LinkOlaran

I just downloaded a hookshot mod (kinda... expected, given my name :P) and was using Minutor to find a dungeon for a string to make it with (since I'm on peaceful atm). I ran into an iron vein that had 258 ores in it. Seriously >.> looking at Minutor though, it seems to function like it states, there aren't as many veins as before, but the ones that're there near the bottom are massive for coal and iron. The difference is less noticeable (but still there) for redstone and gold, and diamond didn't seem to shift much at all, but they do look a tiny bit bigger. Onto trying to get to a 3rd dungeon, since the first two had no string. I see another huge ass iron vein in my way, plus three titanic coal veins somewhere a bit further underneath the dungeon I'm aiming for now which I'm not bothering to get (nearly full inventory). EDIT: Dear god it's everywhere: ... I need more picks. >_>

So, from what I remember (and now double checking) from Cadde's Ore Vein mod (which the creator of the Biome Mod included the list of settings to change in the biomesettings txt file to emulate), the mod is supposed to make it so that the veins of ore up near the surface are small, but the further down you go, the larger they get. I know they get larger. A lot larger. 97 coal vein right after a 59 iron vein >__> not a clue how deep I am, although I thought I heard lava a second ago. My inventory is running out of space, lol. I didn't download this to make things easier, though... I'm hoping it's just focusing all the tiny veins of ore into bigger ones like I recall the description saying, and not just making more ore/map chunk. If I go down and find a crapton of diamonds, I might just delete this world and revert the settings back to the old one :S I'll admit, it is fun seeing these massive veins of ore, though... hm... Oh, and I'm going to be trying to make a massive tree to make a house in/on. Already have 700 ish blocks of raw lumber, and 30 something saplings to build branches with. Hope I can make my way back to my spawn after I finish off this cave (trying to get down deep enough for redstone/diamond to make a compass). Oh, and I am playing on peaceful for now. More interested in building than fighting right now :P

With caves, you have to be extremely cautious >.> mobs can spawn and hide just about anywhere (big rooms with ledges above you are your biggest problem, they can and will hide up there and either drop down, or in the case of skeles, shoot you). I'd start getting used to combat above ground first before I ventured into caves, though. Knowing how to dispatch everything will make it easier to handle. So long as you don't get too swarmed, you should be able to take anything down with a bow. Sword though, that's a bit more difficult, you'd have trouble with spiders and skeletons. Basically, when I go into caves, I bring supplies to last me a fairly long time (stack of 64 raw lumber, coal, extra swords/arrows, any iron bars I might have to make more tools, and the rest food, most likely). I tend to advance slowly in areas I'm not completely sure about, but once I have a base of operations (crafting bench, maybe a couple furnaces, and at least one big chest) set up and walled in with doors/glass to see around the area, I start moving a bit faster. Always keep your eyes and ears open if there's any dark unexplored areas around you. I tend to explore the surrounding area first, then come back to mine everything just to make sure no nasties decide to sneak up on me while I'm mining. I always tend to try to make the lighting as bright as I can, to avoid mobs spawning in the lit areas - with the recent updates and Notch changing the spawn code more, I'm not sure what the optimal lighting is anymore, but I tend to put a torch down every 3-4 blocks. Be extra cautious around lava, since one hit from even a zombie is all it takes for you and everything in your invy to be incinerated :P I either pour water on it if I have a bucket (makes obsidian), or I flat out avoid it and don't stay very close to it. If there're too many mobs in one area, retreat and slowly come back. Chances are, some of them followed you, but not all. Try to thin the ranks a bit and only have one-two aggro on you at once, you'll survive a lot easier that way. Oh, and if there're skeletons and anything else there, you could try to get the skele to accidentally shoot the other mob. This can have some... bad consequences though, since creepers will explode >.> funny as hell to watch the mobs infighting, though. Oh, and if you think you might die, make absolutely sure you know how to get back. Death only means losing stuff if you can't get back in time. I died... hm, not sure how far away it was, but it took me a good 20 min of sailing to get back in the general area. I'm guessing from that, that the timer for dropped items only starts when the map chunk the items are on is loaded, but I'm not 100% sure. The timer is about 5 min, from my experience, and I know I took a lot longer than that to get back. Good thing too, since I had a diamond pick and a watch on me, not to mention my only bow >.< And yes, if you just started, you're probably not that used to combat yet :P don't worry too much about it, keep at it and you'll be able to handle just about anything. Just don't get cocky, that always ends badly. I should know >_> Cave delving can be annoying with all the mobs, I admit :P usually worth it though, if you manage to get down deep enough to get diamonds. Hope I helped somewhat. If all else fails, just keep at it. You'll get into those caves eventually.

