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Sunday, October 24, 2010

Day Twenty-Seven

Before I get started, my apologies for the lack of updates of late. Life has caught up to me in the shape of several ghastly assignments. I'll still try to get Towards Dawn updated a few times a week at the very least. Moving on, Day Twenty-seven:

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The torches did not seem to be working too well this night. I could hear the crunch of grass, the hiss of spiders, the rattle of skeletons, and the moans of zombies for most of the night.

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That's everything but a zombie.
There we go.
Here comes the sun.
The zombies and skeletons were taken care of, but I could still hear spiders, and I knew there was at least one creeper lurking out of sight. Yet again, I would have to make a dash for it.

3... 2... 1...
Three spiders leaped down after me. One hit me as I backpedaled. I shot arrows but they jumped manically and my shots went astray. Then two creepers joined in the chase.

Back!
I turned to run forwards and put some distance between us, only to find more creepers trying to flank me. I turned and ran north, merging the two squads into one. Spinning back around, I had enough space now to start firing.

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Fortunately, the spiders grew disinterested and I had only the creepers to deal. I managed to take out all of them without a single explosion.

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I still don't trust them...
The morning excitement over, it was time to start the day. It was time to climb the hills to the east.

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I hardly crested the first mound before another creeper jumped at me from behind a pig.

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With that taken care of, I moved on. The ground lowered again into a plateau with hills rolling to the south and mountains rising to the north. The air also seemed overly foggy. I checked that my draw distance was still on normal, which it was. Perhaps the world is just so huge now that it is not rendering as much.

Looking east.
Looking south-east.
Mountains to the north.
Ominous cave.
Sure is ominous.
The flat, easy ground continued for a time, and I started to miss the ocean I had left behind. That was soon to change.

Looking north while coming down a hill.
That looks like an interesting mountain...
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I thought I had captured him in this picture, but right above the coal on the right-hand side of the overhang stood a pig, precariously leaning off the edge. He was wandering back and forth out of sight. Unfortunately, I must have just missed him when I shot the previous picture. It hardly mattered, as I was going to climb up to him to take a picture. But first, I wanted a picture of the gravel stalagmite in the shade (just visible two pictures up).
And then several things happened at once.

Pig!
The moment I took the picture, I heard a squeal and the pig that had been on the mountain fell and died before my eyes! My god! Just as I was reeling over this turn of events, a skeleton leaped out from behind the stalagmite and attacked me.

Skeleton!
Get back!
So that was horrifying. Now that there was no reason for me to climb atop the overhang, I worked up the mountain just to the south and continued east.

Looking north at the overhang. RIP Mountain Pig.
Coming down the other side, I spied what is perhaps the most peculiar mountain thus far. Not most amazing, but most peculiar.

Like a giant ant mound.
Slightly different angle.
Well, I would just have to climb it, wouldn't I? Hopefully there would be a way down on the far side.

Okay. It looks less impressive from the ground.
Up we go.
From the top, the view was fairly extraordinary.

I can't remember what way this was facing. Perhaps south. There was ocean on both north and south horizons.
So no easy way down on the eastern side...
View to the east (I turned my draw distance up to far for this).
So it looked as though the rest of my day may be interesting. Some crazy stadium-esque mountains and an eventual ocean, if the north and south waters are going to meet up (which they inevitably always do). I could not get off this mountain to the east, so I headed back down to the south.

Heading down south as another young mountain pig starts his climb.
Crazy mountains.
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I decided I wanted to go straight through the middle of these mountains. I carefully crossed a thin cube of grass into the central area.

Easy... (heading north)
Yeah, I kind of expected that (looking east).
With a bit of digging, climbing the cliff was not actually that hard.

Up, up, and up.
Looking back west at the rear of the peculiar mountain. Seems I missed a waterfall.
Atop the cliff.
Looking north through a crazy canyon.
Hmm. Might want to take a step back...
Continuing east, I soon looked out over some of the most breathtaking scenery I have seen for days. The upped draw distance may have helped. 

0_0 Looks just like a Cartograph map.
There was no way down directly to the east, so I balanced across a single-cube wide bridge to the mountain just to the north and headed down its less-steep eastern side.

Heading north-east (slowly)
Careful...
Looking east.
Sun beginning to sink back to the west.
On the horizon (further away than the horizon usually is) I could see the coast. I decided I would try to get to the beach before nightfall.

Crazy mountain to the south.
Strange overhang to the north.
The mountains came to an end with several lakes and sandy dunes before I hit the coast proper.

Looking east.
Interesting island.
.
Same island, from the south.
 I hit the coast just as the sky darkened. Looking for a place to set camp, I noticed a narrow cavern heading into the sand.

The lands I have traveled.
...And a cavern I did not craft.
I looked in briefly and placed a few torches. There was only one path, and it was quite narrow. I should be safe in here. I quickly glassed the entrance and went to survey the  cavern properly. In my rush, I forgot to place a single torch outside. Whoops.

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Now about this cave...
I ran its length hastily, placing torches and checking for smaller caverns leading in from the sides. I found nothing, save a single block missing at the very end. Beyond it, I could hear the moans of zombies.

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Just to be safe...
I still did not feel too safe. I was immediately regretting the idea of camping in a cavern that I did not dig myself. I still have nightmares about that zombie on Day Six (ish) that nearly slaughtered me. Still, this seemed safe enough. But then I looked up:

Uh, sand?
The ceiling, in places, was sand. All it would take is one block for it all to come tumbling down in an avalanche of zombies and creepers. Awesome. That was it. I could not sleep with a cavern at my back. Carefully, I mined some stone away from the sand. 

