We happened upon Real Civil Engineer playing this game one day, though. And to my surprise, she actually seemed interested. We were both ready for something new, so we downloaded it and dove in.

Sometimes I don’t know why I do a spoiler disclaimer. Like, how could there not be spoilers about the game in a post about the game? Anyway, proceed with caution!

The storyline of Grounded 2 has you playing as one of four teens who have somehow been shrunken down to the size of a Nickel, a-la Honey I Shrunk the Kids, or Downsizing. Technically, this is the second time these kids have been shrunk down (this is Grounded 2).

A Quick Recap

Apparently in the first game, the kids were able to re-grow themselves with the help of a robot named BURG.L. At the beginning of this game (from what I can gather) the scientist who shrunk you down is having a meltdown over being thwarted, and is taking it out on said Robot. The kids want to save their friend, though, so they’ve come to the park to stop the scientist when an explosion happens. And once again, they’ve woken up small.

Since being shrunken the first time, a completely different group of people have taken over the corporation responsible for shrinking. You’re able to communicate with the new Director/CEO, who seems just as confused as you are about what happened and why you’re shrunk again.

There’s also a mysterious stranger who’s taunting you (and periodically sending bugs to attack you), and you need to figure out her role in all of this. So far, I’ve been having a surprising amount of fun exploring this park as a miniaturized person, climbing picnic tables like they’re mountains, and struggling to kill bugs I’d usually just smush with a shoe.

So, What are We Actually Doing?

Grounded 2 is an adventure survival game with resource-harvesting, crafting, inventory management, progressive unlocks etc. Dandelions and blades of grass are towering over you like trees, and you chop them down in order to obtain larger construction materials like planks and logs. Tiny “pebblets” (pieces of stone smaller than pebbles), sprigs (pre-grown grass), and acorns (acorns) act as smaller construction material. They’re also used for crafting your first weapons, pieces of armor, and spots needed to make more advanced items (like workbenches and cooking stations).

Food and water is important, too. There are weevils and aphids that you can cook to eat — and some mushrooms you can grab in a pinch. And since you’re so small, a simple dewdrop on the tip of a blade of grass is all that’s necessary to quench your thirst for the day. It’s honestly pretty adorable (initially).

Enemies, naturally, take the form of bugs; and at this size, they might as well be dinosaurs. Borderline-microscopic critters (like the aforementioned aphids) are the size of small kittens, and ants are the size of Big Cats. And those are just the first few foes you’ll encounter.

Ladybugs, butterflies, bees, and of course spiders, and roaches (and more) all make an appearance. There is an arachnophobia slider in the settings to make spiders less triggering. I’m not sure how it changes them, though, I left my slider at “maximum spider”.

Of course, as you progress through the game and create better items everything gets slightly easier to manage. Only slightly, though, because, frankly, this game is pretty tough. And I’m playing on the easiest difficulty. I thought this game was going to be a mild, casual game to play with my girlfriend; but it’s been giving me a real challenge so far.

Cache-Collecting, Controlling Character, & Combat

The controls are relatively simple, but they’ve still managed to provide quite a challenge. You’re given an “Omni-tool” that can turn into a hammer, axe, shovel, or repair tool as needed. Simply holding the “Omni-tool” button (‘X’ by default on Xbox) near the item you’re trying to gather will gather that item.

You don’t have to switch, say, from a hammer after destroying a rock to the axe in order to chop down a tree. You just hold the button and it works. And there’s no wear on the Omni-tool, so you don’t have to worry about it breaking or having to repair or create a new one later. So that’s nice.

Movement

Traversing the world is largely on foot, and unfortunately, there’s no double-jump. Within the “mutations” menu, there’s a hidden upgrade under “Exploration”, which suggests there will be another way to move around the world in the future; but so far, I haven’t found out what it is yet*.

That said, I found myself not using my ant all that often. Primarily because of the Mutations you can apply to your character (more on those later). One of the mutations will increase the rate that your stamina recovers; but in order to unlock it (and it’s subsequent levels which improve the mutation), you have to deplete your stamina a bunch of times. I wanted to make sure I got the top level of that, so I ran pretty much everywhere; and essentially just got used to it.

