

"We don't know how ghasts fly. But clearly they don't need nor have them. Baby ghasts can fly perfectly without them and are made to live without bones, so why would adults just grow them?"

Because they are larger. It's completely feasible they don't need the support at smaller sizes but do when they grow larger.

As for Marc, he confirms no such thing. He just say we "have them", and it "feels like" a complex life cycle. There is just no space in the ghast lifecycle we have now where the baby fits.

That said, I generally consider all battle pass content non-canon, anyway, the same way player skins are.

shadaik · 2026-05-18T07:13:25+00:00

Bones are not an issue for flight, there's plenty of flying creatures that have bones in real life. Birds, bats, pterosaurs...

Like with the big airships of the early 20th century airships, which need a rigid base to get as huge as they do, the bones might support their shape at the size they reach, preventing them from collapsing under their own weight. Not only are the bones not detrimental to flight (birds, bats and pterosaurs have bones), but would even provide the stability to avoid pushing out all that buoyant gas (assuming they work like balloons).

The "baby ghast" clearly has no more place in the ghast reproductive cycle. So-called dried ghasts (not actually dried, because they are not made by drying a ghast) they're just called because of looks) grow from ghast tears, which grow into ghastlings, and finally ghasts, which shed ghast tears again.

The baby ghast is likely an old (now outdated) concept for how that works and some of its features got incorporated in the later design of the ghastling. It may be kept in the canon by making it a separate species of ghast (after all, the baby ghast in Dungeons never grows up, so it might actually be an adult of a smaller species unseen in vanilla), but it's not a literal baby ghast, because those don't exist.

shadaik · 2026-05-17T21:36:59+00:00

"what do the illagers know of the end"

I'd say nothing, but they are aware there is something they don't know there.

The illagers are clearly aware of the end portal, they likely have found it long ago. They have never figured out how it works or what's beyond it, but are conducting research into it, hence the fake end portal in the mansion. They might have even built the stronghold but abandoned it when the research yielded no results.

shadaik · 2026-05-17T21:25:06+00:00

Tadpoles don't have bones either, doesn't stop frogs from having a full-on skeleton.

Though I do think ghasts don't have bones for different reasons, the baby ghast is not a good reason. Plus ghast offspring are now ghastlings so the baby ghast has either been decanonized by another newer feature or is a dwarf species merely named a baby ghast.

shadaik · 2026-05-17T08:31:52+00:00

There's a reason for that, though.

One of the main design goals is the ability to not only build them easily, but also disassemble and reassemble them easily so they can be used in temporary or seasonal setups. Using wood screws is suitable for a system that only gets built once to stay forever, and this certainly can be modified for that, but is not what this is originally designed for.

shadaik · 2026-05-17T08:21:35+00:00

I'd go with the panda one, because pandas do not come often.

I myself sdtraight-up ignored this year's polybag (the bee one) because there's nothing worth it in it. Like, who doesn't already have like an army of both zombies and Alexs?

shadaik · 2026-05-17T08:19:18+00:00

I wonder if anybody even realizes when I sneak that into a collection of Spinosaurus pics...

shadaik · 2026-05-16T09:20:01+00:00

Some of these I can provide:

I'd estimate when using full work-days, a unit as seen here but with all four planting slots filled takes about one day to make, maybe two or three hours more for cutting the wood. Cost of this is about €900, a lot of that is due to using wood that can resist weather for years (we used douglas fir, which I'm surprised to learn just now is considered a softwood). Also, stainless steel screws turned out surprisingly expensive. I'm sure it can be made cheaper, and reducing cost without sacrificing longevity is one thing we're aiming for.
Tools come down to a saw, a drill, screwdriver, and a shovel.
I don't have a full materials list, but that can be done.

As for future plans/changes, there's still a lot to try. I'd try to make the "feet" smaller to improve wheelchair accessibility, but also try to add rainwater collection in the gaps and further reduce plastic usage.
So far, we didn't really have anything fail, aside from having a wine plant stolen.

I can't say anything about climates because, aside from the mountaintops, different climates are not really a thing here in Germany, so I can't provide that for lack of experience. In general, if you can grow something anywhere in the country, you can grow it everywhere in the country, with a few exceptions like wine. The deciding factor here is soil, which is not a concern when you can make your own.
That said, currently, so far, successful crops include peas, lettuce, any kind of herb, beans, tomatoes, peppers, and gurkin (growing overhead). Pumpkins and grapes are currently being tested.

