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Minecraft Makes Little Girls Cry
- 5hoom 15y agoQuite an amusing story. Minecraft sure can introduce you to the importance of planning & strategy. I recall early in my minecraft career learning painful lessons (don't dig down!) as I was exploring a large cave, fell in lava & lost my hard-earned diamond-tools, respawned & had no idea where I just was. If it weren't for the peer pressure of being at a lan surrounded by other players, I probably would have cried too ;)
- Natsu 15y agoOne of the first things I learned was to build a giant torch-studded tower in order to mark your house. Sure, you may have to suicide to get off of it, so leave your good stuff at home. This prevents exactly the scenario they encountered. Yeah, you can also build a compass, but that takes gold & redstone. Huge towers can be made with mere dirt.
- ja27 15y agoHit F3 and write down your house's coordinates.
- sekhat 15y agoIron and redstone for compass. Gold and redstone is clock.
- Natsu 15y agoOops. You are correct. I have one, but I leave it in my base. And I'm still miffed that you can't put clocks on the wall.
- jamesgeck0 15y agoBuild a bed. The last bed you sleep in becomes your spawn point, and they look less ugly than giant dirt towers.
- Natsu 15y agoI have several, but sometimes you want to walk home. And they help you know your relative location when exploring so you can find your items if need be.
- lotharbot 15y agoTry a spiral staircase instead of a straight tower. It takes the same amount of material once you remove any scaffolding. You don't need to jump off and die, and you can return to the top and build a larger or more interesting beacon (such as a lava ball, a pixel art sign, or a huge glass observatory) at a later date. Another thing I like to do is, once I've gotten just to the edge of sight range from my current base of operations, find a local high spot and put up a short cobblestone pillar. Put a torch on top of it and another torch on the side facing home (or two sides if your base is on a diagonal). These navigational beacons extend the range at which you can easily explore without getting lost.
- gte910h 15y agoThe lessons I learned when I played a bit this winter: Always put torches on the right (really "same") side of tunnels/etc as you dig/explore. Then you can always find your way back topside. Always build markers at your spawn point pointing which way you're heading out, as well as a chest with basic supplies there The mapping tools are great for finding a structure that doesn't fit on your mental map you know you built (but ones that point out minerals feel like cheating) Burning Netherrack makes excellent markers, as well as monster killing traps I don't play minecraft often anymore, but when I do, it's very well planned out ;oD
- tptacek 15y agoNot directly apropos to this article but let me reenforce the data point: Minecraft is BANANAS with 10-12 year olds. My kids discovered it on their own, and their friends (from decidedly less geeky families) were already playing it.
- ineedtosleep 15y agoReminds me of this time I found one of my younger nephews -- who is around 10 -- playing Dwarf Fortress...with the default tileset. I don't know how that kid got into DF, but he's already my hero.
- arethuza 15y agoMy 12 year old son has been playing Minecraft with his friends for a few months now - it seems to be a real hit with that age group. He also has a real interest in anything to do with Roman history, and gladiators in particular, so he was quite excited when he showed me a copy of the colosseum that he'd found somewhere.
- Natsu 15y agoAgreed. My cousin's kids are about that age and they're the ones who got me started on it. We joke about making a "Don't fear the creeper" t-shirt someday, too. Which reminds me, I still have to finish that gigantic automatic monster harvesting building one of these days, assuming I can find the schematics I wrote out for it.
- lotharbot 15y agoI was at a church gathering recently and there was a 10-ish year old kid who couldn't stop talking about MineCraft. He was really impressed when my wife told him she'd written a mod for the game (the original Marble mod with the texture that tiled over multiple blocks). Is your monster harvester similar to http://ripminecraft.blogspot.com/2011/08/monster-condo.html http://ripminecraft.blogspot.com/2011/08/monster-condo.html ? Larger? Smaller?
- Natsu 15y ago
- jarin 15y agoI was just looking at the comments, and I'm kind of surprised that spambots aren't smart enough to skip a site when comment links are nofollowed (and Blogspot seems to be terrible at blocking them in the first place). Seems like it would be more efficient to move on to sites that don't nofollow their links.
- dmc 15y agoOff Topic also: google still count them as backlinks, but do not pass on Pagerank juice. They might still count them as a small factor in website rankings.
- prawn 15y agoCost to spam is probably lower than the effort to avoid nofollowed blogs. Also, there might be just enough idiots clicking links manually to encourage them to persist.
- getsat 15y agoHaving only do follow links pointing to your site would set off some alarms at Google Search HQ...
- ggchappell 15y ago> Nothing educational can have value without the possibility of crushing failure. That's a thought-provoking statement, I think.
- ErrantX 15y agoI think he's identified the root cause of the ongoing failure of our modern education system.
- GoGlobal 15y agoReally cannot understand the fascination with that "game".
- jrockway 15y agoIf only there was an article somewhere that described one reason why someone likes it. Oh wait, that's what this discussion thread is for...
- lloeki 15y agoMinecraft is 21st century digital Lego, for better and worse.