Hardcore spawn in SSP - your experiences

[Educated_Fool]

I have not seen a lot of stories of people playing with hardcore spawn in single player worlds, so along with the latest update I made the decission to play with it enabled (on SSP). All I can say is:
It's been quite some time since I've had this much fun with Minecraft.

I have two bases in my world; one near my (original) spawn which I mainly use as a big storageyard and one a kilometer away from that one which mainly revolves around a big mobfarm. While I was busy lighting up some of the caverns around the mobfarm I stumbled upon a double dungeon. You can probably allready guess, but I didn't survive this encounter.
My first thought was something along the lines of "Oh well, just a little walk and I can continue.", but then it struck me; hardcore spawn is enabled...

So there I was, unequiped in the middle of the night in a part of my world I had never seen before. Well, it made me realise how much easier it was to build up from scratch when you have the sun shine down on you. I quickly cut down a nearby tree and made sure there were no mobs in my vicinity. I saw some cows and reallised I would need the food, I made a sword and went after them, killing some zombies that were in the way. There is something strangely satisfying about trying to find/get food while fighting of all those monsters, kinda brings up that primitive caveman within you.

Luckily I found a small patch of water nearby where I could grow some wheat (I am in a snowbiome, so most water is turned to ice) and build up my encampment around it. With two chickens laying eggs and the patches of wheat to feed them (yeah I didn't really use the wheat -_-') I had a source of food and a shelter. Though I was not planning to stay here for long, I didn't want to leave a dirt hut either. So I build up a small tower above the "farmingroom", also slightly in the hope of recognising some landmark from up there (oh, how naive).
(This tower is, by the way, probably the one aspect that brought me the most joy. I used the design of a tower I had build in one of my earlier worlds. It looks crude and is rather small, so if I wasn't stranded in a random part of my world I probably would never have build it. But building it gave me the feeling of meeting a long lost friend. So thank you FC, for that moment of nostagia =) )

In the end I managed to find some iron and redstone (it's also been quite a while since I was this happy to find redstone, normally I would just throw some gold and hellfire ingots in a crucible) and build a compass. The journey back to my spawn was longer then I had expected, so the outpost I build near my spawn was definitely a sight for sore eyes.

But besides all this there was one aspect that really made me realise how awesome hardcore spawn is. My usual reaction to dying in Minecraft is "meh". Most of the time your gear can be retrieved, so all you lose is a little bit of time returning to the location of death and some XP. But soon after I returned to the caverns I realised something; I was afraid to die, something I have not really felt since ~ beta 1.7. I understand that there a lot of people who care little for this, but fear (of the monsters, of the night, of dying, you name it) was one of my favorite aspects of the game when I started playing Minecraft, so a big thank you for that Flowerchild, thank you for making Minecraft awesome again.

Now I'd like to hear what other people have to say about hardcore spawn (preferably in SSP, but SMP experiences are okay as well :) )
For those who haven't yet looked at it, I totally recommend playing with hardcore spawn enabled, especially if you like the adventure aspect of minecraft (not mojangs idea of adventure, but surviving in the wilderness, building up a small settlement and finding a safe way back home) Give it a shot and post your experiences here ;)

tl;dr - Hardcore spawn in your SSP world is amazing, try it out and post your experiences.

[FlowerChild]

Very nice man. Thanks for taking the time to post this :)

[Mr_Hosed]

The food aspect and how important it is can NOT be underestimated in BTW now and is a huge part of what makes Hardcore spawn fun. It's actually hard not starving to death unless you focus on securing food first. Also makes tundra and desert biomes far less favorable I've found for early game settlements.

In my SSP worlds I used to mine to diamonds with-in the first hour and have steel with-in 4 to 6 hours. In my latest SSP world with Hardcore spawn on I've played 4 hours and barely mined. I've been spending all my time securing food, even if that meant planting a bazillion trees just for the occasional apple while I scarfed zombie flesh. I've barely used my mill on my hemp because I'm so afraid of starving to death...

I actually have a nearly fully functional farm, something that previously I wouldn't bother with until I was ready for breeding farms.

Making wheat non-craftable with-out processing has seriously upped the challenge level =)

[DaveYanakov]

Hardcore grinding made learning how to fish important. Hardcore spawn has made it absolutely vital.

