With the beacon running, Episode 11 is a progress report on Basketopia, the base under the ocean. "I wanted to give you a little update on Basketopia," Basket says. "I've done a lot of digging and a lot of work on it." The climb down the beacon ladder shows how much has been cleared.
A floor of grass
The main area is dug out almost to the bottom. Grass covers the floor, small orange pumpkin lights sit in it, and the start of the dome wall runs around the edge. One spot still leaks water through the ceiling.
Slimes have been the problem down here. Another player on the server suggested that slimes tend to run into corners and walls, so Basket dug a moat around the outside to catch them. It had to be bigger than planned: at least three wide and three deep, so the big slimes sink to the bottom, split into smaller ones, and drown. Some sections already hold water. The rest stay empty until the leaks are fixed.
It is night, so Basket heads for bed. In chat, Basket asks "sleep?" and PontiffLachlan answers "i'll log" and leaves the game. Later PontiffLachlan rejoins, Basket types "ty," and the reply is "all good."
Building what you cannot see
After the night passes, much more of the dome is in place. Basket built it in phases: the top first, then the bottom, then ice arcs in the four corners. Ice is nearly invisible underwater, so Basket opens the resource pack screen and shows the trick. In a custom pack, the ice texture was swapped for another block's texture so each placed block shows up. "This is how I actually handled trying to build the thing without being able to see."
The stacked chests that used to sit around the floor are now sorted, with ender pearls in one and mob drops in another. That storage is temporary. Once the dome is done and the water is gone, a central building goes in the middle.
Basketopia Test World 3
Next Basket hops into a creative world, Basketopia Test World 3, where the dome stands on open grass. The earlier glass version was hard to count block by block, so this one is split into sections of different materials: one kind for what Basket calls the corners, another for the sides. With the MCEdit design open on a second screen, Basket recommends splitting any huge build up the same way, so the counting does not wear out your eyes.
The dome is done
"And there we have it. Took a lot of ice." Some parts are improvised where the design was hard to follow. A few chests left on top get broken with a slower pick, since the fast one would go through the ice too. Next up is choosing a building, maybe "a castle thing," some terraforming, and side domes. Basket also wants a rail line coming in from a small island, so anyone arriving can see the dome from outside on the way in.
From the cobblestone path up on the ocean surface, the dome shows as a faint circle below.
Filling the moat
Last, Basket floods the empty moat sections. Ice blocks go into the trench and get broken with a pick, and each one leaves water behind that spreads into an infinite spring. The ice runs low ("Forty-two left"), and one stretch barely spreads at all. "I guess in this case maybe it was better to use a bucket." Basket finishes one layer and says the next layer and the other moat will get done off camera.
The episode ends at night on the grass floor inside the finished dome, by the beacon.
