Playing Minecraft

[schneefink]

There were a couple of quotes I saw often together with art in memory of Technoblade, so I looked them up and found out they were from the poem one sees after killing the dragon in Minecraft. I started reading the poem but it's so beautiful that I stopped because just in case I ever played Minecraft I wanted to have the experience of reading it in full for the first time then.

…less than a week later I started playing Minecraft. What a surprise. I named my world Aurantia, after the hidden area of harpies and trolls in Phoenotopia: Awakening, and I left all the normal difficulty settings, which I'm worried I'll regret but it's okay so far. I've been making regular notes and it just randomly occurred to me that I might as well post them, idk.


First day: climbed a mountain and died almost immediately in the first few nights. Then I looked up how to make a crafting table, made leather boots and a helmet and figured out how regeneration works etc., and was feeling quite a bit better but then died to two zombies in the next night, and unfortunately I hadn't managed to make a bed yet so all my stuff despawned before I managed to find the spot where I died again.

Tuesday: I had full iron armor! But no bed, and I was too excited to find a mine and mine copper and then was blown up by a creeper I didn't see. No chance I could find my items again before they despawn, boo. But that only took me about an hour and a half, so not too bad, and now I know to be more careful. Unfortunately I already mined all the easily findable iron from that one big mountain…
I made two or three more attempts, and I even managed to place a bed once, but then I lost track of time and didn't manage to make it back to the bed before being shot by a skeleton, and then I was disoriented in the night and lost all my gear again. Boo. I might have to find a new mountain to get iron… Silver lining, at least I didn't find enough iron to make an iron pickaxe and mine those emerald blocks I found, otherwise I would have lost them. I really need to find a place to place my bed that I can easily find again, and then I can place a chest there too.

The next day I was going to be smarter about this and use more signs to remember where I went. And it worked well! I found a trader with llamas that attacked me, I found a little bit of iron (I made shears so now I have plenty of wool, at least), and shortly afterwards I found an entire village. Very convenient! Plenty of houses, villagers I can trade with (in the future), even a chest with some iron armor pieces I looted, and some things I will be able to use way later, like a brewing stand. Then I felt confident enough to mine my first emeralds. Unfortunately, right after that I was attacked by bandits – sorry, "illagers" – and wound up with the status effect "Bad Omen", which (as the wiki explained) means if I returned to the village now it would be raided, so I stay away for now. I can cure it with milk, for which I need a bucket, for which I need more iron, but this stupid quarry seems to have no more iron so I might have to search a little further out.

On Thursday I spent a long time mining for iron, including, unwisely, in a natural cave – those are much more dangerous because monsters, but they are so tempting! I died once, but thankfully found my stuff again. Eventually I did find a piece of iron ore and made a bucket, and then it took me a while longer to find a cow because I had misremembered where they were, and then I was finally ready to drink some milk, only to realize that I didn't need to any longer because the status effect disappeared when I died.

I did some more resource gathering, and I leveled up one villager and got some more emeralds. Then I wanted to just take a look at the other side of a mountain, but I got turned around and lost, idk how to find that village again where I have a chest full of stuff… But I found a second village! In the middle of a forest, near a lake, and basically on top of a ravine. Fairly annoying to even just walk around the village, actually. But there are foxes nearby, there is a cat in a crate, and I built a boat and tamed a dog, which is nice.
No idea where to go next tbh, further out just for fun or turn around and try to find the first village again. Maybe that, and this time with better landmarks? Would be good to eventually know where stuff is so I can find it again. And then at some point I want to start farming and then mining for diamonds and other stuff…

On Sunday, after having had the fantastic idea to use F3 to figure out my coordinates, I decided to try and find the first village again. I didn't know where it was, of course, but I figured the coordinates could at least help me go in a straight line. …they didn't, I gave that up pretty soon, and I got lost a lot. I did find a broken nether portal with a whole block of gold, and a golden shovel with Silk Touch in a chest nearby, that was neat. Then instead of looking for the first village I decided to just head to a direction where I thought I saw smoke, regardless of which village it was, and it turned out to be my first village! With redstone dust from a cleric and the gold I made a compass and a clock, those will probably end up being useful. I also found another half-a-village not far from the first one. And I dared to leave a house right after dawn to go after a spider and was surprised by a creeper, but I survived the explosion with half a heart – the benefits of better armor! (Didn't even get string out of it.)
I really need to start making a food farm, and ideally with some animals too, but I want to find a good location first. Near those villages there are so many hills that I always feel lost, but maybe if I level it a little first? Would be some work but doable.

Monday: some landscaping, because the area around the village is way too hilly, and some exploring of that area. I think I will build a house and farms there, because it is close to two villages, many animals, water, trees, and mountains aren't that far away either.

Tuesday: I planted my first crops! …figuring out water buckets was harder than I thought. And I thought I knew where I wanted build my base, next to the village and nicely on top of a hill so I can easily find it again, but then I realized that it might be better not to build it on a hill so it´s closer to the areas with better mining potential. Idk, still thinking about it.

