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Far Lands or Bust

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Far Lands or Bust
Current logo for the series
Created byKurt J. Mac
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons11
No. of episodes860
Original release
NetworkYouTube
ReleaseMarch 6, 2011 (2011-03-06) –
present

Far Lands or Bust (abbreviated FLoB) is an online video series created by Kurt J. Mac in which he plays the video game Minecraft. The series depicts his journey to the "Far Lands", a distant area of a Minecraft world in which the terrain generation does not function correctly, creating a warped landscape.[1][2] Kurt has been travelling since March 2011 and, as of 2024, is expected to reach his destination some time in 2025. The show also holds the Guinness World Record for the longest journey in Minecraft.[3][4]

Episodes of Far Lands or Bust typically act as a sort of podcast, with the game providing a backing track while Kurt discusses recent events in his life, news and science. The show also encourages viewers to donate to charity to reach fundraising goals.[4] This charity was originally Child's Play, for which the show raised over $400,000.[5][6] From 2018 to 2019 the charity was Direct Relief.[7] Beginning in 2020 the charity is the Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), from which Kurt adopted his own dog, Juno, in 2017.[8] On August 30, 2020, Kurt announced he would no longer be using PAWS as his charity, mostly due to complications with their donation system, instead switching the charity to the Equal Justice Initiative.[9]

Format

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The Far Lands

The Far Lands

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Minecraft is a sandbox video game which places players in a 3D procedurally generated world. As a player walks in any direction, the game generates terrain ahead of them, creating (in theory) a virtually infinite world for the player to explore.[2] However, due to computational limits in earlier versions of the game, at a distance of roughly 12,550,821 blocks from the center of the world the terrain generation algorithm behaves unexpectedly, creating a sudden warped landscape.[10] Markus Persson, the original developer of Minecraft, commented that "Walking that far will take a very long time. Besides, the bugs add mystery and charisma to the Far Lands."[1] The name "Far Lands" was adopted by the community to refer to this area. Persson also said it would be "impossible to reach the Far Lands" and Kurt took that as a challenge.[11]

Due to changes to the game's code, recent versions of the game do not contain the same error, and terrain continues to generate normally at distances up to 30,000 kilometres (19,000 mi) from the center of the world.[2] Kurt has continued to record his series in version Beta 1.7.3,[12] the latest version of the game in which the Far Lands are still present.[13] Persson estimated in 2014 that walking to the Far Lands would take approximately 800 hours.[14] Even further out (32 million blocks), the game fails to check for collision, leading the player to fall through the map to their death.

Over 30 legitimate journeys to the Far Lands have been verified as of October 2023.[15] About 1/3 have been completed (some using a 1/8th shortcut through the Nether dimension), 1/3 are in progress, and 1/3 have become inactive (including one death, TinfoilChef[16]). For example, in August 2022, this goal was reached by Mystical Midget, after 2,500 hours of walking.[13]

F3 monuments

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In the game, a debug screen can be opened by pressing F3, which displays the player's current coordinates in the world, plus the biome.[17] In Kurt's journey to the Far Lands, he only presses F3 once the season's charity donations goal has been met to wrap up the season. Additionally, he builds a monument to commemorate the occasion.

An exception to this was when he crossed a point where the floating-point error grew from two texture pixels to four. On August 8, 2020, Kurt witnessed an increase in the floating-point error jitter during a live stream (listed as episode 793.5). Kurt pressed F3 in the next episode, 794, to confirm he'd hit the milestone of 4,194,304 blocks. He built a monument to mark the point.[18] The next time this occurred was April 16, 2024, during that year's FLoB-a-thon, when he noticed the jitter increase again after 8,388,608 blocks of total progress.[19]

Season Press Date Distance % Season progress Episode Donation goal Total raised Notes
1 - May 27, 2011 Unknown Unknown Unknown 30 - - F3 was not pressed at the end of the first season.
2 1 November 17, 2011 292,202 2.33% 292,202 96 $8,200 $11,724.00 Donation goal was initially $820, then raised to $8,200 after it was reached in under a week.
3 2 September 1, 2012 699,492 5.57% 407,290 178 $29,220 $70,838.39
4 3 March 6, 2014 1,479,940 11.79% 780,448 334 $100,000 $186,649.13
5 4 March 28, 2015 2,266,779 18.06% 786,839 490 $50,000 $66,061.70 During this season, Kurt passed the jitter milestone at 2,097,152 (= 221).
6 5 January 22, 2017 3,116,936 24.83% 850,157 640 $60,000 $71,431.83
7 6 August 31, 2019 3,857,848 30.74% 740,912 755 $50,000 Unknown
8 7 August 11, 2020 4,194,303 33.42% 316,455 794 - - Not a season ending. Pressed to confirm the passage of the jitter milestone at 4,194,304 (= 222).
8 March 6, 2021 4,856,980 38.70% 999,132 815 $8,200 [20]$18,093.04
9 9 April 1, 2022 5,765,878 45.94% 908,898 828 $4,200 $4,680.00
10 10 May 30, 2023 7,396,358 58.93% 1,630,480 847 Unknown Unknown
11 11 April 16, 2024 8,388,608 66.84% 992,250 FLoB-a-thon 2024 - Day 15 - - Not a season ending. Pressed to confirm the passage of the jitter milestone at 8,388,608 (= 223).
12 July 25, 2024 9,864,725 78.60% 1,476,117 FLoB-a-thon 2024 - Day 79 $7396.35 $8134.00

