Alright. Hello. Welcome to Never Dig Down, the podcast where we talk about Minecraft and related activities. I'm joined I'm Chris Anse. I'm joined again by Tim Marta.
Chris:Hi,
Tim:Tim. Hello.
Chris:How are you today?
Tim:I'm pretty good.
Chris:That is good. That is good. We've we've been three weeks two weeks, three weeks since we last chatted. So Yeah.
Tim:We had a little holiday last week.
Chris:Yeah. So we, we're back to episode eight no. Episode nine. Sorry. Which you can find online at goodstuff.fm/neverdigdown/nine.
Chris:And, of course, our Twitter account never dig down_fm is where you can find us if you'd like to follow us. So have you played in three weeks, surely? I mean, I'm I'm usually guilty party here, but surely you've played some Minecraft since last we spoke.
Tim:I I have. Have you are you implying that you have not?
Chris:No. Actually, this time I I get to the the break was long enough and I actually have. So Excellent. I
Tim:What did you guys get up to?
Chris:Well, we, actual mostly vicariously, guess, but we did play one on Saturday last week, last weekend, I guess, a couple hours of, or an hour, I guess, with my with my boys. We have the the four year old is getting into it, he we have three controllers now. So he's able to get in there and mess around. And then, my seven year old has messed around a lot and likes to play obviously a lot as I mentioned before. But, we did the, just played around in creative mode on the Xbox for for the whole time this time, and, it was fun just to, excuse me, to let let him kind of experiment with the various things that we don't actually ever get to play with a bit.
Chris:And so, like we answered, the question last time for Nick, and listener Nick has another question this episode coming up, but about Golems and their use and stuff. He got to just sort of not that you need to do this in creative mode. It's not that hard to build a Golem, actually, stone Golem, but or iron Golem. Yep. But he's
Tim:The iron Golems and snow Golems.
Chris:Yeah. The iron Golem, which is the you just need blocks of iron, obviously. You need to find some iron. But he was playing around building that with the pumpkin on the top and getting golems and then spawning in, zombies and watching them getting kicked into the ocean by the the golem, which was Right. I think just fun and, like, of those things where you probably I I hadn't thought of actually playing with a Golem or going out of my way to get a Golem.
Chris:Golem? How do you say it?
Tim:Yeah. Golem? I I say Golem.
Chris:Golem. Okay. To get one. But, just seeing that sort of activity of I mean, obviously, he could just spawn as many as he wanted, but he still have to make them. And then, he, yeah, just seeing them boot zombies out.
Tim:Go golems are the iron golems are really funny because they walk with this nice swagger.
Chris:Yeah.
Tim:And then when they get near a a hostile mob, they'll just throw their their arms up in the air. That's their attack. And and if you accidentally hit one of them, they will take you down very quickly.
Chris:Oh, really? Yeah. That's what yeah. Wasn't sure. I mean, obviously, in creative mode, doesn't matter, but yeah.
Tim:Yeah. I though, I don't know if I mentioned it before, but the the one time that I really bothered to spawn in or to to craft iron golems is when I'm about to fight a wither. My strategy for the wither is to just dig down and then dig a cavern to fight them in. And before I create the wither, I will I will create a whole bunch of iron golems, which will naturally fight any hostile.
Chris:Oh, yeah. So they
Tim:Hostile hostile mob.
Chris:Yeah. That's what I we forgot I forgot to get him get him to experiment with just other, you know, like, will they attack a creeper as well or spiders and stuff?
Tim:Yep. Yep. The tough part is is getting them in a room and then, and then spot and then manufacturing the wither in a timely fashion so that the iron golems don't, like, get distracted and wander off and wander out of the wander out of their attack range.
Chris:Right. Because that's what we were wondering. Like, because I I left it for a while and came back, and he was doing this. And, the do they are you able to contain them with, like, a fence or something, or how would you, like, keep golems hanging around?
Tim:Yeah. The iron golems. Yeah. They're they're easy to to you know, you can fence them in just like any other, friendly mob.
Chris:Oh, okay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's makes for a fun little defense mechanism around your house or whatever if you're Yep.
Chris:Building.
Tim:Yeah. Totally. And it's nice to have company.
Chris:Yeah. Exactly. For the no. I was gonna make a joke about only child or something, but that's not not nice. I shouldn't say The, and yeah.
Chris:So and then he had cousins over this this weekend or on Sunday or Monday, I can remember, and, just playing. They were all in creative mode. Of course, then they they had the we have three this is the age old problem. Three controllers, four kids
Tim:Mhmm.
Chris:And then the debate of also playing in creative mode. One the oldest wanted to, like, do each make castles in creative mode and then flip over to, survival mode and fight. And so they did that, but then, of course, there's a few tears in real world fights over somebody getting killed because obviously, that's the name of what they're doing, but not everybody understood.
Tim:Do the consoles have adventure mode?
Chris:No. I don't think so. At least, I'm trying to remember now. I think it was just flipping between survival and creative.
Tim:Okay.
Chris:Because what's adventure mode again?
Tim:Well, adventure mode is a way of setting up a map and saying this part of the map is destructible and this part of the map is not destructible.
Chris:Oh, right.
Tim:It's it's a it's a way that a lot of the developers set up maps, set up like, you know, mystery maps and and basically, like, platforming maps and you know? So you can build a temple and, you know, if it was just in standard survival mode, you could just dig your way through the temple and find the end. But you can set up an adventure map such that you can say, okay, I built the the temple out of sandstone. The player cannot destroy sandstone.
Chris:Right. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's it would be that would be a neat way to play, and and we'll probably progress to that on the computer eventually here once they Yep. Be his his we've talked about his one cousin in Australia, which, he plays with, but the the local cousins as it were are primarily on the Xbox and stuff and don't have the the computer to play on.
