Something that I’ve mentioned on a couple of different occasions, but have yet to really explain is afk farming. Now for most you’ll be familiar with the concept of afk or away from keyboard, but for some this may be a new concept and I thought it’d be appropriate to take some time and explain it as it’s likely going to play a role in your own pvp strategy.
A Semi-Complete Fully-Auto Cactus Farm
The first thing you need to know about afk farming is what it is. Now in Minecraft crops will only grow if the chunk they’re in is loaded. A chunk will only be loaded if a player is in range of it, so for those who build their bases closer to spawn you’ll likely have your farm running 24/7 regardless of whether or not you’re actually actively playing at the time. This can be quite handy for obvious reasons, but makes your base more vulnerable to raiding. If however you build your base further out the likelihood that another player will be in range often enough to keep your crops growing is limited and as such you’ll need to employ afk farming. This involves staying logged on even though you’re not actively playing. For example you could log on to the server and just leave your character to sit in range of your farm while you go to work, read a book, or enjoy a movie. When you come back your crops are all grown so you harvest, replant, and repeat eventually selling the crops at spawn to provide money for things you need to effectively pvp.
A more advanced system involves full automation which is often accomplished through use of redstone, but can also be done via other means. A fully automatic farm will allow you to sit tight for longer periods without needing to return to harvest and replant as these things are done for you. These types of farms are most often made using cactus, melons, pumpkins, and sugarcane, but can also include mushrooms and even chickens if you’re clever. Of course if you’re on a factions server, afk farming can be something your faction splits into shifts so no one person has to stay logged in all the time.
The obvious danger is that your character will be standing somewhere without you at the controls. This makes your character vulnerable to attack and it’s why farm security is one of the most important aspects of afk farming, though shockingly it’s one of the most overlooked. Often times it’s you’re extremely valuable resources like diamonds that get the best security, but I personally believe that your farms should be nearly as well protected in order to keep your character safe and to protect your source of income.
Finally it’s important to remember to check the game occasionally even with a fully automatic system as accidental loss of connection will occasionally occur and if left un-resolved for a long period of time could seriously cut into your profits. While afk farming you’ll also want to make certain that your inventory or pause window is open to make sure you’re not logged out for inactivity.
So there you have it, a crash course on afk farming. I hope this helps you set up your own farms and I look forward to seeing you server-side. Until next time, thanks for visiting my N3rd C0rn3r.
Well hello again everyone and welcome to the latest article in my Minecraft PvP series. As you likely remember from the last article I was well under way trying to get my new base completed. I did manage to set up the early farm infrastructure and I’d been using the money earned from that to purchase more cobblestone to finish my base out with. Today I’m happy to say that this portion of the base building is complete and I’m now completely incased in cobblestone covered entirely with water. Obviously it won’t keep out the most determined, but it will make getting in a very costly process with little reward.
Eventually cactus will line the lower section as well
This is of course only the first step to base completion. To help offset certain costs I’ve taken the four rows at the ends of each farm and used them for sugarcane, carrots, melon, and netherwart so I needn’t buy these things each time I need to make some potions. I’ve also planted 4 oak saplings inside the base with only enough room for them to grow one of the smaller versions of each tree and in such a way that they won’t interfere with the farm set-up. This is due more to a fluke than to good planning, but I’ll gladly take it. Now I need to buy considerably less for each project I do as wood and brewing materials are plentiful. If you’re wondering why I went with oak as opposed to birch which would naturally grow the shorter trees it’s simply because I wanted a readily available source of apples as well.
Next up on the “to do” list is the automation of the cactus farm using hoppers. So far I’ve got 2 rows completely automated, but there’s still a good deal of work to be done. The idea is that the water streams on the above level (which I’ve decided to leave to save a bit of money) will push the broken off bits of cactus down into the line of hoppers on the lower floor. This will attach to hoppers surrounding the sand blocks supporting the cacti on the lower level allowing a fully contained system that doesn’t require exposing the hoppers to the outside. Once the two main hopper lines are complete I’ll be able to afk farm much more efficiently and progress toward completion should speed up quite a bit.
Once complete I’ll have the money to get the resources to start raiding some nearby bases, though it seems as though there’s little construction happening anywhere near me.
Finally, if you read all the articles on my site, I’d first like to say thank you and you’ve probably noticed that I’ve started an Original Minecraft story series. These tend to be a bit longer so I’ll be writing a new one only once a week (typically on Sundays) and then I’ll make two in game copies which I’ll be giving away for free at spawn on Sunday evening. If you’d like to try and get a copy of one of the books, then I’ll see you at spawn once I’ve finished in my N3rd C0rn3r.
Below is my first ever (though definitely not my last) original Minecraft themed story, formatted so that you can copy/paste it into a book and quill in the game if you'd like to. If you do I'd ask only that you leave the referencing tag at the end so those that enjoy these stories can find more of them. Thanks to everyone for all your support so far and I hope you enjoy Reckless Abandon.
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It was a day just like any other. The square sun rose over the extreme hills in the distance bathing the land in light and burning away the monsters foolish enough to stand out in the open as it made its daily debut. Little about today seemed
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especially unusual. Steve was running low on iron and so it was time for another trip down into the mines to extract the relatively common, but immensely useful resource from its long entombment in the dirt and stone that seemed so prevalent down
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there. Steve needed the iron for a massive overhaul of the mining operation itself. He wanted to make it as automated as it could possibly be, but of course that meant a great deal of manual labor up front to get the materials needed to set up the system.
