Playing Games for Education!

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I found a skeleton spawner!

November 27, 2020 / / 0 Comments


I found another mob spawner, so I started by carving out a bigger room for them. Then, I got bored with that and I cracked and turned on coordinates. I’m not too sure how much help this will be but I’ve been looking into how to more reliably get materials in the game and knowing your y-axis coordinates seems to be helpful for that.

 

It does feel a bit silly since I went through all the trouble of making the locator map, but I’m still happy I have that. Also the locator map is actually a much smaller portion of the world map than I was expecting. 

 

Now I’m trying to mine in the y-11 area, I hope that makes sense, of the world. It is pretty low but I have dug deeper in mines so It wasn’t too big of a deal. Turns out the suggestions were correct! I’ve been finding gold, iron, coal, and diamonds and that was just one mine. I think I’ll travel around a bit to my other mining sites and go back to the y-11 areas to do some more digging. 

 

Also with the coordinates on I can not jot down the locations of my various bases which is going to be so helpful!

 

Teleporting black death octopus

 

Unfortunately as I was digging down I ended up breaking through a wall and looking out over the water/lava canyon and across the way was this ominous black creature with purple eyes. Then, SURPRISE it teleported over to me and I tried to run away, not sure what I was thinking since this thing just teleported to me but there it is. Obviously running didn’t work and I ended up getting killed by this thing. So, naturally, I Googled it. Turners out it was an Enderman something I should have been able to kill, so now I know for next time. However, I did remember to make sure I went back right away to get my loot before the 5 minute timer was done. I had to coerce the Enderman out of my mine, but somehow I was able to avoid getting killed again and got back to all my precious materials before they disappeared . I saw this as a win, I’m progressing with gathering materials and I’m going to be following along with this video to make some fun things in my world!

 

It may seem a bit late for this, but I think it’ll be fun to make a few of these builds.

Until next time!

Is this what rage quitting feels like?

November 9, 2020 / / 0 Comments

I have been exploring my Minecraft world during my sessions and trying to sort of discover different aspects of the game as I go along. I watched a few videos in September on how to get started, and when I find something interesting I’ll look it up but other than that I’ve been going it on my own. However, I think this is when that method stops and I start doing more research into things. I normally play this game as a bit of a ‘brain break’ and start it up with the goal of exploring what I can do. However I find that I end up wandering around and digging/mining without much point to it and the last few game sessions I have left feeling like I didn’t do much.

 

Last week a frustrating Minecraft session ended when I died in a spot that I am not really sure I know how to get back to. I went outside of a new place I had built at night and was immediately attacked and killed by a wizard. I suppose it wasn’t so much of a rage quit as it was just giving up because I couldn’t be bothered to deal with finding all the stuff I had dropped. So here is when I decided that maybe some time I put aside to playing the game should be shifted to watching some how-to videos. For next week I am going to  search out some resources on YouTube or maybe some other blogs and start my game sessions with a plan. Hopefully that will give me a goal to work towards in my exploring of Minecraft.

 

Until next time!

Exploring and gettin’ lost

October 31, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Every time I start playing this game I sit down, and I think “Okay, what am I doing again?”. Maybe if I were playing on a more regular basis it would be easier to progress and look up more information that would help my game play, but time is a hot commodity for me during the school year. For this session I decided to head in one direction and explore whatever I came across. I crafted a compass so I could go in a mostly, straight line. Before I headed out, I visited my zombie spawner that I talked about in my last post. So, after killing all the zombies in there I took out all the candles I had left in there because I think it was impeding the spawn rate. Then it was off on my adventure!

 

I headed south to explore something that I saw lighting up the sky during the night cycle. It was not very far away and when I got there it looked like Minecraft lava so of course I jumped in! Then I died. So that was a fun learning experience. After respawning and returning to pick up all the loot that I dropped I found that the sun was setting, and I needed to find shelter. However, I wanted to stay in this area, so I started digging and building up a little shelter for myself to spend the night digging/mining in. Which turned out to be great because I was able to mine a bunch of the blocks around the lava but sometimes, they would explode so I should probably investigate what was happening with that.

