The Minecraft Experiment, day 24: The Real World

When I first started playing Minecraft a few months ago, I played with a rule: if I die, I have to delete the entire world. Now I'm trying to get to hell and back. The diary starts here , and we're up to the 24th.

Day 23

Day 25 >

World 10, deaths 9

I've been away from this dimension so long they've invented a new type of tree.

The real world is excellent. There are colours other than red here, and things freeze over much more often than they do in hell. Once I emerge from the forest fire I created, for example, I find an ocean that did just that:

My compass works here, too. The needle points the way to my spawn point - home - so that's where I'm heading.

There's still lava, but it's much easier to avoid. This little dribble of it has formed a useful safety moat around itself in the ice. Thanks, thermodynamics!

On the other side of the icesea, there's an intriguing cavern. I should probably be making the most of the daylight and only stopping at places like this when night falls, but I can't resist.

It goes a long way back, long enough that I have to remember how to make fire happen without setting the world on fire. Torches, that was it. Coal, that's the stuff. Sticks, I remember these. Light!

I get carried away exploring this huge cave complex. Each new area is pitch dark until I put my torches down, but nothing nasty emerges from the black when I do. And I keep finding metal - something I ran clean out of in hell, making new pickaxes to replace the ones I wore down tunneling my way through it.

By the time I find an opening to the surface, I'm a) 87% iron, b) so far from where I entered that it's a different climate zone outside, and c) completely in the dark.

I've done it exactly wrong - wasted a safe day in the dangerous dark of the underground and emerged just as the bad things come out at night.

But I can still make the best of this - I can hear a spider squeaking nearby. I went to hell with 2 bits of string, and you only need 3 to make a bow: weapon technology I've only dreamed of until now.

Rather than emerge from my hole, I decide to tackle this challenge like a hero by waiting in the dark until he comes near enough for me to stab him in the arse.

It works, but after one stabbing he understandably scuttles off. Reluctantly, I climb out of my hovel and am immediately shot in the face by three consecutive arrows.

Ow! The real world has got nastier since I was last here. My armour means the attack isn't fatal, but ducking and weaving their next shots is too tricky to do while fighting them. Instead I run for the coast, because the sea is the only place I'm sure I won't encounter anything worse.

Ah.

Friday: The Skeleton Coast.