Man that death sucked. Reminds me when I was exploring the jungles in the southeast of my world... got plastered by a witch, desperately tried to outrun all the mobs until I could build an enclosure, and just got stuck trying to get past some dense tree foilage. That was the worst.
Speaking of, I finally finished exploring to create my first filled out map.
My world's overworld
The island in the northwest is my spawn point, Outset Island. To the south is Heartland, where I have a large base camp near a waterfall. If you go southwest until you reach the narrowest point, that's where I built a canal to link the oceans, and you can see the bridge I'm building (I think this is the first I've ever built something so large it shows up very clearly on the map). I've got a base camp near that bridge, and then one to the north in the desert. I think I've decided to name the desert land to the northeast Anatolia, and Geurdo Villa is a desert village there (you can see the buildings if you look closely- they make 3 dots in a line and there's a < like shape that's another building). To the south is a bunch of jungles I've named the Levant. I probably should name the canal the Nile canal using these conventions haha.
And the map to the northwest is Europe... France is the big blob, Scandinavia comes down. I haven't explored anything but the ocean borders because the overland route is kind of hilly, so it's going to take a long time to explore. I found two villages in Europe, one is just off both of my maps, but it's north of Outset Island (almost directly). I think there's another one in the vicinity Denmark, but I'm not exactly sure because I didn't know what the borders looked like so I didn't have a good frame of reference to use as a landmark.
I also resisted the urge to take a flint and iron and burn down all the jungle in the southeast to help me explore. Anyways, this is the first time I feel like I've actually done something in Minecraft that's noteworthy. I think I might hop on the NeoCraft server tonight to celebrate. Interested in seeing what it looks like.
