I hadn’t played Minecraft in about a year, and aside from a couple weeks doing mods in 2021 I hadn’t played in years. But your thread inspired me to try it again. They have added a lot of stuff. I started the game looking at a panda bear in a bamboo forest. The cavern I explored is really something else, compared to what we used to have. Spelunking has always been one of the major features of Minecraft, in my opinion.
Since you haven’t posted about exploring caves, and you have written that you find the Nether disorienting, I’ll share some tips I have.
Bring logs. When spelunking, logs are useful mainly as a source of sticks for torches. One log and eight pieces of coal makes 32 torches. 64 logs could potentially last you 1,500 torches - definitely enough for whatever area you plan on exploring. Sticks can also be used to craft new tools, if yours break.
(Logs are also useful in case you need to make a crafting table.)
Bring coal for torches, unless you are mining a lot of coal in the first place. If you are bringing coal, bring blocks. One block of coal is good for 36 torches; 64 blocks of coal (attainable after you get into enchantments) could last over 2,000 torches.
(Coal is also useful in case you want to smelt anything while spelunking.)
Have a system for navigating your caves. Maps won’t help you underground or in the Nether. Some players use signs. I like to use torches - I always place torches on my right, so that from any point in a cavern I can find my way back by following the path with torches on the left. I will use two torches on the wall to indicate which path I should follow on the return trip, when I run into a cavern I have already explored (i.e. a loop). For large open spaces that have no right wall, I will either construct a pillar, mine a staircase to produce a right wall, or place the torch on the ground.
Make rest stops. I mean a small hole in the wall with a crafting table, a furnace or two, and optionally a chest and doorway. You can outfit them with blast furnaces, but this isn’t quite as useful now that raw items are compressible (see point #5). With older versions of Minecraft, many caverns looked identical and unremarkable. Rest stops were, in my opinion, invaluable aids to just mentally envision where I am in the cavern. With my current world, however, there seems to be much variation and large open spaces in caverns so these may not be quite as useful in that regard.
(You can also get fancy if that’s your style. In my world there is a large underground pond which frequently features glow squid and tropical fish. It is one end of a very tall and flat cavern with a natural dripleaf and azalea garden nearby. I am considering making a fishing hut and dock down there. Years ago I would occasionally make wheat fields deep underground near my strip mines.)
Compress your resources. A full inventory will force you to either surface or make difficult choices. If you are mining coal, iron, copper, gold, lapis, or redstone, craft blocks when you have approach two stacks of an item. It didn’t occur to me at first, but the new raw iron, raw copper, and raw gold items can be compressed into blocks without smelting them. I generally never mine enough diamonds or emeralds to need to compress them - if you are carrying two full stacks of either, even late game, I’d say it’s time to drop them off at home just to be safe.
Bring food and filler blocks. This goes without saying but is easily forgotten.
Bring multiple pickaxes. In the early game that could mean four stone or iron pickaxes. Later on I like to carry one fortune pickaxe and one efficiency pickaxe. Until you get mending, there’s no reason to waste your Fortune III durability on stone.
I don’t have much experience with underwater mining as flooded caves appear to be a new feature. But I noticed a couple things. The magma blocks that pull you down will give you air. Just be sure to sneak so you don’t get hurt by them. You can no longer use doors, torches, etc to create temporary air pockets since your breath meter takes time to refill now. But you can dig a 1 block hole in the roof of a flooded cavern, and swim up to it to catch your breath. Try to get your hands on a helmet with Respiration. Respiration III lets you stay underwater for a full minute. Turtle shells are the best since they have an additional 10 second bonus, but even a gold helmet will do.
In the Nether, you will want Fire Resistance enchanted armor and, as soon as possible, potions of Fire Resistance. Always spend the Redstone to make the resistance potion last longer. If you have a silk touch pick and an enderchest you can carry tons of potions - later on you can use shulker boxes for the same effect. Also be sure to bring lots of stone - even cobblestone is resistant to Ghast explosions. I recommend making a small base in the Nether around your portal - at least a stone encasing. You can do crazy things like grow trees and even wheat, without water.
I upgraded most of my world to 1.18, but I’ve spent most of my time in the areas that were generated under 1.17. so i haven’t explored the caves and cliffs, yet. You inspire me to start.
