Episode eight of the Lorax Challenge, Michael Deering's September 2014 Minecraft Hardcore Challenge. The goal is a nice stone castle with a melon farm, without breaking a single tree or leaf. Basket starts where the last episode left off: inside the big cobblestone walls, on a stone floor, in the rain. The guest voice is on the call again, building in a separate world on the same seed.
Wall work in the rain
The episode opens in third person on Basket in iron armor, iron sword out, standing on the wet stone floor among the torches. Then Basket climbs a ladder up onto the walls.
From up there the melon farm by the lake is in view, with ripe melons sitting on the farmland, and a tall, narrow cobblestone tower stands at the lake end of the walls with a torch on top.
Most of the next few minutes go into the tops of the walls. Basket lays cobblestone along them, breaks some back out with the pickaxe, and stops at the crafting grid to make more torches. The cobblestone stack keeps shrinking. "I'm out of cobble."
Back to the quarry
So it is back down the ladder shaft in the old yard to the long stone room from the last episode. Basket carves more stone out of its walls with the iron pickaxe until the hotbar has full stacks again, then climbs back up into the daylight.
A creeper at the wall
Basket comes out on top of the wall near the lake with the sword out, and there is a creeper down in the tall grass right beside it. Basket watches it come closer along the foot of the wall. "Oh, don't blow up."
It does. The blast leaves a crater in the ground right against the wall. "Ah, you jerk."
Basket spends the rest of the daylight patching it with dirt and cobblestone, and the sky goes red over the lake while the work goes on.
Night in the quarry
Night comes on with the rain still falling, and Basket goes back underground. The quarry room keeps getting wider, with torches set across its flat floor. At the foot of the ladder on the way out, Basket stops to eat some melon.
A top for the tower
Back up in the dark, Basket climbs to the top of the tower by the lake and builds a notched top on it: single blocks around the edge with gaps between them, and a torch on each one. Then Basket digs straight down through the middle of the tower and walks out at the bottom.
From the floor, the tower stands over the torches with its new top. "I'm trying to see how tall this is."
After that it is more wall work in the rain, building up blocks along the walls near the lake, and then one more trip down the ladder. Basket turns oak planks into sticks at the crafting table, goes back to the quarry and starts cutting down into its floor.
Still underground
The episode ends in the quarry. A switch to third person shows Basket in iron armor with the iron sword, standing among the torches on the stone floor.
Basket is alive with full hearts and experience level 20 when the credits roll. The hotbar holds the iron sword, the iron pickaxe, the axe, a stack of dirt, the iron shovel, a full stack of cobblestone, melon slices and 14 torches. The tower by the lake now has its top. Nothing follows the credits.