As I am on holiday at the moment I've been using the time wisely - mining like a motherfucker in Minecraft! I got it for £3.59 for my XBox One, probably discounted because I own the XBox 360 version.
So I start a new world and do pretty much what everyone does, start feverishly mining downwards to collect enough resources to build a shelter for the night. Once that was done, continue to feverishly mine looking for diamonds and whilst looking for diamonds collect any other resource I come across (iron ore, coal, gold, redstone etc.)
After a day's worth of mining and building, I'd established a safe haven, several sky walkways (for getting around at night safely) and a farm full of wheat, pumpkins, melons and trees.
With all the self sustaining shit sorted I then hit the bedrock and started mining out, with the intention of collecting an assload of cobblestone and finding as many diamonds as possible, the reason for this? Get a diamond pickaxe so I could go get some obsidian.
With enough Obsidian secured I then built a gate to the nether... now, the nether is not a place to be scoffed at, I've been burnt there many times, so I like to think I was very careful when I entered it. Unfortunately I never expected the system to plop the damned gate right on the edge of a very high fortress wall with a pit of lava at the base of it!
Whaaaa! Plop! Crackle, pop, crackle, dead!!
I sat there and stared at the screen wonder whether or not Mojang purposely coded in something like that? They must have, probably thought it was a right laugh as they sat in their comfy seats drinking Mountain Dew, shouting "Dude! That sucks but let's totally do it man!"
Of course I lost everything I had on me at the time, including a newly minted diamond pickaxe, a load of iron ingots and tons of wood (and every Mincrafter knows how tedious it is to collect wood).
Rather than throw my controller at the wall (which I've done before), I steeled myself to getting back everything I lost, half a day's worth of mining and I was even better off… fuck you Mojang.
Since then I've secured the obsidian gate on the nether side with a veritable fortress of cobblestone, for two reasons: one, so I don't keep falling into the pit of lava every time I go through it and two, to prevent ghasts from blowing me off said wall! As cobblestone is impervious to ghast fireballs it was a no brainer, I've now got a 'beachhead' for me to start from when I go looking for nether resources.
I am now off to do some caving, I need coal, lots of it, I need a shitload of glass as I'm now constructing my glass fortress in some very deep water! I will post how I produce it via XBox Live's Upload feature.
