Inadvertent Slaughterhouse

I got a bit fed up with Minecraft for a few days. Endless, unceasing intimations of mortality plus headaches from too much screen time, not to mention the carpal tunnel, will do that to you. I couldn’t stay away too long though – I suppose it’s a good thing that I crave Minecraft and not heroin but I’m beginning to think the end effect is essentially the same – and I’ve been back in World 5 for a while now. While I was away I ventured to a bar I hadn’t been before and found myself, while there, in a long Minecraft conversation with two other addicts. My gods, it is just like a drug addiction. All we need are some gang signs and we’ll be set.

Back in Minecraft world, instead of going on home with my tail between my legs to ride the trains for a while, I took advantage of the extremely well stocked spawning hut on World 5 to get myself all armored up and equipped with tools and took off in a sort of southwesterly direction. Mostly, it was snow, snow and more snow. Mountains. Snow. This is, as I have mentioned, a pretty well explored and developed planet that used to be all snow and I was beginning to think that I would have to sail away again to find virgin territory when I happened on an abandoned boat. I love finding abandoned boats. It’s so sort of creepy cool – I mean, I know I built the damn boat and left it there but still, finding random boats gives me that sudden frisson of wondering just who the hell has been sailing around there.

I didn’t get very far in the boat – yet another ice sheet, what you gonna do? – but I got somewhere I was pretty sure I had never been before. There was a massive and amazing lava flow with the requisite burning trees scattered in front of it. I holed up for the evening right there and listened all night to the screams of dying farm animals. It was quite cheery; suited my mood. In the morning I ran around picking up pork chops and leather and I thought, okay, this is the place for me, this inadvertent slaughterhouse. The light from all the fires keeps the monsters away and, just like Scarlett, as pig is my witness, I will never go hungry again. So I set forth to build a wooden house of incredible fabulousity, a thing of beauty and a joy forever with three wooden floors, a deck and a glass pyramid of sorts on top. I like it but the nightly screams of anguish were beginning to get to me, not to mention the problem of where to store all my pork.

Therefore, I built a pond under the burning trees – this rescuing of farm animals seems to be kind of a theme - and now I have not just a lavafall but waterfalls galore. I like it here. Now, of course, it is time to build a trail to spawn, the inevitable marker of a finished home.

Zombie Zoo

I have a music room. This is not as fancy as the music rooms I have seen on other people’s Minecraft videos, where they use redstone dust to make connections and have entire raves and stuff. No, it is not as fancy: it’s three note blocks and me, thump thump. I can almost play Three Blind Mice and I am impressed with my bad self and my mad music skillz. The music room is nice and all but it is Not Enough and so I decide to head out adventuring the next day.

I find a cave fairly quickly – where were all these caves hiding when I was looking a few days ago? – and it turns out to be a giant whopper of a cave that just goes on and on and on ad nauseam. I find not just one but two dungeons and at the second one I had an idea. Zombie Zoo! Glass is a wonderful thing

It was a great cave. I left with enough diamonds, lapis and iron to outfit an entire town and so, I thought, okay, it is time to travel, to explore, to see what this new world of mine has to offer. And I set off again into the wilds.

Where a creeper killed me on my second evening out, in the middle of nowhere so that I will never be able to recover my diamond pick or all my lovely brick blocks. Bah. I’m going back to World 5.

Okay There Are Caves After All

I found a cave! Well, what I found first was a dungeon – a dungeon, like Ozymandias, buried in the sand. I am a heartless sadist who really enjoys exposing dungeons to the bright and merciless rays of the square sun, so I dug out all the sand just to watch skeletons be born and die screaming. Then I dug out the inevitable dungeon chest, hoping, as I always hope, for a record. No record, but given my current poverty this chest was maybe even better. A bucket! Some redstone dust! Three entire loaves of bread! (Why don’t monsters ever hoard diamonds?) Wow! I’m rich! And, and, over there, wealth beyond imagining, is some iron ore. I made a compass, walled myself into a corner and settled back to gloat for the night.

Then it was time to explore the cave proper. Given the paucity of my armor – there wasn’t that much iron - it’s not surprising that I died at the first zombie. It turns out that my house is really near spawn, which I had kind of thought. I figured this out by emerging from the sandy decline of my birth and immediately finding a sign that said That Way with an arrow. Yeah, less than 3 blocks, or, more precisely, an island and a half away. Not only that – is it possible I’m actually getting better at finding my way around? - I knew how to find the cave again. Just turn right at the house, through the woods, around the inlet, past the lava pool and there it was. Moments like these are why Notch, all hail, invented Peaceful mode and so into the cave to retrieve my death stolen objects and onwards.

Not a bad cave, all in all. Not the best I’ve ever been in, but I came out with nearly 60 iron, 4 diamonds, 50 or so redstone and 16 lapis. I wish there had been some gold and more diamonds and lapis, but I should not complain. Now I have a diamond sword and a really heinous purple bedroom carpet. What more can one ask of life?

