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.