Yeah, lol at regretting spending $14 on something that's guaranteed to give you at least 10 hours of quality fun. Compare it to the price of a DVD or to the price of a night spent drinking at bars and you realize that gaming offers the best value for money by far of any entertainment pursuit.

re: diamond:

You can make a jukebox but it only requires one diamond. You can also make the hardest armor with it. I refuse to become a diamond whore cause that would turn this game into a WoW-esque grindfest and I'm just not going there, so I haven't really done anything with the few diamonds I've found.

Armor doesn't have much value anyways cause the penalty for dying is so low unless you venture away from your spawn point which essentially turns the game into hardcore mode. On top of that the only thing you can do with cow-skins is make armor so I feel it's a waste to use steel and diamond on anything than tools. Better tools mine faster which has huge value for me.

On another note, I just finished my 64 block high 4-pronged sky-arch. My base is looking pretty cool now. If anyone is interested I could make a short video of it.

So far I've just built my own shelter and started digging down. I'm not really sure what else to do. haha So far it's pretty fun. Sometimes I just like to go up to a high point looking over the entrance of my little shack and envision what it is I want to do. I seemed to have a rock quarry where I'm at with lots of gravel. I have found 1 block of iron so far and like tons of gravel and coal.

I've been using this as a guide: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Main_Page

Also, don't know if anybody knew this, probably, but I figured it out on my own. There are little plants out there that kind of look like a mini tree and you will pick them up automatically. You can plant them down and they will turn into a tree.

EDIT: This is what mine looks like so far after about 2 hours. The snow is annoying:

if u dont like the snow just start a new world until u find one with conditions u like

Will the snow go away eventually? I already restarted once when I first started because there was too much water and not much land, but it gave me snow again so I figured maybe that was just the way it was for now...so...will it eventually go away? I've already put in a bunch of time on this one.

Not sure about the snow. I think the ground looks kinda nice when it's snowing but the snowflakes are distracting, like having a smudge on your glasses or something. I wouldn't worry about the time spent. Restarting is part of the fun. You get a clean slate to make your base even more awesome. You'll also be much faster at doing everything because of experience.

A few ideas:

-Make a 4x3 mine all the way to the bottom. Do it inside your main base and make a skylight above it so see the day/night cycles and you can come up to build during the day. The deeper you go the more rare minerals you find. Put stairs every other square on the wall to save on lumber.

-Make a monster trap. There's tons of ideas on youtube.

-Make a huge tower. You can actually jump up and place a block underneath you if you time it right. Try to see how high the sky reaches.

-Make a farm to grow wheat and make bread. Bread is a very efficient source of health cause you don't have to smelt it like cooked ham.

-Figure out how redstone wiring works and create some gizmos/circuits.

-Make a railroad or rollercoaster. This requires a lot of iron so you'll need to mine a ton before.

yeah 2 hours "wasted" is nothing.
and besides u get multiple saves so u can go back to this world if u want to

the snow stays afaik but u can prolly find a fix for it somewhere on the minecraft forums

i found a lava-waterfall on the side of a mountain. dug it out to have a nice lava fountain. fell into it, got out and got mauled by zombies. now i cant go back because its incredibly far from my spawn and i didnt leave any directions. ****.

question: how do you find back to your bases after you spawn/explore? i have built at least 8 bases and i have found exactly one of them again, the one right next to my spawn. and they werent hard to find either, 2 on top of huge mountains with torches all around, 1 big platform over 2 smallish hills also with torches all around.
do you just mark everything with torches? i started to just build lighthouses on big mountains so i can find back.

I guess I'll start over because the snow is annoying really. I was really starting to get used to the way my terrain was. I was on a mission to level the small hill/mountain across from my base and build a big building. I was in the process of leveling out of the ground. It has put a purpose on the game.

As far as your base, I don't know if there is a way to set a spawn point? I saw a video of a guy and it looked like there was a compass on his toolbar. Not sure what it was used for.

Another problem with snow is that you can't see sand.

How does the multiplayer work? As far as if we were all on the same server? Would we just all be in the same world and then could build and see each other's land? Or could team up and build something together?

