Season 2 Minecraft: The River 5 Vengeance in Mine!

I started out pretty simply. I ran out at dawn, found several creepers and killed them with arrows. It takes about 5 arrows to kill them, so the "sling" sound was pretty fulfilling, but it was not enough for me. They weren't suffering.



For something filled with gunpowder, these guys sure do take a long time to burn. Which is actually fine with me, they squeal while they burn to death. Just light the ground in front of them on fire and they run strait through. Ah. That felt good.

But was it really enough? No.



This guy fell in a hole, and was then helpless. He couldn't escape, just hop there, hoping I would get close enough for him to explode... but I had other plans. I covered the hole with wood... nice flammable wood. Then I stacked gravel, nice heavy gravel on top. Oh? You didn't know that gravel falls as if held down by gravity? Neither did he.



It would be bad for him if somehow that wood was to disappear and allow all that rock come crashing down on his head.



"I don't deserve this." he said to me.
"Deserve ain't got nothin' to do with it" I said, as I lit the wood.

I then remembered I get extra rewarded for killing Creepers.



Poetic justice.



"I'll see you in hell" this one told me.

"Yeah... I reckon so" then I lit the fuse.




EDIT
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To anyone that is new to this, this is season 2, titled: The River. Season 1 was titled: The Bay. You have to dig back a few posts to find The Bay as this is my gamer blog and I have some non-minecraft stuff going on.

Minecraft: The River episode 04

This one gets interesting at the end.

The next big cut was a rather large one, the first where I really cut into a mountain side. It was during this cut that I realized how drastic a change to the scenery this would be. This would not just require cutting work, but eventually sculpting landscapes as well. For now, the grunt work.

I surround the land areas I want to cut with torches because they are plentiful, renewable, and easily seen at night. I decided my route and I placed them down in what I thought would be a manageable cut.



Next I went to "water level" and I traced and cut out the shape so that I knew when to stop digging down while I was clearing the land to the bedrock.



I continued like this for several blocks of land. Each night I would return home with my tools, unload a ton of dirt and rock, and prepare for the next morning. The time in my treehouse was rather nail-biting. There was not a lot of room up there, and every morning I was greeted to this:



That was a light morning. I also learned the flaw to a treehouse... it shaded the undead from the sun, so every morning I had to jump out of my tree house, turn around and kill whatever it was keeping me awake at night.

So this particular morning I woke up and waited for the dead to turn to ash and I jumped out of my treehouse, only to see this in front of me:



If you remember, these things are full of gunpowder, they hiss, blow up and destroy things. I didn't want my tree house to be blown away, so I ran as well as I could. I must've stubbed my toe cause it blew up...



my oven! :(

This was a declaration.



This was war.

Minecraft: The River episode 03

The grunt work begins.

Remember that open mouth of hell I said I found? Well, I'm on top of it here to get a survey of the landscape below. I'm trying to plan out the path I want to take the river through the hills in this area near my Tree House.



It is not very easy to see a simple path through. The strait line method doesn't really match the contours of the land, nor does it really "feel" that's where the river would go. So I have to kind of take a detour as you can see in this shot here:



A bit further along the path, you can see that it goes beneath Hook Mountain and continues on towards the ocean in the valley between Hook Mountain and the other cliffs opposing the mountain.



So here we go, the first real big cut. I knew I was not going to do any turning just yet, so I dug strait lines in the direction I had decided. Next I started clearing the dirt out, and then I had to switch to picks so that I could get the rock out. I wanted to save all this dirt in case I needed it later. I made several big storage boxes near the tree house to hold much of it.



Finally I broke the dam once again and let it flood the area.



I know this wasn't the most interesting of updates, and I promise its not a season of "I cut here, I flood here" so stick with me, more cool stuff to come!

Minecraft: The River episode 02

So today I was to set up and get ready to work on the River. I thought I would test the waters a bit, and learn how water worked in the world. At this time I did not even know if I would be able to make a river.



You can see Fort Lookout in the view, and that the bay turns into a sort of river and elbows off into the distance. You can also see that the river blocks up rather early in a very shallow spot, it looks perfect for my plans.



The blockage is short, so the plan is to simply cut right through the area. First I find my depth:



A creeper from the night before helped me out with that... while I was surveying, it ran down and exploded right beside me. No complaints I guess, I did not die, and now I have a start.



Next I cut a shape out in the way I wanted the river to go. I made sure not to make it too strait and to have some variation in its path so it did not look too man made. After cutting the shape, I start hollowing out the land.



Next I break the earth dam, and the water rushes in. It doesn't fill fully like real water, so I have to bring in water using a bucket to fill the corners, but in no time the river is connected with the pond and we have the makings of a waterway.

It has actually been several weeks since season 1. I did things like planted trees and flowers near Fort Lookout, I explored a bit more around the area. I am ready to move to a new area, so I think of where my river is likely to take me and I know how much work is going to keep me from Fort Lookout. I find two trees up in the hills and I make myself a tree house in their leaves and branches. I later add a simple chimney stove on the ground so that I can cook myself some food.