Minecraft’s lighting is ugly. However, it’s necessary to prevent hostile mobs. Peaceful difficulty is an option, and so is letting shit spawn everywhere to trample your petunias every night. Not really a fan of either. Went instead with terraforming a mooshroom island which doesn’t spawn mobs.
As far as the time spent at spawn goes: everyone went bonkers over hardened clay when it came out. I rolled “large biome” worlds until I spawned next to a mesa biome full of it. And that’s how I met your mother.
In the beginning I farted-around spawn for a long time. Built the world’s ugliest house. Not even the cute little garden in the backyard could sell this monstrosity. Once I had diamond tools and a beacon I embarked to find a mooshroom island.
Terraforming such an island requires leveling mountains and removing all the mycelium. It’s a lot of fucking work, and I had just done the same thing on 2b2t. I felt serious burnout by the end of it (well, technically before then). I switched gears toward building the city at that point, which didn’t go too bad at first, but as I continued it became too much and I called it quits.