I get disoriented even in small caves, though. I have a really lousy sense of direction. I’m thinking i may craft a lot of carpet to help guide me.
I don’t yet have any ender chests. I guess i need to learn to kill endermen, first. I’ve been avoiding them so far…
Yeah, the standard advice seems to be torches, but i guess i place too many of them? I’m not disciplined about always placing them the same way, either. But dropping a pair of carpet pieces (white on the right, red on the left, say) might orient be better? It would be slow, of course.
In the nether, my son suggests making a trail of something that won’t be damaged by a ghast’s fireball. That’d include every kind of stone, and i do have a lot of stone lying around.
I think the idea is that you could at least change the key so that it’s not around other keys you already use. That way, if you mistype, it just won’t do anything.
I have two phases of torch placement. First, running into a newly discovered cave and putting torches wherever just to light the place up while trying to avoid being eaten. Once a cave is tamed, I then switch torches to the second scheme.
The second is careful placement. I put an opaque block (usually cobblestone) on a surface so that the torch is fully visible from one side and obscured from others. I do this so that the torches are visible when I’m facing towards home. When I come into a cave I’ve already tamed, I can quickly see which way is home. And more importantly, I can quickly follow my trail while in a panicked retreat.
I came across the most amazing landscape - an absolutely gigantic pit, essentially a huge underground chasm but that has no roof. It even has stalagmites, despite there being nothing to drip down to create it. It looks like a cross between a cave and an open pit mine. It’s the damndest thing. I’ve spent four game days in it collecting minerals and coal.
I run a Java Minecraft server on mine own Linux machine for my kids and their friends. I usually wipe the server whenever there’s a major version change. Lately, we’ve been running on Hard, but with Keep-Inventory on. And PvP on, because the boys like to tussle.
I usually set the world spawn point in a plains area. Depending on how they feel like playing, I’ll sometimes set up some command blocks to hand out iron ingots or diamonds. It’s “cheating” of course, but it lets the kids focus on different things, like PvP or Nether, instead of only resource acquisition.
For myself, I build myself a hobbit-hole in the side of a hill and then explore. I like building tunnels, bridges, stairways as I go. I always have a crafting table, grindstone, and stonecutter with me. The new version 1.18 makes exploring caves and underground great. Especially if you generate the world with “Large Biomes”, you can get very expansive caves!
I’m pretty happy with the world I generated. I think I mentioned that I cheated, and looked for a seed that placed spawn close to mushroom fields. That means I didn’t have to fight much in the early game, and never had any food shortages. (I did need to create wheat seeds and pen in some cattle, but that’s easy.)
I have enjoyed building up resources. I had fun making a skeleton experience farm – and was a little disappointed at how much easier that is in 1.18. (I had to modify my existing farm, of course, as it needs to be much better shielded from light.) I’m quite proud of my tidy little village, full of industrious villagers who will sell me most of the spells I might want and diamond gear. And I enjoyed the challenge of building an iron farm without torturing villagers. I’m intrigued by needing clerics, because the world I started on had a huge village with all sorts of professions, but no clerics, and no resource shortages that I’m aware of.
My next project is going to be to sort the crap the skeleton farm produces. I’ve never build any redstone circuitry, and look forward to messing around with that. I’m also going to build a melon/pumpkin farm because my son wants me to. Honestly, I’m quite happy with the emerald output of my string farm (with its fletcher outpost to turn string into cash) but he keeps insisting that I need the efficiency of farming melons and pumpkins, so I suppose I’ll do that. And I must have left a stray bed in the village, because a bunch of baby villagers were born, recently, so I suppose they can become additional farmers so I can offload those fruits.
But after I do that, I think I’ll take a break from developing, and do some exploration. I have a large sea, and I think its shores touch every biome. I’m thinking I may walk around the sea, building huts from time to time as I go, and explore the overworld and reach every biome. That will include some light mountain climbing. And I want to map out where I can find different types of wildlife, because eventually I do want to build a zoo. I already have an arboretum, but I need to add azealas and the two nether trees to it.
I guess that leaves out the caves. And I do want to check out the caves.
I just accept that I will get lost in caves. You can always staircase up. Then i find my way home overland, which can also be fun. If we are on the kiddie server, with “keep inventory” on, I sometimes take the poor man’s teleport via lava pool.
