S3 Minecraft: Styxx Ep 2

We left off last time in desperate retreat. I had seen one skeleton, but as I ran I realized there were two skeletons doing a tag team on me. I ran out and started my way up the mine when I realized that I had done something stupid... I could easily be knocked off. I turned to look for a safer ledge, and saw just how many arrows were coming for me.



I pulled out my pick and I created a quick hiding hole in the wall where there was already a short clearing. I then realized the skeletons are in just as much danger as I was... I pulled out my sword, and I knocked them down into the abyss where I never saw them again.



Now it was time for me to go into that abyss. It was not but a few meters down that I saw some more light.



I cautiously headed toward the light. The bottom of the mine was finally reached, and it branched into several areas. I wanted to explore the light I had seen. Lava coursed through the area, and then while looking at the lava I came across another sight



Red stone has a number of uses in Minecraft. The most complicated technlogies required it, and I knew that it was only found in the deepest of mines. This is the kind of stuff I was after, I slowly mined a walkway so I could possibly reach the stuff, I was worried it was too close to the lava.



Lava spits what looks like solid pieces of lava out and onto the ledges sometimes, and I do not know if it can harm me. Further more, it has a hiss similar to Creepers, so I am fully paranoid while walking near it. Eventually though, I have claimed my prizes.



I mined around, and it was very dangerous here. Lava destroys anything that falls in it, and I lost a few chunks of coal and one or two pieces of redstone dust to the firey liquid. While digging I thought I had uncovered some more iron... but at second look and I realized I had another first



GOLD! I have no clue what Gold is currently useful for, but I know its one of the most rare ores on the map. In the future I am sure it will have a great use, so I mined what I could. I got about 4 blocks of it before there was too much lava in the area to explore for more.

Next I walked down a pathway that was on the opposite side of the lava. It extended into a little hallway. As I approached, I heard the trickle of water. I cleared a few stone to make it easier to walk, and then was met with:



A room full of waterfalls! There were at least 3 waterfalls draining from the ceiling into a lake in the room. I could barely see the lake because the room was so very dark.



Almost immediatly I was hit with an unknown amount of arrows. I know with full iron armor, I was almost dead in a few seconds. I retreated, ate some food to fill my health, and hid... waiting for my attackers. In the following 5 minutes I killed no less than 3 zombies and 3 skeletons, and the arrows did not stop. It was crazy... I was worried about losing my new ores. So I did the only thing I could think of.



I blocked the room and resolved to return one day to the Lake of the Damned, more prepared and with less fear.

For now, I had some new goodies to take home.

S3 Minecraft: Styxx Ep: 1

Welcome to Season 3.

Minecraft: Styxx Episode 1 "Glitters"

Short recap: I was creating The River connecting The Bay to a larger body of water, so it would serve as a sort of highway from my spawn point to other parts of the world. I created a tower to serve as my base of operations where I had been working. While digging a well, I broke through the land and found an underground cave system that I am currently exploring.



Obviously I am in a much more dangerous environment than I had been before. The Bay was strangely situated to where monsters rarely roamed around it. The land near the tower was much much more dangerous. I decided I needed to create a good supply of food to support my exploration and my spelunking.



The first step was to... add steps. Going in and out of the well was haphazard, and I frequently went outside to find myself confronted with enemies. My walls defended me well against most things, but spiders can still climb walls and skeletons can still fire arrows. I wanted an easy way to retreat, to get in and out, to access my well. So I remade the entrance and installed stone steps.

Next just off the step side I made a room that would be the cellar. I lined the walls with nice wood panels, but I kept the floor stone so that it would stay more chill. It has 2 double chests for holding animal harvested items, and a single chest for emergency storage of whatever.



With that out of the way, I suited up and prepared to go back down the well. I went the same route as before and got to the deep, lightless hole I had been to before. As I started to make my way down, I soon found a pathway off to its side. A diversion that I could not resist. I made this .gif to try and give a sense of where the path was...



So off I went to the side, the corridor continued well out of sight. I explored it fully, and found disappointment that it lead to a dead end. I got a bit of coal, but not much else.



On my way out of dead ends, I generally leave only a minimal bit of light, and I typically seal the area with man made materials so that if I had ever come back to the same area through some other means, I know I had been there. I was widening the wall a bit so it would not block light, when I cracked open this:



It was not far from the entrance to this little diversion, so I decided to widen the hole and explore.



