Yes, I really have gotten to hate Creepers!

I've noticed that the monsters spawn even inside your buildings, anyone know a way to prevent that?

They spawn where it is dark enough - so the best cure is lots of light - torches, fireplaces, and glowstone.

Both of those last two will require a trip to the Nether. Netherrack - the every day rock that most of the nether is made from, can be lit by a flint and steel and burns forever. Glowstone is made from four glow dust pieces, and glow dust comes from breaking the native glowstone with a pick - you will not get a 1:1 ratio there, you will get less than you break.

*EDIT* Oh yeah, forgot about lava - if you are going for a Hellworks look then a lava fountain can provide light.

But, yeah, make sure your house has lots of light - you may find fireplaces and fire pits more in keeping with your theme, so lots of netherrack. Before hitting the Nether then lots and lots of torches.

Oh, and Jack O'Lanterns - pumpkin + torch = Jack O'Lantern.

For more active defences, try an iron golem - golems are weird, you build them on site, not in your crafting menu. For an iron golem build a T out of four iron blocks and put a pumpkin on top, it will turn into a golem. Expensive though - that amounts to 36 pieces of iron. Snow golems are made with two snow blocks and a pumpkin, not much use in a fight - they throw snowballs, and they leave a trail of snow behind them. Cute and cheap though.

The Auld Grump

Now that all sounds much more interesting than classic mode.

A WORD OF WARNING!

Firefox has decided that Java is bad and has disabled it on my computer.

The updater is not updating Java, and trying to install the latest version of Java tells me that the wizard is being interrupted. Oracle apparently knows this happens, but does not have a cure.

Minecraft has stopped working because of this problem.

The Auld Grump

Works fine on Chrome!

The classic one works for me on firefox, but not on chrome.

Yeah, a lot of people had it happen, all of them Firefox users....

So, I have also switched to Chrome, and reinstalled Java. Good work, Mozilla! Google really appreciates your efforts....

The Auld Grump, fie! I say! Fie!

Turned off the blocklist on Firefox - the only extension on it was Java....

Guess I will have to stay away from suspicious sites until Java gets an installer that works for me. Giving up Minecraft and PCGen just wasn't going to happen.

The Auld Grump, then again, I don't visit suspicious websites, anyway....

Thanks for the heads-up guys, this game is awesome!!! I had a little problem with Vista not wanting to give me sound, but it got sorted out pretty quickly. I'm inside of my original hidey hole that I built after watching the how to survive your first night video. Just mining away and figuring out how things work. I like the crafting part of it and can already see the potential in the game and time slipping away. At least I'll be having fun! One thing, I haven't seen any bad guys yet, but at night I hear some awful sounds outside. Still in the sneaking out as soon as its light and retreating to the safe house near dark mode. Maybe I'll go out some night and see what the noises are...

OK. YOU GUYS ARE IN TROUBLE......

After getting the game and 'playing' from 3.00pm to 7.00am non stop, the missus is not happy with you lot getting me addicted. Especially when we had to go to an important luncheon, therein I find some 7 other players of this game and all we talked about was our stories.

I am to suffer one weeks missing out on this site ( so she who must be obeyed thinks) It started yesterday.

Not talking about work, religion or politics, that I can understand. But finding seven other people at a function and discussing a topic of mutual interest - that just seems like sound social functioning.

How it is it some people get to say that the topics that interest them are 'good' and the topics that don't, but may interest other people, are 'bad'? That's always seemed unbalanced to me.

(Take care of your good lady by all means, just recommend you find ways to do it that have you operating as equals as that tends to work out much better in the long run. Of course, it may be that she is less confident at social gatherings than she admits (or you realize), in which case sticking to topics she feels she can contribute to may be her way of feeling safe. If that's the case, then maybe you could work out beforehand how you can help her out and how she can give you time for conversations you want to have. ... Ah, the complex world of socializing and relationships )

Thanks for your kind words Zenguy.
My wife is a social butterfly and enjoys parties. It normally me who does not enjoy. However on this day I really enjoyed the day and infact a few of us are getting together for a "mineEvening" and letting the women have their own 'social chat' evening.

