Nice! I love the hut. So is that your new vacation home? Cant wait to see the finished foundry.

Also, not what I wanted to see when I looked into my mushroom farm room to see if they had spread enough to harvest!

Heh, neither Creepers nor mushrooms like bright light....

If I remember properly, mushrooms can grow in places that are only one block high, so you can make an area where mushrooms can grow but there isn't enough room for monsters.

The Auld Grump

Well, curiosity got the better of me, so I downloaded the demo for XBOX.

I'm hooked; 5 minutes of gameplay in the tutorial mode was all I needed. The Wife™ was glad there's a split-screen mode so she can play along as well. I shall be purchasing a points card come the 'morrow to get the full version. Bye-bye free time

I mentioned that I was playing a bit at work last week. Two of the guys I work with came dragging in yesterday because the had played the tutorial and then couldn't sleep thinking about the game.

Mission accomplished

I started a new world, with one of the seeds that start you near a village. Once I had created a wall around the village, I started working on an elevate mine cart track. So far I have 2 stations and the platform for the track between the two stations and the platform running to where I'm going to build a 3rd station.

To get the stone I needed to build the stations and the platform, I started strip mining an area near the village that had exposed stone! Currently I've dug down to expose bedrock in some areas of the pit and gotten some diamond, gold and iron! Made powered tracks last night from the gold and am about to start laying track.

The second station I built is near another place that I'm going to strip mine!

While exploring in some of the caves that intersected my first strip mine, I ran across a huge underground canyon, came in at the bottom of it! Took a couple of screens of it, but need to take a couple of screens of the pit and then post all of them!

That's awesome! Cant wait to see the pictures. That has to be a huge hole! It must rival the Kennecott Copper mine. That thing is enormous and can be seen from space.



I also started a new world. I made it in creative mode with one of those seeds to see some of the things I haven't found yet in my world. It starts you near a village with a second village within sight distance, and behind the second is a ravine with an abandoned mineshaft in it. If you explore the mineshaft briefly and I mean very briefly, it connects to a stronghold that is pretty extensive. So now I know what to look for.
The seed is : 2525617506084080286 if you want to give it a look.
1st Village near: X:367 Z:163
2nd Village near: X:563 Z:64
Ravine with mineshaft near: X:621 Z:-36
and the stronghold is in one of the corridors of the mineshaft.

If you haven't seen an Ender Portal it is near X:735 Y:34 Z:-18 in the stronghold. I believe I had to destroy a wall to get to the area it is in. (There were several hidden rooms with camouflaged buttons, and pushing buttons doesn't work in creative mode. It just destroys the block.) Hope you guys enjoy it. Like I said I started in creative mode so I could putter around safely and see what the different areas look like since I haven't found them yet exploring in my world. The flying part was cool as well. Pretty awesome world.

I have a world set up in creative mode for when I want to try and create something from a YouTube video I've seen. For instance I wanted to create a bi-directional subway station that I had seen on YouTube, so I started a creative mode world and then experimented in it until I got the method down!

I'll have to use that seed that you mention in your post in creative mode to check it out. As far as the pictures, I did a couple of screen captures last night, but forgot to put them on my thumb drive, so I can't upload and post them until I get back home tonight!

Oh and my strip mine isn't quite as wide as the one you pictured!

I tend to strip mine deserts. I take away all of the sand (and I do mean all of the sand - I use a lot of glass and sandstone) then peel away the stone, layer by layer. Having good weapons means killing a lot of creepers, which means a lot of gunpowder, which means I make a lot of dynamite. Dynamite takes out a lot of sand fast.

Part of the reason I decided to go steampunk - I am an ecological disaster, might as well look like a 19th century industrialist as act like one.

My only current rail line connects to what remains of a desert.

The Auld Grump

LOL Grump!

Ok, I've uploaded my two pit pictures, and after hearing about your desert strip mining, I feel insignificant!

No, that's pretty danged significant!

My latest strip mine I am actually digging to look like a strip mine, part of the reason for the rail line.

Your's is much deeper, at the moment.

Next update will bring large biomes - so less complete destruction of entire deserts, forests, and jungles.

The Auld Grump, this game needs balrogs, for when you delve too deep....

Eeeeee!

Though I did die quite a few times because of a rather large area of lava I found almost at the bottom. There was a large area of water in another cave right above the lava, so I was able to make a whole bunch of obsidian from it, but kept falling in while trying to maneuver around and deal with the various skeletons that kept showing up!

Ok. Thanks a lot for this topic. I'm now an official MineCrack addict. I stumbled on a room way below the ground with a monster spawn block and a couple of chests with some goodies inside. I was scared of the monster spawn block so I left it alone (playing in 'peaceful' mode for now until I get the hang of things).

Boy, Iron ore is sure scarce in my world

I love finding the dungeon rooms. I usually mine out all of the moss rock to use later. To disable the spawner until you need it (xp farm), just put a torch on top of it and it will deactivate. To reactivate it, just remove it.

Glimmar's Steampunk texture pack for the win! Thanks for the headups earlier in the thread Grump. I decided to try a texture pack today and that one is so full of goodness its crazy. I love the Victorian era and the steampunk genre, and this pack fits the bill. I especially love the new skins for the mobs.

