"Oo! Mushrooms!"
December 20, 2010 10:43 AM   Subscribe

First Time to the Nether! (SLYT) If you like hearing people being endearingly excited and/or Minecraft, you'll like this.
posted by jragon (56 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
Boy, I haven't had that much fun in a long damn time. I'm a bit jealous. :)
posted by Malor at 10:48 AM on December 20, 2010 [1 favorite]


That was pretty charming.
posted by crickets at 10:50 AM on December 20, 2010


The Nether: It sounds like a baby crying in reverse.
posted by Avenger50 at 10:51 AM on December 20, 2010


I loved this bit:

"What kind of terrible sounds are these?"

"Ooh, mushrooms!"
posted by kmz at 10:51 AM on December 20, 2010 [10 favorites]


Maybe that double rainbow guy has me spoiled, but I expected much much more.
posted by echo target at 10:57 AM on December 20, 2010


DOUBLE DIAMOND SEAM! OH MAN!
posted by The Whelk at 11:00 AM on December 20, 2010


Minecraft: the bastard issue of an unholy union between D&D, Kingdom of Loathing and Nethack. Minecraft is retro the way an Akkadian bible is retro.
posted by clvrmnky at 11:06 AM on December 20, 2010


Don't worry about food...we'll be serving breakfast when you get there!
posted by Smart Dalek at 11:10 AM on December 20, 2010


Nice diagonal staircase at 0:10. I'll be stealing that design.
posted by Iridic at 11:12 AM on December 20, 2010


In related news - minecraft went beta today and plenty of people are reporting that the new build is a dog. It won't even launch properly for most mac users, and I went from 90+ fps to <10 fps when I upgraded on Linux. You may want to play offline for a couple of days until it gets fixed... ;(
posted by samworm at 11:18 AM on December 20, 2010


yeah it's a bumpy start, the Mefightclub server is down ..which always happens right when I get a bug to do something new .....
posted by The Whelk at 11:19 AM on December 20, 2010


WHAT KIND OF TERRIBLE SOUNDS ARE THESE? Ooh, mushrooms!

Nice haiku-like summary of the entire Minecraft experience.
posted by naju at 11:26 AM on December 20, 2010 [2 favorites]


I was going to comment on that diagonal staircase. Talk about suboptimal design. But cool looking! Check out the hexagons!

It also reminds me, I was wishing I had a "measure tool" last night. I'm building a railroad parallel to a subway and would like a simpler way of checking lengths than "time how long it takes to run that distance".
posted by DU at 11:27 AM on December 20, 2010


DU: "It also reminds me, I was wishing I had a "measure tool" last night. I'm building a railroad parallel to a subway and would like a simpler way of checking lengths than "time how long it takes to run that distance"."

Hold down F3. You'll get a set of X, Y and Z coordinates along with everything else.
posted by charred husk at 11:42 AM on December 20, 2010 [4 favorites]


That was rather endearing. I remember how excited and enthusiastic I was when I first went to the Nether. But it only took about a day for it to dawn on me that the Nether actually kind of sucks and is terribly boring.
posted by Gator at 11:43 AM on December 20, 2010


Hold down F3. You'll get a set of X, Y and Z coordinates along with everything else.

omg now I can't wait to get home!

But it only took about a day for it to dawn on me that the Nether actually kind of sucks and is terribly boring.

Agreed. And it totally screwed up my world or I couldn't get back out or something, because I always hid this HUGE nether-y place sitting there.
posted by DU at 11:52 AM on December 20, 2010


Those sounds are nothing. You should have heard how horrible it was when the Ghasts were able to take damage from fire and lava and so they were constantly screaming (even that video doesn't really capture it, but it's closer).
posted by straight at 11:53 AM on December 20, 2010 [2 favorites]


Oh, that reminds me, I'm not playing Minecraft right now. Weeelllp gotta go!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:05 PM on December 20, 2010 [2 favorites]


Beta is out, btw.
posted by empath at 12:27 PM on December 20, 2010


I haven't been able to find a features list for the Beta upgrade. Anyone help me out?
posted by rebent at 12:56 PM on December 20, 2010


I guess this entry on Notch's blog qualifies.

Throwing eggs and "something rare"? Hmmm. If anybody finds out what this entails, please share.
posted by Gator at 12:58 PM on December 20, 2010


It's interesting that the guy felt like he had to set up like a temple room for the portal, because I ended up doing something similar. Building the portal on the top of the hill inside which I constructed my base, on top of a pyramid of cobblestone. Then I walled the whole thing in glass. Then with water pouring over the glass from above. Then a tunnel leading down into the base.

