Underground, Michael Deering's February 2014 challenge, gives each team one Minecraft day above ground to gather everything it will need, then sends it below the surface for the rest of the month. Basket's team is MaBaSteeSco on the GopherCraft server: Steel_Douglas and Max_Writer show up in the chat as they join, and Scoti_Garbidis earns an achievement soon after. They start next to a village with no trees in sight. "We have a problem. There are no trees."
Pillage the Village
So the village becomes the lumber yard. Basket breaks the logs out of a farm's border and crafts a crafting table and a wooden pickaxe while the others clean out the rest. "I've got a bunch of carrots, I've got a bunch of potatoes, I've got a bunch of wheat." Someone heads for the library's books, and someone has two diamonds. The team won't stay, though: "We're not staying at this village. It's a death trap." The order goes out to grab everything, "and wish them luck. And maybe they'll live another day." Then: "Probably not."
Saplings and pigs
The team heads south toward a dark oak forest, picking up saplings along the way, since wood will be scarce once they're under. Livestock is harder. Killing passive mobs is only allowed if you breed replacements, and pigs won't follow anyone down a hole. Out on the plains Basket has carrots in hand, and two pigs next to Scoti_Garbidis breed. "Did these pigs make another pig? Yeah, they did."
A soup kitchen
The dark forest has mushrooms. "We're gonna open up a soup kitchen." Basket finds a giant red mushroom between the trees, with Scoti_Garbidis right beside it, and chops into the cap and the stem. "Sun is heading down. Should we find a cave or stairstep?"
Under for good
They go in through a cave at the forest's edge and carve out a little room. "Don't use dirt to patch up the holes." The wood count comes in from around the room: "I got 20 oak, 9 dark oak and seven birch." Someone spots "water dripping down from above." Then a player falls into a hole and finds a cave below, and that settles where to go next. "What else are we gonna do for the next seven and a half days?" There is no going back up. "We can't, it's against the rules."
Zombies in the dark
The caves are crowded. "Skeletons to the right," someone calls, and three zombies shuffle out of a dark opening right at Basket, who swings a stone sword at them. When one player's game freezes, someone runs back so nobody is left alone. "Nobody gets left behind." Max_Writer and Steel_Douglas push on through the torch-lit tunnels as the team spreads out. "Why are we splitting up? I don't think that's a good idea."
Looking for home
The plan settles into something sensible: "find a central area, make it our home, and then start exploring the caverns after we get some housekeeping done." Basket mines iron and coal along the way, and the team finds a cavern with brown mushrooms already growing in it. "This might be big enough to grow trees down here." Torches worry them. "We are gonna go through torches like crazy."
One last shaft runs straight up to the sky. "Seal it up." Basket ends day one alive and underground, and no death shows on screen. The end card follows, with nothing after it.