Minecraft - I missed thee

Back from Christmas and back to digging around in the virtual dirt. Got to go a little nuts the last two nights playing, and I've really decided to throw a little more caution into the wind and mix it up with the baddies, finally.

On night one I really didn't know what to do, but I knew that I needed to do something a little more exciting after a found a couple diamonds. Problem with the diamonds that I found was that I only found two of them, so I really didn't know what to do with them, I ended up making a sword on day two, because I was going to kick some ass, but more on that later.

So night one, I decided that I was going to go check out what I'll call Four Points mountain. It's a collection of four mountain peaks with a giant space in the middle of it, where I decided to set up base camp, because there are a lot of natural caves around it, so for exploration it's a good location. But more on that later as that was also a night two adventure.

Avoiding anymore tangents... I set to make a tunnel from the Ick Palace towards 4 Points so that I wouldn't have to run around the side of my fort, saving me a little time. This worked out great so it led to me making another tunnel towards the West and eventually a third tunnel to the North. The whole process worked out pretty neat as I set up a whole underground passage system that would save me time and be much safer for getting to where I wanted to go. The third tunnel did connect to a natural cave that I'll need to go back and check out because it goes basically straight down, but it was getting late on night one so I let it be. I'll come back to it, but I can almost see my old buildings so I'm a little reluctant to go there, I'm looking for a newer area.

So on night two I decided to go to 4 Points and build up a little house in the middle of the mountains, really should rename the house here the Nexus because of it's proximity to so many natural caves. There is one major problem with the house though, I didn't make it far enough in the center of the clearing so I've had to deal with a couple creepers dropping in from about 1000 feet up. I think the house is safe now as I've closed off the top of it, but who knows. Anyway with my new digs I decided to go exploring and the pictures that I've attached are of a volcano type of structure that I found, it was pretty amazing looking and with a natural cave that goes down quick, so that is on the list of places to go check out.

I also did a little adventuring into a cave right next to the Nexus, it's pretty straight forward, nothing crazy in it, and tons upon tons of coal, which is a good thing. I sealed off the deeper portions so that I could mine out the coal and some iron before I went venturing deeper. When I finally did I was met with a panic attack... As soon as I cleared out a walkway into the unexplored areas I was greeted with the hsssssss of a creeper right next to me about to explode. After losing control of my mouse for a second (I always do that, that in itself will make a great let's play series) I was able to get back through the walkway quick enough that he didn't explore (thank goodness that my left hand knew where the "s" button was. Thankfully he was stuck behind a single block of dirt and couldn't get to me, a couple sword whacks later and he was dead. I went deeper to be greeted with an arrow pegging me in the head from a level below, I took more damage killing off that one skeleton that it cost me basically all of my leather armor. And it was pointless as well because where the skeleton was, there was a 3 block drop off that went in multiple directions that I wasn't prepared to go venturing through at that point. But it was the principle of killing that guy at that point.

So at the end of the night I went and armed up, because we're going back next time I get on to explore how deep that cave goes. I made a set of iron armor and a diamond sword, I'm not fucking around now. And I welcome death if it should find me, just means that we'll be building new stuff in an unexplored part of the world. Honestly I'm surprised that I've been able to last as long as I have without dieing, I think that I've been playing it too safe, so I need to bring the excitement and go find me some diamonds.

And the last picture of the ocean, who says that there aren't oceans, looks pretty far and empty to me. =)

Minecraft - No sprelunking for you!

I played a bit last night but I'm not really sure what all I did. I made a tower on the corner of my palace that was really nice, the glass floors on the overhang are now going to be standard. And with that I kind of felt like my little abode was complete on the outside. I did a little digging inside my place, got to the bedrock and then decided that I was going to start making branch mines. I was really hoping that I'd hit a natural cave system, but I didn't hit anything. And speaking of natural cave systems, I am in a region that is like devoid of them...

So after my tower construction and my mining, I decided that I'd go do a little exploring looking for a nice cave to go dive into, nothing. There literally is nothing around me for a very long way, at least that I found so far. When I went to the far North I found a very cool looking mountain structure that looked to have a couple caves in it. One of them was a bust, but I have yet to check out the other two. I'm going to need to set up a sort of base camp over there to check it out because it's too far of a walk to go back and forth on repeatedly, probably just build a house in the middle of the structure so that I don't have to run back and forth all the time.

My battlenet account got reset and rehacked. This time I recovered it with an authenticator so hopefully that will take care of the problem going forward. My brother was telling me to set up a new e-mail but honestly I just don't want to set up yet another e-mail address that I'll have to look at, I mean it's a pain in the ass. I guess if I get hacked again then I'll need to make an address just for gaming, which I'm sure will splinter into a million different accounts if I have to change any of the individual games because it got hacked. "I'm tired of running!"

Headed off for Christmas so I won't be playing anything for about a week. Hopefully by then Notch will have the beta stabilized and we can start playing on the server again. Who knows maybe this time my main machine will be able to run it.

Minecraft - Beta Prime

So it's the first night of beta and Crash didn't update the server so I did a little playing on the single player. As you can see from the pictures I went exploring and building, I kind of like my little fountain.

I started the night with the thirst for adventure and thought that it was time that I got up the balls to go clear out that cave that I had been toying with for the last couple of weeks on the SP. So I followed the pathways to the spot where I was going to need to drop down and naturally there were a couple creepers waiting there for me. They really aren't too much to deal with if you can whack them from a couple blocks above so I cleared they out and then jumped down. Instantly here came another creeper from the darkness, I drew my bow and fired into his sad face, his body falling to the floor and leaving behind a couple small piles of sulfur (not gunpowder actually) when I heard the dreaded SSSSSSSSSSSS. I spun around quickly and could only see the feet of another one trapped behind the block that I used to jump down to the level I was on, talk about luck. I sent a couple arrows into his body as well making sure that my back was clear before venturing onward.

And this is where it hit me, why there is such a thrill digging around underground. As I prepared to rush into the darkness with my torch in hand I realized how vulnerable that I really was when I rushed in to total darkness to drop a torch. If something were to jump out at me, I'd freak, lose control of my mouse and run around like a little girl not able to fend off what was coming at me. Now I have to say I'm decent at the average FPS, so this shouldn't happen with me, but it does. I freak out because I really think that I'm going to die in there when something attacks me and I'm not expecting it. So when I go spelunking there is always the feeling that something is going to come out of the darkness and I'll be completely unprepared to deal with it. I mean if I see something coming, it's not that hard to deal with, heck I even have time to pick the right weapon most of the time, but in the darkness you have to do a lot all at once. First you have to figure out what is coming for you, is it a spider, a skeleton, creeper? Depending on what it is you have to use very different tactics. Second where is it coming from? Generally you'll hear a zombie coming so they aren't a big deal, a skeleton usually will announce that they are around by whizzing an arrow past your head, a creeper, usually you don't see them until they are right in your face since they don't make noise. Third, what weapon do I need? Usually the bow is the sure fire bet, but do you really want to waste arrows on a zombie? Fourth, are there adds? Fifth, where can I move to? All of this happens in an instant and the best part is that you never know when that instant is going to come. It might never come in a dungeon, or you might get 5 or 6 instances of it all right back to back, you just don't know.

