Talk:Gravel/Archive 1

Gravel + red stone wire + pistons
I've just tested it and it seems you can push a row of gravel using pistons so you won't brake red stone wire this gravel is traveling through (it pushes the dirt and place gravel without braking circuit that's working on it).

I've basically made short loop with repeaters placed on dirt, then put some pistons inside this small dirt circle and some gravel column to feed those pistons. What happened there is that gravel pushed by pistons would go through the dirt with red stone wire on it without breaking the circuit. ReiseReise 18:45, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Use for gravel
This may seam obvious, and I'm sure you already know this but I just realized that you can place any gravel from your inventory and re-mine it. Essentially this can be used to convert 100% of your gravel into flint if you are patient. Of course when you mine gravel and it gives flint, you won't get that gravel back.

I was just going to add that to the wiki, although it might seem obvious, i think it belongs in it. -Aeroren

There is a little blurb regarding this on the main page for Gravel. The easiest way to sift the gravel is to make a 3x3 Tower with a hollow center and a 1 block wide and 2 block Tall opening at the bottom to dig and collect thru. Just make the tower as tall as you want, drop the gravel down the hole and go to the bottom to dig until you've gone thru the whole stack, repeat. It's much faster than placing a block, digging it up and placing another block down. - TheBlackDragon

My friend created a gravel chute that was 2x1 with a staircase leading to the top where there was a hole in the wood floor. In that hole, he could place gravel on the side of the wood and it would fall perfectly back into place. When breaking the gravel he would just alternate. As one side fell, he would break the gravel on the bottom of the other side of the stack. The top is sealed off so mobs can not enter, so if one needed flint, they could just bring their gravel over or use the gravel they would store in the attatched room. If nessissary, I could take a snapshot of the gravel chute and it could be placed along side the note that one could break placed gravel, and if anyone wanted tothey could snapshop a 3x3 with a hollow middle as well, and it could be placed right beside it. Then we'd have two possible gravel chute layouts that people could make. --RTGreece21 07:49, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Found a new use for gravel, if your pour water on it, it becomes Clay (Block). Upon further research, I found out it was the addon mcMMO that was causing this. --Doirdyn 04:13, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Buckets give 100% flint
I have heard that when gravel is dug up using a bucket, it always gives flint. I haven't yet had a chance to try it, but if it can be confirmed, then it should definitely be put up here. -Helloworld00

Digging gravel with a bucket producing 100% flint is easily demonstrably false. I dug 10 gravel with an empty bucket: 0 flint; 10 gravel with a bucket of lava: 0 flint; 10 gravel with a bucket of water: 1 flint; 10 gravel with a bucket of milk: 2 flint. -mqj

Flaming Gravel
I just recently noticed that when gravel falls into lava it gets set in fire, until it stops. anybody else notice this?--Ikalpo 20:19, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is because falling gravel, and sand too, are entities. CyborgDragon 20:29, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Steps and Gravel
I recently found that step blocks also disintergrate gravel dropped on them, though not stair blocks, interestingly. Nahere 01:09, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * that info was on the step page, i believe.Toadbert

Contradiction
Hey, there's a contradiction in this article. It says it yields flint with an "exact 10% chance when destroyed", implying any means works, but later it says that when it falls on torches it doesn't yield any flint either, which I've observed myself. Also, when I dig gravel as it drops fast with a diamond shovel, it drops nothing. I'm thinking it's not the torch, but the method...if it's dropping and being destroyed too fast, it doesn't drop Flint. I'm wondering if this is a bug or just an annoying limit feature that Notch put in. Any knowledge/thoughts on this? --Mskd bklndr 16:26, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I would assume that it's two different code paths. My understanding of gravel behavior is that it exists in 3 different forms: Thus what happens when you destroy a gravel block is unrelated to what happens when a gravel entity "tries to place itself". I've never been able to destroy a falling gravel entity, but I've never tried with a diamond shovel. —KPReid 19:55, 17 December 2010 (CST)
 * Gravel block
 * If destroyed, drops gravel resource or flint resource.
 * If the block below is destroyed, turns into a gravel entity (which is subject to gravity)
 * Gravel resource
 * Can be placed as gravel block.
 * Gravel entity (which looks just like a gravel block)
 * Falls down. When it hits a surface:
 * If the space it occupies is clear, turns into a gravel block.
 * If the space is not clear, turns into a gravel resource.

---If anyone else wants to contribute data, that would be welcome--- ~RTGreece21, March 4th, 12:35AM.
 * Decided to try destroying falling gravel to see what I get. Sometimes I got flint, usually I got gravel. I update the game or look for updates every night, so from the date of this reply, what I say I have found to be true. I also asked my friend to try it at well, and he found the same thing. His screen name is KojiLiKurasu, but I don't think he plans on joining the wiki.
 * I took one chunk of gravel I had and set it up so I could break it as it fell. I did NOT break any of them while they were not falling, and I made sure of that.
 * In any case, this is what I found:
 * 1st try: 34 gravel gave me 3 flint and 31 gravel.
 * 2nd try: 31 gravel gave me 2 flint and 29 gravel.
 * 3rd try: 29 gravel gave me 3 flint and 26 gravel.

