PixlBit

I couldn’t get interested in any other game today, so I played Minecraft. I’ve decided that the ultimate fun in this game isn’t killing the Ender Dragon, but gaining the ability to enchant all your gear.

First task in that quest is to find the buried Stronghold as fast as possible and raid it for its library of books. I did some testing in Mark’s Creative Mode game to see if the Stronghold always appears in the same place. It doesn’t, but I did find out how the randomization works. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give you enough information to find it without an Eye of Ender. Ah well, I was hoping to skip going to the Nether for certain ingredients to make Eyes of Ender. I’ve died more times in there than I care to remember.  

After that failure, I started a new survival game and managed to build the enchantment table without dying. A little caution was all that was needed. Once that was done, I roamed the Overworld and Nether, fighting everything to level up to 30 so I could enchant an item to the maximum power (it’s still random though). I enchanted my diamond sword. I got Knockback II and Bane of Arthropods III. Meh. The sweetness is some combination of Fire Aspect, Sharpness and Loot. The enchantment process cost me three XP levels, so I was going to go out level grinding again, if I didn’t have to stop for the night.

I’m thinking I may start switching back and forth between survival and creative modes within one game. That way, I can do the tedious stuff more quickly in creative mode, and then get back to some challenging gameplay in survival mode. I’m also thinking, I may come up with a few designs that would set up an interesting scenario like making a railroad into a mine to be used with TNT minecarts, or building a simple castle so I can stand on the walls and shoot mobs. Both of these tasks take way too long in survival mode; although, Mark and I have done them both while playing co-op, which makes things go a little faster. Solo though, forget it.

I feel sometimes that Minecraft is ruining my interest in other games. I resist going back to a game with a linear path like Halo 5 because Minecraft offers a sandbox of many possibilities and no pressure to do it in any time frame. I also like the creative aspect of Minecraft. Mark was building an underwater tunnel that looked really cool. I don’t know, though. I think maybe I’m just a little anxious right now about my future and can’t stomach the tension that a lot of games put on you. I think I’ll get back to them eventually.