So I charged in with my torches and lit up this huge cavern of a room and proceeded into the next room, naturally a creeper was waiting for me, no problem. The next room was almost vertical, I went up a couple blocks and realized that it went to the surface so didn't really need to go all the way up. Besides I saw that a creeper was hanging out up there a couple levels above me, and as everyone knows a creeper above you is a very bad thing. So I just headed back and sealed off that part of the cave.

I had one final area that I needed to check out, I was hoping that the cave would take me down to the bedrock, but sadly this cave did not. But as I was checking out my final passage I heard an arrow twang on the ground next to me, there was a freakin skeleton in here, in an area that I thought was safe. It was that same passage way that I wrote about a couple weeks ago where a creeper and a skeleton were just hanging out. So I looked around, and there he was, a skeleton sniper sitting up on a ledge firing at me. I think their aim got worse in the beta because he wasn't too hard to pick off, then I went up to light up his little cubby hole. Dropping dirt under me to climb was a little nerve racking because what would happen if a creeper spawned up there while I was climbing up, ah the tension. Anyway I got up there, dropped a torch and saw this 3x1 spawn spot, sneaky bastards.

At this point the cave was cleared, I could have dug down and seen where else it would go, but I wasn't in the mood for digging I was in the mood for exploration. So I packed up my bags and headed off to the North looking for a large cave that I could set up shop next to. I ended up finding the mountain face that you see in the pictures above, it was just too cool to pass up. So I went to work on a new home, why? why not? This time I thought that I'd get a little more sophisticated and add a little fountain, the walls are better, and the entry gate is better as well. i even climbed up the cliff face to make my 2 high retaining wall up above me to make sure that nothing was going to come raining down on my palace. It was a thing of beauty, which I'm still planning on doing more with, and then I saw a creeper way way up high over my palace. Wanting to see if he'd die if he fell I shot an arrow up at him, honestly didn't think that I could hit him, thinking he was too high, but I hit him and he disappeared. A couple moments past and then I caught him jumping down into the water of my fountain, not dieing. I took care of him, but I'll need to fix that problem up above me to make sure I don't have to worry about that again.

From e-mails I can see that Crash is having trouble with the server, so who knows how long that could be down, either way I probably won't get to do anything until after I get back from Christmas, so no hurry from my standpoint.

Minecraft - Fun Cubed!

If someone else joined up with us I don't know what clever title that I'd come up with, but now that we have Kerg in the mix, the fun is now cubed!

I'm still fighting with my home computer to get the game to run without the "magic blocks" that disappear and reappear when trying to mine them. It's made the game unplayable on that system and I've pretty much tried everything that I can think of. So in reaction to that I'm going with plan B, I've broken out my old laptop and I've been playing in the browser. It's not ideal by any means, but it does work and it's stable as anything. I'll keep messing with the main system because it looks so much better on there, but for now I'll look at maxing out the performance on my laptop.

So last night once I got my laptop going I decided that I'd try and explore the cave that is underneath my house. As I got deeper I saw a very cool underground river that flowed deep into the cave. I followed the path to see that it met up with another river and poured down into a giant hole that I'm assuming went all the way to the bottom because I could see light coming from deep down below. However the drop off was a location of a lot of danger as well, there is a dark opening right around the corner and next to the drop off that I need to get around so that I can further explore. Problem is, is that it's spawn heaven, I counted 4 creepers, a spider, a zombie, and 2 skeletons that all tried to get around that hole to get to me. A couple of the creepers blew up next to the hole and increased the size of it, opening it all the way up, and making it that much more dangerous. The place is a serious hell hole, I'm going to want to go back and clear it out because there is iron down there, but it's going to be tough.

So in an effort to clear that place out, I decided that I would go get me some armor (not sure if it works in multiplayer yet) and get back down there. Naturally there was only like 1 cow up in the starter town so I had to go out looking to round up some cattle. As I got further away I just decided that I was going to make a little outpost in the middle of nowhere just for a change of scenery (Crash has basically built up the entire starter town) I wasn't really intending on making it a complete house, but after I started work, it turned out really cool and I spent the rest of the evening working on it. I'll get some pictures up, it has a nice outer wall with a ditch around the front and the cliff to the side of the house is dug out with a trench inside of it preventing mobs from dropping down on my head. The coolest part though is the house itself, there was this giant pillar that extended up to about the clouds but had a very small ununiformed opening at it's base that was just screaming to be built in. The natural location is just fantastic with an even more strategic location just to the side of it, with an opening right next to a waterfall and stream on the side of a small hill, which would be very easy to secure.

Not sure what I'm going to do next. I might keep building that house, might go back to clear out the other dungeon, or I might just go exploring and build another house out in the wilderness. Really it's just going to be wherever the winds take me. I do think that I should run out into the distance and make an evil looking empire with lava and obsidian, really far out there so that if the guys ever see it they will be like WTF! is this! Good times.

In the not so good times, my wow account apparently got hacked. Not that I'd really care on the wow account since I don't plan to fire WoW up again (I don't want to burn out on that style of game before TOR), but I do want to get Diablo 3 and this will just be a serious pain in my ass if I don't get it resolved. Let's see how well the legendary blizz support does for me, I don't really have high hopes.

Minecraft - We are the creators of worlds

As I was telling Crash, why build a character when you can build a world? As you can see from the pictures, we have been busy. With the lag from the server not causing as much of a problem we've been able to be a lot more productive. Crash is working on building houses and his pyramid, I took on the task of building the tower. So overall the whole mountain is getting a make over from the two of us working it both on topsoil and some digging within, it's kind of turning into our capital city.

We have both started talking about our potential next projects. I think that he is going to work on a tunnel system that will connect remote areas to our main capital, I'm thinking that I might go on a little walkabout and build some stuff out in the middle of no where, just as something to discover out in the wideness. But I also want to go looking for some diamonds and do some real dungeon exploration, with the lag I've been afraid to really mix it up, but after playing from CA, it's got to be ok now, right? So yeah I want to go find me some goodies and kill some stuff, not to mention that I want to get me some obsidian as well so that I can make portals and even maybe a black tower of death with lava pouring from it. Toss that out in the wilds and let him come across that! Another project I'm thinking of is doing a massive tower that will be gigantic. And a final idea is that we could make a bridge from out mountain to the mountain behind us, that would be way up in the air.

Overall there are lots of things to do and while I could see how it could get old, if we can get Kergin to join us then that will add just a little bit more. 3 people would make it really interesting as more projects would keep going up, and more stories and ideas.

