Matt's premise, that dungeon delving and keeping track of things such as torches and other minutae that make a foray into a dungeon an exercise in ongoing tension, puts the initial incarnations of D&D in the Survival Horror style of gaming. Your party isn't all powerful, you have limited amounts of critical items such as food, water, and light, and you have to balance your ability to delve deeper versus your ability to get out before your supplies run out.
In that vein, I could call the Survival option of Minecraft "Survival Horror" as well.
And believe me, that thought has crossed my mind more than once these past few weeks.
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| If you've been watching Carbot Animation's Elden Ring videos, this will look awfully familiar. Just insert screaming. From gfycat. |
***
The deeper I got into Minecraft, the more I realized just how similar Minecraft is to being on a PvP MMO server. Your head has to constantly be on a swivel, even in the daylight, because you're never quite sure when a Creeper or another monster will just appear --or be hanging out under a tree-- and can cut you down before you can say "What happened?"
I guess that leads me to the fifth revelation about Minecraft: Don't be concerned about leveling up, because you're going to die anyway and lose your levels.
Fatalism very quickly set in during those first several hours of game time, where I realized that if I was going to survive I was going to have to clear out some space and build above ground. I didn't really need to go above ground in general, but I felt that it made the most sense to be able to have a tall building where I could at least see if it's dark or not outside. But to clear that space, I had to live with dying a lot.
Plus I had to cover up the "mine" I made, which was my first shelter.
And every time a Creeper exploded in my general vicinity, a hole opened up again, which meant that the long term solution was to basically fill that damn thing back in.
Which meant strip mining a nearby hill and using that dirt to fill in the mine itself.
/sigh
Eventually, I built a tower made out of birch blocks and each evening I'd seal myself inside. I had little openings where I left gaps in the blocks for a cheap window, and I learned my sixth revelation about Minecraft: If you make your windows two blocks big, a monster can get inside.
Like a @#$%-ing spider.
So that became my reality: hiding out in my birch tower in the darkness and the rain, and clearing the area some more during the day.
My long nights were spent trying to figure out what I could do next. Surely I could craft more items than what few pieces I already had, so I read some more of the How to Play section and noted that I could create a workbench --apparently without tools, no less-- and from there I ought to make more items. So I created a workbench and stuck it in a corner.
Now, the instructions said to click on it, but... how close did you have to be to actually do that? I kept accidentally putting down blocks (which required me do break them down again) before I realized I had to basically stand right next to it. Then the builder's window came up with far more options than before, and I could create wooden items such as an axe, a shovel, and a sword.
Uh, a wooden shovel? And a wooden axe to chop down trees?
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| Me: "Sheesh. Can't you all give it a rest? I'm not even playing WoW right now!" |
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| Me: "@#$%-ing Paladins." |
Whatever. I still built them, because even a wooden sword is better than a pointed stick.
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| Just ask Monty Python. |
Okay, I thought. I've got this. I have some basic tools, I've cleared out enough space to survive walking out of my tower, and I even built a door for the damn thing. Now, what else to build?
It was then that the seventh revelation reared its ugly head: monsters will spawn inside your dwelling.
I discovered this when I went inside my tower for the night, saw darkness creep over the land, and I got up to get a drink. I came back to discover I was dead.
"What the hell!" I exclaimed as I rezzed and ran (!) back to my tower.
I reentered to find a Zombie inside, who promptly killed me before I could grab my weapons and fight back.
So.
Third time's the charm, right? I reentered and finally took the zombie down, then I had a chance to stew over what happened.
Just what did happen? Did it come inside while I wasn't paying attention and left a door open? No, I'd been very diligent about that. So... What?
I guessed that it had to have spawned inside, maybe if I wasn't there when darkness closed in or something.
Reading the How to Play section again, I read up on Nightfall. The last sentence caught my eye: "Also be sure to light up the area with torches, it may save your life." I'd presumed that it was talking about outside, but what if it meant that monsters would spawn inside?
And how the fuck do I create torches?
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| Coal? Oh, for fuck's sake. |
That meant I was going to have to dig until I found some coal and then I could make torches.
***
"I apparently suck at Minecraft," I told my questing buddy that night.
She chuckled and mentioned that she happened to know some kids of hers who'd love to chat with me about Minecraft.
"Oh, I can imagine," I replied.
"Maybe you should try the sandbox mode."
"Sigh. My oldest said the same thing."
My mining adventure looked pretty grim, since all the digging that I'd done had only landed me some cobblestone and dirt. But in a rare stroke of luck, the next day I dug in just the right spot and found some some coal. I grabbed a couple of chunks, made some torches, then just kind of plunked them on each floor of my tower and hoped for the best.
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| If you'll note, I also made some stone swords and axes as well. |
So far, so good.
***
Outside of behaving as if I'm some strip mining corporation with a penchant for mass deforestation, I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Now that I've got the basic tools down, I can now try to mine to find ore and gradually expand my capabilities.
The unknowns:
- How long items last. I know from sad experience --and truly bad timing-- that items will gradually weaken and break through use, but I don't know whether that includes wooden blocks. Or stone blocks, in much the same way as fencing in Stardew Valley eventually crumbles. That would kind of suck to login and suddenly discover half of my birch tower crumbling to dust beneath me.
- Just what other monsters are out there. I've already encountered Zombies, Creepers, The Drowned, Spiders, Slender Man (?), Skeletons, and Witches (?), I'm not sure what else is out there. I don't have any ranged weapons, so I run like hell from Skeletons and Witches who can hit me from distance with arrows and spells. I just have this bad feeling that some truly big monsters are out there, lurking, and I'll discover them the same way I usually do: by dying to them.
- What effect things such as fire might do. I've played enough Rimworld to not be completely clueless, and I know that one of the worst feelings in the world in Rimworld is when a wildfire starts outside of your safe area. I would not be shocked at this point to see wildfires spreading like crazy because OF COURSE THEY WILL.
- Whether I can ever actually see my toon from the front. I've tried the traditional MMO view of swinging around using the left mouse button to see what my toon looks like with armor on, but no dice. Surely there has to be a way to view my toon, but I haven't figured it out yet. Then again, The Outer Worlds never had an option for a 3rd person view, which is the main reason why I didn't play the game.
- How to eat. Maybe I'll start working on that part, given that I can actually survive for longer than a day. But campfires require coal for some weird reason, so unless a furnace doesn't need coal to cook I might have to do a lot more digging.
One big question remains: now that I've got a functional shelter, a fence around it (not sure just how much it helps, but it's there), some tools, and some armor, now what? My immediate needs have been met, but I know I'm just tempting fate if I stay out in the rain or after dark, so I can't really explore very far. I may have to create alternate shelters if I want to go exploring, in the same way as any guerilla group has multiple hideouts. (See: the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War, or to use a Fantasy equivalent, the Noldor's hideouts in The Silmarillion.)
I guess in one respect, I'm a poor candidate for playing an open world sandbox game such as Minecraft. While I can appreciate what goes on in trying to figure the game out, and believe me, there's plenty of gaps for things such as "just how DO you eat food?" which isn't covered in the How to Play section, once I get past a certain point my motivation for playing kind of drops to the floor. I mean, I've got the house, the weapons, the armor, and even a freaking door, so why create anything more ostentatious? Maybe that's why my motivation for raiding and achievements in MMOs isn't really all that great: it's not that I can't put the work in, it's me questioning whether the work is worth it in the long run.
Perhaps I should investigate that more in Part 3.
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