Since my state is still in partial lockdown, I've had a lot of free time at home. This has mainly gone into video games since I can't do much else. I finished one of the last farms in my previous Minecraft world then grew tired of it and took a break so I could play Borderlands 2 with only slag weapons (which don't spawn until you're halfway through the game). I returned and tried a UHC world, only to die of fall damage just after creating my Nether portal. Either way, those two playthroughs were interesting. They made me realize just how much I love trying dumb challenges in games.
So here I am, trying a survival journal for a nomad-style Minecraft world. My hope is to improve at combat itself thanks to the rules I've put in place in addition to learning about how to utilize tools/mechanics the average player wouldn't use in their normal worlds. In addition, I'm a weirdo who loves inventory management. It's very stressful, but for me, it's the good kind of stress. Like how I tried Dark Souls and threw myself at the Taurus Demon for two and a half hours until my strategy of "jump onto him over and over and over" finally worked.
I'm going to attempt this challenge three times, all of which are Hardcore runs. If I die, that attempt is over. The world is complete when I've completed a set of challenges I created, and I move on to the next world if I succeed.
Rules:
Hardcore only, random seed
I must constantly be on the run. If I'm not gathering resources or looting a place, I must move. I am allowed to stay with villagers for trading for a max of 40 minutes (aka two full day-night cycles).
I can only craft wooden/leather and golden weapons and armor (gold is removed once I reach the Nether). I am not allowed to use any diamond / Netherite weapons or armor (just for that little bit of extra difficulty). Tridents are allowed.
I can craft anything that's not diamond tool-wise. I am allowed to trade for diamond tools or use ones I find but not craft them. If I do find or trade for a diamond tool, I am allowed to upgrade it to Netherite whenever I want.
In general, anything I find in a chest or dispenser is fair game.
I'm not allowed to mine iron or gold ore (including Nether Gold / gilded blackstone). I am free to smelt tools and weapons for their nuggets, and I am free to take whatever nuggets I come across.
I can only sleep once I find / craft a bow, and after I sleep, I am not allowed to sleep for seven in-game days.
The rules will be updated if I create any new ones or remember any that I forgot.
And finally, I do have some datapacks on. All of them came from Planet Minecraft, and they are:
Wither Skeleton Archers / Wither Jockeys
BAC Advancements
Better Wandering Traders
Desert Sandstorms
Flower Pots++ (not sure why I installed this one)
Honey in Desert Temples (again, not sure why)
Illager Fortresses v8
Natural Brown Mooshrooms (I think this one was a misclick on my part.)
Phantom Jockeys
Raw Food Poisoning (which was a misclick and will be removed in the next run.)
And finally, my world's goals are:
Slay the Ender Dragon
Slay the Wither
Clear an Ocean Monument
Defeat a Woodland Mansion
Defend a village from a raid
Build an iron golem (which takes 38 iron)
But with them out of the way, it's time to begin.
(All of this happened last night, so I'm going to use past-tense.)
I completely forgot to take a screenshot of my spawn location, so I took one from a different after wandering off and butchering some cows.
It's not in the screenshot, but I did spawn near a ruined portal which was good for loot.
.
Results of my slaughter session
.
I was lucky enough to obtain that much leather and sugar canes. With them, I could make books. And with diamonds and obsidian spawning naturally in chests, I could craft an enchanting table, which would be a game-changer. All I needed to do was find them.
Night fell, and I rushed past as many mobs as I could to reach the ruined portal. Then I was met by two gold blocks and this.
.
.
Twenty-eight new iron nuggets. Just enough for an iron pickaxe. In addition, the golden sword had Sharpness 5, giving it six and a half hearts of damage. The math doesn't sound right, but that's what the advanced tooltip said. Odds of it glitching out? I'd say something like 60%.
Oh, and the helmet had Blast Resistance 4. Neat.
A Drowned and a zombie with an iron sword then rushed me, so I sliced them up with my pointy new weapon.
I gathered the gold blocks and used them to make a golden chestplate and axe. Until that point, I was gathering wood with a wooden axe. Gold is even faster than Netherite, so even if it was very brittle, I was able to quickly gather roughly 40 logs. Then I dug into a coal vein, made a campfire, started cooking my porkchops and realized: I forgot to make a shield.
So I waited until day instead of simply until my pork finished. Then I ran across some mountains until I stumbled across a flock of probably 15 chickens.
.
.
I needed their feathers for arrows once I obtained a bow. Since this is 1.16, I have to deal with phantoms. Phantoms are very annoying even with a bow, but bows make them easier to kill. So I needed one fast.
I kept running and eventually came across an ocean. Shipwrecks can have diamonds in them! So I crafted a boat and sailed until I came across one.
.
The first chest I opened had the treasure map and seven books. Very useful!
.
I sailed to where the map told me, making a stone shovel so I could dig faster, and eventually found the chest. I was then completely disappointed.
.
.
Yes, there are emeralds and iron, but I can't make proper use out of them.
I set off again, eventually reaching a continent. I found a full-golden armor zombie and wanted to kill it, but it despawned just before I entered the "no more despawning" range, which was very disappointing.
Then I found a village and became exited again.
.
.
I knew from one of my UHC attempts that Taiga villages can have armor stands with iron armor in addition to normal chests. So I ran off and was pleasantly surprised.
.
.
Seven obsidian and two pieces of iron armor to replace my gold and leather. Very nice stuff.
.
I snagged a grindstone for later (gotta get that XP somehow) and continued looting. I actually also found a Fletcher who would trade gravel and an emerald for flint, but I had no gravel, so I sold him a stack and a half of sticks and left him. Then I found it.
.
.
An iron helmet and chestplate! But I only had so much room. So I traded an item for the helmet and left the chestplate, since at that point, I already had several chest items including an iron chestplate.
.
By now, I had already used two items that are typically ignored, those being a golden axe and sword. But after leaving the village, I made the third: a Flint and Steel. I can hear someone now.
"But those are used! Nether Portals!"
Yes, they are used for nether portals. And for decorating with fire. But how often are they used for combat?
One mechanic I always forget about: right-clicking a creeper with a flint and steel or fire charge causes it to tick down and explode regardless of proximity to the player. I can take advantage of this when surrounded by mobs: ignite a creeper, block with a shield and watch as everything near me takes some big damage while I'm perfectly protected from the blast.
This post is already so long that I'm anxious about its size, so I'll save the rest of this session for another post.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Watch out for the crabocalypse. Some say the day will never come. But it will.
Feel free to drop by for a chat whenever.
If you'd like to talk with me about other games, here are a few I play.
Team Fortress 2
Borderlands series (Borderlands 2 is my favorite game, ever. TPS combat is a lot of fun and makes up for the lower-quality story, in my opinion)
Elder Scrolls series
Warframe (IGN is something like That_One_Flesh_Atronach)
Pokémon series (HGSS forever)
Rocket League
Fallout series
Left 4 Dead 2 (Boomer files always corrupt though)
SUPERHOT (SUPERHOT is the most innovative shooter I've played in years!)
Dead Rising series (Dead Rising 2 is one of my favorite games, and the 3rd was a lot of fun. 1st has poor survivor AI and the 4th is bad)
Just Cause series
Come to think of it, I mainly play fighting-based games.
Well, that was interesting, to say the least. I meant to update with the rest of my session yesterday, but I was distracted by a new session. And then my first attempt ended in my demise after I got into a fight I couldn't handle. I'll likely split the remaining screenshots into two more posts, the second coming tomorrow, then begin anew the day afterwards.
Not too much happened for awhile. After crafting my flint and steel, I continued my journey to find diamonds. I checked probably 20 total shipwrecks, ruined portals and buried chests to no avail. I did find a nice pair of Mending boots, though. Alongside a few pieces of laps.
Eventually, I found land (a mesa) and decided to search for a desert. If I was going to find diamonds, it'd be in a temple, after all. I did also get this neat screenshot:
.
I entered one of the above-ground mineshafts, and what would I find besides a spawner?
.
Sorry, but it's dark in there. I only use 30% brightness for FPS purposes.
From there, I finally crafted a bow. My rule then kicked in: from that moment on, I was allowed to sleep once per week.
I thought about mining some of the gold, but a nagging feeling in my head convinced me otherwise, telling me it would be too easy (as if gold makes things easy). I then decided that my character was a nomad and therefore didn't know how to properly mine. She wouldn't be able to properly extract the ores, either. And thus, rule 6 was born.
After wandering for awhile, I came across a desert. And what luck!
.
.
It was the dead of night then and there, so finally, after an hour of playtime, I slept for the first time. There were two reasons. One, I wanted to trade with the villagers after looting them. Two, I was living in constant fear of a witch turning into a Phantom Jockey and butchering me.
I slept and started ransacking the villageborrowing holding the hay bales for ransom, eventually ending up with a nice pile of emeralds. 58, to be precise. But the village had nothing else I needed, so I left.
And what did I find but another village? An acacia one, too.
I began looting it and questioned this villager's hatred for its fellow villagers. Why else would someone build a house this far away?
.
I then misclicked, dropping an entire stack of wheat that was then sucked up by one of the farmers. That was poor luck on my part. And there were still no diamonds.
By the time I left the village, I had amassed quite the stack of emeralds.
I looted one or two more ruined portals by the time I reached the next ocean. When I did, I suffered my first real scare.
.
.
In my last main world, a Trident zombie made me lose two whole days of exploration and looting progress. But that was a few weeks after I returned to the game from one of several hiatuses. This wasn't. I was ready.
So anyways, I killed it and continued sailing, coming across what else but an ocean monument?
.
.
After looting another ship and following its map, I had my first stroke of luck.
My first diamond! Now I only needed one more.
Also, pillagers.
I then had another stroke of luck. Another village, and this one had a church!
I had already realized that I'd need a lot of lapis for enchanting, so I waited until day came, making sure to gather all the hay bales which I then sold back to the villagers for a profit. I upgraded a cleric and bought all the lapis it would sell me.
Then I went into a nearby field and tamed a horse. That was a lucky find.
It's only now occurring to me that most of my screenshots don't mean anything, so I'll end it there so I don't lose my progress.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Watch out for the crabocalypse. Some say the day will never come. But it will.
Feel free to drop by for a chat whenever.
If you'd like to talk with me about other games, here are a few I play.
Team Fortress 2
Borderlands series (Borderlands 2 is my favorite game, ever. TPS combat is a lot of fun and makes up for the lower-quality story, in my opinion)
Elder Scrolls series
Warframe (IGN is something like That_One_Flesh_Atronach)
Pokémon series (HGSS forever)
Rocket League
Fallout series
Left 4 Dead 2 (Boomer files always corrupt though)
SUPERHOT (SUPERHOT is the most innovative shooter I've played in years!)
Dead Rising series (Dead Rising 2 is one of my favorite games, and the 3rd was a lot of fun. 1st has poor survivor AI and the 4th is bad)
Just Cause series
Come to think of it, I mainly play fighting-based games.
Since my state is still in partial lockdown, I've had a lot of free time at home. This has mainly gone into video games since I can't do much else. I finished one of the last farms in my previous Minecraft world then grew tired of it and took a break so I could play Borderlands 2 with only slag weapons (which don't spawn until you're halfway through the game). I returned and tried a UHC world, only to die of fall damage just after creating my Nether portal. Either way, those two playthroughs were interesting. They made me realize just how much I love trying dumb challenges in games.
So here I am, trying a survival journal for a nomad-style Minecraft world. My hope is to improve at combat itself thanks to the rules I've put in place in addition to learning about how to utilize tools/mechanics the average player wouldn't use in their normal worlds. In addition, I'm a weirdo who loves inventory management. It's very stressful, but for me, it's the good kind of stress. Like how I tried Dark Souls and threw myself at the Taurus Demon for two and a half hours until my strategy of "jump onto him over and over and over" finally worked.
I'm going to attempt this challenge three times, all of which are Hardcore runs. If I die, that attempt is over. The world is complete when I've completed a set of challenges I created, and I move on to the next world if I succeed.
Rules:
The rules will be updated if I create any new ones or remember any that I forgot.
And finally, I do have some datapacks on. All of them came from Planet Minecraft, and they are:
And finally, my world's goals are:
But with them out of the way, it's time to begin.
