First Impressions: Minecraft (NS)

Fine.  Fine!  I kind of get it now.  To an extent anyway.  I am enjoying Minecraft.

I have previously mentioned that I did play Minecraft: Pocket Edition, but that was limited to Creative Mode only and not Survival Mode and it did not have access to any of the user and studio created content that you can purchase using their in-game Pixel Currency.  I stopped playing M:PE after about a month of playing sporadically because it failed to capture any feeling of either accomplishment or sense of objective and I needed the real-estate for other app(s).  So when I put in Minecraft for the Nintendo Switch ("put in" because I bought the physical cart some time last year when Amazon had it on sale for $19.99), I linked my Microsoft Games LIVE account (or whatever the name of it is now), created my own Jaconianland and jumped into Survival Mode!

Maybe there is something to be said about all of the pigs/cows/llamas I
killed who kept trying to run away from me and couldn't build their own
tower of dirt blocks to escape a more powerful enemy?

My first night in-game I spent standing on a four block tower of dirt, just out of reach from a zombie because I had no weapons.  I then died, finding out that fall damage is a thing, as well as starvation bringing you down to half-of-a-heart; my hp was dropped a lot after falling from a height, followed by starvation, and then was blown up by a Creeper.  The next game I dug out a small room in the side of a mountain and holed up there over night.  The next day while wandering around, I apparently starved myself down to half-of-a-heart again because I was convinced you couldn't/shouldn't eat raw meat, or if you did it would further decrease your life, because eating raw meat is bad for you.  I then accidentally fell down a hole into a running river (a hole I had created myself) that was apparently housing a zombie/Drowner that didn't disappear when the sun came out (or the sun may not have been high enough) and the one hit killed me.

For the two of you who do not know (me previously being one of the three), when you die in Survival Mode, you lose all of your inventory (more on this later) and you respawn somewhere else in the world.  Not where you were killed, not where you spawned the first time, someplace different.  The location might be close by, but it definitely seems to be randomized within a certain area.  So when I died, my collected materials and equipment disappeared with my voxel corpse, which meant that I had to start the collection process all over again.

My second respawn brought me to a side of the island/world I was not familiar with, but I found part of a giant mushroom I had already destroyed so I went looking for my dug out cave.  I was not able to find said cave before night so I started digging another one in the side of another mountain.  I was progressing somewhat well with this run, eating raw meat (because I had yet to discover fire) and .  My dugout now had a crafting bench, I had enough to build a bed so I did, but I just had not placed it yet.  It was near dawn and I left my mountain hole only to see a handful of zombie-looking people standing outside.  They weren't groaning or making any noises, but I decided that I might try to rack up some XP so I went out with my sword ready to kill some zombies.  Then I was shot multiple times by people who apparently were armed with bows or crossbows.

My third respawn brought me closer to my original spawn area so I broke down the box that starts near your first start (because a storage container when you have a limited inventory in a game about collecting/harvesting materials would probably come in handy), and I was able to find my first mountain dwelling.  I broke down the crafting bench there after spending the night.  While out and about, I discovered that my second mountain hole was remarkable close to my first, just across a semi-forrested valley, so I took everything back to that second home, liking the location a bit better.  

My second, now main, mountain bungalow fort.  I originally planted the
flowers on the mountain there so I could tell where it was from a distance
before I had built the bed.

You could probably imagine my surprise when I found a bunch of my scattered items around where I had been killed (I told you I would get back to this).  This confused me because I thought I had come across the area where I had previously died, but found nothing, so maybe you just loose a certain number of items?  So I gathered everything up and began to fortify my second and main Mountain Home.  Then while crafting objects while in the crafting bench window, I heard the groan of a zombie, backed out of the window to find a zombie right on top of me and I kind of panicked and was killed; I had been keeping my health low, not on purposed, but because I was trying to build a fire to cook the raw meat, thinking that it would heal more hearts that raw meat.  I died from this attack.  And then spawned in the adjoining room where my bed was.  Eureka!

The feeling of finding out that creating a bed is equivalent to generating a respawn point was a pretty exhilarating feeling, especially since I have, for the most part, been playing this game blind.  I did look up if there was an objective in Survival Mode and discovered that there is not, but there is something called an Ender Dragon which is kind of a final goal, but does not end the game.  That being said, because I have been playing video games for the last 30+ years, I have not been completely under a rock when it comes to Minecraft.  In the early days of the game seeing someone post a video of their wooden architectural marvel being completely engulfed in flames after a spark (or something?) from a fireplace caught the wall on fire.  With this in mind, I built a cobblestone room for my campfire and paranoid that there might be smoke build up without proper ventilation, I built a chimney out of cobblestone wall/fence because I liked the look of it, and because I thought it would prevent potential enemies from being able to use the chimney as an access point into my house.

So that is where I am at in Minecraft.  Nearly eight years late to a game that has been part of pop culture for just as long.  I feel like the turn around for me was a combination of finding what the rocks/blocks look like where you can harvest sulfur (in order to create torches), and being able to build a bed/respawn-point.  I think my next goal is to further explore the land and build little fortified huts if I cannot make it back to my main mountain home, and I have been delving into the basement of my main place and all I can think about is that I hope that I do not dig too greedily, too deep.


Right now, the main negative thing I have to say is that I probably should have just bought the game digitally instead of a physical cart because I like the idea of having it at the ready as a break when playing a larger game, something akin to Fire Emblem: Three Houses or The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt and just want something to unwind with.  Having the game digitally would scratch that itch, but having it on a physical cart means the process of having the physical carts at the ready and switching them out.  I know, first world problems and all that.  I ultimately got the physical game for the couple of reasons that I buy physical including having the game available even if it is removed from the eShop, being able to share with friends, and freeing up as much space on the Switch and memory cards as possible.

Hey there.  'ow YOU doin'?

If you are interested in following my Minecraft adventures, I would recommend following the Twitter account I use for us here as I probably will not be posting any more full articles and will only be mentioning my progress in Monthly Updates.  On Twitter, I will probably be posting all the things that I find interesting and at 3am, there is a lot that I could find interesting.



~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian
But The Children Know