Hardcore Mode: The Desert

So that temple I found the other day was definitely worth exploring...

And yes, I did manage to explore off the edge of the map I had crafted. I didn't even realize it and ended up quite lost. Normally this isn't a huge deal, you can wander about until you find your way home. But on hardcore mode I started to get... paranoid. That in itself is a comic for another day. 

Minecraft: Hardcore Mode

I've been playing a bit of Minecraft lately, and I found that since the last time I had played, they'd added a new Hardcore mode to the game. It's different from the normal survival mode in that you can't change the difficulty at all and upon your death the entire world is deleted. Forever.

So, the masochist in me decided to start a Hardcore world and see how far I could get. The results...

I'm currently on my third go, and I've gotten much further this time. I've got a little farm going with some chickens and wheat to avoid travelling far for food. Have set up a little fortress outside my mine to shoot monsters from relative safety, and always travel with a map in tow. I'm currently dividing time between searching for diamonds and finding a village, so I can try out the new trading system.

Home sweet home. 

On my last exploratory venture I found this right before I had to go to work.

Ruddy mysterious.

Apparently, it's a Desert Temple, and although part of me wanted to explore it straight away the new careful part of my brain that has developed thanks to Hardcore mode made me stop and look it up. A good thing too, because there's a TNT trap in there that would have blown me up if I hadn't been careful. Although, that would have made for an excellent comic. 

Those Screens!

I remembered them today! Here are a few screenshots of my short (yet awesome) time in Minecraft. A pretty early shot of my base at night. I spawned right next to a lake sort of thing, so I got in a boat and did some...boating around. (While of course, playing Lonely Islands "I'm on a Boat")

One of my first projects was to construct a skylight in my mine. It has the advantage of letting me know what time it is before I reach the first floor, and also burnin' up any skeletons or zombies that might follow me. If I run out of arrows or swords...

And this is one of the latest iterations of the base. The upper fortress is pretty cosmetic at this point, but is still a nice place to chill at night. And the tower is for sniping creepers for their gunpowder. Also, ch-ch-check the Diamond items maaaan!

Pretty Happy with This

/Movie Trailer voice on
One Man...must survive...the wilderness.

But he doesn't know...that at night...danger awaits him.

Echoes from Underground

The Unfriendlies by ~Turnthephage

Right, so I've had a decent go at Minecraft (but forgot to bring the screenshots I took to work, d'oh) and I had a few thoughts I wanted to write down. First off, if you want some extra reading on what exactly Minecraft is, here are a few links.

Right, so first off, the graphics are not the best in the world. They do however, do the job. What that means is that rock looks like rock, you can tell that that brown thing with the green stuff on top of it is a tree and that that pink thing jumping around is supposed to be a piggy. Eventually you stop noticing how blocky everything is, and some of the randomly generated landscapes are quite impressive.

Minecraft reminds me of when I was a little lad playing in my room with my legos. I'd build castles and towers and space stations and then have the little yellow dudes play out their adventures. Often, smashing some of it for dramatic effect. The game is kind of like lego, but you play the perspective of the lego men. Well, a lego man.

That's another thing, apart from the animals and monsters, you are all alone. There are no friendly humanoid non player characters, and anything that vaguely resembles a man is either going to shoot arrows at your head or try and give you the zombie death hug. I really get the feeling when I'm playing, that the world is out to get me, and the only way I can survive is to rely on myself.

Conan the Mineventurer by ~Shinedog

So you build defences, you never venture out at night (unless you are feeling brave) and you learn to listen out for the telltale sounds of a zombies moan or a skeletons bones rattling in the distance. And spiders...don't get me started on the fucking spiders.

And then there is the mining. Why would you even bother, right? If there are things that want to kill you down there? Well, that's where minerals are. Coal for your torches, Iron for better tools, and of course the elusive azure glow of Diamonds. Sometimes it gets downright tense, especially when you stumble upon a natural cavern underground. You'll creep along, putting torches on the wall, your fingers ready to switch to your sword or bow. Sure, you could play the game on peaceful mode, but I feel like the game would get a bit boring that way.

Anyway, I don't want this to turn into a TLDR wall of text, so I'll leave it at that, and get those screenshots up later.

Awesome art by Michael Corrigan

Ssssssss

Sad creepers are sad.

That's sound they make right before they explode and make you DIE. I have been exploring the game of Minecraft for the last couple of nights. It's a game where you...mine. And also Craft. Completely randomly generated worlds with no goal except to survive against the creatures that come out at night.

The first time I actually met a I didn't even see the bastard. I was outside at night cleaning up the dirt to make a proper wall for my little shelter. The resulting explosion did clear the dirt pretty quickly though.

Anyway, I will probably post a few pictures of my progress with Minecraft, as well as some more thoughts once I put a few more hours in.

Also, here is wallpaper version of Creeper!

It is left aligned because my desktop is. So there!