User:MentalMouse42

=Mental Mouse=

I'm a relatively new user, but have been playing heavily for 3 months or so. In my world for 1.2.4, I'd gotten as far as exploring the Nether, with several map's worth of Overworld exploration. Since that included a lot of jungles and extreme hills, I decided to start a new world for 1.3.1.

My current game
As of Aug-9-2012, my new world has been coming along nicely... Having learned from experience, I've been staying within the confines of my first map, while accumulating resources locally. I spawned in plains, but with forests, jungle, and deserts, all within easy reach. I also found a village and got up a few emeralds before the village got depopulated (I posted that bit as a bug...). I've accumulated all the animals except wolves (and apparently those are now incompatible with cats), and having found some melon seeds, I've now completed my set of farms. (Including the new cocoa plants... yay, cookies!)

The quarry under my original base produced a fair bit of ore including diamonds, with much more from the nearby ravine I've been looting. It opens onto an abandoned mineshaft at lava level, that's been... interesting. Especially the cave spider spawner that was embedded in the middle of a large room's high ceiling! Flint-and-steel let me burn enough webs to slap a torch on the spawner, but that didn't actually stop it. :-( I had to find (and dig) a way around to get at it from the top and take a pick-axe to it.

At this point, my next order of business is to find a Nether Fortress... I never did find one in my last game, and in this one, I've only poked my nose into the Nether long enough to throw up some cobblestone walls. The Nether:Talk page indicates the nearest Fortress may be quite far away, half the map or worse. On the other hand, The Altitude page suggests it's likely to be between levels 50 and 85 (though that graph might well represent a single game :-.

Suggestions for Minecraft
Since the forum doesn't seem to want to accept my registration, I'll stick my suggestions here.


 * Placeable clocks: From the forum, but I endorse it.  Having a clock on the wall would be really nice....  I'd also love to see the placed clock act as a timer, delivering a redstone signal for one of its 12 "hours" (picking which one works much like setting a note block).  I'm thinking it should turn on for the whole hour.
 * ETA: Apparently 1.4 will have "frames" which let you mount clocks.  No timers, I guess, but at least it's a wall-mounted clock.
 * Redstone block as BUD: Several people on the forums were suggesting variations on redstone blocks.  (That is, a 9-1 "compact storage".)  I figure that besides being at least as interesting as redstone ore, it should do something useful.  My suggestion is that the block should light up (perhaps level 10 or 11) and deliver power for 1 second (button length) when any of the 6 adjacent blocks updates.  Just to make it more interesting, it should also energize when a mob or item touches it, similar to a pressure plate.  Whenever it is energized, it should become "insensitive", to avoid loops.


 * Cloning maps: I propose that maps should be clonable by dragging the new map to an existing map in your inventory.  The maps wouldn't actually stack, but the attempt would trigger the cloning instead of a new map.  Alternatively, a map could be cloned any time someone creates a new map while standing on the same block as the original (all three coordinates must have the same integer part).  (Somehow I originally got the idea this was already the case in 1.2.4, but it didn't work....)  The latter especially would have interesting implications for SMP, but the issues are straightforward....


 * Placeable gunpowder trails. This is another idea I got from the forums, and like.  Placed gunpower would be guaranteed to be set afire by any adjacent flame or lava, with each segment burning briefly and having a chance to set stuff afire.  TNT, if course, would always be set off thereby.


 * Potions of fire. When drunk, it would simply set you aflame, but of course the real point is as a splash potion!  The effect would be instant rather than timed, and would affect blocks as well as mobs.


 * As a backstop to fixing the Village Zombie Apocalypse, villagers could spawn near the well when needed, subject to nearby doors. The tricky part would be if you wanted to check if the well's been destroyed... what would count?  Perhaps it should be self-repairing.

Ender Chest
I'm looking forward to being able to build my first Ender Chest, and considering what might go into it. With 18 slots, some items are obvious, but others... arguable. Assuming full stacks (or as much as I've got) of the most compact form, I've so far got the following: At this point, we start getting into progressively more uncertain items. We've only got half-a-dozen slots left, and I'd want to save a slot or two for "input" or utility stuff.
 * 1) Wood logs, of course.  This is instead of any pure-wooden tools, I'll make those (and a crafting table) as needed.  The same applies to the next few.
 * 2) Iron.
 * 3) Gold.
 * 4) Diamond.
 * 5) Redstone.
 * 6) Coal.  This one is actually questionable, but not having it could be inconvenient.
 * 7) Sugar Cane.  Ultimately for maps, but since it's a 1:1 conversion, might as well have the version that can grow.
 * 8) Beef or pork:  Max-density food
 * 9) Obsidian
 * 10) String... besides bows and fishing lines, this gives a few blocks of wool for beds and markers.
 * 11) Smelted Stone. The big question here is, cobble or smelted stone?   But smelted stone is easier to convert back to cobblestone (place and mine) than the reverse, and it's needed for certain crafts:  notably buttons and redstone repeaters.
 * 12) Ender Pearls (to make more chests)
 * Bread or Cookies: Cheaper or small-change food.
 * Flint (or gravel) and...
 * ... Feathers. A stack each of these, plus 1/8 of the wood stack, makes 4 stacks of arrows.
 * Dirt, for growing stuff
 * Wheat seeds, eggs?
 * Glass?
 * Blaze rods?

Villager Cure is Problematic
Apparently, the cure for Village Zombies (which is also the means for village recovery) requires a Potion of Weakness. Unfortunately, you can't brew potions until you've found and looted a Nether Fortress. Pretty dubious to me.... OK, you could hope for a priest to offer you a Blaze Rod (and have enough emeralds already to buy it) before he gets killed. Pretty iffy. On the other hand, all you need is one Rod for a Brewing Stand, because Weakness is the only potion that doesn't need Nether wart.

Feedback
Please leave notes for me on my talk page. I also have a sandbox page.