Minecraft weekly #3

So far, we’ve gotten a good start to minecraft; A home, good tools, building blocks, and food. If you just want to do that for the rest of your minecrafting days, then from this point on, these blog posts will be useless for you. If you want to go farther, and explore the dangerous and uncharted parts of minecraft and get even better upgrades, then these are for you. This section will tell about mining, and what you get when you go deeper.

First of all, you need to mass up supplies, such as food, iron, wood, coal, and, oddly enough, a bucket of water. The water is for in case you run in to lava, so when that happens, just right click while holding the bucket of water when you get out of the lava, and bam, you’re not on fire any longer.

Unlike last time, go AS DEEP AS POSSIBLE, and ALWAYS start from a cave. They can be time and material savers, though you could get blown up. Once you get deep, four different ores will appear along with the ones that you have already seen; these are Gold, Redstone, Lapis, and Diamond. If you are under a mountain biome, you can find Emeralds too. All of these ores must be broken with a iron pickaxe.

Gold ore will look like all the other ores, except with yellow spots instead of black(Coal) or rust(Iron) spots. You have to smelt gold. It is used to make strong tools that last about as long as wood, so don’t use gold for tools(Same with the armor). You could use it to make a clock or powered rails. I usually just keep it in a chest. Like Iron, you can make it into a block and place it.

Redstone is an ore that has red spots on it. It does not need to be smelted, and will drop more then one piece of redstone dust when you break it. YOU CANNOT USE IT FOR TOOLS, it is used mostly for redstone creations. Redstone is like a wire used to carry electricity in your house, and can turn on different things. It does need something to turn it on, though. Redstone blocks are newly added into the game, and are used in redstone circuits.

Lapis is very much like redstone, but have a few major differences. First of all, Lapis has dark blue spots on its ore. Second of all, it isn’t used for redstone circuits; it is used for dyeing things blue. You can make it into a block.

Diamonds are the best of all. They have light blue spots on their ore, and drop one diamond that does not need smelting. These diamonds create the best, most durable tools and armor around. Diamonds are very rare, though. Just like everything else, they can be made into a block. They are also used in other items, such as Enchanting tables and jukeboxes.

Emeralds are like diamonds, except the only use of them is to trade with villagers. They also have green spots on their ore. This ore is the rarest. They can be made into blocks.

Minecraft Weekly #1

This is the first minecraft weekly. In this blog post, I will be talking about the basics of survival, which will help many n00bs to get better at the game.

For a starter, you create a world. I suspect that you know how to create a new world. First of all, the ‘gamemode’ button needs to be at survival. Next, press the ‘create new world’ button, and there you go. If you want to name your world, just type in the name in the box that says ‘new world’ in it before you create the world. Once you create it, the survival starts.

There are many different methods of survival, but first of all there are two different modes that switch the way that you play the game. First of all, you can play on Peaceful, which means NO monsters and NO losing hunger. There are bosses, but you can’t get to them(Because there are no wither skeletons to get wither heads and no endermen to get ender pearls, which you have to combine with blaze powder to get an Eye of Ender, and there are no blazes,).

There is also easy, normal, and hard, which all have monsters and hunger(Important note; In peaceful, there are still non hostile mobs and some neutral mobs. In peaceful, dogs, cats, and Iron Golems are still there, but not Enderman or Zombie pigmen). I would recommend you starting at easy, because peaceful can get boring after a while, and normal and hard can drive you mad because the hunger bar goes down faster. Also, Cave Spiders poison you on normal and hard,). If you go on peaceful, I would recommend looking at another blog post, or maybe just look it up, since I am going to be talking about survival on easy.

IMPORTANT NOTE: NEVER choose hardcore as your gamemode instead of survival when you create your world, at least while you are not a good survivalist to the game. More notes will be about that in another blog post.

When you come in to the new world, start punching trees(I know it sounds dumb, but do it anyway,). This will give you wood, which you can craft by putting in your inventory. Once you craft these, you need to craft a workbench and sticks, and you can look up crafting recipes on the Minecraft Wiki. Once you have a crafting table, you need to craft a wood pickaxe. Once you have done this, dig down to get some stone. Once you have cobblestone(when you break stone, you get cobblestone, which is used for tools. Stone can be smelted back from cobblestone, but you cannot make tools out of it), Go ahead and craft some stone pickaxes, swords, and axes. If you find coal, get it, because you can use it to get torches.

At this time, you will probably be ready to explore. Get your crafting table and start exploring, and once it becomes night, make a quick shelter. If you can, find some food, but wait to mine in caves. NEVER stand outside and fight through the night. It is the best way to get killed. The best way to kill mobs is to make Murder Holes, shown by PaulsoaresJR.

After you have survived the night, I would get out and wander around a little more. This is the checklist that your home place NEEDS to have:

Nearby wood source*(1)

Nearby cave

Pasture of animals nearby, preferable animals are cows.

It cannot be in the middle of a desert,*(2)

*(1) If you have saplings, then this is not needed, but it is better to live near a forest or jungle.

*(2) If you find a desert village, then you can stay, but otherwise, go in to the desert, but don’t make your settlement there.

Here is a list of optional things:

Terrain(Such as mountains) That give you a natural barricade from monsters.

Huge cave system with many ores

Nice landscape

DOGGIES NEARBY!

MOST IMPORTANT OPTIONAL THING: KITTIES NEARBY!(No, it isn’t, but It IS true that minecraft cats and kittens can be cute, but they take a lot of effort to tame,)

After this, you should be able to settle down and survive. No matter how long it takes you to find the necessary things, search for them. Until you can, set up a small hole in the ground to stay in during the night. These are your first two major steps in minecraft, which I call the Beginning(Getting tools and things), and the Searching(When you search for a home).