Chris:So, but then they haven't that's the thing with whatever. That's a a sub debate, but, you know, Microsoft's charging for online payment or online matchmaking with their Xbox Live thing means you have to commit someone to buy Minecraft, which isn't too hard to convince, but then you also have to convince said kid's parents to pay the, whatever it is, 30 or $40 a year for Xbox Live so that they can play Right. On top of buying the console and everything else. So, not that it's that high of price, obviously, but just
Tim:Does the does plate does the PlayStation, online platform have an annual fee?
Chris:I don't think they do. Someone can correct us if we're wrong. My hunch is that they didn't or
Tim:my Is PlayStation Live? Is that what it is?
Chris:No. I think it's PlayStation Network. PSN. Yeah. That sounds right.
Tim:PSN Yeah. Costs. Yeah. It's it's a long stuff actually. Like, I haven't had a PlayStation since '2.
Chris:Oh, yeah?
Tim:And I actually just barely even used it because I happened to get a Wii around the same time, and the Wii was just so much more fun.
Chris:Oh, yeah. I know we're I was always the Xbox and going back, like, Xbox, and then before that, it was a Sega Genesis or something, I think. Anyways, I had the Nintendo original Nintendo Entertainment System, but then from then on, I skipped I'd went the other way and didn't go Nintendo. Always went. Because I wanted the more extreme hardcore gaming is how I Right.
Chris:Exactly. Figured it was or whatever. But but, yeah, now there's whole archive of, old library of old Nintendo games that I missed out on due to my, ignorance or perceived Right. Unfunness or something. I don't know what I was thinking.
Tim:PlayStation Plus.
Chris:There you go.
Tim:PlayStation Plus is you can buy it. You can prepay for twelve months for $50.
Chris:Oh, okay. So they do charge similar.
Tim:I mean, it makes sense because that infrastructure is just not cheap and there's no way No. There's no way they could like, they're selling those consoles basically at a loss. So they've gotta make their money back somehow.
Chris:Yeah. There's no way Xbox Live, I don't think, would have sustained itself based on, you know, gaming fees or whatever from developers and stuff. Yep. It couldn't have especially the to the degree it has and and stuff, but yeah. Yep.
Chris:Alright. So with, digging for news, which we kinda just went over random stuff, but, the one follow-up, I I think it was just a follow-up from our Twitter account, but a tech nerd guy I follow who's also a dad and, sort of in the Apple world, but he coauthored a new book called The Visual Guide to Minecraft, and I think it's available through Peachpit Press. Link will be in the show notes. But, looks like an interesting little book if you're a parent or what otherwise, someone who's just new to Minecraft, and wants to get into, some learning about this. And, you can either buy a book, like a paperback book for about 15 to $20 or a bundle of with ebook for $22, or just ebook for $13.
Chris:So, yeah. It's, I I haven't read it myself yet. The I respect him as a a writer and author just based on his blogging and stuff and other stuff he's been involved with. But, it's, yeah. It looks like a good start to getting a bunch of It does look good.
Chris:So Yeah. Something to try out or find it at your library when it eventually comes out if you're cheap like me sometimes. Which actually that reminds me, have a there's a library book on hold, Minecraft. The the actual Mojang's published series. There's a new one on combat, I think it was, that just came out.
Chris:I think I mentioned that last episode, but anyway Cool. Coming out, so it's available now, you know, bookstores and libraries and whatever and stuff. So
Tim:Yep. Those are the ones with the, like, very distinctive illustrations on the cover.
Chris:Yeah. Like, make
Tim:Like, there's a whole series of them?
Chris:Yeah. I think there's up to four or five, I think. But, yeah, they look like, they're really visually nice. Like, lots of full page screenshots and stuff.
Tim:Right. They're striking.
Chris:Yeah. Definitely worth looking at and checking out at, you know, your bookstore or whatever and and not that most kids will have nice little library on the shelf maybe that they but they're they're actually nice little hardcover books that, I suspect would hold up to being played with. Most kids, like, probably, like, my son even at seven looked at the book. The we've got them. He devours them in, you know, in in one sitting and then doesn't really go back to it necessarily to remember how to do stuff.
Chris:He probably just retains it better than I do. But whereas, yeah, a lot of kids will just go online for, like, how to do this or that. But it does kinda make a nice little way to, like, talk it through with your kids, figure out if you're a parent who doesn't understand Minecraft, read it with your kids and understand what's actually going on with the game and things like that when you're talking about withers and creepers and all that kind of stuff. So reading is good. Anything else for news that you had?
Tim:Notch has left the building.
Chris:Oh.
Tim:Yeah. I I think it was it was either the last week or the week before. He sent out a tweet that was basically leaving the office for the last time just like any other day. So I didn't make a big deal out of it. Just kind of left the building.
Tim:And I I happen to know that, a bunch of Millionaire staff members had some are in Seattle. I think they might still be there. I think they've been there for, like, a week, and so they're just kind of obviously making plans.
Chris:Right. Figuring out their next step, next phase. And
Tim:I was watching a streamer the other day, and apparently, I had just missed Notch who had been making some comments to the streamer, in his chat.
Chris:Oh, nice.
Tim:And it it wasn't a Minecraft chat.
Chris:Interesting. Yeah. He's kinda like the, Internet celebrity, aye, of
Tim:Oh, totally.
Chris:Sort of popping in and
Tim:He's he's gonna be famous for quite a long time because I mean, he he really was the like, not just the face of Minecraft, but the guy who created Minecraft. And and somehow everybody who plays Minecraft or a ton of people who play Minecraft strongly associate him with the game, you know, especially kids when when you maybe this is, like, the first time that, like, the creator of such a popular game has been, that such a popular game has become, pop has become available during, like, the era of social media. Yeah. So kids kids, were able to find out who created the game and actually, like, reach out to him, and feel like he was an accessible person. You know?