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"Those hoppers sure do use a lot of iron," Steve said to himself as he gathered up a few pick-axes and shovels for the long day ahead. He paused for a moment and stared at the armory considering a sword, bow, and some arrows, but after a moments
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consideration he decided against them. Because the automated system wasn't set up yet he'd have to carry all the gathered materials back himself and he decided he just couldn't spare the room in his pack for the extra gear. Little did he know that
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this one decision would end up making this day a potentially fatal one. Armed with picks and shovels and nothing else Steve made his way down into the mines dug out near his little home. The first couple levels had been completely dug out already so he
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headed for level three only 9 or so layers down from the surface, but far enough that natural light didn't ever touch the blocks at this level, at least not without help from Steve. Making his way down the ladder Steve could hear the soft drip of water
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leaking through shallow tunnel roofs and the occasional crackle of the flame at the top of the torches evenly spaced throughout the mine tunnels. He reached level three quickly and found his way to the next area ready to be mined, pulled out a fresh pick,
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and started digging. On and on he went, burrowing through dirt and rock stopping only to gather coal or iron encountered along the way or to switch out a broken tool. It must have been at least an hour into his work when the tunnel he'd been digging
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suddenly opened up on another, somewhat wider tunnel, one Steve hadn't dug. It was quite dark and led off to the left for quite a ways before it hit a wall of any sort, however it seemed to not go very far to the right leading Steve to believe that he'd
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hit the very end of a tunnel. Strangely there
was a bit of iron just to the right. Steve had to wonder why anyone who made a
tunnel like this would leave behind an iron vein. Wood braces held up the roof
of the tunnel and cobwebs had affixed themselves to
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the corners formed by these braces. Sections of mine cart track were visible on the floor, though several sections were missing and though this portion of the tunnel was dark, Steve could see light from torches a ways down the tunnel to the left. Steve
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pulled a torch out of his pack and affixed it to the wall immediately in front of him, jamming the grip into a crack he found there. "If whoever dug out these tunnels left this iron, then they probably left even more further down," Steve said thinking
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outloud. One thing was for sure, his tunnel hadn't been giving him nearly as much iron as he'd been hoping for and exploring these pre-dug tunnels would be much easier than continuing to dig his own. With that thought Steve made up his mind to take a
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look around and see if he might not be able to improve his fortunes somewhat by mining what had been left behind. Having made his decision he pulled out his pick and made short work of the iron vein to the right and then set off down the left tunnel. As
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he went Steve continued to place torches making sure the path back to his own tunnel was clearly marked. The last thing he needed was to get lost down here. As Steve rounded the left corner at the end of the hall he saw another iron vein and made
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straight for it. Greedily he hacked away at the iron rejoicing in his lucky find of these tunnels. Steve quickly gathered the iron visible on the surface, but there was more beneath it and he needed only take a step in to reach it. Steve ducked in to the
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small opening in the wall realizing too late
that the place he'd intended to put his foot was actually a hole to a vertical
drop deeper into the tunnels! Steve tried to catch himself, but it was no use
and he fell for a terrifying moment that seemed to
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extend to encompass several eternities until he landed with a sickening thud on a hard wood platform. Steve was reasonably sure he'd cracked a bone in his leg, but he was still able to stand on it with only minor discomfort. "Oh, well that's just great
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Steve!" he yelled at himself, feeling foolish for having made such a rookie mistake. As Steve picked himself up he took a look around at his new surroundings. He was on a wooden platform that crossed the gap over a huge underground ravine. Steve took one
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look back up the hole he'd fallen through and knew there wouldn't be any way to climb back up that way and so it seemed he'd have to find another way out. He placed a torch right below the hole to mark where he'd come from and started hobbling up a long
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wide tunnel that seemed to lead back under where he'd been. If he was lucky he'd be able to find a tunnel that went back up and connected with the system he'd been in right before he fell. If he could find those tunnels, he'd be able to find his way back
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from there. The tunnel seemed to go on forever and it wasn't too long before Steve placed his last torch. "Oh, no," he said out loud, "I don't have any torches left!" He finished, his voice taking on a hint of panic. If he wanted to get out of here, he'd
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have no choice but to continue through the dark of the tunnel ahead. Steve began to feel his way further down the dark tunnel being extra careful to make sure each step placed him firmly on solid ground before committing. After several tense minutes that
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seemed more like hours Steve found his way to the end of the tunnel which turned left and thankfully began to ascend. A wave of relief washed over Steve as he felt the path start going upward toward a now not so distant light source. Unfortuntely his
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relief was cut short by the sound he heard from behind him. There was an eerie hiss of a sort accompanied by the skittering of multiple legs over the cold stone surface of the tunnel. The sound instantly turned the wave of relief into an icy chill that
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ran down Steve's spine temporarily immobilizing him. If that sound was what he thought it was, he could be in very big trouble. He fought through the paralyzing fear and managed to look back over his shoulder to see a set of beady red eyes staring back at
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him from the tunnel ceiling. This is what he'd been afraid of. This was a cave spider; a small blue spider with a deadly poison bite that could end the already injured Steve if he played this wrong. Realizing how truly desperate his situation had become
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Steve felt the overwhelming urge to run for the light up ahead. Steve took off up the sloping tunnel praying there were no holes along the way. The spider leapt after him looking to poison him and live off of his corpse for several days at least. Steve
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Pressed on, his injured leg throbbing painfully as he sprinted down the tunnel. If he could just reach the light any other spiders he encountered wouldn't attack him, or so the stories had always said. Something about bright light made them lethargic
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and passive. The light wouldn't save him from this one though. The adrenaline from the chase would keep it focused enough to continue attacking him, even in the light. Steve pulled out his last pick as he ran. It was almost dead, but it's the closest
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thing he had to a weapon. "Oh, why did I leave the sword behind?" he asked himself full of regret about the ill-fated decision. There was no time to dwell on his mistake however. The light was just ahead and Steve skidded to a halt in its comforting glow
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as he turned to face the pursing spider. The cave spider leapt up aiming for Steve's head, but Steve with a desperate swing of his pick caught the spider in mid-air sending it flying back. Undeterred the spider made another leap, this time dodging the
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frantic flailing of Steve's pick and managed to sink his fangs into Steve's already injured leg causing it to explode with a rapidly spreading burning pain that felt like molten iron scorching a path through his veins. Steve gave the pick a final solid
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swing knocking the cave spider off him and flinging the head off the handle. The spider landed a few feet away clearly dead with the shattered remains of the pick sticking out of its abdomen. With the immediate threat having been dealt with Steve, using
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his good leg pushed himself up against the wall with the torch on it, where he sat cringing in pain from the spiders bite. He could feel the poison spreading, drawing ever closer to his vital organs where it would do some serious damage, potentially
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killing him if he didn't do something quickly to stop it. A quick look around confirmed that this was indeed the system of tunnels that led back to the one he'd been digging and as such it was already quite well lit. From this angle he could see a
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chest sitting flush with the wall across from him that he hadn't noticed before. He crawled over to it with his last ounce of strength just barely able to lift the lid as he felt his life slipping away from him. Inside was some iron, a pick, and...
