Saturday with Sach: My First Night
We don't talk enough, you and I.
Yes, I mean you! Let's face it, we all come here for the same thing (Minecraft stuff), and it's a pretty safe bet that we all like Minecraft stuff, right? With Minecon 2013 rapidly approaching, and the massive 1.7 update looming on the horizon, I thought I'd take a minute to look back on the history of Minecraft, and how it affected me personally.
I started playing this game back in 2010, right on the leading edge of the Alpha/Beta transition. Remember Minecraft back then? Quite a different game, wasn't it? The ability to throw eggs was a new thing. Tools were (until Beta 1.0) self-repairing, if you threw them on the ground. Tool-tips were brand new. There was even a brief period where . Hard to believe, right? Seems like an eternity since the days before beds, colored wool, and a million other things (both massive and minuscule) were added to our favorite game.
ANCIENT HISTORY - MY FIRST NIGHT
My first time in Minecraft was like many people's first time; wander aimlessly, try desperately to figure out what to do without any clear instructions, give up with that and start punching things until it makes sense, get wood from randomly punching a tree, and accidentally figuring out how to make my first tool. As I remember it, the first tool I accidentally made was a wooden shovel. Incredibly proud of this accomplishment, I named my shovel "Ted". Not the most useful first tool, but it would prove to be my saving grace later. What I wouldn't have given for item frames back then.
It was at this point where I started experimenting rather heavily with crafting. Doors are an easy thing to stumble across when spamming wood planks in the crafting table (which I also found by accident), so I excitedly made a fresh new door, still covered in scratches and dents from my pathetic attempts to craft it with a shovel. Now, what is a door without a home to put it on? Not yet savvy to house-building, I figured my only option was to put this masterpiece of entryway technology in the opening of a cave I'd been digging into for a good part of the day, with my splinter-prone pickaxe.
Then, night fell. Those of you around before beds were introduced know how this part goes. If you're already tired of reading, I'll cut to the chase and say there was a lot of screaming.
NIGHT FALLS, NEW FRIENDS ARRIVE
So yea, there was a lot of screaming. My first zombie visitors weren't as big a concern as other games had led me to believe they should be - none of them were running at me on fire, or screaming about brains, that I could tell - and Ted was sufficient for knocking them off the cliff-side I'd installed my masterpiece door into. Somewhere in my excited daytime tunneling, I'd forgotten about a cave system that I had opened up from my amateur room-carving expedition. Deep in the recesses of that horrible place spawned what would be a lifelong nemesis of mine, and no doubt many of the builders among you. Facing outward from my cave home, batting zombies off the cliff with Ted like some kind of crazed cricket player, I didn't notice the silent danger creeping up behind me. Even when it started hissing, the panic hadn't yet set in.
Then, suddenly, I was gone in an explosion. So was most of my cave. Worst of all, my masterpiece door got blown somewhere I couldn't reach, and it was lost forever.
Good thing I was able to find Ted. He was the real hero in the end.
AND NOW, YOU
I've been taking up a lot of space reliving my first terror-inducing night in Minecraft, but now, I want to hear YOUR story! What were your first memories of Minecraft? When did you first start playing? Can you remember your first night? Let's hear about it!
Well, I joined in 0.0.11a, so when mob spawning and night was added instead of killing rana and eternal day, I ran. I ran out of the mossy cobblestone house that was pre generated, and I never read the changelog, so I went into a cave, expecting there to be a rana/steves flood, but, MOBS. Ran, hid in my moss house with some mushrooms and that's it.
Pretty nooby looking but when you see a creeper blow up on you and you haven't seen that since survival test, BRRGHAHHFGRTZZAHH!
The only thing I am confused if I go back to the alpha version, is no sprinting.
In alpha, minecraft was a quiet game.
The game was something i saved up for. i cant remember how much it was but i got it twords the end of alpha. I was super exited and i started up the game. Knowing nothing i created a world titled "my 1st world". i went on and having watched a few tutorials i set off from my beach. i was near a pretty big mountain in a snow biome. I dug a little cave on the side of the mountain with a ladder going up to the cave and made all the necessities (Furnace, crafting table, chest, door, walls, torches, etc). it became night time and i was so ready to see what the night time held for me. it started snowing and it got dark. so i grabbed my wood sword and climbed down the ladder. All the sudden "hssssssssssssssssssssssssss....... BOOM!!!!". a creeper was right at the bottom of my ladder. i spent the rest of that evening replacing what had been broken. Also killed a zombie that night.