Chris:Yeah. And that's what I remember, like, growing up with, like, say, Doom or or Wolfenstein, like John Carmack and and the ID software folks was it was kinda like that there's at least still a degree or two removed where you would go to a website, a blog or whatever that they had posted on and refresh and see the post, but it still didn't feel like the same kind of connection.
Tim:Right? People had no representation. Like, might have a blog, but that's not nearly as personal as Yeah. Your your Twitter or your Facebook account.
Chris:Yeah. Exactly. Totally. And so what was they they had like a dot plan thing or something where they'd post anyways, that's more nerdy than probably our audience is here. Sam is getting frustrated that we're not talking about more Minecraft stuff.
Tim:So It's all Minecraft stuff.
Chris:Come on.
Tim:Yeah.
Chris:Anything else from the past from the past couple weeks?
Tim:I don't think so. I just thought it was interesting that that clearly the company is moving on and Mhmm. And just kind of just missing notch on Twitch is like makes it clear that, he's moving on as well.
Chris:Yeah. You're you're one finger or footsteps away from fame. Right. Well, we wanna thank, Campaign Monitor for sponsoring this episode of Never Dig Down and, of course, The Good Stuff Podcasting Network. They've been with us from the beginning, and, you can visit campaignmonitor.com to get started sending beautiful, easy newsletters today to your clients, friends, family, whoever you might wanna email, but, more specifically, a list of some sort that you want to, send beautiful newsletters to.
Chris:You can use their, Canvas, their template builder, which you can check out at canvas.cm to build your template for your newsletter in sixty seconds or less. I, had a templates or the newsletter for the good stuff network that I sent out. I had done up a template for it, a design, and was kind of in a rush because had to go get my kids or something. And it was like the quickest version I'd done of the of a template because I changed them every time just to play around with Canvas. And they actually wanted to feature it in the campaign monitors gallery of, you know, amazing newsletters or whatever template designs that they have.
Chris:And and so if I can do that in as quick as I did, you can probably do something even more amazing and better than than that, I'm sure. And so if you check out canvas.cm, like I said, or campaignmonitor.com, you can see all the details of how to use their amazing newsletter service. Thanks to Campaign Monitor, for supporting good stuff and Never Dig Down. So our main topic today, Tim.
Tim:Yes. We are moving on toward the end game. We're we're not there yet, but we're we're we're about to kind of take those steps that get us to the end game. The end of the game being finding the end, which means finding the end portal, which means finding a stronghold. And finding a stronghold is not trivial.
Tim:You need a lot of specific things to get to the stronghold. So the stronghold has the stronghold is is kinda like a dungeon. It's usually underground. If you get lucky, it might spawn as a very, small, you know, one room dungeon under the water, which happened to me recently. It was very surreal.
Tim:I was looking for this giant stronghold, and it just happened to be this this one room just floating in the middle of the ocean, which, made life incredibly easy because it's not it's sometimes it's a pain in the butt to to fight your way through a stronghold. But to actually find a stronghold, a world will generate I I think there's a distance that a stronghold won't spawn within another distant within within, another stronghold. So there could be multiple strongholds in a world, but, there's a technique for finding strongholds, and that is to get an eye of ender and to throw it in the air. And that eye of ender will then float toward the nearest portal. And so what you wanna do is you need to get a a couple of eyes of ender because, when you throw one of these eyes of ender and it points in the view in the direction, there's a chance that it will break, and you won't get it back.
Tim:So whenever you throw the eye offender, watch the direction it goes, make a note of it, and then run and see if you can pick up the eye offender again. This is incredibly annoying if the eye offender takes you over the ocean because then the eyebender will be dropping into the water, and you have to drop into the water to find your eyebender all the
Chris:time. Right. Well, that's what I was gonna say is even going up over a hill or like, will it I've never played too much with the eye of an ender pearls or whatever, but the will it sort of stay x height above the ground no matter what's in front of it?
Tim:Well, when you throw it, it goes up to a certain height and then kind of goes forward and then floats and then drops. Oh. I haven't actually done it while, like, facing a hill, so I don't I don't actually know the the answer to that question if it'll go through the hill or if it'll, like, go up up up over the hill. That's actually a really good question. I might check that out.
Tim:But but it hasn't come up, so I'm I'm inclined to think that that it's that maybe they programmed it so that won't that won't be an issue.
Chris:Because you you would normally, like, find a sort of a big wide open space and then Yeah. A desert or whatever. Right?
Tim:Yeah. Exactly. And actually, like, I wanna say, like, 75% of the time, the strongholds I find, they're not in the ocean, like this kind of micro stronghold I was talking about, but they're under the ocean. So I'll have to, like, grab a boat, and I will have to be throwing under an eyes of ender into the air as I'm sailing my boat. But you like I said, you want a few eyes of ender.
Tim:Like, I don't I don't try without at least three because what I wanna do is I wanna throw an eye of ender, note the direction, and then run that direction for as far as I can as far as I feel like, like, maybe for a couple of minutes, and then throw it again. And if it goes in a different direction actually, I'm gonna step back for a second. When you make that first throw, mark the direction, but then run 90 degrees from that direction for a little while, and then throw it again, and then mark that direction. What you can do then is you can triangulate and you can find the intersection of those two positions.
Chris:Right. I think I follow what you said. I'm gonna have to do it like a sketch sketch. Yeah. But I I know what you mean.
Tim:So, like, find your find a big field or something or find yourself, like, on a big empty desert or something so it's easy to run. So throw, note the direction it goes, and then run, like, 45 or 90 degree 90 degrees away from that. So a bit like, turn left and then just run for a couple of minutes. And then throw the eye again and note the direction that that one goes. Where those two directions intersect is where the stronghold is going to be.
