Gimme the Blocksss!

Lately I have been dreaming of a world made of blocks.  I am usually happily whacking away at stone blocks with my mining pick.  Just as the final block breaks up I realize I am standing on a layer of sand blocks that suddenly give way and drop me into a deep ravine!  Fun times!  I have mentioned my Minecraft addiction during the podcast, and I thought I would use my blog space to torture you with it.

I don’t use any mods or texture packs.  I’m not opposed to them, but I’m enjoying things the way they are.  When you start a new game the world is generated at random.  In the advanced options you can enter a “seed” code for the game engine to use to generate the new world.   If it turns out to be an interesting world you can share the seed with other players who will get the same world to play in.  Recently, I’ve been experimenting with using names as seeds to generate new worlds.  I started with the names of my friends and then moved on to celebrities that I admire.  If you are looking for some cool new worlds try using “feliciaday”, or “wilwheaton”.  Next I’ll be trying “neilgaiman”, “jonathancoulton”, and “nathanfillion”.

There is a cool feature in the 1.8 update that I have found a fun use for, but in my (admittedly limited) search of the internet I have noticed very few people doing the same.  So I thought I would share it and maybe someone else will enjoy it.  In the update they added the ability to use bone meal on mushrooms to make them grow into huge mushrooms.  You can then place ladders on the stalk of the mushroom and use the mushroom as an elevated platform.  The brown mushrooms grow with a flat top and the red mushrooms are domed.

The beginning of my mushroom kingdom!

This leads to a lot of building possibilities.  I have managed to grow trees on top of mushrooms and even mushrooms on top of mushrooms!

Thinking of making an upper level forest

You just need to dig a hole in the mushroom top that you are using for your growing surface and then place a dirt block in the hole.  As long as you have enough room for the tree/mushroom to grow you can create your upper level forest, or multi-level mushroom kingdom!  According to the Minecraft Wiki monsters can spawn on the mushrooms, but so far I haven’t had a single one spawn up top.  I have been able to use the platform to pick off creepers with my bow and arrows, which means I’ve spent most of my nights standing around on mushrooms making silly pew-pew noises.

A place from which to shoot all things!

If you have used mushrooms to create structures I would love to see them!  Link to screenshots in the comments, send email to dicebag@thediceguys.com, or tweet links to @DiceGuys. (Remember: Our comments allow signing in via Disqus, Facebook and other IDs, and leaving a link will mean I have to approve the comment. Don’t need spammers here linking to little blue pills.)