My Adventures On Asteroid 5251, Part 1

Hello fellow gamers! Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be documenting my journey through this little MineCraft adventure map called Asteroid 5251. Sounds epic, right? It is, but I’m getting ahead of myself.  As part of our weekly “Game On!” we’re playing through an Adventure map.  But we only have one or two maps, so I went off in search of more. A quick Google search lands me at a MineCraft forum thread for a map called Asteroid 5251: A Medieval Space Epic.  I scroll down, glance at screenshots; alright, I’ll bite.  Little did I know what I was getting myself into…

It starts off like your normal MineCraft map. Well, it does if your normal MineCraft map involves starting in a crater surrounded by the pieces of your wrecked spaceship. Apparently, I heard a distress calling coming from this asteroid, was mesmerized by the beauty of the asteroid field, and KLUNK. Fortunately, I still have a few supplies left on my ship. Among other things, it contains the only grass I’ve found so far, as well as the only saplings. There’s a sign in it prompting me to read more of the story; the ships scanners have located a giant cavern below me. My objectives are to set up camp and dig down into it. Alright, let’s set up camp! I get a wheat farm started and plant my saplings, then I head off to explore while I wait for them to grow.

Wrecked ship + barren planet = :(

The planet is barren. And I mean barren. The only things that disrupt the flat snow are the giant craters filled with dirt and stone just like the one I landed in. I wander around until twilight, then I head back to the ship, seal up the holes, and sleep. I wake up to find that my saplings have still not grown. There’s not really much else to do, so I dig out a staircase as far down as I can with my bare hands. Unsurprisingly, I hit stone and had to stop until my trees grew (which, fortunately, happened soon). I dig. And I dig. And I dig. Just when I’m starting to lose hope, a cavern! The instructions said the signs prompting me to read the next part of the story should be obvious, so the fact that I haven’t found another one yet is starting to worry me. I think someone was trying to make up for the barrenness of the land, as the cavern was completely flooded with water flowing every which way (including into lava). After some uneventful mining, I was just starting to give up hope when I see in the distance, this area where the blocks seem too small to be anywhere near me. I walk over to this area (which turns out to be a hole) and I see this:

My First Glimpses Of Awesome

Whoa. Epic. (See? I told you it was coming.) Now, how am I supposed to get down there? The way I saw it, I had 2 options: I could just jump and hope I survived, leaving me with no way back to base, or I could dig around to the side and kinda dig down a little hoping I could make a staircase down. I chose the digging. I started on the left. It was a very nerve-racking dig, because every other block I dug fell a long, long way into whatever awaited me below.

Right when I’ve almost traveled to the complete far left side of the circular dome I discovered, I dig out a few blocks to take a good look at this place now that I’m lower than the arches separating this dome from the others. And then…wait…what is that across the chasm? Is that….glass? Sure enough, there’s a small glass sphere waiting for me on the other side. I’ve spent all this time digging in the wrong direction. >.<

Click for the large version and see if you can find the glass.

So I backtrack, and begin the whole process of tediously digging stairs down again, this time, off to the right. Then, after a few blocks, AHH! I hurriedly replaced a few blocks and ran to avoid the lava flow headed for me. So much for that plan.

Now what am I going to do?

To be continued…