Speaking of stories I haven't given up on the idea of doing a fraps series, I think that would be a lot of fun, those movies really bring the game to life as you watch how someone else approaches the game. Why? Because the game isn't really about skill it's just about people playing with toys and seeing what happens, the actions are similar, but the reactions that different people have is unique, think of all of those 2 girls 1 cup videos. Why were they popular, because you wanted to see how long someone could watch and how they would react in the end. Same thing here, just a lot cleaner.

Wow I just compared Minecraft to 2 girls 1 cup. I think that I'll end on that note.

Minecraft - You tease

Ah the joys and pains of minecraft. Some parts of the evening the server was nice to me, other times she was a bitch. Got some pics to upload. The first is our little complex from the outside. My stuff is on the lower left hand side, while Crash lives up in the waterfall. And the other picture, well that is the Nether, or Hell. Crash turned on the nether level and that was where I logged in at. Thanks Crash!!!! Actually he stopped eating dinner to help me back to the normal world so that was cool. Hell, nice place to visit, but I'm not ready to live there.

And we checked out the PC gamer server, now that is some crazy crap right there. Honestly that is too crazy for me. I like the adventure part of the game, that is all crafting. It's neat, but where is the thrill?

In other news I tried to get my server going again, no luck. The trick that I used to get myself going on our server was to restart my computer, seems to have helped out a lot. I was able to feel safe enough to do some cave exploration. Thankfully the zombies were there to remind me that if the lag got a hold of me they would eat my brains. I never saw them, but they were down there. You know what else was down there, a huge vein of iron, we're talking 30 blocks all right next to each other, that is the largest vein I have ever seen of iron. Gives me some high hopes that I might find a large diamond vein... Probably not but I can dream can't I.

Minecraft - To server or sever, that is the question

Didn't get to do much this weekend with my mom in town, but the little bit that I did get wasn't the best. The latency issues that I'm having trying to log onto our server have been death. I'm thinking that I might just go back to playing the single player game for a bit until the network issues get patched a little bit. I don't want to, but it is seriously affecting my enjoyment.

I talked to Crash and he suggested a couple things about getting my server up and going, so I'm going to try that tonight as well, if I can get my own server going that would be good and if nothing else we can test the latency and see if it's the game or the computer that Crash is running it off of. I have a feeling it's the game itself, but it can't hurt to try, who knows.

I also made a last push on the guys about buying the game before it leaves Alpha, don't think that they will, but I wanted to give it a shot. Once the bugs get worked out I could see this being a whole bunch of fun with the couple of us running around building stuff. Ah dreams....

Minecraft - Well it is Alpha

Don't really have time to do a full post today. Crash and I have been having a good time in the multiplayer, even with the lag issues, but hey is only Alpha right. A couple pics from the fun.

Minecraft - Fun Squared

Oh man if that isn't the best pun ever for MC I don't know what is, in fact I'm going to have to use that as the subject later when I e-mail the guys about the intro adventure that my brother and I had last night. Granted it was laggy as hell, but hey it's alpha so what do you expect. But last night showed the awesome potential of what is in front of us. It wasn't simply twice as fun, it was exponentially better (get it fun squared, plus the game is a bunch of squares, har har).

So yesterday we talked about it, we were both going to try and get the server going on our respective machines, but I wasn't expecting to have the time last night myself. Later I get a call from my brother telling me that he needed me to test and see if I could get on, I could, that meant that we were in business.

Later in the evening I jump on, you can already tell that there is some lag, I'll dig out a spot of dirt but the spot doesn't go away, mainly because of the lag not updating. Those problems did persist through the night, which was a downer because it made doing anything pretty tricky. It also caused a problem that ended up killing my brother while we were looking for some zombies, as a note to myself, we need to build a walkway from the spawn point to our mountain homes.

Ok so I spawn and he comes running over to me from across the water, he had already been on doing a little exploration and he had found a mountain with a gigantic waterfall, have to say it was very impressive. I get to work right away mining out some coal and claim the hole as my house, he's like fine, here is mine, and he takes me to a cave that he dug out behind the waterfall, very cool.

From there we both did a little digging in our homes to make them bigger and that's when we both heard the moan of zombies someplace in the mountain with us. I never found them, but I'll have to continue the search next time I'm on so that we can clear out the chamber, I'm actually expecting a spawner in there from the number of moans that we heard.

After that I cleared out the area in front of my house so that it would be safe and did a little exploration, finding a huge cave nearby that will have to be explored. But the lag got pretty bad so I'll have to keep my expectations in check until the next patch. Of course at the end of the night my brother tells me that he has his wow server running on the computer that the MC server is on, not sure but I'm guessing that probably wasn't helping things.

I'm going to wait until the game becomes a little more stable before hitting up the other guys, but I could see this being a lot of fun with the group of us. Exploration would be a blast and raiding a dungeon (especially if the boss mobs are added) would be a blast as one of us would be on look out as we explored. My brother agreed that we can probably get Kerg to join us, but we'll have to break his WoW addiction long enough to do so, Keg would be nice to get, but as my brother said, "Good luck."

Until next time

Minecraft - The mana tree

I'm not sure why I thought of the mana tree from The Secret of Mana over something more obvious like the Elf tree in WoW, I guess it's not quite that big anyway. Either way, seriously, that is a huge tree. I had kind of finished up what I wanted to do with my castle after the last week or so of building it and had this huge room up top that I didn't really have a use for. So I decided that I'd make a little tree farm. I only planted the two saplings that I had on me, just because it wasn't supposed to be a big project, it was just a thing to do for the heck of it. But wow that is a huge tree, it makes my tower look tiny, thankfully I'll never have to worry about wood again. One day when I get bored I might need to burn it down just to see how awesome that looks.

It looks like I'm done with Castle Ick, at least for now. After almost two weeks of construction and messing around I think that I'm ready to move on from the project, it's not perfect, but I need to do something else, I've spent too much time there and I need to do a little exploration.

So in the spirit of exploration I went looking for a new cave to go explore, I wasn't looking for anything serious just something to get my feet wet with. If I wanted to go crazy I knew where the cave was that would be crazy, but I wasn't fully prepared for that yet, plus I'm still kind of a wuss. Changes things when you know there is a price for death, makes it so that you're afraid to die. But I do think it's still the right decision so I'll stay true to my word on it.

So all in all not a lot happened last night, I finished up the castle and am ready to go adventuring again, we'll see where that leads.

Oh I almost forgot, I spent an hour trying to get a server up for my brother and I to play together on. I didn't have any success, but I'll give it another go in the near future.

Minecraft - Frap! I need to get to sleep

Minecraft, I hate you. You keep me up far too late at night as I work out the finer touches on what I'm hoping will be my own personal masterpiece. I hate that you force me to make it perfect, knowing that I will be my only critic, damn you.

