The title card reads "Minecraft Hardcore Challenge June 2013," with "E03" in the corner, and Basket opens over the pause menu with "day three of the challenge." Another entrant's video turned up a zombie spawner over by the pumpkin patches, with a Bane of Arthropods book in its chest, but Basket isn't sold on it: "I don't know if I really need a zombie spawner."
The zombie at the door
The zombie in gold armor from last time is still out front, stuck in a hole by the cave mouth. "So the first thing obviously is this guy here. He needs to die." Basket gets some hits in with the stone sword between trips inside, where the iron is still cooking in the two furnaces. The iron goes into buckets first, not armor: "I'm going to actually start with buckets of water first and then I worry about armor later." Then the zombie is out of sight. "Where'd he go?"
Watching other entrants has also shown Basket something odd about the shared seed. Pumpkins sit in the same spots for everyone, but the animals don't. One entrant has chickens over a ridge where Basket's world has "sheep cows everywhere."
Water for the pumpkins
The chickens by the river haven't laid. "So no eggs, huh." Basket had hoped for eggs every day and doesn't want to stand around waiting. Pumpkins aren't the problem: "I have plenty of pumpkins, actually right now the problem is the eggs." So the day goes into a bigger pumpkin patch up the hill. Basket chops a tree for room, finds "an apple" in it, tills rows and pours a long channel of water beside them, refilling the buckets as it goes. Pumpkin seeds go in, and saplings around the edge.
A path to the chickens
Other players had trouble leading chickens around, so Basket leaves them where they are and builds a flat cobblestone path out over the river to reach them. There are five. "Can we get an even number? Uh, no." Basket settles for two pairs, chasing them out of the tall grass, and picks up an egg. "Maybe in the beginning of the next day I'll have to try and get these guys to maybe be in a pen of some sort."
By dusk Basket is back inside with the door closed off, and makes a chest for the extra junk. A crafting session turns out more ladders and iron pickaxes, since more iron turned up.
Down the ladder
The plan for the night is to dig straight down, branch mine near the bottom, and hope for diamonds. "Maybe I can skip some of the iron armor pieces and just go right for diamond." Basket places safety blocks on the way down, then breaks into a cave with redstone, lapis and "a big lava lake."
A skeleton comes around a barrier Basket put up, and dies to the sword. "I got a bow, what a deal. So we have one arrow and a bow." A creeper follows, then more skeletons. "That skeleton creeper is a little bit intense, so my heart's a little jumpy." Seven iron is enough for leggings, so Basket makes them on the spot.
Gold from a zombie
One skeleton ends up "taking a bath" in a stream, lost in the current. Then a zombie in a full set of gold armor shows up. "We got a blinged out zombie." It takes a lot of hits, but it goes down and leaves its armor behind. "We've got some shiny golden armor."
The count comes to twelve iron. Then time runs out with Basket still in the cave: "I don't know where my stairs are and that's the end of the episode." Next time, Basket will decide whether to stay down there, smelt and explore some more, or head back up. Food isn't a worry yet, with three pies and two apples. The game pauses with day three done and the run still going, and the end card follows with no gameplay after it.