Episode 4 Minecraft: The Bay

When I last left you, I had explored the mountains in view of my home. While it was exciting for me, it was not really advancing my current goal of making the bay a habitable and logical "Home Base". I identified that I needed to explore, but it was behind my "home" mountain that I had not seen. So I proceeded to check it out.

Immediately rounding the corner, I see the large mountain that is sort of a "sister" mountain to my home mountain. It has a giant hole in it that almost looks like an eye. I decided to call this Cyclops mountain after the mythical giants with one eye. Directly in front of this was an arch that I had to go through to reach the back of my home mountain. It looked disturbingly like someone shot a cannon through 2 mountains now that I look at it in the pictures...



Anyway, it was on the other side I was facing that I saw this huge monolithic shape appear on my horizon. I got closer and saw an amazing looking mountain that after some thought I've named Anvil Mountain.



While I was looking at Anvil mountain I realized that my mountain had several caves in the back. One obviously lead strait through where I was planning on building a lookout fort. The other lead to an unexpected location. I illuminate them in these pictures but you can see that it lead to the underground river near my home!



Then things got CRAZY. While looking at my home I heard a sound, a "uhhhhhhhhhh" kind of sound. I went to my home and I closed my door and grabbed my sword. When I rounded the corner, I was met by this!



HOLY CRAP, zombies are real and they just happen to be invading my home area. I fought off this one eventually, but it scratched me up something awful. As the sun came up, I was able to see it was a whole gaggle(herd? crowd? flock?) of zombies. I recalled that in the movies the zombies couldn't survive during the day, and sure enough as the sun rose higher they caught fire. I thought I was in the clear.



Except apparently they take a while to die from fire!



I had to kill a zombie... that was on fire! How could it get worse than a zombie on fire? Fire is scary enough. Zombies are freaking mind blowing. Flaming Zombies are pure nightmare fuel. I survived the night and survived the morning and decided I needed to kick things in to high gear and get some stuff done.

Episode 3 Minecraft The Bay

So morning came without incident. I went outside and grabbed my crafting bench and went inside. A few stones creates me a furnace. Some sand, some coal, and now my shelter has glass windows! I'm a regular Joe Rockenfeffer. Actually, my shelter is pretty poor, but it keeps me safe at night. Here's a picture of it so you know what I'm workin' with.



So you can see that I don't really want to stick around here, I decide to go looking for cows. Cows, I figure, will give me something good. Perhaps some steak to eat, or milk. I go up the hill, but instead of going back up the mountain from yesterday, I head towards what I hope is some flat land. What I find is unpleasent...



I call this "The Hole". The whole damn mountain is hollow! This is the largest by far, but I soon find that almost all the hills here have smaller "holes". After about 3 mountains explored, I come to a flat area at last. It had roses and it had cows! Moo Mesa sounds stupid, so I named it Rose Point. Off the edge I see a large body of water.



I chased some cows around and killed them. They have leather, and I need some protective armor in case a mountain decides to explode. Come to think of it, I hope the mountains aren't hollow because they all exploded.... Anyway. With some leather in my bags, I headed back toward my shelter as it became night.

Episode 2 Minecraft: The Bay

Today started out well.

I made my way down the side of the bay and found a few pieces of coal beyond a waterfall near my beach shelter. On my way back I cleaned up the coastline a little bit in anticipation of needing to mine there later. I made a few torches and felt much better about my situation. With my new confidence I began giving myself some more room in my shelter. I needed a few more blocks so I began chopping at the rocks in the cave beside the shelter and soon broke through to an underground cave. Using torches to light my way I was surprised to find...



I was excited, this was my first big discovery in game. The water moves fast, but is not so deep. I did not want to waste my rare torches, so after this shot I gathered back up my flares and left. I took the blocks I had and I squared away my shelter. I created a crafting bench and set it on the beach, I then fashioned me a door to put on my shelter to make it easier getting in and out.

I began feeling adventurous, so I resolved the climb the mountain and get a look at the cave up top where I planned on making a Lookout platform as my previous post illustrates. I get near the top, with barely any place to find a footing, when suddenly I hear a loud hiss. I look around and see nothing and then suddenly BOOM!



