If there’s one thing you can’t trust your friends to use wisely, it’s the stuff that they didn’t work for. I learned that when my friend fell into a pit of lava in Minecraft. In mere minutes he had cost us all of our diamonds and we never found any more.

It all started about two years ago when two of my friends and I got together and we made a brand new Minecraft world. After a few days we were making pretty average progress. We had made a base, created a food supply, and we were even lucky enough to find some diamonds. I wanted to save them for later, but one of my friends wanted to use them immediately.

“Can I have a diamond hoe?”, Codey asked.
I told him, “No.”

“What about a pickaxe?”

“No, you can’t have a pickaxe.”

“Then what diamond tool can I have?”

I sat there thinking for a moment. I couldn’t come up with a valid argument at the moment. In hindsight I could have said that we need to save our diamonds for later use. 

Instead I said, “Fine you can have your hoe.” I then reluctantly took two diamonds from my chest and crafted one for him. 

I should have just said no. After we had the diamonds to collect obsidian, we built a nether portal. A little bit later he typed in the chat again.

“How do you use a smithing table?”

My response? “That’s how you get netherite gear.” 

Netherite is a material in the game that is stronger than diamond, but cannot be burned by lava. However, it is difficult to obtain and very dangerous because you have to get it in the nether, as the name states. You also need to have diamond gear to collect it and apply it to your equipment. That being said, Codey asked me another question.

“Can I get a diamond pickaxe?”

I sat there for a moment wondering if he was being serious. He had already asked for a hoe and now he wanted a pickaxe? I hesitated before responding to his question.

“You’re not trying to get a netherite hoe are you?”

“Wait, you can get one?” he asked.

I stared blankly at my screen. Then he typed again.

“No, I’m just getting normal gear.”

I decided it wouldn’t hurt to spend a few more diamonds if it paid off. I gave him his pickaxe and he happily went to explore the nether. He didn’t last long. A couple of minutes later a death message popped up in the chat.

The message read, “Codeygaming4575 hit the ground too hard”

I stopped for a moment before realizing it was no big deal. He could just respawn and go get the stuff back. The funny thing about death messages though, is they aren’t always specific enough about how the player died. Codey had indeed died on impact with the floor. However, the floor he hit was the floor of a shallow lava pool. When he explained what happened I was furious.

“Did you just waste all of our diamond tools?!” I asked him. He didn’t need to respond. I already knew the answer.

I stared in disbelief. His mistake had cost us five diamonds. Now we were left with only one. We were never able to find another diamond in that world. Since that incident I have learned to be more cautious with the items I give him. I never want to risk another chance of him losing something that easily costs us hours of progress.