maloki

An Enchanting Night in Minecraft, day 5

To pick up where we left off yesterday, more adventures!

While scouring out in the night I ran into a fox for the first time, and let me tell you I was fascinated. These foxes had a tendency to hang out in the water and swim around, which I thought was extremely cute. Unfortunately they are fickle animals and it was difficult to take good pictures of them.

It's night time and standing on the edge of the river I'm looking down the crossbow towards a fox swimming. — I’m not aiming to shoot, I just have my crossbow loaded because other monsters about

I quickly dove back into the mines, I had one major goal, and that was to get some obsidian, because I wanted to build an enchanting table, and I finally had a diamond pick axe.

I quickly found rich resources, and this diamond node was 8 diamonds worth.

At the bottom of the cave 4 blocks of diamonds — More treasure below

While my main goal was obsidian, as I said, I didn’t pass up any opportunity to get diamonds.

Another 2 block of diamonds on the wall in a very dark cave — Precious diamonds

At some point I was making my way back to the surface, and started digging another stair up, this is still very close to my other dungeon entrance, but now I got two apparently.

A small cobblestone entrance to stairs leading down into the cave systems — Perfect

I also had to be incredibly careful to not drain the lake.

Something beautifully strange

I went down for more adventures, because I had totally gotten sidetracked from actually finding the obsidian, and I noticed that I was close to this purple thing on the mini map. So I started digging. And inside was this gorgeous purple stone.

Opening to a ball shaped room with purple stones — What’s inside?

Turns out it was an amethyst, and all the blocks were amethyst, and the protruding shards were amethyst shards, and I said amethyst way too many times. But look how gorgeous it is.

Inside the ball of purple amethyst. It's very shiny and pretty. — All the amethyst

Through this cave, I found a way out, and met a cute little Wolf.

Even stranger, but just what I was looking for.

This was probably the best find this day. It both had obsidian and lava that I was looking for. It was in the middle of the night, so I was trying to be careful and not get eaten by anything.

A small ruin, with obsidian, stone bricks, a chest, some lava, magma, and netherrack, in the middle of the forest. — A kind of obsidian ruin with a lava block, some magma and gold blocks.

This meant I could head back home and finish my secret project. The enchantment table!

Crafting screen in Minecraft, with the materials for the enchantment table in place. — It’s ready

I headed back home, built the enchantment table, placed the 15 book cases. I was so proud of myself that this tiny piece of information had stuck in my mind from the Minecraft series I’m watching. And I could “complete” this in one go. I had enough paper and leather for all the books and I organized it in the correct way. Unfortunately the only screenshots I have of the area is with the enchant menu open showing off the items I already enchanted.

My focus was putting into practice some of the things I had learnt through osmosis with regard to enchanting, so I forgot to actually screenshot along the way. I had a session with gathering extra XP mainly around the house and the farm, the chickens helped a lot.

Enchanting screen, hovering over the crossbow I'd just enchanted with Unbreaking 3 and Piercing 4. — Sexy crossbow enchantments

Diamond Pickaxe tooltip, with the enchantment Unbreaking 2 and Fortune 1 — Better pickaxe

Tooltip for a second Diamond Pickaxe enchanted with Efficiency 2 — 2nd pickaxe

And I can combine these two pickaxes to repair and get both enchantments on one! Which is neat.

The crossbow had piercing on it, which means I can in theory use it to more efficiently cull my chickens. And yes, it works like a charm! Piercing also means that I can pick up almost all my arrows again, which is very helpful.

Thank you and good night

Bonus session:

Me and Loa managed to squeeze in a session the same day, so here’s how it went. Basically I’d been eagerly awaiting to show him the last two posts of stuff, and he’s finally got some time off. And yey!

He logged back in while back in that cave we’d died. And he had to find his way back. I did go down to help him, and we did some exploring before we went back up again and he got to see the new shiny house. I was like “y u no say anything about the house yet”, but expressed it as: So did you notice something? And he was like “Yes, you put in support beams!” and I was like “AND A WHOLE OTHER FLOOR!”.

I think he takes a bit longer than me to process things and give feedback, so me just eagerly awaiting an immediate response means it feels way too slow.

He was rummaging through the boxes, and well the organization isn’t amazing yet but I helped him find what he needed. He eventually went upstairs and found the enchanting table, and was actually impressed with me having added the correct amount of bookshelves, which I appreciated.

Then he taught me a trick, to cover the bookshelves to get only low level enchantments showing if you just want some minor bumps on say your entire Iron Armor. So we did that, and managed to get two pairs of iron boots with Feather Falling 1 so we can both enjoy easier falling not that we got to put it to the test.

Loa in enchanted iron gear, glowing purple/pink, holding a spy glass. — Lookin cute.

We went to hunt for some kelp, and Loa used the spyglass to see the kelp before we got there. And I was screaming at him that he went and found the kelp before I even left the house, then he waited for me to catch up and showed me that he used the spyglass, and we laughed at it. Then we went to cut it down, and bring it home.

