after watching a playthrough
of better than wolves
with mea
I decided this is the kind of pain that I enjoy and gave it some tries,
although for now with no addons, just the main mod alone
so far I've put in 18 attempts which took 7 hours
the mod is currently for minecraft 1.6.4, I chose standard on hardcore - normally when you die
for the first time you get respawned randomly, after that you respawn nearby but I decided
to do full hardcore and when I die I delete that world and create a new one
most of my experiences with minecraft these days are modern versions on fabulously optimized
(mostly performance tweaks, no real gameplay changes from vanilla), that's my baseline to compare to
in this note I'll list out my experiences, some differences (mostly difficulty-increasing obviously)
and my ways of dealing with them that I found to work to an extent in my attempts so far
everything here takes longer - breaking blocks, getting food, gathering resources, etc. -
be prepared to grind for hours to make any real progress
less durable blocks like dirt and sand drop 6 piles when broken (dirt pile, sand pile) -
4 of these make a slab
both dirt and sand and their slab versions are affected by gravity which makes building
any kind of shelter for the night incredibly difficult
having a steady supply of those slabs is a must-have early game to conserve your hunger
sprinting and jumping will tank it, slabs are a way to move vertically without really affecting it
some blocks are functionally unbreakable, so far the only ones that I encountered were stone and ores -
this makes mining into a mountain impractical early game, especially without pickaxe access
what I found works for me and lets me consistently survive nights is either finding some cave with small
enough exits to block them off or a place in a mountain where there's 4 blocks of dirt on top of another
this should ensure that mining the 2 bottom-most ones makes at most 1 block fall
and you still have a roof over your head
this is because (as far as I can tell) not all naturally generated dirt is affected by gravity -
the ones that do fall seem to generate in a checkerboard pattern, so when mining those 2 blocks of dirt
mentioned above and getting the 3rd one to fall, mining any blocks next to that column should only cause
the second block to fall and result in a 2 block high ceiling for that column
that covers a third of the things required (not actually) to survive the night
- the other 2 are food and light
when in dark areas, you get the gloom effect, which will give you some visual and audio effects
for 2 minutes, after which you'll start taking damage
in the early game, to avoid the gloom, you need a campfire,
for which you need 4 shafts (sticks), a fire plough (2 sticks)
and any kind of fuel to keep it burning - anything wooden works (including saplings) alongside
flowers, feathers, wool, sugar cane and coal dust
I usually try to pick up some flowers when I see them and kill chicken for feathers (as well as food)
aside from that the drops from cutting down trees (bark and saw dust) will also give you some fuel
we've touched on food - this seems easy enough, as passive mob spawns seem unaffected
but having it be unchanged from vanilla wouldn't be fun
mobs run when you break blocks or place blocks, they run when you hit other mobs AND on top of that
cows and horses (which drop meat here too) kick you for some massive damage early game
I just straight up avoid cows and horses and go for either pigs, chickens and sheep
in addition to all that, raw meat will always give you food poisoning for a minute and having
that effect makes you unable to eat anything else and lowers your hunger until you start taking damage
low hunger (and low health) also will get you into more trouble, as they make you go slower,
break blocks slower, unable to hit things with your fist (and eventually anything) and unable to jump
there might be more I either forgot or haven't ran into yet :-) so you really really don't wanna get
either one low
to cook food, get a pointy stick (1 shaft) and put it on that campfire
at that point you need to maintain a medium fire (I am NOT going into the details for this here,
check the wiki if you're interested) for 4 minutes
if your food stays on the campfire for some more time after that OR is cooked with high fire it'll
become burned meat, which luckily gives you no debuffs but only restores 1 drumstick of hunger
there's been some talk of wood, but how does getting it actually look?
breaking a tree log takes like 6-7 (heheheha) full block-breaking cycles (if you can even call
them that), meaning you'll need to repeatedly wait out the full breaking animation
(which will give you some drop) that many times before the entire block is broken
you don't actually need to break the entire block for anything but it lets the leaves decay
and in forests that's very useful (have I mentioned that all entities pass through leaves here?)
