Mom Plays Minecraft - Descent to the Core: Things To Know about Level 2

You've descended towards the core and just landed in the new zone.  Brace yourself - things will start happening fast!

You'll be in one of three places: a little cave, a big dark outdoors place, or an "island" (basically your transporter) in the middle of water.  Wherever you land, the first thing to do is get to safety!

If you're on the darkened plane, dig down several blocks and then dig out very fast.  Be prepared to beat off mobs (luckily, most of them show up on the minimap.)   Mobs will come after you, and if you're on level 80 or above, you get different types of explode-y creepers,

If you're on the island, extend the island using your leaves (you can only extend it one block....try for two blocks over the water and you end up in the water).  On harder modes, use the leaves to build a "fortress wall" because everything out there is coming for you right away.  Once you're safe, build a boat to go to the "mainland" (if you die while doing this, it's almost impossible to retrieve your stuff from the bottom of the pitch-black water environment.  Reset and try again.)

If you're in the cave, bring out a cube of dirt, plant one of your saplings on it, and relax.  You're in the clear for now.  Start digging outward and keep looking on your map for a patch of dark blue, indicating open space and water.  You'll want to head there to make your home.


FIRE!

Torches work differently in Descent to the Core than they do in Minecraft.  While they are your friend, they also set things on fire.  Keep them away from trees, vines, coal, netherrack, and small children passing by.

AIR!
Vines are a good source of oxygen (particularly if you have a limited number of saplings) but you'll need to keep them 5 blocks away from torches.

FOOD!
You can starve to death.  The two easiest foods to get are "rock soup" (probably hard on your teeth) and "Limes" from limestone.  Rock soups do not spoil, but they do use up wood and stone.  Limes are also your best and fastest growing crop.

GERTRUD
Don't get too fond of her.  She has a habit of walking into walls and dying if she's penned up, and running into attacking creepers and zombies if she isn't penned up.  I stick her behind stone walls, but that's not a guarantee.  The first quest under "Noah's Ark" gives you another sanity pet, Rhea... but you have to find and kill some spiders, and if Gertrud's dead by this point, it's going to be a challenge.

STUFF TO COLLECT

Keep any marble and limestone you find.  Eventually you'll need two stacks of the stuff. You'll also need two blocks of compressed gravel eventually.

Mine all the aluminum and copper that you see.   Copper can be used for armor and a lot of other things.  You won't be able to mine ferrous ore, iron, or anything else for a very long time.

You will need to find lots of dirt - and that's found in the open areas where all the monsters are.  If you're not in the open area, 9 rotten foods (most of your food goes rotten) will make one dirt.  Fastest way to get spoilable food is to create limes from limestone (it takes 4 days for food to go bad.)

Friendly NPCs
Believe it or not, they (like hay bales and other stuff like enchanting tables) are buried in the rock.

HACKS!

Cheat mode is enabled, but that takes the challenge out of it, I think. The one hack I do use after I get tired of dying is the map teleport (if you type M to get the map and click on one of the X's, you can either eliminate them or you can teleport there.  I save useful locations)

TIPS!

Keep a tree and a block of dirt on you at all times.

One thing I wasn't aware of when I was first playing is that your pickaxe (and other tools) upgrade as you use them... so repair (with one piece of flint) rather than replace.  Use 3 gravel to make one flint to repair pickaxe.  No need for repair table - type E and do it in your 4 box crafting slot (flint on top, broken pickaxe on bottom)

No matter how stupid the "blind" rewards seem, put them in an inventory somewhere.  They'll be something you need for a quest turn-in later on.

If you die and lose your pick (in the deep water, for example) you will have to make another flint pickaxe and level it.  It's not much fun.  Don't take your pickaxe on the water.

Boats are surprisingly fragile.  Running into the shoreline, baling out of the boat, zombies, and perhaps even harsh words will cause it to vanish.

Zombies have pickaxes AND TNT. They will come into your house and will let other mobs in.

There's a display in the middle left of your screen that tells you what "floor" you are on.  You start out around level 50, so you have to go up for copper and up even more for iron.

Watch your inventory display ("E") - you get experience for some crafting actions.  After you've accumulated a certain number of points, you will have the option  to unlock another inventory slot.