He also showed me how to build an automatic bone meal machine using hoppers, but as usual I got too distracted by him being in the game with me that I took very few screen shots. *sad face*

Loa standing by the bed ready for sleep. — Zzz

While we were getting kelp it was getting dark, and he wanted us to go back home and sleep because we were so close. Then he laughed at me going to bed in the game with all my clothes on.

Next day we went to go back to the ruins I’d found. For more obsidian and to show me how to make obsidian with lava and water.

We found two foxes swimming in the river this time. — Foxes going for a paddle

We arrived at the ruins, and I looked through the inventory and I was like “where’s the water bucket, did you take the water bucket?” And I looked up to this:

Loa standing on one block above me, holding a water bucket. — Oh, you got the water already

It was a very silly moment. He let me try putting the water over the lava source block, and voila I had one more block obsidian. I was honestly a little bit upset by it, because I was hoping that there was a way to get more of it. But unfortunately not.

Then Loa asked me, if I’d found any villages yet, and I hadn’t, but I had seen what looked like a village on the map. And we were already halfway there from home, so we started walking.

By the time we saw the village in the distance it was already getting dark.

Dark night looking over a valley, with some lit up houses near the horizon. — There is indeed a village

Loa was worried about the villagers, because they could die from monsters etc, so we hurried over, there were a lot of monsters on the way and we almost got killed by those child-sized zombies again.

Loa in the village next to a torch-post. — We made it to the village

In the village, there were guards as part of one of the mods, and they were fighting off most of the monsters.

Once dawn came, and the villagers started to wake up, I learnt how to trade with them, and found that one forester was trading oak saplings for emeralds, and the hunter was trading 5 emeralds for 2 slime balls, we need slime to make something nice. I’ve been keeping an eye out for slime ever since Loa mentioned them the first day he joined me.

And yeah, that’s where this adventure ended, we got our slime, and we logged out in the village to make something to eat.

More adventures ahead tomorrow!

If you’re enjoying reading these little articles or stories, consider throwing some support my way: via ko-fi or alternatives. I’m currently trying to cover my student loan debt payments and that will be my goal going forward too.

What are these bugs, what’s happening? Minecraft, Day 4

You may remember yesterday that I was flustered about our bodies disappearing, today I discovered what happened to them. But let me set the scene first, something I didn’t manage to grab any screenshots for because I was so distracted.

Apparently when Loa joins the game I focus on showing him things and doing things together with him, so we went cave diving, we were finally deep into the caves and we found the diamonds I’d not been able to get to yesterday because I kept dying and losing my shit so I couldn’t mine it. At the very bottom of one of the chasms, we were exploring around, trying to be fairly careful. At least I was. I do feel like because Loa has a lot more experience with Minecraft he’s a lot more gung ho about the whole thing. I’m gung ho in a different way.

While I was… I don’t know what I was doing tbh it all happened so quickly, Loa ran into an Enderman, and it became hostile. And I was like “Why did you attack it” and he was like “I didn’t, I only looked it in the eyes” and I was like, “WHAT?! You mean I could’ve killed myself yesterday when I was taking those screenshot of the Enderman I knew wouldn’t hurt me?!!”. Loa quickly died, and I was like “let me help you *slash slash*” and then I realized he was dead, and soon I died too.

We made it back to the depths fairly soon, and we couldn’t find our corpses again, just like the problem I’d had yesterday.

Loa logged out, to go get ready for work, and I was like “I’ll get our shit back with creative mode again because this is stupid”. And after I’d done that I noticed something.

The Mystery of the Disappearing Corpses

We had looked for the corpse in the depth, and looked around for it by digging around the spot we died, the spot the game knew we died. Double checked the coordinates and such.

After I’d recovered our items, and stashed it away in the appropriate chests, I noticed that a purple dot on the minimap, closer to the mining base camp than where we died. Basically on the minimap xp and arrows and some other stuff shows up as purple dots, while normal items are red dots, and I knew from before that the corpse does show up as a purple dot. This was when my mind started to connect the dots (pun not intended). From the minor reading I’d done on the corpse mod FAQ I knew that it didn’t handle custom depths very well, something that I didn’t even know if I was running as this modpack was new to me and well Minecraft was new to me.

I walked towards the dot on the map, through the tunnels I’d already been accommodating for easy travel and I started digging. And this was my first screenshot of the evening, me finding my corpse 4 feet under ground (pun intended). And once at the foot of the hole, I noticed the “0” in the coordinates and realized that yes, indeed any corpse that dies below 0 ends up at 0. This explains the floating corpses too. (this isn’t the corpse from me dying this time, but an older corpse).

My corpse at the bottom of a hole. — I found my body

close up of my body at the bottom of a hole. — Yep that’s definitely me

So I started a new project for the night…. digging tunnels on the 0 level, going in all possible directions to be able to easily go to our corpses.

Why you ask? Well, ehm… I’m weird. and I enjoy seemingly random projects that are just for me for weird reasons.

A stair down to 0 level, and a beginning of a tunnel. — And so the work began.

More cavediving

It wouldn’t be a project of mine if I didn’t get distracted along the way. So here I am building other shelves trying to get more iron (because I’m fairly low on stock as most of my gear has broken). I guess it was part of the plan and goal for the night to get more iron, that’s why I went into the mines to begin with too.

