This has probably been discussed already but I couldn't find a similar thread. Before I go into it, here is what I want to point out.
1. I realize minecraft is not supposed to be a challenging or a hardcore game and that the premise of it is in fact creativity, exploration, ect.
2. I'm mainly referring to "Survival" mode and the whole concept of surviving.
Ok, let me just start now. The whole idea of survival doesn't seem to be very present in my case when I'm playing Survival mode. It feels as if I am never in any sense of danger. You can make a successful base in a matter of seconds (not exaggerating) and the only REAL danger I've ever felt was when I was exploring new caves. It just seems like survival mode is not much about surviving as it is exploring (which confuses me as there is a rumored adventure mode which is supposed to be just this; exploring)
I don't want to turn this into a suggestion thread but here are a few ideas I propose.
1. Your building has a sense of (or lack of) durability.
2. Enemies can and WILL attack your base when you're inside it
3. Revert back to the "defend at night, rebuild at day" mentality
I know this is would take away a lot of time from exploring but I don't really imagine exploring when I think of surviving. When I imagine surviving I think of barricading myself, hiding, sneaking, having limited resources, ect.
Once again I would just like to say this is JUST my opinion.
This has probably been discussed already but I couldn't find a similar thread. Before I go into it, here is what I want to point out.
1. I realize minecraft is not supposed to be a challenging or a hardcore game and that the premise of it is in fact creativity, exploration, ect.
2. I'm mainly referring to "Survival" mode and the whole concept of surviving.
Ok, let me just start now. The whole idea of survival doesn't seem to be very present in my case when I'm playing Survival mode. It feels as if I am never in any sense of danger. You can make a successful base in a matter of seconds (not exaggerating) and the only REAL danger I've ever felt was when I was exploring new caves. It just seems like survival mode is not much about surviving as it is exploring (which confuses me as there is a rumored adventure mode which is supposed to be just this; exploring)
I don't want to turn this into a suggestion thread but here are a few ideas I propose.
1. Your building has a sense of (or lack of) durability.
2. Enemies can and WILL attack your base when you're inside it
3. Revert back to the "defend at night, rebuild at day" mentality
I know this is would take away a lot of time from exploring but I don't really imagine exploring when I think of surviving. When I imagine surviving I think of barricading myself, hiding, sneaking, having limited resources, ect.
Once again I would just like to say this is JUST my opinion.
Another one of these... Protected and claimed territory SHOULD be safe so that we can do something other than sit in our 6x6 cobblestone shack waiting for dawn. Daytime is just not long enough to both collect and rebuild extensive damage to your walls. If it's easy where you're at, go somewhere else and it becomes hard again. Sometimes you have a map where there aren't many caves and hostiles near where you start, and other times you end up spending days just clearing out, lighting, and blocking off nearby caves. What's the sense in having nice stuff like mine-cart tracks, redstone, farms, ect if they're constantly being torn apart by hostiles?
Survival is fine for starters, but it loses its luster after awhile. Eventually you get tired of just surviving and want to start thriving. Other stuff to explore and deal with will come in time. Notch even mentioned something about enemy villages, that has real potential right there.
Just a quick fix, Adventure mode is a mod where you can't add or remove any blocks (or can remove only certain types of blocks) and you play through a pre-made adventure made by another user, yourself, or even Notch himself.
Nowadays, minecraft is way too easy for me if I play as most people play it. Here's what I do to make it harder:
*Play in adventure mode with no bonus chest (you start with nothing, can't break most blocks, can't even dig 1x2 hole to hide in).
*No wooden or stone pickaxes allowed.
*No wooden or stone swords allowed.
*No wooden axes allowed.
*Torches allowed only after you acquire some blaze powder.
Heeheehee! Surviving like this is definitely possible, but it is NOT easy. Hunger becomes a real issue. To make any technological progression, you have to get creepers to blow up wood for you, and/or then mine with TNT, until you get an iron pickaxe. Either way, you need creepers, which means your first day you should start out killing animals and gathering other food. If you are really in a bind, here's some low-tech quasi-renewable food:
0 wooden logs required:
*Zombie flesh from zombies burning up in the morning.
*Breed chickens with grass seeds and/or eggs.
***If you find a village with a blacksmith's house, you can cook the chicken meat.
1 crafting bench, 1 wooden log required (usually obtainable from one lucky creeper blast next to a tree):
*Farm wheat with wooden hoe (which you can then use to breed animals if you want, or just for bread).
*Bowls of soup.
Melee tech progression:
*Barehanded (0.5 hearts of damage).
*Wooden shovel (1 heart of damage).
*Stone axe (2.5 hearts of damage).
*Iron sword (3.5 hearts of damage).
*Diamond sword (4 hearts of damage).
Other useful weapons:
*Bow and arrow (requires crafting table, 1 wooden log, 3 string, arrows).