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bread! "Oh, thank goodness!" Steve exclaimed grabbing the bread and greedily gobbling it down, hoping that it would give him the strength to overcome the effects of the poison before it finished him off. Steve ate his fill and waited, hoping against hope
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that this lucky break would somehow ultimately save his life. Minutes passed as he sat there feeling like death itself, but as suddenly as it had come on, Steve could feel the turning point in his bodies fight against the effects of the poison. The
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searing
pain began to subside and Steve could actually feel his strength returning.
After several more minutes of thankful rest Steve slowly tried to stand and
found that even his injured leg felt better. He took a couple careful steps to
make sure he
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was ready to travel once more and having been satisfied that he was feeling better he ate one more bit of bread leaving him one last piece and began a slow, but steady walk back up the tunnel and to his home. The ladder back to the surface was challenging
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to put it mildly, but he made it back to the surface where thankfully it was day time still, though the sun was making its way down toward the horizon. Steve made the short walk from the mine to his house crawling up the stairs and practically kissing the
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threshold
of this safe haven. Closing the door behind him Steve went to the kitchen and grabbed
a bottle of glowing liquid which he then drank, setting the bottle aside for
later use, and then hopped into bed, ready to put the events of the day behind
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him. His sleep that night was so deep that he didn't even dream and the eight hours of night passed by in the mere blink of an eye. Steve awoke feeling one-hundred percent better and decided that he needed to create a reminder for himself, to never go out
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unprepared again, even if it meant making a few more trips back and forth. Steve gathered up some materials and the last remaining piece of bread from the abandoned mineshaft and created a frame, which he placed the bread into. He then took this and
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hung it on the wall above the door to the armory as a reminder of the previous day’s events. From then on any time Steve thought about going out without weapons to save room in his pack he would see that bread and remember that such a decision almost cost
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him his life. That was a mistake he was going to make sure he never, ever made again.
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The End
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If you liked this story and would like a copy that you can copy/paste into your own Minecraft world or would like to read more original Minecraft themed stories like this one you can find them at: http://www.n3rdc0rn3r.blogspot.com
Hello everyone and welcome back to my Minecraft PvP series. So when I last posted I had just begun construction on a new base after encountering some difficulties with the last one (namely that I was unable to grow anything) This thankfully proved not to be the case for the new base and I was able to set up some temporary farms to help me get some money to finish the construction. Well luckily they did just that and I was able to get enough cobblestone to start the lower level including a waterfall catch. Now as most of you are probably aware, one of the best ways to protect your base is to completely cover it in water to prevent the effects of TNT explosions. However if your base has yet to be sealed (like mine at the moment) this water coverage provides a means for people to get to your base assuming of course that it’s not on the ground. Since I’m still working on it, I didn’t want any unwelcome visitors just yet. I also managed to set up the basic structure for my cash crop the cactus. This is a pretty simple setup for now that is simply a row of sand 8 blocks long with 4 cactus set on it every other block and water set on either side to bring the broken off bits of cactus to me in order to expand the farm or sell for other materials. Because the server automatically removes entities every now and again I will eventually replace the water streams with hoppers, though that’s a bit down the line as iron is a bit expensive. Still it’s a necessary project and once I’ve got that going I can start making the things I need to do some epic PvPing.
The Cactus Farm (so far)
Since the cactus farm doesn’t actually take up the whole area I’ll also set up some other basic farms to provide food and brewing ingredients so I don’t have to buy them every time I’d like to make something. I’ll definitely include melon and netherwart. Be sure to let me know in the comments if you think there’s anything else I might need.
Now you may have wondered why I’m not using obsidian for this base and that’s an excellent point, it’d be far safer if I was. Well there are two great answers for that. First, obsidian is very expensive and the base is rather large so doing the whole thing up in obsidian to start with is just a crazy idea, it’d take way too long and issue 25 might see me finish my base, which I imagine would be pretty boring for you guys. Once I’ve got the farm going full tilt I’ll upgrade it, but for now cobble is fine. Second of course is that I have very little of value there are the moment. There’s some sand, some cobble, some cactus, and lots of water, things easily found anywhere on the map. Raiding the base would be a waste for anyone and so the best protection isn’t absolutely necessary just yet (though I’m sure it’ll get there eventually). Hopefully the next post will see the completion of my new base and the first stage of my cactus farm done here at the N3rd C0rn3r.
If you’re not a fan of Greenheart Games, I imagine you soon will be when you play their new game “Game Dev Tycoon,” which casts you in the role of a video game developer back when the whole thing first started and takes you all the way up through the next generation of console gaming and beyond.
Graphics & Sound
Because the game is a simulation less effort was invested into the graphics and sound, though that’s not to say that they’re bad. As you might expect the graphics are somewhat more basic that other games might be, however they easily get their points across and it’s not challenging to identify your settings and the details that fill them. The sound is of good quality and the track, though repetitive is catchy and still not an irritant after several solid hours of gameplay, a feat not often accomplished by other similar style games.
Gameplay
My Splash Screen
The game starts you off as a brand new software developer working out of a garage and starting with a meager $70k to develop your first game. If there were any doubt about what to do first it’s quickly dispelled as “develop a new game” is you’re only starting option aside from just sitting there and watching your monthly costs eat away at your startup money. Even if you find a winning theme and genre combination right off the bat and balance your focus correctly, don’t expect reviews for your first game to be better than 6s. Better ratings come with time and experience and for now 6s are awesome.
As you continue other opportunities will open up for you. Research is your first option and at the start all that’s available is “research new topic” (which is great because it costs nothing except research points) and the well worth saving up for “create custom engine” which opens up the option for you to design your own game engine in order to utilize the new technologies you keep researching thereby improving your games.