Down further into the depths I went, cautiously. A torch every few steps so I could make sure I did not fall through some other deep crack in the earth. A wall of coal came in to view, but just as I had started to collect it, I saw another hole in the wall... and in that darkness, I spotted some sparkle.



I got excited, I needed more steel because a glitch had ruined my already sparse supply. With reckless abandon I cracked open the wall and went for the iron, swinging my pickaxe wildly. I payed for this abandon, as suddenly I heard the familiar and extremely scary sound of strings going "fwaaaang" as arrows suddenly darted at me.



To be continued in Minecraft: Styxx Episode 2 "Horrors Below"

The Map Mod Question

Minecraft is super easy to mod, and now with the in game texture switcher it is easier than ever. I find myself tempted to use some of these mods, especially the Doku derivitives, but every time I load them up into "Hollow World", as I named my world, it doesn't feel like "home" any longer. The world I am familiar with is suddenly alien again. So for "Hollow World", which contains The Bay, The River, and the upcoming Styxx, I am going to stay with standard.

That doesn't mean I'm anti-mod. I'm actually creating a 16x texture set for that contest that Notch announced. I have to say that making 16x textures look like anything more than a Jackson Pollock painting is pretty hard. Like, almost all the mods you see on the forum are at least 32x with many being 128x textures. I do not know of any that have stayed 16x in the modern Alpha version of the game. So I'll enter it into the contest but I don't know if I'll make it available to anyone else, its almost embarrassing to show to people that just do not understand what 16x16 is compared to even 32x32.

Notch did a great job with the original to tell you the truth, and nothing will humble you more than making what you think is a great and detailed 16x16 dirt file, only to load it in game and it look like really badly crap, repeated time and time again in the dirt hills standing before you.

Season 2 Ep: 7 "Minecraft: The River" Finale: DOWN THE WELL

Yes! Season 2 "The River" Finale!

The focus changes from the water way, to the underground as we go DOWN THE WELL



I gather up all the steel bars from Fort Lookout and The Treehouse. I fashioned myself a set of armor because I did not know what was down the well. I secretly hoped for adventure. I hop down the well.



I knew the hop down would not be so bad, but I did not know what to expect down here. It could have just been a small hollow hole, just large enough to fit me. Once I looked around, I realized this was not the case. I could see from where I was that the hole did indeed lead at least a little further in.

It lead further in. I creeped forward, planting my torches ahead of me so I could see how this cave went. Soon I found that the cave does not lead flatly on the horizontal... I came to a cliff, and off the cliff was darkness.



I am not a fan of just digging strait downward and using ladders. So I decide to kind of spiral downward and around the hole, looking for more advantageous places to work my way downward. When I went around the top of this deep depression, I found that the cave DID continue horizontal as well.



I had a choice, and I chose to go down the hole. My adventurous spirit was soon rewarded, because in the dark I began to see a glitter.



Placing a few torches revealed the riches I had found



Large coal reserves, and the vital iron that I was very low on. I rarely go underground, so I rarely have steel to use for picks and other tools. This was a great discovery for me. Then, tucked in a corner of the iron, I spotted even shinier glittery.



Gold gold gold... I didn't know what I could use it for, but GOLD! It was new! It was shiny! It was rare! Its rarity probably played a part in my next decision. I looked over the edge after collecting my iron, coal and gold. I saw no bottom.



I made perhaps 3 meters of progress further down when I heard the rattle of a skeleton. Immediately my mind filled with fear... if I was hit just the right way with an arrow, I could fall down the hole and lose all I have, never knowing just how deep this place was. I got scared, and decided to head back out.

My first foray into the well did not end there though.



On my way back up, I remembered the cave continued past the hole. I decided if I died there, I would be able to get my stuff back easily. I so went around the hole and looked into the cavern. It was not long before I turned the corner and saw... daylight? Yes, there was daylight in this cave.



I continued into the daylight, wondering where I would emerge in the upper world. The answer was surprising.



I took advantage of this luck, and I returned home to the Tower to put up my new riches. That night I would steel my nerves, and prepare to return, and go further DOWN THE WELL!

Next up is Season 3 Minecraft: Styxx

Season 2 Ep: 6 "Minecraft: The River"

Well, my last post had some pretty crazy stuff in it. Much of it I had to redo since I lost the originals. I've been done with "season 2" for a few weeks now actually, so sometimes things get lost. Just a reminder, you can click on my photos and have a large version of it show up.

Anyway, as I was cutting this long path into the world, I realized that it looks pretty... man made.



