Mark and I played a bunch of Minecraft today. We played on Survival mode as usual and tried to gather all the matterials necessary to get to the Ender Dragon and beat it. In our first try, we got into The Nether and found ourselves on a island like structure high in the air with the fortress set to one side and seemingly far below. I tried to build some stairs down but eventually just jumped for the end of a broken walkway. I somehow survived it but then had to fight off multiple Blazes, Withers and Ghasts. It was a disaster and I kept dying, my equipment scattering all over the Fortress walkways.Each time I would respawn with no gear back at the town and dash back to The Nether to try and recover my stuff. This was, of course, folly and as soon as I picked up my gear I got killed again. Mark had similar issues and after a while it got too frustrating to continue.

The default settings for Survival has your equipment scatter where you are killed. You have a somewhat limited time to return to the site and pick it up again before it vanishes. This can be a very annoying feature when you're assaulting a Fortress somewhat out of reach and overfull of enemies. It forces you to be very careful and that is not our style - stealth and careful approaches are not to be tolerated. Speed is the thing. 

So we restarted with different settings that allowed us to keep our equipment at death. It disables achievements, but who cares, having fun was more important. This second venture was better and by the time we had to stop for the day we had all but Enderman eyes in our chests. That's perhaps what we'll be gathering tomorrow, but I started the opening sequence in Stardew Valley (my rental game) at the last minute and it looked pretty good. But, I may stay with Minecraft for the sake of playing co-op. If Mark wants to do something on his own, then I'll play more Stardew Valley. 

The opening to Stardew Valley has you name and customize your 8-bit style character and then enter your farm for your first day. The story is fun. Your Grandfather gives you his old farm house to help you start a new life. This has a huge appeal to me. I wish so much I could escape to a farm in the country. If I lived on nothing but oatmeal and goat's milk, I would be ok with it. 

On another subject entirely, here's another picture of my rediculously large Skylanders Collection. These are the tech element characters from the second Skylanders game, Skylanders: Giants. 

Bouncer, Lightcore Drobot, Sprocket, Drill Sergeant, Drobot, Trigger Happy

Bouncer was a star Roboto-Ball player before the Arkeyans came along and converted him into a security robot to watch over the Mabu made slaves in the mines. There he decided to join the Skylanders and fight for the Mabu's freedom. He freed them and then joined the other Giants in the greater war against the Arkeyans. 

Lightcore Drobot is just Drobot with lights and a different pose. 

Sprocket is a Golding, a member of a wealthy family. She had no interest in fancy things only gadgets and figuring out how things worked. She tinkered in her uncle's workshop until Kaos orchestrated his abduction. Sprocket built herself a high tech battle suit and went to find her uncle. She hasn't found him yet but in the meantime she took up the fight against evil in Skylands.

Drill Sergeant, Drobot and Tigger Happy are return characters from Spyro's Adventure with new poses.