Episode 3 of Zombie Life, Michael Deering's July 2015 Minecraft Hardcore Challenge. The rules still hold: eat only zombie flesh, kill villagers, craft only wooden things, and break nothing but dirt, gravel, sand and coal ore, with the village to fix up in the end. The team of three, Basket, Scoti_Garbidis and pulse2010, picks up where the last night left them: deep in a cave of lava and water, short on food.
A creeper in the dark
The food talk starts right away. "I have four spider eyes." Then a bigger question. "Where's our spawner?" "Your spawner is in another castle." The team pushes on through the cave. Then a line appears in chat: "pulse2010 was blown up by Creeper." In hardcore, that's the end of pulse2010's run. "You kind of snuck up on us." "Oh snap. GG, man." "Do you wanna stick around and be a ghost with us?" Basket and Scoti_Garbidis keep moving, and the plan for later is a simple one. "We'll make you a grave out of dirt and gravel."
Lost in the lava
Now it's two of them, and they can't find the way they came in. "This is also a dead end." "It all looks the same." The tunnels open onto a lake of lava, and Scoti_Garbidis walks the edges while Basket lights the way with torches. "How do you suppose we shall traverse this?" The one useful thing down here is dirt, the only block they're allowed to break, and Basket fills the hotbar with it. "One wooden shovel worth of dirt, almost."
Dirt stairs to the surface
They can't dig through stone, so the exit has to be something that already reaches the sky. "We need to go back to that ravine, right?" Back at the spot where they jumped down, Basket starts building. "I'm making us stairs up." The steps are rough, but they work, and the two come out on the savanna in the dark. "We're gonna get up to the surface at night."
Half a heart
The night is full of zombies, and the hearts on Basket's HUD keep falling. Neither of them is sure where the village is anymore. "We head north." Creepers turn up in the grass, then a skeleton, then a spider. "Put down blocks in between you and the skeleton." By the time the fighting stops, Basket's health bar is down to half a heart. "I'm down to half a heart." Flesh gets split between them, and it's not enough to heal.
A desert village at dawn
Past a lake the grass gives way to sand, and there's a village ahead. "Let's go to the village." The sky turns red as morning comes, and zombies are still walking between the houses.
One of them is wearing iron armor. "One's got armor. Be aware." Basket and Scoti_Garbidis take it down between the sandstone houses, and Basket ends up holding its iron chestplate. The deal is simple. "I feel like one of us should eat to heal, and then the other person just gets the armor." Basket puts the chestplate on and drops rotten flesh on the sand. "You can eat that to try and heal up." Then Basket crafts a new wooden sword. "I gotta make another sword."
The episode ends in the desert village in daylight, with Basket's health still low and Scoti_Garbidis alive beside the houses. The credits follow, with no gameplay after them.