(All of this happened last night, so I'm going to use past-tense.)
I completely forgot to take a screenshot of my spawn location, so I took one from a different after wandering off and butchering some cows.
It's not in the screenshot, but I did spawn near a ruined portal which was good for loot.
.
Results of my slaughter session
.
I was lucky enough to obtain that much leather and sugar canes. With them, I could make books. And with diamonds and obsidian spawning naturally in chests, I could craft an enchanting table, which would be a game-changer. All I needed to do was find them.
Night fell, and I rushed past as many mobs as I could to reach the ruined portal. Then I was met by two gold blocks and this.
.
.
Twenty-eight new iron nuggets. Just enough for an iron pickaxe. In addition, the golden sword had Sharpness 5, giving it six and a half hearts of damage. The math doesn't sound right, but that's what the advanced tooltip said. Odds of it glitching out? I'd say something like 60%.
Oh, and the helmet had Blast Resistance 4. Neat.
A Drowned and a zombie with an iron sword then rushed me, so I sliced them up with my pointy new weapon.
I gathered the gold blocks and used them to make a golden chestplate and axe. Until that point, I was gathering wood with a wooden axe. Gold is even faster than Netherite, so even if it was very brittle, I was able to quickly gather roughly 40 logs. Then I dug into a coal vein, made a campfire, started cooking my porkchops and realized: I forgot to make a shield.
So I waited until day instead of simply until my pork finished. Then I ran across some mountains until I stumbled across a flock of probably 15 chickens.
.
.
I needed their feathers for arrows once I obtained a bow. Since this is 1.16, I have to deal with phantoms. Phantoms are very annoying even with a bow, but bows make them easier to kill. So I needed one fast.
I kept running and eventually came across an ocean. Shipwrecks can have diamonds in them! So I crafted a boat and sailed until I came across one.
.
The first chest I opened had the treasure map and seven books. Very useful!
.
I sailed to where the map told me, making a stone shovel so I could dig faster, and eventually found the chest. I was then completely disappointed.
.
.
Yes, there are emeralds and iron, but I can't make proper use out of them.
I set off again, eventually reaching a continent. I found a full-golden armor zombie and wanted to kill it, but it despawned just before I entered the "no more despawning" range, which was very disappointing.
Then I found a village and became exited again.
.
.
I knew from one of my UHC attempts that Taiga villages can have armor stands with iron armor in addition to normal chests. So I ran off and was pleasantly surprised.
.
.
Seven obsidian and two pieces of iron armor to replace my gold and leather. Very nice stuff.
.
I snagged a grindstone for later (gotta get that XP somehow) and continued looting. I actually also found a Fletcher who would trade gravel and an emerald for flint, but I had no gravel, so I sold him a stack and a half of sticks and left him. Then I found it.
.
.
An iron helmet and chestplate! But I only had so much room. So I traded an item for the helmet and left the chestplate, since at that point, I already had several chest items including an iron chestplate.
.
By now, I had already used two items that are typically ignored, those being a golden axe and sword. But after leaving the village, I made the third: a Flint and Steel. I can hear someone now.
"But those are used! Nether Portals!"
Yes, they are used for nether portals. And for decorating with fire. But how often are they used for combat?
One mechanic I always forget about: right-clicking a creeper with a flint and steel or fire charge causes it to tick down and explode regardless of proximity to the player. I can take advantage of this when surrounded by mobs: ignite a creeper, block with a shield and watch as everything near me takes some big damage while I'm perfectly protected from the blast.
This post is already so long that I'm anxious about its size, so I'll save the rest of this session for another post.
Watch out for the crabocalypse. Some say the day will never come. But it will.
Feel free to drop by for a chat whenever.
If you'd like to talk with me about other games, here are a few I play.
Team Fortress 2
Borderlands series (Borderlands 2 is my favorite game, ever. TPS combat is a lot of fun and makes up for the lower-quality story, in my opinion)
Elder Scrolls series
Warframe (IGN is something like That_One_Flesh_Atronach)
Pokémon series (HGSS forever)
Rocket League
Fallout series
Left 4 Dead 2 (Boomer files always corrupt though)
SUPERHOT (SUPERHOT is the most innovative shooter I've played in years!)