I began clearing the water line and working my way up about 1 block up, 1 block back each time, trying to clear it and make it look better.



Finally, I think it started looking more like what is generated in the game randomly.



I began replacing all the stone with dirt, and a few creeper attacks helped me randomize the area, it began looking very nice... but something became apparent. As much time as this river was taking me, I just doubled or tripled the time involved because I'm not happy with it looking man made. My treehouse, as I discussed earlier, was rather crappy. I was tired of living in a cramped space and having to foot race the bad guys every morning. So since I liked the landscape, I made this.



I deliberately made it simple and small, I did not want to drown out the landscape, I wanted it to be a part of the landscape. It really is quite small. I took a "I found it like this" approach to the job, and decided to spiff it up with some newly constructed wooden structures.



As you can see from the dirt, I had to flatten the back yard a bit more. I constructed a wood shed and even keep raw logs back there for effect. The sides of the roof on that shed are actually wooden steps, but I thought they added character to the building. I also began with a fence, and as you can see, what I thought would be a well perhaps.



To the tower itself, I added wooden floors. It came out to be 2 solid floors with the top being a sort of closet that lead to the outside. I extended the edges with some wood so I could actually use the area out there. I lined the top with torches so I could find it easier in the dark. This felt much better than being up in a few trees at night, and it was closer to my work site. Even though both the treehouse and the tower appear in the same season, I actually spent weeks in that treehouse. I needed the change.

Next I began working on beautifying or touching up the "courtyard" as I called it. I planted some trees, went out and collected some flowers. I knew I did not like my well all that much, but I decided to put some water in it just to see if it looked better from the top of my tower. I went in to dig a hole, but the hole did not just lead to more dirt.



Apparently, just beyond where I had dug to flatten the land, the land was hollow! I knew the area around my spawnpoint was full of holes and empty mountains, but I thought I had traversed past that. No, this lead to a full on cavern under my tower!

Next Episode we go DOWN THE WELL!!!

Minecraft Forums: Listed

Hello to any newcomers and what is apparently my long time readers!

My older readers came from my Gamer Blog, which is a wider take on games.
http://skyppno7.blogspot.com/

Feel free to go there if you are bored. Eventually all my Minecraft posts will only be posted here, as I don't want to see like I'm a bait and switch kind of guy. If you want Minecraft stuff, this is where you go.

I'm listing myself on the main Minecraft Forums as a Text and Picture Let's Play. I hope that there are several more folks that make a Text and Picture based Minecraft blog so that we can have a little community feeling around here. Text and Picture blogs are a bit of a different animal than a video blog. Video blogs can get by on boring parts by having witty content or just by the virtue of having motion. Text and Picture blogs can not do this, they have to be edited and set up.

Not to mention the vast amounts of pictures you have to sift through.

As of number 5 I'm in a sort of transition phase, and I lost a few photos of events that occurred so I had to "re-create" them. You'll notice because the grass texture is the more recent Holloween update grass. No need to "call" me out on this.

Anyways thanks for checking out my blog :D hopefully you get entertained for a while.

Season 2 Ep: 5 "Minecraft: The River" Vengeance in Mine

I started out pretty simply. I ran out at dawn, found several creepers and killed them with arrows. It takes about 5 arrows to kill them, so the "sling" sound was pretty fulfilling, but it was not enough for me. They weren't suffering.



For something filled with gunpowder, these guys sure do take a long time to burn. Which is actually fine with me, they squeal while they burn to death. Just light the ground in front of them on fire and they run strait through. Ah. That felt good.

But was it really enough? No.



This guy fell in a hole, and was then helpless. He couldn't escape, just hop there, hoping I would get close enough for him to explode... but I had other plans. I covered the hole with wood... nice flammable wood. Then I stacked gravel, nice heavy gravel on top. Oh? You didn't know that gravel falls as if held down by gravity? Neither did he.



It would be bad for him if somehow that wood was to disappear and allow all that rock come crashing down on his head.



"I don't deserve this." he said to me.
"Deserve ain't got nothin' to do with it" I said, as I lit the wood.

I then remembered I get extra rewarded for killing Creepers.



Poetic justice.



"I'll see you in hell" this one told me.

"Yeah... I reckon so" then I lit the fuse.




EDIT
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To anyone that is new to this, this is season 2, titled: The River. Season 1 was titled: The Bay. You have to dig back a few posts to find The Bay as this is my gamer blog and I have some non-minecraft stuff going on.