I'm probably just a little too obsessive about Minecraft at the moment now that I think about it.
posted by JHarris at 1:17 PM on December 20, 2010 [1 favorite]


WHAT KIND OF TERRIBLE SOUNDS ARE THESE? Ooh, mushrooms!
Nice haiku-like summary of the entire Minecraft experience.


Or a phish concert.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 1:46 PM on December 20, 2010 [24 favorites]


the Nether actually kind of sucks and is terribly boring.
Yeah. There's nothing to do in the Nether. I tried making houses for the pig men so that they would love me and see me as a god of good things but they didn't care. They might have worshiped me if my plans had come to fruition but it turns out that you cannot, no matter how hard you try, create a swimming pool in the Nether. So I chipped out a bunch of eternal hell fire blocks and took them on home to make flaming pixellated sculptures and then. . . that's it. There is no point, as far as I can see, to the Nether.
posted by mygothlaundry at 3:17 PM on December 20, 2010 [1 favorite]


Fast travel, and whenever he gets around to making torches go out, the glowstone will be useful.

On a multiplayer server, portals or teleports of some kind rather quickly become non-optional. Ideally it'll be built into the game somehow rather than something hacked in.
posted by empath at 3:23 PM on December 20, 2010


These nether videos don't make me any less worried about the state of minecraft. I hate to say it but he needs a pm to make him focus instead of going off on whatever tangent he feels like.
posted by Ad hominem at 3:30 PM on December 20, 2010


There are warp points on SMP though, right? And the red netherstone is perpetually burning, easy to mine, and plentiful, making it a decent, if somewhat cumbersome, permanent light source. Even when torches eventually go out, I can't see myself wasting the effort to mine lightstone unless it's needed for something useful.

And I was pretty ticked off when he announced that the ghasts and pigmen would no longer take lava damage. That was one of the things I liked about the Nether, even though the constant screaming was hellish. If the ghasts and pigmen at least dropped something unique, instead of stuff you could get more easily and safely on the surface, or if there was a unique block type that was actually used for something cool, there'd be some point to the Nether, but until then, meh.
posted by Gator at 3:32 PM on December 20, 2010


The thing about requiring Glowstone to have permanent light sources is, it's really hard to come by. You have to go to the Nether, which requires 14 obsidian blocks. To get obsidian you have to mine down at least until you find lava. To do that you have to tunnel down for a long while, which makes you vulnerable to the torches you post to keep your way save burning out. So to get the obsidian you need reliable lighting, but to get reliable lighting you need obsidian. This isn't even bothering to think about the tremendous effort required to find the three diamonds needed to make a pick that can harvest obsidian.

Additionally, with all those torches burning out regularly it means that those bases we all love to build become more like deathtraps than safe havens.
posted by JHarris at 3:42 PM on December 20, 2010 [1 favorite]


The first time I went into the Nether it kept reminding me of the strip club I had gone to a couple of weeks earlier. I finally figured out that what was making me think of a strip club was the Nether's weirdo lighting. And that's the only thing the Nether has going for it in my opinion; it's basically just boring and pointless. Also, there's no strippers.

I quit playing Minecraft suddenly a couple of weeks ago because I got bored with the whole thing. I guess I'll have to try out the new beta version.
posted by cropshy at 3:45 PM on December 20, 2010


Reading mygothlaundry's comments about Minecraft is almost as much fun as actually playing Minecraft.

I've yet to see the Nether. Because I can't mine obsidian. Because I can't find any diamond. Because I am reluctant to dig any deeper because I keep hitting a water table that floods out my tunnel. Because I built on a narrow peninsula for purposes of defense and I've put so much work into it that I'm reluctant to pick up stakes and start elsewhere. But the cactus hedge-maze is coming along nicely.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:48 PM on December 20, 2010 [1 favorite]


This is my new favorite minecraft review.

