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!
I think I started playing around 1.3, I'm not entirely sure.
I was weird back then, wasn't I?
I joined back in beta 1.7.3... right on the edge of the 1.8 patch.
I recently heard my friends talking about a game (Which I thought) was called Mindcraft. Then they started talking about sticks, so naturally I'm like "WTF ARE YOU PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT?!?" So one of them offered to tell me, but I had to buy it first. After buying it with my mothers money, I invite my friend over to teach me the basics. He inserts a seed that spawned me on a small island in between two large land masses. He told me to go towards a hole, and jump in, which I do. Then he tells me to dig up the sand. As I dig, an awkward cage thing appears. (My first dungeon came pretty early!) After exploring a little while, I find my first tree which was right above a small cave. I punch the tree as told to by my friend, with difficulties as I spam clicked and didn't hold down. Then I got a sapling and placed it. I dug up some dirt and went on my merry way. Then I built a house on a beach, made of dirt, planks, and logs. I then live for minecraft weeks on end, improving my house little by little, growing in skill and knowledge as I progressed. Then, one day, the inevitable. A creeper spawned in my house, blew me up, blew up my bed, and I never found it again. The last thing I remember of that world is the single sapling I placed on top of the cave, and deleting it out of pure rage.
This was beta 1.7.3, and now we're about to go into 1.7
My first spawn, I remember it well. It was on a beach, back when people always spawned on beaches. I went for a walk to try and find a tree, I knew trees were the first thing to look for but that was the extent of my knowledge. I fell into what I can only describe as a crater or gorge. It had trees, sand, water and animals. I never left it.
I made a main building and everything off it was connected with glass corridors because I feared the monsters outside. I hadn't even realized you could craft swords at this point, I had only just found out you could make shovels I only knew of the pickaxe and axe XD It took me about a week to realize how to plant wheat.
I hid from monsters for ages, to the point where I would completely close off areas of a cave if something spawned in there. I used too many torches and didn't realize the furnace existed until I accidentally tried to make a chest out of cobblestone. That was when I learnt about iron and I found redstone for the first time. I thought it was just decoration lighting, like fairy lights.
After a while I went to university and had to stop playing, but I kept up to date on stuff and read the wiki almost daily to learn more about it. I started watching Youtubers play it, the first video I remember watching of Minecraft being SSoHPKCs where he said he would probably never play the game again after a few episodes, yet he still plays it today XD. Then the Yogscast really helped bring the game along with their Israphel series which kinda lost its meaning after a while.
Then I found out about multiplayer. The first server I went on was with a user called Yustle, I had fun messing about but he'd already built a place to live and had pretty much done everything so there wasn't much for me to do. He suddenly just dropped off the map one day. Then I found the server I am still on today, The Cooked Porkchop. It didn't have a name back then, it was just a vanilla server with no name and no rep. Then the admin asked for name suggestions, I was using a furnace to cook food at the time and jokingly said "the cooked porkchop". He liked it so much it stayed XD
And here I am now, up to date all the time with things, still no idea how redstone works, moderator of the server and repping my Transformers Tracks skin because robots XD
That's the short story anyway.
We were all newbies once...
My friend started to show me how to play on his laptop. I was instantly hooked. When I got it, I called him over right away. We got a skin for me and I made my first world. Survival of course. We searched for a while until we found a smooth spot near a desert and taiga, next to a small hill. I built my 7x7 wood plank house that had a bed, a chest, furnace, and crafting table, before he had to leave.
He came back the next day and I built a second floor where I put my bed. He noticed that there was some blocks missing from the other day. I explained to him that a green thing came up behind me and blew up. He told me it was a Creeper. My exact words were "Creepy." We had a laugh
A week passed when my friend came back to see how I was doing. I had built a 3 story brick house with a rooftop sniper hut, a basement made of mossy cobblestone and cobble, with a painting-secret room where I put all my stuff, a small hovel where I had a "Storm bunker" for funsies, a gigantic tree made of 5x2 oak saps that stretched up to at least 60 blocks high, and to top it all off, A huge cobblestone wall that protected my land with a water moat around it on the outside, with two sniper towers. He was surprised to say the least
He explained that because I had so much diamond stuff, that I needed to go to the Nether. I was confused, not knowing what the Nether was. He told me to go get some obsidian, so I brought him a stack XD. He built a portal and asked for a light. I got a Flint and Steel and he lit the portal for me. It was very tempting, so I ran in.
The world loaded for a few minutes (at the time it was 1.2.4 so the generation was slow) and then I got the achievement "We got to go deeper!" He told me not to hit any mob until I told him. So what did I do? Hit a pigman.
Anyway, Now that world has a tree that goes to the max height, a 4 story brick and netherbrick house with the same basement (just more furnaces) 6 beacons, a lava-disposal system, a fireplace, tons of wolves, 3 sniping towers, the cobblestone wall now has a fire moat instead of a water moat, and also has fire on the top (pesky spiders) as well as an auto-farm, tons of chickens, sheep, and cows, and to top it all off, a Dragon Egg surrounded with Diamond Blocks and glass.
This took maybe 4 months to build all of it.
I was enjoying my peaceful (set on hard) world when my friend mentioned Multiplayer. I have went into it a few times but never really wanted to join a server. He gave me two IPs, one for a survival server and one for a minigame server. I still have those two IPs in my list.
