Minecraft Forums

+ Link: City Construction Challenge
+ Description: Construct a city in this highly detailed challenge. There are several buildings and constraints and this is a lengthy and difficult challenge.

+ Link: Desert Oasi
+ Description: Survive on a custom terraformed desert oasis. Complete a variety of tasks with limited resources in a harsh land.

+ Link: Skyblock
+ Description: Survive and thrive in the sky with limited resources. The player starts with a chest and limited supplies. They must build a cobblestone generator to start, then expand their small block to include many improvements.

+ Link: Survival Island
+ Description: You are trapped on the one and only desert island. Use your survival skills and limited resources to accomplish a variety of minecraft goals.

+ Link: The Tree Spirit
+ Description: The player must play from their home tree for this entire challenge. The tree can be grown by placing more trees, placing logs, or placing leaves. A variety of tasks must be completed to win.

+ Link: Vech's Super Hostile Series
+ Description: A variety of survival challenge maps ranging in difficulty. Must download the different maps as they are custom made. Very challenging.

+ Link: Mercenary Challenge
+ Description: Find a village and work your way up to great warrior status. As you complete missions and help the village more work will come your way.

+ Link: Post-Nuclear War
+ Description: Live in a bunker with many rules imposed by a nuclear bombing. You must not go outside under most circumstances and you must heat your entire base!

+ Link: Run a Hotel
+ Description: Start at one star and work to five as you build and run a hotel. Every specified improvement you add works towards your overall goal of a 5-star hotel.

+ Link: Town in a box
+ Description: Build a town out of a starting set of materials (or your own). All materials must fit into a chest.

+ Link: Under Water Challenge
+ Description: Dive underwater and build a base. Once you are underwater you must not surface. From the underwater base, finish a variety of objectives.

+ Link: Valdark's Challenge
+ Description: Simple - Make it to the end on hardcore. Maybe not so simple. Great use of pictures to spice up the presentation

+ Link: Eco-Friendly Challenge
+ Description: Any resource you use must be replenished as you accomplish a very wide variety of Minecraft goals..

+ Link: Elemental Challenge
+ Description: Complete a variety of common challenge tasks while be restricted to only one type of biome based on your element.

To start producing blocks of any sort, that cactus block needs to grow, and with that you can go: 8 cactus -> 4 logs -> 1 sapling. With the latest Philosopher's Stone upgrades, you can call up a crafting grid anywhere, without a crafting table, so no need to create that!

So, 3 redstone -> 2 coal.
1 coal -> 1 cobblestone.
1 cobblestone -> 4 dirt.
1 dirt -> 1 sand. You now have 1 coal, 3 dirt and 1 sand.
Place the dirt alongside the existing sand, causing it to fall. Use the remaining dirt to make a little platform.
Place the sand on a dirt block, and the cactus on top.
Wait for it to grow (gonna be several long, dark nights...); save up 8 cactus.
8 cactus -> 4 logs -> 1 sapling
Plant the sapling and wait for it to grow.
Harvest the tree logs, gather dropped saplings, re-plant saplings
Repeat until you have 7 logs. 7 logs plus 1 coal (saved from first redstone conversion) = 7 charcoal.
7 charcoal -> 7 cobblestone -> 28 dirt
Expand platform, grow more trees, convert logs to charcoal to cobble.
Build a furnace, stock it with charcoal.
32 cobblestone -> 4 redstone ore -> 1 iron ore. Save up 96 cobblestone for 3 iron ore, smelt it into iron ingots and make a bucket.
2 charcoal -> 3 redstone, redstone + charcoal + bucket = lava bucket. cactus + bucket = water bucket. Now you can create a cobblestone generator and go from there!