Also, the ants combat assistance continues after your character dies. While you’re respawning and figuring out how to get back to your stuff, your ant is still fighting the enemy that killed you; and will often die itself doing so. You can call your ant to you as soon as you respawn, but you have to actually think to do that — which you won’t know to do at first. At least we didn’t, assuming our ants would continue to follow us like it did everywhere else (to an almost annoying point).

When your ant dies, there is a cooldown, seemingly, until you can call your ant again. And I have seen them come back after dying. But more often than not, we’ve looked up and are missing our ant. It’s not following us like it usually does, it doesn’t come when called, and when we open the companion menu, there’s no ants to be found.

Granted there is an anthill that can be built that we haven’t used yet. And that may facilitate the respawning of ants. But if that were the case, I’d love to see some acknowledgement of that. Say, a pop-up or something after the ant dies that says “build an anthill to bring your ant back” or something.

It’s the most obvious after loading back in to the game — either starting up a new session, or simply because the game crashed (which it does fairly often). Maybe there’s an issue where your ant disappears if the game quits or is closed before the cooldown is up. I’m not sure what the culprit is, but we’re each on our third ant. Maybe there’s something we’re missing but it just seems buggy (pun intended).

Combat

I mentioned earlier that this game is surprisingly tough, and combat is one of the reasons why. Fighting consists of pressing the right trigger to attack, the left trigger to block, and ‘B’ (on Xbox) to dodge. You can also do a perfect block (parry) by hitting the trigger at the exact moment they hit you. It’s relatively simplistic, but it’s anything but easy.

The window of opportunity to perfect block is larger than a lot of games that I’ve played; and the enemies attack patterns aren’t incredibly complicated. But there’s still times where blocking feels muddy, and you end up getting hit when you were sure you timed the perfect block correctly.

Even the initial bugs you come across, like ants, provide a decent challenge — they take a lot of hits to kill, and they do a decent amount of damage. I ran an archer build for a while and oftentimes simply dodging just didn’t cut it.

The bigger-stronger bugs are even more bullet-spongey, and some even have status effects like Venom or Sizzle. That’s not to even mention the damn stink bugs that release a gas cloud that damages you. You can make a gas mask that negates the effect of the bug’s cloud — but you need to kill a stink bug in order to make it. Kind of a catch-22.

Enemies also pretty relentless. There were several occasions I accidentally came across an aforementioned stinkbug or something, but knew I didn’t want to fight it. So I ran. But despite running well outside of where I found them, and seemingly running for a while (though it’s not like I timed it), I’d turn around and they’d still be there. You can get away. It’s possible. But make sure to keep running, and hope your health isn’t already low in the initial encounter — they’ll probably hit you once or twice before you’re far enough away.

Health

Don’t expect to just sit behind a rock for a little while and get back to the action, either. Health doesn’t regenerate, not even outside of combat. And the easiest health item available — Fiber Bandages made out of Plant Fiber and Sap — doesn’t regenerate your health instantly. There’s a sub-bar that slowly increases, and you’ll only get the health if you don’t get hit before it fills up.

There are potions that can be made that will give you more health and have it increase instantly, and some food will also increase health. And with the cooking station you can create meals that gives quite a bit of health and will cause it to regenerate for a short while. But those, of course, take more resources which takes more time to go out and acquire.

Health items and other consumables also only stack to 5 (until you’ve leveled up your Axe and find a pretty rare item, which takes a while). So I’ve really been struggling to balance holding the right amount of health items, and figuring out the most efficient way to create more.

So far, just grabbing the sap and plant fiber and making a few bandages has been the most efficient solution — given that they can be created on the fly and those items are the most readily available — but there’s still a lot of complications.

If you’ve got any status effects on you, you won’t actually gain any health from the wrap because, remember, there’s a sub-bar that increases that stops as soon as you take damage. So if you’re affected, you take damage immediately, and the healing instantly stops. And given the limited stack sizes, you’re not really able to hoard the materials, either.

The carrying-capacity smoothie might be the most efficient drink that can be made. I’ve started using them more and more — they recover a decent amount of health, and do so instantly. They take resources that are slightly more difficult to gather, though, than the wraps. And you can’t simply make them from your crafting menu — you have to make them at a specific Smoothie Station.

