The first GopherCraft UHC opens in a glass-walled lobby, with fifteen players milling around benches and nameplates everywhere. The rules come over the call before anyone moves: "There's a wall, don't go above it. The Nether is pre-rendered, there is no wall in the Nether, but if you go past, that's on you." Then it is time to "come and click the button and get your wool."
Picking teams
Five teams of three, sorted by wool color. Basket ends up with a light blue wool block in the hotbar, standing near lostinthefort, Steel_Douglas, pikerize and TChels. The team cards roll next: BasketMC, Lostinthefort and PsychoSFK on one card. On the team call, the game hands them a name: "You're the sparkling party, congratulations." Someone suggests calling themselves the Glowstones instead. The words "The Sparkling Party" stay on screen as the match begins.
Sugar cane, pigs and no trees
The three spawn on grass by a river, right up against the tall wall, and a purple bar counts down to "GO!" The first problem is wood. "Ah, no trees." Basket heads for the sugar cane while the others run off looking for a forest, and the pigs nearby do not last. "I've got 7 pork chops on me."
One plan on the call was to craft as little as possible, so the achievement lines in chat would not give anything away. It did not last long. Chat soon reads "BasketMC has just earned the achievement [Getting Wood]," in a flood of the same line from everyone else. Someone asks for a crafting table anyway, and one soon sits in the grass next to lostinthefort.
Supplies before dark
The list grows from there: cobblestone tools, a furnace full of pork, sand "for bottles," saplings in case they get stuck in the Nether. The plan is enchantments first, then the Nether. Horses and donkeys get hunted for leather ("I got five pieces of leather"). Basket crosses a desert looking around. "There's a well. No village." Apples count up to four. Then the sun starts to drop, and the team decides to staircase down rather than dig straight.
A skeleton gets the host
Underground, a baby zombie can be heard somewhere in the tunnels. Then chat reads "Gopherboy was doomed to fall by Skeleton," and "gg" lines follow from all over the server. The Tab list now holds fourteen names. On the call: "It sucks, he already died." A chest goes down at the top of the stairs, with food left in it for whoever comes back up.
Iron and a lava pool
The staircase opens into a cave with "tons of coal" and iron. One piece of iron falls down a hole, but eight more get handed over ("Here's the eight iron") and go in the furnace. The plan: a bucket, an iron pickaxe, then armor. A bucket shows up in Basket's hotbar. Next to PsychoSFK, lava glows in the cave wall, and the talk turns to grabbing that lava source "for a weapon," or "even just for killing mobs."
"20 MINUTES" pops up in the corner, and that ends the first episode. Basket is alive and underground with lostinthefort and PsychoSFK, a bucket in the hotbar. "I think we're doing pretty good." The credits that follow thank Gopherboy for running and hosting the event.