I have a totally different way of doing it: to be able to afk, you need to find an NPC village and train someone as your apprentice. In the beginning, you’ll only be able to give him/her a single simple task to do, but as you progress you can give him/her written notes or a book to be able to do more things. And your npc will only be able to do things that you’ve done already, so they won’t be able to discover new things while you’re not there 
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