Minimal GNOME3 in Minimal openSUSE 11.4

Good morning, afternoon or night,

I have just done a fresh install of openSUSE 11.4 with text mode only, and did

zypper refresh

and

zypper dup

Now I want to install GNOME3, but I would like to install a minimal shell (no browser, no e-mail, no IM, just the shell) because I want to learn how to install things on my own. That said, I don’t want to try the “1 Click Install” option, and I don’t want to use

zypper install -t pattern 'GNOME 3'

from the GNOME_STABLE_3.0 repository.

That said, can anyone please point out to me how can I do it? I tried

zypper si gnome-shell

but I ended up with a system which only booted in failsafe mode, and that showed a black screen otherwise.

Thank you very much.