I don’t know what to mine / I’ll mine this anyway

It’s not especially uncommon for someone who’s played Minecraft for a while to get caught up in thinking about the past.

The new updates are a different game from our first versions, many of the servers we played on in our youth have long shut down. Builds on multiplayer or downloadable maps, and builds we’ve made both in our own worlds and on other people’s infrastructure have been since swallowed by map resets, failed hard drives, dead MediaFire links, and any number of other things that the passage of time brings. Of the friends we’re still in contact with from those times, the enthusiasm for the game isn’t the same, because ultimately, life goes on.

I could name a few servers I used to frequent. MinecraftCC, Tiki-Craft, and if we’re going way back, World of Krull, before one of my elementary school friends got banned from it and we vowed never step foot in it again. Ah, memories. And later in my teens, I could never forget writing my first TUI in ComputerCraft Lua and getting temp-banned from SwitchCraft for finding a camping spot in one of their Mob Arena maps…

As somebody who spent lots of time playing on other people’s worlds, I find solace in having kept some of my personal worlds, even if in an archived form. Tucked away in my OneDrive, I have a folder of Minecraft worlds consolidated from a handful of computers that I’ve played the game on in the past, even including a few from 2011-2013.

Something I’m especially happy to have is even the files for CatCraft, a Minecraft 1.6.3 server that I managed to port forward, and somehow run on the shakiest DSL connection imaginable!

Through the more recent worlds, though, there was always something that kept me from really jumping into it. I played for a while, but only made a couple of builds, maybe a house and a filled double chest. It wasn’t very far in until I got bored of the world, or got caught up in something else and never returned. I don’t think it had really clicked for me outside of multiplayer.

I was down about this a little, but a little inspired too, so I wanted to try again for 2025. Since I haven’t had any prior attempts this year, and I felt like if I could sink a lot of hours into replaying Super Mario Galaxy over and over, surely I haven’t finished my time with this randomly generated block game quite yet.

This little blog post is gonna serve as a memento of the first six or so hours of World5, my first long-term Infdev world – and, possibly, one I’ll bring forward throughout the game’s update history.

Inf.. what?

That’s right: before Alpha, but after Indev, it’s Infdev! The intermediate versions that first introduced the infinite terrain Minecraft became known for. There isn’t a particular reason why I decided to go for Infdev, other than its novelty to me, just predating the boom of the “let’s play” format that proliferated on YouTube in the game’s alpha days and beyond.

I’ve been feeling my MineCraft playlist as of late, where I’ve saved a few early Minecraft Classic and Survival mode videos. While neither Alpha nor Infdev were versions I started playing Minecraft on, videos like these with the dramatic cobblestone, bright green grass, and boat physics that allowed for the most baller elevators had inspired me to get the game back in 2011.

To give you an idea of how old this version is, though, Paulsoaresjr’s first Survive and Thrive tutorial (originator of ‘hidey-holes’ and spy chickens) covered Alpha 1.0.13_01, which was released the same day of upload on July 29, 2010. The first episode of Seananners’ walkthrough was released in August that year, on Alpha 1.0.17_04, which released on August 23, 2010. Both videos were catalysts for Minecraft’s explosive growth. And in the Alpha days, multiplayer survival was brand new! All the growth to that point was largely facilitated by people sharing their singleplayer builds and experiences, as well as the existing Minecraft Classic’s multiplayer server list.

The Infdev version I’m playing, the first Seecret Friday update, was released on June 18, 2010, just over a month (or two) before. Just in time for Minecarts, but just before Dungeons and Spawners. It isn’t the first Infdev pre-alpha, but not the last either.

To be honest I picked the Infdev version that showed up in Prism Launcher first, but then switched back to the BetaCraft Launcher afterward as it fixes the sound system, and gives me more granularity in which versions to choose as well.

All that is really to say that Minecraft updates were super fast during this period of time, and starting right here in Infdev for a new world just sounds really neat, especially if I decide to progress through game versions. It also gives me the unique opportunity to play with the version for more than about 20 minutes of fumbling around.

Welcome To My World!

And more than 20 minutes of fumbling around it was! This will not be news to the Somnolians, but I fumbled around for about six hours in my new world, and I’m here to tell you how it went.

First off, I’ve been trying to put a spin on the way I play the game to help keep things interesting. One of these techniques (techniques?) is going to cheaper materials to build stuff first, and then ‘upgrading’ them to nicer ones later. You’ll see a few dirt houses and awkward looking bridges in this post. Done is better than perfection, so I’ve heard. (This is also really great if you think of it as a “sketch” you can more easily break down and modify before using wood or stone, which takes nicer tools to break quickly.)

Secondly, when I punch down a block, I’m well thinking about placing it somewhere else or how I’ll use it. Some of my previous playthroughs, singleplayer or multiplayer, have been killed by hoarding lots of items, especially blocks I could be using to build things. I wanted to avoid that, and also make lots of use of the extremely basic materials for building stuff that I can renovate later.