The date was precisely January 27th 2012. My friend KiKi come over and finally convinced me to download Minecraft with his account and try it. For the longest time I was sworn to believe that CastleMiner-Z was the god of all blocky games. So there I was, sitting in front of my computer, looking at this low-grade home-screen. He had me open a new world, where I spawned in a forest, where he had me learn the basic controls. I walked around for a bit, and found a small lake, where he showed me how to break blocks. Of course, the common first mistake, not holding the punch, is a problem. Once he gets me around this, He asks me to try and build a house by right-clicking with a block. I start my house building in the 4 planks I had found, and try to build the rest in sand. As I started placing the first blocks, they start falling on me. Confused, I continued placing blocks overhead until I found myself suffocating.
KiKi gets me out of the situation just in time to see the sun going down. Excited, he told me to look out for mobs. He spotted a spider in the lake, but at the time, I had never seen a spider, so with my brightness minimal, I continued my walking leisurely. Little did I realize, my biggest enemy, the spider itself, was already behind me. The last thing Is aw before the death screen was a big black box...
Those were the days, huh?
I do remember the first time I played on a Floating Islands map. The spawn house was on top of a layer of gravel. I walked out went "oh hey gravel!" dug out a block and Ayeeee! *splat* Despite that rather inauspicious start, the floating island worlds became my favorite type to play on. It was always a challenge to see how many islands you could build your way to. I also remember being rather sad when infdev didn't include a floating islands generator option. (Though the new amplified terrain generator helps bring back some of that feel of trying to build suspended over a vast abyss.)
Then, sometime around the time the map seeds were added (I think) I discovered you could just replace the art files in minecraft.jar and re-texture the game. It was all downhill from there. I might not be one of the better know texture artists but I'm certainly one of the oldest. (In terms of how long I've been doing this, not in terms of actual age.) The very first texture pack I ever made was Metalcraft. The individual thread for that pack has the questionable distinction of being the very last thread in the
textureresource pack sub-forum. (I just only bother with updating my collection thread linked in my sig these days.)Anyway, as i lived on the wiki and studied it like nothing i've ever studied before, i knew the basics and could make a pickaxe blindfolded before i had the game. So when i spawned in my first ever survival worldback in 1.2.5, it was a taiga biome and its was peaceful. I punched a few trees and jumped in the nearest hole which happened to be a decent cave system. I went exploring and came across an underground lake which had some sugar cane growing next to it (don't know why but i thought it was cool, shows how impressionable i was). I made my home there and, after doing the stuff you usually do in survival, i decided to recreate the map as a creative world (back before i knew about maps, i used creative and wrote down the coordinates). I found an awesome part mountain which had a ravine showing and an abandoned mineshaft in it.
Then of course later, i built a minecart system between to the two things and i was so proud of it. If i had a better computer, i would have played on easy and of course, die 100,000 times before i knew how to kill creepers.
I downloaded the game, it only took seconds. Installed a skin because I always explore every feature first. So I knew I could add a skin when I looked at my profile on the website. I took to the game like wildfire. I found my first tools of Pickaxe, Sword, Spade. Never knew about the Hoe until I googled it >.>
I soon started smashing trees with my hand, then the Sword, Pickaxe, finally the Spade which I just knew would not work. Using the knowledge I had with building a sword and pickaxe and how they sorta looked like the real tools. I placed my sticks and added the wood. Not in planks at first. I was ready! Set! and Excited! I had my wood, and with my dreams fulfilled I created a Tree House as my first home. I had plans, big plans with defense using lava, arrows, and holes lots of holes.
Oh how little did I know about the physics of Minecraft. Out of all my exploration and understanding of how to build a chest, door, ladder, torch. I never thought of the consequence that wood + lava would make when touched. With the idea of a defense with lava running down the mountain I saw the hoard of Creepers and Zombies. Excited I got them to follow me, running to my house I placed the lava in the wood slot and hoped for the best.
