#building and redstone and grinding and mob-wrangling

[cleocatrablossy]

Sorta want to make fake D&D stat blocks for everyone in the life series. And maybe Hermitcraft. So noting down my rough translation of base stat -> Minecraft for myself later. Most are just the actual D&D mechanic but there are some Minecraft specific things I want to add

Str -> the grind(mining, building, and terraforming)

Dex -> parkour & dodging, how often are they running

Con -> how often do they die, as well as how quickly they tend to heal up

Int-> General background knowledge(you know how to make the thing, or how the thing functions)

Wis-> Usage of that knowledge in the ever changing world(trying newer or riskier redstone/changing things in it, when to start building defenses, being able to pull off the thing, wrangling aggressive mobs)

Cha -> How convincing are they as well as relationship with passive & neutral mobs(How many players can they convince of things, how good at lying, trusted by villagers? How about how many cats or dogs? Last three to a lesser extent than interactions with other players)

[rayveewrites]

Who is Alice and What is Zloy: An Essay* on the Lore of Zlobert Experience

Aka I did not watch hours of Zloy videos and dig through his Tumblr to keep this information to myself.

*This will not be written in essay format. I have a visceral hatred toward structured writing. Thank you for your understanding.

Zloy is a dimension-jumper/worldhopper, which means he spends most of his time doing whatever he wants wherever he wants. Of course, Zloy was actually alive at one point, and he had trouble surviving in servers he wasn’t native to.

The solution? An exosuit! What exactly this damn thing is is a little unclear, but it is, presumably, pretty good at keeping the man alive, and most likely has an awful lot of robotic functions, or at least can be easily fitted with robotic functions.

So Zloy was doing his thing in some world or another when he ran into the ghost of a witch. Said witch’s ghost then proceeded to steal Zloy’s original body for reasons that are unclear to me but might have come up somewhere maybe? (Zloy for the love of god please tag your lore consistently I’m begging you-)

Zloy, now disembodied and watching a witch run around in his former body, then proceeded to possess the nearest humanoid creature, as one does. Said creature was, of course, a zombie, which was allergic to sunlight, as most zombies are. Being possessed by the ghost of a Player didn’t exactly change that little fact.

Fortunately(?), Zloy knew how to cure zombie villagers! And, consequently, how to look after his new zombie body: golden apples and weakness potions. Of course, those can only manage an actual zombie so much, and also his body was kinda decomposing, and part of Zloy’s brain was being exposed to the open air and the guy was just kinda miserable in general, so he made himself a helmet out of his available materials. (Gold. He made a gold helmet. It got stuck to his head pretty much immediately. Now he’s even more miserable).

So Zloy’s wandering the land, consuming weakness potions and golden apples, a helmet glued to his head that he’s waiting to break but also really doesn’t want to have break on him, and eventually it does, in fact, break, because gold is not a very practical metal to make your helmets out of.

Unfortunately, the helmet breaking does not change the fact that it is still, in fact, very much attached to Zloy’s head. The golden apples, meanwhile, finally start doing something useful, so Zloy is now a ghost possessing a zombie with chunks of gold helmet embedded beneath his skull that conveniently work as sunscreen.

(either the apples or the helmet also turned his eyes yellow at some point)

And things are looking up! Not only has Zloy brute-forced his new body into being a fully functional Player, but his newfound zombie nature means he’s compatible with worlds by default, because zombs are a Minecraft constant. He’s free to travel the universe and cause problems for everyone, including himself!

Eventually Zloy finds his way to a little server called Truly Bedrock, where the moon is in pieces before they even start and the inhabitants are every flavour of unhinged imaginable. Zloy, who has seen weirder things than a broken moon and is also very unhinged, was right at home!

…Until said home got blown up by a chunk of moon.

And then the rest of the moon.

Fortunately, the TBers are frankly impossible to kill, even if they get bits of moon dropped on their heads every season finale. They’re like extremely weird cockroaches (affectionate).

So welcome to Season Two! This is where things get really interesting.

Zloy starts the season off with a shop in their new shopping district called the All Store. The All Store’s function is that people can both sell common resources to it, and buy from it, ideally creating a shop that restocks itself.