There we go. I feel safer now.
Sure is dark outside.
And so ends day twenty-seven.

16 comments:

  1. I miss you, piggy! (Invader Zim quote)

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  2. Floating sand should be safe, as long as you don't move anything around it.

    I had an entire underground complex near to my base with a sand ceiling. It stayed in place for days before I unwittingly mined some iron out from under a sand block. Then the entire thing flooded, since it was under a beach.

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  3. I'm enjoying your blog. Good luck with the assignments, and take what time you need to get them done, but please continue :)

    Some suggestions to deal with your daily morning monster-dash: you could build yourself a sky-light of glass in the ceiling of your shelter. That way you'd at least know what's accumulating on your roof during the night, trying to get at you. You could even build the sky-light from the inside during the night, although that would run the risk of dropping a non-spider enemy on your head - not digging it directly above your head would help.

    If you wanted to get a bit more fancy, you could replace a block next to the sky-light with a log (not planks, but a raw log direct from a tree). If you see that you have monsters on your roof, you can light the log from below with a flint and steel, and the flames will burn out the top and damage/kill your roof-pests. Logs are sometimes consumed by fire, so perhaps build a dirt block under the log once it's alight so that nothing can drop in on you.

    Good luck!

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  4. Yes, I agree as well. Please continue as you are able as the adventure is inspiring. We always wonder "whats over the next hill" or "what is almost going to kill him today"

    I think the jumping pig was a message from mountain guru pig. I think it forgives you and wants you to have some tasty ham. They were literally throwing it at you.

    I like the skyport idea. You also could build a wall say 6 blocks wide by 3 high behind your entrance. Then you have a clear walk out without things dropping on you.

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  5. Sorry if you've already answered this, but what do you plan on doing once biomes are added to the game? Will the update affect terrain generated by an already existing map? I want ot look forward to a lost-in-the-jungle series of updates...

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  6. Thanks Rob and John for the tips. Those are some good ideas. If I actually start to make my camp before the last second when the sun is setting, I'll definitely use some of them. :)

    As for biomes, Anon, my understanding from what Notch has said is that existing worlds will get the different biomes, but you need to render new land for them to appear. I.e. they won't be appearing in land that has already been formed before the update. As I am forming new land everyday, I doubt that will be a problem for me.

    It is certainly going to make things more interesting. I'm fairly worried about what new mobs I may find in these new, exotic lands D:.

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  7. Love the blog, it has inspired me to do a little travelling of my own, except I'm heading west, doing it in a winter wonderland and I set myself the challenge of building my own shelter every night rather than digging it or walling up a cave.

    I haven't followed that rule very well however, there's only a small string of outposts with some walled up caves in between, still it's very awesome walking across frozen seas and finding shelter from the snow under large overhangs.

    Of course it's only just now that I realise what I should have done is only use snow blocks to build my shelters >.<
    Not sure how well it would gel with your nomad ways, but I'd say have a go at making your own shelter (if only once), maybe out of logs if you don't fancy using the stone you mined whilst leaving the mining life behind :D

    Oh and I wouldn't worry too much about new creatures just yet, you probably won't be wandering into hell any time soon so I think the worst of it will just pass you by. If you finish this blog and make a new one where you only travel east through hell however...

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  8. Oh! Oh! Do the trek through hell thing like Malagate suggested, that'd be hilarious! I'd give you five minutes until you die a horrible death, the way hell is sounding.
    Obviously you'd do it in a new world, I'd never wish that fate upon the nomad (not to mention that the nomad would probably never get his hands on obsidian to make portals anyway).

    But on the topic of handy tricks to keep yourself safe at night, I've got one too. If you make yourself a bucket and fill it with water, you can make a spring outside your door each night. The current will push any pesky enemies well away from your door, and has the added bonus of giving you a handy speed boost as you make a run for it in the morning. No mob would get near you!

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  9. Just got linked to your blog.
    How big is your save-file!?
    Four-Earths to the horizon. Keep it up.

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  10. If you had a detonator, I'd suggest you drop some dynamite into that hole and blast the hell out of whatever's in there...ah well.

    This should get especially interesting after the 31st...say, do you think we could get another map after 35 or 40 days of travel? I'm curious to see just how far north you ended up going a few days back.

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  11. Anon: The saved file is about 100mb last time I checked. :)

    Davie: I'll put another map up at 30 days, me thinks. I might make it a routine to do it every ten days.

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  12. Looking forward to seeing the new lands and new biomes through your nomad's eyes.
    "Upon that trackless desert, two legs of stone..."

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  13. You have inspired me!

    I'm going to make a blog similar to this one, but I'll be documenting my day to day events. Do you have any advice?

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  14. I hope you get a chance to do some more travelling, I keep waiting for the next update.

    Perhaps once you get wherever you're going, you could do a return trip via hell, or maybe pass that job on to somebody else. They could write it up as a descendant of the original explorer.

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  15. Kagetama:

    Only advice I can think of is take lots of photos and try to give a sense of coherent space. I always try to mention what direction landmarks are in so that people can (hopefully!) kind of stitch the pictures and words together into a coherent world. Apart from that, just be sure to do something interesting and worth reading, which in Minecraft is not hard!

    Jeremy: Well I just handed in 6000 words worth of essays and am now on summer break so I will be returning to regular posting pretty much immediately! In fact, I am going to play and subsequently post Day 28 in the next few hours. :)

    Once the journey is 'finished', pending on the size of the map file, I am planning on uploading the map so that others can either follow in my footsteps or walk off in another direction or whatever they wish. :)

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  16. I saw shrooms in the omnious cave.

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