The Shrine

Well, after nearly 2 years it's finally officially a release version.

Some new stuff that has gone in includes abandonned mines, villages, new animals, enemies (including this one called the Enderman which is harmless unless you look at it, kind of the opposite of the Big Boo; if you look at it, it will teleport behind you and start attacking). So treasure hunting and looting is now a big part.

Wolves will hunt sheep herds as well.

I am currently playing on a server with co-workers. We set up a central town with a gladiatoral arena, a market, and railway stations with tracks, leading out to our respective lands; most of this currently in progress.

So far, it seems a lot more fun than when I played it 1-2 years ago. More things to make, more things to do.

IGN's review of the release version of Minecraft; it gives a nice short overview of what the game is about. Although it missed some key features that I like, including the new sorts of mobs in the game, as well as the variety of biomes including swamp, desert, jungle, forest. As well as some of the new very interesting features such as bringing along pet wolves with you.

I'm just starting to play it now. I love it though. I even hooked a PS3 controller up to my PC so I could use it just for Minecraft. haha

If you want a few pointers:

* Use diamonds for pickaxes, not only to they mine much faster, but they last a very long time. They'll increase the rate at which you find other diamonds and ores.
* Save all gold and (almost all) iron for railways. It may not seem like you want to use them now, but when you're on a server with people, you'll eventually want to get out and away from everything a few kilometers, and you'll probably want to hook into the central rail if you have one.

A good start for new players:
1. Cut wood, make planks, then make a crafting table.
2. Make 4 or 8 sticks then with those sticks and remaining planks. a wooden pickaxe.
3. Mine down and get a at least 14 rocks
4. Make a stone axe and cut more wood with it (it will be easier to gather more now
5. Make a stone pickaxe and a furnace with the remaining 8 rocks
6. Put wooden planks in the bottom and wood in the top to make charcoal.
7. Make a small hole in the side of a hill to camp the night out in. Put torches in it, and block the entrance, keeping a window to see what time of day it is.
8. Start gathering more rock for more tools, maybe mine for some coal if you can find it, it is fairly common.
9. When daylight breaks, take your valuables (wood, axes, pickaxes, and anything you mined in the night) and get moving; run for about a 100 blocks in one direction to get away from any creepers that spawned over night.
10. Find a forest for your first camp (make a crafting table, furnace, chest, and bed if you can), go deep enough into the forest, and then start building your first real camp there. In a forest, you'll be able to cut down lots of trees.
11. Kill/shear some sheep for some wool at first opportunity to make a bed, this creates a spawn point for you once you sleep in it.
12. Make an iron pickaxe with the first iron you get, but use only stone axes for everything except gold and diamonds.
13. Make a ladder and dig down to level y12 (press F3 to find your location, this will also come in handy if you want to explore and need to mark places down - this shows your x, y, and z coordinates, with the y being your depth. Diamonds are found under Y16, but I prefer to go down to 12 because of less chance of running into lava and water. So it is fairly deep down - I think ground level is Y64.). Look for diamonds down here, once you get them, make a diamond pickaxe, and never look back at the stone ones =P

Lox, what software do you use to enable the PS3 controller on PC?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsTk_AmKn08

To get the PC to recognize the controller, I used motioninjoy. You can Google that one to see how it works.

How do you work in hotkeys on the PS3 controller for selecting items?

I am curious, because I don't like the navigation method of a keyboard and mouse as much as I would a controller.

Not sure. I haven't gotten to a point where I'm using hotkeys yet yet. How do the hotkeys work in Minecraft?

Also, thanks for the guide. I'm going to use that when I get started. I thought I'd have time over the weekend, but it's been busy.

Essentially you have 1-9 to use for items. You assign items to those keys by entering your inventory and placing them in an active slot. Think Ocarina of Time, except with 9 buttons instead of 4 for weapons/items.

On my guide - it gives a relatively full overview, but is sparse on details of how to actually craft the items. Luckily there's ample online resources and a wiki that describes all of this stuff in good detail. I'll update my post later with links when I have some time; probably late this afternoon/early evening.

Oh, ok. Well, you'd probably lose a few of the shortcut keys since you have fewer buttons on the controller, but you might be able to map some of them to controller buttons. Also, since you are essentially just mapping the PS3 controller buttons to keyboard keys and you're not actually telling Minecraft to use a gamepad, you could still hit the key on the keyboard to select the item.

I updated my guide with links to the wiki. I also just realized that I have a PS3 imitation controller hooked up to my old PC =P

I'll use that. I think the 4 shoulder buttons will be good enough.