By this point I had made a diamond pickaxe but would only use it for special ores for most of the night.

Don't mind me, just building ledges around random crevasses in the cave system. — climbing the walls to get more ores

Another example of my body being in the wrong place. This is the corpse from earlier in the day.

My corpse, wearing an iron helmet, leather pants and holding a sword standing straight up, floating in the air close to vines. — Ah yes, there I am.

I don’t like building like this because I’m not used to it yet. And this height was incredibly scary… But then I remembered that I did get very confident with doing this kind of building in 7 Days to Die, and that game is pretty much Minecraft with different textures.

Looking down off a ledge, to see the side of the block I'm standing on to be able to place another block next to it, while balancing above a very very high height. — Don’t look down.

House Renovations

After a while I was satisfied with the digging and pathing I’d done under ground and I remembered all the wood I’d cut the night before, I decided it was time to rebuild the house for a little bit.

If you don’t remember what it looked like before, do check back with the previous posts (day 2, and day 3) where I’ve shared some house pictures.

I knew I wanted to change from spruce planks to oak planks, and I quickly noticed that I didn’t want just the plain oak planks, I needed some kind of accents. So I decided to try some combination with oak logs, and build a semi-timber house.

The main plan was to raise the roof by one block, and build a second floor. The second floor would mostly host things we wouldn’t be using as regularly like the bed, and I don’t know what else yet.

The front of the house as I've added the first floor extra height by 1 block, a row of oak logs. — Front of the house, after I’d just begun.

I had to learn the mechanics of block placing, and how the blocks that have different rotations rotate depending on where you aim etc, which was an interesting challenge.

Beginning building the second floor, adding torches around so no baddies will spawn on top- — It’s slowly taking shape

Second floor being built straight above the first floor roof/ceiling, as I was increasing the height by one block — Difference in colour is quite big.

Okay it’s taking shape. I decided for aesthetic purposes to make extra log pillars inside as the inside corners wouldn’t show the outside corner block.

From the front of the house, getting the frame of the second floor into place. On the left of the screen there's two log pillars supporting that corner of the house. — The front of the house

I’m focusing on the frame on the top floor before replacing the bottom floor. Also my building is quite haphazardly, because I will build something get distracted and do a different piece. Even when I try to do it very organized. This is ADHD organization, clearly working well.

The side of the house, you can see more progress on the top, with some ceiling beams of logs visible. — chickens are looking at me working

From the very back of the house, the wall on this side is complete, except for the gap for future windows, double the size from the previous windows as seen on the bottom floor. — Okay, I like this shape.

Very blocky, how would it not be in Minecraft, but I also like it. I enjoy working with the aesthetics and textures to create something out of these blocks.

All the frame of the house is now finished, and more pieces of the walls are added with some visible gaps, and no roof yet. — I think the chicken likes the new house too

At one point I did have to go out for more wood, thus the night time photo with a sapling in my head. But again, it was just very nice. I do appreciate the night time in Minecraft, and real life.

A night time photo of the almost completed house. I've attempted to build a roof out of logs too. — Almost complete, night time view of the new house from the other side of the vegetable garden patch.

From the inside of the top floor of the house, looking up at the log ceiling, decorated with some lanterns. All the gaps in the walls have now been filled in with glass pane windows. — This looks quite cozy.

The view from one of the windows, over the bridge leading to the dungeon house, which has also been replaced from dirt to oak planks. — Beautiful view

Showing the other corner of the top floor of the new and improved house. Showing a random stair leading nowhere which was used to build the roof. Big open windows showing more trees outside. — I really appreciate the aesthetic I achieved here.

Bottom floor of the new fresh house, still with flooring made of grass because it's not been replaced. — The house is now functional. Please ignore the grass floor.

Front of the house as the roof has been put in place. the door is almost invisible, matching the colour of the oak plank walls. — I’m quite proud of it.

Wait, where are all my chickens? I wonder if this was after I culled them, or while a bunch of them were still off in the mountains because the escaped while I was rebuilding things. I’m realizing that it looks like all the chicken are gone. What I think happened here is that I bred them so new babies were formed, and then I killed off the adults, and the baby chicks tend to huddle around any grownups left, so they are all huddled on that one point of the mini-map which only displays one chicken.

View of the completed house from the bridge leading to the dungeon house. — House complete.

I think this is where I’ll end today, even though there were some minor adventures continuing in the night, nothing too fabulous happened, and I can just add it to tomorrows post about the next adventure.

Thank you for being with me on this journey experiencing this game for the first time, and doing my damndest to write image descriptions that are useful on these images.

See you tomorrow.

After the strangest night the sun will still rise, Minecraft day 3

I didn’t think I’d get around to playing yesterday, especially after taking so long to write yesterday’s post (I’m going through some medication issues, and it’s really screwed with my concentration levels this week). At some point I had decided to not play, I had logged in to take some of the screenshot for yesterday’s post, but decided to call it a night, but I found myself staying up for another reason.

