12w22a

another thursday and another minecraft snapshot. so the enchanting got a lot better. A basic mobfarm will now bring the player to the highest enchanting level in a fast time. The levels are now linear towards each other, which means that from level 50 to 51 there is the same amount of XP needed as from level 0 to 1. Also the highest enchanting level got changed to 30. I was afraid that this also destroyed good enchantments, but apparently all the enchantments are still there just lowered. Mining also yields levels. Levels are now so easy to acquire that the ender dragon yields a bit over 1000 levels, which is simply insane. At least this makes annoying waiting times on a mob grinder a lot less painful. It may be overpowered and too easy to get the highest level, but it is better than standing in front of a grinder for an hour. AND FUCK YES THE PAUSE BUTTON IS BACK!
trading has been improved, but i think that trading will still change a lot in the future. It is just funny to see how it will change in the future.
Jungle Temples are like the pyramids a cool addition, but the traps are easy to destroy and the loot again includes diamonds, but because it is only one chest with diamonds it may be okay since they are rather rare. Also they feature chiseled stone bricks, which were not able to acquire before.
Smelting lava in a furnace doesn't swallow the bucket anymore which is amazing news and it took long to fix that bug. Now the nether can be used as a fuel source pretty much. Tripwire is one of the best features, especially for UHC, now traps are a lot easier to hide. potions in the creative inventory are also quite useful. Block of emerald is a nice addition for buildings. I may use it for future buildings too, since it is finally a green block with a nice texture. Adventure Game Mode is also finally added. As a fan of buildings and surviving it is nothing for me, but this has been promised before and i think it was time that it is finally added to the game (although very buggy and not complete at all). I have heard that zombie pigman can now spawn in the real world by a nether portal, which is a nice little addition for the game. Oh and rain can fill cauldrons which finally gives them a use. I imagine custom maps with no water where these cauldrons can be very important to get water from.

Big Snapshot!

New Item: emerald - it seems to be extremely rare, i just heard that it only spawns in extreme hills and i will test it soon i think.
Trading System - the trading system is quite funny i have to admit and seeing that when you are lucky you can buy diamonds and sell coal, so with patience you can farm diamonds, just by cutting down trees and burning it into charcoal.
New Ore - see emerald
Texture - the gravel texture and the stars indeed look very nice and also gravel is now lower in volume i think.
New Block - It really is the enderchest now. Considering it is quite expensive and it cannot be a big chest i think it is not too powerful, which i was afraid it would. It may be a good addition, because all players share one chest, so if players are far away from each other they can use it as a trading method.
Buckets stackable - This is indeed useful and on my little playthrough it came in handy already.
Better boats - The boats are broken right now, you cannot move them around and the movement is extremely buggy, i think its a bug. They break lilypads, which i dont really care about, but they dont drop boats if tried to be picked up by axe or hand, which is quite sad, so no real improvements here.
Apple of Notch - This item is amazing. It makes you nearly immortal for 30 seconds, because your regeneration is so damn fast. Afterwards you still have 4 and a half minutes with resistence against enemies and invincibility of lava. so a very good addition.

Villages - Villages now consist of sandstone in the desert biome. They look perfectly fitting and i hope more villages in different biomes are about to come.
Pyramids - The pyramids are nice looking structures with chests and a basic TNT trap inside. For my taste they are a bit too overpowered. From my first pyramid i got 7 diamonds and from the second one 3 diamonds. They seem to be not as rare as villages too, so either they should spawn less often or the loot should be changed. I also think dungeons lose its appeal with the additions, dungeons should now feature the new golden apple instead of the cheap one, so that it makes it worth looking for.
Sandstone Stairs - It was about time that they have been added. Yet there is no crafting recipe, which may change next thursday.
Dispenser Update - Lava and water can be controlled by dispensers now which is amazing, i can imagine nice temples with waterfalls on the sides that can be controlled just by one line of redstone behind it instead of pistons that may not look as good.
Bugs - Lightning bugs, misshapen terrain and extreme lags are still common, i hope they can fix it, so that the new version gets better playable. Also pausing the game is still broken and leaving the game in the background eats so much RAM that it melts my computer pretty much, i hope they can fix these problems, the last real version still runs a lot faster. And they seem to have introduced chunk errors in singleplayer. I have never seen these kinds of errors before in single player, it is normally only a multiplayer problem, also there is a weird error that disguises dirt and sand blocks as stone and sandstone blocks and you have to restart the world to fix it, i saw that bug before, but also only in multiplayer. All in all it is a decent update though (not only decent but amazing, it is a lot of stuff added, which can improve gameplay, i just hope the bugs can be fixed so that it actually will improve the gameplay.)