[TheAnarchitect]

Oh gods yes. Before HCspawn I only ever fished in order to get cats.

[Ribky]

Ha, it's not even the HC Spawn as much that has been getting me to fish. It's the HC Beds. Whenever I find myself near water, far away from base (especially if pick durability, armor or hunger is low). I build a quick makeshift "fishing tower" and fish the night away.

Sure I could mine... but fish man, fish.

[Kazuya Mishima]

I started a new world Saturday just to see how all the new hardcore features affect early game and overall there is just a small degree more stress in the early stages finding food. However if your economize your time and make sure getting food is a top priority it's still very doable. If anything the lack of ability to reset your spawn, i believe, forces you to stay put in your initial spawn. I felt less need to search around for the optimal or most scenic base and just immediately got to work surviving.

As of now i have a windmill a, a breeding population of pigs and cows as well as a some dogs.

i am living offa pork from a wheat crop. Didn't really catch many fish as my base is rather far from a large body of water.

One thing mojang seems to have totally neglected is the early game, hardcore grinding has added a bit more emphasis on survival imho. Mojang's early game is either getting easier due to noob chests and villager resources or not innovating at all.

Also i'm trying to play without iron armor this go around to see how it feels, overall i only died once to a creeper.

[kaos78414]

I recently started a new world with Hardcore Spawn enabled, and I have to say it is awesome. I died while mining; my young step brother was in the room and has a tendency to talk while I'm playing, so I wound up not hearing the creeper behind me.

Anyway, after dying, I wasn't sure how far I had spawned, but I didn't recognize any of the area. So I wandered around a bit thinking, Oh, I couldn't be too far. But after a few trips wandering in circles moving to the tops of trees and mountains trying to find my initial setup, I gave up and started building again. I move very slowly in MC because of my wont to build pretty things, so it took awhile before I got to redstone and finally created a compass. Then I started what turned into the longest gravel road I have ever built in MC, complete with bridges and tunnels through mountains and signs and all sorts of cool landmarks to see along the way.

So, I guess what I'm saying is this: Thank you FC! This, along with the other HC changes, have transformed the way I play minecraft. It has brought a lot of the fun back into the game, and HC spawn definitely brings a reason for me to construct railways and awesome roads like the one I described. I'm scared of death again, but at the same time it (as FC had mentioned) causes me to want to build out over a much larger region. And that in turn makes my cities look much cooler, with sprawling roads and landmarks and rails. Loving it. :)

[FlowerChild]

Man, I'm thinking I really need to step up the timeline on my own playthrough so I can make the decision as to whether to make HC spawn the default for the mod.

REALLY glad you guys are loving it so much. I knew it was the right move for anarchy play, but had a question mark next to it for SSP. I'm very happy to hear it's so positively influencing people's play experience in single player as well.

[Sarudak]

I like it and we turned it on on our friendly server. It's just another reason to build infrastructure and make you feel like your minecraft world is actually settled and alive.

[FlowerChild]

I like it and we turned it on on our friendly server. It's just another reason to build infrastructure and make you feel like your minecraft world is actually settled and alive.

Yeah, I think my main hesitation with regards to it was in it possibly making original spawn less important.

How do you find it affects that? Does it still serve as a central hub to your in-game activities?

[Sarudak]

Well our main base is several km to the north of spawn and the only good way to get back is to head back to our original (now abandoned) base by spawn and take the nether portal there to get back. So far the only time I've died with it on I was able to find my way back with little to no work since I've already explored the area around the spawn a bit. Just got lucky I suppose. In any case the original spawn is not the hub of our in game activities anyway since we searched around until we built a mountain biome (large biomes are on that's why we're so far out). But hard core spawn does make me more inclined to want to build up the original spawn to a larger degree than it is now and maybe add some markers further out. Without hardcore spawn I had no such inclination.

[FlowerChild]

Cool. Thanks for that info man. Without doing a full play-through myself (yet), I wasn't certain on what the long-term impact would be, as there are a heck of a lot of variables at play here.

And yes, I realize spawn isn't your main base. That's fine. However, if you're still going back to original spawn upon death, and thus feel motivated to build it up further, that's more the player thought-process I'm interested in.

