I continued working on excavating the space for the tree farm, and discovered something disconcerting: enemy mobs were starting to appear. A creeper blew up near me, taking out some blocks. I wasn't used to that at all. I had gotten very used to creepers blowing up and NOT damaging the landscape. Despite all that, I soon had a massive underground tree farm. My wheat farm was also doing well, and was effectively feeding me.

I started to do a little exploring, and found my chests, workbench, and furnaces were just a little too vulnerable for my liking. I moved those up into a cubbyhole above the tree farm. I also planted some watermelon seeds I found in a chest in the nearby abandoned mineshaft next to the tree farm. I wanted potatoes, but I was established.

The commissary had a drop party, but this was far more modest than what I was used to: cooked meats. I stored those away for safe keeping. They would be my emergency backup. I finished securing my cubbyhole by putting four pistons at the entrance triggered by a single switch. The redstone was exposed, but I didn't expect to see many visitors.

I did a full harvest on the tree farm, then harvested my few watermelons to get a full crop planted. My next goal was to pursue a rumor of an iron farm. If I could find it using the GPS coordinates, I'd be able to collect enough iron to satisfy my needs for a while. I spent a lot of time traveling by boat, but ended up dying shortly before reaching my destination. It was disappointing, but I accepted the results and decided I'd be safer just mining for the iron I wanted.

I was considering mining back up to the surface to retrieve a couple cows and sheep, maybe even chickens. If I could get a few slimes killed, I could even get a hidden entrance going, where I'd be able to seal the entrance and hide it. It had a lot of appeal. I just wanted to have my supplies without poking my head up.

It occurred to me to try digging my way to the iron farm, since I was doing some branch mining anyway. It quickly occurred to me that the distance was far too great to make that a practical idea. Instead, I built a nether portal and grabbed some obsidian. With only about a thousand blocks to go by nether, and armed with a few diamond picks, I was quickly able to get to the iron farm AND pick up some much needed nether quartz.

The iron farm wasn't in the best of shape. I made some efforts to clean it up a bit, added some hoppers to collect the iron into a chest for me, and generally did minor maintenance. I also harvested some leftover redstone and a couple carrots from the abandoned base there. I was quite pleased, overall.

I hung around until I'd collected nearly two stacks of iron. Then I returned home. My next step was to concede that I needed access to the surface. I dug back to the surface and set up sticky pistons to a switch to hide the entrance from sight. I then used a couple of leads I'd found to haul cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens down into pens I made next to the wheat farm. I even got to kill a slime!

Somewhere during that, a "drop party" was held. I'd had experience with drop parties on the old multi-person world, and this was far more modest than the old one. Instead of tons of diamond blocks, I got a few diamonds. Leather, leads, various types of food, even a few slime balls were dropped. Nobody got many of any item, and a few missed a desired item. Overall, nobody got anything they couldn't have acquired on their own with a little effort, so nobody was overly upset if they missed it.

Soon after all that, I went to spawn to offer someone some food, and found myself unable to teleport home again. The gods assured us they were working on the problem. I took time to get a few books from the library and check out some of the gods' model villages.

On a whim, I decided to enter a new private world. I appeared in a large desert. Behind me was an ocean, before me was forest. A short distance away was a swamp. I accepted this as a world with opportunity, but soon ran into a significant problem: food. I soon found myself hiding in a hole in the ground as my tiny wheat farm grew. I needed wheat for bread, and had to stay still so I wouldn't get any hungrier. It was a tense time, with spiders overhead and skeletons in the trees as I waited for my wheat to grow on dry ground.

Waiting for wheat to grow, while you're afraid to move is a very, very unpleasant thing. At first, you're quite tense, but after a while, boredom sets in. There's a part of you that just wants to stow everything in a chest and commit suicide so you can reincarnate with full health, but it feels like cheating, somehow. Worse, there are rumors of worlds where when you die, you cannot go back into them. I wanted to mature myself to where I could live in such a world for a long time. To simply give up because of a little misfortune seemed too easy.

Eventually, I had enough wheat to start healing again. I made a larger plot in my little hole, then ventured out for more seeds. Along the way, some chickens started following me. I killed one, but brought the rest to my hole and sealed it up. With two chickens, I could start growing my food supply faster. I would wait until I was well stocked before I ventured out again. Perhaps things were not as bad as I'd first thought.

It was a slow process. I didn't have a bucket to bring water to my little field. I collected every egg and tried to hatch it, so the chicken population grew while my supply of wheat stagnated. I lit up the chamber as best I could, and waited. I waited so very long. I needed food so I could move freely about. With food, I could face skeletons for bonemeal to speed up the process. With food, I could go dig for iron. But instead, I waited.

Spiders are the worst. They sense your presence beneath the earth and refuse to leave. Instead they hound you, hissing incessantly as they wait for you to emerge. Zombies are bad, especially when they swarm towards you, but hiding under the earth as spiders hiss overhead is horrible.

Eventually, I had enough food and supplies that I felt confident in leaving my hidey-hole. I killed a stray spider, creeper, and then, in a fit of overconfidence, charged a creeper with a wooden sword. After working so long to stay alive and safe, I died. I felt that I had failed something important. I wanted to try my mettle in a world where I could make no mistakes. I would leave this world as my failure, never to return.