Gravel/flint rate
I did some calculus on the number of gravel blocks you'd have to place and destroy to convert it all to flint. I can explain it if you want some proof; I only say that because the answer seems intuitive enough. On average you place nine times your starting amount. If I have 64 gravel and I want 64 flint, on average I'll place and destroy 576 gravel blocks. Of course, you have low odds of only placing 64, and even lower odds of placing blocks indefinitely. --Allenmaster125 00:48, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I did an actual test on 24 blocks of gravel with wooden shovels. It used up 4 shovels and half of my 5th to turn all the gravel into flint. Additionally, it took an insanely long time to convert the final two blocks into flint -- until I got to the last two, I'd only used 3 and a half shovels. If you do the math, this means it takes around 12 wooden shovels to convert one stack of gravel into flint. Qwertygiy 16:07, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Flint rate increased in 1.3?
Decompiled SSP 1.3 yields this: public int idDropped(int i, Random random) {  if(random.nextInt(10) == 0) {      return Item.flint.shiftedIndex; } else {  return blockID; } Am I mistaken? &mdash; fuchsi a n i a  06:15, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

That is not 10% like the main page says. that is 1/9 01:22, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm sure that's 10%. random.NextInt(10) generates an integer from 0 to 9, inclusive, and 0 has a 10% chance of occurring. - Alphap T ~ C 06:27, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

mcMMO Mod
There have been quite a lot of edits claiming that gravel can be turned into clay. It feels like this might warrant a lock? Darkid 12:46, 16 April 2011 (UTC) If I remember correctly, it was a glitch in earlier version of the game, so that might explain why those keep coming up. --TylerBrach 02:27, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Fortune bug
If gravel is mined with a tool with Fortune IV or higher, Minecraft crashes. The offending bit of code is: public int idDropped(int par1, Random par2Random, int par3) { if (par2Random.nextInt(10 - par3 * 3) == 0) With Fortune IV, this calls Random.nextInt(-2), which is obviously illegal. While it does require mods/hacking to obtain such an enchantment, this would be trivial to fix, so I think it's worth reporting. -- Orthotope 06:16, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

For something so "easy" I'm suprised no one has made a mod to fix the issue. -- NuclearDERP 18:14, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

A quick could be to force a minimal value by replacing that : public int idDropped(int par1, Random par2Random, int par3) { if (par2Random.nextInt(10 - par3 * 3) == 0) by : public int idDropped(int par1, Random par2Random, int par3) { if (par2Random.nextInt(Math.max(0,10 - par3 * 3)) == 0) -- y.petremann 16:54, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

New gravel texture
Shouldn't the gavel texture still be the 1.2.5 gravel texture? 12w21a isn't an official release, the official texture is still the old one. 68.32.86.200 05:49, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Does anyone else not like the gravel texture? Like Honestly NPC villages will now look wierd. Also agreed official texture is still the 1.25 one.

New texture is ORRIBLE: as alpha player, I always loved old texture, it was so realistic, so good, so... Pink! New one seems ill cobblestone... And when you open the inventory you can't recognize if it is cobblestone or gravel. If they want to change the texture, I will use a vintage texture pack: they touched the cobblestone, ok. They touched glowstone, ok. But gravel can't pass. Goomboss 01:15, 7 july 2012 (UTC)

I do agree that the old texture should still be the one on the page, because the official version is still 1.2.5. As far as the "Does it look good or not" debate goes, I personally don't like it, but then again, I thought the old gravel texture was ugly too. I can't decide if this one is equally bad or worse, but I'll probably update my custom retro texture pack to use the old one just because it's the one I'm used to. Either way, the solution to not liking the gravel texture is very simple, and so it's not a big deal. Dullstar 07:53, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

People, deal with it. –Preceding unsigned comment was added by Noobnathan (Talk&#124;Contribs) 15:05, 27 August 2012 (UTC). Please sign your posts with

infobox
Where is the info box for falling gravel? ILeon 18:46, 28 March 2013 (UTC)


 * All falling blocks (sand, gravel, dragon egg, anvils) use the same entity ID ('FallingSand'); which type of block they are is stored as an NBT tag. An Entity infobox could be added here, but it would be identical (except for the image) to the one at Sand. -- Orthotope 20:28, 30 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Should FallingSand have its own page then? There wouldn't be much info, but otherwise we'd have to duplicate the info across all blocks that have gravity. –ultradude25 ᐸ Talk Contribs 06:05, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Texture
What if you can change the texture to on 0.8.0? I hope so.(edited 01:28, 1 May 2013 (UTC))Minecraftaddict154 01:25, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Compass?
Gravel has a VERY EASILY IDENTIFIABLE 'L' adjacent to the northeast corner; perhaps you can specify this in the article. (I'm assuming block orientation is constant; if it's not, I would be surprised.) Anyway, I wanted a quick-and-easy method of finding the compass directions in the Nether, and I guess this is it.

Clay blocks also work. Columbus8myhw 21:54, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Yup, it's noted in Tutorials/Navigation. But you don't need gravel in the Nether, as netherrack also has a similar mark. --Mental Mouse 21:15, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Netherrack's Compass Mark is not nearly as identifiable as gravel's. Clay Block's Mark, in my opinion, ranks second; Redstone-dust-dot's Compass Mark ranks third (at the north and east are two pixels not connected to the main blob). Anyway, I wanted a Nether compass to know where to look for Nether fortresses; they generate in north-to-south strips, so if I go east or west I'm probably going to find one. (Once I already find one, going north or south will be the best way to another fortress.)
 * You should definitely put the thing about the Compass Mark on the article. Actually, I might do it myself. Columbus8myhw 21:54, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Gravel Under Rails Slows Carts
I just did a test that rails have more traction on gravel and slow them down but they're faster on cobblestone and generally any other surface. Please tell me how my entry was 'incorrect' and how no one has discovered this after rails being in the game for 4 years but yet there is the mentioning of the aesthetics of gravel as decoration beneath rails. Unless its a server only thing. --RadicalEdward2 (talk) 00:50, 18 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Tested in snapshot 14w03b with both empty and occupied minecarts; they travel the exact same distance whether the rails are placed on top of stone or gravel. If you're testing game mechanics in multiplayer, make sure it is a vanilla server with no modifications of any kind. -- Orthotopetalk 01:59, 18 January 2014 (UTC)