Minecraft

Section: 

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Day 1
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I’m cast ashore in my own little world.

Where am I? It’s some sort of sand spit. I trudge over to the next island over and climb to the top to get the lay of the land. It’s a bay with four or five islands strung across it. I dubbed this area Cape Curly and the Pointy Archipelago, and claimed it in the name of Me.

Then I beat on a tree until it fell apart. Built a workbench and some tools. With my trusty pick-axe Wilson at my side, I’ll tame this empty land.

Or maybe not so empty. At night, something was growling. Something I don’t think I want to meet.

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Day 14
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Frickin’ cows. Frickin’ pigs. Frickin’ sheep. Weirdest thing is they all swim. They just wander off the beach and start bobbing around out there on the water with a blithe unconcern for the proprieties. It sounds like there’s some sort of bizarre bovine laundry out there some mornings.

I’m trying to decide if the birds are chickens or ducks. They make a chicken noise, but they swim like ducks. It’s confusing.

Wilson and I have been opening up the top of the island, looking in vain for coal. After dying a lot every night, I learned to close off the top of my mine with stone and a skylight. So now I have a snug little den to go into when the sun goes down.

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Day 36
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The foolish man built his house upon the sand... .
Around here it’s not so foolish. Sand is a great building material. Except for the fact that hitting sand often means I’m about to become bunk-mates with the briny deep. What I get for digging on an island, I guess. I’ve taken to marking safe-digging lines with all this waste-rock I’ve been chiseling out. Otherwise, it’s one block too many and I’m swimmin’ with the fishes again.

Except there are no fish. Still up to my eyebrows in barnyard stock, though. Where the heck are they coming from?

Still no coal, so that means no torches. I seem to be safe in here, but the nights seem awfully long sometimes.

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Day 40
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As the sun came up this morning, something outside the walls exploded. It didn’t do too much damage to the wall, and I was planning on taking out the top of that hill anyways. Wilson and I did some math on the resultant hole, and figured out any walls I build better be at least three blocks thick.

Still no coal. If one of those exploding things gets up on top of my cavern, it’s going to break a LOT of glass when it goes. Better start working on the walls again.

Accidentally assaulted a sheep when it stepped between me and some tree parts I was smacking with Wilson. Now it’s running around naked, and I have three blocky, little cotton-ball things. What do I do with these!?

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Day 52
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I spend my days harvesting and planting wood or scouting around. Every night I go to my tunnel and lay a thick stone wall between me and what’s out there. Still haven’t found coal. With the wood and sand I can make glass, so there’s plenty of windows. It’s a little weird to be digging fifty-plus blocks deep by moonlight.

I love watching the sky. I built big glass windows to the east and west so I can watch the sun and moon go up and down. It’s pretty over the water and it makes it easy for me to know when it’s safe to go outside. At night there a whole lot of nasty things.

My current favorite unfriendly is this giant spider that likes to jump on top of my skylights in the middle of the night and dance some sort of arachnid Watusi. Just about gives me a heart attack when the moon is right behind him and I catch it out of the corner of my eye. I bet my blocky backside that thing isn’t there to ask me to dance, too. Frickin’ creepy.

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Day 84
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New ugly thing showed up tonight down in the big left tunnel. Must have come from that natural hole I found. Too rattled to remember the sword; I hit it with Wilson. That didn’t seem to do enough damage. Green like the other one, but has four legs and no arms. How does it even eat? I had just enough time to wonder about that before I found out first hand.

You don’t want to know.

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Day 92
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FOUND COAL! Three layers of blocks down, right below the remote little sand spit where I respawn after something eats me. Sigh. Isn’t that always the way? If I’d just headed for China that first night instead of thinking about resources and defenses, I would have been a much happier camper.

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Day 138
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This plan of digging the galleries by just expanding on where I dug up random deposits of coal and ore has a downside. I’ve ended up with a sort of central hallway with seven staircases leading down into it now, and from there I went off in all directions and levels. It looks like M.C. Escher’s foyer, and I keep getting lost trying to get back to my diggings. I’m going to have to go down there and straighten that out.

Got tired of respawning out on that stupid little backwater sand-spit at the end of the chain and trying to run back to my secure spot in the very unfriendly dark, so I’ve started fortifying that area. The plan is to respawn within secure walls where there’s some backup armament, and THEN go back out to try to kill whatever just ate me so I can get my stuff back.

