my “ultra-vanilla” base
i’ve been playing minecraft for over 14 years now, but i never really got into making survival worlds until about 8 years ago. i’m sure a lot of people relate to this, but i’ve struggled a lot in the past with keeping momentum in my many past worlds.
i would always have a vision in my head that was too grand for me to ever realistically finish. many large builds i would be inspired to make required either plenty of grinding or exploiting game mechanics to build farms.
after many dissatisfied attempts at trying to play the game this way, i had a realization: i wasn’t actually playing the game the way i felt like it should be played.
about a year ago, i decided to start a new world (when the copper age released), and i gave myself a few guidelines to keep myself immersed in the world:
1. no coordinates
i used to always rely on coords when building/exploring, and its very common to see others use it too (it’s even a setting in the vanilla game). however, always having a location tracker in game felt a little too convenient for me and prevented me from being fully immersed in the world.
as a result, i turned it off and have stuck to using lodestones as an alternative, which are surprisingly handy!
2. no (exploitative) farms
any farms i’d have to look up a tutorial for wont be in my world. if i want to make a farm, i’ll need to figure it out myself. that means no iron farm, but i’ve managed pretty well (caves are literally everywhere people!!). i would say also no gold farm, but im on bedrock so i can’t build above the nether roof anyways (which #hottake should be the same for java too!!)
i also wont build a trading hall (villagers rights!!). honestly i think players should be discouraged from doing that, but villager mechanics desperately need a rework anyways
i understand why people need to make crazy farms for their mega builds, but i find gathering these resources by hand to be far more immersive and meaningful.
i should clarify this doesn’t mean “no automatic farms.” i do have an automatic honeycomb farm and temporary egg farm, but they’re small in scale and i was able to construct them without a tutorial
3. pace yourself
progression in minecraft is ankle deep, and i do wish it had more depth, but that’s a whole other tangent. i only upgraded my equipment once i got sick of replacing my current tools and armor.
staying in the early game longer gave me plenty of time to plan out my world as well, which i never properly did in previous worlds.
4. no going to the end (yet)
this is a bit of an extension of the last rule, but i don’t want to go to the end right now for a few reasons:
first, i want to build/traverse my base without the need for elytras or shulker boxes. i dont want to obtain them until its necessary.
more importantly, i dont think the end is worth exploring in its current state. i’m holding out for an end update because, quite frankly, its an incomplete dimension. i dont care if it takes years, im not going to the end until i have a better reason to.
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these aren’t hard set rules, but since putting more thought into how i play, i’ve haven’t put this world down! i’ve been playing for a year straight and still continue to think of cool ideas i can add to it. if you feel like you can’t stay engaged with the game past the “2 week” phase, i really reccomend trying this out