*Flint&steel (requires shovel for flint, 1 iron ingot (obtainable from lucky zombie drops)).
*Lava bucket (buckets can sometimes be found in goody chests long before you have the tech needed for 3 iron ingots).
Low-tech lighting options:
*Natural lava pools/lavafalls.
*Torches in villages.
*Active furnaces (to make sure no monsters spawn in your hut as you go outside to hunt creepers, put a stack of something in your hut's furnace to smelt for the night).
*Sunlight. When doing shallow caving where only a layer of dirt is overhead, periodically dug holes up to ground to let sunlight in, and cave only during the day.
Medium-tech lighting options:
*Sprawling piles of wood lit with flint&steel (temporary lighting, useful for shallow caving early on).
*Netherrack lit with flint&steel.
*Lavafalls engineered with lava buckets.
Armor progression:
*Leather armor (needs only crafting table (sometimes obtainable in village), cows.
*Iron armor (needs iron pickaxe...(much later in tech progression).
Monsters you WANT to encounter early on:
*Creepers (needed for blowing stuff up).
*Spiders (easy to kill even barehanded as long as your back is covered, needed for string).
Monsters you DON'T WANT to encounter early on:
*Zombies (punching to death or even whacking to death with wooden shovel takes forever, they multiply and gang up on you, and minimal gain from fighting them).
*Skeletons (unless you can hit at them safely or let them burn up in the morning).
*Witches. Death.
*Baby zombies....OHGODOHGODOHGODOHGOD!!!!!!!....
Ideal biomes to start in:
*Plains with some occasional trees around or trees bordering the plains area. Nice and flat. Easy to see and avoid monsters. Sometimes horses around for early leather armor.
*Savanna. Nice and flat with sparse trees.
Okay biomes to start in:
*Roofed forest. Plentiful mushrooms, top of tree canopy provides nice safe walkway, creepers sometimes spawn in day under canopy, which is nice.
*Jungle. Creepers sometimes spawn in daytime, and vines allow quick escape routes to higher ground in a pinch.
Bad biomes to start in:
*Any other forest type biome. Too many trees, not easy to run from monsters, easy to get cornered, no advantages otherwise.
*Extreme hills. Without being able to place or remove blocks even getting down from the initial spawn can be tough. Hunger runs out quickly from jumping. Few trees. Overhangs sometimes nice for allowing creepers to spawn during day.
*Mesa. Same problems as extreme hills.
*Desert. No trees. Barely livable in terms of hunger by virtue of fact that zombie flesh and spider eyes can be harvested with help of cactus and sunlight. At least it is flat and makes it easy to avoid monsters. Get out of there and find trees ASAP.
Next to impossible:
*Isolated ocean island start with no trees and no animals. Only food available is by waiting for zombies to burn up in day (although they will probably just hop in water and not die). Or, take your chances fighting spiders for spider eyes (although doubtful whether you can actually accumulate net food in this way when factoring in punching and hunger from healing from poision). If nearest continent is not close enough to swim to without dying of hunger, and there are no underwater ravines/mineshafts (which could provide an alternative way of finding wood for a creeper to blow up), survival is physically impossible.
This has probably been discussed already but I couldn't find a similar thread. Before I go into it, here is what I want to point out.
1. I realize minecraft is not supposed to be a challenging or a hardcore game and that the premise of it is in fact creativity, exploration, ect.
2. I'm mainly referring to "Survival" mode and the whole concept of surviving.
Ok, let me just start now. The whole idea of survival doesn't seem to be very present in my case when I'm playing Survival mode. It feels as if I am never in any sense of danger. You can make a successful base in a matter of seconds (not exaggerating) and the only REAL danger I've ever felt was when I was exploring new caves. It just seems like survival mode is not much about surviving as it is exploring (which confuses me as there is a rumored adventure mode which is supposed to be just this; exploring)
I don't want to turn this into a suggestion thread but here are a few ideas I propose.
1. Your building has a sense of (or lack of) durability.
2. Enemies can and WILL attack your base when you're inside it
3. Revert back to the "defend at night, rebuild at day" mentality
I know this is would take away a lot of time from exploring but I don't really imagine exploring when I think of surviving. When I imagine surviving I think of barricading myself, hiding, sneaking, having limited resources, ect.
Once again I would just like to say this is JUST my opinion.
Another one of these... Protected and claimed territory SHOULD be safe so that we can do something other than sit in our 6x6 cobblestone shack waiting for dawn. Daytime is just not long enough to both collect and rebuild extensive damage to your walls. If it's easy where you're at, go somewhere else and it becomes hard again. Sometimes you have a map where there aren't many caves and hostiles near where you start, and other times you end up spending days just clearing out, lighting, and blocking off nearby caves. What's the sense in having nice stuff like mine-cart tracks, redstone, farms, ect if they're constantly being torn apart by hostiles?
