Minecrafting: Fresh Start

As mentioned in the previous post, I'm starting a new world to take advantage of new resources in the game, as well as the seed feature. This way, anyone who's interested in a particular feature of the world can make their own with the same seed and check it out for themselves (as much as the world allows for).
In the interest of actually getting more done, with this world I'm going to focus less on the blow-by-blow account of the entire adventure, and more on overall progress. Exceptions to this will probably be crazy things that happen spontaneously, and cave exploration. Sound good?

So, without further ado -

Seed: Sandbox Empires

(Fun fact: Using the seed "Castles in the Sand" dropped me in a desert biome surrounded by ocean. Irony? I think so.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Day 1:
My initial reaction was "Mountains! Trees! Caves! Woohoo!" Further exploration confirms this - this world, conveniently enough, features some really awesome mountains, overhangs, and occasional flying bits of dirt.

Not far from the spawn point, I spot a large swath of bare, exposed rock. I mine some coal for good measure, and file this spot away as a future building site.

Night 1: I chisel into a mountainside and dig away a large patch of rock. I make some new tools and a sword, and even pull up some iron ore.

Day 2: I explore some more, and find some really sweet natural bridge formations. I collect a bunch more wood, as well as a couple of mushrooms and leather from hapless cows. I have a fatal encounter involving a creeper and a large cliff, but recover all of my stuff.

Night 2: Another random cliff face, and another night of chiseling stone and occasional ore out of the ground. I dig into a tiny cave system inhabited by a single zombie, who quickly meets his demise.

Day 3: I decide on the bare stone patch as the site of my future base. It's close to my spawn, open, and mostly level. For once, I'm not building on a mountain, so I decide to make this a more symmetrical structure than my previous castles, and a bigger one to boot. I mark out the corners of what I plan to be the main keep and wall, and it's a 39-meter square.

Unfortunately, night falls before I can get into much of the construction. I have plans to keep myself occupied, though . . .

Night 4: I know very well from previous experience just how much stone a giant castle takes, so if I ever want to get that thing started, I'd better get cracking harvesting some raw materials.
Serenaded by the moans of the zombies outside my dirt hovel, I begin carving myself a staircase deep into the cuboid bowels of the earth.

(Side note: Where else would I ever get to write a sentence quite like that one?)

Some distance in, I pop out into the inevitable cave. It doesn't look large at first, but crawling behind a gravel mound confirms my suspicions - there's actually a much larger lower level not immediately obvious when you enter. A few minutes of skeleton-smashing fun later, I realize that my time on a slightly laggy multiplayer server has turned me into a hardened caving verteran - nothing I encounter in the depths comes close to touching me, as I happily bounce through the tunnel system. While this cave isn't particularly remarkable overall, I do find a couple of cool sights, including an almost perfectly circular room . . .

. . . an impressive underground river . . .

. . . and a lavafall!

The one scare I do get in this cavern actually happens while I'm carefully climbing around said lavafall. About halfway up the slope, a zombie plummets from a darkened ledge onto the ground in front of me. I hastily backpedal, hoping for him to meet a quick end in the magma flow. Unfortunately, he only barely catches himself on fire, so I have to scoot quickly backwards for a few tense seconds before he drops.

At the bottom of the cave I manage to dig up a hefty supply of iron, and even a couple of gold deposits. Sweet!
I poke around a lava lake in the hopes of spotting some diamonds, but that's too much to hope for at this point.

I enjoy the view for a few minutes, then trudge back to the surface.

Day . . . 5? 6?: I've lost track of time while deep in the earth, but now I have a base of resources to work with. The daylight hours are spent working on the castle foundations, along with a few seconds building a bed to speed my nights along.

I go through several days fairly quickly with the aid of my handy new bed, and soon run out of cobblestone. Still, I have finished a substantial portion of my epic fortress foundations.

So . . . now what? More caving? More castle-building? Something else?

Hmmmmm.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Next: I make a decision!