Becoming an effective Nomad

[Shengji]

A lot of the people complaining about finding a village seem to reference how far villages are from their home, or the idea that they have to bypass good sites to build. I think this is the attitude change that is needed - at the start of the game you are not going to be realistically able to settle and have a central base - no wonder trying to find a village is a nightmare. I made this mistake too.

You are going to be truly nomadic. You will go to where-ever the food is. By all means, use your meta-knowledge of where villages can and cannot be to search a biome more or less thoroughly but cut any umbilical cord you have which makes you return to an area without food.

You will hit a village at some point and you will find fantastic places to make a base. If that long lost perfect mountain top retreat is still nagging, write down everything you remember about it's location in a book and when you are in a later phase of the game, launch an expedition to find it again - surely you are excited about emergent gameplay like that, I am! I'm considering restarting precisely because I managed to settle in the best place I have ever found!

As a true nomad, you will have to develop skills that you may have neglected in minecraft until now -

Food gathering: It is certain you will be carrying a sword or an axe. Use it as often as you can to stockpile food. Is a fishing rod really worth making before you settle? Look for mushrooms all day long. I refuse to believe anyone but a beginner player will spend the day walking past food then die of starvation when they are locked down at night.

Shelter: Portable or roughly crafted from your environment?

Journeying: Is it really worth climbing that hill? Perhaps the view will be worthwhile. Can you access the tree canopy easily rather than struggling through the forest, especially if there are creepers about! Use a boat at every opportunity. Follow rivers as far as you can.

Resource gathering: Do you really need to carry stacks of wood around with you? Perhaps if you are about to cross a desert you do! If a resource is rare enough then take it. If you are going to put yourself in a position where you will not see a necessary resource for a while, plan ahead.

Acceptance: Yes some players find a village immediately. Yes, you could be journeying for ages before you find one. Enjoy the phase of the game you are in now. It's not a race. If you REALLY want to build massive impressive structures, then doing so with the hardcore stuff makes them magnitudes more impressive. If you want to do it without the challenge, hello peaceful/creative modes.

Death: When you wander so far from your spawn, death becomes even more of a problem, especially if you have established a farm already. You may have gone so far that it is impossible to find it again. Dare I mention the quest to find the old ruins and emergent gameplay again? Basically death knocks you back to the nomadic phase. Allow me to quote FC "Death is bad, m'kay". If it's really that important to you, develop a trail marking system and use it to trace "roads" without building a road. A trail of torches is particularly effective in the desert at night. Chunks out of trees works well in dense forests. A trail in the snow will last for as long as it doesn't snow in that chunk.

Injuries: Getting badly hurt can leave you in a literally impossible situation because you cant jump. You are carrying steps, right?

Leave your own tips and strategies below, soon enough we will all dream of a life off the beaten track!

[JakeZKAM]

Food is a priority, and livestock is a burden. Trying to sustain any kind of farm early game is much more difficult than simply moving about collecting what you need. Slay what you find but leave enough for a possible return trip if you decide to come back later once you have a stable food source.

Don't spend excessive time mining, it's easy to lose track of time and end up coming up for air around noon. You want to be moving on at first light so only mine out a small shelter and make a furnace for the night.

Leave behind bases. Fill them with as much as you can spare if you get lucky and start having an excess of food. These little outposts can become lifesavers if you come across one after dying or on a trek back to spawn.

And on that note leave your original spawn alone! It's very tempting to slaughter everything that moves the minute you spawn but this area is very important due to it's closeness to strongholds and the fact if you die you're going to be in the general area. Do yourself a favor and leave this place alone until you can come back with sufficient resources to build a base.

[Mud]

A very helpful post! I will have to roll a new world and try this approach tonight. Exciting.

I'm thinking all you'd need for shelter during your journey is a trap door. When night falls, simply stop where you are and dig three blocks deep and 3 blocks wide and you have a snug shelter with room for a furnace and a door that's both zombie-proof while allowing you to see outside so you know exactly when it's safe to come up.

:edit: I do like the above suggestion of leaving small stockpiles in your makeshift shelters when you leave, assuming you've got an excess of food and supplies.

[JakeZKAM]

A very helpful post! I will have to roll a new world and try this approach tonight. Exciting.

I'm thinking all you'd need for shelter during your journey is a trap door. When night falls, simply stop where you are and dig three blocks deep and 3 blocks wide and you have a snug shelter with room for a furnace and a door that's both zombie-proof while allowing you to see outside so you know exactly when it's safe to come up.

:edit: I do like the above suggestion of leaving small stockpiles in your makeshift shelters when you leave, assuming you've got an excess of food and supplies.

The only problem with that kind of shelter is getting out and avoiding the creepers in the morning ;) I prefer digging a hobbit hole into a hillside or partially fortifying a tree. Also if you're in a tree at night it's fairly safe to run along the canopy and keep traveling, while jungles are relatively the safest biome I've ever traveled in and I rarely stop for the night in them.

