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If you are anything like me, then you have heard of Minecraft, and maybe even watched someone else play, but never actually tried it for more than a few minutes. This thread is designed to answer two questions:

1. What is Minecraft, and why should I bother playing it?

2. If you play Minecraft, what did your favorite/worst worlds (seeds) look like (for Survival mode), or what was your greatest creation (for Creative mode)?

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ANSWER TO QUESTION 1:

My son has been playing for a while, but almost always on Creative mode. He wanted me to join, but all I saw was him creating castles and fortresses that his friends online would try to destroy. One of his friends would spend all day making gigantic Pokémon on the Super Flat World.

None of this sounded very interesting to me.

Eventually, my son convinced my wife and daughter to play, but they were doing Survival mode. The three of them would play for hours, and still try to convince me to join. Well, summer finally hit, so I decided to see what all the fuss was about. Here is what I found:

Survival mode of Minecraft is a lot like Civilization and Age of Empires. You start with nothing and have to gather resources to create your world. Minecraft, however, takes the "Swiss Family Robinson" approach of you being deserted alone with nothing but your hands (unless you choose the starting bonus chest option). You need to chop down trees to create tools, so you can build shelter and weapons. You need to kill wild cows, pigs and chickens for food. You need to do this quickly on the first day before night falls.

Nighttime on Minecraft is when the danger increases. Unlike the real world, Minecraft's "predators" are zombies, skeleton archers, and giant spiders. These only come out at night, unless they can find a dark place to hide (they burst into flames in sunlight). However, there are two more deadly predators that can come out during the day - Creepers and Endermen. Creepers are basically suicide bombers that look like a man-sized cactus. They get their name, I think, from the fact that try to sneak up on you when you are not looking. Once you have armor, they are not as deadly, but early in the game it is likely instant death. The Enderman will not attack you unless you look him in the eye. They are tough to fight because they can teleport all around you while you are trying to hit them. They can be avoided, though, as I have seen several of them, but I have never had to fight one yet. I have only died once in the game, after probably about 100 hours of gameplay so far, and that was from a Creeper that snuck up behind me in broad daylight while I was harvesting carrots and potatoes.

Although this may not sound like much of a family game, I assure you that it can be just that. My family plays together on a 4-player split screen. We each have specific tasks that we enjoy, so we end up covering all the basics. See the next post for more!

ANSWER TO QUESTION 2:

YMT's Worst World (Survival Mode)
God had a sense of humor with this one, since it was my very first game. My family was trying to convince me how great Minecraft was, and I finally decided to give it a go. We spawned in the middle of the desert, which was horrible since there were no animals or wood. The desert was huge, so it took us all day to set up a safe shelter under the sand and rock, but food became an issue. We spent several days trying to gather the basics, while my son did his searching. The world had many dense jungles and humongous mountains, so his hunt took a while. After a few "game" weeks of difficult living, my son uncovered the whole map to find that there were no villages, no temples and no mushroom islands. We promptly exited the game. 

FTR, my next two worlds with the family also did not have any villages, although they did have temples and mushroom islands. 

YMT's Favorite World (Survival Mode) - Seed # -7706538816009204745
The world I am currently working on so far is my favorite. For my first games, my family always started with the bonus chest. We would also have my son start the game in Creative Mode, give us each three items of our choice and put into the bonus chest, then restart the game in Survival Mode. This way we were all having fun in our own way.

However, for my current world, I decided to go in empty-handed with Survival Mode, and my wife joined me. We wanted the true Swiss Family Robinson experience. 

We spawned on nice flat plains, but we were also just ten blocks away from a village. The village had a blacksmith and two libraries, so we had two furnaces and two crafting tables (one of each for both of us), as well as one chest. That saved us time and resources right off the bat. The village also had six farms ready to harvest with wheat, carrots and potatoes, so we had a lot of food right away.

The blacksmith's chest had an iron helmet and iron pants, so I was already safe from the predators. Since the village was on the plains, there were a bunch of sheep, so we were able to get wool and make beds on the first night. There were also a bunch of cows, so my wife was able to get some leather armor quickly as well.

There were about 10 villagers, so there were many trade possibilities. There were three villagers trading emeralds for wheat, so we gathered the wheat quickly and replaced all the carrots and potatoes with wheat seeds. One villager was offering an iron sword for 10 emeralds, so I got an iron sword by the third day. After completing that trade, the happy villager's new trade offer was for diamond boots! He also dropped his offer on another iron sword to 7 emeralds, so my wife could have one, too.   

Since I now had iron pants and helmet, and diamond boots, I decided it was safe to go into the mines. There was one just on the edge of the plains, within easy walking distance. It was shallow, and I could already see coal and iron. I gathered that all up and went home to put coal in the furnace, and refine the iron. I went back to mine the next day to dig deeper. I was ambushed by a Creeper and two skeleton archers, but I was able to survive thanks to all the armor and iron sword. I found a huge cache of iron and coal. I used the iron to make an iron chestplate, with still more leftover for my wife to make shears and a bucket.