Sleep does regenerate health, too, but you can’t sleep whenever you want. The kids have to be “tired enough”. And it doesn’t regenerate all of your health. So health management is definitely an important aspect of this game.

Truthfully, given such small stack sizes, the lack of fast travel, and the complicated nature of finding a lot of the materials needed for health, I have no idea what the developers of the game intend for you to do to survive on long treks through the park.

You essentially have to use half of your inventory slots simply being prepared — needing food, torches, enough health items to survive a few tough encounters, and potentially a backup weapon (so you can both see and fight when necessary) can leave you with very few slots for gathering resources in a hurry.

Maybe I was supposed to make more bases instead of constantly trekking back to the same one. But, man, a lot of times it felt like there were decisions made to simply extend the required playtime arbitrarily.

Getting Stronger

Of course, there are ways to improve your strength and defense, and a surprising amount of playstyles to choose from. It’s actually quite deep. Each type of armor (type being the kind of bug used to make it) corresponds to a different combat style. And there’s three armor slots, so you can equip one of each of the same type of armor; which will give you an additional bonus.

So for example, equipping the Bee Facemask, Bee Shoulder Pads, and Bee Shinguards — which all give the Ranger bonus for archery — you not only get a speed increase when drawing an arrow, but your arrows can also release a pollen cloud that slows enemies.

While I went into the game not expecting much, I was pleasantly (and frustratingly) surprised with the combat. There were times I wanted to throw my controller through the TV, but isn’t that the mark of a solid experience? Don’t make the mistake of thinking that since you play as teenagers, and the graphics are a little on the cartoony side, that this is a simple, casual game. Like I did.

Some Mild Complaints…

An ongoing gripe with this game is inventory management. Resources only stack to 10, and consumables to 5 — and that’s only non-expiring consumables. All food (raw and cooked) can spoil, so they’re each on an individual countdown… Which means they each take up their own slot. Again, there’s no real way to hoard the items you need for long treks.

Granted there are upgrades to increase these amounts, but not by much; and not until several several hours into the game. If you’re the type loot every enemy and hoard every item (like me), well:

And most of them aren’t. Almost all of the weapons use both hands, so, so far, I’ve been running a couple weapons simultaneously.

I wanted to primarily be an archer, but I made sure to keep my spear leveled up because I knew I’d have to use it anytime I needed light at the same time. Even Candy Staves are two-handed, so I’ve been having to keep it up. At this point, spears are essentially my primary playstyle (again).

Hopefully there’s some sort of hip-mounted light source that we can unlock so that I can main pretty much any weapon. But until then, I’m making due.

You Mentioned Planks and Logs Earlier?

Something I’ve always loved in video games is the building and creating aspect. I remember copy and pasting ROSEBUD a hundred times, so I could build a megamansion and furnish it with the most expensive items in The SIMS. I’ve also grown to appreciate earning the ability to build a massive home, too, which is why I was so proud of my Minecraft builds.

Build Mechanics

Rather than needing the items in your inventory (or in storage nearby) to begin the building process; you’re able to put a  “ghost” of the item in the spot you want to place it. Then you’re able to come back and add the materials as you acquire them. It’s nice, because you can get a feel for what you’re trying to do before actually committing. And you’ll be able to see if your idea is even viable before wasting resources.

That said, occasionally I did wish I could build the items instantly. Namely floors and stairs, so I could get higher more easily to build more levels and the roof. Ceilings and roofs need to be supported as well — and you can’t even place the outline if they aren’t (an outline can be supported by another outline, which is good). So shaping substantial structures takes a bit of additional creativity to even plan. And you may find yourself building section-by-section.

I also need to keep experimenting with the building mechanics. I decided to start with building the floor (obviously), but I started with the lowest elevation in the area. So, a lot of the floor pieces ended up, visually, underground. They clipped through in order to attach to the other floor pieces. The ground floor of my house looks like a crawlspace under a trailer. I don’t love it.

I want to try building a new house, this time starting at the highest elevation in the area. But I feel like the house would look like it was floating or cantilevered at that point; which I don’t think I want. The best-case scenario, which I need to figure out, would be Palworld-style where the bottom level creates a “foundation” to the ground, so it’s not just floating, and it makes sense visually. Again, it’s something I need to test. Again, maybe in creative mode.

Time to Buzz Off!