I think the wife was put out by the fact, I played the game, she was annoyed, I enjoyed the luncheon, and found more game players outside of the pc industry. Thing are looking good.

Get her to try minecraft. If she plays for 5 minutes she'll be hooked. Back when I played WOW, I got my wife to try it and she ended up playing and being more in to it than me. Nothing beats having a wife that games with you. Don't give up trying either. Mine didn't want to try it at first, but she eventually caved.

Last night was my first experience with a creeper. There I was alone (or so I thought), working on an upper level of my mountain fortress, when all of a sudden I heard a sound behind me like someone frying bacon. Ouch!!! They can really blow big holes in walls and floors. Plus making my way back from the spawn point was really hairy. I may have to make a small storage room near where I respawn to hold a weapon and some emergency supplies.

Use lots of torchlight to eliminate spawn points, and doors (preferably iron) to stop them walking in on you.

Clay, I found some clay!

Enough for a bit more than 64 blocks of bricks....

Something tells me that I won't have enough to do all seven stacks.... But I think that I can finish off the first three.

The Auld Grump

I've gotten to going outside after first light looking for the creepers and attacking them! At least that way, if I don't kill them, they tend to blow up in areas that don't destroy work I've already done. Currently I've been exploring a lot and have oh, 20 or so houses spread all over the game! Not all of them have doors, when I don't have an iron door and two buttons ready to go, I will put a dirt square in the door to make it a glassless window, that keeps everything out till I get a door in place. When I'm ready to go through the door, I use the shovel on the dirt square, then place it back after I'm through the door.

I'm exploring because I want to find a village, but so far no luck. I did run across a well in the desert, I'll have to remember to take a screen of it next time I go by it!

I keep finding clay under the sand, closer to earth than water.
It was in my way when i was building a glass tower.
Whats great with glass is those arrows hit glass and rebound.

I've tried to get the wife into minecraft but No it's a MAN thing she says.
Perfect, at least I do not have to compete with her.

(Thump Thump) she read the post over my shoulder.

At least it was not the mouse shoulder.

I love the glass! Last night I was digging pretty deep in my mine and found some Lapus Lazuli. The cool thing though was that when I was mining it, I broke through into a huge underground area. The scale of it was unbelievable. It stretched as far as I could see. It was a huge underground series of mountains and valleys with an enormous waterfall and river. Off in the far distance there was a pale blue diffusing light that kind of back lit everything just enough to make it visible. It really was a very well rendered background. I was kind of awestruck for a moment and almost got killed by a creeper. I'll post some screen shots later today.

Putting the foundry on hold until I get enough clay - next up is a hospital (well, tenement for my over abundance of villagers), cruciform, with four light wells.

No brick!

The Auld Grump

Remember guys water changes lava to obsidian.
However you must have a bucket to get the water then pour on the lava.
How to break obsidian, use a diamond pick and keep the finger on the mouse.
Hope it helps someone.

Ah, obsidian - hard to mine, even with a diamond pick; easy to create - trough of lava, and a bucket of water so water flows over the trough of lava. Ten is enough to make a portal to the Nether.

Portals that are too(?) close together exit out the same gate into the nether - this can be used to make a shortcut home since ducking back into that gate inside of the nether takes you back to the first gate that it connected to.

The Auld Grump

Finally have enough bricks to finish the stack for the third Bessemer, and a start on #4.


Foundry 4 by YeAuldGrump, on Flickr

I am now creating a copy of the save game files, to use in the event of major Creeper damage.... Came close today, managed to get the thing far enough away that it didn't damage the Foundry.

The roof plan is a series of factory style skylights.

As you may be able to tell, I have finally started making magic items - that bow was a level 50 item. Just one enchantment, Power V. I liked my older level 40 something bow, less damage, but it had Power, Flame, and Push. The second had Push, Flame, and Infinity. Wore that one out fast.

The Auld Grump

The Auld Grump

So I finally started working on my subway between my new tower and a large canyon I found. It's not the biggest canyon I've found since I started playing the game, but it's the biggest above ground one I've found on this particular world. Here's a screen of the starting tunnel.

I need to expand it to be 3x3 once I've got enough materials to make it look nice and lay all the track. Collecting iron right now, and am always on the look out for gold and redstone!

