$#@%#$%#

I discovered recently the joys of using diamonds for armour and tools. It's awesome. I survived a ton of creeper attacks wearing my diamond armour, and cleared away a ton of dirt with my diamond shovel. For example, I obliterated this hilltop. This is the before picture:

Anyway, I ran out of diamonds so I figured I'd head back to my beach front cave system. I was feeling pretty cocky in my new armour and wasn't finding any diamonds so I kept going deeper and deeper. I scored a lot of iron and gold and then I finally found diamonds. Not a lot, but a little. And then I trapped myself in a dark cave. I was trying to claw my way out and a zombie came up behind me and killed me. Boo-urns.

So now I've got to try to remember my way down to where I was and I've got to do it fast. I had my watch with me, my diamond armour and lots of raw materials. Miraculously I found my way down but too late. I lost my shit. So the next time down I grabbed a couple of signs to help me find my way down faster.

I was besieged by creepers and skeletons and zombies and everything. but I had fresh iron armour, I was holding out okay. So fuck you guys:

I dug deeper and deeper and found one piece of diamond. And then eventually a creeper caught me by enough of a surprise that I couldn't escape. I tried so hard to get down there fast enough but I got hopelessly lost. My shit was gone again.

So I rage-quit to write this blog post and now I think I'll go back and build a rail line down to where I was.

What do I like about Minecraft?

• Surprises. I was digging a tunnel from my train station to my beach front house this evening and I stumbled across several natural caves. One of them was enormous! Tons of charcoal, iron, and even a little gold without having to explore!
• Exploring! In a randomly generated world, I'm seeing everything for the first time. I have no idea what's going to be around the next corner or even under my front doorstep. Remember that expansive cave system under the lake in front of my house? I sure do... even if I'm too scared to visit much because of all the monsters still in there.
• Being afraid of the dark. When I found tonight's surprise cavern, the first thing I did was run away. When I was properly equipped I came back and proceeded to turn on all the lights. I placed torches like a  kid who has just gone home to and empty house after seeing The Exorcist. When I ran out of torches I built walls to prevent any darkness-spawned monsters from chasing me down and exploding. Good thing too.

This is as close as I like to get to creepers when I'm taking a picture

• My Frenemies. Sure, I curse every time a zombie horde kills me hundreds of feet underground when I've been trapped in a labyrinth for virtual days. And creepers blow up my shit all the time, but that just gives me something to fight against. In a world where you can build a skyscraper on your own in a couple of hours, it's important to have something to fight against. My achievements don't mean anything without adversity.
• Building shit. Obviously. =)

Ore Collection

This post has too much text. I thought about taking screenshot of my spelunking adventures, but I'm pretty sure most caves look the same and won't give you a good sense of just how quickly I lose sense of direction. Instead, I'll randomly insert fun pictures.

Here's lunch!

I'm running out of iron. Time to head back down into my massive mines to see what unexplored caverns I can find.

Nothing much showed up in the first couple of branches. Maybe 9 bars total? I did find a dungeon that was spawning lots of zombies. I tried to get close, but I just ended up dying a lot.

Eventually I gave up and went back in search of more iron. I figured I still had lots of lava fields I hadn't explored so I went deep deep deep into my mine to see what I could find. What did I find? Paydirt! It seemed like every cavern I found led to tons of iron and at least two more caverns! I even found lots of gold and diamonds!!! Not that those are much use to me.

Here's a small army of goddamn monstahs waiting outside one of my homes.

At one point I was holding about 40 chunks of iron ore on my person when I found another patch of lava. I filled in the lava and walked past when suddenly I caught fire! I guess my filler had melted. I started to panic and ran back toward the closest water but knew I wouldn't make it. When I respawned, I panicked a little. If I had died standing in lava all my precious iron would be gone! Fortunately, I eventually found all my gear and resolved that now was as good a time as any to head back to the surface and build some train tracks:

I stood on my roof and waited for sunrise which is potentially my favourite time of day: