So, it’s my first full day in Minecraft and, as the blue, fuzzy rain comes down into my blocky, multi-substance home (for which I neglected to build a roof), I’d thought I’d begin a list of lessons learned on the first day.

• Be aware of the ecosystem you’re heading into. I dove right in to the ds106 multiplayer minecraft server and arrived at night.  It got ugly fast as I was attacked by spiders, zombies, and arrow-shooting skeletons.  [Apparently these don’t arrive in the day time.]
• Friendly people make learning easier. If it wasn’t for the assistance of my fellow bunkhouse 3 mate, @Leelzebub, who was building a series of amazing rides in the world, I likely wouldn’t have survived the first night  (even if that help did come with some well-deserved, and good-humored teasing about my inabilities to navigate even the most basic of Minecraft functions). She even built the first wall of my house.
• There are tutorials out there for many, many things. After my first session, I went and looked at some of the lessons created by fans of the game and managed to learn a few basics fairly fast.
• I wanted a chance to be a bit uncomfortable as I learned new things.  Check.  I’ll struggle a bit with this and that’s a good thing.

I can see how it would be very easy to spend a great deal of time in the Minecraft world, though there’s a bit of a learning curve involved beyond the basics.  Once you learn how to create new objects though, you have only your own creativity as limits for the things you can build.

More to come…