Minecraft - Whole lot of pictures

I've been pretty lazy about posting pictures so here is a whole bunch of them from my latest adventures.


This is the Red castle. As you can see I went with a contemporary look accented with flames surrounding the outer walls. The ring of glass around the building is a trademark of my design, I figure if there is enough sand why not see all of the monsters.

This is the vault in the Red castle, home of the richest spoils of the land.

This is the Orange portal, humm maybe I should put some wool in there.

While this might look like any other cave, I tried to capture the insanity that this one is. In the picture you can see several ways that lead off into the dark. Normally that's ok when you have a wall behind you as well, in this case the cave opens up behind me as well. The area behind me though at this point has been explored.

My arrow machine. It's not the greatest design in the world, but it works like a charm. Skeletons get stuck in the water in their dungeon and then flow to the cactus, the water on the left then pushes them into the cactus, killing them and allowing their loot to sink to the collection point.

This is the entrance to the arrow factory. As you can see I don't like surprises around my front door. The roof is also lined with an over hanging checkerboard design to keep spiders from getting up top.

Another look at the entrance to the arrow factory and it's cave. The cave has been walled on the top to prevent creepers from dropping down on me if I use this entrance. During the day I do, but at night I usually come out through the arrow factory, it's safer.

This is the entrance to the Orange portal tunnel. I went a little crazy in protecting it with flames and cactus. I'm telling you playing on hard has me really worrying about getting killed.

This is the Orange castle as of today. I have a feeling that it's going to get an expansion in the near future. Again the cactus, with the V shape in front of the door there is no way that I can round a corner and get jumped by a creeper. The top of the castle also uses the overhang checker design to prevent spiders climbing the cactus. And I put a little orange walkway by the door for fun.

This is the inside of the Orange castle. The little hut in there is the same hut that I built on day one. I built a little farm, that I never use, and the walled off section in the back is my crafting and vault room. The castle itself serves my purposes and is safe from mobs, except that a clever spider could climb the flag on the outside, but I'll let that go (famous last words I'm sure).

So there it is, all of the locations that I have been talking about in my previous posts. I should post more pictures but normally I'm playing and don't want to spend the time doing the blog right, but I needed to take a night and do it correctly. So voila!

Minecraft - The Return to the Red Kingdom

After completing the arrow factory, it was time to dive back down into the depths of this expansive cave. And let me just tell you, this cave is hell, pure absolute hell. It has huge caverns, fractured walls with lots of tiny spawn locations, gravel pretty much every where, vertical expanses, water, lava, you name it, this place has it. I honestly think that even with all my months of playing, this cave is the hardest that I have come across, and then playing on Hard, oh that's just the icing on the cake.





So I dove down there, twisting passages that open up to 8 or 9 different directions, so my normal systimatic exploration was not really an option. There was a lot of run in drop a torch or two and run out. It's not the best way to explore because by doing that it essentially gives the mobs more chances to spawn, but considering that they had half a million places to spawn from anyway, what's the difference.





The worst part about this cave was that even after spending a couple evenings exporing the lower reaches of it, there was only one diamond to be found. Seriously this cave was a piece of shit, but it had to be explored. And then there it was, finally I found a couple exposed diamonds, 5 in total. Where were the diamonds? Naturally on the edge of a vast open area with water flowing right towards me, the perfect mob express. By this time my son was looking to play so I manned up and mined out those diamonds then got my ass out of there.





Later that evening I had the chance to make my journey back to the Red Kingdom, I had my diamond pickaxe so based on my rules, I was good to go. Not knowing how far the journey was going to be, I loaded up on supplies for an adventure that I was thinking might take days. Nope, turns out that 2 stone picks only get you about half a days travel in the nether, so I was a lot closer than I thought I was or wanted to be. I mean it's not close, but it's sure not as far as I was envisioning. Note to self, go further next time, a lot further.





Anyway I made it back to the Red castle and it felt like I was at the spawn again. It was odd, I had been here only a week or so ago, but it felt ancient, it was no longer home. Realizing that making a mine track between Red and Orange on the overworld was going to be tedious I accepted that I was just going to make a cart in the nether to do it, mainly because I'm looking for a good excuse to make a good mine track like in the multiplayer world before. I pulled some iron and gold from the Red castle and returned back to Orange.





When I got back to Orange I had a revelation, "I was coming out of the nether into an unsecured very large cave." hummmm Ok time to enclose this thing so that I don't have to worry about getting jumped. I closed off the portal and dug myself a tunnel under the water between the portal and the castle to what is a makeshift entrance closer to the castle. Eventually I plan on digging the tunnel all the way to the castle, but for now it works.





Playing a hardcore style has kind of taken my building methods to new heights in the form of monster security. Cactus are pretty much everywhere around the building to try and kill mobs, and with netherrack now a part of my avaliable inventory, lots and lots of flames are now a part of every design. I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with the fire on my main castle, but it's going to be cool.