After being up and it was 1-2 AM, and yesterday’s adventure was published, I eventually felt like I could play, and that I could allow myself to stay up all night (make a conscious decision to do so). I had the goal to stay up until a possible delivery, but that delivery never happened and I had a glorious sleep on the sofa instead. But, enough about my real life, let’s talk about my Minecraft night.

Into the night

I logged in with one goal, and that was to gather materials to be able to rebuild the house if I had energy. I felt like we needed an expansion to be able to add more organized storage and such. And I also wanted to replace the dirt built bridges.

However, I quickly found myself just gathering wood, for hours, and just letting myself walk around mindlessly, stay out in the rainy night, the rain sounds in the game were so soothing, and I just kind of got lost in it.

First person view in Minecraft, me holding an axe, and looking at trees through the dark rain of the night. — Dark rain over the forest with faint lights on the side of the screen

I feared no foe, and just got my shit done. I couldn’t really stop chopping down trees. I started by clearing the area around my vegetable garden.

View over the vegetable garden in the rain, a dirt path trails off the screen. The torches around the garden lights up the vegetable patches in a beautiful way contrasting the rain and darkness. — My vegetable garden as a light of hope in the rainy night

I really should be more patient with taking my screenshots, so it doesn’t still say “saved screenshot” in the next screenshot. Practice, patience. We’ll get there.

As you can see I have a mini-map, and I would only turn it on occasionally, but I found it incredibly helpful during the nights when I’d otherwise be worried about monsters killing me. I found myself incredibly brave just being out here doing my thing, and dealing with them as they came up. I’m slowly learning how different monsters behave in the night, but also meeting new ones and learning things from those encounters. Not that I fully understand them all yet.

View over the fields below a hill, the vegetable garden on the left edge of the screen, and big fields on the rest of it, a lot of small saplings planted as part of sustainable farming — A nights work

Viewing my work was very fascinating, especially after a little bit of time passed, and suddenly trees had sporadically grown, as below.

View over the field with saplings, now some have grown a little. varying heights of the trees. — Some are really tall, some are more like bushes

Looking up at the canopy of a big tree, that grew a lot taller than the other ones around it. — Beautiful tall trees

While climbing the mountains I also made new friends, namely another chicken, and even though I have a pasture filled with chickens, I just can’t resist bringing more home from far away.

A white chicken at the top of a tree, I'm fairly close to it with seeds in my hand- — Chickns appear in the strangest of places.

The chicken, following me with seeds in my hand, over the little dirt bridge I built next to my vegetable garden — Come on buddy you can cross the little bridge.

My chicken pasture filled with both grown chickens and baby chicks. — All the chickens

While I was climbing one of the mountains I cleared my inventory by throwing out the eggs, and chickens appeared. I threw some of them in some weird places, so they ended up outside of the pasture and I had to collect them back in. They are so smol and cute tho.

A tiny chicken next to the water outside of the gate to the pasture looking up at me expectantly of the seeds in my hand. — im smol

Dangers in the night

I went to chop down the sugarcane close to the dungeon house, and two tiny zombies ran up to me and attack me. I was so perplexed because I’d not seen tiny zombies before. Before I knew it I was dead.

Death screen in Minecraft. Screen is shaded red, and the text says "You died! kinkymal was slain by Zombie".

However, it was kind of entertaining, because seeing my corpse was neat, which has a new skin, even though it’s covered in armor. And I can show you how it works (this will be relevant later).

A corpse with brown hair, white-ish armor (iron) and a sword standing right up. It's me, I'm the corpse, I'm looking at my own self. — She’s dead alright.

Dark night, with a small zombie child between myself and my corpse. Next to the fence for the chicken pasture, lit up with torches. — I’ve never been so afraid of a small child

Continued story with the zombie child, you can now see the head of it right upon me, but at waist height. — I’m being attacked!

I think the scariest part of them was that it felt like they came out of nowhere, and just ran at me. The zombies do tend to walk towards you from a lot further range, so yeah that was definitely part of the nights experience, figuring out how the different monsters act towards me, and what range is safe for me.

Further away from light, darkness enveloping the world, and me standing straight up against an Enderman, the Enderman is tall and slender, pitch black, with pink sparkles floating in the air around it as a kind of aura. — Friendly? Friendly!

I knew that you wouldn’t hurt me, Mr Enderman, unless I hurt you first. So I allowed myself to walk up fairly close to have a look at you.

Something I didn’t manage to get screenshots of was the Pillagers that kept coming up to me, but you can see the “debuff” at the upper left corner of the screenshots. And lucky me they dropped a crossbow that I could use in my adventures.

Aiming a cocked crossbow towards a skeleton in the distance. — I got you in my sights

Cave Diving

Oh boy, I decided to go back into the caves, because I had completely forgot why I was cutting so much wood. And realized I was starting to run low on Iron.

Viewing down the staircase to the caves for mining. Pool of water at the bottom that you can jump into to make traveling down faster. — Time to go cave diving.

I feel like it’s worth mentioning, I was incredibly tired during this session, and spending the night awake while I needed sleep, because my brain was being silly, so I did die a lot more than I’d say I usually do.

I don’t remember why this skeleton killed me, but ack, here we are. And well I did get my stuff back from this because it was fairly easy, more interesting issues arose later in the morning.

