Minecraft 1.4 at a Glance (284/365)

Hello world! Did you know that the scheduled release of Minecraft 1.4 is just two weeks away?

Well, it is.

So, let’s take a look at some of the more prominent additions to one of our favorite games.

There are a plethora of new mobs/mob variants, let’s take a look at them all.

WITHERS-

This, in my opinion, is the coolest of the new mobs. These guys can only be “crafted,” they cannot be spawned. They are extremely mean. They shoot Wither heads at you which will explode, and they even kill all friendly mobs too. They won’t be helpful and kill Skeletons or Creepers, just pigs, cows, sheep, etc. Jerks.

They can also regenerate their health. The final main feature of the Wither is that if it damages you, you will undergo a Wither II effect. Meaning that all of your hearts will be shadowed so that you can’t tell how many hearts you actually have left. For example, you might see that you have 10 black hearts, but in reality you have 5 hearts of health remaining. This is really bad news. Here’s a hint, if you’re going to fight a Wither, bring some dang good armor and a sword, and a bucket or two of milk since milk terminates all effects, such as Wither II.

WITHER SKELETONS-

These guys are pretty mean too. They are black skeletons, they carry a stone sword instead of a bow, they also cause you to undergo a Wither II effect, they only spawn in Nether fortresses, and can be spawned using a Skeleton spawn egg in the Nether (you will spawn a Wither Skeleton 80% of the time). Not as bad as the Wither, but still mean.

WITCHES-

Tyler and I aren’t a fan of this new mob. We feel that it strays from what Minecraft is, or at least, what it used to be. Personally, I don’t hate it as much as I did before, but I am still unsure if it should be in Minecraft. Anyways, Witches do ranged attacks. They can throw harmful potions at you (slowness, damage, etc.) and use healing potions on themselves. In other words, if you’re going to kill them, kill them fast. The spawn in Swamp biomes in little Witch huts. They look like villagers, have a wart on their nose, and their nose will move…weird.

BATS

My second favorite new mob. Ironically enough, they have no purpose whatsoever. They are just awesome. Bats are passive and will never attack the player, not even if provoked. They spawn in dark caves and will hang from the ceilings while sleeping. However, they wake up and fly all over the place if disturbed by the player. They don’t currently drop anything; hopefully that will change.

STRONGER SKELETONS/ZOMBIES-

Depending on your set difficulty, you may now see that both Skeletons and Zombies can sometimes spawn with armor and weapons (obviously, Skeletons already have a bow, but it might be enchanted now). This is one of the scariest things about the Pretty Scary Update. How would you like to run into a Skeleton with an enchanted bow and Chain armor…I wouldn’t. In addition, Zombies can now pick up items off the ground, and use them. Thankfully, they will for sure drop picked up items when they die.

VILLAGER ZOMBIES-

Zombies can now infect villagers. This can mean very bad things if you are living in a village. You may be overrun by Zombies. Zombies can also infect baby villagers…oh the horror! These baby villager zombies will be very small, 50% faster than other zombies, and they won’t burn in the sunlight. Great. Oh, did I fail to mention that they can also wear armor?

Thankfully, you can be the hero of Minecraftia and save all these villagers if they are infected. All you need to do is throw a potion of weakness at them and give them a normal golden apple. Then they will return to normal, and, hopefully, not get infected again.

MOB SKULLS-

This is just too cool. There are five new decoration blocks in 1.4, a Skeleton head (my favorite), Creeper head, Zombie head, Wither head, and a Steve head (that’s a bit disturbing). The only block that can be retrieved in Survival is the Wither head (rarely dropped by Wither Skeletons), the rest can only be retrieved in Creative. Still, you can line the walls of your house with trophies of all those Creepers and Skeletons you have killed. Excellent…

CUSTOM SUPERFLAT WORLDS-

Another really cool feature to Minecraft, the ability to customize you Superflat world however you like it. You can make the entire world be made of TNT if you want…but don’t light up a block of TNT, nobody’s computer would survive that kind of explosion. Right now, there are a few different presets. They are still working on an easier way to make your own map and add individual layers, but you can do that by using the bar at the top (the one filled with weird numbers). It isn’t as convenient, but it works.
Note: This picture was a teaser from Dinnerbone, and is not what the Superflat customization menu looks like now.

