1601

I’ve heard many rumors about how the threshold for darkness spawning keeps curling back, but I think it’s instead the inconsistency of monster spawns from day to day. It’s really hard to pin down.

1602

The irony is that after spending all that effort erecting this fortress, my favourite base of operations is still a tiny cave in a beautiful natural location.

Its a massive pillar of stone and earth sticking out of a lake, with a waterfall running down the side. Its riddled with caves, and the centre is hollow and open to the sky, with lava at the bottom.

All I did was install a door at a natural chokepoint, carve a few steps to access difficult locations, and a couple of short hidden tunnels and shafts. A few torches are scattered around, but I mainly rely on the glow of the natural lava flow.

The base has a “treehouse” appeal to it that my Motte and Bailey is entirely lacking.

In a game that allows terraforming on a massive scale, I find myself attracted to an “elven” ethos of living in harmony with my surroundings. I can’t bring myself to cut down any large, multibranch trees, even when I needed all that lumber for my palisade.

And its only because I have the option to terraform that my decision to leave it mostly natural has any meaning. Its like RPGs where I always-always play the good guy, but it only feels “good” because I have the option to do evil.

Tony

1603

Dude, how many times do we have to tell you? Pics!

1604

So with the servers being down last night I resorted back to single player. Something odd I noticed my first night was… no monsters. I went to the cave I was in last time I played. Still, no monsters. I fell a little too far and didn’t get hurt at all. I finally said to hell with it and dropped all my goodies except weapons, meat, and torches in a chest and broke through the barrier into the darkness. What followed was a solid hour of frantically lighting the biggest cave system I have ever encountered in this game. The whole time I’m nervous as hell even though for some reason I’m invincible and totally alone. I still haven’t found an end and I estimate that I have already placed over 250 torches. If I miss a spot when the monsters start spawning again, it’ll be hell. I’m sure I’ve missed several already.

Edit: Well now I feel like a jackass. Apparently when I reinstalled last update, the difficulty changed to peaceful. Hurr

1605

I hope you got every corner lit before changing back to dangerous…

Also:

“In the last 24 hours, 28954 people registered, and 14006 people bought the game.”

Where’s that quote from someone who said sales would peter out before they got to 150K…

“725090 registered users, of which 190563 (26.28%) have bought the game.”

1606

Wow, 26% is a huge conversion rate. More impressive to me than the absolute numbers and those are crazy for and indie title to start with.

1607

I’ll be buying this when I get home tonight now that I’ve heard his system is back up.

In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been up to:

This is the world I am in. It is island hills surrounded by frozen water.

In order to stop from getting lost, I decided to build a tower, but I got carried away:

Yes, that is above the cloud layer. In Survival mode. In a tower that isn’t yet finished (though close).

1608

One thing about my world is that metal and coal are very sparse so far. I’ve found maybe 60 pieces of coal in 12 hours, and maybe 20 pieces of metal. Most of my building has been with stone tools, using stone.

I wish there were metal detectors in this game.

1609

Metal detectors… that’s a genius idea. Another use for redstone!

1610

You’d have to find that first. Of which I have found none.

That being said, does anyone have any decent mining strategies? I’m basically making a giant stripmine in my base. It has netted me 3 iron and about 10 coal.

1611

Strip-mining seems pretty hit or miss. I have better luck (and more fun) just by exploring natrual caves and occasionally poking additional holes in the walls (following the sounds of water or monsters). If you hit on an extensive cave system, you’ll have oodles of exploration and may work your way all the way down to diamonds. Just leave torches as you go to mark explored areas. I find a ton of coal/iron this way.

1612

If you’re serious about mining for valuables, then the most efficient way is to dig down several levels, then use a ‘pillar and corridor’ system. In essence, you dig a loooong horizontal corridor, then dig left three blocks, then left again and another loooong horizontal corridor. This leaves you with the maximum possible block exposure without the possibility of missing any veins. You can also make some paths between the long corridors to make it a little more pillar esque.

I.e. (apologies for the poor art - no link abilities yet)

x=block, o=corridor

ooooooooooooo
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxo
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxo
ooooooooooooo
oxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
oxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
ooooooooooooo

note: this isn’t fun. But will probably give you a good groundwork for some kind of underground base…

1613

Heres some information about efficient mining:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=28299

This image make all clear:

1614

Huh. Almost all my digging has been above water level. I guess that’s why. And since my world is islands… not a lot of room for coal either. I guess that explains it. Time to go much deeper.

1615

Has the dispute with PayPal been cleared up yet?

1616

Besides that excellent thread I bet the techniques in dwarf fortress for exploratory mining would apply to minecraft easily

I can’t link, but look on the df wiki for “exploratory_mining”.

1617

I bet he’s got something unexplored. I had that recently in a cave - I was CERTAIN that I had explored everything but I kept getting incoming skeletons. Turns out if I looked up in one of the huge chambers where was a passageway they were falling out from.

1618

Find caves. The only time I stripmine is when I need stone for massive projects. I have two quarries I use.

1619

Yes - they’re now requiring a partial reserve to be held for two months then released (recurring).

1620

I need the stone too. My tower is above the cloud layer. But that link above gave me a good sign as to what I should do.