Minecraft on Xbox 360: alone in the dark

Large inanimate object? Keanu Reeves.

You'll only need a bit of wood.

Ed, are you sure somebody didn't put a minecraft sticky label onto a dark souls CD before giving it to you?

Much of the time, Minecraft is a deeply terrifying game. Stray out after sundown, and you'll be mauled by zombies and spiders or pierced by the arrows of unseen skeleton archers. Die, and everything you were carrying falls with your corpse. The uneven, procedurally generated terrain is full of natural ambush points and pitfalls. Home-made armour and weapons degrade with use, leaving you high and dry at the worst possible moments. Many of the monsters (not including the Creepers, sadly) can't spawn in well-lit areas, and the consequence is that you develop a caveman's dread of darkness. It's Neolithic in there, people. Bring your animal instincts.

Sounds like it to me!?

I'd like you to build a chess set suitable only for giants.

Really quite intrigued with this.Was checking out the tutorials for it the other week on you tube.Very deep game for what on the surface looks like something on the Spectrum 48k (which is thirty years old).I think i might take a punt on it to be fair,what i have seen of it on the tutorials looks like endless hours of fun.There should be some quite regular updates and that with it as well as i understand.I am thinking of doing something cheesy,like a big skull in the middle of the island or something.

First thing I did was build a replica of my house, but that's because I am sad.

Best thing to do if you are short on stone and other resources is build a shack out in the wilderness or in a mountain with an internal dimensions of 7x7x3 (Length x Width x Height)
Ensuring you have enough ladders, dig a 5x5 hole in the centre of your new room, layer by layer placing torches every once in a while.
Maybe add a few floors every once in a while to expand your mine outwards and keep digging till you hit bedrock, or lava.

Now you have an aesthetically pleasing mining shaft for those of us with OCD.
Who knows, you might find some diamonds...

Had this on PC for about a year and a half now. Fantastic experience. For the less creatively-minded (like me), one of the easiest (and most aesthetically pleasing) buildings to start with is a castle. Or hollow out a mountain to call home, and put lava-spewing holes on the outer shell for a nice effect Or dig for diamond! The world is your oyster!

Also, remember coal. Coal is your friend and you must treat him nicely

Looking forwards to this a lot, probably as much as I was Mass Effect 3... screw the witcher 2 this is GOTY right here.

Westeros.

Have a nice, busy 10 years!

It's fun to all run in different directions, find materials to craft as much armour and weapons as possible, then return at a set time (eg: midday on day 3) for a duel to the death.

Most game starts are usually:

• Punch tree - make crafting table - make wooden pick - get three stone - make stone pick - get coal - make torches
* (Also, while you're doing this - get meat and cook in a furnace) (oops - IGNORE - no hunger bar)
• Now you need to go cave exploring for iron and diamonds

Ooh, I like the sound of duelling. And the chess set idea could work. I wonder if there's a way to make it actually playable, perhaps by mechanising the board or something. Would probably take forever. As would crafting a scale model of Whiterun, which was my first thought.

Matt's nicked the build and done a video with it. Look out for that later today.

It's a shame this isn't the latest PC stage of Minecraft, as you have to eat to survive, there are NPC villages and better dungeones to explore!

Couple more tips -

Never dig straight up or straight down. Never.

When cave exploring, it's a good idea to put torches on one side of the passage only (I put them on the right), to help navigating out again.

Oh, and I didn't realise there's no hunger bar - you can ignore the cooking meat part in my post above.

Once you get a base camp set up I like to make myself a map, compass and boat then take off and see what wonders my randomly generated world has to offer. Map and compass are a must because it is nearly impossible to find your way home without these tools.

You can make a map? And a boat? And a compass? Awesome.

When cave exploring, it's a good idea to put torches on one side of the passage only (I put them on the right), to help navigating out again.

That's genius - no idea why I never thought of that. Ace tip, man.

There are some good tutorials on You Tube for anything you might get stuck on.There is a series on there by an American guy,quite funny and very helpful.

Ooh, I like the sound of duelling. And the chess set idea could work. I wonder if there's a way to make it actually playable, perhaps by mechanising the board or something.
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The magic of redstone, friend, the magic of redstone...