On Jumping Back Into Minecraft

It’s been a long time since I last played Minecraft. I had a dig around back when Mojang announced the massive new caverns and build heights, but I didn’t do much. I looked around in creative mode, thought it was neat, then moved on. After all, I’ve played a lot of Minecraft. However, several of my sister and my sister’s friends decided to make a Minecraft server, and, after a bit of sibling pressure, I decided to jump in.

Now, the spawn in this world is a mooshroom biome. Mooshroom biomes are my favourite biome, but I can’t build in the spawn area, which is reasonable. After all, you don’t want someone to come along and ruin your spawn area. There is spawn protection, but frankly building so close to spawn is always risky. Luckily, various boats are provided and I sailed off in a random direction, which I later learned was south. It took me a while to find land, but I also found a small island next to some land, which I have decided to build on. But while I found myself farming and digging for various resources, I came across some rather weird things.

Firstly, where the fuck is all the iron?

Seriously, where is it? Apparently it’s all up in mountain biomes, the same way emeralds are also found in mountains. Which confused me a lot, because iron was always pretty common. It still spawns underground but you really need to dig down to find it. It’s around level 17, before you reach the deepslate layers. I’ve so far only found half a stack of iron, most of which I used to make a bucket, an iron sword and an iron pickaxe. I was given some more and made it into iron armour leggings, so I had at least some protection. But yeah, I never thought I’d struggle to find iron so badly.

There’s also plenty of other things that are new to me. Like the amount of underwater lakes there are, and how big cave systems have become. All the caverns have been two things: Underwater or very large. Or a combination of both. And I don’t have anything to help me breathe underwater. The vast caves however are great to look at, despite being filled with mobs.

One other thing that stuck out to me is that there are far less safe spaces. Underwater is filled with monsters and drowned bastards that throw tridents at you. The Nether has never been more deadly, with multiple new mods being added. Endermen also spawn in the Nether too. And then you have all the new structures too, which have their own mobs. Dungeons these days are kinda tame compared to modern Minecraft structures. The worst things though are the flying bastards that attack if if you don’t sleep regularly. But they’re not exactly new.

What’s nice though is that we have a ton more blocks to play with. Everything from nether trees to cherry blossom trees, plus quite a few new biomes, like sparse jungles. Normal jungles are a pain in the ass to travel through, but sparse jungles are closer to normal forests when it comes to tree density.

Overall though, I do like a lot of this new stuff. It’s nice to have a reason to explore again. And it’s lovely playing with my siblings and their friends.