In starting a new world there are more decisions to be made after choosing your seed. What mods do you want to add? Do you want Shaders? Which ones? Do you want to play through a certain progression or go straight for diamonds right at the beginning? Sometimes you can choose how you want to play as you go, or you can decide before you even get started.
How I am choosing to play in this world
For me, I want the focus of my forever world to be farming. So, I found a mod pack called Great Farmers + and I loved it. It has 33 mods for farming, a vineyard and others. It also has extra building mods and a backpack mod for more storage. I added a couple of mods for the content creation side and went with that. The only downside is that I couldn’t get any camera recording mods like Replay or Flashback that worked with it, so I must go without. Alas! I will grieve the lack of cinematic shots for my videos.
I also chose to play the world through the natural progression of the game. In the beginning you start off with wood tools and move quickly into the stone age. My idea was to live out each age and build, farm and collect accordingly. In the stone age there were things they didn’t have, and I wanted to take my time in each “age”. So, I cook my food over a fire pit and build stone houses, similar to what could’ve been built in that period.
(As a quick disclaimer: I am not a historian and the majority of what I know about history I learned in school, read in books or saw in pictures. Do not take what I say as 100% correct, I could be mistaken and not realize. What I share is strictly my opinion and nothing more.)
The first days of a new world
The first couple of days in the new world are inevitably the hardest, unless you are lucky enough to find sheep right away. Having to hide out during the night and try to make your days productive are always interesting. That and the lack of food right away. Of course, I forgot to get any food and was very hungry before the second day arrived.
Building my house
One of the first things you need in the world is a shelter. A place to hide out while the monsters rule the night. Since stone houses that were built partly underground were one of the types of houses built in the stone age I went with this design as my inspiration. Just as it started getting dark, I dug out a little entrance and started mining away indoors to clear out my living space. I almost forgot about lighting and made the fire pit last minute. I cleared out my first living room with time to spare and decided that while I waited for morning, I would dig out a bigger room behind the entrance room.
Food
As it neared morning, I realized I had not collected anything for food and was getting hungry. Morning came and I rushed outside to get ambushed by a zombie and a skeleton. They nearly got me, but I survived with one heart to spare. I did some good, old-fashioned fishing, diving and hitting the fish with my ax (we don’t have spears). I walked back to my home and cooked the fish over the fire pit. It was lovely, and my first fish were delicious!
Struggling with the restrictions of my world
As I began expanding the house and thinking about storage, I realized that a couple of things are going to have to be less historically correct in my world. For example, storage in history was more pottery, fabric bags and sacs. Chests weren’t until later. However, in Minecraft you need a furnace to make pots, and I am not building a furnace until I reach my “iron age.” So, I am going to use chests so I can store items right now. I may come back and change the chests out for pots later when I can make them.
Exploring the world nearby
After spending the first few days getting settled into the world, it’s time to explore around my home. These trips are always fun, as you get a feel for the land and find new things. Getting sheep for a bed is fantastic, no more night! Some more types of crops for food are also good. I had a pretty good find early on, getting rice, pumpkins, sugarcane, eggs, flax and bamboo. I was also able to get flint to make a flint knife. Yay!
My first farm
I started farming wheat right away but expanded it to the other crops that I brought home from my exploration. The farm is still small right now; I will have to spend time to expand it as we go. The biggest thing I am looking forward to is making pumpkin pies. I don’t know how old they are, but to me they are ageless!
Surprise Discovery
I spent another few days finishing the interior of my house, making it all stone inside. I now have a main room, a storage room and my main living room. With this done, I was tending to my farms when I made a great discovery. I can turn straw into straw bales! This is almost the same as hay bales, but it has a darker coloring. You may think that this is a small discovery, but it means something to me. I can make the proper roofs for my houses to make them more historically exact! Now that is something worth celebrating!
End of the first session
With all of that done, it is time for me to turn in. My world is starting to come along! It’s been fun hanging out with everyone and thank you for sharing in my experience. You can watch the video for this blog in the videos page.