Death screen in Minecraft. Screen is shaded red, and the text says "You died! kinkymal was shot by Skeleton". — “Shot by Skeleton”

Inventory screen, with a preview of my character, still wearing my armor, but covered in 10 arrows. — Yep, I was definitely shot by a skeleton

Gorgeous view of the big cave I found. I wanted to take my time to go explore it, but maybe not quite yet, I still needed more iron. And I was carrying a fair amount at this point.

View of a big cave, in the foreground you see greenery growing and hanging down from the ceiling, and in the background you see a lava waterfall and some hints of water around it. — There are some very gorgeous sights in Minecraft.

Unfortunately one wrong step, can mean falling to your death. I didn’t do anything in particular, I just managed to find the one block that would let me fall all the way down. form -18 to -50. Suffice to say, I died.

Death screen in Minecraft. Screen is shaded red, and the text says "You died! kinkymal fell from a high place". — Whoops, I tripped

I did laugh at myself after falling down, and continued listening to the zombie groaning next to me. And I was like, well I’m sure I can find a way back down here and retrieve my corpse.

Which took me on a new adventure.

Corpse Hunting

Diving back in, with some spare iron tools, and blocks no armor but some food, I was confident I could get back my corpses.

Looking down the stairs I built leading back into the green cave. — Could I find my way back?

Inventory screen, with 3 arrows sticking out of my body. — No armor, no weapons, no tools.

I encountered another set of skeletons, this time it was a monster spawner in an inconvenient place, and I was already down on my luck, so I had to go fetch that corpse too (sorry no death screen). And I did find my corpse, I guess I’d been running and jumping around while getting killed. Because my corpse was not where I expected it to be.

My corpse (without armor) high up among the greenery growing from the ceiling. — My corpse was a lot higher than I expected

This wasn’t the corpse from the fall. But one in between. I managed to build my way up to it and fetch my items from it.

A closer shot of my corpse floating in the air as I'd managed to make my way up to it so I could loot it. — closer up to my floating body

Unfortunately, I was so stuck in trying to figure out hwo to find my corpse, I didn’t actually take many more screenshots this night, because there was a struggle to find it. And in actuality I couldn’t find the corpse, and didn’t take a screenshot of me being in the correct location.

Player Death History screen (mod), showing the dimension and location of my corpse where all my loot is stored post death. — Double checking the coordinates of the corpse I’m really trying to get to

But I did solve the problem creatively after a while of searching. And by the help of some useful tips and tricks I figured out how to go into creative mode, because the mod allows to retrieve your items in creative mode, if you can’t find the corpse (or whatever reason you want to use).

And I felt like because I’d been able to get to the position where it should be, I was okay with getting my stuff back, even if the mod broke for the purpose at that point and I had to find another solution. I did also research the mods FAQ and site etc, to figure out if there was something I was missing, and there was no helpful solutions other than this to be honest.

As I finished off my cave adventures in the early morning, I decided it was time to go to sleep instead of trying to do more stuff in the game when I was too tired to play. And take a bit of a break.

See you in the next post/episode! (I finally remembered what I wanted all the wood for, so probably doing that next time!)

Sharing my world in Minecraft, Day 2

At the end of yesterday’s post I promised a house tour, when I realized I didn’t have any pictures of the house and my little patch I call home. I also realized when I was adding these images of the house to this post that well, a lot changed in yesterday’s session and I don’t think I captured any more images of that, so you’ll have to come back tomorrow for yet another update!

Okay lets get started.

House Tour

I have built a small house with space for bed, and a crafting corner and some storage. And while there’s a garden with a fence, the chicken kept coming inside because I forget I can take seeds out of my hands.

Feed the chickens seeds and they’ll follow you OUT of the house.

As you can see my hotbar is full of seeds. And I was very confused about where my gear was, and it turns out it was lost in the caves because I had logged off after a death. This modpack has a corpse/death mod that stores all your stuff in a corpse. Which means it’s easy to go fetch it all again, if you can get past whatever killed you.

Front garden with a sheep hiding behind a bush.

One lonely sheep and one chicken in my front pasture/garden

My one sheep and chicken in the pasture at the front of my house. I kept feeding them because I didn’t know if they need food or not. But I guess it does make me feel connected with them.

And here’s my little garden! It looks very different now, see the photo below. I had learnt from Mr Streamer (who in turn learnt from the comment section) that planting different plants next to each other is more efficient than the same. I don’t know if there’s any merit to this, but it seems to be working fairly well, and I also don’t know if it’s related to a mod in the modpack or not (and it turned out we’re running different versions of the modpack so it contains different mods). So that’s what I’ve been trying to do, while also getting variety.

At this point I haven’t had enough iron to make a bucket, to get more water in this trench I dug, so that was a project I set out to get going with for the day. Loa tried to help explain to me how to fix my water issue, by creating infinite water sources, but he ended up being like “let me just do it myself”, because I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say, whoops.

Mining adventures

I went out to fetch my items from my body, and get going with the day.

On the way I discovered greenery, while also being distracted by gems.

Very very deep cave. Looking down from a height

Turns out I found a bigger cave, filled with Lava. I did not venture further, because something was waiting for me at the surface, and I had fetched what I came back for.

