Apologies in advance to those of you sick of Minecraft posts….I know there’s a ton of them but I just can’t help but add to the chorus.

It took me a few tries to get into Minecraft but once I did, wow did I get hooked hard! And what’s making the game extremely fun to me is promising myself that I’ll accept all consequences. When something really bad happens to you, it’s so tempting to just shut down the program without saving. I refuse to do that, and it gives the game a bit of Diablo-addictiveness when you respawn with nothing in your inventory and zombies crawling all over the place.

So far I’ve died when a Creeper blew up outside my door, taking it and a chunk of my wall out. I’ve died when a skeletal archer shot me through the window pane of the door, leaving me dead inside my lair (note to self, never get stuck at 1 heart). I’ve fallen down very very deep shafts, losing everything permanently, twice.

Right this moment I’m stuck at the bottom of a deep well. How’d I get there? Well, I died just before dawn. I respawned to find a bunch of undead still around. I ran, and somehow got disoriented and lost. I couldn’t find my lair!

As the day wore on it was tempting just to suicide so I’d respawn and regain my bearings, but that was against my rule. So I punched some trees to get wood and quickly cobbled together wood tools. I saw a tiny vein of coal and climbed up to it. I dug it out and dug myself a temporary shelter. Then I made a crafting table and put together some torches, but promptly forgot doing this (stay with me).

I knew it was going to be a long boring night without more wood to make tools, so with a bit of light left I headed out to find some trees. I traveled further than I should have and darkness started to fall. I turned to run back to my temporary shelter and learned that it’s hard to find your way to a new place in twilight when you can no longer see distant landmarks. I was lost again!

With it getting very dark very quickly I just dug straight into the side of the nearest mountain and blocked myself in. Now I was in the dark. And (doh!) forgetting I already had torches, I started digging out an area to put down my work table. My screen was totally black and I dug and dug but never found a spot to put down the table.

I couldn’t figure out what was happening. Then (/facepalm) I noticed the stack of torches on my tool bar. I equipped one and jammed it into the wall and found that I’d been digging straight down and not realizing it. I couldn’t see the top of the shaft I was now in. 1 block wide and who knows how many blocks deep.

I sighed and began carving a spiral staircase out of the side of my shaft.

When I get out, I’ll still be lose and now out of coal. But I’ll persevere! I know I will!

Loving this game. FF XIV launched today but I’m playing Minecraft!