New Years' Surprise!

Hello readers. I thank you for taking the time to read my blog. On December 23, 2010, the first post was made so this blog is already over a year old. Since then, Minecraft and myself have improved greatly.

As a treat for all of you, on January 1st I am going to unveil a large project I spent some time working on. It is literally the largest project I've ever had, standing somewhere around 1,006 blocks in size. It is related to something I've posted on here before, but never actually did. This idea I mentioned several months ago had one image attached to it, one image that has attracted the majority of my readers. Up until now they've searched for this but not found it. This surprise will be what they are looking for, and possibly more. This will be both a celebration of over a year of adventures, as well as ushering in the year 2012.

Tale of Kingdoms

One of the mods that I have is Tale of Kingdoms. It sort of turns Minecraft into an RPG. I keep a separate minecraft.jar file specifically for it, because it defaces the terrain in ways I would prefer it didn't unless I actually wanted to play it. Yesterday, Christmas, felt like a ToK kind of day. So during the time I wasn't doing anything else, I was playing it.

I'm still sort of a wimp when it comes to monsters. The gate of the starting castle has a forest, and that's where I do most of my combat. By day I would wander around chopping wood and collecting resources, sometimes cautiously entering caverns and lighting them up. I'm still not comfortable going inside a large, dark tunnel teeming with mobs. By night I would pick off the mobs that walked close enough that I could safely snipe them or cut them up.

Here's a picture of my camp inside the castle gate. I've added a single chest since then.

For the large part of combat, I've had a wolf companion with me. I'm not quite as careful as others probably are when it comes to looking out for their dogs. While I certainly do aim to not hit the animal, if it gets in the way I'm not going to dodge, especially when I'm in a fight. My first canine companion died in a fight with a spider. Whether or not it was an accidental strike with my stone sword or a hit from the spider, I don't know.

Yes, I incorrectly wrote the year as 2012. We're almost there anyway, so it doesn't matter.

But right as I established that sign, located not too far from the gate, another wolf walked over, and was promptly tamed. Meet Dog 2.

In the Tale of Kingdoms world, I want to set up a small house, farm, and perhaps a couple other niceties for myself. There is a rather flat plain not far from the castle which would make a good spot to set up camp. It would be temporary because as soon as I had enough reputation to become king, I would leave the spot and establish a city in the game.

(Maybe I should install Millenaire, since the maker of ToK has made the two mods compatible and complementary.)

Here's my progress toward kingship: