If you've been reading so far, you'd be forgiven for thinking that I flail around in games without much of a discernible plan. You're not alone, and it applies to life as well. However, rest assured that I've hatched a plan! And not just a very concrete, fulfillable plan, but a series of excellent plans... short, medium and long-term plans! If you're not impressed to hear this, my accountant will be. Speaking of which, I'm three months overdue to with my accounts. I should make plans for filing those.
But my fiscal situation is not the issue at hand here. We're talking about more important plans, mainly concerning where my game of Minecraft (and this blog) is going. The last time you left me, I was stuck in the crazy lava/water cave deep beneath the surface. As this is just static text, I'm still here. Hi!
You may remember that I made a resolute decision to explore further, regardless of the near certain chance of me accidentally tripping and taking a long dive into a shallow pool of magma. Nothing has changed and I still intend to do that (explore, I mean, not fall into lava) so that brings us onto the first order of the day:
Short Term Plans: See What's Happening in the Crazy Fire Water Cave
I start by blocking off the waterfall flowing towards the lava, and reveal a platform of obsidian. That should make things a bit more maneuverable and I make my way around to the left. The going is tough - although I deftly make my way around the lava, I'm simply met with more loads more lava to navigate. However, the rewards I spoke of previously are indeed worth it. I pick up some redstone, a bit of iron, some more iron and... oooh! DIAMOND!
Ah, nuts; it's just lapis lazuli. For those of you who don't play Minecraft:
a) How on earth are you enjoying this
b) Lapis lazuli always tricks me when it's embedded in walls as it looks like diamond, arguably the most valuable and useful object in the game. While it's still super-rare, lapis lazuli has very little use. Well, it has one use - it dies wool light blue. So we can agree that it's useless.
I still get the feeling that we're long overdue for a diamond pay-off. No idea how true it is, but I read somewhere that diamond is more likely to form around large areas of lava, so I'm determined to venture deeper into the... the... ah.
... if that theory holds true, there's probably a fair bit of diamond around here.
Slightly Longer Term Plans: Screw this cave, I'm out of here.
More crazy lava/water stuff. To be fair this was to be expected given I've dubbed this the Crazy Lava/Water Cave, but there's no way I'm going to keep going. I've already made my way over a few of these damned things, but too much is too much.
It's time to haul my awesome stash of iron ore (43 at this point) up to the surface. Pay day, girlfriend.
I make it up the waterfall and into the main cavern. I have no idea where the Endermen from earlier went to, but to hell with those guys. I don't need any friends when I've got this much iron. But crawling through the tunnels back to the entrance, I do come across an old acquaintance... or should I say, an old enemy?
I twiddle my moustache. I see him as he stalks from the darkness beyond. He pauses, and watches me.
Hello, Kenneth. We meet again.
I've had to ramp up the brightness and contrast in this screenshot just to make him visible to the untrained eye, but I'd recognise his intimidating figure in any cave system, under any lighting conditions and regardless of any graphic rendering restraints. He lingers just for a moment, staring directly at me, before slinking off into a side corridor. Most creepers would charge straight at their prey without a moment of hesitation, but not Kenneth - he's playing a long game, and I have to admit that his psychological tricks are beginning to unnerve me.
The rest of my ascent passes without incident, and I'm as surprised to see that it is daylight outside as when you come out from the cinema following an early afternoon showing in the Summer.
Weary yet feeling triumphant, I throw the iron ore into the furnace and wait for it to smelt. With the short-term plan of getting back to base in one unburnt piece accomplished, I have plenty of time to kill waiting for my iron in order to ponder the finer workings of...
The Mid-Term Plan: Upgrading to Minecraft 1.0 and Venturing Onward
Yes. Even though the 'full' version of Minecraft was released a few weeks ago, I am still playing in the previous version without all the exciting additions to the gameplay mechanics. Why haven't I updated yet? Why am I so behind the times? What are these Blu-Ray Discs everyone is harping on about? Why did they cancel Hey Arnold!?
So many difficult questions, but I have all the right answers. Firstly, it's an optical disc storage medium designed to supercede the DVD, and secondly it's because I record all my gaming sessions and do the write ups later on. Whenever life lets up a little and I get the chance to play my Iron Man Mode save, I tend to do a whole hour or so and that can generate a good few blog posts in advance.
Lastly, Arnold just ran his course. He'd be about 30 years old now, so stop clinging onto the past and let it go.
So, here we go... at this point of the narrative, I update the game to Minecraft 1.0. Not only that, but it'll also be the first time I've played the latest version - I've purposely avoided playing the game other than for IMM. My reactions here to the many changes and introductions will be born out of surprise; heck, I've even avoided reading about the new version, so it's really all news to me and I genuinely wonder what the new update will hold?
Broken textures and heartache, it seems.
I 'use the patcher, noob' as the water pool rudely suggests but get the same results. It could be that this version of the texture I have isn't compatible with MC 1.0, so I switch to another texture altogether:
It seems that I'm going to have to take it back to the old school until I get the chance to implement a snazzier, working texture. Expect default textures for the next load of screenshots, and remember that this is how we used to see things back in the day. You kids have never had it so good.
I don't notice anything immediately different about 1.0 except that the swamp outside by base is a bit... swampier. More vines and shit, innit.
I plan to explore a bit more and can't wait to see what's in store for me. And I don't mean just wandering in vague circles around my home until I half-heartedly fall into a terrifying and potentially lethal cave, either. I'm talking about walking with purpose to a terrifying and potentially lethal cave beyond the horizon, and throwing myself into it with gusto. As such, I collect my newly smelted iron and pack up base - taking with me my bed, furnace, crafting table, everything in the chest and even the chest itself. And yes, I'm going to physically carry all this stuff with me. I work out.
As well as 'just for the hell of it', there is another reason for my upcoming odyssey to farther lands. You're probably thinking "goodness, this sounds a lot like a long-term plan!", possibly as a result of me mentioning a long-term plan earlier. I did mention I had a long-term plan, didn't I?
I have a long-term plan.
Long-Term Plan: Leave the World Altogether
I've not updated as often as I would like as I've been trying out some other ideas for the site recently which may see the light of day at some point, but also because spare time is a rationed commodity at the moment and I have to prioritize my... y'know, priorities.
One thing I miss dearly is playing Minecraft in multiplayer on a private server run by Russell. There's just a few of us on there, but at the last point I played (a couple of months ago) we'd managed to make a very interesting world of it. He has soldiered on, and I miss playing with him. So to speak.
At the same time, I don't want to neglect the blog. So here's the long-term plan.
I've packed up my stuff and I'm about to decisively head North. Or West. Or... which way does the sun rise in Minecraft? Yeah, North. No, Ea... well, I'm heading that way. I will explore when I feel the need to explore, kill livestock whenever the mood takes me, set up temporary bases whenever I find it necessary, fantasize over your girlfriend's photos on Facebook whenever I damn well please, and just generally frollick like the free man that I am in and amongst the game's blocky beauty. But essentially, what I really want to do is this:
Build an Obsidian Portal. Once I achieve this, I'll carry on the blog and my adventure over at the multiplayer server. Of course, that's if I don't die first - I've not found any of the necessary diamonds needed to make a pickaxe strong enough to mine obsidian, so my work's cut out for me. If I do die in this mission, as per the rules of Iron Man Mode, it's all over.
But we'll see how we get on.
More to follow, including some slightly more interesting terrain than The Ziggurat encountered so far. Here's a teaser... catch you next time!
