Tutorials/Tips and tricks

Here are some tips and little hints for those who are new to Minecraft. Remember, however, that there are often tips under the 'Trivia' section of an item's page, and are likely to be more in-depth:

Peaceful mode
Can't seem to figure out those zombies? Too slow for the spiders? Can't make a decent shelter without the worry of a creeper? Low on health and don't have any food? Set the difficulty to peaceful and, voila! Your health will quickly regenerate, your hunger bar won't hurt you, and all hostile mobs will disappear. This becomes very helpful when building large structures or pixel art; however, most players dislike this, as it takes away much of what they see as the challenge and some of the fun of Minecraft.

Tree technique
If you want to get every block on a tree but just can't reach that top one, try leaving the bottom block intact (not cut down) and then jump on it to get the rest. Once done, harvest the bottom. If you still can't reach after using this, you'll have to place a block such as dirt below you to boost yourself up higher... or use an adjacent piece of land and leave more than one block. For the giant 2x2 jungle trees, see the tree page for techniques.

Remember the pattern
Struggling to remember crafting patterns? Trying to make a bucket but instead you make a minecart (and waste 5 Iron Ingots!) or even a cauldron (and waste 7 ingots)? Take a closer look at a pattern, like the fishing pole pattern. Take notice of how the sticks and string line up to look like a fishing pole. Many patterns follow this trait, such as doors, which use two columns of wooden planks to make the rectangular shape of a door, and swords, which use two wooden planks, cobblestone, iron ingots, or diamonds for the blade and a stick as the handle. (Or you could press ESC to stop the game and then visit the Crafting page for help.) Stack some items to avoid excess item dragging which wastes time try putting two diamonds in a helmet shape on top of diamond pants etc.

Set your spawn
If your house is far from your spawn, and you have 3 Wool and 3 Wooden Planks, you can make a Bed. If you sleep in a bed at night, it will set your spawn, and, like in real life, skip the night. Be careful: if you break your bed, you will lose that spawn point! Therefore, it may be smart to make a second bed, and place it and sleep in it before you get rid of the first bed. That way you won't die and spawn at the original spawn point while moving your first bed.

Shelter problem
Is it nearing nighttime and you haven't finished your shelter yet? In an emergency situation and need some shelter? Dig three blocks down and place a block above you, and now you're safe! You may want to expand the boundaries so you may place a bed. This method is not recommended though, as you're completely exposed to mobs as you leave. Pillar jumping is another solution. Simply make a pillar directly under you: 10 or 12 blocks will put you out of reach from a skeleton's arrows, and out of range from monsters in general. Or you can simply set your difficulty to peaceful mode and relax. (See first paragraph.)

Branch mining
This is perhaps the safest method of mining, with higher rewards. Make sure you have a lot of pickaxes and at least 64 torches in your inventory. Slowly mine a big stairway to bedrock, lighting your way with the torches as you go. If you plan to have 1x2x2 paths leading off the side of the stairway, bring as many torches as possible. When you get to bedrock go up 12 stairs (to get to the diamond layer) then mine a 1x2x2 infinite corridor.

Aboveground
Make a 1x2x2 doorway in the back of your home. After that easy step, make a huge room and have several different ways to mine. Low and high, left and right - you're sure to hollow out a mountain soon, getting hefty supplies of coal and iron, however you will not encounter gold, lapis lazuli ore or diamond, and there is still a slight danger of lava.

Caving
Find a cave, and explore a branch of the cave. If the cave branches off while exploring your current branch, go down one of the paths at random. When you reach a dead end go back and mine the Coal, Iron, etc. that you passed. (Leave at least some of the torches you placed, to keep the area lit and prevent monsters from spawning.) After you do that, go down another branch of the cave, and repeat the above process until the cave is done. Now mark the cave in some way so that you know you've mined out this cave. This is best for peaceful mode or easy, as whilst the ores are more obvious, there is more danger of mob attack.

Mineshaft with a water drop
You will need about 2 stacks of ladders, 1 bucket of water, a few iron (or one diamond) pickaxe(s) and a sign. First, dig a 1x2 hole down to bedrock level. Remember not to dig straight below yourself. If you hit non-flowing lava, stop your mineshaft, or try and find a way around the lava.

Once you do that, (or as you go down) place ladders along one side so that you can climb back out of the hole. Place the sign 3 blocks above the bottom on the opposite side of the ladders. Place your water just above the sign. Now you don't have to use the ladders to go down: instead you can just fall down.

Obtaining coal without mining
You have made your shelter, already mined some cobblestone and can't find any coal to light your environment? Just make a furnace, and smelt some wood logs (not already crafted to planks). Use the planks for fuel—2 planks for every three logs you want to cook. This will get you charcoal, which is in all ways equal to coal. (Note that charcoal and coal don't stack together.)

