Txp's Balloon Factory

Txp's Balloon Factory
Txp's Balloon Factory
Survival 4
	The Balloon Factory
Base
World	Survival 4
Builder(s)	Txp_
Founded	1st April 2020
Location	X= 250; Y= -3600; Z= 64
	Map Click for full map ;

The parking lot of the factory

Txp's Balloon Factory was the main base of Txp_ on the Survival 4 world of the Dogcraft Server. Ever since it's creation on 1st April 2020, right when the new world opened, there has been a lot of changes to this place. Hoping to make his base much better than his one on Survival 3 he will update this article frequently with new pictures, but for right now, enjoy reading about the way this all got to be.

History

Wool, falling and a lot of pain

The unloading area of the factory

April 1st; Survival 4 just opened and player Txp joined the server to start a new adventure. With big plans in mind, he set off to find the perfect location. And after a 3,5 km walk, he found a nice location. This area had a lovely forest, a small hill right next to a pond and a desert nearby, this was the perfect location for Txp's starter base. Now you might be wondering, what will his starter base be? A dirt house? A cave? Or perhaps your ordinary house made out of wood and stone? No, Txp came up with the brilliant idea (you will see why it wasn't so brilliant later on) to build a balloon heigh up in the sky as his first seek of shelter. With his location found, and scaffolding set for the balloon to be built, he started gathering wool, because well, he quit frankly needed a lot of that stuff. After hours of sheering sheep and some kind donations by players such as TigerNL he got enough wool to get started, and so he did. The design of the balloon was quite easy to replicate from a creative world design, however, there were two main factors that complicated the build and increased the build time massively, Phantoms and fall damage. The constant attacking of the local Phantom gang together with the height of where the construction site was located, resulting in a grand total of over 30 deaths during construction (yeah that's why this wasn't such a great starter base) But after a few days of hard work and a lot of deaths he finally did it and the balloon was finished.

The descent of Txp

The 3 balloons above the factory

With the first balloon finished, Txp wondered what next he would do, his first idea was to build even more balloons and connect them up to form one big base. This would've been a cool idea however the lack of space in them was annoying. So he came up with a new plan, a factory. This factory would offer a lot of space to work in and give Txp a little bit of a rest from building balloons constantly. Also, the warps and homes of the server often disappeared, and with no elytra, it was annoying to get back up to the base every time. After making a nice design in creative, construction started. First, the inside. The first floor was designed to have 2 main corridors, one with chests for storage, and one with villagers. On the right side of the base, Txp planned to have a trophy room for all his special items collected over the course of Survival 4. A couple of months after the new world started a good friend of Txp, Giantdino24, also joined Dogcraft. He, of course, wanted to live as close to Txp pas possible. Therefore a design was made for a new house a couple of blocks away from the main factory, the building was made in the same style as Txp's building, mostly made out of bricks. Later a melon and pumpkin farm was constructed under this house, with a minecart track above ground going to a storage facility in the factory.

To the sky we go again!

Picture of the skyscraper, on the left

After playing for over half a year on survival 4 Giantdino had grown out of his little house and wanted a bit more space. Luckily for him, Txp also wanted to renovate the space around his factory and make it all look a bit prettier. First, a crane was constructed, together with a nice fence going all around the factory. The parking lot got a big upgrade too. Then, the main project. One week before Christmas, Txp and Giantdino tore apart his house and started flattening terrain for a big new project, skyscrapers! The idea of this project was to make more space for farms, but still, give everything a nice look. As of right now, there is one tower finished housing Giantdino's storage room on the first floor, and his penthouse on the top floor. In between these levels will be farms, 5 farms to be precise, Sugarcane, melons and pumpkins, cactus, kelp and wool. With a total of 2 other buildings planned so far, this is going to be a big project for the two. Together with this expansion, Txp also made a road connecting up his and his neighbours base, more on that later.

Moving mountains and making villages

After almost a year of working on and off on this base, I felt like doing something completely different. Inspired by the mountains of Gaia, I started to work on my own stone masterpiece on the east side of my base. The mountain range was going to surround a small custom village for, well, villagers to live in. The idea was the each house would have a different profession of villagers, so instead of putting the poor people in small 1 by 2 holes, I thought it was a good idea to build proper houses for them. A total of 6 houses were constructed, but I only managed to properly populate 2 of them.

To make this new area of my base more accessible I made a small subway system from Giantdino's tower to the entrance of the village. Behind the subway entrance was also a secret piston door in the mountain that leads to some sort of room without a purpose :P

The end of Survival 4

1 year, 11 months and 14 days.. that's how long I've spent at this base, not all of it was ever finished, like the battle ship on the west side of the area, or the village. And 95% of the builds were not planned beforehand, and therefore my base kind of looks like chaos. I'm still very happy with what I've achieved, at the end of the day playing on Dogcraft and building in Minecraft is all about having fun, and I had a lot of fun working on these builds.

Places of interest

The gas station made a return

First, let's begin outside the main factory, at the parking lot. This place has seen quite some changes over the months, from being a pale grassy landscape to a dark and grey road. However now, it's a modern light and green parking lot with the various easter eggs to discover. Armour stands, for example, there is OldManLP85 fighting a zombie with a stick, TrainerMoon running away from a crime scene. And dmgdog peacefully reading a book under the streetlights.

Moving on to the unloading area, there are more armour stands such as expedtadam driving a forklift and Cookies58_ working on colouring the wool. This area is detailed to tell a bit more of the story about the factory and really try and give it a more factory feel.

The trophy room with TheWhitePanda down in the ground

Going deeper into the factory, we can find the trophy room with a very peculiar inhabitant in the floor, it's a panda named TheWhitePandaNL referring to player TigerNL. Walking more through the building we reach the main entrance with the storage room and villager trading hall. There are many mini blocks and player heads to find around that area. Underneath Txp's bed, right in the middle of that area, there is a secret room (not so secret anymore now). It has a pathway underground going all the way to the other side of the parking lot.

Moving out of the factory, we go up to the 3 balloons, the Cyan and white balloon was as mentioned earlier Txp's starter base. The other 2 are empty. There used to be a 4th balloon, but that got removed when construction of the first skyscraper started.

The first skyscraper is mainly Giantdino's base, who has his storage room on the first floor. The building is around 32 blocks tall and will be the shortest of 3 skyscrapers.

Moving down again to the road, this road leads all the way from neighbour SeamusenMC's base to way down of the factory. Along this road, a border crossing can be found, and also the return of Txp's mall plot from survival 3 TxPetrol, a gas station, made a return.

Gallery

Dmg reading a book under a streetlighgt
The border of Txp's base
An overview of the base.