Minecraft PvP Adventures: The Hunger Games

Recently I’ve started playing more multiplayer Minecraft, particularly playing on PvP servers, where you can play against other people. In the Minecraft Hunger Games you’re placed in a huge open world with up to 150 players, you explore, find resources, make tools and weapons, find food and try not to starve to death, find and kill the other players, and generally try to survive. You have 2 minutes of invincibility when you spawn and after that the last player standing wins.

I spawn in, and like the 100 other players around me, start frantically running towards a tree to gather some wood during the invincibility period. My tactic for this game was to get around 5 logs and then just run as fast as I can to the edge of the map, away from the other players, and hunt for food. The first few times I played I underestimated how important, and difficult, it was to get food. I would either start digging underground and look for iron as quickly as possible, and then have to resort to eating zombie flesh if I even managed to find that, or run around just looking for some mushrooms or hoping for some animals to spawn. I was lucky this time in that I was able to find a herd of cows outside of a small cave. I beat the cows to death, ripped off their skin and cut out their meat. After entering and then blocking off the entrance to the cave, I had a nice hideout, enough beef to last for a while, and some leather to make armour.


40 players remaining.




A key aspect of the Hunger Games servers was that you choose a kit to add something to your arsenal from the get go. During this game my kit was ‘Beast Master’, so I spawned with 2 wolf eggs and 4 bones. I spawn a wolf and the greedy bastard uses up all my bones until it becomes obedient, I spawn the other wolf anyway and just set it free, to roam the land and live a full life. Scruffy and I start heading down into the depths of the cave, and immediately stumble upon a massive coal vein. I make enough torches to last the rest of the game and keep heading down. We venture though the various pathways of the cave, coming across beautiful underground waterfalls and luminous lava pits, battling skeletons and zombies, collecting more and more resources and becoming a formidable team.


20 players remaining.




Scruffy runs around killing zombies and protecting my back, as I continue to find as much iron as possible. I find a nice iron ore vein on the side of an underground ravine. There’s water flowing down into the depths of the cavern beside me and I can hear the splashing of a party of mobs waiting for me to fall. Directly beneath me there was a creeper, jumping up and down just too low to reach me. The ore was right on the edge of the ravine wall and the immediate drop was significant. I told Scruffy to sit and stay and proceeded to build a makeshift bridge of dirt and cobblestone. Nervously holding down the shift key, I build a narrow path to the ore. I started mining into the vein. One block, two, three-all of a sudden I had 8 more iron blocks to add to my stack. That was all I needed for now, enough to make a sword and some extra armour. It was time to find my way back out of this cave and start hunting for players.


10 players remaining.


I start heading back the way I came, and Scruffy is equally eager to get out of here and see the sun again. But of course as any Minecrafter will attest to, the allure of a dark cavern and the possible goods inside is too strong to ignore. So we were diverted, several times, into caves and pathways, down water streams and around mobs, until we were utterly lost. This wasn’t a huge problem since I had torches and food, and while we were so deep underground we were safe from other players, but there was one thing I didn’t count on-the Feast.


5 players remaining.


At some point in the game, at some point on the map, the server holds a Feast. A bunch of stuff happens and people get cool equipment, I assume, I’ve never actually been to the Feast before. Suffice to say that there are restrictions on the server, for example you can’t mine diamond, so if you’re lucky enough to be near the Feast when it happens it could be a real turning point. The downside is that many other players may arrive at the location, making it a dangerous area. I see the Feast be announced, I see the coordinates, I look up my coordinates, and I weep in despair. I pat Scruffy on the head, hope that no one else got anything too powerful from the Feast, or that people that went there killed each other out, and continue to try and make it above ground.


4 players remaining.




As we continue to walk out, I find a creeper directly in my path, so I hit it with a sword and it gets knocked back. The ever loyal Scruffy immediately starts to attack it, I walk over to hit it again and kill it, but as Scruffy keeps biting it, it gets knocked back and it’s just out of reach for me to hit. I hear the creeper’s signature hiss and see it explode and disappear in a haze of smoke and rubble, and I see Scruffy’s body flash red, fall to its side, and disappear. NOOO, SCRUFFY! Goddamn creepers, I have to win now, for you old friend.


3 players remaining.




As I mourn for Scruffy, I decide now is not the time to leave the underground caves. I dig down deeper, I need to get more iron, get stronger, and make sure I can’t lose. As I start crafting some more armour, I exit the crafting bench and-goddamn creeper out of nowhere. GODDAMN CREEPERS. I hate them so much. This one wasn’t going to go get out alive, a few hits with an iron sword and it was dead.


2 players remaining.


Now we were in to the end game. I have full iron armour, an iron sword and food for days. I start to, once again, try and find my way back above ground. I feel like I’m in a pretty good position, so I ask the only player remaining what equipment he has.

Oh sweet Jesus diamond!?
POTIONS!?
I really regret not going to the feast.



I see him coming down towards me, closer and closer, until I can hear him mining only a few blocks above me. I start sprinting down into my cave system and I see a skeleton in my way. I can’t engage it now, can’t risk getting hit and losing any health, and I can’t go back since he’s going to break through my wall any second. I’m not worried though, I have the spirit of Scruffy by my side. There’s no way I’m losing this, after all, the underdog always wins right? He breaks though, I charge at him and my iron sword clangs against his diamond armor, he hits me with his diamond sword and I die almost instantly.

Well…crap.

Goddamn creepers.