ABz Plays Minecraft Again

Like the other games that I've increasingly spent time blabbing about in the game threads, I figured I might as well move my descriptions of my Minecraft exploits here rather than bore people elsewhere.

I started playing Minecraft a month ago when I was still sick during the weekend and didn't feel like doing anything else. I knew the dangers of me being focused on/addicted to another video game. What I didn't expect was that a couple of days later when I invited Baby B to watch me play for a bit, that it would become a fun thing for us to do together daily. Now we talk about plans for building things, I fill her in on what I did in the game after she goes to bed, and we started buying her some of those little Minecraft collectibles, of which she now has six. (And two of the ones I bought her after she had the sheet showing the possible minis for that series, she was able to correctly ID by feeling their shape inside the bag!)

Fun things we experienced together:

Realized that instead of shearing sheep and then dying the wool to make things (requiring a unit of dye for every wool), I could dye sheep directly, and then shear colorful sheep to get that wool. This led to me making a giant pen and breeding a bunch of sheep, then dyeing them in a bunch of colors. Also, some sheep, when bred with each other, will make new colors, such as red+yellow=orange, black+white=grey, etc. For colors that don't mix, the game picks a random choice for the baby of one of the two parents. So I now have white, black, brown, grey, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and magenta sheep.

I learned that Minecraft now has maps that you can create, and zoom out four times to make MASSIVE area maps, and then place Banners to mark points of interest as you travel, then use the map on them to navigate back later. I started doing this in my explorations, using White banners to mark my own bases and orange for natural Villages. I will use other colors to mark places later. But this also led directly into:

I spent hours and in-game days running around on land trying to explore places before realizing/remembering I CAN BUILD A BOAT. My initial starting location and first fort is on a hill overlooking a giant ocean. For several days of gameplay, I was using ridiculously long bridges of blocks to try and find stuff out in the ocean, and then "upgraded" to trying Nether Portals, when I wasn't really equipped to explore the Nether without extreme danger (and ended up dying for my first time, twice in immediate succession, from trying to travel and getting ambushed by zombie pigmen), when I could have built a fucking boat out of the wood from a single tree.

Once I discovered this very obvious thing, I took my boat and explored most of a map square by water first, then hopped out to check out the land. This actually makes exploration fun, as I can also use rivers to go inland. Though I found a nice spot for a new castle far, FAR inland and started working on it, then realized that the river leading there was broken or interrupted in a dozen places, so I started working to connect them...but kept getting stuck outside at nighttime and having to build temporary shelters...and THEN forgot to carry a bed with me so I could sleep in my shelter until safety the following morning, so I spent several nights standing on a platform high enough to keep me safe, and sniping monsters with my bow.

Then I realized that settlement was just too far away, and started building in ANOTHER new location, this one accessible by ocean travel about two minutes from my original home. This one is planned to be my "BIG" project. It consists of a large plateau of raised land with several tall mountains around it, a river and the ocean close enough to use for travel, a Village in the valley below that I can migrate villagers from when I complete my own highly fortified settlement, and an "Illager Outpost" a short distance past that for me to fight enemies at.

In this new location, I've so far built a large stairway leading to a pass between two tall mountains where I am building guard towers and a gatehouse, some farm plots, an apartment building for 12 Villagers and a couple of tree farms for wood. I intend to build a Market with "job blocks" for the Villagers, a fortified wall around the entire area to protect against monsters, and a huge Keep to be my own home.

Villagers can now have 13 different "jobs" that allow you to trade with them for various profession-related items, which raises their levels and lets them offer better items to trade. One of my main goals for this is to get a Cartographer villager to level 5 so they can offer me treasure maps! But the villages I've discovered so far in my explorations are very open and susceptible to monster attacks...the village next to my starting area was down to two villagers and full of craters from exploding Creepers before I started building a small wall around it and installing plenty of torches to keep it lit at night. (Light prevents monsters from spawning, but if you miss even a single dark corner somewhere, they can pop out of it.)

So, that's a summary of the last few weeks of play. If anyone reads this at all, feel free to discuss your own experiences with the game. I'll add screenshots later.