Minecraft II: The Floor is Made of Lava

When last we met our intrepid hero, he was plummeting towards a fiery death at the whim of Roadkill and his deathplank. Cruel gravity also had a hand in things, but I mostly blame Roadkill. We all went down together, though, and into the lake of fire. It wasn't a ring of fire, per se, but it was definitely burning. I don't know why I just referenced a Johnny Cash song that I hate, but there you have it.

So we land in the lava, our avatars catch on fire, and...well, that's it. The invulnerability in Minecraft multiplayer detracts a bit from the drama. We hop about in the lava until we get to the edge, haul ourselves out, and wait for the flames to extinguish themselves.

Now we're kind of stuck here.

It seems that Roadkill hadn't really planned this far in his fiery fun ride - there was no way out of the pit. I don't even know how he dug it, but I suspect it involved dynamite. Lots and lots of dynamite. In any case, we were far underground in an unexplored cavern. We could have flown out (there's a cheat code for that), but that's not Minecraft. That's not manly. This is a game where you get your first building materials by punching trees.

So, armed only with our wits and our cheat-coded diamond pickaxes, we dug our way out. We dug for what seemed like ages. We passed zombie-like moaning in the walls (apparently monsters can become trapped in caverns?) and continued, undaunted. Roadkill made a joke that he sure hoped we didn't dig up into a lake. The universe heard him, and obliged.

We didn't dig into a lake. We dug into an underground river. Thanks, the universe.

While digging at an upwards angle is perhaps the most efficient way to escape from a cave in Minecraft, you have no way of telling what you're going to dig into. There's no core sampling in Minecraft, no GPR. So, you run the very real risk of breaking through the next layer of blocks and having your tunnel flooded by water or lava.

So we were all pushed backed down the passageway by the deluge, our precious torches being snuffed out as we washed by. Mamu and Roadkill just ended up some distance down the tunnel once the water had run its course. I, however, managed to get pushed into a deep pit, which was now a deep full of water. Always a good combination! I managed to swim up into a little alcove behind the waterfall. I'm still not sure why the water didn't fill it, too, but that's where I took the above screenshot and caught my breath.

I'm still not 100% certain how swimming works in Minecraft, but you definitely have a slowly draining oxygen bar. Eventually I managed to swim to the surface and onto a ledge, where I dug myself back to our main staircase. By the time I got there, Roadkill and Mamu had already reached the surface and gone back to their respective building projects. Thanks a lot, guys!

I'd say something about how sweet it was to see sunlight again, but it was dark when I emerged. So, sweet moonlight! Sweet, square, blocky moonlight!

I head back towards our skybridge, which is, in fact, easy to find. Mission accomplished, Uber-Landmarks! As day breaks, I start work on the dome above my house's third floor.

I wanted to go for a bit of an amphitheater look, hence the stone bleachers all around. You can sit right next to the glass and get a nice view of the surrounding terrain, even though glass in this game is kind of hard to see through (the thin lines artists use to indicate glass end up being pretty thick lines in 8-bit).

For reference, that chimney-like thing to the left of the above picture marks the build ceiling I mentioned last time. Hmm. The dome isn't going to be quite as grand an arching as I envisioned. I take a break from all the backbreaking click-labor and walk across the skybridge to Mamu's heathen altar.

It seems he's captured the magic of the Burning Fields. Roadkill tells me that this is achievable with simple flint and steel to start fires. Sure, I say. That makes sense. But it doesn't really explain the floating block of wood, forever engulfed by unconsuming fire. Ah well.

Heading back towards my house, I realize how quickly we've all acclimated to this life among the clouds. It doesn't even seem weird anymore, and now clouds are just something I have to wait to pass so I can get a clear screenshot. Well, that's a lie. It's still all pretty breathtaking. But just to hit home the fact of our altitude, I replace the bridge to my house with a glass walkway.

Aaaand I get the 8-bit vertigo again. Good job distinguishing fantasy from reality, brain. I glance up to see how my house is shaping up from the outside. It's looking a little top-heavy, to be honest.

I think the outer reaches of my top floor are now wider than the platform it's built on, but did that stop Frank Lloyd Wright? Probably not. I've never been to any of his houses, so I'm not sure. At least the randomly interspersed mossy rock doesn't look too bad. None of it's visible from the inside, because that wouldn't be classy. You have to stay classy when you're a kilometer or so above ground level. It's all that separates us from the birds.

At some point in all this, Hillary wanders over and tells me how nice the upper level would be for a library and reading room. How true! Now, if only there were a way to make block bookshelves...

Turns out there's a block for that! For whatever reason, one of the few stylized blocks in the game at the moment is a bookcase, so I install them in all the tasteful places of the room for Hillary. I add some torch pylons for lighting, and finally finish off the dome

It's not the domiest dome, but it's my dome. Home. Dome home? I'm rather proud of what I've wrought, with the (completely superfluous but grand-looking) support struts casting their shadows across the library floor.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Minecraft. My next venture into the game will probably be the single-player mode, where you're not invincible and the night is full of monsters. What do you mean, there are consequences for falling from obscene heights in my aerial construction efforts? Stay tuned!