I guess you could say that I was addicted at the start, I just say that I have a ton of spare time
(by the way I'm totally addicted)
I also totally have a 8 story house made of diamond blocks in a creative world
Spent the first few days punching trees, wandering the world and experimenting with crafting. I would hide in the walls at night, holding my head, praying the moans outside would stop. I tried going out and facing my fears once.. next thing I know, I'm in the middle of nowhere, in the dark with nothing.
I decided to make a massive dirt castle with a tower that reached up into the clouds. I dubbed it "Tower of Ambi" in hopes that where ever I was in the world, I would see the tower and know how to find home.
I obviously didn't understand chunk rendering back then.
When I died, I checked the skyline and saw nothing but clouds. I never found the Tower of Ambi again.
I downloaded it off of his recommendation and proceeded to start wandering aimlessly through the tutorial world. After a few minutes of this I started digging with my hand straight down. It wasn't till things got dark and I couldn't see that I started to get claustrophobic. I was in a hole in the ground with no way out that I could see. I dug deeper, and soon found that the blocks took longer to give way. I turned the game off after I found bedrock and was completely disorientated.
The next day I started to actually play the game - discovered what redstone was all about, and found CNB's tutorials through youtube.
I was hooked from that point on.
Minecraft Beta 1.7.3:
So, I got to play Minecraft in July of 2011, my friend showed me the game, and I thought I'd convince my parents into buying it for me. I barely knew anything about the game. I didn't even know how to dig blocks. I was clicking the blocks as if this was Cookie Clicker, and soon figured out how to mine dirt. I named my world "htraE", expecting Earth upside down... lol. I spawned on a desert hill, next to a Plateu like biome. It became night very fast, and I didn't know about the monsters. I had about a 10x20 dirt room halfway into the ground. I had no logs. My friend told me that Monsters burn up in the day.
So, it became day again, and I guess what blew my mind. Yep, those nasty, green, creepy buggers( ) It became night again super quick, and I died, respawned, died, respawned again, and so on. I killed a spider, though! I got string, then died.
I gave up for a while. Sadly, not knowing the consequences of DELETING worlds, I deleted htraE and started to watch YouTube. I learned the seed "worstseedever" and found my first ores, and Diamonds. Does anyone else remember that seed? I had a lot of fun and find myself so nostalgic while I play Minecraft to this day. I still play that one "worstseedever" world. And find myself building, and building, and building... using the Nether portal dupe( ). I love my Minecraft world.
It starts off, with the trees. I randomly started punching the trees, eventually yelling 'DAAAAAAAAAAAD MINECRAFT IS BROKEN!!!'
I later decided to hold, the left mouse button, figuring out it worked, I said 'Oh, nevermind!' and moved on.
I traveled quite a ways with my logs. I figured out how to make a workbench and made my first pickaxe *wiki I luv you*
Then I started to make my home.
When it became night, I felt I was safe with walls around me. However I had no roof, so spiders could crawl up-That I did not know.
So later I was freaking out, basically crying. Eventually I died, looked everywhere for my home, I couldn't find it. So, I rage quit, deleted the world, and moved on with life. *aka crying in a pillow*
Is that a reference to The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages?
Anyway, my first night was in creative. I spawned in a jungle, built a shack near a lake out of wood that I dubbed "the pioneer house", and tried to make a crafting table by placing oak wood planks in a 2x2 square. When that failed, I kept blowing up TNT until I punched into a cave system, then built a "mining facility"- pretty much just a cubic building made out of iron, lit with redstone torches (I couldn't understand why it was so dark ), decorated with several exhibits of ores (I used an obsidian block as a substitute for a coal block because this was back in 1.2.5, way before coal blocks were added) and with a derpy yellow wisp pixel art on the ceiling (this was shortly after I got Sonic Colors)- above the pit. After many failed attempts, I finally built a Nether portal out of sheer curiosity to see what the Nether was like. I got hopelessly lost. I tried to get back by building another portal, hoping I would be close to my house. I wasn't. After wandering hopelessly, I finally gave up, settled in a cave in another jungle, and built a hut out of gold and diamond ore. Then I tried survival mode.
My first time in survival mode was fun. Basically, I ran around in a desert until I found a forest. I was used to instantly breaking blocks in creative mode, so my fruitless rapid-clicking on a tree perplexed me to no end. I finally googled "how to get wood in Minecraft". A quick look at the wiki revealed that I had to hold left-click to break a block. By that time it was nighttime, so I gave up and deleted my world.
It's amazing how time flies, isn't it? Maybe I'll go back to my first world and use command blocks to link my first and second bases...
My first REAl night was building a undeground sand house and having to empty my inventory of valueables because i didmn't know chests needed a gap at the top.
But, there was one world i remember in particular. The update that added Birch trees spawned me in a valley in wchich I made a cave my home. I hardly ever ventured out but over 10 escapes from that cave were made. It finally paid off when I installed a bunch of mods that allowed me to spawn about 200 zombies. My seige defence was unsucsessful and my home overrun and destroyed. There was an old ultility called the Teeth of Time. It aged your worlds physically. I used it and the file stays in my vault and will be for the rest of time.
Then I learned about hunting... that was fun... back in the days of the "arrow spamming bow". Those were the good old days.