Can someone help me please. I followed all the steps in the read me but when ever i start the game up its just normal MC 1.5.2 and it resets the .jar in the new folders i made...
Unfortunately, there was a recent update to the MC launcher that requires an additional step. You can find more info here:
It could be I'm just a wimp, or lazy, or whatever, but whenever I play, I usually burn out and lose interest before I hit iron, usually get being a fishing pole or a ingot or two before the constant repetition of 'punch wood, mine, wait for sunrise, mine, chop wood, mine, wait for sunrise, chop wood, run out of food, linger, die'
Most of the time, I don't even manage to get iron as I can't find a cave, or mobs inside said cave kills me. I just can't find it in me to repeat that 'stone-age' stage long enough to actually start doing something other then cower and struggle to not die, because after a few hours of doing it over and over again, it's just not fun. Then I come back after a while, have fun for a bit, and the cycle repeats.
I'm at the point I'm wondering if it'll be worth it to cheat in a iron pick or something.
I mean, I love the mod and all, but the start feels a bit too long and tedious to me.
I know exactly what you mean. A lot of times I come back to BTW after a long period away, make a new world, and encounter what you run into. I got lucky and had a pretty great spawn this time and it's kept me hooked. My advice:
- Find a safe place to spend the night. Best choice is usually a hillside, and ideally one that already has exposed stone (saves you the trouble of digging to stone, which makes getting that first stone pickaxe and a night's worth of logs much easier.) Block the entrance with 1 dirt block and 1 dirt slab. Ideally this lets in just enough light to prevent Gloom. If it doesn't, destroy the slab and keep an eye out for spiders trying to sneak in. Only use the furnace to cook food and have enough light to spend the night harvesting cobble. You probably won't have enough bark/sawdust to leave the furnace running all night. Try not to stray too far from your original spawn.
- Your second day should be spent murdering any surviving non-bovine wildlife for food (since they'll die to zombies during the second night anyway), gathering enough wood to continue mining through the second night, and ideally finding at least a little coal. I'll usually leave my little hole with a few stone axes, a few stone picks, and a couple of stone shovels. Having at least one torch will let you continue mining through the night without having to use up fuel in the furnace. If you can find a good block of coal, gather enough to have a few torches and plan on returning for it later; your priority for surviving the second night is food (you should have at least 5 edibles) and wood.
- Repeat this process until you have at least several edibles, a decent surplus of cobble and wood, and a dozen or so torches. Carry a small amount of wood and/or sticks and a bit of cobble with you, and most of your food. Stash the rest in a chest in your little hole. It's time to go caving!
- Roam around until you see a likely cave. Run in and drop some torches to check it out. If it goes decently deep, or you see a fair amount of coal or iron, get setup to mine it out. Dig yourself a little safety hole in a convenient location after lighting enough of the surrounding area to be relatively safe from monster spawns. Murder any chickens, pigs, and sheep in the area because you'll be spending the night and they'll get eaten anyway. If the cave has nearby openings, try to block them with dirt or another convenient block. With all of that done, you can freely mine throughout the night. If you get there later in the day, just spend the night inside your little safety hole like normal and wait until daybreak to mine out the ores. Listen for footsteps (****ing goddamn creepers...) before you open up your hidey hole, the last thing you want is a creeper blowing up half your ****.
- Repeat this process until you have a sizable stack of iron. I will typically just head in a single direction and not deviate too much to make it easier to locate my original home. I'll often stack dirt or cobble at least 3-5 blocks high and extend the top block 2-3 blocks to either side as little markers, leaving a torch on the face that's facing AWAY from home. Especially if placed on top of a hill, these should be visible from quite a ways away and make it easier to keep your bearings straight.
- Use your first iron ingots on a hoe. Use the hoe to till up some hemp seeds, and use those seeds to lure some chickens. You only NEED one chicken, but more is better. Throw it in a safe hole somewhere where monsters won't get to it, feed it seeds, and throw the eggs into the pit to either make more chickens or get raw eggs. Cook the raw eggs, and ideally combine them with cooked porkchops (1 egg + 1 porkchop = 2 ham and eggs, which restore as many shanks as a regular porkchop does, much more efficient than eggs/porkchops alone.) You could also make a bucket and go milk cows with it and combine the raw egg with milk to make scrambled eggs, but this will require you to have shears to cut tall grass with (to lure the cows to a safe place and keep them fed so they keep generating milk), or you get lucky and find some wheat in a dungeon chest or the like.