[Sarudak]

I haven't really gotten a chance to experience this part of the game much. Both games I started from the beginning have resulted in me finding a village almost immediately off the bat which I was rather bummed about. Especially since I chose large biomes specifically with the intention of making that bit difficult.

[Mud]

Hillsides work better of coarse. Another solution is to dig a checker-board of 3-deep holes around your door, creepers love falling into them. Though this takes time and energy.

I haven't really gotten a chance to experience this part of the game much. Both games I started from the beginning have resulted in me finding a village almost immediately off the bat which I was rather bummed about. Especially since I chose large biomes specifically with the intention of making that bit difficult.

I too play on Large Biomes almost exclusively, and was planning on rolling until I got a world that started me in one of the biomes that doesn't spawn villages to make sure I get a decide nomadic experience.

[JakeZKAM]

I haven't really gotten a chance to experience this part of the game much. Both games I started from the beginning have resulted in me finding a village almost immediately off the bat which I was rather bummed about. Especially since I chose large biomes specifically with the intention of making that bit difficult.

With that in mind I wonder if anyone has a good seed with very remote villages. It really is a great experience and teaches you some good lessons about safety and efficiency in mine craft ;).

[Sarudak]

I would like a good seed for large biomes that starts me in the middle of an ocean with a lone tree for maximum challenge. :D

[JakeZKAM]

I would like a good seed for large biomes that starts me in the middle of an ocean with a lone tree for maximum challenge. :D

That's just asking for it xD the only problem with starting in an ocean biome is that HCSpawn is going to put you right back on that island over and over again, which kinda which kinda ends up ruining the need for survival in the first place -.-

[Sarudak]

That's just asking for it xD the only problem with starting in an ocean biome is that HCSpawn is going to put you right back on that island over and over again, which kinda which kinda ends up ruining the need for survival in the first place -.-

Ok how about a seed with several islands within the hardcore spawn radius but none of which are in sight distance from each other?

[JakeZKAM]

Ok how about a seed with several islands within the hardcore spawn radius but none of which are in sight distance from each other?

That would work quite well actually :-). I'd love to play something like that.

[ScubaPlays]

I haven't really gotten a chance to experience this part of the game much. Both games I started from the beginning have resulted in me finding a village almost immediately off the bat which I was rather bummed about. Especially since I chose large biomes specifically with the intention of making that bit difficult.

I've had the experience that finding a village in large biomes is easier. Since the village has a chance to spawn in a desert or a plains area, the larger the area the better the chance. Whenever I came across a desert I always found at least one village and one temple, usually multiples of each.

[Kazuya Mishima]

I was not able to find a village on my first few days. Instead i found a small patch of pumpkins. Pumpkins and my spawn, which was rich in chickens, allowed me to bootstrap myself up to sustainability. It would give me opportunities to build an effective defensive fortification on the sea and allow for cleaning up spiders in the morning. Not to mention I lost a good bit of time building a pier, this was somewhat necessary to give me safe fishing access but i did go a little aesthetic on the construction which was totally unnecessary driving the pilling supports which where jungle logs into the sandstone for support, talk about a waste of time.

I don't think a nomadic existence is absolutely critical if you can find a pumpkin patch and chickens. Technically this is the very similar to finding wheat and cows/sheep or carrots pigs. HCH provides is two potential paths to sustainability early game and we may be getting sugar cane and cocoa beans as food items soon. By the third or fourth night i had a grinder up and was making bone meal for plant growth, being very careful not to exhaust myself.

Also i like to plant mushrooms where i work and live and pick them as the reproduce. It's ugly but an effective farming technique as your overlapping farming and working.

When you become more sustainable and have automation you can clean up the shrooms and make a water harvester or something

So i had a permanent base camp by day 3 after slaughtering about 12 or so sheep maybe 10 chickens. I really felt i was rolling in food and i had plenty of time to dig for redstone make some surface mob holes surrounded by ivy traps, eventually find a village and obtain the 3 stables of a healthy diet and breach a mine shaft which ultimately lead to my death from a zombie and a skeleton :(. Hunger didn't kill me, my own unfamiliarity with injury and BTW decrepitude did.

[Mud]

Spawning on an island wouldn't effect the nomadic stage much so long as there's a tree. You simply build a boat. With luck you'll find mainland (or at least a bigger island with some wildlife) before you starve.

[Kazuya Mishima]

Spawning on an island wouldn't effect the nomadic stage much so long as there's a tree. You simply build a boat. With luck you'll find mainland (or at least a bigger island with some wildlife) before you starve.

I dunno. I've been in some big fking oceans looking for mycelium and I've never played a large biomes world.

[RezDev]

That's just asking for it xD the only problem with starting in an ocean biome is that HCSpawn is going to put you right back on that island over and over again, which kinda which kinda ends up ruining the need for survival in the first place -.-

Ok how about a seed with several islands within the hardcore spawn radius but none of which are in sight distance from each other?

Sarudak, try this one:

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This is the seed for my main world (1.1) that I play on normal biomes. I think it will do well as a large biome seed.

