Tutorials/Redstone tips

This page is especially created for beginners, to help. If you are experienced with redstone this may not be the best page for you, but you still may find some helpful information you didn't know. This page is not about how to make redstone circuits (see "See Also" for more), but it gives tips to improve redstone contraptions, and make it easier to remember what each part of the circuit does.

Colour coding
This is a simple yet very effective tip, especially if you create redstone contraptions that have many different parts to them, like comparator clocks mixed with other redstone items. It is to use different colored wool, concrete, or terracotta for different parts of the circuit. If you place all of the redstone on top of the same block, for example, out of dirt, soon you may completely forget how your redstone works. Furthermore, this is important if you want to show off all redstone contraptions on YouTube, so people can copy your design in their Minecraft world or you want to be able to go back to your project and understand what does what.

First in Creative Mode
If you want to make a complex redstone project in your survival world, it's always best to do it in creative mode first. When making complex projects, create a creative world, preferably a superflat, and set cheats on. You can build through the whole day, and when night starts to come, you can set the time to 500. Creative mode is a great for building, because you have an infinite number of blocks, you can break blocks right away, and you can fly around to look all around your structures.

Once you have finished your redstone contraption, try to figure out where you can improve the contraption; maybe try to make it a little bit smaller. Then, all you have to do once in survival mode is gather the materials, and just copy what you did in creative mode. Optionally, you can count how many of each material you used when building in creative mode, so that you will know exactly how much of a certain material to gather when in survival.

Farming Materials
When making very large redstone contraptions, it is recommended to make farms for renewable resources. Here are a list of materials you may need to farm:
 * Redstone (The only renewable source of redstone is by killing witches, so make a witch farm)
 * String (Make a spider farm if your contraption includes a lot of tripwires and/or dispensers)
 * Iron ingots (Make an iron golem farm if you need a lot of hoppers or minecarts)
 * Slimeballs (Most redstone contraptions are much easier to make if you have a slime farm, specifically ones that require a lot of sticky pistons and/or slime blocks)

Extra Materials
When you're making a redstone contraption in survival mode, in addition to bringing all the materials needed to built that contraption, there are other things that you will need or are recommended. See this list for things to bring in addition to what you need to actually build the circuit.
 * A bed, to sleep off the night
 * A sword or axe, to defend yourself against mobs
 * Food
 * A stack of any type of block, preferably a cheap and easy-to-break block, such as dirt, but not a block that has follows physics, like sand. Use this as scaffolding when building up high.
 * A map to find your way back to your house (optional)
 * Basic tools

The Perfect Redstone
When making redstone, its important to make it a reasonable size.

Too much redstone
You shouldn't create too much redstone, such as 876 chunks for one contraption. If many complex redstone circuits are going on all at once, your computer could lag.

Forcing yourself in a space
Although you should not use too much redstone for a contraption, don't try to create a fully functional redstone circuit in a small amount of space. Complex redstone circuits will need plenty of space to function. For example, you cannot create a computer that can play Minecraft on it and has 478 frames a second in 1 chunk.

For the best redstone results, make your contraption as small as you can with it still functioning, but if you find you're having any troubles with that small of a size, make it bigger. Also, make sure to never underestimate how much time, space or materials you will need.

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