Overall, I’ve had a surprising amount of fun playing Grounded 2. It’s still in Game Preview mode, and it shows in a lot of ways. But running around as a three-inch person, and experiencing this perspective has been incredibly interesting. And despite it’s somewhat cartoonish appearance, it can really give you a challenge (and a scare if bugs already freak you out).

I’ve still got some work to do in order to re-grow myself, and I can’t wait to dive back in. Just don’t ask me to play in VR.

The post Grounded 2 | All The Small Things appeared first on I Talk Games.

We even got some Redstone in there! I mean, I’m no Mumbo Jumbo or Pingu (by a long shot), but for a few hours of gameplay and a couple YouTube videos, I didn’t do too shabbily. These are just incredibly accessible, practical builds; that took my base area to new levels. Keep reading to check those out.

Everything around the treehouse (from the end of the last post) seemed, essentially, like more of the same — Just variations of wood. Not finding anything really new, we set off again. We tried to pay attention to landmark features and leave breadcrumbs for ourselves so we could make our way back at some point, but it didn’t really help.

Of course creepers and zombies were a problem, but now we’ve got ice archers? (“Stray’s” I guess) And they poison you?!? That’s annoying. We had to act fast, so we built a fence around this area to keep enemies out.

I had a vision pretty quickly for this base. I wanted the façade of the mountain to stay the same, with our living areas being within that space. And I wanted to add windows and lights so it looked like a home carved into the side of the mountain; which is exactly what it was.

On the ground level, when we first arrived, we built into the mountain to make our base. We simply carved out an area that looked big enough and dropped in beds, storage chests, and work benches. I wanted some “natural light” in this area, but we unfortunately didn’t have any glass or sand at the time, so I just made an opening in the wall. I figured we were protected by the fence we had already built.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think about spiders and the fact that some mobs have ranged attacks. We’d be minding our own business trying to get something done in the house, when all of a sudden we’re getting shot from behind. It got old fast, so we ended up filling in the gap pretty quickly. Actually, I still wanted the natural light, so I left the bottom row open. But then we were subject to spiders and baby zombies.

And the fence itself that we initially built failed quite a bit. Since we were in the snowy biome it, well, snowed. A lot. That snow would pile up (which is a cool game mechanic, I just didn’t know it existed), which would create a step for mobs to use to get over the fence. You just can’t win with this game.

After a couple nights I just high-tailed it over to the first beach I could find to gather some sand and head back, to create real windows that also protected us. It was necessary, too, because I had a few ideas for this base and they all involved windows. And I just tried to be cognizant about the snow, and clear it out whenever I noticed it piling up.

I wanted to expand the home and add a proper bedroom. Plus I wanted the outside to look more like there was a home built in there, so I started building up. There was a nice corner in the side of the mountain, so I carved out an opening to that. I put a wrap-around window in that corner, with a narrow hallway entrance, in order to make up the bedroom.

It was completed when gf added in the beds with the headboard and carpet; along with the seating area behind. Also on the second level (before the bedroom) was a bit of a library. I put windows looking out on the side of the mountain too — along with the aforementioned corner — to really make it look like a home from the outside. But otherwise, it was just the area you first got to when you went up the ladder to the second level.

Gf ran with it, though, and added some carpeting, bookshelves, and “seating” around the perimeter. We took a lot of it down when we moved (needed the bookshelves for enchanting, when we finally discovered that); but that’s what this looked like in it’s heyday — and I really liked it. Now, it mostly looks abandoned and ransacked.

Redstone

Also, around this time, I learned about Redstone. I had mined a ton of it, but I had no idea what it was or what it was used for. Thanks to YouTube, though, a whole new world was opened for me. I immediately started thinking about how I could apply these new principles.

My first thought was to have a machine that pushes mobs into a pool of lava at the push of a button. The main issue was actually getting the mobs in front of the pistons. My best thought was to have the tops of the pistons be on the same level that they walk on to get to me. Then, there’d be a small platform a block down in front of the pistons.

So, ideally, they’d walk across the piston, drop down onto that platform (where they’d stay because they A) wouldn’t willingly walk into lava and B) are still trying to get to me); at which point I’d press the button and have the pistons make the push.

