Dungeon diving, and boat rowing. Minecraft Day 8

Before I start, I feel like it’s worth mentioning that what I will refer to as “dungeons” in this post, I’ve since learnt that they are called Mineshafts, do correct me if I’m still wrong (since I’m asking). Anyways, I’ll keep referring to them as dungeons in this specific post, and may adjust my language in future posts. I do not actively try to look for the “proper” language in these posts, because part of the charm for me personally is figuring out what stuff is, and naming things or referring to things in the way that makes sense to me. Okay okay, let’s get started shall we:

I hate this game. Okay, I may be exaggerating, but I did die enough today to utter the words “I HATE THIS GAME” more than once. And I honestly didn’t die that much, but the XP, THE XP! It was all lost… *Cry* Luckily we were, as before, able to get our corpses back so it wasn’t too bad. And yes, I’m saying We, because Loa joined me for an entire full session today and I think that was the first for us, and we had a lot of fun doing a lot of different things both together and separately.

As you remember from yesterday, I had logged out in a very safe spot, because I wanted to pick up where I was and to explore further. I wasn’t entirely sure what this “dungeon” would bring, but I wanted to go down there to have a look. I asked Loa a few times if it was safe, if I would die, and if I should be worried about whatever he’d mentioned yesterday, he said I could go on and that the thing he mentioned shouldn’t be relevant because apparently I need a key (I still have no idea what he was talking about.)

Loa joined the game. But went on his own adventures for now.

So I started to make my way down, but I kept getting distracted by iron, and coal, and anything mineable really. Me, distracted? No, Never! (I legit had to open a stream to distract my involuntary attention so I can keep writing this, why ADHD brain, why?) I kept making all the ores and coal, and redstone and lapis into blocks, to be able to fit more into my backpack, and so I could see how much I had gathered by the end of it all (keep reading and I’ll show you!).

I even ran into a giant slime, and to my dismay it split into more slimes after I killed it. Let me say I had been very surprised at how easily it died just milliseconds before I realized that it split, and that they were all coming for me. I had been hoping that the big slime was friendly but it was walking towards me in a way that scared me, so I had to attack in self-defense (Yes, I hear how bad that sounds.. ew).

So much ore, everywhere, pick pick and gather and never actually going back to where I was planning to go.

I was so confused when I found this, I knew I had blocks of Raw Iron in my backpack, but I didn’t expect to see it in the wild!

Looking back I honestly think I was very nervous and just trying to do ANYTHING but going into the “dungeon”.

But look at all this ore though like some things you just don’t leave behind.

I finally made it to the entrance and looked back up, to show you where I came from.

Dungeon Time

Finally I made it into the maze like tunnels of the “dungeon”, and after exploring a lot of the tunnels in there, and stripping all of the rails that I could, I did find some chests and some nifty loot. The chests were in minecarts which I knew could be useful so I picked them up after looting them

I tried to go through it methodically, but I’m wonder if the mini-map was actually a hindrance to me because I kept seeing things I couldn’t quite get to yet, and I’d obsess about where I was on the map and not figure out where I could actually go.

First spider web, surely it’s nothing to worry about.. Right?

But then I saw one tunnel that was completely filled with spider web, I feared going there, and asked Loa if I should, if it was safe, or if, you know, I should just turn around and never look back? He assured me it was safe.

I cut my way through some of it, and used my shears to cut them down a little bit faster (at least I imagined it was faster).

I seemed to have disturbed something, and small cave spiders (smaller than I was used to) started to attack me.

As you can see there’s an arrow sticking out of the post on the left side of the screen, so I was fighting not only what felt like invisible enemies, but also ones that would actively seek me out.

Quickly more and more small cave spiders came out of it to attack me. And they all did poison damage, something that was completely new to me. Which drained so much more of my health than I realized, so when I thought I was good and safe to kill the skeleton that was behind the webs and next to the spawner, I was not, and I died before I knew it. I think this was the very first time I was incredibly mad about dying in this game, and I was like “how the fuck do I get back there”.

Look at all that xp though, 27 enchanting levels!

Back home

Loa was back at the house by now, after having set out to the village when he logged on. I don’t know what he did at the village other than trade for a bit, and heal some Iron Golems that were suffering from low health. He offered to join me to retrieve my corpse, so we headed back out again.

