Yes, growing cactus is very easy. Just place a piece of it on sand, and then you wait.
it grows pretty fast, but I don’t think it ever gets any taller that 3 cubes.
I recently created an entire field of cactii, putting them 4 spaces apart. I’m not sure if they need much light, maybe they woun’t grow in shadow.
I had this problem for a while, too. Originally, my base was carved out of a hill about halfway up from level ground, and I would simply jump up terrace levels to get there. After being sabotaged by creepers a few times, I flattened the side of the mountain until it was level vertically with my front door, built a glass “bay window” around the door and erected a ladder up through a portal at the bottom of the bay window. Now I can do a scan of the area before I venture out, and snipe anything brave enough to hang out at the bottom of my ladder.
Strangely, I haven’t seen any creepers (or any other baddies for that matter) anywhere near my front door since then. :dubious: Of course, my hilltop base is directly above my main base, and the drop is long, so they can’t spawn and pull a death from above anymore, either.
Just found this. Had to share.
Poor guy!
No way that wasn’t intentional.
Fake or not, it gets funnier every time I watch it. 
I don’t understand how people can build houses out of wood, though – wood has so many other invaluable uses, esp. building tools & weapons, that I never have enough left over for building structures with (never mind the fire hazard!)
I love creeper videos, too. Here are some of my faves on YouTube:
Giant Creeper Statue
Amazing Creeper Ambush
And it points out an interesting aspect of this game - what happens stays happened. You can’t go back to a previous save. I think more games should have that. You mess up you learn the hard way not to mess up like that again.
Agreed. I see those wood houses in most of the youtube minecraft videos. That wood isn’t doing anything! It should be being made into weapons and tools. I guess they must have more than enough already for the tools they’ll need.
[looks up at roof, or rather space where roof used to be]
“Balls.”
Well, in most games, if you die you are permanently dead, which is what saves are for. But there is a method to back up your save games files, which I STRONGLY recommend! (PM me for details if you want to learn how, it’s rather complicated and machine-specific.)
I find that I primarily enjoy the first few nights of the game- I like the survival mechanisms. If I could reset my spawn point, I’d set out exploring one world, rebuilding my camp each night or two. Until we get that feature, I have to restart a new world whenever I want something new.
So last night I started a new world. Holy cow- it’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve seen in the game yet. Soaring mountains with amazing overhangs and hundred-meter waterfalls- it’s like some fantasy painting brought to life.
Well, I started setting up my home base (there’s tons of coal, just lying around!) when I noticed how many huge trees there were around me. I found one on the edge of a cliff and though, “Hey, how about a treehouse instead of the usual cave?”
So I dug my way into the tree and hollowed out a living area. I built a door where I came in and a ramp (using unsupported wooden stairs) for the entrance. I was really careful to not carve away too much wood so that the canopy wouldn’t die- canopy is the only thing you can’t replace, so you’ve got to be careful with it. I ended up with a few saplings, which gave me an idea…
Extreme Horticulture!
In the morning, I found an even larger tree. I made my way up to the top of it on the outside of the tree (using a convenient nearby cliff) and planted some dirt on top of a few of the taller branches… and then planted saplings on the dirt. Once those sprout, I’ll knock out the dirt block and replace it with a log, thereby “grafting” the new tree on top of the old. I’m hoping to make an absolutely gigantic tree and make a multi-story treehouse inside it.
Yeah, I’ll have to be careful with fire.
Fire can jump surprisingly long distances, just like in real life.
Last night, I was in a dense forest and set a giant tree on fire, to act as a beacon. Even though I’d cleared a 2-square perimeter around the tree, the fire “crowned” from one tree to the next, spreading like…well, like wildfire. 
I managed to smash down enough leaves to create a makeshift firebreak, thereby saving half of the forest, but the other half completely burned down, with eternally burning floating logs everywhere.
It actually looks pretty damn cool.
I am not only building myself a house out of wood, I am using the trunks instead of the planks. Love how it looks but the second floor is taking a bit too long to build.
On an unrelated note, I was relocating all of my iron, gold, and diamonds from my mine to my house and I saw a coal tile. I HAD to grab it but it turned out to be right next to some lava which I accidentally fell into. Almost made me quit the game!
Ouch…well, that’s yet another example of why this game needs a Quicksave feature…
In fact – THIS IS IMPORTANT – this morning, the power went out while playing Minecraft, and after it was restored, to my horror the game had DELETED MY ENTIRE WORLD!! Thank goodness, I had just backed up my saves the night before, so I only lost 6-8 hours of play…but I did confirm on the Minecraft Forums that yes, this is a known issue, and not an occasional one either. Unfortunately it probably won’t get fixed until Beta…
So a word of warning to everyone: BACK UP YOUR WORLDS!! You will be glad you did so!
Well, the way I understood it is that it’s saving constantly. Unfortunately, it saves after your catastrophe.
There have been times where I’ve died but have been able to go back and retrieve everything I had on me. That time, though, everything burned up I think. After finding a few more diamonds two days (IRL days, not in-game days), I got killed by a huge Slime Blob Block Thing loosing all my good tools and materials.
Saves are weird. I was playing on my laptop when away from home, and the game randomly freezes with a black screen. When I reload, I find that while I’m in the exact same place I was when it froze, but recent torches I’ve placed aren’t there–a real pain when in the middle of exploring a large cave system.
Even stranger, on one occasion, it froze right after I mined some minerals, and when I restarted, I still had the ore in my inventory, and it was back on the cave wall.
I don’t know, knowing that there is a risk that you may lose all that you are carrying makes it a bit more interesting to play, IMO.
