Minecraft
I started playing Minecraft, a sandbox/adventure game, September 26, 2010. Minecraft posts on my blog. I am also somewhat active on Reddit r/Minecraft. See also my user page on Minecraft Wiki.
Table of contents:
My world
My current world is available on a public server at mc.switchb.org. It is overwritten daily, so feel free to mess around and use all of the available resources. There are no server mods in use, and no commands available for players.
While I am the only person who actually plays it persistently, I have built the rail stations so that they are all multiplayer-capable. (However, not all of the rail tunnels support simultaneous travel in two directions.)
MCServerlist.net entry, with more info on the world.
These are some images of my first world (pre-Halloween 2010):
Other worlds
I have not yet found any multiplayer servers I like to play on; probably because I'm mainly interested in extensive planning on a whole landscape, with resource constraints. There was a list here of servers with interesting constructions and challenges, but it quickly became obsolete. Here are some server list sites:
This Minecraft Forum post lists “adventure maps” — worlds created by other players to present challenges which you download and play single-player. I haven't played many of them myself.
Loadout
I play a relatively conservative game, so I don't carry a lot of emergency supplies, but I don't care for constantly running back to base. Here's what I carry all the time:
I keep all of these items in the lower rows of my inventory so that gathered items are separated in the upper portion.
The Wooden Planks allow me to construct crafting tables, handles for tools, and doors for safety. Some recommend carrying logs for the higher total amount of wood, but I find having an extra inventory slot available is useful and I rarely need that much wood (though I would probably find uses for it if I did).
I do not carry an axe regularly as I find it to not be worth the inventory slot, unless I'm doing some constructing or landscaping involving wood; wood harvesting is done inside my tree farm with its own supplies.
Mining and Caves
- The risk of encountering lava when at depth can be minimized by recognizing that all deep lava pools have the same depth and at that depth, all caves are completely filled with lava. If you find that depth, and dig horizontally at or above it, you will never encounter lava flowing at you except for lone lava streams and lakes. In case you do encounter lava, establish a reflex of noticing the sudden brightness and bringing up a block to plug the hole with. Using these guidelines, I have never died to lava despite not carrying a bucket of water.
- When transporting or otherwise working with lava, carry a bucket of water, be at full health, and don't carry anything valuable. Especially that diamond pick you were just taking the obsidian cap off the lava pool with.
- When you dig a tunnel and finds it hit something you don't want (say, lava, a cave, or a previous construction of yours), plug the hole with glass, so you know what was behind there when you come back. Or carry signs and label things — but glass stacks.
- If you mine out a block at the level below you, and then immediately place another block in the same location, then the resource dropped by the removed block will often bounce up into collection range rather than dropping down.
Mining patterns
My current favorite strategy for mining of diamond, redstone, gold, and lapis lazuli is to find the depth of lava pools, then dig long straight tunnels, spaced out every 3 blocks horizontally, just above that depth. Being at this depth maximizes the valuable ores, while avoiding having to dig around lava. There is also the possibility of exploring caves, but caves at this depth are often either cut off by lava pools, or so open and complex that there is a large risk of ambush.
For iron, I find that exploring caves at any depth is quite sufficient.
Reddit user dumptruckman suggests not digging systematic tunnels, but rather fully excavating every region of dirt one comes across, because shovels are cheaper and digging dirt is faster (and also exploring caves). However, the dirt itself never contains anything valuable, so I suspect this is not actually that useful.
Mechanisms
See also my playlist on YouTube for mechanism designs (not mine).
Redstone
Tips for understanding the behavior of redstone:
- Think of redstone dust as occupying the entire block it's in, even though it's drawn as a trail on the floor.
- The graphics of redstone dust accurately display its connections (other than directly up, and toward redstone torches one level up); if there is no dust trail in a given direction it will not interact with the object in that direction. (Exception: TNT.) This means you may have to give an extra block of space to allow your circuit connections to be made without interference.
- Redstone torches: the block containing the torch itself is the output and the block the torch is attached to is the input. This means that a redstone torch standing on the ground can only have inputs that are one layer below it (and beside) or two layers below (underneath).
Minecarts
Technique:
All material here was obsoleted by the glitch-booster fix in Minecraft 1.6. TODO: update this with powered-rail designs.
Builds:
TODO: Update this with powered-rail designs.
- I have built six unique minecart stations; they can be seen on my server (see above). They incorporate many of the ideas listed below and refinements thereupon (these links are now a bit stale).
- Automated Minecart Station — Simple automatic cart launch, uses an unnecessary additional booster and a separate return track. Just make the holding track longer and it serves as its own booster.
- YouTube - Minecraft Minecart System — All the features you could want. The carts wait for you to get in and out. They are delivered from a pile of minecarts. (Reddit thread.)
- YouTube - Minecraft cart ride — Simpler but equally effective system, apparently; the cart is simply always ready to enter. Also has long tracks and an underwater base. (Reddit thread.) I used this design in my first world.
Spawner traps
Very simple mob spawner trap: place a cactus block on top of a sand block next to a water stream out of the room around the spawner. (Context). My own version is a 5x5x5 room around the spawner, with a water source in one diagonal corner with a couple blocks to spill over (and another couple in the other corners, but I don't think they were necessary), a cactus block (on top of a sand block, standing out of the water, so that it doesn't destroy the drops) forming the end of the wall next to the water flow exit, and a dinky little room with a door (just in case of wandering monsters or spawned ones outside of the trap) around the exit to wait in. I have used this design successfully against skeletons and spiders.
Other
Texture packs
These texture packs I particularly like:
- Frenden's. If you liked the style of Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, you'll like this pack. Sometimes it's hard to see terrain because of the nearly flat colors, though. (Or at least that used to be the case. These days it seems to be changing a lot every update. —2011-05-03)
- Painterly Pack. I didn't like the defaults, but the customization options gave me something very nice. In particular, there is an option for borderless glass, and the appearance of cobblestone is distinct and yet not so terribly noisy as the standard cobblestone.
- Lucid Pack. Very clean, bright look, without being flat-colored. Unfortunately not recently updated.
- Planet Pack. This is one of my favorite packs for general play, except for the stone being a tad dark for mining work (especially with smooth lighting on). It has a clean, colorful look without being cartoonishly perfect.
- DokuCraft. The original RPG-style texture pack. 32×32; newer blocks and water will appear glitched unless Minecraft is patched.
Other texture packs in my collection:
R.I.P. (no longer kept up to date):
