Skeleton, oh how I hate you! [Death Stories]

[Mr_Hosed]

After the pick-axe update I've been finding that skeletons are the most evil mob in the game. Inevitably, shortly after I've reached iron at a given spawn point, I end up being brutalized by skeletons. There may be a zombie involved to help, or worse, a spider, but it's always the damn skeletons that both do the most damage and get the finishing shot.

God how I hate the skeleton!

At my latest spawn location I managed to find a nice surface cave with enough iron in it for a pick and coal for a stack of torches. Bonus, tons of sheep around for food and armor (LOVE that addition). I setup a base camp at the mouth of the cave and proceeded to spend 5 days lighting it up, mining it out, and slaughtering everything on the surface.

I even had mushrooms, pumpkins, and a caged chicken for eggs. Best starting base I've had yet. But I ran out of iron to mine and I wanted a hoe to start pumpkin and hemp patches.

I started searching the surrounding plains for another good surface cave and found one with a massive entrance, but fairly linear and lots of openings in the ceiling. Zombies kept spawning and coming to the surface, but they're slow and noisy.

I think, "let's do this!"

I get one torch down and suddenly I hear THWANG and I'm down 2 hearts. Shit! A skeleton. No big deal, I charge him and take him down with my axe, but not before he hits me two more times. I'm down to about 4 hearts so I'm getting ready to torch up the room and heal up.

THWANG!

Another damn skeleton! Where? What? CRAP! Axe, swing, swing, shit, swing! Die already! Swing. POING! No more axe. Quick, punch!

THWANG!

...where the hell am I now.

This is the 3rd base since the pick-axe update where I made it to the iron age just to die soon after. God. Damn. Skeletons. Every time.

[Taleric]

They are pack hunters! Sounds like they triangulated lol.

Yes with the recent updated and the inability to sculpt the caves down low skele line of sight has been an issue as well. Dogs help a bunch if I get clear from the initial shot while they clean up. Best bet though has been to turn caving into a mining operation, when it is deep. Sectioning off as I go very slow.

[MaxAstro]

Also helpful is to fight skeletons at their own game. A bow is HUGELY important, as early game as you can get your hands on it, I've found.

[JakeZKAM]

That's always felt a little cheap to me, that the most effective method of killing skeletons is by sniping them. It just feels.... Wrong. Then again in terms of survival against mobs long range weapons are always vastly superior.

[DiamondArms]

Definitely going to agree that bows are the best weapon in the earlygame, as they don't require iron or better. Skeletons also drop free ammo on death.

I personally hate hunting skeletons on the shore, as wading into the water makes dodging arrows slightly easier, but getting close enough to kill the mess of bones is a dual suicide in the early game. I've died to that issue a few times.

[Mr_Hosed]

Also helpful is to fight skeletons at their own game. A bow is HUGELY important, as early game as you can get your hands on it, I've found.

What's sad is I had one I'd stolen off another skeleton a couple days earlier and just didn't even think to use it.

[Holycobra]

I have died to skeletons so many times. I'm more afraid of them than creepers. (and I only recently learned sprint hitting creepers is amazing >.>).
Before I had hardcore spawn turned on, I had died trying to swim back to base with the same skeleton repeatedly killing me. With the skele itself in the perfect spot in the water, it was hard to reach, didn't move, and wouldn't burn up in the sun. I felt like a clay pigeon, best way to live was to jump off a nearby cliff into the water and run to base. Serves me right for not turning on HCspawn sooner I suppose.

As far as the bow, I do try to get one quick as I can, but early on most of my ammo comes from skeles and when at best you get two arrows from a skele that takes 3 shots to kill....
Seems about right for BTW. lol

Usually I end up hiding until the skeleton gets close enough for me to charge it. Occasionally (when they're in water I think) they're content to sit back and fire away, causes a lot of issues.

[Six]

Pulled this from my mobtrap earlier today, seems relevant to the thread.

Spoiler

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I would not want to run into that skeleton.

