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!
For a while, I would just delete a world when I died, even if I wasn't in hardcore mode. I played on Easy and even Peaceful for months, but Normal was (and is even now) easier for me thanks to changes in mob behavior and how combat works. Plus when mobs are around you can get stuff like bonemeal, even if you never starve to death in Peaceful mode.
But for the longest time, I'd just do what I did that very first night: Find a good hill where I could see all around, and build a dirt house on top, slowly replacing it with wood or cobble as I mined my way through the world.
I just started a Hardcore world last night, with tons of mods in. We'll see if I manage to get The End. If not, I guess I'll just restart and try again.
There were no sheep on this island, so I didn't have a bed. I still don't. My little dirt hut over a pond was 2 blocks high, and didn't have a glass roof yet, so I had one block dug out at ground level so I could see when it was morning. My island apparently has no caves under it whatsoever, because there were a lot of mobs out there, including an enderman within reach. Confident of my safety, I decided to use my wooden sword to slay the enderman. Lo and behold, I killed it and got a pearl - except that pearl was a couple blocks too far away to reach from safety. The night was just beginning, and I didn't want to watch the pearl despawn right in front of me, so I decided I could dig out a couple blocks, grab the pearl and replace the blocks really fast. I couldn't. A zombie got in my house and killed me. My spawn point was across the island, which has a ravine in the middle I would have to jump over, so I was out in the open at night. I attempted to get back to my hut around 5 or 6 times. Every time, a creeper would come and blow up (not killing me; I play on Easy) and then a skeleton would shoot me and kill me. Respawn, creeper, skeleton. Many times. Once I fell into the ravine, and seeing no escape, jumped down to where a creeper was. The creeper didn't kill me. A skeleton did. One creeper blew up half my house, but fortunately not my chest. Later, after another creeper exploded in the exact same spot, I made that area an extension of my tiny house. My island looks like a war zone from that night. Finally, all the creepers had blown up and it was becoming morning, so I tried to go back to my house one more time, and what did I find? The same zombie that killed me the first time and started the whole mess. And it had my wooden sword. It killed me once, then burned. I got my sword back, and about half my stuff.
The ironic part? I never did get that ender pearl. I think it was destroyed when the creeper blew up my wall.
THE END
Now i'm in ways to make a fully-automatized iron farm (like the tango tek design) in the spawn chunks. And I have a underground villager farm in order to get emmeralds to make a fully size beacon pyramid (I have one done).
My actual first night was in peaceful, and my true first night was really nothing to write home about, and I really don't recall it. My most memorable world was when I seeded an NPC village and turned it into a small city (repaving the streets, building apartments, etc.) in survival, which I found quite fun.
Then I discovered mods, and I actually changed my major (film/video to computer science) partly because of their influence.
So, in a nutshell, Minecraft changed my life!
BTW, Three cheers for Ted!
I had gone through a really bad breakup, so one of my friends introduced me to facebook to try and cheer me up with friends and such. One of the friends I met there suggested I try this new game called Minecraft that was really becoming popular. So I scrounged up the money and bought myself an account.
I believe it was in the 1.8 beta back when there were awesome world generations with villages aplenty but completely abandoned.
I spawned in a forest, naturally, and my first kill was from smacking a nearby chicken around a little too much. I then experienced a euphoric sensation of giddily using the dead raw chicken meat to cut down my first trees. Something in my head just thought it was hilarious that I was slapping some flabby uncooked chicken against a tree, and actually cutting it down by doing so. Unfortunately, slapping a chicken around a forest of trees is very time-consuming, and I ran out of daylight. :C Instead of building a wood house above ground, i found a hill and dug into the side of it instead. That very first world came and went a good 2-3 years ago, but I will never forget my chicken-y adventure.
You underestimate the power of Off-Top...
Anyway, my first time playing was somewhat uneventful as I slowly took everything in and sorta roleplayed a bit. I made a cobble-fort, with a tree farm and everything, though. I had one cave I mined in, and, after deciding that I needed to get a mod-pack for whatever reason, I had a village-thing nearby from a village-mod-thing.
But ultimately it pretty much got all jacked up with the updates and everything, and I moved on to doing super-productive things in Creative. The first world was still very special, though.
Good eye!
I spawned in and looked around for about a minute. Then i found out what buttons walked and decided to pick up all the flowers i could see :P. I ended up finding out i could destroy blocks such and i liked to destroy dirt and sand, i guess because it was easy. After waddling around for a while, it turned out it was getting dark. I was on a hill, and back then with the lighting the sunset was beautiful ;).
My First Night:
After watching the sunset, i continued to waddle the area. Then i saw a spider... My natural game instinct told me to run, so i did. I ended up dying in a little water puddle, dropping all my flowers and dirt :(. I then ran up to a hill in the desert and decided to destroy into it for protection. i ended up breaking stone with my hand, not knowing there were tools. After destroying a tiny bit of space, i placed one block down, leaving another for a bit of light (back then there was only moody).
After that first night i googled minecraft help, and found the wiki, and thats when i started learning. Sometimes when i play this game, i just wish i could go back to the old updates and no nothing, and re-live the minecraft experience...
Bought minecraft in November of the 29th 2010 at that time played minecraft off and on then after I watched G4 that had just aired a special review on their minecraft server, it was my first time in multiplayer. i just started building anything and everything and exploring all the builds, that was in Dec 2010 the 14th after that i got my friend into wanting to play minecraft, so he bought it too and then we started our first survival multiplayer game.
The first real survival
This was the first time we played this. having to figure out everything, punching wood" i was clicking it all the time wondering why i never got anything then i held it and got some wood lol.." we survived in a cave at first started gathering materials and building up our tools from wood to iron to finding our first diamond and doing everything we can to find enough for a full set of tools and then we started on our city it was by the ocean on the beach next to some trees well that was my story of the beginning i started playing lol
The last one was the death of me.
I spawned in a giant lake with a taiga biome on one side and a jungle on the other. I started towards the taiga as it looked easier to navigate. Some wolves had spawned on the bank of the lake. I approached them and, thinking that they might drop food to help me on my first day, I punched one.
I was dead in seconds.
I respawned right next to the wolves, who were still angry at me. I hid underwater, and was happy that they couldn't dive after me. I sank to the bottom hoping that they would lose interest in me and let me go free. I didn't notice the little bubbles disappearing above my hunger bar.
I drowned.
I then respawned, you guessed it, on top of the wolves. They tore me to shreds.
With this process being repeated several times night shortly fell. A little friend of us all spawned in the darkness and slowly swam towards me. He approached, started hissing and flashing, and exploded. The wolves were killed (as well as me) and I was, eventually, allowed to start my world, 15 minutes after spawning. Thank you, Mr Creeper!
Again and again and again... To this day, I still hate skeletons to... the bone.