2021

Yeah, same here. I still rely on stone tools for everything. Then again, I did build a comprehensive mine track system, so my priorities may be skewed (tracks over tools :P).

2022

I’ve played around with this: MC Mapper and I find it to be kind of awesome.

It’s a dungeon generator. You have to open the .jar file with Java (just right click and Open With > Java Platform), then do Data > Read Player Position, and set that as the Dungeon Start Chunk.

It generates a fairly complex dungeon that runs really deep, and has monster spawners for a challenge. Generates doorways as well, and glassed-in lava areas. Also has chests with some goodies that seem to get better as you go downward, though I wouldn’t suggest going into one of these dungeons without being equipped to take care of monster spawners.

It also lets the world’s original cave system cut out the generated dungeon, so there’s still that flavor of old broken ruins type of feel going on. The generator also puts a sky-high stone pillar on the landscape so you can find the dungeon, though if it’s generated more than 2 chunks away you’ll have to do some exploration to find it.

Make sure you backup your world as the generator doesn’t care if it chews into your underground buildings or whatever. I started a new world, walked around a bit (to generate some chunks), and then used the generator.

Fun stuff.

2023

I finally succumbed and got Minecraft. Here was my first time in-game:

  1. Set game to Easy.
  2. Find trees.
  3. Chop trees.
  4. Begin building hovel-like structure before nightfall.
  5. Night comes much sooner than expected.
  6. 5 million spiders show up to eat me. Also skeletons.
  7. I am eaten.
  8. The End.

I am refining my approach for attempt #2.

2024

That’s the only way a first game works in Minecraft. I watched tutorials and had the Wiki open my first time through, and my game ended pretty much just like that.

2025

Oddly enough, setting the difficulty to Easy makes more monsters spawn, and there’s fewer on Hard. I’m not sure if it’s a bug, or an attempt to balance out other factors (they should at least have less health on Easy).

I think I’m going to hold back a bit until the Hallowe’en update and then start a new world, using my current one more as a testbed for experiments. I wonder what happens if I drop lava over there…

2026

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong

Christ it’s so hard to beat down a stupid rumor after it spreads on the internets.

2027

My early attempts were more or less like that, Creole Ned. My biggest mistake was to repeatedly claim existing caves and structures fairly late in the day, and then I would forget to tighten things down properly before darkness came.

Thanks for the cavern marker tips, guys. Wonderpug’s “two torches for unexplored areas” is elegant and mok’s “main road of silver step blocks” is cool too (similar to my thinking about waypoints pointing to landmarks and other waypoints, in addition to the usual “out”).

2028

I started my first proper SP game last night. I began by wandering aimlessly about, punch down trees here and there as the mood struck me. Eventually I found myself on a mountaintop overlooking a valley on the other side of which was a huge cave system complete with overhanging land, and a stream of lava pouring down into the depths. Very cool indeed.

At that point it started to get dark so with no other options I pulled a Bugs Bunny and tunneled a hole into the side of the mountaintop and sealed myself in without a torch, or anything else. After a night of hearing creepy sounds outside my rabbit hole I eventually got brave enough to dig out and set up shop.

Over the course of the next few days I found some coal (or flint or whatever it is) for torches, and all the basic necessities and had a routine of hiding in my makeshift house/hole at night so nothing would eat me. A man needs a proper home however, and rather than relocate I ended up reinforcing my rabbit hole into a solid rock structure that eventually took over most of the mountaintop as a mini castle type thing. Progress was slower on this than I’d have liked since I kept getting attacked by creepers who would blow up a good portion of the place on a regular basis and scare the living hell out of me. They got me four or five times over a couple of game days in fact, always close enough to my home to destroy a big chunk of it. Creepers are bastards.

Tonight I think I may venture across the valley into the cave system I spotted over there. Single player Minecraft has clicked.

2029

Coal. Flint is the stuff you get from gravel.

Oh, and I envy you the cave exploration. The first time you find a cave network… wow.

2030

Maybe it’s a bit late to chime in here, but when I’m exploring a big underground area, I typically throw torches on the walls ahead of me, and when I find an area that’s too big to tackle I wall it in with a wall of dirt - easy to spot as being artificial, so I can find it again. I usually wall off an area just before a torch, and I leave a one block “window” in the wall. It’s pretty obvious that a wall with a light beyond it is not normal, so I never lose track of areas I’ve temporarily walled off. When marking the area I want to travel, I usually use two torches to indicate the main path out or down to my pit/monster generator.

When I’m outside, I tend to build pillars of dirt about 5 or 6 high with torches around all four sides of the top. I put a second torch below on the one side closest to my house, so if I ever get disoriented all I have to do is find a pillar, find the side with two torches, and travel away from the pillar in that direction.

On another topic, the world I’m in has been filthy with coal and iron (lots of shallow caverns in the world, so I can often find iron visible from the surface) but in all my digging I’ve yet to come across any diamond.

Also also - I just saw my first slime (some green junk was clipping through the wall as I was tunneling down, and I broke through one block to see what it was). Freaky!

2031

I’d been having terrible luck finding diamond, but last night while rooting around in a previously unexplored cavern of my very first world, I stumbled across at least 10 of them. Thank god I had an iron pick with me.

Of course, I’m too afraid to actually USE diamond for anything, since, you know… lava.

2032

Strip mining the bedrock will give you more diamonds than you can handle. They’re fairly evenly distributed.

I also do wall up unexplored cave branches with dirt to come back to later; very helpful.

2033

What I want to know is how, when exploring a new cavern, people deal with the holes in the ceiling. Nothing worse than getting goomba stomped by a creeper.

2034

Use your stack o’ dirt to climb up and plug it.

2035

Does anyone know the rules for tree growing? Once a sapling has grown into a tree, does it keep growing, or do they just pop into their final small/medium/huge form? If they keep growing, is there an upper limit? If I have a huge tree with branches, will it ever grow bigger? If some leaf blocks have been destroyed, will they grow back?

2036

In a fit of insomnia, I spent a very long night hollowing out a 40x40x16 block on the top of bedrock trying to find diamonds. My reward for the effort: 11 diamonds across three veins.

Can’t say that strip mining is necessarily worth the effort.

On the other hand, once I was done I decided to be environmentally friendly with the strip mine, walling off the lava lakes with glass, putting in a skylight, and building a dirt ladder to the surface. Now I have a forest at the bottom of the world full of barnyard animals.

2037

Leaves do not grow back. Trees also do not grow, they appear instantly at one of several sizes and that’s it. There are some factors which seem to cause the somewhat pre-generated look of trees to come out differently, and that usually happens when planting trees close together. Seems like a tree wants to grow a certain amount of leaves and trunks, and if it doesn’t have room for it, then the trunks/leaves get pushed higher and to the side. Plant some saplings directly next to tree trunks and you’ll see what I mean.

2038

Thanks. So it sounds like if I want a forest of purely mega-trees, I should cut down any lesser trees that grow, and replant them.

2039

Not only that, but you should plant them directly next to other tree trunks. I made a tree with a 90°-shaped tree trunk that was the result of 3 saplings, and its leaf/upper-trunk structure is strange, unique, and “fluffy.” So if you want some higher density thicker trees, try that, though you may have to plant the saplings one at a time.

2040

You can check out my triple-trunk tree and my failed quadruple-trunk tree which are in my "magical forest’ in front of my condo on the Qt3 frontier. I’m not sure why the quadruple-trunk failed, only the trunk grew up like 4 blocks and then no leaves came of it. Was weird.