With my new long-term purpose fixed firmly in my heart, I spend a full day waiting for my iron ore to smelt and thinking about how funny the word 'smelt' is. By the next dawn, I'm about ready to set out into unfamiliar pastures and look forward to a full and sunny day of adventuring. Except I spend most of this day dicking around with my inventory in preparation, so by the time I actually leave the packed-up base the sun is beginning to set. Dang.
But whatever. My excitement leads me to throw caution to the wind and I head out towards the horizon regardless. It's not long before I come to the first instance of post-update terrain wackiness; essentially whenever you update Minecraft to a version with a different landscape gen alogarithm, once you venture outside of the already explored area the crossover point can feature some pretty bizarre features such as this lagoon which seems more angular than Sarah Jessica Parker's jaw.
With only a minute of daylight left remaining, I spend thirty seconds of it laughing at this picture and another thirty to return to the game and walk on a little further. Darkness well and truly falls by the time I reach a small forest outcrop. I cannot see any monsters spawning amongst the trees, but I can sure as hell hear them. Shit's about to get serious.
There's no time or space to make shelter, and as I'm at sea level digging a hole downward is proving to be a bit tricky. I find a group of around six sheep and a few pigs huddling together, so for want of a better option I wade into the middle of them for safety. Go wool shield! Unfortunately, my reputation with the world's animals seems to have preceded me and they decisively walk away from me as one. A pig at the rear of the group glances back to fire me a disapproving look. I kill it.
Being the heroes that they are, the rest of the animals flee from their fallen brother but not before one of the sheep lets its feelings known by barking at me. Wait, what? Oh, a wolf!
My soon-to-be lupine friend watches on passively, probably figuring that since I'm so fond of wanton murder we're on the same team. He's not wrong, and once I finish up I reward him with a few of the bones I collected in the Crazy Fire/Water Cave.
Because this forest and its abundance of dumb sheep and pigs must be a nightmare for a wolf, my gift of three old bones wins him over to my side. The game puts a red collar on him to signify he's mine in body, and the hearts emanating from his head tell me he's also mine in spirit. I'm sure we'll have a heap of adventures together, and I'm glad he turned up when he did as I see zombies closing in. The extra fighting power will be useful and I give him a name befitting a beast of his ferocity: Clarence.
No sooner than I spot one does a zombie decide to become our first challenger. However, my immediate concerns lie with the creeper which is only a few meters ahead of me. I can deal with just the one, and draw my sword to kill it before the zombie to my left reaches me.
But it turns out that neither should be my main focus. As the creeper ahead distracts me, I hear a noise from the trees to my right.
Being in possession of lightning-fast reflexes (I was sober at the time of playing for once) I manage to backpedal quick enough to get away from all threats. Luckily, I've got Clarence to back me up! Although he doesn't look like he's going to bother if I don't throw the first punch, and I'm emphatically not going to be doing anything that daft. Nope, I run as fast as my cowardly legs can carry me. Probably thinking it's all a big game, Clarence runs behind me with creeper #1 behind him, followed by a zombie, and creeper #2 bringing up the rear. Cue the Benny Hill music.
I don't look back until I reach Parker Bay. Looks like I lost them.
This time, I sprint straight through the forest rather than lingering and find a mound of dirt on the other side which looks about perfect for creating a small hole to sleep in (I've already got a pre-made bed from the last base, which I'm somehow able to carry around). I manage to dig out the hollow utilizing the most efficient hollow-digging method I have in my arsenal - having a creeper sneak up and explode in your face. The resulting hollow in the side of the mound is spot on; cheers dude.
In the morning Clarence is waiting patiently outside, so we continue on. His patience doesn't hold out too long however as when we find an adventurous-looking cave entrance, he's so eager for me to get down there he feels it necessary to push me into it and I break my ankles. To show his camaraderie he jumps down immediately afterwards and nearly kills himself, too.
It takes an awful lot of raw chicken to heal him up and the fall wasn't far off destroying me, either, so I ask him to wait while I explore further. Sit, Ubu, Sit! Good dog.
After falling down the vertical entrance, the first thing I come across is a small hole which opens out into what looks like an abyss. There's a tiny bit of light in there - no idea what the source is - but any attempts by me to see what's going on down there come to no good. All I can surmise is that it's very deep and that the layer of ground separating me from getting to know the bottom of it intimately is only one block thick.
Ker-thunk. I feel the not especially pleasant sensation of an arrow lodging itself in my spine. Since 'not watching my back' seems to be turning into a theme today, I'm unsurprised to discover I've been jumped by a skellington and it's not just Clarence trying to push me down holes. I spin around and in quick succession hit it in the face with a) my fist, b) a raw chicken, c) a feather, d) a mushroom, and e) a block of cobblestone before finally getting through my hotkeys and settling on a sword (the practical choice) to finish off the job.
I'm going to pass. This cave is giving me bad vibes, much the same as if you were at a party and one of the guests shot you with an arrow while trying to push you into an infinite void, so I chalk this one up as a loss and head out with Clarence in tow.
To recap though, I'm trying to find some diamond to fulfil my ultimate goal of mining some obsidian to build a portal, which I've decided will allow me to carry on the blog in a multi-player server since I'm so incredibly... lonely.
I'm so lonely here, guys. Lonely and sad.
But I'm not going to find any diamond milling around on the surface and shying away from every cavern I come across, of course, so I make a concerted effort to push on into the new terrain and explore the next few cave systems I come across.
Hours pass, and nothing comes up in my subterranean adventures. A truck load of iron, but not much else. Pretty much the same result as I was getting back in the area around the Ziggurat, in fact.
I carry on walking into the new terrain. It looks similar to the old terrain, also around the Ziggurat area.
In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd say this wa...
... ah.
So the previous few hours weren't so much of the beginning of a grand exodus, but more of a 'little jaunt in a confused circle'.
After a lot of head-scratching, I begin some plan-making. The plan-making results in further head-scratching but ultimately I feel my plans are well made and my head is sufficiently scratched.
Hey.
Remember that boat I accidentally made ages ago?
