Exploring the world

As you progress in the game, you might want to explore the world around you. There are various reasons you might want to explore. You might want to find more resources, maybe you want to build a new base or house there, or maybe you just want to look around and find some villages or desert temples. All of these are reasons why people go exploring.

When you go exploring, you should always have a pickaxe, a good sword, a and enough food. You can also bring torches, blocks, maps, a compas, and more. When I go exploring, I usually take these items:

• Pickaxe
• Sword
• Shovel
• Axe
• Blocks
• Food
• Torches
• Map(s)
• Bed

I usually bring a bed so that when it turns night, I can sleep before the mobs spawn because I don't like exploring at night. Its dark and dangerous at night. Just make sure you don't die if you took your bed or you will spawn at the first spawn point, not where you last slept because you broke the bed.

There are many different biomes you can find especially with the new 1.7 update, they added a lot of new biomes. You can find more information on biomes HERE. There are a lot of different biomes each containing different materials and structures. That is why I like exploring. There are so many cool things you can see.

Diversity

This is a video of me and Shawn playing a mini-game called Diversity. The objective is to collect 10 different colors of wool. Every time you complete a mini-game, you get a block of wool. Once you have all the wool, you win the game. All the mini-games are different. This one we did on camera was the Arena. We have also done the Parkour mini-game and the Trivia one. I liked Parkour the best because i'm pretty good at it. Shawn, not so much. The Trivia one was also fun. You had to answer a bunch of questions about Minecraft and if you got one wrong, you would have to start over from the last checkpoint. You get a checkpoint every 10 questions that you successfuly answer. We did mess up quite a lot but it was still fun. We tried the Maze mini-game but that one was way too hard so we used the one and only freebie for it.

Sorry, the sound is a little off.

Farming

Farming is a very important part of surviving. With the new 1.7 update, your hunger goes down a lot quicker so now it's even more important to have decent farms. The first thing you need to do, is find some seeds by breaking the tall grass. I also suggest finding some carrots and potatoes. You can find those by killing a zombie (it's a rare drop though). You can also find them in a village. Next, you want to craft a hoe, which is done like this:

After you have made a hoe, just right click some dirt or grass and then right click it with some food like seeds. If you want the crops to grow faster, you need to "hydrate" the soil. You can do that by placing water within 6 blocks. 

The hydrated ones are the darker colored ones.

Farms can also be automated with redstone to make them more efficient.

All About Mining

Today I am going to teach you about mining. To start off, you should start to build a staircase downward until you get to level 5(you can see that on the f3 menu, level 5 is when y=5). The staircase should look something like this:

Now, find level 11. From there you should just dig a tunnel 1 block wide and 2 blocks tall. This tunnel can go on as far as you want. As you're making the tunnel, place torches every 4 blocks like this:

So that there are 3 blocks in between each torch. Once you stop the main tunnel, stop at each torch and mine out about 5 blocks in the 2 walls like this:

This is one of the most efficient and cheapest ways of mining. Since ores usually spawn in clusters that are wider than 2 blocks, you will see them on at least one side of the wall. Diamond ore only spawns in levels 16 and lower so level 11 is like in the middle since level 1-5 are bedrock. So level 10, 11, and 12 are probably the best layers to go mining at. There is also a high chance that you will find a cave, dungeon, abandoned mineshaft, a ravine, or maybe even the stronghold. If you find a cave, it is a good idea to explore it just be careful of the monsters that can sneak up on you.

The Next Few Days

Once the second day of your Minecraft adventure begins, you should make a decision. You can either stay where you are and start building, or you can go exploring for a better or more interesting place to live. If you go exploring, make sure you have some torches and enough food for a few days. You will also need some basic tools, especially a decent sword (at least iron). Before you head off, you might want to remember where you live by writing down the coordinates. To do so, press f3 (for windows) and fn + f3 for Macs. Then a menu like this should come up:

Now, simply look where is says x, y, and z. You only need the whole numbers of x and z. The y coordinate is your height so it's not that important. Now, head off in any direction you want until you find a cool place to make your permanent base. By then, it's probably already night time or a few days have passed, so just try to do the same thing you did in the first night; go mining, start planning your dream house/base. In the morning, you should go back to your old base if you didn't take all your stuff with you. Then you can start gathering supplies for your main house/base. You could start to build something as cool as this:

However, building something like this takes a lot of time so don't expect it to be done anytime soon. In future blog posts, I will be explaining more on how to build efficient, semi automatic farms. I will also be going over some mining tips and explaining how enchantments work.

Minecraft Survival Mode

Survival Minecraft is all about surviving by yourself in a randomly generated world. The first step to surviving is to find a tree and start punching it down. After you get some wood you need to make a crafting bench by opening your inventory and placing 4 wooden planks like this:

To get the planks, simply put the logs in your crafting area, and for sticks, just place two planks on top of each other. Now that you have a crafting table, place it down somewhere. For the first day, you should collect about 15 logs. Now that you have enough wood, open your crafting table by right-clicking it. You will need a basic set of tools which includes a pickaxe, axe, shovel, and sword. The recipes for the tools are shown below.

Pickaxe:

Axe:

Shovel:

Sword:

Now that you have a set of basic wooden tools, you need to find a place to stay for the night. I suggest just digging a hole in the ground or in the side of a mountain, just remember to never dig strait down because you might run into lava and die. During the night, you should start mining for materials such as cobblestone, iron, coal, and maybe even diamonds! After you collect some cobblestone or iron, you should make a new set of tools with them. In order to get iron and gold, you will need to smelt them in a furnace. The furnace is made like this:

You will need to use coal or wood as a fuel in the furnace. Mining is a great way to pass the time while your waiting for morning to come because you can get materials while doing it. Later on, when you can craft a bed, you can just sleep through the night if you want. If you start getting hungry, go outside during the day and look for some cows, pigs, or chickens to kill. You can then put their meat in the furnace to eat. These are the basics of surviving your first day and night in Minecraft. In the future, I will explain more advanced things that can be done and how to be more efficient.

Introduction to Minecraft

     Minecraft is a sandbox game made of many blocks or cubes. You can build whatever you like. You can play by yourself in singleplayer or with friends in multiplayer. Many people have created custom maps for other Minecraft users to play on and enjoy. One of these maps is called Cluster Chunk. Cluster Chunk is a PvP map, or player vs player map, where you try to kill the other person and try to prevent them from re-spawning by destroying their bed. The first one to destroy the other person's bed and kill them wins. You can play with two or more players and have teams. Each cluster is made up of about 8 of almost every block in Minecraft. There are also three smaller clusters around the main one which contain useful items, however they are guarded by monsters. Both team's clusters are exactly the same so no one has an advantage to begin with.

     Shawn and I have played on a lot of maps and this is one of our favorites because it is always exciting to play. But this is only one of many maps and minigames that exist. This series starts off with me and Shawn playing Cluster Chunk. If you want to watch the exiting battle, click the following links:

My Perspective:

Shawn's Perspective:

     This is the first video in the series but in the future we will play more minigames and different types of maps. We might also play in survival mode and teach you some useful tips and how to play and succeed in Minecraft.