I haven't been very active the past couple days in Minecraft. Mainly just walking around the immediate area of the village I live in. About a third of a day's run from the village is a Testificate village, a pretty nice one too. Plenty of cobblestone buildings. Or at least, according to Minutor it's north. There's a discrepancy of directions between Minutor and Rei's Minimap, which I use in-game. A nice grassland island is up that direction as well. To Minutor-east (which I believe is Rei-north) is a Mayan (?) village.
Whenever I get bored with Minecraft, it's usually because I'm not doing anything. I observed this happening with me recently and recalled a nugget of wisdom I have seen and applied a couple times before. Just find somewhere half decent, dig down, and start mining. If nothing else, you will collect more resources and get yourself back into the Minecraft groove.
My experience went way better than that. There is a large ravine right in the middle of this village which I've gone through, collecting exposed coal and iron ore. In order to get to the floor I made a staircase. Since the ravine is already there and takes me down about 25 levels, that would be an ideal place to do some mining. Equipped with an iron sword and pickaxe I begin building a staircase down to level 12 or thereabouts. But I don't quite make it. After a minute I break a block and adrenaline surges through me. I have opened the entrance to a cavern! And below me is a spider! It stares at me as I ponder what to do. There is a zombie nearby and another spider. I see cobblestone in the upper left corner of my field of vision.
Since the spider is directly below me I attempt to suffocate it in gravel. I equip gravel on my hotbar and sneak to the edge of the stone block I'm standing on. As soon as I place the first gravel, I begin falling with it! The spiders jump on me immediately! This is too much for me so I switch to Peaceful. Not too far on my left is a spider dungeon. Who knows how many other spiders were just waiting to dig into me. The spawner still generates spiders but they exist only as flashes before the game's code removes them. I spend a minute or two swinging my sword at these ghostly arachnids, hoping to damage them and see how the game reacts.
At some point in the future I am going to attempt to conquer this dungeon. This would prove a great challenge for me. I don't take the contents of the chests, as useful as they may be. The rewards and the mossy cobblestone will be won in battle one day.
Since I'm down here, I look around. Some water to my right and... light? I walk toward it expecting lava but instead see a chest! And wood! An abandoned mineshaft! There are two chests on either side of the entrance. A third chest is nearby. It has diamonds in it which I quickly take. Exploring the mineshaft I notice an odd density of cobwebs. Then I see it, the cave spider spawner. This is too awesome. A cave spider glitches in and out of existence. Curious all the more I wander around a bit and find an underground ravine intersecting the mineshaft system.
This all plays in very well with what I am wanting to do in the future of my Minecraft adventures. One of Etho's trademarks is his underground "Man Cave," which is basically a hollowed out intersection of tunnels that he has remodeled to act as his base. I would like to emulate this. His base is also by a mineshaft an two cave spider spawners.
A few posts ago I mentioned making an automated city. I think I will take up this endeavor. Using Testificates and villagers I will be able to populate it somewhat.
I'm also going to attempt to accomplish all of the game's achievements. And lastly, but most difficult of all, I'm going to face down the Enderdragon, in Survival mode, and attempt to defeat it.
This will all be recorded in this blog. Please do tell others about it, and provide me some feedback as well. Happy digging!
