GrimBlock Premade Grid (Minecraft world save) 1.3

[Sabatasso]

I spent a few days with Single player before trying online, and as usual I am quite conservative when it comes to graphics as it does not bother me if it's bad as long as it does the job. The character models actually does bother me a little, but I can live with it. The world looks great with Photorealistic pack, but I went for Dokucraft as it fits the "blockyness" fairly nice.

Survival mode intrigued me, so I watched two episodes on youtube to see how I made essential stuff, and learned the "hideyhole" trick. Very good tutorial to be honest. I tried and tampered with mods until I was satisfied, All Will Fall and Millenaire are essential for me, I'd also like a "realistic" tree felling mod but could not find any that didn't interfered with something else.

OK, I start the game on hard and have "evolved" following strategy;
Chop three blocks of wood. Make a work station. Create a wooden axe and a wooden pick. Chop a lot of birch to make charcoal and regular blocks for sticks. Make a hideyhole and find rocks to make a furnace. Light the furnace once it gets dark, creates enough light in your hideyhole until you've got torches. Make at least 64 torches and 5 stone picks, a stone sword, a stone axe and two stone shovels.

Pick up your furnace and workbench and get ready to become a Dwarf.
Dig a dirt hole until you find a mountain, needs to be at least five blocks high where you make a two block entry hole (all will fall, stone disabled, everything else will eventually fall), close the entry behind you and dig one step ahead, and one step down and three blocks wide. Place a Torch with sensible distance, wall or middle step is fine. You will most likely find Iron, Coal and LOADS of rocks. Once you're full, create a little room on one of the sides and offload the furnace and workbench, then create a big Chest. Place stones in the chest, smelt iron and create Iron Sword, Iron Armor and at least one Iron Pick.

Now it's time to gather food. Go back outside the hole and kill cows, sheep, spiders, whatever comes your way really. Stay away from Creepers, as you don't have a Bow yet. Try to gather materials for a bow, three strings and some feathers for arrows. You will find flint soon, if you haven't already. Head down your hole again, and cook the meat. Keep digging down until you A) find a huge cavern with lava and a very high ceiling B) until you find a impenetrable substance on the floor, Obsidian, which you need better tools to mine. If you do, then you start digging 2x2 in one direction until you find A).

Once you find the lava and waterfall caverns, start harvesting Gold, Lapis Lazuli, Iron, Diamonds and everything you need. Upgrade tools and weapon when you see fit. Build rock walls around waterfalls and lava pits, and fill the cavern with torches as you go. Make rock paths on the cavern walls to get to the good stuff, and if you find a horde of mobs on the floor at a point, retreat to one of your waterfall dams and unleash water on the mobs.

Once you're satisfied, head up to the surface and create yourself a castle on a mountain top, live happily ever after and you can't really achieve anything else in this game with Single Player.

Key points;
By going straight for the core, you create your own little sheltered and well lit environment until you got some decent gear, and then gather some food without much chance of getting killed. In the process of gathering materials you will get byproducts that you can make a very decent keep, fort or castle with. Two times I found a skeleton Spawner which I turned into "unlimited arrow and XP dispensers" as well. The big downside with this game is that even though you can make and build a lot of stuff, the world does not make it interesting for you to live in it, and once you've made your place there is really nothing that keeps wanting to play.

I've done this four times, takes a few hours each time. I died once since applying this strategy...
The online servers aren't really that tempting, If I wan't MMO I just go with DAOC, WoW or WHO which are a lot better in terms of combat and PvP.

I've looked at the Adventure maps, but that removes the element of building and landscaping, which is the biggest selling point of this game in the first place. For Adventure purposes I would suggest introducing an indestructible block that can form a hidden impenetrable wall around dungeons, preventing you from digging your way to the goods instead of just removing the build-feature. Removing the sand-box mode from a sand-box game such as this, leaves nothing but a crappy game compared to other adventure games. Combat is piss poor to be honest, so basically any RPG that offers community made modules and multiplayer will be so much better in every aspect that I don't even want to try to describe it.

I still thank you for opening my eyes for this game, I had a few good hours of fun before I "solved" it. I've read interesting posts and plans about advanced Player and NPC model mods that will open for much better combat, and also implementation of more RPG elements and scripts that in time will turn this game into a real universal game contender in almost every genre.

It is simply brilliant in all its simplicity, but still too early in the making for my taste. I know it has left "Beta" officially, but to me this is definitely a Beta game due to the lack of content (at least from my point of view). (Dialogue, Dynamic evolution, NPC faction interaction, wars and fighting without PC involvement and so on. Since the game is so mod friendly, and with plans for even better mod friendliness ahead, I only see endless possibility with this game, I believe it will get a lot better, and I will keep an eye on this one for sure.

PS. This post really turned into a "Tutorial / Review" post, and I'm sorry if it was on the fringes of off-topic. I also chose to ignore the poor online experience for now, and focus on the parts that were great in terms of potential. Though I will most likely not play this game very much until I see the "right" mods.

[Saice]

Honestly I enjoy caving much more then staright up mining.

Don't get me wrong I also use branch mining around the level 12 when I need to ton of stone for something. But for eveything else I go caving.

Caving is fun but you will get blown up a few times before you start to get good at it. Bring troches, food, spare wood (to make tools and troches as needed) and tools. Armor is a plus as mental armor will let you sruvive a direct creeper blast.

Then just go... walk around until you find a cave and then explore it. There tends to be better number of resources like iron, coal, and the others in caves. Do not skimp on troches light everything up. And relize you will get attacked and might even find mob spawners but that is the fun for caving. Risk for Reward.

[Red Wyrm]

I remember the first time I played Minecraft. It was early in its beta stage, but a friend of mine and I found a cave that had so many shafts, branches, and such that it took about ten to twelve hours to fully explore. It was freaking amazing!

[Sabatasso]

There tends to be better number of resources like iron, coal, and the others in caves.

1 hour of branch mining at level 12-13 gave the net sum of 22 diamonds, more than a full stack of iron and I've left the coal for now. I spent three hours the day before without finding any diamonds, though, so it's a bit of luck involved.

I'm worried about what to do next, though. Starting over and doing the same all over is rather pointless... and entering the nether and killing a Dragon is a bit "meh..". I guess I'll be waiting for the right mod to come along, like I said

[Sabatasso]

I found something!!!!

http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/118 ... lash-mine/

I tried it, and it gives me at least some more "purpose" when playing. I hope they update it to 1.2.5 soon, but it works well with 1.2.3 for now.