My Minecraft 1.6 Challenge

Minecraft 1.6 was released the Thursday (5/26/11) and I dove right in. I toyed with hatches, Omega and I got on multiplayer and fought the glitches, but most importantly, I made a map. On my main world I made a map and explored around my house but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to push it, so I set my self a challenge: go as far as my map will take me, make another map, and repeat as far as I can go before coming home. I decided that ‘west’ was where I wanted to go, so off I went.

I hadn’t gone all that far west from my home before  so I was surprised to find a huge pit. I’ll have to spelunk that when I get home.

I didn’t get very far before I hit water. It figures that I’d have to cross allot of water to complete this challenge.

Hey, tall grass! I’d not seen it before in this world. Some people aren’t enamored with it but I think it adds nice a feral element.

I was rounding a cliff face after leaving my map when it dawned on me: I don’t have the components for any more maps. I have redstone. paper and iron back home, but that’s a ways back already. Fortunately I have a compass with me so I just need to find some sugar cane and make the paper I need.

Hey, sugar cane! That was easy. Unfortunately there was only one stalk and three sugar cane only makes three paper – and I need eight. Time to move on.

I eventually reached a coast so I made a boat and took off. It was hard to maintain direction without my map anymore, so I relied on my compass. I figured I’d use it to fill in the gaps between the map I have and the map I’m going to make.

(anyone shaking their head right now is ahead of the game)

Night set on the first day of my adventure but I didn’t want to wait until morning minute by minute – I needed a bed.

Hey, sheep! I sheered a few, dug a hole and made a bed.

The next morning I set off again. Hey, it looks like there’s a desert ahead. Sugarcane won’t spawn there so I hope it’s a small one.

Consider my hopes dashed. I was getting farther and farther, not just from home but my map’s limit. This was going to be harder then I thought.

Cool, a natural valley! Let’s take a look.

That looks pretty cool but the best part is that I found a way out of the desert. Score!

I approached a sea shore, with the opposing coast some ways away. I don’t really feel like making a boat, but I don’t want to swim either.

Screw it – I’ll swim. I desperately wanted to stay near water, figuring that was my best chance to find sugarcane.

The next day, I found it. Sugarcane! I bounced over and made the parts into paper, but still only had 6 pieces. I sat there grumbling when a sinking feeling set in.

My plan was to use my compass to span the gaps between my maps. However, making my second map would require using up my compass. Should I do that, once I got to the edge of my new map I could be forever lost. My options were three: build the map and hope I got lucky getting home, build the map and then dig for redstone to make another compass (I’d found iron on the trip), or turn tail and head home a complete failure.

I sadly picked option three. I didn’t want to risk never getting home and I didn’t want to spend the time it would take to happen across some redstone, so I’m going to march back home with nothing accomplished.

Next chapter will feature the long trip home. We’ll see if anything changes my mind about going home empty handed.

Alphasim out.