Your chance to destroy a golden wrench for charity

Left: Golden Wrench. Right: Colosseum. Gone: Your expectations of the limits of achievement.

On Saturday, March 26th, five of the Top Tier Tactics writers got together for the first time to do something absolutely fiendish for a good cause. After hours of begging, building, planning, and falling to our deaths, we constructed the world’s first 20-story golden wrench in Minecraft. Gaze upon its beauty, mortals, and despair. For while some people dream of owning such a powerful tool, others take action and bring their desires to life.

Of course, Top Tier Tactics wouldn’t create a golden wrench if it didn’t have any intention of exploiting it for the good of others. That’s where you come in: whoever bids the most for the Golden Wrench for the QubeTubers Minecraft Marathon for Child’s Play on April 9-10 will win the chance to own it in-game burn it to the ground!

Bailed out of technical problems

When the game started, we were assaulted with a bevy of technical problems. First, my LiveStream channel was broadcasting MineCraft in 1680×1050 at about four frames per second. Since this isn’t generally good for playing or for watching, I attempted to resolve the problem, only to have Minecraft crash repeatedly. And when the game finally did get back online, the LiveStream client crashed, broke, and gave me the finger.

Luckily, Space Hamlet, our newest writer, happened to have a working LiveStream channel and a computer that didn’t hate him, so we were able to proceed relatively unhindered. After Syntria gave us a tour of the QubeTubers Minecraft server and its many wonders (including working SG-1 Stargates!), Rabid Ferret, Binerexis, and Serge T3 were able to join us, providing additional insight and commentary.* With out team assembled, we set out to build a, uh…

You must construct additional sheep

Right. We were supposed to choose a structure to build. And not unlike the final form of Gozer, such a decision could not be made lightly. After a little deliberation, arguing, and Senior Editor veto power, we settled on a gigantic golden wrench. After all, if Top Tier Tactics was going to be involved with virtual items and charity, why not stick with what we know best? Unfortunately, we were faced with even more problems once we had a goal, since the QT server is legit, and digging up 500 gold ingots would take far longer than we’d care to think about. I don’t remember if Rabid Ferret or Serge suggested it first, but the prospect of using yellow-dyed wool would make the task considerably more affordable, if not significantly more cruel to imaginary mammals.

With the cooperation of the indigenous wildlife and many generous donations from other players on the server, we had the raw materials necessary. There was yellow wool for the golden parts of the wrench, black wool for the handle, and cobblestone for scaffolding. We didn’t have blueprints or any other plans, but I did have a blank sheet of paper, a ruler, and a picture of the golden wrench, and quickly threw together proportional dimensions. After making our way to a suitably tall hill that would serve as a natural pedestal, it was time to begin construction.

Begin at the beginning

Serge gazes upon our new god.

We wanted our golden idol to be as grandiose as possible, but that created a stumbling block. If we began building to scale, it’s possible we could hit the skybox, ruining our efforts. While such an issue could be circumvented with foresight, planning, or recalculation, there was a much faster (and therefore inherently better) solution: create a gigantic scaffolding to the skybox, then build the golden wrench from the top down.

The concept was so simple, one wonders why it isn’t employed in real life construction. Sure, we fell to our deaths a few dozen times, and when we made mistakes we had to fix them upside-down from the ceiling. On one or two occasions, I may have thrown up in my mouth upon staring down at vertigo- and vomit-inducing virtual vistas. And yes, the whole situation made transporting materials difficult (at least, if you wanted to bring them to the top), but I’ll be damned if I ever solved a problem the correct conventional way.

What goes up must go up in flames

Hours later, our task was complete. Then Binerexis had to point out that a few blocks were off, and we redid the entire handle.

A few hours later, our task was complete. It was about 4 AM in England, so our Smarty Pants Engineer had to go to bed, though the rest of us were equally exhausted. As whiny and juvenile as it may sound, building an imaginary tower of wool for hours on end while teetering near death and losing vision due to nightfall, clouds, and Coke Zero fueled hallucinations isn’t easy. We removed the scaffolding, placed a sign, and logged off.

The Top Tier Tactics Golden Wrench remains in the QubeTubers Minecraft server, a testament to human greed, phallic devotion, and squabbling over virtual wealth. Thus it should come of no surprise that your moral duty is to destroy this god-forsaken token of evil. Right now, the top bid for its ownership and demise is a lofty zero dollars, meaning anything you wager is likely to secure your spot as the torchbearer on the 10th. And remember, all donations directly benefit the Child’s Play Charity.

What are you waiting for? Get over to QubeTubers to learn more, then make your donation while name-dropping T3, and you could be the one to burn everything we worked so hard to achieve!

*90% of which involved making fun of my default Minecraft skin. The other 10% consisted of bickering about Doctor Who.