Learning Minecraft - Update

So I've been playing a LOT of Minecraft over the last term and the last week and a half of the holidays...

At the start it was just learning the mechanics with my son on our Survival world. Experiencing that heartbreak of starting fresh every time we felt like we were progressing. For example, venturing off into the world and finding some diamonds for the first time. We made some diamond tools, gathered all our riches and on the way back home, get blown up by creepers...

So that was our weekend for the first month or so. I'd look up some guides to get some tips on Survival mode, learning about animal and plant farms, water mechanics and even a little redstone.

I also learnt a LOT from the students at school during their Colony Game in Minecraft: Education Edition. I found out about potion brewing, little trick mechanics when fighting certain mobs and also about the scary Nether.

Some of my ex-students who graduated in the past also invited me to their Survival world and I learnt about strip mining and about the F3 function, particularly using coordinates.

Bring that all together and back on the Survival world at home, we started prospering. Didn't die as often, and even if we did, we would just run back and get our things back as we learnt how to 'orienteer' out in the Minecraft wilderness. (Using man made beacons, or roads, or torch placements)

Then my wife joined us just as holidays were about to start.

We went on this crazy spree of Minecraft for about a week. Started a new Survival world (on Easy) and she picked it up really fast. We created our own strip mines and we were doing really well. Then I discovered automated farms and that took my obsession to another level. I started researching and watching videos. I created* an AFK fishing spot where we started getting books and enchanted rods. So I looked into enchanting and books. I also created an automated melon/pumpkin farm and sugar cane farm using redstones and I felt like a tinkerer! I watched more videos on what else I could build and found that I needed 'sticky pistons'. That required slimes. So next, I learnt about 'chunks' and used tools to find slime chunks in order to create an automated slime farm. Once that was done, I went in to the Nether and after many deaths and watching numerous videos, I finally made a blaze farm.

(* By created, I mean I built it but the designs were from people I found online)

After the Blaze farm, I was kind of exhausted with Minecraft so I took a little break, just hopping on now and then to play with my son. But later on I also discovered banners and custom designs. That was really fun to play with as well.


It really showed me how deep this game really is and why so many people enjoy it. There's something in it for everyone. There's action, design, tinkering, collecting, organising, homemaking, fishing and I'm sure there's more. It kind of reminds me of Vanilla WoW where I would just give myself these mini missions/goals to achieve in game - I didn't need the game to give these to me. My experience in Minecraft was pretty much the same. I'd give myself a goal, for example, create a blaze farm, and this would entail so many other mini goals in order for me to get there. I use blaze farm as the example because this required the most research and preparing on my part from my playthrough so far. I first looked up the materials I'd need. Found out that I need sticky pistons and slime blocks. So I went about finding out how to farm slimes. Researched Slime Farms. Learnt about chunks. Spent hours digging out a chunk to create a Slime Farm. Once I had this, I located a blaze spawner and spent days trying to light it up and create a covering around it so I could farm them in peace. (Even though I probably died close to a hundred times - from blazes that slipped through, ghasts and fall damage) Finally, I needed to create the actual mechanisms, which required me to look more into redstone and quite a lot of failings.


I've recorded a lot of the gameplay and will upload it once I can edit it all down to a more digestible size. Photos to come soon too!