- Setup a safe little area for a small farm. Make sure it's near water (hemp requires wet dirt and sunlight to grow) and till it. A simple little 3x3 farm should be plenty to get you started. Go use up most of your hoe tilling grass for hemp seeds. Plant most of them, but keep a few on hand to continue feeding your chickens with. I would recommend saving the last couple dozen uses of your hoe in case a ****ing creeper shows up out of ****ing nowhere in the middle of the goddamn ****ing daytime when the entire local area is brightly lit and destroys your farm and everything in it.
- Use a few bits of iron to make a bucket, and another bit to make a fishing rod. You've probably got a whole pile of rotten meat and spider eyes by this point, and you can slowly turn them into fish with the rod. You'll want the bucket so you can milk cows, but you may want to wait until after you have shears (to cut tall grass with) first. No point in having a bucket for milk if there aren't any surviving cows in the area.
- Once you have some hemp growing and a couple of chickens safe in a hole somewhere, you should have things pretty well under control! You have a limited but renewable source of food with the hemp+chickens cycle, and once the hemp starts coming in, you can begin working towards your windmill and really beginning to advance down the tech tree! Use feathers from any chickens you kill (and you don't really need to leave any alive once you have a few safe and sound at home, feel free to murder every single one of the noisy pricks) to make arrows, and you can use the arrows to kill cows! Make sure to use your shears to cut the leather into, well, Cut Leather. You get 2 pieces of Cut Leather for every piece of Leather you cut, which gets you to leather armor that much faster. You can (and should) also shear sheep. Between the two you should be able to get a mixture of leather and wool armor reasonably easy, which will make deeper mining much safer for you
I find the toughest thing is just finding and luring some sheep and cows to safe places by the time I have shears etc. By that point all animals within a considerable area around spawn are dead so it takes quite a bit of travel to find them and bring em back!
If you die... hey, feel free to take a break for a while. The fun thing about hardcore spawn is that your effort is never truly WASTED. You're just temporarily delayed. Once you have a compass (four bits of iron and one bit of redstone), it's not too hard to get back to where you were before you died, assuming you built reasonably close to spawn
So from what see, I should explore, and explore a lot. And probably be more reckless early-game.
All of my deaths are because I didn't wander more than like, 50 blocks from spawn(not even kidding here. I never went anywhere where I couldn't reach my very first hole in the ground before sun went out. Seriously. The furthest I've been, I still managed to get back before monsters came out, and that was when I started heading back when the sun was setting). I'd run out of food as I lingered for days there, then when I finally found a possible cave, I'd pretty much be all out of food, and die because I couldn't keep myself fed enough to survive the first skeleton I meet, nor enough torches to prevent monster spawns in decent area.
Pretty much every time I went inside a cave, it was a 'I don't think I'm nearly prepared enough, but without that iron, I'll starve in three days' rather then 'I think I can take on that cave'
Pretty much every time I went inside a cave, it was a 'I don't think I'm nearly prepared enough, but without that iron, I'll starve in three days' rather then 'I think I can take on that cave'
From my own experiences with it, I find that pushing yourself to cave too early or too fast is a good way to die. I usually force myself to wait until I have a full set of mixed cloth/leather armor to start caving, and have additional personal rules for moving downwards, like not going to bottom strata until I have a sword.
You can survive pretty much indefinitely on the surface if you're willing to move around a bit. I'll usually take overnight hunting trips a few times during the early game, moving out to a new location with lots of animals, digging a small hidey hole overnight, then returning back to my main base the next day. I find that doing so gives you enough food to last many days.
Anyways, all told my advice would be that if whatever you're doing isn't working: change it. Rather than just beating your head against the wall, analyze your own play and try to figure out what you could be doing differently to make your life easier.
And probably be more reckless early-game.
No...that's definitely not right. The early game is largely an exercise in risk management.
From my own experiences with it, I find that pushing yourself to cave too early or too fast is a good way to die. I usually force myself to wait until I have a full set of mixed cloth/leather armor to start caving, and have additional personal rules for moving downwards, like not going to bottom strata until I have a sword.
You can survive pretty much indefinitely on the surface if you're willing to move around a bit. I'll usually take overnight hunting trips a few times during the early game, moving out to a new location with lots of animals, digging a small hidey hole overnight, then returning back to my main base the next day. I find that doing so gives you enough food to last many days.
Anyways, all told my advice would be that if whatever you're doing isn't working: change it. Rather than just beating your head against the wall, analyze your own play and try to figure out what you could be doing differently to make your life easier.
