Hi everyone, this is just a post for me to document my first Minecraft world. No idea if anyone will find this interesting but I thought it may be fun to document it. This post will focus on my main base and some of the Beta area and in the future I may post other builds in the world.
I was introduced to Minecraft in 2011 when my brother was excited to show me a demo of a game that he described as a world made of blocks like lego, but at night zombies, skeletons and explosive camoflauged things try and kill you. I was really interested in the demo he showed me and immediately knew I wanted to try it so I purchased the game for him and I (it was about £5 to buy Minecraft back then).
I created my first world in Beta 1.6 (for ages I remembered it incorrectly as 1.5 but is definitely 1.6) and I really had no idea what I was doing. I saw my brother get some planks in the demo so I did the same, and tried to build a house. I must have been incredibly slow at doing so as I remember being killed by zombies and skeletons and decided to build elsewhere. I still have the ruins of this house on my world, and these would be the first blocks I ever placed in Minecraft:
Following this was my second house attempt, but this was again unsuccessful when creepers blew it up, and when I died without a bed I couldn't find the house again. The ruins are unfortunately no longer there as I used the resources for another project and later a giant tree was built over the ruins. I could still find the ruins of my first base attempt so I used that as a guide when journeying from spawn, and decided to cave into a mountain, secure a base, and then build a tower upward. This is what I did and it became my first successful base that I still use today. I unfortunately don't have many images of this time, but I built a castle tower, then decided that I could make it into a full castle. I asked my brother to make a copy of my world in creative (he is more technical than I am) so that I could experiment, and I have a picture of this creative test world that I sent to my girlfriend (we are married now) for her thoughts- here it is:
I pretty much used this design for my castle, not exactly but similar, in the original survival world. I named the base "Castle Pow" as my nickname is Pow. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures as back then I had no idea I would find the progress images interesting in the future or I'd even still play Minecraft a decade later. And following on from this, I played this world until the official Minecraft Release came out. Around this time, all the biomes changed and Castle Pow was now in a swamp and later was mountain/wooded mountain. I wasn't really a fan of the grass colour as I was used to the bright green grass round the castle, I did carry on playing but wasn't as keen on the biome changes. I played into 1.2, 1.3 and a bit beyond that but did gradually start to play it less.
I still played quite a bit of Minecraft in those years but pretty casually and I have one fairly long-running world where I took over a Woodland Mansion. I got into Minecraft quite a bit more around its resurgence in 2018 and 2019 and I did begin to wonder about my original world. EDIT: I should really credit DallasMed65 who was a massive inspiration to me and around 2018/2019, I loved seeing him play and develop his old Minecraft world. It really inspired me that he could keep a world that was years old running, and I did begin to wonder about my first world.
I thought at this stage it was lost to history as I had changed computer a few times. But one night I was looking through my laptop for some old MP3 files and stumbled across a folder called "Old Minecraft". I have no recollection of making this folder, but I went in and to my surprise, there was my original world
I booted it up and all the memories came flooding back. I decided to play the world again, and I started having a lot of fun with it. This might annoy some survival purists but I did move some structures from my other survival world so I could carry on where I left off on my other world. I didn't give myself items or cheat in creative, I just wanted some of my favourite builds ported over so I could make this world my permanent Minecraft home, so a couple were moved over. Looking back, I am not sure if I would have done this now- but to me it's part of the world's history at this point.
I was still not super keen on some of the biome changes caused by seed shifting in the Beta areas (when the world was created, biome data was processed "on the fly" and not stored in actual chunks like it is currently with Anvil format, so biomes were liable to change during any Minecraft updates- meaning what was previously forest could become desert, or swamp etc). I thought some biomes in the Beta areas were quite out-of-place following this. This is something that happens when playing a Alpha or Beta world in current version Minecraft. So after discussing with some friends and asking opinions on this forum, I decided to do use World Edit, and make all the Beta areas forest to be more like I remembered the world, with as seamless as possible transitions to the new terrain.
I did a sympathetic restoration of Castle Pow to bring it into the modern era. Inside the castle was a bit of a maze, so I kept some the same and updated the rest. I wanted it to be my main base, so I textured the castle a bit, but kept the "soul" the same, as in keeping the four-tower keep mostly original, just textured and some trap door shutters etc, and adding a house and kitchen area. Here's a picture of the castle from that 2019 era, pre forest biome. I had removed biome data with NBT Explorer to see if that improved things and I think this was 1.14 biome data which was mountain. As I say, eventually I decided to change it with world edit to Forest and I have kept it that way ever since:
I began to play the world more, and in the end, uploaded it as a server so I could play with my wife and brother who are also Minecraft fans. I built a village around Pow:
Finally I did want to extend the castle a bit without changing it much, so taking inspiration from Pyke from Game of Thrones I added some side towers, as well as a storage room underground beneath one of these towers (under the old keep is still a labyrinth of 2011-era mines, secret enterances and such).
Castle Pow now has a storage room, mini display of 2011 items and tools, a creeper farm, sugar cane areas, and a skeleton spawner XP farm. And that's about it for this post, I might do the Nether, End and other builds in this world in the future, thanks
1
That actually sounds great! That way, it can technically happen in all modes. That way, no griefing for people who don't want this, and fishg and I get our epic fight!
1
That sounds correct in theory but like the last guy said, Mojang wants you to really earn that piece of string. Not by getting it from a passive mob.
1
I guess some seeds are better than others. On my Realm, End City was only an island away. Nobody wanted to bridge because we were messing around and were daring each other to knock people off.
1
Yeah, I can find a gateway back the the End Island about every 2-3 islands.
2
Yeah. Very few people actually go through the effort of building villager farms that look a little more homely. I copied DanTDM's villager farm building from his hardcore series in creative mode because I didn't feel like shepherding them in.
2
Yes, but Hollywood spread the character around a whole lot and gave me nightmares for a week afterwards.
1
I just save the coordinates of the entry point somewhere and then explore. Either that or build huge cobblestone pillars to track my progress.
1
First time I managed to use the "elephant in the room" joke ever.
2
Tis a sad life for thou art villagers that are nothing but traders to thou art players.
2
I raided an End City in less than 30 minutes with 3-4 of my Realm friends. Other than that, I have never ventured to an End City in survival.