I wanted to capture any items that the mobs dropped, too, so the plan was to put hoppers and chests under the lava. I needed a place to put the chests, with the hoppers above, with lava on top of those, not to mention the step for the mobs and the pistons that push them — so I built a huge structure off to the side that would accomplish just that.

And actually, for a first attempt, it worked pretty well. I had stairs going up to the top/platform, so I could lead the mobs up to the platform. I’d run around trying to got mobs to follow me; and when they did, I’d head up the stairs, jump across the gap, and head to the button hoping they’d follow.

It was a 2-block-long jump, so I could clear it and head to the back of the machine, while not worrying about mobs following me that far. And I built the entire structure relatively long because at this point I was thinking about the bow-and-arrow enemies and how they like to stay a bit further back.

In the back of the trap I had the aforementioned, button and I would wait for the mob to inevitably walk toward me and off the one-block ledge onto the block right in front of the pistons. At the push of a button, those pistons extended and pushed the enemies into fire. Easy peasy.

There were a few downsides. For one, I took a lot of hits trying to lure enemies — I couldn’t just stand there and wait for mobs to come to me at the back of the trap, I had to physically go out and get each one to follow me. Also, Spiders were largely immune due to how I had the Redstone laid out. And, not that this affected the trap’s performance, but it was rather unsightly.

I thought I could solve a lot of those problems by making the platform of the trap at the same level as the rest of the ground — digging down for the drop-off, chests, hoppers etc. I could enclose the Redstone more easily (I thought), and hopefully enemies would see me just standing there and come after me, instead of having to lure them.

One small issue

There was one small issue with this plan, though, and it was that I was in an ice biome. So there was just water under the ground level. I had to essentially build a box underwater, fighting off Drowneds and trying to avoid drowning myself in the process (which I failed at constantly). I eventually got the box built and drained, though, and was ready to make the trap.

At this point, my vision expanded and I no longer wanted the one-block drop for the mobs. I wanted them to walk to the edge of the lava pit on the ground level, and instead of mobs dropping in front of the pistons, the pistons would pop up behind the mobs to push them into the lava. I tried several variation of this before realizing/discovering that pistons don’t like to move other moving pistons. So, I never got it working.

Before I was able to put it back to the original design, we decided to move on again from this area. Haley wanted to actually take advantage of villagers and make a real farm; and I was ready for a change. I was tired of being cold.

I closed off the trap so no mobs could get in — thinking I’d maybe come back one day and tinker — packed up and headed out again.

One of our main goals for the next area was actually using villagers for farming etc., so we high-tailed it to the first set of occupied houses we found. Having already ruined several villages by letting them get overrun with zombies, we were very cautious this time.

We lit up the whole area pretty quickly, then looked around, and found a nice open area for us to put our house. We chose a spot looking over a crevice that had water, and thought it would be cool to build out over that. There was also a big waterfall off to one side, so we really like what it looked like.

I wanted a slightly bigger build here, and I envisioned a very modern-style home with rectangles staggered on top of each-other for each designated space. So that’s what I got to work on. I did an entrance area, a bedroom, and a space for work tables initially. I also wanted to shoot my shot at making a piston door — so I did that as well — and I thing it turned out great.

At first there was a switch, but I eventually wired it up to pressure plates so we could just run in and out. I felt pretty safe doing so — we built a full barrier around the house, so mobs shouldn’t have been able to get in. I did have a couple moments of panic where I thought some were getting through (I’d hear the door while I was crafting or something) but it turned out to be the traveling merchant.

I’m not sure how he’s able to get in and zombies aren’t, but I’m grateful. We also left the entire back of the house open, just because. It was gf’s idea and I think it looked great. I’m guessing that helped keep mobs on the back-side of the home rather than inside the fence. Path of least resistance.

Once we figured out enchanting and what bookshelves were for, I stacked another rectangle on top to house those; and to upgrade the look of the house a bit (inside and out) I replaced the wall of our bedroom with windows, and that’s the house itself!

The Fun Stuff

Around the house there are a lot of things we built, too. Like I mentioned, gf wanted a farm and villagers, so she followed a YT tutorial and built one off to the side. We ended up getting tons of villagers with this setup. We (Haley mostly) also painstakingly fenced in the entire village so all of our work wouldn’t be in vain.