I cried as my house in the tree burned to the ground. Then died from the zombie and surprisingly not the creeper. All that was left was the furnace and chest. I learned that day that Minecraft was a cruel world and would seek my revenge. From that day, I have always hated lava. Always.
Thats my story and I'm excited to go to 2013 Minecon and maybe see some of you!
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Another thing, after some days i found Diamonds, i thought they were useless so i left them there in the deep parts of my mine, when i read about it, then i rushed it down like a monster to get my shinies! But i closed that part because it was unnaturally dark (Much later i got acknowlede that it was called Void Fog), i also found a Cave, and was exploring it with much fear, when i heard a sound, one of those you hear inside a Cave, man i went out running in real life!!!
If you mean when I bought premium back when Minecraft Alpha just came out, I just built myself a home out of dirt and wooden logs (after I figured out it wasn't insta-break blocks and you needed to hold down the block-breaking button!). I can't remember the rest. Still, I liked those days...
Anyone else bought premium before/during when alpha was out?
The major things I remember was the mega differences between what we experienced at this moment and today.
1: The implimentation of the half slab: We were so RELIEVED that the half slab was "invented". Before that we were always jumping around like gazelles to get up on any hill or block. Today this block is almost never used by the community. But at this moment it was the most praised one!! lol
2: The lava bucket bug: There was a time where the lava bucket was terribly dangerous because of a bug. If a chest was opened with a lava bucket in the hand, the lava was putted on the ground, destroyed the chest and it's content, burned us and sometimes killed us!!
3: The bed: What a relief it was!!! skipping the night by sleeping! And no more bed represented by wool blocks or half slabs. There was even entire blogs about how to create beds in Minecraft with blocks! lol
4: The leaf decaying bug: There was a time when leaves did not decay like today because of a bug. We had to break every leaf block to get rid of a tree. It was so long! I was creating a forest at this moment, a forest like those today that have a lot of big trees, and I finally gived up on that hehe!
Once I loaded my first world I started wandering around and had found a nice little mountain ocean side to which I quickly took to carving out a flat piece of ground part way up the mountain for my very first masterpiece.....a dirt house. I had at least known enough on how to make wood tools and to gather wood. It was then that I quickly learned how to make stone tools and I decided I was ready for my first adventure.
Journey to the center of the earth
I started digging down at an angle like all new adventurers as I saw this to be the most efficient way to get down. I then figured out how to make stairs to make the descent and ascent quicker. Like all adventures there has to be a crux and defining moment to really make you reflect on all that you had accomplished (about 40 levels).
Tragedy
This moment arrived for me as I had stumbled into a cave. Fortunately I had a hand stone sword so the moment was not when I encountered my first "mob" but rather when I suddenly started taking damage. I quickly spun around looking in every directly to find my attacker but there was no one there. In an effect to flee my invisible attacker I ran back up the steps but to no avail.....the attack continued even while I was safe inside my dirt house.
It was hear the onslaught continued, my health drained and my panic grew but there was nothing I could do. My first character passed on with only this note
WE HAVE TO EAT?! What is this?
As I reflected on my oh so short first day in Minecraft, I decided I should probably watch some How to play videos and read the wiki because clearly I would not be able to survive another day without doing so.
I ended up in a hole with some bread for half of it.
My first night was not on a game of my own. (it was a world of my own, but my friend let me play on his account on about beta 1.3) I was, also like you, wandering aimlessly but also asking my friend what the heck to do. thanks to his help, i made a little cave home in the side of a (what old minecrafters would call, but new ones would call a pretty steep hill) mountain. So then i started wandering around punching pigs out of boredom and when the pig dropped a pork chop (or if anything dropped anything xD) i ask him what it is.
Panic/ the escape
When my friend noticed the sun was setting and we were to the point that you couldn't even see the mountain that i lived in on far render distance, he started panicking telling me to get to the mountain i lived in before a creeper blew me up (at this point both of us were yelling at the screen for our minecraft character to move faster). By the time we got to the mountain i was getting chased by 2 zombies and a creeper.
The boredom of the night
If I remember correctly, all night on minecraft we were just watching some videos of some cool games my friend saw on the internet. By the time dawn broke i had to go. and THAT'S my story of the first night i survived.
Now that i re-read this, I'd say my memory's pretty good xD