Truth be told, I can't hate MC, it's myself that I wish I had more restraint, but alas, there is always just one more thing that I need to do in the damn game, and really I love every second of it. So last night I kept up work on my moat/deathtrap, and I actually kind of got it to work, it's not perfect and it surely isn't automated, but it will kill a mob or two that decide to go for a swim in an effort to breach my walls. But considering that it isn't perfect I have to decide if I'm going to try and prefect the system on the other walls or just give up on the plan altogether. I'm thinking that I'm going to just move on and let it be for now, I've spent the last week building the castle and while I'm happy with the way it came out, it could have been better. Also I want to do a little more exploration underground and see what I can find, but for those trips I'm going to arm my ass up, I'm scared to risk it all down there, but at the same time, I've been a little too much of a wuss and I need to mix it up a little bit.

So I think what I'll do is flush out the remaining area in the Ick cave, torch it up so that it's safe and then get to the digging. I'm not sure how big the system there is, but I have a feeling that it's pretty large. I'll make a set of steel armor and a steel sword or two, along with a pile of arrows and torches. The first trip will be to clear it of as much danger as I can, after that I'll go back and mine it. Ok sounds like a plan, would be fun to watch...

Speaking of watching, I tried to get the fraps going, but wasn't able to upload it to here. I guess that I could put it up on youtube, just as a test. I'm not really planning on doing a Let's Play series, but I think it might be kind of fun too, so I'm exploring the possibility, I'll need to get a mic though, yet again. If nothing else it would be fun to be able to show off my stuff to at least my brother.

Minecraft - My brother

The attached video is from my brother, the quality kind of sucks, but you get the point. I'm just happy that I got him to play it.

Minecraft - Castle Construction

Last night I spent a good deal of time trying to make my castle as cool as can be, but I seemed to keep running into snags, namely the moat. I just can't seem to figure out a good way to make the moat so that it's not more dangerous to me than the mobs. I even considered taking it out altogether, but it just looks so cool that I can't bring myself to doing it. I'll just keep working with it, might go look for some cacti to turn the moat into a mob grinder. I don't really care about the drops, I just want a little peace, might just make another outer wall, that would be one big ass wall.

The tower in the picture is really really high up there and it was pretty nerve racking to build it, one slip and it's back to the start. All the work that I'm putting into the castle has made me wonder if I'll have the stones to stick with my plan and run off in another direction if I die. I guess at the end of the day I could always come back at a later date and finish it if I die, but it's interesting knowing that I could lose it all really quick.

Which brings up an interesting point about playing hardcore, I'm afraid to go exploring in the dungeons. I like the added sense of risk because it's thrilling, but knowing that I don't have to put myself in those situations kind of keeps me from doing it. Oh sure I could go look for diamonds, but I really don't need them when you get down to it. We'll have to see how this plays out, as of now I'll still go with my plan, I think in the long run I'll thank myself for it. The one thing that kills me is that I want to look up my map with the cartographer, but I'm afraid that would give away where I'm living, and make it too easy to cheat in the future.

Anyway enjoy the pics

Minecraft - Just Pics

Didn't play last night but had some pics from the other day that I wanted to get up. One is from my adventure the other day where I had the run in with the Zombie spawner, and the other is my tunnel between the fort and castle, it's really really long. I also got my brother to give the game a go. Not sure what he thought of it, but at least he didn't say, "WTF this is a piece of crap!" So that is a plus =D

If he likes it, then we move on to rope Carl in.

Minecraft - I stand against the night

I was thinking that if anyone read this they would think that it's a Minecraft blog since that's all I write about. It is not, it is my gaming blog, but considering that all I've been playing is Minecraft, that's about all I'm going to write about.

I really need to take more pics and post them, but that takes too long when I could be playing...

Last night I decided that I needed to finish the tunnel between the Ick fort and the Ick castle, and boy is it a long tunnel, it's so long that I can see fog at the end of the tunnel from the tunnel out distancing the draw distance. But it's a safer way to travel that is for sure, plus I think it's a bit faster, wait until I put my rail line in there, then it will be pure awesome, and underground railroad if you will.... hehe.

With some calculation and a bit of counting I punched through to the center of the Ick castle about where I was hoping to come up, problem was, I did it at night. So I had two options; punch through or go all the way around and do it that way. I bit the bullet and punched through at daybreak, thankfully there wasn't anything there to welcome me except for a couple sheep. I marvelled at my accomplishment and felt quite proud of myself, perhaps a bit too long, because night descended on me quickly while I figured out what I was going to do with the opening in the center of my castle that led into the mines underneath my system of caves, that could potentially be bad news. On top of that, I didn't have supplies to make it through the night, I was low on torches to prevent spawns, so I dug in and got to the top of my wall for some defense.

As the night wore on I counted as many as 6 creepers along the outside wall along with a mix of spiders and zombies, thankfully there weren't a lot of skeletons to deal with. Inside 2 creepers spawned along with a skeleton, who eventually found me, he met a quick end from the business end of my rapid fire bow.

When morning finally came I was doing ok, I took a look at the moat system to see why it worked and didn't work, and have decided that I'm going to add a row of glass blocks along the top to see if I can use that to burn away baddies in the morning, although the water will put them out. Humm maybe a deeper pit for them to die in? Either way it looks really cool.

I also went about setting up torches as a last activity for the game night, there must be 100 of them in that place now. By midnight gametime, nothing had spawned internally (except for a freakin farm of animals) so I think that the interior of the Ick castle is now safe for construction, next step, making something kick ass.

I talked to Tony over e-mail last night and was trying to sell him on the game, told him that I'd buy it for him, hell I'd buy it for Carl too if he was interested. I think that it would be kick ass cool for us all to be playing on the same world building up our little empires, just because it's always cool to be able to show off what you built. Regardless though if I'm the only one that sees my little world I'm good with that, it's very satisfying to see the structures that you make. It's kind of like building with legos, but as I told Tony, they are legos that are trying to kill you, so enjoyable.

Minecraft - Into the Darkness

I'm not quite sure why I decided to press on into the darkness last night, but sure enough I went. After all I needed the coal for the number of torches that I'm going to need for the castle, but there seriously are easier ways of getting it. But like a fool I decided that I'd see what was beyond that lavafall and venture deeper into the what I'll call the lava cave (better name to come).



The cave itself branches off in many directions which can really be a pain in the butt when you're trying to cover yourself. I'll head down a corridor a couple meters, toss in a torch so that I'll have at least some spawning buffer before turning back to another corridor and doing the same thing. Problem with that is, the place is crawling with nasties, at one point I came to a ledge where I found 3 creepers, a skeleton, and a zombie. Being cautious I was able to use the ledge as a perch and pick them off with my rapid fire bow (that thing becomes a machine gun when I'm pressed).