Yeah - it is a fantastic looking texture pack.

Found another sea of clay, built another home away from home, just a little place.

The Auld Grump

I just played a bit on my son's account last night, and I have to say, it is both addicting and annoying.

I have to wonder if I'm playing the same game as you guys. I was proud of myself figuring out how to get iron ore (Key insight from my son, "No dad, that's iron not copper" which made the google search suddenly really helpful), make a torch, and smelt iron.

But the skeletons still kick my butt, I started a second mine (when darkness fell and I was too far from home, so I walled up) that I now can't find again (which is doubly-annoying because I got killed in it, so there is a lot of stuff sitting there (yes, by a skeleton, don't know how it got in)), I fall off narrow stairs pretty regularly, I can't figure out how to eat (had an apple, had rotten meat), and on and on, I'm constantly flooded with cobblestone (I just hollow out a niche, put 4x64 cobblestones in my 'makeit' area, toggle back to normal so they all get expelled to the niche, and wall it up with dirt in case I need to get it again).

Villagers? Trains? Towns? Ain't seen much of that!

Skeletons tend to do that. Enemies will spawn where there isnt much light, so keep your areas lit well with torches. (They last forever). To eat, make sure the food is in an action slot and hold the right mouse button in. It will take a second to eat and there will be an animation of you munching on said food. Make a crafting table in your inventory menu if you havent already. This will allow you to make chests to hold your items. The towns are small and spread about, so it can take some exploring to find, and you actually make trains on your own in the crafting menu. There is a superb wiki for the game and the crafting recipes are here: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Crafting

Any more questions, just ask. Good luck and have fun!

Switched back to default textures and took a couple of quick screenshots of eating and crafting.

Eating:


and crafting a chest. (You only need 8 wood not the 41 in the picture) Also two small chests can be placed next to each other to make one large one.


Hope it helps!

Thanks. Ah, hold down the mouse button to eat. Got it.

Yup, I have a chest (once I saw the furnace/forge I tried arranging everything else I had in a box shape).

I still think I should be able to make an ax with the flint, but Iron is working ok.

I've lit my underground areas -- there must be some shady place where the monsters are lurking.

I didn't know that torches last forever -- that's great to know. I've been placing them sparsely because I figured they must burn out eventually.

Steve

You can also use cobblestone for the axe if iron is in short supply. It wont last as long, but there is alot more of it and it works in a pinch. Same goes for a sword. 1 wooden stick on the bottom and 2 stone or wood or iron for the blade. Takes some figuring out but i have a blast.

Until you have armor (any armor) monsters will kick your butt.

Bows help, but arrows can be in short supply, at least until you have decent armor and weapons.

I tend to keep a skeleton spawner once I find it - plunk a torch on top to turn it off, remove the torch to turn it on. Use a sword to kill skellies until you have enough arrows. That also gives you enough bone to make fertilizer, so you can grow Instant Trees!(TM)

Regular cobblestone can be used to make axes, swords, and shovels.

The Auld Grump

I've been playing a lot of the Feed the Beast Map ("Insanity" version) http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1052619-125-feed-the-beast-insanity-ssp-released/

It's a "sky block" map with a reward system. You start with very little, but as you build and complete challenges, you earn new items to use. It's based very strongly around the mod Equivalent Exchange, which lets you use alchemy to convert blocks into other blocks of "equivalent" value. For example, cobblestone has a value of 1, while iron has a value of 256, and gold 8196.

At the moment, I've been spending a lot of time breeding bees to meet one of the challenges. Bees are added by the mod Forestry.

One nice thing about Feed the Beast is that (most) of the mod installation has been simplified with the included mod pack.

Damn it! I had spent quite a few hours over the last few weeks making a massive castle, based on Castle Ravenloft from the DnD adventure of the same name and was working on it Sunday night. Well, due to the nasty tropical storm that's hovering over Florida, we had a power failure and unfortunately, my gaming computer is one of the four computers that I have that is not on a battery backup!

So my saved world is gone!

Guess I've just got to start over!

Bummer. I thought it saved between sessions -- or did the map get corrupted?

I've been going the stealth route: building a tunnel out to the middle of the sea using ladders. Weird when the squids start beaching themselves inside.

Steve

I think the map corrupted. Main thing is I was actually playing the game when we lost power, so I'm guessing that's what happened to that world. Good thing about this happening, I found a youtube video of how this guy was making hidden entrances, which will let me make secret doors for the castle as I build it again.

Finally I found a world seed that started me off in a better place than the last time.

Dude that really sucks. I hate to think about losing that much work.

A fairly major update, sometime soon.

Among other changes:
Boats will break lily pads, not the other way around.
Minecarts will be easier to use.
Enderboxes - shared space boxes made of ender eyes and obsidian.
Villagers with trade goods!
Tripwires.
Jungle temples.
Desert Temples.
More types of wooden objects.
Bigger Biomes.

The Auld Grump, who committed Greek dancing tonight....

Possibly the scariest review of any video game that I have ever read, let alone for Minecraft....

The Auld Grump

This may or may not work, but I found this on the web -

I highly recommend backing up your Save folder first, but then I am paranoid.

Let me know if that works.

The Auld Grump

Thanks AuldGrump, I'll have to give that a try.