A quite different testrun

Normally on thursdays i either have no time, because i am in college or i do have time to run the snapshot right when it comes out. Then i testrun it in creative, try to find the new things and help editing the Wiki anonymously. This time however it will be different. If i have the time and i can get home earlier today, i will play the new snapshot in Survival mode and play a few minecraft days. I will get full iron armor, get redstone and coal to test if storage blocks for these materials were added. I also get an ender pearl to test the enderchest theory and try to build a laser that was another possible added block and most importantly after i gathered materials i search for a village and take a look at the new trading system. I also will go outside the first night to check how the night will look with the new stars. When i found redstone and it still has the same texture i may be underground for a longer while to see if i can find the new ore.After i did all of these things i will do what i normally do, go to creative and take a look at the things i have missed and look online what else was changed. Oh and i also have to take a boatride and will of course try to stack buckets, maybe even try to stack water buckets and stuff. If I really want to continue playing for a longer time i may even try to find enough gold for the Notch apple, but i think this will not happen, since it needs 72 pieces of gold.

Big Snapshot?

So tomorrow another minecraft snapshot will come and it will have two weeks of new features, since last week we did not get one. I do hope for an overall better performance, since the last snapshots made my game run extremely slow. jeb_ hinted at the new features we are expecting.

New Item: ruby - currency for trading with villagers
Trading System - I really hope that diamonds are possible to buy, so that people can farm things and for that get diamonds, without needing to mindlessly just stripmine, which gets annoying after a while.
New Ore - It looks like a ruby ore, but it may be a re-textured redstone ore. Maybe redstone can be crafted from rubies or the other way around?
Texture - Maybe a new redstone ore texture as said, and additionally a new gravel texture that looks quite promising, maybe they finally added the feature to turn gravel into flint too, who knows. Also the stars in the sky are smaller now and brighter, i hope for some constellations in the night sky.
New Block - A "useful" block that was requested before. i really hope it is not the enderchest, which is a chest that can be opened from everywhere you want with another enderchest, because that is too much into the magic style for me, i would prefer to see a redstone or coal block instead, that would be quite cool, or something else decorative, or maybe even a trap block, but well i shouldn't guess.
Buckets stackable - This is something extremely useful, because empty buckets just fill a whole inventory easily.
Better boats - I actually don't mind that boats get destroyed by lilypads, that's just how minecraft works. However i would love to see that you can pick up boats again.
Apple of Notch - Interesting idea to bring back an uber item. i really hope they give it an ability of an potion effect that is in the game but not used yet.

Yellow Wool = Easy Wool

So i was walking around and there was an industrial looking building. i made a shovel and got some dirt to just look what is on top. First i made a staircase up, but soon had to face lots of blazes, so i went a dirt tower up. I went on top of the building, made a hole in the roof (silverfish spawned but all fell down, so they couldn't attack me). Under the hole there was the wool. I got the wool and went out. I thought maybe i missed something and went inside and light everything up with fighting but that was just a waste of time, i should have just gotten the wool and escaped. Afterwards i head towards a jungle and inside the jungle was a little temple with a similar style of dungeon like the other wool aka a long stairway down with blazes and venomous spiders. I went the clever way down and searched through everything but again did not find the wool yet. I will probably run inside again and light everything up until i find the wool, which just has to be somewhere.

Oh fuck you, pink!

-I made a picture while iron was cooking, in the background the tunnel i made which made everything worse-

-a little cute silverfish <3 yes they were also around-

-That's how basically every room looked, just with more spaces-

-i was amazed that i had a calm moment without any monsters at that part-

So i invited Yvonne for a call and went home through the desert, did some resource management, got some wheat, some wood etc etc and headed onto the island. After quite some ways of walking with stupid lag i saw the victory monument right there in the middle of the island. Next to the VM there was a huge mossy area with water going inside. Instead of going down with the water, i played it clever and destroyed the whole upper layer, so that sunlight goes in and i know what i am facing. Down i saw an entrance and made my way thru the outside to not face mobs. Then came a staircase with poison spiders and ghasts. I didn't know what insanity was about to happen when i made a break there. After a hard time fighting these spiders i had to face the worst, random rooms full of blazes (there were so many blazes that minecraft lost its sounds, a common bug, which can be fatal when you dont hear creepers sizzle). First i played it safe and surrounded the rooms, trapped the blazes and looted the chests, but after i traveled in circles for half an hour or longer i just went inside lit everything up and destroyed all spawners. It was difficult, but i really was lost in that maze. And even when i had everything lit up it didn't help. I didn't see a monster for 5 minutes, but neither saw the fleece-box. I found a lot of iron and even 5 pieces of gold and stacks of coal, but not the fleece-box. It took me long, but at the end i realized that when i was building a safe walkway, i built it exactly over a shaft down directly to the fleece-box. So all these arrows i wasted on the blazes were just because i missed the right way directly in the beginning of the area. I was quite mad at myself for my shability, but in the end it worked out i guess. Now i have the pink wool and full iron armor.

