September 22, 2010

Minecrafting, deeper and deeper

It all started with these articles from rock, paper, shotgun. Actually, that's not exactly right. I tried the Minecraft Classic a while ago, but did not really "get it". Well, with the free weekend (too late, sorry), I finally caved in (haha) and went into Minecraft.

So, stranded on this strange land, and finding the grisly remains of 3 people would were looking just too much like me to be comfortable, I went in search for a dwelling before night settled...

I found a nice cliff not too far from where I was, dug into it, which gave me enough material to upgrade my equipment to stone items. Quickly tired of putting blocks in front of my home every night to ward things that go bump (and not wanting to again be a thing that go argh) and destroying them the next morning, I installed a nice little door:


It worked like a charm. I could open and close it with a flick of the wrist. Near it, I had my stove and my crafting table, as I passed a good portion of the day outside. On the morning came a creeper, wanting to sell me cookies or something. When I did not let him enter, the guy got so angry that he blew up, taking with him my door, the wall, my stove and table. Talk about being on a short fuse !

So, the next incarnations of my tools were put further away, with a big chest for all the thing I had accumulated:



It was a nice comfy home. Problem was, being stranded here left me a bit of an insomniac. Incapable of sleeping, I spent the nights mining, searching for coal for my torches (I know of a guy that was mining in the dark for 3 days; it did not end well...) and for iron. Also, the worry of hearing all those awful things that wanted my flesh put such a cramp on my stomach that I could not eat a thing. The problem with all that? I had no sense of time.
I would often come back from my mining in order to go outside, only to find that most of the day had already sweeped past.
I needed a way to know the time of day...

I decided I needed a mezzanine. Could I even do that? I needed sand for that... So off I went in search for sand. Luck struck out, and a nice sand trap revealed itself. I just added some stairs to easily go up and down (turns out I'm a bit of a stairs freak, you'll see)


Smelting is easy. You can even keep it running while you do other things. If you've got enough wood, or coal.


Glass ! So, t'was time to redo my ceiling with glass. I decided I needed two steps. A glass ceiling just above me, and another one faaaaaar above. You never know...



It went faster than I thought it would. Only had to blow some more glass once because I didn't put some blocks where I should have. It was nice. There was only one problem:



The cliff... The cliff above blocked my beautiful view !! Time for another project: DESTROYING THE CLIFF! Didn't know how long it would take. And running up, mining, then running down to get more tools would be tiring as hell. Stairs time !


Stairs. Beautiful stairs. So beautiful, in fact, that I cannot bear myself to use you. You know what, little stairs? Stay right there, I'll just step on my glassy ceiling, and mine the cliff from below. Really, get some rest, relax, i've got it.


A temporary cobblestone tower on my fragile glass ceiling, what could go wrong? This... Isn't... Really... Easy... Need to reach... Aw Crap...


Night is falling. The zombies will come and... Aw, shoot it, I'm almost finished. So I'm continuing my work, whitling away at the cliff when a zombie moans loudly right above me. Yay, that means I'm almost there! I just need to NOT have the zombie fall on me...
Worst minutes in my life. Let me tell you, if you haven't been shoveling dirt from under while a zombie moans and groans right above, you do not know what the words stress and fear mean...

And Finally !


That is MUCH better !

Next up : The aqueduct !