Originally it starts out as a fairly traditional chests-and-signs shop, but after a while Zloy gets bored waiting for the server to update to 1.16 I guess, so he revamps the All Store with an awful lot of well-explained redstone.

Realizing he’s kinda created something that could tangentially count as an artificial intelligence, he dubs it Allistore (Alice for short), mostly for the pun.

He then takes a break to reinvent the TNT duper because those don’t work on Bedrock. His solution is ghasts. He also builds a bunch of pirate ships and giant skulls because Zloy. He ignores the current ongoing serverwide problem that is beacons causing nether corruption in the overworld, but so does the rest of the server so.

Eventually going back to the All Store, Zloy gets to work and expands it once again and kinda rants in the general direction of whoever’s been messing with the circuits.

He finds a dark oak sign saying ‘hi’ in one of the dispensers, renames it to ‘henlo’, and chucks it into Alice’s water stream (which is set up to never let items despawn, meaning it'll in there forever) as a stupid joke. 

Then he goes off to design a vault! It has elder guardians, cobblestone generators, obsidian, the works. His plan is to convince his servermate Dadcraft73 to pay Zloy for the right to put his diamonds in said vault. Dadcraft agrees, so long as a) the diamonds are insured and b) Zloy stores his diamonds in there as well.

…So the diamonds get stolen like a week later.

Zloy’s put on trial, and the court is a kangaroo court, and nothing makes sense and a definitely-not-Foxy-person shows up at one point while Judge Foxy steps out of the room, but he ends up owing Dadcraft hundreds of diamonds he doesn’t have.

Zloy finishes his expansion of the All Store, and checks his accounting chest to find not the results of his test run, but a face saying hi dad. Here’s the sign you lost.

So it turns out Alice is, in fact, sentient. Somehow. Neither they nor Zloy are quite sure why.

(It’s at this point Zloy switches from using she/her to they/them pronouns for Alice. Canonically they’re fine with both. )

Zloy installs a shulker box swapper so Alice can talk more easily than messing with the accounting chest, and then Alice tells him to get his act together and reopen so they can maybe earn Dadcraft’s diamonds before Zloy gets locked in his own vault (which is a very effective prison).

Alice mail-orders a mech from Mr Beardstone, who has a mech shop for some reason, and Zloy realizes Alice can look after themself and doesn’t really need him anymore. He gives them the diamonds he managed to accumulate and goes off to lock himself in his vault-turned-prison for the remainder of the season.

Alice is, quite frankly, having none of this, so they scan the inner workings of the mech and combine that information with a scan of a thing named Chuck that showed up like once and…. Look, I dunno what that thing is either tbh. There's no context as far as I can tell.

Anyway, these scans come in useful when Alice uses them to get Zloy’s old exosuit working and operational and they finally have a player-sized body to work with, so it’s time to bust Zloy out of jail!

Alice basically tells him to get his act together and get mining, because apparently he hasn’t told anyone other than Lyarrah that his shop is a person, and they don’t particularly want to get repossessed.

Zloy does a lot of mining and gives Dadcraft a stupid amount of diamond ore arranged in the most obnoxious tree he can manage and that’s the end of that.

The TBers finally decide to do something about the ongoing beacon corruption, and JessieB comes in with news of an extremely big, extremely ominous nether portal that will spell the end of the server.

Naturally, the TBers go to investigate, and learn that the extremely big, extremely ominous nether portal will not, in fact, turn off. And then a giant magma cube came out and started destroying stuff.

While most of the TBers ran to upgrade and fire FoxyNoTail’s giant laser, Zloy and Beardstone split off to make a giant mech out of shops for Alice to pilot, and Alice fought the giant magma cube… at least until the laser destroyed both the mech and the magma cube.

The problem, as you might imagine, is that giant magma cubes tend to split into many, many, many smaller (large-size) magma cubes that are now swarming the entire server. The things are everywhere. There’s no escape.