Building a house
There are some recommendations for early building:

For beginners, you might want to hollow out the side of a hill or mountain. This can be done quickly and turn into a good shelter, but keep in mind it will be harder to find your home if you wander off, or you could place torches if you have any around the entrance. A second design is to collect a lot of wood and build a house of wooden planks. These stand out easily, look good, and function well. The bad thing is they are flammable (please note that as of 1.3.1, wood slabs are flammable) and may be set afire by lightning.

A more durable shelter can be made of cobblestone, but don't use dirt for anything but strictly temporary shelters (dirt is easily demolished by creepers). Don't build with or on sand or gravel—they are influenced by gravity, which will make things very difficult when you decide to expand the shelter or dig a basement.

Darkness
Out of coal/charcoal? Remember that hostile mobs require a light level of less than 7 to spawn. Use this knowledge to save some torches in your shelter: even if things are a little dim, any space within 7 blocks of a torch is spawnproof.

Upper-tier ores
See some redstone, diamond, or some fancy ore? Don't use low-level pickaxes to mine them, the ore mining as slowly as stone with a hand is a hint that it will not drop anything! Remember, wood pickaxes only mine coal and stone, while cobblestone mines iron and lapis lazuli ore. Iron mines all blocks but obsidian, which only diamond pickaxes can mine. Be careful - lava lakes often occur at the same level as precious ores. A way of remembering is if the ore takes more than two seconds to mine (apart from obsidian) you can be certain you are using the wrong pickaxe.

Item durability
Mining deep underground and suddenly, inexplicably, your Pickaxe turns into your hand? Is it a bug? Or is it Herobrine? It's neither! It's the item durability feature! Take care to look at the 'health' of your item (the little colored bar underneath the item) before departing on any long trips, be it exploring or mining, as the last thing you want to do is to take the long trip back home just for an Axe, or a Pickaxe. Time is precious, so try bringing along a crafting table, or stock up on tools if you have to. Try not to use tools up completely—instead, hang onto the almost-dead tool while you switch to a new one. Then when the new tool is itself mostly used up, you can combine the two. This pools their remaining durability, with a "repair bonus" for good measure.

Ravine mining
We've all been there. The level generator has created a giant ravine. After you get past the initial "where did that come from?", you'll often see some rare ores within. Well, don't think about jumping down, because that will lead to (almost always) certain death! There are two ways that you can use to get to the bottom without digging lengthy staircases.

One way is to get plenty of sand or gravel. Place blocks in midair and allow them to fall to the bottom of the ravine and stack on top of one another. When they reach ground height, jump on and dig down. (Note: This is the only time when digging down is acceptable.) When you reach the bottom, give yourself a high-five, go get the ore, and re-stack the blocks to get back up.

Another method is to make a waterfall. Build a simple pool on the edge of the ravine, leaving the side that borders the ravine open. Make a bucket, fill it with water, and fill the pool so that it overflows into the ravine. (Or you can just dump your water bucket a block or two away from the edge.) The water will leak out of the pool and fall to the bottom of the ravine. This can be used as an easy way to get down and back up. If you're really impatient, you can actually jump down the ravine into the water at the bottom, which will protect you from a fair bit of fall damage. Be careful however, as most ravines found underground have lava pouring from the sides or in lakes at the bottom. Don't miss ;).

Farming techniques
Rarely do passive mobs ever respawn after they have been killed, which means meat can only last so long (unless you have 2 of each animal and breed them). At this point, starting a farm is the best idea.

Wheat farms
Most people will start a wheat farm first because seeds are one of the first items one can acquire. Also required for a farm are dirt/grass, a hoe, light, and water. What most people don't realize is that one source block of water extends four blocks in every direction, including diagonally. Therefore, the most effective wheat farm is 9 x 9 with a source block in the middle. Again, that one source block extends to all tilled soil in the 9x9 area. That area yields 80 wheat after fully grown (9 x 9 = 81, minus one for the source block is 80). This not only saves water sources, but also gives more room to grow crops for less water.

If you want to farm more efficiently with only having to use a single bucket of water/Water source, it's best to make a multi-level greenhouse. 12 long by 13 wide is preferable, it will allow for a walkway to put torches on. The plots go as follows: 8 rows by 4 columns, a trench 8 blocks long, then another 8 rows by 4 columns. Make each level 5 blocks high minus the foundation layer. Place several layers of of cobblestone or wood before the new level is made to prevent water drops from leaking. Place a hole in the ceiling where the water will enter from the top levels and on the ceiling of each floor, torches or glowstone can be placed to accelerate crop growth. Repeat for as many levels as desired. When flooding the trench at the top, remember this, it is necessary to have the holes in a zig zag pattern to allow the water to flow from level to level. This will net 64 Wheat per floor and will allow faster crop growth since the crops will all be in the same confined area.

To clarify the trench system: If the ceiling of one level has a hole on one side of the water trench, make the hole of the floor above or below on the other side of the water trench. This allows for only one bucket of water to be used for optimal farming. Water flows 8 blocks in a trench and will spread the same for each level it goes to, the last block is purposely made to be a hole to capitalize on this.

Tutoriels/Conseils et astuces