Minecraft

[shot2bits]

A volcano that spews pigs.

yes i suppose that makes sense, if it was the otherway round it would be volcanoe-pigs rather than pig-volcanoes

also good starting tips there pants

oh and its probably worth mentioning crops grow quicker if they are hydrated so having water nearby is handy

[Dog Pants]

They do? I'll have to get some water to them then. Also, using buckets to take lava up to your moat is awesome.

Also, Minecraft Infdev is now called Minecraft Alpha, and he's done away with indev. He's also made a standalone (offline, non-browser) version.

[shot2bits]

was just about to post saying hed updated and properly released the client now. theres also......STAIRS, much smoother going down now without constantly bumping your head into things

and yeah hydrated tiles grow much faster, you can also use torches so they have light in the night and your crops will pretty much grow in 1 day.

wiki page on it here http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Farming

[Dog Pants]

The water needs to be the same level or higher than the crops? Wouldn't that make them a bit wet? Oh well, looks like my castle courtyard will become paddyfields. Must remember to drop a water bucket and not a lava bucket though.

How do you make stairs then?

[shot2bits]

i generally just do the water the same level as crops, i mostly end up just doing rows, but you can hydrate 8 blocks with 1 block of water i think.

stairs you just craft:

OOX
OXX
XXX

where O is just empty spaces and X is wood/stone or whatever, this makes 4 stair blocks, so you sacrifice a few blocks for much smoother movement

[Dog Pants]

Yeah, I worked it out in the end. They don't quite work properly, for example making stairs two blocks wide, but they're handy for mining. Tried the irrigation out and it made quite a difference, but it's a bit unwieldy for inside and pigs kept using the water as a step up to my crops.

Have you found a secret room yet?

[shot2bits]

yeah they dont always face the way you want. no secret chambers yet, i spent some time underground playing with lava and water i found and eventually dug to bedrock. will go searching for secret chambers and saddles later, been mostly looking for a decent amount of iron though, only found about 15 peices in total

[Dog Pants]

Yeah, iron's pretty scarce. Diamond seems a little easier to find than it was though. Careful in the bedrock, it's uneven and you can dig out into nothingness through little holes.

[shot2bits]

yeah i just found lava in the gaps, i broke though to an absolutely fucking HUGE underground cavern just now and it just doesnt seem to end, theres various underground pools, rivers, and waterfalls scattered around a few pools of lava and a few spiders and zombies lurking in the dark corners. i almost fell through a hole that led into the biggest lava pit ive seen.

every time i hit a dead end i turn round and follow another route that leads into even more caverns and corridors, i may have some trouble finding my way back

[shot2bits]

one thing im most impressed with is how alot of the underground caverns seem to have different layers, and if you look around enough they loop around to the bits on higher up and lead to loads of different places, ive found myself climbing up around loads of different waterfalls, and then running into lots of hordes of zombies and skeletons, unfortunately i have no arrows and cant get close enough to the skeletons to kill them

not found any diamond, just fucktons of coal and still just small bits of iron scattered about, nowhere near as much as im gonna need to make a huge minecart track

edit: after running round aimlessly trying to not get killed by skeletons for anothing half hour i fell down a hole and landed miraculously nexto a workbench id made near the entrance of the massive chambers and have managed to find my way back to my base id made in a mountainside, i think im going to set up a proper farm so i can take food next time and either some better armour with the iron or a bunch of arrows so i can give those skeletons some payback

[Dog Pants]

Interesting discovery! If you have a torch below a stack of gravel (and presumably sand) and they fall onto it they are destroyed (you can still pick up the block though). Makes it easier to dig out those areas when you're not carrying a shovel.

[shot2bits]

nifty!, just hope that its not a massive pool of lava or water above them all.

i found one of the secret chambers somewhere near my base, and killed the spiders that where inside, but as i started to attack the creature spawn block another spider popped out of it and killed me, and now i cant find where it was again

edit: i found it again! turns out i kept going the complete opposite direction i needed to, but not i keep getting hurt by lava in adjascent tiles to me that wherent hurting me before, im gonne build on them as the gap into the secret chamber is right nexto the lava and trying to take on spiders while standing on the edge of a lava pit isnt so good

[Dog Pants]

Ugh. If you're going to go spelunking in huge lava-filled caves, make sure you leave valuable stuff like huge quantities of stone, generous amounts of iron ore, rare mushroooms, all your glass, iron picks, gold ore, and a diamond sword, at home.

[shot2bits]

Ugh. If you're going to go spelunking in huge lava-filled caves, make sure you leave valuable stuff like huge quantities of stone, generous amounts of iron ore, rare mushroooms, all your glass, iron picks, gold ore, and a diamond sword, at home.

that very much so!

also, dont try to open doors with a bucket of water in your hands....

in other news, i have started making waterfalls out of my farms irrigation system

oh and the game has been updated for secret friday stuffs, stairs seem to be working better side by side now

and it would look like theres also levers and pressure pads now

edit: and buttons, which you can put nexto doors to open them when you press it, also seems to be metal doors that can only be opened with the new switches

[Dog Pants]

Oooooh!

[shot2bits]

ooh, theres alot of stuff in this update by the looks of it. theres a new block, which gives you some red powder when its mined and that can be used to make wires to connect pressure pads to stuff

[Dog Pants]

That's pretty cool. Unfortunately in order to find copper I'll now have to either start a new game (and lose my nicely growing castle) or go exploring new areas so it generates some.

Hmm, what interesting things can we do with switches, levers and doors.

[shot2bits]

if i manage to find some copper will be testing iron doors resistance to lava and water and see about making some kind of mechanism for burning intruders via lava or washing them down a waterfall

[Dog Pants]

I did wonder about that myself. Two flood tanks either end of a channel, one with water and the other with lava. Trigger the lava to kill off gribblies, then let in the water to turn it to stone, then mine it out again. Problem is it'd take a good few bucket runs to reset and the lava would destroy anything the monsters drop. The best defence is just to keep them out.

[Dog Pants]

Well I've not found any copper or secret rooms still, but I did build a new castle and it's coming on nicely;