Chris:Right. Nice.
Tim:So then you can just run, run, run, and then you'll have to keep throwing ender pearls or eyes of ender to make sure you're going the right direction. But, also, when you get over the stronghold, the eye of ender will stop flying forward a bit. It'll actually fly up and just hover there for a bit and then fall down. And that's when you know you were over the stronghold.
Chris:And that's when you start digging down?
Tim:Yes. Yeah. And like I said, most of the time, it, for me, at least in my experience, the strongholds have been under the the ocean bed. So you you, like, literally have to, what I do is I bring a whole ton of sand, and it's even more complicated than that. Because, what I do is I was I wanna make a tunnel down to the bottom of the ocean so I don't have to swim down.
Tim:Mhmm. So I need I wanna make a tube, and so I make a tube of four giant stacks of sand. And then you fill up the middle of it, and then you empty out the middle of it, and there won't be any more water in it.
Chris:Right. Just by digging down through it.
Tim:Right. Which But it's more complicated than that because you can't just place sand or anything on water. So you're gonna need to make, like, a land bridge from the closest point of land. So grab a whole like, a couple stacks of dirt and then just start placing it and make it, a one by whatever path from the beach to where your stronghold is. And then you can use that land bridge to place your sand on.
Tim:And then once you place the sand, like, on the side of the land bridge, the sand will fall down to the bottom. So you just keep placing sand, keep placing sand until it appears at the top of the ocean, and then you can make your little tube. Right. And then, ideally, what you do is you put ladders in the tubes. You don't have to jump up and down all the time.
Chris:Yeah. And it it so it can go quite far down, I guess, is what I'm saying. Like, when you're dropping sand off the edge
Tim:of the dozens and dozens of blocks down.
Chris:Yeah. Okay. Cool.
Tim:Yep. So you wanna get like multiple stacks of sand and just to be just to be safe.
Chris:And the reason you use sand as opposed to anything else is?
Tim:Well, you could use gravel, but I use sand or gravel because you can place sand or gravel on the side of your land bridge and it will then sink down to the bottom of the ocean.
Chris:Right. Because any other material will just
Tim:attach salt. To the side of the land the land bridge.
Chris:And if you're you're swimming in the water in the ocean or whatever you're call it, the you can't just throw sand out of
Tim:off of yourself. Can't just place you can't just place a block in the water. The any block needs something to grab onto, and water is not gonna be it. Yeah. So, I mean, theoretically, you could swim down to the bottom and just start placing blocks from the bottom up, but that's dangerous because that's gonna it's gonna be difficult, and it's gonna be hard, and you could drown.
Chris:Right. And that's there's those
Tim:to just make a super long, you know, one block wide bridge from the closest beach you can find.
Chris:Yeah. Because there is the enchant or the what is it? The spell enchantment charm. What am I looking for? The where you can breathe underwater for a little while, but that would be Yeah.
Chris:Still not very efficient way of
Tim:Yeah. Well, you'd need you'd need there's an enchantment for breathing underwater, and then there's also an enchantment for, walking underwater. There's a potion of water breathing that you can get to get the, water breathing buff, but then there's a depth strider enchantment that you would want to apply to some boots. And that just sounds like a lot of work.
Chris:Yeah. Exactly. When there's sand a plenty in
Tim:my Oh, there's also the respiration, enchantment. So you get a helmet with respiration and, boots with depth strider, and you can basically walk and breathe underwater, like you can normally. But then also, you would wanna get a potion of night vision so you could actually see underwater.
Chris:Right.
Tim:And that just sounds like more work than just making a long stupid lanternage.
Chris:Exactly. I'm just saying if somebody wants to go the long way around, they can they can do that too.
Tim:Yep. They're big into enchanting.
Chris:Yeah. Exactly. So picking up on last episode or I think it was yeah. It was last episode, right, that we talked. They just wanna practice their enchantments.
Chris:Get get good. Don't wanna lose that muscle.
Tim:Absolutely.
Chris:So okay. Before I derail this, where were we in actually getting to the stronghold?
Tim:Right. So we're kind of working our way backwards. There's the ender portal in the stronghold, and to find the stronghold, you need the eye of ender. But to get the eyes of ender, you actually need ender pearls. You need the recipe for the eye of ender is one blaze powder and one ender pearl.
Tim:And so blaze powder, obviously, you will have had to make a trip to the nether to kill some blazes. But the ender pearls are quickly becoming my least favorite part of the game. I'm not sure if they changed the behavior of the endermen, but endermen are the only way to, go out and find ender pearls, in the world. Sometimes they show up randomly in chests and dungeons, but that's not gonna happen often enough for you to be able to count on it. And the endermen so you have to find not only do have to find endermen, you have to kill endermen, you have to get lucky enough that they're gonna drop some ender pearls.
Tim:And the best way to that I have found to find endermen is to find a big open flat area, like either a plains or a desert or something, and build yourself a little hill in the middle of that, and then build yourself a little, enclosure. Like, build a build, like, a two by two wall and give that two by two wall a little roof that sticks out one block just so that you can fit yourself under it, and there's no empty blocks above your head. Because the Endermen are just over two blocks high, and because they're over two blocks high, they won't be able to fit under that ledge, and they won't be able to get to you. The trick the trick to killing an enderman is to get yourself a decent sword. Yeah.
Tim:A diamond sword would be best, but an an iron sword is fine because there's a trick to it. Everybody knows that when you stare at an enderman, it starts making faces at you and it starts making a crazy noise and it and it starts moving toward you. But what you do is once you're under this ledge, when you're in little you're in little enclosure, look at an enderman. So it comes toward you and it's all agro and then hit its feet. If you hit its feet, it won't transport away like they want to do.