Friday: Made it back to the second village, though I would not have managed without coordinates. I forgot how frustrating this village is… the houses are so far apart, and half of the job blocks have no villagers by them. Idk if that will get better on its own or if I should just place the blocks where more villagers are. Next, mining. I fell down a waterfall into a cave that was way deeper than I thought, but at a sort-of-platform there was already a tiny house with a bed so this is my mining hut now.

Saturday: Soo I tried to swim up the waterfall, fell, died, and lost some of my supplies that were swept away by the water deeper into the cave, including my iron chestplate >.< (I blame all the pro players I watched who made it look easy.) So I built a stone column up instead and later built ladders up. I thought swimming down the waterfall would be easy and then I started drowning… I did quite a bit of mining and found more iron, redstone, copper, lapislazuli, gold, and my first three diamonds! I could go to the nether now. But I think I will do some more mining first and hopefully get diamond armor, and trade for an enchanted sword with that one weaponsmith novice etc., because I am still very afraid of monsters.

Sunday: I finally got string from a spider I killed, built a fishing rod, got raw fish, and made friends with two cats :) I also did some more mining, but very unsuccessfully: I found nothing but a massive cave which I'm too scared to explore.
The smart thing now would probably be to make some food farms, level up some villagers etc. and then mine in a different direction, but farming is booring. Maybe I do need to look up a few tips on how to make those semi-automated farms, then I don´t have to bother so much anymore. So far my main food source has been stealing wheat from the village, but that was the other village, this one has less wheat just lying around. I could just go back to the first village and steal more wheat...

Monday: More mining: found more gold, redstone, and iron, but no diamonds. I did find a lush cave! Looks nice with all the glowberries. The wiki tells me I can find clay there which I can trade for emeralds, so I might try that, or I can try to find my way out, idk yet.

Comments

[melannen]

That sounds excellent! Sounds like you found a great spot to get settled, too. It took me a lot longer than that to figure out what I was doing (I think I took several days to even learn how to make a crafting table! --- although in my defense at that point I'd never watched anyone else play and also was playing on a version with no crafting recipes. I definitely didn't get brave enough to climb waterfalls or talk to villagers for a good long time!)

If you're having trouble finding your way back I really recommend a map and compass! Most streamers don't use them because they seem to either have mods that mean they don't need them or they're just that good, but I cannot manage without them. You can mark villages and mines things with banners on the map.

(I recently started a new world - only my third one! - and I was going to actually play with hostile mobs turned on this time, but then I had a village *right on spawn* and the mobs kept killing my villagers before I was geared up enough to do anything about it, plus I was having a lot of lag, so I chickened out and turned them off again. ;D I turned off particles and that helped the lag, so when I get the spawn village fully mob-proofed I will turn them back on. Maybe.)

[schneefink]

I can turn off mobs? Intriguing...
I haven't noticed mobs killing any villagers so far, seems like I was lucky, or maybe just didn't notice. I thought that's what the iron golems are for - I could probably kill them for iron but was too worried about the villagers to try.

A map is a good idea! I haven't used one yet because there's no cartographer in the village and sugar cane is rare (I need to figure out how to grow some) but now that I think about it a map would be super useful. Got some more exploring to do! And mining, and farming, and and and...

[melannen]

Sugar cane should be pretty common along shorelines in all biomes, if you find one and follow it, and extremely easy to grow! Anywhere it will let you place a sugarcane block, it will grow. With wild cane you can harvest just the upper blocks and leave the base to grow back too (I did that for a while before I figured out farming.) A cartography table is also really easy to make and lets you make much bigger maps.

If you set difficulty to "peaceful" there are no monsters, and you also don't get hungry and have really good health regeneration. (You can still easily die of environmental hazards like fire, falls, mine collapse, and drowning, though.) The downside is there are some in-game things that are really hard to get without killing mobs, some people get bored, and also you will get very complacent and die constantly if you ever go on a world that has them. :P Also you *can't* eat or drink anything but milk.

Iron golems protect villagers, but villagers are very stupid and will easily get stuck in corners out of range of golems' protection (or golems will get stuck somewhere useless - I had one desert village where they kept dying to cactus spines). It's not the end of the world if a few of them die to mobs, and mobs only spawn when there are players around, so if you aren't spending much time in the village they'll probably be safe (the fact that my village was at spawn, so I knew I wouldn't be able to avoid it until I geared up enough to not constantly die with no bed, is the main reason I was so worried. Also I wanted a good librarian early on, and a good librarian dying is tragic.)

But that's why the streamers almost always just keep them in captivity once they start leveling them up, they really like to die. I just can't make myself get into slavery, kidnapping and human trafficking. One reason I like the early Dream SMP so much is they aren't allowed to do that there, so it's a lot more like the way my games go than on other SMPs that let you have captive villagers.

[schneefink]

I figured out my problem with sugarcane: I was trying to grow it on farmland ^^

I just died twice in a row, once from falling off a cliff and then when I wanted to collect my stuff I was shot by a skeleton (hate these guys), fortunately I lost nothing I can't replace but still annoying. That will teach me to be more careful and less greedy. (Eh, probably not.)

