Minecraft

After trying out the free version of Minecraft for a couple of weeks, I bought the paid version this past Sunday.

The free version was a build-and-burrow sandbox, where you can fall from great heights, or fall into lava, or fall into deep water, and not be hurt. You can dig and dig and never get tired. You also learn how the sandbox works: How water flows quickly, but lava slowly; how sand blocks, unlike other kinds, fall staight down when a block underneath it is broken; how clouds move from the east to the west, even though there is no sun; and how to toggle rainfall by pressing F5.

Not so with the paid version: You will get hurt when you fall; you will drown if you stay in water too long; you will burn in lava; you cannot toggle the rain off and on; there is a sun, which brings ten minutes of daylight for every day; and, unlike the free version, there is life in there — some of which is out to get you!

I had already viewed the first five tutorials, and followed their advice, but even then I found myself in trouble on the second day. The tutorials did not tell me about rain: Little blue drops falling from the sky. I went out to look for dinner, frolicing in the rain. There were plenty of animals — sheep, pigs, wolves, cattle — when I spawned, but in the rain I saw no animals at all.

I soon found out why: The rain made the soil very, very soft. Before I knew it, I fell through the ground into a cavern — where I found myself fighting not one, but two creepers! (The creeper is the emblematic critter of Minecraft, a green four-legged ithyphallic beast that quietly runs up to you and explodes.) I found myself deep in a cave, with no way to climb out in time before the onset of night, when it would not matter whether I was in a cave or not, and with all but four of my lives lost.

D'oh!

I did manage to survive the first night by doing the following. While the sun is up:

1. I punched out a couple of trees for their wood blocks. Trees have usually five or six blocks in them.
2. I pressed the E key to open the inventory, which includes a introductory 2 × 2 crafting area.
3. In the crafting area, I made a wood block into four wood planks. I made twelve planks.
4. Then I made two planks, set vertically, into four wood sticks. I made twelve sticks.
5. Then I filled all four squares in the crafting area with planks to make a crafting table, which I put in a convenient spot. Right-clicking on the table gave me a 3 × 3 crafting area.
6. Two sticks in the mid-center and bottom-center, plus three planks across the top, made me a pickax. This was what I was looking for.
7. I found some stone blocks with black dots — a vein of coal. I whacked at the blocks of coal (at least two) with my pickax to break it apart and get coal.
8. A stick and a piece of coal made me four touches. I was good with eight torches, a couple of which I put in dark areas to keep the bad critters at bay.
9. Now I am ready for shelter. I dug a corridor into a room at least 4 × 4, lit with a torch, into which I put my crafting table.
10. By this time night was falling. I sealed the room with blocks of stone, leaving a 1 × 1 window to view the outside without being attacked by night critters.

And that is how I survived my first night.

While the world was asleep I continued to build with the crafting table.

1. I replaced the now-worn wood pickax with a stone pickax, made the same way.
2. I also made a stone sword (two stone blocks and a stick in the center column) to fend off the bad critters and to butcher the good ones for dinner.
3. I filled all but the center space with stone to make a furnace, which also doubles as a stove.
4. I filled all but the center space with planks to make a chest to store excess items and free up room in inventory.
5. I used six planks to make a door for the shelter, so that I do not have to keep putting stone blocks in and out.
6. I had found some iron ore blocks just before dark on the first day. I smelted them with the furnace into iron ingots, with which I forged an iron sword.

At this point the rains came. I already told what happened next, except that the iron sword came in handy against the creepers. They would have killed me if I had not struck first.

The next day my Minecraft kept crashing, and when it didn't crash, it kept doing odd things. I will have to install the 64-bit version of Java to make Minecraft work for efficiently.

I should mention that on the first try I did make shears out of two iron ingots; that I have sheared me some sheep; and from their wool I made a bed. The bed becomes the new spawn point; and helps in making the night pass faster (you wake up at sunrise).