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Day 180
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What the heck is THAT!? It looks like a skeleton, but it shoots arrows at me. Oh yeah!? I’ve killed enough spiders now to make my own bow and arrow. Eat that, )@&^&@&!

Oops! I apparently can’t hit the broad side of a barn from the inside with this thing. It's dead, but I’m out of arrows. I need feathers to make more.

I am become Death, destroyer of chicken/duck thingies. Chuckens?

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Day 264
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Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane... . I’ve had that running through my head a lot today. Though, strictly speaking, the situation would be best described by saying it the other way around. My fortifications are sort of growing together, and the spot at the top of the island where I’ve been growing trees is getting too shaded between the walls and those crowns grown together floating in the air where that one tree got too tall to harvest.

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Day 283
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Short-term solution to tree problem: lighting that courtyard up like the Luxor Hotel. Long term, I’m going to have to build some new land for a tree farm. I am NOT skimping on the walls. After all my dealings with things that go bump in the night around here, my motto is if you don’t die when you fall off, the wall’s too short. Wilson agrees.

Found more coal. Right under the road I’d been putting off building due to other projects. Not funny, God.

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Day 300
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The sun has set on a day of cultivating my farm. Found 16 seeds in the grass and got them planted over in my designated patch. Then I just beat everything around them with a hoe until it wore out. Hope that helps.

Tonight there’s a horrible groaning noise that’s following me wherever I go. Have we finally got a fish of some sort? It sort of sounds like whale-song.

After some stumbling around under the far left staircase, I found what was moaning and put it out of both our miseries by filling it full of arrows. Was not a whale. This one didn’t explode. Go me!

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Day 321
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Found a way to keep Creepy Spider from swimming out and screeching at me all night through the window. I built a beach under it and planted it with a row of cactus. It let me get rid of some of this extra sand I’ve got laying around, and it also let me take out that lone cactus on the next beach over that keeps making me think it’s one of those green things with the extra legs silhouetted against the rising sun when I catch it out of the corner of my eye in the morning. Stupid thing just beats itself to death on them now. Three or four screeches and it’s done.

Now that I’ve got the knack, this garden stuff is fairly easy. The trick is to plant enough seeds in one place to give it a sort of critical mass and make sure no grass grows around it. Then go out there and cultivate all the open spaces once a day or so. Keep it going by planting new seeds in those open spots. The shoots grow taller, and then eventually turn golden and disappear. They didn’t die - you find them turned into little wheat sheaves floating among the other stalks.

This evening’s task: Play grain tic-tac-toe with the workbench and the furnace until I figure out how to eat it.

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Day 334
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I’ve got it down to a science now. Three hoes + five pickaxes + two axes + two shovels + one sword + five arrows = one day and night’s work. Give or take on the arrows. Green things are still stupid, but frickin’ skeletons are learning how to circle strafe.

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Day 348
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Whose brilliant idea was it to teach the skeletons to ride Creepy Spider into battle!? To add insult to injury, two respawns and about 30 arrows later, the jerk blew up anyway and took out a corner of the big fountain courtyard, flooding my flowerbed. What I get for erroneously deciding that I’d lighted the under-construction causeway brightly enough to keep the zombies away so I can keep working after sundown.

No rest for the wicked. Right, Wilson?

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If you want to see what adventures you will have,
head up to http://www.minecraft.net and take a look.

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My workshop
Where the wild things are
amber waves of grain
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane...
moonset through glass tower
Looking back over the causeway under construction

Comments

Awesome!

Great read momgamer. Need to get back to my single player world soon, the zombies will be missing me.

Well she outdid our succession game.

Oi! In day 40 the protagonist claimed to not have coal, so how could she and Wilson have glass? Hmm?

Oh. Oh...yeah.

Good read. I have not touched my single player game in a few weeks. Too many big projects on the MP server. Maybe after Fridays secret update I'll jump back in.

Thanks Momgamer for representing all of us that are horribly addicted to Minecraft on the front page.

Great writeup.

I think we Minecraft players need a support group.

"Hello. My name is Tanstaafl and I'm a Minecrafter"

What a great article. Bravo.

