Part 25: On the importance of roofs

... So there was a slight spider problem to deal with this morning.  Specifically, three problems, all skittering across the roof over my head.  In the daytime, spiders are supposed to turn harmless, but these three had me nervous: they were tracking me.  I shifted to one side of my shelter; they scuttled along to the same side.  I shifted again; they followed.  This was not the behavior of harmless Minecraft creatures.  Bunnies don't do such things.  Chickens don't follow fondly at your heels.  Creepers, however, want nothing more than to snuggle.

So, I batted at the spiders with a sword through a tiny hole in the glass until they were no longer a problem.

Of course, strings are completely useless to me.  I've already got a bow, which won't wear out in this version of Minecraft, and which I won't lose unless I die (or accidentally throw it at a charging creeper).  The only other thing you can build with one is a fishing rod.  To fish properly, you have to sit still with the hook in the water and stare fixedly at it for several seconds  - by which point, Boxter would be a distant dot on the horizon.

There was a creeper out there, though - I'd caught a glimpse of it while I was edging around, trailing spiders.  I took off running, and this time managed to spot the creeper early enough to dispatch it with a volley of arrows.

Here it comes!

 I collected Boxter, and we were soon on our way northward.  At least, for about 20 seconds, until we ran up against the coastline I'd detected yesterday.  But I could see land to the northwest that looked as if it might be connected.

Onward to the distant pointy mountains!

It was, in fact, connected, although it was also full of bears.  At one point I dismounted to collect some arrows, only to find to my surprise that Boxter had taken off running top-speed toward the bear.  I have no idea why, since I'd always thought him a brainy sort of horse.  Maybe it was an attention-seeking move.  The bears seemed willing to give him attention, all right.  But we got away.

Or maybe Boxter was planning to save that other horse, now that I look at the screenshot.  I've been beginning to make a habit of saving horses when I find them menaced by predators, but I guess I mistook this one for another bear.

 Soon we had come upon mountains again, sparsely forested, and topped by a massive summit.  We bounded to the top - going UP mountains is no problem.

It would probably be pretty fun to watch someone climb one of these mountains on horseback.

 The view was terrific, and encouraging.  More treeless plains.  But to descend the sheer cliffs on this side of the mountain would be madness.

Treeless majesty!

I opted instead for the slightly-less-sheer cliffs on the other side of the mountain.  We weaved our way slowly down, inching up to each dropoff before jumping down - I have no idea why I thought falling off a cliff slowly would be any better than taking a running start.  The downward acceleration is the same in either case.  But we survived with only minor falling damage.

The sprinkle of yellow flowers on the distant hill is a nice touch.

 And this was another mini Horse Heaven, a conclusion soon verified by the appearance of a horse party.

An adults-only horse party

There were no caves nearby as it began to move toward sunset, so, upon finding a protected and bearless valley, I began to enact a backup plan.  I parked Boxter (he ran a little ways off, then stayed watching), and began to carve a grand opening in a sheer cliff face.

So patient... so innocent.

I made the opening four blocks high and two blocks wide and several blocks deep, so that I'd be able to ride Boxter right into the hole and park him.  To my surprise, when I'd finished making the cave and turned to find Boxter, he trotted right toward me.  Maybe he was going to cooperate this time.

So obedient...

 Nope. Here's a shot of him leaping out of the opening as if the back were full of bears.  I keep forgetting to get a haystack ready in my hand when attempting this maneuver.  The cobblestone block I was holding would avail me nothing.

Nope!

 By nightfall, though, I had managed to freeze Boxter in place, put in a luxurious tall glass window, and enlarge our hole into a spacious hall.  That's code for "mined and didn't find a single thing".

He's got his face in the wall again, but it didn't seem to do him any harm.

 In the morning I went to the window to watch the sun rise.  I was snapping scenic sunrise shots when suddenly I noticed a weird shape rising up into the air at the edge of the valley.  Reflexively, I grabbed a screenshot - what IS that?  Is that a flying skeleton?  Flying? I only had a split-second glimpse before it was gone, disappearing behind one of the giant pixellated scratches that seem to appear even on newly-placed glass.  Seconds later, a cow strolled nonchalantly from behind that pointy mountain.

I don't know what this was, but I have a feeling it wouldn't have been friendly.  Perhaps this was the true form of Spooky Cow.  In which case, if this thing flies, I had better always build good roofs on all my shelters in the future.  I thought of the roofless pits I'd been building toward the beginning of my journey and shivered.  Caves.  Caves from now on.

This is probably very bad.

Part 21: Nearly to the North Pole!

Morning came, and I made my customary mad dash from shelter, waving my mighty pixellated sword, careening off a duck and a bluebird.  When I finally slowed to a stop and turned around, I discovered that there had been no danger - this time - and that I'd apparently inadvertently built a hobbit home during my panicked shelter construction last night.

Not nearly as comfortable as the hobbit houses in the movies, though.

I like this version of shelter construction, though... it's built for easy exit - just break the glass and leap on the horse, bolting easily through the door with a heigh-ho, Boxter.

