Returning to Minecraft

I’ve started playing Minecraft again, with a few differences. First of all I’m straight-up cheating because I’m versioning my save files, so I can roll back any time I like, and this is a game that is designed not to let you undo your mistakes. But the reason for this is that I am sick of creepers wrecking my stuff, basically; while I am occasionally careless and I lose a load of diamond into the lava, this is rare and what is far more common is that a creeper sneaks up and blows up on the surface, and this frustrates me because it obviously messes up stuff I’ve built but also messes up the really cool natural land formations. There’s still an element of risk to the game because I’m only saving like this after completing a task or a mining session or whatever, so I can still lose progress by being forced to rollback because I haven’t checked in for a while.

I’m also being rather more industrious. I’m not expanding naturally by doing what I normally do: dig a little cave, flesh it out with furniture and then dig a shaft straight downwards at the back, and then one upwards and build a lookout tower or something on top of the hill. Instead I’m planning my digging to get resources rather than to find caves, because I’m more interested in building cool stuff on the surface now. My mine is separate to my house: I didn’t mine for ages when starting, building up a wooden house with a bed (meaning no random monsters all over the place which is win) on the first few days and then only after being well-established finally starting the hunt for coal. And now I’m strip mining for cobblestone and diamond.

The world I’ve got is really cool-looking and I’m looking forward to linking things up with cart networks and then building massive towers and castles and suchlike, gradually.

Here’s a quick screenshot of my woodland retreat. Currently digging up a sunken garden to the (arbitrary) north linked to this by a tunnel.