New map, new rules, and a bonus objective involving 54 hidden emeralds. Episode 1 of Myriad Caves is mostly us working out what this map expects of us, and then finding out the hard way that the first cave does not care.
Story time: the rules
Every one of these maps starts in a lobby with the rules on the wall, and this one comes with a tome so heavy the book animation opens in slow motion. Scoti reads them out.
Survive however you can, break and craft whatever you need, and complete the monument by placing special enchanted blocks on it. Never play on peaceful. Do not leave the boundaries of the map. Do not craft or move ender chests. Do not purify villagers. You are allowed to craft the material blocks for the monument yourself.
Then the bonus goal, which is the one that ends up shaping the whole series: find all 54 hidden numbered emeralds scattered through the caves, and smash each one with a stone pickaxe.
The death counter is switched on too. Press tab and you can see exactly how badly it is going.
Two things this map does differently
The food system is not the one you are used to. Myriad Caves runs the old pre-1.8 rules, so eating restores health directly instead of filling a hunger bar. A loaf of bread is a heal, not a snack for later. That changes how you fight, because backing off to eat is now the same move as backing off to heal.
The other one is a kindness. Some of the dungeons here are enormous and deliberately non-linear, so renderXR ran colored glass through them to mark the route to the wool. We were optimistic about that at the time.
With the rules read, there is a single button in the lobby and a warning that everyone needs to be standing on the pad before anybody presses it. It is a one-way trip. We pressed it.
The Grotto of the Novice is not for novices
The first area throws a zombie at us before we have anything worth calling a weapon, and it goes downhill from there. Cobwebs, spiders, a creeper coming down from somewhere above, a spawner glowing up a side passage, and a witch on the path we needed to take. Basket spends a decent stretch of this episode at one and a half hearts announcing that he is running away, which is the correct call.
There is a nice touch in here: death chests. If you die, your gear ends up in a chest with your name on it, sitting where you left it. We found somebody else's early on and spent a while poking at it before working out what it was.
Communication, allegedly
The running joke of the episode is a crafting bench. Basket puts one down, Scoti picks it up and walks off with it mid-craft, and there is a long and very polite negotiation about whether asking first counts as communication. It sets the tone for the next eighty-nine episodes fairly accurately.
There is also a solid two minutes of Basket convinced something is wrong with his mining speed, watching his own arm swing in slow motion and wondering about mining fatigue, before working out he had a wooden pickaxe in his hand the whole time.
Where we finished
By the end of the episode we have the basics: stone tools, a sword each, torches, string and cobwebs, some coal, a bit of leather and rotten flesh off a zombie, and a couple of experience bottles. No wool yet, and none of the 54 emeralds. There is a spawner we have decided to come back for, and a witch we have decided not to.
Ninety episodes to go.