With one passageway cleaned out of mobs but I didn't actually go and light up the tunnel because I hate dropping down into darkness and the only other path there went right next to the lava flow so I let it be hoping that any mobs that would come from that direction would get caught in the lava themselves.



The tunnel system itself was very impressive, the main corridor had a huge vaulted ceiling that must have been 10 meters high, which may be a problem with spawns because I can't get a light up there, well I can, but I was hoping that I wouldn't have to. I took the first tunnel that I came to that went to the left into a large wall of rubble and behind the rubble was a whole lot of moaning meaning one thing, zombies. The rubble itself was stacked high, 7 or 8 high in fact making clearing it out a pain, not to mention that there was a clearing above it meaning that I didn't know if I risked having zombies drop on my head if I dug it out incorrectly. Slowly but surely I cleared it away little by little and placed some dirt in the opening to seal off the top. As I went deeper I could hear the moans get louder, they were pissed and there were a lot of them. Finally I broke through and there they were, at least 5 of them all trying to get through to me.



At this point I realized that I was in for a big fight so I was going to need to arm up a little better than I was and go back and make myself an iron sword. I left for my house without event (but man are those caves creepy) fashioned my sword and made my way back down. Problem was, there was a zombie in the area that I thought had already been cleared and secured. How the hell did he get there? Not that he was tough to deal with, but had it been a creeper that I wasn't expecting, oh man that could have been trouble. Even as I write this I'm not sure how he got there, but to be safe I used up some of the precious coal that I had been harvesting and planted another torch in that tunnel hoping that would prevent future spawns. Now it was time to take down that zombie dungeon.



I made my move slowly taking them out one by one as I pressed on, sometimes being attacked by three at a time, thankfully the tunnel to get to me was narrow so I never got overwhelmed. I meleed the close ones and then after the room was cleared, I took out my bow to take out any in the extended passages, then I went to work on the spawner. Useing my sword (probably the wrong tool) I started to beat down that spawner fearful that at any moment another zombie could pop up and attack me. With ferocity I worked until at last the spawner was destroyed, leaving me with a chest full of loot as my reward. Even better the ceiling above the dungeon was made of coal, a double reward that made the whole process even more worth it.



It also turned out that all of the rubble was covering up a rich coal deposit itself. Taking my time to clear out the rubble I filled my backpack with a good helping of coal, it had truly been a rewarding trip into the caves, time to head home...



But on the journey home I was reminded that I'm never safe underground. As I approached the main corridor where the lava pool was, I saw a tall green figure glowing in the light, yep a creeper. The clueless bastard was just minding his own business but I knew what had to be done. I withdrew my bow and fired, hitting the square little frownie right in the chest, once, twice, a total of five times before bringing him down. I knew then that I would never be safe, and that they would always be hunting me.

Minecraft - Coal

There are two ways to play the game, the efficient way, and the fun way.

I was on a search for coal last night as I had used up the last little bit that I had to make a couple torches, and I had options A and B available to me. At first I decided that I would just mine a little bit in my cave at night and look for some random coal but just digging in one direction. I found a little bit, but really the whole process seemed a little bit tedious, so I thought to myself, "Let's go and see if those outside caves have any coal in them."

There is a small cave just around the corner from my base, so I went and checked it out, and lo and behold there was some coal just inside the cave. But here is where things got tricky, the cave opened up to the outside world in a spot that was generating a bunch of mobs. Not wanting to see my character go up in flames I took the time to wall off the entrance and make a glass tunnel back to my fort for safety, which now thinking about I need to do a little more work with it to make it 100% safe. Anyway in I went now feeling that my backside was secure. Instantly I see mobs moving around in the darkness and the clattering of a skeleton. I withdrew my bow and started firing at the movement in the distance striking a creeper. Behind him was another creeper, and then another. The darkenss of this cave seemed to be crawling with evil. I ventured down the creeper chamber to find that I had cleared it out and put up some torches to keep it that way. At that point I sealed off another passage where I believe the skeleton was hiding. Finally feeling that my back was secured I took the third tunnel mining the coal and iron that I found along the way, and there at the end was a lavafall in the center of a giant chamber, which must have been only a short walk from my outside house. Thankfully when I came upon the chamber I entered on a balcany which allowed me to see below, and I got to see a creeper jump in the lava and get burned up, that was fun. Next time I get on I'll have to go down there and check it out.

My other project was the continued work on my little castle. I finished up the outer walls and added a rampart that ran the entire distance of the wall. Next I dug up a small moat around the front, which I experimented with a little. I think what I'm going to do with the moat is make it so that if a mob falls in they are sent to their death leaving their loot to surface within my castle walls. If I can pull it off that will give me all sorts of goodies for doing nothing.

I realized what is one of the fun things about this game, there isn't a treadmill, it's all about doing what you want to do and enjoying what that is. If I explore it's exciting to see what is next, or what is waiting for me arond the next corner. If I dig the prospect of finding a treasure is there, or maybe a unique waterflow or lava flow, maybe a chest. If I build, it's totally free building to be whatever I want it to be, usually built out of a need. I saw this video yesterday and it reminded me of all of the negatives of WoW. And while I had fun with it, the evils of it are true.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2487-The-Skinner-Box

Minecraft - FIRE!!!

Only you can create forest fires. Die Smokey!!!

Minecraft - Diamonds and Castles

I really don't understand my addiction with Minecraft I mean it's basically a game about digging in a hole and then building stuff, Simcity would be similar in that regard so I have no idea why it's so addicting, but it is!

This weekend I ventured to the bottom of the Ick cave and finally hit rock bottom and it was a very long way down, oddly enough I never hit another cave in my digging, which while anti-climatic did make digging a lot safer because I never had to worry about mobs. I mean there were some mobs just on the other side of the walls but I never punched through because I didn't think that I needed to add to my drama when I was on a quest for diamonds. Actually I was kind of hoping to explore a little bit and randomly hit another cave, but considering that I am playing a sort of hardcore method, I didn't want to purposefully risk it. And yes I still have not died in this game, came close with that Creeper.

Speaking of Creepers, as you can see from the screenshot in my last post my base needed some work to make it impenetrable. Sure there are perfect methods online of how "you're supposed" to make your base, but where is the fun in that. I build what I want to build and I do it how I see fit, if I wanted cookie cutter then I wouldn't play because that becomes a job. All of that being said I think that the Ick fortress is safe now, no mobs within my outer walls for the last couple of nights and I now feel safe to wonder around my grounds at night without fear of attack. But the Eastern Base as it was dubbed originally is not perfect by any means, it was built out of necessity and as such is disjointed and doesn't have all of the room for crafting and storage that I would like. Additionally I had a large chest full of stone that I had gathered from all of my underground digging and have decided that I need to put that to use by building myself a large castle just a little inland from where I'm living today.

