{now that we've met i might try exploring upriver. but if you want to be sure you can find me, you could try building a spirit house!}

{what's that?} the forest spirit says curiously.

{you can make it at a delicate crafting table once you meet a spirit! there's a different recipe for each of us. i'm not sure exactly how it works but i think we can visit our houses very easily even if we're very far away!}

"That sounds useful! I'll add it to the agenda."

He mentally reviews said agenda: armor and weapons to infiltrate the shadow forest and find ink to make a writing desk, orchard of every kind of tree right by his house because he's too lazy to walk around for food variety, crafting table bootstrapping, spirit house.

{good luck!} says the water spirit.

"Thanks!" And he waves (no pun intended) goodbye, picks some dates, and eats them on the way back up to his house.

{water spirit is nice!} says the forest spirit. {is good to meet more spirits!}

"They are nice! Had you not met them before, or did you just mean it was nice for me to meet them?"

{never met other spirits! we live different places.}

"Wow, I might be the most extroverted person on this island. Which is a contender for weirdest thing yet. I guess we can meet the other two together, then!"

Tiny pointy happy wiggle.

Well, he can hardly put the forest spirit down of they're going to be doing adorable tiny wiggles. He will just have to try check for recipes involving dirt and water, and put the sand and some wood in the furnace, with a shoulder friend. (Unless they want down, of course.)

Shoulder friend is happy to stay perched!

The furnace melts sand into glass in a similarly tidy fashion to how it melted ore into metal, but with better fuel efficiency, although he might or might not have collected enough sand to determine exactly how much better. (One unit of wood melts four buckets of sand into four units of glass.)

Crafting recipes involving dirt and water are thin on the ground, so to speak, but he can make a bunch of things at the Advanced Crafting Table if he approaches it carrying glass. The possible recipes include:

1 wood or stone or metal, 1 glass;

1 wood or stone or glass or metal (three different recipes);

1 wood and 1 stone and 1 glass and 1 metal.

He didn't get enough sand for all that, but he can probably make it out to the beach again and back with more before dusk, now that he knows the shortest route there! Though presumably the thing that needs one wood or stone or glass or metal is walls, and he's fine with the ones he's got. What are the other two things?

1 wood/stone/metal and 1 glass produces a Window, which can be inserted into a thin or thick wall to let in some natural light. (He can even hot-swap it into an existing wall, exchanging it for the already-present wall item in whatever spot he places it.)

One each of the four materials produces a Refined Crafting Table, at which there are two recipes available with his current ingredients: something for 2 wood and 1 glass, and something for n wood or stone or glass or metal where n is at least 2.

Sure, he can put a window in the wall of the common room and one in his workroom. But the really exciting thing is the next step of crafting table, and the two things he can get from it! He uses two wood for the "2 or more of something" one, since he has a bunch from all the trees whose seeds are now growing in his "yard".

The 2-or-more thing turns out to be... a shower stall, 2 blocks wide by 2 blocks wide by 3 blocks high.

The 2-wood-1-glass thing is a grandfather clock.

There's also those three 1-of-something recipes from the Advanced Crafting Table still untried if he wants to take a crack at those.

Showers: way better than baths even with infinite water. He takes a moment to put the shower in the bathroom (and the bathtub in the bedroom, since killing probably-giant spiders for thread just doesn't seem to want to come to the top of his priority list), leaves the clock on the basic crafting table (he'll set it at sunset), then tries the three one-of-somethings (in wood again). 

The three one-of-somethings are:

a sink,

a "Superior Roof" (fancier-looking than the wood-and-dirt kind),

and a toilet.

Those! Are some really nice things to have! For reasons the narration has been omitting! Now the bathroom is an actual legitimate bathroom and Bruce can wash his hands without bending over a bathtub and life is greatly improved in general.

He isn't super clear on what the advantage of the superior roof is supposed to be--maybe there's going to be rain at some point and it will keep the rain out better?--but he swaps it in over the workroom anyway. 

Next up: armor. Can he make a suit of armor out of tin with the same recipe as the wood one?

He totally can! It is much prettier and also less bulky. Goes clank when he walks, though.

At this point he may be running low on tin and it could be worth making another run to his mining pit - although the sun is also getting low, so maybe he'd rather get a good night's sleep in his bedtub first.

Yeah, he did a lot of walking around in the fresh air today and now he's the good kind of tired. In the morning he can take an actual shower again, which continues to be awesome, wash his clothes in the tub, and breakfast on apples and dates before heading out to the ore mine again. 

Another few levels down the ore mine, he breaks through into some sort of natural cavern! It's kind of dark in there. He might want to bring a torch if he's going to explore further.

Oh wow a cave! But what if there are monsters down there? But cave!

He goes back upstairs to grab the torch off his wall, and also to say to the forest spirit, "I found a cave! I want to explore it but I'm a bit worried it's got monsters in it."

{monster in cave,} the forest spirit agrees. {stone spirit in cave too!}

"How dangerous are the monsters in the cave? Is there a way to sneak around them? . . . And they're not going to attack the stone spirit if I go down there and bother them, are they?"

{day monster in cave is just rocky slime. night monster is skeleton,} says the spirit. {stone spirit is fighting expert, will be okay.}