Yes - it's still relatively rare, but not nearly so much as before.
I think I needed two and a half deposits worth to get enough.
Not quite enough. There's a lot of naked blue sheep wandering around, but I still need at least five times more than what I've got so far. :P
(So if anyone has any Lapis Lazuli they don't need...)
Kev and I have messed about with the nether gates to make travelling to/from PB's lighthouse easier. We made a nether gate at PBs, but it led to that one Jon made in the arctic. So we've disabled that one for now (hope that's ok, Jon) so that PB's one made its own gate in the nether.
We're currently linking those two gates in the nether up. So, in short, you can get from any of the original cluster of nether gates to PB's lighthouse very fast. And you can travel from PB's lighthouse to the original nether gate (one in my old house) very fast.