So with the new castle in mind I built another 3 furnaces so that I could start making clean stone because my castle is going to look kick ass once it's done, no cheap cobblestone for me. So far I think that I've made about 500 clean stone blocks then I ran out of coal, which could be a little bit of a problem, didn't really think it all out ahead of time, plus my addiction to torches doesn't help. I have a feeling that's going to require me doing a little digging in a local monster cave, because I don't really have any mountains around me.

The other thing that I did for my castle is start work on the outer wall, on my first base that was kind of an after thought as it was needed, this time around I'm starting there. It's only made of dirt with a cobblestone line around the top, but it will serve it's purpose, I might throw some glass in it as well, but not sure how tough I want to make it look, but I will be adding a rampart to it. I have high hopes for how my castle will turn out, I have enough materials to pretty much make it however I want so I'm thinking that I'll give it adequate room for storage and crafting that I don't currently have.

Another little thing that I think I'll add will be a raised walkway from the castle to the original fort, or maybe an underground tunnel. Maybe a secret passageway which would give me something to do with all of that redstone that I've acquired, really no idea what to do with the redstone. One idea that I had was to set up a mine field for the mobs to blow themselves to pieces in but knowing me I'd end up blowing myself to pieces in the process.

Speaking of death, I had a little run in with some lava at the bottom of the Ick cave. It was nothing to serious as I was being extra careful around it, but did my best to dig right around it so that I could find myself that all too rare diamond, of which I found two of them. Not enough for a pick, but it was enough for a shovel, so that was helpful. I'm so cheap that I still use stone tools rather than iron, in my opinion I don't think that I've found too much iron so I'm kind of hording it. If I were to ever die and then not return to this encampment and then hand over the save to someone like my brother, there would be some phat loot waiting if he made the trip.

So with that I shall leave the blog for the day and toss of a photo or two later perhaps. Next time I get on I'll be on a search for coal before I can continue the construction of my fantastic castle =)

I also need to work on my brother to play this game, then maybe we can play multiplayer.

Minecraft - Knock knock

I thought that my castle was set up pretty good, didn't think that I would have too much to worry about. Turns out that wasn't really the case, after spending a while digging down in my mine, I had that Creeper hanging out right outside my door. Seriously that's the sort of thing that can really ruin your day, had I gone out there.

I guess that I need to make a large wall to surround my entire estate, that way I won't have to worry about it again. I knew the water out front was a weak spot, but I kind of liked how it looked, oh well.

Minecraft - Day 1 world 2

So I saw a guy on the forums do something similar to this idea and it sounded kind of neat. Kind of a hardcore method of playing without wiping out the world when you die. What I decided that I would do instead of building up around my spawn spot, I would pick a direction and run in that direction for 2 game days, mining for wood or coal as I saw some, but basically get as far from my spawn as possible. When that character dies, I'll spawn again and then send that guy into the next direction for 2 days. The goal being that my world will become filled with little settlements from where I lived, because once I die, everything that remains there will stay there. Eventually my world will be filled with little houses from people that have come and gone and to me it will feel a little more lived in. It also has a fun bi-product, it's as exciting as hell...

After my two day run in which I took cover on the first night, I set up shop on the Eastern coast a long way away. Oh and I little tip, put the draw distance to tiny when running, that way you really are lost out there. Anyway, I set up a little house and thought I was doing well for myself, having known the basics of survival I felt pretty good. The first day or two were uneventful, but on that third day, here he came bouncing down the side of my little house everyone's favorite baddie, the creeper. And before I could run away he blew himself to pieces, taking my health to half a heart. What a rush that was knowing that one more anything and it was back to square one. Thankfully I had killed some pigs and had some food stashed so I was able to recover.

After the creeper blew the front of my house off I went about rebuilding and setting up a defensive structure that I'm pretty happy with now. If I ever happen to find this castle in my future explorations then it will be something that I can be proud of.

So just a quick update tonight because now it's time to get back to it. Man I love this game.

Minecraft - The Water Cave

Every morning I think I wake up saying to myself, "Man I really need to go to sleep earlier." Because every night I end up staying up later than I intend playing something, and right now that something is Minecraft. As a side note I really need to send my screenshots to my e-mail so that I have access to them.

Last night I did two things, the first was that I built myself a little tower on the Ick house, which is quickly becoming a castle. It's not great but I think standing on top of that tower of glass is pretty neat. I'll need to clean it up a little bit because there is a lot of cobblestone that makes it a little tricky to see whilst climbing. But once you get to the top the views are quite nice. The tower didn't really take too long to do and it gave me something to do at night during my restocking trips back home for more tools as I ventured into what I have dubbed the Water Cave.

Early on in my adventures I discovered a cave just to the West of my house that needed to be explored, but I had gotten sidetracked digging in my house and venturing through the Spider Cave, but now was a good time to return. In my journeys through the house cave I had dug all the way back up towards the surface and the desert and it looked as if I was really close to the Water Cave, that I could bust through and meet the two caves up, naturally it wasn't as easy to link them as I had thought.

I started digging towards where I knew one of the branches of the house cave ended and quickly found a passageway that took me in another direction, and had a stunning underground waterfall which as I would learn went down to the depths of the cave, of which I haven't explored yet. When starting a new cave/dungeon it's always a little freaky, if you're near the surface you can hear the mobs up on the surface and that totally throws me off because I don't know what is in there with me hiding behind a corner and what is up top. This time it was a spider, I couldn't find where he was at for a couple minutes until I looked up to see the source of the waterfall, and there he was trying to get his fat little body to drop on my head. Ah meet Mr. Bow you stupid spider, pow dead!

That is one thing that I don't think you can really explain to someone who hasn't played the game, but those caves and dungeons are pretty freaky, if you hear something and can't find it, you just know it's going to jump out at you at some point. Especially when you're trying to map out a new section and there are multiple tunnels that you can explore.

The cave expanded downward and I ended up finding a couple zombies that were trapped by a pool that had formed at a section of the waterfall. Those poor little bastards moaning and jumping to get to me, but were held back by the water so they were easy to pick off. Once they were disposed of I took a second to look around and found that I had linked up to the Ick cave, in the deep section where I had found lava. I moved around the little pool by building a dirt walkway and saw that the cave descended even deeper. Goofing around I dug up a block and accidentally unleashed the water in the pool and sent a waterfall down to the depths of wherever. I had intended on exploring there, but after creating the waterfall I decided that I'd let it be for now as no mobs were going to be able to swim up it. I was just thinking that I'm going to make this a giant water slide for myself to get down there once I go.

So leaving the waterfall of darkness I took off down another chamber to do some deep digging. With the reveal of dirt and gravel at the depth level I was at I figured that there had to be something cool over there. I found a little gold (which is useless, but I will be making a watch) but nothing else as of yet. By the time I had finished digging around, my tools were shot so I needed to return to the surface to resupply, and by then it was getting too late so I made my gear and logged out, ready to find some diamonds on my next adventure.


