Zylon
2041
Or you could just plant them on dirt pillars, then when they sprout, replace the dirt with wood blocks.
It’s not cheating, it’s horticulture!
Pogo
2042
Yeah that way you can have more varied tree heights without getting those thicker weirdly shaped trunks that I got.
roBurky
2043
That would just make it a bit taller. It’s the impressive multi-branched ones with masses of leaves I want.
That’s pit mining, actually; the terminology here is confusing. You want to go all the way down to bedrock and then 3 or 4 high in a single direction for a long ways. Then back up, and make a very long branch; back up and do again, etc. Like this:
1 - Initial direction when you hit bottom.
2, 3, … n - next shafts to dig after that.
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6
I can’t figure out how to do whitespace padding in bbcode; the horizontal gap between the 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 shafts is supposed to be about ~3 blocks each. This maximizes the number of faces revealed per second digging apparently. It ends up getting confusing as hell once it gets big, so you have to carefully add map directions, but boy does it ever get you loot.
You know what I’m really into these days? Strip clearing the rock but leaving the ore for later.
It’s neat to come into an area that was stripped of everything but off at the edges of the light cast off by the fire pit are free floating veins of coal and iron.
That and my 64x64 pyramid, which while has been done before over and over again, has nver been done by me. Torches are too fiddly for such an endeavor. MOAR FIRE PITS!
jeffd
2046
I recently joined my friend on his multiplayer server. I dorked around with him for a while, and after a bit lamented the lack of mobs. It’s just not the same game when you’re not fearing for your life!
My friend had built an observation deck, at the top of a particular tall mountain. So I decided to give him something to observe. BEHOLD!
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Another angle:
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And finally from lower down:
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This thing is HUGE. Its base starts at the ocean layer, and obviously it goes above the cloud layer. It’s by far the largest construction I’ve done in Minecraft. Also, since I don’t have ops on the server, this was done the old fashioned way. I dug a pit mine all the way down to adminium, to get the materials to build this thing.
I want to fill in the blank spaces with Obsidian, but my calculations indicate that it will take 104 Obsidian. That stuff mines so slowly; there is no way I’m doing it. I’m going to have to get ops on the server and just spawn myself some blocks for that… I’m also a little tempted to see how it looks if I stick a redstone torch behind its eyes…
Pogo
2047
26 minutes, exactly. And that’s not counting the time it takes to figure out how to mine it without it dropping into the lava that is undoubtedly underneath it, or the time to find it.
No way, it takes 15 seconds a block with a diamond pick?
Pogo, that Mob Spawning Science thread is amazing. All the mob drops you could ever want!
Pogo
2049
Yeap, 15 seconds, or 60 seconds with non-diamond but, of course, you can’t get the obsidian out of the block without a diamond pick. So it does take quite a while if you want to build, say, a creeper-explosion-proof entrance to your castle or whatever.
Also, yeah the “science” behind mob spawning is pretty cool. I have to say part of the appeal of MineCraft is figuring out how things work, and after reading that thread it should be obvious now why complex areas (such as hillsides or fields with trees) spawn so few mobs. Indeed, if you get a vantage point at night, most of the mobs you see spawning will be on flat open areas, since the generator has less chances to “disqualify” a chunk as spawnable for monsters.
Well, I couldn’t hold out any longer. Picked this up today, looking forward to messing with it this weekend.
Okay, made attempt #2 after watching a ‘How to survive your first night in Minecraft’ video. This is what happened:
- Set game to Normal.
- Spawned in and found some trees.
- Chopped trees.
- Looked along exposed cliff faces for coal.
- Found coal.
- Made workbench.
- Made wooden pickaxe.
- Mined coal.
- Burrowed behind coal to make survival hovel.
- Moved workbench inside.
- Made a few torches.
- Fortified the entrance of the hovel with stone, strategically lit area with torches.
- Survived the night, hooray!
But…
During the next day I began expanding the hovel into a proper home. I was proud of my work. I then went out to do a little exploring of the nearby area and suddenly found myself face-to-face with a creeper. I had no weapon so I ran. He exploded. I died and could not find my hovel.
I made hovel #2 and have since moved on to making more tools, including swords and have killed a spider and a creeper (and cows and chickens). My guy has leather booties now, so his feet will be the last part of his body to explode.
Hovel #2 has an extremely deep staircase plunging downward. I have found more coal and some iron along the way.
Question that’s been asked before, I’m sure: Are there any recommended texture packs? I find several things a bit hard to distinguish with the default textures and wouldn’t mind using another set if they are a bit sharper.
I love reading posts like yours, Creole Ned. It takes me back to the time when I was new to the game and still discovering things.
Anyway, a couple of often-recommended texture packs are Painterly and Quandary.
Pogo
2053
My start is a little different. I take 3 logs and make a wooden bench and immediately make a wooden axe. I then chop down enough trees to have enough wood to fortify my first shack a little better against creeper explosions. I also ditch the wood axe as soon as I see some stone and break down 9 pieces of stone to make 3 stone pickaxes.
Check this thread out: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=12352
My personal favorite is Doku’s texture pack, the version without flowers (he/she made a version that put petals on the grass and leaves, looks kinda stupid). Basically it looks like SNES Zelda, and it’s 32x32 instead of 16x16. Water/lava/fire will not animate though (only at 16x16 do they animate).
I was going to recommend Doku’s too, but didn’t, due to the high def texture bugs.
However, there is a mod that supposedly fixes it. I haven’t tried it, but it’s probably not too terribly difficult to install. If you search further down the page that Pogo linked for the “32x32 Texture Fix” mod, that’s the one.
Mission accomplished.
I died and could not find my hovel.
Heh, I move around so much my worlds are usually riddled with old hovels.
Eventually, when you get a bit more settled, you should make a compass that will lead you back to your spawn point. On the way to find it from your current base, make tall beacons with torches along the path so that you can follow them back home.
Watch out fer creepers…
I personally like the Brandcraft textures listed in the thread Pogo linked to. Very clean, almost cell shaded in appearance, but not too over the top in terms of brightness.
Makes it very easy to distinguish block types without ruining the “feel” of the game imo.
Painterly pack (linked above) for me. I really like the look of that one.
Wendelius
Bill
2058
I hate the trek from the spawn point back to my mine so much; it’s just too easy to get lost or killed, especially early on before you are able to build safehouses or beacon. So now I always build my first base of operations within sight of the spawn, and that means that restart a lot of maps until I get one that has interesting terrain close to the spawn.
Pogo
2059
Painterly Pack looks great, but not being 32x32 really limits the amount of detail you get. I don’t think I can go back to 16x16. Time to test out that fire/lava/water animation fix, though I imagine it will be a broken mod after the update. Hopefully the update fixes the issue in the first place.
And seriously, guys, change your spawn point already. It’s easy to do (though being off by one number and spawning inside a block can happen, so stash your inventory before you do it). Notch gave us a huge generating world to explore and setting a spawn point where you’ve settled is a logical thing to do.
Bill, I was doing that too until I tried out NBTedit. Moving your spawn point is super easy if you follow these instructions carefully. (Be sure to back up your save first!)
Edit: Ninja’d by Pogo! :)
