Wednesday, a day like any other. I was visiting a small village on my 4th residence when suddenly the elder villager told me that they had discovered an ancient map. This map was brought in by some scribes from SMP1 and it allegedly showed the location of a mysterious mansion. "You can buy it from me", he said: "it only costs you 58 emeralds.". It was pretty much useless to the villagers, but maybe a player could find some use for it. Not being in the best of moods today I figured why not... I bought the map, went to the wastelands (on SMP2) and tried to read it. Yah, no go. Stupid villagers I thought... A few moments later my friend Aya came online, we chatter a bit and I told her about the map which didn't work. She looked at it and told me that it looked just like any other ordinary map. We went to a small mining base when suddenly she asked: "But have you tried it on SMP1 yet? If its from SMP1 then maybe that's where you should use it". Oh well, why not? I set out to SMP1, went into the wastelands and what do you know.... This called out for an expedition! I quickly called Aya and we soon studied the map together... "Look", I said: "we are here.. that white dot. And the mansion is over there, in the south-western regions. So all we have to do is go there and check the place out". Aya quickly went into the SMP1 town to gather some supplies, while I brought our tools from SMP2 and before you knew we were ready to go! We carefully studied the map to plan our journey... First we had to cross a desert and boy was it hot... But fortunately we were well prepared for the journey. Or... so we thought Much to our surprise the desert suddenly ended and we were standing next to the sea. Great, now what? Aya asked me if I had a boat on me but unfortunately I never stopped to think to bring one. But this shouldn't be a problem according to Aya. She had discovered a village on a small hill nearby. Maybe they sold boats? Not much later Aya found the villagers blacksmith. "Boats? No madam, no boats. But I can sell you an iron axe, then you can chop down a tree. Only 8 emeralds, how does that sound?", the villager said. Aya passed on the offer and asked someone else: "Boats? We don't sell those", the other villager told her: "But I can sell you this sappling to grow a tree. Only 12 emeralds!". Aya sighed, this was going no where... Suddenly Aya heard an explosion and from a distance someone yelled: "Creepers, everyone get inside, there's a creeper here!". And that gave Aya an idea... While the villagers were all hiding inside she grabbed her axe and removed all the wood from the village farm and replaced it with dirt. No way that they were ever going to miss that! So not much later we were finally well on our way again and making some serious progress! We sailed quite a long time, eventually coming across a swamp. Aya beaconed me to be silent because there might be some witches around here. After all: the whole journey was to find a mysterious mansion so it somewhat made sense that we would be traveling through likewise mysterious places. Fortunately no bad things happened here, we quietly and slowly rowed our boat and managed to get through unharmed. At the end of the swamp we picked up our boat and I checked the map again. "We're making progress alright!", I said: "look, from here on we should travel westwards". Time go to West! Luckily for us the area was pretty easy to travel on, plains usually are, but looking back we should probably have brought a lead with us so that we could use some llama's for quicker travel. Eventually we crossed the plains and a nearby forest and we were once again standing near a huge river. Time to dig up the boat again... After traveling for most of the night we got a bit tired. Aya even started wondering if this mysterious mansion might have sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Then, during the morning, I checked out the map again and what do you know? It changed color! We were definitely getting closer now! During times like these I really enjoy the offhand We managed to find a lake which was connected to the main sea when we noticed a very dense forest. That had to be the forbidden forest where we would find the mansion. And for sure: when looking at my map even more areas were colored in. There was no mistake about it! The good news was that it wasn't as hot as in a jungle, but the bad news was that it was just as dense and hard to navigate in. "Look out!", Aya yelled when I suddenly noticed a huge ravine in front of me. "Maybe you should look less at that map and more at where you're going", she said. Easier said than done, we were getting so close now..... "You can come now, it's all clear..." Do you know the saying that the last parts are always the hardest? Well... here was yet another example of that. It was almost as if the mysterious illagers were warned of our coming and had sent out their army to stop us. Fortunately nothing which Aya couldn't handle We decided to climb the trees and walk across the forest roof when all of a sudden we spotted a clearing. "Wow", I said: "this place is huge!". As it turned out there weren't too many people near the entrance so we quickly set up camp there and started to explore the rest of the mansion. * Some notable things which we found were: Many statues And an empty dungeon... We managed to defeat all the vindicators and found 2 evokers which both dropped one of the fabled totems of undying. This made the trip really satisfying because now we both has a nice piece of loot to bring home (other than the many emeralds dropped by the illagers of course). In case you're interested... We cleared out all the mobs and placed torches, we found 2 loot chests (which will eventually refill) and cut down one wool statue to see if there was anything inside (there wasn't). We removed all the bookshelves from the top floor but left everything else pretty much intact (other than a few small holes in the walls to check for hidden rooms). We made camp: placed a (free for all!) double chest which contains the wool from previously mentioned statue (we weren't interested in that) as well as a few other blocks. There are also 2 beds so that you can quickly get back to your death point should you die. The reason I'm telling you all this? Because we decided to share the coordinates so that if you're interested in raiding a woodland mansion then here's your chance! Like I said: other than the illagers we pretty much left things intact. So: SMP1, /waste w. Use your compass: /compass set -5521 592 and you should be fully set to go. As you can see the mansion is 1625 blocks away from the EMC outpost, so that is perfectly doable. Especially because there's a lot of water to cross, so don't forget to bring a boat. Sorry, stopped my story there. Just heard that a friend of mine passed away today and I kinda didn't feel like finishing the rest anymore. Still wanted to finish this post, so maybe another time.
