User: nihlaeth Date: 2010-12-12 07:20 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

bought it myself, can't find any coal but it's fun indeed ^^

User: rho Date: 2010-12-12 09:16 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I'd been meaning to look at Minecraft for a while, and the imminent price increase finally persuaded me to take the plunge. I'm not entirely sure what I make of it yet, but it's definitely interesting.

I'd managed to find the wiki and the tutorial there on surviving the first day before you posted this, but seeing it in action was nice as a way of reassuring me that I wasn't doing anything hopelessly daft.

I've mined out my base to be a fairly decent size now, and have a workbench, forge and chest, many torches, stairs, a painting, and a front door. I also found some iron while expanding my base, so I have an iron pickaxe now as well.

The biggest problem I'm having at the moment is creepers, which have a nasty habit of exploding on me every time I try to leave my base, which doesn't lead to happy fun times, especially since the explosions also have a habit of taking out my base's exterior wall and door, necessitating a rebuilding job. Any tips on how to stop this from happening?

User: sophie Date: 2010-12-12 10:56 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Creepers are annoying as heck, yes. There are a few things you can do.

Mobs can be killed using weapons, and there are basically two different weapons you'll want to use. One is a sword, and one is a bow (for which you'll need arrows). I'll give the crafting recipe for the sword and if you want to look up the bow, you can. (I'm doing it this way to avoid too many spoilers.)

The crafting recipe for a sword is like the one for the shovel, except that you replace the middle stick with another of the materials you used for the head. (In your case, probably wood or stone.) With that you'll be able to kill various mobs, although you'll need to take particular care around creepers. They *can* be killed in melee battle (they don't explode when they die), but it's difficult to do so without having them explode because they were too close to you.

I'd suggest that if possible, when you leave your base, you don't hang around near the entrance at first; go away from it and then look back to make sure there were no creepers behind you. If there was one, then I'd suggest trying to see if you can trap it into a corner that's too high for it to jump past, at which point you might be able to pick it off relatively easily. If you have a bow and arrows, things are much easier as you don't need the corner; you can shoot the arrows at the creeper while it comes towards you.

There's also the possibility of building traps around your base - or having one in a central location so that when you exit your base, if a mob starts following you, you can lead them into the trap. Traps generally involve the mobs walking into things which do damage to them in some way, but I'll leave it to you to work out the details. (Unless, of course, you want me to give you details! But it's much more fun to work things out and build stuff yourself in Minecraft, I think.)

Of course, even with a weapon, nothing can prevent this sort of accident except being on your toes and looking around. Creepers are kinda insidious like that; they're very good at sneaking up when you don't expect them. Until recently, creepers didn't even make idle noises, so you couldn't even rely on sound to tell if there was one about like you could with the other mobs. They do now, though, so I'd suggest listening out for them, too. (You'll soon get to learn which sounds correspond to which mobs.)

BTW, a free tip in case you didn't already know - with doors, you should place them while you're on the dangerous side. (In other words, outside your base.) The way doors work, doing it that way means that you get to attack mobs outside your house, but they don't get to attack you. If you do it the other way, of course, it's the other way round...

User: hellaweasels Date: 2010-12-12 19:40 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Eeee, Minecraft! <33

I think you sound good.
[And your base looks awesome by the way.]

User: landsraad Date: 2010-12-15 20:39 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I had never heard of Minecraft until I read this journal so I downloaded it and it seems very addictive. One thing though, I had a go at multiplayer and it's quite annoying that you can spend hours building something only for someone to come along with some TNT and blow it up in seconds.

User: sophie Date: 2010-12-18 07:16 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

That can be a bit annoying. That's why a lot of servers nowadays have a whitelist, so people can't just come in and do that. The one I play on mostly just doesn't advertise itself very publicly, though it still gets its share of griefers.

How are you, by the way?