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 20: Things that go quack in the night

When morning dawned, things picked up approximately where they had left off: surrounded by an unknown number of enemies, plus one spider.

Scenic country, though.  Cautiously I broke the shelter's glass.

Looks all right...

... Yeah, it wasn't all right.

Fortunately, I had been moving at a fairly fast panicked dash, so the creeper merely winged me.

As the second inevitable creeper made its charge, I filled it full of entirely too many arrows, since I was too nervous to take the time to pull the bow back properly, and the amount of damage per arrow was approximately the same as if I had lobbed them overhand.

Our descent from our hillside shelter was something less than elegant.

Ouch.  Red means ouch.

And we began our journey, through scenic though lion-infested desert.

...And more lions.  And this one had spotted us.  Over a period of a few seconds, I careened madly off the hillsides in an effort to get away from a series of two lions, and in the process inflicted so much damage on myself that I actually had to stop, with one heart of health left.  For whatever reason, I can't do anything on horseback, including eating (health regulations don't allow a meal service?  horsebacksickness?), so I actually had to get off, while Boxter did his level best to wander towards peril.

Fortunately, there was nothing too much more perilous than an unconcerned chicken.

Guess what's just over the crest of that hill!  Could it be a lion?

Next on the list was bears.

And another bear.

And a shadowy lump that was either a bear or a relatively-harmless boar, but which I'm going to go ahead and assume was a bear.

And a lion.  And, unfortunately, thicker trees, impeding our skittish and vaguely-northward flight.

In fact, the country was becoming distinctly and disappointingly forested once more.

As the sun was getting low in the sky, we reached the land's end once again.  We would be nuts - well, more nuts than usual - to go any farther today.

For the second day in a row, there was no ready shelter-cave, so instead I set about digging another hillside hollow.  Rather than staying in the hollow I was digging, Boxter immediately took off.  But it seemed he only wanted to go swimming, and he watched me work while he bobbed serenely in (happily shark-free) waters.

A duck checked my work.

But unfortunately, it seemed that was all Boxter wanted to do that night: go swimming.  And no amount of my firmly returning him to the nice shelter I'd built would convince him to stay in it long enough for me to build the last wall to enclose us.  He hankered, evidently, for the sea.

It's getting dark... this is not funny anymore...

He's out there somewhere again.

....annnd he's left for a fourth time.

It was time to bring out the haystack offering.

By that time, it was full night, and our shelter had one wall and a roof completely open to the night and the creepers.  And I could hear something coming, as it scraped loudly, shuffling footsteps coming closer.   I could barely move my fingers on the keyboard and mouse, as they stiffened with dread.  It was coming closer... closer... and suddenly it was THERE!

...it appeared to be a duck.  Which wandered around not doing much of anything, but all the while making a loud, heavy, shuffling, scraping sound.  Apparently there's only one "footstep" sound in Minecraft, so the footsteps of a duck make the same noise as those of a zombie.

I had nearly finished putting in the windows when I began to hear a new noise, the WwwwwooooOOOOooo creepy mooing sound of the Spooky Cow.

I'll spare you the many screenshots of an empty window, which I took each time convinced that THIS time I finally had a shot of the Spooky Cow.

But this screenshot was interesting - a shot of the duck launching itself from the roof above my head, only to die in a puff of asterisks in midair.

Eventually I saw the likely culprit: a fox that somehow must be possessed of a ninja ranged attack.

And then another shape darted in front of the now-very-scary window!

It appears to have been a boar.  Such was my distraction that I took the time to build a furnace to smelt more sand into glass, only to finally remember that I didn't actually have any sand with me, or anything worth smelting, really, unless I wanted to make more rock to add to the mountain of solid rock that already surrounded me.  Or to replace some of that unsightly cobblestone with elegant grey rock, thus making my habitat into an elegant.... yeah, right.

Here's yet another screenshot of a blank window, during which I must have been convinced that something else was out there.

Morning dawned, and our entrance hallway did have a certain elegance to it.

And yet another creature lurked at the door.  Someone must have been projecting movies on the other side of the glass or something.

I appear to have drawn my bow against the terrifying sheep.

Oh, well, at least we'd, most improbably, survived another day and another night.  Next: more trees!