Once you get your first hit game and make you’re first million dollars you’ll be presented with an option to move to a new office. I’ve found that accepting this offer immediately tends to result in bankruptcy and so I stayed in the garage till the next gen systems came out, researching the whole time and then made a new engine and moved into the new office. From there things just got better and better. Seven hours later I finished the game (but don’t worry, you can keep playing afterwards if you want to).
Object lesson
The best part about the game is that it’s designed to teach an object lesson, or at least the pirated version is. The two versions start very much the same way, however once you reach a certain point you start getting messages in the pirated version that you “lost x amount of money because of piracy” to the point where it becomes impossible to develop new innovative games and still keep from going bankrupt. While it may be slightly exaggerated, one can definitely see the point and I find myself glad to have spent the $8 for the game to avoid the piracy hassle in my N3rd C0rn3r.
Well it’s day two for yours truly on the MineFrenzy PvP server and unfortunately it got off to a bit of a rough start. After setting up my initial base and pouring time and resources into it I discovered a very unfortunate problem that means it’s going to be impossible to keep a base where I’d intended; crops will not grow there. As you may have guessed this means that I was attempting to set up a base in the Nether which seemed like a good idea until I ran into that particular problem. Now I’m not sure if I was just doing something very wrong or if Nether growth has been disabled to force farm building to be in the overworld, but after several hours of afk farming using multiple crops yielding no results I figured something was up. I went ahead and tested the same basic setup on a singleplayer world and what hadn’t happened in hours on the server took a few minutes there and thus I decided I’d have to tear down the base, unclaim the land and start fresh somewhere in the overworld. So the next several hours involved me burning through picks reclaiming most of the materials used to build the base and then heading back to spawn.
To minimize any potential losses I dumped what I wouldn’t need for the journey to a new base location into my enderchest keeping with me only the necessities and the least valuable items that wouldn’t fit in the chest. I then made my mad dash out the back of spawn (again) and proceeded to walk, and walk, and walk gathering valuable resources as I went. When at last I arrived I began the long process of setting up my base once again, hoping once more that the secrecy of the location would help prevent any incursions for the time being (not that I’ve got anything valuable there at the moment).
Since I didn’t have nearly enough resources to complete the base I set up a couple temporary farms on the roof (which is all I’ve got finished for now) to help bring in some more money to complete the project. This time the plants grew and by the end of the night I had myself a tidy sum to use the following day for further base building. Hopefully I can have the basic structure finished in just a few more days. Because of the expense of the materials I’m purchasing I did try to make a cobblestone generator, however it seems that this has been disabled which will be interesting for anyone attempting a lava monster based raid as the lava just pushes the water out of the way rather than making cobblestone from it. I’ll have to try and find some way to overcome this issue when I start raiding. At any rate, I’ve decided to go with a large cactus farm as 8 are sold for $100 and they’re really easy to make automatic meaning I can afk for hours without having to do a thing in my N3rd C0rn3r.
Hello everyone and welcome to my first ever Minecraft PvP blog series. In this series we’ll go through the PvP experience (and this is all new for me as well so we’ll be learning together) and see what all it has to offer. I’ll be playing on the new MineFrenzy server at mc.minefrenzy.com. This server is being hosted by HaydzSoulutions primarily for Youtubers to record on. However it is open to the public as well and I very much feel like the goals of the server are in line with making a blog series and as such this server is where I’ll be building, fighting, and growing my way to the top (hopefully).
Day 1
Spawn
First thing was first of course and I decided that I’d be playing without any donator advantages, though should you decide to play on the same server definitely consider donating to support the server (you get cool stuff for it too so it’s worth it). This decision means of course I’ll have to work twice as hard to get the resources I’ll need to survive and conquer, but I’m sure I’ll manage.
As I only started with a little cash and some basic tools and weapons (a stone sword, axe, pick, and shovel) I opted to vote for the server to get some extra coin. On the MineFrenzy website under voting are six different links that lead to places you can vote. For whatever reason the second to last in the list would not let me vote due to some sort of captcha issue, but we still got plenty of money for voting on the others and thus it was time to head out.
As I’ve never really PvP’d before and didn’t have the money to start hack and slashing right away, I snuck out the back entrance and went way, way, way out to set up a base, hoping secrecy would keep it safe until I had the resources to establish better defenses.
Sneaking Out of Spawn
Once there, which took a good deal of time, believe me. I set my home and teleported back to spawn to pick up some necessary resources which I then took back to my new base location to start building. One very important step in this process was making sure to claim the land. You can only do this if you’re in a faction so you’ll need to either join one or create your own. I, for security reasons opted to create my own, KING. I then claimed the land I wanted and began to build. The reason this step is so important is because if you don’t do this people who are not a part of your faction will be able to place and destroy blocks and access your chests without any problem making it easy to steal your stuff. Distance is a good way to keep your stuff safe, but claiming your land is even better.
At that point it was getting pretty late and I had to call it a night, but as you can imagine I’ve got some grand plans for the future of my new N3rd C0rn3r.
Pandemic is a web based flash game some of you may be familiar with already while others of you might not. The premise of the game is that there is a new disease of your own making that is making its debut on the world stage. As it infects and potentially kills more people you earn evolution points which you can spend to make the disease hardier, easier to transmit, more infectious, and more lethal. You can also remove traits that make it more noticeable so people are more easily exposed without knowing it.
Gameplay
You start off the experience by choosing your difficulty. There’s Relaxed which is kind of your easy mode. This mode tends to go faster and not all the traits for diseases are enabled so you’ll get a little less variety. The other option is Realistic which opens up all the traits, but tends to take longer.
Next you’ll choose a disease class; virus, bacteria, or parasite. Each class has features that make them more capable in some categories and less so in others. Viruses are very infectious but weak against environmental factors, bacteria are more drug resistant and less effected by environment but earns evolution points slower. Parasites are the slowest evolvers, but they tend to be much less noticeable than the other classes and thus tend to spread further, albeit more slowly. In addition each class has a different set of symptoms that can be added to it to help spread the disease or make it more lethal.
