User:Simons Mith/Creeper handling

Creeper Handling
Specially for featherwinglove...

About me
My own playing style is a sort of self-imposed hardcore mode. I don't play hardcore, but when I die I randomly teleport to a new location and start again from scratch in the existing world. With time, I expect to gradually start coming across my own old building works, probably long after I've forgotten about making them in the first place. But this does mean getting caught out just once could be game over for that particular Steve, so I do have a strong incentive to have anti-creeper methods that work.

As far as my average survival time goes, I almost always last long enough to get a full set of iron armour, and am usually collecting my first diamonds when I finally get careless and get caught out. In hard mode, a full suit of iron armour is simply not enough to ensure safety against creepers. The latest Steve did a lot of village trading for diamond goods, and is the best armoured I have managed yet. He has the best chance of long-term survival I've achieved to date.

Creeper areas
Three areas where one needs to worry about them; above ground and below, and in the short time period after a transition between the two. Somewhat different techniques are usable in these cases.

Sleep regularly
Carry a bed with you at all times and sleep regularly the moment it starts getting dark. While creepers survive during the day, just as for other mobs they only spawn in darkness, so the less darkness there is in your world, the fewer creepers. There is a catch with this approach; unless you leave beds behind everywhere you go, if you do get killed you will respawn at the world centre, which may be inconvenient.

Use caution after caving
If you've been caving, you probably worked through the night several times, possibly without realising. That increases the probablility that there will be more creepers than usual about when you surface. Keep your guard up for at least one full surface day after you've been down below, longer if your home biome is a forest or jungle.

Clear and light up your regular haunts
Make sure you have good sightlines around your usual areas by clearing back cover. These areas are 'home', and your guard will tend to be down a bit. Just the time for a creeper to catch you out.

Kill untamed passive mobs
Set up farms for the animals you do want to keep, and then be willing to kill any wild animals you find. It's a fallacy to think that because you heard an 'oink', that means the creature moving nearby is a pig, because creepers can and do move through herds of passive mobs without disturbing them in any way. In other words, just because you heard an 'oink' doesn't mean there isn't a creeper nearby as well, moving up under cover of those non-threating pig-noises. Particularly for any hardcore mode player, you have to check constantly, and you absolutely cannot assume that any movement nearby is a passive mob.

Carry a knockback sword
A knockback sword does double duty; it will knock a creeper away, drastically reducing the damage it does if it does explode, and it can still be used for parrying. If you are out specifically hunting for mobs, then there may be other better mob-killing swords, but if you are just out and about, and want the sword for defence, the knockback sword is the best choice. Besides, when you're out hunting your guard is up, and you're much less likely to get caught by surprise anyway.

Wear enchanted armour
Enchanted diamond armour with explosion resistance is vital to survival. I have not yet experimented with whether it's worth enchanting iron armour to tide you over until you have a full set of diamond equipment.

Carry emergency blocks
If you fall down a hole into a dark area, immediately surround yourself with a fort of emergency blocks. Then take stock, checking your damage and healing if necessary, and making temporary peep-holes in the fort walls to see what's around you, and pick off any nearby mobs one by one. Be careful about trying to pillar out of danger, because if there's a skeleton around it may knock you off the pillar, and you may even fall further, taking more damage.

Keep your food bar full
In safe terrain this is less critical, but in dangerous terrain always keep you food bar topped up or close to it so that you can heal promptly.

Carry healing supplies
I use a few golden apples (the cheap ones). A few seconds of regeneration restores several hearts of health, and usually tops up the hunger bar as well. That gives a quick boost to your hearts, and then you can usually afford to wait for natural healing to do the rest.

Creepers underground
Underground, something moving about without hissing, clanking or groaning probably is a creeper, and you should assume the worst. If it does turn out to be a passive mob that has fallen down a cave, it would be safest to kill it to avoid false alarms.

Falling creepers
Do not linger in any area where creepers could fall on you. When exploring an unlit chasm, a potion of night vision is extremely useful. Failing that, make quick forays to place torches and then retreat to shelter. Use the forays to place a few lights and perhaps the occasional barrier across the chasm to block mobs' movement. If you can't access an area to light it up, assume it's infested. If you want to stay a bit longer in a dangerous area, build a shelter that completely surrounds you while you work.

Exploit the despawn mechanics
A safer way to cave is to make brief forays into dark areas and place a flurry of torches, then retreat and listen. If all remains clear, advance again into the newly lit areas and place barriers. Then go somewhere else for a while, giving mobs in that area time to despawn. When you revisit later, the area will be much safer and you can explore it more thoroughly.

Place regular barriers
Put fences with gates throughout your mines. This gives you an area to retreat to, and once behind a fence you know mobs can only approach you from one direction rather than two or more. This makes it much easier to guard against them.

Take up archery
Minecraft has bows and arrows and means of obtaining them, I would advise that the player take up archery sooner rather than later, as no creeper can blow up if it is outranged by the player. Along with this, the player should train themselves to hunt hostile mobs as the best defense against any hostile mob attack is to be hunting for them long before they have time to lock onto you. I have hunted at night several times now, and the most common if not most effective defense I have so far found is to climb up to a high vantage point on the top of a hill where there is little or no land behind the player and there is a large body of water or impassable terrain blocking mob movement. The only other thing I would suggest is to prefer hills where jumping is required, as mobs cannot jump, this effectively blocks their pathfinding to the player, the one caveat to this is that it is a lot less effective against skeletons unless you jump high enough up a hill to be out of range of the height limit of their arrow trajectories. BrickVoid 05:27, 24 October 2012 (UTC)