Foxy figures that hey, they haven’t had the moon fall on them yet, may as well get it over with. He shoots the moon with the aforementioned laser, and everyone hauls tail into the very secure, apparently moon-proof vault/prison. Zloy doesn’t want to leave Alice to die, but Alice just kinda yells at him to get in the vault, they’ll be fine, they literally can’t die as long as the All Store still stands.

Zloy grabs part of Alice and goes, and then another chunk of moon lands on the TB server because these people really can’t go a season without that happening. It’s a wonder they have any moon left. 

Speaking of which, the moon is suspiciously fine for Season 3. Not only is it in one piece, something that has not been the case for the server’s entire history, and also Alice shows up and starts acting really weirdly about halfway through the season (the thing Zloy grabbed turned out to just be a monitor).

Turns out Season 3 is a simulation run by Alice so the TBer’s brains don’t die while they heal from being squashed by the moon again. Unfortunately, Alice had to strip a lot of Zloy’s permissions to make this work, so even if they do pull everyone out, Zloy will be left without a functional body, and- no, stop offering yourself up as sacrifice you stupid zombie.

They break the server via the medium of maps, because maps in bedrock servers take up obscene amounts of data and completely destroy the file size. That’s not a TB-exclusive thing, that’s just a known problem with bedrock edition.

They get out, but Zloy’s body is, in fact, no longer functional, so Silent chops off his head and they take it with them. Zloy is fine, if rather grumpy from being stuck in Silent’s hotbar and unable to do anything except loudly judge Silent’s actions.

Eventually Silent gives up and gives Zloy to a random zombie he finds in a cliff, and Zloy, once equipped, is once again able to possess the zombie’s body and is capable of making that everyone’s problem, including his own.

Alice shows up eventually, names his overcomplicated autobrewer, and starts chilling in his hotel.

In short: Zloy is a ghost possessing a decapitated zombie head possessing a zombie. Alice is his offspring, an immortal AI/building who is able to use player-sized proxies to interact with people in a more traditional way. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[cyclicalaberration]

Listen. Listen. Are you looking for new hermits to watch? No? You should be! Hermits are all great and there's not too much to backlog this season, so you want to get on that!

Welcome to a Semicomprehensive list of hermits by someone who watches (almost) everyone. I will not be including welsknight, xisuma, hypnotizd, Mumbo or Grian in this post as I do not watch Wels, hypno or X and Grian is Grian and Mumbo is Mumbo, and the chances are that you've probably heard about them.

Do you want insane builds and some of the Noises ever made from a human mouth? Try bdubs! Bdoubleo100 uses a lot of experimental editing in his videos, with strange camera angles, cuts with transitions that are just him sneezing, or experimental zooms in his intros. He's an incredible builder and has mastered the art of small interiors, and his redstone is compact, pretty, and functional, even though he once spent a very long time on a complex farm before his daughter pointed out he could change which pickaxe he was using.

Cubfan is the hermit for you if you want wacky technical Minecraft, unusual ideas and off the walls grinds for difficult to farm materials. Last season he made a dripstone, red sand, raw iron and rooted dirt custom biome, and he often does speedruns over on his twitch. This season he's teamed up with Ren, building a house in his basement.

Do you want game breaking technical skills? Farms you wouldn't think possible? Weird taste in what farms are normal and sane to build? As long as your brain can process deep voices, Docm77 is the hermit for you! He's got a hive mind of technical Minecrafters behind every farm and is racing against Mojang to exploit glitches before they're patched. Who knows, maybe dinnerbone will take his other arm for this.

Etho hasn't yet returned to hermitcraft, as he's on hiatus to take care of his parents, but when he's back he's full of wacky hyjinks, strange farms and builds with insane palettes. He's been doing Minecraft since the very beginning, giving many their start and teaching many a Minecrafter a thing or two.

Falsesymmetry is a PVP powerhouse, and being the queen of heads, hearts and body parts she can and will go head to head with the best of the best. She's also an incredible builder, organics and massive digs comprising many of her recent projects. She's witty and cool and her builds are often out of this world.

Do you like your Minecrafters sweet and terrifying? Geminitay keeps ravagers as cows and doesn't blanch at taking on a woodland mansion on day one. She freehands statues, bonemeals custom trees into existence, and stays upbeat and positive through it all.