I've never had a librarian but I just looked them up and it sounds like I will be able to use them soon! Just a few more diamonds and I will be able to make an enchanting table...

Yeah, it really depends on how you view villagers but I don't think I'll ever start imprisoning them. I felt so guilty when I destroyed that one fletching table because I was hoping that I would get a different trade offer after I rebuilt it and then the fletcher was mad! (And the trades stayed the same except the prices went up.)

I also feel weird about the concept of mob farms... idk, maybe I'll think differently once I really need more xp/certain resources ^^

[dreamersdare]

I feel like Minecrack has gotten a lot more complex than when I used to play it (Day 1: Sole objective was to survive the first night. Collect enough stone with your bare hands to make a pickaxe and a sword, scope the local area for coal, build a hut out of dirt. Get wood for a crafting table and build a furnace so you can make torches. Light up your dirt hut so creepers can't spawn next to your face in the middle of the night and wait...). But that was back when it was Notch's baby in beta :D

But I used to love caverns. Light them up like a Christmas tree as you went round them to stop things spawning behind you and gather up All The Goodies. Invariably get blown up by creepers at least once, shot to death by skeletons you can't find multiple times and ultimately get lost and have to build a staircase out to freedom.

Compasses and maps are your friend though, unless they've changed. Navigating the world used to be pretty much impossible without them.

[melannen]

That's still how you play! It's just that after you've gotten bored of caving there's now a LOT MORE other things you can do (also caving got a lot tougher with the recent Caves update changing how they generate.)

[melannen]

You don't need an enchanting table to use librarian enchantments, just an anvil! (Which takes half a stack of iron, but no diamonds.)

I am going to relocate some villagers soon I think because they are in a village with a lot of cliffs to fall off and die/caves to walk into and get trapped, but there's a nearby much safer plains village I can move them to, fingers crossed I figure out how without killing them.

[schneefink]

I have not yet built a single house! I usually made myself caves for the night, and later moved into houses in the village. Maybe I should do that one of these days :)

It is the repeated death by monsters part that scares me off caverns - I'm a wimp ^^ Maybe if I always make sure to have a bed nearby? Hm. Or just make a few rounds only meant for lighting things up, that could work.

[schneefink]

Ooh, good to know. I think there even was an anvil in the other village, I should go check. And also look up how to encourage the creation of more villagers.
Good luck figuring out how to move yours :)

[dreamersdare]

I think the last time I played, we had the Nether and we had villagers (and trading had developed) but it was defintely before Microsoft bought it, I think. I can't remember how long it's been now.

Maybe I ought to go back to it... Some of the new additions look quite fun!

[dreamersdare]

I think it comes from there being no houses back when we first started (villages were a later addition) and a dirt house was quicker to build than a cave sometimes depending on the biome. But I have absolutely done the cave thing as well. I used to carry a bed when exploring caverns, so I could dig into a wall, stick up a torch, place the bed and have a snooze :D

My torch consumption was nonsensical though. Although I think there are more options for lighting things up nowadays!

[schneefink]

I use so many torches when mining that I actually ran out of coal at one point recently ^^ (Okay I also traded some to villagers for emeralds but still.) I know there are other options for lighting things up but I either have not found them yet or do not have access yet. Well there are campfires but that seems like a waste.

[dreamersdare]

Jack'o'lanterns! Okay, they need a torch but i love lighting up my homestead with freaky pumpkin heads!

Reforestation and charcoal is my default solution to a coal shortage. I have a little fenced in, lit up tree zone currently where every chopped down tree is replaced by a sapling. There will be no creepers in my wood/charcoal supply!

[schneefink]

...it had not occurred to me that I could use charcoal for torches. That's going to be useful! And I didn't know I could use the carved pumpkins for lights either, I'll definitely try that out once I make myself a home base.

[dreamersdare]

They both add light and look damn cool. I'm playing a low coal game with Mr DD at the moment and I have to admit, charcoal is a life saver! He likes to plant jungle trees in fours to make those mega jungle trees and, really, wood and by extension charcoal just stop being a problem then!

[schneefink]

I want jungle trees! Sadly I have not found a jungle yet. (Or a swamp. Or a desert.) I'm still looking for a good place to build my base - currently I'm migrating between two villages which of course means the stuff I want is always in the other village. There's so much to do, it's always so hard to decide what to do next. Today I spent almost two in-game days just fishing, but I got a saddle so it was definitely worth it.

[dreamersdare]

Ha, I literally build my home base at my spawn point, wherever that happens to be. I figure I can always build something else later but I never do, or at least never anything as big :D

But I know what you mean; I always seem to be picking my next 'job' from a list of at least give things, no matter how much I tick off!

[schneefink]

I had completely forgotten where my spawn point even was, but recently when I went exploring I found some of my earliest hide-outs again, turns out by coincidence my home base is quite close :)