PixlBit

I thought I'd done all the Survival Mode achievements in the Xbox One version of the game but a few days ago a new one popped up when I tamed a horse. That almost had me looking at the achievement list but I avoided it. Today, though, I got bored trying to get to the Enderdragon and looked at the list. Here's some I got and some I didn't.

Super Fuel has you power a furnace with lava. I've powered furnaces with lava lots of times but I guess not since this latest DLC update. This was an easy one: make an iron bucket, scoop some lava, plop it in the furnace, done. 

Taste of Your Own Medicine has you throw a potion of poison at a Witch who usually throws them at you. I knew the recipe for that already: Nether Wort, Spider Eye, and Gunpowder. It was just a matter of finding a witch. It wasn't that hard. As Mark and I mined, we kept our ears on alert. When Mark heard her in the mine, I dashed down from the surface and we both hunted for her. Once found, we chucked our potions at her simultaneously, both getting the achievement. Ha! 

Free Diver has you stay underwater for 2 minutes. This you can only do with a potion of breathing. I knew the recipe for that too: Nether Wort, Puffer Fish, and Red Stone. The matter of getting the Puffer Fish was the problem but by some dumb luck, my first cast with the fishing rod brought me one. Mark and I ran to a nearby pond, drank the potions, and submerged for 2 minutes. The funny part was that the pond was so shallow you could see the tops of our heads sticking out of the water. 

Dry Spell was a fun one and one that took a good long time. This has you dry a sponge in the furnace. Seems easy, right? But it isn't. Sponges exist within underwater Monuments in the Ocean. The world Mark and I were in didn't have a Monument that we could find. Mark went through four other random worlds looking for one and came up empty. So I looked up a Seed World that had one for sure. I guess that's cheating but, really, it was just saving some time. Searching these worlds endlessly is not my idea of fun. 

After getting in that Seed World, it wasn't just about swimming to the Monument, you need that breathing potion. To make potions you need a Blaze Rod and you can only get that in The Nether. To get to The Nether you need Obsidian to build the portal. To mine Obsidian you need a Diamond Pickaxe. So we were in it for a long haul. Luckily all my practice over the last few days made this go quicker. I had the Nether Portal up, made myself a full suit of enchanted iron armor, a diamond sword, and an enchanted bow in record time.

In the Nether, I got the ingredients I needed for the Brewing Stand: Blaze Rod and Nether Wort but not without dying once and Mark dying once too. Sometimes those Wither Skeletons come out of nowhere when you're least prepared. It was utter mayhem around the Portal with Ghasts shooting fireballs and Wither Skeletons attacking from all sides. Once they vanquished us we managed to recover the Blaze Rods but not the Nether Wort and I had to go in again.

Then I needed the Puffer Fish for the potion but I couldn't find any string for the fishing rod. This world had very few spiders on the surface and none were dropping thread. So I took a chance and threw my only Eye of Ender to see if I could find the Stronghold. In the Stronghold, there are a lot of spider webs which you can harvest for string. By some miracle, I had, with two throws, narrowed down its location to within 50 blocks of our house. I dug, found not only the spider webs, but the End Portal and the Library. However, I was just there for the string so I tore out of there while Mark raided the place for everything else. 

I caught the Puffer Fish in about five casts of the rod and made the potions. Then I jumped in a boat and paddled out to the sunken Monument. I drank the potion and had 8 minutes to locate a Sponge.

The Monument is really cool inside. It's deep underwater and lit by strange lanterns that make an erie light. Within the rooms of the Monument are strange fish who try and defend the place. They attack you with a strange light that gives you fatigue and causes damage. I killed a bunch of those things before I ran into a really huge one. I fought it for a while and finally killed it and it dropped a Sponge. I grabbed it and, with 1 minute left on my potion, swam back to the surface and my boat with Mark there waiting. 

Back at the house, I had to figure out how to dry it in the furnace. Nothing seemed to work at first until I realized you had to use the sponge to absorb some water and then put it in the furnace. I had assumed it was already full of water since I had just retrieved it from deep in the ocean but apparently not - only in a game. That done I handed the sponge to Mark and he repeated the process. We both got the achievement with not a minute left to play in the day. 

I was very satisfied with that achievement but Mark wasn't as much because while I was dashing around doing all the chores needed, he was having appalling bad luck. He died in The Nether trying to recover my lost equipment, then he got lost in the Stronghold, then died again in the mine surprised by two creepers at once. I had to laugh. He wasn't amused. 

There are a few more achievements for Survival Mode I'd like to try for but they are even more difficult. One has you map out 9 full maps and frame them. You need to spawn a large world and wow is it massive. 2 maps worth is already too much real estate. 9 is like crazy talk, but I'm thinking of strategies. 

Two others are for when you are in The End with the Enderdragon. If I can figure out how to harvest Eyes of Ender more quickly, they will be easily done. 

Finally there is one where you have to teleport 100 meters (or blocks). You do this with Ender Pearls harvested from the elusive Endermen. Throw a Pearl and click a button and you teleport to it. It will go 50 meters normally so, I suppose, you need a high mountain. I tried it once and didn't get the achievement but I let the Pearl hit the water before I teleported to it so that may have disqualified me, I'm not sure. It was certainly a very long distance, I thought. 

And that's yet another day in Minecraft.