Speaking of adventure, I had the coolest idea. I'm sure someone has already done it, but you could make a very sweet Zelda type of adventure in this game if one set their mind to it. You could set up a series of dungeons each holding a type of loot and holding clues to the next dungeon. At the bottom of each you could have a switch that would be linked to redstone and to a door in some distant dungeon. Then through a series of dungeons you unlock all of the doors granting you access to the final boss. It would take a bit of time to do and setting up all of the items around the world, but that would be pretty sweet. Naturally I won't be doing it because I'd rather be playing the game but I'm just saying that it could be done and be very awesome.

Until next time...

And I'll add dome pictures too.

Minecraft - Death, Building, Terror

I got to play a bit of Minecraft this weekend and some of my expectations of the game were brought back down to Earth, but don't tell my brother, I still want him to try it and I'd love to see multiplayer with him. Anyway that doesn't mean that I still don't find the game to be engaging in many different ways, if I had to compare it to another game I'd have to say it was a combination of SimCity and Doom. SimCity in that a lot of the purpose is to build the world around you which can be a lot of fun and the means with which to gather materials to do that are only found in the depths of the Earth and exploring in the darkness dropping torches to ward off monsters is thrilling to say the least.

So this weekend I did a couple of things, first I decided that I wanted to branch out from my first house, I didn't really need to because as it turns out the caves below my house seemingly go on forever, but more on that in a minute. So I decided to hike up one of the nearby mountains and build myself a little observation post, naturally I didn't take a picture so I'll have to do that next time I get on. It's pretty cool, it's about 2 blocks below the cloudline and it's walled with glass and an open ceiling with a great panoramic view. The best part is that any monsters would be very hard pressed to get up there to me so it's quiet which is nice as well when I want to do some crafting in peace, because my first house reminds me of "I am Legend".

I've learned that my first house is very safe now, it has high walls a large ditch that you have to cross via the glass bridge which is blocked off with a gate. But to hear those guys out there at all hours of the night banging on the walls gets a little annoying, so I decided that I'd go exploring for a good location to build a castle. I ventured out to the North across the seemingly endless desert and found a nice grove with lots of trees and sheep and a tiny island just off the coast in a little inlet. I was thinking this will be perfect, it's an island so the monsters won't be bugging me all night. So with piles of stone that I had collected from the mines under my original house I went about making what I thought would be an amazing castle. Turns out that as the darkness closed in I rushed to get the walls up so it ended up not having quite the majestic footprint that I would have liked, but no matter that could be fixed. I also included a line of glass all the way around the castle so that I could see outside and a large skylight for light during the day. I was going to put some towers on it and everything, really do it up nice, but then the night came. Turns out that zombies can swim, same with spiders and other stuff, so the whole idea to make this awesome island castle was flawed. I decided that I'd just abandon the idea and try again later so I crafted up a boat and sailed back to my original house. I left some materials in the house just in case I was back in that area, and that is kind of my plan to leave stuff all over the place just because. One day I'll go on an epic quest and I intend on leaving a trail behind me.

What is going to be interesting about that epic adventure is something I learned that I wasn't to happy about, it turns out that if you die and you're too far away, your stuff is gone. I was really hoping that any of my deaths that took place would leave behind some loot for future adventures, but alas that isn't going to happen, and I have to say I was bummed about that. I guess it adds to the element of danger in adventuring, because it would be very easy to get back to where you were and pick up your stuff, plus I'm sure there is a network issue with keeping all of that stuff active at a long distance, oh well.

So how did I learn about death, well naturally the hard way. I was doing some very deep digging underneath my house and came across a zombie spawner. Pretty easy to take out so I killed off the zombies and set up torches around the spawner so that they would stop spawning. I'm not really sure what happened, I think I might have touched it, because a zombie spawned while I wasn't realy paying attention or when I dropped down on the spawner on accident and he proceeded to kill me while I was fumbling around trying to get to my sword. Naturally I dropped a lot of iron, redstone, gold, and an assortment of other nice items that I should have taken back to the surface (or at least put in a chest). When I ran back down there to find my stuff, it was all gone, I wasn't so much pissed as I was disappointed because of what that meant, but I could still put stuff in chests so it's not a total loss. Oh and to avoid future problems I went ahead and took out the spawner, those things are going to die now.

Now knowing the price of death, that adds a little more excitement to what I would consider an already pretty terrifying cave exploration. Graphically Minecraft pretty much sucks, I mean it's a bunch of boxes, which I think work great, but seriously it's a bunch of boxes, it's no Crysis 2 or anything, hell it's not even WoW. But when you mix in the right level of darkness, mobs that can tear you apart (creepers) if they get the jump on you, and the sounds of them all around you, never knowing from which of the three tunnels ahead of you they are coming from, well then you got yourself a nice little sense of dread, which I find thrilling. Remember playing Doom back in the old old days of gaming and never knowing where a mob was going to jump out from and proceed to kick your butt, well this works similarly.

Minecraft is a lot of fun and I'll keep on playing it for as long as I find it to be fun. The concept of the game is so different than anything else out at the moment that I find it so refreshing, it's a true sandbox game but it suffers from one problem that all single player games do, you can't really show off your work to anyone, so in the end there is a bit of isolation. Which is probably what spurred me to write this blog, sure no one is ever going to read it, but it feels a little better knowing that it's there.

Until next time.

Minecraft Day 2

So I had seen Minecraft in various places online but honestly it's a bunch of blocks and it's just making stuff so really how much fun could that be? Well I have to say it's a hell of a lot of fun. What really tipped me off to it was the video link below.

http://www.youtube.com/user/davidr64yt#p/u/111/4bh4EexJO4I

This guy named "X" did a great series of videos on the game and they were amazingly engaging, to the point that I realized that I had to play this game, and holy crap was it worth it.

Essentially if I had to break it down it's a game about survival and making a place for yourself in a virtual world while trying to stay alive. Think of all of the blocks like legos that you have to build stuff out of, and then add in monsters that are trying to kill you while you do said activity. The result is a thrilling RPG type of game that is extremely rewarding (to me anyway).

When it starts you pop up in a randomly generated world of infinite size. Now think about that for a second, this isn't like Oblivion where the world was hand crafted to be a specific way, nope this is pure computerized nature at it's best. Sure it's a simple world, but it's so inviting at the same time (until the creepers start showing up of course). Anyway you spawn and you have nothing but your bare hands to make it in this world. The first thing that I did was go beat down a tree with my hands to get wood, for that wood I made sticks, which I then turned into a wooden pick axe so that I could go mine for coal. Why coal, for torches, why torches, because I was in a race against the sun at this point. Once the sun goes down the monsters spawn and they are out for blood. The torches work to keep them away because monsters won't spawn in light, but that won't keep them away from killing you once they have spawned.