I *think* what this will lead to with time is that without HCS enabled, you are likely to have 2 built-up areas (main base and original spawn). With it enabled, you are likely to have those AND a number of small outlying bases that you built up as temporary structures (and may be tempted to work on further once you begin), and potentially a larger system of landmarks and such to help guide you back to original spawn and your main base.

So yeah, sounds good overall.

[jakerman999]

I suppose now would be the ideal time on how I deal with hardcore spawn.

I enabled it on my single player world, and have had a number of deaths with it (most of them because I haven't started brewing fire resistance potions yet) but at most they seem to be a minor annoyance. I believe I mentioned in another thread how I go about setting up mines and small outposts at the same time. It boils down to creating a grid mine at a low level with a large radius. Whenever I die, I merely chop down a tree or two, get a crafting table and a few picks and shovels, then proceed to dig down and tap into my grid. I close off the top and bottom of all my pits, and I'm back in my established world.

All in all, it takes at most five minutes, and I can usually recover my inventory if the chunks I was occupying have unloaded. I will mention that at one time I found my first jungle biome when I spawned, so yay for that.

[Elensaar]

Had my first death with HC spawn myself yesterday. It really does make you fear death more.

I came out of my mines, only to find a skeleton in my treefarm and a creeper hanging out on my doorstep. I kill them and go to pick up the loot, when a creeper hidden under the trees starts hissing at me. I manage to get clear of the blast, but now there's a huge hole in my lawn. I look around, and everything looks safe, so I start filling it in... Only to have another creeper jump down on my head and blow me to pieces. :P

Suddenly I'm in a completely unfamiliar area, somewhat resembling a cross between taiga and a chunk error. Loads of nooks and crannies. I did originally spawn in taiga by a beach, but this doesn't look familiar at all. :P Now I have to set up base and get that compass to reorient myself. Found my way back to spawn, where I have a hut set up with some necessities. Spawn is very important even with HC spawn on - it's the only spot you have an absolute way of finding. Finally I could proceed by newly built boat down the coast to the border of swamp and extreme hills where I'm building my main base. It wasn't at all what I had planned to do, but it was an awesome adventure. And later, when I discovered an abandoned mineshaft while digging what will be my underground railway from spawn, it made me really cautious. To the point where I've left that project for when I'm better equipped. (I agree with Aeslynn Winterfell, if you've watched his LP, I hate poisonous spiders. :P)

Thank you so much for this FC. The mode is awesome, and will be staying on in my install. And I wouldn't worry about devaluing original spawn. I think that for most people it will still be the hub they use to find their way back to wherever they've been building.

[chai]

I have two hc spawn experiences, one from each of my main worlds. I'll give you the tl;dr of this post here and now: hc spawn in singleplayer is really cool.

World 1:

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This world's spawn has almiost everything you could ask for, all in a day's walk. There's a swamp, a taiga, a desert, plains and a forest all in the immediate area, and a jungle not too far off. I spent some time building a walled base, started a farm after collecting all the requisite animals, and everything was proceeding apace when poor Steve fell from the top of the highest tower to his death on the cobbles below.

He woke up in a desert that stretched surprisingly far (not on large biomes). Reaching the edge in the evening I was able to punch some trees and retreat underground to mine 'til the sun came up. Mining was quickly productive, and I was able to make some armor and a compass with ease. I went ahead and built a base camp and slaughtered enough of the local wildlife to keep Steve fed on the journey home. After making the temporary base into a cosy but surprisingly defensible little cabin, I headed back, but took my sweet time, making safehouses whenever I spotted some inspiring scenery, and leaving pillar-markers on the way.

When I got home, it had been several days. I finished what I was working on before the fall, did some farming, and then extended my nether road to the portal I'd built at the new shelter through a combination of dead reckoning and luck. All-in-all, the traveling was good times and the return to base felt like a homecoming. Huzzah! One of my current projects is to explore this world further in general, and nether portals to distant lands in particular.

World 2:

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This world is a survival island. One tree, some tall grass and flowers, a massive cave system under the island, and kilometers of ocean in all directions. I think this world would be nigh-unplayable on large biomes, unless you were to install something like the Zeppelin mod and just let Steve float in a random direction while you were afk. But I digress.