Dude, that just sucks >.< shame there wasn't much of anything salvageable... although I see a chest and a crafting bench survived. I noted the bricks, so... was it a fireplace or lava? >.< Guess I should be really careful putting one in any wooden house I build... although I tend to build cave fortresses more often, heh. Well, at least one good thing, wood is fairly easily to replace... still sucks that it happened, though. Finally got Minecraft working properly. Corrupted itself again, luckily I thought to back up the newly redownloaded files and zip them in case of this situation. After a bit of effing around, I have a new world. Currently sitting in a 2x3x2 box with doors, completely dark outside, no torches since I couldn't find any freaking coal. Again. I hear zombies, spiders, and... cows. Guess which is bothering me the most right now >.> ... How many effing spiders are on my roof? Jeebus >.<

Created my account... coming up on 24 hours ago now. Currently level 7, halfway to 8 now. Gear is between -10 and -6 (although he still has no weapon... >.>) Link, since I'll undoubtedly be joining ELITES once I hit level 12 :P http://godvillegame.com/gods/Jack%20Magnus That's all assuming my idiot hero actually listens to my command to join, anyway >.> he's extremely thick skulled, although from reading this topic last night, I suppose that's perfectly normal, lol :P Most entertaining thing I've seen yet was a comment about going to Boatmurdered and having a good time there. Even better, I had just read the entire DF series of it yesterday XD I admit, I was a bit... O_o when I first started playing with all the odd comments, but I'm now really entertained by looking for all the ones that're familiar to me :P Hm, so now I'm switching between playing Godville, Minecraft, and Dwarf Fortress in my free time... and soon going to have Rune Factory 3 added to that as well o.o I have too much to do, lol.

I only tried making tnt landmines once, but putting a pressure pad right onto a tnt block works fine. The pad pops off and goes into item form when it's activated, although I didn't notice it breaking in the explosion either (wooden pressure pad at that). Still trying to find a decent world. The amount of deserts I start in is astounding to the point I adjusted the temperature/moisture settings of the Biome Mod to (hopefully) almost completely disable them. And I'm still spawning in them -.- It's either that or snow biomes (or both) that I always start in. Hoping that I'll start far away from both and have cliffs nearby soon. If only Minecraft would stop breaking and refuse to generate worlds after a certain unknown number... (when I hit the empty slot, it takes me to the world generation screen, but the progress bar never appears). Whenever it stops generating worlds, I usually have to remove the modded jar file from the bin folder, and put in the backup old one, generate a world, then switch it out again (hopefully, I've been taking the vanilla Minecraft jar file and reloading the Biome and marble mods into them up till now, but I assume just switching in the previously not working one will work too... >.<) EDIT: *spawns two more worlds* *both start in deserts* FUUU go the [bleep] away, stupid deserts -.- seriously, the chance of a desert being created now is very near nill, and they're still spawning... that does it, cactus aren't that useful. Adjusting temp/moisture so they can't spawn at all. If I get one after that, then it's haxing. EDIT 2: Thought it couldn't get any worse, then it did. Minecraft must've managed to corrupt at least one of it's files, since it started blackscreening and crashing, regardless of me putting the default, non edited jar file back in or not. Had to redownload everything, which took another half hour -.- I got it working now, though. Mods and all.

