Better Than Wolves Forum

I've just reached the point in the tech tree where I need to find a village to progress. So I dug a tunnel up to the roof of the nether and started off in a direction to create a portal far enough away from spawn to get a village. I've created six portals, and each one has been terrible.

Locations:
One: Middle of a large winter biome
Two: Island in the middle of a sea
Three: Cave under the sea
Four: Floating in the air above the sea
Five: Another cave under the sea
Six: Floating in the air above the sea again.

Not to mention my original portal in the nether was terrible, I was on an island in the middle of a large open area of the magma ocean. It took three stacks of cobble to create a tunnel to the nearest land.

Those are some bad rolls! :(

Are you pressing in one direction or many? The floating ocean one could be a great grinder spot :)!

It's one direction at the moment. I'm trying to make the tunnel to the nearest nether fortress as well, so I'm just periodically poking my head out of the nether as it were.

Man, tell me about it. My main world has seen nothing but ocean portals, and I don't know how I'll ever find a village. With my luck, when I finally do find one it'll be because the portal decided to open directly in the middle of the village, and everyone will be converted to witches before I can do anything about it. >.>

I would try going another direction, as those oceans can be damn huge (like thousands of blocks on average, more if you pissed off the Random Number Gods).

Yeah those oceans are nasty. We got a portal over sea and I traveled a day in each direction to find land. Never did.

Are large oceans some weird byproduct of BTW or is that just vMC?

No, that just came out of the terrain changes in beta 1.8 and the addition of the ocean biome. FC tries specifically not to change world generation in ways that will break worlds (e.g. strata is still stone, just different metadata, and villages are still effectively the same except for the presence of villagers/crops).

Yeah I figured. Kinda sucks when a island is big enough to make it seem like it's a large land mass, you invest days in your game then get down to some exploring/nether tunneling only to find you're on some shitty island in the middle of nowhere.

Guess it's all just luck in the end.

Portal 7: Cave under the sea, again. At least this one has a good supply of ore.
Portal 8: Island in the middle of the sea.
Portal 9: Prairie! Yes! Wait a second, is that the shelter I made while searching for wolves? Why yes it is. Apparently I walked over a thousand blocks to find wolves. Also: hope you like a massive jungle.
Portal 10: Island in the middle of the ocean, but pretty close to the shore. Walk into the nearby desert because why not. And I finally find a desert temple! Decide to keep exploring further into the desert.

Then I see the holy grail. A village at long last! Wait a second, why is it so small? What do you mean the only farm is dried up, and there are only three villagers here. At least I can take some consolation in that one wants paper, and the other sells food. Time to call it a night, and hope I can find a village with wheat in the morning.

derevik, how much are you digging in the Nether between each portal?
As dawnraider mentioned, oceans in Minecraft can be really large; I usually bet ~10km each. So it's usually worth digging through 20 stacks of netherrack (640m in the Nether) between each portal attempt.
(And yes, you'll use a lot your diamond pickaxe... so get the crucible before that.)

Also: dried farmland = you're still too near your original spawn to get good villages = dig more.

Ah, and as you probably noticed yourself: don't hunt just for the villages. There are four biomes you want to check - jungles (temples), deserts (temples, villages), swamps (witch huts) and plains (villages).

I can also attest to oceans being massive, I once sailed over one with a few friends one night on our server (in the overworld) I shit thee not, we were sailing for over 3 hours real time. Since that night, I now have a rule that I'll travel one full MC day on an ocean and if I don't hit land, then I turn right the hell around!

Last time I played BTW, I had to go over 32000 blocks to get past the ocean. I had over 4000 block tunnel in the nether, with a portal every 200 blocks where each one was either in the sky above or in a cave below the ocean. I found a mushroom island, which was cool. At one point I went 500 nether blocks in each other cardinal direction and still ended up in the ocean each time. Having to run through that tunnel was so tedious that built a railway in it, which made the journey even longer, plus having to wait for the mob traps to produce enough iron & gold. When I finally got to dry land after a few IRL months, I didn't even feel like playing any more, and haven't played since. I guess I just needed to know if that ocean ever ended.

Chaotic: I actually ended up heading towards my spawn from village with no crops (it had villagers) and found one that had crops. Didn't find a priest though, so the hunt continues.

I got lucky when searching for wolves; I found a witch hut on my way back to my home base.