After getting Steve properly outfitted for the journey and plenty of hard tack (okay, donuts) for rations, I headed out to find land. After traveling for quite a while, I hit land and was able to gather some new types of flora and, eventually, convince quite a bit of fauna to follow me back to the island. Needless to say, I'd built a temporary base at landfall and begun farming animals right there.

Once I had most renewables (still sans mycelium, villagers, and anything cold biome-related), there was little reason to leave my island stronghold. I figured I'd find everything else later. Time passed. Of course, as I said to myself as I burned to death in lava (you never see the lava bed with your name on it 'til a skeleton's arrow knocks you into it), now's as good a time as any to go resource hunting.

To my surprise, Steve awoke on his island home, safe and sound! Exploration since then indicates that this is likely due simply to the sheer size and location (I'm guessing roughly centered on (0,x,0)) of the ocean not leaving many spawnable points ~2 km out.

More time passed. One evening, while melting down his old iron armor to forge anew, Steve looked up at the sound of a groan. Of course---the latest platform out from the island needs torches. Whoops! Just Steve's luck, while casting about for the zombie (or any other threats), he accidentally gave an Enderman the stink-eye. Slobbering with rage, it teleported forward and summoned about 50 (or maybe 3) of its friends and quickly beat our uncharacteristically unarmored antihero (can't really call 'im a hero with this mod installed, what with enslaving souls and slaughtering villagers and whatnot) to a bloody pulp. The moral? Make new armor, *then* melt down the old, even when you think you're safe.

Steve awoke in pitch darkness. I picked a random direction and hoped to spot a light of somekind, but no dice. Hit a dead end instead. Hearing groaning behind me, for about 20 blocks, I punched stone to burrow upwards. I finally hit the surface; it was still night, but I was able to punch down a tree and mine 'til daybreak. I built a lodge there on that snowy bluff looking out to sea, then descended to mine. Eventually, I found enough ores to make a compass and enough food for the anticipated boat trip back. I built a nether portal on site (you never know when one'll come in handy) and jumped in before I left. But what did I see in the distance? Lights! Cobblestone! My nether road! I'd had to build a long way to find a nether fortress, and boy did it pay off. I dashed home, over the protests of a nearby ghast, and was thrilled to be back at my lovely little island. Needless to say, I lit up that dang platform right away, and later followed the oversea route back just to see if there was anything interesting on the way. Nope.

So there you have it. Two long tales, I'll grant, but one must wax rhapsodic on occasion.

To summarize again, I think that hardcore spawn in ssp is great fun---death is less of a mere annoyance---it's an experience. You actually have to resign yourself to losing more than a couple of diamonds or a few pieces of soulforged steel, and you get that classic just-beginning-a-new-minecraft-world feeling everybody loves. Furthermore, it not only requires exploration for the obvious reasons, but actively encourages it (a) as a precaution, and (b) just to see the scenery on the way home.

Finally, a caveat: I did not need to take the Bartle Test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Test) to guess what my type would be. In vanilla minecraft, in addition to a building world, I always had an exploring world---yes, I know that there's not much to see, but I still always liked just heading out with minimal equipment and seeing what was there, because it was there. In Bethesda games, I traditionally disable the in-game GPS feature and most forms of fast travel. Therefore, I obviously cannot speak to what this mode would be like for people whose gaming focus is different.

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[The Phoenixian]

Alright, first a caveat: My experiences do not come from SSP but from Anarchy SMP. (First Jadedcat's server and now the Official server)
Regardless, I believe they represent a response to dying in hardcore spawn, and one that seems a bit game breaking at that, which I haven't seen yet.


Originally, my pattern when dying was first find food, then branch mine for iron and redstone, and from there to make my way to spawn and then finally acquire any needed extra food from a melon stash for the two kilometer overland trek northeast to my home base. (Once I'm out of the trees and so long as I don't do anything stupid, nighttime has never posed a real problem to me on this route, armored or unarmored.)

By the end of the server however I had, after about ten combined deaths and trips to the End gotten a good enough idea of landmarks where hardcore spawn put me that I had no need of any compass, and would thus merely find enough food to get to spawn and then make the trek home.


Now, on the official server I have only had two of deaths where I had developed to the point of walking back to base from but I think the pattern is not going to change for the better at this point.