Once you’ve selected a disease class next up is naming your disease. This could be anything you want and if your score’s high enough will get posted on the leaderboards when you submit your score at the end.
When you’ve decided on a name and entered it click done and the game will take you into the world you’re about to try and destroy. The game will start up paused and you’ll get a tutorial pop-up letting you know that there’s basic information available about the different parts of the game if you’ve never played before. Honestly the tutorial section doesn’t tell you anything that you can’t get from just playing the game once or twice so if you read anything read the interface section so you know how to move around and do stuff and then start playing by clicking the “x” in the upper right corner of the tutorial pop-up box. This will clear the screen so you can see the world and un-pauses the game. To pause it again, click the pause button at the bottom of the screen just right of center. Next to it you’ll also see your speed controls allowing you to speed up or slow down the progression of time. Once you’ve gotten the hang of the game you’ll rarely take this off max speed.
Since you start off with 4 evolution points the first thing you’ll want to do is open the disease window by clicking the disease button on the bottom bar just left of center. This opens the information panel about your disease and presents you with some basic options. Divided into 4 categories; Traits, Transmission, Resistance, and Symptoms. Traits are inherent to your disease and can’t be changed so aside from acquiring a basic familiarity with these you won’t need to worry about this section. Transmission contains different methods for how the disease is spread and includes rodents, insects, water, and air. If you don’t have any of these the disease is transmitted strictly through human interaction. The next section contains resistances where you can make your disease more likely to survive and thrive in different environmental conditions as well as make it more resistant to potential drug treatments. Finally you have symptoms, which almost all make your disease more noticeable, but more often than not also make your disease more infectious and more lethal. At first you’ll only have the first tier of potential symptoms available which are the same for each disease class and include sneezing, coughing, fever, sweating, and vomiting. You can spend evolution points to unlock further symptoms with more impressive effects. You can also spend points to sell symptoms, which is good early on to help your disease go unnoticed for longer.
Once you’re done tweaking your disease you’ll have some more areas to check out. The icon in the bottom bar in the middle is your evolution points pool and will increase as the number of infections increases. The button next to disease is labeled world and will provide you with overall statistics and a convenient list of regions that are clean, infected, or forsaken (completely killed off). That section won’t become real important until later in the game. Finally you have on the left side of the screen the breaking news column which will let you know what’s going on in the world and where your disease is spreading to (and how countries are reacting to it). Basically as you play you continue to improve your disease until you’ve killed off all those that you can.
Graphics & Sound
Honestly the game is not terribly demanding as far as graphics and sound go. It’s pretty simple in this department. Music consists of a single short track that just repeats and thankfully can be shut off through the menu. Graphics are just your basic contrasting colors and some icons to indicate what each region has and whether or not it’s currently operating, nothing too fancy, but very clear. You should be able to run this game on pretty much any computer.
Conclusion
I’ve been playing the game for several days now and I must admit I rather enjoy it. While it’s missing some things I really think it should have (like airborne diseases being carried across oceans by wind or storms) it’s a fun game and I feel confident in saying it’s easily worth a few hours of your time. I hope you enjoy your experience with Pandemic II in your N3rd C0rn3r.
If you were ever worried that the normal mobs in Minecraft just weren’t enough, never fear because as of the “Very Scary” update Minecraft now has witches. These mobs look very much like the standard villager but with witch themed attire paler greenish skin and a stereotypical wart on the already oversized villager nose. The reasons to go after these ladies of the night however are less about their appearance and more about what goodies they carry with them.
Why Hunt Witches?
I’m sure if I looked back in history a bit I could find a couple good reasons to hunt witches, but none so good as the loot drops of witches in Minecraft. A witch has the potential to drop up to 6 items ranging from sticks, glass bottles, gunpowder, redstone dust, and even glowstone dust not to mention the occasional rare drop of a potion or two. With all these resources becoming available in a farmable format it’s not surprising that many people would choose to set up a witch farm. Like any kind of non-spawner block farm it’s a big project that involves lighting up the areas around, above, and below your spawning area to get maximum effect. This is the easy part however, while finding a witch hut is going to be the challenge. These structures will spawn randomly in swamps upon world creation and if your world was created before the introduction of these new lucrative mobs you’ll have to go a ways out to find an area you’ve never seen in order for the huts to spawn.
How to Hunt Witches
Once you’ve found one of these huts you’ll have to do a little deconstruction to make it a more valid spawning platform for a farm, When witches were first released this included the entire area of the hut (inside floor level and two layers below the floor with a boarder marked by the roof’s overhang. However based on my own recent testing it seems that the valid spawning area for witches has been curtailed as of 1.5.2 to include only the inside of the hut which means farming them is now much more difficult (though not impossible). Unfortunately my testing also revealed that if you made your world without generated structures you will not be able to set up a witch farm even if you were to build an exact replica of a hut where one would normally spawn (used same seed with generated structures on to find exact location. Spawning area it seems is generated with the structure). Still, if this is the case for you, you can always trade villagers for both redstone dust and glowstone (and villages can be set up without generated structures, though it’s difficult) and I’m sure you’ll find some way to get the other things (I know sticks are hard to come by, but you’ll just have to soldier on). For those who can set up their farm however it’s as simple as making the spawning floor (which will end up being quite small) and set it up with a drop or some sort of lava blade if you prefer to kill your witches in the traditional fashion. Be aware however that witches can heal themselves with potions so they’re quite difficult to kill for experience or through drowning and as such you’ll want to make sure your trap is lethal.
Conclusion
Even with recent nerfs a well-built witch farm will supply you with all kinds of resources that you might otherwise have a fairly limited supply of in your N3rd C0rn3r.
As most of you will already know yesterday was June 15, however what many of you may not know is that yesterday was also free RPG day. Free RPG day is essentially an open beta test for new role playing game modules that are in their final development process and I was just lucky enough to get in on the playtest for Fantasy Flight Games new upcoming product Star Wars Edge of the Empire Roleplaying Game. Now going into the experience I was a little wary because I’d done some research on the new system and it is quite different from the now discontinued Saga edition that I’d grown most accustomed to. Of course I had my misgivings about Saga as well having come from the even older d20 system from before so I felt like I had to give this version a chance.