Properly equipped at last, I turned to enlarging my house. It is quite fabulous now – I wish I lived there, actually – and it’s getting more fabulous by the minute as I cheerfully scalp every sheep in a three mile or so radius. This takes me over the prairie, where I find, yes, another cave. There are caves here after all. Phew. And on the way back, I find another ginormous clay deposit. Well, we all know what that means – soon it will be time for another house.

Brand New World

I spawned in a pretty place. This is a new world in more ways than one. There have been a lot of updates since I last started and here they all are: gray and black sheep, different kinds of trees and a ginormous pumpkin patch. Cool! I dutifully punch a couple of trees, make myself a wood pick, harvest some pumpkins and take off, looking for coal before it gets dark.

I don’t take enough pictures but trust me, this is an attractive, if not particularly dramatic, world. There are some floating islands that look enticing but they’re waaay up there and I don’t feel like dealing with it. What there isn’t much of, is coal. At last I find some – near a lava pit – and dig in for the evening. It’s weird to have stone tools again and be constantly looking for coal. I am spoiled.

I wander for a couple of days. I think I am probably going in circles – not having a compass or a watch is tough – but it’s okay. I pick up a variety of useful objects and then I come across one of the biggest clay beds I’ve ever seen. Well, that’s that then: I am fated to build a brick, or mostly brick, house right here. I choose a likely island, nicely situated on a sort of boundary between three biomes and begin construction.

One thing I’d forgotten about starting over again is that you have to kill a lot of cows. I’ve gotten used to leaving cows the hell alone unless they are seriously annoying – trying to push me off a cliff or refusing to get out of the kitchen, that sort of thing – so having to actively hunt them again is sort of a blow. They scream and make me feel guilty. Still, you do what you have to do to get armor and I kill cows. A lot of cows, because leather armor, while it looks cool, actually sucks. Don’t tell the road warrior. A skeleton nearly kills me in the water. A creeper nearly kills me outside the house. A spider nearly kills me – you get the idea. I need iron and I need it bad. Well, hmmm. Where do you find iron? In caves.

There are no caves.

This is unheard of. There are always caves. Minecraft is all about the caves. I run around my island, looking. No cave. I run through the woods to the north. Cave free. I check out the prairie to the west. Nope, no caves here. I head east into the desert. I find two caves. Two small, empty caves, not offering so much as a block of coal. I’m getting desperate so I go home and dig through my floor. Sure enough, there’s a cave full of zombies! Yay! Except. . except. .. there’s nothing in it but the two zombies and it dead ends after one smallish, dishearteningly empty cavern.

Well, this sucks and I’m not sure what to do about it. I can keep on looking but then I run the risk of losing my new house forever. I can’t build a road from this house to spawn without a compass and for a compass I need iron and redstone dust which I can find. . . in a cave. I could mine, yes, I could dig a giant hole and then I would eventually find some stuff but that is so, so boring I can’t stand it. I am at a loss.

Different Worlds, Same Grim Reaper

I ride back and forth on the railroad a couple of times – practice makes my minecart catching technique better – and then decide that it’s time for adventure. Time to seek out new worlds! New lands! New creepers! I’m going to leave by boat in the morning and see what I can find. I dither around a while trying to figure out what to take with me – all this brick, obviously, so I can build, and glass and a diamond pickaxe and, um, the fishing rod or some reeds? Netherrack or gravel? Redstone dust or a sign? Pumpkins or buckets? Tough choices but at last my pockets are full.

And then, I travel. I take the boat as far as I can and then head eastward, ever eastward. I cross a small snowy zone and then a pretty area that I like but it’s too close and I want to go far. I cross a bay that’s full of squids, more than I’ve ever seen before. I run across prairies. I make another boat and sail until I hit a huge ice sheet. I run over that and across an area of tundra that’s criss crossed with tunnels and caves and chasms. I dig myself shelters and keep right on moving, stopping only to scalp the occasional sheep. And then I stop at an imposing box canyon – like, literally a box, descending to a square lagoon and think, it would be kind of cool to build a house across this. Nah, I think, too unwieldy and there’s nothing else much here. But maybe I’ll just spend the night, dig down and make some windows into the center.

I do that and in the morning, when I hear all the monsters, I’m glad I decided not to live here. I dig out and up to the accompaniment of clinking skeleton and zombie death – and right into the hands of some five creepers and a couple of spiders.

Yeah, I die again. You know, before I started this blog I used to go weeks without dying. Months, even. Of course, I was playing on Easy then instead of Normal – I feel that it behooves me to play on Normal now, since I’ve been around so long – but I never thought that the two modes were frankly all that different. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I'm more adventurous now that I'm writing about Minecraft as well as just letting it impact my real life in not so healthy, addictive ways. Who can tell? The upshot is that I’m completely stone dead in two of my principal worlds. Fuck. What to do now?

No choice, really – I delete a world I barely remember and start from scratch. Stone tools, no coal, find shelter before nightfall - the whole thing. Here I go!

On To World 5

Ah World 5. It was my first snow world and my favorite for a long time. It is notable, now, for the extremely long railroad I have built between two of my houses - the pictures along the right, below, are from the route. Both those houses now are going to need updates and spiderproofing, stat, and I fully expect to be in one of them when I emerge into the world.

Nope. I’m in a rough shelter. Oh wait, I recognize this, it’s along the railroad tracks. There must have been a pig on the tracks again the last time I was here, when, I remember, I was courting death by riding the trains at night in the dark. This is totally fun, if fraught with peril, since not only do monsters occasionally jump right in the cart with you, but any farm animal on the track will stop you dead and leave you there in the open to die by monster. Adventure: you take it where you find it.

When the sun comes up I run quickly along to Ballerina House – yes, that’s the Ballerina of yore, on whose skirt that one skeleton was born, lived and died - and begin spider proofing. This house was originally only ever going to be a wayhouse but the setting proved irresistible and I spend a lot of time here. There are tons of caves, lots of islands, sand, green hills, trees, not too many monsters but enough to keep life interesting – everything one wants, really, in a neighborhood. I even have Potemkin neighbors in a small brown house across the bay so that I can look out at their cheery, if false, lit windows at night and not feel so alone. And now there are spiders on my roof. Lots of them, judging by the sound. Yay. I guess.

I finish fixing up Ballerina House, which doesn’t take too long – it’s a one story, one room number and can stay that way - and decide to head on over to Island House to fix it up too. Travel between the two is perfectly simple since I put the minecarts and the perpetual motion minecart boosters in! Right? Yes, well, nothing is simple. I miss the minecart. I miss the minecarts, actually – three of them. I put them down on the track next to the booster and go to push them along and hop in but zoom! They’re away out from underneath me like something out of a 1920s slapstick silent film routine. Curse you, Buster Keaton, I say and then I try again with the same results. Three times, three misses, three trains left the station empty and I am no longer in a pleasant mood. I run to Island House, nearly getting run over by the stupid minecarts that I didn’t manage to catch before. It is calming to whack at them with a pickaxe.

Island House is quite lovely if I do say so myself. It’s built around three or four trees and made almost completely of brick. There is, though, the strange black lump of death by the front door – I hate it when my houses have strange black lumps of death, don’t you? This time, I think to myself, I’m going to do something about that, by god. Therefore I divest myself of all my valuables, stand way back and whack the corner of my house down, block by slow block. At the second whack something emerges from the blackness.

It’s a boat. A boat has somehow gotten stuck in my house and created a deadly space time vortex or something like that. One of the hazards of island living, I guess, those pesky death boats. A few blows with an axe reduce the boat to splinters and at last I have a shadow free home. Not only that, but this house is well stocked with good stuff. There’s over 80 brick blocks and tons of netherrack and light dust and all manner of awesome accoutrements for minecraft living in the double chest in the kitchen. Now all I have to figure out is what to do with this largesse.

Four Horsemen

I’m dead again. This is getting old. I go months and months without dying and then I just start dying all over the place, kaboom, pow, you’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. I am so cranky about the constant cycle of mortality that I even closed up Minecraft and the computer and went off to coddle my carpal tunnel.

How did I go this time? Hit by a bus, a meteor, famine, plague, death, war? Well. I left the desert and wandered for a while, lost as always. I found a really fabulously cool landscape but didn’t linger long, which I know I will regret. I scalped a lot of sheep, found the occasional block of iron, stayed in several small, hasty shelters and then headed north with vague plans of finding Mountain House and trying to work my way back to FourFalls from there. And, with more stays here and there and more naked sheep, I did end up at Mountain House. I built an ice fishing hut out of wool – it’s very cozy and I want to bounce around in it – and realized that I no longer had a fishing rod. I was all about the fishing for a while there, never without my rod, stopping by every likely bay and inlet, but the attraction eventually palled. There are easier ways to get food and fishing rods take up vital inventory space.

Well, when you have no fishing rod and no string to make one, because Mountain House is blessedly extremely low on the monster population, you must go caving. In caves, there are usually spiders. There will be spiders (as opposed to blood, although there will be some of that too) and they will donate their string to the cause. I needed more diamonds anyway because Ozymandias had just about worn out my diamond pick and my diamond shovel. There is a big, deep, scary cave right around the waterfall from Mountain House so off I went, intrepid spelunker, to find what I could find.

I found in rapid succession a spider, a zombie and then a creeper who dealt the death blow to my already weakened self. Damn, damn and damn again. I think I’ll go to World 5 for a bit and leave my World 3 self in limbo.