Fiddling around with the recently updated Biome Mod right now. Also installed the marble mod as well, which introduces marble blocks into the game (in three flavors, available here: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=79760). Trying to get a world with a fair number of deep chasms while still having some nice areas up above to build on, although I'm getting increasingly irritated at starting in/next to snow and/or desert biomes, so I'm adjusting the temperature to mostly eliminate them. Also, the replacewaterwithlava true/false part of the settings lags me like hell because of said snow biomes (ice+lava = lots of melting = lots of lag). Still, it might be a new challenge, considering how very little water is available... might consider trying it for real at some point. Right now though, my original idea. Also implemented Cadde's ore settings in the Biome Mod, although I have very little idea of what exactly it did yet >_> I'll find out, I suppose. Oh, and I replaced my in game character skin, finally >.> a Link one, of course :P Ah, and for Gio: More or less, this is what I do to start: 1. Find a bunch of trees, punch one down. Make a crafting bench and a wooden axe and pick (recipes are on the wiki), use up axe chopping down some more wood (I've seen people get by pretty easily with about a dozen raw wood blocks at the start, but I tend to just go till the wooden axe breaks :P) 2. Find a coal deposit, and mine it out along with some of the surrounding stone to make stone tools later. Use the coal and some more sticks to make torches to make your eventual home safe from mob spawning while you're away. 3. Locate a starting place for a shelter. The easiest method is digging a hole in the side of a cliff, but be wary of mobs possibly sitting on top of your entrance and jumping onto you in the mornings when you exit. Put a door on your entrance (when you place it, place it while you're outside looking in, I've noticed that skeletons can't shoot through if the door is facing like that, but the reverse they have a chance to, or at least they did in older versions) After you have a hole to protect yourself at night with, it's your choice to do whatever you want. I personally try to make sure to kill as many spiders as I can to obtain a bow and two fishing rods as soon as I can. I also try to get some sand collected to smelt down into glass using a furnace (different fuels and how long they last are listed on the furnace wiki page, but the two I use are coal = 8 items smelted, and processed wood = 1.5 items smelted). Glass is always good for looking out of your hidey hole in the morning to survey the surroundings, rather than a hole in the wall a skele could shoot through >.> There's so much to do in this game, it's impossible to list all the starting stuff, lol >.> just make sure to have a shelter by nightfall, that's when the mobs spawn. Also, only creepers and spiders will survive the sunrise, zombies and skeletons will burn up (and drop their respective loot) once it gets bright enough, but they won't burn if they're in water or hiding under a tree/in a cave. Spiders also go unaggro, assuming they weren't already actively trying to kill you (in which case you need to stay out of sight long enough for them to lose interest, but I don't bother with that). Oh, and quick/easy defences are pitfalls/trenches (at least two blocks deep) and cactus walls (can't put them directly next to one another, also need to be placed on a sand block) Sorry for the extremely long post >_> Oh, and SeaNanners is epic. So is X, but I started watching SeaNanners first, so he's better in my eyes :P

If you go under the main Minecraft directory (C:\Docs and Settings\Username\App Data\.minecraft or something similar), there's a folder labeled "saves". Under there, just compress the save you want (they're numbered the same as in game) into a zip or rar file, and upload it, I suppose. I've downloaded a save file before (I think it was uploaded to megaupload or something), so it shouldn't be that difficult to do, assuming megaupload and similar sites are easy as imageshack is to use >.> As for my own save files, if I could I would, but dialup internet means I'd be sitting here for an hour for it to upload :P Also, starting to really hate spiders on here -.- they're by far the most annoying mob to deal with for me, assuming I don't have a bow. Bow means everything is easy, assuming I'm not swarmed. The combination of the spider's jump and run attacking makes them more difficult to predict and stay just out of range and still hit them >.>

And that is precisely why I always have a bucket of water and food with me when going into the deeper parts of a mine >.> Yeah, lava's dangerous, but avoiding it isn't terribly hard, so long as you're cautious about where you're standing as you're mining (ie, don't stand directly next to the block you're mining, stand a bit back so if lava pours out, it doesn't pour onto you). I will note, however, that lava does have the ability to light me on fire through walls... luckily, both times this happened I was knee deep in water, but I still got the hurt sound and the on fire thing for a split second. I have a tendency of converting lava to obsidian as I find it, since once I have a few source lava blocks, I know I won't need any more anytime soon, and it's a bit safer (don't want mobs knocking me into lava or anything). Honestly, the last little while, I haven't played Minecraft as much - been playing Dwarf Fortress, or trying to >.> getting back into Minecraft now, though. I decided to try that biome mod a page or two back. It seems to have reignited my interest in Minecraft for the moment :P playing mostly on normal settings, but I adjusted the height and depth parameters so I started waay up on a cliff with no way down >.> at least there's plenty of supplies (coal and wood) up here, so I don't need to worry about going down just yet. I'll build a boatovator or something once I expand my underground home out enough to nearly hit the cliff face from the inside. I should have found iron by then, if not... I'm sure I'll locate some by wandering around down below. Noticed a few waterfalls (and one lavafall) while I was looking over the edge when I started, so I'm enjoying the fact I spawned near those :P

After Minecraft (another indie game) got a bit boring for me, I decided just now to download and try this. Generating my first world now :) I'm curious as to what graphics pack I should install (after I play for a bit, anyway). Any recommendations? And is it terribly complex to install them? I have the DF wiki open as well, but I'm not using it till after I fail a few fortresses (I note that it stated somewhere that 'losing is fun' so... here goes nothing :P) ... Just looking at the map gen process makes me even more curious about this game >.> it really is fascinating, I've never played a game that has ascii graphics before.

