tips and tricks for the enterprising adventurer from the master himself!
i hear alot of people complaining about changes as if they are all impossible to overcome, they aren't they are mostly easily conquered with a bit of common sense
I'll probably be updating this as i notice people asking about certain problems
* fishing is a great way to get food starting out, you can do it from the safety of a boat, without any threats (so is hunting animals, but that can be more dangerous at night) you can make a fishing pole from 2 string and some sticks, you can get string from 1 wool, or from killing 1 spider, and your in business! you can do this in any biome and you can even find weird new bonuses in the water like enchanted weapons and name tags
* find a cave or ravine to find easily exposed ore since stone is too hard to dig through
* put your torches in a predictable way while caving so you don't get lost, i always put mine on the LEFT WALL while im going down, so when i am lost, anytime i come across a torch, i know the RIGHT WAY to get OUT is to keep the torches on the RIGHT. so few people ever really cave anymore since everyone just lazily grid mines they don't know this common sense tip
* you can use halfslabs easily made from cobble or wood for twice as many NON FALLING steps that you can easily make on the go if you bring your crafting table. this will allow you to easily quickly conveniently and cheaply get in and out of any cave or ravine or pit without pillaring which is honestly pretty silly
* avoid going under level 30 with no armor, you will know when your too deep because torches wont work on walls anymore, dont give up cry and quit the server when this happens, you shouldn't be able to go from tech level 0 to tech level max -1 in one 5 minute period...
* DONT GRID MINE or mine through tons of stone as a normal practice, it will ruin any pick VERY quickly, it is just not practical and isn't intended to be in challenge mode
* dig up all of the dirt and gravel and pick out all of the cobble around ores, frequently you will discover other passages, or other ore clusters RIGHT in your immediate vicinity, allowing you to stay in a smaller more familiar area for longer where you know the exits and don't have to clear so many monsters, this is especially useful at the deep depths where so many more kinds of ore are present including diamonds! you can dig the lowest dirt on the stack and jam a torch under it and all of the blocks will fall into a nice neat pile instead of having to dig them individually, this is easier if you use your hotkeys, or just dig with the torch in hand and drop it instantly, it gets really easy to time with little practice
* dont dig dirt or ore right over your head or right under your feet, it can (usually will) cause blocks to fall which can hurt you and suffocate you
* don't place torches on dirt, it can trigger a cavein and also the torch will fall off
* if you have your flint and steel for deep lighting, you can also use it to light up zombies before killing them, that will prevent them from coming back to life!
* you can make temporary drop chests as you go and dump any useful ores in there to avoid them dropping incase you die, just don't forget where you leave them!
* if you hear a ghast screech after killing a creeper or blaze, RUN!!!!!! it means they have dropped a tnt that is about to explode
DEEP MINING TIPS:
* lighting tips under 30: you can use redstone torches to put off dim light, move pockets of lava in a bucket, i think jakolanterns? and just set temporary fires from flint and tinder (i do this alot especially starting out before i have much redstone) you can also tap redstone ores before mining them if there are other nearby ores you could mine first. DONT POUR WATER OVER ALL LAVA YOU SEE, it can be useful. monster spawns ARE reduced in the light, but they can still occur
* have at least full iron armor AND A BOW, it is also not a terrible idea to slap some cheap low level enchants on the armor, go for blast or fire resistance as they will help vs blazes which can spawn in the deep depths. there is an enchanting table in the library on the space ship that anyone can use. bring a bow to kill blazes at RANGE, they explode on death so don't melee them to death, finish them with the bow and enjoy all of the ore they expose!
* KNOW YOUR ESCAPE ROUTES, when you hear a blaze fire up, you want to know which direction to run without thinking. if you are working on a serious deep core mine, it is a good idea to build (or leave) choke points or barriers for cover, choke points should be easily blockable by a block or door, having areas your not mining in blocked off will prevent extra monsters from nearby from sneaking up on you, halfslabs make great blockers cause you can see through them and they are cheaper than full blocks and don't fall and you can shoot through them! (this also helps in netherfortresses!)
