These are a few of my favourite Minecraft things

1. Spiders. Don’t ask why, but of all the mobs you fight, spiders are my favourite. Maybe because they are so easy to defeat?
2. Caves. Just love exploring them. You never know what you might find around the next corner… Just don’t forget to bring loads of torches.
3. Finding iron. No, scrap that, finding diamonds.
4. Survival. Really like it much better than creative.
5. When the rain stops. Why does rain in Minecraft bother me so much? Well, it does.

I’ve been playing quite a bit on and off, especially with youngsters aged 7 to 13 as part of my work as a digital educator in Skerries, Co. Dublin (Ireland). And I still love it!

My most-Minecraft Week

Over the last week, I’ve probably been doing more Minecraft than ever before in such short an amount of time. Together with my techie adviser & son, now just one month shy off 14, I ran a 5-day Minecraft summer camp, and then on Saturday, we delivered a 3-hour workshop for 7- to 9-year-olds in a local library. Add to that some evening play in order to suss out this, that and the other, and I think that for a non-gamer adult, I clocked up a respectable amount of crafting time!

Here are some insights and thoughts prompted by that.

1. I love playing Minecraft and just wish I could do it more often, more regularly. I love going on a mining expedition and I love crafting things.
2. Redstone is fantastic fun. My son taught us how to make TNT canons and piston doors, and I’m now finally beginning to get the concept. It’s not all that easy at first, all those repeaters and red-stone torches that invert currents and the 15-block-rule, but it makes sense and you can do great things with it. I definitely want to do more.
3. I don’t like creepers. Not one bit. I’ve had more homes destroyed by them than seems even remotely fair. Many of our campers say they are cute, which I find strange. What is cute about a green hissing mob that seeks you out and explodes in your home???
4. Mods can be really good, but it can also be quite a wait to download a pack like Feed The Beast and to launch it then. My favourite mod has to be Pixelmon – it’s like normal Minecraft with Pokémon in it. I had never played Pokémon either, so it took me a little to get used to it, but then I enjoyed seeking out other Pokémon and battling them.
5. MinecraftEdu is great when you’re working with a group of kids, some of whom have never played Minecraft on a PC before. It helps if the kids can actually read…

We’ll have a weekly Minecraft Club in cccSkerries. I’ll write elsewhere about the educational value of sending kids to Minecraft classes… for now, I’ll just summarise it in two words: Extremely high. The Minecraft camp was the first of our camps to be booked out, and the participants all said they want to come back next year. And I want to play more Minecraft, too.

Day 7: Minecraft spiders and cave-pigs fly

Let’s go spider hunting

How do you deal with a spider, I ask The Son. And: How do you use arrows? Because I had some from the last fight. And he says: Make a bow! But you need string.

And now I see that I do have string, from that last fight!

So I’m going to try and make a bow and arrow, to shoot that spider on my roof.

But no matter how I rearrange sticks and string, I can’t get bow and arrows.

Maybe I need arrows while crafting?

No luck. I’ll check it out online. – And yet again night falls and surprises me! This time I do make it to my bed and sleep.

So, the results of my research: Bad news.

I have arrows, so that’s ok, I don’t need to craft them, but I need three pieces of string for one arrow. I only have one.

You get string when you kill a spider. That means: In order to make the best weapon against a spider, I first need to win in a direct fight with a spider.

Sigh, Let’s get that spider down for a fight so! Or let’s get up to that spider, who is still sitting on top of my landmark tower!

I have no more dirt to get up to the it, so I dig some.

That might make a nice ditch for safeguarding my house later!

– OK, I’m on the roof, easy enough, using the dirt cubes. Right-click and jump…. but oh no, what’s that, I fall off!

Need to use the left-shift for creeping, that stops you from falling, I believe. (Is it called creeping? Crawling? We’ll see.)

But there is a new development right now: Looks like the spider used my dirt stack to come down itself!

Bring it on, spidey, bring it on! And once more I’m so inside my fight that I forget to take pictures.

You’ll have to take my word for it: I fought, spidey fought, I hit, and I won.

Two more string units came out of the spider! Let’s go craft that bow!

But no – another disappointment. I mustn’t have picked up the string fast enough, I still only have the one string, although two strings came out of the dead spider. So annoying. And I’m hungry again.

What’s that (above), you ask? That’s me eating! Pork chop! That’s what it looks like.

After this victory (albeit not resulting in more string), and having done some quick basic repairs to my house, I feel adventurous again. The Minecraft world beckons!

Finally – cave-searching again!

I’ll find myself a cave yet! It’s supposed to have a large opening on the side of a hill or mountain. Is this one?

Let’s go and explore! I use my left shift and carefully lower myself down, digging at the cobblestone.

A floating pig! strange. So pigs can fly! (OK, so I dug away the cobblestone underneath Piggy. Still!)  I’m determined to avoid killing more pigs and let it float.