I couldn’t go too long without messing with Redstone, so I made a trip-wire trap that opened the ground as mobs walked across it, dropping them into lava (the one from the top of this post). I loved the idea behind this, and mostly the execution but it required a lot of finagling of blocks that I didn’t love.

In order to hide the tripwire, I needed to build a little bit of a tunnel; and cats and pigs (and the occasional baby villager) kept getting stuck in there. And since that’s where the tripwire was, they’d be triggering it. This would leave the pit open, so they wouldn’t be able to get out. I’d have to break the trap to let them free, and then re-build it.

The villagers also weren’t smart enough to avoid the trap itself either, so I lost a few who fell in. Along with a couple iron golems. It was still worth it.

On the other side, in a corner, I built a much simpler version of my first trap. There was just a one-block hole just on the outside of the barrier of our property; connected to a button that removed the block for the drop in to lava. It was simple but it worked well — I even caught a few creepers with it.

Redstone wasn’t the only thing that YouTube taught me. I also learned how to quickly cultivate helpful items like kelp/bone meal, sugar cane, and wood. I built a basement to house the farms because I liked the idea of an underground “factory”. Also, the back-side of our base had water, and I liked the idea of having a glass lookout from the factory into the water. So I went deep enough to do that.

First, I built the kelp farm that automatically created the bone meal, and I used the bone meal to grow the oak trees (for wood) and sugar cane (for paper). I wired up a dispenser for each, so the bonemeal was automatic. When I wanted sugar cane, all I had to do was add bonemeal, turn on the farm and wait.

For wood, I simply had to place the sapling; a tree would eventually sprout for me to harvest. With this setup, I could grow 5 at a time. I even built some pistons at the top to get rid of the leaves so I could get more saplings and sticks — keeping the farm self-sustainable. I probably didn’t need that part though as I always ended up just climbing the machine to get all of the leaves anyway.

We started realizing our need for iron, so we built the classic iron farm that involved killing iron golems automatically. There were a few issues setting this up — there’s a lot of conflicting information out there, especially given the various versions ‘vailable. But eventually we got it working properly. And for shits and giggles, I built a rail line from the basement over to the iron farm.

To Do’s Going Forward…

I also attempted to make a couple mob farms in this area — one at bedrock and one like 300 blocks in the air, but I never got those to work for me. All the videos I watched made me think I did things right, but I couldn’t get mobs to spawn. Never did figure it out. Now that I think about it, I didn’t give them a ton of time, but I felt like I should have seen at least one or two if it was actually working. Now that the other farms are established, I might go back and try to work on one of these again and actually get them to work.

At this point, we felt established. And while we had some goals still, we also were itching for some new experiences. At various times while we had been playing, we glanced at the add-ons to see what was available. There were a couple that looked promising; and since we wanted to keep this world relatively vanilla, we decided to start a new world for that.

We ended up making a pretty cool homestead there, too, but that’s for another time. My pyramid that reveals a hidden enchanting room will have to wait for another post. Let me know in the comments if that’s something you want me to show.

Otherwise, thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought of this, and what your Minecraft builds look like, I love getting inspiration from other designs.

Did you enjoy this post? Be sure to check out one of my other ones! And be sure to check back soon to see what other games I talk about. Thanks again for reading, peace!

The post Minecraft Home Tours Part 2 | Farms & Redstone appeared first on I Talk Games.

I really loved Pokémon as a kid, so when I learned about PalWorld (bear with me, this is a Minecraft post), it was something I definitely wanted to try. My girlfriend and I gave it a shot, and we really got in to it. Going in, I didn’t know that I would have to chop down trees, craft my tools and weapons, and build shelters to survive nights. But given the overall idea behind the game (catching and battling Pokémon Pals), I was more than willing to do it.

Note: this is just a house tour post. I’m giving some background info and context for each build, but I’m not actually going to review or comment on the game itself much. I’m Just going to talk about the couple houses and bases and builds that we made, and why.

Also, as an Amazon Associate I may earn a small commission if you were to make a purchase using a link on this site. It’s at no cost to you, though, and can really help out the blog. I appreciate it!

