Minecraft - Exploration

This is about a week ago now but I finally have a second to talk about the recent exploration that has inflated the world size up to 85 megs.

One night Drus got lost coming out of a cave with his 8 diamonds in tow, and like usual he was lost in the middle of no where because he doesn't carry a compass with him. After wondering around forever and finding all sorts of very cool cliffs he ended up running into the Creeper border patrol and they demanded his 8 diamonds for trespassing on their territory. Drus didn't feel like parting with those precious gems so instead he parted with his limbs as he was blown to pieces.

The outcome of this was that he found some awesome cliffs that he could build upon and told us that he was making a new base out there in the middle of no where. Keep in mind that he had a hard time finding his way back and at some point after I had found it, I needed to escort his drunk butt back to it. =)

And I have to admit I think that he found the coolest looking set of cliffs in the game, lava and water pouring from the top, it's actually quite awesome. But to find his new home I had to go out on a little adventure of my own to the East to find it. All I had to go on was that it was 2 days East of my outpost and that it was in a cliff that had water and lava coming out of it. I like a good challenge so I loaded up on gear and set out to find it.

At first I thought that it wasn't going to be out there as far as he was claiming it was, I mean he gets lost all the time who knows if he might have been going around in circles? From Beta station I set out East into an area that I had been to before when I came looking for my cactus, but once I got past the dessert, I was in mans country. The rolling hills broke into a patchwork of small checkered caves within them that will need to be explored on a future date, and the land led to a large ice covered expanse of water right at sunset, thus I decided that this would be a good location for Gamma station.

When day broke I set off across the water looking for his "awesome cliffs" I didn't find his place but I did find a massive cliff structure that was a real "oh wow" moment. I was thinking that his place was going to be in that structure because it was pretty awesome, or at least near it, but after a lot of searching and a minor bit of cave exploring it was getting dark so I climbed up the near mountain both for a better view and shelter for the night. Delta station was founded and it's above the cloud line, way the heck up there.

Day 3 and still I haven't found the lava in the cliff that I was looking for. I continued East thinking that maybe I hadn't gone far enough. The mountain range was huge and the peaks gave way to giant valleys, but still no sign of a lava flow. After a lot of looking it was time to hold up for the night yet again, this time thinking that I had probably gone too far to the East and that I should double back in the morning. So Epsilon station was established for the night.

On day 4 I headed back West thinking I was either going to find it or give up. My thought was that it had to be close to where the cliffs near Delta were so I was going to give that a look. And there it was, I have to admit seeing that wall of water pouring down the cliff (which I think was a natural flow) was pretty amazing. I wasn't able to figure out how to climb up there, so I took a look and then headed back home.

After heading out to the East it was time to find a nice area that I could make a little expansion for myself, so I headed to the North from my tower thinking that I would find some land up there. Boy was I wrong, apparently Drus had already been up that way because every cave that I saw had a torch poking out of it. That bastard!!! He had explored everything within a day from the lighthouse so if I was going to go expanding I was going to have to really go North. But I had another idea, but it's a secret.