Minecraft! (single player dwarf fortress)

[aganazer]

While I appreciate the austerity of simply starting with your fists and your wits and your crafting wiki, I do wish that you started out with a few pieces of coal. Then it becomes the story of the dwarf who got some lumps of coal for Christmas because Santa Dwarf had you on his naughty list. And then you're exiled to the middle of nowhere!

The old survival indev version would start you out in a wooden shack with two torches on the walls. It worked great since you could take the torches with you while you dig a mine and find more coal. It was just enough light to see what you are doing deep in a mineshaft.

I miss the old indev version. It had a few world themes. The Hell theme was cool as... it would have lava oceans and was very dark.

[Marcin]

Yea it's kinda weird but it makes more sense than a bucket of water making an endless river.

Mmm, yeah, but I was planning to cut a channel from the ocean to ... well, wherever I needed it. I can't do that in this model.

Although I rather like the endless buckets. It'd be much harder to get rooftop waterfalls without them :P

I don't mind starting out without coal. I've spent a night frantically walling myself away from the creeplies as I got stuck out at night too far away from my lair(s). You'd miss out on that if you could *always* find coal.

Oh, that flat world was done with a hack tool. Nevermind then. :P

World themes, huh. I'm sure there will be more work on the underground layers to come ...

[rowe33]

You could also just set it to Peaceful mode for the first night or two until you find coal. It'd make for a much easier start.

[pg]

In my experience coal is fairly abundant. You can usually find some just by looking around the sides of a few mountains or few entrances of caves. Stuff that can be harder and deeper down to find is iron, diamond, gold, red stone, etc. If you go splunking down a major cave system you will likely find some of everything but you do need some torches first!

[caesarbear]

You guys complaining about coal are just not looking hard enough. I've used my bear hands to smash through solid stone in the black of night saving my nearly broken wood pick to get coal. caesarbeargrylls is not impressed.

[barstein]

I've spent my first nights without torches before and it wasn't that big a deal. I think you still have some visibility for digging and stuff as long as you're working out in the open (and have some basic walls up).

And it's not like you can't make a quick dash from your shelter to a nearby tree, and dash back again. Risky, but worthwhile and passes the time. Or if that isn't an option (too many monsters spawning), just drop the difficulty down a bit temporarily, as others have suggested.

[MonkeyPunky]

And it's not like you can't make a quick dash from your shelter to a nearby tree, and dash back again. Risky, but worthwhile and passes the time. Or if that isn't an option (too many monsters spawning), just drop the difficulty down a bit temporarily, as others have suggested.

I once built a hole to cower in at night when I had no torches. I left a 1x1 block hole in the front so that I could see daylight. A pig wandered over and was jumping up and down in front of my window, so I thought I would take a quick step outside for some ham. There was a creeper right out of sight. It exploded, I died, respawned, then collected my ham.

The moral is, stay in your hole til daylight!

[barstein]

That doesn't always happen, though, so don't let the fear rule you! :P

That would indeed be a pain if you were holing up at some distant location. Great thing about building your first shelter at the spawn point is (1) you can start building and preparing sooner and (2) if you're killed, you reappear immediately at the same spot.

Plus, creepers can be convenient demolition contractors.

[ThornFalconeye]

I just found out about the powered minecarts- of course it was right after building this:



That small blob on the right side(in the water by the tower) is the luckiest thing I have ever done: turns out my mine of about a week of work, one of the exits came up right there in the water, so I built a bunch of ladders to get me there, instead of going 200 units down in my internal minecart adventure flume.

(http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/681...raftawsome.png) full sized

[DocLazy]

Waiting the night out in a hole is a waste of time. Make yourself a sword and some armor and go to town on the monsters.

[JM]

You guys complaining about coal are just not looking hard enough. I've used my bear hands to smash through solid stone in the black of night saving my nearly broken wood pick to get coal. caesarbeargrylls is not impressed.

Bear hands must be a mod I've not seen yet.

[kerzain]

I'm in the process of thinking up a good look for my avatar, for the moment I'm going with a bloody murderer look:



EDIT: Here's the .png for this: Right click and save. To use it upload it (or any other character) at http://www.minecraft.net/skin/

[JM]

Haha, that's really good. Think the eyes make the biggest difference.

[mok]

For my $.02 on game start, This strategy seems to get me going pretty quick:

When starting a new game:
-mark your spawn point
-get enough wood to make a workshop, wooden pick and wooden axe
-chop wood until the axe breaks
-then try to find coal before dark
-if found coal, build dirt hut around spawn point, else hold up on a mountainside during the night mining stone in the dark - you may get coal at some point
-in the morning, find coal if not yet found then build a small dirt hut at the spawn point
-dig all the way straight down to the bottom and then grid-mine for diamonds using stone tools, save a iron pick for gold and, of course, diamonds. Skip what redstone you can initially.

I have had the most success fast by building a castle around the spawn point, regardless of where the spawn point is. Makes for the best hard-core mining base. Last one I did had a 9x9 floor with the sp in the middle, then I dug all the way around and hollowed out a mirrored 9x9 floor on the bottom of the world - this lead off four jump points for grid mining. Gotta watch for lava though - gravel is great for snuffing out lava. Once you get bored grid mining, you can come up and start looking around at what is nearby.

[barstein]

I was too lazy/busy to write it up but you have pretty much summarized the way I start out, currently, except that I'm not married to finding coal and/or digging into a mountain the very first night. So far, I've managed to find stone and ore right underneath wherever I've spawned.

[dtolman]

Is it normal to make giant towers to mark where your house is?