As I got dressed in golden armor I felt ridiculous. Most of this was looted armor, but I did not realize how pink it was because of the enchantment.

Pet break. Horses I brought home yesterday. Before we head back out on adventure I had forgotten to show these off yesterday (yes I’m still calling it yesterday even though this post is published much much later).

Corpse Recovery

So when making our way back to where I died, I was trying to find my original entrance again, which was under water, but in doing so ended up taking another tunnel under water which led to the surface on the other side of the land… Loa tried to follow me and died in the process… I laughed and cried while I waited for him to come back again.

As we continued and got to above where my corpse would be, Loa was like “we can just dig straight down to get to your stuff, I can do it and put water at the bottom for you so you can jump down”, and I was like “okay, it’s at -31”

After a while of digging, as we were quite high up compared to where my body was supposed to be, Loa was like “don’t they end up at 0?” and yeah, that was true.

He dug down to that level, and he was like “so where is it?” and I had to tell him, just dig in a circle at that level, and OMG! he laughed so much when he finally found my corpse! The same laughter as when I found my first one at one of those “in the middle of the mountain”-points.

It was time for me to follow him down and retrieve my corpse.

Now that we had recovered my corpse, and were ready to continue down into the caves and dungeons, and so we did another dig straight down and another puddle of water for me to jump into.

All in all we went down close to 100 blocks in height. From 67, to -28

We were back in the dungeon, and decided to try and find the new path I knew I hadn’t explored yet. But just kept running in circles before we found a way to go elsewhere, and found a new path and a new adventure. Almost immediately we ran into another monster spawner with the horrible horrible poisonous spiders. And they all aggroed on me, while I was trying to hide behind a corner, and I think in that moment Loa managed to destroy the spawner, while I died. I had to make my way back again, and then we had to find our corpses again, because he died from a creeper.

Loa made a fancy but also very dangeours “elevator” to go back down the same hole we had already dug out, and he said “You can come with” but I plainly refused because it felt way too scary. Basically he used a water source block which he’d pick up before it was too late, and it freaked me out enough to watch.

Another fall all the way down, let me spare you the pictures of that…

Your regular scheduled cave exploring

So we were back out in the “normal” cave. And Loa found some diamond nodes that I had completely missed before. So of course I had to come back and help mine it. We only had one mining pick made of diamond. And I think it may have been enchanted with Fortune I at this time.

After we left the dungeon we eventually went our separate ways within the caves, and I decided to keep moving towards the desert region that had been my initial goal when heading out yesterday (feels like forever ago now). I kept doing it through the caves, but had trouble finding a way out and kept running in circles, still digging up more resources.

During our adventures Loa and I were talking about how satisfying mining is in this game, and that we both just wanna keep doing it even when we’re trying to do other things. So we decided that if we end up with 64 blocks of Iron Ore, we both have to stop mining for a while.

I guess there’s a reason it’s called Minecraft, huh.

I kept looking for caves that would help me get out, while keeping walking in the right cardinal direction. As you can see in the above photo I’m turned the wrong way, but hoping this twisting cave can lead out.

Take aim, get set, row!

Eventually I did manage to get out of the ground and to start my trek North West (I think accidentally wrote North East before/yesterday), and I made it to the ocean, and realized that I had to keep crossing it to get to wherever I was going. Remember, it was almost 3000 bl from home, which is quite a way to go on foot.

Since I knew I had to cross a lot of water to continue, I decided to build a boat.

I already had a crafting table in my backpack to be able to craft things on the fly when needed. It’s very nice for tools that were still iron, or emergency stone tools, or just a new full stack of torches.

I also use the crafting table to compress resources into blocks of the resource, so blocks of raw Iron and Gold ore, and blocks of Redstone and Lapis, and of course coal, which I just kept mining even though we don’t really need it.

I rowed the boat, North/West, I went over a lot of open ocean and places that hadn’t loaded in yet, which got quite laggy to do while both of us were on the server. Took a while for us to realize that was causing Loa trouble though. Whoops.

Treasyre

No adventure would be complete without even MORE distractions.

Could that be, a boat? Wonder if it has treasure!

I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it! Heck, that’s amazing.