[-J-]

Yeah, I had a fun little run-in with a bunch of skele-bobs the other day. It was actually really exhilarating. I was just returning to my temporary camp after a day of scouting and the sun was setting. I was about 400 blocks away from the camp when the mobs started spawning. Long story short: I got ambushed by a skeleton. He chewed half of my life away and the other mobs seemed to sense this since they were closing in on me in a large posse. I didn't even see the spider. Nor did I see the creeper. Not before the damn thing hissed, blew up and by some miracle it left me unhurt. Unlike the second one that - with the help of a spider - blew me up and left my equipment laying on the ground. I knew the approximate site of my death and made a run for my precious equipment, unarmed, like a fool. It wouldn't be a long journey, just a few hundred blocks. But unfortunately it was the middle of the night and the mobs kept on spawning. I ran into a spider that decided it was about time for me to stumble upon some web. After gnawing a chunk of meat or two apart from my flesh I managed to escape the web. I punched the fucker straight to the face and continued my great escape. But there was another one waiting for me ahead. Accompanied by a creeper. I decided to take a risk. I ran next to the creeper, waited for it to hiss and then kept on running as the damn thing demolished the soil and left the spider lying lifeless on the ground. It felt like a great success and I decided to try it again. It too was successful. I had made it. I was a mere few blocks away from my precious swag. And then... an arrow hit me. It hit me right in my unprotected head, leaving me disoriented, slow and vulnerable. THUNK. Another arrow hit me in the gut. I could no longer see. I felt this was going to be it. Dead once again. THUNK.
Silence.
I never saw my precious equipment again.

Spoiler

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But goddamn was it fun.

[DaveYanakov]

After getting sniped from under shade trees one time too often I've hit on the idea of trimming away all leaves from under which you can draw a line of sight to your front door. It's fairly easy to knock out all connecting leaves and let the remainder decay on their own. Now when a skeleton takes shelter from the heat of the sun, he's cowering behind a tree so I can walk up and slap him with an axe at close range without having to deal with taking fire while closing.

[Sandrew]

I jumped from a cliff into water and didn't make it. I was carrying everything I achieved so far on my person (including 27 iron ingots, 55 gold ingots, and, worst of all, 13 wheat seeds). God damnit.

[Mr_Hosed]

I jumped from a cliff into water and didn't make it. I was carrying everything I achieved so far on my person (including 27 iron ingots, 55 gold ingots, and, worst of all, 13 wheat seeds). God damnit.

The iron and seeds.... OUCH!

[Sarudak]

I jumped from a cliff into water and didn't make it.

Maybe you shouldn't do that while carrying all your valuables on your back?

[Sandrew]

I jumped from a cliff into water and didn't make it.

Maybe you shouldn't do that while carrying all your valuables on your back?

Haha, I know man. Don't know what I was thinking when I did that. I usually approach anything even remotely threatening with extreme care but just went with this one for some reason.

[MaxAstro]

It says something awesome about the kind of game Flowerchild has created that losing more than enough gold to make a matched pair of solid gold, life sized statues of yourself is an "oops", but losing a handful of wheat seeds is a "NOOOO!"

:)

Also: Dave, I am totally stealing that idea from you. That is brilliant!

[ExpHP]

I must've been ambushed by skellies from completely out of the blue at least half a dozen times since my last death. Every time, I managed to cower my way over to the nearest wall and box myself in at the last possible second, giving my blood-soaked lungs time to dry...

It's actually gotten worse since I've crafted an Iron Sword... Because, now, I seem to think I can take them on!

[EtherealWrath]

If you make a 2 block pillar of stone/dirt in front of you- skeletons will usually walk forward to get a better shot, while you have something to take most the hits for you.

[Gunnerman21]

I was riding in my boat through a swamp when I came across a spider... he was close enough that he jumped in the water after me and shot some web which stuck my boat in place. I couldn't move at all and the spider apparently couldn't hit me through the web for some reason. I took my chance and used my axe to break free, but as soon as i broke the web, a skeleton saw me from off shore and I promply died from one shot of his bow. (sadface)

[dawnraider]

I saw a pack of skeletons off in the distance, so i decided to climb up a small hill to snipe then from afar. I was so concentrated on that, however, that I did not hear the spider until it was practically on top of me. I turned around just to see it shoot a web at me. I was just able to dodge the web, but in doing so I fell off of the hill about 5 blocks. Right into two creepers. First one point-blank exploded, killing me instantly, even through my leather armor. The second one then decided to blow up, even though I was dead already, destroying all my stuff, including my fairly good condition power II bow dropped by a skeleton, my leather armor, iron sword from a zombie, and my almost full stack of combined normal and rotten arrows, along with a bunch of food.