Generally, all of my homes that I build above ground have a balcony or something (or maybe just stairs/ladder up onto the roof) so I can sit up there and snipe the mobs that come near me. Always be wary of skeletons if you do that, though. Making the balcony high enough off the ground will prevent the spiders from getting at you, but skeletons can shoot you quite easily, they do have near perfect aim after all. They do have trouble shooting straight up, though. I tend to build a block high barrier around the outer edge of the balcony to hide from skeletons if needed, but that's up to you, since one could easily just retreat away from the edge of the balcony to avoid arrows. Oh, and don't do this if there's a cliff or anything nearby that mobs can jump off of onto it (common sense, but still, they're perfectly willing to half kill themselves jumping off of cliffs to get at you). Alternatively, build a cactus fence. That generally keeps mobs from getting too close, and if they do get through the fence, they're already damaged at that point (or, instead of having each cactus one block apart, do it diagonally: X X X X X X (assuming the forum code doesn't break it, anyway) That'd be impenetrable, unless if they spawn on the inside of the fence >.> just have a single gap (maybe with a door or something) so you can get in and out. Personally, I don't bother with cactus fences, I tend to dig pitfalls and a trench around my house (at least two blocks deep, three and at least a 2x2 across hole for spiders I think, not completely sure on their jumping ability). They see you, run towards you, and drop into the trench and get stuck. Once morning comes around, just head out, kill off any creepers inside, drop in and grab the loot, etc etc. Of course, I've had skeletons shoot at me, hit a creeper, and BOOM there's a new crater in the side of my house before, though. Might be better to move the trench out further, in that case. Of course, I'm thinking all simple stuff here. I'm sure there's more complex defenses, but I'm usually too lazy to bother with them :P oh, and that water door looks pretty cool, actually... hm...wonder how opaque water is, if it's fairly transparent I might use the water door idea and surround my house on all sides with it... >.> EDIT: Of course, the forum breaks the ascii I was doing to show the cactus idea -.- hang on, I'll upload a screenie instead. EDIT 2: Here's what I meant (and yes, I'm being ocd about showing what it is I'm talking about):

Managed to dig down in my main base far enough to hit redstone, made myself a compass and watch, and subsequently left the area to explore. Only took a diamond sword, bow with a stack of arrows, 3 pieces of pork, the watch and compass, and... my boat. I think that's it. Was wandering around (purposely away from my base) for several in game days, and I found what, more or less, is a mountainous area that's completely made of sand and stone on the outside, and sheer cliffs everywhere leading down into water. Once it becomes daytime, I'll edit this post with pics from afar. I think it's really cool looking, and completely different from my usual build sites. EDIT: Took longer than expected, died trying to get a record off a creeper >.< took me an entire day to get back, my stuff was still there. Guess the theory that the timer for dropped items doesn't run if the map chunk isn't loaded is true. Anyway: I like this area, although I dunno what sort of house I'll build. Torn between a brick house surrounded by a fence, and a glass tower a la crenshinibon (if I spelled it right >.>) Right now though, gotta get established.