Got to take a screen of the new house and alpha station for the subway.

Heh, got lost in the Nether, went to 1/2 a heart when a Ghast blew up the ledge that I was standing on, dropping me into a sea of molten lava.... I had a potion 0f fire resistance, and a healing potion, otherwise I would not have been at half a heart - and losing your stuff in a sea of molten lava is not fun....

Wore out my magic shovel, almost wore out my magic pickaxe, not much left of my Power V bow, even though I was mostly using a lower level bow with Infinity. My armor took a beating, but I finally managed to make it back to safety. Losing that many magic items, something like 100 levels worth (half in that one bow) would have hurt. Losing nearly eight full stacks of Glowstone (not Dust, the actual reconstituted stone) would have made the expedition pointless - it was why I was there. Getting lost did mean getting a lot more Glowstone. Left more for later, assuming that I can find my way back to the place....

Lots of Blaze Rods... got them early on when I found a monster spawner in my second set of Nether ruins. But aside from the alchemy stand I don't have any idea what to do with Blaze Rods. Lots and lots of Ghast tears... I made 'em cry alright.

Killed a lot of Ghasts. Started at level 1, made it to 25 before I found my way back. Next time I will bring a stack of Obsidian, make a new portal if I need to.

If you are going to make any magic items then a high level bow and pickaxe should top the list. Losing the shovel I don't feel too bad about, but I want to see what a level 50 pickaxe looks like.

The Auld Grump

Finally got up the sand to delve into the nether. I'm basically playing it like I'm on Mars. I've built a bunker around the portal, and a tunnel complex, both surface and subsurface to a nearby set of ruins and am in the process of making it less dangerous to occupy by giving it walls and a roof in the walkways and rooms that don't have them. I knew all of that extra cobblestone would come in handy!

Have about a stack of blaze rods. It took a fair few minutes to get close enough to shut down the spawner by completely surrounding it with rows of cobblestone. At least I think its blocked. Things got quieter after that, except for the sidewinder missile shooting ghasts.

I haven't constructed a bow yet so no good shots at ghast tears. I'll get those next time.

Found a heap of soul sand and some glowstone dust and headed back to sanity. The trip definitely kept me on my toes. I'll have to classify my first trip as a win!, but then again, I haven't gone very far and had almost no time out in the open.

Did you die? No? Then it's a win.

The Auld Grump

Went crazy with collecting and growing or breeding all of the different crops and animals available in the game. I lucked out and found a Giant Mushroom Biome about a half days walk from my fortress and snagged some Mooshrooms!! Mushroom stew here I come!


I also experimented with dyeing sheep so i have all 16 colors available. Whats cool is that when you shear them, the wool grows back in the dyed color!



I have been smelting a ton of stone and glass lately so I decided to build an arboretum so I could smelt charcoal. It takes 8 charcoal or coal to smelt a stack of 64 wood into charcoal. So I basically get 56 charcoal and 7 stacks of glass or stone per stack of charcoal used. Pretty cool since I was running low on coal. The arboretum is down on level 24 in my mine and has room for 99 of whatever trees I want to grow, either Pine, Oak/Jungle or Birch.



I'm now actually growing or breeding everything in the game except ocelets, wolves and melons. I
have to go find some of those. I haven't found an abandoned mineshaft yet so no melons. I'll post more pics later.

Any tried the xbox version yet? Any good? I'm thinking of getting it. Though it'll wait a bit, diablo 3 comes out tomorrow.

My son (who regularly plays Minecraft on the PC) played Xbox Minecraft at a friend's place on the weekend - said it was great.

I found a flippin' sea of clay last night!

Enough to finish all seven stacks for my Foundry with some left over.

It wasn't even far from home - I just had not gone that way until I decided to carve a road through the jungle. I built a little Tiki hut to use while my clay was being turned into bricks - I ended up with over twenty piles of 64 brick blocks each.

*EDIT* Going back for a screen shot I found more clay....


Tiki Home by YeAuldGrump, on Flickr
My Tiki Home. Notice how the hot tropics borders on the snow covered forests....


Tiki Home 2 by YeAuldGrump, on Flickr

A better view, against the setting sun.

The Auld Grump