Pwning noobs since 2011

Not Minecraft related today, I had to link up something that I thought was pretty awesome, it's my 4 year old son playing MC. It's pretty dark and the video itself is nothing amazingly exciting, but it's him playing and I thought it was cool.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Ickabodxx

Minecraft - The Arrow Factory part 1

Wrote this the other day before the pictures thread.

I have been playing this game since November and the other night was the first time I had ever found the holy grail of mob spawners, yes I finally found a skeleton spawner.


Burdened with the fact that there aren't a lot of caves around the Orange Castle I went back over the lake to the small cave that I had started work on the night before. I was kind of hoping that I wouldn't have to cross over water every single time I wanted to get into a cave, but such is life. I had already cleared out the top portion which left me with a single passageway that headed down, blocked off by gravel at the bottom. I hate gravel, there is always something nasty waiting on the otherside of it, and this of course was no exception, but at least it wasn't a creeper just hiding there waiting for me.


I dug out the gravel and started to put some torches down but no sooner than I had placed my first one than I hear the familiar sound of "twang" an arrow impacted the rock right next to me. As usual I lost control of my mouse in an "Oh shit!" moment regained control and engaged the skeleton. 5 arrows later the skeleton was a pile of bones, but there was no time to celebrate like a team of commandos a couple more rounded a wall of cobblestone and it was on. I dropped one of them but considering that this was a fresh start I wasn't armed with my normal complement of arrows so I would be out of ammo quickly if I stuck around to have a fire fight with them. I made a break for the surface with the skeletons on my tail, thankfully they got lost on their way up and now I was free to figure out how I was going to secure this dungeon.


From the surface I noticed that the dungeon was only about 20 blocks down so I decided that the best way to clear it out was to give it a big sunlight. Using the solar powered death apparatus otherwise known as the sun the skeletons were killed off leaving me free to get down there and torch it up so that it would still be safe at night. I like it when dungeons are off in a little corner and you don't have to worry about any extra mob help coming in to join the fun, of course this was not going to be the case here. There were three large caverns that connected to the dungeon that needed to be sealed off before I could deal with the spawner. Normally I don't close off tunnels, I just go clear them out, but in this case there wasn't much of an option, dirt to the rescue. After that I went in and put up my torches securing the dungeon for my future arrow production.


And that is where I left if for the evening, it was too late to begin figuring out how to best make my mob grinder (oh and did I mention there is lava under the dungeon, just to make it interesting). That will be my next project, with a stockpile of arrows I'll then be ready to clear out the closed off passages and really begin the search for those diamonds and make my trek back to the fabled Red kingdom.

Minecraft - My hardcore rules

After playing for a long time single player can get a little old, so I added a couple rules to give it a hardcore feeling without actually deleting the world. Plus it adds a little more purpose to your daily MC life. Trust me after you're first character dies, you'll look at things a little different.

Spawn in the world as usual and play as usual on Hard until at least two nether portals can be created, once you have enough obsidian then the game becomes "hardcore".


Hardcore process


Each life is assigned a color (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Black) more colors can be used, but I'm using the color wheel for my game. The first base area is Red, which is essentially everything that you do between spawning in the game and the first post portal death. The Red base is the nexus for the entire first round of the game, all other cities will span out from it.



The Red player will play and build their city like normal, but once they die, that is it for the Red city and it's surrounding region.



Between players the game is set to peaceful so that the next player can be set up. In order to do that there are a couple things to do.



1) Place a grave where the previous player died (optional, but fun)


2) It's also fine to take the possessions that dropped upon death and put them in the chests back at the base (again optional)


3) Once ready to start the next player, equip them with 2 or 3 picks, 2 shovels, 20 obsidian, flint and tinder, and a stack of torches. This equipment is only to get to the next starting location, dye in the color of the next character can be brought as well.


4) Enter the nether and start digging in any random direction for as far as you can on the picks. If your portal is in an open area then just run a distance that you feel is far from your original spawn.


5) Once you've travelled far enough, set up a portal and re-enter the overworld. In order to make things very difficult, place obsidian over the entrance to the portal in the outside world so that there is no going back. BUT make sure you can get to the surface before doing so!


6) Once on the surface and you know that you can play like normal, throw away any items that you brought to get you to the surface from the original spawn location. picks, shovels, flint, torches, etc... This should start you off with nothing, just like you would if starting a new world.


7) When day begins in the game, set the difficulty to Hard and play like normal.

One extra rule

All base structures must be built above ground, meaning no digging into the side of a cliff to make a house. Mob traps and other minor structures are fine to make undergound, but nothing that you'd consider a base.

Finding the old locations


In order to find the old locations you are required to make a diamond pickax so that you can open the portal and return to the original spawn, however you aren't allowed to use the portal just yet. In order to use the portal you need to find the original portal on the surface. Basically exploring your way back to the Red base.


Once you've reached the Red base then you are free to use any materials that are stored there and the portal to get between the two locations. But I would recommend not using the nether as it makes it kind of easy.


