Really close to the spawn for the seed 404, there’s a gravel flat. Dig one block down in the gravel, and it’ll all collapse under you in a big underground waterfall that goes straight to bedrock.
I was reading a neat article in the wiki about Redstone circuits. You can create all the various Boolean logic gates as well as memory(!). How useful would this be as a learning tool for future Computer Science/Engineering students?
D’oh.
I spent quite a bit of time wandering around 404 (in Peaceful mode) and found a nearby cavern that provides a safe way to the bottom of that shaft.
Where’s the fun in that? Ride the waterfall down with a backpack full of goods and dig/fight your way out!
Well, there’s a guy who built a 16 bit computer using redstone circuits.
Tried that before I found the adjacent cavern. Wore out nearly a dozen picks before giving up. 
Bump.
With the big 1.8 update coming out any day now, I figured it might spark more discussion. That is, if anyone is still playing…
Was there ever a SDMB server? I’ve been itching to try multiplayer, but I only want to do it on a server with people I know (in the internet sense of the term).
Anyway:
A while back, I was going to convert my starting hill (which I built a base in) into a sandstone shell. To do that I needed sand, but I didn’t want to uglify my nearby beaches. So I sailed to a far-ish beach, and stripped off all of the sand and sandstone, but not touching the stone or dirt. That actually looked ugly enough to be cool, like a real life strip mine. So now I’m making it my goal to strip all the sand off that peninsula.
Decided to start a new world with the new patch. And, apparently, I like pain, as I decided to type in random words as seeds until I got an ocean biome to start with. After about 15 attempts, seed Hypnosis did the trick. 3 islands, 2 trees, nothing else.
This is freaking insane. I’ve made it through 4 or 5 minecraft days without dying so far, though I may just suicide since I’m just digging below spawn and am currently at 1/2 hearts and no food.
Somehow I’ve managed to find something like 40 iron before finding any coal at all. Finally broke into some sort of a cave system and saw some coal, but I haven’t gone down to get it yet. Charcoal works, but given the lack of wood to start with, it’s very, very tough to make anything remotely safe.
No passive mobs spawn in the ocean biome, so no pigs/cows/chickens, an no sheep for beds (managed to get 3 string so far), managed 5 wheat so far, but no point in just making 1 bread when my hunger bar is all the way down. Finally got 1 bone after my third skeleton kill, so hopefully I’ll get more going.
Not sure I’m real fond of all the new features. The fact that this is really just “half” of the adventure update makes things hard to judge–XP drops but doesn’t do anything yet, strongholds and villages that have no NPCs, etc. I didn’t much like “hunger” mechanics in games back 30 years ago when I first started playing the original Ultimas, can’t say that I’ve liked it better over time.
My very try with the new update spawned me in an ocean biome on a small island with one tree. It’s very challenging, but I’ve decided to stick it out, see if I can last, say, 30 days without dying. I think I’m on day 6 so far.
If you have string, you can make a fishing rod, and that will be plenty of food. Did you save a sapling when you cut down the tree, so you could replant and develop a little sustainable forest? I’ve also started a small farm, but the plants grow so dang slow! I have also built a boat and traveled to some other islands, found a mess of coal in a mini-ravine of one, but that’s it.
Agree that the half-update is odd, but willing to stick it out.
I build. I have built Tiger Stadium. I have built my whole neighborhood including all the bars and restaurants and my house. I built the Johnson Art Museum at Princeton.
I like the update. It fleshes it out and makes it more of a game. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the hunger meter. I think it goes down too quickly, but I’ll happily accept it.
slaps forehead Completely forgot about fishing, it was so damn useless previously. Good thing I didn’t have a chance to play tonight, perhaps I’ll get out of the half-a-heart situation alive after all.
And yeah, I’ve got one island pretty well littered with saplings now, the wood situation is now upgraded to “poor” instead of critical.
Thinking of staying as close as possible to spawn so that when 1.9 does come out, I don’t have to travel too far to get any new content (as opposed to the world I’ve had since Alpha, where the Nether portals to get to newly generated chunks for each update are getting ridiculous)
The first world I generated after 1.8 had an excellent spawn point. I started with an abandoned farm within sight. The first day was spent just exploring the area, and since there were buildings already there, including some torches, I didn’t need to find coal on the first day.
I love island maps. They’re so addicting. I did the survivor island map before seeding was installed and was hooked. I love mining dirt underground to terraform my island. I will intentionally quarantine myself to an island I find if the random generated maps aren’t being helpful.
Hardest time I had was on a gravel island where I found a bit of coal on the 8th day and placed four torches before I died falling down a spiral down mineshaft I was using to find coal during the daytime. This was before beds and charcoal torches, so I had to hunt down my island by wandering frantically across the landscape. By the time I found it, all my drops were gone. 16 more in-game days before I found more coal. I was spending all my nights perches on gravel towers, breaking them down and building them up to convert them into flint to be useful as I waited for daylight.
It appears my laptop has bit the dust, and now I’m looking for something to replace it, but it has to be able to run Minecraft. Does anyone have any suggestions? Right now, I have this, this, and thisin mind, but I have no clue what specs I’d need.
Also, Notch said he’s making a craftable mob in 1.9, a snowman golem that’ll divert attention away from you and chuck snowballs at enemies.
Played around with the snow golem in the 1.9 pre-release. They sometimes either forget to attack mobs, or they start attacking them way too late to be a useful decoy. They also don’t follow the player around, they just wander aimlessly. I guess they could be useful for mob traps. I do really love the idea of craftable mobs.
The new snow biomes that I’ve come across are huge. Like 4-5 times the size of other biomes. I don’t know if that is a bug that will be fixed in the actual 1.9 release or if it’s intentional.
Been playing this world since 1.8 came out a few weeks ago and I still haven’t found any strongholds.
How did you get the pre-release?