NEW SOUNDS-

Not much can be said about the new sounds. I like that they have some different sounds depending on what block you’re walking on, and I enjoy the new animal sounds (except for the Enderman, that thing is scary as hell now). That’s all I have to say about that.

COMMAND BLOCKS-

These blocks are extremely cool, especially for Adventure maps. They cannot be crafted at the moment, but can be accessed by using the /give command. Using this block, you can have commands be activated by a redstone signal. Any command you want can be used, and you can restrict it to the closest player, farthest player, random player, etc. For example, if you have a /give command, when powered with redstone, the closest/farthest/random player will receive that item. Cool, right?

BEACON BLOCK-

This is an interesting new block that I have never been too sure about. It seems slightly strange for Minecraft, but at the same time, it’s really cool. When placed on a 1, 2, 3, or 4 level pyramid, and activated with some ingot or gem, you can get superpowers! Well, sort of.

ANVIL BLOCK-

This block is still a mystery. Dinnerbone released a picture showing off the latest item a few days ago. Based on other released pictures, the Anvil will allow you to rename items, repair items, and combine enchanted tools/weapons. For example, if you have Pickaxe A with Efficiency 4 and Pickaxe B with Unbreaking 2, you can place both of them in the anvil and you will get Pickaxe C with Efficiency 4 and Unbreaking 2. Cool right? However, repairing and combining tools seems to cost quite a few levels. Good luck.

INVISIBILITY POTION-

We have 2 new potions now. The first one is an Invisibility potion. When you drink/splash it, your whole body will become invisible. However, any tools or items you are holding, or any armor or gear you are wearing will still be visible. There will still be particle effects also, so you aren’t completely invisible. Mobs won’t try and attack you, unless you hit them or run into them.

NIGHT VISION POTION-

This potion is cool. I assume all of you know how dark it gets at night, or how hard it is to see in a cave without torches. Well, this potion will light everything up for you. It’s like a major brightness increase, sort of. Anyways, it is quite useful.

CARROT ON A STICK / “STEERABLE” PIGS-

We have been able to ride pigs for quite some time now. However, we have not been able to steer them…until now. Thanks to the Carrot on a Stick item, we can now point pigs in the direction we want them to go. While riding the pig and holding the carrot on a stick, just point in the direction you want to go and Mr. Piggy will head in that direction. If you hold the right mouse button you will go even faster. Sadly, the pig will eat the carrot over time and it will eventually “break.”

FLOWER POTS-

This is a cool decorative item. You can place mushrooms, flowers, cacti, ferns, etc. into the flower pot and put it wherever you want. It’s one of those items that really doesn’t serve any purpose, but it looks really nice.

ITEM FRAMES-

Again, another decoration block. This one can have several uses though. You can place an frame on a wall and then right-click an item in there. If you place a clock, compass, or map in one of these frames they will work just as if you were holding them (clocks will still show the time, etc.). Another really cool item.

CORNER STAIRS-

This is just a little fix which turned out to be awesome. When you reach a corner with stairs, the stair will morph into a corner stair. I actually have no idea how to explain it, it’s better to just see it. This is really nice for roofs that use stairs.

“DYEABLE” LEATHER-

This is also cool. You can now use any dye you want and you can change the color of your leather armor. You can use different dyes together too, in order to make, literally, millions of different colors. This will be especially helpful in PvP team/faction servers.

NEW FOOD-

Finally, we have even more food. The two main items are carrots and potatoes. They can be planted (you can find them in villages, I believe) and you can get even more! Plus, you can make golden carrots, baked potatoes, and poisonous potatoes. Cool.

There are plenty of other new features. But these are the biggest, and in my opinion, the coolest of the bunch. So, there’s only 2 more weeks until 1.4…After reading through all these features, which of them are you the most excited for?

Thanks for reading and Happy Mining!

Minecraft Tip #30 (247/365)

Hello one and all. Jonah here for another tip. This tip is all about tools. There are 12 tools in Minecraft. We are going to look at all of them, check out their uses, their durability, and their recipe. Are you ready?

We will first look at all of the basic tools; the pick, shovel, hoe, and axe.

First, you can use five different items/minerals to make these tools and they each have different durabilities. Here are the five, with their durability:

Wood- 60 uses
Stone- 132 uses
Iron- 251 uses
Gold- 33 uses
Diamond- 1562 uses

Each of these items will also have a different efficiency. The order is as follows: Wood, Stone, Iron, Diamond, Gold.