the first time you strip the bark (used for fuel), then every even drop is a shaft and
every odd drop is saw dust
shafts here are what you want as they give you access to the most basic weapon
and the aforementioned campfire
now, as with everything in this mod, breaking wood with your fist is painfully slow, so to actually
get a decent amount of shafts before night you'll want something better to break it with
to do that I discovered / invented the following method: punch wood 2 times to get a single shaft
(alongside 1 bark as a side effect), turn that shaft into a pointy stick which has 2 uses
find some stone and stab it twice with that pointy stick - the first one will give you a
pile of gravel, the second a loose stone
turn that loose stone into a sharp stone (8 uses I think?), stab that block
for more loose stones until breaking it takes longer (you'll notice)
and go farm wood at that point
you'll want at least 7 shafts, as that gives you the full food + light campfire setup, alongside those
you'll get some fuel for the campfire to keep you alive through the night and let you cook some meat
more shafts will let you craft some wood clubs (2 shafts per club) which is useful early game
if you run out of saw dust, bark and others, shafts can also be used as
a better kind of fuel for campfires
during the night I tend to maintain medium fire on my campfire and mine into stone for some loose stones
from the second day onward I'll gather enough wood for weapons and fuel and try to find any nearby
passive mobs to grab some more meat
during that time I might stumble onto some mobs, from which paradoxically creepers are the easiest
lure it near a wall, place 3 slabs in between you and the creeper and let it explode for free blocks
in exchange for a negligible bit of damage
this eliminates the need to mine dirt for slabs and gives you more time in the day for other tasks
zombies and skeletons I'll attempt to wait out, as they still burn in the sun in this mod -
sometimes they can hide under leaves which do still block out the sun
in that case I'll try to lure their fuckass 1.6.4 ai out - if I'm near my base and can hide there
they don't give me much trouble, especially since you can sometimes
peak out without them noticing you but sill being able to hit them
this works at least with skeletons, I usually kill the zombies through half or 1 block tall holes
in my wall
when killing skeletons you can use 2 of their bones to make bone clubs, a much better weapon
both for combat and gathering meat
spiders in open spaces are not something you want to deal with, as they spit cobwebs
(yes, the full block) at you and will jump towards you at high speed
you can make 1 wide holes in your wall to deal with them easily
if I see / hear even a hint of a witch I'm pissing my pants and running the fuck out of there
do not even think of touching her this early
I haven't had any interactions with endermen but from what I've seen and heard you do not wanna
deal with their bullshit either
this covers all hostile mobs you'll encounter and all of my strategies this far into the mod
my current goal is surviving the nights and killing spiders until I get string
(so far I've been unlucky with I think 2 spiders dead in all attempts and 0 drops)
that string lets me ditch those fuckass stones (at least temporarily) and craft an axe
with that axe I get the ability to mine actual full blocks of wood
and I believe it only takes one breaking cycle to remove the block (!)
wood blocks aren't affected by gravity which means you get freedom to expand your shelter
or even go full out and build a skybase that will make you almost completely safe during the night
given it's high enough for mobs not to target you
this mod and version of minecraft has its bugs and you'll most likely hit them (I sure did)
but none of them affect your game negatively in a way to make gameplay worse and all of them
can be dealt with by exiting and entering your world again
overall impressions so far are positive and I really really enjoy figuring things out on my own
without looking up the meta and following it to a tee
do take note of the fact that I didn't go into this mod fully blind, I did watch a full playthrough
of a harder version of it so I do have some ideas on what's going on and what my next goal might be
I honestly don't know what my experience would be like going into it blind - the achievements
seem to be set up to lead you through the mod's progression step by step but I don't know
how successful they are at that and how enjoyable it would be
I strongly urge you to try this mod if you enjoy grindy games and seeing your progress slowly
build up over a long period of time - just make sure not to get too attached to your worlds
I'll be posting more about my attempts as they keep piling up and I'd be happy to read
about your experiences with this mod or recommendations around it if you have any :3c