Soon we were standing before the coastline that we'd encountered late yesterday, it quickly became apparent that due north was not on the agenda for today.  We skirted the sandy shore, relatively easy going, and had a moment of excitement when we spotted a horse.  It was alone, though, and was the only horse we would encounter that day.

Horse.  A single lone horse.  And I will have to find a hundred of these to have an even chance of finding a pegasus.

We made decent progress during the morning, though not in a straight line, due to the convoluted nature of the coastline.  Danger still lurked as well, causing us to make the occasional panicked detour, taking falling damage.

If you look closely, you will see danger lurking.

We entered a pretty cool-looking landscape, with strangely scalloped mountains, and gravel that crunched interestingly underhoof.  The landscape was, however, lion-infested, so we left its wonders unexplored.

Land of Lions and Gravel

We chose the fox-infested valley instead, and passed through a blur of nice open desert country.  No horses, but also no trees.

At the edge of the desert, we came once more to the land's end.  The shark-infested land's end.  Time to turn away from north once more.

Passing back into (unfortunately) forested country, we came across two lions fighting over a female lion.  I wondered whether male dominance fights were coded somehow into lion behavioral nuances, or  whether it was in fact no more subtle than the simple command KILL, in which case the female lion would be battling the victor.  Boxter firmly vetoed any in-depth study on the behavior patterns of lions, so we didn't stay to see the outcome of the fight.

Rawr!  Lions fight by flashing red and bouncing off one another.

This part was scary - a narrow channel of water.  After mincing about on the shore looking about six times for sharks, we bravely splashed across.  There were no fatalities.

Ford the river, caulk the wagons and float, or look for a bridge?

And today we hit a milestone in our northward journey - snow, for the first time.  Boxter had never seen snow before, and we slid and swerved madly about in the forest - of course, that's what he does even on dry ground.

Even the trees were different, distinctly coniferous, and somewhat easier to dodge between.

Now, there's no actual increase in the frequency of snow as you go northward in the Minecraft world - yet it still felt like we were nearly at the edge of the world.

Below, a vast snowy landscape.  The dot near the horizon on the upper left is an unfortunate shark that popped into existence above the ice rather than in it.  It slowly rotated in confusion, flashing red, evidently wondering what exactly was going wrong here, and why water was not nearly as fun as other sharks had made it out to be.

Boxter is very hard to maneuver on ice too.  Just so you know.

As nighttime approached, I tried to employ the shelter-finding technique of finding a hole in a hillside and building a door on it.  It was getting late, and the hole I found was more vertical than horizontal - perhaps not the best of ideas.  Boxter expressed his opinion of my site by taking off in the opposite direction.

This was ill-advised.

I had no time for this - I gave him another of my precious haystacks, which froze him contentedly in place while I frantically tried to build walls and a roof around us.  Such was the level of my anxiety that it was quite some time before it occurred to me that I had the power to make it less dark in the immediate area, and that this might actually be rather a good idea.  I placed a torch, and got the walls in place before anything too scary came for us.  The hole in the hillside really didn't do much for us, only serving to increase my anxiety due to its deepness and scariness.  Fortunately, Boxter was too big to fall down it.

Panicpanicpanic

I got the ceiling on, all except for one block which was directly above Boxter's head.  I knew from experience that if I tried to plug that hole, I would likely end up on Boxter's back, with my head in rock, or else protruding out of the hole as an easy target.  But I could see stars through that hole, and had quick visions of zombies, skeletons, and creepers raining down through that hole.  They probably wouldn't find it.  It would be safer to leave it be.  But I am not a rational person.  I right-clicked with my stone, to plug the hole.  I ended up on Boxter's back.  I took damage from the ceiling.  I jumped off Boxter's back.  I fell down the deep hole that had been right beside Boxter this entire time.

If I can juuuuust reach that last ceiling block....

Here's a picture I took at the bottom of the hole, as I marveled at my stupidity.  I could hear spiders.

Nope.

Quickly and not-at-all-calmly, I began peppering the area with torches, trying to reveal all the scariness before Things came out of the dark to get me.  Far above me, I heard Boxter making his normal horse sounds, which meant that at least he was all right for now, and probably laughing at me.

It was Very Scary in the cave - it had been ages since I'd ventured into an actual cave - and somewhere in all the mess I saw the beady red eyes of a spider.

Scary

I bricked up that cave.  I bricked it up good.

No longer scary.

And proceeded to brick up all the other scary side branches.

Scary.

No longer scary.

That done, I paused to look back up through the hole I'd fallen down.  I could still see that darn square of sky that I'd failed to patch earlier.  Great.  If something did end up falling through that hole, it'd continue on down until it landed on my head.

Truly, my incompetence at Minecraft knows no bounds.

But at least with the side tunnels blocked, I began to feel secure enough, even with the maddening sound of the spider I'd bricked up, to mine for the wonderful bits of iron that I saw lying around, and even to smelt the iron into a shiny new pair of metal pants.

Toward dawn I climbed my way back to the surface, where I found another spider waiting on the roof, as usual.

Hello, spider.

Boxter and I watched the moon set through the windows.  I'm definitely adding windows to all my shelters from now on.  Or at least I will until I run out of glass tomorrow.