The Experience
The adventure we were started with was called Shadows of Black Sun and takes place largely in the underbelly of Coruscant. I was a little frustrated that particular day because of some errands I’d had to run before and so I picked the character Tray’Essek, a Trandoshan Hired Gun with the Marauder specialization (basically a brawler) so that I could focus almost exclusively on cracking heads. Joining me were a couple other players who picked the premade smuggler though they changed the species to Twi’lek and altered the gender to be female and the premade Rodian trader with no adjustments except taking on extra obligation for more equipment. Having read about the obligation system already and how it could have unpleasant consequences I opted to stick with the base level of obligation. Once we’d made our character selections the GM (game master) wasted no time and we found ourselves running from security guards after an alarm was tripped during a data heist. The only escape seemed to be a droid piloted speeder taxi and we all piled in and took off, but a lucky shot from the guards took out our pilot droid and our Rodian made a leap for the controls. I pulled out my antiquated slug thrower (basically a gun) and covered our escape while our Twi’lek smuggler shot out a nearby advertisement sign showering the area around us with sparks blinding both us and our pursuers. As our sight recovered we managed to pilot into a tunnel leading to the under-city only to find it blocked by a massive duracrete slug. Some fancy flying maneuvered us through a tight gap allowing us to pass, but damaging our engines severely. Only the combined efforts of two of our party members were able to keep the speeder in the air long enough to land the smoking hulk out front of the chop shop where we were to drop off the stolen data. From there we’re sent on a mission to recover stolen spice from the Black Sun Organization and bring the bounty hunter culprit behind the theft back for punishment (if we don’t do the punishing ourselves). The story evolved from there and found each of us growing more comfortable with our character’s niche and how we were going to play them. In the end we were successful, tricking the bounty hunter into an ambush where we stunned him and bound him to be delivered along with the spice back to our employers.
The New Mechanics
There are three major changes from the older roleplaying games that are worth noting in a review of Edge of the Empire which while a little awkward at first really serve to speed up the gameplay and make it a lot easier to determine the outcome of an action.
Narrative Dice System – instead of using numbers, adding the roll with all the bonuses and comparing that to DC (difficulty class) as with an older system, this version of the game uses a unique narrative dice system that has symbols on each face of several types of dies that quickly tell you whether or not an action succeeds. There are four main symbols to worry about. The first two are successes and failures. When you make a roll you count the success symbols and subtract the failure symbols. If you have at least one success symbol left the action succeeds, otherwise it fails. The other two symbols are advantage and disadvantage symbols. These modify the outcome with unintended side effects. For example a successful role with a predominance of disadvantage might cause you to successfully pop out of cover and shoot your foe, but leave you off balance till the start of your next turn making you easier to hit. The mechanics, once you have the hang of it are pretty easy and describing what happens and why becomes the harder part. Don’t worry too much if you haven’t been able to get a set of the special dice just yet, the adventure includes a conversion chart in the very front so you can use your standard d20 dice if need be.
Obligation – one of the key elements of the new system is called obligation and it’s simply a measure of how much history your character has that may one day come back to haunt them. Every character has some sort of obligation as part of their back story (like Han Solo’s debt to Jabba the Hutt). On your first mission your character has the option to increase their obligation to get extra talents or equipment to make the mission easier, but this means there’s a better chance that that character’s obligation is going to somehow cause an extra complication during the story. This is a great campaign element as it creates side stories as you go, and your actions can even cause you to gain further obligation as the story continues. The easiest way to explain this is to think about the way Bio Ware makes its games. All your supporting characters have some sort of history which creates a problem that they need your help with in the form of a side quest. The obligation system is essentially the same concept.
Simplified Measurements – the method for determining distance and difficulty is now significantly simpler than it once was. There are five different difficulties represented by dice. Simple is one difficulty die (8 sided), medium is 2, hard is 3, etc. Range is done in the same fashion with short being 1, medium 2, and so forth. To move to a different range category is no longer a matter of squares but rather one or two maneuvers (the equivalent of move actions from the old system) and viola, you’re closer and the shot is easier or vice versa.
Conclusion
Based on my experience with the game so far I have to say that I’m very impressed with what Fantasy Flight is doing with it. As a GM for the old saga system I can easily see how much simpler writing a campaign for Edge of the Empire will be in comparison to writing one for Saga was. The idea of a role playing game is for everyone to have fun, and I think Fantasy of Flight is on the right track for that with Edge of the Empire. I look forward to my next few experiences with the game as I pick up the starter box and play through the included adventures (including the free downloadable one from their website) and eagerly anticipate the release of the core rulebook once beta testing is complete. My only hope is that they’ll offer some sort of conversion system so the old resources are still useful in some way so that they’re not just sitting on the selves gathering dust in my N3rd C0rn3r.
While it’s true that sustainable living in Minecraft is going to require farming and ranching, hunting is also an activity you’ll find yourself doing from time to time. Whether you’re looking for rare loot drops from mobs or just grabbing a bite to go when traveling far from home hunting is going to play a role in your Minecraft world.
Why Hunt?
There are a couple reasons to go hunting in Minecraft. Foremost of course is to get some food. This is an option best used early in the game before you have farms set up or when far from home with food reserves running dangerously low. In such a case you can hunt chickens for raw chicken, cows for raw beef, or pigs for raw porkchops. If you kill these creatures by lighting them on fire the food will actually drop cooked saving you the need to cook it yourself. You can set them on fire with a flint and steel or with a sword that has the fire aspect enchantment or a bow with the flame enchantment. You could also hunt zombies for their rotten flesh and the rare drop of carrots and potatoes though this is more dangerous and ultimately less rewarding. The other purpose of hunting is to get at items that mobs drop but only when physically killed by the player. Things like spider’s eyes (which can be eaten but will likely cause a poison effect) and the coveted ender pearl. This type of hunting is often far more dangerous and is something you’ll want to do only when properly equipped. While it may be dangerous, the rewards are often well worth it.