First wool

So it was time for adventure!

I packed my stuff and just walked straight on the island, nothing could go wrong, i had my bed if it turns night i could make it day before monsters make my life hard. I walked over plains and then into a big forest, crossed the forest with a few zombie and spider encounters and the day was nearing its end already, it was a very long walk. After the forest i slept in my bed on the edge of a new desert. After i crossed the desert i saw the ocean, i really just crossed the whole island and did not find anything. I turned around walked a few meters and then i saw it in the distance. A big pyramid!

This was going to be my first adventure! i set up a little base and dig into the pyramid (although there was an entrance). Like a grave robber i just hit myself thru the rock to avoid anything bad that could be triggered by the entrance. I found a little room with some goodies but nothing to fancy and a big stairway down into the abyss. I didn't want any monster to surprise me, so i grabbed my pickaxe and dug myself around the hole to the ground to enter the tomb. I found big rooms all connected by large spaces and all featured chests. After i put down torches in the whole area and looted the chests i realized that it had several layers. There were holes in the ground with the same structure down below. So i went back to the beginning room, and dug a hole in the ground and used a gravel-elevator down after some encounters with some hidden silverfish (fuck yeah easy XP). The room below had no entrance to other rooms and i soon figured that it was on purpose so noone would dug down but instead run into traps. But i had a better idea, instead of using the way directly down, i dug myself a long stairway down to the deepest layer, there i heard something i never wanted to hear: Blazes. So i dug in to see something, but the room was full of blazes already. I put down a basic trap to get a few blazes to die and then looked inside again and there it was: A chest! A room full of blazes with a chest, that must yield something good! So i suffered finding the chest from down below, because my orientation is just bad and after quite a while i got the chest and in it was literally nothing, the best thing inside were chain leggins and i had already iron ones, so i didn't pick it up. Angrily i made my way to the next room, since i did not see the wool monument anywhere, underground i encountered a lot of silverfish. I chose to hit them with my hand instead of my sword for a while to get most of the out at first, since they can only hurt you when they hit your head it was quite an easy task to gain much levels on the way to the wool. The next room was full of zombies, which was perfect since i ran low on food. I trapped some of them got some anti-fresh meat and continued to the next room. Creepers... Ok i turn around and go the other side: A skeleton room... Okay I'm not doing this, i counted the sizes of the rooms and just dug myself to the next wall which was faster than going in anyway. The next room was just crazy, it were fucking ghasts! Since i was on the bottom of the world the void fog made it impossible to see the ghasts. The way to go was up, making a little hole and killing all the ghasts, which was an easy task in such a small room with so many so big monsters. Every shoot was a hit, since there was nothing else then ghasts. After killing them all i dug myself to the spawner, removed it and killed the new ghasts. I entered the room killed all new monsters in there and lit everything up. Then i saw already the fleece box. My first wool was white, which surprised me since it was quite a place far away from my spawn. I grabbed every wool piece since i am in hardcore anyway and made my way back up to the top. I don't know how many days have been passed, but this was a heck of an adventure!

Stranded - Day 3 & 4

Day 3

Day 3 was a rainy day, so i could not do many things, i tried to stay distant to make enemies despawn and then walked carefully to the island. I planted the saplings, dug myself into a hole and gathered a bunch of stone. With the stone i made tools and i used it to make a very little and ugly cobblestone hole. I also built a little chicken-farm on the water and a bamboo farm. I had two eggs, but badly did not get any chickens, yet. When the night came the rain luckily stopped. During the night i tried to get a spider from the land follow me into the water (to kill it and finally get my third piece of string), but i wasn't lucky. I killed two spiders and both gave me no string at all and to get them into the water was extremely difficult. The first time i saw two spiders on the shore, but when i swam near it 7 creepers spawned already. After a few minutes of swimming back and forth i got a spider that dropped 2 strings for my arrow. This world has a lot of gravel, so i am confident that i can soon get a lot of arrows, when i have a chicken-farm going.