No...that's definitely not right. The early game is largely an exercise in risk management.
I think one of the reasons I'm not advancing is poor risk management, but not as in too much risk, but in too less risk. I basically do nothing but chop nearby wood and hunt nearby animals until I run out of both, then cower in my base till I'm forced to go out, basically never risking any caves, and never risking moving to new locations in case I get lost or something.
I feel that moving somewhere where I can't reach my main base before sunset is too risky, which it seems I have to do.
Note that by 'reckless' I mean, 'try moving further away from base while doing everything I can to not get lost to look for more food and possibly coal'
I think one of the reasons I'm not advancing is poor risk management, but not as in too much risk, but in too less risk. I basically do nothing but chop nearby wood and hunt nearby animals until I run out of both, then cower in my base till I'm forced to go out, basically never risking any caves, and never risking moving to new locations in case I get lost or something.
I feel that moving somewhere where I can't reach my main base before sunset is too risky, which it seems I have to do.
Note that by 'reckless' I mean, 'try moving further away from base while doing everything I can to not get lost to look for more food and possibly coal'
Pretty much. As you've found out, you'll quickly starve if you sit in spawn the whole time
I WILL say that if you spawn in a jungle biome, you may just want to kill yourself so you respawn somewhere that doesn't have poison spiders crawling out of the damn trees. Trying to explore and/or live in a jungle biome before you have a couple buckets of milk on hand is usually a great way to die. Spawns with wolves in the vicinity can also be troublesome because they'll start getting hungry after a couple days without animals to eat and dealing with a pack of wolves when you just have a couple axes can be difficult (but then again, wolfchops!) Wolves will also make animals near spawn die that much faster. I find that you can usually find a couple sheep/pigs/chickens alive after the first night, but if wolves are in the area, you'll be lucky to have even a couple of those mobs survive the combination of wolves+zombies. I wouldn't necessarily force yourself to relocate if you spawn near wolves, just it's something you need to be aware of. The nice thing is that you'll hear the aggressive sounds if they've gotten to the point where they're hungry enough to randomly attack the player, and those sounds are pretty damn loud, so you should know to expect them before you open up your hole.
I'll usually walk about 1/2-3/4 of a day's length away from spawn in a cardinal direction, noting useful things along the way (or gathering them if it's just a couple things, like if I find a pumpkin or two in a plains biome.) Dig yourself a little hideyhole, preferably near some surface ores like I mentioned earlier, and spend the night. Head back to spawn the next day with all the loot and food you can carry, cook your food and get the iron smelting, spend the night restocking your cobble supplies, and then do it again the following day, this time in a different direction. Try to avoid meandering too much until you have plenty of torches or other ways of creating markers so you won't lose track of where spawn is. I think the ultimate goal is to keep repeating this process until you have enough iron to make a hoe. Once you have the hoe you can lure some chickens with hemp seeds, feed them to create a renewable food source, and begin farming the hemp to begin advancing down the tech tree. As FC said, once you have shears it's not terribly difficult to shear sheep as you pass them by, as well as lure a few closer to home so you can have a renewable source of wool for armor (and you can always kill them for food if you're about to run out, and just find more sheep somewhere else.) I've explored mineshafts and caves down to the 2nd/3rd strata border without any armor, but it's certainly a lot safer with the 1.5-2.0 points of armor wool/leather will give you. I definitely recommend not doing extensive exploration without a sword, though. My iron typically goes hoe->pickaxe->sword->pickaxe, stopping for shears and maybe a bucket when it's convenient.
I have really awful luck with fishing, but once you have enough torches to make the surrounding area of your hideyhole safe, fishing at dusk, dawn, and during rain allegedly makes for an effective renewable food source. I've only ever gotten 2 fish at once from the same large 3-5 block deep river (which spawns squids at night), running across a 6ish chunk area, and most nights I'm lucky to even get one. I'm probably doing something wrong, though.
So started a new world, and was lucky enough to find a one of those puddle-cave things with a large vein of coal in it to settle down for the night-and it was close to spawn to boot- and found out how out-of practice I was with BTW when I got nearly killed a cow, killed by a squid, killed by a squid again(thank god for floating items and that hardcore spawn cooldown thingy), nearly got killed by a jungle spider, and nearly got killed by a creeper.
On the plus side, following advice, instead of staying close to home, I wandered out as far as I could without getting caught outside at night, and managed to kill enough sheep for a wool hat, shirt, and pants on like, the third day. There where a lot of sheep.