We already had some emeralds, but tbh more emeralds never hurt anyone. And iron and gold is always useful.

Just keep rowing

While rowing, I tried my very very very very best to not get MORE distracted, but we do know that any adventure game is just ripe with distractions. I rowed over this gorgeous underwater temple, and I know approximately what’s in side, but I definitely want to go back there when both me and Loa have Neptunium Gear so we can both breathe and see under water. I’m looking forward to that!

Row row row your boat, gently across the entire fucking ocean. Phew. Okay we did it. There’s only so many images you can take while crossing an entire ocean. But we did it, we made it, we found hat looks like sand dunes.

I finally made it to the the desert, it wasn’t desert only it was mixed with something else but I don’t remember. Before I went up on land to look for the cacti, I noticed the beautiful corral in the water, and decided to go in and have a closer look

Underwater I found sea pickles, which kind of worked like glow lichen but in the water, and I picked one up and unlocked the lime dye recipe. Lime dye was why I was out in the desert to begin with, because I needed that green dye, to mix with the white dye. And here I discovered a plant that immediately gave me Lime Dye. I may or may not have facepalmed at this.

The funniest thing right now was that I still had no idea what I needed the lime dye for, but it was something cool, and I knew it was worth the epic adventure to get it. And I was going to show Loa as soon as I got back and built it.

Even the zombies were different here. Considering how far away from home I was I still had to be careful, so I didn’t have to struggle too much to make it all the way back if I died.

Neverending adventure

Of course I found a pyramid (is that what it is? I’m having trouble with words atm), and I knew what was hiding at the very bottom, I just had to be careful to not blow up.

Sandstone castle, gorgeous architecture, I hadn’t seen sandstone yet, nor Terracotta. And here I found both.

Do you know what’s underneath? Do you want to know? If not I’d scroll by now.

This is a very deadly trapped room, but because I already knew about it, I didn’t die horrible to the copious amounts of TNT that was hidden just below the surface here. And instead I just brought home as much loot as I could. Heck yes!

I promptly forgot to take the rest of the screenshots here.. So I’m sorry I can’t show you any more, I promise I’ll do my best to show you next time I run into one of these.

Jungle Hills

I started the trek home, and I found new biomes. And Loa wanted me to sample some to bring home. Because these jungle trees could house cacao beans, and vines!

I tried to row through the area, and get to the other side, but in some places I had to pick up my boat and walk again.

Let’s not find out if piranhas in this game wants to eat me alive. That’s an adventure for another day.

I couldn’t resist the urge for some last minute roleplaying, by cutting my way through the leafy bushes to get out of the jungle and make my way back home. It’s not easy to catch this well on a screenshot.

Home Sweet Home

Finally I made it back home. and I’m running out of words.

Loa had been making our house look nicer in the meanwhile. Because our chests were just filled with stuff and I just thrive in organized chaos (don’t judge me, you know what ADHD is like).

While I was inside, minding my business, I heard these words form beside me “IS THAT DIAMOND ARMOR?”. Loa was still wearing iron mostly, and I was like “maybe”.

Back in side, he kept crouching to look at me in disapproving manners (see it was disapproving! I’m not projecting, this is what you do Loa!).

Yes, I had made one diamond helmet, but the armor was Neptunium. Because fishing is OP.

And to wrap things up

As promised, the collection of blocks of ore and things. 64 blocks of redstone, 31 blocks of lapis, 54 blocks of Iron Ore, 16 blocks of Gold, 51 blocks of coal. A lot of coal was used while adventuring because torches, but I think all in all this is a pretty good haul.

Additionally, some blog site related things: This post took the longest to write, mostly because this week was a weird week, but also because a long gaming session translates into A LOT of adventures all squeezed into one.

I hope you still enjoyed it, and I’m trying to figure out a nice balance going forward, but I don’t quite know what it’ll be like yet. Loa has had 2 weeks off, and that’s the time we’ve been playing Minecraft together (except for the first few days), and going forward he’ll be back to work (in real time, not blog time, this posts’ adventure was started 10 days ago), on the night shift, so I’ll probably be playing a lot more on my own again, and we’ll see how that all goes. I mean most of the time when we’re playing together we are often playing apart and then showing each other things later. As you’ll see in upcoming posts.

Until next time, try to not explode your house.

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