Minecraft: Go West, Middle-Aged Man

Hard to believe that I haven’t worked on my Minecraft world for almost a month; I guess I’ve been too busy in my weekends, and Rock Band 3 takes priority. But I did find time today to play for an hour or two.

I’d been doing a lot of mining recently; that’s strangely soothing, but I’ve built up a fair supply of materials now, so I figured it was time to stretch my legs a bit. I’d headed north and south before, but I had very little idea of what was to the east and west; so I packed my bags and headed west. (Actually, I didn’t pack my bags very well: next time, I should bring a bed, to avoid the tedium of waiting out the nights.)

There’s a tree farm immediately to the west of my front door; I knew there was a bit of sand beyond that, but I wasn’t sure what was past the sand. And water north of that area; it wouldn’t have surprised me if the water curved south and turned the western voyage into a very short trip indeed! That turned out not to be the case: the scenery to the west was, honestly, a little boring, and I ended up going north a bit to hug the coastline.

Eventually, the terrain got a bit more varied, and I saw some mountains. There was a cave inside the mountains, but it didn’t end up being particularly large.

Continuing on from that, my next surprise was when I looked down at the grass below me and saw a hole! I dropped down, and it turned out to be another not particularly large cave, with a more normal exit on the other side.

I kept on going until nightfall; not too much in the way of further excitement.

Eventually, the sun rose, and I trudged on.

After a bit of hiking, I ran into a truly amazing cliff with a waterfall pouring down from it.

I swam up the waterfall; that cliff was really tall, bringing me up to cloud level! I’d never seen the clouds moving right past me before.

Somehow, I made it down without breaking my neck and kept going. The next bit that caught my eye was a canyon with water in the middle; for some reason, I felt like I should be flying a ship in a Star Wars game through it.

At this point, the sun was setting; I was in a winter region, with very tall trees.

I was almost ready to go home, but one last cave caught my eye, so I decided to take a closer look. And, when I went down there, it seemed quite deep, and there was iron visible, so I had to hop down and explore/mine.

And, unlike the previous caves I’d seen on this expedition, it kept going and going! Here’s an underground river, and another view down a steep drop, with what looks like water below. (And a light source, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see the water…)

As always when you have unexpected light in a cave, there was lava. (Like I said, this cave was very deep: I went all the way down from the surface to the lava layer.) And there were good mining opportunities to be found: I ended up with 25 iron and some redstone and gold as well.

At which point I was at the bottom of an enormous cave, with no clear idea of how to get up. (The vast majority of my descent had had a generous assist from gravity.) I didn’t even have a mental picture of which way I wanted to go; fortunately, at various points I could look up and see torches that I’d placed. So I took out my pickaxe and started climbing, finding a few more caves along the way.

At some point in the ascent, I ran out of torches; I wasn’t worried about coal, but I’ve never been so relieved to open my inventory and see that yes, I do have wood on me. (My pickaxe was running low, too, but I had a spare of that as well, and wood is all I need to construct more of them.) After quite a while, I eventually made it up to the top; and, as I reached the top, I broke through the ice and accidentally flooded the cave! I’m curious what effect the water had on the cave, but not curious enough to have actually gone down and checked…

A truly glorious cave; a pity that it’s so far away from home, and that I have very little idea how to get back there! At any rate, I turned around and started trudging home after that. Which didn’t take so long, I made it home the same day, because I knew which direction to go and didn’t stop to take pictures and explore caves.

As I got close (quite close, you can see a sapling from my tree farm), I noticed a cute little pool under the sand; funny how such pleasant surprises can be lurking under your feet!

Once I got home, I smelted the ore that I’d gotten in the cave, and, to prevent subsequent animal incursions into my house, followed Steven’s suggestion and replaced the dirt floors with cobblestone. Though I was sad to see that my chicken had disappeared; I guess the game doesn’t track mobs when you’re far away? A pity, I kind of liked having a pet…