Then I found pumpkins and tossed four chickens in safe hole, and now I have plenty of food.
I cannot believe how much difference a little bit of exploring has made.
To top it all off, I found a ravine that was largely open to the sun, with iron inside. I think I'll go there after I make enough ladders.
Few questions though.
1. Is it safe to go out during a thunderstorm? I'm hearing thunder outside, and I think it's raining too.
2. What is the best fuel to smelt iron ore with? I remember iron taking a very long time to smelt, and I don't want to use a bunch of wooden stuff just to find out that I don't have enough and waste the things, but I'm not sure if smelting iron is a good use for my coal, since if I remember correctly, each ore gives one nugget, meaning I need nine iron ore per ingot, and that's going to use a lot of coal
Birch gives you the best return. If you find birch trees, try to save the birch logs for fuel and just use other woods for sticks and whatnot. I spawned pretty much right in the middle of a plains/forest border so I used all the birch trees for fuel and was able to stockpile the coal and use it for torches instead. You don't really need to worry about smelting the iron until you have enough to make your hoe or pickaxe, anyway
Endermen make a thunderclap noise when they teleport back to the End, you could be hearing that. You should be careful exploring during a thunderstorm. It reduces the light level more than rain does, which makes it pretty likely that monsters will begin spawning in places they normally wouldn't, and since it's raining, the skeletons are free to chase you instead of hiding under a tree.
In that case, I think it might just be rain... I think I'll gather some more things then try nab all the exposed iron I can find.
Also, found a jungle temple at the edge of the jungle.Will it have anything worth raiding?(Note-as long as it's not totally empty, I think I might try to go in, even rotten flesh, bones, or string would be useful. I can't actually kill monsters for it... ok, I can kill some spiders for string, but it eats up too much food for healing and stuff)
Edit: Never mind, it's a full-blown thunderstorm, complete with zombies and spiders at the gates.
In that case, I think it might just be rain... I think I'll gather some more things then try nab all the exposed iron I can find.
Also, found a jungle temple at the edge of the jungle.Will it have anything worth raiding?(Note-as long as it's not totally empty, I think I might try to go in, even rotten flesh, bones, or string would be useful. I can't actually kill monsters for it... ok, I can kill some spiders for string, but it eats up too much food for healing and stuff)
Edit: Never mind, it's a full-blown thunderstorm, complete with zombies and spiders at the gates.
I don't think I'll be going out until it stops.
From my experience map features are always worth exploring, just a lot more far away from base. I've found ingots in chests nearer to spawn, so it's worth it. Just be careful there are a lot of places for mobs to hide in a jungle temple.
From my experience map features are always worth exploring, just a lot more far away from base. I've found ingots in chests nearer to spawn, so it's worth it. Just be careful there are a lot of places for mobs to hide in a jungle temple.
Worth noting that jungle spiders are rather bad news in the early game
Why were they added, anyway? Were jungles considered too easy to survive in, or was it just to make jungle biomes more interesting/frustrating?
It's really the hunger that makes them dangerous more than the poison. Gotta have milk on hand or prepare to eat like two days worth of food!
At one time jungles were actually a lot easier to survive in than any other biome due to mobs having pathing difficulties within them and such. Jungle spiders were intended to correct that as well as to increase biome diversity and give jungles a unique flavor. Thematically, they look and feel like they *should* be dangerous, and the spiders make that a reality.
Worth noting that jungle spiders are rather bad news in the early game
Went closer chasing after a sheep, got scared half to death when I got hit by a flying web.
On the plus side, I got two string, which means a fishing rod, which means renewable food. Only lost two muttons to the hunger effect as well, so I think it was worth it. Now the question is, can I go in and out of the temple before the spiders eat me?
I have the torches for it, I have some armor, but after remembering spiders shoot webs, kinda hesitant to go somewhere with so little room to maneuver. I might just do it though if there's a chance for ingots. After all. even if I die, all I need to do is build up another base somewhere else, right?
Ever since I saw an interview with you on youtube years back FC, I've meant to come in just to compliment you and your work. I ended up agreeing with pretty much everything you said. It's actually been a few years since I've touched the game, but I wouldn't be surprised if its feature implementation is still random/unfocused. If I come back to it, it'll probably be just to play your mod.
I'm also surprised this is still ongoing; doubtless almost all of the other mods I used to play have long since died. Kudos to your dedication man.
A mighty machine built within the wake
Of a long dead dream, little demon awake
The citizens sleep, never quite knowing when
The device will reawaken, hungry again.