Tim:So you can just sit there under the little ledge. It'll be trying to get to you, but because you're, because this roof is two blocks high, it won't be able to get to you, and you could just sit there whacking its feet.
Chris:Nice. There's a few, I've seen a couple of people doing something similar to that with, like zombies you can do. You build, like, a zombie trap similar to that idea of basically, the the attack, whatever vector or whatever for a zombie is obviously your upper body. Mhmm. And so their feet can't they don't kick, I guess.
Chris:They haven't figured out how to kick people. And so similarly, I guess, for Enderman. Right? If if I'm following your
Tim:audio visual. You can you can, like, the way to aggro an Enderman is to look at his at his chest. But if you if you hit his chest, not only is he going to have the opportunity to hit you back, but if you hit his chest, he may transport away, you know, even behind you and then come and tuck you from behind. But if you hit his feet for whatever reason, they don't transport away.
Chris:Funny little
Tim:Unfortunately, I have found that this worked better in Minecraft 1.6 than it does in 1.7 or 1.8. For whatever reason, the and and in my experience, this may not be new behavior. But, in my experience, endermen are, spawning less frequently at night, and they're also less apt to come right up to you when you aggro them. Sometimes I have to go out and really and really fight them outside of my little enclosure. They used to just come right up to you, but they're less apt to do that any longer.
Tim:And when you Sorry. And it goes without saying once you bunch once you built this little enclosure I guess it doesn't go without saying because I didn't say it, but I should say it. When you built your little enclosure in the middle of the desert or flat plains, the reason you're building a little hill is you can get a little elevation so you can see the end of it spawning, and so you can look at them and bring them to you hopefully. But you obviously also need to do this at night, so you're also gonna be battling other stuff. So you like skeletons and zombies and spiders, All the other normal stuff that spawns at night.
Tim:So make sure you're well protected in terms of, maybe having multiple swords with you and making sure you've got really good armor on.
Chris:And is this would this be a case of having the Golem idea with you? Doing something like that?
Tim:Could be, but you don't want the Golem to be attacking the Yeah. The Enderman. Right. Yeah. Because if you attack the Enderman or if they're attacking the Enderman, I don't know what the if that changes the odds on the Endermans making the drops, dropping the Ender pearls.
Chris:Right. Because presumably when they whack an Enderman, it destroys a complete as opposed to Yeah.
Tim:Maybe. I'm not sure.
Chris:Yeah. But you just don't know. Yep. Yeah. And when you were earlier, you're saying, just for people who maybe it's a it's a nerdism or whatever, but aggroing an enderman, meaning what?
Chris:What does that mean?
Tim:Oh, getting them all aggressive and and and if you once you aggro them, they'll they'll get angry at you and they'll come attack you. Right. Otherwise otherwise, they'll ignore you.
Chris:Kinda like ticking them off or, I'm trying to think of what the Australian for Sam would be, but, making them act
Tim:It's kinda like there's some kind of arrangement we've made with the Enderman. It's like, we'll live in the same world. That's fine. Let's just leave each other alone. But if you look at us, we're really coming after you.
Chris:Yeah. Which I think we've talked about before. Anybody who's played Minecraft knows how freaky that just like because you don't even have to be doing it on purpose. You're just walking around and all of sudden Enderman pops up and you're like, you're looking at it and you're just like yeah.
Tim:It's a really scary noise.
Chris:And it's it's a testament to the sound design and stuff of what I would assume it when it was made anyways is fairly amateurish, like, not that they didn't know what they were doing, but fairly amateur designers, like Yep. You know, and
Tim:I'm sure they had a low budget when they first came up with
Chris:Yeah.
Tim:A lot of stuff.
Chris:But the fact that they got it so right or maybe it's the history of just having that, you know, playing it at night or whatever. That sound. But either way, good job on that. Yep. Notch.
Chris:Incoming.
Tim:So, the tricky thing is that like, it's not hard to find a couple of endermen, but the tricky thing is you might need you might need a dozen or more Ender pearls at the end of the day, because you're gonna need a couple of Eyes of Ender to to look for the stronghold unless you happen to get really lucky and stumble across it, which has never happened to me. Because so you need a couple to you need couple couple eyes of vendors to throw, but then you might need as many as 12 eyes of vendor to activate the end portal. Once you find the stronghold, and then find the room with the end portal in it, The end portal is it's a it's a four by four it's a four by four ring of ender pearls set inside stones. It's four by four, but the corners aren't filled in. So it's actually there are only twelve twelve eyes of vendor.
Tim:But some of them might be filled in, but sometimes they're empty. And even if some of them are filled in, it's usually only one or two. So you usually need at least 10 to 12 eyes of ender to drop into the into the end portal to activate it. And getting all those ender pearls is a pain in the butt.
Chris:Right. And because is there any like, you've talked a bit about finding endermen or or how to attack them and stuff, but is there any other tricks to, like, certain they appear in better places?
Tim:Men spawn? No. Like, the really, the best strategy I found, and and I've done some googling on this, the best strategy I found is you really just need to sit in an elevated portion of a wide flat area so that because stuff's only gonna spawn near you or relatively near you within a couple of chunks of you. And so you want a big flat area, and even ideally make that area a desert surrounded by water because they're not gonna spawn on water. So you just need to sit there and wait and watch for them to spawn in, and then agro them as soon as you see them.
Chris:Right. So they come after you. Yeah.
Tim:Yep. And just FYI, arrows do no good because as soon as you an arrow is about to hit an Enderman, he will teleport away.
Chris:Oh, they got that.
Tim:Yeah. You have to have to fight them up close. You have to melee them.