During the first, less than five minutes after I entered the server, Everything proceeded as it had in the early days of HC spawn on Jadedcat's server.

The latest one was different however.

All I did was take a moment to orient myself via the moon, find food, attain tools (conveniently dropped by another player who had died nearby earlier), and walk straight back to my base, or rather lack of base, with no need to find spawn and though unknown territory.

The reason I am able to do this is because I make a map of landmarks and was able to find one that was completely unmissable, even if I had never been to that part of it before. I walk to the coast, and then up and down it until I find a familiar point and from there I can follow the landmarks to my base.

[Nerdasaurus_Rex]

That is one reason I think HCS improves BTW, it involves you more with your world.

One way to remember where your base is with HCS is to actually draw your own map on a piece of paper, and keep it by your computer. This is the kind of thing that excites me. You now have a reason to make something personal in the real world to coincide with something in your minecraft world.

[sky_demon]

Oh i still cant believe how much fun it was for me.. Ah.. So i died in not fun way. There was an acsident with creeper in my redstone wiring floor and the problem was that i wired it wrongly this time. So i went to make some hellish ingots, and before doing that i duble checked my lever which activates stocked fire, and when i placed ingretians finely i blew up. I figured out that my incorrect wiring made my lever do oposite thing. So i spawned far far away from my base and thats when it happened. All memories, and emotions just flooded me... Long long time ago when i started my world i've really liked that aspect of minecraft that you can catch fish, and first thing that i did was built nice fishing hut, and small confy house right in spawn, and when i saw all that it was just so ;_; ... Ya. So it was early morning. I checked my hut and found few used rods, and some coal in furnace. I tuck them, and just went fishing. Damn it was so awesome to see this old place, and remember what i was doing long time ago... It was so nice to just drop off that all sfs armor, and all those plans of big projects, and just enjoy this small simple full of memories place. ;)

[Mr_Hosed]

@FC a tad necro, but you asked for real accounts using HCS in SSP and I've finally played long enough in my new world to do that. Figured it made sense to update this post rather then create yet another thread.

Without further adou, my HCS experience in SSP after 20 hours of play on a new world.

First off, I've started several worlds in 1.4 with HCS on and I've never lasted very long at the original spawn. Maybe a night or two. Because of this I've yet to have an SSP playthrough with HCS on that actually has a base at my spawn point.

In my current world I started gathering my resources, but spawn was an extreme biome so all I could find were sheep every where. It turned night before I was able to secure a food source and I died. I've found that a spawn point is worthless without plentiful animals to kill as HC Grinding and HC Bonemeal makes initial food sources limited to slaughtering animals.

Since this was a new world I had no idea where I respawned at in relation to my original spawn. I decided that I needed to secure food before all else so I did the ole' wood punching thing and hunted down about 20 pigs while searching for a location to mine. By the time it was dark I ended up just digging into a hill, cooking up my stuff and setting up shop.

This location actually ended up being a permanent location and after much terraforming I've built massive manual farms here and my first windmill. I also built a path of markers back to spawn so I could find this base again as I really liked how things were turning out. After about 8 hours of play however, I ran into an Enderman in my basement and miscalculated unenchanted iron armor's effectiveness and died. Poof! New spawn location.

My 3rd spawn location ended up being on the edge of a desert and swamp. I died a couple of times to creepers the first night here, but finally managed to setup a small mining station and wheat farm. As I started mining I ran into a HUGE abandoned mine, found some diamonds in chests, and then proceeded to get blown up before I secured my loot.

This time I didn't respawn at the 3rd location, but only about 100 blocks away from it so I was able to find my way back to the mining station and continue the hunt for resources. My goal was to get enough iron for full iron armor, sword, and compass, then get out of there for now to get back to the more permanent base I'd set up.

Now I'm back at my original base setup at the second spawn location and I'm back to terraforming and progressing through the BTW tech tree. I was able to find all my stuff from the enderman attack at the bottom of my mine as well, which was a nice surprise.

I gotta say, I'm actually affraid of death again. It's been a LONG time since I cared if I died in Minecraft. I've also gotten to reexperience the beginning game several times over without starting new worlds each time. In the past I've never kept a world beyond about 80 hours of gameplay as it becomes to civilized after that. I think I'll be keeping this world around for quite some time though.