The group beat the Fallen Menagerie a few episodes back. Now Basket goes back in alone. "I'm going to try to solo orange wool very slowly, so I probably won't do a lot of narration." Nobody else is in the instance, and nobody else is on voice.
A key and a budget
A fresh run starts with a key. The Gatekeeper sells the Orange Key for 48, and it lets you into the orange wool dungeon with one or more players. Basket isn't sure the trip will pay off. "My goal is at least to make back 48, and hopefully I don't lose all my things."
Inside, Basket sets up a base and sorts gear into a shulker box, with backups of the good stuff in case things go wrong. That includes C'Zanil's Shroud, a rare chestplate that gives Regeneration while worn.
One door at a time
The plan is simple: wall off every entrance but one, wake a spawner, back off, and let the mobs come around the corner. "I only want one way in." It mostly works, though it's slow, and every hit costs durability. "I already spent the money, so I might as well see this through." A zombie villager gets a bite in early, and some of the archers end up shooting each other instead of Basket.
Up the ladder
One building has a creeper spawner and archers on top. Basket crafts a table and some ladders, climbs the side, and switches to blocks to get a foothold. "When I die horribly, I want to have it on record." The roof is crowded: creepers, archers and fast ones that blow up quickly. A few of them take out their own spawner. Basket gets off the roof alive, picks up the first chests, and walks back to the base to sort it all.
The first haul is mostly middling: some tier two and tier three gear, a night vision potion, a small bow, a regular shield and some triple arrows. By Basket's count that's about four of the 48 back. Health never got low, though. "We didn't die."
The spawner in the tree
Next is a garden area full of poison spiders and creepers. "Have I really only been in here for 20 minutes? I feel like this has been a long time." The creepers keep appearing from nowhere, and they blow up fast. "There's so many of these stupid guys." It takes a while to find out why: the spawner is hidden in a tree. "That's cruel. Is it in the tree?" Poison spiders keep knocking Basket around, so Basket falls back, shoots from a distance, and works on the spawners one at a time. "This chest better be awesome, that's all I have to say."
The chest gets opened, the spider spawner goes down, and Basket grabs a sword before heading back with a full inventory.
Thirty minutes in
Back at base, Basket drops off the junk and makes more torches. The running total is about six of the 48 so far, and Basket wonders out loud if an easier dungeon would have been a better use of the key. "All right, 30 minutes in." Part 1 stops there, with no deaths and plenty of the dungeon still ahead.