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The seemingly unachievable is about to be achieved – one very dedicated Minecraft player is on his way to reaching the fabled Far Lands after over a decade of traveling toward the edge of the sandbox game's procedurally generated world.
If you haven't heard of him yet, KurtJMac is a YouTuber with one simple mission: reaching the Far Lands in Minecraft Beta 1.7.3 – on foot alongside virtual canine companion Wolfie McWolfington, all while playing in Survival Mode. Kurt's first-ever entry in his "Minecraft Far Lands or Bust" series was posted on March 7, 2011, with regular entries dropping since. In nearly 15 years, though, he has yet to hit the Far Lands.
Although they're not an "official" marker of the edge of the world, so to speak, the Far Lands stand as a terrain generation bug (one that has been resolved in newer versions of Minecraft) and a hard boundary around 12,550,821 blocks from a seed's initial spawn point. They're very visually distinct, with towering blocks of terrain jutting out of the ground peppered by never-ending tunnels, holes, and waterfalls… but they're not easy to reach – normally, anyway.
And "normally," as in by walking in Survival Mode, is precisely how Kurt has been making his way to the Far Lands – a journey that has seen him raise nearly $500,000 for charity projects, including Child's Play, Direct Relief, the Progressive Animal Welfare Society, and the Equal Justice Initiative. It all seems to be coming to a close now, however, as fellow YouTuber AntVenom points out in a new video on Kurt's progress.
Dubbing Kurt's trek to the Far Lands "one of the single greatest achievements in the entire history of Minecraft and arguably gaming," AntVenom explains that he's about to reach that "magical point" that sees the game's terrain go buggy. He knows as much because, well, "I did the math" – and math he did indeed, even though Kurt has only pressed F3, which pulls up a player's coordinates and other information in Minecraft, a total of 12 times.
AntVenom was able to calculate Kurt's approximate location regardless, promising viewers he "is currently walking his final million blocks" to the Far Lands. "How many hours did Kurt spend walking between his last two F3 presses, and how many hours has he walked since his last F3 press?" That's the information AntVenom started with, which told him "pretty accurately where he is, and when he's due to reach the Far Lands."
After putting it all together and working with some "guesstimates," AntVenom deduces that "Kurt only is about 200,000 blocks away from reaching the Minecraft Far Lands, which also means that Kurt is less than 24 hours of walking from completing his decades-long journey to the Far Lands." Should he average three or so hours per stream "as he's been doing," then Kurt will hit the world's edge "somewhere around episode 60."
For reference, he's currently at his 53rd episode of the Far Lands or Bust series – so there's really not long left until Kurt achieves what no one else has in the beloved Mojang game (at least not by walking, anyway). Fingers crossed.
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