The way this game generates the terrain is just amazing sometimes. I just went out looking for coal and found a small cave on the side of a massive mountain. Walked in and noticed some coal. I busted through and saw sunlight. I came out through and there are massive steep walls on all sides and a waterfall in one end. I came through just to the left of that waterfall, but I got up on some higher ground for a better picture. I started over to get rid of the snow.

i think it was in one of seananners videos where he found the most awesome cave/mountain ive seen yet.

it looked eerily like bowser i think it was.
cant find the vid atm

I usually go for a standard build:

-Wait for a world without snow.
-Search for a big beach as soon as I spawn.
-Build a big wall of dirt to block the zone I like
-Search for some coal
-Start 4 furnaces in the wall area and build a glass house to plant wheat. Big irrigation project starts too.
-Build an observation tower next to the glasshouse, light some wood on the top floor, so that it burns forever. Makes a good lighthouse.
-Substitute the dirt wall with a glass wall
-Start a mine complex. I'm pretty OCD, so I make a few signs and label all my mine shafts. I also plant signs when I hear monsters, to pinpoint dungeons.

Usually when I get bored after a few hours, I start building a glass-bottom under a lake. Looks incredibly awesome to walk under the water

Think I just lost 3 diamond tools, raw diamonds and probably a stack of iron ore

Guess it's time to build a rollercoaster

Found an old picture of a glasshouse of mine. For some reason my HD pack wasn't installed at the time.

I just built a spiral 4x4 stairway to go straight down and ended up finding an open cavern. Had a skeleton in it, but I went down anyways when it went away. Then I turn around and it's right next to me shooting me with arrows. In the heat of the moment I kept hitting "C" which I hotkeyed as my inventory button. I died.

Lighthouse sounds like an awesome idea. Build it up on a high point so you can see it at night.

During the day I'm leveling out an area to build a building and at night I was working on the mineshaft, but now I made it to that cavern so I'm gonna have to explore a little bit.

I really didn't want to get this addicted to the game! I've been playing since I bought it like 5 hours ago? hahahaha

My game keeps crashing.. I can play for like 10 minutes, then it goes to (not responding).. Is it my comp or the game? any ideas are welcome.. I deleted/reinstalled java, didn't fix anything

ways to test your comp:

use speedfan (or whatever) to monitor temps (while playing) -- make sure to check your gpu temp. Often the default fan setting isn't adequate for 3d gaming. I haven't played minecraft and don't know how taxing the game is.

Stress test the computer with say prime95, looking for errors and temps under load.

No issues if I don't maximize the window.. However it's probably better that it was crashing, causing me to not want to play, because I thought I had just played for like 30 minutes or so and realized it's been almost 2 hours

HOLY CRAP UPDATEMENTZ

http://www.minecraft.net/boo/

Random picturamentz

2 Watchtowers with lighthouse


Treefarm



Glassfortress with wood house

Nice pictures, Doom. Looks cool.

I just spent the last 2.5 hours clearing out my land. Finished that. I have over 2500 rocks and probably more dirt. Finally leveled it out, cleared out the rock foundation and covered it with dirt. Now I'm ready to start building. Not really sure how I'm going to do it.

I'm kind of annoyed with night time. 1. It slows down my work and 2. the monsters are kind of dumb. I don't really understand the point really. I know they give some materials, but really, what is the point?

Also, last night I hit bedrock in my first mine that went straight down. I found 1 block of diamond and 1 block of gold in the process. Then I started another mine, but I'm kind of getting tired of just digging rocks.

Maybe once I start working on designs it'll be better. The night sucks because it's either go inside and starting mining down or just stand in one spot until the sun comes up.

What do you guys do?

Ok, so trying to dig to the center of the earth, and ran into lava like 200 squares down. I'd rather not dig around it (I mean, your mine shafts have to be perfect, right?). Lava can be moved with a bucket, right? I'm running very bad trying to find iron (all of 2 squares, so far), and I'd rather not waste too much time looking for iron if that's not what I need anyways.

jvs

We should really get a 2p2 server goin

YouR_DooM,

Ugh, cobblestone.

ItalianFX,

The point of mobs is to make it a survival game. That's why it's called survival mode after all. At least the night is only 7 minutes while the day is 10. I just wish I could alt-tab out of the game without pausing it. I try to find productive ways to spend my nights but sometimes all I can do is wait for sunrise to accomplish my next task.

You can build a 3 block high wall of dirt around your outside building project to work on it during the night. Mobs can't get in and they won't spawn inside if you light it well enough.

You can always turn it on Peaceful. I got annoyed too, I didn't like not being able to do anything half the time. Just turn em back on when you want string or dynamite.

Doom how'd you get your glass with black outlines? Or is it something different?

Bring up your inventory and then alt tab