Build ledges and pathways as you go, along with "hides" to duck into for those times when you discover that you're being shot by a skeleton (or worse) and need to get out of their sight.  Watch out where you place the torches, though.

Mom Plays Minecraft - Descent To The Core Modpack (first level)

I'm a mom (and grandmother, for that matter) and I just started playing Minecraft because one of my granddaughters plays the game and I thought I could learn to interact with her online when I can't drive over to visit.  And having once mastered it (and learned some of the cheat codes and where to find them), I got fairly good at Vanilla Minecraft.  In fact, it got a bit boring.

Someone suggested I try a "modpack" and after a lot of hunting, I installed the Curse client (a different one than I use for my Warcraft gaming mods) and went off to look for a modpack.

"Journey to the Core" looked like a fun Minecraft mod.  So I installed it, tried it (on hard mode), and kept dying.  Then I tried it on 'normal' mode and kept dying in the second part.  I refused to try it on 'peaceful', so I put the modpack on 'easy' (this is a misnomer, folks) and forged ahead.  I tried looking at videos, but most of the dialogue was some young-ish guy making lame jokes and giving a travelogue of what he was seeing - after about an hour of watching, I came away with only two tips and a sense of frustration.  Most of the videos for Journey seemed to stop with the second level, and the one that reached the third level was a team of three people.

I'm playing in standalone mode and it doesn't look like I'm becoming triplets any time soon.   So I'm writing this, my own "tips for survival" for "Journey to the Core."  No lame jokes, no music, no voiceover.  Just ... notes (what a concept.)

Level 1:
This is a totally safe area (even on hard mode), so you can do what you like and not get eaten or killed. My first action is to hit the chest with my hand (breaking it apart so I can take it with me) and put on the backpack.  I do NOT start reading the quest manual at that point.  The manual will put lots of lovely quest rewards in your inventory - but you're starting out with a very short inventory and there's some things you might want later.  I put the jelly sandwiches and root beer (and the chest) in the backpack and then I usually catch Gertrud with the safari net and put her in as well - don't forget the leash and the fencepost.  This keeps her from wandering into your work area later.

Next, I punch the DEAD trees (not the live one.)  Don't stand under them because the leaves fall hard and will hurt you.  Collect leaves and wood and go into the cave and collect a mushroom or two and all the gravel on the top level (don't descend the ladder.) The last block of gravel (a "slope")will also give you a Carpenter's Wedge Slope.  Save these wedges - they burn nicely in furnaces and save your valuable wood for other things.  Once you've started the Journey to the Core, you won't be able to mine coal right away.   Collect the mushrooms because they can be made into a food, and then and go back to the tree.

Beat up on the leaves (don't bother using pickaxes or sword or shovel) - but don't stand under the tree.  Falling branches ("widowmakers") will hurt.  Use the leaf blocks from the dead tree to boost yourself up to harvest all the wood.  Around the tree in a "plus" pattern are six blocks of regular dirt.  Take them.

Caution: when you're harvesting the tree, it may get dark.  DO NOT PUT A TORCH ON THE TREE.  It will burn the tree up and the leaves (and you!)

Next, beat up on the grass and evaluate the seeds.  I only take two that will give "nourishing morsels."  If you can find a soybean seed, take that one.

Finally, sacrifice one of your blocks of wood and make a Wooden Shears.  Go to the vines without flowers and start harvesting them until your shears breaks.  In the next section you'll need oxygen, and these vines will provide it.  Get as many as you can.

Once they break (or you're tired of cutting vines), grab those discarded wood planks, collect all the torches in the area, and head into the cave.  DO NOT WEAR A TORCH ON YOUR HEAD.   That can set things on fire.  Grab wedges, all the mushrooms you find, and all the gravel.  You can beat things up using the torch - if it goes out, click on another item in your inventory and click on the torch again and the light will come back on.

By the time you reach the elevator, you'll hopefully have around 60 stacks of leaves, more than 11 torches, more than 10 Deadpine logs, more than 20 Oak logs, more than 5 saplings, at least one apple, and at least 20 wedges.  Before you start the elevator descent to the core (you can't come back up) make sure that your leaves AND your pick are where you can reach them.  I usually click with pick.

You will end up in one of 3 situations - a nice cavelet (best option), a space in the middle of the water (second best), or a darkened plane (dig downwards VERY very fast!)