Day one of Zombie Life, Michael Deering's July 2015 Minecraft Hardcore Challenge. This month the players live like zombies. They may only eat zombie flesh, they are to kill villagers, they may only craft wooden things, and they may only break dirt, gravel, sand and coal ore. The end goal is to fix up the village they attack at the start. Basket plays in a team of three with Scoti_Garbidis and pulse2010, in hardcore on Minecraft 1.8.6.
Out of the hole
The episode opens with the team crowded into a dark hole in the ground, waiting for the start. "I just have to be there for day." Then they climb out onto open grassland and go looking for the village. "Oh, it's over here, guys. Over here." A pumpkin patch sits just outside the houses.
Into the village
The rules say the villagers have to go, and the team doesn't wait. "We got to train the villagers right with our fists." Basket goes into one of the houses bare-handed and punches the villagers inside. The chat shows Taking Inventory for Scoti_Garbidis and then for BasketMC, and Basket sets down a crafting table on a village path and makes a wooden sword. One thought lands a little late: "He wants us to kill all the villagers, cuz then we won't have an auto zombie tracking source, right?"
Coal from the cave
Stone is off limits this month, and that changes what counts as valuable. "Since we can't mine stone, coal is very valuable, because it has to be on the surface of a cave." Basket finds a stony hollow full of exposed coal ore and works through it with a wooden pickaxe until the hotbar shows 60 coal. Meanwhile someone is in trouble on the call: "I'm alive and almost dead." Rotten flesh is the only food, and it gets passed around. "Anybody got any zombie flesh for me to eat?"
The library becomes home
Back in the village, Basket earns Getting Wood by breaking the log border of a wheat farm, then crafts a wooden shovel and a stack of torches. The torches go up inside the village library. "This will be our base. This library." Later, Basket also lays acacia wood slabs around the village paths and adds a wooden axe to the hotbar.
Zombie flesh after dark
Night brings exactly what the team needs: zombies. Scoti_Garbidis and pulse2010 fight them in the grass between the houses, and the drops start adding up. The worry on the call is friendly fire. "Be careful not to hit each other." Basket's own hearts barely move all night, but not everyone is so lucky. "My health is not good." By the end of the night someone is "up to eight zombie flesh," and pulse2010 turns up in the torch-lit library.
Day two
"I think the sun's trying to come up." Basket takes a swing at a spider in the dawn light, and then it's morning over the village. "And it's day two." No death lines show up in chat, and all three players are still alive. Basket ends with wooden tools, torches, a few acacia slabs and a single piece of rotten flesh. Fixing up the village hasn't started yet. The credits follow, with no gameplay after them.