Mr. Black


The Black character is essentially time. After going through all of the colors you will have Mr. Black to play with but his objective is different, instead of building a new city, his job is to destroy the old ones via TNT only. By making or using TNT from the previous cities he destroys their buildings with explosions, basically to mimic the effect that time and the elements would have on a ruined structure over time.



There are a couple ways of playing this character:


1) Go around destroying all the other cities, regardless of death until they have all been destroyed.


2) Destroy the other cities, and kill yourself in the explosion so that you don't see the effects of the ruins, making it a surprise for the future.


3) Play Hard like normal and work towards the destruction. Playing like you would with any of the other characters, except that you can travel to the old cities as soon as you want. But once you die then the next Red player takes over.




Second Red




After you're done having fun with Mr. Black it's time to restart settling the world again, just like rebooting the matrix. I guess Mr. Black is Neo =)


Anyway... Enter the starting portal just like you would for any other character, except this time you want to go at least twice as far away from the original spawn this time so that there is plenty of room to re establish the world. Then play like normal.



Finding ruins




If you find a ruin during play then you are able to take what is ever remaining there for your own use. It's suggested that you don't rebuild the structures because they are supposed to look destroyed, but that's up to the player.


Over time the world will be settled and ruined over and over again creating a huge RPG style world. The fact that you're starting over all the time is akin to a Hardcore mode, but unlike "the hardcore mode" where the world is deleted, your world keeps growing over time, but for you it's still a challenge to try and stay alive.

Minecraft - Mr. Black and the rules pt 2

The rule set that I'm using is an evolving process and I was wondering what I would do once I ran out of colors, long drives make for good times to come up with solutions.





I'm going to go with the characters of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple and Black as my lives in MC. There was some thought about using pink, while, grey, and brown, or whatever colors, but to keep it simple I'll just stick to the color wheel. Mr. Black however is a different animal than the others, his job is essentially to simulate time in my world. After all of the other colors have been killed off, Black will appear and go about finding the bases of the other colors and essentially blow them up. Yep I'm going to greif my own world.





Each color over time is going to find sulfur, but probably not enough to really do anything cool with it, I mean sure TNT is fun, but it's not always that practical. But it is practical if you just want to blow things up. So Black will take whatever sulfur that he finds in the various castles and whatever he farms up himself and then go about blowing up the color castles to leave them as ruins around the map. I'm not quite sure what I'll do about the loot in the chests, but I'm thinking that I'll just leave it in the chests that remain, as treasure to be sought after. Another thought is that Black gets killed in the blast, so I don't even see the distruction that I leave behind, making finding the ruins in the future that much more interesting.





Once Mr. Black dies then Red will make his return, but in a very distant location and thus the game will then repeat the way it is right now. Each color gets one life and once they are dead Black will come again and destroy what they have built. With a never ending map, I like the idea that I could be playing and randomly discover an ancient civilizations remains at somepoint, since my start locations are mostly going to be random it will be a surprise to find them.





I think that I finally figured out how to play my RPG game that I wanted from day one (go back and read my first post about MC) I'm curious to see how this all plays out, should take quite a while when I think about it. The world is going to be a huge file, it's already 25 megs.

Minecraft - Orange Coal-ah

My work on cheesy titles has no limits.


Day 2 with Mr. Orange was a trial of sorts, after doing a little bit of exploration it turns out that there aren't any natural caves near me. Well there was the little underground lake under my base that held that zombie but it's been cleared out now. Not having any caves around me might not sound like a big deal but it is when you don't allow yourself to strip mine, it makes finding coal at the start of the game a real pain in the butt. The catch of course is that you need coal for torches (yes there is charcoal) and you need the torches to go into the caves and find coal.


My search for coal took me over one of the mountains where I found a valley with a small cave attached to it. This area just looked like death, but I needed that coal so I worked my way down and with the few torches that I had, lit it up and went about my business. It was a little nerve racking because the area was anything but secure and with only leather armor on, one creeper could mean death. Thankfully the mining was uneventful and I was able to make it back to my castle with a decent amount of coal to at least put up some windows and make some clean stone for my structure (yeah I'm building a little more this time around). Of course my building burned through my coal and I was yet again forced to go find some more.


I headed off to the Western desert and found a couple small pockets of coal that helped out a little bit but didn't solve my problems. Then I headed back towards the portal and found a cave that was near the entrance (there is coal in the portal cave, but I'd consider that cheating since I found it on peaceful). In exploring that cave I was finally able to find a nice vein of the stuff and possibly found my first cave to explore in depth.


I'll be honest, I'm a little nervous to go back underground after the death of Mr. Red. I've put a good deal of work into my castle and I'd hate to see that all be lost by one creeper catching me off guard (see all the cactus around the entrance to the castle as an indicator) But that's the nature of the game. I've managed to find a decent amount of iron so I should be able to make iron armor and begin my decent looking for diamonds. Diamonds of course are the key in my game, once I find 3 of them I can "re-open" the portal and then go looking for the Red base and use it's resources again, and I'll make that rail line between the Orange and Red kingdoms. I mean you've got to have goals...


I also thought of another addition to my rule set, Mr. Black, but I'll use that as a separate post.