This is my own tree farm: 15x15 room, 6 blocks high. Make the ceiling as high as you are capable of digging while looking straight up - once you can't hit the ceiling from the ground, it's high enough for trees. I put my saplings down in a checkerboard fashion - I've never seen any of my saplings disappear because of this, but I'm unsure if a tree will grow if it's overhead space has leaf blocks in it. You'll also note I don't have that many torches on the ground (only 5 spread out on the floor, one dead center and 4 diagonally away from it, 5 spaces away from each corner tile), but there's a line of cobblestone on the ceiling forming a big plus sign that I have torches on - this is because when my trees were growing before, it was dark enough up there for a skeleton to spawn, so I took down the trees and put the skylight thing in. No more mob spawns, but I do get some animals in there as well. Plus the torches I have hanging on the wall. Now that I think of it though, my glass wall/partial roof might have something to do with my not needing torches, though. Play around with the number of torches, and see what happens. You can make the room smaller and you probably won't have the issue of mobs spawning on the treetops, though. I just wanted one big room, though. In other news, hit my first cave system in my mine, down like... 50 blocks from the surface. Has a dungeon in it too, according to Minutor. Still haven't found it, though. Found a massive amount of mobs, though. Went through at least two stacks of arrows and almost one iron sword so far. Headed back up to take a screenie of my tree farm and resupply. Made two more iron swords and iron armor (since I saw a crapton more iron in the caves), plus some iron picks to mine the gold I saw as well. Still need to find that damned dungeon, though... armed myself with a block of tnt and a lava bucket if things get too hairy for me to handle >_> Also, this is my current map (you can see my base on the eastern side of the map, you can see the glass of my mineshaft/tree farm poking out of the side of a mountain): Note the large amount I've explored so far. That's from when I got lost trying to locate an above ground lava fall a while back >.< I did find some reeds and cacti while I was out and about, though. So it wasn't all a waste. Planning on investigating the snowy region once I locate this dungeon, which should probably have some redstone dust in the chests. If not, going down deeper till I get some, so I'll have a compass and watch before I head out again.

Believe me when I say this, Minecraft will devour your life. All free moments will now be spent either building, mining, or being exploded by creepers. >_> In all seriousness, it's heavily addictive. I can honestly say I was dreaming about Minecraft for about a week after I started playing it. Wreaked havoc on my sleep, was tired all day most of that week... In my Minecraft world, things are going good. Still haven't beat my record of 13 creeper kills in one morning from overnight spawns, though. My mine is progressing down, finally (after probably a Minecraftian month in game) getting some iron. Yes, it took me that long to actually start digging down instead of up (to build a skylight for my mine so I have daylight shining in during the day - probably shouldn't have started the mineshaft in a mountain lol >.<). I got the idea of the skylight (and making storage rooms on a floor every certain distance down so I don't have to go all the way back up or bring furnaces/chests/crafting benches with me all the time) from X's Adventures in Minecraft (him and SeaNanners are the only let's play vid series' that I watch). I honestly can say I would never have thought about creating fully fledged storage depots along the way down to bedrock if I hadn't watched those vids >.> I keep running out of sand, though. I create a glass floor in my mineshaft on the same level as each storage depot so I have a place to stand (the actual depot isn't in the mineshaft, it's dug into the side), plus I'm making tnt whenever I get 5 gunpowder (which is pretty much every day if I bother to go outside in the morning. Took a 3 day expedition via boat to a sand pit I found a fair distance away with Minutor. After spending a few days out there digging up sand (and swearing at the fact I only brought a dozen shovels and no materials to make more, plus no trees nearby... oh, and no torches either, didn't think to bring any >.>), I went back and promptly made a boathouse to hopefully stave off those damned hijacking animals from breaking my boats for the thousandth time. Also build an underground tree farm, which is working well (once I got a ceiling light system in place to stop more skeletons from spawning on my trees). I'm still running out of wood, though. Putting in a lot of chests in my storage rooms >.<. I should take another expedition and head northwest, I saw an above ground lava flow on Minutor a while ago. The entire forest is probably on fire in that region, but at least it'll be funny as hell to see a forest fire I didn't create >.> Oh, and I should probably make an observation deck so I can fish at night from it. That'd be useful... I do have almost an entire chest of pork and fish, though. Still haven't created a wheat farm, either... so much to do, lol. So much to do...

Yeah, the mob spawning has severely increased for me: I counted 5 creepers and 5 spiders outside my mountaintop building. Not a clue so far if there's anything on ground level where my base entrance is. Probably more creepers, I get a lot more of them than spiders >.> Went down below while the pic was uploading, only found a single creeper (which exploded), and feathers scattered about from zombies. My mine's going slowly (had a severe coal shortage for a while, just found some more - was recycling torches up till now >.<). Gonna use the tnt I was able to make and start digging downward now. EDIT: Right around 3 hours after my original post. New record for mob spawns, had 13 (!) creepers outside this morning. 12 up above surrounding my mountaintop building, and one more down below. Not to mention all the feathers and arrows scattered about from zombies and skeletons. I'm enjoying myself right now, honestly. Probably not so much when I start digging down and hitting spots where I have to increase my lighting scheme to keep the area safe >.>

