Look at all that coal! There was probably another chunk that same size underneath it! It'll be really helpful when I get back to my base... wait, where's my base?
I don't recognize this forest. It's near a desert, swamp, and snow biome. There's no place on my main map that has all that so close together. Maybe I wandered a bit too much and got lost. But even if I use Minutor, I can't find my base! What happened?
I'll tell you what happened. This is a new map. Today I decided that Main 1.0.0 has run its course, and it's time to begin the adventure again with a new world, appropriately called Main 1.5.0. Why? As I mentioned in an older post, I have been growing dissatisfied with the world I had held for over a year. I had hundreds of diamonds, gold, and iron. More coal than I knew what to do with. But I remained unhappy with it. I wanted to start over. I had not played Minecraft with the challenge and excitement of mobs on the prowl, looking to slay me. The diamonds were cheap. Frankly, the map was boring and even if I tried to start over with that world, it wouldn't have felt right. Plus, my building skills have changed greatly over time, and the map just couldn't sustain the changes adequately.
So I have begun a new world. Main 1.0.0 isn't going to be erased. I'll keep it on my hard drive, but probably won't add much more to it. Instead, my creative energies will be on this new map, which I hope to keep around for a long time, a worthy successor to Main 1.0.0. I'll be adding a unique spin to my gameplay as well, to make things fresh for me:
- Once I find a jungle, jungle wood will be the stuff I use to make wooden items. The other woods are better reserved for other things.
- Birch logs are sacred. No using that to craft.
- I'm challenging myself for this. In the past I alternated between Peaceful and Easy. For this map, I will be on Normal mode. I've been a Minecrafter for two years, I think I can handle it. There is only one exception for me to use Peaceful, and that is when my computer is lagging out during mob attack. You see, my laptop has a hard time with sound files when I first start playing and the game will stall and stutter horribly. It takes a couple minutes for it to calm down. So if I'm about to be killed due to Minecraft freezing, I will take Peaceful mode to prevent a pointless death. But it will only be Peaceful briefly, just enough for me to recover. Then back to Normal. No exceptions.
In addition, there are a lot of things that I didn't experience because I was playing on Peaceful all the time. I've made a sort of challenge for myself that I call the Minecraft Experience, which has over 40 different tasks for me to accomplish ranging from completing all the Achievement to making a Blaze XP farm to defeating the Enderdragon and Wither. The goals are just big enough that they can be done without being tedious. So for instance, one of my goals won't be making an Iron Golem farm that constantly outputs hundreds of iron at a time, because that would be boring and take too long.
So on to the adventure in Main 1.5.0! I found a cave and started mining what I could. Got in a fight with a skeleton.
As I did on the Shear Survival server, I cobbled up all the surface entrances to the cave for security. Here's my front door.
At one point I got in a fight with a skeleton and almost lagged to death, so I briefly invoked the Peaceful mode while I cooked up iron to make an iron armor set and iron sword. Then it was back to Normal difficulty. This stinkin' bat, now deceased, watched me the whole time.
I set up a small farm and basic living quarters. This is just about where I stopped for the day.
I am going to continue stocking up on resources and keep adventuring in the area. I hope to find a jungle biome next to a plain or swamp. From there I will start building to my heart's desire, as well as completing the Minecraft Experience challenge. Since I enjoy sharing my creations with others, I will try to make more frequent uploads of my map. I'm thinking once every 2-4 weeks. We will have to see how things unfold!
