Minecraft: Day 1

Well, this has been extremely unpleasant so far. With the constant stream of new video games to try, being productive has become a very difficult and vague task. The greatest distraction has been Little Big Planet 2, which I believed would haunt me for all eternity. Alan and I have been hard at work creating some of the most epic levels in the history of everything, yet for some reason when I tried to start debugging today, the game (and my system) froze. Six times now. So, feeling completely drained of enthusiasm, I turned to another colossal creative outlet: Minecraft.

Now, after my first night in Minecraft several months ago, I discovered the Peaceful mode. Several days later I found InvEdit. It went downhill from there, as mod after mod found it's way into my game. It was no longer about survival as I spent day after day exploring my beautiful world. It wasn't as though I was lazy; I filled a tunnel I dug with TNT, then spent a week leveling out my new cavern floor, walls and ceiling. Even in the private SMP server Alan and I ran, we had modded armor and tools, yet we still built a 100 meter wide diamond pyramid by hand. With modded inventory...

But today my time of cowardice ends. Having no real experience with actually surviving in Minecraft, I created a brand new world, mod free. And no more Peaceful... and I am really shocked by what I have missed out on.

Day one:

I'm not so clueless as to not know what to do first, wood is the basis for everything, and that is my first priority, but right off the bat I notice something off; my precious forest is combusting.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed there was a nice little pool of another valuable, yet dangerous resource.

This will come in handy for farming obsidian. Yes, I do plan on entering the Nether eventually.

For the moment however, I had to focus on getting wood, and finding coal. I gathered as much un-burned wood as I could, then took off in search of the much-needed coal.

I set off, and it wasn't long before I spotted a beautiful mountain formation perfect for coal-mining.

Yeah, there's something floating right in the middle, but that's not too unusual. My worst memories are of the lawn care service I ran when I was 12; mowing those floating suckers was no picnic. As I'd hoped, it took me only a second to find a small cave with some coal in it, and fortunately for me it wasn't very deep.

With only a little effort, I successfully closed off the entrance to any creatures that might want my brains.

I was beginning to feel a lot better about my situation, and after just a few moments of enlarging my hidey-hole this feeling was reinforced with the discovery of an iron vein. Whistling, I started digging steps down into the mountain, with the growls of zombies indicating I was approaching a cavern. I broke through, and after a quick, self-confident double-checking, I made sure there were no deadly creatures in the immediate vicinity. I was disappointed to find this little cave nearly completely clean of anything except a little pool of water, but I was growing confident in my ability to handle anything the game threw at me.

I surfaced to find it was morning, and I immediately spotted several arrows from fallen skeletons. With my confidence reaching it's peak, I crafted my first iron chestplate.

Of course confidence doesn't indicate stupidity; I realized I was lacking anything restorative. Fortunately, some friendly neighborhood pigs volunteered to help fill this need. I headed back inside as the sun set, then another realization hit me: the forest had burnt down, and I was beginning to run low on wood. Being the clever type, I cleared out a room and planted a sapling in the middle. Well, growing a sapling can take a while, so I headed back down my tunnel, and started back up digging. Almost immediately I broke through into another cavern, and like before I lit the area with a couple torches and checked for baddies. For the first time I felt a twinge of fear as I spotted something move down one of the many dark tunnels twisting away from where a stood. But I had a sword and an iron chestplate, and the only way to get resources was to mine, so a chose a direction and started walking. What happened next was perhaps the most terrifying experience of my adult life next to having a child; there was a sudden loud hiss, and I exploded. There was no warning. There was no sign of the creeper, though I swear I checked everywhere; it just dropped right on top of me and I was dead.

Death is cruel in Minecraft, where instead of fading to a standard Game Over screen, they show you all the precious items you labored so hard to gather, lying strewn around your body. At this point it's hard to remember why I'm doing this, but if anything I'm determined not to give up. More tomorrow!