Part 3: STILL haven't left yet

This is getting ridiculous.  The last time I prepared for the journey, rather than try to race the lions and bears to Squares's pen (covered with grass still in this incarnation), I opted to just use the new handy GUI to change the settings so nothing attacks horses.  Done.  Squares safe, peace of mind restored.


I farmed and farmed and farmed the same stupid wheat that I'd already farmed before, and made the same stupid haystacks and sugar lumps that I had already made before.

The only thing keeping it interesting was watching the antics of the animals in the valley below my house as I farmed.  My house overlooks a smallish valley completely surrounded by sheer mountainsides, and in a fit of torch-happy glee, I lit up every inch of the valley.  Traditional Minecraft monsters (zombies, skeletons, and creepers) only spawn in the dark, and since it's never dark in the valley, I'm completely safe from those monsters there.  The Mo'Creatures animals and predators spawn only near light, which means that at night they're popping up left and right in my valley.  It's like my own private nature show: foxes hunting bunnies, lions hunting cows, bears hunting horses, lions battling foxes, bears battling sharks (the bear won, on account of the shark being out of water at the time), and even some creatures like ogres that shouldn't have technically have appeared at this difficulty level (small Mo'Creatures bug).

Lion/fox battle!  They started out charging each other repeatedly in a flurry of roars and screeches.

Lion/fox battle part 2! In which they stood one meter apart and stared at each other for a full minute.  Shortly afterward, the lion killed the fox.  Within seconds, the other fox (must have been the first fox's second) dashed in and killed the lion.

Bird in my house!  I threw seeds to it and it eventually stopped being afraid of me.  Tamed birds don't despawn, so the bird lives in that room in my house now.  That off to the left is a huge tree growing up through the middle of my house.

Epic bear/shark battle!  Sadly, barely visible from here (you can sort of see them under the tree at the edge of the water).  By the time I ran outside for a closer look, the shark was dead, on account of either the bear's efforts or its being on dry land.

Flaming shark!  Flopped too close to that burning tree.  I wonder if I'm the first person in the history of Minecraft to set a shark on fire?

This was odd. Lion with two birds circling overhead.  The lion stayed put for a few minutes on end while the birds circled around and around over its head, making a racket.  Were they teasing the lion?  Had the lion just hit its head?  So many questions!

This was positively freaky. A red man stood against the wall at the far end of my valley, making constant "ouch" noises and slowly revolving in pain.  I took some screenshots and then skedaddled, hairs standing up on the back of my neck.  I think this was a werewolf, which isn't even supposed to spawn on "easy" difficulty.  Another minor Mo'Creatures bug.

This is not a small number of sharks on the lawn.  These are only three of the approximately twelve that I counted dying on the grass all at once.  Took a screenshot from one of my windows in the house showing all twelve, but it's hard to make them out.

There was one problem, however.  See it yet?  I finished all my preparations, carefully chose my inventory, and made the journey to my southern house where Squares was waiting in his pen.  Had been waiting.  Instead I found a lion in the pen.  Turns out the "hunters don't attack horses" setting doesn't work.  Minor Mo'Creatures bug.  The lion didn't take kindly to me trying to ride it, so I instead beat it to death with a bow (too panicked to draw the right weapon upon finding myself in a small pen with a lion).  Then reloaded from my save.

Back to building that farm again, this time with the horse-eating predators turned firmly off (so sadly without predator/prey antics to keep me amused.)  My house bird didn't reappear.  The sharks continued to rain onto my lawn, but now there were no bears to battle them.  Sigh. But finally I was ready.

Then Minecraft crashed, losing all my progress.

Part 2: Turns out I wasn't ready just yet.

Remember how last time I said I was ready to leave?  Turns out I wasn't ready just yet.  I had done most of my preparatory farming and sugarlump crafting in the midst of a series of Minecraft crashes and Mo'Creatures version updates.  The result was that after my first optimistic declaration that I was ready to start my horseback journey, I embarked instead on a series of bizarre Groundhog Day-esque replays of the same day.  I must have built the same farm four or five times, and the same floating forest at least three times.  In one of the replays, Minecraft remembered that it was nighttime, but forgot that I had just spent the day reflooring Squares's pen in wool, reverted it to grass, and (since they spawn only on grass) immediately spawned a bear.  By the time I noticed the wool back in my inventory and ran out to save Squares (in the dark, mind you!), he had already been devoured. The other repeats of the same day were less nightmarish (Squares is OK now), but I have become quite sick of farming.

Squares in his pen, with evidence that I was indeed working on flooring it in wool, and honestly didn't leave him to the bears that one time.

One of the incarnations of the farm, this one containing a rabbit.  I chased the rabbit around with a sword for a while, managing only to damage my crops.  Finally I cornered it and shoved it bodily out the window.  It fell to the ground several meters below and hopped away.  Defenestration: a successful pest control method.

The latest updates of Mo'Creatures added a few things, one of which is sharks.  Dr. Zhang must have been really excited about the sharks, because they're set to spawn in large numbers everywhere, including in the waterfalls near my house.  The sharks that spawn in my waterfalls are unfortunately short-lived, since they flow immediately onto dry land and then spend the next few minutes blinking red and writhing before finally expiring in a puff of smoke.  The first time it was exciting and impressive (sharks are big!) but after the tenth one or so it changed more to "What the heck is wrong with these things?"  Every time I leave my house I see at least one of them in its death throes, and the ground is littered in shark teeth.  There's no use for shark teeth in the mod yet, but as I'm amassing an impressive collection of them, I hope the eventual use for them will be something completely awesome, like building your own hovercraft or adding them to a horse to make it an attack horse that doesn't take guff from bears.

Shark that has just run out of river.  These things take a LONG time to die, which means they're tough, and which means I don't ever want to meet one in the water.

The other thing the mod updates added is a GUI that controls all sorts of settings about the new creatures.  I suddenly have very tempting options, including the option to turn all the hunter animals off, or the option to make them not attack horses, and the option to make 1/10 horses be a pegasus, rather than the current 1/100.  The most seriously tempting option is to make the hunters leave the horses alone, after the traumatic experience with an alternate universe in which Squares was eaten by a bear.  It's not even fair - the horses don't even try to run away from the lions and bears, but just hop excitedly, saying, "Hello, Mr. Lion!  Are you coming to be my friend?  Hooray!"  After some consideration, I've decided to keep the predators vicious, and keep the pegasus rare, so the journey will be longer and more exciting.  This may be a mistake.