Nether Adventure, Michael Deering's March 2014 challenge, gives each team one Minecraft day in the overworld. Whatever they gather in that first episode is all they get, because at the end of it they go through a Nether portal once and never come back. Basket's team this month is ScoOpBaLo: Scoti_Garbidis, optimus1971, lostinthefort and Basket, on the GopherCraft server, starting with empty hands. "We have one day to get whatever we can get our hands on."
Everyone scatters
The chat shows optimus1971 and lostinthefort joining, then fills with achievements as four players punch trees at once. Basket starts on the oaks, and the plan to stick together falls apart within a minute. "By the way, I lost you, Basket." There are forests on both sides of spawn, and nobody is sure which one the others picked. The chat shows Basket earning Time to Strike! for a sword soon after. "Oh, I hear a zombie." One teammate sees the bright side: "It's more food."
Short on food
"I'm gonna put a furnace down, start smelting iron in it." "I've got a stack of sand." Someone asks for a pillar "just so we know where to meet back up." Food is the real problem. "Oh my god, I'm going to starve to death. Do we have food?" The answer is apples, and nobody wants to eat them: "I think we need to save those for absorption in case we don't get armor." Zombie flesh gets handed around instead. By sunset there are 16 iron in the furnace, and the call comes: "I think it's time to go underground."
Down the stairs
In a cave by the meeting spot, Scoti_Garbidis stands near a crafting table while a bucket gets made and filled.
From there the team staircases down in different directions. "It's not diamonds we're looking for." The month's rules ban mining diamonds before the Nether and gathering anything after the 20-minute mark, so the clock matters: "We're like 12 minutes in here." Then the news everyone wanted: "I found a ravine. Lava ravine."
A portal by the lava
Redstone ore shows in the ravine walls next to the lava, and there is more iron. "I'm hearing skeletons still." Nobody has armor. "This is really freaking me out." Basket carries water buckets onto the lava lake and turns its edge to obsidian.
A portal goes up beside the lava, and lighting it takes one more iron ingot for the flint and steel. The last minutes turn up a few extras. "Did we get some gold already?" "I got four pieces." "I got sugar cane." Seeds do not: "Out of all that, I did not grab one seed."
One way through
"Don't go in. Once you go in, you can't come back out." With less than a minute left, the team says a quick goodbye at the portal and steps through. On the other side is red netherrack, lava and fire. Within seconds, the portal frame is packed with cobblestone, and optimus1971 and Scoti_Garbidis still have more in hand. The screen does not show who placed which block.
All four finish day one alive and in the Nether, with no armor, two apples in Basket's hotbar and, by everyone's account, too much wood. The credits roll after that, and nothing comes after them.