You've probably heard of goodtimeswithscar, with his improv prowess, incredible terraforming and absolutely insane, detailed builds. He's absolutely hilarious, taking the bit to the extreme, but don't let the bumbling exterior fool you, the man is scarily competent when he remembers to check his elytra durability.

Ijevin is a mix of technical and beautiful, with detailed builds and fascinating ideas, but he's also one of the more prolific farm builders of the hermitcraft server. While he may not invent quite as many farms, he almost always builds scarily productive farms with hours of work put into them.

Impulsesv is an incredibly creative technical YouTuber, known often for his mob wrangling and creative theming for his builds and inventions. When it comes to interactions he's not lacking either, fitting into any group with laughter and ease.

Another super, mega, dare I say Omega YouTuber is Iskall, whose infectious laugh and creative time lapses never fail to brighten up a day. He's chill, and he often builds whatever comes to mind, be it a carrot hill or a villager encampment, and all of them look incredible.

Coming to you as he always does from Nashville Tennessee, joehills spends much of his time on the server on community projects, teaming up with Cleo, or simply making the Joehills difference. His videos aren't as fast-paced as some other hermits, but he streams frequently and is simply a joy to watch.

Do you like your family friendly YouTubers toeing the line? Do you like your guys to know what a house looks like? Then keralis is the guy for you! His builds remain grounded while at an incredible scale, and each time he makes an innuendo, his voice is so calming you can almost believe he doesn't do it on purpose. Almost.

Pearlescentmoon makes building an art form with gorgeous colors, organics with incredible detail and the small tendency to rotate her builds 90° if she's not happy with them. She's energetic, off the walls bouncy, and she never fails to bring a smile to the face and awe to the server.

Do you want lore with that? Get your lore with rendog, the official Lore Guy of the hermitcraft server. His lore carried over, landing gigapods and making gigapies after the disaster that ended the last server, with instructions from his alien compatriots and a significant amount of yes, and.

Stressmonster has earned her rightful place in the hermitcraft hall of chaos, full of giggles and excitement, not a moment of her videos are ever dull. She's in awe of it all, excited by everything in the game and incredibly creative in all of her builds. Who else builds a teapot as a starter base?

Do you want ravagers? You can get ravagers with tangotek, builder of insane farms, with off the walls redstone and an affinity for one of the game's most dangerous mobs. He's best known for inventing the iron farm, creating a new version of it each season, and for Decked Out, the mini game he's revamping this season with Even More Ravagers, Wardens, and who knows, maybe a captured wither or two.

Tfc is like when you're watching your friend or family member play Minecraft, just doing the every day tasks, mining, mining, more mining. He puts the hermit in hermitcraft, but as the server's resident grandpa, he's allowed to take it slower than the crazy kids around him.

Vintagebeef is like when you take a man who is absolutely Not normal and wrap him up in a veneer of Just Some Guy. His videos are calmer and chiller than many of the hermits, but his projects are by no means small... I'm not going to spoil anything, but if you're a fan of map art, you should absolutely check him out.

Xbcrafted deserves his spot in the Hermitcraft Hall Of Should Absolutely Cuss. He is straining at the confines of the family friendly content, and when he and keralis are together, only good things happen. Being one of the shyer members of the server, he's also fairly calm, but he and keralis also make up the flirting quota of the server.

Zedaph lives up to his mad scientist base of season eight, making the game interesting with insane challenges submitted by viewers for him to complete for retextured pumpkins and bragging rights. He's into automation in the most inefficient method, because redstone is meant to be funny, not maximum output.

And finally, last but not least, zombiecleo themself! They're a master at armor stands, a skill few can claim, and also a stunning builder. Going for a mythological type of vibe for this season, they've recently changed their hair to snakes, all the more ways to terrify bdubs. They're sarcastic and witty, and I thoroughly recommend their videos for a good time.

As always, every hermit has something to enjoy, and don't limit yourself! Poke your head in a video, check it out, even if you're not sure you'll like it! Who knows, you could find your new favorite!