That’s enough of that, let’s look at each individual tool.

The pickaxe will mine stone and brick related blocks as well as ores and (for diamond only) obsidian.

The axe will cut down trees and other wood-related materials.

The shovel can go through dirt, grass, mycelium, snow, sand, gravel, and clay easily.

The hoe plows dirt/grass and turns it into farmland. This will allow you to grow crops.

Next, to the secondary tools.

The fishing rod will allow you to catch fish. It can be used 65 times before breaking.

The flint and steel allows the pyromaniac in you to come out and light everything and anything on fire. It has 65 uses.

A fire charge is similar to flint and steel except it has only one use. This is handiest in dispensers.

Shears can be used to collect leaves.

They can also collect vines, tall grass, ferns, and dead bushes. In addition, it destroys cobwebs easily and gives you string from it. You also destroy wool easier. You can collect wool from Sheep, mushrooms from Mooshrooms, and safely remove tripwire. It has 238 uses.

Next is the clock. It will tell you the time of day by showing you the position of the sun/moon.

The compass points you to your original spawn point.

While moving across the land you can pull your map out and it will keep growing and show more land. This is handy to find your way home.

Finally, the bucket can be used to transport and place water or lava. You can also right-click a cow while holding a bucket to get milk from it. You can drink milk and it will remove all potion/poison effects.

That is all you need to know about tools. I hope you found this tip helpful. Thanks for reading and Happy Mining!

Shelf Mod Review (220/365)

Hello everyone! First, I would like to apologize. I completely forgot that it was Mod Monday yesterday and when I got home the stupid power went out again. Life is cruel sometimes. Fortunately, Tyler had already done the post but he didn’t remember about Mod Monday either. Oh well. To make up for yesterday, here is a mod review for y’all.

Now, we are only one week into Minecraft 1.3, so there are many mods that still have yet to be updated. And since I don’t really want to do a mod review on an outdated mod, I will be reviewing some smaller mods until more are updated.

So, here is a very simple mod. The Shelf Mod, which comes from the mind of Risugami, who is responsible for other mods such as Modloader, Death Chest, Recipe Book, and more.

This mod, as the name suggests, adds shelves to Minecraft. These shelves act as miniature chests, the difference, however, is that the items will be displayed on the outside.

Here is a shelf. It sort of looks like stairs. but it is a lot cooler than that.

It is a very simple recipe. Here it is.

When you right click a shelf you will open up a menu very similar to that of a crafting table.

A 3×3 box where you can insert items like a chest. Now, this shelf is 1/3 of the size of a chest and it requires 3 wood planks to craft. So, if you just want a place to store things then go ahead and make a chest. But, as I said earlier, shelves display the items.

Like this! Pretty cool, huh?

So, whatever you place on the top row will be displayed on the top of the shelf. Then the middle row in the middle, bottom row on the bottom. It’s pretty self-explanatory.

You can stack items in shelves. That’s handy.

If you really wanted to, you could also use these shelves as stairs. I have no idea why you would want to, though.

Shelves come in four different varieties: Wood, Smooth stone, Brick, and Obsidian. The recipes are the same for each.

Now, I have a few very tiny  problems with this mod. First, you can’t shift-click items out of the shelf. Second, wooden shelves act like wooden half slabs used to, they have to be mined with a pick, not an axe. Finally, obsidian shelves can be destroyed with any pick, instead of just diamond. now, I suppose that just makes life easier but it would be more realistic if you needed a diamond pick.

Those are things I would like to see fixed in a future update, but it isn’t a huge deal.

FINAL RATING:

    

I give this mod 4/5 diamonds. It is simple, handy, and it looks nice. I could see a mod like this being useful in shops on some servers. There are a few small problems I have with it, but all-in-all this is a neat mod.

Download the mod here: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/75440-v131-risugamis-mods-preliminary-updates/

Thanks for reading. We will try to remember about Mod Monday next week and, hopefully, more mods will be updated by then and w can do a review on something a little more exciting. For example, we got requests to do mod reviews on Thaumcraft, Redpower, and ComputerCraft. We have not forgotten about your requests, don’t worry, but these are big mods that will likely take a while to be updated.

Until tomorrow…Happy Mining!