Well, I learned a valuable lesson, always always always mark your path when you go wandering for trees since your base has none nearby. I have about a dozen saplings planted outside my (new world's) base, but there're no trees nearby, I had to go wandering just to find some for my first night's torches. I decided to start working on a house, so I made two stone axes, brought a stone sword and a couple stone picks, plus my two fishing rods (stacking a worn one on a new one resets the worn one's durability, so infinite uses so long as you watch the durability to make sure it doesn't wear out completely), and went out looking for trees. Was out in a newish area, cutting down trees, starts getting dark, so I head back. Except I have no idea where back is. Fail -.- I wander around in the pitch black for a bit, trying to (hopefully) stumble across my cave. After a creeper blows up next to me and almost getting shot in the ass (again) from a skeleton, I decide to just dig a hole in the wall next to water and wait it out while fishing. Next day, I kill a couple creepers and a spider lurking nearby, and climb a nearby hill with trees on it. Turns out that same hill with trees on it is the overhang that my cave is built under. Even MORE fail. Ah well, at least I got plenty of fish that night. And more wood to hopefully built my house with. Gonna build a boat and see if I can find some clay and make a brick house instead, but I'm not holding my breath on finding enough, even with clay being more common now. Although, if I head out looking for clay, I'm bringing stuff to build temp shelters with. I might've been able to get away with standing outside at night and killing everything before, but I highly doubt it'll work too well now, with the increased spawning of mobs. Also Skull, that's a fairly common glitch, it seems it happens when you enter the Nether. It resets the filesize to 0.0mb (or I've also heard sends into negatives, but never seen it myself). The world functions as normal, though. Not sure if it's the Nether travel that's causing it or not, but it only happened to my main save after I went in and exited, so...

I've had creepers come out of nowhere and kill me when I'm attacking another one as well. Even though when I'm backpedaling away from the first one, I quickly look around to make sure there wasn't one there >_> Have something like 40 gunpowder, just from fishing mobs at night now. I'm starting to think there's a cave right under me or something, I heard zombie and spider noises in my new basement, but I dunno if that was a sound glitch (which I read about last night, it randomly plays the wrong noise sometimes when you're walking), or if there's a cave under me. Might explain why I can't seem to reel in as many mobs now as I did, there aren't as many spawning near me. It's possible they're just spawning out of sight, I guess... One question now is, what will we do for mob traps? The 11.5k item trap is broken, down to... 20% production now, I think I read. Wonder what sort of format trap will put out the max items/hr now. Kiershar's 50x50 trap might work, since it looked like it worked off of natural mob spawns to begin with... although I really don't know what I'm talking about here :P just guessing. I still want a world that I spawn in the middle of a big desert biome, though >.< and when I say big, I mean big enough that I can't see the edges of the biome.

Well now, that is a cool cave system >.> I personally just started a new world, too. Specifically kept spawning worlds till I got one that started me off in a desert. I wanted to build stuff there, for some reason, and wanted my spawn there too, so... anyway, got the world I wanted. Was a 10-20 second walk just to find a tree >.> couldn't find any coal at all on the first day, spent the night hiding in a tree. Next morning, found a tiny cave with a bit of coal and iron in it, took it back and started a small cave. That night, I learn I have a spider problem >.> little bugger was sitting on my cave entrance the whole time. Took me part of the morning to figure out how to get rid of the blasted thing, but I got out eventually. Started building a wood house on a cobblestone foundation (grabbed some saplings while I was out in a forest biome, and brought those back to plant on a grassy patch nearby, so I have trees there now. Then, once I get some string, I learn just how amusing mob fishing is. I now have a single floor wood house with the top floor still open (working on building up at some point, but I want a basement first), and I sit up there, and hook mobs, dropping them into a trench I dug around the sides of my house. It doesn't give that many items, but it's entertaining to me :P I did just have one incident with a creeper, though. Blew out part of the foundation (and all the sand that was underneath it). Took most of the day to fix >.< Gonna start digging out my basement, then I'll see if I can connect the basement to my cave. Or I might just block off the cave altogether and dig straight down under my house, dunno yet. Also, did anyone notice mob behavior changing any? At least creepers seem to decide to idle randomly and stare at me: Mildly creepy (and fitting), but still weird.