How to Hunt
The actual process of hunting is much like it is in the real world. You go out at the appropriate time, either day or night depending on what kind of prey you’re after and when you’ve located your prey, you attack. Swords and bows are the main implements for hunting. Which you choose to use will depend on what you’re after. For chickens, cows, and pigs, since you can hunt them in broad daylight and they won’t attack you back it just makes sense to use your sword. For zombies and spiders the bow makes more sense as these mobs can attack you back. In fact since these mobs are hunted at night you may want to create a sort of blind to shoot them from and go down for the loot in the morning when it’s safer. Finally we have the endermen. Because it’s impossible to hit an enderman with an arrow, you’re going to have to get up close and personal with them using your sword. It’s extremely dangerous so make sure you’ve got some good armor on and you’re equipped for a difficult fight.
Conclusion
While hunting may not be the kind of thing that you find yourself doing every day, it can in fact prove quite beneficial when done right in the correct circumstances. If you find yourself low on food far from home or need to get at some of those ender pearls why not try hunting in your N3rd C0rn3r.
Yes, I know Minecraft is a sandbox style game which means that official lore is non-existent and story outside what players make for their own worlds is just unheard of. However there is the option for players to do some writing in game to add lore and character to their own world, whether that’s just so you can have some fun or for something to share with friends is up to you.
Why Write?
There are a few different reasons to do some writing in Minecraft some are practical and some less so. First and foremost would be to communicate information. You see this on multiplayer and PvP servers all the time. When you spawn in there are signs everywhere telling you how to set a home, teleport back to spawn, and buy items as well as what the rules for the community are. Many adventure maps will also use writing to give players valuable information or move the story forward. If you’re on a single player map or maybe a small multiplayer map however, you probably won’t need to communicate so much information and so writing becomes more of a free form because you want to sort of thing. You can write poems, stories, or even basic how-to guides that you can trade with your friends or just keep in a library of sorts. However there’s another good reason to write. Villagers will sometimes trade you 1 emerald for 1 written book meaning that those books you’ve been writing can become profitable. However if you intend to trade them, you may wish to make sure you have a copy outside Minecraft (to copy paste back in later) or make them shorter works as there’s no way to get them back and you wouldn’t want to trade Moby Dick for 1 emerald after having spent several hours transcribing it into your Minecraft world (not that anyone would ever do that, but still).
How to Write
There are a couple different methods for doing some writing in Minecraft and the ones you choose will depend largely upon what you wish to do. First we have the humble sign which can be used to convey basic information in a brief and concise format. If you needed to you could place two signs next to each other and continue on the next sign making ancient ruins with the story of their former occupants a possibility, though this method I can imagine would become irritating rather quickly. Alternatively if you’ve got a great deal to say or are planning on writing a story of some sort you could instead use a book and quill (made by combining a book, ink, and a feather). This will allow you to write up to 50 pages of text and up to 256 characters per page, so while longer books may need to be a series, you can still get a pretty good length story into one of these. As an added bonus you can even copy and paste into a book from an outside text editor, but only if it’s 256 or fewer characters. If you wanted to make a larger message, you could always build each letter out of blocks, but this seems like it might be a bit excessive.
Conclusion
If you’re ready to add some character and lore to your Minecraft world there’s a system for you to do just that and for any who enjoy writing the odd story or two I highly recommend you give it a go in your N3rd C0rn3r.
If you’ve been playing for any length of time you’ve likely already encountered some obstacles to the dreams you cook up. Minecraft is all about overcoming those obstacles and accomplishing what others deem to be impossible.
What are potential obstacles?
Still 45 Layers to Bedrock
Maybe you’ve decided to build a new base, something absolutely huge and it’s going to take weeks of hard work to even get the building site ready, let alone actually build the structure itself. Perhaps you set up a cool new redstone device only to be killed by a stray creeper and your device destroyed or perhaps you’re playing on a PvP server and your impenetrable base was thoroughly raided. Whatever the situation you have to remember that these are the breaks of Minecraft and they just come with playing the game. It may take some time but the new epic base is totally worth it. What creepers destroy you can rebuild with better defenses, and though your base was raided you can always find a new home, rebuild, and get revenge.
How to overcome
When the unthinkable has happened and you’re stuck starting from scratch or your project is just dragging on with no end in sight, the only thing to do is either give up or press on. Obviously only one of those is going to help the situation, but sometimes it can be good to work on something else for a little bit. Maybe you’re major project has some things that need to be worked out for later, you can take a break and work those things out on a creative server and then come back to what you were doing fresh from your break. Maybe working on improving your overall defenses will get your mind off the creeper attack for a while and help prevent it from happening again, and of course with the need to build a new base comes the opportunity to test new concepts, come up with new designs, and find new ways to prevent the same thing from happening again.
The rewards of persistence
When all is said and done, if you’ve kept the course and finished what you began, if you’ve rebuilt and better defended, and redesigned and made truly impenetrable than you know the rewards and they’re quite amazing. For those of you, who, like me, are still struggling through the difficult times, know that what you’re working toward is worthwhile and that while challenging it is potentially amazing. If you put your mind to it you can accomplish it and I challenge you to do so.
Conclusion
While I recognize full well that the challenges we face in Minecraft can be great, I know that overcoming them will not only improve our world, but ourselves in the process. So my fellow Minecrafters I urge you to press on and truly accomplish what you set out to do in your N3rd C0rn3r.
In Minecraft there are a few different types of explosives and as you can imagine all of them involve the use of gunpowder. Each thing of course has a different effect, but all can be worthwhile.