Something blew up the side of the mountain, I was blown toward the edge, but luckily did not fall off to my death. Only a few rocks had hit me. I took a moment to collect myself, I had no idea what had caused such an explosion. I looked and found the cave about 10 feet above me, luckily its structure did not seem damaged by the explosion, though I did not explore it further. Night was setting in. I went back to the shelter.



I was not sure what had happened up there. I did decide I need to make some windows for my shelter so I could see the things that may come around at night. Unfortunately I left my crafting bench outside on the beach... and my fear was too much for me to run out and retrieve it. Windows would have to wait for sunrise.

Episode 3 continues my exploration, as well as small improvements to my shelter.

Minecraft: The Bay Episode 1

New Beginnings
--------------

I am going to skip the "What is Minecraft" stuff. To get to know it better, keep reading my blogs each day I update them, or watch some youtube videos; both are cool with me.

So I was unsure about this world when I was thrown in to it. I have a woefully small amount of information about my first couple of days. Like most people, I went looking for coal along the coast line. My world reminded me of sandstone cliffs in China. Lots of caves that looked to be carved by tidal forces. These caves had very little coal. I fashioned a pick axe, looked around, dug a little and then night was falling. I did what everyone in this situation does without coal...

I dug a hole and covered myself in for the night. I did not have enough material to cover the entire roof. I sat there, hearing nothing for a long time, when the moon sudden materialized above me. The small hole in my roof was in perfect alignment with the moon. It was somewhat more comforting than complete blackness.



That was my area, and when I saw it from here, I was absolutely happy with it. I saw a lot of potential. I especially liked the island, I had cleared the top of it on my way to this vantage point, and it looked nice all flat like that. I immediately began planning. If you do not plan in Minecraft, you're going to be in a ton of trouble later on.

I decided I wanted to preserve the natural beauty of this scene. I wanted it to look like I built AROUND the landscape, not make the landscape move around my buildings. These are my plans as of now.



A: This is where my shelter is. I built it in the dark so it looks unnatural, but I was worried about being eaten.

B: This is my goal. I want to build a lookout/lighthouse home here, high enough where I can find it from far away.

C: I want to walk around easier, I am going to clear this material, I do not think it will harm the surroundings

D: I want to do like an overhanging walkway here, there is not a lot of sand, so I will carve tastefully into the cliff side here

Well that's it for episode 1. I promise it gets a little more interesting later, its just a slow start :D This season is 7 Episodes long. Tune in next time as I explore my immediate surroundings!

Reboot

My last post here was almost 1 year ago. I'll reboot this and see how far I get. I want to add in boardgames now as well, since I now have a fascination with them and a girlfriend that shares my love of such games :)

I think I'll keep the old antique graphic template, as for the artwork I will change it as soon as I get an idea.

A little update to my gaming:

Recently Finished: Metroid (NES)

Now Playing:
-Soul Nomad and the World Eaters
-Petville
-Minecraft

I am stuck with a tiny TV in my room right now. When I can I sneak into the living room to play my PS2 there, and right now I"m playing Soul Nomad and the World Eaters by NIS. Wonderfully awesome game. A bit more simplistic in the character combat than Phantom Brave, but the fighting graphics are amazing. The story is great so far, and funny as hell.

I'm playing Petville on Facebook to get my "sims" fix. I mainly choose a room, pick what I want the room to be and focus on that room until it is done.

Minecraft. There are a list of games that look terrible in screenshots, sound terrible in description, and yet are some of the best games ever made. Put Little Big Planet into that category. Now put Minecraft in there as well. Minecraft is sort of a MMO-esque crafting game, but set in a world that is much more like a lego wonderland. The world you live in is randomly generated, mapper programs have mapped it as 8x the size of the Earth, so you will never run out of new places to explore, but you mainly build your home stead and craft things. Sort of Harvest Moon too, but sort of lonely right now. Later they are adding a more comprehensive multiplayer mode where your friends will live in your world as well.

Anyway, more about Minecraft soon as I'm writing a whole freakin' Chronicle.