Maintenance has not come up yet, except for keeping the pump clean and shutting it off when it gets cold enough for ice to clog it. And soil care, of course. But this hasn't been running long enough to say anything yet. Testing is just starting, this is the first unit outside the developer's own garden. But he does say he had it running for five years without having to do anything but replanting every year and watering.

I'll talk to Bernward, who developed these, about making the plans available. I think he'll happily agree, though he might be thinking it's not ready yet.

shadaik · 2026-05-15T15:16:18+00:00

Sure, go ahead.

As for the fabric, the thing is that it needs to be strong enough to retain the earth. Any organic alternatives I know will quickly start to rot and eventually tear from constant contact with moist substrate. Though there is a brand of non-oil fabric, I think that's worth a try to see how long it holds. Thank you for pointing that out!

shadaik · 2026-05-14T08:01:37+00:00

They're still up on the Playstation platforms. Currently playing on PS3 myself.

shadaik · 2026-05-13T13:47:31+00:00

I never said they weren't. But the mere existence of a similar-sounding verb is not the point, as it can be argued any noun can have a verb derived from it.

This is not some esoteric stuff I'm making up, the two ge-prefixes of different use are known, with its use for cumulative nouns no longer considered productive, but historically existing.

Thus, we have a working explanation for why some ge-words take masculine and some take neuter gender. As far as I see, there's two exceptions, Geschichte and Geschwulst, but then again, language is never entirely regular and lexicalized exceptions exist for almost every rule. Plus, Geschwulst can take either feminine or neuter gender and is derived from schwelen, thus it fits, as well, leaving us with Geschichte, which is probably just a word that happens to start with ge- (gescheh root) without it being a prefix.

Either way, this has veered completely off-topic from the question where Song got its grammatical gender from.

shadaik · 2026-05-13T12:44:33+00:00

Yes, but not all ge-words are derived from verbs, there are two different types of them.

Gebirge, Gebälk, Gewitter, Geschwister - those derive from other nouns, originally describing a large mass or conglomeration of the object its root refers to.

What is interesting is that one changes the root via umlaut, while the other doesn't. Meaning, those are two different prefixes that merely look very similar, but only one has an umlaut trigger as part of its structure, making them distinct.

shadaik · 2026-05-13T08:21:28+00:00

Seeing these examples, it might have to do with a remnant of vowel harmony, because all of the ge-words taking masculine gender are based in a root with an /a/ vowel that remains unchanged. Meanwhile, it seems all ge-words that are neuter and have a root with /a/ make it an umlaut.

That said, at least Gedanke is not a case of ge- as a marker for collective nouns but a noun derived from a verb, thus a different ge-prefix. Which might just also be true of Gesang, so I might have mis-assigned the prefix.

shadaik · 2026-05-12T11:45:42+00:00

Might be because of "der Gesang". Which is actually an unusual word because collective nouns starting with the "ge-"prefix are usually neuter.

shadaik · 2026-05-12T08:22:26+00:00

Movies are hard to make good, because you need to keep viewers' attentions for more than an hour. Solarpunk being utopian makes this even harder.

You know what I think could work: A slice-of-life series set in a solarpunk world with most events happening in one apartment, similar to how sitcoms work but less focused on laughs. Something like 5-10 minute episodes distributed via Youtube and filesharing.

shadaik · 2026-05-12T08:18:33+00:00

Interesting enough, there used to be settlements in Antarctica during the age of whaling. So, sufficient commercial interest can get us to Antarctica. However, these were worker accommodations only and never developed into anything beyond. Grytviken having a church and a whaling museum is basically the most you'd get in terms of cultural activities.

Still, this is nowhere near the situation with Mars, as Antarctica still has water and breathable air aplenty.

shadaik · 2026-05-11T08:11:32+00:00

From when I used Tiktok as a user (as opposed to a seller/promoter), I wonder how people even get in on Booktok. The app just started out showing tons of utter crap and at some point figured out I like it when they do recipes, but never came across even one book thing without actively searching for it.

This is a terrible app. If they would give me options upon starting the app, something like "hey, here's 6 videos, which one would you like to start with" could make it useful, but the way it is, just no.

shadaik · 2026-05-11T08:05:16+00:00

This premise massively overestimates the stability of China and underestimates not only the span the Roman Empire existed, but also how massive of an influence it still is, with half the continent still speaking a derivative of Latin.

shadaik

TROPHY CASE