A new Visitor

Who’s that?

Loa joined my game before heading to work! And there was quick some adventures afoot.

Skeletons chilling outside under the tree canopies

There’s a lot of moments where I’m like “Loa did you know?” about Minecraft, and I got a feeling it’s like experiencing a 5yr-old playing the game and explaining something you already know. And I love getting to be that person right now. Did you know that skeletons hide under the trees to not get burnt in the daylight? I find it fascinating. and yes my hotbar is empty because I died again. RIP.

Free Range Farming

Once he joined, Loa quickly taught me that if you feed two animals you breed them, and I was like “Oh I thought the heart meant they loved ME and wanted to be with ME, not fuck each other smh.”

I found a black and a white sheep, and I fed them both seeds

We went out and found some more animals for our farm. I found a black and a white sheep, and I used the trick Loa had just taught me, and I got a baby sheep that was grey! And I was so happy. Once I got back home I immediately cleared out the other sheep, that I had before and that Loa had brought back too, which gave us extra wool and food. But I didn’t want more than these 3. For now.

Loa quickly started building a bigger farm, for wheat, so we could have a good supply of food, but he was confused by all the million extra types of seeds and stuff I had, which is part of the modpack.

He also started some small projects and installed his own bed in, now, our house.

At one point I noticed that he was building something strange, a little bit away from the house, and he was like “this is a great way to farm eggs”, and I was like you’re not putting my chicken in a box, we free range our eggs in this house! He didn’t heed me warning though.

I caught him coaxing a chicken out of our garden and over the little bridge (from which I take the vegetable garden photo) to this big box, and up the stairs on the side. And he was like “push it in”, and I did because I was curious how it worked mechanically. However moments after the chicken fell in so did I, and that reminded me that I was not okay with this. So I started mining it down and chopping down any wood pieces and the box, reiterating that “we free range our chicken here.”

I started digging out the back of the house a bit later, to make it flat, so I could put a big pasture out there.

Big field with a fence on the right side, and a hill on the left side. Dirt patches where I’d leveled out the terrain.

Pasture filled with chickens, and torches everywhere.

I think it turned out pretty nice.

Distractions, Minecraft with ADHD:

I think while Loa was in the game with me, I didn’t take nearly as many screenshots. So let me tell you some stories instead.

I believe I was struggling to leave the cave system, because I kept dying and not finding my corpse after I did. So I was running around trying to find it, and we went back in together, no pictures of us both in the caves unfortunately. He taught me a neat trick of just blocking a passage that leads to a dead-end to make it slightly easier to find your way back in, or out for that matter.

The entrance to the cave system I’ve built a tower out of, with a stair down, and I showed him how you could just jump down because there’s water at the bottom, unfortunately my pictures of it aren’t very good.

A cobblestone hovel, with a stair peaking out.

A spiral staircase with actual stairs, so you can run up and not needing to jump.

The angle of the second image isn’t perfect, you can’t actually see the water at the bottom because of how the stair spiral. And the front of the building is a bit messed up, but will have a door later. I was adding in the stairs today as part of making the cave system more accessible. And making it easier to find your way out. But basically, you run and jump down, and land in a puddle of water that’s 2 by 2 blocks to give you some space. And it makes it really fast to go down, and the stairs make it fairly fast to run back up too.

We did spend some time running around doing random things yesterday, but occasionally in the mines we lost each other and I lost myself (my body) that I needed to get back to. Every time after I would find myself again, I’d also get lost. So I started carving out some nice paths, that are clear on where to go. Or at least if you follow it in one direction you’ll make your way back or forward.

And one of those paths, made out of wood, leads to this mining basecamp.

Wooden path, with a chest on the side with a sign, and another sign and two beds in the background

A sign saying “Mining operations” above a chest

I felt like it could be good to have a home away from home, with some extra material you can’t carry on your own etc. and a bed if you want to change your spawn point temporarily. There’s materials to make new tools (still on iron), and some food too. And ofc a lot of wood to keep making these nice paths.

From here I kept puttering around, just filing down corners, putting up more torches, and helping myself make sense of the paths going further down into the cave system, and I cut off some dead ends with a clear indication that not to venture forward.

In closing

Here’s how the garden looked by the end of the session:

A fair amount of plants are newly planted here, because I had just harvested it. I’m loving how it’s developing, and how we’re being rewarded by variety.

My very first experience with Minecraft, day 1

I don’t know how many parts of this I’ll be writing, but I started playing Minecraft, for the very first time, yesterday. And I got feelings.

We could talk about why I never tried it until now, but let’s just summarize it as “I was stubborn”, and it’s a familiar trait with me for people who know me.

What made me want to try it all of a sudden? I think it was a combination of things.

I got the time to ease into the idea of playing it, by outside influences. For the most part in the past when I’d seen Minecraft videos it would be from already established players (with the 5yr old exceptions), and I never got to see that early player experience. And that put me off. It often felt like you needed to know how to play the game in order to play it.

