this is a post in a series where I infodump about
better than wolves and my experiences with the mod
read the previous one: better than wolves CE 3.1 #1,
I'll expand on that in this one
2 days ago (I think) I died on my 26th attempt, the furthest one so far
right now I'm unwinding after that attempt and a very silly death (food related as usual)
I am much much much more consistent at grabbing everything before the first night, including shelter
if I'm too late to get one before mobs start spawning
I kite a creeper to blow up a hole in the ground and try to find
a place where I can dig a 2 high space in dirt without the dirt above falling
I don't think I was playing anything exceptional during this attempt, I just got
lucky with the seed - lots of caves near spawn, enough iron and coal in those
(alongside a creeper exploding deep in my creeper hole and uncovering more iron)
all the iron luck helped me find 8 ore in total, mined those with a sharp rock
for a pile of iron ore each - 2 of those craft into an iron chunk
it would look pretty silly if you could smelt that into a proper iron nugget
in a campfire, so first you need to get a brick oven
it's crafted from 4 loose brick slabs, which are crafted each from 4 bricks,
so 16 bricks total for a brick oven
the process of getting those bricks is, as usual, pretty tedious
first step is finding clay, which spawns under water - the texture is the dirt one
with some grey clay blobs inside, it might be a bit hard to spot if you're not used to it
mining that with anything below a stone shovel (I usually just use my fist)
gives you a pile of clay, 2 of which craft into the usual clay you know from vanilla
mining it with a stone shovel gives you clay, which is preferable if you have enough string
you can craft that into a wet crude brick (which is also craftable back into normal clay)
that you can place on the ground
that wet brick, when placed, starts drying if and only if it's sunny
(the wiki also says a brick oven can be used but you don't have it yet)
- night pauses the process while rain completely resets it 0
it pops off into normal clay if walked over by you or a mob, at this stage
there's also no way to make any platform to place them on that's safe from mobs
the drying process unfortunately (and predictably) takes more than 1 full day, you'll always
need to wait out a single night for the wet bricks to form into vanilla bricks
the only way to lose your clay is if a mob walks over it, doesn't pick it up
(I believe only 50% of zombies can do that, no other mobs fortunately)
and it's done in the first half of the night, so that you don't pick it up
before it despawns after 5 minutes
my luck with this has been hit or miss, one night I can lose ~80% of my clay, the other
all of it stays in place and eventually dries up
the next step is smelting those iron chunks in your brick oven which is so quick and fun!!!! :-)
if you didn't pick up on this it actually takes 10 minutes and 40 seconds
(640 seconds, as a reminder food takes 4 minutes to cook, 240 seconds)
and needs a lot of fuel - a full stack of sawdust if you're into that
the wiki lists all fuel burn times in an equivalent amount of sawdust and
a single oak log burns for exactly 640 seconds, letting you burn a single nugget
with no loss of fuel
there are a few changes here from a campfire:
1. you don't need to worry about the fire getting too big and burning your thing -
place that oak log into your oven, stop thinking about it and do some other shit
and come back to a perfectly functional iron nugget later on
2. you need to click in a different place to place the fuel
and the smeltee (if I may call it that) - right click on the bottom half with your fuel
and right click on the top half with your (most likely) iron nugget
keep in mind that if you click in the wrong place with a log you'll place the block
and have to spend some time getting rid of it - make sure to stand right in front of your oven
to avoid that
the fire in your brick oven still has to be started somehow, luckily by this point in the game
you should have a campfire you would prefer to have burning almost all the time
and here is one of the few mechanics that is both pretty realistic and does actually help you -
if you place your oven right next to that burning campfire and put fuel in the oven,
the fire will spread from the campfire to the oven and it will start smelting your iron
on its own given some time
this saves on some wood and possibly string, but most importantly hunger -
an issue I still struggle with
after the first few nights I often find myself not having enough food
and not having any (sometimes) passive mobs near my base
this makes the journey to a mob made of food pretty long and if not careful
you can either end up starving far away from your base, stuck somewhere far
in the night, or even worse - both at the same time
this is a situation I got myself into near the end of the 26th attempt, which
forced me to dig a small hole in a mountain where I could cook my raw food
on a campfire
this proves that this strategy of making small bases you can survive the night
and starvation in is viable and possibly even preferable over coming back
to your main base every night - I only did it once because I was forced into it
so I can't say yet but I'll try it more later on
I'm getting a bit off track from the iron so let's continue down that path
by this point you should have a brick oven next to your eternally burning campfire
and possibly a few iron nuggets
you will also almost certainly not have 4 iron nuggets that are required to make
a chisel - the next step in your progression in this wonderful mod
in total you'll need to find 8 ores which is quite a lot with this little resources
grab some food if possible, find a cave nearby that's not too vertical
(you don't want to spend neither hunger on jumping or a lot of blocks going down one)
make some crude torches with the coal you might have already found
(same as iron - 1 ore -> 1 pile of coal dust -> 1 coal -> 1 crude torch)
crude torches will slowly burn out with time,
whether they're in your inventory or placed down,
when fully burnt out the item gets deleted and you need to make more
they will also be decimated if you fully submerge into water or walk in rain with
them in your inventory (unlit ones will survive though)
a bit deeper into a cave, at the point where sunlight can't reach anymore
you'll get the gloom effect and will eventually start taking damage from the dark
when caving I usually craft 2 torches not to waste too much coal and so that I can
always have at least one placed to 1. not get glooom 2. actually see where I can place
the second one and where I'm walking
this can be hard and very seed-dependent, don't get discouraged if you don't get
4 iron nuggets from the caves around you (or do, it's brutal honestly
and not worth it if it makes you feel like shit)
now you have 4 iron nuggets and can (and should) craft them into your first chisel!!!!