I also think I avoided building tutorials too long. It felt like “cheating”, but it’s actually a great way to learn. My freehand buildibgs are so much better.
My oldest daughter is 15 now. She has lived on the other side of the country since she was 2. I would go visit her once a year and the rest of the year I would video chat with her every weekend.
When she got old enough we played online games together. I created a Minecraft server and we played in Creative mode.
I still have it and I go in there every once in awhile to remember the stuff we made. I love her little signs and notes she would write for me in places.
My youngest daughter is turning 8 soon and I can show her things I made with her big sister. The game has a lot of sentimental value for me.
I’m not worried about that being cheating, but i may be too proud of my own design ability. That’s a good suggestion.
I do have a standard hut i build based on a formula for making “circles”, and I’m pretty happy with it as something i can build quickly, that has enough room for a pair of beds, a crafting table, a chest, and a bit more. I’ll probably build a string of them around the sea. I’ll probably also place a few portals to facilitate returning to places. (They will connect to the roof of the nether, not the real nether. That’s the cheat that i use extensively to get around.)
Hmm, now I’m thinking about what to pack for this journey of discovery. Maybe a should bring a lot of wool and plan to leave beds behind, so i don’t find myself back at spawn when i die.
The best part of Minecraft is that you can play it however you want and there’s a lot of ways to play it. Cheating is rather ill-defined when it’s your own server.
When I travel with the plan to jumpstart a new base, I carry: bed (set spawn), boat (for travel over water), stack of food (to eat), stack of seeds (for starting a wheat farm), two buckets of water (for building a well), shears (for clipping sheep), stack of logs (for planks and sticks), crafting table (to craft), stonecutter (for stairs), stone pickaxe (good enough to mine iron), stone shovel (digging dirt and gravel), stone axe (chopping logs), stone hoe (farming). I’m likely forgetting something, and I’m sure others have their own preferences.
I’m thinking I want to pack:
wool (to make beds as I go)
boat (if I want to get back to my “home” quickly)
stack of steaks (to eat)
an empty bucket and one full of water
stack of logs, stack of planks, stack of sticks
stack of coal (mostly for torches)
crafting table
two axes, two shovels, two pickaxes (one silk touch, one fortune – maybe I only need two pickaxes, and can make due with one shovel and one ax.)
sword, bow, stack of arrows
stack of jungle doors (my favorite door type)
stack of glass (for windows)
stacks of building materials. I like to use something that’s not common where-ever I am building, so it stands out. I have a lot of terra cotta, and it’s fairly pretty, so maybe that. Although you can’t shape it, you just get cubes.
A stack of scaffolding, in case I want to climb up anything.
A telescope and a map or two, so I can look around and know where I am.
A clock, so I know what time it is.
A suit of armor.
Yeah, my inventory will be cluttered. I may need to stage stuff. Or maybe tame a pack animal. Of course, then I’d also need to bring a lead…
And if I’m walking, I suppose I could bring a couple of tame cats, and breed them to leave a cat near each hut, to keep away creepers. I expect to stay near the ocean, so I can hunt fish when I need them.
At times, I’ve created command blocks to kill all creepers, everywhere, forever. Every time I come across a little pile of gunpowder, I giggle a little. :evil:
I recommend taming a donkey. You’d need a saddle which you can get from a villager, or you may already have one from a dungeon.
The donkey can wait in your boat, no need for a leash.
You probably don’t need two sets of tools unless you plan on collecting lots of resources, but it looks like you’re doing a mapping expedition. One set should do fine, as long as they are in good condition.
I don’t recommend building more than one or two outposts out of nonlocal materials per trip. You can bring an item frame and extra blank maps. If you copy your map and place it in the item frame it will leave a permanent marker. That way you can come back later and build the base of your dreams. (May want to test this first - it may have been banners rather than item frames)
After the next upgrade, boats will be able to carry chests.
Hmm, i don’t think i have a saddle, actually. I have all sorts of other random crap, but i don’t think i have that, yet. I suppose i could train up a leather worker. Now I’m wondering where i came by saddles previously.
Maybe a should bring a lot of wool and plan to leave beds behind, so i don’t find myself back at spawn when i die.