Ransacked the temple and got rotten flesh and a ton of bones, which is a good thing because killing skeletons for the bones would have been difficult.
The next day, the entrance to my little hole in the ground got blown up by three creepers. Managed to not die, but had to spend the rest of the day patching it back up. Will it be worth it to make something like a entrance tower only accessible by ladders?
Having to kill a spider or creeper like, every other day before I get out is kinda tiring.
Also, does tall grass regrow? There's tall grass where I could have sworn there wasn't any before.
Ransacked the temple and got rotten flesh and a ton of bones, which is a good thing because killing skeletons for the bones would have been difficult.
The next day, the entrance to my little hole in the ground got blown up by three creepers. Managed to not die, but had to spend the rest of the day patching it back up. Will it be worth it to make something like a entrance tower only accessible by ladders?
Having to kill a spider or creeper like, every other day before I get out is kinda tiring.
Also, does tall grass regrow? There's tall grass where I could have sworn there wasn't any before.
Tall grass doesn't regrow
I frequently build an entrance ladder until I can safely build a wall around my larger base with multiple exits, but make sure you do it in a way that nothing but you can get to it.
I frequently build an entrance ladder until I can safely build a wall around my larger base with multiple exits, but make sure you do it in a way that nothing but you can get to it.
Oh, I must have missed it then. It could also possibly the the creeper explosion that redirected my path to the tall grass without me noticing.
My entrance is now about 4 blocks off the ground. Spiders somehow still end up on the roof, and now, instead of killing a creeper every other day, I have to jump out my entrance at a sprint every other day... This safe entrance thing is harder than I thought.
One option I've went with before is to have a second exit. Mobs sit near one because it's the closest they can get to you, not as many will be near a further away exit.
Unfortunately, there was a recent update to the MC launcher that requires an additional step. You can find more info here:
http://www.sargunster.com/btwforum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=8506&p=141890#p149981
I know exactly what you mean. A lot of times I come back to BTW after a long period away, make a new world, and encounter what you run into. I got lucky and had a pretty great spawn this time and it's kept me hooked. My advice:
- Find a safe place to spend the night. Best choice is usually a hillside, and ideally one that already has exposed stone (saves you the trouble of digging to stone, which makes getting that first stone pickaxe and a night's worth of logs much easier.) Block the entrance with 1 dirt block and 1 dirt slab. Ideally this lets in just enough light to prevent Gloom. If it doesn't, destroy the slab and keep an eye out for spiders trying to sneak in. Only use the furnace to cook food and have enough light to spend the night harvesting cobble. You probably won't have enough bark/sawdust to leave the furnace running all night. Try not to stray too far from your original spawn.
- Your second day should be spent murdering any surviving non-bovine wildlife for food (since they'll die to zombies during the second night anyway), gathering enough wood to continue mining through the second night, and ideally finding at least a little coal. I'll usually leave my little hole with a few stone axes, a few stone picks, and a couple of stone shovels. Having at least one torch will let you continue mining through the night without having to use up fuel in the furnace. If you can find a good block of coal, gather enough to have a few torches and plan on returning for it later; your priority for surviving the second night is food (you should have at least 5 edibles) and wood.
- Repeat this process until you have at least several edibles, a decent surplus of cobble and wood, and a dozen or so torches. Carry a small amount of wood and/or sticks and a bit of cobble with you, and most of your food. Stash the rest in a chest in your little hole. It's time to go caving!
- Roam around until you see a likely cave. Run in and drop some torches to check it out. If it goes decently deep, or you see a fair amount of coal or iron, get setup to mine it out. Dig yourself a little safety hole in a convenient location after lighting enough of the surrounding area to be relatively safe from monster spawns. Murder any chickens, pigs, and sheep in the area because you'll be spending the night and they'll get eaten anyway. If the cave has nearby openings, try to block them with dirt or another convenient block. With all of that done, you can freely mine throughout the night. If you get there later in the day, just spend the night inside your little safety hole like normal and wait until daybreak to mine out the ores. Listen for footsteps (****ing goddamn creepers...) before you open up your hidey hole, the last thing you want is a creeper blowing up half your ****.
- Repeat this process until you have a sizable stack of iron. I will typically just head in a single direction and not deviate too much to make it easier to locate my original home. I'll often stack dirt or cobble at least 3-5 blocks high and extend the top block 2-3 blocks to either side as little markers, leaving a torch on the face that's facing AWAY from home. Especially if placed on top of a hill, these should be visible from quite a ways away and make it easier to keep your bearings straight.
