So, the other day, a streamer I watch and adore named KingArgaroth (Twitch/Twitter) opened up a Minecraft Server for his Twitch Community – and because of that, I got back into Minecraft! It’s been a lot of fun and thanks to the mods and the community, I’ve been having a blast with my time in this blocky madness… Today, I wanted to talk a bit about my experience with that!
Note: The screenshots here are just there to be pretty and they don’t correlate to what I’m talking about… mostly. I didn’t really think about taking screenshots as we were doing certain things, so I just took some here and there as time went on. Also, some of these were taken with different shaders from others. Hence, there may be some differences here and there in terms of lighting quality and whatnot.
The server is running version 1.19 of Minecraft but with mods. While I’ve been somewhat excited about 1.19 and while I’ve been looking forward to playing it myself, I haven’t really managed to get into it after all. I tried to play it here and there, but none of my attempts to get into it succeeded. I was at a bit of a loss. Had I already grown tired of Minecraft despite not having played it in years?
Anyhow, fast forward to now, and I’m really enjoying it. I believe that the fact that I can play it with people I know and friends I made along the voxel-based way really added to my enjoyment of the game. Playing it alone or having to explore independently is kind of boring – at times, even frustrating.
As always, I spent hours trying to find iron (of all things) but to no avail. The way it generates now is somewhat frustrating if you can’t find any mountains. But thanks to friends, I got to get some iron tools early, find my own stash, and basically pay them back for whatever they gave me (and some extra).
We help each other out at times and give advice. Some people I hang out with have played a lot of it already in the past, just like me. Others are completely new to it, so I kinda feel obligated to take care of them. I got an infinity bow for one of the newbies as well as a spyglass. Isn’t that fancy?
And well, there’s the mods as well that we’re playing, I guess, that not only make it more fun and exciting to go out into the world and explore all the new biomes and structures… but it also adds a bunch of quality of life features that I would love to see in Vanilla Minecraft.
“Better MC” is a mod pack that mostly adds quality of life stuff… and also new mobs, items, blocks, furniture, biomes, structures, and five whole dimensions. What’s more is that the End and the Nether are both overhauled, featuring plenty of great new items that make exploring those places all the more exciting – and dangerous!
After Mojang scrapped the Birch Forests and the Fireflies because of some silly reasons, I was amazed at how much those additions added to the atmosphere of the game. There are particles in the air that make the game feel much more alive (leaves falling down, waterfalls creating foamy particles at the water surface, mushrooms releasing spores, etc.). On top of that, foliage piles can be found sitting beneath trees which is incredibly cute! There are also twigs and rocks on the ground that you can simply pick up and use in crafting… pretty great!
One thing we did the other day was this sort of “temple” or pagoda that was filled with enemies that would crawl on the ceiling or spawn en masse, putting us into some incredibly precarious situations, even. Those enemies paired with the increasing difficulty of each floor posed as a real challenge but after a few hours of going at it as a team of four, we eventually managed to not only light up the whole place but to also take off with a lot of pretty darn great loot!
There are other places in the world that I wanted to challenge but for now, I feel like I had enough of “raids” and combat, haha.
After that night, I tried to just dedicate myself to my base of operations (located in this sort of dome-looking building that was generated into the world only to then get modified by the likes of me) and some more buildings. A friend settled down into the Cherry Blossom Forest in the valley beside my mountain, so I spent about seven or eight hours building up this sort of “way”/staircase down to her. It’s not only there to connect the two of us (especially as the “waystones” make it quite easy to move between her base and mine) but also for the sake of immersion. How do people hike up there? Wouldn’t it be natural for people to build a staircase into the mountain? Maybe wood is less natural but still!
Once done, I started to expand my storage as the few barrels I have are somewhat limiting. I dug beneath the ground, decorated the walls, and started to place down chests and whatnot. Since I now have a bit of a basement, I was also thinking about possibly getting a bee setup in the glass dome upstairs and working on some smaller projects, like a tower or whatnot to expand upwards…
All the while, I could build up small semi-automatic or even automatic farms in the basement to generate moss, bamboo, sugar cane, cactus, or other items such as bonemeal. I believe that that could be pretty fun and I’m looking forward to working on some systems down below.
Given the number of newbies we have on the server, though, we can’t just storm into the End and Nether and automate everything, so I should probably also hold off on Villager Trading and Iron Farms (as well as other overpowered mechanics) as those could ruin the experience for those new to the game…
But overall, I’m glad I can basically build something up and kind of live out my vision of this place here. I have a lot of plans for my mountain and thanks to the abundance of resources and wood varieties (as well as other blocks!), I’m able to build up some relatively pretty structures, which has felt quite great and a lot less demotivating.
If you wanna check out the mod yourself, I recommend grabbing the “CurseForge” Modlauncher. It makes it a lot easier to get mods installed and whatnot… There you can simply search for a mod pack named “Better MC” by SHXRKIE. If you play it multiplayer, you may need to inquire about what version it is. Either way, it’s pretty simple and easy to use. With how lacklustre the “Wild Update” has been, I’m honestly more than happy about the fact that “Better MC” exists.
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well.
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