I think I have been doing this wrong this whole time! I know it has only been a couple weeks but starting my Minecraft sessions by watching some tutorials and planning out what I want to do has resulted in a much better experience. Not that my goals have been very extreme but I have to start somewhere I suppose. So for this session I wanted to collect sugar cane, to make paper, and redstone and iron, to make a compass. With paper and a compass I can make a locator map which I am hoping will help me out in this game. I have seen sugar cane growing around my newest house/cave, because there are water sources nearby. From the videos I watched sugar cane only grows by a water source and you are supposed to harvest it on the second, or middle, block. I’m not sure why you are supposed to harvest it that way because the video didn’t explain it but I did it that way and now have a bunch of sugar cane! I think I might try and start growing it next week, but we’ll see. For the redstone I have two choices, I could try to dig down where my new base is and hope to find some, or I could try and find my way back to my first base. Since I wanted to try, again, to get back to my first base I decided to give that a go. I have tried to venture out to my first Minecraft home/base a few times already but I ended up going deeper into the mountains and snowy area, apparently my sense of direction in Minecraft is pretty bad. Yet, during this session I was able to find my way home! It was great to be back and grab some of the redstone for my compass. But first, I wanted to kill some zombies from my zombie spawner room. When I died I started off at level one again so I wanted to regain some lost ground. Maybe next week I’ll explore what levels do in this game. Anyway, after I killed some zombies and planted some seeds at home I was ready to make my locator map but then I realized my mistake. Worried that I might die and not be able to find my loot within five minutes I only took a small amount of my paper (made from the sugar cane) with me. So now I needed to somehow get back to my newest base. I really didn’t plan this out very well.

 

I ended up making two compasses and took them both with me on my way to find the new base. After a night of rest I headed off, thankfully I had just made the trip so I was able to recognize some landmarks and made it back to my newest base in no time, and I now know that it is due east of my original base. 

 

And then, I did it!!! I made a locator map!!

Then I took it out, and it was okay I guess. I think I had built it up to be this game changing item when in fact it was just a somewhat useful tool. Although maybe if I look more into it I’ll understand how useful it can be. All in all I was happy that I was able to get something done and after that I decided to go down and do some mining because I still had some time. I ended up finding more redstone, gold and iron. 

Until next time!