10 Minecraft Tricks and Hacks

Between school, extracurriculars and spending time with friends, you have limited time enough to bond with Minecraft.

So don’t waste what precious time you have with your avatar by dying unnecessarily, losing your valuables, or slow-poking around. Instead, try out some of these tips to save your time, up your Minecraft understanding, and give you a better Mining experience with these Minecraft tricks and hacks.

1. Familiarize yourself with the code.

Learning the ins and outs of Minecraft won’t just help you now, but will also come in handy in the future if you decide you like gaming so much, you’d like to design them! Start with the basics by pre-ordering LearnToMod, a Minecraft modification that teaches code as you go. Before long, you’ll be so familiar with the game, it will be like riding a bike…with square wheels.

2. Get around faster.

When traveling through a corridor only two blocks high, run and jump at the same time to maximize your speed. To go even faster, place ice on the bottom layer and do the same. “You will absolutely fly,” says Minecraft guru and Youtube user Mumbo Jumbo.

3. Zombie-proof your doors.

This one is easy – build your door one block up to avoid zombies getting through.

4. Maximize your potions.

To get the full effects of any potion, toss it in the air so that it lands on you.

5. Farm sand easily.

Rather than bother with shoveling sand, place a torch underneath. The fire will burn all of the sand above it for you.

6. Speaking of fire…

Light your livestock on fire so that the food you gather is pre-cooked (such as roasted chicken, yum). Never mind that it’s a bit barbaric.

7. Relax in peace.

Set your difficulty (in the Options menu) to Peaceful. This way, you won’t have to worry about a hostile environment if you’re concentrating on building something. Not that murderous spiders get in the way…

8. Understand ice.

Hitting ice won’t destroy it if there is nothing under it. However, when a solid block is underneath, hitting the ice turns it to water – an effective way to fill a stream or pond.

9. Experiment with mods.

Your time is limited enough as it is, so play in a world that you’ll really enjoy. Try out popular mods like Railcraft, JourneyMap, and Mantle.

10. Combine water and lava.

When the lava is running, combining it with water creates cobblestone. When the lava is still, the combination creates obsidian. Both valuable, cobblestone does not adhere to physics, while obsidian is the second strongest material in Minecraft and is necessary to make a portal to The Nether.