I'm not used to live on ugly places without any symmetry, but this has to be enough for now.

Day 4

The day arose after i crafted some more tools and this was going to be a good, but boring day. On the shore were still 5 creepers. One exploded (i took no damage) and the others didn't seem to mind me that much. The trees started growing and it took me nearly half the day to get one big tree completely down. I may not care about the material of my house right now and it all looks like trash, but one thing i cannot stand even in survival is trees floating midair. After i knocked down the tree i replanted the trees. The saplings i gathered i can now burn in a furnace, because i do not want more trees in that farm for now, because i do not want more mobs to spawn. I cooked the tree chunks down into coal and made torches which i all laid down on the shore. Then i gathered some more stone in a hole. killed three sheep for wool made a bed when the night started and i figured that routine now will kick in. Stocking up on all of my resources and living a nice adventurous life, yet i will not rush to start moving onwards to the island before i haven't secured the first part of my shore completely.

Stranded - Day 1 & 2

Day 1

My ship broke and i have nothing on my body except my water-heavy clothes. I see land, but hesitate to go, maybe i should first look for all supplies left in my sunken ship before heading into the unknown. Diving and holding my breath i go town to the body of my ship. I find two chests with a bit of armor and a sword. A bit of food and other supply i may need later. Even a bit of wood and basic tools. I also found a bit of stone i will have to use later. Before it is getting dark i should explore a bit of the land, get a few seeds to start a basic wheat farm, and find some stone. I found a bit of coal on the surface and in a little cave-in under a gravel-trap i dodged, i found even a bit more of coal and stone. While mining stone with a freshly made wooden pickaxe i made from wood i found in my ship and wood i destroyed of my ship (since its sunken i may as well use it) i was attacked by a spider. No problem for the iron sword and i immediately closed up the dark cave the spider came out of. I planted my seeds on the shore and now had to decide where i wanted to live. Yesterday when i thought about this scenario i figured a house that is up a few blocks so monsters can't easily reach it may be a good idea, but now i got a better idea. I headed into the ocean back to my ship. No mobs will spawn in water i thought and started building a platform right over my wooden past. The sun started to kiss the horizon goodbye.

Night 1

It was a peaceful night, i made torches and put it down on my little piece of artificial land i created as a permanent home until i found the monument. I expended the area and then gathered more wood from my ship. I also headed down into my ship to gather a few more things, but i was mislead and used up precious time hunting after a ghost (destroying parts of the ship only to find out that it was the room i already looted). I made a few more tools, started a basic layout of my platform and rested to be ready for the big journey that was to come. While waiting i made the worst mistake of the first day. I ate the only melon i had instead of making seeds out of it, immediately after i ate it i screamed "NOO", but it was too late.

Yvonne, the cow, walked up to me and bumped me with her nose while i took this screenshot of the wizard's tower in the distance.

Day 2

The sun rose and i knew exactly what i had to do. The answer was easy, i needed a steady supply of wood. So i headed inside the land and soon found that the land is filled with animals and i can kill some without having to worry to extinct a species. After walking a few meters i realized that it was a bad idea to run inside the land and get lost, so i changed my plans and ran on the shoreline instead which will later provide me protection to the death that was about to come. After a while of walking i saw a mysterious huge tower, which looked old and forgotten. I was sure that this would not be the last time to see this tower, but for now i had to leave it behind and head further. Not far after i saw the tower i saw a swamp with trees, the perfect way to get some saplings and bring them to my home. After i knocked down one tree with an axe i made the night before i realized that it was a day journey and it was about to get night, so i grabbed all the saplings i could get and headed back home not knowing what horrors the night would bring.

Night 2

The night was scary, i was not attacked by any monster, because i had the chance to keep a distance. The only thing that saved me was the fact that i was near water though. It didn't take long and hordes of monsters started spawning, i tried to walk along the shoreline, but soon had to switch onto swimming to avoid any confrontation. While swimming home i looked on the shore and i never saw so many monsters crowded onto each other like on the tokyo metro. On my way back home i saw two spider jockeys, which is a very rare mob and two in one night is just ridiculous. One time i tried to count what i saw on a third of my screen on a very crowded place and it were 7 creepers, 5 skeletons and 3 spiders. There was no way that they spawned without spawners everywhere in the ground. Reaching my platform i planted some seeds next to my platform, thinking "Screw this, there is no way I'm going out there on the land right now".