 

Once it was day again, I continued exploring south, finding caves to hide in during night to avoid getting mobbed by baddies. I almost made it to a mountain but my time was nearly up and I wanted to head back to my home base because I had a bunch of new items I had no idea what to do with.

 

So, I made the journey back and I found a merchant along the way, but these people only want to trade for emeralds, and I have no idea how to get those. One more thing to add to the research list. Also, I found out that you can ride lamas, but I do not know how to control them, more research, hahaha! When I got home, I carved up all the pumpkins I had to decorate for the weekend, or forever who knows.

 

Happy Halloween!!

 

Until next time!

Digging Deeper and Deeper

October 25, 2020 / / 0 Comments

I have been playing this game for a while now and I think I am starting to see how people sit and play for hours and hours and not even notice the time pass. Since I have many assignments, classes, work, and general life going on most of my time is scheduled and that includes time working on this free inquiry. Alarms and timers on my phone have been a life saver in this Covid-19 world where most of my time is spent inside at a desk. I have been feeling more at home in my little Minecraft world and after spending a bunch of time digging and pickaxing my way to iron and diamonds I resurfaced to go to my home base so I could drop off a few things. On my way up the mine shaft I had dug I heard the strangest noises. Confused, I started looking around expecting to see an enemy trying to attack me. But there was nothing so I figured I’d have a deeper look once I finished my trip ‘home’. When I went back to investigate the noises were in the same spot so I figured I should start busting down some walls and figure out what was going on.

 

And then, I found the zombies.

 

It was strange but so is this game so I cleared the zombies away and walked into the room they were stuck or hiding in. That is when I saw it.

Usually when I find something unfamiliar in this game I do a quick search for what it is before messing with it. Turns out this thing is a zombie spawner and its great for leveling, which is good I guess! The rest of the session I spent enlarging the room so the zombie spawner could do its thing and I’ll go back later for all the sweet low effort experience points. 

 

Until next time!

Starting my free inquiry project

September 27, 2020 / / 0 Comments

I describe myself as an opportunistic gamer. If the game is in front of me and easy to play I’ll try it out, but my completion rates are abysmal. It isn’t that I have no interest in finishing a game from start to finish, it’s just that I can never find the time to finish a sixty (or more) hour play through in these seemingly endless games. 

Enter Minecraft, a game with no actually ending, or plot for that matter. I have never played Minecraft before because of how it is described (and the graphics) seems like no fun to me. I bounce right off of open world games, I suppose I like to have some story elements to pull me into a game. Yet, I feel compelled to try Minecraft, after all this game has been hugely successful with elementary school aged children and may still be when I start my teaching career. 

First hurdle, buy Minecraft. I was a bit surprised that this eleven year old game still cost forty CAD, but that’s Microsoft I guess? I made the mistake of trying to buy Minecraft from the website and kept cycling between the product page and the purchase page. I then realized that I should probably be buying the game from the app store on my PC, which worked perfectly.

Finally I was in and, just as I expected, I didn’t get it.

I has watched a YouTube video on how to get started in Minecraft so I did as they suggested and started punching trees and collecting wood to make my first set of tools. Why? To make more tools I think? I was happy for any place to start really. 

After wandering around and making some tools with my brand new crafting table all of which I made using the wood I got from punching trees, the sun went down. This is not a good thing because at night monsters and evil creatures try to kill your character in the game. I suppose this isn’t normally that bad but as a new player with no house to hide in during the night it was annoying to keep running away from things while I was trying to figure out what I was doing. When the day cycle started again I was able to look more at the crafting recipes I have access to. I’m not sure if it is normal to see the recipes I was able to look at or if this was something I turned on in game settings but it was actually nice to be able to see the different components I needed to find to advance my gear and make a building with doors and stairs and other house things. However, I wanted to do some exploring before I made anything else because I was thinking I might find a town or an abandoned town or something.
Next post I will be talking about my map exploration skills and what to do if first person view games give you motion sickness! 

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