As we played, I started enjoying the “survival” aspect of it more and more. And once I figured out the construction rules, I really loved bringing various build ideas to life (stay tuned for my PalWorld commentary and building tours). For a little while, I even got a bit of an itch for survival games and I branched out a bit giving Ark and Valheim a shot. I didn’t stick around long enough to give them a real chance, though (I may go back one day).

So, after taking a bit of a hiatus to play different games (like Split Fiction), we started itching to do some mining, resource gathering, crafting, and building again. Having just watched the Minecraft movie at a friends house with his kids, it seemed like the natural option.

The Beginnings

We wanted a relatively fresh playthrough, so we didn’t go in to the game with much information or any goals. We mostly planned to just explore and see what we could find, and I knew there were diamonds out there to be had. But otherwise, we decided to figure it out as we went.

I forgot how little information the game really gives you when you start. I did know that we had to sleep through the nights because there were enemies, but I didn’t remember just how dangerous they were. It was a pretty quick lesson.

I wanted to build a house, but between creepers, spiders, and helmet-wearing zombies, I didn’t feel safe just building out in the open, even during the day. I figured it would be a good idea to create ourselves a platform that we could build on top of that monsters couldn’t reach.

We found a good spot, kind of on a cliffside facing a village (something else that was new to us) and thought that would be great because we really only had to dig down 3 sides. Also, we found an area that already led pretty deep underground right below that spot, so it was a good place to start mining too. So I started digging three blocks down around the area that we decided would be our base’s plateau.

Digging out the space

Truth-be-told, I didn’t fully think the plan through. I thought the landscape would be largely unaffected, but there’d be one area just a little higher than the rest where our home stood. It was early in the game, so I didn’t have the blocks to build up, and in my mind, I’d easily achieve that vision by just clearing the blocks around where we chose our home to be.

I realized pretty quickly, though, that I wasn’t building a plateau, I was building a moat. I was just trenching out the area around my base, creating a pit. Oh well, it’ll still get the job done. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t think a one-block-wide pit was enough. It seemed like the enemies could make it across that gap with little issue. So, I decided to double-up my work and make the trench at least 3 wide.

It wasn’t my initial vision, and a bigger project than I anticipated. But after a couple in-game days and a few frustrating deaths, I got it dug out.

While finishing the bulk of the trench was relatively quick, it took several days of tinkering to finally get it to a place where I thought it actually looked decent. We had to fill in all of the creeper holes and block off any overhangs where skeletons could hide out during the day. It was a whole to-do, but I liked how it turned out.

I left an area off to the side as our “main entrance” to the plateau. It was an easy-enough jump for us, but one that mobs couldn’t make. I ended up making another easy way in — by climbing up and over the trap — but this space remained the main way we got on to the home area. There were various ladders within the trench, too, in case we missed the jump (which we did often. Frequently finding creepers waiting for us at the bottom).

Catching Mobs

Speaking of traps, I was thinking about ways to capture mobs to harvest their drops — especially the arrows from the skeletons. This was long before we watched any videos about what to do or how the game mechanics worked, so I was just trying different things.

I eventually got everything filled in properly, and actually buttoned-up, so there were no unknown/missing spots where mobs could sneak in. And on the outside — next to the doors that made up the “entrance” to the trap — I put ladders so I could climb over into the property while hopefully luring the mobs into the trap.

I say it was only moderately successful because I really only trapped zombies. I didn’t think about the skeletons’ mechanics and how they tended to stay a bit further away so that they could shoot. After the couple times zombies got in when I wrongly assumed I was safe, I ended up building walls around the trap to prevent that.

With those walls, though, I was out of the sight-lines for the skeletons, so they didn’t come into the trap that often. I tried luring them every once-in-a-while, but they usually lost interest after I got into the base. Or they’d kill me before I had a chance to make it back.

Spiders could obviously just climb over the trap, so I wasn’t really trapping them in the first place.

Instead of glass, I ended up trying a couple iterations of putting transparent blocks in different patterns in the opening between the trap and the home. I hoped that would lure more skeletons, while at the same time stopping them from shooting us. I kind of got close (and close to a traditional mob farm, accidentally) by putting blocks only on the top-half of the opening. But by the time I got to that plan, we decided to move on and explore another area.

Overall, I never got the base into a perfect place, or the trap as efficient as possible. But I did learn a lot and had fresh ideas for the next home-base we built.