Completion

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Season 11 saw Kurt increase the completion percentage from 58.93% to 78.60%, suggesting that Season 12 could see another 20% of progress made towards his journey. That would put him at about 99% of the way towards the Far Lands at the end of FLoB-a-thon 2025. An estimate by professional Minecraft builder MegaMinerDL in July, 2024, calculated that Kurt could in fact reach the Far Lands in a mere 80 days.[21]

References

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  1. ^ a b Persson, Markus (March 9, 2011). "Terrain Generation Part 1". The Word of Notch. Archived from the original on December 5, 2014. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
  2. ^ a b c Hughes, Timothy (October 1, 2013). "Far Lands". Unwinnable. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
  3. ^ "Minecraft: Ten of the best block-busting world records". Guinness World Records. November 11, 2014. Retrieved October 13, 2017.
  4. ^ a b Parkin, Simon (January 23, 2014). "A Journey to the End of the World (of Minecraft)". The New Yorker. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
  5. ^ Casti, Taylor (January 27, 2014). "Intrepid Gamer Attempts To Find Edge Of Minecraft World". Huffington Post. Retrieved October 13, 2017.
  6. ^ Racco, Marilisa (July 15, 2014). "There's millions in those Minecraft blocks". Maclean's. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
  7. ^ kurtjmac (March 6, 2018), Minecraft Far Lands or Bust - #671 - New Charity & 7-Year Anniversary!, retrieved March 6, 2018
  8. ^ "Charity Fundraising at Far Lands or Bust - an expedition in search of adventure, exploration, and for charity!".
  9. ^ kurtjmac (August 30, 2020), Minecraft Far Lands or Bust - #797 - How Numbers Work, retrieved September 2, 2020
  10. ^ "Broken". Digital Human. Series 5. Episode 6. 15:18 minutes in. BBC. Radio 4.
  11. ^ "This Dedicated Soul Has Been Walking Across 'Minecraft' Since 2011". Tech Times. September 4, 2015. Retrieved October 13, 2017.
  12. ^ McGlynn, Anthony (April 10, 2021). "One Minecraft player's ten-year journey to the Far Lands". PCGamesN.
  13. ^ a b "踏上3200萬方塊第一人！《Minecraft》玩家2500小時「徒步」挑戰" [First Person to Walk over 32 Million Blocks! Minecraft Player Finishes Challenge After 2500 Hours]. Yahoo 遊戲. August 28, 2022.
  14. ^ Dean, Paul (May 29, 2014). "Far Lands or Bust: One man and his wolf walk across Minecraft for charity". PCGamesN.
  15. ^ MMDL (October 11, 2023). "The Far Lands Walkers 2 | COMPLETE LIST 2023 [30+ players] – Premium Minecraft Blog". premiumminecraft.com. Retrieved October 12, 2023.
  16. ^ Tinfoil Sis (August 13, 2022). "I'm not sure how to tell you all, but sadly @tinfoilchef passed away this morning. He will be missed". X (formerly Twitter). Retrieved October 12, 2023.
  17. ^ O'Brien, Stephen (September 18, 2014). "Getting Started". The Ultimate Player's Guide to Minecraft. Que Publishing. p. 23. ISBN 9780133900637.
  18. ^ "Far Lands or Bust - Episode 794". YouTube. August 11, 2020.
  19. ^ "FLoB-a-thon 2024 - Day 15 - April 16, 2024". YouTube. April 21, 2024.
  20. ^ "Far Lands or Bust - Episode 816". YouTube. March 25, 2021.
  21. ^ MegaMinerDL (July 9, 2024). "KurtJMac approaches 10M blocks, could reach Far Lands in 80 days". Retrieved July 26, 2024.
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