- Use your first iron ingots on a hoe. Use the hoe to till up some hemp seeds, and use those seeds to lure some chickens. You only NEED one chicken, but more is better. Throw it in a safe hole somewhere where monsters won't get to it, feed it seeds, and throw the eggs into the pit to either make more chickens or get raw eggs. Cook the raw eggs, and ideally combine them with cooked porkchops (1 egg + 1 porkchop = 2 ham and eggs, which restore as many shanks as a regular porkchop does, much more efficient than eggs/porkchops alone.) You could also make a bucket and go milk cows with it and combine the raw egg with milk to make scrambled eggs, but this will require you to have shears to cut tall grass with (to lure the cows to a safe place and keep them fed so they keep generating milk), or you get lucky and find some wheat in a dungeon chest or the like.
- Setup a safe little area for a small farm. Make sure it's near water (hemp requires wet dirt and sunlight to grow) and till it. A simple little 3x3 farm should be plenty to get you started. Go use up most of your hoe tilling grass for hemp seeds. Plant most of them, but keep a few on hand to continue feeding your chickens with. I would recommend saving the last couple dozen uses of your hoe in case a ****ing creeper shows up out of ****ing nowhere in the middle of the goddamn ****ing daytime when the entire local area is brightly lit and destroys your farm and everything in it.
- Use a few bits of iron to make a bucket, and another bit to make a fishing rod. You've probably got a whole pile of rotten meat and spider eyes by this point, and you can slowly turn them into fish with the rod. You'll want the bucket so you can milk cows, but you may want to wait until after you have shears (to cut tall grass with) first. No point in having a bucket for milk if there aren't any surviving cows in the area.
- Once you have some hemp growing and a couple of chickens safe in a hole somewhere, you should have things pretty well under control! You have a limited but renewable source of food with the hemp+chickens cycle, and once the hemp starts coming in, you can begin working towards your windmill and really beginning to advance down the tech tree! Use feathers from any chickens you kill (and you don't really need to leave any alive once you have a few safe and sound at home, feel free to murder every single one of the noisy pricks) to make arrows, and you can use the arrows to kill cows! Make sure to use your shears to cut the leather into, well, Cut Leather. You get 2 pieces of Cut Leather for every piece of Leather you cut, which gets you to leather armor that much faster. You can (and should) also shear sheep. Between the two you should be able to get a mixture of leather and wool armor reasonably easy, which will make deeper mining much safer for you
I find the toughest thing is just finding and luring some sheep and cows to safe places by the time I have shears etc. By that point all animals within a considerable area around spawn are dead so it takes quite a bit of travel to find them and bring em back!
If you die... hey, feel free to take a break for a while. The fun thing about hardcore spawn is that your effort is never truly WASTED. You're just temporarily delayed. Once you have a compass (four bits of iron and one bit of redstone), it's not too hard to get back to where you were before you died, assuming you built reasonably close to spawn
So from what see, I should explore, and explore a lot. And probably be more reckless early-game.
All of my deaths are because I didn't wander more than like, 50 blocks from spawn(not even kidding here. I never went anywhere where I couldn't reach my very first hole in the ground before sun went out. Seriously. The furthest I've been, I still managed to get back before monsters came out, and that was when I started heading back when the sun was setting). I'd run out of food as I lingered for days there, then when I finally found a possible cave, I'd pretty much be all out of food, and die because I couldn't keep myself fed enough to survive the first skeleton I meet, nor enough torches to prevent monster spawns in decent area.
Pretty much every time I went inside a cave, it was a 'I don't think I'm nearly prepared enough, but without that iron, I'll starve in three days' rather then 'I think I can take on that cave'
From my own experiences with it, I find that pushing yourself to cave too early or too fast is a good way to die. I usually force myself to wait until I have a full set of mixed cloth/leather armor to start caving, and have additional personal rules for moving downwards, like not going to bottom strata until I have a sword.
You can survive pretty much indefinitely on the surface if you're willing to move around a bit. I'll usually take overnight hunting trips a few times during the early game, moving out to a new location with lots of animals, digging a small hidey hole overnight, then returning back to my main base the next day. I find that doing so gives you enough food to last many days.
Anyways, all told my advice would be that if whatever you're doing isn't working: change it. Rather than just beating your head against the wall, analyze your own play and try to figure out what you could be doing differently to make your life easier.
No...that's definitely not right. The early game is largely an exercise in risk management.