Dead Rising series (Dead Rising 2 is one of my favorite games, and the 3rd was a lot of fun. 1st has poor survivor AI and the 4th is bad)
Just Cause series
Come to think of it, I mainly play fighting-based games.
Well, that was interesting, to say the least. I meant to update with the rest of my session yesterday, but I was distracted by a new session. And then my first attempt ended in my demise after I got into a fight I couldn't handle. I'll likely split the remaining screenshots into two more posts, the second coming tomorrow, then begin anew the day afterwards.
Not too much happened for awhile. After crafting my flint and steel, I continued my journey to find diamonds. I checked probably 20 total shipwrecks, ruined portals and buried chests to no avail. I did find a nice pair of Mending boots, though. Alongside a few pieces of laps.
Eventually, I found land (a mesa) and decided to search for a desert. If I was going to find diamonds, it'd be in a temple, after all. I did also get this neat screenshot:
.
I entered one of the above-ground mineshafts, and what would I find besides a spawner?
.
Sorry, but it's dark in there. I only use 30% brightness for FPS purposes.
From there, I finally crafted a bow. My rule then kicked in: from that moment on, I was allowed to sleep once per week.
I thought about mining some of the gold, but a nagging feeling in my head convinced me otherwise, telling me it would be too easy (as if gold makes things easy). I then decided that my character was a nomad and therefore didn't know how to properly mine. She wouldn't be able to properly extract the ores, either. And thus, rule 6 was born.
After wandering for awhile, I came across a desert. And what luck!
.
.
It was the dead of night then and there, so finally, after an hour of playtime, I slept for the first time. There were two reasons. One, I wanted to trade with the villagers after looting them. Two, I was living in constant fear of a witch turning into a Phantom Jockey and butchering me.
I slept and started
ransacking the villageborrowingholding the hay bales for ransom, eventually ending up with a nice pile of emeralds. 58, to be precise. But the village had nothing else I needed, so I left.And what did I find but another village? An acacia one, too.
I began looting it and questioned this villager's hatred for its fellow villagers. Why else would someone build a house this far away?
.
I then misclicked, dropping an entire stack of wheat that was then sucked up by one of the farmers. That was poor luck on my part. And there were still no diamonds.
By the time I left the village, I had amassed quite the stack of emeralds.
I looted one or two more ruined portals by the time I reached the next ocean. When I did, I suffered my first real scare.
.
.
In my last main world, a Trident zombie made me lose two whole days of exploration and looting progress. But that was a few weeks after I returned to the game from one of several hiatuses. This wasn't. I was ready.
So anyways, I killed it and continued sailing, coming across what else but an ocean monument?
.
.
After looting another ship and following its map, I had my first stroke of luck.
My first diamond! Now I only needed one more.
Also, pillagers.
I then had another stroke of luck. Another village, and this one had a church!
I had already realized that I'd need a lot of lapis for enchanting, so I waited until day came, making sure to gather all the hay bales which I then sold back to the villagers for a profit. I upgraded a cleric and bought all the lapis it would sell me.
Then I went into a nearby field and tamed a horse. That was a lucky find.
It's only now occurring to me that most of my screenshots don't mean anything, so I'll end it there so I don't lose my progress.
Watch out for the crabocalypse. Some say the day will never come. But it will.
Feel free to drop by for a chat whenever.
If you'd like to talk with me about other games, here are a few I play.
Team Fortress 2
Borderlands series (Borderlands 2 is my favorite game, ever. TPS combat is a lot of fun and makes up for the lower-quality story, in my opinion)
Elder Scrolls series
Warframe (IGN is something like That_One_Flesh_Atronach)
Pokémon series (HGSS forever)
Rocket League
Fallout series
Left 4 Dead 2 (Boomer files always corrupt though)
SUPERHOT (SUPERHOT is the most innovative shooter I've played in years!)
Dead Rising series (Dead Rising 2 is one of my favorite games, and the 3rd was a lot of fun. 1st has poor survivor AI and the 4th is bad)
Just Cause series
Come to think of it, I mainly play fighting-based games.