Rather than take Clarence the Wolf with me on my overseas adventures, I decide his home is his here - it'd be unfair to relocate him on a different continent so I ask him to wait at the coastline. A couple of minutes into my voyage and I realise that he'll sit there forever unless told otherwise, and will probably starve to death as a result, so in hindsight maybe that wasn't the fairest thing to do. I would go back and save him but it's late and I'm sleepy.
I become enthralled by the upcoming landscape. Looks like all kinds of craziness is afoot, and I eagerly sail over there. Or paddle over there. I have no idea what mechanism makes this boat go forward.
This place is fantastic. If the caves around here don't yield the diamonds I seek, I fail at Minecraft and probably life itself. That excellent plateau will be my base of operations.
Assuming I don't kill myself trying to bridge over to it.
Eek.
After a lot of very careful fiddling around and more than one underwear change, I finally make it over. It's pretty sweet up here - relatively flat and spacious except for the big hole in one part, and the views of the surrounding area are worth writing home about. Heck, it's worth writing a blog about it. Yep, this is where I'll stay for the time being.
It's occurred to me that I've not really done much building since I arrived in the world. From my mining expeditions I've got more cobblestone than a obsessive compulsive cobble hoarder in a cobble canyon, and can build pretty much whatever takes my fancy. A mansion, a tower, a mansion with a tower, a giant stone penis, a big statue in the image of Kanye West... well, those last two are one and the same, but the point remains that I should put this cobblestone to good use.
I decide to keep things practical and construct a massive fortress, which will not only be a good place to stash the crap I'm lugging around but will also look fitting on the sky island when viewed from the horizon.
Hmmm. It looked like I had way more stone when it was my inventory.
Well, I've not got enough to finish it off and put a roof on it (a prerequisite for 'shelter') and it's getting dark. I'll need to lay down for the night somewhere safe.
Sans shelter, this was honestly the safest solution I could come up with:
Thanks to my genius bed placement skillz, the night passes without incident and I wake up feeling as fresh as a daisy (albeit suffering from acute vertigo) and hankering for some adventure. Sadly, the day also passes without incident - I find a small cave and mine downwards for the entire day, but I find nothing except a creeper blast to the face and a punch-up with a skellywag. Besides from some loose iron I return to base without any good loot, although the mining spree has given me enough cobble to finish my Sky Fortress (or small bedsit. Whatever.)
I'm low on wool and don't have enough to make another bed, so I have to collect the one I cleverly placed above the insane hole in the sky platform plateau. As it's dark I scan the area to make sure nothing horrible like a creeper or Kanye West has spawned nearby, then approach the one block-wide walkway out to the middle of the hole.
After a good look around, the going seems safe and I grab it without any intervention from creepers. When I'm making my way back and suddenly find myself with a ringing in my ears and falling through the big hole in the ground, however, I take the remaining few seconds before I hit the ground at terminal velocity to reflect on how creepers earned their name.
I also refer to them frequently as 'oh you utter bitch-face sneaking bastard!' which is equally as fitting, I guess.
The explosion didn't kill me outright and there's a pool of water approximately one bazillion miles below me, and closing fast. If I spastically manage to land in one of the very few spots which are only a block or two deep, I'll be as dead as the next creeper on which I plan to take out my anger should I survive. While the chances of landing on a jutting surface rock is slim, at this height, no amount of iron armour will save me from death should I hit one (even though Minecraft physics dictate that the more heavy armour you're wearing, the less damage you'll take if you crater. Go figure.)
I close my eyes; an expert gamer's trick. You can have that one for free.
When I point my peepers back at the monitor, I'm satisfied to learn that I should probably take up diving as an Olympic sport. I'm deep in the pool and a wandering squid floats by and expresses his concern, which is nice but guys I don't have time for chit-chat yeah?
I resurface and paddle (probably in a very pansy-looking way to any mobs watching) to the side of the pool, my heart still very much in my mouth with my balls having retreated into my body to a location roughly where my heart was. That's all wrong. I take a moment to collect myself before heading back up to the top (no idea why in hindsight since I'm clearly less safe up there than down here.)
The second I'm back up my critical faculties kick back into gear. The gear in question may only be neutral, but it's a gear all the same and I realise the dangers of standing on a very rickety bridge thing at the edge of a high plateau brimming with nasties. I could make a dash to the half-finished Sky Fortress (one-room hovel, whatever) and brick myself in, or I could head back down to the surface and figure something out there.
Since it'd take me about five Minecraft days, or 25 of your Earth minutes, to make my way back down the awful access bridge it would be dawn by the time I got to ground level so; alas, I go with option one and try and reach the Sky Fortress (barely-made outhouse, whatever) without getting blown up. Or blown off. Getting blown off the plateau, I mean.
Specifics aside, as I rush across the surface towards possible safety, no direction or kind of blowing would be welcome in the next fifteen seconds. I've been blown by a creeper once today and I don't wa...
... Oh, come on guys. Seriously?
Grow up. This is a serious blog I'm trying to run.