Chris:Yeah. And sword like a diamond sword or iron sword or whatever you the highest level sword.
Tim:If you're under the ledge and, you know, they're not hitting you, you can kill Enderman with really anything. You know, like, even if you're doing, you know, one point of damage per hit, like hitting with your fist. You can kill an Enderman with your fist if he's not hitting you back.
Chris:Right. Yeah. I gotcha. Stay at a safe distance and walk away forever. Alright.
Tim:Totally. So I think that's really that's getting to the end game. That's this finding the stronghold, using the eyes of ender by throwing them. Once you're in the stronghold, which is basically a big dungeon, and there's often a big library with chandeliers, and there's usually plenty of zombie and skeleton spawners, The the trick to finding the room with the end portal in it is to listen for the little, the end portal room has a silver fish silver fish spawner in it. So listen for those little snick snick snick little noises that the silverfish make, and then you can probably follow those noises to the room with the end portal in it.
Chris:And that yeah. So I was gonna say, like, for somebody who if this is what you're going after, is there any way like, I'm just thinking of somebody who stumbles on on something like this or, like, I mean, I guess unless you're often like you said, it's often underwater. So it's not like you'd just be walking, digging into a cavern and stumble upon it very lightly. But how does it differentiate itself from a different kind of, like, dungeony space that you
Tim:I think the the regular dungeony places are, lined with cobblestone. So if you're mining and you're digging through stone and you see a whole bunch of cobblestone that you didn't place, that's probably a dungeon. And so there's probably some chests in there, there's probably some mine carts in there, and there's probably some monster spawners in there, some mom spawners. If you're digging along and you find what looks like stone bricks, like gray bricks, and sometimes they're cracked and sometimes they're kind of greenish mossy, those stone bricks are a hallmark of a stronghold.
Chris:Gotcha. Yeah. Because I can think of when I've played, like, where you you kinda digging around and you stumble across something, you might not even recognize it as being something different than others. Like, it looks different, but it might not Yeah. Recognize why or what's the level of importance, I guess, especially
Tim:Strongholds are awesome. They're kinda creepy. But and they're like strongholds are like, a place where people used to live, but the monsters have taken over.
Chris:Right. Okay. And the same similar with the ender the portal. Sorry. I was gonna say ender pool, but, the portal that you would is it something where you would you have to, like just like the nether portal, you have to actually physically sort of drop through?
Chris:I'm looking at a little picture from Yeah. But
Tim:Yeah. So the so the where where the the Nether portal is vertical, the end portal is horizontal. And where the the Nether portal will take a few moments to transport you through, the end portal does it immediately. Right. So there's no, like, oh, I don't wanna do this.
Tim:Like, once you're committed, you're committed.
Chris:Yeah. And I see what you mean, like, as far as where you have to drop the ender pearls right into just looking at the picture now. Yeah. And that's what I I guess what I was getting with trying to figure out for folks why where they are is like where a traditional game, you walk through and the music gets intense and you, you know, there's cut scenes to tell you that this is what's happening and you're about to do this and the end battle and all that kind of stuff. In Minecraft, it's kinda or maybe there's different music here, but, you know, you you stumble across stuff and it doesn't change the game at all.
Chris:It just Yeah. It's just there and even There yeah.
Tim:There are very few, you know, atmospheric indicators that you're where you want to be.
Chris:Yeah. Like, because this, you know, you could stump in theory, I guess, you could stumble across this and not really recognize that, actually, this is the way that I could finish the game or whatever you would call it. But Yeah. And not really even recognize it and leave and think, oh, there's I can't I'm walking around these little things. Nothing seems to be happening.
Chris:Looks kinda
Tim:Yeah. I I don't I don't think there's a whole I don't think there's a big chance of that with the stronghold because, like, you might stumble across a stronghold. I don't know how often that happens in the real world. You might stumble across one. But
Chris:Right.
Tim:I think you would recognize it as being something significant, because it's got this gray brick that you've never seen before, and it has a and it and it's they're fairly large, and there are doors and passageways and and multiple levels and, you know, a big library with chandeliers and books and all kinds of monsters and cobwebs all over the place. And it just looks significant in a way that nothing else that you stumble across in the world does.
Chris:Right. Alright. So do you wanna save the what happens on the other side of the portal for next next
Tim:I will I will say that once you're once you've gone through the portal, there's no way back until you either die or kill the dragon.
Chris:And is that so that does that actually end? So you kill the dragon, let's say, obviously, you die, you go back to your wherever your last spawn point was.
Tim:If you're if you're playing survival.
Chris:Right. If you are not hardcore like you.
Tim:Right? Yes. Yes. But if
Chris:you kill a dragon no. You know what? We'll we'll save it till next time. We don't wanna spoil Is there a like you say, I'm starting out from day one Mhmm. To getting to the point where I'm about to drop through that end portal.
Chris:Yeah. How like, a normal person, how long do you think that would take to what we've described here in over nine episodes, give or take, in real world playtime? How do you think like, is that to me, that sounds like something that would take, say, a couple days of not eight hour days of playing, but, like Right.
Tim:Yeah. You know. No. I think, I think it could be done, you know, we we could have done it over the course of the nine hours that we've been talking about it.
Chris:Right. Okay.
Tim:I think if I think the speedruns, the target for speedruns is under two hours.
Chris:Right. That's a very experienced folks, you know, trying
Tim:to do exactly what they're looking for. Yeah. And that really depends on getting a good Spawn point. World generation. Yeah.
Chris:Yeah. Yeah. And I think just bringing up the the the amount of time for folks who are thinking that I wanna finish Minecraft or or complete it or whatever to get that achievement and stuff like that, but recognizing that it's not a, the one sitting tip oh, some people could do it once. I wish I had those days again sometimes, but the the the one sitting kind of of playtime or whatever, it's not entirely realistic, but, but just to pace yourself, I guess, and and enjoy the journey to that point and then yeah. Yeah.
