[-Sara-]

Found the stronghold on a pre-set seed. Apparently unlike ruins (which are smaller than Strongholds), only one stronghold is created per seed! It's a HUGE catacomb of man-made tunnels and stairways as well as hosting rooms such as a library (paper in chests there, so I assume books might be also), treasure rooms (it had the long lost red apples in there), a fountain room, prison cells and more. Many doors have buttons next to them to open them. It's REALLY creepy and felt like a level out of a dungeon creeper such as the classic game Diablo 1. It's hidden well in the ground and often crosses abandoned mineshafts and/or caves. Ravines can probably still cross it also. Once found though, the many hallways connect this huge tunnelsystem to many new areas. It easily goes many floors down and holds a few dozen rooms and hallways! If (although unlikely as our map was already created) we get our stronghold also, I advice entering it with a full group, well prepared. It has plenty of space and linked abandoned mineshafts with spawners to throw a barrel full of mobs at the player.

Some screens I made:

[Sandwich]

Hubba hubba!

[Retsof]

1.8 is apparently also better at making large caves (edited for brightness)


My "house" is actually just a large natural (perfectly round) room with the cave entrance boarded and doored.

[-Sara-]

Some updates:

• 1.8 will be upgraded to 3 strongholds per seed.
• 1.9 will have an infinite amount of strongholds per seed. I guess Notch and Jeb still want to make strongholds more interesting and don't wish to leave a lot of obsolete strongholds on server seeds, in case stronholds will change radically.
• Jeb wants to give strongholds a (small) chance of containing powerful boss mobs, but wants them to be summonable on the players command like Terraria. A shame, as that'll probably give way to setting up lava or dispenser traps or w/e to beat bosses without effort.

WARNINGS & TIPS for 1.8:

• Ravines can suddenly cross caverns, be careful where you step! Ravines can sometimes go 50 blocks or more deep, an instant death when you dig through a stone or dirt wall and walk in without watching your step. Also caverns seem to be designed to contain more pits. You may step into one and fall 5-10 blocks down, thus hurting yourself. You can't run around in the dark without taking some slight risk anymore.
• Mineshafts hold random chests, sometimes even containing diamond! Be aware that there's lot of spawners in those mineshafts, sometimes up to 3 and those spiders will deal damage-over-time effects killing you VERY rapidly. Also beware spiderwebs, they slow you down more than soulsand and the last thing you want is not being able to run from a creeper (unless your server is creeper-protected).
• Mineshafts and NPC-villages hold flavour items to make them look better such as furnaces, crafting benches, rails and doors. Breaking those down and picking them up saves you from using a lot of crafting materials to build them yourself.
• When you break smoothstone blocks or the new stonebrick blocks, a silverfish may spawn (a silverfish, like in reallife, is a little creepy-crawler insect). While they don't hurt you much (half a heart per hit) they spawn a lot of minion silverfish if you don't take care of them quickly! If you wait too long 20 of them will gang up on you, drawing their strenght from attacking in numbers. Flint-and-iron or strong swords may take care of them quickly.
• Swords now block attacks by right clicking, time this well to finally avoid that 'being-hit-before-hitting-back-your-enemy' problem which pestered minecraft for so long.

Observations:

• The new seas/oceans are HUGE. I'm now on one spanning over 500-1000 blocks and I still haven't crossed it. Now and then a tiny island (5-25 blocks) appears with one or two smallish islands (50-200) blocks in my way.
• So far I only spotted wild wolves in taiga biomes. Maybe that's their new home or it was coincedence.
• Mushrooms turn into giant mushrooms with bonemeal. Maybe mushrooms which are not hampered by surrounding trees and with enough space to grow will eventually grow into giant mushrooms by themselves. If this is true, beware of your above-ground mushroom farms!

[Pred the Penguin]

I watched some 1.8 videos by the Yogscast and apparently it's much harder to die if your hunger bar is full.

Also boats are destroyed when you hit shore in vanilla minecraft. Richard's server has a mod that prevents that and changes a few boat physics, too.

[-Sara-]

I watched some 1.8 videos by the Yogscast and apparently it's much harder to die if your hunger bar is full.

Also boats are destroyed when you hit shore in vanilla minecraft. Richard's server has a mod that prevents that and changes a few boat physics, too.

Good to know, removing.

[Commander Zane]

Also boats are destroyed when you hit shore in vanilla minecraft. Richard's server has a mod that prevents that and changes a few boat physics, too.

Why the **** would that retarded function be added back?

[-Sara-]

it isn't, I thought how boats acted on RHX's server was how they act everywhere, I barely use boats.

[Commander Zane]

I meant how they explode when touching land, I thought that was normal behavior until recently. I was pretty sure it was changed before 1.7.x to not do that.
Might be misreading.

[Pred the Penguin]

I'm pretty sure you're are misreading. If you open up an absolute clean minecraft and create a new world, anything you hit hard enough while riding a boat, except soulsand, will destroy your boat. IIRC it has been that way for quite a while... Do you not play singleplayer?

[achtung]

I'm pretty sure you're are misreading. If you open up an absolute clean minecraft and create a new world, anything you hit hard enough while riding a boat, except soulsand, will destroy your boat. IIRC it has been that way for quite a while... Do you not play singleplayer?

I rarely play singleplayer, a lot of people don't really play singleplayer very often, from what I understand.  1.8 will go a way toward changing that though.

[rev_posix]

Aw ya...     (Please note the lower left hand corner)

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[Commander Zane]

I'm pretty sure you're are misreading. If you open up an absolute clean minecraft and create a new world, anything you hit hard enough while riding a boat, except soulsand, will destroy your boat. IIRC it has been that way for quite a while... Do you not play singleplayer?

Not anymore, other than to mess with a new ground-breaking mod. Otherwise I'm forced to dowload optimization mods to stop the frame skips every three seconds that began to appear since the 1.6 series (Which never happen on MP for some retarded reason).

[Pred the Penguin]

I think that's because in MP you're not the one generating the map.

[Commander Zane]

Even after I've let the game sit in one spot to generate everything around me. Maybe 1.8 will be different which I'll check soon since it's released.
Nope even 1.8. Wow so much for computer specs.

[headdie]

Even after I've let the game sit in one spot to generate everything around me. Maybe 1.8 will be different which I'll check soon since it's released.
Nope even 1.8. Wow so much for computer specs.

take me a heck of a lot longer to load 1.8 than 1.7 and even SP lags at times now

[Corpse_Puppet]

Any chance of having the server ip put in the opening post on the thread? I seem to have lost the settings after minecraft updated itself

[Commander Zane]

Wonder who in the dev team thought making the hotkey for fog distance F3+F was a smart idea, since you know, F3 already does something and everything.

[qazwsx]

first post updated, server still running 1.7.3, so 1.8 players will have to wait a bit D:

[pecenipicek]

same here. until i see what goes down with craftbukkit and 1.8 and plugins in general, i'll be holding off on updating.



qazwsx, you guys running RB1060?