So after I got some torches I dug myself a little hole in the side of a hill so that I could hold up for the first night. That was pretty safe, nothing could get me until the morning so I just kind of hung out. When morning came I was unaware that some of the monsters didn't die off by the daylight, namely Creepers, which I have a nasty little way of blowing up when they get too close to you, leaving giant craters, which in this case I became one of.

Ok respawned and ran back to pick up all of the goodies that I had already picked up and decided that my little hill home wasn't going to cut it. I had heard that if you build up on top of a mountain then the mobs have less of a chance to come get you, but I didn't want to live like some hermit up on top of a mountain because that would have been a pain in the butt to get to anything else (except for the forest that is located on top of a mountain to the East of my eventual home). So I decided that I'd use a slightly larger hill to make my house. And thus I began digging in and down, just in time to beat the night. Thankfully the little hill house was large enough that I could move around a little bit and set up my work bench, stove, and chest. And thus I went to work on more useful tools made from stone, including my first stone sword.

When the day dawned, like the noob I am, I walked out to quickly get mauled by another batch of monsters that had decided to set up shop right outside my door. Ok as supernanny would say, this crap was unacceptable, thus it was time to set up some exterior defenses. Now there aren't actually any weapon type of defenses (at least not that I know of yet), the first thing that I did was cut out a little walkway from the front of my house that wraps around to the North side of my house. This at least will keep the baddies from waiting right outside my door when the morning comes, but note to self, make the house face the East in the future, and not blocked by a large mountain preventing me from getting the full sunrise (no wonder my days seem so short).

Anyway the idea then occurred to me that maybe monsters were spawning on top of my house because the roof was made of grass, thus I decided that I needed a roof. Originally I was going to go farm up some wood then reconsidered and used stone because I had started a little quarry within my house (more on that later) and I was rolling in stone, hence the stone ceiling was started. Of course knowing me a stone ceiling wasn't going to be enough, let's make this into a stone tower so that I can see if there is anything outside of my door in the morning, or better yet let's make a second entrance so that I'll really be safe. So after some time I finally got the tower completed with windows pretty much around the entire perimeter (yes glass windows, because I live by a lot of sand).

With my house pretty secure I felt a lot safer waiting out the night listening to the monsters surround my house in the darkness, and when I finally looked out from my tower I saw them, it looked like a starter zone in WoW, there were dozens upon dozens of those bastards out there. Out of dumb luck I seemed to have built my house/tower/castle in the middle of a monster city (not a real city). This could only mean one thing, the house was going to need more defense, maybe a moat and a bridge.

So this is where day 2 really starts, I decided that if I built a bridge and cut out the land around my house then the mobs wouldn't be able to get to me. So with a couple of shovels I set to work cutting out my "moat" (no water... yet...) Once completed I needed away to block them off, I was thinking that maybe I could just remove a block when I wanted to go back and forth but that seemed pretty tedious so I made a gate with a door so that only I could get in. That's when aesthetics came into play, I adorned it with some torches and short stone wall to make it look awesome, even dropped a little sign outside saying when I built the Ick house.

The following game day I felt a lot safer, nothing was going to get to me if I didn't want them too, but I made a couple more additions, like a glass wall along the front of the original entrance and an outer perimeter wall just to keep them a little further away so that I wouldn't need to listen to them at night. But I had something that I really needed to do, I needed arrows. Sure my house was safe, but there was still the threat of creepers nearby in the morning, thus I set off to find some rubble which might drop flint (arrowheads). For the most part rubble is found in the side of mountains or caves, and I just happened to find a huge pile of it by a very large cave, I should say hole in the Earth because it's a huge hole. Aside from rubble I found iron, which is used to make steel and better tools, but I also found a chicken that had fallen in the hole, that was kind of funny, but he had other friends too. Within the hole and very near all of the rubble I was digging through I heard a crapload of spiders and there it was my first dungeon spawner. Underground little monster spawners can appear and this one was a spider factory. Without the proper weapons and armor to take on the spiders not to mention lack of arrows that I had come looking for, I decided to leave it alone for now, I did end up putting a sign by the entrance calling it the Spider cave because signs are cool.

Back home I went and decided that I was going to see if I could find anything of use below my little place in the world and before too long I bust into a natural cave beneath me, my thoughts, oh boy time to explore a little bit. With torches in hand I started my decent, which ended up being short lived. Remember I mentioned that creepers explode, well out of the darkness one of guys came charging after me, I turned tail and raced out of there as fast as I could, thankfully he wasn't a great climber so he wasn't able to follow me up. Afterwards I erected a door to keep anything else from climbing up and giving me a big shock one day in my house while I might be crafting.

And that pretty much sums up the adventure for the first two days.

I really don't know what the future of Minecraft is, but there is something that is just so cool about setting up these little houses and just exploring. I was thinking that I might make a second house and do it right, after that who knows where my exploration will take me. What could be really thrilling is that your spawn spot doesn't change, so the further away you get from home, the greater the risk, because when you die, you drop everything you have on you. So how cool would it be to just explore the world and set up little supply stations and forts around the world as you press on. If you die, go off in another direction and see where that takes you. Eventually you'll have made an entire little kingdom around where you spawned with random loot all over the place. Sounds kind of like the makings of one kick ass RPG if you ask me, and imagine if someone else then played that save file not knowing where you had been and they went off exploring seeing the traces of your work from previous play, to me that has the makings of a real adventure. Let me explain...

In a game like Oblivion the world is huge and there are towns and castles and random loot all over the place, but you know what sucks about it? It's all artificial, all of it is there because some artist or some programmer decided that they would put X at spot Y. In Minecraft, if I build a house I built it because I needed that house to survive. If you find a diamond sword, you found where an epic adventure of mine ended. When you find a chest full of goodies, you're finding stuff that I left there from a previous adventure that I didn't want to carry with me. So really anything that you find is the direct result of my previous adventures. Torches are in places where I explored, meaning I may have left loot (probably not, but you never know). And really how alive is that world now when you think about it? If someone picked up my save they'd be playing in a game where my guy virtually lived, built, and died, how alive is that? To me that is the pinnacle of gaming a world with an honest to goodness history to it. AWESOME!!!

Intro

In the months after the ending of Lost I have been for lack of a better word, Lost without something to write about. Then it hit me on the way to work this morning that I should write about my gaming adventures. Sure that's nerdy as hell, but considering how much I enjoy doing it and the fact that I end up dumping all of my stories on Tony, Carl, and Gid I might as well take that off of them in e-mail and put it up here to cyberspace for myself, and anyone that gets bored and wants to check out what I'm doing. Maybe I'll get all crazy and start making videos and other crap but probably not due to the time that that would require.

So for what it is, I give you the adventures of Ickabod (my digital alter-ego).