I think one of the reasons I'm not advancing is poor risk management, but not as in too much risk, but in too less risk. I basically do nothing but chop nearby wood and hunt nearby animals until I run out of both, then cower in my base till I'm forced to go out, basically never risking any caves, and never risking moving to new locations in case I get lost or something.
I feel that moving somewhere where I can't reach my main base before sunset is too risky, which it seems I have to do.
Note that by 'reckless' I mean, 'try moving further away from base while doing everything I can to not get lost to look for more food and possibly coal'
Pretty much. As you've found out, you'll quickly starve if you sit in spawn the whole time
I WILL say that if you spawn in a jungle biome, you may just want to kill yourself so you respawn somewhere that doesn't have poison spiders crawling out of the damn trees. Trying to explore and/or live in a jungle biome before you have a couple buckets of milk on hand is usually a great way to die. Spawns with wolves in the vicinity can also be troublesome because they'll start getting hungry after a couple days without animals to eat and dealing with a pack of wolves when you just have a couple axes can be difficult (but then again, wolfchops!) Wolves will also make animals near spawn die that much faster. I find that you can usually find a couple sheep/pigs/chickens alive after the first night, but if wolves are in the area, you'll be lucky to have even a couple of those mobs survive the combination of wolves+zombies. I wouldn't necessarily force yourself to relocate if you spawn near wolves, just it's something you need to be aware of. The nice thing is that you'll hear the aggressive sounds if they've gotten to the point where they're hungry enough to randomly attack the player, and those sounds are pretty damn loud, so you should know to expect them before you open up your hole.
I'll usually walk about 1/2-3/4 of a day's length away from spawn in a cardinal direction, noting useful things along the way (or gathering them if it's just a couple things, like if I find a pumpkin or two in a plains biome.) Dig yourself a little hideyhole, preferably near some surface ores like I mentioned earlier, and spend the night. Head back to spawn the next day with all the loot and food you can carry, cook your food and get the iron smelting, spend the night restocking your cobble supplies, and then do it again the following day, this time in a different direction. Try to avoid meandering too much until you have plenty of torches or other ways of creating markers so you won't lose track of where spawn is. I think the ultimate goal is to keep repeating this process until you have enough iron to make a hoe. Once you have the hoe you can lure some chickens with hemp seeds, feed them to create a renewable food source, and begin farming the hemp to begin advancing down the tech tree. As FC said, once you have shears it's not terribly difficult to shear sheep as you pass them by, as well as lure a few closer to home so you can have a renewable source of wool for armor (and you can always kill them for food if you're about to run out, and just find more sheep somewhere else.) I've explored mineshafts and caves down to the 2nd/3rd strata border without any armor, but it's certainly a lot safer with the 1.5-2.0 points of armor wool/leather will give you. I definitely recommend not doing extensive exploration without a sword, though. My iron typically goes hoe->pickaxe->sword->pickaxe, stopping for shears and maybe a bucket when it's convenient.
I have really awful luck with fishing, but once you have enough torches to make the surrounding area of your hideyhole safe, fishing at dusk, dawn, and during rain allegedly makes for an effective renewable food source. I've only ever gotten 2 fish at once from the same large 3-5 block deep river (which spawns squids at night), running across a 6ish chunk area, and most nights I'm lucky to even get one. I'm probably doing something wrong, though.
So started a new world, and was lucky enough to find a one of those puddle-cave things with a large vein of coal in it to settle down for the night-and it was close to spawn to boot- and found out how out-of practice I was with BTW when I got nearly killed a cow, killed by a squid, killed by a squid again(thank god for floating items and that hardcore spawn cooldown thingy), nearly got killed by a jungle spider, and nearly got killed by a creeper.
On the plus side, following advice, instead of staying close to home, I wandered out as far as I could without getting caught outside at night, and managed to kill enough sheep for a wool hat, shirt, and pants on like, the third day. There where a lot of sheep.
Then I found pumpkins and tossed four chickens in safe hole, and now I have plenty of food.
I cannot believe how much difference a little bit of exploring has made.
To top it all off, I found a ravine that was largely open to the sun, with iron inside. I think I'll go there after I make enough ladders.
Few questions though.