At least for starting out the world, I wanted to build as I went as much as I could, explore more of the land, and not get too settled in any particular spot. Traveling lightly meant that I was more frequently making my mark on the world, whether it be planting saplings, doing bits of terraforming as I pleased, building bridges so I wouldn’t get lost as I’m out searching for caves or cliffs, or scaffolding houses for shelter when the sun comes down. (Infdev predates beds by quite a while. Fortunately, monster spawning is somewhat rare, even on Normal difficulty, so I did end up working in the dark a lot, since just waiting in a hidey-hole with the game focused is not a very fun way to pass the night.)

With that philosophy still percolating in my head, the first thing I did in my new world was terraform some sand with my bare fists and build a makeshift house for the night. It was quick and dirty (a dirt roof doesn’t fall, sand does), but it was enough, and completely different than my typical first steps in a Minecraft world: punch a few trees, find a hill, dig a hole in it, wait out the night. A few in-game days later, I got lost splorin’, and since I still had my things, I shrugged it off and built another one. Built a house with a garden roof, thought, “‘Hey, think I’ll link up some of these landforms!” and kinda just kept going, so I’ve traversed and bridged quite a few different areas without even thinking about permanence. It felt nice, a pretty fast and loose way to play it.

As of writing, the route from spawn to the rest of… well, civilization, is still fairly loosely defined, and I’ve gotten lost trying to get from the latter back to spawn a couple of times. (I will resolve this later. Landmarks-wise, getting from spawn to my other settlements is easier than the other way around. Next time I die or something, I’ll start digging and chopping wood and building some clearer paths from spawn.) Overall, though, I think I have a few nicely defined areas already, and I hope you get the vibe from the screenshots that it really feels expansive, and decently inhabited even in this early stage.

Amusingly, I don’t think this would be a very conducive play style if I didn’t have a computer that could run even this old version at a maximum render distance at a very fast frame rate. Back in ye olden days, I had to use a tiny rendering distance to play on those multiplayer servers. In this version of the game, you about expect Herobrine to show up if you turn up the fog. I look at the amount of area I’ve traversed, my fairly sparse access to coal (and thus torches for the night), and I’m pretty glad computer hardware is where it is today.

Survey of the land

I think it’s really funny actually that I’d written so much to this point without throwing out some screenshots, which was my intent for this post. So let’s start off. These are the settled areas in the world, starting with spawn. Here is the spawn house, with a lookout deck:

Looking the other direction, we see a path of torches that lead into the wilds from here. Somewhat unwisely, I traveled a fair distance from spawn before setting up a new settlement, without a clear path to it.

Roughly following it, we find this short ‘bridge’ I’ve yet to build, but we can swim across to find the Connectors.

The marker over there is on an island linked by two bridges, one to my settlement past what I’m dubbing the Rock Plains, and the other to the Expanse.

There’s more wilds out the way to the left that are left unexplored, but in that direction, we have a shelter in the Expanse house.

Let’s see what’s out there on the other bridge. Past some forest, we get to the Rock Plains. Past this way, actually, is the settlement I made after getting lost from spawn the first time.

I’m going to call this the First Bridge House, because it’s the house I built after building my first bridge between landforms.

Heading across the First Bridge takes us to the first settlement away from spawn, with scaffolding for a very wip house. Note how you can see the First Bridge House still in the distance.

Across the shoreline here, were you to go along the left, would take you to this other wip, roofless house.

A lot of these buildings are a work in progress, as are the bridges. There isn’t a great path to lead to and from spawn quite yet, because of the distance, but as you can kind of see I’ve been playing it fast and loose with what I build and where I go in the world. Exploration has been the big draw here, and the buildings I’ve shown off all started as quick dirt shelters before I had the wood available. I’ve just been making them look nicer over time, and terraforming in other parts of the world as I like.

After getting lost from spawn a couple times, I realized I really ought to make paths for myself between areas as I was exploring, and that’s why the areas further out from spawn are better documented. Of these areas, I spent the most time around the First Bridge and its Rock Plains. I’ll be on making a clearer path soon, so I can get from Spawn to the Connectors between the Expanse and Rock Plains, and vice versa much easier.

So, that’s the first about six hours of my new Infdev world! It’s been super fun. Funnily enough, I’ve equated this playstyle a bit to making what looks like a multiplayer world, since I’ve purposely avoided concentrating my resources in one place. I’ll probably settle down and make things look really nice soon, do more mining and procure more coal for torches (more rare in this version, since you can’t cheese it with charcoal), as well as make it impossible to get lost :), but for now, I’ve had a great deal of fun exploring the randomly generated landscape and building real organically.

Addendum: Since I’ve been workshopping this post, I can tell you that this world is far from done. I’ve logged I think 12 hours now? I’ve gotten lost in a really cool cave system, fixed the bridges and also worked on the houses. There’s quite a bit I haven’t even put in this post since it took a while to edit, but I might write a followup or film a tour if I’m feeling sillay.