When I went into the Nether last night, I had it on peaceful, so I wouldn't get mobbed by ghasts. Just wanted to explore and look at how the landscape was formed first, and examine the new block types. I located X's new video of his first venture into the Nether this morning via the wiki's page on the Nether. I now will never go into the Nether on anything but peaceful because of the sound effects >_> Damn, those things are creepy... and the zombie pigmen are almost as bad, the sounds they make are just... creepier than I expected. I don't like zombies to begin with (although the normal zombies I can deal with easily), but those sounds are just... >.<

In case it wasn't already abundantly obvious, don't set fire to trees inside a forest biome: >_> I admit I did this on purpose, but I only set two fracking trees on fire to begin with, not... however many are in that pic. And there are more, I was completely surrounded by flaming trees at the point I took that picture. On a more serious note, I've noticed that forest biomes seem to be by far the most common for me. I've started in/next to one in all the worlds I've generated so far (3 worlds). After that seems to be sand/desert ones - desert ones seem to have a crapton of clay if they're near or surrounded by water, or clay itself is just far far far more common than it was before (which I hope). I've seen some pretty nifty looking mountains as well. Winter biomes seem to be rare for me, I've only seen either one, or two very close together. Even still, there wasn't any frozen water nearby, just snow on the ground. And hey, Minecraft must've crashed when I was typing this. I had it open when I started, and now it's gone >.> figures. Ah well, didn't lose any of my exploration on peaceful mode in this new world I created for the purpose of examining biomes.

Just a quick warning, when you first enter hell/the nexus/whatever you want to call it, move the hell away from your portal: I moved away, thankfully. Then swore when this happened. You can see I'm in the process of redirecting the lava now, but still...

*swears at cannot connect to minecraft.net* Expected that it'd be near impossible to connect at this time, but still fracking annoying. Gonna be waiting on my friend till later to actually explore hell (we're both going to explore it on our single player files, although I'm starting a new one and quickly getting everything together instead). EDIT: I'm in, downloading now. Although slowly, due to dialup >_>

http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=55552 This is the one that I built. Fair warning, though. It requires a lot of resources to build, and a lot of time to actually do it in. Of course, you can just make it less floors and get less items/hr if you wanted. If you don't think you have the time and resources for that trap, this one might be better, although I admit I never really looked into it myself: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=52532&p=848700 Puts out far less items/hr, but it also states it only takes 2-3 hours to build with diamond tools, in comparison to the one I actually built, which took... 2-3 days real time >_> Can't wait for the hell update, honestly. Tomorrow is going to be a pain...

Tested my mob trap out last night for an hour. Got something like... 9117 items or something in that hour o.o the trap goes from bedrock up to a few floors (floors are... 4 blocks high each?) above sea level. Considering the original trap is from bedrock to sky limit, and puts out 11.5k items/hr, I think mine works pretty damn good :P got something like 523 blocks of tnt now, gonna go mining for a bit soon.

Got nearly 15 floors of the mob tower built so far, bedrock up to sea level. Funny story, though... Just when I got the floor just under sea level built, was starting on the outer edge of the next one up, and a pig drops down onto the part I was building and stares at me for a second. I watch it for a sec, and it jumps down onto the floor I was on. I went about building the rest of the floor, and as I was near the edge of the floor I was standing on, that damned pig started pushing me right towards the edge. It didn't just bump into me, it was pushing me right towards the edge. Amidst swearing at the pig, I start punching it and knock it right off the edge it nearly pushed me off of. Damned hijacking animals are turning into assassins now... >_> I'm keeping my eyes open for every animal that comes near me now. Seriously, I was right on the edge and that pig almost knocked me right off >.< Anyway, gonna build a few more floors and cut it short. Considering 30 ish floors is 11.5k items/hr, my 15 floors should be at least half that, which is more than enough for my purposes. Once it's built and I've stockpiled a fair amount of gunpowder for tnt, I'll start wandering and looking for clay, just because. I enjoy the exploring aspect, honestly. EDIT: Yep, this be karma alright. Right after I post this, I fall into the mob tower and die horribly from the fall, trying to get a ladder piece I just knocked down since I placed it in the wrong spot. Then I find out my carts at my spawn point station are gone (either due to animal hijacking or failure to stockpile there on my part), so I had to run to the island station further ahead and try to cart from there to the tower. Missed the first cart due to lag and it hitting the booster before I got in, then I go get another one, and hit the same cart (I think) on the way there and start going in reverse... All in all, I made it back in time. I did learn something though, my collection canal works perfectly, lmao. All my stuff ended up right there next to the chests.