* if i you find a nice big lava pit try and follow along the walls of it to see alot of surface area without having to mine, you can use your halfsteps to place a walkway around its edge, or extra dirt into the lava if its shallow and you don't care about dirt
* tnt is cheap and effective, you can make 3 at once with just a bit of creeper droppings and sand, tnt blows up huge areas and exposes tons of surface area, where diamonds can hide. be warned though tnt can blow up some of the ore (usually will) so if youve already explosed a ton of cobble, and dirt, and gravel, dig all that up to reveal possible diamonds before blowing up more tnt
* tnt mining can leave HUGE irregular deep pits.. this is bad for monsters, it leaves them alot of area to spawn, remember to leave chokepoints, it is also a good idea to build up safe level paths through large blasted caverns where you can easily run out or stay on safer highground away from monsters
use halfslabs to block off the sides so spiders cant climb onto it, and so you cant be shot down by skeletons
NETHER TIPS:
* the nether is crazy hard, don't ever go out in the wide open ... like ever
, it is hell, it is supposed to be hell, hell is no place for long walks and picnics. ghasts are king here, you are a worm compared to them, if you see a ghast RUN, pray later.. dont be out in line of sight of wide open spaces where ghasts can spawn, dont fight ghasts
just dont. if your reading this guide you should not even think of fighting ghasts anytime soon.
* immediately make shelter, enclose your gate int a tiny box of anything, as long as you placed it it will have 5 break protection which is super useful when so many things here can explode blocks
* dig down into the ground and make long narrow 1 wide 3 tall tunnels, 3 high is because netherrock will frequently ignight, when it does, if you have a 3 high tunnel, you can place dirt at the ceiling and it will fall and putout the fire, don't put fire out with your hands! (what are you simple?)
* get low as fast as you can, down at lower depths there seems to be PLENTY of thick netherrock without much lava or wide open space where you can make fairly safe tunnels
* keep plenty of halfslabs handy! when you hear pigmen around, be ready to block your tunnel with your halfslabs so that you can kill them risk free
* find a netherfortress and explore it for netherwart (keeping your halfslabs ready), make sure to create some chokepoints and barriers as you explode the long and cornering halls, so you can at any moments notice quickly defend yourself risk free (pigmen can be pretty ferocious)
* killing pigmen in a fortress should usually drop netherwart
once you have some rods and some nethewart .. id leave!
* use your rods and netherwart to make some nice fire resist potions before heading back
* remember you dont NEED to get full enchanted diamond armor the first day.. all the other players will be facing the same challenges including possible griefers, iron armor is highly undervalued by so many new players who are used to vanilla. this isn't vanilla
* save your XP!, as you mine and smelt ore you will gain plenty of XP, you can save it into bottles to avoid losing it on deaths, make glass bottles and right click them on an enchanting table and now you don't have to worry about it being lost on death, just put the bottle somewhere safe for later when you want to enchant. there is a free enchanting table you can use on the spaceship in the library
BUILDING TIPS
* also remember the crafting aspects of the game! stone is pretty nice and will be valuable to other players, so even if you don't care about it, mining all of the cobble loosened from nearby ores is a good idea because you can sell it or use it for crafting later
* there are tons of other easily accessible building materials you can use in your builds aswell, quartz can drop from gravel so get that, wood farming or gathering on the surface is easy
* overhangs and eaves can be done easily by 'two pillaring' up to where you need the corners, and placing the corners first, you can place TWO opposing corners and follow those eaves from the corners across the whole rest of your surface without ever having to build 'over air'
* two pillaring is just stacking your way up 2 blocks at a time instead of 1, place a block next to you, jump on it, place 2 blocks next do you, jump on those, place 2 next to you... etc, this should be obvious, use sand so you can easily knock it back down afterward with the torch trick
* you can also build bridges this way, two pillar up to the desired height the reach of building is far enough that unless your bridge is crazy long you wont need to do it much. it also makes for nicer looking bridges
try not to get hung up on one or two minor changes that you 'dont like' and 'want changed or else you quit'.. in real life there are things that you sometimes cant just flick your fingers and have changed, you work around them, overcome them, some can even be blessings in disguise (like explosive monsters in caves exposing diamonds!)
remember the goal is to have fun, don't worry so much about hardcore grinding or mining, try and socialize, don't forget the value of trade, teamwork, cooperation and division of labor. also don't forget about all of the things like potions low level enchants, leather or chain armor, all of these things are far more useful and valuable in this world now that you can skip past every single thing in the game get full enchanted diamond armor in 2 hours and kill the dragon.. that is 2 hours of ease, challenge mode is long term interesting challenging fun which can be even more fun and interesting safer, and funny if you bring a friend!
