The Tree Spirit Challenge

The first core aspect in this challenge as you might have guessed by now, is to grow a world tree.

It all begins when you join our world as a lone tree "spirit". The first thing you do is pick a single tree to become your blessed grandfather tree. It can be any kind of tree you like (within some limitations), on any location, as long as it is not too close to other grandfather trees. When you find one you want to bless, chop down the tree and gather all saplings and logs that drop, but you must leave the bottom log of the tree standing. This bottom log becomes the heart log and life of your world tree - if it is destroyed, be that by creepers exploding or fire, the challenge is lost, and the tree will die (if you're playing hardcore. Otherwise rebuild and keep going.)

When you have done this, hop up on your tree's heart log and begin the challenge proper! From now on, you may no longer leave your tree, you are linked to it. You can only mine or harvest anything you can reach while touching a log or leaf of your tree. With the saplings and logs you harvested from your grandfather-tree, you will be able to plant and grow new trees, offspring of your first, which you again can harvest completely. Then you repeat this process over and over again, while you try to grow your tree into a big, awe-inspiring creation! You may not expand your tree with wood gathered from other trees -- only with wood from your grandfather-tree's offspring. If you chop down other trees, throw the logs away or turn them into planks to use for crafting and decorative building.

The second core challenge aspect, lies in using no resources but those you can reach while touching part of your tree, be that a log or a leaf directly connected to your tree, through a series of other logs. To mine/harvest something, you must be able to reach it while touching your tree. Once it's an item dropped on the ground, you may leave your tree momentarily to pick it up. Let's illustrate an example with pictures:

The tree on the right is your world tree, and you want to pick up that flower. However, the tree spirit cannot leave it's tree, and the flower is too far away to reach! How can we pick up the flower? The answer is roots! The tree spirit can direct the growth of the world tree's roots to where they need to go, simply by placing logs grown from the sapling offspring of the original tree. So to reach that flower, the tree spirit would make a path of logs symbolizing the growth of roots, for example like this:

By using this simple concept, the tree spirit can reach anything! It can grow roots to water, expanding to encompass a greater area, or even dig deep down into the core of the earth to find precious materials like coal, iron, or even diamonds. Remember though, the roots must be directly connected through a string of logs to your tree's heart. Placing a log for every second block and jumping from log to log does not leave you with a direct link, and is not allowed.

These two aspects form the core rules in the challenge, and open for a surprisingly interesting and refreshing play-style, where absolutely everything you find becomes extra precious. To gain materials that you can't find while on your tree, you may trade with other spirits. To do that, you must grow your roots close enough to touch each other, or both connect your roots to the magical spawn area where everyone can roam freely.

The third core aspect, while not a rule in itself so to speak, rather more of a suggestion is; whatever way you decide to attack this challenge, do it in a way YOU find fun! Make up your own limitations to add to the challenge. Yours is the drill that will pierce the heavens after all, and you won't pierce the heavens if you're not having fun.