The influences around me that eased me into it were mainly two. Mr Samuel Streamer on YouTube playing the Better Minecraft modpack on his secondary channel. And ExcessiveProfanity talking about playing it with his young son. I had heard them talked about it in the past, but I think combined with Mr Streamer playing it and me enjoying watching that series, it just started to click for me.

Loa has been playing Minecraft since long before we met, and he had invited me to play with him a few times, it just never felt right though. I tried to not be too dismissive about it, but each time I basically landed on “I don’t feel it”. But the past few days it started to bubble up inside of me. So while Loa was asleep, I walked up to him and whispered “Do you want to play Minecraft with me?”, he was too asleep to hear me though, and maybe that was my thought too, that I didn’t want him to hear me because I was scared of the reality.

First screenshot in Minecraft — “How do I screenshot?” -F2. “Okay, thank you.”

Through the day I installed curseforge, the modpack (Better Minecraft), and the Minecraft Free Demo (as you can see in the above screenshot). There were a lot of cute moments which I wish I could’ve captured in a better way, but I also didn’t want to put a lot of my currently limited spoons to set it up. So I decided to just take screenshots instead, and tell you some small stories.

Yes, this was what I wanted to screenshot as my first screenshot. They are so cute, and it’s such a nice experience to meet them for the first time. I was basically just running around picking flowers, cutting down trees, freaking out about it being night time, and stayed in the safety of the field with the animals.

I met a very suspicious looking pig though. Turns out it was a sheep in pigs clothing. Adorable. Apparently rare?

Baby pig! I immediately ran out to get my other pig

Then, when I ran into the baby pig. And I immediately sprung out of my chair, as I’d recently been unpacking some boxes in the house, and ran into my room to fetch something. Loa was sitting next to me at the time and he was like “Do you have one?” and I was like “omg omg omg omg”, because yes, I have one, a small plushy that I actually got for him some years ago. I guess it’s both of ours now.

Classic Minecraft death: Player was blown up by Creeper

And then, a while later I had my first death, these are always important. Especially in a game like Minecraft where dying is just part of the game. And everyone’s been blown-up by a creeper once or twice. I saw it before it blew up, but I couldn’t move away fast enough and was already low on health. I’m honored that my first death was given to me by a creeper, and I’m sure there’ll be many more.

A very dark image, in a cave in Minecraft, and a lurker hiding behind a bush — Always lurking.

After this very well played trial I did buy the game. The reasons I played the trial first was that I wanted to be sure that I’d enjoy and continue to play it. And yeah I’m very happy with my first session.

The evening continued with me playing it, and not taking as many screenshots, but I’ll give you a house tour tomorrow.

The biggest jumpscare I experienced yesterday was not from any creepers or mobs. But rather, a friendly visiting caravan.

I was head down digging something and I heard their very loud sound as they showed up out of no where.

See you tomorrow for more adventures.

Allowing myself time when editing for the first time

You may have caught my sneak peek preview of me recording RimWorld, and right now I’m in the process of editing it.
The goal is to create some decent bite-size episodes of about 30min, and then share it with you all over time. I spent a whole week with every night recording, and it was kind of intense. That said, recording makes RimWorld run a lot slower, so I didn’t necessarily get very far each night.

I could see that there was an eagerness within myself to rush to get something out, but then I realize that in order for me to continue enjoying and getting back into editing I need to let myself take the time it needs.
For a few reasons:
1. I’m learning a new editing software, kdenlive. The last one I’ve been familiar with, before CapCut on the phone in recent months, was Avid about 17 years ago when I was at school studying film and editing. It’s been a while.
2. I’m getting used to the different tools available within that editing software, and have big chunks of video to log.
3. I want to just enjoy the process.

I realize that this means it’ll take y’all a bit longer to actually get something, but hopefully I can provide some sneak-peaks and some insightful texts like this in the meanwhile.

If it’s any consolation I will most likely be editing one episode at the time, and then schedule them or publish them as they are done. If I finish a lot in a short time span, I will of course try to space them out at some decent interval.

Thank you for your patience with me as I struggle with my health, and mental health levels over the past few years. I’m glad you’re here, and that we’re embarking on a new journey and chapter together!

Mini-review: Beholder

When Beholder became available to me on Twitch, a game I’ve been eyeing for a while, I didn’t have any excuses left. I had no idea what the game was about because I rarely look too deep into any game.

So I sat down with it yesterday, and quickly I started to get uneasy about it. We’re supposed to spy on the people in our building, and we’re a landlord. Just being put in the shoes of being a landlord is bad enough, adding to that with having to spy on the people, and write reports. I get it it’s dystopian, but I wasn’t sold on the narrative when I started playing.

I was very close to giving up, and calling it quits, when I realized there’s more to the narrative. And I continued playing. I’ve done 3 different runs, and the 3rd one I decided to stop. I was getting stressed by it, partially from the mechanics, and the time management. We’re able to be awake 24/7, conversations stop time, but writing your reports don’t. So occasionally you have to really stress in order to get the profile or report done at the right time.

Minor spoilers ahead.

Discovering that you can complete each “mission” in different ways is interesting though, and does allow for some replay-ability. And just realizing that we’re not only a bad person we’re just living under the circumstances that were handed to us and trying our best.