Strange sounds from the dark… What is it? Oh no, another zombie / creeper combo. And this time I’m not ready. Too few torches to keep them away. Too slow fighting. Can’t do anything…. respawn in my bed, miles from my stuff, which (as I now understand quite well) will be lying around where I died for a limited amount of time.

Will I make it back to the cave in time to get my things? I run, I run, I find the cave entrance, I’m back, but Creeper is still there and I am unarmed.

Is it worth it? Or should I just start (nearly) from scratch? (I do have a house, a crafting table, a furnace, and a bed!)

Who dares, wins – I got all my stuff again – but then the creeper had me before I could use a proper weapon, and once again I respawn in my bed.

I once more make it to the cave, once more am beaten, and when I reach the cave a third time, everything is gone. So is my will to fight.

This time, I’m calling it a day. I’ll just have to start again next time. Bye for now, dear reader!

Day 5 – When Minecraft got “creepy” for me

Difficulty setting: Normal…

I’ve done it. I’ve dared. I’ve gone from “easy” (where so far nothing bad has ever happened) to “normal”, expecting those favourites of all the children I have talked to about Minecraft: Creepers.

Will they now come and find me? What will happen next? I get some basic info from the Creeper page in the Minecraft wiki.

Hmm, they seem nasty enough… No wonder all the kids love them (I guess)….

So what’ll I do while (also) waiting for my first creeper to show up? The tutorial suggests for Day 3 to build a cobblestone house. Got that. For day 1, to explore a cave – haven’t done that yet!

So let’s dig and see can we find ourselves a cave.

The Cave Adventure

For 15 minutes, I’ll simply dig and see where I go. I’ll try and go a total of ten blocks to the front, then down and back….

Oops, water again! What now…?

I feel like swimming to the platform ahead! It turns out to be incredibly easy to swim, just like walking – perhaps because it’s a stationary lake, not like the little stream I saw before.

When I got out, it was so dark I needed to use another one of my torches.

HELP! There I was, digging away, all well… and then there was this awful sound, like someone groaning, and of course I had to go and look – and now a zombie and a creeper are making their way through the water towards me!

Why did I switch to “normal”…. easy was so nice and easy…

The Son says: Take the sword, fast, and punch them….

Here goes….

Hitting the zombie with the sword got rid of him, hooray, and I’m now at Level 2 (see the green two in the middle of my bar?). The creeper can’t get me as he bobs up and down when walking / swimming and keeps hitting his head. The Son says to go and get him. Aww okay.

Got the creeper, too! And more green stuff and the gunpowder (see picture) the creeper left behind. What’ll I do with that, I wonder?

But I forget, I meant to go and mine some stuff!

Wet and hungry and running out of tools.

And I mine and mine and …. my pickaxe goes! I decide to go back to my base, where I left the crafting table, but it’s quite tough and tiring to be digging through some cobblestone and some dirt (much easier than cobblestone, though) with just my sword. Which needs replacing soon, too.

And then there is another new sound…. water?

Yes, in a way it is water – rain!

And it looks like I’m quite hungry, too. I make my way back, see my house – not too far away at all – but walking seems tougher than usual, or is that just because I feel wet?

Having eaten, I make it home safely.

Let’s not waste any time – I need some tools!

I make three stone pickaxes, so I don’t run out again, and a sword. The pickaxes are easy enough, three stones and two sticks. But how do you make stone swords??? Ah yeah, two cobblestones, one plank. No, doesn’t work. Let’s try one cobblestone, two planks – for which I need to make planks first:

And phew again! There was a creeper outside my house, but luckily I know now that I can beat them. Went outside, had heard him first, located him, and killed him! It all happened so fast, there is no pictorial record. Sorry, folks. I’ll try next time…

Back to work. Planks made, now for the second sword.

Nope, no luck. Have to look at the recipe again… two cobblestone, one plank. Let’s try! Maybe I positioned them wrongly…

Got the recipe wrong! Two cobblestone, one stick! Details make a big difference. And to be ready for the next day (it’s night outside, and still raining), I’m cooking some pork chops in the furnace, too. [It seems I made a mistake using wood, planks would have given me just as much heat, and coal would have been the best choice. Guess who the fountain of that knowledge is…]

But as I’m happily sizzling those, there is that by now too familiar groaning outside. More zombies or creepers? Where is my sword?!?

Oh no…. I was getting too cocky and now I’m dead. The skeleton got me, or was it that spider?

“Respawn” my Minecraft screen says. I seem to wake up close to my bed.

I have nothing left in my inventory – nothing! I remember reading you can get your things back where you died, and go outside straight away, having respawned in / near my bed – but then the skeleton and the spider are still there!

It’s actually all quite exciting now, much better fun to just about have made it back to my house with a good few of my possessions than not having been attacked at all.

My life bar is so low because the skeleton’s arrows (do skeletons have arrows?) got me a few times.

I make for my bed, try to hop into it – and luckily, it works! I sleep! Let’s call it a day and see tomorrow what happened to all my things.