Day (and Night) 1 - Preparing For The Voyage

I awoke amongst trees. I'd not seen trees like these before; they all seemed to have leaves trailing down to the ground and many were growing in water. A quick trip over to the Minecraft Wiki indicated that I was in a swampland biome.

Well, first things first - I started punching trees. Having gathered enough wood to make a workbench and some rudimentary tools, I had a look around to see if there were any obvious mountains nearby from which to gather stone. As luck would have it, there were. One in particular was visible above the trees just a few hops and a short swim away. I headed over.

Using my flimsy wooden pickaxe, I extracted some stone from the side of the mountain, carving a neat square hole into the wall. I decided to take it deeper, created a new workbench to put into the cave I was digging out, added a furnace and a chest, turned some wood into charcoal to make torches with, created stone versions of my tools and stuck a wooden door across the entrance for good measure. Now I'd have somewhere safe to spend the first night before my journey began.

I then headed out to gather some food (the sight of a "hunger" bar on the screen hinted that perhaps food might be more essential than on my last round-the-world trip) and found a small group of pigs that I quickly turned into raw porkchops for cooking later. I also chopped down a couple more trees to keep my wood supplies up. By this point, the sun was getting low in the sky, so I headed for my first night's home, grabbing a few blocks of sand on the way (I like to have windows in my caves to keep an eye on what - or who - is outside).

Once safely inside, and the sun was well and truly below the horizon, I turned my sand into glass and had a go at crafting a few of the new "thin" window panes. I installed one near the cave entrance and stuck a few glass blocks around the door for improved exit visibility.

As I hadn't yet found any sheep so didn't have wool with which to make a bed, I decided to spent the night tunnelling my way through the mountain to get a glimpse of the other side. It didn't take long, as this was not a very big mountain. I put another pane of glass at the end of the tunnel and noticed the sky was already starting to get light. I must have spent longer than I thought messing around with my inventory.

It was time for the journey to begin.