1. Is it safe to go out during a thunderstorm? I'm hearing thunder outside, and I think it's raining too.
2. What is the best fuel to smelt iron ore with? I remember iron taking a very long time to smelt, and I don't want to use a bunch of wooden stuff just to find out that I don't have enough and waste the things, but I'm not sure if smelting iron is a good use for my coal, since if I remember correctly, each ore gives one nugget, meaning I need nine iron ore per ingot, and that's going to use a lot of coal
Birch gives you the best return. If you find birch trees, try to save the birch logs for fuel and just use other woods for sticks and whatnot. I spawned pretty much right in the middle of a plains/forest border so I used all the birch trees for fuel and was able to stockpile the coal and use it for torches instead. You don't really need to worry about smelting the iron until you have enough to make your hoe or pickaxe, anyway
Endermen make a thunderclap noise when they teleport back to the End, you could be hearing that. You should be careful exploring during a thunderstorm. It reduces the light level more than rain does, which makes it pretty likely that monsters will begin spawning in places they normally wouldn't, and since it's raining, the skeletons are free to chase you instead of hiding under a tree.
In that case, I think it might just be rain... I think I'll gather some more things then try nab all the exposed iron I can find.
Also, found a jungle temple at the edge of the jungle.Will it have anything worth raiding?(Note-as long as it's not totally empty, I think I might try to go in, even rotten flesh, bones, or string would be useful. I can't actually kill monsters for it... ok, I can kill some spiders for string, but it eats up too much food for healing and stuff)
Edit: Never mind, it's a full-blown thunderstorm, complete with zombies and spiders at the gates.
I don't think I'll be going out until it stops.
From my experience map features are always worth exploring, just a lot more far away from base. I've found ingots in chests nearer to spawn, so it's worth it. Just be careful there are a lot of places for mobs to hide in a jungle temple.
Worth noting that jungle spiders are rather bad news in the early game
Why were they added, anyway? Were jungles considered too easy to survive in, or was it just to make jungle biomes more interesting/frustrating?
It's really the hunger that makes them dangerous more than the poison. Gotta have milk on hand or prepare to eat like two days worth of food!
At one time jungles were actually a lot easier to survive in than any other biome due to mobs having pathing difficulties within them and such. Jungle spiders were intended to correct that as well as to increase biome diversity and give jungles a unique flavor. Thematically, they look and feel like they *should* be dangerous, and the spiders make that a reality.
Went closer chasing after a sheep, got scared half to death when I got hit by a flying web.
On the plus side, I got two string, which means a fishing rod, which means renewable food. Only lost two muttons to the hunger effect as well, so I think it was worth it. Now the question is, can I go in and out of the temple before the spiders eat me?
I have the torches for it, I have some armor, but after remembering spiders shoot webs, kinda hesitant to go somewhere with so little room to maneuver. I might just do it though if there's a chance for ingots. After all. even if I die, all I need to do is build up another base somewhere else, right?
Ever since I saw an interview with you on youtube years back FC, I've meant to come in just to compliment you and your work. I ended up agreeing with pretty much everything you said. It's actually been a few years since I've touched the game, but I wouldn't be surprised if its feature implementation is still random/unfocused. If I come back to it, it'll probably be just to play your mod.
I'm also surprised this is still ongoing; doubtless almost all of the other mods I used to play have long since died. Kudos to your dedication man.
The launcher updated again- theres now an additional step involved.
http://www.sargunster.com/btwforum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=8506&p=141890#p149981
It might be easier to use MCPatcher or MultiMC ect to install BTW.
A mighty machine built within the wake
Of a long dead dream, little demon awake
The citizens sleep, never quite knowing when
The device will reawaken, hungry again.
Ransacked the temple and got rotten flesh and a ton of bones, which is a good thing because killing skeletons for the bones would have been difficult.
The next day, the entrance to my little hole in the ground got blown up by three creepers. Managed to not die, but had to spend the rest of the day patching it back up. Will it be worth it to make something like a entrance tower only accessible by ladders?
Having to kill a spider or creeper like, every other day before I get out is kinda tiring.
Also, does tall grass regrow? There's tall grass where I could have sworn there wasn't any before.
Tall grass doesn't regrow
I frequently build an entrance ladder until I can safely build a wall around my larger base with multiple exits, but make sure you do it in a way that nothing but you can get to it.
Oh, I must have missed it then. It could also possibly the the creeper explosion that redirected my path to the tall grass without me noticing.
My entrance is now about 4 blocks off the ground. Spiders somehow still end up on the roof, and now, instead of killing a creeper every other day, I have to jump out my entrance at a sprint every other day... This safe entrance thing is harder than I thought.
One option I've went with before is to have a second exit. Mobs sit near one because it's the closest they can get to you, not as many will be near a further away exit.