Survival is fine for starters, but it loses its luster after awhile. Eventually you get tired of just surviving and want to start thriving. Other stuff to explore and deal with will come in time. Notch even mentioned something about enemy villages, that has real potential right there.
*Play in adventure mode with no bonus chest (you start with nothing, can't break most blocks, can't even dig 1x2 hole to hide in).
*No wooden or stone pickaxes allowed.
*No wooden or stone swords allowed.
*No wooden axes allowed.
*Torches allowed only after you acquire some blaze powder.
Heeheehee! Surviving like this is definitely possible, but it is NOT easy. Hunger becomes a real issue. To make any technological progression, you have to get creepers to blow up wood for you, and/or then mine with TNT, until you get an iron pickaxe. Either way, you need creepers, which means your first day you should start out killing animals and gathering other food. If you are really in a bind, here's some low-tech quasi-renewable food:
0 wooden logs required:
*Zombie flesh from zombies burning up in the morning.
*Breed chickens with grass seeds and/or eggs.
***If you find a village with a blacksmith's house, you can cook the chicken meat.
1 crafting bench, 1 wooden log required (usually obtainable from one lucky creeper blast next to a tree):
*Farm wheat with wooden hoe (which you can then use to breed animals if you want, or just for bread).
*Bowls of soup.
1 crafting bench, 1 wooden log, 2 string (from killing spiders):
*Fishing.
Melee tech progression:
*Barehanded (0.5 hearts of damage).
*Wooden shovel (1 heart of damage).
*Stone axe (2.5 hearts of damage).
*Iron sword (3.5 hearts of damage).
*Diamond sword (4 hearts of damage).
Other useful weapons:
*Bow and arrow (requires crafting table, 1 wooden log, 3 string, arrows).
*Flint&steel (requires shovel for flint, 1 iron ingot (obtainable from lucky zombie drops)).
*Lava bucket (buckets can sometimes be found in goody chests long before you have the tech needed for 3 iron ingots).
Low-tech lighting options:
*Natural lava pools/lavafalls.
*Torches in villages.
*Active furnaces (to make sure no monsters spawn in your hut as you go outside to hunt creepers, put a stack of something in your hut's furnace to smelt for the night).
*Sunlight. When doing shallow caving where only a layer of dirt is overhead, periodically dug holes up to ground to let sunlight in, and cave only during the day.
Medium-tech lighting options:
*Sprawling piles of wood lit with flint&steel (temporary lighting, useful for shallow caving early on).
*Netherrack lit with flint&steel.
*Lavafalls engineered with lava buckets.
Armor progression:
*Leather armor (needs only crafting table (sometimes obtainable in village), cows.
*Iron armor (needs iron pickaxe...(much later in tech progression).
Monsters you WANT to encounter early on:
*Creepers (needed for blowing stuff up).
*Spiders (easy to kill even barehanded as long as your back is covered, needed for string).
Monsters you DON'T WANT to encounter early on:
*Zombies (punching to death or even whacking to death with wooden shovel takes forever, they multiply and gang up on you, and minimal gain from fighting them).
*Skeletons (unless you can hit at them safely or let them burn up in the morning).
*Witches. Death.
*Baby zombies....OHGODOHGODOHGODOHGOD!!!!!!!....
Ideal biomes to start in:
*Plains with some occasional trees around or trees bordering the plains area. Nice and flat. Easy to see and avoid monsters. Sometimes horses around for early leather armor.
*Savanna. Nice and flat with sparse trees.
Okay biomes to start in:
*Roofed forest. Plentiful mushrooms, top of tree canopy provides nice safe walkway, creepers sometimes spawn in day under canopy, which is nice.
*Jungle. Creepers sometimes spawn in daytime, and vines allow quick escape routes to higher ground in a pinch.
Bad biomes to start in:
*Any other forest type biome. Too many trees, not easy to run from monsters, easy to get cornered, no advantages otherwise.
*Extreme hills. Without being able to place or remove blocks even getting down from the initial spawn can be tough. Hunger runs out quickly from jumping. Few trees. Overhangs sometimes nice for allowing creepers to spawn during day.
*Mesa. Same problems as extreme hills.
*Desert. No trees. Barely livable in terms of hunger by virtue of fact that zombie flesh and spider eyes can be harvested with help of cactus and sunlight. At least it is flat and makes it easy to avoid monsters. Get out of there and find trees ASAP.
Next to impossible:
*Isolated ocean island start with no trees and no animals. Only food available is by waiting for zombies to burn up in day (although they will probably just hop in water and not die). Or, take your chances fighting spiders for spider eyes (although doubtful whether you can actually accumulate net food in this way when factoring in punching and hunger from healing from poision). If nearest continent is not close enough to swim to without dying of hunger, and there are no underwater ravines/mineshafts (which could provide an alternative way of finding wood for a creeper to blow up), survival is physically impossible.
My fan fiction of the game: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1957118-programmer-my-first-fan-fiction/#entry24096758