As one of the most popular games of the past decade, a lot of Minecraft’s success can be attributed to the sheer amount of freedom it gives you. This game is much more than just an ordinary sandbox, having tons of systems to discover and manipulate that keep players invested year after year. With so much to uncover — and more being added all the time — it would be almost impossible for anyone to know everything there is about Minecraft, and if you’re coming in fresh it might all seem a bit overwhelming. Regardless of which type of player you are, we’ve rounded up the best Minecraft hidden tricks and advanced tactics for beginners and veterans alike, in order to help you master your blocky world.
Hidden Tricks And Advanced Tactics For Minecraft Beginners And Veterans
The initial draw of Minecraft was the comparison to Lego, and that effect certainly still exists. Building anything and everything you can imagine is a major component to why the game has endured for so long, but other aspects of Minecraft have grown to almost exceed that pure creative element. From crafting and exploring, to adventuring and fighting, there are endless ways to spend your time — but there are a few specific things you should know to make your experience far more successful.
Mine Intelligently
Mining is obviously a huge component of Minecraft. You’ll need to mine for just about everything, assuming you want to get better equipment than the most basic wood tools. All the best materials, such as iron and diamonds, plus others like coal and redstone, are all found in the Earth, waiting to be broken free by your pickaxe. But just grabbing your axe and randomly carving holes isn’t a very smart way to maximize your efforts.
First of all, never dig or mine straight down. Yes it is the fastest way to go down, and rare materials do tend to spawn more often the deeper down you go, but you never know when you might break a block and end up falling through the roof of an underground cave, or worse — directly into a pool of lava. Getting your items back would be difficult in the former scenario, and impossible in the latter. Always dig diagonally, or in a spiral, when going deeper.
When you reach a depth where you want to search for materials, use a branching system. Mine in a straight line for a while from a center point, then create a second branch two blocks away from that first one branching out again. Repeat this process to stay organized, but also maximize the amount of blocks you see without needing to mine every single one.
Water And Lava
Water and Lava can be the most annoying, and deadly, surprises you encounter in Minecraft outside of the monsters. Nothing’s worse than accidentally flooding your mine with water or cracking open the roof to get a diamond and inadvertently releasing a pillar of lava. For this reason you should always have a backup plan ready for these situations.
The good news is that, even with lava, you can plug up a hole with just about any block. You’ll be overflowing with cobblestone while mining anyway, so keep a stack on your quick bar right next to your pickaxe so you can instantly swap to it and place a block to replace the one you just broke and halt the flow. You have a few seconds to do this before the lava actually drops down to the ground and spreads, and as long as you can still reach the source, any lava that slipped out will disappear.
Water is the same, but there is another trick that becomes very useful when exploring underwater areas. As long as you can reach a flat surface underwater, if you place a door or a torch down on the ground it will create an air pocket you can use to refill your oxygen so you don’t have to swim all the way back to the surface.
Finally, despite lava being a very valuable resource for the late game, you can no longer create infinite sources of it. If you want easy access, the best way is to make a Nether Portal and hope it brings you close to a large lava lake.
Use The Recipe Book
While crafting was pure experimentation and word of mouth in the early days of Minecraft, later versions have included a handy recipe book that will actually display how to make any item with the ingredients you’ve discovered so far. This is an amazing tool to get an idea of what you should be crafting based on what you’ve collected so far, as well as to help you remember recipes for things you’ll be making often. It won’t prevent you from crafting things you haven’t unlocked in the book yet, either.
Set Your Spawn
When you first arrive in your new world, your first order of business should be to find a place you want to settle down and call home. Odds are, that isn’t going to be the exact spot you initially appear at in a randomly generated game, but that position is your default spawn point should the monsters get the best of you. Once you’ve started building your new base, or at least know where you’d rather spawn for a while, build a bed out of three wool and three planks and use it to set your spawn point to that bed. Just make sure the bed itself is in a safe place, because if it is destroyed for any reason and you die before making a new one, you’ll be sent way back to your world’s original spawn point.
As long as you keep these tips in mind, and have a strong weapon, durable armor, and steady supply of food on hand, you’ll be the master of your Minecraft domain in no time.
Next: Minecraft Movie Pushed Back From Its 2022 Release Date
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Jesse Lennox loves writing, games, and complaining about not having time to write and play games. He knows the names of more Japanese game devs than his own neighbors, and has a way better knowledge of the game industry at large than anything going on in “real” current events. You can catch him defending the plot of Kingdom Hearts and geeking out over awesome combo videos in character action games any day of the week.
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