this is a huge step in the mod and it felt really good getting it for the first time
(this is what I really enjoy about an experience like this)
this chisel unlocks one of the first tings you get in vanilla minecraft - the crafting table
go find a stump from any tree, take your chisel and start digging!!!
iirc it takes 2 cycles to get your crafting table, either way you'll get an achievement
when you get a functional one so just keep digging until that happens
the crafting table finally gives you a full 3x3 crafting grid and unlocks a pickaxe, which
as all tools requires string
with a stone pickaxe, stone and all the ore you most likely have encountered so far
(coal and iron) take only 2 cycles to fully break the block which is quite honestly HUGE
the first cycle always gives you either a pile of gravel in the case of stone
or the ore you're mining (this also lets you get the whole ore thing instead of piles -
1 coal or 1 iron chunk), the second cycle breaks the block and gives you a few loose stones
I think? check the wiki if you care about this :3
this lets you mine stone efficiently and expand your base
(though there's not much reason to do so yet)
I haven't got any further than this but I'll touch on 2 topics before ending this one:
string and unusual food
string is essential, as it's required to craft any tool and not having string
will put you back pretty much to the beginning of the game, mining wood very
slowly with a rock, not getting full wood blocks, getting less resources from blocks
- it generally just sucks
there are 2 pretty consistent sources of string I found - either kite spiders during the
day that spawned a night before or kite jungle spiders if you have a jungle nearby
if you have enough hunger and enough weapons to hit them without needing to go back
to your fist, normal spiders from night spawns should be easy enough
killing them gives you 0-2 string, with 0 being the most common in my experience
this is great if you love gambling but got boring for me after a while
a mechanic we can (ab)use here is the fact that spiders shoot cobwebs at you
if you're far enough away from them
hit a spider once to aggro it (they're still passive during the day) and either back up
to keep your eyes on it and be able to hit it back or sprint away from it for a while
until it shoots that cobweb
I usually do pick the safer and a bit more hunger-preserving option of just hitting it
because getting string slower is always better than dying
if you manage to make the spider shoot its cobweb, it won't drop any when killed afterwards
if you prefer not to get into any combat at all, spiders do also aggro on other mobs
(I think by default passive once and other hostiles if hit by accident)
and can shoot their cobwebs at those
in that case just wait out a night and scout out the area around you to find any cobwebs
laying on the ground (or not)
in the last attempt I managed to find a cobweb pretty deep into a lake's area
around 3 blocks above the surface
I debated just not getting it for a while, I managed to grab it but it took quite a lot
of blocks to get there without losing hunger
the other source is jungle spiders which spawn at either day or night in the jungle
due to the high amount of leaves (which jungle spiders, as any mob can hide in and pass through)
it's very very important that you're careful
they're smaller than usual (vanilla cave spider size),
faster than normal spiders I think (might be wrong)
and give you poison when they hit you
this is incredibly dangerous and ideally you should just run away after they've shot
their cobweb at you to avoid any encounter with one
do reserve this for when you're in dire need of string, the risk is honestly not worth it
to connect these 2 topics, I'll remind you that just like in vanilla, you can eat spider eyes
in this mod, with this action also giving you poison for a little while
this brings us to the topic of avoiding starvation
there are 2 types of dangerous food I've encountered so far - rotten flesh and uncooked meat
have a varying chance to give you food poisoning, usually for 60 seconds
I want to make this absolutely clear - YOU DON'T WANT THIS
the food poisoning effect gives you the usual vanilla minecraft hunger, while also making you
unable to eat any food
this, when active for 60 seconds, will most likely fully drain your hunger bar at which point
you'll start taking damage from starvation
assuming no better source of nutrition, the only thing this will cause is bringing you closer
to death very quickly
the only situation where I think it could be useful is when you're already fully starving
and taking damage - in that case you'll gain a few more additional seconds from the moment
you eat that raw food to the moment your hunger drains once again
raw food (and at this point any food I believe) gives you less than 4 drumsticks of hunger
which is not enough to start healing, and due to the food poisoning you won't be able to get
above that level
if you really have nothing better, do keep in mind that you're not guaranteed to get
food poisoning, with rotten flesh it's an 80% chance and with the raw meat you'll have
at this point it's 50%
gambling with food poisoning is better than nothing, but even better than gambling
on rotten flesh and raw meat is food that gives you poison
this might sound weird at first, but same as in vanilla minecraft, poison brings you down
to half a heart and doesn't actually kill you - this is very very very useful
if you've been in your world for a longer time and have killed some mobs, you might have
come into possession of the aforementioned spider eyes or creeper oysters - both giving
you a single drumstick of hunger and giving you 5 seconds of poison
that causes you to lose at most 2 hearts but never kills you and still
lets you eat more food during the effect
if in a place safe from hostile mobs and with enough poison-inducing "food", you'll be able
to get yourself to half a heart and OVER 4 drumsticks of hunger
this means that if you stand still not doing anything and wait 9 minutes and 30 seconds
(half a minute per half a heart of regeneration) you'll be at your initial hunger after
eating AND full health
this gets even better if you're low on food - say you have 1 or 2 cooked meat pieces
alongside some poisonous food items - eat your spiders eyes and creeper oysters first,
then at the end eat your cooked food - the end result is full health and even more hunger!!
I used this once to save myself from a death from starvation and it's incredibly useful
this early in the game when you have no food
this covers pretty much everything I've gone through since the 1st post
the next one will most likely be out in 3 weeks at the earliest
I'll soon be cut off from the game for a bit below 2 weeks, and I don't expect to get
any noteworthy attempt in the next few days - I also don't expect myself
to perform well enough to get further than before in the first few days after I'm back
once again, if you decided to pick up the mod too and Feel the Pain™, I'd love to
read about your experiences :3