Chris:Work your way up to it. So cool. Alright. Well, something to look forward to for episode 10. It seems like a nice round number.
Chris:We like, as if we planned that, very well to take 10 episodes to cover finishing the Thanks
Tim:to the end. Yep.
Chris:We had some listener listener q and a question from, listener Nick. I said his last name ready, but, Nick, sent us an email last time and sent us another one this week, which is awesome. Thanks. You can email me, [email protected] with, any Minecraft related questions you might have. So his question was, hey, Chris and Tim.
Chris:I have a question. How do you do you find an underwater temple? And on a scale from one to 10, how hard is it to find one of these temples? I love you guys. Keep up the good work.
Chris:Smiley face three? No. What's that? I'm I'm not up on my emoticons. Anyway.
Chris:I don't know.
Tim:I can't see it.
Chris:Okay. What's
Tim:So the underwater temples are actually, they're actually officially called ocean monuments, and they're new in 01/2008. And the ocean monuments are the only place that you can find certain things like sponges and sea lanterns and a certain kind of a new kind of block called prismarine. And finding an ocean monument is I don't think that there actually is a strategy for finding the monuments. I've only seen one once, and it just happened to be because I spawned on a beach where from which I could see an ocean monument. And when you when you what you see when you see an ocean monument is really just kind of like an area of the ocean that looks a little bit brighter.
Tim:Yostra monuments spawn only in deep ocean because they're fairly big, and they they take up a lot of space. So I think the only way to go looking for them is to is to just grab a boat and just start sailing around and seeing if you can find one, and obviously going to chunks that you haven't been to before so that they're loading up new. I don't know if this is true or not, but somebody recently told me, and I've been meaning to to science it to figure it out, that if you spend less than three minutes in a chunk, you can leave that chunk. And after three minutes, the game will forget how it generated that chunk. Perhaps perhaps, it's only partially right, and it doesn't and it only forgets parts of what it generated, like specific features like mobs or plants or something.
Tim:But there's something about there's a three minute mark where the game commits a chunk to memory. So I don't know if there's a strategy to sailing out through a bunch of chunks and then waiting some time and then sailing through those chunks again if there's a chance that something else something will have spawned during that time. I don't think that's true, but there's I wanna figure out what this three minute, buffer is.
Chris:Interesting. Because you think, yeah, like, obviously, if you put something down somehow, it has to then start remembering or saving that that space, but
Tim:especially the action is yeah. Yeah. I've so I've been I I need to figure out what that three minute, buffer is all about.
Chris:Right. And so that's that was a question, I guess, related to that sort of and and maybe you kind of answered it in there, but, like, with with this being a new thing in 1.8, you said. Right? Mhmm. If you have a previous saved game that you started in, let's say it was one seven or whatever Mhmm.
Chris:Are these things gonna get added just, like, maybe already where you've been and there might just all of a sudden be now in Ocean Monuments?
Tim:Only in chunks that you haven't been to before.
Chris:Right. Okay.
Tim:So new new stuff, if you if you started a world in a previous version of Minecraft and open it up in a new version of Minecraft, I think there's some small chance of the world getting corrupt, but but definitely, there's no chance of a new block spawning in a chunk that you've already loaded.
Chris:Right. New animals can spawn around the world. Right? But
Tim:Yeah. Not necessarily like a horse or There's not gonna be any of the new ores in any of the places that you've already been mining.
Chris:Right. Right. Interesting. Interesting how that works. Okay.
Chris:So hope that answers your question, Nick. And like I said
Tim:Well, just so you know, when you do find an ocean monument, they are super brutal. You want to, just like before you go into the end, you wanna make sure you're buffed up. You wanna make sure you've got your armor. You wanna make sure you've got a bunch of weapons. And because this thing is underwater, you really do wanna go to that extra extra level, go to the take that extra step of making sure that you that you've got depth strider on your boots and respiration on your helmet and night vision so that you do make sure to actually maneuver in a reasonable way.
Chris:Because is it like a just looking at the picture online, but is it it's not a case where you, once you get into it, it's there's no water inside of it, or is it all still filled with water? Do you know what I'm saying?
Tim:I do know what you're saying, and I don't actually know. I assume it's I assume it's actually full of air because otherwise, you would drown if you went down without without the respiration or the potion of water breathing. But you water you really want that stuff to even get down there because even before you get to the temple, stuff comes flying out and attacking you.
Chris:Right. Just to get inside. Oh, okay. Yep. That makes sense.
Tim:Just getting inside the temple is a big, a big pain.
Chris:Right.
Tim:A big challenge.
Chris:Yeah. And maybe, like, visually, it's hard to miss, obviously, if you're down there that far and you it would, you know, visually, it would stick out as a thing that you'd wanna go check out.
Tim:Yeah. It's all lit up and you'll see it for sure. Yeah. It's just finding it. It's the big deal.
Tim:There's no there aren't not that I I don't think there are any there's no, like, ender or eye of ender style location, mechanic for finding an ocean monument.
Chris:Right. Okay. So, yeah, I hope that that answers your question, Nick, and, feel free to send any follow ups. We, love to answer listener q and a or listener questions, I guess, and we'll provide the a. And, [email protected] is where you can send that email.