It does make the experience a bit more intense, yes.
Even so, it would be nice to have a way of easily recovering an earlier savestate if you really screw things up royally. I can live with losing all my equipment…but accidentally destroying one of my artistic projects (e.g. a delicate water statue I’d spent hours building) is a case where I definitely would have restored from a quicksave, if it were possible. (I did have a manual backup, but it was more than 12 hours old, so I didn’t bother with it.)
Just got the game a few days ago.
First world: I spawned on a smallish island, with nothing nearby but more small islands. I fooled around a little getting used to the controls, beat up some trees, then dug a hole to hide in for the night. A little “L” shaped hole, with an opening so I could see if it was day again. While waiting and listening to the creepy noises I figured out how to make sticks, and then went to the crafting section on the wiki to figure out how to make tools and weapons. The next day I made a crafting bench, made a wooden sword and pick and explored some more. I found little of interest, mostly water and sand. I tried a little mining but outside of stone to make better tools and weapons got nothing. After another night in my little hole I tried mining some more, but lacking coal to make torches I couldn’t see too well, and managed to dig a hole straight down into a cave with zombies in it. Fell in and got eaten, losing what little I’d collected. Okay…
World 2: Ah, much more interesting. I spawned on the shoreline of a good sized landmass. Ran around a little, and came upon a flattish area in front of a large hill, much more promising than the last time. I dug up the earth a bit to flatten it more and made a small dirt enclosure for the night; two blocks high. Ran around punching trees for wood and looked around. During the night I made a crafting bench, a chest, and tools in my micro-fort. Did some exploratory mining in the hill the next day, and struck coal right off. After another night making a furnace, torches and stone tools I went back and dug more. I made quite the warren that day and the next, which came to an end when three creepers invaded the mine. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! I got most of my stuff back, but the mine was a mess.
For my next project I stocked up on picks and torches and dug a diagonal mineshaft downwards, deeper and deeper and deeper. I found lots of good stuff; iron, and when I came back after restocking and with and iron pick I found redstone, more iron and diamond. I also reached bedrock, and started digging tunnels sideways. After striking lava for the first time I got fried; I put up a sign at the entrance announcing “Dug-Too-Deep Mine, Beware of Balrogs”.
In between trips, I’d expanded my fort; I’d flattened more land, and over two nights built a larger fort with stone walls, torches on the corners and inside and a real door, as well as a dirt lookout-tower in the middle topped with a torch. Deciding to branch out, I built a stone stairway from inside my fort to the top of the nearest hill, flattened and walled it in. I’m experimenting with farming there now.
I built a walled pathway to the smaller nearest hilltop, where I have my latest project; a large multifloor tower, with glass windows and everything. Which has gone well, barring the time a creeper blew out much of the first floor and killed me again. On the other hand fighting spiders in the process got me enough string to make a bow, so the fighting is much easier now.
I’ve also been improving my lower fort; replaced the dirt central lookout with a taller stone one, partially paved the inside. I also built a stone enclosure I intend to put lava in at some point, and a small pool. I’m also digging out the sand around the fort to make windows and am considering a moat; I managed to dig into the underside of my pool and have flowing water over some of the bottom of the trench at least. I’ve yet to even dip into making anything out of redstone but a compass. I did that after exploring a little and getting lost for two days; since I was carrying an iron bucket and pick I didn’t want to just die and respawn. I did come across a really cool looking crater lake in the process though.
So far I like it. It makes me think of legos with monsters.
I was playing Minecraft with my girlfriend and we stumbled upon an absolutely massive cave system, ended up dying by creeper, and quitting in frustration.
Today I decided I wanted to explore the cave, but I was feeling relaxive so I shoved it on peaceful. like a pansy The massive cave system is RIDICULOUSLY massive, I spent an hour and no less than three stacks of torches, mining no cobblestone, but only iron (I lost all my iron picks when I died). I came out with one and a half stacks of iron after GIVING UP. Every time I mined some iron or turned another corner I started to scream “oh, come on!” because invariably there’d be another fork or another mini-cave. I STILL haven’t explored this cave system fully. All I can say is that this would have been nigh impossible if it wasn’t on peaceful, even the small room I died in had 5-6 mobs who presumably wandered in from various parts of the cave. I can’t imagine how many swords I would’ve gone through fighting everything there. I eventually gave up and turned back when I found a giant pit. The weird thing is, I started this network after digging down from the bottom of the natural shear shaft near my base. I’m incredibly surprised I haven’t hit bedrock yet.
In all of the videos I’ve watched I’ve never seen a cave network so big, this one is rooms upon rooms upon rooms, and I didn’t even get to mine half the ore because I was stuck with stone picks. On the plus side, I finally found some diamond!
My own Big Scary Cave system took three very long sessions to clear out, and it’s still not completely spawnbusted yet. (In fact, the whole cave is currently off-limits due to environmental hazards, despite being 90% lit up.) Be thankful you didn’t get so lost that you had to dig a new passage out – that’s happened to me quite a few times.
Bow & arrow is your friend.
The best way to reach bedrock is to dig your own secure mineshaft. Find some good solid rock, and start digging down at an angle. Eventually you’ll hit bedrock, which is easy to spot since it’s a block you can’t destroy with any tool. (Watch out for lava, of course!)
Ain’t that the truth? 
I keep some rock in the first quickslot and avoid mining anything too close to me; if I strike lava I back up, hit “1” and start spamming blocks until it’s dammed. So far I’ve avoided getting fried since the first time.
Good advice. I do the same thing, except I use glass instead of rock.