There are very few games I purchase for PC outside of Steam. This is mostly due to convenience but there’s also rarely a game that is available on PC that is not available there. However, this game is exceptional in more ways than one. Not only is it the second best selling game of all time, it is one of a kind in its graphical design and style. Developed and published by Mojang Studios in 2009, this game has captured every platform and bled into pop culture much like Mario and Zelda. It, now, even has a movie. It’s also a game I have yet to finish. It’s my pleasure to say that I am playing with the goal of completing Minecraft! And I’m not doing it alone. My good friend, Art, is joining my quest to fight the Ender Dragon, as we have so many times before.
I have played Minecraft off and on over the years, especially in the past 5 years after graduate school. I’ve never had a bad time with the game. It is equally peaceful and chaotic, a mindless journey and a scream fest. However, I frequently would lose direction with Minecraft. Part of the fun of this game is exploring the massive randomly generated world, building structures and systems to your heart’s content, and of course surviving the many creepy crawlies trying to get in your way.
Most of the games I play have a narrative objective and a clear path. Minecraft does not. It’s up to the player to decide where their journey will take them. The world is a truly massive sandbox for the player to do with as they please. It was overwhelming to take in the possibilities! So I wouldn’t be able to move forward, or other games would catch my attention and Minecraft would be waiting for my return. Not this time though.
The Dynamic (or Chaotic) Duo
Art and I love to play survival games together. His creative and organized mind pairs well with my chaos driven exploring nature. Without fail, I’m usually the one to leave settlements to explore and find resources, promptly find danger, and bring it home kicking and screaming for help. Meantime, Art has just finished making the living space symmetrical with the best way to max out statistics while also being aesthetically pleasing.
We have ventured into many of these games before, including Valheim, Raft, and of course Minecraft. While the fun is always abundant when we get together, so are the neuro-spicy tendencies of ADHD. Shiny new game syndrome narrows its gaze and whatever we were just doing in said game fades into the background until we cycle back to it. Of course, we can’t remember what we were doing and a new game or world is built just for it to happen all over again. Doesn’t that sound familiar?
Time to Change This
We have decided that this trend needs to be adjusted. Art and I are determined to finish one of these survival games and work through our library of them before we abandon ship. It will be hard, but rewarding and exciting. So the question came to where we should start. Minecraft was the easy beginner choice of the games available in our list. The world is massive but the goal is clear enough to test our resolve on this new found goal. Of all the games in our list, it was also the one that made us rage the least at our losses. The date was set and the world created. The journey begins.
With matching versions of Minecraft, it is a breeze to connect with friends online and play in the worlds created together. Luckily that was the hardest part of our journey so far. Minecraft has evolved and been adapted so many times over the years, there are several versions of the game. If players want to play cooperatively with their friends, be sure everyone has the same version, otherwise invites and worlds will not communicate with each other. After about 10 minutes of figuring out what versions we had, our Java edition venture was loaded in.
Getting the Lay of the Land
Whenever I play this game, the first 3 days are always the most chaotic. It is a mad dash to figure out how to defend yourself when the imminent doom of night descends on you. No bed to save yourself the trouble. Certainly not a strong enough shelter to keep a creeper from blowing all your plans, or hearts, sky high. This playthrough began no differently.
I load into the middle of a grassy valley surrounded on two sides by mountains covered with trees. There is plenty of livestock. The beginning of a cave catches my eye on the edge of one of the mountains so I decide this is the perfect place to get started. After savagely brutalizing some trees to make our first set of tools, we immediately start working on a shelter near the cave entrance, which leads to a great mine shaft to start with. At least, that was the plan. Creepers and skeletons with bows had other plans.
Art laughed and continued building a room for us to take shelter as I died no less than 5 times right outside the convenient oak door to the room. There were so many craters from the Creepers. Luckily I would respawn close by so I could run right back in to get my stuff. I could never outrun the Zombies and Skeletons agile hands however. The second I ran in, I died to my own wooden sword in the hands of a zombie or shot with a bow as the final heart disappears.
Meanwhile, Art is gleefully putting our room together, complete with crafting table, a series of chests, furnace, and beds. As the sun rose on our war torn front stoop, the enemies scattered and I had a moment’s reprieve to lick my wounds and have a laugh as I fixed the ground. With the craters fixed, I pan over to find Art building a protective perimeter.
Let’s Get to Mining
Rearmed, well rested in a fresh bed, and well fed, we descended into the cave. Starting with a hunt for charcoal or iron, Art and I explored several openings and created more tunnels of our own. With only torches to guide us, we made various twists and turns through the never ending rock. I pulled up a guide to the various mining levels and where we could find different resources. A quick google search led me to Badlion.net, where a nice table guide displays what y-axis level each resource in Minecraft potentially spawns. They even broke down with game play research on what floors they would recommend searching for the best output of nodes. Armed with this information we could start our resource search!
Our settled room sat comfortably on Y Axis 94. Around Y-axis 50, I decided to pick one direction and just dig in the staircase fashion down. This way we have easy access to any layers we wanted. If we needed to find a specific resource, we just head to that area of this staircase-to-hell and start digging in the walls for it. There were no signs of days passing other than the dark circle forming around the screen here and there. So breaks were filled by returning to the surface and sleeping the night away.
As morning came, more pickaxes were made and deeper we went. Going down was no problem. By Y-axis -16, we realized we needed to make some improvements to our design. Each step down meant spacing the space bar to get back up, making our characters jump or leap. So like a bunny, I returned to the surface to turn our plethora of stone blocks to staircases. I proceeded to line every step of the way with said stair case blocks to make transport so much easier. As Art dug down further, I made sure we could get back up without breaking our spacebars.
Down the Hole
The occasional resource veins jumped out in the staircase crafting. Mostly gold and charcoal spotted our descent down. This was a welcomed surprise that we immediately took glee in. The moment was short lived when Art went to deposit all the gold they had mined when we realized we were working with stone pickaxes, the very kind that don’t pick up gold. No, they only destroy it. In defeat, we declared iron was no longer a hope, it was a need. Following our resource level guide, we proceeded to Y-axis 16, as recommended. Time to put Badlion.net’s recommendations to the test!
Surprisingly we did fairly well in our endeavors for iron. Art took one side of the staircase while I took the other. I chose to clear a large amount of space, focusing around the recommended axis. Clearing 14-18 in a wide fashion, I managed to find quite a few veins! We have enough that each of us could make an iron pickaxe for the sole purpose of gold collection with a little left over to save. Using torches and the fun mechanics of Minecraft to create floating light bricks, my iron farming path turned more into a cavern. With 3 hours in the bag, Art and I decided to wrap it up for the day, finishing with the success of iron in our pockets and few enemies taking our stuff.
What Have We Begun?
Art and I have many days ahead of us on our venture to slay the Ender Dragon. The growling walls are posing enough of a challenge in our stairway to Hell so far. That being said, I’m excited that we managed to get a start on the basics needed to get on our feet. We actually managed to make our own beds in this playthrough instead of having to steal them from innocent villagers. Knowing us, I’m sure it will come to pass, but for now, I leave you here. I can’t wait to document each of our sessions here for you. How do your first nights in new Minecraft worlds go? Let me know what you think of our journey and having this has a series to follow in the comments! Let’s Connect.
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This post is not sponsored. All thoughts and opinions have been made independently through experience and time spent with the game.