Chris:And or tweet us, Never Dig Down underscore FM is where you can find us. And there goes the police car. Your find of the week was, is an oldie but a goodie. This is one of the first things I remember stumbling across, with Minecraft when I saw it in sort of tech news and stuff. But
Tim:Yeah. Me too. Like, I'd heard of Minecraft, but this, so this is we'll put a link in the show notes, obviously, but there's an article in The Escapist from 2011 called computer built in Minecraft has RAM performs division. And I was reading this article and seeing this video that really kind of woke me up to the capabilities of of the mechanics, in Minecraft, the machines that you can build, and the logic can you can build into them. It's really kind of amazing because a lot of it has no has nothing to do with the stated goals of the game, which is getting to the end and killing the dragon, but they're all about being creative and seeing what can be done if you introduce, you know, simple logic gates into Minecraft.
Tim:What can we do? Well, this guy built a computer, and it actually works and actually has memory and performs functions. And if you watch the video, it's, the video and other videos like it are actually kind of boring because it it takes time. But the things but your mind will still be a little bit blown because the the things that all these, like, switch these it's like visualizing the interior of a computer made out of, like literal switches and gates. It's fascinating.
Chris:Yeah. You do have to your, what's the word? Like, nerd score needs to be a little bit higher to sort of actually figure out that this is amazing because at first glance, it's kinda just like, well, there's just blocks.
Tim:It's kinda like your nerd score needs to be high to fully appreciate how it's working, but you don't need any you know, you know, you need a high nerd score to understand that something really cool is happening. Like, these like, they're obviously not physical gates and levers and blocks of stone and and wires and connections and what have you. But the fact that you can see, you know, physical levers flipping in front of you and watch your reaction, You know, put a number in, get a number out. Yeah. That kinda blew my mind a little bit.
Chris:Yeah. Well, sir, and definitely way back when, like, was 2011 when this sort of came out and well before the whole, like, YouTube Minecraft phenomenon Mhmm. Hit in a big way. And and there's another one, Minecraft CPU performing division that'll throw in there as well. He's got a few that
Tim:Since then, somebody has built a dual core CPU. Jeez.
Chris:Yeah. And there's like printers and, you know, all Yeah. Yeah. Anyway Yeah. It's insane, obviously.
Chris:But just going back to what where it kind of like started or whatever.
Tim:Yeah. I don't know if you've ever read, The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.
Chris:No.
Tim:But The Diamond Age kinda follows the story of a of a little girl who grew up in poverty, but was given this very special book, which was designed to teach, to teach young girls how to become, like, not just empowered, but also kind of become so empowered that whoever reads this book could could basically become intelligent and skilled enough to, like, rule the world. And, like, one of the, quote, unquote, scenes in this book is the little girl has to you know, is kind of taken imprisoned in a in a castle, which is run by this duke who turns out to be all mechanical. And throughout the castle, she finds all kinds of chains, and she figures out that the chains are loops of logic, and she can flip the chains so that they represent zero and one, and she can and through that process, she learns how to kind of reprogram the duke in his castle so that he's on her side. And that's kind of the level of of mind blowing you can get to in this Minecraft thing where you can build these logic gates out of physical things and actually see these computer concepts right in front of you.
Tim:And like building building a Turing machine in Minecraft is obviously something that people have been trying to do for a while as well.
Chris:Yeah. And it's it's awesome. It's like, yeah, on a on nerd level, computer level, and just the fun of of being able to do this in, well, either console or your computer or whatever and and building this kind of stuff is Yep. Crazy.
Tim:Yeah. So I think, I think last time we said we were gonna start getting into machines, and we will. Once we get through the end game and killing the dragon and whatnot, we'll definitely be moving on to machines.
Chris:Yeah. I think we'll we'll explore the the future of how Never Dig Down goes, we've sort of hinted at, you know, YouTube stuff. And maybe at some point, it might have make sense to sort of abandon our audio format for a while and move to just a a YouTube channel for a a few scenes or or episodes or whatever you wanna call it.
Tim:Definitely, use the audio podcast to get some experts in here and Yeah. Talk talk to them about mods and talk to them about machines and
Chris:Yeah.
Tim:Just talk to them about what about everything that can be done in Minecraft.
Chris:And there's actually and there's sort of spin offs too of, the whole parenting and kids and stuff. I saw a designer friend who well, I don't know if he's a friend. He follows me. I follow him. But on Twitter, Cameron Moll, he tweeted about how a while ago they'd made the decision to actually ban Minecraft from their home, with their kids because they saw
Tim:some Yeah. Saw
Chris:that. Addiction issues they thought maybe or whatever. And so, you know, talking with about folks like that, I don't there's each family is different, obviously, so I'm not all about, you know, what works for one doesn't necessarily work for the other. But still interesting discussions to have about, about that kind of stuff. So Mhmm.
Chris:If you are such a person who listened to this and and you were at all interested in podcast discussions like that and want to appear on the show, I'd love to hear from you as well. Again, Chris at good stuff dot f m. And, yeah, we'd love to have some some folks on, other folks on.
Tim:For sure.
Chris:So, Tim, where can folks tweet at you or follow you if they so desire?
Tim:I'm at Murtaugh on Twitter. That's m u r t a u g h.
Chris:Nice. And I'm iChris on Twitter. And, like we said, you can find Never Dig Down on Twitter at neverdigdown underscore FM. On the web, goodstuff.fm/neverdigdown. And then if you put a slash nine, you'll find this episode.
Chris:We have lots of other shows if you're interested in other tech and other sort of discussion podcasts, news, and being a grown up and all sorts of other topics that are discussed in the shows at, goodstuff.fm. And we would love it if you took the time to throw a quick rating or review in iTunes if you use Apple's iTunes to find podcasts at all. Going to the Never Dig Down page on iTunes and leaving a rating or review really helps us get the word out about the show. It sort of lets Apple know, hey, this show is interesting, and other people should find out about it as well. So that would be really appreciated and, I think that's everything I have to say.
Chris:So thanks for listening. Have a great day. Bye.
Tim:See you next time.