Day one of The Merchant of Minecraft!, Michael Deering's February 2015 Minecraft Hardcore Challenge. The goal is emeralds: whoever holds the most at the end of the eighth day wins. This month the usual ban on hurting animals is lifted, so they can be killed and eaten. The other rules stay: no beds to skip the night, no AFK crop growth, the Nether is allowed, and each episode is one Minecraft day and night. Basket plays alone, in hardcore on Minecraft 1.8.1, with structures turned on.
Wood, cane and a plan
The world starts on a green plain with a river and a few oak trees. "I believe there's a village that way." First comes wood: Basket punches a tree, makes a crafting table, then wooden tools and a sword. Sugar cane grows by the water. "Sugar cane would be handy." Villagers will decide what's worth collecting, so the plan stays loose until Basket sees which ones live here. Food shouldn't be a problem this month, Basket figures, "so we can sprint around as much as we want."
Hunting on the way
With animals fair game, the walk turns into a hunt. Pigs go down for porkchops, sheep for wool, and a rabbit for its hide. Basket keeps sprinting across the grass until roofs show on the horizon.
What the villagers want
The village has wheat, carrot and potato fields, a church tower and a ring of wooden houses. Basket harvests the ripe crops, replants seeds, and pulls cobblestone from the edges of the buildings for stone tools and a furnace. Then it's time to see what pays. The cleric will give an emerald for 40 rotten flesh. The fletcher takes string. Later the leatherworker turns out to want leather, and Basket has one piece. No emeralds change hands today, but now there's a shopping list. "I'm a little rusty," Basket admits.
Night in the village
The sun goes down while Basket is still working on the houses, trying to get villagers indoors with wool and planks. Night brings trouble fast. A spider climbs around the houses and Basket fights it off, and a spider eye ends up in the inventory. A creeper turns up between the buildings, and zombies move in from the dark. Basket hears the losses more than sees them. "There goes another villager." A careful hope follows: "Hopefully I'll have at least two at the end of this."
Digging in under a house
Basket ducks into a small house, plants a sapling, and digs down through the floor. Below, the furnace cooks porkchops while the pickaxe opens up stone, coal and iron. The iron is for armor and tools. Basket also thinks ahead to the trading: more doors, and a plan to "make a villager breeding thing" so the village can grow back.
The plan for the morning is simple: head up and "see what sort of villagers we have still alive." The episode ends with Basket mining down a narrow shaft, alive and at full health, still without a single emerald. The credits roll after that, with no gameplay after them.