I was one of the early purchasers of Minecraft from back before there was a Survival mode, and I haven't really gone back to it much since he's been developing that. Clearly, I should.

Woo-hoo! Minecraft on the front page! Take that, podcasters!

"Chuckens". Heh.

By the way, waiting for the wheat to harvest itself is why you aren't getting any seeds from it. punch it down with anything when it's at full height and brown, and you'll get a wheat and (often) two seeds.

Also, have you actually counted the days so far, or is that just for effect? I lost count around 50, myself...that was a long time ago.

Can't wait for tomorrow!

Minarchist wrote:

Woo-hoo! Minecraft on the front page! Take that, podcasters!

Yeah suckers! This game isn't Dwarf Fortress, it's a ton of fun to play without having to spend 300 hours understanding the game.

Great article!

Blind_Evil wrote:

Oi! In day 40 the protagonist claimed to not have coal, so how could she and Wilson have glass? Hmm?

Oh. Oh...yeah.

Wood, as well as deflated volleyballs, can burn in the furnace, but torches require coal. I'd imagine that Wilson would only be on par with a stick though.

A truly excellent tale. I might have to give in and try it out.

Wow. What timing. Stryker has already killed my productivity this week by introducing me to this game. I haven't even played it but have just been watching a YouTube series of some dude playing.

I think I've been sold on the game. Thanks, MomEnabler. Thanks.

Is this one of those games where the stories you can tell are always going to outweigh the actual game?

Speedhuntr wrote:

Is this one of those games where the stories you can tell are always going to outweigh the actual game?

Isn't that technically any game?

For those who are curious as to what you can do with the game, I'd invite you to take a look at the GWJ multiplayer thread, where many of our fine upstanding community members — and Quintin — have been constructing some incredible things. Or, to see what can be done in single-player, check out this post (warning: shameless self-promotion) or this absolutely ludicrous building.

I would also highly recommend this page in the forums, particularly the "How to Survive Your First Night" tutorial. As of now, there's no in-game tutorial, and you have about ten minutes to figure out the mechanics of the game and construct some sort of shelter before the nasty beasties come. Sounds worse than it is, but a bit intimidating at first.

Dakuna wrote:
Speedhuntr wrote:

Is this one of those games where the stories you can tell are always going to outweigh the actual game?

Isn't that technically any game?

The good ones, at least.

Always love reading a good write up of the fictitious adventures players get in their own Minecraft games. Especially since people have such varying play styles.

Ah hell, I've been trying to avoid playing this game for fear that it would consume me. I can't resist any longer. Too. Much. Awesome. Here.

Minarchist wrote:

For those who are curious as to what you can do with the game, I'd invite you to take a look at the GWJ multiplayer thread, where many of our fine upstanding community members — and Quintin — have been constructing some incredible things.

Hey!

That's just... you... aw.

Because, see, Quintin is a jerk!

wordsmythe wrote:

Because, see, Quintin is a jerk!

Ohhhh, I get it!

I figure for every time I make disparaging comments about wordsmythe, I need to make one to Quintin to even things out. That's to make up for the "what does your tag mean" thread.

wordsmythe wrote:

Because, see, Quintin is a jerk!

Oh, you dirty whore! You changed your sig!

*runs home crying*

Good job there, Momgamer; you've earned another $13 for the folks at Mojang. I hope you're at least getting some kickback from this quality piece of work.

This article, along with 7 (and counting) "How to survive..." videos that Minarchist linked, are what pushed me way over the edge. Before this, I had thought that Minecraft was basically a big, blocky, full-scale "Lego" world, in which to just dig and place blocks of building materials. Now I know that it's a big, blocky, full-scale "Lego" world in which to dig and place big blocks of building materials, while also cooking and crafting and forging crazy awesome stuff and narrowly avoiding death. So thanks.

If you were always curious to try Dwarf Fortress but couldn't get past the ASCII graphics or the incomprehensible UI, then give Minecraft a try.

merphle wrote:

Stuff

What he said. Definitely worth the money. I have basically turned an entire mountain into an underground fortress and have armored walkways everywhere outside it. I don't know why it's so addictive but it is!

Nice write-up, momgamer. Are you participating in our succession game? You have a knack for the uh... "fan-fiction" stuff.

Yeah, I'm on the list for the succession game, down a ways. It's going to be fun to take my turn in that world.