What about the inside?

As for the house itself: When we first got to this plateau, I built a small hut to sleep for that initial night. But once we built the “main house”, it just became storage and extra crafting tables.

While I was digging the trench, my gf built the main house — complete with expanded storage and work tables. She even included a roof-top deck decorated with a bell from the nearby village (we didn’t know what the bell did yet).

I liked what she had done with it, and wanted to add something of my own. I decided on a basement, complete with a nice little fireplace; and I included a walk-out, so you could enjoy the water from that level. There was also a cleared out area under our house that we’d created by mining for stone and coal and getting blown up by creepers. I thought that area looked pretty cool, so I added a window looking in from the basement. I kind of made it up as I went, and I really liked how it turned out.

Haley also realized that she could potentially keep pets and wanted to see what that was about. Given the trench I made, it was difficult to actually get animals up to our homestead, but that persistent merchant was usually around.

Haley built 3/4 of a fence and waited until one of the merchant’s llamas were within it, and closed it off. Our first official pet. We were still learning at this point, and didn’t actually know about taming or breeding. So we just held on to the one llama until we moved on from that base.

Which leads me to house number 2

We were starting to get a little bored with our original home, and as I was out gathering resources one day, I came across a new biome and type of tree. It seemed like a good opportunity to explore and move on, so we packed up and did just that.

It turned out that the tree wasn’t much more than just a new variation of wood, so we moved past it. We had committed to moving on, so we didn’t want to simply go back. Eventually, we came across a huge chasm in the side of a mountain, and decided to explore that. It was pretty mob-infested, so we built a base pretty quickly right outside of it.

We, once again, gave ourselves a bit of elevation between the home and where the mobs spawn. But it was nowhere near as in-depth as the first spot. We basically just built a small platform in the side of the mountain to make a simple sleeping spot.

I wanted to give it some character, though, so I added a wall of windows to look out through. It turned out great, and it was very little work. Good thing, too, because we realized that this chasm didn’t have anything for us at the time, and we moved on pretty quickly.

Treehouses

When we left the base by the crevice, we immediately came across a swamp biome. And for the first time, we saw a Huge Brown Mushroom (I had to look that up, I thought they were just yet another variety of tree. I never chopped one down). We built a bit of a “treehouse” on top of that, but it was another quick one to just get through the night.

At one point, my gf and I got separated, so I built a base on the treetops so she could hopefully find it/me. In order to get into it, you had to navigate up and over using it’s leaves and the leaves of nearby trees.

Both of those interim houses gave us ideas for what would become our next main base. We wanted to create something up in a tree, with a more low-key hidden entrance up through the leaves.

We found a prime candidate for the treehouse and carved ourselves and entrance channel through the leaf-blocks. This still honestly might be my favorite entrance to a house we built.

We got to the top and cleared out a spot for the house. We had tons of stone at the time, so we built this grayscale monstrosity on top. While aesthetically the jury’s still out, I thought It was really cool disappearing through the leaves to secretly get inside this base.

We planned on staying here for a little while, so Haley built this wrap-around balcony and added a garden with some decorative plants. It wasn’t too substantial (and we didn’t really know the farming mechanics yet, so we weren’t trying to gain anything from it) but it was fun and we liked it.

I’ve also always like the idea of living furniture & decoration — like having a tree growing through the treehouse, so I tried to bring that to life here. We left the body of the tree, and just build around the trunk. At the time, we thought that leaves would continue to grow on trees, so I built a couple blocks off  the side of the top of the trunk, so there’d be more leaves above, too, which would have been incredible.

Turns out, leaves don’t grow like that, so it didn’t seem like my vision would be realized. But while creating the videos for this post, I added them in manually. I was in creative mode anyway, so I figured “why not?” It actually turned out pretty well, and I kind of wish I thought about it from the start.

Thanks for reading! This was actually just part one — It was getting pretty lengthy as is, so I felt like I should break it up. Be sure to check out Part 2 where I start to dabble in some Redstone and farming (and I don’t simply mean planting crops).

Let me know in the comments what you thought about my first builds after being away from the game for over 10 years. I think they’re pretty clever for having gone in with very little information. Hope to see you in part two, or if you enjoyed this, be sure to check out one of my other posts!

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