[CreeperCannibal]

Stick by the rivers and any bodies of water that will really take you places as your character exerts less energy when in a boat. Also try to collect any rare materials along the journey. This will spare any extra unneeded journeys from home that could have been avoided.

[Six]

Stick by the rivers and any bodies of water that will really take you places as your character exerts less energy when in a boat. Also try to collect any rare materials along the journey. This will spare any extra unneeded journeys from home that could have been avoided.

Although I've not been terribly careful about taking things slow and not expending too much hunger, in mapping out this area:

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mostly by boat, I can say it took about 3/4 of the food it took to map this area:

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which had much more trekking on land.

Boats really do help.

[Lars]

A very helpful post! I will have to roll a new world and try this approach tonight. Exciting.

I'm thinking all you'd need for shelter during your journey is a trap door. When night falls, simply stop where you are and dig three blocks deep and 3 blocks wide and you have a snug shelter with room for a furnace and a door that's both zombie-proof while allowing you to see outside so you know exactly when it's safe to come up.

:edit: I do like the above suggestion of leaving small stockpiles in your makeshift shelters when you leave, assuming you've got an excess of food and supplies.

The only problem with that kind of shelter is getting out and avoiding the creepers in the morning ;) I prefer digging a hobbit hole into a hillside or partially fortifying a tree. Also if you're in a tree at night it's fairly safe to run along the canopy and keep traveling, while jungles are relatively the safest biome I've ever traveled in and I rarely stop for the night in them.

If jungles would have more monsters in them at night, they would definitely be something you would never EVER want to wander into at nighttime. Not even with armor on. You have to jump and climb constantly, and you're slowed down immensely from walking on leaves all the time. I think it would actually be awesome if spawnrates in jungles would be higher. That would certainly force me to build some walls in my current world. =)

Also, I will try out the whole nomad phase. I've played as a nomad before, but that was a long while ago and before I had discovered BTW. I really liked the playstyle, even though there were only disadvantages to it then. Now you're forced to adapt this playstyle. It's awesome ^^

[FlowerChild]

If jungles would have more monsters in them at night, they would definitely be something you would never EVER want to wander into at nighttime. Not even with armor on. You have to jump and climb constantly, and you're slowed down immensely from walking on leaves all the time. I think it would actually be awesome if spawnrates in jungles would be higher. That would certainly force me to build some walls in my current world. =)

You know, I never thought about it before, but they really did create a biome covered in leaves when mobs can't spawn on them, didn't they?

I'm running out of fingers to stick in this dyke.

[johnt]

new mob: Endersloths.

[Mud]

If jungles would have more monsters in them at night, they would definitely be something you would never EVER want to wander into at nighttime. Not even with armor on. You have to jump and climb constantly, and you're slowed down immensely from walking on leaves all the time. I think it would actually be awesome if spawnrates in jungles would be higher. That would certainly force me to build some walls in my current world. =)

Also, I will try out the whole nomad phase. I've played as a nomad before, but that was a long while ago and before I had discovered BTW. I really liked the playstyle, even though there were only disadvantages to it then. Now you're forced to adapt this playstyle. It's awesome ^^

One of the issues I've always run into with Jungles is that the treeline obscures the sunlight which means that skeletons and zombies that spawn in the jungle at night have a good chance of remaining during the day.

But yeah, I think jungle would be one of the hardest zones to start in if there isn't a beach/ocean near by.

[Six]

If jungles would have more monsters in them at night, they would definitely be something you would never EVER want to wander into at nighttime. Not even with armor on. You have to jump and climb constantly, and you're slowed down immensely from walking on leaves all the time. I think it would actually be awesome if spawnrates in jungles would be higher. That would certainly force me to build some walls in my current world. =)^

In running around a whole bunch through many biomes, I've actually come to the conclusion that the most dangerous overworld biome at night, is a plain old Forest. Low visibility at eye level, lots of viable mob spawn spots and a bits where you get blocked in by leaves. Plus the fact that you wouldn't expect it to be dangerous, so are more likely to run in stupidly.

[Shengji]

In running around a whole bunch through many biomes, I've actually come to the conclusion that the most dangerous overworld biome at night, is a plain old Forest. Low visibility at eye level, lots of viable mob spawn spots and a bits where you get blocked in by leaves. Plus the fact that you wouldn't expect it to be dangerous, so are more likely to run in stupidly.

When I used to run my plugin which let trees spawn saplings and those saplings plant themselves, forest biomes became no-go regions. They were dark enough to allow spawns through the day, twisted and difficult to navigate in because you had no hope of maintaining a constant heading. Plenty of trees would make steps up to the canopy and the trees would push right up against any walls you had, which meant the creepers could walk right over your walls!

[Sarudak]

When I used to run my plugin which let trees spawn saplings and those saplings plant themselves, forest biomes became no-go regions. They were dark enough to allow spawns through the day, twisted and difficult to navigate in because you had no hope of maintaining a constant heading. Plenty of trees would make steps up to the canopy and the trees would push right up against any walls you had, which meant the creepers could walk right over your walls!

That sounds obnoxious... Kill it with fire?