The title card reads "Minecraft Hardcore Challenge August 2013," with "E03" in the corner. Basket is back underground in game show host Michael Deering's August challenge, standing in the abandoned mineshaft found at the end of the last episode. The goal for the day is simple: "I'm hoping to not die." There's still no good source of food.
Clearing out the junk
Before going anywhere, Basket makes a chest to store "quite a bit of junk," keeps the apples, and puts some iron in the furnace to smelt. Then it's into the tunnels with torches, blocking off any opening that leads somewhere unknown. "Shafts make me very nervous, as they should." There's spider noise everywhere, and then the answer to a puzzle: "There's a creeper stuck on the web along with the poisonous spiders. I was trying to figure out what that green was." That way gets skipped. A zombie wanders up the tunnel instead, and Basket eats a piece of rotten flesh, hoping to stay full despite the hunger effect.
Twenty-three iron
The mineshaft has iron in nearly every wall. "I'm trying to see how much iron I can get in one episode." By the eight minute mark Basket has "23 iron unsmelted," plus more already smelted back at the furnace. Somewhere along the way the spawner turns up too: "Yep, not very friendly in there." Basket notes where it is and leaves it alone.
A full set of armor
Back at the chest, Basket builds a couple more furnaces and splits the ore between them. The iron goes into armor piece by piece ("six doesn't get me much yet") and then an iron sword and a couple of iron pickaxes, with a stone one kept as a backup. Spare charcoal becomes torches. Dead ends get a mark on the wall: "I don't really have a symbol for that, but I guess I will do this for dead end." The armor gets its first test soon after: "Oh, hi! If I didn't have on all that armor, I probably would have taken damage there."
Lava and an enchanted bow
One tunnel opens onto "a lot of lava." A zombie is stuck on a ledge across it, and there's a skeleton too, which Basket thinks is holding an enchanted bow. "That could be dangerous." With only one arrow in the inventory, a bow of Basket's own is possible but not much use, so the skeleton gets left for now. Basket tries to remember a fence trick for fighting mobs from behind cover, places a fence with a block on top, and finds the gap is still open. "Oh, you can get through. What a jerk." The hole gets sealed again. Basket isn't full enough to regenerate health, so an apple goes down, and Basket remembers that in 1.6 healing eats into the hunger bar. "This is going to be a little trickier than I thought."
Two creepers and a wrong turn
Basket drops a level, passes a ravine ("That's dangerous") and gets rid of some water. Then, coming around a corner, a creeper is right there. "Two creepers, I guess." Now that Basket knows where they are, "I can deal with them," though "those creepers really got me scared there."
With the episode almost over, Basket digs down a little, half hoping a diamond will appear. Nothing. No redstone has shown up yet either, so the mineshaft is probably still fairly high. Then, looking for the ravine to get bearings: "Oh my, I'm lost."
Basket ends the day alive, in a full set of iron armor, still exploring the mineshaft, with no steady food yet but "these apples are lasting pretty well." The game pauses and the end card follows, with no gameplay after it.