It’s also a solipsist’s god sim… with all of the loneliness and pathos that implies.
posted by empath at 3:49 PM on December 20, 2010 [2 favorites]


BOP:

Dig all the way down to bedrock. When you hit the very bottom, go back up about 10-12 levels. Then dig straight ahead. I promise you, you will find diamond within about 5-15 minutes of digging, along with a ton of iron, redstone, and gold, and very little lava. Diamond only exists 1-16 levels from the bottom, lava mostly exists up to about 10 levels from the bottom
posted by empath at 3:52 PM on December 20, 2010 [1 favorite]


Oh, I know where to look for diamond. It's finding access to that stratum without first hitting water from within my Impregnable Fortress of Extremely Well-Lit And Tastefully Appointed Corridors that's the problems.

The easy solution is to go a few hundred yards (blocks? What's Minecraft's unit of measurement? Gotta be blocks, right?), um, centiblocks, rather, from the entrance and start another mine, which I could then join to my fortress via minecart.....

Hmmm.....


Well, there goes MY evening.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 4:07 PM on December 20, 2010


Nah, the best way to find diamond is in the caves. Just take off and start looking for caves. Digging is so boring. The caves, on the other hand, are the farthest thing from boring: they're terrifying. That is why, I confess, I explore them in Peaceful mode. Well, actually I wait until I kill three or four creepers and take some skeleton damage and then I switch to peaceful mode, having proven my mettle. But then you're in the cave and it's super cool and you just keep on going down until you get to both lava and flowing water and lo, there will almost certainly be diamonds. And gold. And flat lava that you can then make into obsidian by moving the river over. It will kill you when you go to mine it but whatever, you will come back and try again.
posted by mygothlaundry at 4:15 PM on December 20, 2010 [5 favorites]


I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of redstone and coal
And the creeper said "Well, blow up my soul."
posted by drezdn at 4:16 PM on December 20, 2010 [2 favorites]


Wait wait wait. What's this about torches going out? I've never had that. Is that a new feature that I'm going to hate?

It's finding access to that stratum without first hitting water...

Dig through the water. Build a coffer dam, bucket the water out and dig down.
posted by DU at 5:47 PM on December 20, 2010


The torch thing was supposed to be part of the Halloween update, but he wasn't able to get it working in time. Apparently it's still on the back burner. Existing torches (even ones in crates, supposedly) would be turned into lanterns and keep burning forever, but any new torches you made would eventually burn out and have to be reignited. People were going nuts crafting stockpiles of torches in anticipation. It's presumed that the lightstone or glowstone (gold blocks from the Nether) will be needed to make the perpetually-burning lanterns.
posted by Gator at 5:58 PM on December 20, 2010


I wasn't on board with the Notch-bashing, but torch timeouts might just do it. That's seriously bogus. I hate the Nether and redstone is semi-rare and not very bright. Maybe I can make my 11 year old go mine it for me.
posted by DU at 6:13 PM on December 20, 2010


I wish I had paid more attention. I only just realized that giving out a Minecraft Alpha key to people might be a good holiday gift for the semi-geeks. Unfortunately, now it's in beta, and eventually the keys will stop letting you update unless you pay.

Today's beta launch was devastating. I don't know anyone who runs an existing server that's been able to get it to work. Not only that, fixing item durability and the impending torch durability is going to make this game a lot more frustrating. Especially on servers that are heavy into the creativity and not the survival aspects.

Re: fast travel, teleporting is nice, but a minecart subway is the way to go. I just need to figure out how to get unlimited minecarts working.

Anyway, I'm just waiting for the day when someone turns this into a front end for Dwarf Fortress. Then I can finally withdraw from society completely.
posted by chemoboy at 8:16 PM on December 20, 2010


Nah, the best way to find diamond is in the caves

Maybe the most entertaining way, but most of any given cave system is going to be over the diamond level and won't have any diamonds at all. You'll get a huge amount of iron, some smaller amount of gold and redstone, and if you're lucky, you'll hit maybe one seam of diamonds. I explored a huge cave system with a friend on saturday for over an hour with a friend on Sunday. It went from surface to bedrock and our haul was about 300 iron, 60 gold, over 100 redstone, far more coal than we even bothered to pick up and 5 diamond.

Had I just been mining straight corridors at the right level for that amount of time, it would have been less fun, but if have gotten about 5 times that amount of diamonds.