I’m still curious about some other characters, and figuring them out etc, but for now I’m going to put this game down and say I’m done with it, and I’m fine with what I experienced.

It’s possible that my current state of mindfog makes it harder to play the game, so maybe coming back to it some other time would be better. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll make a review in review series down the line.

Partnered link where you can buy this game: Beholder is currently available on Humble Bundle on sale the next 4 days and 20hrs for only €2.99!

Day 12, the Sculpture (Finale)

11th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Luxemburg’s Journal

We found Von’s Jade sculpture! That means they were here! I asked the trader about it, if he knew anything else. And he told me about how some of the people who pass through here had visited Cannon’s colony. They apparently had had a horrendous time, and weren’t going back anytime soon. Guess that means their hospitality isn’t the best.

Von’s sculpture is such a gorgeous piece called 3FS, it bears an illustration of an ellipse surrounded by rectangles. The whole image is depicted by the careful arrangement of thousands of priests. If I had enough money I would’ve bought it back, and brought as a peace offering.

Now it’s time to get to their camp, it’s not very far from here, we should reach it before the end of the day.

Cannon’s journal

Ralph has fully healed, and we’re all doing fairly well here. The animals are becoming so abundant, I’ve decided to abandon the idea of taming the warg as well, but I needed meat to tame the polar bear we saved. It didn’t seem interested in staying with us after it healed, so I let it outside, but it’s such a gorgeous animal I want to see if I can change it’s mind.

Some of the other animals are staying though, the emu, and the elephant named Samson. This is overall good.

[…]

Something I didn’t expect happened today. Luxenburg, Croiro and Speedy showed up at the camp. They weren’t hostile against us, and I was surprised that they had found us at all. Since me and Von had decided to keep communications with the old colony, it was actually quite nice to see them again. And I handed over a few doses of luciferium (as many as they wanted to carry), and they gave us some Hospital beds, and began helping around the colony and finish building a new break room.

I think this is a great start of a new colony together, if they want to stay here, I don’t know. Maybe they can help us settle in at least, and then we can decide.

This is a RimWorld character journal, mainly following a pawn by the name of Cannon and their journey as they keep a diary on the rim. This is using a modded game as a source, so some things may differentiate from the core game.

Day 11, It’s raining animals

10th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Luxemburg’s Journal

Today was the first time we got attacked by anything during our 7 day caravan. It was a measly three Scaria infected squirrels. I’m glad I didn’t try to go on this quest alone, because while three squirrels may not sound like a lot, if you’re caught alone it can be quite harmful, especially if one of your wounds get infected. We ended up with a small break after the ambush, patched Speedy up, collected some extra berries and herbal medicine.

…

At the next village we still didn’t find any luci. But we got some solid info, it was recommended that we cross through the forest along the path instead of going around the ancient asphalt road, unless we really want to visit the other villages in our hunt for luci.

As we’re running out of days I think it’s best to get to Orange Rock by following the suggested path, and hopefully it’ll bring us closer to figuring out where Cannon set up camp. I am hoping that Cannon didn’t sell all the luci immediately, but saved some of it for emergencies or got a change of heart when they realized that they’d done.

…

We made it through the forest by 20h, and the village is just north of the Rhino Chestnut Swamp, so I’m beginning to get my bearings on this side.

We’ve again been recommended to go to the next village, another of the Black Horse Maca faction’s, because according to where they saw the drop pod land its highly likely they passed by there if they were looking to sell anything.

Cannon’s Journal

While I was out deconstructing ruins for more materials, I found a polar bear. What? Similar to the other animals I’ve come across the past few days it was hurt, and these animals all seem to have crashed in cargo pods, and that often means they were domesticated by someone, so I guess they may want to start around. I hope the arctic wolf and polar bear will get along with Ralph.

Even with all the new animals I was just having a horrible day today, and began aimlessly wandering in the rain. Von calmed me down before nightfall, but I was so dazed I tried to use the telescope even though.

I apparently Von found an elephant? I hope we can feed all these animals…

Day 10, Progress

9th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Cannon’s Journal

We finished the first guest lodgings! Von helped me move some furniture, I put up some wall and roof, and it looks okay. Still need some extra floor, but at least now they can sleep in some beds.

There was a caravan visiting, and they had an arctic wolf available, and I decided to buy it instead of trying to tame a warg all on my own. I also found a hurt emu that I brought home and patched up. I guess I’m an animal collector now.

It’s still raining, and we bought a telescope, will have to wait with using it until it stops raining.

Luxenburg’s Journal

We reached the Village Rego, of the Union of Verea. They greeted us and said they’d heard about us from our neighbouring villages. They are the same faction as our second closest neighbour. They also didn’t have any luci to sell, and we added a small amount to our food rations, just in case.

According to them the drop pod from 10 days ago did not go north of them, but seemed to have landed somewhere south west of where we were right now. And if we continue following the ancient asphalt road we may be able to get more info from the next village over. Maybe the people are looking for had visited there.

The drop pod going south of them, doesn’t mean that Cannon and Von set up a settlement south of here. They could have gone anywhere from where they landed, but let’s hope they set up somewhere close to where they landed.