Journey to the Forest Mansion

(Below - supplies for the journey)  I finally found a Village Cartographer who had a Woodland Explorer Map for sale.  I wanted to make a Map Wall of the journey, so I packed supplies to make maps as I traveled. 

I put the Woodland Explorer Map in my shield spot, and created new maps in the other hand - starting with a basic blank map that could be expanded to 4x4 size on the craft table. When the marker indicated I had 'walked off the map' I started a new map.

Woodland Explorer Map on left, 0/4 map on right.

It was a long journey. It took me fifteen Minecraft days. I passed near six villages, and a ruined portal. I had to detour several times to avoid things like a pillager tower and rugged terrain.

I crossed plains, savannas, swamps, deserts, mountains, and a bit of badlands. Every time I went through a forest I wondered if this was where I would find the Woodland Mansion, since you can only find them in the thickest woods. The map gives no indication of the distance still to travel, although the pointer does start to change direction as you get closer.

In a snowy taiga I stopped at an igloo to explore the basement where an unemployed villager and a zombie villager were in separate cells. I cured the zombie villager and freed both villagers.

I didn't run into many hostile mobs, since I slept every night.

Finally, the Woodland Explorer Map started to fill in and I saw the Mansion! 

The Woodland Explorer Map starts to fill in.

I had not really come prepared to fight the hostile mobs in the Mansion, so I built a treehouse and planted wheat and sugar cane nearby while I looked on the net for information on "Easy ways to defeat the Woodland Mansion." There weren't any,  just a lot of hard ways.

Treehouse

From the forest I got wood for ladders and from an abandoned mineshaft I got coal for torches. When I felt I had procrastinated enough, I decided it was time to attack the Mansion.

Going in through the top.

I got up on the third-floor roof and made an opening, then set up a small base in a third-floor room. Between fights with vindicators, evokers, vexes and other assorted hostile mobs, I put up as many torches as I could. 

I tried to put doors on each room.

It took a while to kill all the hostile mobs. It is fortunate that Vindicators and Evokers don't respawn after you've defeated them. 

When everything was quiet I explored. Every Mansion has a random assortment of types of rooms, although I think there is always a Conference Room  The one I found had two rooms with giant statues of cats made out of bales of wool, and many rooms with growing things. There were wheat gardens, flowers in pots, and even a room with a giant tree growing to the ceiling. 

Two rooms with giant wool cats, but no wool ducks.

I did not find any loot that was not available other places in my Minecraft world, but I valued the journey itself. I also got a half-dozen Totems of Undying from killing evokers.

A room full of oak saplings.

Getting my loot back to base presented a problem. While I could have teleported, I eventually built a nether passage from a portal near my base to a portal near the Mansion. Even with this shortcut it is a long trip. 

Totems of Undying in my Potion Room.

Journey Map Wall in my Base Basement

On the map wall the path from my base (on the bottom) shows as the colored line going to the top (the Mansion).