On the other hand, just digging straight across 10-16 blocks from the bottom will absolutely guarantee you diamond within 15 minutes or so.
posted by empath at 8:55 PM on December 20, 2010 [1 favorite]


I really should not make long posts from my iPhone. Ignore the redundancies in that one, please.
posted by empath at 9:08 PM on December 20, 2010


If you can find enough lava springs (or a lava pool) you can farm the lava to make a portal without needing diamonds. Use dirt like this to do it:

Bottom row:
DDDD
DLLD
DDDD

Sides:
XDXXDX
DLDDLD
XDXXDX

D = dirt, L = lava X = air. Do one layer at a time and pour water over the lava blocks, turning them into obsidian. It can be a bit fiddly to build, but it's worth it if you can't get to any diamonds. You also only need 10 "blocks" of lava, not 14. You can miss the corners out.

I think the Nether is supposed to be boring because Notch added it as a way to move about the map pretty quickly, rather than as a useful dimension that you'd want to stay in.
posted by Solomon at 12:00 AM on December 21, 2010


You don't actually need diamonds to make a portal -- if you've found some still lava, some water, and enough iron to make a couple buckets, you can make your own obsidian in a portal-shaped dirt mold. It's a little fiddly, but it's not difficult, and it's often quicker than searching for diamond and hoping.

I don't recommend going without a bow and an assload of arrows, though. And enough stone to build a ghast-proof bunker.
posted by rifflesby at 12:08 AM on December 21, 2010


Great minds etc.
posted by rifflesby at 12:10 AM on December 21, 2010


I think the Nether is supposed to be boring because Notch added it as a way to move about the map pretty quickly, rather than as a useful dimension that you'd want to stay in.

I think the Neither isn't supposed to be boring, but Notch is still iterating through ideas.
posted by JHarris at 12:21 AM on December 21, 2010


BTW, on the cofferdam idea:

I have built a large room of my base on my local Minecraft install under water, out of glass blocks, and managed to remove the water from the inside. Looks awesome both from the surface and from inside. I'm currently in the middle of a project for getting grass to grow there, so I'll have animals spawning randomly inside my little Sealab.
posted by JHarris at 12:30 AM on December 21, 2010


The thing about requiring Glowstone to have permanent light sources is, it's really hard to come by. You have to go to the Nether, which requires 14 obsidian blocks.
- posted by JHarris at 3:42 PM on December 20


10 obsidian blocks, actually - you can leave out the corners:
-##-
#--#
#--#
#--#
-##-
posted by Nossidge at 2:39 AM on December 21, 2010


I really wish the resources in minecraft were less evenly distributed. As it is now, it doesn't really matter where you mine, outside of a cave, you're going to find the same amount of minerals. What I'd like to see is two things -- 1) more concentrated seams of minerals, spread further apart, 2) Some connection between surface features and the distribution of materials beneath them (ie mountains in a jungle biome have 20% more diamonds), and 3) Biome specific flora and fauna.

The idea being that it rewards exploration, extending roads and tracks further out, building colonies, etc. It encourages the development of an economy on a MP server (exchanging iron for diamonds, etc). Right now the only resource that really rewards surface exploration is clay.
posted by empath at 6:00 AM on December 21, 2010 [1 favorite]


Right now the only resource that really rewards surface exploration is clay.

Also pumpkins, which make better light sources than torches (brighter, waterproof).

For me, the awesome terrain generator rewards surface exploration enough to keep me playing. But I agree, more stuff to find would be awesome. I really hope Notch follows through on his plans to create mob villages.
posted by straight at 9:38 AM on December 21, 2010


Also the Slime Balls will serve some obscure purpose in the future.
posted by The Whelk at 9:58 AM on December 21, 2010


Oh, for crying out loud. So apparently the "something rare" that was teased in the Beta update is just a skin modeled on some DJ. Yay.

Notch needs a few lessons in not making people think they're getting something awesome when they're actually getting something pointless.
posted by Gator at 2:32 PM on December 21, 2010


The guy doing the I've-never-played-before-and-I'm-going-to-play-a-world-only-until-I-get-killed Minecraft Experiment just finished his portal in the latest installment.
posted by Evilspork at 3:59 PM on December 21, 2010


Things I found out the hard way: You can no longer do the item reset glitch :( Also armor takes damage.
posted by empath at 6:57 PM on December 21, 2010


Minedraft! Apparently this has been all over Reddit for a month, but it's new to me. An end at last to poorly proportioned windows.
posted by Iridic at 1:32 PM on December 22, 2010 [1 favorite]


That's pretty nifty.
posted by Gator at 1:38 PM on December 22, 2010


Neat. I'm in the midst of designing a rail station. That will come in useful.
posted by empath at 2:29 PM on December 22, 2010


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