I'm on my first game, and the landscape is dotted by ever larger towers to mark where I've rebuilt my home (again). I swear I've lost my house 3 times - at least I'll have some fun when eventually I to stumble on my old dwellings and their puny mark towers like an archaeological expedition (and all the f!@#ing iron ore I left at my corpse).

[kerzain]

I put towers (shaped like upside down L's) on top of several hills to point the way to my house. They're easy to see in the distance and they do a great job of keeping me oriented.

If I find something interesting out in the world and I want to come back and explore it later I'll double the thickness (to help me differentiate whether it's a random location marker or a home marker) of a tower and point it at my find.

If I ever find myself lost I'll just go to the nearest tallest hill, build an excessively large column underneath myself so that I stand above all the scenery and am able to see my markers. When I get oriented I'll dig the column away so I don't A) take damage falling, B) leave useless columns littered about.

[marxeil]

There's also the 'beacon in the sky' trick, although if the map is a hilly one it won;t be visible from everywhere on the map. Still, combined with the towers its rather useful.
Its also decorative.

On a different subject, I find that this game is sort of a commentary on man's greed and its inevitable price. I found myself numerous times trudging through a cave system for some time, and instead of hurrying topside to deposit my treasures I linger a little longer to check this avenue or other for more riches, only to be ambushed by hordes of monsters and lose it all (or in one crushing event - to be submerged by lava pouring from above while digging upwards to the surface).

[kerzain]

There's also the 'beacon in the sky' trick, although if the map is a hilly one it won;t be visible from everywhere on the map. Still, combined with the towers its rather useful.
Its also decorative.

I like to think of myself as a pseudo caveman making rock piles (and graduating to castles etc), so the beacon in the sky thing wouldn't work for me :p

On a different subject, I find that this game is sort of a commentary on man's greed and its inevitable price. I found myself numerous times trudging through a cave system for some time, and instead of hurrying topside to deposit my treasures I linger a little longer to check this avenue or other for more riches, only to be ambushed by hordes of monsters and lose it all

My dungeons are full of chests that I routinely leave behind full of valuables (while exploring) to help minimize any loss. I spend much more time under ground than above ground (I think my dude is a gnome or a dwarf or some other subterranean race) and have created and found massive networks of caves without coming back up. The only real requirement is that I bring along tons of unprocessed wood blocks and I can pretty much stay down there until I run out of wood.

(or in one crushing event - to be submerged by lava pouring from above while digging upwards to the surface).

Been there, done that. It sucks when you know where a river is but you can get to it in time. I need to start carrying a bucket of water to see if I can dump it and jump in the water to put out the flames.

[mok]

I got tired of getting lost ;> but building your first house enclosing your spawn point seems to solve that if you also dig down to the bottom in that house to look for diamonds. Eventually you bring up a ton of stone.

When I am ready to wander, I simply bring the stone and torches, and build a one lane road and place torches on it. I found once I did that, I never got lost as the road is very visible form a hill. The lava beacons definitely help too, but depending on the terrain, even ones above the clouds disappear when you get far enough from base. Road building also helps you focus on directions (east west and cloud moevments).....and it takes you by interesting landmarks that you then can go back to and explore. If I am building a road and it is daylight and see an interesting opening to explore, I make a mental note of it and keep the road construction up till dusk, then spend the night in the interesting cave - after all - daylight does not matter in there.

Roads then help you esitmate how you need to dig if you want to tunnel back to your original quarry (then lay mine cart tracks, then send powered minecarts with storage minecarts of ore back to your base - oh this game is a great fun waste of time)....


Lava is the spelunker's friend and the miner's enemy. ;>

[CaseyRobinson]

Just read multiplayer sever news this morning --

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/897275641/status-update

[Marcin]

Yeah, I started out building the inverted L shapes. They're now inverted T shapes however, since I seem to have created multiple lairs. :P

My starting point is out on the water (snow world) so I can't start digging there, heh. However, building some sort of hut there (and a skyway to connect to Lair 1 which is just a bit inland) sounds like a good idea!

@ThornFalconeye: where is that track's intended destination? Looks neat ... until the sea monsters are *really* added one of these updates :)

[barstein]

I shape the towers uniquely for easy pattern recognition too, and red flowers also really catch the eye. If you plant them in series of rings around your tower, optionally combining them with torches, the towers are even harder to miss from a distance.

[Marcin]

This thread needs more pictures. Click for full size.

Here are my wanderings, guided only by distant markers obscured by the falling snow. I don't bother putting torches on these, since at night the snowfall obscures everything anyway.



Ah, home is in sight. I might now have enough blocks to finish it (i.e. make it tall enough so that a skyway from it can go over the nearby mountains).



Function first, form later. This will need more windows, glass floors, a moat or two, waterfalls, etc.

[flyinj]

EDIT: SORRY- only the client is updated. The server isn't out yet.

Carry on...

[Sepiche]

MULTIPLAYER UPDATE IS OUT!!!!!


(now the thread title makes absolutely zero sense)

Are you sure? It looks like he updated the main client to allow connecting to MP games, but he's still not planning on releasing the server until tomorrow.

[DocLazy]

This is my current project. In the foreground is a factory, in the background is the frame for a tower. Each level is four blocks high, including the floor:


This is at the top of the tower looking at the factory. Unfortunately that's the top of the map and I can't build any higher:


I now just need to figure out what the hell i'm going to put in that tower. It's highly unlikely I'll get this finished as I think it will take probably near to 100,000 blocks to finish.

[Marcin]

o_O

That's all I got.

[ThornFalconeye]

My god..... one- thats a lot of charcoal for fancy blocks.

two: you need to build a rail system. and a TNT elevator.

[Gremlinclr]

Are you guys just spawning this stuff or actually mining and making the blocks? Cause that's a hell of a lotta work.