This was all within the first "game week." I had full armor and was ready to explore the map (since my son was not with us). I soon found the temple. I used my mine digging approach to get down to the hidden treasure chests. I stumbled across some iron ore while digging down, but I bypassed it at that time. The four treasure chests held 32 gold ingots and 6 iron ingots. I took the treasure home, then went back to the temple the next day for the iron ore. The vein ended up being one of the biggest I had seen - 19 iron ore blocks. The only bigger deposit I have ever had was with the coal I had found earlier in this world, which had 56 coal blocks. 

That's where I am now. I just started exploring the rest of the map, but at least my wife now has full iron armor. At my last save point, I had just found a nice shallow iron/coal ore mine, and just offshore was a mushroom island. So, I set up shelter there for safety, and I plan on going back to the mines when I return to the save.

Interesting side note, both mines that I have worked on have lava source blocks that were not very deep. Also, during my exploring I passed by a huge cavern in a valley between two mountains. Upon closer inspection, I could see down to both lava source blocks and a minecar track. I have only explored about half of the map, so I'm hoping to find another village. At this point, though, I may not need one. 

I am on the PS3. I can get the seed number for my favorite world, if you want it. It is a great starter world. 

I love minecraft! Play around an hour a day, and love all of it's simple complexities.

Redstone is my favorite! I love how you can with the press of a button automate farming, and storage chests!

My favorite thing to do is just start an Ultra Hardcore world with 10 or so friends, and see if we can beat the ender dragon.
We have only done it once in around 15 times of trying.

I have a new update from the seed that I provided in an earlier post. I love occasionally finding apparent glitches in the random world generator. For this seed, I found an oddity during a search for a Jungle Temple. I had finally seen my first Jungle Temple in a different seed, and now I know how to loot them safely. So, I decided to go back to my favorite world and search the jungles, which I had not done previously. In one of the dense jungles, I turned a corner through some vines and spotted something I had not expected - a Desert Temple! 

There was no desert around, so the generator had literally put a desert temple in the middle of a jungle. Even my son had not seen that before. Gotta love random seeds! 

I forget the name/numbers for my worst seed, but I spawned without land in sight at max view distance. I then swam for 10 minutes and quit.

Yeah, I would have quit that game too, and then burned the seed number. 

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I'm changing the name of this thread to "Minecraft Secrets/Tips" so people can share anything appropriately helpful. I went back to my favorite seed (as mentioned in my third post), and decided to explore the cavern that had the visible mineshaft. It was very easy to get down to, especially if you are good with ladders - I'm not, so I dug a stairwell. 

In roaming the mineshaft, I stumbled across a Cave Spider generator, and was promptly ambushed by a horde of the nasty beasts. I was able to retreat and block the passageway, but I was down to my final life meters, and I was poisoned. I then used my newest tip/secret that I read somewhere:

Drinking milk from a bucket will cure poison.

I was intrigued when I read it, so I now always carry a bucket of milk with me into the mines (as well as a water bucket and an empty bucket). Sure enough, the milk cured me with half a heart point left, and then replenished me to 2 hearts... no more poison.

Please share any other tips/secrets that can help fellow Minecrafters survive or have more fun! 

Tips for the first day:
Easy start:     Get 7 logs.    Make a crafting table, 8 sticks and than 20 planks.       Use 2 sticks and 3 planks to make a  wood pick (crafting table.         Dig down, and get 18 stone.      Use crafting table to make a furnace , a stone pick, a stone sword, a stone axe, and another stone sword.       get 32 logs and cook 25 of them to charcoal using the leftover 17 planks.    For the other seven, use 3 and make 24 sticks, and than use those and the 24 coal to make 96 torches, and than you can go caving already.         I normally get this done within the first 4-5 minutes, and than have some Iron tools and some Iron Armor on the first day.

After this you need some food, and caving you will come upon some skeletons, and will get some bones.        Use these bones to grow a couple of Wheat, and than use that as a basic food source for the first night.

After the first night you should go animal hunting with your first Iron sword, and than use some shears to get wool to make a bed. Make a wheat farm, and the most efficient design for output is the wheat (Wh) and the Water (W) in this just in a repeating pattern right next to each other.


                                              Wh    Wh   Wh

                                             Wh     W      Wh

                                               Wh   Wh     Wh


Next you will want to find some animals and make an animal farm, but don't make the boundries larger than 19 x 19, because than the animal will recognize that it is trapped and will not stay spawned like normal, it will despawn once you get 32 blocks away from it.
The best animals are Chickens (for arrows) and Cows.
For Cow, Sheep, Horse, and Pig farms, you don't need a fence gate to keep them in, if you have a fence and than a cobblestone wall, and than a fence, the wall and the fence don't connect and leave a little space between them that you can get through but the animals cannot, except chickens.

The best level for mining is when your head is on level 13.8, and the most efficient method is just a strait line, though if you branch off to the side for 50 or so blocks every 5 blocks in the line it is more thorough, and will improve your chances of finding diamond, but decrease chances of everything else.

In the nether Ghasts only spawn in 5 x 5 areas, so don't make your rooms bigger than that, or you may get a nasty surprise.



I have a lot more tips, and if you have areas where you are having trouble than just tell me and I will tell you everything I know.

Just seeing if anyone has tips, or wants to discuss minecraft or anything else.

http://www.2machines.com/articles/183040.html

An article about minecraft.
It says that it's good for kids, but I play with my Uncle, and he thuroughly enjoys playing it, and loves the mental challenge it is, especially in Minecraft Ultra-Hardcore version.