The Sphere

The Sphere, also known as the Death Starter House, was the first residence of Zisteau on the MindCrack vanilla Season 4 server. It is his first major build on the map. The Sphere was situated in the midst of mountains in a snowy biome and was located 2000 blocks from the center of the map. The house was intended to be a starter home, much like last season's temporary house, until he could leave the continent and proceed to begin more complex builds. Zisteau recognized the possible issue of fall damage—he began construction on the Sphere when the UHC non-regenerative health mode was still activated—but deliberately ignored this risk.

Zisteau conceived of the idea and explained it during his first episode on the new map, which he released on July 7, 2013. He described what he envisioned as a planet that had just been hit by a laser or some projectile. By the next episode, Zisteau had roughly designated the location where his floating Sphere would float by a July 8 episode and began to lay out the lowest level of the build. Zisteau outlined the Sphere and laid out scaffolding for each of its levels during an episode he released two days later, setting it out with a 37-block diameter. It was during this time that he outlined his first major design issues: how to enter the house without using ender pearls and without compromising the façade, how to descend to his mineshaft, and what materials should be used in the construction of the structure and façade. He eventually decided on quartz and coal blocks, with quartz as the dominant element. A major guiding factor in this decision was his desire to make the Sphere look alien and out-of-place.

Zisteau started wheat and reed farms at the very bottom on July 10, the first amenities he built within the Sphere. He gradually began to relocate his crops to automated farms along the outer edges of the Sphere, moving his wheat and then his reed farm. He later added pumpkins and melons, and a triple netherwart-potato-carrot mechanism. Zisteau has plans to add a sunset-viewing room to the build.

Zisteau deconstructed the Death Starter house in order to reuse the materials in the Arcology.