Types of Explosives
There are actually four different types of explosives in Minecraft, splash potions, fireworks, TNT, and creepers and each has its different uses. Creepers are of course the source for your gun powder, but you can if armored up allow them to explode near you just to clear some blocks out of an area. This of course will work better if you do it on relatively fragile blocks like grass or sand as a regular creeper’s explosion won’t do much damage to stone. A charged creeper (one that’s been struck by lightning) will do a great deal more damage obviously, though unless you’re in some boss armor, I’m not sure I’d let that get anywhere near me, and probably not even then. Of course if you’re looking for a decent sized explosion without being blown up by creepers you can always go with TNT which causes a good deal of damage and doesn’t require that you be in the blast radius. TNT can be crafted with 5 gunpowder arranged in an “x” pattern on the crafting window with 4 sand blocks filling in the empty spaces. TNT can be set off using a number of methods including redstone wiring, flaming arrows, and of course flint and steel. Next up we have fireworks which at first may seem a bit useless, but they can have their advantages. Fireworks come in a variety of shapes and colors and can even be made to go different height meaning you can use them to establish a code with friends on a multiplayer server and send messages to one another without using chat. Of course you could always use them as a means of celebration as well as they do provide a pretty cool effect. Finally we have splash potions which are regular potions that have had gunpowder distilled into them. These don’t do explosion damage but rather make the potion throwable and give it an area effect (like a grenade). This is most useful for poisons, potions of weakness, or potions of harming, though splash potions of healing and regeneration give a player a unique option to play a healer role in a party of several members.
Why Use Explosives?
Well some of the reasons are obvious like coded firework messages and splash potion uses, however some are less so. TNT for instance can be used to quickly take a digging project from the surface level down to bedrock, however the TNT might land on valuable resources and destroy them so be careful where you place it. Interestingly it can also be used to create a cannon for use in PvP which normally won’t allow you to change the blocks of an enemy base directly, so you blast your way in with TNT or for the slightly more insane, TNT can be used to create a launch pad to shoot you high into the sky (possibly to quickly get out of a mine). Still, when it comes right down to it, playing with explosives in Minecraft is just good fun.
Conclusion
While explosives may seem to have few practical uses, they do in fact provide a unique experience in the game of Minecraft that’s well worth trying out. If you’ve got gunpowder just lying around and are ready for something new, give explosives a try in your N3rd C0rn3r.
In the game of Minecraft there will on occasion be reason for you to try and trap a mob rather than outright kill it. There are many, many ways to do this and several different reasons that I’ll try and explain here.
Why Trap a Mob?
The most notable reason I can think of to try and trap a mob is to get special things from doing so; for instance if you can get a skeleton to shoot and kill a creeper it will drop a music disc. As you might imagine, this would be insanely difficult outside of controlled circumstances and getting all 12 music discs in the game would be nearly impossible (they’re dropped at random so you can bet you’ll be doing this more than 12 times). However you can trap a skeleton and a creeper in certain spots and then situate things so that the skeleton kills the creeper. The other main reason I can think of is to cure a zombie villager which is not an instant process. This is most easily accomplished by first trapping the zombie villager so you can protect him from other zombies and sunlight while also keeping other villagers safe and then cure him using a splash potion of weakness and a golden apple.
How to Trap a Mob
As I said there are countless ways to trap mobs that range from as simple as digging a 2 block deep hole to the super complex redstone piston contraptions that will literally pull the ground out from under them. By far my favorite trap though is something I learned about from Haydz which is super simple and very effective for any 2 block tall mobs. You place a block of soul sand level with the ground and surround it by a ring of any type of regular block 2 blocks up off the ground. This allows mobs to walk into the trap freely, but prevents them from getting out. This is a result of the coding for the soul sand block being just a little different than other blocks. It’s actually just a little shorter in the coding than a normal block would be which forces a mob or player to take a step up when they try to step off the block. This causes them to be just a little too tall to pass under another block that’s 2 high preventing them from moving from the one block of soul sand. This type of trap can even be extended so it’s a long line, or even a ring around something preventing mobs from ever getting too close.
Conclusion
While it’s probably not going to be the kind of thing you’ll do every day, trapping does have its uses in the world of Minecraft. So if you’re after those music discs or even just want to screw with the mobs a little bit give trapping a try in your N3rd C0rn3r.
As it’s an important topic in the real world so too is conservation important in Minecraft. Now technically the environment in the game will never collapse due to a lack of trees or anything like that and since the world goes on forever all materials are essentially infinite, however who wants to travel 5,000 blocks or further out to go get some wood? That’s an epic journey by any standard and not one I’d be particularly interested in embarking on. As such almost purely for convenience conservation of resources is important.
What to Conserve
Basically you want to try and not waste anything that you can’t produce infinitely with some sort of generator. So dirt, while common is something you’ll want to preserve. Iron and gold likewise until you can get farms for those items at which point you can just have at it. Diamonds and Obsidian of course you’ll want to try and conserve pretty much always as they’re both a bit hard to come by, though if you can get a redstone farm going you can always convert that to obsidian and then just use the obsidian for whatever. There’s obviously more but you get the idea. This however also involves the idea of replanting trees when you cut them down or even netherwart when you raid a supply from a nether fortress so that if something terrible should happen and you fall in lava on the way home, you can still get resources from those same sources rather than needing to find another supply.
How to Conserve
The best way to conserve your valuable resources for better uses is carefully choose the materials you decide to use for tools. While a stone pick is slower and less durable, the materials used to make it are easily found and can be generated infinitely. You will never run out of material for stone picks. On the other hand, if you don’t have an iron farm, using an iron pick on anything less than gold, emeralds, redstone, or diamonds is simply wasting that material. With a stone pick you can even make a new one on the go by carrying wood with you as you mine so its breaking isn’t as big a deal. Similarly using gold for anything besides powered rails and potion is a bit of a waste, unless you’re going to directly enchant the thing being made, but really it’s ultimately just not worth it. Finally we come to the hoe. Because it’s only use is tilling dirt and it doesn’t do that any faster based on the material you’re using there’s really no reason to ever make a hoe with better materials except to increase the durability. Still a stone hoe lasts a very long time, and once your iron farm is going an iron hoe will easily till even a large field. Of course there’s always replanting as well. When you cut down a tree, grab one of the saplings falling from the leaves and replant the thing. If you destroy a bunch of grass getting seeds, leave a couple so they can spread again. This will prevent you from needing to go far and wide to find those resources again in the future.
Conclusion
With a little extra effort you can make sure that valuable resources aren’t wasted needlessly and that the area around your base will continue to be rich in resources for a long time to come ensuring a bright future for your N3rd C0rn3r.
