This is a tangent, it’s about a very particular feeling, and still about gaming, but will more be like a musing, similar to my other blog.
Me talking about my experience in the Nether, and some of the stressful elements of it, reminded me a lot of Loa and I playing Terraria on stream the first time we streamed, years and years ago, and a lot of people joined to watch the stream, and asked if they could joined the game. We allowed them to join us, and thought it’d be fun to explore a new game with people.
But, these people were a lot more geared than we were, and just threw things on us that we didn’t have to work towards getting hold of ourselves. And it quickly turned me off the game entirely. Clearly, we have ourselves to blame for inviting them, and I… but I don’t think it’s only on us.
I feel like something is missing in gaming communities and the conversation about new players and established players, and that’s the “how do you want to play?” question when we join someone else. People have different styles and ideas about how they want to enjoy what they are doing. Instead, we pick up our friends and carry them on our backs instead of sitting back to watch them while they explore this game we love with fresh eyes.
I guess these thoughts are also strongly connect with the “let new players be noobs” thing I wrote recently. This is something I’ve seen in streams too, or your favorite YouTuber’s comment section, as they are playing a game people love. Instead of people just enjoying watching them experience it, they want to butt in and backseat and tell them how to do it the best way, the most efficient way etc.
I used to have a big problem, in my everyday life, if I couldn’t do something as efficient as possible it wasn’t worth doing. It kind of goes along with the stupidest saying in the world “if somethings worth doing it’s worth doing well”, and I had to practice for years to allow myself to just do, anything. No matter the result.
So I do think it’s definitely a trigger for me, for the perfectionist in me, when people are like this. But I also know that I can be like that or have been in the past at least, the frustration of someone not doing a thing in the game you love the right way, so now they might hate the game you love. Yes, this is slight hyperbole to make a point.
The actual point I do want to make is, that we should look for consent when playing with someone who’s new to something you’re not. Ask questions, ask guiding questions, ask meta questions about questions.
Do you want to experience the story?
Do you want to just see what you uncover and discover organically while I follow you?
Do you want me to help you get better x or do you want to figure it out?
Oh, do you want me to straight up give you the answer to the question, or are you just thinking outloud?
Do you want me to give you a hint?
Negotiate with your friend, your favorite streamer, etc. And then just enjoy that sense of awe and discovery together with them!
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.
Chicken inside my house.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.
My stream of water and garden.
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.
Mining some Lapis, a blue gem.
On the way I discovered greenery, while also being distracted by gems.
Deep Chasm with lava at the bottomVery 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?
A visitor is in my houseLoa is in my house! With now 2 chickens
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.
Loa in front of our white double bed
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 backgroundA 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:
expanded vegetable garden
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.
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.