[Panda]

God i would kill to be able to throw stones at them early game, even without damage, just to fend them off...

[Foxy Boxes]

God i would kill to be able to throw stones at them early game, even without damage, just to fend them off...

Snowballs?

[Mud]

Also helpful is to fight skeletons at their own game. A bow is HUGELY important, as early game as you can get your hands on it, I've found.

Skeletons were my primary motivation for getting a bow early on as they're nay impossible to kill with an axe in Hard Mode with cloth/leather armor. This also making having a chicken farm that much more important.

[Mr_Hosed]

GAH! God. Damn. You. Fucking. Skeletons! <Rage quit>

So here I was thinking "Excellent! I've got these bastards figured out. Slow and steady wins the race."
Yeah, right. Nothing is easy nor safe after FlowerChild gets done with it.

I restarted my seed when strats came out.

Founded a new base near spawn. Gathered a good supply of stone, food, etc.
Headed out for greener pastures (my spawn is a jungle, hate that). Murdered the world along the way.
Found a surface level spider spawner. Conquered that easily and setup camp there.
Started exploring the surface cave system next to the spawner. Got 2 stacks of coal and almost 2 ingots of iron...

"Wow, this should my best start yet!", I think.

After dieing to skeletons while night fishing (they'll swim to you to get around your fishing hut walls) and eventually (after even more deaths) finding my starter base I got settled and started on the second layer of the cave system. It's one of those where the tunnels don't intersect other then at a cliff.

I start my stairwell project to reach the next "layer" (it's not a stratification) and break into a small hallway. This is perfect, only two directions for mobs to come, narrow exit, etc.

Yeah, there were 4 damn skeletons in my so called perfect hallway...

Still managed to kill 3 and escape, blocking my route on the way. That last one though... Little bastard just sniped my ass all the way up the stairs.

[Setting_Sun]

GAH! God. Damn. You. Fucking. Skeletons! <Rage quit>

So here I was thinking "Excellent! I've got these bastards figured out. Slow and steady wins the race."
Yeah, right. Nothing is easy nor safe after FlowerChild gets done with it.

I restarted my seed when strats came out.

Founded a new base near spawn. Gathered a good supply of stone, food, etc.
Headed out for greener pastures (my spawn is a jungle, hate that). Murdered the world along the way.
Found a surface level spider spawner. Conquered that easily and setup camp there.
Started exploring the surface cave system next to the spawner. Got 2 stacks of coal and almost 2 ingots of iron...

"Wow, this should my best start yet!", I think.

After dieing to skeletons while night fishing (they'll swim to you to get around your fishing hut walls) and eventually (after even more deaths) finding my starter base I got settled and started on the second layer of the cave system. It's one of those where the tunnels don't intersect other then at a cliff.

I start my stairwell project to reach the next "layer" (it's not a stratification) and break into a small hallway. This is perfect, only two directions for mobs to come, narrow exit, etc.

Yeah, there were 4 damn skeletons in my so called perfect hallway...

Still managed to kill 3 and escape, blocking my route on the way. That last one though... Little bastard just sniped my ass all the way up the stairs.

the exact same thing happened to me but I thought i'd killed all 3 and that was it but there was one behind me all along and I got two shots that killed me ... and the rest is rage quit history

[Bevanz]

I had just broken into a new cavern above my current subterranean base... it was one of the larger caverns and had several spiders and skeletons in it. They all turned around at me at once and fired, but I ducked behind the entrance I had hewn from the wall. I took out my iron sword and hacked down one skeleton, then another, I was down to 4 hearts and was looking for the third when a creeper came from behind and exploded right behind me, killing me. >:( guess I hadn't secured the way in as well as I thought I had lol.